Lily Dale Read Online Free Page B

night. Sometimes even that wouldn’t be enough. She would awaken at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M . and go back, chasing one more link that might save her husband.
    She bound stacks of printouts into three-ring notebooks. When she decided that Johns Hopkins was the best hospital for treatment, she and Noel left South Carolina, where they had retired to their dream house on a golf course, and went to Baltimore. Carol had done such a good research job that Johns Hopkins sponsored a workshop she helped put together for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and their families. She and Noel were in Baltimore for the workshop when Noel’s heart arrested. The doctors revived him, but his lungs filled with blood.
    For the last six hours of Noel’s life, Carol and their younger daughter sat by his side. The breathing tube in his throat didn’t allow him to speak, and he didn’t appear to be conscious, but Carol talked and talked. She told stories of good times she and Noel had shared since their first date when he was seventeen and she was fifteen and they were both just learning what love was about.
    â€œI lost my best friend, the person who had been the center of my existence for forty-four years,” she said.
    In a sense, Carol’s trip to Lily Dale was a bid to get a little leverage back. She had done everything she could to save him, but she had failed. Now, if the universe could be jiggled, the veil torn, the wall between this life and the next cracked, Carol was going to do it.
    â€œI only see three choices,” she said. “I can wither. I can become a recluse. Or I can use this for growth.” Lily Dale was the path to growth.
    On Friday night, the first evening of Carol’s visit, she was sitting with Frank and Shelley on the long, screened back porch of the Takeis’ house. They’d just been to a little outdoor amphitheater called Forest Temple for an outdoor message service. Each day during camp season the Dale hosts three outdoor services—one at Forest Temple and two at Inspiration Stump, a squat concrete pillar that is said to encase a tree stump. Mediums once stood on the Stump during message services. That ended when one of them had a heart attack in midproclamation. Lily Dale leaders decided that Stump energy might be a bit too strong.
    Spiritualist religious practice includes giving messages from the dearly departed, which is called “serving spirit.” These services contain no offering and no sermon, only spirit messages. They begin with a prayer asking that only the “highest and best” spirits be present. Mediums, who often say they must turn off the spirit voices or go crazy from all the chatter in their heads, want to make sure that not just any errant spirit comes beaming in when they open the channel.
    Typically mediums stand before the group, scanning the crowd. Then they pick someone and ask permission to give a message.
    Most often they ask, “May I come to you?” Some mediums prefer more flamboyant phraseology: “May I step into your vibrations?” or “May I touch in with you, my friend?”
    That opening query is one of the few questions mediums in the Dale’s public services are supposed to ask because the community wants to guard against what critics call “cold reading”—basing messages on bits of information mediums have cleverly elicited from their clients.
    During my first summer in the Dale many spirits named John had died of something in the chest area. Many grandmotherly vibrations brought roses, peace, and love. Many female tourists heard the spirits say they were doing too much for others and notenough for themselves. Many men heard that they were misunderstood.
    Could I have guessed that? I’d ask myself after a message. Often the answer was yes.
    Mediums who are really “on” give their messages as fast as they can talk. Their words come out in a rush of images, advice, and