The Spirit's Cabinet

You are in an area surrounded by curtains. The curtains prevent you from seeing out of the area and there does not seem to be any way out. There are two others here, but you cannot see them, only feel that they are there. The curtained area is furnished with a chair and a table. The chair is of the stackable variety made of tubular steel with padded plywood to make a seat and a back. The table is a baize covered square with foldable legs. On the table are a small handbell, a black bound book with 'The Holy Bible' embossed in gold on the cover and a candlestick of solid silver with a thin red candle in place.

This is not where you usually are; you usually inhabit what used to be your family home and watch as your grandchildren grow up without you and your daughter falling out of love with the husband you did not approve of in the first place. That was then, but this is now.

"I'm Caroline," you say, hoping that you can be heard by the other two presences better than you are heard by your living family; although you have found that tutting at Maria, your granddaughter, will most of the time give her enough pause to let her conscience kick in.

You feel that your words make no impact on the space, but you hear a response. "My name's Frank. Pleased to meet you."

You see a ghostly male hand emerge from a curtain, and put out your own hand, which is similarly ghostly, to shake it. You shake hands, it is the first contact you have felt since you died several months ago.

"Do you know why we're here? And do you know where here is?" you ask.

"No," says the ghost that steps from the curtain. Frank is a bit rough round the edges, in a flannel shirt and jeans, slightly spoiled by a dent in his skull. In answer to your shocked look he explains, "I died when a machine at work went wrong."

You and he turn to look at the other presence here. He appears to be dressed in a very formal black suit, and have handsome good looks, but when he smiles most of his teeth are missing. "Who are you?" you ask.

He looks down his nose and says, "I was Harold the Magnificent, until my assistant failed me fatally, Now I'm the ghost of Harold the Magnificent. I don't know why you two are here, but at least I know roughly where here is."

"Do tell," you encourage. You feel that Harold is deliberately withholding the information, to make himself the senior person in the group.

"This is a magician's spirit cabinet and we were summoned here, from wherever we were before, by forces I can't claim to understand, to do the bidding of a magician and help him perform this illusion."

"If that's the case," asked Frank, "why would fate choose us and take us from whatever we were trying to achieve by being ghosts and dump us here?"

"Usually," claimed Harold, seeming to pretend to knowledge he was less than sure of, "the nearest people in the spirit world are summoned, but in some cases someone will be summoned who can do something towards their aim in the afterlife."

"How does that make sense?" you ask.

"It's fate and fate works mysteriously, even obliquely sometimes. So unless we can find out where this spirit cabinet has been set up, relative to the places we usually haunt, we won't know if this is an evening off, during which nothing would be achieved, or an opportunity to make progress."

You say, "For me it could be an evening off, from trying to move things, because my granddaughter, Maria is out this evening. With a bit of effort I can move crumbs and dust, but it's not very effective, because my daughter is a house-proud woman who polishes everything to within an inch of its life."

"That's good," Harold says, "we will need someone who can touch and move things if we are to do what we will need to do. Do you have any other influences, Caroline?"

You feel it is nice to be addressed by your name after months of being ignored. "Well, sometimes I see my granddaughter considering being irresponsible (doing stuff that can wait, when there is more important things to do) I have found that if I tut, she will pause and in most cases she will go and do the important thing first, but not always. I seem to have no effect on my grandson or daughter, and I don't like being in my son-in-law's presence, so I go away to another room."

"That might be useful too. How about you Frank? Do you have any powers or abilities?"

"I don't know! I think I've only been dead for a week or two and I'm haunting the engineering workshop. I seem to be able to stop machines working, but I don't know how I do it."

Harold thought about this and then offered, "Maybe you will find out how you stop the machines, which will help in the purpose of your afterlife."

"Forgive me asking, but what can you do?" you ask.

"I wish I knew," Harold seems distressed by this admission of powerlessness. He tries to smile, then remembers that his teeth are missing and shuts his mouth. "But I can be of use, because I have an idea of the course of events that are supposed to happen in a spirit cabinet, and, who knows, I might find my spiritual purpose or power, or be able to help you with the application of yours."

You begin to hear noises from outside the curtained area. The noise might be a voice, but you cannot understand what is being said.

