THE STATE

AMBER TALIANCICH ALLEN

Bachelors of Arts in English

University of South Alabama

May 2013

Candidate for the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Cleveland State University

May 2016

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree

MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING at the NORTHEAST OHIO MFA

and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

May 2016

We hereby approve this thesis for

Amber Taliancich Allen

Candidate for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree

Department of English, the Northeast Ohio MFA Program

And

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by

Thesis Chairperson, Imad Rahman:

______

______

Department of English April 21, 2016

Professor Caryl Pagel:

______

______

Department of English April 21, 2016

Professor Robert Miltner:

______

______

Department of English April 21, 2016

THE STATE

AMBER TALIANCICH ALLEN

ABSTRACT

This thesis is a work of fiction, a novel in progress. It is written with seven different point-of-views, which cross time and place and weave in such a way to tell an overarching story. The work is heavily influenced by the Southern Gothic and the writings of Shirley Jackson and William Faulkner. Main themes include womanhood, community, motherhood, and spiritualism, as well as southern and female etiquette. It is also based on personal experience growing up in a small Mississippi town.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………..... iii

CHAPTER

I. CARRINGTON…………………………………………………………………...1

II. MRS. JENINGS, 1925…………………………………………………………….2

III. JAMES, 1952……………………………………………………………………...5

IV. HEREWARD CARRINGTON, 1907…………………………………………….9

V. EVELYN, 1952…………………………………………………………………..10

VI. LENA, 1922……………………………………………………………………...14

VII. BESSIE, 1889………………………………………………………………..…..19

VIII. CARRINGTON, 1910…………………………………………………………...21

IX. MRS. JENINGS, 1918…………………………………………………………...23

X. JAMES, 1952……………………………………………………………….……27

XI. HEREWARD, 1907………………………………………………………….…..32

XII. EVELYN, 1952…………………………………………………………………..33

XIII. LENA, 1922……………………………………………………………………...38

XIV. BESSIE, 1889………………………………………………………………..…..42

XV. CARRINGTON, 1910………..………………………………………………….43

XVI. MRS. JENINGS, 1918……………………..…………………………………….44

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XVII. JAMES, 1952…………………………………………….………………………49

XVIII. HEREWARD, 1907…………………………………….………………………..54

XIX. EVELYN, 1952……………………………………………….………………….55

XX. LENA, 1922……………………………………………………………………...60

XXI. BESSIE, 1891……………………………………………………………………62

XXII. CARRINGTON, 1917…………………………………………………………...64

XXIII. MRS. JENINGS, 1918…………………………………………………………...66

XXIV. JAMES, 1952…………………………………………………………………….68

XXV. HEREWARD, 1907……………………………………………………………...74

XXVI. EVELYN, 1952…………………………………………………………………..75

XXVII. LENA, 1925……………………………………………………………………...79

XXVIII. BESSIE, 1893……………………………………………………………………88

XXIX. CARRINGTON, 1918…………………………………………………………...90

XXX. MRS. JENINGS, 1918…………………………………………………………...91

XXXI. JAMES, 1952…………………………………………………………………….98

XXXII. HEREWARD, 1907…………………………………………………………….106

XXXIII. CELIA, 1952……………………………………………………………………107

XXXIV. LENA, 1925…………………………………………………………………….110

XXXV. BESSIE, 1900…………………………………………………………………..120

XXXVI. CARRINGTON, 1918………………………………………………………….121

XXXVII. MRS. JENINGS, 1918………………………………………………………….123

XXXVIII. JAMES, 1952…………………………………………………………………...127

XXXIX. HEREWARD, 1907…………………………………………………………….133

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XL. EVELYN, 1952…………………………………………………………………134

XLI. LENA, 1925…………………………………………………………………….139

XLII. BESSIE, 1900…………………………………………………………………..149

XLIII. CARRINGTON, 1918………………………………………………………….155

XLIV. MRS. JENINGS, 1918………………………………………………………….156

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I. CARRINGTON

Uninterrupted land. Raw and wild. Shaded by tall pines. Dense oaks. Bayous of thick, swaying marsh grass. Sundews and butterworts. Lure--trap. Pes pes: cry of the tiny frog. A lullaby. A symphony with grasshopper thrums on warm rainy nights. The moon.

The stars. Spotlights, and the natives ask--Kak ayǫk yąhi inąki wo: what have you suffered that causes you to sit and cry?

It’s 1699 when strangers arrive. Small villages abandoned. Left in ruins. Ghost towns due to smallpox. It passes from the French to the British to the Spanish, American by 1811 and Mississippian by 1817, but not Carrington until 1875.

A haunted land. Burial grounds unearthed during battle. The war. New blood shed. Brother against brother. To blanket the soil. To feed old spirits. The first small seeds planted for a cursed people to root a town.

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II. MRS. JENINGS, 1925

Mrs. Jenings found herself sitting amongst her best ladies seven years after what the town had labeled the incident. It was a difficult but worthy climb back to the top, though to a place she wasn’t quite sure she deserved anymore.

It was a cool day, for Mississippi standards--82 degrees in the middle of August when 95 was the average. Due to this, and a thankful breeze coming in from the bay, the ladies had decided to take the game onto the back porch.

“It’s your turn, Snoopy,” Mrs. Lemon said, tapping her fingernail against the table to get Mrs. Jenings’s attention.

Mrs. Jenings hated when Mrs. Lemon did this, the tap tap tapping, and she often wondered if she did it to Mr. Lemon, too, and if so, it may just well explain why Mrs.

Jenings saw Mr. Lemon pulling into his driveway around 5:30 every morning, an hour before his children must be up and ready for school.

She looked down and then back up to meet Mrs. Lemon’s gaze, reaching a silent understanding that this round could determine the game. They’d been card partners long enough that a single glance could indicate it was time to do what they did best: bluff. She

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knew the risks. She knew she’d have to balance her manipulation, bid low, but not too low. She liked her deceit to be just under the radar, slightly unprovable. Ambiguous between lie and fated luck.

“I can take two,” Mrs. Jenings said, knowing she could positively do at least three, but probably four.

Mrs. Lemon nodded and continued ordering the cards in her hand, being sure to keep them securely hidden from the roaming eyes of Mrs. Baughker, who sat at her right.

“I’ll say three,” said Mrs. Baughker.

“I’ve got at least two good ones here,” Mrs. Lemon said.

Mrs. Mohler sighed. “Maybe I can do five, then.”

Mrs. Jenings took a sip of tea to prevent from smiling, made easier considering their Spades game was held at Mrs. Mohler’s that week, who made her iced tea so sweet,

Mrs. Jenings felt she’d just chewed on foil wrap after each tiny sip she could manage.

Since Mrs. Mohler had the most help out of the ladies, Mrs. Jenings figured she’d at least have someone with enough to sense to either teach the poor woman how to make tea or just make it themselves. Though, Mrs. Jenings also believed Mrs. Mohler to be the most strict with her help, so she wouldn’t be too surprised if she, in fact, used it to torture them.

By the end of the round, Mrs. Jenings and Mrs. Lemon had won eight tricks combined, five coming from Mrs. Jenings’s hand alone, pushing their score over the 500 point goal, therefore winning the game.

“Oh, darn,” said Mrs. Baughker. “You win every week. I just don’t know how you two do it!”

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“They sandbag,” Mrs. Mohler said calmly as she gathered the cards.

Mrs. Lemon gasped. “Now you take that back right now, Kitty Mohler,” she said, pushing her chair back to stand.

“For heaven’s sake, Mary, sit down. She can’t prove anything. We’ve never been penalized for bags during the entire ten years we’ve played together.” Mrs. Jenings said, taking another painful sip of tea.

“Oh, you’re right,” Mrs. Mohler said, now placing the cards back in their box.

“You’re always just shy of it.”

“And what are you trying to say?” Mrs. Lemon shrilled again while returning to her seat.

Mrs. Mohler shook her head, dismissing the conversation there.

Mrs. Jenings knew Mrs. Mohler knew she’d cheated. There were things in place, for instance--large point deductions, to prevent from taking cheating too far, but Mrs.

Jenings also knew a thing or two about quietly getting her way. She had a keen knack for truth-twisting that went well beyond card tricks. But Mrs. Mohler was one of the few,

Mrs. Jenings believed, who could see right through it all.

Except for, maybe, the most horrible thing Mrs. Jenings knew she’d ever done: told one lie, spoke one sentence five words, that completely, utterly ruined a man’s life.

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III. JAMES, 1952

It was far muggier than an early mid-March evening should be. I wasn’t sure when or where the shift occurred. Perhaps as I cut down through Kentucky, or even sometime while I drove around the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Maybe it happened the very moment I completed the small stretch across Georgia and entered Alabama. Regardless, it seemed the weight of the very air I breathed grew heavier and heavier the farther I descended south.

With the top down, Jo Stafford sweetly sang You belong to me as I crossed into

Mississippi. There wasn’t much traffic, but I could see lights in the distance suggesting a town may be near by. It’d been awhile since I’d last referenced the map. The sun had just gone down, and it was a hot, clear night, stars slowly revealing themselves, but there were moments when the sky lit in the distance, like fireworks veiled by clouds, a pulse radiating out over the horizon like something I’d never seen before.

Eventually I came across a small, one-manned gas station on the side of the road and thought it best to stop for a filling. The attendant, who seemed asleep on a wooden stool with his back propped against a little shack, yellow light pooled around him from

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the pole above, startled when I pulled up to the single pump. He rubbed his hands down the legs of his denim overalls before making his way over to me.

“Caught me just in time. I was just about to close up shop,” the attendant said so quickly, and in an accent so thick, I could barely make out the words. “Well my, my. I’ve sure never seen one of these in person. What a beaut,” he continued after an appraising whistle.

He was referring to my Jaguar XK120-M Series Roadster. My leading lady, my

Blue Angel. She was a pale blue with silver accents and chrome wire wheels.

“Doesn’t that actor from...shoot,” he said, before spitting on the ground. “You know, what’s his name?” He waved his hands as if that would conjure the answer.

“Haven’t the slightest,” I said, forcing a smile.

He looked a bit dirty, but it all seemed surface-level, like he just needed a good soak and scrub and then he’d be fresh and proper again.

“He’s got that tiny mustache, you know.”

“No, I’m sorry I don’t know,” I said, knowing full and well he was referring to

Clark Gable.

He whistled again. “Mighty fine car you got yourself there,” he seemed to say more to himself than to me. He patted the hood, which made me a cringe a bit, if I’m being honest, before finally taking the pump down to start fueling.

I pulled the map from the glove compartment and gave it a good once-over.

“You just passin’ through, or you got plans on where you’re going?”

“No plans.”

“Most places’ll be closing up soon. You looking to sleep tonight?”

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I was getting rather tired. I’d been driving for about thirteen hours by then, with no food, only stopped to buy a soda somewhere around Georgia. I looked at the attendant and saw his intense gaze. He stared at me with a purpose, a suspicion, perhaps.

“Do you have suggestions for tonight? Somewhere quiet. Private, even?” I asked, resting the map against the steering wheel.

“Might need to head a little more north for that. The beaches get a lot of people this time a year.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed it’s quite hot. It’s still snowing where I’m from.”

“Where’d that be?”

“Vermont.”

He nodded, as though it made all the sense to him that Vermont would be rather snowy still this time of year. I had the feeling, though, that he didn’t really know a thing about the yearly snowfall of Vermont. But in his defense, neither did I.

Once the car was fueled, he came around to my side. “Tell ya what. Let me see your map,” he said, reaching over. “You got a pen?”

I handed him the pen from my shirt pocket. He placed the map on the hood, and I could only wish he weren’t heavy-handed as he proceeded to draw a path to my next destination.

He returned the map and pointed to the line he’d drawn. “You just stay on this road for about twenty miles, then you take a right,” he said, poking the wrinkled paper. “I woulda circled the town on the map, but it’s not on the map. Think they even took the welcome sign down.”

“Well how will I know I’m there?”

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“Just follow that path I gave ya. You’ll know. It sorta just comes out of nowhere.

There’s an inn in the center of the town. Only one they got. Can’t miss it.”

“Well, okay. Thank you,” I said, and when he didn’t walk away, I asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, right. Right--$2.82.”

I handed him a five and told him to keep the change. He looked a bit shocked, but nonetheless accepted the large tip without question--they always do-- and after he went back to his stool, I looked at the line he’d drawn and the chicken-scratched letters reading

Carrington, curious even more since that was a family name. I started my angel and gave her a good rev for the delight of the attendant, who smiled and waved as I drove away, giddy like I was Gable himself, racing off into the night with Joan Crawford by my side.

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IV. HEREWARD CARRINGTON, 1907

The whole history of modern spiritualism presents three, and only three, cases of remarkable physical manifestations such as cannot, very readily, be accounted for by fraud…

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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V. EVELYN, 1952

Standing on a pedestal in the center of Dee-Dee’s Dress Shop, a Carrington institution, as the sign outside read, Evelyn Lovelace swatted at the pink pouf on her shoulder while her mother discussed hem lengths with the tailor across the room. Despite her efforts, there was nothing she could do to prevent her shoulders from looking like two pastel powder puffs.

“Will you stop that,” her mother snapped as she joined her on the pedestal. “Oh, darling, you look just darling. Simply divine.”

“I look like a cross between Scarlett O’hara and the Easter Bunny, Mother.”

“Oh, my! No, dear. Divine, really. A little bit of O’hara, yes, but why not? You’re supposed to be the belle of the ball.”

Evelyn sighed. “Not the Antebellum belle,” she said, scratching at the lace constricting her throat.

“This is the south, dear. Tradition never goes out of style,” said Dot, a long-time saleswoman of Dee-Dee’s, as she came around the corner with a new bundle of dresses

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draped over her arm, “but I had a feeling you might want to see something a bit more modern.”

Carrington’s Festival of Flowers was in two weeks, and Evelyn’s mother had signed her up for the Blooming Belles Beauty Pageant. During registration, the girls were to pick which flower they wanted to represent. While most fought over Mississippi’s state flower, the Magnolia, which not so discretely won every year, Evelyn chose the Azalea.

When she was younger, she would spend most summer afternoons at her grandparents’ house, and in their front yard was a giant Azalea bush, the center hollowed out like a cave. For a while, it was her own little secret, until one day she’d fallen asleep, only to be awakened sometime late in the night by her grandfather shining a light in her face. He’d never told anyone where he’d found her, always, then, their little secret.

“Oh, Ev, try this one. It’s simply gorgeous,” her mother said while she dragged her hands down the length of a cream organdy dress speckled with black polka-dots. It wasn’t bad. Much better than the lacey wad of cotton candy she was presently wearing, at least.

Minutes passed as she struggled out of one dress and into the other. Before she even pulled the dressing room curtain completely open, her mother gasped.

“Oh, Evelyn,” she cooed. “This is the one.”

She stepped onto the pedestal and smoothed her hands down her stomach, feeling the fabric softly bounce beneath her fingers. The dress felt like it was floating over her skin. It was fitted up top with the bodice dropping low on her waist, the skirt flowing out from her hips, organdy falling in wispy layers that grazed the ground. What Evelyn loved the most, so opposite from the previously poofy disaster, was how the sleeves slid low on

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her arms, fully exposing the expanse of skin from her shoulders to her collarbone, and lower still to her, though modest, cleavage.

She gave a small twirl, and she felt like dancing smoke. A cloud caught in a breeze. Lovely.

“Now we just have to find the other one,” her mother said, ruining the bliss

Evelyn had finally found after two excruciating hours of shopping.

But the other one her mother was referring to wasn’t a dress. It was a man, which posed a serious problem for Evelyn, because she found every boy in Carrington to be utterly dull. And the one’s who were at least passable, were usually already taken and often even recycled once the girls figured out there really weren’t any more fish in the sea. For instance, Debbie Johnson had already tried and failed at dating Ronnie Carter three different times, the first of which Evelyn had to remind her of, it having been in kindergarten, after all.

But it didn’t help either that Evelyn could remember how each boy looked and acted when he was five: a few braced, most snotty nosed, all intolerably mean and bratty.

She had a story for almost every boy she went to school with. In the first grade,

Kyle Hode put tuna juice in her milk once when she’d gone to the restroom. After one sip, she spewed the mess all over the table, ruining the lunch of Betsy Matthews, who refused to speak to her again until the third grade.

Michael Mohler, in the fifth grade, looked up her skirt while she hung from the jungle gym, which she only learned because Connie Miller heard from Parker

Cunningham that he paid ten cents to hear the story in the boy’s bathroom.

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Then there was Mitchell Dye, who in the sixth grade went around telling everyone she was his girlfriend, but when she approached him, in front of half the school’s Jr. High football team, no less, he only laughed, saying he didn’t even know her name, which was a blatant lie because she’d first introduced herself to him in preschool when he’d fallen off the tire swing into a puddle of mud and she’d given him her cardigan to clean the dirt off his bleeding knee.

His little joke had caused all the jocks to laugh, not only removing Mitchell from her list of potential boyfriends (for the second time--the first having been when she never got her damn cardigan back), but also Jimmy Biggs, Adam Dalgo, Mark Chesterton,

Owen Brown, and Debbie’s Ronnie, who was already technically off the list because he was, and would always be known as, Debbie’s Ronnie.

By the time Evelyn was in her senior year of high school, there was only one boy left on the list: Joseph Woodward. And even though Joseph was only ever nice to Evelyn, she couldn’t quite bring herself to talk to him. Or look at him, even. It wasn’t because he lacked appeal; he was rather handsome. But there was something about Joseph that truly made Evelyn shiver, and not in the sweet, dark way a man often could if he knew what he was doing (not that Evelyn would really know how that felt, either, though).

Rather, there was something unsettling about Joseph. Of course, Evelyn was raised on the rumors. That Joseph’s family had secrets.

“Well, what do you think?” Dot asked.

“We’ll take it,” Evelyn’s mother said before she even had a chance to speak for herself.

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VI. LENA, 1922

It was early one morning, as Lena sat in the parlour reading, sneaking a cigarette before her parents woke, when a bookshelf in the study toppled over. The crash startled most everyone in the house, causing the four guests at The Lakehouse Inn to come running downstairs within minutes of each other. By that point, most of the guests had been there three or four days, and so they felt quite comfortable in the old New

Hampshire B&B.

Lena put out her cigarette, waving the smoke away because she knew her parents would soon follow, then slipped what remained in a table drawer in hopes of sneaking back to it later after everyone had returned to bed. Though the crash didn’t bother Lena, she still followed to assess the damage. She was becoming quite used to these disturbances, actually, as they had become more and more frequent as she’d gotten older, or perhaps, she’d simply started taking notice.

“What on earth,” the lady from room eight whispered softly to herself, but Lena heard as she rounded the corner and entered the room.

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Her great-grandfather’s English Chippendale bookcase was front-down on the floor of the study. Glass and wood splintered out from beneath the case due to the gothic tracery glass doors shattering in the fall, which must have occurred rather fast because only one book, Lena noted as the book, rested alone on the floor, completely across the room from the accident.

“What do you think happened?” the man from room nine asked Lena, but her father stepped in to answer.

“That old thing’s been wobbly for years. Been meaning to patch it up myself, but just couldn’t find the time,” her father said as he tried to usher the two couples from out of the room. “How about everyone go and get settled in the dining room. Nancy’s got some coffee coming, and she’ll get started on breakfast a little early today.”

The guests seemed satisfied, but perhaps still a little shaken, as they filed out of the study. Lena’s father gave her a stern look that she knew expressed something along the lines of: don’t even start.

After he’d gone, Lena picked up the book. The Physical Phenomena of

Spiritualism. It was written by a distant relative of hers, Hereward Carrington, and she’d become obsessed with it years ago after stumbling upon it one rainy, summer afternoon while her parents were remodeling one of the upstairs rooms. Her discovery of the book was similar to the event that had just occurred, though far less dramatic. She’d been sitting in the parlour, the next room over, when she heard a soft thump come from the study. Since she could hear her parents upstairs, and knew, otherwise, the house was empty, she went to investigate the noise, and soon after found the book resting close to the wall opposite the bookcase.

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At first, she thought nothing of it. Simply figured all the banging from her parents upstairs had jostled it loose, but shortly after she’d returned it to its spot and settled back into her reading of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, she heard the soft thump again. This occurred three times before she decided to keep the book close, eventually reading all

477 pages within a day.

She often wondered why that day had been different. That same shelf and that same book, probably always in the same spot, had been in that same room since before

Lena was born, twenty-two years ago. No, nothing before that day, almost two years ago, had seemed very different. But shortly after, her father hired Madame Rose, a self- proclaimed psychic to not only feel the energy of the house, as Madame Rose had put it, but to also hold seances in the basement on the weekends for guests.

And as much as her father didn’t believe the stories and rumors claiming the historic New Hampshire B&B was haunted, he did like the extra money he could charge for those little events, as well as the extra guest fees he could tack on for staying in rooms four and five, the ones considered to have the most physical phenomena, according to

Madame Rose, that is.

Lena wasn’t quite sure, herself, what to think of the small disturbances that often trickled throughout the inn. Most were small, harmless, like the book falling from the shelf. But every now and then Lena felt as though she were being watched. Most often when she was in the study returning the book to its rightful place, as well as at times while walking through the gardens behind the inn. The gardens her grandfather had built slowly over time for her grandmother, with rows of roses--red, yellow, and orange--and rows of feather pinks between rows of elephant ears and azalea bushes, bee balms and

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rain lilies and bugbanes, as well as a single powder blue hydrangea--her grandmother’s favorite--nestled near a small fountain next to an aged iron bench, the place where her grandmother had passed away on a chilly November morning years before Lena’s birth, alone, book resting in her lap.

