The Medium by Noëlle Sickels Page A

her hands to her throat and gasped for breath.
    Walter pushed his chair back from the table. Mr. Grauer rebuked him with a gesture one might make to a boy squirming in church.
    Ursula gently grasped the back of her granddaughter’s neck. “What is it, Helen?”
    The constriction began to lessen.
    â€œSomething … something around my neck …”
    â€œHands?”
    â€œNot hands. Like a scarf … but tighter.”
    â€œAre there any spirits present?” Ursula repeated loudly, addressing the ceiling.
    The constriction was completely gone now. Helen let her hands fall to her lap.
    â€œYes,” she said.
    It seemed to her that her voice was coming from the back of her head or, impossibly, from behind her head.
    â€œWhat is your name?”
    Mrs. Samuels made a small whimpering sound.
    â€œMrs. Samuels,” Ursula asked, “does the neck or pain of the neck mean anything to you?”
    The woman nodded. A large tear was making its way down one cheek.
    â€œMy boy … my boy hanged himself,” she whispered.
    Helen coughed.

    â€œWon’t you tell us your name?” Ursula looked at Helen as she rephrased her question.
    Helen swayed a little, then nodded.
    â€œIris,” she said.
    â€œIris,” Ursula said, engaging the spirit directly while still looking at Helen, “do you have someone with you?”
    â€œYes,” Helen answered.
    â€œIs it possible to speak to them?”
    â€œI will speak for him.”
    â€œIs it my boy?” Mrs. Samuels interrupted. Emilie put a restraining hand on the distraught woman’s arm.
    â€œWho is with you, Iris?” Ursula said.
    Helen leaned back in her chair. She could feel sweat on her brow and on her upper lip.
    â€œSammy,” she said almost inaudibly.
    â€œThat’s him! That’s my Moshe. His friends called him Sammy. I never liked it. But boys—what can you do with boys today?” She gave a nervous laugh.
    â€œDo you want to ask him anything?” Ursula said to her.
    â€œAre you all right, Moshe?”
    Helen saw Iris hovering serenely beside Mrs. Durkin’s sideboard. One sleeve of Iris’s robe was rippling as if she were standing in a breeze. Helen couldn’t see Moshe, but she sensed an agitated presence next to Iris and knew that he was the cause of the sleeve moving. Then Iris’s voice was in her mind, at once strange and intimate.
    â€œIris says Sammy is on the road to perfection,” Helen said.
    â€œI didn’t get to tell him … to tell him good-bye.”
    â€œIris says Sammy knows you love him. There is no time for regrets. The past is not here.”
    Iris was fading. Helen looked away from her to the sputtering candle. “They’re going,” she said.
    â€œNo!” cried Mrs. Samuels.

    Mrs. Durkin got up and turned on a floor lamp. Now they were only seven people around a table in an ordinary dining room. Mrs. Samuels was weeping into a large white handkerchief.
    â€œHe hasn’t really left you, Mrs. Samuels,” Emilie consoled her.
    â€œNothing is lost but it changes,” Ursula added. “We are none of us ever alone.”

CHAPTER 9
    The next morning, it was raining. The air was the color of pussy willows. Helen was reminded it was Saturday by the fact that no one had knocked at her door to hustle her out of bed.
    Just as she reached to push open the swinging door to the kitchen, she heard her name mentioned in conversation. This was getting to be an uncomfortable habit, catching news of herself while hidden behind a door.
    â€œHow can you be so sure, Nanny, that Helen wouldn’t have been hurt?” Walter was saying.
    â€œYou heard how Emilie begins by calling on good spirits,” Ursula answered.
    â€œBut bad spirits can show up anyway,” Emilie reminded her.
    â€œBad,” Ursula mused. “We must be careful to judge when we do not understand all.”
    â€œI judge someone who