In the Shadow of Blackbirds(37)
“What’s ectoplasm?” I asked.
“Aha! So, you don’t know everything.” She beamed with a show of shiny white teeth. “Ectoplasm is spiritual energy, fully materialized. Imagine an umbilical cord connecting the other side to the mortal world. My body produces ectoplasm that reaches out and moves tables and objects with the strength of human hands. Keep your fingers off it, and while you’re at it, keep your fingers off Roy, aside from holding his hand while we create the chain of energy. Are you quite clear on my rules, Miss Black?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then let’s begin.” Lena plunked the bowl of sugar cubes on a side table that also held a donation jar and Julius’s handbills. She clip-clopped in her thick heels to a switch by the door and pressed the button that turned off the lights, submerging the room in blackness. Agonizing chills spread down my back and arms. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. I smelled Roy’s extinguished cigarette. And mold.
Lena traveled back to her chair in the dark with the same clip-clop rhythm as before, which reassured me she hadn’t traded places with anyone else. A chair scraped against the floorboards, sounding like she had taken her seat.
“Join hands,” she said.
We did as she asked. Roy took my gloved hand tenderly, and Aunt Eva clamped down on my healing fingers until I fidgeted enough for her to loosen her hold.
Lena drew air through her nose and released it through her lips with a slight whistle. “I’m going to fall into my trance now.” She breathed in and out again. “Open your mind. Leave your doubts at the door. Turn your thoughts to loved ones who’ve left this world for the Summerland.” She continued her long, audible breaths, each exhalation punctuated by a soft moan that caused Roy’s fingers to twitch against mine. I tried to see the outlines of my companions’ heads, but the darkness penetrated the room completely. Lena must have sealed off the windows to keep even the slightest hint of moonlight from peeking through the shades.
I didn’t turn my thoughts to any loved ones.
The perfume and cigarettes and mold in the air gave the séance a dirty feel. We were not attending a formal social event, as Aunt Eva had said we would. I’d been tricked into another theatrical show, courtesy of Mr. Julius Embers, whose impenetrable emotions reminded me again of Stephen’s warnings about opium. Hazy Roy, who sounded like he was starting to snore next to me in the dark, was probably an addict, too.
“Spirits, are you with us?” Lena’s new, deep trance voice rumbled up from her belly. “Knock once for yes, twice for no.”
Aunt Eva’s hand flinched in anticipation.
“Are you with us?” asked Lena again.
SLAM.
A solid knock walloped the table and made me jump.
“How many spirits have joined us tonight?”
SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM.
“Five spirits. Marvelous. Do you see your loved ones sitting at this table, spirits? Once for yes, twice for no.”
SLAM.
“Do you want to show your beloveds you’re here?”
SLAM.
“Then play for us, spirits. Play.”
The table vibrated under our hands, as if an electrical current buzzed beneath the wood.
“Join us, spirits. Play. Show us you’re here.”
The vibrations strengthened, rattling up my arms, jolting my neck, and trembling down my spinal column. The table creaked and shook and tilted back and forth, gaining momentum. Wood crashed against my rib cage, tipped away, and banged against me again. I couldn’t breathe. Pain and fear crippled me.
No, no, no, screamed the rational voice inside my head. This is not what Stephen’s spirit feels like.
The table hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I regained my breath, kicked off my right shoe, stretched out my stocking-covered toe, and felt around in the dark for signs of fraud. After another blow to my ribs, my toes met with something soft and curvy and covered in smooth fabric: a pair of female legs, wrapped around the center post, shaking the table with all their might.
One of the feet gave me a swift kick in the fleshy part of my calf.
“Ow!” I cried.
“Shh,” hissed Aunt Eva.
The shaking stopped and Lena called out, “Don’t touch the ectoplasm. Keep all hands and legs to yourselves. Behave like proper ladies and gentlemen or you’ll do irrevocable harm to the one you want to see.” She exhaled five more of her drawn-out breaths, probably to calm herself after my investigative toes. “Close your eyes. Turn all thoughts to the dear souls you miss so much. Don’t allow anything else inside your head. No doubts. No fears. Nothing.”
I closed my eyes and played along, even though my expectations had soured as much as when Stephen had told me about Julius’s photography tricks. I turned my thoughts to Mae Tate, the first student at my high school to die of the Spanish flu. No one in the séance room would have known about her. Mae had worn her dark brown hair in loose braids that hung a full foot below her backside, and she always sat at the front of the classroom because her father couldn’t afford to buy her eyeglasses. She collapsed on the floor during the first week of English literature, while we were studying William Collins’s “The Passions” in our McGuffey Readers. Mrs. Martin rushed us out of the room, as if the girl had caught fire, and we all stared with open mouths at the way Mae convulsed on the hard wooden floor like the victim of a witch’s curse.