should be bestowed on someone of the weaker sex, though I suppose the female’s sensitive nature is what makes them more conducive to receiving communication from the other side.”
It had been years since Tabby indulged in missing her mother, but she missed her now with a longing that shot through her body like hungry fire. Even Eli seemed distant, like he belonged to a life lived long ago. What she wouldn’t give to be far away from this cold, sterile place, and back in the cemetery with the familiar headstones and the sounds of the city, Eli singing a hymn under his breath as he weeded.
Someone had wheeled the gurney so close to her that she could smell the faint scent of lime and decay. The sheet had been removed, revealing the prostrate body of a woman, and a wave of nausea came over Tabby.
The way Tabby saw it, she had two options.
One: Lie. Tell them it didn’t work. How would they know if she had opened her mind or not? She could simply say she had and that no communication had come through. Perhaps she could lie about what the spirit said, tell them just what they wanted to hear. But what exactly did they want to hear?
Two: be a good girl and open her mind, faithfully relaying everything the spirit said, thus helping Mr. Whitby reach his abhorrent goal.
As far as options went, they weren’t ideal. She felt a surge of protectiveness for the spirit of the dead woman. How would she reassure this poor spirit that she would be all right? Would she be all right? Or were Whitby and Jameson damning her to some kind of unspeakable hell? In the previous experiments, Tabby had simply had to open her mind and make contact. There had never been a corpse in the room. She thought of Mr. Graham’s dying words, and fought another wave of nausea at the memory of bodies dancing with electricity.
A hush fell over the small assembly, and Tabby had to squint against the blinding light that suddenly shone in her face. Dr. Jameson cleared his throat and thanked Mr. Whitby for his opening words before launching into his own speech.
“Today we are gathered here to witness a new stage in the cycle of life. We are familiar with birth, with death, and now we seek to understand rebirth. I know that there is frustration at the perceived lack of progress, but I would be remiss in not pointing out that there is no such thing as a wasted experiment. Every experiment that we ran in the past that did not give us our desired outcome led us one step closer to this day.” He gestured to Tabby. “But we now have a valuable new tool that will bring us even further in our search. Will we see the spark of life rekindled today? It is possible, but not likely. Again, I urge patience and to remember that the scientific process is a slow, methodical one, as it should be.”
He sounded so reasonable, so logical. Tabby wished she could see the faces of the men in the audience, see how they reacted. How long had these experiments been going on? How many people in Boston were privy to the grotesque pageantries played out in this theater?
His speech concluded, Dr. Jameson bowed to light applause. Tabby twisted her neck to the side so that the corpse on the gurney filled her vision. Though the deep lines etched around the woman’s eyes and mouth spoke of a hard life, she was not old, perhaps thirty at most. She was covered by a sheet up to her neck, but in a dramatic flourish, Dr. Jameson flicked it down, revealing her bare chest. Tabby closed her eyes, unwilling to partake in the titillating spectacle that drew murmurs from the audience of men.
He spoke as he moved about the corpse, applying all manner of clamps and wires to the cold, hard flesh. When he was finished, he called for absolute quiet from the audience. “Now, Miss Bellefonte. I am going to ask you some questions about the woman beside you, just to establish that you’re truly in possession of the abilities attributed to you. If you answer these to satisfaction, I will remove the bindings and you may sit in a chair, or however is most conducive to you.”
She would cooperate, for now. She did not believe that anything she did would actually help them achieve their goal of