“But he’s
lying
,” she said, agitated, aware that her voice was rising in a most unscientific way.
“Why would he do that?”
“Because that’s what he
does,
” Laurel said, with a definite feeling that things were spiraling out of control. “He’s a total manipulator.” She was also more than mildly unnerved that the one student who had grated on her from her very first days at Duke turned out to be their star test subject.
What are the chances?
The whole thing seemed orchestrated in some ominous way that she could not explain.
But she knew she was fighting a losing battle. There was no denying the scores, especially after Brendan tested Tyler again himself, and though Laurel was sure there was something they were not seeing about his test results, so far Tyler was the only one who came close to the kinds of scores they needed to replicate the Folger Experiment.
Like it or not, he was their best candidate.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Poltergeist mediums tend to be between the ages of ten and twenty years, with their abilities coinciding with the onset of puberty, which has led researchers such as Carrington and Fodor to hypothesize that poltergeist phenomena are the externalization of developing sex energy.
—Alaistair Leish,
The Lure of the Poltergeist
They had another.
A girl. Brendan had found her, and when he called Laurel in from the other lab room on his cell phone she could hear the subdued excitement in his voice, though he was trying to keep it neutral.
The girl was a sophomore, small, slim, and startlingly pretty, in both a catlike and doll-like way. Pale, pale skin, silky butter-colored hair, a small bow mouth, almond-shaped blue eyes, and a honeyed Southern accent. She was manicured and pedicured and waxed and plucked, and her embroidered camisole probably cost more than every piece of clothing Laurel had on. Laurel could see instantly that Brendan had worked his magic on her; the girl’s eyes followed him around like a starved feline stalking a canary.
“Dr. MacDonald, this is Katrina DeVore.”
“Hello, Katrina,” Laurel said. The girl looked her over, and her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak.
Brendan didn’t seem to notice the deliberate snub. He motioned Laurel over and showed her his clipboard, where he’d recorded results for five consecutive card runs. The girl had scored from twelve to fifteen hits on each test, significantly above chance. What’s more, her scores increased with each test, while generally a subject’s test scores tended to decline over time.
Laurel had been reading about this phenomenon in an article titled, “The Role of the Experimenter in the Successful Elicitation of Psi Results.” Dr. Rhine had believed that the kind of experimenter actually in contact with a subject was critical and that the experimenter’s personality was a determinative factor in the psi-testing environment. Rhine assumed that subjects were made, not born, and that it was the experimenter’s job to adequately prepare his subject for a psi test.
Laurel looked over Katrina’s personality inventories. Her PBS indicated she had strong traditional religious beliefs, and no belief whatsoever in aliens or extraordinary life forms—but she did answer ambiguously about anything psi-related: reading minds, predicting the future, movement of objects with the mind.
Laurel put down the clipboard. Brendan looked toward the girl, who instantly lit up under his attention. “Katrina, I’d like you to do a second run of tests with Dr. MacDonald.”
Katrina’s face turned sullen; it was clear to Laurel that she didn’t like that idea one bit. But she smiled sweetly and told Brendan, “Of course, Dr. Cody.”
Brendan left the room. Katrina perched with a ballerina-straight back in front of the card display, ignoring Laurel entirely as she sorted the cards with maddening slowness. Her dislike wasn’t merely obvious; it fairly rolled off her in waves. Laurel felt like a footservant.
When Katrina had finally made it through five sets of cards, Brendan came back in, and again, the blond girl lit up like a Christmas tree. “Can you wait outside for a moment, Katrina?”
Katrina shot daggers at Laurel with her eyes, and answered prettily, “Yes, Dr. Cody.”
Brendan reached eagerly for the envelopes to tally the results.
They were abysmal. She’d only managed to get one or two cards correct in each of the five runs.
“I don’t understand …” Brendan fretted.
“I guess she was more motivated with you,” Laurel said, keeping her voice even, while inwardly she rejoiced.
Dodged that bullet.
Brendan looked devastated. He slumped back in his chair, staring at the cards as if he could will a different set of results. Then suddenly something seemed to hit him, and he shot forward in his seat.
