her name on that door, her heart raced, daunted and thrilled in equal measure by the weight of responsibility.
What a jarring, unnatural sound the telephone was, a vibrating, clattering noise that was far louder than the size of its two small brass bells would have indicated. Eve wondered if she was already becoming her Grandmother, hating modern, clanging sounds that jarred a contemplative mind. The alarming notification had shattered the timeless spell of the Friel family song.
The first NYPD telephone had gone into the Center Street station in 1880. Nineteen years later stations often communicated by wire or courier instead. The force hadn’t wanted to pay for what was still a relative luxury when the women working there weren’t switchboard operators or secretaries, so Gran paid for the installation on the wall as a matter of convenience, expediency and safety for Eve’s precinct, even though she herself hated using one.
Eve was designated as the Precinct contact, so it had to be her that answered the phone. This also made sure that if there was a problem or a disciplinary action it would fall on Eve and not her colleagues. When she created the Precinct, she insisted this be so. She wouldn’t subject a fellow Sensitive to reprimand or censure, if she could help it.
As Eve entered, the startled sadness on Jenny’s face had Eve blushing with an apology, knowing she was interrupting something beyond precious. The Friels wafted to the back of the room as if concerned they might be too intrusive otherwise. Eve gestured to the ghosts that they were welcome to stay, and then gestured at the phone that she’d have to answer, bowing her head in respect and care before changing her focus.
Their office was dim. Jenny hadn’t turned on the one large electric lamp that hung too low and buzzed too loud. Their group often relied on what meager sunlight came through the thin, tall lancet windows that peppered the back of the records building.
Eve went to the wall where the telephone box was mounted, picked up the handle of the receiver and leaned in, speaking close and loud into the voice box. “Whitby here. How can I help you?” she said, in a loud, strong tone. She didn’t announce herself as a woman, even if her voice might belie it, as she wanted to be spoken to on merit, not on impressions of her sex and their aptitude in such a work environment as this.
There was only a hiss on the other line.
Breathing—shallow, soft, and far away.
“Hello?” Eve repeated. There was an intake of breath, as if whoever was on the other side of the line wanted very much to say something but couldn’t.
The hissing of the line continued for a moment, a static buzzing overtaking any sound of breathing. As if it were coming out from the telephone itself, a chill emanated, and the tiny hairs across Eve’s face froze. She shuddered. The static hiss grew loud, unbearable.
But no one was on the line.
Eve shook herself free from the chill and hung up, placing the black cylinder with a fluted end on its designated hook.
Turning around, she noticed Jenny was gesturing to her parents, who were reaching out to her, placing incorporeal hands upon her small shoulders. Eve turned back away, not wanting to interrupt the family.
The most interesting feature of the room was its narrow, glowing windows; it sported nothing but file cabinets, a rickety shelf, and a few small tables with drawers that were more suited for school children’s desks than for professionals facing the wall, each set with a wooden sorting tray full of various papers and guides. At the back of the room, dressed with a black tablecloth and set with notebooks, a small bell and a candle, was a small circular séance table with five seats, one for each medium and one for Gran whenever she felt like joining them, their mascot and patron saint.
“Where is my coffee?” Eve muttered to herself.
Vera lifted her transparent hands in the air. “Incorporeal. Don’t look to me.”
At her elbow, Eve’s favorite cup appeared, presented by Jenny, who looked up at her with narrow, angry eyes. Eve took a step back at the small and inexplicably furious girl. Jenny gestured between the cup and a spirit board planchette, signing that setting the cup down upon it was quite disrespectful. She folded her arms, fuming.
Eve frowned a moment before offering a counter argument.
“But you don’t use a spirit board or a planchette, Jenny.”
The girl turned away, her thin braid swinging out from her small head. In the next moment she whirled back, the braid again airborne before it thumped down on her shoulder as she emphatically began signing that even if Eve didn’t use a board with letters and numbers and a small disc spirits guided to point to them, perhaps some of their company might want to use one.
“If you’d like to use a board, Jenny, then say so. And then I won’t think of it as décor.”
Jenny slammed a drawer closed on her desk that had been open. She looked into the air and shook her fist at Vera, gesturing between her desk and the ghost that things had been moved. She signed, emphatically, not to move her things.
Eve came close and put both hands on the girl’s shaking shoulders. “What’s really going on, my dear?”
The girl burst into tears.
Mrs. Friel wafted over to Eve. A ghost’s voice came as a distant but clear whisper, carrying with it an intense atmospheric quality as well as words, almost as if a spirit’s words were underscored with a sorrowful note of music, evoking a Sensitive’s empathy. “I’m sorry, Miss Whitby. It is the anniversary of my death in the waters of the East River. It has only been a year.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Eve exclaimed, putting a hand to her mouth. “I had no idea!”
The ghost continued. “She lost everyone that day. Nearly our whole parish, the last of any family. She’s been overwhelmed with emotion of late.”
“Of course,” Eve murmured. Mr. Friel just stared at his daughter, having hardly gotten to know her in life, illness striking him down back in Dublin when she’d been a baby. Eve caught the glimmer of tears in his vaguely transparent form, sparkling in small luminous silvery stars, there in his welling eyes.
Eve knelt, holding her arms out for Jenny. The girl didn’t wish to be held; she shook her head.
“I’m here for you as you need,” Eve murmured. “Please let me know.”
Jenny nodded, wiped her eyes and went to one set of the lancet windows at the back of the room that let in light in distinct shafts at this hour of the day, if the sun was bright. She climbed a step-stool and began cleaning the thick panes studiously, a creature of constant movement.
Much like the house chores, Eve wanted everything to be fair, but Jenny had asked for extra hours. It seemed like working was a drive, a constant urge for Jenny, a way to stay afloat from her grief. She was such a restless spirit and Eve, wishing she could take the girl’s grief away, empathized with the complications of missing a body when there still was a spirit there to see. Her parents weren’t gone. They just couldn’t hold her anymore. The loss of touch was the most unbearable of all changes between the parallel worlds of life and death.
Eve took to her desk and examined what had been left upon it. There was an envelope that read Miss W in small script.
That was slid under the door, Jenny signed to Eve after she’d placed her washcloth in a tin bucket, strode over, and stopped across Eve’s supervisor desk. The young girl’s expression indicated the missive was both important and likely unwelcome. Eve shared a worried look with her colleague and opened the envelope. Her heart immediately sank.
The memorandum was on a slip of paper with red ink.
Complaint, 11am.
She glanced at Jenny who pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, signing somewhat of a rhetorical question, wondering if anyone would ever be satisfied by what they do.
“Satisfaction doesn’t seem to be in human nature, but still, we strive,” Eve replied with a sigh.
The