Episode XXXVI - Geist Zeit

            “Franck!?” Siren called as she knocked lightly on the door, “Franck, are you in there?”

            There was a profound silence, followed, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, by a small pop and then a low whirr.  Siren glanced over her shoulder at Ellis and Gulliver.  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.

            She turned back and pushed the door open slowly, so as not to cause too much disruption to whatever might be occurring within.  It pushed against a sea of small metal parts, springs, rubber tubing, crumpled up pieces of paper and other miscellaneous debris, clearing a path as it went.  Beyond the inventor’s clutter there was a bed and beside the bed there was a desk and seated at the desk, hunched over and scribbling rapidly, was the Former Baron Von Spektr.

            “So you’re up, then?” Siren asked as she stepped into the space cleared by the door.

            The Former Baron turned around and smiled, “Oh, I’ve been up for hours!”  He turned back to his page and continued his scribblings, occasionally glancing up at a small device made out of wire and spring which was spinning around with ever-decreasing momentum.  A jar of pink coloured liquid was attached to the bottom of it, bubbling gently.

            “That’s good,” Siren continued, “because we have both a problem and an opportunity and we… or rather I need your help with both.”

            “You know me,” the Former Baron replied, not looking away from his work, “I’m always ready for a little problem solving, just give me another ten minutes and I’ll be with you.  What sort of problem is it anyway, and what opportunity?”

            “Well, the problem is that we’ve accidentally summoned your Great Uncle Adelbert and the opp-”

            “You did what!?”

            The Former Baron was no longer engrossed in his work now.  He had spun on the spot so vigorously that his chair nearly turned three hundred and sixty degrees.  His face was a pallid, wrinkled expression of horror, to which his thin-fingered hands rushed as if called to comfort it.

            “You did what!?” he said again, apparently too lost in disbelief to continue in any more detail as to the nature of his upset.

            “I said that we’ve accidentally summoned your Great Uncle Adelbert,” Siren replied, somewhat sheepishly, adding, “I’m guessing you didn’t want to speak to him again?”

            “Oh, no, no, no, no, no!  Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!  Oh no!  He was the worst of them.  Of all my centuried relatives – the entire twice blessed, thrice cursed line – he was the most monstrous!  He used to keep the servants locked up in psychic shackles and would paralyse or poison them at the merest hint of disobedience!”

            “Actually, he mentioned something about that…” Siren said, half under her breath.

            “And he housed an Unspeakable Horror in the basement.”

            “That, ah, also came up,” added Ellis.

            “An Unspeakable Horror!  Do you have any idea of the terrible, monstrous depravity of such a thing?  I would go into more detail, but… the horror of it… Unspeakable!”

            “I’d imagined that it might be,” said Siren.

            “And if all that was not bad enough, he excavated the Key of Despair and the Lock of Eternal Silence and then very nearly started the sequence that would unleash-”

            “-the Blood Tide of Deverus through the Gates of Final Reckonin’?” asked Gulliver, breaking his utter silence up to this point.

            “However did you know that?  Ah it matters not!  The man is a raving lunatic and is as likely to bring the world to its end as do anything for its betterment.  He cannot be allowed any freedom whatsoever, not even to speak.”

            “He’s speaking quite a lot in your hall right now,” Ellis added helpfully.

            “Gah!” cried the Former Baron, leaping to his feet and staggering, half-deranged, towards the door, leaving Ellis, Siren and Gulliver no choice but to stand aside and let him past.

            “This doesn’t look good,” Ellis said into the ensuing silence, “he’s normally so unflappable.”

            “I agree,” Siren replied, “but the question is, is this because Adelbert is a genuine menace, or just because he’s a really annoying relative?”

            “I can’t ‘elp but think that this is somehow all my fault,” Gulliver added miserably.

            “That’s because it is, Gulliver, but I wouldn’t worry about it.  You weren’t to know.”  Siren turned back to Ellis.

            “So what do we do about it?”

            “I guess we go back downstairs and see what the Former Baron is doing first.”

            “Then let’s go.”

            The hallway was filled with the sound of shouting.  Both Former Barons were in full flow, the deceased and the deposed, and as the trio of guests descended the stairs, neither of the old inventors seemed to notice them at all.  their cacophony was so great that it was difficult to distinguish what they were actually saying.  Ellis could make out a few words here and there: a cry of ‘Psychopath!’ from the current Former Baron; something about ‘a brainless babe’ from Adelbert and various other interjections Ellis assumed were local obscenities issued from both parties, but there was nothing coherent.  Siren, Ellis and Gulliver stared at them, then at each other, then back at the strange, but disturbing scene before them.  Minutes seemed to pass.

