Martin gave an exasperated sigh.

Joseph smirked.

Matthew gave a pitying shake of his head.

Mr. Carter continued to scream.

Matthew tried to say something, but he could not be heard over the screaming.

“Good lord, Mr. Carter, find your nerve.” Martin said. “It’s intangible. There’s nothing sticking in you.”

“Get it out!” Mr. Carter shrieked. “Get it out! Get it out of me!” the poor theater director grabbed at the thorn and felt only his fingers closing into his palm again and again.

Joseph grabbed one of Mr. Carter’s hands. “Look. Look at your hand!” he shouted.

Mr. Carter obeyed and sat sniffling as he watched Joseph lead his hand into and out of the black thorn.

“It’s just light and shadow. See? It doesn’t even feel like anything, does it?” Joseph asked.

“No…” Mr. Carter replied.

“You’re okay.” Joseph said. “Do you see that now?”

“Yes…” Mr. Carter panted. “I’m okay…I’m okay…”

Joseph patted his shoulders. “Good man. Now, let’s get you some water.

Joseph opened the door and called out. “Esmee! Could you bring a glass of water?”

In a moment, a glass was placed in Joseph’s hand, and Joseph brought the glass to Mr. Carter.

“Drink this, Mr. Carter.” Joseph said. “You’ll feel better.”

Mr. Carter drank, and he did feel better--a little.

“Do you understand now, Mr. Carter?” Matthew asked. “This shadow, this thorn, means that you were part of the haunting from the beginning. Somehow, the ghosts have a connection with you, and if you are absent while we investigate, we won’t be able to figure out that connection. We won’t be able to help you. We won’t be able to get the thorn out.”

In a moment, Mr. Carter calmed down.

He considered what he should say to Ernst, Morton, and Glass. There were a lot of nasty things he wanted to say to them. He came here to get help, to alleviate his fears, but instead they had added to them. They drug him deeper and deeper into this infernal haunting business, and Mr. Carter wanted to tell them off for it.

But he didn’t.

They had a point about the thorn. It meant he had been part of this whole mess from the very beginning. He could argue about their heterogeneous approach all he liked, but he couldn’t deny that the thorn bound him to this haunting.

He would be polite. He would even be grateful, because they would certainly start making things better. They could not possibly make things worse.

He took a deep breath.

“Well, I can’t say that I’m not disappointed that I’ll have to tag along for the investigation, but I understand, and I trust you.” Mr. Carter touched the spot on his chest where the thorn had been. “If you can’t get this thorn out of my chest and those ghosts out of my theater, well, I doubt anyone can.”

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“We’ll resolve the situation to the best of our abilities.” Matthew said.

“Please just say that you’ll make the ghosts go away.” Mr. Carter begged. “I know you have to look at both sides, but please just say it, I need to hear the words.”

“If the removal of the ghosts is the best outcome for this situation, then we will remove the ghosts.”

“Close enough, I guess.” Mr. Carter stood up. “Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time, it pleases me greatly to see that your reputations were not unwarranted. If all goes well, my troubles will be over before tomorrow evening. Do you know of any good lodgings nearby? Preferably with locks on the doors?”

“There’s no need to wait.” Matthew said.

“What do you mean?” Mr. Carter asked.

“We have ways of traveling quickly. Very quickly.” Matthew explained. “The means by which may be disturbing to you, however.”

“Don’t say that, Matthew.” Joseph said. “Trust the man to have more courage than that!” Joseph looked at Mr. Carter. “It’s not anything, believe you me.”

“What is it? It’s almost sundown. How can we get from Blackwall to Essex before the ghosts come out?”

“By utilizing the services of a ghost.” Matthew explained.

“Oh.” Mr. Carter squeezed the arms of his chair tightly. “So, like the ghost of a carriage driver?”

“No. It’s not like that at all.” Joseph said.

“Good, because I couldn’t stand being that close to a ghost. I’m sorry, Dr. Morton, but I simply couldn’t. I’d scream. I’d run. And having to be that close through an entire trip, well, that would be like torture!”

Joseph smirked. If Mr. Carter only knew…

“What will it be like?” Mr. Carter asked.

