Edge of the Shadow

by Yvonne Montgomery

  Andrea's eyelids lowered, then closed. She felt tendrils of aromatic smoke filling her lungs, seeping further to the inner recesses of her body. Behind her eyes she could see images of her cells floating on smoke into the room as she exhaled, becoming part of the whole.

  "We ask that you return now," entreated Aura Lee from a great distance. "We urge you to go home."

  * * *

  The back of the chair moved and Andrea's eyelids lifted. The room was dusky, furnishings distorted in the shadows. Her nose wrinkled at the pungent odors in the air. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was, but when she glimpsed the bronze reptilian Athena, the afternoon's activities flooded back into her mind. At a rustling behind her she swung round. Aura Lee stood over her, the very picture of consternation. "What's the matter?"

  Aura Lee blinked. "Uh, nothing, dear. I just wanted to see what you were working on. I'm sorry I disturbed you." She hurried to her chair. "I know today has been exhausting."

  Andrea frowned. "I was working on something? I thought we were closing the circle." She glanced down at the stack of papers in her lap. On the top sheet was a sketch, half obscured given that Strudel rested her head and both paws across it.

  Pulse jumping, Andrea slid out the page for closer inspection. The young man of the earlier drawings grabbed at the jagged rocks ahead of him, clearly about to fall into the fissure behind him. His fingertips were a scant inch away from any chance of safety. "My God," she breathed. She'd drawn scenes from his life, and now, maybe his impending death.

  Andrea looked up from the drawing, catching the dismay on Aura Lee's face. "What?"

  "Nothing." Aura Lee's gaze ricocheted off her own. She leaned forward to fuss with the tea tray.

  Into Andrea's mind came the image of Aura Lee with the tea tray, handing her the stack of papers to put on the table beside her. Had she hoped for another sketch?

  "You set it up, didn't you? The same weird herbs as at the séance, this time with drawing supplies handy."

  Aura Lee clasped her hands in distress. "I didn't mean for it to happen. It wasn't—"

  A brisk rapping at the door was followed by Rose's entrance. She sniffed the air and glanced at Aura Lee. "It smells like a pot party in here."

  "No such luck." Andrea pushed herself out of the chair. "It would've been a lot more fun."

  Aura Lee sputtered, but Rose ignored her. "What d'you mean?"

  Rose had been the one to hand her off to Aura Lee. "You mean you weren't part of the set up?"

  "For heaven's sake, quit talking in riddles and tell me what's going on!"

  "It's my fault," Aura Lee blurted before Andrea could answer. "I didn't mean to—it was a last gasp effort."

  "At what?" Aura Lee was silent, and Rose let out a deep breath. "Come on, it's been a rough day. Get it over with."

  "All right," Aura Lee said in misery. She explained asking for Andrea's help to close the circle opened at the séance. Andrea sat back down as she spoke.

  "That's all I meant to do, but then I thought, we never tried automatic writing." Aura Lee twisted her hands together. "I thought maybe Cottie could get a message to me through her while she was here. It's obvious she's already channeling somebody—that's how she's making those sketches. She'd be able to intercept what Cottie sent. That's all I had in mind," she said to Andrea. "I swear it."

  "Why didn't you ask her?" The cool disapproval in Rose's voice was softened by the compassion in her eyes. "I don't know the protocol for the situation, but I expect getting her permission was required."

  Andrea listened, anger simmering, but Rose's effort to determine the etiquette of using her to contact the dead had her biting back a reluctant smile.

  Aura Lee turned a mournful gaze toward Andrea. "If I'd asked, would you have helped?"

  Her impulse to smile vanished. "No way. You know why?" Aura Lee shook her head. "Because I'm scared. You don't understand how horrible this is. You're convinced I'm channeling somebody? I'm trying to convince myself I'm not losing my mind. How do you think it makes me feel having you set me up for it again?"

  Aura Lee blinked, her face folding into anxiety. "Oh, my. I didn't think. I'm so sorry."

  A tapping at the door was followed by Noreen's voice. "Aura Lee, are you there?"

  Rose pulled open the door and Noreen lurched in. Her hair was in disarray, her eyelids at half-mast. "Thank the gods you're here. I came to beg some tea but—" She stopped short at the sight of the three of them. "Sorry if I'm interrupting."

