Poltergeist

CHAPTER 14

Ben sat at a small wooden table in the Five Spot's bar with a canvas book bag beside him. The seasonal menu looked to be Hells Kitchen Italian, to judge from the collection of American tin advertising signs and picturesque laundry arrayed overhead while the Bobby Rydell version of «Volare» played in the background. Excess is the Five Spot's stock-in-trade, though they'd forgone the red-and-white-checked tablecloths in the bar. I slid into the bench opposite Ben's chair.

"Hi. I thought I'd be ahead of you. It's not four yet." "Mara shooed me out of the house early. I tried to call you a little while ago, but I just got your voice mail.”

I snatched the cell phone from my pocket and saw I'd never turned it back on after leaving the theater. "Damn," I muttered. "This thing has the worst ringer—some kind of annoying pop song. I shut it off and forgot to turn it back on. I miss my pager." "I'm sure it's got a vibrate mode." "Yeah, I just can't find it.”

"Can I take a look at it?" Ben asked, holding out his hand. I shrugged and handed it over.

Ben poked at it and the phone made several aborted yelps and squawks before giving forth a rich purr. "There. That should do it." I peered at him. "How did you do that?”

"It's the buttons on the side. You press the top one to unlock the mode, then poke the bottom one until the screen says Vibrate' and then lock it again." "Now I feel stupid.”

"Don't. I had to get one of my students to show me three or four times." He handed the phone back to me and I tucked it back into my jacket pocket. "Do you want a drink?" Ben asked, putting his hands flat on the table.

"Not yet. What are you going to show me about séance tables and knocks?”

"Well, not a lot. My technique is pretty rough." The table lurched toward Ben, kicking its feet up at me and sending the candle on the tabletop clattering to the floor. I yelped and slid back in my seat.

"Oops," said Ben as the table settled back onto all fours. I ducked down and retrieved the candle, replacing it on someone else's table.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Did that look familiar?" "Sort of. How did you do it?”

Bens smile split his dark beard. "It's almost too easy. This technique was very popular with spiritualists and phony mediums at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Spiritist movement was at its height. A lot of people do it without knowing that they've done anything and then take it as evidence of spirits. That's called 'ideomotor'—the idea becomes motion—and Tuckman, as a psychologist, is certainly aware of it. The technique is the same whether it's deliberate or accidental and it takes very little pressure or strength to do it. You can use a pretty heavy table, but the lighter it is, the more dramatic the effect.”

"OK, I think I get this, but what's the difference between a Spiritist and a spiritualist?" I asked.

"Oh, Spiritism was the movement, and people who adhered to the Spiritist Church or beliefs called themselves Spiritists—so did a lot of frauds. Spiritualist was and is a much looser term.”

"OK. So, yeah, what about this technique?”

"It's all just friction and leverage. See how my hands are flat on the table? So long as I have friction on the surface and can exert force outside the fulcrum point of the legs, I can tilt the table just by pulling my hands toward myself while not allowing them to slide across the surface. See?”

The table lurched again and I noticed that it leaned down toward Ben. I looked under the table. It was resting on the two feet closest to Ben with the other two feet in the air about an inch. Ben eased the table back down until it hit the floor with a bang.

"Sorry. I lost my grip. But that wouldn't matter. In the conditions of belief created in most séance circles, the sitters will be as impressed with the sudden thump as with a smooth return, if not more.”

"Drama," I agreed.

"Exactly. And you can do more with a few simple modifications of this same technique. It's easiest with a table like this that has the legs set a bit inside of the edge of the tabletop. The farther the legs are from the edge, the easier it is, and a table with a central pedestal—even a heavy one—is shockingly easy to tilt. Now, watch this.”

He placed his hands flat again and the table immediately slid a bit to the left and eased up onto one leg so the other three were off the floor. It wasn't much, but enough for most people to be impressed with. Once more I looked under the table and this time took a glance into the Grey. Nothing paranormal was acting on the table, even though the restaurant had the usual share of ghosts and memory.

