by Peter Bunzl
POP!
The spotlight flashed back on. Standing in the centre of the stage was a woman in a white silk cloak and a bejewelled blue velvet dress with a tall collar that framed her hair, which was piled high on her head like an inky thundercloud.
She raised her hands in the air and pressed her palms together in front of her, before giving a small bow. When she rose, the flickering spotlight illuminated her face. She had a strong nose, sculpted cheekbones and inquisitive hazel eyes – just like Robert’s – that were highlighted in thick lines of kohl. She frowned, taking in the full auditorium, and her eyebrows slashed across her forehead like two charcoal dashes. For a moment it seemed as if she was struck with stage fright. Lily meant to say as much to Robert, but his mouth was open and his white knuckles clutched the seat of the chair.
“D’you think—” she asked.
“It’s her,” Robert interrupted. “My ma.”
Celine smiled briefly and motioned with her hands. The red curtains behind her opened to reveal an indigo backcloth, covered with stars made from glass beads that matched the ones on her dress. They flickered in the footlights until it seemed as if astrological patterns were floating between them, picking out signs of the zodiac and other celestial formations.
“Behold, the spirit cabinet,” Celine said.
The spotlight shifted from her face to reveal a black lacquered wooden cabinet about the size of a person that stood upstage. A white circle shone in its centre like a mother-of-pearl moon. A thin line split the moon down the middle. It must’ve been the edge of two panel doors that made up the front of the box. And indeed, as Lily looked closer, she saw a small glass handle on either side of the line.
Celine stepped over and, grasping the handles, opened the two doors to reveal the inside of the cabinet. Dark as death itself, it seemed to suck away the light.
“This is a portal into another world…” Celine’s voice was loud and authoritative, but it contained an edge of melodious mystery. She waved a hand around the inside of the box. “At the moment the space is empty, but with a few words I shall summon my astral spirit guide to appear.”
Celine clapped her hands together. “Usually she takes the form of a harmless girl, but the truth is she’s a dangerous foe. Don’t cross her, or make her angry, or she may lash out with her powers.
“Luckily we have ways to protect ourselves.” Celine walked to the front of the stage, where a wooden chair and a table with a glass of water had appeared. She took a small object from the table, and held it up so it glinted white in the light. It was a piece of chalk.
“Before I make the summoning, I must draw a pentagram to stop others entering into our world from the land of the dead.”
Celine crouched then and drew a circle around the entire four sides of the box. She made a second circuit of the cabinet and chalked a strange-looking star symbol inside the circumference of the circle.
Then she returned to the front of the stage, took a short drink of water, and sat down on the wooden chair.
A soon as she was comfortably seated, she closed her eyes, put her fingers to her temples, and began to hum a tune softly to herself. Slowly, gradually, she added in words, getting louder and louder, until the echoes of the song filled the whole space.
The song seemed nonsense at first, but soon it echoed and morphed into real phrases that Robert could understand.
“I invoke thee, spirits of the furthest places,” Selena sang, her voice shifting and quaking with the odd rhythm of the words.
“Leave your graves, and wing your way, from lost eternal starless spaces.
I call you forth, from breathless, sleepless, deathless slumber.
Down winding paths; bright guided by the moon.
Follow her gibbous face.
We await your presence…
Bring knowledge everlasting, and awake…
NOW!”
A loud KERRrraAACcCraaaCK! echoed around the theatre.
Robert’s gaze leaped to the spirit cabinet, and his heart skipped a beat, for it was no longer empty. There, in its dark confines stood a ghostly figure with a pale, cadaverous face.
Inside the cabinet the deathly figure with the pale face hovered in mid-air. Her white gown and long blonde hair billowed behind her in the blackness, as if she was deep underwater. The room had grown colder. It seemed the spirit-girl had brought a winter chill with her. Celine shivered, and wrapped her shawl tighter round her shoulders; the light about her dampened and discoloured.
With a loud hiss, the ghost-girl awakened. Lily caught her breath. The spirit’s eyes were rolled back in her head, but still it seemed as if she was staring deep down into everyone’s hearts.
