Chapter 8: The First Séance

The clock was ticking. Not a metaphorical clock, but the very real, very loud, forty-eight-hour countdown initiated by Mr. Kim's final, damning phone call. The neon-orange eviction notice, which Donnie had retrieved from the trash and smoothed out, was folded neatly in his pocket, a constant, crinkling reminder of his impending doom. Desperation, he was discovering, was a powerful motivator. It had propelled him out of the manor and into the gray, mundane world of Schroon Falls with a singular, grim purpose.

His first stop was the Schroon Falls Public Library, a squat brick building that smelled of old paper and disinfectant. He sat at a public computer terminal whose keyboard was sticky with the residue of a thousand other hands. The machine was painfully slow, each click of the mouse followed by a long, agonizing pause as the ancient processor considered his request. With the patience of a man who had no other choice, he hastily designed a flyer. He used a plain, severe font, the kind used for warnings and official notices. There were no graphics, no flourishes. Just the cold, hard facts. He typed out the words, each one a small, calculated lie built upon a larger, impossible truth.

Experience the Voices of Schroon River Manor.

A Clairaudient Evening with D. Keller.

$20 Admission. Tonight Only.

All souls welcome.

He read the text over and over. "Clairaudient Evening." It sounded official, professional even. He'd found the term online, nestled between "Clairvoyant" and "Clairsentient." It meant 'clear hearing.' It was perfect. "D. Keller" was a masterstroke of minimalist branding, suggesting a man of mystery and importance, not Donnie Keller, a guy who had recently failed a slug audition. He sent the file to the library's printer, a large, clanking beast that charged ten cents a copy. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the last of his worldly funds: two dollars and forty cents in assorted coins. He fed the coins into the machine, and with a series of loud whirs and clunks, it spat out a small stack of twenty-four black-and-white flyers. His entire marketing budget, spent.

With the stack of still-warm flyers in his hand, he moved through the perpetually overcast town with a grim efficiency he didn't know he possessed. He was no longer just a jobless loser; he was a promoter, a publicist, a barker for the weirdest show on Earth. He tacked a flyer to the cork bulletin board at the Falls Diner, right next to an ad for a lost cat and a poster for a high school bake sale. He pinned another one up at the post office, a third at the laundromat. He felt a strange mixture of shame and pride. He was advertising a complete fraud, a performance built on his freakish vocal talents and the existence of actual ghosts. The absurdity was dizzying. But as he pressed the last thumbtack into the bulletin board outside the town's only grocery store, he felt a flicker of something else: determination. He was going to pull this off. He had to.

He returned to the Grand Hall of Schroon River Manor late that afternoon, the weight of the coming night settling upon him. The first order of business was to turn this dusty, decaying hall into a theater. He began dragging the heavy, dust-covered chairs from the edges of the room, arranging them in a neat semicircle facing the great, cold fireplace. Each chair let out a pained groan as he moved it, the sounds echoing in the vast, silent space. He arranged a dozen of them, a small, hopeful island of order.

He stood back to admire his work and realized he had a problem. The room was too dark. The faint, gray light filtering through the grimy windows was atmospheric, certainly, but it was also flat and uniform. He needed drama. He needed control. He needed shadows. Ambient gloom alone wasn't theatrical enough. Proper lighting, of course, was out of the question. He had no money for lamps, for cables, for anything. He was a theatrical producer with a budget of zero. He would have to rely on the manor itself. With a sigh, he began a pragmatic search of the mansion's forgotten corners.

He started in the main kitchen, a cavernous room with a checkered floor and rusted, industrial-sized appliances. Tucked away behind a walk-in pantry was a small, unassuming door he hadn't noticed before. It led to a damp, musty maintenance closet that smelled of rust, old oil, and mildew. He used the flashlight on his phone to pierce the darkness. The small room was a tomb of forgotten labor. There were stacks of rusted paint cans, stiffened paint brushes, and old, cracked buckets. And there, on a high shelf, behind a bag of hardened cement, he saw it. A dusty old toolbox. He pulled it down, its metal groaning in protest. It was heavy. He opened the rusted latches. Inside, nestled amongst moldy rags and a set of antique wrenches, were three large, heavy, industrial-grade flashlights. They were the old, metal kind, built like small batons, the kind security guards and policemen used in old movies. They were dented and scratched, clearly left behind by some long-gone caretaker, but they were exactly what he needed.

