Poltergeist

CHAPTER 15

I rang the security buzzer outside the Fujisaka building Sunday afternoon and was answered by a birdlike voice speaking Chinese. I knew I'd pressed the right code, so I replied, "Ana Choi, please." I overheard snatches of a rapid, singing exchange of Chinese; then another voice spoke out of the speaker. "Hi, hi! I'll be right down.”

The speaker clicked off and I turned around to look out at the cloud-shadowed length of Sixth Avenue South. This was the brittle edge of the International District—the real heart of Chinatown being a block north and east on King. This street was the true international mixture the city trumpeted with pride—and which had sometimes been decried as mere racism in pretty words. Across the street was the old Uwajimaya department store building with its blue-tiled roofs and upturned eaves—still partially empty since the new Uwajimaya Village complex had risen to the immediate south. Farther south was one of the enclaves of Nihonmachi—Japantown—and around any corner you could find a feast of Chinese bakeries, Filipino groceries, Vietnamese noodle houses, and Tokyo-style coffeehouses.

The Fujisaka was the only modern condo building in the ID—the rest of the International District's housing was apartments or hotel rooms. Expensive and glossy, it snuggled in with its older, smaller neighbors, no longer the strange, shiny interloper since the arrival of the towering Uwajimaya Village.

The door behind me opened and an Asian woman stepped out wearing a fluffy white jacket against the chill. She had a round face with a pointed chin, high cheekbones, and a slightly reserved expression. Any claim to Oriental mystery vanished when she grinned, making her face sweet and sunny. She looked up at me.

"You're. . Harper, aren't you?" Her speech pattern wasn't so much an accent as a vague tint over her English.

"Yes," I replied. "Ana Choi?" I recognized her from the recordings, but I asked anyhow.

She nodded. "Sorry I made you wait. My parents were having an argument. If I just walk out, they think I'm being disrespectful, so I had to wait for them to quiet long enough to say I was leaving.”

"You live with your parents," I said, making a mental note.

"Yeah. We moved from Macao twelve years ago and they're still very old-fashioned. I'm not a traditional Chinese girl, but I try to make them happy when I can. Sometimes it's hard." She looked around the damp street. "Let's go, huh? We can talk while we go.”

"Sure," I agreed. I'd parked across the street in the sparsely used lot of the blue-tiled building.

"I'm grateful for the ride," Ana said. "Usually I take transit, but it's a long ride on Sundays—one of my buses runs once an hour on weekends.”

I shrugged. "It works out for both of us. When did you start with the project?”

"Back in January. Ian wanted me to. He said it would be fun.”

"Is It?”

Her turn to shrug. "Yeah, I guess it is. It was kind of stupid at first, but it got better. I like it.”

We stopped to get into the Rover. Ana smiled. "This is neat. Very tough.”

"Yeah, it's pretty good. Except for the gas mileage—then it's a bit of a hog.”

She nodded, settling herself in the seat. "OK. So. What do you want to ask me?”

"How do you feel about the group?”

"I said I liked it.”

"I mean the people. Do you like them?" I asked, starting the engine and heading the truck toward PNU.

"Yeah, mostly.”

I watched her reflection in the windshield glass. I didn't see any yellow line of Grey energy around her from that angle. "Anyone you don't get along with or feel uncomfortable with?”

She laughed. "You know, I don't care one way or the other. I like most of them pretty well, but I don't feel like I know them enough to care a lot. They're nice, but. . they're just nice and nothing special to me.

"Even Ian?”

She made a face and rolled her eyes. "Oh, Ian. Sometimes I think I don't even like him anymore. Sometimes he's mean and so selfish. He never spends any time with me anymore. He's always busy and we don't even— Our sex life doesn't exist except when it's bad. I only joined the project because he wanted me to and I thought we could see more of each other, and now he sometimes acts like he doesn't even want me to come to the group.”

This didn't jibe with Ian's version, but I wasn't surprised by that sort of thing anymore. And I remembered how Ana had flinched in the recordings as Ian pulled her hair from her earrings.

"Why wouldn't he want you to come?" I asked.

"So he can flirt with Cara Stahlqvist. He's such a dick.”

"If he's a dick, then why do you go?”

She scowled. "It's my project, too. Why should Ian get to scare me off? Besides. . he's not the only person there who matters.”

"You just said none of them meant anything to you.”

She looked at the side window. "I lied.”

'You're seeing someone else from the group?”