            It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Siren who took action.  Her scream was louder than Ellis would have thought possible and it achieved a pitch of singular intensity which left ears ringing in the (suddenly silent) hallway for a long time afterwards.  Everyone was looking at the pirate.

            “Thank you,” she said, stepping forward so that she almost stood between the Former Baron and the painting.

            “My word!” said the Former Baron as he twisted a finger around in his ear, “I had no idea you had that in you!  Was that ever a weapon in your pirate arsenal?”

            “Pirates?” cried Adelbert, “You’re dealing with pirates now?” he seemed to tremble with disbelief.

            “Asks the man who made a deal with the Horde of Shacklehill and completely destroyed Southdown in the process, killing all who lived there.”

            “Good of you to remember, but pirates?  They’re so vulgar!”

            “I am not vulgar!” Siren responded, planting  her hands on her hips and staring at the painted Baron with an intensity Ellis thought might soon melt the frame, “And, I’ll have you know, there is a long history of nobility among the great pirate captains.”

            “Once they became pirates they ceased being noble… or great.”

            Siren turned back to the Former Baron, “Can’t I just burn the frame?  That would solve the problem, right?”

            “Oh, goodness, no!  Then we’d have an honest-to-goodness Geist on our hands, and that’ll be much worse.”

            “A Geist?” Ellis asked.

            “Would that really be so bad, Nephew-of-mine?  Then I can advise you more fully and get you out of this hovel you have been driven into!”

            “Ugh!” the Former Baron cried, “Could you imagine it!  He’d be off helping the ‘Noble Society of Hypostatick Philosophers’ in no time.”

            “What’s a Geist?”  Ellis asked again.

            “Okay,” Siren replied, “so we don’t burn him, but there must be something we can do?”

            The Former Baron turned his back on the frame, much to Adelbert’s evident fury, and started stroking his chin.

            “What we would need,” he said thoughtfully, “is a way to unsummon him.”

            “How did you do it last time?” Ellis asked, “And what is a Geist?”

            “Last time?”

            “I mean, when you turned all of the paintings off, for want of a better term.”

            “Oh, that’s just it.  That is exactly what I did!”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “Well, the paintings were plugged into the Hypostatick network in the old Grand Chateau.  When we took them down, that effectively switched them off.”

            “So, how’s this one powered?”

            “It could only be by old Adelbert’s own hypostatick energy, which is why we’d have a Geist on our hands if we burned that frame.  As it is he’s basically a bound Geist.  The frame’s all that’s restricting him!  It’s exactly what I was afraid of.”

            “Okay,” Ellis said calmly, “I’m going to ask this one more time.  What is a Geist?”

            To his surprise, it was the painting which answered.

            “A Geist is a kind of artificial ghost capable of possessing machinery and with a strength several times that of an ordinary ghost, or an ordinary human for that matter.  I created a legion of them once and pitted them against the Unspeakable Horror, but they never made it out of the basement.  Still, I don’t intend to fight anything of that magnitude, and, under such circumstances, I think I would find being a Geist to be quite agreeable.”

            “Do you see?” the Former Baron asked, nearly tearing at his thin strands of hair in frustration.  “We cannot let that happen!”

            “It really is only a matter of time, actually,” Adelbert said, starting to sound rather pleased with himself.  “I can feel the frame weakening with every passing minute.”

            “Cogs of Gehenna! I need to think!”  And with that the Former Baron vanished into the basement, leaving Siren, Gulliver and Ellis once again staring silently into his wake, only this time Adelbert Von Spektr was humming to himself behind them.

            “Oh, please be quiet,” Siren sighed, then she too disappeared down the stairs.

            “This is all my fault…” Gulliver said gloomily.  Ellis attempted an encouraging smile, but the lanky pirate was already following Siren and soon he was left all alone in the hallway – alone but for the talking painting, at least.

            “Just… just stay there.” he said to it uncertainly, before making his way to the basement door and descending the stairs himself.

            “Well, I’m not going anywhere, am I?” Adelbert Von Spektr said softly to himself in the silence of the hallway.  “At least, not yet.”

FIRST EPISODE

PREVIOUS EPISODE

NEXT EPISODE

FULL ARCHIVE