Lily Dale: Awakening (8 page)

“Think of it like a sensitive radio that’s capable of tuning in to a frequency other radios might not be capable of receiving. A medium is basically just a highly responsive transmitter, receiving signals others can’t pick up and passing them on.”

“Yeah, but radios don’t pick up signals from dead people.”

“Around here, we prefer to say Spirit.”

Around here? We?
Her grandmother must have a bunch of imaginary friends—or so-called spirits—living in her house. Or, more likely, in her head.

Nonplussed, Calla mutters, “Dead is dead.”

“There is no such thing as ‘dead,’ Calla. People who have departed their physical bodies on this earth are still with us. They never really leave us. If you can believe that, you’ll find a great deal of comfort.”

Calla bows her head and blinks away hot tears, thinking of her mother.

She wants to lash out at her grandmother:
Mom’s
not
still with me, because if she were, I’d feel her.

I can’t feel anything at all. She’s just . . . gone.

Odelia comes over to the bed, sits on the edge of the mattress, and touches Calla’s shoulder. “Listen . . . I know this isn’t easy for you. Any of it. But I do think you’ll find some comfort in Lily Dale, and maybe even get to like it here, if you give it a chance.”

“I’m already giving it a chance, aren’t I? I’m here.”

“Right. You’re here. But you didn’t know about us before you came.”

“Us?”
Calla echoes blankly. “What do you mean,
us
?”

Odelia hesitates. “The thing is . . . I’m not the only medium in town, Calla.”

“You’re not?” she asks slowly.

“No. There are lots of us. Dozens, in fact, now, during the season, so—”

“Dozens?” Calla interrupts, stunned. “How can there be dozens of mediums in a tiny town like this? What kind of crazy coincidence is that?”

“It isn’t a coincidence at all. Lily Dale was founded back in the eighteen hundreds as a center for spiritualism.”

Thud.
Calla feels as though she’s been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.

Finally, she recovers enough to ask, “So, the whole town is . . . haunted?”

Odelia laughs. “I guess you could say that . . . but
I
wouldn’t.”

“What would you say?”

“That the town is filled with caring, sensitive folks using God-given gifts to help people.”

“Help them how?”

“There are any number of ways. Healing, counseling, communicating with Spirit. Some of us have different areas of expertise.”

“You mean, like doctors have different specialties?”

Odelia looks pleased. “Right. Like that.”

“So, what’s your specialty?” Calla asks, deciding to at least act as though she’s buying into this stuff. Maybe there’s a part of her that does—or, at least, is willing to try.

“Oh, I’m a jack of all trades, you could say.”

“But you can see dead people? Spirits?” she amends. “Talk to them? And get messages?”

Odelia nods. “That’s exactly it. And it’s taken me many years of training to figure out how to interpret those messages from what they show me. Even now, there are times when I don’t get things exactly right.”

“So, you don’t actually hear them speaking?”

“Sometimes I do.”

“What do they sound like?”

“Well, sometimes I just hear my own voice in my head, in their words. But I usually do hear my guides’ voices. And they sound much higher-pitched than a human voice . . . they’re on another wavelength, basically, to put it into layman’s terms.”

“What are guides?”

“Spirit guides. They’re entities that are a permanent part of us all, but they exist on a higher realm. Everyone has them, but not everyone can see them.”

“You mean, they’re like guardian angels?”

Odelia looks pleased by Calla’s question. “In a way, yes.”

“What about my mom? Is she my spirit guide now?”

Odelia hesitates. “She might be. Some who cross over continue to guide their loved ones from the other side. But spirit guides—the kind I’m referring to—aren’t on the earthly plane.”

“How do we know they’re there, then?”

“Oh, they’re there. You can learn to become aware of them through meditation—they’ll become known when you’re receptive to them. Or sometimes, if you need their help but aren’t even aware that you do—or that they exist—they’ll try to get your attention somehow.”

“How? By popping up and saying ‘boo’?”

Odelia ignores her sardonic tone. “They have different means of letting you know they’re there. They can show up physically or let you hear them, or smell—”

Impatient, Calla cuts in. “What about my mom? Can she do that, too?”

