by Paul Boor
In Forestport, Nicolas knew plenty of Irish; they’d come in droves to build the canals, and most were Catholic, eating fish on Fridays, crossing themselves whenever they let loose an oath or mentioned the name of a relative who’d passed on. They believed in an afterlife, like most religions, he guessed, but it seemed to Nicolas that theirs was a particularly structured view—heaven, hell…and something in between.
The afterlife. Nicolas had never given it much thought. He was a practical sort, and though he’d seen too much of the dead, he’d never seen a soul.
Worshippers paced up and down the aisle, seemingly at random. Nicolas was enjoying sitting quietly so near Keiller’s niece when she stood abruptly and motioned for him to follow to the front, where they knelt in a line of penitents with heads bowed. A priest in blue and gold satin vestments bobbed down the line, mumbling something that Nicolas recognized as Latin—not his best subject in school. In a flash, the priest smeared soot in the center of Nicolas’s forehead with his blackened thumb. The cross. The next moment Nicolas was following Renée back down the aisle. She stopped to dip her hand into a stone basin near the entrance and cross herself. Nicolas blinked against the tropical sunlight as they stepped outside.
“See, Nick? That wasn’t so bad.”
“It was quick enough. Will your uncle attend today?”
Renée turned her face up at him, the cross of soot on the smooth ivory of her forehead. “Uncle?” She gave out a burst of laughter. “Huh! Uncle’s only religion is science. Mine too, I suppose,” she said, turning serious. “There’s Easter and Christmas. In summer, there are so many funerals.” She sighed and wagged her head. “I’m afraid church is hardly a priority. This afternoon I’ll be tending to that boy’s cells you so fortuitously supplied me.”
“And I must locate this Cotton Exchange Building.”
“Oh, that’s simple. It’s at the dead center of the commercial district. Say, why don’t I accompany you? Indeed, on our way, why not stop by my house and take a cup of tea?” Renée hesitated. A frown rippled across her brow. “I live with my mother, hardly out of our way, and she’d be pleased to meet you.”
Nicolas was getting to like this island. It had its fair share of violence and danger, but there was gaiety and growth, too. The place was moving ahead. One day, he thought, the name of this port city would be on the lips of the world. And here, strolling beside him, was an exceptional woman, one who remained lighthearted in the face of personal losses that would turn a lesser woman—or man—into a weeping, lifeless recluse. Renée Keiller. A physician. A scientist who, with her uncle, would one day find a cure for yellow fever.
As they strolled along the broad boulevards toward her house, Nicolas couldn’t help but stare again and again at the smudge, the mark on Renée’s forehead—the black cross found on citizens throughout the city today. A bolt of misgiving passed through him as—in his mind’s eye—he saw that other mark, the thing that haunted his dreams and had marked the dead boy. A signature as black, as sinister as soot, but indelible, unchangeable . . . a scar.
19
The Medium on Ball Lane
The house was located on Ball Lane, a quiet, narrow street cut into the middle of the block, two streets down from Professor Keiller’s. It was a modest, freshly painted pink-and-white two-story home with small, simply ornamented porches along the front and one side, where a towering, leafless camphor tree exuded its faint, medicinal odor. Renée opened the gate of the white picket fence and trotted up the stairs, leading Nicolas across the porch and into the entrance hall. She called for her mother, with no answer.
“Please take a seat here,” she said, beckoning to a sun-filled, elegantly furnished sitting room to the right. She slipped off her gloves and set her hat on a hook. “It’s here that we receive guests.” Nicolas hesitated, his gaze drawn to the lightless room across the hall, its pocket doors half-closed.
“That other parlour is Mother’s personal sitting room,” Renée explained. “Here’s more cheery.” She motioned him into the sunlight. “I’ll see to some tea . . . and Mother.”
Renée walked toward the back of the house, but rather than sit, Nicolas shuffled across the hall for a quick look at the mother’s “personal sitting room.” A second parlour, it was nearly bare of furnishings. The outside shutters, closed tight against the tropical sun, allowed only thin slats of light to fall on a rug decorated with a large central zodiac sitting in a field of stars and a scattering of tiny numbers and obscure celestial signs. A stuffed screech owl, mounted high on the far wall, peered down with its large yellow eyes.
