The Spiritualist

by Noah Alexander

  “Pardon me for the shabbiness,” said he settling himself on a wooden crate, “but I have recently shifted to the house and my only servant’s mother chose a very inconvenient time to leave her body and become a spirit.”

  He muttered a few inaudible words before moving his hand in a circle in front of his face.

  “A Mayan prayer for the spirit to rest in peace,” he explained.

  “Do you live here alone?” asked Maya

  “Yes, in a sense,” said the Spiritualist looking dreamily at the ceiling, “But not if you see what I see. For instance, you would think that this space between the two of us is empty. But is it? If you ask me, it is not. At this very moment, there are spirits going past between us, rambling gaily like this is the Grand Arcade of Sophia. I live with these spirits. I have lived with them all my life, so I don’t think I live alone.”

  “You mean to say,” asked Maya doubtfully, “that you can see these spirits.”

  “No, no my dear lady,” laughed the old man making his ample paunch jiggle comically, “It is not necessary to see something to believe it. I can feel spirits.”

  Maya shuddered to think that she was sitting in the presence of dead people. She did not believe in ghosts but the conviction with which the professor was telling her about their existence forced her mind to think otherwise. He also claimed to be a professional in the field. Chinew noted her incredulity and smiled jovially at her.

  “Don’t worry my dear lady,” he said, “in my years of research I have come to the conclusion that an overwhelming majority of spirits are good. They don’t even care about humans, they are after all in a state which is quite above life. I like to believe that they think of us in much the same way as we think of ants. Inconsequential. They have no reason to worry about us.”

  Prof. Chinew’s statements did nothing to make Maya feel better. She decided to change the discourse and focus on the case at hand.

  “But in your letter, you said that you have proof that there are spirits in this house.”

  Chinew smiled, “Certainly. Though, if you ask me, a knowledgeable person does not really need proof to believe something as apparent as the existence of spirits, it is only the less knowledgeable who is incredulous. Henry, unfortunately, lies in the latter category. I have often told him of my experiences with undead beings but he has always shrugged them like they were fairy tales. His profession and training have compelled him to seek proof of the most logical of things. I am surprised he does not ask for proof that I exist. But I do believe that I have something now which will convince him that there are spirits in this world and even in this house.”

  “Yes,” said Maya, excited that the professor had finally breached the topic that she was here for, “let’s talk about that.”

  Chinew scratched her head looking at her doubtfully. “Are you sure you want to hear this, my dear lady,” he asked, “When I taught at the university, I had a single girl in the class of spiritualism and on the third day of the term, as I narrated my experiences of dealing with a particularly nasty spirit, she fainted of fear and had to be taken to the hospital never again to be seen in my class.”

  Maya did not take the comment well. Here was another man who doubted her abilities just because she was a woman.

  “I think I can handle it well, sir. Please go ahead” she said in a stern but dignified manner.

  “Certainly,” said Professor Chinew, “I have no intention of keeping this from a brave woman like you, I am sure you can handle it. But would you, my dear, be able to convince Henry if you are convinced yourself of the presence of spirits in this house. I mean to say that Henry is a strange man and he only listens to people like him. People who can give him sound reason and logic. You know, those men who would look at me and deduce that I went to the bathroom at two in the morning and tell me from a letter in my mailbox that the second cousin of my mother was killed in the war. I regularly hear such stuff and I have a feeling that until you explain Henry in such a manner, he would struggle to grasp the truth. I hope you understand what I am talking about. I mean, I just think it would be better if Henry could come himself to investigate my claims or send one of those colleagues… you know the more qualified men that he employs.”

  Maya could no longer hide her displeasure. Chinew had formed an opinion that she was not one of Camleman’s more intelligent employees just by looking at her. Why, because she was a woman, or because she was ill-dressed? Maya shot a sharp penetrating glance at the old man. She would prove him wrong!

