Poltergeist

CHAPTER 22

Maybe it somehow knew I was working for its destruction, or maybe it was just in a bad mood, but I spent much of Thursday night under attack by the poltergeist. Small objects in the Rover pinged against my head and face as I drove home. Flinching almost put me into the rail on the viaduct and I got a moment's vertiginous view of the waterfront below before I corrected my path back into the lane.

At home, I had never regretted my collection of books and funky objects until now. A dining room chair rushed at me like an angry dog as soon as I walked into the condo. A pair of bronze bookends soared off the shelf and came for my head. I yanked a bit of the Grey around myself and dodged, taking most of the impact on my shoulders.

Chaos ran back and forth in her cage, agitated by the activity. As I moved toward her, a hardbound book winged past me and crashed into the wall nearby. She's a tough little creature, but I doubted she'd have much of a chance against flying books. I snatched her from her cage and shielded her with my body as I ran for the bedroom. The phenomena followed me from room to room.

I put Chaos in the bathtub and rushed back into the bedroom. I dodged missiles while I dragged every heavy, pointy, or hard object out of my bedroom. I piled most of them in the hall closet and closed it, wedging the door shut. The objects rattled against the door until I moved away. I hauled the most dangerous objects out of the living room and stuck them in my mostly empty kitchen cupboards, tying the doors closed before I returned Chaos to her cage. It appeared shed be safe enough if I wasn't near her. Celia only had a connection to me, not my pet, but I still stacked pillows and cushions all around her cage before I ran back to my bedroom and closed the door. I slept in fits, roused by small objects throughout the night, but the ferret was fine in the morning and the poltergeist seemed to have wound down a little.

I called Sous first thing in the morning, and he insisted I meet him at Le Crepe—a business diner on Second—rather than discuss Tuck-man's project over the phone. So, of course, once we were seated at the same table, he was silent and inscrutable. His narrowed eyes and blank expression might have been caused by exhaustion and insomnia as much as thoughts or judgments reserved to his own mind, but I couldn't tell. I was nursing coffee after my bad night and feeling no more sociable than he.

I glanced past his shoulder to the midmorning lull on the street outside. "How's the investigation going?" I asked.

"Still open. Tell me what happened on Wednesday.”

"I can't tell much—I don't understand it myself—but Tuckman's shutting the project down.”

"Why?”

"The protocols were flawed—that's why things went awry. People have been hurt and it's just too risky. The details don't make a lot of sense, but the end result is that Tuckman is shutting it down. I still have a little follow-up to do with the participants, though. I thought I'd better let you know I'm not quite out of your hair yet, but I'm on my way.”

"I'd prefer that you left this to me.”

I sighed and lied. "Solis, I'd love to, but I have a job to do, too. Whatever's wrong with Tuckman's project is probably a common thread between our investigations, but I'm not going to just assume that and put the baby in your lap. I've been cooperative with your investigation—a little more than I had to be—so you'll just have to bear with my presence in your view a little longer. Unless you have grounds to lock me up.”

It was his turn to sigh. "All right. What do you think these cases have in common?”

"Well." I paused to put my thoughts into sanitized order, restraining an urge to say things I knew he would write off. "I've been looking at these people and at the situation Tuckman's created and I think he's either pulled in or precipitated a psycho. I think what happened to Mark Lupoldi was caused by something and someone in Tuckman's project. It appears that the incidents Tuckman considered sabotage are just other symptoms of this individual at work. He deliberately picked a group of people with slightly unstable personalities and lots of problems, bound to develop tension in an environment where he encouraged them to believe they could do some pretty strange things and get away with it. Psychology's not my field but I imagine that in that kind of environment, if you've got an individual who's on the edge of psychopathic or psychotic behavior, they might find the last step all too easy to take.”

Solis looked down at his own cup and nodded slowly. "That may be true, but my concern is still only the discovery of the killer.”

"Do you have a suspect? I have a few.”

He grunted. "Evidence makes a case, not suspicion. I'd like to find those keys or the method… I agree Dr. Tuckman's project is involved and I've looked very hard at his subjects and assistants. Tell me who you suspect.”

I told him and he raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He refused to give me any response in kind. So much for sharing information.

Returning to my office was a walk through the Grey without even trying. As I crossed Pioneer Square, ignoring phantom traffic and the tipped layers of time, something winged into the side of my head, brushing my temple and yanking out a strand of my hair.

