by Suzanne Weyn
The grim reality of my dismal situation—which had momentarily been cushioned by my delight at Thad’s arrival—surged back on me with full force. I was on my way to a certainly angry mother and sisters who would probably be bewildered and feel caught in the middle. Would they all blame me for letting Mimi run off as she had? How could I face it all without her?
And now I worried that the one bright spot I had to look forward to—letters from Thad—would not arrive. The last three minutes of our time together had, I feared, completely changed his view of me. In a second, he had gone from seeing me as his contemporary to viewing me as a child! Why couldn’t I ever keep my mouth shut?
The train was now running at full speed, racing into the blackness of a tunnel that would carry me away from this exciting city—and away from Thad. Shutting my eyes, I lost myself in the motion of the train carrying me forward. What would it be like to travel on and on and never arrive, simply to keep moving with no endpoint?
I remembered what Tesla had said about traveling into the future, but for the moment, I was in no rush to get there. The future would be fully upon me the moment I arrived back in Spirit Vale.
Chapter 14
SPIRIT VALE, 1911-1912
My recklessness in taking off for New York was almost forgotten in Mother’s shouting and weeping over Mimi’s departure. Why hadn’t I stopped her? How could I have let her go? I must not have tried hard enough to talk sense into her. It was as if I had been the older sister and could have somehow controlled Mimi. Mother decried the terrible loss of Mimi as “irresponsible” of me.
The entire town took up my disgrace. Aunty Lily said I had been the one who tricked her into driving us to Buffalo, when in actuality it had been Mimi’s idea. Princess Running Deer did a Native American spirit ceremony to try to contact Mimi’s living spirit to make sure she was safe. When no response came, Mother went into fits of distress, crying for days, certain some harm had come to her.
Amelie and Emma provided unexpected comfort in a weird sort of way. One night at dinner, Emma suddenly stood up at the table and began to rock slightly as a faraway look came into her eyes. The same strange distance appeared in Amelie’s expression.
“I have found her,” Emma spoke in a trancelike voice, softer and gentler than her own normal tone.
“Who are you?” Mother asked cautiously.
“It’s me, Mother. Amelie.”
We all looked to Amelie, but she gave no indication of being aware of us. Why had Emma said she was Amelie?
We shifted back to Emma. “Mimi is over water. It’s night where she is,” Emma said, still in her trance state. “She is staring up at the moon. She is in love.”
“In love!” Mother cried and jumped up so forcefully that her dinner plate fell to the floor. “With whom is she in love?”
The commotion had the effect of breaking Emma’s trance. Her eyes blinked rapidly and lost their distant gaze.
“Whom is your sister in love with?” Mother demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma replied. “Who is in love?”
We looked to Amelie, but she had rested her head on the table and was now snoring lightly.
“You said you were Amelie,” I told Emma. “Why?”
Emma shrugged. “Did I? How odd.”
This news that Mimi was safe, derived from wherever, comforted us all, except for Mother, who seemed to think that this impending romance simply upped the level of peril involved. Every time she looked at me, she seemed reminded of it anew and shook her head darkly.
Only Blythe, recently turned thirteen, thought Mimi was brave and adventurous. “She would have been an idiot not to have gone,” she stated boldly to us one night when everyone was in the parlor and Mother was once again engulfed in tears and recriminations. This took everyone by surprise, since Blythe was not usually one to buck the tide of prevailing opinion. “We’re not rich. There is no wealthy young man for her to meet in this town. The only young men at all are ones who have died and speak through other people. When else would she have a chance like this to see the world and find romance?”
“Don’t you go getting any ideas, Blythe,” Mother chided. “Your sister is involved with scandalous people. Who knows what this will do to her reputation or to her chances of making a suitable marriage—not some shipboard fling with who knows what manner of man.”
“What do you care what people think?” Blythe spoke to Mother with unforeseen defiance. Her words seemed so at odds with the cherubic face that it made me see her in a new light, as a surprisingly independent person, no longer a child. “Most people think everyone in this town is crazier than a loon,” she continued. “And they’re probably right! That doesn’t seem to bother you.”
