In the Blink of an Eye (5 page)

Not that she enjoys that kind of weather in June.

She inserts her ancient key into the front door lock and turns it, then, shivering in the unseasonal chill, buttons a red cardigan over the long floral-print dress that drapes her petite frame. Descending the three steps from the porch, she notices that the small patches of grass on either side of the walk need mowing, and the sign that dangles on a chain from the peeling white post near the street is askew. She straightens it.

JULIA GARRITY, REGISTERED MEDIUM.

Julia starts down the narrow, tree-shaded street lined with close-set gingerbread cottages similar to hers, many fronted by signs that announce the spiritual counselors in residence. All of the homes display classic 1880s architecture: pillared porches with spindled rails; ornately carved wooden overhangs; fish-scale shingles; bull's-eye windows under the eaves. Some are in good repair, freshly painted in authentic colors, their tiny yards green and immaculate, bordered by neat flower beds and dotted with birdbaths and benches. A few—like Julia's—show their age. Blistered paint, sagging steps, rotting wood.

The town bell chimes again as Julia reaches the end of the street, where it intersects with Cleveland Avenue, Lily Dale's closest claim to a main drag. A trio of tourist types are on the corner, consulting the visitor's pamphlet. One of them, a grossly overweight woman wearing a straining purple polyester pants set and a black windbreaker, turns to Julia.

Huffing slightly, her face florid as though it were ninety degrees out instead of barely sixty, she says, “Excuse me, do you know where Inspiration Stump is?”

“It's down that way, along a path,” Julia tells her, pointing vaguely to the left. “But the services have been moved to the auditorium because it looks like it might rain. That's what the bell means.”

“Where's the auditorium?”

Julia points to where the historic white wooden building is visible ahead. She considers, then dismisses, an offer to escort them. It isn't far, and she's headed to the same destination. But she isn't in the mood to chat with strangers. Iris's death less than two weeks ago still hangs heavily over her.

Julia notices the camera slung over the woman's chubby arm, and a gold ring—a wedding band?—on a chain around her neck.

A younger woman with her asks, “So what happens at these services? People just show up and the fortune-tellers do their thing?”

Julia wearily summons her patience, reminding herself that the summer season will soon be under way and she'll have to do this often now that Lily Dale is overrun with outsiders. Most of them uneducated about the community's origins, and more than a few are skeptics.

“Mediums aren't fortune-tellers,” Julia explains.

“So it isn't like a seance?” asks the purple-clad woman, obviously disappointed. “I was hoping to contact my husband. A friend of mine was here and she said—”

The obese younger man with them interrupts. “Ma, get it through your head: you ain't gonna contact Dad. This is just a waste of money.”

“It was only six bucks each to get in the gate,” says the girl, obviously his sister. “And she paid for all of us, so what do you care?”

He rolls his eyes and looks at Julia. “You ever met one of them mediums?”

“A few.” As she speaks, she hears something.

Her mind's voice, a garbled rush of sound. She automatically focuses, straining to interpret it.

“So you think this stuff is real?” the guy is saying.

“What I think doesn't matter. You'll have to make up your own mind,” she says, mentally dismissing the intruding spirit voice as she hurries away, toward the auditorium.

“
W
HAT DO YOU
think? Do you want to go over there and sit in on the readings?” Kent Gilman asks, pointing at the auditorium in the distance.

Standing beside him on the porch of the peeling two-story clapboard-sided Summer Street Hotel, beneath fluttering American and Canadian flags, Miranda Cleary follows his gaze. A steady stream of people, the vast majority of them middle-aged women traveling in twosomes and threesomes, files through the auditorium door.

Miranda shakes her head, shifting her heavy blue canvas tote bag to the opposite shoulder and wondering if she should run back upstairs for a jacket. It feels chillier out here than it did when they checked in a little while ago, and the clouds overhead look ominous. She makes a mental note to pick up a local paper and check the weather report.

“We can skip the readings for now,” she tells Kent. “I'd love to see the mediums in action, but according to the brochure, there are sessions every day. Right now I'd rather use the last few hours of daylight to check out the lay of the land so we'll be acclimated tonight.”