"The magician is introducing the illusion and his spirit medium," says Harold. He then gives a sudden intake of breath. "I know this spirit cabinet, it was mine when I was alive. There can't be another such cabinet with that scorch mark on the fabric, from that fateful day." He is pointing at a bald and blacken streak in the otherwise clean, if tired, red velvet. "You'd've thought they might have tried to get that repaired."

"Never mind; you can't do anything about it now," points out Frank. "So what can we expect?"

"Well, in a minute, the magician will open the curtains and allow some people from the audience to check things out, then he will tie up his assistant and fix her to the chair, then he will close the curtains and call out instructions and we will do our best to follow them."

"What if we don't want to?" you ask.

"I don't know," says Harold, "I never thought about it when I was a magician myself, but as the instructions are usually harmless stuff, there's no point in not doing them."

Frank seems concerned. "Won't someone notice that we're doing the things; like the assistant or the magician or the audience? and isn't that giving the game away about there being an afterlife? Somehow I thought that providing evidence that the afterlife was real was taboo."

"I thought so too," you agree.

"True, but we have an advantage, the audience 'know' that they are being fooled, so assume that there is trickery, so the only people we need to fool are the magician and the assistant. The assistant will be pretending to be in a trance, we will have to get her properly hypnotised, so she does not interfere, this allows the magician to assume that the assistant is doing her job, with whatever small variations we decide we need to add. And as part of the hypnosis we can tell the assistant that she did her bit. Everybody's happy and nobody is any the wiser that it was us doing the work."

Frank asks, "Won't people see us?"

"Of course not," blusters Harold. "Have you ever been seen? You could walk up to Buckingham Palace in the nude and nobody would notice; well, except the odd person with psychic powers, but who would believe them. On the other hand it would probably be a good idea to avoid the people that are about to invade this space. You'll be aware that coming into contact with a living thing causes a nervous reaction that is often interpreted as feeling cold."

"I guess that would explain my son-in-law's duvet hogging behaviour when I first died and was trying to get him to wake and see me," you suggest.

"Stand back!" says Harold, "He's just winding up his introduction and has got his observers from the audience. The curtains will be opening any moment."

The other ghosts retreat to the corners of the cabinet on the far side from the table; you move into the corner behind the table from the side from which the noise of the magician's introduction was heard.

The curtain opens and a woman and three men enter the cabinet.

The man who leads the way into the space is very formally dressed, in a suit that was almost identical in style to Harold's. You hear an intake of breath from Harold. Once the people are inside the area of the cabinet you can hear what they are saying. The man in the suit first instructs the men to check the curtains are not equipped with trapdoors or additional assistants, while he guides the woman to the chair. He also calls to someone outside the curtained area suggesting that they check out the outside rear of the cabinet before taking their place in the chair where she can see the back and the side of the cabinet at all times and be seen by the audience.

The other men, more casually, but smartly dressed, make a moderate job of checking the curtains, to the point that each of you needs to duck to avoid being touched. The magician has them turn their attention to the woman, who is now sat in the chair. She is wearing a sleeveless gown of white that sparkles with crystals. The dress reaches mid calve at the bottom. Added to her costume are six strips of unbleached linen, which stand out against her tanned skin, these strips are tied tightly to her ankles, her wrists and the tops of her upper arms.

The magician tells the two men to tie the ends of the strips around the woman's ankles to the tubes that are the front part of the chairs frame and once the knots are in place he provides each of them with a stapler to ensure that the knots they have made do not come apart. They are next instructed to tie the strips the adorn the woman's upper arms to the section of steel tubing that rises from behind the back of the back-pad of the chair then crosses above it to descend behind the other side; he reminds them to staple these knots, multiple times if they feel like it. Their final task in securing the woman to the chair is, once the woman has crossed her arms across her abdomen, to tie the tails of the wrist-strips to descending steel tubes below the back-pad and staple the resulting knots.

With the woman tied to the chair he sends the other two men away to station themselves at the corners of the stage so that they can spot anyone trying to enter or leave the cabinet. Thinking that he is alone in the cabinet, he whispers a few words in the woman's ear, then makes a few hypnotic gestures in front of her face and her head lolls forward and her body appears to be held up by the strips attaching her arms to the chair frame.

The magician steps to the side to give the audience a view of the woman, tied to the chair and seemingly hypnotised. He steps from the cabinet space and with a rattle draws the curtain on the audience side shut.

