Poltergeist (Greywalker, Book 2)

by Kat Richardson

  Albert started to rove around the room, eyeing us both as if he found the conversation distasteful but couldn’t quite tear himself away. Ben carried on without even noticing I’d started to glaze over. “Later, they noticed that they individually experienced incidents of minor PK when they were alone, too.”

  “What happened?” I prompted.

  “Nothing spectacular—and this was all near the end of the experiment—just object movements, flickering lights that seemed to respond to questions, the sensation of being watched. It might have been suggestion and conflation, but the group attributed the incidents to Philip, even when they happened in multiple locations simultaneously. Unfortunately, none of the at-home incidents was recorded in any objective way.

  “The other telling thing was that they couldn’t get anything to happen collectively or individually if they were consciously trying. Phenomena only occurred when the members were expectant, but otherwise relaxed and making no effort to create phenomena. They thought that would change eventually. They said they had hoped to create a visible apparition or an apport, but the group broke up before any greater advances were recorded.”

  “Hang on—what’s an apport?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Ben said, then cleared his throat and continued. “An apport is a real, extant object that appears from empty air. Usually it’s something significant.”

  I leaned back in my seat on the book-laden sofa and looked at the volume in my hand. It wasn’t very thick or heavy. Quite unimpressive. I thought of Tuckman’s manipulations and fancy equipment. “Did the Philip group do this in a lab?”

  “No, more’s the pity. They did it in a house with very little recording equipment, no monitoring, and no control.”

  “Then how is anyone sure it wasn’t a hoax?”

  Ben squirmed around and found room to prop his feet on his cluttered desk, tipping the chair far back. Albert dimmed and vanished, giving up on the conversation at last.

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Ben said. “Most of what the group claimed they could do has been shown to be possible, but only on small scales and inconsistently. Recent psychological studies into false memory and expectation claim it’s all conflation, but they’ve only addressed the traditional séance, not the Philip experiments themselves, which—for all their flaws—were at least held in a lighted room with an attempt at neutral scientific inquiry. As I said, no one’s been able to reproduce the level of phenomena the Owen group got. Most who’ve tried get little or nothing. That tends to bolster the hoax idea—or self-delusion.

  “But there are broadcast records of a TV episode and a short documentary film about the experiment. The tape and the film have since disappeared. But the book came out in 1976—the original paperback, that is.” He pointed to the hardback in my hand. “That one, there, is a later version from 1978 with some additional chapters. A lot of people still remembered those TV episodes in ’78. If the book were published in the last ten years and had the same lack of documentation for events that happened thirty years ago, I’d be skeptical, but it’s contemporary with the events claimed and though it’s been doubted, it’s never been debunked. Even the psychological experiments into conflation and false memory don’t disprove the events claimed by the Philip group. The fact that some members have since died or disappeared and the rest now refuse to discuss the experiment doesn’t help to clear up any questions.”

  I sighed. This was a mess. Dicey experiment number one leading to dicey experiment number two. “Did anyone ever get hurt during the Philip experiments?”

  Ben frowned. “No. Not unless you count a few bruises from the table getting frisky—at least I never heard of any injuries. Why?”

  I shrugged. “It just seemed that if you could move a table around, you could also do some damage with it.”

  “I don’t think they ever got anything so dramatic. It was only a folding card table.”

  The original group hadn’t invested the time or equipment Tuckman had. That wasn’t the only place they differed, but how significant were the differences? The fact that Tuckman’s group worked in a lab under monitored conditions would make me expect fewer oddities, not more. I tried another tack. “Why did you recommend me to Tuckman?”

  Ben blinked. “To be honest, I was surprised he asked—I hadn’t heard from him since he moved from U-Dub to PNU—but my reputation as the ‘freaky-things expert,’ as he put it, had stuck in his head and he said he figured that if anyone knew an open-minded investigator, it would be me. I’m not sure it was a compliment. . . .”

  I looked askance. “Probably not.”

