by Mary Bowers
Carly, with the presence of mind of someone whose job is keeping track of everything and everybody, had brought the thick pillar candle from the lanai and shielded it with her hand as she ran, as if it were important to keep the original flame burning. Penetrating the confused crowd standing around the table, she placed the candle in the middle of the table, carefully avoiding the cat, and then retreated into the shadows.
She nodded at her crew, and without taking their eyes off their equipment, they nodded back.
Ed gazed longingly at his sound set-up, but decided he didn’t have time to get to it. He’d have to trust Wyatt and Elliott. Then, rebelling at the thought, he took his trusty little pocket recorder out and set it at the edge of the séance table. Finally, he threw himself down beside Taylor and grabbed his neighbor’s hands as if he were steeling himself for a double arm-wrestling contest. His grip on Taylor was particularly hard, but she didn’t seem to notice. She hadn’t taken the seat they had decided on for her, but Wyatt and Elliott smoothly made adjustments, as unruffled as the medium herself.
“I think I should get into the action now,” Teddy Force said suddenly, moving toward the séance table.
Carly blocked him.
From the table, hobbled by the chain of hands, Ed hissed, “The original group only. This isn’t the beginning of a new séance; the one from the lanai continues. She’s still in a trance, you idiot.”
“I could take Dobbs’s place.”
“Good grief, Teddy,” Ed said, shocked. “You’re not an amateur. You know better.”
Teddy seemed as if he wanted to argue, but Carly got in front of him again and stared him into silence. He rolled his eyes, stalked across the room and leaned up against a wall to watch from the one place in the world he hated the most: anywhere behind the camera. From two feet away, leaning against the same wall, Michael gave him a glance, then looked back to the table.
“The same, the same,” Ed was telling the other sitters. “Seat yourselves in the same order as before. Hands, hands.”
They groped for one another; in the rush of things, Britt banged an elbow on the table but managed not to cry out.
Taylor, utterly composed, waited. When Bastet stood and rearranged herself closer to her mistress, Tiffany gave a little shriek.
“Mark?” Taylor asked. “Mark?” She kept her eyes on the base of the candle but kept angling her head, as if listening for something.
“He’s gone,” she whispered after a few minutes. “I shouldn’t have asked him; he can’t do it. I’m so sorry, Mark. I was wrong to do this to you.”
She sighed, then refocused herself, and now her gaze was on her cat. Bastet sat quietly before her, unblinking.
“Alan,” she said, talking to the cat.
The cat glanced across the room at a particular armchair, then turned back until she was looking into eyes as green as her own: Taylor’s. Then the animal settled and relaxed onto the table, watching her mistress.
Taylor gazed back quietly for a moment, then dropped her own head and began to breathe deeply.
The room was silent for a full seven minutes. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Dobbs asked Ed, “Are we supposed to do something?” before Ed could make a growling noise to silence him.
“Yeah,” Teddy’s voice said behind them. “What are we supposed to do now? She’s asleep.”
“Shut up, Teddy,” Carly’s voice said quietly.
“I mean – ow!” Teddy stopped talking.
Another five minutes and twenty seconds went by, accurately timed by Ed using his atomic watch. He alone seemed have grown calm, even gratified, while everyone else grew impatient and began to stir.
There was a grumbling succession of unintelligible words from the opposite side of the table from Taylor, then Roy Angers cleared his throat and spoke up.
“Alan?” he said, looking up into the air. “You there, buddy?”
Taylor lifted her head in a mechanical way and looked directly across the table, her green eyes darkened by some trick of the candlelight, her face intent but relaxed.
“Alan?” Roy repeated, looking into the medium’s eyes. “Is that . . . your eyes! That’s weird.”
In a mere thread of a voice, Ed asked him, “Can you be more precise? What’s weird?”
“His eyes,” Roy said, and then he subsided, looking uneasy.
“Ask him a question,” Ed said in his new, attenuated voice.
