"We will if we concentrate. Now, hands tight, eyes... shut. Picture Houdini, imagine Houdini, however you know him. Ask Houdini to answer our joint plea: come, tell us you are here, give us a tangible sign."
Temple waited. If they weren't satisfied with the multigenerational poster boy with a face for every window, what would keep them happy?
In a moment her nose knew.
No longer did it detect French-roasted duck, or Italian wine or English gin or even Cuban cigars. No, now she sniffed something truly out-of-this-world.
A wet smell, Temple thought, damp and chlorinated.
"Ummmph!" That was Electra's inarticulate whimper.
She was staring white-eyed away from the circle of psychics, toward the giant fireplace that dominated the room's only solid end.
In the six-foot opening, a soot-shadowed mouth of black bricks leading up into a chimney-to-nowhere, stood--not Saint Nick, wrong season--but something that had definitely not been there before!
Not a breath was taken at the oval table.
Then the darker pool of shadow, where the fireplace logs should lie stretched, poured onto the gray marble apron with the silent, liquid ease of India ink.
"A stupid cat!" Oscar hissed in disappointment.
"A black cat," the hatted lady noted significantly.
"My cat," Temple said, craning her neck. "Louie?"
He blinked, looking very pleased with himself for a critter presumed to be behind a locked bathroom window, who had just plummeted from God-knew-where for Lord-knew-how-many feet.
"Leave him," Mynah ordered. "He was meant to be here. He is an omen."
No, thought Temple rebelliously, he is an anomaly, but there's nothing mysterious about it, other than that a cat will go where he wants to, when he wants to, and leave you to guess just how and why.
Magician, her mind accused him. After all, he wore the prerequisite black.
Louie moved to the side of the hearth and began washing his paws with a hot pink tongue.
"Do not let yourselves be distracted," Oscar ordered a little desperately. "We focus on Houdini. On the boy Ehrich who became the hero Houdini. We concentrate on his life, and death, and his avowed intention to return after death, if anyone could."
"Yet he was a skeptic," Edwina put in. "He used to debunk false psychics."
"False," Mynah repeated sharply. "We have no false psychics here, unless the unknown, unvouched-for participants--"
Eyes turned to Temple and Electra. And Crawford. Temple saw the cameraman's light hovering in the black glass opposite Buchanan as he zoomed in for a close-up. Bet even C.B.'s cameraman didn't care much for him, Temple thought.
Crawford's body fidgeted in his chair, sending tension along the linked hands.
"Listen, folks. I'm only here to report the show. If you don't come up with anything camera worthy, no airtime. I'm not about to bother messing with the stage props to produce some weird phenomena. That's not what I get paid for."
"A cat is hardly a weird phenomenon," D'Arlene noted.
"It is if it belongs to one of the people we don't know much about at the table," Mynah said.
" 'Belongs' is hardly accurate," Temple said. "I left him locked in at my apartment four miles away. Maybe he's an astral projection."
"Locked in." Agatha Welk's voice was so low it seemed a delusion. Her eyes were closed, but the lids quivered. "Don't you see? He's an ... escape artist."
"Oh." Electra sounded awestruck. "Cats can be very ... unsettling sometimes. I never took Louie for having a sensitive bone in his body, but it's possible--"
"He is a medium!" Mynah announced with her customary certainty. "We needed another to complete the circle, the mental circle. Now Houdini will come!"
"I don't think so," Temple whispered to herself.
"Why not, dear heart?" The veiled lady leaned close again.
"He's just a cat--a strong, stubborn, clever cat--but I've never seen him do the slightest thing strange. Except for ... this."
"You see!" Mynah glowed with triumph. "I can feel Houdini's life force thrusting at the glass that encloses us. I can feel it building like heat lightning, so strong, so stubborn, so strange. Do you feel it? Do you?"
There was indeed an electric sense of suspended animation in the artificial chamber. Temple felt it, felt it along the tense, fisted hands, felt it among the many minds searching for signs and explanations.
