Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Read online

The New Recruit

  By Leanna Renee Hieber

  New York City, NY

  United States of America

  1889

  New York City was as compelling as it was deadly. A dizzying, ever-industrialising monster of innumerable, inexhaustible moving parts; human beings were cogs in intricate wheels responsible for turning the axis of the world’s hungriest city. Living here was a mythic journey one embarked upon with great caution. The fangs of New York’s creeping, climbing skyline sharpened on the souls of the unprepared. If one were not born privileged, mere survival depended upon an exceedingly resourceful, clever mind. Bettina Spinnett hoped hers was up for the task.

  New York was all Bettina had, and she prayed it wouldn’t be responsible for her untimely end. At sixteen, she had outgrown the orphanage. Gracious Sister Anne had allowed her to stay. But it was time to move on. Even Sister Anne, in tears, thought so.

  Wearing her only possessions—a plain blue linen dress, worn socks and tattered boots—Bettina walked out of the modest orphanage building and towards the bustling avenue beyond, praying that the city might deign to help her find her way, here in this land of striving struggle so many had fled to from so far away to call home.

  For any woman without means there was always the trade of flesh, and while she was sure few chose that path, many were driven to it. The idea terrified her and she’d frankly rather die first, which was also an option. She put aside her morbid reverie when she set off down the busy and bustling Lexington Avenue, hoping for a sign. Further downtown, she found it.

  Gramercy Park stopped her, the avenue running right into the gated garden only meant for residents. Thankful the beautiful Central Park further uptown had no such restrictions, Bettina reflected on fond childhood trips to that glorious expanse open to poor folk like her. Gates barring access to a neatly groomed park, preventing her a glimpse of New York’s finer homes, grand townhouses, and luxurious carriages, unfortunately, were more familiar to her.

  What really caught her eye of the world belonging to the better-off were all the ghosts.

  There was one particular building that was less fine than the others. Its bricks were in need of washing. All the city’s steam, soot and grime had turned its once pleasantly cream coloured bricks a sickly ashen shade. Its shutters were all latched, a kerosene lantern burned upon its front stoop, but at a slight angle, its great hook bent and the flame made a black mark upon the glass. She didn’t notice an address upon the front door.

  But all the ghosts were pointing. They floated and bobbed in the air as one might expect. What was surprising to her was that they were in colour. She would have expected grey out of spirits, not that she’d had a great deal of experience with them. They had occasionally haunted the orphanage, mostly children who had died there, but the nuns were quick to shoo them away, and from what she had remembered, they were generally white or silver, or an occasional silhouette in the corner of the eye.

  Illnesses and melancholies in the previous year meant Bettina kept to herself at the orphanage. Perhaps that isolation made her more able to see the spirits now, or perhaps New York had simply grown more haunted with a different variety of spirits since she’d last strolled its vibrant streets.

  A throng of them floated before her, undulating like flags in the breeze, facing the unremarkable brick facade. Once Bettina placed her foot upon the slate stoop that sported a faint hairline crack on each step, the spirits vanished. With far finer buildings around it, this one almost looked like it was trying to be uninteresting. Spirits, she noticed, tended to like things that were a bit off. Now that she was paying attention, they evidently had better things to do.

  Something buzzed at her when she stepped fully upon the first step. Her slight weight couldn’t have made much of an impression, but she couldn’t see the source of the sound. It was like a bird’s chirp, but mechanical. She mounted the next steps, up to the doorknocker.

  A small circular crest above the plain knocker was marked O.S.M: Office of the Supernatural and Metaphysical.

  Bettina had never really thought much about either the supernatural or metaphysical, but both sounded quite interesting and exciting. She hoped she could beg for work in an office rather than on the street. Her aptitude for reading and passion for mathematics and science offered faint hope that she wouldn’t be laughed at, seeing that she was a girl. Maybe the spirits had done her a huge favour, her prayers to the city not for naught.

