I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head. Another tug, another pull of light. A very faint one, somewhere close by—but not very strong. I didn’t understand.
I smelled smoke again and wondered if Nathaniel wasn’t coming back. I called his name in my mind, but he did not respond.
The light did not respond. Whatever spirit was waiting in the wings did not respond to me, not exactly. I don’t think it knew who I was, or what I was, or what I wanted. I can only compare it to a blind and deaf man standing in a room full of people who are trying to get his attention. It knew I was there, but it could not imagine how to respond.
(It was a man. I caught enough of its energy to know that much.)
“There’s another man . . . ,” I said aloud, in case the words had any power. “I can’t see him well. Sir?” I tried. “Sir, can you hear me?”
The shape of it changed, and it wasn’t light anymore but something else—something dark and swirling and smelling of ashes, charred bones, and hair burned down to curls of soot. It shifted and leaned toward me, and I felt the appalling scope and size of it. It was huge, and it dwarfed me. I had asked for its attention and gotten it. Now I wanted nothing more than to be rid of it, forever.
To be rid of him, whoever he used to be.
“Hello?” I tried, desperately standing my ground. “Who are you?”
I opened my eyes but saw nothing, save the audience. Then the audience went away and I couldn’t see that, either—and when I looked around I could not see Dr. Floyd or the pulpit or the sun setting on the other side of Spirit Lake, which was scarcely larger than a pond, but it was their lake, and they could call it whatever they wanted.
I felt like I was falling asleep, dropping precipitously into some dream. No, some nightmare. Someone else’s nightmare. I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire—not cannon fire, and not muskets or rifles, but something much faster—and I smelled chemicals that burned my nose and made my eyes water. Someone else’s nightmare.
• • •
A man. This man.
No, some other man. (He dreams of fire.)
• • •
“WHO are you?” I asked one last time. I scarcely had the wherewithal to form each short word, but I did, and he heard me—this huge dark thing, this terrible ash-covered beast, he heard me.
He responded in a voice that was made of a forest on fire, in a voice that was made of everyone on earth who ever lived, screaming and dying.
I am the hammer.
• • •
I sat down. Or I fell down. Either way, in a moment or two I felt hands grasping me by the armpits, holding me upright, and then letting me lie down. I was gasping, panting, short and sharp. He was gone, and in his wake I saw someone else, smaller and colder and shaking. He was speaking to himself, or else he was praying.
“Dios mío. Está aquí . . . está aquí . . . está aquí.”
Dr. Floyd wrote down my words—the very last words I mustered before I passed out cold, in front of God and everybody. She showed them to me later.
I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, but apparently the dreaming man does.
• • •
WHEN I woke again it was dark outside, all-the-way dark and not the half-light of sunset with gaslamps. I was lying on a chaise in the hotel lobby, and Mr. Rowe was sitting beside me—a tea tray on the small table between us. I was startled to find myself in such entirely different surroundings; I was worried about how I must’ve been manhandled into the hotel; and I was relieved to see his friendly face when he smiled at me and said, “Hello there.” Then, to someone back behind the counter he called, “I believe she’s coming around.”
Mabel appeared, and with her came a man whom I hadn’t seen before. “Alice!” she exclaimed, and dashed to my side just a moment too late to help me upright.
“I’m all right, don’t worry. I just . . .” I reached for one of the little sandwiches that accompanied the tea. They were made from pimento spread, smeared between the fluffiest, whitest bread I’d ever seen. “Overexerted.”
Mr. Rowe excused himself and Mabel took his seat. She thanked the man as he left, and accused me: “That was no mere overexertion—you and I both know it.”
“What else would you call it?”
“She has a point,” said the newcomer. He was tall and angular, with salt-and-pepper hair and a light brown suit. “Sometimes our vocabulary for these things proves insufficient.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” I took a bite of sandwich before he could answer. I needed food more desperately than I needed a response.
“Oscar Fine, at your service, Miss Dartle. I’m the president of the camp meeting association.”
That’s right, I’d heard someone mention him at some point, in passing. When I finished chewing, I said, “Dr. Floyd tells me that spiritualists aren’t much for hierarchies, or organization in general.”
“Spiritualists are not, but our camp meeting is a business—as a matter of necessity. There is property to be owned and maintained, communal structures to be addressed, and programming to produce. Someone must also make arrangements for guest speakers and convince the county that we need camping permits for those who bring their own supplies and choose to skip the hotel.”
I took another bite, finished chewing, and swallowed. “Then it’s a good thing they have you, Mr. Fine. I had no idea there was so much involved in running a show like this one. Not that it’s for show.” There I went again, blushing to the roots of my hair. “You know what I mean, though. Don’t you? I mean the camp and the town, and . . . People here are all so very understanding, and they know things before I can say them, so I hope that when I say them wrong . . .”
Mabel leaned forward and said into his ear, “Dr. Floyd says she’s already met Francine.”
