Chapter V #4
The answer might have been something like,—Yes, whether I want to or not.
“Or is it, you know, a gag gift?” she pressed, when half a minute had passed and I was still silent. She tore the receipt from the printer and handed me a pen. I signed my name and handed it back to her.
“Winnie,” she said. “Cute.”
“It’s not a gag gift,” I said finally. “I’m going to use it.”
She nodded, her expression changing to almost … impressed? In that moment I found myself wanting her approval desperately, something I should probably speak to a therapist about.
“Cool,” she said. “Just be careful, you know? The person we call isn’t always the person who answers. Think of it like a big communal home. The phone rings, it’s anyone’s guess who’s going to be on the other side.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
I picked up the box and tucked it under my arm.
I didn’t want to leave the store, which was lowly lit and smelled like lavender candles and was quiet and cramped and cozy.
But the employee was slipping quickly back into her state of gentle boredness and it was getting really late.
My sisters would be worried. (My remaining sisters.) I probably had text messages from them.
Practical Magic was long over. I hadn’t checked my phone in a while.
“Okay, well. Bye,” I said.
“Bye, little medium,” she said, even though she was probably only a few years older than me and little was a stretch.
I left the shop, squeezing the Ouija board box to my side, pulling my phone out of my pocket and sending Bernadette and Clara a quick text, not bothering to read the twenty-eight they had sent me already.
If Henry wouldn’t answer a knock on his closet door, we would simply try another way to reach him.
We spent Sunday wandering around the city.
It was a gray and bleak day and we welcomed it, and we welcomed the way our fingers grew numb with cold and our feet turned numb with walking and our brains turned numb from the repetitive movement of one foot in front of the other.
We avoided the busiest streets, we zigzagged down alleys, we got back to the house around six and ate cereal for dinner, the three of us standing in the kitchen, I think simply forgetting to sit down or perhaps so used to being vertical.
It was already pitch dark outside by the time we washed the bowls out in the sink.
We set up the Ouija board on Evelyn’s floor, pushing her bed against the wall, scooting her nightstand over, making room for the three of us to sit, all crowded around it.
Clara lit cream taper candles. Bernadette closed the curtains and threw a square of black silk over Evelyn’s lamp (where did Bernadette acquire a square of black silk?
I simply didn’t ask). The result was a room lit much like the magic shop itself.
The shadows were alive and moving and I was thoroughly freaked out as I took my seat next to my sisters and stared at the board and planchette before me, made in China, probably, not connected to the afterlife or the underworld at all, probably, a waste of $39.
99 (plus tax), but here we were, and I doubted Dark Magic had a return policy for slightly used occult products.
“Okay,” Bernadette said, looking at me. “Take it away.”
“Take it away?”
“This was your idea. Lead us.”
“Lead us?”
Bernadette narrowed her eyes at me. “Come on. It’s not rocket science. Ask a question.”
“Ask a—”
“If you repeat what I just said again, I will be forced to summon up a demon and sacrifice your soul to Hell.”
“I’m wondering if we shouldn’t joke about things like that,” Clara said gently. For the first time, I noticed there was a hardcover book in her lap. The title was visible on the front, written in embossed gold letters: Mythology.
“You brought a book to the séance?” Bernadette said.
“I thought it couldn’t hurt, to do some light reading. If what Aunt Bea says is true … that the Farthing girls are … Well. You know … Persephone had a pretty strong connection to the Underworld … Maybe that’s why…”
“Spit it out, Cece,” Bernadette said, not unkindly.
“Maybe that’s why we’re able to see Henry in the first place,” Clara finished, her words tumbling out before she could change her mind.
It was funny. Between us, we had three lifetimes of seeing a ghost in our attic and we had maybe never once considered the correlation Clara was now presenting.
“But then why can Winnie see more?” Bernadette asked after a moment.
“Against my will,” I added weakly.
“I don’t know,” Clara said. “But she’s the only one who can…”
“No,” I said, suddenly remembering my conversation with Aunt Esme. “Aunt Esme could see them, too!”
“When did she tell you that?” Bernadette asked.
“In Vermont.”
“And you kept it to yourself?”
“There’s been a lot going on,” I said, gesturing down at the Ouija board.
“Fair,” Bernie allowed.
“So you can see them and Esme could see them…” Clara said, and we could practically hear her brain whirring over this new information.