  Aura Lee whipped a tissue from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. "No problem." She headed to the kitchen.

  "Scones? Brownies, maybe?" Noreen called after her. "That's what I really need." She glanced at Rose. "Something wrong?"

  Rose slumped into the red chair. "Andrea's drawn another sketch."

  "Really. May I see it? I've gone through so many landscape photos my eyes are crossing. Maybe something new will help." She took the paper Andrea held out to her and fumbled for the reading glasses on the chain around her neck. She scrutinized the sketch, and when she looked up from it, her expression bleak. "Our young man's situation has worsened."

  Andrea's lips twisted. "It's more hopeless than the earlier ones."

  Noreen sat on the footstool. "You've had different feelings about the sketches?"

  "I guess so." Andrea thought for a moment. "Yeah."

  Aura Lee sailed in with a tray loaded with cups and a steaming teapot. Strudel sat up for a closer look. The door to the kitchen swung shut, sending a lemony scent across the room. Noreen breathed deeply. "Do I detect lemon shortbread?"

  Rose cleared space for the tray. "I smelled it this morning when it was baking. Anything I can do to help?"

  "Thanks, it's under control." Aura Lee set the tray down. "Start the tea around while I get the shortbread."

  Strudel's black nose twitched and her ears bent forward in anticipation. Her wagging tail speeded up as Aura Lee returned with a plate of shortbread and a small dish she set in front of the dog. The contents vanished in the swipe of a pink tongue.

  "She'll beg, but don't give her anymore," Aura Lee warned. "She's had plenty."

  "But she's so cute." Andrea bit into the square of shortbread and closed her eyes in reaction to the buttery, tangy flavor melting in her mouth. "Never mind," she mumbled. "Nobody's getting any of this away from me."

  "A conniver is what she is," Aura Lee said darkly. When she saw the look on Andrea's face she flushed bright pink.

  Noreen observed the by-play but just reached for her tea. "I stumbled across something online. If you don't mind," she said to Andrea, "I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  "What about?"

  Noreen pressed a finger against the crumbs on her plate and licked them off. "What was your principal feeling about the first sketch?"

  Andrea responded without thinking. "I was scared to death."

  Retrieving a notebook from one pocket, Noreen pulled a pen from another. "Because?"

  "It was drawn in my own style but I'd never seen it, never thought about it, and didn't remember making it."

  Rose frowned. "Why ask about her emotional responses? I thought you wanted the facts behind the sketches."

  Noreen nodded. "Exactly so. Emotions can be factual information. The feelings surrounding an event may be as important as the event itself. Emotions perfume the span of man like rain on a spring day. Althea Morgan Shipley. Eighteen thirty-two to eighteen seventy-nine."

  Andrea frowned. "I don't see the connection."

  Noreen smiled. "No? Would you tell me how you came to draw this latest one?"

  Andrea glanced toward Aura Lee. The older woman set her cup onto the table with care, clearly waiting for Andrea to expose her. "I fell asleep. There was some paper nearby and a pencil. When I woke up, the sketch was finished."

  "Had you drunk any alcohol?"

  "No. We burned some sage and, I've forgotten what else."

  "Dittany, Balm of Gilead, mastic, and mullein," said Aura L
ee. She watched Noreen's pen move across her notebook page. "The same herbs we used at the séance, except for the mullein."

  "Hmmm. Are any of these likely to produce hallucinations?" Noreen asked Aura Lee. "Or create a state of intoxication?"

  Aura Lee shook her head. "I don't think so. They're used to allow manifestations of spirits."

  "Did you see any spirits?"

  "I just drew a picture."

  "And you, Aura Lee? Did you see or feel anything different in the room?"

  Aura Lee sighed. "No."

  "Were either of you aware of any feelings different than your own?" When they both shook their heads, Noreen sat back in her chair, looking at her notes.

  "I've been reading about people's perceptions during hauntings. Many accounts report feelings 'left behind.' I'm sure you've heard about cold spots some people encounter in haunted houses. Animals react to such places as well."

  "Like Strudel at the séance!" Aura Lee exclaimed.

  "Exactly." Noreen took another piece of shortbread. "Accounts tell of dogs sensing the qualities of certain people, as if they can smell evil or fear." Thoughtfully, she added, "I wonder if the scents of our emotions are released into the air."

