"Would you like me to help you prepare for bed now, Miss Amelia?"
"No, thank you, not just yet. But could you help me with my shoes and stockings please? The doctor removed them to check my feet and I can't bend enough to replace them on my own because of my corset."
"Of course, Miss." When she had replaced the stockings and ankle-high shoes she stood up and asked, "Anything else, Miss?"
"No, that's all, thank you."
"Very good, Miss. Just ring when you're ready to dress for bed," she said, gesturing towards a sash cord that hung alongside the bed, before curtseying and leaving the room.
Alone once again, Arlene readied herself for another attempt to visit Martha's room, and this time she wasn't interrupted. Opening her door quietly, she saw that the hallway appeared deserted. She stepped quickly out, tiptoed across to the door opposite, and knocked lightly. Upon hearing a young woman's voice say "Come in," she opened the door and slipped into the room.
Furnished exactly like the bedroom in which she had awoken, this room differed only in that the wallpaper's predominant floral motif was roses. A log suddenly popped in the fireplace and a glowing ember jumped out onto the marble hearth as Arlene crossed the room. She stopped a few feet from the bed, where a young woman sat brushing her long auburn hair. About eighteen or nineteen years of age, the ravishing young lady was dressed in a dark-green velvet gown.
"Martha?" Arlene said.
The girl looked up at Arlene and said, in a nervous voice, "Yes?"
Arlene stood there staring at her, not knowing how to begin. What if this wasn't one of her girlfriends? She was going to look pretty ridiculous. But she could always put it down as confusion resulting from the accident. Of course, this person should have already recognized her if they had really been traveling companions.
The girl became noticeably uncomfortable under her quiet, steady gaze and said, "Can I help you? Do I know you? I've had an accident and I'm not myself."
Arlene knew that she had to take the chance, and plunged ahead. "You only know me as Arlene Watson, not as Amelia."
* * *
Chapter Four
Jumping to her feet, her eyes wide, the young woman looked Arlene up and down with her mouth half-open. "Arlene?" she said tentatively after a few seconds. "Is that really you inside that body?"
"Yep, it's me; Arlene Watson of 1273 Concord Lane, New Bedford, Mass."
Running to her, the young woman wrapped her arms around Arlene and hugged with all her strength. "Oh God, Arlene, I thought that I was alone in this nuthouse. What's going on? We look like other people. I'm scared. Are we dead?"
Arlene, relieved beyond words to find her best friend, was hugging Megan just as tightly. At the last question, she relaxed her embrace slightly. "Dead?" she echoed in surprise as her mind raced. "I hadn't thought of that," she said thoughtfully. "I first thought this was an elaborate vision created in my mind by the spirit of the house. Then, I began to suspect that it might be a dream. But I no longer think either of those is possible. Everything seems so real. This body feels so real. You feel so real. I've never had a dream that even approached anything like this. But if we're dead, why do we look like other people?"
Releasing her grip and pulling back to look at Arlene, Megan said, "I saw this movie once where dead people could look like anyone they wanted to. They just had to concentrate to change their form."
"But why would we pick these shapes? I admit that I've wanted to be a bit prettier at times, but I never wanted to be shorter, weaker, or have to wear twenty-five pounds of clothing that squeezed my chest so tightly I couldn't breathe easily."
"Could this be what we looked like in a previous life?"
"It seems that we should remember the previous life, if we're dead now."
"Maybe you forget all your past lives when you're reborn. I saw a movie once where an angel injected people with something to make them forget their previous lives before they sent them back to Earth to be reborn."
"If we're dead, then everyone else around us must also be dead. I don't know, but I'll certainly consider it as a possibility, Martha."
"Arlene, call me Meg. Everything is weird enough without you calling me Martha too."
"Until we figure out what's going on, we'd better play along with this charade. That means that you're Martha, and I'm Amelia. Let's go find Renee and Erin. I suspect that they may be Roberta and Elizabeth, the other purported traveling companions of Amelia. Anne told me where their rooms are."
In Elizabeth's room the confrontation played out the same, with the girl that they found there rushing to embrace them as soon as they properly identified themselves, despite their current appearances being so radically different from their familiar forms.
As they completed their reunion in Roberta's room, it logically became the room where they held their conference, once their small celebration at finding one another was over. Renee had always been the most attractive of the four girls, but now she was drop dead gorgeous. With soft, glistening, raven-colored tresses that fell gently to a tiny waist, she had a perfectly sculpted face with large, dark-chocolate eyes and a porcelain doll complexion that would have made her the easy winner in most twenty-first century beauty contests. Erin had once again been the most shortchanged of their quartet. She was only radiantly lovely, instead of having the stunning features of the other girls. But at least she had a beautifully clear complexion, without a blemish on her face. She had light blond hair, deep-blue eyes, and a figure that was breathtaking. But Arlene had started to wonder how much was real in any of their shapes. The corsets that they all wore were squeezing their waists to incredibly small proportions, giving them hour-glass shapes, and the bustle attached to their undergarments gave their profile a rather distinctive and, at least in Arlene's mind, most unflattering appearance.