Lena’s mother had always said Lena had gotten her love for books from her grandmother. But sometimes Lena worried if that wasn’t the only thing that had been passed down to her. Her grandmother was said to have heard voices and was often found talking to herself, though she claimed to always be speaking to someone else, just to a someone else no one could see or hear. Though Lena didn’t hear voices, she feared her rational concerning the book would be a little disconcerting to anyone else. Eventually,

Lena developed a theory about the book. Weeks, sometimes months would go by without it falling, and then suddenly, she’d have to just about glue it to the shelf to make it stay, something she actually tried once, but it’d been ripped free during another occurrence, as

Lena referred to them, causing a small tear in the bottom of the black cloth cover, and so she feared doing more damage if she tried again.

What she did notice, though, was that shortly after these occurrences, a significant change soon followed. The first had been Madame Rose. A few weeks later, after three days of book acrobatics, her father fell while cleaning the roof and broke his leg in two spots, forcing her mother to cancel all reservations for the following two months because she couldn’t handle cooking for and taking care of her father on top of a house full of guests. And as this pattern continued, the changes seemed to get worse and worse, the most recent being when one late evening, during a walk along the beach that stretched across Lake Winnipesaukee, Lena found her high school sweetheart, her fiance of two

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years, cozied, limbs sticky, covered in sand, intertwined with a girl they’d once gone to school with.

It had been a year, until that morning, since the book had last fallen off the shelf, so Lena wondered, now what would happen?

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VII. BESSIE, 1889

Before Mrs. Jenings married Mr. Jenings, she was Bessie Lee Brown, a Virginian farmer’s daughter. Her childhood didn’t include the lace gowns and etiquette lessons like many of the girls she went to school with, rather her closet was filled with sensible items that could be worn again and again, despite constant rips and caked-in dirt thanks to her daily chores on the farm. She was an only child and motherless, so it wasn’t until grade school, until encountering Molly Lee , that she first paid attention to how a girl should appear and behave.

After Bessie attended Molly Lee’s sixth birthday party, she promised herself it would be the last time she entered a situation so ill-prepared, so ill-received, because even then, every girl, along with Bessie, knew the Browns were less fortunate, the working class. Molly’s parents had insisted she invite everyone in her class, though, and

Bessie, hopeful this could be the moment when the others would take her in, teach her their ways, accept her, had begged her father to let her go. But Mr. Brown knew the risk.

He’d dealt with the snobby likes of the Lees and the Byrds and the Carters since he was a young boy on the farm, himself, but he even believed maybe this could be Bessie’s break.

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A way to bridge the gap that he never could after the death of his wife when Bessie was only two.

Thankfully, it only took hours of cookies and pink frosted cakes and stories of baby ducks and pet piglets to thaw the hearts of her classmates, that day, and Molly also seemed to take a liking to Bessie and so started inviting her over often, even without the other girls from their class. Bessie eventually started spending nights there, sometimes entire weekends, especially when Mr. and Mrs. Lee were out of town, which seemed to be often. On those parentless weekends, Molly would lead Bessie into Mrs. Lee’s closet, where they were surrounded by puffs of mauve and magenta silk, snowy white crinoline, silver and gold threads, and lace the color of freshly milked cream.

But what Bessie envied the most: the three rows of shoes, ranging from dainty satin slippers to high-laced, leather riding boots. She would slide her small foot into silky pumps and marvel at how her skin transformed, glowed when surrounded with such beauty. Sometimes Molly would climb onto the seat of her mother’s dressing table and pull strings of pearls and jewel studded bracelets and clips of silver with clustered, colorful stones for ears and hair and give them to Bessie to try on.

They would adorn themselves and sit amongst the richness of the closet, bask in the joys and privilege of what it must mean to be a woman, and Bessie would wish she never had to leave.

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VIII. CARRINGTON, 1910

The railroad line from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, Louisiana is complete, bringing many tourists to Carrington to enjoy the natural spas surrounding the small town. The economy thrives, and in time, cozy inns and hotels develop all along Jefferson

Avenue, the main street that cuts down the center of the town, stretching from the A&A depot to the sandy coast of the gulf.

There are those who depend on the tourists--for instance, the inn owners and Mr.

Lovelace, who runs the general store, but then there are those who wish the small town were still a secret. Those who despised the extra hoof traffic and the muddying of the hot springs. And eventually it is those who help the town shift and settle its downtown more north to the farthest edge of their town lines where the old Mason Plantation still resides, thus receding into the woods closer to the bayous and back bay away from the main roads, selling off the land near the busier gulf to the surrounding towns. But for some, that still isn’t enough.

An even more secluded stretch of land is bought by Mr. Harold Jenings, a wealthy patron of Carrington, and this area becomes known around town as the row of

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benefactors, because whether their names are written high on signs or filed away on private contracts, among the five families settled on the row, the entire town is owned and accounted for.

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IX. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

The day had finally come when the new neighbors’ house was complete, and Mrs.

Jenings peered through her side window in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the family as they first arrived.

While Mrs. Jenings wasn’t one to envy the possessions of others, because she was securely confident with matters of her taste and knew no other could truly compare. But she still couldn’t help but see the lady of the house next door as being a potential rival.

This wasn’t such the case with the other ladies in her small community. For instance, she never worried about Mrs. Lemon because she knew she was too lazy to ever prune her front bushes herself so the flowers were often strangled and the plants overgrown, and Mr. Lemon was also too cheap to hire someone else to do the labor (Mrs.

Jenings often wondered if the Lemons were only so rich because Mr. Lemon absolutely refused to spend money), so their front yard was usually such an eyesore that no one would even bother to look beyond it, which was a shame because the capital details on the Ionic columns supporting the front porch were absolutely lovely, though not as lovely as the exquisite details of Mrs. Jenings’s own Corinthian capitals, that is.

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And while she appreciated the Baughker’s attempt at edgy originality by having a

Queen Anne-style architecture, she was also appalled by the blatant lack of recognition toward southern tradition in the structure and found the home’s complicated asymmetrical shape and strictly ornamental spindles and brackets truly tacky, however fanciful and regal the house may well be to passersby.

The Mohler’s residence, however, wasn’t as gaudy or illy taken care of, rather it was just too simple to be considered awe-inspired. It was a more reserved version of a southern home. A traditional Greek Revival structure with a wide, plain frieze. The porch had six, but rather simple, box columns, and though the symmetry was altogether eye- pleasing, the classic clapboard exterior was utterly dull to look at for too long, but thankfully one wouldn’t have to, nor would they really want to, since Mrs. Jenings’s grand French Colonial home was only right next door.

Inspired by the design of the Mason Plantation in the center of town, the Jenings’s home was wide with two levels, the roof hipped so that it extended over the porch of the second floor, which wrapped around the entirety of the house on both levels. With French doors, raised living quarters, no interior hallways but rather passages off the porches to the rooms, and almost floor-to-ceiling windows lining every opportune space, the house was not only naturally well-lit, but able to remain cooler than most during the hottest, muggiest months of the year in Carrington, something she liked to remind the ladies of when it was so hot, especially in Mrs. Baughker’s home, that the cards were almost too slick to hold onto.

But it seemed their new neighbor had considered something similar when designing their home. Mr. Jenings, not wanting to enable his wife’s tendency toward

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snoopery, only told her the new family’s name--Woodward-- and that Mr. Woodward was a banker from somewhere up north, where exactly, he didn’t mention, though. Like theirs, the Woodwards had also chosen to build in the French Colonial style, which Mrs.

Jenings found somewhat distasteful since they weren’t actually from the south, but she felt that could already be seen in the design.

While the new home wasn’t as wide and spacious as the Jenings’s, the added third story and a half gave it extra height. There were six green-shuttered windows on each floor, three for each wing, and a single pella window for the attic story above doors which opened to a small sun porch. A flower path that rivaled Mrs. Jenings’s own began exactly ten feet away from the front steps--she measured one night once the construction and landscaping crew had left-- the flowers shifting from yellow roses to Indian pinks, which she begrudgingly admitted would surely attract any hummingbird population within a mile-radius, as they led to a five-stair entry of a green-trimmed, wrap-around porch-- she was pleased to note they only had one gallery porch (as opposed to Mrs.

Jenings’s two), located solely on the lower level, all framed with--cheap-looking-- ferns and spanish moss, but only thanks to the close proximity of hers and Mrs. Mohler’s oak trees.

Mrs. Jenings paced anxiously across the front study, the room with the most advantageous spying window. Only once did Mr. Jenings interrupt her by only popping his head in the room before grunting and walking away to probably smoke and take his

Scotch at the backside of the house, his favorite to do around this time of the day, when the sun was just beginning to set, eventually dipping low into the bay water that acted as their backyard.

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But just when Mrs. Jenings was about to retire herself to her usual nightly routine, she heard the crunching of tires as a dark green car came up the drive that entered the secluded community and veered slightly left to follow the path up to the Woodward’s new home. She watched as the man came from around his side to open the passenger’s door and a lovely woman, blonde and petite, exited, taking the hand of her husband for help until her dainty feet were situated on the imported cobblestone path of the driveway.

And then a little boy clamored out of the car, running up the stairs to the front door with such excitement that even Mrs. Jenings’s envious heart melted a moment and she almost forgot that her place as the wealthiest, most tasteful lady in Carrington was at threat.

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X. JAMES, 1952

By nine p.m., I’d made it to the small city the gas attendant had told me of, slightly surprised that he’d indeed been right-- it was, in fact, incredibly hard to miss considering it seemed to be in the middle of the woods. I was rather worried at one point, fearing this had all been some sort of ruse, a trick devised to lure me away from civilization so that I could be robbed, tortured, eventually murdered. It was all over the papers, lately, after all. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I was just the type of person someone like that would be looking for. But my fears had soon after been soothed once I saw a hint of light in the distance, and after I’d come around a considerably sharp turn, there it was-- Carrington, appearing out from the woods as though the trees existed solely to frame the lovely image before me.

The attendant was again correct in that I had no other choice but to make it to the inn at the center of town. The main road, the one that had also wound through the woods, led directly to the inn with no choice to turn down another road. It was quite strange, really, but the road did allow me to get a glimpse of the quaint town since it seemed to travel right through the center, and though it was very dark already, I still understood the

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place to have an insurmountable amount of southern charm. Large oaks lined the path and were nestled between tiny shops with small entryway lights above each door. There were little parks on each side sprinkled with flower patches and well-groomed bushes, and I even noted two gazebos along the way, each adorned with tiny golden lights.

But there wasn’t a soul in sight. The town was utterly quiet, completely shut down for the night, it seemed. As I neared the inn, iron poles lined the road with hanging old- fashioned lanterns, shifting slightly in the summer breeze. The inn itself was grand and stately, two levels of white Antebellum tradition, the lanterns carrying over to sway between ferns along the wrap-around porch. The road followed around to the side of the inn and led to what looked to be an empty lot. Strange enough, it seemed this was the only road-- the only way into the city and the only exit by going back the way you’d come.

I’d hoped the temperature would’ve cooled by that time of the evening, but the air was still intolerably thick and hot. I hesitated before walking up the stairs to the porch because tiny bugs swarmed near every lantern. The porch was clean, not a speck of dust or dirt it seemed on the white wooden floor. White rocking chairs lined the path, and they too looked spotless. At the door, I hesitated once again because it seemed quite dark inside, though I couldn’t actually see in. The curtains were closed for every window and the glass of the front door was that cut, distorted type that blurred my view of anything beyond it. I was considering looking around more before something caught my eye closest to a lantern lit at the top right of the doorway. It was the largest, blackest cockroach I’d ever seen. I immediately snatched the handle and prayed it was unlocked.

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Gratefully it was, and I hurried into the inn and shut the door before any unwelcomed guests could follow. I’d been right that it was dark inside. Only a single dim lamp was on by what I took to be the reception desk. It was tall, a dark rich mahogany, with a wall of hooks behind it, keys hanging from every one. There was a person sitting there, a young man, but he appeared to be sleeping.

I stepped up to the desk and cleared my throat. When that didn’t work, I tapped the wood. And when that didn’t work, I leaned over and gave the man a hard poke on the shoulder, pulling back in time so that it looked I’d only been patiently waiting.

He shuffled in his seat, his eyes lazily opening and then closing and then opening again with a start, a little shake, obviously startled to see me standing there.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, standing. “How long have you been there?”

I noted he sounded a little upset.

“Just a moment.”

The young fellow stood, staring it seemed expectantly, until I asked, “Do you have any rooms available for the night?”

“I’m sorry, but we actually don’t. We’re all booked.”

I calmly looked behind his head at the wall full of keys and then back to meet his glare.

“Those are copies,” he said, anticipating my question.

“I’m willing to pay extra.”

“Again, I’m sorry, but we’re all booked, sir.”

“Will there be anything tomorrow?”

“No, sir.”

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“Don’t you need to check? If you have a full house, it may be hard to keep track of such a thing,” I said, forcing a smile.

The fellow opened a book in front of him and almost immediately said, “Nothing available tomorrow either, sir.”

I was losing my patience because I knew full and well whatever that young man had just looked at was indeed a blank page.

“In case you misunderstood earlier, I’m willing to pay you extra.”

This seemed to catch his attention. Money always does, though.

“Name your price,” I continued.

“$50.00.”

“Sold.”

He raised a brow. “My mistake, that’s only for the room, sir. It would be $100 if you included the extra.”

“Fine.” I said, fully realizing I was being taken for a fool. In my entire life, I’d never spent more than $16.00 for a hotel room and that was at the Waldorf-Astoria just last week. I highly doubted this place was more accommodating than the damn Waldorf-

Astoria.

“Perfect. I just need a little information and we can get you all settled in,” he said before looking around, it seemed, confused. He finally grabbed the book from earlier and opened it to what looked like a random page and asked me to write my name and address, just anywhere.

“Great, just great. Now how will you paying Mr...?” he said as I handed the book back over.

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“Castleby,” I finished for him. I’d made sure my entry had been quite illegible.

“And that would be cash, good sir.”

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XI. HEREWARD, 1907

The investigations of the Society for Psychical Research...have demonstrated the fact that supernormal phenomena do occur; but whether the “physical phenomena” are considered to be as such is a question that still remains to be undecided.

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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XII. EVELYN, 1952

Evelyn often found herself wondering. Wondering about her town her parents her grandparents, the people she’d grown up with--her fellow classmates--the world. She wondered about what life was like beyond Carrington. In all her eighteen years, she’d never left the small town, and when she really thought about it, she couldn’t conjure the name of one single person she knew who had. She also wondered if that was a mistake and that maybe she just never paid enough attention. But above all things, Evelyn paid attention, so whether she realized it or not, this absolutely wasn’t possible-- her not paying enough attention.

But, of course, it wasn’t actually true that no one had ever left Carrington. Bobby

Baughker, in fact, left only two months ago to study law in Oxford. Evelyn had just never liked Bobby ever since that time she’d heard he’d once likened her lips with those of a trout (little did she know that to a tenth-grade Bobby, that was actually a compliment), and since he was a year ahead of her in school, he was an easy person not to miss.

Usually though, she noticed every little thing about every single person, place, or thing in Carrington. She even paid attention enough to realize she got that from her

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grandmother, who seemed to have a sixth sense to just know things about people before those people even knew it about themselves. Her mother, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to the world, the people around her, always doing and saying as she pleased, always nodding when others spoke but really only waiting until it was her turn to talk again. Evelyn found it to be a talent, really, her mother’s ability to turn every conversation back to herself.

But Evelyn found herself to be just the opposite, simply happy to sit in the background and watch and listen and think and keep to herself. So when her mother mentioned the Belles Beauty Pageant, Evelyn really didn’t see it coming, which was silly, she thought in retrospect, because as her mother had put it, it was a family tradition, darling, one dating back to her grandmother who was on the very first pageant committee in 1925. Plus her mother had won the ridiculous thing in 1943 when she was eighteen- years-old, so it was only natural that Evelyn follow in her footsteps.

But again, Evelyn couldn’t stress enough how truly unnatural it was. The pageant had three different sections: Formal Wear, Talent, and Interview. Evelyn had the new fancy dress, but she didn’t believe she had the talent nor the social skills the judges were looking for. Plus, she still didn’t have an escort, not that she’d really tried to find one because she was fully aware of just how hopeless that situation was. And no matter how much her mother pressed, Jerry, her third cousin, would never be a viable option in any sort of dating capacity, no matter how innocent or minor the role may be.

“Ev, dear, are you ready?” her mother called from somewhere in the front of the house. Today all the girls were required to help decorate the town and inn for pageant and

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festival activities, as if participating in the damned thing weren’t bad enough, now

Evelyn felt partly responsible for its very existence.

“Evelyn Grace Lovelace, if you don’t get your tush--”

“For goodness’ sake, Mom, I’m right here.”

“Well, you know how your grandmother gets when she’s left waiting too long, especially by herself.”

Evelyn nodded because she knew exactly how her grandmother got when she was left waiting too long, as well as did most of the town-- everyone knew just how high Mrs.

Bessie Jenings’s expectations were. Even in her old, eccentric age, she still had the entire, though modest, population of Carrington wrapped around her frail little finger. Fear is a powerful motivator, but so is pity, and her grandmother successfully conjured both in everyone who knew her, which was indeed, everyone.

“What on earth are you wearing, Evelyn?” her mother said, almost a shout, once

Evelyn had come into view.

Evelyn had had a bit of a feeling her mother would disapprove of her outfit, but it was over a hundred degrees outside, and probably felt even hotter once the humidity was figured in, so Evelyn had dug out some old slacks from deep within her closet and cut them as short as she thought she could get away with and then hemmed the bottoms neatly. She’d thought they would fall around the mid of her thigh, but she hadn’t factored in how high the shorts rose around her waist, thus bringing the length of the shorts considerably higher than the mid of her thigh.

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“You bought me this shirt just last year,” Evelyn said, feigning innocence, referring to the pale pink, scalloped-collar shirt she’d tucked into the high waist of her newly-made white shorts.

“Oh, really, Evelyn, you cannot leave this house looking like,” she paused. “like a--”

“It’s so hot out there. I’m not wearing some thick, cotton dress for hours out in that heat,” Evelyn said as she finished coming down the stairs.

“But what will people think? Really, Ev dear, you look like a floozy!”

“They’re not that short.”

Her mother was silent a moment, looking to be taking it all in, before she leaned over and said, in almost a whisper as though she may be overheard, “For heaven’s sake,

Evelyn, you’re...” she stopped just long enough to wave her hand in the general upper area of Evelyn thighs, “...is just hanging out. Go upstairs and change,” she finished louder as she blocked the door after already smacking Evelyn’s hand away from the knob twice.

“I’m not changing. Either I go in this or I don’t go at all.”

“Your grandmother is waiting.”

“And she can keep waiting.”

Her mother gasped. “What has gotten into you? Where did you even get this idea?” she asked, poking Evelyn’s thigh with a freshly painted nail.

This made Evelyn pause. She’d seen something similar not too long ago in last year’s June issue of Vogue at Susie Parker’s house, but Susie had gotten the magazine from Sally who’d gotten it from Debbie who’d gotten it from Daphne who absolutely refused to say who she’d gotten it from-- all meaning, the magazine was a secret.

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“I just wanted to wear something I wouldn’t roast in. That’s all, I promise. I didn’t even mean to cut them this short.”

Her mother let out a heavy, audible sigh. “Well you know that snotty Martha and that wretched child of her’s...what’s her name?”

“Grace,” Evenly said after her mother finally stepped aside and opened the door.

“Yes, Grace. How completely ironic for that poor tactless child to be called

Grace.”

“No one will care, Mom. You’ll see.”

But as it’d turned out, everyone had cared. (Especially Evelyn’s grandmother.)

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XIII. LENA, 1922

Built in 1805, The Lakehouse Inn was a three-story, red brick structure that was once the home of Lena’s great-grandfather, Henry Edwards, who was known to have had a soft-spot for all who were deemed outsiders, outcasts, political rejects, even going so far as to house Confederate soldiers in the attic while hiding escaped slaves in the cellar, as well as allowing for the home to act as an emergency hospital for Union soldiers who couldn’t make it to the mainstay an hour or so east from the inn. Eventually he decided to turn his good-natured habit into a business, and thus the Lakehouse Inn was officially open to the public in 1825.

Lena had grown up hearing stories of the inn’s rich history, much of which was bloody and violent or simply shaded by sadness, and as Madame Rose put it during her first few moments in the house, a history that had left an irrevocable state of horror echoing throughout its walls.

At first, Lena was impressed with Madame Rose. She was impressed with how she looked-- mysterious with a confident posture-- how she spoke-- refined with a hint of an exotic accent, though of what origin she couldn’t exactly pin down but she suspected

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something Gaelic-- and by what she said-- statements that confirmed Lena’s constant paranoid and anxious state of being, such as confirmation that she was indeed being watched, more specifically by the spirit of a Union soldier who died in what was now room two, because she had the same dark hair and sad eyes as the woman he’d left behind during the war.

But over time, something changed in Lena’s opinion of Madame Rose. It wasn’t that Lena didn’t believe something or someone was haunting the inn, in fact she thought that it was rather plausible considering the inn’s past and the odd little things she’s experienced first-hand, written about, but she did start to wonder if Madame Rose was more of a people-reader than a palm-reader, historian than a spiritual see-er. There was truly no way to know whether the spirits she claimed walked the halls were in fact those she claimed they were. It was highly likely that most of those who had led tragic enough lives, experienced horrific enough deaths wouldn’t have any records with the inn, because their visits were probably always officially off the record.

