Superstition

17

Taylor Freestone sniffed in the haughty way that he thought befitted a member of the East Coast establishment, of which he considered himself a prominent member. Joanna's latest memo had not impressed him. Its bottom line was that the group had still made no progress in conjuring up its ghost, and the three-week deadline had been passed. He mentioned a couple of stories that he said he'd like her to start thinking about. One was about the private lives of UN delegates in New York; another involved new whispers of scandal in the endless Kennedy saga. Naturally, if the ghost story became live, as he put it with no intended irony, he would put her back on it full time. He still knew that if this thing worked out it was a cover story.

Boredom was the main problem facing the group, especially someone like Roger Fullerton, who simply wasn't used to it. The idea of meeting regularly with the same people, however agreeable, for unstructured sessions of talk, speculation, and occasional jokes was beginning to wear thin. Sam confided to Joanna that they were going to lose him if something didn't happen soon.

“We're going to have to try something new,” he said to her one night in her apartment, late.

“I thought we just did.”

He laughed and shifted on the bed so that his body covered hers in a gentle, sensual embrace. She could feel him hard and urgent, ready to enter her again, and gave a little moan of pleasure. “What exactly did you have in mind?” she whispered.

“Tell you later,” he mumbled, teasing the lobe of her ear with his teeth, his excitem

“A Ouija board!”

The protest came from Barry, who seemed to regard the suggestion as almost an insult.

“Jesus, Sam! I thought this was supposed to be a scientific experiment, not a board game.”

“The Ouija board, or an equivalent, was used in China and Greece from at least the sixth century b.c. The Romans used it in the third century a.d., and the Mongols in the thirteenth. Europe discovered it in the 1850s. Native Americans had their own version of it, which they used to find missing objects and persons and talk with the dead. It didn't become a ‘game’ until some smart American slapped a patent on it about a hundred years ago and started marketing it commercially.”

“Okay, okay. But I still think it's a weird idea.”

“How does everybody else feel about it?” Sam looked around the table. “Remember, we don't do anything unless we all agree, or unless we all agree to a majority vote.”

Ward Riley observed that Ouija boards were widely used in Victorian seances. It obviously served to externalize physically something in their collective consciousness. “I think we should try it,” he said.

Maggie said she had heard it described as a “dangerous toy,” but had tried it once as a young girl without ill effects-or, for that matter, any positive results either.

Drew had no objection. Pete said maybe it would help them break through whatever was blocking them right now.

Roger didn't have an opinion either way and was happy to go along with the majority.

Joanna had tried it at school, like Maggie without results, but had no objection to trying it again. Barry said what the hell, let's do it.

The device that Sam brought down from his office was something that he hadn't used since his earliest experiments with the paranormal. The large hand-painted board bore all the letters of the alphabet, numbers 0 through 9, and the words “Yes.” and “No” standing opposite each other. The pointer was heart shaped and stood on three small felt-tipped legs. It was large enough for all eight of them to place a fingertip on it-so lightly, Sam told them, as to be barely touching it.

Although they got into the procedure without fanfare or ceremony, there was undeniably a new sense of drama in the air. The physical coordination required of them-all leaning forward at the same angle, arms extended, forefingers resting on the pointer head like leads emerging from a battery-gave a focus to what had so far been an abstract intellectual exercise. They were keyed up, alert, ready for something to happen.

“Is anybody there?” Sam asked in a normal conversational tone.

There was a silence. They waited. Nothing happened.

Sam asked the question again. “Is there somebody who wishes to talk to us?”

Again nothing happened. Joanna found herself involuntarily holding her breath. She quickly glanced at the others and saw that most of them were doing the same. Her finger was resting so lightly on the felt top of the pointer that she could barely feel the contact, but suddenly she became acutely conscious of it, like an irritation or an itch that you have to do something about before it drives you crazy. But she couldn't, because she knew that her finger must stay where it was as long as the others kept theirs there, all waiting intently for something to happen.

Then it did. She gave a little gasp. There were murmurs of surprise, curiosity, suppressed excitement from the others. The thing had distinctly moved about an inch. However much she rationalized it in the terms that Sam had explained to her, she felt her heart beating faster.

“Is somebody there?” Sam asked again, his voice steady. “Please indicate yes or no.”

A brief pause. Then, in a single, straight movement, the pointer slid to “Yes.”

“Somebody's pushing,” growled Barry.

“Nobody's pushing,” Sam said. “Keep your fingers in place. Will whoever is there please spell out your name for us?”

Gradually, almost hesitantly, the pointer moved back to the center of the board, described a circle as though getting its bearings, then headed for the letter “A.” It barely paused before looping out again, all of them leaning and swaying to follow it, moving in unison like some kind of precision dancing team. It went to “D” and back to “A,” then across to “M,” after which it came to rest once again in the center of the board.

“He's not going to spell out his last name,” Joanna heard herself saying. As though in response, the pointer started to move again and all of them with it. “W-Y-A-T-T.”

“I'm telling you, somebody's pushing it!” Barry's voice was high with incredulity.

“If that's what you think, try it,” Sam told him. “Ask it a question to which only you know the answer, then try and push it to spell it out.”

Maggie had removed her finger, but Sam said quickly, “No, Maggie. Everybody keep your finger there. Don't resist Barry, just try to follow him. Okay, ask it a question.”

Barry frowned a moment, then asked, “What's my cousin Matthew's middle name?”

The pointer didn't even get to the first letter. It was obvious that Barry was pushing, and equally obvious that the others were not resisting; yet he couldn't even get it to move in a straight line. He conceded with a grudging, “Okay, I guess I'm wrong.”

“Let's carry on,” Sam said. “Does anybody have a question they want to ask Adam?”

Roger said he did. “I'd like to know whether Adam thinks he's real, or knows that he's just a projection of our thoughts?”

The pointer didn't move. “Which is it, Adam?” Sam said. “Are you real or not?”

Once again the movement began. “I-A-M-A-D-A-M-W-Y-A-T-T.”

“‘I am Adam Wyatt,’” Roger repeated. “Well, that's nicely inconclusive.”

“If we're not pushing it, which we're not, is there any reason why this thing couldn't move by itself?” Joanna asked.

“Psychokinesis? Let's try,” Sam replied.

They all removed their fingers.

“All right, Adam,” Sam said, “can you move the pointer by yourself without our touching it?”

It seemed an age as they sat motionless, watching, though in fact it was barely a minute.

“Maybe it's a little soon for that,” Sam said finally. “Back to the old method.”

They all replaced their fingers on the pointer's felt top.

“Anybody else got a question?” Sam asked.

Pete said, “Why don't we ask him why he can't move this thing by himself?”

With a swiftness that startled them, the pointer started moving around the board until it spelled out “I CANNOT.”

“ Why not?” Barry repeated.

This time there was no response. The thing remained as dead as it had been when they weren't touching it.

“According to the theory, if I understand it correctly,” Ward Riley said after a while, “what we're learning now is that we don't believe in Adam enough to give him a life of his own. Isn't that so, Sam?”

“According to the theory, that's right,” Sam said.

“Why don't we ask him if he can do anything to prove that he's real?” Drew said.

With a suddenness that made them all recoil in shock, a sound came from the table that was unlike anything they had heard before. It was a sharp rap, but more like a detonation than a knock, something that came from within the fibers of the wood itself rather than from the collision of two hard surfaces.

Joanna had felt the vibration run up her arm. She could see that the others had too.

“I think that's him,” Sam said. There was a note of quiet triumph in his voice.

Joanna's heart was beating fast.