by John Coyne
It was only six o’clock, and the sidewalks were crowded, but still, Jennifer felt vulnerable. When a police car halted at the traffic light, she turned her face into the booth, but she was convinced they had spotted her, that the composite photo was already out and the cops were searching for a blond white woman, five foot seven, wearing a full-length fur coat, wool jacket and skirt, and a wool turtleneck. She pulled the collar of her coat up around her face and listened to the phone ring.
“Please, dear God, please let her be home,” she said out loud. When a woman did say hello after a half-dozen rings, Jennifer spoke rapidly. She explained about reading the article, about having the strange reaction to the Ice Age display. She told her about seeing Kathy Dart, and about the thirteen-mile run out along the C & O Canal. She stopped herself before she mentioned her attack on the mugger near the museum, and the women at the foundation.
When she stopped talking, she was out of breath, and crying. She couldn’t stop her tears, couldn’t keep herself from sobbing into the phone.
“Come see me at once,” the woman said, giving Jennifer her address.
“Thank you,” Jennifer whispered, wiping the tears from her face. “I’m coming.” When she finally hung up the phone, the traffic light had changed, and the police car was gone. Jennifer ran out into the street, and turned north toward Eighty-second Street and the home of Phoebe Fisher.
“Welcome,” a small woman said, pushing open the iron gate that guarded the basement apartment. “You were very close to me when you telephoned. I could feel your presence. I am Dr. Fisher.” She stepped back, and Jennifer saw that Phoebe Fisher was lame, that she used a thin, silver cane to support herself.
“I ran,” Jennifer replied, still gasping for breath as she followed the woman into the warm apartment.
Phoebe Fisher was dressed like a teenager in a tight black leotard and a wrap-around black skirt, with a bright red scarf knotted around her long thin neck. She was very small and very beautiful, with coarse black hair already streaked with gray. Her pure, white skin was the color of bisque pottery. Jennifer felt large and ungainly beside her in the low-ceilinged apartment.
“You have a fireplace!” she exclaimed as she entered the living room. The blazing fire made her feel immensely better.
“Yes, and I’ll make you a cup of tea, and we’ll talk.” Phoebe Fisher smiled at Jennifer. Her sculpted lips were neatly sketched into her tiny face. And when she smiled, her mouth widened and made her seem even younger. Jennifer liked her at once. She felt safe here. Maybe Phoebe Fisher would be able to help her. The fear that had been building and spreading through her body all afternoon eased away, leaving her suddenly lightheaded and very tired.
“Here,” Phoebe directed, touching the deeply cushioned chair close to the fireplace, “come sit down and get comfortable. We can get to know each other a bit while I make us a fresh pot of tea. Would herbal be all right? I’m afraid I don’t have anything else.”
“Thank you. Anything. I’m just fine, thankful to be here.” Her declarations surprised her. She was never this open with strangers, but now she felt the need to share her emotions, to tell this woman everything.
“Now, Jennifer, how did you meet Kathy Dart?” Phoebe asked, standing behind the kitchen counter that divided the rooms as she made the pot of tea. “And what were your feelings about her?”
Jennifer told the whole story as Phoebe made tea, then came back to sit beside her in front of the fire. Jennifer told her about Eileen Gorman and their chance meeting, about her jog along the C & O Canal and what had happened to her in the museum. She explained that she had known, really known, when that hut in the Ukraine had been built.
“What is wrong with me?” Jennifer asked, crying.
“There is nothing wrong with you, Jennifer. Nothing. You are a very fortunate person. A gifted person. It’s your electromagnetic frequency, that’s all.” Phoebe was smiling. “We share it, my dear. We are both gifted that way.” She reached out and touched Jennifer’s knee.
“I don’t understand,” Jennifer whispered.
