25. Jun, 2021

An Enlightened Séance

Mrs. Salter had asked for the arrangements to be made as she did every month.  She insisted upon it, either on the date of her husband’s death or one significant for the supernatural auspices in the calendar. 

     “He said he would come back,” she repeated firmly and every month she tried to enable her husband to do so.

     The drawing room was kept hushed and quiet for an hour or so beforehand to prepare the air for spiritual passage.  For a time, Mrs. Salter had experimented with using mediums, but they were prone to fobbing her off with ‘a little visitor’ instead of her husband.  Like many other mothers Mrs. Salter, by now a grandmother also, had plates of still little figures in their baby laces among her photographs on display and these were an easy thing for a faker to settle upon.   Mr and Mrs. Salter’s belief was that only the most tremendous intellectual effort of conscious willpower would facilitate a visitation from ‘the other side’ and that any infant soul would not be capable of such a concept.  Nowadays, Mrs. Salter remained as purist as she and her husband had been themselves and conducted the séances personally with a group of trusted others.  She and Mr Salter had been dedicated to a ‘scientific approach’ to spiritualism and she still had every faith, more than five years after his passing, that he would find a way to communicate the secret message on which they had agreed. 

     Mrs. Salter had never told a living soul (or a dead one for that matter, just in case) what the message was, and could spot a  charlatan instantly as a result, this message being the only proof she would accept of her husband's phantom presence.  In spite of it never having happened yet, Mrs. Salter never gave up hope.  She had a rota of people who were invited, based on astrology, beneficial confluences of time and tide and what she had defined as being their auras, to attend on different months.  This being Winter Solstice Mrs. Salter, whilst not advising that pagan belief systems were necessarily a factor, always hoped that whatever portals there were might, on such a night, be more flexible to the attempts of Mr Salter to convey his message.

     “Mr Salter was a very dedicated man,” she always announced at the start of proceedings, “and I have no doubt that he still is.  Tonight, my friends, might be the very night!”

     Together, she and Mr Salter had built a very delicate instrument of bells and turning cogs.  It had little charms suspended within it of personal or symbolic significance, which was worked by the heat of lit candle flames and set in motion by the up draught.  The tiny bells and charms were struck as the fans turned, sounding with a fey, mesmerising timbre.  Gold and silver fretted discs spun and caught the light, flickering like magic lantern slides.  The whole effect created a trance like suspension in the air for the séance hand holders to watch.

     “Everything is an aid, not an instrument,” Mrs. Salter would emphasise to her acolytes, for by now, she had quite a following.

     Sensation seekers expecting manifestations and ectoplasm, for she sometimes allowed those begging to take part to attend experimentally, left disappointed and found their psychic moments around other tables in future.  Nevertheless, neighbours of Mrs. Salter were prone to comment in general that if spiritualism left its followers as woebegone and pallid as Mrs. Salter’s regulars, then they would stick to church on Sundays, thank you very much, as the godly ought to do. 

     Nell, Mrs. Salter’s young paid companion, went into the drawing room to add fragrant apple and cherry wood from the basket in the hearth to the fire already lit by the maid, and got out of its box the ‘Automaton Machine’, as Mrs. Salter called it, read for deftly assembling its components as a centre piece on the table.  The senses of the living in a heightened state; eye, ear and nose pleased by the sights, sounds and scents of beauty, were thought to be a helpful energy source to help the phantasmagorical Mr Salter concentrate his determined efforts to get through.  Nell had been with Mrs. Salter for several months now.  It was a comfortable enough situation if you put up with these particular vagaries, and she was lucky to have it, especially as a rescued ‘fallen woman’.  Nell’s looks, her youth and appearance of maidenly delicacy, had helped her to be one of those swept from the streets by the charitable good offices of those who sought to rescue and redeem girls such as she.  In turn, Mrs. Salter, a fellow philanthropist of theirs, had been as happy to give Nell a chance of respectable occupation as she was herself to be given one. 

     Polished crystal glasses and a cut glass decanter of sherry, with a dish of sugared almonds, were already placed on the French polished table ready for the guests.  Nell now lit candelabras with tall tapers and set to with the Automaton.  Nell had been chosen from the charity home by Mrs. Salter partly for her pale, solemn looks and once the room was set, she went back upstairs to brush her hair into a soft knot and put on a blue velvet gown.  This was because Mr Salter had been a devotee of Tennyson and Nell was fancied by Mrs. Salter, when attired thus, to capture the painted image of ‘Mariana in the Moated Grange’, so becoming a further and living visual aid for Mr Salter to be drawn back from whichever bourn he had arrived at.

