《EMG: A Voracious Mirror》


 Chapter 1. Old Superstitions

    1867, Late July


    Audrey decided to go ahead and do the foolish ritual and all its silly steps to prove a point to Harriet, to prove to her that the ghosts that inhabited their modern world in growing numbers were not the ghosts of their old mothers¡¯ era. The ghosts of their mothers¡¯ era were fakes. They were misidentifications, lies, or folklore. They were like Hercules and Cinderella, fictional. But the ghosts of Audrey and Harriet¡¯s era, of the modern era of thaumaturgists and manesologists, were real.


    Ghosts in the modern era were scientific fact, like gravity and bacteria and photosynthesis and other things Audrey read about in her brother¡¯s school books. Ghosts had been a fact since 1861, when Dr. Edward James published the first scientific paper on ghosts, Multiple Intelligences Within the Human Body. Multiple Intelligences was like the Bible. Few read it, more read snippets from it, but all knew of it and what it proclaimed.


    Modern ghosts, real ghosts, were not even called ghosts, scientifically speaking. They were called manes in all serious publications, though common publications such as Illustrated Phantom Stories (a guilty pleasure of Audrey¡¯s, for though its content was sensationalized and lurid, it did provide a daily supply of ghost stories) called them ghosts. The average person called them ghosts, though Audrey took great pleasure in correcting anyone that used the term ghosts. ¡°They aren¡¯t ghosts, they¡¯re manes.¡± was one of Audrey¡¯s favorite sayings, and her mother was sick of hearing it.


    Ghosts couldn¡¯t be summoned through silly rituals that called for one to play with a candle and spin around and stare into a mirror at such-and-such an hour. To summon real ghosts, you needed scientific instruments called gaeite candles, not wax candles. These gaeite candles combined an electric battery, the latest in chemical and electrical technology, with a block of gaeite mined from the ruins of the pre-human Dyeus culture, and as everyone knew from the pamphlets the government printed and distributed back in 1865, when a block of gaeite was exposed to an electric current, it produced a silvery-white glow called olprt radiance which was part physical light, part metaphysical ectoplasm. Olprt radiance responded to disciplined thoughts, and when wielded by a a manesologists trained in the mental exercises of the Dyeus culture, miracles could be worked, including the summoning of ghosts.


    That was how ghosts were summoned, not through superstition, but through science.


    Really, everyone knew about ghosts these days. Even far-off Indians at the corners of the British empire knew about them. For Audrey, there was no excuse for people like her mother and Harriet to go on believing silly superstitions, not in the modern year of 1867, and it bothered her greatly when they did so, as if they had no common sense in their heads. Audrey couldn¡¯t stand it when her mother talked about ghosts not being able to cross running water, as if they couldn¡¯t fly wherever they pleased, or about how they couldn¡¯t enter churches, as if Christians couldn''t¡¯ leave ghosts when they died. But Audrey really couldn¡¯t stand it when Harriet talked about Bloody Mary, as if Bloody Mary was even a real ghost! When it came to believing in nonsense, Audrey¡¯s mother had the excuse of her age, but what was Harriet¡¯s excuse? She had none! She was simply a bird-brain.


    So, to make a point to Harriet, to prove to her once and for all that there was no place for Bloody Mary and her silly rituals in the modern world, Audrey decided to do all the silly, foolish things that Harriet said would make Bloody Mary appear in her mirror, all just to prove a point.


    It was just to prove a point--and it made what happened to Audrey all the more unjust and tragic.


    When the sun went down and her parents went asleep, Audrey double-checked the list of instructions she had made.


    --When it is dark, walk backwards up the stairs while holding a candle in one hand and a hand mirror in the other.


    --Walk to the largest mirror in the house (which was the mirror in the bathroom).


    --Place one candle near one edge of the mirror and another candle at the other edge (this, Audrey realized, meant that she had to leave a candle in the bathroom before the ritual started, otherwise she would have to somehow carry two candles and a hand mirror. She wondered if Harriet had ever thought about that peculiarity of the ritual and decided that she probably didn¡¯t. Harriet probably never did the silly ritual herself, though she swore up and down she did, the big liar).


    --Say ¡°Bloody Mary¡± three times in the mirror (what was to be done about the little hand mirror, Harriet didn¡¯t say. Audrey suspected that the ritual Harriet described was really the combination of two different versions. There were always different versions of superstitions like this. Audrey supposed that Bloody Mary wouldn¡¯t be too terribly offended if she left the hand mirror on the counter outside the bathroom).


    --Spin around three times.


    --Gaze into the mirror once again.


    And if these steps were followed exactly, Harriet promised that supernatural activity would occur in the bathroom mirror--though she was vague about the precise form this activity was to take. She said that when she herself summoned Bloody Mary, she saw the face of her husband-to-be: John Lloyd. But of course she would see John Lloyd. Her parents had introduced her to him a month ago and she fell head-over-heels for him. But Harriet warned that more than one¡¯s future husband could appear in the mirror. She warned that a skull could appear, or a woman in a bloody shroud, or a warty-faced witch. Presumably, one of these images had to be the legendary Bloody Mary. Or perhaps all of them were Bloody Mary. Or maybe Bloody Mary had sisters. It didn¡¯t matter.


    Who exactly Bloody Mary was supposed to be, Harriet couldn¡¯t say. She explained to Audrey that she heard from other people (she was always hearing things from other people) that Bloody Mary was the ghost of Queen Mary Tudor, notorious for her persecution of Protestants. Harriet told Audrey that Mary Tudor burned nearly 300 men at the stake, and while that was interesting, it didn¡¯t explain why she wanted to visit people through mirrors in the present. Harriet also heard that Bloody Mary was the ghost of Mary Worth, an American plantation owner who took great delight in executing escaped slaves. Again, it was interesting, but Audrey couldn¡¯t see the connection between old homicide and modern mirrors. Harriet also heard that Bloody Mary was a Hungarian Countess named Elizabeth Bathory who killed her servant girls and bathed in their blood in an effort to maintain her own youth (apparently, superstitions got stranger the older they were), but Countess Bathory being Bloody mary seemed like a stretch to Audrey, even in light of the other two proposed identities. Elizabeth Bathory wasn¡¯t even named Mary, how did people come to believe it was her in the first place?


    With little faith in the proposed identities of Bloody Mary and even less in her supposed ability to be summoned by girls with too much time on their hands, Audrey lit a candle, picked up a hand mirror, and prepared to begin the ritual.


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Audrey had no doubt that when morning came and she reported to Harriet that her mirror was uninhabited  Harriet would call her a big liar. She would call her a liar whether or not she did the ritual, Audrey knew that, but Audrey didn¡¯t want Harriet to be right in calling her a liar. She didn¡¯t want Harriet to stare her in the eye and glean that she was too cowardly to perform the ritual from her facial features. Harriet had a way of reading people, and Audrey feared her friend smiling at her and saying ¡°You¡¯re lying, Audrey! I know you¡¯re lying! I can see it in your face!¡±


    That would be the worst possible outcome of the night, and so Audrey was resolved to carry the ritual to completion, foolish as it was.


    It was not a difficult thing to walk up the stairs backwards. They were the stairs of the house Audrey had lived in since she was born/ She could have walked up them blindfolded. But when Audrey reached the top of the stairs, she found that she was faced with something she hadn¡¯t considered--was she supposed to walk backwards down the stairs as well as up it?


    Audrey felt very foolish. She thought she had considered all the oddities and inconsistencies of Bloody Mary and her rituals. How did she not foresee this?


    Harriet never said anything about how one was supposed to go back down the stairs. Maybe it was assumed that whoever performed the ritual kept the largest mirror they owned upstairs? Who would keep such a large and fragile thing upstairs instead of downstairs?


    Audrey looked down the stairs. For the first time that night, she felt apprehensive. In the dark, with only a little candle to provide illumination, she could see only a few steps of the stairs before they vanished into the darkness beyond her candlelight.


    Audrey thought about what Harriet would say. Audrey decided that Harriet would definitely tell her she ¡°did it wrong¡± if she didn¡¯t walk backwards down the stairs. Walking forwards down the stairs would count as a botch and spoil the whole ritual, and Harriet would laugh at her, and so, Audrey turned around, and with her back to gravity, descended the stairs.


    She had to admit to herself that going down the stairs was more¡­well, she wouldn¡¯t say scary¡­more precarious than going up. She descended carefully, very carefully, feeling every step with her feet. With every step she took, she had the curious feeling that she was about to tip over and fall the rest of the way down the stairs. She felt as if a hand was gently pulling at her back and that at any moment it could start tugging.


    When Audrey finally reached the ground, she smiled to herself, and imagined what would have happened if she had fallen. She wouldn¡¯t have broken a bone, that much she was sure of. Her mother once broke a bone falling down the stairs, but she was so old, and so frail. Audrey figured that she probably would have yelled and woken up her parents, and then they would have yelled at her for waking them up in the middle of the night. Knowing her luck, the hand mirror would probably have cracked as well, and they would have yelled at her for that too. The whole house would be up and yelling and pretty soon someone would be knocking at the door asking what murder was just committed.


    In her imagination, Audrey could hear her mother. ¡±Audrey! You¡¯re always getting on to me about ¡°superstition¡± this and ¡°unscientific¡± that, and now you¡¯re up in the middle of the night trying to talk to Bloody Mary!¡±


    It was all so silly, wasn¡¯t it?


    Audrey felt disappointed once she was inside her bathroom. One would think that as one got closer to Bloody Mary¡¯s appearance that things would start to get scarier, but this was nothing compared to the stairs, and the stairs were a trifle.


    Audrey put her candle at one end of the mirror, retrieved a tinder box from her pockets, and lit the one she had placed before she went to the stairs.


    She could barely see herself in the mirror and doubted that she would be able to see Bloody Mary, if Bloody Mary even showed up. How was anyone supposed to see anything in a mirror, in a dark room, with only candle light to see by?


    It was all so silly!


    Audrey gazed at her reflection, dull and murky as it was. There was her eye, there was her chin, and there was her lip. Everything was there, but all the parts were suspended in the darkness so that she could only see the parts her eyes focused on. It was like her face was sinking beneath a black puddle, or falling into a dark cloud.


    ¡°Bloody Mary,¡± Audrey said.


    She nearly laughed. She couldn¡¯t believe that she was really doing this. She hoped her parents wouldn¡¯t hear her.


    ¡°Bloody Mary.¡± Audrey said again, and then one more time, ¡°Bloody Mary.¡±


    And that was that.


    So disappointing! Whoever invented this silly superstition clearly never tried it themselves. If they had wanted it to be really scary they could have made it so that the person said ¡°Bloody Mary¡± three times in a pitch black room. That at least would have been something, but this? This was nothing!


    Audrey reached for her candle to light the way back to her bedroom, but then she remembered something--the last step.


    Turn around three times.


    She decided she might as well. She had done all the other silly things, so what was one more?


    She turned around once.


    Twice.


    Three times.


    And looked in the mirror.


    Audrey blinked. Was she dizzy? She didn¡¯t feel dizzy, but the mirror looked strange. In the mirror, she could see the glare of the candlelight, she could see the bathroom, but she couldn¡¯t see her face.


    Where was her face?


    Audrey closed her eyes. It must be a trick of the light, she thought.


    She opened them.


    And still, she couldn¡¯t see her face.


    She laughed. She must have pulled some sort of magic trick on herself. What stage magicians did on purpose to fool their audiences she did on accident to herself. Didn¡¯t people say they always used mirrors for their tricks? That was what this was, some sort of Pepper¡¯s ghost trick.


    She moved to try to see if she could change what was in the mirror. She stepped back, she stepped forward, but still, she would not appear in the mirror, but everything else did.


    She had no reflection, no reflection at all.


    But that was only how it seemed, she told herself, it was impossible for something, for anything, to not have a reflection. Somehow, the light was being curved or refracted or meddled with in some way so as to make it seem that she didn¡¯t have a reflection.


    And then she realized that she could see in the mirror the bathtub and cabinet--and those things were behind her.


    How was that possible? How could some optical trick make the mirror show what was behind her..as if she wasn''t there?


    She grabbed one of the candles. No more silly games in the dark. This had gone on long enough. The game was over.


    She held her candle close to the mirror.


    And she saw that the candle floated in mid-air without a hand to hold it.


    Audrey gasped. She dropped the candle. It clattered to the marble floor and snuffed itself out with sloshing, liquid wax.


    Half the bathroom plunged into darkness. Audrey felt strange, and told herself to calm down. She was safe, she told herself, whatever was happening, she was safe But her heart continued to beat faster and faster. She started to sweat.


    This was fear--but also something more.


    Her mouth dried in an instant. She felt her stomach start to churn.


    She felt very, very cold, very, very suddenly. Her teeth chattered together. She touched her forehead and felt that she was ablaze.


    She had a fever, a horrible, flu-like fever, in seconds, and she could not explain it. But worse than the fever was the fear. Something had been done to her, something she couldn¡¯t understand, by a thing she didn¡¯t believe in.


    Until now.


    Audrey began to cry. Tears clouded her vision, but when she brushed them away she found that her vision still blurred without them.


    Her head felt light and her limbs heavy. Her legs buckled and she fell to the bathroom floor, barely catching herself on her hands, but then they too gave way under the weight of her body and she slumped to the floor, cheek pressed against the cold marble.


    Through half-closed, unfocused eyes, Audrey could just barely make out the candlelight reflecting in the mirror.


    The candlelight formed a suggestion of a face. Whose face it was, Audrey did not know, but it certainly wasn¡¯t her own.


    Audrey screamed, and the softness of her scream terrified her. It wasn¡¯t loud enough to reach her parents, sound asleep. It was barely loud enough to escape her throat. And then, in the span of a terrified heartbeat, her screams no longer had the strength to leave her mouth.

 Chapter 2. Modern Guardians

    In Blackwall, the city that was called the ghost of London, the three manesologists who composed Ernst, Morton, and Glass took their morning tea and coffee together in their office as they routinely did. It was part of the wheel of their lives--tea, ghosts, sleep, followed by tea, ghosts, sleep.


    ¡°Thank you, Nick.¡± Dr. Joseph Morton said as their employee, a young man who had died in the fireball that swallowed London, warmed his tea by placing a thin skin of green ectoplasm around the cup. The ectoplasm suffused the china cup and made it glow like an ember fresh from a fireplace.


    Joseph was a man large in size and long in age. He had the largest cup at the table, and yet he could lift it with just a finger and did just that, pouring the cup¡¯s warm contents past his bushy white beard and down his jowly throat.


    ¡°Ah, now I feel awake!¡± Joseph exclaimed.


    Nick had died in incredible heat, and so his ghost was reborn as heat. He could not assume a human form, or anything even resembling a human form, but he could become fire and warmth, and did so, most often in the form of a green fireball or glow. He chose to be the color green because he thought it a spiritual color that would cause people to consider him a spirit first and living fireball second.


    Because Ernst, Morton, and Glass did Nick a great kindness several years ago, Nick worked as their employee keeping their offices lit and heated with his power. Because of Nick¡¯s work, Ernst, Morton, and Glass never had to worry about paying bills for heating or their early morning drinks getting cold.


    Dr. Matthew Ernst took delicate sips of his tea as he made his way through his daily morning reading. Today he read a manesological paper fresh from Ireland by a manesologist named Harry Escott. The paper dealt with the phenomena of a lady in green clothes seen walking about the ruins of various medieval fortifications and castles. The contents of the paper were indecipherable for the ordinary man, loaded as they were with technical terms and the language of the prehuman Dyeus culture, but were gripping to Dr. Ernst.


    Dr. Ernst was a quiet, reserved gentleman of unremarkable looks, but any manesologist would recognize his face. Years ago, he wrote an influential paper on the internal operations of a ghost¡¯s composition. Such technical concepts were irrelevant to the lives of normal people, and so he was regarded as just another face in the crowd by most, but among manesologist, he was regarded as a pioneering scientist. They said he was to metaphysical anatomy what Vesalius was to physical anatomy.


    Dr. Martin Glass did not take tea, he took coffee. He developed a taste for the drink years ago when he studied the works of Abdul Alhazred in the Bagdad as part of his thaumaturgical education. There was a time in his life when he aimed not to be a manesologist, but a thaumaturgist.