“Calla—”

“Can you see her and talk to her?”

“I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

Odelia shrugs, looking reluctant to answer. “Some people come to me after they pass, others don’t. Mediums can’t always see people closely connected to our personal lives. And when I do readings, I tell people there’s no telling who is going to come through to them. It might not be who they’re hoping to get, but it’s always who they’re meant to hear from.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Calla, increasingly irritated, doesn’t wait for a reply. “Are you saying that if you did a reading for me, you might put me through to, like, the old guy from down the street who died when I was a baby, and not to my mom?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Calla—”

“I mean, if you can’t put someone through to the person they want to talk to, then what good is any of it?”

“It’s not like a telephone,” Odelia says evenly. “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just place a call to the other side and ask to speak to someone specific.”

“Then why even bother getting a reading at all?”

“You probably shouldn’t.”

“That’s fine, because I wasn’t planning on it. I don’t even believe in it, anyway,” she feels compelled to add, for good measure. Even though it might not be true.

She waits for Odelia to defend her so-called profession. She merely shrugs. “That’s your prerogative. Your mother didn’t believe, either, for what it’s worth. And neither did her father.”

Odelia’s talking about Calla’s grandfather, Jack Lauder. Mom never talked about him. All Calla knows is that Mom’s parents split up when she was a little girl, and her father moved away and had little to do with Odelia or Mom after that.

Maybe now I know why,
Calla can’t help thinking.
Because his ex-wife was a whack job who thought she could talk to dead people
—
only, just random dead people. Nobody who matters.

“As for
your
father,” Odelia goes on, “I’d be willing to bet he still hasn’t got a clue what I do, or that this town is populated by registered mediums.”

“I’ll bet you’re right. Because if he knew . . .”

“You wouldn’t be here,” Odelia finishes for her when she trails off. “Right?”

“Right.” Her father would have her on the next plane out of here, even if it meant giving up his sabbatical in California. No way would he let her stay in a crazy place like this. It was hard enough to persuade him to send her here in the first place.

“Are you going to tell him?” Odelia asks her after a moment. “When he calls?”

“Are
you
?”

“Not unless he asks.”

Calla finds herself smiling despite herself at the thought of her father happening to inquire,
“Say, by any chance is this Lily Dale place filled with people who can talk to ghosts?”

“So . . . are
you
going to tell him?” Odelia asks again.

Calla hesitates. “No. Not unless he asks.”

Odelia smiles at her. She isn’t in the mood to return it, though.

“Want some milk and cookies? I always have that before bed. And mango sorbet.”

Calla shrugs and swings her legs over the edge of the mattress. “Why not.”

“Oh, hi, Jeff. Sure, she’s fine . . . no, everything went fine . . . yes . . . yes . . . hang on a second, she’s right here.” Odelia turns to Calla, sitting at the table spooning the last bit of melting sorbet from her plastic bowl, and holds out the telephone receiver. “It’s your dad.”

Calla knew that, of course. She knew it when the phone rang.

So, does that make me psychic? Ultrasensitive to earthly energy vibrations around me?

No. It’s just common sense. He wouldn’t have been able to reach her on her cell, so of course he’d try Odelia’s number.

“Dad?”

“How’s it going, hon? I tried to get you on your cell phone but I kept getting voice mail. I left a few messages, but I didn’t want to wait to talk to you. I miss you too much already.”

Calla is completely caught off guard by the tsunami of emotion that sweeps through her at the sound of his voice. For a second, she can’t even speak.

She watches Odelia dunk another pecan sandy, which turned out to be a delicious shortbread-tasting cookie, into a glass of milk.

Then she manages to croak, “My cell doesn’t get service here.”

“Uh-oh. Will you survive?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “So, your grandmother did meet you at the airport on time . . . right?”

Calla knew before she left that he doesn’t think Odelia is the most responsible human being in the world. Back in Tampa, he kept asking her if she had cash for a cab, just in case her grandmother was late—or didn’t show up at all.

