Squamous with a Chance of Rain
Author: Alexis Hall
Date: 2014-10-30T08:00:00+00:00
Description: Dear Dr. Howard, The enclosed comprises the complete personal correspondence of Patient #137 prior to her admittance to Bethlem Royal Hospital. It is my hope that these documents will provide valuable insight into the events immediately preceding her current episode and may, therefore, usefully inform your treatment of her. Since arrival, her behaviour has been characterised by long periods of docility, punctuated by outbursts of hysteria, in the grip of which she has seduced into deviant behaviour a nurse, a Quaker, and two representatives of the Fallen Women's Society. She has also spoken in

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Squamous with a Chance of Rain (A Prosperity Story)

Copyright © 2015 by Alexis Hall

Cover art: Simoné, http://www.dreamarian.com

Editor: Sarah Frantz

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ISBN: 978-1-62649-227-1

First edition

January, 2015

Also available in paperback as part of Liberty & Other Stories:

ISBN: 978-1-62649-230-1

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Dear Dr. Howard,

The enclosed comprises the complete personal correspondence of Patient #137 prior to her admittance to Bethlem Royal Hospital.

It is my hope that these documents will provide valuable insight into the events immediately preceding her current episode and may, therefore, usefully inform your treatment of her.

Since arrival, her behaviour has been characterised by long periods of docility, punctuated by outbursts of hysteria, in the grip of which she has seduced into deviant behaviour a nurse, a Quaker, and two representatives of the Fallen Women’s Society.

She has also spoken in unknown, inhuman languages, inscribed the floor with malignant, ever-shifting runes, and revealed to the other inmates an infinite sky of alien constellations, much to the distress of the staff.

I trust you will have greater success with her than we have.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. L. Phillips

To L, and all the wild horses

About Squamous with a Chance of Rain

24 August 1859

2 September 1859

12 September 1859

21 September 1859

29 September 1859

30 September 1859

3 November 1859

12 November 1859

13 November 1859

20 November 1859

30 November 1859

12 December 1859

15 December 1859

23 December 1859

2 January 1860

15 January 1860

Dear Reader

Also by Alexis Hall

About the Author

Enjoy this Book?

My dearest Miriam,

I write to congratulate you on your wedding and to send you all my very best hopes and wishes for your future happiness. From the portrait you so kindly enclosed with your last letter, I can certainly agree that Lord Bodgeringham possesses several qualities valuable in a husband: to wit, extensive facial hair, and a slightly confused expression. I am sure you will do very well with him and still better with his thirty thousand a year.

I do, however, wonder if you will sometimes have occasion to recall that final summer we spent together at Miss Githers’s Finishing School. I confess I miss our walks, and I think of them often, particularly when the hour has grown late and I find myself awake, alone, and idle. I think most particularly of the delightful countryside in that part of the world, and the innocent pleasures it afforded, for as you know, I am ravishingly fond of landscapes. My thoughts dwell most especially upon that secret place, in those days known only to myself I’ll warrant, where two velvet-soft hills rose sweetly to enchant the viewer’s eye, and below them, a tender valley with a hidden cleft where I oftentimes did linger, plucking meadow flowers and other such girlish fancies.

Unfortunately now is not a time for fancies, girlish or otherwise, for misfortune has come upon me in something of a deluge, and I find myself caught without an umbrella. In swift succession then, I have lost both my position and an uncle—though I confess I am rather more concerned about the former than the latter, for Uncle Ridgewell was something of an eccentric who lived much of his life abroad. You may recall that Miss Githers was always chastising me for my unfeeling, unfeminine ways, but I simply do not see how I can grieve someone I never met and who, moreover, was so inconsiderate as to die a pauper.

I am honestly a little cross with him. In every novel I have ever read, the untimely demise of a mysterious relative has always led to the heroine inheriting a substantial fortune, and all I have received for my trouble is a battered, iron-banded travelling trunk full of papers, and a frankly exorbitant bill for funeral expenses. I can only presume he was not the right sort of uncle and that, perhaps, I am not the right sort of heroine. I blame my hair, you know. If only it had been golden instead of this dreary brown, and curly instead of straight, I might have been a duchess by now.

Nor were the circumstances of my uncle’s death propitious—although, then again, I imagine few are, at least for the deceased. Accounts are somewhat equivocal, but from what I understand, he lately returned from an expedition to the Dark Continent in possession of a peculiar idol he had, shall we say, obtained without consent from the native people of that region. I understand that it has since been dispatched to the British Museum for study, but I did find several sketches of it amongst his papers. They depict a corpulent, somewhat anthropoid, bat-winged creature, excessively festooned in tentacles. Even rendered ineptly by my uncle’s pencil, it seems to radiate a profound and all-consuming malevolence and an otherness that is itself a kind of monstrousness. He depicted the entity sitting upon a pedestal scrawled with indecipherable characters, which were also infused with the same alien malignancy. It seemed as though Uncle Ridgewell had made some attempt to translate them, but as my linguistic abilities extend no further than conversational French (voulez-vous coucher & etc., I’m sure you recall) I could decipher very little. And, truthfully, I saw no reason to try, for the symbols distressed me. They seemed so distant in both conception and execution from anything we might understand as language, or even, perhaps, thought: a way of being vastly and coldly beyond anything human reason could encompass.

Forgive me, dear Miriam, I grow quite macabre, and I have not yet come to the darkest part of this peculiar tale. My uncle died no natural death. He was murdered by a group of miscellaneous ruffians armed with shotguns, who burst into his rooms late one night. Inspector Jarvis of Scotland Yard informed me yesterday that they have taken the priest into custody, but the dilettante has fled the country, and they have yet to catch the accountant. What am I to make of this? What on earth could Uncle Ridgewell have done to earn the ire of such disparate individuals?

I suppose I shall never know. I have gone through his papers quite carefully, but most of them are deranged scribblings and laundry lists. And since I am not to conveniently inherit a fortune or, for that matter, a pot in which to perform an intimate elimination, I must focus my attention on my future, or lack thereof. I suppose I must apply to the agency for a new position, but as I was unfortunately discharged from my last one without a reference, I am not hopeful.

It really was the most wretched business. As I have already written to you at length on this subject, I need not soil this paper with my opinion of the Fitzhammonds, but you can surely imagine my horror and outrage when I was called into Mr. Fitzhammond’s study to answer (oh I can barely put it down, my pen shakes so at the injustice of it all!) a charge of unnatural advances to his eldest daughter. Maria is simply dreadful—a pot roast in pink sarsenet, whose behaviour to me has grown increasingly bold since she turned sixteen. Needless to say, I would rather seek satisfaction with a broom handle than lay hand upon her, and this was clearly her revenge. Her father harassed and chided me for over an hour on the subject, and at last, pushed beyond endurance by his impertinent inquisition, I told him I had not seduced Maria and nor would I because she was deeply ill-favoured. And then he ranted for some considerable time about his little Maria being good enough to entertain the depraved lusts of any right-thinking pervert, and fired me.

So, here I am again, back in London, friendless, penniless, and jobless with blasphemous symbols swimming constantly behind my eyes like the afterimage of suns. Ah well. How does that saying go? When God closes a door, somebody opens a window and dumps a chamber pot over your head.

I remain,

Your loving Jane

My dearest Miriam,

Thank you kindly for the description of the latest additions to your wardrobe. Sheer black satin, you say, with wicked little bows? How intriguing. Though you may have to tell me more about it before I am able to render a sound sartorial opinion. I look forward to your next missive.

As for myself, I cannot lie. Things have been difficult of late. The investigation into the death of Uncle Ridgewell was concluded, not to put too fine a point on it, inconclusively, with a judgement in which the phrase “the balance of his mind disturbed” featured prominently. And having gone through his paperwork, I am inclined to agree. By the final pages, the writing in his journal resembled nothing so much as the vile scrawlings upon the idol pedestal: over and over and over again, the most disturbing invocations to beings who slumber beyond the stars. I must have spent too long in their perusal for the hieroglyphics have lately taken on a peculiar clarity to me, as though I learned them long ago.

However, putting aside these grotesque mysteries, I do have some good tidings to share. After several fruitless pilgrimages to the agency, where I was told in no uncertain terms there was nothing suitable for me (emphasis theirs), I have at last secured a new position with a family in Cornwall. The head of the household is, I understand, a retired skycaptain, a widower, with seven children. His wife passed away some years ago, and frankly, I cannot blame her. Apparently they have had some trouble retaining governesses in recent years, and I was asked for most particularly.

Should this trouble me, I wonder? One hears such stories. There was that red-haired girl hired at exorbitant expense to impersonate the daughter of the household for reasons that still strike me as manifestly implausible. Or the business with the fellow with the black beard on the bicycle. Or our poor dear friend from school who strangled that little boy in the woods one evening. Of course, she always was terribly sensitive, and having attempted to teach the rudiments of civilisation to little boys myself, I can well understand why she might have succumbed to murderous hysteria.

I did make some enquiries of the previous governesses, but unfortunately none of them have answered my letters. If I had any spare funds, I could hire a consulting detective, but I do rather dislike consulting detectives, and my finances are so deeply unhealthy as to be practically consumptive. I shall simply have to be sensible. I will not ride any bicycles, explore any attics, wander around any woods late at night, or strangle any children. And if anyone should happen to want me to wear any clothing other than my own, I will tell them no. How difficult can it be? What can possibly go wrong? A skycaptain with seven children. What is so fearsome about that?

