Chapter Eight
Eight
Séance, take two.
We’ve returned our fingers to the upturned glass, even though now our hearts aren’t in it. Not mine, at least. The same goes for Heather, who rolls her eyes when I tilt my face to the darkness above the table and say, “Is there a spirit present?”
I pause and listen, waiting for whatever trick Brad and Ronan have cooked up for us next. I can just barely see them in the dark corners of the room, like shadows themselves. Neither of them has moved, so I try again.
“Is there a spirit present who would like to commune with us? If so, please make your presence known.”
Across from me, Susie immediately straightens in her chair. “Did anyone else feel that?”
“Feel what?” I say.
“A chill. Just now.”
Next to me, Julianne pipes up. “I feel it, too.”
“So do I,” Violet says.
I feel nothing. Then again, I’m in full skeptic mode. Even if I had felt something, I’m sure my brain would have denied it. I’m surprised, then, when Heather does a startled shimmy in her chair.
“There it was again,” she announces.
I start to feel something myself. Not a chill, exactly, but something close to that.
A frisson of anxiety I haven’t experienced in twenty years.
That doesn’t mean it’s real. It wasn’t then, so it can’t be now.
But then one of the framed butterfly displays drops from the wall, hitting the floor with a bang and a sickening crunch of broken glass.
All of us at the table jolt to attention.
“Brad, was that you again?” Violet says.
“No,” he says, still motionless in his corner. “I swear.”
That is clearly bullshit. It has to be more of Brad’s handiwork, although I can’t tell how he did it from the other side of the room. I’m trying to figure it out when the drinking glass on the table suddenly moves beneath our fingers.
At first, the nudge toward the YES startles me.
Wasn’t expecting that! Yet once the initial shock wears off, I realize it was inevitable.
Fake or not, it’s what we’re here for. More important, it’s what Ronan and Loretta want from us.
I suspect that, more than anything else, has prompted this collective moving of the glass across the table until it finally reaches YES.
“Thank you, spirit,” I say, playing along. “We invite you to move more freely, if you are able. We have many questions for you.”
Beside me, Violet whispers, “Ask who it is.”
“Spirit, kindly tell us your name.”
The glass we’re all touching moves again. Those imperceptible muscle movements Brad talked about are now hard at work. I even know where we’re heading as the glass slides closer to Violet, zeroing in on the letter right in front of her.
A
It then zips right, to the letter that’s last in the alphabet but, due to the circular layout, directly beside the A.
Z
The glass keeps moving to the R, and I have to stop myself from sighing at the predictability of it all. Sure enough, it finishes by sliding back to Violet and the letter A.
Azra.
I guess the others have decided to fake it as well.
“Is this the same Azra who was on New Avalon in 1926?” I ask, despite already knowing the answer. When the glass slides to the inevitable YES, I toss out another question. One for which there is no obvious answer.
“Azra, are you a man or a woman?”
Because Daisy’s diary never specifies Azra’s gender, I’m curious to see what the others subconsciously choose. The glass sits motionless, as if no one can quite decide—or mentally guide the others in that direction.
A second goes by.
Two.
On the third, the glass abruptly glides to the NO tile.
Interesting.
“So you’re neither?” I say.
“Or both?” Susie adds.
The glass edges away from the tile before looping back to it. Another no. Fine, the others have copped out on answering the question. I resist an eye roll.
“Azra, what happened to the women who were here before us?” Susie says, returning to a question with another obvious answer.
The glass moves faster now, zipping to the letters located between me and Violet, quickly skipping among four of them.
D-E-A-D
Of course.
All of us assumed this.
“How did they die?” Julianne says, displaying no sense of irony, no awareness that this is entirely predictable.
Even though she’s the most superstitious among us, she can’t actually think this is real.
But when I glance at some of the others, I see the same solemn, expectant expression on the faces of Susie and even Violet.
Her gaze follows the glass as it slides around the table.
She silently mouths each letter it pauses at, spelling out a word that should surprise no one.
“‘Killed,’” Violet says when the glass finally rests at the D placed between the two of us.
“Do you know who did it?” I say, forcing them back to a question for which there is no obvious answer.
The glass immediately shoots to the YES tile. Another cop-out. One that brings to mind an improv class I took two summers ago and its overused mantra: Yes, and…?
“Azra,” I say, “will you please tell us, specifically, who killed them?”
