This is the beginning snippet of my short story "Bedlam." Enjoy!
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Bedlam Copyright 2011 by Salena Moffat
~~1898~~
The sea…She could hear the night sea, hear the pounding of the Channel waters. Always, the sea, the water…the red, dripping wine, falling in endless knotted garnet beads from her outreaching fingers and into the foaming waves. Liquid, pure and holy…and meant to be consumed…inherited…
The sea…Trembling at the edge of the world…always, the sea…And Cadachlod…
…Cadachlod…
He had gone beyond the waters…He had gone…And he would return to her…
Amelie stood in the seafoam, in the seafoam as it washed over her bare feet, as it froze and caressed and held her bare feet within itself…as she shivered in pure abandon…
Her fingers clutched tightly around something sharp, and she opened her palm to see what it was, and she was astonished to see her ceraunoscope, with its minute winding mechanism jabbing into her flesh…
And she could see Cadachlod now, could see him there, rising from the waters of the bay…He cried out to her from the black waves, he rose from them, he walked toward her from the waters of the bay…
Her ceraunoscope gleamed in her palm, and as she looked out over the waters of the bay, lightning arced across the night-dark sky, and the small machine in her hand began to grow warmer…
…she knew what it wanted of her…
And as she watched, Cadachlod changed in the moonlight, his face changed and altered and shifted like the waves until his visage was that of the other…of the beloved…of the man Amelie loved…
She ached to hold him, to touch him, to…
The ceraunoscope was growing more heated by the moment, until it was now almost impossible to hold. The heat from the metal would surely blister her flesh soon, unless she gave in and…
And there was a sound very near, a whisper of feet on sand, and Cadachlod’s face was no longer that of the beloved and his face was that of a creature long dead and he opened his mouth and a sound emerged that was both raw pain and driving rage and Cadachlod was gone, was vanished into seafoam…
…the ceraunoscope fell unheeded from her trembling fingers…
…for Alexander had come…
With a desperate cry, Amelie reared upright in her bed, icy sweat dotting her cheeks…or was it tears? She didn’t know, or care.
Her ceraunoscope rested where it always did, between her breasts, suspended on its slim chain. It was cool against her skin, reassuringly cool…
Slowly, she lay back against her pillows. She knew her nightgown had been changed, knew it by the silken touch of embroidery that met her fingertips. She glanced down the length of her body, and saw pale blue linen cambric where translucent ivory foulard silk had been when she’d gone to bed. In that instant, she knew she’d once more not merely dreamt but had walked in Dream, knew Alex had followed her, had brought her home…
…had brought her away from…
She rose from her bed, cambric flowing around her ankles. She went to the wide bay window that spanned much of one wall, and sat on the cushions that lined the oak window-seat. Her gaze was torn as always…as always…to the waters of Lyme Bay below. Moonlight gleamed on the waves.
She glanced down at the rhododendron bushes beneath her window. They were unmoving. The night was silent and tranquil but for the ever-present crash of waves against boulders.
She pressed her fingers to the cold ebony mullions, and she half-fancied that her fingers were wet for they came away so chill. She rubbed her hands together in a wasted attempt to regain warmth.
The spume on the water was rising now, foaming, dancing, tugging at her in the moonlight, and she didn’t know suddenly whether she had truly awakened or was still asleep.
…Alexander…
She heard him enter her room, she was sure of it, but when she turned to greet him, she knew with a sickening twist of her stomach that she was still asleep after all, for Cadachlod stood there, Cadachlod and not the brother she’d been so certain would come once more to her rescue.
And the ceraunoscope was instantly overheating, going from cool comfort to blazing metallic flame against her skin in mere seconds. She began to scream…
The screams needled through the cold night air, carrying clearly throughout the asylum. The alarms began to ring very soon afterward, waking everyone who had slept through the shrieking.
