Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts

by Dianne K. Salerni

  George has brought a gramophone and three recorded discs in an effort to impress Helen. He sets the gramophone up in the parlor and cranks the device himself, playing “Sweet Genevieve,” “On the Banks of the Wabash,” and “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” over and over and over.

  Meanwhile, Helen grabs Ida by the elbow and whispers fiercely in her ear. Ida cringes away from her, speaking respectfully but flinging her free arm out to indicate the offerings on the dining table. Helen is complaining; Ida is defending. When I look at the food on the table, I don’t see anything wrong. I also don’t see anybody eating.

  Franklin’s voice in my ear makes me jump. “The rose of youth was dew-impearled. What does that mean?”

  I blink at him idiotically until I realize he’s quoting a line from the song playing on the gramophone. “I don’t think it means anything. Do you think Helen is acting strange?”

  “If George had brought something respectable, I’d ask you to dance. Helen is wound up tight, but this party is important to her.”

  “I don’t know how to dance. And why is it more important than any other?”

  “I have no idea. I could teach you to dance, if you like.”

  He’s looking at me rather intently, and I’m not sure how to respond because he has already said that George’s music isn’t the right kind for dancing. Before I figure out what to say, something in the dining room draws my attention. Two girls approach the table, then recoil and leave the room in far too much of a hurry. I walk away from Franklin.

  “Eleanor?” He follows.

  The dining table practically groans with the weight of all the food, most of it untouched. There are roast beef and sliced ham, oysters on the half shell, pâté of goose liver, creamed corn, endives in cream, and an endless variety of cakes and sweetmeats. I pick up a plate, thinking that if one person starts eating, the rest might join in, but no sooner do I reach for a serving fork than everything on the table transforms.

  The beef is burned; the ham soaks in congealed fat. The oysters are rancid, the creamed corn curdled. The pâté is riddled with lumps, and all the cakes are streaked with green mold. The stench of spoiled food makes my gorge rise, and I step back, gagging.

  Between one blink and the next, everything returns to normal.

  “Davy,” I say between my teeth. Obviously, the ghost is not as faded as we hoped. He’s back to his old tricks. No wonder the guests aren’t eating. I turn to Franklin to ask what he sees, but he spins around in alarm as raised voices swell in the billiards room.

  Two boys are arguing at the billiards table. One is upset over losing, and the other is demanding payment of a wager between them.

  “It’s that blasted music that’s put me off my game,” the loser declares angrily. “I’m putting a stop to it!” Ignoring his opponent’s request for the winnings, he hefts the billiard cue over his shoulder and leaves the room by the other door. By the expression on his face, he’s on his way to crack that cue over the gramophone, or George’s head, or both.

  “Hey! Hold up, there!” Franklin exclaims, darting after him.

  I mean to follow, but at that moment, Ida walks into the dining room from the direction of the kitchen. She’s carrying a sugar bowl and doesn’t acknowledge my presence, even though we’re the only two people in the room. Walking with an oddly stiff gait, she dumps the sugar into the punch bowl. “Ida?” She doesn’t answer. Instead, she uses the ladle to stir the punch. “Ida!” I grab her hand.

  The girl jumps and flinches. “Goodness, Miss Eleanor! You startled me!”

  “What are you doing?”

  Ida looks down. The sugar sinks to the bottom of the punch bowl. If it is sugar. Something about it looks very wrong to me. The crystals are too coarse, too heavy. “What…what is that?” Ida stares at the sugar bowl in her hands as if she’s never seen it before.

  My skin crawls. “I’ll take care of it.” Picking up the punch bowl, I hold it ahead of me, careful not to splash my dress, and carry it into the kitchen.

  In spite of the fact that we have a party underway and there are more servants in the house than usual, the kitchen is empty. There are pots on the stove, plates warming in the oven, and no one watching them. I pour the punch into the sink and rinse the bowl under the faucet, looking nervously around. Where are Maisie and the other two girls? I check the food, make sure nothing is burning or boiling over, and start back to the party.

  The door slams shut.

