by Noel Hynd
The significance of this might have escaped most people. And, for many years, it had. But armed with this, Brooks walked over to the Nantucket Town Hall, intent on reconciling the town’s death records with his own suspicions.
It did not take long. The proof was as fresh as the death certificate of Mrs. Helen Ritter, the longtime schoolteacher on the island.
Myers was Helen Ritter’s maiden name, too. Irma May, or Mabel Mack, had been Mrs. Ritter’s older sister. Henry, the much despised Henry, had been her brother-in-law, and old Helen might have spoken volumes about the whole thing, had only anyone induced her to speak in the many years before her death.
But no one had ever asked.
Chapter Fifty-four
It was ten P.M. on the evening of the thirteenth when Annette placed the checkerboard table in the center of the living-room floor. There remained the breaks in the wall which Emmet Hughes had tried to repair. That area of the room was kept clear, upon Reverend Osaro’s advice. The rest of the furniture was pushed to the side. The carpet had been left in the center of the room.
“Draw the shades,” Osaro said. “That’s a very important part. Draw the shades.”
If a séance was going to work at all, Osaro suggested, it needed all the help it could get.
By quarter past the hour the room had been “dressed” for the ceremony. Annette stood near the hearth, watching Timothy and the minister steady the table upon the carpet. Three old wooden chairs were chosen from the contents of the house and were placed by the table.
“Annie?” Tim asked. “Where do you want to sit?”
She looked as if she didn’t want to sit at all. But she steadied her nerves.
“Nearest the door,” she said with a jittery laugh. Tim and the minister smiled. She could have that place, they said. Annie was the first to sit down.
Brooks drew a deep breath and sat down next; he faced the door that led to the rear of the house. Annie’s hands were already on the bare wooden table, her pulse pounding rapidly. Tim was seated next to her and placed a hand on hers for a moment.
“Does the room have to be absolutely dark?” she asked. “Or can we…?”
“We can have a small amount of light,” Reverend Osaro said. “Our own light from within is permissible, as if to create our own small universe. But spirits don’t like lights, remember. So success can be contingent upon near-darkness.”
He paused.
“Crazy as it sounds, you’d be surprised how well you can see once your eyes get used to the blackness,” he explained. “And spirits also provide their own illumination, too.”
“Yeah,” Annette said, still nervous.
Brooks’ gaze settled upon the candle that had stood on the checkerboard table. “Let’s try it with a votive candle first,” he said. “And see what happens.”
Osaro protested mildly, but said they could try it if they felt more comfortable that way.
Osaro closed the doors and the windows. He drew the shades. He snipped much of the existing wick off the candle so that the flame would burn very low. He set the candle on a side table. Osaro had hung dark blankets on all the windows to shut out any light from outside.
When he turned off the room lights, the shadows from the small single light in the room threw a series of macabre shadows across the walls.
Osaro sat down at the table. A small silver cross hung on a chain at his neck, beneath his clerical collar. He kissed the cross. They held hands around the table and Osaro led them through a brief prayer.
“Now,” Osaro finally said. “Everyone relax. Try to breathe deeply and settle yourself. Close your eyes if it makes it easier. Put yourself in a receptive frame of mind. Tell yourself that you wish to converse with a spirit. Make this room a friendly receptive place for the soul of a departed person to come forth and receive the mercy of God and our Savior Jesus Christ.”
Several seconds passed.
“Oh, yes,” Osaro said, recalling. “And rest your hands on the table. Don’t worry about fingertips or the edges of the table. Just rest. Allow yourself to drift a little, if you can. Think about Heaven if you wish. Heaven as you conceive it, Heaven as you might want it to be.”
Annette did as instructed. Brooks did, too. Each closed both eyes and tried to imagine the presence of God, of Heaven and of spirits coming forth in the room. Each, however, found it difficult to keep both eyes closed.
Annette peeked. Brooks peeked also and caught Annette peeking. He winked at her and suddenly they both laughed lightly.
