A Woman of Reputation. Chapter 1, Night.
1871, Mid-May
Agnes half ran, half stumbled, through the misty streets. She could hear her blood thundering in her ears and her feet beating the cobblestones. The cold mist condensed on her body and mingled with her sweat. She never ran so much in her life, yet tired as she was, she kept running, for the man was right behind her, ever right behind her. She could not hear the man, but she knew he was there, right behind her, cloaked in the darkness and the gray mist.
She didn’t dare turn her head, but she knew he was there.
She wasn’t sure exactly where she was. She just ran and ran, and she must have been somewhere near Chopin Street, because she remembered that was where she was when she first encountered the man, but she just ran, not knowing in what direction she ran, knowing only that she had to get away from the man and his knife, knowing only that her side was wet and sticky and flaring with pain.
She passed beneath a street lamp and saw to her horror that the wound was even worse than she had imagined. Her whole side was crimson. Down her leg ran her blood. It trailed on the street, pooled between the cobblestones, and left a trail like red ivy to shine in the yellow light of gas lamps and vanish beneath the dark fog.
This was all the world to Agnes: herself, the endless night, her trailing blood, and the predator that followed her blood.
On and on Agnes ran. The street didn’t seem to end. Where was she? She felt as if she ran the entirety of Mainstreet twice over. What street in Blackwall had this many gas lamps?
Then there was a light, not at all like the yellow shimmering of the gas lamps. This light was brighter, as bright as harbor lights, and it had the silvery color of the moon. Agnes flung herself into the light, praying that she had at last found safety.
She saw a man in the light, a man with black hair and black eyes. He was holding something in his hand that was creating the light, something with an amber colored body and a gray base, something shaped like a candle–but wax candles were never so thick. The amber body was thick like a block of marble.
“Help me!” Agnes cried. “Help! Oh help! He’s cut me! I’m dying!”
Suddenly, the man was standing right beside her, though Agnes couldn’t remember him or herself taking another step.
He held the candle-shaped object next to her flank. Her blood was bright, fresh red. She couldn’t tell her torn dress from her torn body. Everything was engulfed by that leaking wound.
The pain in her side sharply increased. Her wound had gurgled pain with every step, but now it screamed, and she screamed with it.
“I’m sorry.” the man said. “It needs to hurt before we can close it, I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing to me?” Agnes cried.
“I’m helping you to the best of my abilities, I promise. My name is Dr. Matthew Ernst. What’s your name? Please, tell me your name.”
Suddenly, the pain was gone, completely gone, without so much as a tickling left in her side.
And so was the red gore. No sticky redness. No jagged hole. Her dress was smooth without a single imperfection.
“Oh god…” Agnes swayed. “Oh god, I think I might faint. I must sit down.”
“What is your name?” Matthew asked again.
Agnes gave up on standing, yet somehow, she didn’t fall. Her legs seemed rooted to the ground. “There’s a man!” she sobbed. “He cut me. I thought he was drunk, he stumbled up to me, I tried to help him, he cut me! He’s mad!”
“Please, it’s extremely important you tell me your name.”
“Cora.” she gave him her other name on force of habit. “I mean, Agnes. My name is Agnes Little.” She looked around, but could’t find the man. “I swear there was a man. He cut me. I don’t know where he is.” she looked at her feet and expected to see the trail of blood winding through the cobblestones.
But there wasn’t a trail, and the stones were smooth. The dirt between them was clean.
‘There was a trail!” Agnes shouted. “A trail of my blood! Did you make it go away with my wound with that…that light of yours? How did you do that?”
“Agnes. Whatever happens, try and remember who you are. Remember your life. Remember what you did as a child. Remember where you grew up. Remember–”
Dr. Matthew Ernst continued to speak, but words didn’t come out of his mouth.
“Dr. Ernst? Dr. Ernst, I can’t hear you!” Agnes reached her hand out towards Matthew. He didn’t seem to notice her. He seemed to look right through her. His mouth continued to open and close at a steady, calm rate.
“Dr. Ernst, what’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”
Agnes touched Matthew’s shoulder and screamed as her hand fell through his body.
Then suddenly, the rest of Dr. Ernstt started to go the way of his voice. He faded. The colors of his form dulled until they became as dark as night and then became the night itself. The mist swirled around him and then through him.
He was gone.
