Placebo

by Steven James

There were generations of African Santería practitioners in Philadelphia who have been around since colonial times. And although Mambo Atabei was not from Africa, the ceremonies she performed had been originally exported from there to Haiti, adapted, and then imported from Haiti to North America.

  The cloth doll in Cyrus’s office was, of course, a gimmick. No one who was a serious voodoo worshiper would use a doll like that. It was for the tourists in places like New Orleans and some of the neighborhoods in Miami. Real voodoo has much deeper roots and much different methods.

  When the door opened, Cyrus could smell incense. It was meant to mask the other smells that emanated from the house, or peristyle, as it was known in Mambo Atabei’s religion.

  She stood in front of him, fiftyish, slim, black—she hated being called African American because, as she said proudly, she was Haitian, not from Africa, not from America. “You don’t hear Caucasians preface their identity by naming their ancestors’ continent of birth: ‘European-American’ or ‘North American–American.’ All of this political correctness is only thinly veiled bigotry used to create divisions between people groups that need to be drawn closer together, not separated by hyphenating their identities.”

  “Dr. Arlington.” Her voice was soft and congenial but had a raspy edge to it. The result of a throat injury sometime in her past.

  “Mambo Atabei.”

  “It’s been, what? Two months? Three?”

  “Something like that.”

  Without another word she invited him into the living room.

  The brown and white doves that she would use in the basement were caged in the corner of the room, out of reach of the gray cat that stalked across the footstool in front of her couch. The doves squabbled with each other, oblivious to what awaited them. The cat eyed them with calculated interest.

  Cyrus wondered about the cat. He hadn’t known Mambo Atabei to use cats, but he wasn’t really sure what all went on in her basement. He’d only witnessed her using doves and chickens—although he did know that larger animals were part of some of the ceremonies she performed.

  A wide variety of liqueurs and rums were collected on an end table in the corner of the room. An HDTV, two chairs, a lamp, a crucifix on the wall, a shelf of DVDs, and knickknacks rounded out the room. A typical living room.

  At the far end of the room, a curtain was drawn across an open doorway. He knew that the curtain concealed the steps that led to the basement.

  A basement that was not quite so typical.

  He’d been down there on numerous occasions, just as an observer. But he’d seen what went on around the pole, the poteau-mitan, in the middle of the main room, had seen what caused the dark stains on the dirt floor beneath it.

  There is, of course, a dark side to voodoo, a strand that’s not about dancing and drinking or trying to find out some insights about life from a Loa. There’s a side that has nothing to do with blessings or celebration.

  It was the side Mambo Atabei counted herself a part of, the highly secretive Bizango Society.

  Cyrus was not easily rattled, but Atabei had a certain unnerving quality about her and studied him with a quiet intensity that made him slightly nervous. “And what exactly can I offer you tonight, Dr. Arlington?”

  “I’d like to put something into play.”

  “Regarding?”

  “A man who is in a coma.”

  “A coma.”

  “Yes.”

  He knew that in Atabei’s tradition, a donation for services was expected. The nature of the request determined the size of the donation. “I’m willing to make a donation to the peristyle.” For now he held back from telling Mambo Atabei exactly what he wanted from her. “A sizable one.”

  She tapped the thumb of her right hand against her forefinger, evaluated what he’d said.

  He heard bleating from the stairwell to the basement. A goat.

  He pretended not to notice it.

  “What is it exactly that you want me to do?” she asked.

  And Dr. Cyrus Arlington told her, in depth, the nature of his request.

  Production Value

  The jet’s engines purr, but other than that the plane is quiet as Xavier and Charlene do their research beside me.

  It’s been half an hour and I’ve been scanning Dr. Tanbyrn’s book. He actually does make reference to potential negative effects of quantum entanglement when it comes to thoughts, mentioning some of the same examples as Xavier used with me earlier today—shamans and witch doctors. Curses.

  After all, if placebos can be used to help people heal themselves merely by their thoughts, could their thoughts also be used, conversely, to destroy them? Certainly, the debilitating effects of psychosomatic illnesses and depression were just two examples. And if a person really can affect another person’s physiology by his thoughts, as Tanbyrn had demonstrated, there was no reason to believe that the effects would necessarily always have to be positive.

  His conclusion: if either blessings or curses affected reality, the other would imperatively do so as well.

  As Dr. Tanbyrn wrote:

  Most religions believe in the power of blessings and curses. In medicine we have placebos that eliminate pain or, in some cases, treat diseases. In psychology we find that the power of positive thinking affects behavior, and there is ample evidence that those thoughts can actually rebuild neural pathways that have been damaged by severe depression. From quantum physics we know that an observer’s thoughts and intentions determine the outcome of reality. So we have religion, medicine, psychology, and physics all saying essentially the same thing—our thoughts and intentions have the ability to affect reality in inexplicable, but very real, ways. To shape the outcome of the universe.

  The last statement seemed like hyperbole to me, but it was a similar point to the one Xavier had made when we were talking earlier in the hospital.

