Calliope: The Lab By Imani Wagner (Short Ten)

Calliope and Dr. Delvaux get just steps closer to helping Mavis find his body. What they stumble upon is far from what was expected.

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Mya peeled herself from my embrace like she had been sitting in the lap of her grandmother. This made her look younger. She was like a little girl trying to grow up, trying not to allow herself to be coddled too much. Little Mya straightened up, showed all the grownups that she was grown up too and that she could pull herself together long enough to solve a most painful mystery. “How do we get this guy?”

“We start by helping Mavis locate his body,” I said softly.

“We should get started. Calliope, can you switch seats with Azrael,” Dr. Delvaux asked. “Mavis, sit here with me and Calliope.”

“He’s here?” Mya looked around the room like she would eventually lay eyes on her brother. Tears threatened her red stinging eyes.

Dr. Delvaux, Mavis, and I joined hands. “Okay Calliope, we’re all going to go in together. I’ll instruct you on how to help Mavis.” She crossed her legs before she continued. She sat poised and upright. Her back straightened and her breathing slowed to a deep hypnotizing rhythm. It was clear now that this is how she put herself in a meditative state. I thought about what could act as the “on” button to my own meditation. “Eyes shut. Now, find me in the spirit world,” she said.

When I closed my eyes, there was nothing. I could feel my body resting on the couch, but I was here in the darkness of this other world I had been learning so much about. It was quiet here. It was not a lonely silence, but more like hushed nature. It sounded like the wind was gently blowing through the trees and, at any moment, the sun would come to swallow the darkness up.

Slowly, out of the blackness walked Dr. Delvaux. From another direction, Mavis emerged. We mimicked the state of ourselves from reality and clasped our hands together. Mavis’ ghost was doing that misty-vibration-thing I had always seen other souls do. Dr. Delvaux and I were buzzing too. On this plane, everyone looked the same. We were clusters of colorful sparkling dust. We were all mystical beings, spirit, trying to understand ourselves and each other.

“Mavis, this is going to require some concentration on your end. You’ll have to get connected with your body before we’ll be able to find it,” said Dr. Delvaux.

“How do I do that if I can’t see it?” Mavis said before looking at me, as if I knew. Delvaux would have to give us a drawn out map, because I hadn’t done this part before. Ellie had already established a connection with her body. Her soul appeared to be much older than Mavis, not because she had been older than Mavis when she died, but she seemed to be cognizant of something that he had yet to learn.

“That’s why we’re here with you. All of us must first believe that this is possible. You’d be surprised how much we can will into existence with just a little belief. Do you believe, Mavis?”

“I do,” he said. I wasn’t sure how honest he was being but it looked like he was trying his best.

“ Do you believe, Calliope?” The wind had grown gusty in the dark naturalness of the spirit world. I could hear the imperceptible trees frolicking. Though the dead came there, the place was alive.

“I believe,” I said, and within seconds we were standing in the basement Mavis had shown me in those visions just days ago.

He spun around to both of us. “I have a hunch that my body is here somewhere, but obviously it’s not in plain sight. I’m not really sure what to do from here.”

“That’s alright. Let’s look around.” The basement was fairly long. At one end it was like a normal gloomy basement. Cobwebs hung in its crevices, and there was the occasional humming of hidden flies and tiny beetles. At the other end was the mad man’s lab. I expected it to be left in a more grotesque manner. I expected blood to be all over the walls and puddled on the mortuary table, but there was none. It had been wiped clean. It glistened under the dull overhead light. The floors were freshly swept. The only dust in the space were our ghosts drifting from one part of the room to another.

The workspace off in the corner had been left exceptionally well too. It was organized and smelled of bleach. The monitors were all shut off. Papers were stacked neatly within a pile of file folders. I reached to flip through the first yellow folder, but my hand went right through it. I didn’t get it. I had seen ghosts touch elements of the real world all the time. I had just watched Mavis hold his sister's hand, and I saw as she observed the strange sensation.

“You can do it too,” Dr. Delvaux said. She came over to me and inhaled deeply before opening the manila folder. On the left-hand side was a photo of a black boy who appeared to be about the same age as Mavis. On the other side were a stack of papers. Dr. Delvaux went through each one, “It’s an inventory.” She opened another folder, and began to go through that one, and then another. Every breath she took came in and out heavily and quickly, and I began to understand. This was the first time I had ever seen Dr. Delvaux so upset. Her mouth fell open and I could see the tears stuck behind her eyes. Instead of letting them go she shoved them down and wadded them into a lump in her throat. If I hadn’t known any better I would’ve thought she was in pain.

“What do you mean? Of what?” Mavis joined us as we continued to hover over the canvas of dead men.

“It’s one big list of black men he has dissected. The youngest was 17,” I said. The weight of this had not yet hit me, and I hoped that it wouldn’t. I hoped that I would never fully know what I was witnessing.

Dr. Delvaux’s voice was shaky when she turned to us and said, “He’s harvesting them.”