He unscrewed the end of the first one. The batteries inside were caked in a white, chalky corrosion. He used the edge of a wrench to scrape the contacts clean, blew out the dust, and screwed it back together. He clicked the switch. Nothing. He shook it. Nothing. With a grunt of frustration, he gave it a few solid whacks against the palm of his hand. It flickered once, twice, then burst to life, casting a powerful, brilliant beam of light through the darkness of the closet. He felt a surge of triumph. He cleaned and revived the other two. They worked as well. The manor, in its own strange, decaying way, had provided the tools for its own haunting.

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Night fell on Schroon River Manor not as a blanket, but as a shroud. The Grand Hall was plunged into a profound darkness, the only illumination coming from the three strategically placed flashlights. He had set them on the floor, aimed upwards, their powerful beams cutting sharp, dramatic cones of light that threw the shrouded furniture into stark relief and created long, eerie shadows that danced and writhed on the high walls. Donnie stood by the great oak door, a dark silhouette against the flashlight-illuminated gloom. In his hand, he held a dusty, black top hat he had found in a wardrobe in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was his cash box.

He heard the crunch of gravel outside. The first customers had arrived. A small line of four curious townspeople formed on the sagging porch. He opened the door just wide enough for them to enter one by one, collecting their money with a grim, silent efficiency. The first was a woman in her late sixties with kind, earnest eyes and a large amethyst crystal clutched in one hand. She gave him a twenty-dollar bill and a reverent smile, as if she were paying for a genuine spiritual experience. Donnie dropped the bill into the hat. Next were two local teenagers, a boy and a girl, dressed in elaborate but cheap goth attire—all black clothes, heavy eyeliner, and silver jewelry that was probably painted plastic. They radiated an air of performative boredom, but their eyes were wide with curiosity. They slapped their money down with theatrical disinterest, a crumpled twenty from each of them. Donnie nodded, his face a neutral mask. The last to arrive was Mr. Prince, the town librarian, a meticulous, bird-like man in his fifties. He wore a neat tweed jacket and held a small, leather-bound notepad and a pen, ready to document the evening's events. He paid his twenty with a look of intense, scholarly interest.

With eighty dollars now nestled in the dusty top hat—more money than he'd had in a couple weeks—Donnie closed the massive oak door. The sound echoed through the hall, signaling the beginning of the show. The small audience settled into the dusty chairs, their hushed whispers rustling in the darkness. Mr. Prince, on the end of the row, was already taking notes. Donnie walked to the front of the room where a small, rickety table stood, a single, unlit white candle in its center. He placed the top hat down on the table with deliberate, reverent care. It was the offering. It was the centerpiece of the ritual. The Spectral Siblings were nowhere to be seen, but he could feel them. A palpable chill hung in the air, a drop in temperature that had nothing to do with the night outside and everything to do with the four invisible entities who were waiting in the wings.

Donnie sat down at the table and waited. He waited for the rustling to stop, for the whispers to die down. When the room finally fell silent, he discovered a flair for the dramatic he never knew he possessed. He let the silence stretch, drawing it out, making it thick and heavy and uncomfortable. He let his audience lean forward in their chairs, their anticipation building with every passing second. Finally, when the silence was so complete it felt like a physical presence, he spoke. His voice was his own, low and somber, a quiet anchor in the charged atmosphere.

"They are quiet tonight," he said, his gaze sweeping over the small, upturned faces illuminated from below by the flashlights. "Shy. But there is one who wishes to speak. A woman's heart, broken by the sea."

Mrs. Janson, the woman with the amethyst, leaned forward even further, clutching her crystal so tightly her knuckles were white.

Donnie closed his eyes, a simple gesture that signaled a profound shift. This was the moment of transition. He shut out the dusty hall, the four curious faces, and the pressing reality of his rent. He reached inward, to the voices he had so carefully recorded and rehearsed. As he did, a faint, shimmering outline of Amanda, the tragic ghost, materialized in the deep shadows behind his chair. She was almost invisible, a subtle distortion in the darkness, unnoticed by the audience who were all focused intently on him. His posture changed. His shoulders, usually slumped with the weight of his own cynicism, softened, becoming more delicate. His head tilted slightly, a pose of ingrained, sorrowful grace. When he spoke again, the voice that emerged was not his own. It was the soft, tragically beautiful voice of Amanda, a voice he now knew as well as his own.

