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“On the level: Can you really communicate with spirits, Zarilda?” Evie asked late one night as she and some of the other circus folk gathered in the circus train’s dining car.
Zarilda snapped down cards in a game of solitaire. “Only if the spirits wanna communicate,” she said around the cigarette holder between her lips.
“And how much do you charge for your services?” Evie asked.
“As much as I think I can get.”
Evie rose from her seat. She fished a dollar from her coin purse and laid it on the table beside Zarilda’s deck. “I’d like to speak with a friend.”
Sam looked up from his Zane Grey adventure novel. “Baby Vamp…” he warned.
“Evil. You think that’s a good idea?” Theta chimed in from where she was playing checkers with Johnny.
“What in the hell’s the matter with just playing cards and reading magazines?” Elsie said in her honking Brooklynese. “It was a long day!”
“Maybe she can tell us something about what’s happening, something we need to know. Oh, look, I just want to know that she’s jake,” Evie pleaded.
Zarilda regarded Evie through the smoke of her cigarette. “You know, sugar, I’ve done this a thousand times. Mostly, folks want to be reassured that everything’s fine. So that’s what I tell ’em. But if I read for you, I won’t lie. Now. You sure you want the full truth?”
“She was my best friend. I need to know.” Evie placed a black jack on a red queen that Zarilda had overlooked. “Please?”
Zarilda pocketed the dollar with deliberateness. Then she swiped the abandoned solitaire game back into the deck and put the cards aside. “What’s your friend’s full name?” she asked.
Mabesie. Pie Face. “Mabel. Mabel Devorah Rose.”
“Devorah,” Sam repeated. “Her Hebrew name.”
Mabel had been Jewish, like him. But unlike him, she’d been a believer. She’d even converted, because her mother wasn’t Jewish. He wondered now if it had ever bothered her that Sam took his Jewishness for granted. Her parents were modern. Socialists. New Yorkers. But Sam’s parents had immigrated from Russia during a pogrom. They had run for their lives, leaving behind their possessions but not their superstitions. Growing up in New York’s Lower East Side and Chicago’s South Side, Sam had been steeped in tales brought over straight from the shtetls of the old country, tales of golems and dybbuks and mazikim. It was meant to keep
them in line, to make them do right. It was to remind them where they came from, how good they had it here. Remind them that no matter where they settled in this world, they were Jews first. But to Sam, none of those stories of demons and restless spirits ever seemed as frightening as what the real world cooked up: Czars who murdered peasants because they could; people who went along with it. Governments who could experiment on innocent citizens. Or Shadow Men who could take a mother away from her son with a threat of deportation, who could hook that same son up to a soul-breaking machine in the name of patriotism and progress and profit.
He knew now, of course, that there were restless, demonic spirits who meant harm. And still he was more afraid of what people could do.
Sam put down his book and came to stand beside Evie. “You sure you wanna do this, Doll Face?” It didn’t sit well with him, this raising of the dead, disturbing their rest. Especially Mabel’s rest.
“Yes,” Evie said, headstrong as ever.
“All right, then,” Zarilda said on a sigh. She stubbed out her cigarette. “Gather ’round, ever’body. Seems we got some séance-ing to do.”
“Aw, Jesus Christ, Z!” Elsie grumbled, slamming down her Photoplay.
“The more people, the stronger the signal,” Zarilda responded. “Now, then, place your hands on the table, please, like so.” Zarilda pressed her palms against the small table. The others pulled up chairs and followed suit. Evie sat across from Zarilda, flanked by Theta and Sam.
“I speak now to the one in the spirit world called Mabel Devorah Rose,” Zarilda intoned. All trace of her carefree spirit was gone. She was deadly serious. “Speak to us now, Mabel.”
“Yeah, hurry it up, Mabel,” Elsie grumbled.
“Do you mind?” Evie snapped.
Zarilda’s eyes fluttered closed as her head bent forward and lolled left to right, from shoulder to shoulder, a turbaned pendulum. She lifted her head with snakelike movements, as if searching for a signal. “Mabel… Mabel… speak…”
Goosepimples dotted Evie’s arms. The room had grown noticeably colder, and hazy.
“She’s at peace. I can sense it. A place of deep rest of—”
Whip-fast, Zarilda’s head snapped back with an inhalation of breath so sharp it seemed to bring pain. Her chest bowed out as her arms shot straight to her sides, then stiffly back, like someone or something had them pinned behind her. Zarilda spoke gibberish. Her warm brown eyes rolled back in their sockets. For the first time, Evie was afraid.
Wisps of pale gray smoke wafted out of Zarilda’s throat, and with it, whispers. Like several voices talking at once. Just under the whispers were demonic cackles and moans that made Evie shudder. Whatever Zarilda had come into contact with, it was not Mabel. Evie didn’t want to know these spirits.
