by Vicki Lane
She cast a significant glance at my hips and continued. “I was going to suggest you might like to try Pilates but I think Pilates works better in a less … cluttered atmosphere. At home I go to this beautiful studio—very simple, very Japanese—a scroll on the wall, an ikebana arrangement on a low table, and one wall, completely glass, looking out on a meditation garden—all rocks and moss and just a tiny trickle of a waterfall into a koi pond—”
“It sounds lovely, Glory,” I interupted, wondering if gritting my teeth every few minutes was going to damage them. “And you certainly have stayed in good shape. But, I tell you what, why don’t we take a walk together? That would be exercise.”
Of course a walk involved a change of outfits for Gloria and then I had to suggest that her choice of a sports bra and very short shorts was not a good idea for walking a mountain trail.
“Oh, but we need to go down to the paved road and walk there,” she insisted. “It’ll be a much better cardio workout—we can really move along. Do you have some hand weights?”
Not me. But Gloria did and we strode along in fine fashion: she, holding the little gray dumbbells and pumping her arms furiously; me, stretching out to keep up with her. I had to admit, my little sister was, indeed, in good shape. She could set a brisk pace and talk at the same time.
“… go to Hot Springs—that’s near here, isn’t it, Lizzy? Nigel—the one in Asheville who did my hair—he’s a psychic, by the way, and he was telling me about this really fabulous inn in Hot Springs that’s going to have a weekend psychic retreat. Nigel said there was this amazing man from Glastonbury—England, you know—who’s going to be in Hot Springs doing a retreat. Nigel says this man is known in the spiritual community as a really tuned-in medium who can put people in touch with their departed loved ones. Well, I started thinking and it seemed to me that—”
“Gloria?” I panted, “I didn’t know you were into … when did you get interested in this stuff?”
My sister has always been a devotee of self-improvement workshops, often with an exotic spiritual slant: Tibetan color—or was it colon?—therapy, Mayan massage, Shinto chants for rejuvenation, Bulgarian bulge reduction—okay, I made that one up. But, séances? It just didn’t seem like her thing.
Still, Asheville is known as a New Age vortex—“the Sedona of the East” as one magazine article put it. It evidently hadn’t taken long for Glory to get sucked into that vortex—with Nigel’s help, I suspected.
Gloria looked sideways at me and replied without missing a beat. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Lizzy.”
The words were said in a matter-of-fact way and not, I thought, intended to wound. But they did.
“Glory,” I said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to a stop, “listen—”
“Let go!” she squawked, coming to an abrupt halt and shooting me an accusing glare. “You’re hurting my burn!”
I pulled my hand away and began once more to apologize. How could I have forgotten so quickly? We had checked the first-aid kit in my shop for burn ointment and come up empty but Gloria had insisted we take our walk first, saying she would run in to the drugstore later. Now the burn was an angry red with a weeping blister, popped, no doubt, by my stupid hand. And I was winded.
We were about a mile down the road from my driveway—almost directly in front of Miss Birdie’s place. And her truck was there. Thank goodness I’d convinced Glory to put a T-shirt over the sports bra and change the shorts for longer pants. Miss Birdie seemed to take modern life and fashion in her stride but still …
“Gloria, we really need to put something on that burn, especially now that the blister’s open. That’s Miss Birdie’s house there across the branch and I’ll bet she’ll have some ointment. I was going to bring you down to meet her anyway. Birdie’s one of the last of the old-timers around here and one of my favorite people in the world.”
It didn’t take much convincing—I think the burn was hurting more now and maybe, just maybe, Glory was a little winded herself.
We had crossed the bridge and were passing the hedge of tall rhododendrons at the edge of the yard when I heard Gloria’s sharp intake of breath. She was frowning slightly and staring down the road. All at once her eyes widened and I felt her fingers dig into my arm.