Lena also noticed Madame Rose was quite social with the guests the few days before her weekly seances and palm-readings, a sly way to get to know them, their families, their insecurities. But for so long, Lena only simply felt suspicious about

Madame Rose. She never had evidence, never anything to truly hold against her. She had actually come to like her. That was, until Lena, herself, was read by Madame Rose.

One morning, Lena had decided to take her coffee onto the patio, watch as the fog rolled out, hovering just slightly over the garden grounds. There were times when Lena just wanted to sit alone and stare, watch, listen. This had been one of the mornings, but it wasn’t long before Madame Rose joined her at the small table facing the yard. After a

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few moments of shared silence, Lena started to rise, but Madame Rose reached out, grabbing her wrist, perhaps only lessening her grip once she’d noticed the startled look on Lena’s face.

“Sit,” Madame Rose demanded.

Lena pulled her wrist back, and stared down a moment at the woman before finally taking her seat again.

. Madame Rose then took Lena’s hand into hers and flipped it over, seeming careful to be gentle this time, and skimmed a finger across her palm. She studied Lena while Lena studied her.

Lena followed every swipe of her finger, noticed the way her brows drew in when her tracing slowed over a spot, how she leaned in as though straining to see through the gray, misty air of the morning, how something, a look close to disappointment flashed across her face, how her lips spread into a grim line, before her fine features glazed over again with a peaceful, blank stare.

“I can tell you a few things, if you want,” Madame Rose finally said, her accent thickening, straying to something more Scottish.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Lena said, but, in truth, she was a little intrigued.

And as if Madame Rose could truly read her mind, she continued.“You have lived many lives, dear. You used to have magic running through your veins, probably still do a bit,” she said, looking up from Lena’s hand to meet her gaze.

“You see that in my palm?” Lena asked, forcing a smile.

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“No, I can see it just by looking at ya. It’s your eyes. They’re quite old. But you’re stuck in a death cycle, see?” she said, pointing to a spot on Lena’s palm. “Always the same, every time. Always by your own hand.”

“You mean I’ve killed myself?” Lena said, bringing her hand back, resting it in her lap.

Madame Rose nodded in confirmation.

“Just by looking at my palm, you know this?”

“The lines, yes.” Madame Rose then gathered her dish and cup, leaving Lena to sit and stare at her idle hands, alone.

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XIV. BESSIE, 1889

Poor Bessie.

Her teachers thought Poor Bessie because she lacked manners and grace, not even knowing how to properly sit in a skirt, her legs always flailing about. Poor Bessie because her mother had died when she was so young. Poor Bessie because she was never taught how to curl her own hair and it often looked unkempt and unbrushed. Poor Bessie because her family farm had failed to produce a good crop for the past two years and the whole town knew it. Poor Bessie because all her clothes were stained, poorly patched, had tiny holes. Poor Bessie because she was an only child and Poor Bessie because her father refused to marry again.

Poor Bessie Poor Bessie Poor Bessie, the young Mrs. Jenings was long known as

Poor Bessie because everyone in her small Virginia town knew just how bleak her social prospects were and forever would be. And despite her growing friendship with the dazzling Molly Lee, her classmates paid no such mind to Bessie, hardly even associating a name to the mousy-haired, dirty-kneed girl who always sat in the back of the room, in the end, extending an odd sort of kindness to Bessie by simply not thinking of her at all, nonetheless as Poor Bessie.

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XV. CARRINGTON, 1910

At first, many worry. They worry how they will survive with no tourists. They worry how they will eat with no produce shipments or meat shipments or any sort of shipments. They worry how their children will learn with no schools or teachers. They worry how they will stay healthy with no doctors or drugstores and they worry how they will survive without places to buy things like flowers or vases or plates or furniture or mirrors or dresses or cards or anything at all because no stores exist. But Mr. Jenings reminds them, yet. No stores or schools or drugstores or doctor offices or groceries or flower shops exist, yet.

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XVI. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

Weeks passed and Mrs. Jenings wondered when she should venture over to the new neighbor’s house since she hadn’t yet been summoned. She would forgive Mrs.

Woodward of this social blunder for only so much longer before taking it so personal that her new mission would be to ensure the Woodwards would have no higher role in any of the functions, whether it be societal or business, in Carrington, something she knew would be rather tricky considering she’d discovered a few days ago while dusting-- snooping--in Mr. Jenings’s office that Mr. Woodward was now the silent owner of the only general store in town, therefore saving the Lovelace family from going completely bankrupt.

Two more weeks passed before Mrs. Jenings received an invitation from the Woodwards for a housewarming party. She was sitting on the porch when the invitation was delivered by Mrs. Woodward herself, which left Mrs. Jenings to wonder if she was indeed correct in her thinking that the Woodwards had no hired help, an oddity since they appeared as though they could easily afford it. Mrs. Jenings sat quietly, fanning herself to fight off the

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sticky air, as Mrs. Woodward quickly walked up the front steps and held out a small pink envelope scented like gardenia, Mrs. Jenings’s least favorite scent. She wondered if that had been done on purpose, but nonetheless she accepted the invitation, nodded her head with the smallest of smiles, and then Mrs. Woodward turned and went back to her home as quickly as she had left it, never having said a single word. The party was only in two weeks, and Mrs. Jenings then understood Mrs. Woodward as having been simply too embarrassed to speak.

The week before the party, a drama occurred next door, which as scary as it was, Mrs.

Jenings was somewhat thrilled by all the commotion. The Woodward’s youngest son,

James, or Jimmy as Mrs. Woodward often corrected, had gone missing sometime during the early morning, though Mr. Woodward believed it to have been sometime later in the afternoon. With the help of the Baughkers and the Mohlers and the Lemons, Mr. and

Mrs. Jenings joined the Woodwards in searching the gardens (Mrs. Jenings not able to keep herself from inspecting the roots of Mrs. Woodward’s white camellias), as well as the bayou, where the ladies searched along the coastal grass as Mr. Baughker took Mr.

Woodward on their boat to search a little farther out while Mr. Mohler and Mr. Jenings crawled under the house-- all returning, in the end, fruitless.

By nightfall, little Jimmy still hadn’t been found, but the Woodwards promised to let everyone know when he returned. Moments after they’d retired outside, Mrs. Jenings looked out from the window in her second-story reading room to see the boy standing in what must have been the attic, backlit by a soft glow, waving once she’d caught his eye.

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The night of the party, Mrs. Jenings and her husband were the first to arrive. Before knocking, she studied the fine details carved around the door, and she noted how the framing windows were absolutely smudgeless, wondering then if Mrs. Woodward simply preferred her help to remain strictly out of sight.

Mrs. Woodward answered the door before Mr. Jenings had even knocked, and the two were ushered into the entryway where Mrs. Jenings fawned over everything in sight.

The nicely waxed floors. The polished banister. The exquisite moldings and tin-lined ceiling. And the grandest statement upon their entry--the family portrait, which depicted

Mrs. Woodward as gracefully younger, leaving Mrs. Jenings to wonder if perhaps the artist had been granted creative liberties.

But there was another man in the portrait Mrs. Jenings didn’t recognize. He looked to be in his early twenties, though it was hard to be sure. She found him to be quite handsome, but when she inquired over who he was, she was met with awkward silence until Mr. Woodward suggested they come away from the door and get more comfortable in the parlour.

Mrs. Jenings was intrigued but easily distracted, noting the dainty yellow heels

Mrs. Woodward wore. They looked satin, catching a slight sheen from the light as they entered the next room. Tiny pearls lined the curve at the top, where the satin met skin, and then swirled into a large, but tasteful, cluster that spiraled down to the toes. And as

Mrs. Woodward sat, crossing her legs at her ankles, Mrs. Jenings couldn’t help but notice how perfectly unscuffed the soles were. Mrs. Woodward seemed then to bounce her feet, meeting Mrs. Jenings’s gaze with a knowing smile.

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Soon after the Lemons and the Baughkers arrived, Mrs. Jenings excused herself to find the restroom, which she had no real intention of seeking. Instead she wandered around the first floor, noting how heavy the house felt despite its open design. Unlike hers, there were hardly any windows aside from the facade. Despite the beauty and richness of the actual decor, everything about the house felt rather claustrophobic-- extra small rooms were in odd places, many doors were locked-- she’d aimed to peek behind every closed door-- walls seemed to randomly split rooms, short halls led to nowhere. It felt like a maze.

Fearing she’d been gone too long, she traced her footsteps back, truly worried, at first, that she couldn’t find her way. But she could tell when she was almost back to the parlour because Mrs. Lemon’s shrill laughter was more and more ear-piercing with every step, and when she’d almost returned, she noticed a small piece of paper on the ground.

After looking to ensure no one was around, she picked it up and read:

“THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT

YOUR SON TECHNICAL SERGEANT WILLIAM L WOODWARD HAS BEEN

REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE TWENTY FOUR SEPTEMBER OVER

FRANCE IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED YOU

WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED= J.L. ULIO THE ADJUNCT GENERAL”

She then folded and slid the paper into her dress pocket.

After dinner, while everyone went into the parlour to listen to Mr. Jenings play the piano to tunes they could sing along with, Mrs. Jenings slipped away unnoticed, this time

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venturing outside in the hopes of stealing a glance into any of the rooms closed off from within. She quickly learned that was not such an easy task, after all. And while she attempted to climb the lattice-work to peek into a window she was just shy of reaching, she heard a scream.

She dropped back to the ground and hurried to the front of the house, stopping short when something fell from above a few feet in front of her. It was hard to be sure in the dark, as the sun had already set hours before, but the closer she stepped to the object, the more she realized it was a shoe. And once she’d completely come upon it, she noted again the fine detail of elegant pearl clusters, wondering briefly if soda water could remove that regretful smudge of dirt.

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XVII. JAMES, 1952

The Confederate Inn was quite cozy, inviting, even, especially at this time of night with all the lights turned down low. The walls were filled with old photographs and weathered, brown-aged documents. It didn’t take me long to realize the inn had once been a plantation. Cotton, it seemed. I stepped back outside, still amazed at how grossly sticky the air was, and while I was getting my bags from my car, a young colored gentleman approached and asked if I needed any help.

“I’m fine, good sir,” I said to the young man. I thought it strange he would be working at such a late hour, but was pleased nonetheless at the offered hospitality. He was wearing a white suit with a green vest, the color an exact match with the hue of the shutters, a green I’d come to understand as being definitively southern. He had a nametag in the shape of what I believed to be a magnolia that read Walt.

“Do you accept tips?” I asked as I reconsidered, finally realizing just how exhausted I was, but I first wanted to be sure this was a paid man. I didn’t know how hard the Confederate Inn strived to be authentic.

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Walt simply nodded yes and reached down to take my bags as though my asking was confirmation enough that I wanted help.

“Thank you,” I said, releasing my bags to him, except for one, a small gray suitcase. “I’ll keep this one, though.”

He seemed to hesitate, eyeing the bag still in my hand, before asking, “Where to?”

I hadn’t even bothered to look, yet. This poor man was weighed down by the sole weight of everything I owned, and I was prolonging it. I pulled the key from my pocket, which had a small piece of paper with a neat, cursive G written across it and tied onto the top with a piece of red string, and held it up for him to see. He nodded again and continued to walk.

There was a masculine grace in how he carried the entirety of my life on his shoulders. A grace and ease I envied.

“Are you from here, Walt?” I asked after we’d walked a while in silence.

“Born and raised, sir.”

“I’m not really from anywhere,” I told him, though I could’ve just plainly said,

I’m from New Hampshire.

It was dark, but our path was lit by more lanterns hanging from black, cast iron poles. I thought maybe I could make out small cottages in the distance, and we often passed signs along the way giving the history of the plantation and the location of different buildings on the grounds. We passed the red brick kitchen complex, the washhouse, a small schoolhouse, and the overseer’s cottage, as identified by the signs. I

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wondered how much had been left out, which trees they used for hanging, which houses for lashings.

When it seemed we were walking deeper into the backwood of the plantation, six modest, wooden cottages, all with tiny front porches, stood in a straight line facing our approach. Walt veered to the right and walked to a tall, narrow and round red brick structure that had no porch but instead an iron balcony from the second-floor window.

The land around the building had been cleared, but thick vines still stretched from the edges and crawled up the sides, some reaching so high as to wrap around the thin spire at the tip of the roof.

“How truly curious-looking. What is this place, Walt?” I asked, eyeing the building.

“It’s the old garçonnière, sir. It housed the owner’s son.”

“All the way back here?”

“Not legitimate, sir,” he said, waiting for me to use the key.

“I wonder why he put me here, Walt,” I said as I opened the door.

He just shrugged before carrying my bags in and placing them on the wooden floor of the entryway. He turned on the lamp which sat upon a dark-stained table beneath a slim, tall mirror that stretched almost to the ceiling, and I saw the room was sealed off from the rest of the floor by two white French doors.

I opened the French doors and light filled the small space. The floors transitioned from wood to black and cream checkered tile. The room was minimal, with only a few side tables scattered around a dark couch near a small fireplace, which was useless since it was the middle of November and the heat outside was still suffocating. I walked around

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the small space, turning on another lamp as I passed, and noticed there was no kitchen or larger table to eat at, and no chair for guests, all of which, I realized, were just as useless to me as the fireplace. The space smelled sanitized, but a dampness could be detected under the surface, a musky stench that I began to associate with this idea of southern living.

“Would you mind taking the bags upstairs, please, Walt?” I asked, noticing how my voice lifted and echoed throughout the space. I looked up and saw how the ceiling stretched to the highest point of the structure, with the second story curving, leaving the center hollow so that one could look down from the bedroom to see the bottom floor.

Walt hesitated, but lifted the bags once again and carried them across the room and up the iron, spiral staircase to the second floor, which only housed the bedroom. I would, unfortunately, have to use the bathroom at an external location. And to think, they charged more than the Ritz-Carlton and they couldn’t even provide me with a convenient toilet.

“Staying long, sir?” he asked while dropping my bags next to the bed. It didn’t sound like the normal, polite question. It sounded more as though he wanted to be sure I wouldn’t be there very long.

“I don’t quite know, yet,” I said, forcing another smile even though I felt about how Walt looked in that moment: anxious, maybe a bit cornered. “But if I need anything,” I continued, “I’ll be sure to call after you, good sir.” I finished the last of the sentence by pulling a five out of my money clip and holding it out for him.

Walt looked down at the money, then back up to me, then back down at the money. I’d never seen someone so conflicted over free money in my entire life. But then

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again, perhaps, Walt was fully aware of how totally unfree this money could be. A silent bargain, maybe, though neither of us were yet sure of the terms. But he finally, though still hesitantly, reached out and took it, eyes down and face blank.

“Thank you, sir,” he said after a few moments had passed in silence and neither of us had moved. “Anything else you’ll be needing tonight, sir?”

“I’m mighty hungry, Walt.”

“Kitchen’s closed, sir. Nothing until the morning. There’s a diner next door that opens early, and there’s a cook out on the grounds tomorrow in the afternoon for the beginning of the festival.”

“Festival?” I asked, truly feeling how tired I was. I stretched across the bed, feet still firm on the ground, and looked at the ceiling. It was tin-plated, organic designs stamped into the metal. Swirls and dots etched between flowery wisps. Myself was a blurred reflection, abstracted even more by the hazy glow of the lamps from the lower level filtering up. The top of Walt’s head was just a round, dark shadow in the tin.

“Festival of Flowers, sir. Tradition here.”

“Good. Thank you, Walt. I think I just need some sleep now,” I said, unmoving.

I saw the dark shadow bounce and then trace away, the direction opposite of me, until it was gone, and I knew I was alone again.

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XVIII. HEREWARD, 1907

There can be no doubt, then, that the history of spiritualism is saturated with fraud, and that the vast majority of the phenomena obtained through mediums are fraudulent in character.

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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XIX. EVELYN, 1952

Evelyn had expected a few wayward glances. Perhaps a snicker or two. A few whispers, sure. But she really hadn’t expected the all-out passive aggressive assault she received from the pageant goers and their mothers, at least not so early in the day. She thought maybe they’d have to stew in it. That perhaps that one last extra extended flash of pale thigh as Evelyn reached higher than usual to tie a bundle of daisies near the top of a gazebo pole would somehow be the last straw, would cause the outcry from the mothers that Evelyn was a bad influence on them all. But it took far less than that.

It only took one brief look by that snotty Martha Higgins as Evelyn and her mother approached for Martha to signal by glare alone to Missy’s mom, Doris, who then glared at Bea, who then glared at Sarah, who then glared at another mother and so on until all the mothers had received and passed along the glare announcing Evelyn and her mother as the newest targets in their battle to preserve Southern decency.

But Evelyn’s mother was too busy to notice this silent war cry, instead searching for her own mother, Evelyn’s grandmother, who Evelyn still spotted first, sitting on the

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front porch of the Confederate Inn in one of their large white rocking chairs, sipping what looked to be iced tea with mint leaves, her favorite.

As they approached, Evelyn noticed her grandmother’s eyes changing, growing slightly larger with each step they made toward her, up each step they took to stand on the porch.

“Sorry we’re so late, Mother. Have you been out here long?”

“For a bit, yes,” she said, eyes never leaving Evelyn’s bare legs. “You should report to Missy. She has the list of things to do, Evelyn.”

While Evelyn was used to her grandmother’s dismissive tone, she regretted leaving her mother with the tone she knew would soon follow once she was completely out of earshot. Her grandmother’s signature tone, one concocted of equal parts shame and disapproval with pinches of embarrassment, all in the name of upholding the family name. But her grandmother hardly wasted any time, Evelyn able to hear the beginning of her hushed tirade by the bottom of the porch’s stairs with an “Oh really, Adelaide, how could you let this happen…” the last of the sentence falling away as Evelyn marched across the front lawn of the Confederate Inn to where Missy and her little gang of ladies stood smiling smiles Evelyn knew were surely less than wholehearted, nonetheless friendly.

“Oh Evelyn, so happy you made it. We were getting worried,” Missy cooed, her perfectly peach colored smile never faltering.

And as much as it almost pained Evelyn to do so, she mirrored that smile with her own, unglossed lips. If her grandmother had ever taught her anything, it was that honey

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got you farther than vinegar, no matter the awful taste the words left in your mouth, afterward.

“What would you like me to do?” Evelyn asked, ignoring the way Missy’s gaze continued to wander her outfit, long after she’d finished speaking.

“Oh, yes. Could you be a dear and check on breakfast. It’s just muffins and the sort. Don’t know what on earth’s taking them so long.”

“Of course,” Evelyn said, somehow managing to spread her smile wider. If anything, this got her away from the likes of Missy.

“And would you mind bringing me back a tea?” Missy called after Evelyn had already turned and walked away and so Evelyn pretended not to have heard her.

The kitchen was frantic with both excited and hostile energy, but as soon as Evelyn stepped into the room, most of the cooks and servers stilled and turned their attentions to her, something she could never quite get used to. Her grandfather had bought the inn some time ago, way before Evelyn was born, but it wasn’t until recently that her grandmother had become something of a permanent guest at the inn. Since her grandfather died, her mother worried leaving her grandmother out there alone, so near the bayous, so near the house that once seemed to have consumed her grandmother’s every waking thought, would only lead to disaster.

Even Evelyn noticed how much less her grandmother fixated on it all (all being a story Evelyn has never completely heard) by living at the inn, but Evelyn still struggled with the shift in power. She’d always known her grandparents were prominent in

Carrington, but she, herself, never really felt the attention, that is, before now. She had

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friends, but was, by no means, considered popular or on the radar, and she preferred it that way. So now that her mere presence could still a room full of busy workers, she wasn’t quite sure how to react.

Mrs. Livingston, the head of the kitchen, rushed over to Evelyn. “Your grandmother need something, Evelyn, dear?”

“Actually, no.” And with those words, the kitchen once again frenzied with preparations. “But Missy wants to know where breakfast is, I guess.”

To this, Mrs. Livingston rolled her eyes, but seemed to catch herself for Evelyn’s sake. “It’s almost ready,” she finally said.

“Do you need any help? I can take something out, if you want.”

“Don’t be silly, child. Go enjoy yourself. I’ll have something sent out, soon enough,” Mrs. Livingston said, trying to shoo Evelyn away.

Mrs. Livingston had worked in the kitchen of the inn for as far back as Evelyn could remember, and surely she was there even before that. But Evelyn realized, for as small a town that Carrington is, she found it difficult to really know its inhabitants. And she didn’t think it was due to a lack of trying. When Evelyn was young, she used to love sneaking away to this very kitchen, hiding around a corner to watch Mrs. Livingston roll a layer of dough onto the wooden table. Eventually, Mrs. Livingston would catch Evelyn, but instead of shooing her back to her home down the road, she would wave her hand for

Evelyn to join her. They would talk about how best to keep the dough from sticking to the roller (flour) and the table (flour), and once when Evelyn was a little older, Mrs.

Livingston even gave her advice about boys (flour--because the way to a man’s heart is by having your kitchen always smell like freshly baked bread or sweet sticky rolls).

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But in the end, after all those years of sitting on the counter next to Mrs.

Livingston as her hands worked and braided and rolled, her hands seeming to age right before Evelyn’s eyes, Evelyn still felt she didn’t know a thing about Mrs. Livingston, beyond that she was married and had two children, both a bit older than Evelyn, herself.

“Truthfully, I’m not in much of a hurry to go back out there,” Evelyn said, and she could see the understanding in Mrs. Livingston’s eyes.

“Alright, then. Those buns over there could be popped in the oven. Be sure to use a mitt. Don’t go burning yourself in my kitchen.”

