A Summoning of Souls

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  It was true; little Ingrid’s spirit had led the charge toward what Eve prayed would prove ongoing justice. Their search continued.

  Upstairs, the main bedrooms and boudoir, in earth-toned brocade wallpapers and wood paneling, were empty, a few small side tables and one bed left behind, and the spirits that had gathered seemed unconcerned for this floor. It was the uppermost floor they wanted Eve to see.

  A silvery mass flew above, calling for Eve to follow as they passed through the ceiling.

  Eve led the detective up a narrow flight of curving stairs to an arched top-floor hall with two small doors open into empty, cobwebbed rooms and one large door at the end of the hall, painted a bright red, an entirely unsettling and odd juxtaposition to the rest of the understated townhouse.

  Three young spirits flew ahead, pointing to the arched, crimson portal. Vera hung back against the hallway wall, gesturing to the spirits as if what was to follow was for them to say, not her.

  Eve recognized the souls, hovering at the threshold. They were three of the children that Eve had interacted with during Dupont’s fetish. Eve recognized the boy of around ten or eleven at the fore; he had appeared in her office during a séance to glean information about Dupont’s activities and the thefts of tokens from corpses.

  “Hello young man,” Eve said in a welcoming tone. “Giacomo, isn’t it?” At this, the little boy brightened, nodded, beaming that he’d been remembered, and he and the dark-haired little girl beside him in a pale pinafore shared a smile. “I remember you were trying to get justice for your sister during the remainder of your too-short life and then, even after death. And is that you?” She turned to the girl.

  “Yes, thank you, ma’am,” the boy said. “This is Magdalena.”

  One of the reasons the dead so often cooperated with Eve and wanted her to listen was that she tried to make them feel important and recollected in a world that had often discarded them.

  “I hope you two were able to find some peace, knowing Mr. Dupont had been arraigned.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but if you’re here, then you know not everything’s done with. And now that I’m here, I remember,” the boy said ominously. “Not like this house would let me forget…” Eve took a moment to explain what she was seeing and hearing to the detective. The spirit pointed to the red door.

  Horowitz approached, looked at Eve, and withdrew the six keys again, peering at the ornate double lock. He tried one of the remaining keys that didn’t go to the front doors; eventually the slenderest key unlocked the base of the hefty iron lock and a second key above undid another latch, and the wooden door swung open on soundless, well-oiled hinges.

  The room was triangular, one large window with a thick red curtain drawn aside, the view looking out over the shingles of the next rooftop, edges of the trees along the street coming into view beyond a small window ledge.

  Inside were what looked like stage sets, which would explain the hefty red window drape as a stage curtain. Folded to the side were painted screens with various landscapes of field, sea, or forest. A mixture of props peppered one wall, a mixture of fantastical and liturgical things, a castle footing, a spear, a taxidermized peacock. An open trunk with a bunch of costumes spilling out. A small bookshelf held children’s books with gilded spines.

  A Bavarian scene was set at the fore, a crook, prop sheep, and large metal bell set to the side.

  Vera pointed to it. “That’s how Maggie described what her children looked like who asked for her help, little Grimm’s fairy-tale children.”

  “Where is Maggie?” Eve asked Vera, who could only shrug, a sunbeam cutting through her silvery form, a contrast of luminosity, the sun highlighting dust motes floating amid the edges of the spirit’s skirts. “I wish she were here to help make sense of this.”

  “This must be where Dupont did his private, postmortem photography,” Horowitz mused. “Posing the bodies that had been left in his care?”

  “This is likely all the staging for the collection that ended up in the Prenze mansion.” Eve turned to the little boy and his sister. “Were you photographed as well as stolen from?”

  The girl nodded, and gestured to her hair, indicating a lock taken at some point during the funerary process.

  A third spirit that had hung back in the hall now wafted close to Eve, a wide-eyed child in a long robe with wispy hair. “This is how we were posed, so many of us,” the child murmured. “Before we were laid out. Freshly dropped off. Barely dead a day in some cases. Before the stink could really set in.”

