The Sweet Far Thing

by Libba Bray

  “These are true spirit photographs, ladies. See the spirit world come to life before your very eyes. Herewith lies irrefutable proof of ghosts among us, of life after death!”

  “Oh, may I see?” a lady to our right asks.

  “See it? Why, madam, for a mere ten pee, you can own it. Amaze your friends and family! I took this very photograph at a séance in Bristol.” He lowers his voice to a charged whisper. “What I saw there changed my life—spirits, among us!”

  The ladies gasp and whisper. One pulls out her coin purse. “I should like proof, if you please.”

  “Any one you like, madam, plenty to go round.”

  I nudge my friends. “We’ve no time for this. We’ve got to—”

  A commanding voice breaks through from behind us. “Do not believe his claims, dear ladies. This is nothing more than optical trickery at work.”

  An elegant gentleman with a thicket of black hair, streaked through with silver, and a neatly trimmed goatee steps forward. There are deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and he leans upon a walking stick, but though he is an older man than I’ve seen in my visions, there is no doubt he is the man we seek: Dr. Theodore Van Ripple.

  “That’s him,” I whisper to Ann and Fee.

  The doctor hobbles closer. “This ghostly image is no more a spirit than you or I. It is simply an ordinary photograph soaked too long in a photographer’s bath. A trick, you see?”

  “Do you call me a liar, sir?” Mr. Smith sniffs.

  The man bows. “You’ll forgive me, sir, but I cannot allow such kind, good-hearted ladies to be taken in by untruths.”

  Mr. Smith can smell doubt robbing him of a sale. “Ladies, I assure you, I saw these spirits with my own eyes! Here is proof, I tell you!”

  But it is too late. The lady in front has walked away, shaking her head. Others come to take her place. They still want to believe.

  Felicity pushes her way toward Dr. Van Ripple. “Is that true, sir?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite. I am familiar with a great many illusions. I deal in the world of smoke and mirrors myself. I am a magician by trade. In fact, I performed this evening. For a few moments,” he adds bitterly. “But I shall perform a special show for you.”

  He reaches into his pocket and produces a deck of cards. “Here. I shall show you. Take a card. Any card you wish. You may reveal it to your dear friends but do not show the card to me.”

  I crane my neck, but I don’t see McCleethy yet, so I select a card—the ace of spades—and reveal it to Ann and Felicity before tucking it into my palm out of sight. Dr. Van Ripple passes the deck to Mr. Smith.

  “Would you do me the favor of shuffling these cards, dear sir?”

  With great irritation, Mr. Smith rearranges the deck. He hands it back to Dr. Van Ripple, who shuffles the cards again and again, making polite chatter the entire time like a born showman. At last, he places his white-gloved hand upon the deck and pronounces, “You hold the ace of spades, dear lady. Do you not?”

  Astonished, I show him the ace. “How ever did you do it?”

  His eyes twinkle. “The rules of magic, my dear, are best not discussed. For once we understand the illusion, we no longer believe in it.”

  “He’s marked the cards,” Mr. Smith huffs, indignant. “Sheer fakery.”

  Dr. Van Ripple tips his hat and produces a frog from inside it. The frog hops onto the shoulder of a very startled Mr. Smith.

  “Ahh, slimy beast!” The photographer nearly topples his own table trying to get away. The crowd laughs.

  “Dear me,” Dr. Van Ripple says. “Perhaps we should stand elsewhere.”

  The doctor hobbles ahead, leading us past other exhibitions: A painted Turk’s head pushes fortunes out of its mechanical mouth; a snake dancer balances a giant serpent across her shoulders, undulating slowly as the beast coils and slithers; a man holding a stuffed bird trumpets the wonders of a traveling museum of natural history. I even spy Madame Romanoff, otherwise known as Sally Carny of Bow’s Bells, conducting a séance. I once took this false spiritualist to the realms by accident. We lock eyes and Sally abruptly ends her reading.

  Dr. Van Ripple pauses before a statue of Osiris to mop his brow with a handkerchief. “Our Mr. Smith was nothing more than a faux-tographer, it would seem.”

  “Your card trick was most impressive!” Ann says.

