The Fire Witness

36

After the séance, Flora sends her guests off with a brief farewell. She knows that people like to be alone with their fantasies and memories.

She walks around the room slowly, blowing out the candles and returning the chairs to their original positions. She is pleased that everything has gone so well. Then she goes to the entryway, where she’s placed a box for contributions, and counts the money inside. Next week is her final spiritual evening and her last chance to recover the money she’s taken from Ewa. Too few people came in spite of her ad in Fenomen. She’s started to lie awake at night and stare into the darkness dry-eyed, wondering what she’s going to do. When Ewa pays her bills at the end of the month, she’s going to realize that the money is missing.

The rain has stopped by the time she gets outside. The sky is black, and the reflections of streetlights and neon signs glitter on the wet pavement. Flora locks the door and slips the key into the mailbox for Carlén Antiques. She takes down her cardboard sign and stuffs it into her bag, then notices that someone is standing in the doorway one building down. It’s the young man who attended the séance. He takes a step toward her and smiles apologetically.

“Hi, I was wondering… Could I ask you out for a glass of wine or something?”

“Not possible,” she says, feeling her usual shyness.

“You were really great,” he says.

Flora has no idea what she should say. Her face colors more and more the longer he looks at her.

“It’s just that I’m going to Paris,” she lies.

“Would I be able to ask you a few questions?”

She realizes that he must be a journalist from one of the newspapers she’s tried to contact.

“I’m leaving really early tomorrow,” she says.

“Just half an hour, no more,” he says.

As they cross the street to the nearest bistro, he tells her that his name is Julian Borg and he writes for the magazine Nära.

A few minutes later, Flora is sitting across from him at a table with a white paper cover. A waiter delivers red wine and she cautiously takes a sip. It tastes both sweet and bitter and soon she feels warmth spreading through her body. Julian Borg is eating a Caesar salad and he’s looking at her with curiosity.

“So how did this start?” he asks. “Were you always able to see spirits?”

“When I was little, I thought everyone could see them. I didn’t find it strange,” she said, and blushed again because the lie came so easily.

“What did you see?”

“People I didn’t know were in our house. I only thought they were lonely. Once in a while a child came into my room and I’d try and play.”

“Did you tell this to your parents?”

“I learned quickly not to say anything,” Flora says, and takes another sip of wine. “It’s only recently I realized that many people need the spirits, even if they can’t see them, and the spirits need people. I’ve finally found my calling. I’m between them and help them meet each other.”

She finds herself resting in Julian Borg’s warm gaze.

In reality, the whole thing started when she lost her job as an assistant nurse. She saw less and less of her former colleagues, and within a year, she had no friends left. The unemployment office paid for a course in nail aesthetics, and she got to know another person in the class, Jadranka from Slovakia. Jadranka had periods of depression, but during the months she felt well, she earned a bit of extra money by handling calls for a website called Tarot Help.

Flora and Jadranka started to hang out together. Jadranka took Flora to a séance held by the Sanningsökarna. Afterward they chatted about how much better they could do it themselves. A few months later, they found the basement space on Upplandsgatan. Two séances later, Jadranka’s depression worsened and she was admitted to a clinic south of Stockholm. Flora decided to continue the séances on her own.

She took out books from the library on healing, previous lives, angels, auras, and astral bodies. She read about the Fox sisters, the mirrored cabinet, and Uri Geller, but she learned the most from the skeptic James Randi’s efforts to expose the bluffs and tricks mediums use.

Flora has never seen ghosts or spirits, but she realized she was good at saying the things that people longed to hear.

“You use the word ‘spirits’ and not ghosts,” Julian says.

“They’re the same thing really. But ‘ghosts’ is such a negative word.”

Julian smiles and his eyes are sympathetically honest as he says, “I have to confess… I have difficulty believing in spirits.”

“You have to have an open mind,” Flora explains. “Arthur Conan Doyle was a spiritualist, for example-you know, the man who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

“Have you ever been called in to help the police?”

“No, no.”

Flora turns beet red and doesn’t know what to say. She looks at her watch.

“I’m sorry, I know you have to get going,” Julian says, and he takes her hands. “I just want to say that I know you really do want to help people and I think that’s wonderful.”

Flora’s heart pounds from his touch. She doesn’t dare meet his eyes as they say goodbye and go their own ways.