When The Spirit Moves You Read online

  Copyright © 2008 by Thomas J. DePrima

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal, and punishable by law.

  No part of this novel may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This version of the printed novel has been formatted for presentation on Amazon Kindle devices and various other electronic media. The requirement that the text flow freely to accommodate different mediums may at times result in unusual display arrangements.

  Cover art by Thomas J. DePrima

  ISBN-10: 1-4357-2378-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4357-2378-8

  To contact the author, or see additional information about this and his other novels, visit:

  http://www.deprima.com

  * * *

  I wish to thank Margaret Moore, the Archivist for The Mark Twain House & Museum at 351 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, CT, and Rebecca Floyd, the Manager of Interpretive Services for that same fine organization, for the helpful information they provided while I did research for this novel.

  * * *

  This series of novels include:

  When The Spirit Moves You

  When The Spirit Calls

  Other novels by this author include:

  A Galaxy Unknown

  Valor at Vauzlee

  The Clones of Mawcett

  Trader Vyx

  Milor!

  Vroman Castle

  Against All Odds

  * * *

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Product Description

  * * *

  Chapter One

  Her youthful face a study in intense concentration, Arlene Watson absentmindedly brushed several stray red hairs away from eyes of vivid cobalt blue as she focused on the exquisite tarot cards arrayed before her. To escape the interminable boredom of yet another excessively hot and humid midweek day in late June, she was using the elegant deck to foretell the futures of her friends.

  "Owww!" Megan yelped as she snatched her hand away and sat up quickly on the carpeted bedroom floor.

  "Well don't pick up the cards while I'm doing a reading and I won't slap your hand," Arlene said, instantly regretting her action because of the hurt expression on Megan's face. Softly, she added, "Meg, I only tapped it."

  "It stung," Megan whined, in a hurt little girl voice virtually guaranteed to elicit sympathy, while she rubbed the back of her left hand. Repentantly she added, "I'm sorry for picking up the card. I just wanted to look at the picture. It's a new deck, isn't it?"

  "It's very distracting when I'm trying to concentrate, dear," Arlene said, shifting her lotus-like position slightly to get more comfortable. Her lithe body was already deeply tanned from the weeks of sun that the group had enjoyed since school recessed for summer vacation. All of sixteen and a half years old, she was the unofficial leader of the small coterie of teenage girls in tee shirts and shorts that presently lounged in various positions around her bedroom. Though tallest of the four girls, at five-foot eight-inches, it was her intelligence and personality that made her their natural leader. Softening her expression, Arlene added, "And yes, dear, it's a new deck. Well, not actually 'new' new. In fact, it appears to be quite old. My sister gave it to me. She picked it up at a yard sale this past weekend. Sarah only paid a dime for it." Gently caressing one of the cards with an index finger, she said, "The cards are gorgeous, aren't they? They appear to be hand painted. Tell you what, hon, you can look at the entire deck as soon as I'm done reading for Erin. Okay?" Arlene punctuated her promise with a huge smile.

  Megan Kearney smiled and nodded, promptly forgetting about the mild slap to her hand. Resuming her former prostrate position on Arlene's right, her shoulder-length brunette hair all but hid the arm that propped up her head as she looked on. Her adorable face, with its button nose and shining brown eyes, projected a childlike innocence as she studied the cards almost as intently as Arlene. Several inches shorter, she was often referred to as 'Arlene's shadow' among local teens. Not really intended as a disparagement, it was simply that the girls were rarely seen apart. Megan's effervescent personality and infectious smile always made her a welcome addition to any social group.

  "C'mon, Arlene, tell me already," Erin pleaded, ignoring the little interruption, "what do you see?"

  Erin McDonald's pixie face was practically lost in the mop of mousy brown locks that covered her head. For several years she had styled her hair to conceal as much of her face as possible. It seemed as though she had tried every acne medication and home remedy available on the planet, but the annoying and unsightly pustules continued to sprout on her otherwise pretty face like wildflowers on a Colorado hillside. At just five-foot four-inches, she was the shortest of the quartet. Embarrassment about her complexion normally kept her reserved in mixed company, but her quiet demeanor belied the passion and intelligence visible to any truly observant person that looked into her provocative dark-brown eyes.

  "The cards say the same thing as last time," Arlene said. "You'll have a long life; a very, very long life."

  "Great," Erin said excitedly. "What else?"

  "I'm not sure," Arlene said slowly, scrunching up her not-unpleasant face. "It's very confusing. It almost looks like two lives because, on the one hand the cards say that you'll be a career woman, but on the other they say that you'll be a mother with many children."

  "Oh good, I love kids," Erin said effusively. "And it's possible to have both a career and children. You just have to manage your time effectively."

  "And marry a guy who will stay home with the kiddies while you go to work," Renee quipped from her vantage point on Arlene's queen-sized bed, prompting the three girls on the floor to giggle.

