Cerulean Rust

NOTE: This is the second book in the Rail Legacy series, after AN UNSUBSTANTIATED CHAMBER. If you want that one (and more of this one and beyond): https://www.amazon.com/William-Jackson/e/B00UC38FTI/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0


Prelude:
Eagles Killing Doves


July 27th, 1884
5:12 P.M
Railroad City, Missouri

The smell of victory broiled into an abhorrent stench.
The machine lay dead. At the least it had become only a ruptured mass of junk to the startled Army. Bloodstained and smoking like a horizontal chimney, Steam’s Vassal’s future had been routed. What moments ago had been the glorious giant that saved the Rail more times than anyone could count, now spat blue fluid from lacerated tubes as its steamheart drive sputtered a weak death squeal.
But, what of the pilot? Mayor Samuel Gamaliel Stockwell, hero of the age, master of science, had lost his life. His condition after the battle, after the Gatling fire and alien weapon, was best left to the imaginations of the more macabre.
Hundreds of men in navy blue uniforms with shiny buttons surrounded the machine with bayonets at the ready. These were not the hardened men who had fought Indians and lived to tell the tale. No. These boys were recruited along the route, a long trek begun weeks before in Washington D.C after a man with a talent for generating explosions wrecked an armory in the name of a ‘free paranormal state’. The boys were greener than new grown grass, but they made up their amateur abilities with blind obedience. After all, America would have its seasoned veterans if it had not lost the Red Nations War to the Sons of Red Death, that mechanized confederation of Indian tribes. And wasn’t their leader, Theodore Thunderchild, once an ally of this dead mayor?
The boys gazed into the metallic crater, giving approving head nods at the sight of Stockwell’s destroyed remains. Most developed severe delirium to accompany their vomiting after seeing what a weapon from the stars can do to a man’s body. A deranged few garnered healthy smiles, but quickly ran to stand at attention as a man of age and rank entered the smoking, windblown confusion that, on an ordinary day, was known as Puma Lane.
Sergeant Leopold Powell looked to his men like a cow dog in soldier’s attire. Mean faced, big nosed and short, but the man was even more of a dog when it came to gnawing at a bone, especially a steel bone bearing machineguns and retractable swords. He hopped off of his shadow of a horse, walking with a quick gait while cradling an artificial hand, an old wound bearing very fresh pains.
In thirteen steps he reached the machine and climbed on top, kicking out one of the periscope eyes with his boot heel. For a time he listened to the joyful sound of breaking glass. Powell surveyed the scene, pulling down his wide-brimmed hat with gold tassels to keep the bright sun from his beady eyes. Dust devils whirled about Puma Lane, a short road mainly used by telegraphers for the Capital Rail Line and stagecoach stops. The Corona Coffee Company nearby had its employees shuttered inside at the moment of the incursion. Further down, young soldiers placed a forceful cease and desist to the trains running in and out of the artistically designed Thimble Station. No engines would run to Montreal at two-hundred miles per hour this day.
Tomorrow, Powell would have to comply with the cries of the capitalists, but today was the Army’s day.
In the distance he heard the pops and bangs of gunfire against the energy beams and superior strength of the city’s paranormals. To the ears of Leopold Powell, those were the orchestral music of American Right clashing against the screeching howls of High Treason. Ten percent of a city against the combined might of the newly minted Regular Army and Navy Aerial Corps?
No chance of victory! He thought with an outward expansion of his chest. No sir. Not for them. He’d taken down anything a president and general had asked of him over the years: rebels in the Civil War, Cheyenne in the (once American) West, railroad rioters in Pennsylvania. Unorganized, angry people were the easiest to corral, the fastest to subdue. Powers, talents or whatever they called them in this burg made little difference to the sergeant. Lower your arms, in whatever form they came in, or die. Stockwell wouldn’t comply, came in guns loaded and gargantuan shield at ready on his twenty-foot tall marvel.
And where is the hard-headed mayor now? Under foot.
“Men!” the sergeant yelled across the street. Young boys shuffled and busted heads to form a crowd around the Vassal. Inspections of the dead and wounded would resume later.
“I cannot express my appreciation for your hard work and willingness to follow my orders. After ridding ourselves of the Undying Man two days ago, and proving he can die with enough liquid rubber and fire- - and bullets,” he paused to allow his boys ample time to laugh. They laughed good and well at the recent memory of killing the city’s famous Negro lawman. “We have shown the nation that we can enter this supposedly impregnable establishment and seize control!”
Boys yipped and yelled, Confederate shrieks mingled with roars and hats tossed to the hot sandpaper wind. Leopold allowed them ample time to celebrate. He watched them whoop for joy, release tensions built up from long days on the march and bitter skirmishes. But hopefully, the worst parts were behind them.
