by Rose, M. J.
We sat in a circle around this twenty-five-centimeter-high centerpiece on our card table. Adults playing a parlor game. All curious, but one with a desire so strong it must have extended out into the ether, to the spirits. It gave off sparks. And shone.
As I watched, I allowed how profoundly I wanted this trick to be real. I desperately wanted to speak to the dead. On the last day of the week of the anniversary of Leopoldine’s death, I longed to speak to my daughter.
“Open your minds,” Delphine instructed us all. “Let the spirits in. Make them welcome and allow them to speak.”
Nothing happened. With each passing second, I felt my hope ebbing. Then after almost a full minute, the little stool began to move. One of its legs tapped. And then again. And again.
“Is someone here with us?” Delphine asked, the excitement in her voice rising like bubbles in a champagne glass. “Are you here?”
Tap, tap.
I will never forget the reverberation of that wood against the table. It was no different from the sound of a tree branch snapping. Of a door shutting. Of a box lid closing. An innocent sound, I thought then. But how wrong I was, because with each rap, another seed of madness took root in the fertile soil of my mind. The tapping was wicked, degenerate; it was depraved.
“Is someone there?” my wife cried out, clearly unnerved.
The taps continued at a slow pace. François-Victor diligently made notes, but I was certain they would prove to be random and inconclusive knocks. From the expression on Delphine’s face, I could see she thought the same.
Another effort, another failure, I thought.
And then the rhythm changed. The tapping sounded more determined.
As François-Victor laboriously recorded the number of taps, I somehow anticipated the word being spelled out as if I were having a conversation with a ghost; I was able to understand these whispers of air. Ah, this is difficult to explain, even for me. So much of this adventure is. But believe me, during that séance and those that followed, our spirit guests spoke to me. Not out loud so others could hear, but not in my imagination either.
I am here. I am with you.
Then the tapping stopped. The stool ceased to move. This time it remained still for two full minutes. I was ready to push my chair away when it finally started up again. The stool appeared agitated. Jittering. Sliding a bit, then pushing back. Was Charles doing this himself?
“Are you the spirit who was tapping before?” Delphine asked.
Two taps.
No.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The stool tapped four times. Then stopped.
D.
Then one tap.
A.
Then a long flow of even taps. Charles counted twenty-one. Then a stop.
U.
Then seven taps.
G.
It had taken me one second to hear what it took the stool several minutes to spell out. One word, Daughter.
Then it stopped for a slight pause before starting up again. Immediately the stool tapped out four more taps.
D.
Then five.
E.
Then one.
A.
I knew this word too, long before its last letter tapped out. I put the two words together.
Daughter. Dead.
“Who are you?” Delphine asked once more.
The spirit identified herself this time by tapping out her name. Letter by letter.
L.E.O.P.O.L.D.I.N.E.
“Is it truly you, Didine?” I asked. “Is it you?”
I did not have to wait for the tedious taps. I knew. Nevertheless a single tap confirmed it.
Tap.
Yes.
“Are you happy?”
Yes.
“Where are you?”
Light.
“How can we be with you, my dearest?”
Love.
“Do you watch over us and see our unhappiness?”
Yes.
As a student of human nature, I have trained myself to read faces and see what is in someone’s heart regardless of the words they use. As that stool tapped out its answers to the questions we were asking, I watched those present for chicanery and guile. Was Charles exerting some kind of pressure upon the stool? Could he have been so desperate as to make it move out of grief? Or so cruel as to make a joke of such a somber occasion as this?
I asked him outright and he assured me he wasn’t manipulating the stool. Were my other children in on it somehow? Or my wife? She claimed to suffer because of my dalliances, but she didn’t hate me enough to punish me like this. No, Adele was not capable of such a hoax. In fact she was sobbing and our daughter, her mother’s namesake, was crying with her.
No, this was no prank. Sybil’s tripod had come to life.
