Poltergeist

CHAPTER 12

Later Saturday morning I was finishing my breakfast when Ken George arrived at the Alki Cafe. I already knew what he looked like, so I had no difficulty spotting him when he paused at the hostess's desk. She pointed him toward the back and I put up my hand to wave him over. Since the weather was lousy, the restaurant was half empty and no one had tried to rush me out as they often did on weekend mornings—a good thing considering I'd only just managed to kick my bad mood of the previous night by indulging in ridiculous amounts of coffee.

Ken was about my height, slim, and had a loping, slope-shouldered gait that made his leather jacket swing as he came toward me. I now knew from the file that Quinton had guessed right: he'd been born in India, and while his coloring was classic Indian—black hair, bronze skin, brown eyes—the presentation was Western and unconsciously hip—as if other people copied him—right down to the wire-frame glasses and the soft mustache with close-trimmed goatee.

He stopped at the table. "Hi. Are you. . Harper?" His voice reminded me of Sean Connery without having a discernible accent— low and broad as if it came up through a trapdoor behind his teeth rather than his throat. His smile was bright white and I'd have taken him for a vampire if I were going by incisors.

I nodded. "You're Ken George.”

He grinned and ducked his head. "Yeah. Sorry I'm late. I can't seem to get the hang of the buses." He sprawled opposite me, swinging a black courier bag under the table. He kept his chin tucked down and looked up at me with a self-deprecating smile. His long fingers toyed with the silverware roll. "So. What did you want to talk about?”

The waitress passed by and he caught her eye with the same little-boy grin. "Hey, could I get a cup of coffee, please?”

She smiled back. "Sure.”

As he turned away from me, I peeped at him through the Grey and found myself stymied. There was a sort of glassy, shifting emptiness between us, giving only brief glimpses of color through its moving surface. It reminded me of my own Grey shield. Ken's barrier was incomplete and unstable and he didn't seem conscious of my probing. Like Solis's blank walls, it was turned to the world, not to the Grey, and had the worn ease of a habit. This piqued my curiosity and raised my mental hackles a little.

He returned his gaze to me, raising his eyebrows, and I reverted to a more normal view, smiling.

"I'm doing some additional background on Dr. Tuckman's project. I just wanted to ask a few questions.”

"Shoot.”

"How did you get involved in the project?”

He smiled and ducked his head, taking the silverware roll apart; then he looked me in the eye again. "I'm in love." Then he gave a short laugh. "No, that's not true—I exaggerate. I wasn't in love when I started.”

He went quiet, thinking and plucking at the edge of the napkin. Then he sat up, leaning forward, staring into my eyes without blinking.

"How did I get involved… I was bored. Let me tell you, Harper, a couple of years ago I thought I was a real badass." His voice was low and soft, coming slowly and with a subtle rhythm. "I drove everybody crazy, I got into trouble, got thrown in jail, messed with people, just did mean, stupid things because I could. And my friends thought I was damn cool for it—or they just really loved seeing me screw up. What a bunch of jerks. I figured out how dumb it was—eventually. And I've been trying to get my life together since then. But sometimes it's. . well, it's boring. So this guy I know says this ghost study sounds like a trip, and I thought it could be. . fun. And Tuck thought I was cool, so I was in." He sat back and let the waitress put down a mug of coffee. He thanked her with a sincere look straight in the eyes as if coffee from her was a blessing. He started tinkering with the drink as soon as she left, dropping his gaze and keeping it from mine.

"Fun," I repeated, dismissing the odd mood he'd created. "Is that why you knocked on the table at the first séance?”

He jerked his head up and stared at me, his eyes wide. "What?" he squeaked. "Me?”

I nodded. "I studied the recording. It was you.”

He laughed and seemed very ordinary, the hard walls around him momentarily dropping, and I saw a thin yellow thread of energy looped around his head. "All right, all right. Yeah, I did it. It was all just so. . goofy. Here we're all taking this thing so seriously and trying to be cool with it and in my head I'm laughing my ass off. So I smacked the table with my knee. And they're all so excited and I'm trying not to bust up. God, it was funny! But it was… an icebreaker or something and after that things started to happen." His voice dropped a bit and his demeanor flickered toward serious, the blankness covering him again.

