by Devon Glenn
Emily turned around in her seat. “Oh, I know. I lost the card you gave me. Sadie said it would throw off her accounting if we didn’t put something in the register.” She turned around and resumed typing.
“So Sadie told me.” Elerick placed the envelope on Emily’s desk, then sat down on her bed and sighed. “I never should have brought you to the spa. It’s put us both in a bad position. Sadie figured out what we were doing in there.”
“No, she didn’t.” Emily scoffed. “She was staring at her phone the whole time.”
“I’m pretty sure she did. She said the whales were singing too loud.”
Emily burst out laughing. “Well, she’s picky about music.”
“Emily, we were the whales she was referring to. We were being too loud.”
“I thought we blended perfectly with the pan flutes.”
“That’s what I told…” He shook his head. “Look, I’m a licensed massage therapist. Every day, the clients get on the table, I perform the perfectly innocent services listed in the brochure, and I collect the fee. I don’t seduce my clients. If I do, this whole thing falls apart, and I am just a greased-up gigolo who rubs naked people with oil. Do you understand that?”
“I do. But where are we supposed to go to be alone? This is where we live.”
“I get that. But next time, we have to be more careful. It’s not worth losing this job—or you.”
“Fair enough,” Emily said. “But don’t worry; I doubt Sadie will tell anyone. It’s kind of an awkward conversation to have with your grandparents.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Elerick relaxed. “Sorry to interrupt. Do you want to get back to whatever you were doing on the computer?”
Emily shook her head. “No, you should see this. Orbies is blowing up right now.”
Elerick moved behind Emily’s chair. He placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed the top of her head while Emily retrieved her tablet to show him what she had been working on. She had so many people asking her to identify orbs and host chat sessions for them that she had a waiting list.
As soon as she pulled up a new window, she saw that an instant message was blinking at her on the screen. To her surprise, it wasn’t from a living person hoping to reconnect with a loved one: it was from Wheels, the accident victim who had told her she’d be getting an email.
Wheels: Hi, Angel. How about some one-on-one time?
Emily: Hey, Wheels. Good to see someone I know on this thing. Do you want to talk to your parents or something?
Wheels: No, I want to talk to you.
Emily: I’m kind of busy right now. What’s up?
Wheels: Ever since I saw you at your inn, I just can’t stop thinking about you. I was hoping you felt the same way.
Emily took her hands off the keyboard and leaned back in her seat. She didn’t know whether she should be flattered or sad. She went with sad—spirits, in her experience, never formed attachments like that to the living. He must still be in the ghost realm.
She forgot for a moment that Elerick was standing right behind her, reading every word.
“Why would you show me this, Emily?” Elerick asked, his voice cracking. “So you’re just using this site to pick up guys? Who is this person?”
“No, of course not.” Emily stood up. “I’m so sorry. I’ll tell Wheels that you’re here, and he can explain the whole thing to you.” She tried to pull Elerick into a hug, but he blocked her arms with his hands.
“You’re not yourself right now,” Elerick said, backing away from her. “I tried to protect you with the energy work, but it seems to be making you hedonistic. I must have done it wrong. I told you: I don’t have any formal training. I shouldn’t even be doing this.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
Her words fell on deaf ears. “You shouldn’t be online right now,” Elerick said. “You’re way too vulnerable.”
“Too vulnerable for what?”
“Just promise me you’ll stay in your room until the effects of the massage wear off. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll check on you later.”
“Where are you going?”
“To go rethink my life choices.”
Elerick climbed up the stepladder and hoisted himself into the vent to go back to his room.
“I’m doing an Orbies meetup at my séance tonight,” Emily called after him. “You’re coming, right?”
“If it means I get to keep an eye on you,” he said. “But this discussion isn’t over.”
Oh my god, Emily thought as she turned back to her screen. Elerick was being melodramatic. She’d deal with him later. First, she’d give Wheels a piece of her mind.
Emily: I thought you were crossing over to visit your grandparents.
Wheels: I changed my mind.
Emily: You’re dead. We can’t be together.
Wheels: That’s where you’re wrong.
Emily’s heart was pounding out of her chest. The living, breathing Wheels was already dead and buried. His choices, as far as she knew, were to stay in limbo as a ghost or cross over—preferably the latter.
Emily: How are you writing to me, anyway? Are you using the instant messaging tool?
Wheels: Ha. Let me show you what that would look like.
Wheels: Sorry for your loss. Peaches. Grandpa. Sandwiches. These responses suck, Emily.
Emily: Those are from my reading with Melody. Is that what comes up in the auto-fill?
Wheels: Ding ding! Good thing I can type over them.
Emily: What do you mean you can type over them? Ghosts can’t type.
Wheels responded not with another sentence, but with a symbol from the Orbies emoji keyboard. It was a pair of binoculars. She had been right about the emoji: ghosts who were limited on words could easily use symbols, and there was no mistaking what Wheels was telling her now. Emily shivered at the thought.
Emily: Where are you right now?
Wheels: I’m a few doors down. Hannah the Towel Lady, as you like to call her, has her video chat open on her tablet. So the computer is all mine.
