Elizabeth and Zenobia

by Jessica Miller

  ‘Oh!’ Zenobia clasped her hands together. ‘It’s like a solemn congregation of Spirits!’

  She was talking, I guessed, about the furniture veiled with white dust sheets. But Mrs Purswell, finished with the curtains, was soon whipping off the sheets and folding them into neat squares. And then the shrouded shapes weren’t spirits at all. Just furniture. But strange furniture. Dressers and sideboards and winged armchairs that looked like the serious grandparents of the furniture Mother had chosen for our house in the city.

  ‘Some people’—Zenobia eyed Mrs Purswell—‘have no regard for atmosphere.’

  I said nothing. I hoped the armchair-ghosts and sideboard-ghosts were the only spirits haunting Witheringe House.

  Zenobia’s scornful eyes were on me now. ‘Well, I hope you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘And there’s only one way to find out.’

  She took her watch from the folds of her dress and buffed it with her sleeve. Then, pretending to be interested in the needlepoint pattern of a cushion Mrs Purswell had just plumped, she began to swing the watch on its chain. It made slow silver circles in the gloom. This was from The World Beyond by Famed and Celebrated Clairvoyant Madame Lucent, Chapter Three: ‘How to Locate the Mysterious Presences at Work Around You, in Five Simple Steps’.

  Step One: To determine if a Spirit is Present in your Home or Surrounds, first Ostentatiously display something Shiny. Spirits, like Magpies, are attracted by things that Glint or Sparkle. Hold your Shiny Thing so it is easily visible and as you do so pay Close Attention to any Changes in the Atmosphere about you. Does a Door Creak? Do you Feel a sudden Chill? Does the mist of Spirit Breath appear on the Surface of your Shiny Thing?

  Zenobia stilled the watch’s chain and brought its ticking face closer to her own. She inspected it carefully.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘there was a faint misting on the watch case. But it’s gone now.’

  Mrs Purswell was talking with Father. ‘I shall give the house a good airing,’ she was saying, ‘and then I shall make up the bedrooms. I expect you’ll take the large bedroom closest to the library, Dr Murmur?’

  ‘Very good,’ said Father.

  ‘And for Miss Elizabeth—’ She looked me up and down. It was a look that made me want to stand up straighter. I pushed my shoulders down and uncurled my spine. ‘The only room suited to a child,’ she spoke over my head, ‘is the nursery.’

  I felt a creeping red come over my face. I was definitely too old for the nursery.

  ‘Not the nursery,’ said Father firmly. ‘In fact, Mrs Purswell, it won’t be necessary for you to open the East Wing at all. Nor for you to poke around in it, Elizabeth.’

  I nodded.

  ‘We will hardly need so much space,’ Father went on. ‘After all, we are only two.’

  ‘Three,’ said Zenobia. ‘We are three.’ And she unloosed a button from her cuff and let it fall to the carpet.

  Step Two: Find a Spare Button in your Sewing Box or Unloose one from About your Person. Drop it to the floor and let it Remain There for fifteen minutes at a Minimum. If, on your return, it has Disappeared, it has likely been taken by a Spirit. Spirits are forever losing their Buttons and will therefore take any that they see Unattended.

  Mrs Purswell looked at me, thoughtfully. ‘The blue guest bedroom then, sir?’ she said at last.

  ‘The blue guest bedroom,’ said Father, ‘will do very well.’

  The first dinner in the new house was mostly silent. Father sat at one end of the long polished table. Zenobia and I sat at the other. The dining room was dark and shadowy in its corners. From one of these corners, Mrs Purswell materialised. Her apron was very white against the darkness.

  ‘I expect’—she ladled soup into bowls—‘you’ll want something light after your journey.’

  The soup was pale green. An exploratory stirring revealed weedy leaves floating through it. I brought a spoonful to my mouth but before I could taste it, Zenobia cleared her throat.

  ‘Father,’ I said. And again, when he made no sign he had heard me, ‘Father!’

  His voice came down the table, faint and irritated. ‘Yes?’

  I angled my head at the place beside me. He looked, for a second, tired. Then he said, ‘Very well, Elizabeth. Mrs Purswell?’

