The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  “A Presence has come to me,” he said in a sonorous tone. “My spirit guide brings one of the recently departed to this plane … Agatha, is that you?”

  “Of course it is I,” said the young woman beside Trace, at the same time as a sharp rap sounded in the room. The two matronly women jumped and clutched at each other’s hands.

  The girl beside Trace made a disgusted noise and folded her arms across her breast.

  “That ain’t you, makin that knockin sound?” Trace whispered.

  She turned her head toward him and Trace flinched. Her eyes were shadowed as darkly as Kieler’s but without the spark inside. When she turned them on Trace, he felt as if a shadow had moved between him and the sun.

  “No, and I couldn’t if I wished,” she said. “I’ve tried.”

  “She is with us,” Kieler said, and the elder of the two women gasped and pressed a handkerchief over her mouth. “She is trying to communicate … Agatha, your mother and your Aunt Sarah are here … Is there some message you wish us to hear?”

  Rap! said the table.

  “I keep telling you,” the dead girl said peevishly. “Can you hear me or can’t you?”

  “Oh, Agatha!” the older woman wailed through her lace hanky. “Are you all right, darling?”

  “Agatha,” said Kieler in languid tones, “are you safe and happy, child?”

  Rap! said the table.

  “No thanks to you, Mother,” Agatha said. “I told you that Walter Fitzsimmons had a cold look about him.” She looked at Trace as if expecting him to sympathize. “He smothered me, you know. He made it look like a fit, and the examiner said I’d swallowed my tongue, but he put the pillow over my face.” She sighed. “I never should have agreed to marry him.”

  “I reckon not,” Trace said.

  “Don’t one rap mean yes?” Boz whispered.

  “Yes, but—” Trace began, and decided Boz didn’t really want to know he was standing six inches from a dead girl. “Never mind.”

  Kieler glanced their way, then extended his hands toward the two women. “We will join hands,” he said, “and focus our thoughts on Agatha. If our concentration is strong, a doorway may be opened, and she will speak to us directly.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Agatha said darkly. “This is the fourth time I’ve been here, and he hasn’t managed it yet.”

  “Why do you keep comin, then?” Trace asked, ignoring Boz’s questioning look.

  “My aunt came first. She didn’t like Walter, either, and she thought there was something suspicious about my death. She keeps trying to talk to me, but all this fool can do is knock on the table and speak in theatrical voices. The first time I came, I thought he heard me—really heard me. My aunt thought so, too, that’s why she keeps coming back.”

  “Agatha Fitzsimmmons,” Kieler crooned. “Come through the veil, child. See this light through my eyes, and speak with my tongue. Use this vessel to commune with your loved ones.”

  “Oh for pity’s sake,” Agatha said. “Open your eyes, old man!”

  “Is there really a spirit here?” Boz whispered. “Or is he just talkin out his ass?”

  “Little of both,” Trace said.

  “Is there someone with you?” Agatha said to Trace. “You were talking to someone, but I can’t see…”

  “It’s my partner,” Trace said. “He can’t see you, either. So you, ah, you know you’re…?”

  “Dead? I didn’t, at first,” Agatha admitted. “I thought I was dreaming. But then my aunt started visiting Spiritualists and calling to me—”

  “What was it … what was the dreamin like?” Trace felt a weird quiver in his guts, a combination of thrill and dread. He’d never spoken to one of the spirits like this, never asked these sorts of questions. Wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers.

  Agatha shrugged. “Drifting. Pleasant. Warm, comfortable. Until I heard them calling me. Now I’m tired all the time, and they won’t let me rest.”

  “And you can’t see my partner standin here?” Trace gestured with his thumb toward Boz, standing wide-eyed and nervous behind him.

  Agatha looked, but shook her head. “I see you. You’re very clear. I see the room through there, but it shifts, grows lighter or darker depending upon Herr Kieler. He’s bright and dim by turns, like a candle in a draft. But you’re like a chimney lamp. You don’t flicker. Since you’ve been standing here I can see the entire room.” She looked him over, carefully. “You’re not dead, are you?”

  “No,” Trace said. “You don’t see other dead people, then?”

  Agatha shook her head. “Do you?”

