Shivers (11 page)

Dr. Emily Jannings was another young person on the staff, and her specialties were divided. She would occasionally assist Thorne in his ESP research, but her main thrust was toward the more physical manifestations of brain power. Mind over matter, for instance. Thorne would test a person’s ability to pick up thought waves from another room, while Emily would see if—and to what degree—someone could use their mental abilities to make an object move.

Thorne decided to speak with Emily because he was closer to her than to anyone else on the staff, and because he respected her opinion over everyone’s. There might be others who were more knowledgeable, perhaps, but none who had her warmth and sympathy and understanding. She would listen with her heart as well as her mind.

He approached her office, hoping she was free at this hour, free long enough for them to discuss the matter in detail. He turned into the small room where Emily sat looking over some papers.

Eric rapped once on the open wood door. “Mind if I disturb you?”

“Eric! Come in,” she said brightly, putting the papers together and placing them on top of a pile in the corner of the desk. “What can I do for you?” She. was in her late thirties, with wavy brown hair cut short and curving away on either side of her forehead. Her eyes were light blue. She had a long graceful neck, and a pretty face with soft features and high cheekbones. She had a preference for dark suits; this afternoon was no exception. She handed Eric her pack of cigarettes as he spoke.

“I’d like to talk to you about something that happened to me last night. Something disturbing.” He declined her offer of a smoke, but lit hers with his lighter.

“Thank you,” she said. “Well, what happened exactly?”

“I believe it was either a psychic attack, or I accidentally—or purposefully, I should say— tapped into someone else’s thoughts. Or someone else’s reality. I’m not sure which.”

“Well, that’s not altogether unusual for you, Eric. Although I must say, this business about psychic
attacks
does sound interesting.”

“I wish that’s all it was. Interesting. Actually, the experience put me into a severe mental state —left me drained and panicky—and quite frightened the wits out of me.”

“You’d better go over it. In detail,” Emily said. He did.

By the time he was finished relating the events of the evening, Emily had started her third cigarette. She always smoked rapidly when something particularly intrigued her.

“And you think that the ‘nightmare’ you had last evening was somehow related to the drunk who approached you at the subway?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it,” Eric replied. “The feelings I had were the same. The images I saw were similar.”

“But it wasn’t until
after
you went to bed that you saw anything especially . . . coherent?”

“That’s true. I only picked up random bits and pieces from the derelict’s mind, but they were the same as the bits and pieces I saw later at home in bed when I began to relax. Then I began to let the images
saturate
my mind so that I could see a clearer, yet more complex, picture.”

“What’s your explanation for it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t believe the drunkard was behind it all. It was all he could do to keep himself alive. If he
is
alive. At this point, who can tell?”

“Do you think someone deliberately fed you those images,
wanted
you to see what you saw?”

“No. No, I realize now that that wasn’t the case. I would have had an easier time of it, for one thing. Even if I had been picking up the thoughts of someone who was unaware of my existence, it still wouldn’t have been quite so hard to get a
fix.
No, I think instead that I tapped into an uncommonly powerful mental force or forces. Frighteningly powerful. I was susceptible because I had been thinking about the derelict all night, and I’m sure that what I saw had something to do with him. His mind, as insane as it was, was still very strong.”

“Was it his mind you ‘encountered?’ Someone’s nearby? A neighbor’s, perhaps?”

“If the images had come from nearby, there would have been a residue, a presence, all about me in the morning. Besides, I would have known by now if another sensitive lived in my building.”

“It’s a big building.”

He tapped his head playfully with his index finger. “I’ve got a big mind.”

She laughed and got up from the seat. “Let me get us some coffee and we’ll talk about this some more. I’ll only be a moment.”

“Fine. I could use a cup.”

She returned five minutes later with two cups and some packets of sugar. They each finished preparing their coffee, then returned to the subject at hand.

“Well,” Emily said cheerfully, “now that we’ve determined the cause, let’s discuss the effect. You suffered extreme paranoia, depression, abject loneliness, claustrophobia . . . let’s see, did I leave anything out?”

