“Then let’s see,” Horowitz said, and charged in, through the parlor and around to the back half of the building. Eve followed quickly.
Beyond a small preparatory kitchen left over from when the parlor had first been a home, they found a rear door with a dark shade over its window. The detective went out, Eve following to the small patch of struggling green surrounded by the backs of other buildings. Horowitz noted the fuse box on the exterior brick of the parlor and gestured to an additional small metal box beside it.
Eve reached forward and flipped open the lid to reveal the tines of metal and a sparking current snapping between them.
“Antonia broke the current of one of these boxes before.” Eve peered closer. “If we can get something nonconductive, and break the wires there, it should disconnect it.”
Horowitz picked up a broken plant pot and knocked the edge on the side of the wires, and with a click and scrape they fell to the side.
With a rush of cool air, spirits swept into the space. Eve followed the lead of the dead and the detective followed her. These older spirits were not dogging Eve like the children had been before their parts and tokens were found in Dupont’s “reliquaries” and “art projects.” In the wake of the spirits’ chill came drops of rain falling from a darkening sky.
Reentering the parlor’s hall, Eve watched the spirits swoop around, some five to seven of them, darting through walls and windows, experiencing the freedom of movement they’d not had when kept outside; but there was a focus to them—they were looking for something. A host of them went down a narrow stairs to the side of the kitchen, stairs Eve hadn’t noticed before.
At the top of the winding stairs floated a distinct spirit that struck Eve with a sequence of memories. He was dressed in a dark robe and cap and had a long black-and-silvered beard; his skin was a dusky grey, which in life must have been a rich bronze. She’d noticed him before, floating outside of sacred sites but, not wishing to disturb his peaceful mien, Eve had never spoken with him, nor he to her.
He turned and floated down the stairs. Eve followed, Jacob on her heels, only to vanish at the bottom stair to leave them alone in a whitewashed room.
Downstairs, two narrow rectangular windows at the top of the cellar-level wall lit the room; coarse wooden floorboards were laid over a dirt floor. Set about the plain space were several wooden cabinets, most that looked like the base of a phonograph stand, two with wheels on tapered legs, one stocky and squat against a wall, and a few large wooden spools set against the far wall.
“These cabinets look like…” Horowitz trailed off as he looked into one of the wooden cabinets and examined the top tray. It was empty.
“The bases of the device attached to Gran during her abduction,” Eve finished, opening another of the rolling cabinet bases. Nothing. “Devices then attached to me and Cora.” She opened the door of the cabinet against the wall. Nothing.
“But only after we all were overcome by noxious gas.” The detective finished recalling the events of that troubling night bitterly. Who had abducted them was unclear, but all roads pointed to Dupont and Albert Prenze as Montmartre. The detective moved to lift the large wooden spool shapes, but there was nothing in or on them.
“These spools look like they’d have held rope or, considering the devices, wire.”
“Yes, wire,” Eve confirmed.
The spirit in robes that had gone down ahead of them reappeared. When he saw Eve catch his eyes, he wafted closer to her. “I know you,” Eve said. “I’ve seen you outside various sacred sites, since I was a child. What brings you here?”
“Dupont and Prenze have become notorious of the dead. They threaten spirits and living allies. We are united in the pursuit of justice,” the man said in a thick accent, likely Armenian, Eve noted, from the Gregorian style cross he wore below his beard. She only knew this because Gran had insisted when she was a child that she learn as many icons and sacred symbols as she could, saying she’d encounter them all in the city’s confluence and each had importance and power. As of late, New York’s Armenian population was growing rapidly in hopes of escaping persecution abroad.
“I’ve seen you too,” the man continued, adding warmly, “child of spirit. Any haunt remaining in service to life, to God, and to the city should learn the most gifted mediums of their age and take note.”
“Thank you,” Eve replied, moved by this outreach. “As I’m sure you know, prosecuting Dupont is under way, but Prenze…”
“We need proof, please,” Horowitz added, taking Eve’s lead, looking in the direction she was looking even if he couldn’t see what she saw or heard what spirits said. “Tactile proof of wrongdoing. Anything you could point us to would help, spirit, thank you.”
