Beyond Belief

by Roy Johansen

  Perhaps the Child of Light had demonstrated his powers for them. As powerful as the boy was, he did not yet have the patience and wisdom to control his abilities. It was a wonder that more people had not been hurt.

  He smiled as Joe and Nikki passed only a few feet from where he stood. He adjusted his video camera and scratched his upper lip. The phony mustache itched almost as much as the long-haired wig. The disguise was entirely in keeping with his cover as a freelancer from Pittsburgh, here to capture footage to sell to independent television stations. The ruse allowed him to keep a close eye on Jesse without arousing suspicion.

  The morning's talk on the press line had centered on Darlene Farrell's disappearance. It hadn't occurred to him that Jesse might be blamed for harming her, but it made sense. Nelson had crossed the boy and gotten himself impaled. The reporter had harassed him and been punished.

  Good. Let ‘em think that Jesse had offed the reporter. Maybe it would make these other creeps think twice before they bothered him.

  Even if it didn't, that was okay. Jesse had a protector. Do you know I'm out here, Jesse? Can you think what I'm thinking? Of course you can. The time of Alessandro is almost upon us. Your time. Our time.

  It was after ten that night when Joe took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Landwyn University library. The place was practically deserted. No big surprise. The college library wasn't exactly a Saturday night hotspot.

  Although Landwyn had become infamous for its parapsychology studies program, Professor Reisman made sure the library was fortified with a large collection of skeptical literature. Joe was ahead of the curve on psychic fraud techniques, but he still spent most Saturday evenings on the sixth floor, perusing the latest additions. That night he planned to check into any new levitation rigs that might be out there.

  Nikki and her friends had a weekly slumber party club in which they rotated from one home to another. It was his turn to host only once every eight weeks, so he was left with many Saturday nights alone. He was surprised how big and lonely the apartment was without her.

  Get used to it, he told himself. It wouldn't be long before Nikki would be gone almost every night. Surely he wasn't the first parent who wished he could freeze time and hold on to the child who made life so special.

  Nikki had been upset by Jesse's outburst that morning, but she didn't hold it against him. “Be for real. If someone made you cry, I'd be pretty mad,” she had said on the way home.

  He couldn't argue with that.

  He went to the sixth floor and walked to the occult and paranormal studies section. Each row of tall wooden bookcases ran almost the entire length of the room, ninety feet long, with no breaks along the way. Air from the heating vents whistled down the long rows.

  He glanced through a few of the newer books, looking for paranormal studies focusing on children. Many of the tests were worthless, since they were so loosely supervised that it would have been extremely simple for the young subjects to cheat. Jesse was clearly out of these kids’ league.

  Joe thumbed through a few books and put them back on the shelf. Nothing here would be of much—

  Crash.

  He jumped. It sounded like an explosion.

  Crash. Another one. On the other side of the room.

  Joe peered over a row of books. The bookcases were falling toward him one by one, like giant dominoes. He was in the middle of the row, far from either side. He turned left and ran.

  Crash.

  If he didn't make it, a tall oak bookcase would smash him flat.

  Faster, he told himself. Run faster.

  He wasn't going to make it. Crash.

  He dropped to his knees, curled into a ball, and threw himself into the bottom shelf of the bookcase next in line to tumble.

  He kicked and elbowed the books through to the other side, knowing that the heavy volumes would soon be falling on top of him if he didn't get them out. Only one more to go …

  He gripped the inside of the shelf and pressed his hands and knees against the sides.

  Crash.

  The shelves in the next row rammed against his. He braced himself as the heavy framework growled and wood splintered above him.

  He was going over. The bookcase he was in struck the next one with an ear-splitting crack.

  He fell to the floor, and the shelf neatly framed him as it slammed down a moment later. Hardbound back issues of National Geographic magazine from the shelf above pummeled him in the chest and head.

  He lay on the floor, recovering from the blows as the rest of the cases fell.

