The Daemoniac

by Kat Ross

  The afternoon passed in this frustrating way, and I was no closer to a revelation when four o’clock arrived. I was hungry though, and the repast that the Masons had laid out on a blanket near the shore made my heart—and stomach—leap with joy. There was fried chicken and potato salad, corn on the cob and strawberry rhubarb pie. The kitchen staff at the Grand Hotel had also given us a dinner basket, which included iced tea, fresh-baked bread, and cold sausages with sage and apple.

  We sprawled on the gently sloping grass, puffy white clouds sailing overhead, and I listened with half an ear as John and Samuel talked about baseball (they were both Giants fans) and their mutual disgust with the decision the previous year to ban black players from the national league.

  John told a few amusing stories about his professors at Columbia College, leading Samuel to relate how he’d been one of the first students to enroll at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. The school had opened on Independence Day, 1881. At the time, it consisted of little more than a rickety one-room shack.

  “I remember that in those first months, if it rained while Mr. Washington was teaching, I would have to go stand over him with an umbrella,” Samuel said ruefully.

  But Booker T. Washington, who had been born into slavery and was still just twenty-five years old, was a man of considerable energy and resourcefulness. He soon moved the school to an abandoned plantation nearby. The mansion house had been burned down in the war, but Samuel told us that the students set to work renovating the property, building a kiln in which they forged bricks for classrooms, a dining hall, dormitories and a chapel. Over the years, enrolment grew from about thirty to more than five hundred, right in the heart of the former Confederacy.

  “We planted our own crops,” Samuel said, biting into an apple. “We had to, if we wanted to eat. Clearing that land was not a pleasant task, but when some of the students complained, I remember that Mr. Washington would pick up his axe and lead the way into the woods.” He laughed. “No one felt equal to arguing with that.”

  One of his classmates had told him about the Cassadaga Lake Free Association. Samuel was intrigued. After he graduated, he heard that the great orator Frederick Douglass would be appearing here so he hopped on a train north. Douglass spoke passionately about women’s suffrage, a cause he had championed for forty years since the Seneca Falls Convention. Rose Rickard was also in attendance, and the two had hit it off immediately. They courted for a year and married in the auditorium, with the blessing of their neighbors if not Rose or Samuel’s families.

  As we sat on the grass together, I noticed a few curious and even hostile stares from whites, but most either paid us no mind or came over to greet the Masons with smiles and local gossip. It truly was an enlightened village. Interracial marriage was officially illegal in many states, and not tolerated in the rest, including New York.

  I thought they must love each other very much to have risked so much.

  I lay back, stuffed to the gills, and watched as darker clouds began to mound over the western edge of the lake. As they advanced, bringing a cool breeze that smelled of rain, everyone scrambled to pack up their picnic things before the arrival of the storm. Whitecaps churned the surface of the water, sending a pair of swans gliding for the safety of a sheltered cove. The first drops were just beginning to fall as we reached the Masons’ house.

  It was black as night outside as we put the food away. Distant thunder rumbled and my apprehension returned. In fact, I was starting to feel downright ill. As though a fever was coming on.

  “Is something the matter, Harry?” John asked. “You look flushed.”

  “I feel a little odd, but I’ll be all right,” I said, summoning a wan smile. “I think I ate too many sausages. Let’s just get this over with.”

  John helped Samuel light candles in the parlor. Then John, Mrs. Rivers, Rose and I sat around the table in the center of the room. Samuel, who was trained in shorthand, took a chair near the hearth. We placed our hands on a planchette set atop a “talking board.” It was made of wood, and painted with the letters of the alphabet. Rose explained to us that this was a fairly new device in the Spiritualist community, which allowed for swifter communication with the dead than the previous system of rapping out each word. We were not to guide the planchette ourselves, merely to allow it to move where the spirits wished.

  In the center of the table, she placed a framed picture of Becky, taken when she was a child. It showed a solemn, unsmiling little girl of about ten, in a dark frock with a white ribbon around her neck. For a split second, the ribbon seemed to become a chain, its links cinched cruelly around her throat. I blinked and the image was gone.

