A sound burst the heavy stillness, a jingling that was not of the silver bell in the jar. The tambourine that had been on the sideboard. Its jingling continued, steady, almost musical in an eerily discordant way.
Vargas’s whisper was fervent. “Angkar is still present. He has forgiven Mr. Quinn, permitted us one more chance to communicate with the spirits he has brought with him.”
Mrs. Buckley: “Praise Angkar! Praise the spirits!”
The shaking of the tambourine ended. And all at once a ghostly light, pale and vaporous, appeared at a distance overhead, hovered, and then commenced a swirling motion that created faint luminous streaks on the wall of dead black. One of the sitters made an ecstatic throat noise. The swirls slowed, the light stilled again for a moment; then it began to rise until it seemed to hover just below the ceiling, and at last it faded away entirely. Other lights, mere pinpricks, flicked on and off, moving this way and that as if a handful of fireflies had been released in the room.
A thin, moaning wail erupted.
The pinpricks of light vanished.
Quincannon, listening intently, heard a faint ratchety noise followed by a strumming chord. The vaporous light reappeared, now in a different location closer to the floor; at the edge of its glow the guitar could be seen to leap into the air, to gyrate this way and that with no hand upon it. The strumming chord replayed and was joined by other strange music that sounded and yet did not sound as though it were being made by the strings.
For three, four, five seconds the guitar continued its levitating dance, seemingly playing a tune upon itself. Then the glow once more faded, and when it was gone the music ceased and the guitar twanged to rest on the carpet.
Nearly a minute passed in electric silence.
Grace Cobb shrieked, “A hand! I felt a hand brush against my cheek!”
Vargas warned, “Do not move, do not break the circle.” Something touched Quincannon’s neck, a velvety caress that lifted the short hairs there and bristled them like a cat’s fur. If the fingers — they felt exactly like cold, lifeless fingers — had lingered he would have ignored the professor’s remonstration and made an attempt to grab and hold onto them. But the hand or whatever it was slid away almost immediately.
Moments later it materialized long enough for it to be identifiable as just that — a disembodied hand. Then it was gone as if it had never been there at all.
Another period of silence.
The unearthly moan again.
And a glowing face appeared, as disembodied as the hand, above where Dr. Cobb sat.
The face was a man’s, shrouded as if in a kind of whitish drapery that ran right around it and was cut off at a straight line on the lower part. The eyes were enormous black-rimmed holes. The mouth moved, formed words in a deep-throated rumble.
“Oliver? It’s Philip, Oliver.”
“Philip! I’m so glad you’ve come at long last.” Cobb’s words were choked with feeling. “Are you well?”
“I am well. But I cannot stay long. The Auras have allowed me to make contact but now I must return.”
“Yes... yes, I understand.”
“I will come again. For a longer visit next time, Oliver. Next time...”
The face was swallowed by darkness.
More minutes crept away. Quincannon couldn’t tell how many; he had lost all sense of time and space in the suffocating dark.
A second phantomlike countenance materialized, this one high above Margaret Buckley’s chair. It was shimmery, indistinct behind a hazy substance like a luminous veil. The words that issued from it were an otherworldly, childlike quaver — the voice of a little girl.
“Mommy? Is that you Mommy?”
“Oh, thank God! Bernice!” Margaret Buckley’s cry was rapturous. “Cyrus, it’s our darling Bernice!”
Her husband made no response.
“I love you, Mommy. Do you love me?”
“Oh yes! Bernice, dearest, I prayed and prayed you’d come. Are you happy in the Afterworld? Tell Mommy.”
“Yes, I’m very happy. But I must go back now.”
“No, not so soon! Bernice, wait—”
“Will you come again, Mommy? Promise me you’ll come again. Then the Auras will let me come too.”
“I’ll come, darling, I promise!”
The radiant image vanished.
Mrs. Buckley began to weep softly.
Quincannon was fed up with this hokum. Good and angry, too. It was despicable enough for fake mediums to dupe the gullible, but when they resorted to the exploitation of a middle-aged woman’s yearning for her long-dead child the game became intolerable. The sooner he and Sabina put a finish to it, the better for all concerned. If there was even one more materialization...
There wasn’t. He heard scratchings, the unmistakable sound of the slate pencil writing on a slate. This was followed by yet another protracted silence, broken only by the faintest of scraping and clicking sounds that Quincannon couldn’t identify.
Vargas said abruptly, “The spirits have grown restless. All except Angkar are returning now to the land beyond the Border. Angkar will leave too, but first he will free me from my bonds, just as one day we will all be freed from our mortal ties—”
The last word was chopped off in a meaty smacking noise and an explosive grunt of pain. Another smack, a gurgling moan. Sabina called out in alarm, “John! Something’s happened to Vargas!” Other voices rose in frightened confusion. Quincannon pushed up from the table, fumbling in his pocket for a Lucifer. His thumbnail scratched it alight.
In the smoky flare he saw the others scrambling to their feet around the table, all except Professor Vargas. The medium, still roped to his chair, was slumped forward with his chin on his chest, unmoving. Quincannon kicked his own chair out of the way, carried the Lucifer across to the nearest wall sconce. The gas was off; he turned it, and applied the flame. Flickery light burst forth, chasing shadows back into the room’s corners.
Outside in the hallway, hands began to beat on the door panel. Annabelle’s voice rose shrilly: “Let me in! I heard a cry... let me in!”
“Dear Lord, he’s been stabbed!”
The exclamation came from Cyrus Buckley. There were other cries overridden by a shriek from Mrs. Buckley; Quincannon turned in time to see her swoon in her husband’s arms. He ran to where Sabina stood staring down at the medium’s slumped body.
Stabbed, for a fact. The weapon, a dagger whose ornate hilt bore a series of hieroglyphics, jutted from the back of his neck. Another wound, the first one struck for it still oozed blood, showed through a rent in Vargas’s robe lower down, between the shoulder blades.
Ashen-faced, Dr. Cobb bent to feel for a pulse in the professor’s neck. He shook his head and said, “Expired,” a few moments later.
“It isn’t possible,” his wife whispered. “How could he have been stabbed?”
Buckley had lowered his wife onto one of the chairs and was fanning her flushed face with his hand. He said shakily, “How — and by whom?”
Quincannon caught Sabina’s eye. She wagged her head to tell him, she didn’t know, or couldn’t be sure, what had happened in those last few seconds of darkness.
The psychic assistant, Annabelle, was still beating on the door, clamoring for admittance. Quincannon went to the sideboard. The brass key lay where Vargas had set it down before the séance began; he used it to unlock the door. Annabelle rushed in from the dark hallway, her eyes wide and fearful. She gave a little moan when she saw Vargas and ran to his side, knelt to peer into his dead face.