Superstition

by David Ambrose

  “Where do we go from here?” he said, his voice unsteady.

  “I think you should go back to your wife. Be with her.”

  “She asked me to bring you over. I said I would. She wants to know what you think about all this.”

  Sam got to his feet. “I'll be glad to come with you.”

  The other man shot him a hard look. “You stay away from her.”

  Sam shrugged. “As you wish. But she's going to wonder why I won't talk to her. Or why you won't let me. And if she doesn't like your story, there's nothing to stop her from calling me. Then what will I say?”

  Ralph thought this over. It was true: his wife wasn't the type to be easily fobbed off with excuses.

  “Listen to me, Towne…” he began.

  “Sam. I think it might be easier if we use first names, don't you?”

  “Listen to me, Sam. If you tell her any of the stuff you've just been telling me, ever…I'll break your damn neck. Do you understand me?”

  Sam looked at him. Ralph was fit and well built and probably strong enough to do it. He was certainly scared enough to try.

  “Don't worry, I'm not going to upset your wife. I have no reason to. I suggest we make a deal, you and I.”

  Ralph frowned quizzically. “A deal?”

  “I'll come back with you and tell her something-something that makes sense.” He gave a brief, dry laugh. “Not the truth, obviously, because that doesn't. I'll make something up, and say you've given me permission to stay in the house alone for a while to observe the phenomena more closely. What do you say?”

  Ralph looked at him, incredulous. “You want to stay here? Alone?”

  “That's exactly what I want.”

  Ralph stared at him some more. And then a kind of understanding dawned in his face.

  “Yes, of course. You and…that woman…I should have guessed from the way you've been talking about her.”

  “Can I stay?”

  Ralph nodded. “You can stay.”

  58

  Sam made a brief tour of the rest of the house while Ralph packed a couple more suitcases for his wife and himself. Joanna's parents had insisted on driving down when Joanna had called them before breakfast to tell them what had happened. She was going to go stay with them for a few days; meanwhile Ralph would rent an apartment in Manhattan, then join her on the weekend.

  There was nothing much that he hadn't seen already. In the basement kitchen drawers had been yanked open and their contents scattered. Various things, although not everything, had been swept from shelves, and several pots and pans dislodged from where they usually hung. The damage wasn't as bad as in the drawing room, but it still looked as though a tornado had swept through.

  Ralph's footsteps sounded on the stairs-coming down, Sam thought, a little faster than necessary. He had insisted that he didn't mind staying alone a few minutes to do his packing. “What can happen in broad daylight?” he'd asked. “This stuff only happens at night-right?”

  Sam hadn't disabused him, though in fact there were no rules on the subject. “Phenomena”-to use that sterile, antiseptic term that Sam found increasingly unsatisfactory-occurred any time and any place, in the dark or in full light, below ground or above it.

  “Okay, let's go,” Ralph said as Sam joined him in the hall.

  “Let me take one of those.” Sam picked up one of the heavy suitcases.

  They left the house and found a cab. Twenty minutes later they entered the lobby of the small hotel where Sam had spent time with Joanna's parents in the past. The desk clerk told Ralph that they had already arrived and were upstairs with Joanna.

  As they went up in the elevator, Sam felt the same tense, nervous hollowness in his stomach that he'd felt waiting on the steps earlier while Ralph opened up the house. He was sure that Bob and Elizabeth Cross would not recognize him, yet the meeting filled him with apprehension. Nothing, he repeated to himself, could be taken for granted. Logic dictated that Joanna's parents, like the Joanna he was about to see again, would be part of the subtly changed world in which Adam Wyatt had been born not out of the minds of men and women, but out of the genes of his forebears.

  Yet, as Sam knew, logic did not rule the universe. Or if it did, it did so in a fashion that remained impenetrable to the human mind. He used the thought to calm himself, to prepare himself with a Zen-like detachment for the confrontation.

  Bob Cross opened the door of the suite when Ralph buzzed. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes as they stepped inside and Ralph introduced them. Sam found himself in a medium-sized sitting room. Elizabeth Cross came in from what he supposed was the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  “Joanna's just getting out of the shower,” she said. “If you've got those clothes, you'd better take them through to her, Ralph.”

  He did so, leaving Bob Cross to introduce Sam to his wife-again without a hint that their paths might have crossed before.

  “Joanna tells me you investigate this kind of thing professionally,” Elizabeth Cross said.

  “I run a department at Manhattan University,” Sam said. “We look into anomalous phenomena of all kinds.”

  “Well, this sounds about as anomalous as anything I've ever come across,” Bob Cross said. “I saw a flying saucer one time, but that's nothing compared with all this.”

  “Bob, will you please stop talking about your flying saucer? There's no comparison.” Elizabeth Cross sounded as though she had already rebuked her husband on the subject more than once that morning. “Nobody else saw your flying saucer, but we've both seen this woman. Ralph's seen her, Dr. Towne's seen her-even Joanna saw her in the mirror.”

  She turned to Sam. “What do you think is happening here, Dr. Towne? Can you tell us anything?”