Olivia Hunter sat up slowly in her bed and reached for her lamp, lighting it wearily. As light began to seep into the corners of her bedroom she slid out of bed and into her slippers. Her nightrobe was next, and she tied it with an exhausted motion. She’d been awake for three days straight before last night, before she’d finally been allowed to fall into a deep and dreamless slumber. And now this.
She sighed and ran a hand through her tangled hair, knowing she looked like one of her patients but not really caring. If she stopped to brush the knots out, she would fall asleep at her dressing table.
She glanced at her pocket watch and gave it an irritated shake. It had apparently stopped working almost immediately after she’d fallen asleep. She flipped open the back with a fingernail and tapped the tiny bulb that should have held at least some aether. Empty. Naturally.
She flung the watch onto her bed and stepped into the corridor, where she was greeted by complete chaos. Mercifully, an orderly had silenced the alarm bell, but patients had already scattered from their rooms and were milling about noisily, obviously frightened by the screams that were still emanating from the only room whose door remained closed. Amelie Tamnais’ room.
Olivia darted back into her own room and grabbed a corposant candle from her nightstand, then walked out toward Amelie Tamnais’ closed door, refusing to show the uneasiness she was feeling. It certainly wouldn’t do to cause even more of a panic. Orderlies were busily swarming about, gathering patients and calming them, herding them all into the asylum’s vast common room where the orderlies would dispense sedative-laced cups of tea. The corridors were empty in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Once relative peace had been restored, Olivia opened Amelie Tamnais’ door. Darts of tiny dancing staticlight swirled over the door and slithered around the doorframe. White swirls of spitting static arced out to meet Olivia’s hand as she twisted the knob and entered the room. She hoped one of the orderlies would have sense enough to go to the Bethlehem chamber and turn on the cooling steam vents that would soothe the static.
Amelie Tamnais was standing on her bed, brown hair flying about wildly in a storm of static. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and she fixed Olivia with a look of pure terror even as she continued to shriek. Her nightgown swirled with static, prisms of the stuff making eerily lovely patterns on the cotton fabric. Something glittered in one clenched palm, and it looked to Olivia as if this might be the source of the static.
Amelie suddenly flung her head back and gave a loud, long wail, and the static surrounding her gathered in upon her, forming a network of filaments that picked the girl up bodily and flung her at the ceiling.
Olivia darted to Amelie and thrust the unlit corposant candle toward Amelie’s closed palm. Immediately, static shot toward the red wax, and the wax began to absorb it, turning a ghostly shade of blue as it took in glistening filaments of the floating laces of static. The candle grew warm in her hand, but Olivia refused to release it until it had done its job. After what seemed an eternity, Amelie gave one last high cry and opened her fist, and the gleaming object fell from her fingers to the floor with a hollow clatter.
Amelie fell onto her bed from her place near the ceiling at the same instant the object hit the floor. The staticstorm ceased abruptly, and Olivia tucked the now-sated candle into a pocket of her robe. Once lit, it would provide enough electricity to light the asylum for a month, she thought grimly. And all of that power had emanated from one small brass object.
Amelie was unconscious, her screams stilled, the fear on her face utterly gone. Olivia smoothed her nightdress and covered her with the mussed bedclothes before reaching for the object Amelie had been holding.
It was a ceraunoscope, and it was blisteringly hot to the touch. She dropped it immediately, then took Amelie’s hand to examine it. As she feared, angry red blisters were already forming on the girl’s palm. The sound of the steam vents coming on startled Olivia and she dropped the girl’s hand.
Amelie moaned, and Olivia darted a glance at her face, and wished forever after that she hadn’t…
For looking back at her was not Amelie Tamnais at all. Looking at her from Amelie’s eyes was something else entirely.
Olivia was powerless to look away, held immobile by the dead and foul eyes that stared out at her, eyes as unlike Amelie’s warm amber ones as it was possible to be.
A faint smell wafted now through the room, not the clean sharp scent of a staticstorm but the smell of the grave.