  Just as her trembling fingers moved to lift the knocker, the door swung open to reveal a spacious entrance foyer, a coat tree bearing hats, a great coat, cloaks and several umbrellas stood to her right, and a mirror to her left with odd fixtures about its frame. If she wasn’t mistaken, a glass eye upon a metal stalk was looking at her from the mirror’s crest and followed her as her foot stepped across the threshold.

  The corridor was panelled in finely polished maple wood. Open wooden doors on either side of the entrance foyer led to sitting rooms and fine landscape portraits adorning the surrounding walls. A staircase swept up behind a hefty woman at a hefty desk a few yards from the doorstep.

  “Welcome to O.S.M, young lady,” said the stocky, matronly woman. Bettina didn’t know what she meant, but the word was pronounced like “awesome”. After a moment Bettina realised it was the acronym for the office.

  The woman was dressed in plain, thick navy wool, like a police officer might wear, a pin upon the lapel of her smugly buttoned jacket, hair in a pile atop her head, grey strands flecking the brown locks. Behind her sat file cabinets and a fascinating array of metal things that Bettina couldn’t begin to describe or place.

  “Hello, ma’am,” Bettina said, bobbing her head before she turned to see who had opened the door. She saw no one there.

  “You could see this address,” the matron stated, as if that were something surprising.

  “Well... yes. Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Bettina asked.

  “Seeing this place would mean you’d have been sent here. We’ve a system. A subterfuge.” She waved her hand at the facade of the building, as if it shouldn’t even have been there. “We don’t get ‘visitors’. Especially not from young ladies like yourself.” Her eyes widened. “You’re not the Crimson Lark are you?”

  “Ah... N-no...?”

  “Good. You don’t appear to be a swashbuckling pirate, bank robber and international man of intrigue. But one never really knows, do they? We’re expecting the Lark within the month, trouble is, we’ve absolutely no idea who we’re looking for.”

  “I... wouldn’t know the first thing about robbing banks... or piracy...” Bettina murmured.

  “Well, that’s good.” The woman furrowed her brow. “But we’re not expecting visitors this week. Tell me your name and what you’re doing here? I am Mrs Marsh.”

  Bettina opened her mouth to explain herself, but wasn’t sure what to say, even though the woman was a bit odd, and it was, after all, an office dealing with the supernatural... should she mention the ghosts? She paused inelegantly with her mouth ajar.

  “Let’s try again,” Mrs Marsh began with a patient tone that contrasted her sturdy frame and expression of sterner stuff. “Why are you here?”

  “My name is Bettina Spinnett and I don’t exactly know where here is. But I’m looking for work.”

  “At present the only one working here is me.”

  “Then I’d like your job. I mean—” Bettina clapped a hand over her mouth, biting at her fingers. “I don’t mean that as if I want to replace you, I mean, I’m sorry, what I mean is—”

  Mrs Marsh barked a laugh. “You’re looking for work? This is New York. Everyone is looking for work. But I don’t understand how that made you able to see the place. Usually we’re cloaked.” The woman turned to the wall at her left where two small swords were crossed upon a placard and pressed a protruding seal above their crossed blades. There was a strange sound, like a gate being closed and the light in the room seemed to ripple a bit, followed by a rumb
ling hiss of some exhaust valve deep in the basement below. “There. Perhaps our curtains needed to be freshly shut. What do you think, Miss Spinnett?”

  Bettina just stared at Mrs Marsh, afraid to seem confused when the woman seemed perfectly clear about this mysterious building with its strange contraptions and desire to hide. If this was an office of the improbable she couldn’t act like she didn’t believe. She had to seem amenable, as if all this was perfectly ordinary. “Of course,” she said with a strained smile.

  The matron examined her. “So, you can see our building, even when under our SpectraVeil? Most intriguing. I’m not sure what sort of wages you’d be looking—”

  “I was turned out of my orphanage, Mrs Marsh,” Bettina blurted, feeling her poise escape her for desperation. “I don’t need much. Just a dry place to lay my head and something to eat.”

