We Hear the Dead (8 page)

Kate

Some people might say I made a bargain with the devil. I suppose it seems so, and yet that is a rather harsh judgment of my sister. I prefer to think of it as an agreement for our mutual benefit. There was nothing, after all, that I wanted more than an opportunity to explore and share my newfound talent.

In many ways, I was fortunate that my gift took this form. I always felt that it must have saddened my great-grandmother that her second sight was attuned only to funerals. The family learned to keep their knowledge a secret, for in those more primitive days Great-Grandmother Rutan might have been branded a witch and blamed for the very deaths she prophesied.

I would have liked to have met Aunt Elizabeth and learned more about her dream visions. Sadly, like those of her grandmother, they always foreshadowed death. However, my mother has told me that her sister was always a lively and cheerful person. Knowing that she was to die in her twenty-seventh year, she never wasted any of the days until that time. My mother recalls that she held her head high and proud on the day she married Mr. Higgins, even though her groom had tears on his face and her sisters wept. She would not allow the foreknowledge of her death to deter her from love.

How lucky I was—my gift allowed me to look backward, at those already gone before us, instead of forward to a knowledge no one really wanted in advance. If my role was to be a medium through which the dead communicated with the loved ones who grieved for them, then I was proud and willing to accept that role. It was not all that different from the service of a clergyman who ministers to a grieving widow in her darkest hour.

In fact, Mrs. Redfield told me that my succor was a greater balm to a suffering heart than the doctrine recited by a well-meaning sermonizer. After one of our spirit meetings, she took my hands and said to me, “Bless you, child. You have lightened my heart in a way that no one else could—not the reverend at the church or any other person who has counseled me on God's will. I believe that my daughter's soul still exists and that she is waiting for me in a better, brighter place, thanks to you.”

I had never known that Mrs. Redfield suffered so, for she seemed such a merry and high-spirited person, but apparently she kept her secret grief locked within her heart. I was touched and moved by her plight, and I always made sure to include a special message for her from her daughter.

I was distressed at leaving Hydesville, as Leah had commanded. Being separated from Maggie was like leaving a limb behind. I cried for the first two nights, inconsolable no matter how Leah tried to comfort me, and was stricken by a sick headache that left me prostrate and weak. On the third night, my aunt Elizabeth spoke to me in a dream and bade me take cheer, for my fate was preordained and this temporary loneliness was a small price to pay for the full realization of my gift. After that, I faced my new life in Rochester with more mettle and settled into the role set forth for me by my sister as a medium for the spirits.

Leah made it clear to me that if I wished to continue along this path, I would abide by her decisions in every case, and I agreed. When her plan became clear to me, I faltered somewhat. However, I soon realized that while certain persons were convinced by Leah's tricks and others were entertained, the true believers understood that the value of the experience resided in what I had to say. Before long I had followers whose need was as great as that of the ladies I had known in Hydesville, and it was for the benefit of those persons that I tolerated Leah's tomfoolery.

My sister may have been a trickster, but my own purpose was pure.

Maggie

What a dismal place Hydesville was without my sister. If I had thought it a wasteland before, it was a hundred times more so now. The little farmhouse, full to bursting a few days prior, now seemed lifeless and empty. Mother and I were the only visitors remaining. This may have pleased Betsy, full to bursting herself and preparing for her confinement, but for me it seemed a sentence to a life devoid of any meaning. Consequently, I was ill tempered and quick to anger. When Betsy chastised me for scorching David's Sunday shirt with the flatiron, I burst into tears and exclaimed that no one in this backwoods town would notice a few burn marks.

“If it were up to me,” she snapped in return, “I would close you up inside a crate and send you back to Rochester City by post!”

Even the spirit meetings, held now in Mrs. Redfield's parlor, came less frequently. The fact is that I was not as strong without Kate. My heart was not in it, and it became difficult to resort to any subterfuge when all the ladies' attention was focused on me. Cracking the joints in my toes failed me on more than one occasion, and without Kate's assistance in reserve, the spirits often gave conflicting answers, rapping once instead of twice or failing to rap on the correct letter.

“Margaretta is simply not as gifted with the spirits as her sister,” I overheard Mrs. Hyde whisper to Mrs. Duesler.

As embarrassing as this was, it was nothing less than the truth.

I did not protest when our meetings ended early and soon ceased altogether. At that time, I assumed that this was Leah's plan for extricating us from our deception. Before she left, I had asked her, “What shall I do in your absence?”

“Continue as you have done,” she said, “but be careful and take no risks. Await my first letter, and take guidance for your actions from my words.”

