“Why would you say that?”
“Because it only ran for a few minutes at a time. All that work, all that money spent on fuel and machinery, and looking back now I can say for certain: It was mostly for the sake of theatrics.”
“But it killed people. It terrorized them.”
“Excessively, yes.”
The hostess brought the oatmeal and fruit and promised Alice toast and jam to come. She thanked her and said, “Then the flame projector did its job, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but at what cost? If the eight or ten of us had been given Gatling guns we could’ve done more damage to the enemy. Although . . .” I slipped a bite of ham under the tablecloth. Felipe slurped it down. “Fear is a weapon, too, as I know better than anyone. And it was . . . my God, it was a frightful thing to behold.”
“There you go, then.” Her tears now mostly dried, Alice reluctantly withdrew from the subject and less reluctantly saw to her breakfast.
I saw to my coffee.
We both finished up, but when it was time to leave the table for someone else’s breakfast and coffee needs, Alice was not quite finished with me. She braced herself as if she were preparing to propose something unthinkable. She took a deep breath, released it, and said in a dramatic fashion: “Tomás, I want to read you.”
“Read me?”
“Yes, like when I held your hand in the service—but in a more controlled fashion. I’ve asked Dolores Brigham for use of the fellowship hall this morning. No one else needs it for anything, so we can have a little room, and a little peace and quiet.”
“What do you hope to see, when you ‘read’ me?”
“It’s more about what you hope to find. You want to reach your wife, don’t you? You came here for help? Isn’t that what this is all about?”
I set Felipe on the floor and took the end of his little red leash in my hand. “You know I want to reach her—more than anything in the world. But no one seems to think that it’s Evelyn communicating with me. Have you changed your mind?”
“Yes and no.”
“I must tell you, I heard her speaking inside the doctor’s house. She told me where to find your minister and how to bring her out. That was not the work of some terrible flaming shadow; I know it for a fact.”
“How can you be so sure?”
I tried to keep from sounding annoyed. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. That voice came from the Evelyn I always knew and loved—helpful and kind. Lover of animals and children and buyer of bouquets for the Sunday table. Helper of persons in need.”
“And most definitely not an arsonist.”
“No, not an arsonist. You heard the doctor’s last words; she said as plain as day, to me—she said, ‘It isn’t her.’ It isn’t Evelyn, setting the fires. That’s what she meant, I would swear it on my life—and on the life of anyone in this town.”
“Good God, don’t say such a thing. Even if that is what she meant.” Alice sounded dubious, but her uncertainty was honest. It meant she was open to the possibility of Evelyn’s presence. It would have to suffice. “Please, come with me. This will be odd and awkward, but I think it’s important.”
“Very well. Read me, Alice Dartle. Tell me what you find, and tell me if it matters. Tell me how to stop the fires.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she muttered. “I’ve missed a lot of classes.”
She led the way out through the hotel, across the street, up the porch, and into the bookstore. On the far side of the bookstore was a fellowship hall lined with wood paneling and filled with long tables for potlucks and other social events. It was a large room—far too large for two people alone, but this was the place where Alice wanted to read, so that’s where we would sit together.
• • •
I don’t know why I felt so reluctant. Was it her lack of confidence? A fear of what she might find? This was why I’d come to Cassadaga. Literally, I had traveled all this way for this exact moment. Why did I want to run from the room? What was I so afraid of?
Was it all the sunflowers?
They were on the tablecloths and in vases. I should’ve taken it as a good sign. I don’t know why I didn’t.
• • •
“I’VE been learning some things, from the classes I’ve actually attended and the seminars I’ve listened to,” Alice informed me. “I’m a good student, I swear.” She pulled out a paper bag and used its contents to draw a large white circle on the floor. Before I could ask, she explained, “This is salt, and it helps protect a space. We use it to keep bad things out when we’re trying to talk to the other side.”
“Why?” I asked.
“To be real honest with you, I couldn’t say. As far as I can tell, a lot of this kind of thing boils down to one of two things: either because that’s how it’s always been done, or because it can’t hurt and might help. Right now, I’ll take all the help I can get,” she added under her breath. “Now, come on, have a seat with me here, inside the circle.”
I stepped over the thick white line and Felipe tried to follow me. Alice picked him up before he could scatter any salt, and she gave him a hug.
“Can he come, too?” I asked. “I want him to be safe, inside the circle.”
She handed him over. “I don’t see why not.”
I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, and he curled up in my lap. She sat down across from me, so close that I was almost uncomfortable. Our knees brushed one another when we shifted. It was an awkward thing, but a reading must be personal, mustn’t it? It must be invasive and close. One must open a book before one can know its contents.
• • •
I should not have been concerned. Evelyn had spoken to me without the ashes this time. Evelyn was there beside me, and she was good, and now Alice would see that for herself. So why did I fidget and fret? Why did I anxiously pet Felipe’s head and hope that this all went quickly?
• • •
THE lamps were all off, but light trailed in through the windows so the scene was hardly dark, and only a little dim. Still we felt hidden, there on the floor between two large tables, sitting in our salt circle. On the other side of the wall we could hear chatter in the bookshop and the chime of a cash register. Out on the sidewalks, people walked by muttering about the fires, all the fires, so many fires.
