Séance at Dover
A short story.
Note: If you are in New York City, please join us tomorrow, Friday October 18th at 6pm, for a special Beautiful Eccentrics live event, The Carnival of the Political Animals —an evening of Civil War-era music, political fables and commentary, with El Club de Protesta and Pheonix Vaughn. More information here:
https://www.franciskiteclub.com/calendar#/events/117727
The following is a short story which I wrote in January 2011, as part of a small book titled Three Sibling Stories, created for the exhibition Subtext at West Space in Melbourne, Australia, organized by Anusha Kenny and Jeff Khan from UN projects. Each story was written using a self-imposed rule, which was to incorporating a group of 10 random found text phrases from used books, which can be seen in the illustrations that accompany the book.
The strictest secrecy had been kept. I was in great expectation as I hurried to arrive to the séance of Dr. Mogrhabe. I remember it well: it was a cold night on the 27th of November of 1898 — I hold this date in my memory because it was the anniversary of Alma’s death, and I had remarked at the time this coincidence when the secret announcement had come to me. It had those characteristic words that the converted knew his invitations had: “you have been invited to a special evening. Do not tell anyone of this invitation.”
Many of my close friends and acquaintances knew of Dr Mogrhabe’s séances, but no one could participate unless they were specifically invited. His spells were memorable, or so I was told. Every word was something the audience would carry away and think about.
I had always thought that I would never merit becoming one of his guests, as I could not fathom what would incite to choose me as a guest, given that I am a theologian who does not approve of these kind of incursions into the unknown. But such was my fate on that day. I have to say that I did not take this invitation without certain apprehension. I remembered the case of Jonathan Strange, who we all knew so well from the Royal St. George’s Golf Club, who at one of the séances he suffered such an impression that he was never the same again, yet he never wanted to discuss the matter. He only walked around the streets with the visage of a corpse. I, too, thought that this invitation could be fatal for me, but I also thought — and this is really the fatalistic character in me— that which was meant to happen needed to be confronted. Why meet improbable disaster half-way, I said.
Dr. Mogrhabe lived in the outskirts of Dover, up a muddy road. I had decided to walk it, in order to preserve the secrecy of my visit. I was unwell — I had had a can of sardines for breakfast, which had not agreed with my stomach. I had not employed good judgment in thinking that they were still edible, even though they had been sitting in my pantry for twenty years. There was something meaningful in eating that last can, the last remainder of the shipment we had purchased when we were still a family.
As I walked the slippery uphill, I fell a number of times, and my lamp broke against a tree in one of them, so I had to barely orient myself with the tenuous moonlight and my sense of hearing, which, despite the noise of the rain that fell implacably, told me which was the side of the shore (for all the many misfortunes that I have endured, the good fairy happened to give me the rare gift of an extremelysensitive ear). At that moment, I heard a deep voice behind my back, saying:
“This was an old Roman road that was used for a while to go to the coalfields, but it had been abandoned.”
I abruptly turned, shocked by the new presence. I saw a young man, yet dressed in what appeared to be an attire of forty years ago, as if he had continued wearing the fashions of his parents. For a moment he reminded me to myself at that day and age. “I was also summoned by Dr. Mogrhabe”, he said, by means of explanation. “We will share the same luck.” “Or misfortune”, I replied. “I am Thomas Quercy”.
“Wellesman,” he replied after staring at me for a second, and started walking in front of me. I was grateful for that, as it was easier to follow his steps than to make up the road through my hearing. It seemed strange to me that he also did not have a lamp, yet he seemed to walk with perfect assurance toward our destination, as if he had done the path every day of this life.
“Did you know that Dr. Moghrabe was a chiropractor and an eye doctor?” Wellesman said. “He was a singer first, a baritone, and then learned the celesta. But soon he realized that there was no future in that antiquated instrument.
Same with voice. Baritones have gone out of style too.”
I was going to inquire further before he continued:
“He studied it in Japan. He developed a special screen through which patients who were color blind could see colors for the first time.”
“How could that be possible?”— I said.
“His invention was very successful, but he and his associates refused to capitalize on it. They wanted their invention to change the world. In the same way they opposed the idea of business as an end in itself, feeling that design should be improved for the sake of as many people as possible, helping them toward the attainment of what is often called the better life.”
“What did he do then?” I inquired.
“He moved here, to Dover, where he had inherited a mansion from his great-grandmother, his last living relative. The house had been preserved exactly as it had been left by her grandparents, and as he arrived, he decided that he would maintain the same aspect of this house to conduct his experiments of visuality.”
“He is a peculiar man”, I said.
“It is not his taste but only his standard of genuineness that is so evidently higher than that of his contemporaries.”
I then had to ask Wellesman:
“Have you visited his house before?”
“Once you have learned it, you never forget this path.”
Wellesman was clearly one of those men who did not enjoy sharing things about himself, bur rather found comfort in discussing others.
After a short silence in our walk I added:
“What should I expect of this séance?”
