Mister Brass and

the Last Sudden Silence

Joshua Reynolds

 

 

January 8^th, 1910.

Paris.   

 

Mr. Brass could neither smell the stink of the water nor process the noise that echoed down from among the vaulted archways far above. The sound of music was something he could no longer enjoy, but he could follow its trail well enough. The dark, oily water of the catacombs coiled around his legs, pulling at him as his insect-thin limbs propelled him on.

It was said, in less cosmopolitan places, that Paris swallowed men, body and soul.

            Luckily for Brass, he had neither. That was the popular opinion, at any rate. Brass himself, inhuman as he was, shared no opinions either way. At least not with anyone of importance. His red lens eyes clicked open and shut as he navigated through the darkness beneath the Palais Garnier with ease.

            Ostensibly, he knew that the sheer effluvium of the sewers was the reason that he was undertaking this journey alone. The Parisian police had wanted to wait for the appropriate equipment, but time was of the essence. The woman had been missing for close to twenty-four hours, after all. Lost down here in the dark with a madman.

            Still, not a gendarme had seemed anything but relieved when Brass had voiced his intention to go ahead alone. Brass did not begrudge them their discomfort. His copper and brass frame with its intricately engraved ‘flesh’ – in reality a carapace of overlapping, thin plates that hid his clockwork guts – was anything but reassuring.

            Even with his alien form clad in a finely tailored suit, he was no more human-looking than an avocado. Something he apparently had in common with the man he was hunting.

            Le Fantome.

            A sliver of atonal sound amidst the tide of distant music. He whirled, inhumanly swift, drawing the Tesla-Electro-Pistol from its holster beneath his arm, a harsh blue light sizzling at the end of the barrel. A rat dove into the water and paddled away, squealing. Brass raised the pistol, his finger sliding away from the trigger. Engraved eyelids clicked once. Twice. Then he turned and resumed his trek in the subterranean silences of Paris.

            It had been at the suggestion of one C. Auguste Dupin – Chevalier Dupin – that Brass had been brought in on the investigation into the disappearance of Erika de Chagny. The girl had disappeared from the family home. Guards had been disabled, manhandled, and, in the case of one, crippled. Dupin had built a careful description of the kidnapper, but had abruptly decided against any further involvement.  

Brass had made the acquaintance of the old ratiocinator in Belgium, where they, and a younger, impressively mustachioed, slightly rotund detective with the Belgian Police, had tracked the genetic terrorist Edward Hyde through the fairy tale streets of Bruges.

            Brass recalled his meeting with Dupin in the long-shattered remains of the once famous Paris Opera House. Destroyed by the Martians in the War, it had become overgrown with red weed and black mushrooms.

            “A ghost died here,” Dupin said, prodding the debris with his cane. He was elderly now, almost a living wrinkle. Still, there was a spark to him. “Did you know that?”

            “No,” Brass said.

            “I am done with things,” Dupin said then, with an air of finality. “There is no case here.” Brass said nothing. Dupin’s motivations were often hard to follow, even for those who knew him well.

            “I only suggested you under duress, my mechanical friend,” Dupin continued. “The Comte de Chagny is a hard man to refuse, especially given his connections to the Global Science Consortium.”

            “I will do what I can,” Brass said. Dupin nodded.

            “I expected no less, Monsieur Brass.”

            The meeting with the Count and his wife had been less amiable. The Count was a youthful looking man, small with a woman’s complexion and a tendency to go red when thwarted. His wife, in contrast, was a thin, pale thing, all vitality long since drained out of her.

            “Letters! Letters from a dead man!” the Count ranted, stamping his foot. “The Chevalier discovered them in her room. He even trailed the kidnapper to the sewers! But he refuses to go any further!”

            “Chevalier Dupin is a hard man to understand, at times,” Brass replied. He sat in their solarium, overlooking the river, hands on his knees.

The Count grunted and turned on his wife. “I told you he was not dead!”      

            His wife did not reply. Her eyes were haunted. Scared, perhaps.

            Strangely, or perhaps not, it was that look that Brass remembered the most. As if she knew something. Brass had seen that look many times before in his time as a Pinkerton operative. It was guilt.  

            But ferreting out secrets was not his job. Not this time. Dust and mold knocked loose by the vibrations of his quarry pattered down on him as he moved, scattering his memories back into the shoals of his mind. The brim of his bowler hat was heavy with the stuff, and he wiped at it absently.

The music was growing louder now, but that no sure indicator that he was actually close to his destination. Sound could, and often did, play tricks in these tunnels. The water level was rising steadily as he made his way deeper into the depths. It roiled sluggishly around his hips now.

