“Eustace…” Cordelia asked, feeling a hum of energy radiating from the container. “What is that?”
“Mom. I lied about the mountains.”
Cordelia’s mouth dropped open. “You sent pictures for Christ’s sake!”
“I did go,” her sister was quick to explain. “And it was a beautiful day. The way the light was playing with the trees. The weather was just right—not too hot, not too cold. Mom and I had such a good time that I couldn’t go through with it.”
“So, you put her in a box and kept her—where? Under the bed?” Cordelia raged, pressing her hands to her head. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.You and Mom had such a nice time?” Cordelia glared at her sister. “She’s dead.”
“Only in a manner of speaking,” Eustace told her. “You yourself said you see ghosts. Look, I know I was supposed to. I just couldn’t do it. I opened the bag and there she was, reduced to grit. I couldn’t let her go. Not with so many questions still.”
“She can’t answer you, Eustace! She’s in a box!” Cordelia replied, slamming her hands against the table and making the candles jump.What’s one more woman haunting this place?
“Stop saying that.” Eustace looked wounded. “It’s not a box. It’s an urn. Poplar wood and powder-coated metal. It cost me six hundred bucks.”
Cordelia cast her a seething glance.
“Now she can be with her family,” Eustace told her. “After tonight, we can place her in the crypt where she belongs. Even you feel the wrongness of her not being here.”
“Except she didn’t want to be. Are you forgetting that? She explicitly left this place out of everything she ever told us, crypt and all.” Cordelia shook her head. “I have a bad feeling about this, Eustace.”
“Which part, Mom or the seance?”
“All of it!” Cordelia answered.
“Just breathe,” Eustace told her, taking a seat across the game table. “We have to be calm for this to work.” She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “Follow me.”
She placed her phone on the table with the screen facing up. Cordelia could see the wikiHow page open to step-by-step instructions on communing with the dead.
“Really, Eustace?” she snapped. “WikiHow is your infallible source?”
Her sister shushed her and opened one eye. “Just breathe in,” she said calmly. “Do what I do.”
Cordelia pursed her lips, then caved. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, letting the breath fill her chest and stomach before releasing it again in a slow stream. For a second, sheallowed her eyes to part, but the upside-down face and dead eyes of their levitating grandmother stared up at her from the photograph, and she instantly shut them again. As she concentrated on breathing, the fear in her heart would soften, her head going slack like shot elastic. But then the reality of what they were doing would spread inside her like a subcutaneous injection, and Cordelia would seize, awash with agony.
Eventually, Eustace told her to open her eyes and place her fingers on the top of their mother’s urn beside her own. Reluctantly, she did so.
“Is there anyone in the room with us right now?” Eustace asked the darkness.
The candle flames guttered, snapping back to attention, smoke spiraling up from them in a galaxy of particles, and Eustace’s eyes went wide.Did you see that?she mouthed. She placed the fingers of her other hand atop the book and photograph, motioning for Cordelia to do the same.
Cordelia pulled her free hand from her lap and laid it by her sister’s. A twitch of anxiety ran up her spine like mouse feet.
“Can you tell us who you are?” Eustace asked this time. They waited a moment and then Eustace tried again. “Are you a relative of ours? Did you die in this house?”
A tremble ran through the floorboards beneath their feet, vibrating up the table legs, causing the candlesticks to tap a little rhythm against the table. Cordelia curled her toes inside her flats, feeling besieged.
“That’s ayes,” Eustace whispered. She ground her jaw in determination. “How did you die?” she asked the room.
The heavy curtains along the front window billowed as if a gust had passed through it, but it was shut fast. Both sisters turned sharply as the fabric resettled, unrecognizable shapes milling in the undulating drapes like moving sculptures. A Frenchbud vase pirouetted to the floor on their right, crashing upon the rug, rolling back and forth on its side as if teased by invisible fingers.
Cordelia tried to draw her hands back, but Eustace held them fast. “Don’t let go! It’s working.”
“I don’t like this,” Cordelia told her. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Did someone hurt you?” her sister asked the room, ignoring her concerns. “Like they did our mother?”
Cordelia’s head began to swim as she blinked her eyes, trying to shut everything out. Around her, the room was speeding up, turning in dizzying circles, making her sick. Everything she’d spent a lifetime running from felt like it was crowding into the room all at once—every spirit, ever nip of fear. They all wanted something from her, their own pound of flesh, and the noise was deafening, like a thousand languages being spoken at the same time. She couldn’t breathe.