Powell raised his hand, the one replaced with an artificial model after the original had been chopped off by a Jicarilla hatchet. The prosthetic bore the small imprint of STOCKWELL & CO. along the wrist attachment. He ignored the irony.
“With only the Spaceman and his Moon bride Ore to stand in our way, I see no reason why victory cannot be achieved by day’s end!”
Overhead, a passing cloudcraft, the Cutlass, cast a scimitar shadow over the gathering soldiers. The largest flying ironclad in the world drifted with barely a sound on a negatrite-induced triple steam boiler. Earlier in the morning, Cutlass bombarded the outer walls of the Canterra Bunker, a scientific establishment built over the hole where the negatrite sphere lay buried, the cause of the nation’s woes.
It had been defended by four sisters, each paranormal. Victory in Violet, the eldest and hands down declared World’s Most Splendid Athlete, led the defense. Her next in line, the Gilded Guise, possessed a body made of condensed liquid, which she could disperse into a boiling cloud and reform at a whim. She proved instrumental in causing great harm to the large ship’s gun crew, causing the captain to send men down in person for the assault. Aerie of Emerald, green and blue hair as long as the day and stretched out like wings, controlled the birds of the sky, even the dreaded Razor Crows, to scatter men as they advanced. The youngest of this quartet, Crimson Aerial with her iron skeleton that grew out as hollow tubes down her spine and forearms, ejected pressurized steam from those tubes to fly faster than the meanest of hawks. These heroines, the Upton Sisterhood, Guild of Honor, gave as good as they got. It had been a tremendous battle, one for the ages, the stars of the ether gone nova.
But the Navy brought with them weapons coated in vulcanized rubber, the bane of paranormal powers. And, at one dollar per round from the notorious but needed Carver Company, proved to be a bane to Congress’ wallet as well. Used effectively, three of four were shot down, their talents diminished to the point of irrelevance. Powerful heroines became mediocre women, confused additionally by sedatives and flashing grenades, weapons made by the same Carver once called villain and jailed by them so many times.
Victory and Aerie were mishandled by a thousand dirty hands, and carted off to die in darkness. Gilded Guise proved harder to thwart, but Carver thought of her anatomy for a long time during his prison stint. Soldiers loaded her weak body into a steel cylinder attached to a boiler. How long could she remain steam and be alive they wondered? Was there a limit to her time as a boiling fog? If so, what was it, and what occurred afterward? Soldiers playing scientist alongside a criminal genius concocted the worst of experiments.
The answer came after one hour and twenty minutes of red hot intensity. A solid thud could be heard in the cylinder. Careful hand opened the door with iron rods. A female body, cooked almost beyond recognition, rolled out at the feet of stunned boys. Within seconds, the corpse deteriorated into so much debris. They probably should have been filled with regret at doing such things to the fairer sex, but the Navy drilled its boys with grudges. During the Red Nations War, these very same women had carte blanche to order ships about. Women ordering men on ships! The United States Navy never forgot the perceived slight.
Powell reminisced on the Upton report, and smiled. What was grander than looking out into the world and smelling victory?
The land smells of power and ruptured intestines. Beautiful.
No more Guild, no more mind boggling stories of villainous foes to fill the dime novel shelves. He would burn down that evil negatrite forest they called the Frontier, cleanse the Midwest of its Blues, and then retire to his secret club with a fine and exceptionally young female.
Through the wind and the stinging dust, cavalry men on horseback charged, dispersing the crowd and Powell’s lusty daydreaming. The leader of this horse-powered ensemble appeared very different from the young, scrawny lads of Powell’s force. This man loomed so large in the saddle that his own steed could barely sustain him. Thick necked and fiery orange eyes stood out under the man’s cavalry hat. The boys knew this was a paranormal soldier, one on their side.
“Colonel North.” The sergeant took one last look into the abyss holding Stockwell’s remains, clutched his stomach, and climbed down. “Have you word on the Runaway?”
Callum Octavian North dismounted while his horse gave an audible whinny of relief. The colonel stomped with every step, more from the man’s compact weight than from an attempt at intimidation. His swagger and size encouraged most of the boys to retreat a few steps. Only the fearless Leopold Powell moved forward.
“Sergeant, my men have line of sight on Alexander Amberson, the Spaceman, and his bride, Queen BH’kheya. He seems to be very distracted, mumbling. I’d reason he’s gone mad, but still took out fifteen of my men with ease.”
Powell considered the report with a rub of his chin. Only the Spaceman and the alien put a chill down his stalactite of a spine. Their powers were an obvious fatal blow to the entire operation if they put their minds to it. So, why weren’t they? Could it be true what they had heard on the road to Railroad City, information gathered by force from Lunite women who stayed on Earth with their human husbands?