Evelyn would have found Mrs. Livingston’s concern thoughtful, if it weren’t for her grandmother now staying at the inn. She could only imagine how her grandmother would react if Evelyn did hurt herself, regardless of it having been strictly her fault.

Evelyn didn’t wish her grandmother’s wrath on even her worst enemy, though there were times when Missy was at the height of her reigning snottiness when Evelyn would be happy to make an exception.

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XX. LENA, 1922

April was the beginning of the busy season for the Lakehouse Inn, and all ten guest rooms were already booked for the coming weekend, which meant Lena would be glued to her mother’s side for the entire week, helping with food preparation, mainly, but she also had cleaning responsibilities on top of helping her parents coordinate activities for the guests. Lena was used to this sort of work grind, as she’d been deemed a “little helper” early in her toddler years, the moment when her mother realized she could barter with the three-year-old Lena, trading four jelly beans for every picked up toy, which later became scrubbed potatoes, which later became chopped vegetables, which later became swept and scrubbed floors and made beds and polished silver and so on until Lena was old enough to fully invest every moment of her free time to the family business.

She didn’t feel the sacrifice really. While she enjoyed school, making friends wasn’t much of a priority for her. She was the quiet one who always kept to herself, usually eating lunch in the corner away from everyone else until high school when she found a large Willow tree behind the school and decided that would be her secret spot.

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She never had close friends, nor even a boyfriend until the year after she’d graduated high school when she’d met David-- her eventual ex-fiance upon the straddling incident-- in a cafe walking distance from the inn. Even then, she’d noticed how they had little in common. She lived mainly in her mind or within the worlds of literature and philosophy books, while David had little patience with discussing books, nonetheless the attention-span to sit down and read one. It was obvious his studies had meant nothing to him, and she’d often wondered if his family money had anything to do with him getting into law school. What Lena did enjoy, though, was how David looked at her, and she knew very well it wasn’t loving affection she saw in his eyes.

In the end, their break-up had little impact on Lena, though. There was never a moment when she knew, nonetheless ever thought, she loved him. But when he’d asked her to marry him, she said yes because she knew that’s how a girl should reply. And for the briefest moment, while standing on the beach on a cool, October night, the spray from the lake reaching new distances as the rough water crashed waves into the coastal rocks, she thought, maybe she could do this.

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XXI. BESSIE, 1891

Bessie finally felt she was coming into herself. Perhaps, becoming a lady. More lady-like, anyway, because she still wasn’t convinced a girl living on a farm, with no mother, with no sisters, milking cows and cleaning coops and gathering eggs and spraying down pens could ever be considered a real lady. But Molly Lee’s mother surely helped Bessie feel, and look, more lady-like.

Since Bessie was always a little shorter than Molly Lee and a little smaller than

Molly Lee, and even always a bit slimmer than Molly Lee, Bessie was often given hand- me-downs. Shiny dresses Molly had only worn once, dainty white gloves, polished shoes

(which were thankfully still a bit too large for Bessie’s little feet, so she knew she’d have that much longer to wear them), as well as hair clips and bows and pins, charm bracelets and necklaces and clipped earrings. And each time Bessie tried on her new items, Mrs.

Lee would fawn over every inch of Bessie and tell her things like you’re so pretty in blue and who knew you could be so lovely and you look like such a little lady, while Molly usually sat somewhere close-by, watching and wondering. Always watching and wondering.

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Until finally the day came when Mrs. Lee took something of Molly’s that Molly wasn’t ready to let go of. It was a dress her father had brought back for her from Paris. It was cream-colored silk dotted with off-white pearls and lace wrapped around the waist and peeking out from the cuffs. The collar was embroidered with a darker stitch and laid with more layers of darker lace and darker silk, matching the tiered skirt.

Molly knew the dress no longer fit, that her waist was no longer as slim as

Bessie’s, but she also knew it was the finest dress she had. Had ever had. And she often liked to touch it, still, from where it hung in her closet. To admire it. She was still far too young then to consider she could have given it to her future children, but it was a thought that came to the much older Molly, years ahead and an entire lifetime away from this moment.

And so as Bessie slid into the dress, that Parisian dream, which seemed to fit every young curve of her body perfectly, something inside Molly snapped. Something shifted within her quiet disposition that had been instilled by her mother’s good graces since birth. And when Mrs. Lee told Bessie she had never looked more like a lady, Molly stood from her chair and yelled into poor Bessie’s face but you will always smell like a dirty cow.

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XXII. CARRINGTON, 1917

Carrington is finally looking like a Carrington. Like a town. Like a place with stores and homes and sort of roads. Roads aren’t all that important to the few people of

Carrington, who finally understand the value of self-sufficiency. But self-sufficiency seems easy to maintain when a town is backed by such wealthy benefactors.

The people of Carrington learn early not to question how a store, how a house can be built, can appear overnight. They learn early not to question when or how meat arrives daily or where the new coop, nonetheless the new chickens, in Mr. Avery’s backyard come from. Or even the three cows in Mr. White’s backyard. Mr. White knows nothing about cows but he will learn to milk them, make cheese and butter to sell to Mr. Wells’s small grocery store, which houses a vegetable garden in the back Mr. Wells uses to grow seasonal produce. Mr. Lovelace studies herbs and plants and makes medicines, was a doctor in old Carrington, so he runs the drugstore and makes home visits to the sick.

The ladies also do well for themselves and the town. Mrs. Carter shears sheep and

Mrs. Mitchell runs the school and teaches teachers to teach and Mrs. Holmes grows and sells flowers, because even in a place like Carrington, beauty can be valued alongside

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necessity, and Mrs. Hode makes and sells clothes and Mrs. White bakes and sells breads and tarts and sticky buns, daily.

And so a peaceful rhythm falls over the town of Carrington. A sense of security that, perhaps, only money can bring, but a lack of understanding, perhaps, that it’s really not one’s own money.

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XXIII. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

Mrs. Jenings thought about screaming. She thought about dropping the shoe and returning from where she’d come from, safely hidden around the backside of the house at the time she'd heard the fall. She thought about slipping the shoe in her pocket, because, of course, it was the shoe she’d envied only moments before and it would be a shame to let it go to waste, after all. But Mrs. Jenings did not scream or did not sneak away or drop the shoe or even hide the shoe. Instead, she calmly walked back inside the Woodward’s home and went to the parlour where her husband and her neighbors were still singing merrily around the piano and then cleared her throat until she caught the eye of Mrs.

Lemon, who then shushed the rest of the group, knowing the look on Mrs. Jenings’s face all too well, and eventually all eyes were on Mrs. Jenings. She savored the moment longer than appropriate before finally saying I fear we may have a bit of an issue as she held what was once Mrs. Woodward’s pearl-clustered shoe out for all to see.

“Now, dear, what are you doing with that shoe?” Mr. Jenings asked after it was made apparent no one else knew what to say.

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Mrs. Jenings hated the tone Mr. Jenings had, one she had become all the more familiar with the longer they’d been married. One that said wife, stop being so damned silly or wife, what is it now or wife, best make this quick. Mrs. Jenings loved her Mr.

Jenings, but she often wondered how equal their love truly was to one another.

“I found it on the ground, dear husband. Outside.”

Mrs. Lemon looked around the parlour, searching, as Mrs. Jenings suspected, for

Mrs. Woodward. “That’s Doris’s, isn’t it?”

“A fine observation, Mary,” Mrs. Jenings said.

“But where is Mrs. Woodward, then?” Mr. Jenings asked, Mrs. Jenings failing to ignore the suspicious nature of his tone.

“My dear husband, but the real question should be where is Mr. Woodward?”

“Well, he’s right back…” Mr. Jenings began, but stopped himself as he looked around the room, noticing, finally, that Mr. Woodward was, indeed, not right back there.

Mr. Chesterton, stood. “I suggest you get to your point, Mrs. Jenings.”

“And I suggest, detective, you follow me.” And with that, Mrs. Jenings left the room, the house, not bothering to look behind her because she knew full and well her capabilities of making people follow her.

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XXIV. JAMES, 1952

There was already something about the place that made me want to stay. First, it was simply to stay in bed, because though it was still breathlessly hot, there was a comforting effect the room had on me in the way the sun reflected off the tin to fill the space with a warmth that went beyond the mere physical. And at night, the room was so quiet, the land was so dark, I couldn’t help but listen to only myself, something of which,

I fear, will not always be such a positive thing. But then there was also the view outside my window. The grass and trees were still a dark, vibrant shade of green--nothing like the those in the north, which though often times more beautiful in color, they would eventually litter the ground and leave their hosts bare and vulnerable to the cold.

I’d decided to unpack sometime late in the night, restlessness and hunger preventing me from sleeping deeply. I couldn’t remember the last time I had really eaten.

The road has as much of a numbing effect as it does a calming one. But so with everything put away, the place felt a bit like home. A home, anyway, one for perhaps the briefest moment, I could pretend was my own.

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A breeze came in from the window, which I’d cracked sometime in the night with the smallest hope of cooling off the room, and carried with it the most glorious smells of cooked meat and baked breads, both yeasty and sweet. And then I remembered what Walt had said.

Festival of Flowers. A cook out. Not only would it give me a chance to fill my cramping stomach, but also a closer look at the people of this small, seemingly quiet town I’d found myself so quickly charmed by.

Once I’d dressed and gone downstairs, I found something waiting on the table in the entryway, a small envelope with a large C written in bold, black ink. I looked around to see if anything else had been left, if maybe anything had been moved, but it seemed all was still as it had been the night before, when I’d arrived with Walt. But I found it odd, still, a bit disconcerting, truthfully, that someone had come into my suite without my knowing. Weren’t there laws to prevent such a thing? I would surely think so. I took the envelope. It was light. I struggled with whether or not I wanted to open it, but ultimately knew my curiosity would devour me if I didn’t.

Inside was a tiny square photograph, the grey tones were faded and a hint of orange threatened to overtake it all, having already turned each corner a dusty, burnt color. At first glance, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. The picture was taken in a library,

I could tell that much. A tall man stood next to an equally tall, but fragile-looking, woman. Her eyes were wide and scared and I’m ashamed to say how long it took me to realize it was my own mother standing there, holding a book I also recognized, a book she used to read to me when I was younger, when I was being intolerably mean and

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fussy, as she’d say. The man, though, I only had the vaguest sense of recognition toward, and honestly, only because he seemed to slightly resemble myself.

I flipped the photo over and written on the back in fine cursive: Jay and Lena

Castleby, May 3, 1925. Investigation 09.

Walt. I was so sure it had been Walt who had given me the photo, that the moment I saw him, I walked across the lushly green grass of the inn’s grounds with the desire to hand him a small amount of bills, but his eyes grew wider and wider the closer I approached.

Perhaps he was worried his gift had upset me, that I would possibly tell the front about him entering my suite without my knowing, but I may never know, because before I could reach him, he scurried away into the nearest building. The kitchen complex, as the sign had read outside. But when I went to follow inside, I was only welcomed by the frenzied eyes of people spattered with flour, covered elbow-deep in dough. Walt, who

I’m sure, for obvious reasons, would have stood out like a sore thumb, was nowhere to be seen. And just when I was about to quietly inch back the way I’d come, a plump woman, older by the streaked wiry gray hairs in her bun, rushed to stand before me and yelled, fists clenched and on her hips, “What, sir, do you think you’re doing in my kitchen?”

I struggled to find my words. The room had stilled. The entire kitchen staff had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were on me. I couldn’t tell the plump woman

I was in search of Walt, for I feared what she may think of me, then. So I said the obvious, something any cook would surely love to hear. “I couldn’t help myself, ma’am.

My stomach led me here.”

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The plump woman eyed me longer before a slight, but I’d say wary, smile formed on her, just as plump, face.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked, her hands falling from her hips. She walked away, then, grabbing a pie from a nearby table and placing it into one of the large ovens in the wall.

“I am not.”

“And you’re staying here, at the inn?” she asked, still moving about the kitchen, stopping only briefly to stir the contents of a pot or taste a corner of a loaf or press the tops of the muffins to make sure they were firm.

“I am.”

And then she stopped and looked at me, I’d say, curiously. As though it were odd

I’d be staying at the inn. She grabbed the muffin she’d just tapped the top of and walked back to me, handing it out. I took it with a nod, grateful for how warm it still felt in my hand, and the smells of cinnamon and apple and baked nuts made my stomach cramp, begging for me to eat something, already.

“This looks wonderful. Absolutely wonderful, ma’am. Thank you.”

She didn’t respond, but instead went back to travelling about the kitchen. That’s when I noticed someone was still staring at me. I suppose I felt the stare first, really. She was sitting in the very back, her apron being the only thing that made her similar to the rest of those in the kitchen. Her hair wasn’t messy or powdered with chocolate or flour or whatever else these ladies were powdered with. She wasn’t plump, and didn’t wear a dress more similar to a frock, and she was young, much younger than the rest of the ladies in the kitchen, who had all gone back to their duties, a chaotic air once again

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blanketing the room. But the young girl, she appeared calm, and her curious, sad eyes said something more than the plump lady’s had, something I was all too familiar with, something that said I don’t belong here, but perhaps, I belong nowhere else.

The front of the inn looked nothing like it had the night before. Granted, it had been quite dark, but the inn was now alive with color. Bright pinks and purples and blues and even yellows streamed across the wrap-around porch. Flowers were bundled and placed all over the grounds, whether in vases or left hanging or even simply tied to lantern and porch poles. The iron gate near the entrance had become entirely a wall of flowers. It was only nine in the morning, and the place had been utterly transformed and was crawling with people. Or with women, rather, with young ladies. I didn’t see a man in sight, and I couldn’t tell if that pleased me or made me all the more fearful of this new place.

At first, no one seemed to notice me standing in the middle of the yard, but eventually one look after another look piled on top of another look turned the whole group of ladies in my direction, and not so unlike what happened in the kitchen, the world seemed to freeze and focus all of its silent attention on me.

“Good morning, ladies,” I said, holding my muffin in the air, to show, perhaps, that someone at this inn had approved of me. Because I had a feeling that’s what I had to have to survive not just this moment, but this place--approval. And as the ladies all stared, some with blank faces, some looking rather curious, I couldn’t help but notice most seemed afraid. But afraid of what--me?

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why, though. I knew myself to be a rather good-looking man, a well-mannered man, even, when I put effort into it. No I

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couldn’t see one reason for a group of lovely ladies to show such fear, unless I was confusing fear with intimidation. That, perhaps, I could understand.

I looked at the young lady closest to me, to my left. She was stereotypically pretty. Shiny hair slicked back in a ponytail. Good nose and chin that suggested she may have come from money. But her eyes, though a lovely, sparkling shade of blue, gave no true window into her soul. I had a feeling she wasn’t the nicest person I would meet here, nonetheless, I had a feeling she was the young lady who all the other young ladies listened. You could see it in her posture, alone.

“James Castleby,” I said, bowing slightly to the young lady.

Her face scowled and scrunched and almost looked pained before she hurried away to stand near a group of older ladies. The mothers, I assumed. And just when I was about to try my hand with the next lovely young lady, I heard from across the yard,

Castleby.

And when I saw the old woman standing on the porch, pointing directly to me, I realized I had been summoned.

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XXV. HEREWARD, 1907

Automatism. Self-motivated, automatic. An “automatism” generally signifies a movement made without conscious thought and will on the part of the person by whom such movement is made.

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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XXVI. EVELYN, 1952

Evelyn had been brushing butter on the salted biscuit tops when the stranger had walked in. She wasn’t worried the way the other ladies in the kitchen were worried. He’d looked harmless enough, she supposed--he’d hardly even spoken, but it was the first stranger she had ever really seen, afterall. And by that, she meant real stranger, not just a person she simply didn’t know, but rather a person that absolutely no one in Carrington knew. And even though she found it hard to believe strangers never came to Carrington, she also found it to be true. On the rare occasion someone visited the town, it was usually a distant relative and the visit was often talked about for days before, the town always buzzing with nervous anticipation.

“Was that…” Mrs. Potter started.

“A guest?” Miss Haines finished, both ladies now failing to tend to the bubbling berries on the stove.

Evelyn knew the berries would be ruined soon, along with the ladies for letting them ruin, if Mrs. Livingston’s glare was any indication. The ladies must have noticed, as well, because they finally settled and lowered the heat, stirring once again, but Evelyn

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could see the almost panicked looks on their faces. And she couldn’t quite understand why.

“How are those biscuits coming?” Mrs. Livingston said, startling Evelyn in such a way, she almost dropped the tray she was carrying.

“Fine, I think.” But Evelyn knew they didn’t really look that fine, though she still held hope they would taste fine, regardless.

Mrs. Livingston eyed the tray. The biscuit tops were lumpy and the edges black on a few which had been closest to the fire in the oven.

“Yes, fine,” Mrs. Livingston said, taking the tray from Evelyn and then handing her a basket of muffins--blueberry and banana nut and lemon, from what Evelyn could smell. “See if these hold Missy over. Tell her I’ll send more out soon.”

Perhaps under different circumstances, Evelyn would have argued, made an excuse to stay hidden away in the kitchen longer. There were so many things out there to avoid, Missy and her grandmother being only the first two from the list. But Evelyn suddenly found herself willing to be thrown to the wolves if it meant she could get a closer look at the inn’s new guest. The inn’s sole guest, even.

She often wondered why they even called the inn an inn. The only people who stayed there were the workers (something her grandfather had worked out long ago in exchange for not having to pay them) and the extremely rare times relatives came in from out of town, but they were usually never charged. Evelyn didn’t understand the specifics, really, but she’d learned over the years (thanks to her constant inquisitive nature) that her grandparents had some sort of bartering system set-up with other members of the town.

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Everyone takes care of everyone, her grandfather would always say. And then, of course, there was her grandmother, who was now a permanent resident at the inn, as well.

But an actual paying guest--Evelyn, and she was sure, for that matter, no one in

Carrington, had actually seen before.

*

Missy had spotted Evelyn as soon as she’d returned to the front.

“A basket of muffins? You’ve been gone for ages, Evelyn. And all you come back with is a tacky basket full of cold muffins?” Missy said, her perfectly peach mouth twisting into a sort of ugliness that Evelyn found fitting.

Before Evelyn could respond, Missy snatched the basket away and walked off.

With Missy gone, Evelyn noticed they’d actually gotten quite a bit done. Pots of azaleas and hydrangeas and bee balms lined the walkway to the inn. The porch and gazebo held hanging baskets of begonias and fuchsias and sweet alyssums and the iron gate at the front was now a wall of bright white daisies speckled with colorful million bells. The yard was already dusted with flower petals, something that, Evelyn knew, would only be beautiful for so long.

Just as Evelyn was about to trail after Missy, she noticed the man, the stranger, standing on the porch with her mother and grandmother, bearing the same panic-stricken face she’d seen when he’d stumbled into the kitchen, his eyes full of understanding that he had landed somewhere he didn’t really belong.

Evelyn's mother eventually noticed her staring and tried to discreetly shoo her away, but of course, Evelyn wasn’t so easily deterred. However, once she reached the

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stairs to the porch, her mother stepped down and took her by the shoulders and turned her the opposite way.

“It’s best if you stay out of this Evelyn,” her mother said, guiding them both over to where Missy stood with her little gang of ladies and the mothers.

Evelyn could tell Missy was still recounting the muffin fiasco.

“Stay out of what? Who is he?”

Her mother didn’t answer, not in the way she’d hope, anyway. Rather, she spoke low, as if worried someone may overhear, and told Evelyn this wasn’t the place or the time. Stay away from your grandmother, was the last thing Evelyn heard before her mother pushed her toward the huddled group.

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XXVII. LENA, 1925

Two days without incident.

Lena had decided it would be best if she kept a journal. This way, she could try to scientifically prove whether or not the inn was haunted, as well as whether or not it had anything to do with the book, but Lena also hoped to uncover if Madame Rose was indeed a fraud. She aimed to record evidence, make note of when or where any physical phenomena occurred, and most importantly, maintain detailed notes on Madame Rose, herself--any changes Lena may notice not only about her behavior or her appearance, even, but also about the space she was in. For instance, if the atmosphere felt any different simply with Madame Rose’s presence, something Lena believed may actually occur with real psychics, since all their energy may be attracting a different, spiritual sort of energy.

But so far, Lena only had that there was nothing to report. Both the inn and the psychic were completely silent, Madame Rose being ill and having not left her room for the past two days, a fact, though, that Lena didn’t completely overlook, having already noted the past two days had been without incident.

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The last incident, of course, had been the crashing bookcase. Lena and her father had managed to repair and remove any of the remaining glass shards from the door, leaving the panes empty. Lena actually enjoyed its new look, but hated that the books weren’t so protected anymore. And even though the book always managed to find its way to the floor whether the doors were closed or not, she still had felt a strange sense of security once she’d slid the book back into its rightful place, shut the glass doors, and turned the key until she heard the soft clank.

And so, as usual, she had returned the book, still locking the doors out of habit, and all was normal, the book remaining in its place, until the morning Lena opened her eyes to see the spine, faded with cracked gold letters, facing her on the bedside table in her room. This, Lena had truly found strange.

The book had fallen in the study before. The book had been tossed across the study before. The book had even slid across the floor of the study before her very eyes before. But the book had never come from off the shelf, travelled up two flights of stairs to the third floor, taken a left winding turn and then another left winding turn to connect to a hall that took a sharp right turn, passed one room on its left and then a bathroom on its right before finding her room at the very end of the hall, opened her door, and settled itself on her bedside table before.

