Séance on a Wet Afternoon

by Mark McShane

  She walked along the corridor, smiling; smiling both at her happiness at being back in a well-loved place, and at the faded yellow that coloured the walls in such an endearing way that it made her heart ache with sweet melancholy. The colour soothed, caressed, drew her on, on to where the corridor ended in a large door, at the sight of which her smile widened. She came closer, and saw every detail of the door’s surface: the unpainted grey wood, the knots and whorls, the crack down the centre of each panel, the white knob with the black ring where the porcelain was worn away. When a dozen feet from it she stopped, was stopped, was held back firmly by something behind her. The smile went. She tried with all her mind, but there was no going forward, and she sighed and gazed longingly at the door. Then she started to glide backwards, slowly, evenly … back … back.…

  Gradually Myra came aware that the attempt was over. She sat perfectly still and kept her eyes closed. It was as she had expected; there was not enough mental co-operation even to take her to the door, let alone beyond it. If she could have reached it, touched it, she would have been able to receive telepathic messages. Beyond it anything was possible. She had been beyond it three times, but only for fleeting seconds, but those seconds were the happiest of her life. She breathed a heavy sigh, for herself and for the benefit of the watchers, and turned her mind to the task in hand.

  She said, ‘I have a message for someone on my left. Someone who has a business problem.’

  ‘Yes.’ said a trembling voice. ‘That’s me.’

  Myra knew the voice belonged to a Mrs. Wintry, who owned more than a hundred old houses, most of them condemned, and who spent her time fighting tenants and the council. She said, ‘You are worried about some property.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is old property, but sound and good for many years.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘There are persons involved who would hurt you if they could.’

  ‘Yes, there are.’

  ‘I get a strong feeling of uneasiness coming from these people. They are waiting for a decision, a decision you must make.’

  ‘By Friday noon.’

  ‘The message I have for you is very explicit. You must …’

  ‘Who is it from?’

  ‘You must take into account the prevailing conditions in property, follow the dictates of reason, weigh carefully the advice of your solicitors, and reach a conclusion satisfactory to your business sense and your integrity.’

  ‘Yes. Who is it from?’

  ‘It is fading. I am sorry.’

  Bill had a good view of the group around the table, from his wife’s profile to the unobscured face of Mrs. Clayton, and it was mostly on this face that he fixed his eyes. The young woman from Barnet was watching Myra closely, with an expression of curiosity, fear and hope. Bill could see that she was probably younger than he’d at first supposed; it was the lines and darkness of worry and sleeplessness around her eyes and the tense set of the mouth that aged her.

  He looked back to Myra as she began to speak again, and listened. She wasn’t entranced, he knew by the sound of her voice, and he was interested in how she would satisfy her clients and make them happy by saying the most commonplace things. She was talking about a man, with a description that would have fitted ninety-five men out of a hundred, and the woman sitting next to Mrs. Clayton kept saying, ‘Yes, that’s Fred. That’s my Fred,’ and, ‘Ask him about Mrs. Brown’s Marion.’ Myra dodged around every leading question, and finished with the woman by pronouncing, ‘Take good care. Take good care.’

  It was Mrs. Clayton’s turn next, and Bill tensed. There was a moment of silence before he heard Myra say, ‘You are worried about a child.’

  ‘Yes.’ The young woman’s voice came loud and clear.

  ‘You are worried because for the second time she has not come home when expected.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You must be of good heart. Your child is safe. She is being taken care of by three people. They are not evil people, but …’

  A noise intruded on Bill’s hearing, a rustling noise from behind, and he swung his head quickly.

  Adriana was getting off the bed.

  Before he could move the picture down over the peephole she had trotted to his side and was standing staring up at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he grabbed her arm, pulled her close and clamped a hand on her lips. She began to struggle and squirm and shake her head from side to side.

  Mrs. Clayton’s voice came through plainly: ‘When will I get her back?’

  Adriana froze, and Bill with her. Then the child suddenly burst into violent contortions, flailing and kicking. The noise of their movements seemed monstrously loud to Bill, and he darted a fearful glance at the peep-hole; but he dare not loose her to close it for fear she shouted the moment his hand left her mouth.

  He used all his strength against her, lifting her bodily off the floor and clamping the back of her head to his chest. Slowly, and with a slight feeling of exhilaration at his superiority, he began to get the better of the fight. He imprisoned both her arms in his left one, and after taking two painful kicks on the shins trapped her legs between his knees. She still struggled, but was too tightly held now to allow much movement. He curved his hand closer around her mouth as she began to make gurgling sounds, and stopped them. He quickly leaned to the wall and put his eye to the hole to see if the rumpus had been noticed by the women. As before, the medium was the centre of attraction in the séance room.

  Myra said, ‘She is in a place that is built of wood. It is warm and dry, and she is being well cared for. You must not fear for her safety.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The three people are now better disposed toward the child than they were wont to be, and are treating her with courtesy. They seem to be happy about something. All is well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Myra thought she had told Mrs. Clayton all she could, and ended with, ‘There is nothing more, except that you will see your daughter soon. Very soon. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow for certain you will see your daughter.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  Myra moved her head slightly, toward the woman on the far right, wanting to hurry along the meeting. She knew the woman to be concerned about her husband’s affair with his secretary, and began to frame her opening sentence around ‘a young woman with a romantic attachment’.

