The Collected Short Fiction

Dead Letters (1978)

The séance was Bob’s idea, of course. We’d finished dinner and were lighting more candles to stave off the effects of the power cut when he made the suggestion.

‘What’s the point? The apartment’s only three years old,’ Joan said, though in fact she was disturbed by this threat of a séance in our home. But he’d brought his usual bottle of Pernod to the dinner party, inclining it toward us as if he’d forgotten that nobody else touched the stuff, and now he was drunk enough to believe he could carry us unprotesting with him. He almost did. When opposition came, it surprised me almost as much as it did Bob.

‘I’m not joining in,’ his wife, Louise, said. ‘I won’t.’

I could feel one of his rages building, though usually they didn’t need to be provoked. ‘Is this some more of your stupidity we have to suffer?’ he said. ‘Don’t you know what everyone in this room is thinking of you?’

‘I’m not sure you do,’ I told him sharply. I could see Stan and Marge were embarrassed. I’d thought Bob might behave himself when meeting them for the first time.

He peered laboriously at me, his face white and sweating as if from a death battle with the Pernod. ‘One thing’s sure,’ he said. ‘If she doesn’t know what I think of her, she will for the next fortnight.’

I glared at him. He and Louise were bound for France in the morning to visit her relatives; the tickets were poking out of his top pocket. We’d made this dinner date with them weeks ago ‘as usual, to relieve Louise’s burdens of Bob and of the demands of her work as a nurse‘ and as if to curtail the party Bob had brought their flight date forward. I imagined her having to travel with Bob’s hangover. But at least she looked in control for the moment, sitting in a chair near the apartment door, away from the round dining table. ‘Sit down, everybody,’ Bob said. ‘Before someone else cracks up.’

From his briefcase where he kept the Pernod he produced a device that he slid into the middle of the table, his unsteady hand slipping and almost flinging his toy to the floor. I wondered what had happened in the weeks since I’d last seen him, so to lessen his ability to hold his drink; he’d been in this state when they arrived. As a rule he contrived to drink for much of the day at work, with little obvious effect except to make him more unpleasant to Louise. Perhaps alcoholism had overtaken him at last.

The device was a large glass inside of which sat a small electric flashlight sat on top of another glass. Bob switched on the flashlight and pressed in a ring of cork that held the glasses together while Marge, no doubt hoping the party would quiet down, dealt around the table the alphabet Bob had written on cards. I imagined him harping on the séance to Louise as he prepared the apparatus.

‘So you’re not so cool as you’d like me to think,’ he said to her, and blew out all the candles.

I sat opposite him. Joan checked the light switch before taking her place next to me, and I knew she hoped the power would interrupt us. Bob had insinuated himself between Stan and Marge, smacking his lips as he drained his bottle. If I hadn’t wanted to save them further unpleasantness I’d have opposed the whole thing.

A thick scroll of candle smoke drifted through the flashlight beam. Our brightening hands converged and rested on the glass. I felt as if our apartment had retreated now that the light was concentrated on the table. I could see only dim ovals of faces floating above the splash of light; I couldn’t see Louise at all. Silence settled on us like wax, and we waited.

After what seemed a considerable time I began to feel, absurdly perhaps, that it was my duty as host to start things moving. I’d been involved in a few séances and knew the general principles; since Bob was unusually quiet I would have to lead. ‘Is anybody there?’ I said. ‘Anyone there? Anybody there?’

‘Sounds like you’ve got a bad line,’ Stan said.

‘Shouldn’t you say ‘here’ rather than ‘there?’’ Marge said.

‘I’ll try that,’ I said. ‘Is anyone here? Anybody here?’

I was still waiting for Stan to play me for a stooge again when Bob’s hand began to tremble convulsively on the glass. ‘You’re just playing the fool,’ Joan said, but I was no more certain than she really was, because from what I could distinguish of Bob’s indistinct face I could see that he was staring fixedly ahead, though not at me. ‘What is it’ What’s the matter?’ I said, afraid both that he sensed something and that he was about to reveal the whole situation as an elaborate joke.

Then the glass began to move.

I’d seen it happen at séances before but never quite like this. The glass was making aimless darting starts in all directions, like an animal that had suddenly found itself caged. It seemed frantic and bewildered, and in a strange way its blind struggling beneath our fingers reminded me of the almost mindless fluttering of hands near to death. ‘Stop playing the fool,’ Joan said to Bob, but I was becoming certain that he wasn’t, all the more so when he didn’t answer.

