Chapter 43
“Talk to me.” Lady Bell sat on a periwinkle velvet armchair in front of the library fireplace. She nodded to the matching chair next to her as Harper entered the library. Harper sat and found a gin and tonic waiting for her on the end table.
“It occurs to me that you might like a drink other than gin. We do have other spirits here at Bell,” Lady Bell said as she leaned back contentedly.
“This is fine, it’s my favorite actually,” Harper said as she sat in the surprisingly comfortable chair. The fire felt comforting, and Harper felt her nerves unwind a bit.
“Mine as well. A Bell Manor tradition that we owe to the namesake of your suite, the Scarlet Sunbird. Another story for another time. But I digress, talk to me,” Lady Bell said.
“You found some records upstairs. I will confess that we might have had a hand in pointing you in that direction. I only tell you so you won’t discount your reaction by thinking you’re going mad. You are not, I assure you.”
Harper shook her head. “How? How did you know? I don’t understand.”
Lady Bell held her gaze on Harper. There was an aura to her as she sat there before the fire. Harper realized she was holding her breath.
“That is an excellent question that has a long answer, and you will get that answer, I promise. But like your equally excellent question as to how I came to be where and who I am, it requires you to have a little more knowledge of how you have come to be where and who you are.” Lady Bell spoke carefully, measuring each word.
Harper’s head was spinning. She took a sip of her drink. “I found a journal, written a very long time ago, I’m not sure when.”
“It was started in 1690, and completed some years later. You can appreciate why we have certain precautions for handling the work. All our paper records are, of course, backed up digitally. Nigel saw to it with the help of some of our younger tech-savvy friends. But I felt it was important for you to see the original.” Lady Bell set her glass down.
“I interrupted you, I apologize. You said earlier that you were processing.”
Harper swallowed, her words sticking in her throat.
“It sounds crazy, but I know Meg’s story.
I remember it, at least bits and pieces.
I’m not far in, but I can see what she saw, smell it, feel it.
” She looked at Lady Bell desperately, knowing she wasn’t making any sense, but the lady seemed nonplussed.
“It’s not crazy at all,” Lady Bell said. “I expect you will remember even more as you continue reading. Tell me, how do you remember? How did you see Meg MacGruer’s story before today?”
“I’ve had the same dreams all my life. I don’t remember much of my childhood, hardly any of it to be honest. I’ve blocked out so much from before and since my parents passed.
But I do remember my dreams, I always have.
They’re not always the same, but I can see now that they were all Meg.
” Harper spoke in a whisper. She’d never told anyone but Carli about her lost memories.
“There’s a reason you are here, Harper,” Lady Bell said. “Have you been remembering anything else since you’ve arrived here on Bell?”
Harper nodded, a small motion, barely decipherable. “I remembered our flat in Vestmannaeyjar. I had forgotten most everything about it. I remembered drinking coffee with my father.”
“And prior to coming to Bell, what did you remember about your parents, your childhood?” Lady Bell asked, her voice a gentle cadence, hypnotic even.
Harper closed her eyes, the pulsing flashes of memory at the periphery of her consciousness. Each flash was like the lash that came down on her back in the dream that must have been Meg. Harper flinched, an involuntary shudder running through her skin.
“Disconnected things, a story my father told me when I was a little girl, what my mother smelled like—salt and soil, she worked on the water, she gardened …” Harper trailed off as a flash of a small garden appeared in her mind’s eye, messy garden boxes with red and yellow flowers overpouring, strawberries emerging from perfect white blossoms, the smell of thyme and mint.
Green vines and trailing blooms covering a wooden fence that separated the garden from the volcanic rock and dust that lay beyond, it was a hidden space, imbued with magic.
The lash fell and the sting of the memory made her flinch, but Harper breathed in the air despite the pain, sunlight, and heat overwhelming her resistance to remember, the faint musky scent of fertilizer and soil, an acidic edge of rain, a storm coming in.
“You’re there right now,” Lady Bell observed.
Harper nodded. “These worlds have nothing do with each other. What does it mean?”
Lady Bell leaned forward, placing her hand on Harper’s knee.
“I don’t have all the answers, only that I know that these two worlds are absolutely tied.
They are worlds you forgot. One is from a very long time past, the other closer to your heart, but they are your worlds.
You are starting to wake up. Bell does that. ”
Harper took a drink with shaking hands. “I don’t understand.”
Lady Bell sat back and sipped her gin. “You participated in a good number of anthropology experiments in Boston. Your name is on the roster for your roommate Carlene Felling’s PhD research. Is that right?”
Harper nodded, past being shocked at the lengths at which she had been vetted.
“What was the nature of these experiments? What is Ms. Felling’s area of research?” Lady Bell asked.
Harper nodded. “She’s an anthropologist, studying Victorian Spiritualism. Lots to do with me guessing what was on cards, or notes from the audience, that sort of thing, but they were a joke, I mean, I didn’t pass any of them, that wasn’t the point. I was just helping her out.”
“I ask because the notes on her research mark you as ‘highly clairvoyant,’” Lady Bell continued.
“Carli is stretching the truth. She called me ‘weird psychic,’ but anything I ever got right was a coincidence,” Harper protested.
She felt an edge of irritation at the line of questioning.
This didn’t explain what she had read upstairs or why she was suddenly being flooded with memories she’d pushed down for over a decade.
“You discount your talents,” Lady Bell said gently.
“You see that table over there, Nora Grey’s table?
” She nodded her head in the direction of the great polished wood table.