But I must apologise for this hasty letter. I have to make my preparations for the journey, and several challenging decisions lie before me. For example, should I pack the grey worsted or the grey nankeen? And will I need the grey organdie in the wilds of Cornwall? Glamorous, is it not, the life of a governess? Though, to tell the truth, I am not entirely without hope. I understand the place is something of a smuggler’s haven. I suppose I must take care lest I am set upon and brutally ravished by a wild-eyed, wild-haired skypirate in tall boots and scarlet petticoats. That would be simply dreadful. I had best take the organdie.

Just in case.

I remain,

Your ever hopeful Jane

My dearest Miriam,

I am safely arrived, unravished, in Cornwall. I may have to abandon all hopes in that direction. A would-be despoiler would be hard pressed even to find me, for in this part of the country, night sets in at two in the afternoon and does not depart again until midway through the morning. The daylight, if so it may be called, is a thin, pallid waif, who swoons and sighs and does not linger long. If only the rest of us had such liberty. It began to rain about twenty miles from Vanstone Hall and has not ceased since. The sky shifts sullenly through shades of granite, and the air possesses a uniquely clammy quality as though one breathes through damp flannel.

In short, it’s charming here. Do visit.

Oh, I so envy you Italy. And your poor husband recalled suddenly to India. Just in idle curiosity—I could stand to hear a little more about the Venetian comtessa.

As for Vanstone Hall, it is your typical sprawling English pile: golden stone and symmetry and terrible, terrible draughts. The grey-green lawns stretch all the way to the sea, which twists and turns beneath the clouds like an unquiet dreamer, but otherwise we are surrounded on all sides by a dense black forest which smothers what little light the sky bestows. The captain himself spends the majority of his time in a decommissioned airship, and the children, as a consequence, have been left to run wild. The housekeeper, a black-clad gargoyle called Mrs. Smith, took one look at me as I climbed, wind-buffeted and bedraggled from the carriage, and declared that I would not last a day. If she thought to menace me, she misjudged the matter severely, as I have always rather appreciated being underestimated. It allows one to relax.

While my meagre possessions were being taken up to my room, Captain Vanstone honoured me with an introduction. He is a tall, dark gentleman of the expected military bearing, not unhandsome, I suppose (were one to be interested in that sort of thing), if his features were not marred by the harshness of his mouth and the coldness of his very blue eyes. We shook hands, and he regarded me most intently, enquiring if I was indeed the niece of Ridgewell Harris. I saw no reason to deny it, and he continued to stare at me, as though some thought or recollection troubled him, until Mrs. Smith cleared her throat, which seemed to recall him to himself. Whereupon he produced a whistle from the pocket of his coat, and sounded a naval call. In response, there was a mighty clamour from the second floor, and his seven children came galloping down the stairs and stood at attention in the entrance hall.

My dear, I cannot tell you how deeply I was impressed. In all my years of governessing, which admittedly do not number so many, I do not know how such a marvellous idea had not already occurred to me, for there is no task so demoralising or exhausting as rounding up children. He had even prepared a whistle for my use, and I thanked him with true sincerity for his kindness. When he left us, I bade the children introduce themselves. The eldest, Abigail, informed me she was sixteen and did not need a governess, to which I responded that she had one and had therefore better accustom herself to it for the sake of her own comfort. Next came Benjamin, Chloe, and David, who said he was incorrigible, for the previous governess had told him so. “Then I will see that you are appropriately corridged,” said I. And, finally, Esther, Faith, and Grace.

Once we had all met each other, I dismissed the children to bed and went up to my room, for the hour was already very late, and I was exhausted from my journey. In truth, I have not slept well these past nights, for I have been beset by the same unsettling dream: I am lost and alone amidst the measureless ruins of an ancient city, its aether-smoothed, oddly angled stonework thick with stardust and tarnished by untold centuries. And when I look up, I see no familiar constellations, merely a great emptiness through which the cold vastness of the universe seeps.

I remain,

Your somewhat troubled Jane

My dearest Miriam,

Thank you for your wise advice on how to induce a peaceful slumber. I tried it diligently the other night, keeping the image of my dear, kind friend clear in my mind, and I found it most efficacious. I still dreamed of that ruined city, but I eased more pleasantly into sleep.

We are settling into a routine here. I have subjected the children to a week of Latin irregular verbs, which has them nicely subdued, and I believe I am growing accustomed to the savageries of the Cornish weather and the hostility of the land that awaits me beyond the high iron gates that enclose our forest. It is almost as though the moor has garbed itself to match the sky, for it is little more than a blackened desert of stones, withered heather, and storm-twisted trees. Conscious of my own strictures not to wander foolishly about forbidding locales, I have been obliged to largely restrict myself to the house, though even that is not without its inconveniences, for it seems as though I cannot take two steps in this dreary place without encountering Mrs. Smith. I should wonder if she is following me, but she never has anything to say to me, just dark looks to bestow and an irritating facility for appearing without warning and vanishing into shadows as though she were a part of them.

Honestly, it is beginning to take a toll on my nerves.

Which, perhaps, might explain why I sometimes fancy I feel the walls in the empty rooms breathing, and I become seized with the fear that they may all inhale simultaneously and crush me to pieces. And the other night I stepped onto my balcony for air and for a moment, just for a moment, it seemed as though the sky matched the sky in my nightmares: vast, cold, starless. But it was probably just the weather, which has been dreadfully overcast of late.

Dear me, I am turning into such a dull correspondent. There is a noticeable and, to my mind, distressing lack of Bavarian princesses here in Cornwall, and even the gossip is about six years old, for conversation in the servants’ hall (not that I pay it much heed) still revolves around the unsavoury circumstances under which the captain’s wife passed away. Mysterious deaths, it seems, are like hackney carriages. One can go for extended periods without encountering a single one, and then several turn up all at once.

Amalthea Vanstone’s portrait, painted not long before her death, hangs at the head of the main stairwell. It shows a remarkably beautiful woman, pale skinned, with a mane of thick, curling black hair and eyes not one shade lighter. I think the artist must have flattered her, for she looks no older than I do (although it is possible I have grown prematurely raddled as a consequence of my unnatural urges), and I am sure had I been delivered of seven children in such improbable haste I would not be sitting on a swing with my skirts full of rose petals.

It is a fine piece, I am sure, but I cannot like it. There is something about her eyes. And the light catches the picture so strangely sometimes that I think her feet are lumpen and somewhat resemble— Oh, oh, disregard me, Miriam. This is nonsense. I do wish I could sleep untroubled. I think I may have to take action, I mean beyond that which you have already so eloquently recommended.

Mrs. Vanstone must have been the daughter of one of the neighbouring families, for apparently it was all quite sudden: a love match. She died when the captain was away on active duty, and the extremity of his anguish led him to take up permanent residence in his old airship.

You know, if this is romance, I want no part of it. But the tale grows even stranger still.

The other night, after I had finished marching the children to bed, I was unexpectedly summoned by the captain himself. Mrs. Smith eyed me most suspiciously as I ascended the rope ladder to the ship, which I actually rather resented for it was not as though I was thinking to myself, “My evening would be so very much improved if I spent it in the company of a fecund, grief-stricken eccentric.”

He met me in what must have been the captain’s cabin, though it was now a sort of study, awash in books and papers (I confess, I checked for deranged scrawling and was relieved to note his hand was a precise copperplate), and full of complex mechanical devices I presume are used to navigate the skies.

“Miss Grey.” He watched me just as intently as he had the first time we met. “Sit.”

After a moment, I sat, and we were silent for some considerable time.

“You must forgive me,” he said at last, “I have grown too accustomed to giving orders. I have lost whatever gentleness of expression I once possessed.”

“Please,” I returned, “do not trouble yourself on my account. If I took offence every time someone addressed me without forethought or courtesy, I should be an extremely angry woman.”

He frowned, I think in some confusion. Handsome, perhaps, but like most of his sex not overly lavished in mental acuity.

He tried again: “Miss Grey, no doubt you are surprised that I would wish to speak to you.”

“Surprised that my employer would arbitrarily impose upon me? Of course not, that is why I am here, is it not?”

“You are here to be a governess to my— Ah.” I think he was younger than his manner suggested, for he flushed at that. “You are severe, Miss Grey.”

“I prefer to think of myself as honest, sir.”

His fine eyes flashed at me. “Do you wish me to apologise?”

“Not particularly.”

“Oh.” He looked almost disappointed. One of those.

“Would you be so kind,” I asked, “as to tell me why you wished to see me?”

As it turned out, he wanted to discuss, of all things, my Uncle Ridgewell, and his manner throughout the thinly disguised interrogation that followed was quite peculiar, even for a gentleman who voluntarily passes his days in a metal sepulchre. I told him what little I knew of my uncle’s life and death, which is not much more than I have already relayed to you in these letters, but he seemed dissatisfied with my answers and continued to press me far beyond the point of politeness.

It was unsettling and, to be frank, irritating. The whole business. As is the fact I seem to have misplaced my whistle, which means I am reduced to communicating verbally with the children.

I remain,

Your severely exasperated Jane

My dearest Miriam,

While I was in Altarnun, posting my last letter to you, I was feeling somewhat, shall we say, frayed, so I paid a visit to the local druggist in the hope of at least temporarily soothing my sleep-related difficulties. Apparently it is not uncommon for sensitive young ladies to suffer discombobulation as a consequence of upheaval in their personal circumstances, and admittedly, my personal circumstances have been somewhat uncertain of late, so I allowed him to prescribe me a small measure of laudanum. I was cautious at first, but I do believe it has helped. I still dream, but somehow less vividly, and the house feels less oppressive to me and the children less irritating. When I return again to the village, I must procure a larger bottle. The tiny vial I was given would barely medicate a distressed fly.