Agnes felt a pain in her side. She touched the spot with her hand and recoiled at the familiar touch of sticky, destroyed flesh. She felt herself moving forward, one foot in front of the other, lurching through the darkness as her life bled down her leg, onto the stones, down into the gutters between the stones, and she felt the eyes of the man upon her, and she saw the gas lamps swing by overhead as she ran, and…
Agnes half ran, half stumbled, through the misty streets. She could hear her blood thundering in her ear and her feet beating the cobblestones. The cold mist condensed on her body and mingled with her sweat. She never ran so much in her life, yet tired as she was, she kept running, for the man was right behind her, ever right behind her. She could not hear the man, but she knew he was there, right behind her, cloaked in the darkness and the gray mist.
Her mind was filled with panic, but beneath that panic was a rapidly-dawning sense of confusion.
The man had cut her, and she ran, but Dr. Ernst was also there and he had helped her…before the man had cut her? No, that didn’t make sense. He cut her and Dr. Ernst helped her. But now the wound was open and she was running and where was Dr. Ernst? Where was she? This couldn’t be Chopin Street, not with how long she had been running. If only there was a street sign somewhere, if only the gas lamps revealed anything other than fog and stones and the trail of her own blood.
Suddenly, up ahead, there was a silvery-white glow.
Dr. Ernst!
Agnes redoubled her efforts and threw herself at the light, but the man she found within that sphere of radiance wasn’t Dr. Ernst. Instead, it was a towering man, wrinkled and disheveled. Everything about the man seemed tall, from his physical height to his stovepipe hat to his long, gray beard.
“It’s going to be alright, Agnes,” the man said. “My name is Dr. Joseph Morton. I’m a friend of Dr. Ernst.”
A lit cigar burned away in the hand that didn’t hold the strange object radiating light. Wisps of gray smoke danced in the silvery glow. The tip of the cigar burned green, somehow, but this seemed a minor incongruity within the chaotic nightmare Agnes found herself in.
“Oh God! Help me!!” Agnes threw herself at Joseph–then screamed as she passed through him.
It was as if he wasn’t even there.
Agnes fell to the ground. “Why? Why can’t I touch you?” she held up her hands to Joseph pleadingly. “Why can’t I touch you? I don’t understand!”
“Oh, Agnes, dear, I’m so sorry.” Joseph knelt by her. “It’s all a nightmare, isn’t it? We’re trying to help you but you’re spread out, girl. It’s making it hard.”
There was a sharp pain in her side. Agnes screamed again.
“I’m so sorry. It has to hurt before it can be fixed. But look now! Look!”
Agnes did.
No blood, no cut, no tear. But it wasn’t nearly as comforting to see as it was the first time.
“I don’t understand! I don’t understand any of this! Oh God help me!” she shouted.
“I’ll keep it simple, then. Remember! Remember who you are. This nightmare is but a moment in a life that is much greater and much more vibrant than this. Remember your girlhood, remember your first love, remember your favorite birthday–but remember!”
Agnes screamed.
Behind Joseph, the man rose up.
Joseph turned, and the green flame on the tip of his cigar shot up like a flare and engulfed the man. The green flame blazed and filled the night with light. The light blinded Agnes. She closed her eyes. She heard the sound of immolating clothes.
“Ha ha! Take that!” Joseph shouted. “Burn him all over, Nick!”
Agnes opened her eyes.
Agnes half ran, half stumbled, through the misty streets. She could hear her blood thundering in her ear and her feet beating the cobblestones. The cold mist condensed on her body and mingled with her sweat. She never ran so much in her life, yet tired as she was, she kept running, for the man was right behind her, ever right behind her. She could not hear the man, but she knew he was there, right behind her, cloaked in the darkness and the gray mist.
But wait…there was Dr. Ernst, and then there was Dr. Morton. But she had just escaped the man, and he was right behind her. Her wound was fresh and throbbing, again.
She had only just been stabbed, it had happened no more than seconds ago, she was sure of that. So when did she meet Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton?
Agnes didn’t have long to ponder the strangeness of her circumstances. The fog suddenly cleared. It had swarmed about her like a wall of vapor blocking off the buildings, but now the buildings were present and visible.
Buildings meant people.
Agnes screamed. Someone had to be inside those red bricks, those dim windows. Someone had to be, even just one person, she only needed one person to save her.
She screamed, even as the exertion tore at her side. “Help! Help! He’s killing me! He’s killing me!”