“Crazy…why…craz—” Mother cried, sputtering incredulously. “No one thinks that. People flock here for guidance!”
“Crazy people,” Blythe insisted.
For being so insolent, Mother banished Blythe to her room, punishing her for the first time any of us could recall. She then confined me to my room, simply because I had brought all this on in the first place.
This blame did not relent, making that autumn of 1911 one I did not particularly enjoy. But, like waves, events roll in with a crash-bang, then recede, leaving the waters calm—at least until the next wave comes along. That’s what I discovered in the weeks of being constantly confined to my room, a confinement during which I worked on my article about Tesla while thinking about Thad unceasingly. After a while, Mother stopped crying and quit noticing whether Blythe and I were in our rooms. The townspeople gave up looking at me with condemning glances.
Late that November, teams of workers descended on Spirit Vale in flatbed trucks loaded with timber. It seemed that nearly the entire town came out each day to watch them work as, in a remarkably short time, giant poles were erected along Main Street. The workers then scrambled up the poles and strung great lengths of telephone cable between them.
Once again, as with the electric lighting, the Spirit was the center of our first experience of the telephone. The first words spoken over the telephone cable in Spirit Vale were voiced by Aunty Lily. She was proud to be the one to speak them in front of a fascinated crowd that included Mother, Blythe, Emma, Amelie, and me, as well as many of the other resident mediums. “Hello,” she said. “Is this the Buffalo police station? It is? Well, we are pleased to report that all is calm here in Spirit Vale. Thank you.”
When Aunty Lily hung up, Madam Anushka lifted the tall, black metal phone, turning the speaker piece in her hand. “I vonder eef de spirit vorld can be contacted in dis way?” she pondered aloud.
“It is a mite like talking to a spirit,” Aunty Lily remarked. “There’s this voice talking at ya, but no body.”
“What if Hiram called you up one night?” Blythe suggested with a touch of mischief.
“Now why would he do that when he’s right here?” Aunty Lily asked. “He is still here, isn’t he, Maude?” she checked with Mother.
“Yes, and he says you were very intelligent to have this phone installed,” Mother reported.
Aunty Lily beamed proudly.
By December I had stopped checking the mailbox, continually hoping for a letter from either Mimi or Thad. It had never been easy to secretly check the mail at the box out by the white picket fence. When Mother wasn’t busy with clients or helping Aunty Lily with her hotel accounts, she was nearly camped there. She and W. T. Stead had begun a lively correspondence. To receive a new letter from him was the greatest pleasure of her life.
I think it was safe to presume that Mother had developed a crush on the noted journalist. He told her of Julia’s Bureau, an institution he’d established in 1909 where inquirers could obtain information regarding the spirit world from his spirit guide, Julia. He had on staff a group of mediums who could contact her.
He also sent Mother small gifts: a pack of tarot cards, a crystal ball made of real crystal, clusters of amethyst stone for channeling and focusing energ
y. Another gift that arrived in early December was a Ouija board, which Mother immediately set about mastering and using with her clients. The plaque in our front yard soon read: MAUDE ONEIDA TAYLOR—MEDIUM, CHANNELER, VIBRATIONAL PATTERNS INTERPRETED, TAROT READ, CRYSTAL ENERGY FOCUSED, EXPERT PRACTITIONER OF OUIJA BOARD CONTACT.
On Christmas Eve that year, my sisters and I each played a role in Spirit Vale’s yearly production of A Christmas Carol, held in the town center. As one might imagine, in a population focused on the spirit world, this play about Christmas ghosts and prophetic, transformative dreams was held in very high, nearly worshipful esteem. I had been cast as Mrs. Cratchit. Blythe was the beautiful young woman Scrooge almost married. Emma and Amelie were the Ghost of Christmas Past, played as one entity, which was how people were starting to consider them. Aunty Lily made a wonderfully cranky, if somewhat effeminate, Scrooge, and Princess Running Deer was an ominous presence as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Madam Anushka accompanied the scenes with haunting performances on her violin. The final bows were met with rousing cheers.