  Her face and tone of voice reflected the touching confidence that outsiders have, or need to have, in whoever is designated an “expert” in some field in which they find themselves perhaps unwillingly involved.

  “Do you know what I mean by poltergeist activity, Mrs. Cross?” he said. He and Ralph had agreed on this approach on the way over.

  “Well, yes, of course I've read about it and seen movies. Is that what this is?”

  “I believe so.”

  It was a deliberate lie, and he disliked himself for telling it, but he had no choice under the circumstances. For one thing, the alternative could only cause unnecessary pain to Joanna and her parents; for another, his access to the house depended on his keeping his word to Ralph.

  “I thought poltergeist activity was something that only happened around adolescent kids,” Bob Cross said, sounding skeptical. “Repressed sexuality, conflicting emotions, that kind of thing. Isn't that right?”

  “It's right,” Sam said, “but not a rule.”

  He wanted to tell them that there were no rules, that the truth made no sense, only the lies. But it was bad enough having to think like that, without forcing others to share in his despair.

  It came as a shock to realize that “despair” was the word that best described his state of mind. Until that moment he had hidden from it, clinging outwardly to a pretense of normality, and inwardly to the increasingly threadbare idea that even if the world was crazy he could remain sane by responding to it rationally. But it wasn't true. The truth was that the more clearly he saw things, the more swiftly he descended toward madness. He knew suddenly, deep inside himself, that he had already passed some point of no return. Yet he continued speaking calmly in his practiced, authoritative, expert's manner.

  “Poltergeist activity, things being thrown across rooms and smashed, is one of several psychokinetic effects-that's mind over matter, or mind working through matter, or in matter.”

  “But there's always somebody who's doing it-right?” Bob Cross said. “Somebody sending out mind waves or whatever? There's always somebody responsible?”

  “That's true,” Sam conceded. “Mind over matter-by definition there has to be someone doing it.”

  “Then who's doing i
t here? One of us? That woman we saw last night?”

  “From what I've heard, I'd say she's part of the effect and not the cause.”

  “I don't understand,” Bob Cross persisted. “I thought the poltergeist effect was things flying across the room, not people hammering at your door and talking to you and then disappearing.”

  “That woman was a ghost, wasn't she, Dr. Towne?” Elizabeth Cross spoke as though it was a thought that had been bearing down on her and of which she had to unburden herself.

  “There's a widely held belief,” Sam told her, “that ghosts are actually psychokinetic manifestations-the projections of our own consciousness.”

  The memory of his conversation with Joanna over their first lunch many months earlier almost overwhelmed him. He buried the emotion in more words, standard explanations, reassuring half-truths.

  “We take our consciousness so much for granted, we forget that so much of what we see isn't something that's objectively out there. Colors, for example, don't exist ‘out there’ in their own right. They're the eye's and brain's response to certain wavelengths of light.”

  “But the light's out there,” Bob Cross said, like a man with only limited tolerance for such abstractions.

  “Well, yes…”

  “That's something, at least.”

  Elizabeth Cross stood with her hands clasped nervously in front of her. None of them had thought of sitting down, although there was ample place to do so. Somehow this didn't seem like a conversation to be had sitting down.

  “I'm afraid all this talk of whether things come from inside us or from somewhere else is a little beyond me,” she said. “Things happen, that's all I know.”

  “And that's the most important thing we can say about them,” Sam said. “In fact, it's probably the only thing.”

  Elizabeth Cross took a few steps, composing herself for what she was about to say. Sam saw Bob Cross watching her with concern. He, apparently, knew what was coming and was unhappy about it.

  “There's an idea I haven't been able to get out of my mind ever since that poor young woman was hammering at my door last night. I don't know why I called the police. I shouldn't have. I just panicked and…” She broke off, overcome by emotion for a moment. Her husband went to her and put his hands on her arms.

  “Elizabeth, don't…you'll just upset yourself again…”

  “No, I want to say it. I think if we're asking Dr. Towne to investigate this…this thing, whatever…it's wrong to hold anything back.” She looked at Sam. “My husband knows what I'm going to say. He thinks it's a silly idea…”

  “Please, go ahead,” Sam encouraged her.

  With a nervous glance at her husband, she began. “Bob and I had a child before Joanna, but she died at birth. She would have been called Joanna, too. It was a terrible time for us, you can imagine. But when I discovered that I was pregnant again a year later, and when the baby was another girl, we decided to call her Joanna, too. In a way we both thought of her as the same little girl, alive and coming back to us. We felt as though we were giving back some kind of life to the poor little Joanna who died. It probably sounds absurd to anyone else, but that was the reason why we called her Joanna.”

  Her gaze had become fixed on Sam, though no less so than his on her.

  Bob Cross stood at the third point of the triangle, though he knew he was outside what was going on between them at that moment. He was an honest, down-to-earth man not given to this type of speculation. It made him uneasy, though he was not entirely sure why.

  “Could that woman have been the ghost of our little girl?” Elizabeth Cross asked, her eyes beseeching Sam, if not for an answer, at least for an understanding of the pain behind the question.