"The salt spray..." the voice whispered, a fragile, breathy sound that seemed to rustle the very air in the room. "...still I taste the salt spray of that final, cruel morning..."

The audience was captivated. The goth teenagers, Tim and Sonia, had stopped looking bored. Their mouths were slightly agape, their performative cynicism forgotten. Mr. Prince had stopped writing, his pen hovering over his notepad. Mrs. Janson's eyes were wide, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated belief.

Donnie, as Amanda, continued, letting the overwrought poetry fill the hall. The words were silly, the sentiment was melodramatic, but the voice, the voice was perfect.

"My captain, bold and brave of heart,

Promised a return from the start.

But the Atlantic, a jealous bride,

Pulled my love beneath the tide."

As the last word left his lips, a sudden, inexplicable cold breeze swept through the sealed Grand Hall. It was a phantom wind, rustling the dust sheets on the furniture and causing the unlit candle on the table to flicker, its wick dancing as if from a passing shadow. Mrs. Janson gasped audibly, her hand flying to her mouth. Tim and Sonia exchanged a wide-eyed, silent look. This was not part of any show they had ever seen.

As Donnie continued to recite the poem, his voice filled with a perfect, heartbreaking sorrow, Amanda's translucent form behind his chair became slightly more defined. Her faint, bluish light intensified. She brought a spectral hand to her heart, her movements perfectly mimicking the pain in the words he spoke. Her silent grief was a ghostly harmony to his audible sorrow. From her seat, Mrs. Janson's eyes widened further. Her gaze shifted from Donnie to the space just behind him. For a split second, she saw it clearly—the shimmering, heartbroken form of a woman in a lacy gown. It was just a glimpse, but it was enough. Mr. Prince, following her gaze, saw nothing but shadows, but the look of profound, rational confusion on his face was just as telling. He stopped trying to write and just stared, his meticulous, orderly world thrown into chaos.

Donnie reached the end of the poem. He delivered the final line, then let out the final, heartbreaking sigh he had perfected in their first rehearsal. The sound was a masterpiece of misery, a single, perfect note of loss that seemed to drain all the warmth from the room. It echoed through the hall and then faded, leaving an absolute, ringing silence in its wake. As the last of the sound died, Donnie slumped forward in his chair as if the effort of channeling the spirit had completely exhausted him. Behind him, the shimmering outline of Amanda dissolved, melting back into the darkness.

For a long, breathless moment, the audience was too stunned to react. The spell held them fast. Then, Mrs. Janson, with tears openly streaming down her face, began to applaud. It was a soft, hesitant clap at first, but it broke the silence. Slowly, the others joined in—the goth teenagers clapping with a newfound, genuine respect; Mr. Prince applauding with the stunned, rhythmic motion of a man trying to process an event that defied all logic. The first séance was a success.

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Donnie waited. He sat at the table in the flashlight-illuminated darkness, listening as his small audience filed out, their hushed, excited whispers echoing behind them. He waited until he heard the heavy, final thud of the great oak door closing. He was alone again. He, the dust, the shadows, and the four silent, invisible beings who had just become his business partners.

He let out a long, slow breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He felt strangely hollowed out, his throat raw, his mind buzzing. He looked at the dusty top hat on the table. He reached out, picked it up, and emptied the contents onto the tabletop. A small mountain of crumpled, worn bills tumbled out. Fives, tens, twenties. He began to count, his fingers separating and smoothing the bills with a focused, almost reverent intensity. One hundred. One hundred and fifty. Two hundred. Two hundred and twenty. Two hundred and forty. Two hundred and forty-five dollars.

He stared at the pile of money. It wasn't a fortune, but it was more than he had possessed at one time in years. It was enough. It was enough to placate Mr. Kim, to push back the encroaching tide of homelessness. It was enough to buy groceries for a few weeks; not real groceries, just instant noodles... and maybe some more pickles. He picked up a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. It was real. It smelled faintly of perfume and old pockets. This worked. The absurd, insane, impossible scheme actually worked. The first test had been passed. A strange, unfamiliar feeling began to bubble up inside him. It wasn't joy, not yet. It was something far more potent. It was relief.