“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Farnsworth. “What might change?”

  “Well,” said Anastasia, “for now, you, Mrs. Farnsworth”—and she looked to the wife—“have only heard them. They have not sought to make their delights known to you in the flesh.”

  With the word “flesh,” Mrs. Farnsworth became so instantly still, so pale, that the possibility occurred to Anastasia that she’d just killed her, and they were just waiting for her to topple over. Hastily, she added, “I would say that this is good news, actually. For they do not seem to be malicious. Incautious, maybe. Maybe too enraptured in their celestial marriage…their frequent, repeated celestial marriage, apparently, which of course should not surprise us. For ghosts do not grow old, they do not tire…”

  “Then what do you suggest?” interrupted Mr. Farnsworth.

  Anastasia turned to him. “What I always suggest. That we put the question to them. After all, you are their guests.”

  “Ha!” said Mr. Farnsworth with a little snort. “Guests? That’s nonsense. We bought the house three years ago. The title, as they say, is free and clear.”

  “In the corporeal realm, perhaps, Mr. Farnsworth. But the dead do not use the Registry of Deeds. This is an old house. Three years means nothing in the spirit world. There has been a long succession of owners, God knows how many competing claims.”

  Mrs. Farnsworth turned to her husband. “I knew we never should have bought it!”

  Anastasia held up a hand. “That is not what I am saying. All homes have histories. What I am saying, rather, is that there just need be a mutual understanding between all interested parties. A realignment, if you will. You must, when the time comes, make your case to this…painter, this poet. Appeal to reason, sympathy, common interest.”

  “But how?” the couple asked, at once.

  It was then, looking beyond them, that Anastasia became aware of a single eye, belonging to the Farnsworth daughter, who had cracked open the door and stood watching from the darkness. For a moment, Anastasia felt exposed, as if her deceit were something that a child, who better knew the rules of the pretend, could see. She stiffened, lifted the cup of wine, and swirled the dregs. Now she felt that she was performing an act of confidence for not only the haunted woman, but all of them, the husband, child, ghosts.

  “It is late. Tomorrow night will be the séance. That is when we will find out.”

  * * *

  “Catamount, Madame Rossi, Puma concolor, known also as the cougar, the mountain lion, the panther. Extraordinarily rare these days. She has been stuffed as I apprehended her, in the moment of the attack.”

  They were in his study, a grand room in the new house, crowded with animals. By the window: the panther. On the dresser: a large, four-tusked creature that she had first thought to be the whim of a taxidermist, but which Mr. Farnsworth had explained was a warthog, and one that had also attacked him. He would show her the scar, but it was a bit high on the leg. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, smoking a pipe, dressed in an olive hunter’s jacket of worsted wool. She below him, on the couch; a zebra carpet with a raised head lay between them. On the desk: a tray, a decanter of whiskey, two glasses, a knife, a pheasant, a ruffed grouse.

  For the past two hours, he had given her a tour of the premises, during which they had discussed the history of venery (“such an odd word, that means both the hunt and conjugal pleasure”), differences in hunting rules and regulations in the states of New York and Massachusetts, the grouse (it really had been lovely, followed him like a puppy), how long a man could live only on rabbit (not long) versus opossum (fattier, thus longer), and the Indian practice of polygamy, a topic on which he’d made some study (he had a manuscript in progress, should she like to see).

  She listened patiently, mostly seeking anything that might be useful for the séance. But the tour of the home had yielded little by way of archaeology, for he’d kept but some dressers from the prior owner, a grandfather clock of Revolutionary vintage, a kitchen table, a bed.

  “Ah?” For a bed, at least, was germane to the troubles.

  “But the ghosts, Madame Rossi, hardly confine themselves to the bed.”

  And he had shown her the new ceilings of printed metal, the William Morris wallpaper, the Turkish rugs. The chimney needed mortaring, and there was still a draft in places—they would need to reframe the windows. He hoped that this had not disturbed her sleep.

