Apparition Trail, The

by Lisa Smedman

  “My whisky’s done, and so am I,” he gritted. Without another word he scraped back his chair, rose to his feet, and stalked away.

  I scooped up my winnings, and smiled in satisfaction. I’d given the gambler his come-uppance. But the smile froze on my lips when I realized that Four Finger Pete might take his anger at losing out on his wife.

  “Well done,” Chambers congratulated me. “Of course, winning comes easily to a man with powers like your own.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, wadding the money into my pocket. I kept my ear cocked, listening for anything that sounded like a man’s voice raised in anger.

  Chambers pushed the poker cards aside, then slid a hand inside his cutaway suit. I stiffened, wondering if he had a pistol concealed under it, but instead he drew from his pocket something that was wrapped in a black silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it to reveal a fresh deck of cards, then spread the cards face up across the table with a sweep of his hand. The deck bore the usual numeric denominations and suits, but the face cards portrayed a wild mix of characters: I saw renderings of what looked like a priest, a Hindu fakir, a Red Indian in buffalo-horn cap, and an Egyptian priestess, among other things. When Chambers gathered the cards together and began shuffling them, I saw that the reverse of each card was a solid black.

  “During the poker game, you exhibited evidence of psychical powers,” he said as he shuffled. “These are faculties that extend beyond the normal range of human perception. I’d like to propose a guessing game to test those powers.”

  I was still annoyed at Chambers for not acting the gentleman and helping to defend the Indian woman when Four Finger Pete struck her, and I was still listening for sounds of an argument on the deck below, yet I was intrigued by his proposal. All of my life, I had experienced strange hunches, premonitions and spates of luck. Could these abilities actually be measured? If so, I could imagine my father rolling over in his grave — just so he wouldn’t have to look at the proof.

  Chambers might be nothing more than a charlatan — a fortune-teller who used these odd cards to gull people into thinking that he could predict the future — but if he did have the ability to measure my abilities, I wanted him to do so.

  I decided to agree to Chambers’s test. “How does it work?” I asked.

  “Quite simply,” Chambers said, laying the cards face down in a neat stack on the table. He tapped a finger against the top card. “When I turn over this card, what suit do you suppose it will it be?”

  I hazarded a guess: “Hearts?”

  Chambers picked up the card and glanced at it. A slight downward motion of his moustache as his lips pressed together told me my first attempt was a failure. He laid the card on the table beside the deck. “Again,” he said briskly.

  I took another guess: “Spades?”

  The second card went down upon the first. “Again,” he ordered.

  The farmer still sat at the table with us. Intrigued, he leaned forward, sucking on his pipe, sending pungent wafts of smoke over the table. He was more intent upon the guessing game than I was; part of my attention was still focused on listening for the sounds of a disturbance on the deck below.

  Chambers saw that my attention had wandered, and prodded me.

  “The ten of diamonds?” I said with a shrug, forgetting that I had merely to guess the suit.

  “That was excellent,” he said encouragingly. “You were correct on both the suit, and the number. Let us continue in that vein — if you guess either the suit or number correctly, we’ll count it as a success.”

  I didn’t think he was supposed to be offering me any indication, and had a feeling that these new rules were giving me an increased chance of guessing something correctly. I was mildly irritated at this idea, and at Chambers’s tone of voice: it was almost as if he were encouraging a child. I had known since my childhood that some sort of “sixth sense” resided within me, and now I wanted to know its extent without stacking the deck — and without my efforts being coddled.

  I guessed at three more cards, following Chambers’s urgings to concentrate long and hard before each answer, but then I had to stop and take another dose of my patent medicine as pain wracked my stomach. The discomfort made me decide to speed up the game. When Chambers laid his finger upon the next card, I guessed immediately: “The queen of diamonds: the card that shows the Negress wearing a turban.”

  That startled me. I hadn’t directly observed a card of that sort when Chambers spread out the deck a few moments ago, yet I could picture the black-faced woman clearly in my mind.

