Chapter Nine

 

“Liana’s gone to bed,” Aunt H. said when she joined me in the music room. “I tried to persuade Roma to stay the night, but she insisted she wanted to go home.”

I nodded absently. “I bet.”

It was about an hour after the séance had ended. I had retreated to the music room once it was clear Roma was not in any immediate danger. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that while Liana was gleefully reliving the evening’s haunted highlights for the rest of the stricken attendees.

Aunt H. was clasping and unclasping her hands, an uncharacteristic and, I knew, unconscious sign of nervous tension. “The poor thing was so exhausted. I offered to have Tarrant drive her, but she declined.”

I said, “Speaking of exhaustion, you look beat, darling. You should call it a day.”

No lie. Aunt H. looked white-faced and haggard. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and lines around her mouth. So much for my reassuring presence. She looked even worse than the night I’d first arrived.

“I will. I wanted to talk to you, Artie.” She took the matching rose-and-silver wingback chair across from my own, sinking onto it wearily. Her expression was a mix of anxiety and reproach. “You shouldn’t have done it, dear. It’s not like you to be so…so foolhardy. Suppose you had managed to grab hold of-of that thing. It might have… Who knows what might have happened!”

“Aunt H., you can’t really believe—”

She didn’t let me get any further. “I blame myself. I shouldn’t have sent for you. I wouldn’t have if I’d thought you’d take such an intolerant…sneering view of the situation.”

After a moment, I said, “Well, that hurts. And I don’t think it’s fair.”

It did hurt. And it did feel unfair.

“What you did tonight… There could have been terrible consequences.”

“All right, I admit that in the heat of the moment I forgot the rule about not breaking the circle. Which, considering how many times I’ve seen The Legend of Hell House—”

“You’re still joking about it!” Aunt H. cried. “It isn’t funny!”

“I’m joking because the fact that you seem to believe this…nonsense is scaring the hell out of me.” I reached for her hands. They were ice-cold and rested unmoving in my own. “Aunt H. Think about this rationally. Do you honest-to-God believe Ogden showed up in the dining room this evening?”

She didn’t answer. She just sat there staring at me with that troubled gaze.

“Roma Loveridge faked the whole thing. I don’t know how she did it—yet—but I know she did.”

“How can you say that?” Aunt H. protested. “It was Ogden’s voice. You know it was. We both know that was Ogden. And it couldn’t have been a recording. He answered you. He responded to you. No one could have anticipated you would be there tonight, let alone what you would say.”

It was reassuring to know she had thought it through, even if she had come to a different conclusion than me.

I was trying to think of how to respond without further putting her back up, and into my hesitation, she said, “Artie, have you considered that perhaps your resistance is…perhaps you’re afraid to believe?”

I sighed. “No. It isn’t that. I’m willing to consider the possibility that ghosts exist. I’m even willing to consider the possibility that ghosts return to haunt the living. But what happened tonight? I don’t buy it. Starting with the guest appearance of Tony Clarke.”

Her expression altered. “Yes. That was…odd.”

And by odd, she clearly didn’t mean supernatural, spooky odd. She meant she’d also sensed something off.

“Did you ever mention to Liana what happened with Tony?” I asked.

“No.” Aunt H. was definite. “But I did tell Ogden about it. I thought one reason you settled for Greg was you were afraid to get involved with someone vulnerable again, as someone who truly loved you, truly cared about you would be vulnerable.”

I was too startled to know what to say, and eventually came up with a lame, “Greg loved me.”

“Maybe. In his own way. Not enough to actually divorce his wife.”

No. Not enough to divorce her. And what a good thing, since it had simplified matters when he’d decided to return to her. Well, a bird in hand is no doubt worth more than waiting maybe decades for your boyfriend to inherit.

I said shortly, “I don’t want to have this conversation. The point is, Roma somehow found out about Tony and used that knowledge tonight to try and buoy the idea that Lord Reckmore or whatever his name is—was—and his cast of thousands was legit.”