“Of course you don’t. I didn’t either when it first happened. None of us know, really, but we learn. You are experiencing the first flashes of mediumship. To put it in academic terms, you have already gone through what is termed the first stage, conceptualization, and now you are in stage two. Preparation.” Phoebe paused for a moment, staring thoughtfully up at Jennifer. “Welcome to the gang.” Her soft brown eyes widened and glowed.
“Well, what is this gang? I feel like my body has been taken over or something.”
“You’re right. It has,” Phoebe said, “but you’re joining people like Emperor Wu, from the Han dynasty in China, and the Greek Dionysian cults of the sixth century B.C., the Celtic bards in the British Isles, not to mention Jesus Christ and his disciples. You’re in good company, Jennifer.” When she saw the uncomprehending look on Jennifer’s face, she asked, “Would you like me to try and explain how it all comes about? Why this is suddenly happening to you now, here in New York City in 1987?”
Jennifer nodded emphatically.
“Most of what we call mediumship, or channeling, is the product of an arrangement that is made between two bodiless entities—the person who is going to be the channel and the entity or consciousness that is going to be channeled. After that, one entity is incarnated in a body and begins life without even remembering the agreement. Life continues normally until the person gets to a place where he or she does remember. It’s called an encounter, and it’s different for everyone.”
“But I didn’t go through any encounter,” Jennifer protested. “I was just going on with my life, and then, wham, this!”
“I don’t know yet what happened, Jennifer. I don’t know enough about you yet, but later perhaps, if you are comfortable, I might try to channel to see what we can learn. I’m sure you were experiencing, or suffering, something
And then your frequency connected somehow.”
“How did it happen to you? What was your encounter?” She slipped out of her chair and sat down beside Phoebe on the small rug. “This is a Dessie rug, isn’t it?” she heard herself saying.
“Yes, it is. But how did you know about them? They’re from Ethiopia and very rare.” Phoebe laughed. “But of course you know. That is the wonder of being a medium.”
“No, I don’t know.” Jennifer was shaking her head, afraid again. “I mean, I know this is a Dessie rug, but I don’t know why I know it.”
Phoebe shrugged. “That’s it. You’ve always known. You learned it in another life, and you have carried that bit of information tucked away in your subconsciousness, from one age to the next.”
“Oh God, I can’t believe this.” Jennifer dropped her head into her open palms, held herself for a moment, then threw back her head, rubbing away her tears with her hands. It was very warm near the fire, but she didn’t want to move. For some reason she didn’t want to be away from Phoebe Fisher, who was silently watching her, smiling sweetly as if she had all the time in the world.
“Okay, how?” Jennifer asked. “Tell me what happened with you. That might help me understand what’s going on with me.”
“Well, about three years ago, at two different times within a two-month span, I had very close physical sightings of Dance’s spaceship here over New York City. What I didn’t understand then was that that was his way of signaling me, sort of tapping my subconscious memory. But it wasn’t until my experience in Central Park—the one that was written about in the Times—that I really began to investigate. I did all sorts of research into metaphysical theories, and eventually I came across ideas on mediumship.”
“Then I met several mediums, and one of the entities who came to those meetings offered to teach anyone who was interested how to channel. Even then I didn’t think I would devote my life to channeling. I was working as an editor at Redhook magazine. I had a career. I had a boyfriend who I was living with, and who I thought I loved. I was happy. Or thought I was.
”
“But it was in that class, in a receptive state, under the guidance of the other entity, that Dance made the telepathic connection. And as soon as he did, the memory of that previous agreement came back to me: who he was, who I was, what the ship sightings and the experience in Central Park had meant. All of this that had been blocked out of my consciousness came back to me.”
She smiled over at Jennifer. Now it was dark in the room, and the firelight cast their shadows against the far wall of the apartment.
“When I saw you in the doorway, I knew,” Phoebe went on softly. “I knew that you had had a similar experience. The only difference is that the entity you’re channeling is from the past, and Dance is from the future.”
“You mean he tells you what’s going to happen a hundred years from now?”