She also felt something prowling among their common intentions and discordant personalities. She looked at the hearth. Louie was gone!
Now her own tension communicated along the line of linked hands. Agatha's eyelids trembled at a speed mimicking REM sleep. Mynah's head was thrown so far back her throat was as well articulated as a spine and her eyes showed only white. Oscar's head was lowered, lost behind his Christ-like curtain of hair. Electra was transfixed by their alarming states, only her eyes moving as she studied one psychic after the other. Beside Temple, Edwina Mayfair had turned her head away, as if listening for something very faint.
The table rapped. Thumped. Vibrated.
They all jumped, as if a strong electric current had rushed from hand to hand.
Midnight Louie had appeared upon the table's center. He stood staring raptly at the chamber's ceiling. Then he sat and patted at something--clearly nothing--on the tabletop, tilting his head to pursue the invisible prey with curious feline concentration.
Then something cylindrical rolled away from his paws.
Oscar Grant leaped up, taking his partners' hands with him, and caught it as it came within reach.
"A bullet," he announced.
"From the heart of Houdini's hand," Mynah declaimed. "He carried that bullet in his hand from some mysterious incident when he left home as a young boy and roamed for a year. It is a sign! S-s-something is immi-n-nent." Mynah's confident voice trembled like Agatha's eyelids and her hands began to shake at an intensity felt among all the participants.
Temple searched the corners and shadows of the pseudo room for the imminent--or was it eminent?--Something. She saw nothing.
Louie lay on the table, defrauded of his find, his tail lashing as if to dust it, each swish making the sound as if someone gently rapping ... rapping at their seance chamber door.
Electra had a pressing confession for no one in particular. "My knees are shaking so much, I think they're rapping the table."
" No, it's Louie's tail," Temple said.
"But why is Louie here? Karma is the psychic one."
"Karma?"
"I mean, his karma has no psychic overtones. He has no experience in this sort of thing. Does he?"
"How should I know? He didn't come with a resume."
"Oh."
Mynah's head was horizontal to the ceiling now, and her long, violent sigh caught their wandering attention like a clap of hands.
Even Midnight Louie looked up.
And well he--and they--should.
Mist was creeping along the seams of the walls, oozing out of the light sconces as if from an invisible dragon's nostrils, hovering at the ceiling.
Mist rose between those seated at the table, from the center seam dissecting the table. Mist encased Midnight Louie in an ethereal aura.
Mist congealed like cumulous smoke in the high hearth, obscuring its blackness. Mist moved, a nebulous form not terribly tall. Mist floated into a humanoid mass that reminded Temple of an abducting alien, black-hole eyes an abyss in a vague white figure.
Mist sifted at the windows like a lace curtain, concealing, revealing.
A fresh, sudden scent of chlorinated water almost seared their nostrils.
Their heads pulled back from this sensory assault, hands nearly separating as they coughed and gasped for breath, eyes blinking against instant, caustic tears.
A woman's moan was almost orgasmic. (Mynah, Temple suspected cynically.) A man made an anguished, throat-clearing bark,
Louie's growl was long, low and as deep as the darkness in his throat, sounding bla
ck-panther formidable. Temple was too shaken to make any noise.
Someone hiccoughed. Someone else sighed, softly, slowly.
The ghost?
Eyes still tear-blurred, Temple looked around. The form in the fireplace still shimmered there, as if a photograph had been superimposed over it, a grainy photo of an almost naked man with dark eyes and hair. He seemed bent over, like a dwarf. He seemed ... bound in metal cuffs and chains.
"Houdini!" Mynah screamed, rising yet not breaking the grip that had lasted until then. People were pulled upright in jerky motion: Electra, Crawford, D'Arlene Hendrix.
A silver slice of light flashed above them. Looking up, Temple saw something hovering over the table ... a mace from the display of arms hanging before the window-walls. How eerie to see something that must weigh twenty or more pounds floating like a heavy-metal fairy in midair.