The captain continues to treat me with a strange mixture of suspicion and curiosity. I am called to his study nearly every evening now, and sometimes during the day I catch his eyes upon me, though he acts as though it was merely happenstance that he was near me at all. The other night, as I was preparing to leave, he abruptly put out a hand as if to hold me back and said, “Do you think me handsome, Miss Grey?”

Heaven save me. I confess I was in some eagerness to depart, for the night had closed around us like a great black hand, and it had been some hours since I had last taken laudanum, otherwise I might have leavened my response with some degree of tact. “No, sir,” I told him.

He looked startled, while I wrestled to conceal my frustration. I mean, really. What had he been expecting? “Yes, sir, your odd behaviour and air of brooding melancholy lubricates my nethers”? Oh forgive me, Miriam, for my impropriety of expression. I have been so out of sorts of late. And, of course, being a gently reared young lady, I know nothing of nethers, nor of their lubrication. But when the captain’s bewilderment had passed, he laughed and said rather warmly, “You are a very singular creature.”

And since that was certainly no topic I wished to discuss with him, I went on hastily. “You must forgive me, sir, I spoke too bluntly. You appear to have all your appendages in the correct quantity and configuration, and that is truly all the aesthetic judgement on the male form I may render. Good night.”

Thankfully, he let me go after that, and I hurried to my bed. My gas lamp, which I was sure I had refilled earlier, but perhaps I had not for my sense of time is a little disturbed, sputtered out as soon as it was most inconvenient for it to do so, leaving me stranded equidistant between the captain’s ship and the house, with nothing to light my way. It is strange, is it not, how night can distort one’s perceptions of distance, for I felt the woods pressing terribly close just then, with a sort of dark weight behind them, like bodies crushed up in a crowd. And the closer I drew to the house, the closer the trees seemed to grow to me, as though we were all engaged in an on-my-part-reluctant game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

Except, of course we were not, for they were trees. Trees! And I have read Mary Wollstonecraft.

Though I heard them laughing, laughing in a jangle of high-pitched voices, as I ran for the door, made it through, and slammed it closed behind me. Despite the lateness of the hour, Mrs. Smith was there in the entrance, and I almost fancied she had been waiting for me. But she simply turned away, and vanished into the shadows as though she had never been there at all.

In her portrait, Mrs. Vanstone smiles with sharp teeth.

Oh, Miriam, Miriam, please write back soon.

Your,

Jane

My dearest Miriam,

You must forgive me for my last letter. I really do not know what strange humour was upon me when I wrote it. Trees moving in the dark. Well, of course trees move in the dark. It is called wind. And, yes, Mrs. Vanstone is smiling in her picture, but in a perfectly everyday manner. I feel an unspeakable fool, and I am covered with shame you witnessed me fall prey to such absurdities. I assure you I am once again in complete control of my faculties, and shall remain so, thanks to the laudanum, which has been absolutely invaluable in helping me regain my equilibrium.

And, despite my manifest lack of interest in doing so, I seem to have made some progress on unravelling the dark secret of Vanstone Hall. A few days after my . . . moment of temporarily heightened irrationality . . . the captain called me to his study as usual, bade me sit, paced about awhile, and then began thus:

“Miss Grey, I owe you an apology.”

I confess, in my naïveté, I sat there waiting to hear how sorry he was for persistently importuning a poor governess with already limited free time, but it was not to be.

“I have misjudged you” he went on. “I think I can trust you.” He went to one knee before me and looked intently into my eyes. “I can trust you, can I not, Miss Grey?”

I smothered a sigh. “If you must.”

He stood and began pacing again. I could tell it was going to be a long evening. “You have heard,” he said at last, “something of the tragedy of my wife’s death.”

“Something.”

“There is more to the story, Miss Grey, than is commonly known. You see, I do not believe my wife died a natural death. I believe she was murdered.”

“Oh dear.”

“Indeed, Miss Grey. Indeed. And by none other than my own sister.”

That seemed implausibly dramatic. But I did not say so aloud. Instead, I asked what reason he had to suspect his sister of killing his wife.

“My sister—” his face darkened “—my sister has always been somewhat queer. Wilful. She declined several offers of marriage, with the result that she is unwed, unprotected, and on the shelf, and spends all her time gallivanting about the globe with her equally peculiar friends.”

I gazed dreamily out of the porthole into the deepening night. “How terrible for her.”

“She made no attempt to conceal her aversion to Amalthea. Her hatred was unreasoned and unreasoning. My wife was a good woman, Miss Grey, a kind, loving, virtuous woman.”

Had he continued in this vein much longer, he would likely have swayed me into sympathy with the murderer. “If I may say, sir, many of us entertain antipathy for the people around us. We do not necessarily kill them.”

“You do not know my sister and the ruffians with whom she associates. One of them is an accountant, for God’s sake. I cannot imagine a less suitable companion for a gentlewoman.”

An eerie premonition prickled across my skin.

Meanwhile Captain Vanstone had retired to the far end of the room, where he stood, half in shadow, with the candlelight flickering disjointedly across his features. I am sure it would have made fine viewing for a correctly disposed audience.

“Diana was here at the Hall, with Ridgewell Harris, when my wife passed away. That was why I initially sought you out. I thought you might have some connection to the business.”

“Absolutely not, sir.” I was internally cursing my uncle for all I was worth, and in the vilest terms my maidenly mind could muster. It was apparently not enough that the man should leave me nothing but a box of insane ramblings. He had now contrived, from beyond the grave no less, to embroil me in the plot of a three-volume novel. A particularly hackneyed three-volume novel at that.

“Or, at least, I’d hoped,” went on Captain Vanstone almost pleadingly, “you might have been able to shed some light on the matter. I never saw her body, Miss Grey, never heard anything but the vaguest stories. I searched for evidence, but I hardly understood what I was looking for.” He ran a hand through his hair, disordering its usual precision. “I don’t understand it. What possible reason could my sister and Ridgewell Harris have to murder my wife?”

I adopted my calm voice. It is very practiced from years of governessing. “Perhaps that is because they had no reason. Perhaps she did indeed die in a tragic, mysterious accident for no particular reason, leaving behind no body. Such things do happen.”

“Perhaps you are right.” He let out a long, broken sigh, and turned suddenly. “Oh, Miss Grey, what would I do without you?”

“Why, I’m not sure, sir. Take earlier nights, I suspect.”

He went on as though he had not heard me, as his sex are so wont to do. “Seeing you there, so neat, so prosaic in your grey dress, has reminded me how terribly lonely these years have been.”

“Perhaps you should get out more. Meet some new people. Take up a hobby.”

He gazed at me sorrowfully. “Is there nothing, Miss Grey? Among his papers? Some hint, some clue, anything at all?”

Suddenly the symbols from my uncle’s journals were blazing behind my eyes, so clear, so harsh, stripping me like bones beneath the desert sun.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Grey?”

I must have spoken, but I had no recollection of it. My throat felt tight and oddly raw.

“Do you need a handkerchief?”

I told him I was well, quite well, only tired. He released my hand—when had he taken it?—and I tromped back to the house, retiring rather shakily to my room.

I suppose I must have felt some degree of pity for the man, for I did spend some time, when I rightly should have been resting, examining my uncle’s journals more closely. At no point did I find anything relating to Diana, the captain, or Amalthea Vanstone. But then I’m not sure sensible murderers keep diaries. What would they write? “Murdered innocent woman, weather continues fine”?

The symbols that are not symbols anymore are so loud in my head tonight. I feel they are etched upon me, inside out, in the light of a universe of dying stars. I shall take some laudanum. That will surely help.

I remain,

Your loving Jane

My dearest Miriam,

A message sent in haste, for I have just had the oddest encounter. I have wondered if the disordering of my nerves is not partially attributable to lack of exercise, so I have taken to exploring the house itself, which is extensive. Though, of course, I am careful to avoid any attics, basements, mysterious passageways, or crumbling towers, and, on sheer principle, the west wing. Mainly I have restricted myself to the state rooms, which makes for tedious rambling, but being bored is not the worst fate in the world. Indeed, as a governess I should probably embrace it as a rare gift, for while children may be said to stir many emotions, boredom, sadly, is not among them.

Today, stepping into what I believed would be another guestchamber, I instead found myself in what could only have been the late Mrs. Vanstone’s room. I knew it at once, for there was another great portrait of the lady hanging above the fireplace; in this, she took on the aspect of Demeter, clad in a long white gown, holding a sheaf of corn, her tumbling ebony curls threaded through with apple blossom. The truly startling thing, however, was that unlike all the other rooms I had visited, which were muffled up in dust sheets and dimmed behind their curtains, this one stood pristine, as if awaiting her return. A satin dressing gown lay across the back of a chair, brushes, combs, and other such accoutrements on the dressing table. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, eerie. Possibly even evidence of mental disorder. For someone must have taken the trouble to maintain it like that, dustless, spotless, like a butterfly collector’s prize, lifeless behind glass.

Yet somehow I felt myself compelled by that domestic mausoleum. To press the unpressed carpet with my footfalls, to stir the unstirring air with my presence. To touch the untouched things. The brush and the mirror on the dressing table were a matched pair, finely wrought, though composed of some material I did not recognise: something almost like shell, I think, smooth and marbled honey brown and cream. I was reaching out, on some strange, almost sensuous impulse, wanting to touch them, when I heard footsteps, and suddenly Mrs. Smith was there.

