Saints, Liars, and the Dead
A Boston medium shows up in a small town, aiming to profit off a recent collapse in the coal mine. But the job's not as straight-forward as it seems.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —
Thora
More people were lined up outside of the inn than Thora had seen in months. She’d half thought more of them had moved on after the mine collapse, but there they stood, widows with dark bags under their eyes, holding babies in their arms or toddlers by the hand. Mixed in were miners themselves, those who hadn’t been on shift when the tunnel had caved in and buried all but one.
She ran her eyes over the line once more. Gideon Rourke was missing, though she hadn’t really expected him to show up. Odds were he hadn’t ventured far enough into town to even see the flyers, and no one visited him anymore, save her.
The line shortened in front of her, each person giving their twenty-five cents to the youth at the door. Thora tightened her fist around the quarter dollar she held. This pair of city folk were no different than the journalists who’d flocked in like vultures in the wake of the collapse, pecking at grieving families for anything that’d make a good story, only to leave them no better off than where they’d started when they realized the story wasn’t selling.
As if men’s lives were worth nothing more than some words printed on paper.
“Twenty-five, cents, ma’am.”
She handed over the money without a glance at the dark-haired teenager, and followed a woman and her three young daughters into the cramped parlor room.
It was dark and smelled of kerosene from the lamps, the walls and windows covered in dark fabric. In the center was a small, round table that the townspeople clustered around, pressed in on each other like baled straw.
On the far side of the table stood the man from the flyers. The “professor.” There seemed nothing special about him. Everything about him seemed ordinary – his height, the color of his hair, even the way he held himself. She’d half expected him to appear draped in velvet or even silk, instead of the plain black suit that hung from his shoulders. Thora imagined it was suited more for dinner parties than holding a séance, though she’d never before attended either.
The door to the room closed somewhere behind her, and Thora spotted the youth she’d given her money to passing through the crowd to stop at Victor Sinclaire’s side.
Sinclaire clapped his hands, quieting the whispers that had filled the room. “Good evening. My name is Victor Sinclaire. My assistant here is Emery Calhoun, and they will be helping to make sure everything goes well. These things don’t always go as planned.”
“Why not?” Harold Holsteader asked. Even in the dark of the room, Thora could see the coal dust ever present on his clothes and skin, dark smears that never seemed to wash off, and marked the miners for all to see.
Sinclaire shrugged his shoulders, his arms out and palms up, making the move larger that it needed to be. “Speaking with the dead is more of an art than a science, and like the living, sometimes they just don’t want to speak to you.” He nodded to his assistant, who stepped away, and gestured to the chairs around the table. “Is there anyone who would like to go first? Please, don’t be shy.”
Chair legs clattered against the floor in a thudding cacophony as several people hurried to take them. Thora squeezed closer, trying to get a better view of the table.
“Oh, don’t rush!” Sinclaire’s assistant urged. “It’s no good if people are pushing.” For Sinclaire’s part, he’d only set a hand on the crystal ball at the center of the table, keeping it from toppling onto the floor.
Fitch Kinkaid put his hand down on the table. It wobbled slightly. “Just start the thing.” He appeared to have lost weight since the last time Thora had seen him, at the joint funeral they’d held at the mouth of the mine for all the miners lost. Fitch’s two sons, a grandson, and his son in law had been on the line when it caved in.
His daughter was silent at his back, belly round with child.
Sinclaire nodded and sat at his own chair, flaring his coat tails with a flourish that Thora found distasteful. The whole thing was ridiculous, taking advantage of these people and making a spectacle about it. She could spit.
“Em,” Sinclaire said. “Lower the lights.”
His assistant did as bid, slipping past Thora to darken one of the kerosene lamps. Only the one just to the left of Sinclaire’s shoulder remained bright, casting his face half in shadow, but sending a bright light onto the crystal.
“Who would you like to speak to?” Sinclaire asked Fitch, who immediately said the name of his eldest son.
The smell of incense began to fill the room, blending with the scent of kerosene. Thora glanced around and spotted the tiny red dot at the end of the stick, near the shadow that was Emery Calhoun. The assistant seemed focused on the séance, as were the rest of the group.
