We Hear the Dead

by Dianne K. Salerni

  During our sitting, Leah sat demurely with her hands folded in her lap and listened attentively to the spirits. If she smiled now and again, it seemed only to indicate her pleasure in hearing the uplifting messages from those who had gone before us to heaven. Once she caught me watching her and winked.

  It wasn’t until the third day of Leah’s visit that the blow finally fell. Lulled by a false sense of security, Kate and I had been unwise enough to let her find us alone. Leah caught us in the parlor and shut the door.

  “I know you are doing it,” she said, without preamble. “I don’t quite know how, but I know it is you.”

  Kate began hesitantly: “It is true that we are the medium through which the spirits…”

  “Forget that hogwash, Catherine!” Leah snapped. “I know you are making the noises with your person somehow. There are no spirits at work here.”

  “I have the gift!” Kate said indignantly.

  “The gift of mischief making! But you haven’t any sense! Do you have any idea what would happen if you were found out? Stop fidgeting and look at me, Margaretta! Mrs. Redfield thinks you are both the most darling girls. Can you imagine how that would change if she discovered you were making a fool of her? And what about your rich Mrs. Hyde? She’s the biggest toad in the puddle here, and if her husband found out how you’ve tricked them both, he would ride you out of town on a rail!”

  I sniffed doubtfully, and Leah turned on me. “Do you think they don’t do that anymore, Margaretta? I am here to tell you they most certainly do.”

  She turned back to Kate. “What about Betsy and David? Have you thought about them? If you are discovered a fraud, their reputation is ruined. They’ll have to leave town. Everyone would think they were in on it, especially with David giving people peeks at that box like it was a carnival sideshow! What about Lizzie? She’ll be riding that rail right beside you, because no one’s going to believe that one out of the three girls was innocent.”

  It was true. I had not thought about any of those things. I couldn’t help flashing a look of alarm and despair at Kate, whose eyes were welling with tears.

  “You’ve gotten yourselves in a fix, girls,” Leah said. “It’s a lucky thing for you that I came when I did.”

  ***

  Leah sat Mother down for a long talk. Kate and I stood together quietly in the corner of the room and did just what Leah had told us to do.

  “The strain of this gift is too much for such young girls,” Leah explained to our mother. “Kate has already had one fit and fainted dead away on another occasion.”

  “But the spirits just come, every evening,” said Mother. “What can we do but listen to them?”

  “I propose that we try splitting up the girls.” Leah glanced back at us, and we nodded as we were supposed to. If we did not agree, Leah had made it plain that she would reveal our deception to Mother. “I will take Kate with me back to Rochester, and Maggie will remain here with you—for now. If all goes well, you can join us in a few weeks.”

  Mother’s brow furrowed. Kate was her youngest, and I could see how much it pained her to be parted from her baby. “Perhaps you should take Maggie,” Mother suggested. I wasn’t sure whether to feel jealous at that or hopeful about returning to Rochester or apprehensive about leaving with Leah.

  However, Leah’s plans were already made. “I will take Kate,” she insisted. “Then, if there is another fit, she can see a doctor in Rochester who doesn’t take horses as patients on alternate Saturdays!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Dr. Knowles,” muttered Mother. “But I guess it couldn’t hurt to let a city doctor take a look.” She brightened. “I could come with you.”

  “You will stay here,” Leah instructed. “Betsy will need your help when the baby comes. I will write you in a few weeks, and if this spirit manifestation is under control, you can bring Maggie for a visit.”

  In the end, there was nothing Mother could do but bow to her daughter’s will. We passed Kate into Leah’s greedy hands, not knowing that we were conducting the business of spirit communication into an entirely new realm.

  Chapter Ten

  Kate

  Some people might say I made a bargain with the devil. I suppose it seems so, and yet that is a rather harsh judgment of my sister. I prefer to think of it as an agreement for our mutual benefit. There was nothing, after all, that I wanted more than an opportunity to explore and share my newfound talent.