I whirled, looking for the culprit, and spotted a dilapidated man in greasy, filthy clothes sitting on a bench nearby. He held his hands open, a crooked cigarette fallen to the wet ground in front of him, and stared at me with wide eyes. I bent, looked around, and spotted a cigarette lighter—a Zippo-type with a metal case—lying against the building beside me. As I crouched to pick it up, I glanced through the deeper Grey at the lighter. A thin filament of yellow energy was fast fading from it, drawing back like the tail of a snake vanishing into a bolt-hole.

I glanced around, catching sight of a fleeting yellow haze, glittering with flecks of red and slices of silvery time. I picked up the lighter and flicked it into flame. The bit of Celia peregrinated around the square as if it had no interest in me at all. And maybe it didn't this time, but its presence near me was worrisome. I'd spent too much of the previous night dodging books and household objects. They'd all had a small yellow thread of Grey energy reeling from them. Given the violence of Wednesday and the previous night, I was surprised at this minor display.

I took the lighter back to the bum on the bench.

"This yours?”

He stuttered and fumbled, fearful and uncertain how to answer. Then he blurted, "I dint trow it etcha! Hones'! It jus' kina. .”

I nodded with a rueful smile. "I know. It just got away from you. They do that." I looked down at the crumpled cigarette in the gutter between us and shot another quick look for Celia, but the thing had moved away. "That yours, too?”

He looked down and his face fell to the verge of tears as he saw the mud-soaked cigarette. "Yeah," he moaned.

I dug into my pocket for the change from my coffee and handed it to him with his lighter. "Take care of this. Don't lose it, OK?”

His eyes glowed and he offered me a snaggle-toothed grin on a raft of fetid breath. "I will. I will! Tank you, Miss. God bless you!”

I backed away, starting for my office again with a shrug and a mumbled "thanks." Sliding on the mucky cobbles, I hurried on through the October thickness of ghosts.

I was going up the stairs when my cell phone jiggled on my hip. I snatched it and answered.

"You have to do something.”

"What? Excuse me, Dr. Tuckman, but we closed this case last night," I answered, shoving the phone under my jaw as I unlocked my office door.

"Yes, I know. But something must be done. You seem to be the one who understands this thing—”

"No, Tuckman. You understand it. You just don't want responsibility for it.”

"Ms. Blaine!”

I reminded myself that his check hadn't cleared yet and heaved a sigh. "What's the problem?"

"Celia is bedeviling the subjects.”

' 'Bedeviling'? Just how badly are they being pestered?" Maybe the relative calm around me now was the reflection of Celia's action elsewhere. I threw my things on the floor behind the desk and sat down.

Without his villain act to bolster the impact, he just sounded peevish and unpleasant. "Considering the range of injuries they've all sustained recently, it takes very little 'pestering' to make someone miserable. They've all called—every one—with one story or another of the poltergeist doing unpleasant things.”

"Great. Look, Tuckman, as I understand it, the poltergeist is a collective phenomenon, yes?”

"Yes," he snapped at me, impatient and annoyed.

"Well then, if it exists because they believe it exists, the obvious thing to do is get them to stop believing in it.”

"And do you think that's likely when they are being pummeled and assaulted by this make-believe ghost?”

I laughed. "You put it there, Tuckman. I can't do anything to help you on that score. You taught them to believe, you'll have to teach them to be skeptical again. Why don't you tell them it was a hoax? That you had the room rigged and almost nothing that they experienced was real? That should shake a few of them up. If you can get them to stop giving it credence, maybe it will stop harassing them." I didn't say a damned thing about its harassing me, too. The entity had gone off on its own with its master and I doubted that the rest of the group could do much more than weaken it by any lack of faith, but I wouldn't say it wasn't worth a try.

Tuckman remained silent, brooding.

"Dr. Tuckman. Seriously. You need to convince them to stop giving it their support. You have to. It's taken on a life of its own, but if you can break down their belief, you may weaken it enough to stop its doing anything worse. Be brutal. You have to.”

"You've been no help at all," he spat.

"Then I won't charge you. Good luck, Dr. Tuckman. Remember that this is no longer a game. Your ghost killed one of your assistants. This thing has to cease and it's up to you to break it. Not me.”

I could almost hear the slow boil of his vexation. Then he hung up on me. I didn't mind. If I was lucky, I'd never hear from Gartner Tuckman again.

I worked for a while, periodically fending off the random attacks of random objects. At one o'clock, I went to catch Phoebe at her parents' restaurant. Hugh had told me she'd be there, and I needed Amanda's address. I could have just called, but that wouldn't help me mend any fences—Phoebe might take it as another attempt to dodge my rightful dose of her wrath and that wouldn't be good in the long run. Besides, I loved the Masons and needed some kind of break from the grinding horror of this case.

