THE POWER OF THREE

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Linda waited until she saw the car pull into the street and that it had disappeared down the tree-lined avenue. Only then did she face the door and insert the key to unlock it.

  She had been here before. The realtor hadn't recognized her, not her face or her name. The tragedy that happened in this house was in the dim past when Linda was just six years old. Now she was sixty and she had finally come back to confront what evil lay in the rooms beyond the door.

  The gloom reached out as she stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind her. She stood a moment feeling how the house moved, as if a shiver had gone through the floorboards and walls and ceilings. "Yes, I'm back for you," she said out loud.

  When she was six, she had a room up the stairs on the second floor. Her parents occupied a room down the hall. She had known for as long as she understood her surroundings, which might have been around age three, that the house was alive. Monstrously alive. She had no words to explain it to her parents and wondered at how they didn't know. Only by age six did she even realize she was the only one keyed into the notion that the house was evil. That the house was sentient. That it had thoughts and perpetuated crimes.

  She had been the one to discover her parents' bodies. Harper and Livy Broderick lay in their bed bludgeoned to death, their faces destroyed, their skulls shattered, their brains lying on the pillows like gray clots of wormy matter. Linda had run screaming from the house and had never been back.

  Until now.

  It had taken her fifty-four years. After being orphaned and taken by her mother's sister across country, she grew up with her aunt in Palo Alto, California. After an unremarkable childhood, she had gone on to the university at Berkeley where she secured a bright future for herself in psychology. She taught freshmen their first psychology courses, snagged tenure, and lived a quiet life. She had never married, owned no pets, and claimed few friends beyond faculty members. It was her inner life that teemed with energy and curiosity that kept her anchored in the world.

  Since childhood she had been psychic. No one knew; no one even suspected. She had been born with the gift. That was why she had known about the house and how it breathed, how it possessed malevolent desires. After her parents were murdered--by the house--though no one believed it--the gift grew exponentially. She began reading her Aunt Helen's every thought and thankfully they were kind and forgiving thoughts so that Linda felt safe in her care. In awe of this new experience, playing with it as she might a new toy, she began to reach out with her mind and read her teachers' thoughts, the thoughts and intents of her classmates, even the thoughts of strangers. She could turn the gift on and off or she thought she might have gone mad with all the streams of thoughts like a million light ribbons streaming toward her night and day from every living creature she encountered. She would slam the door of her mind. That's how she envisioned it--a slamming of a door. When she did that, people were as opaque as dirty dishwater. When she opened the door again, she could read them.

  This gift gave her a leg up on the students in grade school, high school, and college. She graduated early and entered Berkeley by the time she was sixteen.

  She didn't really use the gift to cheat her way through life or to do anyone harm. She knew instinctively that if she were to use it in self-interest or against another, it might vanish. She wasn't sure of that because she'd never tried it, but in some way she just knew. Not that she wasn't tempted. She once wrote down a list of all the ways she could use her ability to make money, interfere in people's lives, and get herself promoted to powerful positions. In the end, she couldn't do it.

  The Idea came to her in her twenties once she had gotten her degrees and was hired on at Berkeley as an assistant psychology professor. The Idea gave her life meaning. It drove her. She had been haunted by the loss of her parents all of her life, and although she knew it had to do with the house they lived in, she didn't know what she might do about it. Then the Idea came to her that she might expand her supernatural ability beyond reading minds in a psychic way to reading the minds of that which was not human.

  She wanted to read animals. Inanimate objects. She wanted to read the world and what comprised it--the earth itself. If she could train herself to do that, she could certainly read a house. The house that sat at 2242 Maycroft in Hayden, Alabama.

  Questions ate at her for years, for decades. Why had the house killed her parents? Why had it not killed her, too? How could a house be as alive as people who walked the earth? How was it a repository of such hate that it could reach out and take the lives of the innocent?

  Being a psychology professor, Linda realized her gift and her goal to read other than human beings, must remain a secret. She could not tell anyone, ever. Psychology was a science and science did not allow for mumbo-jumbo, for ghosts and shadows that walked, for houses that could rise up and strike down a married couple sleeping peacefully in their bed.

  The first inkling Linda had that she might be able to read an animal was when she was on a day trip to the zoo. It was a brilliant spring day and she hadn't anything else to do on that Saturday. She meandered down shaded lanes past giraffes and elephants, through the snake house, past the bird sanctuary. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers. She thought about getting something to eat at one of the little food carts scattered throughout the zoo--maybe a hot dog...and cotton candy. She came upon the gorilla exhibit where a Silverback lived with his harem of females. He was outside of the man-made caverns this day, reclining like a majestic god on a slick, brown slab of rock. Linda stood at the guard rail fence, pondering his great wide chest, his beautiful human-like hands, and the fine intelligent brow. She wondered what he was thinking...

  I hate you like all the rest. You're not so different, woman.

  She came upright, her spine stiffening, and frowned. Had she really heard him say that to her? She inclined her head, staring hard at the gorilla's face. Are you talking to me?

  Who else? How many of you do you think can read my mind?You're the first. Fancy that.