As Ben continued speaking, he demonstrated. "You see that if I pull, the table leans down toward me. If I push, it'll rise on my side instead. Angular change changes the direction of tilt. With a confederate at the table, a phony medium can make the table tilt or even 'walk' in any direction. And if I push forward with even pressure and no tilt, the table will scoot in the direction of push, instead of rising. With a confederate to create or maintain the tilt, the phony medium can remove his or her hands from the table and still get phenomena. The other sitters will join in without recognizing it because of the suggestive quality of ideomotor. Takes a little practice to be smooth about it, but it's not hard. Try it.”

He settled the small table back down. I put my hands down and pushed a little. The table scooted toward Ben.

"Put your hands a little farther out and push down as you push forward.”

This time the table rose slowly about half an inch.

"Congratulations, you're a spirit communicator.”

I gave him a sour look. "What else can you do with this?”

Ben grinned and demonstrated how to make the little table turn and several techniques for making it rise off the floor, including one he called "the human clamp," which involved holding the table between his hand and the edge of his shoe, the same way most of us would hold an object between our thumb and finger, and moving it around without touching the floor. It was a full levitation with only a foot and a hand as tools.

Next, Ben reached into the canvas bag on the floor and brought out a large, stiff loop of heavy wire, which he strapped onto his forearm so the closed end was cupped under his hand like a gigantic hollow spoon. He slid his hands back onto the tabletop so the loop went under the lip. "This is called a crook and the operator uses it to lift the table. There are several kinds and they require a lot of discretion to use, but…”

The table leapt, the legs on my end flipping upward so fast I had to squeeze backward into the bench to get out of the way. Ben waved the table side to side and up and down. It was sloppy, but a little practice would have solved that. He waggled the table so it rotated around the axis of the loop and then put it back down.

By this time, the happy hour crowd was staring at us with varying degrees of boldness. "It's just a trick," I said to the nearest table full of gawkers. One of the men nodded and slurped his beer, but didn't stop looking at the table with suspicion.

I found myself shaking my head and stifling laughter. "Wow. How does anyone blame that on a ghost?”

"They don't get caught. If they do, they say they only did it to encourage the spirits. A stage magician does the same thing, priming the audience with little revelations and ideas that encourage them to suspend their disbelief and buy into the bigger illusions. Quite a bit of psychology goes into a successful magic act." Then he added with a growl, "Or a faked séance.”

I cast a speculative look on Ben. "Is this upsetting you?”

"Only because I suddenly realize how easy it is to fake these things and how many people—including me—have probably been taken in by willful fakes and sincere assistance' by well-meaning believers who make fools of the lot of us.”

I sat back and regarded him in silence a while.

He avoided my gaze and stared at the table.

"Disillusion's a bitch, isn't it?”

He snorted. "Yes, it is. And now I really want something to drink.”

We caught the eye of the waiter, who sidled up with a dubious glance at us as if he wasn't sure what would happen next. I ordered coffee. Ben asked for a dark beer.

He'd stripped off the crook and was rolling his sleeves back down when I noticed red dents on his forearms. I pointed at them.

"What caused those marks?”

"The crook. Pressure from lifting the table. I imagine that if you use a crook a lot, you probably build up some kind of callus or marks.”

I nodded as the waiter returned with our drinks. Mark had had very similar dents on his forearms, according to the autopsy. I'd bet that a closer examination of the recordings would show that he had used a crook a lot in the early days of the sessions. Now I understood why Tuckman thought the heightened phenomena could be faked— the crook was impressive—but I was more sure than ever that they hadn't been. I hadn't seen the same movements from anyone else, but I'd seen Mark make the same hand slides and elbow dips I'd just seen from Ben.

Ben licked foam from his mustache and sighed. "This reminds me of university in Germany. I think the amount of beer I drank then is probably why I still don't speak German as well as I read and write it. I suspect the other guys in the program liked to get me drunk just to hear me butcher the language. I didn't mind at the time—I got a lot of free beer out of it. Damn good beer." He shook his head. "I haven't done anything that stupid in years.”

