Ghosts by Gaslight

by Jack Dann

  “Do not worry about us,” he said. “After a meal, I have no doubt that we shall sleep like a pair of tops, our minds spinning and humming with dreams. By the time you return, we may have crawled from our beds, but don’t expect much activity.”

  Her eye traveled around the room, pausing to take in the tumbled shelves and the scattering of volumes on the table.

  “Hawthorne is a man of books,” Theron said by way of explanation. “Being that most perilous of creatures, an author, he just couldn’t wait to pay homage to my grandfather’s collection.”

  I was surprised by this bit of subterfuge. Although Theron had been a jokester as a boy, he was scrupulously honest.

  “I am fond of reading,” Patience Hobbs said, “though sad to admit that I do not care much for stories.”

  “No?” It always surprises me when people utter such sentiments, as though we were not all enmeshed in one great, tangled tale.

  “Perhaps I prefer the realm of the possible,” she said. “Often stories are merely fanciful pipe dreams without any ground underneath.”

  I gave a short bow, effectively silenced by the firmness of her assertions.

  The dark-haired girl gave me a smile of sheer witchery as she paused in the open door; then she vanished. As if in reproach, Daphne Mathers drifted into my mind: I recalled her standing near the open grave in the wind, her blond hair loosening from its black-ribboned knot and tumbling onto her shoulders. She bent to retrieve a fallen comb, her eyes going to Theron’s as she rose up.

  Only once previously had I met Daphne, when I found her a laughing, quick-witted girl—a fit wife for Theron. Judging from the little Saxton nieces clinging to her skirts, she seemed the sort of person who attracts children and knows how to amuse them. Daphne had taken to me immediately, no doubt for Theron’s sake, and later in the day she walked with me in the park, taking my arm and confiding her love for rambles in the woods, her fondness for animals and for gardening, and the little jokes she and Theron liked to play on each other.

  “And now for breaking the fast,” Saxton said, “and afterward I wouldn’t refuse a tot of Geneva and water with sugar and lemon to send us off for a nap.”

  The voice startled me, for I had gone far from the room in memory, and my nerves were on edge from travel and lack of sleep. “Yes,” I said, “we should nap and rise again when the women leave the house.”

  Theron cocked his head, staring at me.

  “Not that I suspect anything,” I added, “but it is always helpful to have a free hand when searching without a clear object.”

  Although the breakfast was hearty enough to set me nodding and the featherbed proved soft, I woke as the carriage rattled from the yard. My friend Theron slept on; I poked my head in his room and heard the sighing of his breath, as though he grieved even in sleep, and decided not to wake him. I wandered around the house, feeling that I hardly knew what I was about, other than to glance at books and papers. In the kitchen I found a few ancient receipt books, nothing of interest.

  The pantry gave up a more exciting result, for there my hand closed on a foxed, leather-bound tome on which I made out the title On the Nature and Activitie of the Various Spirits. I cried out in pleasure that was, alas, immediately abated on finding that the chosen volume was a sort of antique cookbook for distillers and brewers.

  On peering into the women’s chambers, I saw nothing that would not have been at home in my wife’s dressing room. A heap of sad-colored cloth and a tumble of scarlet trimmings seemed the makings for a new gown, no doubt chosen to accentuate the dark, flushed complexion of Patience Hobbs. Climbing to the low-ceilinged third storey of the house, seldom used and secret, I felt closer to my quarry, whatever it was. Footsteps in the dust led to a workroom piled with fabric and notions. Methodically I began removing bolts of cloth. A pink light was filtering between the trees before I laid my hand on Unholy Spirits, Being the Devout Man’s Handbooke and Medecine Cabinet for Those Unfortunates Afflikted with Apparitions, Ghosts, and Kindred Spirits. The book had been shoved to the rear of the shelf, along with several books on the art of millinery, and was obscured by baskets of buttons and scraps of fabric bound with string, saved for some patchwork quilt that might never be.

  “‘Printed for John Williams,’” I read aloud, “‘and Francis Eglesfield, and are to be sold at the Crown and Marygold in Saint Paul Church-yard, 1648.’”

