Annabelle

Charles leads the group of guests into the yard, where Ms. Eldridge is standing at the stone wall. Her arms are raised, and the sun is beating down on her face. The air is crisp, and I wrap my arms around my body to keep warm.

“Is he finished with his pictures?” she asks Charles, sensing that he’s behind her without looking.

“He is.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t spot any tricks.”

“I see.”

She spins to face the crowd, smiles, and says, “Good morning. Annabelle is eager to talk to us today. Shall we?”

The group follows her to the assembly hall. Mr. Spencer joins them, and John stays close beside him. Fox weaves throughout the people, her ears pointed up and her tail wagging. She yips at John and he pets her head. The little dog seems to have lived her life around crowds, knows how to blend in and be loved.

We arrive at the assembly hall and Ms. Eldridge unlocks its blue door and pets Fox’s head.

“Wait here, girl,” she says, then looks at me. “Dogs are very sensitive to spirits.”

I follow her inside. The assembly hall is separate from the main house and not nearly as nice. It looks like it was cobbled together with spare parts. The paint is chipped, the beams warped, and the windows are cracked and covered with boards that only let in thin slivers of light. There’s a makeshift stage built from old wood in the front, lit with a row of candles. A white curtain hangs behind it, and metal stars and ribbons are tied to the rafters, just like in that strange spot I found in the woods. Benches line the room, neatly arranged, but facing the back.

There’s an uneasy silence in the air. I sit in the corner, as far away from the door as possible, and Charles comes beside me.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispers.

Soon, the room is filled and the benches are packed with people.

Margaret walks around the room and stares into each person’s face, holding her hands up, like she’s sensing things beneath the skin that only she can feel.

“You,” she says, and points to a woman in the second row from the back. “Stand.”

The woman is old and clutches a scarf against her chest. “Me?” she says, but there’s something strong and clear in her voice that doesn’t match her body.

Ms. Eldridge waves her hands over her, staying a few inches from touching her dress.

“Yes. Her energy is wrong. Charles, lead this woman out,” Ms. Eldridge commands. “She isn’t here with honest intentions. She is not one of us.”

The woman shuffles out of the aisle, and Charles holds her elbow and helps her out the door.

“You’re working with the devil!” she yells from outside, and Mr. Spencer smiles at me.

“A nonbeliever,” Ms. Eldridge explains. “We cannot have this in Annabelle’s presence.”

It dawns on me why he was smiling. Just like Mr. Spencer has a routine before he takes a photograph to establish trust, that old woman was probably paid to sit here and be ushered out. This must be part of their lie, because if Ms. Eldridge and Margaret could really tell a person’s true intentions just by looking at them, she’d have thrown Mr. Spencer out at first glance and I’d be left on the road to freeze.

Margaret makes her way through the rest of the rows, and when she’s done, she stands near the stage. Ms. Eldridge takes the stairs beside the stage and stands in front of the curtain. It’s clear she is the only one allowed to be there. I twist my head and watch as she hangs a small bell on a stick and clutches her hands as if she’s praying.

“Only those with open minds to the spirit world should be in the presence of Silver Star,” Ms. Eldridge says. Her eyes are closed, and her face is pointed to the ceiling. “If any among you doubt what is about to happen, please leave.”

No one moves.

Margaret walks down the aisle and kneels beside me. She whispers in my ear, close enough to make the hair stand up on my neck, “Don’t peek, darling. Look ahead and never turn back.”

John looks at me and tilts his head.

Ms. Eldridge begins, her booming voice filling the room.

“Annabelle, we are here, prepared for your presence. Come to us. Connect us with your guiding light.”

John taps his foot, and it’s the only sound I can hear in the room, a beating in my ears.

Tap tap tap.

“Annabelle, we are waiting.”

Silence, except the sound from John’s shoes on the floor.

Tap tap tap.

I stare at him, try to a send a message with my eyes. Stop it!