“Oh my god! Quick, Lizzy, we have to hide!” she gasped and, before I could protest, tugged me into the interior of a giant rhododendron. Peering through the screen of dark green leaves and deep red blooms, I tried to see what had put that note of panic into my sister’s voice, what was causing her to tremble so violently. The first vehicle we’d seen since we began our walk—except for the old guy who went by in an ancient pickup as we were coming out of the driveway—was coming up the road in our direction.
I nudged her, trying to get her to stop hyperventilating and talk to me. “Is it that Hummer you’re so stressed about, Glory? Hey, I hate them myself, stupid, ostentatious gas-guzzlers, but why should we hide from—”
The boxy, tanklike vehicle crawled along the road like an ominous black beetle, slowing at each clump of mailboxes. As it passed I saw the white license plate with the orange Florida silhouette in the center. The driver seemed to be lost—a familiar sight.
“It’s only another Floron,” I reassured Glory. “He’s looking for the place his friends bought or the place he thinks he might buy. We get that all the—”
But Gloria was shaking her head. “He’s from Florida, all right—I know that car.” Her voice was flat and resigned. “Don’t you understand, Lizzy? That’s the Eyebrow—the one I saw in Asheville—and he’s looking for me.”
Gloria pulled at the slender chain around her neck, bringing from under her shirt a little gold heart. She clutched at it like a talisman as we watched the Hummer disappear around a corner, heading for Full Circle Farm.
III~The DeVine Sisters
Hot Springs, NC~May 1887
“Has she gone?” Dorothea whispered to her sister.
Theodora, who had been leaning down to unlock the traveling trunk at the foot of the bed, paused. She straightened and looked toward the bedroom’s open door.
“The chambermaid? Heavens, I don’t know. Perhaps she’s tidying Renzo’s lair. What does it matter? She wouldn’t have the least idea … but close the door if it troubles you.”
When the heavy oak door had been shut and latched, Dorothea returned to her sister’s side, a finger laid to her lips. “She’s just finishing up—but do keep your voice down till she leaves. Perhaps I’m being overzealous—you’re right; I doubt the poor old thing has the wits to understand any of this.”
The stately Theodora turned the key in the trunk’s lock and pushed open the lid. After a brief perusal of the odd assortment of objects before her, she nodded thoughtfully. “No, I believe you’re right to be cautious. There’ve been some unpleasant revelations and exposures in the Spiritualist community of late. You remember that insistent young reporter at the hotel during our last engagement—”
“Indeed I do!” Dorothea’s silvery laugh rang out in a merry peal. “Did I not find him hiding in my closet? You saw how he tried to brazen it out by pretending that he was smitten by our beauty but I had the hotel detective escort the wretch to the street with a warning never to return.”
Theodora’s face remained grave, unmoved by her sister’s laughter. “It was a near escape. My wardrobe had been searched thoroughly and there were telltale scratches all round this lock. Fortunately, that young man was as poor a locksmith as he was a liar and our … materials went undiscovered.”
Dorothea drew closer. “What shall we use for your next session with Harris? The trumpets again?”
Reaching into the tray at the top of the steamer trunk, she withdrew two yard-long cones fashioned from heavy paper. One was pure black, the other white. The larger opening of the white cone was smeared with some creamy substance.
Lifting the black trumpet to her lips, Dorothea began to speak. Though hardly above the level of a whisper, the
deep voice that she affected resonated within the cone, causing it to vibrate as she spoke.
“Who calls Guiseppe from the Elysian fields, back to the earthly plane, back to this dark place of travail and woe? Is it another in search of a guide?”
Still considering the contents of the trunk, Theodora didn’t bother to look up.
“No, I think not. Not the trumpets. We used them last time. Familiarity breeds, I’ll not say contempt, but rather, curiosity. And where there’s curiosity, there’s danger.” She pushed aside a folded length of pure white silken gauze and brought out a small shellacked board. On it, in an elegant italic hand, were painted the letters of the alphabet and the words YES and NO.
