by Nate Kenyon
“You spit them out. You didn’t swallow them.”
“That’s right.” She nodded. “That way my head doesn’t get all…fuzzy. Only the shots, I can’t do anything about those, see? That’s why I hate them.”
Sensing she was being tested, Jess said only, “I see. That’s very clever. You’re a clever little girl, grinding up your pills like that.”
“No, I’m not. I’m dumb. See, I told you about it, and now you’ll tell them. You won’t tell, will you? You promised.”
“I won’t tell. Sarah, can I ask you something? Why do you think they give you the pills and the shots?”
“It’s a game, see, a big mean game, they’re trying to get something from me and I won’t let them have it. And they don’t really want it anyway because they’re scared.”
“Do you know what this thing is?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
“Hmmm. I like secrets. Maybe you’ll share yours with me sometime.”
“You wouldn’t like this secret. And anyway, maybe you’re just part of the game. Maybe you’re on their side and it’s all a big trick. You’re gonna put me in the bad room!”
“No, Sarah, I would never do that. I would never make you do something you don’t want to do, or put you someplace you don’t want to be. We’re friends, remember?”
But Sarah wasn’t listening. “They want to get rid of me. They’re trying to kill me.” She walked to the table and picked up her bear, clutching it to her chest. Then she went back to the window.
“I’m going to break out of here soon,” she said, looking into the sunshine. She was trembling. “Then they all better watch out. Oh boy, they better.”
—14—
The Fingertip Bar and Grill is located just outside of downtown, directly off the C subway line. Barely visible from the street, unmarked and “long and thin as the tip of a finger,” it is a favorite of local students looking for someplace a little off the beaten path. Road signs interspersed with the grilles of classic cars decorate the walls like some kind of automotive graveyard. A traffic light mounted over the door flashes green, yellow, and red.
Saturday evening, Jess stepped though into that smoky, alien place, and paused to let her eyes adjust, searching for Charlie. A moment later she spotted the smiling, chocolate-brown face moving toward her from the bar, as jazz swelled and throbbed from somewhere in back. The bar was narrow and deep; drunk students would sometimes confess to getting lost in the depths, and the rumor was that on particular dark nights you could just keep going, that the bar never ended.
“Hey there, girlfriend. Thought you might be thinking about standing me up.”
“Never, Charlie. I haven’t been out on the town in a while. I forgot how long it takes to get anywhere.”
The woman appeared concerned, her powerful features managing to seem exotic and warm at the same time. “You look like death. Come on over here and tell me all about it. We’ll get some food into you and you’ll feel better. It’s not man trouble, is it?”
Jess shook her head and smiled. She followed the swish of Charlie’s silk skirt to a small booth against the wall, amazed as always how the crowd seemed to part for her as if by magic. Charlie was a large woman, but lithe and quick on her feet. At twenty-seven, she had a beauty that transcended her size, a breathtaking nobility that others often found intimidating. But she could be refreshingly blunt. They had met in a shared lab class a year earlier, and since then had become fast friends. Jess admired the way nothing ever seemed to get to Charlie.
“If it’s not a man,” the woman continued, after they settled into the booth and ordered a plate of nachos and two Blue Moon beers from the tap, “then it must be family. I can’t think of anything else that would make a girl look the way you do.”
Jess wondered how on earth to respond. Normally she was fiercely independent, proud of her ability to thrive on her own. But since she’d returned from Gilbertsville, her evenings had been endless and too quiet. Something fundamental to her own nature had been changed. She felt like a caterpillar that had crawled into a cocoon—though she had no idea what kind of shape she would find herself in when the metamorphosis was over.
She was pleased with the sudden progress Sarah had been making. The girl seemed to be getting comfortable with her and opening up. They were bonding. And she and Shelley had been meeting regularly for coffee to discuss the case. But she was still uncertain about the experience of meeting Sarah’s family, and what it all meant. The image of Annie Voorsanger standing up in that dusty, forgotten room, the sound she had made, the sudden, wild look in her eyes, remained with Jess no matter how hard she tried to shake it.
And she was lonely. Late nights were the worst—waking up in the emptiness of her apartment, Otto gone from his customary spot at the foot of her bed. That was when she had the strongest feeling that some basic part of her had been shaken, some simple truth exposed. Her mind seemed to be humming, voices muttering at a distance too far to be overheard. It was then, and only then, that she would allow herself the longing for another human being, anyone who could fill these moments in time with something other than ghosts.
Finally this afternoon she had decided to follow up on something else that had been bothering her. Now she wished she hadn’t. Not until tonight had she been so desperately bewildered, so incapable of discovering her true feelings.
“I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot lately,” Jess said. “The way he died.”
Charlie knew about her brother. She knew about the agreement with Professor Shelley and the sessions with Sarah. Charlie knew more about Jess Chambers’s life than most people. “I think you’ve got an angry spirit,” Charlie said. Her eyes sparkled.
“What?”
