The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (8 page)

She was calling him Gareth. And Helen…did she mean my mother?

“Through a strange
deaf
girl
,” my father countered. “How on earth could I trust information from beyond the grave that you might be influencing?”

“Because she said things, through Rachel, that Rachel could not have known.”

I stood, this news like a slap in the face. “Wait just one moment!” I cried. “You had a séance? You contacted Mother?
Rachel
did? Why didn’t
you
say so?”

“We’re saying so now,” Mrs. Northe retorted. “After you left, this was the only way I could calm your father and not have him running off after you. He needed to understand that some things were beyond him. We didn’t conspire to keep anything from you.”

“I planned to tell you, Natalie,” my father contributed. “You only just now walked through the door.”

I sat, stung. Suddenly, I felt as my father must feel, kept ignorant and left out, and I hated it. “Well, what did Mother say? Lord knows I’ve asked her to talk to me! How could you do that without me?”

“I didn’t think I needed your permission to talk to my dead wife,” my father snapped. “You’re hardly in a position to take offense, Natalie, after what you’ve put me through—”

“Your mother repeated what she said to me when you were solving Denbury’s mystery, Natalie,” Mrs. Northe replied calmly, diffusing the tone. “You’re meant for battles she could never have fathomed. She has seen great things between life and death. You are meant to be a messenger and soldier. We must leave you to the circumstances presented to you and help you as best we can.”

That sounded biblical, like I was some prophet or tragic martyr. I didn’t want to be either, and I most certainly didn’t want to be a “soldier.” But what else could I say or do? And Father was right. I was in no position to be angry, considering that most fathers would, after my antics, send me away to some sort of ward for misbehaving girls.

“Is that why I’m psychic now, too?” I asked Mrs. Northe. “I dreamed about Rachel. I know she’s in trouble. I’ve dreamed of a morgue, of dead bodies sitting up. Am I clairvoyant, now? Prophetic?”

“Dear God.” Father put his head in his hand, rubbing the crease of his worried brow.

Mrs. Northe sipped tea before replying. “When your soul communed with Jonathon in the painting, it opened mental doors that could not have been opened otherwise. Jonathon, too, has gained a second sight since his incident. His ability to see auras will help him see danger directly. The paths of light are not leaving you defenseless against the walk of darkness.”

“Evelyn, please,” my father begged. “Can’t she be spared all this? Can’t you enlist your friends upstate, fellow spiritualists, in this cause instead?”

“It’s too late,” she replied simply. “Natalie is inextricably a part of the unfolding drama. Jonathon, too. As am I.”

I closed my eyes briefly, fighting back tears, struggling to speak, struggling to come to terms. “Please do not…talk to Mother again without me,” I managed, dabbing a handkerchief to my eyes.

I was still reeling about
Gareth
and
Evelyn
. Initially, flirtation between my father and Mrs. Northe had been novel. I’d never thought of my father as a possible suitor to anyone. But this was becoming something real that would change the dynamic forever, something that would at long last displace not only me, but my mother. I couldn’t think about that now.

“Have you been in touch with Rachel since the séance?” I asked, my jaw still clenched.

“I went to look in on her at the hospital,” Mrs. Northe replied. “But Preston’s wing has gone dark and quiet, and she wasn’t there. A matron at the door said Preston was traveling while his wing is under renovation. Rachel left a note for you. Hopefully her address is therein.”

“We must go to her tomorrow.”

My father stared back and forth at us as if he wondered what he’d let into the house.

I was exhausted and had no more energy left for this or any other conversation.

“It’s good to be home,” I said, kissing my baffled father on the head and Mrs. Northe on the cheek. “And it will be good to get a good night’s sleep.”

I took Rachel’s note and went upstairs.

There, I began reading and wished I hadn’t.

Chapter 7

My dear Natalie,

It’s been too long. Don’t scold me for hiding under rocks. I came to see you, and while I regret I missed you, what a pleasant surprise that there was a woman when I came to call who could speak in sign language! Mrs. Northe signed very lovely things about you and said you were on vacation out west. I hope you are having a lovely time and that this finds you well when you return.

I’ve thought of you often since I left Connecticut to tend Aunt Miriam in her illness. I still have all your notes from class. I read them to put me in a good mood.

I’m sorry I never wrote after I left. I got so caught up with Auntie. You remember her, don’t you? From the Seder she hosted when she came to visit?

Do you speak at all? How is your condition? I kept expecting words to burst out of you. Like a bird from a cage. Not that I would be able to hear them. But I imagine reading your lips would be as amusing as your notes.

After Aunt Miriam died, it was like I died too. She was so full of fire. To see her waste away was shocking. It wasn’t fair. I was angry at God for taking her. I guess I still am. I’m even more angry that her spirit didn’t stay to keep me company. I guess it means she’s happy and at rest. But I’m very lonely. I’ve written to my family in Germany, but they don’t have any money to bring me home. I’ll have to save for the trip.

I’m hoping that since you didn’t run away from me when I said I heard the dead, you’ll bear with me now. I need your advice.

I work for Dr. Preston in the basement of the German Hospital on Seventy-Seventh Street where Aunt Miriam was being treated. The moment I saw him, I heard a voice in my head say: “That man is my husband. He’d give anything in the world to know I am all right. To speak with me. It’s his love for me that won’t let me go…”

I took a patient’s chart and wrote that message on a blank space. When Dr. Preston saw the words, he was shocked. He told me they could only be from his dead wife, Laura. He said he’d pay me if I spoke with her more and would tell him what she said.

