Spirits in the Material World Read online

“All right, then. You just hang in there. I know that between the three of us we’ll figure this all out for you.”

  She clasped her hands together. “Thank you.”

  I wished I could draw her into a warm hug. She just seemed so alone and small. A thought came to me.

  I put out my hands to her again, palm up. “Here. Try this. Put your hands palm down just over mine. So they are just about to touch, with the tiniest of space between them. Can you do that?”

  She nodded and stepped forward. She put her small hands directly over my larger ones.

  I held her gaze. “Now I’m going to send you warm, loving thoughts. Right through our hands. It’s almost as if we’re holding hands, across these dimensions. Look at them. Can you feel the warmth?”

  She stared at her hands … focused … and then a gentle smile came to her lips. “I can. I can feel it.”

  I smiled at her. “See? We do have a connection. It’s why I can see you. Believe in me. In us. We will find a way. We’ll help you be with your family again.”

  She nodded, her face glowing.

  And then she faded … shimmered … and was gone.

  I pushed up to standing and turned to the two women. Prudence found her voice first. “I think I understood the gist of your conversation. So you’re … so we’re … we’re going to help the girl find her way back home again?”

  I nodded. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Mrs. McGillicuddy’s brow creased. “But how in the world are we going to figure out who she is?”

  I turned to look at the closed library door. The thumps were still coming against it, although they’d slowed down. Apparently Cassandra was running out of steam.

  I smiled. “I think I know someone who will be able to help with that sort of research.”

  Chapter Five

  When I undid the library door lock, Cassandra tumbled into the room with all the grace of a hippopotamus taking her first roller skating lessons. She wildly looked around the space, scanning the shelves and corners as if they held the very secrets of the universe.

  At last she rounded on me. “Who were you talking to?”

  Prudence said, “Amber was talking with the ghost.”

  Cassandra pointed an accusing finger at me. “I told you there was a succubus haunting this building! I’m the one who discovered it! I’m the one who should get paid for –”

  Mrs. McGillicuddy said, “It wasn’t a woman.”

  “Aha!” chortled Cassandra, tossing her blonde mane like a victorious lion. “So it was a Nephilim, just as I originally stated! Amber was interfering with the ley lines. It’s what threw me off. There was this one time I was visiting Stonehenge, on the solstice, and because of the way the clouds blocked the sun –”

  Prudence said, “It wasn’t a Nephilim. It was a young girl.”

  Cassandra stared at her as if she’d grown a third eye. “A little girl? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Who gets haunted by a little girl?”

  I sighed. “Sarah isn’t haunting the house. Not in the sense you mean. She just wants to get back to her family.”

  She burst out laughing. “Sarah? The ghost’s name is Sarah?? Couldn’t you come up with anything better?”

  Her English accent was slipping. It was now less Game of Thrones and more Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

  I’d had enough of her British fakery. I asked her, “What’s the name of the purple vegetable shaped like a bulbous zucchini?”

  She stared at me as if I were mad. “Eggplant.”

  “Where do you store a spare tire in a car?”

  Her hands went to her hips. “In the trunk!”

  I pointed to the floor. “Which floor of this house are we on?”

  Her hands flung up into the air. “We’re on the first floor! What is this insanity?”

  Prudence was staring at Cassandra now with open-mouthed shock. “Wrong. The correct answers for someone from England would be aubergine, the boot, and we’re on the ground floor. The first floor is the floor above us.”

  A nervous twitch came to Cassandra’s mouth. “I’ve been in the US for a while. I guess I’m just starting to think like you Yanks.”

  I pulled out my phone and found her website. Her photo was right there on the main page, prominently featured, with the tag line of “100% Success Rate in Dispelling Unwanted Spirits.”

  I saved the photo to my phone’s memory. I then went to Google and did a reverse image search. I fed in the image of Cassandra.

  Bling.

  Google had 95 mentions of “Cassandra”. Except in these cases her name was “Moonflower Monique”. She’d been operating around San Francisco, California, and had apparently bilked several widows out of their life’s savings.

