Episode XXXIX - Geisterdämmerung

            The scrap heap rose up and cogs and bits of pipe rained down with a harsh clatter, pouring off a shape which was vaguely human, but scaled up at least ten times.  The giant machine, its parts still aligning themselves under the influence of Adelbert’s spirit, stood up to its full height of about fifty feet and stretched, losing a few more stray cams and flywheels to fall down into the remains of the dump with a series of striking metallic clangs, before turning with a long groan to look at the coach.  Its face was terrifying, consisting as it did of the car which had, until recently, been Adelbert’s sole vessel, and being framed by an array of pipes and obscure clockwork machinery.  Two giant hypostatick bulbs, their glass shattered, took the place of eyes.

            The Former Baron pulled his head up, stared at the monstrosity which stood before him and gritted his teeth.  “Well, he’s done it.  He’s managed to build himself a new body.  I’ll grant that it’s bigger than I was expecting, but I suppose it’s not so bad.  I mean, those feet must each weight as much as a house, so we’ll all die very quickly when he stands on us, won’t we?”

            Adelbert stretched out one of his monstrous arms and pointed at the carriage.  “Will you listen to my advice now, Nephew?”  The voice was booming and the laughter which followed it was truly horrific, its madness amplified as much as its volume.

            “Oh, of course!  Why would I not listen to a deceased relative who is now a gigantic pile of rusting scrap metal?”

            “Don’t make light of me, boy,” the machine-giant boomed, “not now, when I have the physical strength to match my intellectual prowess.”

            “And corrosion to match your corruption!”

            “I am a genius!”

            “You’re a lunatic!”

            Adelbert let out a roar of metallic rage and swung his long scrap heap arm out towards the carriage.  Ellis felt the gust of air it created wash over them.

            “Uh, Franck,” Siren said, slipping back inside the carriage and raising her voice as she did so,” don’t you think we had better get moving?”

            The erstwhile driver, who still sat, cowering, beside the Former Baron, nodded emphatically.

            “I think,” the Former Baron replied, drawing the reins as he did so, “that you might both have a point.”

            The horses let out a loud whinny before trotting the carriage around in a tight semi-circle, away from the dump and towards the road once more.  Behind them the heavy metal feet of Adelbert slammed into the ground one after the other and he let out another groan like the contracting hull of a ship.

            Once the carriage was on the road it was easy enough to pick up speed and the horses clearly didn’t want to hang around any longer than they could manage.  Siren, Gulliver and Ellis stared out the rear window of the carriage and watched, with growing horror, as the gigantic Geist-possessed machine began to lope along the road after them.  It quickly became apparent that it was travelling every-so-slightly faster than they were and, even with the Former Baron and the driver whipping the horses until they screamed, there was only so much speed a horse-drawn vehicle could manage.  It would take a while, but as long as they remained in the open, Adelbert would catch up with them.

            “We need to go somewhere he can’t,” Siren said as she began wracking her memory for some clue as to where that might be.

            “Wasn’t there an aqueduct leading out of Shalereef and into the Borough?”  Gulliver suggested, “‘E wouldn’t be able to climb up that, would ‘e?”

            “It might be difficult for him yes, but how would we get up there?”

            “Well,” Ellis said, thoughtfully, “if it’s an aqueduct, then it has to flow out of a reservoir somewhere and that’s got to be at the same level as the aqueduct itself.  Assuming that they need to maintain the reservoir at times, then they ought to have access up to it, and they probably would want carriage access as they would need to carry heavy tools.  Am I right?”

            “You’re really thinking this through!” Siren said, astonished, “maybe you’re getting the hang of being in another world after all.”

            “It’s not that difficult.  This world may be filled with lots of things I would consider crazy, but for the most part things still have to operate the same way they do on Earth.”

            “I suppose they must.”

            “”This is all well and good, I’m sure,” Gulliver interrupted, somewhat testily, “but shouldn’t we inform ‘im out there about our little plan?”

            Siren nodded and turned away from Ellis to stick her head out of the window.

            “Franck,” she called, “can you get us to the Borough end of the Aqueduct?”

            The old inventor looked at her in utter surprise for a moment and then nodded enthusiastically.

            “Oh yes, that should be quite easy.  That Aqueduct is from the Frenton Estate.  I used to play there all the time!  There is one problem though.”