            Brass stopped. Head cocked, he listened.

            Behind him, the sound of water splashing. It wasn’t rats. Not with that much noise. Not with –

            The blow came out of nowhere, battering him from his feet, driving him beneath the foul water.  Something grasped him, held him down, driving his spine against the furry stones of the sewer floor. Brass twisted against the weight, thrusting his legs up. They broke the water and stopped, the soles of his feet connecting with something. Abruptly, he found himself free. He pushed himself up awkwardly, rising from the water slowly.

            The shape of something filled the darkness. It made a sound like a bellows being squeezed and lifted arms the scraped the stone ceiling in a shower of sparks. The arms came down and Brass heaved himself backwards.

            The water exploded up with the impact, slopping against the sides of the tunnel. Brass heard a groan echoing from deep down below. The stone beneath his feet trembled.

            A fist wrapped in rags and chains caught him on the chin, knocking him back. He sliced through the water, striking the wall. Rats scattered, squealing. Brass grabbed a handful of brick and pulled himself up. He had maintained a grip on his gun, despite everything. The Tesla shrieked and a fat bolt of lightning lit up the darkness, illuminating the shape that trudged towards him.

Seven feet, if it was an inch, clad in burlap rags. Rusty chains were wrapped around its forearms and its head was covered by a hood, an animal’s feed bag with eye slits cut in. Mismatched eyes glared out, narrowing at the sudden explosion of light.

The electricity splashed over it and it staggered, grunting. Brass fired again, and again the electricity struck it and spread, like water splashing over a porous stone. It stopped, breathing heavily.

“Get out,” it said, voice muffled by the sacking.

“Where is the woman?” Brass said.

“Not here. Get out.”

“Forgive me if I do not believe you.” Brass gestured with his pistol. “Again, where is she?”

“What are you?” the bulk said, chains rattling. Brass reached out, snagging his hat where it floated.

“Mr. Brass, Pinkerton Detective Agency. We never sleep.” Brass stared at his hat for a moment, then shook the excess water off and plopped it back on his head. “Seconded to the Paris Police for the duration,” he continued.

“Duration?”

“The kidnapping of a woman – ”

“It wasn’t a kidnapping!” the bulk said, shifting. Brass’ eyes clicked once. Twice.

“The Phantom, I presume?” he said.

“No,” the bulk said. “Merely his disciple.”

“I was not aware that ghosts had disciples.”

“There is much of which you are not aware, automaton.”

“Then, if I may ask, where might I find the Phantom?”

“You will not.” The shape moved closer. “You will leave. These tunnels – the streets of the under city of Paris – are his.”

“The city of Paris might dispute such,” Brass said.

“They are free to do so. Thus does ungrateful man treat those whom he owes most,” the bulk said. “Was it not Les Fantome who defended this great city when things from the ugly stars did crawl down and seek mankind’s extermination? Was it not Le Fantome who unleashed his Angels of Music upon the mollusks?”

Brass hesitated. There had been rumors, of course. Of clockwork angels with razor wings circling Notre Dame and the opera house, singing horrible songs. Of crawling, wheezing spiders made of steam bags and gears that erupted from the sewers, water-cooled steam guns mounted on their carapaces chattering. But there had been many horrors in the Martian War, both for and against humanity. Brass himself had been one of the former, after all.

“Hero or not, kidnapping is still an offense in the eyes of the law – ”

“What law? The law of man?” the thing said, chains rattling. “Pfaugh! That for the law of man! What of love? What of beauty, kindness? Those are the laws of this land, machine. Laws you cannot comprehend!”

“I am no machine,” Brass said. It stung, the dismissal inherent in the term. Others had used it of course, but to hear a shapeless thing such as this refer to him in such a manner. . .

The shape made a noise. A wheezing, gasping grumble that Brass realized was laughter.

“Says the contraption of metal.”

“My name is Brass,” Brass said. “Mr. Brass.”

“Mais non,” the bulk said, lunging suddenly. Long fingers, thin, but strong-looking, clawed for Brass’ face. Brass ducked as best he was able in the water, firing his pistol. Lightning burst in the gap between them, snarling. The bulk continued forward, heedless. Brass was forced backwards, back under water. The pistol slipped from his grasp. The water seemed to tremble with music. Fists battered him, chains dragging sparks from his face. Brass launched his own blow, and felt flesh give as his bronze knuckles struck home.

His back struck the floor of the tunnel. A brief moment of resistance, then, with an audible roar, the tunnel gave way.

