Believing

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  It’s been such a long, difficult day.

  But it’s over now, she tells herself, yawning deeply as she folds back the quilt made of fabric squares from her mother’s childhood dresses.

  A sense of calm begins to seep into her aching body as she slips into bed.

  You can relax now.

  Yes. At last she can escape, if only for a little while, the lingering memory of what happened to her last night.

  She runs her fingertips over her mother’s emerald bracelet, trying to clear her brain.

  All she needs to do now is go . . . to . . . sleep . . .

  But she can’t.

  A telltale chill is creeping into the room like an unwelcome night visitor.

  Oh, no, Calla thinks wearily, reluctant to open her eyes. Please, no. Not tonight. I’m so exhausted.

  She burrows deeper into the covers, hoping that if she ignores it—whoever, whatever it is—it will go away.

  But she can feel persistent goose bumps raising the hair on her arms, and the air is quickly becoming saturated with a presence determined to make itself known.

  Finally, Calla allows her eyes to open.

  A figure is clearly visible in the darkened room, a few feet from the bed, watching her.

  Calla recognizes the apparition in a flash: Kaitlyn Riggs.

  But this time, for the first time ever, she’s smiling. Their eyes meet and she gives a little nod at Calla.

  Thank you.

  Kaitlyn’s heartfelt words echo in Calla’s head as she begins to fade.

  “You’re welcome,” Calla whispers, and she adds one last “Good-bye” before Kaitlyn disappears entirely.

  Knowing she’ll never see her again, Calla feels a twinge of sadness, yet mostly just relief.

  She yawns and allows her body to relax once again, her right hand wrapped comfortingly around the bracelet on her opposite wrist. The stones really do feel warm.

  It’s just the heat of your skin, she tells herself drowsily as she drifts off. That’s all . . .

  Her mother is waiting for her in a dream.

  Stephanie is in the professionally decorated, tropical-hued master bedroom in their house back in Tampa, getting dressed for work.

  Watching her, a conscious part of Calla’s brain is aware, somehow, that her mother thinks she’s alone in the house . . . yet she isn’t.

  A helpless voyeur, she watches her mother slip into a familiar pencil-slim charcoal gray skirt, then the matching suit jacket. Mom hums to herself as she fastens the row of round, shiny black buttons, then steps into a pair of high-heeled black Gucci pumps.

  Turning to her bureau, she reaches for the bottle of Calvin Klein perfume she always wore—she called it her signature scent. Calla sees the label on the bottle: it’s called Eternity.

  Mom sprays it, and Calla’s nostrils fill with the unmistakable smell of lilies of the valley.

  But how can that be? It doesn’t make sense, Calla thinks fuzzily. Eternity smells spicy, almost fruity. Nothing like lilies of the valley.

  That’s because you’re dreaming. Dreams don’t always make sense.

  Then again . . .

  This doesn’t feel like a dream.

  At first, it was almost as though she were watching a scene in a movie. But now, wrapped in the familiar floral scent that couldn’t have come out of a Calvin Klein bottle, Calla is gradually understanding that it’s all too real.

  She can vividly see every detail in the bedroom; can hear the far-off sound of the sprinkler system hissing across the lawn two stories beneath the closed window; can feel her feet walking in those tight, tall shoes.

  Yes, suddenly, she, Calla, is actually in the scene. Living it. She has morphed into her mother, has gone from bystander to experiencing the action through her mother’s eyes.

  She reaches toward the king-sized bed and lifts the edge of the Caribbean-blue quilt. Her fingers probe deep into the crevice between mattress and box spring. At last she finds it and pulls it out.

  A manila envelope.

  For a moment, she just looks at it, shaking her head.

  Then she whispers aloud into the empty room, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

  Leaving the room with the envelope in hand, she moves down the hall past the slightly open door to Calla’s room, toward the stairs.

  Only when she’s passed the bedroom and reached the head of the stairs does it occur to her that Calla’s door should be closed. Puzzled, she starts to turn to look back.

  In that stark, sickening, awful flash, she realizes that the door is now fully open, that someone was lurking there, that whoever it is has come up behind her and— Before she can see who it is, a pair of hands land roughly on her shoulders and push, hard.

  She lets out a shrill, terrifying scream.

  Then she’s falling, hurtling through space at first, then beginning to hit the hard wooden steps, and bounce, and hit again, screaming as bones shatter and flesh is bruised and torn open and ferocious pain explodes within—

  With a gasp, Calla sits up in bed, her heart pounding frantically.

  Oh. Oh, thank God.

  Dazed, she realizes that she’s safe.

  In Lily Dale.

  In Mom’s girlhood bed, beneath a quilt made from dresses Mom once wore, her mother’s emerald bracelet on her arm.

  She shudders, recalling every detail of a horrific nightmare that may not have been a nightmare at all.

