The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) (8 page)

Creepsis?
Lorenzo repeated.

It’s the name the locals have given to it,
Deem replied.

Ah, the good people of Paragonah,
Lorenzo replied.
They were never
very happy about Henry building his house here, and they grew more and more
displeased with our séances. I suppose it’s as good a name as any. Whatever it
is, it isn’t Willard Bingham any more, that’s for certain. I want to help you.
I’ll do whatever I can. Just promise me you’ll try to release me from here, and
I’ll help you in whatever way I’m able. Don’t abandon me. I’ve been in here so
long, it’s unbearable.

We’ll try,
Deem said
. We’ve been told if we kill the Creepsis, it’ll
kill off whatever is inside our friend, too. Do you think that’s true?

I have no idea,
Lorenzo replied.
It might work.

Do you know how to kill it?
Deem asked.

I’ve dreamt of taking an axe to it, but since we’re in the
River that obviously won’t work,
Lorenzo said.

How are you safe, in there?
Winn asked.
Why are you trapped?

Lorenzo sighed.
That’s a story I’ve repeated in my head so
many times I’m sick to the throat of it. But I’ll tell it again for you.

Lorenzo arrived at Henry Blackham’s mansion just after eight,
the appointed time for their gathering. A light rain, badly needed, had begun
to fall as he walked to the house.
Emma’s handiwork,
he thought as he
passed through the beautifully landscaped front yard, adorned with dozens of
rose bushes, expertly manicured.
She’s kept this all going, even with the
drought.

Emma was an eminent hostess, and he knew when he reached the
door she’d be there to welcome him in, enthusiastic and genuine in her delight
at his arrival. Then she’d escort him through the living room and into the
central room where they held their séances, and politely excuse herself while
he mingled with the others. Emma wasn’t a Spiritualism enthusiast like the rest
of them, but you wouldn’t know it from some display of displeasure. She
supported her husband’s rabid interest in the subject but didn’t participate,
preferring to retire upstairs to her room and the children rather than sit
around the table while the spirits were summoned.

Lorenzo wasn’t disappointed when, after knocking, Emma
appeared and things played out as expected. He was the last to arrive that
night, and the others seemed impatient.

“You’re finally here!” said Mary Pingree, grabbing him by the
arm and leading him to the large round table.

“Let him get his coat off!” said Jacob, Lorenzo’s brother-in-law.
“We’re not in such a rush we can’t let the man have a minute to settle.”

Lorenzo slipped off his jacket and walked to a freestanding
coatrack in the living room near the entry. The majority of hooks were already
taken, but he found an empty one underneath the other coats.

Most of the group was already seated around the table. Many
were old-timers, people who joined the group just after Sonja Harriman’s tour
stop in Salt Lake City four years ago, where she stunned the crowd with her
ability to summon spirits and communicate with the dead. It had been at that
performance that Lorenzo met Henry, and their acquaintance had quickly
developed into a friendship and desire to continue Spiritualism pursuits. Just
after Henry married Emma, rich iron ore had been discovered on a parcel of land
owned by his ailing uncle, and before the mine had been completed, his uncle
passed, leaving the enterprise to Henry. The mine had proved lucrative, and
with the proceeds Henry had built the house they now met in, large and
spacious, ornately adorned, and situated with his enthusiasms in mind: the
chief one being the thrill of communing with the deceased.

As Lorenzo sat at the table and placed his hand on the fine
silk tablecloth, he looked around at the others, chairs spaced tightly together.
Almost a full dozen tonight
, he thought to himself, seeing Mary sit
directly across from him, Abraham Stoddard at her left and Jonas Orton at her
right. Jonas’ brother, Langford, was sitting to Lorenzo’s left, and he could overhear
him talking to the person on his left, Althea Rowley, about the recent interment
of ‘the killer.’ Willard Bingham, the subject of their discussion, was now
residing six feet under and a hundred yards to the west, in the city cemetery.
The group had managed to contact several souls from the nearby graveyard over
the years, and having a notorious executed murderer now in their number was an
invigorating subject, with several of the group wondering if it might impact
the séance in some negative way.