            “Yeah?  What is it?”

            “It’s behind us!”

            Whilst all the planning and shouting had been happening, the carriage had reached the edge of the current Borough residences and turned back onto the main road heading to the harbour.  The Former Baron now pointed over to the Aqueduct, which was clearly visible running through the estates, with the hills the reservoir lay nestled within some distance away.

            “Can we turn around?” Siren shouted.

            The driver shook his head most emphatically, but Franck just smiled.  “We can try,” he called back.

            Suddenly the Former Baron was leaning over the terrified driver and snatching the reins away once more, only this time he pulled sharply on them almost immediately and the horses were forced to make a dramatic turn that sent the carriage swinging around behind them, throwing Siren back inside until she was crushing Ellis against the other side and making him blush again despite his discomfort.

            When they were able to disengage from each other and peer out the window once more they saw, to their horror, that the carriage was now careering towards Adelberts’ gigantic Geist body whilst he continued to charge towards them.

            “’E really is crazy!” Gulliver cried as he ducked his head back inside and screwed his eyes shut.

“Oh, I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Siren muttered.

Ellis just let his jaw drop and prepared to scream.

Everything seemed to slow down for him - the rush of the wind, the sound of the horses hooves on the cobbles, their whinnies on the breeze and the groaning roar of the oncoming Adelbert - all these things seemed amplified in their perfect disharmony.  He gazed upwards at the face of the mechanical monster and saw its shattered-glass eyes following them, its arms swinging to strike, its springs and coils, cogs, gears and levers, flywheels and cams, all preparing to kill, and then the carriage rushed into its shadow, beneath its legs and out into daylight on the other side.

All heads appeared at the carriage windows once again and looked back at Adelbert’s gigantic figure standing in the middle of the road, his fists deep beneath the cobbles where they must have smashed in an effort to catch his prey.

“That might actually slow him down for a while!” Siren said, with a loud sigh of relief.

“Hopefully long enough that we can make it to the Aqueduct before he tries that again,” Ellis agreed.

“We nearly got smashed to pieces…” whimpered Gulliver.

The carriage raced along the cobbled avenue as fast as its horses could take it.  Pasture, parks, pools and patios slid past the windows in a thousand shades of greeny-yellow beneath the jade and amber sky.  Ellis mainly kept watch out the rear window and so missed many of the exotic houses and strange fortifications which marked the distinctive styles of the Borough’s more extravagant residents.  What he saw instead, however, was the progress of Adelbert as he first tried to remove his ‘hands’ from the cobblestones, then dropped them altogether, preferring shorter arms to being stuck in the road, and finally turning around and starting after them once more.  They had managed to gain quite a bit of ground by this time and Ellis was barely able to see the details, but it was soon abundantly clear that Adelbert had just made himself quicker.

“Oh no,” he said with alarm, “he’s gaining on us again, and faster than last time!”  He turned to Siren, “How long do you think it will take us to reach this estate?”

She took a look out the window and said, “Maybe another five minutes?”

“Oh, I hope that’s long enough,” Ellis replied with an intake of breath, “because, I have to say, Adelbert looks really angry now.”

The carriage was not alone on the wide Borough avenues.  Pedestrians, though scarce, could still be seen wandering between estates and the little ‘villages’ of retainers that seemed to clump around the larger castles.  There were other cars and carriages too, with the motorised vehicles beeping their horns as they neared the carriage, before spraying the horse-drawn vehicle with foul-smelling vapours.  when any of these vehicles neared Adelbert chaos tended to ensue.  There were cars and carriages rolling off the road and into gardens and walls.  There were screams and running figures.  On one occasion a car seemed unable to swerve clear of the giant instead  ploughed into one of his legs, causing the great machine to stumble and completely crush the vehicle.

“I think I saw someone get out before he fell,” Ellis said in an attempt to reassure his awe-struck companions, but he wasn’t really sure himself.

That crash did, however, buy them a little more time and they were soon pulling up the hill through the Borough village of Whiteflag, named for the unimaginative colours of the House of Frenton, towards the reservoir and the aqueduct, which gently sloped away from them to the east.  As they rose higher and higher Ellis saw that they had a perfect view of the whole Borough district, including the scrap yard and the outlying regions were the city became dense once more.  From there the district looked like a gigantic park, dotted about with mansions, castles and palaces.  Ellis was suddenly reminded of the time when he visited a theme park and saw the whole site from the top of one of the roller-coasters.  It had been more chaotic than this, but not less strange.