I was expecting her letter to report that Kate's power to converse with spirits was diminishing, and I would subsequently “discover” that my abilities had also faded away. The unsuccessful spirit meetings held in Mrs. Redfield's house foreshadowed the end of the entire ghostly enterprise, and in many respects it would be a welcome relief, for I had tired of the game.

As it turned out, I was wrong about Leah.

***

Two long weeks passed while I languished in boredom and restlessness. Finally, one afternoon, David returned from town with a letter that had arrived by the latest mail carriage. Mother tore it open immediately, just as anxious for news as I was, and after scanning it with a furrowed brow, she read it aloud to the gathered company.

Dearest Family,

We safely arrived in Rochester a fortnight ago. As you know, it was my hope that these ghostly incidents would end if we separated Kate and Maggie. Alas, this has not been the case, and, if anything, the spirits have grown overexcited in their new stomping ground and have been making their presence known to all.

The rapping began on the boat during our trip and only grew worse once we had arrived at my house. Our first night in the house was a sleepless one, what with the mattress shaking under us and Lizzie shrieking in the night that some cold hand had touched her neck. When the girls cried out for the spirits to leave them alone, first Lizzie, and then Kate, and finally I, too, felt a stinging slap on the face! In the end, I was forced to wake Calvin Brown from sleep and ask him to move down from the third floor and make his bed upon the sofa in the second-floor parlor.

After much reflection, I decided to invite a few very close friends to the house for a spirit circle like the one I attended at Mrs. Redfield's house. I hoped that if the spirits were given this opportunity to communicate with the living, they might cease their nightly pranks. And so it happened that, after an evening of rapping and answering questions for our guests, our ornery spirits were appeased, and we have had no more trouble with them.

Let me assure you, however, that I have not yet hung up my fiddle when it comes to abolishing these pesky spirits. I have a mind to move Kate from this house, which is half a century old and may be just as haunted as your little Hydesville house, and into a more modern residence. I am currently engaged in seeking such a place, although mindful that it must be one in which I can accommodate Calvin, for alone among my boarders I feel a certain responsibility to him. It is good to have him with us in any case, as his presence comforts the girls and provides an anchor against the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

I will write again when I have found a new residence that meets my requirements, and I hope at that time Mother and Maggie will join us here.

Your devoted daughter and sister,

Leah

We were all puzzled and disturbed by Leah's letter and the report of these pranks attributed to the ghosts. I had been so certain that Leah would use our separation to abolish the spirits and end the deception without giving our duplicity away. Instead, she seemed to have escalated the falsehoods.

I could not make heads or tails of it. Had Leah been convinced after all that we employed supernatural powers to create the rappings? What was I to make of the cold hand and shaking mattress reported in her account?

Leah stated that she had moved Calvin Brown into her apartment as protection from the spirits. Calvin had rented rooms in the third floor of Leah's house for nearly ten years. He was a mild-mannered and pleasant young man, about David's age. My mother had practically adopted him when she discovered that his parents were dead and that he had no other living relatives. For years we girls had viewed him as a foster brother, just as dear to us as David. Leah was blind to the fact, obvious to the rest of us, that Calvin's regard for her was something more than brotherly. I had no doubt that Calvin would do whatever Leah asked of him, and I wondered if he, too, was now included in the deception.

Three more weeks passed in a slow, countrified agony. Betsy took to her bed in labor and, after two days, delivered a healthy daughter, later christened Althea. I admit staring into the child's red, squalling face with some consternation, viewing her mainly as a source of more laundry that would no doubt find its way into my lye-burned hands.

Mercifully, the expected letter from Leah finally arrived, stating that she had found a suitable house on a more modern street in the city and that we could join her there immediately. I packed my meager belongings in a hurry and was ready to go in an hour—although it took Mother another two days to prepare for the journey. We started out before dawn, with David driving us in the wagon to Newark, where we boarded one of the Erie Canal boats. It was my first trip by boat, and the bedlam of activity was a great excitement for a time, but once the voyage was under way it soon became tedious. Sad-looking horses walking on trails beside the canal pulled the boats, and people on foot easily outpaced us, waving merrily as they passed.

The trip lasted the entire day and into the evening. It was quite dark by the time we set foot on land at Rochester and hired a carriage to take us to Leah's new residence on Prospect Street. Unlike the sleepy little hamlet of Hydesville, the city of Rochester was still awake and going about its business even at nine or ten in the evening. Carriages and wagons bumped along the streets, and pedestrians, many of them walking in couples and dressed for evening social excursions, strolled leisurely along under the gaslights. I smiled at the bustling hubbub of it all. I had missed this background noise of life in the nighttime when forced to fall asleep to silence punctuated only by a cricket or an owl.

