Superstition

by David Ambrose

  He took a sheet of paper and wrote out the letters of the alphabet with a felt pen. Then he took a pair of scissors and cut them into squares. He cut another piece of paper in two and wrote “Yes” and “No” on the separate halves. Then he arranged them around the table just as they had been on the Ouija board. For a pointer he brought over an empty water glass, which he turned upside down and placed in the center.

  Nobody had spoken throughout the operation, almost as though they feared that by uttering the wrong word they might break some kind of spell. Pete returned to his chair and they all, without having to be prompted, placed a fingertip lightly on the overturned glass.

  “Please tell us your name,” Sam said.

  The glass began to move. There was a kind of inevitability about its progress that made Joanna think of Greek tragedy, when you know what's coming but the fascination lies in watching it unfold. With a steady and precise movement, barely pausing to register its choice of each successive letter, the glass spelled out “M-A-G-G-I-E.”

  Drew's breath came in a ragged gasp. Her hands rose to cover the lower part of her face in a gesture oddly reminiscent of Maggie when she was taken by surprise or alarmed by something. The rest of them sat silent, wondering what there was to say and who would say it first.

  “Keep touching the glass,” Sam said, maintaining his tone of professional calm, like a surgeon demanding a fresh instrument in the operating room. Two or three wavering fingertips returned to renew contact, Drew's last of all.

  “Please tell us,” Sam said, “why you call yourself Maggie.”

  The glass shot out from under their hands as though fired from a gun. It missed Sam and Roger by inches and shattered against the wall. The whole thing happened so fast that they didn't have time to react, just sat in a frozen silence broken only by a ringing echo of the impact.

  A guttural rumble came from Pete's throat as he slumped in his chair and his head fell forward on his chest. At first Joanna thought that he must have been hit by a shard of flying glass. But there was no blood, no sign of any wound. She realized what was happening. It was an almost exact replay of the grotesque performance put on by Murray Ray that day at Camp Starburst when he'd pretended to receive telepathic knowledge of the death of the husband of that poor woman in the audience. But this, Joanna knew, was no performance.

  Pete's head rolled on his shoulders and he moaned loudly. They all erupted in movement. There were shouts of alarm.

  “He's having a fit. Call a doctor!”

  “No!” The word came from Sam as an order. “That's no fit. Wait.”

  He moved closer to Pete and reached out to touch his shoulder gingerly. “Pete…?”

  The head snapped back and the face that leered up at Sam was no longer Pete's. The eyes had rolled back half into their sockets, and the lips were drawn back over his teeth in a rictus grin.

  Two chairs went over, then a third, as everyone jumped back to put some distance between themselves and this thing that had appeared in their midst. There were gasps of shock, muttered blasphemies. Joanna saw Drew cross herself the way she'd seen Maggie do on the video. Only Sam remained fully in control of his responses, not letting go of Pete's shoulder as though the contact somehow grounded them both in a shared reality. “Who are you?” he said.

  The rolled-back eyes focused up at him, and the teeth parted slightly. But the sound that came through them had nothing of Pete's voice in it. Nor was there any movement of his lips or jaw coordinated with the words. It was as though his body had no more life than a ventriloquist's dummy, its words projected from some hidden source elsewhere.

  “She will not destroy me…not her…not you…not anybody…”

  The moment the words were uttered, his eyes closed and he fell slackly sideways. He would have hit the concrete floor if Sam hadn't caught him. He came to with a start, like someone who had momentarily fallen asleep and hoped that no one else had noticed. But he found himself encircled by anxious faces.

  “Hey, what's up?” he asked, looking from one to another. “I'm sorry, I guess I dropped off there for a second. Did I miss something?”

  Sam strode over to one of the two video cameras and pressed a switch to eject the cassette. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. Frowning, he traced the cable from the camera to the transformer.