  The last mention was about six months ago.

  I passed the phone over to Prudence.

  Her lips drew down as she scrolled, and then she stared at Cassandra accusingly.

  Cassandra put her hands up in innocence. “It was just a series of misunderstandings,” she protested. “My clients were always pleased with my results. It was the sons and daughters who got grumpy, when they realized their inheritance had been spent.” She tossed her mane. “The kids were just after the money. They didn’t care about their mother’s happiness.”

  Prudence’s voice was dry. “You are so altruistic to be the only one to look after these neglected women.”

  Cassandra leapt into the opening. “Yes! Exactly! The widows had been abandoned by their families. Left alone in large, creaky old houses. The only time the kids stopped by was to ask for more money. I gave the widows solace! I listened to their concerns!”

  Mrs. McGillicuddy pointed out, “And you bled them dry.”

  Cassandra crossed her arms before her breasts. “Well, I deserve to be paid for my efforts, don’t you think? Sometimes I was there every day for months on end! Some widows never wanted me to leave!”

  I could almost see that being true. Not that it excused Cassandra, of course. She was taking advantage of the situation. But, still, it was sad that women ended up estranged from their families. Sad that their ending days were ones of loneliness and emptiness.

  Cassandra huffed, “So, if it seems you don’t want my help after all –”

  I gave her a gentle smile. “Actually, I believe we do.”

  Mrs. McGillicuddy and Prudence turned to me in confusion. Prudence asked, “We do?”

  I waved a hand toward the leather stool where only a few hours ago I myself had sat. “Cassandra, if you’d please take a seat.”

  Cassandra looked as if she might refuse, but apparently curiosity over a potential new source of income won out. She pulled the stool over to one side and carefully spread out her skirt as she sat down on it.

  I looked to Cassandra. “All right, Cassandra. Judging by the news reports we were just scanning, you were fairly successful at what you did. The sheer numbers of sons and daughters complaining seems to indicate that you had engaged a large number of … clients … who believed in you wholly.”

  Cassandra leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “Of course they did! I wasn’t just some fly-by-night shyster. I took their concerns seriously!”

  I nodded. “You are a savvy entrepreneur. And that meant you did a ton of research. You looked into everything. Their family history. Their ancestors. Their genealogy. Birth dates. Death dates. So that you could have as much information as humanly possible.”

  She puffed up in pride. “I am an expert! It’s important to understand your clients. I knew more about their families than their own children did!”

  Prudence gave a low laugh. “And somehow you missed that Gertie and I were married women? You thought we were sisters?”

  Cassandra’s flush rose to her ears. “If I’d been back in California I would have considered that as an option. But here in Massachusetts? In the heart of New England? It never even crossed my mind!”

  I pointed out, “You do realize that Massachusetts wa
s the very first state in the US to allow gay marriage, in 2004?”

  Mrs. McGillicuddy twined her fingers into Prudence’s. “May 17, 2004,” she said fondly. “Prudence and I were married that very day. We’d already had to wait so many years for it to be possible. We didn’t want to wait a day longer.”

  I turned on Cassandra. “And when did California finally allow gay marriage? 2013?”

  Cassandra blushed. “Well, we were the second state, for a short while. We did allow it in 2008. But then Proposition 8 came along, and we were shut down until 2013.”

  Prudence’s eyes twinkled. “And you thought Massachusetts was the backwards state, did you? You just assumed we were sisters?”

  “I was rushed,” insisted Cassandra. “Normally I do thorough research. But the email from Prudence came in from my website a few hours ago. I was just setting up shop here in Salem, and I didn’t want to miss out on my first big case.”

  I nudged my head toward Mrs. McGillicuddy’s opulent gold lamé dress. “You mean that you saw photos of Mrs. McGillicuddy in the society website photos and knew this was too big a chance to pass up.”

  Cassandra’s cheeks burnished red and she looked toward the floor.

