Spirit

by J. P. Hightman

  “I think sometimes if we didn’t have these, I’d lose you to one of those states of yours,” Tess said thoughtfully, running a finger over the shoulder of her own instrument case.

  “What state is that?” said Tobias, sad-eyed, with phony good cheer. He started to get out, but Tess took his arm.

  “We could stay in here and keep warm a little longer, couldn’t we?” She tried to look romantic, even scandalous, but she knew her fear of the journey ahead was quite obvious to him.

  “Love to.” Tobias smiled with equal amounts of reassurance and roguishness. “But the train will be leaving. You can hide in here—but then you’d miss all the fear and terror and wonder of it all.” With a mischievous look, he opened the door, taking her hand.

  She stepped outside into a cruel wind, as the coachman unloaded their luggage.

  They watched as a tired mother rounded up four little girls. She looked surprised to see their instrument cases. “What’s this, something to ward off evil spirits?” she joked.

  “I hope not,” said Tobias.

  “Well, we’ve got plenty around here,” said the mother, nodding toward her little girls, who were chasing one another fiendishly. “It’s all very romantic really, isn’t it?” added the woman. “A perfect escape from the city.”

  Do we look as if we need escape? Tess wondered. She had thought they appeared like any happy and typical young couple, but her view of “typical” was perhaps not common. Tobias had a bemused expression; he seemed worn-down, but making-the-best-of-it, pulling his coat tight against the cold, his whitish blond hair a part of winter itself. Tess could see herself from a window reflection, so small beside him, but thoughtful, poised, perhaps even beautiful. Her ample dark hair was tied up, loose strands framing her petite features. Not unappealing, overall. Certainly respectable. And she hid her fears quite well.

  As the children passed, casting off joyous fragments of wildness and excitement, Tobias watched with some jealousy. He said, “What would you give to feel like that every day?”

  Tess smiled at him. “It’s Christmas, Tobias. You should be no different.”

  But then the father of the little girls crossed into the snowy scene, shoving through the crowd, and it was as if the whole world grew suddenly darker. The man had an evil about him; it came off his body like the odor of death itself.

  “Children,” he yelled, yanking the arm of the youngest, “get out of the way of these people, before I have to punish you, and believe me, I’ll use all the force my arm can give.”

  Their mother turned away, ashamed, while the man looked gruffly toward Tobias, complaining, “Can’t leave ’em at home—we’re all going to the ice festival.”

  Tobias eyed him coldly. “That ought to brighten our spirits.”

  The crush of people had begun streaming into the frosted gates of the Salem train station.

  While the coachman took their baggage to the rear of the special express, Tobias and Tess stood apart from the flow of other passengers.

  “Last chance to turn back,” Tess murmured.

  “Nonsense. We’re about to find out if there really are witches up there.”

  A stooped, elderly conductor ambled past them, pushing to get through the gates. “Make way now, or we’ll be running late,” he muttered. “A lot of out-of-town folk here, looking for land in Blackthorne. Train’s crowded. You may need to sit apart.”

  Tobias looked down at the trainworker. “Oh, we’re never apart.”

  The old man, walking on, looked at him over his shoulder. “Dangerous to need each other so much. I’m a widower, I can tell you a thing or two about that—”

  “And no new lady has snatched you up?” mumbled Tobias, under his breath. “You wonder how that could be possible.”

  “—you’d better get in. They’re boarding now, sir,” the old man said, not even listening.

  Hiding a smile, Tobias imitated the man’s fearsome voice, “They’re boarding now…”

  Tess considered him. “You don’t have the right inflection. You have to sound more like you’re hiding a human head under your coat.”

  Tobias tried again, darker, more convincing. “They’re booooarding now…”

  “Much better. The human-head element was right there. Palpable.”

  “Tobias! Tess!”

  Behind them, Celia Harnow, the innkeeper, arrived, her golden curls bouncing as she hurried to them. She was a large, bubbly, blustery woman, whom Tess thought somewhat likable in all her stumbling kindness, though Tobias found her quite annoying, which he openly admitted.