  The shadows in the corner shifted and thickened and Mrs Purswell stepped out of them again. ‘I hope it’s not too much trouble,’ said Father, ‘but we need an extra setting by Elizabeth. Zenobia has joined us for dinner.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Mrs Purswell laid another bowl and spoon beside me. I liked her better for the incurious way she accepted Zenobia’s presence.

  Zenobia took up her spoon. She admired her reflection, first convex then concave, in its surface. Then she bit down on it hard. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Real silver.’ She pressed the bowl of the spoon into the deep hollow of her eye socket and grinned. ‘The kind they lie on dead men’s eyes.’

  ‘That’s not really dinner-table conversation,’ I told her, just like Mother used to tell Father in the old house whenever he talked too long about photosynthesis.

  Zenobia looked at me. She looked down the table at Father, whose eyes never lifted from his soup bowl. She looked at me again. ‘It’s the only conversation, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ she said. ‘You may as well not be here’—she jerked the spoon in Father’s direction—‘as far as he’s concerned.’

  My stomach twisted. I didn’t want Zenobia’s words to be true.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said and I searched about for something to say to Father.

  I raised myself up in my chair and made my voice very loud. ‘Do you find the house much changed, Father?’

  Father addressed his reply to his soup. ‘It is just as it was. Perhaps a little dustier.’

  ‘It must hold a lot of memories for you,’ I prompted.

  He looked up, spoon poised.

  ‘The house.’ My voice cracked. ‘The house must be full of memories. From when you were a child.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and he steered another weedy spoonful under his moustache.

  ‘I suppose,’ I went on, changing tack, ‘you’ll start your work tomorrow.’

  At the museum Father had been head of the Botanic Department. His resignation and his return to Witheringe Green would allow him to begin work on a new project: an improved system for the classification of native ferns and wildflowers. The old system, in his opinion, had room for improvement.

  ‘I expect to begin fieldwork shortly,’ he said.

  After this there was only the sound of our spoons sloshing through soup and clinking on the bottoms of our bowls.

  Zenobia put her elbows on the table. ‘The button is gone,’ she said.

  A gust of wind blew the chandelier above us back and forth. Zenobia’s face went bright and then shadowed and then bright again with the swaying light.

  ‘I’ve checked all the cobwebs as well,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t hard. Witheringe House is abundant with cobwebs.’

  Step Three: If your house is Inhabited by Spiders, observe their Cobwebs closely. A Spider will usually make its Gossamer Web by weaving in a Clockwise Direction. But Spiders are creatures Sensitive to the Presence of Spirits and if a Spirit is nearby, a Spider will weave its Web Widdershins.

  ‘And are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Widdershins,’ she said. ‘Definitely widdershins.’

  Zenobia took out her watch, opened its case, and laid it flat on the table. It was two minutes to eight. She watched its second hand tick twice around its face. Then she took up her fork, tested the tines on her finger, and held it in the air.

  Of course. Step Four.

  Step Four: With a Tuning Fork if you are able to Procure One, or a Salad Fork if you are not, Test for Spirit Vibrations in the Air at the time when the clock Strikes the Hour. The small spaces in time between one Hour and Another are the times when the veil that divides our Waking World from the World of the Spirits is at its most Per
meable: the closer to Midnight the Hour, the thinner the Veil between Worlds.

  Zenobia’s watch showed eight o’clock exactly. The chiming of a clock in another room started. The fork in Zenobia’s hand juddered and she dropped it on the table.

  The fork on the mahogany roused Father. ‘Are you feeling all right, Elizabeth?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I replied. But this was a lie. I was far from fine. In the old house, Zenobia had never got as far as Step Four. And this meant she had never progressed to Step Five. And Step Five didn’t bear thinking about.

  Step Five: If, having carried out these first Four Steps, you are Satisfied that you have Indeed Located a Mysterious Presence at work around you, it is Time to continue to the Fifth and Most Crucial Step in the process. For further information, Read On to the next chapter: Communing with the Spirit World (The Keys to Holding a Successful Séance).

  Would Zenobia really hold a séance?