“Yes. I subjected myself to an old western. Something I’d never do if I was in my right mind.”

She giggled. “I
love
westerns. But to each his own. You craved companionship. You felt that the four walls were closing in on you. That the bathroom would devour you if you stepped inside. Trapped. Enclosed. Like inside a mouth.”

He swallowed the coffee and nodded. “Yes. A singularly unpleasant sensation, I assure you.”

“No doubt. Your feelings of terror started to subside only when you turned on the TV?”

Eric placed his hand on his cheek, trying to remember. “Yes. No—it was earlier, my blue bedroom. I couldn’t stand anything dark or bright. The terror changed into a fear—of those extremes in color, or tight, cramped spaces. Then, I became horribly depressed. I felt pathetic, sad about my lot in life.”

“We all get that way sometimes.”

“Yes. Yes, we do. But this was intense. Remarkably intense. Not brought on by anything in particular.”

“Subconscious memories of the images you saw. People crying out. Herded together in pain.”

“Yes. That could be it. It had to be unconscious, though, because at that time, I wasn’t even thinking about what I’d seen in the trance.”

“And to counteract the despair, the emptiness, you turned on the TV.”

“Yes.” He was excited now, hoping that together they could help him understand his ordeal.

“And there was no more terror.”

“No. Except for one moment.”

“When? When did it happen?”

“I—I can’t remember.”

“Try. It could be important.”

“I—uh. I can’t. Yes. Yes, now I remember. It was when I first turned on the TV set. But it went away as soon as the picture came in.”

“You mean it happened right after you switched on the set, right before there was any picture?”

“Yes. No. I mean it happened just as the picture came in. I think. Then it went away. For good.”

“Hmmm. Interesting. Blackness and then harsh, bright white light.”

“What’s that?”

“What you told me you saw during your trance. Darkness, through an aperture. Then a rectangle of light getting larger and larger.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, when you turn on a set, you’re looking at a sort of window. At first it’s dark, and then the picture comes in. A flash of light, getting bigger and bigger on the screen.”

Eric sat back in the chair. “Yes. Exactly. That must have been a reaction to what I saw in the trance. Not really similar. But enough of a suggestion to recreate the fear I’d felt.”

“Well, that explains it. You just accidentally hooked up with someone’s TV reception, and with all the junk on the air these days, it’s no wonder you had a nightmare.”

Emily laughed. But Eric could only manage a weak smile. Talking with her had helped, but had brought him no closer to answering the questions that bothered him. But then, he hadn’t really thought it would.

They conversed a short while longer, of innocuous things, minor things, relating to the job and the people they worked with. Then Eric left, thanking Emily for her time.

He knew as he walked down the corridor toward his office that Emily had only been trying to make him feel better; she certainly hadn’t meant to laugh at his distress. Or had he communicated his distress eloquently enough? Whatever the case, he knew that he was far more worried about the past evening’s experience than he had let on to Emily.

And he truly dreaded dusk.

At a quarter past one that afternoon, Henry Judson was looking through a microscope in the police laboratory, his face constricted with mounting horror. During his five years with the department, he had analyzed poisonous chemicals, determined blood types, and studied samples of skin and hair. But he had never seen anything quite as bizarre as what he was seeing now. He removed the smeared slide from the microscope and placed it on the table beside it.

Then, he quickly jotted down some notes on a white pad, labeled the paper carefully, and took it down the hall to his superior’s office.

Ernest was taking a break, chatting by the water cooler with a young man and a middle-aged woman. Henry excused himself and asked Ernest if he could speak to him privately in his office. His superior complied.

Ernest lit one of his odorous cigars. “What is it, Henry? You don’t look so good.”

“Well, sir . . .” Henry said, hesitating. “I was analyzing a substance that was brought in after lunch.” He consulted his paper. “Sample 8IB. Unknown substance—uh—found on the wall of a hotel room.”

“Yes, I recall that. Looked something like jelly, right?”

“Yes. But it isn’t.”

“What did you find, Henry?”