“Annabelle,” Ms. Eldridge says again, so quiet that I can hardly hear. The bell begins to ring, slowly at first and then faster and faster until it’s one long note. They must be shaking the stick somehow. I want to look back and see, to discover their tricks. I force myself not to.

The wind blows outside and comes in through the cracks around the windows, extinguishing the row of candles and filling the room with the smell of smoke.

I squint to look through the little cracks around the window. Outside, the limbs of the oak tree are blowing and slivers of light come in the room. Dark gray clouds fill the sky. Inside, shadows dance around, circling me. They look almost human in the way they move. Does the shadow belong to Ms. Eldridge, or someone else?

They move quickly, and their forms are fleeting, but I swear I see eyes like two circles of white. No—it was just the specks of sunlight I saw through the window, leaving spots in my vision. I feel light-headed. The room seems to spin around me, and my arms go numb.

I glance over to John, see him look at me, wide-eyed. He covers his face with his hands.

Ms. Eldridge lets out a moan and then a voice says, “I am here.” The voice sounds nothing like her own. It’s caramel smooth and distant, somehow echoing against the walls of the assembly hall.

“Annabelle,” Margaret says, “thank you for joining us.”

“What do you ask of me?” the voice replies, and a light comes from the stage, bright yellow like the sun, glowing on the back of the crowd’s heads.

Where is it coming from? How are they doing this? I don’t dare look back, afraid I might melt into a pillar of salt like that poor lady in the Bible.

More shadows surround me, darker now, and if I squint I can see shoulders and heads and—

“Annabelle, we are here as true believers, wishing to speak through you.” Margaret’s voice is firm and controlled, like she’s practiced this many times.

“Very well,” the voice says.

I close my eyes, feel my heart beat in my chest, fill my ears with a pounding rush of blood. I can hardly breathe.

Margaret moves through the room, holding her hands over each person.

“You,” she says to a woman. “Stand.”

The woman obeys, and the voice coming from Ms. Eldridge says, “Your name is Elizabeth. Your child was lost to disease, but he has come to talk to you.”

The light brightens and dims with her every word.

“He asks if you remember swimming in the pond?”

“Yes,” the woman says. Her voice trembles. “I remember.”

“He wants you to know there’s a pond where he is, and it’s beautiful. He can swim every day.”

The woman cries out, clapping her hands, and I want to scream at them to stop.

This isn’t right. Somehow, these lies feel worse than what we do with the pictures.

The woman continues asking questions to Annabelle, her eyes full of tears, until finally she sits back down beside her husband and he wraps an arm around her.

Margaret moves on, holding her hands over people. She stops over a man who lost his son in the war, another man who lost his wife to the flu, a woman whose husband was in an accident. The voice speaks to each of them. She knows their names and tells them things I probably could have guessed just by looking at them.

Everyone’s story is basically the same, Mr. Spencer once told me. Just a few little changes here and there.

Margaret works her way down the aisle. Her hands pass over Mr. Spencer and move toward John.

“Stop,” the voice commands.

Margaret looks back, surprised. Normally, it must be her that picks the people, but this time the voice has chosen.

“Him.”

“Me?” Mr. Spencer asks, sitting up straight. He’s smiling, eyes closed, basking in the silliness of their act.

“No. The boy,” the voice says.

People murmur, and suddenly Mr. Spencer’s face turns grim. He looks around, locking eyes with me.

What did you tell them? his face seems to say.

The light from the stage is brighter now, and the shadows are a deep, dark black, moving around the room, unmistakable. Can’t other people see them, too?

“Stand,” the voice commands, and I watch my brother grab the bench in front of him and push up from his seat. His legs are weak, and he coughs into his hand. He looks so frail all hunched over, but in my mind I see him as he was before the sickness came, running through fields of bright, tall grass, his fingers brushing a row of Mother’s flowers, pulling a purple one for me to tuck into my hair. I chased him then, scooping him into my arms and crashing to the ground. We rolled in the sunlight, laughing, unaware of how our lives could change so quickly.

