Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (20 page)

He knelt at the spot and touched the floor where life evaporated for two souls. He felt the frozen ground through his leather gloves. His fingers began to numb, and he slowly lifted them to his face. The gloves frosted his cheek.

The thought of the girl’s face, forever etched into his mind, haunted him. She didn’t have to die—not with an unlocked door. Why did she stay?

He took out a small notebook. With shaking hands, he began jotting notes of the case. He recorded the location of the bodies inside the room and the condition of the victims. Hoping he had enough information, he turned to leave the room, but something urged him to say, to find a message . . . a clue.

“What?” the man asked himself. The sound of his voice disappeared in the machine’s hum. He took a final look and noticed the match case—evidence even he overlooked.

Holding his lantern high, he picked up the case and studied it. Delicate etchings decorated the polished metal. He shook it. It responded with silence. He held the lantern closer and noticed something wedged into the bottom of the case. Using his pen, he fished out a small photograph.

The firelight jumped across the picture. Even in the darkened room, the man immediately recognized the face of the girl who perished where he stood. Turning the picture over, he found writing.

My dearest Pia, I pray this note finds you so you’ll know of my love for you. Whenever you see this match case, remember me and know that I will always be with you. Please keep the knowledge of my love in your heart. One day we’ll reunite and my joy will be complete. Pia, never forget that I love you more than life itself. Goodbye, my daughter, until we meet again.

The officer pocketed the evidence and left the room. The sound of his boots against the plant floor echoed as he made his way out of the labyrinth of walls and pipes and vents and rooms filled with secrets, finally emerging into the night.

As he stood staring at the stars, thoughts of a mother’s final wish swirled in his mind and he recalled the look of serenity on the child’s face. He hoped to God the mother’s prayer was answered. He climbed into his vehicle and made his way through the darkened streets of the sleeping city.

Styled after Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

The blessed silence, the reprieve from the damned ghost’s haunting presence, lasted a brief three years following the untimely and dramatic departure of the Opera’s Prima Donna, Mademoiselle Daae. But in late 1884, it became abundantly clear that Monsieur Leroux’s fantastical tale contained at least one incredible falsehood—namely, the Ghost was not dead.

Oh, the management was in on the misdirect. They still paid his salary, obligingly kept Box Five for his exclusive use, and kowtowed to his every whim. The ballet chorus still kept on their metaphorical toes, shrieking at the occasional odd sound or strange happening—as excitable young women are wont to do. But, perhaps most importantly, the murders stopped.

Yes, it was a quiet truce. One could argue that it bordered on comfortable. The theatre was enjoying a resurgence of popularity, now gained through the quality of its productions, rather than the sensationalism of its apparent haunting. Messrs. Armand Monchamin and Firmin Richard even begrudged little of the stipend they were forced to pay their resident spook. After all, the Opera Ghost was now earning his keep . . .

Christine’s kindness, her kiss, had changed Erik, the man known to most only as
Le Fantôme de le Palais Garnier
, or simply, the Opera Ghost. Still a recluse and a figure of terror, he kept to his subterranean hermitage, making his wishes known via the ever-servile Madame Giry. The ghost now worked in the background to assist the company through his many talents.

And by background, I mean literally. The wonders of a Palais Garnier production were a sight to behold. Audiences came expecting theatre and left talking miracles, magic. It has been expounded upon elsewhere, the natural genius that the phantom possessed for engineering, mechanics, and illusion. His myriad of secret doors and passageways, the nerve system of the already magnificent Palais Garnier; his own lake-bound dwelling-place beneath the seven stories of basement catacombs, an unsung modern marvel.

It only followed that, in his newfound fit of goodwill, Erik should lend his talents to the prop, scenery, and stage effects department. At first the contributions were subtle, but as initial mistrust faded, the aid became more . . .
outré
.

Combined with his talent for writing, original and marvelous productions soon graced the stage of the Paris Opera. Audiences soon spoke of modern effects not seen elsewhere—scenery that moved itself, props that soared over the crowd. The age of the machine was in vogue, and Paris was leading the way.

And Messrs. Richard and Monchamin knew exactly where to invest their sizable profits.

“How? How does this happen?” M. Monchamin, a portly and florid gentleman of the desk, threw the morning paper down on the credenza, startling his partner with his brash entrance.

“Beg pardon—how does what happen?” M. Richard, as thin as his partner was thick, middle aged and generally the more impassive of the two, looked around wildly. They’d enjoyed their reprieve for too long, it seemed.
Please let it not be a cast member,
he scanned the page, feeling a headache threaten.

“This. This!” Armand jabbed a finger at a small article below the fold. It read:

LONDON OPERA HOUSE FITTED WITH NEW ELECTRIC LIGHT, AUDIENCES IN DELIGHT

“Audiences are in delight, dear Firmin,” the manager sputtered. “
In delight!”

“Hmm . . .” Firmin was mostly unmoved, wheeling as he was from relief that the headline heralded no disaster. “I suppose we’d better look into this ourselves.”

