She woke and did not know where she was, or who. She was very still in the dark, listening to the moving and scraping.
And something else … the piano. A single note, over and over, then dropping a third, then back to the original note.
She sat up and looked around her.
She was in the indistinct white room that she’d been in with Tyler during their testing. The Zener card table was there, and instead of Tyler, another young man sat in one of the chairs: broad shoulders, round and ruddy face, Carolina blue eyes … only she only sensed their blueness, because he and the whole room were in black and white; it had the faded, grainy quality of a newsreel. She stared at the young man.
I know him.
He reached to the table in front of him and picked up a card, a Zener card, and held it up so she could see: a card with a thick, black circle on it. He looked intently across the white room at her, holding the card …
She stared back at him.
So familiar, those eyes.
And she stared at the card, trying to glean the message …
A circle.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
She bolted up from sleep … to silence and grayness.
Who am I? Where is this? What year is this? What century is this?
Terror pulsed through her, instinctive, immediate.
She was not in the white room, but rather, on a sofa downstairs in the great room. The room was dim and there was no color in it; it had the faded, grainy black and white of a newsreel. There were lumps of sleeping shapes around her, and her skin started to crawl.
Who are they? Who am I? Which reality is this?
She forced herself to breathe, forced herself to focus on the objects around her. The computer monitors, with their smashed screens. The sophisticated control board. The black-and-white newsreel quality faded and she saw the room in dim color, in the present.
Brendan, Tyler, and Katrina slept on sofas and mattresses. Now Laurel remembered.
We brought the furniture in last night so we wouldn’t be sleeping alone.
She looked around at the arrangement of furniture and bodies. No sign of the young man from her dream.
God, it was real.
So much more real than anything else was feeling right now. She had to ride out another wave of disorientation, of displacement.
Outside the tall windows it was dark, not the dark of night but the deep gray of rain, which was what had leached the color out of the present. As she focused,
Laurel
focused, waking, she could hear the pounding and splashing of rain on the bricks outside, and the rumble of thunder in the sky.
She sat up and the blanket that was covering her slipped down, and something white fluttered to the floor. She looked down, and down.
It was a card, a white Zener card—with a thick black circle on it. An electric realization shot through her.
The card. He gave me the card.
The others woke, slowly. She watched them—saw their jittery jolts as they came into full consciousness and registered first where they were, and then began to remember what had transpired. Each of them looked up to the ceiling, then to the walls, where the paintings still hung upside down as in a surrealist exhibit.
They all looked around, and no one said a word.
They sat around the dining-room table, with the dark paneling and the tall glass windows around them. They were in a bubble. Laurel knew that there was a garden outside, that there was air and sky and trees and a road, but the thought of going outside didn’t even occur to her, and it had nothing to do with the heavy and dismal pour of rain.
Brendan had set up a wide white board on the mantel of the fireplace, turning the room into a parody of a classroom. Laurel was reeling from the absurdity at the same time that she was finding comfort in the familiarity, the attempt at order.
She was so shaky, her whole body trembling … her whole sense of reality shattered, really. Nothing she thought was real was real.
But there was no thought of leaving anymore—none whatsoever. She felt as if she were part of the house, as if she had always been part of the house. It was in her blood. No one else seemed to have any intention of moving, either.
“So today,” Brendan said. “We need a game plan.”
“A game plan,” Tyler snorted, though without anywhere near his usual panache. “It’s not our show, though, right? We wait and see what it decides to do.”
“On one level,” Brendan agreed, and his voice was even, but Laurel had the fleeting thought that he could have killed Tyler in that instant, and an accompanying thought that that was not good. “But we can also analyze what happened yesterday, and I think we should. Let’s first review the major theories of poltergeists.”
He picked up a red marker and went to the white board. Katrina sat, straight-backed, with her hands primly folded in her lap, the perfect teacher’s pet. “Anyone?” Brendan said, lifting his eyebrows.
“A noisy ghost,” Katrina said promptly.
“Excellent,” Brendan beamed, as if this were kindergarten, and wrote the phrase at the top of the board.