Harper nodded. “Nora Grey was a particular sort of psychic, an extraordinary sort that comes along very rarely. But there is a broad spectrum of ability in this world.” She paused and took a sip.
“How can I explain? There are your bunny-ear psychics. Like the antennas on an old television? They are tuned into one, maybe two channels, but it’s full of static, hard to understand, hard to hear.
On the other end are your multimedia chaos psychics, they receive anything and everything all time, they have no filter, they have no control, and they are often driven entirely mad by it.
Many of the women who have been ‘diagnosed’ with various afflictions are actually multimedia chaos psychics who have no control over what world they are in at any given time.
It is a sort of madness, but not what our modern medicine would make it out to be.
” Lady Bell paused, staring into the fire.
“And then there are the Nora Greys and her mentor, Dorothy Kellings, the Scarlet Sunbird. These are the sort of psychics who learn to take that madness and channel it, laser-focus it, and can tap directly into any number of worlds. Nora Grey and Dorothy Kellings destroyed a meetinghouse in Boston during a rather famous session in 1901; it made all the papers, put them both on the map as far as spiritualists go. And when you have a moment, I highly suggest reading about her final appearance in Salem. Those kind of connections to the next world require a sort of energy that is not common to us mortals.” Lady Bell paused. “Are you following me?”
Harper nodded, the combination of the gin, her empty stomach, and the intensity of Lady Bell’s words was making her head buzz gently.
“You are not ‘weird psychic.’ I would be tempted to say you are bunny-ear psychic, picking up frequencies from a very specific channel. It’s still foggy and it doesn’t make much sense, but you are connected and you see things that others do not.
This is a truth, we have discussed it.” Lady Bell spoke softly, a gentle smile on her lips.
Harper nodded. “Yes, that is true.”
“However, I just don’t know. You might be bunny-ear psychic, but you also might be capable of quite a bit more. Bell Manor, in addition to Nora Grey herself, has been host to a few psychics of her caliber. Your suite, are you enjoying it?” Lady Bell asked with a baiting grin.
Harper nodded. “It’s beautiful, the Sunbird Suite.”
“Yes, named after Dorothy Kellings, the Scarlet Sunbird herself. She was a guest of Bell Manor for quite some time following the incident in 1913.” Lady Bell paused again. “Are you familiar at all?”
Harper shook her head. “Only through Carli, my roommate, something about a townhouse in Queens.”
Lady Bell nodded. “Something indeed. The whole structure, and half the block, was leveled in the incident; it took years to rebuild after 1913. Another record you should very much examine upstairs; it will give a full account, much of it written by the Sunbird herself.” Lady Bell took a deep breath and stretched her neck.
“You’re saying you think I’m … What are you saying?” Harper asked, confused.
“Nothing you don’t suspect yourself. All I’m saying is at the very least, you have picked up on a frequency, a history, Meg MacGruer’s signal.
You didn’t seek it out, you didn’t have to work to find it.
It found you, and that is pretty extraordinary.
The more you read, the more you will remember, and the more you remember of Meg’s story, the more you are likely to remember of your story.
I said before that you are waking up.” Lady Bell reached out and took Harper’s hand.
Harper felt herself clutching it as though she might drown.
“Bell has a way of helping people to wake up from the nightscapes we lock ourselves in.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Harper asked in a small voice, afraid of her own words.
Lady Bell laughed and squeezed Harper’s hand before sitting back and finishing her drink. “Very sneaky, Ms. Hafdóttir, but you will have to wait for my story. I will answer another question for you, though. You asked about our British visitors to Bell Island?”
Harper nodded, her mind spinning.
“They are members of the Psychical Society in London. A remnant of the very same society that was active on Bell back when Nora Grey was a guest to our halls. They had come here for her, you see, but they never left, not really.” Lady Bell stared into the fire, her face thoughtful.
“They have invested a great deal in Bell. I think they have hopes of another such wonder as Nora Grey or Dorothy Kellings, but I suspect their prolonged interest is motivated by sentimentality.”
“Invested?” Harper asked curiously, sipping her drink.
“Yes, financially quite a lot. You might have wondered how Bell sustains itself without the benefit of tourism? We have the income from fishing, of course, and the occasional band of researchers like yourself. But the boost from our British benefactors cannot be discounted. The Psychical Society invests in Bell, and we happily host them whenever they care to visit.” Lady Bell looked away from the fire and met Harper’s gaze, her eyes bright.
“Not to sound rude, but why?” Harper asked cautiously.
Lady Bell laughed. “Not rude. It is curious. Like I said, I believe they are holding out hope that another Nora Grey will manifest on our shores. Miss Grey’s work has sustained them for a century, and the Brits are nothing if not loyal.
” She sat forward abruptly and cast a strange smile at Harper.
“Now, you have a dinner to attend, I am afraid that I cannot join you tonight, but you have a special guest waiting for you in the formal dining room. Please eat, drink, let us take care of you.” Lady Bell stood and stretched her arms over her head; Harper could hear her shoulders pop.
“And tomorrow, or tonight, whenever, when you continue your reading, and I assume you will … take note that there are a few other documents in the file with the journal. One is a historian’s account of Meg’s story, a translation of the journal if you will.
The original can be challenging to read in places.
On that note, good night, dear girl, and thank you for joining me. ”
Harper didn’t have a chance to respond, her tongue tied and her words choking her.
Lady Bell cast her a smile and a small wink.
Irrational tears sprung to Harper’s eyes, she wiped them away in frustration over what she was becoming.
She stayed in the velvet armchair for a moment, taking the last sip of her drink and letting Lady Bell’s words absorb.