After a few miles of arduous hiking, Seneca told them to stop. Colby glanced around and saw everything Seneca had described in that first séance in Iowa. This was the spot where Colby and Giddings were supposed to build their Spiritualist camp.
“Colby built a home on the shores of Lake Colby-which was later moved to a place you’ll see tomorrow, at the edge of Spirit Lake—and Giddings and his family built their home close by. Colby eventually got a government deed for seventy-four acres, but he didn’t do much of anything else for eighteen years.”
“How come?” she asks.
“No one really knows. In October 1894, a dozen mediums signed the charter for the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp. The charter states that the camp was to be a nonprofit association that promoted Spiritualist beliefs in the soul’s immortality.”
“You think Mr West would read for me, Dean?” She sits up, hugging her knees against her
“Sure.
“My dad’s mom—Nana Honey—died a few years ago. Maybe he can tune in on her.”
Then she tells him about Nana Honey, how she buried money for Lia in her backyard and put money in a college trust fund for her that her parents can’t touch. “She always called it my freedom money. She said someday I might need it to get away from my mother.”
Dean snaps forward. “Lia, this is perfect. Part of my trust fund will be available to me when I turn eighteen. With that and the money you have, we won’t be struggling financially. We’ll have my car. We can live together in my apartment at Stetson.”
“Unless my parents are looking for me.”
Unless, what if maybe.. . he hates the uncertainty, the unknowns. He draws her back against the nest of sleeping bags and holds her while she falls asleep. Outside, the night sounds rise and fall with a strange, steady rhythm.
2
The road climbs and dips over a series of shallow hills, and everywhere Lia looks, there are pines, thick and green and tall. A hush suffuses the morning air. Lia is certain that if Dean stops the car, she won’t hear a sound.
Now, coming up on her right, she spots a large two-story stucco building that looks as if it were transported here from the Mediterranean. Along one side runs a wide porch lined with rocking chairs. “That’s the Cassadaga Hotel, “Dean says. ‘We’ll park there and walk around.”
As they walk, Dean explains that the town actually has two distinct areas, a rebel camp—psychics who broke off from the association—and the Spiritualist camp. It lies to the south of
430A, the road they came in on, and to the west of and behind the hotel, And here, the crooked little houses look like they were shipped in from Cape Cod, and in front of nearly every home is a sign with the psychic’s name and specialty on it. Reverend So and So, medium or clairvoyant, reader or astrologer. And over there, Spirit Lake glimmers like a blue eye in the warm November light and that old house at the edge of the marsh is the Colby place.
But all of that aside, Cassadaga feels like home to her in a way no other place except Tybee ever has. It isn’t just the marsh that surrounds Spirit Lake, but the very texture and feel of the air, as though magic hums just beneath the surface of everything She feels safe in this strange little community.
“I love it, “she says softly. “Let’s live here.”
“Once I start at Stetson, Ian has offered to let me use the Colby house f I want. Maybe we can live there together.”
It frightens her when Dean talks like this because it means she would have to run away from home. As bad as her home life is, as much as she detests her mother, the idea of being a runaway appalls her. Yet, if she had Nana Honey’s money, if she and Dean had a place to live, she could study for her GED while he was going to college. If she could get her GED by the time she was sixteen, she could be finished with college by twenty and be done with law school at twenty-four This idea appeals to her, to get an early jump on life, to make something of herself earlier than her peers.
Dean points at a two-story yellow house at the end of the street. “That’s where he lives with his wife, Heather, and their eight-year-old son.”
As they get closer, Lia gets a good look at the place. It reminds her of a house in a fairy tale—a crooked screened porch, odd little windows, a side yard filled with lush, colorful plants. A fountain shaped like a swan has vines growing around it. The sound of the water soothes her.
Ian himself answer the door, a tall, Ichabod Crane–like man with thick, dark hair and large eyes the same deep blue as the Pacific. His eyebrows seem to be perpetually raised and his forehead is deeply lined. He exudes enthusiasm and although his voice isn’t loud, it seems to boom when he greets Dean. He doesn’t bother shaking Lia’s hand; he hugs her hello as though she is already a member of the family. She has never felt so welcome anywhere.
They settle in his living room. It’s crowded with things—statues, figurines, magazines, and books everywhere, old photos on the walls, plants that billow in the bright sunlight that streams through the many windows. And there’s a strangeness about the air here, a kind of hush that quivers just beneath the chaos, the friendly mess. Spirits?
As Ian brings in drinks and snacks, Lia wonders if he’s tuning in on her if he’s seeing spirits. Is that how it works? “Who’s Honey?” Ian suddenly asks.
Well, she thinks, that answers her question. “My grandmother.”
Ian sets the tray on an end table, cocks his head as if listening to something Lia can’t hear, then nods and sits down. “She says the house is going to be sold and that you should dig up what’s buried in the yard and hide it at your house.”
Lia looks quickly at Dean, who holds up his hands. “I didn’t tell him anything. I swear.”