  The only thing that had disturbed her sleep was the porcupine.

  “No celestial couplings?” he asked.

  She recognized the lidded gaze that had passed over her figure at the pitch of last night’s feast.

  “No couplings, Mr. Farnsworth. It was a very deep sleep.”

  She wondered how early he had started on the whiskey. Drinking was not unreasonable, given the situation. His wife had taken ill after last night’s conversation and, despite her bromides, passed much of the small hours assaulted by another ghostly performance.

  One of the dogs stirred by the fireplace, rose, and trotted over. Mr. Farnsworth bent to feed it something from his pocket, then resumed his regal posture. “It is all in her imagination, isn’t it?”

  Anastasia was unprepared for the directness of the question.

  “Sorry?”

  “This bacchanal. The voices.”

  “Oh, I do not know yet, Mr. Farnsworth.”

  He waved this away. “Nonsense. She’s crazy. You know that.”

  “I’ve said no such thing.”

  He pointed with his pipe. “But I can read you.”

  Anastasia watched the dog return to settle by the fire. “If I may, Mr. Farnsworth. I am surprised. Last night you seemed a man open to the possibility that our material realm exists within a greater fabric. Of the communication between worlds. When we discussed your colleague that had recommended me…”

  He waved his hand. “Oh, please. You know as well as I do that it was all for my wife’s benefit. I can hardly keep track of all the lies that I must engage with to keep this house together.”

  “The sounds you mentioned. The creaks, the footsteps.”

  “Old houses creak.”

  “Old houses also have ghosts, one might be inclined to answer.”

  He studied her for a moment, before he forced his most charming smile. “Madame Rossi. For a moment, please drop the stage show. I understand the necessity for therapeutic purposes. You’ll be paid, I assure you, but don’t treat me like a fool—I did not build my factories by being tricked by other people. I know flimflam when I see it. I’ve been to séances. Turnips that grow up from the carpet! Dancing vases! The ghost of King Philip! If I were the ghost of King Philip, I’d use the opportunity to finish what I’d started and massacre the lot of you lunatics.”

  He stopped and drew heavily on his pipe, found the embers dead, and poured himself another glass of whiskey. Anastasia watched him. For all his bombast, she did not dislike him. A proper adversary. At the same time, one did not need to believe in an afterlife to feel some outrage at those who so swiftly cast away the past.

  “And you do not think that, with all that I have seen, I’d be mad not to believe?”

  “Bah!”

  She followed his gaze to the window, where a pair of crows had settled in the branches of the tall, magnificent elm that rose in the dooryard. “I am surprised, Mr. Farnsworth. If you think that I’m a fraud, and that your wife is merely ill, I would suggest that you consider consulting a physician.”

  He took a gulp of whiskey. It was meant, she knew, to show resolve, but a slight trembling betrayed him. “Oh, don’t think I haven’t tried. But do you really believe that she would tell her doctor about such angelic buggery? She says her stomach hurts her; he sends us home with liver pills, or syrup for her nerves.”

  “A stomachache,” said Anastasia, “would not be my diagnosis. Nor liver pills my cure.”

  Another gulp. “It is good to know that we agree on one thing.”

  “More than one thing, I think. I’ll grant you madness too. But the mad hear ghosts as well.”

  He turned back and began to speak, but she held up a hand to stop him. Her bracelets clattered down her wrist. “I know what you will tell me, Mr. Farnsworth. But I don’t wish to go in circles. One believes the world is enchanted or one does not—it is no use trying to convince another person otherwise. If I might suggest something more productive? I have been conducting séances for nearly thirty years. If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that apparitions do not occur by happenstance. They come at certain times of—how might I put it—opportunity. That is, they tell us something about the situation in which they appear.”

  He sighed. “Madame Rossi, you are asking me to believe, when I have told you…”

  “No. Please. Believe nothing. No ghosts. Let’s just say it’s madness, only. Might you have a hypothesis of why your wife might be afflicted?”