  I grab the handle and pull, but the door won’t budge. While I struggle, a damp cold falls over the room. Not the biting, clawing cold of the old Roosevelt mansion, but a foul, earthy cold that would emanate from a grave. Dread trickles down the back of my neck, and I turn to see Davy Drummond’s ghost, which reveals itself in a full-body manifestation at last.

  I’m facing a boy Teddy’s age, with dark brown hair and a thin, foxy face. It wears knee-length trousers over droopy white socks, a plain white shirt, and a short jacket with a single button at the throat. This ghost would look like an ordinary boy in 1850s costume if it weren’t clinging like a spider to the wall of the servants’ staircase. The sight sends a lightning bolt of panic through every nerve in my body. It’s so inhumanly wrong.

  The ghost smiles at me, and a whisper tickles my ear. “Bye.”

  Then it scuttles sideways up the staircase wall and out of sight.

  I look at the back door, wondering if I can get out of the house that way. But that thing went upstairs, and it wasn’t telling me goodbye. It was saying my aunt’s name.

  23

  ALICE MEETS A CRACKPOT

  ALICE is not enjoying the party as much as she pretends. Pride alone keeps her Alice Act intact—showing off Emily Spinach, complimenting Helen’s friends on their dresses. She doesn’t know how many of these people have heard the story of what happened at her father’s old house, so she makes a point of showing how unaffected she is.

  One thing has cheered her today—seeing Eleanor sweep through the house in that gorgeous gown, smiling and swishing her skirts with Franklin trailing lovelorn behind her.

  The idea to buy Eleanor a new dress came when Alice’s eyes fell upon the letter Mother Edith sent last week. Although she scanned it briefly on the day it arrived, this time, the disparaging remark about Eleanor’s clothes jumped out at her. The fleeting flash of rage Alice felt in defense of her cousin surprised her. She promptly asked Aunt Bye for the dress allowance and turned it over to Helen. “Buy something for Eleanor and don’t let her know it came from me.” It wasn’t anonymity she wanted so much as avoiding Eleanor’s thanks—and questions. If prodded on why she felt compelled to bestow this gift, Alice might explode and blurt out Mother Edith’s heartless comment. And Eleanor doesn’t deserve to hear it.

  This is what I have for mothers. One Vengeful ghost. And one spiteful second choice.

  And Aunt Bye, a stubborn part of her mind reminds her.

  When the grating noise of George’s gramophone drives her from the parlor and she can’t finagle a spot at the billiards table, Alice steps out the front door, hoping to find another distraction. Helen’s friends were smoking cigarettes on the stoop earlier, and Alice believes she can talk them into letting her try one, if Helen—or more likely Franklin—isn’t around to interfere. But the smoking boys are no longer there.

  Alice is about to go back inside when two figures turn from the sidewalk onto the steps leading to Aunt Bye’s front door. The first is a woman, and when she looks up, Alice recognizes Nellie Bly. “Miss Roosevelt!” she exclaims. “Well met.”

  The man behind Miss Bly is tall and thin, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He wears a suit and coat that look like garments of quality that have been worn for too many years, and he carries a large, bulky case that sparks Alice’s curiosity. “Good evening, Miss Bly. We weren’t sure if we were going to hear from you again.”

 
Miss Bly mounts to the top step and beams at Alice from beneath another stunning hat. “I wanted to be in touch after I consulted my expert, and here he is. Alice Roosevelt, may I introduce you to the world’s most talented inventor, Mr. Nikola Tesla!”

  “Never heard of him,” Alice says suspiciously, remembering that Miss Bly also said her expert friend was a bit of a crackpot.

  Miss Bly’s eyebrows shoot up. “It is tact that is golden, not silence. Samuel Butler.”

  Alice’s cheeks burn. Tact is not her strongest quality. She should make an effort at manners for someone who has come here to help. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tesla. Thank you for coming.” The gentleman doesn’t seem to have taken offense. He surveys Alice with a pair of eyes that are sharp and keen and might very well see straight through her. Self-consciously, she opens the front door and escorts the guests inside.

