May, 1861
His Seership once explained to me that men’s impulses good and ill have all of them their complement in the World of the Spirits that borders our world.
And so for every saintly man is a Spirit that cradles that man in its favour. Just so for every wicked one is One that holds him to his ill.
Affinities these ties are named. The wicked ones are called Diakka.
Like angels but with blackened wings, they seemed to flock around my head. They liked to have a lark on me. At night I heard them clambering upon the roof of my hotel, dragging their pale bodies over the slate and scraping the tips of their wings in the gutters.
Mumler was no more at Newspaper Row. Now he was in other rooms just three streets south on Otis Street and these were larger, Mumler said, so as to hold his clientele.
A week passed then of William Guay in search of chairs and rugs and drapes.
The first day we opened for business at large everyone you’d think was there. Hannah’s mother in her room—and Hannah in a pretty dress—and Mumler in a costly suit provisioned on His Seership’s dime—and then of course there was Bill Christian, lurking, coming in and out.
The day’s first sitter came at ten. He knocked his all there was no bell. I drew the door—says to him, “Welcome. Come upstairs and sit,” says I.
But then he looked at me cock-eyed for I’d forgot there were no stairs.
When Hannah asked him for his name he said that it was Mr. Hinkley. And then he went on to explain that he did not desire a sitting. Rather it was for his master. This man he declined to name.
Mr. Hinkley bowed to us and then he let me see him out.
No sooner had I shut the door than there was knocking there again and I went down the hall to retrieve Mr. Hinkley. Not only was the knock not him but this new man was tall, well-built, and stood with folded slim white hands. He wore a sweep of waxed moustaches—fussy suit—and bowler hat. The first thing he did upon coming inside was to write down his name in the studio’s logbook.
“Mr. Five Hundred?” Mumler says. He checked the shop’s logbook again.
“I am the gentleman spoke of,” says he. He had a mellow high-ish voice. He was almost a pretty man. His staring eyes were very green and damp as though he had been weeping.
“And what do you do here in Athens,” says Mumler, “if we are not to know your name?”
“You came recommended by Katherine Fox on account of your medium, sir, standing there. She has told me that Hannah, if that is her name, would provide me with the evidence I needed for conviction.”
“Conviction in regard to what?”
“I hear that your Hannah is gifted,” says he. “By some accounts too gifted, yes? While you, sir, were explained to me as a prodigy of science and an artist to bargain. More than belief, that is why I have come. To see a splendid process happen.”
The way he had said the word happen was strange. It almost seemed to make him giddy.
About my ears the buffeting of claw-tipped black reprieveless wings.