"No! Not outside the group, really. Sometimes we go out for drinks after…. And I like talking to him. He likes to talk to me, too.”

"Who?”

She blushed. "Ken." She kept looking out the window.

I nodded. "Does Ian know?”

"I don't know. I don't think so. Ken teases Ian sometimes and I know he's doing it because of me, but Ian just laughs it off. I think he'd be nasty to Ken if he knew, but he seems OK.”

"Do you plan to do anything about this?”

She sighed. "I don't know. I can't just leave Ian and start going with Ken right now. It would be bad. For the group. Ian's not the sort of guy who takes a breakup well. And besides. . it's hard, you know. Sometimes I just want to keep the peace. I don't want a big deal over everything.”

I shook my head, but kept my mouth closed. They'd cooked up a rotten little triangle. Misery not only loves company it makes its own. The whole group was full of sexual tensions and power plays, so far, and this seemed about par for the course.

"I just don't seem to pick the best men," Ana said. "But at least Ian was OK with my parents. If I started dating Ken, they'd be furious.”

"Why?”

"My father would say he's not good enough. And my mother always sides with my father—it's part of her role, you know. Traditional Chinese wife.”

"I'm still not getting it. Why is Ian—who's mean to you—OK, but Ken's not?”

She turned and blinked at me. "Because Ken's brown.”

"What?”

"Brown. He's not white.”

"You're not white, either.”

"I know that. But my father's racist. He thinks there's something. . dirty or bad about being colored if you're not Chinese—or at least Asian.”

"He doesn't know India is part of Asia?”

"It's not the right part. If the people are darker than he is, they're dirtier than he is. It's OK for me to date a white man or an Asian like us, but someone who's brown? No. It would be even worse if I wanted to date a black man. He'd never speak to me again. My sister went out with a black guy once and he's still angry at her. He'd go insane if he knew they slept together.”

"That's a bit over the top.”

"My dad." She looked grim. "So. . you know. . that's why I don't want to stop going to the group, although it would be the best thing. I wish I could just make it all change. Why can't we all be happy? If we can make a ghost, why can't we make ourselves happy?”

I grabbed the chance to get back on topic. "Are you certain that you're making a ghost?”

"Yes." She gave a hard, decisive nod. "I'm Chinese—we know about ghosts. They're all over the place. They live through us, so our ghost is real, too, even though we made it up.”

"What do you mean 'they live through us'?”

"I mean we give them strength—energy. We remember them and they continue. That's why it's important to remember ancestors and family, or they fade away. Or they become angry and then you're in trouble. We made up our ghost and we keep her alive by our thoughts, so if we stop believing in her, she'll go away.”

"How do you know it's not just a fake? That someone in the group isn't making it seem real when it's not?”

"That would make Celia very angry. It can't all be fake—there's no way for everything to be made by one person fooling us—so the part that's real would know when someone was faking. How would you feel if someone was pretending to be you? That's how Celia would feel and she would get even.”

"What about you?" I asked, turning the truck into PNU's west parking lot.

Ana looked surprised, her narrowly plucked brows arching upward. "What about me?”

"If you found out someone was faking anything, would you be angry?”

"Yes. Sure I would.”

"And would you want to get even with them for it?”

She gave me a bemused look. "No. I would tell them to stop, but Celia would be the one who would punish them, if they needed it.”

"Do you think she could?”

A deep frown took over her face. "I don't know. I really don't." She looked up again. "We're here. Good. Thanks for the ride," she added, opening the door and swinging out. "I hope I was some help.”

"Quite a bit.”

"Cool, cool. See you later." She closed the door and walked toward St. John Hall. In the dismal sunlight I could see the bright yellow thread around her, pointing toward the hot yellow spot on the window of room twelve like a compass toward north.

I stayed in the truck a while longer, thinking and waiting for the group to be assembled so I could sneak into the observation room unnoticed.

I saw Gartner Tuckman heading for the building with his briefcase in his hand. He was playing villain again, wearing black and glaring. I followed him into the building, keeping far enough behind to give him a chance to round up any séance members loitering in the hall.

At the head of the stairs, an uncanny fog shot with light lay across the floor. Strange traceries swirled in the Grey remnants. I peered at it, but couldn't understand it any better than the last time Id been near this room. Odd colors roiled through the puddle of Grey like lightning leaping cloud to cloud, and then the colors seeped toward the closed door to room twelve and oozed away. I felt it tug like a tidal race and then move away. I didn't see the yellow wad of tangled lines.

