by Adam McOmber
For a moment, I wished I’d never shared my ability with either Maddy or Nathan. He had been nineteen and she and I, both a year younger. I’d been old enough to understand what damage my revelation could do, but at the time, I didn’t care. The decision was fueled by my own vanity. I wanted them to think I was fascinating, especially Nathan, and I knew my talent would fix his gaze.
During my outing—as it were—the three of us held hands around a bottle of Tyndall’s popular brand ink while standing in Heath’s southern woods, not far from the outcropping of shale where my mother had succumbed. Oak leaves shone red and orange above us like fire, and the tree trunks looked like ancient pillars. The Heath was a temple that evening, and I was to be its priestess.
I’d chosen the ink bottle to demonstrate the transference because, as an object, it was banal. I could have produced an extravagance from Father’s collection of curiosities—a Peruvian god-mask or a mechanical bird designed by the medieval engineer Tommaso Francini. But there was no need. What I would show them would be extravagant enough.
I squeezed the cool slimness of Maddy’s hand, and thrilled at the sheer weight of Nathan’s. I’d never touched him for such duration before, and now that I had my chance, I cherished it. We huddled in our small circle beneath the autumn sky, braced against the chill, all staring down at the ink bottle nestled in the leaves. When nothing happened, Maddy, who was wearing one of her more dramatic dresses, an emerald corseted gown with a dark silk flower in her hair, said she was tired and would like to go home. “I don’t know what you mean to show us, Jane,” she said. “But I’m not really in the mood for a magic show.”
Nathan hushed her. He was already interested in spiritism from reading articles by William Crookes, head of the queen’s Society for Pyschical Research, and from his mother’s own participation in séances. My allusion to what I believed would happen with the ink bottle pricked his interest further—another factor that contributed to Madeline’s state of perturbation.
I was experiencing some sort of anxiety over my performance and felt as though I was pushing my consciousness against a batten of wet cotton, trying to form some connection between the three of us. Maddy made a kind of hiccupping sound, and then without warning, the transference occurred. All the fine hair on my arms stood on end and my teeth ached. I think even the leaves around us might have rustled.
The three of us listened as the glass bottle of ink began to make a high and wavering echo that was wordless, but later we all agreed that listening to it allowed us each to feel something of what it was to be the glass. There was a deeper sensation too—a greenish color that made me think of old plant matter, great and sopping ferns blotting out the sun. We were digging deeply into the bottle’s ghosts, glimpsing its most private layers. Nathan looked from the bottle to my own face in shock, and Madeline began to giggle, as if someone had brushed a feather against the nape of her neck.
We broke hands, and for them, at least, the ink bottle grew silent.
“What in God’s name, Jane?” Nathan asked, but I had no time to answer. Maddy was sinking toward the ground, still giggling, reaching her hand to a bed of leaves for support.
“Is the bottle haunted?” she asked. Maddy too was well apprised of séances. Nathan’s mother had shared with us her investment in them, and Maddy’s own mother, the venerable Eusapia Lee, became quite obsessed with summoning after the death of first her husband and then her son, Melchior.
“It’s certainly not haunted,” I said, picking the ink bottle out of the leaves and slipping it into the bag I’d brought. “I didn’t think you believed in that kind of foolishness, Maddy.”
“I don’t,” she said. “Of course, I don’t. But, oh, it had a voice and it has been to strange places.”
“It’s not just the bottle. All objects emit sensation,” I said. “It could have been anything: a pair of shears, a pocket watch, a mirror glass. Plants are soothing. That’s why I wear flowers so often.” I pointed at the feverfew tied at my wrist. “Flowers help me silence the objects.”
Maddy’s eyes became remarkably still, and I hated to see that I’d inspired fear in them. “Are you some kind of witch, Jane? I’ve been friends with a sorceress all this time?”
I sighed. “Oh, Maddy. Really.”
Nathan helped her out of the leaves and to a bench some distance away. I followed, picking up her fringed wrap, which had fallen into the dirt.
“How fully have you experimented with this ability?” Nathan asked.
