She turned to a large metal box on a shelf. Wires jumbled all around it and one of the vacuum tubes stood tall from the top. "Now observe."
She turned a dial and it began to hum. The table, too, made the sound. It vibrated, rattling the floor, and then the planchette moved.
It slid over to the letter "C" as Persephone worked her little machine. Then "O," then "N." She spelled my entire name from the other side of the room.
"Radio signals, Connie. That's how they did it."
She walked over and fiddled with the table. A section pulled out from beneath the top. I'd looked it over and I swear there was neither crack nor crease.
Inside iron nails had been tied into place, each wrapped in copper wire.
"What are these?"
"Ferromagnetic cores," she said. "When a charge is passed into the copper wires, it creates a magnetic field in the iron nails." She handed me the planchette. "The legs are filled with iron as well. Radio receivers built into the legs of the table allow me to open and close the circuits remotely, turning on the magnets needed to pull the planchette where I want it to go."
"What powers it?"
She pulled another hidden drawer out to reveal a dozen A and B batteries strung together.
"Everything they'd need can be hidden right here in this table. Any illusionist worth his salt can build hidden compartments."
"Wait. You searched their table."
"But I didn't know what I was looking for yet."
I stepped back and took it all in. Try to remember, this was the early nineteen twenties. For the teenage me, radio control and electromagnets might as well have been rocket ships to Mars.
"This is amazing, Seph," I finally said. "Really it is."
She turned the machine off. "But?"
"But it's so loud. The humming and the rattling."
"There's some kind of shock absorption they've used. I haven't figured that out yet. But I will."
"Okay. So that might explain how the table didn't rattle itself apart. But what about the humming from the equipment?"
"The wind and the shutters rattling. The door slamming open. It was all misdirection, sure, but it also hid the sounds."
"You're telling me they made the wind blow?"
"No, no. It hit me after being in the old library." She shuddered thinking of it. "They could have used a Victrola. After all, we never saw the shutters smacking against the house because the curtains were drawn. We never saw the wind."
"What about the door blowing open? And who ran the radio thingee to send the signal that spelled out the words?"
"Well, they obviously have assistants, don't they?"
"I guess there's one way to find out. Now that you know what you're looking for, you can check their table again."
She waved it off. "You think they'll let me in a hundred feet of that thing again? Besides, I don't need to prove they did it this way. I simply need to prove they could have."
I almost repeated what Doyle had said when he hired us: Just because a painter can mimic the image of a sunset does not mean the sun never leaves the sky. But I knew better than to argue with her. Besides, who was I to disagree? I'd never spent so much as a single day in a classroom.
The table was shipped back to Manhattan and she returned to it a few times over the years, but I never felt she ever really reproduced what had happened that evening. I'm not saying her sister summoned an honest-to-God ghost. But whatever had occurred during that séance, Persephone's table was one of the rare times where she missed some piece of the bigger picture, even if she did use it to debunk another dozen mediums who dabbled in radio science over the next few years.
Sir Doyle's response to her assessment was much as I expected when she showed him her table, but he made good on his debt to us anyway. Ghosts or no, he felt horrible about what had happened to Seph. When her face had healed, he arranged for the Times to run the story about how she solved Caitlin's murder. They snapped a picture to go with it and I still have a copy of it framed in my study. Doyle was very impressed with her for solving the crime. Houdini too.
Me? I was always impressed by Persephone Gale. Even now, decades after she's gone, I rarely think of her without feeling as though she were a comet. Vibrant and bright and exceedingly rare.
I miss her.
At the train station the next morning, no one waited to see us off. Rose had booked an early morning reading for Neph with a bunch of Wall Street eggs. Any goodbye there wouldn't have been able to top our day in the cemetery at any rate.
As Persephone argued with a porter about our seat assignments, I caught sight of a red Lancia Lambda parked several yards away.
I raised my hand to wave and it drove off.
Once we were seated, Persephone let out a sigh. "Back to civilization. Thank God."
A loud hiss and the car jerked forward.
"You did give Nephthys our address, didn't you, Connie?"
"No. I didn't think about it."
She pulled a nail file from her purse and went to work on her hand. "A shame. If we keep your studies up, you'll be reading and writing letters in no time. You two could have stayed in touch."
I could have hit myself. I slumped back into my seat and chewed on a fingernail.
She made a show of sighing again. "I suppose I can write her and provide our contact information. Poor girl needs a logical voice in her life anyway."
Grinning, I said, "Yeah, she could probably use a big sister."
"I hate that term. `Big sister.' Makes me think of gargantuan opera singers. Let's use the word `mentor,' shall we?"
"Whatever you say, Madame Persephone of the Spirits."
She smacked my shoulder and laughed. “I should have never told you that.”
The train rocked down the tracks and Gallow's Grove disappeared from view.
"I have to say, Connie, I am thrilled beyond belief to know that I will never set foot in this town again."
Only she was wrong about that. That wouldn't be the last time we'd visit Gallow's Grove and it sure as Hell wouldn't be the last time we found ourselves knee deep in trouble.
