This is a stalling tactic. Everyone has a John or a Joseph who has crossed. But the woman immediately to my right gasps, pulls her hand from mine, and lays her fingers on her chest. I tilt my head ever so slightly at her. Kiyoko moves behind her and withdraws a light feather. She runs it gently, discreetly, across the woman’s bare neck.
The guest begins weeping. Under the table, I tug the embroidered tablecloth, and the glasses of wine in front of the weeping guest and the gentleman beside her both topple. He leaps up, and I quickly give the empty chair a shove with my foot. The guests are enthralled.
“Joseph is here,” I say, and I tip my head at the empty chair. “He thanks you for giving him a seat.”
Come ON, Spirit, I urge.Give me something here!
Spirit must take pity on me, or more likely on my guest, because it flashes a series of pictures: pencils and books and feather quills.
“Your Joseph was a writer? Or a scholar of some kind?”
The woman’s eyes are fully glassy. She nods eagerly.
I love and hate this job.
I get a flash of ice—largeice, like a glacier, then of some kind of bird. “A penguin?” I say aloud, before I realize it. The woman’s eyes widen.
But these messages of penguins and scholars: The imagesstab through my thoughts like a piercing migraine, rather than in gentle, fuzzy imagery.
“Yes! My boy was studying penguins when he—” Her voice catches, and she looks at her hands in her lap.
Chill bumps rise on my arms. I assume it’s because Joseph wants to say something else about penguins.
But I am wrong. My whole body seizes and I know almost immediately that by relaying this message, I have unleashed terror. I cannot move, the horror envelops me so completely.
One of the other guests sucks in a loud breath. “Look!” he says, and points at the large mirror over the fireplace.
Smoke from the fire and the candles on the mantel are discoloring the amber mirror, tinting the glassy surface a dull ashy black. All but the words. There are unmistakable words scrawled there:
HELP US
One guest screams.
The temperature in the room plummets to freezing cold. We can suddenly all see our breath. The guests shiver uncontrollably.
This part—this chill. This is not part of our show. I glance at Kiyoko, at Clarice. Their eyes narrow at me, as if I’m creating this scenario.
I am not creating this scenario.
Am I?
I feel weak. A rush of heat washes over me. I am hot and cold at the same time. Feverish.
This séance is going awry. Spirit shows me an image of a rapidly unspooling thread. I try to catch hold of it, to wind it back onto the skein, but my palms burn and blister.
And then, there they are: the three figures, two tall, one in a wide-brimmed hat. Shadows, on the edge of my vision, tasting metallic and raw. I have invited them here, opening this portal, and they are happy to terrorize. They step toward me. My heart races.
There is a terrible pressure here, like the sensation of being far underwater in the darkest parts of the sea. Our eardrums throb, pulse, and the guests all work their jaws, straining for release against the agonizing pain.
The temperature of the room whiplashes, and now there is heat. So much heat. The air pulses in waves. We immediately sweat. Slowly, flames creep through the cracks in the floorboards, as if coming from below. Outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, flames bend and lap at the glass.
Surely this is another of my hallucinations. Surely I am the only one seeing this. I squeeze my eyes shut to clear the images.
The guests scream. Panic. Terror fills the room. I amnotthe only one seeing this. We are experiencing this horror together.
The inferno grows. Growls. My throat instantly dries. Through the painful stinging of my eyes, I see it: the guests. One with hair on fire. One whose dress is in flames. The stench of burning hair, burning flesh, fills the room. Fills our lungs. Screams of agony pierce the air. The guests pound at the door of the elevator, but it’s locked.Locked. They push toward the windows, claw at the glass.
My lungs. I gasp. There is so much smoke, so much heat, my lungs cannot grasp on to air. They are blistering.
