Strong Spirits [Spirits 01] (6 page)

      
Harold said, “I intend to cultivate your acquaintance, Mrs. Majesty. You’re too precious to lose.”

      
Whatever that meant. But it gave me something to think about as I wafted to the door and down the hall.

# # #

      
I always entered the séance room before my guests because I needed to make sure everything was set up the way I wanted it. Not that there was much more to set up than the cranberry lamp, but I liked to settle in; get myself in the mood, if you know what I mean. Maybe this quiet time might be considered meditation. I don’t know, but I needed it, especially since I hated conducting séances in this room. I preferred to hold them in the drawing room, but that room was full of people tonight.

      
The dining room bothered me, perhaps because it had a musician’s gallery hanging out over the table. I know it sounds silly coming from a medium, but the darned gallery spooked me. I always had the feeling someone was lurking up there, and the feeling gave me shivers. I did think that somebody like Mary Roberts Rinehart might use a gallery like that in one of her books. She could have a body fall out of it during a séance, for instance.

      
Never mind. My imagination carries me away sometimes.

      
Be that as it may, I wasn’t going to give up a paying job just because the ambience in which I had to do it made my spine tingle. A Gumm knows better. Therefore, after I made sure the lamp was low enough and the chairs were the proper distance apart, I removed my hat and my black gloves—according to my spiel, you need a flesh-on-flesh connection if you expected to communicate with the spirits—and went to the door and opened it. I always ushered folks in to let them know who was in charge. I was, after all, not quite twenty; I needed all the help I could get in the being-in-charge department.

      
Good old Featherstone stood on the other side of the open door. Now
he
never had any trouble looking as though he were in charge, even when he wasn’t. He stood there, as stiff as stone, with his nose and chin in the air as if he didn’t care to look at the people he worked for, and ushered all the ladies and gents into the room. He was a master of his art, old Featherstone. I admired him tremendously.

      
Mrs. Kincaid stood beside her sister, holding Mrs. Lilley by the hand. Poor Mrs. Lilley looked as if she’d have rather been anywhere and doing pretty much anything other than this. I took pity on her.

      
Smiling courteously, as usual, I extended a hand to her. “Please come in, Mrs. Lilley. I assure you, this won’t be difficult.”

      
Reluctantly, the woman entered the room. She didn’t return my smile, but I didn’t hold that against her. I felt too sorry for her for that.

      
“Where would you like me to sit?” Her voice was low and it sounded as reluctant as she appeared.

      
“Beside me, if you please,” I answered, sitting at the head of the table and waving at the chair to my left.

      
She walked slowly to the chair I’d indicated and sank into it with a sigh. Her every movement seemed to be carried out with difficulty, as if it were hard for her to come up with the strength to exist, much less move. I patted her hand and gave her a soothing smile, hoping to impart some of my strength to her.

      
Mrs. Kincaid sat at my right. The darned gallery loomed over all of us like the wing of an enormous black bat. I saw Harold and Lieutenant Farrington enter the room. They sat together opposite me. Harold grinned like an imp, although Lieutenant Farrington appeared sober enough. Good thing. It would be terrible if I burst out laughing when I was supposed to be summoning the dead. It was also a good thing that the light was so low I wouldn’t have Lieutenant Farrington’s gorgeous face to ignore. It was difficult enough to maintain my air of mystery and mastery with Featherstone standing beside the door, looking superior.

      
After everyone had settled into their chairs, which always took a while, although I don’t know why, Featherstone shut the door and I scanned my audience. Mrs. Walsh was there; her husband had made a fortune manufacturing chewing gum. The Walshes lived in an estate an acre or two down the street from the Kincaids and had a huge orange grove behind their house. It smelled really good on Orange Grove Boulevard in the springtime. I’d done two séances for Mrs. Walsh that had gone quite well. There were a couple of new faces, and I hoped they’d be impressed enough to hire me, too. Every time I did a séance, I picked up new customers. It was one of the benefits of my line of work.