“Enough to know it isn’t really much more than a parlor trick,” I said. “There’s beauty in it. A poetry of objects. But it doesn’t go any further. I can’t move them or alter them in any way. Sometimes if I let the experience go on too long, it gives me a splitting headache.”
“But you have control over it?” Nathan asked. “You can make it stop and start?”
“A modicum of control, though there are times when it surprises me.”
He was boyish about the whole endeavor, and I loved how he looked at me with fascination. My heart raced as he spoke. “Really, Jane, this is wonderful,” he said. “I’ve seen mediums pull their tricks in parlors all over London, but that’s all a bunch of wool. This, however, this is quite real.”
I blushed. “I told you it would make for an interesting evening.”
“Can you do it again?” he asked.
“No,” Maddy nearly shouted from her bench. “Don’t ever. That was the most frightening thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I thought the most frightening thing was when you were thrown from your horse last summer,” Nathan said.
“That wasn’t nearly as bad as this,” Madeline replied. “A horse, at least, is a rational creature.”
“I don’t want to repeat it,” I said. “The transference makes me tired.”
“Of course,” he said. “But there are men who’d have an interest in this.”
“If you’re talking about William Crookes or any of the other pseudo-scientists setting up shop around London, I don’t want to garner their interest. No one else should know about this. I’d rather not be studied, Nathan.”
“Yes,” he said, considering, as he handed Maddy a handkerchief. A fallen yellow leaf had attached itself to Nathan’s lapel. He picked the leaf off carefully and turned to look at me, one sharp eyebrow cocked. Despite my fear of study, Nathan’s new interest pleased me. I’d drawn his attention. I’d finally become a woman of significance.
• • •
After the tête-à-tête around the ink bottle, Nathan craved my touch. He wanted to experience the souls of objects everywhere and, at times, he seemed even to forget about Maddy.
“I don’t know why you had to show yourself off like that, Jane,” Maddy said one day in the privacy of my dressing room. “This whole affair has Nathan so out of sorts. He doesn’t listen when I speak to him. He doesn’t ask to go for walks.”
I sat at the vanity, brushing my hair slowly and studying my face in the mirror—dark eyebrows and clear gray eyes. I wondered if it was possible that my face was growing slightly less plain as I matured. “I’m sorry, Maddy. It’s just that—”
“What does it even mean,” she asked, “your horrid little trick?”
I lay the brush on the vanity and turned to her, feeling for once I might have the upper hand. “When he looks at you, Maddy, he sees a beautiful girl. And now when he looks at me, he sees my talent. We both have something to offer, you see? My revelation will keep our little group strong.”
When she next spoke, her tone was rueful. “You don’t know the first thing about human nature, do you? It’s because you were shut away for so long. You never learned how people really are.”
• • •
When Nathan and I began our experiments, we would sit in the disorder of my father’s study at Stoke Morrow with an object between us—a fire screen, a piece of embroidery, a picture frame, or even an image of the Holy Ghost pulled from the wall. Nathan would extend his hands
, palms up on the table, and I would lay my hands on top of his—flesh against flesh. Touching him made a heat rise in my cheeks. Part of me wanted to open myself entirely to Nathan, to give him the shock of feeling everything inside me, yet I knew how dangerous that would be. My desire for Nathan was already doing more harm than good.
During our experiments, Nathan attempted to experience what I experienced, and all the while, I held back the greater part of my talent to protect him. The connection between us was so dampened that it did not always manifest, but there was still enough to excite him. A vein would appear on his temple, and his eyes would get a glassy look, as if he’d smoked opium. I should have known Nathan would try to force me to take the experience further. And, moreover, I should have realized where that furtherance would lead.
I can still hear his voice echoing in those darkened rooms: Are you giving me everything, Jane? Is this all that you can hear and see?
And my own response, a blatant lie: Yes, Nathan, this is everything.