Silvery light poured out of one of the buildings. It blazed out of the windows and outlined the door in bright bars of light. It suffused the building. The very brick itself seemed to drink in the light. As a cloth absorbed water and darkened, the brick absorbed light and brightened.
The door flung open, and there in the threshold was a man with a familiar object in his hand. Though he was markedly younger than Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton, his possession of the object marked him as one of their own. He had short blond hair, a bushy mustache, and blue eyes dulled behind tinted glasses.
“This way!” he cried. “Come in, quickly, quickly!”
Agnes ran to the light. But suddenly, from out of nowhere, the man appeared between her and her savior.
Shadows covered him like solid, black cloth. She could not see his face. There was a shroud of shadows between his hat and neck that obscured his features. He wore a black cloak and black gloves that made it hard to tell where the shadows ended and where his body began.
He was tall, almost as tall as Dr. Morton was, and towered over Agnes. She felt like a helpless child. In one of his hands was a dagger the color of a rotten tooth. Brown stains on the dagger were either rust or blood.
Its edge was bright red, wet and hungry.
The man brought his arm up in a motion that made Agnes think of one of the men her mother loved, one of the men her mother brought home who would raise his hand before bringing it down in a violent arc that smashed objects and broke bones.
Agnes thought of her mother. She hated her, but she thought of her nonetheless.
Then, the man stopped.
Silvery light burned through his chest and left a hole.
The man stumbled, fell, and broke apart like brittle glass. The pieces of the man oozed into the darkness and vanished.
“Come on!” her savior shouted. “Get inside, quickly!”
Agnes threw herself into his arms and sobbed upon feeling that he was real, and solid. He held her with one arm and led her into the building. Agnes heard the door slam shut. Somehow, the man was able to close the door even with Agnes in his arms, even with the door several feet away. But that was like the green fire in Dr. Morton’s cigar, a silly thing to worry about now.
“Shh! Shh! It’s alright now, Agnes. My name is Dr. Martin Glass. I’m a friend of Dr. Matthew Ernst and Dr. Joseph Morton.” Martin led Agnes to a chair.
Agnes swept her tears away and looked around. The silvery light of the object in Martin’s hand allowed her to see every dusty detail of the building, which she thought had to be some sort of old restaurant or coffeehouse. Dust coated the tables. A chalk sign bore the illegible marks of what may have once been a menu. Simply moving in the building kicked up dust, and the motes floated as black specs in the silvery light.
“Oh God.” Agnes breathed fast and hard. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.”
“Look at me, Agnes.” Martin put his hands on her shoulders. “Look at me.”
Agnes did so.
“Breathe in through your nose, slowly, and then breathe out through your mouth slowly.”
Agnes did so.
“Keep doing that. Come on. Follow me.” And as Martin breathed in and out, Agnes copied his cadence. Very quickly, she calmed down.
“There you go.” Martin smiled. “It’s okay now. You know, that little trick even works to calm down manes?”
“Manes?” Agnes asked. “Oh! Oh those are ghosts, what learned people call ghosts, of course. But how does that work with them? They don’t breathe.”
“It’s a common misconception that manes don’t breathe. Some do.” Martin said. “There’s a spiritual component to manes that copies the body just as other components copy the mind. When the component is strong, a manes might breathe. Rarely does their breathing actually move air, but they do it nonetheless.”
Martin extended his hand. “Dr. Martin Glass of Ernst, Morton, and Glass.”
Agnes shook his hand. “Agnes Little. Um, I think…I think I know Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton but…but I’m not sure I do, really.”
“What do you remember?”
“I was walking. I usually walk at this…” Agnes almost said “at this hour,” and she did usually walk the streets at this hour, but that was not something to discuss with a gentleman. “…I usually go for walks. But anyway, I came upon this man, and he was stumbling around. I thought he was drunk. I went up to him. I tried to help him stand and then there was blood on me and I thought he hurt himself but he stuck me, he actually stuck me, he actually put a knife in my side and–”
Agnes looked at her side.
Once again, no blood, no cut, no tear.
“Oh God.” Agnes gasped.
“Agnes Little, this is not an easy thing to tell you, but you are at the center of a manesological event.” Martin said.
“I don’t know what that is. “ Agnes said flatly. “I don’t know what’s real anymore!”
“Yes, you do. Listen to me. Manes are very powerful beings. Have you ever read Illustrated Phantom Stories?”
Agnes had, as much as she could read anything.
