Poltergeist

CHAPTER 19

I was roused out of bed early Wednesday by the wretched intrusion of the cell phone s happy burp. I remembered now why I had resisted them for so long. No one likes a chirpy morning person—especially an electronic one—when they've slept like Pinkerton. Carlos s touch on my shoulder had set off a buzzing, burning sensation in my body that had left me with bad dreams and restless sleep.

Snatching the phone from its charger I snapped at it, "Hello." "Ms. Blaine, I'm concerned, in light of Sunday's events, to have outside confirmation of the monitoring equipment for today's session.”

It took me a moment to put the voice and information into context. "Tuckman, it's seven a.m. Your session isn't until three thirty.”

"Yes. I'm making a last-minute request. I thought you'd appreciate as much time as possible to accommodate it," Tuckman replied. His voice oozed condescension. "You appear to have an electronics expert you trust to vet this. I'd like you and your expert to reexamine the room and observe the session to confirm our procedure is as documented.”

"Look, Dr. Tuckman, my expert doesn't work for free and may not even be available on such short notice." My brain was kicking into gear and I wondered if I could get ahold of Quinton so early. He kept bandicoot's hours. "This is a bit of an intrusion and I suspect he'll charge extra for it, if I can get him at all.”

"Immaterial. Whatever got past us last time mustn't happen again. I've spent a lot of time on the phone with the subjects to get them to try one more time. I even had to concede to this ridiculous idea that Mark Lupoldi is haunting them. I've put some additional safeguards in place and added some additional protocols and checks to document the session. But they have to be inspected and checked off by an independent expert before the session. We only have today." I hesitated.

Tuckman lost his cool. "Damn it! I've been up all night to do this!" I didn't know if it was caused by exhaustion or fear, but the sudden whining snap to his voice got me raising my eyebrows.

"Calm down, Dr. Tuckman," I soothed. "I'll get it done." "I have to have outside corroboration." I could hear him breathing fast.

"I understand. I'll set it up as quickly as I can. Make sure the room is locked and remains that way until we get there unless you're in it. No one else should enter that room, if possible. If they have to, you need to be with them and watching them every second, or you can't guarantee that the room is properly controlled. And the same goes for the observation room. No access to anyone but you until I get there.”

Tuckman took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. That reminded me of the relaxation breathing I'd been forgetting to practice myself. "All right. I'll make sure it's secure. I'll have Terry deliver my lecture so I can keep working on the room." Lucky break for Terry—I imagined Tuckman's ego didn't allow anyone else much time in his limelight.

"Good. I'll see you later.”

I dragged myself through a short run and a shower, followed by an argument with the ferret over the ownership of a banana she had tried to stuff into her mayonnaise jar. I always won, but the look she gave me made me feel guilty. Yet another reason not to have kids: if a two-pound ferret had me wrapped around her tiny toes, I'd be a full-time hostage to a child.

I violated the law and used the cell phone while driving. The height of living dangerously, considering the merry oblivion practiced by most Seattle drivers. You can spot a coffee mug or briefcase riding on a car roof every morning commute.

I had to leave a message for Quinton getting him up to speed on the situation and asking him to call me back soon.

He returned the call a little after ten. He agreed to do it and estimated it would take two to three hours to complete the job and document it. I suggested we meet at the Merchants Cafe for lunch at eleven and go on from there.

"I hope he's prepared to pay well for all of this," Quinton said.

"He is.”

"Good, 'cause I've never met the guy but I'm pretty sure I won't like him. Working for jerks costs extra and working for jerks on short notice is even more," he added, then yawned. "I'll see you at eleven.”

Tuckman was grading papers on the séance table when we arrived. His condescending sneer came out when Quinton walked in, but it vanished once the work began. Quinton's odd but thorough, and I had to smile a little at Tuckman's surprise over the scruffy technician's abilities. Quinton found several flaws in the installation of Tuckman's new toys and deftly rewired them as the psychologist watched. He also produced a complicated form on a clipboard and asked a bunch of questions about the previous installation, nodding and frowning and making notes.

After a while, he handed me the clipboard and asked me to fill in some blanks as he called things out. Then he stalked around the room with his tools and meters, testing the repaired circuits and running through an extended version of the same baseline performance he'd done the last time. We were done at ten to three and Quinton took the clipboard back from me to add some more notes and his signature.

