Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(94)

He adjusted his posture to suggest that he was about to urge the car forward, but I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Wait. I . . . well, it’s a silly idea, maybe. But I have one all the same. You’re the one who gave it to me, so if it’s awful, it’s entirely your fault.”

“All right. Go on . . .”

I swallowed hard, but my mouth still felt very dry. “Let’s do it: Let’s have a little séance. Right here, in the woods, before anyone at Chapelwood is likely to spot us. It isn’t a fine parlor full of professionals at Lily Dale, and we might not reach anyone of use . . . but we could do it in front of the car, by light of the lamps—just leave the engine running—and we might have a word with Leonard Kincaid. He might be willing to help, if you don’t think that’s completely mad of me to suggest.”

Simon stared straight through the windscreen, either at his own reflection or the ribbon of dirt in front of us.

“You don’t think that’s insane, do you? I told you, I’ve done a great deal of reading about alternative religious practices—and you’re a man who investigates the preternatural. Between us, we must have the skills, even if neither one of us is half so gifted at speaking to the dead as poor Ruth has become.”

“It’s dangerous.” He turned to me, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it. “The dead can lie as easily as the living, you know—and although they might know more than we do, they don’t know everything. We could scrounge up an improvised talking board easily enough, but there’s no telling who—or what—might answer our summons.”

“But we’re doing this blind, Simon. Even the wrong information could tell us something useful. Have you ever performed a séance before? I’ve only read about them. Do you know how it’s done?”

“I’ve watched several of them, and I’ve done some reading myself—but never participated. It feels . . . not dirty, exactly, but suspect. Too many questions, too many variables, too little certainty for my taste.”

“But we have all those things in abundance already, don’t we? What’s a little more thrown into the mix?”

“Ruth is waiting for us,” he said uncertainly.

“She’ll be waiting in another ten minutes, and we’ll be better prepared to help her.” I hadn’t convinced him, and I probably wouldn’t, not all the way. But there was always the chance I could wear him down. “We’re dithering, regardless. We could at least dither more productively.”

He sighed, threw the car into park, and left it running. “Fine. Let’s give it a try, though we might be better off asking for Father Coyle than Leonard. Leonard may have firsthand knowledge of the place, but James is more likely to tell us the truth. Of course, there’s always the chance that something will claim to be James, and we’d have no way of knowing . . .”

“Good heavens, have a little faith.”

“I should pull some out of thin air, you mean?” He opened his door and climbed out, and I did likewise, rather than wait for him to come around. These were not polite, civilized conditions, and we did not have all night, for all that I spoke of productive dithering. I was all too aware that we needed to keep this quick.

? ? ?

I could feel it, Emma. The weight of a cosmic clock, ticking, ticking, ticking . . . down to some awful resolution. It’s nonsense, isn’t it? Or I thought so at the time. Now, I guess . . . I don’t know. But I felt a desperate need to hear from someone, somewhere, that we were on the right path, and that we could help, and that we definitely weren’t too late. Because if we were too late, then it wasn’t just Ruth we’d failed—it was the whole world.

Insane, that’s what it was. But not untrue.

? ? ?

Together, we stood in the headlights. I held my hand up to shield my eyes, and peered around the trees. “Now, I’ve never done this before, and I’ve never even seen one,” I confessed. “But I know how it works in theory. We don’t really need a board, but we’ll need letters. I’ll just grab a stick or something . . .” I found one of a good length and size, and I used it to stand before the car and write out the alphabet, splitting the letters into three rows and adding the numbers zero through nine.

“Put down a ‘yes’ and a ‘no,’” he directed. “And that ought to be sufficient. If it’s going to work at all, that is.”

“Really, if you’re going to be so glum about the whole thing—”

“Really, you should be a tad less giddy about it, I think.”

I frowned, and pointed my stick at him like a wand. “Who’s giddy? I’m fascinated, but keenly aware that time is short. Your glumness does nothing to hurry things along, now does it?”

“Very well.” Defeated, or willing to pretend as much, he sat down cross-legged with his back to the car, and the makeshift board between us.

“We need a planchette,” I noted.

“It doesn’t matter what actual object we use; it’s the intent behind it. The stick will suffice. All right now, come sit down.”

I tried not to be too fussy about my dress and the dirt, and cross-legged isn’t a common position in which I find myself—but I managed to lower myself down with modesty, if not grace. I held the stick out to him, and he took it, then broke it into pieces until he had one about as long as my hand from wrist to fingertips.