Free Ghosts by Gaslight by Jack Dann Page A

for the horror it witnessed at the same time that he cursed it and prayed for it to leave him alone. He grew to believe beyond question that he was going mad and had a lawyer draw up papers to make certain that he was to be delivered to Bensham Asylum, and not to Devon Pauper. He made copies for each of his housemates and slipped them under their doors.
    When they in their turn at last began, one at a time, to hear the lone voice in its own context—whether or not Angelos had the generator running—each reacted as differently as might have been expected. Griffith denied fiercely that anything unusual was happening at all, while Vordran admitted to the voice, but blamed Angelos’s foolhardy experiments for waking some ghost or spirit long resident in the old rooming house. Only Scheuch considered the situation more or less as it was: the four of them bound, whether as victims, prey, or helpless bystanders, to the endless imploring sorrow of a single human being from another time and—in all likelihood—another country. No less frightened than the others, he determined consciously to drown himself in the voice, to listen to it to the point of numb boredom, inoculating himself against its eternal misery. The technique had proven remarkably effective against the mean arrogance of his bank’s manager; he saw no reason why it should not aid him in this situation. Scheuch was not a highly imaginative man, but he paid attention to what worked.
    With his keen hearing, he was the one who first noticed that the voice was beginning to be audible in Russell Square. He thought at first that he might be imagining it; but when Vordran commented on it, and Angelos’s increased pallor and sleeplessness gave silent assent, Scheuch conducted his own research, carefully pacing out the exact range of the voice—which increased, block by block, every week or thereabouts—and also making note of the local residents’ awareness of the sound, or lack of it. Some seemed as yet unaffected, but many were beginning to look as though, like himself, they had taken to spending their nights with their heads buried under several pillows. Scheuch found it cheaper than gin and laudanum, though no more effective.
    It was at this point, on the fifteenth of August—a Saturday morning—that Mr. Emanetoglu came to collect the rent.
    The small, dark man turned, as always, at the northeast corner of the square, passed the Cabmen’s Shelter, walked another block—and then abruptly froze where he stood, raising his head and cocking it sideways, like an attentive bird or a hound on point. After a moment he began to run, which was not something Mr. Emanetoglu did at all often, and children laughed at his clumsy gait as they scattered out of his way. Reaching the house on Geraldine Row, he first knocked, then rang, as was his invariable custom, no matter his current urgency. When no one responded he waited no longer, but let himself in, thrusting the door open so violently that it rebounded from the wall and banged shut behind him. He took the long stair two steps at a time, like a young man hastening to his beloved. He was talking loudly to himself in Turkish, and his normally serene brown eyes were wide and wild.
    Griffith’s room being just off the first-floor landing, it was the one that Mr. Emanetoglu burst into without announcing himself, demanding as the door slammed open, “What have you done? What has happened here?”
    Griffith was not asleep. Griffith did not appear to have ever been asleep. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his head in his hands, and he did not immediately look up at Mr. Emanetoglu’s furious question. He muttered at last, “Ah, hello there, old Glue Pot—pull up a chair.” He raised his head, blinking. “Is it that time already? Half a second, then—”
    “Never mind the rental fee!” Mr. Emanetoglu shouted at him. “What have you done, you foolish man?” He actually took Griffith by both slumped shoulders, as