  “Not here.”

  “Can you see my mother and aunt?”

  Trace nodded, once.

  “Would you speak to them for me?”

  She made it sound so simple and sensible—the only polite thing to do, really. Trace felt within himself, cautiously—there was no fear, just a nervous sense of being in unfamiliar territory. “I reckon I could.”

  “Reckon you could what?” Boz interrupted.

  “She wants me to talk to her mother,” Trace said, and grimaced at his own stupidity when Boz looked alarmed. “She’s just a girl, Boz. Just a poor dead girl, got a message to deliver.”

  “That’s what you said about the last one.” Boz’s nostrils flared as he drew a short breath. “Well. That’s what you came here for, ain’t it?”

  Trace wasn’t so sure of that, but it was a sure-fire way of getting Kieler’s attention. “Wait here a minute,” he said, and glanced at Agatha. “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Ruth. Mrs. Ruth Walden.”

  He ventured into the room, measuring his pace like a pallbearer. Kieler was saying something about a place of rest and music in the clouds, but his voice trailed off as he and the two women became aware of a new presence in their midst.

  Trace felt like a fool. “Pardon me, Mrs. Walden?” The elder of the ladies opened her mouth, glanced sideways at her sister, but did not answer. “Ma’am, you don’t know me, but I, uh, I have a message from your daughter Agatha. She wanted me to tell you somethin.”

  Mrs. Walden’s mouth was still open. Agatha’s aunt looked confused and wary—this wasn’t part of the show she had come to see.

  “My son.” Kieler’s voice was tender, but it had been so long since Trace had been called that, he didn’t realize he was being spoken to. Kieler stood up, all five feet of him, and gestured to his own chair. “Dear boy. The first visit from one of the departed can be strange and frightening.”

  Trace cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Providence has led you to us,” Kieler said, signaling with his eyes. “Please, sit. Tell us how you were contacted by Agatha. Was it a dream?”

  Trace blinked. “Yes, sir, a dream I had last night.”

  “And Agatha appeared to you in it?”

  “She did.” Trace took the seat that was offered to him, glancing at the women, the sudden hunger in their eyes. “She was … wearin a white dress … with a”—his mind raced futilely over all the things women wore—“um, cape … and she had flowers in her hair. She was sort of glowin, you know.”

  “The Celestial Aura,” Kieler murmured, “that the residents of Heaven bring with them.”

  “The very same.” Trace glanced toward the doorway. Agatha and Boz stood side by side, both with hands on hips. Neither of them was glowing.

  “And how did Agatha appear to you?” Kieler asked.

  Trace looked at him. “I just told you that part.”

  “But can you describe her?” Kieler suggested, inclining his eyes and head ever so slightly toward the women.

  “Oh, right. Um … she was young and—not pretty, exactly.” Had a face like a horse, now that he thought about it. And the mother looked just like her, but stouter and more horselike.

  “Handsome?”

  “Yeah—that’s as good a word as any. Had a healthy look about her. Long and lean. Dark hair. Curly, I think.” The two women frowned at him,
not hearing what they wanted to hear. Trace drew a deep breath and dredged up phrases from the mollycoddling Spiritualist newspapers. “I remember the hair because it floated around her, like there was a spring breeze surroundin her. There was the smell of flowers in the air, and when I looked around I saw we were in a green field, standin in the sun, with bees and birds singin all around.”

  The mother was interested—more than that: hopeful. Her handkerchief was wrapped around white knuckles and she leaned forward slightly, eyes soaking him up like cornbread in bean soup. The aunt was more reserved; her gaze kept darting back and forth between Trace and Kieler.

  “And when you awoke, you felt compelled to seek me out,” Kieler said, his voice dreamy and soothing. “Forces you cannot explain led you to my door, though we have never before met.”

  “Somethin very like that,” Trace said, lowering his own tone to a rumble. That was one thing common to preachers and confidence men—you had to know how to use your voice. “I walked around all day feelin like there was somethin I was supposed to do. I walked the streets like Saint Peter, wrestlin with my own unworthiness, and Agatha herself must’ve been leadin me, because next thing I knew, I was standin in front of Mr. Kieler’s shop. And the moment I set eyes on you, ma’am,” he let his eyes rest on Mrs. Walden’s, “I recognized your daughter’s features. And I knew I was sent here by a power greater than this poor soul.”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Kieler said.