Harold steps forward and asks you to speak to the woman to hypnotise her properly, telling you that you should hurry, because she could open her eyes at any moment.

"I've never hypnotised anyone; what do I say? And why am I doing the hypnotising?" you ask.

"You're doing the hypnosis, because you're the one who can contact the living. Besides, hypnosis is easy in this situation; all you have to do is tell her to relax deeply and sleep, but remember doing what she was supposed to do when she wakes up. It will probably benefit from being repeated a couple of times, just to be sure."

You approach the woman and bend down to whisper in her ear. You tell her to relax and sleep and upon waking remember doing what she should have been doing. You recognise that her breathing is slowing and her body seems to be more relaxed.

You are a little surprised that the hypnosis has worked so well. You ask Harold, "How come she is now hypnotised from me speaking to her, when all my previous attempts to communicate with most people are a dead loss, and Maria, who seems to be the only person to react to me, doesn't really hear me?"

"The good thing about the spirit cabinet that helps us is that it amplifies our abilities."

Harold is about to continue, when a foghorn-like sound penetrates the cabinet, then the magician is heard to declaim in a very loud voice, "Oh, spirits from beyond the veil, manifest and make yourselves known to us."

You look over at the woman in the chair. "How did she sleep through that?" you ask.

"If she hears it at all, she will have hear it at a more normal volume. That tone of voice is a specific tone meant to be used to communicate with spirits."

"That's all very well, but what are we meant to do? It's not like we can step out of the cabinet and show ourselves."

"That's the point of the things on the table," Harold seems a little exasperated. We just need to ring the bell, light the candle and throw the book out of the cabinet."

"Ok, I can probably throw the book if the power boost that you mentioned is sufficient, and I can ring the bell too, but there's no way I can light the candle."

"I'm guessing that we'll have to rely on Frank for that one," Harold suggests.

"I don't know how to do that!" says Frank.

"Ok, you ring the bell, Caroline, while I talk to Frank about maybe using whatever talent he has, which will not only help the act along, but probably help him with the reason for his ghost-hood."

You look at the bell; to you after several months of trying to move crumbs and dust grains, it looks impossible. It might weigh as much as a pound, but when you have become accustomed to struggling with things that weigh tens of milligrams. You attempt to grasp the handle with every expectation that you hand will pass through the wooden handle. You are surprised when you knock it over. There is a rattle as the clanger contacts the bell as it rolls towards the edge of the table. In a reflex from your life you put your hand on the handle to stop it from reaching the edge. It stops.

While you consider your next move and begin to right the bell, you listen to what Harold has to say to Frank.

"Ok, Frank I don't think I can do this, but perhaps you can. You say you can make machines stop working, how does that work."

"Like I said, I don't know. I just concentrate on the machine and it stops working; sometimes the gears break, other times it just overheats."

"I don't know if breaking gears will be useful, but overheating sounds just like what we need at the moment. Try concentrating on the candle's wick and thinking about it getting hot. Or I've seen people click their fingers and a flame appearing above their thumb."

After another rattle from another attempt to pick up the bell, Harold says, "You don't have to ring it like you're calling the children in from the playground; just make sufficient noise to be heard. Maybe you should lift it and shake it a bit from side to side. If you want to make more noise you could drop it on the floor afterwards."

Carefully you manage to lift the bell an inch from the table, and with a slight twist of your wrist, you get it to swing enough that the clapper impacts the metal of the bell making a tinkle. With a little more effort, you manage to achieve a sustained tinkling noise for about six seconds. After the six seconds you drop the bell which bounces on the table top and topples over to the floor.

Dropping the bell is not what you intended to do, but you suddenly stepped back and lost you tenuous grip. You stepped back instinctively, because of the small jet of flame projecting from Frank's finger. He looks almost as shocked to be the source of the flames as you are at having them unexpectedly appearing inches from your nose.

Harold who was standing beside Frank, grabs his arm and directs them toward the tip of the red candle. In the next moment, the candle is lit and Frank has extinguished the flame, or possibly, judging by the expression of terror on his face, allowed it to stop.

"Ok, now that that is done, it time to throw the book out of the cabinet, Caroline."

You approach the book and wonder how you are going to get the bible to move, let alone moving fast enough to leave the cabinet. "Ok, here goes nothing," you comment and slam your hand under the table moving upwards. You feel the slight discomfort that you usually feel when you pass through things or they pass through you as your hand passes through the table, then as you arm continues to rise, you see the book rise and soon it lands on the rail of the cabinet and topples outside.

