by Sam Gafford
Reluctantly, Arthur and Amy walked away and went back to being the hosts. Mary stayed.
“So,” Mary said, “as I was saying, you’ve never seen art until you’ve been to France. The paintings they have there are unbelievable!”
“When did you go?” Ann asked. Her voice was filled with amazement and envy.
“Not that long ago. Walter took me. We hit all the museums and hot spots. I’ve never seen art such as they have in Paris. It is breathtaking. And the music! Ah, if you really want to be a singer, Ann, you have to go to Paris.”
“I would love to go there someday. But the future is so uncertain.”
Mary laughed. “No, it isn’t. The future is just as certain as the present or the past. It’s all the same.”
“What do you mean?” Ann asked.
“Only that everything exists at the same time. You can see the past or the future because they’re all here.”
“That”—I spoke slowly and my voice was dry and cracked—”sounds suspiciously like something that Arthur would say.”
“He speaks!” Mary laughed. “Yes, I suppose it does. Must be something about growing up in Wales, eh?”
“Ann,” I croaked, “I’m not feeling very well. I think I’d like to go home now.”
“Home?” Mary screamed. “Oh, I don’t think so. You can’t leave yet, Ann, the party’s just getting started.”
Mary grabbed Ann’s hand and pulled her out of the chair. “Come on, you promised that you were going to sing, didn’t you?”
Ann looked lost, and yet she had let go of my hand.
“Well, yes, but right now? Everyone’s so busy. Maybe later.”
“No,” Mary said, “right now is the perfect time. Let’s go, right over here.”
Mary pulled Ann over to the piano, where the pianist had been playing some calm, soothing melody. She waved to Arthur, who came over a bit too quickly and eagerly. While Ann talked to the pianist, Mary whispered in Arthur’s ear. He nodded and turned towards the party.
“Attention! May I have your attention please?” Arthur announced. People gradually stopped talking and looked at him. “We have an unexpected treat this evening. Miss Ann Simmons, a talented singer, has agreed to regale us with a song. I’m sure that you will find her voice to be as lovely as she is. Ann?”
Looking a little embarrassed, Ann cleared her throat and nodded to the pianist. He began playing a tune I had never heard before. It was in a moderate time signature (not too slow or too fast) but, it seemed to me, more than a little depressing.
“Scenes of my childhood arise before my gaze,
Bringing recollections of bygone happy days.
When down in the meadow in childhood I would roam,
No one’s left to cheer me now within that good old home,
Father and Mother, they have pass’d away;
Sister and brother, now lay beneath the clay,
But while life does remain to cheer me, I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from mother’s grave.”
Her voice was beautiful—more beautiful than I could have imagined. Soft and lilting, it rang with emotion and melancholy. I felt every word she sang as if it were my own heart that was breaking.
“Only a violet I pluck’d when but a boy,
And oft’time when I’m sad at heart this flow’r has giv’n me joy;
So while life does remain in memoriam I’ll retain,
This small violet I pluck’d from mother’s grave.”
I watched the people as Ann sang. They were enraptured, almost as if they were having a religious experience. Some swayed with the melody and others had their eyes closed because they could not bear to watch.
“Well I remember my dear old mother’s smile,
As she used to greet me when I returned from toil,
Always knitting in the old arm chair,
Father used to sit and read for all us children there,
But now all is silent around the good old home;
They all have left me in sorrow here to roam,
But while life does remain, in memoriam I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from mother’s grave.”
Standing nearby, off to the side, was Mary Kelly. She was mouthing the words as Ann sang them. I had the strange idea that it wasn’t really Ann signing but Mary singing through her.
“Only a violet I pluck’d when but a boy,
And oft’time when I’m sad at heart this flow’r has giv’n me joy;
So while life does remain in memoriam I’ll retain,
This small violet I pluck’d from mother’s grave.”
Ann finished and the room filled with applause. Even the reporters I had talked to earlier, who were the veritable symbol of cynicism, were smiling and applauding. Ann had won over the room and was, I was sure, destined for a long, fine career in the theatre. She had more talent than anyone I had ever known.
I shook my head. I felt as if I were just waking up from a dream and struggled to remember where I was and everything that had happened to me in the last few days. Burglaries, royal secrets, East End musclemen, dead women—and who knows what else was waiting? It was all getting to be too much for me.
“Did you like it, Albert?” Ann asked shyly. Even if I hadn’t thought it was the closest thing to an angel’s voice, I would not have been able to say differently.
“It was beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such beauty in my life—but what a strange song to choose! It was so sad.”
Ann smiled. “Oh, I know! I was going to go with something more cheerful, like ‘Champagne Charlie’ or ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart Now,’ but Mary suggested that song. Funny thing is that I wasn’t sure I remembered all the words, but I must have done something right because everyone seemed to love it.”
Suddenly Mary Kelly was there. “How could they not? You sang it so beautifully!”
Ann beamed more from Mary’s praise than my own. I had decided that the evening had been quite enough.
I was about to say this to Ann when Arthur suddenly stood up again.
“Attention! Your attention please! Lest you think that the entertainment has ended for the evening, I warn you that it is just beginning!”