  She was about to pronounce the first word, but stopped. Her chest had suddenly started to ache. She took a deep breath and began again to speak, and again stopped. The pain was getting worse. It was as though her lungs were so full of air they were about to burst.

  She became frightened, pulled her hands free, clutched them to her breast, opened her eyes and mouth and tried to breathe out. She couldn’t. The pain spread with a jump to her throat. She was choking. Her heart thumped wildly, her lungs swelled steadily, her eyes bulged from their sockets, her head roared with frantic noise, and mad fear struck like a knife zipped up the spine.

  She leapt to her feet and screamed.

  Bill jerked convulsively. His hair suddenly felt as if it were alive with crawling things. He was so unnerved he was barely conscious of the child still clamped in his arms. He watched unblinking as Myra, her hands around her throat, swayed forward on to the table and crashed down to the floor.

  There was a frenzied bustling and babbling as the women crowded round. The ceiling light was switched on. Mrs. Clayton, the only one still sitting, looked down worriedly. Then the movement and noise stopped, and there was an expectant silence. Bill heard his wife’s voice.

  She said, ‘Dead.’

  He took one step back from the peep-hole. He closed his eyes tightly. He was overpowered with a feeling of horror; black dripping horror. His lips, mouth, his whole lower jaw began to tremble. The moan that escaped him tuned up to a squeak at the end. As though he’d been stung on it, he pulled his hand from the girl’s face and pressed it to his lips. Adriana’s head fell to the side. />
  With his eyes still closed he loosed his left arm, and felt her sag away from him and land with a soft thud on the floor. He cringed forward from the waist, holding a hand to his bubbling stomach, and forced himself to open his eyes and look, but knowing before he did what he would see. He knew the child was dead.

  Adriana was lying on her back, her arms spread and her legs twisted. Her face was dark, and there was a slight frown between her partly open eyes. Her hands were clenched into tight white-knuckled fists.

  Bill’s legs gave way, and he sank slowly to his knees beside her. He stared, stupefied with grief and dread, at the lifeless form, and reached out a hand that dangled like an empty glove and touched the smooth brow, and whispered, the words blurred with saliva, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  Myra had been lifted on to a chair. She felt quite normal, all pain gone, but a little dazed and worried by the attack she’d just had. She was wondering if it could be her heart.

  Her vision was filled with women’s faces, all wearing expressions of alarm, wonder and ill-disguised delight. She smiled faintly, and the faces moved back. One of the women said, ‘I’ll get you a glass of water, shall I?’ Myra nodded, but then remembered the bathroom window, and said quickly, ‘No. No thank you. I am quite all right now.’

  Another woman, the one whom she had been about to address when stricken, leaned forward and asked, ‘Who is it?’

  Myra blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Who is it that’s dead?’ You went out like a light, then said, “Dead”. Who did you mean?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Myra murmured. She didn’t know, and only vaguely recalled saying the word. She had no idea why, or where it had come from. She thought it must have been a reaction to the fear she’d felt while having the attack.

  ‘I hope you will excuse me, ladies,’ she said, rising. ‘But I must cut short this evening’s meeting. I do not feel very well.’

  There was a hushed chorus of suitable replies, though nearly every face showed disappointment; disappointment, Myra knew, not so much at the termination of the séance as at the lack of psychic significance in the dramatic faint.

  She snuffed out the candle and went to the door, and led the way downstairs. She noticed two of the women glancing surreptitiously at Mrs. Clayton, who had fallen to the rear, and she thought they had probably realized who she was, connecting the name and the talk of the missing child. They would tell the others, and all would remember the words, ‘You will see your child tomorrow.’ Myra was very pleased.

  She opened the door and stood to one side of the sill, and shook hands and exchanged a brief word with each woman, who, before reaching the doorway, had deposited an envelope on the hat-stand shelf. Mrs. Clayton was last. She glanced at the shelf, brought a wallet from her pocket and asked, ‘What shall I give, Mrs. Savage?’

  ‘There is no set fee. Just whatever you think.’

  The woman drew a crackling five-pound note from the wallet. ‘Will this be all right?’

  ‘It is more than generous, Mrs. Clayton,’ Myra said, accepting the money. ‘I hope I have earned it.’

  ‘Oh I assure you, you have. I feel much better now. My husband didn’t want me to come, said I should wait for Adriana. You see, we expected all day since noon to be phoned and told where to go and get her. But when six o’clock came and we hadn’t had word, I took a chance and drove over here. I’d have gone mad waiting all night to hear from these people, but now I can rest easy. We’ll have her back tomorrow … won’t we?’

  ‘I am sure of it. I will stake my reputation on it.’

  Mrs. Clayton sighed, smiling.

  Myra said, ‘It was true then, what the paper said, you have paid someone a ransom.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And did not the police try and apprehend these people?—when the money was handed over.’