Frowning, I let myself into the observation room. Terry ignored me. I stayed on my feet and looked out through the double-paned glass.

Tuckman was in the séance room, standing near the observation mirror with his back to us. Some of the participants had taken seats at the table, but others had chosen to sit on the sofa. Ana was seated at the table in one of the hard chairs, along with the only séance member I hadn't interviewed yet—Wayne Hopke, the elderly military man. Ian, I noticed, was standing near the sofa, which put him in position to both look down Cara's blouse and hover over Ken like some mythic avenger—so he wasn't oblivious after all. All attention was turned to Tuckman, as he spoke in a mellow, soothing tone I'd never heard from him before.

". . begin today’s session," he said. "Our friend Mark Lupoldi has died in an accident. This is… a tragedy, and since I know we were all very fond of Mark it is a blow both to our project and to our feelings.”

Tuckman must have had a bit of theater training himself, to judge from his posture and delivery as he counterfeited sorrow. His shoulders were slumped a little forward and bunched as if he anticipated a blow. The angle of his arms indicated he was clasping his hands together and I imagined his knuckles were white. He probably had a convincingly sad mask arranged on his face.

I looked at the rest of them. Each wore some expression of surprise, startlement, or shock. Cara closed her eyes. Even through the double filter of the glass, I could see Grey sparks and flickers of yellow, red, and the unhealthy green I was beginning to associate with illness and distress. But I still could not see clearly enough to know which coil of energy belonged to whom. I ground my teeth with frustration; the thorough protocols that protected the project—and which I'd normally have cheered—were making my job difficult and there was nothing I could do about that.

"Although this sad event was in no way connected to our project," Tuckman continued, "it's entirely understandable if any of you feel you cannot go through with today's session or even if you want to withdraw completely from further participation. Mark was so enthusiastic about and devoted to the experiments that it is difficult to imagine them going forward without him. He has, of course, left an impression on all of us, colored our sense of the world and our work with his easy friendship and generous nature. We will all miss him.

"I know this seems abrupt, but in deference to everyone's feelings at this time, I think that we should postpone this session and consider if we wish to proceed at all—”

Dale Stahlqvist glowered. "What? Are you suggesting that we quit?”

Cara's eyes flashed open as all other heads turned to stare at her husband.

"Not 'quit, " Tuckman said, raising his hands. "Consider—" "Consider quitting," Dale snapped. "Just throw the whole thing out because we can't go on without Mark? That would put the lie to everything we've done—make the group meaningless—and I simply do not believe that's true. Mark worked as hard as any of us and I think he'd be appalled at such a suggestion. You mean well, Doctor, but it's the wrong thing to do.”

Tuckman sighed as the others began to ring a cacophony of rejection. They would see it through and they would start right now—for Mark's sake. Cara was the only one who remained silent, keeping her eyes down and her face impassive.

Tuckman deserved an Oscar for his performance. He didn't look smug or pleased when he gave in to their demands to continue as planned. He looked resigned and tired. He excused himself and told them to begin as soon as they felt comfortable.

Patricia was availing herself of a tissue as Tuckman entered the observation room. I wondered what had taken him nearly a minute in the hall. He brushed his hands over his hair and sat down. Now he did look a bit pleased.

"Terry," he said, "make a note of the fact that the group chose to go ahead and there are no plans at this time to replace Mr. Lupoldi." He shot me a smug look, then returned his attention to Terry. "How's the monitoring looking?”

"Everything is pretty normal so far, though there was a small spike in EMR activity when you made the announcement. It's returning to normal now.”

Tuckman nodded to himself. "Good. Now let's see what they do. . ”

For the first ten minutes or so they sat around the table and talked about Mark; then they started swapping stories about Mark and the séances and the whole thing took on the aspect of a wake.

Patricia suddenly giggled. "I'll bet Mark's with Celia," she said.

"Don't be stupid," muttered Cara.

The table gave a loud cracking noise and thumped up and down.

"Is that you, Celia?" Wayne Hopke asked, as usual assuming control of the questions.

The table thumped and skittered side to side, knocking Wayne and Cara out of their chairs. A hail of knocks roared on the tabletop. The rest of the group stood up to avoid the table's sudden agitation. A small bookshelf crashed over, spilling decks of cards and stacks of magazines onto the floor.