I agreed. It was the only way I could think of to help support Aunt Miriam—even though I could never tell her about it. Suffragette and union organizer she may have been, but she did have her limits.

I never saw Laura. I don’t see spirits. I feel them. I hear what they want me to hear. But Laura told Dr. Preston, through me, to let her go and that she would be all right. That she loved him. Everything you’d hope the dead would say.

Then he started bringing others into his office. He’d call me in while I was helping the maids in the hospital. In his office where wide windows let in bright light, some sorrowful face would look up, hoping I could share something from someone they had lost.

Sometimes I connected. I’d write out words or phrases. Objects or articles of clothing, trinkets or favorite jewelry helped make contact. I try to make sense of the scraps. But spirits are scattered echoes of us. It isn’t like sending letters. I’m like a faulty telegraph cable. Now and then a choppy message comes through.

More often than not, though, I don’t connect. I try to scrawl notes saying it means loved ones passed peacefully. Hardly a comfort to those who want “proof.” But I don’t know any more about what happens after death now than I did as a child, clinging to the beliefs of my people.

My séances have been moved into a small, gray basement room. Dr. Preston calls it my office, but it’s more like a dungeon. I’m a door down from the morgue. Dr. Preston thinks if I’m closer to death, I’ll be able to communicate better with it. Even on warm days, nothing can shake the chill.

Dr. Preston has started bringing in trinkets on his own, possessions from those who died in his wing of the hospital. Once I touch the items, he puts them in a box and asks me to connect the spirit who owned them. He claims he’s testing how materialistic a spirit is and that I’m helping his experiments on the soul. But I don’t think a spirit should be encouraged by anything but seeking its rest. I’m afraid that by tying spirit to object, I’m participating in an unnatural part of the human relationship between the living and the dead.

What do you think, Natalie? Am I doing something wrong?

Dr. Preston was so passionate, so desperate. It’s hard for me to say no to the living. But I wonder what the dead think of it all. All I can sense is sadness, which worries me.

Today a new box arrived. Again Dr. Preston asked me to connect a spirit with the item therein. But I don’t know what it was. With lockets or other personal items, I have the piece in hand. Not a box to separate the connection. But Preston said it was extremely private and I’d been requested by family members not to touch anything directly. Yet no family members were present. Dr. Preston just had me make sure I asked for a name.

Even if I wanted to play Pandora with that box, it was locked. All I heard was a spirit’s name. A name and lots of crying.

I try to pray out my troubles at the synagogue a few blocks away to lift my sorrows up. Like prophets did. But I’m scared. Light a candle for me, Natalie, like in the seder. I’m afraid I’m bad luck. When you receive this, if you could write or visit me, I’d be grateful.

Your friend,

Rachel

Of course, a nightmare followed that night.

Rachel appeared in that room where I’d first seen her, a small, dim room. Her “office.” She sat at a round table, a leather-bound box before her. A red droplet pooled at one of the corners. The room was freezing cold, making my breath a cloud. Rachel didn’t look at me at first. She was dazed, focused on the box, her hands limp on either side of it.

I took a step closer, and she turned to me in a jarring motion, her dark hair disheveled, her pale face gaunt. Her expression, which was usually so soft and amenable, was horrified, her dark eyes wide and bloodshot.

“Make it stop,” she signed to me slowly, her hands shaking to form the words.

Then she put her hands on the lid of the box. And opened it.

Inside was a severed human hand.

Voices from unseen bodies started screaming. So did I.

A moment later my father was at the door, having groggily flung it wide without knocking. “Natalie, what on earth—”

The sight of my room and my father steadied me.

“Nightmare,” I said.

Father rubbed his face, worried. “Mrs. Northe said you needed to go far from the city to clear yourself of the cloud of dark magic. Have you done so? Did you go far enough to break free? Or does the curse linger on in your dreams?”

These were not terms my father was used to. He hated such talk, so it was valiant of him to try and relate to me. “I…I can’t say. But nightmares are nothing new, Father. I’ve always had them.”

He came forward and kissed me on the head. “I wish you didn’t,” he soothed, and went back to the door. He turned. “Tomorrow, why don’t you meet me at the end of my workday and we’ll go visit your mother. What do you think?”

I felt a smile break over my face, and with it, the shadows of nightmare rolled away. “I’d love that.”

“So would I. Please rest, darling. No matter what you’ve gotten wrapped up in, it’s so good to have you home.”

A stray tear fell from my eye. “It’s good to be home.”

Chapter 8

First thing in the morning, when I came down to the breakfast table for eggs, Father handed me an envelope marked “Cunard.” That was a steamer line.

In the same instant that my heart thrilled at the prospect of an important note from Jonathon, it chilled. What if it was something terrible? Father stared at me, as if waiting for me to elaborate. I ran to my room, my heart thudding. I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of Father. I was still trying to protect him, even though he was making every effort to keep pace with our strange events.

“News from your lord, is it?” he called after me, bewildered.

“I hope…” I called back from the top of the stair.

“I’m off to work,” he said. “I assume Evelyn is entertaining you today?”

Evelyn. I was going to have to get used to that familiarity. “Yes,” I called. “Have a lovely day. I’ll meet you in your office this evening and we’ll go to Woodlawn. I love you.”

“I…love you too,” he said, surprised that I was the first to say it.

I tore open the envelope. My relief was immediate when I could tell it was not news of doom or death. But it was an odd instruction.

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