By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  William furrowed his brow. He had shifted his stance so that he could see the door over the lady’s head but Adam Foole did not appear.

  You must be a pugilist, sir? she said.

  I beg your pardon?

  She touched a finger to her face. Your bruises.

  William smiled vaguely. No, he said. An accident.

  An accident, yes, she was nodding. Yes. She stared up at him and there was burning in her face a kind of beatitude that left William moved. She looked tired and happy. We must be careful, she said, in this world at least. Our flesh is so fragile, though our spirits endure. Of course Miss Utterson does not always reach through. But that is how one knows it is real, you see. It is rather crowded on the other side. There is so much noise.

  Noise?

  Interference. She paused. Are you not a believer, sir?

  Well.

  It is quite all right. I shall tell you what to do. She patted his arm quickly and she smiled and smiled. You must reveal nothing to her, she whispered, you must give her no details. Then you will see. She will know things she cannot possibly know. And then you will believe.

  He could still see no sign of Foole. He watched the medium glide from guest to guest and then turn with a sinuous grace towards them and drift across the soft blue carpet with her eyes fixed on the lady in the green shawl.

  Miss Utterson, the lady said warmly. How do you feel tonight? Shall we have success?

  The medium grasped the lady’s outstretched hands and peered into her eyes as if seeking some answer but she did not reply. Then she turned and lifted her face and regarded William where he loomed and she said, in a throaty murmur, You must be Mr. Pinkerton.

  She spread then clasped her jewelled hands and her bracelets rattled and William inclined his head. He was going to ask her if her spirits had told her that but he sucked at his teeth and did not say it.

  You have been to India, he said instead.

  She smiled. The webbed lines under her eyes, the loose skin in the hollow of her throat. Combed blond hairs invisible above her lips. She was older than he had thought.

  Oh, India, said the lady in the green shawl. I’ve always wanted to experience India.

  We are more than just experience, the medium said quietly. Her painted eyes were fixed with a luminous intensity on William. But we are also what we were. I spent many years in the Raj, it is true. It was difficult to leave it in the end.

  It looks like you brought it back with you.

  The Raj is always with you, once you have become a part of it.

  Extraordinary, the lady in the green shawl murmured. Most extraordinary.

  She took no notice of the lady but began to speak to William of the strangeness of that continent. Of the fields of rice in the winds blooming golden and tidal like corn. Of the crowds in their colours and the tall narrow houses painted blue and yellow and red and of the long surf rolling in at Madras. She said back then travellers were strangled in their sleep and the Bengalis worshipped a goddess with a tongue of blood and a necklace of human skulls and yet she herself had feared only the holy men wandering the cities with their roving eyes and tangled hair halfway down their shoulders and the knuckled bones in their backs articulated and sharp. It was not a country, she said, but a world. Not a world, she said, but a passing through time. One grew old there. She said on her first afternoon on the river she had seen the body of an old woman in the mudbank being eaten by pariah dogs.

  Of course death is only a gateway, she said. Our bodies hold us like locks.

  Like locks, murmured the lady.

  Locks, said William.

  She nodded. We cannot transcend without first breaking them open.

  Exactly, murmured the lady.

  William frowned. By transcend you mean die.

  She shook her head. Nothing dies. It is only born into the next life.

  William studied her hard eyes and wondered what she had seen in this life that would lead her to such a pass. He did not yet know if she deceived or was herself deceived.

  She leaned closer. He could smell her skin. She wore no scent, no perfume. You think you do not believe, sir, she said. But nobody comes here who does not seek someone. You must not be frightened.

  Frightened of what?

  Of what happens this evening.

  William smiled a cold smile. And what is it you seek?

  She did not take his meaning or else chose to ignore it. She said, calmly, My mother, sir. But she has already found me.

  William said nothing. He watched the soft man from the doorway come up behind her and nod in greeting and without turning to acknowledge him the medium said, This is my brother, sir. Mr. Utterson, Mr. Pinkerton. Mr. Pinkerton is the guest of Mr. Foole this evening.

  Utterson nodded. His eyelids were sleepy but the eyes behind them were as hard as any William had seen and stared out of the slack grey skin of his face with an unfriendly sharpness. The man leaned in close to his sister and said in a surprisingly soft voice, They are ready, my dear.

  William looked from one to the other. Mr. Foole has not yet arrived, he said.

  The medium smiled her strange smile.

  And just then the tall Sikh drew the beaded curtain aside and Foole stepped into the parlour. His face, discoloured by a heavy bruise on one cheek. A scab of dried blood crossing the bridge of his nose. His forehead was knotted by worry, his silk hat unbrushed and dull. He looked drained, and desperate, and anxious. William’s eyes met his, held.

  But already the medium was allowing her brother to take her elbow and lead her through the folding doors and then the gaslights dimmed as if being choked slowly into darkness.