  A couple of observations that I find significant: according to Dr. Tanbyrn, it’s more effective if the person who is cursed knows it and believes in the power of the curse. Research on curses that were spoken over people who were unaware of it or didn’t believe in them had mixed results. The deeper the personal connection, the more pronounced the effect, just like in his love entanglement studies at the Lawson Research Center.

  Tanbyrn didn’t mention Jesus cursing the fig tree, but he did mention Balaam being hired to curse the Israelites in the Old Testament.

  After a lifetime of studying the secrets behind illusions and mentalism, I can’t help but be skeptical about all of these claims. However, the test results from when Charlene was in the Faraday cage showed that my thoughts had somehow affected her physiology, and the dozens of research studies mentioned by Dr. Tanbyrn in his books add validity to the theories. Needless to say, the findings at least piqued my curiosity.

  Whatever the actual relevance of all this, one thing is clear: Xav was right; for thousands of years people of faith have believed in the power of words, thoughts, and intentions to both heal and to harm. And recent breakthroughs in the study of quantum entanglement and human consciousness support those claims.

  My phone vibrates, and I see another text message from my producer at Entertainment Film Network.

  Oops. Forgot all about that.

  Now that I’m on my way to Philly, it’s definitely time to give her a call.

  I speed-dial Michelle Boyd’s number and she picks up almost immediately. “Jevin! What happened? I’ve been texting you all night.”

  “It’s been a crazy day. I assume you heard about—”

  “Of course I heard. Are you kidding me?” She’s excited, sounds almost exuberant. “Fill me in. I need to hear it. Your take on everything.”

  It takes me a few minutes to relay the story of the fire at the center and Abina’s death and the fight with Banner and Dr. Tanbyrn’s hospitalization. For now I leave out the detail that I’m in the air on my way to Philadelphia.

  “What about the study? Were you able to debunk it?”

>   “No, but at this point I don’t think that’s really the primary issue.”

  “Of course it’s not the issue. This Tanbyrn deal, this fire, that’s the story. This whole thing with the doctor is great.”

  I feel myself bristle at her words. “Great? How is it great that a man is in a coma?”

  “No, no, no, not that. That he survived! I’m talking production value. What a great story—human tragedy, heroism, a life-and-death struggle. Viewers will love it. If we can just pull some footage together before tomorrow’s—”

  “Production value? That’s what this is to you? Viewers will love the fact that a man—”

  “You’re missing the point here, Jev. This is a Nobel laureate who was the target of an arsonist’s flames. Viewers will love that you saved him, that he’s valiantly fighting for his life. Don’t you see? It’s the perfect way to take your series in a new direction. We were aiming for more of an investigative approach this time around anyway. And I mean, let’s be frank, debunking psychics and sideshow acts? Come on, Jev, even you have to admit that that gets old after a while. Viewers want something unique, something fresh, something different.”

  “So, a dying man is fresh and different.”

  “Listen to me, Jev, every news station in the country is following this story, but you have the inside scoop. You were there. You saved a man’s life, for God’s sake. This isn’t just Tanbyrn’s story, it’s yours.”

  On one level, I know that what she’s saying is true—other networks will cover this, and I had been there; I’d experienced it all firsthand. It was certainly a tragic and gripping story that viewers probably would love, and it made sense that Charlene and I would be the ones to tell it. I can’t put my finger on precisely why I’m not excited about pulling what we have together into an episode, apart from the fact that it seems to be leveraging a man’s suffering to promote ratings.

  Which, of course, it is.

  “Dr. Tanbyrn might die,” I tell Michelle. An obvious fact, yes, but I feel like it needs to be said.

  A pause. “Yes, well, that would be tragic, but viewers would be forced to think about their own mortality in light of his death and would be inspired to live better lives themselves. They’d be moved to tears, would remember him and his work in a positive light. If he makes it through, he’s a fighter; if he succumbs, he’s a martyr in the name of scientific advancement. Either way, we come out ahead.”

  That’s it.

  No one comes out ahead when an innocent man suffers. And no one comes out ahead when an innocent person dies.

  “I’m out.”

  “What do you mean, you’re out?”

  “I mean I’m out. I’m not going to be involved with this.”

  “You have to be. You drop this and I’ll drop your show, I swear to God—”

  “Do it. You just said that debunking psychics and sideshow acts gets old after a while. And yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t need the money and you don’t want the show. Find something you’re excited about and we both win. There’s plenty of extra footage left over from previous shows. I’ll give it all to you. It should be enough for you to round out the season.”

  “I don’t want that, I want this. I want Tanbyrn.”

  “Get used to disappointment.”

  I hang up and notice Charlene eyeing me. “Breaking out lines from The Princess Bride now, are we?”

  “In this case it seemed appropriate.”

  “So, I couldn’t help but overhear that—your side of the conversation, at least. We’re officially freelancers now, I take it.”

  “Yes. I suppose we are.”

  “It actually might be better this way.”

  “Yes.” I feel an unexpected spark of excitement at the thought. “It just might.”