"There must be something stupid in your more recent past. There's plenty in mine.”

Ben laughed. "I prefer to pretend it's all the folly of youth and not endemic foolishness.”

"I don't have that excuse.”

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Harper.”

I frowned into my coffee and changed the subject.

"Ben, how would someone make a knocking sound?”

Ben picked up the crook again and rapped it on the underside of the table, making a sharp noise. "Like that?”

The rap sounded very much like Mark's first efforts. "Exactly like that. Is that how all knocks are made?" I asked.

"Oh, no. You can use your feet, hands, knees, or a hard object concealed in your hand or clothes. A character in a book once used a tin box strapped to her knee. When she pressed it against her other knee, it deformed and made a cracking sound.”

That rang a bell and I wondered which book I'd read it in but couldn't bring to mind.

Ben gulped some more beer and continued. "The Fox sisters— they started the whole Spiritist movement by accident—used to crack the joints of their toes or rap their toenails against the floor to create raps, and even though people caught them at it and they even admitted it, people wanted to believe. So they did. Investigations of people like the Fox sisters and their imitators led to modern parapsychology.”

"They chose to believe. .," I repeated, thinking. "So parapsychology grew out of fakery?”

"The search for truth in the face of fakery," Ben corrected me, frowning. "A lot of the early investigators were magicians and scientists—Houdini was famous for debunking phony mediums. In fact," he added, reaching again into his bag, "one of the big names in modern skeptical investigation is another magician—James Randi. I brought you one of his books as well as one of Houdini's books. Neither of these guys is shy about showing how the trick is done. And they're both pretty blunt about what they think of the whole field. Although I think they're both wrong in condemning the whole without adequate proof.”

Ben was a bit defensive about it, but I reserved judgment. While I had more personal experience of ghosts and the paranormal, I wouldn't care to step forward and make any claims or attempt to prove any such thing to professional skeptics of the Houdini grade. As I'd already noted in Tuckman, the blindness of belief and desire isn't restricted to the oddball side of the discussion.

I put the books into my own bag as Ben finished his beer.

"Ben, could any of these techniques make a table break away from its sitters and run around the room?”

Ben chuckled. "Not without being about as obvious as a rhino in a bathtub. Some things can't be concealed at that proximity, no matter how good a psychological manipulator the magician or spiritualist is. And speaking of rhinos, Brian and Mara will be waiting dinner on me and we'd all like it if you would come, too. It's roast beef, and Mara might have some answers for you about glass and spirits. She did ask me to ask you…”

I hesitated, but Ben looked puppy-eyes at me. I gave in. Mara was a great cook—even without any witchcraft to help—and they were my friends as well as the closest thing I had to professional advisors in the Greywalker line. I smiled. "Dinner would be really nice. Thanks.”

"Great!”

We paid up and left, catching a few more stares from the patrons as we went. I wondered how many tables would be tilted tonight and how outrageous the beer-fueled stories would grow by Sunday morning. If they, too, wanted to believe, then I expected that by next Thursday it would be common gossip that the Five Spot was haunted by a fictional ghost of someone killed by the old counterbalance trolley, whose long-gone upper terminus the Five Spot now occupied.

When we walked into the Danzigers' house, the scent of savory meat and bread wafted to us along with a despairing cry of "Brian!”

Ben and I exchanged a look. He sighed, heaved his shoulders, and went ahead of me into the kitchen.

Brian sat in the middle of the kitchen floor in a pile of vegetables and lettuce, staring at the kitchen table and rubbing the top of his head. Mara, her new-penny-copper hair sweeping over her face, crouched beside him, holding a large bowl.

"Now, wasn't I after telling you you'd regret that? Hm? Smarts a bit, doesn't it?" she chided him.

"Owww. .," her son replied, patting his head with a lettuce leaf. Mara snatched it from him and put it into the bowl.

"None of that, y'wild animal. That's for eating, not for wearing.”

