The following transcript was retrieved from the hereafter, and channeled by the renowned psychic, Uma Kincaid. The divining seance was held at the home of the deceased, in a final effort to procure the location of the missing person"s body, and in the hopes of providing an acceptable explanation for his death. (At publication, the body has not been retrieved, and no acceptable reason has been offered for his demise).

When asked if the victim might possibly still be alive, Uma replied, "Honey, we wouldn't be havin' a seance, if'n the Joe wus'n dead."

What follows is a transcript of the s>=ance held on October 17, 1998. Speaking, through Uma Kincaid, is the spirit of the deceased. At the request of those involved, all family members shall retain their anonymity.

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"It was mid-September in Boston. There were two inches of snow on the ground, and icicles were hanging from all of the trees. The native Bostonians (and a few of the more well-adapted students) were flaunting and parading about in their shorts and bikinis, playfully hurling snowballs back and forth at one another. It was freezing.

"I was freezing. But I knew what I needed. A jacket. No, a coat...a heavy, furbelow coat. With wool lining. Buttons, and a hood.

"I could no longer feel my ears, and I feared that if my brain began to believe that they were actually gone, I would begin to lose my hearing, as well. And after that, who knew what might follow? I knew what I needed, and what I needed was a coat! But with only twelve dollars to my name, I was fearful that I might have trouble obtaining one. (My only consolation was the thought that the fever burning deep inside my head might keep me warm for at least a little while longer.)

"I coughed, and felt a rattle deep down in the recesses of my chest. A vision of ice crystals floated up from the back of my mind and momentarily danced before my eyes, before a strong gust of frozen air blasted around the corner and winded it away.

"This was not funny, I was dying out here.

"I was cold. I mean seriously cold. I'm talking deep down, in the bones, shivering, blue fingers cold. And I was sick. (However, I must admit that I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the fever-warmth that the cold brought with it was a fair exchange for allowing the prolific flu germs free ravage of my body). I smiled and felt my chapped lips split, cold blood quick-freezing to my chin.

"I was on Newbury Street, facing a sign that at first meant nothing to me, at second glance still meant nothing to me, and at the third registered in my head as a possible clue towards salvation. The sign read:

BERTHA COOL'S
Vintage Clothing
Upstairs –

"I stumbled up the stairs, only to find that inside and higher up did not necessarily mean warmer. Inside was a rag-tag conglomeration of dusty rags and cotton memories—survivors of an age better forgotten. And standing behind the counter, in bell-bottom jeans and a red leather vest was, I presume, Bertha Cool herself. She waved me in with a sepulchre flick of her hand, and a wink. She was overweight (very much so), but her obesity seemed to carry with it an air of carnal indifference. She winked again, and nodded her head, causing her jowls to tremor and shake.

"But I would not be deterred. I knew what I needed, and what I needed was a coat. I could not be parleyed into conversation with this bovine costumer, no matter how cool she was. I turned towards the racks of vintage rags.

"You cool?" she asked, coolly.

"I stopped.

"Was I cool? Was I cool!? Goddamn, she didn't know what cool was. I knew from cool, and I was it. Man, I was so cool, I was practically frozen. "Yeah, I sure am," I said with forced casualty and lips trembling from the cold. Before she could answer my eyes landed upon a coat. Not just any coat. The coat.

"It was a surplus army jacket, complete with lining. It had obviously been worn before, it was very faded to the point of almost looking bleached and was even tattered in some places. It looked decades old. Ages old. Never mind that it was still decorated with some of the insignia and badges—patches belonging to whatever soldier had originally struggled it through the 'Nam or Korea, or even the French trenches of the first World War, for all I knew. I couldn't tell. I couldn't think straight. I'd never been a history buff, and I was cold. It may have been vintage, but was not an antique—somehow I felt certain about this. I had seen virtually every one of Boston's 158,000 college students wearing similar jackets. It looked very warm.

