Another nervous chuckle escaped her, as she still clung to the hope of some logical explanation that would dispel the darkness of this nightmare like a new, rising sun.
The four focused faces stared back at her in unbroken sobriety, unable to provide that logical explanation and confirm reality for her.
“So, I was about to contact you,” she said, “and while I was typing, another one of those strange calls came through. I answered again. When I turned back to the computer screen, this was typed across the e-mail I was about to send.”
She handed over the printed e-mail and pointed to her name typed over and over across the page in capital letters. Tracy was aware that if they were to think she was nuts, now was the time.
“I saved and printed it, because I wanted you to see it.”
The four looked it over, still taking notes, and then Dylan turned to her.
“May we keep this for our records?” She consented and Dylan handed the paper over to Leah, who filed it away in a folder and began to write.
“Then...I saw him,” she said. The pronouncement lifted all heads in her direction as though she’d dropped a silent bomb. Sidney sat up straight and leaned closer.
“When?” he asked, knowing his prediction had come to pass.
“Just before I came here. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“How long ago?” he pressed with the urgency of a cop about to nab a crook.
She glanced at her watch.
“About forty-five minutes, now.”
“Tell us exactly what you saw.”
She sat back and closed her eyes, tuning in, recalling the finest of details.
“I felt like someone was standing over my shoulder, but I didn’t turn around, and I could see from the reflection in the computer screen that there was no one there. I finished what I was doing, and I got up from the chair. I stretched my legs for a second, and I turned around. There he was. His face wasn’t in my mind but right in front of me.
“I closed my eyes and tried to shake it away; I thought I was seeing things. I opened my eyes again, and he was still there and even more vivid. But something was strange. He looked like he was there, but he wasn’t there, like he was part of the surroundings. Then I saw him move, and he moved fast! And then, he was gone.”
Sidney and Leah nodded their heads in recognition, as Tracy finished recalling the shock of her life with a voice that had turned misty. Their young, but seasoned lives had been filled with encounters and experiences with the Great Beyond, and they knew first-hand of the terror that could be involved: the fear, the mental trauma, physical strain, and often heartache. They tried to make her understand.
“You see, Tracy,” Sidney said. “When someone passes on, they are supposed to ‘move on’ to the other realm, that is, what most people call ‘Heaven.’ Unless, they go to Hell, which might be more applicable nowadays.”
She cracked a smile at the truth of it.
“But some people don’t move on. They feel they have unfinished business in this world, or they’re afraid to leave their loved ones. Sometimes they can’t accept that they’re dead, and there are some who don’t even know they’re dead. There are quite a few reasons a spirit cannot exit. Some lose their way, but some prefer to roam the Earth. We call these spirits, ‘ghosts.’ So, you’re accurate when you describe him as ‘being there, but not being there.’ After death, they are no longer in this world as we are. But they can remain attached to it, if they so choose.
“What interests me most,” Sidney continued, “is that you’ve seen him. After reading your e-mail, I had predicted that you would. It’s not often that they make contact this way, through means of technological communication, and so there are few studies on it. But from my experience, that type of contact is usually followed by a physical manifestation.”
Dylan sat with his elbows perched on the table and hands folded together, exuding a grand, authoritative presence over the meeting and observing as the funny guy faded away into the serious and superior intellect that was the real Sidney Pratt. The lead investigator then spoke.
“Tracy, this rare occurrence that Sidney refers to has a name. It is known as ‘The Pipeline Effect.’ It is said to occur when a spirit tries to make contact via means of technology. Technologies such as: telephones, radios, transmitters, televisions, video and from what you’ve described to us today, the computer, have all, at one time or another, been used by the dead as ways to communicate.”
“You’re a first, kid,” Sidney said, nudging her. “At least for us, anyway.”
“But not entirely, Tracy,” Dylan said. “The four of us all have our reasons for being here. We all have, or have had, some connection with the other realm at some point in our lives, and it is what drives our research. Brett and I have spent years studying electromagnetic frequencies, radio waves, and other forms of sound and technology used in this type of research. Leah and Sidney are two very gifted people who are of great benefit to the society. Both have been endowed from early childhood with abilities that have made them subjects of the society’s research. So, you are not alone, Tracy. Leah, why don’t you begin with your story?”
He turned his focus toward the doll faced girl who drew nearer to the table. The seer was about to tell her tale.
* * * *
“It all started when I was about five years of age, and my parents moved us into a house on Cedar Drive. My mother was a Realtor, who had purchased it cheap from an estate sale, and it was a colossal, three story, colonial style mansion that seemed to keep its history locked inside. As I stood outside looking in for the first time, I felt a dark cloud pass over me, one that left me speechless and unable to explain the jagged feeling of fear I felt, or that vibe of dark uncertainty that somehow escaped its stone structure.
“It was lonely in that house for me. My mother was obsessed with renovating the house and restoring it to its ‘former glory.’ My father, a lawyer, was always busy with an endless parade of clients. Soon, I began my own ritual of exploring the various rooms of the house. It was then that I encountered Agnes.
