by Alan Finn
II
To say my editor was happy with what I wrote would be a gross understatement.
The usually emotionless Hamilton Gray was over the moon. Ecstatic. Downright giddy, as a matter of fact.
“Astounding,” he muttered continuously while reading my account of Mrs. Pastor’s death. “Absolutely astounding.”
It was the morning after my long, sleepless night—a warm Sunday that found most of the city’s residents worshipping at one church or another. Mr. Gray and I, however, attended the Church of Journalism, which wasn’t divided into denominations, didn’t require tithing, and certainly didn’t have a day of rest. For us, news—or at least the selling of it—outweighed God and all the angels in heaven.
When Mr. Gray finished reading my article, a smile stretched from one ear to the other. I couldn’t recall ever having seen him so joyful. “My boy, you have made this newspaper proud.”
“I assume the article is adequate?” I said.
Mr. Gray pressed the pages to his chest, literally hugging them. “Adequate? It’s brilliant. The Public Ledger and the Times shouldn’t even try to outdo us. But try they will, and they’ll only look foolish in the end.”
I was well aware of what this meant for the Evening Bulletin. While it was true that every paper in the city was preparing to report on Mrs. Pastor’s death, mine would be the only one with intimate knowledge of what had transpired when she passed away. The only thing readers in Philadelphia enjoyed more than a good story about murder and mayhem was a firsthand account of it. That’s exactly what they were going to get.
What they wouldn’t read about, however, were my secrets.
The piece I had written for the Bulletin was mostly an accurate account of what I saw at Mrs. Pastor’s home. I mentioned the floating instruments, the otherworldly voices, the wind that rushed through the room right before she died. I chronicled my quick, yet chaste, examination of the body before concluding she was dead, and the aftermath of that pronouncement. But readers of the Bulletin saw no mention that Annalise Holmes was one of the voices to come out of Mrs. Pastor’s mouth, nor did they know about the other ghostly visitors during the séance. By not revealing what I knew about the others, I hoped they, in turn, would refrain from revealing what they knew about me.
Fortunately, Mr. Gray was too enamored of the more dramatic portions of my article to question whether anything was missing.
“Was P. T. Barnum truly in attendance?” he asked.
“Yes. He was very much present.”
“Astounding,” Mr. Gray muttered again. “Our readers will simply not believe what they’re reading.”
“The only downside, I suppose, is that our exposé of the city’s mediums has stopped before it could begin in earnest,” I said. “After this, it will be impossible to conduct the investigation in anonymity.”
Mr. Gray squeezed the pages a little tighter. “Our readership will have increased so much that it no longer matters. If Mr. Peacock wishes, I’ll have someone else continue it. As for you, Clark, Mrs. Pastor’s death is the only thing you’ll be writing about.”
“I doubt there’ll be much more to write, sir.”
“There’ll be the report from the coroner, I assume. Don’t you find it strange that an autopsy has been requested in this matter?”
“Not at all,” I replied. “I gathered that it’s unclear what caused Mrs. Pastor’s death.”
“What if it was murder?” Mr. Gray said, his eyes agleam at such a prospect. “The city’s greatest medium killed during one of her own séances. Oh, you couldn’t create a better story.”
“I hope that it’s not. For the sake of her loved ones.”
Left unspoken was how I wished it for my own sake as well. While I wrote about killings almost daily, it was not my desire to also have witnessed one.
After reading the story again, Mr. Gray declared it the best thing I had ever written, congratulated me on a job well done, and sent me home. On my way out of the building, I spotted a few colleagues arriving for the Sunday afternoon shift. They nodded politely, but in their eyes I glimpsed what seemed to be unbridled envy. No doubt they had heard about what happened to Mrs. Pastor and were jealous that it was me, and not them, who had been there to witness it.
I made the journey home on foot, enjoying the sun on my face and the relative quiet of the city’s streets. There was a slight breeze blowing down Chestnut Street, carrying with it the sound of an organ being played and a congregation giving full voice to a hymn I faintly recognized.
I am, sad to say, no longer a religious man. Once you have seen what I have—battalions of fearful, angry men racing across a battlefield with the sole intention of slaughtering each other—you begin to doubt that a benevolent god exists. Yet, as a young child, I was a frequent churchgoer, often found with my mother in the front pews of the First Reformed Church on Race Street. My father never attended, adhering to Mr. Karl Marx’s theory that religion was the “opium of the people.” My mother, however, had been a devout woman who insisted I put on my best suit every Sunday and sit through fiery speeches spoken in a packed, sweltering church. While the sermons were wasted on me, I learned to love the music of the lord. Even now, I remember the words and melodies to many hymns of my youth. Whenever I think of them, I hear my mother’s clarion voice singing along.
Of course, I thought of her on that lovely Sunday morning, thanks to the hymn I heard floating down Chestnut Street. I still wasn’t entirely convinced it had been my mother I’d spoken with the night before. A nagging, doubting part of my brain kept telling me it had been the cruelest of tricks. Yet the rest of me disagreed. My brain could think whatever it wanted, but my gut, my heart, and my soul told me otherwise. And listening to that hymn, I started to slowly but surely believe that my mother had somehow spoken to me.