“Sounds good.” Kent nods and raises his hand, indicating the steps in an
after you
gesture. “Let's go.”

Miranda hesitates. “Do you think I need a jacket? It's pretty cool out here.”

“You can wear my sweater if you get cold.”

“But what if
you
get cold?”

“This is just for show.” Kent motions at the pumpkin-colored cardigan tied around his shoulders, a perfect complement to his pale yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts. “You know I'm always warm.”

That's certainly true. Their biggest arguments, since becoming roommates two years ago, have been over the thermostat setting.

Miranda glances at the sweater. “I don't know, Kent . . . That color will clash with my hair.”

“And your freckles. But who's going to see you here? A bunch of fashion victim tourists and maybe, if we're lucky, a couple of ghosts. And if by any chance a potential Mr. Right appears, remember, eight percent of men are colorblind. Maybe he'll be one of them.”

Miranda grins. “Okay, then let's get going.” She adds, with a shiver, “And hand over the sweater now. There's a breeze coming off the lake.”

Kent obliges, holding her bag as she shrugs into the sweater. It's soft and luxurious, deliciously scented with Kent's designer aftershave. She raises the cotton to her nose and inhales deeply.

“Don't worry, I just took a shower,” Kent says, watching her.

“It's not that. It smells great. Michael used to wear this cologne.”

“Really? Then remind me to toss the bottle into the trash when we get back upstairs.”

She rolls her eyes. There's certainly no love lost between Kent and her ex. Michael's blatant homophobia didn't help matters much.

She buttons the sweater. It fits almost perfectly, as she and Kent are almost the same height. And weight, she thinks ruefully, with a glance down at her ample hips. Hopefully she won't stretch out the waistband.

“We're burning daylight, Miranda,” Kent says impatiently.

“Oh, please, look who's talking. Didn't I just spend a half hour waiting for you to decide which pair of hiking boots to wear?”

“I still think the Timberlands would have looked better.”

“But they give you blisters,” she points out as they descend to the tree-shaded street.

“Sometimes pain is beauty, Miranda.” He hesitates, glancing in both directions. “Right or left?”

“Which way is more interesting? You're the one who's been here before.”

“It doesn't really matter. The whole place is interesting,” he tells her, and gestures to the right. “Let's go that way first.”

Miranda feels around inside the bag to make sure she put in a few extra rolls of 800-speed film. They aren't beginning the investigation until much later, after dark, but in this line of work it's best to be prepared for anything at any time. Which is why, in addition to her 35mm camera and film, the bag also contains a notebook and pens, a digital camera, an audiotape recorder, a thermal scanner, and a compass to record shifts in magnetic fields.

Kent is lugging a video camera with a tripod, an EMF meter, a motion sensor, and a Trifield Natural Meter.

Tonight, when they get down to business, they'll be wearing their khaki photographer's vests with clips and pockets for the rest of their equipment, including an infrared night scope, flashlights with extra batteries, lanterns, candles and matches, a first-aid kit, and a cell phone in case of an emergency. Miranda hasn't encountered one since she started investigating paranormal activity almost a decade ago, but when you're prowling around remote locations in the dead of night, you never know what might happen.

They set off down Summer Street, heading away from the busy commons area and auditorium.

They only arrived in Lily Dale an hour earlier, having risen at dawn to make the nine-hour drive from Boston in Kent's aging Jeep. This is their first stop on a summer-long paranormal research tour that will take them to the West Coast and back on a carefully mapped route. With any luck, their findings will yield them enough material for a book collaboration. Not that either of them is an experienced author, but spiritualism seems to be a hot topic at the dawn of the new millennium. With any luck, they'll earn enough money from an advance and royalties to quit their day jobs and become full-time paranormal investigators.

“This place is charming,” Miranda says, reaching up to shove a strand of rust-colored hair from her eyes. As usual, she's pulled her unruly shoulder-length mop back with a hastily fastened barrette at the nape of her neck; as usual, the wiry curls are desperate to escape confinement.