“Yes.”
“Some of those stories are exaggerated, but there’s a good deal that aren’t. Manes really can lift up houses and toss them through the air. They really can invade human bodies and move them like puppets. They really can make what’s real look false and what’s false look real. You were carried around Chopin Street without being carried, as strange as that may sound. One moment you were here, the next moment there. Does that sound like what happened to you?”
Agnes nodded.
“That’s called teleportation. It is a thing manes can do to people.”
“He moved me…”
“Yes he did. All he did was turn you around and around. That’s all.”
“I think he liked that. The trail. Following the trail of my blood…” Agnes rested her head on the back of her chair. It was a cheap wooden thing, scratchy and splintered, but it gave her some comfort. “He played with me like a cat with a dying mouse…”
Agnes rolled her head and looked out the window with half-opened eyes.
There, in the window, was the man.
Agnes screamed. She tumbled from her chair, overturning it as she fell to the floor, and pointed at the man. “It’s him! It’s him!” she cried. “He can’t die! He just keeps coming back and he keeps chasing me and he keeps cutting me and I don’t understand what’s going on! Who is he? Why is he doing this to me?”
Martin knelt next to Agnes, who buried her face in his shoulder. “He cannot hurt you and he cannot come in here. He can only look at you. He’s just a tiger at the zoo. He can no more come in here and hurt you than a painting can get out of its frame.”
Agnes peeked at the man.
Did his eyes meet hers? She couldn’t tell with the shadows in the way.
She cringed, imagining that his eyes did in fact meet her own.
“Try not to look at him.” Martin said.
“I’ll try.” Agnes buried her face in Martin’s shoulder and quivered like a small animal.
“I know it’s hard. But all he can do is look, and if you look at him, you’re acknowledging the one thing he can do to you.”
Martin gently guided Agnes back to the table.
“Have you heard of Ernst, Morton, and Glass, Agnes?” he asked.
‘No. I don’t know the slightest idea who you are, but thank you, thank you so much! He was going to kill me…but are you sure we’re really safe in here? I’m afraid he could break down the door!”
“I am sure that you’re safe. We’re manesologists.”
“Manesologists!” Agnes gasped.
That word alone brought hope to Agnes Little.
She was a woman of very little education, she could only read and write a little, but she knew what manesologists were. They were the ghost men. Everyone knew the ghost men. They were as necessary as policemen and fire brigades these days. I
In Agnes’ mother’s time, ghosts were rare beings. They had a negligible effect on the world of man and were thus easy to ignore and disbelieve. Not so in Agnes’ time.
The ghost men protected ghosts from men and men from ghosts, always remaining impartial in disputes, and wielded powers granted to them by a group of occultists called the Ror Raas. The Ror Raas predicted that ghosts would gradually come to fill up the Earth due to the natural weakening of something called Archon walls and empowered the ghost men to guide and protect mankind through the coming age of ghosts. These Archon walls couldn’t be pointed to. They couldn’t be touched and they couldn’t be marked on a map, and yet the Ror Rass said they existed as a boundary between the physical Earth and the metaphysical Astral. Agnes thought it was strange that people were expected to believe in a giant wall they couldn’t see with their own eyes, but then again, there was supposed to be some kind of great wall in China, and she had never seen that with her own eyes. If people in authority said something was a certain way, who was she to doubt it?
“You’re a manesologist…” Agnes was awed.
Then she looked at the strange, glowing device in Martin’s hand. “Oh, I’m such an idiot! That’s a gaeite candle. I…I should have known that’s what those things were. I’ve seen pictures of gaeite candles.”
“You are not an idiot.” Martin said. “You’ve been through a horrible experience and it’s playing havoc with your ratiocination.”
“My what?”
“You’ve suffered a nasty fright and it’s made it hard for you to recall things.”
“True, true. But I still should have recognized a gaeite candle nonetheless. What else makes silver colored light? What else is made out of a big rectangle of gaeite?”
Gaeite was a strange material. The Ror Raas mined it out of ruins older than Rome, older than Babylon, older than any of the civilizations of mankind. They learned where these ruins were from the same being that told them about the Archon walls–Abramelin.
Abramelin was a colossal thing that lived beneath Egypt. The Ror Raas never said what Abramelin was, only what Abramelin was not. He was not a man, or a beast, or a god, or a demon, or a fairy, or a ghost, though Agnes’ mother once told her that someone once told her that Abramelin was like a great whale.