  Pete came over, curious, and saw the problem right away. “Somebody's pulled the plug out of the wall, for God's sake…!” He replaced the plug in its socket. A handful of indicators glowed as power returned to the system. “How in the heck did that happen? I checked that plug myself before we started.”

  25

  Pete looked around the group like somebody who still half suspected that he was the victim of a practical joke. Sam had told him what had happened and the others had corroborated every detail. The fact that there was no video or sound recording was something that none of them could explain. Pete had to take their story on trust.

  “Joanna, would you do me a favor?” Sam asked. “Go upstairs and see if Peggy or any of the others are still there. I'd like to bring them in on this.”

  But the lab was empty, most of the rooms dark. She went back down the steps to the basement. Pete was sitting at the table with his head in his hands, shaken.

  “I believe you,” he said. “Of course I do. It's just that…wow!..The idea takes some getting used to.”

  Sam glanced questioningly at Joanna as she came in. She shook her head to indicate that they'd all left upstairs. He looked at his watch. “Listen,” he said, addressing everyone, “it's a quarter past nine. Normally we'd have packed up and gone home by now. I don't know how you all feel about this, but I think it might be worthwhile to go on.”

  “To achieve what exactly?” Roger asked.

  Sam spread his hands to suggest that he was open to anything. “To see what happens. I think we're at a very interesting point in this whole process.”

  Drew's soft voice pierced the brief silence with complete clarity. “I think Maggie was right. I don't know what it is or how we've done it, but I think we've come up with something bad. And now we have to get rid of it. You always said, Sam, that we could dematerialize this thing if we had to. I think now's the time.”

  Sam accepted her opinion with a shrug of qualified acquiescence. “I think dematerializing something before it's actually materialized may be putting the cart before the horse. But, if that's how you feel…” He looked around at the others. “How about the rest of you? Do you all agree with Drew?”

  “I have to say I do,” Barry said. “If I'm honest, I don't like what's happening. You know what it makes me think of? Did you ever see that film Forbidden Planet? Where this whole race of geniuses gets wiped out by a machine they've built to cater to their every whim? Only what they didn't bargain for was that it would respond as much to their collective ‘id’ as to their ‘ego.’ So they got wiped out by monsters that the machine created out of the dark side of their own minds. I think maybe what's happening here has something to do with the dark side of our minds.”

  Ward Riley's mouth twitched disapprovingly at the corners. “I saw that film years ago and wasn't much impressed by it. The idea that a people of such brilliance could have overlooked such a possibility and made no provision for it was deeply unconvincing. I think we should beware of looking to Hollywood for any kind of intellectual guidance.”

  “So what's your take on all this, Ward?” Sam asked him.

  Ward stroked his chin and pursed his mouth a moment. “I think Maggie's death was natural, but we've been caught up in a collective response to it that owes more to superstition than to reason. I believe that's what is behind the phenomena we've been experiencing.”

  Sam turned to Joanna. “How about you? Any thoughts?”

  It was a hard one to call. “Speaking as a journalist, I've got enough material and more for a story. Speaking as one of the team, I don't know. I don't know if I want out, or if I want to see what happens next.” She paused. “I think
maybe I want to see what happens next.”

  She registered an almost subliminal twitch at the corner of Sam's eye. She could barely believe it, but he had given her a wink of complicity. She had to stop herself from laughing out loud. The gesture was in such bad taste in the circumstances, so wholly inappropriate, that it was hysterical. But then she realized that, of course, he hadn't winked at all. She had read something that simply wasn't there into the involuntary movement of a facial muscle. A wave of alarm swept over her. She was coming adrift from reality, losing all sense of proportion and perspective. She also felt suddenly vulnerable, as though everybody in the room must have seen her mistake and now knew what was happening to her. Just as quickly she realized that nobody was paying her any attention. They were all too fixed on the dilemma before them.

  Sam turned to Roger. “What do you think?”

  Roger hesitated for a moment, then spoke with a solemnity that Joanna had so far not seen in him. “I think that whatever this phenomenon is that we've started, the best thing we can do now is stop it.”

