Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #17: The Mystery of the Giggling Gobber (Chapter 11)

Despite the absence of any kind of perceivable threat our fiendish captor had retreated away from the stairs, screeching curses. I'd come to expect insanity from the blighted gobber, but screaming angrily at thin air was a new development in his dementia.

"No!" Titan shrieked at the emptiness, like a child denied a treat. "You no get him, wait too late, Titan kill him you try, no, no, me deny!" As if confirming their master's proclamation of ownership several of his disgusting servitors skittered up my bound legs and body. I dared not look down at the horrible things that grasped me, tugging and creeping up with terrible intent. When they reached my face with their putrid caress I lost what composure I still possessed and cried out in terrified loathing, shaking my head as best I could to dislodge them. One particularly vile skitter thrall wrapped the length of piston-reinforced intestine that served as its snakelike body around my throat and constricted tightly with a series of deadly clicks from the iron joints. It didn't quite choke me to death, but I sensed it sat ready for its master's whim to do so. I was powerless to do anything other than watch the events unfold before me.

Although no physical forces clambered through the ruined doorway to challenge Titan the gobber acted as if an assailant had invaded his sanctum. Indeed, despite the evidence of my own eyes I felt something, a familiar presence, but not in any sort of comforting way. By looking away from the area I could detect a slight shimmer out of the corner of my blood-drenched eyes, as if the haze of a summer's heat had taken on a life of its own. Invisible enemies then; perhaps a specter of a victim come to take its revenge on the blighted gobber that had murdered it? Retribution was a powerful motivation used to cling to the material world by angry souls, and there was ample evidence that such deeds were done here as to give the most hardened criminal nightmares. I'd witnessed stranger things in my time, and if such supernatural justice was demanded I for one could think of no better target for it than the mad gobber.

Titan continued to shout at whatever it was, carrying on a one-sided argument that lent credence to the half-seen shimmer's existence. Servitors swarmed from the corners at his agitation, undead mockeries of life composed of a variety of human organs, limbs, and eyes interwoven with crude mechanika. The phantom that Titan railed against swept through the skitter thralls like a hurricane laced with razors, scattering the disgusting things across the cellar, their unnatural lives cut short as surely as if an axe had been laid to them.

I gritted my teeth in expectation of death; violent spirits were notoriously indiscriminate in their murders, born as they were from rage and the need for vengeance. It was as likely to take my life as the gobber's. The apparition's ethereal gaze washed over my body like icy water, and suddenly I knew in my heart that this was the death that had stalked me across Immoren; this was what Orsch had feared would find me. That sense of familiarity as if from a nightmare forgotten a hundred times, coupled with an odd prickling in the back of my mind, lent credence to the strange notion that this thing was connected to me in some obscure fashion. Deep within my breast my soul called out to the phantom as a plague-stricken man calls out for the executioner's axe, welcoming it as the end of torment and the peace of the grave. The ghost had not come for Titan.

It had come for me.

Vainly I wished that I had kept Cora's spectral trap rather than giving it to Orsch, no matter how my arcane allergy would have reacted to the mechanika. The device rested useless in the inner pocket of his heavy woolen coat, wherever it had been discarded by Titan. Having expended my supply of terror for the moment I was left with numb wonderment as the invisible entity carved a path towards me, slicing through more of the gobber's disgusting handiwork as they swarmed to block its path. Apparently Titan was not as limited as I though, for his beady eyes tracked the specter's progress without pause or question.