Rap rap rap
In the comfortable confines of her Cambridge study, the researcher tried to not lose her concentration. Members of the Psychical Research Society knew to not bother her between nine and noon, public readers of the Society’s annual publication were hardly allowed into the private research building, and the majority of her friends were unlikely to rouse themselves from their own work before four in the evening. This interaction was guaranteed to be irritating.
Rap rap rap
“Damn it all. Two pounds it’s a student looking for Henry,” Nell muttered, finally dragging herself away from her papers. She’d been reading the rather fascinating account of a man who’d been awoken in the night by the screams of a disturbed young neighbor, miles away and deceased the same night. The newspaper clippings, interviews, and other evidence in the collected report had been painstakingly verified by her husband and other members of the Society. Now that she'd organized the account’s characteristics, she was only too eager to begin her real work on the project—adding statistical data to their records. This interruption by one of her husband’s inevitably-disheveled philosophy students was only too—
Nell opened the door to an empty hall. Dust motes caught in a draft from her office eddied in the streaming autumn sun, and outdoor murmurs and distant laughter filled the air like traces of sweet incense, but there was no knocker, no lost student.
“Oh dear,” Nell said. She gave a little laugh and rubbed her eyes, tired though it was still early. “Time for a cup of tea, I suppose.”
Since she shared her office space with other members of the Society when they were in Cambridge, the office was good-sized and boasted a small fireplace with a kettle in the back. But no sooner had she brewed a proper strong, black tea and poured it into a cup than the knock returned.
Rap rap rap
“Oh for heaven’s sake. What is it?”
No one answered her query.
She stomped over and swung open the door only to find that, once more, the hall was empty. This time she stepped out and walked down to the end of the corridor. To her left was a row of tall peaked windows framed in ancient stone. To her right were solid oak doors with carefully numbered plaques that hid the work of the not-so-venerable scholars and researchers of the various esoteric sciences by which Cambridge was presently rather embarrassed. Today, only the office at the end of the hall was likely to be occupied. On this door she rapped sharply thrice. She froze and then took a moment to stare at her knuckles. Why had she emulated the offending knock so precisely?
She had a long, fruitless ten seconds to think on it before young Thomas Pellew opened the door.
“Thom,” she began, without hesitation. “Has anyone been going about knocking you up?”
He blinked his weak gray eyes at her for a few moments, before asking, quite intelligently, “Hmm? What’s this?”
Nell sighed and tried to control her temper. Thom had been an excellent student and was really quite skilled at representing the skeptic’s side of a psychical debate. As soon as you tried to engage him in any non-theoretical conversation, however, he seemed perfectly baffled. “Has anyone come pounding on your door only to depart before you could open it?”
He shook his head. “No, no one has. I haven’t heard anyone walking by either, but I must admit I was not listening for it. You know how it gets. I’m sure that would have been alarming?”
“Rather.”
“Ah, yes, well then. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”
Nell managed to not roll her eyes at the young man and, after politely thanking him for his suggestion and requesting that he call on her if anyone did bother him, she returned to her own office.
This time she left the door propped open with a wooden wedge before walking back to her desk to drink her cooling tea. As much as she hated being interrupted during her work, she was sure certain exposure would prevent the offender—
RAP RAP RAP!
She hopped to her feet and spun so quickly the heavy chair turned with her. She opened her mouth to scold the interloper, but the words died before they could reach her lips, fading to a soft, horrified cry. At the door stood none other than Edmund James, one of the three founding members of the Psychical Research Society.
“Good morning, Nell,” he murmured in his charming, intense voice. That voice combined with that firm jawline, that passion that ever burned in his sparkling, long-lashed eyes, had once so beguiled the poet Marian Eliot that she’d made him the model for her most famous hero. He’d never looked the type to become transfixed by the spiritual (much less the psychical), but the Society was the sort of group that always surprised you.
“Good morning, Edmund,” Nell managed to reply after a full minute of gawking. Her fevered brain noted how the light seemed to slant through her old friend’s hair, illuminating it like a halo. She watched as he reached up to smooth his heavy mustache in a gesture that was as familiar as her own husband's way of twisting his beard. “I-it seems you’ve finally made good on your … promise. Would you mind if I, ah, sit?”
“Oh, yes, please do. Mind if I come in?”
“Yes, not at all, yes. Oh my.” Nell sat down hard in her chair. She was lucky she had not picked up her tea cup before the knock, else she would have had a mess to clean. With a trembling hand, she reclaimed the cup and pressed it to her lips. The scent helped her feel a bit less like her world had just been lifted up, flipped upside down, and shaken with the furious vigor of a gardener who suspected a serpent in his boot.
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Edmund did not approach her, but instead stood, looking almost shy, by one of her stacks of pending folios and folders.
“I almost thought you wouldn't be able to see me today. I’ve been rather put out when I’ve tried to see you before. I’ve only just obtained the knack of it.”
“You’ve tried before?”
“Desperately. Mostly in dreams and with little success.”
“My apologies.” Nell tried to imagine how she would have felt if Edmund had made such a declaration six months ago. Many women would have swooned at the thought of him being desperate to see them, but she probably would have laughed. Edmund and the Hodgsons had always been good friends despite their differences in personality. Edmund’s eagerness would have indicated that either he wanted to throw a surprise party for Henry, or that he wanted to argue in defense of one of his more unreliable (and therefore rejected) witness accounts. One would have resulted in success, the other inevitable disappointment. He’d always said the Hodgsons were the old bulldogs of self-defeating skepticism, especially Nell.