"What's going on, Arlene?" Erin asked as they sat on her bed. "I thought I was dreaming when I discovered those people standing over me, but I should have woken up by now. Where are we?"
"I wish I knew. I'm pretty sure that we're still in the mansion, but I haven't been able to come up with anything else I could prove, or disprove, even to myself. There originally seemed to be four possibilities. One, this is a dream. Two, this is a 'vision' or hallucination, like the ones I experienced earlier. Three, the spirit has somehow altered reality. Or four, the spirit has sent us back through time."
"Seemed?"
"As I've told Megan, I've now discounted it being a dream, or a vision."
"It has to be a dream," Renee said. "And if I am dreaming, I guess that means that you're not even here with me right now. This is all just in my head. I'm probably still lying in the front entrance hall of the house."
Reaching out quickly, Arlene pinched Renee's arm, hard.
"Ow!"
"What about that?" Arlene asked.
"I just dreamed that you pinched me. It hurt. Don't do it again, Ar!"
Arlene sighed. "Do you ever remember having a dream that was as vivid as real life?"
"They always seem like real life; until I wake up."
"This real? With all your senses alert and functioning normally?"
"Why not? I could just be dreaming that I'm awake and alert."
"How about a dream where you don't recognize anyone?"
"That is a bit unusual."
"I'm pretty sure it's not a dream. And— let's also say that it's not a vision or hallucination. What if the spirit is able to control reality?"
"Control reality? How?"
"I don't know, but this certainly isn't our normal reality. Look at the gas lights mounted on the walls. They haven't used gas for lighting since about 1920 or 30 if I remember correctly from history classes; maybe even earlier, except for places where it's done solely for aesthetic or nostalgic reasons. And look at how we and everyone else are dressed. Women haven't worn only floor length gowns since before World War I, and, as I recall, bustles went out of fashion in the late nineteenth century. At first I thought t
hat this was some sort of vision, like when I 'zoned out' earlier. Then, like you Renee, I thought that this must be an incredible dream; a fantasy concocted by the spirit and being played out in my head. I thought that when the spirit tired of the game, I'd wake up and we'd be allowed to go home. But I believe now that I'm not dreaming, or hallucinating. Everything is way too real for that. Martha speculated that we might be dead, but we don't have any point of reference for that. So, for the time being— I'm going to assume that we've been physically transported to an altered reality where the year is say— about 1890."
"Good Lord, Ar!" Renee exclaimed.
"The only other alternative is that we've been transported back in time. Would you prefer to believe that?"
Renee grimaced and said, "You're really letting your imagination run amuck. There's no such thing as time travel. Oh sure, it's fun for books and movies, but it can't be considered as a real possibility. It's far more likely that we're dreaming, we've been hypnotized, or maybe we've even been— drugged."
"Drugged? By who?"
"Maybe the estate isn't abandoned after all. Maybe that's why there have always been so many security patrols here. Maybe there's a secret government base beneath the mansion, and after they frightened us so badly that we fainted, they jumped out and drugged us to keep us under. In fact, maybe that thing we saw was actually just a cloud of gas to knock us out. Right now they have us hooked up to a machine that's feeding us these mental images. The ghost story might only be a cover to keep trespassers away."
"Now who's letting her imagination run amuck? Look, all I ask is that we keep our minds open until we can definitely rule out altered reality— or time travel." Arlene held up her hands to silence Renee's immediate opposition. "I know that they're unlikely, but it's possible that the spirit who chased us to the front door of the mansion knows something about altering reality or manipulating time that mere humans don't. Take a look in the mirror if you don't believe that. I lost five inches of height somewhere. I was the tallest before, but now I'm the shortest. At least all of you are closer to the height of your original bodies."
"Which would seem to invalidate time travel as an option," Renee said, still not willing to accept it as a possibility. "If we had simply traveled back in time, we would still look the same, wouldn't we?"
"That seems logical," Arlene said thoughtfully, "but nothing about our situation really makes any sense."
"There's a small calendar on the writing desk in my bedroom," Megan said, "that indicates it's January 19th, 1883. I thought it was a joke, but now I'm not so sure. Ar, how are we going to get back home if we're really stuck in 1883? I don't think my great-granny has even been born yet."
"I'm more concerned with getting my own body back," Erin said.
"Why?" Renee said. "That one's better."
Arlene normally paid little attention to Renee's facetious comments, but this hardly seemed like the appropriate time and place for such remarks. "Knock it off, Renee," she said. "If we assume that we really are in 1883, and occupying strange bodies, then we're in deep trouble. There'll be plenty of time for dumb jokes once we get back home."
"Who's joking," she quipped, confident that regardless of what Arlene said, it had to be a dream. "That body is better. In fact, all these bodies are better than our real bodies. Just look at us." Smiling, she added, "If we're not dreaming, this has to be heaven."
Ignoring Renee's attempt at humor, Erin said, "Hey, as long as we're all still alive, and together, we'll work this out and get back to where we belong."
"I hope you're right." Arlene said. "But what if we don't? Have you considered what our lives will be like from now on?"
Renee stopped smirking and asked, "What do you mean, Ar?"