“Wait a minute. Chance is five cards per run.”
“Yes … ,” Laurel started, puzzled—and then it struck her what he meant.
“These results are
too
far below chance,” Brendan said triumphantly. “She was deliberately failing. She’s got control over this.”
Yes, and a massive grudge against me,
Laurel thought, unprofessionally, but she said nothing aloud. Not that Brendan would have noticed; he was already halfway to the door.
“Let’s try the dice tests.”
He practically bolted to the door and ushered Katrina back in, beaming. “How did I do, Professor Cody?” she asked guilelessly, managing not to look at Laurel.
“Very interesting, Katrina. Very interesting, indeed. I’d like to try another type of test, if you’re up for it.”
The dice machines tested ability to influence the fall of a set of dice. The dice were shaken mechanically, in a revolving Lucite tube, and the test subject was to concentrate on the dice and attempt to make the dice fall as sevens, or snake eyes.
With Brendan’s encouraging presence, Katrina displayed a dramatic concentration on the machine, and the resulting falls of the dice were impressive, 31 percent above chance.
At one point Brendan stepped close to Laurel to murmur into her ear, “I think we’re in business.”
Laurel saw Katrina’s face cloud, and at that moment, the slowly rotating dice machine suddenly went wild, flipping crazily around on its stand.
Laurel stared in shock.
Did that really just happen?
“Whoa!” Brendan leaped to shut off the machine as Katrina cowered back, wide-eyed. “Sorry about that. What can I say—they’re fifty years old …”
Katrina slid an oblique look at Laurel and Laurel wondered if they weren’t taking on more than they could handle.
They finally dismissed Katrina, who tendered Laurel another malevolent glare at as she left.
Brendan turned to Laurel and he didn’t have to speak. They had tested over five hundred students in three weeks, and there was no one besides Tyler who was even close. And even Laurel felt a rush:
What are the chances that we’d find two so quickly?
Brendan leaned on the lab table. His eyes were alight. “I say we do it with just the two of them, if we can get them to agree. We can’t just keep running tests forever. And their scores really are exceptional.”
“What about controls?” Laurel countered.
“We’re the controls,” Brendan answered immediately.
“No, I meant—”
“So did I. Non-psi-gifted subjects. That’s us. I think we should keep this as small and controlled as we can. We add more people and we risk losing the quality of subjects.”
Now that the prospect of actually moving into the house was looming, Laurel found herself dragging her feet, metaphorically speaking. “How much do we tell them about the history of the house?”
“We definitely let them know that we’re going into a house that has a history of poltergeist activity. Absolutely.” He paced the room, planning. “Maybe we show them the police report to set up expectation. Otherwise …” he trailed off, turning to her, “otherwise, I think we say as little as possible, at least at first. Let them pick up on the history—or not.”
Laurel opened her mouth to protest and he cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say. I know you have doubts. But Mickey—one week. Just a few days even. Even just walking through the house with those two. At the slightest hint of anything dangerous we’re out of there, I swear to you.”
He picked up Katrina’s and Tyler’s test scores. “But with subjects like this—how can we not at least try?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
There was always an odd feeling to Laurel about having just one or two students in a classroom, and it was even more odd to have two professors to two students; there was something almost illicitly intimate about it. Tyler slouched at his desk, openly checking Katrina out. Katrina sat straight in her chair, as if on another plane, pointedly ignoring him. No one was fooling anyone: There was an energy about these two that made the atmosphere fairly crackle. The sun slanted through the leaded windowpanes and flame trees were in full color just outside, blazing the red of a molten sunset and adding to the charge of the atmosphere.
Brendan clapped his hands together in a jolly, archaic gesture. “Well. First of all, thank you for the time you’re already put into this project. Your contributions have been very helpful.” He glanced at Laurel. “In fact, you were our high scorers.”
Laurel watched as the two students absorbed this. Katrina blinked rapidly. Tyler looked at Katrina, then at Laurel, speculatively. She had the feeling that he was assessing something about her, and trying to position himself to use it.
“So we’re psychic, that’s what you’re saying?” Tyler finally drawled.