1. A noisy ghost.
“What else?” he demanded.
Slumped in his chair, Tyler shrugged listlessly. “A particular aspect of a traditional haunting.”
“Which aspect?” Brendan asked, and waited, marker poised upon the board.
“A particularly kinetic aspect,” Tyler shot back, and Brendan turned to look at him.
“Good answer, Mr. Mountford.” Brendan wrote it down as number 2:
2. Kinetic aspect of traditional haunting
—and turned back to the room. “What else?”
“An imprint of a violent emotion on a place,” Katrina volunteered. Her eyes were shining, her lips full and wet.
“Yes, good.” Brendan wrote it down.
“We also have the agent theory,” Tyler said, his voice dripping with innuendo. “The repressed emotions of an adolescent …”—his eyes slid toward Katrina—“girl, gone wild and manifesting externally.” Katrina kicked out at him from underneath the table. But Laurel noticed their sparring was forced, it lacked any kind of energy or conviction.
Brendan was already busy writing on the white board.
3. Agent
“And fraud,” Laurel said suddenly. “Let’s not forget fraud.” She looked at Brendan, and saw his face tighten. “A proven factor in many cases,” she added, holding his gaze. She didn’t even know why she was saying it—it wasn’t what she believed. After yesterday she didn’t even know what she believed anymore, but it was what she was compelled to say, and it was out.
Brendan turned stiffly to the board and wrote,
4. Fraud.
“Anything else?” he asked, and there was a touch of fury in his voice.
To Laurel’s surprise, Tyler spoke again. “ ‘A dynamic between the percipients and the house,’ ” he said, and Laurel realized he was quoting from the Leish article. “The Poltergeist Effect.”
“Yes,” said Brendan slowly, and wrote on the board. “Anything else?”
“Something else,” Katrina said quietly, and Laurel felt a chill. “Something else entirely.”
“Like what?” Brendan said, but without as much force as before.
“Entities,” Katrina said after a moment. “Something … extradimensional. Just something
else
.”
There was a silence that felt cold. Brendan turned to the board and wrote it.
“None of the above,” Tyler said, and Laurel knew he meant it as a joke, but the ice was not broken. Brendan continued to write, making his own notes on the list. Then he put the marker down and rubbed his hands together, delighted. “Excellent list. Let’s break it down now.”
He stepped back to survey the list on the left-hand side of the board:
1. A noisy ghost
2. Kinetic aspects of a traditional haunting
3. An imprint of violent emotion on a house or place
4. The psychological projections of a human agent (possibly adolescent, possibly female)
5. Fraud
6. An agreement between the house and the observers: The Poltergeist Effect
7. Some other discarnate entity
8. Unknown
“Let’s take number one. A noisy ghost. An angry or mischievous spirit,” Brendan embellished, and added the words to the board. “Certainly we had a taste of that yesterday, no?” His voice was hearty. “In fact, let’s talk about that for a moment. Would you characterize the manifestations yesterday as a: ‘angry’; or b: ‘mischievous’? Or, c: ‘other’?”
Or d: ‘insane’?
Laurel thought, wildly.
I vote ‘d.’
Brendan turned from the white board, and looked expectantly at them. “Let’s just throw out some adjectives. Descriptive words.”
“Teasing.” Katrina said promptly. “Sly.”
“Excellent!” Brendan leaped to the board and wrote down the words.
Teasing/Sly
“Indeed,” he nodded, looking toward the upside-down paintings. “Keep going,” he ordered.
Beside Laurel, Tyler spoke, to her surprise. “Seductive. Manipulative.”
Brendan turned and looked at him. “Interesting. Why do you say so?”
Tyler shrugged. “It got us all going, didn’t it? We were chasing it around for hours.” He looked sidewise at Katrina. “Might as well add ‘feminine.’ I’ve spent less time chasing a girl.”
Katrina gasped and hit him, automatically. “Prick.”
Tyler smiled lazily. “I’m just sayin’.”
