When The Spirit Moves You

by Thomas DePrima

  In 1937, Amelia lost her beloved Jeremy to a heart attack, just two months after they celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary. Their love had never dimmed in all of their years together. She felt like she lost a part of herself on the day of his funeral, and she stood crying in the mausoleum until Elizabeth and Roberta pulled her away. She began to wonder how she could ever continue on without him. But continue she did. She still had a large and wonderful family who loved her, and was loved by her.

  Amelia was once again standing by a gravesite, crying, in 1939. This time it was for the loss of Elizabeth. Amelia and Roberta cried in each other's arms as the coffin was lowered into the ground. For weeks afterward they spoke almost every day on the phone, talking about their families and reminiscing about their lives.

  Prior to World War II, Amelia made sure that the family was well positioned in steel production, and manufacturing businesses that would assist the country in the upcoming conflict. By this time, no family member ever argued with her, or second-guessed her, when she made a business decision. They just went out and did as she instructed.

  In 1945, as America and much of the world celebrated the end of the war, Amelia made her final business directives, and retired completely from the family businesses. Her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren continued to come to her for advice occasionally, but she refused to have any direct contact with the numerous companies she had managed since Jeremy's death.

  Roberta passed away just a few months after VJ Day. The happiness that came from seeing the war end was overshadowed by the loss of her dear friend. This time Amelia stood alone at the grave and cried. She missed both Elizabeth and Roberta so very, very much, and began to feel that it wouldn't be many more years before she joined them.

  * * *

  Following Jeremy's death, Amelia's single greatest pleasure in life was having her family around her. For her 83rd birthday, no less than 207 children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great, great grandchildren attended the party that her children arranged for her in the mansion's garden. She'd prepared her will many years ago and continued to update it as the family structure changed.

  Lately her health had begun to fail. Years ago, she'd begun to set down a record of her life. She hoped that she would live long enough to complete the journals.

  As she relaxed in bed on April twenty-third of 1949, propped up by several pillows while she wrote in her journal, Amelia's fountain pen ran out of ink. She called to her secretary, but received no reply. Impatient to continue, she only waited several minutes before getting out of bed to go to her desk. As she crossed the room, she experienced a sharp pain in her chest. Darkness surrounded her as she collapsed.

  Amelia's secretary found her lying on the floor a short time later. She immediately called for help, but it was too late. There was no pulse, and the small, frail body was cooling rapidly. Mrs. Jeremy Westfield was gone.

  * * *

  Although her closest and dearest friends had preceded her in death, there was no lack of mourners on the day that Amelia was laid to rest in the family mausoleum. While it was true that she had run the family businesses for years, she had done so from the anonymity of a board room; so anyone with grievances against one of the companies directed their enmity towards the visible corporate officers or company personnel. The thousands of mourners who filled the cemetery, or simply stopped and bowed their heads as the long somber procession passed through the city, knew that they had lost a friend; even those that had never spoken with her directly. Amelia's philanthropy in eastern Massachusetts was legendary. A dozen buildings bore her name, including a new children's hospital in Boston, her foundation awarded dozens of scholarships to the deserving children of employees in the Westfield companies, and hundreds of large and small charities always knew that they could count on her for a donation each year.

  The lead cars of the funeral procession, about fifty, were naturally filled with family members, but the dozens of cars behind them contained a virtual who's who in Massachusetts. At the cemetery, the governor of the state read the eulogy, enumerating Amelia's many accomplishments and numerous good deeds. He would miss the sizable campaign contributions that had helped get him elected to various offices as he climbed the political ladder, but knew that he would miss Amelia herself even more. She had, on more than one occasion, given him sound advice that helped him out of a sticky political situation.

  As the service was concluded, Amelia's body was carried into the mausoleum and slid into the waiting chamber beside the one that contained Jeremy's remains. Jeremy's parents and paternal grandparents occupied other chambers in the marble edifice. A heavy marble slab was lifted into place and bolted to the wall as Amelia's surviving children looked on with moist eyes. A cast bronze plaque would be mounted in a few days, and then the mausoleum would be sealed until it was needed again. Six chambers still remained empty.

  Tears were wiped away and sinuses cleared as the mourners left the cemetery. Although she was gone from them, the powerful love they felt in their hearts for Amelia Westfield would endure for their lifetimes. During the eulogy, the governor had said, "How very empty our lives could have been if Amelia Olivia Westfield had never been a part of them."

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  A cold, numbing sensation crept up her back and the blackness around her was pervasive. She was at a complete loss to explain her situation. She felt around as she lay there, but instead of the bedroom carpeting that she expected to find, she discovered the cold, smooth feel of marble. She remembered falling, but couldn't comprehend what had happened after that. She knew that her eyes were open, and that it had only been around noon, so why was it now so dark? Her secretary or maid should surely have discovered her before nightfall. As her hand encountered something, a bright circle of light suddenly appeared. She realized then that she must be dead. She had often heard when she was young that a bright light would appear to lead you to your destination when you die, if heaven is your destination.

