by Cat Winters
“Hello.” May peeked up at me from beneath her long lashes and pushed the wooden pointer to the word GOOD-BYE on the game board.
“Hello.” I cleared my throat and leaned my hands against the back of one of her chairs. “What is that?”
“You’ve never seen a Ouija board?”
I jerked away from the table with a gasp.
May snickered. “Don’t look so spooked, Ivy. The devil isn’t going to come crawling out of the board and snatch you away. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Quite sure.” She tucked the wooden pointer inside a small bag made of gray cloth. “And I’ll have you know, I’m not the only Widow Street woman who employs Ouija boards and spirit mediums.”
“You employ a medium?” I asked. “A séance sort of medium?”
“Yes, a highly reputable one, another former Chicago girl, in fact. Why?” She lifted the board’s cardboard box off the floor. “Don’t you believe in ghosts?”
“Oh, boy. What a question.” I pulled out the chair with a loud screech of the wood and dropped down onto the seat.
“I’ll take that response to mean that you do indeed believe,” said May, a coy grin on her lips. “Might you have ghost stories of your own to share?”
“Well . . .” I folded my hands on the table to stop them from quaking. “To be most honest—and I’m only telling you this information because of your own Spiritualist beliefs . . .”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“Well . . .” I inhaled a long breath with a lift of my shoulders. “The Rowan women are known to see the dead.”
May raised her right eyebrow and settled the Ouija board inside its box. “The specifics, please.”
“I’ve never once mentioned this peculiarity to another person outside the family,” I said in a whisper, as if the spirits themselves—as if Eddie Dover—might actually hear me. “Not even my closest childhood friends. But my mother and I . . . well . . .” I licked my lips. “Rowan women tend to see the ghosts of loved ones right before someone dies.”
May rubbed her lips together and seemed to digest my confession. “Harbinger spirits,” she said with a pleased-looking nod. “Interesting.”
I straightened my neck. “Is that something you know about?”
“Not entirely. But I’ve learned various theories about spirits through the medium.”
“And what are her theories?”
“Well, she says”—May lowered the Ouija board’s lid over the box with a soft squeak of the cardboard—“some spirits get stuck in the places where they died. The haunted-house sorts of ghosts, if you will. Some struggle to complete a task they didn’t finish when they were alive. Others”—she brushed a sheet of dust off the curved letters of the word OUIJA on the lid—“they roam the earth, unsettled, restless, unsure what to do or where they belong. And then there are the lucky ones.” She sank back in her chair and drew a deep sigh with a lift of her chest. “If only all spirits could follow their lead.”
I leaned forward on my elbows. “What happens to the lucky ones?”
“They accept their fate”—she sighed again—“and just enjoy themselves.”
“In heaven, you mean?”
“I was raised a strict Catholic, so I’m not sure if I can truly refer to a Spiritualist realm as heaven. But, yes, they’re making the most of the afterlife. Have you ever heard that poem, ‘Gather your roses while ye may’?”
“Yes, of course. It’s ‘To the . . .’” I cleared my throat, for the contents of the poem suddenly seemed quite personal, even if May misquoted the words a smidgen. “‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,’ by Robert Herrick.”
“Well, they’re still gathering, still enjoying the party, the lucky bastards. I wish my poor Eddie could be one of them.”
I stared at the way my fingers lay in a pale and quivery pile on the table, like an unsettling heap of squirming larvae. I spread out my hands and willed them to stay still. “Does Eddie visit you?”
May cast her eyes to the lamp shining above us, the warm light glistening against her moist eyes. “Yes.”
“What does your medium say about his tendency to do so? What type of spirit is he?”
“A wanderer.” She inhaled through her nose. “Those are the ones who tend to experience pangs of concern for their living loved ones. It’s part of their restless nature.”
“Do you think I’m witnessing wanderers, then?” I found myself leaning even farther forward, my elbows easing across the slick grain of the wood. “Are these spirits of lost loved ones worried about how I’ll handle the news of death?”
“Perhaps.” May returned her eyes to mine. “They might be attempting to comfort you.”
“Unfortunately”—I glanced at the window beside us, mistaking the shadow of a tree limb for the silhouette of a man’s arm—“they don’t bring me one single shred of comfort. I’m actually scared to death one of them will show up at any moment, letting me know I’m about to lose someone else. This flu. That German.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It just seems likely I’ll see my brother whom I lost to the war, and then someone else I love will”—I swallowed and shuddered—“disappear.”
May peeked at the window as well but seemed untroubled by the shadows. “So many people are dying out there right now, Ivy. I doubt there’s time for spirits to bring warnings of every single fatality at the moment.”
I shuddered again, and then I pushed myself to my feet. “I should get going.”
“Where?”
“To see the German.”
“But—”
“I know it sounds ridiculous after he threw me out, but there’s a prickling deep in my bones that insists I have to go to him.”
