“Does this Madame Tamara have an address?”
“Follow the highway south and look for her sign. You can’t miss it,” he said, spitting on the ground again. “Just look for the sign.”
The Protege
TAMARA’S SIGN WAS, indeed, hard to miss. He half remembered passing it earlier before pulling into Greywood Bay. Neon depicted a red triangle with a blue eye set flush in the center. A yellow sun surrounded it all. The name MADAME TAMARA was emblazoned beneath it in glowing white. Dusty windows were painted with various services from Tarot cards to palm reading to crystal gazing. Below them sat credit cards decals, most of which had been scraped off.
“Unbelievable,” Dan mumbled as he closed the car door.
He had seen plenty of businesses like this spread across forgotten highways and rural areas, places where people turned to preachers and mysticism instead of reason and logic. He paid them little more attention than he did the magician who guessed someone’s weight at a circus. Another car sat in the otherwise empty front lot, a recent model German import, and he doubted it belonged to the same person who owned the old house.
The door jingled as he opened it and stepped into the waiting room. Like Mabel’s house, the room was decorated with dreamcatchers, crystals, and small idols. Three framed photos of Indian holy men hung on the wall opposite the couch. A jeweled frog that doubled as an incense holder belched streams of smoke. A Tibetan mandala adorned the wall and he pegged it as a hackneyed Chinese knockoff.
The waiting room was a converted foyer with a curtain of beads dividing it from a room behind it through which he saw three shapes sitting around a table. He walked over, pushed several beads aside and stood there in silence, observing the scene in the interior. A middle aged woman, whom he assumed to be Madame Tamara, sat on one side of a table and rocked back and forth like a palm tree in a tropical breeze. Her eyes were rolled back and her mouth was open, lip quivering in a whisper.
Across from her sat a couple around Dan’s age. One glance at their clothes and he knew they owned the car out front. The woman was dressed in a power suit and the man had a gold watch. They held hands, as if in a slight trance themselves, and Dan watched as the husband bit his lip and fought back tears.
“He says he loves you,” said Madame Tamara, as if the words were heavy and took all her energy to cough up. “He says, don’t be angry, don’t be sad... about...” she paused, blinking her eyes in quick succession, and for a brief moment she made eye contact with Dan. Then, she returned to the couple. “Don’t be angry about, a thing, a gift he wanted... something he asked for--”
“A bicycle,” said the husband, and he turned to his wife. She gave a desperate nod, an affirmation, and turned back to Tamara.
“That’s it, a bicycle. It was a present,” Madame Tamara continued.
“He wanted a bike for his birthday, but...” the wife trailed off.
Then the husband cut in. “I thought it was too dangerous. There were so many accidents in our neighborhood. He could have hurt himself and I...” The man swallowed hard and blinked. “It was all he talked about.”
“He says don’t worry, he’s happy now, it doesn’t hurt,” the psychic continued, eyes fluttering. “He says...” she paused and drew in a deep breath. “He says you were the best gifts of all. And he’ll always be thankful for the time he had.”
She exhaled and her whole body seemed to shrink, like an animal deflating after a predator had left. Or a cat, Dan thought. Then she blinked again, eyes glancing once again to Dan, then back to the couple as she shook her head.
“I’m so sorry. But sometimes, if the spirit is strong and at peace, the connection can’t be held for long. And his was as strong as any I’ve ever known.”
With those words the businesswoman burst into tears and fell into the comfort of her husband’s embrace. Madame Tamara slid the box of tissues to her. She took them, two at a time, wiping her eyes while her husband rubbed her neck and smiled. Dan realized there sat two broken people, two parents, or former parents. Had the other day’s events in the hot tub turned out different... well, he didn’t want to go there.
“Thank you so much,” said the businesswoman between sobs. “I can’t explain--”
“I know,” said Madame Tamara with a kind smile. “You don’t have to try. It’s my job, and tonight, it was an honor.”