Lena then dutifully removed her journal from the drawer of her bedside table and made note: Zero days without incident. Incident: 7:42 a.m. Book has moved on own to personal bedside table. Will return book to shelf and report whereabouts later in day.

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Later in the day, Lena was reading in the study, careful not to look at the book where she’d returned it to the shelf for fear it would prevent whatever compelled the book to jump from compelling it again. And though Lena was concerned over who or what was controlling the book, she also found herself to be as equally curious.

“I always seem to find you reading,” Madame Rose said, rounding the entryway from the hall.

Lena noted the way, as always, Madame Rose’s accent seemed to shift, never settling on any consistent region, any consistent inflection. Madame Rose continued to stand in the doorway as Lena remained quiet, not even bothering to look up from what she was, at the moment (not), reading. She thought it best not to engage with Madame

Rose in even the slightest sort of way. She’d read how many self-proclaimed psychics could read a person in ways having nothing to do with supernatural intuition, but rather by simply paying attention to their own basic human intuition, something which most probably ignored and so they were more easily fooled.

Women, Lena had also read, were already known for having a higher amount of natural intuition, and so she thought that with a little more effort, Madame Rose could easily take advantage of something she was already predispositioned for by simply becoming even more well-versed in the human psyche. And so Lena wanted to give

Madame Rose absolutely nothing to read into. She even focused to remain perfectly still around Madame Rose, knowing that one who is so well-versed in the mind, may also be inclined to be so well-versed in the language of the body, which Lena believed anyone

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like Madame Rose would have to be willing to master both an understanding of the mind and the body, since their ability to truly read people was, in the end, their livelihood.

Typically, Madame Rose, having picked up on Lena’s unwillingness to interact with her, would leave, but instead this time she chose to enter the room and she chose to study the shelves and she chose to pluck The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism from off its shelf and she chose to sit in the chair opposite of Lena as she opened the book to read.

Lena still said nothing and she still remained perfectly still, not even moving to turn the page. She read the same word the same sentence the same paragraph the same page over and over and over until she didn’t know how much time had actually passed and until Madame Rose finally closed the book in her lap and carried it away with her as she left. Only then did Lena turn the page and continue on as though her morning routine had never been interrupted.

And even later in the day after Lena had returned to her bedroom from a long walk, because she did love walking along the coast on those northern gray, dreary days, she noticed a small note had been left on her bed. The penmanship was dainty, clear, and definitively feminine. You’re invited.

On the other side--a drawing of Madame Rose sitting at a table, her eyes closed, meditative. What looked to be spirits swirled around the rest of the page, and at the bottom, that evening’s date and 9:00 p.m. were listed.

Lena thought it very silly for Madame Rose to think she would participate in such a thing. Yes, she did find joy in reading about the spiritual world, but she also believed it

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wasn’t something to be so easily messed with. And while she had little faith in Madame

Rose’s abilities to speak with the dead, she had plenty of faith in the sort of dead who wanted to speak.

But despite Lena’s best efforts to forget about the invitation, to hide and get rid of the invitation, it always somehow managed to make its way back into her hands. Not in any sort of mystical sense, just through an impulse driven by pure curiosity. And just maybe, still, a piece of Lena wanted to prove once and for all she was right about

Madame Rose, because in the end, if she wasn’t right, what would that say about Lena, herself, about her future if it all went the way Madame Rose had predicted?

So Lena wasn’t that surprised when she found herself settled in at the table in the basement, between Mrs. Hodges from room five and a young man, who must have only recently checked in because Lena didn’t recognize him, with only ten minutes to spare.

Madame Rose hadn’t yet entered the room.

The room was dark. Very dark, in fact, with only two short candles lit at the center of the table, placed on either side of a clear, glass ball. And the room looked infinitely dark, as though the walls of the basement had disappeared and they only had a black void surrounding them. Lena assumed some sort of trick of the eye, with paint, perhaps.

“You seem nervous,” the man sitting to Lena’s left said.

She hadn’t realized her hands were in her lap, twisting the fabric of her dress.

“Just a little excited, is all,” she said, attempting to give the man her best smile.

“First time?”

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“No,” she said, though she wasn’t really sure why she lied. Maybe she just didn’t want to come off as foolish. “Yours?”

“Not quite.”

Before then, Lena hadn’t really looked at the man, had avoided meeting his gaze, even, but something in the way he’d answered caused her to look up, and before she could stop it, heat filled her cheeks, and his smile grew wider.

“Are you a guest?” he asked.

“I’m staying here, yes,” she said, looking down again, trying to calm her restless hands.

And then he did something Lena found startling. He reached over and placed his hand over hers, tugging at the one nearest to him. But then she saw he was holding the hand of Mrs. Lawson, as well, who was sitting at his left and who was holding hands with

Mr. Lawson at her left and so on until Lena realized the entire table was holding hands, including Madame Rose at the head. She hadn’t even noticed when Madame Rose arrived, nonetheless sat down and given instructions.

“Welcome,” Madame Rose said, her accent thick. The candlelight made her pale face look unusually warm.

Lena wondered if it did the same for hers.

“During this journey, I only ask of you two things. No matter the outcome of tonight, never remove your hands from the circle, unless I say, and always keep your eyes closed, for your safety and mine.”

The table broke into murmurs that echoed throughout the small space. The buzzing energy was almost overwhelming for Lena, and she wished she could do

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something with her hands to help ease her own thrumming anticipation. As if the man to her left had felt a shift in her, he squeezed softly, reassuringly, it seemed. She looked over and gave him the briefest of smiles before investing all of her attention back into

Madame Rose.

“Now let’s bow our heads, close our eyes, and meditate,” Madame Rose said.

Lena did as she was told. A strong hum filled the room.

“Please, spirits of understanding descend upon us to help guide in each of our spiritual journeys, as we are all gathered here in the inner circle tonight, in our own ways, as seekers of truth. We greet thee, spirits. We offer thanks. Guide us, please. We’ve gathered all you’ll need to make your presence known. Please, now is the time. If you wish to touch a person here, tonight. If you wish to reach out to a dear loved one who is part of this inner circle, do not hesitate. Make yourself known.”

The room seemed considerably colder to Lena, then. Madame Rose’s hums filled the air again, and it took all of Lena’s control not to open her eyes. Then there was silence. A loud, like waves crashing inside a shell type silence.

“Catherine,” said a deep voice , Lena shortly after realizing it was Madame Rose, her accent gone and her voice having dipped into a baritone.

A small gasp followed. “I’m Catherine,” said a lady, it sounded, from somewhere across the table.

“Dear Catherine. My dear Catherine, I’m sorry,” the voice continued.

“I think that’s my Harold,” said the lady, presumably, Catherine, which Lena later saw was Mrs. Hasting from room six.

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Madame Rose’s voice returned. “I’m sorry, Catherine. It seems I’ve lost him. I ask again. Are there any spirits here tonight who wish to make contact. Let your presence be known.”

And then Lena felt the table tilt. At first, she thought it to be only in her head, which felt heavy, the roaring of her blood pounding in her ears from nervousness, anticipation, excitement. But then the table tilted more and more until she could feel the edge almost pressed into her lap. She found herself gasping with the others. She felt pressure on her left hand, and she realized, this time, it was she who was holding on tightly for reassurance. But he returned the squeeze.

“I feel a presence,” Madame Rose said. “Someone is here. He tells me to call him

Kit.”

And just then, Lena felt something stroke down her arm. Fingers, rough and cold.

Though it was gone as soon as it had come, she could hear footsteps as something shuffled away. Small gasps continued around the table. Lena, herself, was breathing heavy, but she wasn’t sure whether or not to be alarmed.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the man to her left whispered close to her ear, leaving a chill once he’d moved his mouth away. The table suddenly fell back to the ground, the resulting bang echoing loudly off the walls, and Lena actually let out a small scream.

“Kit has left us. I’m sorry, but we must stop early tonight, my friends. He used far too much of me to bring himself forth.”

Lena thought she heard the man next to her groan, perhaps upset the evening had been cut so short.

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“You may now open your eyes and release hands.”

As Lena did, it took a moment for her eyes to readjust. Everything looked as it had before. Even the candles and ball were still in the same place, which she found odd since the table had definitely moved. She made note in her head to write that down in her journal later. She had just stood when the man grabbed her hand.

“How was your first?” he asked.

“It was fine. Didn’t seem much of anything, though,” Lena said, noticing Madame

Rose was still seated at the table.

“It was curiously short tonight,” he agreed.

“You’ve seen Madame Rose before, then?”

He placed his hand on her back and with a small push, suggested they leave.

“I have,” he seemed to say carefully, as they made their way back upstairs.

“There’s another one tomorrow. Will you be there?” Lena asked, though she wasn’t sure why it mattered.

“I was planning on it, yes. Will you?”

Lena hadn’t planned on going to another one ever again, but as she looked at the man, now in regular light, she couldn’t help but nod, yes.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said before leaving Lena to stare as he walked through the front of the inn and out into the cool night.

After Lena went back to her bedroom later that evening and pulled her journal from between the two mattresses of her bed, all she found herself wanting to say was,

Tonight, I met a boy.

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XXVIII. BESSIE, 1893

Eventually, there came a point when poor Bessie was hardly remembered, a notion of the past, perhaps, she had never existed at all. Because even though Bessie still lived on the farm with her father, still motherless and still milking cows, she had long ago refused to clean the pigs or mess with the coops. And her father hadn’t a clue on how to handle this new Bessie. The new Bessie who would powder her face and color her lips and wear satin shoes and dress in fine dresses, finer than anything he’d ever seen for a girl her age, and set her hair in curls at night and practice walking with books on her head and wear clipped earrings and jewels and gold on her slim fingers and wrists, and around her neck, he often saw pearls, all of which he had never given her.

But Bessie had a secret. While she told her father it was the Lees who had given her such things, it was oftentimes Bessie who had given such things to herself. And since these such things had indeed come from the Lee home, regardless of the Lees knowing,

Bessie still felt she was offering her father a considerable amount of truth.

It had started with something small. A simple silver hairpin Bessie had found on

Molly’s floor after Molly had left the room to request a snack of bread and honey. She’d picked the pin up and held it in her small hands and imagined how it would look in her

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dark hair versus the blonde of Molly Lee’s. She thought it would surely shine more in hers, able to better stand out. It hadn’t yet crossed Bessie’s mind that she could take such an item without anyone noticing, but as she stood near the mirror about to place the pin in her already loose curls, she reacted without thinking, placing the pin in her dress pocket when she heard soft taps of Molly coming down the hall.

It wasn’t until after she’d returned home, was safely tucked away in her bedroom changing into her nightdress, when the pin once again found its way to a floor and she discovered she had accidentally taken it. And all thoughts of returning the pin slipped from Bessie’s mind as soon as she realized she could then place it in her hair without worry of who might see. She felt little guilt, though. Afterall, the pin may have been lost forever, no longer able to serve its purpose, if it hadn’t been for her. What good was a hairpin on the floor? Molly Lee probably had dozens, hundreds of hairpins, while Bessie only had two, one of which was rusted from so often using it to hold her hair in the bath.

But then the silver pin turned to a handful of pennies turned to a broken broach turned to a lipstick found in a waste bin turned to silk stockings thrown out for rips turned to hairclips found under Molly’s bed turned to pearls left out on Molly’s dressing table turned to a ring sitting near a sink and so on and so on and so on until the day came when

Molly found Bessie inside Mrs. Lee closet, searching for the perfect pair of heels.

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XXIX. CARRINGTON, 1918

A new family moves onto the row. The Woodwards. Their white house stands three stories high, with a fourth half-floor as a small library of sorts. The front is symmetrically pleasing, gaining the trust of those who venture past on morning strolls and nightly jogs. Mrs. Woodward insists a flowered path begin exactly ten feet away from the front. The flowers shift from yellow roses to Indian pinks, which will surely attract any hummingbird population within a mile-radius, as they lead to a five-stair entry of a green-trimmed, wrap-around porch, all framed with ferns and spanish moss. The plantation-inspired home, Mrs. Woodward knows for sure, will make them very agreeable to the new neighbors. This, Mr. Woodward knows for sure, will make his wife very agreeable, at least for the next few years. Because, after all, his goal is only her happiness.

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XXX. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

Of course, Mrs. Lemon screamed. But Mrs. Jenings understood the impulse, because she had considered screaming, herself, once she’d realized the shoe had fallen from a foot that had fallen with a body that had just fallen through a window.

“And you found her just like this?” Mr. Chesterton asked Mrs. Jenings.

She only managed to nod, yes.

And nothing was, in fact, different about Mrs. Woodward. Her body was still caught between two branches. Her legs were still split, angled at impossible angles. One bent back, the foot hidden, nestled in a patch of leaves. The other dangling straight down, surely snapped loose from somewhere, as it swayed easily by the wind. The foot was still bare, the nails painted a shocking red. And even in death, her posture was still perfect, with the only-moments-before-lovely bunned hair snagged, holding the well-disciplined arch of her neck straight. But worst of all, her face was still all too easy to see, all too easy to read. Horror.

“And what of the shoe?” he continued.

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“It fell to the ground. There was a scream, and so I came to investigate, and well...the shoe fell to the ground.”

“And so you just picked it up?”

“Yes. Of course, yes.”

By this time, Mr. Chesterton was holding a notepad. Mrs. Jenings watched as he

wrote her yes and circled it. The circle worried her.

“Where were you when you heard the scream?”

Mrs. Jenings hesitated. Though she didn’t truly have anything to hide, because she knew she was guilty of nothing other than mere snoopery, she still worried over telling Mr. Chesterton the truth--that she was, in fact, outside when it had happened.

“In the dining room.”

“The dining room?”

She could already hear his skepticism, see it on his face with how his eyes squinted as he wrote her response. But why, why was she in the dining room?

“I finally succumbed to getting my own drink for fear of dying of thirst if I relied any longer on the politeness of the hostess.”

She heard a small gasp from behind her, surely Mrs. Lemon finding her statement to have been in poor taste. But Mrs. Jenings wanted to be believed, and she knew no one would actually believe she would so willingly serve herself.

“And what after the scream?”

“Well, then I went outside.”

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“You could tell the scream came from outside from within the dining room?” he asked.

She couldn’t remember if the dining room had windows, but she still nodded, yes.

“And you could tell the scream came from the front yard from within the dining room?” he continued.

For once, Mrs. Jenings didn’t quite enjoy the feeling of having all eyes on her.

“Don’t be obtuse, Henry. I, of course, only went into the front yard once I’d realized nothing seemed unordinary about the back yard or either side yard.”

“Of course. But that’s when you found the shoe?”

“Yes.”

“Can you show me where you found the shoe?”

“For pity’s sake,” Mrs. Jenings started, but her voice trailed as she looked up at

Mrs. Woodward’s still gaping face and then back down to the ground, trying to remember the exact spot the shoe had settled. When she realized she didn’t know for sure, she pointed down to a spot just a little away from where she and Mr. Chesterton stood.

“Well, it had to be about there, I suppose,” she said, still pointing.

“You suppose? You don’t know for sure?”

“Of course not. There were bigger issues.” Mrs. Jenings looked to her husband, who stood off to the side with the rest of their neighbors (she still found it hard to consider them friends, even after all these years). Mr. Jenings met her gaze, but offered nothing in his face, his body, to let her know what he was thinking, nonetheless whether or not he believed her.

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“This is downright foolish. A complete waste of time,” Mrs. Jenings finally snapped. “Tell me, detective, have you even yet wondered where Mr. Woodward is during all of this? Don’t you find that a bit odd, detective. That a man’s wife is now tangled in a tree, yet he’s suddenly nowhere to be found? Now, surely, I’m no detective, but I do find that a bit odd.”

Mr. Chesterton studied Mrs. Jenings a bit longer before shutting his little notepad and saying, “Indeed.”

“So what do we--” Mr. Jenings began but was cut off by his wife.

“We should start with a search of the house,” Mrs. Jenings said.

“And just…” Mrs. Lemon whispered, speaking more up into the tree than to the group.

“We can figure out how best to deal with her after,” Mrs. Jenings said, taking

Mrs. Lemon’s hand in the hopes of guiding her back to the house, but Mrs. Lemon pulled away and looked about to respond to what she surely felt was another of Mrs. Jenings’s insensitivities when Mr. Jenings spoke up.

“My wife is right,” he said loudly, so that those who had already started to wander could hear. “We don’t know, yet, how this happened or whether or not there’s cause for concern or threat for the rest of the community. I suspect we should, indeed, find Mr.

Woodward.”

“Oh dear God, and the boy,” Mrs. Mohler said, speaking for the first time since

Mrs. Jenings had entered the parlour with the shoe.

And Mrs. Jenings suddenly felt so horrible. How could she have not thought about the boy? Not even in the slightest bit? Not about his whereabouts or his safety or

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even his motherlessness. Surely, she should have considered his motherlessness by then.

Of all the people there, she was the one who could best relate to poor James or Jim or

Jimmy or whatever damned Mrs. Woodward wanted him called that day.

“I’ll check his room,” Mrs. Jenings said, already halfway to the front door.

“You know where his room is?” Mr. Chesterton asked, looking about to pull his notepad out again.

“Shouldn’t be so difficult to find,” was all she offered before returning inside.

But the task was a bit more daunting than Mrs. Jenings had anticipated. The house was deceivingly large and the halls turned in strange places, some even leading to dead ends, and there were many many rooms with closed doors, all locked. For a while, Mr.

Jenings had helped her search. They’d wandered around calling the poor boy’s name, alternating as they went along. James! Jim! Little Jimmy! James!

There was never a response, never a noise. And then Mrs. Jenings realized she needed to get her bearings. She wondered where she was in the Woodward’s house compared to her own house next door. She realized she needed to go up, climb more and more into the house to the uppermost room where she recalled the boy often waving once he noticed he’d been spotted.

She didn’t think this was the boy’s room, rather a place he liked to hide, since those late night appearances often occurred during or after one of his escapes. But once they’d reached, from what they could tell, the uppermost floor, no one could seem to figure out how to climb higher. Where the entrance to the attic would be.

“Must be a door inside one of these rooms,” Mr. Chesterton said.

“Or a pull-down ladder,” Mr. Lemon offered.

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But Mrs. Jenings believed it had to be easier to access since the poor boy was able to get there so often on his own. If the rooms were often locked, she doubted he could so easily find a key, and she knew there was no way he could reach a ladder in the ceiling.

And then she had an idea, one she wasn’t so sure she was ready to share with the others.

“You’re positive this room exists?” Mr. Jenings whispered while the others had continued to wander down the hall, fiddling with door knobs and knocking on walls, perhaps in hopes of hearing a response.

“Absolutely positive,” she hissed. And that was all it really took. Someone to challenge her, to force her to prove herself right or smarter than everyone else. She liked to think her husband knew what he was doing by questioning her--coaxing her to rise to the occasion, rather than believing he simply didn’t trust her.

“I know for a fact the Woodward’s had servants,” she whispered to her husband.

“For a fact?” he whispered back.

“Yes,” she hissed again.

“Then why didn’t we see any tonight?” Mrs. Mohler asked, having overheard.

“They must have secret passages,” Mrs Jenings said, matter of fact.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bessie,” Mrs. Mohler said, drawing Mrs. Jenings’s name out slowly, knowing full and well how much she hated her first name.

For a long time, by then, Mrs. Jenings had adopted the nickname of Kitty, which she often noted didn’t sound as weird as it looked written down, therefore signing letters and cards with a simple K.

“I’m not being ridiculous. This house is huge and absolutely spotless. There is no way Mrs. Woodward handles this home on her own. I suspect they just don’t like their

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help being seen,” Mrs. Jenings said, pacing the hall, looking for spots where a wall could possibly move and or even open.

“Such passages would allow them to move around more easily without being noticed,” she continued, now tugging at fixtures, hoping to trigger something. But then she realized, again, that it must be something the poor boy could manage on his own, so switched to kicking the moldings along where the wall met the floor.

“You cannot be serious. You look so foolish right now,” Mrs. Mohler said, but the others had already started to help Mrs. Jenings, the sounds of feet banging against walls filling the hallway.

And just when Mrs. Jenings was about to respond to Mrs. Mohler, her foot sunk into the wall, into the small square molding at a seemingly dead end and a door appeared and slid to the right, Mrs. Jenings noting it to only be about the height of a small child, a poor boy, even.

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XXXI. JAMES, 1952

I wasn’t quite so sure what to expect when I first saw the old woman, standing there, pointing. Her face was like stone, frozen in an expression best described as a glare, but one I couldn’t decipher between being certainly hostile or simply certainly old, as though she had collected years and years of sternness, of anger, perhaps a bit of bitterness or sadness in the layers of her skin to create a permanent, grimacing glare, one that would surely remain even in the best of her moods because it looked just that suitable for her face. And even though I didn’t know a thing about this woman, I knew by that glare alone that I should not keep her waiting.

Nothing in her face changed as I approached the stairs. She only lowered her arm and returned to her seat. Though she had the shake of a woman her age, her posture was regal. She sat there, high on the porch, as a queen would, keeping watch over her people.

As I walked up the stairs, I noticed for the first time another woman, a good bit younger, as she raced past me. I watched as she went back out into the yard, as she prevented the young lady I’d noticed from the kitchen from following me onto the steps. The young

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lady was pale, paler than she had looked only moments before. She looked a little startled.

“Will you hurry up,” a voice, I’d have to say, croaked, from the porch. The old woman was rocking back and forth, a tissue to her lips. She’d smeared her bright pink lipstick a bit, revealing the shrinking, purpling skin beneath.

I removed my hat and held it to my chest as I stepped up onto the porch. I bowed a little, even, recognizing this was a woman who expected respect, and not entirely because of her age or gender.