Leah's new home was indeed in a more modern and affluent part of town, although it was interesting to note that it adjoined a cemetery, which was a strange choice if she were fleeing from ghosts. I am afraid that we roused the entire household when we knocked on the door, but our arrival precipitated joyful exclamations and exuberant embraces.

Snuggled in bed with Kate that night, I finally heard the story of her month living with Leah. “Oh, she knows how we make the sounds,” Kate assured me, “and so does Lizzie, now. You wouldn't believe how furious Lizzie was when she found out. She called me all kinds of horrible names and said that I was bound for hell for deceiving our family and friends. Why, I was so angry I slapped her!”

I began to see the layer of truth beneath the falsehoods in Leah's letter. Our older sister had defended her daughter by slapping Kate back, who had bounced right back and slapped Leah in return!

“I was very peeved with Lizzie,” Kate went on, “so I waited until she was asleep and dribbled cold water down her back. She leapt up screeching and overturned the mattress I was lying on. Then we pulled each other's hair out in handfuls until Calvin woke up and grabbed each of us by our night shifts and shook us till we squealed! Leah stomped around angrily with her hair all bound up in rag curls, and Calvin blushed like a girl to see her in her nightclothes, but Leah didn't pay any mind. She gave us a tongue lashing and stamped her feet all the while, until the old lady who boarded downstairs banged on the floor with a broom and asked if we were dancing the Highland fling upstairs!”

She and I giggled and whispered long into the night, two dearest friends reunited, until the comforting rumble of city noises outside lulled us into sleep.

Maggie

Kate and Leah had a few surprises for me when I sat for my first spirit circle in Rochester.

The guests included Amy and Isaac Post, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, and their friend Reverend Clark. Our family had rented rooms in the Posts' old house for years, and Kate and I had grown up playing with their sons. When I first saw them that evening, I greeted them with some awkwardness, knowing that I was about to deceive them.

I was also worried about the Reverend Clark, for Kate had confided that he was a longtime friend of the Grangers and that he had come with the purpose of exposing our fraud and rescuing his good friends from harm. Kate, however, expressed no reservations and assured me that Leah had everything well in hand.

Reverend Clark was short and stout, with shaggy eyebrows and a gruff manner. When first introduced to him, Kate and I were entertained by the sight of his unkempt eyebrows waggling in surprise, for he was clearly taken aback by our appearance. We looked like two innocent children excited to partake in a late evening with the adults, not sinister confederates in a humbuggery!

Leah invited our guests to each take a seat around the table in the center of the parlor. Calvin Brown already had a hand on the back of a chair, which he pulled out for Leah with a shy little smile. She seated herself and arranged her voluminous skirts in a decorative manner with a murmur of thanks. When she dropped her handkerchief, Calvin, always attentive to her needs, quickly knelt and retrieved it for her.

Kate took a chair to the left of Leah, and I sat myself on her right. The remaining chairs were taken by the Grangers and the Posts, with Reverend Clark directly across from Leah. Calvin, Mother, and a sullen-faced Lizzie withdrew to a sofa in the corner of the room. When Leah gave a nod, Calvin put out the gaslights, leaving three candles burning on side tables in the room. Afterward, we sat in silence, with our hands upon the table.

Everyone seemed quite comfortable with the silence, except for the Reverend Clark, who was looking around the faces in the circle with some puzzlement. Just when it seemed that he was about to start asking questions, we all heard a shower of quick, light raps, knocking upon the floor and the table itself. I tried not to show my surprise, because these noises were not the joint-cracking sounds to which I was accustomed.

No one at the table had moved his or her hands, although Reverend Clark leaned back from his seat and tried to peer around the table on both sides.

Leah called out in her bright voice, “Welcome! We have gathered here tonight to commune with the brotherhood of spirits, and if it is the wish of our voiceless guests to telegraph their messages to those present in body, please give us a sign.”

Again we heard a shower of gentle raps. Mrs. Granger looked eagerly at Leah, who nodded to her with an indulgent smile. “Harriet!” Mrs. Granger gasped breathlessly. “Is that you?”

We heard two raps, for yes.

This was another shock to me. Never before had Kate and I impersonated the deceased loved one of a person present. We were careful to send messages from a nameless group of spirits, refusing to allow the members of the circle to directly address their relatives. It would be too easy to make mistakes, we had reasoned, and incorrectly answer their questions. Also, we had qualms about the morality of such an imposture. For us, there was a great deal of difference between sending a message from Harriet and pretending to be Harriet.

