The Vanishing

by Wendy Webb

  “Adrian, listen,” I said. “If you’re going to tell me Havenwood is haunted, I’ve got news for you: I already know. I’ve known from the first day. I thought I was seeing things, but now—”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid there’s much more to it than that,” he said. “You’ve been asking and wondering why my mother chose to drop out of sight and stop writing, all of those years ago. It’s time you knew the truth about the vanishing of Amaris Sinclair. Especially because you have just come face-to-face with it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The fire blazed and the candles flickered as I sat in the drawing room, waiting for Adrian to begin his tale. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts, or his courage, and was clearly elsewhere—not there in the room with us in front of the fire, but back to whatever time and place this story occurred. I looked at Drew, and from his furrowed brow, I understood that he knew the tale Adrian was about to tell all too well. I got a knot it my stomach when I saw how serious both of their faces were. This was the reason Mrs. Sinclair had ended up in that psychiatric hospital, I could feel it. Suddenly, I wanted to stop what I had started.

  “Listen,” I said, breaking the silence and surprising Adrian out of whatever thoughts he had retreated into. “I know I was the one insisting I be told what’s going on here at Havenwood, but from the looks of both of you right now, I’m not sure I want to know.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. I had the distinct feeling that I had stirred up a hornet’s nest, and wanted very much to calm it back down. “If this is Mrs. Sinclair’s story, maybe she should be the one who tells it to me,” I offered. I didn’t want to admit to knowing at least part of the story already.

  “I suppose,” Adrian said, “that with any good story, it’s best to start at the very beginning.” He smiled and raised his glass. “My mother bought Havenwood when I was no more than a boy. She had been here as a child and had fallen in love with the place, especially the library.”

  I nodded. “I know that. She told me.”

  “So you must also know the house’s history.”

  “I do. Built by Andrew McCullough in the 1800s, patterned after his family home in Scotland.”

  “Very good. And you’ve heard Andrew’s strange tale?” He eyed Drew.

  “About the Windigo? Yes, she told me about it.”

  At the mention of this, I could see a shudder pass through Drew.

  “Well, my dear, this house has a history of strange things happening within it, starting with old Andrew but not ending there, I’m afraid. You know he was a patron of the arts, and invited musicians and writers and painters and dancers and all manner of artistic types here to this house, in the middle of the wilderness. And they came.”

  Drew took up the tale at this point, leaning in toward me. “But one visitor stood out in Andrew’s mind, above all the others. Seraphina.”

  I fingered the slim volume about her life in my sweater pocket. Why did all roads seem to lead back to her?

  “What was it about her that intrigued him so?” I wanted to know.

  “Well, she was beautiful and mysterious, and Andrew was never one to let a pretty woman go unnoticed”—Drew smiled at me—“at least that’s what family lore tells us. But more than her looks, Andrew was obsessed with her gift.”

  “The psychic medium business,” I said.

  He nodded. “You must remember, Julia, this was the height of the Spiritualist Age in this country. You couldn’t walk down the street, any street in any big city, and not see signs for psychic tearooms and séances and mediums.

  “It became an obsession for the wealthy,” he continued. “The poor and working classes had much to occupy their daily lives—making a living, putting food on the table, just simply surviving in a harsh world. Especially the recent immigrants to this land. Oh, our Andrew had it easy—he had the foundation of a family fortune underneath him. But the average people? They didn’t have time for such nonsense.”

  “But the wealthy did,” I said.

  He nodded, taking a sip of his Scotch. “Indeed. When you’ve got food on the table and a fire to keep you warm and no worry of either of those things ever going away, then it’s time to think about things like the great beyond. And people wanted to know about the afterlife, whether their loved ones were safe and happy, and what lay beyond the veil.”

  “I remember Houdini was into it, wasn’t he? And Arthur Conan Doyle?” I asked.

  “Conan Doyle, famously so,” Drew said. “Others in literature and entertainment as well. But where there is a rich old widow who is willing to pay to talk to her dearly departed husband, there’s a charlatan waiting to take her money and run.”

  “There were a lot of charlatans, then?”

  “The movement was full of them,” Drew said. “It was a disgrace, really. People in the most important houses in New York City and Boston and places like that would have Spiritualist salons, and a whole cottage industry of fakers sprung up as a result. The rapping on the tables, the levitation of the chairs—all of that, or most of it anyway, was faked.”

  “Are you saying Seraphina was one of those fakers?”

  Drew shook his head. “Just the opposite, Julia. Seraphina was the real thing. Astonishingly real. With her, there was no sideshow, no big production of going into a ‘trance,’ or calling of spirits, or dimming of the lights. She’d simply talk to the dead as easily and naturally as we are talking here, now.

  “She would fill theaters all over Europe and on the East Coast, where she would walk out onto the stage with no fanfare whatsoever, and begin to relay messages to members of the audience from their loved ones who had died.”

  I nodded. All of it sounded familiar. I’d seen modern-day psychics do the same thing.