It didn’t matter that our conversation from the previous evening had become hazy and half forgotten. I remembered her telling me to visit my father, which I knew I would never do. I also recalled that strange word she had said—Praediti. But everything else was vague, like a dream that had quickly dissipated upon waking.
While I didn’t remember most of her words, the sound of her voice—that warm tone that had brought me to tears—began to haunt me. I thought I heard it standing out from the other voices singing the hymn that was slowly fading in the distance. Before the song vanished completely, I stopped on the sidewalk and turned, trying to face the direction it was coming from.
That’s when I noticed a man in a black suit following me.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about him. He walked about half a block behind me, strolling leisurely, as many men do on bright Sunday mornings. His morning suit was clean and pressed, again not out of the ordinary. While he was too far away to get a good look at his face, the way he moved—back rigid, facing forward—gave me pause. He seemed like someone trying very hard to give the impression that he was not looking at something. When, in truth, he was looking at me.
I turned away from him and began to walk again, keeping my pace to a crawl. Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed that the man had also slowed. He barely shuffled along, head still raised, eyes pretending to look beyond me. Yet when I began to move faster, another backward glance revealed that his pace had quickened as well. Not noticeably fast, mind you. Just enough to keep an equal distance from me.
My first instinct was to confront the man and demand to know why he was following me. But a single seed of doubt prevented me from accusing him of it. If I was wrong, I didn’t want to appear rude or, worse, insane.
Instead, I decided to be more discreet. Looking to my left, I saw that I had reached a dry goods store, closed for the Sabbath. Its wide windows faced the street, behind which were flour sacks piled into tidy pyramids and elaborate stacks of tin cans. I stopped directly in front of a window, pretending to peer inside. In reality, I could see the street behind me reflected in the glass.
Then I waited.
The strang
er in the black suit slowed again, proceeding at a pace that even a turtle could have surpassed. When he realized I wasn’t going anywhere, he picked up his pace. As he approached, I resisted the urge to turn and face him. Instead, my gaze remained steady on the reflection in the window.
The man soon appeared on the left side of the glass, walking swiftly. He still faced forward, chin slightly raised, like a commander marching in front of his troops.
I lost sight of him briefly as he passed directly behind me, my reflection blocking out his own. When he slipped into view again, a chill of dread shot through my entire body.
The man had turned his head while behind me and was now staring directly at me in the glass.
Never before had I seen a more ghastly countenance on a man still living. Wide of forehead and narrow of chin, the stranger’s cheekbones jutted out on both sides of his face. His skin was as white as talcum powder, which set off tar black eyes devoid of emotion. Aimed squarely at my face, those two dark orbs studied me, taking in everything at once.
Yet the most startling thing about the man’s appearance was his nose.
He didn’t seem to have one.
In its place was a dark crevasse divided by a thin strip of cartilage. It was as if his nose had been lopped off long ago, leaving large, unnatural nostrils ringed by flaps of white skin that vibrated slightly as he breathed. The result was as appalling as it was fascinating. And as the man continued walking past me, I couldn’t help but stare, inadvertently making eye contact with him in the window’s glass.
As his eyes met my own, the stranger gave me what could only be called a smile, although it contained neither warmth nor mirth. The slight upturning of his pale lips suggested something more sinister than friendly.
In an instant, the smile was gone, as was the entire reflection of his face, for he had turned forward again and quickened his pace. I stayed where I was, listening to his footfalls on the sidewalk. When I counted twenty of them, I slowly turned around.
To my surprise, he was no longer on the street. Apparently, I had waited too long, giving him just enough time to round a corner or duck into a nearby building.
Left alone once more, I continued my walk home.
The streets filled considerably in the next fifteen minutes as the city’s churches released their congregants. Pedestrians in their Sunday best, momentarily cleansed in the spirit of the lord and free to engage in another week of sin, soon surrounded me. I took no comfort in the growing crowd. In fact, it made me more nervous than if I had been alone. At least then I could have seen if the noseless man was following me again. But now each person joining the fray only further hindered my lookout for those dark, prying eyes. Still, I at least tried, constantly checking over my shoulder to make sure the man wasn’t behind me once more.
I did this for the remainder of my trip, not stopping until I was safely home and locking the door behind me. Once inside, I leaned against the door, breathing heavily. My hands shook. My heart, normally so sedate, thrummed so hard in my chest that someone listening to it would have thought I had sprinted all the way from Chestnut Street. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture anything other than that man’s horrific, noseless face.
I couldn’t.
His image continued to haunt me, and although I knew he hadn’t followed me home, I couldn’t shake the dreadful feeling that I would be seeing him again very soon.
III
In the afternoon, Violet and I set out in her father’s brougham for a long, relaxing ride before meeting friends at a dinner party. I felt rather unchivalrous about having my fiancée pull up to my doorstep instead of the other way around, but I knew Violet didn’t mind. I also understood that her father liked it that way. Although we were betrothed, Mr. Willoughby preferred not to leave his daughter alone with me until we were properly man and wife. So we were often accompanied by either one of her parents or a member of their household staff.