  He had witnessed too much suffering and horror as a young man at Antietam to think spiritualism’s embrace of death anything but madness. The grave was the grave, the dead the dead. The worms fed and were fattened. Had it not ever been so? Because he had been fast and strong for his size he was named runner on a crew of eight for a Parrott cannon that day and he had begged his father to let him serve. Nights still came to him now when he would awaken in a panic, twenty years on, a man who occupied his time with violence and blood by choice but for whom the nightmare of that morning still thundered in his skull and made him sick. It was September of 1862, his seventeenth year. The night before the battle he had felt a roiling in his gut that the men of his battery called death belly. By common assent it meant he would not walk away unscathed. That crew’s last runner had been ripped in two at the waist by a splintering wheel as it fragmented off a cannon ten yards away and it had taken the pickers three days to bag the lad and haul his pieces by horse to the overfull graves. The gunner on William’s crew was a boy of twenty and seemed impossibly old at that time, in that place. He showed William how to soak knots of rag in cold water and stuff them into his ears and said the noise when the firing began would be a physical thing, he would feel it rustling the sleeves of his coat. He showed William how to mark out a line in the dirt and grass from the limber to the cannon and explained that when the battle was under way the smoke from the cannons would roll in great sheets over them and he would see nothing but blur and fog and flares of light in the exploding chaos. All this proved true. They were positioned on high ground and fixed their mark on the cornfield where the Texans would come rushing through and when the battle was joined the world dissolved into flame and smoke and a shuddering earth that was nearly impossible for William to keep his balance upon. His task was to carry the ten-pound shells one at a time from the limber along the line to the gun crew and he would stagger with the shell held low in both hands and his elbows locked, his eyes trained on the marks in the dirt showing him the way. He could see only a murky fog, hear only the roaring. Thirty minutes into the battle a Confederate battery had fixed their position and the hill burst around them and exploded into flame, whistling twists of iron scantling, spikes of wood, rock, dirt. There was a high whine, like a mosquito at his ear. And then William felt himself lift into the air and hang there for a
n impossible length of time and then a gentle pain enfolded itself around him and massaged his knee between its thumbs and then it started to crush him with a fury and it tightened and tightened yet further and when there was only the pain and the long darkness of what came next he closed his eyes and descended.

  The air in the seance room was heavy with the scent of marigolds. William stood to one side of the folding doors and held his handkerchief to his mouth and breathed. He had heard stories of spirit cabinets, of floating objects, of ghostly figures manifesting in the corners of seance halls. Here afforded no such possibilities, cramped as it was. A bare round table without cloth of any kind filled the space and the chairs surrounding were squeezed close with their laddered backs scraping the walls. Thick purple drapes hung from iron rods at the ceiling and a solitary lantern was burning on the table. Beside this, a small wooden box with its lid flipped back. Inside: a small brass bell.

  He waited for Foole and put out a hand and Foole glanced up. I started to think you might not show, he said.

  Foole smiled a tight smile. Mr. Pinkerton. You came.

  William touched the skin under his own eye. How’s your face?

  Embarrassing.

  They took their seats as did all the others and only the widower Gables stood with one hand resting heavily on two seat-backs as if uncertain which to take. The medium pressed her jewelled hands flat on the table and raised her head.

  We are only nine, Gabriel, she said.

  Her brother glanced at the gathered sitters. Who’s missing?

  She dipped her head and the gold hoops at her ears caught the light.

  Never mind it. I shall make the tenth.

  You cannot, she said. She gave him a quick sharp look. You must be the guide.

  His eyes took in the sitters one by one and then William watched his slow eyelids lower like the eyelids of a caiman and he said, Tonight I shall be both. It will be fine.

  He pulled the extra chair away from the table and took it through the doors and returned after a moment and folded the doors shut behind him. They sat in silence as he took his seat, fastened the lid of the bell box shut, replaced it in the centre of the table. He reached his left palm towards Mr. Gables, the ancient widower shrunken and trembling, and took the man’s fingers in his own. You must not, ladies and gentlemen, under any circumstances, break the circle. Do not let go of the hands of your neighbours. It would be most dangerous.

  Dangerous, William said with a quiet smile.

  Dangerous, sir, yes. We are bridging worlds in ways we do not entirely understand.

  They all sat in the light of that dim lantern with the curtains close at their backs and the bell set out before them and their arms were stretched wide across the distances. William glanced at Foole but the small man was studying the medium with a quiet seriousness and would not meet his eye. Something did not feel right.

  The medium had already closed her eyes and was breathing long slow steady breaths.

  Her brother said, I must ask you to concentrate now. All of you. I want you to focus your energy on the one you wish to contact this evening. Think of that person. Remember their smell, how they looked to you, the sound of their laugh. Many of you will have brought an item that once belonged to them. You do not need to share it. Only think of it while we wait.

  A minute passed, two minutes. He heard a soft murmuring from across the table and realized the medium was speaking to herself. It sounded like Latin.

  William watched Foole’s eyes move between the medium and her brother.

  Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. A quiet settled upon the narrow room, a warmth began to fill it. William could feel his eyes closing, he began to drift in an almost sleep. And then all at once the bell in its wooden box clattered harshly and his eyes opened in alarm. His blood loud in his ears. Everyone sat unmoving, hands grasped in the faint light. The bell sat yet in its box in the centre of the table.

  There has been contact, the brother said calmly. Have any sitters present felt anything?