    The thaumaturgists of the Ror Raas, who Major General George Colley of the British army, of the largest and strongest military on Earth, called ¡°the uncrowned kings of the world,¡± were a group of men and women who achieved great knowledge and power through what they called the Abramelin Operation. This was a series of psychic meditations which, when carried to completion, allowed one to communicate with his or her own soul. These meditations were gleaned from the dreams of Abramelin, a gigantic being that slept beneath Luxor, Egypt, whom occultist Samuel Mathers made telepathic contact with in 1865.


    The Ror Raas anticipated the worldwide increase in earthbound ghosts throughout the later half of the 19th century and believed that manesological activity would continue to increase into the 20th. To maintain peace between the earthbound dead and living humanity, the Ror Raas bestowed gaeite, the miracle of the Dyeus culture, upon a group of anthropologists, alienists, and occultists to form the first manesologists.


    The Ror Raas, of course, had the power and knowledge necessary to mediate between ghost and man, what George Colley had said was in complete earnestness, but they feared that taking on such a responsibility would give them undue influence over the world. They were fearful of becoming a race of god--kings ever since they began intervening in armed conflicts around the world starting with the American Civil War in 1863 when they brought an end to hostilities by placing fires in the sky over the Battle of Shiloh. Thus they say it necessary to recruit men that had one foot in their world and one foot in the mundane world, men like Martin Glass.


    Martin Glass wanted to be a thaumaturgist, not a manesologist. He wanted to talk to his own soul, not the souls of others. But something happened during his education that caused him to abruptly change paths. What this something was, he never told Joseph and Matthew, and he intended never to tell them as long as he could help it.


    Though his tutelage under the Ror Raas ended before Martin could accomplish the Abramelin Operation, he picked up a few minor miracles from his lessons that came in handy in his new life as a manesologist. He could, for example, see and touch ghosts, no matter how immaterial they might be. Matthew and Joseph could only do the same with the aid of a gaeite candle.


    Martin wore large, dark glasses which dulled the color of his piercingly blue eyes. Martin was young, relative to Matthew and certainly to Joseph, and his mustache, while as thick as Joseph¡¯s, was a vibrant blond instead of a snowy white.


    Martin sipped his coffee and gazed at the wall, or perhaps through it. He was given to go off into trances in which his mind would jerk at the chain of his body and take half-steps through the Astral universes his teachers mapped.


    Matthew read, Joseph woke up, and Martin dreamed.


    All three men were momentarily taken out of their morning habits by a blue face materializing through the door.


    ¡°I got today¡¯s Blackwall Undertaking!¡± Esmee Walker announced. ¡°And judging by the cover, its a really interesting issue!¡±


    Esmee, like Nick, was a victim of the London fireball, but unlike Nick, she was able to assume a human form. She appeared in the beautiful, albeit simplified, form of a woman, like a statue of blue glass come to life. She was another employee of Ernst, Morton, and Glass and worked their electrograph, sending and receiving messages from all around the increasingly haunted Earth.


    Esmee placed her copy of the Blackwall Undertaking on the table and left through the wall to check on the electrograph. She checked it night and day, for she never slept, and the electrograph had opened an entire world of nighttime activity and correspondence. Esmee considered some parts of her ghostly existence a curse, others a blessing, and she found her unending endurance to be among the blessings. She thought she was like the Earth. The Earth, like herself, never slept, not fully. While England slept, China was awake, and Chinese manesologists had wonderful stories to share with her over the electrograph about the legendary Zhong Kui, who they considered to be history¡¯s first manesologist.


    Joseph grabbed up the broadsheet and brought it close to his tired eyes. Then he groaned.


    ¡°Hmph. Hrumph!¡±


    Esmee stuck her head back through the wall. ¡®I heard that! I thought you¡¯d have a strong reaction to that image, Dr. Morton!¡± She then pulled her head back through the wall and vanished, with her smile being the last part of her to go.


    ¡°¡±Hmph? Hrumph?¡± What¡¯s that all supposed to mean?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Hrumph rumph rumph.¡± Joseph bellowed.


    "I¡¯m having a hard time deciphering your ape language, old man.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°What? Didn¡¯t the magic men teach you how to talk to animals like how Elijah talked to the ravens?¡± Joseph always called the thaumaturgists ¡°magic men,¡± because it always bothered Martin to hear the four syllable title reduced to two monosyllabic words.


    ¡°Elijah didn¡¯t talk to the ravens, you big ape.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°He did too, and I¡¯m surprised you don¡¯t know that.¡± Joseph said. ¡°The story of Elijah and the ravens is something taught in every Sunday school.¡±


    Martin turned to Matthew. ¡°Matthew? Please help me elucidate our simple friend here. Did Elijah talk to his ravens?¡±


    ¡°1st Kings doesn¡¯t mention the ravens talking to Elijah.¡± Matthew answered, not bothering to look up from a captivating passage on the color green as used in medieval heraldry.


    ¡°Though it doesn¡¯t mention them not talking, the implication seems to be that they were non-communicative ravens, completely normal and mundane save that they brought the prophet food under the command of God.¡±


    Martin smirked. ¡°Told you so, old man.¡±


    ¡°Now, now, boy. Remember what I said exactly.¡± Joseph said. I said that Elijah talked to the ravens. I said nothing about the ravens talking to him.¡±


    ¡°Oh, really?¡±


    ¡°Yes.


    ¡°And why would the great prophet bother to speak to animals incapable of talking back?¡±


    ¡°Because he¡¯s polite, obviously. Those ravens brought him food in the morning and in the evening. They were very dutiful avians, so there¡¯s no doubt that Elijah whispered ¡°thank you¡± at least once or twice.¡±


    ¡°But the ravens had nothing to do with the food, not really. They acted as agents of God. Their work was God¡¯s work, and so Elijah should have thanked God, not the birds.¡±


    ¡°Boy, when we¡¯re eating at Bishop¡¯s Restaurant on Curant Street, and the waiter brings you your sauti of rabbit, do you say ¡°Thank you, garcon,¡± or do you say ¡°Thank you, chef?¡±¡±


    ¡°That is an entirely different circumstance. The waiter is not an extension of the chef¡¯s will. The ravens were an extension of God¡¯s will. They were like God¡¯s puppets. They were like my dogs.¡±


    Martin sloshed his coffee high into the air.


    Matthew saw the black liquid arc through the air out of the corner of his eye. ¡°If you spill something, clean it up.¡± he muttered while reading a passage speculating on a possible connection between the green ladies of various castles and a mythological figure known as the Glaistig.


    The coffee stopped in mid air as if suddenly frozen into a solid jet.


    ¡°Not a chance of that.¡± Martin said. ¡°Remember when my dogs caught the bullets of those assassins? Some coffee is nothing to them.¡±


    Martin¡¯s two dogs were carryovers from his thaumaturgical education. They were thought-forms, mental energies shaped by his willpower, and were useful for many things, horseplay included


    The dogs compressed the coffee back into a cup shape and slotted it down into Martin¡¯s cup.


    ¡°Joseph, when my dogs save your life by blocking a bullet, or a knife, or a stone, do you say ¡°Thank you, doggies?¡± No, of course you don¡¯t! You say ¡°Thank you, Martin,¡± though that¡¯s assuming you even remember to say ¡°thank you,¡± you rude gorilla! The point is, my dogs are extensions of my will, just as Elijah¡¯s ravens were extensions of God¡¯s will. Thanking the ravens would have been like thanking the hand of a person that pulled you out of danger instead of the person. You might do something like that, strange as you are, but the average person wouldn''t.¡±


    ¡°We never fail to find the most creative things to argue about over breakfast, don¡¯t we?¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°Boy, you are assuming out-of-hand that the ravens were actually ravens.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°Oh, this is an interesting pivot.¡± Martin said.


    Would the almighty really mind-puppet a flock of corvus corax when he already has an entire celestial host of winged messengers?¡± Joseph asked. ¡° That would be like you going to the pound and picking out a flesh-and-blood dog to train to pick up rocks and block bullets. I think the implication in the scripture is clear: God sent his angels to Elijah in the form of ravens.¡±


    ¡°What sort of supreme being sends his angels to deliver food?¡± Martin asked.


    "Well, what else would they be doing? Singing hymns and pondering the divine?¡±


    ¡°Traditionally, it was thought they did exactly that when not called into service.¡± Martin said. ¡°But psychic exploration of the Astral has revealed that angels busy themselves with much more than worship and study of the Monad. When not called to action, angels attend to matters of cosmic importance, typically involving the manifestation and regulation of universes.¡±


    ¡°Sounds to me like God sent his best angels to be Elijah¡¯s ravens, then.¡±


    ¡°How do you figure that? One would think that food delivery would be a considerable step down in prestige from spinning galaxies.¡±


    ¡°One would think that, because one is human, and to humans spinning galaxies around your finger is a dream and taking food to old Elijah east of the Jordan is a chore. But I think God¡¯s angels would have enjoyed taking a break from cosmic business. I think they would have enjoyed stretching their wings in air rather than aether. I think they would have relished using wings that actually had to be moved like wings in order to work. Imagine how exhilarating it would be to use muscles after being nothing but light?¡±


    Joseph spread his massive arms out and puffed up his chest. ¡°To pull with their wings and chest against the current of the air?¡±


    Martin chuckled. ¡°Stop that, you old ape! You look ridiculous!¡±


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Joseph held out his wrinkled hand. ¡°Imagine what it would be like to learn frailty and comfort, to rest in the warm, wrinkled hand of Elijah and feel him pet your hollow bones?¡±


    Martin touched his glasses. What was behind them wasn¡¯t an angel, but it was like one.


    Martin was more like the beings of the Astral than he let on to his friends.


    ¡°You might be right, old man.¡± Martin said. ¡°You might actually be right.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean ¡°might actually?¡±¡± Joseph thumped his chest. ¡°I¡¯m always right!¡±


    Martin smirked. ¡°Mad apes believe the strangest things.¡±


    Martin sipped his coffee. It was chalky and hot, just the way he liked it.


    He never spun a galaxy around his finger, but the things he did while training to be a thaumaturgist were comparable. It was a completely different life compared to the one he now led. The things he saw during his training, the beings he spoke to, the places he went¡­and none of it, absolutely none of it, was like Earth. There was no Blackwall, or Bishop¡¯s Restaurant, or Ernst, Morton, and Glass in Heaven.


    Martin would know.


    ¡°You alright, boy?¡± Joseph remarked on his expression, which had suddenly turned pensive. ¡°Something wrong with your coffee?¡±


    ¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong. Anyway, let¡¯s see what¡¯s got you so aggravated this morning.¡± Martin reached over the table for the broadsheet. ¡°Come on! Show us!¡±


    Joseph pulled the paper out of Martin¡¯s reach. ¡°No! I don¡¯t think I will!


    ¡°Children, please.¡± Matthew said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to have to buy another table.¡±


    ¡°Got it!¡± Martin exclaimed as the paper pulled itself loose out of Joseph¡¯s hands.


    ¡®No fair!¡± Joseph said. ¡°You cheated! You used your dogs!¡±


    ¡°See what I mean? I cheated, not the dogs cheated.¡±


    Martin looked at the broadsheet and smirked. ¡°This is what¡¯s got you grumpy? Hey, Matthew, take a look at this!¡±


    Martin placed the paper atop Matthew¡¯s academic journal.


    ¡°Hm.¡± Matthew raised an eyebrow at the broadsheet then placed it on the table.


    The cover of the Blackwall Undertaking showed an enormous, scaly beast rising out of the ground and shrugging off a rural town like an ox a blanket. DR. ROBERT LUMEN DISCUSSES SUBTERRANEAN DRAGONS AT WILDE UNIVERSITY, the headline proclaimed.


    ¡°It¡¯s an imaginative scene, if nothing else.¡± Matthew said.


    Joseph tapped the cover with his finger. ¡°Just look at this shameless sensationalism! Shoddy! I would have expected something like this from out of Illustrated Phantom Stories, but this is the Blackwall Undertaking! It¡¯s an informative publication, or it''s supposed to be!¡±


    Joseph turned to Martin. ¡°You¡¯ve seen what the Dyeus culture¡¯s old sparring partners look like with your own eyes. Do they look anything like this?¡±


    ¡°This drawing resembles a real vovin in the same way a child¡¯s stick figure drawing resembles a man. That is to say it portrays the general shape without capturing any of the detail.¡±


    Joseph rolled his eyes. ¡°You could have just said no.¡±


    He tapped the cover again as if he could strike the dragon itself. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be so bad if it was just an inaccurate depiction of a dragon, but they had to go and mix in some fear mongering. Look at our vovin gentleman here, tossing a whole town like he was an angry Atlas! You two remember what Bob¡¯s presentation was like and how many people kept asking him ¡°Will the dragons one day wake up and overturn our cities?¡± Poor Bob, I actually felt bad for him. They actually kept changing up how it was asked, but they kept asking the same thing. ¡°What would happen if the dragons woke up? How much destruction could an awakened dragon cause? How much dirt would a dragon have to displace to create an earthquake?¡± You¡¯d think they wanted the dragons to scrape away our civilization with the way they talked!¡±


    ¡°Fear naturally follows from feelings of powerlessness.¡± Matthew said. ¡°Robert should have expected all those questions after he likened the powers of the vovin to the Greek gods. I don¡¯t know why he grimaced when the inevitable happened.¡±


    ¡°No, I have to take Bob¡¯s side here. The distance between our little crust of civilization and the dragons slumbering far below our feet is several thousand times that of the distance between¡­well, here and Japan, to give an example.¡±


    ¡®Does Japan have giant dragons?¡± Matthew asked.


    ¡°Does it matter? Look, the world of Fairy has dragons, doesn¡¯t it? And ogres, and nixies, and trolls, and all sorts of large, dangerous beasties, right? But no one cares about them, because Fairy is beyond the farthest star, as they say¡±


    ¡°Metaphysically speaking, Fairy is beyond the farthest star.¡± Martin said. ¡°But also closer than your own shadow.¡±


    Joseph rolled his eyes. ¡°Oh, and here comes the magic man to give his take, eh?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m simply giving you the whole quote. ¡°Fairy is beyond the farthest star, but closer than your own shadow,¡± that was Dr. Hado, remember? He lectured on the war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts at Wilde University? Come on, surely you remember, we were in the audience!¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t blame me for daydreaming.¡± Joseph said. ¡°That was an awfully dry presentation. My eyes were glazing over by the time Dr. Hado got to the reign of Lugh.¡±


    Joseph picked up the broadsheet, crumpled it up in his hand, and tossed it in a bin.


    ¡°Poor old lizard tyrants,¡± he said. ¡°I wonder what they would think about this?¡±


    Martin chuckled.


    Joseph and Matthew looked at him.


    ¡°Oh. Sorry. I just found it funny. I¡¯ve actually been inside their thoughts, you see. I¡¯ve been inside the dreams of a vovin.¡±


    ¡°You never told us that.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°I haven¡¯t?¡± Martin sometimes forgot what he had and hadn¡¯t told his friends about his previous life.


    ¡°No.¡± Joseph answered.


    ¡°Sorry. I was once inside the dreams of a vovin named Fiadh.¡±


    Martin sipped his coffee.


