The mournful blast of the foghorn echoed over San Francisco Bay and a gust of wind whined through the trees. It was a good night for a séance.
Gilda looked at herself in the mirror. The red velvet evening gown hung from her small frame like a heavy curtain. Her black eyeliner and red lipstick looked suitably mysterious. This time it will work, she told herself.
Entering Gilda’s room, Juliet looked like a haunted waif from a Victorian oil painting. She wore a white nightgown, her long, pale hair tumbling over her shoulders.
“Greetings,” said Gilda.
“Wow!” Juliet gasped.
With her pale skin, red velvet dress, and purple-red lipstick, Gilda resembled a young vampire. The single candle she held in her hand cast a macabre light on her painted features.
“You look so different!” said Juliet.
Downstairs in the parlor, the grandfather clock chimed twelve times.
“Please be seated there on the floor,” said Gilda, pointing to a spot next to the Ouija board. On either side of the board, Gilda had placed a pillow and a lit candle.
Juliet sat down on one of the pillows. Gilda plopped down on the other side of the Ouija board, crossed her legs Indian style, and faced Juliet.
“What is this thing?” Juliet asked, staring at the mysterious letters and numbers on the board.
“You mean you’ve never seen a Ouija board before?”
“I’ve heard of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”
“It’s a tool to help the dead communicate with the living. When it works the way it’s supposed to, it’s kind of like a psychic telephone.”
“A telephone?”
“See, we both place our fingers very lightly on this thing—it’s called a planchette—and when your aunt’s spirit wants to speak to us, she’ll send vibrations that make the planchette move across the board to highlight the answers to our questions. She can say yes or no, or she can spell out special messages.”
Remembering the Principle of Amplification, Gilda placed the faded snapshot of Melanie next to the Ouija board. “Now,” she said, “if anything strange happens—say, if I begin to levitate, or if the room we’re in suddenly changes shape—it’s important not to panic.”
“You think you’re going to levitate?”
“I’ve read that it sometimes happens during séances, so I just wanted to prepare you. Ready?”
“I guess.”
Gilda and Juliet placed their fingertips lightly on the planchette and closed their eyes. In the flickering shadows and yellow glow of the candlelight, their faces looked slightly ghoulish.
“I’m actually kind of scared,” Juliet whispered.
“Then let’s get started before you lose your nerve.” Gilda took a deep breath. “Spirits beyond the grave, please hear us. We would like to speak to Melanie.”
The planchette remained still.
Juliet giggled.
“Stop it,” Gilda whispered.
“I’m sorry; you’re just being so dramatic.”
“Spirits beyond the grave,” Gilda repeated, “please hear us. We would like to speak to Juliet’s aunt—Melanie Splinter—who died near this very spot, in a fall from the tower in this house!”
Juliet stopped giggling. She suddenly felt very cold.
The Ouija board shook slightly.
Gilda’s eyes flew open. “Are you doing that?!”
“No. I mean, I don’t think I am.”
Gilda felt a tingling sensation at the back of her neck. As if on cue, a familiar sound began from behind the wall of the room—the hollow echo of footsteps ascending a winding staircase.
This may be my first real communication with an actual ghost! Gilda braced herself for anything and reminded herself of one of Balthazar’s rules: A psychic investigator must remain calm at all times.
The steps grew louder, then stopped suddenly, as if pausing just on the other side of the wall.
Gilda and Juliet stared at each other, then at the wall.
“Who is here with us?” Gilda asked. “Is that Melanie?”
With surprising force, the planchette slid quickly across the board to highlight the word yes.
“Wow!” said Gilda, forgetting, for a moment, to focus on maintaining a more formal demeanor as the leader of the séeance.
“Oh my God,” Juliet whispered. “It’s really her!”
“What is it that you want to say to us, Melanie?”
The entire room seemed to vibrate with fearful anticipation, and Gilda prepared herself to feel her body float up from the floor or for the whole room to elongate like a stretched rubber band. More footsteps and rustling sounds came from the other side of the wall.
Gilda and Juliet held their breath for nearly a minute, watching and listening, but the sounds ceased. Gilda remained sitting firmly on the floor, and the planchette remained still.
“Maybe she doesn’t have anything to say to me after all,” Juliet whispered.
Minutes passed. Silence and the quiet sniffing sounds of Juliet’s shallow, nervous breathing were the only answer. The girls sat patiently for what seemed a very long time, but the ghost would say nothing more.
20
The Message
Too exhausted to remove her makeup and séance gown, Gilda flopped down on her bedspread, feeling defeated. Although she and Juliet had come close to communicating with Melanie’s ghost, the séance hadn’t yielded the spectacular results Gilda had anticipated.
“Mind if I crash in your room?” Juliet asked Gilda tentatively. The séance had set her nerves on edge, and she hesitated to venture alone down the dark hallway that led to her bedroom.
“Sure—suit yourself.” Gilda moved over on the queen-size bed to make room for Juliet.
Juliet sat down on the edge of the mattress. “You’re sleeping in that dress?”
“Too tired to change,” Gilda slurred.