"What do you think of Tuckman's premise?”

"Tuckman's premise." He thought a bit. "Seems plausible. See, I don't really believe in this ghost thing—all that spooky howling around the windows stuff—I figure what's the point? But… I think I met one once. There was something there, at least. This was back when I was about thirteen, back when I started smoking, and I was outside at night, having a smoke, and there was a shadow where there couldn't be a shadow. And me, being a stubborn bastard, I went and I stood in it. Just stood. And it was cold there. I mean, it was the middle of the summer and this one spot is just freakin' cold. Then it moved away and disappeared. And I want to know what the hell it was. This project hasn't answered that question, but it's making me think and that's something. Challenging.”

He gave a sudden laugh. "Most of what I do in class or even at work is boring—I'm always putting things off until the last minute and then pulling something out of the air the night before and everyone goes nuts about it and I know it's just some half-assed junk I whipped up. But this is not something I can fake. It's not just me. It's kind of cool making stuff happen. And, yeah, it's fun.”

"Same kind of fun?”

"Same kind of fun. . What do you mean?”

I noticed his habit of repeating phrases to buy himself time, of thinking and gauging his answers before he gave them. "I mean have you faked anything else since then?”

Ken chuckled. "I don't have to. Stuff happens by itself and it's a lot funnier than what I could fake. Wednesday, the table was galloping around like a horse. That was a laugh.”

"Do you think anyone else could be faking any of the things that have been happening?”

"I know they could, but I don't think they are. That's not the point.”

"What is the point?" His clever evasions and cold shield irritated me. I was reminded of the abusive boyfriend I'd run away from in college. He had also been charming and attractive, slipping out of hard questions and dealing damage for them later while he seemed unscathed by anything I did. I tried to shove the feeling aside, but it pricked me as I watched Ken.

He toyed with his coffee mug and built his reply. "The point? The group, I guess. Power of the mind. Self-control. We're all working together, but we're still alone, still ourselves, controlling this thing we made." He paused and played with the mug, then drank from it before continuing. He lowered his eyebrows and shifted his gaze to the side, and his wall was solid and slick as glass. "Maybe I'm not so sure, after all. I need to think about it.”

"OK. What do you think about the rest of the group?”

"The rest of the group." There was a sudden flare of brightness around him before subsiding and he looked at me again with a smile lighting his eyes. "About half of 'em are dicks in one way or another. The rest are OK.”

"Who's OK?”

"Mark's all right. He's funny, you can hang with him, have a beer, that sort of thing. Wayne's good—”

I stopped him. "I'm not sure who's who yet, give me a clue.”

"OK. Mark's the guy with the long hair. Wayne—he's the old guy with the crewcut—sometimes he acts like he's still in the army, but he's a good guy. Cara's the blonde married to Dale Stahlqvist, very rich, beautiful. She" — his tone grew cold and bitter—"no… I take it back. I can find her attractive—I can want her—but I think she'd cut my throat and keep my scalp when she was done with me. Ana— Chinese woman—she's. . she's magic." He shrugged and looked down. His skin was too dusky to blush well. He peered back up at me from under his brow. "The rest—they're just there.”

"Just there?" I echoed.

He chuckled, catching on to me. "OK, they're dicks.”

"I've got one more question for you.”

"Fire away.”

"When did you start to take it more seriously?”

"I'm not sure. Maybe when I started talking to Ana.”

"And why'd you do the portrait of Celia?”

"You said only one more question.”

I shrugged. "I lied. Why the portrait?”

He returned my shrug. "It's just what I do. It's one of my tricks— people get all impressed that I can use Illustrator and Photoshop—like it's hard. I'm not even that good at it. But I get an obsession and then I want to do something about it. So I do. I wanted to know what Celia looked like. I couldn't think of her as real until I knew and I had to know, had to dig in. So I painted her." He glowered and seemed both more human and more dangerous, exposed in sudden, bright red ire. "She didn't even like the damned picture. I had to work it over for days. Man! You know how hard it is to draw a person when you can't even see them? It's not like there's even a photo of her to work from. We had to do this sort of Twenty Questions thing to get it right. I wanted to smash something before we were done. It was frustrating.”