Emily: Where is she?
Wheels: On her bed, trying to impress some dude on the internet with her saggy peaches. Boobs, not peaches. Auto-fill is the worst.
Emily: Gross. Get out of her room. That’s so rude.
Wheels: Not until you answer my question. Do you feel the same way?
Emily: No, Wheels, I don’t. I’m sorry, but I’m seeing someone.
Wheels: Sorry for your loss.
Emily: You haven’t been talking to some charlatan promising a shortcut back to the mortal world, have you? Because there aren’t any. Please let me help you cross over.
She started to type the last sentence but quickly erased it. Emily’s mind was already wandering back to Elerick, who had looked so disappointed in her when he left that she felt like she had just been caught kicking a puppy. Wheels clearly needed her help, but it was unnerving how easily she was pulled from her real life to respond to someone else’s drama.
“You caught me at a bad time, Wheels,” she wrote instead. “I promise we’ll sort this out later, but right now I’ve got to get ready for my séance tonight.”
CHAPTER 30
A bra, a boat, and
a novelty pen
Emily turned up the gas, lit a match, and watched the flames burst over the ceramic logs inside the retrofitted fireplace. She had to keep the room warm for when the guests arrived. She held no greater power than the power of suggestion, and as she talked about the spirits who floated in and out of the room during the séance, many of the guests would report feeling cold spots. Emily was always quick to point to out to the skeptics that the room had sufficient heat.
“Am I the first one here?” asked Hannah, walking into the séance room with a photo album tucked under her arm.
Emily pulled t
he good armchair close to the fire and motioned for her to sit. “Yes, and I just got the fire going,” Emily said. Hannah had thick blond hair, a reddened face, and a loose cotton sundress that looked like it had come from a resort gift shop. Emily could only assume that, in addition to being perennially short on towels, the Towel Lady was also missing her winter wardrobe.
“That’s OK, hon,” Hannah said. “It’s so warm in here already, I think I’ll take a seat by the door and watch the others come in.”
In groups of twos and threes the others arrived, filling all ten seats, some of which had been pulled in from other rooms and arranged in a semicircle around Emily’s chair. A young couple sat in the opposite corner, whispering conspiratorially while they uncorked a bottle of champagne. Three middle-aged women in track suits crowded into a love seat, while a retired couple pulled their chairs closer together, and closer to Emily. Two of Joan’s friends from the arts commission sat upright in their seats, nodding at Emily with approval at the arrangement, notably the snack table.
“Help yourself to some wine and cheese,” Emily said to the crowd. “Spirits are attracted to positive energy—the kind that can only come from eating dairy products.”
The crowd laughed nervously. Outside, Joan stuck her head in the doorway to officiate. “I see you’ve all met Emily,” she said. “Enjoy the show. Tai, Liz—if you need anything, I’ll be in my office.” Joan’s friends gave her a wave and settled into their seats, their plates piled high with Gouda and Brie.
Emily counted to thirty, telling herself that she was waiting for her guests to finish getting their cheese, but she was really giving a few more seconds for Elerick to show up. When he didn’t, she plugged her mother’s laptop into the wall, took a deep breath, and sat up straight in her chair. She wore a long black dress with a green shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, with wisps falling around her face.
“Lady, you look like the doll across the street,” Tai said with a laugh. Liz kicked him. Emily’s resemblance to the mannequin on display outside Madame Selena’s haunted dinner theater was uncanny. Seated in a rocking chair on the porch, the doll wore a replica of Emily’s favorite green shawl and her signature shade of red lipstick. Selena Jacobs had done this on purpose, Emily knew.
“Never touch that doll—it’s evil,” Emily said. The others looked at her with alarm. “I’m kidding,” she said. “Moving on. I’m glad you’re all here tonight, instead of Madame Selena’s.”
Emily pointed to a large portrait hung over the fireplace, showing a young woman with intense gray eyes and shining white hair, the corners of her mouth turned down in the perpetual solemnity of history. “In the late nineteenth century, a spinster named Darthilda Crossing also held séances in Cape May,” she said. The three ladies on the loveseat leaned forward with interest. “She lived with her parents and channeled spirits for her neighbors and the guests who came into town over summer.”
Emily paused as her own words hit a little too close to home. She suddenly wanted to change her introductory speech. Every word. But there wasn’t time for that.
She cleared her throat. “She spent a lot of time in this hotel because she was a close friend of the innkeeper and his wife. The owners even bequeathed her the hotel when they died so that she could continue her séances in this very room. Unfortunately, Darthilda was killed in the same nor’easter that took the innkeeper’s wife. And the innkeeper followed them both into death shortly thereafter.”
“Does Darthilda haunt the inn?” Liz asked.
“Many people have reported hearing a voice coming from the séance room when no one is supposed to be here,” Emily said. “I’ve seen her here myself, and I believe that she may still be working as a medium…from the Other Side.”
The guests murmured.
“Maybe she’ll help me channel spirits tonight.” Emily leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I’ll also be using Orbies. I wonder what she would have thought about contacting spirits on the internet. Or the internet in general. Has anyone used Orbies before?”