“Well, sir—it seems to be a solidified mixture of blood plasma and cell tissue and . . . well, I isolated all its components, and it appears to be a jellied paste made of flesh, blood, and bone—and clothing fibers—all mashed together, somehow transformed into a gelatinous form. I can’t figure it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You mean, that stuff they scraped off the wall was from a human being?”

“I—I think it
is
a human being, somehow— compressed—into that jelly.”

“Let me take a look at this.” He reached over to his intercom and signaled his secretary. “Joan, I don’t want to be disturbed by anyone until I get back to you, is that clear? I’ll be in Lab 27.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, let’s take a look at this stuff.”

They walked out of the office and headed toward the lab.

It was way past two o’clock when Ernest had finished and compared his findings with Henry’s. “Both organic and inorganic material, that’s what threw me off,” he said. “But you were right. Absolutely right. It’s unbelievable. But what on earth could have turned a man into jelly like this?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Henry said, involuntarily shuddering.

Although Steven lived in an entirely different neighborhood, and the restaurant was around the corner from Harry’s apartment, Steven arrived at the place first. He sat at a table nursing a bloody mary and waited for his friend to show up.

He liked Harry, had known him practically his whole life—though he had to admit the man was a living anachronism. It would always be 1960 for Harry Faulkin. His whole irresponsible attitude toward life and women—or “broads” and “chicks,” as Harry called them—seemed to indicate arrested development. But for a man without any discernible talent—aside from bedmanship, to hear him talk—Harry had managed to go far.

He walked in half an hour late, mildly apologetic. “Stevie, my boy. Let’s get me a drink and get down to business.”

He ordered a martini, very dry, with a twist.

“Any new developments?” he asked Steven.

“Nothing. Harry—where can he
be?
This just isn’t like him.”

“My theory doesn’t sound promising, huh?”

“That he’s with some woman?” Steven paused, then figured he might as well go ahead and tell Harry about Vivian.

“I read about her, man,” Harry said a few moments later. “The gal that took it in the subway.
She
was your brother’s lady friend? No flies on that kid. You think her death and your brother’s disappearance are connected?”

“I don’t know what to think, Harry. Joey was just a kid looking for work and a little fun in the meantime. At least, that’s what I thought. Now I find out this ‘girl’ he’s seeing is a middle-aged widow, that she thinks he committed suicide— and then
she
falls in front of a train. There might be no connection at all. But it’s the only thing I have to go on.”

Harry was excited. “Look, Steve. You asked me last night if I could get Joey’s picture on the news. You didn’t tell me then he was shacking up with that dead woman. We covered Vivian Whatshername’s death on the program. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince somebody there’s a new angle here. Deaths, disappearances . . . sounds interesting already.”

Steven wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Do you know if Vivian’s death has been determined an accident, murder, or suicide yet?”

Harry shook his head. “Even the witnesses weren’t sure. It all happened so fast, I guess. You know how those things are. Anyway, if they cover the broad’s death on the news again tonight, maybe they can mention your brother’s disappearance, flash his picture, y’know? Got one handy?”

Steven took one out of his wallet. “Here.”

“Good. Let’s order. I’m starving. Relax, buddy. It’ll be okay. Has Harry ever let you down?”

Harry managed to make it to the studio only fifteen minutes late. He went into his dressing room and waited for the makeup lady to come and prepare him for the broadcast. In the meantime, he studied his copy.

While he was acquainted with basic techniques of meteorology, and knew what the terms that he used during his weather report meant, he was certainly no scientist. The facts about the upcoming weather were given to the news writers, typed up and spiced with snappy patter, and then handed to Faulkin for him to look over. There was no need for memorization, as everything he reported was written on cue cards that he could refer to from time to time. He was allowed to ad-lib in his own inimitable manner. But in spite of the fact that he did not actually predict the weather—scientifically or otherwise—he was still held accountable for it by his friends and coworkers. It was simply a tradition. Harass the weatherman when it rains, even if he was no more a weatherman than the entertainment reporter was a qualified critic.