This Side of Jordan

by Monte Schulz

  Edith remarked, “Just last spring, my husband witnessed the use of an Ediphone to record spirit voices.”

  “It is our own vital electricity,” Oscar explained, “our electrical emanations, that initiates the spiritual telegraph through which these trance mediums perform. There’s no longer any recondite mystery about it. The science behind celestial guidance has become clear as day. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that anyone with the proper mental physiology should be able to achieve spiritual rapport.”

  Edith agreed. “It’s true, of course. I’ve communicated clairaudiently with my sister Sara for years. She passed over with typhus when she was just nine and I missed her terribly before I learned what a lovely purpose she has now among the spirit spheres and how beautiful everything is over there.”

  The double doors parted behind Alvin, and he heard a woman’s lilting voice issue from the back parlor: “Flowers whose fragrance lingers, whose bloom fades not, a summer’s day of joyous youth.”

  Oscar Elliotsen and the dwarf got up and Alvin looked over his shoulder to where Madame Zelincka stood under the mahogany archway dressed in a flowing lavender robe.

  Edith grinned and clapped her hands. “Oh dear, I had a crystal vision of you just yesterday evening, materializing for me like this in gossamer silk, spirit-spun!”

  Quickly, Alvin stood, too, having decided to keep any further opinions under his hat. He didn’t want these folks to hate him. People were being friendly for once and he didn’t want to foul it up. Besides which, he knew he had good reason to make friends with the dearly departed.

  Madame Zelincka smiled as she strolled into the parlor. “Then it would have been infelicitous of the spirits not to have called us together this evening.” She surveyed the room. Her face was pale and lovely, her eyes blue as the sky. She was sober and statuesque, taller than her guests, and her brown hair, a graceful chignon of dark curls, hung down her back. “I’m so pleased you’re all here.”

  Alvin smelled a scent of sweet verbena as the medium drew near. She winked at him and he blushed. Why hadn’t he worn a suit? He felt like a hick.

  Oscar Elliotsen said, “I’ve been waiting all week to tell you that Mrs. Tingley’s temple dome at Point Loma was even more beautiful than you promised.”

  Edith said, “My husband’s favorite shade is amethyst.”

  Oscar added, “We joined a harmonial circle on our final evening with Dr. de Purucker that got over to Madame Blavatsky herself. As she spoke to us of her celestial life now, we were inundated by a wonderful sprinkling of fresh violets from the summerland.”

  The dwarf remarked, “Oh, I’ve read that the pure dry air of California inspires the most startling manifestations.”

  Madame Zelincka’s eyes sparkled in the golden light from the shaded oil lamps. She nodded. “That’s quite true. Contrary to our original theories of vibration and mental regions, spirit magnetism appears to be invigorated by atmospheric conditions that most closely resemble the radiant fountains of sunlight those exalted souls enjoy in the seventh sphere.”

  “Madame Zelincka?”

  A dainty older woman dressed in a white lace gown with a garland of pearls and a crystal pendant appeared under the archway. Alvin saw she had been crying lately, her powdered face drawn with tears of sadness.

  The medium greeted her with a warm smile. “Lillian, come meet our friends.” To the others in the parlor, she explained, “The disembodied spirit of Lillian’s late husband Joseph has survived in an etheric body for three years now without knowing he’s passed to a life beyond our own. Because he’s still able to see and hear his loved ones, he thinks he’s dreaming, a not uncommon spiritual infirmity for those whose physical lives were crippled somehow by disease or discontent. Tonight, this mental agony of Joseph’s, shared faithfully by his dear Lillian, will be addressed by our psychic circle and the purpose of his life in spheres above, revealed to him at last.”

  Lillian remained in the doorway, her fingers knotted tightly together. “Can’t we begin now?” Madame Zelincka polled her guests. When each nodded a willingness to proceed with the séance, she smiled. “Well then, perhaps we should retire to the spirit room.”

  Edith agreed, rising from the chesterfield. “Indeed! There is no artifice to the odic flame. Mysteries will be revealed, enlightenment gained only when we commence our sitting.”