Aldwine Abbey Asylum lay darkling grey in the midst of a field littered with the ruin of a much older building. The original abbey, erected in the twelfth century by a Crusader desperate to save his soul after the acts he’d committed in the Holy Land, was torn down by Henry VIII, and it was the ruin of this structure that lay now amid weeds and hawthorn. The vast and sprawling current house had been built of local grey sandstone by a marquis under Elizabeth, and over the centuries it had gradually been altered, with entire portions rebuilt to match the then-prevailing architectural fashions. It had served as a private asylum for the wealthy mad of England for some two decades now, and was in fact quite the most thriving such facility in Britain.
The asylum boasted all of the modern conveniences, and was a sterling example of just how far scientific theory had advanced when it came to the care of the insane. There was a complete and fully functional Bethlehem chamber which contained all of the latest tools available, including a vast store of corposant candles for harnessing the static that was inevitably produced by the humming, gleaming machinery within the immense room. They could easily have used the machines to power the newly installed lighting fixtures, but the corposant candles provided what amounted to instantly recycled and therefore free energy. It was vastly more efficient than the gas system had been, and far less likely to trigger explosions.
Olivia Hunter sat in the chamber now, trembling uncontrollably, her head in her hands. Light from the endlessly whirring machinery reflected off the tracks of tears on her cheeks. The tears had not been caused by sadness, but by fear…
She rose stiffly from her seat and walked slowly and unsteadily across the chamber to the Lovelace difference engine that sat in aloof majesty on a marble table near the chamber’s huge two-storey windows. She worked quickly, clicking many of the small toggles into various positions and finally pressing the brass button that would send her message flying through the aethersphere toward London. Toward Alexander Tamnais, step-brother of Amelie.
All she could do now was wait for him to arrive, him and the man who had accompanied him when he’d committed his step-sister several months ago.
And into her mind, once more, came the dead, rotted eyes that had stared out at her from Amelie’s face, and the tears streamed unbidden and unnoticed once more down Doctor Hunter’s face.
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Bedlam Copyright 2011 by Salena Moffat
~~1898~~
The sea…She could hear the night sea, hear the pounding of the Channel waters. Always, the sea, the water…the red, dripping wine, falling in endless knotted garnet beads from her outreaching fingers and into the foaming waves. Liquid, pure and holy…and meant to be consumed…inherited…
The sea…Trembling at the edge of the world…always, the sea…And Cadachlod…
…Cadachlod…
He had gone beyond the waters…He had gone…And he would return to her…
Amelie stood in the seafoam, in the seafoam as it washed over her bare feet, as it froze and caressed and held her bare feet within itself…as she shivered in pure abandon…
Her fingers clutched tightly around something sharp, and she opened her palm to see what it was, and she was astonished to see her ceraunoscope, with its minute winding mechanism jabbing into her flesh…
And she could see Cadachlod now, could see him there, rising from the waters of the bay…He cried out to her from the black waves, he rose from them, he walked toward her from the waters of the bay…
Her ceraunoscope gleamed in her palm, and as she looked out over the waters of the bay, lightning arced across the night-dark sky, and the small machine in her hand began to grow warmer…
…she knew what it wanted of her…
And as she watched, Cadachlod changed in the moonlight, his face changed and altered and shifted like the waves until his visage was that of the other…of the beloved…of the man Amelie loved…
She ached to hold him, to touch him, to…
The ceraunoscope was growing more heated by the moment, until it was now almost impossible to hold. The heat from the metal would surely blister her flesh soon, unless she gave in and…
And there was a sound very near, a whisper of feet on sand, and Cadachlod’s face was no longer that of the beloved and his face was that of a creature long dead and he opened his mouth and a sound emerged that was both raw pain and driving rage and Cadachlod was gone, was vanished into seafoam…
…the ceraunoscope fell unheeded from her trembling fingers…
…for Alexander had come…
With a desperate cry, Amelie reared upright in her bed, icy sweat dotting her cheeks…or was it tears? She didn’t know, or care.
