The Invited(90)

“Hi, Dicky,” Riley said.

“Nice to see you, Riley,” he said.

“This is my friend Helen.”

    The man she spoke to nodded, looked up at Helen, eyes locked on hers. The skin on the back of her neck prickled.

“Welcome,” he said. “Take a seat.” He was tall, Helen guessed in his early fifties, and had an angular, weathered face with small gray-blue eyes and a large mustache. He was wearing jeans, a button-down shirt, cowboy boots with pointed toes. Then Helen noticed his large leather belt and the holster attached to it. The man had a handgun strapped to his waist.

What did a man who talked to ghosts need with a gun?

She thought the best idea was to take Riley’s hand and drag her the hell out of there. But it was too late. Riley had taken an empty seat and was pointing at the last vacant chair, letting Helen know she should take it.

They’d been waiting with two empty chairs. Like they’d been expecting them.

Helen settled in, looked over at Dicky and tried to imagine him as the little boy who had lost his father to the woods, to the white deer. What had little Dicky seen that day? How long had he chased after his father and the deer, calling out, desperate?

The woman to Dicky’s left leaned over and whispered something to the old man next to her. He had large eyes and ears with tufts of hair growing out of them. Helen thought he looked like a great horned owl. The owl man nodded.

“Before we begin,” Dicky said, “let’s all take a minute to remember that the communication we all seek with those who have passed doesn’t begin and end here, in this circle.”

The owl man nodded, gave a low “Mm-hmm.”

Dicky cleared his throat and continued. “I reckon you could say learning to read signs from the spirits is a little like learning to speak another language.”

This got him more nods of agreement.

“It’s about picking up on patterns, learning to be more receptive to the signs we get from our departed ones every day. We’ve all gotta be on the lookout for those patterns. You all know the stuff I mean: dreams we have again and again, numbers that come into our lives over and over, a song on the radio, an image we can’t shake. Reality…it ain’t random.” He shuffled his feet in the pointy-toed boots. “The spirits, they have the power to manipulate the world around us. To send us signals. It’s up to us to keep our eyes open. To listen to what they’ve got to say.”

    Was it Helen’s imagination, or was Dicky looking right at her when he said this?

“I keep seeing that pileated woodpecker in my yard,” a man Helen recognized from the pizza and sub shop said. “It was my brother’s favorite bird. I’m sure it’s him.”

There was a general murmur of agreement from the group, followed by more discussions of coincidences, serendipitous moments, and signs they’d all received: repeated license plate numbers that were actually a code, voices with important messages picked up on the static in between radio stations, recurring dreams.

Helen said nothing.

Dicky looked at her. “Tell me, Helen, have you experienced anything like this?”

She squirmed, looked at Riley, who gave her a little nod.

“Well,” Helen began, “I do find myself waking up at the same time in the night. Three thirty-three.” She didn’t tell them she woke up and saw ghosts. Though she was sure this was exactly the sort of crowd that would be eager to hear such a thing, she wasn’t willing to trust this detail to a group of strangers.

The old woman beside her nodded. “It’s the spirits waking you. That’s a powerful number. The number three is the number of communication. Of psychic ability. It’s the number of mediums.”

She looked at Helen, gauging her response. “What happens when you wake up, dear? Do you see any visions? Have any particular feelings?”

“No,” Helen lied. “I just go back to sleep.”

The woman nodded. “Stay up next time. Stay up, keep your eyes open, and listen. If they’re waking you up again and again, there’s a reason.”

More murmured agreement from the group. Helen felt everyone studying her.

“We can begin,” Dicky said. He reached out, took the hands of the two people sitting on either side of him, and then the whole circle joined hands. Helen took Riley’s hand in her right and held the old woman’s hand in her left. The woman’s hand felt light and fragile and fluttered slightly like a small bird in Helen’s hand. Dicky closed his eyes and bowed his head, and the others did the same. Helen tilted her head down but kept her eyes wide open, watching.

    “We bring only our best intentions into the circle,” he said.

“We bring only our best intentions into the circle,” the others echoed.

“We open our hearts and minds to those we can feel but cannot see,” Dicky said.

“We open our hearts and minds to those we can feel but cannot see,” the group echoed.

“We ask the spirits to join us here in the room, to come forward.”

This time, there was no repeated refrain. The musty room was still. All Helen could hear was the others breathing.

“Are there any spirits here among us now? Give us a sign,” Dicky called.

There was a loud rap that came from somewhere behind Dicky, near the old fireplace. Helen jerked her head up, searched the shadows.