Roy cleared his throat again and said, “Alan . . . that swatch of Margarita green you had painted on the back of the restaurant. You know – by the service door. It’s still there. I haven’t had it painted over.” He paused, surprised by a wave of emotion. Then, forcing himself, he went on. “You want me to go ahead with that green? We’re repainting when the Holidays are over.”
“No,” the voice from Taylor’s mouth said. “We talked about that. Remember? I told you; too yellow. I want the turquoise.”
Roy jerked back as if something had hit him in the face. He blinked a few times, tried to speak again, found his throat too dry, then steadied himself. “Oh, shit,” he said. Then he steadied himself again and leaned forward. “What do you want me to do, Alan? You know what I mean. That thing we were talking about at the beginning of the year. I’d like to go ahead with it. It can’t make any difference now. What do you say?”
There was a long enough pause that the sitters began to shift and glance around at one another.
Then, so abruptly that Tiffany gave another little scream, the answer came. “I already told you. No!”
“Yeah, I remember, but it’s all different now, right? Everything’s changed. Not that I need your permission, but as long as . . . I didn’t really expect this séance thing to work. It’s really you, isn’t it? I just thought I could – it’s really got nothing to do with you anymore – you shouldn’t be here – ” He stopped suddenly and looked around the table. Then he looked back at Taylor. “You understand now, right? You know why I had to do it. I don’t know why I’m even asking you. I’m going ahead with it, damn it, and if you don’t like it, haunt me.”
In half the previous voice, Taylor’s mouth formed the word, “No.”
“Screw you,” Roy said. “Why the hell did you have to show up, anyway? You’re dead!”
“Alan, is that you?” Wendy said suddenly, as if she couldn’t hold herself back anymore. She was shooting glances around the room, seeming to try to find him. “Alan, why did you leave me for that bitch? You know it was wrong, don’t you? She killed you, didn’t she?”
There was no answer.
“I know you can hear me,” Wendy said accusingly, suddenly zeroing in on Taylor. “Don’t you try to hide from me. I know you’re here. I don’t know anything about any green paint, but I know you, and I can feel you. You’re here.”
“Wendy, don’t,” came the voice. “Stop. Go away.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she shouted. “You already left me once. You don’t get to tell me to get lost again – not now! Alan, I loved you. I always loved you. Why did you leave me?”
“Keep holding her hand,” Ed warned as Kent moved closer to his mother and looked as if he were going to break the chain.
Suddenly Wendy stopped, angled her head and lowered her shoulders. She blinked in surprise. Then she made a little sob. “I can feel it now, Alan,” she said in a shaky voice. “You don’t have to say anything. I feel you again. Not the new you, trying to change yourself, making a fool of yourself. The real you. I can feel it all over me. The way we were that first time we went to the beach, remember? The ice cream sundae . . . you couldn’t afford to get two, so we both ate the one, together. And that movie. I’d already seen it with another guy, but when you asked me to go, I pretended I hadn’t and I went and saw it again, just because I wanted to see it with you. I didn’t even like that movie. I never told you about that until years later. Remember? It was good between us then, wasn’t it? Before kids and work and payroll and parties . . . and arthritis and knee replacem
ents and high blood pressure. Just you and me and an ice cream sundae at the beach. I remember it, Alan. Don’t you? You couldn’t forget – I know you couldn’t!”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks now, and her eyelids fluttered over trembling lips. “On the beach,” she said one last time, and then she subsided.
In the quiet that followed, Roy gently said, “You still love him, don’t you? After all he did to you, you still love him.”
Wendy lowered her head.
Ed was still observing sharply, watching every face, memorizing every nuance. Now that they sat at a round table, Ed had a better view of Kent, and something about the way he looked at his mother seemed to interest him. He nodded, as if something had been confirmed.
After Wendy had taken over the connection to Alan, Roy’s head had steadily lowered, as if he were thinking things over. Without lifting his head again, he said, “Good-bye, Alan. You’re a selfish bastard, but you were a good businessman, I’ll grant you that. We went through a lot together. But I’ve understood you for a while now, and this hasn’t changed anything. Go on off to . . . wherever it is. Just go, okay? It’s time for you to go.”