  “Amen,” Trace said, thinking he was surely going to hell.

  Mrs. Walden’s hand reached swiftly across the table and closed over Trace’s. “Bless you,” she said tearfully. “Bless you, sir.”

  “Tell us,” Agatha’s aunt urged. “Tell us what she said. It was Walter Fitzsimmons, wasn’t it?”

  “Sarah, don’t.” Mrs. Walden patted her sister’s arm. “It’s enough that she’s safe and at peace.”

  “That man needs to be held accountable,” Aunt Sarah protested. “Why else would she have appeared to this man?”

  “She wanted me to tell you, she’s happy where she is,” Trace said. “And not to worry yourself about her. She said to remind you, the Lord takes care of his own, and judgment will come to us all, in good time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “That’s all they want, really, is comfort,” Kieler said, pouring draughts of beer from a jug into thick pottery goblets. He handed one to Boz, then to Trace, then took one for himself.

  They were in the kitchen now, a homey and grubby bachelor’s kitchen, around a simple plank table that grazed the stove at one end, and was piled with more of the same rubbish that filled the front room. This stack was mostly jewelry, and a few gold teeth. It looked as if Kieler had been making an attempt to sort out the pieces with any value.

  In the daylight, the little German was slight and spry, almost childlike, with a sparse head of hair and a trim little mustache. He might have been thirty or sixty. His eyes were dark blue and sharp as a magpie’s.

  He offered them a plate of cold boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbage. “I must say, Mr. Tracy, for all your protestations of being a tyro, you handled those two women with a rare and fine control. Have you ever worked in show business?”

  Boz snorted amusement and Trace aimed a good-natured slap at his head. He was in a much better humor than he had been an hour ago. Even that minor expenditure of his power at the séance table had left him feeling relaxed and relieved. “I was studyin to be a priest. I guess that’s near enough. How did you know I wasn’t fakin?”

  Kieler chuckled and forked a bit of potato. “My dear boy, I am not entirely the fraud I must appear. I have the gift myself, though I am only a candle flame to your beacon. I knew there was a spirit in the room, but as to her name and message…” He shrugged, eloquently. “Sometimes I hear and see more. Sometimes less. It matters not to the bereaved. They want to be reassured, regardless. So we resort to the cruder methods.” He gnawed at the potato and it crumbled off his fork. He caught it in the other hand.

  “Trace wants to get rid of his,” Boz said.

  Kieler lifted an eyebrow at Trace. “This is true?”

  Trace grimaced, remembering Miss Fairweather’s admonition against wishing his power away. “I used to. Now I’d just like to control it better.”

  Kieler lifted both eyebrows. “You seem to me to have control. What is amiss?”

  Trace told him about the spirits coming around and disturbing his sleep. “I got enough demands on me from the livin, I don’t need the dead runnin me ragged, too.” He showed Kieler the rope burn on his neck. “Used to be they were only a nuisance, but now they’re actually attackin me … and Boz here can’t get any sleep either.”

  “You are becoming more powerful?” Kieler said.

  “It does seem that way, yes. And I can’t … turn it off.” It occurred to him, if this little man was not a complete fraud he might watch the spirit world the way Miss Fairweather did. Herr Kieler might’ve already marked Trace’s power the way she had. In fact the two of them might be aware of each other, and that left him, Trace, once again at a disadvantage. “Anyway, I’ve been lookin for somebody else who might have more experience controllin it, and could tell me how.”

  Kieler nodded encouragingly, while his knife and fork were busy at work. “Tell me, your gift—were you born with it, or did it come to you?”

  And so Trace related how he’d nearly died at Sharpsburg, and lain among the bodies of his comrades for almost three days before he was found. How he’d been sick and feverish for weeks afterward, out of his mind with pain and infection and morphine. And when he’d finally pulled out of the fever, he’d found he couldn’t stop taking the dope without becoming sick all over again, and along with the nausea and cramps came visions worse than anything delivered by the drug.

