He cleared his throat and tried again but discovered that he had forgotten how to speak. He never had had time for love. Correction: he had never made time for love, not with his mother’s illness, then training and serving as an officer in the Royal Ornithopter Corps. He had seen what his father had done to his mother, deceived her, leaving her broken. She had lived the rest of her days in a strange madness, driven insane by her shattered heart. He could not stomach the thought of her in Bedlam, so he had cared for her, vowing never to let love do that to him. After she passed, he chose to stay away from women and focus on his military career. When the Ministry had plucked him from the ROCs ranks, he had met Agent Braun. Since that day, his thoughts often went to where they should not. Eliza was a fine agent, a fine woman, but this lady standing before him made even Eliza Braun appear ordinary. He had never beheld such beauty.

  “Yes?” the woman said after a moment.

  Simon woke from his daze and snatched his black bowler from his head. Clamped in white-knuckled fists, he held it to his chest and bowed to her. “Agent Simon R. Boswell at your service, madam.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir? Whom do you represent?”

  “I represent Her Majesty’s interests,” was all he was permitted to say to civilians. “You reported a haunting, ma’am?”

  “Oh yes, forgive my rudeness. Do come in.”

  “Thank you.” After picking up his attaché case, Simon stepped inside, careful to keep his eyes anywhere but on her, silently chiding himself for being such a school boy. After all, he had gone through extensive training to be an officer for the ROC, then an agent for the Ministry, and such thoughts are not becoming. “Get a hold of yourself, man,” he mumbled to himself as Mrs. Honeywood closed the door.

  Tucking the bowler under his arm, he set his case down, then pulled his notebook out of his breast pocket, looking around the house. “Do tell me the nature of your haunting, Mrs. Honeywood.”

  “Well, as I told the police, it happens mostly at night. I’m here alone, Agent Boswell, and I have not slept well in months. I am quite weary of this torment, and I do wish it to end.”

  “Of course, ma’am. The Ministry will do all it can. What types of disturbances at night?”

  “Strange sounds. Thumping in the walls. Furniture moving around. I can hear it, Agent Boswell. I can hear him speaking to me.”

  “Him?” Simon asked, looking at her for the first time since entering. As any good military man, he could compartmentalise if he focused hard enough. He would just have to put his feelings aside for this investigation. It was improper, after all.

  “Yes. My husband. He talks to me as if he is still here. Whispers things.”

  “Indeed.” Simon finished taking his preliminary notes and put the notebook back in his pocket.

  “I must sound mad, don’t I?”

  That made him look up from his notebook. He gave Mrs. Honeywood a pleasant smile. “Tosh. The Ministry specializes in such matters, so please, do continue. Spare no details.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You specialise in this? How many hauntings have you investigated, Agent Boswell?”

  Simon closed his notebook. “Would you be so kind as to show me around, Mrs. Honeywood? To get a general sense of the place. You can tell me more about your situation as we go, shall we?”

  He looked around for a place to hang his hat and decided to set it atop the polished wood bannister.

  “How very rude of me, Agent Boswell. Please, allow me to take that for you. And your attaché case?”

  As he offered her his bowler, her cold hand brushed his, causing goose-pimples to climb up his arm, across his torso, and downward. Clearing his throat and regaining focus, he again averted his eyes from her and opened his case, removing the Spectral Gaussmeter and Thermal Imager before handing her the case, careful not to touch her hand this time. Must minimize the distractions.

  “This way,” Mrs. Honeywood said, leading Simon up the stairs.

  As he climbed, he strapped the Spectral Gaussmeter to his left wrist and pulled the thermal imaging goggles over his head, propping them up on his forehead.

  “Tell me more about your experiences, Mrs. Honeywood. You lost your husband, your children?”

  “Yes.”

  The catch in her throat did not go unnoticed. “Forgive my bluntness, ma’am. It must be a painful subject for you, but it is essential that I understand your situation.”