The ghost turned toward him with another benevolent smile. “Yes, child of Moses. I understand.” He then pointed a long, robed arm at the wall nearest them, where the one cabinet not on wheels sat flush against the wall.
“The old priest is gesturing to this one,” Eve explained, opening the door again to show the spirit that the cabinet was empty. The spirit gestured again, insistent, the arm of his robe like a shadowy wing.
“Then let’s move it from the wall,” the detective suggested, and they each took a corner of the heavy wooden piece that had been left behind likely out of expediency.
As soon as they moved it from the wall, a thin folder of papers fell to the floor and the detective rushed to pick them up. Eve looked over his shoulder as he examined the papers.
On top was a typed half page with handwritten names, indicating that Arte Uber Alles had a permit to exhibit an “unnamed art project” on the Brooklyn Bridge, with the year, 1899, but no date set. Another paper marked a transfer of property from the Zinne family to A. Montmartre: a warehouse of funerary clothes downtown near the water.
“That’s the location Gran was abducted to, where we all were put unconscious!” Eve exclaimed.
“Now this is important proof,” Horowitz said. “Thank you, spirits!” he said to the air.
Eve turned to the ghost, but he had vanished. Even if spirits weren’t manifest, gratefulness carried to their world and Eve heard a soft chorus of “You’re welcome” on the air and relayed the sentiment.
Another permit was for laying an additional telegraph line in Tarrytown jurisdiction, perhaps what Eve saw today. Did Prenze have property near Sanctuary?
Another paper was a receipt for wire from the Roebling Wire Company, many spools, and the next was for a bank account via the Chemical National Bank with its headquarters on Broadway, indicating that Arte Uber Alles had a new account as of 1896, the year Prenze supposedly died.
“Permit, receipt, property transfer, and account contract....” Horowitz listed off, peering at the addresses on each. “Places to inquire once we’ve continued sweeping this place.”
“Neither Dupont nor Prenze as Montmartre could’ve known this was left behind, and I’d like to think that was through the help of the spirits,” Eve said. “Though I confess, part of me is beginning to be paranoid enough to wonder if everything is a trap and we’re just wandering where our enemy bids.”
“If so and it leads to evidence, we use it to fight back,” the detective replied matter-of-factly.
Eve kept sweeping the room, recalling Antonia had plucked a thin braid of hair from a baseboard upstairs and had left it on the grave of the child it belonged to, per the spirit’s request. The recollection reminded Eve to look in every crevice and she did so.
Going back upstairs, Eve’s eye caught on a small dark triangle on the baseboard a few steps from the ground floor. Using a fingernail, she separated the triangle from the wall, and with her fingertip slid a small, thin piece of metal up into view.
A tintype image. Likely from forty or so years ago, when the prephotographic medium was in its prime. The portrait was of a distinct, severe-looking woman in a black dress with a ca
meo at her throat.
“Good eye, Eve!” Horowitz exclaimed, looking at the image over her shoulder on the stairs.
Looking at the picture, Eve had a visceral reaction. She could feel a rush of information wanting to hit her all at once. At the center of her forehead, a burning sensation indicated there were too many spirits that this image summoned and that reactions were clogged at her third eye. She wavered on the step. Jacob gently steadied her.
“She hated him, and he her…” Eve murmured. “I feel it. The spirit world knows it too.”
“Do you remember, the painting in the ballroom of the Prenze mansion?” Horowitz asked. “I think this is the same woman.”
“Yes, it must be,” Eve agreed. “The mother Albert had such contention with.” Eve’s ears perked up at a specific sound: a rustling, an assent. “She is at the core of his motivations.” She tucked the tintype into the pocket of her skirt. She’d been sure all her skirts, for work or for everyday wear, had at least one. She didn’t like the object being near to her, just a few layers of fabric from her skin, but the image was important. “Perhaps that volatility of emotion can serve us.”