  “You are too kind. Allow me to present myself properly. I am Dr. Theodore Van Ripple, master illusionist, scholar, and gentleman, at your service.”

  “How do you do? I am Gemma Dowd,” I say, giving my mother’s maiden name. Ann holds fast to “Nan Washbrad” whilst Felicity becomes “Miss Anthrope.”

  “Dr. Van Ripple, I do recall hearing of you,” I begin. “I believe my mother attended one of your shows.”

  His eyes sparkle with interest. “Ah! Here, in London? Or was it perhaps in Vienna or Paris? I have played for both princes and the populace.”

  “It was here in London, I am sure,” I offer. “Yes, she said it was a most marvelous spectacle. She was amazed by your talents.”

  The doctor positively glows with the adulation. “Splendid! Splendid! Tell me, which illusion did she prefer—the disappearing doll or the glass of ruby smoke?”

  “Ah…yes, em, I think she rather fancied both.”

  “They are my specialties. How marvelous!” He cranes, searching the crowd. “And is your dear mother with you here tonight?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I say. “I do remember that she said there was one illusion which thrilled her beyond all the others. It was one in which a beautiful lady was placed into a trance and instructed to write upon a slate.”

  Dr. Van Ripple regards me warily. His voice has a chill in it. “The illusion you speak of belonged to my assistant. She was a medium of sorts. I no longer perform that trick—not since her tragic disappearance three years ago.”

  “She disappeared during the performance?” Ann gasps.

  “Dear me, no,” Dr. Van Ripple replies. He fluffs his collar, and I imagine that in his day he was quite the dandy.

  “What happened to her?” I prod.

  “My associates suggested she ran away with a sailor or perhaps joined a circus.” He shakes his head. “But I think otherwise, for she claimed she was being hunted by dark forces. I am quite certain she was murdered.”

  “Murdered!” we say as one. Dr. Van Ripple is not one to lose an audience of any sort, even for a tale so unseemly as this one promises to be.

  “Indeed. She was a woman of many secrets, and, I am sorry to say, she proved quite untrustworthy. She came to me when she was but a girl of twenty, and I knew very little of her life other than that she was an orphan who had lived away at school for a time.”

  “She didn’t speak of her past?” I ask.

  “She could not, dear lady, for she was a mute. She had a remarkable talent for drawing and transcendental writing.” The doctor takes a bit of snuff from an enameled box and sneezes into a handkerchief.

  “What is transcendental writing?” Ann asks.

  “The medium goes into a trance, and whilst communing with the spirits, she receives messages from beyond which are communicated through writing. We turned a tidy profit….” He coughs. “That is, we aided those poor grieving souls desperate to speak with loved ones who had passed on to the spirit realm.

  “Then one day, she came to the theater quite merry. When I asked her why she was so happy, she wrote upon the slate—for that was how we spoke to one another—that her dear sister had visited her, and they had a plan to ‘restore what has been too long lost.’ I did not know what she meant, nor did she explain. I was rather astonished at the mention of a sister, as I knew of no family she had. It seems the lady in question was a cherished friend from her school days. When I asked if I might meet her sister, she was evasive, callous.

  “‘That would not be possible,’ she wrote, smiling. She was one for small cruelties, and I was quite certain she felt her dear friend to be far above my station.
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  “Soon after, she changed. One day, I found her in the shop among our many tricks and properties, holding fast to her slate. ‘My sister has deceived us,’ she wrote. ‘She is a monster. Such a wicked, wicked plan.’ When I asked her what could have caused her such distress, she wrote that she had had a vision—‘a most terrible vision of what should come to pass, for what I took as fair is foul and all shall be lost.’”

  “Did she tell you what she saw in the vision?” I press.

  “I’m afraid not.” The doctor’s brow furrows. “I should say that she had an unfortunate habit—a fondness for cocaine. She could not be without it. I believe it began to destroy her, body and soul.”

  I think of my father, and my stomach tightens at the memory of finding him in the opium den.

  “But cocaine is perfectly harmless,” Ann says. “It is in many tonics and lozenges.”