“They say,” the sergeant whispered, “that the Lunites lost control of their artificial environment after the Jovians polluted it three years ago. As such, they’ve had to increase their search for a new planet to call home. Some Lunites we apprehended claim a world was found, but too far away to reach before all of their millions of people die of old age.”
North dipped his massive head. “I’ve been told the same in my interrogations. I’m confident Spaceman could get them there. During the Jovian War, I remember Edwin Seer claiming there were no limitations to Amberson’s accomplishments in the absence of space. If that’s true--”
“Then we’ve got them!” Powell yelled through clenched teeth as he slapped North’s granite-like shoulder. Powell mistakenly used his real hand for the action. The sting from hitting such a beast reverberated halfway up his arm. The sergeant passed it off with a partial grimace, before thundering off to gain a hold of his ebony steed.
A double whistle from his dry lips roused the lads to form three columns, kicking up even more dirt. “Alright, boys! Arms up and feet at the ready! We’ve one more battle to fight before it’s done!” The sergeant clutched the hilt of his sword as if he were about to enter a fencing bout, riding the hurt warhorse as best he could down Puma Lane.
Victory would be his.






















Chapter One:
Heat in the City



June 28th, 1887
Railroad City, Missouri
Southwest corner: Old Southern Line Switchyard

“Ow! Grrr!” echoed across the yard, bouncing off the metal hulls of trains.
Engineer Bob Deevers peeked his narrow cranium out the opening of the engine. The railroad cap on his head hung low, making him appear like a denim duck.
“You eh, alright there sonny?” the engineer asked in a voice more suited to an old man than a forty-year old.
The man he questioned crouched by the engine’s wheels stood up to become a very tall figure with huge shoulders, long mangled brown hair and a perfect V-shaped form in tight clothing, the worn black garb of a cowhand. Grease covered him up to the elbows. Aside from seven short scars on his chin, the young man was definitely the cream of the crop of manhood. He also possessed the requisite anger to fit the category.
“Yes Deevers, I’m just fine!” Virgil Stockwell snapped. He slammed a curved metal object to the ground, watching as it sent tiny pieces of sand and gravel flying. “How did you wear out a reverse shaft arm, and the connecting rods? Did you crash into a Stone Bear for crying out loud?” Virgil pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and attempted to wipe black grease from his gorilla hands.
“Old boss man got us running hard, tryin’ ta keep up with your daddy’s Engine Alpha and such on the Capital Line. We push these old trains day and night. Eventually somethins’ gotta give. I see that trip ta Paree didn’t soften you up none.”
Virgil’s head turned toward Bob with the ferocity of a lion guarding its kill. He squinted at the engineer through slits, but the young man’s creamed coffee eye color shone through. Virgil cracked his knuckles, rubbed the back of his neck, and turned to stare at the switchyard.
An artificial realm greeted those special eyes. Not a tree or bush could be seen for hundreds of yards in any direction. There was only the yard and its machinery, the yard and its myriad pieces. Steam whistled as gears turned in grim, bassoon tones while a nearby wheelhouse angled an engine to a different direction. Laid tracks, spare tracks and a plethora of other rusting objects made up the landscape, turning beige earth into pools of dull scarlet, prismatic oil or funeral day black. This corner held little of the natural world.
Cars without windows lined every track like so many iron cocoons. As a boy always fascinated with trains, Virgil used to imagine the cocoons would one day spawn mechanical moths, bright white beauties to fly up to the Moon and awaken the world from its doldrums. But not a single one ever birthed such a miracle, and Virgil Stockwell stopped imagining after 1884. To be more specific, he refused to waste his time on so trivial a thing as imagination, and rooted himself firmly in the nuts and bolts of industrial life. The world killed his joy
“Paris,” Stockwell spoke loudly, “had much to enjoy, or so I’m told. But my interests lay in trying to get the French past air balloons and into the idea of an entire flying village. I thought for a moment that Mouchon would back my proposal but…”
“So, you came back madder than ever,” Engineer Bob put it plain.
“Someone should take Father’s idea of cloudcraft and make it more than a platform for weaponry!” Virgil cried. Brakemen, Signalmen, boys playing between the cars stopped to look quizzically at this loud man before returning to their lives. Virgil never noticed them. Instead, his eyes went up to watch the cloudcraft Reasonable slowly drift out of view to the east. The personal sky yacht of the Stockwell family, it had transported him across the Atlantic and back smooth as butter. But rather than have it drop him off at Thimble Station, where the imperious Navy Aerial Corps had taken hold, he demanded to be set down at this switchyard, lest he see uniformed men up close and turn his repressed anger into something more tangible.