  “That light of heaven beaming through to us,” the dwarf said, starting for the back parlor.

  “The great truth,” Oscar Elliotsen added, crossing the carpet arm-in-arm with his wife.

  “There is no death,” Edith affirmed.

  The farm boy waited briefly by a potted palm on the side of the doorway where several unshelved books were stacked casually atop the flanking bookcase: Scientific Basis of Spiritualism, Thirty Years Among the Dead, Gleams of Light and Glimpses Thro’ the Rift, Somnolism and Psycheism, Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, and a thick blue volume with the odd title OAHSPE. He hadn’t seen any ghost pictures yet.

  As Madame Zelincka entered the back parlor, her son Albert increased the illumination in order for everybody to see where they needed to go. The spirit room was a perfect octagon draped in burgundy silk at each wall, divided by bracket gas lamps with tulip shades tinted pale heliotrope, yet barren of furniture except for the round spirit table and six mackintosh chairs. Persian rugs covered the floor while the entire ceiling above shimmered with golden stars on an indigo sky.

  The sitters took their places at the table with the dwarf seated between Lillian and Madame Zelincka, the farm boy to Lillian’s right, Edith next to Alvin, and Oscar Elliotsen between his wife and the medium: a proper balance of men and women around the spirit circle. Once everyone was comfortable, Madame Zelincka placed a fountain pen and a stack of blank message cards on the table, then motioned to Albert who departed through the front parlor, drawing the mahogany doors shut behind him. Tulip-shaded gaslights were reduced to a faint purple glow and the sitters became still. The darkened spirit room was cool and the air dry and clean. Alvin remembered how his sisters had played with a Ouija board planchette and automatic writing when they were younger. For half a year, Mary Ann claimed to be clairvoyant and told everyone in the family she had received personal messages on a slate hidden in her closet from a ghost named Agatha. Both Amy and Mary Ann learned how to crack their toes like the Fox sisters and imitate spirit rappings under the dining room table. Only Grandma Louise was fooled. No one in Alvin’s family had ever mentioned attending a genuine séance.

  He heard Madame Zelincka’s melodic voice speak out of the gloom: “Please place your hands on the table, palms down.”

  She waited a few moments for the sitters to comply, then began, “By the constitution of our universe, each of us exists in the all-pervading ether as pure spirit until we are born into the material world, which is itself the beginning of our individuality that persists after physical death when the spirit quits the body once more to join celestial spheres. Those of us who remain earthbound give off thought-rays that attract beings of an ethereal order to the gates between life and death. Because even the long-departed remember earthly pleasures, many would gladly forsake the highest realms of eternal glory for the joy of seeing families gathered together again for Sunday dinner or watching a belovéd child at play once more. This insistence upon revisiting the earth-plane is achieved by the attracting odylic energies of a sympathetic medium, which permit direct communication with spirits across the veil much like electricity is filtered through a galvanic battery. These spirits experience a séance like a blissful afternoon dream, a pleasant interlude. They yearn to be called.”

  Madame Zelincka became silent.

  After a few minutes, the farm boy felt a strange chill in the air, not unlike the dark draft in the Palace of Mirrors. His fellow sitters were barely visible across the spirit table, but the ceiling sky of stars seemed luminescent, floating gently in the gloom high overhead. He heard a faint tinkling nearby like the ringing of a tiny bell.
A brief vibration rattled the table. Lillian drew a sudden breath. Alvin felt a mild breeze pass through the darkness behind him while the jingling increased to a delicate melody from a music box some garden fairy might possess. The spirit table shuddered and tipped. He heard Edith whisper to her husband. The table shook hard and the farm boy’s arms tingled as if stung by electricity and the spirit table trembled and began to rise ever so slightly from the floor. Lillian squealed and briefly pulled her hands away. Strange knocking sounds circled the room. Raising his eyes, the farm boy saw an apparition of fireflies mingling with the stars. It sent a cold shiver up his back.

  “Spirit lights,” Edith murmured.