  Dr. Van Ripple’s smile is strained. “So they say, but I think otherwise, my dear. For I saw how it ruined the girl so that she no longer knew what was truth and what illusion. She was suspicious in the extreme, seeing haunts in the shadows. She insisted that she was the only one who might stop this terrible plan, and she wrote long into the night on a secret tome which she said was of the utmost importance. Once, I surprised her as she worked past midnight in the studio, the candle burned nearly to the last of its wick. She startled and covered the pages quickly. She would not show it to me. I suspected her of divulging the secrets of my magic. I dismissed her, and that was all I saw of her for many months, until one spring day three years ago. Just after I’d dined, she knocked upon my door.

  “I scarcely recognized her, so shocking was her appearance. Her eyes were those of the doomed. She’d not slept or taken food in some time. And her behavior was most odd. She asked for paper and pen, and I provided them. ‘I am wicked,’ she wrote. Naturally I thought her unsettled in mind and implored her to stay. But she insisted that dark forces were at work. ‘They will keep me from revealing the truth,’ she wrote. ‘I must act quickly before I am found.’”

  “What forces did she speak of?” Ann presses.

  The doctor stretches his long fingers over the top of his walking stick, preening like a rooster. “It seems we shall never know. The lady left my home—and vanished.”

  “What became of the pages she wrote?” I ask.

  He takes a deep breath. “I cannot say. Perhaps that terrible secret she feared died along with her. Or perhaps, even now, some diabolical plan is at work, and we are at its mercy.” The doctor smiles like a kind uncle. He offers his card. “For your mother. She might have need of a magician to entertain her guests some evening?” I take the card; he closes his hands over mine. “Open them.”

  When I do, they are empty. The card is gone. “How did you—”

  He pulls the card from behind my ear and places it triumphantly in my palm. “Ah, there it was! Such mischievous calling cards I have, I’m afraid.” Dr. Van Ripple pats his pockets and frowns. “Oh, dear. Oh, my.”

  “What is the matter?” Felicity asks.

  “I seem to have misplaced my wallet. I do hate to impose, but might you lend an old man a few shillings? I give you my word as a gentleman that I shall repay you in full on the morrow—”

  “There you are! Really, girls, you had me quite worried,” Mademoiselle LeFarge announces, hastening straight for us with a fuming McCleethy behind her. I do hope the magic lantern show is a wonder, for this may be my last night on earth.

  Dr. Van Ripple’s smile is kind. “Fear not, dear lady. Your daughters are well in hand and safe from the riffraff, I assure you.”

  “These young ladies are not my daughters, sir. They are my charges,” Mademoiselle LeFarge splutters. “You had me quite worried indeed, girls.”

  “Trouble, my dear?” Inspector Kent takes a stand beside Mademoiselle LeFarge. He gives the doctor the penetrating stare he has perfected as a policeman, and the magician blanches.

  “Well, I shall be off, then,” Dr. Van Ripple says quickly.

  “Hold a moment. I know that face—Bob Sharpe. It’s been a while, but I see the years haven’t changed everything about you, sir.” Inspector Kent stares hard at Dr. Van Ripple. “You weren’t attempting to extort money from these young ladies, were you?”

  “Inspector, you do wound me,” Dr. Van Ripple says. “I merely watched over them like a mother hen.”

  The inspector folds his arms and looms over Dr. Van Ripple. “Like a fox guarding the hens, you mean. Mr. Sharpe, I trust that you have no desire to return to prison, and that I’ll not see you again this evening?”

  “As it happens, I have a previous engagement.”

  Miss McCleethy’s stare nearly stops my blood. “I am sorry, Mademoiselle LeFarge. I was gone but a moment,” she says.

  “Ladies,” Mademoiselle LeFarge chides, “if you ever wish to leave the confines of Spence again—”

  “Spence, you say? Spence Academy for Young Ladies?” Dr. Van Ripple asks.

  Mademoiselle LeFarge nods. “The very same, sir.”

  Dr. Van Ripple gives us a little push. “Yes, well, wouldn’t want to miss the show. Best to take your seats now. A good evening to you all. Inspector.” And with that, the old man hobbles away, as fast as he can.

  LeFarge shakes her head. “What an odd fellow.”