  His words hung in the air with a quiet authority. Even Sam was impressed by the tone in which they'd been spoken and the feeling behind them. Roger looked at him, aware of his response.

  “I imagine that surprises you. The thing is, Sam, I think there's a distinction to be made between exploring an idea and following all of its consequences to their conclusion. Exploring the atom was an idea. The bomb was one of its consequences. It didn't have to happen. There were many other things we could have done with the idea-that we did do, and will do yet. But the bomb happened. And I have a feeling that this is another of those dark tributaries.”

  Ward spoke. “I have to say, listening to Roger, I'm on the whole inclined to agree with him. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try again. In fact I want to. But I'm not easy with what's happened here, and I think we should end it.”

  “In the church, we call it exorcism,” Drew said quietly.

  Roger looked at her with a gentle smile. “Exorcism, dematerialization-in physics we call that the principle of complementarity, the same thing described two different ways.”

  Sam looked at Pete, who nodded. “Let's get rid of it-now.”

  “You're sure you feel up to this, Pete? You don't have to.”

  “I think it'll take all of us. Except for Maggie, of course.”

  “Well, it looks like we have a majority,” Sam said, and started to pull up chairs and put them in place. “I'm not sure I agree with your verdict, but I understand it. And if we don't function as a group, we don't function at all.”

  “Talk us out of it if you want to,” Roger said, openly inviting him to try and implying his own willingness to listen.

  Sam shook his head. “I'm not sure I want to. We've all been affected by Maggie's death. It's probably best if we make a new start-those of us who'd like to.”

  “Sam, can I say something?”

  “Sure-go ahead, Barry.”

  “Would it be all right if we put Maggie's chair in place as usual?”

  Sam looked around the group, but could read nothing in their faces, aside from the fact that they were all awaiting his response.

  “What purpose do you think that would serve, Barry?”

  Barry shrugged awkwardly and looked a touch embarrassed. “I don't know. Maybe we'll just feel more…complete that way.”

  Sam thought a moment. No one spoke. “Why not?” he said eventually.

  Pete picked up an extra chair and placed it where Maggie had always sat. They took their places. Instinctively Barry placed his hands on the table before him. Drew did likewise. Then everybody followed suit, including Sam.

  “There's no formula for this,” Sam said. “All we're going to do is affirm in a clear and positive way that we invented Adam, and that the experiment is now over. We know that it's been at least partially successful and we've proven our point-that a concentrated thought-form can become manifest in different ways. But Adam was an idea belonging to all of us. There was a little bit of each one of us in him. Now we're each taking back the part of ourselves that was in him. We're dismantling the structure we created. Our thoughts about Adam are no longer held in common between us. Now we have only individual memories of him. They will fade with time, as they're beginning to fade now. Adam was an illusion. A trick of the mind. But it's over.”

  For a long time nobody spoke. Drew had closed her eyes. Joanna couldn't see whether Barry had closed his too, or whether he was simply staring down at his hands. Roger was looking at the tabletop. Ward, too. Sam was looking across the room. Following his gaze Joanna saw the glowing red lights which meant the sound and video equipment were running.

  Drew's voice broke the silence in a flat, defeated monotone. “It's not going to work.”

  Everyone looked at her. Her eyes remained closed.

  “What makes you say that, Drew?” Sam asked.

  She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “Because he's part of us all now. Like a child. You create them out of what you are, then they become themselves. But whatever happens, they never really leave you.”

  As she finished, her face contorted from within to form a terrible image of unbearable pain. She began to weep silently, as though an anguish bottled up for years was finally coming out of her. Barry put his arms around her and tried to comfort her, but she only wept more bitterly, her sobs arising from the depths of a long-buried heartbreak.

  The others looked on helplessly, embarrassed and moved in equal parts. Pete turned away and stared down at his hands spread out on the tabletop. “Don't, Drew,” he said, his voice tight with nerves. “You're bringing him back. You have to stop.”