    ¡°So what are we going to do first today?¡± he asked. ¡°Do we head to Furnivall Manor up in Cumberland and investigate reports of a manes girl in the moors or do we go to Harrogate to see into their doppleganger business?¡±


    ¡°Oh come now, boy.¡± Joseph said. ¡°You can¡¯t just bring up being inside the dreams of a dragon at breakfast and leave it at that! What was it like?¡±


    ¡°Indescribable.¡±


    ¡°You can describe it.¡±


    ¡°I just did. Indescribable is a description.¡±


    ¡°It is not!¡± Joseph turned to Matthew. ¡°Is indescribable a description?¡±


    ¡°Perhaps.¡± Matthew answered. ¡°But not a sufficient one. Martin, surely someone with your creativity can describe it more thoroughly than that?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I cannot. My physical senses were not utilized inside the dreams of Fiadh. I cannot relate what I saw, what I felt, what I touched.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s start with something simple then.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Is it bright inside a dragon¡¯s mind or is it dark?¡±


    ¡°Neither.¡±


    ¡°So like a gray color?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m starting to think you¡¯re having a little fun here.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not.¡±


    ¡°Boy, we¡¯re not asking for you to draw us a painting, we just want to know what it¡¯s like.¡±


    ¡°No, no, it¡¯s no good. I can¡¯t relate even the slightest detail without it being as grossly inaccurate as that drawing you wadded up and tossed.¡±


    ¡°Go ahead and be inaccurate, then.¡±


    ¡°No. I saw what you did to the last inaccurate image.¡±


    ¡°I promise I won¡¯t wad you up and toss you in the bin.¡±


    ¡°No. I simply do not have the words to describe the dreams of a dragon, if there even are words.¡±


    ¡°Ah, you¡¯re no fun.¡±


    A look of realization flashed over Martin¡¯s face. He snapped his fingers. ¡°You know what this is? This is the sacrifice of Odin.¡±


    ¡°Come again?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s a thaumaturgical saying. The Norse god Odin was a god of wisdom, among other things, but he wasn¡¯t born that way. To achieve his knowledge, Odin plucked out his own eye and gave it to the god Mimir. He became partially blind to the physical world so he could see the world beyond. It¡¯s a cautionary tale for thaumaturgists. The more we learn about the worlds beyond, the less attached we are to the world that birthed us. I gained eyes that could see the dreams of a dragon, but not the tongue to relate them. This is just one of those things I can¡¯t share with you two, I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    Esmee suddenly appeared not through the wall, but through the open door. She frantically waved around the reason she came through the door: a freshly printed electrogram. The three men could smell the ink as Esee fanned the paper.


    ¡°We have an emergency!¡± Esmee exclaimed. ¡°A young woman¡¯s life is at stake! The three of you need to get to Margate as soon as possible!¡±


    The three men placed down their drinks. There was no need for further explanation. It was not the first time that they were called to an early-morning emergency. It would not be the last.


    They took their coats from the coat rack and headed for the door.


    ¡°Come with us, Esmee.¡± Joseph said. You can explain more on the way.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me Esmee, may I see?¡± Matthew asked as he reached for the electrogram.


    ¡°Oh, of course, Dr. Ernst.¡± Esmee handed Matthew the electrogram and Matthew instantly lost himself in its contents.


    The physician that wrote the electrogram reported a frenzied list of symptoms--dyspnea, anemia, catatonia¡­


    Matthew looked down at the feet of his friends and trusted them to lead him wherever he needed to go.


    ¡°Mind the office until we get back, Nick.¡± Martin said.


    A blast of warm, comforting air conveyed Nick¡¯s thoughts--¡°I will, and take care, my friends.¡±


    The manesologists left the office and immediately encountered the small mob that loitered around their building every day. These were called the watchers, for they watched to see who came in and out of Ernst, Morton, and Glass so that they could report them to various insurance companies. Having a haunting, or simply associating with a ghost, was enough to cause one¡¯s insurance premiums to spike, and thus Ernst, Morton, and Glass thought very little of the watchers, and Joseph in particular took pleasure in teasing them, but there was no time for that this morning.


    ¡°Excuse us, gents.¡± Joseph said as he produced his gaeite candle and activated it.


    An electric current ran through the thick block of gaeite that made up the body of the gaeite candle. Silver-white light the color of the moon radiated from the amber colored block.


    The watchers fled from the sudden light, because they knew from experience that many things could come out of olprt radiance, things that were most often large, fearsome, and ill-tempered when held in the grip of Joseph Morton.


    Joseph cleared his mind and thought of the appropriate images.


    The Dyeus prince spoke the name of his sire, and he appeared. It was not a pleasant reunion. The people demanded their king¡¯s return. The prince begged for his father¡¯s return. In the face of all this, the old man didn¡¯t dare voice his need for rest.


    The Zacare Operation


    Whistle, named so for the sound he made as he galloped through the air, appeared. He was an old and valuable ally of Ernst, Morton, and Glass. He was a ghost horse, the first to be recorded in the modern era. The wind blew through the translucent beast just as easily as the light did. Whistle shook his chestnut colored neck and flared his nostrils without a sound. He only made his namesake sound when he was tearing through the air.


    Attached to him was a carriage, hollow as a Jack-o-lantern pumpkin. Ernst, Morton, and Glass boarded it along with Esmee. Martin activated his gaeite candle and filled the inside with silvery-white light. He would have to perform the Perkunos Operation as long as Whistle was in flight. It was a safety precaution to ensure the horse and his carriage remained solid during the trip.


    Joseph produced a metal square covered in dials and switches from his pocket. This was a tool Ernst, Morton, and Glass called the noise box, and though it was made to communicate with a ghost that only manifested as and responded to sound, it proved to be a tool with other uses such as directing Whistle through the sound of whip cracks.


    Joseph turned a dial and the sharp sound of a whip caused Whistle to take to the air. Two more whip cracks caused Whistle to turn in the direction of Margate.


    ¡°Tell us what¡¯s happening, Esmee.¡±Joseph said.


    In normal light, Esmee appeared a light blue, a blue like that of a forget-me-not or a morning glory, but in olprt radiance, she appeared as black as the cover of a Bible, as did all ghosts and spiritual manifestations. Gaeite candles revealed the supernatural, no matter how invisible their manifestations might be.


    So completely was she rendered as a black silhouette that her mouth could not be seen. Her face was like a blot of ink.


    ¡°There¡¯s a girl named Audrey Lewis in Margate. Her parents found her early this morning, collapsed in the bathroom with a horrible fever. She was unresponsive. Her breathing was shallow. Her color was pale. She was¡­is¡­dying. Her parents called a physician, but, well¡­Dr. Ernst can see just from the electrogram¡­¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Matthew said without glancing up from what he was reading. ¡°Yes I can see. The poor physician seems beside himself. He makes it very clear in his writing that he has no idea what is wrong with Audrey Lewis, no idea what he can do to stop the symptoms, and no idea whether she¡¯ll live to sundown.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s fading that fast?¡± Joseph asked.


    Matthew nodded.


    ¡°Audrey doesn¡¯t have a history of illness. She¡¯s never had anything more serious than a cold.¡± Esmee said. ¡°So it has to be a ghost doing this to her, a ghost or something like a ghost.¡±


    Matthew handed the electrogram back to Esmee.


    ¡°It¡¯s hard to say at the moment, but my current hypothesis is that this is a malady possessor.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°Oh!¡± Esmee¡¯s hands shot to her face. ¡°Another one of those?¡±


    ¡°Yes, unfortunately.¡± Matthew answered.


    ¡°Damn it.¡± Joseph muttered. ¡°If it¡¯s a malady possessor, then she may have already passed.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t say that, Dr. Morton!¡± Esmee exclaimed.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, dear, but it¡¯s the truth of the matter. They¡¯re one of the most murderous types of ghosts.¡±


    ¡°Even if we don¡¯t get there in time, we can still prevent the malady possessor from spreading.¡± Martin said. ¡®One life dies, but several more are spared. Let¡¯s look to that, if we can¡¯t look to anything else.¡±


    Malady possessors were a virulent kind of ghost. They were the ghosts of those that died to slow, lingering disease. The spiritual component that stores the memories and behaviors of a ghost¡¯s physical life was very strong within them while the spiritual component that creates a ghost¡¯s novel behaviors was very weak. This caused them to experience, vividly, what it was like on their deathbed while being unable to move beyond that suffering. This imbalance of spiritual components made them miserable beings, but it was another weakness in the spiritual component that controls the imprinting and expression of a ghost¡¯s physical body that made their misery contagious.


    Malady possessors did not have ectoplasmic bodies, like Esmee. Instead, they were bodiless and manifested, as Nick did, as flashes of light or wisps of color. Malady possessors remembered the suffering of their bodies but lacked a body to contain that suffering. Thus, seeking to complete themselves, they sought out the bodies of others to pour their misery into.


    Not being biological beings, malady possessors could not spread the disease that killed them, but they could force the bodies of those they possessed to respond as if they had the disease. This resulted in what was essentially an extremely strong allergic response. The body¡¯s own immune system killed it from within.


    Malady possessors were a physician¡¯s nightmare. They were quick to infect, quick to kill, and quick to move on to other hosts. They had wiped out entire communities while leaving bodies that showed absolutely no signs of infection or disease. Their blood, now still and cold, showed no bacterial or viral infection under the latest microscopes.


    ¡°Would you like for us to summon someone to escort you back to Blackwall, Esmee?¡± Matthew asked. ¡°The Sky Witch, perhaps?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Esmee replied. ¡°I could use a good flight. It¡¯s been awhile since I¡¯ve had one.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Matthew asked. ¡°We¡¯re a long way from Blackwall now, you know how fast Whistle travels.¡±


    ¡°The longer the flight, the better. Besides, there¡¯s the Thames right there.¡± Esmee pointed out the carriage window at a blue ribbon winding its way across the ground. ¡°I just have to follow it to find Blackwall. But could Martin poke a little hole? The last time I tried passing through Whistle¡¯s ectoplasm while he was in motion the speed caused me to fan out like a rag in a gust of wind.¡±


    ¡°I certainly can do that.¡± Martin said.


    He touched a finger to the side of the carriage. A small hole appeared where his fingertip touched. Air whistled through the opening.


    ¡°Ha.¡± Joseph smirked. ¡°A whistle inside Whistle!¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re making jokes now?¡± Martin asked. ¡°Now?¡±


    ¡°Yes I make jokes now.¡± Joseph answered. ¡°While jokes can be made.¡±


    ¡°Good luck.¡± Esmee said. ¡°I hope it isn¡¯t a malady possessor, but if it is, good luck anyway!¡±


    She scrunched herself down until she was a thin, blue rod, then she shot out of the small opening like a blue lightning bolt.


    When she was gone, Martin touched the hole with his finger and sealed it.


    A few moments later, Whistle arrived in Margate. The manesologists followed the directions in the electrogram and steered Whisper toward the Lewis household. They found Mr. Lewis waiting outside his mansion. He had been waiting for Ernst, Morton, and Glass ever since the family physician declared himself powerless to help his daughter.


    Mr. Lewis flinched back as Whistle drew up by the porch. ¡°Good God! It¡¯s like Satan¡¯s own horse!¡± he exclaimed.


    ¡°No sir. Old Whistle isn¡¯t Satan¡¯s horse, he¡¯s ours.¡± Joseph said as he stepped down from the carriage. ¡°We¡¯re Ernst, Morton, and Glass. Show us where Audrey is.¡±


    Mr. Lewis led the three manesologists inside. ¡°She¡¯s in her bedroom.¡± he said. ¡°I carried her there after my wife found her passed out on the bathroom floor.¡±


    ¡°We know.¡± Matthew said. ¡°Dr. Johns¡¯ notes were very comprehensive.¡±


    ¡°What is it? Do you know? Mr. Lewis asked. ¡°What¡¯s happened to my daughter? Has she been possessed?¡±


    ¡°We have to see and examine her before we make that determination.¡± Matthew said. ¡°It may take some time.¡±


    ¡°Of course. I understand that. But do you have any idea what could be wrong with her? Any idea at all?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t like to discuss possibilities, only certainties.¡± Matthew said.


    He thought it would be best not to mention their malady possessor theory. Matthew could see that Mr. Lewis was trying his best to appear calm and collected as he led the manesoloigsts through his home, but the sweat on his brow and his quick breaths revealed that was struggling through the most terrifying night of his life.


    ¡°Yes. That makes sense.¡± Mr. Lewis said. ¡°You want to be certain. That makes perfect sense. There¡¯s a lot of things that could be wrong. It¡¯s just like a normal fever. A lot of things can cause a normal fever, but you have to do an examination to find the specific thing. It¡¯s just like a normal fever¡­¡±


    Mr. Lewis muttered something that Joseph couldn¡¯t hear with his old ears, but Matthew and Martin heard it clearly: ¡°Please don¡¯t take long. She doesn¡¯t have long, I think¡­¡±


    Martin looked around. Family portraits and paintings of flowers hung on the walls. A Margate newspaper was pinned under a cooling cup of morning tea. This was not a cemetery, or an old castle, or an ancient ring of ruined stones. This was a home for the living. Somehow, the dead had been brought to this place.


    Mr. Lewis led the manesologists to the door of Audrey¡¯s bedroom. Through the opened door, the manesologists could see Mrs. Lewis sniffling at her daughter¡¯s bedside while the family physician stood in the corner like a cringing scarecrow, stiff in the knowledge of how useless he was.


    ¡°Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, please wait outside.¡± Matthew said.


    Mrs. Lewis slowly, quietly, stood up, gave her daughter¡¯s hand a tight squeeze, then shuffled pitifully to her husband¡¯s embrace beyond the threshold. As she cried into his chest, Joseph shut the door, leaving the manesologists with a helpless physician and a dying girl.

 Chapter 3. A Swiftly Fading Light

    Audrey was in her bed, head centered on her pillow. She barely breathed. Her skin was pale and bloodless. She was like a corpse with a fever. Her vitality was burning itself away, and when it was done, she would be a cold husk ready for the viewing.


    At her side, the misty eyed physician wrung his fingers together. Exhaustion marked his face.


    ¡°I gave her a sedative--an opium cordial.¡± the physician said. ¡°In case she¡¯s in any pain. It¡¯s all I could think of doing.¡±


    Joseph put a comforting hand on the physician¡¯s shoulder. The physician hung his head in shame, like a schoolboy before his teacher.


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m Dr. Felix Johns.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me, please.¡± Matthew muttered as he moved past Joseph and Dr. Johns to Audrey¡¯s bedside. He took her cold hand and felt for a pulse.


    ¡°I¡¯m Dr. Joseph Morton.¡± Joseph said. ¡°That is Dr. Matthew Ernst, and my friend with the blue eyes back there is Dr. Martin Glass.¡±


    Martin stayed by the door. He saw something when he entered the room that he couldn¡¯t understand, and with the physician present he wasn¡¯t sure if he should say what it was aloud.


    ¡°We are manesologists from Blackwall.¡± Joseph said. ¡°And we are here to help.¡±


    ¡°I know who you three are.¡± Dr. Felix said. ¡°Everyone knows who Ernst, Morton, and Glass are. You¡¯re always in Illustrated Phantom Stories. I know your reputations. I would not have called you here if you three weren¡¯t the only ones that could possibly save Audrey. She is in a terrible state, and it''s growing worse, and I can¡¯t do anything to help her. I don¡¯t even know what¡¯s wrong with her.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s alright, Dr. Johns.¡± Joseph said. ¡°You¡¯ve done all you can, all that could possibly be expected of you. The burden is now ours and ours alone. This was never a physical problem that a doctor could treat.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen people die before.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡®But never one this young. Never in such good health. It isn¡¯t right for this to happen. It isn¡¯t natural.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re right..¡± Joseph said. ¡°It¡¯s not right and it''s not natural. But we deal with things that aren¡¯t right and aren¡¯t natural every day. We¡¯ll help her, Dr. Johns.¡±


    ¡°Dr. Johns, please go outside.¡± Martin suddenly said.


    ¡°He needs to go outside?¡± Joseph asked.


    Martin nodded.


    Joseph gently pushed the physician towards the threshold of the door. ¡°Dr. Johns, tell Audrey¡¯s parents that we¡¯re examining her right now and we are not to be disturbed until we are done.¡±


    Dr. Johns gave a sheepish nod and walked through the threshold. Joseph closed the door behind him.


    ¡°So what¡¯s going on, boy?¡± Joseph asked.


    Matthew suddenly spoke up. ¡°I may have to revise my original hypothesis,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t think this is a malady possessor. A full-body debilitation like this would be highly irregular for one. I see very little inflammation for a fever this bad. It¡¯s not like she¡¯s sick. It¡¯s like the very life has been sucked out of her. It¡¯s like all that¡¯s left of her is the fever.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re right, Matthew, this isn¡¯t a malady possessor.¡± Martin said. ¡°Switch on your gaeite candle and you¡¯ll both see what I saw when we walked in.¡±


    Matthew unclipped his gaeite candle from his belt and flipped a switch. Silvery-white light the color of the moon filled the room.