  The table rose to a foot above the floor and hovered silently. Higher in the dark, the spirit lights glowed blue and flew about the room like burning phosphorous on a spectral draft. Alvin heard the ticking of a metronome somewhere and the beat of a snare drum. He held his breath as the table tipped precipitously toward Oscar Elliotsen who grunted but stayed in his chair. Then the music faded away and the spirit table descended slowly to the floor.

  A violet aura formed about Madame Zelincka.

  She spoke aloud, “Ethan?”

  The spirit lights suddenly fled and the farm boy felt his hair ruffled by another chilly breeze. A single bird feather wafted out of the darkness overhead, drifting and spinning slowly downward toward the sitters.

  It alighted precisely in the center of the spirit table.

  Madame Zelincka spoke again. “Ethan?”

  A minute of silence.

  Another feather.

  Then, like a distant tinny voice over the radio, “I want my milk and johnnycake.”

  The medium asked, “Are you hungry, Ethan?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I sit by the river everyday without catching so much as a tadpole.

  The fishing is very poor in the spirit land.”

  Changing slightly the timbre of her voice, Madame Zelincka told the sitters, “Poor Ethan is an orphan child who drowned in the Potomac the night our great President Lincoln was murdered, so his physical remains went unsought, his passing disregarded. As Ethan waits to be claimed, his tragic predicament summons other desperate souls to the gate.”

  Madame Zelincka reached under her own chair and brought up a small paraffin lamp that she lit with a lucifer match and placed on the spirit table. Then she passed one of the blank cards to the dwarf, one to Lillian, and one to Edith. By now, Alvin had forgotten he ever had a fever.

  Her violet aura dimmed by the lamplight, Madame Zelincka said, “I must tell you now that there are tramp spirits who infiltrate many sittings hoping to impersonate a familiar loved one for the purpose of instituting mischief. The messages from such beings only confuse true spirit teachings, like a ray of light deflected at its source. They can be hurtful and dangerous. Therefore, determining proof of a spirit’s identity is essential. What I would like each of you to do now is to compose a thought or a question on your card that might only be addressed through direct writing by one who knows you best. When you’ve done so, place the card beneath your chair and leave it there until I ask for it.”

  Madame Zelincka took the fountain pen and handed it to Edith. “Mrs. Elliotsen, would you please begin?”

  “Surely.”

  The medium raised her voice. “Ethan?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are the others here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They each wish to speak. Shall I let them?”

  “Soon, dear.”

  “I learned a song by the river this morning. Would you care to hear it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ta-ra-ra-boom-dee-ay. Ta-ra-ra-boom-dee-ay.”

  The farm boy heard a faint giggling echo race about the spirit room. He watched Edith pass the fountain pen to Lillian, who began scribbling onto her card. The flame within the paraffin lamp flickered. Alvin squinted nervously into the dark, but saw nothing. His legs felt numb.

  Madame Zelincka said, “That’s very nice, Ethan. Can you sing another?”

  “No, ma’am. The water’s very cold today. I watched three squirrels fight over a walnut. I think it may snow soon.”

  “Ethan, may I please speak with Joseph Cheney?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lillian handed the pen to the dwarf, and hid her message card. Oscar stifled a cough. The dwarf rapidly scrawled something and gave the fountain pen back to Madame Zelincka.

  The medium extinguished the flame in the paraffin lamp, darkening the spirit room once again. She spoke softly, “Joseph?”

  The sitters were each silent.

  Alvin felt the barest prickling over his skin, but held his attention on the medium. For perhaps half a minute, Madame Zelincka gazed dimly into the purple shadows beyond the table.

  Then, slowly, a green luminous effluence emerged from her eyes and ears and mouth, like a radiant fluid passing into the atmosphere.

  “Emanations of ectoplastic strings,” the dwarf murmured in the gloom, his own eyes wide with wonder.

  “Ghost serpents,” said Oscar Elliotsen.

  “Pure etherium from across the veil,” Edith said, with a smile. “Essence of the divine.”

  Alvin watched in awe as the glowing ectoplasm curled and floated about the spirit table, briefly caressing the stack of message cards, then winding in and out of the sitters, trailing away from Madame Zelincka like plumes of faint green smoke.