I knew of only two in Cassadaga, but it’s a small place. Two must feel like a thousand.
Alice took a deep breath, and then she took my hands. “Tomás Cordero, are you a praying man?”
“I have been known to pray in the past. I do not pray very often anymore.”
“Now’s as good a time as any to try it again, don’t you think? Say a short one, to whatever God you believe in—even if you don’t believe very much that anyone is listening. Even if you only hope there is a God to hear you. Say hello to Him, and ask Him to watch over us.”
“Why?”
“Can’t hurt, might help.”
I pretended to indulge her, closing my eyes and muttering a quick Our Father in Spanish. I trusted she wouldn’t understand or recognize it, and I hoped it wasn’t rude, but I didn’t mind if it was.
I don’t pray on command; that’s all.
When I was finished pretending, she closed her eyes and began speaking so quietly that someone on the other side of the salt could not have heard her. “I’ve already seen the battlefield, and I’ve seen you in your gear, with the machine that takes eight men to fire. I’ve seen the flames and smelled the smells, and now I wish to see past them. I wish to see the source. I’ve seen the flames . . . from something altogether unprecedented. A new thing, under the sun. Who else . . .” She was hardly even whispering anymore. She was moving her lips, and a small bit of air was coming out. “Who else saw the flames? Someone else . . .”
“Evelyn?”
Her tight-s
hut eyes crinkled with irritation, then relaxed. “No, not Evelyn. She had no idea what you were doing over there. You left it out of your letters. You didn’t want to scare her or make her worry.”
“That’s . . . true. But is she here? Is she with me?”
Silence. Then a little tilt of her head. “Evelyn?” she asked. Silence. A shake of her head. “If she’s here, she isn’t coming forward. You’re alone. Nothing is following you; nothing is attached to you. It’s strange . . . there was something with you, when you first arrived.”
“That’s what everyone says,” I complained.
She didn’t open her eyes. “That’s because it’s true. You wore it like a rucksack full of bricks. Whatever it was, it wasn’t your wife. There was nothing ladylike about it. It was big and manly, and it had a gaping . . . hunger,” she tried, then changed her mind. “No, a bottomless hatred. It had a hungry hatred that wanted to swallow up everything, everyone. But who was it?” she asked. I do not think she was asking me. “Such a noise the war made. Such a roar the fire made. Nothing like it, ever before on earth. A sound to wake the dead. A ruckus like a thousand witches burning at once.”
She adjusted her grip on my hands and turned mine over so the palms faced down—and hers were underneath.
“I saw him, before you got here,” she said. Eyes still closed. Hands still warm and a little damp. “I was giving an open reading, like the one you saw where David collapsed. After the regular spirits came and went, there was someone else waiting in the wings. He stank of fire. I started calling him ‘the smoldering man,’ when I had to call him anything . . .”
Her voice faded out.
Her voice faded in.
“He saw you there, with the fire machine. It woke him up. It reminded him of something. It called to him, or he called to it. Then when the war ended, he came home with you. He was along for the ride, watching and wondering what you’d done with the machine. He wanted to see it again. There was so much left to burn. And then you began starting fires.”
I almost pulled my hands away. She sensed it and gripped mine more tightly than I liked.
“I didn’t take the machine back home. I couldn’t have. Not if I wanted to.”
“He didn’t know that. He is much too old to understand what he saw. And you . . . you were setting your fires, looking for Evelyn. She couldn’t hear you, but he could. He wanted a way in, and all he had to do was pretend.”
“No one pretended. Evelyn sent me those messages, with the soot and ash.”
She shook her head. “No, she didn’t. She isn’t here, Tomás.” She opened her eyes and fixed me with a clear, commanding stare. “Dr. Floyd was right, but not the way you want. Your ghost isn’t Evelyn. It’s never been her.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You’re lost, Tomás. And this thing . . . this spirit that came from the old world . . . he stayed with you because you invited him to. When you set those fires, you set out a welcome mat.”
“I invited Evelyn,” I insisted. I was ready to toss Felipe from the circle and follow immediately after him, but Alice clutched my wrists and held them in her fierce little talons.
“When you open a door, you don’t always get to pick who comes through it.”
“Let go of me.”
“Not yet. Please,” she added, when I began to pull away from her. “He’s gone now. He left you, and I don’t know why, but it’s important.”
“Imogene said he was free.”
“And Agatha practically said he was unstoppable. God help us if they’re right.” She squeezed and released my wrists, then took my fingers and opened them. I didn’t realize I’d clenched them. “God, or Spirit, or whoever. There’s nothing left of him with you, except the smell of smoke and a bad impression of hate . . . hungry hate . . .” She used those words again. “I keep feeling the fire . . . smelling the fire. Fire is hungry, too. Isn’t it? It consumes everything, if you let it.”
“Usually. Eventually.”
“Lord Almighty, the smell of it . . . you know?” She wrinkled her nose. “Like it’s right here, in the room with us.”
