Good day to you, gentle reader! Sir Reginald Lackbottom at your service. I recently underwent a terrifying ordeal which I thought suitable to dictate into this Mechano-Aether-Transmission-Logbook for your shock and bemusement. 
It recently came to my attention that my nightstand, previously known to me as harmless, was, in fact, haunted. I had been given the piece some years back from my disreputable Uncle, Lord Aleister “Red As the Night” Dunwich. This, in retrospect, should have been my first clue.
New decoration always takes some getting used to, but the nightstand was trouble from the start. Always the optimist, I considered the antique piece’s skull-festooned skirt molding to be a design feature, and I disregarded its unearthly nocturnal moans as a kind of cuckoo-clock. Peculiar but very effective: not only was I awake by sunrise, but in fact, I now barely slept at all.
On the rare occasions when I slumbered, I would awake with a start to find my nightstand shuffling about my bedroom on its wooden cabriole legs, ungainly, like some kind of horrendous wooden squid. I approached Uncle Dunwich about this. He claimed the piece was authentic “French country” furniture, to which I replied, “I suppose that explains it.”
I asked him to take the blasted thing back. I told him that if he was going to give me heritage furniture, he might at least have the decency to assure me that said heritage did not include Belial anywhere in it. In response to this, Uncle Dunwich fled my home, cackling maniacally. I have not seen him since. I still do not believe he has ever been to France, or that he even knows what it is.
The months wore on. The nightstand troubled me none-the-more. I reasoned that perhaps it had overheard the conversation between myself and my Uncle, and pledged to do no more ill. I would believe any man (except a Londoner) capable of such a change of heart; why not furniture as well? A good piece of furniture is like a person, after all: it has arms, legs and often padded seating.
Yet outside my manor, strange things had begun to happen. The streets of Twisp-By-Sea became plagued by penny-dreadful crimes committed in the night, as the news-papers indicated, by a short and silent evildoer. Initially I paid little heed, suspecting the dark deeds to be the work of leprechauns, whose Hibernian nature I have always distrusted. But I grew increasingly troubled as reports grew more detailed. Witnesses reported the knave as having curiously bowed legs and “the flattest head [one has] ever seen.”
Tennyson was thus imprisoned, but the crimes continued. Finally, the truth presented itself to me. I had awoken from uneasy dreams to find my nightstand slinking slowly back into my bedroom, reeking of absinthe and evil. At that moment I knew the nightstand’s ambulatory nature had extended into the township after all, and I was a larger fool than Tennyson not to have seen it before. I leaped out of my bed and tackled the wayward furniture to the floor.
My interrogation was brief and futile. The nightstand offered no word of explanation, nor any word at all, and thrashed around angrily until the sun came up. I pulled the drawers from the thing, but there were no clues; the nightstand was as empty as a Londoner’s prayer. There was only one solution. I sold the nightstand at a downtown antique furniture bazaar (or perhaps it was merely an ill-conceived carnival, I will never know) and washed my hands
of the affair.
Thereafter, no more dark deeds troubled Twisp-By-Sea aside from the usual ones. I myself had mixed feelings. The nightstand had matched my décor so well, my room now looked empty without it. I missed the delicate rope-braid embellishments and finely wrought escutcheons exactly as much as I did not miss the nightly swarms of bats and ectoplasm.
I decided to consult my Babbage Mechano-Aether-Transmission Engine to peruse replacement furniture for my bedroom. It appears that the Cymax Mechano-Aetheric Mercantile Company has contracted with woodwrights such as Pulaski, Stanley and American Drew (imagine that! The Colonies producing goods of refined taste! What next, a horseless carriage?) which suit the refinement of my bedchamber.
I may take a chance on this oddly-named Cymax establishment. I hope to have a new nightstand forthwith, and I have been assured by their customer service lackeys that none of their furniture is possessed by dark spirits. In fact, the quality and selection of their non-supernatural furniture is the best I have seen since I attended the exorcism of William Morris’s armoire. My heart is at ease. Truly we are entering a bright new age.
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