It took several minutes for the woman to compose herself. Madame Tamara just sat there smiling, offering her tissue after tissue, nodding her head, and waving off the stream of gratitude. The husband handed her several hundred dollars but she didn’t count it. Instead, she placed it on the table next to a string of prayer beads and smiled at them as they got their coats and mumbled a final thank you.
Dan held the bead curtain open for them and the husband gave him a smile, a small nod of appreciation, and in his eyes Dan saw a deep sadness that betrayed his stoic exterior. Hours earlier, Dan thought, he’d probably been knee deep in equity trading but now, after hours, he was a thrall to some off ramp psychic in a no-name town.
After they left Madame Tamara put the money inside a small box next to a deep blue crystal globe then looked at Dan with puzzlement. “It’s a little late for a reading hon. ‘Fraid I’m about spent for the night.”
“Actually,” Dan said, and he stepped into the reading room. “I’m not here for that.”
Madame Tamara studied him for a moment, and he wondered if she already knew why he was here. Of course she doesn’t, he thought. She’s just a good at reading body language. A charlatan peddling fake souls to the bereaved.
“I see,” she nodded. “Well, in that case, I’ll let my hair down. Come on in to the kitchen.”
Whatever aura of mysticism the dim lights of the reading room gave her faded in the kitchen. Beneath the harsh light her thinning grey hair and freckled skin seemed to age with each minute she took in the news. He told her everything he knew about Mabel Halgrove, starting with the painting, his drive to Yuray Arts, and his discovery of her body a few hours ago. She never spoke, only listened while she boiled water, put tea bags in separate cups, poured hot water in, and sat across from him as he finished. He left out the gruesome details of her friend’s demise, opting simply to say that she had been dead for a while.
“That much I guessed,” she said, nodding at the news as if it were no worse than a parking ticket. “I’m sorry to hear that, and I appreciate you telling me. But I’m not all that surprised.”
“Not surprised? About what?”
“Her death, the painting, that creation, I’ve heard it already. She said it’d been, how’d she put it? Fermenting. Yes, that was the word. She said it’d been fermenting for a long time. And somehow, I knew, after she finished it, it’d be the last time I’d saw her.”
“I’m sorry,” Dan said, smiling at the absurd idea. “You sound like you actually think she painted it.”
“I don’t think she did, I know she did. Last two times I saw her, it was all she ever talked about.”
“So you saw her, I mean physically saw her put that paint on the canvas?”
“Didn’t need to. Ol’ Mabel was powerful, and so was our bond. I didn’t need to be beside her to know what she was birthing.”
Dan scoffed, a wide smile crossing his face. He felt like he was talking to Tommy, or worse, Jessica, and explaining that the closest wasn’t full of monsters and dolls didn’t talk.
“I’m sorry, but you do realize there is no way, I mean no physical way, a blind person could paint a picture with that level of detail, right? It’s impossible. Physically impossible.”
“Hon,” she said with a smile that only elevated his frustration. “I’ve seen things that would turn your hair as white as ash. Thirty years now I’ve watched old Mabel reach in to the nether and channel the dead. She taught me everything I know. And, compared to her, I’m not even an opening act.”
“You really expect me to believe this?” he said, feeling the glass buzz behind his eyes, annoyed at her t
heatrical words.
“I don’t really care what you believe. World’s round or the world’s flat, it’s all the same to me,” she said, blowing into her hands and then opening them as if releasing an invisible bird. “But the point remains, you’re sitting in a psychic’s kitchen, so a part of you must wonder as well.”
“Look, I just watched you fleece those folks. That couple back there? The bicycle? They told you everything. Anyone with a basic understanding of psychology could see that.”
“Ah, the Thompsons, lovely people. Tragic about their son, but those things do happen. Tell me, did they look like they felt fleeced to you? Or did they look happy?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No Mr. Rineheart, that is the point. What you want and what you need, they ain’t the same. Those two, they didn’t need a seance, and I probably couldn’t have given it to them. Their boy was far beyond the sight of my shores. What they needed, really, was a little sense of peace and hope after a tragedy, and a chance to say they were sorry. That, I could give them. Cheaper than therapy, and it doesn’t drag on for months. Try getting that from someone with a basic understanding of psychology.”