  “You came here yesterday, I suppose,” she asked observing the room which had been lit by two oil lanterns”

  “Yes that is true,” said the professor slightly surprised.

  “And in a hurry?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “The boxes in the room are wet. Apart from yesterday, it hasn't rained in Cardim in more than a week. Most of the boxes in the room are not packed properly, which means you were in a hurry. Further, I think that you have trouble sleeping and take morphine regularly to aid yourself but you haven’t taken the drug in the last couple of days. You are unmarried but you do have a child and you were thinking of visiting him, no her.”

  The professor gaped at Maya for a few moments then his lips curled into a smile.

  “That is all correct apart from the fact that that I have a daughter. I have not one but two daughters. Twins. But pray tell me how did you manage all this. I didn’t think I was such an open book to read.”

  Maya’s face cocked up in pride.

  “Regarding morphine,” she said arrogantly, “I see the marks of hypodermic syringes on your arm and I saw a paper wrapper of morphine lying at your door. That you have not taken it recently is evident as you show acute symptoms of withdrawal - runny nose, watery eyes, and, since you are constantly massaging your arm, muscle ache. Nothing serious, but observable nonetheless. That you have a daughter or well twin daughters is clear from the picture that you have hung on the wall behind you. Though you are yet to unpack your stuff, you have taken special trouble to take out that picture and hang it on the wall, which means you hold it dear, and seeing the picture gives you great happiness. The picture is of a group of school girls. Obviously, you are fond of one of the girls in the picture. The girl could be your niece as well but, on a balance of probability, I would say that such fondness is often reserved only for one’s own kin. You also have a bill of a girl’s boarding school near Bombay on your table and a schedule of trains to Bombay in front of you. It is clear that you are planning to visit Bombay to meet the girls.”

  Professor Chinew was visibly impressed. “Seems like Henry has been spending a lot of time with you,” he smiled broadly at her, “But let me tell you, I doubt even you would be able to save his 50 Cowries. I have won the bet already, for there is only one plausible explanation for what happened in the house yesterday and that is the presence of spirits.”

  “I am all ears,” Maya said.

  “Let me take you straight to the room of interest then.”

  Prof. Mortemius Chinew took up a lantern and led her to an adjacent room, one of the three rooms which had a window facing the garden. The ancient house, Maya noticed, was rather expansive and had at least 6 rooms joined by a wide lobby. The wooden floorboards were peeling in places and deep gray mold had deposited in the corners. The door to the room they were headed to was locked. Chinew fumbled with a hoop of keys in the pocket of his trousers and slowly opened the door as if expecting a dangerous beast to leap out. Nothing of the sort happened. The room smelled musty and had plaster crumbling from the ceiling and the walls. The floor was draped in a thick Persian rug which was littered with a strange assortment of artifacts - wooden figurines, glass vials, pieces of bones, scrolls, and small leather-bound books. A large wooden cupboard, its door open, flanked one wall and contained many other similar artifacts. On a large mahogany table at the end of the room lay a porcelain vase and a candle. Maya tiptoed through the mess to scrutinize the room.


  “What happened here?” she asked finally.

  “This room,” Miss Mitchell, “was ransacked by spirits.”

  Maya turned to face Chinew, slightly amused by his conviction.

  “And what makes you say that?” she asked.

  “Let me tell you in brief,” said the professor stepping into the room and towards the table, “This thing here,” he pointed to the vase lying on the table, “I got it from Calcutta during my recent trip to the old market. Don’t go by the looks, this is no ordinary vase, this is a spirit catcher made by the legendary spiritualist and medium Henrikh Yerevo. The seller had told me, and he was an old and wise man not one of those thugs that you find squatting in the flea market in Cardim, that the spirit catcher had over one thousand spirits, locked inside the vase by the power of spells.”