  “It was astonishing; she was a true phenomenon. The messages were real and easily verified. In one very famous incident, she accused an audience member of murder. Of course he had done it—his dead wife was there, telling Seraphina the whole story. She also told Seraphina where to find the murder weapon, a fact Seraphina relayed to the police. The man went to prison. She did quite a bit of work with law enforcement after that.

  “Andrew had heard about her and was intrigued. He had lost both of his parents, remember, and would’ve loved nothing more than to hear from them again. He invited her to Havenwood. She came. Several times. And brought many other people with her, artists and writers—”

  “Charles Dickens!” I added. “I saw a book he inscribed to her.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I wonder if she was ever able to bring Andrew any messages from his parents,” I mused, staring into the fire. I felt a knot in my throat and a stinging behind my eyes at the thought of my own parents, both gone almost two decades now. I would’ve given anything to have heard from them somehow during the past few years of my life. I wondered if I’d have made different choices, had they been here to guide me. I quickly wiped away the tears that threatened to fall and cleared my throat, and realized for the first time what easy prey the grieving wealthy must have been.

  Drew seemed to sense what I was thinking. “The story is that yes, she did help Andrew communicate with his parents. I think that’s why he kept asking her back. That, and the fact that he was in love with her.”

  “In love? Are you sure? I thought he married a local girl and had a family. Besides, from what I’ve read, Seraphina was married, too.”

  “Love doesn’t always follow the rules, Julia,” Drew said, smiling rather sadly, I thought. “Any soap opera will confirm that for you.”

  I looked at him. “Are you telling me they were having an affair? How could you possibly know that?”

  Drew shifted in his seat and took a sip of Scotch. “Andrew’s journal. We found it in what had been his study during a renovation of the third floor. It’s pretty clear they were in love with each other. What they did with that love—that’s their business, I guess. In any case, after the night we’re telling you about, all of that was over. For
all we know, they never saw each other again.”

  I took a sip of wine and considered what they were telling me. “But what does her story have to do with Mrs. Sinclair? That’s what we’re talking about, right? I mean, Seraphina couldn’t very well have caused her to stop writing and drop out of sight.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, my dear,” Adrian said, taking up the tale. “Seraphina’s story and my mother’s are completely intertwined.

  “As Drew said, Seraphina had no trouble talking to the dead. As I understood it, she had had the gift since childhood. But this particular night in the east salon at Havenwood was different. Several people sat around the table, all of whom were looking for messages from their dearly departed. But Seraphina couldn’t hear anything. No voices, no messages of any kind. Only an eerie silence. An emptiness. She couldn’t figure it out. She knew full well the people around this table had lost loved ones, but no matter what she tried, she could not conjure up any sort of communication from beyond the veil, so to speak.”

  I was confused. “That doesn’t sound so dire,” I said. “So, she couldn’t talk to that dead that night. So what?”

  Adrian took a sip of his Scotch. “Have you ever heard of something called the Devil’s Toy Box, my dear?”

  I hadn’t. I shook my head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I’m very glad it doesn’t. It’s not something anyone should play around with. It’s a very, very dangerous object. But Seraphina didn’t know that when she brought it here to Havenwood.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a box with a tight-fitting lid, made of ancient wood. It usually has symbols and inscriptions on the outside. The inside is covered with mirrors.”

  “What is it for?”

  “It’s for trapping spirits, my dear.”

  At this, Drew pushed himself up from the sofa and made his way to the sideboard. “I think this calls for a refill, don’t you, Adrian?” He poured Scotch into his own glass and Adrian’s and crossed the room with the wine bottle for me.

  “Thanks,” I said to him, catching his eye. I didn’t know if all this talk of spirits was something he believed in or disdained, but I couldn’t tell from his expression. The conversation was definitely veering off into the absurd.

  “This box sounds like some sort of parlor trick,” I said, sipping my wine. “I thought you said Seraphina didn’t need any of those kinds of things.”

  “She didn’t, at least not until this particular night,” Adrian said. “And the Devil’s Toy Box is all too real. It’s no trick. But the tragedy of the whole story is Seraphina didn’t know what it was, not really. She had no idea what she was doing when she opened that box. I firmly believe she’d have never opened it, had she known.”

  “So, what happened, exactly?”

  “It was during this particular séance, in the east salon, the one in which Seraphina was having trouble communicating with the other side. As the story goes, she was getting frustrated and angry. She didn’t want to disappoint the people who had come all of this way to see her and communicate with their departed loved ones. But she just wasn’t getting any sort of messages at all.

  “So she thought she’d try something she had never tried before. Her husband had been traveling in the Far East and had brought back a small box covered with strange symbols.”

  “The Devil’s Toy Box.”

  “Yes. A shaman of sorts sold it to him, and he took a liking to it, thinking it might be useful to his wife in her stage act. So he brought it home and gave it to her. She put it in her bag and didn’t think much more about it, until that particular night here at Havenwood. That night, in an effort to jump-start things, she lit a few candles and then remembered the box, and thought she’d put it on the table and open it, to see if that might not coax a few spirits out of wherever they were hiding. She thought she’d put a candle inside, and the mirrors reflecting it would cast an interesting glow. She had no idea.”