  Rolling onto her side, she tried to pull herself towards the light, only to discover that it was merely something shining in the gloom. Was she dreaming? Stretching out her hand to the light, she felt something like a tube. She discovered that it was a flashlight, and as she raised it from the floor, the bright beam shot out and illuminated the figure of a person standing silently in the darkness. She stared dumbfounded at the image of her dear friend Martha, who had died so many years ago, as she had looked when they were young girls together. Was Martha here to lead her to her destination? As Martha looked in her direction, another sound compelled Amelia to swing the flashlight in a different direction, where the beam of light illuminated a figure that appeared to be Roberta. A final sweep of the flashlight illuminated her friend Elizabeth. They were all together again for their final journey. Amelia felt warm tears form in her eyes and run down both cheeks. She wouldn't have to travel down this final path alone. Her dear friends were with her once again for her passage to the hereafter.

  Trying to sit up, Amelia realized that she again had the strength of a young body. She also became more perceptive of her situation. It certainly didn't feel like what she expected death to be like. She moved the flashlight around and saw, illuminated in its beam, the entrance foyer of her home, Westfield Manor, but everything was dusty and dirty. Then the enormity of it hit her. "We're back," she said quietly to herself. "Oh my God, we're back." More than half a century ago they had been pulled from this spot and put into the bodies of the four unfortunate girls who had succumbed to the freezing temperatures of a mid-January snow storm. And now they had been returned to their former bodies. She was at a loss for immediate words, a condition that had rarely befallen her in recent years.

  Amelia heard Roberta say, "Where are we?"

  "Am I alive?" Martha asked, feeling gingerly at her chest with her hands.

  "The last thing I remember," Elizabeth said, "is seeing my children standing all around my bed. I had a sharp pain in
my chest and I closed my eyes for a minute. Then I was here."

  "Children?" Martha echoed in surprise.

  Amelia cleared her throat. Finally finding her voice, she said, "I think that we're back in our own time; our original time." Getting to her feet, she added, "Let's go into my parlor."

  Entering the room so familiar to each of them now, they saw that the one candle on the table still burned brightly. But there was no sign of the spirit who had kidnapped their souls so many years ago. Or had it only been seconds? The candle seemed no shorter than it had been when the spirit chased them from the room. Amelia turned to face her three companions, and they stood looking at one another for what seemed like minutes. It was difficult to tell who moved first, but suddenly they were all together in the center of the room, hugging and crying. Amelia hadn't seen any of them in years, and had never expected to see them again this side of the hereafter. They all just stood there, hugging and kissing one another for a long time.

  As the tidal wave of emotions began to ebb slightly, Martha said, "You are not going to believe the crazy dream I just had."

  Amelia was the first to laugh, and her laughing caused the others to start laughing. In seconds, they were all in hysterics. The laughter helped them further release the tensions they were feeling.

  As they again calmed, Elizabeth asked, "Was it all a dream, Amelia? Did the spirit only make us think we went back in time, or did we really go? Everything here is just as it was when we were chased into the corridor."

  "I don't know," Amelia said, "but it definitely seemed real."

  "Wait a minute," Roberta said, "The spirit at the séance said that these bodies had died. If we really did go back, we couldn't be alive here now. It has to have been a dream, created by that spirit. And it made all of us share the same dream. Or are we dead, and ourselves fated to haunt this house forever?"

  "I don't think we're dead," Amelia said. "And the spirit of Elizabeth Reese didn't actually say that these bodies died, only that a soul is immutably linked to its corporeal body until the body dies. Maybe that's how we got back. When our souls were freed by the death of our other bodies, we were instantly transferred back to the bodies we remained linked to."

  "Then you're saying it really happened?" Martha asked. "I was really killed by that Stemple woman?"

  "I don't know, Martha dear. Perhaps we'll know in time. Nothing here seems to have changed even the slightest bit. Maybe it was all an elaborate dream, perpetrated by the spirit."

  "But it couldn't have been," Elizabeth said. "I have such vivid recollections of everything. I don't even have to close my eyes to see the faces of Donald, my children, my grand-children, and my great grandchildren. I can recollect every single thing that happened to me over more than half a century."

  "Grandchildren and great-grandchildren?" Martha echoed.

  "Perhaps the spirit had the power to make us dream a lifetime in just minutes," Roberta said.

  "Let's get our things and leave," Elizabeth said, "before the spirit comes back and does something else to us."

  "I don't sense his presence," Amelia said. "I believe he's gone. Maybe after accomplishing his task, he crossed over to the immortal world."

  "We can talk later, at Elizabeth's," Roberta said. "Right now I just want to get out of here, Amelia."

  "Since we appear to be back in our own time, I guess you should call me Arlene again, Renee."

  "Fine. Arlene. Now can we please get out of here?"