“You should not be here, Miss Grey,” she said, and there was something in her shaking voice I could not read: anger, perhaps, or fear, or something else. I murmured my apologies, but she swept past me, glancing wildly about the room. “Have you touched anything?”

“No, ma’am. I was merely curious and—”

“Nothing? You have touched nothing? You swear it?”

I think the poor woman must be quite mad, but I hastily gave her the assurances she desired. As it happened, I was rather glad to be able to give them. I don’t know why I had thought to touch anything in that decaying husk of a room in the first place.

“We do not touch the mistress’s things.” She hustled me out of there, and stood guard outside the door until I moved away.

And when I came back later, for I could not help myself, the room was locked. What make you of this?

I remain,

Your loving if slightly perplexed Jane

My dearest Miriam,

Of course you are right. Frustrated illicit passion for the late Mrs. Vanstone. I don’t know why I did not think of that myself. However, I would beg you to refrain from conjuring any further images of Mrs. Smith, who is a formidable woman, dancing around her mistress’s empty bedroom wearing her nightgown. I have undergone some trying experiences recently and you are not helping.

Here at Vanstone Hall life continues serenely. Everything is perfectly normal. I believe it may rain tomorrow.

Hah.

Not bloody likely, if you will forgive the vulgarity.

Well, it will most probably rain, for it always rains, but normality is clearly anathema to this household. Were they not paying me sixty pounds a year, and had I any hope of alternative employment, I would no sooner have arrived than departed again. But, unfortunately, liberty has not been one of the luxuries of my life. I sometimes see my days stretched out before me, as cold as the gleam on the tail of a comet, and I ask myself, what is it for? I was raised a lady, and now I am supposed to raise other ladies, who will marry or not marry and raise ladies of their own, an endless chain of paper dolls, cut in the same meaningless shape.

It seems I am unaccountably melancholy tonight. Let me take a little laudanum to raise my spirits, and tell you the latest news from Vanstone Hall. Well, I suppose to call it “news” is a bit of a stretch, but I find my dislike of Mrs. Vanstone’s portrait increases by the day. It is not so much the watchfulness of her eyes, but the slick and glistening infinity I sometimes fancy they reflect. The other night, when my dreams took me—as ever they do now—to the ruined city of rust and ages, I felt some deep strangeness within my skin and, turning, beheld myself, or rather the reflection of my own reflection, deep within the darkness of a vast, black eye.

I have not experienced visions of quite such disconcerting intensity since I began taking the laudanum. Perhaps I should increase the dosage.

At present, my other preoccupation is the children, for they have grown increasingly unruly in recent days. I believe Abigail has formed an injudicious attachment to a very blond, bright-eyed stableboy called Ralph. Following what could only have been a late-night assignation in the gazebo, she sought ingress to the house via my balcony. I did what any right-thinking governess would have done, and pretended to be asleep, for nothing would induce me to meddle in such a matter.

The following evening, I was supposed to present them for dinner with their father. Apparently this is a tradition of the family, or rather the captain’s preference for interacting with his children only on a monthly basis, but when it came to it the little . . . individuals . . . were nowhere to be found, and I had to go down alone.

Captain Vanstone gave me the coldest look. “Miss Grey, if you cannot keep discipline in my household, I will find someone who can.”

Oh, I was furious, but I curtsied meekly and went in search of his wretched spawn. I traipsed all over the house, but saw neither hide nor hair of them. If only I had not misplaced the whistle, then at least I would not have been obliged to shout myself hoarse. At last, when I was on the verge of telling the captain his children were about to become his own dashed problem, Mrs. Smith emerged from the shadows and informed me that they were playing a game with me, as they had with the preceding governesses.

“What is the nature of this game?” I demanded, vastly unentertained by the whole business.

“They run out into the woods, Miss Grey, and pretend to be trees.”

I stared at her. The night was as thick as tar, and moreover it was raining even more heavily than usual. One would have to be completely out of one’s senses, or at the very least amphibious, to go out in such weather. “And I am to fetch them, am I?”

“Someone must.”

And, with that, she vanished once more into the darkness.

I sighed heavily and went to my room to fetch my travelling cape and my sturdiest umbrella. No sooner had I stepped through the front door and put it up, than the wind came at me shrieking and tore it from my hands. And my poor umbrella, which had served me faithfully all these years, was ripped to pieces like a rag doll by the storm. I will not relate the epithet that passed my lips at this moment. There was simply nothing else for it; I pulled my cape from the teeth of the wind, gathered up my skirts, and pressed on into the darkness of the forest.

I had hoped the trees might provide some respite from the weather, but I was not so fortunate. The wind transformed them into monsters who lashed at me with spiny fingers as I passed, and the rain soaked deep into the mulchy ground, rendering it treacherous to both my progress and my petticoats. There was no sign of the children, just lissom shadows that writhed in the distance, and occasionally snatches of their laughter carried on the breath of the storm. Once I thought I caught a glimpse of Chloe, the tresses of her hair grown so wild in the wind that they seemed more akin to a nest of tenebrous appendages, and I resolved to reacquaint her with a hairbrush as a matter of urgency.

On brighter days, I had traversed the edges of the woods, but I had not ventured so deep within them. And it was not long before I realised I was lost. I turned, seeking the house to guide me back, but there was nothing. I looked to the sky, and the forest had swallowed that too, along with all the stars and any hope of light.

Of course, there was no real need for alarm. At worst, I would simply have to spend a deeply uncomfortable night in the middle of the woods in the rain, but thankfully I have a strong constitution and have never been susceptible to chills. However, it was far from my preferred scenario. I hoped I could simply retrace my steps and tell the captain that if the children chose to play silly games, they deserved to suffer for it, and that was my final word as a professional educator.

This plan was easier to formulate than implement, for the trees had closed upon whatever path I had thus far taken, and my gown had grown so discomfortingly sodden that it felt as though I fought half against the forest, half against myself. Oh Miriam, I hardly dare disclose what I did next. Even now I blush in recollection.

I . . . Miriam, I . . . I disrobed! I lifted my skirts and unfastened my crinoline and wriggled out of it, and left it there in the mud like the exoskeleton of some metal creature. At the time I was too cold and damp and angry to be embarrassed. I turned in what I thought was the most likely direction and charged off, my saturated petticoats clinging to my legs in a most unseemly manner.

It was almost as if the forest itself took exception to my boldness, for the trees crowded in about me, branches scraping my skin and tangling in my hair, and brambles rising up seemingly from nowhere to entangle me. The wind caught for me like claws, and the rain felt like teeth against my face. There was still no sign of either the house or the children, though I could still hear their laughter, or sometimes voices joined in an eerie chanting, calling out for something, or perhaps someone, in a harsh, inhuman language I was half-afraid I understood.

At last, I saw what seemed to be an opening between the trees, and a diminution in the density of the darkness. My heart gave a great hopeful lurch. And this time I was certain I saw the children, all seven of them assembled there, and the shadows were playing upon them so strangely that I almost beheld them as something . . . other. They scattered at my approach, vanishing into the forest, and I bundled up my skirts and dashed after them, shouting something quite unladylike in an effort to encourage their obedience.

I am no slouch. I might have caught at least some of them had the ground not changed abruptly from mud and soil to rain-slick stone. I slipped on some loose masonry and fell to my hands and knees in what I presumed to be a puddle. Or rather, what I presumed to be a puddle of water. Except it was faintly warm and had a thicker consistency than one usually expects.

Just at that moment, the storm grew quiet, and the moon broke free of the clouds, drenching me in tarnished silver light. And I saw that I was kneeling in a pool of congealing blood in the ruins of what must once have been a temple, though now it was little more than a tumble of broken spires, choked with weeds, and dead leaves.

In the space between two fallen pillars lay the corpse of a doe, blood flowing sluggishly from a savage gash in her throat and into the cracks between the stones. Her eyes were open, dark and blank, and I recall with peculiar clarity the length of her eyelashes. I thought how strange it was for a mere beast to be graced with an attribute that seemed so . . . so human.

Instinctively I put my hands to my mouth to stifle a sound of shock, and tasted iron, and I suppose I should have given thanks I had not yet taken any dinner, for I would surely have not been able to keep it. But I was rather too preoccupied with blood, the slaughtered animal, and the vile temple in which I found myself. As I struggled to my feet, I could not help but notice that there were carvings upon the ruins in the same monstrous script that had filled the pages of my uncle’s journal, and the stone itself was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was greenish black in colour, flecked here and there with gold, and possessed of a sickly sort of iridescence. It was unpleasant to touch, slick and almost soapy.

I fled that dreadful place.

And, somehow, I found my way back to the house, falling over the threshold in a state of bloody and bedraggled undress. The children were waiting for me with their father, all of them properly dressed and bone dry, smiling at me.

“Miss Grey!” I do not think I will readily forget the look on the captain’s face either. He stared at me, flushed with what I dearly hope was horror.

I mustered what remained of my dignity. “Pray excuse me. I am feeling somewhat indisposed.”

And before anyone had a chance to respond, I escaped to my room. And, here I am, having dried my hair, changed into my nightgown (sadly it is not satin, and it lacks bows, wicked or otherwise), and taken some laudanum to steady my nerves. I cannot seem to rid myself of the image of that poor dead creature lying there in the woods. I want to be able to say that it was simply the most unfortunate of accidents, but there was something horribly deliberate about it all: the tearing of the throat, the positioning of the body. But who would do such a thing, and why? Only the children and I were abroad this evening, but how could they have been out in such a storm and show no sign of it?