“It’s very hot today,” the young man stated, suddenly aware of the amount of sweat weighing down his clothing. “How is the city faring?”
“Ain’t you heard?” Bob mumbled, more concerned with finding a match in his many pockets to light his weathered pipe.
“I maintained a strict silence on anything happening in the States while away. After all, the goal was to find… peace of mind.”
“Even your family ain’t heard from ya?” Bob asked with more zeal in his voice. He had the match, and struck it.
“No. So what happened? Do you know anything of Uncle Flag or Uncle Tad?”
“They say Epsom had another run in with the Army boys, but came out on top. Even got himself a fancy office and title, some kinda detective like Pinkerton or so they say, but I don’t gossip. He partnered up with the Astin woman, you know the one? Huntress in Hazel.”
Virgil ran toward the engine so fast as to shake Bob to his core. “The same woman who rounded up the Kittridge boys five weeks after the takeover and…”
“Ran ‘em through with a sword, yessir. But I hear the Army used her up too, and she had about enough and changed sides. But I don’t get into people’s affairs.” Bob overcame his fear of the charge, and patted Virgil’s hand that grasped the hull of the engine. Virgil ignored the comfort.
“Changing sides doesn’t mean a change of heart! Far from it!” Stockwell screamed. He kicked at gravel as if it had risen up against him. “What is Uncle Epsom thinking? Isn’t there someone, anyone, in the Rail better to spend one’s time with than that – that --!”
“Not good to use harsh words on a woman, even when she ain’t around ta hear ‘em. Mind your tongue boy. I known you since you was a younign’ an’ I promised Sammy I’d make sure you stayed respectable.” Bob finished his chiding with an appropriately hard head nod and stern gaze.
Virgil kept busy ramming his fists together with resounding cracks. Bob grew uneasy as he watched the young mechanic pace like a mad bull. “What would my mother think of all this?”
Bob lurched as if he’d seen the writing on the wall. “Dagnabbit! Your momma! I almost forgot!” He vanished into the engine’s bowels, a short space to toss a jacket or hang a lantern. Five seconds later the engineer produced a box wrapped in brown paper and marked with a handwritten label. “She came here three weeks back with your brother Simon. They were certain you’d stop here before seein’ anybody else.”
Virgil looked at the box as if boxes were a new thing. He took hold of it, noticing the definable weight in his hands.
“It’s an even weight distribution, probably one of Simon’s tinkerings,” Virgil murmured.
“Would you open it boy? Don’t leave a man in suspense!”
So open it he did, tearing away the brown wrapping and tossing the label with his name written in the tender flow of his mother’s calligraphy. The box was one for shoes, proving it to be a gift from his economical and scatterbrained little brother. Virgil removed the lid as if an anarchist’s bomb lay inside waiting to explode. No bomb lay in the box, only a strange new device nestled in wood shavings. He pulled it out and held the device to the light of the day’s brutal sun.
Made of wood and well varnished it appeared, a contraption that easily fit into the palm of his hand thanks to its square form tapering down to a handle adorned with brass trim. The face of the device was flat, bearing a dial engraved with many numbers, and a second dial containing all twenty-six letters of the alphabet along with mathematical emblems. Between the dials sat a black button labeled STOP. Below these were two tiny toggle switches. On pressing the one to the left, both dials raised up. Virgil’s eyes widened with childish glee. He knew what this thing represented! Had little brother actually done it? If so, the evidence would be visible on the second toggle.
He flicked it up. From the back of the device, a long metal rod with two circular steel rings sprung out of the device’s tip. Virgil found himself almost able to smile.
“I’ve seen somethin’ like that before!” Bob yelled and pointed. “Your brother’s been puttin’ them up all over buildins’, telegraph poles an’ water towers. Yessir, skinny Simon’s kept busy!”
Before Bob could finish his declaration, Virgil Stockwell vaulted into the engine, and climbed on top of its roof. With the advantage of height, he could clearly see to the west what the cars and switch turrets were blocking. Tall rods each with two rings nearly dominated the rooftops of many a structure, as if every building had taken on insect qualities. He counted one, two, three, fifteen altogether. Yes! Simon had been a busy lad while he was away fuming.
Virgil turned the device over, already knowing in advance what he would find. Engraved on a small silver plaque were the words:
STOCKWELL & CO.
PORTABLE VERTOGRAPH
The talk of their childhood was now very much a handheld reality. Ignoring the heat, he wiped sweat from his brow and began turning the two dials in rapid succession. Six seconds later, Virgil Stockwell sent out the message while the vertograph hummed softly under the power of a Stockwell electric battery.