Tuckman handed him an additional form and pointed to a place for another signature, saying, "You'll need to stay for the session and confirm the operation of the equipment.”

Quinton shrugged and signed without looking up. "It's your money." He handed the whole sheaf of forms to Tuckman.

Tuckman looked a bit pale when Quinton told him how much money, but he agreed. When he reached for his checkbook I said I'd add it to the bill—Quinton worked on a cash-only basis, which Tuckman found amusing.

The observation room was packed once Terry arrived. The close quarters and lack of sleep made me feel raw. In the séance room, the sitters seemed nervous and keyed up, too. Their chatter was more shrill than usual and the meters showed spikes of sound and energy as the participants moved and talked, settling themselves for whatever was going to happen. No one seemed to have any doubt that something would.

Patricia put a spray of dried flowers in the center of the table and fussed with them as the others walked around. Something Grey and powerful was visible to me in there, even though the glass made it fuzzy and ill defined. I could see the swirling yellow mass I associated with Celia and feel the surge of cold. I heard Dale Stahlqvist and Wayne Hopke on the audio monitor arguing about the possibility of Mark's ghost appearing.

"Does anything look odd to you guys?" I asked, half expecting that they could see the strong Grey activity, too.

Terry and Quinton looked down at the boards as the participants gathered around the table. "Some of these EM readings are higher than normal," Terry said. "The new room barometer is also indicating rising pressure. We'll have to compare it to the outside pressure later. Those guys are kind of wound up, though, so it could just be that.”

I nodded and looked back into the room. My earlier fatigue had revved up to nervousness, though I thought I shouldn't care.

The group had distributed themselves around the table at equal distances so their fingertips, resting lightly on the surface, never touched one another's. Ian had ended up almost sideways to the mirror between Cara and Wayne with Ana on Wayne's other side. Ken was right in front of the mirror between Ana and Patricia, who had Dale Stahlqvist on her left looking straight into the booth. Cara—the cut on her cheek still covered in a gauze patch—had the spot between Dale and Ian. Someone had turned on the stereo and it let a smoky blues guitar bleed moodily into the room.

Wayne cleared his throat and started to speak, but Dale Stahlqvist cut him off. "Good afternoon, Celia," he started, giving Wayne a sharp glare. "Are you with us?”

The table bulged upward in the middle, deforming like a balloon filling with air. Its metal-shod feet dug at the carpet and the flowers slid off onto the rug. I felt my own knot of Grey tighten in my chest and the air in the booth tasted metallic.

Terry looked up from his display of monitoring instruments. He sounded worried. "I'm seeing a static charge building up. And the temperature in the séance room is dropping.”

"What?" Tuckman demanded. "How much?”

"Five degrees in one minute," he said, shaking his head and staring back down at the panel. "Most of my electrical monitors are acting up. I'm guessing magnetic interference. . ”

"It was clear during the tests," Quinton stated. "It's not the new equipment—that's working fine.”

A thunderclap cracked the air of the experiment room.

The participants looked nervous, shooting glances at one another from the corners of their eyes. I could see the hazy yellow wad of energy was now streaked with sudden jagged welts of red. As I stared, the haze seemed to pull into pieces and draw back together, then apart, drifting from the center of the table toward the participants. The largest clouds of energy moved toward Ken, Ana, Ian, and Cara, fired with red and yellow flashes. Smaller balls like heat lightning twitched in the direction of Wayne, Patricia, and Dale.

"Celia?" Dale asked in a nervous voice.

"Maybe it's Mark…" Patricia suggested.

The table quivered, as if gathering itself.

"Nonsense—" Cara snapped.

The table sprang upward and fell back, digging its feet into the carpet. It jerked and shuddered, writhing under their fingertips like an animal in pain. Patricia yipped as it trampled her foot.

Hot light flared over the table in pure white fury and I felt a sympathetic bum along my limbs. The table spun under its brilliant Grey canopy, rising on one leg and striking Cara and Ian hard in the ribs. Cara dropped to her knees as the table knocked into Ian a second time before coming back down. Ian staggered backward, holding his side as the rest stared around.

"The pressure—" Terry started.

The stereo erupted in a burst of uncoordinated noise as the table rushed toward the glass divider, rising off the floor with a sudden bump. Alarms squealed and pinged in the observation room.

"No!" Terry shouted at his instruments. "It can't do that!”