“Are you at peace, my darling?” Mrs. Granger went on.

Two raps.

“Are you lonely?”

One rap, for no.

The Reverend Clark was looking anxiously back and forth between the wife of his friend and the three of us sisters. Leah looked comfortable and confident and happy for her friend Adelaide Granger. Kate was excited but not perturbed in any way, and I am sure that I looked extraordinarily innocent that night.

After a few more questions and comments by Mrs. Granger and another pitter-patter of knocks, which apparently signified Harriet's presence, Mr. Granger sighed and addressed his daughter's spirit. “Harriet, dearest, we have brought Lemuel Clark with us tonight, and he would like to ask you some questions. Would you be agreeable to taking his test and thus proving to his doubting nature that you are really with us?”

Agreeably, Harriet rapped twice.

“I have a suggestion,” Leah intervened. “Why don't you write four answers to a question of your choice, only one of which will be correct, and then after asking your question, you can point to the answers in turn. Our spirit will rap when you point to the correct one.”

Reverend Clark nodded thoughtfully and accepted the paper and nib pen that Calvin rose to offer him. He wrote four words upon the paper:
Rover
,
Pinkie
,
Bear
,
Dusty
, and then set the pen aside. “Harriet,” he said hesitantly, as though feeling foolish addressing the empty air, “can you tell me the name of the little dog my wife and I once owned, that you so enjoyed playing with when you were a child?”

He pointed to the name
Rover
and, after a moment's silence, moved his finger down to the name
Pinkie
. Immediately, we heard two raps. Mr. and Mrs. Granger sat back in their seats with smiles on their faces, the Posts exchanged a nod, and the Reverend Clark looked up with an utterly astonished expression.

We heard five distinct knocks at that time, and Leah said, “She is calling for the alphabet board.” Leah reached down and lifted up a slate that had rested by her chair. When she placed it on the table, I saw that the alphabet and the numerals zero to nine were written upon the slate in chalk. With a start, I realized that this was to replace David's method of reciting the alphabet. Leah pointed to the letters on the board in order, and Amy Post, taking up the paper and pen abandoned by the Reverend in his surprise, recorded each letter that received a knock.

Soon Harriet had spelled out the following message:
Do not persist in your unbelief. I have come not to disturb you but to ease the grief of those who mourn me and promise that all will be as it should be in the land of eternal summer.

Kate turned to Leah now and, using her girlishly innocent voice, said, “I wish the spirits would
do
something, just to let the Reverend see how strange they act sometimes!”

“Let's invite them,” replied Leah. “Would you like to see the table move, Reverend? Let everyone move their chairs back from the table.” Under Leah's direction, we did this and then placed our feet upon the chair rungs and our hands in the air over our heads, so that all could clearly see them. No sooner had we done so than the table, with no hands upon it, lurched several inches across the bare floor toward us girls.

I could not contain my gasp, and Mother cried out, “Land sakes!” Reverend Clark, although his shaggy eyebrows waggled in astonishment, stood immediately up, grasped the edge of the table, and pulled it back to its original position. He was just sitting down when the table slid roughly away from him again. Kate clapped her hands in childish delight, and the spirit circle broke up at that point.

The Reverend Clark took each of our hands in turn as he left that evening, stating that we had certainly given him much to ponder and that his entire understanding of the universe had been altered. He cupped one hand under Kate's chin and said, “I see that I was mistaken in my belief that chicanery was taking place in this house. This child has no more understanding of duplicity than a canary bird, but for all her artless innocence has created a miracle.”

Much later, when we were safely alone, Kate poked fun at the Reverend by placing her fingers along her eyebrows and waving them humorously. “If I heard correctly,” she said, “that man called me a birdbrain.”

“That is only what you deserve for acting like one,” I retorted. “Now, if you don't tell me how all those events were accomplished tonight, I shall tear the dress from your body to look for myself!”

I had figured out that Kate was making the new rapping noise by detecting the slight rustling of her skirts each time they occurred. With a rueful grin, she lifted up the hem of her dress and showed me the places where lead balls had been sewn into it. “It was Calvin's idea,” she admitted. “He is more devilishly minded than we could have guessed.”

“However did you know the dog's name?” I asked.

Kate smiled. “Look, I will teach you to do it yourself easily. When the Reverend began to write down the answers, I watched him closely. He paused a moment before writing the first name, but he moved the pen directly to the second name without thought. He paused another moment before writing the third name and even longer before writing the fourth, because he had to invent them, you see. I find that most people place the correct answer in the second position, because they don't want to write it down first, but they can't think of two more false answers without stalling for time.”

