The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (22 page)

CHAPTER THIR
TEEN

The Séance

T
he next night, Jake rode alone in the carriage as Nimbus drove him into town for the séance. He had been lucky to snag the last available ticket for the night’s event, but was glad the others had stayed at home. A séance was not to be undertaken lightly.

H
e stared out the window at the cold, craggy woods, feeling tense and chilly as he mulled the task ahead.

He
had spent the day checking every hour or so on the Inkbug, waiting for word from Aunt Ramona. But the fuzzy little caterpillar had not so much as twitched an antenna. Jake wondered what was taking her so long. Maybe the Elder witch had to do some research on the old protection spells that had been used all those centuries ago.

Well, he hoped she got back to him soon, because he had no idea what he was going to do
if one of the ghosts tonight confirmed the black fog was really Garnock the Sorcerer.

There was no point scaring himself silly about it.
Just cross that bridge when you come to it
.

Upon arriving in Llanberis
, he found the streets deserted, though it was not yet nine o’clock. The only sounds of life at this hour came from the pub they passed, then Nimbus turned down another murky, shadowed lane.

A few moments later, he
parked the coach outside the crystal shop. Jake got out, his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, his collar turned up against the chill.

He
nodded when Nimbus said he’d wait there. Then Jake glanced around at the eerily abandoned streets and crossed to the front door of Madam Sylvia’s shop.

A “Closed” sign hung on it.

When he rapped his knuckles on the window, however, and showed his ticket through the glass, the shop clerk let him in.

The medium herself was meditating to clear her m
ind before the séance, the woman said, but he was welcome to browse the shop while he waited.

Jake greeted t
he other six guests with a nod, promptly noting that he was the youngest person in attendance. As the adults chatted, trying to hide their nervousness about the imminent arrival of the spirits, he gave no sign of the fact that he, too, was psychic.

He did not wa
nt to steal the show from Madam Sylvia, but more importantly, he first wanted to make sure that her abilities were real. There were a lot of frauds out there, and if she was one of them, tricking people who were grieving over loved ones, he had every intention of exposing her.

But
, of course, his main goal tonight was to get answers about the black fog from any ghosts who might appear. It would be tricky speaking to the dead without revealing himself to the living as a psychic.

H
e paced restlessly up and down the shop aisles, inspecting herbal candles, stones with claimed vibrational powers, and an assortment of odd charms.

Then Madam Sylvia made her entrance, appearing with a flourish in the red-curtained doorway at the back of the shop. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Come this way, if you please.”

Jake raised an eyebrow and joined the others.

Madam Sylvia
waited in the doorway, greeting her guests as they filed into the dimly lit backroom of her shop. She was a short, plump, grandmotherly lady with wiry gray hair and a round face with rosy apple cheeks—but fierce, dark eyes. Her piercing stare seemed at odds with her sweet, Mrs. Claus-like face.

Her clothing was a
lso a study in contrasts, part somber widow in a black mourning gown with a high lace collar, part Gypsy fortune teller, with many rings on her fingers and a wildly colored shawl draped around her shoulders. The countless necklaces hanging from her neck made her jangle when she walked.

In the backroom, all
seven guests sat down at a round table with a dark, fringed tablecloth. The lighted candelabra in the middle of the table cast but a feeble glow.

Of course,
Jake thought cynically, low lighting could help conceal any trickery the alleged medium had planned.

Meanwhile, anticipation hung i
n the air, adding a zing of nervous energy to the darkened room as they all waited to see what would happen next.

Obviously, the other guests were not used to dealing with ghosts like he was.

Glancing around the table at the candlelit faces of the strangers in attendance, Jake wondered what their stories were, who among the dead they were hoping to contact. They could be any sort of people, for these days, everybody loved a good séance—men and women, young and old, rich and poor.

Queen Victoria herself was fond of them, and Jake had e
ven heard that Mrs. Lincoln out in America used to host séances right there in the White House, trying to reach the soul of her dead son.

The other guests were looking around
, waiting for anything supernatural to happen, though the séance hadn’t even started yet.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,” their hostess began in a spooky tone.
“I am Madam Sylvia. In a moment, I will invite the spirits from beyond to join us, and you will each get your turn to ask three questions. I’ll relay their answers to you, but you must keep quiet so I can hear their responses. I am a clairaudient, which means that I can only
hear
the voices of the spirit world. I cannot see them.

“Now
then. Before we begin, I would ask you all to rest your hands palms down on the table, fingers splayed, like so. Make sure the tip of your pinky finger is touching that of the people on both sides of you. Take care not to break the circle once we begin, or the connection could be broken.”

Now that sounds like a load of rubbish,
Jake thought, but he went along with it anyway.

