All I could see outside the car window was fog. I stared in front of me instead, at the back of Father's head and the head of the driver who had met us at the station house.
"Dr. Murmur?" he had asked, appearing out of the fog. "For Witheringe House?"
"That's right," said Father.
"Mrs. Purswell sent me," said the man, and Father nodded. It seemed he knew who Mrs. Purswell was.
The man drove us out of the station and past the village of Witheringe Green, though I couldn't see it through the grayness. We started up a hill so steep, it was almost vertical. Halfway up, the driver stopped.
"Witheringe House," he said. "Or the gates, anyhow. The rest of the way is too steep for the car."
He walked ahead carrying a lamp so we could see in front of ourselves. I strained to catch sight of the new house. But apart from the skeleton shapes of trees and a glinting that might have come from the glass of a window, I saw nothing but fog.
As I came closer, I started to make out the outline of the house. It was stone, the same gray color as the fog, and its roof was turreted and shingled. It looked like it had stood empty a long time.
On the crumbling front step of the new house stood a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman. A worn crocodile-skin bag sat at her feet.
"Mrs. Purswell," said Father. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."
"I've just arrived, sir," she said.
"Just arrived?" Zenobia's voice came close in my ear. "She looks like she's been standing there a hundred years, exposed to all the elements."
"She does look," I admitted, "a little weather-beaten."
"She looks like one of those gargoyles"-Zenobia pointed up-"has crawled down from the roof."
I didn't look where Zenobia pointed. Gargoyles, with their bulging eyes, frighten me.
"Of course they do," muttered Zenobia. At the same time, Father said, "Mrs. Purswell, this is my daughter, Elizabeth."
Mrs. Purswell nodded at me. Her eyes passed over the place where Zenobia stood.
"I've engaged Mrs. Purswell as our housekeeper once more," Father said. He spoke to me, not Mrs. Purswell, who had plucked a brass key from the key ring rattling at her hip and disappeared through the door into the greeny-dark insides of Witheringe House. Father followed her, and Zenobia and I went next, feeling small under the high ceiling of the front hall. The hall opened onto a large room. At one end of it a broad staircase went up three levels. Half-dead palm trees in porcelain pots drooped on either side of the stairs. At the other end a dusty tapestry hung from the ceiling. Its fringed edge drooped onto the floor. Mrs. Purswell yanked the curtains open, and light spilled thinly in.
"Oh!" Zenobia clasped her hands together. "It's like a solemn congregation of Spirits!"
She was talking, I guessed, about the furniture veiled with white dust sheets. But Mrs. Purswell, finished with the curtains, was soon whipping off the sheets and folding them into neat squares. And then the shrouded shapes weren't spirits at all. Just furniture. But strange furniture. Dressers and sideboards and winged armchairs that looked like the serious grandparents of the furniture Mother had chosen for our house in the city.
"Some people"-Zenobia eyed Mrs. Purswell-"have no regard for atmosphere."
I said nothing. Personally, I hoped the armchair-ghosts and sideboard-ghosts were the only spirits haunting Witheringe House.
Zenobia's scornful eyes were on me now. "Well, I hope you're wrong," she said. "And there's only one way to find out."
She took her watch from the folds of her dress and buffed it with her sleeve. Then, pretending to be interested in the needle-point pattern of a cushion Mrs. Purswell had just plumped, she began to swing the watch on its chain. It made slow silver circles in the gloom. This was from The World Beyond by Famed and Celebrated Clairvoyant Madame Lucent, Chapter Three: "How to Locate the Mysterious Presences at Work Around You, in Five Simple Steps."
Step One: To determine if a Spirit is Present in your Home or Surrounds, first Ostentatiously display something Shiny. Spirits, like Magpies, are attracted by things that Glint or Sparkle. Hold your Shiny Thing so it is easily visible and as you do so pay Close Attention to any Changes in the Atmosphere about you. Does a Door Creak? Do you Feel a sudden Chill? Does the mist of Spirit Breath appear on the Surface of your Shiny Thing?
Zenobia stilled the watch's chain and brought its ticking face closer to her own. She inspected it carefully.
"Well?" I asked.
"I think," she said, "there was a faint misting on the watch case. But it's gone now."
Mrs. Purswell was talking with Father. "I shall give the house a good airing," she was saying, "and then I shall make up the bedrooms. I expect you'll take the large bedroom closest to the library, Dr. Murmur?"
"Very good," said Father.
"And for Miss Elizabeth…" She looked me up and down. It was a look that made me want to stand up straighter. I pushed my shoulders down and uncurled my spine. "The only room suited to a child"-she spoke over my head-"is the nursery."