    A black silhouette covered Audrey Lewis from head to toe like a funeral shroud.


    ¡°What is that?¡± Joseph whispered.


    ¡°Is that her soul? No, no it can¡¯t be.¡± Matthew said. ¡°If that was her soul, and it was manifesting this strongly, then it should be decoupling. It should be forming a ghost before our very eyes, but it isn¡¯t. This has to be the most thorough possession I¡¯ve ever seen¡­but no, it can¡¯t be that either. Possession doesn¡¯t look a thing like this. Joseph? Martin? You two remember the Fox sisters?¡±


    ¡®Yes.¡± Joseph said.


    Martin nodded grimly. That had been one of their bad cases.


    ¡°The manes had such a strong grip on Leah Fox that she was speaking fluent Enochian, but it didn¡¯t look a thing like this.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°Yes, we remember.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Under olprt radiance, odic particles let by the ghosts colored the nerves of their bodies. They both looked like cracked china dolls.¡± Joseph said. ¡°But this is¡­well, it¡¯s like if Esmee slept on top of her.¡±


    ¡°This is something the two of you have never seen before, but I have.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen this before?¡± Joseph asked.


    Martin nodded.


    ¡°The Ror Raas calls this the death shadow. It is the state a man and his soul enter at the very moment of death, the instant he dies and his ghost lives. So quick and brief is the death shadow that it has only ever been observed by thaumaturgists in two respects: during the completion of the Abramelin Operation, or during natural death of a man carefully observed by psychic eyes.¡±


    ¡°This doesn¡¯t seem very quick and brief.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°Yes. That doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± Martin said. ¡°When we walked in, I thought we had arrived at the very instant of her death. Yet she lingers.¡±


    Matthew suddenly leapt back.


    ¡°We need to stand away from her! Well away from her!¡± he exclaimed.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°I¡¯ll explain outside. Come on!¡±


    Without another word, Joseph and Martin followed Matthew outside.


    Audrey¡¯s parents immediately sprang upon the manesologists.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with her?¡± Mrs. Lewis asked. ¡°Oh please, tell me you know!¡±


    ¡°Get back, please.¡± Joseph said. ¡°We¡¯re still in the middle of the investigation.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Mr. Lewis asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s hard to explain. But we need to investigate from out here, away from the girl.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand. What¡¯s going on? Is there a ghost inside her?¡± Mr. Lewis grasped at Joseph¡¯s sleeve.


    Joseph gently broke his grip with one finger.


    ¡°Please stay calm, Mr. Lewis.¡± Joseph turned to Dr. Johns. ¡°Please take these two to another room in the house.¡±


    ¡°Any room?¡± Dr. Johns asked.


    ¡°Yes, just take them away. We need space to work. Please.¡±


    Dr. Johns led Audrey¡¯s parents down the hall. They slowly followed the physician and could not help but stare at the manesologists as they rounded the corner, as if their eyes could pull explanations out of them.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong, Matthew?¡± Joseph asked.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°I fear what we¡¯re dealing with is like a spiritual aneurysm.¡± Matthew replied.


    ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°I think I know what you¡¯re getting at.¡± Martin said. ¡°But explain what you mean so I¡¯ll know for sure.¡±


    ¡°Manesology has long known that there is a medium, poorly understood though it may be, through which the nervous impulses of the body and brain imprint upon the spiritual components of a ghost. There¡¯s a botanist named Willhelm Pfeffer, he works out of the University of Tubingen, and he recently put forth a theory that a plant¡¯s microscopic cells have fluidic membranes made of lipids and proteins. He called it a plasma membrane, and it works in such a way that it''s permeable to some substances, impermeable to others. Pfeffer wrote a commentary on a manesological paper of mine in which he proposed that the medium between body and soul might also be a kind of membrane. This odic-biological membrane would allow the body to interact with the soul one way, and not another, and in doing so preserves the body just as a cellular membrane preserves a cell¡¯s inner cytoplasm from being absorbed by surrounding fluid.¡±


    ¡°I see.¡± Martin said. ¡°I had the same idea. The binding force that ties a soul to a body has been scraped off. Aneurysm was a good comparison, Matthew. The binding force isn¡¯t gone, not completely, but it''s weakened. Her soul is bleeding away and ravaging her body as it goes.¡±


    "Then it¡¯s a good thing we moved out here.¡± Joseph said. ¡°The three of us are thick with spiritual residue. If there is such a thing as an Odic-biological membrane and if hers is scraped off, then our presence would be like rubbing dirt on a wound.¡±


    Joseph turned to Martin. ¡°Is this like anything your or the Ror Raas have seen?¡± he asked.


    ¡°No. This is a unique sort of horror. In a way, this is like the Abramelin Operation, where a thaumaturgist tries to separate his soul from his body without dying.¡±


    Martin looked through the opened door at Audrey.


    He took a long, deep breath.


    He was looking at a dead girl. But did his two friends realize it? He wondered.


    Matthew, maybe. But Joseph¡­


    ¡°This is awful, but from the standpoint of manesological inquiry, it''s fascinating.¡± Martin said. ¡°The death shadow is so rarely observed, so poorly understood, that what it actually is has been a matter of debate. Some say that it¡¯s just like the Odic-biological barrier Matthew describes. Others say it''s something created at the time of death, something that might be involved in nurturing the manes as it decouples, something like a spiritual placenta. But here, it¡¯s lingering. It can be observed. I do not have the eyes of a true thaumaturgist, but I will still do my best to observe and take notes as she dies.¡±


    Joseph glared at Martin. ¡°Who the hell said she¡¯s going to die?¡±


    ¡°Old man, I¡¯m sorry, but look, if this was a possessor like we originally thought, we¡¯d be rolling the dice. But this is something we¡¯ve never encountered before. This is something no manesologist, or for that matter thaumaturgist, has ever encountered. We can¡¯t save her. We can¡¯t save her anymore than Dr. Johns can.¡±


    Joseph narrowed his eyes. ¡°I ought to slap you for that. You go on and on about ¡°the sacrifice of Odin¡± this, ¡°indescribable¡± that, but when it comes time to make miracles instead of talk about them, what do you do? You give up.¡±


    ¡°From her death we might learn something that¡¯ll advance manesology. Don¡¯t get upset about what¡¯s staring at us in the face.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re going to learn nothing, because she¡¯s not going to die.¡± Joseph unclipped his gaeite candle from his belt. ¡°Since we can¡¯t go in with her, I¡¯ll cast the Darsar Operation so we can work over a distance.¡±


    ¡°Work what exactly?¡± Martin asked.


    ¡°The usual for when we don¡¯t have a manifested ghost in front of us.¡± Joseph said. ¡°We use the Aldi operation to pick up an Odic trace, then we use the Zacare Operation to call him in front of us.¡±


    ¡°Do you really think we¡¯ll have time to pick up a trace before she goes?¡± Martin asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°Joseph, it could take days.¡±


    ¡°It could take a day and a night if we¡¯re lucky, and if she holds on long enough we can save her.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s not going to last that long and you know it.¡±


    ¡°Then go sit in the carriage and cry, boy. Matthew and I will do the work.¡±


    ¡°Damn it, old man, I¡¯m just being realistic about what we¡¯re dealing with and what we can do, and can¡¯t do. Say we bring the manes that did this here. Then what?¡±


    ¡°Then we force him to undo what he¡¯s done.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s assuming so much. That¡¯s assuming we can communicate with the manes. That¡¯s assuming the manes knows what he¡¯s done. That¡¯s assuming the manes can undo what hes done.¡±


    Joseph looked at Martin silently for a moment. ¡°You don¡¯t want to try, do you?¡±


    ¡°I want us to use the Plosi Operation to make an impression of her death shadow on the Odic layer of the Astral.¡±


    ¡°Ah.¡± Joseph nodded. ¡°I see. That way the magic men will be able to study later what¡¯s going on here.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s for the best. She¡¯ll die, but she¡¯ll die having contributed to--¡±


    Joseph suddenly slapped Martin across his face.


    The young man recoiled and rubbed his stinging cheek. ¡°What the hell did you do that for, you ape? You could have knocked my glasses off!¡±


    ¡°I was aiming to knock them off. I guess age has made me weaker than I thought. What are you thinking? The Plosi Operation would kill her as she is!¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s dead anyway.¡±


    ¡°Everyone is ¡°dead, anyway.¡± Everyone dies.¡±


    ¡°She has hours at the most. Damn it, Joseph! If there was something else we could do, anything else, I wouldn¡¯t suggest the Plosi Operation at all!¡±


    ¡°There is something else. We work and we pray.¡±


    ¡°Her death will be meaningless if we waste what little time she has left on a fool¡¯s chance!¡±


    Joseph looked at Matthew. He hadn¡¯t said a single word since they stepped outside the room. He just stared at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. Not even the slap broke his gaze.


    ¡°What are you thinking about, Matthew?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m thinking about ways to repair her membrane. If we only had a model, a mental impression of what the Odic-biological membrane looks like, I think we could use the Ozien Operation to shape ectoplasm around the scrape like a bandage.¡±


    ¡°But we don¡¯t have a model.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°No, we don¡¯t. We wouldn¡¯t have the slightest idea what we would be doing. We¡¯d likely kill her instantly if we tried.¡±


    ¡°Then what do we do?¡± Joseph asked. It always came down to Matthew to decide for the group whenever Joseph and Martin had a disagreement.


    ¡°What you suggested. We work and pray.¡±


    Matthew looked at Martin.


    Martin nodded his agreement. Martin the manesologist believed trying to capture the ghost was a waste of time, but that Martin came second to Martin the member of Ernst, Morton, and Glass.


    ¡°You can help us if you want, boy.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Or you can go cry in the carriage, it''s up to you.¡± Joseph knew that Martin would work with them, but he wanted to get another hit in. He was very disappointed in the boy.


    Joseph closed his eyes and activated his gaeite candle.


    The Dyeus warrior watched his enemies from across the sea. He feared the day they would finally meet, for in watching them, he grew to respect them.


    The Darsar Operation.


    Images of Audrey and her bedroom appeared in the olprt radiance that shined from Joseph¡¯s gaeite candle.


    Martin and Matthew activated their candles and added their light to Joseph¡¯s own.


    Together, Ernst, Morton, and Glass threw their thoughts onto the olprt radiance.


    The Dyeus prince trudged through the wilderness. He could feel the target of his search pull away from him, but that was what he wanted. He didn¡¯t want to catch him, he wanted to herd him towards the city where his grieving parents lived.


    The Aldi Operation.


    Martin gasped.


    ¡°There¡¯s no trace!¡± he exclaimed. ¡°There should be some Odic trace, even just a little one, but¡­there¡¯s nothing!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not detecting anything either.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°Nor I.¡± Matthew said. ¡°How is that possible?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s only one explanation I can think of for how someone spiritually assaults a person and then leaves without a trace.¡± Martin said. ¡°They had to leave like you and me. They had to leave as flesh and blood, meaning they arrived as flesh and blood.¡±


    ¡°A human did this?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°A living human?¡±


    ¡°Yes. And they¡¯d have to have a considerable knowledge of the Astral world. They would have to be a manesologists or a thaumaturgist.¡±


    ¡°But why?¡±


    ¡°Why this family, why this girl, I don¡¯t know, but ultimately I think it¡¯s fairly obvious what they wanted. They wanted the death shadow.¡±


    ¡°So an insane manesologist, or perhaps a thaumaturgist, comes to Margate and attacks a random girl in her home just to see the death shadow? That doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°I know it doesn¡¯t make sense, but if there¡¯s a better explanation, I¡¯d like to hear it, gentlemen.¡± Martin said.


    He turned off his gaeite candle.


    ¡°Why did you do that?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you see? This is useless. Someone came in here last night as knowledgeable about the Astral world as the three of us, perhaps even more knowledgeable, and gave this poor girl a mortal wound upon her spirit. He¡¯s killed her as surely as if he had shot her or stabbed her.¡±


    ¡°Turn your gaeite candle back on.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Before I hit you again.¡±


    Martin looked at Matthew. ¡°Whoever did this would have known that we would come. He would have known how to make what he did untraceable and irreversible. Surely you see that, Matthew?¡±


    ¡°Please turn your gaeite candle back on.¡± Matthew said. ¡°We will continue to look for a trace.¡±


    Martin nodded. That was that, then.


    He turned his candle back on and joined his friends in a long vigil.


    Half an hour passed as they strained their thoughts over the image of Audrey. They searched for the faintest, smallest trace of Odic energy, the smallest particle of ectoplasm. They could find nothing.


    But still they searched, even when Joseph had to sit down on one of Martin¡¯s dogs, even when the hall became stiflingly hot with the heat of their occupation.


    They didn¡¯t notice Dr. Johns until he announced himself.


    ¡°Excuse me.¡± he said bashfully.


    He cringed as the three manesologists turned to face him. It was evident from their perspiration and tired expressions that he had interrupted them while they were hard at work.


    ¡°The Lewis family asked me to check on Audrey. I know there¡¯s nothing I can do, I told them that several times but¡­they still want me to look her over. May I?¡±


    He glanced at the projected image of Audrey. He wasn¡¯t going to ask about it. He figured the manesologists wouldn¡¯t be able to give him an answer that would aleve his confusion.


    ¡°Take a look inside.¡± Matthew said.


    Dr. Johns nodded and siddled his way inside the room. As he entered the room, he entered the projected image in the hallway.


    The manesologists returned to the Aldi Operation. They paid little attention to the little man in their little projected image. They paid little attention until he started screaming.


    Joseph caught Dr. Johns as he dashed out of the room. He had a great deal of experience with hysterics even before he became a manesologist.


    ¡°Calm down.¡± he consoled the physician. ¡°Calm down, Dr. Johns. Remember the family.¡±


    Mr. and Mrs. Lewis stood at the end of the hall. They ran to check on the scream.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± Dr. Johns said to them. ¡°They¡¯re working very hard. This is a hard case. I saw something I didn¡¯t understand and I screamed. But I¡¯m fine now.¡±


    Mr. Lewis nodded and then with slow reluctance took his wife by the arm and led her away. Mrs. Lewis didn¡¯t want to move. She knew, as only a mother could, that her daughter was near her end, and all the work of the manesologists did was fill the minutes until the final moment.


    But her husband¡¯s gentle hand was hope, hope that the manesologists could save her daughter, hope that if she and her husband turned away and waited just a little longer that the manesologists would work a miracle. Just look away, and Santa will come with gifts. Just look away, and the faeries will work their magic.


    Her husband¡¯s hand was hope, and she grabbed it tight with both hands as it led her down the hall.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Dr. Johns muttered to the manesologists. ¡°I¡¯m useless, but I don¡¯t mean to be a hindrance as well.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s alright.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Tell us what happened. We can see into the room but we didn¡¯t see what you did. Tell us what happened, its very important.¡±


    ¡°I was checking her vital signs and I noticed that her breathing was faint, very faint, so I took out my pocket mirror, see? Here.¡± Dr. Johns produced a small circular mirror from his pocket. ¡°I wanted to see her breath in the mirror. It¡¯s a way to check breathing when it''s very faint. But as I checked the condensation, I noticed that Audrey¡­had no reflection.¡±


    Matthew took the mirror. He held it close to his gaeite candle. He worked the knobs on the gaeite candle¡¯s metal base, turning one as far as it would go one way and another as far as it would go another way.


    The hand mirror darkened as if gray mist clung to it.


    Dr. Johns gasped.


    ¡°Where was she found?¡± Matthew asked. ¡°Where was she found exactly?¡±


    ¡°She was found in the bathroom.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    ¡°And is there a mirror in the bathroom?¡±

 Chapter 4. The Demon in the Mirror

    Joseph and Matthew stared at the bathroom mirror. The light of their gaeite candles revealed a gray fog on the mirror. It was a trace, and they found it on every mirror in the house, but it was strongest in the bathroom mirror. The gray in it was almost dark enough to be black.