“Well, I think the séance was pretty spooky,” said Juliet, sensing Gilda’s disappointment with the results and feeling that she should at least try to say something encouraging.
“But the point isn’t just to ‘be spooky’ like the séances at slumber parties! I really thought we were about to make contact with Melanie and discover some specific information.” Gilda yawned wearily. “Maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing as a psychic investigator.”
Juliet felt unsure how to respond since she had been skeptical of Gilda’s psychic investigation skills from the very beginning. On the other hand, she sensed that Gilda’s method of persevering through blind trial and error might eventually lead to some real discovery. Having always been an extremely cautious person herself, she couldn’t help but feel some admiration for Gilda’s willingness to experiment—her willingness to risk failure.
“You’re probably learning as you go,” Juliet said tactfully. “Besides, if it wasn’t for your investigative skills, I would probably never know that my aunt was going to be sent to a place called Lilyvale. In fact, I’d probably still think I was crazy just for wondering if this house is haunted!”
“That’s true,” said Gilda, feeling more hopeful. “So you’re actually admitting that you’re happy I came to visit?”
Juliet paused. “Okay,” she said. “I admit I’m happy you came to visit.”
“Then I admit I am, too.”
• • •
Gilda sat outside in the dark, staring up at the tower. A blond woman approached her—a childlike woman who looked exactly like Juliet. Somehow, Gilda knew that the woman was dead—that she was actually Melanie.
“Do you want to come in?” the woman asked, placing her slim fingers on the locked door leading into the tower.
“But there’s no key,” said Gilda.
“I’ll let you in.” The woman opened the tower door easily. Gilda hesitated for a moment, and then followed her.
Inside, the tower smelled of sweet, stale perfume—an aroma that reminded Gilda of the church lilies at her father’s funeral.
I must pay attention to every detail I see in the tower, Gilda told herself. But somehow she could only focus on the white feet of the woman who led the way up a narrow stairway.
“Where are we going?” Gilda asked.
“I do this again and again,” said the woman, ignoring Gilda’s question.
They finally reached the top of the stairs.
“It’s almost time.”
Gilda found herself in a room that contained a small writing table and her typewriter. She heard the sounds of someone typing and immediately felt happy; it was her father sitting at the typewriter! But what was her father doing inside the tower?
Gilda walked toward him and sat on his lap, the way she used to when she was just a child. How nice it was to feel her father’s arms around her again. How reassuring it was to feel the soft fabric of his favorite flannel shirt.
“What are you writing?” Gilda asked, noticing that her father’s face was unshaven, and that he had all the hair on his head again. In fact, he looked just like he used to look in the days before he was sick.
“Just typing some letters,” her father replied.
“Do you get the letters I write you?”
“Sure.”
“Then why don’t you write back?”
“You know how slow the mail can be,” her father replied calmly. “Don’t worry; eventually you’ll be able to read my letters.”
“Did I tell you I’m a psychic investigator now?”
“I’m proud of you, honey,” her father said.
Then the blond woman appeared again. She stood before an open window, the night wind blowing her nightgown around her thin body.
“Why are you doing this?” Gilda asked her.
The woman didn’t answer; she simply perched on the window ledge and then pitched forward into darkness without another word, as if she were merely diving off the edge of a swimming pool into water. Gilda ran to the window in time to see her plummeting like an angel crashing to earth, her gold hair and white nightgown streaming behind her.
“Wake up!” Gilda heard her father say. “You should wake up and listen.”
Gilda awoke to find Juliet sitting up in bed, wearing the same frozen, blank gaze she remembered seeing when she first discovered Juliet’s eerie habit of talking in her sleep. Juliet seemed fixated on something in the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Gilda asked. She squinted into the darkness, trying to determine what Juliet was looking at, but she could perceive only the dark shadows of furniture.
Juliet didn’t reply. “He hides things,” she said.
“Who hides things?”
“I know, Aunt Melanie,” Juliet continued, “I’ll look.”
Juliet was talking to her aunt Melanie!
Gilda had a gut feeling that she must write down everything Juliet said. Wake up and listen, her father had advised her in her dream.
Gilda scrambled out of bed, then searched frantically in the darkness for her notebook and a pen. She only succeeded in tripping over the Ouija board, falling to her knees, and knocking over two candlesticks, which rolled across the floor noisily. Gilda sighed, assuming that the commotion must have broken Juliet’s trance.
But Juliet seemed to be hypnotized—completely deaf to everything except the dream conversation in her mind.
“I see your eyes,” said Juliet, now whispering, “your eyes on the ceiling.”
Your eyes on the ceiling? The strangeness of Juliet’s words intrigued Gilda; it was as if she were reciting some cryptic poem.
Gilda found her way to her writing table and searched in the darkness until she could feel the typewriter keyboard under her fingertips. She hesitated a moment, wondering if the sound of the machine might break Juliet’s trance, but decided to take the risk. She quickly typed as many of Juliet’s words as she could remember.
Juliet now stood up and walked stiffly—as if her limbs were made of plastic—toward the corner of the room. She reached out, attempting to touch something in the blank space in front of her. “The angel,” Juliet said. “The angel will speak and unlock you.”