The lunch rush had thinned to a trickle by the time I arrived and the family was, once again, revving up for Friday night. I seemed to be spending all day in restaurants, but this I wouldn't mind. I loved the company of the Masons. Even when they were in their weekly uproar, they were a warm and welcoming crowd. They laughed at full volume and smiled with infectious ease.

As the patriarch, Phoebe's father had taken his usual seat at the family table in back, his arthritic hand clutching a glass of tepid water, which he used more for emphasis than hydration. «Poppy» was gnarled and weathered, as brown as hand-rubbed walnut, and still ran the whole family merrily ragged without lifting anything but the glass and his voice. The clan fluttered around the table, flying in and out the kitchen doors like giddy fruit bats, somehow managing not to careen into one another while acceding to Poppy's every command. He spotted me as I came in and waved me to his table.

"Harper! Come on back here, girl. Where you been? I thought maybe you finally gone wasted away t'nothin' and blew off on the wind." His accent was still as thick as breadfruit—full of «de» and «dem» and soft Rs, lilting and bouncing like reggae—though he'd now lived thirty years in Seattle.

I wound through the crowd of family and sat down next to him against the kitchen wall, which was deliciously warm after the exterior chill. "No, Poppy. I still stick to the ground most of the time.”

He uncurled his index finger from the glass and poked me in the shoulder, scoffing. "Barely. I suppose them foolish white boys you date don' know better. Too bad t'see a nice girl like you goin' t'waste.”

I made a mock sad face. "Well, I just have to make do—Hugh is taken.”

His body shook as he roared laughter. He was loud for a little old man in his seventies. He wound down after a minute, chuckling, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Girl, I knew you could.”

That confused me. "Could what, Poppy?" I asked.

"Unfreeze yourself.”

I gaped at him. "What?" I squeaked.

"Harper, ever since you come out the hospital, you been hard and chilly like steel in the freezer—I'm surprised you got a man a' all. You built up some icy walls like you spect someone goin' t'hurt you some more, but when you ain't lettin' nothin' in to hurt, you ain't lettin' nothing in to love you, neither. Then you be stayin' away from here, like you don't need your family no more—'cause you family, even if you are thin like an of broom.”

I stared at him for a while, this old man with sharp black eyes. I hesitated to ask. "You. . can see some kind of wall around me?" If I had erected such a thing, surely I had good reason to keep the world at a distance. And maybe it was the same for Ken—even tough guys can't take it forever.

Poppy laughed and poked me again. "That's a metaphor, little girl! But spiritual walls be just as hard and cold as the real thing. Why you go look so sad now?”

I jerked back, swamped with bleak memory. "My dad used to call me 'little girl. “

"Harper, I'm sorry. I'm not presumin' on him. How long he's been gone?

"A long time. I was twelve when he died. Now there's just me and Mom and we don't get along.”

"That I know. So. . that why you don't be comin' round? We're too clingy?" Then he sat back and winked at me. "Or maybe you don' like Miranda's cookin' no more?”

I snorted a laugh, relieved to be off the subject of me and my wretched family—even if it did mean dealing with the oddities of the surrogate one. "I love your wife's cooking and I'd be twice as fat as you want me to be if I ate it as often as I'd like to. And three times as fat if I ate it as often as you'd like me to. Things have been a little strange since I got hurt and I've been busy. And Phoebe's mad at me.”

"Oh, she don't be so mad as dat.”

A plate of steaming food was shoved onto the table in front of me.

"I am too as mad as 'dat. “

I looked up into Phoebe's scowl. Or rather, her attempt at a scowl that broke up into a smile as I watched. She put down her own plate and sat across from me. One of the family slid some glasses of water onto the table for us as they passed. Another dropped off rolls of utensils and napkins, never missing a beat on the cleaning and prepping for drinks, dinner, and dancing that took over the place on Fridays and Saturdays.

Noises came from the bar area and the front of the dining room as the tables were rearranged to make a dance floor and stage for the band. Shouts and laughter gusted out of the kitchen with every swing of the doors. Phoebe and I had to lean toward each other to speak at a normal volume.

"Hey, girl," she said.

"Hey, yourself. Thanks for seeing me.”

"Oh, like I'm goin' t'hold a grudge. I was mad. But I understand." She had picked up her father's accent again.

I'd already explained myself and resisted any impulse to do so again. "How are you doing?”

"Fine. I'm goin' back to the shop tonight. How's it lookin'?”