Even Malkin, who was normally scared of nothing, was shaking beneath the seat – Lily could feel his tail trembling beside her leg. She wished Anna was with them, to pour scorn on the whole occasion. Why had the aeronaut not arrived? Had Caddy the lobby girl refused to let her in?
“Please welcome my spirit guide,” Celine was saying. “I call her No-name. She’s been dead nigh on forty years. She passed over when she was young and has been lost in the underworld ever since, treading broken, misty paths. In that time she’s gathered to her many dark and supernatural arts…”
Celine stood up from her seat and spoke directly to the floating spirit. Her voice sounded slow and calm, but a slight tremor of panic danced through her words, as if she wasn’t entirely sure what the ghost might do.
“No-name, I invoke thee to bring forth the lost loved ones of these people present so we may commune with them. Are you ready to make that calling, No-name?”
The ghostly figure in the cabinet nodded slowly in assent. “I am ready,” she rasped, and her voice, loud and brash, carried across the theatre, then faded slowly like dispersing smoke.
Celine walked towards the footlight and descended some steps into the auditorium. She wandered along the far aisle and the spotlight followed, sending inky shadows flickering across her skin. Robert, Tolly and Lily had to crane their necks to see her, as she flitted between the packed rows.
She stopped beside an elderly gentleman, and took something from his outstretched arm.
“No-name, what is it I hold in my hand?” Celine asked. She had her back to the stage and Lily could see that her eyes were glazed over. In her trance she appeared not to see anyone in the room.
A long second passed and then the spirit answered in its hissing raspy tone. “This is Mr McNally,” it said. “And you hold a ruby ring in a clasp of silver he gave to his wife on her thirty-fifth birthday. Precious Amelia, who died three years ago this June.”
The man’s face turned red with shock. “Yes! I want to know… I-I want to know if she’s all right?”
“She’s with you, isn’t she, No-name?” Celine’s eyes were watery with tears.
The spirit nodded. “Her hair is knotted and white, and she has fierce green eyes.”
“That’s her,” the man sobbed, brushing his hand across his eyes.
“She wants you to know everything is fine. She’s at peace, and she’s watching over you. She’d like me to tell you that you may sell the ring, if needs be. And she says to give away the rest of her things, the old clothes that you kept in the chest of drawers. It is time, she says, for you to move on with your life.”
The man took a deep breath, and gave the spirit a little bow of thanks.
Celine placed the ring back in his hand and moved on. She was coming closer, but she turned aside and halted beside a well-dressed lady, who held up a jewelled moth hatpin.
Celine took it from her and seemed to focus afresh on something far off in the distance. “Do you know this, No-name?” she asked the spirit.
The spirit answered with surety. “A French hatpin with a polished amber stone set in a silver decorative moth design, bought in Paris by Miss Lomax’s mother… Ida was her name.” The spirit shifted and bowed its head; its long blonde hair hung bedraggled across the scorched rings of its eye sockets. Then it continued. “
You found the pin last week, Miss Lomax, when it fell from a box on the shelf at the back of the wardrobe. Your mother wants you to know she’s with me. She hid the pin there for you. She wants you to have it. To keep it by you always as a reminder of her…”
Celine turned and walked back up the aisle then came along the front of the stage. Ignoring the other patrons, she wandered towards them. She was barely three steps away now. She stopped at Tolly’s seat, but he had nothing to give, merely some monkey-nut shells, and the stub of a pencil, which Celine rejected.
And then, she was at Lily’s side. Lily felt in her pocket for something. But all she could find was Mama’s fossil. She handed it over and Celine grasped it in her palm and closed her eyes.
“What manner of thing have I been given, spirit?”
