Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Temple tried to relax while various fiends, phantoms, ghouls and demons, not to mention overtly dead people, wandered in and out munching on slices of cold pizza and guzzling cola drinks.

  To watch Walking Rot nibble on long-cold sausage and pepperoni peeping greasily from under a winding sheet of congealed mozzarella was enough to turn her stomach.

  No one else seemed to notice the unappetizing juxtaposition, mainly because the gathered psychics were so uninterested in anyone else besides themselves.

  "I hope the seance area isn't as tawdry as the kitchen," an imperious female voice was complaining.

  "You would have thought," came another woman's petulant whisper, "that the organizers would have provided some decent refreshments for us as well as for the resident ghouls."

  "Maybe we are the food for the resident ghouls," a man answered with a brusque laugh.

  "Don't be gruesome, Professor Mangel," another woman chided. "Houdini is hardly a ghoul."

  "But wouldn't Houdini consider us little better than a motley bunch of grave-robbers?"

  asked a woman whose face was hidden by a mammoth picture hat--black, with veiling of the same sober hue. "Is there one of us present that he wouldn't dismiss as a rampant fraud, were he alive? What makes any of us think he'll show up in person, instead of just showing us up as latter-day bawds and humbugs? In life, he often went in disguise among such gatherings to get the goods on the mediums."

  "We are professionals!" the first woman--whose flowing silver-gray mane of hair rivaled any hat, however dramatic--said haughtily. "We aren't even requesting remuneration for this sitting."

  "Ain't that a pity?" someone muttered.

  She went on unflustered. "Houdini would be in bad faith if he showed up in disguise.

  Besides, we are psychics. Wouldn't we sense a ringer in our midst?"

  The silence that met this question proved that several psychics present harbored secret doubts about the others' abilities and intentions.

  Temple whispered uneasily to Electra, "Methinks these crystal-gazers don't see much future in each other, or this seance."

  "What a prime group!" Electra's admiration was oblivious. "You are gazing upon the cream of the West Coast clairvoyants."

  "They look like the cousins of the Addams family, except for that woman in the denim."

  "D'Arlene Hendrix. She's often assisted the police in finding dead bodies. She says she's just a housewife who senses things."

  Temple no more believed in "just a housewife" than she did in messages from dead victims.

  But D'Arlene Hendrix sat sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup at the large empty wooden table.

  In her hand-painted T-shirt and denims, she looked as normal as apple pie, her metal-framed bifocals on a pearlized string and her serviceable watchband cutting into her plump wrist.

  "That one over there is Mynah Sigmund," Electra whispered as if in church.

  "The Woman in White' act?"

  Electra's wide eyes rebuked. "She says she is a white witch and can dowse for water, read health or sickness in people's auras and commune with Indian spirits. Guess I should say 'Native American' now."

  Temple reevaluated the Sigmund woman in view of Electra's advertisement. She was tall, her thick cascade of silver-gray hair as sculpted as a frozen waterfall, though she was not yet forty. She wore white as if color were a curse: long, flowing gown, probably stretch polyester.

  Moonstones glowed in silver jewelry, an elaborate necklace and a ring-bracelet that linked the fingers of one hand to her wrist with a web of fine silver chains. Sarah Bernhardt had commissioned Rene Lalique to make a similar piece with a richly enameled serpent motif.

  Temple had often admired photos of this mock-decadent theatrical trinket. Mynah--after the black bird that spoke; could that be an original name?--needed no blatant snake designs on her jewelry. Her entire figure and its calculated presentation spoke of sinuous manipulations of both the corporeal and spectral variety, Temple thought, bet your best albino snakeskin boots!

  Maybe that was why the men in the room clustered around her. Clever, Temple thought, to play upon white instead of the dramatic black. Aimee Semple McPherson, the meteoric evangelist of Harry Houdini's time, had played the same cynical contrast of light and darkness with spectacular success.

  "Temple, I get very negative female vibes from you." Electra frowned. "You don't like Mynah Sigmund on sight."

  "I don't trust her on sight; there's a difference."

  "She is considered tops in her area."

  "Don't doubt it. What about the short dumpy woman with the ridiculous hat?"