Outside the wind picked up, sending plaintive pleas to the sea, who answered with roars and splashes. Nature communicates all its attitudes better than any man’s words.
I asked Didine one last question.
“Will you come back to talk to us more?”
One glorious tap. The yes I had yearned to hear.
And so, in a matter of moments, a life changes.
I who had never been haunted, who had been skeptical of visitations, suddenly accepted all possibilities. Or as a priest would say, in that moment, I allowed the devil into my life.
But the priest would be wrong. I did more than allow him in. I gave the devil a warm hearth and a hospitable place to rest for as long as he wanted one. I gave him access to my very soul.
Two
AUGUST 14 , THE PRESENT
UPSTATE CONNECTICUT, USA
Since she’d left Paris six weeks ago, every day when she woke up, Jac L’Etoile vowed she was going to heed her brother Robbie’s parting advice and be present. When they’d said good-bye, he’d kissed her on the forehead, brushed her curls back off her face and said, “If you can do that one thing, Jac, you will begin to heal.”
Now, as she trekked through the woods with Malachai Samuels, she tried to pay attention, as Robbie would say, to this moment, right now, and not allow her mind to drift and sink into grief.
Be present.
There was much to be present for. The air was fresh with the smell of grass and apples. She was with a trusted mentor, who had something important to show her.
Be present.
She noticed a fence of No Trespassing signs up ahead. As they approached, the lovely summer day clouded over. The electric scent of a coming storm blew in and Jac felt a chill. A foreboding that they should turn back. Then chided herself for her childish reaction. This was no Grimm’s fairy tale. She wasn’t Gretel. And Malachai certainly wasn’t Hansel. The Oxford-educated psychoanalyst was the codirector of the prestigious Phoenix Foundation in New York City, a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old institution dedicated to the scientific study of reincarnation. He owned this land. These woods had been in his family for nearly two centuries. There was nothing bad that could happen to her here.
• • •
Earlier, after finishing lunch, Malachai had suggested she get ready, that they were going to take a walk.
“Where?” she’d asked.
“To see my secret garden,” was all he’d offered.
Malachai was unapologetically secretive in a way that was both old-fashioned and refreshingly avant-garde. He performed sleight of hand without revealing his tricks. Cured children of their nightmares while refusing to explain what spells he used. He was a magician. Perhaps the only true one Jac had ever known. Hadn’t he made her own mental illness—hallucinations that had plagued her as a child—disappear and vanish into the Swiss Alps’ crisp mountain air when she was fourteen?
Dressed for their hike, she and Malachai exited the turreted and gargoyled manor house through the great room’s French doors. Stone terrace steps led down to a well-tended formal garden nearing the end of its summer glory. They followed a pebbled path that bordered organized-chaos beds of blue hydrang
ea, late-blooming sedum, pink roses and lavender Russian sage.
The floral bouquet scented the air and stayed with them as they passed through ornate iron gates. By the time they reached the Victorian gazebo the smell of fresh-mown grass joined the mix.
From there it was a few dozen yards to an apple orchard. The trees were old and gnarled but the branches were laden with hard green fruit, still weeks away from ripening.
Coming out the other side, they climbed a small hill and arrived at the wood’s apron.
Here the cultivated grounds gave way to unbridled nature. Gone were all signs of civilization save the handmade notices that hung at odd angles off naked tree-trunk poles tamped into the ground at six-foot intervals. The warnings were written out in uneven letters painted in black on rough wooden planks.
Private Property.
Intruders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent.
Pilgrims and tourists alike.
Pilgrims?
Jac wanted to ask Malachai to explain, but he was already yards ahead, waiting for her on the other side of the implied border.
She met him at the edge of a grove of hemlocks and pines and they stepped inside the forest.
The blue-green darkness and its scent assaulted her. Usually she loved the smell of tree resins, but its intensity here was overwhelming. It stung. As if the sharp tips of the evergreen needles were pricking her olfactory sensors.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Malachai asked as he opened his arms, embracing the woods.