  59

  It was several minutes before Joanna came in to join them-long enough for Elizabeth Cross to get over the tears that actually putting the question to Sam had unleashed in her. She and her husband now sat a little awkwardly on the edge of the dark red fabric-covered sofa. He was comforting her, and she was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Sam turned away for a moment to give them their privacy. He looked out of the window into the busy street below and thought back over his answer. It had been pretty noncommittal and well within the boundaries of his agreement with Ralph. Yet it was as honest as he could make it. He didn't know what other answer there could be.

  “I'm all right,” she said, clearing her throat and blowing her nose. “I'm sorry, I'm all right now.”

  Sam turned back to her. She was looking up at him, smiling an apology for her weakness.

  “This isn't something that we've mentioned to Joanna, by the way. She knows about the other baby, of course, the sister she might have had. But we haven't mentioned it in…” she made a vague, general gesture, “in this context. I thought maybe it would be best not to.”

  “I think you're right,” Sam said with what reassurance he could muster. “I don't see that it would particularly help in any way.”

  The door opened and Joanna came into the room. She wore jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and had her hair tied behind her head. She looked subdued and oddly fragile.

  “Dr. Towne-thank you for coming. Please tell me what's happening.”

  Before he could say anything, she caught sight of her mother furtively hiding the handkerchief with which she'd been dabbing at her face.

  “Mom, you've been crying! Please don't.”

  “I'm all right…it's just all so…strange and upsetting.”

  Joanna went over and gave her a hug.

  “Don't worry-I'm sure everything's going to work out now that Dr. Towne's here.”

  Ralph came back into the room and stood quietly by the bedroom door. Joanna turned to Sam.

  “Ralph says you're going to stay in the house for a few days.”

  “That's what I'd like to do.”

  She looked at him. The way she was dressed, and with her eyes wide and questioning and with no makeup, she looked more like a strangely solemn teenager than a grown woman.

  “Who is she?”

  Sam was aware of Ralph's gaze on him, but he didn't look away from Joanna. “I can't say,” he said.

  “You can't say? Or won't say? Or don't know?”

  “I…don't know.”

  She looked at him as though trying to divine whether he was lying to her or not.

  “Why did she say ‘Help me’?”

  “I don't know-yet. Maybe I'll be able to find out.”

  “We must try to help her, whoever she is.”

  “We will.”

  Nobody else in the room spoke or moved, sensing that this was somehow a private moment between the two of them.

  “Do you think I'm an awful coward not to go back?” She asked the question with a childlike seriousness, and waited for his answer.

  “No. I don't think you should go back. I think it would be a mistake.”

  “Why?”

  He moved his head as though to say the answer was obvious.

  “Ralph tells me that you're pregnant. That's a very good reason for being careful.”

  “Do you think there's any danger?”

  “I don't know. Sometimes it's more sensible not to find out.”

  She continued to look at him, tipping her head slightly to one side, as though the angle gave her some insight into his thoughts.

  “Is there something I don't know, Dr. Towne? Something that you're not telling me?”

  Sam shook his head and gave a gentle smile. “No, I promise you.”

  It was a lie, yet somehow an easy one. There was something about her that enchanted him, a freshness and an innocence that were all too rarely found.

  “You have a very active imagination. That's another good reason for staying away from psychic phenomena.”

  He looked over at Ralph.

  “Don't let her go back there, Ralph-not yet.”

  “Don't worry, I won't.”

  Bob Cross gave a snort of impatience. “Well, I cer
tainly intend to go over and take a look.”

  Sam knew at once and instinctively that he had to prevent this, although he didn't know why-or, for that matter, quite how.

  “If you'll forgive my saying so, Mr. Cross,” he began, trying to sound as deferential as he could, “I don't think that's a very good idea.”

  “Why not?” Bob Cross looked at him in a way that suggested he'd better have good reasons to back up his advice.

  “Not really anything specific,” Sam said, hoping he wouldn't be forced to go into too much detail. “It's just that whatever's happening here is a family-linked thing- your family. I think you should stay together, support one another, and not expose yourselves unnecessarily to any influences that we don't yet understand.”

  Bob Cross looked unconvinced. “I want to see that damn mirror for myself-the one with scratching on the back.”

  “You will. Just give me a day or two-please?”

  The older man's face took on an expression of reluctance, but he grudgingly agreed, “Okay, you're the expert. I guess we'd better listen to you.”

  Sam felt an immense relief. “By the way,” he said, turning to Joanna and changing the subject, “I read your book. It's excellent.”

  Her face lit up with pleasure. “Do you really think so?”

  “It deserves to do well.”

  “I really appreciate your saying that. Do you think we could discuss it sometime, at more length?”

  “I'd be happy to.”

  Things drew quickly to a close. Joanna's father, having been denied access to the “scene of the crime,” was impatient to be on the move, urging his two women to collect their belongings while he phoned down to the garage for his car. Sam said his formal good-byes to all three of them in the hotel suite, then Ralph accompanied them downstairs. When he returned, Sam was waiting for him.

  “You handled that well,” Ralph said to him. “Thank you.”

  “They're nice people. I hope this thing won't cause them any more upset than it has already.”