“Look into it? Goodness, I’ve already told Mme. Giry to handle it.”

As if on cue, Madame Giry appeared in the doorway, her wiry frame doing little to block the light, but somehow dimming the small office with her presence.

“Ah! Madame Giry,” Armand motioned her in, eyeing her nervously. “We were just discussing—”

“He won’t do it.” She wasted no time, delivering her message curtly, with a tone as flat and colorless as her austere attire.

“Oh, but surely he must—” Firmin began, calm as ever.

“Must what?” Giry cut in. “Must be your houseboy? Must waste his time with your projects—all so you can turn another tidy profit?”

“We meant no disrespect, Mme. Giry,” Armand soothed, “but with his talents, we thought surely that—”

“You thought wrong,” she looked from one man to the other. “The Ghost does not wish to have his opera bathed in the garish and vulgar light of Mr. Swan’s infernal invention.” She bid them good day and swept out of the room.

“Well!” Armand put the full effrontery he felt into that one word. Firmin was already scribbling furiously on a piece of stationary, one finger held up to request silence.

“There,” he put the final flourish on the note then passed it over, “I suppose we’d both better sign it.” At Armand’s puzzled look he explained, “We’ll send it today—M. Garnier surely must know someone who can aid us in this endeavor.”

“But the ghost—”

“Hang the ghost! If all he’s willing to contribute is clockwork trickery and cheap smoke and mirror illusions—we’re looking at the future here, and I’ll be damned if we get left in the dark.”

The lights flickered and grew dim. Shrieks filled the brief space of time that it took the gas to right itself and return the room to steady illumination.

“O-oh! The ghost! The ghost!” A dozen fear-filled girls surrounded Meg, who winced and shushed the skittish dancers.

“Ladies, ladies,” she called for order. Though not the principal ballerina (not yet anyway!), Meg Giry commanded special attention in the corps. The last of the original chorus to perform alongside the famous Prima Donna Daae, and daughter of Mme. Giry, the Opera Ghost’s own messenger, the girls looked to the tall, dark-eyed beauty for answers.

“It’s just an air bubble in the pipes caused by the workmen,” she sighed, giving the explanation for the eighth time in a week. Flickering lights, tools gone missing, small accidents amongst the electrical crew—such things had become regular occurrences during the opera house’s fitful upgrade to the new electric light. However, having lived through the horrors of three years prior, Meg was ready to believe these small hiccups for what they were: natural delays in a complicated process. That she’d once in a while seen a pensive, worried look flit across her mother’s face never bothered her—Mother was always worried.

An urgent knocking on the door nearly brought the room to chaos again. Cracking it open to see who summoned, one of the young ladies—a back row girl by the name of Brigitte—nodded rapidly at the unknown visitor then turned to Meg, eyes bright with apprehension, “Meg? It’s your mother—”

With a frown, the young lady wove her way to the door, her grace making even the short, utilitarian journey a lovely sight to behold.
I really don’t need an interruption right now
, she glowered inwardly as the girls lapsed into one more round of ghost-induced tittering.

Meg stopped short. The man at the door was clearly not her mother. With a puzzled glance and growing unease in her chest, she thanked Mademoiselle Brigitte who obligingly left Meg to her conversation with the stagehand, a ruddy fellow who nervously fingered the grey shapeless cap he held in his hands.

“Mam’selle Giry? Your mother’s had a small accident. If you could please come with me.” The words were gruff, but not untinged with kindness. Meg followed the roughhewn stagehand down the hallway with alacrity, leaving her corps to gossip and invent reasons for her swift and sudden departure.

It was not the ghost that’d brought Mme. Giry to the attentions of the prop master’s ministrations, but something rather more ominous: sickness. Laid up on a small and ridiculously over-decorated settee, Madame Giry awaited the doctor’s arrival with customary sharpness. This alone helped put Meg at ease as she arrived on the heels of her obliging messenger. If her mother had the strength to be impatient, then it couldn’t be all that serious.

Still, the concierge had fainted, and, at her admittedly advanced age, any illness could become serious. Meg knelt by her mother’s side.

“Do not let the doctor treat me,” Mme. Giry clawed at Meg’s arm, her voice husky and whispered. There was a feverish tinge to her lips, a brightness in the eyes that recalled Meg to her earlier alarm.
Not call the doctor? Nonsense. He was already on the way.

Meg informed her mother of this and was promptly shushed. Drawing near, the old woman hissed, “In my room. A small bottle with a dropper. Fetch it, my darling.”

Eighteen years of knowing better than to argue, Meg complied with the strange request, returning from her errand to find her mother having regained her feet, albeit with the aid of her cane. Madame’s eyes positively glowed as she espied the stoppered brown bottle in Meg’s hand. “Come, come,” she toddled away to a small dressing room in spite of there being no one about, the crowd having dispersed now that Meg had been fetched. It wasn’t that the old woman was disliked, rather the consensus was that nobody necessarily wanted to deal with the shifty old crone and only tolerated her because . . . well, because of past events.