“No.”
“You’re dead!” Roy said savagely. “Go away!”
Britt was still holding Roy’s left hand, and he leaned in and said, “Mr. Angers, it’s all right. Calm down now. We’ll talk later. Everything will work out just fine; you’ll see.”
“Do nothing. Do nothing. Do nothing.” Taylor’s head gently nodded forward as she babbled the two words over and over until her voice failed. As Taylor’s head went down, the cat rose up, staring.
There was a general feeling of something being finished, and this time as the room went quiet, nobody was restless. Wendy sniffed quietly, and Roy occasionally shook his head. Britt watched Roy intently, but he never spoke. Nobody said or did anything, or seemed to want anything else to happen.
When Taylor finally lifted her head and inhaled, Tiffany cried out, “Stop it! No more! I can’t take anymore.”
Looking around, blinking, Taylor said, “What happened?” in a completely natural tone of voice.
Britt began to laugh, a full-on, you-can’t-make-a-fool-out-of-me laugh, loud and sarcastic.
“You see, Tiffy?” he said, “it’s all been fake. Nothing to be afraid of. No big deal. You almost had us going there, Taylor, but that ‘Where am I what happened?’ bit at the end was just too scripted. Ruined the whole act. Still, I’d say she put on a good show, didn’t she?” he asked, looking around for agreement.
Nobody paid any attention to him except for Taylor, who looked at him quizzically and said, “Did you say you went kayaking today?”
Chapter 20
The lights went on, the candle went out and the cat jumped down from the table, all at the same time. The séance sitters looked around at one another blinking, and everybody began to breathe normally.
Roy Angers got up first. “Well, I guess I got my money’s worth,” he said grudgingly, coming around the table to stand over Taylor. He slipped a folded check out of his shirt pocket and threw it down in front of her. “There’s my share. You can get the rest from Wendy and Carly. They agreed to split the fee with me. He was really here, wasn’t he?”
“You tell me,” she said.
He stared hard at her for a moment, jerked his head in an obscure way, then turned to walk out of the room, muttering about needing a drink.
After watching him go, Taylor looked back to Britt and opened her mouth to speak.
“Good God,” Kent Pissarro said before she could get a word out. “That’s a hell of an act you’ve got there. I don’t know what to make of it, but I’m damn glad it’s over. Come on, Mom.” He got to his feet and helped his mother to rise.
“He was here,” Wendy said, looking directly at her son. “Didn’t you feel it?” Her face was radiant, and the tear stains only made her skin look moist and young. “Your father was here. I know it. And you know what? It’s all right now. I understand. He loved me. He always loved me. He knows now that he made a mistake. If he had lived – if that creature hadn’t killed him – he would have come back to me. That must have been why she killed him – because she did kill him. I know that now. He was going to leave her and come back to me and she shot him.”
Kent held her by the shoulders, looking down at her with deep concern.
Everyone was watching them except for Taylor, who was looking at Britt. “I was going to ask you something,” she said groggily. “Something about . . . .”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Kent said, turning on Taylor savagely. “What are you talking about? The act is over. Stop trying to impress us.”
Taylor looked at him somewhat distantly, and without any rancor she asked him, “Why are you so upset? You don’t seem like the type that believes in ghosts.”
Surprising everyone including his mother, Kent said, “I never thought I did. Not until he tried to kill me.” He looked up in the air. “He’s gone now, right?”
“How did he try to kill you?” Ed asked, quivering.
“With his car. I was driving it, and it . . . tried to run off the road. Into a tree.” He stopped, rubbing his eyes.
Ed started to ask the obvious questions, but Taylor said, “Jessamine was letting you drive it? Why?”
“Mine was acting up,” he said sharply. “It was my own father’s car. Why shouldn’t I drive it?”