  ‘Oh no. Charlie didn’t want to take any risks. He told the police about the ransom, but not where he was going to take it.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that was the wisest thing.’

  ‘Yes. However, they told us later, the police, that they’d followed Charlie when he went to town this morning. They saw the money change hands and I think they got a good look at the man, but they didn’t try and catch him or anything. But they did try to follow him. He was very clever though, they said, and they lost him.’

  Myra tutted. ‘Too bad. But what about the chauffeur?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s a lot of nonsense. Charlie and I are convinced he’s not connected with it at all. We’ve had Henry with us for years. He’s a fine man.’

  ‘Still, I do not suppose you are greatly interested in the criminals. You just want your little girl back.’

  Mrs. Clayton nodded. ‘Exactly.’ She put out her hand. ‘Well, thank you very, very much, Mrs. Savage. You’ve eased my mind a great deal, and my husband will be relieved, too, when I tell him what you said—even though he doesn’t think much of this kind of thing.’

  ‘He can not be blamed for that, when so many people consider spiritualism to be nonsense. But we know different, do we not, Mrs. Clayton?’

  ‘We certainly do. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’ Myra waited till the young woman had passed through the gateway before closing the door, and sighing with satisfaction. Everything was ready, she thought. Everything was perfect. The ‘good look’ the police had had at Bill was unimportant; his face was changed radically by the cap and in the plastic mac his body seemed a great deal bulkier.

  She turned her face upward, and shouted, ‘Bill!’ There was no reply. The house was very still. She frowned and shouted again. Silence; a silence that was somehow ominous. She went to the foot of the stairs and climbed three steps and shouted once more. Getting no answer she trotted briskly up to the landing, and listened outside the bedroom door for a moment before opening it.

  She stood and stared, and gasped. Bill was kneeling by the side of the bed, his forearms and head resting on it. In the centre of the bed was a motionless form, moulded perfectly by the thin sheet that covered it from head to foot.

  ‘My God!’ she said harshly. ‘What have you done?’

  Sitting on the edge of her chair Myra was feeding Adriana’s clothes to the fire, the sputter and hiss of which competed with the clock’s tick in providing the only sounds to the room. She had torn the small overcoat to pieces, seam by seam, and was now in the process of burning the last slice of sleeve. It was almost midnight.

  Bill was sitting on the couch, staring vacantly into the shadow under the table. An occasional blink and a regularly twitching nerve at the side of his sagged-down lower lip were the only intimations that he lived.

  A button flared briefly with green flame, and the sleeve was gone. Myra picked up the shoes, set them firmly atop the coals and patted them down with the poker, making a mental note to remember to search the ashes for the heavy metal buckles.

  In the hours since the child’s death Myra had rationalized herself from fear to calm. To begin with, the death itself was to her no tragedy; no death was to her a tragedy; almost the reverse. And the horror had been taken out of the affair by her husband’s saying, mumbling, as he had been led meekly from the bedroom, that it was an accident. There was the worry of the consequences, now greatly multiplied, should they be found out, but she had confidence in herself and in her dream; they would not be found out. She was sorry for the parents, genuinely sorry; but the mother was young and would have more children. Apart from a slight change in arrangements everything would go as planned, and the primary result would be as planned—except that it would be better than originally anticipated; the story would now get international attention. The ultimate result was almost guaranteed.

  She tapped at the shoes till they were hidden in the centre of the fire, and turned to look at her husband. She said, ‘It is cold by the window. You had better come and sit in your chair.’

  There was no response. She said sharply, ‘Bill!’

  He
jerked his head round, blinking rapidly. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Come and sit by the fire.’

  He rose very slowly, and very slowly came to the hearth, bowing over his clasped hands and with his head angled a little to one side. Sitting well into the chair his body was stiff for a moment, then it began to sag.

  Myra laid down the poker, and asked, ‘How did it happen?’

  It was a full minute before he answered, in a spiritless monotone, ‘She fell off the bed.’

  ‘Head first? It must have been.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He gave a frowning wince.

  She said, ‘She just died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Instantly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well. Well, she did not suffer at all. That is something, is it not?’

  He made no reply. She glanced at him and went on, ‘You must not take this so hard. It could not be helped. I hope you are not going to blame yourself. Accidents will happen you know, anywhere. It could have happened just the same had she been at home. The fact that it happened here has no bearing on us. We cannot blame ourselves. We might just as well blame the salesman who sold us the bed, or the man who made it, or the Claytons for conceiving the child, or their parents for conceiving them, or ours for us.’

  She glanced at him again, and saw that he’d probably not heard a word she’d said. His eyes were fixed dreamily on the smoke just above the fire. His legs were spread apart from the knees down, but the toes made contact again by sagging in and touching. His right hand was going through a routine: starting at the hairline, the forefinger and thumb came down one on either side of the brow, moved inward along the eybrows, met and went together down the nose, separated to skirt the nostrils, wiped out the corners of the mouth, briefly plucked forward the bottom lip, slid over the chin, down the throat, circled the tie to its point, caressed the wrist of the other lap-lying hand for a moment, and rose slowly to the brow to repeat the circuit.