“I think that for tonight, we’ll employ the planchette and the message board. If I have to listen again to Harris’s late wife calling for her Wodwick to speak to her, I fear I’ll burst into laughter at the most inopportune moment. Really, Doe, sometimes you go too far.”
“What would you have me do then? His name is Roderick. And the solicitous Mr. Peavey did tell me that the dear departed Mrs. Harris had just such a way of speaking—tho’ he called it ‘prattling like a pretty child.’ ”
“Harris did seem much moved.” Theodora dipped into the trunk yet again and brought forth a tiny table-like affair. Balancing the letter board on one outstretched palm, she placed the planchette atop it, her delicate fingers riding lightly on the little tabletop.
“Indeed, ’twas quite affecting, the way he pressed that bracelet on the empty air. A lovely piece of jewelry, was it not?”
Her face grew thoughtful as the planchette beneath her fingers slid from letter to letter. Then her blue-violet eyes glittered and, with a sudden swoop, the little device raced to the upper right-hand corner and stopped on the YES.
In the adjoining room, Amarantha finished brushing the carpet, gave the mirror a hasty swipe with her glass rag, then attacked the surfaces with a feather duster. She had already emptied the chamber pot and spittoon, made the bed, and tidied the clutter of masculine items atop the massive dresser. Now she collected the articles of men’s clothing that lay carelessly draped over the bench at the foot of the bed. One by one she examined them and consulted the printed list that had been left atop the heap.
“Two shirts to wash, three missing buttons to sew on, medium starch; one pair drawers—” She shook out the grayish white garment and sniffed. “Seems this fancy feller ain’t so particular about what don’t show.”
A pair of trousers was next and she began to go through the pockets. “This un’s more careful than most. He’s done emptied his pockets—no, now reckon what this is here in the fob?”
A small round metal device about the size of a silver dollar emerged from the inconspicuous slit at the waist. Amarantha held it between two cautious fingers and studied it. As she turned the disc this way and that, the innocuous-appearing object suddenly emitted a loud crack! The mountain woman started and almost dropped the thing but, recovering herself, stared at it more closely.
Cocking her head to one side as if in response to a call, she turned toward the window. In the shaft of light that streamed between the heavy draperies, a low rocking chair was moving slowly as if someone were sitting in it and gently rocking. In the dancing dust motes, a shadowy form wavered.
“You here?” Amarantha asked as she dropped the little round thing into her apron pocket.
THE NEW PLANCHETTE
A Mysterious Talking Board and Table
“Planchette is simply nowhere,” said a Western man at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, “compared with the new scheme for mysterious communication that is being used out in Ohio. I know of whole communities that are wild over the ‘talking board,’ as some of them call it. I have never heard any name for it. But I have seen and heard some of the most remarkable things about its operations—things that seem to pass all human comprehension or explanation.”
“What is the board like?”
“Give me a pencil and I will show you. The first requisite is the operating board. It may be rectangular, about 18 x 20 inches … The ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ are to start and stop the conversation. The ‘good-evening’ and ‘good-night’ are for courtesy. Now a little table three or four inches high is prepared with four legs. Any one can make the whole apparatus in fifteen minutes with a jack-knife and a marking brush. You take the board in your lap, another person sitting down with you. You each grasp the little table with the thumb and forefinger at each corner next to you. Then the question is asked, ‘Are there any communications?’ Pretty soon you think the other person is pushing the table. He thinks you are doing the same. But the table moves around to ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Then you go on asking questions and the answers are spelled out by the legs of the table resting on the letters one after the other. Sometimes the table will cover two letters with its feet, and then you hang on and ask that the table will be moved from the wrong letter, which is done. Some remarkable conversations have been carried on until men have become in a measure superstitious about it. I know of a gentleman whose family became so interested in playing with the witching thing that he burned it up. The same night he started out of town on a business trip. The members of his family looked for the board and could not find it. They got a servant to make them a new one. Then two of them sat down and asked what had become of the other table. The answer was spelled out, giving a name, ‘Jack burned it.’ There are, of course, any number of nonsensical and irrelevant answers spelled out, but the workers pay little heed to them. If the answers are relevant they talk them over with a superstitious awe. One gentleman of my acquaintance told me that he got a communication about a title to some property from his dead brother, which was of great value to him. It is curious, according to those who have worked most with the new mystery, that while two persons are holding the table a third person, sitting in the same room some distance away, may ask the questions without even speaking them aloud, and the answers will show they are intended for him. Again, answers will be returned to the inquiries of one of the persons operating when the other can get no answers at all. In Youngstown, Canton, Warren, Tiffin, Mansfield, Akron, Elyria, and a number of other places in Ohio I heard that there was a perfect craze over the new planchette. Its use and operation have taken the place of card parties. Attempts are made to verify statements that are made about living persons, and in some instances they have succeeded so well as to make the inquirers still more awe-stricken.”—New York Daily Tribune, March 28, 1886: page 9, column 6.