“Yeah, charming in broad daylight,” Kent agrees. “But tonight, we'll see what pops out of all this frilly gingerbread woodwork.”

“If the rain holds off. Because I feel it coming,” she says, as the wind gusts, rustling the leaves overhead.

“So do I. We should pick up a newspaper and check the weather report.”

“You read my mind,” she says with a smile.

She and Kent have been working together for several years now, as founding members of the New England Ghost Society. They had originally been introduced to each other by an elderly widow, Mrs. Bird, who was convinced that (A) her sprawling ancestral home harbored spirits, and (B) Miranda and Kent would make a good couple.

She was wrong on both counts.

Despite numerous nocturnal visits to the supposedly haunted Back Bay Town House, Miranda never found anything other than a lonely old lady desperate for company and the opportunity to regale someone with tales about her family's colorful past.

When Miranda finally concluded that her client's home was free of supernatural activity, the disappointed Mrs. Bird swiftly rebounded into a matchmaking mode. She insisted that Miranda come to lunch one day at her Commonwealth Avenue home to meet a fellow paranormal investigator who had also recently proclaimed the house free of spirits.

Miranda went along with the blind date with minimum reluctance. At that point, she was still trying to work things out with her ex-husband, but she figured it couldn't hurt to meet someone who shared her interest in psychic phenomena.

Michael certainly didn't share the interest. In fact, that was part of the reason their marriage had foundered. The other part had to do with a buxom female bartender named Cassie, who later became the new Mrs. Cleary before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.

But as Miranda keeps assuring Kent and her therapist, she's long over Michael. Meanwhile, she remains grateful to Mrs. Bird—now dearly departed—for the introduction to Kent.

Miranda's first thought, upon meeting him, was that he isn't her type. Tall, lanky, bespectacled and bearded, he has an owlish, scholarly look. Miranda, the youngest child in a large, fun-loving Irish-Catholic family, has always been attracted to rowdy, redheaded, green-eyed men like her ex. A lot of good that has done her—but she still can't seem to help herself, even now, despite Kent's constant warnings to steer clear of blarney-spouting good-time Charlies—and Patricks and Seans.

Miranda's second thought—after realizing at that long-ago luncheon that she wasn't the least bit attracted to Kent Gilman—was that apparently, the feeling was mutual.

Miranda's oldest brother, Declan, had abandoned the seminary in favor of a live-in relationship with another man, and she had met enough of their friends over the years to pick up on the signals Kent Gilman was sending across Mrs. Bird's damask-covered, candlelit table. Clearly, Miranda noted, this particular man wasn't interested in dating women.

She later learned that he, too, was merely humoring the hopeful Mrs. Bird, who to her dying day believed that her ploy was a success and that Miranda and Kent were partners in more than just ghost busting.

And no wonder. They are definitely soul mates—just not the romantic kind.

They now share an apartment in a two-family house in south Boston, within blocks of Miranda's family home. They're both educators—Miranda a fourth-grade teacher in the city's public school system; Kent an instructor at a local community college. And they both have a crush on their downstairs neighbor, a rugged personal trainer who seems to have no idea that either of them even exists.

Then there's their part-time work as certified ghost hunters. During the school year, they limit their activity to occasional weekend investigations at the request of home owners who are convinced, as Mrs. Bird was, that their houses are haunted. But during the summer months, Miranda and Kent have taken on more complex projects.

Last year, they spent all of July on Nantucket, documenting paranormal activity at a local whaling museum at the request of the curators.

The summer before, Miranda and Kent spent most of their time on the Cape, investigating haunted centuries-old cemeteries.

The cross-country tour is Miranda's idea. In the wake of another shattered romance—this one with her sister Maureen's husband's cousin, Tom—she's anxious to get out of the old neighborhood for a while and lick her wounds.

The book is Kent's idea. Like countless academics before him, he originally intended to become a writer. As far as he's concerned, a coauthored nonfiction parapsychology title is a stepping stone to the great American novel.