Whatever Abramelin was, Agnes hoped that he would always continue to be a benevolent mystery. He had helped mankind considerably since Samuel Mathers made psychic contact with him in 1860. But Agnes knew from experience that powerful beings could give you money one day and a fist the next. That was the way of the world, and maybe the way of the world didn’t apply to a being like Abramelin, Agnes would like to think it didn’t, but maybe it did.
“I still can’t believe I couldn’t recognize a gaeite candle.” Agnes wanted to slap herself. “I swear I’m not that stupid Dr…I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?”
“Dr. Martin Glass, of Ernst, Morton, and Glass.”
Agnes winced. “Oh! Of course! Of course I know who you three are!”
“Everyone knows who you three are!” Agnes said. “Ernst, Morton, and Glass, of course! I’ve often read about you in Illustrated Phantom Stories.”
More accurately, Agnes read as much as she could in Illustrated Phantom Stories. She could only read a little and thus needed the illustrations to guide her reading. Her grandmother, who cared for her after her mother couldn’t, never bothered to give her an education. She didn’t see the value in it compared to putting her to work in a factory putting replacement parts together with her tiny hands for the gigantic steam beasts that loomed over Blackwall and the London ruins. Even colossal machines like the steam beasts had small parts, and small fingers were useful in putting those parts together, if they were quick enough to avoid being chopped off by the blades of the sizing machine.
“You three were ones that dealt with the Brute of Ipping, and the Lord of Ballard Hall, and the Elf King. You three are…well, you three are famous!”
“At the risk of sounding conceited, I suppose we are.” Martin said.
“Oh, there’s nothing conceited about it! It’s just a fact!”
Agnes suddenly flinched. Her eyes had wandered over to the man, still at the window. He hadn’t moved an inch.
“So that man outside is a ghost?” Agnes asked. “I’ve been attacked by a ghost?”
A pained expression crossed Martin’s face.
Agnes looked at her side. “I’m all healed up now. I understand very little about this teleportation power the ghost put me under, but I understand that I’m not torn to shreds anymore. How did you heal me? Was it magic? There’s not even any blood, now. My dress isn’t even ripped.”
“It wasn’t magic. It was just an application of scientific, manesological principles.”
“I don’t understand–and don’t bother trying to explain it to me, I’ve always been a rather dull girl. But tell me, will it last this time? Am I going to come open again and will you have to put me back together? It was terribly confusing outside, but I remember Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton healed me but then the wound opened up again, twice I think…did I meet Dr. Ernst before Dr. Morton?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will last this time. You’re healed. It took us some time to understand what it was we needed to do to heal you and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry you had to go through so much pain.”
“It’s alright. I’m alright now. Compared to how I was before you three rescued me, I’m very alright. Ohhhh…” Agnes gave a whimpering sigh. “I thought I was going to die. I lost so much blood, I didn’t know I had all that blood inside me! But maybe he didn’t cut me? I mean, not physically, right? I don’t know much about ghosts, but I’m guessing he gave me a ghost-wound, so you could use your ghost-powers to make it all go away, is that how it worked?”
“The important thing is that you’re safe now. He can’t come in here. All he can do is gape at us.”
“Who is he?” Agnes asked. “Or, I guess, who was he?”
“That little, violent creature outside is best known as the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
“He’s not so little when he’s up close to you. It felt like I ran face-first into a wall when he stumbled into me. All I could see was his black clothes and cloak. It was as if he was the whole night, and it was all against me…but I’ve never heard of the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
“Well, he’s known to the police by that name.”
“Was he some sort of madman?”
“He was an evil, horrible man.”
“I thought I knew all about the lunatics and madmen of Blackwall. You wouldn’t know this, Dr. Glass, being a gentleman of learning and distinction and all, but I live on Chopin Street, and Chopin Street is, well, it’s like a gutter, all the bad things in Blackwall flow into it.” Agnes gave the Werewolf of Blackwall another brief glance. “Shame his ghost didn’t turn out different. I read that they sometimes do.”
“They sometimes do. Other times, they’re very similar to who they were in life.”
“Oh, Dr. Glass, I feel so strange.” Agnes rubbed her temple. “I think he may have done something to my head. It’s like he fractured my memories and put them back together the wrong way. I keep thinking back to what happened outside and it’s all a messy blur, I just can’t make any of it make sense…”
“Confusion is common after a haunting experience. Try not to think about what happened much. Know that you’re in my olprt radiance right now, and it tells me things about you. It tells me that you’re fine, physically and mentally. You are fine.”