  The medium spoke up, “Joseph?”

  A man’s husky voice echoed out of the darkness across the room.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alvin searched quickly about for the source while Madame Zelincka said, “Lillian, please ask your question.”

  Lillian brought her card out from under the table. She spoke sweetly: “My husband Joseph was always quite a deuce with the girls. We first met during college at the Junior Promenade when I was on Reception Committee. Norris Webster introduced us to each other next to the coat closet where Joseph told a particularly clever joke.”

  “Which three members of our esteemed faculty most resemble a camp breakfast? Bacon, Dunn, Browne!”

  The dwarf laughed aloud.

  Oscar Elliotsen stifled a cough.

  Nodding, Lillian passed her card to Madame Zelincka who glanced at it briefly with a smile. Then the medium inquired, “Are you feeling well, Joseph?”

  “I’m not sure. My wife believes I ought to take more exercise. When I was a student at the university, I threw the hammer on Field Day and never lost.”

  Madame Zelincka smiled. “Joseph, do you know where you are now?”

  “I see a table with chairs and a circle of people I’ve never met. Are you having a party? Was I invited? I suppose I must’ve been because I’m here, aren’t I? Really, I can’t quite remember.”

  The medium asked, “Do you feel lost, Joseph?”

  “I’ve had peculiar forebodings recently. I’ve been confused and I haven’t slept well. There’s a strange darkness all about. Is this the Mohonk Mountain House? Lillian and I were married in the Parlor Wing twenty-three years ago. It was my wife’s idea to return for our anniversary.”

  “Joseph insisted we make the same walk up to Sky Top cliff as we had when we were young,” Lillian told Madame Zelincka. “The trail was awfully cold in the evening, black as pitch, and quite treacherous coming down. I should have known there would be an accident. My husband suffered terrible ulcerations after his fall, yet refused a physical examination until he was unable to rise from bed at the end of the week.”

  “I had an accident?”

  “Don’t you recall?” Madame Zelincka asked.

  The husky spirit voice crossed the room. “I have no memory. I can’t think.”

  Lillian said, “I prayed by your bedside and mopped your brow for thirteen days, my darling. I held you to the very end.”

  Softening her voice, the medium told Lillian, “Your husband is gradually losing his earth memories. His mental life now occurs in spiritual darkness which
he’s experiencing as a form of wakeful delirium.” She spoke up. “Joseph?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Do you know what year it is?”

  “Of course I do. It’s 1926.”

  “No, it isn’t,” the medium replied. “This is now 1929.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Yet it’s true.”

  “Where have I been? Am I insane?”

  The medium asked, “Do you believe you are?”

  “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

  “This is no mental derangement or dementia. Three years ago, you passed over to the spirit side of life. You’ve lost your mortal body, Joseph. Your earthly life is finished.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why, it’s utter nonsense. Now I’m sure this is all a silly dream.”

  “You’ve been wandering in a twilight state for quite some time now, unconscious of the truth. Do you still need to eat? Do you feel the chill of autumn? We’ve gathered here in our circle tonight to wake you from this sleep of death that has blocked the spiritual progression which is your natural destiny.”

  Alvin watched the tulip lamps briefly flicker across the dark. A slight breeze passed by the spirit table bearing a musky odor of shaving soap and cologne, but he saw no one. Were the other sitters not so calm, he’d have been utterly petrified with fright.

  “Oh dear! Lillian, is this not some hideous nightmare? Am I really dead?”

  “Darling, I’ve missed you so!”

  Madame Zelincka said, “Joseph, nobody ever really dies. We simply pass on to an invisible world of higher mental spheres. The grave is not our final goal.”

  Alvin heard the voice shift again to another corner of the spirit room. “If I’ve died, why am I not in heaven?”

  “Heaven is within you, Joseph, as it is with all of us. You’re drawn here to the magnetic aura of the living perhaps because of a conscience stricken with discomfort over mistakes you made during your life on earth, or bothersome worries that should no longer concern you.”