Sticks and Stones

by Alexie Aaron

  Enos’s birdman stature filled the room. His pleasant looks masked the warrior he was groomed to be. He had received permission to work with PEEPs as a full-time investigator from his guardian Victor.

  Mia who was raising four birdman/human hybrids was the subject of scrutiny by the Brotherhood of the Wing. Soren, their leader, approved of having the young birdman there watching and protecting the family. Enos had embraced the position wholeheartedly and rarely left Mia’s side these days.

  Burt looked at his core group with satisfaction. The group grew and shrunk from time to time, but the basic members were present today. He appreciated that they were there to listen to him discuss poltergeists.

  “If everyone could have a seat,” Burt said.

  Enos sat down. Mia turned her chair towards Burt. Ted and Cid turned around from their consoles to give the elder investigator their full attention.

  “Thank you for coming in today. It has been a while since we’ve been able to sit together in a room for the sole purpose of education. As you know, I’ve been given a grant to further my study of the paranormal. As a PEEP, I have been logging our experiences, not only for the purpose of our cable show but for the benefit of studying the supernatural. We’ve seen a lot of strange things, dealt with entities we didn’t know existed, and comforted a lot of homeowners who were haunted by ghosts. But there is one area that I’ve purposely steered us away from, and that is poltergeists.”

  “Why?” Audrey asked.

  “It’s because most of the accounts are phony,” Mike said. “It’s the easiest haunt to fake. Toss a few stones at your sibling and claim the house is haunted with poltergeists.”

  “Historically, it’s true that many of the poltergeist infestations recorded were either found to have been faked or the results of the inquiries were never published. It seems, once the noisy beasts stopped playing with the homeowners, there was no real interest in continuing the investigation. I’d like to educate you all on what I’ve learned over the years and, if I may, give you my theories. Please share any of your own experiences if you have any.”

  The team looked at each other and there was silence.

  “Mike?”

  “I think the closest we came to what we thought were poltergeists were, in actuality, the ghosts of the autistic twins Erdmut and Garrit Hofmann,” Mike supplied.

  “I too would have bet the farm when we came in to investigate that we were dealing with poltergeists, and this is why. Poltergeists have similar paranormal abilities to ghosts…”

  “They’re vermin,” Murphy interrupted. “They have no soul. They were never people.”

  “He’s right,” Burt said. “We’ll get back to that in a moment.”

  Murphy nodded.

  “Forgive me if I start off using generalizations,” Burt said to Murphy. “We know that typical – and I use that word loosely – haunts fall into the following categories. Intelligent haunts, such as our friend Murphy and Jake. These ghosts we can have interactive communication with, and they are, for the most part, aware of their present environment. Residual haunts, which we have determined are echoes of the past. And poltergeists. Now, I know most groups would add demonic possession into the list. Some insist that shadow people exist, and there are a lot of accounts of elementals, such as fairies, elves, nymphs, gnomes, etc.”

  “No such things,” Murphy scoffed.

  “Still, we haven’t seen everything,” Mike piped up. “Who would have thought half the shit Mia dealt with was ever real?”

  “I’m not comfortable with demons being dumped in with ghosts. They are a race of living beings and not solely energy based,” Mia said.

  Burt’s eyes locked with hers a moment. She wasn’t challenging him; she was just making a point. “I agree with you. This is why I haven’t included them as things PEEPs take care of on the website. The only occurrences of elementals that I’ve seen with my own eyes were the dragons that the demons and witches control.”

  “You’re saying that PEEPs are concerned with just intelligent and residual haunts,” Enos clarified.

  “Until now, yes. Moving forward, I’d like us to look into poltergeists,” Burt said.

  “Why?” Mike asked.

  “I think we have three or four poltergeist-like haunts going on within a 500 square-mile area. It would be foolish to ignore the possibility of recording some hard evidence of the phenomenon to study after the occurrences die down.”

  “I’m game,” Mia said and put her feet up on the table.

  Burt knew this was a signal that she was settling in to listen to him.

  “That’s because you can see them coming,” Mike grumbled.

  “No, I can’t,” Mia corrected. “Murph, can you see them?”

  Murphy shook his head.

  “I can’t see them either,” Enos said. “There isn’t much that escapes my eyes, but if there are poltergeists, I’ve never seen one.”

  “I can’t believe it. We’re finally on a level playing field,” Mike said.

  “Guess so,” Mia said. “Now hush up and listen to Burt.”

  Burt was amused. Mike had stood on the rug of self-satisfaction for just seconds before Mia pulled it out from under him with her parental tone.

  He looked at Cid. “You may be the only one with an advantage here. You may be able to hear it, or them, coming.”

  “If that’s the case, maybe we could enhance the earcoms,” Cid suggested.

  Ted jotted down some notes.

  Burt waited until Ted was finished before starting. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about poltergeists. My first exposure was at a frat house at college. I think all but Audrey have met Scott Hogan. He’s the new history teacher at the high school. In college, he was very popular, and it wasn’t just because he was God’s gift to women and football.”

  Mia leaned over and whispered something into Audrey’s ear. This caused Audrey to giggle.

