Superstition

by David Ambrose

  She looked at him awhile, her face unable to hide the misgivings she felt. “I guess I have to take it on trust that you're not bullshitting me. After all, I can always check.”

  He laughed. “Go ahead, check. Telepathy's more commonplace than most people realize, but I'm not going to get into a fight over it, because you'll believe what you want to believe. We all do. All I'm saying is that telepathy is the most likely reason why ghosts are sometimes seen, heard, or sensed by several people at once. And the experiment I'm suggesting will provide evidence of that.”

  “You say this experiment has already been done?”

  “More than once. And it's time someone created another ghost and looked into the implications a little further.”

  They did so for the rest of lunch, by which time Joanna knew that she had what she was looking for. It took less than twenty minutes to type up her notes for Taylor Freestone and take them into his office that afternoon. He held the few pages limply in his hand as though the effort tired him, then dropped them as he finished reading.

  “Go for it,” he said languidly.

  Joanna walked out with a sense of triumph. “Go for it” was as close as Taylor Freestone ever came to foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm.

  7

  Looking back, she saw that her elation at Taylor Freestone's reaction was more than just professional. She now had an opportunity to go on seeing Sam without the formalities of dating and all that that involved. She was surprised when she realized how much she wanted to go on seeing him. Thinking about it, she had to admit that he was certainly one of the more interesting men she'd met, and he wore well the longer she spent with him. She came to see very quickly that he wasn't just an act, a piece of cleverly polished performance art, sustainable for an evening or two, until the routine became stale and repetition set in. What made Sam interesting was his interest in everything. When he spoke it was a process of discovery-as much for him as for his listener. He never taught or lectured. Even when speaking of things with which he was familiar, he would put them together in new ways and find patterns that he hadn't noticed before. He was, on the whole, exhilarating company. And he made her laugh often.

  There's a weakness somewhere, she found herself thinking one day when she got home. There always is, there has to be. In the end it'll show, something obvious that I should have seen all along.

  Then she stopped herself, ashamed of the distrustful nature that such a thought revealed. That wasn't, she knew, the way she really was.

  Nearing thirty, Joanna had behind her a love life that she liked to call “mature”-which she defined as having more good memories than bad, her only regrets being not things she'd done but some of the things she hadn't. She wasn't yet consciously thinking of any kind of permanent relationship. She'd tried that once-a live-in affair that had lasted three years, until he'd met somebody else. They had parted without bitterness. She came to realize very quickly that she had liked Richard more than she had loved him, and had secretly rejoiced to have her freedom back.

  That had been eighteen months ago. Since then she had been alone, except for a brief but romantic liaison with a French diplomat at the UN who turned out to be rather more married than he'd led her to believe. For the past six months she'd missed him more than she'd cared to admit, so her interest in Sam brought her, at the very least, the assurance that she was over Jean-Pierre.

  Yet she knew no more about Sam now than she had after their first lunch together. She had no idea whether he'd ever been married or whether he was still married, though there was no evidence of any family life either in his conversation or in the odds and ends, postcards and snapshots, scattered about his untidy office. She had broached the question obliquely once by asking him whether he had any children, but had received only a simple “No” in reply. On one occasion he'd let slip that he'd been at Princeton, but she knew nothing about his family or even where he'd been born.

  The idea crossed her mind that she could always formally interview him and find out everything she wanted to know. After all, if she was writing a story about his work she would have to write something about the man. But she dismissed the possibility at once, annoyed to find herself in such a state of mind that she would even consider such devious strategies.

  She hadn't been prepared for this at all.

  The phone rang just after seven and brought her groggily out of a deep sleep. It was her mother, full of apologies for calling so early but making the excuse that she'd tried three times in the last two days and always got her machine. She hadn't left a message because there wasn't anything special. She just wanted to talk.

  Joanna could tell that something was wrong. Or at least that there was something on her mother's mind. She asked her what it was.

  There was a hesitation at the other end of the line, followed by an uncharacteristic awkwardness in her mother's voice as she said, “Darling, I know it's silly, but I've had the most terrible dream about you three nights running. Are you all right?”

  Joanna assured her that she was perfectly all right, and asked her to describe her dream.

  “There's really not much to it, and it makes no kind of sense that I can figure out. All I know is that it's night, and it's raining very heavily outside, and I'm here alone waiting for your father to get back from work. Then something happens-I don't know what-but suddenly you're outside banging on the door trying to get in, but I won't let you. For some reason I'm terrified and have to keep you out. You're screaming and I'm hiding somewhere, terrified, and I can hear this pounding rain the whole time and…it's awful.”

  Her mother's voice broke slightly, but she pulled herself together and said, “I'm sorry. I told you it was ridiculous. But I've had it three times now, and it's got me really worried.”

  Again Joanna promised her that there was nothing to worry about, but the fact that her mother was so upset bothered her. Despite the fact that Joanna was an only child, Elizabeth Cross had never been an anxious or overprotective mother. This kind of thing was totally unlike her.