“I was playing with a ball one day in the third floor hallway, when I was distracted by the pungent scent of perfume that wasn’t my mother’s. My ball had rolled into a room at the end of the hall, one I hadn’t explored yet. I went inside and there she was, sitting in the old rocker, one of the many antique pieces the prior owners had left behind.
“She was a woman of about seventy-five, and she had the sweetest smile. She sat knitting, and rocking, and motioned me forward, and then the ball rolled back towards me. She had moved it. I knew she did—I saw her.
“She could speak without moving her lips and beckoned me to sit down beside her. One day, my father saw me talking as I sat next to her rocker.”
“‘Leah, honey, who are you talking to?’” I heard the confusion in his voice.
“‘Agnes,’” I said to him. I hadn’t realized he couldn’t see her, but he did see something.
“It was later that night that I overheard my parents fighting. My Dad expressed his concern to her that I was talking to someone who wasn’t there.”
“‘So what,’” she said. “‘All kids have imaginary playmates! She’s five!’”
“‘The rocker was moving!’” He was yelling at her. “‘How do you explain the rocker rocking back and forth and then coming to a complete stop on its own?!’”
“It was then that I realized that my father hadn’t seen Agnes but saw the rocker moving. He knew that something was dwelling among us in that house. It continued for hours: my father telling her that he hated the place, and my mother yelling that he wasn’t going to ruin the chance of her owning her dream home.
“Days went by, and they seemed to grow even further apart. I would run to Agnes to get away from their screaming, and she’d always be there, in that room. One day, my Dad walked up to the third floor to get me.
“He had decided to take me with him on an excursion down to the basement. I be
came fascinated with the vast, dank, labyrinth that seemed to stretch out for miles underneath the house, with its maze of walls built of limestone piled high into a catacomb structure. The walls gave way to long, winding corridors that led to cobwebbed rooms and passageways where secret tunnels were rumored to exist, and that legend still persists to this day.
“It was a treasure trove for my mother’s renovations, with colonial furniture and artifacts everywhere, all left behind for the passing centuries to hide.
“Dad and I were playing Hide and Seek when I ran into one of the countless rooms and hid behind one of the rounded arch doors that creaked with ages of atrophy. My eyes turned to see what was behind me, and there, I saw a woman sprawled across the stone cold floor.
“She was naked, clad in only her skin that had turned a shining, soft purple, and her eyes cast a fixed stare back at me. The blackened bruises were strung across her neck like a medallion, and I could swear that she blinked. That was the loudest I have ever screamed to this day.”
Tracy sat in awe; her lower jaw loosened and dropped.
“You found a dead body?”
“No,” Leah said. “I had a vision of one. What I was seeing was the past. My Dad came running into the room, and I was pointing to the corpse on the floor that to him wasn’t there.
“He screamed for me and ran into the room, then pulled me up into his arms, shaking me. I could do nothing except point, trying to catch my involuntary heaves of breath that were outrunning me. He turned and saw nothing, and with the same rush with which he had entered the room, he whisked me out and away.
“The next thing I recall was that he had confronted my mother, and their fighting had escalated into what I knew would be the end of them. My Dad tried hard to convince her that we needed to get away from that house, for my sake, because something was tearing us apart ever since we’d moved in. My mother refused to see what was happening to us. She had a renovation crew at work inside the house, and the workmen often stopped and eavesdropped, wondering if they should even finish what they had begun.
“Then, stranger happenings began to occur: glass breaking for no reason, sounds of footsteps, whispers, and occasional shouts, haunted us night and day. Lights would flicker, and the temperature would turn ice cold even with the fireplace roaring. At times, a smell like rotten meat would invade the house, and then vanish as quickly as it had flourished.
“Dad awoke on one occasion with scratches on his face, hands, chest, and back. I am certain that he’d seen something that night. He began to change, to weaken as though surrendering. Then, one of the workmen fell down the giant staircase and broke his neck. He survived, only to be paralyzed from the neck down, swearing that he was pushed, though no one had been there.
“Mom began to slip away from us, sitting motionless and quiet with no signs of life in her eyes. She was now a prisoner of that house, locked in some hypnotic spell, and the only release seemed to be death. I don’t think she even recognized me, or my father, who was executing some plan to get me away from there and get Mom help. He kept telling me not to worry, that it would all be over soon. I prepared for bed on what would be the last night I would ever spend in that house.
“He tucked me in bed that night, and I lay awake, thinking. Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. The air in the room had changed, and I even thought it might have been Agnes. I sat up in my bed and looked over by the chair in my room. I felt my heart stop from the horror in front of me.
“There, was the same woman I saw in the basement. A man was clutching her by the throat, wringing her neck backward and forward until the naked, vulnerable victim fell limp in his grasp. Another man stood behind them, watching and seeming to be enjoying it. Her eyes were pleading with me. Her hand was outstretched, and there was nothing I could do but scream.
“My hysteria rang out through the house, and it had been only seconds when the door flew open and the lights filled the room, hurting my eyes but defeating the darkness. My Dad snatched me out of bed like a rag doll and ran so fast, carrying me down the huge staircase that I thought we would tumble. The next thing I knew we were out the front door, without my mother. I would never see the horrific visions of that house again, except in my mind.”