He laughed. “Oh, that mad little nun. Her gifts are extraordinary, aren’t they?” He settled down into a broad smile, all full, stretched lips and fluffy brows held aloft. “We don’t all see as clearly as she does, but yes, I understood you perfectly. I do apologize for the belated greeting, and I wish we could’ve met under different circumstances . . . but it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance all the same. I trust you’ve been kindly received? Treated well?”
“Oh yes.” I bobbed my chin up and down, then stuffed the rest of the finger sandwich into my mouth.
“And I’m pleased to introduce the pair of you, but hellos and how-are-yous are hardly the most pressing of things right now. Alice, I’m sorry you missed the potluck, but . . .” Mabel frowned sternly at me, as if this were no time to be noshing on sandwiches and tea—but she was wrong about that. There’s no greater time to eat than when one has freshly awakened from a sudden faint at the hands of peculiar spirits. That’s what I always say. Or that’s what I’m going to say, from this day forward.
I swallowed again and took a cup of tea. A sip would do me good. It might steady my hands, which quivered embarrassingly, rattling the cup and saucer together. They chattered like teeth. “I’m sorry I missed the potluck, too, and I am eternally grateful for whoever put this fine little meal together. Mr. Rowe?” I looked past her but didn’t see him at the desk. “Or whomever. And I don’t know what you want me to say, Mabel.”
“I want you to say that you’ll be more careful next time!”
“How?” I asked, as plaintive as a child. “I don’t know what I did right, and I don’t know what I did wrong. I can’t imagine how I might prevent it. Besides, it was only a little faint.” I tried to shrug it off, but the smell of burning lingered in my nose, and that terrible fire-fire voice still rolled between my ears.
• • •
I am the hammer.
• • •
“IT was more than that.”
“Then you tell me what it was,” I snapped. I did not mean to snap, but there it is. I snapped. More calmly I said, as I
picked up another triangle of sandwich, “I’m new here. I thought the open reading was . . . was . . .” What had Mr. Colby called it? “‘A harmless baby step.’ An opportunity to serve, and nothing to be afraid of, certainly. Nobody mentioned any fainting, but if that’s as bad as it gets, then I’m prepared to take it in stride.”
“How big of you.” Mabel’s arms were crossed against her stomach, under her thick wool shawl. She wore it with a tremble of chill, as if this were Virginia in January, and not Florida. As if there weren’t bog insects buzzing on the other side of the window to my right.
Mr. Fine did not yet know I was a hopeless case—a frazzled brat who was out of her depth—so he went easier on me than my erstwhile mentor. “Unfortunately, that’s not as bad as it can get.”
Mabel left her seat and took a spot beside me on the chaise, and Mr. Fine replaced her in the seat. “I don’t wish to frighten you, so let me say this, first: Incidents like yours tonight are very rare, and you are not likely to have another one anytime soon.”
“Good to hear.”
“Good to say.” He grinned. “You are young, and you are new to this. Sometimes a reading becomes overwhelming, and—”
“I was definitely overwhelmed,” I said too fast.
“—and that’s a chance you take, or a chance you choose not to take. But tonight I think you brushed up against something more dangerous than a fit of emotion. I could hear it in your voice, when you asked the man who he was and asked him to come closer. You were wandering too far away from yourself, trying to get his attention.”
That was a good way of putting it, really. “He was right there, just outside my reach, and it seemed as though he couldn’t see me or hear me.”
“But you could see him and hear him?” Mabel asked.
I didn’t want to tell her about the words. I don’t know why. Maybe I just didn’t want to say them out loud. “I saw something. I heard . . . something. Someone.”
She pressed, “But nothing you could identify or describe?”
“It was more like a presence . . . something large and unhappy. I only wanted to help.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. I could live with it.
Mr. Fine nodded and crossed one leg up over his knee. “It’s a noble impulse, Alice, but someone should’ve warned you before you attempted the open reading.”
“I should’ve warned her. Honestly,” she said to Mr. Fine. “I didn’t realize she’d see so much. She’s got quite a bit of talent.”
“So Mr. Colby tells me.”
Mabel continued to defend herself, and I continued to let her. “But in my defense, mediums so rarely meet anything like what she encountered up on that stage. When they do, it’s usually much later in their careers. Most of us need a certain measure of experience for those things to notice us at all—no matter how loudly the foolhardy might try to summon them.”
Oh boy. Here came my questions, buckling and folding on top of one another like train cars forced from their track. “Wait, Mabel—was there something onstage with me? And what do you mean, things? What things? Was the man I contacted tonight a thing? One of the things you’re talking about, I mean?” I paused to take a breath. “What are we talking about again?”
Mr. Fine said, in his soothing, pleasant voice, “I suppose we’ll all find out eventually, but for now, all we can do is speculate. It might be as simple as . . . well, that the dark things beyond are the spirits of truly bad people. That’s what our faith would generally have us believe—for we don’t expect to find any angels or demons on the other side.”
Mr. Colby and Dr. Floyd had already told me about how death was only a change of state, and that good people in life were good people in death—and so forth. You couldn’t expect everyone on the other side to be a friendly, helpful presence. It simply wasn’t logical. “Mabel, what did you think it was?”
