A Summoning of Souls. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ two narrow rectangular windows at the top of the cellar-level wall lit the room; coarse wooden floorboards were laid over a dirt floor. Set about the plain space were several wooden cabinets, most that looked like the base of a phonograph stand, two with wheels on tapered legs, one stocky and squat against a wall, and a few large wooden spools set against the far wall.

      “These cabinets look like…” Horowitz trailed off as he looked into one of the wooden cabinets and examined the top tray. It was empty.

      “The bases of the device attached to Gran during her abduction,” Eve finished, opening another of the rolling cabinet bases. Nothing. “Devices then attached to me and Cora.” She opened the door of the cabinet against the wall. Nothing.

      “But only after we all were overcome by noxious gas.” The detective finished recalling the events of that troubling night bitterly. Who had abducted them was unclear, but all roads pointed to Dupont and Albert Prenze as Montmartre. The detective moved to lift the large wooden spool shapes, but there was nothing in or on them.

      “These spools look like they’d have held rope or, considering the devices, wire.”

      “Yes, wire,” Eve confirmed.

      The spirit in robes that had gone down ahead of them reappeared. When he saw Eve catch his eyes, he wafted closer to her. “I know you,” Eve said. “I’ve seen you outside various sacred sites, since I was a child. What brings you here?”

      “Dupont and Prenze have become notorious of the dead. They threaten spirits and living allies. We are united in the pursuit of justice,” the man said in a thick accent, likely Armenian, Eve noted, from the Gregorian style cross he wore below his beard. She only knew this because Gran had insisted when she was a child that she learn as many icons and sacred symbols as she could, saying she’d encounter them all in the city’s confluence and each had importance and power. As of late, New York’s Armenian population was growing rapidly in hopes of escaping persecution abroad.

      “I’ve seen you too,” the man continued, adding warmly, “child of spirit. Any haunt remaining in service to life, to God, and to the city should learn the most gifted mediums of their age and take note.”

      “Thank you,” Eve replied, moved by this outreach. “As I’m sure you know, prosecuting Dupont is under way, but Prenze…”

      “We need proof, please,” Horowitz added, taking Eve’s lead, looking in the direction she was looking even if he couldn’t see what she saw or heard what spirits said. “Tactile proof of wrongdoing. Anything you could point us to would help, spirit, thank you.”

      The ghost turned toward him with another benevolent smile. “Yes, child of Moses. I understand.” He then pointed a long, robed arm at the wall nearest them, where the one cabinet not on wheels sat flush against the wall.

      “The old priest is gesturing to this one,” Eve explained, opening the door again to show the spirit that the cabinet was empty. The spirit gestured again, insistent, the arm of his robe like a shadowy wing.

      “Then let’s move it from the wall,” the detective suggested, and they each took a corner of the heavy wooden piece that had been left behind likely out of expediency.

      As soon as they moved it from the wall, a thin folder of papers fell to the floor and the detective rushed to pick them up. Eve looked over his shoulder as he examined the papers.

      On top was a typed half page with handwritten names, indicating that Arte Uber Alles had a permit to exhibit an “unnamed art project” on the Brooklyn Bridge, with the year, 1899, but no date set. Another paper marked a transfer of property from the Zinne family to A. Montmartre: a warehouse of funerary clothes downtown near the water.

      “That’s the location Gran was abducted to, where we all were put unconscious!” Eve exclaimed.

      “Now this is important proof,” Horowitz said. “Thank you, spirits!” he said to the air.

      Eve turned to the ghost, but he had vanished. Even if spirits weren’t manifest, gratefulness carried to their world and Eve heard a soft chorus of “You’re welcome” on the air and relayed the sentiment.

      Another permit was for laying an additional telegraph line in Tarrytown jurisdiction, perhaps what Eve saw today. Did Prenze have property near Sanctuary?

      Another paper was a receipt for wire from the Roebling Wire Company, many spools, and the next was for a bank account via the Chemical National Bank with its headquarters on Broadway, indicating that Arte Uber Alles had a new account as of 1896, the year Prenze supposedly died.

      “Permit, receipt, property transfer, and account contract....” Horowitz listed off, peering at the addresses on each. “Places to inquire once we’ve continued sweeping this place.”

      “Neither Dupont nor Prenze as Montmartre could’ve known this was left behind, and I’d like to think that was through the help of the spirits,” Eve said. “Though I confess, part of me is beginning to be paranoid enough to wonder if everything is a trap and we’re just wandering where our enemy bids.”

      “If so and it leads to evidence, we use it to fight back,” the detective replied matter-of-factly.

      Eve kept sweeping the room, recalling Antonia had plucked a thin braid of hair from a baseboard upstairs and had left it on the grave of the child it belonged to, per the spirit’s request. The recollection reminded Eve to look in every crevice and she did so.

      Going back upstairs, Eve’s eye caught on a small dark triangle on the baseboard a few steps from the ground floor. Using a fingernail, she separated the triangle from the wall, and with her fingertip slid a small, thin piece of metal up into view.

      A tintype image. Likely from forty or so years ago, when the prephotographic medium was in its prime. The portrait was of a distinct, severe-looking woman in a black dress with a cameo at her throat.

      “Good eye, Eve!” Horowitz exclaimed, looking at the image over her shoulder on the stairs.

      Looking at the picture, Eve had a visceral reaction. She could feel a rush of information wanting to hit her all at once. At the center of her forehead, a burning sensation indicated there were too many spirits that this image summoned and that reactions were clogged at her third eye. She wavered on the step. Jacob gently steadied her.

      “She hated him, and he her…” Eve murmured. “I feel it. The spirit world knows it too.”

      “Do you remember, the painting in the ballroom of the Prenze mansion?” Horowitz asked. “I think this is the same woman.”

      “Yes, it must be,” Eve agreed. “The mother Albert had such contention with.” Eve’s ears perked up at a specific sound: a rustling, an assent. “She is at the core of his motivations.” She tucked the tintype into the pocket of her skirt. She’d been sure all her skirts, for work or for everyday wear, had at least one. She didn’t like the object being near to her, just a few layers of fabric from her skin, but the image was important. “Perhaps that volatility of emotion can serve us.”

      Returning to the parlor level, a woman in a plain dress, like the uniform of a schoolmarm, floated above the dais.

      “Do you have anything to say to us?” Eve asked. “Anything would be helpful.”

      “All in black, СКАЧАТЬ