Leah gazed into the black surface of the table, as though it displayed her memories in motion. The bulk of her story had been told, but the tale remained unfinished, and Tracy stared, astonished.
“My Dad left me with my grandmother, and then he went back for my mother. I don’t know what happened in that house during that time, but whatever it was--it destroyed the only family I ever knew. My mother committed suicide in that house; she had hung herself from the top balcony. Dad came home eventually, after spending time in the state hospital. He’s all right now and still sees a psychiatrist, but he won’t ever mention what happened when he went back, if he even remembers.
“I later wrote my history for the society, and they conducted an investigation into that house, which has remained uninhabited. It turned out that the woman I saw was a young prostitute who was raped and murdered in that house in 1935. The man who killed her was Agnes’ son, and the other man was a fellow ex-con of his. They stashed her body in that house, and it was discovered years later, a result of the investigation. It had been walled up amid the limestone.”
Leah’s eyes unglued from the table top and met those that were fixed on her.
“When I became old enough, I decided to use my ‘gift’ to help others, to assist those that linger, unable to move on from this world and to help those who are haunted to understand. Otherwise, what is the point of having such an ability?”
Tracy let out a gasp, realizing the strength of the young woman in front of her.
“You’ve come to the right place, and we will help you.”
“That’s right,” Dylan said. “We want you to know that we are all in this together.” He reiterated the group’s support to Tracy and thanked Leah for sharing her history. Now, he turned to Sidney. “Well, Sid, it’s your turn.”
Chapter Seven
Again, Sidney refrained from his slightly hunched slouch and raised his head, his robust cheeks puffing out from under horn-rimmed glasses. He sat in wonder as to where to begin and decided that the beginning was the only way to tell a history.
“Well,” he said, “like Leah, I was also the age of five when my first paranormal experience occurred. This is a crucial age in the psychic development of children. One of my main fields of study is that of children with certain gifts or abilities. I have studied: child clairvoyants, telepaths, telekinetics, spirit seers such as Leah, and ‘listeners’ such as myself.
“Listeners are those who are able to hear the voices of the dead, often immediately following or even days after death. I first heard the voice of my grandfather only minutes after he died. This event changed everything in my life and turned me into whom, or should I say, ‘what’ I am today.
“These experiences are not about hearing voices. Actually, what happens is an interruption of all the sounds we identify as reality, and only the voice of the spirit can be heard. When this interruption occurs, we are momentarily deaf to the surrounding world, and we listen as the sounds of an unknown realm become known to us. This I’ll explain further, but allow me to start from the beginning.
“My grandfather meant the world to me when I was only five, and it was just the four of us: me, my parents, and him. My grandmother had died when I was too young to remember so Grandpa had lived with us all of my life. He would take me fishing, to the movies, on trips, a convenient baby-sitter for Mom and Dad.
“Then, one day he died. I was crushed, beyond inconsolable. The devastation went on for days. It was my first interaction with the reality of death, my first conception of what it meant to be gone forever. The word ‘why’ kept reverberating in my mind, a constant echo. My state of mourning had left my parents in a helpless state of dilemma.
“I sat on our front porch on that hot summer day, sobbi
ng, mourning, and distant. I had heard his voice, just as clear as I am hearing my own. The power and magnitude of his voice seemed to break through an unseen barrier into this world, throwing what little I knew of it so far, into question.”
“‘Sidney.’ I heard it; it was sharp and interrupted the natural process. I knew it was real because everything had stopped for the sound of that voice. The chirping of birds, the soft breeze rustling in the trees, the off-hand noises from inside the house, all were muted, diminished by the ghostly interruption. My body chilled even as the bright orange sun blazed down that August day.”
“‘I love you,’ I heard him say, ‘always.’”
“The perfect, crystal clarity with which he spoke was as though he were there. “I ran into the house and yelled for my parents, who came running from the kitchen along with two of our neighbors. I told them what I heard, and how I couldn’t hear anything else at that moment, and how Grandpa was still here...somewhere.
My mother’s face had melted into a molten mask of humiliation that strangely enough, seemed frozen. Her embarrassment, the greater concern, displayed like a work of art.
“My father looked like someone whose darkest secret was just exposed in the bright, summer sunlight for the entire world to notice. The features of his face twitched and tweaked, and the nervous climb of his breathing ascended as he tried to speak over it. The way our neighbors looked at me confirmed it, betraying their thoughts: Michael Pratt’s kid was a whack job.
“I began to hear other voices since that day and by the age of eight, I was able to identify the occurrences as the same as when I heard my grandfather’s voice. My parents had judged it to be a vivid, overactive, childhood imagination. Then I mentioned names of people that, to my parents, had long passed on, and their secret looks of confirmation to each other had done nothing to fool me. These people were dead, and I could hear them.
“I was taken to see psychiatrists, some of whom concurred with the imagination theory, claiming I was suffering from the traumatic effects of first-time grief, a child compensating for a sudden, overwhelming loss. Then there was this one shrink who had difficulty in diagnosing me as schizophrenic because I lacked all the other symptoms.
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