Returning to the parlor level, a woman in a plain dress, like the uniform of a schoolmarm, floated above the dais.
“Do you have anything to say to us?” Eve asked. “Anything would be helpful.”
“All in black, everything in black, but never in light,” the solemn woman said, and while her dress was simple and neatly kept, her silver hair was wild as if swept by a storm.
“Well, this place was a funeral parlor,” Eve replied. “There’s nothing unusual in that.”
“But that’s how we see him!” The spirit shuddered, her transparent form shaking. “The spirits, he hates us, and he stares at us, all in black, a void.” The ghost’s eyes widened. “He’s planning something terrible, with all those things and wires and devices and we don’t know how to stop it.”
“The shadow man? Is that who you’re talking about?” Eve asked. A child spirit had described Prenze in such a way. The woman nodded. Something that rattled a spirit was of greater concern to the living.
“The shadow man wants to end us. Whispers and cries from places we can’t access, spirits in great distress, imprisoned by his hatred.” The woman swooped at Eve suddenly, her arms flailing. Eve tried not to flinch, but the rush of cold air made her blink back tears. “Help! Before he kills us all!”
“We want to help,” Eve reassured the nervous old woman. “What else can you tell me?”
The spirit turned to look out the window toward a couple walking arm in arm under an umbrella. She reached toward them as if transfixed and didn’t say another word, just floated with transparent arms outstretched, longing for some old suitor.
Eve sighed, seeing the woman’s attention was lost to her. Horowitz was looking at Eve, patiently waiting for an explanation of what, if any, clues were shared.
“Taking lessons from the dead is admittedly a life of unreliable narration,” Eve began. “But she said Prenze is planning something terrible. They want us to stop harm coming to ghosts. Like he harmed Maggie.”
The fact that Eve hadn’t seen Maggie all day troubled her, even if Zofia had mentioned she was off, preoccupied. Usually her best friend passed through, checking in, a consistent companion. Maggie was Eve’s familiar, her spirit tether, guiding her through life. Losing her to Prenze’s interference once made Eve nervous about any further absence.
“I wonder if those spools of wire, since dispensed, relates to the danger to ghosts, as Maggie seemed to think it was Prenze turning up the lights to a blinding level that…blinked her out, severing her spirit’s tether to our world.”
“I think you must be a connective piece, then. You and Gran,” Horowitz said. “Cora too, those with psychic capacity. To do what he wants to do, he must need information from you; why else study you or hook you to the device?”
“I don’t know. Whatever he did opened something; it was after that that he began the astral projection.”
“Let’s see if next door can be any more reliable than any of your ghostly narrators,” the detective suggested.
Exiting the Irving Place address, Horowitz took a moment to lock the door after him before they turned toward Gramercy Park. Following the promise of trees ahead, they walked a block north and stood at the southeastern corner of the rectangular enclave of townhouses facing a gated green with a wrought iron fence to keep out anyone who didn’t belong to the little district of old money that hid itself from the city’s biggest industrial changes in the widening streets and avenues beyond.
The spirits that usually coursed around the neat and tidy green were still today, all floating in place, all staring straight at Eve. For them to be stock still was unnatural—stifling, even, to a Sensitive so accustomed to seeing them as reflective of the city’s constant movement and restless nature.
Eve stopped in her tracks, the detective beside her, his hand brushing hers. After a moment he caught her hand and kept it, squeezing her palm as he tilted his head toward her.
“What is it?” her ever-attentive companion asked.
“All the ghosts are staring at me.” Eve fought a nauseous wave of unease. “Their stillness is unsettling. Ghosts are creatures of movement and floating. Entities of eternal breezes. For the whole of the spirit world to be acting unnatural makes me wonder what Prenze is doing or perhaps what other changes are happening to affect them.”
“Perhaps his electrical work, the monitors, the blockades—and more—are affecting their general freedom?”
“Perhaps…” Eve squinted at the spirits, which stared blankly back. She shook her head and turned toward the closest row of townhouses, Dupont’s home around the corner from his parlor.
