Shadows of the Silver Screen (11 page)

XVII

 

“Playing the part of this monster is driving me to distraction!”

His face flushed with concern, Monty leaned forward across the dining-room table and jabbed his fork into an open dish. Brandishing the speared sausage like a blubbery finger, he pointed it at Penny with a flourish.

“This blasted story of yours will be the end of me, Penelope. I swear that Lord Eversholt’s villainy is poisoning my mind. I’ve not felt this way since I understudied Macbeth at the Garrick, back in eighteen ninety-five.”

Grease dripped from the undercooked sausage, staining the linen tablecloth below, before Monty stuffed it into his mouth with an angry grunt.

From the other side of the table, Penny glanced up at the actor, the dark rings beneath her pale green eyes telling the story of her own anxiety. The breakfast plate in front of her lay untouched, a solitary piece of toast left forgotten on the side. After a sleepless night, her mind was still filled with thoughts of the girl who had haunted the evening’s filming: Amelia’s shadow finally stepping into the light.

“So what are we going to do?” Monty demanded, shards of half-eaten sausage spluttering from his mouth as he stared at her expectantly.

Penny’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Do about what?” she asked.

Now it was Monty’s turn to frown.

“About getting out of this ghastly place!” he exclaimed. “We must convince Mr Gold to shelve his plans for this moving-picture show and return to London without delay. I promise that I will throw myself into the role of Montgomery Flinch once more – anything to escape from this shadow that plagues me.”

Penny stared back at Monty in surprise, torn between her own misgivings and her desire to solve the mystery that lay here.

“But the contract has been signed,” she began. “
The Penny Dreadful
has promised Mr Gold that he alone can make the picture show of this tale. We can’t just leave.”

Monty scowled.

“You would say that,” he snapped. “Especially seeing as how Gold has seen fit to make you the star of this production. I hadn’t been aware before now, Penelope, that your ambitions lay in the direction of the stage. In fact your guardian, Mr Wigram, has always made it quite plain to me that he prefers you to stay out of the limelight.” Monty rose to his feet and fixed Penny with a sharp-eyed stare. “I wonder what he would say if he knew of your starring role?”

Penelope paled. She knew exactly what her guardian would say. Mr Wigram had always impressed upon her the risk of her real identity being discovered if she stepped too close to the flame of Montgomery Flinch’s fame. The idea that a mere girl could write the masterful tales of terror that graced the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
would be too much for the critics to bear. Montgomery Flinch’s continued success depended on this secrecy.

She pressed a hand to her temple as a strange, woozy sensation swam into her mind. Gazing down at the polished silver of her breakfast plate, Penny saw the pale reflection of Amelia Eversholt staring back at her, a shadow creeping across her brow.

As quickly as it had come the reflection disappeared, almost as if she had imagined it. Shaking her head as the dizziness passed, Penny looked up to meet Monty’s gaze with a pensive stare.

“We have to stay,” she told him.

The colour drained from Monty’s face. For a second, he stood there in silence, swallowing hard as he considered his response. Then, with a theatrical gesture of surrender, he threw up his arms in dismay.

“Fine,” he snapped, turning away from the table to leave. “If you need me, I’ll be in my bedchamber studying the script.” Monty flounced from the room, the angry stomp of his footsteps echoing through the manor house.

A sudden feeling of weariness came over Penelope. Trying to clear her mind, she fixed her gaze on the moors that lay beyond the large bay window, taking solace in the picturesque scene. Beneath a cloudless sky, the rugged hills looked almost benign, a far cry from the treacherous heath she had braved last night. Even the ugly blight of the abandoned mine, its crumbling buildings nestled in the crook of the valley, seemed somehow softened by the sunlight.

As Penny stared in the direction of the distant pithead, she heard the soft whisper of a voice in her ear.

I’ve been lost for such a long time
…

Spinning around in her seat, Penny searched in vain for the source of the voice, but only faint shadows lurked at the edge of the room. She buried her head in her hands, her fingers trembling as the faint murmuring started again.