Wellesman didn’t answer at first. I wondered if he was thinking or if he had been somehow offended by the question.
“They are impossible to describe”, he said. “They don’t resemble any other séance you may know.”
“Well”, I said, “I have never been to a séance, so I am not sure I would be able to compare it to anything.”
“They all start with a photograph.”
“A photograph of the deceased person?”
“No, that would be counter-productive”, said Wellesman.
“It usually is a photograph of something the person saw and somehow related to, an image that summarizes their life. Once, when the widow of Jonathan Williams, who was a fisherman from the north, requested a séance, Doctor Moghrabe chose a photograph of a walrus.”
“A walrus?”
“We observed it for eight hours straight. We must have started around four o’clock, shortly after supper. Toward midnight we heard a noise, and the disheveled figure of the fisherman appeared before our very eyes. In a way, I surmise, we had become him by force of observation.”
“I will believe it only when I see it”, I said, unsure on whether I was attempting a joke.
“Some of us gather every week here, when we earn Dr. Moghrabe’s trust.”
“I can’t imagine coming every week to summon a group of ghosts.”
“You can only summon one at a time”, Wellesman said. “According to Dr. Moghrabe, spirits can’t speak to each other. Although sometimes they believe they can see other spirits and talk to them, but in reality they are only talking to themselves.”
I was a bit puzzled by the idea. As I was about to ask for clarification, Wellesman asked me:
“Didn’t you ever want to get in touch with someone you had lost?”
The question shook me a little.
“I sometimes wish I could talk again to my sister Alma.”
“When did she pass away?”
“Eight years ago, on my birthday.”
“You know —said Wellesman— they say here in Dover that when a sibling dies on the birthday of another, the second sibling is likely to die on the birthday of the first one.”
“I don’t like to think about those things. And as I said, I am not so sure about conversing with ghosts.”
“But you should know, since you are a theologian — he added— that collective experiences are powerful spiritual things. When you meet with others and are well-guided, you can attain what you can never attain while alone. It then becomes possible for an individual and group experiences to reinforce one another so that the new conception of reality increasingly permeates the thought and feeling of the community.”
“How did you know that I was a theologian?” I asked, puzzled.
Wellesman didn’t answer my question. We had arrived to the house and he replied something to that effect. Dr. Moghrabe’s mansion, a grand but rickety old structure, lied at the top of a hill. I could only make the silhouette of the large structure with its various gables and the many enormous tree branches surrounding it against the dark blue color of the night sky. The house must have been a few hundred feet from the shore, as I could clearly hear the waves hitting the rocks. Later I saw some red lamps.
The last climb to the entrance was extremely uphill, and, me not being in the best health and disposition to climb, and it being that I had struggled to keep the pace with the more agile Wellesman, it took me a while to make that last stretch.
When I arrived at the gate, I couldn’t find Wellesman anymore. He apparently had rudely gone inside without waiting for me.
As I approached the entrance I realized that the red lights corresponded to a number of pretty Japanese red lanterns were hanging on the porch, which made the place even more unusual. There was a music coming from a phonograph, and I remember thinking that it was so interesting that the phonograph would never appear to stop.
As the door was open I walked into the foyer of this Georgian house which had seen better days. The walls of the vestibule were covered by daguerreotypes of every kind, every kind of scene. I had never seen so many photographs in the same place in my life. So enthralled I was with the display that I didn’t realize that there were no people to be seen in the house, yet, the interior was warm and the hallways were dimly lit, mainly with red Japanese lanterns. I started wondering about the stories behind these images. Some included a historical monument, another a giant tree, a spool, a toothbrush factory.
It must have been at that moment when I heard a faint voice at the end of a hallway.
“Its like a photograph that’s torn in pieces and put together again. You have to absorb it again. If you move it’s frightening.”
The long blue hallway, lit by the moon, seemed to be never ending. Each corner seemed covered by a framed photograph. I wanted to follow the voices, but my fascination for those images kept me moving very slowly. And slowly, the muffled voices started becoming more distinctive. I heard someone say:
“Perhaps the sardines had not been ruined, he thought.”
As I entered the larger room I knew then why I had been invited. Dr. Moghrabe was there, surrounded by aunt Rose, Brigitta, Ross, my closest friends— everyone I knew.
They all looked so much older, so changed, almost alien, especially Wellesman who now looked like his own grandfather. He was at the Doctor’s side, holding a photograph that I recognized and which was being observed attentively by the group. It was a photograph of our garden, taken that spring of 1879 when we moved to our house in Sussex. Alma was enjoying the recently bloomed hyacinths. She was sitting in that favorite veranda chair of hers, which can’t be seen in the photograph.
The photographer, who was me but now it feels to me as if it had been someone else —someone like Wellesman— was happy, oblivious of the possibility of a truncated future.
As the exposure was taken,he was silent for a moment, smiling queerly across the garden into the eye of the sun.
—