    Joseph pinched his wrinkled brow and felt his age. ¡°It¡¯s damned frustrating, Matthew.¡± he said. ¡°I got so excited when we found the trace on Dr. Johns¡¯ hand mirror, and then I got even more excited when we found the ectoplasmic trace here. I thought we were making progress, but we¡¯re still stuck where we were, looking at smoke in a mirror! We can¡¯t pull him out. We can¡¯t even make him appear!¡±


    ¡°It has to be our olprt, like Martin suggested.¡± Matthew said. ¡°It¡¯s half physical light particles and half ectoplasm. Because the manes exists entirely within reflective surfaces, our Operations fail. The physical light of olprt is reflected back, and with it, its power.¡±


    ¡°I still find it hard to believe that this is the best we can do. We¡¯ve gone up against ghosts that can toss mountains clear over the moon, like the Brute, or Gog and Magog, but it''s glass that beats us. Damned glass!¡±


    Martin entered the room and placed Dr. Johns¡¯ hand mirror on the counter.


    ¡°I was outside Margate before it started to brighten,¡± he said.


    ¡°Hm. That¡¯s a large unmanifested body.¡± Matthew said. ¡°Well, the manes¡¯ size does provide us with a slight advantage. We don¡¯t need to use the Aldi Operation to find it anymore. We know where it is. It¡¯s here and we¡¯re inside it.¡±


    ¡°Great God, is the ghost¡¯s unmanifested body really that big?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s not the first manes we¡¯ve encountered with an unmanifested body the size of a small town.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°Then we have a lot of mirrors to collect.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°I get the idea, Joseph.¡± Martin said. ¡°I can move fast when the dogs are carrying me. I can use the Aldi Operation on this mirror and turn it into an Aldi compass. Even with the reflective interference, it should be possible to do that. Then I use it to lead me to every mirror in Margate, I bring them here, and with so many points of manifestation, we should be able to use the Zacare Operation to pull the manes to us, reflections be damned!¡±


    Martin smiled. ¡°This is possible now. This is actually possible. We¡¯re going to save the girl. Oh, I love it when I¡¯m wrong about things!¡±


    Joseph chuckled. ¡°I like it when you¡¯re wrong about things, too.¡±


    Martin unclipped his gaeite candle from his belt and held it tight in his hand. ¡°I¡¯ll need to do this alone. With the olprt weakened, the two of you would make mistakes I wouldn¡¯t and spoil the Operation.¡±


    Matthew and Joseph turned off their gaeite candles without protest. It was true that Martin was the strongest among them. The bathroom was momentarily a normal bathroom softly illuminated by candle light from the hallway with a mirror that clearly reflected the bathroom and the three manesologists, but as soon as Martin activated his gaeite candle, the room filled with silvery-white light and the mirror darkened until it was like a beetle¡¯s shell.


    A Dyeus Queen pointed to the West. That was where her son had fled. He did not take learning that he was dead well.


    The Aldi Operation


    The darkness in the mirror quivered like the skin of an animal. Then it started to swirl like a storm in a starless night. There was a sound like creaking glass on the verge of shattering.


    And then, faster than a blink, the darkness vanished from the mirror, leaving Martin to look at his own surprised expression.


    Bloody Mary had fled deeper into the mirror beyond the reach of Martin¡¯s Operation, beyond the reach of any manesological Operation that depended on photons.


    Martin grasped at the surface of the mirror with his fingers.


    ¡°Oh God. Oh God, oh god¡­¡± he muttered. ¡°I¡¯ve failed. I¡¯ve killed her.¡±


    Joseph touched his shoulder. ¡°Calm down, boy,¡± he said consolingly. ¡°You must calm down. You¡¯re a magic man.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s in the mirror and we can¡¯t get her out. It¡¯s not fair. It¡¯s not fair, we were about to save her!¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s still the Zacare Operation. We can do it even without gathering up all the mirrors.¡±


    ¡°That would take days!¡±


    ¡°We may be lucky. The ghost might feel us pulling at him and attack us. It¡¯s happened before.¡±


    ¡°Not with a manes of this temperament, not with a ghost that hides from us in a mirror! There¡¯s nothing we can do! Nothing!¡±


    Martin¡¯s eyes went wide. A sudden thought crossed his mind.


    There was something they could do, or rather, something he could do.


    There was a certain thaumaturgical trick¡­


    Martin shook his head and banished the thought from his mind. No. No he couldn¡¯t do that. He would die doing it and then there would be two deaths tonight.


    Martin sighed. The strength had gone out of him and he wilted. ¡°It¡¯s not fair, Joseph. I thought she didn¡¯t have a chance when we walked in, but she had one. She had a real chance and I wasted it.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Dr. Johns stood in the threshold of the door. The manesologists hoped he hadn¡¯t heard too much.


    ¡°I''m sorry,¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°But there¡¯s a young lady that needs to speak to you three. Her name is Harriet Blackman and she¡¯s a close friend of Audrey¡¯s. She says that she knows why a ghost attacked her.¡±


    A teenage girl, eyes red from tears, shuffled into view.


    Harriet gaped at the three manesologists. ¡°Oh God¡­you¡¯re Ernst, Morton, and Glass¡­¡±


    Joseph nodded. ¡°We are.¡±


    ¡°I read about you in Illustrated Phantom Stories¡­oh, Audrey must be in a really bad state if you three are here. They told me that she was¡­very ill¡­¡±


    ¡°Harriet, we won¡¯t lie to you, girl.¡± Joseph said. ¡°She¡¯s dying.¡±


    ¡®Oh! Audrey!¡¯ Harriet grimaced as fresh tears swelled in her eyes. ¡°It¡¯s all my fault I ought to be sent to jail for murder!¡±


    She buried her face in her dress sleeve and sobbed.


    Joseph placed his hands on Harriet¡¯ shoulders while Martin placed a dog beneath her..


    ¡°Calm down, girl. Here, sit on this cushion of air.¡± Joseph gently leaned her onto the dog. ¡°They told us you had some information that might help explain what¡¯s wrong with your friend. Start from the beginning.¡±


    ¡°Well¡­yesterday evening, Audrey and I had an argument, not a big argument, but an argument. She said that there was no such thing as Bloody Mary, that she wasn¡¯t a real ghost, and I told her that too many people have seen her for her not to be real. She said she would prove to me that Bloody Mary wasn¡¯t real by trying to summon her, by doing all the things people said would make her appear in a mirror. I...I didn¡¯t think Bloody Mary was actually real! I was just having fun when I told her the steps!¡±


    ¡°Bloody Mary is not real. Joseph said. ¡°And we would know. She¡¯s just a superstition. Girls have been looking into a mirror on Halloween night to see the reflection of their future husbands since my grandmother¡¯s time. Someone just came along and retold that superstition with the ghost of a woman added to it, and then as people started to talk about this woman in the mirror they started to say she was this murderess or that murderess. Bloody Mary is a rumor. She is not real.¡±


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    ¡°Then what happened to her? They told me that a ghost had attacked her, stole her reflection somehow!¡±


    ¡°A ghost has attacked her. A ghost has attacked her and made her very, very sick. But the ghost isn¡¯t Bloody Mary. Harriet, sometimes ghosts awaken into physical reality very confused. They know nothing about their living bodies, nothing about their past lives. But they remember folklore. They see that they can fly and think they¡¯re angels. They see they can walk through walls and think they¡¯re faeries. This ghost has come to think of herself as the Bloody Mary of legend, but she is what we call a fetch, a pretender ghost.¡±


    ¡°I suppose it doesn¡¯t really matter what she is. What matters is what she¡¯s done to Audrey. Are you helping her? Can you help her?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re doing all that we can. Please, tell us what you told Audrey to do to summon Bloody Mary. We¡¯re having difficulty making the ghost appear before us through conventional manesological methods.¡±


    Harriet told them everything, and then, not feeling the least bit relieved about the situation, walked home.


    The manesologists went through the rituals. They went up the stairs, and down the stairs. They lit candles of wax while their gaeite candles hung dull at their sides. They turned around and around and stared hard into the mirror.


    But nothing they did, absolutely nothing, would summon Bloody Mary. The fetch was too clever and too well-protected. She knew she had only to do nothing, only to stay crouched behind the mirrors, to win.


    After several tries, the manesologists returned to the hall outside Audrey¡¯s room and resumed the Darsar Operation. The hallway once again held an image of Audrey and her room that allowed them to work miracles upon the girl without risk of spiritual contamination. Then, they worked the Zacare Operation. That it was their only hope went without saying. The Zacare Operation worked through the Astral, which touched every point of physical space. It could call a manes on the other side of the world to face the. It could call a manes out of a mirror. But the Zacare Operation required psychic familiarity. The more familiar one was with the summoned manes, the quicker and easier the Operation. Ernst, Morton, and Glass could summon Esmee or Nick in an instant because they saw them every day. But for a manes they barely interacted with, who resisted the glow of their gaeite candles, the Operation could take days. If they had only a little contact with her, if Martin had only been able to hold her before them for a moment, they could have summoned her in an hour or so.


    There was no hope of summoning Bloody Mary before the girl expired, and yet, there was simply nothing else they could do. And so, they stood in the hall, over the little image of Audrey Lewis, and wiped the sweat from their brows as they performed the Zacare Operation and willed with all their might for Bloody Mary to appear before them.


    The hours exhausted them, but they continued on, even as the sun started to set and the sunlight faded leaving the darkness of the house to surround their little bubble of silvery white light. Each of them suspected that they would fail, even Joseph, but only Martin knew with unerring certainty that they would fail, for he didn¡¯t dare to do the one thing that could save Audrey Lewis.


    ¡°How much longer do you think she has?¡± Martin whispered to his friends.


    ¡°It¡¯s not your fault.¡± Joseph replied softly.


    It wasn¡¯t an answer to the question Martin gave voice to, but it was the answer to the question in his heart.


    Martin stared at Joseph.


    Joseph put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his bright eyes right through his dark lenses.


    ¡°Neither Matthew nor myself could have held her. We knew back in Blackwall that this haunting likely wouldn¡¯t end well. None of this is your fault, boy.¡±


    Martin¡¯s eyes watered. He looked away.


    Joseph held him close.


    ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have hit you. I¡¯m sorry.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°You were right to hit me.¡± Martin said. ¡°This was the right thing to do. We tried to the end. That¡¯s honorable. What I would have done, that would have brought us knowledge without honor, and what good would that be?¡±


    Suddenly, Dr. Johns entered the hall. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis followed close behind him.


    ¡°They want to be here.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°At the end.¡±


    Martin looked at Audrey¡¯s parents. Reddened eyes met reddened eyes. Martin saw that Audrey¡¯s parents had expressions of pure despair. There was not a trace of blaming anger or harried fear on their faces. The hours had wrung away those feelings. There was only an accepting sorrow.


    ¡°I have to go.¡± Martin muttered as he pulled away from Joseph.


    Joseph held him fast.


    ¡°Please, Joseph, I need to go. I¡¯m not¡­I¡¯m not strong like you.¡± Martin said over choked sobs.


    Joseph looked him in the eye. ¡°What¡¯s wrong, boy?¡± he asked gently. Joseph could tell that there was something bothering his young friend beyond the presence of the parents, but Martin tore himself away from his grip and bolted out the door.


    It was quiet outside. Martin could no longer hear the parents crying and sobbing. His footsteps echoed down the empty street as he walked towards Whistle.


    The sun was setting and an orange light made things look warm compared to the silvery-white light of the olprt radiance, though the air was cool and comforting. What was happening inside the house felt as if it were a world away, but even an incomplete thaumaturgist knew that distance was as nothing to ghosts and their effects. What was happening inside the house might as well have been happening beyond the farthest star. Its effects still clung to Martin as close as his own shadow.


    Whistle tilted his head at Martin as he approached.


    ¡°Hello, horse.¡± Martin said. He generally didn¡¯t care much for Whistle, or any other animal. He found them unpredictable compared to his ever-reliable dogs. But Martin was in pain, and Whistle was another living creature. Martin envied Whistle¡¯s lower, animal intelligence.


    Whistle didn¡¯t have a care in the world. The horse was completely removed from the tragedy unfolding inside the Lewis¡¯ household. It was just another night for him.


    Martin patted the horse¡¯s head, fingertips passing through his translucent skin.


    ¡°Good horse.¡±


    Martin went inside the carriage and opened the trunk. It was a very special trunk. It was a sea chest once used by a ghost pirate to hold his treasure and was gifted to Ernst, Morton, and Glass after they convinced him that his tireless quest for treasure would no more bring him happiness in death than it did in life. The chest was infused with gaeite and maintained its position in space when surrounded by even the most gossamer ectoplasmic constructs. It didn¡¯t fall when inside a ghost ship and it didn¡¯t fall when inside a ghost carriage.


    Martin sifted through the chest¡¯s contents as he searched for what he wanted. He passed over a spare gaeite core, just in case any of their candles were damaged, painted to look like nothing more than a wooden block, a pair of dice carved from a dead man¡¯s skull, a few pages from the Orphicon of Galanis, the black claw of a peryton¡­


    Ah, there it was.


    A 1776 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.


    Joseph had placed it. He said that one might never know when one might need a drink. It and several bottles like it were gifted to Ernst, Morton, and Glass after they resolved a haunting in an Italian wine connoisseur¡¯s basement. Someone had walled up a man inside a wall and the man¡¯s ghost was understandably upset. One bottle was kept in the carriage and the rest of the bottles were kept back home in Blackwall, deep beneath the earth.


    Joseph had one of his dogs uncork the bottle. He gagged as he downed the bottle. He didn¡¯t normally drink wine, or other alcohol. His teachers at the Ror Raas taught him to avoid mind altering substances. Hashish and morphine might have been the drugs of choice for poets, but thaumaturgists consumed only tea and coffee in keeping with their precept that the workings of the mind should be clarified, not obscured. But Martin didn¡¯t want his mind to be clarified. He only wanted to be numb, and knew that alcohol was a way for men to numb themselves. He did not want to think. As a man of science and philosophy, this was the ultimate defeat.


    Martin took another drink.


    He wept.


    He beat his fists against the side of his head.


    ¡°Coward, coward, bloody coward¡­¡± he muttered to himself.


    It was not only because of his failure to hold Bloody Mary or the parents¡¯ evident despair that he stepped outside, though their suffering greatly disturbed him. He had stepped outside because he had, once again, found himself ensnared by the sacrifice of Odin. There were, once again, things he could not talk about with his friends, things that were tearing him apart. There was something he could have tried, something that could have saved Audrey, something he very nearly did when he saw the despair of the parents, something he feared he would do if he went back inside.


    Bloody Mary was protecting herself by hiding within mirrors. Their reflective surfaces dulled the power of Ernst, Morton, and Glass'' olprt radiance by reflecting the part of olprt that was light.


    But gaeite candles and olprt radiance were tools of manesology.


    Not of thaumaturgy.


    There was something that he, and he alone, could have done--a powerful, risky gamble that could have cost his life. That something was a thaumaturgical Operation. Martin was no true thaumaturgist, but he knew more about thaumaturgy and came closer to completing the Abramelin Operation, than he had let his friends know.


    He could use his very mind as a gaeite candle and his will as olprt radiance.


    What gave olprt radiance its power was that it was partly physical and partly metaphysical. It was light mixed with ectoplasm. It was an alchemical tool. Martin understood a great deal of alchemy, Matthew very little, and Joseph none at all. Olprt radiance allowed one, with the proper knowledge and disciplined thinking, to perform miracles in the alchemical direction of fire. The alchemical direction of fire meant that the powers of physical Earth, which meant human thoughts, acted upon the Astral, which meant ghosts, just as smoke from a fire rose from the ground and intruded upon the perfection of the heavens. But more things were physical than photons and more things were metaphysical than ectoplasm, and thus more things could function as a gaeite candle than a gaeite candle.


    Martin¡¯s mind was partly physical, part blood and muscle and nervous electricity, but because of his thaumaturgical education, his mind was also partly metaphysical. His thoughts did not write upon the Astral as did the thoughts of general humanity. His thoughts were of the Astral, and the dogs were but the simplest manifestation of this fact. And so, being part physical and part metaphysical, Martin could burn, and be a candle against the darkness that struck at the Lewis family.


    If he chose to be.


    He didn¡¯t dare tell his friends that he could set his mind afire and become a gaeite candle without light. He feared what they might say to him, because he had no idea what they might say. Would they tell him to do it? Would they tell him not to do it? Regardless, Martin believed that presenting them with such a choice wasn¡¯t right. This was his burden and his alone. This was what the sacrifice of Odin truly meant--being alone with one¡¯s silent burdens.