“Kent, don’t,” his mother said. “And don’t take this out on Taylor. She only did what we asked her to do. Here’s my share of the fee. It was . . . it was really worth it,” she added, starting to break down again. “I think you’ve saved me about ten years of therapy. I’m all right now. It was all just a terrible mistake.”
“Come on, Mom,” Kent said, taking Wendy’s arm and trying to guide her from the room.
“Wendy, wait,” Taylor said.
In spite of her son dragging her toward the door, Wendy stopped and turned back.
Taylor took the long strand of agate beads from around her own neck and gently draped it around Wendy’s.
“Thank you for letting me wear them, but you need them now, more than ever.”
“Why do you say that?”
Without giving her a chance to answer, Kent said, “Yeah, whatever. Wait – are those Grandma’s beads?” He glared at Taylor, then took his mother’s arm and finally managed to get her out of the room.
Tiffany walked up to Taylor and stopped, a strange look on her face. “He let me have that car,” she said in a hurt little voice. “He never said anything about it trying to kill him, and he let Jessamine give it to me.”
Taylor just looked at her.
Britt came up and took Tiffany’s arm, saying to Taylor, “I still say it was a damn good show. You’re good. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Then he guided Tiffany out of the room.
The room seemed suddenly empty, and Taylor looked around. Only Michael and the crew from Haunt or Hoax? were still in the room. Even her cat was gone. She glanced at Alan Pissarro’s favorite recliner and felt nothing.
“Okay, that’s a wrap,” Carly said from somewhere in the corner.
There was a general exhaling and relaxing, and Dobbs said, “My first séance. That was awesome! I never realized they could be so . . . awesome. You know?”
Teddy gave him a disgusted look, stood himself up from where he’d been leaning against the wall and walked over to Carly to harangue her about not being allowed into the circle. The crewmen started handling their equipment normally, no longer trying to be quiet.
“We could do additional footage,” Teddy suggested. “Right here, right now, while we’ve still got the room. Cut me in somehow, as an omnipresent observer. I could add voice-over in post-production, tying it all together.”
“Seriously, Teddy?” Carly said witheringly. “It’s perfect. It’s whole. We’re not editing this. We’ll do the usual wrap-up, but we’re not cutting into this with a few cheesy remarks from the voice in
the sky, got it?”
Teddy retracted himself, fuming.
“Funny that Porter wouldn’t come into the room,” Wyatt commented.
“What did you want him to do,” Carly asked, “sit down at the table and hold somebody’s hand?”
“You know he never comes around that cat,” Elliott said. “He’s probably in the kitchen, going through the garbage. He wouldn’t even come onto the lanai with us. We’ll have to figure out how to work that into the narrative – canine vs. feline vibes, or dueling familiars. Something like that.”
“Porter is not a familiar,” Teddy said loftily. “He is a sensitive in his own right.”
Behind Teddy’s back, Wyatt and Elliott shared a deadpan look.
“All right, kids,” Carly said, “let’s pack it up and get out of here. I’ve still got time to make it to the Halloween party at The Oasis. Good show, everybody.”
Ed glared at her. “Show!” he muttered, exasperated.
“Um, aren’t we forgetting something?” Taylor said.
“No,” Ed answered. “I feel the séance is definitely over, though the results, as always were confusing.”
“I’m not talking about that. Carly? Have you got the checkbook handy? I think you said your share was $200, but of course, you can make your donation larger, if you wish. Make it out to Orphans of the Storm.”
“I don’t carry that kind of thing with me to a shoot,” Carly said smoothly. “I’ll send you the money when I get back to my office.”
“Nice try,” Taylor countered. “You don’t have an office. You run this operation out of that van in the driveway. If you don’t have a check out there, you can take up a collection and give me cash.”
“Taylor,” Ed said, earnest and serious, “when I get home tonight I will make the donation through the website. You have my word.”
Taylor paused for effect, then said, “Good enough.”
Wyatt and Elliott, after pausing worriedly, finished packing their equipment as fast as they could and stood up. Taylor was between them and the door, and they seemed to hesitate, wanting somebody else to get by her first.