  “You forgot your train tickets at the inn!” she said, her baby face flushed.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Harnow,” Tess said politely.

  “I’m so jealous of you two, tighter than two doves. Me, I’m stuck with the old goat. He wants me to stay with the inn and feed him and his firemen friends, so I can’t even go to the carnival.” The “old goat,” her husband, was the usual target of her complaints.

  “Yes, thank you, ma’am, we’ve got to be going now,” said Tobias. Moving away from the inkeeper as he whispered to Tess, “The dead hate to wait.”

  As they neared the line for the train, Tess saw the four little girls again. Nearby, a scowling, thin woman was arguing with a porter over a cart piled with some boxes. “Be careful with those, they have my dolls in them. They’re for sale at the festival.” She rudely warned one of the girls, “Don’t touch these. They’re not for you to play with.”

  Tobias watched the sweet, tiny child turn sad. Out of spite, he reached over and swiped one of the woman’s boxes. Tess hid her amusement. As the thin woman fussed, not even noticing him, Tobias broke open the box and pulled out a boy doll. He looked at the girl. “What do you want for Christmas?” he asked.

  Tess watched the little girl answer, “Mmm, something…”

  Tobias grinned, handing her the doll. “Like this?”

  “Something scary.” The girl giggled.

  “Something scary? For Christmas?” Tobias asked.

  “She loves scarecrows and Halloween,” said the child’s sister, while her parents obliviously moved ahead.

  “Sounds like my kind of girl.” Tobias pulled the head off the doll. “Headless horseman,” he said. “All you need is a horse.”

  “You’re a strange man,” the girl said.

  “Yes,” said Tobias, good-naturedly. “Yes, I am.”

  Tess reached out to squeeze the girl’s hand. “Tess Goodraven,” she said, and gestured to Tobias. “My husband, Tobias Goodraven.”

  “Husband?” The girl laughed. “You’re too small to be married.”

  “Not at all.” Tess smiled back.

  The girl’s father turned, calling the children angrily, and Tess could see Tobias growing tense. “What I love about Christmas is, it always brings out the best in people,” she joked uneasily.

  Tobias took on a mock-scary voice. “And all the ghosts get homesick.”

  She kissed him. “I feel brave.”

  They moved toward the train, with its magnificent black engine, dragon-breathing steam over the imposing station, whose square brick towers and buttresslike side wings were ominously reminiscent of a medieval fortress.

  Several youngsters turned to Tess, shocking her, for their eyes were pearly white and fixed upon nothing in particular. Others stood with closed eyes, and carried canes to help them along. The blind children stood with their chaperones, and Tess felt a pang of sadness that they could not see the sorcery of winter around them, the beauty that the train and the station created together.

  Everyone was silent. Tobias and Tess stood out brilliantly from the crowd; as always, he in gray, she in white. They looked around, observing every detail with amusement and fascination, as the snow collected on the other passengers’ drab black and brown coats.

  Normal people. Odd little curiosities.

  The train was now ready, but the pace of boarding was slow. Impatient, Tobias led Tess away from the others, and ent
ered through a coach farther up, slipping a bribe to a steward.

  The train was a masterpiece. Tess and Tobias moved through several parlor cars, beautifully appointed in dark leather and mahogany. The trip today would be a short one, but the festival organizers had spared no expense.

  As they walked through the first-class section, car after car grew more opulent. Tess found herself wanting to sink into the chairs of each room, for they were truly rooms, dripping with grandeur, presenting plush sofas, dazzling chandeliers, and wide windows, rooms in which millionaires like J. P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie would have looked quite at home.

  Then came the dining car, ornamented with cherrywood tables, brass fixtures, silver, linen, and china—a feasting place for kings. The second dining car was less expensive-looking, but only slightly less extravagant.