      
When chit-chat ceased, which happened after everyone realized I was being silent and staring at them—it always unsettled them—I spoke in my cultured, low, séance voice. “I’m going to ask Featherstone to turn the electrical lights off now.” I nodded at the butler, who only acknowledged my request by carrying it out. He didn’t even glance at me. I always got the impression Featherstone didn’t admire me as much as I admired him.

      
The room went black. It was only after folks got used to the decreased level of light that the red lamp made an impression.

      
“Everyone please take hands,” I instructed, keeping my voice soft and as mysterious as possible. “We are going to attempt to communicate with Mrs. Lilley’s son this evening.” Because I felt so sorry for her, I squeezed her hand lightly. I don’t know for sure, but I think she appreciated the gesture, because she returned the pressure.

      
Somebody sighed and somebody else coughed. Things like that always happened. Stray noises had stopped bothering me about seven years before. I didn’t pay any attention to them any longer.

      
“In order to communicate with the spirits, I will have to go into a trance-like state. If the spirits are happy with us, my control will join us soon. I will need absolute silence in the meantime.”

      
It was stuff and nonsense, of course. They could have chattered away like magpies and it wouldn’t have made any difference, because it was all a sham. I’d come to understand that people needed the trappings that went along with the séance, though, so I always strove to give them a good show.

      
A few shuffles of a few feet constituted silence according to these séance attendees. I could tell the group was receptive and that they were eager for me to commune with their ghosts. Sometimes you could sense a skeptic in the group, but this time everything seemed fine and dandy. The red lamp did its part in mesmerizing people. After a little while of thinking about spirits and staring at the red lamp, almost anyone could conjure up a ghost if he tried hard enough. I moved my act along by slumping slightly in my chair after a few minutes of maintaining relative quiet in the room.

      
Mrs. Kincaid, who had been through this before and knew what my slump presaged, tightened her hold on my right hand. It hurt a little, but since I was supposed to be falling under the influence of Rolly—Raleigh—whoever he was—I didn’t flinch. On my left, Mrs. Lilley’s hand fluttered slightly, as if she were unsure what was going on.

      
Now came the fun part.

      
In an accent I’d been cultivating since my tenth year, and which I’d modeled on a phonograph record featuring John Barrymore playing Macbeth, I rolled out my Rolly introduction.

      
“Och, m’love, ye’ve come nigh to me again.” I had to lower my voice an octave, but I just adored doing the Scottish burr. If I didn’t value my livelihood so much, I might have used it in the neighborhood, but I couldn’t afford to jeopardize my medium business by playing around with an accent. I also made Rolly refer to me as “m’love,” since we were supposed to have been soul mates a thousand years or so before. I hate to admit it, but it was nice to think some man had once cherished me madly, even if he was make-believe, not to mention a thousand years’ dead.

      
“Oh, my,” whispered my left-hand neighbor, Mrs. Lilley. I hoped she wasn’t going to panic, so I hurried on with my mediumistic part in this farce.

      
“Rolly,” said I, in an overjoyed sort of voice. “I’m so glad you could join us.”

      
“M’love,” I said. Or he said. Oh, you know what I mean. “I am yours to command.”

      
Would that it were true. I could use some strong male person at my command. “Rolly, another new spirit has crossed over to your plane, alas, another victim of the Great War.”

      
“Och,” said Rolly, and I was pleased to hear the sadness in his voice. I was really good at this.

      
“This young man is the son of Mrs. Lilley, and his name is Bartholomew Lilley, Rolly. He was killed in France.” Next to me, I heard Mrs. Lilley give a muffled sob. I felt wretched all of a sudden.

      
However, I persisted. I had Rolly offer the sympathy I felt. “Och, such a loss, such a loss. ‘Tis a crime to send young lads off to perish in wars.” I thought about having him say something about the futility of war, but decided that would probably just make Mrs. Lilley feel worse, if such a thing was possible.

      
“Have you encountered Bartholomew Lilley, Rolly?” I asked, striving for a sweet, consoling tone of voice. I wanted to hug Mrs. Lilley and let her use my shoulder to cry on.