“Lord Rekhmire.”

“Like I said, I’m not buying it.”

Aunt H. shook her head as though I’d disappointed her once again. “You’ll never convince me that Roma was faking. She truly believes in what she’s doing.”

“Maybe. Her faint seemed genuine. I guess a trance state is a form of self-hypnotism.”

“Even if Roma did incorporate a bit of local gossip into the session, it’s not a reflection of her powers,” my aunt said. “I think it’s perfectly natural a medium might repeat information they’ve picked up. It’s probably unconscious.” She gave another of those little head shakes. “Artemus, I don’t see how you can dispute Roma’s extraordinary gift after everything that happened this evening.”

“I can dispute it because I don’t believe in what happened this evening. Speaking as a theater critic, I give tonight’s performance a C+.”

She sighed, pulled her hands free, and rubbed her temples.

I watched her for a moment. “Have you heard Ogden’s voice before during one of these séances?”

Aunt H. opened her eyes. “Yes, once before. In one of the first sessions.”

“Wait. Yes? You didn’t think to mention that before?”

Twin spots of pink appeared in her colorless face. “It never happened again—and we never actually saw him until tonight.” She leaned forward, clasping her hands tightly. “Do you realize what a miraculous thing that was?”

“You know, I hate to be a spoilsport, but that filmy figure could have been anyone.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“The voice, yes, I admit the voice sounded like Ogden. That figure was too…too nebulous to be able to identify with any certainty.”

“Artemus, you’re approaching this like a film critic objecting to the quality of a particular print. The point is not the aesthetic merits of the manifestation. The point is that tonight we witnessed a true manifestation.”

“Maybe we did. But isn’t the quality of the print—if you want to put it like that—part of how we can determine whether what we saw was real or—”

She didn’t let me finish. “Wait. I want you to really consider for a moment, Artie. With Roma’s help, Ogden not only materialized, it was managed without any apparatus. No spirit cabinet. No spirit slates. Roma didn’t use so much as her Ouija board!”

I made a face. “Does anyone use that stuff nowadays? Wouldn’t the special effects be done with lasers and wireless? The kind of thing you’re talking about was used to simulate a lot of hocus-pocus at the turn of the last century.”

“No. That’s not correct. Roma inherited her gift through her mother, who inherited her ability through her mother. In fact, the Loveridge women have worked as mediums since the heyday of the spiritualism movement. Very often Roma does use her great-grandmother’s old spirit cabinet to make contact. But early on she said Ogden’s presence was so strong, so vital, we might not need the cabinet.”

None of that reassured me. And the gleam in my aunt’s eyes reminded me all too much of Liana’s feverish glare.

“That first contact with Ogden—where you heard his voice—did that happen here or at Roma’s…place of business?”

My aunt wrinkled her nose in distaste at the idea of a “place of business.” She said, “Roma doesn’t have a shop in a strip mall like some sleazy fortune-teller, if that’s what you imagine. She invites people to her home.”

“Okay. She works from home. That first séance where Ogden—”

Aunt H. cut in, “Yes, the first time we heard Ogden speak, it was at Roma’s home.”

“I see.”

“Roma did use the cabinet on that occasion. The way I understand it, the cabinet affords the medium a dark, enclosed space in which to build up her power so that the ectoplasm—that’s that white, milky mist we saw tonight—can form. Even though Ogden did not appear that time, Roma said his spirit was so powerful—and it’s obvious her own gift is so strong—that moving forward we could dispense with the cabinet. Even so, it’s taken this long for Ogden to materialize.”

“Auntie H., do you honestly believe that…cloud…was Ogden?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation, her blue eyes meeting mine steadily. “I do. Do you honestly believe it wasn’t?”

I turned my head away and did not answer.

Until this evening, Aunt Halcyone had appeared to at least consider the possibility that some human agency was behind the “haunting” of Green Lanterns. Now she seemed to have bought in completely to the idea that Ogden had returned from the Great Beyond.