  “Of course, Agent Boswell. Anything you need.” Her soft voice floated into Simon’s ears and settled in his heart. This poor woman had known so much pain, losing her husband and two children. Simon wanted to help her ease her torment. Judging from her inky dress, she was still in mourning over two years later. “It started after a dig in Africa. My husband was an archaeologist, you see. Finest in his field, some would say.”

  She led him down the hallway and into a room lit by a single gaslamp on the bedside table. It could have been his mother’s room, everything draped in rosy tones and lace.

  “Here are where most of the disturbances happen. Like I said, mostly at night.”

  Simon pulled the goggles over his eyes and scanned the room while she continued with her story. No hot spots. Nothing lingering in the still air.

  “Upon return from Africa, he was...different. Before, he had been such a kind man, but after, his moods were often surly. He drank Scotch by the bottle, rarely had touched the poison before. And he was cruel. To me and the children. We became afraid of him, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He must have brought some disease back because he just started withering away. Quite literally, Agent Boswell. And the children caught it as well. They went first, of course, being so small. But my Howard did not last much longer. The doctors, once they saw him, wouldn’t even treat him. Too afraid of contagion, you see.”

  Simon adjusted the goggles’ side gears, tuning the lenses for maximum sensitivity, and scanned the room again before lifting them off his eyes. “There’s nothing here now.” He looked down as the gaussmeter on his arm and walked around the room slowly, but it also showed no reading. “No. Nothing. Anywhere else?”

  “Here is where he whispers to me. All night. Every night. He whispers dreadful things to me. Horrible, improper things, Agent Boswell. Not befitting a gentleman. Not even to his wife.”

  “I regret that you must endure such things, Mrs. Honeywood.”

  “Yes. So do I. Down the other end of the hallway that was the children’s room. I hear them playing sometimes. At first I thought it was my imagination, just a mother’s grief playing tricks, you see. But it is quite more than that.” She wrapped her hand around his wrist. Her hold was gentle, yet desperate. “You do believe me, don’t you Agent Boswell?”

  Her chill receded the longer he held him. He wanted to pull her close, reassure her that he would make it right. There was no evidence, but the conviction in her voice—and now her touch—was very real.

  Simon remained the consummate professional. “Let’s have a look in the children’s room.”

  It was must be just as they had left it. Two miniature beds. A ragdoll on one and a wooden top on the other. Only the daylight coming through a small window lit the dark room. He turned back to Mrs. Honeywood and saw her wipe a tear away with a white, lace-trimmed handkerchief.

  “They would not even let me bury my children properly, in a churchyard. We had--I had to bury them in the garden. Howard was too weak, which left me to dig their graves. I had to dig my own children’s graves, Agent Boswell!”

  “Dear lady, what horrors you have known. Have you no other family? Why did you remain here?”

  “There was no where else to go. My family was my whole world, you see. And I buried each of them alone. Just out there.” She pointed to the window.

  Simon peered out into the grey day and down to the garden below. He could distinctly make out three mounds: one longer than the other two. He forgot himself as the images pelted his mind: this lovely woman with a shovel by moonlight, wailing to the darkness in her agony. Now she lived here alone, trapped forever in this nightmare.

  “Anything here?” Mrs. Honeywood asked.

  Agent Boswell cleared his throat and pulled the goggles down to hide his own tears. He scanned the room but saw nothing.

  “Anything?” she asked again.

  He was just about to make his apologies, telling her they would try again after sunset, when she normally heard the sounds. When he turned to her, he saw two figures: her petite frame and a larger one behind her, arms outstretched toward her throat. Stumbling backward, Simon lost his balance and fell onto the little girl’s bed, upsetting the rag doll.

  He jerked off the goggles. Only the lady remained.

  “Is everything all right, Agent Boswell?”

  “Just there,” he said, pointing. “There was something just there. Did you feel anything, Mrs. Honeywood? Any chill or a cold rush of air?”