  “Art above everything,” Giacomo muttered bitterly.

  “Arte Uber Alles?” Eve asked. The children nodded. “Dupont spoke about a ‘great experiment.’ Were you a part of that?”

  The three spirits nodded in unison. “There was testing,” the waifish, robed child said, ominously pointing toward the wall.

  Along both sides of the wall hung a sequence of long copper wires. Some were attached to discs like what had been placed on Gran’s temples.

  “Monitoring, or testing dead bodies? I don’t understand.”

  Giacomo looked at his sister; she shook her head. The little brother spoke for her. “The process started here and then was perfected at the other parlor.”

  “What process?” Eve asked.

  The boy sighed, as if trying to figure out how to explain it. “To try to block any of us ghosts. Some of us lingered on to see what he was doing with our bodies. He didn’t want to be bothered; neither of them did.”

  “Who?” Eve pressed.

  “Dupont and the partner. The shadow man. He helped with the devices. There’s something behind the wall. Do you hear the hum? It goes up to the roof, to a wind device that powers the drum.”

  “There is a low note in the air, now that the spirits mention it,” Eve said, bidding Horowitz listen.

  “A low drone.” He peered closely at the thin slats of stained wood along the narrow side of the room. Walking over to a seam in the wall, he fished out a curved metal hook from between the wood panels, and a panel slid out to reveal metal plates on the wall behind. The ghosts came close, peering too.

  “It’s all been about getting us to go away.” Magdalena’s voice was tiny and sad.

  “Dupont’s been mucking about with photographs for a long time,” Giacomo offered, “but the experiments, all this wire and the metal and such, that’s been about three years. Since the shadow man. We’ve been asking any spirit we see these questions. We know you need answers. We’re trying to help you piece it together.”

  “Thank you, dear children,” Eve said earnestly, looking at each spirit. “You’re so helpful. You’re right, we need answers, and proof. Each moment we’re getting closer.”

  Vera’s generally kind, warm expression was fixed in consternation. “These men.” She shook her head. “If you don’t want to be haunted, why act in a way that angers the dead?” Vera, floating in the doorway, asked the absent tenants, echoing the rhetorical question of this case.

  “I’ll let Bills know about this development,” Horowitz said. “Those postmortem photos can be evidence, if we can ever recover them from Prenze’s clutches.”

  They descended again to the main floor, and Eve peered at the only thing that had been left in the hall: a grandfather clock against the wall of the entrance hall that faced toward the open parlor arch.

  “I can see why Mrs. Dupont didn’t want to take this with her,” Eve said, grimacing. The face of the grandfather clock was an eerie, smiling half-moon that looked more like a sneering caricature of a clown than a celestial body. She peered closer at it, seeing that there were smaller clocks in each corner that were set to other cities around the globe. Each of those small hands were spinning in an unnatural manner.

  A cold dread crept over Eve at this sight, and it seemed the tall, carved wood sides of the large fixture trembled. The face of the clock suddenly ca
reened close to hers, and strong arms seized her and swung her by the waist away from the clock and toward the other end of the hall, papers from the file scattering everywhere.

  Jacob had moved, deft and nimble to swing her out of harm’s way, covering her in a protective embrace as the clock crashed behind them against the balustrade and then to the floor in a terrible noise of clattering chimes and springing clockwork.

  Looking up at the rear door window at a flurry of movement, Eve glimpsed a man in a black hat and a long black cloak leering for a moment before vanishing.

  Prenze again and his blasted projection. The most unwelcome haunt, and now, able to manifest objects with force.

  Jacob righted Eve, and she embraced him. “Thank you!”

  The rear door swung open of its own accord, and they broke apart, both balling their hands into fists, ready to fight. But this time, there was a more welcome sight at the threshold. The spirit children reappeared.

