The Girl in the Glass (21 page)

"But he's seen the ghost of a girl, no?" she said. "Isn't that what drew you all into this?"

"You have a point," I said. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"¡Claro!" she said.

"Have you ever seen one?"

"No."

"Then you believe only because you want to believe or you've been taught to believe?"

"No seas tan condescendiente," she said. "When I was five years old, my father came to me one Sunday afternoon and said, 'Come, I want to show you something.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'Something to help you live your life,' he said. He took me by the hand, and we left the house. We walked to the end of town and then out across the meadow and up the large hill, nearly the size of a mountain that watched over all our lives. 'Where are we going?' I asked. 'To the mines,' he said. I knew that he worked in the silver mines, but I'd never been to them.

"There were no workers at the mine on Sunday, only a guard, who we found sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the mine office, fast asleep. My father woke him and told him we were going to take a walk in the mine. The guard smiled and nodded. 'You're taking her to number three?' asked the man. My father nodded. 'I took my boy only last month,' said the guard, who gave us a helmet and lantern.

"A few minutes later, we stood at the opening to the silver mine, a huge dark hole framed by timbers. Just inside, in the shadows, I could see a train track and a few cars, but my father told me we would be walking. He held the lantern up in front of him and I wore the helmet, which was far too big for me, and we walked down into the ground, as if we were being swallowed whole by a giant snake. As we walked, he started talking. 'Some years ago,' he said, 'there was discovered in tunnel number three, a very rich vein of silver. The discovery made everyone very happy. Five men were sent to work there. They began mining the silver, the purest quality, and so much of it.'

"All the time he talked, we continued to descend. The air got thin, and it became very warm. Still we kept walking. When we reached a place where the main tunnel split, we headed right. Then the tunnels split and split until if I had been alone I could never have found my way back to the surface. 'One day, while the five men were working in tunnel three,' he said, 'there was a terrible cave-in. Something shifted in the earth, and hundreds of tons of rock and dirt collapsed into the tunnel. There was too much debris for us to try to dig through. We called out to the men on the other side of the wall of rubble, but nothing came back, not a single word, not a whisper. They had all died.'

"Eventually we came to a particular tunnel and turned into it. It ended abruptly, though, and when my father held the lantern up, I could see it was choked with large rocks. 'Step up,' he said, 'and put your ear to the rock.' I did. 'Listen hard,' he said. Immediately I heard a sound that seemed to come from inside the pile of rocks. Many voices, screaming, yelling. I couldn't make out any words, but their sound was so frantic and frightening, I could not listen for long, for the lament chilled me to my soul. 'Now they know we are here,' said my father, and the sound of the voices grew so that we could detect them clearly even standing back.

"'Some say the sound is from a stream that runs through the ground there, some say it is the echoing of the wind blowing into the mine from some unknown opening. But no, it is haunted,' said my father, 'by the spirits of the dead miners. Men who have to work near here always bring wads of sheep wool to stuff in their ears, so they don't have to hear the cries of the dead.' 'Why do they cry out?' I asked. 'They are angry at having died,' he said. 'The mine owner knows there is much silver in there, but he will not allow the vein to be reopened, because he fears their ghosts will haunt the entire mine.' 'Why did you bring me here?' I asked. 'I wanted you to know that this exists in the world. To know this is to know something important about life.' I didn't understand what he meant at all and thought he was just trying to scare me, which he did.

"Later that day, I told my mother about our trip to the mine. 'The ghosts are so unhappy to have died,' I told her. 'Nonsense,' she said. 'Death is hard, but once you're gone there is nothing to be unhappy about.'

'There is only one reason the dead come back,' said my mother. 'They return to instruct the living.'"

"But that doesn't mean that the sound on the other side of the cave-in wasn't running water or the wind coming through a shaft that led to an opening," I said.

