by Vicki Lane
But there was no time to puzzle over this wordless stranger. With a quick thank-you, I continued down the road.
It was too early for the spa to be open, so I followed the road around to the back and parked by the remains of the old bathhouse. It was a small, roofless shell of a building with gaping glassless windows and doorways blocked by wooden planking. Except for one, where the planking had been partially removed. There was no sign of Gloria, no sign of anyone. Stepping out of the car, I drew a deep breath, preparing to call her name, then stopped.
From within the bit of the building that was still standing, I heard voices—low, murmuring, confidential. And one of them was my sister’s.
I hesitated, torn between relief at having found her and annoyance that I’d been so worried. One of the other weekend Seekers must have had the same idea for an early morning walk and they’d decided to take a look at what was left of the old bathhouse. But it was time to get back.
“Gloria,” I called at last, “how about a ride back to breakfast?”
The voices stopped and in a few moments Gloria appeared in the doorway, her turquoise tracksuit bright in the morning sun that had finally overtopped the nearby trees. Still carrying those hand weights, she stepped carefully around the barrier, blinking like a moviegoer emerging from an imaginary story into reality. She paused for a moment and then looked down at her wrist.
“What time is it anyway, Lizzy? My watch battery must have died.” She motioned vaguely over her shoulder. “I got to talking to the most interesting woman in there … she knew all about the history of the place. I think she must be some kind of docent—she has on a long skirt and a white cap and a big white apron.”
I frowned. “They do reenactments here sometimes. But surely someone would have mentioned it …” I stepped past Gloria to look into the interior of the old bathhouse. “Let’s ask your friend what’s up.”
A quick glance revealed nothing but a small empty room, in the center of which was a long rectangular bath, half filled with murky water. The sunken tub’s marble was stained and the floor—more marble?—surrounding it was cracked and uneven. In several places, accumulations of bird droppings hinted that the remaining rafters of the missing roof served as a night perch for birds of some kind.
Then a sudden shaft of light slanted through those rafters, hitting the water and illuminating it to a pale clouded green. I could see insects skittering over the top of the water and something seemed to move through the sunlight. For a brief moment, I had the eerie sensation of being just on the verge of—I don’t know—maybe it was the verge of time. Instantly I could imagine this little room as it had been: a wooden chair, a stack of white Turkish towels, an enamelware basin, the gleaming marble tub, now brimful of clear water with wisps of rising steam on its surface.
No sooner had I registered this impression than it was gone. I was back amid the present dingy remains of past glory. The sunlight faded and I looked up to find that a cloud had moved to cover the sun.
“There’s no one in there …” I began, turning back to Gloria. But she was in the car, carefully reapplying her lipstick with the help of the rearview mirror.
I looked again. No, there was no one. And no back way out of the roofless building. Unless I chose to believe that a woman in a long-skirted costume had somehow noiselessly climbed out …
Glory was still busy with the mirror, fluffing her hair now, and I made a quick circuit of the little building on foot, scanning the open area all around for any sign of the mysterious woman.
No sign. Unless the little scattering of fresh-picked leaves at the back of the building was a sign.
I peeked back into the old bathhouse just to make sure but, as I’d expected, there was no one to be seen.
“Hello?” I whispered, my voice echoing strangely above the marble tub. “Is anyone—”
“Lizzy!” The sharp sound of Gloria’s voice made me jump and I turned to see her face at the car window. “I thought we needed to get back to breakfast. Who are you talking to, anyway?”
“Evidently, no one,” I muttered as I climbed back into the car. “What happened to that woman in white? I don’t see how …”
“Woman in white?” Gloria’s brow wrinkled and she favored me with a long turquoise stare. “What are you talking about?”
Indeed.
I’d been there before—there on that misty boundary line between what is and what might be. For a person who prides herself on her rationality and who has, prior to giving in to Gloria, avoided all varieties of psychic exploration, I have to admit that there’ve been events … experiences … things I couldn’t explain so I didn’t try.
No more could I explain what had gone on in the two sessions yesterday. Apparently Xan had received messages from his brother via notes on the piano. I had heard the notes—and, I’m a little embarrassed to say, had lingered behind at the end of the session to look for hidden wires or something of the sort. Which I had not found.
And apparently Charlene had heard the voice of a departed friend—in her head. There had been some disappointments: No spirit had spoken through Giles, much less through any of the rest of us. But I had to admit … there had been something at work that I could in no way explain.
I started the car—we would just have time to grab some breakfast before the first session—and headed down the road toward the gate. As we passed the clump of trees and the odd rocks, I slowed but wasn’t surprised to see no sign of the woman who had been there earlier.
“Glory, when you came by here this morning, did you notice anyone back in there?”
But Gloria wasn’t listening to me. She was humming an odd little tune, simple and haunting and, I was pretty sure, not a number from one of her favorite Broadway shows. In a minor key, it had the feel of a mountain ballad to it. And I knew I’d heard it before … somewhere …
“What’s that you’re humming?” I asked.