  “It doesn't make any sense to me either, Mom. But there has to be some reason for the dreams we have. Have you told Dad about it?”

  “Each time I have it I wake him up, moaning and crying out. He doesn't know what to make of it either.”

  They were both silent a moment. Joanna could feel that her mother was feeling better just for having spoken to her. “You know what, Mom?” she said, trying to lighten the mood a little. “It sounds to me like you're hiding something from me, something you don't want me to see and feel bad about. Have you done something outrageous to your hair, or what?”

  Her mother managed a brief laugh, slightly forced. “I've looked at it every which way, and I can't figure it out. Why would I ever feel about my own daughter that I can't have this person in the house? What could you have done?”

  “Jesus, Mom, I hate to think. But whatever it is, I haven't done it.”

  Another pause. Then Elizabeth Cross said, “Maybe I feel somehow that you're hiding something from me, and I'm, you know, resisting whatever cover-up you're giving me.”

  “I'm not giving you any cover-up.”

  “You're not working on some story like that last one, are you?”

  Joanna's mother, for some reason, had been deeply uneasy about Joanna's involvement with the phony psychics at Camp Starburst. She hadn't known until after the event that her daughter had been in there alone, undercover. “Those kind of people are evil and dangerous,” she'd said. “I'm shocked that the magazine let you do that. Call me superstitious if you like, but I think that kind of thing is best left alone.”

  “I'm working on a story about a psychologist at the University of Manhattan,” Joanna said, uneasily conscious of not telling quite the whole truth, but knowing it was wiser for the moment to withhold further details.

  They talked awhile longer as Joanna got out of bed and went through the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Gradually their conversation took on its usual half-jo
king, half-serious tone as Elizabeth's fears receded. “Any movement in your love life?” she asked after a while. “Not that I'd want to seem like I was prying, of course.”

  “Oh, Mom, nobody would ever accuse you of prying.”

  It was a running gag between them, one that allowed either to “cut to the chase” whenever they saw fit.

  “But since the subject's come up…”

  Joanna laughed. Her mother was sounding quite her normal self now.

  “Since the subject's come up, Mom, all I'm going to say is that the answer to your question is somewhere between no and I'm not sure yet. I'll keep you posted.”

  8

  Sam gathered the members of his department together twice a week to review current projects and consider new ones. They couldn't all fit into his office, so they sat informally around a central reception area where visitors and volunteers normally waited to be called into one of the adjoining rooms. This particular morning the topic under discussion was the new group experiment proposed by Sam. Joanna, with everyone's permission, was taping the meeting and making notes. She had also been told to feel free to make comments or ask questions.

  “Essentially it's a reconstruction of the Victorian seance,” Sam was saying, “with the difference that they thought they were conjuring up the dead, whereas we know it's PK-psychokinesis,” he added for Joanna's benefit. “The observable effect of mind on matter.”

  “What I don't understand is why you have to invent a ghost to achieve this-aside, that is, from giving Joanna a good story, of which I'm all in favor.” The speaker was Tania Phillips, one of the members of the department Joanna had not met before. She had short dark hair, a wide mouth with an aggressive jaw, but gentle eyes. “We're already getting measurable PK effects with all our work with individual test subjects and REGs, so why use different methods for a group?”

  “Because whenever this experiment's been tried, no amount of heavy concentration or earnest meditation has ever produced results. The best approach is a relaxed, sociable group treating it as a kind of parlor game. The imaginary ghost, so the theory goes, serves as a focal point for ‘psi’ forces that we all supposedly have in ourselves, but which we don't know how to make conscious use of.”

  “But why does it have to be an imaginary ghost, instead of-I don't know-Julius Caesar or Napoleon?” The question came from Bryan Meade, the engineer in the group.

  “We probably could whistle something up and call it Julius Caesar or Napoleon,” Sam said, “though we'd soon discover that he knew no more about the Roman Empire or French history than any of us around the table did.”

  “Sam's right. Inventing a ghost who never existed makes the point more clearly.” The comment came from Jeff Dorrell, the theoretical physicist. “I read just recently some stuff on that Toronto group twenty years ago. I agree-it's time somebody tried something like it again.”

  “They created a ghost called Philip,” Sam said, looking around the group, his enthusiasm mounting as he spoke, “who was supposed to have lived in the English civil war, then committed suicide after an unhappy love affair. He never materialized physically, but after a while he started talking to them through table rapping. And they got some spectacular poltergeist activity-all of which exists on tape and film.”

  Peggy O'Donovan had been listening to the discussion from a corner, balanced on an impossibly ancient beanbag and hugging her knees beneath her usual flowing caftan. “Okay, let me just ask one thing. I presume everybody here has read Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel?”

  Everybody had, with the exception of Joanna, who had never heard of it. “I think I know what you're going to say,” Sam said, “but go ahead, tell Joanna.”