Isabel gently laid her left arm across my chest. "Wait," she said, "there's more. That night, I had a bad dream. In it I was being chased by some unknown evil. The only part I clearly remember was that my grandmother, who had recently died, appeared. She materialized, a ghost, her face contorted in anguish as it had been when she was laid in her coffin. She screamed at me, 'Take this!' and thrust forward a silver candlestick. I awoke and knew that the voices in the mine had given me this nightmare. Even though I was only five years old, that image stayed with me forever.

"Two years later, a rich man bought the mine. He fired everyone who worked there, including my father. The new owner was warned about tunnel three, but he said he didn't believe in superstition. When he learned that a rich vein of silver lay down there, he ordered his new men to excavate the tunnel. As they dug, the crying of the dead miners increased until it could be heard all the way to the entrance. Still, he insisted they continue to dig. On the day they broke through the debris and found the bones of the old miners, all of the new workers, eight men, suddenly died."

"A curse?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Poison gas from underground. Later it was discovered that the original collapse was caused by an explosion due to this gas. My mother had been right, the spirits were trying to warn the miners not to dig there. Once the gas was discovered and the mine was vented, the voices of the spirits were never heard again."

"I don't know," I said. "It's a good story, but does it prove that there are ghosts?"

"One more thing," she said. "That night you came to save me at the mansion, and that thing was fighting Mr. Cleopatra in the hallway, I knew the phantom might be hurting you and I wanted so badly to help. I looked around the darkened room for something, a weapon. Then I heard my grandmother's voice,

'Take this,' it said, "and I remembered a heavy silver candlestick that was on the mantel in that room. I used it to beat the demon on the head."

BY WAY OF YOUR ART

I
t was after dark when Antony parked the car at the end of a line of others in the circular drive of the Barnes estate. From the considerable number of autos present and the absence, as far as we could see, of the police, it seemed Barnes had been good to his word. Antony, in his chauffeur guise, got out and came around to open the door for Schell and me. He then retrieved the large traveling trunk that carried the props that would be necessary for that evening's séance, and we began our slow, cadenced walk to the front steps. We hadn't done a job since Parks's place, and it felt good to be working again. I gave my turban a last-minute adjustment before we began the ascent to the front door. Barnes met us in the foyer, looking more haggard than ever, as if he'd aged two decades since last we'd seen him. He approached Schell with his hand out, but I stepped forward to intercede.

"Mr. Barnes, please do not take this as a slight, but Mr. Schell has asked me to communicate for him until after the séance. He is in the process of preparing himself to go more deeply into his mediumistic trance than he has ever gone before."

Barnes, at first, appeared disappointed at the prospect of dealing with me, but as I continued with my explanation his fears seemed to subside. "This will be a very arduous, and to some degree dangerous, foray into the spirit world tonight, and Mr. Schell has been preparing since early this morning, descending through the various levels of concentration and consciousness to reach the very quincunx of afterlife affinity."

This last phrase made Barnes take a step back, as if he feared he'd already possibly been too disruptive to the great man's preparations. Schell was turning in a command performance, his eyes closed, his lids fluttering, his Adam's apple bobbing, and his hands out in front of him, fingers splayed wide. Before we'd left the car, he'd purposely rumpled his hair, displacing it to achieve just the right look of duress.

"I've assembled everyone from the list, as Mr. Schell requested," said Barnes. "All of them, that is, except poor Parks."

"Mr. Schell has asked me to express his condolences to you for this sudden, tragic loss of your friend following so hard upon the heels of the loss of your daughter."

Barnes said nothing, nor gave so much as a nod, but stared fixedly off into the distance, as if stunned by the thought of what he'd been through. It was only the arrival of his wife that brought him back to the moment. She came up next to him and entwined her arm in his. Mrs. Barnes had fared no better than her husband. Her previously dark hair had gone completely gray in only the short time since I'd last seen her. I bowed slightly to acknowledge her presence, and Barnes explained Schell's condition to her.

"If you will gather your guests together," I said, "Mr. Cleopatra and I will begin setting up. Once the room has been prepared, I will usher in Mr. Schell."

"Very well," said Barnes. "Follow me. We're going to use the dining room, as it has a table large enough to accommodate everyone."