  Ben crooked his mouth into half a smile. He looked about six minutes from falling asleep and his mouth was operating on autopilot. “Yeah, he’s a bit of a jerk.”

  “Y’think?”

  Something thumped downstairs. Albert rushed into visibility. More thumps echoed up the stairs punctuated with a series of grunts and growls. Ben tried to twist in his chair and fell onto the floor in a tangle of limbs.

  “Oh . . . drat it! Rhino on the rampage.” He dragged himself upright. “I’m sorry. He usually sleeps longer after lunch.”

  “When do you sleep?”

  “When Mara’s home—which is about four hours twice a week. Or that’s what I remember. Brian will probably grow up thinking I have early Alzheimer’s and that Mara is my caseworker.”

  “I thought your mother babysat on occasion to give you guys a break.”

  Ben shook his head as the thumps approached the attic door. “Not for a while. She fell and fractured her leg.”

  I stared at him in horror. “Not Brian . . . ?”

  Ben made it to the door. “No. She slipped walking up some steps in the rain. But she’s a tough old lady with strong bones, so it’s not too bad.”

  I heard Brian say “Graah!” on the other side of the door and then the door bulged inward with a cracking noise and a rattle. Ben snatched it open and Brian tumbled through into his legs.

  “Graaaah!”

  Ben tried to look stern, but only looked a little cross-eyed. “Schreckliches kind!”

  I wasn’t sure what it meant but Brian rolled on the floor and giggled. I didn’t think that was the effect Ben had wanted.

  “You may need to switch to Russian,” I suggested.

  “Unfortunately, my mother’s already got him started. German is my last recourse for emotional outbursts and my grammar goes all to hell—heck!—when I’m mad. Soon I’ll have to switch to Finnish or learn a new language to stay ahead. How long do you think it will take to learn Urdu?”

  I didn’t know if he was serious.

  “Maybe you should try pig Latin.”

  Ben hoisted Brian up. “How ’bout frog Latin? If transmogrification actually existed, I would ask Mara to turn him into a frog.”

  Brian laughed harder. “Ribbit!” he shouted, clapping his hands.

  I followed them down the stairs, reserving judgment on the existence or nonexistence of anything. “Looks like you don’t need a witch to do that.”

  Brian planted a loud kiss on his father’s cheek, then wriggled out of Ben’s arms at the foot of the stairs and charged across the hall toward the living room in full rhino-mode once again.

  “Well. So much for froggy,” Ben sighed. “I think I’m going to have to take him to the park, or he’ll never run down. Do you want to come along, or would you prefer to cut short your visit to the wild animal park?”

  I did feel a pinch of guilt, but I said, “I’d better get back to work. I’ve got another couple of quandaries for you, though.”

  Ben began stalking the wily rhino-boy as he called back over his shoulder, “What quandaries?”

  “First, how come glass—especially mirrored glass—filters the Grey?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when I look through glass I see less detail in the Grey. If the glass is mirrored, the filtering is greater, and multiple layers of glass filter still more of the visual component. Wh
y?” I called to him.

  Ben tackled his son and carried him into the hall to put on his coat. He reached for what looked like a dog harness and leash hanging from the coat rack and picked it up while keeping one eye on Brian. “OK, you want to go out and run? Do you need a leash or will you let Papa keep up this time?”

  Brian eyed the leash and pursed his tiny mouth. “Not doggie. Rhinerosserous.”

  Ben knelt down in front of Brian. “Hören, mein kleiner rhino—you need to hold Papa’s hand till we get to the park or you’ll have to wear the leash. I don’t want you running into traffic again. OK?”

  Brian looked grave. “OK.”

  “So, holding my hand all the way to the park, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK.” Ben stood back up and took Brian’s hand; then he looked back at me as Brian tugged him toward the door. “What was it . . . ? Oh, yeah. Glass acts as a filter . . . There’s a lot of folklore about the effects of mirrors and silver on spirits and monsters, but I don’t know how that would relate—folklore’s not a reliable source.”