  I heard the faint snap of card against table as Chambers laid it down and I shook my head to clear it. “Again,” Chambers said, a slight note of excitement in his voice.

  We proceeded in that manner through all fifty-two cards. When we were done, two piles of cards lay upon the table. They were about even in height.

  “I didn’t do very well, did I?” I said.

  “Quite the contrary,” Chambers said. “You guessed correctly on twenty-eight cards. Better than I would expect.” He scooped the cards up and began shuffling them.

  “Better than you would expect, perhaps,” I said, adopting a tone my father might have used. “But not conclusive evidence. Twenty-eight correct answers out of fifty-two cards are only to be expected, when either suit or numerical value will suffice. It’s no more than random chance.”

  Chambers inclined his head and gave me a quizzical look. “Let’s test another possibility,” he said. “Your ability to receive thought transferences.”

  By now, our guessing game had drawn a crowd of curious passengers. I glanced around at them uneasily, made even more uncomfortable by the ache in my stomach. I was under strict orders from Superintendent Steele to draw no undue attention to my investigations, and had instructions not to discuss with civilians any evidence I found of the paranormal. The last thing Steele wanted the new division to be burdened with was a barrage of curiosity seekers and sensationalists. I hoped there wasn’t a journalist in the crowd.

  “Could we retire to a more private place, Mr. Chambers?” I asked.

  Chambers shook his head. His eyes held a mischievous twinkle. “I’d like to test you under these conditions,” he said. “I have found that discomfort — whether it’s caused by physical pain or the emotional turmoil of having observers present — can have a pronounced effect on the results.”

  The crowd of passengers had grown to about a dozen, supplemented by the return of the steward and two other riverboat men. I felt a bead of nervous sweat trickle down my side under my scarlet jacket, and wished I had made the journey in plain clothes. I was doing what I’d been explicitly ordered not to do: expressing overt interest in the supernatural. Yet I couldn’t help myself.

  Chambers lifted a card and glanced at it, then pressed it face-first against his forehead with a theatrical flourish. With his free hand, he reached across the table and grabbed my wrist. So startled was I, that I was unable to protest. The touch of his bare fingers, moist with sweat, made me feel even more ill at ease than I had in the Commissioner’s office.

  “What card am I holding?” he asked, his dark eyes blazing with the intensity of concentration.

  I swallowed, my Adam’s apple bobbing uncomfortably against my stiff collar. “The ace of spades?” I ventured tentatively, after several moments.

  Chambers’s hand squeezed my wrist, and he smiled. Then he laid the card facedown on the table and drew another. Several people crowded around behind him, trying to peer at the card.

  This time, I guessed more quickly, eager to end the test and return to the solitude of my cabin. “The eight of hearts,” I said.

  He placed the card on top of the first.

  “Again,” he prompted, raising another card to his forehead.

  “The four of diamonds.”

  My flesh began to tingle under his fingers.

  “Again,” he said.

  “The seven of diamonds.”

  So far, Chambers had placed ev
ery card in the same pile. Either my guesses were all wide of the mark or — even more frightening — I was guessing every card correctly. My nerves buzzing, I continued guessing as quickly as Chambers could raise the cards to his forehead. Although each card was presented to me with its black side facing me, I had a curious double vision that showed me its face slightly above and to the left, as if in a prairie mirage. A curious tickling feeling centred itself upon my forehead, just between and above my eyes. The crowd of onlookers that surrounded me, and the saloon walls behind them, took on a translucent appearance.

  At long last, two piles of cards had replaced the original stack. One pile was large, the other quite small. Chambers counted them silently, then announced the final tally: “Forty-four correct in either suit or number, and eight incorrect. An excellent score of eighty-four per cent, well above the statistical average.”

  I pushed my pillbox hat back from my forehead and mopped my brow. “That’s astounding,” I said. Then my policeman’s instincts took over. Despite the evidence I had seen with my own eyes, and Steele’s assertions that paranormal powers did exist, a part of me — albeit an ever-diminishing part — remained as sceptical as my father. I added, for the benefit of our observers: “But not so surprising when you consider the fact that no one saw the cards except Mr. Chambers himself.”