Then the glass made a rush for the edge of the table, so fast that my fingers would have been left behind if our fingertips hadn’t been pressed so closely together that they carried each other along. The light swooped on the letter I and held it for what felt like minutes. It returned to the centre of the table, drawing our luminous orange fingertips with it, then swept back to the I. And again. I. I. I.

‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ Stan said.

‘He doesn’t know who he is,’ Marge whispered.

‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘Can you tell us your name?’

The glass inched toward the centre. Then, as if terrified to find itself out in the darkness, it fled back to the I. Thinking of what Marge had said, I had an image of someone awakening in total darkness, woken by us perhaps, trying to remember anything about himself, even his name. I felt unease: Joan’s unease, I told myself. ‘Can you tell us anything about yourself?’ I said.

The glass seemed to be struggling again, almost to be forcing itself into the centre. Once there it sat shifting restlessly. The light reached towards letters, then flinched away. At last it began to edge out. I felt isolated with the groping light, cut off even from Joan beside me, as if the light were drawing on me for strength. I didn’t know if anyone else felt this, nor whether they also had an oppressive sense of terrible effort. The light began to nudge letters, fumbling before it came to rest on each. MUD, it spelled.

‘His name’s mud!’ Stan said delightedly.

But the glass hadn’t finished. R, it added.

‘Hello Mudr, hello Fadr,’ Stan said.

‘Murder,’ Marge said. ‘ He could be trying to say murder.’

‘If he’s dead, he should be old enough to spell.’

I had an impression of bursting frustration, of a suffocated, swelling fury. I felt a little like that myself, because Stan was annoying me. I’d ceased to feel Joan’s unease; I was engrossed. ‘Do you mean murder?’ I said. ‘Who’s been murdered?’

Again came the frustration, like the leaden shell of a storm. Incongruously, I remembered my own thwarted fury when I was trying to learn to type. The light began to wobble and glide, and the oppression seemed to clench until I had to soothe my forehead as best I could with my free hand.

‘Oh my head,’ Marge said.

‘Shall we stop?’ Joan said.

‘Not yet,’ Marge said, because the light seemed to have gained confidence and was swinging from one letter to another. POISN, it spelled.

‘Six out of ten,’ Stan said. ‘Could do better.’

‘Shut up, Stan,’ Marge said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Stan said. ‘You’re not taking this nonsense seriously’ Because if that’s what we’re doing, deal me out.’

The glass was shuddering now and clutching letters rapidly with its beam. ‘Please, Stan,’ Marge said. ‘Say it’s a game, then. If you sit out now you won’t be able to discuss it afterward.’

DSLOLY, the glass had been shouting. ‘Poisoned slowly,’ Stan translated. ‘Very clever, Bob. You can stop it now.’

‘I don’t think it is Bob,’ I said.

‘What is it then, a ghost’ Don’t be absurd. Come on then, ghost. If you’re here let’s see you!’

I felt Marge stop herself saying ‘Don’t!’ I felt Joan tense, and I felt the oppression crushed into a last straining effort. Then I heard a click from the apartment door.

Suddenly the darkness felt more crowded. I began to peer into the apartment beyond the light, slowly in an attempt not to betray to Joan what I was doing, but I was blinded by the glass. I caught sight of Stan and knew by the tilt of his head that he’d realised he might be upsetting Louise. ‘Sorry, Louise,’ he called and lifted his face ceilingward as he realised that could only make the situation worse.

Then the glass seemed to gather itself and began to dart among the letters. We all knew that it was answering Stan’s challenge, and we held ourselves still, only our exhausted hands swinging about the table like parts of a machine. When the glass halted at last we’d all separated out the words of the answer. WHEN LIGHT COMS ON, it said.

‘I want to stop now,’ Joan said.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll light the candles.’

But she’d gripped my hand. ‘I’ll do it,’ Stan said. ‘I’ve got some matches.’ And he’d left the table, and we were listening to the rhythm he was picking out with his shaken matches as he groped into the enormous surrounding darkness, when the lights came on.

We’d all heard the sound of the door but hadn’t admitted it, and we all blinked first in that direction. The door was closed. It took seconds for us to realise there was no sign of Louise.

I think I was the first to look at Bob, sitting grinning opposite me behind his empty bottle of Pernod. My mind must have been thinking faster than consciously, because I knew before I pulled it out that there was only one ticket in his pocket, perhaps folded to look like two by Louise as she laid out his suit. Bob just grinned at me and gazed, until Stan closed his eyes.