That afternoon, our chaperone was the coachman, a stout fellow called Winslow. He rode up top, giving Violet and me a modicum of privacy inside the enclosed brougham. Still, we knew we remained within earshot, and were thus on our best behavior.
“You look tired, Edward,” Violet said.
“That’s because I didn’t sleep a wink,” I replied.
“Oh, please don’t become like Jasper. I doubt last night saw an hour’s worth of sleep between the two of you. He came home late again, knocking things about in the next room until the sun came up. Little does he realize that it affects my sleep as well.”
The mention of her brother produced a flare of panic in my rib cage.
“Have you spoken with Jasper at all today?”
“No,” Violet said. “He was sleeping all morning. He didn’t even come down for lunch. I do worry about him sometimes.”
As did I. I’d have some explaining to do if he eventually told Violet about seeing me on the street with Mrs. Collins. I considered telling her about it myself, but decided against it. It wasn’t as if I’d be seeing Mrs. Collins again. Also, I had a feeling that Jasper would stay quiet about it as well. I had no idea what he was doing out and about alone on a Saturday night, but whatever it was, I assumed he didn’t want his sister to know.
“I’m certain it’s just a phase,” I said. “He’s still young and carefree.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Violet reached out to me with a gloved hand. I held it in both of my own, caressing the satin stretched across her delicate palm. We rode in silence for a while, hands still clasped as we gazed at the city slipping slowly past us. The brougham traveled north, taking me once again to Chestnut Street and the building that housed the Evening Bulletin.
By then the presses were rumbling away, I knew, churning out thousands of newspapers with my name on the front page. I supposed I should have been excited by that prospect. It was, after all, the high point of my writing career. Yet I felt uneasy knowing that my impending notoriety could lead others as enterprising as Lucy Collins to learn who I really was. But nothing could be done about it at that point. With the presses rolling, whatever was being printed on those warm pages couldn’t be wiped away.
Violet, naturally, had heard about what happened to Mrs. Pastor, yet she didn’t broach the subject other than to offer sympathy that I had been there to witness it. I appreciated her silence on the matter. Anyone else would have pestered me for tawdry details, curious about what I had seen and heard. But not my Violet. There wasn’t a curious bone in her body, which was one of the things I loved about her. She was comfortable with what she comprehended and saw no reason to muddy the clear waters of her knowledge.
In my youth, if someone had asked me what type of woman I wanted to marry, my ensuing description would have been nothing like Violet Willoughby. Back then, I would have talked about someone very much like my mother. Keen of mind. A touch of mystery. Eager to explore the world.
Violet was none of those things. She was intelligent, but not overtly so, which was how she had been raised. Her mystery was the kind all women possessed, in that it was impossible to quite know all of her thoughts and desires. As for travel, sweet Violet had told me she felt no need to see the world, since everything she knew and loved was right here in Philadelphia.
Instead, Violet had characteristics above and beyond those I desired as a boy but now saw value in as a man. Her kindness was unparalleled, and her disposition was sunnier than a June morning. She was never cross, nor was she ever blue. A great deal of that, I was certain, came from wealth. To Miss Willoughby, every day was an occasion to put on beautiful dresses, visit with friends, and enjoy the good fortune that had been bestowed upon her. While that may have seemed trivial to most, there was something admirable about a young woman who loved life. That joy, after all, was what had initially drawn me to her.
Violet and I had met the previous August, at a dance for war veterans hosted by a group of society ladies. Attending such an event was the last thing I wanted to do, but Barclay insisted I
go. He felt I was becoming too much of a recluse—which, in truth, I was—and that a night out among lovely young women and fellow soldiers might do me some good. On that matter, I disagreed. I had no expectations that spying a pretty girl on the dance floor could or should erase those horrible memories that had been forged on the battlefield.
The dance, just as I had expected, was a sorry affair despite attempts to keep things festive. The hall was festooned with red, white, and blue bunting. A small orchestra had been set up in the corner, playing the airiest waltzes and reels. Along one wall was a table offering punch, coffee, and a variety of cakes and pies. Yet the air inside the hall was thick with humidity and sadness. It was far too hot for a dance, to be sure, and a fair number of both sexes wilted in the heat.
Then there was the uncomfortable fact that many of those in attendance were battle scarred and weary souls. Some bore their wounds quite literally, such as one man missing an arm whom I saw dancing with a lovely brunette. The girl smiled bravely and looked him square in the eyes, but her free hand, not knowing where to be placed, fluttered around his pinned-up sleeve like a confused bird. Others were physically unharmed, but the events of the war still haunted them. I could see it in their glassy eyes, in their stooped shoulders, in the hollow words they spoke. I knew the signs because I was one of them, shuffling through my life without any attempt to actually live it.
I decided to leave the dance after less than an hour. It was all I could possibly endure.
Stepping out of the hall, I was stopped by a pretty young woman in a light blue dress. She stood in the doorway, her yellow hair elegantly piled atop her head and held in place by a bonnet adorned with white rosebuds. Her pale skin was offset by cheeks gently kissed by rouge paper. She looked lovely—a shimmering vision emerging from the still air of that suffocating hall.