“It is an ammonite,” the spirit replied. “It belonged to the girl’s mama, Grace Hartman. She’s by my side at this very moment. A handsome, clever woman with a big smile. She says that she found this fossil in Braklesham Bay, where you were all three together on holiday, long ago, Lily, when you were barely six years old. She loved fossil hunting, especially with you. She misses you always, but she’s glad you still have the rosewood box with her gifts in, and your purse, with the many treasures inside that once belonged to her. And the heart, Lily, she’s glad you’ve a good heart! She says you must forgive your father, he’ll come round eventually to knowing what you are capable of, and realize you’re not an invalid, but a strong-hearted girl who can look after herself. And that strength you have will last for ever.”
Lily dug her nails into her arms to stop herself shaking. She hadn’t been thinking of Mama when they set foot in this place. It hadn’t even occurred to her that No-name might be able to speak with her.
“She loves you, Lily,” the spirit continued. “And she wants you to remember what she told you in that moment when you last spoke. Whatever your problem is, whatever the question, you must trust your heart. It will make the right choices.”
Lily’s hand jumped to her chest; the Cogheart fluttered beneath it. How could the spirit know such things? Could it be true that she was speaking from the other side? And yet, there was something familiar about her, even hidden within the deep shadowy interior of the cabinet…
Celine placed the stone back in Lily’s hand – it felt warm from her touch but heavier somehow. Heavy as a rock. Lily clutched it hard in her palm and turned to Robert to say something, but his face was filled with dread.
Celine had stepped away from Lily and was standing right beside him.
She brushed her hair behind her ear and moved closer, her eye landing on the chain glinting around Robert’s neck. She indicated it. “You’ve lost someone too,” Celine said. “I can feel that loss leeching from you. Did this belong to them once upon a time?”
Robert nodded.
“It won’t take but a moment,” Celine whispered. “No-name can’t call forth anyone for you unless you let me hold the keepsake.”
Robert felt a twinge of worry as he undid the clasp and slipped the Moonlocket from around his neck. What if she didn’t recognize it? He wanted to say something, to ask her, but the words dried in his throat and lodged there like a misshapen cog that had come loose inside him.
Celine took the Moonlocket lightly in her hand, barely glancing at it as she closed her fist around it. She was about to turn and speak to the spirit, as she had done with the others, when something – perhaps the feel of the crescent shape in her palm – made her glance down, and she let out a low moan.
She stared hard at Robert, then fell back heavily against the edge of the stage.
“It’s the Moonlocket – the other half of the Moonlocket!” she cried, stumbling over her words. “That means…you’re Robert…the son I left behind!”
“And you’re my ma?” Robert stood, and tentatively held out a hand. “You’re Selena Townsend?”
Selena nodded. Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him close. Robert put his head against her chest; he could hear her heart beating hard, and her shawl against his cheek smelled of smoke and dry wool.
“It’s been such a long time,” she whispered tearfully, brushing the hair from his face. “How on earth did you find me?”
THUUUD!
Something had fallen to the floor.
Lily looked around.
In the spirit-cabinet, No-name, who had been floating impossibly in the shadowed aperture, now stood upright on its floor, with her bare white feet visible.
No-name walked towards the threshold of the cabinet and paused…then stepped out onto the stage. The audience gasped in unison as the spirit scuffed the complex chalk pentagram, then opened its mouth and made a deep wailing sound, before running, hair straggling and arms outstretched, towards Selena and Robert.
Lily held her breath, choking back the terror as the wailing No-name spirit clawed towards them. It reached the edge of the stage and jumped down among the onlookers who froze and shrank back in their seats, and it seemed as if the spirit might attack them all. Selena, Robert, or anyone nearby.
But then it paused, and wiped a tiny hand across its brow. Smudging its ghostly pallor. And Lily realized it was just stage make-up. The spirit was much shorter than it seemed in the cabinet, almost the size of…
The spirit pulled away the thatch of blonde hair. It was a wig, and beneath it was a black twiggy tangle. Lily breathed a sigh of relief. No-name was Caddy, the girl from the box office.
“My brother!” Caddy whispered softly in her own voice. She dropped her wig on the floor, where it was immediately pounced on by Malkin, who ripped it to shreds. From inside the neck of her dress, she produced a locket on a chain that matched Robert’s. Lily saw it was the opposite piece to his – a fuller and fairer moon.