Oh, Miriam, I am so tired.

I remain,

Your Jane

My dearest Miriam,

It seems you must forgive me yet again for having importuned you with a letter written in a moment of emotional turmoil. I woke early to a terrible headache and one of those crystal-bright days that so often follow in the wake of a storm. I confess I lay awhile in bed in a state of nervous agitation, but then I remembered I am not sensitive and I do not possess a nervous disposition, so I got up, dressed, and set out again for the woods.

Astonishing what a little light and common sense can do. The whole area looked quite different this morning. Even pleasant, though of course we are winter struck, and thus the trees are bare and the scene is one of austerity rather than anything more conventionally charming. But in the wake of the storm, everything seemed renewed somehow, clear and cleansed. And while I found what perhaps may once have been a temple, it was little more than a few tumbled stones, and what I most certainly did not find was the corpse of a deer, the corpse of anything at all, or any sign of there ever having been a corpse. Not even a stain upon the stones. I suppose the rain might have washed the blood away, but what of the body? Surely that would not have just . . . vanished?

And now I begin to question what I saw. It was dark, after all, and perhaps I was suffering some imbalance of mind. Could I have imagined it? But it was so vivid—I recall it still, the eyes, the ruined throat, and the blood. There had been blood on my hands. And on my dress. I rushed back to the house only to learn that my clothes had already been taken to the laundry as they had been drenched and covered in mud. Mud? How could I have mistaken . . .

Was I mistaken? I have heard that laudanum can occasionally induce hallucinations in the patient. Perhaps I should moderate my dosage. But it has done me such good, I cannot believe it could be harmful. Oh, what is the matter with me, Miriam?

If nothing else, at least I have found my whistle again. It was in my bedroom all along.

I remain, or so I believe,

Your loving Jane

My dearest Miriam,

I write with both good news and bad. The good news is that I am probably not losing my mind. The bad news is that I believe we keep company with a murderer.

Yesterday, the children, who have been particularly vexatious of late, took flight after lunch and simply could not be induced to return to the study of oxbow lakes upon which we had laboured together that morning. I pursued them to the terrace, calling loudly upon my recently rediscovered whistle.

You may perhaps imagine something of my surprise when it summoned not seven wayward children but a creature of such unfathomable otherness that even now my mind cannot wholly grasp its reality. It swooped upon membranous wings from an ink-black rift between the clouds, not bird nor bat nor insect, and came at me in a flurry of screeching malignancy. I turned to run, but it was far faster than I. Its claws tangled in my hair, and it dragged me, struggling, to the ground. I cried out and tried to fight it off, but it was all I could do to protect myself from the wild tearing of its beak-like appendage.

I truly thought I would die. Or that it would catch me up with its feet and bear me away to the ruins of whatever hellish otherworld lay waiting beyond the clouds.

But then I heard a sharp crack, and suddenly the creature was torn from me, its wings flapping and its claws scrabbling. Everything happened so fast, I can hardly recall, let alone relate it. I regained my feet, and the monster wheeled around, shrieking still. A gunshot, and it reared back, collapsing into a writhing heap of scales and feathers and rotting flesh. Another shot, and it lay still.

I dragged my attention from the mess on the ground to my rescuer, who had reholstered her shotgun and was re-coiling the whip she must have used to pull the monster off. When she was done, she hung it from her belt and looked up at me.

Oh my. Oh—my my my.

She was a tall, lean woman, perhaps approaching her fortieth year, clad in travel-stained linens and—so shocking—trousers and top boots. Her skin was weathered, browned by too much sun and harsh air, and her eyes a striking, fall-into-me blue, far deeper and richer than the captain’s. Her hair, tumbling from beneath the brim of a battered fedora, was a tangle of bronze-streaked curls, touched here and there by grey. She moved with purpose, rather than grace, like a great, golden lion stalking the plains of the Serengeti. And her gaze, which was currently trained upon me, was both disconcertingly direct and just a little bit wicked, as though she knew exactly how I looked clad only in my chemise and drawers.

(Poor governess though I am, I do permit myself small luxuries—my underlinens were actually pale-yellow silk, edged with lace and embroidered in very small flowers. So I was glad to reflect that, if my rescuer, in fact, possessed such clarity of vision, I would not disappoint her.)

While I was distracted with these ruminations, she strode forwards and pulled the whistle somewhat violently from my hand.

“What the devil,” she snapped, “are you doing with this?”

I tried not to take affront at her tone. “Captain Vanstone gave it to me. It is supposed to summon the children, not hideous monsters from beyond space and time.”

She made a noise perhaps best rendered as “humph” and strode away from me into the house, taking my whistle with her.

I should have guessed before, but in my defence, I was somewhat preoccupied: this woman had to be the captain’s queer sister, Diana—the one he believed to have murdered his wife, and who had probably murdered my uncle.

Oh, Miriam, why are the good ones always murderers?

The children were good as gold all afternoon. It was by far the most disturbing thing I have thus far encountered at Vanstone Hall.

That night, in his study, the captain was agitated, and I was distracted.

“The nerve of the woman!” said he, pacing up and down.

“Indeed.” I sighed longingly. “She does seem quite . . . audacious.”

“We must act! What can we do?”

Oh, he is so tedious. “I’m afraid bringing suspected murderers to justice did not feature prominently on the curriculum at Miss Githers’s Finishing School. Perhaps you should inform the police?”

“What could I say to them? I have no evidence, and she is my own sister. They would think me a madman.”

“Most likely.” I was silent a moment, thinking to myself. “Sir, have you ever wondered if perhaps Miss Vanstone might have some . . . some reason for her antipathy to your wife?”

He whirled upon me, all wounded pride and manly outrage. “How can you be so unfeeling, Miss Grey? What possible reason could my sister have to murder my wife?”

“Well, I don’t know. Did you ever observe any peculiarities in her behaviour?”

“What sort of peculiarities?”

“Did she ever . . .” What could I say? Sacrifice any deer? Run shrieking through the woods? Chill his soul with a crushing sense of a cruel and empty cosmos? I gave up. “Forgive me, sir. I know not what I speak.”

He threw himself into a chair, assuming an attitude of profound despair, his brow shadowed by his hand. Perhaps he wept, I do not know. “Leave me, Miss Grey.”

I was very glad to oblige him.

When I entered the house, I found Diana Vanstone standing beneath the portrait of the captain’s wife, staring up at it with an expression of such concentrated ferocity that I felt warm all over. Flustered, I tried to slip past her, but (do I flatter myself?) it seemed as though she might have been waiting for me. She turned and addressed me thus:

“You’re the governess, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

She thrust her hands into the pockets of her trousers, tightening the fabric across the strong muscles of her thighs. And I grew, if possible, even warmer, in the most secret of places. I could not seem to stop staring at her legs. I could so vividly imagine them clasped about me in the most carnal of embraces.

“Look, Miss Grey.” With difficulty I made the long journey back up to her eyes. It was somewhat hazardous for there were curves and hollows and dips and planes that threatened constantly to undo my resolve. “I’m sorry about earlier. When I first saw you with that damn whistle, I thought you might have been, you know, one of them.”

One of whom? But before I could ask, she went on.

“You need to be careful here. Nothing’s what it seems.”

“This afternoon,” I pointed out, “I blew on a whistle, and an unspeakable monstrosity from a world beyond the stars descended onto the back terrace and attempted to devour me. I believe I am already, as the vulgarism goes, down with the notion that things aren’t completely normal.”

“I do like a girl with spirit.” She laughed, a sort of low, rumbling purr that made me shudder and flush, but she sobered again quickly. “You should leave, Miss Grey. While you still can.”

She was most likely correct, but I am naturally stubborn, especially in the presence of gnomic pronouncements. It seemed to me wherever this woman went, chaos and death were not far behind. In some ways, I suppose it was quite considerate of her to warn me. “Why?” I asked. “What is it that you intend?”

“I don’t intend anything. But there’s an astral conjunction coming, and if I can’t do something about it, we’ll all be going somewhere that’ll make Hell look like a church picnic. I’ve enough to worry about without civilians getting in the way.”

Civilian indeed. “It seems to me,” I said sharply, “that if your treatment of my Uncle Ridgewell is anything to go by, I will not think much of your methods.”

And then I turned away with what I hope was impressive hauteur and made my way to my room.

My dreams were exceptionally vivid that night. I dreamed of Diana and in a manner my pen trembles to disclose. Though at the last, when our entwined bodies sought their final culminations, I was suddenly torn from myself, star-flung, until I once again beheld us, infinitesimally small, a twist of gold and silver skin shimmering in the bleakness of a great, uncaring eye.

I remain,

Your loving Jane

My dearest Miriam,

I have very little to write about at the moment. It is as if the whole house holds its breath, though what we are waiting for, I do not know. Perhaps this astral conjunction Diana mentioned. Whatever that may be. But, in the meantime, we watch each other mistrustfully, and time slips by.

I suppose I should be relieved there have been no more incidents, but it merely makes me restless, and I begin to doubt my own memory. Do you think perhaps Uncle Ridgewell’s affliction could be hereditary?

Captain Vanstone has retreated to his airship almost permanently, and the children are a pattern of perfection. They even spend their evenings in the practice of close harmony singing, which disturbs me mightily, as it would any rational human.