  What she had hoped one day to be able to do had happened without her even trying. She was so stunned her mind emptied and she was wordless.

  What do you want to know, what's your game, woman? he asked.

  Linda leaned a bit over the fence and projected her thoughts to him. Are all of you as intelligent and self-aware as you?

  The gorilla swiped with one large hand at flies trying to light on his face. He turned his head from her and stared at a wall of the near cave as if bored and woefully unimpressed with the gaggle of humans who watched him. She thought he wasn't going to answer, or he hadn't heard her, or he refused to speak with her this way. She waited, leaning back now, glancing around at the few others who had gathered near the fence to stare at the Silverback.

  He turned his head again and stared straight at her. Of course we are, what a stupid question! You think I'm an advanced gorilla, that only I have a brain and can think for myself? You think men are the only creatures on this planet who has a soul, a will, and a life plan? Then you are as deluded as all the others, the silent ones.Then he made a dismissive sound that echoed in her head.

  Linda spent hours at the gorilla exhibit that day. She and the Silverback had long, philosophical, stunning conversations about the nature of the world and the place animals had in it.

  At home again she fell exhausted in the easy chair in her living room, the afternoon light leaking through the drawn drapes to fall across her legs. She was too tired to even turn on a lamp, much less go to the kitchen to rumble through the cupboards to find something for dinner. She had never searched out the food carts at the zoo. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. There were so many more important considerations. Such as...

  ...her place in the world as a human being had been usurped. She had often thought, looking at a dog or cat or squirrel or cow that those creatures must dream and have yearnings. That they must feel some of the same emotions as humans. That they couldn't be as dull and empty as outer space.


  Now she had proof. She was not mad, that never entered her mind for a moment. The gorilla really had talked with her--for hours. She didn't have voices loose and floating through her mind like a schizophrenic. She was an educated woman who had read the thoughts of others since childhood. She knew a sentient being when she met one.

  After that, she practiced speaking with other animals. She found a lizard sunning itself on her porch one day and crept up on it, careful not to frighten it away. She projected her thoughts as hard as she could--Are you there? Do you hear me?--then waited.

  Two minutes passed. Three. Just as she was about to abandon the exercise, the lizard slid out its neck until it looked to be holding a coin inside, the skin there changing to muddy red, and it said to her, What do you care? You're not the cat.

  Linda laughed. You're not the cat, it had said! So the animal kingdom also possessed wit and humor.

  She spent just a few minutes communicating with the lizard before it sped off, climbing quickly down the porch post to the ground and disappearing without a word.

  For the next year she practiced all the time. She visited the zoo often, communing with birds, animals, and reptiles. Some species were brighter and smarter than others. Some refused to engage, grunting at her in disdain. Others laughed at her while nearby zoo patrons looked on, hearing nothing but squeals and growls and huffing.

  One day a student happened by Linda's house in Palo Alto, walking a large spotted mixed breed dog on a leash. Linda was in the yard planting gladiola bulbs.

  "Hey, Ms Broderick!"

  Linda swiveled from where she was hunched over the gladiola bed and put a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. "Hello, Justina."

  The student strolled up the sidewalk, the dog at her side. "I've been working on that essay you gave us to do. The research I'm finding on it is amazing."

  Linda put down the trowel and bag of bulbs. She rose, dusting off her gloves before removing them. Suddenly a thought slammed into her brain. I hate this bitch and I'm going to EAT her first chance I get!

  Linda's head came up, her eyes widening. She looked down at the dog. "What kind of dog is that?"

  "Oh," Justina reached down to pet the dog's head. "He's just a Heinz 57, all mixed up, you know. I found him sniffing around my back door, hungry and lost, so I adopted him. I named him Spoof." The girl grinned. She was not Linda's brightest student, but it hadn't seemed there was anything about her that would make a dog hate her so much. Maybe she should get into her head...

  "Do you have a dog?" the girl asked.

  Linda answered no automatically, and put herself on autopilot as she and the girl held a conversation about pets and psychology and the essay she had assigned the class.

  Inside Justina's head Linda could find nothing too desperately ugly or diseased. She was a poor student as far as grades went, but she was earnest and tried hard. She had dreams of teaching the same courses as her professor. (She wouldn't make it.) She liked a young man who was using her for sex. (Weren't they all?) She loved the little dog called Spoof who sat patiently at her feet. (That wanted to kill her.)

  Linda turned her attention to the dog. What's up with you? Why do you want to hurt his girl who has saved your life?

  It didn't take long, merely seconds, to understand the mutt was damaged. The brain in its skull had taken blows, probably from a past master, and it hated all humans, each and every one. It was biding its time until ready to snap and to thrust its long snout forward to clamp down on Justina's throat.

  "Justina."

  The girl stopped talking at the interruption. "Yes?"

  "Have you taken your dog to the vet yet?"

  "For shots, yeah. Why?"

  "Take it back to the veterinarian and ask for a scan of your dog's brain. They can do that for you, find out if its had any...well, damage done to it."

  "But why would I do that?"

  Linda took her wallet from out of the back pocket of her jeans. She had needed it when she went to the store for the gladioli. "Here," she whipped out a hundred dollar bill. "It's on me. I insist you take it and have the scan done. I have a feeling something's wrong with...Spoof."

