HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre (5 page)

She put the box down, turned to go to the desk and her letter. A small boy stood in her way, having appeared without smoke, without fog. He stood on the flowered carpet, staring at her wi
th incredibly sad eyes. “
It
’
s my box, you must give it to me,”
he said. He was blond and fair, a cherub.

“
Let me see, the box belongs to a wolf, a foreign woman, a bear, and now you. So which one does it really belong to?”

“
It
’
s mine. It isn
’
t supposed to
be here. It
’
s going to cause…
everything to…
rip.”

“
Rip?”
She approached the boy, going down slowly, painfully, into a crouch so as to be on eye level. “
You're a shape-shifter. Where do you come from?”

“
The Far Back.”

“
So you're dead. You're a ghost.”

“
My wo
rld ripped and took me with it.”

“
We were told there were bombs.”

“
No, that's wrong. It was a rip. We had a box, too, that wasn't supposed to be there. It was that one.”
He pointed to the small whirring object near her bed. “
Now you have it.”

A sudden ripp
le of fear shivered down Angie's spine. She had put on a dress today, giving up her pants and chaps, hoping to fit into the town and what people expected from a single woman. Now she felt the corset whale bones digging in under her breasts and into her sh
o
ulder blades. She stared hard at the child, willing him to take back that last revelation.

“
Give it to me.”
He spoke softly and his voice enticed her to obey him.

He shifted so rapidly her eyes hardly followed the transformation. He whirled until he was c
loud and from out of that cloud came a dragon whose scaly head was bowed by the tall roof of the ceiling. It opened a great mouth and the roar that issued forth filled Angie's ears until she clapped her hands over them. She was uncontrollably yelling and
c
ursing again. “
You damned fool creature, shut your damned mouth!”
She could not get to her feet. The dress tangled itself around her ankles and the high lace collar felt as if it were strangling her. “
Stop!”
she screamed.

Minutes later, after the shape-shi
fter had thankfully disappeared, her door opened and the devil man entered, his hat cocked to the side, his hand on the gun holster at his waist. “
You will be removed from this house right this minute,”
he said. His eyes were dark and fierce, a brook-no-a
r
gument look settling in.

Angie had clawed her way to her feet and stood now wobbling in the middle of the room. “
I'm sorry, please tell the landlady I am extremely sorry...”

“
She wants you out. As an instrument of the law, I order you to gather your thing
s and leave.”

A wild low beeping filled the room. Both Angie and the sheriff looked over to the little box emitting the noise. “
Is that one of those spy boxes that record your voice?”
he asked.

“
No, it's just a...”
She was going to say “
music box,”
but the
room's temperature dropped several degrees and Angie's words trailed off. She knew something terrible was coming, something larger and more wondrous, more dangerous, than a dragon. She began to shake and she stared at the box with wide eyes. This was the
first time she felt real fear.

“
What's...going…
?”
The sheriff frowned, looking at the wall where the wood panels began to vanish and smoke poured into the room. When seconds later the smoke dissipated, there stood a being of light, his features indistingui
shable. He stood tall as the room and his shoulders were at least five feet wide. His menace was a palpable thing that filled the room and made it shimmer with cold light. “
Give me the box or reap the whirlwind,”
it said.

Angie covered her eyes against the
glare, quaking like a mouse caught in a house trap. Even the sheriff was frozen in place, hand on holster, squinting into the light. “
What the hell is this?”
he asked, dumbfounded. “
What spell have you conjured?”

Angie stood accused and knew there was no way she could explain the shape-shifter or what connection it had to the box on the table. How could she explain something she didn't understand herself?

“
There's a reckoning coming,”
the light being said, its voic
e mechanical in origin. “
Do you want to chance it?”

Had Angie been more brave, her trepidation less overwhelming, she would have limped to the bed and taken up the strange box and handed it over. It seemed she must give it, rather than expect it to be take
n. While she pondered the dire prediction, her fear escalating until she could hardly get her breath, her heart like that of an automaton clanking in her chest, the sheriff pulled his weapon and shot at the thing beginning to fill the room to overflow wit
h
its desperate light. There was the explosion of gun powder, the rank scent of cordite, and then the room was empty save for the two humans.

It was too much. Angie hobbled to the bed and sat down heavily, clutching at her chest.

“
You're coming with me,”
Da
ne Whitehall said. “
We can't have the likes of you infiltrating our small town. We ran out a cabal of Magicks last year when they swarmed into town with their painted wagons and light spears and talk of contraband drugs. I'm taking you to the judge.”

Befor
e he reached for her, Angie managed to pocket the box, feeling its heat and life thrumming next to her thigh through the thin material of her cotton dress. Dane marched her straight to the court house and gave his testimony, swearing on the Digest of Socr
a
tes that she had engaged in conjuring a monster, such was her Magick powers.

The judge wanted to sentence her to the gallows, she could see that from the disdain on his face, his mutton chops and pompadour shaking with rage. In the end, after her pleas of
high innocence, he relented and sent her instead to Bakerwane Asylum where she would remain until judged harmless. That could take ten years. Or a lifetime. Neither of which was the least bit fair.