  In the foyer, Miss Bly looks at the streamers and snowflakes and the coatracks overflowing with garments. “What’s happening here?”

  “It’s a party.”

  Mr. Tesla surveys the house as seriously as he did Alice moments ago, and Alice has the impression that he’s looking beyond the decorations and furniture to the bones of the structure itself. At least, until a raucous screech blurts from the gramophone in the parlor. That household item gets his attention, and he grimaces. “Is there someplace quiet where I can work?”

  Alice beckons the ex-journalist and the inventor down the hall toward Aunt Bye’s sitting room. Along the way, she keeps an eye out for a scarlet dress, knowing Eleanor will be interested in what these two have to say, but she doesn’t see Eleanor before they reach the sitting room. Once inside, Mr. Tesla closes the door with a sigh of relief. “Some inventions are created for the betterment of humankind,” he murmurs, “and others merely to disturb the peace.”

  “Now, now,” Miss Bly chastises him before turning to Alice. “Mr. Tesla has a rather unusual theory about ghost eruptions. He believes that the progenitor of a ghost is not the person who died, but the house in which the person died.”

  “That’s crazy!” Alice says, reflecting a moment too late on silence and tact.

  Again, Mr. Tesla doesn’t seem offended. He removes a potted fern and two china figurines from one of Aunt Bye’s side tables, pulls the table into the center of the room, and sets his case upon it. “Death leaves an impression on a house,” he says, unbuckling the case and folding open various compartments. “This impression can fester and grow over a period of days, months, or years before erupting into a supernatural occurrence. The emotions released in a house—dread, anger, and grief—by the dying and the bereaved have a great impact on whether that house will subsequently become haunted.” He lifts glass tubes out of the case and screws them into other places. “People underestimate the contribution of the bereaved. Intense grief can result in violent apparitions.” Mr. Tesla bends a wire contraption shaped like a Y into a vertical position.

  “This house has a tragic history,” Nellie Bly says reflectively. “A chronic illness took the family members one by one over a period of a decade. I assume the accumulated dread of the occupants, the drawn-out sicknesses, the waiting and fear about who would be next made this a very unpleasant place to live. And prone to an eruption.”

  Alice shakes her head throughout Miss Bly’s account. “No, no—that’s not how it happened at all. Didn’t you get Eleanor’s letter?”

  “I did not see one. I don’t usually open my own mail.”

  Alice explains about the life insurance policies and how they mirror the order in which the Drummond family members died. Even Nellie Bly, who saw cruelty firsthand in state-run asylums, sinks into one of the chairs with a hand to her heart. “Monstrous.”

  Mr. Tesla is more pragmatic. “This house has witnessed dreadful things.”

  “So did Davy Drummond.” Alice is not convinced that ghosts can be produced by houses. It would be more comforting to think that her mother’s Vengeful ghost originated from a brick-and-mortar house and her father’s overwhelming grief instead of the woman who birthed her. But that wouldn’t make it true. “Does anyone else share your theory, Mr. Tesla?”

  “Not many,” he replies. “It has been rejected quite famously, several times. The psychologist Dr. William James discounted it because houses have no souls. Mr. Thomas Edison dismissed it as irrelevant. He said it does not matter where ghosts come from since our main priority is to detect, deter, and diminish them.”

  “Doesn’t that make you angry?” Alice asks. “Having your theories rejected?”

  “Why should it? Theories must be tested—and rejected if they do not stand the test of proof. On the path to that proof, I believe in collecting all possible data.” Tesla switches on his device. The bent wire begins to rotate. The glass tubes glow.

  “What is that?” Alice wants to know.

  “A spirit telegraph,” Miss Bly says jokingly.

  “It’s a means of hearing what the house has to say,” Tesla corrects her. Leaning over his equipment, he adjusts various dials. The antenna twitches left and right. The machine crackles and buzzes. Tesla glances at the door. “Ignore the distractions, if you can.”

  There are plenty of distractions to ignore. George’s gramophone. The crack of cues on billiard balls. Girls’ laughter. And then Alice lifts her head like a hunting dog on the scent. Something thrums through Mr. Tesla’s machine.