  Maya heard the professor with incredulity, it was hard not to forget that the man was a noted scholar in his field and taught university students. She went over to the table to study the vase properly. It was porcelain, half a feet in height and a couple of inches in girth, with a blue enameled figure of a devil illustrated upon its surface. The edge of the vase's mouth was chipped slightly. It apparently also had a cap that now lay some distance from the vase on the same table.

  “May I?” Maya sought Chinew’s permission to give the vase a prudent scrutiny.

  “By all means,” replied the professor, “but please be careful and respectful. This is, or rather was till last night, the resting place of a thousand dead men and women.”

  Maya picked up the vase carefully and peered inside. It was empty, except for a small amount of dust at the bottom. She tore a piece of newspaper from inside her bag and rolled the dirt in it, placing the package in a pocket of her bag.

  “What about this spirit catcher,” asked Maya satisfied that there was nothing too interesting about the vase, “what happened yesterday?”

  “Can’t you see,” said the professor sweeping his hand across the floor, “the spirits from the catcher came out. They jumped out as I was sleeping and escaped.”

  “And what makes you think that.”

  “I saw them.”

  Maya found it frustrating to talk to a man who had convinced himself of the implausible theory of the existence of spirits. She wanted raw facts without the garnish of belief but the professor made it rather difficult.

  “Can you please elaborate on what happened exactly as it happened,” said Maya, “without any embellishment. I want to make a judgment about the spirits myself.”

  Chinew was slightly offended. The refulgence in the old man’s eyes faded and his cheeks sunk a little bit. Acquiring a grim demeanor, he kept his silence for a couple of moments before the excitement of narrating his supposedly paranormal experience got the better of him.

  “It was yesterday night,” he said, “I was in my bedroom sleeping like a log. I had had a tiring day, with all the shifting going on and dealing with the lazy porters, so it was no surprise that I was sleeping well, when suddenly at around midnight the house rung with raucous noises, of metal clattering and things being thrown to the floor. Initially, I thought that it was my servant, Moin, but soon I released that couldn’t be true as he had recently gone over to his village upon the death of his mother. I was alone in the house. So I took up a lantern and headed towards the room where the sound seemed to be coming from. It was this exact room. I have plans to make this room my study. And all the artifacts that you see around are essentially means of my experiments and researches. I have collected them throughout my life from all the parts of the world and I keep them inside this wooden cabinet. This room was locked from outside. Even as I fumbled with the keys to unlock the room, the noise of my room being plundered continued. Then as soon as I opened the lock thick white smoke emerged from under the door. The smoke, and it was no ordinary smoke mind you only looked like it, went through me and out under the main door into the street. The room was extremely cold when I entered, the sound had stopped and it was eerily quiet, but I could still sense a presence in the room, it seemed empty but it wasn’t. There was some smoke still in the room which disappeared as soon as I opened the door. Initially, I was confused as there was obviously no one inside. Then I saw the spirit catcher upturned on the table and it became clear. Somehow in the dead of the night, the spirits had spilled from the catcher and caused the ruckus in the room.”

  The professor took a relieved sigh upon finishing the story as if he had been yearning for a very long time for someone to hear his tale.

  “But it could have been an intruder,” ventured Maya.

  “Foolish girl,” said the professor, visibly offended at having his theory questioned, “how could it have been a human. The door was locked from the outside and the window as well. And the sound stopped very abruptly as soon as I opened the door. Do you think men vanish just like that? No. Only spirits do that. And you don’t need to take my word for it, Camleman would obviously not accept a word I say. Why don’t you look at the evidence that the spirit left and judge for yourself.”

  Chinew pointed to the only window of the room. The glass panels of the shutters were covered in strange symbols drawn in white chalk. There were more than a dozen characters drawn in three rows, each a quarter feet in height. The symbols made no sense to Maya at first glance.

  “A spirit wrote those,” said the professor.

  “But why would a spirit write anything?” asked Maya.

