She said, “Who’s got the black candles?”
Miss Noles said, “I got the candles.” She had a shopping bag at her feet, and she rummaged about in it, producing four candles. They were mostly black. One of them was tall and undecorated. The other three were in the shape of a cartoon black-and-yellow penguin, with the wick coming out of his head. “It was all they got,” she said apologetically. “And I had to go to three stores until I found anything.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy said nothing, but she shook her head. She arranged the four candles at the four ends of the table, taking the single nonpenguin at the head of the table, where she sat. Each of the candles sat on a plastic picnic plate. Mrs. Dunwiddy took a large box of kosher salt, and she opened the spout and poured salt crystals on the table in a pile. Then she glared at the salt and pushed at it with a withered forefinger, prodding it into heaps and whorls.
Miss Noles came back from the kitchen with a large glass bowl, which she placed at the center of the table. She unscrewed the top from a bottle of sherry and poured a generous helping of sherry into the bowl.
“Now,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, “the devil grass, the St. John the Conqueror root, and the love-lies-bleeding.”
Mrs. Bustamonte rummaged in her shopping bag and took out a small glass jar. “It’s mixed herbs,” she explained. “I thought it would be all right.”
“Mixed herbs!” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. “Mixed herbs!”
“Will that be a problem?” said Mrs. Bustamonte. “It’s what I always use when the recipe says basil this or oregano that. I can’t be doin‘ with it. You ask me, it’s all mixed herbs.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy sighed. “Pour it in,” she said.
Half a bottle of mixed herbs was poured into the sherry. The dried leaves floated on the top of the liquid.
“Now,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, “The four earths. I hope,” she said, choosing her words with care, “that no one here going to tell me that they could not get the four earths, and now we have to make do with a pebble, a dead jellyfish, a refrigerator magnet, and a bar of soap.”
“I got the earths,” said Mrs. Higgler. She produced her brown paper bag, and pulled from it four Ziploc bags each containing what looked like sand or dried clay, each of a different color. She emptied each bag at one of the four corners of the table.
“Glad somebody is payin‘ attention,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy.
Miss Noles lit the candles, pointing out as she did so how easily the penguins lit, and how cute and funny they were.
Mrs. Bustamonte poured out a glass of leftover sherry for each of the four women.
“Don’t I get a glass?” asked Fat Charlie, but he didn’t really want one. He didn’t like sherry.
“No,” said Mrs Dunwiddy, firmly, “you don’t. You’ll need your wits about you.” She reached into her purse and took out a small, gold-colored pill case.
Mrs. Higgler turned off the lights.
They five of them sat around the table in the candlelight.
“Now what?” asked Fat Charlie. “Shall we all join hands and contact the living?”
“We do not,” whispered Mrs. Dunwiddy. “And I do not want to hear another word out of you.”
“Sorry,” said Fat Charlie, then wished he hadn’t said it.
“Listen,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. “You will go where they may help you. Even so, give away nothing you own, and make no promises. You understand? If you have to give somebody something, then make sure you get something of equal value in return. Yes?”
Fat Charlie nearly said “yes,” but he caught himself in time and simply nodded.
“It is good.” And with that, Mrs. Dunwiddy began to hum tunelessly, in her old old voice which quavered and faltered.
Miss Noles also began to hum, rather more melodically. Her voice was higher and stronger.
Mrs. Bustamonte did not hum. She hissed instead, an intermittent, snakelike hissing, which seemed to find the rhythm of the humming and weave through it and beneath it.
Mrs. Higgler started up, and she did not hum, and she did not hiss. She buzzed, like a fly against a window, making a vibrating noise with her tongue and her teeth as odd and as unlikely as if she had a handful of angry bees in her mouth, buzzing against her teeth, trying to get out.
Fat Charlie wondered if he should join in, but he had no idea what sort of thing he ought to do if he did, so he concentrated on sitting there and trying not to be weirded-out by all the noises.
Mrs. Higgler threw a pinch of red earth into the bowl of sherry and mixed herbs. Mrs. Bustamonte threw in a pinch of the yellow earth. Miss Noles threw in the brown earth, while Mrs. Dunwiddy leaned over, painstakingly slowly, and dropped in a lump of black mud.