The Spirit that Only Martha Knows

Martha Evans sat at the new table in the strange house after church had finished. Her stomach was rattling, empty, like the collection bowl after Colin Martins, that old balding man, had dropped his near-empty envelope. He never donated enough, and even worse he tried to hide that problem. Martha would never do that. Her coins would clatter proudly into the plate, even her breakfast money for which she now nurtured a martyred spark of regret.

Today was different because she had left church early. The seats next to her were emptier than usual, especially the one to her immediate right that her husband, Jacob, having been dead for two months now, would sit. Pneumonia was the diagnosis, according to the last of the doctors, that one who spoke to her for fifteen minutes between glances at his computer. But Martha knew he wanted her to accept an easy explanation. How she missed Jacob!

And now she was here, at a table in Julia King’s house, lured by the strange promise she could see Jacob today. This was the first time Martha had accepted an invite to Julia’s glamorous house, with all its deep oak furniture and curious fuzzy wall hangings. Martha could see why Julia lived alone.

Throughout their polite conversation, Julia did not call the ceremony a seance, which was just as well because Martha did not believe in such things. But she missed Jacob - like no-one else ever could! - so here she was, still the dutiful wife, doing something new for her old Jacob, who would never try anything new anyway.

The ceremony did not start on time. Julia was still busy flicking her long brown hair and pontificating about the sermon today, although she did mention how Colin Martin’s android phone had buzzed at least twice during the third prayer session. That’s typical Colin, Martha thought, looking at Julia’s watch.

10:04am.

The second hand jolted a few times before Martha realised her eyes had dropped to the cloth table, its colour an off-white fade, something indicative of a poorly run household. Jacob would never have stood for that, Martha would be sure. The dirty cloth drifted across the table, huge in its unkemptness, a vast careless plain. As her vision focused a few moments more, the cloth seemed to stretch out to an impossible horizon, a place where the air became scratchy and cold. Or was it? The room around her seemed to be beyond temperature now, her vision filled by bone-white layer now distant beneath her feet, the horizon an utter black ceiling.

She floated with her slow footsteps over the plain, noticing a mass of rocks in the distance. She strode towards them. Like the pulsating egg sacs of a tropical spider, the white rocks breathed. She began to pass ancient trees, green fingers stabbing knives towards the air. Closer to the rocks she saw swathes of dark move in unison, a strange stew of noise and stink floating with them. They gathered like the huddled bodies of naked people. Dots of white jostled occasionally. She could only see a vision of conflicted nothingness.

Amongst the rabble she senses Jacob. She drifted downwards into the misty mass towards the coalescing figure of her dead husband, her eyes gazing through the space beneath where her feet should be. Her clarity of vision, her sight of the open ground, belied the absence of her nose, or any part of her body, something she does not realise (unlike you as you become aware of your nose always blocking your peripheral vision). Jacob is here! Julia was right!

The figure of Jacob doesn’t see Martha, and is instead surrounded by tiny shapes. It is a series of stray church cats, purring against him with comfortable affection. She calls to him. He does not answer. An invisible dome of loneliness surrounds him. Instead the cats jostle into one figure, growing mass, a torso, breasts, mouth and lips, and finally long brown hair. He smiles. To Martha’s horror, Jacob kisses the familiar figure with the pretty smile and deep body. She laughs. Jacob runs his fingers through her long brown hair and joins her in laughter. The sound stung like disinfectant, a perceptible ozone rising from their mouths. The misty stench becomes too potent and Martha jolts away.

Her eyes snap open.

She has clearly slept yet was strangely unslumped. She sees Julia’s watch.

10:05am.

Julia had finished talking about the sermon that day, and was ready to start the seance.

Martha, being the good Christian she is, refuses to take part, finding an easy excuse to leave. She leaves fifty dollars in three neatly folded notes on the table and stands up. She feels terrified. At what she does not know. But she knows there is no point staying. Julia cannot talk to the spirit of Jacob that only Martha knows.