"Temperature's dropping. Electromagnetic activity is rising quickly." Terry glanced over his shoulder to catch Tuckman's eye. "I'm getting subaudibles.”

"What is it?" Tuckman demanded. "Is it from outside?”

"No, it's in the room. Can't tell what it is yet.”

"Mark it and analyze it later." Tuckman's gaze was intent on the scene in the other room.

The table was zooming back and forth with the séance group chasing after it and having difficulty keeping it under their fingers at all. The activity was nothing like the motion of the clamped tables that Ben had shown me. The table was almost writhing and making a horrible clatter as it warped the rug into folds and corrugations.

"Celia, are you there?" Wayne called again.

The table let out a bang.

"Is this Mark?" Patricia yelled.

Another sharp bang and then the table lurched against the fallen bookshelf. The stereo in the room blared a random segment of modern noise as the table stopped and trembled. Through the distorted music there came a loud pop.

Something hovered over the table in a flare of red light, spinning. Panting, the group drew around the table again. The light dimmed a bit and I could make out a flat, translucent shield shape about half the size of my palm, turning in empty air over the center of the table. Whatever was holding it there was strong enough for me to detect right through the double glass and I didn't like the feeling I got looking at that carmine glow, or the sudden sense of being tied to it.

Cara gasped and started to put out her hand. "That's mine!”

The thing flung itself into her face. She let out a short, sharp shriek and flinched, clapping her hand over her left cheek as she turned away from the impact of the thing. She crouched over and scuttled for the door. The table thumped one last time onto the floor, the eerie light dissipating.

"I think it's over," Terry had been saying as I bolted out of the observation room.

In the hall, I saw the door open and flaring red and yellow energy flooded across the floor as Cara stumbled out, clutching her bleeding cheek. I went toward her, tripping in the sudden flood tide of the paranormal pouring out after her. The worlds heaved and laid a shattering weight over me, pressing me down as I tumbled into the boiling Grey wave. I staggered, concentrating on getting to Cara Stahlqvist across the knife-edge of the Grey between us.

"Cara," I said, reaching to catch her arm. This storm of power didn't feel like the outraged ghost of Bertha Knight Landes lashing at Cara for impersonating her niece. It was sickening and brutal. My limbs weighed too much to move, and I felt I was mired in knee-deep muck and tendrils of avaricious horror as I shuddered and forced my arm to move.

Cara shoved me aside and hurried past. I stumbled back as if she'd swung on me with a two-by-four and gasped for breath I had not known I was missing. I choked on a taste of ice and scorched earth and put my shoulder against the wall, pushing myself away from the flashing, roiling edge of the Grey, at last. It had swamped me for mere seconds, yet it felt like I'd fought against a raging sea for fatal minutes. I felt dizzy.

The force that had flooded out the door drained away in eddies of color, drawing away like an outgoing tide. The remains of the poltergeist had a repulsive, sickly feeling, like a vine that had learned to thrive on poison and grown huge and virulent. It didn't have any distinctive shape this time, but I was sure that's what I'd felt brush past, dragging the edge of the Grey. It was much worse than it had been the day before at Patricia's. Something was wrong with Tuckman's ghost. It was far too strong. The cause might be the power line through the séance room—the power line that shouldn't have been where it was— but even that wouldn't account for the sensation of foulness. Even with it gone, I felt it.

As I leaned against the wall, head down, catching my breath, several other participants ran into the hall and milled about in confusion until Tuckman emerged from the booth with his assistant trailing behind.

I headed for Terry as Tuckman went to calm his flock.

"I need those recordings," I told Terry. He narrowed his eyes at me and looked truculent.

"What do you think I am? Your personal Mr. Step'n Fetchit?”

That took me aback. I'd seen two sides of the racism die in a single afternoon—it was no simple two-sided coin. What were the odds? "You think that my asking for the recordings is demeaning?”

"I notice you didn't ask Tuck," he hissed.

"Tuck's not the systems monitor. You are. But if you can't see past that chip on your shoulder to do your job, maybe I should get them from Tuckman.”

Terry glared at me. In the furious pause we heard the conversation behind us.

"We shouldn't have been thinking about Mark," Patricia cried. "We must have attracted his ghost and now he's upset with us.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Tuckman's lips tighten in suppressed anger. "Don't jump to conclusions, Patricia. I assure you it was no such thing. Monitor readings were as they always are," he lied. "It was all your own doing. All of you. Not the spirit of our dead friend. It's just your own creation.”

