1 Strange Fire Mrs. Jenny Blodgett presents: the amazing Little Eva Root Clairvoyant! Spirit Medium! Channeler of the Voices of the Dead! Her Uncanny Abilities shock the senses! She brings forth the Messages of the Departed! Come and see! Come and See! COME AND SEE! During the first week of June 1893, these handbills were unavoidable in the village of Nadab, Ohio. Mailed ahead, they were as common as coal dust by the time Mrs. Blodgett and Little Eva arrived--piled by the door at the Hofmann Emporium, boot-trodden and filthy on the floor of Wilson''s Saloon--and wherever Mrs. Blodgett encountered them, she bent to add the following lines: Wednesday at 8:00 Back room at Wilson''s 35¢ Just. Like. Magic. It began--as everything does--with a spark.
Mrs. Blodgett had started drinking early that day, and her hands shook as she struck at the matchbox: two times, three. A puckered woman on the front bench was fanning herself against the summer heat, and Mrs. Blodgett had to turn her back to the audience for shelter from the breeze. With a final strike, the match head burst into flame. Glaring over her shoulder, Mrs. Blodgett lit the candle. The presence of this candle, like so much of the evening, was theatrical: it allowed Little Eva to begin the performance by lifting the light out of the room like a grand curtain.
And séances are always better in the dark. The truth was that Eva Root had not been particularly little in quite some time. Years before, when Mrs. Blodgett had first trotted her out, the description really had been apt--a tiny seven-year-old, wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked. But she was nearly twice as old now, and the passing days had stretched and sharpened her like the fires of a forge: every day a new town, every night a new bed, and in between, train car after train car after train car. By the time they found themselves in Nadab, they''d given well over a thousand séances in the little towns that had budded up from the steel boughs of the railroad--Carthage, Kansas; Finisterre, Iowa; Goshen, Nebraska--and though she no longer had the smoke screen of innocence to hide behind, Eva had learned all she needed to know about passing on the communications of the dead. Which, of course, was impossible. But all the same--she had a way of making it seem as if it were not.
From the back of the room, Eva considered Nadab''s paltry little crowd. Not counting herself or Mrs. Blodgett, there were five of them there--more than had been at the smallest séance she''d given, but not by much. They were mostly old, too, which muddled things: the more one lives, the more one loses. She took a deep breath. It wasn''t her favorite trick, but there was always the war to rely on: practically everyone over forty had lost someone who''d served in blue or gray. Cannon fire, gun smoke, The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah! . It was going to be that kind of night.
She flexed her fingers. Someone in the slack, sweating audience let out a little fart, and this seemed to deplete Mrs. Blodgett''s already scarce reserves of patience. "Fine," she said. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to present to you Miss Eva Root, a young innocent touched with the power to channel the voices of the dead. Kindly give her your attention, and in return, she will show you things that you never thought possible." This speech had once been considerably longer--and considerably better--but then Mrs. Blodgett had once cared.
"Eva?" Five heads swiveled back to stare at her. She stumbled forward. "There?" she said, blinking at the chair that had clearly been set out for her. This performance of uncertainty generally made a better impression when Mrs. Blodgett responded in some way, but she had already begun to wobble gently around the room snuffing the gas lamps. Swallowing, Eva slid into her seat. Soon only the flickering candlelight was left. "It works better in the dark," she whispered.
"Can I . ?" and she gestured to the candle. Her eyes passed slowly over the faces before her. This was the most important part of the evening, this moment of anticipation. She could make all the right guesses, say just the right things, and still, if these people didn''t want her to do impossible things for them, then she simply couldn''t. The lady on the front bench gave a curt little nod--engaged, but not terribly enthusiastic. Three rows behind her, though, was a man with an unkempt beard who smiled kindly. That was good: a foothold.
Eva pressed her eyes shut, leaned forward, and blew. The candle guttered and died. Darkness. Now she began to thicken her breathing with effort. "I hear thunder," she said. "Men yelling. There''s smoke. Fire.
" She went quiet for a moment. "Is it . a storm?" Somewhere in the room, a chair creaked. "But there''s no rain," she said. "No, not a storm." Another little pause. "Is it thunder? Or . ?" "Cannon," said an eager woman in the third row.
"It''s cannon." Eva turned her head immediately. "Yes." "Was he afraid?" said the eager woman. To be sure, it would''ve been kinder to say that whomever this woman was thinking of had died without suffering. But that would''ve made for a rather duller séance. And besides--the more you agreed with them, Eva found, the more people began to believe you. She nodded sadly.
"There''s quite a lot of fear. But gratitude, too. He wants you to know that he thought of you before the end." "Me?" said the eager woman. Eva chuckled. "He knew you''d be surprised." "Oh," said the woman fondly. Eva didn''t know whom they were talking about, of course, but it didn''t matter--the woman in front of her did, and her certainty filled in Eva''s sketchy outline with a memory so clear it almost seemed to breathe.
That was how it worked. Eva spent a fair amount of time on the eager woman; she was well disposed to believe, and Eva had a tendency to make her guesses work even when they were a bit wide in their aim. By the time Eva moved on, the woman was sniffling softly: a job well done. The lady in the front row came next. She was the sort who wanted to be won over--a little reserved, a little skeptical--but Eva, as always, was patient, and mere minutes later, she was forgiving the lady for her unkindness to a niece who (Eva was almost certain) had fallen to her death in a well. And then, in a flash, everything changed. Eva had just turned to engage the man with the unkempt beard when, with a spark and a sputter, the dead candle at her elbow flared back to life. She made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a yell, and was on her feet before she knew it.
"What is it?" said the woman in the front row. The candle was burning bright, its flame tall and unwavering. Eva wasn''t sure what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened before. "Someone," she said, improvising madly. "Someone is here with us." And this was truer than she knew. "Who?" said the woman in the front row.
"Who is it?" Eva turned her eyes back to the audience. The candle flame gave a wobble, sending inky shadows vaulting across the expectant faces. She still had a performance to give. "That," said Eva, gesturing with her chin, "is a question for you." The bearded man frowned. "Me?" "Yes. Who is it?" The bearded man took a deep breath and began to speak. Eva barely heard him.
Come see the Fair! The voice in her head had spoken so loudly that the words of the bearded man had been entirely blotted out. "What?" "Why, I said my daddy always--" Come see the Fair! Eva gasped. Nearly half her life, Eva had pretended to hear messages that weren''t there. Now, all of a sudden, her mind was filled to bursting with an impossible voice. At the back of the room, Mrs. Blodgett shifted uneasily from foot to foot. "I--I--I . ," Eva stammered.
"Who?" And as if in answer, she was overcome by a rush of sound nearer to her than anything had ever been before: the tinkle and bray of the band organ, the laughter and chat of the crowd. An impossible voice, loud and commanding and clear: Come see the Fair! "I don''t understand," said Eva. The room was suddenly silent. It was only a moment before Mrs. Blodgett swept forward, her face twisted with anger. "I am afraid," she said, "that Little Miss Eva is tired and must withdraw." There was a hubbub of protestation, but Mrs. Blodgett''s voice cut through it sharply.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you. Good night." And taking Eva roughly by the arm, she seized the candle, blew it out, and marched swiftly from the room. When she first met Mrs. Blodgett, Eva Root was living in an establishment in Fletcher''s Gulch, Indiana, called Miss Augusta Grandage''s Home for Unwanted and Destitute G.