The Flimflam Affair

14 Sabina

Nearly a minute passed in silence while Vargas pretended to place himself in a mesmeric trance. Then he commenced a whispering chant in English punctuated by what Sabina took to be simulated Egyptian, in which he called for the door to the spirit world to open and the shades of the departed to pass through and reveal their presence. While this was going on, the lights began to dim as if in response to his exhortations. The phenomenon elicited a shivery gasp from Margaret Buckley, but there was nothing otherworldly about it. Gaslight in one room was easily controlled from another — in this case by Annabelle at a prearranged time or on some sort of signal.

The shadows congealed until the room was in utter darkness. Vargas’s chanting ceased abruptly; the silence deepened as it lengthened. Long minutes passed with no sounds except for the somewhat asthmatic breathing of Winthrop Buckley, the rustle of a dress or shuffle of a foot on the carpet. A palpable suspense began to build. Sabina could feel tiny beads of perspiration on her upper lip, not from any tension but from the overheated air. She was not given to fancies, but she had to admit that there was an eerie quality to sitting in total blackness this way, waiting for something to happen. Spiritualist mediums counted on this reaction, of course. The more keyed up their dupes became, the more eager they were to believe in the incredible things they were about to witness; and the more eager they were, the more easily they could be fooled by their own senses.

Someone coughed, a sudden sharp sound that made even Sabina twitch involuntarily. She thought the cough had come from Vargas, but in such stifling darkness you couldn’t be certain of the direction of any sound. Even when he spoke again, the words might have come from anywhere in the room.

“Angkar is with us.” His normally stentorian voice was muted now, almost a monotone. “I feel his presence.”

Mrs. Buckley stirred and her knee bumped against Sabina’s. The contact brought forth another of the woman’s shivery gasps.

“Will you speak to us tonight, Angkar? Will you answer our questions in the language of the dead and guide us among your fellow spirits? Please grant our request. All here with me are friends.”

The silver bell inside the jar rang once, soft and clear.

“Angkar has consented. He will speak, he will lead us. He will ring the bell once for ‘yes’ to each question he is asked, twice for ‘no,’ for that is the language of the dead. Will someone ask him a question?”

“I will,” Dr. Cobb’s voice answered. “Angkar, is my dear mother Elena Richmond Cobb well and happy on the Other Side?”

The bell tinkled once.

“Will she appear to us in her spirit form?”

Yes.

“Will she do so tonight?”

Silence.

Vargas said in his droning monotone, “Angkar is unable to answer that question yet. He asks for another.”

Mrs. Buckley obliged immediately. Yes, her beloved Bernice was still well and happy among the spirits. Yes, she was present. Yes, she would make every effort to communicate.

Sabina spoke up next, asking in anxious tones, “Angkar, tell me please, is my brother Gregory with you? Gregory Milford.”

Yes, he is one of us.

“Is he among you tonight?”

No.

“Why won’t he come and speak to me?”

Silence.

Vargas said, “Yes, Angkar, I understand. The spirit of Gregory Milford has yet to fully adapt to life on the astral plane.”

“But I must speak to him.” Sabina made her voice sharp, agitated. “I must!”

John chimed in with, “Yes, it’s vital, absolutely vital that we consult with Gregory tonight.”

Without warning, the table seemed to stir and tremble. Its smooth surface rippled; a faint creak sounded from somewhere underneath. In the next instant the table tilted sideways, causing the bell to tinkle furiously; turned and rocked and wobbled as if it had been injected with a life of its own. Margaret Buckley emitted another of her gasps, her moist fingers clutching Sabina’s wrist tightly. Grace Cobb murmured something in a startled undertone.

The agitated movements continued for several seconds, then stopped abruptly. The table lifted completely off the floor, seemed to float in the air for another two or three heartbeats before finally thudding back onto the carpet.

“Angkar has been angered by the Milfords’ inappropriate demands. He may now deny us further communication and return to his exalted place in the Afterworld.”

Mrs. Buckley cried, “Oh, no, please, he mustn’t go!”

“Silence! We must do nothing more to disturb him or the discarnate plane or the consequences may be dire. Do not move or speak. Do not break the circle.”

The stuffy blackness closed down again. The silence was acute, as if breaths were being held around the table; even Mr. Buckley’s soft wheezing had ceased. It was an effort for Sabina to remain still.

A sound burst forth, a jingling that was not of the silver bell inside the jar. The tambourine that had been on the sideboard, closer now, almost as if it were wavering in the air nearby. Its metal jingles sounded in an eerily discordant way.

“Angkar is still present.” Vargas’s droning whisper was fervent. “He has forgiven Mrs. Milford her outburst, permitted us one more chance to communicate with the spirits he has brought with him.”

Mrs. Buckley: “Praise Angkar! Praise the spirits!”

The shaking and jingling of the tambourine ended. All at once a ghostly light appeared at a distance overhead, pale and vaporous; remained stationary for a few seconds, then commenced a swirling motion that created faint luminous streaks on the wall of black. Mrs. Buckley made an ecstatic throat noise. The swirls slowed, the light still again for a moment; then it began to rise until it seemed to hover just below the ceiling; and at last it faded away entirely. Other lights, mere pinpricks, flicked on and off, moving this way and that as if a handful of fireflies had been released in the room.