"Fine. Your cousin told me I could get Amanda's home address from you. I need to talk to her.”

"Oh, that Germaine! When Hugh told me he sent that good-for-nothing to my store I thought I'd have to strangle him!”

"Which one? Hugh or Germaine?”

"Both of them! How could he do that to me?”

"He's just trying to help.”

Poppy laughed, breaking into the conversation. "He's trying t'make you stop feeling sorry for your own self, girl! You come in here all long-faced a week ago and crying f'your friend. That's OK. That's right. But now you jus' being stubborn-sorry f'yourself. You're like your ma, Phoebe—ya got t'be busy.”

"I am busy, Poppy.”

"You is busy with everything but you. I love you, girl, but it's time you go home." He fixed his sparkling eyes on me. "You goin' t'make her go back t'her own place, ain't you, Harper?”

"I don't know, Poppy. . She's pretty muleheaded.”

"That d'truth!”

"You two! Worse than Hugh and Mamma.”

Poppy cackled.

"Phoebe, you know you should.”

She made a face. "Yes. 'Specially since everyone be bossin' me about it!”

Hugh came by with a tray full of glasses for the bar and bent down to kiss Phoebe on the head as he passed. "You get back what you dish out, big sister.”

One of the glasses did a backflip out of the stack and darted toward me, trailing a familiar yellow strand. I snatched it. Phoebe put it back onto Hugh's tray with care, keeping one eye on me.

"You got you a duppy now, too?" Phoebe asked.

"Just the garden-variety poltergeist," I replied. "Nothing so nasty as a duppy—they are nasty, right?”

"They be the nastiest things ever," Poppy answered for his daughter.

"What makes them so bad?" I asked him, picking at my plate of food—it was delicious, but I couldn't concentrate on eating, my brain going in so many directions: the poltergeist, my dad, psychic walls. .

Poppy leaned back in his seat, gesturing with his water glass. "Dup-pies, they're the spirits what don' make it to heaven. They got lost somehow on the nine nights and they settle back to earth. But they got no heart t'feel with, no brain t'think with—their soul, it be broke in two. Half here, half the other place. They don' feel the Tightness or wrongness o' somethin'. They don' think what happen. They just do what they want. They come slap you or pinch you or make f'break things.”

"How do you know it's a duppy?”

"You see them. Like skeletons wearing fog. The—what they call it here? Willow wisp? — That's the thing they look like. Ancestor spirits, you can't see them—they as pure as air. But the duppy be tainted and evil. And they just get eviler and eviler the longer they hang round. Dogs be howlin' when they about and you feel the spiderweb on your face. That's the duppy sign.”

I didn't know if I would call the yellow thread spiderweb, but I recalled the sensation on my face the first time I fell into it, when I investigated the room; I had thought of the feel of it as cobwebs then, myself. The idea of a ghost that grew more and more evil from a lack of conscience seemed to match the behavior of Celia—and its psychopathic master—to a T.

"Why you keep askin' 'bout duppies?" Phoebe demanded. "Maybe that's why they're botherin' you now.”

I tried to calculate the response to any possible answer, but I'd never been very good at the elusive math of relationships. I stuck to the easier side of truth.

"Mark's project was about ghosts and I think there's a connection to his death. This duppy thing seems a lot like the ghost they made and maybe—”

"They made a ghost? That's crazy.”

I shrugged. "Maybe it is. But I thought I'd better talk to Amanda about the night Mark got hurt.”

Phoebe stared at me. "You think some ghost-thing hurt Mark. For real?”

"I don't know. But you don't get answers unless you ask questions. I need Amanda's address.”

Phoebe pushed her lips together and frowned. "OK, but you be nice t'her!”

"I will.”

Poppy wouldn't let Phoebe go to get Amanda's address until she finished eating and he wouldn't let me go with her to get it once she was done, either. As soon as Phoebe had disappeared through the kitchen door, he turned a searching gaze on me.

"What you really think, Harper? You think some duppy killed Mark?”

I turned my eyes toward the tabletop. "I don't know.”

"You can' go lyin' t'me, girl. You know somethin' that you wish you don' never know.”

"You don't need to know it, too, Poppy," I said, shaking my head.

He put his free hand over mine. He waited a minute, but I didn't confide in him or look up. He patted my hand and sighed, sounding very old and tired. "Dem sure give you a basket f'carry water," he said, shaking his head.

I made excuses to leave as soon as Phoebe returned with Amanda's information. Phoebe and her father both watched me go through narrowed, thoughtful eyes.