  “An individual newly granted independence, ready for the world, but already lost within it.” Marsh looked Bettina up and down, something complicated at work in eyes that likely had once been bright but were dimmed with age. “You’d have to work for peanuts, girl. If the President isn’t all that fond of us, you should see what the Mayor has to say. We survive only because the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences has better luck with their government in London and keeps us afloat. But seeing as we’re a former colony, it isn’t much to float with.”

  A nervous Bettina broke the tension by blurting out the rest of her pitch in hopes of assuring the woman. “Sister Anne, who was in charge of my ward, bless her, tearfully told me today that I had to move on. She liked me a lot— she was the only one who ever took interest in me—because I was smart, so she said. She taught me to read and write, and I’m very good with organising. May I help with paperwork? I promise I’m a quick study for whatever you’d need. I’ve nowhere to go. This place seems very nice.” Bettina bit her lip after her breathless rush.

  “And you were not... sent here?” Mrs Marsh again looked puzzled.

  Bettina shrugged. “No. At least, not by anyone...” She thought of the ghosts. They had pointed up these steps. “Led here maybe, by Fate, perhaps?”

  Mrs Marsh harumphed. “Not sure I believe in fate.”

  Bettina looked towards the button Mrs Marsh had pushed over the odd crossed swords. “But you believe in magic?”

  “Science,” Mrs Marsh clarified.

  The place seemed very magical to Bettina, but she didn’t argue.

  “How are you with numbers?” Mrs Marsh asked. “If I were to send you out on a mission to collect data, could you do it? We just lost one of our best analytics men to another office.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I most certainly could, thank you—”

  “Don’t get too excited, child.”

  “No ma’am, sorry, ma’am—”

  “Come.” The woman stood and her thick wool skirts brushed around sturdy boots. Bettina envied the woman her prim, sturdy jacket and skirt when she herself had quite a chill. “I’ll have to assign you a very special piece of equipment.” Mrs Marsh turned to face the stairs. “Oh Mister Books, sir!” She called, her deep voice filling three floors above and resonant through the side rooms. “I’m dispensing equipment. Would you like to come supervise and give instructions or shall I?”

  A British accent barked back. “How many times will I have to say ‘do not bother me, I am on holiday,’ Mrs Marsh?”

  “Well then, next time, sir, book your room at the Fifth Avenue Hotel if you don’t want to be involved with the goings on of an O.S.M. field office.” Mrs Marsh’s scornful tone carried up the stairs like the snap of a whip. She shook her head, returning her weighty gaze to Bettina. “A Mister Wellington Thornhill Books, Esquire, is in town, supposedly ‘on holiday’ though at the sight of file cabinets he is evidently transported and can’t seem to keep his hands out of our own Archives. He is an important Ministry asset, or so he tells us; working with those who serve as our British ‘parents’”, she explained. “And Lord do they like to act like high born parents; wanting us to be very good little boys and girls, but not caring one whit to raise us themselves.”

  Bettina smiled at Mrs Marsh as if they were co-conspirators as the woman gestured her into the other room. Shuttered windows made the light of the room dim lit instead by a few small flickering gas lamps. They were as well kept as one might expect of a first floor parlour, it was unique in the massive length of wooden file cabinets going across one wall.

  Writing desks lined the wall opposite, all wired to telegraph machines, many of which were whirring away in pleasant faint taps. Long thin paper tickers bubbled up from whatever implement was taking in the code. There were wires all about the room, leading to small sockets that Bettina at first thought were gas-lamp fixtures, but she saw that odd metal spokes went up from their sconces. She thought, perhaps they helped keep the building hidden, but she wondered why she could see it then. Maybe the wiring was faulty?