“Whose house is going to be sold?”Lia asks.
“Honey’s house. “Now his eyes are fixed on the space just to the right of Lia’s head. “Susan will never understand. Don’t deceive yourself about that.”
Her mother. “She won’t understand what?”
“Who you are. Who you and Dean are together, she says. It’s best not to fight her, but just to follow your heart.”
Nana Honey used to say those very words to her whenever Lia was torn about something. Follow your heart. She’s too stunned to speak, to ask any more questions. She smooths her hands over her shorts, her thighs, as if to assure herself that her body is real.
3
While Heather is showing Lia the library, Ian leans close to Dean and speaks in a soft, hushed tone. “I’ll try to tell you what I need to tell you before Lia comes back. For years there have been predictions, Dean, made by a variety of psychics here in Cassadaga, about a violent series of events that involve a Curry, a shepherd, and a mirror. These events happen near water, and begin in 1989, with a Romeo and Juliet romance. They culminate early in the new century, in a year that adds up to six. That would be 2004. My feeling is that you’re the Curry the predictions speak of, and that you and Lia are the Romeo and Juliet.”
Dean has heard a lot of strange things from Ian, but this is one of the strangest. He doesn’t know what to think. “What or who are the shepherd and the mirror?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Every day there are thousands of violent events, crimes, victims, and perpetrators. Why would this particular series of events show up in a prediction? And how many other Currys are there in the world? Probably thousands. “If I’m the Curry, why would there be psychic predictions involving me?”
“I don’t know.”
Something in Ian’s tone of voice, in the way he suddenly lowers his eyes, tells Dean that Ian not only know the answers to this question, but that he knows far more than he’s revealing. “So what am I supposed to do with this information?”
“That’s up to you. I’m just passing it along”
“What kind of violent events?”
“I don’t have the specifics. These predictions are contained in something we call the Book of Voices. They go back nearly a century The ones I just told you about
have come from many different psychics over the last ten or fifteen years. The predictions are sealed when they’re submitted, and up until last year, no one saw them but the secretary of the association. She has been trying to put them into order for probably thirty years now. Last year she had a stroke and the president of the Cassadaga Spiritualist Association asked for four volunteers to help with the organization. I volunteered.”
“May I see the book?”
“Sure. But I think we should wait until we’re alone.”
Dean mulls it over for the rest of the day—while he and Lia are swimming in a nearby sinkhole, while they’re breaking down camp so they can move into the Cassadaga Hotel for the night, and finally mentions it to Lia over dinner at the hotel. She listens without interrupting then sets down her fork.
“Romeo and Juliet? But our families aren’t warring. Our families don’t even know each other.”
“I guess it’s more of a metaphor.”
“Well, fuck the metaphor. I’m not going to be anyone’s tragedy.”
“Hey, don’t get so mad, Lia.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You sound mad.”
“I’m tired. “ She pushes back from the table. “I’ll be up in the room.”
Dean sits there awhile, alone, mystified by Lia’s behavior When he looks up, Ian is hurrying through the restaurant door. “Dean, you just got a call from your brother. Heather took it. Your mom had a nasty fall and is in the hospital.” He withdraws a slip of paper from his shirt pocket. “Keith said to call him at this number. You can use the phone at the house, if you’d like.”
His brother’s cell phone number “I’ll use the pay phone.”
He calls from the old-fashioned phone booth in the lobby and Keith answers immediately.
“Hey, Keith. What’s going on?”
“Mom had too much to drink on top of the frills she probably had taken, too. She slipped in the bathroom. They think she’s got a concussion. Allie’s checking her out now. I don’t think it’s all that serious, okay? But Allie insisted I call you. If you’re with your lady love, stay put. Mom’s not going to pass away. This is just more of Allie’s control shit.”
Maybe, maybe not. If he stays here and his mother passes away, how will he live with that? On the other hand, if Keith’s theory about Allie is right, he knows how it will be, all of them in the waiting room at the hospital, Allie ranting about their mother’s drinking, chastising everyone for not watching her more carefully. He knows. And forget it. He wants no part of it.
“Where are you?”
“In my car in the hospital parking lot. I came out here to smoke a joint. It’s the only way I can deal with all that shit.”
“If you want some company, I’ll come. Otherwise, tell Allie you couldn’t get in touch with me.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m heading home in about five minutes.”
“Great, so you never got in touch with me.”
“You got it.”
Dean returns to the restaurant and tells Ian about the call. “You made the right choice, “Ian says. “I don’t feel she’ll pass over from this injury.”
Again Dean has the feeling that Ian knows more than he’s saying.
“Your sister... is she brunette?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Quite striking in appearance?”
“So I’m told.”
“She’s. . . I don’t want to be too blunt about this, Dean.”
“Be as blunt as you want.”
“She’s bad news. “His eyes have glazed over. “There a strong past-lift connection here. I don’t know the years, I can’t see that. But the relationship was obsessive on her part.”
“What was the relationship?”Even as he asks, a part of him dreads knowing.