  I leaned forward. “Look, it’s your skills at researching that make you helpful in this situation. I can guess that Sarah is maybe nine years old, from her face and height. She perhaps lived in the late 1600s, from the type of dress she wore.”

  I shook my head. “But do you know how often children died young in the 1600s? Do you know how popular Sarah was as a name? We have no idea where she lived. She could have been visiting from out of town. She doesn’t remember anything else about her previous life. Somehow we have to piece together her history in an age where there wasn’t Instagram or SnapChat or Facebook or anything else. We’ll just have a few dry records to put together like puzzle pieces.”

  Cassandra’s eyes lit up. “I like puzzles. It’s part of what I love about what I do. Putting together the pieces. Finding how things fit.” Her blush rose again, and she said, softly, “And I really do like helping people. Helping the lonely abandoned souls feel like they matter again.”

  I nodded to her, and then looked across to Prudence and Mrs. McGillicuddy. “All right, then. Starting tomorrow morning, we’re going to find out who Sarah really is. We’re going to do whatever it takes so she can find her family again. So she can go home.”

  Chapter Six

  There was just something about the alluring aroma of a library which set my heart aflutter. Some people enjoyed reading ebooks while others preferred audio versions. But for me, it was stepping into a library which brought me rich waves of joy. The idea that thousands of books were all around me and all I had to do was reach out a hand and open it up.

  The possibilities were endless.

  Cassandra strode right up to the main desk, the coins on her sapphire dress tinkling with every step. Today’s outfit was one of violets and royal blues. Maybe this was her serious thinking outfit. It didn’t matter to me. She was lending a hand for free, and I appreciated it greatly. While I was good enough with computers and phones to post promos for my bookstore on Facebook and Instagram, I didn’t know if I was up to the research we’d need to do to figure out Sarah’s full identity.

  The librarian was in her twenties, slim, with cropped jet-black hair and a silver nose ring. She looked up with a smile. “Can I help you?”

  Cassandra nodded. “Does your library offer a free Ancestry account, for genealogical research?”

  “Yes, we do,” agreed the librarian with a smile. “The computers are just over there. Do you need some help getting started?”

  Cassandra gave a laugh to indicate that whatever meager skills the librarian might possess, they were nothing compared with the awesome mastery of an expert. And then we were off.

  Apparently what Cassandra lacked in ghost-seeing skills, she more than made up for in talents with genealogical software. For it was only a few mouse clicks later when she was pulling up some sort of birth and death records for the town of Salem.

  Her eyes were wide with delight as she went scrolling through them. “I was born in California, and we think of that region as having a history,” she chortled. “The Earthquake of 1906. The Gold Rush of 1848.”

  She pointed. “But you guys? In Massachusetts? You have the real history. You were here before there even was a United States! Back when it was just a group of crazy religious Puritans who charted a boat to take them across the ocean to unoccupied lands. Somewhere where they could do whatever they wanted without the Church bothering them.”

  “But the lands weren’t unoccupied,” I pointed out. “There were a variety of tribes like the Wampanoags and Mohawk and Nipmuck. The groups were already struggling with their inter-tribe treaties and negotiations. And then a boat shows up, dumps sixty-five passengers on shore, and those newcomers just assume they get to rule everything in sight.”

  Cassandra looked at me in confusion. “We did the skits in elementary school. Doesn’t everyone? It was a party. The naked Indians brought in food - turkeys and corn and cranberries. The Puritans dressed in big, black hats and silver buckles. They were all happy together.”

  I held in my snort with effort. “So where are these Indians now?”

  Cassandra looked as if the question had never even occurred to her. “Did they all move to Arizona or something?”

  I sighed. Maybe in California they studied the Gold Rush miners the way we near Salem memorized the names of the accused. Maybe it was simply that each region tended to focus on its own histories.

  Cassandra clicked another button. “Here we go! Look at this. The 1600s. The Mayflower finally made proper land in March, 1621 – with only 53 passengers. Half of the passengers died before they even disembarked! Who knew?”