  The four young women retrieved the candles, replaced the sheets that had covered the furniture, and left the parlor pretty much as they had found it. There were no problems with any of the door handles this time, and no hands gripped Arlene's arms on the return trip through the long corridor. They were outside on the rear terrace in a matter of minutes. The moon was still high in the June sky and a warm breeze rustled the overgrown grass as they followed the road around the mansion. As they reached the area near the front portico, Megan suddenly stopped, her mouth agape as she stared upwards. The others stopped and turned to see what she was staring at. Gone were the two evil looking grotesques that had glared down on arriving visitors for so long. Two large, fretted stone orbs sat in their place.

  "It did happen," Arlene said breathlessly. "I remember replacing those awful stone monsters a few years after Jeremy and I were married. We really did go back in time and live the lives of nineteenth century women."

  No one spoke for the rest of the walk back to Erin's house. The replaced statues were proof positive of their journey, and they spent the time reflecting on their past lives.

  Having been unceremoniously dropped back into the twenty-first century, Arlene felt completely out of touch with life around her. She wondered what would happen to them now. Three of them had lived as nineteenth century women for more than half a century. Behavior that had become natural to them would bring them ridicule in this time period. Could they unlearn the deportment of a lifetime?

  Once at Erin's house, Arlene grew more depressed by the minute as she thought about the complexities of readjustment to a different time. Her friends, noticing her dark mood, asked what was wrong. As they sat down together at the kitchen table, she told them of her apprehensions. They stared silently at one another for some time as they contemplated their situation, finally deciding to get a good night's sleep and discuss it in the morning, if anyone could sleep that is. It was June again, so there was no school tomorrow; they could sleep in and then talk in the afternoon. No one had the least interest in watching MTV.

  * * *

  The four girls spent all of their days together for the rest of the summer, which would hardly have been unusual, except they also isolated themselves as completely as possible from everyone else, even family, while they tried to relearn old ways. They constantly corrected each other's speech and mannerisms in an effort to re-identify with their original lives, and by the time school started in September, they felt that they had sufficiently integrated themselves back into early twenty-first century culture. Their biggest shock had been the number of different students and teachers in the school, and the construction around the city, but just as with the memories of the four girls whose bodies they had occupied, everything became familiar when they saw it. They couldn't believe that so much had changed as a result of their trip into the past, and apparently they were the only ones that remembered how things had been before. They had two separate visions of their past life in their city.

  But changes aside, life restarted from where it had left off. A few people made comments about their sudden maturity, but no one made any unkind remarks about their behavior, and they slowly became comfortable once again in their environs.

  * * *

  "Did you know that you were related to Amelia?" Renee asked as she stretched out on Arlene's bed a week after school recommenced.

  "No," Arlene said. "I had no idea that Amelia was my great, great, great grandmother until my Mom mentioned it to the lawyer who came to tell us about the trust fund I established in 1932. I guess we know now why the spirit waited so many years to fulfill his role. Talk about paradoxes. What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

  "Huh?" Megan said.

  "It's an old children's riddle, Meg dear. If chickens come from eggs laid by chickens, where did the first chicken come from? At first I was dismayed that I was my own great, great, great grandmother, but then I realized that I wasn't."

  "Wait a minute," Erin said with a confused look. "You just said that Amelia was your great, great, great grandmother

  "Yes, but think about it. I wasn't Amelia; not really. Amelia was Amelia Turner of Hartford. We didn't travel back in time, only our souls did. We occupied the bodies, but they weren't really our bodies. So you see, it isn't a paradox."

  "But it is a paradox," Erin said. "If Amelia hadn't been restored to life with your consciousness, she would never have had hundreds of descendents. Your DNA may have come from Amelia Turner, but you couldn't have been born if we hadn't gone back."r />
  "That's true. So it is a chicken and egg paradox."

  "You and your paradoxes," Renee said. "I had a lot of sleepless nights after you first talked about them in New Haven. I thought we were going to suddenly wake up back home as soon as Anne's wedding was over. Then you later thought that we might suddenly be pulled back to the future when Grandfather Westfield passed away."

  "I think I know what happened there," Arlene said. "Jeremy confided in me, just before he passed on, that he had only broken one promise to me in his entire life. When his father was on his deathbed, we sat up with him for days. Jeremy told me that when they were alone late one night, he related the entire tale to his father; about his father's spirit being the force that brought us back to occupy the bodies of the four girls. He said that his father didn't believe it at first, but seemed to accept it as he grew closer to death."

  "What's that got to do with the paradox?" Erin asked.

  "Don't you see? When Grandfather Westfield passed on, and his spirit was freed from his body, he must have realized what he had to do to keep the paradox from occurring. He haunted the house not because he wanted to save Anne, but because he needed our spirits to complete the cycle. We did go there for the séance, and we did go back, even though Anne had already been happily married. We originally thought that a terrible joke had been played on us by an evil spirit, but I believe now that the spirit was just a loving, caring father, anxious to save the life of his daughter. And in the course of doing that, he gave all of us a wonderful gift."