Madam Sylvia
closed her eyes and began invoking the phantom folk. “Oh, spirits of the afterworld! We respectfully invite you to join our company.”

As she spoke, Jake
scanned the dark walls of the small room. They were covered with strange photographs purporting to have captured ghosts on film.

Spirit photography, they were calling it. Quite the new craze. Living people were usually the main subjects of the portraits, with ghosts of family member
s showing up in the background.

Some of the pictures portrayed smoky wisps or mere
orbs of light, while whitish faces without bodies stared out from others.

“Oh, benevolent phantoms of the deceased! I call on you to come to us and share your secrets from beyond! Speak! Speak!”

Jake felt an extrasensory tingle on the back of his neck; gooseflesh prickled down his arms; and as usual, these were the first warning signs that the spirit world was pressing through to the ordinary dimension of reality.

Suddenly, a glowing circle of swirling milky light opened on the ceiling, right above the séance table.

Well, that’s new,
he thought, looking up.
Maybe she is real.

Pale currents of ectoplasm rotated slowly like a whirlpool or some ki
nd of vortex. He was not sure what it was until ghostly heads started peering through it from above, looking down into the room.

Then he realized
it was some sort of doorway. Madam Sylvia had opened up some kind of a portal into the afterlife, and once the spirits saw it, they started coming through.

One by one, ghosts floated down through the hole between their two dimensions. Jake wat
ched in wonder as more of them arrived—male and female, old and young. Ordinary people who just happened to be dead.

Soon, the
darkened room was crowded with wispy apparitions eager to chat with the living.

“That’s right. Come in, come in,” Madam Sylvia encouraged them. “You are welcome in this place.”

“Please, I’d like to talk to my daughter!” an old lady ghost said, bustling forward with a whoosh.

“Everyone will get their turn,” Madam Sylvia replied. “Thank you all for joining us. Now if we could proceed in an orderly fashion, please state your name when you step forward and tell me with whom you wish to speak.”

It began.

Within moments, Jake realized he had no desire whatsoever to become a medium like Madam Sylvia.

It was clearly an exasperating job. He watched and listened, marveling at the old woman’s patience as she relayed messages from the dead.

Neither side was ever fully satisfied. The living pestered her with many more than three questions each
, the guests taking turns around the table. The dead, meanwhile, were all crowding around and talking at once.

“Please!” Madam Sylvia
exclaimed after a bit. “I can’t understand you when you all keep yammering! One spirit person at a time!”

“Right!” A
soldier ghost swept forward and took control of the proceedings on his side of the great veil between life and death. “Order now, ladies and gentlemen! Queue up, you lot!” he ordered the other ghosts, waving them back. “Form a line, now! Take your turn and move on! Don’t take advantage of this woman.”

“Thank you very much, whoever you are.”

He tipped his semi-transparent hat. “Welcome, ma’am.”

Jake hid a grin.

Duly chastened for their rudeness, the ghosts obeyed—well, except for the ghost dog, who bounded through the swirling vortex above and ran over to the man sitting next to Jake.

Barking with happy adoration, the ghost dog jumped up on his former master, tail wagging. The man frowned, as though a
lmost sensing something; then Jake saw him smile when his invisible dog licked his cheek.

Touched to witness this reunion
of master and pet, Jake made a mental note to tell Dani about it. She’d be happy to hear that people’s pets really did go to heaven to wait for their owners there.

Aye, m
aybe that cheerful news would help her stop hating him.

Of course, he had not yet managed to find the right moment to apologize to her. He felt stupid about
it and did not know what to say. In truth, he’d been more or less avoiding her, half hoping she would just forget about their quarrel.

No such luck.

“Back of the line, sir,” the soldier ghost commanded when another ghost arrived, not through the vortex, but whooshing through a side wall of the shop.

Jake perked up. It was the headmaster ghost,
his black scholar’s robes floating out behind him.

Old Sack gave the officer a bow. “O
f course, Captain.”

As he glided past, the headmaster ghost peered through the spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose to send Jake a knowing stare full of disapproval.

Jake scowled back at him, instantly wondering what the strict old don was doing here.

He watched him float to the back of the line, where various ghosts had turned themselves into small
, shining orbs while they waited, or idled away their time in the form of slowly spinning spirals.

From what Jake had read in one of the books in Aunt Ramona’s library
, these forms took less energy for spirits to maintain. The ghosts, however, turned themselves back into full-bodied apparitions when it was their turn to speak to Madam Sylvia.

Most of the messages exchanged were sappy, sentimental things
like “I love you” or “Tell him I’m proud of him,” which Jake cynically thought the spirits ought to have said while they were alive.

Since the information
he
was after was of a more practical nature, he was starting to grow impatient, waiting for his turn. All the while, more ghosts kept coming. It was getting crowded in the little room.