The Juliet (25 page)

“It looks ready to me.”

“I refer to politics, of course.”

“I see,” said Oliver. “The shake-down. Unexpected licenses, permits, pay-offs. I remember encountering similar difficulties. That’s why we make so few pictures on location anymore. There are fewer obstruction artists on the studio lot. So who requires appeasement? The Sheriff? Chamber of Commerce? Freemasons?”

Skinner waived his hand inclusively. “A variety of local interests, I’m afraid. They’ve only come forward with their hands out now that it appears we’re about to succeed.”

“Hell of a strategy, the old ‘watch and wait.’ Like hyenas on the Serengeti, biding their time until the antelope gives birth.”

At that moment Rebekah Skinner appeared on the stage, having emerged silently from the shadowed wings. Her hair was still soft and red; she wore it long with two strands on either side gathered into a small comb at the back of her head. Her face was rouged, and she wore a blue velvet gown, the style of which hinted at the antebellum era. Lace trimmed the sleeves and a deep-cut neckline framed her luminous, powdered décolletage.

“Gentlemen,” she said.

“Rebekah Skinner, what a delight it is to see you again,” said Oliver. It was supposed to have been her grand entrance, but Oliver though she looked like a rodeo clown. He recalled a time when he was very fond of the Mayor’s young wife, but so many of his softer feelings about the Skinners, and Centenary in general, went up in the smoke that took Mollina Grease.

Rebekah took two steps to the front of the stage and looked down on the men.

“Let us begin,” she said. Behind her was an oval table draped in black cloth, around which four chairs had been placed. A deck of worn tarot cards marked Rebekah’s seat. There was also a small silver bell. A drab maid stepped forward to light three stout lavender candles in the center of the table.

Skinner directed Oliver to sit near Rebekah.

Oliver surveyed the set up with that skeptical eye he’d boasted of, but there was no denying the slight thrill of hope. He could smell incense as it wafted overhead, and there was music, soft and sweet music. For all his posturing, Oliver was a man who loved stories and artificial atmospheres. He had an expert’s eye but a rube’s heart. It’s what made him such a good filmmaker.

He was falling for the Skinners’ spell already, so he decided it was time to let his manners fail. “Is that all? A redhead and two ghosts? What else you got?” He inadvertently slipped into diction of a cinematic thug.

The Skinners exchanged a warm, marital look.

“What we mean to communicate,” Rebekah explained, “is that Centenary is a special place where the lost is manifest. Lily Joy’s spirit was embittered when we commenced renovations. Marcus meant to turn the Opera House into a conventional games parlor, but Lily wouldn’t have it. She was very destructive.”

At this point, the center lavender candle flame licked sideways, and when it righted again it burned higher than the others. Rebekah paused out of respect.

“But then the sweet essence of the virgin Mollina Grease joined the whore, and there was peace.” Rebekah did not stumble over these terms, even though they made her guest uneasy. She bent her head forward and closed her eyes. The center candle shot up again, throwing a few sparks.

When Rebekah opened her eyes, her face was rosy with pleasure. “Ah,” she said.

The flame separated from the candle altogether and now hovered over the table, independently. It moved laterally, close to Oliver, as if inspecting his face. He held still in its illumination. It moved to Skinner’s face, and then back again.

“How extraordinary. This is Lily Joy’s incarnation,” Rebekah said of the hovering flame. “She does not wish to be table bound this evening.”

“Indeed,” observed Skinner. He began buttoning the center of his waistcoat. “Hobart, it appears that Miss Joy wants to travel.”

Skinner stood, bowed to the flame and said, “Lead on, dear lady.” With this, the flame began to swoop like a dragonfly, moving higher and higher.

All faces tilted upward to follow the progress of the flame. Candle tricks were easy ones. Oliver searched the glowing trails for some mechanism, a metal string or a glass pipe to explain what he was seeing.

The flame avatar of Lily Joy bounced upwards, and in her circlet of light she revealed sections of the unreconstructed boards of the peaked ceiling. Three quick hops, and there was a length of rope that hung from the old pulley. Another hop and there was a cobwebbed beam. Another hop and there was Mollina’s boot sole swinging, in and out of the light, not yet on fire.

Oliver stifled his surprise. The dancing flame began to spiral downwards and hovered when it reached the vicinity of the table again.

