The séance chamber was somber and tasteful. The chandelier was of beautiful yet not over-ornate design; the table was clothed in a plain black that was workmanlike without being cheap; the curtains were drawn enough to permit spirits but not so tightly as to prohibit eyeballs.
“Oh my, it’s so kind of you to go to all this trouble, for me, a poor old doddering widow with naught left to comfort her in the loneliness of old age but the cold and lifeless cash of her funds,” wept Mrs. Bagelsly, clutching her purse in tearful gratitude.
“I assure you, it is very little trouble,” said Ms. Cuthspoon with a firm and gracious handshake that turned (with gracefully-disguised awkwardness) into having to support the older woman’s weight on her forearms. “I am but a simple student of the Lands Beyond and have very little to offer, but I am always moved to action by the plight of the forlorn and grieving. If you and your man will both take a seat at the table and clasp your palms to mine, we can begin.”
So the circle was shaped with only a little fussing and fidgeting, hand-to-hand, widow-to-manservant-to-medium-to-widow-again, and after no more than a moment of ritual singing, chanting, and calling from Ms. Cuthspoon the darkness that filled the room seemed to grow deeper; the air more turbulent. The chandelier shook for an instance under an alien weight; something dripped from above that glowed softly. A faint glow appeared above the table, giving the vaguest impressions of a human face.
“Charmaine,” spake a guttural voice from Ms. Cuthspoon’s throat. The black cloth masking the table rippled with its breath. “Charmaine. Is that you? It is very dark here.”
Mrs. Bagelsly quailed in awed delight at the sights and sounds enveloping her. “Dear Albert,” she whispered. “My little Alberto. Is it really you?”
“Indeed,” roiled the voice, thick as pitch.
Her trembling chin turned rock-solid under a quick and very nasty grin. “That’s funny. Because your name was Ezekiel, and you insisted on it in full.” And with those words her hand shot up from her lap, cold steel in its grip, and swung wildly at arm’s-length over and above the séance table. The tablecloth ceased its flapping; the chandelier stopped its clatter; there was a number of oddly musical snapping sounds.
“AHA!” she shouted with the lungs of a much younger woman who was also an opera singer. “Piano wires under the table, attached to strategic ‘rattle points!’ to simulate the actions of the invisible!” The knife spun from her fingers with a deft flick, shooting past Ms. Cuthspoon’s ear and exploded in an expensive and fragmented crash. “Mirrors and lightboxes to craft the illusion of a glimpse of those that have passed beyond the veil! And ectoplasm crafted from-” here Mrs. Bagelsly dipped a finger in the substance oozing from the chandelier and sniffed it “- a flour base to simulate the material leavings of the immaterial! Nothing new, nothing new at all. You are most certainly a fraud preying on the vulnerable and grieving, young woman – and what is more pertinent and insulting, you are an UNORIGINAL fraud! The nerve! Book her, Potterridge.”
“The gall!” said Ms. Cuthspoon, drawing herself up in fury (and keeping her hands well away from the set of cuffs Potterridge had procured from his pocket, besides). “I’ll have you know that I am the one and only true and real medium I know of, capable of calling the dead from their rest!”
“With flour paste and piano wire?” sneered Mrs. Bagelsly.
“That’s to pay the bills,” said Ms. Cuthspoon scornfully. “They don’t want the real thing; they want what they expect. Nobody wants the real thing.”
“Oh, and I suppose it’s because it’s too fearful and dreadful for our poor little hearts to take, so you must keep it secret ‘till your dying day and no you WON’T be showing me now no matter how I beg, thank-you-very-much?” said Mrs. Bagelsly in an ever-more-chilling torrent of sarcasm.
“No, I can do that right now,” said Ms. Cuthspoon. “It’s just that no-one likes it very much because it’s dull and a bit of a let-down. Would you like to see it?”
Mrs. Bagelsly toyed with a second, equally-discreet knife as she met the medium’s challenge with narrowed eyes. “Oh, and give you time to prepare a second fake?”
“We can do it wherever you please, right now. And what, you don’t think you can see through me twice?”
She laughed at that. “Outside then; the harsh light of day does treat flimflammery so very well. And make it sharpish! We don’t want the cuffs to get cold.”