I felt a creeping red come over my face. I was definitely too old for the nursery.
"Not the nursery," said Father firmly. "In fact, Mrs. Purswell, it won't be necessary for you to open the East Wing at all. Nor for you to poke around in it, Elizabeth."
I nodded.
"We will hardly need so much space," Father went on. "After all, we are only two."
"Three," said Zenobia. "We are three." And she unloosed a button from her cuff and let it fall to the carpet.
Step Two: Find a Spare Button in your Sewing Box or Unloose one from About your Person. Drop it to the floor and let it Remain There for fifteen minutes at a Minimum. If, on your return, it has Disappeared, it has likely been taken by a Spirit. Spirits are forever losing their Buttons and will therefore take any that they see Unattended.
Mrs. Purswell looked at me, thoughtfully. "The blue guest bedroom, then, sir?" she said at last.
"The blue guest bedroom," said Father, "will do very well."
The first dinner in the new house was mostly silent. Father sat at one end of the long polished table. Zenobia and I sat at the other. The dining room was dark and shadowy in its corners. From one of these corners, Mrs. Purswell materialized. Her apron was very white against the darkness.
"I expect"-she ladled soup into bowls-"you'll want something light after your journey."
The soup was pale green. An exploratory stirring revealed weedy leaves floating through it. I brought a spoonful to my mouth, but before I could taste it, Zenobia cleared her throat.
"Father," I said. And again, when he made no sign he had heard me, "Father!"
His voice came down the table, faint and irritated. "Yes?"
I angled my head at the place beside me. He looked, for a second, tired. Then he said, "Very well, Elizabeth. Mrs. Purswell?"
The shadows in the corner shifted and thickened, and Mrs. Purswell stepped out of them again. "I hope it's not too much trouble," said Father, "but we need an extra setting by Elizabeth. Zenobia has joined us for dinner."
"Of course, sir." Mrs. Purswell laid another bowl and silverware beside me. I liked her better for the incurious way she accepted Zenobia's presence.
Zenobia took up her spoon. She admired her reflection, first convex, then concave, on its surface. Then she bit down on it hard. "Nice," she said. "Real silver." She pressed the bowl of the spoon into the deep hollow of her eye socket and grinned. "The kind they lay on dead men's eyes."
"That's not really dinner-table conversation," I told her, just like Mother used to tell Father in the old house whenever he talked too long about photosynthesis.
Zenobia looked at me. She looked down the table at Father, whose eyes never lifted from his soup bowl. She looked at me again. "It's the only conversation, in case you hadn't noticed," she said. "You may as well not be here"-she jerked the spoon in Father's direction-"as far as he's concerned."
My stomach twisted. I didn't want Zenobia's words to be true.
"You're wrong," I said, and I searched about for something to say to Father.
I raised myself up in my chair and made my voice very loud. "Do you find the house much changed, Father?"
Father addressed his reply to his soup. "It is just as it was. Perhaps a little dustier."
"It must hold a lot of memories for you," I prompted.
He looked up, spoon poised.
"The house-" My voice cracked. "The house must be full of memories. From when you were a child."
"Ah," he said, and he steered another weedy spoonful under his moustache.
"I suppose," I went on, changing tack, "you'll start your work tomorrow."
At the museum Father had been head of the Botanic Department. His resignation and his return to Witheringe Green would allow him to begin work on a new project: an improved system for the classification of native ferns and wildflowers. The old system, in his opinion, had room for improvement.
"I expect to begin fieldwork shortly," he said.
After this there was only the sound of our spoons sloshing through soup and clinking on the bottoms of our bowls.
Zenobia put her elbows on the table. "The button is gone," she said.
A gust of wind blew the chandelier above us back and forth. Zenobia's face went bright and then shadowed and then bright again with the swaying light.
"I've checked the cobwebs as well," she said. "It wasn't hard. Witheringe House is abundant with cobwebs."
Step Three: If your house is Inhabited by Spiders, observe their Cobwebs closely. A Spider will usually make its Gossamer Web by weaving in a Clockwise Direction. But Spiders are creatures Sensitive to the Presence of Spirits, and if a Spirit is nearby, a Spider will weave its Web Widdershins.
"And are they?" I asked.
"Widdershins," she said. "Definitely widdershins."
Zenobia took out her watch, opened its case, and laid it flat on the table. It was two minutes to eight. She watched its second hand tick twice around its face. Then she took up her salad fork, tested the tines on her finger, and held it in the air.