  Chambers shot me a challenge with dark eyes. Silently, he handed me the larger stack of cards, face up. I rifled through them, and found to my amazement that, from what I could remember, they were in the very order I had described.

  “Would you care to be tested a second time?” Chambers asked. “With independent verification by Monsieur Mont-Ferron, perhaps?”

  He half turned to the steward, who drew back in alarm, one hand making the sign of the cross. But others in the crowd pressed toward the table.

  “I’ll do it!” one cried.

  “No, test me!”

  “He must be a spiritualist,” another whispered to a friend. “Next thing you know, the table will be knocking and tilting and ectoplasm will ooze from his ear!”

  I leaned toward Chambers and indicated his cabin with a glance. “Let’s continue this conversation in a more private place,” I hissed.

  Chambers nodded, and carefully re-wrapped his cards. “Agreed,” he said. Rising from the table and picking up his silver-handled umbrella, he indicated the ordinary deck of poker cards that still lay on the table. “The guessing game is merely a parlour amusement that anyone can play,” he told the curious onlookers. “You are welcome to use my poker deck to test each other.”

  We retired from the table, leaving the crowd of passengers to amuse themselves. As we walked to Chambers’s cabin, the optimist and the sceptic were at war within my breast. I wanted the results to be true — oh, how I wanted magic to be real, and psychical powers and perhaps even miracles to be within my grasp. I tucked the bottle of painkiller back into my pocket, and stepped inside Chambers’s cabin as he held the door open for me.

  I had expected the small room to be filled with the trappings of the occult: crystal balls, tambourines and trumpets, beeswax candles, or even a human skull. But it was as ordinary in appearance as my own — although it did contain more luggage. Chambers was well appointed when he traveled. I noted two large steamer trunks and three valises, in addition to two hatboxes: they must have tallied well in excess of the hundred pounds luggage permitted each passenger. A shaving case, pocket mirror and clothes brushes were neatly laid out on a shelf near the narrow cot that served as a bed. The room smelled of Brilliantine; an open jar of the stuff sat on the counter.

  Chambers placed his kerchief-wrapped cards inside one of the smaller bags, then pulled something from the valise. He turned and presented me with a calling card. Printed on it, in small, neat letters, were his name and that of an organization: the Society for Psychical Research. The card was otherwise unadorned, and its reverse was blank.

  “I’ve not heard of your organization before,” I said to Chambers.

  “That does not surprise me,” he said with a smile. “Our society was formed just two years ago, in Cambridge, and our journal, while highly regarded, is not widely circulated in the Dominion — it’s no wonder you are ignorant of it. Very few of our members have traveled to Canada, and I am the first to visit the North-West Territories.”

  “And what does your society do?” I asked. “Other than play ‘parlour games’ with cards, that is.”

  “We investigate the paranormal in all of its myriad forms, in a scientific manner, without prejudice or presupposition,” said Chambers, as if reciting the society’s mandate by rote. “Our members study mesmeric trance, apparitions, faith healing, spiritualistic phenomena, thought transference, automatic writing, communication with the dead, perceptions beyond the sensory organs, and premonitory warnings.”

  I glanced sharply at him, to see if he’d meant to imply anything by the last item on the list. I was starting to wonder whether this gentleman had heard about Q Division, and about my premonitory dreams and hunches. But his eyes were innocent of ingenuity. I yearned to ask him if he knew whether it was actually possible to heal by faith alone, but was already wary at the degree of attention he’d paid to my use of a painkiller. I didn’t want any word of it to reach my superiors.

  “You listed a number of topics that the society studies,” I said. “Are there any among them that you yourself have special knowledge of?”

  Chambers stroked his beard and gave me a coy expression. His eyes lingered momentarily on the bulge in my jacket pocket where the bottle of painkiller rested. “I know very little about faith healing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I quickly changed my angle of approach. “You mentioned something you called ‘thought transference.’ What is that?”