  Bettina drank in the atmosphere of this lush building, a sharp contrast she had seen in the run-down condition outside; a fine reception room, velvet-flocked wallpaper, and fine curios boasted crystal, china or rare old books. All of the office’s grandeur was effortlessly coupled with the forefront of technology. Where the magic stopped and the science began eluded her, but she was captivated. She turned to Mrs Marsh eagerly but was stilled by the woman’s next grave words.

  “Think very hard about what will and what will not scare you, Miss Spinnett.”

  Bettina blinked at the rather unexpected question.

  Marsh continued, pausing before the parade of file cabinets. “Anyone who is in any way involved with the O.S.M must face their fears and overcome them. This work will try the limits of your sanity.”

  Bettina took in her words. Could anything be more thrilling? One day she’d been a bored and boring orphan sewing clothes for orphanage coffers and escaping in the occasional hard-to-find book. Now she was faced with adventure none would believe.

  “I appreciate that you’re wonderstruck, child, but choose. Pick a creature. A monster. A puzzle. A mystery. Go after something that interests you and bring us back something useful you discovered. Bring us numbers. Bring us details.”

  “A creature?”

  “Think of all the mythical beasts of legend and fable. Among our many duties and our wide-ranging purview, we try to ascertain what all truly exists, for most of them do. Research and Development has been refining equipment to track their details. Should you choose the thrill of danger, of course, there are always the more deadly monsters we would like reports about—”

  “What about ghosts?”

  “Ghosts?” She considered this a moment. “Indeed. Very useful. Can never have enough data regarding ghosts. In fact, that’s an area where we happen to be lacking on account of so many false sightings and fraudsters.”

  Mrs Marsh went to the middle cabinet, middle drawer, and rather than pulling out the handle, she pressed upon it. A strange clunking noise and a hiss of steam sounded from within, like a deep metal lever were pulled, such a hollow and reverberate tone when the cabinets themselves appeared mere wood and only the dimensions visible.

  As if on its own accord, the drawer lengthened before Mrs Marsh and she reached in, a tendril of what Bettina assumed was steam wafted up from the interior. The woman’s sturdy hand plucked up a white linen bundle and her elbow pressed upon the outside handle again, the drawer sliding back once more.

  Mrs Marsh approached and instinctively Bettina held out her hands. Marsh placed something lightweight and cool into Bettina’s hand and she whipped off the white linen covering that Bettina could see now was a monogramed embroidered ladies’ handkerchief. Thoughts of whom the handkerchief may have belonged to were lost in the wonder of what was now in her hands.

  A dragonfly. A large brass dragonfly the size of her whole palm, with tiny buttons and screws and wires, iridescent and incredible. She peered at the curious device with great joy, looking at all its special knobs and fine wire mesh. It must be pr
iceless. This stranger must place a great deal of trust in her with something so precious. Bettina’s heart swelled with excitement and purpose.

  “You will use this to record and bring significant data as soon as you are able. Two days at the most, we don’t loan equipment for long. And don’t even think about selling it. We’ve ways to track you down.”

  Bettina nodded. “I wouldn’t dream of it!”

  “Good.”

  Bettina bit her lip. This was as good a time to ask as any, though she didn’t want to press Mrs Marsh’s amazing welcome. “Tonight, though, Mrs Marsh, could you be so kind as to advise me where should I... stay?”

  “Ah yes, that. Well it’s probably best for the safety of the device for you to return it here. I’ll leave the back door open for you and you alone. And here’s how.”

  Mrs Marsh moved to one of the writing desks and picked up a handheld implement that appeared to be a cross between a stamping press and a pair of pliers and returned to Bettina. In the instant, the woman had Bettina’s index finger in her hand. The vice clamped down upon the finger and Bettina loosed a resounding: “Ow!”

  “There now, all done,” Mrs Marsh said. “Touch that finger to the small metal oval on the back door, the one in the alley beyond, and it will unlock for you and only you.”

  Bettina stared at her reddened finger, then back at Mrs Marsh. “This place does try one’s belief.”