“Do you or don’t you?” Aunt H. repeated.

“I…” I let out a long breath. “I don’t deny I attended the séance with a certain amount of bias, and I’m still skeptical. But there was something…eerie in that room tonight.”

“Eerie! I think tonight’s manifestation qualifies as something more than eerie!”

“Okay, spooky. I’ll give you spooky. It wasn’t just the dark or the silence or the weird atmosphere, although all those things were part of it, of course. There was something…not right.”

Aunt H. opened her mouth, and I said, “Yeah, I don’t mean that, though. I mean I could feel a tension, an undercurrent in that room.”

Menace.

I had felt a strong sense of menace. From whom or toward whom, I was unsure, but I was not unsure in my belief that something malignant was at work. Call it instinct, call it intuition, but I was sure something—no, someone—intended ill.

“I will never rest until you have paid for what you did.”

Until that moment, Ogden’s comments had been fairly innocuous. But that final declaration—and the venom in the spirit’s tone—had been very different. That had been a threat. Plain and simple. It could have been directed at Liana, but I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d imagined the hints the ghost had dropped about Ogden’s accident. Motor oil on the floor of Liana’s bathroom or not, the ghost had pretty much cleared her of suspicion tonight.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The “ghost” had been standing behind Tarrant at the time, so maybe the comment had been directed at Tarrant, but I didn’t think so. And I didn’t think anyone else at that table thought so. Was Aunt H. really oblivious to what had been suggested during the séance? Or did she not want to acknowledge the implied accusation?

Or—

No. I refused to consider that possibility. Refused to consider the idea that the “ghost’s” veiled accusation hadn’t registered with Aunt H. because…it was true.

I said, “Maybe there’s life after death, maybe not. But you’d think if Ogden had something important to say, he’d spit it out. If he thinks his accident was no accident, why doesn’t he just say so? If he blames someone for his death, why not speak up?”

She bit her lip. “You take such a…a utilitarian view of the afterlife. It isn’t like this world. It takes so much energy to cross over, and, after all, a spirit doesn’t have an actual brain to reason with.”

“No comment.”

She frowned but, much like one of those overextended denizens of the afterlife, didn’t seem to have the energy for another scolding.

“Have they all gone to bed now? The still-living attendees, I mean.”

Aunt H.’s gaze was puzzled. “Yes. I suppose so. Why?”

“I want to examine the dining room for myself.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing there. You know there isn’t. What could there be? A hidden projector? A hidden microphone?”

“Maybe.”

“When would Roma have planted them? Especially since you had the locks on the doors and windows changed.”

“I don’t know, but I want to look that room over. There’s got to be a scientific explanation for what we saw tonight.”

My aunt nodded once, solemnly, granting permission. She remained motionless in her chair by the unlit fireplace as I went through to the dining room.

 

 

The room seemed strangely unchanged.

Yes, the chairs were in disarray, the crystal carafe had been moved to the table. A half-filled goblet sat beside it. In the old days, I had never seen so much as a side table out of formation. That wasn’t the kind of change I meant.

After the events of the evening, I was expecting, well, not ectoplasm dripping from the chandelier, but something to confirm the weirdness of earlier. But beyond the scattered chairs and water carafe, there was nothing to indicate anything untoward had occurred.

I studied the long room as though seeing it for the first time. Gilt-framed oil paintings lined the walls, the brocade draperies were still drawn across the windows. The furniture was the same rickety antique tortoiseshell stuff Bancrofts had been dining on for generations.

There were no convenient alcoves, nooks, or cubbyholes to conceal recording devices or a fog machine. No closet or cupboard someone could hide inside.

I went to the windows and drew back the drapes, looking out at the moonlit terrace. Half the garden was still overgrown and wild. The other half was efficiently if not elegantly chopped back into submission.

I tested the new bolt on the window frame. It held firm. No one had gained access from outside.