  Rose had folded her legs into the lotus position and now she leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "Like instinctive reactions, pheromones and sexual attraction."

  "It might explain things like mobs or hysteria," Andrea said, but she couldn't see any correlation to her sketches.

  "If that were true," Aura Lee said, "how could people survive living in the world? Walking down the street would swamp a person with waves of feeling from passersby."

  Noreen smiled. "Good question. I think humans had to evolve to the point where they couldn't perceive the clouds of feeling around every person. They had to shut down the receptors in order to maintain their sanity."

  "Hence the development of language, right?" Rose reached for another shortbread bar. "Tamping down intuitive responses, as hearing and sight became more important, required another way of communicating. Are you suggesting so-called intuitive people have retained something of the ability to smell emotions?"

  "Or feel, as shown through galvanic skin response," Noreen said. "Or taste. Carry it a step further. When people die—especially under traumatic or violent circumstances—what if they sometimes leave behind collections of intense emotional molecules, ones only certain people can sense? To the rest of us, there's nothing there. To the acute or intuitive person, there's a presence, a lingering residue, a—"

  Aura Lee's eyes were alight with excitement. "A ghost."

  "What's in a name?" Noreen quoted softly.

  Rose stared at her. "So you think those lingering clouds of feelings could affect the emotions of the people who perceive them?"

  "I don't see why not." Noreen set her cup onto the saucer. "If the emotion molecules were cohesive enough, wouldn't it be like passing through a cloud of perfume? Your skin would take on the scent as you walked through it. You would breathe in the residue. Why couldn't the molecules then progress through your body, affecting your mood?"

  Aura Lee was deeply absorbed. "These collections of feelings would be like shadows, wouldn't they? Casting their presence on everyone, but with only a few people noticing them."

  "Or," Rose said, "perhaps people would be affected by them, but would only perceive them as moods. As Andrea said, wouldn't it be an interesting explanation for mob violence or mass hallucination? You could say those were caused by an overabundance of perceivers being grouped together."

  Andrea shifted in her chair. "But how could you ever measure these things objectively? We're talking about things that are subjective by their very nature."

  Noreen shrugged. "There's no such thing as absolute objectivity. My perceptions are always going to be unique to me because I'm the one perceiving them. It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics. Observation affects outcome. The act of watching something affects the way it turns out. The observer is a part of the equation."

  "Which is why you get so many approaches to the lingering emotional residue." Rose smiled. "ESP, the psychic connection, reading the tarot. People have created or found different ways to link with and explain the emotions they perceive."

  Noreen poured more tea into her cup. "One of my dearest friends is devoted to astrology. Now, I can see no merit in the idea that the stars or planets or the Milky Way rule our lives. But my friend uses the vocabulary of that belief system to explain the world. She's one of the wisest people I know."

  Aura Lee nodded happily.

  "But what does that have to do with my sketches? Why me?"

  "Why not you?" Noreen's eyes kindled with enthusiasm. "In some ways you're the ideal choice to channel information about this young man you've sketched. You're a stranger here and you've just arrived. You're an artist who has spent her career capturing the images of people described to you. You're probably the perfect person to receive the emotional molecules left behind by this man."

  Andrea shook her head. "I don't get it. Heisenberg principle or not, why isn't Dolores sculpting figures representing this guy? Why isn't Kerry writing about him?"

  Noreen leaned forward. "Maybe they are! The observer affects the outcome of the observation. When you examine something, you bring your own past to the experience, as well as your own method. Who's to say Dolores hasn't sculpted something inspired by our nameless young man? Or that Kerry hasn't written something about him? But you, because you've been a forensic artist, you're the one who sketches the events that produced the feelings he left behind."

  Andrea thought of the sense of deep connection she'd felt while making sketches from people's descriptions. Was Noreen's theory credible? Was it really so difficult to believe remnants were left behind after death, that she'd somehow tapped into lingering fragments of a troubled spirit?

  "There is one thing, though," Rose said thoughtfully. "Why is Andrea receiving these messages? More accurately, I guess the question is, why are the emotional remains still here to be received?"

  "In other words," said Noreen, "is there a purpose behind their being received by Andrea? That is indeed the question." She turned to Andrea with eagerness. "Have you had any answer to it? Have any of the feelings given you some direction?"

