Poltergeist

CHAPTER 24

When I called, Mara was stuffing food into Brian and had to relay her answers to me through Ben. She made some guesses, but said she could only confirm them in my presence, so I was heading for another evening with the Danzigers. I hoped Brian would be in a calm mood, as I was already tired.

Mara let me through the door to wonderful quiet. I stood in the entry hall and blinked, looking around for signs of rhino. Mara grinned at me, her green eyes sparking with mischief.

I cast her a wary glance. "You've put him in a barrel in the basement," I stated.

"No," she replied, laughing, "though I'm sure he'll be as hung-over in the mornin' as if we had done. His Irish nature is showin' through— I'm afraid he snatched a whiskey glass and helped himself before we could stop him. He was as fluthered as a fiddler at a wedding, then out like the proverbial light." She fairly skipped ahead of me to the living room.

"Brian didn't have any help getting at that whiskey glass, did he?" I asked.

"Not a bit," she replied, plumping down on one of the pale green sofas with a whoosh of breath. "The horrors'll probably cure him of ever drinking another drop again. If the Children's Services ever get wind, they'll call me an unfit parent for letting him at the booze the once and I'll never hear the end of what damage I've done my poor child. But it's blessed quiet for once. Ben just took him up to bed.”

"How much did he get?”

"Oh. . not much—less than half an ounce, and that watered. He just grabbed the glass and took a drink, then made the most awful face! You'd have thought he'd swallowed fire. Then he dropped a perfectly good glass of Jamey on the floor and ten minutes later he was passed out on the rug. I finally understand why my aunt used to slip a tot into my cousin's bedtime milk. He was a right monster." She caught her breath, then blew it back out in a cheek-bulging gust. "My, I am blathering on. Now, let's see what's on with you. Oh.”

I stopped on the verge of sitting down as Mara stared at me with surprise. "What?”

"There's somethin' tangled on ya. Some magical thing.”

I looked down at myself. "It must be the damned poltergeist, though I don't see anything.”

"Well, you wouldn't, would you? It's rather like tryin' to see the back of your own head without a mirror. Every time you look it moves around. I suppose I could snip it off…”

I had an idea and I put up my hands to keep her back. "No. If I'm connected to it, it's connected to me, and I can follow this line to it— if I can find the thread to follow.”

"Would you want to?”

I thought about it. "I might. Can you remove it later?”

"Well. . yes. I don't see why not. Its not the same as that knot or whatever it is that monster stuck in you—though that might be why it's caught on you. Attracted like to like. Grey things sticking together like Velcro.”

"I hope that won't be happening a lot in the future.”

"Not likely. It's never happened before this. Just a moment, let me get the mirror so you can see it.”

A mirror—

But she'd already jumped up and run out of the room. I shrugged and sat on the sofa in the comfortable creaking of the old house muttering to itself. Albert wafted in and circled around the room before fading away again, and as I relaxed and let the Grey flood in on me as it wished, I could see the curling, golden vines of Mara's protective charms that lay over the house. Without the charge of the rhino-boy, the Danzigers' home was serene and more restful than my own. The poltergeist didn't seem to be able to penetrate it any more than most other Grey things.

Mara returned with Ben and a small silver hand mirror. She told Ben to sit down a moment and brought the mirror to me.

"Let me just get this charm back in place," she said, muttering and fingering the edges of the mirror. She made a shape on the surface that glittered a moment in blue and gold before it sank into the mirror and vanished. "There now. It's a silly trick, but it shows you the back of yourself." She glanced into it. "Hm. My hair wants brushing. Here, you take a look and see if you can spot the thread.”

She handed me the mirror and I took it, looking into the surface and seeing only a patch of straight brown hair. "You may need to move it about a bit to see more of yourself. Hold it out farther," Mara suggested.

I stretched my arms out and moved the mirror around slowly. It was strange seeing my own back from such an angle, like a weird camera. The reflection in the mirror moved like a regular mirror: in the opposite direction of my perceived motion. The small, weird view made me feel a little dizzy, but I spotted the thin yellow thread. It circled my head and neck, then spun away into the deepness of the Grey the same way I'd seen similar strands on the séance members. Now that I knew what to look for, I could catch a hint of it out of the corner of my eye.

