1910
She hadn’t seen the Colonel since his house, when she’d pushed him too far to help her, and he’d grown cold.
Now, because he was also a medical doctor, he’d been tasked with examining Opal to ensure she wasn’t hiding any props or special effects, no trumpets to help throw her voice or thread she could use to move objects about the room or waxy ectoplasm that might spill from her mouth or her ears.
The Colonel clutched the lapel of his vest as he circled her.
His mannerisms were formal; his face, tight.
He smelled of wind and gasoline, of the long drive from Indian Hill to the city.
Opal opened her mouth wide. The Colonel peered inside it, then drew his fingers along her gums and teeth.
His touch was so different now, cold and clinical.
He ran his fingers through her hair and down her neck.
He stuck his pinky finger inside her ears, one at a time.
She lifted her arms, and he stood face-to-face with her.
She was certain he’d break his silence, soften his touch, admit familiarity with her body. “My darling,” she whispered when his ear was close enough.
He cleared his throat.
“It’s me—Hazel.”
He lifted her breasts, one at a time, and felt beneath each with the back of his hand.
He moved some ledger books from the desk, and he motioned for her to sit.
She imagined she was President Taft, whose favorite foods were wild game and steak and potatoes.
He could eat a pound of meat in a single sitting.
She imagined she was Hazel. What foods might she have liked?
What foods would she have cooked for her husband as a token of her love?
What else might she have given to him except all of her?
Opal spread her legs. The Colonel crouched and lifted her slip.
She felt a pulse at her seam. “Hazel Grouse,” she whispered.
She felt his pooled breath on one knee, then the other.
He ran his fingers up and down the insides of her thighs, around to her buttocks, until he was satisfied that she was hiding nothing.
“You may dress,” he said.
THE SéANCE WOULD BEGIN AT eight o’clock.
At a quarter till, the large library was already full, buzzing with anticipation.
From where she stood, hidden between two shelves of books that smelled like binding glue, Opal tried to count the number of people milling about the room.
She counted the velvet-seated chairs arranged in rows.
She counted the rows. The counting calmed her nerves.
One, two, three. She touched the tip of her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she marked each number to one hundred before she recognized Dixie Ellison.
Dixie wore a green peacock hat; her cane was propped on the chair beside her.
She hunched forward, scribbling notes. Across the room, near the back, a group of Earthshine Girls huddled together conspiratorially.
She saw Maria and Gilly and Pearl. Amanda Mahooney was turned away from the rest of them, watching Charles Tuttle with his wife, Bertie, on his arm.
The elevator dinged again, and another group of patrons arrived, Clara Dowd among them.
Tuttle and Bertie greeted her familiarly.
The two women hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks.
They stood next to an alabaster statue of a woman with her index finger pressed to her lips, a replica of a statue a library member had seen in France.
France—how far away it seemed, how impossible.
The windows were covered in black muslin to achieve pitch-darkness. At the front, an oval table. Affixed to one of the chairs was a leather strap attached to wires that led to one of the Colonel’s boxes.
The elevator dinged again. Ding. Ding, incessantly, like an unanswered telephone. Like the bell she’d rung in her parlor when the committee first visited her—only she hadn’t been the one to ring it.
In the background, piano music played a tune Opal recognized, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” The lyrics came to her now:
Act two, scene new,
roses blooming all around the place.
Cast, three. You, me,
Preacher with a solemn-looking face.
Choir sings, bell rings,
Preacher: “You are wed forever more.”
Act two, all through, every night the same encore.
Opal had always paused at the phrase same encore. She’d never heard a more accurate description of her marriage: a show she was stuck performing, day after day.
And yet, here she was, playing a new act altogether.
As darkness fell, the spectators took their seats. Someone extinguished the electrical lights and lit the lamps. The atmosphere softened. The crowd hushed on its own, sensing the start of the show. Opal’s eyes adjusted to the dimness.
She wasn’t sure how this would end, only that it would. I worry about endings, Madame de Fleur had written.