“Don’t horse around,” Osaro counseled softly. “We must try to be serious. Otherwise this won’t work.”
“George? You sure you didn’t get your start with Jimmy Swaggart?” Brooks mumbled.
But Osaro was all business, as if he were a different man. “Knock it off, you clown,” he said. “We’re not here to fool around.”
The smiles eased from the faces of Timothy and Annette. They became aware of noise beyond the house. The occasional sound of a car passing. Very distantly the voices of two people walking by. Once there was a small lonely aircraft overhead. Nothing else.
“I got to tell you, George,” Brooks said quietly. “Really, really. I’m starting to feel like a jerk.”
Osaro didn’t answer. Brooks opened his eyes very slightly. He saw the minister’s face possessed with an expression that almost shocked him, one he didn’t understand. He knew it was one of peace and tranquility because there was nothing upsetting about it. But it was distant, very distant, as if his friend had already transcended into a reality that Brooks couldn’t even imagine.
And Osaro seemed to have entered some sort of light trace. His lips were moving very slightly, as if to invoke a prayer or communicate on a higher level with a presence that Brooks could not yet see.
Annette’s eyes opened and she saw this, also. She looked at Tim Brooks for reassurance. He gave it with a nod.
“Do as I do,” Osaro said in a very low voice. “Both of you. Or you’ll regret it for the rest of you living days and maybe afterwards, too.”
The minister’s hands glided to a fresh position on the table.
Flat with palms down. Fingers very slightly spread apart.
Annette’s hands assumed the same position. So did Brooks’. Then Osaro took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, and appeared to sink deeper into his state of concentration. Then his hands made another movement. He slid his palms to the edges of the table and pushed them to where they touched the person next to him on each side. On his left, his palm touched Annette’s hand. On his right it pressed against Timothy’s.
Brooks nodded. He extended his hand to his right and he and Annette made the same link on the other side of the table.
“Good,” Osaro whispered, seeming to speak as if he were asleep. “Very good. We’re one. Our souls are linked before God. I’m your messenger, your cavalier. Now wait.”
The wait was several minutes. The flame of the candle danced and flickered.
Once, with a mutual flash of terror, Annette and Timothy thought that it had danced so low that it would extinguish itself. But still it burned, bravely and boldly.
Finally, “Is there a spirit present?” Reverend Osaro asked softly.
There was no answer.
“Is there a troubled spirit present?” he asked again after half a minute. “A soul seeking Christian salvation?”
Again, nothing, though distantly in the building there was a creak in a floorboard.
“We wish to speak with whatever spirit is in this house,” the minister repeated after a longer wait.
Annette and Tim held a silence, their eyes open now and alert, vigilant, anxious and expectant.
Many minutes went by.
“What do we do, George?” Brooks finally asked. “No one’s dialing our number.”
Several seconds later, the question settled into Osaro’s mind and provoked an answer. “What the hell do you think we do, you dumb cop?” he answered genially. “You shut up an
d we wait.”
“Yes, sir,” Brooks said with mock respect.
Osaro’s answer lopped off some of the tension in the room. Brooks winked at Annette and the actress allowed herself a slight schoolgirl smile.
Then a door opened!
“Don’t look!” Osaro snapped, his own eyes remaining shut. “If a spirit passes in your line of vision, you can look! But don’t turn! Don’t stare!”
The door was the one that led to the rear of the house, to the kitchen and to the cellar. The latch of the knob mechanism rattled and the old hinges creaked.
Brooks was facing it. He stared despite the minister’s warning. His own eyes were wide. There was nothing there. Just a door that had opened of its own will.
Or to an unseen hand.
Brooks had closed the door himself. He knew he had shut it securely.
“Oh, God in Heaven!” Brooks thought to himself. “This is not really happening!”
He had come here with expectations of success. Yet nothing had prepared him for being face to face with that window that Osaro had once mentioned. The window into the next reality. Or some other reality. Or some dark unknown place where there are no maps and no points of reference.