She made a face that said she’d rather not say. “I felt something enormous and heavy. Very dark,” was all I could get out of her.
“Evil?” I asked. I tried to keep the word from squeaking, but I didn’t do a very good job. “People can be evil.”
He said, “People can be cruel and misguided. They can be traumatized and scarred. They can be frightened into terrible thoughts and appalling behaviors. I don’t believe that this requires any firmer label than simple human nature.”
“That’s . . . awful,” I told him.
“And wonderful, too—for the good in humankind overwhelmingly outweighs the bad,” he said, with a glance at Mabel. “Alice, Cassadaga is a safe place, protected by the strength and character of its citizens. Spirits like the one you met can only wreak so much havoc here. We are each of us a ward, of a kind. Our goodwill is our first defense against ill intent.”
“Are you sure it’s enough?”
Mabel shrugged. “It always has been. We may as well trust that it always will be.”
• • •
MAYBE and maybe not, but I’d argued enough already. I was tired, hungry, and more than a little bit frightened. My hands were not shaking so badly, and I was completely awake—and clear, and free of any supernatural companionship as far as I could tell. I was getting my confidence back in slow degrees, but my patience wasn’t returning along with it.
But I fervently hoped Mr. Fine was right. I came here to be with like-minded people who would understand and accept me. I jumped in feetfirst, and I assumed liked-mindedness and understanding from every individual in town, without qualification. But now I had met something truly, deeply, profoundly evil, and nobody seemed to believe me.
I really should’ve known better. It was simply not logical to expect immediate, unqualified acceptance and trust. But plenty of things aren’t.
8
TOMÁS CORDERO
Ybor City, Florida
LAST NIGHT I took my supper on the couch beside the Edison cabinet, because I was able to find a single station broadcasting across the airwaves. Its voices chattered between the fields of static, but they were faraway and soft—hardly any stronger than if I heard them through a tin can and a string. I could not tell what they were talking about. Still, they comforted me. I did not feel so alone.
I am alone, but I am fortunate. I have been welcomed by others: the handsome young men who keep my shop would have me over for lunch every day if I’d let them; Mrs. Vasquez, who has brought me food and offered me more gossip than I could consume in a lifetime; even my Evelyn’s sister. Before she returned to the island . . . Carmina had said, “Come and stay with us, if you want.” But I did not want to be father to her son (he was only my nephew by marriage), and I did not want to take her war-lost husband’s place.
I did not want to go back to the island. My mother took me and left after the war for independence there took my father. Now I’ve been here for so long that I scarcely remember my birthplace, and that is fine. I am an American, naturalized in time to fight in America’s war.
This is the country I fought for, and bled for, and burned down the world for.
• • •
“ISAIAH, the forty-first chapter,” I remembered suddenly, and said aloud.
My scriptural skills have grown rusty with lack of use, but I have a Bible on hand, and I put my plate aside to retrieve it. The legs of my coffee table scraped the floor as I pushed it back and aside—no longer needing it for a dining table.
I found the old family Bible with ease, because it is very hard to miss. The thing is nearly the size of a car’s tire, and it weighs at least that much. I hauled it down from a shelf with other books, knocking down the photograph someone took of Evelyn and me on our wedding day. She was holding a bouquet of fresh flowers. I remember she brought them home and put them in a vase. Every Saturday ever after, she would buy fresh flowers at the market—dahlias if she could get them, sunflowers if she could not—and leave them in the kitchen on the windowsill. When I came home from the war
I found the skeletal remains of whatever she’d purchased last, brittle and brown in an empty vase. Still tied together with a ribbon, bleached bone gray from sitting in the sun.
I did not set the photograph upright. I left it where it was.
Instead I hefted the enormous book to the table and let it fall beside my plate. In the front cover there were notes of births, deaths, and marriages. The Bible had been Evelyn’s. Her family had not practiced the faith of Rome, but rather some American flavor of Protestantism.
• • •
(I do not remember which kind. She’d lost interest in the church long before we met. It seemed a sore subject—so I never asked her about it. She was content to attend services at Our Lady of Mercy, or not at all.)
• • •
NOW that I think about it, it was odd that the mighty old book remained in her possession. It’s in English, but that’s not so strange—her father’s family had hailed from some different set of islands, far across the ocean in a colder, rockier place than any I’ve ever seen. Her mother had come from Cuba, like me.
King James Version, the great book’s cover said. A king from that same island, I believed. Surely he hadn’t done the translating himself. It must have been a gift, for his vanity. He must have bought and paid for it.
I flipped through onionskin pages as fine and brittle as the stuff I use to cut patterns in my shop, until I found the book and chapter I sought. I scrolled down the columns, following the tip of my finger to the place the padre must have meant.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
I closed the book. It didn’t have anything else to tell me, not right at that moment, and a sudden pop of a vacuum tube brought the Edison voices into sharper focus . . . if that’s the right way to put it. They became louder and less foggy, with less interference from the fuzzy noise that bookended them on either side of the dial. Now I could understand them as surely as if they stood in the next room over.