Phoebe shook her head. “Dance isn’t of this planet—he’s an extraterrestrial, which makes him different. Most channels—like Kathy Dart—allow discarded consciousnesses, which have been alive and no longer are, to come into their bodies. Those consciousnesses have no physical entity, but Dance does—it’s just not like ours. His is an extraterrestrial consciousness, and he and I are linked telepathically.”
“Why is he here? Why is he doing this to you?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I’m not sure, really. I think he is coming through now to assist us in learning that we have the answers we need, to live the lives we want to live.”
“He does not appear physically, because he wants us to focus on the message rather than the messenger, which is where we’d focus, of course, if we saw this little green man walking around.” She laughed. “Dance is channeling through me so the message will stand on its own. And we can decide whether the message works for us or not.”
“What he has to share in no way implies that he thinks his world is better than ours, just that he—they!—are different from us. They recognize that we are learning a lot, that we are beginning to explore things that are relatively new to our society.”
“Is his name really Dance?”
“No, they don’t have names in their society because they are telepathic. I call him Dance because that was what he seemed to be doing when I first saw him hovering over Central Park. He seemed to be dancing before my eyes.”
“But I’m not like you. No one is trying to speak through me. I just have these feelings, these weird, frightening experiences, and suddenly—”
“Because, Jennifer,” Phoebe continued, “you have been trapped inside your own logical, organized, institutional world, and your so-called ‘logic’ has kept you from the great wealth of knowledge within what we call the spiritual world.”
“There’s nothing strange about psychic ability. It’s simply survival. It’s how our minds work to keep us functioning in the world. The reason we can see is so that we don’t fall off a cliff. The reason we can taste is so that we don’t ingest poison. All of our senses are keyed to survival, including the psychic sense.”
“However, we know our physical senses. The mystical is what we do not know. We have to surrender to this experience and enter into it.”
“I guess that’s my problem. I’m afraid to surrender to the mystical world,” Jennifer admitted.
Phoebe nodded. “You know, Einstein used to get up every morning and say that he didn’t know anything. He believed that everything he knew could be disproven at any time. He wanted to treat his mind like a piece of blank paper. Let me experience! Let me learn all over again! That’s what the New Age philosophy is all about.”
Phoebe sat up straight. One leg was pulled up underneath herself, the other sticking straight out. Using her long, thin fingers to tick off the names, she listed the great mediums from history.
“Joan of Arc heard voices telling her to go to the king of France. She was then thirteen years old. Joseph Karo, a fifteenth-century Talmudic scholar, channeled a source called ‘maggid’. Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, both Christian mystics, were channelers. Joseph Smith channeled an angel named Moroni and, based on what the angel said, took his people to the promised land and founded the Mormon church. The list is endless.”
“But I can’t—”
“And didn’t you just tell me you were suddenly able to run thirteen miles after you saw Kathy Dart?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Jennifer shook her head and stared into the blazing fire. “I don’t know anything,” she whispered.
“Yes, you do. You know everything, and now you’re getting a glimpse of what the world as a whole has to offer. It’s frightening to realize your true potential. No one can blame you for not going forward, for saying: That’s enough. I’m comfortable. I’m happy. But are you really happy with the limits of rational thought? Jennifer, give yourself a chance at least to experience life.”
“How do I know it’s true? How do I know you’re to be trusted?”
“Begin with yourself. Trust yourself first. Ask yourself why you are feeling these emotions.”
“I don’t want to do this!” Jennifer interrupted. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be a channel! I don’t want anyone, or anything, to take me over, to use my body. I want it to stop!” Again Jennifer kept herself from saying more, from telling Phoebe how she killed, once she was seized with the brutal power.
Phoebe kept silent. She picked up one of the fire irons and poked at the burning logs till the dry wood sparked and hissed into a burst of sudden flame.
“What is it?” Jennifer asked, realizing the woman had more to say.