  I don’t trust myself to describe what followed accurately, as some of it invoked intense memories of the séance Myrtle staged for me as a child. Instead, I shall present to you the exact transcript of the proceedings as it was taken down by Samuel Mason. It has not been altered in any way. I will note that I also saw things which he makes no mention of, such as the black fog I witnessed rolling out of Mrs. Rivers’ mouth.

  Here it is then, unredacted, and you may judge it as you see fit.

  * * *

  DATE: August 14th, 1888

  SITTERS: Miss Harrison Fearing Pell, Mr. John W. Weston, Mrs. Ernestine Rivers

  MEDIUM: Mrs. Rose Rickard Mason

  COMMUNICATORS: Becky Rickard and Unknown

  ROSE MASON: I begin this séance by asking the kind Spirits to protect us from evil. I beg their aid and shelter from the dark. Now I call to the Spirit of my sister, Becky, who passed to the other side a week ago. I wish to speak with her. Can you hear me, Becky?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Are you there, Becky?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: I call on the spirit of Becky Rickard.

  HARRISON PELL: Excuse me, but I don’t think this is—

  c-o-l-d

  ROSE MASON: Becky? It’s me, Rose.

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: We want to help you.

  h-e-l

  ROSE MASON: Yes, is that you, Becky?

  [no response]

  JOHN WESTON: Is she saying hell?

  ROSE MASON: We want to find out who killed you, Becky. Can you tell us that?

  h-e-l-p-m-e-h-e-l-p-m-e-h-e-l-p-m-e-h-e-l-p

  JOHN WESTON: [unintelligible]

  ROSE MASON: Where are you, Becky?

  c-o-l-d

  ROSE MASON: Tell me who killed you. Do you know his name?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Are you still with us?

  h-e-i-s-h-e-r-e

  ROSE MASON: In this room?

  n-o-t-h-e-h-u-n-t-e-r

  ROSE MASON: The hunter is with you?

  h-e-w-a-l-k-s-i-n-t-h-e-d-a-r-k-t-h-e-c-o-l-d

  ROSE MASON: Becky?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Is he preventing you from speaking to us?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Becky, is he with you now?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: I can help you, Becky, I promise. Tell us who he is. Who the hunter is. We’ll stop him. We’ll find him and stop him. Who did this to you, sister?

  [planchette moves violently]

  dgshflksieldjhssksidrfarrumohrrr

  HARRISON PELL: Please, I can’t—

  JOHN WESTON: I think it stopped.

  ROSE MASON: Becky?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Are you still there, Becky?

  [no response]

  ROSE MASON: Please answer me. If you’re there, give us a sign.

  JOHN WESTON: She’s gone.

  ROSE MASON: Wait, there’s something—

  JOHN WESTON: Harry, I can see your breath.

  HARRISON PELL: What’s happening?

  ROSE MASON: I think we should stop now.

  JOHN WESTON: Yes, I think so too.

  HARRISON PELL: Let go.

  JOHN WESTON: Harry?

  HARRISON PELL: She won’t let go. It hurts
—

  ERNESTINE RIVERS: Burn them all.

  ROSE MASON: What?

  ERNESTINE RIVERS: I’ll eat them and then I’ll burn what’s left. BURN THEM ALL.

  JOHN WESTON: [unintelligible]…Oh God.

  HARRISON PELL: What is—

  ROSE MASON: Who speaks to us? Are you the hunter?

  ERNESTINE RIVERS: We are dust and shadow. [laughs] Abyssus abyssum invocat. Do you miss your sweet sister?

  ROSE MASON: I command you to leave. I wish to speak to Becky.

  ERNESTINE RIVERS: Your baby is dead. It rots in your womb.

  HARRISON PELL: Do you see it, John? What is that? What is that?

  JOHN WESTON: For God’s sake, help her!