Brass experienced a brief moment of vertigo as he sank into the collapsing explosion of bricks and stone. Grasping his opponent, he was dragged under and fell down, carried by the tide of water and gravity. Hands sought his throat, and he almost laughed. He did not breathe, yet they always sought to strangle him.

Fingers dug blindly into the cables and tubes of his throat and his nascent humor evaporated. Not strangulation. Decapitation. That would prove much more effective.

Brass clawed for its wrists, found them, and forced them away even as the water cleared for a brief moment, revealing a vaulted cavern strung with softly glowing globes of light and then darkness as he struck the waters of an underground lake.

Brass surfaced in a spray of liquid. His coat was torn, his hat gone. His opponent, as well. Music echoed all around him, a thunderous symphony, a raw, primal joy that shook the stone pillars that upheld the ceiling.

An island sat in the middle of the lake, resembling nothing so much as a Greek temple, with columns and coiling garlands of red Martian weed. Strange pink flowers blossomed beneath the ghostly gaze of the bulbs of light that hung suspended everywhere. And there, in the center of the island, upon a dais of marble, was an immense organ, its brass pipes rising to untold heights as a figure in black sat hunched over the keys. The music rolled out of the organ, washing over everything.

A splash behind him. Brass turned, but not quickly enough as a massive hand seized his skull and lifted him up.

“Don Juan Triumphant,” the creature said. It’s mask had torn free, revealing a cadaverous face. Thin, neat scars ran across it haphazardly, giving the impression of hurried stitching. Greasy black hair hung lank from an oddly proportioned head. It leered at Brass, great yellow teeth bared in a sickly smile. “His masterpiece.”

It flung Brass away with such force that he skipped across the water like a stone.

“One of his masterpieces, rather.” The creature spread its arms, head thrown back, glorying in the music. Brass tried to find his footing in the water, his feet skidding across the slick stones.

The creature waded towards the island, shedding its rags, revealing a narrow, almost lithe form. A form of patchwork perfection. All except for the face. A corpse’s face.

“Can a machine understand music?” the creature said, turning. “Can you glimpse the Divine Spheres which are his to plumb, automaton?”

“No,” Brass said, following after the creature, moving as quickly as he could.

“Neither could I, at first,” the creature said, climbing onto shore. “But I learned at his feet. He taught me, and did what my father could not. . . ” it trailed off, teeth flashing. “Frankenstein,” it said, as if remembering.

“Frankenstein?” Brass stopped. “What – ”

“Abandoned!” the creature whirled. “Abandoned on Arctic ice, left to wither and rot by the hand of my creator!” Its voice boomed, echoing from column to column. The pink flowers seemed to curl in on themselves in sympathy. “But I survived,” it continued, great arms swinging. “I made my way back to the haunts of men, bearing the scars of my death-duel upon this flesh of hideous creation, hunting my creator – ”

“Frankenstein is dead,” Brass said. Thus music seemed to surge upward suddenly, a flourish of sound that carried the words to echo and re-echo. The monster stopped, eyes narrowing.

“Yes. So they say.” It glared at him. “In Scotland.”

“Yes,” Brass said, wading towards shore. “Six years ago. In Scotland.”

“You were there?”

“I saw him fall.”

“I too saw him fall. Saw him drown. Saw him burn.” The monster turned towards the dais, and the thin figure which played on, heedless of the two. “I have seen him die so many times. Am I to never know peace?”

“Only here, only here,” sang the Phantom, suddenly.

“He saved me, you see,” the monster said, turning back towards Brass. “I was captured, on display, bound and beaten, and he saved me. Saved my soul.” The monster flung out its arms, gesturing. “He showed me such wonders, this Angel of the Opera. He showed me the beauty in music, the beauty of the soul, and now I will ensure his legacy lives on – ”

“Enough, my friend,” the Phantom hummed, without turning. The monster fell silent. Brass set foot on the island. He stepped up out of the water.

“Where is the girl?”

“Closer than you think,” the Phantom said, fingers pulling away from the keys of the organ suddenly. Slim and graceful, black cloak swirling, he stepped down from the dais. A moon-colored Carnival mask hid his face, and an expensively cut gentleman’s suit hid his form. The cloak billowed and collapsed around him as he walked. A silver-topped cane clicked against the stone of the island.

Le Fantome. The Phantom of the Paris Opera House. Slender fingers, clad in black gloves, gripped the head of the cane as the Phantom leaned forward.

“The girl – that silly, foolish girl – is quite safe. Safer than with her foolish mother and unpleasant father.”