  Daymares

  I find myself dozing on and off as we fly east. Eventually I wake to Amil’s voice telling us that we’re approaching Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The lights in the cabin, which have been low for the last few hours, are still dimmed, but he turns them up slightly.

  Xavier is in the back of the plane snoring contentedly, but Charlene is across the aisle from me resting, her eyes closed. I’m not sure if she’s asleep.

  She has a blanket pulled up to her chin, and I watch her for a moment, thinking about when I observed her in the Faraday cage earlier today. She’s as unaware now that I’m watching her as she was when I was viewing her on the video screen.

  I feel like I’m intruding on her somewhat, admiring her like this, and just as I’m looking away she opens her eyes. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  She yawns. “So we’re almost to Chicago?”

  “It looks like it, yes.”

  She rubs her eyes and repositions herself in her seat so it’s easier for her to talk with me. “I guess we didn’t get a chance to connect with your father.”

  The comment takes me back a bit. I hadn’t even thought of my dad since my conversation with her earlier in the day.

  “When this is over, I’ll be in touch with him. I promise.”

  “It might not be over for a while.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure why it was so important to her that I talk with my dad, especially since she’d never brought it up before this week, but I figure she has her reasons, and right now I decide I’m not going to probe. “Give me a couple days. I’ll call him on Friday afternoon, okay? Even if we’re still caught up in the middle of all this.”

  Another small yawn. “Fair enough.”

  She closes her eyes again, snuggles up in the seat, and I wonder how awake she really was, if she’ll even remember our brief conversation later.

  Far below us, the steady flow of cars accelerating, decelerating, pumping through the city streets looks like glowing blood cells passing through dark veins. The cars look so small, but obviously, their size and speed are distorted by distance and by the plane’s velocity.

  It’s all about perspective.

  Only by taking into consideration our current elevation and airspeed could a person calculate the actual size and speed of the cars. As my mentor in magic, Grayson DeVos, used to tell me, “Only perspective brings truth into focus. Where you stand when you look at the facts will determine how they appear. Never forget that when you design your show. The audience’s perspective is even more important than how well you execute the effect.”

  Maybe that’s what we needed here.

  Perspective.

  Maybe you’re looking at all of this from the wrong angle entirely.

  When you study illusions, you have to study the limits of memory to better understand short-term and long-term memory and how to use them to your advantage in a performance. Long ago I read about memories people have in which they see events not through their own eyes but as if they were hovering in a corner of the room watching the events take place.

  Most people have them, often from traumatic incidents. In fact, they’re so common that neurological researchers have a name for them: observer memories.

  I have one of them myself, from when I was nine and a group of half a dozen junior high–aged boys surrounded me. They began to drag me toward an old quarry that people had turned into a junkyard before it was filled with water to create a small lake for fishing and ice-skating on that otherwise neglected side of town.

  No one dared swim in the lake because the bottom was still strewn with junk—bedsprings and broken glass and rusted car parts that were visible beneath the surface on the rare days when the lake was clear enough for you to see down more than a few inches.

  It was a lake we all feared. But they dragged me toward it, and when I recall it now, it’s not from the point of view of a boy being pulled toward the water by the other boys, but from a distance, as if I’m watching it unfold from a perch in a nearby tree.

  I can see the older boys laughing and I can see myself struggling to be free, crying out for them to let me go. Finally, at the water’s edge they shoved me to the side, into a st
and of tall grass. Then they smiled at each other and patted me on the shoulder: It was just a joke. We were never gonna hurt you; we were just kidding around.

  I ran home but never told my parents for fear that they would think I’d overreacted or, worse yet, been a coward.

  And since then, when I remember that day, I don’t see the events through my own eyes, but as if I were watching it all happen from somewhere beyond myself.

  Observer memories.

  But how could they even be called memories when my mind was filling in the blanks, making up the details, viewing things from another, imaginary person’s point of view?

  Observer memories are fictions that our minds tell us are true.

  The same as optical illusions.

  In magic we play people’s expectations against them. The observer’s mind fills in what he or she would expect to see rather than what’s actually being seen.

  I notice that Charlene has her eyes open again. She’s watching me quietly. “You look deep in thought.”

  “Just thinking about how our minds can do strange things, can convince us of things that aren’t real. Sometimes we see things that aren’t really there, sometimes we don’t see things that are. We’re all experts at fictionalizing the truth.”

  For a moment she’s quiet. “There’s a legend that when Columbus was sailing toward the New World, none of the natives saw the boats, that the idea of the giant boats approaching was so foreign to their way of thinking that even though their eyes sent the signal to their brains, it didn’t register.”

  “Not until they landed onshore, you mean?”

  “Well, actually, while they were still out in the water, a shaman saw the ripples and was curious what was forming them. He stared at them, studied them, until eventually he saw the boats. When he told the villagers, they were shocked and at first didn’t see anything. But they all believed in him and eventually came to see for themselves that the ships were there. So the story goes.”

  “So, it was their belief in him that helped them see the boats.”

  “Yes.”

  We begin our initial descent to the airport.