The Dead Hours of Night: Stories by Lisa Tuttle

Author:Lisa Tuttle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2021-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Mr Elphinstone’s Hands

I have a long-standing fascination with the history of spiritualism, especially nineteenth-century mediums and séances. The concept of ectoplasm intrigued me: what was this stuff that was said to ooze from the body of the trance medium? Sometimes like a cloud that disappeared in the light, it could be light and airy like a luminous spiderweb, or solid, cold and sticky to the touch. Psychic investigators theorized it might be the basis of all psychic phenomena, the spiritual equivalent of protoplasm, allowing insubstantial spirits to take on physical form. This interest came together with a true story I read about an old New England family (coincidentally named Tuttle) whose unmarried daughter became pregnant. They did not throw her out to starve, but kept her (I don’t remember what happened to the baby) at home for the rest of her days. Although they provided food and shelter, they made her a pariah in their midst, refusing to look at her or speak to her ever again, as if she was a sort of living ghost they suffered to share their house.

Mr Elphinstone’s hands were cold and slightly damp.

This unpleasant physical detail was Eustacia Wallace’s first impression of the medium, and even after she had a good look at him in the light – the large, deep-set eyes, the greying beard, the high forehead – even after she had heard him speak in a well-modulated, educated voice, Eustacia could think only of how much she had disliked the touch of his hands.

She glanced at her sister and saw that, like the others in the stuffy, overcrowded parlour, Lydia Wallace Steen was completely enraptured. She found herself rubbing the palms of her hands on her skirt, and forced herself to stop. If she had been wearing gloves, like any properly brought up young lady – if she hadn’t been such a hoyden as to lose her last pair and too careless to borrow from her sister – if she had been dressed as the other ladies, dressed as she should be, she would have known nothing of the condition of Mr Elphinstone’s flesh.

Lydia would be horrified – quite rightly – if she knew her younger sister’s thoughts. Eustacia struggled, as she had struggled so often before, to lift them to a higher plane. Mr Elphinstone was talking about Heavenly Rapture, Life Eternal, and the Love Which Passeth All Understanding. Eustacia found it hard to concentrate. It wasn’t that she preferred to think about Mr Elphinstone’s hands, or about the unpleasant warmth of the room, or about the fact that she hadn’t had enough to eat at dinner, only . . . all these things, things that belonged to the real world, had a power that abstract ideas, for all their beauty, lacked. What chance had Perfect Love against a joint of beef or a cold, moist, human hand?

‘We imagine the dead, our loved dead, as being like us; as being, still, the people we knew – our children, parents, siblings, friends, sweethearts.

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