Now what could that desperation mean but that all other avenues of communication had, at the last, failed?
“None needed. I was surprised, as I’m sure you are, to find that you of all people had the potential to see me at all. Most are positively blind to ghosts, it seems.”
“Yes, how strange,” Nell replied after a determined sip of her tea. The cup rattled as she set it back down on its plate. She picked up a small notebook and pencil, made a note, cleared her tight throat, and asked, “So am I to take it you are here to clear up the metaphysical questions pertaining to life after death, Edmund? If so, I must thank you for your perseverance. Sincerely.”
“Oh,” he said. He cleared his own throat into his hand, covering his mouth with apparent embarrassment. “I must admit that no, that’s not really what I’m here for.”
“Not really—Edmund! It was your life’s work before you ….”
He sighed. “I’m afraid, dear Nell, that whatever preconceptions you have about life after death are, indeed, false. Immortality, in my experience, is a myth. A lie of which I’ve been very sorely disabused.”
“But you are here?” Nell pushed down the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her scientific objectivity. This whole situation was mad, but what kind of scientist would she be to let such an opportunity—to interview the dead!—slip past. “So clearly you have proven that life after death exists.”
“This is not life!” he cried with sudden fury. His bright, always shining eyes flashed. With his passion a wave of displeasure and frustration washed over Nell. Her pencil slipped from numb fingers, and she clutched her notebook to her chest like a shield. For just a brief, terrifying moment, she shut her eyes.
“Nell? Nell, darling, are you alright?”
She blinked. There, silhouetted against the sun coming through the open door, was her beloved Henry, back from class. She scanned the room with the intensity of a mouse looking for the hawk. Edmund was gone.
Henry crouched down in front of her, his long, peppery beard almost brushing her knees.
“Do you feel alright?”
Nell ignored him. She pushed past him and got to her feet. She went to the still-open door and looked down the empty hall. She spun about the study room, peeking behind chairs, cabinets, stacks of books and papers, even bookshelves flush against the wall. In the cloud of dust that resulted from her exploration, there was nothing unusual, no Edmund or trace of his person to be found. She looked down at her notebook, still in her hands. There: the date, the time, the singular name, “Edmund J.”
The time. Why was Henry back already?
“What time is it?”
“It’s just past noon. I came to see if you’d take lunch with me in the yard. Did you fall asleep?”
“Asleep?”
The angle of the sun had indeed shifted in the windows. She’d been unconscious for over two hours. She’d lost time.
She stared through her concerned husband’s face, the facts and questions of the matter whirling before her eyes. Had she really seen Edmund? If she had, then she had no proof, none whatsoever. While her husband was more open-minded than most, he would not believe her account without corroborating evidence. She wasn’t even sure she believed it. Afterall, without a second witness—
“Thom!”
“What?”
She plucked her abandoned pencil from the floor, rushed down the hall and knocked on Thom’s door. This time when he opened, it was with a beef tongue sandwich still in hand, a napkin tucked in at his collar.
“Yes, Mrs. Hodgson? Hello, Professor Hodgson.”
“Thom. How are you?” returned Henry.
“Good, and—”
“Thom, did I come and knock on this door at half-past nine?” Nell interrupted.
“I believe it was closer to nine, but yes, you did.”
Nell jotted a quick note. “And did you see or hear anything strange before or after that?”
“Have you come across something?” Thom asked. His eyes had filled with that active spark that only flickered into being when he was about to argue. “Please, do tell!”
Nell covered her notes with her hand and answered with a cool, academic smile that was all ivory. “In due time. Please, do not risk biasing your answers with questions. Did you see or hear anything?”
The spark died almost immediately, snuffed out. Thom very visibly riffled through the scattered pages of his physical memory. “I can’t say that I did. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t notice if cannon were fired in the courtyard. You know how it is ….”
“Yes, yes, I’m afraid I do,” Nell said. She rubbed her eyes, not in the least refreshed by her lost morning. “Thank you for your time, Thom. Please let me know if you recall anything.”
“Now what was all that about?” asked Henry. He gestured at her notebook. “Did you really experience something? You know it would be very helpful to the Society if you could verify some data. Any data really.”
“I think the opposite, actually,” she said. In the half-light of the office everything seemed dimmer than it had a minute before. “As scientists, we cannot be seen to fabricate our own data with personal reflections and anecdotes. We must fashion experiments, collate data, submit for review, and allow others to attempt to repeat our results. I can’t go about simply saying I saw a phantasm.”
“A phantasm? Are you saying you had a medium’s dream?” Henry stroked his beard, dark eyes concerned but fascinated.
“I’m saying nothing, my love. But do take a note of my mental state for the record. It may become relevant later.”
“Quite! As long as you promise to record anything you experience regardless of whether you feel you can relay it to me.”
“Of course.”
“Oh my, love,” Henry said, sweeping Nell into his arms. “Do be safe. And let me know if anything frightens you?”
“Frighten me?” she laughed. She repressed the memory of that awful wave that had consumed her consciousness and stolen her time, unwilling to let Henry feel her tremble. She would need to record that experience in detail. “Impossible.”