“An urban myth, you might call it. Anyone you’ve done harm to will come back to haunt you. The gangs believe it. They’re careful about who they shoot. Only,” she said, leaning forward and fixing Jess with those deeply black, shining eyes, “you didn’t harm anyone, least of all your brother. So that’s all in your head. Just like it is with those Latin Kings.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Simple psychology,” Charlie explained patiently, like mother to child. “Come on, it’s an established phenomenon. A gang member who kills without proper justification decides he’s cursed. He’ll be dead within a year. Why? Not because he’s pursued by the souls he’s killed, because he takes risks, he exposes himself, he has a guilty conscience. He makes it happen.”
“Charlie—”
The woman shook her head. Jewelry tinkled somewhere. “Dear Lord, girl, let yourself go for a bit. I’ve never seen anyone so wound up. Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna just shoot off right through the ceiling.”
The drinks came. Jess let the cold beer wash down her throat, listening to the thump of the music, the loud chatter of voices. She had spent yet another hour with Sarah just that afternoon, going over what little schooling she had received. She had to search hard for any trace of mental illness; Sarah spoke with an intelligence and sophistication Jess would not have believed if she hadn’t been there herself.
And then she had gone home to make the telephone call. And that call had rattled her more than she believed possible. Only now, sitting here in the smoky confines of a bar filled with people, did she begin to relax.
“So what you’re doing, is trying to calm the dead.” Charlie glanced at a table to their right, then back again, the twinkle in her eyes. “What you need is a good, hard fucking.”
“Charlie…”
“I mean it. It would clear your head. That man over there seems willing to oblige.”
Jess glanced at the table, saw the man staring at her and smiling slightly, hunched and broad through the shoulders, heavy jaw and brow.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I prefer my own species.”
“Your prerogative. But let me ask you. Do you ever wonder why you surround yourself with women?” Charlie nodded. “Me, for example. P
rofessor Shelley. All your other friends.” She paused for dramatic effect. “You’re afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Letting someone in, and I mean really inside, where you can’t hide things the way you normally do. The kind of vulnerability that comes from sleeping naked with another human being. They see all your flaws, pudgy thighs, puckered cheeks, moles and freckles and bad breath in the morning. It’s just a thought.”
“Let’s get up off the couch, shall we?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Let me ask you something. Can you think of any reason why a woman would suddenly quit a good job where she seemed to be respected and competent?”
“I can think of many reasons. Her boss is a creep. She’s found a better job. She won the lottery.”
“But she refuses to give an explanation. One day she’s there, the next she’s not.”
“Again, her boss is a creep. Coming on to her or something similar.”
Jess tried to imagine Dr. Wasserman putting his arm around Maria’s wide shoulders, leaning close to whisper in her ear. The image was laughable. “I don’t know.”
“Are we talking about someone at that place you’ve been spending so much time at, when you should have been spending it with me?”
“The woman who worked with the difficult patients. She gave her letter of resignation. And I keep thinking maybe it’s connected, the way she looked, the way she acted around Sarah, and Sarah’s sudden improvement—”
“That’s your problem,” Charlie announced, “you think too much.” She drained her glass with a tip of her wrist, somehow making it look dainty and sophisticated, and announced, “Tonight is not a thinking night. Am I getting through to you?”
“I called her,” Jess said absently, her mind continuing to play over the earlier conversation in a way she hadn’t allowed it to before. Maria’s voice over the phone line, her accent so difficult to understand, but the emotion unmistakable. “Swiped the number off her letter on Wasserman’s desk. You know what she said?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“That Sarah was ‘inside her head.’ That she was embrujado. I looked it up, it means—”
“Haunted,” Charlie said. “And from what you’ve told me about this poor girl, I’d agree. You’re not dealing with some suburban teenager with adjustment problems. This is a girl who probably doesn’t even remember what the outside world looks like.”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Is that all?”
“Something’s not right here, Charlie. We’ve got a hospital director who until recently acted like he had a serial killer in his basement instead of a ten-year-old girl. We’ve got a file on said girl that reads like a medical textbook on diagnostic procedures, except when it comes right down to diagnosing anything. We’ve got a family that for all intents and purposes didn’t exist a week or so ago, insisting that their granddaughter is the spawn of the devil—”
“Let’s cut to the chase here, Miss Chambers. What you’re saying is you’ve discovered a case for the X-Files. I’ll be Scully to your Mulder. Have you seen the girl’s head spin around? Any speaking in tongues? Projectile vomiting?”
“You’re impossible.”
“Honey.” Charlie leaned across the table and touched Jess’s arm. “I am telling you to let it go. Get away for a while and fly to Florida. Take a break and clear your head. We’ll all be here when you get back.”
“I can’t leave now.”
“You should. You’re getting this confused with your feelings for your brother, everything that happened to you when you were young. You’re like a greyhound after that rabbit. But even greyhounds take a few minutes to lie down in the sun.”
“She’s stopped swallowing her medication, Charlie. I can’t afford to take a few minutes. I have to decide whether I break her confidence, or say nothing and risk a setback in her treatment.”
“How do you feel? What does your heart tell you to do?”