It had been Caddy then, not Selena, who’d had the other half of the Moonlocket. She was Robert’s sister. The lost piece that made up the whole. Lily wondered why she hadn’t guessed when they’d spoken with her in the lobby – she and Robert looked so alike.
Caddy handed her locket to Selena, who held up both halves and examined them, and her two children, as one for the first time.
By now the poor confused audience was on its feet, muttering, and peering from all angles, trying to see round the heads of other onlookers to the small gaggle of people in the front row. They hadn’t a clue what to make of things. The whole outrageous act had been revealed as a fraud, but was this now part of the show? No one was entirely sure.
No one except Lily and her friends. She wiped a tear from her eye. She wanted to embrace them all. She’d helped Robert do this – find his ma. And it seemed in that very moment that was what Selena became. Her tall and foreboding performance persona had disappeared and she’d blossomed into a softer, friendlier figure. She barely noticed the reaction of the crowd. Nor did she take in Lily, Tolly and Malkin, standing beside her. She only had eyes for Robert and Caddy and the Moonlocket she’d gifted them.
Selena took the two pieces and fitted them together with a click and the whole Moonlocket glinted in the spotlight. The crescent face and the gibbous face together made a perfect whole moon. For a second, Selena scanned the auditorium, as if she was worried about something else, but then she looked back at her children and smiled. “Finally,” she said, her voice hoarse and cracking, “we’re together again. A family.”
“Not quite!” growled a gravelly voice from the gods. “There are still a few more spectres to arrive at the feast.”
Selena tensed against Robert, as if she was ready to spring like a cat, and her gaze darted round the shadowy theatre. “Who’s that?” she called out.
There was no answer. Only silence.
And her words echoed away into the darkness.
The audience shifted uncomfortably, wondering what was going on. This show was getting stranger and stranger. If it was a show at all. A few of them stood and put on their coats, readying themselves to leave. But their quiet flutterings were interrupted by the disembodied
voice breaking into song.
It was a low harsh tune, very different to Selena’s singing. To Lily it seemed like it came from nowhere and everywhere in unison, as if someone was whispering the words into her ear, but also shouting them across the heads of the whole room.
“See-saw, Jack Door,
Selena shall have a new master;
She shall earn but a penny a day,
Because she can’t work any faster.”
The audience whispered amongst themselves. At the back, Lily saw the tall, official-looking figure with the white beard from the lobby and his moustachioed friend, squeezing past people, making for the aisle. At last she realized who they were – Inspector Fisk and Constable Jenkins! They must’ve been following the same lead.
The last note of the song sounded and the owner of the dark voice stepped to the front of the highest balcony. The spotlight swung towards him and he leered, his face hidden under the brim of a hat. As he tipped his head back, Robert’s breath caught in his throat, for he saw straight away that it was Jack. Jack broke into a silky laugh, and then sang a different tune:
“Jack of Diamonds,
Jack of Diamonds,
I know you of old.
For you’ve robbed my poor pocket of its silver and gold…
Of its silver and gooooooooold!”
The inspector and the constable were making their way towards the stage now, but the rest of the audience were pushing against them, rushing towards the exit – for Jack Door, the most infamous criminal in all of England, was in the theatre!
“Remember that one, Selena?” Jack said, as his song ended.
Lily looked to Selena. She was frozen, like a rabbit in headlights.
Quick as a flash, Jack jumped over the balcony’s buttress and shimmied down a rope tied to the wall. The spotlight lost him for a second, and when it found him again he had reached the bottom. He jumped onto a seat back, and with his arms out for balance, he leaped acrobatically from seat to seat. It was almost as if he had springs in his heels.
The last few stragglers in the audience pushed out the ends of each row, clogging the gangways, as Jack passed them by. They knew something bad was about to happen. Inspector Fisk and Constable Jenkins grappled through the throng, Jenkins reaching for something beneath his trench coat.