  “A hypothesis?”

  “A soldier, Mr. Farnsworth, with nostalgia, develops a palpitation when he sees a serving girl who reminds him of his beloved. A widow wakes to find her husband lying in the bed beside her. A bride loses the use of her legs the day she must walk to the altar with a wealthy older man she doesn’t love. Such cases are well known…”

  “Oh!” He waved her away with a look of disgust. “Gibberish. Heredity is my hypothesis. Her mother was like this. There is a weakness of constitution.”

  “A weakness, or an openness?”

  “I don’t know if I see any difference.”

  She took a deep breath, and didn’t let her gaze fall from him. “This home. Its purchase was her idea?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You suggested madness. I am seeking to better understand. It sounds as if you had a lovely life in Hartford, near your factory. The decision to come here, it was made together?”

  “The germ was mine. But it was one that she embraced wholeheartedly.”

  “She ventured no objection?”

  His eyes narrowed. “If you are suggesting that she is fabricating this to deliberately undermine…”

  “Fabricating, no. Nothing of the sort. If you insist, I am sure she wished to move here. She seems quite dedicated to you.”

  “She is.”

  “You are happily married.”

  “Of course!”

  “She is provided for.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Materially. She is materially provided for.”

  “She wants nothing.”

  “Spiritually.”

  “Every Sunday, we go to church.”

  “Socially.”

  “We have more friends than you can fathom, madame.”

  “Excellent. And sensuously, then?”

  His face turned dark crimson. “Madame! What! How dare you bring up…”

  “Venery, Mr. Farnsworth? Celestial marriage? It was Mrs. Farnsworth, I believe, who ‘brought it up.’ She hears love poetry. Enough of it to make us mortals jealous, frankly. Indeed, someone within these walls seems to be enjoying themselves immensely. But that is not my impression of the corporeal inhabitants I’ve met.”

  He stood, and she stood so that he could not loom over her. His flush was nearly purple. Oh, she’d struck a nerve, she thought. Yes, the anger proved what she’d suspected: a problem with the marital bed.

  He said, “You’re not suggesting…”

  “Not suggesting what? That the topic of preoccupation is often transferred from the terrestrial to the heavenly realm?”

  He was close to shouting. “I have never had a woman speak like this. It…it…is…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s whorish!”

  “Whorish! This from a man who leers at me across the table while his wife trembles in terror! Who makes vague insinuations of his books on Indian marriage and tells me of his warthog scars? Ha!” She felt her neck warm. She hadn’t argued so forcefully, so honestly, with anyone since discovering George’s infidelity. It was magnificent.

  Mr. Farnsworth’s hand went to the whiskey. It shook as he poured. “You are a fraud,” he said.

  “Yes, you said that before. A fraud and a whore. I am glad I have your esteem. You should be happy that the storm will end, and I can leave you alone with your menagerie, in this home of such unbridled joy.”

  He made to speak again but clenched his jaw. For a moment, she thought that he would grab one of the knives from the desk. Very well: she would grapple with him! For she didn’t care now about the séance, the fee—it had been worth it, for one moment, not to pretend. He rose and walked to the fire, jabbed the ebbing backlog with a poker, and then threw it, clanging, across the floor.

  In a mirror above the fireplace, she could see herself between the panther and the pheasant. She was not unpleased by the color in her cheeks, the hourglass into which her half-turned posture had shaped her. Karl Farnsworth strode to the door, put his hand on the knob, and opened it. A draft swept in; the fire flamed. He stopped, and then he slammed the door shut and threw the bolt. Anastasia dropped her arms. Outside, the snow fell heavily; the crows had departed. The house was utterly, perfectly silent. He was standing at the door, and then he turned swiftly, and with two steps seized her around the waist and drew her toward him.