Then it darted out of the hall. The Skinners followed, leaving Oliver to make his own decision about joining them.

The foyer was well lit, and there was no sign of the flame, but one of the large oak doors was open to the dark night beyond it, giving the inescapable impression that Lily Joy had flittered off to join the stars. Oliver found Mr. Skinner pulling on his topcoat, while Rebekah was adjusting a simple hat. The drab servant girl who had lit the candles waited with Oliver’s coat over her arm.

Oliver slipped into his sleeves and asked, “Do you mean to tell me that the spirits can leave the premises?”

“Only Lily Joy,” said Rebekah. “She seems to have the run of all Centenary. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“I’ll say. I’ve never heard of such liberty.”

“Neither had we. But, as you have already witnessed, our Lily is no run of the mill emanation.”

“And the other?”

“Poor Mollina is bound to place. She can never leave the hall.”

At the threshold, Hobart Oliver felt the uncanny desert chill. The outlines of Centenary’s ruins were discernable, wrecked and glowing under a wedge of autumn moon.

The light from the foyer spilled yellow across the graveled street and onto the broken façade of a public house. The Skinners used this illumination to venture out. Oliver looked back, and for a moment the silhouette of the servant girl standing in front of the open door looked too much like Mollina, stalwart from the waist down, shoulders canted with warning. The girl closed the door and the light was gone. Mr. Skinner’s offer to find a lantern was rebuffed.

“There is plenty of moonlight,” his wife said. She peered down into the basin. “There she is.” She pointed past the foundations of what used to be the Patch General Store. Her gesture seemed to organize the shapes and shadows ahead.

Oliver’s eyes adjusted. There was a pale stripe of old road, and down it, a tiny throb of light. Lily Joy was at the bottom of town. He said, “Well, she’s gone far. I don’t recall what’s down there.”

Skinner shouted out for the servant girl. “Sarah!” The door opened immediately. “Sarah, keep a lamp ready.”

“Yes sir.”

“And brandy for our return.”

“Yes sir.”

Rebekah said to her husband, “Leave her alone, Marcus.”

“She likes it. She thinks she’s living inside a dime novel. Sarah!”

“Yes sir.”

“I need my stick.”

After a moment of fumbling the girl ran out to the party. She carried with her the Mayor’s tall walking stick—the practical one for moving rocks and encouraging snakes. She also brought a small skater’s lantern, more pretty than useful. She’d lit the wick, and its tiny kerosene-fueled flame was semitransparent.

The girl was excited. Skinner was right. In her heart she was on some sort of adventure. Her hair was pulled back to make her look older than she was, but her eyes gave her away. She was only fourteen or fifteen at the most. Oliver wondered if she had been sold to the Skinners by her parents. There were worse fates these days.

“Sarah,” said the Mayor, in direct defiance of his wife. “Would you care to accompany us? You can manage the lamp.”

The girl said, “Yes sir,” as if she knew no other words.

Rebekah was silent on the subject except to say, “Well, now we’ve lost her in all this fuss.” It was true. Lily Joy’s flicker was no longer visible. Rebekah cast a critical glance at the girl.

“Nonsense. We’ll find her again.” Skinner gestured towards the cleared, pale path between structures. “This was Penance Road. It leads down to certain districts where privacy was a concern twenty years ago. It also leads to the Sherriff’s building and the cells behind it. I had offices down there when I still practiced.” Skinner tapped his stick into the dirt for emphasis. “It will be a steep ascent on our return, I warn you.”

Skinner led his party into the shadow world of Centenary, moving slowly not because of his advanced years, but to preserve the relative silence.

Oliver could take or leave silence. He was modern; no thing was precious until a man shaped it. He asked, “How did Miss Joy meet her end?” The light of the skater’s lamp tilted in young Sarah’s hand.

“Her end?” said the Mayor. “Well, she was shot to death. That doesn’t sound unusual for a mining town, but Lily Joy was a vivacious creature, a force in our community.”

“You knew her?”

“We both did.”

“Who killed her?”

“No one knows for sure. Her body was discovered at the town’s entrance, propped up against a wooden post sign that has since been dismantled. It used to say
Welcome to Centenary
. She was shot in the chest.”

Sarah piped up, even though she knew she shouldn’t. “She was in her blooms.”

“Hush.”