"I'll tell you, but first let's agree on at least one thing. Until we understand for sure what's going on, we'd all better start using the names that go with these bodies; just so that we don't slip up in front of somebody. The name associated with this body," she said, gesturing to herself, "is Amelia. I don't know what my last name is yet, but I'm going to think of myself only as Amelia until we're out of here; and I'm only going to think of you as Roberta, Elizabeth, and Martha. If people hear us calling each other by our real names, they'll start to think that we've been deranged by our accident. Believe me, you don't want to be put into an insane asylum in this era, even as part of a dream. They were worse than the prisons. Some places reportedly chained patients to a wall and left them to wallow in their own filth for hours or days at a time. I don't intend for that to happen to me. The other will be bad enough."
"What other are you talking about?" Roberta asked.
"In 1883 women had practically no rights. They were almost totally dependent on their fathers, brothers, or husbands for anything that they owned or received. Forget about equal pay for equal work, we can't even get jobs. Except for domestic servants, teaching, entertainment, minor clerical duties, sidewalk vending, and prostitution, women don't work in this society. There's no chance of having any kind of a meaningful career. We can't even put on a pair of jeans without getting stoned."
"Hey, I'm not gonna take drugs just to put on a pair of jeans," Martha said. "But I don't even know where my jeans are. I looked around, but they're not in my bedroom."
"Martha, you're hair is auburn," Roberta said, "don't act like an airhead blonde. Stoning is when they pummel your body with rocks because you committed a crime or didn't follow the proper rules of religion or society."
"They wouldn't do that to you just for putting on a pair of pants," she said decisively, then added hesitantly, "Would they?"
"No, Martha," Amelia said, "not really, but the things that they might do are bad enough. For example, you could be completely ostracized from society. That means that you would be cut off from friends and even family. Until we get home I intend to act like I truly belong here. I suggest that you all do likewise. We can only get away with so much because of the accident. We'll make enough mistakes simply because we're in the wrong time period. We'll all have to work extra hard to fit in with these people. If Renee is right, and I pray she is, this is just a really weird and realistic dream that I'll wake up from eventually. We may be back to normal in the morning. If not, then we'll have to start looking for other solutions. I don't want to be here any more than anybody else does. We were going to be high school juniors this coming school year, then seniors, with college after that. I don't want to miss out on that. 1883 was still the dark ages for women. It holds absolutely no interest for me, other than in historical terms."
"It sounds like you genuinely believe that this might all be real?" Roberta asked incredulously.
"I don't know what to believe. I just know that it seems as real as anything I've ever experienced. So whether it's an altered reality, a shift in time, or just a dream, I'm going to behave as I would if we were in 1883. That seems to be the safest response to something that we don't really understand. We can't simply pretend that we don't see the things that we apparently do see. Don't you agree?"
Each girl nodded her head; even Roberta, reluctantly.
"And, since acting like proper young ladies from the Victorian period is necessary to be accepted in this household, we must pretend to be the girls that should be occupying these bodies. Agreed?"
The others nodded their heads again.
"Okay. Then from now on, until we wake up, or make it back to our own reality— or time, we act like we really belong in this past. Not only when we're with other people, but whenever we're outside of our bedrooms, because we'll never know if anybody is watching. Be cautious about your language. In fact, don't speak unless spoken to, but when you must speak, speak correctly. Anne mentioned that we were all together at a Miss Peterson's Finishing School. I'm sure that they only turn out proper young ladies, so don't use any slang at all, and be careful not to use any references from our time because people won't understand what you're talking abou…"
"Amelia, what do you mean by references from our
time?" Roberta asked, interrupting.
"Like, you know, expressions such as 'fer sure', 'rock and roll', 'kewl', Valley Girl speak, hip-hop terms, and popular phrases from modern songs and movies. That sort of stuff. Understand?"
Roberta nodded.
"From what I've read," Amelia said, "women were household decorations in this time period, until they married, and then they were expected to become baby factories. Practice your giggling and walking. Take dainty steps. Be demure at all times. Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouths shut as much as possible. We all had to read 'Little Women' in elementary school. Remember how they talked and acted? Well that's us right now. We have to try to act and talk just like the girls that should be occupying these bodies. Anybody wanna add anything to— I'm sorry. Ah-hem. Ladies, would any of you care to add anything to what I've just said? Elizabeth?"
"Amelia, how are we going to remove these clothes? I don't think that I can do it alone. This dress is so tight, I feel like I've been stitched into it."
"We could help each other, but it would be far better to rely on the servants. There's a sash cord hanging next to your bed. When you pull it, a bell rings in the servant's area. A maid will come to dress or undress you."
"I don't know if I can do that," Martha said. "I'd feel funny having a complete stranger undress me as if I was a small child. Can't you help me?"
"Not initially, dear. We must rely on the servants for now, to learn about the clothing in this time period. Let them do the work as much as possible. I'm sure they're quite used to assisting in the dressing and disrobing process. In this time period, people dressed for everything, even to go to bed. Women from prosperous families might change their dresses two or three times a day."
When The Spirit Moves You Page 6