But that's a story for another day.
Brad C. Hodson
Born in Tennessee, Brad C. Hodson currently hangs his hat in sunny Southern California. He's worked on the screenplays for a dozen movies you've never seen and a couple you might have. His first novel DARLING is currently being adapted to film and he co-created and co-edited the shared world anthology MADHOUSE. When not writing, he stares through your window at night and watches you sleep.
Find out more:
@BradCHodson
brad.c.hodson
www.brad-hodson.com/bibliography
The Next Big Thing
Sèphera Girón
I’m trying to get this down as quickly as I can just in case there’s no other opportunity to share this warning.
Quickly I’ll note that I’m on one of those million-mile bus rides from Toronto to Boston. By car, it’s about eight hours. By bus, try about twenty-three.
It’s hell sitting here, literally. I’m sweating to death and I’m lucky that I’m rather small. I’m wedged between two rather large men who have already succumbed to the lurches and sways of this behemoth we’re strapped into for the next thousand years.
* * *
It was my petite frame that drew him to me. That I knew for sure. I lured all men and ladies with my oddly thin body and exotic pale face. I’ve been this way for a couple of years now so I know that my seat mates are appreciative as they snore in the darkness. A regular-sized woman would have made this leg of the journey a sweaty crowded nightmare.
However, I’m grateful to be in the middle, kind of squished around while dudes are snoring on either side of me. I have a flashlight pen so that I don’t wake up the whole damn bus with my overhead light.
As for using a phone or laptop to record this tale of dread, I wouldn’t trust any of them. The spirits travel through electricity. Autocorrect is but the
tip of the iceberg of the havoc the spirits could create through our addiction to technology.
No. I’m writing this tale in this Star Wars notebook I bought at the dollar store and hope that it will be found one day. I may have a chance to finish my story. I may not. However, first, the story needs to begin.
* * *
Perhaps introductions are in order in case a stranger happens upon this opus.
My real name is Felicity Alice Brown. Yes, I know, exciting. Not many people know me by that anymore.
Around age fourteen, I had acquired the nickname Fleeceya. Kind of a long story. Don’t need to get into it now. There’s no time to be kicking cans down that particular memory lane.
These days, well, at least until yesterday, I was part of a two-person “entertainment show|” called Danny and Annie. We’ll blow your minds.
For about two years, our shtick was to perform mentalism and magic illusions anywhere that would have us. We did great around Toronto and even travelled for a while. But, as happens in the magic industry, people want bigger and better.
You can wow them by reading their minds yet it’s never enough.
There always has to be more to the act.
For two years, we rode the wave of being a new gig in town. We were on talk shows, radio shows, podcasts and performed everywhere from amusement parks to yachts for rich lawyers.
We both knew, however, that we had to keep the act fresh. We always had to be bigger and better. There had to be something unique. Something simple yet obvious that we hadn’t tried yet.
* * *
But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself for those of you who don’t know me yet. Lord knows, I doubt I’ll ever have any children to find this book. I may perish as I write this or I may live another sixty years. For goodness sakes, I’m only twenty-one. But man, I feel like I’m ninety-seven right now. My back is hurting already from writing all curled up like this. However, I prefer the bookend comfort of these two unconscious men than having to face a row of empty seats by myself.
* * *
I know they are in here. On this bus. I can feel the shift in energy as they coast along the bus, patrolling it as invisible armed dogs, sniffing as they sense me nearby. Their spindly black fingers can’t reach me nor can they pollute my thoughts as I huddle beneath the men’s own protective auras. As long as I don’t piss off the men, their sleeping auras will keep me safe.
* * *
I never let it leave my sight. That wretched board is tucked into the seat pocket ahead of me. It’s wrapped in tinfoil and then in a cloth. I won’t leave it in a suitcase or knapsack. Nope. That thing has proven I have to keep my eye on it at all times. At least until I get there. I reach my hand out again to stroke it. To be certain the rough crackle of tinfoil lies beneath the cloth.
Yes.
It is still here.
It is contained.
And they are waiting for it just on the other side of these twin flesh mountains.
* * *
So that’s what I’m dealing with while I try to get this story down.
* * *
I hit Toronto when I was about sixteen. Typical small town girl yearning for the big city kind of thing. I got sick of my mom’s hoarding ways and hadn’t seen dad in ages. Now, when I say hoarding, I don’t mean a collection of dolls or hats or books. I don’t even mean those people who have boxes all over the house and stacks of magazines with an inch of dust on top. Nope. This was full on reality TV-style, stinky, perilous hoarding.
And the only reason I bring this up or even want to remember any of it is that, as in all shit, a flower must grow. I discovered my love of vintage wear, of pinup girls, of black and white movies and musicals, and the sweet simple eras of perceived innocence. Perhaps it was actually stupidity but there was a type of innocence paired with great fashion in Western world culture that hasn’t been seen in decades. These days, people are too jaded from seeing and knowing too much, often from their internet surfing, and then there are the fragile little babies, the special snowflakes, who want to be protected from the jaded ones.
