"Bang! Bang!"
I groaned as the noise continued with no regard for the affect it was having on my already tender head. I buried myself under the pillows in the hope that everything would go away and leave me alone.
"Bang! Bang!"
Why didn't my manservant answer the damned door? What did I pay the man for?
"Bang! Bang!"
A memory elbowed its way into my head, a note of resignation from my manservant. Something about not being paid, which at the time I had considered to be a damned cheek.
"Bang bang bang!"
I flung myself out of bed and stormed down the stairs, leaving a trail of swearwords in my wake. Wrenching the door open, I glared out into the sunshine. "What?" I growled.
The man standing on the doorstep took a step back and I had a sudden insight into what I looked like: a pale, disheveled man wearing little more than a scruffy nightgown. I rallied with the thought that if this indecent appearance served to get me the privacy I needed then it was a price worth paying.
He recovered himself enough to address me in a shaky voice. "Forgive me for disturbing you, sir, but are you Augustus Potts? The brother of Maxwell Potts?"
"Who wants to know?" I asked. Then, registering the second question: "Max? What has he done now?"
"That is what I wished to discuss with you. May I come in?"
"That depends," I said. "On who you are and what you wish to discuss."
The man looked around before replying. "My name is Wilson. Alexander Wilson. I write for The Times and I wish to talk about your brother's latest invention: the Telecommunicator."
"I am afraid you have had a wasted journey, Mister Wilson. I have neither knowledge nor interest in my brother's inventions. I would suggest that you speak with him instead."
"You see, that is the problem," said Wilson quickly as I moved to shut the door. "He will not speak with me."
"Then he has more sense than I credit him with."
"He has a maidservant who won't even pass on a message," said Wilson.
I chuckled. Kate was clearly finding her feet as Maxwell's new maidservant. She had seemed somewhat strong-willed when she joined us in our pursuit of that demon just a few weeks beforehand, and I had my doubts as to how well she would cope with domestic service. However, handling unwanted visitors such as this man was enough to earn her my brother's undying gratitude. If only I had access to such a service, I thought as I noticed the looks I was getting from passers-by.
"I am not sure there is much I can do to help you, Mister Wilson," I said. "If you will excuse me..."
Wilson put his foot in the door to stop it from closing. "People are dying, Mister Potts!"
"People die every day, Mister Wilson," I replied. However his words were enough to give me pause, so I let the door swing open again.
Taking his cue, the man spoke rapidly. "There have been a number of suicides over the past week or so, all of them respectable people who have never before displayed any form of suicidal tendencies. The one connection between all of these deaths was that they all had a Telecommunicator. All of their bodies were found near the devices."
"Coincidence?"
"If this were just one or two incidents, I would agree. But there was a death last night which brings the total to five."
YOU ARE READING
The Infernal Aether (First Draft)
Paranormal"In the Fifteenth Century, the Aether held the universe together. In the Nineteenth Century, it just might tear it apart." This is the first draft, posted exclusively on Wattpad. The final version, edited and funded via an Indiegogo campaign is now...
