seymoure

Chapter 33
“Technical Magicks”

Fiona held the necklace out to Sebastian Claus and said, “Ya’d best put this on, and let me activate it.”

“What is this supposed to do again?” The fuzzy minded big man asked, while slightly dodging the noose she was attempting to loop over his head.

“Sit still,” the short woman demanded, “These are called psylarms, and they were invented by my nephew at Oxford.”

Claus relaxed and let her put the thing around his neck. He sat back and looked at the clear marble that hung from the leather thong. The marble was latticed with wires that led to a thumbnail sized metal cube that dangled at the end of the necklace.

“We read an article you wrote for a scientific journal about he merging of technology and parapsychology and decided to try the same thing on our own,” she told him.

“My nephew, his name is Wallace DeVane, he’s my sister Anystandia’s boy and builds computers. Together we developed a detector of pretanatural energy. Any wave-length that doesn’t show up in any of our natural sciences is detected and makes the globe on the necklace glow in a color. Ectoplasmic (as you know, that’s unfocused undead humans) makes the glove glow green. Demonic energies register as a gold radiation. Magical energies glow blue. It isn’t a complete insurance against glamours, but it can alert you if something is up you might not have recognized on your own.”

Claus smiled and thanked the lady, and, just as dinner was arriving, a scream was heard.

Sebastian knew that voice. It was Screed.

Pulling himself from the bed with the greatest of efforts, Claus bolted from his room do go down the hallway. He saw Muntz and the Sisters congregating at the door he knew to be Screed’s room.

When he got there, people stepped back. They were awestruck by something.

In the center of the room, where the patient’s bed should be, there was nothing. Not an empty room, nothing. A shimmering pool of nothingness swirled in the center of the chamber.

There was no sound. The blackness let no sight or smell out of the vortex.

Ethel Muntz reached out to Sebastian Claus and held up the globe at the end of his necklace.

The marble was glowing a burning red.

He looked at Fiona, holding out the marble.

Her face was stone still, her eyes raging with panic.