But now I’m coming home
…

Penny pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to quieten the voice in her mind. When she crafted her tales for the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
she was used to conjuring up characters, hearing their voices inside her head as she directed their actions, but this insistent whisper made her feel like she was being possessed.

“Are you all right?”

The sound of another voice caused Penny to glance up in surprise, the whispering suddenly silenced. She saw the face of a boy not much older than herself, his black hair neatly slicked into a side parting, whilst his features were composed into an expression of the upmost concern.

For a moment, Penelope couldn’t place the boy’s face, unused to seeing it without its customary layer of grime. Then as he walked towards her, the realisation struck as she stared up into James’s kindly eyes.

“I’m fine,” she replied, sweeping a stray lock of hair from her face with a fretful gesture. “Just a little tired perhaps from the strain of all this filming.”

The young actor held Penny’s gaze, seemingly unconvinced by her reply. She noticed for the first time the dark circles beneath his pale blue eyes, his features marked by the same haunted expression that troubled her own.

“Can you see them too?” he asked her, keeping his voice low as if fearful of being overheard. “The shadows that infest this place?”

XVIII

 

“I cannot escape them; they haunt me wherever I turn.”

Beneath his furrowed brow, James’s face seemed worn beyond his years, weariness etched into his features. Penelope gazed up at the young actor as she listened to him pour out his concerns. He had told her how the ghosts of
The Daughter of Darkness
now stalked his every scene, apparitions of Lord Eversholt and Amelia herself appearing from the shadows, even as the actors spoke their words aloud.

“Tell me,” James asked, meeting Penny’s gaze with an anxious stare, “do you think I am going mad?”

She slowly shook her head. If James was mad, then she was as well, both of them plagued by the shadows that haunted this place. Some greater mystery lurked within these walls and she needed to find out what it was.

“No,” Penelope replied, “I don’t think that.”

A faint sigh of relief escaped from James’s lips as he ran a hand through his slicked-back hair.

“I’ve acted in countless productions, Miss Tredwell,” he said, “but of all the roles that I have played, on stage and for the cinematograph screen, none have made me feel this way. When Mr Gold turns the handle of that camera, I feel as though I am trapped – a prisoner inside your uncle’s story as these spectres he has conjured rise to greet me.”

Penny stared up into the boy’s eyes, seeing the anguish that lurked there.

“Perhaps I should speak to your uncle,” James continued. “Surely Montgomery Flinch must have some kind of explanation for the spell that his fiction has cast here…”

As his voice trailed away in despair, Penelope shook her head again.

“I think that we should seek our answers from Mr Gold,” she said. “After all, he is the man behind the camera.”

Matching Penny’s stride, James hurried along the gallery, his face turned towards her as she outlined her plan.

“Mr Gold is filming today’s first scene in the library,” she reminded him. “If these strange apparitions we have seen are not mere tricks of the light or products of our fevered imaginations, then he might have captured their passing with his camera. If we could just take a peek at what lies inside the Véritéscope, then perhaps we could find out more.”

Outside, the morning sun was still rising in the sky, but here inside the wainscotted walls of the gallery, gloom reigned supreme. The shadowy faces of portraits stared down at them as a flicker of unease passed across James’s features.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t think Mr Gold will look too kindly on that. Just remember how he treated poor Vivienne and his secretary, Miss Mottram, when they crossed his path.”

With a shiver, Penny thought back to the scene that had brought her to this point. Miss Devey’s face streaked with tears whilst Gold had looked on with a cold-eyed stare; Miss Mottram raging against her employer’s betrayal as he passed the mantle of the leading role on to Penelope herself. Gold had completed his humiliation of both ladies the very next day, returning them to London on the back of a farmer’s cart, the director’s own newfangled motor car sitting idle in front of the great hall. With Vivienne by her side, Miss Mottram had tried to hold on to her decorum as the cart lurched down the drive towards the station, but her features couldn’t hide her seething resentment.