“Olprt is the er, technical name for this moon-colored light, isn’t it?” Agnes asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh.I thought so. I read that somewhere, I think.”
Agnes looked around the building. “Are we the only ones here?” she asked.
“As far as I can tell. The sign outside says Marvin’s, but judging by the conditions here, I don’t think Marvin has been around much lately.” Martin smiled.
Agnes chuckled. She would have chuckled at any sort of humor.
“Just between you and me, Agnes, the door wasn’t unlocked.”
“Ha ha! Oh dear!”
“They say the Ror Raas created us manesologists to negotiate between the laws of men and their laws of spirits. But what that really means is that we sometimes have to break both laws to get things done.”
“Entirely understandable! Oh, Dr. Glass, you don’t need to talk to me about breaking the law. You probably know what I am. It’s not illegal, but that doesn’t mean it’s proper, and so much around it is illegal. A girl out on the streets at this hour, surely you know what I am.”
“You are a woman in trouble and in need of help.”
“That’s a very polite way of putting it, and I thank you for putting it that way. Dr. Glass. But you don’t need to worry about breaking the law, not in my company. I break the law even when I don’t intend to. You know, I think I’m breaking the law right now. I’m not supposed to be in a coffeehouse, or I’m not supposed to be at a coffeehouse with my friends. I’m not sure exactly how that one law works. Sometimes I don’t think it really exists and they just make things up to get us into trouble. Do you think the owner would mind if we used their facilities? I would really like to have some tea, or some coffee. Even just some water would be really nice.”
Martin looked behind the counter. “I don’t believe they have anything. At least, not anything that isn’t spoiled.”
“They’ve been closed that long? I guess it can’t be helped, then.” Agnes strummed her fingers against her arm nervously. “Oh, but I wish I had some coffee. My nerves are frayed like bristles.”
“Would you really like some? Would it help you calm down?” Martin asked.
“I think it would, but if there’s no coffee, there’s no coffee. One can’t fix up something from nothing.”
“Not when dealing with me.”
Martin pointed at the empty table and suddenly there was a steaming cup of coffee.
“Oh bless you, Dr. Glass! Where on Earth did that come from?”
“I made it.”
“Yes, but out of what?”
Martin smiled. “From out of scientific, manesological principles.”
Martin knew that if Joseph was here he would tease him about using his skills for “stage tricks,” but he wasn’t here, he was yards away, and he wanted to do something to make Agnes happy.
He knew she had quite a shock coming up, and soon.
“You mean you pulled it out of thin air?” Agnes asked. “Manesologists can do that?”
“Well, I have a few more skills than my colleagues. A few years ago, I made an attempt to enter the Ror Raas and become a thaumaturgist. It didn’t work out, but I learned a few tricks. They’re helpful as a manesologist.”
“And as a coffeehouse owner, if you ever consider that profession!” Agnes sipped her coffee. “Oh, that’s good! That’s the best coffee I ever had!”
“Thank you. But it’s really just hot water compared to what’s out there. My old teachers got me hooked on fine coffee when I went to Baghdad to study Alhazred from primary source documents. There’s nothing quite like Arabic coffee.”
“Nothing like a brush with death to make you appreciate a little hot water, I suppose.”
“It’s not my only trick. Do you remember how I told you to breathe? In through your nose slowly, then out through your mouth? That’s something the Ror Raas taught me.”
“That little thing counts as a magic spell? Or a magic principle, or manesological spell, or however it’s supposed to be properly put?”
“It is indeed a thaumaturgical trick. In fact, it’s the first trick they taught me. The ability to calm oneself is the gate before all other Operations. If you can’t control your emotions, it’s impossible for you to work a single Operation. But if you can control your emotions, then all further mental disciplines are possible. So you see? Now you can do a little magic!”
Agnes smiled bashfully. “You waste such things on me, Dr. Glass.”
“Education is never a waste. One day they’ll teach thaumaturgy in schools, just as they teach math and reading.”
“Schooling is not an option for me. It never was, not even when I was a girl.”
“A lot has changed in the world since you were a girl. Manes are a scientific reality. History has uncovered pre-human civilizations. It’s not so unusual anymore for a woman to be educated. The Ror Raas has several woman thaumaturgists.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Why, they just accepted a young girl named Edith Nesbitt into their ranks, and she shows a considerable deal of promise.”
