Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Read Free Page B

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