The Infernal Incident of the Spectral Screamer (Part Two)

The place was inexorably different. Silas’ furniture, mostly Georgian with its fine wooden fixtures, had been replaced by similar items but made of odd materials I could not quite recognise. The gas lamps on the walls were gone and in their place were balls of light I couldn’t look at directly hanging from the ceiling. To steady myself, I rested my shaking hand on the strange desk and found a newspaper. It was The Times, apparently, but it was printed on different paper and had photographs in colour. I clocked the date on the top of the front page and my heart rose in my chest; 19^th October in the year of our Lord 2012.

I was brought back into the grotesque world I had somehow wandered into by the piercing sound of a young woman screaming at me. She stood in what should have been the dining room, staring right at me, wearing a form of workman’s clothes.

I take no pleasure in recording herein that at the very epitome of my lungs, I screamed also, clamping my eyes shut as I did so, until both mine and the spectral woman’s screams subsided.

Then, for all the world, the sound of familiarity washed over me like a welcoming bath; I heard Silas’ crisp tones calling my name.

‘Smedley? Smedley my good man, tell me what is it? What is it?’

I opened my eyes with a snap. My hair felt damp against my moist forehead and my moustache had drooped somewhat also. I did not care for my sorry state, however, as I was back in Silas’s house, as I recognised it, and everything was as it should be. My companion was standing over me, as I found myself on the floor of the hall. His alert grey eyes darted around in search of something.

‘I… ‘ I began to speak but could not form the words in my parched mouth.

‘Was it something strange?’ He said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Good. Something uncanny, carnivalesque?’

‘Yes, Silas. By Jove, it was.’

He raised his pointed chin in the air. ‘That will be for me. Oh, I wish I could explain it all to you, Smedley.’

‘Actually, Silas, I think it was my story.’

‘You? But why would it be about you?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t say. It is to do with my dark and enigmatic past which can never, ever be shared…’