She stopped abruptly. “That? Why …” Her face screwed up in concentration. “That’s strange. I have no idea. It just popped into my head.”
She hummed a few more bars. Unlike me, Glory can carry a tune rather nicely and as she continued on, I realized when and where I’d last heard it.
Almost eight years ago. I’d been in the kitchen, finishing up the Christmas baking when Sam had come in. There had been snowflakes on his Navy watch cap and he’d been grinning with delight.
“Listen to this, Liz,” he’d said and had whistled a few plaintive bars. “Odus was playing it on his banjo when I stopped by this evening. I asked him what it was and he said it was ‘one of them old love songs.’ He sang some of it for me—all about a murdered man visiting his widow. But talk about a haunting tune—I can’t get it out of my mind.”
And we had laughed and hugged and planned to go back and get Odus to sing me the song. And Sam had whistled or hummed the melody till the girls had put their hands over their ears or turned up the radio to drown him out.
He’d been whistling it when he went out the door a few days later, on his way to meet an old Navy buddy and go flying in that buddy’s little airplane.
The last time I ever saw my husband.
VII~Amarantha
May 12, 1887
“They want you at the bathhouse again,” the housekeeper said when I come back to work the next day. “Selma’s still down in the back—she sent word by one of her young uns that she can’t hardly go. Mr. Roberts allowed as how you best count on taking her place today and all next week.”
I had been dreading it, for my hands hadn’t yet lost that queer ugly feeling that had come from Miss Theodora DeVine’s white body. And after what I seen in the looking-glass pool, I knew that there was a doom hanging over her and over someone near her. But a body ain’t always got a say in this life and I needed my job at the Mountain Park too bad to get choosy about whose back I rubbed.
When I looked at the list of my ladies for the day, though, Miss Theodora’s name was scratched out and there was a Miss
Cochrane wrote down instead. I was considerable relieved to see that she was an R—just here for rest.
Miss Cochrane was waiting for me when I got to the bathhouse and a more quizzy somebody you never did see. Where did I learn to do massage and how did I like doing it and what sort of folks had I worked on and where did I live and on and on till I was wore out with answering. She had her a little notebook and she wrote down some of what I told her, saying she would be writing letters home and she liked to have things straight when she did.
There was something about her that put me in mind of a bright-eyed little sparrow pecking all around for crumbs and I took to her right off. But there was something more, behind those green eyes …
I helped her with her clothes and took her to the tub. And all the time, them sparrow eyes was darting about, taking in everything there was to see.
“Amarantha,” says she, “do you believe this water has ever cured anyone of anything?” and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
“Well,” said I, “it’s cured several of being dry and cold.”
She laughed like one thing at that but I hastened to say that I knowed it had made quite a few feel better for a time, at least, though I couldn’t speak as to a lasting cure.
“And it ain’t never harmed no one,” I put in right quick. I was just as glad she’d left her little book back in the changing room for I wouldn’t want my silly words used against me.
After she was safely in the tub, I went to the massage room and laid the things ready. The little bit I’d seen of Miss Cochrane had set me to wondering about her so I took up the small white enamel basin, poured it almost full of rubbing oil, and set it on the low table by the chair to where I could lean over it and take a look.
In some ways, oil is better than water for a seeing—of course, living water, like my little pool in the hollow of the rock, is what my granny swore by—though I’ve known her to use a mirror turned on its side, or a pan of ashes, or the blood from pig-killing time.
“Law, young un,” I mind her saying, “anything’ll work to get a seeing. The power’s in the one what’s doing the seeing, everwhat they may use.”
I went to the door and peeked into the tub room but Miss Cochrane was stretched out with her head back and her eyes closed, looking like she was feeling mighty good there in that steamy water. Leaving the door open just a crack, in case that she might call, I went back and set myself down at the little table with my elbows on either side of the bowl and my face resting in my hands where I could peer into the oil.
Used to be, it took some time for the pictures to come. I would wait and wait and the least little thing would pull my mind away—a fly buzzing, a worrisome thought—but now it seems as if I can go to that place between the worlds in no more than a few heartbeats’ time.
I let my eyes go foggy, looking without trying to see, as you might say. At first there was just the shimmer on the surface of the oil; then, as my breath hit it, lines and patterns grew, one inside another and afore long the pictures begun to come. I seen Miss Cochrane, her dark hair in a long braid down her back, astride a horse in the midst of a gang of brown-faced men, all in white and all wearing these great broad-brimmed straw hats. She reined the horse around and lit out of there and the patterns changed and now, there she was, in her shift, it looked like, with her hair all in a tangle, setting on a wooden bench in a bare cold-looking room with some of the sorriest-looking females you ever saw to either side of her. It seemed like she was in a jail of some kind, but whether this was a seeing of something already past or of something yet to come, I couldn’t tell.
I must of jostled the table for the pictures shifted and I saw great boats, the like of which I have only seen in some of the pictures on the walls here in the hotel. Great boats and trains, there was Miss Cochrane again, in a blue dress and carrying a hand satchel. And there were black men and strange long-necked beasts with great humped backs, and women with veils over their face, and more strange folks, and Miss Cochrane riding in a queer little two-wheeled cart pulled by a skinny little somebody and there was another great ship—
“Amarantha, I believe I’m sufficiently cooked.”
