Poltergeist (15 page)

Ben and I exchanged a look. He sighed, heaved his shoulders, and went ahead of me into the kitchen.

Brian sat in the middle of the kitchen floor in a pile of vegetables and lettuce, staring at the kitchen table and rubbing the top of his head. Mara, her new-penny-copper hair sweeping over her face, crouched beside him, holding a large bowl.

"Now, wasn't I after telling you you'd regret that? Hm? Smarts a bit, doesn't it?" she chided him.

"Owww…," her son replied, patting his head with a lettuce leaf. Mara snatched it from him and put it into the bowl.

"None of that, y'wild animal. That's for eating, not for wearing.”

Brian stuffed the nearest chunk of vegetable into his mouth, then made a face and started to spit it out. Mara clapped a hand over his pursed lips. "Oh, no, you don't. It shan't kill you, so you'll go ahead and swallow it. Polite people don't go spitting out their food.”

Brian forced the lump down his throat. "I’s not a people. I’s a rhinerosserous!" he objected as Mara pulled her hand away.

"Well, polite rhinos don't spit, either. And they clean up their own messes or they have to go outside and eat thorny bushes in the garden.”

"Noooooooo…," Brian wailed.

Mara shoved the bowl into his arms. "Then you'll clean up the mess, won't you? And you'll pick up every piece or you'll be eating the ones you miss later.”

Brian's lip stuck out in a very rhino-like fashion. He put his hands on top of his head and said, "Head hurts.”

"Yes, darling, I imagine it does." She kissed him on the forehead and stood up.

Ben gave her an inquisitive look. "What happened?”

"Rhino versus table," Mara answered, brushing off her skirts. "The table won, and the bowl of salad got jostled off and onto the rhino-boy's head.”

"Jostled?”

"Of course. Y'don't think I'd go pitchin’ salad on his head, now, do ya?" She grinned a little, radiating good humor in spite of the mess. "Hi, Harper. I see Ben cajoled you into dinner at the wild animal park.”

"How could I miss it?”

Brian was now crawling about on the floor, picking up the salad and beginning to enjoy himself. I hoped Mara wasn't planning on serving the salvaged salad, as Brian's idea of fun seemed to be to toss handfuls of greens and vegetable chunks in the general direction of the bowl while making various noises. If the pieces missed the bowl, he kept on trying until they made it in, by which time the salad looked quite grubby. Albert appeared behind Brian and seemed to be whispering into the boy's ear.

Mara relieved my anxiety by turning toward the fridge and announcing, "Meat's almost ready, so I suppose I'd better start a replacement salad. Why don't you stay with me while Ben sets the table and keeps an eye on the rhino-boy.”

That was fine by me.

"Now then," Mara began as she brought fresh produce from the refrigerator, "you wanted to know about mirrors and glass and their effect on the Grey.”

I nodded. "Yeah. There's some kind of filtering effect…”

"Hm. I'm not so sure about why the glass does as it does, but the mirror is probably acting in much the same way as silver does. It's reflective, of course, but it's also conductive—whether it's silver, or mercury, or mylar, it still conducts—and I've often suspected that the power lines that run through the Grey energize the metal in a mirror such that it becomes a mild barrier—literally reflecting the ghost from passing through—and most things either can't or won't push past.”

"Why don't they know it's a mirror when they see themselves?”

"Most ghosts are stone stupid. Unless it's been enchanted," Mara said, "most mirrors reflect what is, not what the ghost sees. Most ghosts see things as they were in their life, not as they are now. They certainly don't see themselves as wraiths. I imagine it's a bit confounding to come upon a reflection that doesn't answer your idea of yourself.”

"I suppose…but what about the glass, then?" I asked.

"I've been thinking about that," Ben piped up from behind us.

I swung around so I could see both of them by just turning my head.

"You see," Ben started, brandishing a handful of silverware, "I think what you're seeing there is a sort of material resistance. The energy state of the Grey is extremely high and fast—we've discussed this before, you recall—”

"Yes, I remember.”

