Read Online Trolley No. 1852 by Edward Lee - Free Book Online

“seconds.”
    The other refractors, as I’d come to think
of them, had also returned upwards in the same search, leaving me
the atrium to myself. At once, I contemplated my next tactic; any
women who might recognise Selina’s photo would be upstairs as well,
on the second or third story. However…
    An echoic click came to my ears, that
elevated my gaze.
    The conductor, I thought.
    For there he was, the
regulation cap perched atop the macabrely immobile white face. In
the fashion of an automaton, he took slow steps up the winding
stairs—to the fourth story…
    Though my tactic remained undelineated, it
was my sheer curiosity that overrode any action of greater
utility.
    You see, I had to know:
exactly what was
taking place on the ominous fourth story.
    I gave the conductor only enough lead-time
to conceal my movements; then, with stealth, speed, and
deliberation, I traced his identical steps. Upon the fourth-floor
landing, I hid behind another Doric display pedestal; this one
providing the base for an ancient basalt idol whom I believed to be
the notorious demon Baalzephon so actively worshiped by luciferic
sects of the Middle Ages. Eye lined up along the pedestal’s edge, I
watched the conductor propel himself to the center of the grandiose
stair-hall, pause, and then enter a door.
    Now’s my chance, I realised.
    No one else occupied the
hall, so I made haste across the plush carpeting. But my dilemma
was plain; for although more than half a dozen doors lined the
wall-side of the hall, I could not be certain exactly which door the
blanch-faced man had entered.
    Somewhere near the
center, was all I could deduce. Each door
I silently passed stood identical to the previous, until (somewhere
in proximity to the hall’s mid-point) I stopped to stare at the
tiniest brass emblem mounted upon the door I currently faced.
Inscribed upon this plaque were, I’m utterly certain, the
cuneiformic markings that denoted the following numerals:
1852.
    I checked both ways down the hall, was
satisfied I was not being surveilled, then stooped to one knee, and
to the ornately plated keyhole, I then put my wide-open eye…
    It troubles me that I
cannot in any accuracy convey to you the details I now beheld. It
was a spectacular bed-chamber displayed to my clandestine view:
sumptuous carpet and wall-coverings, lovely antique furniture and
in addition a veiled four-poster bed whose gorgeously carved post
and headboard appeared adorned in gold leaf; oil portraits and
statuary that were no doubt high-mark collector’s items. These
facts, however, rendered the chamber nondescript when compared to the
room’s (and I’m not sure I can even summon an adequate term) sensorial bearing…
    There seemed to be a light
that was not light but some peculiar cast unlike any I’d observed.
This counter-luminescence
( somehow foggy yet clarity-sharpening)
made the room and its contents fairly shimmer as if through mist;
and seemed preternaturally magnified via some phantasmal lens-obscura , and to
that I must not fail to add…
    Two rod-like objects stood upright at either
side of the grand bed. These objects were likely simple wooden
dowels (nothing peculiar there) but what covered the top half of
each was a mass of some unidentifiable substance that seemed to be
partly translucent and rather ill-hued. The only simile I can
summon is to say that these poles looked like bunches of wizened
white grapes on a stick.
    “There you are,” issued the unmistakable and
faintly accented voice of Madam Aheb. She immediately stepped into
view from the rightward side of the key-way, and it was the
paste-faced conductor to whom she spoke. The madam’s black hair as
well as the diaphanous, low-cut gown iridesce’d in the bizarre
accentuation of the room’s light.
    Her voice turned scolding,
“And it certainly took you long enough to get here. You know how I can’t abide to
have this awful stuff on me for a minute longer that it need be.”
    I could only see the