Diana stalks about the place like a wild cat. Maybe the captain is correct, and she is as mad as Uncle Ridgewell, which would mean this astral conjunction of hers cannot but bode ill for the rest of us. I have heard of such things before—individuals so consumed by their sense of imagined danger that they are themselves the danger. The truth is, as little as I actually care for them, I do feel some duty to protect the family. Though I am uncertain what precisely is within my power to do for them. But, then, Diana neither lives in an airship, nor has run through the woods in the middle of a storm (or, perhaps, only I did that . . .), which frankly puts her far ahead of the rest of us in the sanity stakes.

And I feel her regard. Truthfully, I would like to feel more than that. Ahem. She has not tried to warn me away again. I do not know whether to be disappointed or the reverse. Our conversations are, for the most part, regrettably brief. She is often to be found in the library, poring over strange leather-bound tomes, sometimes late into the night.

As you know, I am nothing if not resourceful, so I resolved to feign some accidental meeting, in hopes of learning something of what she sought here or believed she could prevent. It was dim and silent in the library, and the gas lamps plucked at the brightness woven through her hair. She was magnificent, Miriam, quite magnificent. At my approach, she bundled up her papers protectively and sprawled back in her chair, so enticing and unladylike.

“I . . . I could not sleep,” I said as best I could, my throat having gone dry.

She raised her brows. “And you thought of me?”

“No. I came in search of a book. An improving one.”

“To lull yourself into a stupor?”

I could not help but smile a little. “Something like that.”

I stepped further into the room, wishing suddenly for my pretty underlinens instead of my terribly serviceable nightgown and equally serviceable dressing gown, and idly turned over one of the papers on her desk. “And what is it that occupies you so late into the night?”

Her hand came down atop mine. “Oh no, Miss Grey. If it’s distraction you seek, you’ll have to settle for a different kind.”

The next thing I knew, she had tumbled me boldly into her lap as though I were some wanton tavern wench. It was thrilling. She was as warm as summer days the like of which I had half forgotten, and she smelled of sweet, spicy things, womanly and rich. I could feel quite shocking intimacies, such as the flex of muscles beneath some better-not-named parts of me, and the places where the strong curves of her body turned yielding against my own. She plunged her hands into my unbound hair and dragged me down against her mouth.

I have never been handled so. The sheer assurance of it.

It turned me all to honey, warm and bright.

To think I squandered so many fantasies on a skypirate in tall boots, when instead I could have been dreaming of some sun-touched, whip-wielding potential murderess with rough hands and knowing eyes and a mouth of velvet and lies.

“This . . . this is inappropriate,” I said, when I had the breath for it. Which took some little time.

“You mean because we are women?”

Somehow in the heat of the moment, I had allowed her knee to insinuate itself into an unmentionable region. And there it rocked, and pressed, and tormented me, and made me wild with the sweetness of its movements. “No,” I gasped. “Because you m-murdered my uncle.”

Truthfully, at that precise moment, it bothered me far less than perhaps it should. But I have always known I was secretly an unseemly creature.

She stilled, and, in the intensity of physical disappointment, I could not suppress a whimper. “Now see here, my dear. I was very fond of Ridge. I didn’t murder him.”

“Oh, good.” I wriggled in the hope of galvanising her again to motion.

“Now, obviously I discharged my shotgun into the fellow, but I didn’t murder him. I just happened to kill him.”

Her hands had somehow crept beneath the neck of my nightgown and lay naked against my equally naked skin. They touched nowhere of any great note, but where they alighted they seemed to ignite a strange and sensuous magic, as though I had been a stranger to my own self all these years. Is that not odd and a little marvellous? Well, it felt marvellous. Sufficiently marvellous that it took me a moment to heed what she had said to me, and even when I did, I was worryingly disinclined to care.

“I, ah, I am uncertain of the nuances of that particular distinction.”

“It was a mercy killing. He’d lost it, Jane. They’d got into his head. By the time we tracked him down, it was too late to save him, too late to do anything except, you know, put him down like a rabid dog. In a respectful way. Fellow was as mad as a box of noodles.”

My name in her mouth, oh my name in her mouth, like a sweet to be sucked upon and lavished.

(And poor Uncle Ridgewell.)

“That much was clear.”

She gazed at me, frowning slightly, and her eyes were all the untrammelled promises of the sky. “What do you know of this?”

And perhaps it was wrong of me, but I wanted to hear her say my name again, wanted her hands upon me more, wanted to taste her mouth afresh, wanted, wanted, wanted. So I said, “Nothing.”

And, thus, she pulled me close, and growled, yes, she growled my name, and it sent a delicious shiver all the way down my spine. She said it often in the hours that followed (yes, Miriam, hours), as though it were a song sung to all the places of my flesh, and I sang back, wordless and heedless with undreamed ecstasy.

I remain,

Your deliriously pleasured Jane

Dear Miriam,

Mrs. Smith is dead.

Diana found her body in the temple in the woods, her throat slit, her blood spilling over the symbols etched into the stonework and daubed into grotesque patterns all around her.

Everything has been cast into uproar, as you can surely imagine.

Captain Vanstone blames Diana, and I don’t know what Diana thinks. They had the most appalling row, screaming at each other, right in front of the children and the servants and everyone. I think he would have struck her had she not caught his hand and forced his quiescence. And then he wept, and she held him, and we were all utterly mortified.

But I believe his incoherence contained some centre of truth: that it all begins again.

And it is troubling, is it not, that Diana’s visit should coincide with yet another murder? Or perhaps she would say mercy killing. I wonder if the incalculable delights of physical intimacy have led me further astray than I realised. But the deer, the deer was sacrificed before Diana arrived. Except only I saw the deer. Perhaps there was no deer.

I am feeling once again entangled in my own thoughts and memories and dreams. Has it always been so difficult to distinguish between them? Sometimes I almost believe that the vile starless city of my nightmares is not, after all, a dream, but merely somewhere else I am at night.

In some ways, it is almost a relief about Mrs. Smith. Not, I hasten to add, that the woman has been horribly butchered and her corpse defiled, but that . . . it is a thing that has certainly and most definitely occurred. Except now that I write that, I find myself wondering . . . I do not recall dreaming last night. Nor was I with Diana.

Miriam, where was I?

Oh God. Oh God oh God. Oh God.

I had to put my letter aside to attend some household matters, and they have served a purpose in calming my spirits. I believe I may have to accept the very real possibility that whatever madness came upon my Uncle Ridgewell has either transferred itself to me, or naturally developed, perhaps as a consequence of this astral conjunction Diana mentioned.

You see, Diana made some sketches of the hieroglyphics that were inscribed in Mrs. Smith’s blood on the stone, and, somehow, I know not how, but I can read them. They are an invocation to a being whose name I am uncertain how to render in the English alphabet and instinctively flinch from doing.

How could I know that, had I not been responsible for them? Oh, what should I do? What should I do?

I am perhaps not,

Your Jane

My dear Miriam,

I know it hardly seems possible, but since my last letter, events still stranger and darker have come to pass. And while I may not—as yet—be a murderer, I am no longer certain of . . . of myself, and the boundaries of my mind.

There are universes, cold and vast, caught at the corners of my eyes like unshed tears. Spaces between my thoughts, flecked with the fleeting iridescence of a thousand dying worlds.

We are nothing.

A disregarded dream of long-dead gods.

I went to Diana, and told her everything: my uncle’s journals, the dreams, the symbols I somehow knew how to read, the deer and the confusion of my memories. I truly expected that she would repudiate me as something monstrous or possibly riddle me with shot as she had Uncle Ridgewell, but she merely took me in her arms and let me rest there awhile, sheltered. I could have wept at the kindness of it, but I am not yet so undone as to take on in such an absurd fashion. Besides, I have never mastered the art of crying gracefully, and while I was just about able to bear revealing the extent of what is perhaps my madness to her, I was certainly not prepared to do so with swollen eyes and a red nose.

I may be an unwitting channel to the unspeakable creatures that dwell in the aether, but I have my pride!

At last, when I was quite ready, she let me pull away. “What am I to do?” I asked.

She looked grave, but thankfully, still not inclined to shoot me in the face. “Only one thing for it, my dear.”

Which is how I came to find myself tied to the bed that evening. I suppose it was entirely practical, and infinitely preferable to the alternative, which was me rampaging about the woods in a state of delirious blood hunger, sacrificing members of the household to malignant unknown deities. But it felt very strange indeed. As did Diana’s facility with rope.

Her eyes grew somewhat slumberous as she beheld me like that. She had given me such looks before, usually at moments preceding intimacy. I confess, it made being secured in such a way far more pleasurable than it had any right to be.

Rather less pleasurable was the fact she had brought her shotgun. Hardly the ménage à trois of a girl’s dreams, is it? Not that one dreams of such things. Ahem.

I tugged a little on my bonds to test them. They seemed quite secure. “Now what?”

“We wait.” Diana pulled the chair away from my dressing table, spun it round, and—for lack of a better term—mounted it, resting her elbows on the back. I quivered desirously, but alas, there was little I could do about it in my present state. “And do stop wriggling like that. You’re distracting me.”

“Wriggling? You mean, like this?”

“Jane!” Oh, how I adored the growl in her voice.

Really, it is just my beastly luck that I should encounter such a woman while in the grip of an aetherworldly possession. I remember feeling quite peeved about it as I lay there. While, of course, also regretting the deaths I had caused while under the control of my . . . distemper.

“Do you think,” I enquired, “that you might at least enlighten me as to your involvement in this matter?”

“I was trying to keep you out of it.”