The only furniture in the room appeared to be a small, round, oaken table centered over the zodiac. The table was surrounded by four straight-backed chairs. It looked like a perfect setup for playing cards or board games, except that heavy curtains with a somber, floral pattern had been hung around the south-facing chair to create a freestanding “cabinet” that, if closed, would completely isolate the player seated there. More strangely, this chair sat on a large scale like those used to weigh bales of cotton or other produce. The legs of the chair had been sawed partially off to put its occupant at a proper level to the table.
Once his eyes had adjusted to the light, Nicolas noted a sideboard along the far wall that held a pair of writing slates, a box of chalk, and a “talking board,” a sort of tablet covered with letters and numbers used for supernatural communication. Next to the sideboard stood a tall contraption composed of copper electrodes, a tangled nest of electrical wires, and a panel of gauges and dials.
Nicolas took two steps through the pocket door and gasped. To his astonishment, just inside the door stood a stuffed ape, upright and dressed in full formal attire. With wing collar, black cravat, tails, and silk top hat, the creature—a chimpanzee or perhaps a baboon—was about three feet in height and expertly preserved. The simian mouth of this masterpiece of the taxidermist’s art was drawn taut in a wicked smirk; it held a copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species under one arm, and its other arm was fully extended with white-gloved hand signing a welcome.
A chill cut through Nicolas. He understood that a “medium” practiced her art here, but to what precise use this odd assortment of paraphernalia might be put was a puzzle. The smug-looking ape beckoning the visitor to the séance table was an obvious affront to modern science, specifically to Darwin’s theories. So mesmerized was Nicolas by the ape and the whole uncanny business, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Renée spoke behind him.
“Nick—I’d like you to meet Madame La Porte, my mother.”
“Enchanted,” Nicolas said, spinning around with a quick recovery. “La Porte, was it?”
“My married name of course was Keiller,” Renée’s mother explained. “Celeste Keiller, but when my dear husband passed I reverted to La Porte. I thought it fitting since the dear boy, the love of my life, was a professor of linguistics, a Francophile who loved the sounds of words.” She extended a pale, elegantly manicured hand. “So pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Nicolas took the hand of the lady of the house, a handsome woman who had Renée’s gentle face and Cajun dark hair, but with wide streaks of grey, like angel’s wings, along her temples.
“I see you’ve discovered my special room,” she said, her voice at once Southern and regal. “But please, this way.”
She led them through the open pocket doors into the cozier sitting room, evidently a lady’s parlour furnished with armchairs and a long settee. Sheer lace curtains were hung at the windows. The doilies gracing the side tables and antimacassars on the headrests and arms of the chairs were all of matching tricolor lace. A cluttered desk sat in the corner.
“I’ll fetch the tea,” Renée said, disappearing again to the back of the house.
Madame La Porte settled onto the wingback armchair and gracefully gestured for Nicolas to take the settee. “Renée tells me you’re from New York.”
“Yes, but from upstate,” Nicolas explained for the second time in as many da
ys. “My home is far from the city of New York.”
“The countryside is so lovely, in its own way. But there’s much to be said for large, established cities, too.” Madame La Porte reached for a silver cigarette case on the low table between them. “Renée’s father and I lived for many years in New Orleans.”
She extracted a dark French cigarette and offered the case to Nicolas, who declined. He struck a match for her, a bit shocked to see a lady smoke. Renée swept into the room, set a tray down, and took the chair facing Nicolas. Exhaling a pungent, blue-grey stream of smoke, Madame La Porte poured tea.
“Sugar, Mr. Van Horne?”
“Milk, no sugar, if you please.”
“Ah, yes. Canadian style.” Madame La Porte passed a translucent bone-china cup. “I understand you know Renée through your business with the college.”
“A transaction regarding . . . teaching, shall we say.”