“Don’t fall in love with him.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard what I said.” Her eyes glinted with mischief, but her words carried more caution than cruelty. “Don’t fall in love with the German. Unless”—she set the Ouija board box down into her lap—“you’re absolutely sure”—she smiled and looked me straight in the eye—“you won’t get caught.”
Chapter 7
I rapped my knuckles against one of the rough-edged planks boarding up the Liberty Brothers door.
No one answered.
I peeked over my shoulder for signs of watchful eyes in the dark and then knocked again.
“Mr. Schendel?” I called inside. “It’s Ivy. I would really like to speak to you.”
I lowered my hand and leaned toward the door. My shadow seeped across the planks like black ink spilling across the surface. All around me, the yellow paint branched down the bricks in a frozen reminder of the violence hurled upon the store.
Nothing.
“Mr. Schendel? I know you’re likely assuming I’m only here to rid myself of guilt. And you’d be partially right.” I positioned my lips an inch away from the boards. “But I am concerned about you. And your family. And your business. In fact, I moved out of my parents’ house because of what happened here. I thought you should know that. As much as I love my mother and worry about her staying with my father . . .” I covered my eyes and breathed through a sharp spike of pain in my head. “Oh, God, you don’t know how much I worry about her right now. This flu, and . . . this . . . this murder hanging over that house. I worry about her, but I refuse to go back there. I refuse to acknowledge those two men as my father and brother. I’m done with them.”
The air, cold as a root cellar, hung around me without the slightest whisper of a breeze rustling through the silence. I didn’t hear anyone breathing on the other side of the door.
All those words I just confessed to him . . . wasted.
I turned to leave, and the door opened a crack. A pair of blue eyes peeked out from a shadowed face.
“Daniel?” I edged back to the door. “Did you . . . did you hear what I just said?”
“Is that true?” he asked.
“Which part?”
&n
bsp; “You left your family? Because of this?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He didn’t open the door another inch, and his face remained the only part of him I could see.
“I don’t think”—he scratched at a chip on the door—“there’s anything you can do for me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m positive.” He nodded. “There is nothing.”
“I’d be willing to talk to the police . . .”
“The police already nosed about our store and did nothing. Did you see the bullshit in today’s newspaper article?”
I drew back. “No. What did the article say?”
“I’ve stored a copy in the drawer near my cash register. If you want to witness the cold and brutal truth”—he peeked over his shoulder—“I’ll go fetch it for you.”
“It claims vagrants committed the murder, doesn’t it?”
“The murder is only a small sliver of concern in that article. The writer complained about our lack of support in the latest Liberty Loan drive, which is a lie. He claimed we didn’t register for the draft—another lie. Albrecht registered as soon as the U.S. declared war on Germany, but the army turned him down. They thought he wanted a free trip back home to the Fatherland.”
“I . . .” I grabbed hold of the door. “I could talk to the newspaper. And the APL.”
“No one will listen to you. It will help nothing. There is nothing you can do.”
“There must be something. Please, let me inside so we can talk”—I pushed the door open with more force than I’d intended, knocking him off balance—“and so we can figure out—”
I stopped, for lamplight fell across Daniel’s bare throat above the collar of the undershirt he wore instead of his shirtsleeves and vest. A vicious red line encircled his neck—a raw and ugly rope burn.
“Oh, God!” I clutched my own throat, which stung and closed up, as if someone had just clamped a rope around it.
“You need to go.” He snatched my arm and steered me back toward the street.
“No! Tell me what happened.” I pushed him off me and shoved my way into the heart of the store. “Did you try to hang yourself?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it most certainly does matter. My family did this to you. They drove you to it.”
“Please go, Ivy.” He pointed toward the door.
“Tell me what I can do to help.”
“Go.”
“I don’t want you killing yourself. Please, tell me what I can do to take away your pain.”
“There is nothing.”
“Tell me—”
“The only thing you can possibly do is to come to my bed with me.”
I stepped back, and he lowered his arm and blinked as if his request had startled him as much as it had me.
“You want honesty, Fräulein?” he asked in that strange harsh and musical accent. “That is the only thing that would make me feel better, and I’m not even sure that would work.”
My hands trembled, and my legs wobbled and dipped as if made out of rubber. “But . . . I-I-I can’t. I’m a respectable woman . . .”
“This is wartime, Ivy. Morality and righteousness mean nothing.”
“The war is overseas. Not here.”
“Are you sure about that?” He glowered at the damaged chairs and the faded pink stains on the floor.
My skin chilled, and my eyes stung with tears—not from sorrow or shame or fear, but tears from that pustulant wound of guilt that oozed in the middle of my gut with unrelenting agony. I rubbed at the gooseflesh on my arms and thought of Peter’s bruised fingers, Father’s blood-spattered overalls, and the burn mark on Daniel’s neck—that wicked ghost of a noose, which seemed to grow darker and redder the more I hesitated. The lining of my stomach boiled.
I turned my eyes toward the faded stains on the floor. “Do you really think it might help?”
“I don’t know. As I said, I’m not sure . . .”
