Riddance

by Shelley Jackson

One day, on my way to the room I had been granted as a study, I glimpsed through an open door the young doctor-in-training passing something to one of the young kids, who cut a look at me and ran. Dr. Peachie, having wiped his hand on a handkerchief, clasped mine solidly. “What say we take a turn around the garden?” I was surprised, since although we were on as cordial terms as any two professional gentlemen thrown together by circumstance, any impulse (on either side) to closer acquaintance had been discouraged by my stammer, or my old self-consciousness about it, which came back around outsiders. But it turned out he was more interested in talking than in listening, though he waited until we were strolling along the garden path before unburdening himself.

  “I have a confession and a proposal to make. I hope I may speak in confidence.”

  “Of course,” I said, curious and flattered in equal parts.

  “May I have your word on that? I would not like what I am doing to get out, not at this stage.”

  “Well—yes, all right. What’s the mystery?”

  He grinned and in a stage whisper confided, “I have been conducting an experiment.” I laughed hesitantly. “No, really. You have heard of ectoplasm.”

  “N-n-naturally.”

  “Naturally. You have seen the precipitations—the objects some of the children produce.”

  “The ‘ectoplasmoglyphs,’ yes.”

  “Do you know the commonest use of ectoplasm, outside these walls?”

  I said that I knew it was associated with séances, that it manifested most frequently in the mouth of the medium, that some examples had been shown up as disgraceful fakery involving cheesecloth or cotton batting, that—but he was interrupting me.

  “So you have not heard of its use as a psychotropic drug?”

  I expressed my surprise.

  He sat down on a bench, gesturing to me to follow suit, which I did, flushing a little. “In medical circles we have been hearing rumors for some time of a new drug, difficult of access and unreliable in quality, but growing in popularity. Without a regular supply it has been impossible to conduct rigorous testing.”

  I began, I thought, to see where he was going. “The Headmistress has allowed you to take samples of—”

  “Not at all, not at all—no—never! She wouldn’t hear of it. The children. They are often glad to have a little extra pocket money, the poor devils. The mouth objects, when melted down, yield a very pure form of the drug, ideal for experimental purposes. It is no good using the street stuff, which may be diluted or mixed with other narcotics. One must strictly control the dosage.”

  “I suppose,” I said slowly, “that it is important to discover—to study—so as to treat—”

  “Exactly!” He beamed. “Already I have made great strides. The circumstances are in fact ideal—a steady supply, a controlled population of experimental subjects . . .”

  “Do you mean to say that you are experimenting on the ch-ch-ch-children?”

  He smiled. I saw that I was in the presence of an enthusiast.

  “Is that not dangerous? What are its effects?”

  “It is a mild psychotropic with narcotic properties. As one might expect, it inclines one to thoughts of death, and therein lies the importance of my work. Simply put, I seek a cure for our collective addiction to death. Naturally I have to keep my views on the qui vive around these parts!” He laughed heartily, then sobered, and dropping his voice said, “By administering a concentrated dose of pure ectoplasm, I hope to inoculate against the death drive. If my subjects develop a distaste, even a disgust for death and can no longer stand to submit to the curriculum, then I will consider my theory proved. Already I have observed increased truancy. Of course careful experimentation with the dosage is still needed . . . Side effects, in some patients— Why, salutations, sir!” He had discovered the cat, who was crouching under the bench, and now leaned over, wiggling his fingers.

  “Surely . . .” I said, addressing the back of his head. I hardly knew what to say. “Surely a morbid state of mind is commonplace here—do you not fear to exacerbate it?”