“You’ve suffered so much loss,” the voice says.

He doesn’t answer, but I don’t think it was a question.

My hands tighten into fists. I want to stand and yell.

“It is your time now,” the voice says. “Come to me. I need to show you something.”

Mr. Spencer stomps his foot.

“Stop this!” he yells. Is this another test? A way to catch Mr. Spencer in his lies?

“Bring the boy to me,” the voice commands, and I hear a ringing in my ears and the shadows tighten around me as the light from the stage pulses, getting brighter and brighter. Sparks move about, like white eyes staring through me.

John turns toward the stage, and I can’t help myself any longer. I glance back and see Margaret frozen between the stage and John’s bench. This doesn’t seem to be part of their normal routine, but she moves toward John. When she’s close, Mr. Spencer grabs her by the wrist.

“Whatever you women think you’re doing here, I want you to stop it.”

“Let go of me, you snake!” Margaret yells, slapping him across the face. This is the moment Charles was waiting for. He moves in and wraps his arm around Mr. Spencer’s chest. He pulls him out the door, sending a burst of daylight into the dark assembly hall. For a moment the shadows seem to disappear.

Outside, I can hear Mr. Spencer yelling at Charles, and guests whisper to each other and try to listen.

“Bring the boy to me!” the voice yells, louder this time, terrifying.

John looks at me and I shake my head.

I turn my head and stare right into the streak of light on the stage. It seems to hover in the air behind Ms. Eldridge. Shadows snake around it and shapes move inside it, but they’re so bright I can’t see them clearly.

The light focuses on my face. I clench my fists, feeling as if my fingers have turned to salt. I want to turn away, but I can’t. Colors pulse in the brightness and spots appear around me. A woman moves like she is in water, floating in the bright rays of light, her arms outstretched.

Is someone hiding behind the curtain? I look for signs of the trick. Heat radiates from the fabric.

What’s happening?

Margaret comes beside me and grabs my face, steps between me and the light.

“I told you not to look,” she whispers. I stare into her eyes and I feel like I’m drowning in her face. The chair feels alive beneath me. The corners of my vision darken, and I feel myself swaying.

I can’t see.

A gentle rain starts to fall, pittering against the windows, and the shadows wrap around me, devouring me, and it’s just like falling asleep. My body relaxes. It feels like the shadows are grabbing me, pulling me with them, into the darkness and back through the light.

It’s a dream. I’m surrounded by greens and blues and golds. The sunlight on a summer day. My skin burns and the ringing sound continues in my ears, building until it’s all I can hear.

And then . . . nothing.

When I open my eyes, I’m on the floor and two shapes are above me. The rain has stopped, and the door to the assembly hall is open, letting in a shaft of light.

Charles leans in, asks, “Is she all right?”

Margaret smiles and rubs my cheek.

“I think she will be.”

“What did you see?” Ms. Eldridge asks, speaking with her own voice now. I don’t know how long I was out, but the guests have gone into the yard. John’s there, too, waiting for me. Mr. Spencer is nowhere to be seen, though I can hear him cursing at others to leave him alone.

“Nothing,” I whisper. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Charles, get the girl some water,” Ms. Eldridge says, returning to the stage.

She leans her large body on the pulpit, trembling slightly. She’s shaken, and if that’s fake as well, she’s good at acting.

Charles helps me to my feet and holds my hand, guiding me to the door.

“What should I do with Mr. Spencer?” Charles asks, and now I remember what just happened between him and Charles, what that voice said to John, and the fear shoots through me. Have I ruined things already?

“Develop his pictures,” Ms. Eldridge says. “I believe I know what you’ll find.”

I doubt that.

Charles nods, and when I’m finally able to stand, I follow him out of the chapel, back into the sunlight, hoping my work is good enough to save us.