Karen Mercury (11 page)

“My photograph,” said Worth and rushed from the parlor.

Caleb strode about grandly, resembling a ghost himself with his sprightly gray eyes and shimmering locks cascading down his chest. “Necromancy is merely speaking with the dead, and I haven’t had any harm come to me or anyone from that.”

Jeremiah pointed at Caleb. “You try being hit by a snowball thrown by a devious imp. Tell me there’s no harm in that. Or watching a spook take a pencil and draw an engineering diagram for a new speedy type of alpine ski.”

Tabitha asked her assistant, “You mean those skis Derrick invented? He has made good money off that invention. They were invented by a spook?”

Jeremiah nodded tightly. “Those very ones, invented by the bear wrestler, Percy Tibbles. I’m telling you, once those spirits learn how to manipulate matter, there’s just no stopping them.”

“That’s true to an extent.” Foster was surprised that Caleb agreed. “I shouldn’t say I’ve never seen harm come from any spirits. The first step is to affirm if they are good-hearted deceased human beings or lying devilish spirits. The devilish ones can practice deception. The spirits rarely give their names.”

Caleb added, “Then there are the deceptive humans. I attended a séance once, in order to expose the false medium. When I realized she was looking for body cues from the questioner to determine the answer that was desired, I began to play with the medium. Thus the London paper reported that the spirits informed the public that the building of the pyramids in Egypt had cost eleven and nine pence, Noah’s Ark was made of snuff boxes, and the Pope was about to be married.” Caleb smiled at the fond memory, and Foster made a decision to feel affection for him. Who could not like a fellow who wore bison skulls?

“Is it true,” Jeremiah queried, “that you were expelled from Rome on charges of sorcery?”

“That is true,” Caleb answered. “The authorities were afraid the spirits would make Rome their new home.”

Jeremiah asked, “What about your friendship with the poet Robert Browning? I have heard he accused you of unnatural offenses.”

Unnatural offenses?
Foster’s ears pricked up at that. That lent credence to his opinion that Caleb was of the berdache persuasion.

But Caleb appeared unruffled. “Browning didn’t like me, that’s true, mostly because his wife was a confidante of mine. He wrote a terribly scathing poem about me. I have learned not to let those things get under my skin.”

Caleb hardly looked old enough to have had all these accomplishments and travels. He was probably one of those deceptively young-looking fellows who never aged. Foster wondered, though, how or why Caleb had come to be living in a tepee in Wyoming Territory. What travails had he undergone, after associating with famed poets and being ostracized from Rome, to lead him to such a simple existence in the sticks?

Worth strode back into the room then, head down, examining his newly developed photographic plate. Foster leaned into his friend’s back and peered over his shoulder. Worth held a piece of black cardboard behind the glass plate, the better to see the image.

“There’s no dog,” said Worth.

“Yes,” breathed Foster, “but who is this in Phineas’s place? This person appears much more undefined, sort of nebulous. There definitely wasn’t another person in the room when you made the photograph.”

Foster stepped back to allow Caleb to examine the plate. “It’s a woman. I believe she is someone close to you, Mr. Richmond.”

“Bettina Badeaux?” Foster asked hopefully.
It looks more like Orianna.

Caleb shook his head. “I get the impression she is someone still living. We shall find out more when we conduct a séance. I shall ask for her identity. Where can we sit?”

“Oh, jumping Caeser,” moaned Jeremiah.

“I’d like it if you would attend,” Caleb told the former showman. “You possess a radiant frequency of spiritual vibrations.”

This appeared to flatter Montreal Jed, for he placed a hand on his chest and smiled. “Me? Spiritual vibrations? Oh, my.”

“Try not to faint,” Foster instructed him.

So Jeremiah was convinced to join in their séance party, and they set up in the dining room. Caleb requested the tablecloth be removed and candles lit and placed on the table. Since he wanted everyone to join hands and the table was too large, they all conglomerated at one end, Caleb at the head. Tabitha and Jeremiah sat to Caleb’s right, Foster and Worth to his left. Foster and Tabitha had to lean far over the table for their fingers to touch, and Foster swore she cast him a shy look of anticipation.