I AM HOME STOP – HAVE THE GIFT STOP – GREAT JOB LITTLE SYE STOP
He paced the engine in fevered steps, twice nearly falling into the coal chamber and onto Bob. Virgil looked from the vertograph to the rooftop of rods and back again. After a heated ten minutes, his device began to whir. From the side, a bright white sliver of tickertape spewed out in staggered fashion between dots and dashes:
ISN’T IT GREAT STOP – I CAN’T BELIEVE IT STOP – I’M CRYING NOW STOP – BECAUSE YOU’RE HOME TO SEE IT WORK STOP
Virgil felt tears well up in the corner of his own eyes. He toggled the second switch down, and the rod retracted. In two swift swings he was back on the dirty ground, grabbing his blue waistcoat that had hung on a wooden workhorse, along with a golden pocket watch and broad gray hat more suitable to a cowboy on the range than the head of a mechanic.
“Bob, I uh, have to uh…” Virgil spouted like the little boy Bob recalled so fondly in his memory.
“It’s about time!” Bob reprimanded. “Go on, me an’ the boys got this here engine. You can come back later. The Rail needs a brain like yours makin’ real things happen, not poutin’ around.”
Stockwell placed the watch into a vest pocket, and took the time to let out a slight sigh of relief.
“Boy if you don’t move that hide!” Bob yelled, wrench in hand.
So Virgil took off running, past the cars and the roving signalmen with their colored lanterns. He passed the bar that serves alcohol to the railmen, alcohol the Seer Laws don’t let anyone have outside of their own home, but everyone knows the bar does it (and a few others that are a tad slicker). He ran and skipped over rusty spikes and loose railroad tracks until he reached the end of the switchyard’s domain, Chestnut Street. From here, Virgil could see the beautiful shine of Lake Canterra under the sun, the yachts of the rich in stationary positions over the still water, average person’s fishing and cleaning, living and toiling on jerky piers.
He hailed the next carriage he saw, one of the new models built by Carver and not the Stockwells. It appeared rather like a Hansom, a pretty two seater with an open front and dangling lantern, but pulled by a mechanical beast somewhere between a horse and a goat, burping raven soot into the goggled, filter-masked face of its driver.
Virgil hopped inside, sending messages to his brother at a frantic pace. “To the Stockwell Foundry, driver! In the Frontier, and hurry!”
The driver turned about, his breathing all the more audible through the mask, a vicious panting. “Did you say Frontier, sir? Into the Frontier?”
“Yes!” Stockwell ordered in a baritone holler.
The driver kicked the operating lever for the beast, making it go from stationary to walk to gallop. Along the way, the driver voiced a prayer three times to Heaven as the carriage moved down the clamshell road.

____________________



Flag Banner Epsom never told a soul about the Mirror Trick. All of his friends (few indeed) and adopted family were well informed of the Algonquin scholar’s morning routine. Arise one hour before sunrise. Attach mechanical arm of steel and gunmetal to the twisted stub of what remained of his right humerus. Slide circular steambox apparatus along his back and tighten the straps, much in the same fashion as a pair of suspenders, feeling the heat of the machine boil his aging spine. Sit on the side of the old bed and haul over the spring loaded mechanical left leg. Attach and turn the dial to activate the steambox. Wait one minute to generate enough concentrated steam to move the limbs, and begin to walk. Drink enough laudanum to stupefy a horse before starting one’s day.
But the Mirror Trick remained Epsom’s self-imposed memento mori. Rising from the bed every day, he stared into a streaked oval mirror over the wash basin on a solid oak dresser, his black eyes looking into their own abyss. Slowly the blackness spread until his eyes were total pools of morbid tar. His paranormal ability to see into the past of who or what he perceived, chronoscopic vision, kicked into full effect. While Epsom would groan to his colleagues (daily) that he would have to see the person directly to view their own yesterdays, he would never divulge that, by staring hard at his own reflection, he could very much see his own past.
He figured it out quite by accident four years ago, in much the same way many a man uncovered any truth. Drunk and foolish over his own miseries, flailing about an alley in the China Block like a slug in a salt bath, he fell over and saw his own wretched face reflected in a puddle of rainwater. A headache ensued, but his mind suddenly perceived a long lost dream. The joy and ecstasy of warmth, a thumb going into a toothless mouth. Continuous embrace. Abject peace. Only later on and sober did he realize what he had recalled was his very first dream, a dream experienced long ago in Mother’s womb.
Scared senseless but nonetheless curious, Flag Epsom began every morning afterward with the Mirror Trick. So, for a half an hour, he tortured his grim mind with the memories most people would pay good money to dispose of. His hard matron, dying of disease while he watched as a helpless child. Fast forward to the death of his very ill wife, so pretty even while expiring. Next, watch it all occur three more times. But why stop there? He would of course move even more forward, to the night of the Blue Silence, July 29th, 1877.