“Yes,” she said, but she was thinking that there was violence here as well as beauty. The primeval forest that rose up around her seemed threatening. She felt slight beside the trees. These pines had outlived her mother. Many were older than her grandmother. They inhabited this land. She was the interloper.
Jac and Malachai were completely inside shadows now. Submerged in them. The canopy of trees so thick it filtered out whatever sunlight broke through the clouds. Jac felt enveloped in a pervasive gloom.
As someone who produced and wrote a cable TV show exploring the origins of myths, Jac knew all too well the deep significance shadows held in ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology.
Of all the classics she’d read, the most frightening—the one that she often visited in nightmares—was the tale of Agave, Pentheus’ mother. Under Dionysus’ spell, Agave lost her shadow and with it her identity as a mother and a woman. Assuming masculine attributes, she became dark, brutal and less emotional. As her rational impulses yielded to irrational ones, her passions trumped her intellect. Wild rage consumed her. More and more often her unconscious overwhelmed her conscious mind. Until in one final furious frenzy, she did the unthinkable. Agave murdered her own son.
It was then, after the filicide, that she suffered the fate that haunted Jac. The fate said to be the most difficult to bear of all. Agave buried her own child and lived long past him, evermore mourning her loss.
Jac had read what Jung wrote about our shadow selves being the negative, unresolved aspects of personality. The part of the psyche we must confront and come to terms with if we ever hope to become whole. Jac knew she hadn’t yet confronted all her shadows. And that one day she’d need to.
Malachai knew it too. He’d been the Jungian therapist assigned to her case at the Blixer Rath clinic in Switzerland seventeen years ago. They’d been talking about her shadows for a long time.
“Are you all right?” Malachai called from up ahead.
“Fine,” was all she trusted herself to say. How to explain her inexplicable overreaction to this place without making him nervous? He watched her too carefully since her trip to Paris in May when she’d gone home for the first time in years to help her brother look for a lost book of fragrances that was part of a family legend. She’d wound up helping save Robbie’s life, but the danger they’d been in and the memories that had been stirred up had taken a toll on her equilibrium. And so now Malachai took her emotional temperature too often. Seemed almost constantly checking to make sure she was all right. He hadn’t been this concerned about her well-being since she was fourteen years old.
No, Jac didn’t want to ruin this excursion by worrying him. Malachai had made it clear it mattered to him that she see this special place. For all he had done for her, the least she could do was to soldier on. But before she took the next step, she did turn and look back. The path they’d taken to get here was no longer visible. Even if she wanted to escape, the way out was lost. They’d left no trace of their route.
Escape?
They were not venturing into danger but taking a walk on the grounds of his estate. Her imagination was spiraling.
Be present.
Following Malachai’s footsteps, she trod the next stretch of forest as the route wove through monstrous pines. A thick carpet of needles and leaves camouflaged aboveground roots and fallen twigs and made the trail treacherous. She tripped, but Malachai was ahead of her and didn’t notice. Only the birds bore witness to her clumsiness. Righting herself, she continued on.
Suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, she heard a new sound and smelled a new combination of scents. Both were hard to identify until she and Malachai rounded a bend and came upon a waterfall cascading over boulders. The spray on her face smelled of iron. The air, of petrichor, the oil produced by plants when they’re wet. The aroma intensified as the path followed the resulting rushing stream down a slight incline.
“Do we have a destination?” she asked, when they’d been hiking for more than thirty-five minutes. “Or are you just showing me the woods?”
A dead pine, a victim of a storm, or rot, blocked their way.
“Time is too precious to squander. I always have a destination. You should know that by now. The one I’m taking you to today might be just what you’re searching for.”
“What do you mean?” Even as she asked, she knew he wouldn’t answer. Malachai loved to be provocative. As she watched him navigate the felled tree, climbing awkwardly because of his injured hip, she worried for his health. She wasn’t sure how old he was, but guessed he was in his mid-sixties, perhaps older. He was the most determined man she’d ever known. Sometimes his emotional immunity in light of his resolve to accomplish something made him seem inhuman. But he wasn’t. He wouldn’t always be there for her.
