“Oh darling, I’m right here! Certainly I’ll help!
Anything you need. I’ve wanted so long to talk with you
again.”
“My memories of the living world are faint. It’s all
like a dream now. I remember a man sitting at my sickbed comforting me. Was it my father?”
“No, dear, that was your brother Horace. Your father was away when you passed, remember?”
“Mamma, I think I can see Horace now. He’s in a
uniform, someplace far away. Is that right?”
“That’s exactly right. He’s serving his country in
Hawaii. I’ll tell him that you’re watching over him. It’ll
mean so much to him.”
“And I sense – I sense that you’ve brought one of
my belongings with you. A piece of jewelry, perhaps . . .
no, a toy . . . a doll! You brought my favorite doll!”
Mrs. Donohue
opened the purse
she’d been clutching and retrieved
an ancient baby doll
with a cracked skull.
“Yes I did, baby,” she
said. “I brought your
Annabelle. I thought
you might want to see
her again.”
“Mamma, I
know our relationship was not always
easy,” the spirit said.
“But we had some
wonderful moments
of love and tenderness.”
“Oh, Lucy, I’ve
been thinking those
exact thoughts all
these years,” Mrs.
Donohue said, now
close to bawling.
That’s when
my dread froze into
mortal terror. You
see, at that point I
realized that the spirit was doing a cold
reading of its own. It
was using exactly the
same techniques that I used - the techniques that Charlie
had taught me. It started its routine with an appeal for
Mrs. Donohue’s help, to quell her suspicions if it flubbed
any details. It spoke vaguely, not giving any specifics until
the old lady had confirmed them with her words or her
looks. It asked questions that sounded like statements.
Sure, it had guessed that Lucy had died suddenly with a
man at her bedside and that her brother was in uniform,
but neither of those guesses were all that impressive given
the information it had to work with. All sorts of people
work in uniforms, Horace could have been a milkman
in Maine and it still would have been right. And it wasn’t
hard at all to figure out that there was something special
in Mrs. Donohue’s purse, just from seeing how tight
she was gripping it. Whatever this spirit was, it wasn’t
Lucy Donohue. It didn’t even know anything about
Lucy Donohue. It was something else entirely.
Now, you might say it was cowardly of me not
towarn Mrs. Donohue that she was dealing with an
impostor. Personally, I call it good sense. Try and put
yourself in my shoes. There I was with an apparition
from the beyond in my parlor. I didn’t know what it
was or what it was after. I certainly didn’t want it to
turn its attention from Mrs. Donohue to myself. So I
stayed silent, and let the game play out to its ending.
“Mamma,” the spirit said. “I can’t stay much
longer. Will you please give me a kiss before I go?”
“Of course, my darling!” poor old Mrs. Donohue
said. “Nothing would make me happier!”
The apparition leaned in towards Mrs. Donohue and as it did
it changed. The
ectoplasm collapsed in on itself with a wet,
sloshing sound.
It transformed
from the head of
a young girl into
something kind
of like a jellyfish,
a flabby, shapeless mass strung
with stingers and
tentacles. It slid
its ghastly, slithering appendages
deep inside Mrs.
Donohue’s eyes
and ears and nose
and mouth, and
then slouched
forward and enveloped her entire
head within its
gelatinous body,
muffling her
shrieks. It pulsed
and swelled in
size as it engulfed
her. From the
way it shuddered,
I got the distinct
impression that it was in ecstasy.
The worst part was, since the ectoplasm was
transparent, I had a direct view of Mrs. Donohue’s
face the whole time. I watched her eyes widen with
horror and her face slacken like it was turning liquid,
and while there was no trauma on the outside I saw
that inside she was shriveling like a moth in a candle
flame. Not only have I tasted death, I’ve seen the torments of Hell.
Mrs. Donohue collapsed stone dead onto the
table, knocking over the candles as she toppled. The
ectoplasm dissolved into the air like a mist. I was
alone. A few seconds later, the lights flickered and
came back on. The metronome went tap-tap-tap be