The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

roaring sailors when she’d crossed the sea, but this voice was not loud because of any extremity of effort—its normal tone was mysteriously, astonishingly, and disturbingly exaggerated. The voice belonged to the Comte d’Orkancz.
    “Welcome to you
all
,” the Comte intoned.
    The man in the helmet looked up. He saw Miss Temple. Miss Temple leapt down the final steps, dodging past.
    “It is time to begin,” cried the Comte, “as you have been instructed!” From the cells above them—incongruously, fully the last thing Miss Temple would have ever expected—the gathered crowd began to sing.
    She could not help it, but looked through the open door.
    The tableau, for it was framed as such by the door in front and the silver curtain of bright shining pipes behind, was the operating theatre writ large, the demonic interests of the Comte d’Orkancz given full free rein—
three
examination tables. At the foot of each rose a gearbox of brass and wood, into which, as if one might slide a bullet into the chamber of a gun, one of the helmeted men inserted a gleaming blue glass book. The man with the two bottles stood at the head of the first table, pouring the blue liquid into the funneled valve of a black rubber hose. Black hoses coiled around the table like a colony of snakes, slick and loathsome, yet more loathsome still was the shape that lurked beneath, like a pallid larva in an unnatural cocoon. Miss Temple looked past to the second table and saw Miss Poole’s face disappear as an attendant strapped a ghoulish black rubber mask in place … and then to the final table, where a third man attached hoses to the naked flesh of Mrs. Marchmoor. Looking up at the cells was a final figure, mighty and tall, the mouth of his great mask dangling a thick, slick black tube, like some demonic tongue—the Comte himself. Perhaps one second had passed. Miss Temple reached out and slammed the door between them.
    And just as suddenly she knew, this echoing vision provoking her memory of the final instant of Arthur Trapping’s blue glass card … the woman on its table had been Lydia Vandaariff.
    Behind her Elöise screamed. The helmeted man’s arms took crushing hold around Miss Temple’s shoulders and slammed her into the newly shut door, then threw her to the ground.
    She looked up to see the man holding the saber. Elöise seized one of the bottles of orange liquid from the tray and hefted her arm back, ready to hurl it at him. To the immediate shock of each woman, instead of running her through, the man stumbled back and then sprinted up the stairs as fast as the awkward helmet and apron would allow. All he needed was a set of bat’s wings, Miss Temple thought, to make a perfect shambling imp of hell.
    The women looked at each other, baffled at their near escape. The platform door was shaken again from the outside, and the stairwell above them echoed with shouts from the running man—shouts that were answered as he met their initial pursuers. There was no time. Miss Temple took Elöise brusquely by the arm and shoved her toward the open hatch.
    “You must get in!” she hissed. “
Get in
!”
    She did not know if it had room for two, or even if the lift would carry their weight if there was, but nevertheless leapt to the brass plate of controls, forcing her tired mind—for her day had been more than full, and she had not eaten or drunk tea in the longest time—to make sense of its buttons … one green, one red, one blue, and a solid brass knob. Elöise folded her legs into the hatch, her mouth a drawn grim line, one hand a tight fist and the other still holding the orange bottle. The shouting above had turned and someone pounded on the outside door. At the green button the dumbwaiter lurched up. At the red, it went down. The blue did not seem to do a thing. She tried the green again. Nothing happened. She tried red, and it went down—perhaps a single inch, but all the way to the end.
    The door to the platform shook on its hinges.
    She had it. The blue button meant the dumbwaiter must continue its course—it was used to prevent needless wear on the engines caused by changing directions mid-passage. Miss Temple stabbed the blue button, then the green, and dove for the hatch, Elöise’s arms around her waist, gathering her quickly in, Miss Temple’s wriggling feet just barely slipping through the narrowing hatchway before they rose into the pitch-black shaft, their last view the black boots of Macklenburg