“Her parents might disagree,” Brass said, cutting his gaze between the two, monster and phantom. “You sent him to – ”

“You insist on having a name, automaton. Be so good as to use mine,” the creature rumbled. “Adam.”

“You sent Adam to invade the Count’s residence, to steal his daughter – ”

“Not his! Not his!” the Phantom sang out, in harmony with the fading echoes of Don Juan Triumphant. The cane was raised and lowered. Tap-tap.

Brass cocked his head. “Oh?”

“Mine,” the Phantom said, singing still.

“His,” the monster echoed, a grumbling baritone.

“There are better ways – ” Brass began. The Phantom raised his cane.

“You have not had the pleasure of the Count’s company, non?” A trill of laughter. “A brute, monsieur, a truer brute than Adam here.” The Phantom leaned forward on the cane again. “Where others see art, he sees but wasted paint. Where others hear music, only noise. No soul there, Monsieur Brass. Is there a soul in you?”

“No.” Brass said it before he’d realized. “Not a human one, at any rate.” He spread his arms. “Once, maybe.” Images flashed in his head, falling through his memories like shards of multi-colored glass. Images of man, flashes of pain and insanity, the wicked tools of a demented genius, then the cunning artifice of another. Every year, the part of him who had been someone else were a little more faded. A little less real. Soon he would be only Brass. And he felt nothing for that fact.

“And now?” the Phantom said, voice soft.

“I do my duty,” Brass said. He pointed. “You are under arrest for the kidnapping of –”

“I think not,” the Phantom said. He gave the head of the cane a twist and there was a sudden shriek of metal. Brass looked up.

In the darkness that shrouded the roof of the cavern, shapes stirred. Great wings unfurled, shining in the light of the globes, pale porcelain faces twisting, turning on clockwork necks. Faces out of a painting. Perfect and horribly beautiful.

Then, with a sudden silence, the Angels of Music, the Demons of Paradise, dropped from their perches and swooped towards Brass.

A gilded wing caught him as one robed shape flashed past, its razor feathers cutting a groove in his chest. Brass stumbled back. Appendages that were little more than butcher’s blades clamped onto his shoulders and an angel hoisted him into the air. A cherub face framed by molded ringlets of golden hair smiled down at him as great wings flapped.

Brass struggled in its grip. He found himself twisted, turned to face it. From beneath dingy white robes, more appendages, insectile and segmented, burst free, blade-fingers snapping, cutting gouges in him. A haze of emerald light seemed to illuminate the creature from within.

Brass smashed a fist through the Angel’s chest and seized the miniature Cavorite generator within. A sliver no bigger and no thicker than a child’s thumbnail enabled the clockwork thing to fly, to function. Brass yanked it free even as the Angel dropped him.

The Angel gave a squawk and fell limply, but Brass floated upwards, clinging precariously to the tiny generator. The other Angel banked and swung towards him, wings angled to remove his head. Brass kicked his feet, swinging himself around so that the Cavorite generator was between himself and the other automaton. Copper fingers twisted and the generator popped in half in an explosion of glass. Green light exploded and the Angel was caught in the path of a bullet of pure chaos.

The laws of physics were repelled directly in front of Brass and the Angel simply vanished, undone, unwritten. The Cavorite, once released, dissipated and Brass found himself in a free-fall.

He hit the water with a thunderous crack, and felt all of his limbs go out of joint from the impact. Floating, Brass attempted to reorient himself.

“You are persistent, as only the artificially-created can be,” Adam, Frankenstein’s creation, rumbled, wading towards him, long arms trailing through the water. “We cling to life with a much stronger grasp than those birthed of God’s glory. We hold onto all that we have, knowing that to die is, for us, the end. Man has God, but we, we only have Man.”

Rotating the ball-joint that served as his shoulder, Brass unlocked his arm. Duplicating the effort was easier the second time. Limb by limb, he regained his mobility. As the monster loomed over him, Brass darted up, his hands seizing the creature’s neck.

“I rely on nothing save myself,” Brass said. His metal skull connected with the creature’s, and Adam reeled back. Brass smashed a fist into the monster’s side, then caught him in the throat with the edge of his hand. For a normal human, the pressure points of Frankenstein’s creation would have been impossible to find through the layers of chemically enhanced muscle. But for Brass, it was merely a matter of effort.

Adam wheezed and staggered. Locking his hands, Brass swung up as the monster bent over. His locked fists caught the creature on its jaw and the monster was slammed erect. It swayed for a moment, then toppled backwards with a great splash.