  In many ways, I was fortunate that my gift took this form. I always felt that it must have saddened my great-grandmother that her second sight was attuned only to funerals. The family learned to keep their knowledge a secret, for in those more primitive days Great-Grandmother Rutan might have been branded a witch and blamed for the very deaths she prophesied.

  I would have liked to have met Aunt Elizabeth and learned more about her dream visions. Sadly, like those of her grandmother, they always foreshadowed death. However, my mother has told me that her sister was always a lively and cheerful person. Knowing that she was to die in her twenty-seventh year, she never wasted any of the days until that time. My mother recalls that she held her head high and proud on the day she married Mr. Higgins, even though her groom had tears on his face and her sisters wept. She would not allow the foreknowledge of her death to deter her from love.

  How lucky I was—my gift allowed me to look backward, at those already gone before us, instead of forward to a knowledge no one really wanted in advance. If my role was to be a medium through which the dead communicated with the loved ones who grieved for them, then I was proud and willing to accept that role. It was not all that different from the service of a clergyman who ministers to a grieving widow in her darkest hour.

  In fact, Mrs. Redfield told me that my succor was a greater balm to a suffering heart than the doctrine recited by a well-meaning sermonizer. After one of our spirit meetings, she took my hands and said to me, “Bless you, child. You have lightened my heart in a way that no one else could—not the reverend at the church or any other person who has counseled me on God’s will. I believe that my daughter’s soul still exists and that she is waiting for me in a better, brighter place, thanks to you.”

  I had never known that Mrs. Redfield suffered so, for she seemed such a merry and high-spirited person, but apparently she kept her secret grief locked within her heart. I was touched and moved by her plight, and I always made sure to include a special message for her from her daughter.

  I was distressed at leaving Hydesville, as Leah had commanded. Being separated from Maggie was like leaving a limb behind. I cried for the first two nights, inconsolable no matter how Leah tried to comfort me, and was stricken by a sick headache that left me prostrate and weak. On the third night, my aunt Elizabeth spoke to me in a dream and bade me take cheer, for my fate was preordained and this temporary loneliness was a small price to pay for the full realization of my gift. After that, I faced my new life in Rochester with more mettle and settled into the role set forth for me by my sister as a medium for the spirits.

  Leah made it clear to me that if I wished to continue along this path, I would abide by her decisions in every case, and I agreed. When her plan became clear to me, I faltered somewhat. However, I soon realized that while certain persons were convinced by Leah’s tricks and others were entertained, the true believers understood that the value of the experience resided in what I had to say. Before long I had followers whose need was as great as that of the ladies I had known in Hydesville, and it was for the benefit of those persons that I tolerated Leah’s tomfoolery.

  My sister may have been a trickster, but my own purpose was pure.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maggie

  What a dismal place Hydesville was without my sister. If I had thought it a wasteland before, it was a hundred times more so now. The little farmhouse, full to bursting a few days prior, now seemed lifeless and empty. Mother a
nd I were the only visitors remaining. This may have pleased Betsy, full to bursting herself and preparing for her confinement, but for me it seemed a sentence to a life devoid of any meaning. Consequently, I was ill tempered and quick to anger. When Betsy chastised me for scorching David’s Sunday shirt with the flatiron, I burst into tears and exclaimed that no one in this backwoods town would notice a few burn marks.

  “If it were up to me,” she snapped in return, “I would close you up inside a crate and send you back to Rochester City by post!”

  Even the spirit meetings, held now in Mrs. Redfield’s parlor, came less frequently. The fact is that I was not as strong without Kate. My heart was not in it, and it became difficult to resort to any subterfuge when all the ladies’ attention was focused on me. Cracking the joints in my toes failed me on more than one occasion, and without Kate’s assistance in reserve, the spirits often gave conflicting answers, rapping once instead of twice or failing to rap on the correct letter.