Brian stuffed the nearest chunk of vegetable into his mouth, then made a face and started to spit it out. Mara clapped a hand over his pursed lips. "Oh, no, you don't. It shan't kill you, so you'll go ahead and swallow it. Polite people don't go spitting out their food.”

Brian forced the lump down his throat. "Is not a people. Is a rhinerosserous!" he objected as Mara pulled her hand away.

"Well, polite rhinos don't spit, either. And they clean up their own messes or they have to go outside and eat thorny bushes in the garden.”

"Noooooooo. .," Brian wailed.

Mara shoved the bowl into his arms. "Then you'll clean up the mess, won't you? And you'll pick up every piece or you'll be eating the ones you miss later.”

Brian's lip stuck out in a very rhino-like fashion. He put his hands on top of his head and said, "Head hurts.”

"Yes, darling, I imagine it does." She kissed him on the forehead and stood up.

Ben gave her an inquisitive look. "What happened?”

"Rhino versus table," Mara answered, brushing off her skirts. "The table won, and the bowl of salad got jostled off and onto the rhino-boy's head.”

"Jostled?”

"Of course. Y'don't think I'd go pitchin’ salad on his head, now, do ya?" She grinned a little, radiating good humor in spite of the mess. "Hi, Harper. I see Ben cajoled you into dinner at the wild animal park.”

"How could I miss it?”

Brian was now crawling about on the floor, picking up the salad and beginning to enjoy himself. I hoped Mara wasn't planning on serving the salvaged salad, as Brian's idea of fun seemed to be to toss handfuls of greens and vegetable chunks in the general direction of the bowl while making various noises. If the pieces missed the bowl, he kept on trying until they made it in, by which time the salad looked quite grubby. Albert appeared behind Brian and seemed to be whispering into the boy's ear.

Mara relieved my anxiety by turning toward the fridge and announcing, "Meat's almost ready, so I suppose I'd better start a replacement salad. Why don't you stay with me while Ben sets the table and keeps an eye on the rhino-boy.”

That was fine by me.

"Now then," Mara began as she brought fresh produce from the refrigerator, "you wanted to know about mirrors and glass and their effect on the Grey.”

I nodded. "Yeah. There's some kind of filtering effect…”

"Hm. I'm not so sure about why the glass does as it does, but the mirror is probably acting in much the same way as silver does. It's reflective, of course, but it's also conductive—whether it's silver, or mercury, or mylar, it still conducts—and I've often suspected that the power lines that run through the Grey energize the metal in a mirror such that it becomes a mild barrier—literally reflecting the ghost from passing through—and most things either can't or won't push past.”

"Why don't they know it's a mirror when they see themselves?”

"Most ghosts are stone stupid. Unless it's been enchanted," Mara said, "most mirrors reflect what is, not what the ghost sees. Most ghosts see things as they were in their life, not as they are now. They certainly don't see themselves as wraiths. I imagine it's a bit confounding to come upon a reflection that doesn't answer your idea of yourself.”

"I suppose. . but what about the glass, then?" I asked.

"I've been thinking about that," Ben piped up from behind us.

I swung around so I could see both of them by just turning my head.

"You see," Ben started, brandishing a handful of silverware, "I think what you're seeing there is a sort of material resistance. The energy state of the Grey is extremely high and fast—we've discussed this before, you recall—”

"Yes, I remember.”

Brian made motorboat noises under the table as he pushed the bowl merrily around the floor, trailed by Albert, who stuck half through the table as if it weren't there. I found myself watching the ghost, rather than Ben.

"OK, so the particles of energy that make up the Grey travel much more slowly through the dense material of something like glass or brick or stone, but we only see them in glass because when they are slowed down to a certain degree, we experience a sort of persistence-of-vision illusion. That's why you can see a ghost in a photograph when there was none visible at the time—”

I interrupted him, refocusing on Ben. "You can? I thought those 'spirit photos' were all exposed as fakes.”