  Mrs Marsh laughed. “This is just the beginning, child. When you come in for the night, keep to that back room. I’ll set up a palette by the coal furnace. It isn’t much for accommodations, but it’ll be warm and dry. I dare not move you upstairs, not while Mr Books is here.”

  “Is he really so terrible?” Bettina asked.

  “A monster,” Mrs Marsh grinned, evincing Bettina’s smile in turn. “A tedious, meticulous, librarian. Utterly unbearable.” The women chuckled a moment before Mrs Marsh recovered herself as if she ought not be seen smiling. “I just don’t want His Eminence’s lip, as I’m straying far from protocol. We don’t... take folks in.” Mrs Marsh smoothed her jacket with a slightly nervous gesture, her fingers fussing about the hem.

  “And I promise I’ll find a way to repay your generosity,” Bettina promised. Mrs Marsh gave her a fond smile before shooing her towards the door.

  “Now off with you.”

  Bettina looked at the device in her hand, then at the door, then back to the woman. “But…how do I use this...?”

  “Why, you press the button and hold it towards the phenomena you wish to record, of course,” Marsh said, moving forward to press the thorax of the dragonfly on a little iridescent panel. In response, the delicate filigree metal wings flapped and a whisper-soft whine came from the device that was as much mechanical creature as property. The little antennae of the device shifted from side to side and one small, bluish light the size of a pinhead lit up upon its middle and then went out again.

  Mrs Marsh’s eyes went wide a moment before her expression again regained stoic neutrality.

  “How do I know how to interpret what its doing?” Bettina asked, entranced by the movement of the device.

  “However many lights will determine, give or take one, the amount of presences near you. We’ve made all our various recording devices look more like fine toys than equipment so as not to disturb or make the subjects suspect. Once the whole of its panels have lit with as many lights as it has in its system, then it will go back to one and begin counting again. When you return we’ll attach the dragonfly to one of our readers and the little beauty will tell us the other factors; temperature, humidity, atmospheric conditions, et cetera.”

  “Do I have to rely on the lights?” Bettina asked. “Couldn’t I just count the numbers of spirits I see? That seems more elementary.”

  Marsh’s subtle reaction gave Bettina a slight chill. Had she been impertinent?

  Instead, the woman asked with great interest, “Have you always been able to see spirits, child?” Mrs Marsh smiled softly. “That’s new to our department if you can.”

  “Is that useful?” she asked with hope.

  Mrs Marsh nodded, prompting Bettina’s eager nod in turn.

  “Well, yes, but sometimes we can’t rely solely on our eyes alone, can we?” Mrs Marsh asked with her eyebrow raised. Bettina shook her head. “Good girl.”

  Suddenly Bettina wanted nothing more than to make Mrs Marsh and this office proud.

  “Do note the phase of the moon and the addresses and intersections of the phenomena. In that case, you’d best take these.” Mrs Marsh lifted a pencil and notebook from the writing desk. “And this, for the safety of the device.” She then plucked a wooden box with a handle from atop one of the file cabinets and handed them over. Bettina fumbled with them a moment before grasping them tight. Mrs Marsh continued with a motherly tone. “And I’m sure I needn’t tell you, an innocent young lady like yourself shouldn’t be out past dusk. Gramercy may be safer than the territories of the Hudson Dusters and the Bowery Boys, but there is still darkness in wealthy circles. Best not get caught up with the likes of them, however haunted those poor creatures may be.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’ll return by nightfall. I can’t thank you enou—”

  “Go be useful, child,” Mrs Marsh gestured her out.

  Bettina nodded and nearly ran through the door.

  With a thrill, she was off into the city. The bustling, ever-so-haunted New York City. She followed her instincts about where the most haunted places might be. Further downtown. The eldest parts of the city, the places of fires and shipwrecks and disasters of all kinds, where native populations were driven from their island home and where thousands of immigrants toiled in squalor and harrowing conditions while the successful were moving ever upward upon the vast Manhattan grid.

