“Oh!” My eyes widen. I swish the planchette across the wood. “B-A-R-N-R-E-D. The red barn?” I look up into the dull, hazel eyes of Tattered Overalls. “Does that make sense to you?”
His greasy hair shines in the lamplight. “No. We live in the city. Ain’t no barns near us.”
What an idiot. Tell him I said he’s an idiot.
“There’s that restaurant, Papa!” says a smudge-faced boy next to this hulk. “The one around the corner—its front doors are painted like a barn!”
Tattered Overalls scowls at the boy.
But I nod and slide the planchette. People are so easy. They lead you right to where they want to go. Quite the opposite of Spirit, who often comes through as crackles of words through static. Spirit often offers me images, and it’s up to me to interpret their meanings. Sometimes they offer me smells, sensations, or feelings, sometimes snapshots of places I’ve never been, sometimes faraway, tinny music, but they are mostly electrified nonsense. A jolt of static electricity—zap!—but in my mind.
Delightful.
I spell out “D-O-O-R-S.” The boy beams.
I miss you, son.
That I hear as clear as a crystal ball. I throw him a bone: “S-O-N-L-O-V-E.”
The youngster’s eyes glass over. A single tear gathers on his lashes, then slides down his dirty cheek.
I love and hate this job. Mostly hate. Grief is a terrible thing to capitalize on. So where I can offer solace, I do.
“She wouldn’t leave the money there. We never even ate there.” The man licks his dry, chapped lips. Pounds his fists on the table. The planchette bounces to the floor. I bet they think the pounding did that, caused the planchette to bounce like that. If they’d paid attention, they would have seen the planchette hop and skid before the pounding began. If they’d ALL JUST PAY ATTENTION, they would see everything so differently.
The boy shrinks backward at his father’s pounding. The way he folds into himself, I know this boy has shrunk away from pounding before. My teeth grind.
“Where did she leave it?” Tattered Overalls bellows. “I need that money! Where is it?”
This beast is crushing the velvet on my tablecloth in his meaty fists. And he’s scaring his son. I try not to listen to the voice in my head telling me to answer:
“Up your hind end.”
But I do. I say it.
Rather, I hear my voice say it while I cringe. Her words from my mouth. Sometimes I simply cannot stop them from taking over my voice, my words. It’s an awful sensation, and it leaves me nauseated.
The man thrusts his hands under my table and upends it. The heavy oak slab hits the sideboard with a crack, which topples the oil lamp, igniting the crocheted shawl draped over it.
People scream, shove, scramble to stand. Smoke quickly fills the small room, choking us, stinging our eyes.Not this, I think in a panic.Anything but fire. I whip open the thick curtains and bright, yellow day blinds me. I fling open the window and toss the ignited shawl into a dirty puddle two stories below.
Tattered Overalls reaches into his boot and groans, trying to push himself off the floor. He flashes a gleaming silver knife, and he stumbles between me and the door.
Here we go again.
The gentleman with the silver-green eyes steps forward, between me and this brute. “Easy, big fella,” the young man says. His voice! Spirit offers me the image of a steaming cup of coffee, strong and bold and dark.
The brute does not take kindly to this barrier; he places bothhands solidly on the gentleman’s crisp vest and shoves, hard. The young fellow stumbles but rights himself quickly. He shakes his head. Sighs.
Sighs! He’s done this before, tussled like this, and he finds this whole bit tiresome. Those impossible eyes of his slide to me, still standing by the open window. And here,here, is a moment where I feel asnick, like the tumblers inside a locked safe falling into place. An opening, an unlocking. A deep and unavoidable pull.
It is terrifying. I shrug off the sensation. His face quirks ever so slightly, as if he, too, felt both of those things: his pull, my eschewal.
Pop!The young guy lands a sickening punch square on brute’s nose, those silver eyes never unlocking from mine. Blood explodes everywhere. The beast growls like a bear in a trap.
Exciting as this is, I can’t stick around for it. No pokey for me, thank you.
I pull away from the spell of this gentleman and I follow the path of the shawl: out the window. Andthisis why windows are more valuable than chairs, though a fan of heights I most certainly am not. I brace myself for the impact; my boots are ready.
