“Don’t be afraid,” said Agatha, to the room at large. “The Departed love us. They want to be near us.”
Mrs. Shaw looked down at the planchette.
“Now,” said Agatha. “We fix our minds on the spirit we wish to summon, and we close our eyes.” The little wavering gas flame gilded their hands. Agatha’s blind eyes were fixed on the board. “We are in search of one who was in life called James Shaw, son of Penelope Shaw.”
Silence in answer, and stillness.
Agatha lifted her head, eyes closed now, and addressed the darkness. “James?” she said. “James Shaw? Will you speak to us?”
The floor creaked. A hush lay like a hand over Blackthorn House, and in the silence, almost imperceptibly, the planchette crept towardyes. Laura hadn’t felt them manipulate it, but that was unsurprising. The Parkeys were professionals. Mrs. Shaw had gone white.
“Who is here?” demanded Agatha.
J-I-M
“Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Shaw. “Jimmy! Where are you? Are you— Have you passed on, dear?” She had begun to shake. Laura felt it through the table.
The planchette drifted toyes.Then it kept going. L-I-S-T, said the planchette. Mrs. Shaw’s gaze was locked on the moving arrow.
“Listen,” gasped Lucretia. “But listen to what?” The world outside was utterly still.
B-E-W-R, said the planchette.
“Beware?” echoed Clotilde, sharp.
Mrs. Shaw said, “No, but— Jimmy? Darling? Are you all right?”
BWR MSIC MROR, said the planchette. HIM.
This was strange even for the Parkeys. MROR? Mirror? The detritus of Laura’s brain offered her a vague association with the Lady of Shalott, Freddie declaiming the verses from Tennyson while she pored over an anatomy textbook:The mirror crack’d from side to side, “The curse is come upon me,” cried…
“No, but—” Now Mrs. Shaw was searching the empty air with frantic eyes. “Jimmy? Is it really you?”
DED, said the Ouija board. BUT HES ALIV.
Mrs. Shaw didn’t speak.
“Who’s alive?” demanded Clotilde.
FRED, said the planchette. FREDI FRED FR FIN FIND FIND. And if there was any more, Laura didn’t see it because she’d wrenched back her chair, awkward on the carpet, turned away, and left the room.
At another time, Laura wouldhave borne it, in silence if not in good humor, out of respect to her employers. And gone to comfort Mrs. Shaw after it was done. But the presence of the box had shredded her nerves. She hadn’t realized how shaken she was until she found herself shuddering in the hall.
If anyone from the parlor called out to her, Laura didn’t hear, and didn’t trust herself to turn. Combat nursing had given her tongue the edge of a sawtooth bayonet when she was moved, and she didn’t want to turn it on kind, bereaved Mrs. Shaw, or on the scheming, silly old ladies who’d emptied their linen cupboards for her and given her a place to live.
But Laura was shaken enough, going to the kitchen, that at first she didn’t notice the smell.
It was faint. A little earthy, a little sulfurous, very rotten. It was the miasma that lingered in men’s clothes when they came out of the trenches. Laura had thought she’d never smell it again.
The smell was stronger in the kitchen. The box lying by the hearth drew Laura’s gaze like a waiting scorpion, with the smell clinging round it. The heat from the fire must have…Was she breathing? She hardly felt it as she searched jerkily for a pry bar and wedged it under the lid.
Inside was a stiff, stained jacket.
She’d last seen Freddie—was it in July? August. He’d had leave and come to see her. They’d gone to a café in Poperinghe. Eaten a vast number of eggs, heaps of greasy chips. Drunk far too much of that terrible white wine, from the one-franc bottles. He’d been all right. Thin, but they all were thin, and a faraway look in his eyes. They all had that too. He’d smiled at her, just a little gap-toothed, still freckled as an egg. Her brave baby brother. It had been a bloody summer, but a successful one. The Allies had pushed the Germans back at Messines. But then the offensive stalled.
“They’ll leave it there, for the winter,” Laura had told him, deep into the second bottle of wine. “The attack. They’ll wait until spring. Can’t you smell the rain? Can’t come soon enough.” She waved her glass at the sky. “Get on with it, rain.” She poured out her glass, a half-drunk offering. Freddie looked on disapprovingly. “Hush,” she said, smiling. “I’ll buy us another bottle.”
The Belgians said the rain would come early that year. And when it did, the ground would turn to soup. Armies didn’t attack in soup. They survived the summer, Laura had thought, hazy with wine. They’d survive the war. Theywould.
