A Summoning of Souls. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ no,”—she shook her transparent head, white wisps of hair flowing—“this place is an enemy and I want to vanquish it. This house.” She clucked her tongue. “Dios mio.” The spirit sighed, floating toward the library, off the main entrance hall, gesturing with a bent hand that Eve follow her. “This room was the start of everything for me, with this case.”

      The library must also have served as Dupont’s study. Umber-painted walls were broken up by tall maple bookshelves that seemed to have mostly been left alone. Books were stacked along the bookshelves, with gaps where perhaps Mrs. Dupont had taken some tomes of note or worth. A large leather chair and desk remained near a tall lancet window with stained-glass squares. Mrs. Dupont must not have felt the need to move what was obviously his, the man’s actions and obsessions having estranged him.

      “This was where little Ingrid Schwerin appeared to me,” Vera explained, gesturing as she spoke, “just outside the house and then leading me into this hall. Just as the spirits of children begged for Maggie’s intervention at the Prenze mansion, so did Ingrid want me to know her story here.” The spirit shook her head. “I don’t know how I was able to get in, past that blocking device to begin with. Perhaps Ingrid’s tie to this place carved out a door for our souls. I launched her postmortem photograph from this desk into the hall, and that began the unraveling.”

      It was true; little Ingrid’s spirit had led the charge toward what Eve prayed would prove ongoing justice. Their search continued.

      Upstairs, the main bedrooms and boudoir, in earth-toned brocade wallpapers and wood paneling, were empty, a few small side tables and one bed left behind, and the spirits that had gathered seemed unconcerned for this floor. It was the uppermost floor they wanted Eve to see.

      A silvery mass flew above, calling for Eve to follow as they passed through the ceiling.

      Eve led the detective up a narrow flight of curving stairs to an arched top-floor hall with two small doors open into empty, cobwebbed rooms and one large door at the end of the hall, painted a bright red, an entirely unsettling and odd juxtaposition to the rest of the understated townhouse.

      Three young spirits flew ahead, pointing to the arched, crimson portal. Vera hung back against the hallway wall, gesturing to the spirits as if what was to follow was for them to say, not her.

      Eve recognized the souls, hovering at the threshold. They were three of the children that Eve had interacted with during Dupont’s fetish. Eve recognized the boy of around ten or eleven at the fore; he had appeared in her office during a séance to glean information about Dupont’s activities and the thefts of tokens from corpses.

      “Hello young man,” Eve said in a welcoming tone. “Giacomo, isn’t it?” At this, the little boy brightened, nodded, beaming that he’d been remembered, and he and the dark-haired little girl beside him in a pale pinafore shared a smile. “I remember you were trying to get justice for your sister during the remainder of your too-short life and then, even after death. And is that you?” She turned to the girl.

      “Yes, thank you, ma’am,” the boy said. “This is Magdalena.”

      One of the reasons the dead so often cooperated with Eve and wanted her to listen was that she tried to make them feel important and recollected in a world that had often discarded them.

      “I hope you two were able to find some peace, knowing Mr. Dupont had been arraigned.”

      “Yes, ma’am, but if you’re here, then you know not everything’s done with. And now that I’m here, I remember,” the boy said ominously. “Not like this house would let me forget…” Eve took a moment to explain what she was seeing and hearing to the detective. The spirit pointed to the red door.

      Horowitz approached, looked at Eve, and withdrew the six keys again, peering at the ornate double lock. He tried one of the remaining keys that didn’t go to the front doors; eventually the slenderest key unlocked the base of the hefty iron lock and a second key above undid another latch, and the wooden door swung open on soundless, well-oiled hinges.

      The room was triangular, one large window with a thick red curtain drawn aside, the view looking out over the shingles of the next rooftop, edges of the trees along the street coming into view beyond a small window ledge.

      Inside were what looked like stage sets, which would explain the hefty red window drape as a stage curtain. Folded to the side were painted screens with various landscapes of field, sea, or forest. A mixture of props peppered one wall, a mixture of fantastical and liturgical things, a castle footing, a spear, a taxidermized peacock. An open trunk with a bunch of costumes spilling out. A small bookshelf held children’s books with gilded spines.

      A Bavarian scene was set at the fore, a crook, prop sheep, and large metal bell set to the side.

      Vera pointed to it. “That’s how Maggie described what her children looked like who asked for her help, little Grimm’s fairy-tale children.”

      “Where is Maggie?” Eve asked Vera, who could only shrug, a sunbeam cutting through her silvery form, a contrast of luminosity, the sun highlighting dust motes floating amid the edges of the spirit’s skirts. “I wish she were here to help make sense of this.”

      “This must be where Dupont did his private, postmortem photography,” Horowitz mused. “Posing the bodies that had been left in his care?”

      “This is likely all the staging for the collection that ended up in the Prenze mansion.” Eve turned to the little boy and his sister. “Were you photographed as well as stolen from?”

      The girl nodded, and gestured to her hair, indicating a lock taken at some point during the funerary process.

      A third spirit that had hung back in the hall now wafted close to Eve, a wide-eyed child in a long robe with wispy hair. “This is how we were posed, so many of us,” the child murmured. “Before we were laid out. Freshly dropped off. Barely dead a day in some cases. Before the stink could really set in.”

      “Art above everything,” Giacomo muttered bitterly.

      “Arte Uber Alles?” Eve asked. The children nodded. “Dupont spoke about a ‘great experiment.’ Were you a part of that?”

      The three spirits nodded in unison. “There was testing,” the waifish, robed child said, ominously pointing toward the wall.

      Along both sides of the wall hung a sequence of long copper wires. Some were attached to discs like what had been placed on Gran’s temples.

      “Monitoring, or testing dead bodies? I don’t understand.”

      Giacomo looked at his sister; she shook her head. The little brother spoke for her. “The process started here and then was perfected at the other parlor.”

      “What process?” Eve asked.

      The boy sighed, as if trying to figure out how to explain it. “To try to block any of us ghosts. Some of us lingered on to see what he was doing with our bodies. He didn’t want to be bothered; neither of them did.”

      “Who?” Eve pressed.

      “Dupont and the partner. The shadow man. He helped with the devices. There’s something behind the wall. Do you hear the hum? It goes up to the roof, to a wind device that powers the drum.”

      “There is a low note in the air, now that СКАЧАТЬ