“I’m not sure there is anything you can do,” Phoebe said softly, then looked up at Jennifer. The sweet smile was gone from her face. “This entity wants to be heard. He, or she, wants to be channeled through your body, and I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Just as I could not stop Dance from coming to this world to teach, you cannot stop your entity. The spirit’s time has come, Jennifer, and you have been selected to serve its needs in this lifetime.”
Jennifer looked away and stared at the fire. Okay, she thought, but Phoebe’s Dance had come to teach. Her entity, Jennifer now realized, had come to kill.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JENNIFER FLUNG HER ARM out and hit the bedside lamp, knocking it to the floor. The phone was ringing. As she reached for it, she knocked the receiver off the hook. The illuminated dial of her digital clock read 5:24 a.m.
She picked the phone up from the floor and said angrily into the receiver, “This better be good.” But the line went dead.
“Shit!” She slammed down the receiver. Fully awake now, she sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. The heat was coming on in the building, and the steam pipes clanged. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Telephone calls in the middle of the night always made her think someone was watching from an apartment across the street or from a darkened phone booth at the corner.
She pulled on soft slippers and shuffled across the dark room. As she passed the mirror on the back of the closet door, she glanced at herself. As a child, she had been afraid of the dark, and the only way she could calm herself was to rush to a mirror. Her shrink had later told her that she’d had a low self-image. No, she had answered back, she was just afraid of the dark.
She went into the kitchen, turning on lights as she walked. Well, she told herself, if she was up, she was up. As she filled the kettle with cold water for coffee, she reached over and turned on the small Sony on the kitchen counter. Maybe she would make pancakes, she told herself, and cook sausages. She’d have a big breakfast and forget about running and staying in shape for one morning in her life.
She had opened the refrigerator and was pulling out butter and milk and eggs, only half listening to the all-night cable channel she was tuned into when she realized she was hearing Kathy Dart’s voice.
Jennifer stood up and turned toward the set. Kathy Dart was sitting cross-legged, facing the camera. She was not channeling, but talking to the group of people who also sat cross-legged, in a tight c
ircle.
“It seems to me,” she was saying, sweeping her gaze around the circle of people, “that there are two generally accepted views of why we are all on earth.”
“One view I’ll call the religious. It tells us that we are creations of God, and damaged creations at that; that we are born into the world with sin and must spend our lives proving our value to God so that at death we can be accepted into heaven.”
“The second notion about life is the modern view. It explains that we are here today because of a series of chance occurrences in space. The big bang. The small bang. The survival of the fittest. Whatever you want to call it! Every few years we are given a new explanation.”
“The trouble with these two views of life is that they exclude a lot. They cheat us out of all the possibilities of our wonderful minds.”
Kathy Dart paused and looked around the circle. Watching her, Jennifer noticed again how beautiful she was. It wasn’t really her looks, but the calmness of her face. No wonder Eileen responded to her, Jennifer thought. Kathy Dart had such a trusting face.
“We must remember that the mind and the brain are not the same thing,” Kathy Dart said next. “The brain is a physical organ, while the mind is simply energy that flows through this organ. As human beings, as bodies, we cannot be everywhere. But the mind can travel, relocate, be somewhere else, as when we have an out-of-body experience. For example, we all know how it is possible for the body to be on the operating table while the mind is up on the ceiling, looking down, watching the surgeon operate.”
“Yes,” Jennifer said aloud. She stopped breaking eggs into a plastic bowl and turned her full attention to the screen. “Yes,” she said again.
“We do have other levels of reality. We daydream, hallucinate, sleep, dream, and all have some sort of mystical, or psychic, communication with others.” She leaned forward. “I will tell you a true story. It has happened to each of you. You are in a restaurant, you are on the street, you think of someone, perhaps a friend, someone you once knew in another place and at another time. His name pops suddenly into your mind, and then within moments, you see him. He suddenly appears, as if out of nowhere!”