  "Never seen her before. Must be from L. A. But the nice-looking man is Oscar Grant, the television narrator for Dead Zones."

  "Perfect." Temple sighed dramatically, eyeing a director's dream man for the part of "A Prominent Occultist."

  Oscar Grant, somewhere vague between thirty and fifty, was engaged in brushing back his curly dark hair, which tumbled to his shoulders like midnight on a roll, a dramatic white streak zigzagging like a lightning bolt from his left temple to the very ends. He wore plain black, of course, rather in the Max mode: silky black shirt, expensive noir slacks, sleek patent-leather Italian loafers that ran about six hundred dollars. A braided leather belt circled his narrow waist and a similar braided leather neckband ended with a large silver or pewter charm of cryptic design.

  He was talking intensely to the dumpy but eccentric woman, whose deeply brimmed Edward Gorey hat trailed awkward bunches of veiling and black silk flowers.

  She nodded, or rather the hat did. And lucky that she wore it, for glimpses showed a late-middle-aged face that was full, frowsy and far too emphatic to be considered attractive.

  "What about 'mine host'?" When Electric looked blank, Temple tried to be more descriptive and had a tough time coming up with specifics. "The guy in black polyester." Electra's mystified expression remained. "The guy who shops at Big and Tall, who led us up here."

  "Oh. That's Mynah's husband."

  "Oh! Really, the White Witch is married to him? What does he do?"

  "Nothing interesting. Works in an office somewhere. Hangs around. Mynah doesn't seem to take him seriously."

  "I consider that an interesting situation. What's his name?"

  A frown temporarily closed down Electra's normally open features. "You know, I don't know.

  It never seemed to matter."

  Temple eyed the man who stood alone. For all his size both vertical and horizontal, and he must be six feet tall and three feet wide in the middle, he was astoundingly easy to overlook: medium brown hair, thinning; ordinary features, sinking in flesh; lackluster personality, flirting with an edge of depression. Yet he was the one person present, associated with the mediums, who boasted no special psychic role of his own. No wonder he looked dull and laid-back. He was probably just normal!

  He certainly was a quiet contrast to a short, balding man with thick, black-framed glasses, whose karate-chop hand gestures punctuated his intense conversation with a colleague. She was a moth of a woman who might be intimidated by such emphatic delivery, a slight, fluttering presence with a receding chin, unfortunate teeth and thinning hair, a woman in gray who seemed to be turning into evasive water as one watched. She wore shifting aqua chiffon as tremulous as she was.

  "Agatha Welk." Electra, following the direction of Temple's gaze, let her voice go as dreamy and warm as melted chocolate. "A wonderful, instinctive medium, but very susceptible to spiritual influences. I've heard she's had to be hospitalized twice after successful interventions in some terribly shocking cases of haunting and possession." Electra's voice lowered. "Professor Mangel there has risked his academic career in psychology to write sympathetically on the occult world. He is an observer, like us, not a practicing medium."

  Temple nodded. So far, not so startling. None of those present could know that she was the

  ... ex-fiancee ( such a coy, newspaper-engagement-page expression)... former lover (now
that had a way-of-the-world, hard-boiled ring to it) ... estranged ex-roommate (too coy again, perhaps) ... of a professional magician.

  And Max had been just that: professional. He had never pretended that there was anything untoward to his illusions. He would despise these artsy pretenders to psychic powers.

  And then the real pretender walked in the door, trailed by a cameraman hidden behind an ostentatiously flaring light.

  "God," said Temple, turning away.

  Electra blinked, uncertain if Temple was announcing the next player. She squinted at the new arrival. "He's just the Hot Heads reporter who won the special award at the romance convention for the truly terrible takeoff."

  "Right. Except that I'm sure it wasn't a takeoff."

  "He couldn't have meant that drivel?"

  "You don't know Crawford Buchanan. Drivel is his livelihood.

  Remember, Electra, you swore on your mother's grave--and this is the crowd that just could resurrect her--that I would not have to brush knee or knuckle with that creep in the seance seating plan."