"I tried it on and walked up to the counter. Bertha was still nodding her large head. I handed her my twelve dollars. She punched some keys on her register, and revealed to me some of her own chipped and yellow teeth, "Two hundred and fifteen dollars," I thought she said.

"'Damn this fever," I muttered as a feeling of dizzy, warm nausea swept over me. "I thought you said two hundred and fifteen dollars."

"Uh huh," she nodded, her jowls swinging with a pendulous motion and seeming for all their momentum to defy gravity itself—or perhaps, like the ocean's tides and currents, they were more attuned to the gravity of the Moon—or perhaps they simply marched to the beat of their very own drummer. I'll never know.

"I gently began to sway back and forth in front of her as the fever in my brain mounted for another wave. I just stood there at the counter, slowly rocking. I think that I may have even fallen unconscious for a moment, or even entered into a mild coma. I heard birds tweeting, and a sound much like ice breaking. I saw tidal waves and avalanches, and I felt as if I were sinking into an icy field of cotton. I could smell a faint mixture of turpentine and incense. And then I was running.

"My feet took to the floor like twin pogo sticks, out of sync. The coat was in my hands. Suddenly I felt Bertha's plump fingers on my collar, her garishly painted nails scraping the nape of my neck, just as I reached the top of stairs. I closed my eyes and I jumped. The army jacket was ripped from my back—but I hadn"t lost all of it. I still had the lining!

""God help me," I thought as I tumbled down the stairs, head over heels, "I still have the lining!"

"As I rolled through the front door and onto the sidewalk I was immediately stepped on and tripped over by angry, surprised, and pissed off throngs of to-and-fro pedestrians. I managed to roll from the sidewalk, over the curb"s frozen edge, and onto a pleasantly warm patch of street between two illegally parked cars.

"Warm patch?" I thought. "How odd." Yes. Sure enough there was a gust of revitalizingly warm steam billowing up from below. I had fortuitously landed upon a subway grate—I could here the T rumbling by far below—this would be the Blue line. I twisted into a fetal curl and began to drift asleep, dozing to the smell of urine and the sounds of mid-day lunch on Newbury Street.

"Lunch? my mind screamed. Perhaps it was that little bit of warmth that had rejuvenated me, or perhaps it was the fall that jogged my memory. Or maybe the fever in my brain broke for just one cruel, cold instant, and I realized that—What? I couldn't put my finger on it. But something from the arctic recesses of my mind was trying desperately to remind me of something.

"Lunch? I hadn't had any lunch...that wasn't it. Maybe I should have some, though. "Hmm." Was it even time for lunch? I looked at my watch: 3:15. The second hand seemed to be moving especially slow, as if the cold had robbed it of not just its kinetic energy, but its initiative as well. 3:15. "Hmm. That's late, it's almost time to go home—"

"Oh no-Oh god-No!"

"I hit the street running, with a burst of energy that could only have been the caffeine which I"d recently begun to suspect my body was surreptitiously storing for just such an occasion (as no occasion had occurred until now, the caffeine was usually stored until bed time, when it was released in one fluid, eye opening rush. I hadn't been sleeping well.) Then it hit me.

"I was late for work! I was still on lunch! Feeling under the weather, I"d taken my lunch break early, with the hopes that a walk might do me some good. I'd been on my lunch break now for almost five and a half hours—I had to get back to Cambridge...I was employed in an office above Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, almost forty minutes away by subway T, all the way on the other side of the Charles River. What on earth was on doing on Newbury street?

"Already, I could feel the cold sapping the last of my new-found strength as I began my descent into the subway tunnel. The fever had advanced to my eyes and had given everything a reddish tint. It wasn't any warmer down here. As I turned, I imagined that the tunnel was a giant throat, closing around me, and swallowing me whole, like a living cough lozenge. I heard a train in the distance, but my legs had turned to ice. I fell to the ground and slumped against the wall.

