Witch House (11 page)

“I feel it,” said Lilith, circling the room
slowly, dragging her fingertips along the tops of the chairs as she
walked. “He wants us to make contact, here in this room, but he
doesn’t know how.”

“Then he is with good company,” Ursula
replied. “For matters such as this I am most uncertain.”

“There is nothing to it, Urs. All we have to
do is get his attention and help him focus. Watch.” She looked up
at the ceiling and traced the edges along the walls. “Hey, spirit,
what’s your name? You want to talk?”

Ursula smiled at Lilith and teasingly. “Oh
yes, Sister, methinks that shall work. Doth not his manners owe
thee now an answer?”

“What?”

“Surely I know not the spirit ways, yet I
know where questions fail, commandments rule.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, wish not what thee demand, but
demand what thee wish.” She crossed the room and ushered Lilith
back to the doorway. “I have seen this done but once in the circle
of witches.” She returned to the table and placed her hands over
the two candles, and with a snap of her fingers, lit them both.
Next, she broke off a twig from the dead ficus and placed it across
the candles, spanning the two flames like a bridge. As the two ends
of the twig began burning toward the center, she fell into a
whispered utterance of ancient speak. Slowly, the trembling in the
floorboards returned, marginal at first, but stronger as the flames
drew closer to one another along the twig. Lilith approached the
table from the opposite side and joined in the mantra, the words
seemingly less familiar to her, but no less effective. With her
voice added, the vibration below quickly grew to a shuddering
rumble that shook the walls, windows, and everything in the
room.

Ursula broke the rhythm of the mantra and
pronounced a spell while Lilith looked on.

“
Hear ye, spirit, announce thine name,
come show thy self upon this flame; come hither thou where light
burns yonder; embrace what fires now make thee stronger.”

At once, the creeping flames erupted into a
curtain of fire several feet high. The girls leaned away from the
heat, but did not lose concentration. They reached below the twig
and coupled hands, and then Lilith joined in the recitation.

“
Hear ye, spirit, announce thine name,
come show thy self upon this flame; come hither thou where light
burns yonder; embrace what fires now make thee stronger.”

Outside the room, the sound of slamming doors
and broken glass filled the halls. The clock on the mantle chimed
for noon, yet it was still only morning. Overhead, the light
flickered in irregular pulses. Dishes in the old china hutch
chattered upon the shelves before hopping to the floor in shattered
pieces. Behind them, the branches of the dead ficus erupted in
spontaneous flames, scorching wallpaper and blackening the window
above. Lilith flinched at a shadow that had come up beside her,
teased her hair and then faded in the light of the fire. Across the
table, something cold ruffled Ursula’s blouse, lifting it over her
breasts and scoring her bare stomach with lines resembling
fingernail scratches. She fell back in a startled jolt, breaking
her handhold with Lilith. A loud pop as that from a blown tire
snuffed out the candles, the twig and the burning ficus, but did
not halt the tremors shaking paint and plaster off the walls. The
table, bucking bronco-like, began hopping across the room, mowing
down chairs and crowding the hutch into a corner with enough force
to crack its mirror.

“I think we should go now!” said Lilith.

“Aye,” said Ursula. “Wither thou go, I shall
follow. Hasten and be done!”

They fled across the living room, past the
fireplace with the clock on its mantle still chiming for the noon
hour yet to come. Objects large and small sailed across the room,
crashing at their heels. As they neared the front door, Lilith
feared that she would find it locked, but that did not happen. The
house, though protesting in upheaval, seemed more eager to expel
its guests than to consume them.

Just after setting foot out the door, a
sucking rush of air followed them onto the porch, dragging with it
all measureable volume of air from the living room, resulting in a
structural decompression of the house substantial enough to blow
the windows in on the entire north side. With that last breath of
defiance, all paranormal activities ended; the rumbling
floorboards, the flickering lights, even the clock on the mantle
ceased. Telltale scars pockmarked the walls where nails and glass
pelted the room. The girls poked their heads inside once more to
look around. They turned to one another, smiles pulling at their
cheeks with pushpin dimples.

“`Tis an angry one, that one” said Ursula,
“is he not?”

“He does have issues,” Lilith replied. “That
should make this all the more fun.”