  Then silence. It was over.

  He clawed through the books and shelving on top of him, rolling bound volumes off his bruised back and shoulders. He pushed his way through one shelf, then another, finally hoisting himself on top. He glanced around at the large room, where there wasn't one bookcase left standing. It looked as if a bomb had gone off.

  “Is anyone else in here?” he shouted.

  No answer.

  He thought he'd been alone in the room, but it was possible someone was pinned beneath the piles of books and shelving.

  “Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  His forehead was cold. He touched it and looked at his fingers. Blood.

  Thirty minutes later, a library assistant finished bandaging Joe's head. Campus security had confirmed that no one else had been injured. But no one could tell him how it had happened.

  Drew Potter, an older campus cop with a ruddy complexion, shook his head. “Never heard of such a thing, and I've been here for a long time.”

  “The first case could have been pushed,” Joe said.

  “By who? The entire weight-lifting squad?” Potter was right. It would have taken tons of force to unbalance it. “Besides,” the guard said, “no one down here saw anyone coming or going. Did you?”

  Joe shook his head. What a week. Between the elevator and now the bookshelves—

  Wait a minute.

  Joe checked his watch: 10:38.

  Well past Jesse Randall's bedtime.

  No way in hell.

  He stood up and flashed his badge at the security officer. “Lock the sixth floor. Secure it, stand guard, and don't let anyone inside until I get back.” Joe rushed toward the library exit.

  “Why?” the guard asked.

  “I'm going to get my spirit kit.”

  * * *

  “One … two … three!”

  Joe, four campus security cops, and two library assistants lifted one of the massive bookcases onto four McMillan digital scales. It had taken almost half an hour to loosen the bolts securing it to the other cases. The bolts had probably been tightened more than eighty years before.

  The scales’ digital readouts flashed, and Joe added up the numbers. Four hundred and twenty pounds.

  Add another five hundred for the books, multiply that by twenty cases, and it totaled about nine tons for each row. It wasn't likely that a kid had accidentally knocked one over reaching for a copy of Catcher in the Rye.

  “Okay, guys,” Joe said. “Let's clear all books off the first bookcase. However it happened, it all started here.”

  They cleared away the books. Joe knew they probably thought he was nuts. He could read the faces of the younger library assistants: It was an accident, man. Get over it.

  But he couldn't get over it. Not after what had happened to him in the elevator. Not after what had happened to Nelson.

  This time he couldn't escape the eerieness of the situation. Again he had angered Jesse, and again he had been almost killed by the force of an inanimate object. It could have been a coincidence, but that possibility was shrinking with each unexplained occurrence. And if it wasn't a coincidence, who was behind it?

  He surveyed the scene and asked himself the first question he asked at almost every reputed psychic phenomenon site: How would he pull off a stunt like this? In this case he would probably try a pair of power poles.

  About the size of a baseball bat, a handheld
hydraulic power pole operated on the same principle as a powered automobile jack. Commonly used in factories and construction sites, it exerted a force of hundreds of pounds per square inch. Two or even three poles could have been brought into the library under a large overcoat and braced between the back wall and the first row of shelves.

  Joe walked along the toppled shelves, looking for the distinctive pitchfork-shaped marks that a power pole's pronged tip would leave.

  No prong marks.

  He reached into the spirit kit, pulled out a spray bottle, and coated the shelves with a fine mist.

  “What's that?” Potter asked.

  Here come the questions, Joe thought. They had been too quiet. He went into autopilot as he slipped on a pair of illuminated goggles. “It's furniture oil mixed with a phosphorous compound. This wood is so old, it shouldn't absorb much of it. But if there are any places that have been pinched or clamped by a vise, the wood there might be softer and more absorbent.” He wiped the shelves with a rag. “It should soak in a bit in those places.”

  Joe put on the goggles and flipped the ultraviolet switch. Although he usually preferred the fingerprint lantern, the goggles were better for close-up work. Again he walked down the row, studying the shelves.

