Tevun-Krus #70 - Punk Wars II

Demon in Gaslight - A Short Story by @thisisRoy

Rickter caught up to him, cigar clenched between his gritted teeth. "Why, The Machine is not running away, is it? You're attracting much more attention than we can afford, brother."

"I sometimes wish the river came up to the Augury House," Johan remarked, adjusting the strap of the shotgun slung over his shoulder, not decreasing his pace even an ounce.

"I wish, too," Rickter said, looking at the vagrants and the workers milling about. "Perhaps we should move The Machine to our house. Expenses would be saved, as well as suspicion."

Johan smiled without mirth. "How will we clean the blood, then, brother mine?"

The Augury House was a simple stone building of German heritage, a single iron door the only opening in it. That door had a padlock the size of a small child's head, and Johan couldn't contain his excitement as he took out the bronze key and put it inside the slot.

Rickter blew rings of smoke with his cigar and tried to look as nonchalant as possible, but he was vigilant, looking out for anyone who might be keeping an eye on them.

The door clicked open and Johan rushed inside, adjusting his wire rimmed glasses frantically to adjust to the darkness. There was a certain desperation in his actions now. His need had grown to the maximum extent, and it had to be released.

The Machine was kept in a basement connected to an abandoned sewage tunnel, a giant metal boiler-esque keg, with circuitry and electrodes fitted on its top and bottom. It was large enough for an average sized man to stand comfortably inside. A single porthole on the grey hatch allowed view inside the interior. The electric cables which emerged from it were the girth of a man's arm, and plugged directly to the mains.

"I don't know why," Rickter said. "But this machine never ceases to mystify me. How does a metal keg stored in a basement rip a hole in the fabric of the dimensions?"

Johan crouched in front of it, fiddling with the two dials on The Machine's base. "I'm not sure, Rickter. They say Nikola Tesla built this. Ever heard of him?"

"No," Rickter admitted. "Are you certain in what you're doing with those dials, though? I haven't ever seen you do that."

"I am certain," he said. "This dial on the right, this moves the figurative reticle around space. Remember the equine creature we had received?"

"You didn't like it," Rickter said.

"Yes, because the screams of an equine are not comparable to the screams of a human," Johan said. "But the point being, this dial changes the target. And the other dial moves the reticle through time."

Rickter gazed at the left wall of the basement, where a low sloshing sound was coming from. "So what are you trying to achieve?"

"Why, I am summoning a creature from the future." Johan had a smirk on his face. "I'm quite sure Nikola Tesla would've wanted the same use from his creation, although not quite in this fashion."

Rickter took off his hat, hanging it on a peg on the left wall. He then kept a hand on the coarse brick, feeling for the sloshing sounds and the minuscule tremors. "Does this wall connect us to the sewers?"

"Yes it does," Johan said, rotating the dial on the right in anticipation for the small click that was accompanied with every change of decade. "You never noticed it before?"

"No," Rickter said. "I shall go and sit upstairs while you do your job, yes?"

He started to go towards the stairs.

"You must find my practices abhorrent, do you not, Rickter?" Johan said.

"Why?" he said carefully, one hand on the bannister.