Of course. Step Four.
Step Four: With a Tuning Fork if you are able to Procure One, or a Salad Fork if you are not, Test for Spirit Vibrations in the Air at the time when the clock Strikes the Hour. The small spaces in time between one Hour and Another are the times when the veil that divides our Waking World from the World of the Spirits is at its most Permeable: the closer to Midnight the Hour, the thinner the Veil between Worlds.
Zenobia's watch showed eight o'clock exactly. The chiming of a clock in another room started. The fork in Zenobia's hand juddered, and she dropped it on the table.
The fork on the mahogany roused Father. "Are you feeling all right, Elizabeth?"
"Fine," I replied. But this was a lie. I was far from fine. In the old house, Zenobia had never gotten as far as Step Four. And this meant she had never progressed to Step Five. And Step Five didn't bear thinking about.
Step Five: If, having carried out these first Four Steps, you are Satisfied that you have Indeed Located a Mysterious Presence at work around you, it is Time to continue to the Fifth and Most Crucial Step in the process. For further information, Read On to the next chapter: Communing with the Spirit World (The Keys to Holding a Successful Séance).
Would Zenobia really hold a séance?
"We certainly will," she told me. "Tonight."
"You've gone quite pale," said Father. "I expect you're tired. Why don't you go to bed."
It was not a suggestion.
Mrs. Purswell showed me into the blue guest bedroom. Then she nodded and closed the door behind her.
Her footsteps faded down the hallway. I looked around. "It's very blue," I said at last.
"Too blue." Zenobia wrinkled her nose. "I detest the color blue."
"You detest all colors," I reminded her.
"Not true. I like black."
"Black's not a color."
"I like certain shades of gray. And I like red. Not bright red, but red the color of old blood. But there are none of those colors here."
"No. Just blue."
The wallpaper was a blue stripe, and the curtains, along with the quilt that matched them, were a slippery sea-blue. The glass shade of the lamp was the blue color of a medicine bottle, and it gave a sick glow to everything it lit. Even the carpet was covered with faded blue flowers.
Zenobia put her hands to her head. "Do you think, Elizabeth, a person can be allergic to the color blue?"
"Perhaps not allergic, exactly."
Zenobia sighed dramatically. "The sooner we put out the light, the better," she said.
"Will it be held in the dark, then?" My voice wobbled.
"Of course it will be held in the dark. It's a séance."
My heart wobbled.
According to Father there were no such things as ghosts.
I took a long time washing and dressing for bed.
There were old perfume bottles and tonic bottles-relics from past guests, I imagined-scattered around the washbasin. I picked these up one by one. I put my nose to them or inspected the long-calcified powders they contained.
According to Father, ghosts were the products of hysterical imaginations.
I washed my neck and behind my ears. I unwound my hair from its two braids and raked through it with my fingers.
According to Father, Zenobia was the product of my hysterical imagination.
And yet I could hear her behind me. Turning the pages of her book.
"Now, Madame Lucent tells us," she read aloud:
"A séance is the meeting point between Our World and the World Beyond. A Crossroads at which we can Command the Spirits and be Commanded by them!
"And-ooh!-this is interesting, Elizabeth. Listen."
"Friends, when you Conduct a Séance, Expect only the Unexpected! Perhaps your Spirit is in Want of no more than Polite Conversation on a Topic such as the Weather. Perhaps your Spirit will make the Walls about You drip with Blood!"
"I wonder what sort of a Spirit ours will be. If it does prove to be the blood-dripping kind-"
"Don't, Zenobia!"
"I was only going to say it might improve the wallpaper."
I splashed my face with water. In the dust-spotted mirror I saw that I looked scared, so I tried to make myself look brave.
When I turned from my reflection, I saw that Zenobia had laid the necessary equipment on the carpet. A stubby candle in its holder. A matchbook. A length of twine. A silver ring. And the Ouija board, made from thin balsa wood and printed with numbers and the letters of the alphabet. On the board's right side was marked the word "Yes" and on its left side, "No."
"Could you turn out the light, Elizabeth?" Zenobia said, and she struck a match on the side of the matchbook.
"Couldn't we-"
"Couldn't we what?"
"Couldn't we keep the light on?"
"If we must," she said. She cupped the candle so the flame would take, and she shook the match down to a thin ribbon of smoke.
I sank to the carpet. I bunched my nightgown in my hands so tightly my fingers went white.
Zenobia smiled at me through the candle flame. Then she threaded the silver ring onto the length of twine. She held it, with the ring swaying in the air above the wooden board.
"Let us begin," she said.