She was doing it again. Spiraling into the negative. Since coming home from Paris she’d been more anxious than usual. Existential dilemmas that used to pique her curiosity now disturbed her profoundly.
We are all fragile.
Tragedy can strike in an instant.
Almost nothing is within our control.
On the other side of the tree, Malachai brushed off his hands.
“We’re almost there,” he said as he returned to the path.
After another three or four minutes, the trail stopped twisting and became as straight and sure as a cathedral’s central aisle. At its end, Jac glimpsed a clearing.
Malachai threw open his arms expansively. “Welcome to my secret garden.” He smiled enigmatically and led her into the grove of oaks in full leaf. The air was cooler inside this copse. The sensual, earthy odor of oakmoss scented the darkness.
When dried, oakmoss smells of bark, of wet foliage, even of the sea. But since ancient Greek and Roman times its importance had never been its individual odor. Instead, its greatest value was as a bonding agent; oakmoss brought ingredients together, imbuing the end result with a velvety, creamy oneness. Adding an unrivaled richness and longevity to a perfume.
“These are amazing trees,” Jac said.
“Majestic.”
The oak was important in mythology too and so had a special relevance to Jac. “The name Druid means ‘knowing the oak,’ ” she said. “The priests carried out their religious rituals in oak forests.”
“Interesting you chose to mention Celtic mythology.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
Malachai didn’t answer, just motioned for her to follow.
The path t
hrough the trees was hidden by layers of last year’s dead leaves, twigs and acorns. For a second time, Jac tripped. The moment slowed. She began to fall.
Before she hit the ground, Malachai’s hand gripped her arm and he helped her find her balance.
“Are you all right?” he asked in the concerned tone she’d heard so often that summer.
“Fine. Thanks.”
“The roots and sinkholes are impossible to see under all that foliage. You need to be careful.”
Jac nodded. She’d been paying more attention to everything but the uneven terrain. By now she was almost drunk on the aroma of the moss, decaying leaves and moisture. The fragrance teased her. Tricked her into thinking she was smelling the passage of time. This was the scent of earth turning over year after year, of flora and fauna regenerating and becoming nourishment for the next season’s growth.
It could have been a scent of rebirth. But instead Jac smelled the encroaching fall. She smelled death.
They’d reached an outcropping of quarried stones carefully arranged in a double circle. Like other ancient calendars she’d seen here in New England and in Europe, there was little question as to its function. No wonder Malachai had commented on her Celtic reference.
Her host walked around the impressive ruin with her as she examined it.
“I’m sure you’ve had these dated?” Jac asked.
“They predate two thousand BCE.”
“Fantastic.” She felt a real kick of excitement.
Approaching a slab set just outside the circle at twelve o’clock, she began her inspection. For a few minutes, she examined both its sides and scarred surface. “Based on these burn marks, this looks like it was a ritual site.”
“I concur,” he said. “But we haven’t been able to verify it.”
“No, it’s hard to find detailed answers in scarring. There’s so much we don’t know about the past,” she whispered as she ran her hand over the weathered stone, trying to imagine what—or who—might have once lain on its smooth surface.
Malachai chortled. “And so much we could know were we not afraid of exploring outside realms of traditional science.”
She felt chastised but didn’t respond. Malachai was one of the leading reincarnationists in the world. They’d argued enough in the last two months about her refusal to accept reincarnation as a fact. Yes, she’d had a half-dozen unexplained hallucinations this summer in Paris. But they weren’t necessarily past-life regressions. Yes, they had appeared to be a response to an olfactory trigger. But that in itself was not unusual. There were many substances in nature that functioned as hallucinogens when ingested, imbibed or inhaled. Shamans and monks, mystics and Sufis had been using them for years to enter meditative states and receive visions.