Another weapon fell from its place suspended before the opposite wall, smashing into the nearest lighted sconce. That light vanished in a cascade of breaking glass. In the dimmed room, other weapons were flying across the chamber, dipping low over the table, flashing with glints of fugitive light.
A battle-ax came swooping soundlessly toward the seance table like some great metal hawk.
Though the circle of clasped hands never loosened, everyone ducked by instinct, and Agatha suddenly slumped face down on the table. D'Arlene, cowering in her own chair, reached out an arm to keep the unconscious woman from slipping to the floor. Next to them, only the white streak in Oscar Grant's dark hair was visible above the table edge while he took blatant cover.
Mynah Sigmund had not only sat again, but had laid her face and arms along the tabletop, watching the dancing blades as they swept past, ready to take cover if they menaced her flowing locks.
Electra just barely had her nose and crown of red hair above the table rim. Stoic William Kohler, oddly enough, had not moved.
Temple checked Crawford Buchanan next to D'Arlene and Agatha, but not even the top of his head was to be seen. She pulled her legs in closer to the chair, just in case. She herself, being small to begin with, didn't have far to go when she shrank in her chair, and so far the flying blades hadn't frightened her. She figured they were rigged on fish line to perform at certain intervals.
Louie, too, was not about to give up his possession of the table, even if the tableware seemed to be possessed and indulging in overkill. He crouched on the smooth wood, fur roughed into bat de-halo, tail lashing.
Temple, savvy magician's ex-squeeze that she was, remembered much too late where she should be looking: where the action wasn't.
There was one person, so to speak, who had really turned tail and run when the sword dance began.
No chain-dragging spirit still crouched in the fireplace.
Everyone had given up the ghost. Even the ghost.
Temple glanced at William Kohler again, suddenly worried about his oddly stiff posture and immobile, clammy hand still grasping hers. Could he have had some kind of attack?
In the dimness, his figure remained pressed upright against the back of the chair and his eye whites glistened. Temple was wondering if she really had to inch her fingers up his flaccid hand to feel for a pulse, when she realized that his eyes looked her way, frozen in that extreme sideways glance of disbelieving horror. They did blink while she watched. Once.
She let her own eyes stray in the direction that William Kohler gazed.
Temple realized then that Edwina Mayfair had buried her face in her arms to protect it, and that her gloved hand had pulled away so gently that Temple hadn't even noticed it. Still the circle was unbroken, for their fingertips connected as lightly as the life-giving (and life-taking) touch of God's and Adam's forefingers on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Above the stance table hung only the dimmed chandelier; nothing moved but a faint sparkle of fairy dust.
The weapons now hung motionless back at their posts, but before she called the all-clear, Temple wanted to rouse Edwina. The poor woman must have been terrified. Even in the dim light, Temple could see her disarray.
Edwina's gloved hands clutched together as if in prayer, and the unwieldy hat had sagged off her head, revealing ... the pale perfect circle of a bald spot.
Beyond her slumped form, Crawford Buchanan was emerging like a mole from his hole.
Following the direction of Temple's stare, he bent over Edwina, officious fingers searching for the bare wrist of the gloved hand that he had, presumably, held throughout the seance.
Temple retrieved the crumpled hat and veil ... to reveal a downed battle-ax lying beneath it.
"Lights!" Oscar Grant called. "Dammit! Someone turn on the lights!"
Crawford stepped back from Edwina and the battle-ax cheek by jowl with her face, dusting his hands on his jacket sides.
"She's dead," he announced in his always-funereal baritone. Then he frowned. "I think so.
Dead, for certain. Better film this."
Temple quickly replaced the hat and its tangle of veiling, now understanding its cosmetic purpose, as the camcorder's relentless bright light zoomed in.
Blinking again, this time from too much light, everyone studied the scene. Across the table Agatha was stirring awake with frequent sighs.
"What happened? Oh! Did Edwina faint too? Where are all the nasty knives?"
Temple's eyes were mesmerized by the battle-ax's sharp and shining blade. In the full sunlight of the camcorder, a wavering line of red rusted the metal's edge.