“Teaching?” She gave a deep, full-throated laugh. “With corpses in your ice? How novel, Mr. Van Horne. Please do tell me how you came on the idea.”
“You see, madam, a Boston gentleman named Frederick Tudor was trading in ice several decades ago. He shipped as far as India. I heard that Tudor also packed apples and fresh-churned butter, which sold well in sunnier climes such as yours. I simply adapted the idea to a different sort of goods.”
“And so you pack the freshly dead. It’s utterly novel, I admit. But however did you come across your first bit of these ‘goods’?”
“Several years ago I agreed to store two unclaimed bodies in my icehouse until they could be hauled to the medical college in Albany by horse and carriage. The medical men persuaded me to transport the bodies in my ice shipment instead, by barge, on the Erie Canal.”
“And you saw the business potential.”
“Yes, I supply similar needs in Saint Louis and New Orleans.”
“And now here, to Texas. But tell me, my dear”—she drew on her cigarette, a clear, intelligent look in her eyes—“how do you come by them?”
“Many come from accidents in the woods. Arrangements are made by our town’s undertaker.”
“You steal them,” she said, smiling again. “A body snatcher.”
“It’s . . . it’s impossible to come by them legally, I’m afraid,” Nicolas said, blood flooding his face.
“Do you open graves?”
“Never!” Nicolas, shaking his head, sat forward on the settee. He hated that this business was illegal, that he was thought a monster. “You see, madam,” he continued, calming himself, “many are unclaimed bodies and are nothing but a burden to the state of New York. Lumberjacks. French Canadians who die far from their home, without family. There are accidents at the sawmill, in the ironworks, the garnet mines.”
“It’s true, my brother-in-law Francis has a great need. His school is growing so. Indeed, I admire your fortitude to enter a business that’s usually taken on by such scoundrels. But my perspective is ever so different, you see. I have a certain . . . gift that makes it so.”
“A gift?”
“The gift of sensitivity. I perceive what others do not. My worry, Mr. Van Horne, is that the lost souls you provide the medical college . . . these souls may not be ready to be dissected. At least some of them.”
“I assure you, madam, they feel nothing. They are as dead as can be.”
“You misunderstand. It’s not their earthly remains I’m concerned over. I feel for their spirit, their essence. You cannot think all of life’s energy, all that momentum, simply disappears.”
“Certainly, I believe in the soul. But once the soul leaves the body, the body is nothing, is it not?”
“For most, yes. But a few linger, I fear, and they see what’s being done to their bodies. Don’t you think? You must realize this, being around the freshly dead . . . Well, perhaps you don’t, but those disembodied souls make their presence known, at least to me. I hear them.”
Madame La Porte took a long draw of her cigarette, exhaled, and leveled her eyes at Nicolas.
“To speak the truth, Mr. Van Horne, I’ve heard voices these past few days. Strident voices. Then, yesterday, late in the afternoon, a horrible, prolonged scream, a woman in labor.”
“Mother.” Renée, who’d been quietly sipping her tea, shifted in her chair. “Mother. Please don’t.”
“And again, last evening,” Madame La Porte went on, “a tiny voice came through. Two voices, in fact, young boys. They were weak, but perhaps if I tried to—”
“Mother.”
Madame La Porte set her teacup down with a click. “I’m sorry, dear. I understand your material needs at the college. I do. And materialism rules the day . . . but it isn’t everything. There’s much to be said for the spirit.”
Renée’s eyes flashed. “I really don’t think we need burden our visitor with the peculiarities of your personal pursuits, Mother.”
Madame La Porte nodded and reached for her cigarette case. “You’re right, Renée.” Nicolas lit the cigarette. “Let’s turn to more pleasant subjects, shall we? Tell me about these lovely mountains of yours, Mr. Van Horne.”
Nicolas started speaking about his home, the lake, and the harvesting of ice, but he was badly shaken. Dead boys? Two boys, at that? The way I’m talking I’m making no sense . . . I must stop myself before I’m babbling . . .
Madame La Porte listened politely at first, but she grew still, something somber crept into her face, and her eyes emptied.