  “Margaretta is simply not as gifted with the spirits as her sister,” I overheard Mrs. Hyde whisper to Mrs. Duesler.

  As embarrassing as this was, it was nothing less than the truth.

  I did not protest when our meetings ended early and soon ceased altogether. At that time, I assumed that this was Leah’s plan for extricating us from our deception. Before she left, I had asked her, “What shall I do in your absence?”

  “Continue as you have done,” she said, “but be careful and take no risks. Await my first letter, and take guidance for your actions from my words.”

  I was expecting her letter to report that Kate’s power to converse with spirits was diminishing, and I would subsequently “discover” that my abilities had also faded away. The unsuccessful spirit meetings held in Mrs. Redfield’s house foreshadowed the end of the entire ghostly enterprise, and in many respects it would be a welcome relief, for I had tired of the game.

  As it turned out, I was wrong about Leah.

  ***

  Two long weeks passed while I languished in boredom and restlessness. Finally, one afternoon, David returned from town with a letter that had arrived by the latest mail carriage. Mother tore it open immediately, just as anxious for news as I was, and after scanning it with a furrowed brow, she read it aloud to the gathered company.

  Dearest Family,

  We safely arrived in Rochester a fortnight ago. As you know, it was my hope that these ghostly incidents would end if we separated Kate and Maggie. Alas, this has not been the case, and, if anything, the spirits have grown overexcited in their new stomping ground and have been making their presence known to all.

  The rapping began on the boat during our trip and only grew worse once we had arrived at my house. Our first night in the house was a sleepless one, what with the mattress shaking under us and Lizzie shrieking in the night that some cold hand had touched her neck. When the girls cried out for the spirits to leave them alone, first Lizzie, and then Kate, and finally I, too, felt a stinging slap on the face! In the end, I was forced to wake Calvin Brown from sleep and ask him to move down from the third floor and make his bed upon the sofa in the second-floor parlor.

  After much reflection, I decided to invite a few very close friends to the house for a spirit circle like the one I attended at Mrs. Redfield’s house. I hoped that if the spirits were given this opportunity to communicate with the living, they might cease their nightly pranks. And so it happened that, after an evening of rapping and answering questions for our guests, our ornery spirits were appeased, and we have had no more trouble with them.

  Let me assure you, however, that I have not yet hung up my fiddle when it comes to abolishing these pesky spirits. I have a mind to move Kate from this house, which is half a century old and may be just as haunted as your little Hydesville house, and into a more modern residence. I am currently engaged in seeking such a place, although mindful that it must be one in which I can accommodate Calvin, for alone among my boarders I feel a certain responsibility to him. It is good to have him with us in any case, as his presence comforts the girls and provides an anchor against the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

  I will write again when I have found a new residence that meets my requirements, and I hope at that time Mother and Maggie will join us here.

  Your devoted daughter and sister,

  Leah

  We were all puzzled and disturbed by Leah’s letter and the report of these pranks attributed to the ghosts. I had been so certain that Leah would use our separation to abolish the spirits and end the deception without giving our duplicity away. Instead, she seemed to have escalated the falsehoods.

  I could not make heads or tails of it. Had Leah been convinced after all that we employed supernatural powers to create the rappings? What was I to make of the cold hand and shaking mattress reported in her account?

  Leah stated that she had moved Calvin Brown into her apartment as protection from the spirits. Calvin had rented rooms in the third floor of Leah’s house for nearly ten years. He was a mild-mannered and pleasant young man, about David’s age. My mother had practically adopted him when she discovered that his parents were dead and that he had no other living relatives. For years we girls had viewed him as a foster brother, just as dear to us as David. Leah was blind to the fact, obvious to the rest of us, that Calvin’s regard for her was something more than brotherly. I had no doubt that Calvin would do whatever Leah asked of him, and I wondered if he, too, was now included in the deception.