“What’s the correlation?” I asked.
“Esme was the youngest,” Clara said.
“But I’m not the youngest,” I said.
“The youngest of three. The third.”
“Oh. And I’m the third.”
“Could just be a coincidence,” Bernadette said.
“Did Persephone have siblings?”
“Almost certainly,” Clara said. “Each source says something different.”
“So she could conceivably have been the third daughter,” I mused.
“Conceivably,” Clara allowed.
I took the book from her and thumbed through it.
It was written by Edith Hamilton. It had beautiful and scary illustrations.
I felt a little bit like I had fallen down a rabbit hole, like Alice, just trying to sulk in peace and ending up in another world altogether.
It all felt more real to me in that moment than it ever had before.
Persephone. Us. The children of the in-between.
We had always believed the stories, believed Aunt Bea without reservation, but now, when presented with what could potentially be evidence of the truth …
Well, it was a lot to consider.
We had believed the stories, when we were children, but we had also believed in the Easter Bunny.
I handed the book back to Clara. She set it carefully back on her lap.
“Okay, so I’ll, um, just ask a question…”
“I hope tonight,” Bernadette mumbled.
“Sure, um, well. Put your hands on the planchette.” We did. “And, then … Hello … spirits.”
“Hello, spirits,” Clara repeated dutifully, her eyes screwed shut.
“We’re trying to reach Henry. He lives in our attic. This attic. Well, lived. And we’re just trying to reach him. So … Henry? Are you there?”
Bernadette had closed her eyes by then, too, so I closed my eyes, and I tried to concentrate on keeping my thoughts pure and empty, but instead I kept remembering that scene in Practical Magic where the sisters stand on either side of the dead man, their hands over him much like ours were over the Ouija board now, tiny pins in their fingers as they prepared to pierce his eyeballs and complete the magic spell.
I cracked my eyes open. Nothing was happening with the planchette. The way the candles were flickering made my sisters look ghastly and strange. I felt scared, stupid, incredibly stupid. I closed my eyes again.
“Henry … can you hear us? Please let us know if you’re there. Please, Henry. Are you there?”
I didn’t think I imagined it, the slight tingling in my fingers, the slight whoosh of air through the room, the slight increase in light I could sense even behind my closed eyelids, like the candle flames had grown somehow stronger.
I kept my eyes closed. Whatever spell was working, I didn’t want to disturb it. I waited for any sense of motion, any scraping noise of the planchette gliding against the board, any gasp from my sisters as their fingers were pushed by some unseen (undead?) force.
After a few moments of nothing else happening, I opened my eyes.
My sisters were sitting so motionless they looked almost like statues, their brows furrowed in concentration. Clara was biting her bottom lip; Bernadette’s nose was crinkled.
And beyond them—
Beyond them …
My breath hitched in my chest, catching for a moment before dislodging.
There was a …
There was someone.
Not Henry.
Not the right size or shape …
This ghost was smaller, feminine. A Farthing woman, like all the other Farthing ghosts I’d seen in my life. But I’d never seen one inside the house before …
The person we call isn’t always the person who answers.
I wrenched my hands back from the planchette and immediately the room grew dimmer; the candle flames, which had been too high a moment ago, shrunk back to a normal level. My hands stopped tingling. The ghost disappeared. My sisters opened their eyes.
“Did you feel that?” Clara asked.
“There was someone … There was someone here,” I said, out of breath, pointing a shaky finger at where the ghost had stood.
Bernadette and Clara both turned to look at the now-empty space.
“Henry?” Clara asked hopefully.
“Not Henry,” I said.
“Persephone?” Bernadette asked, her tone somewhere between hopeful and mocking.
“No. I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was getting lightheaded; I leaned over and put my head between my knees—there was something I was missing, there was something I wasn’t getting.
The ghost had looked so familiar, the size and shape, the essence of the ghost, it was as if I had seen it before.
“I think it was a Farthing ghost,” I said.
“Well, that makes sense,” Bernadette said. “You always see Farthing ghosts.”
“But never in the house. The only person who’s ever died in this house is Henry. The next closest ghost is a few blocks away.”
“And thank goodness for that,” Bernie said. “One ghost per brownstone is enough, thank you very much.”
“Do you see that?” Clara asked suddenly, and I noticed that she was the only one still looking at the board.