“Castleby,” she said, before I even had the chance to introduce myself. She was still staring out into the yard, slowly rocking.

I stood, a little shaken. But then again, I had checked-in just the night before.

“Do you have anything for me?” she asked.

“I paid last night, ma’am. Do I owe you more?” If I had to pay even more to stay at this odd little place, I would definitely be moving on. I’m not in the business of getting taken advantage of--I much prefer the game as it’s played the other way around.

“They made you pay?” she said, finally looking at me. Her eyes were a surprising bright blue, though glassy, the color accentuating the redness of her veins.

I nodded. “Oh yes, ma’am. More than I even paid at the Ritz Carlton just last week, in fact. Two dollars more, even.”

The look she gave me was quite odd. I couldn’t tell if it was because whatever the

Ritz Carlton was was completely lost on her, or she couldn’t fathom they would charge me that much more than if I were staying at the damn Ritz Carlton, in which case, I

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wholeheartedly agreed. But there was a certain...charm, I supposed one could claim, about the inn. But the service was indeed lacking.

She reached down for something on the porch and raised a small, silver bell and gave it a little shake. The ring was dainty, but it immediately received a response. Walt came from around the corner of the porch and stood at the old woman’s left.

“Need something, Miss Kitty?” he asked, seeming to make extra effort not to acknowledge my standing there.

“Yes, Walt. Please fetch Mr. Castleby his money. I thought I made it clear that he and his wife should never have to pay.”

My wife? And then it was clear, the old woman had mistaken me for someone else. But Walt didn’t question her, perhaps used to her senility.

“Castleby, stop being rude. Sit,” she commanded once Walt had gone inside the inn.

I wasn’t going to argue with the woman. I read somewhere that when the elderly have fits of mis-memory, you shouldn’t challenge them, but go along until they’ve returned to the present moment. And plus, I wasn’t going to mind getting my money back, especially after I’d been so grossly overcharged. So I sat in the crispy white rocking chair to the old woman’s right. The chair was quite comfortable, the back high enough for me to rest my head while my feet settled comfortably on the ground.

This was my first experience with a rocking chair, nonetheless a southern one on a charming southern porch overlooking a fine southern yard within a quaint southern town, and I must say, I was very taken with it. I could imagine sitting on that very porch at night, a cigar in one hand and a nice scotch in the other, listening to the cicadas and

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watching fireflies in the distance, comfortable with being alone. And that was really all I was aiming for in my leaving. To find a place where I could feel comfortable with my aloneness. A place that would be enough to simply replace.

Walt returned shortly with a small envelope. He held it out, with his white-gloved hand, head down, waiting for me to take it. And as soon as I did, he leaned back over to the old woman and asked, “Is that all, Miss Kitty?”

“Yes, Walt. You may go.”

Her voice was different when she spoke to Walt. It didn’t hold the edge of threat it seemed to have when she spoke to me. It was more gentle or compassionate or maybe just plain friendly.

“Now, tell me, Castleby. What did you find?”

“Nothing, yet, Miss Kitty,” I said, adopting what Walt had called her, but she eyed me strangely.

“It’s been nothing for a while, now, Castleby.”

I only nodded and made a slight, affirming sound.

“What of your wife? She’s handling the heat well as she carries?”

“She’s fine, thank you,” I said, noticing how the ladies in the yard had formed small groups, all talking closely, sometimes looking over at us and quickly away when they saw I’d noticed.

“I’ll send the midwife your way in a couple of weeks. Might be best if she stays with you until the baby comes. But you’ll let me know if you need her sooner? I don’t want this to distract from your work.”

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Damn. I nodded again. The less I said then, the easier it would be to deny whatever I needed to later. And as I was about to excuse myself, the younger woman from earlier, the one who had raced back down into the yard upon my arrival, returned to the porch and stood before the two of us.

“Mother?” was all she said, though looking at me as she spoke.

I did my best to give her my nicest smile. The old woman continued to look out into the yard.

“Who’s our guest, here?”

I stood to introduce myself, but the old woman beat me to it, again.

“Don’t be foolish, child. It’s Mr. Castleby, of course.”

I met with the gaze of the younger woman as I reached out my hand for her to take, and strange enough, there was a dawning of recognition in her eyes.

“Mother, Mr. Castleby left something in the library last night. We’re going to go inside and get it, now,” she said, tugging me to the front door of the inn.

“Make it quick, then. Evelyn looks as though she’s about to get eaten alive out there,” the old woman said, still ever rocking.

Once inside, the woman pulled me through the entryway and down a tight hall, which eventually led directly into, in fact, a library.

“I’m sorry, I’m not exactly sure…” I started, but stopped once the woman pulled us to stand in front of a wall, in front of an empty picture frame.

“Well that’s strange,” she said.

The frame looked old. Carved, highly decorative wood, covered in a thick layer of dust, which, though, one could tell had been recently disturbed.

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“What sort of photograph was in there?” I asked, wondering if I perhaps already knew.

“It was a photo of a man and his wife. And the man did look an awful lot like you,” she said, facing me, studying me, eyes narrowed.

“My name is Castleby. James Castleby,” I said, sliding my hand in my pocket to pull out the picture that had been left in my room this morning. I held it up. “Is this the photo from the frame?”

“Why do you have that?”

“I don’t know, honestly. It was left for me. I found it this morning before I left my room.”

She reached to take the photo, but I pulled it back. I felt it more belonged to me, then.

“You’re actually staying here? At the inn?”

I laughed. “Why does it seem like everyone finds that so strange around here?

Isn’t that what an inn is for? For staying?”

She seemed to dismiss my question or rather ignored it entirely and instead asked,

“Do you know the people in the picture?”

I considered this for a moment, whether or not this was something I needed to tell, but I eventually said, “The woman is my mother. I assume the man is my father, but he died while I was still very young, so I don’t remember much of him.” And my mother had destroyed most evidence of his existence after he was gone.

“Why are you here, Mr. Castelby?”

“It seems fate conspired for me to be,” I said, only half-joking.

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“Mom?”

We both looked to see the young lady standing in the entry of the library, which

I’d finally noticed was a very grand library. The shelves went all the way to the ceiling, each filled with rows and rows of books. The books looked old, too. The sort that were cloth or leather-bound, gold lettering on the spines. But the room looked utterly untouched. A veil of dust blanketing it all.

“Evelyn, dear,” the woman said, her voice softening. “Why aren’t you outside with the others?”

She spoke to the girl as if she were still a child, but she couldn’t have been much younger than myself.

“Grandmother sent me.”

I caught the starting of an eye roll from the woman, which brought about a small smile from the young lady, Evelyn, I think I remember her grandmother saying.

“That woman,” she sighed. “How long will you be staying, Mr. Castleby?”

“I haven’t thought very far into the future, Miss…”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Miss Lovelace,” she said, finally reaching over to properly introduce herself. “But you can just call me Miss Adelaide.”

“What a lovely name,” I said, smiling as large as I could. “And please, just call me James.”

We’d both started to walk back to the hall when Evelyn came closer and shot her small hand out toward me.

“And I’m Evelyn,” she said, with the sweetest of smiles.

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“Very nice to meet you, too, Evelyn,” I said, taking her hand into mine, but I released it right away after I saw the glare in Miss Adelaide’s eyes, one not so different from her mother’s.

The hall was slim and so Evelyn went ahead of us, and I did my best not to notice the minimal length of her shorts, the expanse of lean, pale thighs.

“James, I think it would be better if we stuck to calling you just Mr. Castleby around my mother,” Miss Adelaide said, low, as if she didn’t want Evelyn to overhear.

“That’s fine. Just fine, but I have some questions,” I said, but Miss Adelaide grabbed my arm, tighter than I would have considered as merely friendly.

“Of course you do, dear. Later,” she said, adopting that same voice she had used on Evelyn just moments before, the careful one, as though she were speaking to a child.

“Yes, but…”

And as we stepped back onto the porch, Miss Kitty looked over and said, “Good.

Now please, Mr. Castleby, get back to your investigation.”

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XXXII. HEREWARD, 1907

It is because I believe that such phenomena do occasionally occur, that I am anxious to expose the fraud connected with the subject,-- since it is only by so doing that we can ever hope to reach the genuine phenomena which are to be studied.

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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XXXIII. CELIA, 1952

Celia Castleby was lost. She was lost in a metaphysical and spiritual and very literal way. She was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere and maybe one wrong turn away from never being seen again. She was never any good with maps. She took that after her mother. Her brother was always the one with the good sense of direction, always put in charge when their mother piled them all in the car for another job. She hadn’t had quite the normal childhood, but she didn’t realize that, truly, until she’d gone off to college two years ago. Apparently most children didn’t spend their weekends in dusty attics with voice recorders or traveling from one well known psychic to the next in the hopes of finding the one or have friends that no one else could see, but drunk college kids sure did like to hear ghost stories. And Celia supposed she had a good number of those to share.

For a living, her mother was an investigator of the supernatural, and so Celia and her brother, James, tagged along because really there was no where else to go. Their little trio was the only family any of them had, everyone else having passed away. Except

Celia was pretty sure, after finding a letter sitting on her mother’s desk, that her grandfather was still alive and her mother, for whatever reason, didn’t like to think so,

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often even referring to him as dead. But if there was anything Celia had learned from her childhood, it was that there could be a considerably fine line between the living and the not living.

*

The last time Celia had seen her brother was exactly a week after their mother’s funeral.

Three months and six days ago. She could probably calculate it to the exact minute, second, even. She had already gone back to school when she’d felt that she needed to check in on him again. Even though they were a year apart in age, she the younger, she believed she shared some sort of bond with him, something similar to the type that twins are often theorized as having.

But even though they were both raised to keep an open mind, James was never one to believe any of what their mother fought so hard to prove. And so, of course, he thought any notion of a psychic connection between Celia and him to be ridiculous. But

Celia liked to remind him of the time she knew he was stuck in a tree in the woods, nonetheless knew the exact place, the exact tree, he’d climbed when he thought he’d heard a bear and of the time she knew he had gotten sick on Macy Miller’s shoes before he’d returned home that night and of the time she knew to drive back to his apartment a week after their mother’s funeral because he’d drunk so much, he’d passed out and hit his head on the bathroom sink. But he’d always believed each to be a matter of circumstance.

Of just her good intuition. It was him, after all, who had suggested for her to study psychology in the first place.

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But now, Celia found their bond or connection or just her plain intuition challenged, and she had no idea where her brother had run off to or why she felt this urgent need to find him.

(NOTE: I’m trying to decide if this is something/someone I should keep exploring)

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XXXIV. LENA, 1925

Lena paced her room, worried over what she should wear. Never before had she worried over such a thing. No boy had ever made her feel quite so overwhelmed. In fact, no boy had ever quite made her feel. Her past relationships usually resulted from circumstance.

From her inability to say no. She never really put that much stock into them. And even her once fiance didn’t elicit more than the briefest of fantasies of what life could be like beyond the confines of her parents and the inn. Because, in truth, Lena was happy with her lot in life. She had never fully entertained ideas of love or marriage or children. And it wasn’t until rather recently that Lena’s interests were even piqued by something more physical. And, yet.

She worried as she made her way downstairs whether or not he would even be there. And if he were, would she so obviously sit next to him again? Would it actually be easier or harder to concentrate on the doings of Madame Rose if he were so near? She needn't of bothered with such worries, though. Once she walked down the stairs from her bedroom, she saw him rise quickly from where he’d been sitting in the reading room. She wondered if he’d been waiting for her. And if so, for how long?

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“I wondered if you were actually a guest here. And I didn’t catch your name last night to check,” he said, coming closer. But he looked a little more nervous than he had the night before.

“I’m staying here, yes. I’m Lena,” she said, noticing how awkward her name felt in her mouth. As though it somehow weren’t true.

“James,” he said, reaching for her hand. “But you may call me Jay.”

Lena enjoyed how small her hand felt in his--his had to be at least double the size of hers. It wasn’t that he was a large man, but rather Lena was a small lady. Aside from her height, a mere five-three, she was slim and light and with the bones of a bird, as her mother often claimed, which went well with Lena’s slight appetite.

“Were you planning on attending tonight?” she asked, thinking it best to slip her hand away, hating the idea of her mother seeing. Her mother didn’t quite understand how

Lena could feel as though she didn’t need a man to take care of her, nonetheless how she didn’t even want a man to take care of her. And that was what struck Lena as the most odd about how she was feeling in that exact moment--excitement and anticipation and horror. Actual horrifying concern for what could come next if he said yes.

“Yes. Will you join me?”

“I was already planning on attending, but I suppose we could go down there together.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said. He hesitated a moment, as if he was going to say something else or reach out again, but instead he remained still, awkward, staring at

Lena.

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She could see he was thinking hard on something. A small crease formed between his brows--his first tell for her to notice.

“Let me just gather my things,” he finally said, stepping back into the reading room. From what Lena could tell, he’d only retrieved a small journal from the coffee table, sliding it into the inner pocket of his suit jacket before he’d returned, arm out for her to take.

*

The basement looked the same as it had the night before, but this time, Lena knew what to pay attention to. As they entered, she let her fingers drag across the wall, which were covered, in fact, with heavy black drapes. Since they were the first to arrive, she asked

Jay if they could sit closer to the head of the table, closer to where Madame Rose would be, and he seemed pleased with the suggestion and Lena hated how that seemed to please her. The table was covered with a black cloth, the edges long, falling to the ground. The ball and candles were still in the center, the candles already lit.

Once seated, Lena ran her hands under the cloth, feeling the wood beneath. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, though. But she knew the table had somehow moved last night, and she wasn’t fully convinced it had been due to Madame

Rose’s spiritual prowess. How, then?

Eventually she leaned over and tossed the cloth over her head, allowing her to look beneath the table. Of course, it was virtually black under there, with no light able to seep in, but she remained bent over, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

She felt Jay shift until his head was near hers under the table.

“Did you drop something? Do you need help finding it?” he asked.

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Lena hadn’t noticed before how he smelled freshly of soap, but with a hint of sweet, earthy tobacco seeping in. She pulled her head back, almost hitting it on the table above, and twisted her way out from under the cloth, only realizing how hot she’d gotten once the damp coolness of the basement touched her cheeks again.

“Did you feel the table move last night?” She asked, watching as he made his way back up from under the table, too. She was amazed his hat had stayed on the entire time.

“Of course,” he said, but Lena couldn’t tell if he meant that in earnest or if he was making fun of her.

“No, really. I felt it almost fall in my lap.”

“I know.”

Lena started to further argue her claim, but stopped when Mr. and Mrs. Borden from room twelve entered and took seats across the table from where Jay and she sat.

“Good evening, Miss Edwards,” Mr. Borden said, tapping his fingers on the table.

He couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with his hands.

“Hello Mr. Border. Mrs. Border,” Lena said, smiling and nodding at each, something of which Lena had long ago mastered, the most minimal act of politeness, after many talks from her mother about needing to be more friendly to the guests.

Jay leaned closer to Lena and whispered, “Edwards?”

She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she hadn’t wanted him to know she was the innkeepers’ daughter. Perhaps it was just about achieving and maintaining an air of mystery, but she was sure it had to be something more complicated than that.

The room continued to fill with guests, all nodding and smiling at each other and at Lena, who, of course, nodded and smiled and nodded and smiled.

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“Do you live at the inn?” Jay asked.

“Does it matter?”

“It could,” he said and it seemed he would have said more if Madame Rose hadn’t finally entered the room and taken her seat at the head of the table, Lena at her right and

Mrs. Borden at her left.

“Oh, this is all so exciting,” Lena heard Mrs. Borden say quietly to her husband.

And it was exciting, but Lena was sure she was excited for different reasons.

“Welcome,” Madame Rose said. “I’m pleased to see both new and familiar faces here this evening,” she continued, but Lena thought she saw something pass across

Madame Rose’s face when she seemed to notice Jay, though the look went as quickly as it had come, so Lena couldn’t be sure.

Lena felt Jay wrap his hand around hers moments before Madame Rose instructed guests to lock hands around the table. She let their hands linger there, on her lap, longer than probably appropriate, because it felt odd to let others see. And then Lena realized she had to hold onto Madame Rose. The last time they’d touched was when Madame

Rose had read her palm in the garden. Her hand was out and waiting for Lena to take hold, but thankfully her eyes were already closed.

Madame Rose’s skin was cold, much colder than Lena had expected, and she could feel every tiny bone in the psychic’s hand.

“No matter what you feel or hear or even see, tonight, never let go,” Madame

Rose said. “You are to trust the one on your left as equally as the one on your right. We are to protect one another as we take this spiritual journey in finding truth together. If one

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breaks this trust, he is opening himself, becoming vulnerable to the spirits who linger here.”

Lena felt as much as she heard the energy in the room shift. Excitement to nervous anticipation to cautionary fear. Lena watched as Madame Rose tilted her head back, started the same meditative hum. Lena noted how at this point last night, Madame

Rose had requested everyone to close their eyes.

And then the room went quiet. And as more and more time passed in silence,

Lena could see Mrs. Borden growing increasingly uncomfortable and even Mr. Fox from room three was starting to stir a little, while earlier it was evident he was only doing this for the benefit of Mrs. Fox. When Lena looked at Jay, though, he seemed perfectly calm and still, even smiling when he noticed her. But with each quiet second that passed, Lena could feel her new-found confidence waning.

Despite the anxiety filling the room, the basement somehow managed to feel even cooler, and every now and then Lena felt a tiny burst of air and she wondered if a window might be open behind one of the drapes, allowing some of the chill from the night to seep in. One such burst even managed to blow out one of the candles, the one farthest from Lena, leaving just the slightest amount of light left in the room.

“Someone is here,” Madame Rose said, her voice low.

Hushed gasps and whispers went around the table, one even managing to escape from Lena, herself. Jay gripped her hand tighter and she wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or comfort.

“Spirit, if you are here, show us a sign. Give us proof of your presence tonight,”

Madame Rose continued.

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And as it had the night before, the table slowly tilted, rising from where Madame

Rose sat. Lena looked around the table at the shocked and amused and fearful faces.

There were even a few nervous laughs. But when she looked at Jay, he gave her his calm smile again.

“Thank you spirit. We know you are here. Will you answer some of our questions? Knock once for ‘yes,’ twice for ‘no.’”

The table righted itself and the room quieted again until, surely enough, a single distinct knock echoed against the walls. It looked as though Mrs. Borden wanted to pull her hand away, but Madame Rose warned again, “We must hold tight to one another.”

Lena concentrated hard on where the rapping had come from, but she couldn’t quite be sure. It did seem, however, to originate from near where Madame Rose was sitting.

“Do you reside in the inn?” Madame Rose asked.

Another single knock.

“Did you die in the inn?”

Another single knock.

“Can you leave the inn? Can you move on?”

Two knocks.

Two knocks.

“Do you want to move on?”

Silence.

“Do you want me to help you move on, spirit?”

Silence.

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“I fear our spirit is suddenly shy. Perhaps, if we close our eyes, he will feel more welcomed,” Madame Rose said, addressing the table.

Lena watched as guest after guest, including Jay, closed their eyes, and then she met Madame Rose’s gaze, where Lena saw, perhaps, a bit of a challenge reflected back.

It was only after Madame Rose closed her own eyes that Lena did, as well.

“Spirit, I ask again, would you like to move on from this world?”

The silence was all the more nerve-wracking when blinded from the room, but

Lena found it a bit easier to rely on her other senses. For instance, she was suddenly so sure she heard a shuffling coming from behind her.

“Are you happy here, spirit?”

More silence until a startlingly loud, mournful moan erupted, again, Lena could tell, from behind her. Then there was crying, but Lena was sure it was only Mrs. Able from room eight, who sat at the far end of the table.

“Spirit, we can help you. I can help you.”

This time, there was a scream. “Something just touched me!”

Lena couldn’t be sure who had spoken. It took all her will not to open her eyes.

Up to this point, Lena had thought she wasn’t sure what she’d felt about Madame Rose and the seance and the goings on from last night, but now she was utterly confused, truly not knowing what to think about any of it.

“Something just touched me,” the lady said again, voice higher.

“As long as you don’t let go, you will be safe,” Madame Rose reassured.

Lena gripped Jay’s hand more while wishing she could safely pull away from

Madame Rose. She wondered what would truly happen if she did, if she were the one to

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break the trust of the circle. She doubted it would honestly result in spiritual harm, but as though Madame Rose had read Lena’s mind, cold, bony fingers tightened around her hand.

And then, there was no denying, Lena was touched. It was soft, at first, the touch.

Something like fingers tracing up her arm. But those fingers soon wrapped around Lena’s shoulder and she felt nails dig deep into her skin. There was a whimper, Lena only realizing it had come from her after whatever it was had moved away.

Jay rubbed small circles against her skin, this time, obviously to soothe her.

“Spirit, be calm. We are just here to help.”

The table rose again, Lena could tell much faster than before, feeling the leg hit her ankles, her shins, her calves, almost her knees as it went higher and higher.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Madame Rose instructed again. “Best not to give him any opportunity to overtake you.”

Mrs. Able was still crying.

Lena felt something warm against her ear. Hot breath. Her nose filled with the scent of tobacco. “It’s just a man,” Jay, Lena realized, said. “Open your eyes, Lena.,” he said, lips pressed against her ear.

She shook her head no, not knowing whether or not her suspicions concerning

Madame Rose’s abilities were worth risking tempting a hostile spirit if she were wrong.

“Trust me, Lena. Open your eyes,” Jay urged.

And there must have been something in the way he said it, maybe how he said her name, maybe how his hot breath against her skin made her want to do anything he

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said for her to do, but Lena realized, then, that she did trust him, and so she opened her eyes.

