Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“But”—Eloise, annoyed but obliging, shifted the coat higher in her arms—“the Doctor cannot find us—we are cut off! There will be people below—we are marching directly to them!”

Miss Temple simply snorted in reply, for about no part of this could anything be done.

“Mind your feet,” she muttered. “It is slippery.”

As they continued their descent, the noise above them grew, both from the spectators in their cells and then, with another sharp scraping exclamation of the door being forced, from their pursuers at the top of the tower. Soon there were hobnails clattering against the steel steps. Without a word to each other the women increased their speed, racing around several more turns of the tower—how far down could it extend?—until Miss Temple abruptly stopped, turning to Eloise, both of them out of breath.

“The coat,” she panted, “give it to me.”

“I am doing my best to carry it safely—”

“No no, the bullets, the Doctor’s bullets—quickly!”

Eloise shifted the coat in her arms, trying to find the right pocket, Miss Temple feeling with both hands for the bulky box, and then desperately digging it out and prying up the cardboard lid.

“Get behind me,” hissed Miss Temple, “keep going down!”

“But we have no weapon,” whispered Eloise.

“Exactly so! It is dark—and perhaps we can use the coat as a distraction—quickly, remove whatever else— the cigarette case and the glass card!”

She pushed past Eloise, and working as quickly as she could began to scatter the bullets across the metal steps, emptying the box and covering perhaps four steps with the metal cartridges. The bootsteps above them were audibly nearer. She turned to Eloise, impatiently motioning her to go on— quickly!—and snatched away the coat, spreading it out some three steps lower than her bullets, plumping and plucking at the sleeves to make as intriguing a shape as possible. She looked up—they could only be a turn above—and leapt down, lifting up her robes, legs flashing pale, darting away from view.

She had just caught up to Eloise when they heard a shout—someone had seen the coat—and then the first crash, and then another, the cries, and the echoing clamor of scattered bullets, flailing blades, and screaming men. They stopped to look above them, and Miss Temple had just an instant to apprehend a swift metallic slithering and see the merest flash of reflected light. With a squeak she flung herself at Eloise with all her strength, lifting their bodies just enough that they each sat on the handrail, buttocks poorly balanced but feet clear of the disembodied saber that scythed at them, as if the steps were made of ice, then bounced past to ring and spark its way to the bottom of the steps. The women tumbled off the rail, amazed at their own sudden escape, and continued down, the rage of confusion and gruesome injury clamorous above them.

The saber was a problem, Miss Temple thought with a groan, for its arrival below would surely alert whoever was there that something was wrong. Or perhaps not—perhaps it would run them through! She snorted at her own unquenchable optimism. She had no more clever ideas. They came round the final turn of the spiral and faced a landing as cluttered with boxes as a holiday foyer. To the right, leading out to the base of the great chamber, was an open door. To the left, another man with a brass helmet and leather apron crouched near an open hatchway, perhaps the size of a large coal furnace, set directly into the steel column that rose through the center of the staircase. The man carefully examined a wooden tray of bottles and lead-capped flasks that he had obviously pulled from the hatch and set down on the floor. Next to the hatch, affixed into the column, was a brass plate of buttons and knobs. The column was a dumbwaiter.

In the middle of the floor, its blade imbedded—presumably in silence, given the man’s inattention—in a discarded heap of packing straw, was the saber.

From the doorway marched a second helmeted man, walking directly past the pile of straw, to gather two wax-capped bottles, one bright blue, the other vibrant orange, and rush back through the door without another word. The women stood still, unconvinced they had yet to be seen—could the helmets so impede the men’s peripheral vision and muffle their hearing? Through the open door Miss Temple heard urgent commands, the sounds of work, and—she was quite certain—the voices of more than one woman.

From above them came the deliberate pinging of a kicked bouncing bullet, striking the steps and the wall in turn. The men above had resumed their descent. The bullet flew past them and bounced off of the stack of crates on the far wall, coming to rest on the floor near the man’s feet. He cocked his head and registered its unlikely presence. They were ruined.

Outside the door a man’s voice erupted into speech at such a volume that Miss Temple was bodily startled. She had never before heard such a human noise, not even from the roaring sailors when she’d crossed the sea, but this voice was not loud because of any extremity of effort—its normal tone was mysteriously, astonishingly, and disturbingly exaggerated. The voice belonged to the Comte d’Orkancz.

“Welcome to you all,” the Comte intoned.

The man in the helmet looked up. He saw Miss Temple. Miss Temple leapt down the final steps, dodging past.

“It is time to begin,” cried the Comte, “as you have been instructed!” From the cells above them— incongruously, fully the last thing Miss Temple would have ever expected—the gathered crowd began to sing.

She could not help it, but looked through the open door.

The tableau, for it was framed as such by the door in front and the silver curtain of bright shining pipes behind, was the operating theatre writ large, the demonic interests of the Comte d’Orkancz given full free rein— three examination tables. At the foot of each rose a gearbox of brass and wood, into which, as if one might slide a bullet into the chamber of a gun, one of the helmeted men inserted a gleaming blue glass book. The man with the two bottles stood at the head of the first table, pouring the blue liquid into the funneled valve of a black rubber hose. Black hoses coiled around the table like a colony of snakes, slick and loathsome, yet more loathsome still was the shape that lurked beneath, like a pallid larva in an unnatural cocoon. Miss Temple looked past to the second table and saw Miss Poole’s face disappear as an attendant strapped a ghoulish black rubber mask in place…and then to the final table, where a third man attached hoses to the naked flesh of Mrs. Marchmoor. Looking up at the cells was a final figure, mighty and tall, the mouth of his great mask dangling a thick, slick black tube, like some demonic tongue—the Comte himself. Perhaps one second had passed. Miss Temple reached out and slammed the door between them.

And just as suddenly she knew, this echoing vision provoking her memory of the final instant of Arthur Trapping’s blue glass card…the woman on its table had been Lydia Vandaariff.

Behind her Eloise screamed. The helmeted man’s arms took crushing hold around Miss Temple’s shoulders and slammed her into the newly shut door, then threw her to the ground.

She looked up to see the man holding the saber. Eloise seized one of the bottles of orange liquid from the tray and hefted her arm back, ready to hurl it at him. To the immediate shock of each woman, instead of running her through, the man stumbled back and then sprinted up the stairs as fast as the awkward helmet and apron would allow. All he needed was a set of bat’s wings, Miss Temple thought, to make a perfect shambling imp of hell.

The women looked at each other, baffled at their near escape. The platform door was shaken again from the outside, and the stairwell above them echoed with shouts from the running man—shouts that were answered as he met their initial pursuers. There was no time. Miss Temple took Eloise brusquely by the arm and shoved her toward the open hatch.

“You must get in!” she hissed. “Get in!”

She did not know if it had room for two, or even if the lift would carry their weight if there was, but nevertheless leapt to the brass plate of controls, forcing her tired mind—for her day had been more than full, and she had not eaten or drunk tea in the longest time—to make sense of its buttons…one green, one red, one blue, and a solid brass knob. Eloise folded her legs into the hatch, her mouth a drawn grim line, one hand a tight fist and the other still holding the orange bottle. The shouting above had turned and someone pounded on the outside door. At the green button the dumbwaiter lurched up. At the red, it went down. The blue did not seem to do a thing. She tried the green again. Nothing happened. She tried red, and it went down—perhaps a single inch, but all the way to the end.

The door to the platform shook on its hinges.

She had it. The blue button meant the dumbwaiter must continue its course—it was used to prevent needless wear on the engines caused by changing directions mid-passage. Miss Temple stabbed the blue button, then the