  Andrea was hit with a wave of fatigue. Feelings, sketches, the by-play among the Wisdom Court women, all were wearing her down, using her up. "The emotions I've felt most are fear and distrust of myself. I've been in a trance or asleep, just an unwilling utensil."

  The expressions of concern on the other women's faces deepened Andrea's despair. "The idea of an entity waiting to communicate through me is dreadful. I want it to stop."

  Aura Lee was on the edge of tears. "I'm so sorry for what I did. I didn't think."

  "I hope you actually closed that door," Andrea said numbly. She threaded her way past the table and headed for the door. "I can't think anymore today."

  Aura Lee reached for her. "But, Andrea—"

  "Let her go," Rose said quietly.

  Chapter 19

  Sunshine through the windowpanes cast squares onto the oak floor. Like stepping-stones, Kerry thought uncomfortably and frowned at the idea. Elizabeth hadn't been led to Stanley Thornton's grave. The man lived and died in Boulder. Of course he was buried in a local cemetery. That she'd been reading about him in Jessamine's diary had no bearing on their finding his headstone. Neither did the sundial on the marker for the unknown Alice Thornton. But there'd been that odd moment of drift between then and now.

  Kerry tugged the study door open and marched to her desk. Getting bent out of shape over a coincidence was a waste of time. She simply needed to read more in order to answer her questions.

  She opened Jessamine's diary and riffled through the pages of the sections she'd previously read. She looked at the next entry with surprise. The writing was different from Jessamine's usual tight scribble. Her pen had scratched over the page, in several places near
ly tearing the paper. Several ink splotches marked places where the pen had bled into the passage.

  August 5, 1909

  I am so mortified I can hardly write about it.

  I went to our place to meet Kelvin—Mr. T. took Mrs. Selkirk to town for supplies today, so I skimped my chores, anxious to see K. I was there before him, and waited, so excited. I heard him coming, but it was Jack Wheaton walking toward me. He is a particular friend of Edward Selkirk and just as nasty. He was smiling and coming near. I started back toward the trail, but Jack took my arm. When I pulled away, he laughed. He said if I needed somebody to pass the time with, he was happy to oblige. "I can't let you go home unhappy, now can I?"

  Then it struck me. He saw us that day when we lay together. I knew I heard someone. Jack was treating me like a fallen woman! I was shamed. I saw what Kelvin and I did through his mean, piggy eyes. It was the best thing in my life and he soiled it. I wanted to hit him, to kill him. When I walked away Jack came after me. I told him to let me be. He wrenched my arm and I screamed. Then Kelvin was there and he dragged Jack away from me. They fought—it was frightful. Kelvin's nose bled down his shirt and Jack spat out teeth. Kelvin knocked Jack to the ground and came to pull me away. We stumbled down the trail toward home leaning on each other. A storm came out of nowhere and we were drenched in minutes.

  We got to the farm and thank God the buckboard wasn't back yet. We cleaned up in the kitchen. Kelvin's nose isn't broken, but his knuckles are so bruised. He sat with his head hanging for the longest time. When I told him what Jack said, Kelvin cursed him. He said it makes no difference; soon we'll be gone.

  I asked why and he said Dr. Tweedham was called back to Boston and he has to go with him. I began to cry, but Kelvin held me and said I'd come with him. He cupped my cheeks in his poor hands. "We'll marry now." His voice made my heart beat faster. "I can't leave you here." He wanted me to go with him then but I have to tell Mr. T. about Kelvin. He's been real good to me and I can't walk away without him knowing why.

  Kelvin said we leave day after tomorrow and I have to get ready. I don't have much, some clothes and mementos. Tomorrow I'll clean and help Mrs. Selkirk fix meals for Mr. T. I can't stay in K.'s rooms anyway. I don't want Dr. Tweedham to look at me like Jack Wheaton did. Kelvin agreed. He said goodbye and held me close. Mr. T. and Mrs. Selkirk came in right then and I felt like sinking into the floor. Mr. T. gaped at us but was civil to Kelvin when I introduced them. Mrs. Selkirk was scandalized and brushed past me like I was dirt. We told Mr. T. our plans, and I described our courtship over the summer. Mr. T. saw Dr. Tweedham's leaving means we should get married fast.