Haunting Violet
Page 26

“Perhaps we can ask your mother?” she asked, once she’d gotten her composure back. “Surely she has experience with such things?”
“No!” I answered, perhaps too quickly. Elizabeth blinked at my severity. I tried to smile, to soften my tone. “I happen to know she’s never had any experience with spirit-boards.” I cast about for something else to say, to break the moment before she began to wonder at my discomfort.
I might have told her the truth then.
I didn’t. Instead, I turned my attention back to the planchette.
“I saw a drawing once, in one of the Spiritualist papers,” I said, remembering the sketch of sitters around a table, hands resting on the wooden triangle. “Everyone was touching the planchette, the way sitters hold hands. Perhaps to join us together with the energies?”
“Brilliant!” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps you really are a medium, just like your mother.”
I couldn’t explain to her why the notion depressed me so.
We leaned forward to try again. The crickets stopped singing the moment our fingertips rested on the planchette. I tried not to take it as an omen. Elizabeth smiled nervously.
“Ready?” she whispered. When I nodded, she raised her voice a touch higher. “Spirits, we are listening.”
The same silence stretched between us.
“We await your presence.” She sounded sharp, like a governess.
A tingle skittered across my brow, like a beetle. But there were no spirit voices or faces peering back at me.
“How rude.” Annoyed, Elizabeth huffed out a breath. “As I’m not the medium’s daughter, they clearly won’t speak to me. You try.”
I worked to relax my fingers so they wouldn’t cramp. “Spirits.”
“You could ask to speak to your father,” Elizabeth whispered.
I shook my head. I knew there would be no answer; we would call out until our tongues turned blue.
“Spirits,” I repeated more forcefully, suddenly just wanting this to be over so I could crawl back under my blankets. If I hadn’t had to keep my fingers so still, I would have scratched at my forehead. It felt tight, tingling as if my skin was burned with too much sun. At first I wasn’t convinced anything was actually happening. The planchette moved infinitesimally, but it might have been the way we were hunched over the board.
“Is anything happening?” Elizabeth asked in hushed undertones.
“I’m not sure. Maybe?” I leaned slightly so that the moonlight fell past my shoulder onto the spirit-board. “Please, speak to us!”
“It moved!” She grabbed my arm, startling me. The planchette stuttered, as if it had slid from a waxed floor to a carpet.
“Put your hand back!”
She scratched me in her haste to grip the planchette again. I kept very still. It moved again, just a little.
“Did you see that?” Elizabeth breathed.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. The triangle moved so slowly, sweat beaded under my arms as I strained not to shift my hands or influence it in any way. Across from me, Elizabeth was similarly flushed. It seemed to take an age for it to travel just a few inches, toward the first letter, R.
“R,” Elizabeth breathed. “For what? Rheumatism? Retinue? Richard the Third?”
The planchette continued to move, toward the O.
“Romantic? It’s going to tell us our husband’s name! Or else … rotund?” She paused. “Is it calling us fat?”
W.
“Someone’s going to have a row?” She blinked, inhaling sharply. “Oh.” She met my eyes. I nodded, not looking up from the movement of the planchette.
The rest of the name was painstakingly spelled out.
Rowena.
I felt odd, light-headed and short of breath, and the spot between my eyes burned.
Elizabeth was trembling, her eyes glistening. “Truly? Rowena?”
I’d forgotten that, to Elizabeth, this was an old friend who had tragically died last summer, not just some ghost tormenting her. The planchette was moving much more quickly, like a beetle on the surface of a pond.
“N-o-t s-a-f-e.”
Elizabeth and I stared at the board.
“What’s not safe?” she whispered, looking at me with wide eyes.
The planchette continued its eerie journey.
“N-o-t a-l-o-n-e.”
Both of us looked over our shoulders. My breath felt thick in my throat. I could very easily imagine someone sneaking up behind us even though there was nothing but a painted clothes cabinet behind me. Rowena must have meant herself. There was someone else with her, trying to control the board. Or else there was someone else searching out her murderer, and we weren’t alone in the investigation. Or there was someone in the hallway listening to our conversation. There were so many interpretations, I felt as if we now knew less than when we’d started.
The pointer stalled. I could feel the connection wavering; the burning on my brow became a distracting pain.
“Rowena, don’t go!” Elizabeth cried. “You have to tell us what’s going on!”
The planchette spelled out M-r and then T-r-a.
And then it went suddenly fast as a top. It spun and spun in place and then stopped abruptly and would not move again no matter how much we concentrated or pleaded. Elizabeth looked nearly as flabbergasted as I felt.
“Bollocks,” she whispered.
I nodded mutely. But at least we knew something we hadn’t known previously. There was a person of interest whose name started with “Tra,” perhaps the spirit clinging to the board with Rowena? Perhaps someone else altogether.