“Stay calm.” Martin said.

“I’m stuck!” Agnes shouted. “I can’t believe I’m stuck! Oh, Lord, I’m nothing but a jelly!”

“Try moving your arms now.” Martin said. “I just performed a manesological Operation to lessen the density of your ectoplasm.”

“You did? When? Don’t you need to say magic words and move your hands?”

“I know Illustrated Phantom Stories likes to depict us that way, but we don’t need to do anything but think so long as olprt radiance surrounds us and the target of our Operations. Now try moving your arms.”

Agnes did so. Her arms slid clean of the table.

“Now put them on the table, but gently.”

Agnes did so. “I see. I’m a soap bubble. Too much pressure and I break.”

“That’s one way to describe being a manes.”

“I thought ghosts were either like a mist or like people. “ the manes of Agnes Little said. “They could either touch things or they couldn’t.”

“It’s like that for some, but for others, for yourself, it’s kind of an intermediate sort of existence.”

“It’s so frustrating being a third thing in-between two things.” the manes of Agnes Little said. “ How does anyone live like this?” Agnes asked. “Well, I suppose they don’t have much choice in the matter, do they?”

“You just need time to adjust. I know it seems very limiting now, but there are things you can do as a manes that flesh-and-blood people can only dream of doing. You can fly, for instance.”

“Hm. I’d take not having to worry about getting stuck in things over flight.” the manes of Agnes Little said.

She looked at her hand. It seemed so solid, yet every few seconds it would suddenly blink away and reappear like a flashing lightning bolt.

“God, how did I ever think I wasn’t a ghost? I am such a little fool.” the manes of Agnes Little muttered. “Say what you will about Agnes Little’s death, Dr. Glass, but my existence as it currently stands truly feels like a punishment from God.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment.” Martin said.

“There's a certain poetry to my current state. It has the feeling of something from out of the Bible, like Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. I made a living selling my flesh, and now I don’t have flesh. I let men touch me, and now no man can ever touch me again.”

“God is neither petty nor cruel.” Martin said.

“But God is just, and I am a sinner.”

Martin stood up. He could take no more of her constant self-flagellation.

“Please listen to me. In my attempt to become a thaumaturgist, I pursued God. That is what it means to be a thaumaturgist, to pursue God. In the pursuit of God, I sent my mind out into the far reaches of the Astral. I studied the memories and dreams of prehuman civilizations. I conversed with beings that have no shape and no form. Believe me when I say that God is indeed just, but no force of justice would use that thing out there as an instrument! Manes of Agnes Little, I have heard you condemn the woman that you once were, and I cannot understand why you would do so! That creature out there treated Agnes as garbage, to be used for his sick pleasure and then discarded! Why do you not condemn him instead of Agnes? Is it not enough that he attacked the woman that you were, the very source of your memories, and women like her? Do you have to help him in his assault against Agnes, against Emily, against Amelia, and Bethany, and Alice?”

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The manes of Alice Little looked at the man outside the window. She looked at him longer and harder than she ever had before.

The fear she had for him started to pale against a new emotion welling up from deep inside her

She stood up.

“You are right, Dr. Glass. I have abused myself as surely as he did. There is nothing of God in that. I suppose self-abuse is my problem…no.” she shook her head. “No. That was Agnes’ problem. They hated her, and so she hated herself. But I, as her manes, do not have to have her problem. And I know who truly deserves to be the recipient of my anger.”

She stormed over to the window so fast that her feet hovered off the ground, so fast that she did not even notice that she was flying for the first time.

“You damned monster! You killer! You animal! You beast! Look at what you’ve done to me! Well, at least I’m not you! All you can do is stand there and gape like a scarecrow!”

The manes of Agnes Little screamed with a furious strength Agnes Little herself had never known.

“Did you lose anything by dying, you sick, diseased, monstrosity? No! No, because you had nothing but your sick appetites, and you got to go on repeating them! You got to go on stabbing me and stabbing and stabbing me like you wanted! I lost five years! Five years! And you couldn’t just stop with me, you had to kill them all! You had to kill Alice! She hadn’t walked the streets for ages! She wasn’t a whore anymore, you bastard!”

Agnes glared at the man, panting in rage.

Martin smiled. Her condemnation was finally finding the right target.

The man did not move. He did not respond. It was as if she yelled at the night itself. But there was one more thing she had to say, if not for him to hear, than for herself to hear.

“I won’t fear you anymore. But I’ll hate you forever.” Agnes turned and walked back to the table and gently, very gently, sat back down.

“Does he even hear us?” she asked. “He doesn’t seem to.”

“He doesn’t.” Martin answered. “But he also wasn’t the one that needed to hear that. He also doesn’t see us.”

“He doesn’t see us?” Agnes shuffled in her seat to the left and then to the right, trying to see through the shadows that guarded the Werewolf’s face. She couldn’t tell if his shadowed eyes were following her or not.

“But how could he have chased me if he couldn't see me?”

“All will become clear, I promise. But let me continue with the chain of events. You deserve to know how the Werewolf of Blackwall was caught.”

The manes of Agnes Little smiled. “Oh, I do want to hear about this!”

“ After Ms. Grace’s murder, Blackwall was seized with panic. Everyone locked and bolted their doors. Ladies of your profession took to walking the streets with male protection.”

“Pimps are good for something, I suppose.”

“At the time, my friends and I were confident that we weren’t dealing with a manes. But manes or not, there was a killer in our city, and these powers granted to us by the Ror Raas are useful for more than dealing with manes. We have befriended many manes over the years, with many different powers. We called in one that could pass as a living woman and asked her to walk the streets as a tempting target. Eventually, the Werewolf found her and plunged his knife into her, but found that his blade stuck.”

Agnes smiled. “Oh, I like that. Foiled by a ghost! Did the ghost kill him?”

“She captured him alive so that he could give a full accounting of himself before the law.”

“Ah. You’re right, Dr. Glass. Capturing him would be better than killing him.”

“Unfortunately, while he was being escorted away by the constabulary, he slit his throat with a second knife hidden on his person.”

“Oh. Well, that perhaps wasn’t the best outcome, but you won’t catch me complaining about it. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword, so they say. So he died bleeding out on the cold streets, did he?”

“He did. And he died with considerably less composure than yourself. He gurgled through his neck wound, like a pig killed for harvest.”

“Good. There in that is the hand of God, truly.” the manes of Agnes Little said.

“Yes, truly. His rampage, though violent, was brief. It was still 1866 when he perished. It’s been half a decade since then, yet, because the Werewolf’s crimes were so lurid, because he died without giving a name or explanation for his actions, he became an immortal topic of speculation. People wondered if he, perhaps, had a partner. Every time someone was found stabbed to death in Blackwall they wondered if it wasn’t his secret partner at work--or perhaps his own manes. Illustrated Police News would publish any report of Werewolf sightings no matter how far-fetched, and if they didn’t have any reports to publish they would invent their own, for the public loved reading about the Werewolf. I don’t know why, but modern Britons seem to have a barbaric hunger for stories of violence and darkness. It is now 1871, and his legacy still haunts Blackwall though the man himself is long dead.”