At any rate, when I was little, I often dressed up in the antique clothes of great-grandma and paraded around the house, back when the hallways were paradeable. I loved the weird little hats with netting, the rectangle snap purses, swing dresses, and high-heeled pumps. I often wondered if I’d been born in the wrong time, and certainly, to the wrong parents.
But dress-up time was the only portal to happiness in that pit of hell. I left Lucan before I finished high school.
* * *
At any rate, once I hit Toronto, I ended up in some hostels and stuff as I navigated my way through a new city and into a new life. Everyone has a skill or two and I began to understand what was mine.
* * *
Everything became crystal clear to me when I bumped into him at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas. It was like my life’s purpose snapped into focus with that literal bump. I didn’t quite understand what it was or what to even do about it at the time, I was only aware that there had been a “disturbance in the Force.” I stood, shaking my head, trying to see past the bright light that had momentarily blinded me. He kept on walking; his mind obviously on loftier sights than noticing an androgynous skinny little street kid in torn overalls, short cropped blond hair, and oversized Doc Martins. I turned to look at him, my gut telling me to follow him.
So I did.
It was late morning, one of those gorgeous spring days where the welcoming sun beams down from the heavens, declaring that all answers will be revealed in the growing buds on the trees. I had spent the night huddled in a doorway with everything I owned. It beat the stink of the group homes and shelters. As the sudden spring took hold of the city, hugging a blanket in a doorway for a few hours as the sky shifted from black to blue to orange wasn’t too bad at all. As long as people left me alone, doorway naps were all I needed when spring fever hit.
There was one of those annual 420 events at Dundas Square and the stoners were already wandering in. As I followed the man, I enjoyed the sweet scent of bud in the air. I was amazed as I stared around the growing crowd of people lighting up bongs and joints. There was a large stage set up at one end of the square, flags celebrating weed, and banners for various sponsors rippled in the breeze. While I followed the medium-sized man with the slicked back white hair, there was a lady protester on stage, yelling into the microphone about why pot should be legal while others on stage with her blatantly smoked up. There were also cops everywhere. Well, not on the stage but ringing the park; standing around, chilling in cruisers but mostly sitting or standing with bikes. When there were that many cops around, I knew to keep moving. I always had to keep moving. They knew me by name. I’d seen the inside of Toronto jails and wasn’t keen on going back.
The white-haired man stopped at the farthest edge of the crowd from the stage. He stood, surveying the stoners around him in their brightly colored pot plant outfits, floppy hats, and sunglasses. He looked out of place in an old tuxedo with red and gold striped shirt, gold bow tie, and white, slicked back hair. He began to speak at the people nearby in an old-fashioned barker tone.
“I bet I can read your mind,” he taunted.
He began a patter that revealed he was a magician, no, a mentalist, and was going to read minds. I perked up. With glee, I watched as a small crowd formed around him.
“Think of a number,” he instructed an older woman who looked pretty high. “Any number at all.”
He babbled on and by the end of it all, he had revealed the number to the crowd.
He dazzled them with sleight of hand and even guessed the stuff they had in their purses. The growing audience was mesmerized as they watched him pluck coins from their ears, guess the card they chose, and even knew their favorite movie. I had seen many street magicians over the past few months. After all, I shared the streets with them and all the other buskers from guitarists to human statues. Most were pretty good at what they did, but this guy w
as the best I’d ever seen.
He was a hit with the small crowd and when he was finished, he handed out his business card to everyone. I stood in line to take one. His hand reached out to me. I took the card. Our hands touched but I averted my eyes. I didn’t want any mentalist knowing my secrets. He didn’t notice me as he talked nonstop to the stoners who were growing more interested in the comedian who had taken the stage than the magician.
“I’m available for corporate functions, birthday parties, cruises...” His voice faded from my ears as I too continued on my way.
I wandered through the pot rally for the rest of the day, getting a wicked contact high as I enjoyed the bands and the comedians. After a while, I decided I’d had enough. It would be over by six at any rate. That’s how long the rally had before the cops could swarm into the festival area and arrest everyone.
I wandered up Yonge Street until I hit a McDonald’s. I went into a bathroom stall and sorted through the pockets of my overalls. I had seven wallets, three cellphones, and a bunch of jewelry. I pulled out some of the cash. It was suppertime.
As I ate my Quarter Pounder with Cheese, no onions, I began to formulate a plan. It was a bit murky at first. Kind of like a rough pencil sketch. Then, the colors began to blossom and possibilities unfolded before my eyes.
I rented a fancy-ass hotel room that night and pretended I was a movie star. I ended up with over a dozen assorted dime bags of pot, seven lollipops, four brownies, an ounce of sativa, half a pound of gummies, a 420 T-shirt, plus the watches, cellphones, and wallets. My cash intake that day was over four grand. I think those stoners had been planning to buy a lot of weed. Hell, those contraptions to smoke weed cost a fortune as well. I didn’t feel bad as I surveyed my take for the day.