Arthur walked up to a rather pale-looking fellow who looked as if he were about to fall apart on his feet.
“Our very good friend, the Honourable Robert James Lees, is going to conduct a séance for us! Do you dare to know the secrets of the other side? What horrors wait for you?”
The crowd had gasped at the name of Arthur’s poor victim, but not surprisingly I had no idea who that the fellow was. “Ann, do you know this man?”
Ann looked at me, and for the first time I felt that my ignorance had diminished me in her sight. “Of course, that is the Robert James Lees. He is the advisor to the Queen herself! I’ve heard that she consults him on all important decisions because he speaks to him for her.”
“Speaks to whom?”
“Prince Albert! He is a medium! The most amazing one in England.”
Mary scoffed. “Doesn’t look like a medium to me. More like an ‘extra-small.’”
Ann glared at Mary. “You shouldn’t make fun of such things, Mary. There are other worlds out there.”
I was certain I had heard such words before.
“You’ve been talking to Arthur too much,” Mary snickered. “I have enough problems with this world. I don’t need another one mucking about.”
Suddenly Sickert appeared behind Mary, sipping a drink. “Oh, Mary, you’d muck up any world you were in.”
Mary turned on her heel and glared at Sickert. Emboldened by drink, he met her gaze full on. I expected Mary to haul off and claw Sickert in the face, but to my surprise she smiled sweetly and spoke with just a hint of Welsh accent and Irish brogue. “And that’s just the way you love me, Walter, and you know it!”
“Come along, Ann,” Mary said, grabbing her hand, “you don’t want to miss your chance to
get a seat!”
Looking at Sickert, I suddenly realised that I hadn’t seen him for most of the evening. “Where have you been?” I asked.
Slurping his drink, Sickert slyly winked. “Enjoying this most delightful young maid of Arthur’s. Rose, I think her name is. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she is very vigorous!” He laughed at himself and then became deadly serious. “You remember what I told you? Don’t let her get too close to your lady friend. She has a way of changing people—and not for the better.”
I was about to ask what he meant when I heard Ann call my name. She waved at me and patted an empty seat around the dinner table. Several people had already taken seats, but most seemed to hold back. Lees was at the head of the table and Arthur was at the other end. My chair was next to him and I sank into it with an air of overwhelmed defeat.
“Feeling better, Albert?” Arthur asked. “Are you up for this?”
“Up for a ‘spook show’? I should imagine that I can make it through some parlour tricks.”
Both Arthur and Ann looked pained.
“You don’t believe in the afterlife?” said Lees, who was looking at me pointedly. It was the first time I had a chance to look fully at the man. His face was lean and his hair was dark and thin. His whole body looked like an exposed nerve. His most significant feature was his eyes. They were dark and piercing, with one of the fiercest gazes I had even seen.
The entire table turned to look at me.
I felt horribly uncomfortable. My throat went dry and my voice cracked. “N-no. Not particularly. I believe in the things that I can see and hold, not in spirits and will-o’-the-wisps.”
“Spoken like a true son of Cornwall,” Arthur said. “Pragmatic and practical.”
“Perhaps we can change your mind then, sir. Is everyone prepared?”
There were eight of us around the table. Lees and Arthur at the top and bottom, Ann and myself at Arthur’s left, with Amy at his right and three other people I had not yet met. One was a very severe gentleman whom I would have placed in his late sixties with some military breeding in him. Next to him sat a rather heavy woman who seemed far too eager for the séance to begin. On the other side of Ann was another woman who was elderly and wore an air of unsurmountable sadness about her.
Everyone nodded and a group of people gathered around behind us. I noticed that I could not see Mary Kelly anywhere and that Arthur was noticing that as well.
“Very well then, if someone will dim the gas a bit, we will begin.”
Someone, probably Rose, turned down the gas light and the room got terribly silent.
“Everyone please hold hands.”
“Oh? I thought that wasn’t needed for séances,” said Arthur.
Lees looked up. “It is more to mollify our sceptical guests so that they don’t think that I am doing some ‘mumbo-jumbo’ under the table.” Lees looked at me and I returned his gaze. I did not appreciate being made to feel uncomfortable or the ‘odd man out’ simply because I didn’t believe in ghosts.
We all clasped hands, and Lees bent his head and closed his eyes. “It is a difficult thing,” he said, “to speak with those beyond. Sometimes they come, sometimes they do not. We shall see if anyone out there wishes to communicate with us. Everyone at the table, try and think of someone you would like to talk to and maybe they will come to us.”
For several minutes nothing happened. I could hear people holding their breath and then exhaling. My own mouth began to get dry, and I found myself desperately wishing for something to drink. Everyone was watching Lees when his eyes suddenly flew open as if he had been stabbed.
His head turned to the elderly man across the table from Ann, and in a harsh, raspy voice he said, “Sergeant-Major? Is that you?”
I would have thought that someone had just ripped the man’s soul out of his body.
“T-teddy? Teddy Millwood? No, it can’t be you.”
“When did you get so OLD, Sergeant-Major? Have I been gone THAT long?”