Brian made motorboat noises under the table as he pushed the bowl merrily around the floor, trailed by Albert, who stuck half through the table as if it weren't there. I found myself watching the ghost, rather than Ben.

"OK, so the particles of energy that make up the Grey travel much more slowly through the dense material of something like glass or brick or stone, but we only see them in glass because when they are slowed down to a certain degree, we experience a sort of persistence-of-vision illusion. That's why you can see a ghost in a photograph when there was none visible at the time—”

I interrupted him, refocusing on Ben. "You can? I thought those 'spirit photos' were all exposed as fakes.”

"Oh, the ones taken by charlatans in the same era as the SpiritistChurch were mostly fakes, but you can spot those easily. Others seem to be legit. Odd images of people or things where no one was at the time, but they fit in the picture. They don't have to be old photos. They could be anything from any time, taken with any camera.”

I'd seen photos like that—some snapshots taken by my mother or friends from college—and found some of them disturbing beyond reason. They never seemed to merit that disquiet, but I'd never shaken it. "OK, assume I buy the idea. What's your theory?" I asked.

"I think the ghost's reflection on the surface of the glass lens persists long enough for the camera to capture it. If you could see through rocks or bricks, you could see the ghost reflected in the side of a building, too, but since most materials aren't transparent, you can't see the reflection of the ghost.”

"That doesn't explain why I see
less
Grey when I look through a window.”

"You actually see
into
the Grey, not just the reflections of a few stray ghosts. The energy of the Grey just doesn't move through the glass fast enough for you, so the glass acts like a filter, holding back a percentage of the Grey from your sight," Ben explained.

"Mirrored glass seen from the back would reflect much of the initial energy," Mara added, "and you'd see even less.”

"So…are you guys saying that this high-energy stuff simply gets…trapped?”

Ben nodded. "Much of it, yes.”

I shook that idea aside. "But if they can't move through something dense, how can ghosts walk through walls? We know they do that.”

Brian popped up from under the table with the bowl of dirty salad clutched to his chest. Albert shooed him toward Mara and me and the boy trotted across the floor, giggling.

"We assume that's what we see," Ben said, "but I'm thinking that there's more to it.”

Brian stumbled to a halt against my legs and looked up at me with a huge grin as he offered me the bowl. "Harpa." He gurgled with excitement and glanced back to Albert, then up at me again.

I gave Ben only half my attention as he said, "I've been thinking about this a lot since you asked and it seems to me that the Grey must have a property of time that's different than ours. You know that a lot of ghosts are nothing but the persistent memory of something or loops of time and action. Most repeating specters, for instance, have no consciousness or personality—they're just like loops of film that keep on running on, doing the same thing they've always done until they finally wear out completely and fade away.”

"Yes, OK. So?" I shrugged, taking the bowl from Brian and wondering why Albert seemed to have sent the boy to me with it. I handed it off to his mother as Brian threw his arms around my legs and hugged them, pressing his face against my knees.

"Well, they're an instance of time," Ben continued. "An isolated, persistent shard of time that's suspended in the Grey. And I think that there must be layers on layers of time like that scattered throughout the Grey. When we see a ghost walk through a wall, what we're actually seeing is the ghost moving through an opening that exists in his own plane of time within the Grey.”

Mara spoke out of the corner of her mouth as she dumped the filthy greens into a bin by the sink. "Say thank you.”

I looked at Brian as he clutched me in unexpected affection. "Um…thank you, Brian.”

Brian shrieked in delight and let go of me to run back and "help" Ben at the table.

"Very nice, Harper—I think Brian has a crush on you. And I agree with Ben about time," Mara said, tearing up freshly washed lettuce. "If there are instances of frozen time, they must exist all over the Grey, or time itself must be sort of stacked up in the Grey in some way. And that's how most ghosts—which are just memories, time-shapes, so to speak—can move about through what appear to be solid objects. The object doesn't exist for them, since they don't really interact with the present.”

"Exactly," added Ben, bending to pick up Brian and secure him in a high chair by the table. "Ghosts with sufficient personality retention and volition can move through any layer of time they are familiar with, but ghosts with less volition and the simple repeaters are stuck on the time plane they lived in.”