The table. The stage. How far she had come from Gallipolis. She settled her weight against the bookshelf. She told herself again that it’d be over soon, that she’d done this before. Her ankles swelled inside her boots. She told herself this would be a story to tell to M. Just a story.
The mayor rang a bell. “Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, and please direct your attention to the committee assembled before you.” He waited for the final chairs to be occupied, for all eyes to obligingly settle upon him.
He took from his breast pocket a piece of paper and unfolded it.
He began reading. “We have gathered to witness Madame Doucet as she proves, or disproves, her practice and abilities as a medium capable of communing with the spirit world.” The crowd murmured, then hushed.
The windows offered a consoling darkness.
The room was a tomb. The spirits would soon awaken.
“Madame Doucet behaved unlawfully in producing dangerous pharmaceuticals. Comet Pills, so named. Beyond that, we’ve learned she’s prescribed various remedies with neither permit nor licensure.
And, yet, the woman claims to commune with the spirit realm. ”
“A crime!” someone yelled.
“A sin!” yelled another voice.
“To test the veracity of her claims,” the mayor continued, gesturing toward that box, “we’ll be using scientific monitoring devices specifically designed to capture the frequencies of the astral plane.
Leading the experiment will be none other than Colonel Davis Bloodworth, a trained medical doctor known internationally for his cadaverous brains experiments, who has published and lectured widely on the workings of the human mind.
” The committee members took their seats, except for the Colonel, who remained standing, arranging the wires and nodes.
“I’d now like to announce Madame Doucet,” the mayor said.
A handful of people in the audience clapped, but most pitched forward in their chairs, waiting to lay eyes on the Witch of Walnut Street.
The only way forward is forward. Opal stepped out of the shadows of the stacks and into the center aisle.
The crowd turned toward her, expecting to see a real witch: a pointy hat, a cauldron and broom.
She registered their surprise at her appearance, at her simple dress, at the demure way she curtseyed before walking toward the men at the table.
The Colonel adjusted and readjusted wires.
He opened the headband piece, a strap of leather that buckled like a belt.
The room was stifling. Tuttle and the mayor had already removed their suit jackets and hung them on the backs of their chairs. They loosened their neckties. Opal lifted her skirt and took a few steps forward, slowly, a one-woman procession.
She proceeded to the table at the front of the room, where Colonel Bloodworth occupied himself with manipulating wires, pushing buttons, readying his gauges, adjusting the strap that Opal knew would be fastened to her head.
She walked slowly, not wanting to suggest fear or alarm, not wanting to reveal that her heart was a clock wound too tightly.
The Colonel motioned her to sit, and so she did.
As she turned to face the crowd, Bertie caught her gaze. She placed her finger to her lips, like that statue near the door. Silence.
The Colonel stood behind Opal now, fitting the strap onto her head.
He began attaching and tightening the rubber nodes to Opal’s forehead, twisting small clamps so that she felt a grip that didn’t hurt but made her feel uncomfortably tethered.
At that moment, she remembered the eclipse box Oren had set over her head the day they met.
She’d tipped forward with the weight of it, and he gently righted her, and they’d grasped hands for a brief, searing moment before he again leveled the box on her head and told her where to look.
“This machine—a Mind Box, I call it,” the Colonel said, “can measure the frequencies of the brain. It would be expected that when Madame Doucet embodies the mind of … of…”—he stuttered—“from the astral plane, the frequency will shift dramatically to reflect such a change.” His hands moved quickly, working to adjust the contraption on her head.
“Does this feel uncomfortable?” he asked her. “It shouldn’t cause any pain.”
“I’d rather hear won’t,” she said. The audience’s laughter eased her nerves; she drew energy from it.
The Colonel was momentarily wounded; she could tell by the way he lifted his foot and tapped the toe of his shoe against the floor. He took his seat at the table, the box in front of him. He adjusted a few knobs and took notation of the meter, a leaning needle. “It is ready,” he said.