    Martin sipped from the wine. He wished it would work faster on him. The girl would die soon, and then he would no longer have to worry about making any sort of choice. Regret, he hoped, would be easier to live with than indecision.


    Martin wiped away his tears. ¡°I hate you.¡± he muttered to the Whistle ¡°Damned beast. We bring you out, we take you back, Joseph brushes you and feeds you a carrot that falls through your mouth. You don¡¯t know where we take you or why. I wish I was you.¡±


    From the depths of his heart, the words of his old teacher Eliphas Levi suddenly sprang to his mind: ¡°There is nothing more to controlling demons than to do good and fear nothing.¡±


    Those words challenged the decision of his mind and strengthened the protest of his heart.


    Martin breathed as he was trained to breathe: in through the nose, and then out through the mouth. It was his first lesson, for controlled breathing led to controlled thoughts, and controlled thoughts opened the door to all the Operations.


    He would debate his problem out, as his teachers did whenever they came to an ambivalent impasse. He couldn¡¯t, as they could, interrogate his own soul on his problems, but he could still talk to himself. And so, he held a debate, mind against heart.


    ¡°Don¡¯t try it.¡± his mind argued, ¡°The risk is too great, the cost is too high. Bloody Mary is a formidable ghost to be able to do things you¡¯ve never seen before. You have never fought a ghost with thaumaturgy. You have never fought a ghost alone. You are very likely to die if you try it.¡±


    ¡°But she¡¯ll die if I do nothing.¡± his heart replied.


    ¡°Think of all who depend upon you.¡± his mind argued. ¡°Don¡¯t for a moment think you are being selfish or cowardly. Think of how many times you¡¯ve saved Joseph and Matthew. They would have died long ago without your help. They will die if you aren¡¯t there to save them anymore. Think of how many people you¡¯ve rescued from violent manes. Think of how many people will die without you in the world. The girl is but one life weighed against countless.¡±


    ¡°But she¡¯ll die if I do nothing.¡± his heart replied


    ¡°Think of what it means to die.¡± his mind argued. ¡°Think of them having to dress your body, buy a coffin, and set up a funeral. Think of putting all that in the lap of your friends.¡±


    ¡°But she¡¯ll die if I do nothing.¡± his heart replied.


    And his mind had to concede that there was no answer to that one point.


    Martin placed the bottle on the ground. If things went wrong inside, he knew Joseph would want to finish the bottle.


    He carefully reentered the house. He didn¡¯t want anyone to hear him. He hovered silently off the ground with the aid of his dogs. He opened the doors by having his dogs smother the barriers so that no sound, not even a creak, was made.


    He glided down the halls until he came to the bathroom. Then, putting both feet on the ground, he prepared to face the demon in the mirror.

 Chapter 5. Shattering

    Martin commanded his dogs to wedge a broom against the doorknob. There might be sounds, horrible sounds, and he didn¡¯t want his friends to come in once they started.


    Martin gazed into the mirror.


    He saw no fear in his face and found it good that he could so easily disguise his inner thoughts.


    He strained his psychic eyes to see deep into the mirror, deep into where Bloody Mary hid. He saw a dot, a single black pupil in the center of the reflective surface.


    Martin breathed like his teachers taught him to--in through his nose, out through his mouth.


    Martin spoke in the language of the Dyeus, the language of angels.


    ¡°Zacare.¡±


    An electric jolt shot through his body. He tasted blood in his mouth. It was only minor damage, but he had worked only a minor miracle. It wasn¡¯t meant to do anything more than draw Bloody Mary¡¯s notice. It was a nudge, not a pull.


    This was no manesological Operation. Manesological Operations were nothing more than men mimicking palimpsest memories of the Dyeus¡¯ spiritual art and science. This however, was the art, and the science, and the power, of the Dyeus.


    Martin saw the ectoplasmic traces of Bloody Mary as little black specs in the mirror. They floated like soot from a fire caught up in a gust of wind.


    ¡°Here we go,¡± he muttered. ¡°Let¡¯s grab the tiger¡¯s tail and pull.¡±


    ¡°Zacare da gafaonts.¡±


    Martin set his mind ablaze with power. No eye of blood and tissue could have seen the light that radiated from his body in spiked eruptions. This was light beyond olprt. This was source-light. This was the light of the single eye that stood at the summit of all things, that gazed down upon all and in gazing illuminated all. Though this light was significantly dimmed by its descent, it still held infinite potency. The Dyeus called it akele, which meant daughter of the purest light. Another interpretation was moon light.


    Martin¡¯s dogs braced his body as he convulsed. The power felt like thorns rolling beneath his skin, but pain was nothing. Pain was a primitive, solipsistic form of awareness and he learned to expand his awareness far, far beyond pain as an early lesson.


    The specs in the mirror expanded and devoured the mirror as night devoured day. Martin saw himself dimly as if in an obsidian sheet.


    ¡°There you are.¡± Martin said. ¡°Hello, dear. You aren¡¯t like other ghosts. But that¡¯s fine. I¡¯m not like other manesologists. I would like to talk, if we may, and if you¡¯re capable of it.¡±


    The mirror started to brighten. Martin felt Bloody Mary try to move herself deeper into the mirror, deeper into the Astral.


    ¡°Allar.¡±


    The mirror stopped brightening and then darkened to a hateful, angry black. Martin could no longer see his reflection in the slate black mirror.


    ¡°I can¡¯t let you go. May we talk?¡± Martin asked.


    It is hard to describe what Martin then felt. It was not a biological feeling, not a feeling based in any of the human senses. It could, perhaps, be best described as a tightening sensation, as if a giant hand has closed around Martin--and then, pulled.


    Martin smirked.


    ¡°So, now you¡¯re trying to do to me what you did to the girl? Are you surprised? I think you are. I think you¡¯ve been surprised twice. You didn¡¯t want to claw at my reflection. You tried to run at first. You didn¡¯t think I could call you and I did. And now you¡¯re finding out that you can¡¯t take my reflection at all.¡±


    Martin chuckled.


    ¡°Oh, you know what you remind me of? A cat. A big, black cat. You remind me of a cat we keep back in Blackwall named Tybalt. He¡¯s a little pest. He likes to rub on my coworker¡¯s leg and scratch at mine. He scratches and scratches and scratches. That¡¯s you. Go ahead and keep scratching. Go ahead and keep trying to take my reflection. You might be able to hurt me, you might even be able to kill me, but not in that way, no, not with your favorite trick.¡±


    The glass began to creak like teeth set against each other tightly, angrily.


    Bloody Mary removed her grip, but Martin felt a new sensation. It was like the feeling one gets when standing on a high precipice. He could feel his mind being pulled into the mirror, into the Astral, into Bloody Mary¡¯s very being.


    Martin knew that in order to retrieve Audrey¡¯s reflection, he would have to allow Bloody Mary to swallow him. He would have to dive into the very heart of a voracious, insatiable mirror which fed on children. But it almost wasn¡¯t a matter of him allowing it. Her pull was strong, very strong.


    ¡°I had a feeling you would be this powerful. Just my luck. You¡¯re one of the most powerful manes I¡¯ve ever encountered. It¡¯s such a shame that your power is wasted on harming children.¡±


    Martin took a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, as he was taught.


    It was a wonderful feeling to breathe deeply and freely. Martin hoped that he would be able to do so again.


    ¡°Look at me closely, Bloody Mary, I want you to see something. Do you see my eyes?Do you see how blue they are? The bluest eyes you¡¯ve ever seen, no doubt. These glasses of mine have special lenses. They dull the true color of my eyes. You see, I¡¯m a creature that lives behind a glass too.¡±


    Martin removed his glasses.


    What was behind the lenses threw two purple smears of light onto the blackened mirror.


    ¡°See? I¡¯m strange too. I might even be stranger than you.¡±


    Martin yielded to Bloody Mary¡¯s pull. He allowed her to yank his mind out of his body and what was more, he put his own force behind her pull. He rose fast into the Astral, fast enough, he hoped, to catch the manes off-guard.


    He rose into darkness and he felt his mind shiver with the sudden liberation. He was unbound, without a body, without weight, and soared through a dark sky that was without stars or limit. He left behind his cortisol and adrenaline burdened blood and with it his anxiety. He was pure mind, pure courage. He was pure will, pure action without any hesitation, and it was joyful being what he was.


    But his joy was short-lived. The darkness suddenly drained from the universe and revealed glass. Glass above, glass below, glass all around. The universe was a paneled with mirrors, and these mirrors were the eyes of Bloody Mary. She was surprised that her recent meal still twisted and turned inside her gut, but now her attention was drawn within herself. She looked within, turned all her eyes inward to gaze upon Martin, and set them to work destroying him.


    As pure will, Martin had no body, and no reflection, but such things did not matter in a world of pure abstraction. He was reflected anyway. He was reflected invisibly across an infinity of mirrors which began to crack and shatter. The mirrors shrieked as they fractured first into black spider-webs and then into crystalline mists.


    Martin felt himself shatter again and again and again. This was sympathetic magic. This was sympathetic magic--stab a doll to stab a man, break a man¡¯s reflection to break a man.


    Martin countered by armoring himself in a form based on his body--two legs, two arms, and a head. Bodily manifestation was a basic defensive technique. Psychic duelists who dismissed their bodies as chaff, as husks, neglected the benefits of a neurology crafted over aeons by evolution. The body, with its reflexes and instincts, was much faster than the conscious mind. Thus when the body was replicated here, in this place where the conscious mind ruled, it became like a swift blade, a weapon that, while not decisive on its own, was useful in psychic combat.


    Now that his form had a material substance, his reflections likewise filled with form and color. Martin could see his body distorted in a million ways across a million panes of glass. But the pain was less now that it was limited to a body. There was only so many ways a doll could be twisted.


    Martin held his hands in front of himself.


    ¡°Hubaro.¡±


    Light gathered in the space between his palms and was reflected on every surface. The light was his light, and carried the purple hue of his old wound. The mirrors became his, and now that they were his, he could do away with them.


    ¡°Avavago.¡±


    The mirrors shattered. Broken glass drifted like snow in the darkness. Martin felt as if he was inside a black snow globe. The glass swirled about him in prismatic currents.


    ¡°I put out your eyes, Bloody Mary, and I¡¯ll do more to you unless you give up the girl¡¯s reflection.¡±


    The darkness roared as if to say ¡°Never!¡±


    ¡°So you do understand me. That¡¯s good. I was afraid I was dealing with a manes of animal intelligence. You will show me the girl. Now.¡±


    ¡°Om Oma.¡±


    Martin recoiled at what his spell revealed.


    Before him floated not one, but several reflections. He saw Audrey Lewis, but also several young women he didn¡¯t know. Not one of their faces revealed peace. They showed horror, surprise, or confusion, but not peace.


    ¡°How many have you done this to?¡± he asked.


    It was a moment of hesitation that Bloody Mary seized upon. The purple light drained from the shards. They fell again under Bloody Mary¡¯s power and she hurled them at Martin like a wind full of razor blades.


    Martin felt tickling mixed with sharp, abrasive pain through his mental body. But he did not panic. He had been taught that it was over as soon as one panicked.


    ¡°Gmicalz.¡±


    Purple fire erupted from his body. Martin could have spread the fire to the corners of the universe and burnt Bloody Mary into submission, but that risked damaging Audrey¡¯s reflection, and so he pulsed the fire balefully from his body, just enough to get the stream of shards to back off. Then, acting on a hunch, he created a threatening blaze around the reflections.


    The world wailed.


    ¡°Do you see that? Do you see what I have around your precious collection? That¡¯s the fire of Acar. I don¡¯t think you know who Acar is, but you should know what fire is.¡±


    The flames began to turn into brittle glass waves. Bloody Mary¡¯s attention was upon the threat, and that gave Martin time to observe her with his psychic eyes and to think.


    She was some sort of fetch, that was obvious going by how she responded to the folk mythology of Bloody Mary. That meant that her personal memories were weak. She thought she was Bloody Mary because she could not remember what she was. She also did not have a body of her own. She appeared only as a presence or as mirrors. And she was highly protective of the bodily images she had stolen.


    Martin thought he understood.


    Without a body, she took the bodies of others. But evidently one body was not enough. Perhaps only one element of each body was to her liking and she sought to recreate herself by combining pieces? Perhaps she was simply a very vain and fickle creature?


    But maybe he strengthened her memory of her body, of herself, she would quit her mad obsession? Giving Bloody Mary sanity would be easier than trying to take Audrey¡¯s reflection from her by force.


    ¡°Sehul Menot Hngnis.¡±


    Bloody Mary changed. A smear of iridescence appeared next to the reflections. It elongated itself at several points. It formed a head, a body, and limbs.


    It was a change, but not nearly enough of a change.


    The world shimmered.


    If Martin had succeeded in awakening any slumbering memories or self-images, they were not dissuading Bloody Mary from retaliation.


    All was burning, glaring light. Martin burned like a gnat inside a fireplace. But through the pain, he conjured up a counter.


    He held out his hands and between them summoned a glass orb.


    ¡°That hurts very bad.¡± Martin said through clenched teeth. ¡°I think you should feel what it feels like.¡±


    ¡°Val Gisa.¡±


    Martin¡¯s orb flashed once. It  reflected all the fire, all the light, and all the pain back at Bloody Mary. Then it was dark. There was no fight left to reflect. Bloody Mary had ended her attack. Like all that preyed on the defenseless, Bloody Mary could dish it out, but she couldn¡¯t take it.


    With the last remains of her power, Bloody Mary threw herself upon her reflections and shielded them and herself within a spun tumbleweed of glass tubes.


    Martin separated his hands. His crystal ball vanished.


    Though there was no air to breathe in this metaphysical realm, he mimed the old technique of his teachers and breathed in through his nose and then slowly out through his mouth. The memory of the act calmed him.


    The battle was over, but not the violence.


    Martin pooled his will and generated a purple fireball in front of the glass tumbleweed that protected Bloody Mary and her treasures. The purple light reflected off every glass tube and wire, staining Bloody Mary¡¯s defenses with Martin¡¯s power.


    ¡°I ought to affix you to a stone and toss you into an ocean. I can do that to you. I can make you stare at the ocean floor for all eternity, and you know what? I think you deserve it! Seven girls, and all just to what--to try on their reflections? You mad animal! I really ought to punish you for that!¡±


    The glare that was Bloody Mary shimmered in fear like shaken foil, like a distressed icicle.


    Martin felt that fear, and for a moment, he delighted in it, but then he recalled more words from his old teacher, who continued to guide him, even after he left the path of the thaumaturgist.


    ¡°A thaumaturgist looks upon the wicked as invalids whom one must pity and cure. The world, with its errors and vices, is to him God¡¯s hospital, and he wishes to serve in it.¡±


    In this world, there was no air, and Martin¡¯s body was but a shadow of his body, but he still found the familiar action of breathing in through the nose and out through his mouth comforting.


    ¡°Wish to serve.¡± he commanded himself.


    Martin calmed himself. He brought himself down from the fury of pain and battle and regained his composure.


    ¡°Your mind is fractured. I cannot hate you. Even with your components strengthened, you remain a shattered thing. I will affix you, but not to a rock, and I will not toss you into the ocean. We will¡­I¡¯m not sure what we will do with you, but we will try to be as gentle as possible with you. That aside, I need that reflection, and if I have to crack you open like a watermelon and pull it out of you, I will, even if I break myself in the process. I¡­¡±


    Martin suddenly had an idea.


    ¡°How about a trade? You like reflections, but they¡¯re never enough for you. What if I could give you all the reflections that you want?¡±


    The fireball shrank to a single point of light and withdrew to his finger.


    ¡°Here, let me show you.¡±


    ¡°Matorb.¡±


    The purple point shot from Martin¡¯s finger like a bullet and hit Bloody Mary in the center of her massless being.


    There was an explosion of light. The entire universe of Bloody Mary¡¯s mind fragmented like a broken mirror. Purple fissures spread like spider-webs in every direction carving reality into panes. Each pain held a color of the iridescent shimmer that ruled this universe magnified and distilled into a tessellated rainbow that stretched several infinities in all directions.


