The Infernal Aether (First Draft)

Chapter 13 - Unlucky for Some...

The hallway spun around me while I kicked my legs, my fingers scrabbling at the noose around my neck. The fugue which brought me to commit suicide had been jolted away by my body's innate sense of self-preservation. Unfortunately this was too late to help me; the noose held fast.

My vision started to blur and dim, the room pulling away from me as my grave beckoned and then wrenched me toward it.

An image appeared before me, a man in a top hat and tails. A dim part of my mind noted that I'd always expected the Grim Reaper to be less well-dressed and more...bony.

The force round my neck slackened and I fell to my knees with a thump which jarred through my whole body. Fingers tore away the noose and I took a laboured, agonised gasp of breath through a throat which felt smaller than a pip. That breath was followed by others, each more painful than the last, but at least I was alive.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in my dining room, clutching a glass of brandy and shivering slightly. N'yotsu sat opposite me with a curious expression on his face.

"Thank you," I rasped, my voice finally returning.

"There really is no need," he said. "You were lucky I came when I did."

I nodded. "How did you..." My words ended in a coughing fit which reminded me of my first over-eager experiences with tobacco.

"...Know you were in danger?" said N'yotsu. "I did not; it was pure fortune. Kate told me that you had visited and needed to speak to me, so I decided to come and see you. I arrived to see you throwing yourself off your staircase and broke down your door to rescue you."

Once again I was in his debt and expressed my gratitude in the only way I could: with a nod, a smile and an avalanche of coughing.

"I am, however, curious as to why you thought such an act was a good idea," he said.

"I didn't," I croaked. "Or at least I shouldn't. It was that new invention of Maxwell's, the Telecommunicator. It rang. I spoke to my mother. She...made me..."

"Why would your mother make you commit suicide?"

"I don't know. But that's not the strangest part."

"You mean it is not unusual for your mother to want you to kill yourself?" said N'yotsu.

"No," I said, every word an effort. "Please listen. My mother died over twenty years ago."

"Interesting." N'yotsu stood. "Where is the device?"

"Sitting room," I croaked. N'yotsu stood and walked out of the kitchen, in the direction I had indicated. After a moment of staring at the door, I followed him.

It still lay on the floor where I had abandoned it, the tubular speaking and listening attachments spraying off from the box at odd angles. He picked it up and placed it on the table. He held the listening tube to his ear then shrugged and replaced it in its cradle.

"Nothing?" I asked.

"That's right," he said. "No sound at all. You are certain that someone spoke to you?"

"Whatever my brother may say, I am not completely prone to hallucinations. I was definitely lucid."

N'yotsu grunted, but I saw him glance at the bottle of whisky which still stood near the device.

Something was bothering me, and I went back out to the hallway, where N'yotsu had found me. "N'yotsu," I said. "You said you saw me throw myself off the stairway and this was what prompted you to rescue me."

"That is correct," he said.

"But how could you see me? There are no windows in the hallway. At least not at a height you would be able to see in through."