But wait…there was Dr. Ernst, and then there was Dr. Morton. But she had just escaped the man, and he was right behind her. Her wound was fresh and throbbing, again.

She had only just been stabbed, it had happened no more than seconds ago, she was sure of that. So when did she meet Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton?

Agnes didn’t have long to ponder the strangeness of her circumstances. The fog suddenly cleared. It had swarmed about her like a wall of vapor blocking off the buildings, but now the buildings were present and visible.

Buildings meant people.

Agnes screamed. Someone had to be inside those red bricks, those dim windows. Someone had to be, even just one person, she only needed one person to save her.

She screamed, even as the exertion tore at her side. “Help! Help! He’s killing me! He’s killing me!”

Silvery light poured out of one of the buildings. It blazed out of the windows and outlined the door in bright bars of light. It suffused the building. The very brick itself seemed to drink in the light. As a cloth absorbed water and darkened, the brick absorbed light and brightened.

The door flung open, and there in the threshold was a man with a familiar object in his hand. Though he was markedly younger than Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton, his possession of the object marked him as one of their own. He had short blond hair, a bushy mustache, and blue eyes dulled behind tinted glasses.

“This way!” he cried. “Come in, quickly, quickly!”

Agnes ran to the light. But suddenly, from out of nowhere, the man appeared between her and her savior.

Shadows covered him like solid, black cloth. She could not see his face. There was a shroud of shadows between his hat and neck that obscured his features. He wore a black cloak and black gloves that made it hard to tell where the shadows ended and where his body began.

He was tall, almost as tall as Dr. Morton was, and towered over Agnes. She felt like a helpless child. In one of his hands was a dagger the color of a rotten tooth. Brown stains on the dagger were either rust or blood.

Its edge was bright red, wet and hungry.

The man brought his arm up in a motion that made Agnes think of one of the men her mother loved, one of the men her mother brought home who would raise his hand before bringing it down in a violent arc that smashed objects and broke bones.

Agnes thought of her mother. She hated her, but she thought of her nonetheless.

Then, the man stopped.

Silvery light burned through his chest and left a hole.

The man stumbled, fell, and broke apart like brittle glass. The pieces of the man oozed into the darkness and vanished.

“Come on!” her savior shouted. “Get inside, quickly!”

Agnes threw herself into his arms and sobbed upon feeling that he was real, and solid. He held her with one arm and led her into the building. Agnes heard the door slam shut. Somehow, the man was able to close the door even with Agnes in his arms, even with the door several feet away. But that was like the green fire in Dr. Morton’s cigar, a silly thing to worry about now.

“Shh! Shh! It’s alright now, Agnes. My name is Dr. Martin Glass. I’m a friend of Dr. Matthew Ernst and Dr. Joseph Morton.” Martin led Agnes to a chair.

Agnes swept her tears away and looked around. The silvery light of the object in Martin’s hand allowed her to see every dusty detail of the building, which she thought had to be some sort of old restaurant or coffeehouse. Dust coated the tables. A chalk sign bore the illegible marks of what may have once been a menu. Simply moving in the building kicked up dust, and the motes floated as black specs in the silvery light.

“Oh God.” Agnes breathed fast and hard. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.”

“Look at me, Agnes.” Martin put his hands on her shoulders. “Look at me.”

Agnes did so.

“Breathe in through your nose, slowly, and then breathe out through your mouth slowly.”

Agnes did so.

“Keep doing that. Come on. Follow me.” And as Martin breathed in and out, Agnes copied his cadence. Very quickly, she calmed down.

“There you go.” Martin smiled. “It’s okay now. You know, that little trick even works to calm down manes?”

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“Manes?” Agnes asked. “Oh! Oh those are ghosts, what learned people call ghosts, of course. But how does that work with them? They don’t breathe.”

“It’s a common misconception that manes don’t breathe. Some do.” Martin said. “There’s a spiritual component to manes that copies the body just as other components copy the mind. When the component is strong, a manes might breathe. Rarely does their breathing actually move air, but they do it nonetheless.”

Martin extended his hand. “Dr. Martin Glass of Ernst, Morton, and Glass.”

Agnes shook his hand. “Agnes Little. Um, I think…I think I know Dr. Ernst and Dr. Morton but…but I’m not sure I do, really.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was walking. I usually walk at this…” Agnes almost said “at this hour,” and she did usually walk the streets at this hour, but that was not something to discuss with a gentleman. “...I usually go for walks. But anyway, I came upon this man, and he was stumbling around. I thought he was drunk. I went up to him. I tried to help him stand and then there was blood on me and I thought he hurt himself but he stuck me, he actually stuck me, he actually put a knife in my side and--”

Agnes looked at her side.

Once again, no blood, no cut, no tear.

“Oh God.” Agnes gasped.

“Agnes Little, this is not an easy thing to tell you, but you are at the center of a manesological event.” Martin said.

“I don’t know what that is. “ Agnes said flatly. “I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

“Yes, you do. Listen to me. Manes are very powerful beings. Have you ever read Illustrated Phantom Stories?”

Agnes had, as much as she could read anything.