“Is everyone positioned comfortably?” he heard Henry ask,
standing by the room’s gas switch. Lorenzo had heard him ask it many times; he
always said it the same way and with the same cadence, ever since the first
séance in his home a couple of years back. The group knew it as the unofficial
start of the session, and the conversations came to an end, with the room
dropping into silence except for the occasional readjustment in a chair.

With the lights down, only a thin streak of moonlight from
the east windows lit the room, and everyone calmed themselves and took several
deep breaths to prepare for the session. They’d met so many times in the past
that no one needed to offer instruction or direction; they all knew the
process, and the first steps were to clear the mind of all thought, so that
communication with the dead might occur unabated. On their unsuccessful nights,
the lack of phenomena was often blamed on one of the party blocking contact due
to cerebral anxiety or an unrelaxed state of mental acuity. No one wanted to
fail the group and be singled out, so they all took long, deep breaths, letting
the day’s worries blow away as they exhaled, and freeing their minds.

After they sat in the dark for several minutes, Lorenzo began
to feel a tingle in his back. He recognized it as the signal he often felt as
the sessions began, the indication to him that no blockages would impede their
contact with spirits this night, and he felt relieved. He disliked the nights
where they sat for a good hour with nothing happening. Tonight wouldn’t be one of
those nights.

He knew the others around the table might not have received
the same signal. As he was gifted, he often felt physical triggers when unusual
phenomena occurred, or were about to occur. The others in their group, with the
exception of his brother-in-law, Jacob, were not gifted, and experienced a much
reduced level of stimulation from the séance, although what they did experience
was significant and enough to keep their interest in Spiritualism high and
their commitment to the group solid.

As Henry began to speak, Lorenzo realized it would be another
general session, just as most of their séances had been. They would open
themselves up to communication with whatever person or force was willing to converse,
in the interest of learning more about the other side, and thereby obtain
wisdom to use in their normal lives. Lorenzo found the aims and purpose of Spiritualism
to mesh perfectly with his Mormon beliefs, even though the church had begun to
preach against the practice recently. The members of the Paragonah ward had
expressed displeasure with Henry’s sessions, telling Emma at church that they
considered what Henry was doing to be evil and perhaps even satanic. Emma had
relayed these concerns to Henry and Henry had informed the group, along with a
suggestion that they continue their practice but keep things low-key, hoping to
convince others in the ward that they were not something to be concerned about.

“Let all who can hear my voice, hear my voice,” Henry began,
the house completely silent. Even the breathing of the participants was quiet,
and the combination of the stillness and the darkness began to feel like a
substance around them, something that could be moved through and penetrated by
their minds.

“We seek to hear your words this night,” Henry continued.
“Our path is one of righteousness, and we would learn from the experience of
the dead how to tread that path more uprightly, more honestly and spiritually.
We seek transcendent knowledge, that which we can use to surpass our mundane
existence. Speak to us, tell us of your past, of your present, and of your
future. Tell us, so that we may know and prepare ourselves.”

Lorenzo felt himself slipping into the River, and he sensed
that Jacob had entered it as well. Most places looked the same in the River as
out of it, but the number of séances at the house over the years — and, as a
result, the variety of the manifestations that had occurred there — had begun
to taint the structure when viewed from inside the flow, making it look darker
and drearier, less colorful and more and more monochromatic. It had the feel of
a well-used place, both by humans and ghosts.

It wasn’t unusual for a spirit from the nearby graveyard to
gravitate to the house when the sessions began, and run its cycle of repetitive
angst and despair over and over for the group, intrigued by the circle of
listening ears, happy to communicate but often failing to impart anything
useful. After several minutes of waiting, however, today’s session seemed slow
to start; no manifestation was occurring, no apparition had materialized.
Lorenzo still felt the thrill of some imminent event, however, and he knew
Henry would keep trying. The group had been known to sit in silence for over an
hour before throwing in the towel.
We sit much longer in silence at sacrament
meeting,
he thought.
Patience is often rewarded.

Henry waited several minutes more before repeating his
entreaties, urging nearby entities to make their presence known by rapping on
the table, or speaking through one of the participants. Silence followed. There
was no sound from upstairs, where the children were long asleep, or from Emma
as she rested in her room; no sound from outside, the house being far enough
out of town that no one was bound to disturb as they passed by; no hint of a
whisper from the Spiritualists encircling the table, breathing slowly and
quietly, not shifting their bodies in the slightest, not wanting their single
small disturbance to become a reason for the ghosts to pass them by.