  “So, she opened the box?”

  “She opened the box.”

  Adrian and Drew shared a look.

  “I know this is going to sound fantastic,” Adrian said, a sheepish expression on his face. “And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have believed it myself, if not for what happened later. But when Seraphina opened that box, she unleashed something monstrous and strange. Not the spirit of someone who had died, but something else. Something evil and dark that was better left hidden and alone.

  “One man attending the séance that night died. It may have been a heart attack, but others who were there reported that it was like someone was choking the life out of him. People were scratched and beaten—it was a hellish scene.”

  “So, you’re telling me that something was trapped in the box, Seraphina opened it, and whatever it was got out.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” Adrian said.

  “Was Andrew there?” I asked.

  “He was indeed there,” Drew said. “It terrified him.”

  “What happened after that?” I wanted to know.

  “Seraphina left Havenwood and never came back. Nobody knows where she went or whatever became of her. She never held another séance that we know of and never appeared on the stage again. It was as though she fell off the face of the earth. And Andrew never held another séance or had anything to do with Spiritualism ever again.”

  “But what happened after that? It’s not like Havenwood is some sort of house of horrors. I mean, a few ghosts here and there? Sure. What hundred-year-old house doesn’t have them? But there’s nothing evil here, not really.”

  Adrian stiffened. “I’m afraid there is. And you came upon it tonight, my dear.”

  I looked from Adrian’s face to Drew’s and back again. Their whole story sounded preposterous, and yet their expressions were deadly serious.

  “Gideon?” I asked.

  “Indeed,” Adrian said.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this tale, but the mention of Gideon made my stomach turn. My head began to pound.

  “Are you all right?” Drew asked.

  “I am,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I’m just not feeling all that great right now.”

  Drew and Adrian exchanged a worried look.

  “Maybe that’s enough talk about this for one day,” Adrian said.

  “No,” I said. “You said this thing was evil. What is it?”

  “We’re not sure what he is, Julia,” Adrian admitted. “Usually, this isn’t a problem. Not at all. You said it yourself; Havenwood is full of spirits. But this… this is something different.”

  I didn’t like where this conversation was going. “You said something about opening up the east salon.”

  Adrian nodded. “Yes. It has been closed for some years.”

  “Ever since that night with Seraphina?”

  “No.” Adrian’s eyes glistened with tears, and he shook his head as if to shake them away. “There was another night. Much more recently.”

  Drew got up to stoke the fire, and a wave of realization washed over me.

  “It has to do with why Mrs. Sinclair dropped out of sight and stopped writing.”

  “That’s right,” Adrian said, taking a sip of his drink. “You needed to hear about the last night Seraphina was ever here at Havenwood to understand my mother’s story. As I said, the two are intertwined. My mother’s tale wouldn’t have existed without Seraphina’s.”

  “What are you three talking about?” Mrs. Sinclair’s voice pierced the tense atmosphere in the room and made everyone jump.

  “Mother!” Adrian scrambled to his feet and crossed the room toward her. “What are you doing out of your suite?”

  She tousled his hair. “Can’t an old dowager take a little walk around her own house?”

  “But the hallways are pitch-black,” he protested. “Mother, I don’t want you hurting yourself. You might have fallen down the stairs!”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’m not going to fall down
the stairs,” she said, holding up a lantern similar to the one Marion had given me. “He treats me like I’m a hothouse flower,” she said to Drew and me, shaking her head.

  “Now,” she said, crossing the room and pouring herself a drink at the sideboard. “What are we talking about? You three look absolutely caught up in something.”

  “Oh, we’re just sharing stories,” Adrian said, shooting me a look. I understood: we wouldn’t be finishing the tale, at least not right then. I slumped against the back of the sofa, wishing she hadn’t come in here.

  “Actually, Amaris, I was telling Julia here about the fact that old Andrew was in love with Seraphina, back in the day,” Drew said, pushing himself out of his seat on the couch and crossing the room to freshen his drink.

  “Ooh, there’s nothing like century-old gossip to liven up an afternoon!” she cooed. “Yes, Julia, it’s true. Did he tell you about us finding the journal?”

  I nodded, clearing my throat. “That must’ve been quite exciting.”

  “Indeed it was,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “A communication from another place and time. It was like looking through a window into the past. Drew, you’ve got it out in the stables, yes? Maybe you can show it to our dear Julia someday soon.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  And then our conversation turned to other things—the blizzard and the power outage, mostly—until Marion came into the room and announced dinner was served. We were all following her to the dining room when I felt Adrian’s hand on my arm pulling me back. He waited until Drew had escorted his mother through the archway before he locked eyes with me and spoke.

  “Thank you for not saying anything to Mother about what we were discussing,” he said, his voice low.

  “Of course,” I said, but truthfully, I wondered about the reason for the secrecy. “But if it’s on the loose—”

  “I don’t want you to worry about that,” he said.

  “But,” I pressed, “I really do want to hear the rest of this story, especially considering the fact that I ran headlong into this thing.” My stomach tightened at the thought of it.