"There's nothing wrong with the device," Quinton said, poking the monitors with his meter, but his face was pale. "But it's getting awfully hot—”

The table crashed into the glass, gouging a hole as big as a beach ball. Icy air gushed through the breach, dragging a stink of smoke and acid into the booth. I gagged on it and bent my body around a sudden punch of discomfort as the table thudded back to the floor. Unobstructed by glass, I could now see the four large power masses hovering over Cara, Ian, Ana, and Ken. Ken's Grey walls and Ian's prismatic flashes had vanished as if burned away. The four miniature storms of energy tore at the table in pulses of red and yellow.

Shouts broke out in the séance room. The table, cloaked in throbbing, paranormal fire, lurched into Ken, ramming him against the wall below the shattered window. Ana shrieked as the table attacked him again and again. Ken flailed and disappeared below our view, the hot red and yellow energy still hovering over him like a carrion bird on the thermals.

A bright orange flash struck the stereo and it blared a jumbled cacophony of swing music, chopping up "Jumpin' at the Woodside" with "In the Mood" and "Sing, Sing, Sing.”

"Stop it!" Tuckman demanded, jumping up and blocking all exit from the observation room. Terry and I stared over his shoulder toward the pandemonium, appalled.

"I'm not doing anything!" Terry shouted.

"The meters are flipping out. There's something really nasty in there," Quinton snapped. "Where's the damned fire extinguisher?”

I couldn't keep track of which angry knot of energy had done what anymore. The room was thick with the dizzying strobe and strain of Grey forces, a rising tsunami of fury and panic. A cataract of books rushed up from the bookshelves and pelted down on the people in the room. Something red snatched at Patricia's head and she shouted in pain. A spangle of blood and the bright shape of her earring arced to the floor.

Under the boiling storm of Grey, the table lurched again, scrabbling its feet against the floor like a bull and jerking toward the corner beside the door. Ana was in its path, half crouched on the floor, covering her head with her arms. Nearby, Dale had flattened himself over Cara. Ian, Ken, and Wayne had all vanished onto the floor near the broken observation room window.

On the video monitor, there was no violent storm of light, only the strange movement of shadows from the swinging chandelier. I could see Wayne patting at Ken's legs, his voice steaming in the room's uncanny cold, sound smothered in the screaming of the stereo, then turning his head to watch the table.

I looked back through the broken window. Trailing red and yellow streamers, the table charged toward Ana. She dodged, jumping over the Stahlqvists and Ian, and ran up onto the couch, still covering her head with her arms as if she were being bombarded by an invisible flight of ravens.

The table jerked forward, changing direction and tipping toward the sofa cushions. Ana bounded across the upholstery, her feet skimming over the back, to leap off the arm of the sofa nearest the door as the table crashed down onto the couch.

Wayne ran to catch her, scooping her from the air with a ropy arm. He wrenched at the door handle. It came away in his hand.

The table bounced and wheeled on its edge, sweeping toward the door.

Beside me, Quinton and Terry began beating at the monitor board with their jackets as smoke erupted from below. "Get out! The panel's catching fire!”

Dale Stahlqvist snatched at a leg of the rolling table, pulling it away from his wife and Ana. Red and yellow light strobed in the room, lending a disjointed, horror-film aspect to the scene. Patricia picked up a wooden chair and began to beat at the rogue table, screaming at it as blood ran down her neck.

I needed a closer look at Celia. In the confusion, I bolted toward the observation room door as the board full of Christmas lights in the séance room exploded, raining colored glass and sparks over Ana, Cara, and Wayne. The stereo let out a final tortured howl and fell silent as both rooms blacked out.

I heard the whoosh of a fire extinguisher behind me as I rushed into the hall. The séance room door crashed open, flooding the hall with Celia's hot glow and tangled lines. Wayne, Ana, and Cara rushed out as I skidded into the sudden fire and knives of the poltergeist.

A tornado of fury twisted around me, pulling and tearing at me with murderous power. Crystal planes, glittering like ice sheets, cut kaleidoscopic slices of time, flaying me with instants of memory— flashes of lives and shattered jumbles of faces. . and the odor of gun-smoke and salt wrack. The sensation of foulness pushed against me and I reeled forward, desperate to escape it.

Then I was through it and the séance sitters were milling, hysterical and gabbling, into the hall around me. Acrid smoke and the smell of the extinguisher's chemicals flooded from the rooms on a raft of chill. But I still had the other smell in my nose—the stink that had clung under the scent of superglue at Mark's apartment. The odor of the poltergeist.