I then saw a sight that I hope never to see again as long as I live. The man completely buckled from within and began sobbing uncontrollably. I was surprised that he managed to keep from breaking the human chain of hands.
“I’m sorry, Teddy!” he sobbed. “I’m so-so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I should have waited. I shouldn’t have sent you. I’m sorry.”
Lees glared at the man. There was no emotion in his face or eyes. He had become a blank slate upon which this spirit was writing his story.
“Don’t blame yourself, Sergeant-Major. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known that the relief troops were coming. You had to send for help and couldn’t risk waiting any longer. I’m just glad that I was able to help you and the blokes get through the line. Don’t punish yourself, sir, I’ve been resting easy for many years now. Your guilt brought me to you tonight.”
“But you were so young, Teddy. Too young.”
“Yeah, I was, but I’m at peace now, Sergeant-Major. I want you to be at peace too.”
“I—I’ll try, Teddy. I’ll try. God bless you, lad, God bless you.”
“I am, Sergeant-Major, I already am.”
With that, Lees’ head sunk back onto his chest. The old gentleman continued to weep, years full of tears that he had held back, but they didn’t sound so sorrowful now.
I looked around the table. Everyone there had expressions of an almost religious awe on their faces. Arthur and Ann seemed particularly enraptured. “Arthur,” I said, “what is this supposed to be?”
He looked pained. “It’s a window into another world, Albert. ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
I was about to respond when Lees made another sound. This one was softer, lighter, and much younger.
“Mother?” he said. When he looked up, it wasn’t through his eyes. They had grown softer, wider, and—perhaps it was a trick of the low light, but I could have sworn that they had changed colour as well. The voice was young and childlike. Not at all like the one who had spoken to the old soldier.
The old woman at Ann’s side sat up like a shot.
“Who is that?” she demanded. “Whose voice is that?”
“It’s me, Mother, Peter. Have you forgotten me?” The last part was spoken with such pain and sorrow that it nearly broke my heart.
“No,” the old woman said. She was shaking her head violently back and forth. “No, that is not my Peter. He died of consumption almost sixty years ago. You are a fraud, sir, that cannot be my son!”
“But it IS me, Mother! Why won’t you believe me? I’ve come so far to talk to you again.”
The woman was unmoving. “No. I will not believe it. The dead do not talk. It is against the very word of the Bible to say otherwise.”
“I died on October twenty-third, 1829, in our house at Gladringham. The weather had been raining all day and I was so cold. Don’t you remember?”
“You’ve done your homework, sir. But those are facts that anyone could have found out. That doesn’t convince me . . .”
“You left my room and went to yell at Tessie, my nurse. I called you to come back and stop yelling at her. It wasn’t her fault that I was sick. But you wouldn’t stop yelling. When you came back to the room, I was already dead.”
“What is your game, sir? Do you seek to rob me? That I will drop to my knees and beg forgiveness? I have buried two husbands, sir. I am made of sterner stuff than this.”
“You came back in the room and held me as you cried. Your tears fell down my cheek. You held the cross you had hung around my neck and cursed God. Don’t you remember?”
“I—I remember.” She seemed to crumble a bit and then recover her fortitude. “Answer me this, then, what did I sing to you?”
“It was the song you used to sing to me when I was a baby. A cradle lullaby.”
Lees then began to sing with a child’s voice.
“Sleep! The bird is in its nest;
Sleep! The bee is hushed in rest;
Sleep! Rocked on thy Mother’s breast!
Lullaby!
To thy Mother’s fond heart pressed,
Lullaby!”
The woman sat stone silent at the start, but with each word her resolve crumbed. When Lees began singing again, she joined in.
“Sleep then, sleep! My heart’s delight!
Sleep! And through the darksome night,
Round thy bed God’s angels bright
Lullaby!
Guard thee till I come with light!
Lullaby!”
Her head sank onto her chest, and I could hear the sound of her weeping. “Peter! Oh, Peter! I’ve missed you so much. Why did you have to die?”
“I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t want to leave you. Just as I don’t want to leave you now, but I have to.”
“WHY?” she nearly screamed. “Why do you have to leave me again?”
“Because there is something coming now. I can feel it getting closer. I’m scared, Mother. It’s bad and it’s VERY ANGRY.”
“What is it? What’s coming?” Arthur broke in, almost as eager for an answer as the old woman herself.
“It’s something that’s been waiting for a long time to come through. It’s been hiding, sneaking in the shadows, but it’s tired of waiting. It’s already gotten through once before and it’s getting ready to break through for good now. It’s so very hungry.”
The room got even darker. There was a heaviness in the air.
“Peter! No, please don’t go! I need to talk to you some more!”
“Mother! It’s here! Help me! Please help me!”
Lees began jerking back and forth in his seat, and his head jutted at an unnatural angle on his neck. His voice flipped between the child’s and the noise of some guttural animal. Then the child voice screamed.
There was some force running around the table behind us. The people watching were pushed to the floor. It moved with the sound of small booms faster and faster until it felt as if there were a hurricane circling us.
Suddenly Lees began yelling in his own voice.
“Black! Everything is blackness! It’s everywhere!”