All that was missing was Mimi.
Afterward, snowflakes began to fall as my sisters and I headed across the empty main road toward home. The fast-falling snow required us to flip up the hoods of our woolen capes. The light blanket of whiteness that quickly accumulated added to the quiet beauty of the town, with all its gingerbread porches strung in tiny, white electric lights for the first time ever. “It’s so magical,” Blythe commented wistfully. “I hope it’s snowing wherever Mimi is, and that some handsome fellow is holding her hand.”
“Me, too,” I answered, picturing Mimi in a Swiss mountaintop chalet with some prince by her side.
The image also made me think of Thad. What was he doing this Christmas Eve? Was he at a party paying attention to a girl—one prettier than me and closer to his age? Or was he deep in Tesla’s laboratory, unaware of the celebrations outside?
When we arrived home, Mother, who had left the show at curtain call, was waiting with hot chocolate and candy canes. She’d put our wrapped gifts under the tree that, despite the general embrace of electricity, was still lit with delicate, tinfoil-cupped candles on its branches.
We were about to begin opening our gifts when we heard the new motorized mail truck stop at our box and then move on. “He’s arriving late,” Mother commented. “He must have an overload of holiday mail.”
“I’ll go get it,” I said, unable to resist, despite the fact that I had convinced myself neither Mimi nor Thad would ever write. I threw my cape over my shoulders and ran out the front door, once more into the snow, which was falling even more heavily than before.
At the mailbox I pulled out a stack of letters, mostly Christmas cards from our neighbors and one from W. T. Stead, sure to delight Mother. But also included in the delivery was a package wrapped in brown paper and addressed to me. Its postmark was from New York City.
With excited, trembling hands, I ripped the paper apart right there.
It was a book. Without even reading the title, I flipped inside, looking for some kind of inscription or note, but there was none.
Closing it, I read the title: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
It could have come from only one of two people—Tesla or Thad.
“What’s taking so long?” Mother called from the front porch. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right,” I assured her, heading back toward the house.
She waited for me on the porch. “Anything from Mimi?” she asked hopefully.
“No, but Mr. Stead has sent you a card.”
“How wonderful,” she said, extending her hand for it.
She glanced down at the card, smiling fondly. Then she looked back to me. “Merry Christmas, Jane. What do you say we put all our disagreements behind us and start fresh for the new year?”
“I would like that,” I said with a catch in my voice.
“So would I.” With her arm around my shoulder, we turned back to the house.
Neither of us had any idea what the new year was soon to bring.
Chapter 15
And so we lived through the cold months of January and February, when business was always slow in Spirit Vale and the winter wind wailed down Main Street like so many spirits despondently wondering why their loved ones were not seeking their attention.
The Time Machine stayed on my shelf, its spine unbroken. It had probably come from Tesla, I decided. I had given him our address before we’d parted. That he had thought of me at all touched me. His words Jiva is Shiva repeated in my head, but only because I liked the sound of them, much as a popular tune becomes lodged in your brain.
Of course, I pondered why he’d sent me that particular book. I recalled him mentioning traveling to the future and I was eager to see if I could find a connection in the story. But to begin reading the book would make me think of Thad and Mimi, and I didn’t want to dwell for too long on either of them. It was too painful.
I could well imagine why Thad hadn’t written—in fact, I imagined it incessantly, reliving over and over the disappointed look on his face when he realized my age.
But where was Mimi? Why hadn’t she written? My thoughts ran from horrible anxieties about terrible perils that might have befallen her to an even more horrifying thought: What if she’d decided to embrace her new life by cutting all connection to her family? I couldn’t imagine that she would do such a thing…but it was a possibility.