"That's going to be a real pain to try and follow," I said.

"Why would you want to follow it?" Ben asked.

"To find the poltergeist and the person on the other end—the one who has control of the thing. I don't know how I'll follow something that's behind me, though.”

"Just twist it around to the front," Mara suggested.

I looked askance at her.

"Here, I'll give it a go," she said. She put her hands up on either side of my head and hummed a bit as she tried to get ahold of it. "Stiffer than I thought," she muttered. "There's something awfully strong on the other end, but it doesn't actually care if it's behind or before, so. ." She gave a grunt, concentrating hard, and made a sudden twist with her hands. "There," she crowed.

I gasped as something wrenched across the back of my eyes. A ripping sensation like a hank of hair being yanked from the back of my head flooded my skull with a flash of pain that vanished as fast as it came. "Ow.”

"Oh. I'm sorry. It shouldn't have hurt.”

"It did. Not much, but…" I rubbed the back of my head but felt nothing unusual. Another look in the backward mirror showed my head as it usually was, the yellow thread twisted now to leave its tail in front, though the loop around my head remained as it had been. I looked down my chest and saw a weak yellow gleam near my left arm.

"It's a bit off to the left…" I observed.

"I could give it another shove," Mara suggested.

I was quick to nip that idea in the bud. "No. I can work with this. How am I supposed to chase after this thing, though? When I tried to take a look at it once earlier tonight, it was cut off by a building. Or I think it was a building.”

"Probably. You're not a superhero, you know. Can't see through walls.”

"You can't?" Ben asked.

I frowned at him. "No." Then I realized he was chuckling in his beard. The unexpected respite from their offspring seemed to have made the Danzigers goofy.

I had never discussed the deep Grey with them, the blaze of energy defining the shapes of the world like intelligent fire in a pit of cold blackness. It had been all I could do at the time to say that it was not what any of us had thought it was. I didn't want to discuss it now, either, even if I thought I could have. I'd never had any luck before.

I gave them both a quelling glare. Ben looked a little sheepish, but Mara just made a face at me.

"I imagine once you're in the Grey, some things remain as hard and opaque as they are out here," Mara said. "But I suspect that getting around it's a matter of finding a bit of a hole to go through. Once you've got a path you can follow the strand—or at least get a look at it.”

I groaned. "Are you expecting me to dive in there and chase this thing around right now?”

"Why not?" she said, getting comfortable on the sofa again. "Let's see what we can do about this. I'll have Albert spot you, just in case.”

"I think I can manage without a spotter by now," I said.

"Still," said Mara. "I think what you'll need to be doing is bending the Grey a little while you're inside.”

"Like I do with the shield edge? But that seems to isolate me from the Grey, not help me move around in it. Why am I supposed to be bending this stuff anyway?”

"So you can push the layers around until you find a hole to go through and follow that strand. You've said there seem to be layers to the Grey and it must be easier to bend a single layer just a bit than to pull the whole edge around. You should be able to pull on the layers of it the same way you pull on the shield. That's what I want you to try. Go in and look around. If you can see layers, try pushing and pulling on them and see if you can move them aside a little.”

It sounded crazy, but then the whole thing always did. I shrugged. I breathed slowly, let go of normal, and slid the rest of the way into the mist.

The Danzigers' living room, old as the house was, was not thick with the memories of furniture and other peoples lives. Mara had cleared much of that away when they'd bought the house, but some still remained as shades over shades. The humpbacked shape of an old sofa wavered a few feet from me. In the Grey, its form had the substance of memory. I moved toward it and peered sideways, then straight, through thick and thin veils of mist and cold steam. The sofa flickered a little and I could see that it seemed to flatten a little when viewed from the right angle. I put out my hand at the same angle and pushed.

The ghost sofa warped and bent. I grabbed at it and tugged. It slid. I could do it, but I didn't see what purpose it had, except rearranging the Grey furniture that littered my office and condo.

I pushed myself back from the Grey, breathing a little harder than I'd expected.

"I can do it," I puffed. "Not sure what the point is, but I can shove the furniture around, at least. It's tiring, though.”