    The shimmer crawled out of her glass nest and looked around. Martin could tell she was pleased by what she saw.


    The narcissist had finally found a mirror large enough for her ego.


    ¡°I¡¯ve fragmented you, like light through a prism.¡± Martin explained. ¡°All this around us? This is all you. This is you from every possible angle that can be expressed mathematically and some that can¡¯t. Here are your reflections. Here are enough reflections for a lifetime of introspective dress up.¡±


    Martin held up his hand. Purple light gathered at his fingertips.


    He snapped his fingers.


    The universe returned to being a dull, featureless black.


    The shimmer screamed herself into a prickly mass of sharp light.


    ¡°You want it back? Then we trade. You give me the reflections you¡¯ve stolen, all of them, and agree to obey my every command, and I will bring it back. But if you cross me, at any time in the future, I will take it away forever!¡±


    The shimmer reached down with arms like morning sunshine into the glass enclosure. She speared the reflections and brought them out before Martin.


    She placed them messily before the manesologist, like a pile of clothes. Their forms and colors blended together into a mess of dresses and limbs.


    Martin shifted through the pile. Sorrow tore at his heart as he beheld their faces. Some were frozen in horror, or confusion, or awe, but all were frozen, never to change.


    Save for one. If he proved to be fast enough. If he proved to be lucky enough.


    He untangled Audrey Lewis. She drifted before him, as thin and fragile as a wet paper doll.


    ¡°When I tell you to, you will return this one.¡±


    Martin waved his hand. The colors returned.


    The shimmer expanded. Sparks of light drifted across the colored shards like a whirlwind filled with motes of fires. The sparks brushed against every shard, leaving some behind to linger as the rest moved to the corners of infinity.


    She filled herself. She felt herself.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The bargain was made.


    ¡°We¡¯ll both be happy from now on, so long as you obey me.¡±


    Martin took his leave.


    ¡°Caosgon.¡±


    Instantly upon his return to physical reality, Martin was greeted by pain--vibrant, pure, pain that blazed through his body like a fire. His battle with Bloody Mary created feedback on his body he could not detect until his physical senses returned.


    The pain was so great that it could have killed a normal man, but with a thought, Martin dulled his nerves. Pain was something he had absolute control over along with his thoughts, heartbeat, and breathing.


    But more concerning than the pain was what Martin saw when he looked at himself. He saw something that couldn¡¯t be shown in the mirror. Black manifestations pierced his body like pieces of broken glass. He was covered in jagged blades and each one signaled a wound upon his mind. It was as if a giant had thrown him through a pane of black glass, and then another one, and then another one.


    He could not determine the extent of the damage to his mind as he was now, or if any of the damage could be reversible. These wounds could be shallow, or they could be deep.


    What did his battle cost him? Permanent neurological damage? Forgotten memories? He could not know.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Martin muttered.


    He reached for his glasses  and tapped the left lens.


    ¡°Nothoa.¡±


    To Martin¡¯s Astral eyes, the lens darkened, then returned to its transparency, marking the binding of Bloody Mary.


    He placed the glasses on his face. ¡°Now I¡¯ll always be able to keep an eye on you.¡±


    Then he summoned his dogs, both to hold him up, because he felt he might fall down if he had to walk, and because he knew time was of the essence.


    Martin commanded his dogs to push him through the house like a gust of wind. Joseph and Martin barely had time to realize he was there before he was past them and into the room, and certainly didn¡¯t have time for the olprt radiance of Matthew¡¯s gaeite candle to reveal the shards sticking in his body. Dr. Johns and Audrey¡¯s parents didn¡¯t notice Martin at all until he was by the girl¡¯s bedside.


    ¡®Where did you come from? Mr. Lewis asked.


    ¡°You¡¯re too late, and goddamn you for it.¡± Mrs. Lewis said.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Dr. Glass, but she¡¯s passing now. Her heart just stopped.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    With his Astral sight, Martin saw that Audrey¡¯s soul floated above her like a black mist. It no longer touched her. It no longer had her shape.


    He feared, for a moment, that he was truly too late, and that all his struggles had been for nothing.


    But then he saw gray strands linking the cloud to Audrey¡¯s body and knew that all was not lost, not yet.


    ¡°Her heart shall beat again.¡± Martin vowed.


    Martin knew that this part would be hard, but not as hard as what had come before. He had her reflection, and some idea of how to restore it. He had seen thaumaturgists decouple from their souls without perishing as they completed the Abramelin Operation. This was that but in reverse. Instead of unbinding a soul, this was fortifying its bonds.


    He pulled back an eyelid. Sight was the mechanism by which her reflection was stolen and would be the mechanism by which it would be returned.


    Gently, very gently, he rolled back her eyeball so that it gazed lifelessly up at him.


    He sent a mental command to Bloody Mary to release her reflection, and Bloody Mary obeyed. His left lens flashed as dark as an opal, and then it cleared.


    Martin looked at the reflective surface of his gaeite candle and found Audrey¡¯s reflection was restored. But it would be the reflection of a corpse if not integrated with her body and soul.


    Martin touched Audrey¡¯s hand, already bereft of bodily temperature, with his own, and with his other, he touched one of the gray, gossamer strands that linked Audrey¡¯s corpse to her soul.


    ¡°Trof Vgear.¡±


    ¡°Oh god, what is he doing?¡± Mrs. Lewis sobbed. Fresh tears streamed down the thoroughly moistened currents of her wrinkled face. ¡°He¡¯s pinching the air and mumbling nonsense! Someone stop him! Just let my baby die in peace!¡±


    ¡°Etharzi.¡±


    Suddenly, Mrs. Lewis didn¡¯t feel afraid, or worried, or concerned.


    She couldn¡¯t explain why a wave of pure calm washed over her, but she felt it wash the anxiety from her soul.


    She looked at the manesologist standing over her daughter with dry eyes and found that, somehow, she could trust him.


    Martin smiled. He saw what he had hoped to see and it was proof that his spells were working. Audrey¡¯s reflection appeared in the form of a little gray shadow that covered her like a blanket. This was the odic-biological membrane upon which her vitality depended.


    But it was not doing its job. Audrey¡¯s soul remained at the very cusp of decoupling. The membrane had been replaced, but was not functioning.


    Martin suddenly remembered something that had occurred to him before he studied manesology, before he studied thaumaturgy, before he studied anything. When he was a boy, the family dog had birthed a stillborn as part of her first litter. His father took the motionless thing in his hands and touched it, rubbed it, prayed over it, and a mewling puppy crawled off his palm and returned to its mother¡¯s side. It was the first miracle he had ever seen, and he always strived to perform miracles like it.


    Perhaps if he coaxed the membrane, if he used just a little force¡­


    ¡°Carbaf Amipzi.¡±


    Martin pulled on the ectoplasmic string, very, very gently. He thought of a time he was walking Curant Street, back in Blackwall, and found a little boy crying. The boy had accidentally let go of his toy balloon and it floated high in the sky above his head. Martin summoned his dogs and had them push the balloon down until he could grab the string and hand it back to the boy, who, being young enough to assume that adults were innately magical and could do anything, did not ask how Martin had brought down his balloon and simply thanked him.


    He had pinched the string of that balloon exactly like he now pinched the ectoplasmic string.


    ¡°Carbaf Amipzi,¡± Martin repeated.


    And then Martin saw, to his great relief, that the dark cloud floating above Audrey began to brighten and thin just as the strings darkened. The direction of the soul had reversed. It now pulled itself back down into Audrey¡¯s body. In moments, the cloud dissipated, and Audrey¡¯s soul was concentrated in the black strings which stood rigidly upon Audrey¡¯s gray membrane like needles. Martin was reminded of the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture, in which small needles were driven into the body at points purported to mark the flow of life energy within the body. Acupuncture, like many arts of the ancient world, wasn¡¯t science, but had more truth in it than people realized.


    Soon, the cloud vanished and the needle-like strings sank into Audrey¡¯s body. The death shadow returned to her and she appeared as a black silhouette. Martin had rolled back the damage to what it was hours ago. He had transformed a dead girl into one that was merely dying. Now, if he could only produce a spark of vitality, just a spark¡­


    Martin took both her cold hands and held them between his own.


    ¡°Apila.¡±


    Audrey¡¯s pupils flexed.


    There, at last, in those brown eyes, was a spark of life.


    Now, Martin just needed to fan that spark.


    Martin removed his glasses and gazed into Audrey¡¯s eyes.


    ¡°Apila!¡± Martin urged. ¡°Apila!¡±


    He squeezed the girl¡¯s hand.


    ¡°Apila!¡±


    Suddenly, the death shadow vanished from Audrey. Her soul returned, bound itself beneath her skin, and life returned to Audrey Lewis.


    Audrey jerked and spasmed as life returned to her limbs. Her body drank of the life-giving air. She inhaled, and coughed, and wheezed, and when she had enough sense to know she was awake, she sobbed, for she knew that she had escaped Bloody Mary through a miracle.


    ¡°Ha ha! Yes! Yes!¡± Martin exclaimed. Tears trickled down his monkshood eyes.


    Audrey looked up and saw a strange man with purple eyes standing over her. She knew not who he was, but she recognized her bedroom, and she recognized a warm smile and tears of happiness.


    ¡°Audrey, can you hear me?¡± Martin asked.


    Audrey sniffled. ¡°I¡­I want my momma¡­¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s here, darling, she¡¯s here! Your mother¡¯s right here!¡± Martin waved for Audrey¡¯s parents to come over, then quickly moved one of his hands from Audrey¡¯s own and restored his glasses to his face. He had nearly forgotten to do that.


    ¡°Audrey! Oh, Audrey!¡± Mrs. Lewis nearly shoved Martin aside, reaching for her daughter. She held her close, as if she was the only piece of driftwood in a storm-tossed sea.


    Audrey sobbed. ¡°Momma!¡± she cried as she hugged her mother. ¡°Momma!¡±


    ¡°Dr. Glass¡­¡± Mr. Lewis said.


    ¡®Yes?¡±


    Mr. Lewis¡¯ mouth hung open. He wanted to say something, but had no idea what.


    Martin smiled and gestured to Audrey and her mother.


    Mr. Lewis made a sound in his mouth, then quickly said ¡°Thank you.¡± before rushing over to his family.


    Mr. Lewis held his family close. They were, at last, safe. They were all safe.


    Dr. Johns gazed blankly at Martin. ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± he said. ¡°You resurrected her. You brought her back from the dead. I didn¡¯t think you could do that.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think I could either. But I did. I just barely did it, but I did, didn¡¯t I?¡±


    Martin looked at the Lewis family embracing as one and smiled.


    ¡°This is the greatest victory that can be seen.¡± Martin said.


    He placed an arm around Dr. Johns¡¯ shoulder. ¡°Look at what we¡¯ve won, Dr. Johns.¡±


    ¡°I did nothing.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    ¡°Incorrect. You did all that you could, which is exactly what I have done. Come, let¡¯s leave them to be happy, they deserve it.¡±


    Martin led Dr. Johns out of the room and commanded one of his dogs to close the door behind them. They stepped into the silvery-white olprt radiance of Matthew¡¯s gaeite candle and saw the two other members of Ernst, Morton, and Glass looking Martin up and down.


    ¡®He saved her.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°I don¡¯t know how he did it, I can¡¯t know how he did it, but he just¡­appeared in the room and he said some things and did some things with his hands and she¡¯s fine now, she¡¯s perfectly fine. You can hear her crying with her parents.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s our magic man.¡± Joseph said. ¡°He¡¯s full of surprises like that.¡±


    Joseph crossed his arms and looked at Maritn. ¡°Alright, boy, you can start explaining. Matthew and I are about as in the dark on this as Dr. Johns. You went outside. That¡¯s where you left us. What happened?¡±


    ¡°I found the courage to do what I should have done when we first figured out the mirrors were interfering with our gaeite candles. I used thaumaturgy. My guess that the light within olprt radiance being reflected by the mirrors weakened our Operations was right. But through thaumaturgy, I could act upon her with just my will, and there¡¯s no light in willpower, no physical component to be reflected at all. I wrestled Audrey¡¯s reflection and the reflections of several other unfortunate girls away from Bloody Mary. Then I returned Audrey¡¯s reflection. That restored her Odic-biological membrane. And now she¡¯s well. Everything is okay.¡±


    ¡°You used your very mind? To fight a ghost alone?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°You can do that?¡±


    ¡°Not without difficulty, obviously.¡±


    ¡°Damn you and your surprises, magic man. One day you might share them all with us. So you set your very mind on fire to burn as a gaeite candle? Did it hurt?¡±


    ¡°Oh, considerably.¡±


    ¡°Good. Maybe it¡¯s taught you not to do something so stupid again. We¡¯re lucky that we aren¡¯t talking to your ghost right tnow¡±


    Martin smiled.


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t you smile like an idiot.¡± Joseph said. ¡°This is serious stuff, boy. You could have died and left Matthew and myself to pick what was left of you out of Bloody Mary¡¯s teeth.¡±


    ¡°I know.¡± Martin said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I just thought of something funny, something funny to me. My mind is all abuzz with thoughts.¡±


    ¡°And just what¡¯s so funny about what you¡¯re thinking?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°The way I reattached her reflection and fastened her soul back to her body. Well, from my perspective, it felt a little like giving a child back his balloon. Her soul was above her body, attached by the thinnest strands of ectoplasm you¡¯ve ever seen, and I grabbed one and just, well, pulled it back down.¡±


    Joseph smiled. ¡°You know what? That is a rather amusing thought.¡±


    ¡°I would swear you were all insane.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°But you do things I¡¯ve only read about in scripture, so you can¡¯t be insane. You just sound insane. I¡¯m sorry if that sounds rude, but it¡¯s how I honestly feel about you all right now, and if Dr. Glass can talk about balloons and souls, I think I should be able to talk about what I feel.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a problem.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Sometimes, I think we¡¯re insane too. Right now, I¡¯m pretty sure Dr. Glass had a spot of madness, because going off to fight Bloody Mary without letting us know was stupid to the point of madness.¡±


    ¡°We didn¡¯t even hear you come in.¡± Matthew said to Martin. ¡°You must have done that thing where you use your dogs to move without a sound.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Martin admitted.


    ¡°You really didn¡¯t want us to know. Why?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Because before I found my courage, I had to fight myself over it. I weighed Audrey¡¯s life against my own, and the lives of all those I could possibly save in the future, including yours.¡±


    ¡°Including Matthew and myself?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Yes and don¡¯t you try and deny that I had to put you in the calculation.¡±Martin said. ¡°I¡¯ve saved you and Matthew before and I¡¯ll likely have to save you both in the years to come--you especially. Do you remember the Ballard Hall case? I thought we had lost you in that airless chamber.¡±


    ¡°What? Have you been keeping score? Are you going to bill me one day for all the times you¡¯ve saved my old carcass?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°No, I haven¡¯t kept score, don¡¯t be ridiculous, old man. But I knew if I saw you on my way to confront Bloody Mary, if you had said something to me, I might have stopped and turned back, out of fear that one day something would happen to you or Matthew and I wouldn¡¯t be there to save you.¡±


    ¡°Matthew and I were manesologists before we ever met you, boy.¡± Joseph said. ¡°We made our agreement with the Ror Raas to devote our lives to being intermediaries between ghosts and men. That¡¯s our lives in total, boy. If it means we use them up completely, so be it.¡±


    Matthew nodded in agreement.