"Oh, the ones taken by charlatans in the same era as the Spiritist Church were mostly fakes, but you can spot those easily. Others seem to be legit. Odd images of people or things where no one was at the time, but they fit in the picture. They don't have to be old photos. They could be anything from any time, taken with any camera.”

I'd seen photos like that—some snapshots taken by my mother or friends from college—and found some of them disturbing beyond reason. They never seemed to merit that disquiet, but I'd never shaken it. "OK, assume I buy the idea. What's your theory?" I asked.

"I think the ghost's reflection on the surface of the glass lens persists long enough for the camera to capture it. If you could see through rocks or bricks, you could see the ghost reflected in the side of a building, too, but since most materials aren't transparent, you can't see the reflection of the ghost.”

"That doesn't explain why I see less Grey when I look through a window.”

"You actually see into the Grey, not just the reflections of a few stray ghosts. The energy of the Grey just doesn't move through the glass fast enough for you, so the glass acts like a filter, holding back a percentage of the Grey from your sight," Ben explained.

"Mirrored glass seen from the back would reflect much of the initial energy," Mara added, "and you'd see even less.”

"So. . are you guys saying that this high-energy stuff simply gets. . trapped?”

Ben nodded. "Much of it, yes.”

I shook that idea aside. "But if they can't move through something dense, how can ghosts walk through walls? We know they do that.”

Brian popped up from under the table with the bowl of dirty salad clutched to his chest. Albert shooed him toward Mara and me and the boy trotted across the floor, giggling.

"We assume that's what we see," Ben said, "but I'm thinking that there's more to it.”

Brian stumbled to a halt against my legs and looked up at me with a huge grin as he offered me the bowl. "Harpa." He gurgled with excitement and glanced back to Albert, then up at me again.

I gave Ben only half my attention as he said, "I've been thinking about this a lot since you asked and it seems to me that the Grey must have a property of time that's different than ours. You know that a lot of ghosts are nothing but the persistent memory of something or loops of time and action. Most repeating specters, for instance, have no consciousness or personality—they're just like loops of film that keep on running on, doing the same thing they've always done until they finally wear out completely and fade away.”

"Yes, OK. So?" I shrugged, taking the bowl from Brian and wondering why Albert seemed to have sent the boy to me with it. I handed it off to his mother as Brian threw his arms around my legs and hugged them, pressing his face against my knees.

"Well, they're an instance of time," Ben continued. "An isolated, persistent shard of time that's suspended in the Grey. And I think that there must be layers on layers of time like that scattered throughout the Grey. When we see a ghost walk through a wall, what we're actually seeing is the ghost moving through an opening that exists in his own plane of time within the Grey.”

Mara spoke out of the corner of her mouth as she dumped the filthy greens into a bin by the sink. "Say thank you.”

I looked at Brian as he clutched me in unexpected affection. "Urn. . thank you, Brian.”

Brian shrieked in delight and let go of me to run back and «help» Ben at the table.

"Very nice, Harper—I think Brian has a crush on you. And I agree with Ben about time," Mara said, tearing up freshly washed lettuce. "If there are instances of frozen time, they must exist all over the Grey, or time itself must be sort of stacked up in the Grey in some way. And that's how most ghosts—which are just memories, time-shapes, so to speak—can move about through what appear to be solid objects. The object doesn't exist for them, since they don't really interact with the present.”

"Exactly," added Ben, bending to pick up Brian and secure him in a high chair by the table. "Ghosts with sufficient personality retention and volition can move through any layer of time they are familiar with, but ghosts with less volition and the simple repeaters are stuck on the time plane they lived in.”

Albert had vanished by the time we sat down to eat, leaving only the corporeal people at the table. Without him nearby, Brian was a little more subdued and ate his dinner with more giggling than rhino roars. I supposed this sort of behavior was the positive reinforcement that allowed most children to survive to the next stage of parental stress: adolescence. Between considering Brian's sweetened temper and mulling ideas about glass and mirrors, I didn't talk much during the meal and the conversation turned to academic power struggles at the U over upcoming funding and tenure issues. I nodded and ate in comfortable ignorance.