  And there was a smoking car, a mobile gentlemen’s club complete with upright grand piano, a harp, pre-Raphaelite paintings, and a high ceiling made of glass so that Tess could see the snowflakes drifting down upon them, like in a fairy tale.

  Finally Tobias and Tess reached the elegant passenger cars, and found their seats. Tess had traveled quite a bit in her few short years of life, and this train was as perfect a creation as she had ever seen in New York, London, or Paris.

  It was a shame every piece of it seemed to radiate a mournful dread.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Other travelers arrived, in a wave of perfumes and coffee breath, rustling coats smelling damp from snow, excitement mingling with impatience. The Goodravens watched them quietly, trying to gather the full entertainment value from each. Most of them were elderly, perhaps part of various historical societies, but a group of college men provided some color.

  Tess heard one of them, a likable overweight fellow, jokingly say, “Is this ice festival good for meeting girls, or not, Sattler? It’s not just pruny old maids with stalactites on their noses, is it?”

  His friend, Sattler, was the tallest of them, a lanky, relaxed young man with a blond goatee, who gave the overweight college boy a knock-it-off glance.

  Tess had the oddest feeling that they were hiding some kind of lie. She didn’t know what it could be. But it left an acrid taste in her mouth, and Tess Goodraven was rarely wrong about such things.

  The college boys took their seats, and Tess smiled to see them jostle each other and roughhouse. She sometimes forgot that she and Tobias were young at all; they had lived too much to feel very young, and living like older people, on their parents’ money, had made them somewhat old in spirit. She knew Horrick thought of them as naughty children, but he was a crotchety old turnip himself, in her opinion.

  In the murmur of conversation, she heard the overweight student, Ned, arguing with Michael, a gloomy, sullen young man, thin, cold, and bespectacled. “It’s going to be amazing, it’ll be the talk of the music school,” Ned said to him.

  “You’re an idiot,” Michael replied.

  Ned turned to Tess and Tobias. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Is it or is it not brilliant to take the work of Nietzsche and set it to music for an opera?”

  Tess just stared at him.

  “Singing it in German,” he went on. “Isn’t that the smartest thing you’ve ever heard? Would that not be truly greatness?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tess, amused. “I…don’t speak German.”

  Ned was annoyed, but the other student, Michael, seemed satisfied. The train lurched forward, giving Tess a jolt, and Tobias took her hand. “You said you weren’t afraid.”

  She tried to look calm. “You’re with me. I’m not afraid.”

  But she was. She was afraid whenever she stepped out of their New York house, though she took pride in the fact that it never stopped her. She just carried her anxiety with her and rolled it into a ball in her stomach.

  From the window, Tess could see Celia the innkeeper outside at her carriage, sadly watching the train depart. From what Tess had observed, Celia was constantly bickering with her coachman. The conversation was easy to imagine:

  He would be saying, “It’s not my fault you can’t go. I’m not your husband.”

  “He doesn’t control me,” Celia would say. “I can hop aboard that train any time I want.”

  “Let me stop it for you,” the driver would say caustically. “I’ll throw myself in front of it.”

  And Celia would snipe at him, “You won’t get extra pay for it.”

  “The day I get extra pay…”

  “Oh, shut your mouth.”

  Tess smiled at her ideas. She knew she was closer to the truth than not. How awful for Celia to be ordered about by her husband, Tess thought. But it was common. Tess was more concerned about being left behind than chained up; Tobias was too wild, and she wondered sometimes if she could keep hold of him.

  In the growing snowfall the train charged away from the Salem station.

  As steam blocked her window, Tess looked over their companions in the car. From their spot near the back, she and Tobias could see everyone. The older couple closest to them were named Gil and Elaine. Gil was a relentlessly serious man with a great port-wine mark that stretched across his face from his forehead to below one eye. Tobias whispered that he looked as if his wife had hit him over the head and the blood had stained him permanently. Elaine seemed to be a rather gracious individual, quietly anticipating the celebration to come.

  “Getting worse out there, you’d say?” Gil was saying, gazing out the window. He seemed to issue a standard grunt at the end of his remarks.