Chapter 9
Talking to Miss Birdie
Wednesday, May 16
Gloria watched the black Hummer out of sight. Goddam Jerry and his goddam business associates. She mouthed the words as she pulled her cellphone from her fanny pack.
“Lizzy, I’m going to call Ben and warn him that creep might be coming; why don’t you call the Mexicans and tell them—they have a phone, don’t they?”
“First let’s get into Miss Birdie’s house.” Elizabeth was tugging at her sleeve and backing gingerly out of the depths of the big bush. “Anyway, your cell probably won’t work down here. If it really is the guy you think it is, let’s get inside before he comes back.”
Gloria glared at her sister. “If it really is—” Why doesn’t she ever believe me? It’s always the same, she fumed as she allowed herself to be hurried toward the little log house.
A curtain twitched and a shadow moved away from the nearby window. Seconds later the storm door was opening and a voice was calling out, “Lizzie Beth? Whatever in the world were you doing in that ol’ laurel? You and your sister come on in and git you uns a cheer.”
As they crossed the immaculate little yard, Gloria tugged at Elizabeth’s sleeve and whispered, “What did she say? Come on in and do what? And what’s yuns mean?”
“It’s you uns—like we say ‘you all’—she’s saying get a chair. It’s what she always says when someone shows up. It just means she’s inviting us to come in and sit down,” Elizabeth his
sed.
They stepped through the doorway and Gloria saw a low-ceiled room, cluttered with cheap furniture and an old television set. Miss Birdie, a plump little woman in a faded print housedress, stood waiting, her bright blue eyes shining with delight in her wrinkled face.
Gloria’s first thought was that she doubted she’d ever seen anyone that old. And her second was an unsettling visceral response to the gaze: I wish my mother had ever looked at me like that.
The old woman beamed at her. “Aye, law, so you’re Lizzie Beth’s little sister. And ain’t you a purty thing—like a little doll. How proud I am you uns come by!”
Elizabeth hugged her neighbor. “This is Gloria, Miss Birdie. She’s staying with me for a while.”
Gloria held out her hand. “Elizabeth’s told me so much—” But the polite formula was cut short as the little old woman took the hand and turned it over to reveal the ugly burn at the wrist.
“Why, honey, whatever have you done to yourself? Does it pain you right much?”
Gloria felt about four years old as her eyes began to well up and prickle. “Yes, ma’am, it does.” And when was the last time I called anyone ma’am? “I was going to go to the store to get something to put on it—Lizzy didn’t have anything …”
The little old woman was looking deep into her eyes and Gloria fell silent. All at once there was a hush in the room and she had the oddest feeling of being drawn into the heart of some thing or some place. For a moment it was as if she and this ancient woman were standing, hands clasped, alone on some high misty place, far away from the real world.
“Iffen you want,” the words were soft and strangely seductive, “I can draw the fire out of that burn and soothe it. I learned how from my granny.”
“Why, Miss Birdie!” Elizabeth’s light teasing voice shattered the moment of perfect rapport. “I didn’t know you were a witchy-woman.”