  “See anything?” Potter asked.

  “Afraid not. Other than a few scratches, there's nothing here.”

  “Back to the weight-lifting squad theory, huh?”

  “Not yet.” Joe sprayed the phosphorous oil on the top shelves. It was possible, however unlikely, that ropes might have been used in some kind of pulley arrangement. Here, too, there should have been some softening of the wood.

  There was none.

  Damn.

  He examined the floor where the shelf had rested. The floorboards had cracked and splintered under the immense weight of the pivoting edge. He picked up a few pieces of the broken floor and placed them into a plastic sample tray.

  “Well?” Potter said.

  “I'll let you know.”

  It was after two A.M. by the time Joe got home and went to bed, but he was too wired to sleep.

  What the hell was happening?

  There was no chance Jesse was responsible. But it was sure being made to look that way.

  Why? However he figured it, it didn't make sense. Why would anyone go through all this trouble to kill him, when a simple bullet would do the trick?

  Someone obviously wanted the world to believe that Jesse was killing people with his mind. But who? The one person who had the most to gain from such a deception, Dr. Robert Nelson, was dead.

  Nothing seemed to fit.

  Joe considered the elevator. Had it been rigged somehow? He'd thought it was an accident, but now he wasn't so sure. He tried to put himself back in the moment, imagining all the sights and sounds in the malfunctioning elevator car.

  He had some ideas how it could have been pulled off, but he wasn't sure. If he hadn't thought it was an accident, he would have checked it out immediately.

  Finally, at a few minutes to four, Joe climbed out of bed and sat in front of the television. He glanced through the tapes of Jesse Randall's test sessions to find the one he was looking for.

  Jesse's final session with Nelson.

  Joe popped in the tape and pushed play. Jesse was agitated from the start, glaring at Dr. Nelson and scowling at his every request.

  In the test, a group of six recruited volunteers were shown a simple drawing and asked to reproduce it on a piece of paper. After that the original drawing and volunteers’ reproductions were removed from the room.

  Jesse was brought in. “Okay, are you thinking about the drawing?” he asked.

  A few of the volunteers nodded.

  “Come on, are you thinking about it?” he snapped.

  They all nodded and mumbled, “Yes.”

  “When I count to three, I want you to imagine actually drawing it, one line at a time, okay? Imagine it!”

  Again they nodded.

  “Okay. One, two, three!”

  He stared intently at the volunteers, his eyes flicking between them. Finally, he picked up a marker and moved to a large pad at the front of the room. He drew a circle with a triangle on top of it.

  There were gasps from the volunteers, and the original drawing was brought back into the room.

  A triangle with a circle on top of it.

  Not exactly the same thing, but close enough, Joe thought. Very impressive.

  But apparently not impressive enough for Nelson. He spoke sharply: “You can do better than this, Jesse. Do you like wasting everyone's time?”

  Joe had never seen Nelson speak that way to any of his supposed psychics. If anything, he usually erred in the other direction, pandering to the subjects and allowing them to run roughshod over the agreed-upon test protocols.

  Nelson leaned into Jesse's face. “We're going to stay here until you get it correct five times out of five, do you understand?”

  Joe sat forward as he saw Jesse's face change, the expression becoming almost demonic. He knew that expression. He'd seen it before. He also knew the words that Jesse spit out at Nelson a moment later. He'd heard the exact same words from Jesse only hours before almost dying in the elevator shaft:

  “Don't you do this to me!”

  Nate Dillard looked the same as he always had, Joe thought. Even though the guy was pushing seventy, he still had the same rosy cheeks and elastic eyebrows that danced with each spoken syllable. Nate stood on a small stage at the end of the Peachtree Corners High School gymnasium, demonstrating rudimentary magic techniques to a Learning Annex class.

