Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #17: The Mystery of the Giggling Gobber (Chapter 4)

"This is ... unfortunate," Orsch opined, taking the steps two at a time easily to inspect the ghoulishly giggling head further.

"I'm sure that poor fellow would agree," I nodded, following in his wake. Being so near to the severed head made me shudder, and I wrinkled my nose at the putrid-smelling blood that ran down the brass pole upon which it was mounted. The gobber had been very old, missing part of one ear and showing deep age lines along skin that bore more than its fair share of blemishes. Too bad he hadn't been able to see a natural end to his years.

"You misunderstand me, sir. We are the ones experiencing an ill turn of events. This decapitated individual was a goblin named Gekananhegalog. He was the alchemist we sought."

"Of course he was," I sighed. "Somehow, I'm not surprised. But why is his head doing that; more to the point, how can we quiet it, before we begin to emulate it? There is no agent of the spiritual world at work here. I am at a loss as to the cause or the solution."

"As I have told you before, one must look beyond the obvious, beyond what others expect you to see. Direct your attention here, but do not touch."

Orsch pointed down at the brass post; under the Jameson's wan light it took my crude human senses a few moments to recognize what his eyes had picked out immediately. The post was thicker than my fist; an intricate series of tiny gears comprised its innards, each whispering against its neighbor, encased within a thin support structure. Together they turned a slender wax cylinder, upon which several tiny needles carved an increasingly complex pattern, the angle and pressure of the needles changing every pass to create designs of differing depths in the hard wax. While the gears had been placed expertly to work with each other and the cylinder in perfect harmony the craftsmanship of the parts that comprised them were crude and rough, even to an untrained observer such as myself.

The object was obviously mechanikal in nature, which precluded further personal investigation. But I'd seen something like it before, a year ago in a traveling carnival of mechanikal wonders. A beautiful woman had sung into a large horn while a wax cylinder spun, needles carving into it, before the device was reversed and the lady's voice came from the machine itself. Despite the scratchy and rather tinny effect it was quite obvious that the device had somehow managed to capture the singer's voice in the wax cylinder much as a scribe captures words on parchment, able to be played back again and again, which an applauding crowd had demanded.

"Grammatatron," I breathed in amazement.

"It is obviously derived from that design, sir," Orsch agreed. "However, it is just as clear that this particular creation has been adapted for a much less savory purpose. Witness where the connectors terminate."

There was no taint of magic on the mechanikal device, but it still managed to make me feel nauseous when I realized the horrible truth. What had been achieved by a modified tuning fork in the carnival device was here accomplished by a series of thin brass rods that led from the needles directly up into the ragged neck of the corpse's head. I squinted at what I'd first taken to be an overly large blemish on the back of the gobber's cranium. Rather than some sort of birthmark the dark patch revealed itself to be a missing section of skull, carved neatly away. The exposed brain had a multitude of rods leading up through the neck and into the pinkish matter itself, ending in cruel hooks that were latched on to different sections. The surrounding tissue was undamaged, indicating that the mutilator had previous experience in the operation, a horrifying concept. The rods worked the hooked sections of wrinkled cortices vigorously back and forth, threatening both the integrity of the brain itself as well as my capability to retain the supper I'd eaten an hour earlier.

"A grammatatron is designed to record and replay sound," I said with a dry mouth, striving to not be sick. "But there is no horn here, no auditory collection receptacle. Is it playing back this poor gobber's final screams? If so, then the device is malfunctioning. I doubt our deceased alchemist friend went into Urcaen giggling about his fate."