  * * *

  “What we have before us, friends, is a question of interpenetration, the passage between the corporeal and the spiritual. The boundaries we perceive are merely illusions. The eyes are dismal organs, formed in the darkness of the womb. But there is a third eye, an organ of extraordinary power, once open for our ancient priests, the shamans of the Arctic, the Indian powwow. That it has atrophied in modern man is undisputed. The evidence is before us in our willful blindness. Yes, willful! Can we fault those who do not wish to use it? All around us is a world of howling souls, a terrible place. But blindness has its costs.”

  They were holding hands around the table. The parlor was dark, save for the light of a single candle, which flickered in the crystal ball and cast three shadows against the wall. In the corner of the room, the stove hissed softly. Anastasia’s beads clacked as she turned from side to side.

  The speech was the same one that she had given countless times, with the minor addition of the organ of extraordinary power in honor of her paramour. Since the prior morning, while Mrs. Farnsworth lay in her sickbed, Anastasia and Mr. Farnsworth had met and separated four times: twice in his study, once in her quarters in the marmot room, and once in the old kitchen, her hands braced against the low lintel of the ancient fireplace. They had been interrupted when Mrs. Farnsworth had teetered to the top of the landing and called out weakly to her husband. Anastasia was searching for a button, torn from her bodice (the tearing off of buttons apparently a particular delight of the great manufacturer, proving yet again that eros is but a condensation of the general psychic state), when her lover returned to share the news.

  The wife had regained her strength, and she was ready for the séance to proceed.

  “This woman has suffered,” said Anastasia, lifting the limp, cold hand that lay in hers. “A fragile creature, who in another day and age might have been a temple priestess, she has heard voices most foul, seen sights unmentionable…”

  “Oh, remember, I didn’t see any sights,” whispered Mrs. Farnsworth. “Please, don’t encourage…”

  Anastasia ignored her. “She has seen and she has suffered! Gazed upon the lineaments of the Immortal Coupling! Felt the angel’s warm breath upon her lips! Sipped from the trough of celestial pleasure and felt the burning fire in her throat!”

  Lying in Mr. Farnsworth’s arms, propped on Mr. Farnsworth’s sofa with his face buried in her breasts, shooing Mr. Farnsworth’s dog away with her foot, riding Mr. Farnsworth like a saddle upon the splayed zebra with such momentum that they inched right past the fireplace, Anastasia had given consideration to the means and mechanism by which she would conduct the séance. She had brought all the necessary equipment: the ectoplasm and the weights and lines to simulate the rapping, the sleeves with hidden pouches. She had considered automatic writing, the Ouija board, divination by molten lead in water. And she’d dismissed them all. For what a mess she had gotten herself into! What a glorious mess! As if the madwoman weren’t enough to contend with, now she had her besotted husband. “My elk! My sea lion!” he had cried to her. He had been convinced that he could get her to admit she was pretending. But she’d resisted, and her resistance drove him into deeper frenzy. He must know, must conquer! And after each grappling round, she’d left him defeated. But there would be a final reckoning. So she decided to forgo the sleight of hand and work her magic without spectacle. For she—clairvoyant, clinician—had seen to the marrow. She must drag it into the light.

  She blew out the candle. In the darkness, she could sense them watching. She closed her eyes, waiting for the sense—honed over so many years—that hypnosis was ready to begin.

  “I hear something,” she said softly.

  The wife’s fingers were rigid. She began to gasp in quick sharp breaths. “I hear it, too.”

  “I hear it,” said Anastasia. “It is coming closer.”

  “Yes!” said Mrs. Farnsworth. “It is terrible.”

  “There are such colors,” said Anastasia. “Such goodness, but also such anger, such betrayal.”

  “Yes!”

  “Such love, but also hate.”

  “Yes!”

  “Closer now, I feel it coming,” said Anastasia. “A man. I see him; he wishes to speak.”

  “Yes!” cried Mrs. Farnsworth.

  “My God, there!” said Mr. Farnsworth.

  In an instant the eyes of both women sprung open. The room was no longer dark. Instead, a single winking light appeared above the ball of crystal, and then, nearby, a second.