  ‘We certainly will,’ she told me. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘You’ve gone quite pale,’ said Father. ‘I expect you’re tired. Why don’t you go to bed?’

  It was not a suggestion.

  Mrs Purswell showed me into the blue guest bedroom. Then she nodded and closed the door behind her. Her footsteps faded down the hallway. I looked around. ‘It’s very blue,’ I said at last.

  ‘Too blue.’ Zenobia wrinkled her nose. ‘I detest the colour blue.’

  ‘You detest all colours,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Not true. I like black.’

  ‘Black’s not a colour.’

  ‘I like certain shades of grey. And I like red. Not bright red. Red the colour of old blood. But there are none of those colours here.’

  ‘No. Just blue.’

  The wallpaper was a blue stripe and the curtains, along with the quilt that matched them, were a slippery sea-blue. The glass shade of the lamp was the blue colour of a medicine bottle and it gave a sick glow to everything it lit. Even the carpet was covered with faded blue flowers.

  Zenobia put her hands to her head. ‘Do you think, Elizabeth, a person can be allergic to the colour blue?’

  ‘Perhaps not allergic, exactly.’

  Zenobia sighed dramatically. ‘The sooner we put out the light the better,’ she said.

  ‘Will it be held in the dark then?’ My voice wobbled.

  ‘Of course it will be held in the dark,’ she said. ‘It’s a séance.’

  My heart wobbled. According to Father there were no such thing as ghosts.

  I took a long time washing and dressing for bed.

  There were old perfume bottles and tonic bottles—relics from past guests I imagined—scattered around the washbasin. I picked these up one by one. I put my nose to them or inspected the long-calcified powders they contained.

  According to Father, ghosts were the products of hysterical imaginations.

  I washed my neck and behind my ears. I unwound my hair from its two plaits and raked it through with my fingers.

  According to Father, Zenobia was the product of my hysterical imagination.

  And yet I could hear her behind me. Turning the pages of her book.

  ‘Now, Madame Lucent tells us,’ she said:

  ‘A séance is the meeting point between Our World and the World Beyond. A Crossroads at which we can Command the Spirits and be Commanded by them!

  ‘And—ooh!—this is interesting, Elizabeth. Listen.

  ‘Friends, when you Conduct a Séance, Expect only the Unexpected! Perhaps your Spirit is in Want of no more than Polite Conversation on a Topic such as the Weather. Perhaps your Spirit will make the Walls about You drip with Blood!

  ‘I wonder what sort of a Spirit ours will be. If it does prove to be the blood-dripping kind—’

  ‘Don’t, Zenobia!’

  ‘I was only going to say it might improve the wallpaper.’

  I splashed my face with water. In the dust-spotted mirror I saw that I looked scared, so I tried to make myself look brave.

  When I turned from my reflection I saw Zenobia had laid the necessary equipment on the carpet. A stubby candle in its holder. A matchbook. A length of twine. A silver ring. And the Ouija board, made from thin balsa wood and printed with the letters of the alphabet. On the board’s right side was marked the word ‘Yes’ and on its left side, ‘No’.

  ‘Could you turn out the light, Elizabeth?’ Zenobia said and she struck a match on the side of the matchbook.

  ‘Couldn’t we—’

  ‘Couldn’t we what?’

  ‘Couldn’t we keep the light on?’

  ‘If we must,’ she said. She cupped the candle so the flame would take, and she shook the match down to a thin ribbon of smoke.

  I sank down to the carpet. I bunched my nightgown in my hands so tight my fingers went white.

  Zenobia smiled at me through the candle flame. Then she threaded the silver ring onto the length of twine. She held it, with the ring swaying in the air above the wooden board.

  ‘Let us begin,’ she said.

  3

  THE SÉANCE

  Here.’ Zenobia thrust the ring at me and flung herself across the bed’s blue quilt, face-first among the pillows. When she spoke, her voice was muffled. ‘I don’t understand!’

  ‘I can’t hear you very well.’

  She lifted her head. ‘I said, I don’t understand. We followed Madame Lucent’s instructions exactly.’