  Three more weeks passed in a slow, countrified agony. Betsy took to her bed in labor and, after two days, delivered a healthy daughter, later christened Althea. I admit staring into the child’s red, squalling face with some consternation, viewing her mainly as a source of more laundry that would no doubt find its way into my lye-burned hands.

  Mercifully, the expected letter from Leah finally arrived, stating that she had found a suitable house on a more modern street in the city and that we could join her there immediately. I packed my meager belongings in a hurry and was ready to go in an hour—although it took Mother another two days to prepare for the journey. We started out before dawn, with David driving us in the wagon to Newark, where we boarded one of the Erie Canal boats. It was my first trip by boat, and the bedlam of activity was a great excitement for a time, but once the voyage was under way it soon became tedious. Sad-looking horses walking on trails beside the canal pulled the boats, and people on foot easily outpaced us, waving merrily as they passed.

  The trip lasted the entire day and into the evening. It was quite dark by the time we set foot on land at Rochester and hired a carriage to take us to Leah’s new residence on Prospect Street. Unlike the sleepy little hamlet of Hydesville, the city of Rochester was still awake and going about its business even at nine or ten in the evening. Carriages and wagons bumped along the streets, and pedestrians, many of them walking in couples and dressed for evening social excursions, strolled leisurely along under the gaslights. I smiled at the bustling hubbub of it all. I had missed this background noise of life in the nighttime when forced to fall asleep to silence punctuated only by a cricket or an owl.

  Leah’s new home was indeed in a more modern and affluent part of town, although it was interesting to note that it adjoined a cemetery, which was a strange choice if she were fleeing from ghosts. I am afraid that we roused the entire household when we knocked on the door, but our arrival precipitated joyful exclamations and exuberant embraces.

  Snuggled in bed with Kate that night, I finally heard the story of her month living with Leah. “Oh, she knows how we make the sounds,” Kate assured me, “and so does Lizzie, now. You wouldn’t believe how furious Lizzie was when she found out. She called me all kinds of horrible names and said that I was bound for hell for deceiving our family and friends. Why, I was so angry I slapped her!”

  I began to see the layer of truth beneath the falsehoods in Leah’s letter. Our o
lder sister had defended her daughter by slapping Kate back, who had bounced right back and slapped Leah in return!

  “I was very peeved with Lizzie,” Kate went on, “so I waited until she was asleep and dribbled cold water down her back. She leapt up screeching and overturned the mattress I was lying on. Then we pulled each other’s hair out in handfuls until Calvin woke up and grabbed each of us by our night shifts and shook us till we squealed! Leah stomped around angrily with her hair all bound up in rag curls, and Calvin blushed like a girl to see her in her nightclothes, but Leah didn’t pay any mind. She gave us a tongue lashing and stamped her feet all the while, until the old lady who boarded downstairs banged on the floor with a broom and asked if we were dancing the Highland fling upstairs!”

  She and I giggled and whispered long into the night, two dearest friends reunited, until the comforting rumble of city noises outside lulled us into sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maggie

  Kate and Leah had a few surprises for me when I sat for my first spirit circle in Rochester.

  The guests included Amy and Isaac Post, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, and their friend Reverend Clark. Our family had rented rooms in the Posts’ old house for years, and Kate and I had grown up playing with their sons. When I first saw them that evening, I greeted them with some awkwardness, knowing that I was about to deceive them.

  I was also worried about the Reverend Clark, for Kate had confided that he was a longtime friend of the Grangers and that he had come with the purpose of exposing our fraud and rescuing his good friends from harm. Kate, however, expressed no reservations and assured me that Leah had everything well in hand.

  Reverend Clark was short and stout, with shaggy eyebrows and a gruff manner. When first introduced to him, Kate and I were entertained by the sight of his unkempt eyebrows waggling in surprise, for he was clearly taken aback by our appearance. We looked like two innocent children excited to partake in a late evening with the adults, not sinister confederates in a humbuggery!