Mara shook her head. "I think that's the poltergeist strand dragging on your energy. Pushin' around in the Grey takes some work, but it shouldn't take that much or you'd be exhausted all the time.”

"I used to be.”

"Not anymore. Not in a long time, eh?”

"True. I'm getting used to this stuff and it doesn't seem to be trying to kill me anymore.”

Ben was looking at me oddly.

"What?" I asked.

"I've never seen you do that before. It's rather fascinating.”

"I can't begin to imagine why.”

"You sort of. . fade out. I mean, you're here, but it would be easy to miss seeing you. In fact, you look a bit like most people think a ghost looks.”

I rolled my eyes. "Goody.”

Ben just looked intrigued.

I turned back to Mara. "I'm still not sure I see the point.”

"Well, if it's true that the Grey has layers, then it must have layers of time as well.”

"Yes," Ben chimed in. "We've been discussing it and it seems to me that since memory loops exist in the Grey—that's what the most common ghosts are, after all—these memories must be isolated capsules of time. So the Grey must be stacked up with layers of time, like fragments of pages. Like an archeological dig into time itself. Layers and layers emerging as fragments here and there. Time isn't strictly contiguous in the Grey.”

"Then that explains why it sometimes seems too much or too little time has elapsed when I'm in the Grey.”

"Yes, it would," Mara answered. "It would also give you another way to move through the Grey—by digging into the layers of time.”

"I'm not following you," I said, shaking my head in confusion.

"Neither time nor space are exactly the same in the Grey as they are out here—they simply can't be," she explained. "If a bit of time past can stick up through the present time and show itself as a ghost memory, then it seems likely you could dig down to some other fragment of time, if you can find one nearby.”

"I believe that's how ghosts seem to move through walls," Ben put in.

"How?" I asked.

"Moving along the plane of time fragments in the Grey. The ghost exists on his own time plane. When he seems to walk through the wall, what he's really doing is moving through an open space that existed there in his time. The building has changed, or the space has shifted in the Grey, but on his time plane or fragment, there's no impediment, so he just walks on through. You move like a ghost when you're in the Grey. So if you can get to a layer of time where a barrier doesn't exist, you can move through it, too.”

"But I'm not from that time plane.”

"I don't think it matters in your case.”

"So I could dig down to the days of the Duwamish and walk around on the historic mudflats, if I wanted to?”

"Not quite," Mara interjected. "You can only reach what's there. It's not a solid plane. It's fragments and slices all jumbled up. It's memories. If there's no memory or event strong enough to survive in a spot, there'll be no bit for you to access and you might have to move along in space to find the right bit of time. You might even have to emerge from the Grey to move to another location if the Grey is forgetful.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. "I'm having a hard time sorting this out.”

"Why don't you try again, in the Grey," Mara suggested.

I did try. I immersed myself in the shifting world, studying it and looking for the bits of time that they mentioned, catching occasional flashes like the sun on glass, but pushing the Grey around made me dizzy and tired. Every time I emerged, Albert was somewhere nearby, but never too close, and regarding me through his tiny spectacles as if I were doing something rather shocking. By the end of twenty minutes—or that's what the clock said—I was cranky and had managed to move about as far as the living room doorway. It felt like I'd spent hours at it.

I put my hands up in resignation. "I quit.”

"Oh, you can't!" the Danzigers objected.

"Not forever, just for now. My brain aches trying to bend around this and the rest of me feels like I've just danced back-to-back performances of Swan Lake in combat boots. This must be what you guys feel like after a day with Brian in full rhino mode.”

"Oh," said Ben, running a hand through his curly black hair in sympathy until it stood up in crackling peaks.

Mara laughed, but whether at me or her husband wasn't clear. "Don't vex yourself over it. My own poor brain's a bit soggy with it right now. Think on it and it'll come," she added with a sudden yawn. "Oh, my. Surely it's not so late as that?”

"It's almost nine," Ben said.

"Cha! It can't be." She looked at the clock on the mantel. "Oh, it is. I've still got papers to grade!" She jumped up and flung affectionate arms around me. "Forgive the rush, Harper. Must retire to sling stones at my students' essays on sedimentary structures. Most of them can't seem to tell sandstone from cement, much less describe it.”