Caleb got right to it, uttering in a voice higher than usual, “We need help. Can we obtain it? The spirit which encourages us to pray now will drive evil far from us and bring close the helpful spirits who may answer our petitions.”

Foster wondered. Would this “helpful spirit” appear among them as a diaphanous form rattling chains, moaning and lamenting to the skies about his earthly existence? He hoped not, for that might scare Tabitha. Actually, Tabitha didn’t seem the fearful sort. Hell, a spirit like that might scare
him
.

Instantly, cold currents of air feathered Foster’s hands. He looked to Tabitha to see if she felt the same, and he imagined she shot him a look of commiseration. Their attention was wrenched away in the next second when strange shivering orbs of light flitted over the dining room walls. Everyone present bobbed their heads to view the lights, Jeremiah ducking as though afraid one of them would hit him in the head. At first they seemed two-dimensional, the diffractions of sun rays through a crystal projected onto the walls. But a few orbs broke free and danced in the air over the table. Foster did not want to break contact with Tabitha’s hand in order to try and touch one.

Caleb continued in his odd speechifying tone. “The magnetism is coming like the tide in a river—irresistible, overcoming all. What we have already seen is just the smallest wave of the tide coming upon the earth. Some of you here will see it and will be helped along your paths with the great work we have to do. Spiritual truth must come—truth is a lighthouse, a beacon, leading us into the realms of love.”

Now the table itself began to shudder, and everyone’s eyes grew wide. Jeremiah was the first to break the circle, jumping back in his chair, murmuring “Jumping Caeser!”

The shuddering continued, growing more violent in intensity. Even stranger, the candles didn’t wobble one iota, although it was becoming difficult for Foster to keep a hold on Tabitha’s hand. Now the table began to actually rise at the unoccupied end as it shook back and forth like a frenzied dancer.

Jeremiah shrieked, “He’s in a psycho-magnetic condition, and it’s moving the table!”

Worth added, “Look at the candles. They’re not moving in the slightest.”

Jeremiah asked Caleb in a panic, “Is this the tide you were just talking about?”

Although all the windows were shut against the heated summer air, the currents now increased in speed about the room, enough to lift Tabitha’s hair from her shoulders and fluff it about her face, although the candle’s flames didn’t flicker.

“Make those candles move!” Jeremiah insisted.

The candles did. The table was now lifted fully two feet at the unoccupied end, and all at once the candles in their holders slid toward the participants. Foster was forced to break his grip on Tabitha in order to waylay the candles in their journey down the table, and Tabitha grabbed the other set of holders.

Caleb said, “Take a candle and look under the table, if you wish. There must be no accusations of trickery.”

Everyone except Worth shoved their chairs back and leaned far over to see under the table. Of course there was no trickery, but it was heartening to meet Tabitha under the table and talk.

“This is amazing,” she whispered. “He truly is a great talent to be reckoned with!”

“Did you feel those currents of cold air?”

“Yes! And all the windows are closed. I felt a hand slap me, but of course we were all holding hands.”

“Slap you? Angrily?”

“Yes! It felt angry, and it slapped my upper arm!”

Jeremiah was crouched on the floor, having eagerly given up his seat. “Oh, that’s nothing! A hand has been pinching me for five minutes, like it wants me to wake up.
Ow!
Stop doing that!” he said to his arm.

Foster felt it, too, now. Only this spirit hand wasn’t slapping or pinching him—it was caressing him! He could feel each distinctly feminine finger as the hand tickled his throat then delved down his shirtfront to pet his chest!

Above them, Caleb’s voice boomed out with a new masculine vigor. “I thank you, dear scout, for finding my final resting place. It is good to have our agony acknowledged. Those last weeks we tramped around the Black Hills, dying one by one as Indians picked us off, were not a fitting end to my life that was lived cleanly and properly.”