“The world is changing so fast! Dr. Glass, this may seem like a very foolish question, but…you’ve made me think of all the strangeness out in the world these days, so I feel that I must ask…the Werewolf of Blackwall…he’s not a true werewolf, is he?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something from mythology that ended up not being true, at least.”
“Oh, but there are werewolves.”
Agnes stared at Martin.
“Come again?”
“They prefer to be called metamorphe, shapeshifters. They’re very secretive, but they’ll be as well-documented as manes in a few years.”
“Lord! It seems like the world’s always more dangerous than you think.”
“Not in the case of the metamorphe. They’re no more dangerous than humans.”
“That is not saying much, unfortunately.” Once again, Agnes glanced at the man outside.
“Please don’t look at him anymore.” Martin said.
“I know I shouldn’t, but it’s so hard not to. Something inside me keeps warning me that any minute now he’ll start to bang at the door…but he’s just a shadow, now. He can’t hurt me. I’m safe. I have to keep reminding myself of that…but I believe it, Dr. Glass, I truly do.”
“You are safe. He can’t hurt anyone now.” Martin assured her.
“I know that. I know that he’s just…like a drawing. But he’s such a terrible drawing! Good God, he doesn’t even look human–well, of course he isn’t human! He’s a ghost! But he doesn’t have more than a passing resemblance to a human. I saw him burnt and shattered tonight and he just got back up, and now he’s standing there without a sound, without so much as a gasp. I’d sooner believe a scarecrow came out of a person’s dead body than him.”
Agnes returned to her coffee. Its warmth helped drive away the chill of fear. “What did you say this place was called, Dr. Glass?” she asked.
“The sign outside said Marvin’s.”
“That’s interesting. I remember there was a Marvin’s coffeehouse on Chopin Street. Two friends of mine were arrested there not more than a month ago. But that was a new building, and this one’s anything but. And that was on Chopin Street, and I can’t possibly be on Chopin Street after all that running I did. Where are we? What street is this?”
Martin looked away.
“You should finish your coffee first.” he muttered.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Dr. Glass?”
“I’m not the best manesologist when it comes to explaining things to people. I spent so much time with the magic men, the thaumaturgists, that things which seem odd and peculiar to laypersons seem mundane and obvious to me.”
“Well, just tell me what street this is. What’s hard to explain about that?”
“I apologize. I wish I knew a better way to explain this to you. But I do not. This is Chopin Street.”
The reality of her situation was beginning to dawn on Agnes Little.
“Oh. That’s…that’s odd.” Agnes looked again at the man outside. “That’s very odd.”
“Please stop looking at him.” Martin said.
“Dr. Glass, I think that ghost did something to my mind. I don’t feel well at all.”
Martin breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth.
He decided to go ahead and say it.
“The year is 1871.”
“No!” Agnes shouted. “No! The year is 1866! It’s April, I was doing my business no more than a few minutes ago and then the ghost appeared and attacked me. It’s 1866, right Dr. Glass? That’s what you meant to say–1866?”
Agnes’ pleading expression tore at Martin’s heart.
But what else could he tell her but the truth?
“1866 was five years ago. That was when the Werewolf of Blackwall claimed his first victim. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No! No, you’re wrong!” Agnes shouted. “You have to be wrong! Look at me!” Agnes beat her fists against her skin. “See? Solid!”
“Manes can be very solid, as solid as human beings, if not moreso.”
“But I feel things! I can taste the coffee! It even burns me. It burns me, see?” she spilt the coffee over her arm.
“Agnes, no!” Martin cried out.
The black liquid seeped through her skin. Agnes winced at the pain. “That hurt! It hurts, that’s how I know I’m alive!”
Martin slowly shook his head back and forth. He produced a towel from out of nowhere and began to clean up what he could.
“And now you’re drying me off. That’s proof I’m real.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re expressing common misconceptions.” Martin said. “Some manes can feel things, even pain, and manes are very much real, just as real as any human. You are real. Please understand that.”
‘Wait!” Agnes pushed Martin away. “I can see myself! That’s proof I’m alive! I remember this very clearly from Illustrated Phantom Stories–ghosts appear as black silhouettes inside olprt radiance, and I am not a black silhouette!”
“Another misconception. The olprt radiance renders manes as black silhouettes–to human eyes. Here, this will help you understand.”
