The Sleeping Man

Have I become that species of lunatic who believes herself the center of creation, and so all matters — fortuitous or grim — must perforce exist in direct relation to me? I have read a book I found in Caledon, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, by a Dr. Emil Kraepelin. I will not dwell on the inexplicable fact of it's being here, in this world, or its publication in the year 1893 — six years after my departure from Providence a scant two months ago. In this book, Dr. Kraepelin, an alienist, describes a degenerative mental condition that he labels dementia paranoides. I fear the diagnosis might well be applied to the woman I have become.

And, I will mention, in the interest of avoiding lies of omission, that I have begun drinking again. I have not yet gone back to the laudanum, though.

There is a corpse in the attic of Loki Absinthe. Last night, Miss Paine and I came upon it after we discovered a makeshift bridge of planks connecting the Imperial, where the orphans live, with the absinthe house. But already I have gotten ahead of myself.

Why am I even bothering to write these things down? Who will ever read them?

Late in the afternoon, Miss Paine and I were standing near the western canal, by Ginsberg's Dept. Store, when we noticed one of the street urchins exiting the front of the Imperial. He approached us, and I expected no more than another request for monies from a hungry child. But then I noticed that he wore a heavy rucksack upon his shoulders. We spoke briefly, and during our talk he did not once ask for coin. However, he said that his name was Victor Wunderlich — known to friends as "Wunder" — and he was leaving New Babbage for Caledon, and that there was a "monster," a "wolfman," prowling Babbage that had the orphans afraid to go about by night. I gave him a few bills, as did Miss Paine, and he left us wondering if the nightmare of Lucius Sin was about to be revisited upon us. Miss Paine, understandably, grew taciturn and frightened.

So it was that later, after sunset, we searched the streets of the town together for any evidence of this wolfman. In time, we made our way to the attic of the Imperial, and from there to the attic of the absinthe house, and it was here we discovered the body of a man slumped over a drafting table. A dagger protruded from out his back, and there was great quantity of dried blood all about, including bloody handprints. There were also three pages in longhand, one of which was afixed to the man's back with the dagger. I have seen dead men before, and have studied human anatomy at University. But coming upon this body, and the foul stink of rot that pervaded the attic, it was not the same as looking upon the corpse on the dissection table, or even the broken body of my father. I rushed up a set of stairs onto the roof, fearing I would be ill. Fortunately, Miss Paine had the presence of mind to examine closely the papers, which had been written by a Mr. Alexander Eliot, a scientist of some sort, and presumably the dead man.

What dark secrets were hinted in these pages...it is hopeless to try to explain it all now. But they led us to other secrets and other papers, and evidence that Mr. Eliot, Mr. Alexander Eliot, who I take to have been Loki Eliot's grandfather, carried out extensive and terrible experiments. And that he built some device which I have seen referred to in his notes as the "Porta Terrarum Device." This mechanism, composed of three elements — the "Babbage Mark 6," a "sprogmagnatic" ball, and a stabilizer — was ultimately responsible for some catacylsm. Thereafter, Mr. Eliot had it broken into three parts and, according to the evidence we have seen, one of those parts was sent away from New Babbage to Caledon, where it would be delivered to a "contact," in the care of one of the orphans, referred to as "Ally Wunder" in the writings of the dead man. Also, Eliot names his murderers as members of a certain Vangreed Society, who had come for the component of his invention.

In his writings, Alexander Eliot bemoans the damage done by his contraption, and states that he fears by his experimentations that a hole has been torn open in space and time! I quote: "After studying the data collected from the failed experiment I feel we may have caused something so catastrophic to perhaps tear our world apart." A few lines later, "Instruments reveal a lasting residue of the energy created by the device. This I fear could in fact be a scare [?scar] in time and space and is our doing." When did this event occur? Surely not long distant, as Loki Eliot is still a boy. Could this "scare" have been the signal that waylaid my father's time cabinet from its course? How am I to conclude otherwise?

Also, I know that Loki Eliot was given the second component, the "sprogmagnatic" ball, for safekeeping. And the orphans refer to the body as "the sleeping man," and seem ignorant of the fact that it is a corpse, which seems patently absurd, that these streetwise children do not know death when they look upon it!

I must speak with Captain Susenko as soon as I may. Is it possible that I have at least uncovered the cause of my arrival here, or do I suffer from Kraepelin's dementia paranoides? And is it possible that the experimentation of Alexander Eliot upon certain of the orphans of New Babbage (an act mentioned in his writing), has spawned a second lycanthrope, as he seems to have feared? I feel now as though so many of these horrors can be shown to lie one against the other, interconnected, as I have feared all along. More I will not now say, except that I have learned that Miss Paine has cabled Bellatrix Bracken in Steelhead and that even now she is bound for New Babbage. I understand Miss Paine's connextion to this metaphysician, who effected her resurrection when I failed, but it makes me no happier to learn that soon she shall be among us once again.