“A little late for that, is it not?”

She gave me a rueful look. “Good point, well made. There’s not much of a story, Jane. This is simply what I do.”

“You tie respectable governesses to beds?”

“No, that’s just a hobby. I’m an investigator of occult mysteries. So was Ridge, before it all got too much for him, poor bugger.”

“And the accountant and the priest?”

“Friends of ours. Same deal.”

I was silent a moment. “How on earth do you get into something like that? I was told I had to either get married or become a governess.”

“You just sort of become aware of things, at the edges of the world, beyond the sky, between the stars, seeping through your dreams. And then you decide to do something about them.” She shrugged, slightly self-consciously. “I was lucky because I met Ridge. Man was a genius before he, well, before he wasn’t any more. He’d spent a lifetime studying these mysteries. I just shoot things, you know.”

“What exactly happened to him?”

“What happens to all of us. Sooner or later.”

“Ah.”

“He picked up some kind of foul idol from somewhere or other, thought he could handle it. He couldn’t. God knows what kind of hideous entity he might have summoned with it if we hadn’t stopped him.”

“You know it has been transferred to the British Museum for study?”

“Finch and Father Dominic will take care of it.”

“The priest and the accountant?”

She nodded. And I suppose I ought to have rejoiced that at least some proportion of these peculiar happenings was beginning to make some kind of sense to me.

“But,” I went on, “this does not explain Vanstone Hall.”

She ran her hands through her hair, making the strands fly about her face in disarray. I so itched to smooth them. “Nothing bloody explains Vanstone Hall.”

“Did you murder Mrs. Vanstone?”

“No, I did not!”

“Did you . . . commit an action towards her, for example the discharging of your shotgun, which caused her, as a consequence, to die?”

“No, damn it, no. Eight years ago, give or take, Ridge and I came to investigate. This place has always been dashed strange, you know. Anyway, he found this old temple deep in the woods, which he said was most likely the source. So we did one of his rituals to seal it up, and when we got back to the house the next morning, Mrs. V. was just . . . gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Absent. Vanished. Not even a pool of blood or a scorch mark on the floor.”

“Oh my heavens.”

“Ridge had a couple of theories. Either whatever the temple was dedicated to had a hold on her, and an innocent woman was sucked into a hellish aetherworld as a result of the ritual. Or, ah, she wasn’t. Any of those things. It’s been somewhat on my mind, I can’t deny it. I’ve been all over the world looking for information on that damn temple, and I’ve found precisely bugger all.”

“But you returned? Does that mean you know something now?”

She shook her head. “I’m here to fix the wards. Ridge told me they have to be renewed every eight years or so. But this was his area, not mine. Frankly, I don’t have a bloody clue what I’m doing. But I have to try.”

“And when you have . . . done that . . . I will be . . . myself again?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Most likely. Maybe. You never know.”

It was not as encouraging as I might have wished, but it was the closest thing to hope I have experienced in a long time, as warm as the touch of her lips.

The hours passed slowly, as perhaps they are wont to do when you are immobile, but somehow Diana and I found intriguing ways to pass the time. Parlour games and such like. I think I must have slept a little in the early hours, for the sun awoke me, stiff and weary, but still—as far as I could tell—myself.

Diana had watched me the whole night through.

“Does this mean I am safe?” I could not quite keep the joy from my voice.

“Not entirely, Jane.” She frowned. “It just means nothing happened last night.”

“You mean we are obliged to do this again?”

She gave me another of her slumberous, leonine looks. “I’m afraid so.”

I hid a smile. “I shall endeavour to endure it with equanimity.”

“Oh now, equanimity really isn’t necessary.”

Unfortunately, this pleasant interlude was interrupted by a terrible shriek. Diana pulled a bowie knife from her boot and severed my bonds, and since we were for the most part dressed, we dashed together towards the source of the disturbance.

It was another body, this time in the conservatory, and the scream had come from the servant who had discovered it.

Oh Miriam, it was not like the temple. There was nothing ritualistic about it, nothing sacrificial. It was just . . . the foulest slaughter. I could not, for some moments, recognise amidst the blood and gore and riven flesh Ralph, the stableboy. He was naked and partially devoured and yet—I hardly know how to say it—still somehow in a state of advanced priapism.

It was the first time I had ever beheld an unclad man, albeit a young one, for I believe he was just seventeen, going on eighteen. It was probably not a time for such musing, but I confess I was a little startled at the preferences of what seems to be the majority of my sex.

I mean, really? With that? What on earth does one do with it? Other than point and laugh, that is. Actually, perhaps I would prefer you did not tell me. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.

While Ralph’s fate may have solved some mysteries—it seems unlikely it was me, after all, which gladdens my heart—it has only proliferated others. I asked Diana if she had ever seen such a thing before, and she said, “Oh yes, all the time,” but the fact remains that his death is notable in its dissimilarity to the previous ones. The others gave the impression of being purposeful acts. This seemed . . . impassioned.

It has, of course, crossed my mind that Diana could have slipped from my side at any point during the night. But while she may have had opportunity, I can envisage no motivation.

Abigail, you may recall, is the only member of the household with any sort of connection to Ralph, the startlingly blond stableboy. Which suggests that at least one of the children is a lust-crazed cannibalistic monstrosity.

You know, I should probably finish this letter, and do something about it.

I remain,

Your loving Jane

My dearest Miriam,

As you can probably tell from receipt of this letter, I have not been devoured, or lost beyond space and time. I am quite well, actually. I hope this will not prevent you from enjoying the thrilling climax of the Mystery of Vanstone Hall.

As for the other matter: surely you jest. I simply cannot and will not believe it. No sensible woman would permit such a thing.

I went immediately to Diana with my suspicions about Abigail and she said, “Egad!” and reached immediately for her shotgun. This concerned me because, even if I was entirely correct, it would have perhaps been difficult to explain to the captain, and for that matter the authorities, why we had gunned down seven children.

We therefore resolved to speak with Captain Vanstone before proceeding further and made haste for his airship. Inside, there was significant disarray—papers across the floor, instruments overturned—and no sign of the captain at all.

Diana sorted through the carnage with the toe of her boot. “I fear the worst.”

I hardly knew what to fear yet. We ran back to the house, calling for the children, but they were gone as well. Diana cursed.

At the very least, it confirmed my theory that they were most probably evil.

It also explained somewhat my aversion to them, although I had attributed that to my general dislike of young people. However, that did not explain what they would want with their father.

“At a wild guess,” said Diana, as she hung her whip on her belt, “they want to sacrifice him in some depraved and blasphemous ritual to awaken whatever monstrous horror we sealed in the temple the first time round.”

“Then we should hurry.”

“Take this. Picked it up in America.” She pressed a very small pistol into my hand. “Won’t be much use, but it’ll give you something to do while you’re being devoured.”

“Oh, but I have never—”

“Point that end at the villain, pull the trigger.”

“Yes, but where should I—”

She unceremoniously pulled up my skirts and slipped the tiny thing beneath the band of my stocking top. It was terribly shocking and exciting, and I had to remind myself that lives were in danger, otherwise I would surely have behaved quite immodestly.

It is such a pleasant feeling to be armed, Miriam, I cannot begin to tell you.

Thus prepared, we made for the woods. As soon as we left the house, it became evident something was wrong. I know I have complained before of the weather in Cornwall, but its unpleasantness has so far never encompassed a sickly black-green vortex pulsating in the sky like a gangrenous wound.

Diana cursed again, even more colourfully than the last time, and we fought our way through the trees towards the temple.

Such an extraordinary sight awaited us. The children had formed a ritual circle and were chanting together in that harsh alien tongue I must confess is no longer wholly unintelligible to me. Captain Vanstone, as naked as Ralph had been, though significantly less stirred by his situation, was chained between two pillars, his expression somewhat dazed, either as a consequence of whatever method they had used to subdue him initially, or simply from the shock of his current circumstances.

Diana levelled her shotgun, but I put out a hand to prevent her and stepped forwards. Sometimes all young people require is a stern word.

“Children,” I said firmly, “what on earth is this nonsense? Unchain Captain Vanstone, and return to the house at once.”

Benjamin turned to face me. His eyes were disconcertingly dark, as black as Mrs. Vanstone’s in her portrait. “We don’t want to. And we’re not going to unchain father because we’re offering him up as a sacrifice.”

I put my hands on my hips. “To whom are you sacrificing your father?”

He blinked at me as though it was the most ridiculous of questions. “Why, to Mother, of course.”

“We want her back,” added Grace, in her grating girlish lisp. “The bad man took her away from us. We mith her.”

“And Father doesn’t care about us,” said David plaintively. “Not one jot. He spends all his time in that beastly airship.”

I have never believed in the efficacy of lying to children. “Well, yes, but that is not necessarily a reason to use him as part of some hideous ceremony.” Even to my own ears, it seemed a weak argument.

“Yeth, it is.”

Captain Vanstone stirred and groaned softly.

Abigail shrugged. “And Mother can’t come back otherwise.”

“And we like Mother betht.”

“We want our mother back!”

I cleared my throat. “Your mother is very probably an aetherworldly monstrosity from beyond space and time.”

