Mr. Carter rested his head on the stiff cushion of his seat and drifted on the border of sleep, never once crossing over, but coming close several times. As he felt himself start to grow comfortably numb despite his surroundings, Teddy began to talk about how the CSA was so ingenious that towards the end of the conflict they were crafting buggies that were sealed up like coffins. These buggies not only shielded riders from rifle fire but could travel underwater like a whale. The CSA had plans to send a team of such coffins up the Mississippi to burn Washington, but it never came to pass, and now the point was moot. The CSA was fracturing under economic pressure from the North, and as the Ror Raas forbade martial retaliation, the component states of the Confederacy were gradually returning to the Union to avoid ruination.

Teddy’s talk of rolling coffins brought to Mr. Carter’s sleep deprived mind the ridiculous but disturbing image of men fighting on a battlefield in actual coffins. In his mind, he saw Confederate soldiers paddling down a river in coffins. When they reached the shore, their coffins dragged themselves across the beach, scooting along like baby sea turtles in the sand. Then, when a Federal bullet smashed through the soldier’s skull, he fell back, and his coffin clamped shut over him.

But that was not the end. Mr. Carter saw inside the closed coffin. He saw the soldier’s eyes, open and blank and staring up at nothing in the darkness.

That reminded Mr. Carter of his ghosts.

Mr. Carter bolted upright.

He panted. He felt wet with sweat.

Teddy chuckled. “Bad dream, sir?”

“I wasn’t dreaming.” Mr. Carter answered. “It doesn’t count as a dream if you aren’t sleeping, and I can’t do that with all the shaking and the sound of…that infernal motor running.”

He almost said “and the sound of your talking.”

“So if you were not dreaming, were you going off into vision-worlds like the thaumaturgists, sir?” Teddy asked.

“No. My mind was just going off into nonsense.”

“Would that nonsense happen to be related in any way to ghosts?” Teddy smiled at the look of annoyance on Mr. Carter’s face.

“Ah, I see you were, in fact, daydreaming about ghosts, sir!” Teddy said.

“I said no such thing.” It was just his luck. Teddy was nosey as well as talkative.

“Yes. But sir, consider the circumstances. I’m no Holmes or Dupin, but I know a little of that reduction thing, that deduction, induction, whatever it is, I know it, A man rents my buggy in the wee hours of the morning. He shows up exhausted. He’s heading to Blackwall, and everyone knows what’s in Blackwall--Ernst, Morton, and Glass. It seems to me, sir, if I may be so bold as to suggest it, that you have a ghost problem. A haunting, as they say.”

“And if I do? Is a haunting really so uncommon nowadays?”

“Oh, it's common and it’s getting more common. It’s just that I’ve noticed you’ve got one. You aren’t the first person with a ghost problem in the back of my buggy and you certainly won’t be the last. But I’ve had many, many passengers who have had many, many different kinds of hauntings. Would you like to talk about your kind of haunting, sir?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m seeing a professional consultation in Blackwall.”

“I once had a passenger who was a historian, a man of great learning and distinction sir, with a seat at the heights of academia.” Teddy either didn’t understand the hint or he ignored it.

“He was haunted by the ghost of a Roman soldier who marched on London back when it was called Londinium.” Teddy said. “The ghost claimed to be his honored ancestor Secundus Tuccio, though that was just a lie, sir. Secundus Tuccio just wanted to be under the care of a historian who knew a little of what it was like to live back in ancient Rome. He pretended to be related to the historian just to get in man’ts good graces. And for a time, he as in the man’s goo graces, because who doesn’t want to be nice to his ancestor’s ghost? If its’ a faux pas to kick grandma out of the home, it’s something mighty taboo to kick grandma’s ghost out of the home. But ancestor or not, Secundus Tuccio got on the bad side of the historian by being far too talkative.”

“You don’t say?”

“He wanted to know everything about anything that was new and modern to him, and after several centuries that added up to quite a lot of questions about quite a lot of different things! And this Secundus Tuccio, sir, he could talk a man’s ear off from what they say about him.”

“Oh, how dreadful.”

“It could have been a lot worse sir, a lot worse but the historian couldn’t stand Secundus Tuccio and so got in my buggy, got to Blackwall, and called up Ernst, Morton and Glass, and they set the haunting right like they always do. They struck a deal with Secundus Tuccio, you see. They got him to leave the historian alone and in exchange they made him this big, wide, stone called a sinataph…cynotaph…no, a cenotaph! Yes, a cenotaph!”

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“What on Earth is that?” Mr. Carter asked.

“It’s like a gravestone, but without a grave. You see, the Greeks would send their boys off to battle in Europe, they would die, and it was considered a terrible fate to die on alien soil, sir, it was said the ghost couldn’t rest in that state. Of course, we know better nowadays. But the idea was that if you built a cenotaph, you could honor the ghost without the body being present.”

“ You could have just said it was a shrine for a ghost.”

“A shrine! Good word, I’ll have to remember that! Shrine! Anyway, that cenotaph got Secundus Toccio under control. He liked being honored. And the historian would sometimes miss his old faker ancestor and come by his cenotaph and talk to Secundus Tuccio--though never for long! Anyway, sir, is that what your problem is? Do you have a ghost talking to you in the middle of the night, keeping you awake, sir?”