Something about this statement made Gilda’s heart beat a bit faster. She quickly typed this phrase so that she wouldn’t forget it, and then watched Juliet, waiting for her to continue.
But Juliet said nothing more.
“Juliet? Are you awake?”
Juliet did not respond. She turned, walked back to the bed, curled up into a fetal position, and fell into a silent sleep.
• • •
Juliet dreamed that a small piglet was chasing her through the house. When she stopped to confront the high-strung animal, it jumped into her arms and oinked joyfully. Juliet kept trying to put the piglet down, but somehow it wouldn’t let her. “Please leave me alone,” Juliet pleaded, but the piglet wouldn’t listen.
Juliet suddenly awoke and felt disoriented until she remembered that she had been sleeping in Gilda’s room. There, a few feet away from her, was Gilda, snoring loudly. Her snoring must be why I dreamed about a piglet, Juliet thought. On the floor, there was the scattered evidence of the séance: the candlesticks and the Ouija board, which now looked like an ordinary game board—more like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit than a special instrument for speaking with ghosts.
Still asleep, Gilda snorted with great feeling.
Juliet shook Gilda’s shoulder. “Gilda,” she said, “wake up.”
“Mmmmph.” Gilda rolled over on her side, turning away from Juliet.
“Gilda! Quit snoring!”
“I do not snore,” said Gilda, awakening immediately. Secretly, she remembered a slumber party during which her friends had made a tape recording of her snoring and then cheerfully played it back for her the next morning. “Anyway,” Gilda added, “look who’s talking.”
“I don’t snore,” said Juliet.
“But you do talk in your sleep,” said Gilda, “and this time, I kept a record of everything you said.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gilda sat upright. “You said some things that I thought might be clues.”
Juliet laughed with a burst of glee that Gilda found annoying.
“What’s so funny?”
“Go look in the mirror!” said Juliet, pointing at Gilda’s head. “Your hair!”
During the night, Gilda’s hair had molded into a gravity-defying shape from an overenthusiastic use of bobby pins and hairspray in her “psychic-investigator hairdo.” Mascara and eyeliner had also left a raccoon mask of dark smudges under her eyes.
Gilda suspected that she looked ridiculous after falling asleep in her séance costume, but she decided to ignore Juliet’s laughter for the moment. Instead, she stood up, stretched, and yawned, then walked over to her typewriter, where she solemnly examined the clues she had typed the night before.
he hides things
your eyes on the ceiling
the angel will speak
and unlock you
Gilda felt a rush of excitement as she scrutinized the typed words. “Juliet,” she whispered, “I have a distinct feeling that these words are a message of some kind!”
“A message?”
Gilda nodded. “I think Melanie communicated something to you last night. Do you remember anything specific about talking in your sleep? Maybe a dream you were having?”
Juliet shrugged. “I did have a dream about a piglet just before I woke up.”
Gilda frowned. “You mean you don’t remember saying, ‘The angel will speak and unlock you’?”
Juliet looked incredulous. “I said that in my sleep? Let me see that.”
Gilda handed Juliet the paper, and Juliet stared at the cryptic words, feeling bewildered. “How weird,” she said. “I don’t remember this.”
“Try to remember,” said Gilda. “You said these things in the middle of a dream; they must mean something to you!”
Gilda began to pace back and forth. “You know,” she said, “sometimes if you think really hard y
ou can remember all kinds of details from a dream even though it initially seems as though you’ve forgotten the whole thing.” She stopped to inspect her disheveled-looking reflection in the mirror.
As Gilda wiped dark smudges of makeup from her face with a tissue, she felt that she herself was on the verge of remembering a dream—a dream that had something to do with the tower. However, she also knew that if she didn’t write down her dreams right away, they had a frustrating way of evaporating from her mind completely.
Gilda glanced at Juliet, who was still scrutinizing the cryptic phrases she had recorded with her typewriter. This jogged Gilda’s memory: she had a clear image of her father sitting at the typewriter. Hadn’t her father told her to “wake up and listen” to Juliet?
“I don’t know,” said Juliet, squinting at the typed words and then tossing them aside in frustration. “Maybe these words mean something, and maybe it’s all just nonsense, like scrambled eggs from my brain.”
“Or maybe this is our best clue yet,” said Gilda, removing a stray false eyelash from the corner of her eye. “I think Melanie responded to our séance.”
Juliet watched Gilda’s reflection in the mirror as Gilda picked the last of the bobby pins from her tangled hair. “I suppose these words could have something to do with a dream I’ve had before,” Juliet suggested. “In one of my dreams, there’s a woman in the tower who I think is Aunt Melanie, and she says, ‘He hides things.’ Then she tells me that my father ‘has the key’ to something.”
“The key to the tower?”
“Maybe. In the dream she’s in chains, and she wants me to help her unlock them.”
“That makes sense,” said Gilda excitedly. “Maybe Melanie’s spirit feels like she’s a prisoner in the tower, and she wants you to help free her!”
Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Page 16