Why he agreed to go to the grist mill and help out that man on that evening, he’d never know. Perhaps his heart swelled to the rare size of altruism that eve. But as blue nodes of brilliant blue, later termed negatrite, fell into the mill and blinded Epsom, he fell into the grinding stones. First to go was his right arm, twisted like a nail in the prong of a hammer. In his mindless agony, he turned to escape, to go anywhere to get away. In turning, the lower part of the mill found Flag’s left leg, and similarly did away with it. He relived every vision, again heard every sobbing cry and bone-splitting scream.
Only the now crippled Oscar Dunwich knew Flag could view his day of terror, and that he watched it daily. However, the ex-police commissioner never asked Epsom how he did it, or knew he could see himself farther back.
So Flag Epsom performed this ritual every morning for four years, a one-man circus act. He told himself that he would do so until he became so used to the pain, so accustomed to the tragedies, that they no longer could have mastery over him, that one day the infinite daggers would be removed from his heart.
Now on day one thousand four-hundred and forty, the experiment continued its unbroken streak of radical failure. Epsom broke out of the powerful haze in a sickening sweat, perhaps it was from the heat of the day, he thought. Wiping his face and tangled platinum hair with a hard towel, he staggered into the parlor to finish dressing. On went the white dress shirt and cravat, a horrid plaid waistcoat with poorly re-stitched pockets (from a scuffle with a poor man two nights before), and topped off with a brown long coat dating back at least thirty years if not fifty.
Once properly attired, Flag allowed time to sit down and reflect on being an eyewitness to his own life. The result, like the experiment, proved to be the same as well. Bouts of crying ensued soon covered over with prodigious helpings of whiskey and one comforting injection of the ever helpful morphine. Once the liquor left his abdomen cold, he was reminded of the need to eat, and so partook of a ripped chunk of hard bread with a slice of lukewarm, pungent German Katenspeck. A swift washing of his hair and face in lukewarm water, and Professor Epsom was as ready as he could be to face another day.
He fell asleep in an indented leather chair five minutes later, a real and true sleep of peace until the constant bell ringing of a carriage parked outside conspired to disturb him.
“Son of the Bruce!” Epsom yelled in a high-pitched squeal. He shot out of the chair and grabbed a dark cane with the silver head of a Saint Bernard, and fumbled his way out the door.
The sun was a curse this day. Flag ran back inside for a minute, returning to the open air with an old top hat covered in patches that didn’t match his earthen accoutrements. No sooner was it on his head did he remove it to wipe off sweat with a handkerchief. He mumbled all the way as the driver of a black carriage rang the dreaded bell. Inside the carriage, a bronze-skinned woman sat under an auspicious hat of ostrich feathers.
Flag opened the carriage door, and about bent over all the way to get his lanky frame into it. He bobbed his head to the lady, she dressed to impress in a splendid brown walking dress with Louis Quatorze coat of plaid, both colors setting off her golden (and flawless) skin. He tried not to look at her tiny feet, barely visible in mahogany boots outlined in brass floral pins. The lady cooled herself with a wide tan fan embroidered with images of geishas. Even the miniscule beads of perspiration upon her chiseled cheekbones did nothing to diminish her sensuous beauty, nor did the streams of sweat in her crow black curls of hair lessen its sheen. For some strange reason she loved Japan and the Japanese. For some stranger reason, Flag Epsom was attached at the hip to this young woman. The lady batted the bluest eyes, haloed in glowing hazel, at Epsom before gently giving him the cold shoulder.
“Good morning, Miss Astin,” he said with the slightest of hat tipping.
“Professor Epsom,” she replied, her chin held to the haughtiest of positions as she turned to look out of the window. Aretha Tyne Astin tapped on the carriage ceiling with her fan. The driver cracked the whip, and his horses began the drive. “Are you ready for your new prosthetics?” she asked. “Simon sent us a curious machine in the mail today. Right after opening it, a tickertape message spooled from it, asking if we were coming.”
Epsom glared out at the passing world as if it and he were old adversaries. He offered his partner in their newfound temporal detective business no reply. The carriage continued its bumpy ride away from Flag’s home, Sundial House, and departed from the sunny Mansard and Queen Anne homes at this end of the district of Lakeside. The air was rife with the powerful scent of a rundown skunk, adding stench to scorch.
“Very well then,” Miss Astin quipped. “I see your penchance for silence on rides is being maintained. Or is it that you are still angry over my killing the Stimuli Club’s lackey in our office months ago? Either way, we are off to the Stockwell’s home for your benefit before your class begins at Catton College. Agreed?”