Mara rushed off, leaving me with Ben.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you like," he offered.

"I should get back.”

"Home, I hope.”

I nodded. "Soon.”

But once I was back in my truck, I sat and let my head droop. I knew I had earned my fatigue that day, but the drag had started before Wednesday's séance. I'd said nothing to the Danzigers, since I knew they would insist my own safety should come first, but unpleasant implications had come through to me. I'd caught the strand of the poltergeist early on, but the connection seemed to have become stronger on Sunday when I floundered through it in full flood. I'd been feeding it energy ever since without knowing—and in spite of Carlos's statement, I wasn't sure I hadn't contributed more than a coincidental strand to the power that had killed Mark. I couldn't let this feeding go on, but I couldn't pinch off the only handle I had on the thing.

I needed to gain the ability to stalk the poltergeist, but Mara's technique hadn't worked for me; it was too difficult, tiring, and slow to use in tracking—or evading—Celia's nimble movements through the Grey. The entity had shown enough speed and power to intimidate me. There had to be something I wasn't quite getting and it must have been something simple, since the poltergeist's master had learned it with no prior understanding of the Grey or the power in hand. It seemed to me that whatever that skill was, it was probably related to Greywalking and I'd never learned it. I'd been using so little of what was possible, because there were no other Greywalkers to ask—and I hadn't wanted to know. I was learning everything the hardest, slowest way. I'd overindulged in being stubborn.

Without another Greywalker to ask, the only other source of information was Carlos—whose skills as a necromancer glanced across mine in some obscure way I didn't understand. I wasn't sure he did, either, and the last thing I needed was a vampire mentoring me—and he had a more appropriate protégé already. But I needed help. Any kind of kick in the perspective might be useful.

I drove down to Adult Fantasies and was lucky to find Carlos in the tiny office on the ground floor.

The space was really a storeroom with a desk and chair shoved into a corner. Carlos let me in with a pointed glare that sent icicles tumbling down my spine as my stomach pitched.

I was reluctant to speak under that cloud of disapproval, but I forced the words out. "I have a quandary.”

He growled, keeping his attention directed to some papers on the desk, for which I was grateful. His full attention tended to visit the colder levels of hell on me.

I closed my eyes and started, "I know I've already asked you to help me once, but I need to know more about moving through the Grey. The layers of time—or that's what—" I stopped myself before saying "we." Although Carlos was acquainted with the Danzigers, I didn't want them involved any deeper with Seattle's vampires than they had already been. "Tell me about time.”

He put down his pen and clasped his hands in the pool of light on the blotter. His assessment lay over me like a weight of snow.

"What I know may not help you.”

"It's more than I know." He'd realize soon enough how little information I had, so there was no point in being coy about it.

"Time takes many shapes. You'll have to learn them for yourself. It may be a river or a window, a plain or an impenetrable tor that rises from it.”

"But how do I recognize the shapes? What do I do about them?”

"Past time is hard. It has no wish to bend aside. I don't move in the power. You do. You walk in it, breathe it, swim in it." His eyes blazed and flickered. "For you, I imagine time is like rocks in water and you the fish. Like a fish, you will learn the smell of it, the feel of it in the current.”

My breath was a little fast, as if I'd been jogging, and there was a prickling sensation crawling up my limbs against the chill of his presence. His sudden silence brought a jolt of ice as he studied me from beneath his lowering brows.

"Time is. . just shapes. In water," I repeated, turning the thought over and over. A strange inversion of Einstein's ideas about time being a river.

"To you. Yes.”

I got up and left without another word between us.

Now I was puzzled, but no less frustrated. Maybe there was something in what he'd said, but it didn't help me with the immediate problem of Celia. Thinking in dismaying circles, I found myself parking the truck outside my office. Shaking my head, I considered that if my subconscious wanted to wander, I would take the rest of me out for a drink in the thronging weirdness of Pioneer Square. But I wasn't going to do it alone. The historic district was too ghost-riddled for comfort in my current state. I picked up my phone and made a call.

Quinton met me with a hug outside the Owl and Thistle—a noisy Irish pub tucked under a pretentiously Irish stepsister in what used to be a bank on First. How often does a bank go out of business to become a bar? At ten on a Friday night, the little pub was roaring. A "Celtic metal" band—they weren't quite metal, but you couldn't call it folk in spite of the fiddler—contributed to the general clash and thunder of a crowd already drunk on beer and rugby.

