“No, I am trying to reach a compromise.”
“We agree,” said Lelia quickly, and Alice nodded her head forcefully. Fannie thrust her chin up and arched an eyebrow, but did not protest further.
“Good. Now blow out that candle and get back into bed.” I watched with more than a little self-satisfaction as they rushed to their beds and scrambled under the covers. As soon as they were still, I opened the door—
And gasped to see Miss Crenshaw standing before me, shining her lamp in my face.
I gulped for air, my heart thudding. For a brief moment I considered shutting the door on her, but then she spoke.
“Pray tell me, Miss McClure—what are you doing in this bedroom in the middle of the night?” Her face was ghoulish in the flickering lamplight.
“Miss Crenshaw, you gave me such a fright!”
“I ask you again—what are you doing here?” She stared at the pitcher in my hand.
“I …” What was I supposed to say? I’d made a very advantageous compromise with the girls. “Miss Crenshaw—it’s very simple. I was awoken by a sudden thirst, and when I went to the corridor, intending to make my way to the lavatory, I heard whispering in this bedroom. So I came to make sure nothing untoward was going on.”
“They were eating, weren’t they, Miss McClure? What sort of snack have they smuggled in now? I smell nothing other than candle smoke.” She peered over my shoulder with accusing eyes.
“No, no, they weren’t eating. They were talking.”
“Talking about what?”
“About a noise … that they heard.”
Miss Crenshaw frowned. “I saw a light under the door. They weren’t talking about a noise. They were up and out of their beds. I’m sure of it. These late-night meetings are quite injurious to their health, not to mention their concentration during recitations. And having a candle lit so late at night is a fire risk.” She leaned in, her eyes narrowed in anger. “Perhaps you did not know that we lost our first seminary building to fire.”
“Yes, I’d heard that. I’m sorry, miss.”
“They will receive demerits for this—no trip to town this weekend, I’m afraid.”
Well, it was better than a term’s worth of demerits. “Right, miss.”
“And you will have to sit with them on Saturday, Miss McClure.”
“But I’d planned a trip to town myself, Miss Crenshaw!”
“It shall have to wait. You are long overdue with your grade reports as it stands. This will give you an opportunity to catch up.” She beckoned me forward and shut the girls’ door, leaving us alone in the corridor. “You were in that room for some time, Miss McClure.” Her voice was low and steady. “By staying there and talking with those girls—and I happen to know you were in there for more than a few minutes—you were encouraging their bad behavior. I can’t have this. No matter how young, teachers must never imagine themselves friends to their students. Propriety, Miss McClure! It is of the utmost importance!”
She snapped her heels together and stalked down the corridor, trailing a wake of bristling anger that nearly matched my own.
I tossed and turned that night, plagued by thoughts of Eli’s letter, Ella’s ghost, and Crenshaw’s beastly punishment. The next morning before breakfast, I passed Olivia in the corridor. She took one look at my face and asked me to her room. It was all I could do to stifle my yawns as I sat in her chair.
“Long night?” she asked.
“If you only knew,” I moaned, my mind turning again to the wretched letter hidden under my bed. I pushed the thought aside. “How much have you learned already?”
“Oh, just that Fannie and the rest received demerits for a late-night gathering. And that you are in disfavor for not bringing it to Miss Crenshaw’s attention quickly enough.”
“My, my. Word travels fast.”
“The girls are not known for their discretion. Why were they up so late?”
I studied her kind face for a moment. Then I leaned forward. “The girls were doing more than socializing last night.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“You must tell no one, for I could get into much worse trouble for this.” After she nodded, I continued in a whisper. “They were trying to perform an exorcism.”
She blinked. “I see.”
I’d expected more of a reaction than that. “And I caught trouble for breaking it up and telling them to go to bed. It’s not fair at all. I saved them from even more demerits.”