Maddy wouldn’t be kept away from these sessions. There were times she insisted on observing what she called our “dark rituals.” I tried to persuade Nathan to simply cancel our work on those particular evenings, knowing how our apparent intimacy would provoke her, but he insisted on pushing ahead. I remember one particularly troubling evening. We were all together in my father’s study, and the room was filled with dim flickering light from an oil lamp on the desk. Nathan held my hand, trying to see the golden bubbles that hovered around the lamp’s glass chimney. I could see the bubbles clearly and could even hear them chirping faintly. He began rubbing my hand between his two hands, as if the friction might help produce the vision, and it was this rubbing that Maddy could not stand. She stood from the horsehair couch and said, “I don’t want to look at the two of you fondling each other.”
“We aren’t expressing affection, Madeline,” Nathan said, evenly. “As you know, I’m merely trying to experience what Jane experiences.”
Hearing him provide such a frank explanation disturbed me, and I pulled away from him. I liked to imagine his touches meant something more. Suddenly, I felt like a creature, taken from its cage and handled. I was glad I hadn’t shared everything with him. He didn’t deserve the fullness of my talent.
“Here, then,” Maddy said, standing over us, “take my hand, Nathan.”
He grasped her extended hand, and then she waited. “So what do you feel?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I feel nothing. Do you have some power you haven’t told me about?”
I could see tears brimming in her eyes. “No,” she said. “I clearly have no power whatsoever.”
“Oh God, Madeline, don’t make this into some moment,” he said.
Without responding, she took her hand from his and ran from the room. I gathered my skirts to follow, but Maddy was too quick, already outside and halfway across the garden before I could reach the glass door in the conservatory. I watched her move through the Roman ruin and into the darkness of the southern woods.
“Leave her, Jane,” Nathan said. “Maddy hasn’t been in control of her emotions as of late, but she’ll come around.” His hand was on my shoulder, and I wondered if it was there to comfort me or once again merely to gain access to what was inside me.
“If she doesn’t come around,” I said, “we’ll end all this experimenting. She’s more significant than you know. I won’t allow her to feel toyed with.”
“Of course,” he said.
I turned on him. “Don’t think you can get away with some blithe ‘of course,’ Nathan. If this enterprise continues to disturb Maddy, we’ll consider it finished.”
“You don’t take our experiments seriously, do you, Jane?”
“I take everything that concerns my affliction seriously,” I said, attempting to control my emotions. I could feel anger rising from the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want Nathan near me at that moment. I feared what might happen if my emotions got the best of me. “My father will be home soon. I need to rest before I speak to him. Please see yourself out.”
After Nathan was gone, I went to my bed and lay facedown in my goose pillows, thinking of Maddy. She was as fierce a creature as I’d ever known, and I respected her greatly. She’d once said she and I were both outlaws—not unlike those famous villains of the American West that we read about from time to time in the Herald. “Society has abandoned us, Jane, and so we’ll make our own society here on Hampstead Heath. We don’t need the glittering fools of London or their parties.” There was pain in her voice as she said this, and the paleness of her cheeks seemed authentic rather than a product of vinegar. We lay on my bed, staring up at the golden rings that held the bed curtains in place. Maddy was meant for those glittering parties—her fashionable clothes and refined manner spoke to that truth—but her father’s art got her family cast out of such circles. Adolphus Lee’s nude women on bicycles and in train cars ruined his daughter’s chance at status, and God help me, I was thankful for his transgressions.
I could hear her whispering to me: “What forge was used to make your heart, Jane?”
“The very same that made yours,” I said softly, though I wondered if that could possibly be true.
• • •
After Maddy’s explosion in my father’s study, life returned to nearly what it had been. I say “nearly” because there was a tincture of darkness that now appeared between the three of us, a shadow that expanded and contracted like a lung. The experiments ceased for the time being, and the following week, we all went walking on the Heath to clear our heads. I sat beneath a willow tree, legs curled comfortably, watching my friends play with Maddy’s brass binoculars some distance away. Maddy wore an adorable cap and bicycle bloomers, and if I squinted, she looked every bit like some wayward boy from Saint Philip’s Orphan Asylum. Her clothes, more often than not, came from her father’s collection of costumes that he’d used for making his daguerreotypes. It seemed not to bother Maddy, or perhaps it pleased her, that these same outfits had been worn by the women who’d posed for Adolphus Lee in his various illicit images. “It wasn’t Papa’s photographs that were wrong,” Maddy once said to me. “It was society’s perception of them. You can see that, can’t you, Jane?”