  “We’ll help protect you,” Giacomo, again at the forefront of the trio, said. “We’ll try. If he can manifest force, maybe so can we.”

  “Thank you, Giacomo,” Eve said, lowering her fists. “I don’t want you to deny eternal rest on our account.”

  “We’ll rest once all this is settled,” the young spirit, hardened by a life and death of disrespect, declared. “These men disturbed us directly, but they’ve offended the whole spirit world now.”

  This echoed what Eve had heard from within Sanctuary.

  “This isn’t over until he’s stopped his quest,” Magdalena whispered, taking her brother’s hand. Her breathlessness made her words all the more chilling. “He wants us all gone. And he must think you are one of the reasons keeping us here.”

  At this, Eve shuddered. It was true. It wasn’t just that she was part of the inquiry into Albert Prenze, his family, his practice; it was that she tethered what he hated most.

  The detective stepped around broken clock parts to pick up all the receipts and papers from their discovery to replace them in the file.

  “I doubt after all this we’ll be able to make headway at either of our offices,” Eve said. “We should go on ahead to my house so we don’t keep the Bishops waiting. We need them. Now that Prenze while manifesting can throw things at us like a damned poltergeist… We need shields.”

  “Lead on, then, Whitby.” Tucking the file under his arm, the detective gestured toward the door. “Let us be schooled in the steeling of minds.”

  He rubbed his hands together, his tone firm as he continued. “But I’m going to request clearance on the Prenze mansion. The whole family needs to be watched. Tomorrow morning I’ll scout locations. If I recall correctly, there are a few new hotels climbing up north of Longacre Square. We’ll find one with a view of his property, procure a telescope and binoculars, and engage in some good old-fashioned surveillance.”

  He said it with such surety it actually gave Eve a surge of hope. Herein was a workable solution that avoided confrontation, something they couldn’t do yet.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Sometimes the spirits make me unable to see the forest for the trees. I don’t mean to not think like a detective, but sometimes my problem solving is all fantastical and forgets to offer up solutions in the practical.”

  “I had hoped we could pounce on something.” Horowitz exited with Eve, locking the door behind him. “But we need a lynchpin. All the rest of this”—he indicated the papers under his arm—“will fall in around it. From what I know about casework, the more personal we get, the closer to the truth. We have to know what’s going on in the family manse.”

  “Yes,” Eve mused, withdrawing the tintype from her pocket, staring at a cruel face. “Mother dearest made a monster. But I doubt it was solely her fault. I hope we can see something to prove Albert’s duplicity over Alfred, find some way to extricate him before Albert finally does him in. I wouldn’t put it past him, to just take over.”

  “We’ll need to know what’s happening,” the detective declared. “He can’t be the one doing all the watching. Let’s turn the tables.”

  Chapter Five

  Fort Denbury wasn’t terribly far south or west, two adjoining brick townhouses along Waverly Place, just off Washington Square Park. The nickname for the properties had come fondly from Maggie, and she, along with the other Ghost Precinct regulars, kept to Eve’s somber-looking side out of respect for Eve’s parents who lived in the one next door. Lady Denbury held a notable dislike of ghostly intrusion, a seemingly incurable tension between her and Eve.

  Eve glanced up Waverly toward the edges of trees nearly leafless as autumn drew cooler. Her eye caught a few luminous forms floating a stroll along the stones, losing sight of vague outlines against the white of the Washington Square Arch.

  “I’m trying to see if I can see the ghosts that catch your eye,” the detective said, as if by being around her he might pick up on more of her talents. He’d started their acquaintance an unapologetic skeptic, but he’d grown more aware and able since they’d been working together and he seemed to be warming to the ghosts’ chills.

  “I can’t help it here; I always try to see any that pass along the park, even if only an echo. I want them to feel seen and known. The bones below the park are so numerous and so forgotten in this now prized neighborhood, thousands piled together from the epidemics of the last century. They lie there all unnamed. No plaque, no memorial. The more recent dead of the city fear they’ll be similarly neglected.”