“That’s just it. How can I know when I can’t even decide if she’s unstable or not?”
They sat and drank for a while in silence. The music throbbed like a heartbeat. Charlie closed her eyes and moved with it. Then she opened her eyes and said, “Have you thought about talking to someone? I mean, if you insist on playing this silly game of yours?”
“A therapist?”
“Someone who specializes in the sort of thing you mean. Not a spiritualist or medium, but a gen-u-wine scientist. Double-blind experiments, the works. Very above-board. There’s a group right outside of Boston related to the Rhine group in, where is it, Carolina? I only mention it because I happen to be friends with someone who works for them.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Charlie,” Jess said tiredly. “Maybe you’re right. I am just trying too hard to make up for something. My brother, maybe.”
“Well, honey.” Charlie touched her hand gently again. “That might be true. But you ever need that number, you let me know.”
—15—
It’s possible to help this girl, Jess thought as she made her way back to her apartment in the early morning hours, the sounds and smells of the bar still with her like ghosts in her clothes. Really make a difference. But the first thing we must accept is that the traditional analytical approach may not work. A good psychologist tries to unlock every door, using any key available.
And if those keys don’t fit, you look for the ones that you aren’t even sure exist.
Sitting down at her desk, her head still pleasantly thumping from the beer, she opened up her MacBook and jotted down everything she could think of relating to her feelings about this case. She stared at the words floating on the glowing screen, typed in a few others. There was more to add but she didn’t know where it fit. Wasserman and Shelley and their places in all this. Mrs. Voorsanger’s strange description of her granddaughter’s first year of life. Maria suddenly quitting. And those…incidents she could not seem to shake. The way she had felt the first time she had visited Sarah. And the second visit, the shattering light-bulbs, the way the air crackled with a presence unseen but definitely there.
One thing was certain; regardless of the truth surrounding Sarah’s supposed paranormal abilities, Sarah herself believed them. Her frustration after her attempt to open the locked playroom doors was proof of that.
The question remained; should she tell Wasserman Sarah had stopped taking her pills?
For most of the following Monday, Jess’s thoughts were occupied with more mundane things. Lately she had allowed her grades to slip, something she had never done before, and she concentrated on getting to class on time and taking good notes. Her class with Professor Shelley did not meet until Thursday, for which Jess breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know what she would say to the woman yet. Lately Professor Shelley had seemed preoccupied. Perhaps the visit with Sarah’s family had upset her more than she let on.
After her last class ended, Jess made a quick sandwich and grabbed her laptop and book bag. She walked the three blocks to the Brookline Library through an early evening chill, seeing the imposing stone and brick building as if for the first time, though she had been there many evenings in the past. Now it seemed to dig itself into the hill, or rather rise up out of it like some Gothic stone castle, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it that way before.
Inside it was warm and bright. Recent renovations had put the sparkle back into a space that had grown tired and worn. At the reference desk she asked for a stack pass, and slipped down into the lower level, where she stashed her bag in one of the cubicles nestled beyond rows of musty books. It was a good place to sit and think, suspended over the back alley and silent as a tomb. The light in the stacks was dim and thick with dust, but the cubicles were made of a much friendlier wood, and built into the side of the building like bubbles in a submarine.
She left her book bag in the cubicle and returned to the main floor. Computer monitors lined the walls beyond the inform
ation desk. She found a free one and began a search. Soon she had gathered an impressive pile of books, which she stacked on the cubicle desk. She began to scan through them, starting with the earlier titles. Some were based upon specific cases of hauntings and “expert mentalists,” and those she set aside; others were filled with technical experiments on dice throwing and remote viewing techniques.
A full hour later, she had begun to get discouraged. The books were filled with outdated experiments and philosophical ramblings. Then she picked up a book called The Reach of the Mind, and the name on the cover made her pause. J. B. Rhine. At the Fingertip, Charlie had mentioned the Rhine group. Curious, she opened to the beginning of the book, and skimmed down the first few pages. More philosophical bullshit. Jess flipped farther into the book. There she found something that gave her pause.
The effects of narcotic and stimulant drugs (on ESP and PK) are like those produced on higher mental activities. Large doses of narcotic drugs force performance in tests to drop practically to the chance level…the drugs do not, on the other hand, nearly so quickly or so seriously affect the efficiency of the sensorimotor functions.
Sarah’s comment about her head being “fuzzy,” the “gray days” that came upon her and blanked out her memory. A symptom of drug therapy, especially the heavy one employed by the Wasserman Facility. She remembered how Sarah had blacked out during their second visit, how Maria had moved so quickly to administer the injection. How the big woman’s hands had trembled as she held the syringe up to the light and bent to the unconscious girl’s arm.
A simple sedative to calm the heart, Jess had assumed at the time. But now she wondered whether Maria had had more sinister intentions. The woman was obviously superstitious. It would not be too large a stretch to imagine that she had come across this passage in Rhine’s book, or something similar, and, fearful of whatever imagined threat she believed Sarah held for her, decided to take matters into her own hands.