“No. They never say anything to me.”

“What do they do then, sir?”

“They just…stare. They stare at me, blankly, as if they were looking through me, but their eyes always follow me, so I know they’re looking at me.”

“Have you tried talking with them? If someone’s staring at me, sir, I would think they were doing so because they expected me to say something, or do something.”

“No, I have not tried talking with them.”

How on Earth had this become a conversation?

“Why not, sir?”

“Because I don’t know how they’ll answer. I don’t know anything about them. They don’t look like anyone I know. They don’t act like anyone I know. For all I know, the moment I open my mouth to say something, they’ll attack me.”

“But you don’t know, sir. Maybe the ghosts simply want to hear you say something, because they’ve gone a long time without hearing a living voice?”

“I don’t like gambling on uncertainties, Teddy, and ghosts are nothing if not uncertainty embodied.”

“No sir, I don’t believe they are.” Teddy said. “Have you ever read Nesbit’s Guide To Manesology?”

From cover to back, twice.

“No.”

“I highly recommend it sir, and Ernst, Morton, and Glass do as well. It’s a nice little layman’s guide to ghosts. But it says something, and I do paraphrase here sir, but the general idea should come across clearly, that ghosts are impressions left by the mind and body upon the Astral. That’s the big thing around everything else, like a big cloud. You go down to the beach, you press a coin in some wet sand there you go, that’s a ghost, more or less. Nothing uncertain about that.”

“That says nothing about individual ghosts, and it’s the individual variations that make ghosts such uncertain creatures. One ghost looks like a man and acts like a man. Another looks like a man, but acts like a living storybook, moving back and forth, doing the same things again and again. Another looks like nothing, and spends his time smashing anything that gets near him with Herculean strength--that was the Brute of Epping, remember him?”

“Yes sir, he was one of the first cases of Ernst, Morton, and Glass--or rather, Ernst and Morton. They hadn’t recruited Dr. Glass yet.”

“The powers and behaviors of an unknown ghost are always a mystery, so when I see those ghosts leering at me, my mind is filled with questions--Do they just want to talk? Do they expect something of me? Do they think I’m someone I’m not? Do they want to hurt me? This is the uncertainty I speak of.”

“I would think talking to them would have cleared up some of that uncertainty, sir, surely, and without being too much of a risk. If a ghost was mad enough to want to hurt you just for saying “Hello, how are you, what do you want from me?” then I would think he would be mad enough to want to hurt you just for being seen.”

“Perhaps. But who can account for the behavior of ghosts, anyway?”

“Who can account for the behavior of men? After all, sir, ghosts come from men. They say ghosts are mankind’s children.”

“At any rate, I’ll leave the accounting to the professionals.”

“You trust Ernst, Morton, and Glass, sir?” Teddy asked.

“Of course I trust them.” Mr. Carter replied. “Who wouldn’t? Illustrated Phantom Stories prints success after success after success for Ernst, Morton, and Glass.”

“I see, I see. Mr. Carter, are you one for hearing rumors?”

He absorbed them like a sponge.

“Not particularly…though I suppose it depends on the rumor. You mean like, rumors about ghosts? I’ve picked up a few, here and there. One can’t help but pick up rumors about ghosts. Everyone talks about them. I take it that you, with your outgoing nature and mechanical buggy business, have picked up some rumors about ghosts?”

“I’ve heard a few.”

Mr. Carter leaned forward. “Such as?”

“Well, there’s a rumor started by a preacher-man by the name of Putnam…”

“Oh.” Mr. Carter slouched in his seat. “Him.”

“Good to hear you aren’t a friend of the preacher-man, because I’m not either.”

“No one with even an ounce of sense is. Putnam is a malicious little demagogue. I’m not sure why he wants to convince people that ghosts are demons. Maybe he likes the power that comes with people hanging off his every word? Maybe he’s a madman? Regardless, he’s a fiend.”

“I think he just got disturbed by there ending up being things inside us.” Teddy said. “A lot of people got disturbed back when Edward James published that paper of his back in 1861. Silas Putnam just got disturbed real bad.”

“I do remember being a little uncomfortable myself about the revelations, yes.”

“Oh, it made my blood turn cold, sir!”

“I remember reading excerpts from Multiple Intelligences in those broadsheets the government printed to spread the news. At first I thought “Oh. So we have souls. Well, everyone knew that already, if they weren’t pagans." Then I read more and learned that these thaumaturgists, these modern wizards who hated to be called wizards, were talking to their souls. That was unexpected. And so I thought, “Oh. These things that aren’t us, but are part of us.””

“They’re just fellow passengers along for the ride.”

“So they are. Well said, Teddy.” Mr. Carter supposed that even Yankee fools had their moments of wisdom. “I always liked that one line from the forward to the second edition of Multiple Intelligences--”A man is his mind. His soul is his ghost.” It made it all seem so simple, even if it wasn’t. But my point is, we all were unnerved by the discovery of ghosts--the whole world was. But if that’s what made Silas Putnam miserable, there’s no reason for him to spread that misery to others.”

“Indeed, sir.”