Ursula drew a scolding bead down her.
“Lilith?”

“What?”

“Thou art smiling as a serpent smiles.
Methinks you wish to return, yes?”

“Oh yes, sister, we shall return. I’m not
letting this one get away.”

They accepted a ride back to the apartment
from Eva Kinsley, who had seen the flickering of firelight through
the dining room window and could not resist asking about it. Lilith
said to her, “He didn’t want us there.”

“Who?” Kinsley asked.

“Why, the ghost, of course,” said Ursula.
“Give us but his name and we shall tell thee. For aught I know,
`tis an angry soul indeed that death hath spite, for ner a spirit
more possessed as he with anger hath such a knave soul
embraced.”

I could imagine the poor woman’s face.
“What?”

Lilith leaned in. “She said he’s pissed.”

“Oh.” Kinsley set her hands on the steering
wheel at the ten to two position and drove on, and that was all she
had to say about it.

That was when Lilith first called to tell me
about the house. Later, while Carlos and I were driving out to the
Wampanoag Indian reservation, she and Ursula stole back there with
candles and incense to attempt a more structured séance.

They returned to the dining room where the
spirit energy seemed gathered in greatest concentration. Ursula
pulled the table back into the center of the room and collected the
chairs around it. Lilith lit the candles, eight in all; four
yellow—one in each corner of the room—one brown, aligned with the
current position of the moon and three red, forming a triangle in
the middle of the table with jasmine incense burning in the center
of those. Along the windowsills and across the doorway, Lilith laid
down a heavy bead of brick dust. When asked by Ursula what it was
for, she replied, “It’s to ward off evil spirits and make our ghost
feel safer in trying to reconstitute.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure, and it also works on vampires, zombies
and Bush Republicans.”

“Really?”

Lilith shrugged. “Nah, probably not on the
last ones, but if it makes our ghost feel any more comfortable, I’m
all for it.”

All during the preparations, the lights
overhead flickered without prompting and occasionally something in
the room fell and broke on the floor: a glass ashtray, a framed
picture, small knick-knacks from the mirrored hutch. During it all,
the girls never broke concentration, and soon they were sitting at
the table opposite one another, heads bowed, arms stretched in
reach with hands clasped. Lilith winked at Ursula from across the
table, her pupils glimmering in the candlelight. “You ready?” she
asked.

Ursula gathered her deepest breath and
surrendered it through puckered cheeks. “As ever I may.”

“Okay then. Do you want to start?”

“Aye.” She took another, though shallow,
breath and began, “
Hear ye, ol` spirit, heed my call, pass thy
image through these walls. What flame doth break shall let me see,
be it shadows, or be it thee
.”

Lilith echoed, “
Be it shadows, or be it
thee
,” and they both choired, “
Be it shadows, or be it thee.
Be it shadows, or be it thee
….”

They ran this mantra in a steady flow until
their voices sounded as one. Already they could feel the room
growing colder, even as the candles burned stronger, their flames
snaking in cattails high above the table, licking the light fixture
and brushing the ceiling in whispers of pencil-thin smoke trails.
The windows, having fogged over rapidly, soon iced up completely,
with temperatures plummeting to something below freezing.

“It’s happening,” said Lilith. “The portal is
opening.”

Ursula squeezed Lilith’s hands tighter. “I am
cold like the wind,” she said. “Thou art sure what door doth open
doth so easily shut?”

“I don’t know. I’m not real practiced at
this. Give him another call. He seems to like your voice.”

“Aye, `tis not my voice I fear he wants, but
my body heat and thine.”

“Doesn’t matter. Give him another shout.”

“As thou wish.
Hear ye, ol` spirit, heed
my call, pass thy image through these walls. What flame doth break
shall let me see, be it shadows, or be it thee
.”

Again, they joined, “
Be it shadows, or be
it thee. Be it shadows, or be
….”

In the middle of their fifth refrain, the
candle flames fell to mere winks of flickering light upon their
wicks. A soft push of warm air rushed up from beneath the table,
lifting the girls’ hair in swirls and filling the room to a
tempered pitch. The windows began dripping with melted ice. A low
creeping moan bled from the walls and floor as if the house were
relaxing after tensing up briefly. Smoke from the incense began
gathering amid the triangle of red candles. It hung low in milky
trails, collecting and condensing into rolling swirls, resembling a
face reflected in rippled pool water.