And something else macabre showed a steely grin for the television camera... the clumsy metal handcuffs that locked Edwina's black-gloved wrists together like a pair of particularly ugly vintage bracelets.
"What happened?" Agatha demanded as querulously as a child whom no adult will listen to.
"Houdini," Mynah answered absently for them all. "What happened? ... Houdini knows."
Chapter 15
Amateur Hour
You cannot imagine how surprised I am when I only do what I do best--get inside someplace where I am not supposed to be--and the supposed coal chute I stick my nose into turns out to be a slide to stardom.
Actually, the expression "slide" is too nice. It is really a drop, a ten-foot drop straight down to a bunch of bricks. Luckily, I instinctively execute my fabled feline twist in midair, which has been scientifically proven to save lives, and manage to enter standing, looking as if I were always Santa's little helper.
While the room is cooing over my spectacular entrance, I fade into the background and try to figure out what to do next.
I do not like the fog that is snaking around the premises. The occupants of the room seem much enchanted by it, but then they are an exotic lot, I see at first glance. Even my little doll looks more exotic than usual, but that is because she is attired in a gown that makes it look like she is peeking out from behind an azalea bush.
I am surprised to recognize an old opponent of mine. Crawford Buchanan. He is sitting at the table holding hands with some dame in a black hat that looks like it got caught on a mortuary trellis and brought most of it along for the ride. Then there is a white-hot witchy number in platinum-blond everything, a dude in black with hair Yanni might envy, a fat guy in the ever-popular black, a woman whose tail would be twitching if she had one, some bespectacled dude with no hair and the usual black, Miss Electra Lark in her usual Technicolor and a woman who looks like she should be hawking bug repellent in TV commercials.
While all present are debating my method of arrival and importance to the event under way, I sidle out of sight and look around some more.
There is something unnatural about the fog hugging the windows and ceiling and oozing all over the floor and table. It is white, like regular fog, and misty-murky, but something else bothers me. I sniff around, recognizing a scent that some of my kind go kit-crazy over, chlorine, the stuff they use to stink up swimming pools and spas, so as to keep the bacteria brigade from invading the neighborhood. If I am to sniff something sublime, it will be edible at least,
or perhaps a bit of primo nip obtained through purely legal channels. This here chemical trip is not my type of transportation, however, and it leaves me untransported.
Then I figure it out. The stuff is not just seen and sniffed, like most unknown substances, it is also heard. I realize now what has fluffed my tail all along: the slight hisssss the fog makes.
Reminds me of our reptile friends, who are not always lethal, but who have propensities. I believe in giving wide berth to anything with similar propensities, so I forget the fog and take to the high ground to get a better handle on what is happening here.
Well. You would think I had jumped on the middle of their beds during a private moment or something. It is not as if there is food on the table that I might take away. No, the wood surface is as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard, and I have been superpolite and careful to keep all my fighting equipment stowed below deck before I sailed in this direction.
I am still casing the room, so I look for alternate routes of ingress and egress, simply because I have so recently found myself out of luck on that score, and forced to accede to the assistance of a dust-ball of long-distance feline electricity.
In fact, I spot a bright light reflected in one of the dark windows and cringe by reflex. This has everyone at the table forgetting my unwanted presence and oohing and aahing about my superior psychic senses and how a Presence from Beyond must be imminent.
They turn out to be quite right, but it is the wrong Presence and it is from a Beyond that is not as far removed as they would hope.
What happens is the camera operator moves, along with the big bright light that everybody has come to take for granted, only the reflection in the window of the big bright light does not move, but remains a little bright light.
"We are not alone," the dead-white blonde announces, and she is unfortunately too correct.
I blink, and the little bright light winks back twice to my once.
As I feared, my guardian Birman is with me, or at least a little of this Tibetan Tinkerbell's Stardust is. Where she was when I was plunging down the dark throat of the chimney, I cannot say. Perhaps she was out getting her twinkle adjusted. I sometimes suspect her headlights of being set on "dim." No doubt communing with unseen realms saps the IQ.
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