  It was true, we had. We sat cross-legged on the floor with the index and middle fingers of our left hands pressed to opposite corners of the board. We asked all the suggested questions in the recommended order.

  O Spirit, what Moves you to Seek Beyond the Veil?

  O Spirit, why are you Restless?

  O Spirit, tell us of your Troubles!

  And all we got—

  ‘All we got were these!’ Zenobia waved her hand at the letters I had written with shaking hand on a piece of paper. ‘They don’t even make sense!’

  ‘I’m sure we can arrange them to spell out something,’ I soothed. ‘Didn’t Madame Lucent say we shouldn’t expect any message from the World Beyond to be straightforward?’

  ‘You can stop pretending you’re not secretly pleased,’ she snapped. ‘You didn’t want the séance to work in the first place.’ She let her head fall into the pillows again.

  And then the room went cold, and I went cold with it. Zenobia jerked up. Her eyes were sharp with excitement. The twine in my hand started to spin. The silver ring moved from letter to letter like it was being pulled by an invisible hand.

  T-C-K-I-K-N-G-O-E

  I wanted to drop the twine but my fingers were locked around it.

  N-L-P-A-E-E-S-D

  Finally, the twine slowed and stilled. The cold subsided, but the hairs on my arms and on my neck still stood straight up.

  Zenobia, as close to smiling as I had ever seen her, crouched beside me. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew there was a Spirit Presence at work. Now, what did it say?’

  I shook my head. ‘It moved so quickly. I couldn’t write the letters down.’

  ‘But what were they? Try to remember.’

  ‘There was an R. I think a K. More than one E.’

  My eye caught the flicking corner of the blue curtain. I gave the twine to Zenobia and went to the window.

  ‘More than one E,’ said Zenobia, ‘and what else? What other letters? What are you doing?’

  ‘I think I’ve found the Spirit Presence,’ I told her and I showed her the wide-open window. Another gust of wind blew in and once more the room went cold and the ring spun in hectic circles above the Ouija board.

  Zenobia let the twine drop from her hands. She looked sad. And then she looked angry.

  The candle guttered and blew out.

  The bulb in the blue lampshade splintered.

  The room went dark.

  ‘Was that necessary?’ I asked.

  ‘All that vile blueness was giving me a headache,’ she said.

  ‘But how wil
l I explain the broken lamp to Mrs Purswell?’

  ‘I wish you would be quiet, Elizabeth. I find myself overcome with exhaustion. I want only to sleep.’

  In darkness, I groped my way from the window to the bed. The mattress was hard and narrow. I slept with Zenobia’s icy body pressed close to mine and the wind—nothing more than the wind—troubling the window pane.

  When I pushed back the curtain in the morning (quietly, because Zenobia was still sleeping) I saw the fog had thinned. A silvery rain fell instead. The window of the blue guest bedroom, I saw now, looked out onto a ruined garden that struggled up the steep slope on which Witheringe House was built. It was dead, except for the places where it was overgrown with weeds. I spied a sundial, half-eaten by ivy, and a dark tangle of hedge that I realised, after I squinted at it some more, was supposed to be a maze. At the centre of the maze grew a tall tree. The tree had a dry, dead look. Its branches made sinister shapes against the gloomy sky, and I quickly turned my gaze away to a falling-down shed perched at the peak of the slope. It looked as if it had been built at the edge of the world.

  When at last I came away from the window, Zenobia was awake and sitting propped against a pile of pillows. Her book was open at Chapter Six. I saw the title over her shoulder: ‘Recalcitrant Spirits, Some Strategies’.

  Father was not in the dining room. A plate with crumbs and eggshells and a crumpled napkin sat on the table before his empty chair. I swallowed away my disappointment. I liked Father’s company at the breakfast table. Even if we didn’t speak, I liked to hear the rustle of his newspaper and the scrape of his knife against his toast.

  ‘Ten minutes to eight,’ said Zenobia, ‘and already done with breakfast.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ I defended him. ‘He did say he wanted to get an early start on his fieldwork.’ I turned to take my seat and collided, instead, with the stiff bodice of Mrs Purswell’s serge pinafore.