  As though the truth of his barely audible words had pierced her consciousness, she nodded vigorously and took the handkerchief that Barry had been offering her. She dried her eyes, blew her nose, and quickly pulled herself together. “I'm sorry…I'm all right now…”

  “Drew alone can't bring him back,” Sam said. “The rest of us have already destroyed him. He's already gone.”

  The two strip lights on the ceiling exploded in a shower of sparks and glass. The sudden darkness that enveloped the closed basement room was absolute, and the cries of its occupants were swallowed in a howling blast of wind that came from nowhere, as though the walls had dissolved and they found themselves transported to some icy mountaintop. The howl of the wind became a roar no longer made by any natural element. Whether it came from man or beast, or something in between the two, was hard to say. But it made Joanna fear for something she had given little thought to thus far in her life. It made her fear for her immortal soul.

  In that moment she knew with utter certainty that something alien and evil was in the room with them. Among the bodies that brushed past and collided with her in terrified confusion was another presence, one that she sensed by faculties she neither knew she had nor could describe. She knew only that something was among them, something more terrible than death itself.

  As abruptly as the whole thing started, so it ended. A total silence fell, broken only by the moans and whimpers of the terrified group who, for all she knew, could be maimed and wounded, if not worse. Joanna herself, as far as she could tell, was unhurt, but crawling on her hands and knees with no precise memory of how she got there.

  “Joanna…? Where are you…?” It was Sam's voice, close by.

  “Here.” She reached out in the dark and touched someone. She couldn't tell who, but they pulled away with a gasp of fear.

  “Sam, where are you…?”

  “Trying to find the door…”

  There was a scraping sound, then a crash as something was knocked over, and finally a rattling of the door handle and somebody pulling on it as though it was stuck.

  It came open suddenly, and the pale light that filtered down the stairs, although no more than a reflection from the campus shining through a window higher up, was enough to show the figure of Sam groping for a light switch. The single bulb on the stairs illum
inated a scene of devastation in the room that took her breath away.

  The table they had been sitting around had been flung against a wall and lay now with one leg snapped clean off. All the chairs were scattered and upended, half of them smashed. Roger Fullerton crouched in a corner, breathing hard, eyes wide with terror. Drew was curled into a fetal ball with Barry lying across her for protection. Ward Riley was flat on his back with his arms spread, as though he'd been wrestled to the ground by a more powerful opponent. Pete was picking himself out of the tangled wreckage that was all that remained of their video and recording equipment, all of it smashed beyond repair.

  Sam came back in, took her by the arm, and helped her to her feet. “Are you all right?”

  She tried to speak, but her mouth and throat were dry. She nodded her head. Only now, when he held her, did she realize how violently she was trembling.

  “It's over now,” he whispered. “Come on, help me with the others.”

  Sam went over and helped Roger to his feet while Joanna went to Barry and Drew. When she turned, she saw that Sam and Roger were already helping Ward up. They were all in shock, but nobody seemed physically hurt.

  There was a crash as Pete got to his feet, knocking over the twisted remains of one of the camera tripods. He lifted a hand to his face, and Joanna gave a gasp of alarm as he appeared to peel away a strip of soft flesh.

  He heard her and turned. “Wax,” he said. “Paraffin wax, splashed over me. Doesn't hurt, it's barely warm.”

  She saw now that the tub that had contained it lay on its side, also twisted. Then she saw something else lying nearby.

  “What's that?” she said.

  Sam crossed over and picked it up. It was about two feet long, thick, and rounded. He brought it over, turning it to examine it from all sides. There was something sculpted about it.

  “Dear God in heaven,” Sam murmured. There was a shocked, almost reverential tone in his voice. “Do you know what this is?”

  It was a wax cast of a man's forearm-bare, with the hand closed loosely in a fist. Whatever or whoever had been in the room with them had, deliberately or otherwise, left an imprint in the wax put there for that purpose.