“But you lied to them.”
“They lied to themselves. We all do. Why? Because the truth, Mr. Rineheart, it doesn’t always give us the closure we need. Is that so bad?”
The chair squeaked as Dan leaned back and sipped the tea. “Okay, back to Mabel,” he said. “So was she like, how would you say? Possessed or something?”
“Possessed? No, no more so than a magnifying glass is possessed by the light that passes through it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she was special. Touched. Words only reduce her gift to vagaries.”
“Enlighten me.”
She sighed, tapped her fingers on the table and swirled her tea, and Dan thought for a moment maybe she was looking for answers at the bottom of the cup.
“Well, what are we doing here? Right now?” she asked, and waved her hand, pointing to the corners of the room.
“I don’t know, talking? Drinking tea? I’m getting a migraine.”
“You get many of those?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the table.
“I don’t know. At times, sure. Are you reading my fortune?”
“I’m not so sure I’d like what I saw,” she said. “But back to the question: what are we doing here? We’re existing, Dan. Existing. You, me, this table, these old chairs. It all exists here, in this room, in this world, in this reality that we all agree on, correct?”
“I suppose,” Dan said with a smirk.
“Uh-uh. There is no ‘I suppose.’ We’re dealing in absolutes because, as sane individuals, assuming you are sane--”
“--or you,” he added.
“Or myself,” she agreed. “Assuming we’re sane, we both agree that when I hold out this cup of tea,” and she held out her cup of tea, swirling it around as she continued. “...it is in fact, a cup of tea we both perceive, not a snake or a ball of spiders or a burning bush. Sound fair?” She raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Yeah, sounds fair,” he answered.
“Good. Now consider this cup of tea. Let’s say the tea’s the spirit and the cup’s the body, and for argument’s sake, we continue to agree. Spirt and body.”
“That’s a big leap for an atheist.”
“Even atheists put their faith in something, they just call it science.”
She smiled at him, then released the cup. Instinct kicked in and he reached out to catch it but he was too slow. It hit the kitchen tile and shattered, several large pieces spun across the floor and rattled. The rest sat in a starburst semicircle around the puddle of tea.
“Now tell me, where’s the soul?”
“Well,” he said, smiling at her theatrics. “It’s on your floor, that’s where.”
She got up, took a dishtowel from the sink and crouched over the mess, dabbing at it with the towel.
“Not just on the floor, but everywhere. In me, when I drank it. In the air, evaporating. And yes, on the floor.”
She wiped up a large pool of tea and held out the wet dishtowel.
“And sometimes, places or objects or people themselves, they act like a sponge. Spirits cling to them, get into their fabric. Using them to move from one place to the other, like tea from a bag to a cup to the floor and now into the sink.”
She twisted the dishtowel, beads of tea dripping between her knuckles and into the sink.
“And Mabel, oh the spirits did cling to her. If I were a candle, she was the sun.”
He bent down and scooped up a few remaining pieces of the broken cup. Tamara took them with a smile and dropped them in the garbage bin.
“I still don’t understand, physically, how she could have painted that picture.”
Tamara studied him for a moment then let out a disappointed sigh the same way Linda did with Jessica after hours of studying only to find her unable to remember a single word.
“Dan, you haven’t been listening. It wasn’t Mabel that painted it. She was just a medium, a conduit for the dead.”
She lifted her fingers, tapping her freckled cheeks just beneath each eye.
“And the dead, they aren’t blind.”
Bleed-Through
HE DIDN’T REMEMBER much of the drive home. He had left Madame Tamara’s not long after nine and crossed back over the southbound Golden Gate before midnight, his FasTrak box chirping as he sped through the toll lane. He had spent the drive rewinding the days events in his mind. They felt distant, detached, as if they’d happened to someone else, some character in a movie. He refused to believe that the painting sitting in his house right now was made by a blind lady who had ended up as food for half the cats in the county. A blind lady who channeled the dead and, if Tamara was to be believed, poured it out onto canvas like a human photo-printer.