“You must excuse me, Mr. Van Horne. I’m feeling ill,” she said, her cigarette at arm’s length, its ash long and droopy. “Just being with you, I’m sensing a morose presence.” She stood, her breathing shallow and erratic, and dropped her cigarette, still smoldering, into an ashtray. “It’s showing me . . . I’d rather not . . . something ugly, those boys and a good man, and death . . . No! He doesn’t understand the ugliness ahead—for him, for everyone.”
“Is there anything I can do, madame?”
“You? No, least of all . . . nothing . . . I must find a distraction, something pleasant.” Madame La Porte dashed into the hall. She looked around her, muttering as if she were arguing with thin air. “Yes, it is. It is! I’m afraid . . . no . . . No! I’d rather not . . . he seems a fine gentleman, I’ll not spoil his stay. Damned voices!”
And she disappeared up the stairs.
Nicolas turned to Renée. “I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t offend.”
“No . . . no, you see, she hears voices on occasion, but I’ve not seen her this upset since . . . well . . .”
“Such a fascinating person. Quite deep.” Without thinking, he added, “And she’s nearly as beautiful as you.”
Color rose in Renée’s cheeks. “Let’s go, shall we? I’ll accompany you downtown and explain more about Mother. I’ve plenty of time to tend my experiment, and I’ll not be a bother.”
In the hallway, Renée took up her hat with the pink feathers and stood at the mirror adjusting it. Faint strains of a fiddle tune drifted down from the second floor—it was a Gypsy melody as dark, as melancholic, as a funeral dirge.
“Is that jolly old Prangoulis?” Nicolas asked. “From upstairs. Playing such a sad tune?”
“Yes, Basil spends a great deal of time with us, you see . . . and he plays to Mother’s moods.” Renée turned and offered her hand. “Come, we’d best be on our way.”
20
Downtown
“Clairvoyance,” Renée explained. “Mother demonstrated the talent as a child. In New Orleans, she fully developed it.”
“She’s a crystal gazer, then.”
“No, Nick. No crystal ball. Her sensitivity allows her to communicate with the afterworld.”
“I confess, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural.”
“Mother’s no sorcerer, Nick. She’s a medium. Her talents have been verified by the London Psychical Research Society.”
“Verified?”
“The society’s researchers measured electrical parameters
in the room during several of Mother’s sittings, when she communicates with the dead. By installing a scale under her chair, they determined how much weight she loses when she transmits her psychic energy—as an ectoplasm—into the room. The poor dear can lose three percent of her body weight when making a connection. The London folks authenticated Mother’s clairvoyance, inspired writing, and ability to communicate with the afterworld.”
As they strolled, Renée proved well versed in the architectural details of churches, city hall, the opera house, and the Ursuline Women’s Academy. She pointed out Galveston’s slave market, closed after the Great War. “Mother never passes this way,” she said, hurrying by. “Her sense of past cruelties is too great.”
As they drew along the harborside, fishmongers’ carts lined the street. “I’d so love to see this ship that’s traveled so far down the Mississippi,” Renée said. “Would you show me?”
Nicolas led the way past longshoremen and coarse deckhands who stared at the lady. They found Adam pacing the deck of their steamer. Nicolas called to him, “Come meet this fine young lady, the medical man’s niece.”
Adam feigned a dramatic bow. “Adam Klock at your service, miss. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Renée’s giving me a lovely tour,” Nicolas said. “All’s tidy now, I take it?”
“Yep,” Adam replied. “Just waiting for the pilot to get his ship off our hands and back to New Orleans. I heard there’s a crowd down to the emporium, gawkin’ at our exhibit, sir.”
“What sort of exhibit is that, Mr. Klock?” Renée asked.
“Why it’s Mr. Van Horne’s Northern ice, miss,” Adam replied, raising his hand in the air like a politician. “An exhibition of the world’s finest ice, right here, just a few blocks away, at Mr. Slade’s illustrious establishment. I believe it’ll soon be declared the eighth wonder of the world.” Renée gave a chuckle. “Like Niagara Falls, it’s sumthin’ everyone must see before they die.”