"It's time to get out of the way again, because they'll be back to see what's happened and check on the medium." In response to your blank look, he adds, "Her in the chair, the magician will be referring to her as his medium, to give this illusion some spiritualistic credibility."

"But it's us spirits that are doing the work, so why pretend?" you ask.

"Because he doesn't know that and no-one, but us three, would believe it."

The rings rattle along the rail as you and your fellow ghosts hide in the corners of the cabinet. The magician asks the two men from before to check the woman's bonds, which they announce to be as they were left, unloosen and still stapled. While the magician is pleased by this, he gives a second glance at the various ties himself; he seems to be a little unsettled by the lack of subtle clues that his medium had moved.

The magician crosses the cabinet and extinguishes the candle by pinching the wick between his fingers, then picks up the bell from the floor and the candlestick from the table and leaves.

During the inspection, you can hear the applause from the audience distantly, like waves on the shore driven by a brisk on-shore breeze.

The magician leaves and the curtain rattles back into place.

"What's going to happen next?" you ask.

"I'm not sure. It's a long time since I was doing this illusion and I'm fairly sure that we were doing it ourselves, without spiritual assistance. We'll have to see and play it by ear. I hope that I'll know what is meant to happen when I see it."

Harold, the ex-magician, is forced to stop while the magician, declaims, foghorn loud, "Oh, spirits of the cabinet, take this jacket." As the noise fades, a hand dangles a jacket over the curtain. It appears to be the jacket of one of the male volunteers that had left the cabinet, after the inspection of the medium's bonds.

"I recognise this bit. So, Caroline, you need to take the jacket and check the pockets; If you find anything put it on the table. Then we need to put the jacket on her; and I don't mean drape it over her shoulders, I mean so that it is being properly with her arms down the sleeves and everything."

You take hold of the jacket and give it a little tug, being careful not to touch the magician's hand. The magician releases the jacket to you. You find you can support the garment, while you pull various contents from the pockets and deposit them on the table.

"Good!" says Harold. "Now pick something that isn't too personal and won't be damaged when you throw it out of the cabinet. Then prepare it so that you can quickly throw it out, once we have the jacket, on our medium."

You pick a wallet and separate it from the rest of the jacket contents on the table, so you can easily launch it out of the cabinet, once the other part is done.

"Ok," said Harold, "we have the jacket ready, all we need to do now is work out how to get it onto our medium. I'm guessing that you, Frank, have a skill that we have not exactly discovered."

"I didn't know I could do the flame thing before I got here, either," said Frank, not at all confident that he really had any powers at all.

To take some of the pressure off of Frank, you ask Harold, "What exactly do we need to do to get the jacket on her?"

"Well, if we weren't here, she would release herself from the chair enough to take the jacket and put it on and then re-apply the bonds. So we need to achieve the same effect; for preference without interfering with the strips holding her to the chair, because while she's in that trance there's a good chance she'll collapse on the floor and we don't stand a chance of getting her back into the chair in any reasonable length of time."

"So what we need is to get the jacket onto her by passing it through the ties holding her in place?" you suggest.

"That sums it up, but I think, because of the way she is positioned, we're going to have to pass it through her too."

"So, Frank, do you have any experience of passing solids through solids?" you ask your flannel shirted companion.

"I don't think so. But then again, I had not realised I was causing things to over-heat either."

"Well, why don't try something?" In answer to Frank's puzzled expression, you suggest, "Why not try to pass a solid through a solid? There's not much to lose and if you understand the things you can do you will probably be in a better place to get your ghostly purpose done and move on to whatever comes next."

"Ok? I can but try?"

Harold has a suggestion. "You could try passing one of the strips through the frame of the chair. If you succeed, you put it back and we can move on to the exact method. Might I suggest that you try one of the leg ties, because her feet are solidly on the floor and we won't need to move her to get things back as they should be."

Frank leans down and briefly tugs on the nearest leg tie and is surprised when it comes free.

Harold, looks on. "The difficult part is going to be to get it back on, in the same position."

Frank kneels down to get a better look at what he is doing. As you watch he moves the linen strip through the metal of the chair and Frank has to tug bits of it so that it is round the tube and not intersecting it.