“And to think the Reverend compared you to a canary, you wicked thing!” I exclaimed. “How did you make the table move?”

“Leah did that. Calvin tied a length of thread to the table leg and extended it out to the chair in which Leah would sit. He looped it over her foot when he knelt down to fetch her hankie.”

I fell upon the bed that we shared, utterly taken in amazement. “I had no idea that you were running a carnival show here in Rochester while I scrubbed my hands raw on Betsy's laundry!”

It took no time at all to sew lead balls into the hem of my “spirit dress,” and I practiced tapping them on the floor without making an obvious disturbance with my skirt. As for the trick with the thread, I tried that out as soon as possible, which turned out to be the next day at noon, while Mother was out of the house. Having set up my prank earlier, I waited until I saw Calvin rise out of his chair to reach across the table for the water pitcher. When I saw that he had the handle and was easing back to his seat, I gave a jerk with my foot and was greatly satisfied to see his chair twitch out from underneath him. He sat down heavily upon nothing and clattered to the floor with the pitcher upside down in his lap.

Kate shrieked in laughter, and Calvin good-naturedly joined her, raising the pitcher mockingly, as if to throw it at me. Leah hurled her napkin to the table, exclaiming, “This is totally unacceptable, girls!” But then she broke into uncontrollable peals of laughter and had to hide her face in her hands.

The only person who did not laugh was Lizzie.

***

Our niece was becoming a problem. She heartily disapproved of all our spirit tricks, and only the force of Leah's will prevented her from revealing our secrets to Mother. Somehow we knew that this would be a disaster and an ignominious end to all our ghostly activities.

Lizzie felt that our pretense was immoral and bound to condemn us to fiery perdition. She was aghast at how we had fooled all the people of Hydesville and ashamed that we were well on our way to doing the same in Rochester. Alone among us, she did not see the miraculous change in the health of Leah's friends, the Grangers, and would not admit that our spirit communications were often a balm to the injured souls of the grieving.

She made her feelings plain in her demeanor and actions. Leah spoke to her daughter privately, and they had a terrible row. While Lizzie sulked in tears downstairs, Leah climbed the stairs to our room and explained to us what she planned to do. Kate and I were having a great deal of fun in our trickery, and because we had not yet realized Leah's comprehensive plan for us, we were amazed that she had chosen to join in our pranks.

On the next evening, as it happened, we were having the Grangers and Reverend Clark back for another spirit circle. The Grangers could not bear to go more than a few days without contact from their beloved Harriet, and the Reverend professed he would like to return to ask the spirits a few questions of theology. Unfortunately, it appeared that the evening was going to be a disappointment. Our meeting began to resemble a Quaker church service in the length and breadth of its silence.

“What can be the matter?” cried Mrs. Granger after a time, growing distressed by the absence of her daughter's spirit.

“I think I know,” Leah said fiercely, and she turned in her chair to face her daughter, seated as usual at the back of the room. “You are the cause of this silence. You have been a very wicked girl, grieving the spirits so with your actions!”

“No, Mother!” Lizzie gasped, while at the same time two loud raps were heard, the accustomed sign for yes.

“Spirits!” called Leah, raising her head. “Has my daughter, Lizzie Fish, wronged you?”

Two raps.

Lizzie burst into tears. “I can't help it! I just said what I thought!”

“You must repent if you wish to remain a member of this household,” Leah replied sternly.

“See here!” exclaimed Reverend Clark in some dismay, while the Grangers clasped hands for comfort. “What can this poor girl have done to deserve such rough treatment at the hands of her own mother?”

“You do not understand, Reverend,” Leah said. “My daughter has been hostile to our gentle spirits, and they are greatly offended by her ill will. She stood in this parlor yesterday and told me that she wished they would go away forever and cease tormenting my sisters.”

“Oh, Lizzie,” my mother murmured, and Mrs. Granger wrung her hands and vehemently exclaimed how much she relied on Harriet's messages to simply continue in her daily living.

Lizzie was sniveling by now and wiping tears from her cheeks but still as stubborn as her mother in her own way. “I can't repent. I don't see the wrong in what I said to you, Mother. I was sincere, and I cannot repent for it.”

Five loud raps called for the alphabet board, and Leah placed it in the center of the table and began to point to each letter in turn. Our guests were much too distraught to write down the message, so we spelled each letter out loud as it was rapped, and the meaning was plain:
Lizzie must go
.