  No one spoke. The darkness of the drapery surrounding was absolute, it might have been folded from pitch. William breathed quiet shallow breaths, listened to a creak in the ceiling overhead, the slow shirr of the drapery. He glanced at Foole’s face, the thin gash of his mouth in the gloom. The smell of marigolds was overwhelming. For a long while the medium sat murmuring her prayer. Then the clapper in the box rang again, stark, violent, brash. William felt Foole startle beside him. The sound fell away.

  There has been contact, the man repeated. Have any sitters present felt anything?

  Now a lady’s voice said, I do, I feel something, yes. It was the lady in the green shawl. Her eyelids were crushed shut.

  The man was studying her dispassionately. What do you feel?

  Hands. I can feel hands. On my neck. She gave a brief shiver as she spoke but did not open her eyes.

  Do you feel anything else?

  Oh they’re cold.

  Rose? the man said gently. Is there a message for this lady? Is there some word?

  The medium sat with her face uplifted and her eyes closed and the light cast a strange cage of interlaced shadows over her lips and cheekbones. Her mouth was parted slightly and her tongue pressed against her lower teeth as if she might speak. A long silence followed and then at last she spoke. Her voice was soft, hardly more than a breath.

  The spirit says, You have come a long distance to be here, she said. The spirit says, You must travel a long distance back. There is a woman who brings a message from the shining world. A young woman, with red hair. Her hands are white. She is reaching towards you.

  William felt an uneasiness rising in him.

  The medium’s brother inclined his head towards the lady with the green shawl. Mrs. Caldwell? Do you know this spirit?

  She wet her lips. My mother, she said softly. She died October last.

  It is not your mother, the medium murmured. She is here also. It is not her.

  My aunt?

  I am hearing a name. It begins with an H. Hester? Does Hester mean anything to you?

  No, she said.

  The H is important. Can you think of anyone whose name begins with an H?

  My aunt Hettie.

  It is not her. Anyone whose name has an H in it?

  The lady was turning her face side to side in the weak light and William watched the purple curtain behind her ripple and elongate and ripple. Could it be Martha? My sister? We lived in Hull when we were girls—

  The medium was silent and then she gave a sigh as if some breath not her own were leaving her body and she opened her eyes and said, smiling, Martha says hello, Susan.

  Martha? Is it her? Truly?

  She asks what you would like to know.

  Oh, god. Oh, god.

  There was a long silence then in that blackness and William felt the dampness of Foole’s hand in his own, the strength in the sinews there as he gripped and gripped. William’s feet were flat on the floorboards and he could feel a low drumming as if someone was tapping their heels in a quick fearful tap.

  She says to tell you, Lizzie is happy, the medium said. Her suffering has ended. She says Lizzie’s hair has grown back. Her eyes can see again.

  Oh, Lizzie, the lady murmured. Lizzie, Lizzie, my little bird.

  And she started to cry, soundlessly, her sharp narrow shoulders racked by it.

  Do not break the circle, the brother warned. Hold fast. Hold fast.

  They were silent then a long time and the medium began to murmur her prayer over and over. Perhaps twenty minutes passed, perhaps more. The lady in the green shawl had ceased crying and sat luminous and filled with grief like a vessel that had found its purpose and William studied the lines in her face and thought of the grifters he had known capable of manipulating such suffering. When he glanced at Foole he saw a man transfixed by longing and regret and he wondered suddenly if Foole too found this crooked and dishonest. The bell in its wooden box rang again.

  There has been co
ntact. Have any sitters present felt anything?

  No one spoke.

  Rose? her brother said. Rose, is there a presence?

  She rolled her head slowly forward as if following some scent with her eyes shut and her arms outstretched and then she shook her head. It is gone, she said.

  Ten minutes passed. They waited again.

  The bell clacked loudly.

  There has been contact. Have any sitters present felt anything?

  Foole cleared his throat.

  Mr. Foole, sir? Did you feel something?

  No, he said. I thought I did. It was nothing.

  Nothing?

  No.

  I have a presence, the medium said abruptly. A presence is coming through.

  Whom does it seek? her brother asked.

  She sat very still as if listening at an open window to music playing somewhere. She said, hesitantly, A man comes to us tonight, a man in pain.

  What is his name?

  William could feel Foole gripping his hand hard.

  She was silent.

  Whom does the presence seek? her brother asked again.

  The spirit says, Do not mourn. You are loved even still.

  Yes?

  The spirit would like to tell you that there is nothing to forgive. What was left unfinished on this side will be finished on the next. The spirit says, The war. I see the war, and a betrayal.

  Did he die in a war?

  A name. Ignatius.

  William felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

  Ignatius, the brother said. Is it the spirit of Ignatius who comes to us?

  She grimaced, as if in pain. All at once she turned her sightless face and something had shifted in her and when she spoke now her voice had roughened to the husk and gravel of a man’s voice, a faint Virginian bend in the vowels. What is this place? it said.

  Do not be frightened, her brother murmured. His eyes looked carved from darkness. You are between worlds. You are here with a message for this world. What would you have us hear?

  You sound so far away. I lost so many things, I lost—

  What would you have us hear?

  It was silent.