Shadows of the Silver Screen Read Online Free PDF Page B

drifted like mist across the wall, oddly different to the harsh black-and -white lines she had seen at the fairground picture show. Fascinated, Penny watched as these shapes finally coalesced into recognisable forms, a frozen scene suddenly lifelike on the screen.
    She gasped. The picture that filled the wall showed the same room they were sitting in. Blank whitewashed walls, their chairs now standing empty as the guttering gas lamp cast a flickering light on the scene. It was as though the screen had become a mirror instead, casting their shadows out as it imagined the world anew. But what really took Penelope’s breath away were the vivid colours she could see, the picture trembling with an uncanny reality.
    Even though the room on the screen was empty, Penny couldn’t pull her gaze away. Sitting in the darkness, it somehow felt more real to her than this same room she was sitting in. She watched as the figure of a woman stepped on to the screen.
    A summer shawl was draped over the young woman’s shoulders, shrouding the elegant blue silk of her evening gown. As she turned to face the camera, dark locks of brunette hair framed a sad-eyed stare. A shiver of recognition ran down Penelope’s spine. This was Miss Mottram, the mousy secretary who scurried behind Gold everywhere, somehow miraculously transformed.
    Her gaze pierced the screen, some secret sorrow troubling her countenance. Then she began to speak.
    “I am the daughter of darkness,” she began, the sound of her words somehow appearing in the air as they trembled from her lips. “And this is my story – a tragic tale of murder, betrayal and revenge.”
    Penny’s mouth fell open, shocked to hear the words from her story spoken on screen.
    Beside her, she felt Monty lean forward in his chair, a low mutter of astonishment escaping from his lips.
    “Incredible…”
    But Monty’s murmur was swept into silence as from the screen the young woman spoke again.
    “Ever since Mama died, I’ve lived here with my father on these lonely Devon moors. This grand house is my home, my playground, my prison. My father says he must protect me from the evil that lies beyond these walls, but I know now that the cruelty that lies beneath the moors is his alone.”
    A single tear ran down her cheek, its glistening trail shimmering in the silvery light. Staring up into the face of her own creation, Penny was enthralled.
    “This half-life of mine would be hard enough to bear without the misery I have seen. At my father’s mines, children toil in the darkness, chained and harnessed like dogs as they drag from the depths the copper that has made his fortune. Dressed in ragged clothes, they crawl through tunnels buried deep in the earth, never glimpsing the sun from morning to night. From my father’s carriage, I have watched them rise from the pit, wreathed in shadows of steam. I shudder to think of their suffering, those poor, godforsaken souls.”
    As they spilled from the screen, her words seemed to thicken the air around them. The whirr of the Véritéscope was replaced by a distant hiss, the foul stench of steam rising to their nostrils. On the chair next to Penelope, Wigram sniffed into his handkerchief, whilst on her other side, Monty’s shoulders shuddered with tears; the hardships the girl described were almost too painful to hear.
    “My father professes not to care,” she continued. “He says that the money he earns from the mines pays for the finery of my clothes and the banquets that we eat. But my heart chafes at his cruelty and the food on my plate tastes like ashes in my mouth.”
    On the screen, Miss Mottram’s dark eyes glittered as she opened her hands to reveal a jet-black stone.
    “Deep in the mines, the darkness lies,” her voice revealed in a trembling tone, “and it has given me a gift of this stone.”
    Sitting in her chair, Penny felt a strange sensation creep up her spine, the shadows cast across the screen almost hypnotising her as she stared