Her ceraunoscope rested where it always did, between her breasts, suspended on its slim chain. It was cool against her skin, reassuringly cool…
Slowly, she lay back against her pillows. She knew her nightgown had been changed, knew it by the silken touch of embroidery that met her fingertips. She glanced down the length of her body, and saw pale blue linen cambric where translucent ivory foulard silk had been when she’d gone to bed. In that instant, she knew she’d once more not merely dreamt but had walked in Dream, knew Alex had followed her, had brought her home…
…had brought her away from…
She rose from her bed, cambric flowing around her ankles. She went to the wide bay window that spanned much of one wall, and sat on the cushions that lined the oak window-seat. Her gaze was torn as always…as always…to the waters of Lyme Bay below. Moonlight gleamed on the waves.
She glanced down at the rhododendron bushes beneath her window. They were unmoving. The night was silent and tranquil but for the ever-present crash of waves against boulders.
She pressed her fingers to the cold ebony mullions, and she half-fancied that her fingers were wet for they came away so chill. She rubbed her hands together in a wasted attempt to regain warmth.
The spume on the water was rising now, foaming, dancing, tugging at her in the moonlight, and she didn’t know suddenly whether she had truly awakened or was still asleep.
…Alexander…
She heard him enter her room, she was sure of it, but when she turned to greet him, she knew with a sickening twist of her stomach that she was still asleep after all, for Cadachlod stood there, Cadachlod and not the brother she’d been so certain would come once more to her rescue.
And the ceraunoscope was instantly overheating, going from cool comfort to blazing metallic flame against her skin in mere seconds. She began to scream…
The screams needled through the cold night air, carrying clearly throughout the asylum. The alarms began to ring very soon afterward, waking everyone who had slept through the shrieking.
Olivia Hunter sat up slowly in her bed and reached for her lamp, lighting it wearily. As light began to seep into the corners of her bedroom she slid out of bed and into her slippers. Her nightrobe was next, and she tied it with an exhausted motion. She’d been awake for three days straight before last night, before she’d finally been allowed to fall into a deep and dreamless slumber. And now this.
She sighed and ran a hand through her tangled hair, knowing she looked like one of her patients but not really caring. If she stopped to brush the knots out, she would fall asleep at her dressing table.
She glanced at her pocket watch and gave it an irritated shake. It had apparently stopped working almost immediately after she’d fallen asleep. She flipped open the back with a fingernail and tapped the tiny bulb that should have held at least some aether. Empty. Naturally.
She flung the watch onto her bed and stepped into the corridor, where she was greeted by complete chaos. Mercifully, an orderly had silenced the alarm bell, but patients had already scattered from their rooms and were milling about noisily, obviously frightened by the screams that were still emanating from the only room whose door remained closed. Amelie Tamnais’ room.
Olivia darted back into her own room and grabbed a corposant candle from her nightstand, then walked out toward Amelie Tamnais’ closed door, refusing to show the uneasiness she was feeling. It certainly wouldn’t do to cause even more of a panic. Orderlies were busily swarming about, gathering patients and calming them, herding them all into the asylum’s vast common room where the orderlies would dispense sedative-laced cups of tea. The corridors were empty in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Once relative peace had been restored, Olivia opened Amelie Tamnais’ door. Darts of tiny dancing staticlight swirled over the door and slithered around the doorframe. White swirls of spitting static arced out to meet Olivia’s hand as she twisted the knob and entered the room. She hoped one of the orderlies would have sense enough to go to the Bethlehem chamber and turn on the cooling steam vents that would soothe the static.
Amelie Tamnais was standing on her bed, brown hair flying about wildly in a storm of static. Her eyes were wide and terrified, and she fixed Olivia with a look of pure terror even as she continued to shriek. Her nightgown swirled with static, prisms of the stuff making eerily lovely patterns on the cotton fabric. Something glittered in one clenched palm, and it looked to Olivia as if this might be the source of the static.