  "Gee, you don't have to do that, Ms Broderick..."

  "Oh, yes, I do. I've seen dogs like this before, wanderers, stray dogs, dogs that have been abused by former owners. Sometimes they have problems and it would be best to know, wouldn't it? Now take this and go today. Go back to your vet."

  Justina looked uncertain, but took the money. "I guess I'll do it, if you insist. Gosh."

  The dog glared up at her. She wanted to tell it something that would help take away the hatred, but she knew nothing she said to it was going to work. This dog wanted to kill something and if it got the chance, it was Justina it would kill--or die trying.

  As the semester droned on, Linda was happy to see Justina in class, alive, well, being her average energetic self. She was stopped by her a week after the dog incident and told how Justina had taken the dog to the vet's office. She had the scan done. They had told her the dog had a tumor nearly half the size of the brain and the best thing to do was put it to sleep. She gave in since the vet left her no alternative.

  Then, in the telling of this, Justina burst into tears and gave Linda a look. In her mind she thought, It's your fault! He could have died at home with me if he was going to die. You made me take him to the vet. My poor poor Spoofy...

  Linda felt it was better the girl held a grudge against her than to lose her young life on account of a defective animal.

  Over the years, Linda performed these minor miracles that saved both human and animal. Being thus busy with her teaching, the writing of her papers to be published in psychology periodicals, and marveling at how she could find ways to intervene between Fate and the Dark Void, time flew by on gilded wings. It seemed to Linda that not one New Year's Eve was over before another one found her at a faculty party blowing silly horns and throwing confetti into the air.

  Still she worked on the third level of her gift. She could read humans when she wanted--though she did not always want to and kept the door of her mind shut against it more and more often. She could read animals, but reading them made her so gloomy over their plight that she had become vegan, gave money to animal shelters and animal causes, and was wracked with guilt over how her own species felt so superior to the rest of God's creatures on the planet. She shied away finally from interacting with the animal world whenever possible.

  Now she must find a way to communicate with things, with objects. Because never far from her mind was the house in Hayden, Alabama. The house that lived. That had thoughts and created maelstroms and took lives on a whim just because it could. Some days she fantasized taking a trip to Alabama and sneaking up on the house and setting it on fire. She could burn the bastard to the ground.

  If she did that, however, she would never know the truth. The reason behind murder. The face of the evil that lurked within those walls. She would never know the monster who took her parents and changed her life forever.

  And she could not return to discover those mysteries until she could perfect her gift--if it could be perfected any further--to commune with all things, even those not thought of as sentient or having mind.

  Being not only a teacher, but a student of the sciences, Linda had a scattering of knowledge about the universe and the matter that made it up. Stephen Hawking had once postulated the matter swirling around the edge of black holes disappeared. Other physicists disputed him, claiming that of course matter could not disappear! Nothing could ever completely disappear--go from being real matter to a state of...nothing. Matter might transmute, it might become energy, but it did not, no, it did not disappear. For twenty years Hawking stubbornly held onto his theory and even had a mathematical equation that proved it.

  Yet after mulling the problem over of disappearing matter, Hawking himself finally came up with a different theory and a different equation. At a conference of his peers he admitted he had been wrong. He h
ad now solved the problem of disappearing matter. It didn't really disappear! He thought now that it winked out of this universe and appeared in another, for there were parallel universes, they all knew that. It was still matter; it just lived somewhere else. And although it seemed it had disappeared, it hadn't at all. Voila! Problem solved.

  His peers were amused. Again, they were not going to take him seriously. It was a ridiculous idea and they just weren't going to have anything to do with it.

  Linda did not know whether Hawking had it right yet or not. What she did know, that Hawking and all the other physicists did not know, was that matter probably was not just inert molecules and atoms. She knew the atoms in tables and chairs, bricks and mortar and...houses... was made of the very same stuff as she was, as everyone and everything was made of. At the base level, molecules were just that--molecules and no more. Taken together they formed the aging Linda Broderick, the people on the street, the cars they drove, the buildings where they worked. It made up the trees and the sea, the earth itself. Take an atom from a tree and at the very microscopic level of it, that molecule was no different from the one in a single strand of Linda's hair.

  She couldn't prove to others or write a paper with sure evidence that matter, other than what made up living things, might be alive. Possess mind. And intent. Except for the house in Hayden, Alabama. That was the proof, to her, that things lived, that objects had intelligent force, that houses could harbor hate and then kill because of it.

  If the house that killed her parents could think, then all things could think. Or were they merely moved by some other intelligence?

  These puzzling questions kept after her over the years and through all her trials trying to find a way to speak with so-called non-living matter.

  Her breakthrough came in her fifty-eighth year and it came out of the blue without her forcing it the way it had happened with the gorilla at the zoo.

  The walls of her house in Palo Alto began to weep.

  She was sleeping, dreaming of standing naked in her classroom before a group of thirty students. She was mortified and woke herself up feeling startled and ashamed. Naked? Her old wrinkled ass standing before God and heaven for all to see? She was so glad it had been a nightmare.