  “It is good of you to honor the forgotten, Eve, in a way no one else I know can,” Jacob said as they climbed her stoop, facing the black crepe mourning wreath she maintained on the outside of her door.

  “The occasional spirit that floats across the bricks and paths are the only monument to that pit of bones,” Eve explained, turning back to the edge of the park visible from her doorstep, “whispering to anyone who cares to listen that this is a place where hordes rest. I try always to hear the voiceless, in everything I champion.” She shook her head, frustration rising in a wave of heat. “I don’t want to lose track of that battling Prenze. I hate that this living man who was supposed to be dead is taking so much time away from the actual dead that need me to help them help the city. It’s maddening.”

  “It is, and we’ll stop him.”

  For all the ways that her Sensitivities made her feel volatile, the detective was a welcome force of balance and determination. She turned the key in an ornate silver scrollwork lock.

  As Eve entered, she heard commotion in her parlor, the clinking of glass. Stepping forward into the center of the entrance hall, she looked through the open pocket doors to see Gran, backlit by a fire in the parlor’s brick fireplace. She sat at the large circular parlor table that hosted séances when the girls chose to work from home rather than their offices.

  Turning to the window at the sound of clinking glass, Eve was surprised to see Clara Bishop, already there and at work with curious glass vials in her hands. The distinct features of the birdlike woman seemed more pronounced by the gaslight sconces casting her dark blond hair in a halo. A flowing silver evening dress brought out the silver streaks in the braids coiled atop her head, especially the one that hung low to hide her scar.

  Clara clinked one of the vials with her fingernail, and the material inside, soil or something of the sort, settled. Gran had spoken of wards before. This must be how the Bishops had crafted them.

  “Hello Eve and companion,” Clara said. “I’m protecting thresholds. Come in.”

  Gesturing beside her, Eve brushed her hand across Jacob’s sleeve as she introduced him. “This is Detective Horowitz, Mrs. Bishop. He has been a part of all my recent cases and has also been threatened by Albert Prenze. He is a vital asset to my team, and I want him to learn any strategy of advantage and protection.”

  The detective bobbed his head. “Mrs. Bishop, a pleasure.”

  “Ah,
yes, Detective.” Clara cocked her head to the side like a songbird, listening. “Evelyn has said wonderful things about you, and your presence complements the young Eve stunningly. And that’s not an easy feat seeing as she’s so distinct a tone, she’s loud, like me, but...” She gestured around her good ear, as if she were hearing something, and smiled. “You’re harmonious.”

  Before Eve or Jacob could react to any of this, or before Eve could explain to Jacob that Clara heard energies like music, the force of nature continued. “Forgive my barging in and working ahead of you.” Mrs. Bishop turned toward the furthest of the two front windows, where she sat down one of the vials against the window in the corner of the sill. “But there’s no time to waste. A character like Prenze will stop at nothing, and I sense that he feels he is above capture or prosecution. Power drunk, wealth has afforded him being above the law, and this is vastly heightened by his discovery of his own psychic powers.”

  There was another clinking sound from down the hall, and as Eve turned her head toward the open downstairs door, Clara explained the noise. “That would be Rupert downstairs with your colleagues, who are showing him any place that they feel could be vulnerable to intrusion, psychic or otherwise. And thank you for keeping your ghosts at a distance. I don’t mean to be inhospitable to them, but you know my condition....”

  “Oh, of course, they understand!” Eve said, winking up the stairs when she saw Zofia poke a spectral head out from the top landing, the child eavesdropping from a safe distance.

  Their absence was particularly evident to Eve as the room was far warmer than usual, the roaring fire notwithstanding. At any given time, at least three of their regular haunts were generally present, up to five if their resident spirit tethered to music felt like playing piano. Sometimes they’d attract seven full manifestations, not to mention those spirits that were simply and quite literally passing through.