One castle, not far from the line of the aqueduct, stood out as being larger and more gothicly complex than most of the others.  It too had a village nestled nearby, feeding off the traffic of the avenue, but, just like the castle, this village was bigger and more strange than most of the others.  It was more like a small town and Ellis could just make out a wall surrounding the whole complex, grand and foreboding.   The aqueduct passed right through it and he made a note to examine it in more detail should they travel that far.

The carriage skidded around a corner and onto the reservoir access road.  Behind them Adelbert began to ascend the hill, but soon found difficulty in the narrower roads of Whiteflag.  Slate came clattering into the street as his bulk rasped against rooftops and pushed against gables and overhanging storeys.  One particularly fine, peaked roof came crashing in on itself as his arm swept through the storey below.

“He’s destroying the village!”  Ellis shouted, appalled.

“And he’ll destroy us if we’re not much quicker,” Siren added, always pragmatic.

They rounded another bend and then the vast glassy surface of the reservoir lay before them.  Surrounded by grand columns and arches, pillared parades and promenades, it was obvious that the man-made lake was intended to be used as more than just a source of water for the region and even the sluis gate leading to the aqueduct was ornately designed with carvings and statuary.  It was for this that the carriage now headed, scraping past a marble figure whose nudity was suddenly made potentially less offensive by the accidental removal of a piece of his anatomy.  Ellis and Gulliver both groaned.

And then they were onto one of the narrow roads which ran either side of the watercourse and were pulling away from the hill, over the village and out across the gardens of the nobility.  Below them Adelbert seemed furious.  The access road had proven too narrow for him and he couldn’t even use his destructive powers to clear a path, so he was turning to try and follow them along the aqueduct from the roads beneath.  More houses were demolished, but he was soon free of the town and keeping pace with the carriage.  The waterway was no so high up that he could not look over the top with his shattered-bulb eyes as he ran.  Ellis found it extremely unnerving.

“He can’t reach us here as long as we’re moving, but we can’t actually lose him and if we stop he’ll bring the whole aqueduct down around us!  This hasn’t helped us at all!”

Gulliver muttered something about it being his idea and therefore of course it would be a failure, but Siren was more positive.

“We just have to take this one step at a time.  We keep our eyes open for opportunities and stay ready to take them when they appear.”

As it was, however, the opportunity was not for them, but for Adelbert.

As they approached the walled town and castle complex, Ellis noticed that the giant Geist-machine was no longer looking at them and that it had actually slowed down and fallen behind them.  He wondered why this was, but on looking out the window he saw that the machine was staring at the castle with a look that, although hard to interpret due to the makeshift mechanical nature of its face, might have been described as ‘longing’.

“He’s almost stopped,” he said in surprise, “now why would that be?”

“Perhaps ‘e’s scared of the place,” Gulliver suggested.

“Or maybe he remembers it,” Siren said more confidently, “I think I know what that place must be.”

She stuck her head out of the window and saw that Franck was no longer concentrating on the horses, wisely leaving the driving to the driver, instead choosing to stare at the castle in the same, longing way.

She pulled back into the carriage and sighed, “Yes.  I’m almost certain of it.”

“What?” Ellis and Gulliver asked simultaneously.

“That castle is the original, the real Grand Chateau Von Spektr and, judging by how busy it is down there, I’m assuming it’s still occupied.”

“By who?” Ellis asked.

“Why, the current Baron, of course.”

“The Former Baron’s nephew, Tiberius!” Ellis said, as the memory hit him,  “I remember Doctor Barkham talking about him.”

“And what will he make of his Great, Great Uncle turning up on his doorstep like this?”

“I don’t know,” Ellis said, looking out the window once more, “but it looks like Adelbert is going to make an introduction.”

Outside the gigantic machine collapsed into a pile of debris and, through the raining pieces of brass, the car Adelbert had originally stolen roared out and onto the roads, disappearing through the gates and into the town.  Ellis caught one last glimpse of it as the carriage rode on.  It was winding up a little cobbled road towards the castle.

“I think the Noble Society is about to gain a new member,” he said.

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