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XXXV. BESSIE, 1900

Teenage Bessie was blossoming right before the eyes of everyone in her small

Virginian town, everyone, that is, except for Molly Lee, who absolutely refused to believe Bessie would ever rise above her cow-milking stature. Long gone were the days when Molly had to take Bessie under her wing. Bessie was no longer poor Bessie, but rather charming Bessie and Lovely Bessie and look at her break those hearts Bessie. But

Bessie knew Molly wasn’t fooled by her smiles or quick wit or perfect figure and hair and make-up. Bessie knew Molly knew her secrets and Bessie knew she would need to find a way to keep her quiet, to show her exactly how the tables had turned.

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XXXVI. CARRINGTON, 1918

The Woodwards have two sons, but only one of which the rest of the benefactors know about. Their youngest, James, or Jimmy, Mrs. Woodward believing the name

“James” too stuffy for a four-year-old boy, already shares an affinity for books with his father and finds the fourth-floor library to be his favorite spot. Mrs. Woodward finds it curious that a four-year-old boy would have such a favorite spot, but Jimmy’s daily escapes to the top floor are nothing less than determinably impressive.

The first time Jimmy disappears, near chaos ensues. A search of the garden, the nearby bayou, and the questioning of neighbors leaves the Woodwards fruitlessly empty- handed. It isn’t until Mr. Woodward succumbs to his evening routine that Jimmy is found curled in the corner of the library, hugging a prized first-edition of Through the Looking

Glass.

Their other son, though, William Woodward, is hardly ever mentioned at all. He is overseas, a soldier in the Great War, fighting in France according to the last telegram

Mrs. Woodward receives. The mere mention of William’s name triggers something in

Mr. Woodward, perhaps is the origin of his new-found love of liquor, his favorite being

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the kind he drives the thirty miles away from Carrington for twice a week while Mrs.

Woodward tends to whatever it is wives do when left alone.

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XXXVII. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

The group gathered around Mrs. Jenings and stared at the small opening near the bottom of the wall.

“Well?” Mrs. Mohler asked, nodding toward the open door while looking at Mrs.

Jenings, as if to say, go on, then.

Mrs. Jenings looked back at the group, and after realizing it would have to be her to make the first move, she hiked up her dress and kneeled before the door to see a small, dark hallway. The path was clear, no webs or gathered dust like she’d suspected, meaning the entryway was probably used frequently, meaning they’d probably found the right spot. She could see a light in the distance, telling the short hall led to a room. And so, without looking back to the group, Mrs. Jenings got on her hands and knees, thankful that the Woodward’s did have good enough sense to have help and so their floors weren’t so dirty, and crawled through the small space until she’d made it to the other side, into the room.

She could tell by the wall of books on her left that this was the room she could see from her bedroom window at night, where she so often saw the small boy standing. And

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where he normally stood, there was, indeed, a giant window, which was now shattered and open to the night air. Mrs. Jenings went to the window and looked down, knowing, before she saw, what she would see.

*

The group had finally entered the room, one-by-one, Mrs. Lemon being the last and only after she had been reassured time and time again that that were no dead bodies to be seen because she simply could not handle seeing anymore dead bodies that evening.

“There’s no sign of Mr. Woodward here,” Mr. Chesterton stated.

“Or the boy,” Mrs. Jenings said, feeling defeated.

They had searched the entire room. They searched the shelves, pulling books, for clues. They kicked and banged the walls, pulled on the lights, anything that they thought might trigger another secret passage, hoping to find Mr. Woodward, or at least the boy, hiding there. They looked under and over furniture, inside cupboards and the single closet. They dug through the small writing desk, but always found nothing of any use.

After they had gathered back in the parlour downstairs, Mrs. Mohler offered,

“Perhaps, he ran off with the boy.”

“Mr. Woodward?” Mrs. Lemon asked.

“Of course, Mr. Woodward,” Mrs. Mohler said, making sure Mrs. Lemon could hear the frustration in her tone.

“And so Mrs. Woodward…”

“Jumped,” Mrs. Mohler finished.

The room quieted, Mrs. Mohler’s suggestion sinking in.

“You think she did this on purpose?” Mr. Chesterton asked.

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“I can only imagine what I would do if my Mr. Mohler ran off and took our child, leaving me alone. What sort of life would that be?” Mrs. Mohler continued.

“Think of the shame,” Mrs. Lemon said, softly.

“I can only imagine,” Mrs. Jenings said.

“You may soon understand better than the rest of us,” Mrs. Mohler said, eyes overtly settling on Mrs. Jenings’s stomach.

And so yes, Mrs. Jenings did have a secret, or so she thought, and yes, she did not yet want Mr. Jenings to know, and yes, she may, in fact, soon better understand than the rest of them. And perhaps that was why she felt so incredibly much for the boy. Her own maternal instincts were finally kicking in, something, she hated to admit even to herself, she was very worried over. Because, after all, she had had no mother to learn from, and so what sort of mother could she possibly turn out to be? And while she didn’t necessarily consider herself old, she had still figured her days of entertaining even the idea of carrying a child were well behind her.

She met eyes with Mrs. Mohler, surprised she knew, nonetheless could tell. She thought she had been careful in concealing it, making sure to wear dresses where the skirt started a little higher, making sure to stay away from the few foods and smells that she’d already realized turned her stomach, especially cucumbers, which were unfortunately

Mrs. Mohler’s go-to for sandwiches on her Bridge days.

“What’s this?” Mr. Jenings asked.

“Nothing, dear. We’ll talk later,” Mrs. Jenings said, and though this didn’t seem to calm the obviously flustered Mr. Jenings, he also didn’t protest. “We have more important things to worry ourselves over, at the moment.”

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“Maybe we should search outside, now. See if we can tell which way he went,”

Mr. Chesterton suggested.

The men all seemed to grumble in agreement. Mrs. Jenings wasn’t sure what to say, though. She considered telling the truth, because she was actually outside when it had all occurred, and she knew, without a doubt, there was no possible way Mr.

Woodward had gotten past her, especially with the boy in tow, because, for one, the car was still parked in the front drive and so they would have left by foot. She would have certainly heard them from either direction, having been on the side of the house, herself, when the fall occurred. The backyards were also completely squared off with walls, ivy- covered, of course, as were the backyards of everyone who lived on the row to ensure privacy. And since she knew the Woodward’s owned no boat, and that Mr. Jenings and she were the only ones on the row who did and they left theirs locked in a small shed in their own backyard, she also knew, without a doubt, they hadn’t taken to the bayou for an escape, because surely no man would subject his poor boy to the risks of mosquitos and snakes and gators simply to escape his wife.

But Mrs. Jenings remained quiet, joining the group as they filed out the door.

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XXXVIII. JAMES, 1952

The moment Miss Kitty said investigation, I knew exactly what she had meant. I was a bit disappointed with myself for not thinking of it sooner, not after finding the photo, at least. Of course, the inn looked to be the exact sort of place my mother (and I suppose, my father, too) would have wanted to investigate. I could only imagine all the horrible acts which occurred on this very land over the years and what sort of repercussions that would have through time.

“Are you hungry, Mr. Castleby?” Miss Adelaide asked.

The young ladies, including Evelyn, were in the yard, still, covering everything with flowers and more flowers and, remarkably, more flowers. I couldn’t help but wonder what their bee population was like this time of year. How disastrously this could all end.

“Yes, very.”

“Let’s go get some food. There’s a diner nearby.”

The thought of actual food and getting away from this place, which sadly wasn’t feeling quite so homey at the moment, was all very appealing.

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“Yes, please,” I said. I wanted to be careful around Miss Kitty, so I continued to limit how I spoke. I wondered how my father had spoken. If I could so easily pass as him to anyone other than an elderly woman with a mind trapped in the past.

“Mother, we’re going for food. Do you want anything?”

Miss Kitty still rocked and still stared out into the yard as she said, “Why on earth would I want that garbage?”

“I was just checking, Mother. We’ll be back soon,” Miss Adelaide said, stepping away from her mother and tugging on my arm as she passed. “Let’s go, Mr. Castleby.

We’ll want to get a good seat at the counter.”

When we stepped off the porch, the girls quieted, many turning to stare.

“Why do they do that?”

“What?” Miss Adelaide asked.

“Stare at me so.”

She laughed. “We don’t get many new people in town. But the fact that you’re a, what? Twenty-something-year-old handsome young man? You’re going to get noticed and talked about in a place a like this.”

With each small bundle of girls we passed, there were muffled laughs and whispers.

“And what sort of place, exactly, is this?”

“I’m sure you’ll see, Mr. Castleby.”

The diner was close to the inn. But everything seemed rather close to the inn, the inn seeming to be a central point for the town. When we first entered, the place was busy

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with chatter, but one-by-one, each voice fell away, each face turned to look at the door, where I still stood.

“Mr. Castleby?” Miss Adelaide said, trying to grab my attention. She had already taken a seat at the counter. Similar to before, whispers erupted as I moved between the few tables from the entrance of the diner to where Miss Adelaide sat. But this time, I sensed less enthusiasm about my presence.

“You want your usual, Miss Adie?” A young man came called from the other end of the counter.

The diner was simply decorated. It was nothing like the popular ones back home.

The colors were dull--muted yellows, browns, creams. Nothing sparkled about the place.

It looked as though it hadn’t changed in many many years, not since it was first built, probably.

“Not today, Stevie. Could we get a couple of menus?”

Stevie seemed to notice me, then, for the first time. I thought I saw his smile slip a bit, but he righted it before I could be sure. “Sure. Here ya go, Miss Adie,” he said after he’d come to our end, sliding both menus to her, not even giving me a second glance. She must have noticed how unsettled I felt, because she spoke up just as Stevie was about to leave to go back to whatever he’d probably been spit shining.

“Stevie, this is Mr. Castleby. He’s staying at the inn.” And this seemed to truly catch Stevie’s attention, because he stopped mid-step and swiveled back around.

“Mr. Castleby, you say?”

“James Castleby,” I said, offering my hand to the man.

“You go by Jay, too?”

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“No.”

“Is this?” Stevie asked, looking at Miss Adelaide.

She nodded, yes and gave a long Mmhm.

“Well, I’ll be. You know, me and this little lady used to sneak into that old house while your parents were in there and Mr. Woodward would--”

“Stevie, that’s enough,” Miss Adelaide warned, cutting him off.

We had gathered a few more glances from around the room, those who had lost interest, suddenly paying close attention, again.

Stevie grunted. “Right.”

Miss Adelaide didn’t look old enough to have played with Stevie as a child. The man looked, easily, to be in sixties, while Miss Adelaide looked a good twenty years younger. Maybe it was all his years of frying burgers. Grease-soaked skin.

“What house?” I asked.

“It’s a little further out. It doesn’t matter, anymore,” she said.

“Anymore?”

It looked as though Stevie might speak, but Miss Adelaide gave him a stern look.

“We’ll take two burgers, Stevie. They’re his signature dish,” she said, tilting her head toward me as she said the last bit.

“Of course they are. Sounds wonderful,” I said, pushing the menu toward him.

“May I have a rootbeer float, too?”

By the time the food had arrived, not only had I’d given up any chance of getting my float from Stevie, but also that I’d ever get any information from Miss Adelaide. I wondered why she’d even brought me here, in the first place. We’d spent the

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considerably long time waiting on our food mostly in silence. Perhaps it was the pressured stares of the diner’s guests that had unsettled her.

“Is it good?”

“Very,” I said, though truthfully it was quite awful.

We, again, spent the remainder of our time eating, in silence. When we were finished, I waved Stevie down for our check, though it was Miss Adelaide who had actually gotten his attention. And despite that, it was me he placed the check in front of.

Which was fine, of course, I was always going to pay for the lady.

“You don’t have to do that,” Miss Adelaide said.

“Of course, I do. But may I ask you something?” And when she never replied, I continued, anyway. “Why did you--”

“I think you should leave, Mr. Castleby,” she said.

“Yes, as soon as I pay.”

“No, I mean Carrington. You should leave Carrington. I don’t think you understand what you’ve stumbled upon.”

Truer words may have never been spoken, but I didn’t think I could leave even if

I wanted to. If anything, because I was so incredibly tired of wandering.

“I do wish you would tell me.”

“Everything alright, Miss Adie?” Stevie asked, eyeing me.

“Of course. Mr. Castleby, pay the man so we can leave,” she said, taking on quite the familiar tone, one she had surely gotten from her mother.

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I put some bills on the table and Stevie took them without bothering to ask if I needed any change, which I supposed I didn’t, but it was still pretty inhospitable not to ask.

As we were leaving, I noticed the diner had emptied, leaving only the three of us and whoever might be working in the kitchen.

“We don’t seem to have the best luck when strangers come around,” she finally said on our walk back to the inn.

“Do I count so much as a stranger? Everyone seems to know my name, already,” I said, lightheartedly, wanting to diffuse the tension I could feel coming from her.

“Yes, and there’s a not so great reason for that, Mr. Castleby.”

“One, I assume, you won’t tell me.”

“I’m not really sure I’ll have to if you hang around here much longer,” she said.

As we approached the inn, I looked at the main house, in all its southern glory. At

Miss Kitty still sitting there on that rocking chair, and I wondered how differently it may have looked the first time my parents had arrived--if it had looked different at all. And I thought, how could I leave, now?

Because fate had a funny way of pushing a man around--that, I’ve always believed. And while I was never much for believing in superstitions, I’ve always thought there had to be some sort of guiding force in the world and all one had to do was actually pay attention. That was, it seemed, how I had ended up in Carrington, in the first place.

One brief stop, one chance encounter, one circle on a map of a town with a name that was only partially mine. And then there I was, somehow, staying in the exact place my parents had before I even existed. What a fancy coincidence.

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XXXIX. HEREWARD, 1907

...there must be some force in the world as yet unknown, and exercising at least a push-and pull action...upon imponderable matter.

--From The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism

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XL. EVELYN, 1952

Evelyn was happy at least some of the attention had been removed from her.

Missy was too busy conspiring about the new gentleman to care any longer about how inappropriate Evelyn’s mere existence was, that day. Some of the girls were excited, while others were worried, but Evelyn was simply curious because, not unusually, she was bored. So when Missy was distracted by Betsy’s newest theory, Evelyn snuck away to the porch where her grandmother was still sitting.

Evelyn didn’t really speak much to her grandmother. She’d always found her a little intimidating, and by the reactions of everyone else in town toward her grandmother, it seemed she wasn’t alone.

“Do you need anything grandmother?” Evelyn asked as she came up the porch stairs.

“I’m fine. You need to be down there helping.”

“They’re too distracted right now. Nothing’s getting done, anyway.”

“Well, then, someone needs to be doing the job. Might as well be you.”

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And just when Evelyn was about to do her best at arguing with her grandmother, she saw someone she’d never expected to see come across the road and step onto the yard of the inn.

Joseph Woodward.

What? Evelyn heard Missy’s voice shrill from somewhere in the yard. But she didn’t have much time to focus on how the girls were already stock-piling at least a month’s worth of gossip, because she realized Joseph was making his way to the porch, and he looked just about as happy about it as Evelyn felt. When she looked over at her grandmother, she’d thankfully fallen asleep.

“You can’t be here,” Evelyn said, rushing to meet Joseph before he’d reached the stairs.

“The hell I can’t. Haven’t you people put my family through enough?”

Evelyn wasn’t really sure what he was talking about, but by the look on his face, it didn’t seem as though he was going anywhere anytime soon. When she noticed Missy and her ladies huddled and surely already conspiring, she motioned for Joseph to follow her into the inn. At first, she didn’t think he would. He was apparently upset about something, and that something apparently had to do with her, even if it was indirectly, but after he took a moment to look around, probably after seeing what Evelyn had just noticed, he finally shook his head and motioned for her to go on.

Once inside, she ignored the odd look Pete, from the behind the front desk, had given her and went back to the library, because at least she knew no one would wander that far into the inn.

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“I’d always kind of wondered what it looked like in here,” he said once they’d both entered the library.

Now that they were in there, Evelyn wasn’t sure why she’d thought it was a good idea. She’d never been really talked to Joseph before, nonetheless been alone with him.

But she, surprisingly, didn’t really feel uncomfortable, just at a loss for words, though she did manage to say, “Well?”

“It looks amazing in here. These books, some of them must be so old,” he said, wandering around the room, running his hands along the dust-filled shelves.

When he reached out, it looked, to take a book, Evelyn said, “Don’t touch anything, please.”

“Of course not,” he said, as if suddenly remembering where he was and who he was with, any sign of growing comfort immediately gone.

“So,” Evelyn started, but stopped short when she realized she still wasn’t really sure what to say.

“So,” he repeated, some of his anger seeming to fall away, perhaps replaced by a shyness Evelyn couldn’t help but find a little cute.

And then she remembered her list, and then she remembered why he hadn’t been a name on her list to even mark off of the list--because he was a Woodward, and for as long as she could remember, that meant bad news. The Woodwards were bad news. But she didn’t have the slightest clue as to why. And she’d started to notice more and more of those sorts of things about Carrington. Things that were simply considered as general knowledge, that needed no explanation for everyone to follow suit. Thus, stay away from the Woodwards was just something Evelyn grew up hearing.

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“I heard your grandmother was starting up the investigation again,” he said, still looking at the shelves.

When Evelyn was younger, she would often run away to this library, crawl under one of the fancy chairs with a flashlight and read until usually Walt found her and made her go home, but her mother would always know where she’d been because of the dust sprinkled in her hair. Even back then, the library had fallen to disuse, and Evelyn wondered why a place in which she knew her grandmother had once loved had been so abandoned. Even then, with her grandmother living in the inn, it was apparent by the thick blanket of dust that today had been the first in a long long while since anyone had even entered the room.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Evelyn said, despite having heard her grandmother mention something about an investigation to the man from earlier, but truthfully, the man had looked completely taken aback, like it was the first time hearing about it, himself.

“My grandfather can’t take anymore of this. We finally thought at least the worst part was behind us.”

“Joseph,” she said, his name feeling weird on her tongue. She didn’t think she’d ever said it out loud, before. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” he asked, but in a way that suggested he didn’t believe her at all.

“I promise.”

“And that’s supposed to mean something to me?” he said, voice rising.

“Miss?” Walt said from the hallway, causing Evelyn to jump. “Everything alright in here?”

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“I think so, Walt. Thank you,” she said, hoping it was the truth.

“I’ll just be waiting out here in the hall until you’re done, then, Miss,” Walt said after a moment of staring at Joseph, who had once again turned his attention back to the shelves.

“No need, Walt,” Joseph said, suddenly rushing to leave, but as came closer to

Evelyn, he leaned in and lowered his voice and said, “Stay the hell away from my family,” gone too fast for Evelyn to reply, even if she’d had something to say.

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XLI. LENA, 1925

It took a moment for Lena’s sight to adjust to the poorly lit room, the one candle still glued (for all she knew, it really was glued, because she couldn’t fathom how it would rightly stay put during all the commotion, otherwise), working hard to light the room as much as it could. The table was floating, the top raised to about chest-level. It swayed every so often, and in the candlelight, Lena thought she could make out something that looked like thin rope coming up from all four legs, seemingly pulling the table to the ceiling. Everyone around the table still had their eyes closed, including

Madame Rose, but when Lena looked at Jay, he stared back with an expression as if to say, See?

And Lena did see. In fact, she even saw a dark figure standing directly behind

Mrs. Fox. It was difficult to be sure, at first, but once the figure moved, Lena hadn’t any doubt in her mind that something was walking about the room. And though Lena had never encountered or witnessed a ghost before, she felt confident in that what had touched her was in no way possible a mere apparition. It had been solid, flesh-bound, surely. And this figure did, indeed, look solid, flesh-bound.

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“I will you, spirit, to remain calm. You will cause no harm tonight,” Madame

Rose commanded.

The rappings returned, quick and loud, one right after another. With it being so dark, it was hard to tell, for sure, but she never saw the dark figure making the rapping noises in response to Madame Rose’s questions. How then?

Lena watched as the dark figured walked around the table, reaching out to touch

Mrs. Fox’s hair, tap Mr. Able’s hat, even as it leaned over and blew into Mrs. Borden’s ear, which elicited a little giggle, her apparently having calmed down enough to rather enjoy the evening, and as it stood behind Madame Rose, Lena saw his hand run down her neck and down her shoulder and down and down and down beneath the collar of her dress. And when Madame Rose’s head fall back against the figure, Lena snuck a look at

Jay, who now had a wicked smile. She turned her attention back ahead when the familiar shuffling sounded again and closed her eyes when she saw the figure moving toward her.

“I’m going to meditate now to calm this spirit,” Madame Rose said before resuming the hum she’d begun the night with.

The sound of running footsteps circled the group, around and around. Mrs. Fox was still crying and Madame Rose’s hum grew more and more urgent and louder and the small breeze turned to a whirlwind type filling the basement and slinging and flapping papers and the whatnot, and just when Lena thought the room couldn’t sound and feel any more chaotic, the table crashed to the floor and then there was silence.

“He’s gone,” Madame Rose spoke quietly. “You may unlock hands and open your eyes.”

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The room was completely dark, the final candle having been extinguished probably during the fall, but the reactions were still evident. She could even still hear poor Mrs. Fox crying. While Lena had more than happily removed her hand from

Madame Rose’s grasp, she didn’t worry over how Jay was still holding onto hers, now settled in her lap, his thumb again tracing small circles.

Light filled the room as Madame Rose lit a lantern near the basement entrance.