"Do you think of Celia as a real person?”

He blinked at me, his Grey shutters sliding back into place. "A real person? No. A real personality, yes." He frowned and sucked in his lower lip. "Does it matter?”

I shrugged. "I don't know. What does Tuckman say?”

"Huh. He'd probably say the reality of the personality is the only thing that matters.”

We both sat back and I watched the glassy emptiness around him. I wondered just what the hell he was trying to hide. He wasn't very good at keeping his shield in place and I couldn't tell if he did it on purpose or not. When it faltered, something bright and passionate showed through, but he always hid it again. Some vulnerability, in spite of the tough-guy pose? Or something else?

My silence made him uncomfortable. Ken looked at his watch. "Wow. I have to get going.”

"Thanks for talking with me.”

"Hey, it was a pleasure. Seriously.”

"Can I call you if I think of anything else?”

"Sure. No problem. Gotta go.”

I watched him grab his bag and stride out. I wasn't sure if I'd learned much from Ken except that he was hiding something I wanted to discover. He'd answered my questions—not saying he'd been a theater major before switching to art. His obsession about Celia's portrait seemed a bit unusual and I knew I'd missed something through my own annoyance. I didn't think he knew how he affected the Grey—if he'd known I could see it, he would never have let his shield slip. Something had caused that psychic wall to rise, but I had no clue what, no matter how much it bothered me.

I put down money for my breakfast—the waitress had forgotten to charge for Ken's coffee—and picked up my still-strange cell phone. I thought I might be able to catch a few more of Tuckman's group at home now and I was pleased I didn't have to waste time going back to my office. Eventually I'd have to get in some background research on this lot—Stahlqvist and Ken both left me wanting to dig, and who knew what I'd get from the others? — but since all offices were closed, I'd do better spending the small grace period Solis had given me interviewing the principals than grubbing Internet records.

I made calls and was able to catch up to most of the rest of the group and schedule time to talk before Tuesday. I wondered why I hadn't gotten a cell phone long ago.

Patricia Railsback—the harried and unhappy housewife at the séance sessions—met me at the Harbor Steps play yard under a sky that threatened rain, but hadn't yet produced any. Her hair was pulled back into a hasty ponytail that left her made-up face strangely naked and let too much light fall onto the stains of sleeplessness under her eyes. No amount of makeup could hide her expression of pinched dissatisfaction and frustration. She hunched her shoulders under her fashionable wool jacket and stared into the small play yard wedged between two of the complex's four towers.

Three children rollicked over the climbing equipment and kicked clouds of cedar bark into restless wakes whenever they touched ground. Greenery dripped from overhead galleries and orange beams running between the residential towers. Patricia put herself sideways to the yard, leaning her hip against the rubberized rail so she could talk to me and watch the kids at the same time.

I looked over the shrieking, giggling mayhem. The kids were playing some elaborate game of climbing and jumping. "Which one's yours?" I asked.

She sighed. "All of them—Ethan, Hannah, and Dylan," she added, pointing at them in age order. "Demolition experts in training." A large bit of beauty bark winged Patricia on the temple. "Ow!" she shouted, brushing it aside. "You brats stop that! You know better than to throw things at people!”

Hannah and Ethan stopped and stared at her. "It wasn't us! It was the ghost!" Hannah yelled.

Patricia rolled her eyes. "Damn it," she muttered under her breath. "OK, I'm sorry," she called back. "You guys just play carefully, now, OK? Ghosts can fly but you can't, so no jumping around. And no throwing and blaming it on the ghost.”

A careless "OK, Mom" came back, but the kids were already back in motion.

I gave her a sideways look and spotted a bright yellow gleam around her head. "Your kids know about the project?”

"Oh, God. . yeah. Sort of." Her mouth turned down as she spoke and her vowels seemed to spill out the corners. "It's not like you can miss the stupid thing with their dad gone all the time. It's their best little playmate—most kids have imaginary invisible friends, mine have an honest-to-goodness poltergeist to play with.”

"Are you certain this is Celia at work?”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "What else would it be? It's not like I have any other life outside my home, my kids, and this project.”