  ERNESTINE RIVERS: [unintelligible]

  The séance ended at this point because Mrs. Rivers fainted dead away. I was screaming, and Samuel had jumped up to aid his wife, who was also hysterical. John is the only one who maintained any semblance of self-control, and even that was put to the test when the mirror over the sideboard fell to the floor and shattered.

  He yanked open the heavy drapes and threw the talking board into the garden. It was still raining outside, but not hard. Greyish daylight flooded the room. The smell of wet roses followed it, and whatever had been among us fled.

  A doctor was summoned and examined Rose in her bedroom. Ever helpful, Mrs. Rivers (whom John had revived with a glass of sherry) swept up the broken glass. The rest of us sat there, not speaking, and though I hardly knew Rose, I wept with relief when he came downstairs and said that the child she had carried for five months was perfectly fine. Samuel rushed to be with his wife and we let ourselves out.

  My hands had stopped shaking, but I felt curiously disembodied, as though it had all happened to someone else. Mrs. Rivers remembered nothing after the start of the séance. John and I didn’t tell her. We couldn’t.

  All the rest, the part with Becky, I could attribute to Rose pushing the planchette. Why she would do so, I didn’t know. But it was possible.

  I could even believe that my housekeeper had suffered a bout of temporary insanity. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch, actually.

  What I couldn’t explain was that when Mrs. Rivers spoke, her voice had sounded like…well, like several people speaking at once. An overlapping, echoing quality that is beyond the capability of human vocal cords to produce.

  And then there was the black fog.

  No one saw it but me.

  “Do you believe now?” John asked as we reached the hotel, and though he didn’t say it in a gloating way, all my fear and confusion fused together in one hard, hot lump of anger. And aimed itself like a stone hurled from a slingshot at my friend.

  “I don’t know what I heard,” I said, pushing past him. “It happened too fast.”

  “You’ve got to be joking!” He followed me up the stairs. “For God’s sake, Harry. Mrs. Rivers—”

  “Lower your voice, she’s just ahead.”

  “Mrs. Rivers was…possessed by something. You saw it!”

  “She could have known about the baby. I figured it out in two seconds flat.”

  “That’s hardly the point!”

  “Then what is the point? I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

  “What about the mirror?”

  I didn’t answer. A wave of dizziness passed through me. I steadied myself on the bannister.“This is so typical,” John muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If something doesn’t fit your tiny view of the world, it doesn’t exist.”

  “My tiny view?”

  “Yes. Your capacity for denial is boundless, Harry.” A heat came into his eyes that made me uncomfortable. “Something can be right in front of you and you just…you just don’t see it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said coldly, furious at myself and him both without being entirely sure why.

  He stared at me for a moment without speaking. Then he sighed. “Goodnight, Harry.”

  “John,” I said.

  But he was already walking away.

  Chapter 11

  I kept all the lamps burning that night and still didn’t sleep a wink. Contrary to what I had told John, I remembered quite a lot of what had happened in Rose Mason’s parlor.

  I wished I didn’t.

  Becky (if that’s really who was speaking through the board, an idea I was still struggling mightily to accept) called him The Hunter.

  In my mind, it was definitely a capital H.

  I’d been thinking of him as the soldier, but Hunter suited him better. I suddenly knew with cold certainty that he took great pleasure in stalking his victims before he killed them. He had come within inches of my bedroom door and never gave himself away. If I hadn’t heard the soft whisper of his breath, I wouldn’t have known he was there. If the landing hadn’t creaked, I might never have woken up. Or woken to hands already tightening around my throat.

  Abyssus abyssum invocat.

  Deep calls to deep.

  Or hell calls to hell.

  Well, that one was fairly self-explanatory.

  We are dust and shadow.

  The line was from Horace, if I wasn’t mistaken. I laughed and it felt strange, but good too. I hadn’t realized demonic entities from the twilight plane liked to quote poetry.

  I threw off the sheet and hugged a pillow to my chest. There had to be a rational explanation for what had happened. There had to be. Otherwise, the case was hopeless.