     Outside, hansom cabs began to draw up, the horses’ hooves a comforting rhythm chiming in with the ticking of the many clocks in the house which were always meticulously kept to time, for it was the Salter view that the most regulated of circumstances were necessary to spiritual equilibrium in the environment.  On Nell’s mantel, a little Ormolu clock began to strike a silvery eleven and the deeper boom of the tall grandfather clock in the hall chimed in too.  Dimly, for the house was quiet, she could hear all the clocks in the other rooms of the town villa chiming out.  As the clocks stopped striking, the front doorbell began its own ringing, an insistent clamour as each guest was swept in from the cold, late, foggy streets outside.  It was heavy weather, when smoke fell from all the chimneys and settled on the ground in a filthy murk, muffled up cabbies trying not to breath it in as they rattled about delivering people door to door.  It was a particularly dismal mid-Winter season.

     Arranging the sumptuous velvet skirts which Nell was quite sure she noticed moth hole in around the hem and checking her reflection in the long glass above the chilly dressing table, which never seemed to approve of her any more than the maid who didn’t brush her clothes properly, Nell swept downstairs to the drawing room, smiled demurely at the guests and posed herself effectively and wistfully by the window, to gaze out of it in the right attitude.  The circle had been specifically invited by card for this night after Mrs. Salter had ‘studied her equations’ as she playfully put it, those extraordinary mathematical fantasies she and Mr Salter had concocted together some years ago and which she faithfully attempted to follow.

     “Who knows what the key to that door will be, or why!” she would declare thrillingly to her assembled guests.  “But one day it will open.”

     Nell’s own view was that in Mrs. Salter’s case this was harmless folly and since it had been the means of bringing her employment, she had no objections to playing along.  The usual preliminaries were seen to and soft lamplight inside was complemented outside by the gaslight in the street illuminating Nell in a facsimile of soft daylight.  Mrs. Salter did not have the curtains drawn, for there must be no extra veils between the airs of the living and dead worlds other than what there had to be against the elements, such as a windowpane.  In Summer, her séances were often conducted outside in the garden.

     Nell could see the room reflected behind as she gravely maintained her pose.  Sherry had been poured and the sugared almonds passed around.  Mrs. Salter, wide and ordinary looking in her widow’s cap and weeds (although she was out of mourning now, she dressed like this for these occasions), lit the candles under the Automaton Machine.  As it began to turn, perfumed oils were disseminated too, rich scents released by the heat of the flames.

     Outside the window, Nell saw somebody under the gaslight looking back in at her, but the dim air beyond was full of the cold Winter fog, misty about the sputtering light of the gas mantle, and then she believed she saw the shape of a vehicle behind him.  A curious cabby, then, his attention no doubt caught by the lit tableau inside.  But after a few moments, he began to walk, almost hesitantly towards the house and Nell turned to say to her employer,

     “Mrs. Salter?  I think you have another guest arriving?”

     “Indeed?  I thought everyone was present.”  She glanced around the table.  “We are almost ready.  Go and see, would you, Nell?

     Nell left her place at the window and rang the bell for Millie the maid, going out of the room to catch her in the hall.

    “Oh, Millie.  I think another guest is coming.  Can you let them in?”

     “No-one rang at the door, Miss,” objected Millie, disturbed from a restful spell in front of the kitchen fire while all the ‘parlour antics’ as she called them, went on.

    “I saw them coming up the steps,” said Nell.

     Millie opened the door to the forbidding night and acrid tendrils of the smoke filled mist reached in, but no top hatted figure waited on the step as Nell had expected.  Millie closed the door again.

     “Nobody there, Miss.”

     The way Millie said ‘Miss’ contained a subtlety of knowledge about Nell’s origins which her  deferential expression concealed but at least, Nell thought, she did give her the respect of the address.  Millie flounced off back down to the kitchen to convey her lack of appreciation about being disturbed and Nell returned to the drawing room to apologise that there had been nobody there after all.  After this, the séance resumed. 

     Around the table, the group held hands and watched the spinning things tinkle delicately and weave their fascinating illusion.  Then, all the clocks in the house struck midnight in the spellbinding silence, tuneful peals of dainty bells and deep single notes all counting out the fancied fatal hour.  As they died away, the Automaton Machine continued to spangle and glitter in the candlelight, sounding its own otherworldly music and held the eyes of the guests, all concentrating upon it.  The scene was entrancing. 

     Nell had resumed her position looking out of the window, in which she could see the reflection of the lit room behind her and the foggy street, distorted as if through the mirror of that reflection.  Again, a figure seemed to be under the light and then to come towards the house.  It was a man’s form, cloaked and indistinct, a whitish face wrapped in a comforter against the fog.   As it neared,  for a moment she saw eyes, a dark, formlessly swimming gaze fixed upon her and then Nell believed she understood.