Cara was walking back to the group with a moist paper towel pressed to her bloodied cheek. She stopped and listened, glowering at everyone.

"Maybe we shouldn't have been talking about Mark," Ana suggested. "Maybe we were too upset.”

"It must be Mark's ghost—it didn't act like Celia," Patricia insisted.

Cara barked a derisive laugh. "Bull! It acted just like Celia has been lately—mean. There's no damned ghost of Mark! There's no such thing!" She glared at them.

Tuckman shook his head. "I think you're a little upset. . ”

Dale turned and tried to put his arms around Cara. "Cara. . you're bleeding. Let me take you to the hospital.”

She shoved him back. "Leave me alone, Dale. I can take myself." She turned and stalked down the stairs. Her husband stared after her, a moment's bleak hurt on his face.

"She won't go very far," Ian said. "She left her purse.”

"Oh, God," Dale muttered, shivering back to himself. "I'd better take it to her." He darted into the séance room.

I turned to Terry. "I'll be back for the recordings in fifteen minutes. I am not above siccing your boss on you, but I'd rather you chose to do this yourself. Don't force me to knock that chip off your shoulder—you'll look pretty stupid if you get your butt handed to you by a skinny white chick.”

I brushed past the milling group of project members, past Tuckman—who glanced at me with curiosity—and down the stairs to find Cara.

She was standing in the building lobby, staring at something in her hand, when I caught up to her. I peered over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of a creamy stone streaked with amber and brown set in some kind of dark yellow metal. I'm no jewelry expert, so I couldn't tell if it was a real Edwardian brooch or a fake.

"What's that?”

She caught her breath and snapped a cold stare at me. "It's none of your business.”

"Maybe not. Unless it's a brooch you lost that might have been stolen by someone here.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. "All right. It's my brooch.”

"It doesn't seem like something to make much fuss over.”

"It was my great-aunt's! Bertha Knight—oh, damn it, have a little respect. I thought I'd—I thought I'd left it at Mark's.”

Her usual cool reserve had cracked for a moment, but it wouldn't last long. I'd have to pry into her before it froze back over. We locked eyes and I cocked my head a little, inquisitive. "How did you happen to leave it at Mark's?" She wavered.

I didn't. "I'll keep on asking until you tell me, but since your husband is on his way down here, you might want to talk fast.”

"Oh, God. . All right. I left the brooch at Mark's place on Wednesday. We were having an affair and I didn't want anyone to know, so I said I'd lost it. Happy now?" "No. Why didn't you go back for it?”

"I was going to go back for it, but I didn't have the chance and Mark didn't return my calls. One of them must have gotten it from Mark… or stolen it from him," she spat. "Why do you think it's one of them?”

"It has to be one of them. Celia threw it, but it was one of them that made her do it. She's not like she used to be. She's not like the Philip poltergeist Tuck told us about. She's become cruel and spiteful. We used to have such fun…”

"Why couldn't it be Mark's ghost? Maybe you pissed him off." "There's no such thing as ghosts," she spat. "We made Celia up. We control her. Or one of us does. You saw how the session went, didn't you? One of them threw it.”

We heard quick footsteps on the stairs behind us. Cara broke off and turned to look at her husband, trotting down to the lobby holding her purse and jacket over his right arm. He beamed at her, then looked crushed and angry when he saw the oozing red wound on her cheek.

"Come along, dear," Dale said, draping her jacket over her shoulders. "Don't want your lovely face to scar, Cara." He kissed her on the forehead and helped her out the door. Cara. It means "beloved." I stood and watched them until the door swung shut. I almost felt sorry for Dale Stahlqvist. He'd married a trophy—a goddess of quicksilver and steel—and now he had fallen in love with it. He’d forgotten that both quicksilver and goddesses can kill you.

Someone here was just as lethal. Someone had picked up the brooch from Mark's or caused Celia to pick it up, and it had to be one of those who'd been in the séance room. Now they had shown off their cleverness by throwing it back in Cara's face in front of everyone. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that someone who thought himself that clever also thought he could get away with murder, bringing the poltergeist along for the ride. It could have been any of them, including Dale or even Cara herself, lying through her perfect teeth about the brooch, though I doubted that. Her distress seemed too genuine to be an act—a much better act than her impersonation of Bertha Knight Landes's great-niece.

I trudged back up the stairs to get the recordings, bracing for battle with Terry and Tuckman.