Lorenzo jumped when Mary spoke. “Someone is in the room. With
us.”

“Who is it, Mary?” Henry replied. “Let them speak through
you.”

“Not a spirit,” Mary said. “A physical being. A man. Standing
beside the table.”

Lorenzo cast his gaze around the room, better able to see the
entire area while in the River, but detecting nothing unusual. He dropped from
the flow and again looked, but the room was too dark to make out the figure Mary
described.

“Turn on the light, Henry!” Mary said, the tension in her
voice rising. “There is an intruder here!”

Lorenzo heard fumbling as chairs were pushed away from the
table suddenly. Others in the party had become unnerved and were trying to
stand. Henry reached the light switch and the room was suddenly illuminated,
the participants raising their hands to shield the light from their eyes.

“Abraham!” Mary said. “He’s gone!”

“Perhaps that’s what you saw,” Lorenzo offered. “Abraham
leaving the room.”

Others in the party fanned out into the neighboring rooms,
calling for Abraham. There was no answer.

“No, it wasn’t him,” Mary said. “It was someone else.”

After a few minutes of searching, they gathered again in the
central room. “Abraham isn’t in the house,” Langford said. “We’ve searched
every room, even the children’s rooms.”

“He must have gone home,” Jacob said.

“In the middle of our séance?” Mary replied. “That’s not like
Abraham.”

“And his wagon is still outside,” another participant
offered. “If he went home, he walked.”

Mary’s eyes widened and she began to breathe rapidly. “It was
Bingham!” she said. “That’s who was here! Bingham took him!”

“Let’s not jump to that conclusion,” Henry said, raising his
hands and motioning downward, as though he could lower the tension in the room
with the gesture. “That’s highly unlikely.”

“Then where has he gone?” Mary demanded.

“Lorenzo, Jacob,” Henry said. “Join me in a search of the
yards, will you?”

Lorenzo followed Henry to the kitchen, where he prepared
lanterns, and handed one to each of the men. “I’ll take the back yard and the
cemetery side. Jacob, you search the east side and the barn. Lorenzo, you take
the front yard, and search all the way to the road. Holler if you find
anything.”

The men filed out the back door, moving cautiously through
the yard to their assigned spots, holding their lanterns high to cover as much
ground as possible. When Lorenzo heard Henry and Jacob calling Abraham’s name,
he joined in, repeating the name over and over into the darkness ahead of him,
slowly covering the areas of the front yard.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m terrified,
he thought.
I could feel that
something was going to happen. This is it. Abraham has been abducted. What if
we discover his body somewhere on Henry’s property? The Sheriff won’t listen to
Mary’s theory that it was Bingham. One of us will be considered a suspect.

By the time Lorenzo returned to the back of the house, having
covered all of the area he’d been assigned, it was becoming clear that no body
would be found.

“Nothing,” Henry said.

“Me neither,” Jacob added.

“What do we do?” Lorenzo asked.

“John and Mary Hafen live not too far from Abraham,” Henry
said. “We’ll ask them to take Abraham’s wagon back, and check to see if he’s at
home.”

They went back inside and discussed the plan with the others.
Most agreed that they needed to meet again soon, to share whatever news could
be determined about Abraham, and if he had not been found, to conduct another
séance to try and determine what had happened to him. Mary complained that
Abraham was “lost to this world,” and that they should inform his family, but
Henry begged patience, asking the group to suspend any determination of the
course of events until they had more information. The rest agreed with his
proposal.

Ten minutes later, the assembly had broken up entirely, and
Lorenzo found himself riding his horse back to his home, three miles up the
canyon, unnerved by the evening. He tried to ease his mind by assuring himself
that tomorrow night, when they convened, it would be reported that Abraham was
fine and well, discovered on the road home, temporarily overcome with a spell
or delusion that had incited his exit. But the assurances he offered himself
seemed hollow and overly optimistic, and did not take well within his thoughts.
Something deep inside him validated Mary’s account of the proceedings — that
Abraham was indeed gone, and there would be no account of his return the next
evening.