Turning, I saw the hot swirl of Celia's shape collapse, spiraling away like water down a drain and leaving only dim, frayed threads like a spiderweb spun between the participants. I shuddered. It was a force—an entity—capable of great destruction, and the feel and smell of it only confirmed the sickening idea that had been growing in my mind for a while. I had passed through the thing that had killed Mark Lupoldi.

It hadn't just been present and it wasn't a coincidence. One or some of these people had created a killer ghost. I had no doubt of it, but Solis wouldn't like it. He would require a more prosaic solution and I might have to be the one to point him to it. No one else would or could.

I stood in the hall, breath heaving, and looked them over. Ken was still missing. Tuckman and Terry had come into the hall with Quinton a smoke-wrapped step behind them. Cara had allowed Dale to comfort her and I could see thin blood trickling from beneath her bandage as she leaned against him. Wayne had vanished again, leaving Ana in the care of Ian.

I caught up to Wayne exiting the séance room. Glancing in, I could see Ken sitting up against the control room wall. He shook his head as if dazed or deafened. I looked at Wayne.

"Bruised, but not broken, I think," he said. "Just knocked silly. How 'bout you call the medics and I'll take a look at the rest?”

"We'll have to keep them calm and here and not let them go wandering off like Cara did last time.”

"Check. Go tell Tuckman. He'll listen to you more than me.”

"OK. Be back in a minute." I glanced in at Ken one more time, but he hadn't changed any—his shield of blankness was still missing, but there was nothing much else to see. I dug up my cell phone and called 911 as I headed for Tuckman.

Quinton buttonholed me. "I really don't like this.”

"Join the club. What went wrong?”

He gave me a grave look. "I was going to ask you that. The machinery was all doing what it should have—right up until the electrical surge that fried most of it. What caused the surge seems to be your field, not mine.”

"I'm afraid I don't know, either. Some kind of ghost energy, but—”

He waved my explanation aside. "I don't want to know. Magic just makes my head ache. What I do want to know is if this is going to attract cops.”

I chewed my lip. "I think so. There's a murder investigation involved and I suspect the detective in charge has been watching at least a few of these people.”

"Then I need to go, but I'll call you later. There's something I need to check out.”

"Something wrong?”

"Maybe, but I want to be sure first. I've got your cell phone number. I'll call you when I know. Now, I'm out of here.”

I reserved judgment on his mysterious habits and blew out a breath. "I'm stuck a while longer or I'd offer you a lift back to Pioneer Square. Will you be OK?”

He chuckled. "I'm great at getting around. But you be careful, Harper. This thing's a mess.”

I gave him a sardonic look. "No duh.”

He gave me a small smile, then shook his head and loped for the back stairs with his pack slung over one shoulder.

I caught up to Tuckman next, hearing the screech of a siren and the clatter of noise from in front of the building. "Hey," I said, catching his arm to turn his attention from the hysterical Patricia, who was still pinching her bleeding ear. "You're going to have cops all over you in a few minutes and you need to keep this bunch contained—”

The Medic One team hustled up the stairs with their kits. Wayne sent them to Ken first, then resumed his position blocking the main stairs.

Tuckman seemed a little dazed. "What? Why?”

"I suspect that Detective Solis has been keeping an eye on you and your group. Someone has surely called campus security about the noise and the smoke, and Solis's guys will be right behind them. Keep these people in order and under control and try to get them coherent. No detective is going to buy the idea that your pet ghost got loose and attacked a few people—especially not when one of your project assistants died in mysterious circumstances a week ago.”

His respiration was a little fast, his eyes still a little glazed. I leaned in and peered into them. "Do you understand me, Tuckman? Hello?”

He blinked several times. "Yes. Yes, I think so." He shook himself back to normal. "I need to keep them together. Will you stay or have you other concerns elsewhere?”

I smiled at him. "I have other things I have to do. I need to talk to you about all of this, but it'll have to wait.”

"All right." He nodded and stepped away from me, beginning to move through the small crowd, soothing them and organizing their thoughts for them.

I watched the ghost-makers wander for a moment, beginning to fall back under Tuckman's calm. They seemed frightened and confused—unaware of what power they wielded. Most of them. But at least one of them was acting.

I followed Quinton's lead and slid away before the cops arrived. I had an appointment I couldn't miss. Not even for Solis.