Brass looked down at the monster’s insensate bulk, then back up at the Phantom. “Now, if we are done with the philosophy lesson, I am afraid I must place you under arrest-”         

            “For what? A daring rescue? Defending my home?” the Phantom said, cloak pulled tight. “Leave, automaton, leave my endless night, lest I surely slay thee.”

            “Lest?” Brass said. The Phantom flung back the cloak and raised his cane. Blue electricity curled across the head and lightning shuddered out, striking Brass in the chest. He rocked backwards, but did not stop.

            “I abjure thee,” the Phantom said, both hands gripping the cane, lightning flashing again and again, hammering into Brass.

            “I am sure that you do,” Brass said. “But that will not stop me.”

            Soundlessly, the Phantom tossed aside the cane and rushed back up the dais. Brass followed, moving stiffly. The Phantom whirled, pulling on a braided rope that descended from the roof.

            A noose dropped from above, looping around Brass’ head and pulling tight. The Punjab Lasso. Wire strung through the rope made it strong and stiff. Hidden pulleys sprang into action, and Brass was lifted slightly. With effort, Brass reached up and tore the noose from around his neck with ease.

            “Tricks and traps will not help,” Brass said, inexorable. The Phantom did not answer. Fingers danced across keys and the organ gave a sonorous hum. Plates of glass shot up from the floor, enclosing Brass in a makeshift cell. A top slid into place. Brass drew back a fist.

            His blow glanced off of the plate in front of him. “Crystal?” he said.

            “There are geological wonders in this world aplenty, my fine automaton,” the Phantom said. “One such, in Sweden, is a cave composed of rough crystal which holds and amplifies sound into something far beyond what the human form or mind can tolerate. When the wind blows wrong, men have been known to go mad.”

            “I am no man,” Brass said, battering at the crystal.

            “Then consider this an experiment!” The Phantom turned and began to play. A wild reel, not music so much as the war cry of some spectral army.

            Sound buffeted Brass, pounding against him from all sides, above and below. Pure sound. Pure deafening force. The delicate vibration-meters that allowed Brass to hear cracked. Exploded. Cracks crawled across his already battered frame. He sank to one knee. One of the angled mirrors that served as his eyes shattered.

            Brass fell onto all fours, feeling as if he were shaking apart. The stone beneath his palms vibrated. His remaining eye narrowed. Stone.

            Desperately, he dug his fingers into the near invisible grooves that the crystal-plate in front of him had risen from. Ripped the edges of the metal sleeves loose. Worked his fingers under the plate. Inside him, a spring snapped.

            Brass lifted. The plate shot upwards, fell backwards, shattering one of the others. The contained sound escaped, hammering out in a semi-solid wave of noise. Columns cracked and nearly splintered. The Phantom was hurled forwards, slammed into the organ. The organ itself gave a wheezing groan and fell suddenly silent.

Brass heard none of it. Through his remaining eye, he saw the Phantom crawl from the wreckage. Brass stooped, grabbing a handful of the cloak, hauling the man up –

The face of an angel stared into his. Pale, narrow, dark-eyed. Glossy black hair framed her face. She was speaking desperately, hands clutching at him. A drizzle of blood rolled down one cheek. No longer Le Fantome, only a scared girl. Erika de Chagny. The daughter of an opera singer and a lonely ghost.  

Brass set her down, gently.

His mind flashed back. The letters Chevalier Dupin had found. The seeming certainty of the Phantom’s death in the fall of the Opera House.

What had the monster said? ‘I will ensure that his legacy lives on’. He looked at the girl again. Her mouth was open, pursed in song. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she sat in the ruins of what her father-her real father-had built. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

He turned and looked up into the monster’s – Adam’s – face. The creature said something. Trying to explain, perhaps? To give his reasons-their reasons-for the kidnapping that wasn’t.

Brass shook his head and began to walk. He hit the water and kept walking. There was bound to be an access tunnel leading to the upper levels, and beyond them to the surface.

Dupin had known, he realized. That was why he had refused to aid the investigation further. The old detective had known that there had been no crime. The young woman was an adult. It had not been a kidnapping, but rather, a rescue.

He found a tunnel opening, hidden behind a grate.

He would tell them that the Phantom had escaped. That there was no sign of the girl. Machines could not lie, so they would believe him. He had a feeling that the Count and his wife knew the truth regardless. But he would tell them a lie all the same.

Brass grabbed the bars and tore them loose. As he stepped through, he turned to look back.

Monster and ghost stood on the remains of the dais, hands intertwined, heads thrown back, voices raised in song.

But all Brass heard was silence. And in some ways, he knew, that was all that he would ever hear.