“There!” said Lilith. “You see it? It’s
trying to reconstitute.”

Ursula leaned back in her chair, startled,
though her handhold with Lilith maintained. “Indeed, `tis the
spirit, I know, for his face doeth stare me down to my bones.”

“Let it come, Urs. Talk to him.”

“And say to him what?”

“Ask him his name.”

She leaned in some and addressed the vaporous
apparition. “Good den, my Lord. To us, pray tell, what be thy
name?”

The spectral image gathered in tighter
swirls, as shade and shadow lent it definition. Still, it did not
attempt to communicate. Lilith whispered across the table, “Try
again.”

Ursula cleared her throat. “Kind sir, I have
asked thee now, how say ye friends what call thee? Be it spoken in
mine or words of thine?”

“Geezus,” Lilith snipped. “Ursula, you really
must work on your modern English.” She broke handhold and clapped
twice. “Yo, ghost man, over here!” The spirit-face turned
one-hundred and eighty degrees and looked upon Lilith. “Yeah,
that’s right. You’re not an old soul, are you? You’re from this
time. Do you understand me okay?” The ghost opened his mouth, but
could utter no sound.

“Methinks he is a mute,” said Ursula, looking
through the back of his head to his face.

“No,” said Lilith. “He’s not mute. He can
talk. We just don’t have the energy between us to reconstitute him
all the way. Here, give me your hands again.”

The two clasped hands again. At once, the
ghostly cloud boiled to life in a milky swirl confined within the
boundaries of an invisible ball. Ursula pulled back, but did not
break Lilith’s hold. “He grows stronger,” she said, “does he
not?”

“Yes, he feeds off our energy. Keep giving it
to him.” To the ghost she said, “Who are you, spirit? Why are you
here?”

As it did before, the hazy apparition
struggled to speak, but could not. Details and definitions in its
gestures continued to morph like rain clouds into angrier looking
faces, none, however, resembling human form clear enough to
identify. Lilith persisted. “Who are you? Why do you haunt this
place? Give us a sign, spirit; give us a sign that you can hear
me.”

At once, the tremors returned, causing the
windowpanes to shudder and the few remaining knick-knacks on the
hutch to chatter upon their shelves. In the corner, the dead ficus
rose on a column of air and began rotating counterclockwise, slowly
at first, but faster by degrees. Ursula seemed more worried about
that than did Lilith, though both made notice of it only through
fleeting glances. Overhead, the light fixture that had flickered
earlier in the séance began dropping crystal pendants onto the
table in random bombardments. Lilith looked up at Ursula and smiled
teasingly, “Guess we have our sign, eh?”

“Sister?”

“What?”

“Thou doeth make with words ye spirit move,
but hast thee the words to stop it.”

“Stop it? Why would I want to stop it?”

“Come now, I pray thee. Dost thou not see
that ficus yonder? How chance the spin there doth quicken as the
floor doth shake? Doth not it frighten thee that it perchance might
fly?”

“Fly? What do you mean, fly?”

The words hardly passed her lips when the
potted ficus crashed before them, scattering dirt and broken
branches upon the table and spilling the three red candles. Several
small fires flared upon the tablecloth, burning in spotted pools of
melted wax. The two girls kicked their chairs out and folded the
cloth onto itself to smother the flames. The ghost image in the
smoke ball faded, but the rumbling beneath them continued, shaking
bits of plaster and paint down on their heads like rain.

“What say thee we leave?” said Ursula.

“Yeah,” said Lilith, blowing out the brown
and yellow candles as she scooted around the table. “I say that’s a
good idea. Lead the way.”

They hurried from the house, retreating as
before in serpentine fashion to dodge the hail of flying objects of
anything not screwed to the walls, ceiling or floor. Out on the
porch they laughed and embraced, intoxicated by the adrenalin and
exhilarated beyond measure. Lilith grabbed Ursula by the upper arms
and shook her. “Girl, was that fun or what?” she squealed. “Did you
see that ficus fly?”