  Peggy's almond eyes turned in Joanna's direction. There was an almost hypnotic quality in their depth and stillness. “Alexandra David-Neel was a French woman who traveled through Tibet around the turn of the century. She describes at one point how she heard of holy men who were able to create these thought-forms- tulpas.”

  Joanna glanced at Sam as she recognized the word from their earlier conversation.

  “Eventually, through study and practice,” Peggy continued, “she managed to produce a tulpa of her own-a monk, who took up residence in her house. When she traveled, he would follow. Other people saw him and assumed that he was real. To begin with he was friendly and funny and nice to have around. Then she sensed that he was changing into something that made her feel increasingly uneasy, something malevolent. So, having materialized him in the first place, she decided to dematerialize him. Except he wouldn't go. She said she had six very difficult months getting rid of him.”

  Jeff didn't hide the amused skepticism that the story had provoked in him. “My favorite part of that book is where she tells about the hat that walked.” He looked over at Joanna. “Apparently a hat was blown from some traveler's head and landed in a distant valley. Some villagers found it but didn't touch it. They'd never seen anything like it and thought it was some sort of animal. After several days of skirting around it, afraid to get too close, their fears imbued the hat with a life of its own;-and it started to move around by itself.” He chuckled, like a man who thought he'd made his point neatly. “I don't know how literally we're supposed to take Ms. David-Neel, but I smell a little literary license here and there.”

  “The point is,” Sam summed up, “that she doesn't deny that her little monk disappeared in the end, nor did he do any mischief when he was around-aside from making her feel uncomfortable for a while. With the Toronto group, their ‘Philip’ vanished the moment even one member of the group got bored with him.”

  “Incidentally, what size and kind of a group do you have in mind, Sam? Regulars, volunteers, or what?” The question came from a tall, fair-haired man-Brad Bucklehurst, another physicist and the only other member of the department, apart from Tania, whom Joanna had not met until this morning.

  Sam said that by all accounts the optimum number for such a group was six or eight. Because spontaneity was such an important element, it might be an idea to have mainly new volunteers. Joanna, of course, would be among them, as well as Sam himself. Above all, he wanted to avoid anyone who had or even claimed psychic or mediumistic gifts: the aim of the experiment was to demonstrate the power of the normal human brain, not the exceptional one.

  Peggy said she'd start drawing up a list of possibles and put out feelers through the usual newsletters, classified ads, and websites. Of the department members only Pete Daniels pressed to be allowed to join, and Sam agreed. The others, though interested, were too busy with their own projects to devote several hours a week to a new one.

  When the meeting broke up, Joanna headed for her office, which was a pleasant twelve-block walk on a dry, cool day. Sam accompanied her, on his way to a meeting with the administrator of some research foundation out of which he was trying to squeeze an extra few thousand dollars a year-part of the endless battle for funding in a field that didn't enjoy the kind of support given to cures for cancer or even attempts to build a better mousetrap. They walked in silence for a while, and he glanced sideways at her several times before asking if there was something on her mind.

  “I was just thinking about what Peggy said,” she told him.

  “What about it?”

  “You're sure there isn't any risk?”

  “Of what?”

  “I don't know. Starting something that we can't stop.”

  “We just took a bigger risk crossing the road, and didn't even think about it.”

  “So there is some risk.”

  “I don't believe so. But you don't have to go through with it if you don't want to. You can write about it without being part of the group.”

  “No,” she said quickly, “I want to be part of it.”

  They walked on in silence another half-block. “By the way,” he said as they paused at a don't-walk light, “I've been meaning to ask you, is all that business of Murray Ray and the old woman still bothering you?”
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  Joanna was surprised that he'd remembered Murray's name. It had been some weeks since their first meeting, which was the only time they'd spoken of him. She also realized that he'd made a connection that she hadn't made herself between that unnerving incident and the sense of slight misgiving that Peggy's comment had provoked in her.

  She replied honestly. “Whenever I think about it, I tell myself I'm not responsible for his death. I know I'm not. But yes, I do still think about it.”

  “And I suppose you think about that ‘curse’ the old woman put on you?”

  Joanna hesitated. She didn't know whether the problem was admitting to him or to herself that she did.

  “Sometimes,” she said. Then, more brightly:“Then I tell myself it ought to be working by now, but I don't feel anything.”

  He laughed. “You're fine.”

  A surge of pedestrians came toward them across another intersection. They were briefly pushed apart, then he reached out to hold her at his side, slipping his arm beneath hers and wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

  She found that she enjoyed being touched by him.

  9

  In the end she decided that not to do a proper in-depth interview with him would be a betrayal of her obligations as a writer, putting personal considerations before professional ones. There was a twisted roundness to that logic, when she arrived at it, which pleased her.

  He agreed at once when she brought the matter up, suggesting, rather to her surprise, that they go over to his place, where they could talk undisturbed. Perhaps one afternoon this week, he said, for tea? She said fine, accepting at once the obvious point, which only occurred to her then, that she couldn't hope to write interestingly about the man without seeing where he lived. She could send a photographer along later, if she felt it was a good idea.