It had to be a scam, a rouse, just like the one he’d seen Tamara pull on the couple who’d lost their child. An elaborate stunt to build a mythology around a single, obscure painting. It wouldn’t have been the first. There were stories, countless tales of cursed paintings or forbidden objects stolen from the tombs of Pharaohs or the coffers of dead Jews during wars. Unholy reliquaries and haunted wine boxes and paintings sold on eBay with warnings that said: BUYER BEWARE! Sometimes they even fetched incredible prices in private auctions. But in the end the stories were always revealed to be hoaxes and the sellers exposed as scam artists playing on people’s obsession with the supernatural.
But if it was a scam, he thought, it was an elaborate one. One that involved a dead body and a clock that tied it directly to him. And two notes, both written in that child-like scrawl. Had it been a child's hand that wrote it, or the hand of a blind old woman? A woman whose hands, if Tamara’s madness was to be believed, had jerked about between canvas and palette like the limbs of a marionette guided by an unseen master. A conduit, she had said, a conduit for the dead.
And what did the dead want?
He thought of his lecture, of the script he had memorized and recited with little thought. To be remembered, answered Mr. Glass, throbbing deep inside his grey matter. To be pulled through the fog of time and decay and neglect, pulled to the surface and shown to the world.
The alarm, now always on after dark, began it’s twenty second countdown by the back door. He put the combination in, pressed the star button, and the blinking red light turned green. Upstairs, footsteps echoed out, fast and hard, like a child out past his bedtime and sneaking back in. Tommy perhaps, playing his video games well into the night. Dan crossed through the dark kitchen, pausing for a moment as something gleaned off the wall in the moonlight. It was a firefly, flickering in the darkness. No, it wasn’t. It was something else.
That hole in the wall, the one made by the knife, had grown larger. Fissures had sprouted out of it like cobwebs, leaving wrinkles in the wallpaper. An electrical hum came from within the hole. Dan touched the hole, wet and soft
, then peeled a chunk of loose plaster out.
An insect wriggled forth, buzzing like a high voltage power line. He gasped, repulsed, as the thing clicked and buzzed, emitting that same high frequency noise and fluttering veiny, transparent wings. He recognized the insect, though he hadn’t seen one in years.
It was a cicada.
He didn’t kill it, though he wanted to. Instead he wrapped it in a tissue, put it inside a jam jar, and left it on the sill by Linda’s wilted roses. He tried not to think about how many more might be between the walls. Tomorrow he would call the exterminator and have them bug bomb the whole kitchen if need be.
He tiptoed up the stairs, passing through a cold draft that made him shiver, and as he reached the hallway the sound of a door shutting downstairs made him pause for a moment. He didn’t remember if he’d left the kitchen door open or not, and decided he must’ve left it ajar. The house was old after all, and it was only at night when everything was silent that its old bones creaked as it settled into sleep.
He stuck his head inside the kid’s room. Tommy was curled up on his side in the fetal position, the pillow over his head as if he had fallen asleep trying to block out some noise. Only his lower half stuck out from beneath that sports comforter.
Above him, Jessica slept in the middle of her bed. Her pillow was empty and her body lay curled and hidden beneath the sheets. Her stuffed toys and dolls were all lined up at the foot of her bed like little soldiers facing their commanding officer. Yet something was wrong with them.
All of her dolls and toys were missing their eyes. Some had empty holes in the fabric where buttons had been torn out, leaving behind torn thread or stuffing. Others, with hard plastic faces, had their eyes simply scratched off, as if by some sharp instrument. Dan gave the shape beneath the covers a gentle pat, felt it shift, and tiptoed out of the room, wincing at the static shock from the door knob.
He entered his bedroom, took off his shoes, and placed them on next to the wall, glancing at the shape of his wife asleep on her side beneath the covers. When he turned on the bathroom light the reflection in the mirror startled him. He looked older, more so than he remembered. Dark circles sat beneath his eyes that, in the overhead light, made his face seem like a mask or the corpse of a stranger. He didn’t often feel on the cusp of forty, but tonight he thought he looked the part.
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