Albert had vanished by the time we sat down to eat, leaving only the corporeal people at the table. Without him nearby, Brian was a little more subdued and ate his dinner with more giggling than rhino roars. I supposed this sort of behavior was the positive reinforcement that allowed most children to survive to the next stage of parental stress: adolescence. Between considering Brian's sweetened temper and mulling ideas about glass and mirrors, I didn't talk much during the meal and the conversation turned to academic power struggles at the U over upcoming funding and tenure issues. I nodded and ate in comfortable ignorance.

I rang the security buzzer outside the Fujisaka building Sunday afternoon and was answered by a birdlike voice speaking Chinese. I knew I'd pressed the right code, so I replied, "Ana Choi, please." I overheard snatches of a rapid, singing exchange of Chinese; then another voice spoke out of the speaker. "Hi, hi! I'll be right down.”

The speaker clicked off and I turned around to look out at the cloud-shadowed length of Sixth Avenue South. This was the brittle edge of the International District—the real heart of Chinatown being a block north and east on King. This street was the true international mixture the city trumpeted with pride—and which had sometimes been decried as mere racism in pretty words. Across the street was the old Uwajimaya department store building with its blue-tiled roofs and upturned eaves—still partially empty since the new UwajimayaVillage complex had risen to the immediate south. Farther south was one of the enclaves of Nihonmachi—Japantown—and around any corner you could find a feast of Chinese bakeries, Filipino groceries, Vietnamese noodle houses, and Tokyo-style coffeehouses.

The Fujisaka was the only modern condo building in the ID—the rest of the International District's housing was apartments or hotel rooms. Expensive and glossy, it snuggled in with its older, smaller neighbors, no longer the strange, shiny interloper since the arrival of the towering UwajimayaVillage.

The door behind me opened and an Asian woman stepped out wearing a fluffy white jacket against the chill. She had a round face with a pointed chin, high cheekbones, and a slightly reserved expression. Any claim to Oriental mystery vanished when she grinned, making her face sweet and sunny. She looked up at me.

"You're…Harper, aren't you?" Her speech pattern wasn't so much an accent as a vague tint over her English.

"Yes," I replied. "Ana Choi?" I recognized her from the recordings, but I asked anyhow.

She nodded. "Sorry I made you wait. My parents were having an argument. If I just walk out, they think I'm being disrespectful, so I had to wait for them to quiet long enough to say I was leaving.”

"You live with your parents," I said, making a mental note.

"Yeah. We moved from Macao twelve years ago and they're still very old-fashioned. I'm not a traditional Chinese girl, but I try to make them happy when I can. Sometimes it's hard." She looked around the damp street. "Let's go, huh? We can talk while we go.”

"Sure," I agreed. I'd parked across the street in the sparsely used lot of the blue-tiled building.

"I'm grateful for the ride," Ana said. "Usually I take transit, but it's a long ride on Sundays—one of my buses runs once an hour on weekends.”

I shrugged. "It works out for both of us. When did you start with the project?”

"Back in January. Ian wanted me to. He said it would be fun.”

"Is it?”

Her turn to shrug. "Yeah, I guess it is. It was kind of stupid at first, but it got better. I like it.”

We stopped to get into the Rover. Ana smiled. "This is neat. Very tough.”

"Yeah, it's pretty good. Except for the gas mileage—then it's a bit of a hog.”

She nodded, settling herself in the seat. "OK. So. What do you want to ask me?”

"How do you feel about the group?”

"I said I liked it.”

"I mean the people. Do you like them?" I asked, starting the engine and heading the truck toward PNU.

"Yeah, mostly.”

I watched her reflection in the windshield glass. I didn't see any yellow line of Grey energy around her from that angle. "Anyone you don't get along with or feel uncomfortable with?”

She laughed. "You know, I don't care one way or the other. I like most of them pretty well, but I don't feel like I know them enough to care a lot. They're nice, but… they're just nice and nothing special to me.