Mrs. Barnes went off to gather the others, and I started down the hall after Barnes, taking a quick glance behind to see Antony lift the trunk he'd momentarily set down and fall in line. When we reached the room in question, there were already a number of people there. The place was spacious, with a table at its center that could easily seat a dozen. The men and women were dressed in evening clothes, and I scanned their faces in an attempt to memorize them.

I overheard one older woman in a blue chiffon evening dress whisper to her male companion, "I understand this savage speaks freely to the dead." "Savage" was an appellation I'd not yet heard applied to me at these events, but it very nearly made me smile.

I decided that Schell would sit in the center of the left-hand side of the table and directed Antony to lay his case down on the floor a few feet behind that chair. He did so and began unlatching it. Once it was open, lying flat on its side, I reached in and retrieved the candleholder and candle that would sit in the middle of the table during the séance. Next, Antony took out an easel with telescoping legs and a small folding stand. We brought these to the side of the dining room opposite the entrance and set them up a few feet from the end of the table.

Antony positioned a large white sheet of paper on the easel, and I put the stand in front of it, finishing the job by placing two candles at either side so that the paper would be visible to everyone at the table. The last two items to be put in place were incense burners that clamped onto the back of, and rose above, the chair that Schell would be using. Once they were affixed I filled them with sticks of sandalwood. When the candle at the center of the table and the two caches of incense were lit, smoke rising and twining about the room, I began seating people. I held my hand to my forehead for a moment, as if receiving a signal from the spirit world, and then, with a whispered phrase of "Yes," or "I understand" sought out the guests one by one, bringing each in turn to his or her spiritually ordained chair. It was during this that I learned their names and took a quick inventory of who was who. Schell had instructed me to place the two oldest participants on either side of him. Although I offered my hand, few would take it, but one gentleman slipped me a dollar when I showed him his spot. The chair opposite Schell's was reserved for his faithful servant, Ondoo.

When the Barneses and all of their guests were seated, I bowed beside Mr. Barnes and told him that I would fetch Mr. Schell. As I left the room to get him, Antony turned out the lights. I found Schell meandering down the hallway like a simpleton, weaving from side to side, sunken deep in his mediumistic trance. I took his arm, and he whispered to me, "How do I look?" His hair was now crazier than ever, and his eyes were rolled up. "Like an escapee from the Immaculate Redeemer Nursing Home," I said.

"Perfect," he said and smiled. I could readily sense his joy at being back in action. We entered the dining room, and Antony, who had taken up a position by the door, as if standing guard, closed it behind us. Stifled gasps went up from Barnes's friends at the sight of Schell. I led him to his seat and helped him into it while holding my breath against the prodigious output of the incense burners. Before seating myself, I walked over to the easel and lit the two candles directly in front of it. Once I was situated, Schell instantly began twitching.

We warmed up with some preliminaries—the moth from the mouth, the knocking of my big toe on the underside of the table, voices thrown here and there, a couple of bangs of flash powder. The crowd was jittery, expectant, the gentlemen losing their gruff facades, the women losing their breath. When Schell was shuddering so badly it seemed as if he would soon explode, he opened his mouth wide and in a vibrating voice, the words seeming to leap from his tongue rather than being spoken, he said, "We call forth Charlotte Barnes. We implore you to pass through the vale of tears and leap the yawning divide to help us understand your departure from this world."

Mrs. Barnes, who sat to the right of Schell, began weeping. Her husband looked as if he might simply crumble to dust. The gentleman I had marked as Mr. Trumball dabbed his high forehead with a handkerchief, and the old woman in the blue chiffon, Mrs. Charles, nervously pursed and unpursed her lips, as if offering dainty kisses to the unseen. Just to the right of me, the family physician, Dr. Greaves, watched suspiciously from behind thick-lensed glasses.

"We ask you to identify your killer, Charlotte Barnes," intoned Schell, "by way of your art. Come forth and show us who took your life."

"Absurd," said Collins, a gentleman with a drooping black mustache and one continuous eyebrow.