Page 51 of Mesmerized

“You see,” she said in her guttural accent, indicating the lamps with a sweep of her hand, “I haff light so you can see I hide nothing.”

The result of the lamps was, Olivia thought, an even more poorly lit séance table than the evening before, but she made no comment, knowing it would merely upset Lady St. Leger, who was obviously eager to please Madame Valenskaya tonight.

“There is no question of that, I’m sure,” Lady St. Leger said now, smiling at the medium. “But it is very kind of you, for Belinda’s sake.”

Madame Valenskaya nodded regally and motioned to them to sit down. They once again took their places as they had in the past, with Irina and Howard Babington on either side of the medium. Linking hands around the table, the group fell into silence. Olivia watched Madame Valenskaya as she went through the same routine she had the night before, her head nodding forward, then after a time rising slowly until her face was lifted up, as if she were communing with the heavens. Her eyes were closed.

As it had the other night, a ghostly tinkling tune played. Olivia felt sure it came from a small music box hidden in some capacious pocket about the medium’s person. However, she was not sure how it was activated, for she could see even in the faint light that Madame Valenskaya’s hands remained on the table, linked with Irina’s and Babington’s. The woman must, she thought, be activating the box somehow with her foot. It would not be too difficult to run a wire from the switch on the music box down inside her dress and into her shoe, where she could pull on it with her toes. Or she could run a wire down her sleeve and hold it in her hand to tug at some point, for her hands, of course, were in her accomplices’.

It was a clever thing to do, Olivia thought. By making the eerie music play while having a little light on, they could claim more proof that they were not frauds. Olivia thought she would try to take Madame Valenskaya’s hand for some reason after the séance, just to see if she could feel a wire. Of course, the medium could push the wire back into her sleeve when she was finished, or she might have done it with her feet, or it could even be that the music box was hidden in her daughter’s clothes and operated by her. Olivia gritted her teeth in frustration.

Apparently Madame Valenskaya’s usual spirit guide, the American Indian Chief Running Deer, was visiting them tonight, for the medium began to speak in a sort of pidgin English, asking them why they disturbed the spirits. Olivia suspected that this monologue was just a tease to make Lady St. Leger more impatient and desperate to speak with her son.

True to form, Lady St. Leger said, after Madame Valenskaya fell silent, “But what about Roderick? Is Roderick there? Can we not speak to him?”

Madame Valenskaya paused for a moment. Then, suddenly, a wind whooshed through the room, chilling them, and the lights in the oil lamps dipped and one went completely out. Belinda let out a shriek. Startled, Olivia looked up the table at Madame Valenskaya. The medium was sitting there, her eyes open now, looking as astonished as the rest of them.

A low, harsh moan issued from the end of the table where the medium sat, and the hair on the nape of Olivia’s neck prickled in primitive response. Howard Babington’s head was thrown back, and she realized that the sound was issuing from his open mouth. As she watched, he rose slowly to his feet, moving almost as if someone were pulling him upward. His arms dangled at his sides. Then his head fell back down, so that he was facing the rest of them.

“I will have my revenge,” he said, his voice booming out, harsh and grating, like the creak of metal against metal. His face looked different—his eyes filled with a fierce light, his features hard and hate filled, his lips pulling back in an animal snarl.

He had pulled his hands from Madame Valenskaya’s and Lady St. Leger’s as he stood up. Lady St. Leger stared at him now in horrified fascination, her hand clutched to her throat.

“I will have what is mine,” Babington went on in the same deep, rasping voice, his words oddly accented. “I have waited hundreds of years, and I will not be denied. Death cannot thwart me. The whore will pay! No one will escape. They will kneel before me and beg.”

His eyes were wide and glowing with hatred, his face almost unrecognizable. He lifted his arms, fists clenched, and from his mouth issued something that could only be described as a howl.

Olivia shivered, goose bumps popping up all over her. She tore her eyes from Babington for an instant to look at Madame Valenskaya, and she saw on the medium’s face a look of undisguised horror. Next to Olivia, Stephen pulled his hand from hers and shot to his feet, his chair falling over with the force of his movements.

The unearthly howl ended abruptly, as if cut off. Babington’s eyes rolled up, and he began to jerk, as if in the midst of a violent seizure. They all stared with horror as he trembled and shook. Stephen alone was able to move, hurrying around the table toward him. He reached out and grasped Babington’s arm as Babington went limp and slid to the floor.

Chapter Ten

STEPHEN MANAGED TO grab the man with his other hand, as well, so that Babington did not crash onto the floor but went down more gradually, Stephen supporting his shoulders and easing his head onto the ground.

As if released from their frozen state, the women stood up from the table, their voices rising in a babble. Stephen knelt beside Babington and loosened his tie and undid his collar. Olivia moved quickly to his side and knelt down with him.

“Is he all right? What happened?”

“I haven’t a bloody clue,” Stephen replied, taking off his coat and folding it into a makeshift pillow to put beneath the man’s head.

“Is—is he dead?” Madame Valenskaya asked, edging closer and peering down at Babington.

Olivia looked up at the medium. Her face was pale, and her hands were clutching her skirts. Her accent, Olivia noticed, had disappeared utterly.

“No. He’s still breathing.” Stephen took the other man’s wrist in his fingers. “His pulse is racing. I don’t know what happened. He must have had a seizure of some sort.”

“It was the spirits,” Irina offered.

Madame Valenskaya stirred. “Yes,” she agreed, her voice dropping and reacquiring its guttural accent. “Spirits speak through him. Dey are unhappy.”

“I would say unhappy doesn’t even begin to express it,” Olivia commented dryly.

“Yes,” Lady St. Leger agreed, her face troubled. “He sounded quite...well...mad.” She paused, then added, “That was not Roddy. That could not have been Roddy.”

“Olivia, ring for the servants,” Stephen said. “We need smelling salts. I can’t awaken him. And someone please turn on some damn lights.”

It was Belinda who turned the lamp’s flame higher and brought it over to where Babington lay on the floor. Olivia summoned a footman and sent him running for smelling salts.