  Ted shook his finger at Mia. “No trading up.”

  “You’re at the top, Teddy Bear.”

  Mike groaned and Murphy shifted uncomfortably.

  “Moving on. Scott’s fraternity was experiencing the fourth stage of a poltergeist incursion when he sought me out. I think we had physics together. Anyway, I’m going to invite him to a mini meeting if you guys agree to continue with this project.”

  “Tell us about your experience,” Mia prompted.

  “At the time, I was under the misinformation that poltergeists were once living. I did achieve communication, but it was all lies. The situation climaxed with the poltergeist participating in a hazing, and then most of the activity fell off. I advised the group to be careful, always have hands on rails and look down before walking. Scott said, aside from a few missing items, they had few problems.”

  “I take it that there are stages to an incursion,” Enos said, liking the word incursion instead of infestation. Infestation made him think of bugs. Bugs made him think of the place he and his mother had to live.

  “According to my research - books, first accounts, and blogs – there are approximately eight stages. Jake, if you could post them on the screen, please.”

  Mia looked over and read aloud, “Beginnings, noises, moving small objects, apports and disapports…”

  “Obsolete words,” Cid said.

  “True,” Burt admitted. “But they are still used in paranormal reports.”

  Murphy looked confused.

  Mia felt sorry for him and put herself in the ignorant light and asked, “What do apport and disapport mean?”

  “It comes from Latin apportare which means to bring forth. Apport is when things materialize out of thin air. Disapport means when things disappear,” Cid explained.

  “Yum Yum can pull things out of thin air,” Mia said.

  “That’s different,” Burt explained. “She is being given the items from the ether by her spirit guides.”

  “But…”

  “She
has a soul. She is not a poltergeist,” Burt said firmly.

  “K. I’ll continue to read, carrying on from the ports… Communication, climax, decline, and endings. That’s all eight.”

  “You’ll notice that there is an escalation before all hell breaks loose. Then the events trail off until they cease completely,” Burt said.

  “So why bother dealing with them at all if they run a course?” Mike asked.

  “Study.”

  “Why study them?” Mike pushed.

  “For when they don’t run a course. For when they hurt the children of the families or destroy the houses. If we study them in relatively normal situations, we may be able to discern if they can be controlled or even destroyed.”

  Audrey raised her hand.

  “Yes, Audrey?”

  “I think that I was under the misapprehension that they are manifestations of teenage angst.”

  “That is the universal theory,” Burt acknowledged.

  “So, putting the kid into therapy and/or medicating them should stop the poltergeists,” Mike reasoned.

  “But it doesn’t, and they show up in homes without teenagers or even without children.”

  “Stress then,” Audrey said.

  “I think they feed off of stress, emotional outbursts, and angst.”

  “I’m confused,” Murphy admitted.

  “Burt, I’m new here, but can I make a suggestion?” Enos asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what your theory is about poltergeists?”

  Burt smiled. He pulled over a whiteboard, and at the top, he wrote the word virus. “I think that poltergeists are living organisms with a short lifespan. They are born in the emotional center of the brain and feed off the negative energy that an individual produces. I wouldn’t be surprised if they use the latent telekinetic abilities of the victim. They learn from the individual, and just like a virus, adapt to their host.”

  “How do you identify a poltergeist haunt?” Enos asked.

  Burt picked up his dry erase marker and started a list.

  Scratching like mice or rats in the walls.

  Rapping (knocking).

  “Poltergeist translates literally from German as knocking spirit,” Cid said.

  Burt wrote down throwing stones. He turned and said, “The stones aren’t thrown but dropped down vertically. Most of the stones don’t hurt when they hit. But they do damage property and break windows or, in one case, the ceiling of a greenhouse.”

  “Have you ever read Lithobolia?” Cid asked.

  “I did!” Mia said. “Altair has a copy in the library.”

  Mike turned to Mia. “When did you turn nerd?”

  “Reading isn’t nerdy,” Mia sniffed. “You’re one to talk with half a million romance books under your belt. Cid, tell the others about Lithobolia.”

  “It’s a 7,000-word account written by Richard Chamberlayne about a stone-throwing devil. This devil was supposedly being controlled by a witch in 1698. Lithobolia is sometimes used as a term for stones being thrown by invisible hands. The dictionaries never adopted it, but the paranormal world has used it in writing up poltergeist accounts.”

  “What happened?” Mike asked Mia.

  “Long story short, there was, according to the witness – the narrator of this tale – a prosperous farmer named George Walton who had obtained a portion of an old lady’s land, which according to her was stolen. She supposedly cursed him. Roughly, the curse was about him never having peace while living on that piece of land. Our witness had taken a room in Walton’s home while he was visiting New Hampshire from England. He writes the tale as a witness statement.”

  “It was a witness statement,” Cid said.

  “Do you want to tell this story?” Mia asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Maybe Mike would like to hear every pedantic detail.”

  “Sorry, go on.”