At the time, Penny had watched her leave with a puzzled frown, little understanding why Gold would treat his faithful secretary with such disdain. It was only when she returned to her room and found the note slipped beneath her door that she had started to make sense of his cruelty.

Penelope pressed her hand to the pocket of her dress, feeling the outline of Miss Mottram’s note there. A small part of her wished she was back behind her desk in the offices of
The Penny Dreadful,
a place where the stories that she penned stayed under her control.

Penny and James passed beneath a painting of a young woman dressed in a grey evening gown, a black velvet ribbon tied high around her neck. Her sad-eyed stare followed their path down the corridor, neither of them noticing the nameplate fixed to the portrait frame:

 

They were nearing the door to the library now and Penny only hoped they would find the answers they were searching for within. Reaching the door, her fingers closed around the handle, pushing it open as she led the way inside.

The room lay in darkness, heavy curtains drawn across the large bay window, leaving the library shrouded in gloom. Edward Gold was nowhere to be seen.

“Maybe there’s been a change of plan,” James said, nervously glancing around the room.

Penny shook her head. In the shadows she had already spotted the familiar silhouette of the tripod, Gold’s peculiar camera perched atop of it. The lens of the Véritéscope was pointing straight at them, fixing her with an unblinking stare.

“This is the right place,” she said.

Penelope took a step forward, the Véritéscope watching her as she approached, whilst James hung back near the door.

“Perhaps we should wait for Mr Gold to arrive,” he said, as Penny ran her fingers along the camera’s brass casing. “If he saw you touching that…”

Penelope scowled. From the moment she had signed Montgomery Flinch’s name across the bottom of that contract, the filmmaker had been dictating her every move. Seized by the urge to make a stand at last, her fingers sought out the switch beneath the camera’s winder and, pushing it forward with a click, the Véritéscope whirred into life.

As the winding handle turned, a silvery light shone from the camera lens, casting a shimmering shadow across the spines of the books lining the far wall. The vast bookcase was transformed into a cinema screen, the swirling patterns that drifted like mist across the dust jackets slowly parting to reveal the darkened moor.

Penny heard James gasp in surprise, but her own eyes were fixed to the screen, watching as a solitary light loomed out of the gloom; the figure of a boy trudging through the mist, a glowing lantern held in his hand. Then, from out of the darkness, a second shadowy form entered the scene, her clothes wreathed in mist as she stepped forward to meet the boy.

“Are you lost, miss?” James asked, his voice crackling from the camera.

The girl nodded her head, lifting her eyes to fix him with a deathly stare.

“I’ve been lost for such a long time,” she replied. “I can only thank the Lord that you found me.”

Standing in the darkness, Penny’s temple throbbed; a strange light-headed feeling returning as she watched the ghostly figure of the girl step towards the light.

“These moors are dangerous, miss.” The stuttering sound of James’s voice filled the room. “You should be back at Eversholt Manor.”

On the screen, the phantom reached for James’s hand, his eyes filling with fear as she spoke again.

“Take me home.”

At the sound of these words, the picture froze, the ghostly image of the girl flickering and then fading from view as the silvery light disappeared back into the dark eye of the Véritéscope. Unaware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath, Penny let out a long sigh of relief.

She turned towards James, the young actor still staring spellbound at the space where the moving picture had been.

“Surely the camera cannot lie,” Penelope began, her voice trembling with excitement. “She
was
there – out there on the moors. The ghost of Amelia Eversholt.”

James’s face was pale, his gaze still fixed staring straight ahead.

“She’s here,” he murmured.

With a sudden shiver, Penny realised that the winding handle was still turning. As the whirring sound of the camera whispered in her ear, she turned to see the ghostly figure of the girl emerging from the darkness of the bookcase. Penelope gasped. In the half-light, the girl’s wraithlike features looked almost grey, starved of any sunlight, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Penny felt a dizzying sensation seize hold of her mind again.

“You have brought me home,” Amelia said, the whisper of her words seeming somehow to fill the room. She stepped forward again, the spines of the books lining the shelves behind her still visible through her shadowy form.

James stood there frozen, his eyes filled with fear.