  I gave a small smile. It seemed my theory was correct.

  Her eyes went wide. “Wow. Even once they got on land, life was rough. A third of all babies died of illness. Smallpox. Measles. Pneumonia. Makes me glad I was born in modern times.”

  I nodded. “We’re very fortunate. So let’s move forward a few decades. Let’s look at the names in birth records around 1670.”

  She clicked a few more times. Her mouth drew down. “We think of ourselves as so original. But look at the popular names for boys in the late 1600s. Robert. William. John. Just the same types of names we tend to use today. And for girls? Sure, we don’t tend to name girls Charity, Comfort, and Chastity any more. But we still have plenty of Annes and Marys, Janes and Sarahs.”

  I sighed. I’d worried about that. “So it’s not as if one and only one Sarah was born in the 1600s in the area, who then died before reaching adulthood?”

  She snorted and looked at me as if I were crazy. “The printout’s going to go to many pages, even if we keep the radius small.”

  I nodded. “Well, go ahead and hit print. We’re going to have to start somewhere. If we have a long list, at least we can start crossing off the names.”

  I glanced toward the door. “After all, this young girl has been waiting over three hundred years for us. We will do whatever it takes her get home again.”

  Chapter Seven

  The last tourist finally headed out the door, her bag stuffed full of local authors’ books. I always appreciated the interests of those who came to support the talented writers we had in our own community.

  Serena locked the door behind her and flipped the ‘open’ sign into the ‘closed’ position. Then she turned to me with a wide smile.

  “So, are you making any progress on the Sarah list? That sounds so exciting, that you’re trying to help the ghost find her way home!”

  I laid the printouts on the main counter. “It is exciting – but it also feels fairly daunting. Just look at all of these Sarahs. And these are just from the surrounding towns. It could easily be that a family was up visiting from Boston when something happened.”

  Serena stared down at the papers. “If Sarah is despera
tely looking for her family, imagine how they might feel. Maybe they are also looking for her. Maybe they sense she’s lost.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I guess I’d just assumed that they were all dead and gone. That I would figure out where she belonged and take her there – and that it’d activate whatever portal she needed to move on to her next stage. But you’re right, of course. Maybe her family is also in a limbo here, because of her absence. Maybe they all need to be reunited before they can be at peace.”

  She beamed. “So what we need is an Amber Alert. Some way to get Sarah’s image out to all the homes in the area. Maybe the spirits of her other family members will see it.”

  I stared at her. Serena certainly had a tendency to think outside the box. It’s part of what made her a stellar employee. But I was beginning to think that, in this particular instance, she’d gone right past the box and into the next dimension.

  “And just what do you think would happen if we really did distribute Sarah’s photo out to every household in the Salem region? Never mind the fact that we can’t actually take a photo of her in the first place?”

  She patiently smiled. “Not a photo, a drawing.”

  “I’m atrocious at drawing,” I reminded her. “Remember that time I tried to draw a daffodil and you thought it was a rendering of Cthulhu the Dread Demon from the Deep?”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, that was pretty bad. But I wasn’t thinking you’d draw her portrait. I would do it.”

  I squinted at her. “I thought you said you couldn’t see ghosts.”

  “True, but you can,” she pointed out. “You know how police sketch artists draw images of criminals based on victims’ descriptions? Well, we’d do that. But you’ll be looking at a ghost, and I bet the ghost will be able to tell you if she thinks I did a good job or not.”

  “All right, I suppose that’s true. So let’s say I’m able to describe Sarah well enough that you create a reasonable likeness of her. What good will that do us? Ghosts can’t use phones to call the bookstore.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Sarah apparently learned to read and how to manipulate books. Three hundred years is a long time. I imagine either a ghost gets bored completely to death – pardon the pun - or she finds something to do with her time. It’s not outside the range of possibilities that ghosts can learn to use computers and phones. If they can read The Scarlet Letter, why can’t they surf the web to watch YouTube videos?”