***
It ended up being a little less than sharpish. Mrs. Bagelsly insisted on holding the second ritual no closer to the estate than the ditch that bordered the property. “It’s far enough away from the house and dull enough that you won’t have stashed any jiggery-pokery here,” she explained cheerfully. “Who ever heard of a grand and exalted necromantic feat performed in a ditch?”
“Suits me fine,” said Ms. Cuthspoon dourly. “And honestly, I expect it’ll make the thing feel right at home.”
“What, are you summoning up the ghosts of frog-hunters?”
“Hah!” said Ms. Cuthspoon – and it was said, not laughed: three letters and one syllable, sharp and derisive. “I wish. Now back up a little. Don’t fret; I’m not about to cut a run in a dress when your man there is in pants, but I DO need to focus a little and it’s hard to do that with you and that galoot breathing down my neck.”
“Mind your manners,” said Mrs. Bagelsly primly as she waved back Potterridge.
“Mind your knife,” muttered Ms. Cuthpsoon. And with that, she began.
There was no chant or song, and no call. She did hum a little, in that tuneless sort of way some people do when they’re concentrating and need something to make the rest of the world shut up and go away. And then she let out a big, long sigh, the sort that gets the air right out of the bottom of your lungs, and clapped her hands hard, and when she opened them something soft and runny and glowing was hanging in midair in the space where her palms had met.
Mrs. Bagelsly exclaimed something very unladylike.
“Quite,” said Ms. Cuthspoon. She kept her arms open wide, fingers half-cupped like she was holding a set of invisible cymbals. “If you have any questions to ask it, I suggest you do them now. This is more effort than it looks.”
“Ask it questions?” whisper-shrieked Mrs. Bagelsly. “It’s a d*mned insect, a, a, half-lobster! Look at it! Look at its legs! Look at its bl**dy antennae!”
“Believe me, I am aware,” said Ms. Cuthspoon through gritted teeth. “But ask and it WILL answer. And hurry it up.”
Mrs. Bagelsly took only half a moment to compose herself, experienced in rewriting her attitude as she was, and the other half was spent on the practical matters of communication.
“What are you?” she demanded.
The spectral thing twitched some of its many little legs at her fretfully. The message, when it came, did so in the purest form imaginable: direct comprehension without the intermediary confounding of words, of language, of the meaning of meaning. They were as follows:
ded
Mrs. Bagelsly fought the unladylike urge to stick her finger in her ear and swivel it. “Is it being funny?”
“No, they just don’t have any imagination,” said Ms. Cuthspoon tersely.
“Sensible of them; bet they didn’t have any mediums. What killed you?”
at b fsh
Mrs. Bagelsly eyed the thing’s translucent flippery appendages with interest. “Yes, I suppose you were. No accounting for taste, especially among fish. Can you tell us anything about what lies beyond?”
ded
“Or when you died?”
lng ag
“Or anything at all?”
n
“Well, I suppose that’s more than I expected I’d get,” said Mrs. Bagelsly. “Just hold on a moment, I have pencil and paper on me somewhere – ah! Yes, hold it still just a moment longer.”
“Please, there’s no rush,” said Ms Cuthspoon in the most sugary-sweet voice deliverable while biting your own tongue.
“Hush, you owe me this much. An honest morning’s work won’t kill you – there! Done. You can throw it back now.”
Ms. Cuthspoon’s arms dropped, the air didn’t-quite-pop, and the thing went away. “Satisfied?” she said, rubbing her wrists.
“Scarcely,” said Mrs. Bagelsly, tapping her pencil against her sketchpad. “This just raises further questions. For instance, that all seemed very usual to you: is this what happens every time?”
“Sometimes they’re bigger or smaller. Not by a lot, but a bit.”
“Well, that answers question two: is-it-just-the-same-one,” said Mrs. Bagelsly. “Hmm. Question three then: you’ve never found anything else? Anyone else?”
“No. Just these things.”
“Hmmmm. Well now, it seems our business is concluded for the day. You have provided me with evidence of supernatural powers beyond the ken of mankind, Ms. Cuthspoon, and in gratitude for this I shall look the other way in the matters of your practice of cruel japery for wanton profit by preying on the hopefulness of the bereaved. But just this once.”