The leaves of the eucalyptus trees glinted and glittered in the moonlight like silver coins. Through the wind-tossed trees I spotted the light shining from the chauffeur’s quarters over the garage. I fingered the brocade curtains for any telltale lumps made by wires but found nothing. I turned away from the cheerful twinkle of the carriage-house windows.

From there I moved to the table, crawling beneath and checking for bugs—the listening-device type—wires, speakers, anything. There was nothing. No hidden drawers, nothing taped to the underside, no hollow legs. Same with the chairs. They were just ordinary…dining room table chairs.

I crawled out from under the table and went to examine the sideboard and twin servers. The drawers and cupboard doors all seemed solid and well made. I couldn’t find any wires or electronic devices.

I dusted my hands and rose. I was starting to lose hope, but no way was I ready to give up yet. I moved to the walls of the room. If there were hidden doors or secret passages at Green Lanterns, I’d have surely discovered them during my Hardy Boys phase. But it was still worth a try. The house had been built in the late 1800s by Alexander Bancroft, a wealthy coal baron from Victoria, British Columbia, as a wedding present for his American bride. It had plenty of nooks and crannies, so maybe a long-lost secret passage wasn’t out of the question. A lot of wealthy families had built hidden rooms during Prohibition to conceal their private bars.

I ran my hands over the smooth, forest-green walls, seeking… Well, honestly, I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for beyond a seam or edge where one didn’t belong. Sadly, there was no handy bookshelf with a fake-book lever or a faux fireplace with swiveling andirons. I could find no suspicious cracks, no ridges, no hidden hinges.

Pulling my shoes off, I climbed onto the table and checked every arm of the chandelier. I felt around the ceiling medallions. Nothing. There was no ceiling trapdoor, no access panels.

Strike three. Or possibly eleven.

The only thing left was the floor. I started at the far end of the room and went over the parquet floor, square by square, running my hands around each and every groove. I shoved the table and chairs to the side of the room, rolled the faded green-and-gold silk Isfahan rug out of the way, and went over that section of floor too, but there were no loose blocks, let alone a hitherto unnoticed trapdoor.

Defeated, I climbed wearily to my feet. My hands were filthy, and the knees of my jeans were dusty. There was a tickle in the middle of my forehead as my sinuses began to protest breathing all the dirt and dust accumulated over the months while Betty had been left to try and deal with the entire house on her own.

I pushed my damp hair back with a grimy hand. So that was that. Whatever the hell was going on, the room had not been rigged. It was disappointing, but not really a surprise. Wiring the room for sound, setting up projectors, would have required the cooperation of someone inside the house, and that was nearly as hard to believe as Ogden’s spirit wandering the halls of Green Lanterns, pointing the finger of suspicion at all and sundry. All and sundry being Aunt H.

I wandered back to the windows, gazing out at the light still shining through the trees. After a moment, I pulled the curtains.

What if I was wrong? Was cynicism blinding me to one final possibility? The possibility that Ogden Hyde really had come back from the dead?

As I let the idea sink in, a chill went through me. It was a completely atavistic reaction. Even when you don’t believe in ghosts…well, you can’t know for sure. No one knows for sure. I don’t believe in demonic possession either, but the Catholic Church apparently does, and they’re a pretty big, well-established organization. So there you go.

For a few seconds I stood motionless, just…absorbing the feel of the room. It seemed cold for a summer night, and the sense of menace I’d felt earlier was back. But was that the room, or was that imagination getting the better of me? Because it was all too easy to start imagining something lurking in the shadows, watching us with hollowed eyes as we stumbled around in panic. I could almost visualize a grinning skeleton standing across the room from me.

Ohhh-kay. Enough of that.

I went to the French doors, slid the bolt, and pushed the doors wide. The summer breeze wafted in, dispelling the stale scent of dust and old candles and furniture wax. A distant pale balloon floated past the moon and disappeared behind the trees. The night smelled of eucalyptus and sounded like a symphony of crickets and frogs. Moonlight gilded the ornate iron furniture—and picked out the gleam of eyes of someone standing in the shadows.