“It’s not feminine, though.” Laurel heard someone say, and then realized that it had been herself who had spoken aloud.
“No,” Katrina said, and looked at Laurel for perhaps the first time ever without a trace of rancor. “It’s not feminine.”
“No,” Brendan echoed. They all sat for a moment, contemplating.
“Childlike,” Katrina said, thoughtfully. “Playful.”
Laurel felt they were going down a dangerous road, suddenly, but could not have said why. The grandfather clock clicked softly in the corner. The sound felt ominous.
Tyler was nodding, also thoughtfully. She looked around at all of them, their almost dreamy focus. Outside, the rain was a soft, hypnotic patter.
Lulled. We’re all being lulled.
“Intelligent,” Katrina said suddenly. “You know? It’s
trying
to communicate.”
“But what is
It?
” Tyler asked.
“I don’t know,” Katrina said slowly. “But It
is
.”
“This is good,” Brendan said, pacing the floor in front of the fireplace. “This is good. Yes. There’s an intelligence. A …” He turned to Laurel and pointed. “A
personality
. It’s all of the same … mind.” He paused, rethinking. “Mind isn’t the word. But one intelligence.”
Katrina and Tyler were nodding.
“We’re agreed, then?” Brendan said intensely. “It’s one. Just one.”
Laurel felt at this point that she had to put a stop to it. There was something wrong—
what had the pastor said?
—something
perverse
about talking about this …
thing
… as if it were human, as if it were friendly, as if it were knowable.
“It’s also room-specific,” Tyler said suddenly. “It had us going on a circuit, yesterday. The library upstairs, the little room in the center hall, this room”—he glanced around the dining room—“and the one next door.” He nodded toward the great room.
“Yes, it is,” Brendan agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “I wonder why?”
And what if the point is, there
is
no why?
Laurel thought.
“So are we done with this analyzing yet?” Tyler said.
Brendan turned to him, with a cold look. “And what would you suggest instead?”
Tyler shifted on his chair. “Well, are we just going to wait for it to make some kind of move? We could try to make something happen.”
Brendan’s voice was neutral, but Laurel could tell he was intrigued. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
Tyler looked up in the direction of the upstairs library. “Instead of sticking around together, we could stake out the rooms. Things are only happening in a few of them. Why not divide them up, hang out, and see what happens?”
“I don’t like it,” Laurel said immediately. Everyone looked at her.
“Nothing dangerous happened yesterday,” Brendan said, placating. “No one was hurt. I think it’s a good idea. We wouldn’t be far from each other …”
“Or we could try talking to it,” Katrina said.
Brendan turned to look at her, intrigued. “How would you propose to do that?”
“The same way it talks to us. The rapping.”
Laurel felt a current go through the room. She looked at Brendan and Tyler, and could see the light in their faces, burning hot. The two clocks ticked behind them: the grandfather clock in the corner, and the gold clock in its glass dome.
“I think Miss Sugar is onto something,” Tyler said slowly.
Laurel suddenly realized what the feeling of danger was.
We want fireworks again. Even I do. We got a taste of it yesterday and we want more.
She thought of the article Tyler had been reading by Dr. Leish:
“In effect the percipients become addicted to the manifestations.”
But of course, it had already been decided.
Rain fell in a dark curtain outside as Brendan and Tyler carried the long dining-room table into the great room, and they set up four chairs around it, while Laurel watched with a growing feeling of unreality.
Brendan looked to Katrina.
“Katrina, this was your idea. Do you want to try?”
Laurel saw Katrina straighten her back and lift her head. “Yes, I will.” She walked across the dully gleaming floor and seated herself at the center of one long side of the oak table … and looked to the others expectantly until they took their seats.
So she’s a medium, now?
Laurel thought. That was exactly the role Katrina seemed to be assuming as she placed her hands flat on the table, closed her eyes and took a breath, and sat still for an extended moment. The weight of the great room settled around them, the heaviness of place out of time. Rain fell steadily, a soporific rumble. Then Katrina opened her eyes and looked off into the gray distance.