I demurred, as I’d seen Adolphus Lee’s more risqué work, and I could not concede the problem lay entirely with society.
On the Heath that day, Maddy was bird-watching and Nathan leaned over her, perhaps attempting to help, but more likely trying to disrupt her efforts. Sunlight fell through the willow branches, turning the grass where I sat into a shifting sea of light and shadow. I was afloat in the beautiful silence of the scene and the sweet fragrances of the Heath. I couldn’t hear my friends’ conversation—theirs was a secret moment. And I wondered if they talked about me, if they worried over what they should do with me in the long run. I tried to picture us together ten years in the future and then twenty but found I could not. No longer did I imagine we could all live together in some quaint little cottage. Life had grown complicated. We were all trapped in that lovely hour there on the Heath. But what did the future hold for any of us?
The answer to that question revealed itself in full a few days later during another walk. And when that revelation came, it shook us all. My talent was evolving, and not even I was sure what it might finally become. On that day, Maddy was using her brass binoculars again, trying to catch sight of the birds that filled the air with their song. We’d retreated to the Hampstead Hill where asphodels and blue cornflowers grew. “How can the birds make so much noise but apparently have no bodies?” Maddy asked, lowering the instrument.
“There’s something sinister about invisible parakeets, isn’t there?” Nathan replied, then pointing with his cane, “No, look. There’s a kestrel on that low branch.”
She swung around, trying to spot the bird but with no success because, of course, Nathan hadn’t seen a bird at all.
“The only thing more sinister than invisible birds are b
irds of gross invention,” I said, linking my arm gently through Maddy’s and leading her in another direction.
When we realized Nathan wasn’t following, we thought he was playing yet another boyish prank, but looking back, we found him in the shade of the oak tree where he’d claimed to have seen the bird. He was staring oddly down at his own hand.
Maddy called, “Come on then, Mr. Ashe. If we’re out after dark we’ll see more than kestrels. I’ve heard the dead crawl out Highgate at around half past six.”
Nathan didn’t respond.
“What is it?” I said. “Did you hurt yourself?”
He looked up, lips pulled back, so his teeth were showing. “I just had the strangest sensation—as if, well, as if my hand, my own hand, didn’t belong to me.”
“Who did it belong to?” Maddy asked, sounding concerned.
He blinked. “It belonged to Jane. For a moment, it felt as though my hand was her hand.”
She glared at me. “What did you do to him, Jane?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I did nothing.”
“I knew those experiments would come to no good,” she said, going to Nathan’s side and looking at his hand. “It’s all so bizarre, and now look—Nathan is paying for it. It’s made him ill.”
“It felt so interesting,” he said, rubbing his hand against the leg of his linen trousers.
“It isn’t interesting,” Maddy continued. “If the two of you keep going like this, something awful is going to happen.”
He disregarded her comment and looked instead at me. “You were inside me, Jane, unbidden.”
“Perhaps you’re inventing it because of your excitement,” I countered.
He looked at me with something like longing. “Touch me again, Jane. Touch me so I can feel it again.”
• • •
For a time after that day on the Heath, Maddy would not speak to me. Nathan wanted to continue our experiments, but I refused. During those lonely days without them, I spent my hours as I once had, wandering the halls of Stoke Morrow, and I was comforted mildly by sitting in the Tree Room, where Father gathered a wide variety of paintings and drawings with trees as their subjects. This room of trees reminded me of better times when Nathan and Madeline would jokingly ask me to tell the odd story of my birth as it was once related by my mother. They found the story amusing and said it made for a good explanation as to why I was so different. I both loved and hated the story, loved it because it was from my mother and hated it because, though fanciful, it reminded me of my difference.