"That's nice," you comment, "but how does it get us nearer to getting this jacket on her?"

"It gets us a long way, but you two are going to have to cooperate a bit to pull it off." Harold said.

"Ok, so you've got a plan. Let's hear it, because I don't suppose the folks out there will wait forever for us to do this job."

"The plan is that you put the jacket on Frank and he sits into our medium with the jacket incorporeal and then when you have adjusted things so that the jacket does not harm anything he can make the jacket solid again and stand back up. Of course, you'll also need to deepen the medium's trance, because don't want to risk her waking from the flesh through flesh sensation that the living find so uncomfortable."

"It doesn't sound much like a plan to me," you comment, "but I can't think of a better one, let's give it a go." You transfer you hold on the jacket from the middle of the collar to the fronts of the shoulders and hold it open for Frank to get into.

With similar lack of faith in the plan and his abilities, Frank steps up to the jacket and then turns to back into, he passes backwards through the front of the jacket and you try to hold it so that Frank can adjust himself to fit into the space inside the jacket. Suddenly the jacket feels a lot less tenuous and you let go. It appears that Frank is wearing the jacket.

"Wow! It feels good to be wearing something other than the same old shirt and jeans. So what happens next?"

"When Caroline has had the chance to increase our medium's level of hypnosis, you sit in the chair and then adjust your body and the jacket to hers and then re-materialise the jacket and we step away, while Caroline throws the spectator's wallet out of here."

You approach the medium and tell her that her trance is deeper and that she will ignore any strange sensations she might have in the next few minutes. Harold indicates his approval of your hypnotic suggestion by raising a thumb and tells Frank it is time for him to sit in the chair.

Cautiously, Frank tries to sit in the medium's lap and finds that he passes through it, but does not pass through the chair below. With much shuffling he is sat with his torso almost exactly coincident with the woman already sitting in the chair. With some guidance from you and Harold and some tweaks of the fold of the jacket, Frank is in the same position as the medium, who despite your hypnosis is shivering.

"Now Frank," says Harold, "I think this will be the trickiest bit, you need to stop being the wearer of the jacket and pass that onto Jennifer. When she is the wearer of the jacket you can stand and Caroline chucks that wallet over."

Frank seems to be concentrating on not being the wearer of the jacket, but noticed Harold's slip and gives him a significant look, which causes him to blush, suffusing his entire form with a pinkish radiance.

Frank steps away from the chair and you re-perform the slap upward through the table to launch the wallet on a trajectory that clears the top of the curtain. You each return to your former corners of the cabinet to avoid being detected by any inadvertent contact with the living.

"You know more than you're telling, Harold. How did you know that she was called Jennifer?" you say, confident that the three men that enter the cabinet once the curtain is opened cannot hear you.

"Because she's my grandson's wife. And he is my grandson, Harold Junior," Harold admits pointing to the magician who asks the spectators to check that the jacket is properly on the medium and that the bonds securing her to the chair are untouched. It is soon evident that the spectators have not noticed that the tie that Frank adjusted has been moved, but the magician has. The spectator without his jacket is asked to collect the rest of his belongings from the table.

"Is this something to do with your purpose in the afterlife?" you ask.

Harold's blush grows stronger. "Yes, my reason for still being about and not having fully passed on is to ensure that my magical legacy remains. My son, who I initially had hopes for, was struggling financially, after my death and took up a normal job, instead of following in my footsteps. He kept his hand in by performing at office parties and charity events, but more importantly he taught Harold Junior the tricks, including the tricks I had taught him, but he did not use himself. Tonight is a very important night for Harold Junior, because if he makes a good showing tonight, he will have a career that perpetuates my legacy."

"Ok. I guess that makes sense," you say. "But why does he need you to help, when you told us that they know the tricks to pull it off without our help?"

Harold's face turns sad. "Jennifer's a lovely girl and possibly the best assistant my grandson could have, but she is struggling with this particular illusion. If I had left them to do this unaided, it is almost certain that something would have gone wrong, like it did when I performed this on my last night alive. I did not want young Harold to run that risk, so I called in your help, because I was confident that I could marshal your efforts to help me and him. And was confident that fate would bring ghosts that could progress their purposes too. Frank, here, now has a better understanding of what he is able to achieve with his abilities and will be able to apply them to his purpose better than he could before."