Quinton wangled a table in the back near the dartboard and far enough from the band to avoid having any of the people who insisted on dancing in the tiny space land in our drinks. Our conversation was underscored by the thunk of darts and the thock of pool balls as we leaned toward each other to be heard over the wailing of the band covering the Pogues' "Bottle of Smoke.”

I was half down the first pint before it occurred to me I'd had no dinner and we'd just missed the last of the pub grub. "Oh, damn," I muttered.

"What's wrong?" Quinton asked.

"Missed dinner. Oh, well. 'Guinness is good for you, I guess," I added, pointing at a tin sign nearby that featured a comic toucan eyeing the pair of pints balanced on its prodigious beak.

Quinton laughed, then peered at me. "Hey. Really. What's wrong? You never just call and say 'Buy me a drink. “

"Are you saying we never just have a drink?”

"No. I'm saying you never insist. It's always 'Hey, let's shoot pool, or 'Hey, you wanna get a beer? And I noticed that you don't want to shoot pool tonight and I don't think it's because you stink at it—which you do, but that's never stopped you.”

"You started it," I countered, suddenly awkward about how to continue this conversation. "I never shot pool until I met you.”

"Some people would say you still don't shoot pool. And you don't usually evade questions, either. So. . what's the matter? That case for the ego-hound?”

I found myself rolling my eyes without meaning to. "That case. . It's not even a case anymore. It's done. I'm paid. I'm out—and I owe you money, I know. But I cannot let this damned thing go. It won't let me go.

"That thing—the ghost they made—it's a serious problem. I've gotten tangled up with it, somehow, and now it's causing me trouble. It's vicious. I believe it killed one of the project members.”

Quinton choked on his stout. "How does a ghost kill someone?”

"The ghost was just the weapon. One of the remaining subjects controls it.”

I backed up and gave him a fast overview of how the poltergeist functioned and what seemed to have caused its jump to a different level of power and autonomy, how it had become cruel and vindictive as one disturbed individual gained control of it, growing even worse since Mark Lupoldi's death.

Quinton grimaced, shaking his head. "That's freaky.”

"It's deadly. Whichever of them controls it killed Mark. I don't think he or she is going to be content to stop now that they know what they can do—and I'm sure the killer knows by now.”

Quinton nodded and rested his elbows on the table as I went on. "The poltergeist's been raising havoc with everyone connected to it, but it doesn't have endless power. I've been thinking about the activity pattern and it appears that the poltergeist burns energy every time it does anything. If it's been doing a lot—like flinging tables around and breaking people's ribs—it seems to deplete its energy and have to wait for it to recharge a little. That's what it's doing right now. Once the power is at peak, someone else is going to die and this thing will pull on the energy of everyone that feeds it when it goes after that victim. It draws off me, too, and I almost feel complicit in the harm that's already been done. I feel like I ought to stop it, but it's not my job— it's up to Solis to arrest the killer. But Solis is not going to arrest a ghost. He doesn't think in those terms, but there's no evidence linking the method to the murderer. No clues that he'll accept or that a court would, either. Well, there's Mark's keys, but no one knows where they are. The killer must have them, but how do I or Solis get to them?”

Quinton finished his beer and signaled for another round. "Why do you have to?" he asked, digging in his ever-present backpack for his wallet.

I let the waitress take my glass, then leaned forward again, pushing his wallet back into the bag. "You are not paying to listen to me talk this out. Look, this ghost is not going to fade away. It may get weaker if its collective stops believing in it—or if they're killed—but it has plenty of other power to draw on and its master is a psycho who's already done a lot of harm. This thing is not going to stop. And I don't know anyone else who can go after it but me.

"But I don't know how. I've tried to learn some way to follow it, but I can't figure it out. I don't know what to do when I catch it, or how to catch it in the first place. I seem to be stuck with the job of figuring out who controls the thing—which is the same as solving the crime I'm not even supposed to be investigating—and of convincing Solis of the murderer's identity. The real murderer, not the ghost.”