“Your charity and kindness is beyond all my hopes, Mrs. Bagelsly,” said Ms. Cuthspoon. “Will you at least be paying me?”
No, I think not – the séance was fraudulent and you did this lobster-magic gratis. Potterridge, go and get the carriage. Poterridge? Potterridge! Oh, it seems he’s taken a turn; I forgot that he never could abide seafood. Do you have any smelling salts?”
“Ten quid.”
“Three.”
“Done.”
“Poor haggling, young woman.”
“If it gets you out of here faster, it’s a bargain.”
“A fraud, a poor haggler, AND possessed of a rude mouth. At least you’re sensible.”
***
The second time Mrs. Bagelsly came a-calling to Ms. Cuthspoon’s estate, she did so unannounced and early in the morning, and she left Potterridge in the carriage.
“I’ve found out who you’re calling up,” she said triumphantly. “I paid a visit to a naturalist acquaintance of mine, who mentioned an acquaintance of his, who referred me to a colleague of his at the natural history museum. They all agreed my illustration was of a trilobite. Look here – I’ve brought along copies.”
Ms. Cuthspoon stared bleary-eyed at her. “Tea first. Then trilobites.”
“Oh if you insist. And toast too, while you’re at it.”
The toast was burned. Mrs. Bagelsly wasn’t above constructive criticism.
“So as you can see, they’re remarkably common,” she said through a mouthful of marmalade. “Plenty of the nasty little things lying around underfoot wherever the rocks are right to hold their bodies. How many times have you tried to summon the dead exactly?”
Ms. Cuthspoon shrugged. “One doesn’t keep close track of inconsequentials, particularly when the outcome varies so seldomly.”
“Oh come now.”
“I told you, it’s so damned boring that I never really bothered. I tried maybe a few dozen times when I started around age sixteen, then on and off a few times a year from then into my mid-twenties. Doing the same exhausting thing over and over for the same disappointing results is simple madness!”
“And more than that,” corrected Mrs. Bagelsly, “it is statistics. Now, we can make two possible conclusions from your memory here. One is that you can only summon deceased trilobites. This would be simple and William of Ockham would approve of that, but it would be imprudent to accept it without questioning. The other is that you can indeed summon any dead being, but trilobites are simply so common that they are always what you end up with SO FAR.”
“I do not appreciate your emphasis,” said Ms. Cuthspoon, glaring from behind the shelter of her saucer.
“Well, then you will appreciate its explanation: you are going to summon the dead every day, all day, until we have acquired a better grasp of your abilities,” said Mrs. Bagelsly, briskly mopping her plate with the heel of her toast.
“Oh surely not!”
“It will keep you too busy to scam, will advance the sum of human knowledge, and will provide us both with the precious chance to learn something new.”
“I shan’t and you can’t make me.”
“I have numerous letters penned and ready to be posted in my absence should I not give word, mused Mrs. Bagelsly aloud, daintily sucking a glob of breakfast from her thumb. “And their contents are MOST scandalous. Financially ruinous, I should say.”
Ms. Cuthspoon put her teacup down with bad grace. “Fine,” she snapped. “But I’m having a second helping first. This isn’t a matter for an empty stomach.”
***
“Just a little longer,” said Mrs. Bagelsly.
“It’s sunset.”
“Almost there, hold on. Just a little longer.”
“I can’t feel my arms.”
“Nearly there. Nearly. Just a little longer.”
“Going in three.”
“Just a little longer.”
“Two.”
“Just a little longer.”
“One.”
“Just a, ah that’s it. All done.”
Ms. Cuthspoon dropped her arms to her sides and her body into an easy chair. Her eyes, long-since shut, somehow sank deeper into their sockets. Mrs. Bagelsly by contrast was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but her drawing hand took a good six seconds of flexion to leave its cramped shape and she was blinking much less than a human ought to.
“Well,” she said cheerfully. “I think that’s a sound day’s work. We have sketches of all varieties, tables listing them by population, age, and cause of death-”
“’At b fsh’,” said Ms. Cuthspoon with faint venom. “’At b mllsk.’ ‘Sqshd b md.”