Out of the corner of my eye, I viewed his broad shoulders and the slim spread of his stomach, and a small flutter of unexpected arousal stirred inside me. Perhaps some primal call to procreate awakened—a deep human instinct for survival, spurred on by the threat of annihilation from the influenza and the war.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Daniel cleared his throat. “You don’t have to—”
“You would have to promise to be gentle,” I found myself saying, and my face and neck warmed. I cupped my hands over my cheeks, imagining terrible splotchy patches, which, according to my brothers, is how my blushes often appeared.
Daniel swallowed and ran a hand through his hair. I thought he might grab my arm and toss me out of his store again, but instead he said in little more than a murmur, “My apartment is upstairs.”
We locked eyes, and he seemed to test me, while I tested him, each of us waiting to call the other’s bluff.
I drew a sharp breath. “Let’s go upstairs then.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
He turned, and I followed him toward a back doorway that led inside a sawdust-scented workroom crowded with planks of wood, tools, paints, glosses, harsh-smelling varnishes, fabrics, and wide worktables that reminded me of the picnic furniture out at Minter Lake. We trekked through golden flecks of wood that made my nose itch, and we reached a flight of stairs that bent up to the right. Neither of us said a word on our journey up to the second floor. Only our footsteps spoke, his more hurried than mine, although mine moved with far more urgency than I would have ever expected of such a moment. I found myself staring at the back of his neck . . . and wondering what he would taste like if I ran my tongue across that smooth patch of skin below his brown hair. I didn’t normally wonder such things about men, but there it was—a strange and brazen urge. I pondered if his skin, up close, would smell of beer, as people insinuated about Germans.
Upstairs, we entered a small living room, well furnished, of course, considering the occupant. A Victrola with a painted brass horn sat on a mahogany stand in front of the leftmost window, and a photograph of a middle-aged couple in dark clothing and hats—his parents perhaps—stood on the mantelpiece of a brick fireplace. I saw a cream-colored cookstove and a wooden icebox through a doorway to the left.
“Do you live alone?” I asked.
“Yes.” Daniel pursed his lips. “I do now.”
“Oh. I-I’m sorry. I should have known.” I glanced at the photograph of the couple again. “Are your parents—?”
“I live alone, and that’s all you need to know. I have no other family anymore. Not here.”
I nodded in understanding.
He sighed through his nose and continued onward through the apartment, past a closed door that made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. I wondered, if I ventured inside the room within, whether I would find Albrecht’s clothing and shoes and shaving brush, as well as other items that had touched his living body just a few days before. The room might still smell of Daniel’s brother’s cologne, or whatever scent he had carried upon him. Strands of his hair likely lingered in the teeth of his comb.
“It’s in here.” Daniel nodded his head toward another doorway, an open one. “My room, that is. Where I sleep.”
I gave a little cough into my hand and followed him inside a sparse space lacking in color, aside from a navy-blue quilt on a wooden bed and tan-striped curtains hanging over a window that faced the street. Bare walnut panels lined the walls, a silver lamp sat on a chest of drawers, and a pen, a set of keys, and a brown document resembling a passport topped a small desk. A blond-wood guitar rested in the corner across from me.
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and wandered around to the opposite side of the bed.
I eyed the quilt and the pillow, seeing the indentation of his body from the last time he had slept there. �
�Well . . .” I put my hands on my hips and breathed a sigh that parched my lips. “What am I supposed to do?”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “You’ve never been married?”
“No.”
“A beautiful woman? Never married?”
My face warmed again. “No.”
“No lovers either?”
“This is Illinois. We don’t have lovers.”
He barked a loud laugh—the type that comes out as a startling “Ha!” But then he hid his smile by wiping his hand across his mouth.
“What do I do?” I asked again.
“Well”—he looked toward the blue quilt and spoke more to the bed than to me—“you take off your clothes . . . and lie down.”
“All of my clothes?”
“If you want. If it’s comfortable.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to be comfortable.”
I took off my coat, draped it over the foot of the bed, and reached up to the top button of my blouse. Daniel kept his eyes focused on the quilt, but I could tell by the way his breath grew louder and his body went still that he could see me in his peripheral vision. He was handsome for a German, I had to admit, with those deep blue eyes and short locks of tousled brown hair that curled along the sides of his forehead. Yet that red mark on his neck, the way he lingered by the bed in which he wanted me to join him—everything about him at the moment—reeked of death and lust. I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know why I sort of liked it. If I looked into the mirror (if his room actually possessed a mirror), I’m not sure I would have even recognized the woman staring back at me.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
I unhooked three more buttons and gave a shiver from the cool air nipping my bare skin. I could see the pale swell of my breasts and the white eyelet trim of my brassiere, and I thought of the long-ago summer when Wyatt Pettyjohn asked to touch my naked chest down by the lake, and how I let him, just to try it, before I told him, “I don’t think I love you that way, Wyatt. I’m sorry. I’ve got too much to worry about at home for something like this.”