Olivia stared at the wall behind me, saying nothing.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m sorry for the trouble this has brought you, but even more I am worried that it’s come to this. The girls must be truly unsettled if they were willing to take such a drastic, and foolish, step.”
“That’s what I told them—that they were letting their imaginations run wild and it was driving them mad and making them do foolish things.”
She turned to me, a strange urgency in her eyes. “Willie, you know how I feel about this. I don’t believe this ghost exists only in their imaginations. Ella’s spirit is real and restless. Somehow, it has lost its way and become trapped within the school. It needs to be shown the way home.” She clasped her hands in her lap and shook her head. “But an exorcism is not the answer. Such an aggressive act could make matters worse.”
“Oh, Olivia.” I didn’t know how to respond. I couldn’t truly believe the disturbances were matters of the occult. At the same time, I couldn’t deny how frightened those girls had been.
“Willie, I wish to be fully honest with you.” She looked at me intently, seeming to latch on to something she saw in my expression. “I will keep your secret, but will you also agree to keep mine?”
Shared secrets were supposedly the glue of true friendship, but a flicker of foreboding kept me from smiling. After a pause, I nodded.
She reached under her narrow bed and pulled out a wooden box. She lifted the lid and removed four books, which she handed to me one by one. I read the titles—Phantasms of the Living, volumes one and two, Plain Guide to Spiritualism, and Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism. Dismay pressed on my shoulders like a weight.
“Olivia, are you a Spiritualist?”
She frowned. “You say that as though it’s a filthy word. As a matter of fact, I am a Methodist … with Spiritualist leanings. And so was my grandmother, who traveled in the East and once saw the Fox sisters. You know of them?”
“Enough to know they were frauds. My papa told me Katie Fox admitted to lying about her communications with spirits.”
“Only when the older sister forced her to it after arranging to have her children taken away.” She lifted her chin. “And even if they were the worst frauds ever seen, I’d still believe in Spiritualism. It’s certainly not something I’m ashamed of.”
I eyed the box she’d hidden under the bed.
“What I meant,” she continued with a frown, “is that I’m not ashamed to admit it to friends. Miss Crenshaw would not have hired me if she knew I’d participated in séances.”
“Have you really?”
She ducked her head. “Well, only a few.” When she met my gaze again, her eyes were bright with a strange passion. “I’ve watched many, many more. Before she died, my grandmother told me I was sensitive, and that I must develop my talents. But it seemed easier to take Miss Crenshaw’s offer of a teaching position than to set myself up as an untried medium.”
“Your grandmother was a medium? A Cherokee medium? Did she host dark circles and talk to spirits?”
She looked away, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Oh dear,” I said. “Forgive me. My papa was so skeptical of those who claimed to communicate with spirits, and now his words come out of my mouth almost as though I channeled his thoughts.” I reached for her hand and squeezed it until she looked at me again. “Tell me more of your grandmother.”
“First of all, she was white. So banish the notion that only f
ools and savages believe in revenants these days.”
I looked down.
“She was quite respected in our community,” Olivia continued, “with both whites and Cherokee. She welcomed people in her home and sat with them, but she did not ask for money. Sometimes they would leave gifts or a few coins. But that wasn’t why she did it. Her calling was to reconnect the bereaved with those they’d lost. It was her way of helping cure their grief and helping lost spirits find their way.”
I sighed. “Why tell me all this when you know I don’t believe?”
Her eyes grew wide and mysterious. “Because you and I must hold a séance. I need you to open your mind so we can help Ella find her way home.”
• ••
Later I lay on my bed, turning over the conversation in my mind. Once, my papa had spoken of Spiritualists, his mustache bristling under eyes flashing with contempt. “They’re actors, all of them, sinking to the depths of depravity to scrabble a living. They pretend to see spirits, changing their voices to summon their so-called controls. They read people’s expressions, ask them leading questions, and sometimes steal their wallets or have a henchman go through garbage to find their secrets.” He’d stroked his mustache in silence for a moment before turning back to me. “When I die, don’t go to some fool medium. You’ll not find me there, do you hear?”