It was easier on my emotions to stay close to my fictional companion Sherlock Holmes and his friend, the sensible Dr. Watson. Holmes was logical, rational, and impeccable in scrutinizing every detail. Watson and Holmes were both men of science clearing a path of reason among the murky depths of crime and passion. They did not talk to the dead—nor did they run off to Europe on a whim or make a promise to write and then not do so!
I continued to follow Tesla in the papers. I saw a picture of him at a press conference when his radio tower in Long Island was foreclosed once and for all. He promised the gathered press that he was working on a new invention that would be so successful it would enable him to personally finance a new, higher tower with a stronger signal. He didn’t look well. In the background behind Tesla was Thad, listening to his employer with intense interest. I took that photo out and studied it often with a painful mix of longing and anger until it was a worn, nearly translucent shred.
With my accumulated collection of articles and my original interview, I wrote an article titled “Through the Eyes of a Genius.” Just in time for the contest deadline, I mailed it—painstakingly typewritten and bound with a blue ribbon—to the Sun. Then I tried not to think of it again.
The Spirit Hotel was all but empty at this time of year, so Aunty Lily didn’t need my help as a chambermaid anymore. Mother decided I no longer needed schooling, so I was given the responsibility of tutoring Blythe, a task I enjoyed more than expected. It seemed Blythe, who had always seemed so contented to play with her dolls, was now chomping at the bit to get out of Spirit Vale. “Boarding school would be lovely,” she told me with a longing sigh. “Imagine an entire school where the dead just kept their mouths shut.”
“Why would you possibly want that?” asked Emma from her straight-backed chair in the parlor. She and Amelie would sit as heavy snows fell past the window beside them, at a narrow table in the parlor, facing each other, knees touching and working with the Ouija board sent by W. T. Stead. With their wispy, light brown hair caught in identical loosely bound knots atop their heads, their matching slim, willowy frames bent over the board in intense concentration, they looked like lovely fifteen-year-old bookends. Emma asked the questions and Amelie worked the triangular disc, in theory letting the spirits spell out their responses. Sometimes the two sets of violet blue eyes they focused on that board didn’t waver from it for hours at a time.
One day I stood behind Emma. “Amelie, ask the spirits why you won’t talk,” I said.
Amelie looked directly at me as though startled
by the question. Then she placed her hands on the disc and it began to move. I was never sure if it was pulling her fingers along or if she was pushing it. Before long it had spelled out a sentence that read: I am talking.
“Then why can’t I hear you?” I asked.
“You’re not listening,” Emma replied.
“Do you hear her?”
Emma nodded. “I hear her in my mind.”
“It must be because you’re twins,” I decided.
“Amelie has the gift,” Emma said. “It drains her. It’s easier if she doesn’t speak.”
Blythe had been paging through the fashion section of the Sun but broke from her perusal of the latest ankle boots. “That’s one gift I don’t want. Give me a pair of these boots any day.”
That same night, I was awakened by a strange sound outside my window. Lifting my head to listen, I decided it must be a branch blown loose, banging in the winter wind. I returned to a light sleep, only to be reawakened by the noise, which was now louder.
I was proud of my logical mind and did not allow the ghostly goings-on in town to frighten me. But that night, I shrunk low under my covers. Had Mother summoned some spirit who had decided to stay? And if so, why was it walking around outside Blythe’s and my bedroom window?
I looked to the twin bed beside me where Blythe had decided to sleep since Mimi had vacated it. She claimed the room she shared with the twins was too crowded, and I didn’t object because I hated staring at Mimi’s empty bed at night.
I heard the sound again, and this time I realized it sounded like a footstep out on the roof. Once this thought hit, I was instantly wide-awake, every sense alert. Blythe continued to sleep, so, tight with fear, I crept out of my bed and jostled her awake. “Listen!” I whispered. The creaking from the roof had become unmistakable.
Wordlessly Blythe left her bed and went to the window. I followed behind her.
There was, indeed, a pale, ghostly figure standing on the roof.
Blythe pushed up the window. “Amelie!” she called in a harsh whisper. “Come inside.”