"And me?"

"I don't know yet, but I have a feeling that you'll get your chance to move your purpose forward. Let's see what happens next."

"So, what are you expecting to come next?"

"Well, they'll want the jacket back, but Frank can take care of that. Then there is usually one of the spectators gets blindfolded and has his trousers turned up and a bucket on his head, and there's the spirit writing thing, but which happens next I don't know. We'll just have to see."

You watch as a white-board on a easel is brought in and placed on the other side of the chair from the table. On the narrow shelf at the bottom the magician places three markers.

"It looks like he going for the spirit writing first; that's a bit unusual," comments Harold.

He makes more noises of disbelief when a stool is brought in. "He can't be serious; He's going to get Jennifer to try to do all three at once. Jennifer struggles with doing any one of these; if we weren't here he, and his audience, would be in for such a disappointment."

You hear the magician, call for the person who has been keeping an eye on the rear of the cabinet to come in, once she has been replaced by the guy with his jacket still on. It is your turn to be surprised, because into the cabinet steps Maria, your granddaughter. You suddenly know that there is purpose to your being here, but are still unsure what that purpose is; are you here to pass on a message that is more specific that tutting? or are you here to protect Maria from the other people around, both living and dead?

Harold Junior is burbling on about a test of spirit writing and Maria being there to make sure that his medium is not releasing herself and making things happen. He sits Maria on the stool and positions her with a hand on the medium's knee and another holding her hand.

Harold Sr. says, "It looks like you're going to have to hypnotise the volunteer if she is not going to end up frightened by the cold sensation, when Frank sits back into Jennifer to retrieve the jacket and we're going to have to think up some other prank to pull on the audience member, because she's wearing a skirt, not trousers, and I don't see a bucket to put on her head either."

"You can't do that, she's my granddaughter. You mustn't do anything embarrassing to her; I forbid it!"

"Calm down, Caroline!" says Harold. "We won't do anything too embarrassing to her and you'll get the chance to give her a personal message, by writing it on the board." After a moments more thought he adds, "I think we have a plan. Caroline, hypnotises Maria to ignore the cold sensation, then Frank, you sit into Jennifer are wear the jacket again, while Caroline writes her message on the board. You can tell her a message from you as well, she can write that too. After that she takes the jacket and tosses it out of the cabinet, while we work out and execute whatever we come up with to make it appear that the ghosts have been at Maria, without harming her."

While the ex-magician has been talking the living magician has placed a sleep-mask over Maria's eyes and retreated from the cabinet. He rattles the curtain shut and begins his booming invocation.

"Oh, spirits, please return the jacket. Should you choose, you may write a message to the living upon the board. Oh, spirits, please manifest and be active."

You and your fellow spirits feel compelled to carry out your plan, as far as it goes. So you go to speak to your granddaughter and the medium that they will remain frozen in place until released and ignore any uncomfortable sensations until they are released. There is a worrying moment for you as Maria turns her head towards your voice as if she is hearing you more than subliminally.

With the medium and her custodian hypnotised Harold suggests that you pick up the marker and write your message on the board. Frank comes in and once more sits in the lap of the medium. As you finish writing on the board with a marker that seems to want to squeak against the surface, Frank is concentrating on wearing the jacket and then stands up with it on. He turns his back to you so that you may take the jacket in preparation for flinging it over the border of the cabinet. you recap the pen, the reach for the collar of the jacket as Frank straightens his arms to allow to be easily removed, which you think could just as easily achieved by re-materialising it.

As the jacket leaves Frank's body, you feel it taking on its former weight and it takes you two swings to get the jacket to the point where it will flop over the curtain rail and hopefully fall on the other side.

Frank and Harold begin to brainstorm for ideas of what they can do with Maria, but pause long enough for Harold to suggest a message from him to his grandson. You write the message at the bottom of the board and suggest that if things go well, there is space at the top of the board to write a message from Frank.

While you try to hear what the men in the cabinet are cooking up for your Maria, Harold Junior is booming his thanks to the spirits, that if Harold is to be believed, he does not believe in. It is evident from Harold Sr.'s expression that this is a good thing that he never thought to do.

Frank asks you to scribe a message for him as he sits on the stool where you granddaughter is already sitting. Not sure what to do about this you pause, to see what they have planned. When Frank stands up moments later you see he is now wearing Maria's bra, which he quickly removes and hands to you.