“-and we’re beginning to get a better grasp of the big picture.”
“Trilobites, isn’t it? Nothing but trilobites. All the way down.”
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Bagelsly. “If it were nothing but trilobites all the way down, what would be eating them? Keep it up and we’ll find something else. Which is why I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning. I hope you have more of that marmalade, it was really quite scrumptious.”
“Hate you,” said Ms. Cuthspoon. And she fell asleep.
***
“Just a little longer.”
“Little longer ever day.”
“That means you’re getting better at this!”
“Three.”
“Just a little longer.”
“Two.”
“Done!”
***
“Just a little longer.”
“Ending early this time?”
“Well, my fingers are stuck.”
“Again? I’ll get the balm.”
“Would you mind? It’s just that if I try to walk like this, the whole arm goes numb.”
***
“Alright, we’re done.”
“Oh, just a little longer, surely.”
“You’re starting to nod off.”
“Nonsense!”
“What’ve you got written for our last cause of death?”
“I was going to put it down in a moment.”
“And the one before that?”
“Didn’t I get that one? It says ‘at b rptl.’”
“That was the one BEFORE that. We’re done.”
“Oh, really!”
“Besides, I already put the kettle on during your last break.”
“Mm. Do you have marmalade?”
“You’re eating me out of house and home.”
***
“And how was today?”
“Fine? No clouds, blue sky, a pleasant breeze-“
“Oh, don’t be like that. The WORK. How much did you get done?”
“A dozen more than yesterday.”
“Pish posh, still well below par!”
“’Par’ was set with two of us. I’m not as fast a sketcher, even if I wasn’t having to stop and start all the time and remember things before I write them down.”
“Well, I’d better get back to it then.”
“Not before the doctor says you can.”
“It’s just a bit of scribbling! Honestly, you fuss too much. I could do it right here in bed.”
“You could and you won’t. Get better first.”
“Oh, I will, you’ll see. Just a bit longer and I’ll be back to it, show you how it’s done. Just a little longer first. Just a little longer.”
***
She expected the invitation to the funeral. And the grey-faced old men in fine coats speaking to her of how she’d been mentioned in correspondence, such a pleasure to meet her, pity about the circumstances, would she care to ever donate her collection to the museum, oh the specimens looked so lovely in pictures, such a shame, may we all pass in such circumstances.
She didn’t expect the contents of the will. Well, maybe the bit about demanding she hire on Potterridge because he was too damned stubborn to retire, but certainly not the rest of it.
And she certainly didn’t expect the first thing she did when she got home to be tidying up the séance room, setting up her notebook and sketchpad, and settling in for the evening’s work. She’d been paid for it, after all, and the remuneration was going to go farther now that she wasn’t purchasing ruinous amounts of marmalade.
Six trilobites. Sixteen trilobites. Ghostly little arthropods, something far away from crab and spider and distant cousin to both. She asked and nodded and released and wrote and drew from memory, recent memory, so the older bigger ones stayed away.
Twenty-eight trilobites. Twenty-nine trilobites. Small and large and decorated and plain. She took a moment to make sure her columns were straight and tidy, corrected a smudge. Things had to be kept tidy.
Thirty-seven trilobites. And one more afterwards, and as her palms parted her first thought was ‘that’s not enough legs.’
And it wasn’t enough legs, if you were a trilobite. Four squat little pillars, jutted fiercely out to the side of a little round-barrel torso, like a cross between a lizard and a small and politely confused hog. Its earless head looked at her, big eyes curious.
“What are you?” she asked. What else could you ask?
Ded.
“What killed you?”
Caght in clod of bad ar.
“When did you die?”
Long tim ago, durng the gret dyings.
“Can you tell me anything about what lies beyond?”
Ded. All ded.
Ms. Cuthspoon’s mouth and arms, so ably acting in her brain’s stead, ran out of muscle memory. Her hindbrain took up the torch. “If you see a rude, pushy old woman – human woman, like me – around the place, ask her to stop by. Please. Please?”
Oky.
Ms. Cuthspoon closed her arms, made her illustration, recorded her observations.
Then she cried a bit afterwards. That, she’d expected.
It wasn’t much. But it was something new, and that was worth it.