     “Mrs. Salter!” she murmured urgently to the hostess.  “I – I believe it is working.  There is, a someone coming.  A man!”

     Mrs. Salter gave a little cry and came to the window where again the figure appeared to be there under the light and then to approach the house, or to attempt to.

     “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed.  “Where?  Can it be?  We must open the window!”  She raised the sash eagerly, calling “Come in, Herbert!  Come in, please!”  

     A cold air blew in from outside, grimy and sulphurous, reeking, and dispelling with its passage the delicate scents within of hot wax and perfumed oils.  There was no sign of anything else but fog.  Disappointedly, Mrs. Salter turned back as a further wind gust came in to gutter the candles and spin the Automaton Machine on its axis wildly, making its ringing frantic.  The writing paper and inked quill always left ready on the table should the ‘message’ be literally transcribed by spirit or automatic writing, was blown up and over, upturning the ink and leaving a scattering of blots upon it.  Excitedly, Mrs. Salter fell on the blotched paper.

     “This is a sign from him, my dears.  A sign!” she cried.  “He is trying his utmost to speak to me!”

     By tracing the dots together, an impression of letters was suggested, and Mrs. Salter slowly distinguished their possibilities, connecting them into wavery symbols which everyone peered to read. 

     “R…I…P!” exclaimed one of the guests.  “He is saying R.I.P.   Let me rest in peace!  Mrs. Salter, he is urging you not to call him back!”

     “No, no!” she answered fervently.  There is more!  An F?  Another P perhaps, another R?  It is so hard to distinguish and perhaps this is not the whole intent?  This is not Herbert’s message!  But, then, actual words may be too difficult, and these blots are his great effort to communicate!” 

     Nell peered over Mrs. Salter’s shoulder at the paper, making out the shaky letter forms Mrs. Salter had traced.

     The wind, in the conflicting draught,  blew smoke down the chimney and into the room, dousing the fire flames with falling soot and making everybody cough.  One of the gentlemen rose to close the sash window, which was still letting in more of the poisonous night air.

     “No!” Nell found herself exclaiming in an instant of total fear.  “You will shut him in with us! “  Momentarily the man hesitated, and a further blast of wind and rain blew in to extinguish all the candles and the oil lamp.  He slammed it closed as Nell was calling out,      

      “Ripper!  Not R-I-P at all but R-I-P-P-E-R.!  Ripper!  I read it!  I saw it!”

     In the dark, a gurgling sound came from somebody and a fearful scream.  A terrible crashing pandemonium was in the room,  the crystal lifted and smashed into powder by an unseen force of strength which felt brutishly present.

     “Do not fear!  The dead cannot perform the acts of the living!” cried Mrs. Salter from somewhere in  in the dark confusion.

     Nell ran to the drawing room door and wrested it open to let the dim light from the hallway spill in.    The shape of a caped figure was lowering over the prone form of the young woman who had screamed, now in a dead faint on the floor.  It raised its head, and it turned upon Nell those formless dark eyes from which seemed to radiate the deepest possible loathing of her very person.  Then, in an inchoate rush of darkness, the shape swirled by her and was gone.

     “Lights!  Lights!” called Mrs. Salter, ringing the servant’s bell.  “Where is that girl?  We need brandy!”

     “I’ll go!” called Nell from the doorway.

     “Not alone!” cried one of the gallant swells who was present at tonight’s séance.  “We saw nothing but there is surely some presence?”

     Had Nell been the only one to witness that malign form?  Surely, she had seen it?  It was rare that Nell, these days, was glad of a man’s presence beside her, this home a sanctuary from what that had represented in her life before but now she was grateful for it.  Together, they quickly descended the basement stairs into the kitchen, calling for Millie, who was too far away to have heard any of the commotion in the drawing room.  The light in there was only from the fire and a lamp turned very low, where Millie had been dozing before the comfort of the sinking blaze.  It was light enough to see, however, that the spectre, contrary to Mrs. Salter’s belief, had concluded its grim business below stairs and most gruesomely to behold.

     “He knew,” Nell said in a ghastly whisper as her companion ran in disbelief to the poor, dead girl so horribly abused in body before them.  “He saw me, and he knew what I was! I brought him in!”

     Nell understood then that Mrs. Salter had been correct in thinking that her presence in the window would be a lure and in the belief that only the most obsessively single-minded would be empowered by their summons on the midnight hour of such a significant Winter’s night.  What Mrs. Salter had not known was who that revenant might be, or what horrors, having been such a perverted piece of flesh and blood in life, it would be capable of.