At that moment, the sky burst open like rotten fruit. There was a swirl of aether and broken stars, the scent of decaying flesh and something sticky-sweet like overripe lilies sweeping over us in a savage tide, and Mrs. Vanstone appeared in the temple. She stood on two legs like a human, though her feet were cloven and thickly curled with coarse dark fur, and she was about three times as tall as even Captain Vanstone, who was himself a tall gentleman. As in her portrait, she had glistening black eyes and curling black hair, although I did not recollect the immense, wickedly sharp goatish horns protruding from her brow. She was also quite naked, which displayed her quite startling collection of attributes: more than I presume the average quantity of breasts and between her legs, well, let us simply accept that both Captain Vanstone and Ralph the stableboy were as minnows to a shark in comparison to the vast, swaying, and aether-dripping appendage that nestled there.

She snatched up Captain Vanstone and . . .

Oh, I cannot write it. And when she was done, she ate him.

Too late, Diana overcame her horror and took the opportunity to discharge both barrels of her shotgun directly at the abomination. The children cried out in dismay—their voices still harmonising eerily—and Mrs. Vanstone uttered a noise of utterly inhuman fury, deep wounds bursting across her torso, spilling oily fluid onto the floor of the temple.

She wheeled round and . . . and exploded. Out of her own body into something of such unspeakable otherness my pen can barely find words to describe it: an amorphous eddy of cloudy darkness, shifting through shadowy forms each more hideous than the last, and every one a mass of writhing tentacles, slime-disgorging mouths, thrashing goat legs, scything claws, glinting teeth, and other leaking protuberances I prefer not to recall.

The children, also, began to transform, twisting into horrifying, tar-black atrocities, seemingly composed of ropey tentacles, flaky bark, and puckering orifices. They stood on cloven-hooved feet, and where once their heads had been were now masses of undulating tentacles, groping at the air like seeking fingers.

“Oh God,” said Diana. “We’re fucked.”

“I will hope,” I returned, “for merely killed.”

She had, by this time, reloaded her shotgun and fired it fruitlessly at the creature that now confronted us. One of its tentacles swept down and knocked it from her hands, then twisted sinuously about her throat and tossed her across the temple as though she were weightless, meaningless.

Some prehensile part of it best left unconsidered snatched me up. Multiple eyes, all black, all glistening, all reflecting the infinitesimal smallness of me, burst open across the seething surface.

For a moment, we simply regarded each other. The children were laughing.

I understand struggling may be deemed rather unladylike, but under the circumstances, I hope I may be forgiven for my lapse in decorum. I writhed and thrashed and kicked, but all to no avail. The monstrous creature tightened its grip upon me, crushing the breath from my body like a particularly ill-advised corset, and began to drag me inexorably towards something I sincerely hoped to be its maw.

Finding some islet of clarity amidst my growing apprehension, I suddenly recalled the pistol Diana had given me. I was obliged to perform a movement with my leg that would have been far more suited to the music halls of Paris, but I wriggled a hand beneath my skirts and managed to liberate the derringer. I aimed as best I could, and fired straight at the closest eye. I confess I had hoped for something more dramatic: the retort was practically inaudible, and the bullet itself nothing but a streak of light, devoured almost immediately by darkness.

A few aether-thick tears gathered upon the already viscous surface, and through the tiny puncture wound I caught a glimpse of a fallen city, endless and eternal beneath a broken sky.

I took the opportunity to scream.

I assure you, Miriam, it was a perfectly rational thing to do. I thought it might rouse Diana, but twisting round, I saw her sprawled where she had fallen, apparently insensible.

The former Mrs. Vanstone pulled me closer still, overwhelming me with the stench of death and rust, and a deep, undeniable terror. I truly believed it was my own death I beheld in those infinity-stricken eyes.

I think it spoke. Perhaps not to me. But what it expressed was almost in itself incomprehensible, a sense of ceaseless and almost careless malignance so far beyond the time-bound simplicities of mere human hate.

My head was full of cracks, and through them came a rush of voices, all speaking impossible tongues. The symbols from the idol and Uncle Ridgewell’s journal burned behind my eyes.

I do not know how to explain it, but it was as though I stood between two mirrors, catching glimpses of two worlds in the reflection between them: one a ruined temple in the depths of Cornwall, the other a starless, aether-streaked infinity.

It was unencompassable, but somehow I encompassed it. I . . . I was changed. Shattered into something . . . else. So many pieces, so many pieces, so much more than I was before. The formed object is itself alone, but the unformed is all things because it is nothing. I can be anything. For I have been unformed. I answered her.

I stared deep into the boundless emptiness of her eyes and answered.

And when I spoke, it was in a voice of ages, in words I knew but did not know. And the kraken heard me. Listened, and understood, and—yes, yes—now she feared me.

She dashed me to the ground, her misshapen shadow falling across me like the end of the world, but it was too late, for the aether had me now. It was in me, part of me, it was me.

Finding my feet again, I reached up into the sky and cracked it wide. I forced the creature into a maelstrom of my making, and thrust it back, screaming and struggling, to the city where its ilk lie dreaming.

I banished it, and the children too. I tore them from our world and sent them back to their own. And then I sealed the sky and the temple both, with my words, and hands, and blood, and the deep, dark power of the aether.

And then . . . And then . . .

“Jane.”

Diana’s voice sounded so strange to me, her language a feeble, fleeting thing, soft edged like the creatures who use it. These words will not last. They have no power.

“Jane. My God, Jane, your eyes.”

And then I must have fainted, which was somewhat troubling as I never faint.

But I do believe I saved the day. Is that not quite gratifying?

I remain,

Your loving Jane

Miriam,

Of course there is nothing to worry about. While I agree that speaking in the tongues of monsters is not entirely normal, neither was the ingress into Cornwall of what Diana called an antediluvian fertility deity from ruined worlds beyond the aether. I really do think you could show me a little more consideration, under the circumstances.

And, no, I do not need to see a doctor. The laudanum is quite sufficient, thank you.

Furthermore, if you found portions of my letter difficult to comprehend, perhaps you should pay closer attention.

Jane

My dear Miriam,

Thank you for your apology. I do understand that you were merely expressing your concern for me, but I assure you, while I was not, at times, perhaps myself during my sojourn at Vanstone Hall, that is all over now.

However, my future is once again thrown into uncertainty. Since Captain Vanstone was violated and eaten before my very eyes, and his children banished to a hellish aetherworld with their mother, I am once again without employment, without references and, worse still, without salary, for there was no one to reimburse me for my work with the Vanstone children. While I suppose some consideration should be given to the fact they were cannibalistic tree-beings from beyond space and time, they had an excellent grasp of Latin irregular verbs which was entirely due to my diligence.

I confess I had entertained some hopes that Diana would . . . oh I do not know what hopes I entertained. I thought perhaps that I could accompany her on her world-spanning occult adventures. I would dearly love to see Madagascar, and I have been practicing with my derringer so that I can now strike a target in whatever region I wish from approximately ten yards away.

It is an activity I find most satisfying.

But, truthfully, Diana was not the same after our ordeal in the temple. I fear it changed her perception of me in some way, and she no longer liked me as she did before. She tried to hide it at first, but I could see the truth. When she looked at me, it was as though she was searching always for the monsters behind my eyes. I was saddened, at first, but thankfully this sadness has been supplanted by annoyance at her abandonment of me, which is an emotion I find considerably easier to accommodate (and have had significantly more practice in accommodating, as the world annoys me quite a lot of the time).

So I find myself again in London. How much has changed in a mere six months of absence. At least, I feel they have changed. People are grown very strange and uncommonly suspicious. The only kind word I have had from anyone since my return has been from the young lady who runs the establishment where I have been obliged to take lodgings. As a matter of fact, her kindness has extended considerably beyond words, and I am most grateful.

It is a welcome reminder that Diana—oh, faithless coward—was not so special, nor so grand. Florence can do something very similar with her tongue. So . . . dilberries to it, or on her, or to her, or something like that. I forget the exact turn of phrase. It is one of Florence’s. Colourful, is it not? I am getting quite an education at her hands. Quite an education.

I was a fool to be so infatuated with Diana. I see that now. I do. If only my heart would similarly see reason. Stupid, wilful, wayward organ. What use are you?

And I do wish people would stop acting so peculiarly in my presence. So few will look me in the eye, others edge away from me, and only yesterday as I approached her with a penny—at least, I think it was a penny—an orange seller dropped her basket and ran off screaming down a busy thoroughfare. She was promptly trampled to death by a horse, which is, of course, very sad, but surely to be expected if one is too busy succumbing to a primeval and fathomless dread of a bleak, indifferent universe to look where one is going.

It should be evident to anyone that I am quite well, entirely normal, and in control of all my faculties. Admittedly, I am still troubled by visions of a fallen city, and yes, I sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between your feeble, insignificant human language and the wild, mad tongues of the kraken, but I banished the beast, I did not summon it. Nor would I do such a thing, though I feel them stirring in their slumbers, and dream with them their dead god dreams. F’neh c’narthan plergh flargthn. Ph’nafh n’lngh wgaglthn. F’neh c’narthan plergh flargthn. Ph’nafh n’lngh wgaglthn. F’neh c’narthan plergh flargthn. Ph’nafh n’lngh wgaglthn.

I remain,

Your loving Jane

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Glitterland

Glitterland: Aftermath (Free download)

Sand and Ruin and Gold

Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator series

Iron & Velvet

Shadows & Dreams

Prosperity series

Prosperity

There Will Be Phlogiston

Coming soon

Waiting for the Flood (March 2015)

For Real (June 2015)

Pansies (September 2015)

Looking for Group (November 2015)

Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the twenty-first century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.

He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune-teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.

He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a seventeenth-century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.

He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.

Website: quicunquevult.com

Twitter: @quicunquevult

Goodreads: goodreads.com/alexishall

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