  He was a heavy-lifting specialist, and Joe's earliest memories of him were of a flaming trunk rising high over the stage at the Fox Theater. He'd thought of him almost immediately after examining Nelson's murder scene. Although it was unlikely Nate could tell him anything he didn't already know, it was worth a shot to see if there were any rigs out there he hadn't considered.

  Joe glanced around the gym, where the class sat on metal folding chairs. About forty people were there, and as usual at these things, men outnumbered women four to one. There were people from all walks of life, Joe guessed, including doctors, laborers, lawyers—

  And a spiritualist.

  Suzanne Morrison, the attractive medium he'd been studying at the Landwyn parapsychology program, was sitting in the third row. He was scheduled to observe one of her séances the following morning.

  Joe smiled. A spiritualist in a magic class?

  She was obviously bored. Small wonder, he thought. With the impressive performances she put on at her séances, this had to seem like small potatoes. She yawned and glanced around the room.

  He caught her eye. Still smiling, he gave her a quick salute.

  A deer caught in the headlights. She turned back to the instructor.

  After Nate dismissed the class, Joe ran the particulars of Nelson's murder scene by him. Nate was just as confused as he was.

  “Jeez, Joey. I don't know.” Nate, like many of the old-time magicians who knew him from his childhood days of hanging out in Sam's shop, still called him Joey. “I'm stumped. Have you stopped to consider that maybe it's not a trick?”

  “Aw, come on, Nate. Not you too?”

  Nate's large belly shook as he laughed. “Who knows? The world's a strange place.”

  “Uh-huh. Speaking of which, what can you tell me about Suzanne Morrison?”

  “Who?”

  “She's one of your students. Very pretty—green eyes and long brown hair.”

  Nate grinned. “Looking for a date, Joey?”

  “Hardly. She's been passing herself off as a spiritualist. How long has she been in your class?”

  “This is the fourth week of a six-week course. She's been here every time. I don't know anything about her being a medium, but she's smart and catches on quick.”

  “I don't doubt it.”

  Joe left Nate with a breakdown of the physical characteristics of Nelson's murder scene,
but he could tell the guy wasn't going to be much help.

  Joe left the building and wasn't surprised to see Suzanne Morrison waiting for him outside. He smiled. “Well, well, well.”

  “This isn't what it looks like.”

  “Really? Well, it looks like you were here doing a little occupational research. Did Nate teach you how to rig those séances?”

  “No. And they weren't rigged.”

  “Then tell me this: Why would a spiritualist need to take magic classes? Did Houdini tell you to sign up so you could pass along the latest techniques to him?”

  “Are you through?”

  “Oh, I'm just getting started.”

  “I have a good reason for being here.”

  “This I gotta hear.”

  “You will, as soon as you lose that smirk.”

  “It'll take a while to wipe this one off.”

  Suzanne glared at him.

  Joe shrugged and dropped the smile. “As you wish.” He looked at her with mock earnestness.

  “You bastard. I should just walk away, but I don't want to give you the satisfaction of thinking you've caught me at something.”

  “Too late. Please tell me.”

  She glanced away. “I wasn't born with this ability.”

  “The ability to take magic classes?”

  “Do you want to hear this, or not?”

  “I'm sorry. Go ahead.”

  Suzanne took a deep breath. “It started when I was eleven. I had a friend, Daphne, who was killed in a car accident. She was my age. My parents wouldn't let me go to her funeral, but that very day Daphne came to me. She spoke to me. I realized that through her I could speak to other people who had died.”

  Joe nodded. “I read all this in your case file at Land-wyn.”

  “Then you also read that everyone thought I was crazy. They put me in an institution. I spent my fourteenth birthday in there, and the only reason I got out is that I pretended I couldn't hear Daphne's voice in my head anymore. Later it became more than just the voice. It was moving objects. But ever since I was a teenager, I've been looking for someone who can do the things I do, who's been feeling the things I've been feeling. I go to two or three spiritualists a week, hoping to find someone like me, but they've all been frauds.”