Now that she mentioned it, yes. “Wait. Alice? Alice, open your eyes. I smell it, too.”
“It’s only in the reading.”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
I yanked my hands away, and this time she let me. I got to my feet and wobbled, for I was very tired and the smoke was getting stronger. I couldn’t see it, but I could smell it. Felipe was prancing and whining. And I could smell smoke. Real smoke, not dream smoke or reading smoke. I knew it in the pit of my stomach.
Alice scrambled to her feet, too, scraping up the salt circle as she went. “Where is it coming from?”
“I don’t know.”
We both went for the fellowship hall door. I reached it first. I pulled it open with a jerk and saw only a startled bookstore clerk and two surprised customers looking at me like I’d gone mad. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”
The clerk sniffed the air. “It’s just Dr. Floyd’s house. We’ll be smelling it for days.”
“No,” Alice argued. “It’s something else. It’s something new.”
Out we dashed, to the porch, into the street. Alice froze and seized my arm. She pointed at a trail of smoke rising above a house not terribly far from the wreckage of Dr. Floyd’s. It wasn’t coming from a chimney; it was coming from a room on the second floor, a gray-white puff, curling and coiling out toward the sky.
“That’s Mr. Colby’s room!” she squeaked. “We have to get him out of there!”
But behind us, an old man cleared his throat. “That’s true, but don’t raise the alarm. It’s all right, Alice. Everyone is out, and I’ve just rung the fire department.”
She whirled around, appraised the old fellow, and seized him in an embrace that nearly knocked him over. She hugged him so hard I thought she might break him. “You’re not inside? You’re safe! You’re even out of bed! Oh, Mr. Colby . . . what’s happening?”
“An electrical problem, I think. Some books caught fire, but I threw them into the bathtub, and all will be well. I’ve warned Dolores, but please, don’t make a show of it. People will begin to worry. Everyone is so very anxious right now.”
Even as he said this, someone shrieked about the smoke, and people began to cry, and the word “fire” made the rounds up and down the street. Shout by shout, panic spread like the influenza. People ran and people hollered. The well-intended ruse was ruined.
He sighed. “Well, I did try, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Mr. Colby. You surely did.” She looked back at me, stricken and confused, as if I had any answers for her. I didn’t even have answers for myself.
Mr. Colby patted her hand. He stared straight ahead, at the house with the curl of smoke twisting out the window. He whispered to her, as quietly as she’d whispered to me not five minutes earlier: “In the ashes, in the bathtub—and on the floor, where I’d dropped them. There was a message, and I think we must call the council together.”
She turned her wide and horrified eyes to him. “A message?”
He turned to me and kept his voice just loud enough to be heard over the fresh commotion. “Let’s call it a threat. You’ve brought us something awful, Mr. Cordero.” I had never been introduced to him, but Alice (or anyone else) could have told him my name. “Whatever it is, it’s happy here. It has found what it was looking for, and it wants to stay.”
“What does it want?” Alice asked. He did not answer or look at her yet. He looked back at the second story of Dolores Brigham’s house. “Mr. Colby, what does it want?”
He steeled himself, and steadied his stare, then his voice. “It wants for us to burn.”
23
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
THEY BROUGHT DR. Floyd’s body back to us right away.
I’m not sure why they ever took her to the hospital in the first place. She was obviously dead, and there wasn’t anything that any doctor was going to do for her. So I don’t know why they took her, and I don’t know who got them to give her back so quickly—but her body was returned this morning, and by this afternoon there was a hole dug in the little plot up at Lake Helen. It’s not half a mile away and it’s an easy walk, so everybody went up there to pay their respects when Mr. Colby offered to say a few words while the gravediggers put her into the ground.
Lake Helen’s cemetery is a small thing, just a handful of acres a little ways past the loose hills of Cassadaga’s camp. It’s mostly flat and empty, and what few graves are already there generally belong to people from Lake Helen or DeLand. I thought it was odd, until Mabel told me that most spiritualists would rather be cremated than buried.
“Our bodies are merely the clothes we cast off when we cross over. We don’t need them anymore. There’s no sense in preserving them or keeping them around.” She’d explained this as we walked together, up the sandy road on the far side of the tracks. Tomás had walked beside me, with Felipe trotting along, too, at the end of his leash.
We arrived, and we milled about with the other folks from the camp meeting—waiting for Mr. Colby to arrive.
Tomás asked quietly, “Then why do we bury Dr. Floyd? If your dead are usually burned?”
Mabel sighed sadly. “For one thing, her brother is buried here. For another, the nearest crematory is in Jacksonville, and since she never specified one way or another . . . we all thought it’d be better just to . . . I don’t know.” She stared down at her shoes. They were black, like everything else she was wearing, despite the faint sear of weird midwinter heat. “We wanted to put this all behind us, put her mortal remains to rest. We don’t really believe she’s gone, exactly,” she explained. “She’s gone somewhere else, but she hasn’t ceased to exist. If we’re very fortunate, she’ll return and offer her advice and . . . and guidance.” She cleared her throat. It sounded thick, and unhappy. “We shouldn’t be sad. But it’s all right to be sad, if we are.”