  “There is,” he admitted, dragging the cat out by the scruff of the neck, “that risk—that rather than inoculating our subjects against death, one may induce a dependency. But far better discover this under controlled circumstances than allow unregulated use among the underclasses to produce an army of death-addicted neuropaths! That is why the school is ideal; you want a population subject to strict oversight.” He settled the cat firmly in his lap and, still holding it down, began smoothing its fur, now and then working out a bur with nimble fingers. His eyes sought over my face and for the first time I saw a hint of anxiety. “You approve the scheme, don’t you? I am sure you are a man of vision. The greater good . . . We might see an end to war in our lifetime! But listen, all this is strictly between you and me. The Headmistress, unfortunately, is not to be won over to the cause. I didn’t lay bare the entire project, naturally, but the most delicate hints have been met with flat refusal. The ectoplasmic apports are not commodities to be exploited but messages to be heeded, and so on—the usual hocus-pocus. Sheer obstructionism. Also”—here he looked decidedly uncomfortable—“Dr. Beede is not in on the jig. He’s an excellent fellow and I owe him the world! But a good old-fashioned country doctor, not a visionary. I don’t mean to upset the dear man while he still toddles about but, well, I will be taking over his practice soon enough. And the Headmistress! Quite hopeless. But we have something up our sleeves.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, luckily I have an ally on high. Know him socially, you see, as one does, and I won him over to the plan: solid man at the helm, well-regulated program, research facilities brought up to date . . . Spotless uniforms, gleaming surfaces, points of light glancing off needles and syringes, room after room, tier upon tier, neat as a honeycomb, and streaming out of it without surcease the purest, golden-clearest liquid ectoplasm . . .” He seemed to shake himself out of a reverie. “But the fellow’s skittish. Some of the publicity this place has gotten lately—he’s threatened more than once to shut down the school. So the strictest secrecy is required, isn’t it, pussycat?” The cat put his ears back and emitted a low, cautionary warble.

  “May I ask, then, why you decided to confide in me?”

  “Ah! You have heard my confession, now hear my proposal. I require an adult subject with self-control, tact, and excellent observational skills. I have of course injected myself on numerous occasions but a lone experimental subject . . . and it is, I think you would find, an illuminating experience!” He gave a little bounce of excitement, at which the cat lashed its tail. “I said, thoughts of death, but that is not very precise. It conduces to thinking of all phenomena as fixed, delimited and corrigible rather than transient. The universe shows forth as a perfect machine, an orrery without original, revolving on gears of adamant . . . Cells upon cells, wheels within wheels, gloss and smoothness, tiny scintillating points of light repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating . . .” He grinned, showing his eyeteeth (goodness, he was attractive); he stroked the cat furiously; I saw that his pupils were dilated and suddenly understood his gregariousness. I was conscious of a slight feeling of disappointment, I could not say why.

  “You mmm—mentioned side effects.”

  His eyes rolled up, his mouth went slack, his breath rattled—I thought he was having a seizure. Then his eyes popped open and he grinned. “Sleepwalking!” he said. “Lock your door.”

  “Well, I will consider it,” I said, “though I cannot feel quite good about going behind the Headmistress’s back. Are you sure it is not harmful?”

  “Would I take it myself if it were?” he said, spreading his hands in a lordly gesture. The cat saw his opportunity and sprang, disappearing into the tea roses.

  Letters to Dead Authors, #11

  Dear Jephra,

  There has been another libelous letter in the Gazette. (By the way, I am pretty sure that I have guessed the author.) This tim
e, it alleges something I do not quite understand about coils of cinematograph film lying in wait for their pray [sic] in the back basement. I will have to ask our filmmaker friend about it. But it has sped me toward a course I was already considering. I have decided to take my reputation in my own hands, not fleeing but seeking out the public eye, so as to draw it round to my own point of view.

  Already my resolve is being tested. I invited a fiend of a persistent newsman, Cartwright is his name, to take a tour of the establishment, and now he will not leave us alone. Of course I do not allow him to roam the premises at whim, but Dr. Beede’s young trainee is his compadre and no doubt tells him everything he wants to know. Incidentally I think Dr. Peachie may be a secret tippler. I have several times come across him behaving in a most extraordinary—but Mr. Medlar has just arrived with a report:

  “The teething rods are worn. We need new ones.”

  “Again! So soon!”

  He turned out his long, slender hands.

  I sighed. “Well, there is nothing for it. Have Clarence speak to the carpenter.“

  “Also, I—I am afraid I have been injudicious.“

  My gaze sharpened. “In what respect, Mr. Medlar?“

  “I may have given Mr. Cartwright reason to understand that he might be given a tour of the land of the dead.“

  “What!“ I thrust back my chair—splinters flew—and stood. I looked down upon him now.