  Claws scrape on wood, and hair swishes against plaster—the sound of mice in the walls. Tesla adjusts one of the antennas. Wind batters against the doors; branches scratch the windows; floorboards expand and contract. Alice glances at the inventor. These are ordinary house sounds, nothing to do with the supernatural.

  Mr. Tesla turns more dials. “We must delve deeper.”

  More static—and then something like a sob comes from the machine. Heavy breathing. A whimper. Alice turns toward Nellie Bly. “How do we know these sounds aren’t coming from someone inside the house now?”

  “Shhh.” Miss Bly’s brow tenses in concentration.

  A moan is followed by harsh retching—the sound of someone violently expelling the contents of their stomach. Bile rises in Alice’s throat.

  Then, an enticing whisper. Drink your tea.

  “Nikola,” Miss Bly murmurs.

  This time, Mr. Tesla is the one to say “Shhhh.”

  Drink. Your. Tea. The words repeat, coldly, with no emotion.

  Tea. Alice grasps at a memory. Why is that familiar?

  At the séance, George asked, How did you die? And a dead rat appeared on the table.

  Then Alice asked, What else do you want to tell us? And the pendulum swung to T…T…T…T…

  “Drink your tea!”

  Alice flinches at the malice in this third and most chilling repetition of the command. “It was the tea! That’s how she poisoned them. Rat poison in the tea!”

  Tesla shakes his head grimly. “These are not the sounds of a Friendly haunting.”

  “It can’t be an Unaware,” Miss Bly says. “They don’t interact with new inhabitants in any meaningful way, and this one has.”

  “The sounds of an Unaware haunting are detached and disjointed.” Tesla points at his machine. “This house is telling a story, and a gruesome one at that. If these young people knew or suspected they were being poisoned, imagine the fear and the dread that would build up in this dwelling. That points to a Vengeful haunting.”

  “But a Vengeful would have attacked by now. It probably would have attacked on the first day.” Miss Bly’s eyes are alight with excitement. “Are you saying this is something different? An entirely new category?”

  “Not necessarily,” Tesla demurs. “It is more likely an outlier, a haunting with characteristics far removed from the normative. In every category—Friendly, Unaware, Vengeful—it is possible to find outliers. The debate over whether the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was an Unaware or
a Friendly is almost certainly because it too was an outlier. There are other, less famous examples—”

  Alice interrupts his impromptu lesson in diagnostics. “What does it mean for this house? Are we in danger here?”

  Tesla holds up a hand once more, signaling them to be quiet. Alice assumes he has heard something more from his machine, but he turns it off with a brisk click and faces the closed door. “There are a lot of people in this house today.”

  “It’s a party,” Alice repeats. Then she hears what has caught the inventor’s attention—a cascade of voices on the other side of the door. Not the usual merriment of a social gathering, but words of anger. A shout, followed by a great crash. Hurrying around Mr. Tesla, Alice throws open the door.

  Partygoers are gathered in the entranceway to the parlor, straining to see over one another’s shoulders. Franklin’s voice rises above the tumult. “Put it down, I tell you!”

  Tesla follows Alice into the hall. “Hauntings can gather strength from the response of the living, and when there is a great congregation of people and high emotion, the situation may escalate exponentially.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Alice complains.

  “I am saying it would be wise to evacuate the house.”

  24

  ELEANOR BESIEGED

  THE second floor is icebox cold, but I see no sign of Davy Drummond on the walls or ceiling. My skin still crawls from the sight of his ghost skittering up the stairwell.

  I burst into my aunt’s room without bothering to knock. My racing heart jolts faster because she is sitting upright in her bed, both arms clasped over her stomach, grimacing in pain. “Aunt Bye!”

  She’s wearing a nightdress, and her hair is plaited in one long braid. Despite what she said earlier, she obviously never meant to come down to the party. Looking up at me, she is as helpless as a child. “Eleanor, I think I’m going into labor.”

  It’s too soon. Months too soon.