Page 19 of Unforeseen Affairs
Finally, her eyes shifted to his outstretched hand.
Colin followed her gaze, watched as she reached for it. Her fingertips felt cold, and he instinctively closed his hand about them again before he could catch himself.
He was surprised by his own eagerness, but he didn’t want to pull back and draw even more attention to it.
So he held fast to her and sang.
Blimey, he thought as they began the sixth verse,has this song always been this bloody long?
A bell rang out of nowhere.
A collective gasp rippled through the group. Alice shrieked.
“Ah, the spirits have received our call,” Mr. Bass intoned, “and they grace us now with their encouraging presence. Spirits, if you walk among us this moment, and are of noble intent, then please, once more to your manifestation attest!”
He paused, and an unbearably long silence followed. It felt as though everyone in the circle held their breath.
Then Mr. Bass dropped his voice even lower. “Ring us a bell.”
Colin leaned forward. He hadn’t expected anything to happen, certainly not—
The bell rang again. And again. It kept on, growing in force until it sounded as if the spirits were positively desperate to be acknowledged.Had there even been a bell in the room?Colin wondered. He could feel the hair on his arms standing up.
Someone at the table whispered something, but he could barely hear it over the ringing. Then there was another whisper, and he realized it was Miss Sedley. Colin leaned to his side so he might hear her.
“Wires,” she breathed, smug even as she barely made a sound.
“What?” he whispered back, incredulous. “But how—”
“Invisible wires,” she said, still staring straight ahead, her expression empty.
The ringing ceased.
“I can feel it.” Mr. Bass spoke with disquieting authority. “Yes. The spirits are with us.”
The room practically sparked with electricity, the atmosphere was so taut.
“Are you a loved one? A friend?” Mr. Bass inquired into the ether.
Two raps sounded out, an affirmative from the beyond.
Miss Sedley slid closer to him, her arm pressing against his while maintaining the light touch of their fingertips.
Her voice was so low and breathless that Colin couldn’t be certain of what she said, but he thought it was, “It’s only his foot.”
But how in the blazes?
Colin frowned. It didn’t make sense. He peered across the table. The medium sat as still as if frozen in ice, his hands still atop Alice’s and Mrs. Gearing’s. With his long hair and enigmatic bearing, Mr. Bass seemed out of place in the modernworld. He didn’t belong in a place with practical advancements like steam engines for ships and chloroform for pain and the new invention Colin had only just read about in the paper, the device that connected speakers over vast distances through their own type of wire.
He wondered what Miss Sedley would make of such a thing. A telephone, he thought it was called.
With some effort, Colin could see in the half-light that Alice and Beaky’s faces were still, quite unlike their usual selves. To the other side of Mr. Bass, his mother appeared overwrought with anticipation. His heart tightened, and in that moment he prayed that Mr. Bass was no mere table-tipper, that his reputation was merited. For his mother’s sake.
“A family member, then, having left behind those who love you dearly?”
Colin did not look at his mother’s face, lest he disrupt the precarious affair.
One knock rang out.