  “Science hasn’t been batting a thousand for me,” I reminded him.

  “True . . . I’ll have to look into it. Brian, hang on. I need my coat first.” He struggled into a jacket while trying to hold on to Brian’s hand and talk to me. “Is this a general question or is it germane to the case at hand?”

  “Both. Tuckman’s observation room is separated from the experiment space by two layers of glass and I could barely see the Grey effects on the other side, most of the time. The energy concentrations had to be very large or very close to the window for me to see anything distinct. But it’s happened before—I can see less Grey in my truck than out of it.”

  “The truck might be a special case, but I’ll see what I can find out, in general. What else? Quick, before the rhino charges.”

  “I need to know how fake phenomena could be manufactured so it would fool the participants in Tuckman’s séances.”

  “Do you mean that Tuckman is faking his results?” Ben was aghast.

  “No. But I need to know how the effects could be faked so I can show him they aren’t—I think.”

  “OK, you need to know the mechanics of fakery and how to spot them. I’m sure I’ve got some information about it, somewhere. I’ll have to do some research.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Not if you don’t mind waiting for me to find the time. And it’s something to think about aside from playdates and chores.”

  Brian tugged harder and made his rhino roar—I wondered why he thought rhinos made that noise and wished he would stop. I shouted over it as we walked toward the porch. “Thanks. I’ll give you a call another time, unless you call me first.”

  Ben frowned. “Sorry we were interrupted.”

  I waved him off and opened the door for us. “It’s OK. You answered the most important questions I had.” I held up the book. “I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can.”

  “No rush.” He was yanked out the doorway by the charging rhino-boy. The door clicked closed on its own and I heard the latch turn, though no one touched it. I assumed it was Albert, playing security guard.

  As I followed the rhino and his dad down the front steps, Albert whispered along beside me.

  I peered at him. “What?”

  He just stopped and looked at me, blinked, and gave me a thin-lipped smile before fading away.

  Carrying the book, I went to my truck to begin looking into the project members.

  I’d left the files on my desk. I berated myself for it and headed back to Pioneer Square to get my paperwork.

  In my office, the answering machine light was blinking. I poked its button.

  “Harper,” Phoebe’s voice shouted, “you are so in trouble, girl! Is that why you’re not answering my calls? I been calling you since yesterday. You don’t call me back, I’m gonna find me an old obeah-woman and have her put a curse on your scrawny behind!”

  Scowling, I pulled my pager off my belt and stared at it. The display was dark.

  Rey Solis’s voice curled out of the speaker. “I would like to discuss your interview list with you. Call me before three. Oh, yes—Phoebe Mason threatened to skin you. I assume she’s not serious, but do I need to change my mind?”

  Terrific. Phoebe was mad enough to threaten violence in front of a police officer. Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Phoebe. I scrounged in the desk drawers and found spare batteries for the pager and swapped them in. The pager remained blank. Even the little green power indicator wouldn’t light.

  “Damn it.” I knocked it on the tabletop. The case popped open and spilled bits onto the desk. I spat dirty words. How long had it been nonfunctional? It should have vibrated when I opened the office door, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt it buzz and I hadn’t noticed when it had stopped.

  I called the pager service, picked up messages, and told them to forward all calls to the office until further notice. Phoebe had called three times, among other business calls I hadn’t gotten. While Phoebe might skin me, I needed to pay my bills long enough to survive to be skinned, so I put the business calls ahead of hers. One of my steady clients was a litigator with the heart of a demon from the inner rings, so it was in my best interest to pour oil on the permafrost as the first priority. It would be a positive joy to take the heat from Phoebe after that.

  Phoebe didn’t answer the phone at the shop. I got the answering machine that told me Old Possum’s was closed due to a death in the family. As far as I knew, the shop had never been closed before—not even when Dyslexia, the ancient and addlepated queen of the cats, had died and Phoebe had cried for three days. I tried her apartment and her parents’ restaurant with no result. Then I called the store’s office number.