  “Dr. Theodore Van Ripple, né Bob Sharpe. Magician, thief, fraud. Did he tell you ladies a fantastic tale, then claim he could not find his wallet?” the inspector inquires.

  We nod sheepishly.

  “He told us of a vanishing lady. His assistant,” Ann says. “He believed her to be murdered.”

  Miss McCleethy frowns. “I think that’s quite enough.”

  “Yes, I assure you Dr. Van Ripple is a conjurer of tales and cannot be trusted,” Inspector Kent says. “Now, shall we see the miracle of moving pictures?”

  It would seem that Dr. Van Ripple is nothing but a con. I can’t understand why my visions have led me to this aging magician with a vivid imagination and a coat as shabby as his reputation. And to think I’ve chanced magic on it.

  “Did you find your acquaintance, Miss McCleethy?” Felicity asks, and I should like to kick her for it.

  “I did, indeed,” she says. “At first, I thought my eyes deceived me, for he disappeared in the crowd, but happily, I found him again.”

  I’m confused. How could she have met up with Fowlson when he was nothing more substantial than ether? Is she lying? Or is Fowlson really here among us?

  We’re led to our seats, which have been arranged so that we face the wall. A strange instrument is wheeled in and placed in the center aisle—a box perched upon metal legs, much like a camera, but larger. One of the Wolfson brothers, in full tails and top hat, stands before us, rubbing his white-gloved hands together in anticipation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the Egyptian Hall, where in this hour, you shall witness an amazing spectacle of spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins conjured before your very eyes!

  “The Wolfson brothers, masters of the magic lantern, shall astonish and astound you with our feats of illusion—or are they illusion after all? For some would swear that these spirits walk among us, and that this machine powered by gas and light is but an instrument for their release into our world. But I shall leave that to your discretion. It is my duty to advise you that in Paris alone, no fewer than fourteen ladies fainted within the first several minutes, and one gentleman’s hair turned white as snow from sheer terror!”

  Gasps and excited whispers roll through the audience, to the manager’s delight.

  “Why, even the great Maskelyne and Cooke, those renowned illusionists and our gracious hosts here at this famed house of mystery, found the spectacle thrilling beyond all imagining. Therefore, it is my solemn duty to ask any here who may be weak of heart or otherwise unsound in mind or body to please leave now, as the management cannot be held accountable.”

  Three ladies and a gentleman are ushered from the hall. It heighte
ns the excitement.

  “Very well. I cannot say what shall happen this afternoon, whether the spirits will prove kind—or angry. I bid you all welcome…and good luck.”

  The lights are dimmed until the hall is nearly black. In the center aisle, the iron machine hums and hisses to life. It casts an image upon the far wall—a sweet-faced girl standing in a meadow. As we watch, she bends to pick a flower and brings it to her nose. She moves! Oh, the wonder of it. Delighted, the audience breaks into applause.

  Ann squeezes my hand. “She seems so real—as if she were here now.”

  Another image comes, one of a regiment on horseback. The horses prance, their legs moving up and down. We see an angel hovering over the bed of a peaceful sleeping child. Each image is more spectacular than the one before it, and in the dim gaslight, every face gazes straight ahead in awe.

  The wall flickers with new light. A woman, chalky pale, appears in her nightgown, sleepwalking. Slowly, she transforms—the arms lose their flesh; the face becomes a death mask—until standing before us is a skeletal creature. Now there are gasps of a different sort. And then the skeleton seems to move closer to us.

  Small cries of fear pierce the dark. Someone shouts, “My sister! She’s fainted! Oh, do stop the show!”

  Inspector Kent leans in toward us. “Not to worry, ladies. All part of the act.” And I confess I’m grateful for his aside.

  “Spirits!” Mr. Wolfson calls. “Leave us now!”

  The ghostly specters stretch across the wall, their faces shifting from benevolent to grisly.

  “Please, do not leave your seats! I’m afraid I must inform you that the spirits will no longer listen to the Wolfson brothers! They do not obey our commands! Be on your guard, for I cannot say what shall come next!”

  The air is thick with excitement and fear. And then, quickly, the apparition shifts. It grows smaller until it is nothing more than a sweet-faced child offering a flower. Relieved laughter fills the hall.