  “I know it was foolish. I lost my head.“

  “Injudicious in the extreme, Mr. Medlar! We cannot have that nosy parker sniffing around in death!”

  “Well, I know that! Of course I immediately corrected myself, but the devil of it is that he had got his teeth into the idea and attempted to insist. Whereupon one of the little—little children, I should say, thought she would set him straight and, to show him how difficult it would be for a person of his girth to enter the Mouthlands—” he quailed at the fierceness of my expression, then went on “—she herself—intending only pantomime—slipped through. And she wasn’t wearing an Ariadne string.”

  I collapsed back into my chair. “So we have lost another one. And right in front of Mr. Cartwright. Oh, Mr. Medlar, I am far from pleased, very far indeed.”

  Eventually, the creaking of a shoe alerted me to his continued presence. “Why are you still standing around like a lummox? Oh, all right, yes, I will try to fetch her back, though I am quite sure it is too late to mend the damage to our reputation—for which we have you to thank!”

  At this setback, a lesser woman might have retreated! But I am only confirmed in my purpose. New ideas, however scientifically presented, have ever met with resistance from the hoi polloi. To be widely accepted, one must be widely known. I have come to see that an element of that showmanship that I originally rejected as contrary to the spirit of serious thanatological inquiry is necessary, both to correct the deleterious effect of negative publicity, and to attract the beneficent donors that our school, no less than any other, requires in order to maintain the high standards we are known for, if not yet in this world, then certainly in the next. The matter is of some urgency; my health is far from good. So I have devised a series of ventures that I believe will appeal to the popular imagination. (You, who were never a public person, will understand the feelings of trepidation with which I plan my entry onto the public stage.)

  A wholesome and improving Theatrical Spectacle in which our advanced students will show to their best advantage, channeling stage personae of a bygone age.

  A Balloon, or Sky Lung, as I mean to call it, to be filled with the breath of the dead, and suspended from the ceiling or, if the breath is, as I believe but have yet to verify, lighter than air, having more of absence in it, allowed to sail up of its own accord into the sky.

  A giant ear trumpet, like an alpenhorn in shape but not in purpose, that might enable solo listeners to tune in to the land of the dead, even without a hearing-mouth child to act as interpreter. The length of the trumpet would help to amplify the whispers that the dead emit continually, which normally remain below the threshold of hearing unless, in an access of excitement (when moved to warn the living of an impending catastrophe, for instance, or to punish the guilty), a number of dead speak in unison. Then, of course, the innumerable whispers that the wind elicits (seemingly of its own accord), from bottle tops, fluttering leaves, eaves, ears, flags and other flapping things, build to a crescendo, to such a din that anyone can hear, that it would be impossible not to hear. But I digress.

  A similar structure, but reversed, through which the living may make their desires known to the dead. Whether, hearing, the dead would compassionate them so far as to take action, I do not know. Privately I suspect that the majority of ghosts are not much interested in the living. It is the geniuses and cranks, the lonely, the guilty, the vainglorious and the vengeful, who bend our ears year after year. Our perfect dead need nothing anymore.

  A book I wish to write and believe could be quite a moneymaker if any publisher cares to “cash in”: The Compleat Corpse, a Guide for the Recently Deceased.

  I do not ask your help, only your fellowship, for though I stand at the brink of fame and fortune, I feel very alone. The dead blow through me, but do they know me? Does the river know the dog that drinks from it? The earth know the worm?

  Sincerest Regards,

  Headmistress Joines

  P.S. I believe I addressed my last letter to a fictional character. I am not sure what I was thinking.