  He took a deep breath, like a lecturer about to speak. Even though we were both standing, and both about the same height, I felt as if I were seated in an auditorium and looking up at him.

  “Thought transference is the ability of one human being to communicate with another, by means of thought alone,” Chambers said. “Whenever I travel, I amuse myself by testing the psychical abilities of the people I meet. I choose an individual at random and attempt to contact that person via thought transference. All human beings are capable of it, to a limited degree: simply focus your attention on someone long enough, and eventually he will sense it and turn his head. The more quickly and frequently a person responds, the greater his potential psychical ability. Later, when you were guessing at cards, I was using thought transference to send you the correct answers.”

  “How does it work?”

  Chambers’s eyes gleamed as he warmed to his subject. “Human beings exist both on the material plane and on the astral plane. You and I may have been silent as we sat at the card table, here in the physical world, but on the astral plane I was speaking the name and suit of the card — and you were listening.”

  “The astral plane?” I asked, confused. I’d not heard the term before.

  Chambers rummaged in one of his bags. When he found what he was looking for — a slim pamphlet whose cover bore the name of the Society for Psychical Research — he passed it to me with a flourish. “This will tell you all about it.”

  I glanced down and saw that the pamphlet bore a mysterious title: “The Unseen World.” It had been authored by Chambers himself — an etching of Chamber’s face, bearing a scholarly expression, had been printed at the bottom of the pamphlet, under his name.

  I’d grasped enough of what he’d said — even without reading the pamphlet — to spot an inconsistency. “Thought transference doesn’t explain how I was able to predict the cards during the first round of guessing,” I said. “The cards remained face down; you never looked at them until after I’d made my guess.”

  “You are quite correct,” Chambers said, with the look of a teacher who is pleased that his student has asked the very question he was looking for. “You were instead using your astral body to look in
to the future and observe an event that had not yet occurred — the turning of a card — just as you did during the poker game. It’s the hallmark of a true sensitive.”

  I frowned, not understanding the reference.

  “People with psychical abilities,” he continued, “are called ‘sensitives’ because they have heightened senses that extend into the astral plane. Because the astral body is not fettered in time and space as the physical body is, ‘sensitives’ can use their astral bodies to glimpse the future. Unfortunately, they most often do this in a random and uncontrolled manner: typically, while the physical body sleeps. And because these premonitions are jumbled together with the detritus of dreams, their warnings and signs are often misunderstood — and unheeded.”

  I listened to Chambers with rapt attention, the pamphlet he’d given me clutched tightly in my hand. In the space of a few short minutes, he’d explained a mystery that had consumed me all of my life: the source of my strange premonitions that guided me away from trouble — premonitions that saved my life on at least one occasion. I had spent my childhood enduring my father’s dismissals of my hunches as mere “coincidence” and my mother’s outright fear of them, and during my adulthood had tried my best to hide my oddity. Now, in the space of a few short days I had not only had my premonitions accepted at face value by my superiors in the North-West Mounted Police, but had also met a man who provided a scientific explanation for them. My sense of relief was overwhelming. I found myself telling Chambers a story I hadn’t spoken of in years.

  “The premonitions began when I was just ten years old,” I began. “I can remember the first one very vividly. I had a dream in which my grandfather came to me, and told me that he had died in a carriage accident. He was so sad — not at his own death, but at the fact that his favourite mare had broken her leg and had to be shot.

  “When my mother found me crying on the stairs and asked what was wrong, she told me it was just a bad dream and sent me back to bed. But when the telegram came from London two days later, with details of the death that matched what I had told her that evening, she was seized by fits of trembling. She was convinced that my dreams were the Devil’s work, and begged my father to call the minister to pray with me. My father, who regarded religion in much the same light as he did premonitions, told her that she was being foolish and gave a dozen different reasons why my dream could be nothing more than coincidence.