  The first thing that captured her fancy was the harbour, heading directly due west across the Avenues as they increased in number towards the Hudson. And oh, did it yield. Perhaps the device brought out the spirits more by its presence, for they positively thronged around the waterfront. But with so many of them in tattered Union blue, haunting the harbour they departed from, it occurred to Bettina that the Civil War scars would take a very long time to heal, if they ever could. But somehow counting their numbers felt good, as if she were acknowledging their sacrifices.

  Just her and a mechanical dragonfly, looking up and meeting swaying gazes as the spirits floated about, tied to the earth by some unfinished business or worldly woe. The fact that they could see her too somehow made her feel even more driven to her purpose of making them count. Her leaving the orphanage opened up whole new worlds, these spirits showing her the way.

  Down blocks marred by fires and accidents, the industrial district had their own fair share of ghosts for all the limbs and many lives taken by terrifying machines. The spirits led on, showcasing where their numbers swelled and where they thinned. As Bettina made an eastward sweep along the tip of Manhattan Island, the centuries of spirits sometimes choked the air with transparent, shimmering colour, she had to keep count ten times over at least, marking in her notebook when the dragonfly whirled its completed tally and the numbers of light would begin again. The proximity beacon was flickering nearly the whole time. She was surrounded.

  As the behemoth gothic arches of New York’s recent addition, the Brooklyn Bridge, began to loom before her, Bettina gasped at the flock of spirits hanging about its grand bricks and spectacular wire ropes. It was an unparalleled suspension bridge, a monument to human ingenuity, architecture, and design, its two towering arches having gained the crowning title of the tallest manmade structure in this part of the world.

  At the amount of spectres hovering around the incredible achievement, she was reminded at what cost such wonder was gained.

  So many spirits of men floated there, the bridge unable to ferry its dead across to Heaven, keeping them there where they died, countless from caisson disease alone, their forms bent over in pain, as man should perhaps not be so deep under
water, others from any number of perilous conditions. The awe-inspiring spectacle of engineering was haunted down to its watery foundations.

  The day flew by in mere moments, and Bettina did not even notice that dusk had fallen. Spirits cast a fine light and she was more taken up in counting them than in the tracking of the sun or the darkening of the sky. Once she noticed she was taking down her notes by downtown gas-lamp, with the harrowing Lower East Side ahead of her, she doubled back and returned up to the square of fine buildings facing the gated Gramercy Park.

  Tucking the whirring dragonfly that had seen such lively use into its wooden box, along with her notebook for safekeeping, she raced back to the nondescript façade of O.S.M., then around the corner and down the alley behind it.

  She tried the back door and found it locked, but then remembered to lift her finger. Instinct guided her (still) sore fingertip to a small metal oval where a peephole should have been. After a quiet tense moment of pressing the cool metal plate, she finally heard a clunking sound in response, a sequence of latches undoing themselves, and then the creak of an open door, as nondescript as the rest of the building.

  Slipping in as silently as she could, Bettina found the rear kitchen to be a small, brick space with a coal burning stove with a long cooking plate, a fireplace with a spit and hooks for kettles and cauldrons, the sorts of things you’d expect in the most basic of kitchens though none of it looked very used. This was a place of business, not a residence. Through the soft gaslight haze, she could see that Mrs Marsh had laid out a palette with a blanket for her as promised, along with a little glass of milk and a hunk of bread upon the pillow. Bettina welled up with tears, feeling suddenly woozy, overwhelmed by her good fortune at having truly stumbled upon her safe haven in a big city that liked to swallow helpless young women whole.

  She curled up, her palette close to the big black belly of the coal furnace, and took eagerly to the bread and the milk. On the third bite of the threadbare dinner, Bettina took a moment to consider all the walking she’d done in shoes that weren’t without their wear—she’d not noticed all her blisters until now. No wonder she was so hungry.

  Bettina also did not realise how exhausted she was until she rested her head against the pillow and soon collapsed into a dreamless, dark sleep.