“Lovers. She killed you in a fit of jealous rage. “He blinks, rubs his eyes. “There’s more material on this, but I’m unable to see it for some reason.”He pauses, frowns. “Who was Ray?”
“My youngest brother.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes. Four years ago. Why?”
Ian now describes Ray, a small boy with blond hair, his parents’ delight, bright and mischievous. “He’s trying to communicate something but I can’t get it. “He shakes his head. “Perhaps another time. “He reaches over and pats Dean’s arm. “I need to get back to the house. A client’s coming.”
“I’ll walk outside with you. “Dean pays the bill and they head outside.
The air has cooled somewhat. The scent of the marsh mixes with the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine, gardenias. The silence out here seems to stretch forever through the darkness.
“There’s more to those predictions than you told me.”
Ian tucks his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans. “We aren’t meant to know everything,” he says quietly. “Mediums and psychics aren’t gods. Our impressions are filtered through our own consciousness, Dean. That’s why some predictions are wrong.”
“But?”
Now Ian looks over at him. On the planes of his face, a battle rages between light and darkness. Dean senses his reluctance to pursue the matter “I need to know, Ian.”
“Yes, I realize that. But this places me in somewhat of a moral dilemma, Dean. I don’t like meddling in other people’s lives. But when a prediction remains consistent over time and comes from several different psychics who don’t know anything about the other predictions, then I pay close attention. You’re going to father a child who becomes important in the spiritual evolution of Cassadaga. That’s the big picture. And I think that’s why the name Curry appears in the Book of Voices.” He clasps Dean’s shoulder “I really have to get going. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
And then he’s off, striding at a szuzft pace through the dark shadows of the Cassadaga street, and Dean stands there, struggling to absorb what this strange, gentle man has said. And suddenly he is very afraid.
4
It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving and Lia is having her first gynecological exam. At her mother’s insistence. It’s humiliating. She knows this has nothing to do with her health and everything to do with her mother’s suspicion that she is not a virgin.
After the exam the doctor and the nurse leave the room and Lia dresses, fighting back tears, fighting back rage, fighting back every emotion she has ever repressed. She can hear her mother and the doctor talking next door, in his office, and as soon as she sees her mother’s face, she knows the doctor has informed her that Lia is not a virgin. To a woman like her mother, she thinks, this is tantamount to a one-way ticket to social ruin and scandal; and what if the priest at the church finds out?
She doesn’t say a word to Lia on the drive back to Tybee. But as soon as they pull into the driveway, she turns to Lia and demands to know the boy’s name.
And she refuses to say anything.
Her mother grabs he rby the shoulders and strikes her so hard across the face that her lip splits open and starts to bleed. She strikes Lia again. And then Lia shoves her back hard enough so that her head hits the window. “If you ever hit me again, I’ll kill you.”
Lia leaps out of the car, slams the door, and runs into the house. Over dinner no one speaks. But her mother is drinking heavily, knocking back one vodka after another.
Later that night, she hears her parents shouting; glass shattering doors banging open and shut. Then the car peels out of the driveway and she knows her father has left. She leaps off her bed and pulls her dresser in front of the door. It’s already locked, but the dresser will give her additional protection. Her mother will be too drunk to break the door down.
She huddles on her bed with a flashlight, scribbling a letter to Dean, telling him she can’t stand it any longer, she’s ready to run away. She’ll mail it tomorrow at work. She desperately wants to talk to him, but her mother has long since removed the phone from her room. Then the banging begins, the shouts, the curses, the madwoman is at her door.
Lia presses
pillows against the sides of her head and closes herself in the closet.
Her bag is packed, Nana Honey’s money inside. Tomorrow she will run.
The banging stops. Her mother has passed out.
Daylight. Knocking at her door Polite raps. This is her father. “Lia, hon, please let me in,” he says.
She pushes the dresser away, unlocks the door. Sobbing, she throws her arms around his waist. “You left me alone here with her. She was crazy.”
“I know,” he says, patting her head. “Ssshh. It’s going to be okay.” Then he pulls back from her slightly. “She’s going into an institution to dry out. But the only way she’s consenting to go is if you stay with your grandmother for a while.”
“But that’s in upstate New York. I don’t want to go there. And why should I leave? She’s the nutcase.”
“Honey, I swear it’ll only be a few months. I just need to get your mother into this place, then we can work this out.”
She argues, she sobs, but her father is as intractable as a concrete wall. And then he drops the bomb. She’s leaving today. This afternoon.
On the way to the airport, her father stops at Mr Barker’s so Lia can pick up her final paycheck and give her notice. She breaks down in front of Mr. Barker and begs him to mail a letter to Dean. “Or if he calls, tell him I’ll call you with a forwarding address, so I can get his letters. Would that be okay?”
“Aw, Lia, honey, “Mr Barker says. “You know I’ll do anything to help you out.”
Lia gives him the letter to Dean and as he walks outside with her, he slips it through the mailbox slot.
Monday
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