  “Because they wanted to talk to me,” said Chinew, “You are not seeing what is written on the panels,” he moved closer to the panels to explain properly, “These symbols are Armenian for ‘Death comes to All’”

  Maya looked again at the symbols. She had no prior experience of Armenian and could not verify the professor’s claim. She tried to open the window but it was jammed.

  “No use trying that,” said the professor, “I spent an hour with that yesterday afternoon, stuck like a dead man in a grave.”

  “And you are sure the door was locked from outside?”

  “I don’t know what impression I am making but I certainly have a healthy mental faculty and I distinctly remember opening the door in the night.”

  Maya smiled good-naturedly. She took the lantern from the professor’s hand and opened her bag to take out her makeshift detective’s paraphernalia which she had painstakingly assembled for a day like this. It gave her a strange pleasure to carefully undo the straps of the leather case as if she was opening a present she had been craving for a long time. The case consisted of a large brass rimmed magnifying lens which she had nicked from the Agency office, a scalpel, a copper tweezer, a small dusting brush, and a large paper bag.

  “I would need to make an examination of the place,” she explained taking up the magnifying glass and bending down to the floor. Lantern in one hand and the lens in another she swept across the whole floor carefully examining the rug for any clues. At points, she would stop, press her face so close to the magnifying lens that her eyelids grazed the surface. She would then take up the forensic brush and sweep the blemish (dirt or pieces of plaster) in small bits of paper, which she would fold and keep carefully in the paper bag. At the end of ten minutes, she got up and went over to the walls to repeat the exercise. She also examined the cabinet and the table before moving on to the window to study the symbols. She put the magnifying glass close to each separate character and muttered something inaudible. She even moved her hand in the air mimicking the strokes made by the person (or spirit) who had drawn the symbols. When she had finished examining the last character, she tried to open the window once more and failed, still dissatisfied, she peeked through the window out onto the garden, then took the professor’s permission to study the garden in front of the window. She returned quickly to the room and put the magnifying glass and other equipment back inside her leather case, put the case in her bag, and stood up straight visibly pleased by her efforts.

  “I think I have made the necessary examinations,” she announced, “but t
here are a few questions that need some clarification. The symbols, you say the spirit has drawn it?”

  “Yes!” said the professor fidgeting slightly.

  “All of it?”

  “Certainly!”

  “I am sorry but I doubt that Sir. These symbols have been drawn by two hands. One which was in a lot of hurry and the other who had a lot of time. The one in hurry was obviously right-handed given how the strokes and lines grow thinner moving to the right while the one with more time was left-handed. I can also safely say that of the 12 characters on the pane the first 8 are drawn by the right-handed man and the last 4 by the other.”

  “You mean two spirits drew it?” asked the professor innocently.

  “The way you are nervously quivering your fingers says that you know the truth, Professor. The left-handed person is obviously you. You drew it recently and with the help of an Armenian dictionary which peeks slightly from your trouser pocket and which has some amount of chalk still on it. There is chalk also on your hand.”

  The professor looked at his hand to verify Maya’s claims, then rubbed them on the trouser as if wiping the evidence would disprove her theory.

  “I think,” continued Maya, “the symbols were not making complete sense in Armenian so you accordingly helped complete them to prove your theory.

  The professor gaped at Maya, embarrassed.

  “I figured that the spirit had some trouble writing properly,” he said, “it was a spirit after all and it has been a century since it died. We forget a lot of things in a hundred years.”

  Maya smiled.

  “It seems I am correct then. Moving on, I see some footsteps in the room, bare-feet and muddy, these are not yours as you have bigger feet and I don’t suppose the porters who shifted the cabinet to this room were bare-feet. So these footsteps would need to be of the person who was in this room and who drew the symbols. There are no footsteps outside the room so I think you are correct when you say that the room was locked from outside. I also checked the garden and there are no footsteps under the window either. Though it had rained yesterday and they could well have been washed off. But in any case, this window does not seem like it has been opened in a long time.”