“Sometimes what we seek doesn’t always want to be disturbed,” she said as she went from lighting one lantern to the next. “But rest assured, you were always safe. Tonight you were fortunate to discover two truths. That the spiritual world does exist and there are those who can help navigate and speak with the other side. I have proven myself, tonight, to be such a guide.”

The room looked as chaotic as Lena had imagined it would. Papers and broken glass (all of which she had no idea of where they’d come from) were strewn about everywhere, and part of the tablecloth had ripped away, revealing the table had a long jagged crack, starting from the end where Mrs. Fox sat to around the middle, where surprisingly (not so surprisingly?) the candles and crystal ball still sat in their places. The guests around the table finally looked as though they’d settled because, Lena supposed, they felt they’d at least survived. But Lena couldn’t help but wonder, still--survived what? The night hadn’t done much to really help her decide definitevely what she believed Madame Rose was up to--fraudery or spirituality. Would it have been possible for there to have existed a little bit of both that evening?

“And so now I ask you,” Madame Rose said as she came back to the table with what looked to be a crystal bowl, “where can I guide you to, next?” She handed the bowl

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to Mrs. Borden. “And if you could find it in your heart to give anything you can, you would be helping me in helping others unlock their truth. You’ve seen it yourself, tonight, first-hand, how capable I am.”

Mrs. Borden passes the bowl to her husband and nudged him in the side when he started to pass the bowl along to Mr. Hodge, next to him. But with a heavy sigh, he stops, and digs in his pocket, throws in some coins, but Mrs. Borden’s glare must have directed otherwise, because he finally pulled out his wallet and tossed in some bills, how much,

Lena couldn’t be sure, but it looked to be substantial. And then the bowl made its way around the room, each husband seemingly coerced by his wife to donate to the incredible

Madame Rose, but when the bowl made it into the hands of Jay, he stood.

“Good people, you’ve been tricked, tonight,” Jay said, still cradling the bowl.

“Madame Rose is, indeed, a master, but a master of manipulation, not psychic phenomena.”

Lena looked over at Madame Rose, who was still standing near the table, her expression completely unreadable, though.

“Do you have proof, young man?” Mr. Borden asked, looking a little relieved to perhaps be getting his money returned.

Jay nodded, “Indeed.”

He looked at Madame Rose, who placed her hand out, palm up, as if to say, please, go on.

“First of all,” Jay started, but then turned to Lena and placed the bowl of money onto her lap and said, “Here, hold on to this, love.”

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Lena held onto the bowl with shaky hands and felt the heat rise in her cheeks, knowing, surely, they were flaming red. She desperately hoped this didn’t make it back to her mother.

“We’ll start with the table. Simple trick, really,” Jay said, coming to stand next to

Madame Rose. “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the chair.

Madame Rose took a step back and Jay proceeded to sit where Madame Rose had been only moments earlier.

“First, there was the tilt.” A moment passed and then the table started to rise up from where Jay was sitting, just as it had for the past two nights. “Notice how the table is a little low? I’m using my thighs right now to lift it. It’s rather uncomfortable,” he said, laughing, letting the table fall back to the ground, “but I imagine she’s had much practice.”

A nervous laugh also went around the table. Madame Rose continued to stand behind Jay, her face like stone.

“What about when the whole damn thing lifted up?” Mr. Fox called from the other end of the table.

“Yes, that one took a bit more effort on the madame’s part, I’m sure,” Jay said, standing. “But we’ll get into that later.”

“The knockings?” Mrs. Able asked.

“Her ankles.”

“Her ankles?” Mrs. Borden asked.

“It seems strange. I can’t reproduce it, but I’ve seen it done many times. They can twist their ankles in such a way to make them pop, which sounds a good bit like a knock.

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This is when those extra long tablecloths seem to be most handy,” he said as he went around the table, tossing the edges of the cloth up and onto the table so that the underside of the table could be seen.

“This allows for the madame to do such things like lift the table with her legs, knock with her ankles, and, of course, hide the ropes tied around the leg posts which can later be used to the lift the table higher and higher,” he said, holding one of the ropes up for everyone to see.

Madame Rose continued to stand there, expressionless, and Lena couldn’t understand why she wasn’t saying anything to defend herself. She must have sensed this scrutiny, because she simply shrugged her shoulders at Jay’s explanation.

“But how, then, did she attach the ropes to the ceiling? She never moved from her chair, right?” Mrs. Able asked, turning to look at her husband for confirmation.

Lena thought Mrs. Able to have been the most disappointed by the trickery.

“Well, dear lady, she didn’t. She had help.”

The guests all looked around the table, seeming to wonder which of them had played a role in such foolery.

“Worry not. She had outside help,” Jay said, as he went about the room, pulling back (Lena had guessed it) the curtains until finally the dark figure Lena had seen earlier in the evening was stumbled upon, pressed into the far corner of the room.

The figure was covered by, what everyone could now see, another black drape, small slits where his eyes and mouth were. Jay reached out and pulled the cloth toward him until the man beneath was fully revealed, a man revealed to be Lena’s father.

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“I had no idea who it would be under there,” Jay said, taking Lena’s hand as they walked along the beach.

Understandably, Lena had needed to get away from the inn for a while. But she worried this nightly walk wouldn’t be quite enough.

“It wasn’t your fault, of course,” she said after she’d realized how much time had passed without her saying anything. “Did you always know she was a fraud?”

“I did. I’ve followed her a bit. I think she ended so quick last night because she was suspicious of me. If she had suspected me, I’m not sure why she went so all out, tonight, then. It took me a while to figure out where she’d gone next. The last time I saw her was in New Jersey at a freak show, but I had suspected her long before that.”

“So you’ve followed her all over?”

It was a dark night, the moon only a quarter full, but Lena could clearly see when

Jay nodded, their bodies close due to the windy chill coming off from the coast.

“Yes, but not just her. See it’s our mission--”

“There’s more than one of you?” Lena interrupted.

“Yes. I’m part of a society. Our goal is to find true and genuine physical phenomena. And perhaps the best sort of way to go about that, is to first weed out all of the fraudulent phenomena.”

“Yes!” Lena said, her voice suddenly higher, louder. “I’ve been reading this book, for quite a while now, actually. It’s strange, really, how I found this book, but it says something so similar. I’ve studied it quite closely. I should have known better tonight, truthfully.” Her words came out rushed, and she felt her cheeks flushing again. Never had they reddened so much in such a short period of time before.

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“And who wrote this book?”

“Hereward Carrington.”

“You don’t say?” Jay said, stopping to stare at Lena and laugh.

“What? What are you laughing for?” she asked, pushing at his arm, only

afterward realizing she might be flirting with the man.

“I know him. Well, I know of him. He worked with my grandfather, who was the

one who sort of pulled me into all of this.”

Lena dropped to sit in the sand, amazed by such a coincidence. But her life, lately, seemed to be ruled by such coincidences. Jay sat beside her, taking his hat off to hold it down against the sand, she assumed so it wouldn’t so easily blow away.

“When I was a young boy, I would visit him in London, and he would tell me such strange stories. He even let me sit in during some of their investigations.”

“Investigations?” Lena asked, truly excited.

“Yes. They would often question psychics. I only remember one passing the test.

It was the only time I saw genuine fear in my grandfather, too. I can’t remember exactly, but I think she predicted something truly awful. But it was something she’d said before that made my grandfather fearful of what she claimed would come later.”

Lena fell back into the sand, staring up at the sky. The clouds had grown more dense, hiding the bit of moon that had been left for the world that night. “It’s all very strange, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Jay asked, leaning back into the sand next to her.

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“Life, I suppose.”

“Yes. It is all very strange. But I think it’s more guided than we realize,” he said, looking down at Lena, she believed, intently.

“But by what?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t it be great to know,” he said.

Lena had thought it a horrible idea for Jay to walk her back to her room. It was extremely late, but she wasn’t sure whether or not her father would be up and waiting for her to return, wishing to talk to her about what had happened earlier. It was all something Lena absolutely didn’t want to talk about, nonetheless even think about.

But when they’d entered the inn, everything seemed still and quiet and her father was, thankfully, not sitting in the parlour like she’d expected. So she led Jay quietly up the stairs until they’d reached her floor and then quietly down the hall to her room, located all the way at the end. She’d always liked where her room was because it always felt very separate from the rest of the inn.

“Here we are,” Lena said, once they’d arrived outside her door.

“Here we are,” Jay echoed.

Lena hadn’t a clue as to what to do next, and so she found herself quite surprised and lacking any sort of restraint when she realized Jay was leaning in closer and closer to her, though she did step back until she was pressed against her door. He ran his (so warm) hand up her shoulder and neck, into her hair until it settled somewhere in her curls, and just when she thought he was going to kiss her, he pressed his forehead against hers.

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“Will you let me in?” he asked, breath hot against her mouth, but Lena felt he was asking for more than just permission to enter her room.

But without thinking too much on it, which she was often known to do, she reached back and turned the knob, cracking the door just enough so that he could see her answer was yes, even to whatever else he may have been asking.

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XLII. BESSIE, 1900

Bessie’s father thought it was a bad idea for Bessie to attend the party at the Lee’s house that evening.

“You look so much like your mother,” he said, watching from the doorway as she clasped a string of pearls around her neck.

“Do I?” Bessie had never thought she looked much like her mother, that was until the past the two years, when her chest had grown a bit and her hair had taken a new shine and her skin had finally cleared to a smooth, pale complexion with a hint of natural pink to her cheeks. It suddenly made her eyes and nose and mouth transform to the image she had always remembered as her mother’s.

And that night, she was wearing one of her mother’s dresses, the only nice dress her mother had ever owned. It was black silk and the straps rested near the edges of her shoulders, leaving her collar bare, aside from the pearls she had snuck out of Mrs. Lee’s jewelry box so many years before. Something of which she had never really felt that apologetic for, sure that if her mother had still been alive, she would have given her her

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pearls, and since Mrs. Lee was the closest thing Bessie had to a mother, it only made sense that they would have one day belonged to her, regardless.

Her father simply nodded and grunted his signature grunt, the one that stood in for most things he wanted to say but often found he couldn’t, but Bessie had long ago learned to interpret them.

“Maybe I should come with you tonight.”

“Goodness, no,” Bessie said, trying to hold back a laugh. She couldn’t imagine her father in a room, nonetheless in the Lee’s extravagant house, forced to be around many of the people he spent the majority of his energy avoiding. He liked his black and white relationship with the people of their small town, and Bessie knew he truly didn’t mind his position in life. It was a worthy position, one that not only provided for her, but for the entire town, as well, something she felt disgusted with herself for taking so long to realize.

Her father was a good man and had done everything in his power to ensure Bessie had whatever she had needed, but she couldn’t help wanting more. Not necessarily a better life, just a different one.

Later that evening, Bessie found that the Lee’s had once again outdone themselves. She always enjoyed a night at the Lee’s. Good food and entertainment and only the classiest and wealthiest guests attended. While Bessie and Molly weren’t on the best of terms, she knew Mrs. Lee would always welcome her warmly in her home.

And over time, Mrs. Lee had somewhat taken it upon herself to ensure Bessie a better lot in life. She had put Bessie through cotillion classes alongside Molly, which

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instilled all the social niceties both girls would need to navigate the shark-riddled world of the wealthy. But it became obvious fairly early on who of the two young ladies would be the belle of the ball, the ultimate charmer, the one who could best lie straight through her teeth, masked behind a perfectly pouty painted lip, all of which Bessie prided herself for.

“You look absolutely lovely, tonight, Bessie,” Mrs. Lee said, coming in for a slight squeeze around Bessie’s shoulders. “And I love that necklace. Looks so wonderful on your dainty little frame. I used to have one of a similar length, but I haven’t seen it for years, though.”

Bessie smiled, despite herself. “And you’re stunning, as usual, Mrs. Lee.”

Mrs. Lee took a sip from the glass she held in her white-gloved hand and smiled as though she had been told that over a thousand times already, and Bessie would be surprised if she, in fact, hadn’t been.

“Molly’s in the front room, dear, with some of your friends, I believe, if you want to go catch up with her,” Mrs. Lee said, already leaving to disappear among the mingling crowd.

That was, actually, one of the last things Bessie wanted to do--find Molly.

Instead, she went to the small bar and asked the man to give her his finest and when he handed over a small glass filled with something a bit bubbly, she had no idea what he had given her, but sipped it and smiled, nonetheless, despite her instant reaction to spit it out.

“You don’t seem to be a fan,” a fine young gentleman said as he approached

Bessie and slid in next to her against the bar.

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She wondered how he had known she’d disliked the drink, because she was sure she had kept her face pleasant, not wanting to offend the barman’s suggestion of something fine or, better yet, not to give her own novice palate away.

“It’s a bit sweet for my tastes,” she settled on.

“Would you like me to get you something else?” the young gentleman offered.

“No, this will do fine.”

Not satisfied, the young gentleman turned back to the barman. “If you have mint, let us have for the lovely lady, here, a whiskey julep. I’ll take one, as well.”

Bessie found herself shying away from the young gentleman after the barman had left to work on their drinks.

“Are you accompanied, tonight?”

“No.”

“You’re not here to meet anyone?”

Bessie smiled. “Isn’t every unmarried lady here looking to meet someone?” She said, just as the barman returned with two short glasses filled with ice and a brown liquid, mint leaves floating on top.

“Perhaps,” he said, laughing. “These things are quite transparent, aren’t they?”

Bessie watching as he took a sip of his drink. He was dreamingly handsome. Just the sort of man she’d pictured herself one day marrying.

“Are you accompanied?” she asked, and he must have been taken aback by her question, because he slightly choked on his drink.

Once he’d regained his composure, he said, “No, but I am scheduled to meet someone. You wouldn’t happen to be her? No. No, I could only be so lucky.”

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“And what if I am the one?”

The young gentleman lifted both glasses and raised one for Bessie to take. “I believe she’s the lady of the hour. The one I’m set to meet.”

He meant Molly. Of course, he was there to meet Molly. He looked to be the perfect specimen for a husband. Obviously wealthy based off his clothes--a fine suit with a double-breasted jacket that fit his broad shoulders and trim waist perfectly. He even wore gloves and carried a dark cherrywood cane. Only the finest men were known to wear gloves and carry dark cherrywood canes, Bessie believed. And his accent screamed southern aristocracy. Bessie then noticed he had a very fine nose. A General’s nose, probably. A very noble nose.

And then Bessie did something not all that surprising to Bessie, herself, but would be, perhaps, very surprising to others who didn’t know the real Bessie stirring beneath her perfect shine.

“Do you mean to say, you wish I were Miss Lee?” Bessie asked, taking a sip of her new drink, struggling again to keep a straight face from the taste of something she was entirely unfamiliar with, but nonetheless appreciating having something to keep her hands busy.

Before the young gentleman answered, another young gentleman approached.

“Charles, there you are,” the new young gentleman said, taking the drink from out of Charles’s hand and tilting to his mouth until every but was gone, not seeming at all bothered by the burning sensation the brown liquid caused, which now had Bessie in a mild coughing fit while the two men were momentarily more preoccupied with each other rather than with speaking to her.

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Are you well, Miss…” the new gentleman reached his hand out to Bessie to steady her.

“Miss Brown,” Bessie finished for the new gentleman, taking his hand for balance. He was also a fine-looking fellow, but Bessie couldn’t help but compare him with the original young gentleman of the evening--Charles--a name which she found to be wholly worthy for someone with such distinguished features.

“And yes, I’m fine. Thank you, Mr…”

“You may call me Henry. I’m far too young and immature to be a mister,” he said, winking.

And even though Henry was pretty charming, she couldn’t help but notice the look of disappointment on Charles’s face, as he’d realized she was, in fact, not the lady of the hour, but strangely enough, she wasn’t entirely sure how much that mattered, because

Bessie swore she heard Charles whisper to his friend, as he pulled her with him and away from the bar, Stay away, Henry.

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XLIII. CARRINTON, 1918

News spreads quickly in Carrington. News of a taken child. News of a jilted wife. News of a wife jumping from sorrow. And news of a prominent lady’s fall from grace.

The druggist's wife tells the florist.

The florist tells the dressmaker.

The dressmaker tells her daughter.

The dressmaker’s daughter tells her teacher.

The dressmaker’s daughter’s teacher tells another teacher who tells another teacher who tells another who tells another who tells another (but who told the druggist’s wife in the first place?) about the moment when poor Mrs. Woodward was taken down from that tree and Mrs. Jenings, yes that Mrs. Jenings, stepped forward and plucked a lonely yellow heel with tiny pearl studs, they always point out the tiny pearl studs, from off Mrs. Woodward’s foot and proudly claimed it as her own.

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XLIV. MRS. JENINGS, 1918

Mrs. Jenings, as always, felt justified. She had every right to take that damn shoe because, let’s be honest, why let such a thing of perfection go to waste? And she already had the other shoe, afterall. But the moment she did it, when she slid the shoe off Mrs.

Woodward’s cold foot, she knew it had been seen in poor taste. If anything, because of

Mrs. Lemon’s damning gasp, alone, but Mrs. Jenings was rather used to that. She wasn’t, however, used to hearing it from everyone in their small circle. Sure, Mrs. Mohler often let her distaste be known, but the others seemed to keep their opinions to themselves, even Mr. Jenings. But he had been the first to actually say something in that moment. A simple exclamation--Wife!

As time passed, Mrs. Jenings thought things would settle, but it didn’t take long to realize she was being pushed away by the ladies. It was all small things, at first. Like when Mrs.

Mohler had given her the wrong time for their card game, resulting in Mrs. Jenings arriving two hours late, moments before Mrs. Lemon had to leave, anyway. And when

Mrs. Chesterton claimed she’d told Mr. Jenings to tell her she had changed the day she

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would hostess their game from a Wednesday to a Thursday. They had never, in all the years they had played cards together, gathered on a Thursday.

And then it became obvious the schedule had been completely dismissed, purposefully and continuously manipulated so that Mrs. Jenings would have to walk the row herself, sneak peeks in front windows or listen for chatter on each back patio to even tell where they were on any given day. She finally decided to give up when she heard

Mrs. Lemon, her Mrs. Lemon, the only lady she even came close to once considering as a friend, tell the rest of the group to hush because she thought they might be overheard.

So, fine. Mrs. Jenings did not need to partake with those who did not want her there. But as lonely hour after hour, day after day, passed, with even Mr. Jenings still huffing and grumbling around her, she felt more and more restless. And as her belly grew, only by the slightest bit, she was reminded of another person she was sure to eventually push away. Because, in the end, what she was living in that moment, that constant disconnect and solitude, was really not a new feeling.

And even though she had probably truly convinced herself that she was fine without those women, because if she were being honest with herself, it wasn’t really about the ladies, themselves, but rather how it felt to be valued by the ladies, as they were often awed by her affinity to simply know things about people, about Carrington.

But it seemed this snubbing had gone beyond her small group of ladies. For instance, she had just come from town. When she’d entered Mr. Lovelace’s drugstore,

Mrs. Lovelace, who supposedly was the first to have heard the news outside of the row, was sitting behind the counter at the register. It seemed to be just the two of them in the store, Mrs. Jenings having arrived right when they opened to get what she needed for her

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predicament, which was still the only way she could really handle thinking about the baby.

“Good morning, Mrs. Lovelace,” Mrs. Jenings had offered, despite knowing what she knew, but Mrs. Lovelace didn’t respond. So Mrs. Jenings stood a little taller and walked right up to the counter and placed the note her doctor had given her right in front of Mrs. Lovelace, who still didn’t say a word, but at least proceeded to go to a shelf and gather everything the doctor had requested. When she had returned, everything was, gratefully, hidden inside a white paper bag.

Mrs. Jenings didn’t quite understand why, but she simply knew she wasn’t ready for anyone else to know, though she unfortunately suspected everyone already did.

“Just put it towards my husband’s credit,” Mrs. Jenings had said, to again, a nonresponsive Mrs. Lovelace.

But as Mrs. Jenings had walked away and opened the door, she swore she’d heard

Mrs. Lovelace say, God have mercy on that poor child.

It had been a month since what Mrs. Jenings learned the town had labeled the incident, and it seemed her social prospects were as bleak as ever. And worse, yet, she felt pitied.

The looks from those in town were no longer ones of simple distaste or even disgust, but rather pure, unapologetic pity. At least Mr. Jenings was mostly done holding it against her, but even he sometimes pitied her. Sometimes Mrs. Jenings would catch the look on his face, a brief glint in his eyes before he righted himself and remembered who he was married to and how she had a sense for these things. But even Mrs. Jenings, herself, was

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beginning to worry, because honestly, just how long could this go on for? She thought surely it would have blown over, already.

And then two months and three months and four months had passed and Mrs. Jenings was still pushed to the side, still an outcast, still searching for a way back in, but it seemed her prospects were quite hopeless. And so she eventually became the recluse the entire town had probably hoped she’d become. She would alternate, depending on the weather and the mood of her Mr. Jenings where she would sit. If it was a cool night, she would sit on the porch in the back, but the smell of the bayou and the sound of the cicadas and the crickets and the wind in the trees usually made her feel sick and she worried what all that worrying could do to the baby, and by that point, she was worried about the baby because at least when it was born, she will remember what it feels like to be so relied upon.

And one such night, when the worrying had taken over, she left Mr. Jenings to take his scotch outside alone, retiring to bed early. As she sat at her dressing table, brushing out her curls, because even if she never left the house again, she wouldn’t let her lovely hair go to waste, she noticed something across the yard, across in the attic of the house next door. She noticed the small boy, standing there, waving, looking just as he had the last time she’d seen him, the last time he’d waved at her from that very spot, from that very window, from that very secret room.

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