  Generally acknowledged as the leader during Arlene's infrequent absences from the social group, Renee Dennis was decidedly the most attractive of the four teenagers. Just an inch shorter than Arlene, she had jade-green eyes, a perfect smile with soft, lush lips, and a curvaceous body. Her flawless complexion had been the envy of Erin since the first acne pimple had popped up on Erin's face, but such jealousies had never affected their close friendship. Now, with chin resting on crossed forearms, and glistening long blond hair gently cascading over the edge of the bed, Renee watched the reading closely, while doing her best to look disinterested.

  For the third time this month, Arlene was trying to elucidate Erin's destiny, and they had moved from the bed to the floor so that she'd have a steady surface on which to lay the cards. Large by the building standards of the early seventies when the house was erected, there was absolutely no doubt that the bedroom was that of a teenage girl. Numerous posters of current boy bands and recording artists dampened the impact of vermillion walls, while a plethora of cosmetics, skin care, and hair products completely covered an antique-white French-Provincial dresser with gold accent
s. A queen-size bed with matching headboard was draped with a soft-pink bedspread, while disorderly layers of music CDs covered the mated desk. The top of a simple four-shelf bookcase jammed with fiction and romance novels was barely adequate to hold the older model CD player with its huge speakers. Two overstuffed, comfortable, but unmatched chairs, piled high with clothes, left the bed and floor the only places where one could sit; the floor not even suitable until more than a dozen pairs of shoes were stacked against the sliding mirrored doors of a bulging clothes closet. Once cleared, the deep-pile carpeting of light tan with a thick felt pad beneath offered a comfortable place for teenager visitors to relax. The sweet, musky odor of Arlene's favorite perfume was ubiquitous in the bedroom.

  "You'd better start looking for a different boyfriend, Erin," Megan said, "because Bobby Thomas isn't the type to stay home with the kids. He'd just put them in the backyard with a bowl of potato chips, lock the gate, and go looking for his buddies."

  "He would not," Erin said, her face a mask of feigned indignation. Then, changing her expression to one of mock-seriousness, she said, "He'd take the chips with him, to munch on after he locked the kiddies in the backyard."

  "At least you recognize him for what he is," Renee said as she languidly rolled over onto her back and stretched her arms out along the perimeter of the bed, allowing her head to loll over the edge.

  Erin sighed sadly. "I know that he's shallow, selfish, and self-centered…"

  "And those are his good points," Renee interrupted, before screaming and pulling in her arms to protect her head from the pillow that Erin swung in her direction.

  "But he's sort of sweet at times," Erin continued as she pushed the pillow behind her again and relaxed against the dresser. "I'm certainly not going to spend my life with him, but he's fun to be with as long as you don't try to take him very seriously. And it beats not having a date on the weekends."

  Quickly rolling back over onto her stomach, Renee glared at Erin and asked venomously, "Is that directed at me because I just broke off with Brian?"

  "Of course not," Erin said as sweetly and innocently as possible. "I'm talking about me."

  "C'mon, Ar," Megan urged, "finish with Erin. I want you to tell my fortune again."

  "I just read your future yesterday, Meg. It hasn't changed."

  "But you didn't tell me who I was going to marry."

  Arlene expressed her slight annoyance by sighing as she used both hands to push her shoulder-length flame-red hair behind her ears. "I told you that it isn't clear. It looks like you'll have two husbands at the same time, or at least while you're very young."

  "I can't have two husbands at the same time. That's bigotry."

  "You mean bigamy," Arlene said.

  "What did I say?"

  "You said bigotry," Renee teased, grinning down from Arlene's bed. "That would only be accurate if you were marrying both the heads of the Klu Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam at the same time."

  "I've heard you do readings for other people, Arlene," Erin said, ignoring Renee, "and you always tell them specific things. Why are you saying that we have confused futures? Are you holding something back? Can you see our deaths or something?"

  "No, of course not! You're my best friends, and I'd tell you everything, even if it was extremely bad. My own future is just as confused. I'm getting very mixed signals from the cards. Perhaps something dramatic, that we don't yet know about, is affecting our futures."

  "But you always say that our futures are already written."

  "That's what I've always believed, but there may be some cosmic variable at work here; something that's affecting all four of us. Until that's resolved, our futures may be in flux."

  "What's flux, Arlene?" Megan asked softly.

  "It means fluid, hon. Sort of like, uncertain."

  "What can we do to make them less— fluxy?"

  "I don't know that we can do anything. The cosmic forces that control our destinies operate at levels far above anything that mere humans can control. We can try to change them by taking the path less traveled, but then we're just redirected back to our proper track. The harder we try to change, the more we're guided back. That's why I say that we can make small choices, but not the big ones; at least not the ones that really matter. And we never know that when selecting some outrageous path, we're really just following the one that we were destined to walk anyway."