  He avoided Boz’s eye as he talked. Boz had heard some of this, but not about the morphine. Trace told them it had taken him two years before he was free of the dope. He didn’t mention he’d passed the second year in a Richmond sanitarium.

  “And you have seen the spirits ever since?” Kieler asked. “But not before?”

  “There on the battlefield was the first time.” Trace hesitated. “I was lyin in that road, facin up at the sky … and I knew I was dyin. I could feel the blood leakin out of me, and it was gettin cold. My lungs were achin, like they do when you breathe cold air too deep. I couldn’t feel my hands and feet anymore. And I was layin there with Jack Mallory’s dead arm across my neck, cause he’d fallen on me, and all of a sudden he sits back on his heels and kind of shakes himself, like he’d fallen asleep. And he looks at me and says, ‘Well, are you comin?’ and I say, ‘I don’t think I can get up.’ And he says, ‘I’ll give you a hand.’ So I raise my hand up, but it doesn’t feel like my arm, it’s lighter and stronger and it doesn’t feel like it’s connected properly. But I watch it pull up, and the rest of me pulls up, and Jack’s got hold of my hand but I don’t feel it, either, but I feel somethin pullin at my feet, like they’re stuck in mud. And I look back and I see…” Trace shuddered at the memory he’d let lie for so long, like grabbing for a stick of kindling and getting a handful of rot. “I see my body lyin there on the ground, with Jack’s arm across my neck. And I look up at the sky and it’s as though … all the color’d gone out of the world. The battle was still goin on all over, but I couldn’t hardly hear it. I couldn’t feel the ground shakin, or the men screamin—it was all faded out to gray. There was this light comin from the clouds, and it was shinin right through Jack and the rest of them. All around the battlefield there were men marchin up into the sky, and I turned to go with them, but my feet were stuck.” He gave a bark of humorless laughter. “Feet of clay, I suppose.”

  “Then what?” Kieler asked.

  “Then nothin. I was damn near bled out. Don’t remember nothin more until the hospital, the surgeons.” Except parts of him did remember, in nightmares. The dead dragging him down. The earth opening and sucking him down to h
ell. The sensation of worms and beetles tunneling through his flesh.

  “So you were ready to go but something stopped you, eh?” Kieler said. “Some purpose you have remaining here?”

  “Maybe,” Trace said. “But that was eighteen years ago, and I haven’t found it yet.” His mind touched on Miss Fairweather—that big-eyed way she had stared at him after his power leapt into her—and he pushed her down ruthlessly.

  “Perhaps you use the power to help others?” Kieler suggested. “To … free those souls who are caught?”

  “I’d surely be glad to do it, if I knew how,” Trace said.

  Kieler laid his fork and knife on the table and folded his hands over them. He looked at Trace for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

  “I’d be glad to pay you for your time,” Trace said. “Or if you need some work in trade, I guess we could figure out somethin.”

  Kieler shook his head, appeared to come to some decision. “I will tell you a story.” He lifted a finger in a staying gesture. “One moment, please.”

  He went away, back through the séance parlor, and they heard his footsteps climbing the stairs to the second floor, to the back of the building, and then doors opening and closing. The footsteps came back, and Kieler came into the kitchen with a framed tintype in his hand.

  It was of himself, looking a good deal younger, wearing an evening suit and with a top hat on his arm. His other hand rested on a show placard that read THE TEUTONIC PSYCHIC.

  Standing behind the placard, with a possessive hand on Kieler’s shoulder, was a striking dark-haired gentleman, with sharp handsome features and a neat vandyke beard. His eyes were deep and black, magnetic, even in the monochromatic image.

  “My mother had the gift,” Kieler said, smiling fondly at the photo. “As did her mother. It tends to run in families, as you no doubt know … Your father or mother were not gifted with the Sight?”

  “If they were, nobody told me.”

  “Someday, perhaps, you have a child of your own, and you then will know. There is a bond between families who have it, even after death. My mother’s spirit was always there to guide me, after I became a young man. It was she who led me to that great gentleman you see in the image. Yosef Mereck, he was called. The Russian Mesmerist. From the great circus of the Czar, he came to this country … and he called to me.”