I wondered what he’d say about sweet, caring Olivia—a respected teacher of science. Would he call her a charlatan?
I hadn’t promised to take part in her séance, but neither had I refused. Papa had found the notion of spirits laughable, almost offensive. But I’d heard that strange tapping at night. I’d felt the cold chill in the parlor. I’d seen the fear in proud Fannie’s eyes when she spoke of the dark river water rushing after her. I acknowledged all that—I just didn’t know what to make of it.
Chapter 9
THE AIR WAS THICK WITH RESENTMENT in the chapel that Saturday afternoon. To be sure, there were girls who’d chosen not to go to town and sat contentedly reading or working on a composition. But those who were kept from town by demerits were silently seething, unable to concentrate, and sat staring at the wall clock to follow each tick of the minute hand as it traveled the distance of two hours.
I was one of the seethers. This was my first Saturday to stay at the school, and I was surprised by how much I craved fresh air and some variation in the landscape. We were allowed outside for our walk every day, demerits or no, but that was more of a chore than an escape. Without a trip to town, the seminary walls felt as though they might close in on me, and no matter where I went, it seemed Miss Crenshaw’s eyes were following my every move.
And though I wouldn’t—couldn’t—admit it to anyone else, I was mourning the lost opportunity to catch a glimpse of Eli Sevenstar. I’d looked at his letter a hundred times since the night of the attempted exorcism. It still twisted my stomach in knots, but it was more than mere jealousy that so affected me. Disgust would have been the proper response to such a note—I told this to myself again and again—and yet a part of me still thrilled at the passion it conveyed. I longed to look into Eli’s dark eyes and find such a passion directed at me.
It was absurd, of course. I could not be Eli’s welcoming blue sea. A smile or a pleasant conversation was all I could ever hope for if I wanted to keep my position. And I did want to keep my position, for though I felt trapped at that moment, the thought of leaving such independence was … well, it was unthinkable.
Miss Taylor, the domestic science teacher, sat in a wide wooden chair facing the desks. Though she knitted quietly, her eyes were quick to find any girl who dared whisper. I sat at the back of the room, tasked with shoring up the rear defenses.
A stack of compositions stood on the desk before me. I lifted the top composition and glanced over it—a junior essay on “Tact versus Talent.” The authoress was a sweet girl who’d worked long hours to perfect her penmanship in a composition as mindless as it was tidily scripted. I placed that one at the bottom. The next essay was blotched and spattered with ink. That could wait until later too. The third was neatly penned, and the introduction unfolded in a thoughtful manner. In fact, for several paragraphs the argument struck me as beautifully clear and logical. I was giddy, quite prepared to give it the highest mark, when suddenly it entered territory that confused me. The language was exquisite, but the meaning behind the words was muddled. Did the confusion arise from a flaw in the argument … or in my own reasoning? I couldn’t think how to express these misgivings to the student without looking like a prize fool.
I placed that composition at the bottom of the pile.
When I checked the clock again, five minutes had passed.
Lucy Sharp—who’d received demerits for insolence in geometry class—sat to my right with her head bent over a piece of paper. She applied her pencil to it with such ferocity I feared the paper would tear. At least one of us was getting work done. I took a closer look and saw that she was drawing the same circle over and over. She caught me staring out of the corner of her eye. Frowning, she curved her arm around the page and lowered her head so that I could no longer see whether she wrote or drew.
Two desks away on my left sat Fannie, who also leaned over her work, but with pen and ink rather than pencil. Her task consisted of filling out small white cards with text that I could not make out, no matter how I squinted. After a moment, she caught my squinting, and her mouth curved in a cunning smile. I turned back to my compositions, willing myself not to blush.
During the break, she sauntered by.
