Chapter Text
It was dark in the front parlour, and quiet enough to hear the rain on the panes of the bay windows, interrupted only by as rustling as Christopher Melford searched around for a match. When he held it up, its flickering light revealed twelve of them standing in a circle around Madame Celeste, sitting on the floor in the centre.
“Who’s got a torch?” said Reg. “Noel, you had mine, didn’t you? Where did you put it?”
“Ouch!” said Melford, the match burning his fingers as it reached the end of its life, casting them back into the gloom.
Bel shivered, and then coughed even as Noel found and switched on the torch. She slipped her arm through Reg’s. “There’s no point staying here, is there? Let’s go.”
Before they could move, two people walked in through the door, causing them all to fall silent.
“Yes, you should leave,” said the woman. Sapphire, thought Jack, the name sliding through from the other version of this evening he had in his head. She was blonde, tall, and wearing a dark blue evening dress that was at odds with their faded, damp setting. She sounded utterly sure of herself. “This place isn’t safe. There should have been a notice.”
The man with her scowled round at them. “In any case, you’re trespassing.”
Henry Arnhirst turned. “You’re from the council, I suppose?” But Jack noticed that he hesitated over the words, and was relieved to know that everyone else hadn’t entirely forgotten, either.
“That would make sense,” agreed the man – Steel – and after that, they all shuffled out through the hallway, like schoolchildren caught somewhere out of bounds.
Jack and Eddy were at the tail end. He almost stopped to say something to Sapphire and Steel, but of the two versions of this evening in his mind, the one where he knew who they were was already a fast-fading nightmare, the details beginning to elude him, and he felt too embarrassed to acknowledge it in their face of their detachment.
“Doesn’t anyone else remember?” said Eddy to Jack, gripping his arm as they picked their way carefully through the overgrown front garden in the dark. “I mean, it is very hazy in my mind, but Sapphire and Steel were there again at the end, and if they were real, then it did happen.”
Jack watched the others, turning back into the street. “Yes. It happened, I think, but then I suppose it un-happened. It’s already easier to let it go, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to,” said Eddy. “That is, I do. It was awful, but I wouldn’t want to forget that you – that I should keep an eye on you –”
He shook his head. “You needn’t worry on that account. Promise.”
“That other soldier,” said Eddy. “Whoever he was. Steel told me he was broken, and when I said that you weren’t, he didn’t seem to believe me.”
After what they’d been through, he couldn’t give her a glib answer. There was always, too, the ghost of Tom, and that hadn’t been laid with those of the house. “You were right. But I suppose it is complicated. Not broken, not like some, but maybe a bit battered at the edges. I’m staying here, though. You needn’t worry about that.”
“Right,” she said, and nodded. “Good-o.”
Jack gave her a smile, and then increased his speed, catching hold of Reg just ahead of them, walking along with his arm around Bel’s shoulders. “Got a cigarette?”
“Get lost, Mayhew.”
“Only one, and then I’ll leave you in peace.”
Reg snorted and then obliged. He hesitated as he handed it over, while Bel shivered a little in the night air, and coughed again.
“In there – should we report it?” Reg gave a shifty nod back towards the house. “You know.”
“Report what?”
Reg shrugged. “I don’t know. But it was – it was odd, yes?”
“Damned odd. No more séances for me,” agreed Jack, and then fell back with Eddy. “Oh, hell,” he said, patting his pockets. “I don’t have a light.”
Eddy put her hand in his coat pocket on her side and produced a book of matches. “Yes, you do.”
It’s over now, he said to himself as he took the match. Just another nightmare. But he knew only too well how often the nightmares never quite went away.
***
“How bad is the damage?” said Steel, standing in the front porch and watching them walk away down the road.
Sapphire drew back inside. “It’s hard to be precise. Containable, I think.”
“Be certain.”
“It’s impossible to make exact estimates for each of them,” she said. “The length of life will have been shortened, and it will be worse for those who were taken earlier. My calculations suggest that the impact will not be significant, but there will inevitably be an impact. Nothing we shouldn’t be able to deal with, though. Nothing on the scale of this break.”
Steel glanced around at the hallway, and then ushered Sapphire out into the night, drizzle dampening their clothes, as they made their way down the overgrown gravel path.
Copper met them halfway to the gate, coming from the garden. “There’s no sign of any more activity.”
“And what about Copper?” said Steel to Sapphire, as if the technician wasn’t there. “Is he damaged?”
Sapphire suppressed a smile and raised an eyebrow in Copper’s direction.
“I’m fully functional for now, thank you, Steel,” said Copper. “But this house will never be safe, not as it is.”
Steel stopped and turned.
“No need to worry, however,” Copper added. “It won’t be around after tonight.”
Sapphire no longer troubled to conceal her smile, following Copper’s thoughts. “A fire. How fortunate.”
“Yes,” agreed Copper. “A fault in the wiring, I believe.”
“I thought the building wasn’t connected to the mains supply any more,” said Steel.
Copper moved ahead to the gate. “Yes, true. How strange,” he murmured as he vanished into the night. “I expect it will puzzle their authorities for a while, but they always find some explanation.”
“I suppose it will have to do,” said Steel. He put his hand to Sapphire’s shoulder, and then she felt the pressure cease – he had gone, like Copper. The assignment was over. And none of them would be dragged back through time into the clutches of something hungry to meet them, so she was satisfied with the outcome, even if Steel would prefer it to be tidier.
The damage was containable, safely limited, although Sapphire did not make her reckonings without regret. She saw that Bel had walked away with a cough she had not had when she came in, and that Madame Celeste would not reach the front door of the lodging house where she lived before she collapsed on its steps, and she paused to note the years, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds that, unseen by anybody else, had been swallowed by something greedy for its escape.
Time was always a thief, and Sapphire could only save so much from its grasp.
She closed her eyes and read the immediate future of the house, making one final check. It would soon be only a shell that would have to be demolished for safety’s sake. Something new would be built here, something without any dangerous history.
“No more ghosts,” Sapphire said out loud in the garden. “Only ashes and silence.”
Peace.
Then she, too, faded into the night.