A breeze blew back the loose hair around Eve’s face and Vera appeared again before her, white hair up in a bun with strands floating as if underwater. Her floral shawl that Eve had once seen in beautiful reds and blues in the fullness of Sanctuary was greyscale here, held taut over bony, folded arms. Born and raised in Mexico City, a talented artist, she’d spent her adult life in Manhattan. Her intense love of art and this city kept her soul as vibrant as her paintings.
“I was torn from here,” she said, her accent light and lilting. “I tried to go in again, just as you stand, and from here I was ripped apart. Sanctuary put me back together, as it did Maggie. The same thing happened to her at the Prenze mansion. Break these devices of torture, Eve!”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Eve promised, explaining to Jacob what the spirit said. “It’s this house,” she said, indicating the white sandstone façade with carved stone lions on either side of the stoop. They ascended. Vera hung back, hesitant.
Horowitz looked at the ring of six keys with a fob of a sacred heart stamped in metal, a sad reminder to Eve of all the little reliquaries Dupont had made from the parts of children. Jacob chose the most elaborate key, brass with a filigree pattern, and turned the lock that matched its pattern. Their reflection shifted in the etched-glass panel of the door as they entered.
Dupont’s townhouse appeared just as empty as the viewing parlor, and as they stood in the house’s parlor, similarly white walled and open, Eve noticed some of the same spirits that had been floating around the viewing parlor had come with them, looking in the front bay window.
“Let’s disarm the blockade.” Eve gestured to the windows. “They’re here, looking in.”
“Does it ever startle you, seeing them? I know you look upon the dead as your duty, but—”
“Always,” Eve interrupted. All the spirits kept staring at her unnervingly through the window. “Just because one accepts a calling doesn’t mean it can’t scare you.”
Jacob stared at her a moment. “Brave and honest,” he said in admiration.
Eve shrugged. “If I wasn’t at least a little frightened of the power of spiri
ts, I wouldn’t have built up my reserves, my shields, learned my limits. If I’d have just let it all in, without discernment, we’d never have met. I’d have been committed to some private asylum upstate.” She turned and found her way to the back of the home.
Past a rear kitchen, the two exited onto an exterior landing. Eve gestured toward the electric box affixed to the brick outside where a similar blocking mechanism was mounted beside, and Horowitz did the same as was done at the parlor to remove it.
Spirits poured in; a floodgate lifted. Quiet at first, they took stock of the place, moving meticulously through walls, phantoms floating a foot from the floor.
“Greetings, spirits,” Eve called. “Please direct us to anything of note.”
At this bidding, Vera reappeared, her wrinkled face determined.
“No, Vera,” Eve assured gently. “I would never ask you to revisit a site of trauma.”
“No, no,”—she shook her transparent head, white wisps of hair flowing—“this place is an enemy and I want to vanquish it. This house.” She clucked her tongue. “Dios mio.” The spirit sighed, floating toward the library, off the main entrance hall, gesturing with a bent hand that Eve follow her. “This room was the start of everything for me, with this case.”
The library must also have served as Dupont’s study. Umber-painted walls were broken up by tall maple bookshelves that seemed to have mostly been left alone. Books were stacked along the bookshelves, with gaps where perhaps Mrs. Dupont had taken some tomes of note or worth. A large leather chair and desk remained near a tall lancet window with stained-glass squares. Mrs. Dupont must not have felt the need to move what was obviously his, the man’s actions and obsessions having estranged him.
“This was where little Ingrid Schwerin appeared to me,” Vera explained, gesturing as she spoke, “just outside the house and then leading me into this hall. Just as the spirits of children begged for Maggie’s intervention at the Prenze mansion, so did Ingrid want me to know her story here.” The spirit shook her head. “I don’t know how I was able to get in, past that blocking device to begin with. Perhaps Ingrid’s tie to this place carved out a door for our souls. I launched her postmortem photograph from this desk into the hall, and that began the unraveling.”
A Summoning of Souls Page 6