  "My mother isn't dead yet," Electra murmured distractedly. "So that is your ... bete noir.

  Rest assured, I will see that you are well insulated from Mr. Buchanan, if that's your wish."

  "Devout wish. Gosh, look at these mediums' ESP in action. Amazing how they crowd around the cameraman hoping for their proper place in the sun."

  "Not D'Arlene Hendrix," Electra pointed out "Or that strange little woman in the enormous hat. Maybe it's really Bella Abzug... or Dr. Ruth. You know--"

  "I know. Maybe the spirits have told those two that they're not photogenic. Oh, Great Caesar's Ghost! Crawford's coming right for us."

  Temple grabbed Electra's wrist, and wrung it.

  In a moment a glare of several suns transfixed them in its path.

  And here we have two quite ordinary souls," Buchanan's era-ready baritone droned,

  "participants but not psychics, I believe."

  "Oh, no," Electra said. "I'm not at all psychic. I claim to see no more than the nose in front of my face, if I've got my glasses on."

  "And the young lady?" Buchanan's disembodied voice drooled from the anonymous safety of the darkness.

  Anyone pinioned by the gigawatts of a camcorder light was a deer in the headlights, trapped with no options but flight or sudden impact. Especially when she was cloaked in her landlady's most electric muumuu.

  "I'm the obligatory innocent bystander," Temple said calmly. "An impartial observer."

  "You don't believe in powers greater than we know?" he asked.

  "Oh, yes, but I'm afraid they more often don't believe in us."

  "And do you believe that Harry Houdini was such a power, that he will return from the halls of death itself tonight, at the call of these famous psychics?"

  "Houdini was at no one's call in life; I doubt he'll dance to anyone's tune in death."

  "But if you see him tonight, will you admit to the existence of... unseen forces?"

  "If I see him tonight, he won't be an unseen force anymore, will he? But if I do, I'll certainly admit it. Unless he looks like a clever fake."

  "And how will you know a clever fake? "

  "I'll study the stills from your film. That's a form of magic with a scientific base."

  "Miss Temple Barr," Buchanan's voice named her. "A very cool head for the Hot Heads camera, indeed. Time will tell if she remains as cool and unconvinced."

  Crawford and cameraman swooped away to focus their dazzle on the White Witch, Mynah.

  "You did that very well, dear," Electra chirped in Temple's ear.

  "Did what?"

  "Stood up to the barrage of questions under those hot lights. Your previous interrogation experience with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has stood you in good stead. Oh, my, that's redundant, isn't it? 'Stood you in good stead'?"

  "Redundancy isn't going to be our problem tonight."

  "What is?"

  "Keeping me from strangling Crawford Buchanan and stewing him in his own juices--that is, oil."

  "Don't mention murder, Temple, not even in jest! I'm just a New Age amateur, but I've had a very shivery feeling tonight."

  "Shivery?"

  "I... sense death. Maybe it's just the death of October, do you think? This is Halloween, after all Or... maybe somebody famous far away will die tonight. They usually do. I mean, die far away overnight, then we read about it in the morning papers."

  "Electra--"

  "Or it could be an organic death, as in gardening, you know? Maybe it's a bad night for rutabaga. An amateur like me, I could be picking up anything. A star dying in the ... ah, Stonehenge nebula, or whatever. I just have a very, very fatal feeling, but who am I to say? I'm only an aspiring romance novelist, professional justice of the peace and real estate magnate.

  Most of my psychic impressions I get from my cat, so it's nothing serious."

  "Your cat?"

  "Oh. Well, she's not exactly my cat--"

  "She?"

  "Well, probably. She feels like a she. I've never had the nerve to ask."

  "Electra. You can't have a cat without knowing if it's a she or a he."

  "You can if it demands a very dim environment, and refuses to leave even to go to a veterinarian."

  "You have such a cat?"

  "No. Did I say I did?"

  "You implied--"

  "There you go, jumping to conclusions again. How will you ever observe a seance with an open mind if it's already made up? I've got a notion to seat you next to Mr. Buchanan anyway.

  Now there is a man who is ready to believe absolutely anything."

  "Amen."