“Wait!” said Worth. “Who are you?”

Tabitha voiced the words that were in Foster’s head. “Spirits rarely give their names.”

But Foster knew who was speaking through Caleb now. Was the spirit of Ezra Kind—the fellow who had inscribed the rock Foster had taken out of the Black Hills—a berdache? Was it Ezra’s hand that now flitted across his nipple, hardening his cock? This was too, too much!

Foster clambered back into his chair and addressed Caleb directly. “You got your gold in June of eighteen-thirty-four,” he asserted.

Caleb nodded. “That’s right. We came to those hills in thirty-three. Killed by Indians beyond the high hill.”

Ezra was correct—that’s what the rock had said, and Caleb could hardly have known that. Or that Foster even possessed the inscribed stone. The table had now risen so high that Foster could only see Tabitha’s eyes as she peeked over the edge of the table, seated back in her chair. Jeremiah, although he was at Caleb’s end, which had not lifted from the floor, chose to stay kneeling, so he also peeked over the table’s edge.

“Who is it, Foster?” Jeremiah squealed. “Who is possessing Caleb’s body, talking about a final resting place?”

“Ezra Kind,” Worth intoned.

Foster wanted answers. He slapped his hand to the tilted tabletop. “Ezra, can you see events that are beyond your scope when you were in your body? Can you see things that happened in a place where Ezra Kind’s body never set foot?”

“I can, although not reliably. We are totally dependent on atmospheric conditions. Today the atmosphere is charged with electricity, and it’s quite thick, like sand.”

“Can you tell me, then…Who killed my beloved dog?”

Caleb looked at a spot in the distance, far beyond the walls that still danced with the crystalline orbs. “Today an inferior spirit has an influence over me and wishes to give a message.”

Tabitha interrupted. “Is the inferior spirit a woman?” She clutched the edge of the frolicking table as though it were a bucking bronco. “Reason I ask. I think these ghostly hands belong to a woman, and she doesn’t like me very much!”

Jeremiah murmured, “She
really
must dislike
me.”

And likes me too much
. Foster clarified, “Yes, is the spirit a woman?”

“Yes,” boomed Caleb—or perhaps Foster should think of him as Ezra. “I cannot get a clear view of her, but she is very discontented. She is weary of life, weary of the earth.”

“So she is alive?” Foster queried. In keeping with the mawkish lingo of the gold miner, he added, “Does she still walk in human form on this planet?”

“Yes,” Ezra affirmed. “Although she feels very hopeless and desperate.”

“Is she the one who killed Phineas?”

Ezra pondered on this. “I believe so. There is a lot of shrieking in my ears right now, so it’s hard to separate the different threads. She is in great turmoil and anguish.”

“What is her message?”

For an answer, a loud and sharp ping sounded in the center of the table where the candle holders had been. A shiny metal object bounced a few times before coming to rest. Immediately the table collapsed back to the carpet in the proper manner of a table, as though it had exhausted itself. Foster and Tabitha both reached for the object, Foster swiping it up first, as his arms were longer.

“I am rising now,” Caleb reported in his normal voice.

But Foster wasn’t paying attention. He clutched a silver baby rattle, an ornately gilded thing that did double duty as a whistle.

He knew this, because it was the exact same rattle he had given to his baby son a couple of years ago. Overcome by this eerie surprise, Foster dropped the rattle to the table.

This confirmed Foster’s worst suspicions. The hand that slapped Tabitha, pinched Jeremiah, and caressed Foster was controlled by his old flame, Orianna.
Orianna killed Phineas!
Foster was already highly irate with that she-devil hussy for having ripped his son from his bosom two years ago, following some pie in the sky money-making scheme to California. Now his soul fairly boiled to think she was causing further mischief—now that he was poised on the verge of an entirely new life!

Tabitha leaned over the table. “What is it? A baby rattle? How odd. Why would that be this witch’s message?”

“Ah, Foster?” Worth queried weakly. “You might want to pay attention to this.”