  Like many old-fashioned books, this one was luxurious with headings and subheadings and rambling comment.

  I carried my prize down the stairs and into Theron’s room, where he was yawning as he reached for a pair of carpet slippers left to warm beside a low coal fire. He appeared rumpled and unrested despite his long nap.

  “Look what I have found. Ghosts in containers—is a mirror a container? Spirits that linger near staircases. Classification of spirits.” I deciphered the odd spellings and typeface; soon Saxton came to sit beside me, peering over my arm at the Gothic-letter pages.

  “The matter of haunted objects. The matter of spirits who will not allow a painting to be moved. The matter of chimney ghosts. The matter of the same in wells. The matter of grave reflection. The matter of spirit-enchanted pots. The matter of—”

  I stopped, my hand trembling.

  The matter of grave reflection.

  Quickly I turned the soft, rotting pages, skimming a finger up and down the columns of print. “Here! ‘The Matter of Grave Reflection occurs when the image of a Beloved Dead persists in glazed surfaces such as mirrors, metal spoons, glass, perfectly clear ice, butts of water, and such-like materials. Such a seeming-ghost knows no malice or fierceness but the horror of its Presence is highly destructive of daily life. Traditional remedies of the ignorant and afflicted include the withdrawal of the Persecuted to desert places, the abolition of metal from the house, the removal of water barrels to more distant sites, and, among the wealthy, the cessation of bathing in copper tubs.’ ”

  Theron let out a cry.

  “That is it,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “I am astounded, Hawthorne, that you could lay your hands on anything that might shed light on my private hell. Yet this gives me no ease. I am already in my ‘desert place,’ there to be immolated.”

  “There appear to be instructions,” I said, “and we shall try them, no matter how ridiculous. The letters are difficult to make out, and much requires translation to words of today, but we will manage.”

  We exchanged a long glance, and Saxton nodded.

  “And now let me play the proper host. No doubt the ever-prompt Mrs. Molebury is back and ready to dish up a meal.” He stood up. “Just don’t let the book out of your sight until we know all that is needed.”

  Over a repast in the dining room, we did not speak of the mirrors. Mrs. Molebury had concocted a meat pie for us, served along with sweet parsnips and yellow carrots yanked from beneath the snow and dusted with cinnamon and sugar, the homely meal ending with bread pudding and a compote of last summer’s pears that tasted as though preserved with all the sunshine of their days. Saxton partook liberally of Mrs. Molebury’s sweetened boiled drink of cranberries with sherry and offered up many toasts to my ferreting-out skills. He seemed happier than I had seen him heretofore—I supposed that he had been living without hope since his elder brother’s death.

  An absurd length of table stretched away from our chairs, and I thought again of Daphne, and of how the room begged for children. Patience Hobbs served us, lighting the candles and coming in and out with dishes prepared by her grandmother. She appeared out of sorts, her eyes downcast, and once we heard raised voices from the kitchen.

  “Not a good outing, it seems,” I whispered.

  Saxton shrugged. “I’ve never known them to quarrel, not in the two years that Patience has been coming to help her grandmother on the weekends.”

  Afterward, we took the volume into the library, where Miss Hobbs attended us with a tray of brandy. If she had been the one to hide the book, she now knew it had been revealed.<
br />
  “I wonder if I might ask Mr. Hawthorne a question,” she said.

  “Certainly,” my friend said, staring in surprise as I glanced up, half in pleasure, half in curiosity.

  “I only wondered . . . Are you by chance related to the judge John Hathorne, who was appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer so long ago—the witch trial judge?”

  The brandy was sweet fire in my mouth. I choked slightly, startled by her words.

  “Hobbs, there were Hobbses who were arrested,” I murmured. “Is that why—? To my shame, I am the man’s descendant and so have set the ‘w’ in my name to evoke the woods and innocent blossoms and to mark a difference between him and me. Judge Hathorne will always be the shadow and the thorn in our family tree.”

  “Look here,” began Saxton.

  “Forgive me,” Patience Hobbs said, gripping the now-empty salver against her body like a shield. “It was meddlesome to ask, as my grandmother warned.”