  “Cold? Yes. All day, every day. I cannot ever get warm, not since that horrible night. I always feel cold.”

  Simon wanted nothing more than to protect this sweet lady from these horrors, horrors that he now knew were present. He moved toward her and said, “We must leave this house immediately.” But before he could reach her, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end and the horrid stench of death itself filled the room. Mrs. Honeywood was flung backward into the hallway, as if someone was dragging her from the waist. She screamed and the door slammed between them.

  “Simon!” she shrieked.

  “Florence! I’m coming!” Simon turned the knob and pulled with all his might, but the door wouldn’t budge. Crashing sounds came from the hallway with more cries from the lady. Then, just as suddenly as it started, silence. He flung the door open and found Mrs. Honeywood sitting against the wall, hugging herself and weeping. Running to her, he gathered her up in his arms and held her close. Her thin body seemed to disappear in the protection of his embrace.

  “I have all the evidence I need,” he said as he moved her to the stairs. Her shivering frame trembled against his chest as he led her down the stairs toward the front door. “Now, I must insist we—” but as he reached for the brass knob, she pulled away.

  “No! I cannot go out there!”

  “Florence, it’s not safe here.”

  “No!” she cried and ran into the adjacent parlour. Simon followed.

  There she sat on the davenport, head in hands, silently sobbing. His heart swelled for her. This poor lady who had experienced such torment for so long. That she hadn’t gone mad was testament to her strength, but perhaps her strength was now spent. Though clearly, the haunting was not part of her madness. He sat next to her and cradled her against him, telling her it would be all right if they could just leave here. That he would return with others and they would perform an exorcism.

  She looked up at him with hope in her eyes. “In truth, sir? Do you think I could leave this place behind?”

  “Yes, dear lady. I shan’t abandon you in this. You will be cared for, if you will let me.” After all, he had some experience in care-taking, and this lady needed him.

  The corners of her mouth turned up into a slight smile that filled Simon’s heart with joy. She licked her full lips and reached for him.

  He closed his mouth over hers, tasting her soft lips. The desire he had buried for the last decade raged inside him. Cupping her cold face in his hands, he deepened the kiss, losing himself in her until a thunderous crash shocked them apart.

  Behind her, the walls oozed blood, staining the flowered wallpaper crimson. Paintings, which had hung on the walls, were now scattered about the floor, surrounded by their broken frames, their eyes looking at Simon. Only at Simon. The furniture, other than the davenport on which they sat, had been upset. The chairs, the tables, in fact, all the furniture in the room was now upside down. Even the marble bust of Aphrodite balanced on its head.

  “It’s my husband! He will not stand for me in the arms of another man, not even from the grave,” she said, pressing herself against him. “Please don’t leave me here alone, Simon. Not now that I’ve found you.” She took his face in to her hands, her eyes welling with tears, and yet insistent. “You could stay here with me, Simon. We could be happy here.”

  The ruby on her choker glowed, pulsating in time with his own heart.

  “Tell me about your necklace, Mrs. Honeywood.”

  Her hand went to the blood red stone at her throat. “This? This was the last gift my husband gave me. He had brought it back from Africa, found on his dig. It’s all I have left of the real him, before he became so cruel. It’s all I have left, Simon.” Her voice so soft, the last few words came out as a whisper.

  Simon took her by the shoulder and looked into her bright green eyes. “Florence, my darling. I think this stone might be binding him to this place. You must allow me to destroy it.”

  “No! It’s all I have left,” she repeated. Both her hands covered her throat, protecting the stone.

  “Please, Florence,” he said, gently taking her hands away from the stone. “Look around. You cannot continue to live in this way. Let go, dear lady. Let go of the past.”