  Because it felt real.

  So real it was almost like . . .

  A memory?

  Not her own, though.

  Mom’s.

  Did Calla just relive her mother’s last moments on earth?

  If so, then it really was murder.

  The envelope—it had to be the one Darrin gave her. What was in it?

  She was holding it when she fell. Calla was the one who found her at the foot of the stairs that awful day. There was no envelope. She’d have seen it. There was nothing but her mother’s broken, bloodied corpse.

  Someone wanted Stephanie Lauder Delaney dead. Someone pushed her to her death, then disappeared with the envelope.

  Who?

  And why?

  Calla takes a deep breath, exhales shakily, her entire body trembling as she realizes what she has to do.

  It’s time to use Lisa’s airline voucher and book a flight back to Tampa to do some digging around.

  I’ll find out what really happened. I promise you that, Mom. I’ll find out who did this to you . . . and I’ll make sure someone pays. Just like Phil Chase.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Growing up near Lily Dale, I was always fascinated by the mediums whose life work involved breaching the veil between the living and the dead. I perceived them as an enigmatic, magical group—closed off, of course, to us mere mortals.

  When, as an author, I began my professional research into the birthplace of spiritualism—and the spiritualists in Lily Dale—I was in for a surprise. The mediums couldn’t have been more welcoming or more willing to share their insights into the many connections between their world, my world, and, of course, the Other Side. They don’t subscribe to the magical mystic vs. mere mortal theory. According to them, while some of us are inherently more perceptive to spirit energy, we all have the ability to open ourselves to it. Just as with any other skill, it requires education, dedication, and practice.

  Like Calla in Believing, I was invited last March to sit in on an off-season Beginning Mediumship class in Lily Dale. My husband, Mark, insisted on driving me the ten remote, hilly miles from my hometown. I’ll confess that while I protested being chaperoned, I was secretly grateful. Lily Dale in broad daylight at the height of the summer season can be a spooky place. Imagine it off-season, on an icy, stormy night—which of course it was.

  Planning to wait in the car parked in the lakeside lot, Mark first walked me through the dark streets lined with largely deserted Victorian cottages to the class at the octagonal Mediums League building. There, we found an eclectic g
roup gathered in a circle around a flickering candle.

  Let me point out that my husband is a quiet, unassuming, tremendously supportive guy who regards my novelist research adventures with amusement—preferably from the sidelines. But the fledgling mediums wouldn’t hear of Mark waiting in the car for two hours. Nor—when he attempted to sit in a corner—would they hear of him breaking the circle. Flashing me a The Things I Do for You glare, Mark took his place in the circle.

  As the class progressed, led by Registered Medium Donna Riegel, we found ourselves completely engaged. When it came time for a hands-on exercise in billet-reading, we assumed we were just bystanders, but Donna invited us to give it a whirl. I was eager to try; my husband was—predictably— embarrassed and reluctant.

  Everyone privately wrote something on a slip of paper and put it into a bowl. In darkness, we passed it around and everyone took one. Clasping the folded slips, we meditated under Donna’s direction, asking the spirits to show us the answers to whatever was written there. Then, one by one, we tried to channel unseen energy to “read” the papers, or billets, without looking at them.

  Mark’s turn came quickly. He said nervously, “I obviously don’t know what I’m doing, so . . .” Donna encouraged him to try anyway. He confessed, “All I saw in my head was the name Jenn—spelled with two n’s. J-E-N-N. That’s it.” Donna told him to open the paper. Prominently written on it was the name Jeanne. J-E-A-N-N-E. We were all—including Mark— fairly astounded at how close he had come.

  I still tease my husband about having missed his psychic calling, and about putting up a shingle and taking up residence in Lily Dale. But the truth is, faced with the spiritualist philosophy that we are all capable of channeling unseen energy, I have to say . . . I, like Calla, find myself believing.

  ALSO BY WENDY CORSI STAUB

  Lily Dale:Awakening

  Copyright © 2008 by Wendy Corsi Staub All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  While Lily Dale, New York, is a real place, all the characters in this novel are fictional, having been created solely by the author and not based on real people, living or dead.

  First published in the United States of America in May 2008

  by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  E-book edition published in December 2010

  www.bloomsburykids.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Staub,Wendy Corsi.

  Lily Dale: believing / Wendy Corsi Staub.

  p. cm.

  Summary:After realizing that she shares her grandmother's psychic abilities, Calla decides to

  stay with her in Lily Dale, the spiritualist community where her mother grew up, even though her

  visions seem to be leading her toward danger.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-9656-1 • ISBN-10: 0-8027-9656-7 (hardcover)

  [1. Psychic abilities—Fiction. 2. Psychics—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Lily Dale

  (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title. II. Title: Believing.

  PZ7.S804Lil 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007032182

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2252-2 (e-book)