  Everyone stopped talking, then turned to look at her, as if she had muttered a profanity.

  Once Buchanan and his invisible Siamese twin, the cameraman, had stepped back out of the picture, Oscar Grant took center stage, and began with a hair-toss.

  "All right. A word of warning to the tyros present."

  "Somebody here is Swiss?" Electra whispered to Temple.

  " Tyro' means Amateur.' "

  "Oh. I was thinking of the Tyroleans, I guess."

  "It is important that you all," he went on, gifting each person present with the hot coals of his brunet gaze in turn, "take this enterprise seriously. The professionals among us will have no difficulty, but the media and a few onlookers are warned not to interrupt the proceedings, no matter what happens. Remain quiet, calm. Allow each of your brains to be an open bay window.

  Relax, and the phenomena will sweep into the dusty attic of your mundane minds like beautiful, rare birds."

  "And out like bats," Temple suggested under her breath to Electra.

  "Bats are very mystical creatures," came the response, "sacred to the Chinese."

  "So were dragons, but we don't see too many of them around today."

  "Shhh!"

  Mynah, the White Witch, had stepped into their midst. She bowed her dramatically silver head that reminded Temple of hippie* girl heyday haystack hairdo: partedin the middle and flowing to the fingertips.

  Mynah extended her beringed hands as if following a stage direction.

  "We are here on serious business, despite the frivolous nature of the setting. We are here to raise the Master. We are here to be the One Voice that can call him back from Beyond. For seventy years he has resisted all summoners. Now we call, and he will come. The world"--her dark eyes flashed to the refrigerator corner, where Crawford Buchanan's uncharacteristically dark suit was silhouetted by stark white and the camera rode over his shoulder like some unlucky star--"the world will see and we will prove that the spirit domain is a more potent realm than any imagined here on Mother Earth."

  She bowed her head even lower as a tremor began in her fingers; shaking the fine silver shackles on her right hand and then her arms up to her body, until gown and moonstones and waves of sterling hair all vibrated to a trembler of silent thunder.

  "Goodness," Electra murmured.

  "As M
ae West pointed out in one of her films, 'goodness had nothing to do with it.' That's a stage trick, Electra. Total muscular tension results in total tremor. A plus B equals--"

  "Quiet now!" Oscar Grant's black-clad arms elevated. "First, I must introduce a, well-known presence among us, just flown in from Machu Picchu. Edwina Mayfair."

  A polite murmur indicated the familiarity of the name, though the stubby woman seemed a poor representative of such an apparently fabled personage. Oscar Grant quirked her a smile of acknowledgment before continuing. "We now will be conducted above in silence."

  He nodded to the kitchen door, in which was framed the homely figure of Mynah's husband.

  "Hell-o," Electra mouthed without voice.

  The man nodded to her and Temple, introducing himself in a voice cursed with a perpetual frog-in-throat sound that went oddly with his overweight.

  "I am William Kohler. I will conduct you. Follow me." He jerked his shaggy head over his shoulder and began to lumber up the stairs like a Russian bear in black.

  The psychics flowed after him like puppets, Temple and Electra last, reluctantly so, but Crawford & Camera had refused to precede them.

  "Bats!" Temple railed to Electra as they mounted the dark, narrow back steps. "I hate leaving my tote bag behind. And I hate having Crawford and his damn cameraman tailing my rear in this cabbage-patch dress up these stairs."

  "I'm sure that's not the kind of phenomenon they're interested in filming, my dear."

  Temple was not so sanguine, knowing cameramen's propensity for capturing humanity from its absolutely worst angle in the name of cinema verite. But she kept the required silence, expressing her frustration by stomping up the stairs with green-giant emphasis, so each step sounded like the ominous knock of an unseen force.

  Through the thin partitions between themselves and the action attraction that comprised the haunted house, Temple could hear shrieks and rattling rails and moans.

  Great mood music.

  After a half flight they went along a wooden ramp until Temple glimpsed the central scaffolding, and then it was up two and a half flights of narrow, barely lit wooden stairs. Temple, hearing the gears and groans of the adjacent ride, tried to walk more softly so as not to ruin the paying customers' special effects.