  So that was the cause of lifted voices in the kitchen!

  “Our history follows us—I am not sorry that you asked, only that I had such an answer to give,” I told her.

  She nodded and busied herself with the fire while we went on transcribing the pages into readable print. As she left the room, Patience Hobbs looked back over one shoulder. Meeting her glance, I thought again how remarkably lovely she was—even when her equanimity was vexed, she somehow reminded me of the dusky beauty of certain dark red roses. Such deep red flowers used to grow by the jailhouse door when I was a boy.

  Left to ourselves, we discussed the book in low tones. Instinctively we wished to keep the business quiet. Uncovering one of the mirrors, I examined the face, his and yet subtly estranged from that of Edward Saxton.

  “Oh!” Saxton cried, the single note lingering in the air. Once more he looked grief struck, and his hands shook with anxiety.

  “Here, have another sip of brandy,” I said, handing him the glass, struggling to find cheer that would dissolve his distress. “Shall we try the first method?”

  He set the glass on the library table.

  “Is it safe, you think? Or could it be evil? Could it be a spell? I fear being involved in mystery.” Taking a seat by the flames, he gave a shiver of unrest.

  “Laying a ghost is considered a charitable act—surely laying a picture or simulacrum would not be worse or more dangerous,” I suggested. “I am no expert, though, and if you wish a priest to attend us—”

  “No, no,” he said hurriedly.

  “Strange how so small a thing makes its presence felt,” I murmured.

  Soon we drew closer to the mirror, where we tried the oldest of the exhortations: In the name of all that is holy, go! Get thee gone to heaven or to parts netherward, thou face, thou crookshank remnant, thou unbuttoned picture of the dead!

  “That was no use,” Theron Saxton judged; to my surprise, he laughed until his eyes were moist with tears. “I only wish Edward could have heard us shouting such nonsense! Unbuttoned, indeed!”

  Swinging around, he stared at the mirror, and the smile on his face lessened until it finally vanished. “What if the book’s wrong? What if it’s him, a true ghost, or not him but something malevolent?”

  “Perhaps we ought to try the words that the author recommended most highly,” I said, “as loosening the hold of the living on the reflection. The idea is that you might be keeping his image here out of brotherly love, even though it gives you a fright.” I yawned as I rustled through my notes. The deficit in sleep had been catching up to me all day, and I was longing for bed.

  I handed Saxton a sheet of foolscap bearing the properly spelled, copied-out words and listened as my friend read:

  “Belovéd one, you lost your image in this Looking-glass,

  And now I cannot turn and look away from you.

  This floating semblance of your face belies the moth-like Peace

  That settled on your face the day you left the World.

  Bestir yourself to hunt this ghostly Mask of unselved Self

  And, if you love me, snatch it in your sleeping hand

  And keep it there until we meet in other, better worlds

  Where no masks lie and all that’s ghostly-lost is found.”

  “Poulter’s measure,” Saxton muttered.

  “What?”

  He didn’t answer. Staring into the mirror, I tried to judge whether the face of Edward Saxton wore a softened aspect.

  “I don’t know.” My friend came to stand beside me. “It seems the same, or near enough.”

  “Forgive me,” I said, half dizzy with weariness. “I can’t stay awake any longer.”

  My host exclaimed, reproached himself, and hustled me out the door. In our haste, we left the cloth awry from the glass so that the face of Edward Saxton shone like a moon all night into the chamber where, for all I knew, the Saxton family ghosts trysted and held a confab over these late difficulties. I slept like the dead, except that I awakened sooner.

  When a burst of dawn light invaded my room, I sat up, determined to settle Saxton’s difficulties before nightfall. Before he rose, I dressed and wandered through the house, meditating what had happened—or had not happened—the day before. I remembered the library mirror and went to check whether anything had changed in its depths.

  I paused in the doorway: Patience Hobbs stood in a beam of light, gazing into the glass. She looked radiant, as if the figure of Aurora had stepped from her pedestal in the ancient world into ours. When she smiled, I realized that Edward Saxton’s eyes were now open. The floating image looked peaceful and gave the illusion of a living man caught up by daydream.