  “The tossing of stones starts. First, on the outside of the home while people stood around. There was very little damage at this time; I think a lad got bruised. The stones were of all sizes and seemed to come from the yard. The noise was more of a problem. It woke the witness, and he was there to see another onslaught of rocks thrown by what appeared to be no one. The stone-tossing entered the home. Again, the noise the stones made landing was more of an issue than any damage. The stones thrown at the windows, although bending the lead in many places, only broke one pane. This hole was filled by the very stone that broke it. It rested inside the hole as if it were fused with the glass.”

  Cid opened his mouth at Mia’s exaggeration but closed it again for the sake of their friendship.

  “Our witness was in his chamber when a large eight-pounder crashed through, opening his door. He brought it down to show the others but retained it as evidence of the happening. The large rock was found elsewhere without our witness moving it. Each time, he returned it to his room.”

  “Disapportment,” Murphy said.

  “Maybe,” Mia mused.

  “What happened next?” Mike prodded.

  “Well, it was music time in the Walton home. Our witness had no sooner touched his instrument when a large stone rolled into the room. Wait, I think I’m forgetting something…”

  “The spit in the kitchen,” Cid led.

  “Oh yes, thanks, Cid. The large spit, that they put meat on to roast, disappeared from the great fireplace one moment, and the next, they found it stabbed into the wood below with some force.”

  “You can see why this all seems like a poltergeist incursion. You have noises, throwing stones, appearing and disappearing rocks, and the spit,” Burt said.

  Mia waited until he had finished before she continued. “This is when there were other witnesses to deal with. A few, supposedly, saw an arm reach outside the home picking up rocks and chucking them back into the music room. When the place was searched, there wasn’t a person to be found. Poor George not only had to deal with the stoning of his home but, as he traveled, he ran into other misfortunes. He brought the stone problem with him into his son’s home. Inside the house, a cradle had half of a brick tossed into it seconds after the infant - I presume George’s grandchild - had been lifted out.”

  “Was it all stones?” Enos asked.

  “I think a boat plug was spirited away and the boat sunk. George Walton’s belt was stolen and other hijinks. The stoning escalated, and the witness was hit for the first time. He said it didn’t hurt much, as he was hit with the flat of the stone. Later, when it became chaos, he did complain of being hurt. The stoning grew from a light sprinkle to a deluge. The fields, where there were crops to harvest, and the house took a pounding. They heard strange noises and whistling during the onslaught. The fences were pulled down, releasing the cattle. People were now being hurt by the stones. Windows were broken, and the destruction added up. And then it did stop. The witness finished his account with some moralistic fodder. I think he cited the three Graces of all things.”

  “To give the man credit, he only insinuated that witchcraft was at the root of this, and that maybe old George was being punished for his greed,” Cid added.

  “I’d like to read this,” Audrey said.

  “I’ll fetch it after we’re finished,” Mia promised.

  “That was very enlightening,” Burt said. “I can see why lithobolia was linked with poltergeist activity.”

  “I think old George was guilty and his conscience got the better of him, and voilà, a poltergeist is born,” Mia said.

  “Developed,” Burt corrected. He turned and wrote more on the board, adding to his original list.

  Characteristics of a poltergeist incursion.

  Scratching like mice or rats in the walls.

  Rapping (knocking).

  Throwing stones – Lithobolia.

  No regard for clergy.

  Disembodied voices.

  Black cloud, no distinct form.

  Covers pulled from beds.
/>   Pulling of hair.

  They typically take place in people’s homes, not outside in lanes or woods.

  They need one person to focus on.

  If the poltergeist claims to be a person, they claim to either have been murdered or have led a sinful, taboo existence.

  Mia and Cid refrained from commenting until he was finished. Then they argued over whether or not the Lithobolia account was indeed a poltergeist haunt or not, considering Burt’s list.

  Burt saw that this argument could go on for some time. He cleared his voice and said, “I think we’ll take a break and digest what we’ve learned so far.”

  “I have snacks on the back counter,” Cid said absentmindedly. He was forming a point in his mind and was ready to use it when Burt stopped the meeting.

  Mia had already forgotten what they were arguing about. She was headed for the snacks.

  Mike took in this new dynamic between the competitive Cid and Mia and filed it away.

  Chapter Two

  Mia brought back a plate of sandwiches for Ted who was already working on a new earcom design. She slid into Cid’s vacated chair and waited for Ted to sense that she was there. After a few minutes, she sighed and got up.

  “I’m sorry,” Ted said, realizing. He pulled her down into his lap and hugged her. “My brain was on the hunt for a solution that wouldn’t prey upon the commercial earbuds.”

  “Maybe some new spy tech is brewing inside your bean,” Mia said, tapping his head. “Eat something and nourish that inner computer.”

  Ted did as she instructed and shoved half a sandwich in his mouth. When he was done chewing, he asked, “Are you and Cid alright?”

  “I think so, why?”

  “Your spirited conversation…”

  “Oh, you mean we were arguing,” Mia said. “Don’t worry, Ted, until one of us calls the other names, we’re good. I appreciate his sense of detail, and he hates my overexaggeration, but he understands my need for drama. It’s so great to talk with someone about stuff that doesn’t involve children, laundry, and grocery shopping. Believe it or not, deep down, tucked into a corner of my brain is a thinking human.”