“Please go,” said James.
His voice was soft, half choked the way a man’s is when he is struggling to keep control. But it was stronger when he raised his eyes to mine, his jaw set, the words he spoke enunciated with unmistakable clarity: “You’ve proven yourself. It’s done. Leave.”
For a split second, I wanted to protest, to—what? Stay here and comfort him? Make it all better? I dropped my gaze to his hands, those hands I’d conjured in my memories, gripping the edges of the table, the fingers clenching, the knuckles white.
My heart sank. I was a stupid, stupid fool. I’d wanted to prove something to him—to make him see me as I really was, perhaps. To have him notice me, believe me. All I’d managed to do was humiliate him and cause him pain.
I stood, sliding out of our booth on unsteady knees, picking up my handbag. All around us was the quaint café with its peaceful patrons, the soft click of teacups, gentle swells of conversation, a simple English day under blue skies and early-autumn daylight. After what I had just seen, it all seemed unreal, as if the vision had been reality and what I saw before me now was the dream. The headache pulsed up the back of my skull.
As I turned to leave, I saw the owner glance at me, and an older couple sitting at a nearby table wordlessly watched my progress. When he caught my eye, the husband gave me a nod, soft and solemn. I didn’t need psychic powers to know what he meant. A soldier, yes, we understand. Perhaps they had a son who had come home damaged, or who hadn’t come home at all. They were the right age for it.
I blinked and looked back at James. He was staring down at the table, unmoving. A soldier, yes. I did not look at the couple again. Instead, I slipped out the door and let it fall shut behind me.
* * *
The dead don’t walk among us, peering invisibly over our shoulders or watching us as we sleep. There are such things as hauntings, certainly, but they are confined to certain spaces, tied to a place and often with a purpose, though they are in fact rare. Most such cases are actually the product of a living person with an unrecognized, or uncontrolled, power. The true dead, if you wish to speak with them, must be called.
I saw my first ghost when I was seven years old. I was sitting in my accustomed space on the floor behind the plum curtain that separated the sitting room from the rest of the house, listening to my mother with a client. I knew my mother was wearing her black-beaded dress, the scarf tied in her reddish blond hair, but I had not seen the man who was her customer, only heard his voice. I flexed my toes as I listened to them, my legs sprawled out before me as I ate half a tea biscuit and tried not to spill the crumbs.
“Mother,” the man was calling out as I licked my buttery fingers. “Mother! Please speak to me!”
My own mother’s voice was a soft murmur. “Sometimes the spirits are reluctant. Sometimes they are far away and cannot hear. We must be patient.”
“But I must speak to her,” the man moaned. “Mother! Mother!”
“Mr. Carver—”
“Mother!”
I finished the tea biscuit and rubbed my fingers on my stockings. Something was bothering me, like an unpleasant itch in my brain. I pulled up my knees and hugged them.
“Mr. Carver, you must be silent,” my mother said. Her voice sounded weary. “The sound— I cannot— Too much noise interrupts the communication.”
The itch grew worse. It was cold and somehow crawling. I rubbed my fingers along the back of my head, under the hair, rubbing my scalp, trying to make it go away. It persisted. The man’s moans for his mother, and my own mother’s protests, faded as I rubbed. Then I looked up, and the lady was there, standing in front of me.
She wore a heavy black dress adorned with thick braid, and her gray hair was pulled back from her face. Her hands hung limply at her sides, the gnarled fingers curled. Her skin was ghastly, mottled under the eyes and in the jowls. She stood just past the toes of my shoes, ignoring the voices beyond the curtain and staring down at me.
I couldn’t move. I heard nothing but the heartbeat in my ears, felt nothing but the chilling throb in my skull. The woman’s face was a mask of disapproval and anger as she stared at me, her eyes livid with fury.
“I feel something,” I heard my mother say. Her voice was uncertain, a tone I’d never heard her use with a client before. “I don’t—I don’t exactly know. I think it’s—”
“Mother, is it you?” Mr. Carver called. “Please tell me you forgive me!”
The lady made no acknowledgment, only stared at me, unmoved. Some awful sense radiated from her—misery perhaps, or just cold anger. I knew she was dead, that these were the clothes she’d been buried in. A rank smell wafted from her, a damp and clinging odor. I shrank back into the wall, pulling my knees tighter to my chest.
“Forgive me, Mother!” Mr. Carver cried.
I pointed at the curtain, trying to redirect her horrible attention. Go away, I thought in desperation, through the cold fog in my head. You’re dead. It’s them that want you, not me. My finger brushed the curtain and it rippled as if in a breeze.
“She is here!” Mr. Carver said. “The curtain is swaying!”
“I beg pardon?” my mother said, confused. “I don’t—”
“Mother, are you here? Answer me!”
I pointed again. Go away, I thought at the woman again. Please.
For the first time, she moved. Her furious gaze left my face and crawled down to my pointing finger.
Not here, I thought, able to keep calm now that she wasn’t looking at me. There. Not me—them.