  “I would have rather stayed in,” his wife answered, “but it’s probably good for me to go. They’re doing fireworks at the end of it?”

  “Yes. They’ll do fireworks. They spent a good deal of money on them.”

  “Was that one of your recommendations?”

  “One of the few things they listened to. The Blackthorne investors were so stupidly impatient, unh? You don’t have a winter carnival to draw people to your town. You’re supposed to bring them in spring or summer. Make them forget the harsh Decembers.”

  “You’re involved in the carnival?” Tess asked him.

  He seemed annoyed by her forwardness. “Yes, I’m a history professor. I study human-migration patterns. The Blackthorne council paid me to figure a way to bring people back to town.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “Not to have this carnival. I told them the key ingredient in drawing people to a place is lust.”

  “Lust?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We mustn’t shy away from the word, unh? If your land has nothing to offer—far from city and culture, hard and mediocre farming, winters cruel and long—then you use the lure of starting a family. I said to the town elders, “Give some little bit of property to all the young women you can find, and spread the word in every metropolis that your town has the prettiest unmarried ladies the world’s ever seen.” Let nature do the rest. Learn from P. T. Barnum. Advertise. They just laughed me off. They said modern inventions like telephones and fancy trains were more to their liking. Waste of money, hmm?”

  His wife was shaking her head. “He’ll tell you more than you want to know. My husband is a man of ideas. How I love him.” Elaine laughed.

  That was a lie. She hated him and Tess could feel that it no longer even troubled the older woman. It smelled like the lingering stench of rotten fruit.

  “My husband is much the same,” said a beautiful, cheaply dressed young lady. “An engine of ideas. I can never get enough.”

  That was a lie as well. The woman thought often of killing him, which left a black stain in the air wherever she went. Tess smiled weakly. The husband, in his twenties, had lean good looks and clearly knew where every strand of his dark hair lay. Tess decided to call these two Mr. and Mrs. Tawdry-Sinful.

  The man grinned at Tess with indecent intentions. Then his gaze moved on toward another woman, whose eyes flashed in his direction.

  Tobias took all this in with amusement. “Love is eve
rywhere, isn’t it?”

  Tess looked back at him, but Tobias was hardly bothered by Mr. Tawdry-Sinful’s behavior. She began wishing he would be more jealous. Now there was a sense she rarely got from him.

  Jealousy was hardly a rare commodity, she mused. Other girls seemed to find Tobias, with his confidence and easy manner, more than a little attractive. And his low, assured voice. Women loved the voice.

  The historian might have been right about the power of lust. To the Goodravens, it appeared as heat, and a vivid musky smell. In fact, even as Gil had mentioned it, Tess had noted his wife’s interest in several of the younger men on board. It was completely hidden from most, but Tess was bothered by the woman’s lack of decorum, even if only in her daydreams.

  These kinds of considerations were nothing Tess ever spoke about to anyone but Tobias, because no one would understand her, except perhaps another spiritualist. The vocabulary for describing human feeling was, sadly, too limited. But for Tess and Tobias, after the trauma of the theater fire—and with every spirit encounter since—emotion had become a palpable thing.

  It wasn’t just that she and Tobias took feelings in from others like a scent or a pressure upon the skin or like sounds or flashes of light, but on top of that, there seemed to be so many more types of emotion than was usually understood to exist.

  Emotion flowed around them like highly distinct, living things and there were so many sentiments for which there were no words. Tess had many times been witness to the special worry a person had for a missing pet, which manifested as a tingling in her heart. She had also recognized that peculiar disconnection between what some people expressed and what they actually said, as when an impolite woman spoke harshly but continued smiling. This she and Tobias experienced as a low hissing, much like a teakettle before it screams.

  One could fill an encyclopedia with these unnamed sentiments. The Salem graveyard experience in particular had been, for an instant at least, a blasting of all the emotions at once as the spirit entered. She understood how Tobias could crave these communions.