  Silent tears streamed down her pale cheeks, but she nodded, almost imperceptibly. She unfastened the choker from the back and handed it to Simon. He took it from her, then lifted her chin and kissed her again. The stone warmed in his hand, and her lips, so full and soft became hard, dry. He felt her pull away, and when he opened his eyes he did not see his newly found beloved. The thing beside him stared at him with gaping eye sockets and a fiendish grin. Strings of decayed flesh hung from its cheekbones and shreds of black lace swathed its bones. Scrambling away from the corpse, he stumbled toward the door, but it slammed shut. He turned to the empty room and watched Florence disintegrate into dust on the davenport.

  A ghastly howl molested his ears as four spectres rushed at him, two adults and two children. Their phantoms, fleshless jaws open and working up and down, up and down. Their bony arms outstretched.

  He ducked beneath them, grabbed the inverted marble bust, and placed the ruby necklace before him. The ruby smashed with a clap of thunder, rivulets of blood kissing his cheeks. After one final shriek, all was silent. He looked up to see the room once again set to rights.

  The door to the foyer creaked open. Simon did not hesitate.

  The following day at the Ministry, he filled out his report. As events reconstructed themselves on the parchment before him, Simon washed away his mounting grief with shot after shot of Scotch.

  Campbell’s taunts went unheard, and Braun’s curves, unseen.

  A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Tale from the Archives

  A Ruby in Rain

  By Grant Stone

  Season, Winter, 1896

  Lachlan king turned away from the window. "What are you doing?"

  Barry Ferguson momentarily stopped tapping his pencil against the edge of his notebook. "I am," he said, "trying to think of a name. For me."

  "A name?"

  "I was wondering about The Uplifted Boy."

  Since the Ministry had brought the discredited scientist and burglar Spring-Heeled Jack to justice last summer in Liverpool, some of the younger staff had decided they too would like to assume a strange identity. Lachlan thought the new craze for discussion of these so-called 'superb heroes' was a waste of time. Let alone the idea of employees of a secret ministry donning costumes that would make them far more conspicuous. Perhaps that was why they spent so much time discussing the importance of masks. In any case, they tied up the official Ministry telegraph with frivolous discussion. Of course Lachlan had often made use of the telegraph for his correspondence with the members of the Trollope enthusiast society he had helped establish at Oxford. But that could hardly be considered the same thing.

  "I shouldn't think there will be much call for a costumed and pseudonymous stenographer," Lachlan said.

  Ferguson frowned. "Well, no. But with my contraption, I could easily-"

  "Very good, Ferguson," Lachlan said. Ferguson took no offence at being cut off. Presently he resumed his writing.

  Lachlan sighed and watched the lights of Auckland pass by. The carriage was stuffy, but he refused to open the window. The air here may be sweeter than up in Russell, the so-called ‘hell-hole of the Pacific’, but only slightly. He was wearing his best evening formal and did not want it smelling like an open sewer. Earlier in the evening he had been in the foyer of the opera house, waiting for the performance of Ruddigore by Wellington's Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society. Then Ferguson appeared, in brown boots and oilskin, dripping all over the carpet.

  Ferguson had come to the Ministry in an unusual way. There had been some business with sheep in Panmure. The farmer heard a loud explosion and ran to his field to find his animals roasted and Ferguson sitting forlorn and soot-stained with some kind of cannon strapped to his back. Someone in the Ministry saw potential in the young man's dangerous enthusiasms.

  Ferguson was surprised to find that rather than being accommodated in Mt. Eden at the Governor's pleasure, he was offered a desk at the ministry and seventy-five shillings a week. Though Lachlan often took issue with the lad’s manners and dress sense, he had to admit he was a fine stenographer.

  The carriage stopped with a creak and the horses whinnied. "That'll be us," Ferguson said and opened the door. "After you, sir."

  Lachlan stepped into the rain and made his way to the door. Ferguson wrestled a heavy leather trunk from the carriage and followed.

  Lachlan coughed. After several long seconds, the officer at the desk looked up from his Herald. "You're a long way from the opera, mate."

  "And you are a long way from a competent constable from the look of it. I am Lachlan King." The officer appeared half asleep. "From the Ministry. This is my adjunct, Barry Ferguson."

 

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