Epsom managed to rotate his head, giving Aretha a look of drowsy anger mired in a morphine haze. She angled her own head in an attempt to discern the message in his stare. Aretha came up empty. When normal vision failed, she upped the ante on her blue eyes with hazel horizons. A paranormal herself, Miss Astin peered into the biological undersheath that was Flag Epsom. Brain chemistry, electrical signals and organ processes were an open book to her, but revealed nothing more than that the man was, as usual of late, near intoxicated.
“I have never been to see the Stockwells, and only met young Simon last month during an encounter on our roof. Did I tell you he was up on the roof at five in the morning?”
Epsom shook his head as he returned to the view of the city. The business side of the Rail passed by too slowly for his tastes. Huge brownstone office buildings and bustling people, horses trotting and defecating in the street while impudent children ran about like mad. Clothes hung limp on sagging lines like people, like dead people. Like old friends he could never forget…
“Anyway,” Aretha continued, “I had gone upstairs to set up an archery site so that I might advance my training while at work. When I opened the door to the roof, there was Simon, wrapped up in wires and trying to hoist up a steel pole by himself. It was a bit comical at first, until he almost fell off the roof. It took a solid five minutes to convince him to let me help, and together we pulled up the rod. He attached it to a base, and then added the wires. The whole scene was very confusing, but he managed to make it work. All the time he explained to me in exacting detail how his vertograph worked and would revolutionize communication. I did not really understand any of it. But, I will.”
The carriage bumped and jostled the duo all over the plush red seats. Flag rolled his head around, cracked his neck, and leaned heavily on his dog cane.
“Simon even knew who I was, and my reputation. But do you know what? My status as the Huntress in Hazel left him unfazed. He is a remarkable boy. How old would you say he is? I seem to recall him saying he was nineteen, in between the technical explanations. He even knew how many paranormals I had killed working under Sergeant Powell. I wonder how he could ever have known that.”
Epsom’s head swirled like a mad top. “Really? And how many did yew do in?”
Aretha locked eyes with her older partner for a second. “One hundred and seventy six,” she whispered before turning her own head to look outside.
Flag watched her face give birth to an expression of remorse. Then the carriage locked horns with a severe depression in the dirt road, and lost. Both riders inside collided with the ceiling, sending Epsom into a tirade of undecipherable blathering. Miss Astin’s quick reflexes allowed her to brace for impact, and return to her fanning, if a bit more shaken than before.
Her silence was a blessing to Flag’s ears. Silence meant not talking, and not talking meant he wouldn’t have to respond. His not responding would save the professor from revealing things about him, like that he was overwhelmed this morning with longing for his dead family and friends. Or, admitting that he felt sorry for this young woman who had asked to be made into a murderess, without ever understanding the blight it would leave inside of her soul.
He may even have slipped up, if talking had gone on, and told her that carriage rides made him incredibly sick to his stomach, hence his mute demeanor.
But Flag Banner Epsom never revealed his secrets to anyone, and definitely not his weaknesses.

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Neither heat nor dirt nor abnormal creature stopped the cleaning work of Martha Stockwell. For many years this short hourglass of a woman held down the fort at the Stockwell home, an unassuming forest green Gothic house with lime shingles which practically blended into the bountiful growth of the Frontier. The Frontier had mutated more than any one person or thing in 1877, though no one knew why, as the explosion that started the whole fracas (a fact she tried hard to ignore involved her own husband’s wild schemes) occurred on the other side of the city. But here it was nonetheless, and here she had been, cleaning and organizing and doing many things she swore she’d never do as a little girl.
Today’s list of duties began with the regular list of to-do’s in a country home: sweep the floors, cook, wipe off furniture, sweep, fire shotgun at pesky golden cat with long spikes on its back (and walks through walls and never dies; you know the one), prepare lunch, set the table for company. Finally, after a hard morning of labors, Martha could sweep the floor one final time and attend to the surprising guests who had braved the Frontier to pay her and her sons a visit.
She fussed with her blond and gray locks, a hefty mass of silky hair on a small head, and entered the parlor with a silver tray adorned with teeny coffee cups, slices of ham and cheese, her lush raspberry preserves and cat’s head biscuits. Of course the setting appeared more Western than the proper tray offerings, but this was the West after all, and in said environ men get very hungry.
Neither of the guests eyed the tray, not even after Martha placed one of her teensy hands on the shoulder of the larger man, known colloquially a Mister Tad. The name seemed too small for him, a man over six feet in height with thick, coarse layers of gray skin on his body, excellent curly hair and light brown eyes on what seemed to be Negro features. The stiff chair he sat in could barely contain his weight, he being so paranormally heavy and supreme in strength. No, Mister Tad passed his usual love of biscuits to stare contented like at the other man, the uninvited one.