  More than ever, I knew we needed to see this professor at St. John’s. If Uncle Arthur recommended him, he must know an awful lot—more than I did, at any rate, which was next to nothing. The appointment was for Thursday afternoon, the day after tomorrow. I’d planned to let John handle it, but now I had my own questions for the man. And if we left on the first train out, we could still get home in time for me to pay a visit to the Bottle Alley Saloon. It was the last chance to find out who had given Becky the grimoire.

  I felt calmer as I made a plan. Because even if John had been right all along, even if the man we sought was no man at all, that didn’t change the fact that maybe, just maybe, I could still catch him on my terms. He might walk in the dark and cold, but I believed in my heart that he walked in this world, too.

  I rose at dawn. High cirrus clouds formed a herringbone pattern in the sky, their undersides gilded pink by the rising sun. The lake was like a sheet of glass, its surface unbroken except for the splashing of a gang of rowdy ducks. I washed my face in a ceramic basin nearly identical to the one we’d found in Straker’s flat. A quick inspection in the mirror revealed bloodshot eyes and tangled hair. The latter was improved by a vigorous brushing, although pieces of it kept drifting up toward the ceiling in a nebula of static electricity. That problem, in turn, was solved by a hat. I donned my last clean dress, a pinstriped silk fit for travel, and ventured downstairs.

  Nothing stirred as I made my way to Library Street save a fat tortoiseshell cat that watched with slitted eyes from a porch swing as I passed. The greenery between houses drooped heavy with dew. Although the sun had barely broken the horizon, my dress felt too warm, and I guessed the damp would burn off by breakfast. All in all, it held the promise of a lovely morning. I felt almost sorry that we had to leave.

  But The Hunter could already be choosing his next victim. And I hadn’t forgotten that Myrtle would be home in three days now. Time was running short indeed.

  It took Samuel Mason more than a minute to answer my knock. He too was bleary-eyed, but he smiled politely when he opened the door, which is more than a lot of people would have done under the circumstances.

  “I won’t bother you long, Mr. Mason,” I said. “I only wanted to make sure Rose is all right.”

  “Thank you for asking. She’s on bed rest for the next week or so. But we’re both fine.”

  “I also wondered if I might have a copy of the transcript from the séance. There’s an expert I’d like to show it to.”

  “Just a mome
nt.” He disappeared and came back with a sheaf of notes, which he thrust through the door. “Here, take it.”

  “I can make a copy—”

  “That’s all right. I don’t want it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Is there anything else?” He said this mildly, but I got the feeling my welcome was wearing thin.

  “No. Thank you for all your hospitality.”

  He nodded. “Good luck, Miss Pell.”

  * * *

  It was a subdued trio that boarded the eight o’clock train to Albany. I slept most of the way, the monotony of the landscape and the gentle click of Mrs. Rivers’ knitting needles lulling me into a restless slumber. The connection to the Hudson River Line was waiting upon our arrival, and we steamed into the platform in New York just as full dark was setting in.

  A blood-red late summer moon rose above the buildings outside the station.

  A Hunter’s Moon.

  We took separate hansoms from Grand Central Depot, John to his home on Gramercy Park, and ours to West Tenth Street. As he handed Mrs. Rivers into the cab, he reminded me that we were attending a ball the following night at the Kane mansion on Central Park West.

  “There’s no getting around it, Harry,” he warned. “You’ll have to wear something nice. Temple is quite strict when it comes to evening attire. And by that, I mean no boots.”

  I swatted at him with my hat.

  “Well, possibly boots, but be sure to scrape the mud off first!” John called as he swung up into his own hansom.

  I made a face at him, and all was right with the world again, for the moment at least.

  “Did you two have a row?” Mrs. Rivers asked, as we inched through heavy traffic down Fifth Avenue. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “Not really,” I said. “Well, maybe a small one.”

  “You’re lucky he’s the forgiving sort,” she said airily.

  “How do you know it was my fault?” I demanded.