  "I'm not sure that I believe that," Erin said. "Let's say that you're destined to live your life alone. You can change that simply by getting married."

  "But then destiny can step in and have your husband leave you because he becomes enamored with someone else, or he could even be killed. Perhaps you were destined to marry someone fated to die very young; maybe even on your wedding night."

  "That's spooky, Ar," Renee said, grimacing. "You really come out with some creepy stuff sometimes."

  "That's life," Arlene said. "We can't fight it. And I only tell you what I see in the cards."

  "But how can we find out what makes our futures so fluxy?" Megan persisted.

  "We'll just have to wait until the cosmic forces solidify."

  "But there must be some way to find out now— I know, how about if we find somebody with a crystal ball?"

  "Merely owning a globe of clear, colorless glass doesn't give someone the power to see into the cosmos, Meg."

  "How then?"

  Arlene thought for a few seconds. "I think the only way is to find someone in touch with the forces of destiny."

  "Good. Where do we find him, or her?"

  "It."

  "It?" Megan echoed.

  "You have to make contact with someone who has crossed over, or at least with someone who has departed; in other words, a spirit."

  "You mean a ghost?" Megan asked, horrified.

  "I prefer the term 'spirit.'"

  "You can't be serious?" Renee said incredulously. "This spiritualism stuff is really going to your head, Ar."

  Staring at her intensely, Arlene said, "I thought that you believed in this?"

  "I don't really. I think of it as fun; something to do to kill time."

  "How about you, Erin?"

  "I'm not sure, Arlene," Erin said hesitantly. "You've been awfully accurate in the past when you've told us things that were going to happen. At first I thought you were just guessing— and then later I thought that you were just lucky."

  "And now?"

  "Like I said— I'm not sure. You've been right way too often lately; much more than the law of averages should allow if you were guessing."

  "I believe in you, Arlene," Megan said cheerfully.

  Smiling, Arlene said, "Thanks, Meg. I know that you do."

  "So how do we contact a spirit?" Megan asked.

  "With a séance, I guess."

  "Let's do it."

  "I think that we all have to do it together, but I don't think that Renee and Erin want to. How about it, Renee?"

  Renee scowled and said, "It's baloney."

  "What's the matter, scared?" Megan asked.

  "Of course not! It's just a waste of time."

  "I think that you're scared."

  "What's to be scared of?" Renee asked.

  "You tell us," Arlene said.

  "C'mon you guys," Megan urged, "let's do it. It'll be fun."

  "Okay, I'm in," Erin said, "but I don't think that I really believe in ghosts, or spirits."

  Renee sighed and said resignedly, "I guess I'm in too."

  "Let's go down to the dining room so we have a regular table," Arlene said, standing up and stretching her long legs to remove some minor stiffness from having sat with them crossed for twenty minutes. The floor of her bedroom was adequate for a tarot reading, but she felt that a séance required more formality. There were, after all, established procedures for contacting people that have departed the mortal world.

  Megan, Renee, and Erin prepared the dining room while Arlene collected the necessary props. A pervasive darkness cloaked the room
as the Venetian blinds and heavy, opaque drapes were closed and drawn. Three candles, retrieved from the fieldstone fireplace mantle in the living room, were placed in the middle of the oak dining table. Once lit, their dancing yellow flames reflected off the highly polished wood surface and gave the pastel blue of the walls a slightly greenish appearance. A small bowl of leftover soup, with a robust odor that immediately began to saturate the air, was carefully positioned between the candles. Taking her seat, Arlene looked solemnly around the table at the others.

  "What's the bowl of sludge for?" Renee quipped lightly, wrinkling her nose.

  "It's beef barley soup, not sludge," Arlene replied. "I read in a book on spiritualism that you're supposed to place some kind of aromatic food in the center of the table to help attract the spirits. The three candles signify the circle that's required for séances. I'll function as the medium."

  "Let's get on with it then," Renee said sighing and doing her absolute best to appear bored again.

  "I know," Arlene began softly and solemnly, "that you may not have believed in their existence before today, but spirits really do exist. They're all around us as we conduct our daily lives. Most people either can't see them, or won't see them." She paused for effect as she looked slowly at each of her friends. "After today that will never again be the case for any of you."

  Several seconds of complete silence ensued in the room as Arlene prepared herself mentally.

  "You forgot to put on the scary music," Renee said.

  "Would you prefer to leave?" Arlene asked abruptly.

  Renee started at the barked words, then calmed and sighed deeply. "I'm sorry. Go on."

  "If this is going to work," Arlene said solemnly, "you'll all have to put your skepticism aside for now and believe. Just this once, you must believe that spirits really do exist. Believe that they are all around us, all the time; they simply dwell on a different plane of reality. You only need a proper intermediary, and the desire, to connect our world with theirs."