"Do something creative and visual with it; and, if possible make it something that she will recognise as something you'll know," says Harold.

You hand the marker pen to Frank, who seems to have learnt that he can hold things if he makes them insubstantial. As you step towards Maria you have a strong memory of a dress-up incident, when a short-haired Maria wanted to be Princess Leia so borrowed one of your bras and wore it with the cups over her ears, in place of the famous hair buns. You decide that it will remind her of you, especially if you add a clue to your message. In a single motion you place the bra into position and step back to the board to add 'Leia buns' to your message and write Franks.

As luck would have it Harold Junior opened the curtains before you could finish Frank's message. As the stage lighting floods the cabinet, the marker becomes too heavy to handle and drops through you body and rolls to the magician's feet.

Harold is beckoning and whispering urgently to you. "Release the hypnosis on the women and get out of the way before they feel you."

After a few steps you are back in your corner, pausing on the way to tell Jennifer and Maria that they are no longer asleep or hypnotised.

Harold Junior enters the cabinet and asks how Maria is feeling. Maria replies that she feels that something strange has happened.

The magician asks Maria if she felt the medium move, and is told that the only movement she felt was a bit of a shudder through the medium's body shortly after the curtain opened; Jennifer is still pretending to be in a trance.

"Are you in the habit of putting your bra on your head?" the magician asks.

"That's an odd question; but I did used to put a bra on my head because my hair was not long enough to make those headphone hair-things that Princess Leia was famous for when we played Star Wars with the kids next door."

The magician picked up the marker he had nearly stood on and replaced the cap, then taking up another marker underlined the words 'Leia buns' on the white board.

The magician asks Maria to take her hands from Jennifer and remove the blindfold and the bra from her head. It is obvious from her reaction that she knows that the bra in her hand is the one that had been on her chest when she entered the cabinet.

"Well, Maria tells us that our medium did not move, but there are written messages from the spirits upon the board. I think we had better find out if they are meaningful.

"The message at the top would appear to be that last one written because it looks as if the last word is incomplete; probably because I opened the curtain too soon. It seems to say, 'The machines are dangerous at Ac-' something. Does that mean anything to anyone present?"

The ghosts hear that someone has responded to the offer to find meaning in this cryptic message, but cannot make out what the person is saying.

Fortunately for you and your fellow spirits, Harold Junior asks, "So, you are a government inspector who is going to investigate a fatal accident as at company called 'Active Engineering'?" The incomprehensible response has a positive ring to it. With this revelation you see Frank fading from the cabinet as his transparency to you increases and then he is no longer there.

You turn to the dead magician and nod at the corner where Frank had been and Harold says that Frank had achieved as much of his purpose here as he could, so he was returning to the usual place he haunts.

The magician moves onto the next line of writing. "Talk to Grandma Caroline more." He pauses before saying, "That seems oddly specific. Does anyone here have a Grandma Caroline?"

There is some barely audible muttering, from which you conclude that there are no people in the audience with a grandparent called Caroline. You feel the urge to do something to get Maria to speak up, but are saved the effort when she does so, without being further prompted.

"My Grandmother was called Caroline, but she died nearly a year ago." says Maria.

Harold Junior's face looks a little worried and he shoots a disapproving glance towards Jennifer who is still trying to remain trance-still. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be, she lived to a ripe old age and died suddenly in her sleep; the doctors say that she won't have known a thing about it, which is a kind of blessing really. Since then I've had the feeling that she's been watching over me. Perhaps if I talk about things, she might tell me how best to sort things out."

"Thank you, Maria," says the magician as the audience applauds.

He reads the next line and gives another sharp look at the medium. "Do not ever try the bullet catch, ever. And there are six exclamation marks. I take it that this is a reference to my grandfather, Harold the Magnificent, who died attempting exactly that trick. That was the very evening that he last performed the spirit cabinet illusion, that we have just performed for you."

You fade from the spirit cabinet.

----------

You are next aware of being in your granddaughter's bedroom and being told about the magic show that Maria went to see and how she had participated in a spiritualist illusion.

You say, "That's good."

While Maria has evidently not hear your words, she is smiling as if she can feel the approval behind them. You feel that your future of protecting and guiding Maria in her life got a lot easier.