“And you’re obsessed with them. The Dalloway Five.”
“I’m not obsessed. This is our history—Godwin’s history. They killed a girl. That really happened, whether we believe in witchcraft or not. And we know they held a séance—that was documented in the trial. Whether they thought it was real or just make-believe, they performed a ritual to raise a ghost. And Flora died a few days later.”
The primary sources I’d read in Dalloway’s library were inconsistent as to the nature of Flora Grayfriar’s death. The account I’d read in the library described an almost ritualistic killing, Flora’s throat slit and her stomach cut open, stuffed full of animal bones and herbs. But other contemporaneous writings said she was found with a musket ball in her gut, dead in the forest, shot like a beast. It should have been a simple thing, to determine how a girl died: Was she shot, or was her throat slit? Do I trust the trial documents, or the letters written by Flora’s mother? Who had more motive to lie?
Either the Dalloway girls were witches, and they’d murdered Flora in some arcane deal with the devil, or Flora’s death had a far more mundane explanation. A hunting accident, maybe. A lovers’ quarrel. Or even a bigoted townsperson who heard about the séance and wanted to see the girls punished for meddling with powers they couldn’t contain.
After all, Flora was the first death, but she wasn’t the last. Following her, every one of the Dalloway witches died in ways that were impossible to explain. All of their bodies were found on the Godwin House grounds, like the house itself was determined to keep them. It was almost as if they were cursed, as if they’d raised a spirit that was determined to see them all dead.
The more likely explanation—that they’d been killed by religious mountain folk who feared women, feared the magic they’d assigned to women—didn’t hold the same appeal.
Regardless, Alex was right. I hadn’t been able to get the Dalloway Five out of my head for weeks. I’d even dreamed about them the previous night, Beatrix Walker’s hair like spun corn silk and Tamsyn Penhaligon’s bony fingers trailing along my cheek. They had found their way inside me, like fungal spores inhaled and taken root. Sometimes I felt like they’d always been there. I’d read about reincarnation, about girls born again and again, and imagined Margery Lemont whispering soft words in the back of my mind. Every time I touched her skull at Boleyn House, I felt her in my blood.
Maybe I was losing my mind. Or maybe this was what it was to appreciate history, to truly understand it. When I read books, the boundary between my world and others shifted. I could imagine other realities. I envisioned the tales so clearly that it was as if I lived them.
The story of the Dalloway Five was a story born in Godwin House. Why shouldn’t their legend be real?
And if this ritual worked—if we spoke to them—we could put the mythos to rest once and for all.
The scent of sandalwood rose in the air. We’d already turned off the lamp; I could only see Alex by the flickering candles, her skin glowing warm silver in their light.
“All right, then,” Alex said. “Let’s summon old dead witches.”
I’d written the summoning spell in my moleskin notebook: an incantation copied from an ancient tome in the library’s occult section. The process had been painstaking; no one in the eighteenth century, it seemed, had been possessed of legible handwriting. Of course, they didn’t have Ouija boards in the eighteenth century either, and this Hasbro-branded contraption I had bought at the independent bookstore in town hardly qualified as an accoutrement of real witchcraft. But it was better than nothing. I propped the notebook on my knees, and me and Alex both placed our fingers on the Ouija planchette, barely touching it.
And even though I hadn’t spoken yet, all at once the room seemed darker—the corners deepening, the air heavy against my skin. I took in a shallow breath and read the spell aloud.
“Nothing happened,” Alex said after several seconds. “It’s not moving.”
“You have to wait for it.”
“You know that when the pointer moves, it’s because we’re moving it, right? Like, they’ve done studies on this.”
I ignored her and closed my eyes. I’d stolen the Margery Skull; it sat at the head of our altar, close enough that I could have touched it. A part of me wanted to. The urge was almost overpowering. Maybe if I did…Maybe that’s what this ritual needed.
I shifted forward, eyes still shut, fingers reaching. My touch grazed cold bone, and in the same moment, the planchette moved.