"Even Ian?”

She made a face and rolled her eyes. "Oh, Ian. Sometimes I think I don't even like him anymore. Sometimes he's mean and so selfish. He never spends any time with me anymore. He's always busy and we don't even— Our sex life doesn't exist except when it's bad. I only joined the project because he wanted me to and I thought we could see more of each other, and now he sometimes acts like he doesn't even want me to come to the group.”

This didn't jibe with Ian's version, but I wasn't surprised by that sort of thing anymore. And I remembered how Ana had flinched in the recordings as Ian pulled her hair from her earrings.

"Why wouldn't he want you to come?" I asked.

"So he can flirt with Cara Stahlqvist. He's such a dick.”

"If he's a dick, then why do you go?”

She scowled. "It's my project, too. Why should Ian get to scare me off? Besides…he's not the only person there who matters.”

"You just said none of them meant anything to you.”

She looked at the side window. "I lied.”

'You're seeing someone else from the group?”

"No! Not outside the group, really. Sometimes we go out for drinks after …. And I like talking to him. He likes to talk to me, too.”

"Who?”

She blushed. "Ken." She kept looking out the window.

I nodded. "Does Ian know?”

"I don't know. I don't think so. Ken teases Ian sometimes and I know he's doing it because of me, but Ian just laughs it off. I think he'd be nasty to Ken if he knew, but he seems OK.”

"Do you plan to do anything about this?”

She sighed. "I don't know. I can't just leave Ian and start going with Ken right now. It would be bad. For the group. Ian's not the sort of guy who takes a breakup well. And besides…it's hard, you know. Sometimes I just want to keep the peace. I don't want a big deal over everything.”

I shook my head, but kept my mouth closed. They'd cooked up a rotten little triangle. Misery not only loves company it makes its own. The whole group was full of sexual tensions and power plays, so far, and this seemed about par for the course.

"I just don't seem to pick the best men," Ana said. "But at least Ian was OK with my parents. If I started dating Ken, they'd be furious.”

"Why?”

"My father would say he's not good enough. And my mother always sides with my father—it's part of her role, you know. Traditional Chinese wife.”

"I'm still not getting it. Why is Ian—who's mean to you—OK, but Ken's not?”

She turned and blinked at me. "Because Ken's brown.”

"What?”

"Brown. He's not white.”

"You're not white, either.”

"I know that. But my father's racist. He thinks there's something…dirty or bad about being colored if you're not Chinese—or at least Asian.”

"He doesn't know India is part of Asia?”

"It's not the right part. If the people are darker than he is, they're dirtier than he is. It's OK for me to date a white man or an Asian like us, but someone who's brown? No. It would be even worse if I wanted to date a black man. He'd never speak to me again. My sister went out with a black guy once and he's still angry at her. He'd go insane if he knew they slept together.”

"That's a bit over the top.”

"My dad." She looked grim. "So…you know… that's why I don't want to stop going to the group, although it would be the best thing. I wish I could just make it all change. Why can't we all be happy? If we can make a ghost, why can't we make ourselves happy?”

I grabbed the chance to get back on topic. "Are you certain that you're making a ghost?”

"Yes." She gave a hard, decisive nod. "I'm Chinese—we know about ghosts. They're all over the place. They live through us, so our ghost is real, too, even though we made it up.”

"What do you mean 'they live through us'?”

"I mean we give them strength—energy. We remember them and they continue. That's why it's important to remember ancestors and family, or they fade away. Or they become angry and then you're in trouble. We made up our ghost and we keep her alive by our thoughts, so if we stop believing in her, she'll go away.”

"How do you know it's not just a fake? That someone in the group isn't making it seem real when it's not?”

"That would make Celia very angry. It can't all be fake—there's no way for everything to be made by one person fooling us—so the part that's real would know when someone was faking. How would you feel if someone was pretending to be you? That's how Celia would feel and she would get even.”

"What about you?" I asked, turning the truck into PNU's west parking lot.

Ana looked surprised, her narrowly plucked brows arching upward. "What about me?”