Quinton made a scoffing noise. "Why? Why are you stuck with doing this job for them? They can't understand that a ghost did it, but why does it matter? So long as it stops.”

"The family of the dead guy might not agree.”

"I'm not callous, but they're not going to buy this story and it's not up to you to sell it. You have to consider your own position first— 'cause you can't help anyone if you're dead. It's already taken potshots at you—those bookends you told me about could have knocked your head off. Whoever controls it is crazy and isn't too good at sharing his toys. Since the thing has another power source, at some point—even if it means weakening the thing a little—the killer is going to start picking off the competition—everyone who has a connection to the poltergeist and everyone who's a threat. When it does, you'll be on that list, and the more trouble you make for the guy, the closer you'll be to the top. So your sense of duty is a little backward here. You need to be free of this ghost and that needs to be done before it does any more harm to anyone. That's the important thing." He paused for more beer, then went on.

"You're fixated on a path to a possible solution, not on solving the problem. You're thinking of saving other people from the monster, not of getting rid of the monster for everyone's sake, including yours. That's what you need to be working for. It seems to me that you'll be able to find this ghost-thing hanging around its controller or its next victims. If you're going to keep it from being used, you need to separate the killer from control of the ghost. Once you've got the controller removed, it'll be easier to break the ghost. It's like unplugging the power before you start messing with the machinery. It may not be perfectly safe, but the other way is a lot worse.

"It's pretty obvious from what we saw on those early recordings that the ghost isn't very clever on its own and doesn't make decisions for itself. It gets a lot of its smarts from the group that contributes to it. If it's cut off from that, it'll get pretty dumb and be a lot easier to take out. If you can keep the controller distracted from the ghost, the ghost won't have that source of smarts or viciousness.”

I stopped him, studying him a moment in amazement. "How do you know this?”

"Just compiling the information and following the logic thread to the end. I don't usually do it out loud, though, so I probably sound like a moron.”

"You sound brilliant.”

He grinned. "I like that. Tell me that again sometime.”

"OK. Now, go on being brilliant a little longer. I think I'm getting this part.”

"All right." Another sip of beer was required before he could continue. "If you can approach the ghost while the killer is busy, you can isolate it from the rest of the system—the others aren't going to be much trouble, since they don't use it for anything most of the time.”

"They don't use it at all and they're being encouraged to forget.”

"Good. Once it's isolated, I think the system will just fall apart. It may take a while, but it will. It shows all the signs of being an inherently unstable system and the laws of physics say that unstable systems degrade once the feedback that keeps them artificially stable is removed. So you isolate the entity—scoop it up like in a Leyden jar— and take away the input. The charge just sits in the jar until it is discharged or dissipates on its own.”

For some reason I had a sudden vision of Chaos chasing her toys in the mayonnaise jar at home.

"Wait," I said. "A Leyden jar's a kind of. . battery, right?”

"More like a capacitor. Stores the electricity in coupled plates as an electrostatic charge. There's no current flow in a capacitor, which is why the dissipation is slow but the discharge is fast. Batteries store the electricity in a chemical bond that requires a current and is constantly discharging. Doesn't matter, though—it's just an allusion. You wouldn't really use a Leyden jar to catch a ghost.”

But I was thinking maybe I could. I was thinking about silvered mirrors stopping the flow of Grey energy and the slowing property of glass, and I wondered if I could find a bottle to put this particular genie into until its controller was brought to heel.

"Excuse me, Quinton—I have to make a phone call. I'll be right back.”

I rushed outside, forgetting the lateness of the hour, and called the Danzigers. Mara answered, sounding out of sorts.

"It's rotten late, so this had best be good.”

"Mara, it's Harper. I'm sorry for the hour.”

"Oh," she answered, yawning, "I thought you were the dean—the mans useless as a chocolate teapot and an insomniac to boot. What's come up?”

I told her my idea. She made interested noises in between yawns.

"Brilliant! Come for breakfast in the morning and I'll see what Ben and I can turn up." She punctuated her good-byes with another yawn.

I returned to the table caught between the pleasure of Quinton's company mixed with the possibility of a problem solved and the sense of another still hanging like a sword. And I didn't remember that I should have called Will that night until the opportunity was past.