  “Old Possum’s,” Phoebe snapped. “We’re closed. Go away.”

  “It’s Harper.”

  Phoebe growled. “Oh, you! You!” she sputtered.

  I sighed. “I’m coming up there. I’ll explain everything and you can yell at me all you want.”

  She was still trying to get a good harangue started when I hung up.

  One more quick call to Solis to say I’d drop by at three, then I was back out the door with the Tuckman files under my arm and on my way to Fremont.

  TEN

  Phoebe had reacquired articulate fury by the time I arrived at the back door to Old Possum’s. I knocked and was greeted with a storm of words as the door opened.

  “Harper! You are mean and sneaky! You askin’ me all those questions and already knowin’ Mark was dead! You better have some good damn reason why you didn’t tell me. You bring your sneaky-ass self in here and start talkin’.” Phoebe waved into the dim interior of the back office with an emphatic gesture.

  I held position on the stoop. Bright sparks of red and white fury leapt from her, stabbing the air and leaving a sour tang of grief. She glared at me until the sparks died down and her lower lip began to tremble.

  “Aren’t you comin’ in?”

  I leaned left and right, making a big show of looking around her. The big overhead fluorescent light was off and only a pair of green-shaded clerk’s lamps threw pools of light onto the big messy desk in the room.

  “OK,” I said.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m looking for Phoebe Mason.”

  “What d’you—”

  “She said she was going to have an obeah-woman curse me and you don’t seem to be doing a very good job, so I thought I’d have to tell her to get her money back.”

  She reached up and clouted me on the shoulder—Phoebe’s not very tall and though her temper is just as short, so are her grudges. “Girl! Listen to the mouth on you. You get in here, now. But I’m not making you coffee this time. I’m still mad at you.”

  I blew out a sigh of relief. “OK. I can take my punishment without caffeine.” Which was technically true, since I’d managed to miss both sleep and my morning coffee and it loo
ked like I wouldn’t get any lunch, but I’d have to carry on without my favorite crutch. At least until Phoebe relented.

  I entered the dim office and went to tuck myself into a chair too ratty to be allowed on the shop floor. “I’m sorry, Phoebe,” I started. “When did you find out about Mark?”

  Phoebe sat behind the desk and squirmed the chair back so her face was hidden in shadow. I could still see the wavering colors of her distress casting her into Grey silhouette. “Yesterday afternoon. Some detective from the police came round.”

  “Hispanic?”

  “Uh-huh.” The chair creaked as she nodded and I could hear her sniffle in the dark. I couldn’t see her expression, but I could imagine it well enough. “Why didn’t you say anything Wednesday? Why’d you just let me find out from some stone-faced stranger?”

  “Detective Solis asked me not to. And I didn’t want you to feel you shouldn’t say anything bad about Mark because he was dead. We both need to know what he was really like and what he was doing. And if anyone already knew what had happened.”

  “Well, we didn’t.”

  “Who was here when Solis came in?”

  “Jules and Amanda—poor thing—and me. I had to send Manda home in a taxi. She started crying so hard her eyes all swelled up and I couldn’t let her go home on a bus like that.”

  “What sort of questions did Solis ask you?”

  “Pretty much the same as you—how long had he worked here, what was he like, was he upset or in trouble recently, who were his friends, and like that. I even told him about the poltergeist, but he didn’t seem very interested, so I didn’t tell him about the accident.”

  “What accident? You didn’t tell me about any accident, either.”

  “I did! I told you things fell on people.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t such a big thing. Couple of days ago Mark was shelving books in the back near the espresso machine and there’s a customer talking to him. Then one of the gargoyles come right up off the mantel and smacks into the shelf by Mark’s head and the big book he’s putting up falls and hits Mark in the chest. Mark fell down and the book fell down and hit the gargoyle and broke the base and the customer goes yelling out the front door.”