"If you found out someone was faking anything, would you be angry?”

"Yes. Sure I would.”

"And would you want to get even with them for it?”

She gave me a bemused look. "No. I would tell them to stop, but Celia would be the one who would punish them, if they needed it.”

"Do you think she could?”

A deep frown took over her face. "I don't know. I really don't." She looked up again. "We're here. Good. Thanks for the ride," she added, opening the door and swinging out. "I hope I was some help.”

"Quite a bit.”

"Cool, cool. See you later." She closed the door and walked toward St. John Hall. In the dismal sunlight I could see the bright yellow thread around her, pointing toward the hot yellow spot on the window of room twelve like a compass toward north.

I stayed in the truck a while longer, thinking and waiting for the group to be assembled so I could sneak into the observation room unnoticed.

I saw Gartner Tuckman heading for the building with his briefcase in his hand. He was playing villain again, wearing black and glaring. I followed him into the building, keeping far enough behind to give him a chance to round up any séance members loitering in the hall.

At the head of the stairs, an uncanny fog shot with light lay across the floor. Strange traceries swirled in the Grey remnants. I peered at it, but couldn't understand it any better than the last time I’d been near this room. Odd colors roiled through the puddle of Grey like lightning leaping cloud to cloud, and then the colors seeped toward the closed door to room twelve and oozed away. I felt it tug like a tidal race and then move away. I didn't see the yellow wad of tangled lines.

Frowning, I let myself into the observation room. Terry ignored me. I stayed on my feet and looked out through the double-paned glass.

Tuckman was in the séance room, standing near the observation mirror with his back to us. Some of the participants had taken seats at the table, but others had chosen to sit on the sofa. Ana was seated at the table in one of the hard chairs, along with the only séance member I hadn't interviewed yet—Wayne Hopke, the elderly military man. Ian, I noticed, was standing near the sofa, which put him in position to both look down Cara's blouse and hover over Ken like some mythic avenger—so he wasn't oblivious after all. All attention was turned to Tuckman, as he spoke in a mellow, soothing tone I'd never heard from him before.

"… begin today’s session," he said. "Our friend Mark Lupoldi has died in an accident. This is…a tragedy, and since I know we were all very fond of Mark it is a blow both to our project and to our feelings.”

Tuckman must have had a bit of theater training himself, to judge from his posture and delivery as he counterfeited sorrow. His shoulders were slumped a little forward and bunched as if he anticipated a blow. The angle of his arms indicated he was clasping his hands together and I imagined his knuckles were white. He probably had a convincingly sad mask arranged on his face.

I looked at the rest of them. Each wore some expression of surprise, startlement, or shock. Cara closed her eyes. Even through the double filter of the glass, I could see Grey sparks and flickers of yellow, red, and the unhealthy green I was beginning to associate with illness and distress. But I still could not see clearly enough to know which coil of energy belonged to whom. I ground my teeth with frustration; the thorough protocols that protected the project—and which I'd normally have cheered—were making my job difficult and there was nothing I could do about that.

"Although this sad event was in no way connected to our project," Tuckman continued, "it's entirely understandable if any of you feel you cannot go through with today's session or even if you want to withdraw completely from further participation. Mark was so enthusiastic about and devoted to the experiments that it is difficult to imagine them going forward without him. He has, of course, left an impression on all of us, colored our sense of the world and our work with his easy friendship and generous nature. We will all miss him.

"I know this seems abrupt, but in deference to everyone's feelings at this time, I think that we should postpone this session and consider if we wish to proceed at all—”

Dale Stahlqvist glowered. "What? Are you suggesting that we quit?”

Cara's eyes flashed open as all other heads turned to stare at her husband.

"Not 'quit,' " Tuckman said, raising his hands. "Consider—"

"Consider quitting," Dale snapped. "Just throw the whole thing out because we can't go on without Mark? That would put the lie to everything we've done—make the group meaningless—and I simply do not believe that's true. Mark worked as hard as any of us and I think he'd be appalled at such a suggestion. You mean well, Doctor, but it's the wrong thing to do.”