In the center of the room, the table shook, pulling gasps from the crowd. A frown pulled at Thora’s lips. Smoke gathered around the crystal ball, whirling as if in a circle as the table shuddered, and then dispersed across the room. The table stilled. Whatever Fitch and Sinclaire were saying was lost to Thora in the muttering of the crowd.
“I can’t believe it’s real,” Lenore Harker whispered at her side.
Thora didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
The crowd dispersed, heading back out into the cool night air, more than one wiping their eyes as they passed through the door. Thora stayed back, watching Sinclaire relax into his chair, head falling back. He pulled in a long breath.
“That went well,” he said to his assistant, who was carefully smothering the incense.
Emery Calhoun hummed in agreement. “It was a bigger crowd than I expected. Seemed like the whole town was here.”
“Almost,” Thora said. The assistant’s hands faltered, sending spent incense powder floating to the floor. “A couple of folks were missing.”
Sinclaire pushed himself to his feet, straightening the lapels on his suit and running a hand through his hair, sweeping it back off his forehead. His eyebrows rose and a well-crafted smile pulled at the edges of his lips. Rehearsed, it seemed to Thora. No one around town ever smiled so wide. “My apologies. I’d thought everyone had left already.” He gestured to his assistant on the floor, trying to clean up the mess. “Is there something we can do for you?”
“I’d like you to leave.”
The smile faltered, and Sinclaire’s assistant paused in sweeping up the incense. “Excuse me?” he asked, the words slipping out as if on accident. Sinclaire cleared his throat. “I mean, please explain.”
Thora stepped closer, and Sinclaire’s assistant finally rose from the floor, dropping a handful of powder back into the dish it had fallen from. She thought she should be more frightened, alone in a room with two strangers, but all she felt was rage. Her hands trembled with it, she could feel the heat of it in her cheeks, her forehead. “These people have been through enough. They don’t need you here peddling falsehoods, offering lies for money.”
“It’s not –” Emery Calhoun tried, but fell silent at Sinclaire’s raised hand.
“No one is forcing these people to believe, nor to even attend. That’s their own choice.” His vapid smile had fully dropped. “I’m not leaving simply because a single woman demands it.”
Thora could find no way to counter his argument. “Fine.” She turned to the door.
“Wait,” he said, and she stopped.
When nothing more was forthcoming, she faced him again. “What?”
Sinclaire just blinked at her. “I thought you were leaving.”
“You told me to wait.”
“No, I didn’t.” He crossed his arms, creasing the sleeves of his suit. “I’ve no reason to keep you here.”
The room felt strangely cold, Thora’s fingertips like ice against her palm. Her hand ached as she wrapped it around the doorknob.
Sinclaire’s footsteps sounded on the floor behind her, their cadence impossibly familiar. He stopped an arms length away. “In the mine,” he said. His voice was softer than she expected.
“What about it?”
“What about what?”
“The mine!” She whirled to face him, the skirts on her dress flaring around her legs. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, and as she exhaled, she swore it was a white mist. “What about the mine?”
Sinclaire pulled back, hurried steps that sent him bumping into the table. The crystal ball shook and fell from its stand, rolling toward the floor. Emery Calhoun lunged forward to catch it and hit the table, sending it sliding with an ungodly screech. When Calhoun placed a hand on it for steadiness, the table did not shake.
Adjusting his tie, Sinclaire asked, “Why are you bringing up the mine?”
Thora scoffed. “You’re the one who mentioned it first!”
“No, I didn’t.” He didn’t sound like he was lying. But a professional liar, wouldn’t. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Emery Calhoun put a hand to Sinclaire’s arm, the crystal ball cradled safely in the other. “This is weird.”
“What is?”
Calhoun ignored him. “My apologies, ma’am. We can issue a refund, if you’d like.” Sinclaire appeared about to argue, but Calhoun’s hand tightened on his arm, and his mouth snapped shut.
Thora shook her head and finally yanked the door open. However reasonable Calhoun seemed to be, they were both in on the tricks. She knew they were frauds. She just needed everyone else to see it too.
— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —
AO3