"When I awoke, I found that my arms, folded in front of me, had frozen solid. At least, I couldn't move them. Frost covered my sleeves, and much to my surprise there was about three dollars in assorted change nestled in the folds of my stiff and chapped jacket lining. I had always believed that my charity towards others would one day be reciprocated. I heard a train pulling into the station.

"I struggled to free myself from my icy environs, but could not. For one brief, catatonic, horrific instant I suddenly believed that I was down on the tracks. The reddish tint that had recently marked the peripheral of my vision erupted into a glow, and then exploded into a blinding crimson inferno. The blood pumping through my temples ceased its metronomic tick, and became a steady, exacerbated roar. I could not move.

"And then the train was in front of me. The doors slid quietly open, accompanied by that church bell chime that automatically induces a subconscious command to hurry. (Or was that a church bell? An echo of some far off cathedral in some far distant land, marking the lighting of a comfortable, warm, lonely funeral pyre. A warm pyre. A warm fire...)

"I could see inside the warm, yellow-orange, cottony soft, blanketed and cozy train. But I could not stand. All I could do was rock back and forth, slowly in place. I struggled to free myself from the icy clutches of my frozen clothing. But to no avail, I could not get up. The doors began to close.

"Wait!" came the cry, as two kindly gentlemen (Snowmen? Surely not, the fever again...) witnessed my plight, and hurried to my rescue. Lifting me cross-legged from the ground, each taking an arm, they carried me, even as a third snowman heroically placed himself between the closing doors of the train. With a gentle toss, I was inside. And with a final frosty wave through the window, they were gone, lost in the wintry strobe, as the train bore deep into the glacial bowels of the city.

"The gentle toss onto the train was enough to free me. With the sharp report of impact, my icy shell was broken. It was all that I could do to gather what was left of my coins and climb onto a seat. "I fell out at Harvard, and knew intuitively that I did not have the strength to make it back to the office. Not at this rate. The cold was overtaking me for what I feared would be the final time. In the distance, I could see the Holyoke building standing tall in the center of Harvard Square. And on the third floor of that building, like a beacon brightly lit, was my office. And there, in the window was—surely not! Impossible! Yet there it was...

"And somehow it seemed to make a certain sense—it seemed right. It was strangely, perfectly natuaral to me that there, on the third floor of the Holyoke building, perched upon the window sill of my office, was the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail. And brimming with hot cocoa—I could smell it from here, even through the closed and hermetically sealed window. Hot cocoa. Warm, chocolaty, with the power to instantly revitalize.

"And yet I knew it could never be mine...

"Au Bon Pain, stretched out in all directions, from the bottommost floor of the Holyoke building. To reach the elevator which would lift me to my office, salvation, the Grail and the cocoa, I would first have to run the gauntlet of Au Bon Pain. I twisted and staggered through the maze of outdoor seating, side-stepping rogue pigeons, and clumsily knocking over marble chess tables. But I would not be deterred. This was the final stretch, the last sprint, the long walk, as it were, and I would let no one stand in my way. And they didn't. Either through the grace of god, or the murderous, medusa glance of my burning, fevered eyes, I was left alone. Neither patron nor staff saw fit to hinder me, and in fact many looked the other way and stepped quickly aside, forming an isle that would make Moses proud through the sea of the lunchtime mob.

But still the cold had won the day—it had chilled me to the core, I could feel it in my bones. The elevator was so close, yet still so far. I knew I couldn't make it. But I could make it to Au Bon Pain. I could make it that far. I veered like a madman directly into the thick of the outdoor seating and made my way into the cafe proper. With my last ounce of strength I reached out and braced myself against the metal counter.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"For a moment I was startled as I realized that my finger tips had frozen to the lip of the counter, but with the renewed vigor of being (at long last) indoors, I was able to pry them free. "Cocoa," I hissed. That would give me the needed warmth to make the elevator.

"One dollar and forty eight cents."

"I dropped my handful of coins to the counter. One of them clung tenaciously, frozen to the tip of my index finger. The cashier, ever the professional, in a fluid motion scooped up the loose change with one hand, and carefully plucked the nickel from my finger with the other.