A thin, moaning wail erupted.

The pinpricks of light vanished.

Sabina, listening intently, heard a faint ratchet noise followed by a strumming musical chord. The vaporous light reappeared, now in a different location closer to the floor. At the edge of its glow the guitar could be seen to leap into the air, to gyrate back and forth with no hand upon it. The chord replayed and was joined by others — strange music that sounded as though it were being made by the strings.

For four, five, six seconds the guitar continued its levitating dance, seemingly playing a tune upon itself. Then the glow once more faded, and when it was gone the music ceased and the guitar twanged to rest on the carpet.

What seemed like minutes passed in electric silence.

Grace Cobb suddenly shrieked, “A hand! I felt a hand brush against my cheek!”

Vargas warned, “Do not move, do not break the circle.”

Something touched Sabina’s neck, a velvety caress that in spite of herself caused a crawling sensation on her scalp. If the fingers — they felt exactly like cold, lifeless fingers — had lingered she would have ignored the professor’s remonstration and made an attempt to grab and hold on to them. But the hand or whatever it was slid away almost immediately.

Moments later it materialized just long enough for it to be identifiable as just that, a disembodied hand. Then it was gone as if it had never been there at all.

Another period of breathless silence.

The unearthly moan again.

And a glowing face appeared, as disembodied as the hand, above where Dr. Cobb sat.

The face was a woman’s, shrouded as if bound in transparent white drapery cut off in a straight line below the chin. The eyes were enormous black holes. The mouth moved, formed words in a deep-throated rumble.

“Oliver? It is I, Oliver, my son.”

“Mother! Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come at long last.” Dr. Cobb’s words were choked with feeling. “Are you well, are you content?”

“I am both, yes. But I cannot stay long. The Auras have allowed me to make contact but now I must return.”

“So soon? I have so many questions for you...”

“And they shall be answered.”

“When? When will you come again?”

“Soon. Soon.”

“At my next sitting?”

“If the spirits permit. Until then, darling Oliver. Until then...”

The face was swallowed by darkness.

More minutes crept away. Sabina couldn’t tell how many; she had lost all sense of time and space in the suffocating black.

A second phantomlike countenance materialized then, this one high above Margaret Buckley’s chair. It differed from the previous one in that it was smaller, shimmery, and indistinct behind a hazy substance like a luminous veil. The words that issued from it were an otherworldly, childlike quaver — the voice of a little girl.

“Mommy! Is that you, Mommy?”

“Oh, thank heaven. Bernice!” Margaret Buckley’s cry was rapturous. “Winthrop, it’s our darling Bernice come at last!”

Her husband made no audible response.

“I love you, Mommy. Do you still love me?”

“Oh, yes! Bernice, dearest, I prayed and prayed you’d communicate. Are you happy in the Afterworld? Tell Mommy and Daddy. Daddy’s here, too.”

“Yes, I know. I love you too, Daddy.”

Mr. Buckley was spared having to speak by his wife asking again, “Are you happy, darling?”

“Yes, I’m very happy. It’s lovely here. But I must go back now.”

“No, not yet! Bernice, wait—”

“Will you and Daddy come again, Mommy? Promise me you’ll come again. Then the Auras will let me come, too.”

“We’ll come, I promise! Again and again...”

The radiant image vanished.

Mrs. Buckley began to weep softly. The pitiful sound raised Sabina’s ire, as it surely did John’s. It was despicable enough for predatory, conscienceless men like Abraham Vargas to dupe the gullible, but when they resorted to the exploitation of a mother’s yearning for her long-dead child the game was intolerable. The sooner she and John shut down the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses, the better for everyone. If there was even one more manifestation...

There wasn’t. She heard scratchings, the unmistakable sound of the slate pencil writing on a slate. This was followed by yet another protracted silence, broken only by the faintest of scraping and clicking sounds that she couldn’t identify.

Vargas said abruptly, “The spirits have grown restless. All except Angkar are returning now to their resting places in the land beyond the Border. Angkar will leave too, but first he will free me from my bonds, just as one day we will all be freed from our mortal ties—”

The last word was chopped off in a meaty smacking noise and an explosive grunt of pain. The hand holding Sabina’s left hand jerked free. Another smack, then, followed by a brief gurgling moan.

Sabina called out in alarm, “John! Something’s happened to Vargas!”

Other voices rose in frightened confusion. As she freed her right hand from Margaret Buckley’s grasp and stood up, she heard John’s chair scrape backward from the table. It took only scant seconds before his thumbnail scratched a match alight.

In the smoky flare Sabina saw the others rising from their chairs, all except for Vargas. The fake medium, still roped to his armchair, was slumped forward with his chin on his chest, unmoving. John kicked his chair out of the way, carried the upraised match across to the nearest wall sconce. The gas was off; he turned it on and applied the flame. Flickery light burst forth, banishing the darkness.

Outside in the hallway, hands began to beat on the door panel. Annabelle’s voice rose shrilly: “Let me in! I heard a cry from the professor... let me in!”

Dr. Cobb had rushed forward and was bending over Vargas. “Dear Lord, he’s been stabbed! Stabbed in the back!”