Just an abyss.
Then the door closed. The room was very still. Even the flame of the candle didn’t move.
Annette’s damp jittery hand found its way onto Tim’s. Brooks gave it a squeeze, madly rallied his own courage and then returned their hands to the edge of the table. Deep down inside, he had the urge to flee.
He conquered it. For the moment.
“Is someone there?” Osaro asked softly. “Is there a spirit in this room? Is there a soul seeking Christian salvation and the sweet love of Jesus Christ?”
There was a long, dream pause. Annette dared not breathe. Brooks stared straight ahead. Somewhere in the room there was a sound, like a small footfall. Brooks felt his heart in his throat.
Couldn’t anyone see how frightened he was? Why did Annette turn to him for strength when he himself was ready to explode with terror? He drew a deep breath and steadied himself again. He waited to feel a set of cold steel hands upon his neck, creeping up from behind him, squeezing and…
“It is a child,” said Osaro very softly. His face broke into a lovely smile. “A beautiful little girl.”
“What?” Brooks asked, speaking quietly, too.
Osaro didn’t answer. “Welcome,” he said to the presence.
Brooks and Annette glanced toward each other. Then they were jolted so hard that together they felt they’d leap through the roof.
But they didn’t. They kept their hands together on the table, linked and touching. Then they were jolted again as they were suddenly aware of the visible figure of a little girl a few feet behind them.
She didn’t speak aloud. But they knew what she was saying. They heard her within their heads, the same way that Brooks had heard the greater more evil spirit.
“Have you seen my parents?”
Did they imagine it? Or did they feel the checkerboard table give a tremor, too?
Annette felt her heart pound and thunder. Her hands were soaking wet on the table.
The little girl’s voice was plaintive. Pleading.
“Have you seen my parents?”
Annette drew a breath. “I’ve seen your parents,” Annette whispered. “Recently. They love you and miss you.”
Not understanding, Brooks turned to Annette.
Annette looked straight ahead, as Osaro had instructed.
“Where are my parents?” asked the ghost of Sarah Shipley.
“Your parents don’t live here anymore,” Annette said. “Your parents moved to Vestal Street.” Annette remembered the Shipleys’ number and gave it.
“I miss my parents,” the little girl communicated next. Annette nodded. For her, there was an aura of disbelief upon this, too.
“Of course, you do, my child,” Osaro said. “But why are you here? Why have you not passed on?”
“I want them to know,” the spirit said. “I want my parents to know.”
“Know what?” Osaro asked.
“I want them to know I’m with God,” she said. “I want them to know He’s taken me home.”
Osaro nodded very slightly. “They are in my parish,” Osaro said. “I will be your conduit.”
“You will let them know?”
“I will let them know,” he said.
The table shuddered beneath their palms. Annette and Timothy looked toward it. When they looked back to where the little girl had stood, she was gone.
They looked in each direction. Almost imperceptibly, the table had a slight quiver to it now, almost like a heartbeat. For a split second, Brooks thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye flit by—like the little girl moving quickly. But when he looked, it was gone.
Or it had never been there at all.
Many minutes passed. Reverend Osaro instructed Annette and Tim to relax, almost as if they were trying to go to sleep.
“Close your eyes. Think of someone you love who has passed over to the next world,” Osaro said, his gentle quasi-Asian lilt very apparent in his invocation. “Create a loving climate for a spirit to visit. Attempt to communicate…”
Several more minutes passed.
“Tell your legs to relax. Then your arms. Your body. Your mind. Feel yourself tumble gently into a friendly world where you will meet the spirits halfway.”
Brooks opened his eyes a crack. There was no movement in the room. Osaro remained stationary. So did Annette. The candle still flickered.
Then the table rose.
It rose very sharply. It hovered an inch or two above the ground. But both Annette and Tim Brooks knew it was elevated, for when they pushed hard upon it there was give to it. An off balance wobble. They knew it was no longer on the floor.