Tai, Liz, and a few others raised their hands.
“Good. As soon as I make contact with the orbs, we should be able to see their responses on the screen so that you can experience the connection right along with me.”
“I’m going to need my glasses,” one woman complained.
“Don’t worry about that.” Emily turned on the projector that she had hooked up to the laptop. “Can everyone see the screen?”
The Orbies homepage appeared on the blank wall opposite the fireplace. The one woman put her glasses back in her purse, and the others nodded in agreement.
“I’m going to relax right now—kind of like meditating—and ask the spirits who might be listening to come in, one by one, and say their names.” Emily took a deep breath and waited for the air to change.
In the corner of her eye she could see a middle-aged woman holding up her bra and smiling. The bra was heavily padded—much more so than any push-up bra that Emily had seen. “Katherine,” the woman seemed to say. Of course the first spirit in the room wanted to talk about her underwear.
Emily looked around the room, and as she did, Katherine walked behind the love seat where the three women were sitting. “I’m hearing a name like Katherine,” Emily said. Sometimes the words were so clear it was as if someone had put an earbud in one of her ears. Other times the name was just an idea that floated into her mind, like a daydream. Katherine was giving her more visuals than audio.
Emily motioned in the direction of the three women, who were all looking at each other but otherwise didn’t respond. “It’s coming from your direction, ladies,” Emily said. “She’s showing me, excuse me, a bra that’s got a lot of padding in it.”
On the screen, a bra emoji appeared. Emily looked at the sender of the message: it was from Katherine, Elerick’s mother. She remembered the screen name from the night she first connected with Elerick. Now, instead of his picture, she saw the image of an older woman in running gear. She had fairer skin than Elerick, but her eyes were the same. She was lean, tall, and wore her dark hair in a short ponytail. The three women turned to each other and whispered.
In response, Katherine mimed tossing the bra over her shoulder and touched her toes, lifting one heel, then the other.
“She’s thrown the bra over her shoulder and now she’s touching her toes,” Emily continued. “Wait…now she’s jogging in place.”
On the screen, a running shoe appeared next to the bra.
Katherine was just about to lift up her shirt, when her friends intervened.
“Should we tell her, Indra?” one woman whispered to her friend. Indra nodded and cleared her throat.
“That’s my sister, Katherine,” she said. “She decided not to get reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy, so she used to wear this bra that had prosthetics inside.”
Indra’s friend continued. “She died of breast cancer last year, and the three of us girls—”
“Who must seem ancient to you,” the third woman spoke up. Indra laughed out loud.
“We’re training for a half marathon to raise money for breast cancer,” the first woman explained.
Katherine looked at Emily and held up two fingers, then pointed to her wrist. “Two? Two o’clock?” Emily looked at the three ladies for help. “She’s showing me her wristwatch and giving me the number two.”
A watch became the third emoji of the reading. Looking at the symbols on the screen, Emily realized with satisfaction that there was no way that this app alone could take the place of a medium translating between this world and the next. But she had to admit that Katherine was using the emoji well.
“Two hours!” Indra exclaimed. “That’s the time we were going for the last time we ran together. It’s pretty ambitious, but Katherine got all the way down to two hours and fifteen m
inutes before the cancer came back. She trained pretty hard—she was a very active person.” Indra’s voice started to wobble.
Emily sighed. “Katherine is telling me that—again, sorry—her flat boobs made her run faster.”
Indra swallowed her tears and smiled.
“She was more aerodynamic after her surgery,” the third woman agreed.
“Katherine wants you to beat her time,” Emily told Indra. “She thinks you can do it, and she’ll be with you every time you run. She says she’ll meet you at the finish line.”
The door creaked, and for half a second Emily imagined that Katherine had opened it herself. But as it swung, Elerick appeared on the other side, bumping into a chair and righting it before it toppled over. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, looking sheepish as everyone turned around to stare at him.
“You’re just in time, El,” Indra said softly. “Your mom’s here.”
Emily wondered why Elerick hadn’t told her that his aunt was coming. Then again, she could only imagine how Elerick must have felt losing a parent. He didn’t seem to like setting up his mom’s Orbies profile—how would he handle a full in-person reading with his aunt and her friends? Her voice faltered as she tried to figure out what to say. Katherine persisted, growing brighter and fuller in Emily’s consciousness until Emily found her footing.
“You should be glad you missed the first part,” Emily said to lighten the mood. “Your mom was waving her bra around.”
Elerick choked out a laugh, then braced himself for the confrontation he had been dreading all year: the moment when his mother would come through from the Other Side to say goodbye. Once he saw her, he would know that she was really gone. Somehow Emily had known better than to torture him with hugs and tears. Elerick suddenly felt the urge to hear his mother’s too-loud voice again and to introduce her properly to Emily. He opened himself to the spirit world and willed Katherine to show herself to him as well.
“There’s my handsome son!” she said. Katherine’s dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the hard, tired lines around her eyes were gone. “Your girlfriend needs to get her hearing checked.”