Bitterness spilled out with every flooding word. She felt abused by life—although I thought that for a woman with no college degree and no apparent skills or charm, she hadn't done too badly in a socioeconomic sense. I wondered if her whining was bred from her husband's constant absence or the other way around. Half a life led in the shadows of a successful man to whom she no longer felt more than a mechanical duty might lead to many things. Yet she would not break from him, except to join this insane project. She was on the fence about the whole thing—life, family, project.

She'd been a drama major in high school—a bit of a drama queen to my mind—and that seemed to have been the high point of her life. I got the idea she resented the children who kept her tied to her gilded cage and that she wanted attention from someone, anyone—preferably male—and the project had seemed like a place to get it. But it wasn't working out so well. She didn't fit in with the younger members or the older members, and the only person she'd ever had a reasonable conversation with was Mark, whom she'd driven home once when his bike had a flat tire. She didn't really like any of the rest of them, though she wouldn't say so. But she did believe that their poltergeist was real, that they'd made things move and caused the knocks and light flickers through their own power of the mind. She didn't see any contradiction in the idea that everyone else was hateful, yet they somehow worked together.

As she babbled on, bemoaning her life, I glanced at the three kids who had sat down on the ground with a pile of cedar chips and leaves and were tossing them up one at a time. Once in a while, one of the leaves or chips would make a sudden shift to the side and the kids giggled. What were they doing? I peered at them through the Grey and could see a scribbled yellow shape, continuously shifting, stabbed randomly with silvery shards, hovering around them and moving the wood and leaves. Patricia noticed I'd stopped listening and looked at the children also, her yellow thread stretching toward the uncanny shape of the same color.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

She threw her hands into the air. "Who knows? They're kids!" She balled her fists on her hips and shouted. "Hey, stop that! You're getting dirty!”

I took a step closer to the kids and their Grey companion, but as they turned to look at Patricia, they saw me moving toward them. The kids jumped up, dusting at their clothes, and the yellow shape imploded with a muffled bang that sounded a lot like the table raps from the recordings and left a weird ringing in my head. I frowned and peered harder at the kids, but there was only the thinnest yellow strand now, looping around them from a source in Patricia's body, and the thread which had tied her to the shape now pointed only to the empty space where it had been.

I looked back at her. She was making a big-eyed face at her kids, oblivious to what had just happened in the Grey. "Well? You have another fifteen minutes before we have to go upstairs and get cleaned up to see Daddy. Better make the most of it.”

The children jumped up and scurried back to the business of playing on the jungle gym. We went back to talking.

Patricia didn't believe the phenomena were being faked. She became defensive when I asked if she'd ever experienced anything like it before and I had the strong impression she was lying. Pecking at her a bit, I got her to admit she'd had some "odd experiences" as a teenager, but she wouldn't go into detail. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn she'd been the focus of a classic poltergeist haunting—emotional whirlwinds leading to increasingly bizarre events in a bid for attention, a self-justifying sense of persecution. Before I could broach the subject, though, she looked at her watch and turned away from me with her shoulders hunched.

"I have to go." She called out, "C'mon, you three! Time's up! Gotta get cleaned up for Daddy!”

The kids sent up a collective whine, but they dragged themselves toward their mother. She began to herd them toward the nearest tower and its elevator, dismissing me with an absent flap of her hand.

I watched her go, then started to make my own way out to the sprawling hillside staircase for which the complex is named, past the brushed steel sculpture of pi and the tiers of waterfalls. I shook my head as I went down the steps toward Western.

I'd only gotten the bare bones of information out of her and never had a chance to ask if she'd had any further contact with Mark. Annoying as she was, I'd have to find another time to talk to her.

While she might not be causing any of the phenomena herself— legitimately or not—it was possible she was putting in a bit of extra energy and boosting the effect of the rest of the group. She was the only one of the participants I'd seen so far who seemed to have daily contact with Celia—if the thing I'd glimpsed was, indeed, the group's construct, which seemed likely. It bred an odd feeling in me on sight and sent a flash of frost over my bones. The sudden lassitude that had fallen on me when it left bothered me and I wondered why it had happened. This ghost unsettled me more than most.