“Yes.”

“Some of those stories are exaggerated, but there’s a good deal that aren’t. Manes really can lift up houses and toss them through the air. They really can invade human bodies and move them like puppets. They really can make what’s real look false and what’s false look real. You were carried around Chopin Street without being carried, as strange as that may sound. One moment you were here, the next moment there. Does that sound like what happened to you?”

Agnes nodded.

“That’s called teleportation. It is a thing manes can do to people.”

“He moved me…”

“Yes he did. All he did was turn you around and around. That’s all.”

“I think he liked that. The trail. Following the trail of my blood…” Agnes rested her head on the back of her chair. It was a cheap wooden thing, scratchy and splintered, but it gave her some comfort. “He played with me like a cat with a dying mouse…”

Agnes rolled her head and looked out the window with half-opened eyes.

There, in the window, was the man.

Agnes screamed. She tumbled from her chair, overturning it as she fell to the floor, and pointed at the man. “It’s him! It’s him!” she cried. “He can’t die! He just keeps coming back and he keeps chasing me and he keeps cutting me and I don’t understand what’s going on! Who is he? Why is he doing this to me?”

Martin knelt next to Agnes, who buried her face in his shoulder. “He cannot hurt you and he cannot come in here. He can only look at you. He’s just a tiger at the zoo. He can no more come in here and hurt you than a painting can get out of its frame.”

Agnes peeked at the man.

Did his eyes meet hers? She couldn’t tell with the shadows in the way.

She cringed, imagining that his eyes did in fact meet her own.

“Try not to look at him.” Martin said.

“I’ll try.” Agnes buried her face in Martin’s shoulder and quivered like a small animal.

“I know it's hard. But all he can do is look, and if you look at him, you’re acknowledging the one thing he can do to you.”

Martin gently guided Agnes back to the table.

“Have you heard of Ernst, Morton, and Glass, Agnes?” he asked.

‘No. I don’t know the slightest idea who you are, but thank you, thank you so much! He was going to kill me…but are you sure we’re really safe in here? I’m afraid he could break down the door!”

“I am sure that you’re safe. We’re manesologists.”

“Manesologists!” Agnes gasped.

That word alone brought hope to Agnes Little.

She was a woman of very little education, she could only read and write a little, but she knew what manesologists were. They were the ghost men. Everyone knew the ghost men. They were as necessary as policemen and fire brigades these days. I

In Agnes’ mother’s time, ghosts were rare beings. They had a negligible effect on the world of man and were thus easy to ignore and disbelieve. Not so in Agnes’ time.

The ghost men protected ghosts from men and men from ghosts, always remaining impartial in disputes, and wielded powers granted to them by a group of occultists called the Ror Raas. The Ror Raas predicted that ghosts would gradually come to fill up the Earth due to the natural weakening of something called Archon walls and empowered the ghost men to guide and protect mankind through the coming age of ghosts. These Archon walls couldn’t be pointed to. They couldn’t be touched and they couldn’t be marked on a map, and yet the Ror Rass said they existed as a boundary between the physical Earth and the metaphysical Astral. Agnes thought it was strange that people were expected to believe in a giant wall they couldn’t see with their own eyes, but then again, there was supposed to be some kind of great wall in China, and she had never seen that with her own eyes. If people in authority said something was a certain way, who was she to doubt it?

“You’re a manesologist…” Agnes was awed.

Then she looked at the strange, glowing device in Martin’s hand. “Oh, I’m such an idiot! That’s a gaeite candle. I…I should have known that’s what those things were. I’ve seen pictures of gaeite candles.”

“You are not an idiot.” Martin said. “You’ve been through a horrible experience and it’s playing havoc with your ratiocination.”

“My what?”

“You’ve suffered a nasty fright and it’s made it hard for you to recall things.”

“True, true. But I still should have recognized a gaeite candle nonetheless. What else makes silver colored light? What else is made out of a big rectangle of gaeite?”

Gaeite was a strange material. The Ror Raas mined it out of ruins older than Rome, older than Babylon, older than any of the civilizations of mankind. They learned where these ruins were from the same being that told them about the Archon walls--Abramelin.

Abramelin was a colossal thing that lived beneath Egypt. The Ror Raas never said what Abramelin was, only what Abramelin was not. He was not a man, or a beast, or a god, or a demon, or a fairy, or a ghost, though Agnes’ mother once told her that someone once told her that Abramelin was like a great whale.

Whatever Abramelin was, Agnes hoped that he would always continue to be a benevolent mystery. He had helped mankind considerably since Samuel Mathers made psychic contact with him in 1860. But Agnes knew from experience that powerful beings could give you money one day and a fist the next. That was the way of the world, and maybe the way of the world didn’t apply to a being like Abramelin, Agnes would like to think it didn’t, but maybe it did.

“I still can’t believe I couldn’t recognize a gaeite candle.” Agnes wanted to slap herself. “I swear I’m not that stupid Dr…I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

“Dr. Martin Glass, of Ernst, Morton, and Glass.”

Agnes winced. “Oh! Of course! Of course I know who you three are!”