    ¡°One day we¡¯ll all probably die at the hands of some specter.¡± Joseph said. ¡°I understand the decision you made was hard. I understand you having to weigh the lives you could save in the future against the life you could save in the present. But the next time you do moral calculus like that, don¡¯t include me and Matthew. Factor our lives as zero.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t do that.¡±


    ¡°If you care about truth and honesty, you will.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Our lives are not your life, boy. Use our lives as justification for going behind your partners¡¯ backs again and I¡¯ll break those big glasses of yours.¡±


    ¡°Say I told you two my plan. What difference would it have made?¡±


    ¡°Lord, you really have gotten a touch of madness, haven¡¯t you?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°What difference would it have made? Golly, boy, I don¡¯t know. What¡¯s the difference between talking to your partners and not talking to your partners?¡±


    ¡°Would you two have fought alongside me? Of course you wouldn¡¯t have. You couldn¡¯t have.¡±


    ¡°This isn¡¯t about whether or not we could have fought Bloody Mary with you. We could have been crippled and bedridden, that still wouldn¡¯t have given you the right to leave us out of your plans. We could have advised you, planned with you¡­¡±


    Martin shook his head. ¡°This is just another case of the sacrifice of Odin. I could not think of a way to talk to you about what I had to do, what only I could do¡­¡±


    ¡°Oh, and here comes your magic man bit.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Strange how you never consider yourself one until you find it advantageous. Don¡¯t act like the problem was that you¡¯re so high and above everything.What you did wasn¡¯t because of your special magic strength, it was because of your own inner weakness.¡±


    ¡°Martin, were you afraid that we would have told you not to fight Bloody Mary?¡± Matthew asked.


    ¡°I¡­I didn¡¯t know what you would say. That¡¯s why I didn¡¯t risk speaking to you.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°Were you afraid that you would have wanted us to stop you?¡± Matthew asked.


    Martin hung his head. ¡°Perhaps¡­yes.¡±


    ¡°Then that¡¯s a weakness on your part.¡± Matthew said. ¡°And it isn¡¯t right that you blame your weakness on Joseph and I. We are your partners, Martin. Do not ever be afraid of what we might tell you. If there¡¯s a lack of trust between us, we are unbound from each other, and in our individuality, vulnerable.¡±


    Martin nodded. ¡°I am sorry, Joseph, Mathew. I see that now. I was blind and not in the way I thought I was. The fault here was with me.¡±


    ¡°In your case, you made yourself very vulnerable going behind our backs.¡± Joseph said. ¡°It looks like Bloody Mary skinned you alive with several knives and left them stuck in you.¡±


    Dr. Johns looked at Martin.


    And he saw that Martin, in the olprt radiance, was covered in black, jagged shards.


    The shards pierced up and down his body. They covered his arms, on his legs, and even his face. One bisected his eye.


    Dr. Johns sprang back. He took a deep breath and was about to scream, but he eyed the door and remembered the family behind it and covered his mouth with his hands.


    ¡°It¡¯s worse than it looks.¡± Martin said. ¡°Really.¡±


    Matthew switched off his gaeite candle. As the silvery-white light vanished, so too did the black shards seemingly piercing Martin¡¯s skin.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Matthew said. ¡°I thought you might have seen it already.¡±


    ¡°Of course I haven¡¯t seen it already!¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°Why would I be touching him if I saw that?¡±


    Dr. Johns looked down at his body and tried to see if he was pierced anywhere.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Matthew repeated. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to fear from them. They¡¯re purely mental manifestations. I thought that would be obvious to you.¡±


    ¡°If they¡¯re just mental manifestations, then does that mean they could have pierced my mind?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Matthew said. ¡°It¡¯s perfectly safe to touch him.¡±


    Martin smiled and extended his hand to Dr. Johns.


    Dr. Johns gingerly reached for the hand, but remembered those sharp, pointed shards, and recoiled.


    ¡°That¡¯s alright.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°Dr. Johns, I¡¯m sorry if we gave you a little fright.¡± Joseph said. ¡°As manesologists, frightening people is the last thing we want to do. Just as sometimes what appears as very intuitive and obvious to Dr. Glass doesn¡¯t appear that way to us, sometimes what appears to us as intuitive and obvious doesn¡¯t appear so to laymen.¡±


    ¡°What was that though?¡± Dr. Johns asked. ¡°It looked like a whirlwind of broken glass blew through him!¡±


    ¡°Wounds.¡± Martin explained. ¡°Battle wounds. They¡¯re partly from Bloody Mary and partly because I used myself as a gaeite candle. I overexerted myself. Think of it as breaking a bone or pulling a muscle.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t seem to act wounded.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    ¡°LIke I said, it looks worse than it actually is.¡± Martin looked down at himself. Though Dr. Johns couldn''t see the shards without the olprt radiance, he could. ¡°These are like¡­dueling scars.¡±


    ¡°Oh, proud of them now, are you?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°No. But I¡¯m going to have them for awhile, so I figure I might as well enjoy having them.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m concerned that the wounds might be graver than you think.¡± Matthew said. ¡°Not too much graver, but still. Martin, could you summon your dogs and condense them? Make them like a tight fist.¡±


    ¡°I see what you¡¯re getting out.¡± Martin said. ¡°I¡¯ll do that right now and--ahhhhh.¡± Martin groaned and massaged his temple.


    ¡°I feared this.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°I expected this.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Boy, did you really think you could take down that ghost by yourself with only a few odd manifestations clinging to your mind?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll just have to hold off on using my dogs too much.¡± Martin said. ¡°They can move me around and close doors, but I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be squeezing coal into diamonds anytime soon.¡±


    Dr. Johns blinked. He didn¡¯t see Martin do anything. He just talked, and then he had a headache.


    ¡°I understand none of this.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°I feel as if I¡¯ve gone from out of a nightmare into a very strange daydream.¡±


    ¡°When I was in the bathroom fighting Bloody Mary, I saw that the Lewis family kept a bottle of laudanum. I don¡¯t think they would mind if you took a few drops.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going in that bathroom.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°Bloody Mary could be dead, bound, destroyed, whatever, I¡¯m not going in there.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of Bloody Mary, how did your confrontation with her play out?¡±


    ¡°I used the mirror in the bathroom to summon and hold her.¡± Martin explained. ¡°But she fought back. Considerably so. She tried to do to me what she did to Audrey and so many others.¡±


    ¡°Others?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Others. She attacked me psychically. My mind joined with hers and I saw inside her. She has a collection of reflections.¡±


    ¡°How many?¡± Joseph asked.


    ¡°Six, not counting Audrey¡¯s own.¡±


    ¡°Is there any way we can return those reflections? Obviously it¡¯s too late to save anyone¡¯s life, but we could bring closure to some families.¡±


    ¡°It should be possible. She obeys me now. It¡¯s how I got her to restore Audrey¡¯s reflection. I can get her to show the reflections on glass and from there it¡¯s just a matter of finding a list of young women who perished under sudden and inexplicable fevers.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s awful to know she killed six more girls.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°But on the other hand, it''s good to know she never will again. Who was she, though? Who was Bloody Mary?¡±


    ¡°She was what we call a fetch, a manes that believes herself to be a legendary or mythological figure. Do you remember the Knocker of the Huskar Pit?¡±


    ¡°I think I remember reading about him in Illustrated Phantom Stories.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    ¡°The Knocker was a young man named Alan. Because the spiritual component that controls memories and behaviors preserved from life was weak in him, and because the spiritual component that controls novel behaviors  and the component that controls a manes¡¯ innate link with the collective thoughts of mankind were both strong in him, Alan believed himself a knocker, a kind of fairy that protects miners by knocking on the walls of mines to warn of cave-ins and disasters. He retained just enough of his memories to know that he wanted to protect his fellow miners, but not enough to know that he was once a human. He filled in the blanks with stories of knockers. Bloody Mary likewise maintained only a faint recollection of herself, whoever she might have been. She knew only that she was once a young woman but was now a manes, and one whose living body left only a poor impression. In that way, she was also a type of manes we call a wisp.¡±


    ¡°I know what one of those are.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°They look like balls of light, or puffs of smoke.¡±


    ¡°In Bloody Mary¡¯s case, like a glare of light. She longed to look again like a woman, and to that end used her strong connection to mankind¡¯s interconnected thoughts. She used that connection to reach out to young women who gazed long and hard into mirrors and asked to see a ghost. She saw their reflections and wanted them for herself. She collected them like clothes, but none of them satisfied her for long. None of them fit her. But she¡¯s satisfied now. She¡¯s a tamed animal on an unbreakable leash.¡±


    ¡°What did you do to her?¡± Dr. Johns asked.


    ¡°At first, I strengthened her component which controlled the memories of her life and her component which controlled the impression of the corporeal form. In doing this, I hoped that I could give her back her reflection. But those components were extremely weak--if only all of her components were just as weak, the fight with her wouldn¡¯t have been so hard and I wouldn¡¯t have ended up a pincushion. It¡¯s a rule of manesology, you see. All spiritual components can be weakened to next-to-nothing, but they can only be strengthened to a certain extent past their natural strength. So with giving Bloody Mary back her old looks off the table, I shattered her.¡±


    ¡°You did what?¡± Dr. Johns asked.


    ¡°Refracted is probably a better word for it. I refracted her, like light through a prism. Optics were on my mind, so I just applied a little creativity. She is now an endless array of reflections. She has an infinite number of clothes to try on. She¡¯ll never be done, never be fulfilled, but she doesn¡¯t mind. She¡¯s like a hasher with an endless supply of opium, and to control her, all I have to do is threaten to take it away.¡±


    ¡°And where did you affix her?¡± Joseph asked. ¡°Did you affix her to one of the crucifixes?¡±


    Ernst, Morton, and Glass always carried small crucifixes on their persons to affix ghosts. Through the Nothoa Operation, they could affix ghosts to any material, or even to a point in space, but found affixing them to crucifixes to be both practical and respectful.


    ¡°No. She likes mirrors. She¡¯s fully absorbed into being Bloody Mary. So I put her in the left lens of my glasses.¡±


    Dr. Johns gazed into the lens and tried to see anything besides Martin¡¯s blue eye.


    ¡°You won¡¯t be able to see her.¡± Martin said. ¡°But rest assured she¡¯s there. She¡¯s going to be there forever.¡±


    ¡°I never thought we¡¯d be able to add Bloody Mary to our list of helper ghosts.¡± Joseph said. ¡°Though I¡¯m not sure how much help a little murderess like her is going to be.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯ll be a great help if we ever want someone dead.¡± Martin said.


    ¡°No. Other manes are better at that.¡± Matthew said. ¡°She¡¯s only useful if we want someone to die relatively slowly and in such a way that looks like a disease.¡±


    Martin smirked. ¡°Well, you never know¡­¡±


    ¡°I think I might actually have that laudanum after all.¡± Dr. Johns said.


    ¡°Nothing wrong with a little pick-me-up.¡± Joseph said.


    ¡°Do you have any more questions for us, Dr. Johns?¡± Matthew asked. ¡°Because with the girl safe and Bloody Mary affixed, we should be on our way if there isn¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°I feel as if I should have questions. But no. No, I don¡¯t have any more questions.¡± Dr. Johns replied.


    ¡°Then take care, Dr. Johns.¡± Joseph said. The giant then shook his hand, and Dr. Johns felt as if he was a child shaking a grown man¡¯s hand. Martin and Matthew then took their turns shaking his hand, though for the life of him Dr. Johns couldn¡¯t understand why they wanted to.


    ¡°Dr. Johns, please tell the Lewis family that we¡¯re very happy for them, and that if they have any questions they should not hesitate to send us an electrogram, though it may take us some time to answer now that their case is not critical.¡± Matthew said.


    ¡°I will.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°And then I think I¡¯ll sleep for a few days.¡±


    ¡°Rest well.¡± Martin said.


    The manesologists turned to leave, and Dr. Johns began to form a syllable on his lips, though he wasn¡¯t sure for a moment if he wanted to let it fly.


    ¡°JJJJJJJJust one more thing!¡± Dr. Johns exclaimed.


    The manesologists stopped and turned.


    ¡°Dr. Glass, I know I will dream about this day for a long, long time, possibly for the rest of my life. When I see you in my dreams, will it be¡­just as a dream? Or will you actually be there?¡±


    Martin smiled. ¡°Would you like to see me in your dreams?¡±


    ¡°Honestly, no.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°I struggle with the nightmares mundane life gives me. I mean no offense, Dr. Glass, but while I don¡¯t think I would mind seeing you again in waking life, I don¡¯t think I could stand seeing you while I sleep. I think I would cry.¡±


    ¡°Say no more.¡± Martin leaned close to Dr. John¡¯s face. Martin lifted his dusky glasses, and for a moment, Dr.Johns thought he saw his eyes flash an inhuman purple, a purple like that of monkshood, but he decided that it must have been his imagination, for a moment Martin¡¯s glasses were back on his face and his eyes were blue once more.


    ¡°What just happened?¡± Dr. Johns asked.


    ¡°I used a little mesmerism to make it so that you won¡¯t have to worry about dreaming of this day.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Okay.¡± Dr. Johns said. Martin could have told him anything and he would have accepted it at this point. He could have told him that he turned his soul into cottage cheese, and Dr. Johns would have said ¡°okay.¡±


    ¡°Boy, do you want to shred your mind apart?¡± Joseph snapped at Martin.


    ¡°That was just some mild mesmerism.¡± Martin said. ¡°Nothing like real thaumaturgy¡±


    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be doing any mesmerism until we get all those shards out of your mind.¡± Joseph said. ¡°You might have just lost a memory or two.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t feel like I¡¯ve lost a memory.¡±


    ¡°You mean you don¡¯t remember losing a memory? That would be the point, you mad magic moron!¡±


    ¡°Let us to Whistle and his carriage.¡± Matthew said. He then turned to Dr. Johns. ¡°It was good to work with you.¡±


    ¡°I did nothing.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°I keep telling you people that, and you keep acting as if I¡¯ve done something. It makes me think that I have done something, but I can¡¯t think of what that something could possibly be.¡±


    ¡°That people do nothing can, in its own way, be helpful to us.¡± Matthew said. ¡°Sometimes, human interference is more difficult for us to overcome than the supernatural power of manes.¡±


    ¡°I should go check on Audrey, now.¡± Dr. Johns said. ¡°I¡¯m sure she''s fine, but I should check on her nonetheless, shouldn¡¯t I?¡±


    ¡°Go on.¡± Martin said.


    Dr. Johns turned and walked back into the room. Audrey¡¯s parents asked him a dozen questions and he could answer but one--that Audrey was truly well again. There was a loud whistling sound outside as the manesologists returned to Blackwall, and Dr. Johns found that he was left as a simple physician caring for a simple problem of badly frayed nerves.


    With nothing more to be done, Dr. Johns recovered his black doctor¡¯s bag from the corner of the room and took his leave.


    Outside, night had fallen and the stars were out, and yet, somehow, it felt as if it were a bright and refreshing morning.


    Martin would gradually recover from his injuries. Within a month, he regained full control over his dogs. Within two months, most of the shards had dissolved. But he would never lose all of his shards. Though they would become so faint so as to only reveal themselves at the most sensitive levels of olprt radiance, he would always have a few within the deepest parts of his mind. And when he became old and powerful and ascended to a state that his younger self could never have comprehended, he kept a single shard within his mind as a memento of his young life, for he had reached a state where such minor wounds within his mind had no effect upon his functioning.


    Bloody Mary would remain a rarely-used secret weapon in the left lens of Martin¡¯s glasses for all the years Ernst, Morton, and Glass remained in operation. Through study of Bloody Mary¡¯s ability to steal reflections, mankind¡¯s understanding of the Odic-biological membrane increased, and Dr. Ernst would publish a paper on the subject in 1868 titled Osmotic Action Between Body and Soul.


    Following Martin¡¯s retirement from manesology in 1905, he entrusted his glasses, which he no longer hid behind, to the care of American manesologist John Leeds, who would put the glasses in the New Jersey headquarters of the American Manesological Society where they remain to this day. Bloody Mary has been content to live inside her little glass, completely absorbed in the solipsistic study of herself from all reflections and all angles.


    The weakness olprt radiance had against mirrors was investigated by the Ror Raas and corrected in 1868 by a thaumaturgical spell. From that moment on, olprt radiance suffused a mirror without being reflected by it. A mirror in a room full of olprt radiance would show the room without it, even if the room was pitch black, creating a strange optical effect where a lit room had a dark mirror.


    The various reflections Bloody Mary had stolen were eventually returned to their corpses, and those that buried them gained closure from knowing how and why their loved ones took ill so suddenly and perished--and that it would never again happen to another girl. Most reflections, once identified, were easily returned, but a few created cases of their own through unexpected complications--but these stories are for another time.


    Who Bloody Mary was in life was never uncovered and her identity remains a mystery to this day.