“I noticed you staring, Miss McClure. I may as well give this to you now.” She handed me one of the cards with a flourish of her hand. “Mama likes for me to present these early, and in person. I planned to pass them out next week, but you are here now.” Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “Here with us. When we all thought we’d be in town.”
“You might have been here every Saturday for the rest of term had I reported what was really going on last night,” I reminded her, keeping my voice low.
She merely sniffed in response. I looked over the card.
YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED AT A
CHRISTMAS SUPPER FOR SEMINARY FACULTY,
ADMINISTRATION, AND SENIOR STUDENTS
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING,
THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER,
IN THE HOME OF
SAMUEL AND CORA ARCHER BELL.
“How nice,” I murmured, having never attended such a function in my life. Fortunately, I had ages to pick Olivia’s brain on the matter.
“We’ve held this party every year since I was a little girl. It’s always entertaining to see the teachers in their finery. I’m sure you have something quite splendid in your wardrobe, Miss McClure.” Her mouth curved into a cold smile. “I look forward to marveling at it.”
I forced my own smile. “Your script on this invitation is as pretty as copperplate, Fannie. I wonder why it is that I can barely read your compositions? Ah, well, now I know what you are capable of.”
She pursed her lips, and then turned as Miss Crenshaw entered the library with a bundle of letters in her hand. “Oh, look, the mail has come,” she said, nodding toward the door. “Are you expecting anything, Miss McClure?” She lifted her eyebrows and waited. “I didn’t think so,” she said with syrupy sweetness. “I’ve noticed you never get mail. You post letters in town, and yet you never receive a reply. In fact, you never seem to expect a reply. It’s very curious. I have grave doubts about this beau of yours.”
My hands clenched into fists under the table. “I already told you I’ve not been writing to a beau.”
She pouted in mock sympathy. “And not a single letter from family or friends? Ah, look,” she said as Miss Crenshaw handed her a small bundle, “here are two for me!”
How I longed to tear that lovely hair from her head! She was sassy and rude, and … her curiosity about my mail was alarming. She was a sly one—no doubt about that. I’d need to be more cautious when posting
my letters.
And I’d need something decent to wear to her blasted party.
That night, as I stared at the ceiling and mused on rivers and welcoming seas, the tapping started its familiar rhythm. I banged my head against the pillow, cursing whatever was truly responsible for the noise. Finally, I got out of bed with a groan and sat in the wooden chair by the desk.
The tapping stopped.
I heaved a sigh, relieved by the silence but knowing it would start again as soon as I’d returned to my bed. So I laid my head on the desk, shivering at a sudden chill near the windows.
A shriek pierced the quiet.
I leapt from the chair, and it skittered backward with a shriek of its own. I nearly fell but caught myself, knocking my elbow painfully on the desk. My fingers shook as I fumbled with the match, but finally I managed to light my lamp and carry it out into the corridor. The door next to mine opened, and a pale face peeped out. “Get back in your room and stay there,” I whispered. The poor girl’s face softened with relief as she shut her door. The screams continued, sounding more and more terrified. I considered a retreat to my own room. Couldn’t I pretend to have slept through it all? But Miss Crenshaw would frown upon such cowardice, and she frowned at me quite enough already. So I took a deep breath and made my way down the stairs.
Crossing through the vestibule to the corridor, I listened—the screams had seemed close when I was in my room, but now it was clear they were coming from the far end of the school. I heard movement behind me and turned to raise my lamp. Olivia walked toward me, her own lamp in hand. A shorter figure followed close behind her. It seemed to be the domestic science teacher, but I was unaccustomed to seeing prim Miss Taylor in her nightgown and ruffled cap.
“Where is she? Where is the screaming coming from?” Olivia’s face was strangely contorted in the flickering lamplight.
“It might be the chapel,” I whispered.
“I know we must help her, but my feet are heavy as iron,” cried Miss Taylor, “and I can barely catch my breath. Shouldn’t we get Miss Crenshaw?”
The Revenant Page 8