Suddenly, Martin passed his fingers through Agnes’ face as if it was nothing more than a puddle of water. Agnes felt his fingers move through her. She saw her vision distort as her face stretched unnaturally and then returned to form.
“You are solid, but only to an extent.” Martin said.
Tears dripped down Agnes’ face. Her shoulders hung in defeat. So that was it, then. She could think of nothing else that could force down what she had suspected since the wound in her side vanished and reappeared.
“…And you’ve looked at me, as a black silhouette, this entire time?” Agnes asked.
Martin nodded.
“Oh, damn you!” Agnes aimed a clumsy slap at Martin through her tears. It landed a little below his neck. “Damn you! Then say so! Say what I am!”
“I tried to ease you into this revelation. I’m sorry.”
“Say it!”
“You are a manes.”
Agnes gave a small despairing whimper and buried her face in her hands.
Martin rubbed his neck and felt stupid and useless. Robert Lumen, the thaumaturgist who brought together Ernst, Morton, and Glass and protected them from the shadows, once told him that he was the Ariel of his group. He was, like the Ariel of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a miracle worker, even when compared to two other miracle workers. He could go places they could not, do things they could not, but right now, he felt like the most useless member of the trio.
“This would happen to me.” Agnes mumbled. “A dirty old whore, cut up and left to die. This would happen. This should happen. It is justice.”
“Please don’t say such things about yourself.”
“I trusted myself to the good moods of bad men. I have no one to blame but myself for this. Oh, Dr. Glass!” Agnes raised her face, and it was a horrible thing for Martin to see, for in the form of a blank silhouette, he could only guess its grief-twisted features. “Why did he kill me? We were all together, all us Londoners, along the Thames in 1865!”
“That he killed you has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the deficiencies of his mind.”
“How could I have survived the London fireball, and yet die to the blade of one who also survived that horror? It’s inhuman. It’s inhuman to do that to someone after we were all together, huddled in tents by the water! I tempted an inhuman monster to my side!”
“Stop blaming yourself for his sin.”
“You don’t understand. Of course you wouldn’t understand, a young man, an educated man, a good man. The things I allowed them to do to me, all because they gave me money. It was only a matter of time before one went too far. So, Dr. Glass, what becomes of me now? Five years into the future, even if the Manes Charter didn’t cut a ghost out of the inheritance of her body, I would have nothing–so I have nothing now. Do I go to one of those “earthbound afterlives?” Do I go to the Ring Tower, Asphodel Street, where?”
“I am sorry, Agnes, but there is something more you must do before you can rest.”
“Don’t call me Agnes! That’s not my name anymore! That’s the name of a dead woman!”
“There is no reason why you can’t still use the name Agnes Little.”
“The name Agnes Little has no meaning now, not to law, and not to the people that knew her. Five whole years…time devoured everything that was Agnes Little. I am not Agnes Little.”
“The issue of how a manes’ identity relates to the identity of the deceased body that bore them is a contentious one, but I assure you, many philosophers would argue vehemently that you are indeed Agnes Little, if that is who you wish to be.”
“But it isn’t who I wish to be! Listen! I remember being Agnes Little and thinking over the idea of my eventual ghost in my head. Agnes Little wasn’t smart, but she did think about things from time-to-time. She came to the conclusion that she didn’t have to worry about her ghost, because in the end, her ghost wasn’t her. And now I’m that. So let me tell you, Agnes and I are in agreement here. We’re two different beings, so you go hang your philosophers, Dr. Glass!”
“If I cannot call you Agnes Little, what would you like for me to call you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Just stop calling me Agnes Little!”
“May I then call you the manes of Agnes Little?”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. Now where did you say I’m going?”
“I didn’t. There is still work for us to do.”
“Oh…” Agnes whimpered. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
Martin gestured to the man outside, still lurking, still glaring. “I’m talking about the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
“What? What do I have to do with him? I’m not a manesologist!”
“Would you like to help me send him away forever?”
“You mean you can’t?”
“Allow me to explain, manes of Agnes Little. The Werewolf of Blackwall exists through his reputation. His reputation is his body. But you have a reputation as well, and I believe that yours can be the greater.”
“What the Hell are you talking about?”
“We can put your reputation against his. You will crush him, and destroy the Werewolf of Blackwall forevermore!”
The manes of Agnes Little began to sob again, for she could not understand what Dr. Glass was telling her.
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