William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

Upstairs he entered Mrs. Peabody’s room and shut the door. Molly was dressed and combing her hair.

“Well, kid, we laid ’em in the aisles. And with the light on every minute and the medium visible. The robe business was terrific. Jesus, what misdirection! They couldn’t have pried their eyes away even if they’d known what I was doing.”

From under his clerical vest he drew two papier-mâché replicas of a man’s hands and two black mittens. From a large flat pocket inside his coat came a piece of black cardboard on which was pasted a picture of a movie actress cut from a magazine cover and touched up with luminous paint. From his sleeve he took a telescopic reaching-rod made of blue steel. Bundling all the props into the white robe he stuffed them into the valise which he had brought upstairs. Then he lifted his shoe, pulled a luminous-headed thumbtack from the instep, tossed it in, and shut the bag.

“You all set, kid? You better endorse this before I forget it. It’s only seventy skins, but, baby, we’re just starting. I got it fixed so we can slip downstairs and out without a lot of congratulations and crap. Baby, next time we really turn the heat on the old gal.”

Molly’s lip was trembling. “Stan, Mrs. Peabody’s awful sweet. I-I can’t go on with this sort of stuff. I just can’t. She wants to speak to her daughter so bad and all you could do was whisper at her a little.”

The Rev. Stanton Carlisle was an ordained spiritualist minister. He had started by sending two dollars and an affidavit, saying that he had produced spirit messages, to the United Spiritual League, and had received a medium’s certificate. To get his Minister’s certificate he had sent five dollars and had been interviewed by an ordained minister who turned his rostrum over to Candidate Carlisle for a few minutes one Thursday night. Messages were forthcoming and the new minister of the spiritualist gospel was sworn in. He was now entitled to perform marriages, conduct services, and bury the dead. He threw back his head and laughed silently.

“Don’t worry, kid. She’ll hear from her daughter. And in something louder than a whisper. And she’ll see her too. This routine with the lights on and the medium in view all the time was just the convincer. The next time we work with this bunch we’ll work in a regular dark séance or a curtain over the cabinet. And do you know who’s going to give Mrs. Peabody the big thrill of talking to her daughter? See if you can guess.”

“No. Not me, Stan. I couldn’t.”

He was suddenly steely. “You don’t want me to let on to all those nice old folks down there that I have been deceived by a fraudulent medium, do you, sugar? You’ve got ’em eating out of your hand, my little kooch dancer. And when the time comes- you’re going to be one ghost that talks. Come on, kid. Let’s beat it out of here. The sooner I ditch this bag of props the rosier life will get. You think you’re the only one in this show that ever gets the shakes?”

The guests stayed late for a buffet supper. Mrs. Peabody had rallied from the shock of recognizing her daughter and was fully launched in praise of the new medium and her mentor, the Rev. Stanton Carlisle. “You know, I got a definite psychic flash the moment that man touched the doorbell, the very moment. And when I opened the door there he was with the light shining on his hair-just like a halo in the sun, it was a perfect halo effect. He’s like Apollo, I said to myself. Those were the very words.”

When the other sitters had gone Addie Peabody was too excited to sleep. At last she drew on a housecoat and came downstairs, feeling constantly the unseen presence of Caroline beside her. At the organ she let her hands fall on the keyboard in chords, and they sounded so spiritual and inspired. There was certainly a new quality about her playing. Then from beneath her fingers a melody took shape and she played with her eyes closed, from memory:

On the other side of Jordan

In the sweet fields of Eden ,

Where the Tree of Life is blooming

There is rest for me .

They kneel before the high priest, wearer of the triple crown and bearer of the keys .

THE FACE floated in air, unearthly in its greenish radiance, but it was the face of a girl and when it spoke Addie could see the lips move. Once the eyes opened, heartbreakingly dark and empty. Then the glowing lids closed again; the voice came:

“Mother… I love you. I want you to know.”

Addie swallowed hard and tried to control her throat. “I know, darling. Carol, baby-”

“You may call me Caroline… now. It was the name you gave me. You must have loved it once. I was so foolish to want a different name. I understand so many things now.”

The voice grew fainter as the face receded in the darkness. Then its glow changed and diminished until it was a pool of light near the floor. It vanished.

The voice whispered again, this time amplified by the metal trumpet which had been placed in the cabinet with the medium. “Mother… I have to go back. Be careful… There are bad forces here, too. All of us are not good. Some are evil. I feel them all around me. Evil forces… Mother… good-bye.”

The trumpet clanged against the music rack of the organ and tumbled to the floor. It rolled against the leg of Addie’s chair and stopped. Groping for it, she picked it up eagerly but it was silent and chill except at the narrow end where it was warm as if from Caroline’s lips.

The raps which had disturbed them on the last two evenings now began and jumped from the walls, the organ, her own chair back, the floor, everywhere. They rapped in the mocking cadences and ridiculous rhythms that spiteful children use to torment a teacher.

A vase crashed from the mantelpiece and shattered on the tiles of the hearth. Addie screamed.

The tones of the Rev. Carlisle came from the darkness near her. “Let us have patience. I call upon the presence which has come here unbidden to listen to me. We are not hostile to you. We wish you no harm. We are here to help you attain liberation by prayer, if you can only listen.”

A mocking rap on the back of his own chair answered him.

Mrs. Peabody felt the trumpet snatched from her hands. It clanged on the ceiling above her head and then a voice came from it and the rappings and rustlings stopped. The voice was low and vibrant and deeply accented.

“The way to God lies through the Yoga of Love.” It was the control spirit, Ramakrishna. “You little, mischievous ones of the baser planes, listen to our words of love and grow in spirit. Do not plague us nor our medium nor the sweet spirit of the girl who has visited her mother and was driven away by you. Listen to the love in our hearts which are as mountain streams pouring out their love to the distant sea which is the great heart of God. Hari Aum! ”

With the fall of the trumpet to the floor the room became still.

At the door, while he was saying good night, the Rev. Carlisle took Addie’s hand firmly between his own. “We must have faith, Mrs. Peabody. Poltergeist disturbances are not infrequent phenomena. Sometimes it is possible for us, and our liberated dear ones, to overcome them by prayer. I shall pray. Your little girl, Caroline, may not be able to aid us very much but I am sure she will try-from her side of the River. And now, take courage. I will be near you even after I have gone. Remember that.”

Addie closed the front door with dread of the vast, empty house behind and above her. If only she could get a girl to live in. But Pearl had left and then the Norwegian couple and after them old Mrs. Riordan. It was impossible. And Mr. Carlisle had said it would do no good to go to a hotel; the elementals attached themselves to people and not to houses and that would be horrible. In a hotel before the maids and the bellboys and everybody.