Laurel answered evenly. “What we can say quantifiably is that you both scored significantly above chance in your forced-choice testing. That was the laboratory definition Rhine used for ESP abilities, and that’s the definition we’re using for the purposes of this study.”
Again, Brendan looked to Laurel. “There’s another project we have in mind that we’re interested in using you for, if you agree. It would be full-time for three weeks, full work-study pay—or credit for a full five units.”
That last clearly got Tyler’s attention. “A whole class credit for three weeks? What’s the catch?”
“The project involves moving into a house that has a history of psi activity.”
“You mean, it’s haunted?” Katrina asked, with her honeyed drawl.
She’s not as detached as she looks,
Laurel realized.
“There have been various reports to that effect,” Brendan answered. “In 1965, a team of researchers conducted an investigation into a local house where there had been reported poltergeist activity. We’ve obtained a lease on the house and are planning our own investigation into it. We would be replicating the investigation that the parapsychology team conducted in 1965.”
“Just us?” Tyler suddenly asked. He looked at Laurel as he said it. Katrina was looking at Brendan.
“Your test scores show that you are uniquely qualified—”
“Uniquely qualified, huh? The two of us.” Tyler gave Katrina a sizzling look. The girl turned away, flipping her hair back in annoyance, but there were high spots of color in her cheeks. Tyler turned those eyes back to Laurel. “So we’re going to go ghost hunting for a full class credit?” He laughed, a rich, lazy sound. “Oh, I am so in.”
Brendan looked to the blond girl. “Katrina?” She looked up at him and her cornflower eyes were rather unfocused, as if she were in some kind of trance. “If you need some time to think about it, you don’t have to decide tonight—”
“Yes, I’ll do it, Professor Cody,” she said abruptly, her eyes very blue in her pale face. The subtext was patently obvious:
“I’ll do it for you.”
“Excellent!” Brendan enthused. “We’ll be starting right away. We’ll arrange academic extensions in your other classes, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on classes… .”
As Brendan continued, Laurel looked at the two students, fairly brimming with hormones.
This is seven kinds of trouble,
she thought grimly.
But she had to admit, Brendan wasn’t stupid. If there was any truth to the theory that poltergeists were a by-product of unharnessed adolescent sexuality, they were in business.
Laurel walked across campus to the tolling of the carillon bells in the clock tower of the chapel. The setting sun blazed through a yellow tree above her, momentarily changing the fading light to gold. Her emotions were in turmoil, running from exhilaration to deep anxiety. They had two students in their care now, and it was all feeling uneasily real. Could they be taking their young charges into danger?
That’s silly,
she told herself.
Outside of the movies, who ever heard of a ghost killing anyone? As far as that goes, we don’t even know if anyone ever died in the house.
Her extensive searches of the Internet and library records, and a call to the Historical Society, had revealed no more information about the deaths of Caroline and Paul Folger than they already had: per a terse obituary in the Five Oaks
Courier,
Caroline Folger had died at home in 1965, and there was no record whatsoever of Paul Folger’s death, or even any record at all of him after an announcement of his being deployed to Germany in the summer of 1944. As far as the record was concerned, he may have died overseas.
Laurel had reached the arched walkway beside the Chapel and was headed for the stairs down to the faculty parking lot when the sun suddenly dipped down behind the spires of the chapel, plunging the yard into shadows. Buildings loomed on all sides, Gothic and timeless; the silhouettes of gargoyles perched on the turrets, looking down. Laurel felt the chill of night, and suddenly her exhilaration dissolved to fear.
What had she been thinking? It was madness, all of it.
We have to cancel this now, before it goes any further.
She turned on the brick path and walked briskly back toward the Psych building.
Laurel never liked being in campus buildings after hours; there were too many shadows, too many halls down which any sort of predator might lurk. The Psych Building seemed completely deserted; there was no sense of anyone left in the building, and in all corridors except for the central hall, the lights had already been dimmed to half-power. Her footsteps sounded hollow in the halls, and she could already see ahead of her that the lab they had been using was dark, the door shut and locked. So she’d missed him.