“Yup, she was there, right on time.” Calla watches her grandmother finish the cookie in two bites. “How was your flight, Dad?”

“Late. Crowded. Bumpy.” He sounds beat. “I hope yours was better.”

“It was.”

“Good.”

Oh, ick.
Odelia is pouring Hershey’s syrup on another helping of sorbet. Chocolate and mango aren’t the ideal pairing as far as Calla is concerned, but Odelia gobbled up the last serving, so maybe she’s on to something.

“So, everything’s okay there?” Dad is asking. “Other than the cell phone not working?”

She hesitates for the slightest fraction of a second. “Definitely.”

“What’s the town like?”

“Small. Cute.”
Haunted
.

“How about the house?”

“The same.”
In every way.
She shivers a little.

Seeing her, Odelia murmurs, “It’s getting cold in here, isn’t it? I’ll shut the window.”

“So, you think you’re going to be okay there,” her father asks, “until September?”

September.

Wow, when he puts it that way, Calla isn’t so sure she’s going to be okay at all. Homesick, she merely nods before he says, “Honey?” and she remembers he can’t see her.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m going to be fine here. I just wish . . . I mean, I can’t get online here, either. There’s no computer. So, that’s a little . . . disappointing.”

She sees Odelia lift her head abruptly. She assumes it’s because of the computer comment, but she realizes Odelia doesn’t even seem to be paying attention to her conversation. Her head is cocked expectantly, almost as though she’s listening to something. Or
for
something.

“Maybe there’s an Internet café there or something,” her father suggests as she watches Odelia set down her spoon, wearing a thoughtful expression.

“Here? Um, no.” Where does her father think she is, in civilization?

“Well, what about the library? Sometimes they have computers the public can use. You need to check it out.”

Suddenly, Calla sees a shadow pass through the open doorway behind Odelia’s head, where the door to the sunroom is propped open by a doorstop.

There’s someone in there. Only . . .

There shouldn’t be anyone there at all. Calla and her grandmother have been sitting here for twenty minutes, eating sorbet and talking. Odelia never once mentioned anybody else being in the house. And surely she would have.

If she knew about it.

Even as Calla looks on, her grandmother turns her head sharply toward the sunroom.

“Calla?” her father is saying in her ear. “Why don’t you check out the library?”

“Right. I will.”

“Good. Let me know what you find out. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she echoes absently, her attention on her grandmother, who has stood and walked to the doorway of the sunroom.

“I’ll call you around this time tomorrow night, okay?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Calla murmurs.

Odelia is talking, so softly Calla can’t hear what she’s saying. She suspects that’s because her grandmother doesn’t want her to hear.

“I love you, Calla.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

She hangs up the phone.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks her grandmother.

Odelia doesn’t turn around right away. When she does, Calla expects her to deny that she said anything, but she shrugs. “That’s just Miriam.”

“Miriam? So there is someone there?”

Odelia’s eyebrows shoot up. “You saw her?”

Something makes Calla shake her head promptly and say, “No. I didn’t see anybody. I just heard you talking, so I thought someone was there. So,” she adds tentatively, her heart pounding like crazy, “who’s Miriam?”

“She’s just someone who used to live here, years ago.”

“Before you moved in?”

“Long before that.” Odelia gives a staccato laugh. She crosses to the window above the sink, gives it a tug, and pulls it closed. “She lived here long before I was born, actually. Her husband built the house in eighteen eighty-three.”

Calla feels as though a giant just stepped on her lungs, squashing the air right out of them.

“So . . . Miriam’s a ghost?”

“She’s passed, yes,” Odelia tells her. “I don’t use that word.”

“Ghost?”

“Right.”

“Sorry.” Calla takes a deep breath and asks, “Is she your spirit guide?”

“No. Not a guide.” Calla watches her grandmother turn back to the other room, then say, “All right. I will.”

She’s talking to the ghost
, Calla realizes, and the pale hair on her arms stands straight up.

Odelia returns to the table. “Miriam wanted me to tell you that she’s harmless.”

“Oh. That’s . . . good to hear.”

“She just likes to keep an eye on things around here.”

“Is she . . . always around?”