  12. The Final Dispatch, contd.

  [Static, three or four sentences indistinct] . . . thought it was a piano factory, I was sure it was a piano factory. The air tangy with resin, dizzied with varnish, the great curved forms like harps, the blond wood, the floor softly mounded with sawdust, the plink the plunk and the sostenuto . . . And then there is the matter of the piano wire. I was sure it was piano wire, so strong, so readily available. In a piano factory, that is. If there was no piano factory, then it was considerably less likely to have been piano wire with which my mother was strangled or hanged as the case may be. It is not easy to remove a wire from a piano. Or it may be easy enough, I do not know, but not as easy as picking up a piece that is lying on a workbench. So I was fairly sure. I mean, that it was a piano wire (a thin one, not one of the thick bass wires made of a core of wire around which another wire is wrapped) that had not so much strangled my mother as [static] very nearly cut her head off—you may have cut cheese with a wire? So that in fact one could not even see what it was that had made that slim incision that encircled her neck, so deep in the flesh was the wire, they had not removed it. And what if not piano wire had snapped at my father’s hands, making those cuts, on the inside of the forearm, one on the cheek, right below the left eye, as of something narrow, sharp, lashing? [Pause.]

  I had satisfied myself, to the extent that one can speak of satisfaction in such a case, that I knew the story. Yet now it strikes me with some force that it was not a piano factory but a typewriter factory. A powerful image comes to mind: It is a typewriter as big as a pipe organ, bigger perhaps, filling a room otherwise empty, the keys (as big as dinner plates) mounting upward in tiers, like bleacher seats. I remember stepping onto the G, which gave underfoot, for the model had been conscientiously constructed, and really worked. “Slowly, slowly,” said my father. I oozed onto the key, my hands outstretched for balance. Nonetheless, when I transferred my full weight to the key, the hammer rose and smooched the page; I heard the kiss of ink.

  “Idiot,” my father said, or perhaps “bitch,” he employed both words with regularity. I pivoted on one foot, reaching back to touch the frame to steady myself, and cautiously lowered my narrow buttocks onto the 7 key. Which sank; there was another kiss, another curse from my father, and then I was arranging my skirts around my ankles and straining my cheeks in a smile.

  That is not my only memory of this scene. The other is from the perspective of someone else, looking on, and is in black and white, not colo
r, or I should say, sepia and white. I sat on the 7 key, my feet resting neatly and decorously side by side on the G. At the lower edge of the giant piece of paper protruding from the top of the machine, one could see a faint, imperfect G and 7 printed below a message whose full text I have forgotten, though I remember the catchphrase: Joines Typewriters—Giants in the Field! I must have been photographed (and indeed I remember a burst of searing light and a whiff of sulfurous smoke), perhaps by the local paper, where the photograph must have appeared, and from which I or my father must have neatly clipped it, perhaps framing it; perhaps it hung thereafter in the office of the piano factory. I mean the typewriter factory.

  Was it, instead, a giant piano?

  No, a typewriter, surely.

  But how could I confuse a typewriter and a piano?

  Well, it is easy enough—both possess a set of articulated keys that when depressed with the fingers induce their respective hammers to strike a vigorous blow within the body of the instrument, producing in one case a letter associated with a sound, and in the other, a sound associated with a letter.

  Why the two should not be combined into one instrument I have never really understood.

  If a typewriter factory, then no smell of sawdust, no burr of saw and drill. Above all no piano wire and thus no murder, or at least not the particular murder I have imagined. Did my father hammer my mother to death one letter at a time in the giant typewriter, tap dancing on the keys? Obviously not. Perhaps he strangled her with a typewriter ribbon; is it stout enough? There must be something to this memory. Maybe we merely owned a typewriter. A giant typewriter? Did we see one, on a trip to the World Fair, say? [Static, sound of breathing.]

  Perhaps it was neither a typewriter factory nor a piano factory but a telephone switchboard. I can see my mother now, her hair swept up in a roll, her narrow shoulders and flat chest handsome in a close-fitting long-sleeved high-necked dress, her hips flattered into fullness by a petticoat, reaching out, all concentration, to unplug here, plug there—and wire enough to strangle mobs of mothers—but no, but no, absurd, there were no telephones when I was small; were there typewriters?—I will have to check that, too. Are there typewriters now? Have I gotten ahead of myself, has the future leaked into the present by way of the past, making a little detour through death? Or am I perpetrating a fiction? A murder mystery, and I the pale and ink-stained authoress in the garret, slavering over the pitiful bones, vamping my way through increasingly improbable horrors, with a heat that I have too little experience to recognize igniting my virgin loins? Well, no. At least . . . no.