Amelie suddenly flung her head back and gave a loud, long wail, and the static surrounding her gathered in upon her, forming a network of filaments that picked the girl up bodily and flung her at the ceiling.
Olivia darted to Amelie and thrust the unlit corposant candle toward Amelie’s closed palm. Immediately, static shot toward the red wax, and the wax began to absorb it, turning a ghostly shade of blue as it took in glistening filaments of the floating laces of static. The candle grew warm in her hand, but Olivia refused to release it until it had done its job. After what seemed an eternity, Amelie gave one last high cry and opened her fist, and the gleaming object fell from her fingers to the floor with a hollow clatter.
Amelie fell onto her bed from her place near the ceiling at the same instant the object hit the floor. The staticstorm ceased abruptly, and Olivia tucked the now-sated candle into a pocket of her robe. Once lit, it would provide enough electricity to light the asylum for a month, she thought grimly. And all of that power had emanated from one small brass object.
Amelie was unconscious, her screams stilled, the fear on her face utterly gone. Olivia smoothed her nightdress and covered her with the mussed bedclothes before reaching for the object Amelie had been holding.
It was a ceraunoscope, and it was blisteringly hot to the touch. She dropped it immediately, then took Amelie’s hand to examine it. As she feared, angry red blisters were already forming on the girl’s palm. The sound of the steam vents coming on startled Olivia and she dropped the girl’s hand.
Amelie moaned, and Olivia darted a glance at her face, and wished forever after that she hadn’t…
For looking back at her was not Amelie Tamnais at all. Looking at her from Amelie’s eyes was something else entirely.
Olivia was powerless to look away, held immobile by the dead and foul eyes that stared out at her, eyes as unlike Amelie’s warm amber ones as it was possible to be.
A faint smell wafted now through the room, not the clean sharp scent of a staticstorm but the smell of the grave.
Aldwine Abbey Asylum lay darkling grey in the midst of a field littered with the ruin of a much older building. The original abbey, erected in the twelfth century by a Crusader desperate to save his soul after the acts he’d committed in the Holy Land, was torn down by Henry VIII, and it was the ruin of this structure that lay now amid weeds and hawthorn. The vast and sprawling current house had been built of local grey sandstone by a marquis under Elizabeth, and over the centuries it had gradually been altered, with entire portions rebuilt to match the then-prevailing architectural fashions. It had served as a private asylum for the wealthy mad of England for some two decades now, and was in fact quite the most thriving such facility in Britain.
The asylum boasted all of the modern conveniences, and was a sterling example of just how far scientific theory had advanced when it came to the care of the insane. There was a complete and fully functional Bethlehem chamber which contained all of the latest tools available, including a vast store of corposant candles for harnessing the static that was inevitably produced by the humming, gleaming machinery within the immense room. They could easily have used the machines to power the newly installed lighting fixtures, but the corposant candles provided what amounted to instantly recycled and therefore free energy. It was vastly more efficient than the gas system had been, and far less likely to trigger explosions.
Olivia Hunter sat in the chamber now, trembling uncontrollably, her head in her hands. Light from the endlessly whirring machinery reflected off the tracks of tears on her cheeks. The tears had not been caused by sadness, but by fear…
She rose stiffly from her seat and walked slowly and unsteadily across the chamber to the Lovelace difference engine that sat in aloof majesty on a marble table near the chamber’s huge two-storey windows. She worked quickly, clicking many of the small toggles into various positions and finally pressing the brass button that would send her message flying through the aethersphere toward London. Toward Alexander Tamnais, step-brother of Amelie.
All she could do now was wait for him to arrive, him and the man who had accompanied him when he’d committed his step-sister several months ago.
And into her mind, once more, came the dead, rotted eyes that had stared out at her from Amelie’s face, and the tears streamed unbidden and unnoticed once more down Doctor Hunter’s face.