Oliver was impressed by the blunt tale. He wanted to whisper to the chastened girl, “
They always are
.”

A steady incline led to the bottom of the basin, and where the terrain leveled out, more ruins lined both sides of Penance Lane. Skinner paused to scan the area, ostensibly looking for Lily Joy’s bouncing light to guide them further.

Rebekah Skinner, whose quietness was perceived as propriety, chose this moment to finish the story. “Lily Joy’s patrons thought of themselves as more than customers. They were her paramours, and so a dozen men, including bankers and merchants and lawmen, marched down to where her body had been abandoned. She looked like a lost doll, sitting in the dust, her head down over her blasted chest, her bare legs splayed. They placed her on a bier, and carried her towards the deadhouse to be examined and prepared for burial.”

Rebekah wrapped her arms around herself against the chill of the night and the recollection. “The next day those same men, dressed in their finest Sunday clothes, retrieved Lily’s body to deliver to the Apollo-Centenary Cemetery. As they carried her away in a pine box paid for by the judge himself, they began to sing funeral hymns. Songs sung by men alone are unbearably sad. And a funeral attended by men alone is an especially grim event. Without women to cry for them, the men themselves wept. It was horrible to hear and see.”

Oliver asked, “Did the women stay in their homes?”

“No,” said Rebekah, a sickness coating the word. “They met their husbands at the gates of the cemetery. They refused to allow them entry. The Good Women of Centenary turned them back.”

“What happened to Lily Joy?”

Mr. Skinner answered, “She was buried somewhere secret. Unmarked. Unconsecrated, of course.”

“Hence her need to haunt Centenary,” Rebekah said. “Not only was her murder unsolved, but her final resting place is unknown.”

Oliver felt the hairs on his neck rise, and he almost laughed at his response. Here he was in the middle of a ghost town, in the dark of night, listening to a well-practiced and expertly performed ghost story. He was beginning to suspect that Sarah’s presence was part of the plan. The Innocent amongst the Cynics. The Agent of Faith. What did the Skinners have prepared as a finale?

An owl called out, and Sarah dropped the lantern.

The girl began to heave as if the breath were being pulled from her. Oliver reached out, but she spit at him, and Skinner called her name sharply, “Sarah!”

Sarah dropped to the ground on her hand and knees, he back arching.

“She’s having a fit.” Rebekah attempted to kneel beside Sarah, collecting her within the expanse of the blue gown, arms around her torso. Sarah began to shudder.

“We need a stick. To place in her mouth.”

Oliver grabbed the skater’s lantern. Its flame was almost drowned, but once righted it flared back to life. He used it to scan the ground. Mr. Skinner joined his wife as they both attempted to restrain Sarah with their weight and their words.

It didn’t work. She knocked her employers aside, and stood again, now panting like a dog. Her face was streaming with sweat that shined in the cool night air.

“That is no epileptic fit.” Rebekah Skinner cowered under the girl, while her husband tried to catch his breath.

“Sarah, stop!” Skinner sounded betrayed. The girl bounced up and down on her toes, poised for flight.

Oliver ceased his search for a suitable stick.

The girl bolted, disappearing in the dark. The Skinners picked themselves up slowly, knocking the dirt from their clothes and checking each other for signs of damage. Oliver waited on them, not sure what to do next.

It was impossible to see beyond their small, dimly lit circle, but they could hear the girl scrabbling in the darkness. Her boots crunched in the dry soil, and when she paused, her panting breath gave her position away. She seemed to be circling the party, like a predator.

“Sarah!” Skinner shouted in his deepest, most resonant tone.

Circling, circling. Oliver gave a nervous giggle. “We’re being terrorized by a child playing ghostie.”

Rebekah said, “Perhaps.”

Skinner had a thought. He called out again, “Lily? Lily Joy!”

Sarah stopped. She panted.

Encouraged, Rebekah said to the night, “Are you Lily Joy? Lily, show us where you are.”

The light of skater’s lantern flickered out.

“Damn,” said Oliver.

In that moment of darkness the girl’s footsteps made deliberate progress towards the group. Skinner tried a gentler, less commanding tone. “Lily Joy. We’ve been looking for you.”

The girl came close enough to make herself visible but not close enough to be caught. She whispered, “
Follow
.” Her arms pointed straight down, and her hands were balled into fists. Slowly she turned and began walking further down Penance Lane.