"Sir," she said, "You only have a dollar twenty here. Cocoa is a dollar forty eight." I could sense the coldness mounting itself for its final, fatal assault—its coup de grace. I only wanted to sleep.

"Sir, coffee is a dollar fifteen. You can have coffee." Without waiting for my answer she placed a cup on the counter, and I could sense its warmth even before I saw the steam rising from it. I reached out and gingerly grasped the Styrofoam container. I ceremoniously spilled a few drops onto my eager fingers, thankful for this sacrament of blistering heat.

"Sir, the indoor seating area is temporarily out of service. But there is available seating outside." I knew that I would only be able to make it a few more steps before I collapsed in comfortable exhaustion. I shivered, spilling more coffee on my hands. An iron gate encircled the establishment and to make for the elevator I would first have to retrace my steps through the cold hell of "outdoor seating."

"I could feel the coldness all around me, closing in like four icy walls. I was overcome with a powerful sense of foreboding. It was as if I was standing at the collision point of two speeding glaciers. I turned and staggered back out into the cold, exposing myself to the unmerciful hunger of outdoor seating.

"I was lost. Lost in a maze of maniacal, leering chess masters, hurried business men, and garrulous, long winded Harvard students. Awash in a slushwater sea of army jackets, playing pieces, French crullers, and half eaten bagels. I was pulled and pushed to-and-fro and back and forth by an invisible, unspoken tide of rush hour doughnut munchers. Birds were pecking at my feet (Penguins? No.). Already my coffee was losing its warmth, growing cold. And I was helpless. Lost in the labyrinth of Au Bon Pain outdoor seating. Hidden from both Sun and street behind an Arctic array of picnic umbrellas, and iron fencing. The world began to spin around me at a dizzying pace, I could not get my bearing—I had no idea in from which direction I had come or in which direction I was headed. I could no longer see the elevator.

"I crumpled into a metal seat, a cold iron chair that spoke to me of the chill of the confessional, and the weight of the rod. And suddenly I saw that I was not alone, that other before me had shared my fate. A body tucked under a table here, a man frozen solid slumped over his shopping cart over there—others who had shared an end similar to mine, who now lay reposed in a burial ground of bad French cuisine. I felt akin to the elderly elephant, who after a time of frenzied and fruitless searching, stumbles into a clearing and discovered the remains of his brothers. I looked down and saw that my coffee had frozen solid. I settled back and let the cold wash over me.

"I could hear music faintly in the distance. A sort of "jump back Middle Eastern bop," and I felt myself begin to drift down the long dark tunnel of the soul.

"My head tilted over sideways, and I began finally, I think, to see. "Oh, Good Pain..." I murmured as I gazed up into the sky. "Oh, Good Pain..."

"I envisioned an Indian walking off into the endless desert at dusk, and I saw fish being swept away downstream. A fuelless fighter pilot filled with reckless abandon. I saw a cornered bull-fighter's eyes flooded with panic. I was a lighthouse, totally engulfed in fog, muted, and finally extinguished. In the distance, a large woman in Viking costume, (Bertha Cool?) drifted out of the fog on a small boat and began to sing.

"Oh, Good Pain..." she sang. My eyelids fluttered. "My Good Pain... "

And as I felt my soul or my psyche—my being or my consciousness, what have you—finally break free and depart, I was filled with a sense of wonder, and a longing for, and a loss of, all the things that I ever wanted or needed. And I realized that these were one in the same—what we wanted, and what we needed. I knew what I needed, and what I needed was a coat."

* * *

At this point, the seance comes abruptly to an end. Uma Kincaid, weeping quietly to herself, remains seated. Her expression is almost peaceful. She appears to be quite settled, and even at ease.

An older woman from the circle pushes back her chair, and walks over to Uma.

With a gentle, motherly gesture, she removes her own mink coat and places it carefully upon Uma's shoulders. She too, is smiling. A tear, comfortably nestled, is glistening on her rosy cheek.