Chapter 9.4 - Psychic Claire

“You have a visitor,” Grandfather raised his voice as he passed the attic ladder.

Claire had been in the attic the whole morning, looking for a favorite set of brushes she distinctly remembered having seen there the last time she and Grandmother were poking around. 

She’d been checking cupboards and drawers for hours to no avail and she really didn’t want to be interrupted. She sighed, turned off the light and came down to the parlor.

A woman close to her age was already standing there, deep in thought, and seemed surprised to see Claire walk in the doorway.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this, I knocked and nobody answered,” she mumbled, beet red with embarrassment. “I heard you were back, I hoped you wouldn’t mind if I paid you a visit.”

Claire tried very hard to remember how she knew her visitor. Her face looked very familiar, but she couldn’t place her anywhere.

“I’m Jane, your cousin. We used to play together when we were kids, don’t you remember me?” the visitor smiled and all the memories from childhood came back to Claire in a tightly knit package.

“Great!” she thought. “In comes the J, out goes my hope for love and romance.”

“You really live here alone?” Jane looked around a little spooked. “People said but I didn’t think…”

“Yes,” Claire shook her head. “Where are my manners, please, sit.” She paused to hear the clock strike noon and continued. “I was just about to have lunch, would you care to join me?”

“Sure,” Jane tentatively agreed. “I didn’t expect… I should have brought a bottle,” she excused herself again, blushing even deeper.

“Bring wine to this house?” Claire started laughing heartily. “Grandfather would never forgive you. Have you seen the cellar?”

“Not since I hid in there the last time we played hide and seek,” Jane smiled.

“It’s Wednesday, we have beans,” Claire announced, half apologetic, forgetting for a moment that Jane had lived there her whole life and everybody knew one didn’t eat meat on Wednesdays. “I’ll go grab a bottle of red.”

Jane set another place next to Claire’s, a little weirded out by the fact that the latter went to such trouble to set the table when dining alone; after that she sat down, not knowing what to do, and waited for her cousin.

“Not that bottle, Claire, not when we have guests!” Grandfather chided. “The shelf on the left; left, I said. ‘92. That was a good vintage!”

When she returned to the parlor she saw Jane stare at her plate, awkward.

“This is going to be uncomfortable,” Claire thought and went straight to the kitchen to grab the bottle opener. 

“So, it’s been a while, I don’t even know where to begin, how have you been?” Claire tried to strike a conversation as she poured wine into the glasses, but Jane blurted out the real reason for her visit.

“I hope you won’t think I’m too forward, and I don’t mean to make you feel weird or anything, but people have been talking, I’m sorry, I don’t want to impose on you, but I heard…People say you can talk to them, that you can go to them. Please, Claire, you have to help me!” She reluctantly reached for Claire’s arm, almost shocked to feel that it was solid.

“Help you do what?” Claire asked, shocked.

“Help me get to the other side. I have to talk to him,” Jane started sobbing.

“I don’t know what you heard but I don’t even understand what you’re asking of me,” Claire mumbled confused.

“Please don’t say no! I know you can cross to the other side, just like them, people have seen you, cousin. I know you’ve been there all this time. I understand they might not allow it, but I beg of you, please, I can’t live without him.”

“Jane, what are you talking about?”

“When you disappeared,” Jane continued sobbing. “People said you went to the other side, that you can cross, like your mother. I didn’t realize one could come back, I had to see it with my own eyes.”

Claire took a big gulp of the wine to gather courage and continued.

“I went to art school, Jane, in Saint Louis, and then I worked as a gallery curator and as an art columnist. I am now at crossroads in my life and I came here to figure out what to do next.”

“Don’t lie to me, Claire. People have seen you, over the years, walk through the garden at night. They thought you were a ghost.”

A chill went through Claire’s bones when she tried to figure out if it was possible, on one of the occasions when her kin had shuffled her through time, that somebody might have seen her. She hadn’t taken into account until now that if they could move her back in time from fall to summer, there was no reason why they wouldn’t be able to move her back through entire years, or decades.

“I wish I could help you, Jane, but I have no idea what you’re asking of me,” she tried to extricate herself from this surprise challenge.

“Claire, I can see your markings,” she pointed at her fingers, “I know you can do it! Mother would kill me if she knew I was here, everybody in town thinks this mansion is haunted, they say it’s cursed, but I don’t care, just get me to Aaron.”

 She turned Claire’s hands over and the latter noticed, bewildered, that there was still a shimmering of dust on her fingertips.

“Who’s Aaron?” she asked to play for time.

“My boyfriend,” Jane whimpered. 

“Why is he…wherever you say he is?” Claire tried to orient herself in this new story of her life, a story she was completely unfamiliar with.

“I don’t know, they must have taken him, he was just gone,” Jane started sobbing again.

“I’m not sure that I can help you, Jane,” Claire tried to comfort the latter, feeling more and more awkward by the second. “I need a few days to think about it, find a solution, maybe?” she shot an arrow in the dark, which seemed to work nevertheless.

“Thank you so much, Claire! So much! I’ll come back next week, when the moon is full. That would be helpful, right?”

“I guess,” Claire replied, eager to end this unsettling conversation. She walked her cousin to the door, careful to avoid looking at the mirrors.

“Did I or did I not tell you to leave?” her grandfather confronted her the minute she walked back into the kitchen. “Don’t you understand there is no way you can have any semblance of a life here? They’ll never leave you be!” 

“Is she telling the truth, papa?” Claire asked him as if she didn’t even hear the previous comment.

“About what?”

“About me, and crossing to the other side, and Aaron,” she said.

“She’s nuts! Aaron couldn’t wait to get out of here, he took the first bus to California, he’s probably doing odd jobs, trying to make it as an actor. I bet he spun her that supernatural story just to get her off his scent. She’s like a blood hound that one!”

“Joseph!” Grandmother interjected, offended, then continued talking to Claire. “He’s right, though. Aaron isn’t over there, the simplest reason being that he can’t cross. No human can.”

“What about the other stuff?”

“Which part? The part where this place is cursed or the one where everybody thinks you’re a ghost?”

“About crossing and the Otherworld,” Claire whispered.

“See?” Grandfather turned to Grandmother. “See where your decisions have brought us? Wouldn’t she have been better off in New Orleans, living a normal life?”

“What does that even mean?” Claire continued her train of thought. “And what should I tell Jane next week?”

“You tell her she needs help and if she comes near you again you’ll get a restraining order,” Grandfather suggested.

“Why would I do something so mean to her? She’s my cousin!” Claire objected.

“Everybody is a cousin around here, haven’t you noticed? Tell her whatever you want, why are you asking me?”

He turned around and shouted from the hallway.

“I found your brushes!”