Her voice was right at my ear and I jerked upright, pulled away from where I was wandering. She was standing there in her robe, head cocked to one side and studying my gazing bowl.
“I ask your pardon, ma’am,” I said, all confused. “I didn’t mean—”
She leaned closer, peering into the oil. Then she looked up at me, a sharp little glance like a hen that has spotted a likely bug, and clapped her hands together.
“You were fortune-telling, weren’t you? Oh, what fun! I once knew a woman who could see all sorts of things in a bowl of water. Tell me, Amarantha, what do you see for me? The massage can wait—this is far more interesting. And I’ll leave an extra-good tip, you may be sure.”
With that, Miss Cochrane hopped right up on the table and set there cross-legged, just waiting for me to speak. I tried to pass it off and go on with the treatment as usual but she would have none of it. So I leaned back over the bowl.
Of course, I’d already seen aplenty that I could tell her. But I didn’t want to let on that I’d been so curious about her, fearing she might take offense. I took my time and, sure enough, along come the pictures stronger than ever. It works that way sometime, that the pictures are clearer when the person they’re about is nigh.
“I see you on a horse, in some far-off place,” I told her. “And brown men with big straw hats …”
“Oh, but that must be Mexico,” she said, “and that’s already happened. Tell me about the future—what lies ahead for me; can you do that, Amarantha?”
Well, I went on to tell of the other things I had seen: the big bare room with all the poor sad-looking women lined up on a bench and the great boats and all the trains and queer animals and folks I seen and all at once she jumped down off the table and threw her arms about me.
“Oh, Amarantha, you good witch, you! It hasn’t happened yet but I promise I’ll make sure it does.”
Well, that was as queer a treatment session as ever I’d had. We just set and talked for what was left of the time and she asked could she come visit me at my home for she’d admire to see how a real mountain woman lived. She was so earnest and winning in her ways that at last I agreed and we set a time for Sunday evening. And when the hour was up, she give me a fifty-cent piece.
The next to come for treatment was Miss Dorothea DeVine, and though her chart had her down for an R, by the time she was on the table and under my hands, I knowed her for an N—weepy and wandering in her thoughts.
For a mercy, there wasn’t that same deep-down ugly feeling that came off her sister. Though to look at they was as alike as two peas (except for the marking of the moles—Miss Dorothea didn’t have that), my hands would have knowed one from the other at the first least touch.
This one was all wrought up about something. There was a trouble eating at her heart as bad as any cancer.
She lay there quiet as I worked on her back and legs, but when she had rolled over for me to tackle her arms, I seen they was tears, running out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks.
“Is the treatment paining you, ma’am?” I asked. “You must speak up if—”
“Oh, no, it’s fine; I’m just—” And then for the first time she looked at me close.
“You’re Amarantha, aren’t you?” she asked, wiping her eyes with a corner of the sheet that was draping her. “I didn’t know you—” and then the tears plumb busted loose.
“Oh, Amarantha,” cries she. “I am so unhappy and … oh, whatever shall I do?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t understand,” said I, though my fingers had told me that it was the life she was leading that was eating at her, not any cancer. “Is there some way I can help you?”
She lay there still, the tears just streaming, and her lips pressed hard together.
“Ma’am?” I said again and reached
to blot at her tears with a linen towel.
With that, she seemed to get herself in hand and, letting out a great sigh, she turned her head away from me. “Thank you, Amarantha, I don’t know what came over me. Female vapors, I suppose. Pray, continue with the massage.”
Nellie Bly’s Notes
Collected from various members (local residents) of the staff at the Mountain Park Hotel, Hot Springs, North Carolina, May 1887. Possible article?
Granny women in Appalachia (Note—correct pronunciation AP-A-LATCH-IA)
Scots-Irish—ties to Old Country—also some Cherokee influence?
Midwives, healers, can “dowse” for water
Belief in Little People (Leprechauns? Fairies?)—leave food for them
Haints—ghosts—“Haint blue” paint on a door will keep ghosts away
Ax under bed to cut pain of childbirth
Buckeye (horse chestnut) in pocket to ward off “rheumatiz”
According to those who know her, Amarantha can remove warts, cure “thrash,” ease the pain of a burn, forecast weather, and tell your future by looking into a pool of water (or oil!).
Other granny women are said to use tea leaves, coffee grounds, a pan of dirt(!) for the same purpose. Cards, spiderwebs, clouds are also used for “getting a knowing.”
I believe this woman is no charlatan—none here know that I am “Nellie Bly” and yet she described my ignominious departure from Mexico City … and her glimpse into the future gives me such hope for my Jules Verne stunt …
Chapter 21
Spirit Messages
Saturday, May 26
That odd little tune was stuck in her head, Gloria noticed, as she took her place for the Saturday morning session. So haunting and so familiar. Something that an old-fashioned music box might play …