  “You knew?”

  “Yes, I knew,” she said, not turning her eyes toward mine. “And I was glad to see Mr. Edward’s face. I have never grasped why people thought the two Mr. Saxtons so hard to tell apart.”

  “Perhaps you should read the words,” I said, struck by a sudden idea. “You were here when he died. Of course, we should have your grandmother do so as well—”

  “No, I will not involve my grandmother. And I will not read any words.”

  “You hid the book.”

  “Yes.” At last she turned toward me, and the decisiveness I had heard in her voice seemed to dissolve. “I am sorry to refuse you, Mr. Hawthorne. But I will not be tied to anything so much like a witch’s conjuration.”

  “I don’t believe there is any invocation of dark spirits or reproach to—”

  “With my background, you can understand why I might choose to avoid even the appearance of uttering the words of a spell,” she said. “Our time is said to be beyond the baking of witch cakes or being swayed by ‘spectral evidence’ or the hanging of innocent men and women. So we believe. I would not like to test that faith.”

  She had me: as the great-grandchild of John Hathorne, I wanted nothing to do with harming a member of the Hobbs family. The Court of Oyer and Terminer had made too many restless ghosts in New England for me to sanction hurt to a descendant of those who suffered the havoc of my self-righteous ancestor. Yet my unruly imagination instantly conjured up scenes of Patience Hobbs reciting a spell or stirring a potion over the kitchen fire and suggested that she was wrapped in darkness blacker than any shroud upon a mirror. I did my best to suppress these fancies, knowing that story weavers like me are prone to snatch and use our human material as mere material and can blaspheme against the soul in an instant! We are more likely candidates for the Dark Man and damnation than most, I fear . . .

  I bowed, unable to divine what I ought to say, and she passed from the room.

  The morning was spent in puzzling out more recipes for the banishment of the grave reflection and trying a few, each as absurd as the last, though I was loath to forgo any of them. I had suggested to Theron that he go for a ride, and I was glad to hear his horse clopping up the frozen lane in time for a midday meal. I had just transcribed—without the interesting spelling—the directions for a banishment that the book named “The Scouping; or, the Dim
inishmente by Poring.”

  Over a cold collation, we talked indefatigably about where he had ridden, about the cooking of Mrs. Molebury, about turkey hunting and the fine points of setters and a thousand other things—any that did not touch on Mr. Edward Saxton. Outside, sun shattered against the diamonds of snow, lighting up the windowpanes and warming the roof until blazing teardrops plunged from the eaves. The world was beginning to thaw, and so why not this frozen state that had held my friend through a winter of grief and despair?

  Afterward we adjourned to the library for a glass of wine. Having taken down the two great mirrors and brought in the eagle-topped looking glass in which I had first glimpsed the reflected death’s head of Edward Saxton, I was prepared for our next effort.

  “Help me, Saxton—hold one of the mirrors slanted toward me.”

  Looking first at the directions, I tilted the big eagle mirror, rocking it back and forth. “Begone, grave face of reflection; join your kin,” I murmured. The face loosened, flexed, and seemed to float more easily in the depths. When I tried to pour the face into the other mirror, it flew into an unexpected corner.

  “What in Heaven’s name are we doing?” Theron Saxton stared at the image quivering faintly in the depths.

  “The pouring diminishment. A cheerful little activity for two madmen in a library. Don’t look so revolted; it’s probably as harmless as the rest.”

  I rocked the mirror back and forth as though panning for gold. Once again the face wobbled and shot off in a surprising direction as I brought the frame close to the other glass. Then suddenly the image darted from one smooth surface to the other with the slipperiness and celerity of yolk and white sliding from one saucer to another, and, when I checked, the face of Edward Saxton had gone from the eagle-crowned mirror.

  We bent over the first glass, unsure whether a tiny mask might not swim up from the depths.

  “Victory?” The word was a whisper, barely caught.

  The mirrors being weighty, I had begun to sweat from exertion. I stripped off my waistcoat and collar and began the whole procedure again.