“We’ll have the Sky Witch transport us through the air.” Joseph explained. “She’ll lift us up high into the air, you’ll feel cold and wet for a moment as if you walked right through an early morning fog, and then you’ll be back on solid ground.”

Mr. Carter opened his mouth. It hung open for a moment as he slowly formed what he wanted to say in his head.

He gathered his thoughts. “One moment…the Sky Witch? As in the ghost that dropped hailstones that couldn’t melt over the Thames settlement in mid-July?”

“She goes by Matilda now. Mattie.” Joseph said. “She’s very happy with the isolated chain of islands in the Atlantic we purchased for her. She’s like a happy child in a bathtub, she gets to play Juno all day long creating any kind of weather you can imagine and some you can’t, and in return, she comes when we call her and does us favors.”

“And you want her to lift me up, carry me through the air, and place me back down in Essex?”

“We can put a blanket over your head. I’m told that helps a great deal.” Joseph said.

“This was supposed to be better than the carriage driver?” Mr. Carter asked.

“We do have one that owes us favors, but he’s far slower. With Mattie, it’s up and down. It’s very quick, very simple, and it’s over before you know it.” Joseph said.

Mr. Carter couldn’t believe it. How were these men able to treat being hurled through the air on ghostly winds conjured up by a woman best known as the Sky Witch as a trifle? They were treating him like a child that didn’t want to eat his vegetables, but wasn’t it reasonable not to want to be tossed up into the air?

Maybe these men really were ghosts. They seemed as strangely dispositioned as ghosts…

“No. No, no no.” Mr. Carter said. “It’s bad enough that I have to tag along, and have this Astral thorn stuck inside me, but now I can’t even get a good night’s sleep before we start? Frankly, gentlemen, I feel as if you three should be paying me for all this!”

“Mr. Carter, time is of the essence.” Matthew said. “Your ghosts are expanding at a rapid rate. There is a real possibility that they will be out on the streets this very evening.”

“I’m prepared to take that risk.” Mr. Carter said.

“Are you? You said it yourself--you’re fine with your theater having the reputation of a quiet haunting, but not a loud one.”

“But it is not a certainty that they will overflow the theater. Even if they doubled, or tripled their range, they’d only get…about to the lobby, I think.”

“It may be more than triple. It may be much more.” Matthew said. “At any rate, we’re going to head on over to see your haunting for ourselves. But if you’re not present, we will be limited in what we’ll be able to do. It will be like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces.”

“Will you be at least able to keep them confined to the theater, if they are overflowing it? Or at the very least can you turn them invisible if they’re out in the streets?”

“We will try. But I can promise nothing without your presence. That is why I implore you to come with us.” Matthew said.

Joseph stood up. “Mr. Carter, you’ve got a choice between two unpleasantries. The first is that you get a hotel for the night, and if you do I recommend the Eternity Inn down on Waterfront Street, it has a strict no-ghosts, no-haunted humans policy.”

“That sounds reasonable to me.”

“I thought a gentleman such as yourself would like it. But that comes with the unpleasantness of risking the loud haunting that you fear.”

“As I said, that is a risk I am willing to take.”

“I know it is. But when you wake up, regardless of what happens tonight, you will have to deal with it. You will have to deal with something that could have been resolved before your head touched a pillow. And on the drive back to Essex, you’ll be thinking how comfortable you would be if only you got it all out of the way while you had the chance.”

Joseph believed he made his point and walked to a trunk resting against the wall and opened it. He took out a large white quilt. “Now, these are not just for covering your eyes. We all use them, because it’s very cold and wet up there.”

“Where did you say the Eternity Inn was located, again?”

Joseph rolled his massive shoulders. “Very well then, Mr. Carter. Hermes Transportation doesn’t normally send out mechanical buggies this late in the evening, but we have a special arrangement with them. There’s one driver they keep ready for us around the clock. He barely sleeps, he’s a real lively chap. We’ll call him up right now through the electrograph and he’ll be here in minutes.”

“A lively chap you say…”

“Oh yes, very lively. He’s always talking.”

“What is the name of this mechanical buggy driver?”

“His name is Teddy. He’s an American, the Confederate kind, not the Federal kind.”

….

Mr. Carter kept his whimpering deep in his throat as they put the blanket over his head. He hoped the process would be as quick as Ernst, Morton, and Glass had promised.