      
Rolly didn’t answer at once. I did this from time to time, especially when I was being asked to communicate with a new spirit. So to speak. Sometimes I get to feeling really ridiculous when I try to describe my work.

      
When I felt Mrs. Lilley getting tense, I decided I’d waited long enough. Gently prodding, I said, “Rolly?”

      
“Aye, lass. Aye. Another moment, m’love. I think—yes. Yes, I have summoned Bartholomew Lilley.”

      
Mrs. Lilley cried out this time. Mrs. Kincaid whispered harshly, “Hush, Ruth! This is the important part.”

      
I wished I could run interference between the sisters, but I was supposed to be in a trance. Fortunately, Mrs. Lilley didn’t get hysterical or anything. She was tense, though. I could feel the tension coursing from her body to mine.

      
You know, I guess I truly must be a little sensitive to mystical auras and stuff like that, because I honestly felt some sort of new force in the room. It should have been a prickly sensation but oddly enough, the force made me feel better. It was like a benevolent energy. I can’t really explain it, and I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I swear that it might as well have been the spirit of Mrs. Lilley’s son arriving in order to console his mother.

      
That probably sounds creepy, but it wasn’t. Anyhow, even if it was creepy, I wouldn’t have run away from it. We Gumms are a tough lot, and I had a job to do. Therefore, I stuck. “Rolly,” I said, “does Bartholomew have a message for his mother? She misses him terribly and mourns him every minute of every day.”

      
Mrs. Lilley squeezed my hand again, and I felt like a rat. That had never stopped me before, and it didn’t stop me then. “Yes,” Rolly said. “Bartholomew wishes his mother to be at ease. He is happy here, with his kin.”

      
“His kin?” Mrs. Lilley whispered desperately. “Does he mean my father and grandfather and grandmother?”

      
I felt like saying, “Beats me,” but didn’t. Rather, good medium that I was, I said, “Rolly?”

      
Rolly said, “He is with his kinfolk who passed before him.” I don’t know what made me add the next part, but I did. “And your cousin Paul is with him, too, me darlin’ Daisy. Guiding him in his new home.” It’s stupid and I know it, but thinking of Paul and Mrs. Lilley’s son as friends made me feel better. Rolly continued. “Aye, and he wishes his mother”—I had him pronounce it something like “mither,”—”not to grieve overmuch. He will be here to welcome her when her time comes.”

      
Another sob from Mrs. Lilley. I hastened to have Rolly add, “And not before. Bartholomew begs his mother to remain a true Christian woman. There’s much left she needs to do on the earthly plane before she joins Bartholomew in the hereafter.”

      
Before the war, I never once thought about preventing possible suicides among those I served, but since the war I’d been thinking about it a lot. People who are lost in grief are liable to do anything, and I felt a responsibility to let them know their loved ones didn’t want them to join them on the Other Side before God called them. If you know what I mean.

      
All right, I suppose it sounds silly. It didn’t seem silly to me at the time. And I expect it didn’t seem silly to Mrs. Lilley or Mrs. Kincaid, either.

      
This time, a sigh emanated from the woman on my left. It was better than a sob.

      
What happened next wasn’t better than anything. Overcome by the mystical drama of the moment (I did mention that I’m good at my job, didn’t I?) a young woman named Medora Louise Trunick uttered a heart-rending moan, slid out of her chair and landed with a plunk on the dining room floor. The plunk would have been louder if she’d weighed more, but she was as skinny as Pudge Wilson. I’d seen Medora making eyes at Lieutenant Farrington in the drawing room earlier, so I chalked up this theatrical moment to her desire to make an impression.

      
The interruption startled everyone into jumps and gasps of alarm. Harold leaped up from the table and ran for the light switch. His mother, I presume fearing for my spiritual health, hissed at him not to do it, because the light might do something awful but unspecified to my humble self who was, if you’ll recall, supposed to be lost in a trance and communing with a bunch of dead people.