Liam Wake could have been Tad’s polar opposite twin: short, thin, receding black hair on a broad Irish forehead, all of it stuffed into a fine tailored black day suit and white shirt with colonial era ruffles. At least, Martha thought it to be odd, until she recalled Wake had a preference for the colonial era, for mischief and for mayhem. She had a harder time recalling why Wake had walked away from the Guild of Honor, a league her husband Samuel formed. But the chill down her back informed her that Liam was here for underhanded purposes, and Martha Stockwell always listened to her chills.
“Sure you won’t imbibe a little coffee, Tad?” she asked with a pleasant smile. Martha’s round face, big blue eyes and tiny lips made her look every bit like a doll one wins at a county fair, even at her hard won age of fifty, she remained for lack of a better word, cute.
“No Martha, thank you,” Tad replied with a mild hand wave. His voice resounded, even softly spoken, like a grizzly roaring at the edge of a canyon. He continued watching Liam Wake, who eyed Tad with avid lividity.
“I still can’t figure ye out, nigger,” the Irishman said, at last coming out of his daze.
“Liam!” Martha barked, and she could bark like a dire wolf if need be, “you will mind your tongue in my house!”
“Since when did white people object to such a common word as nigger? What world is this then?” he answered with a wry grin, before returning to face his massive adversary.
Tad took hold of a biscuit with one hand, Martha’s apron with the other. “It’s quite alright. You were sayin’. Mister Wake?”
Wake, eyes on target, grasped a coffee cup and held it out in an arrogant way for his hostess to begin pouring. “I can’t figure out why ye were at the cemetery behind the Canterra Bunker the last night of the takeover. I still say the Army should’ve arrested ye. Care to answer?”
Mister Tad carefully placed meat and cheese on his biscuit with huge, iron rail spike fingers before topping it off with a fine coating of preserves. He took two healthy bites and allowed for ample time to enjoy it before wiping his mouth and deep-set frown lines clean of debris. Liam Wake tapped his foot in a feverish form.
“I was a gravedigger at the time,” the huge man offered. “Then as now.”
Wake eyed Martha. Martha could only give him a nervous smile, as she remained under the influence of her chill while pouring hot coffee. Wake returned to Tad, who in turn focused on his biscuit in a happy mood.
“Anyway!” the Irishman quipped between sever sips of brew. “Where are the lads? I’ve yet to see them these past three years on account of business, and I hear Victor has returned from France.”
He knew he had revealed his hand with the last sentiment, but Liam Wake enjoyed saying the thing that raised eyebrows, then watching those brows furrow as suspicion set in. Sure enough, the eyes of Martha, and the thick temple of Mister Tad did both rise to significant heights.
“Y-yes,” Martha started, looking back and forth at the two guests, “he came in early this morning, and already is in the Foundry with Simon. I rang the bell for them to come for lunch, so they’ll be in any minute. But, how did you know he returned? We tried very hard to keep it discreet.”
“Well?” Mister Tad demanded, surprising Liam to no end that a Negro would demand something from him. Wake repositioned himself in his seat for a possible confrontation with this gargantuan.
“Careful ni— Tad. Ye aren’t the sole paranormal in this house.” Suddenly Wake’s coffee cup made popping noises and bubbling before he turned it upside down. What had once been a porcelain cup filled with dark liquid had now been altered to a cup made of unattractive lead, holding a solid, conical lump of pure silver. Wake beamed with pride, while Martha gasped over the loss of a complete set of dishware.
Mister Tad crossed his arm, very much unimpressed by the Barnum style display of talent. He stood up to act as a guard for Martha.
Martha snatched the cup from Wake’s hand and gasped again.
“You have no manners, Mister Wake! Get out of my house!”
“But I’ve yet to see the lad…”
“Now!” Martha screamed into his face. Liam looked down at his hand, seeing it had subconsciously risen in a position to deliver a slap. A quick glance at the impregnable berth of Tad made the hand go limp.
Liam Wake stood, brushing imaginary dust from his colonial mourning suit. He cast a baneful eye at Mister Tad, who seemed a lot taller than six feet. “My how you give off such a broad shadow,” he whispered. He made his way out of the parlor and toward the door.
Wake headed for the door, while Tad took to the huge display windows of the parlor. As is often the case in unexpected happenings, another unexpected thing occurs. The front door flew open before Wake’s hand could touch the knob, letting in the hot air, and the hot temperaments of two other Stockwell associates. The infamous, and very sweaty, Epsom and Astin wandered in under the grip of griping.
Martha was near to fainting. “Oh dear Lord, now we’ll have the salt to go with the sour!”
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