I’m surprised when the glass begins sliding without hesitation. I was expecting another pause. Instead, it bops all around the table, wasting no time in spelling out one word.
L-E-A-V-E
Then another.
N-O-W
“‘Leave now,’” Julianne says with a noticeable shudder.
The glass continues to move, repeating the pattern two more times.
“Which one of you is doing this?” Heather says as it begins a third.
“Not me,” Susie says.
Violet shushes them, her eyes wide with wonder. “I think—I think this is real.”
It’s not.
It can’t be.
This is exactly what Brad said it is. Subconscious groupthink in which a hundred tiny muscle spasms move the glass exactly where we want it to go. The only way to prove it is to trick Azra—a.k.a. everyone else—into providing an incorrect answer.
“Someone ask something no one else would know,” I say. “Only you.”
Heather shoots me a withering look across the table. “And how will that prove anything?”
“If this is just our collective subconscious telling us things we already know, then we need to test it.”
“Fine,” Heather says with a sigh. “Azra or whoever you are, tell us the name of my oldest cousin.”
The glass stops, and all of us wait, breath held, fearful that even the slightest exhalation might influence where it’s going to go. Which, for several seconds, is nowhere. But then the glass nudges forward.
One inch.
Two.
Soon it’s sliding smoothly across the table, on its way to one of the letters situated between me and Violet. Next it quickly glides toward one by Julianne, then the letter directly in front of Violet, then five more located all around the table. When it stops, we’ve spelled out a single name.
CLARENCE
“How?” Heather now sounds even more incredulous, almost angry. “How the fuck did you all guess that?”
“We didn’t,” Julianne says.
“Maybe it was you,” I suggest gently, careful not to upset her even more. “Maybe you guided us to it without even realizing it.”
“But I’m barely touching this glass.”
“Neither am I,” Julianne says.
“Me, too,” Susie chimes in, her voice meek and frightened.
Violet sighs. “Same with me.”
And me. Currently my fingers rest so lightly on the glass’s bottom that I can barely feel it.
“Someone is doing this,” Heather insists. “And I’m going to find out which one of you it is.” She lifts her face, glaring into the darkness above the table. “Azra, tell me Clarence’s middle name.”
Not a second passes before the glass is on the move again.
This time, I try to monitor the pressure of my fingers on its bottom, the twitch of my knuckles, the motion of my arm.
Am I pulling the glass back toward the C located near my elbow—or am I the one being pulled?
While I can’t be certain, I think it’s the latter.
My arm is slack, my touch on the glass light.
I’m just along for the ride as it slides across the table, bouncing from one of the letters on my right to another, then another.
C-E-D
The glass then zooms across the table, moving so fast I need to stand to keep up with it.
Violet does the same, our chairs scraping the floor as we nudge them out of the way.
Soon everyone is on their feet, straining to keep contact with the glass as our arms are jerked back and forth like we’re marionettes.
After three more letters—R-I-C—we’re done. The glass comes to a dead stop, leaving the rest of us breathless and confused, none more so than Heather.
“Cedric,” she says, stunned. “His middle name was Cedric.”
“None of us possibly could have known that,” Susie says.
“Or remotely guessed it,” Julianne adds.
Heather stares at the glass parked in front of the C.
Because it’s the farthest away from her, she has to stretch over the table to maintain contact.
The fierce gleam in her eyes tells me she’s hell-bent on proving all of this is fake, when even I’m not so sure anymore.
There’s a strange, anxious flutter in my rib cage I haven’t felt since I was a little girl, huddled beneath the covers, terrified by the presence outside my window.
“Let’s keep going,” Heather says. “Azra, where is Clarence now?”
Off the glass goes again.
To the W.
To the I.
To the T.
To the H.
We follow it back to the table’s center, where it pauses just enough to indicate a space between words. Then it resumes spelling.
First M.
Then E.
“‘With me,’” Julianne says, gasping.
We all look to Heather for confirmation. Her terse nod is all we need. Clarence is dead.
“And where are you?” she says, less defiant now. Curiosity has gotten the better of her.
The glass starts up again, gliding first to the letter H.
Then to the E.
When I realize where it’s heading next, the flutter in my ribs grows worse.
L
The flutter becomes a knock, rattling my entire body.
L
When the glass comes to a stop in the center of the table, Heather gasps. So does Julianne. Susie says, “Wait, did that spell out—”
I shush her, watching in amazed horror as the glass starts up again, pulling us with it as it spells out two more words.
SO IS