Welcome to the Steampunk adventures of Gold Detection. Over nine weeks, we will travel to the very edge of madness and death with our esteemed heroes! Check back every Monday or Subscribe to receive my writing in your Inbox.
If you would like to start from the beginning:
Part One - Wherein we meet our heroes and listen to a strange and eerie invitation.
Part Two - Our heroes attend a night out with a veiled lady and watch a concert by the ghost of Chopin.
Part Three - A small interlude as the Golds prepare for the party.
Part Four - Our protagonists meet the Black Banshee and its uncanny creator.
Part Five - A dinner party and preparations for the last ride of the Black Banshee.
Part Six - Blackburn’s evil plan is finally in play!
Part Seven - A confrontation with Blackburn.
Part Eight - They stopped the Madman. Now to stop the Monster!
Maximus caught his wife as her captor fell away. “You were never one for waiting on a gentleman to rescue you!”
She smiled and locked her mouth onto his in a passionate kiss that showed him how much she cherished life.
They broke their embrace and moved quickly to face the crimson chair and the husk of the conjurer who occupied it.
Kate held the gun level and pointed it toward the gaunt head of Lafayetta.
“Wait!” Maximus cried. “We know that she is keeping the ectoplasm of these good people captive, but we also know that she led them to the engine. Will they know how to return if we take her out? Are they already beyond salvation? Surely the door isn’t locked, or the medium would be back in her own body.”
Kate understood the horror of the dilemma but was at a loss as to remedy the situation. “Then, what do we do?” she asked as she lowered the weapon.
Maximus looked around the room and then quickly moved back to one of the remaining chairs. “I will go in. I will go in and lead the others back to their bodies.”
Kate saw the dangers but knew that protests would fall on deaf ears. She expected nothing less from the love of her life, and she knew he thought the same of her.
Maximus grabbed her again and pulled her in for a quick embrace. “If there is any way to come back to you, I will find it!”
Maximus sat in the black chair, and the brace moved across his body to lock him in. Kate stared into his eyes for a moment longer, but as the needle pierced his skin, the pupils rolled up, and the life went out.
Maximus felt as if he was being drawn down a long, dark hallway. He could hear the gears of the machine crash and rotate around him. He knew that he was out of his body, but he felt trapped in the viscous substance that Charles Richet had termed, ectoplasm.
He concentrated on the meditation he had been researching and practicing in his basement lab for the last few months. He did not want to be fuel for the machine, pushed and pulled where the machine told him to go. He wanted to seek his prey and find it.
Suddenly, he felt a change. Not one of physicality, but one of spirit and control. He was more than just the ectoplasm now. He was having a full astral experience, and he finally felt as if he could control it.
Maximus probed out with his mind into the black pipes and gears around him, searching for the presence of Lafayetta. He felt a fleeting touch of one of the other passengers—fear, terror beyond anything he had ever felt before flooded into him. He almost lost his own grip on reality. He pushed out with calming thoughts and tried to show the other how to move back along the pipeline, but the touch was rapidly ended, and the trapped spirit rushed hastily away.
Maximus moved quickly on, knowing from the touch that he must move swiftly or the people he came in to save would be driven mad by their experience in the workings of the Black Banshee.
Finally, the pipe he was traveling through emptied into a vast space. Many of the ectoplasmic remnants of the guests were being stored here for later use by the engine.
On the far end, he felt something else. A creature of vast power was there. Maximus pictured it as a dark bat-like shape with vast wings that drove the others back with its power. It pushed against the gathered bits of ectoplasm, forcing them to move through the machine, showing them their roles, teaching them their new duty before leaving them to the task of powering the demon train.
Maximus knew that this shape was the conjurer. Lafayetta was using the monstrous entity of her own spirit to guide her slaves in their duty. Once their minds were broken, they would only know the role they played within the locomotive and could be left there to be its eternal fuel.
He knew that he must act before the medium sensed his presence, yet he had no clue how to fight this monstrosity or even if he could in this form. He locked himself into control of his physical ectoplasm and contorted the blob into a straight spear-like shape. As he did this, he propelled his will toward the dark mass that was Lafayetta.
Maximus hit the monstrous figure as solidly as he could. The black mass broke apart, and he could feel Lafayetta’s concentration waver.
At that moment, he sent his astral projection out to the rest of the ectoplasmic entities gathered in that place. He pushed one word to them, “Bodies!” He then gave them directions back through the pipes of the huge locomotive
A few of the passengers shot away instantly, reinvigorated by the contact and the direction. Maximus pushed harder on the others, but he could not tell if his extra motion helped or not.
He suddenly felt the world closing in around him. A blackness was molding his ectoplasm in on itself, contracting it into a tight ball. His surprise attack had freed the others from Lafayetta’s control, but now he was trapped inside her darkness.
Maximus pushed his will outward, creating spikes along the outside of his ectoplasm and shooting them into the blackness of the substance that held the medium’s spirit.
Thanks for reading and taking this adventure with me! Join us back here next week for the grand finale! Let me know what you think below.
The Black Banshee was first published in a slightly different form in the anthology - Machina Mortis: Steampunk'd Tales of Terror. Pick up the book for some other great stories.