This time she let self-pity overrun her sensibilities, so
great was the injustice. Tears filled her eyes and lay against the lower lids without falling.

She drifted around the cell, wringing her hands. She went to the mattress and withdrew the little wooden box. She unlatched it and lifted the lid to stare down i
nto its mechanism. She had seen clockworks like this in a thousand objects from a saloon stage that rose out of the floor to a child's twirly-gig, but none had possessed the future. None were sentient and without mercy.

“
Are you the Bringer of Chaos?”
she
whispered. “
Are you the Destroyer of Civilizations? Could it be that such a small, inconsequential box made of teak and gears could hold the world hostage?”

She did not expect an answer. The box had been inactive for months now. The last shape-shifter tha
t had come from it was the mind numbing light being in the boarding house.

She tried to recall her school lessons and what she'd been taught about the Old Times, especially the theories of how it had ended. Bombs, they said, went off simultaneously all ov
er, in every major city, in every hovel and hamlet. Monstrous bombs and small, they detonated together, synchronized to take out man and all his works in an instant. Only a few survived
—
those in aeroplanes and those in submarines. Those underground mining
or excavating. Those in the three ships in space that had been sent out to do scientific experiments. Her own ancestors were supposed to have been miners, earthwork diggers, the Ignorant Ones.

The child apparition claimed that theory was balderdash. There
had been no bombs. There had been just this small annoying beast of a machine that spoke riddles and was haunted by spirits who clamored to take possession of it. How this diminutive man-made object would bring about total annihilation was an unknowable p
u
zzle Angie feared she would never decipher. She would like to control the box, make it bend to her will, cause it to send a shape-shifter to the sleeping devil man one night to take his head on a platter, but she knew that was a fantasy of revenge she wou
l
d never get to indulge.

The winter came, bearing down on Hot Spring with an unprecedented glacial storm. Blue lightening zapped through the snowfall, triggering automatons all over town to shut down where they stood. The power from the steam plant ceased,
throwing the valley into darkness. Even the dirigibles landed and the fast rail halted, overtaken by mountainous snow and fields of treacherous ice. In her room Angie shivered beneath three woolen blankets, the cold seeping with icy fingers past the boar
d
shutters over the outside of the barred window. The asylum's cells were quiet. The whole town was muffled with snowfall. An occasional horse rider clapped past on the street, but otherwise Angie might be on the desert moon.

It was in the depths of that f
rigid night that the mattress beneath Angie's ribs began to hum and she knew the box had woken. She pulled herself from the bed, holding the blankets around her shoulders with one hand, and lifted the mattress to look.

“
What do you want?”
she asked in a p
laintive tone. All her hopes had been shattered because of the otherworldly box. Her freedom had been snatched from her. She was marked a Magick, an accusation that would follow her all her days even if she managed to convince the doctors to let her go. S
h
e was destitute, the court having taken the last of her savings to pay for her asylum stay. Thanks to the superstitious sheriff and the crazy little whirring box, her life had been circumscribed by a small cell, the barred window, and little hope to chang
e
it all.

“
What do you
want
?”
she hissed.

Tiny sparks flew off the gears inside the box and the whirring noise increased. A voice that had never been human said, “
Would you sacrifice yourself for your world?”

Angie nearly dropped the box from her hand. For
the first time it felt profane and evil; it felt like an abyss yawning, luring her into its dark depths. “
What do you mean?”
she whispered.

“
Those who came to take me from you, why do you think they wanted me?”

“
They want your power?”

A ratcheting gear spu
n faster, the noise increasing. “
You think it's about power? How dim can you be?”

Angie let go of fear to embrace her anger. She had never liked it when men spoke to her as if she were an inferior sex. She had never let those above her station treat her wi
th scorn. She would not let a simple mechanism insult her this way. She threw the box onto the mattress so that it tumbled against the wall. She turned her back, tightening the blankets around her throat. She stared into the near darkness, trembling and f
u
rious. She was not dim! She was not an inferior intelligence. How dare a machine call her names.

“
Angie?”

She refused to answer in repayment for all the days she had addressed the box with question and it had ignored her.

“
Angie, there is a rip coming. If
you go with me, you can prevent it. That is the truth.”

“
Why would I prevent it, what do I care, who have I left to save?”
She said this in rapid fashion, turning back in fury to the bed. “
What is this mysterious 'rip' and why should it be prevented? You a
re a tale-teller, a deceiver.”

“
I bring the rip in time.”

Angie tried to think what that would entail. A rip in time? How could time be rent and if it were, what did it mean to reality?

One of the asylum's automaton orderlies came to the locked door and from the other side called, “
Power will be restored in one hour. Power will be restored soon.”

Angie ignored the machine outside her door and addressed the one on her bed. “
If time rips, w
hat happens?”
She could hardly believe she was asking such a question, but the box made her suspect it might know more than any machine of her day. It was sought after by apparitions. It was alive with some sort of artificial intelligence that was extreme
l
y rare in her known world of smoke and dung and asylums full of sane offenders to the state.