“Don’t press. Don’t offer resistance,” George Osaro whispered. “You’ll discourage a visitor.”
Osaro’s eyes remained shut. His hands were firm.
The movement of the table was stunning. Unlike any feeling Annette or Timothy had ever experienced before. It was akin to the shock one might feel when, thinking one is alone while groping through a dark room, one presses up against another body.
Across the room, the doorknob moved again. And again the door opened. It opened wider this time and Brooks, who was seated across from it, was aware immediately of a pale white presence on the other side.
“Don’t stare. Again, don’t stare,” Osaro repeated. “Make our friends feel welcome.” He paused. “Is there a spirit present?”
There was.
Brooks stared, anyway. This figure was translucent. It was white and a woman and Brooks felt his body swept with goose bumps when he recognized Mary Beth DiMarco.
She was young and pretty, but obviously very sad. Brooks had the feeling of looking directly into the dead woman’s eyes, though later Annette would report the same sensation. In any case, Mary Beth was crying.
Brooks glanced at Osaro. The clergyman’s expression was one of sadness, too. It seemed to match the mood of the ghost. The table gave another tremor.
“You shouldn’t be dead, should you, child?” Osaro asked. “Something horrible has happened in the universe. It was not yet your rightful time.”
Brooks and Annette watched as the figure nodded her head.
“Your hour will soon come to enter Heaven,” Osaro said. “Tell us why you are here.”
The girl put a hand to her face. She cried. Brooks thought he could hear her. Very low. Very subliminal. The distant sound of a young woman sobbing. Now that he knew what it sounded like, he wondered if he had heard it before in other places of abject human cruelty.
“What is unsettled?” Osaro asked.
She communicated. “Eddie.”
“Eddie didn’t hurt you?” Osaro asked.
The ghost of Mary Beth DiMarco stared at the only policeman present. It should have been scary. But strangely, there
was nothing fearful about this apparition. There was almost something reassuring about her.
“Eddie would never have hurt me.”
Brooks barely drew a breath. He nodded slowly. The table wobbled and lowered. But it never touched the floor. The figure of Mary Beth DiMarco receded. Not that it moved. It just faded until it wasn’t there. And simultaneously, a new shadow swept the room, thrown by the light of the small candle.
Reverend Osaro opened his eyes. He appeared surprised by this third visitation. Annette and Timothy moved their heads almost in unison.
Mrs. Ritter was standing near them. She was steady and solid. Nothing shimmering or translucent.
“Poor dears. Poor all of them. Poor all of you, too,” Mrs. Ritter said, raising her eyes and scanning the assemblage at the table. Her table.
“Why are you here, Mrs. Ritter?” Brooks whispered. “Same as last time. To warn you. To warn you.”
In death, she repeated herself much as she had in life.
“About what?” Annette and Tim asked together.
“Henry,” she said. “He’s mean and crazy. Always was. Always was. Not a decent man.” She smiled cryptically and gave a little laugh.
She looked to Brooks, then to Annette. “I’m pleased to see the two of you together,” she said. “Of course, I knew. One look at the two of you and I knew!”
She raised her fingers to her lips and moistened them. Then she turned, reached her hand to the candle and blithely put her fingers to the flame.
She held her fingers to the fire for several seconds. Brooks could see this very clearly. She smiled as if this were great mischief.
She looked back to the three figures at the table. “Be very careful of Henry Flaherty,” she said. “He’s caused so much misery. Don’t let him cause more for you.”
A final smile. A motherly, protective one.
Mrs. Ritter’s white fingers moved further against the burning wick. Then she arbitrarily snuffed it and the room went completely dark.
Annette gasped. Brooks put a hand on her shoulder to keep her in place. Somehow they all knew that Mrs. Ritter had departed with the candlelight.
“Remain still!” Osaro said. “This might be the moment.”
