Superstition

24

Sam phoned the members of the group to tell them of Maggie's death. Their weeks of sessions together had created a sense of family intimacy that left them all deeply affected by the news. When they met again three days later, it was a sense of personal loss that remained uppermost in their minds more than any thought of Adam or the rights and wrongs of the experiment. Drew and Barry both shed a tear when they entered “Adam's room” and saw the group there minus Maggie. Even the normally reserved Ward Riley was visibly moved.

A new wooden table had been furnished to replace the broken one. When they were all settled around it Sam addressed them soberly. “Obviously I've written to Maggie's son and daughter expressing our sorrow. I have to say there was a hairy forty-eight hours when it looked as though the university might become the subject of a court action. Maggie's son, pushed by her local pastor whom she'd talked with the night of her death, wanted to hold us liable. But the daughter, thanks largely to Joanna's persuasiveness, would have no part of it. So the only thing we have to face now is the question of whether we go on with the experiment or not. If any of you have any thoughts, anything you want to say…”

Joanna cleared her throat. “I'm the only one who missed that last session, but it looked pretty astounding on tape. It was also clear that Maggie was deeply alarmed at what was happening, and there's no escaping the fact that it almost certainly played some part in her death. On an emotional level, part of me says okay, that's far enough, let's just drop this whole thing right now. The experiment was set up for my benefit, to give me something to write about, so I feel a personal responsibility…”

“But you shouldn't,” Sam interrupted her. From the murmurs of agreement around the table it was obvious that the others all felt the same way. “The experiment was set up as part of the research program of this department,” Sam continued. “If we hadn't done it now with this group, we'd certainly have gotten around to doing it sooner or later with some other group. If there's any responsibility, it's mine. If I'd known Maggie had a weak heart, I'd have dissuaded her from taking part in the experiment. Unfortunately she never told me, nor did I ever think of asking. But there's no point at this stage in breast-beating and crying ‘mea culpa.’ Maggie's dead and that won't bring her back. What all this does bring us face to face with is a question that's central to a great deal of what we're trying to do in this department. That question is: What are we to make of phenomena that defy our criterion of rationality? We've all seen things in this room that do that. My belief remains firm that these phenomena are created by our own minds and by nothing else. Maggie, it appears, had become convinced that there was some outside agency at work. What I'd like to ask is do any of the rest of you feel this way?”

There was a silence as he looked around their faces one by one. Barry shook his head as though summing up the feeling of the whole group. No one dissented.

“You know what might be interesting?” Roger said, pulling thoughtfully on one side of his mustache. “Why don't we talk to Adam-find out what he thinks about all this?”

Sam gave a faint smile. “It's what I was going to suggest, but I'm glad somebody else came up with it first.” He looked around the table again. “Everyone agreed?”

There were nods and murmurs of accord.

“All right. Adam, are you there?”

There was silence. Joanna noticed that they were all sitting with their hands in their laps, with the exception of Sam, who was leaning on the table, and Barry, who had one hand resting on it curled into a loose fist. Sam became aware of the same thing simultaneously. “Maybe we need to go back to square one,” he said, “everybody hands on the table, palms down.”

Everyone did so. Then Sam said, “All right, let's try again. Adam, are you there?”

The silence lengthened until Pete said, “Maybe he can't hack it with the new table.”

“Adam, we'd like to talk with you,” Sam said. “Please respond this time. Are you there?”

They all felt as well as heard it: two sharp raps for no.

“In my neighborhood that's what they used to call a Polish yes,” Barry said, looking around the table. “No offense to anyone of that extraction.”

Ward Riley frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps it means that someone's there, but not Adam.”

Joanna saw Roger's eyes dart from Ward to Sam, who was careful to avoid their gaze. She knew what he was thinking, what they were all thinking. Because she was thinking it too.

“Is that right?” Sam said quietly. “Someone's there, but not Adam?”

A clear, firm rap for yes.

Keeping his voice deliberately calm and seemingly casual, the way she'd seen him do all along when things got tense, Sam asked, “Can you tell us who you are?”

The scratching noise that came from the table wasn't like the one they were used to. It was lighter, the product of a different wood fiber. But it came, they recognized at once, from within the wood itself, not from anywhere on the surface, neither on top nor underneath. It was the sound that Maggie had correctly identified as Adam wanting to write. Now someone else wanted to do the same.

“We should have thought of this,” Sam muttered. “The Ouija board's in pieces and we haven't got a replacement.”

“I'm on it!” Pete was already out of his chair and heading for the table by the wall. “This worked when I was a kid,” he said. “No reason why it shouldn't now.”

He took a sheet of paper and wrote out the letters of the alphabet with a felt pen. Then he took a pair of scissors and cut them into squares. He cut another piece of paper in two and wrote “Yes” and “No” on the separate halves. Then he arranged them around the table just as they had been on the Ouija board. For a pointer he brought over an empty water glass, which he turned upside down and placed in the center.

Nobody had spoken throughout the operation, almost as though they feared that by uttering the wrong word they might break some kind of spell. Pete returned to his chair and they all, without having to be prompted, placed a fingertip lightly on the overturned glass.

“Please tell us your name,” Sam said.

The glass began to move. There was a kind of inevitability about its progress that made Joanna think of Greek tragedy, when you know what's coming but the fascination lies in watching it unfold. With a steady and precise movement, barely pausing to register its choice of each successive letter, the glass spelled out “M-A-G-G-I-E.”

Drew's breath came in a ragged gasp. Her hands rose to cover the lower part of her face in a gesture oddly reminiscent of Maggie when she was taken by surprise or alarmed by something. The rest of them sat silent, wondering what there was to say and who would say it first.

“Keep touching the glass,” Sam said, maintaining his tone of professional calm, like a surgeon demanding a fresh instrument in the operating room. Two or three wavering fingertips returned to renew contact, Drew's last of all.

“Please tell us,” Sam said, “why you call yourself Maggie.”

The glass shot out from under their hands as though fired from a gun. It missed Sam and Roger by inches and shattered against the wall. The whole thing happened so fast that they didn't have time to react, just sat in a frozen silence broken only by a ringing echo of the impact.

A guttural rumble came from Pete's throat as he slumped in his chair and his head fell forward on his chest. At first Joanna thought that he must have been hit by a shard of flying glass. But there was no blood, no sign of any wound. She realized what was happening. It was an almost exact replay of the grotesque performance put on by Murray Ray that day at Camp Starburst when he'd pretended to receive telepathic knowledge of the death of the husband of that poor woman in the audience. But this, Joanna knew, was no performance.

Pete's head rolled on his shoulders and he moaned loudly. They all erupted in movement. There were shouts of alarm.

“He's having a fit. Call a doctor!”

“No!” The word came from Sam as an order. “That's no fit. Wait.”

He moved closer to Pete and reached out to touch his shoulder gingerly. “Pete…?”

The head snapped back and the face that leered up at Sam was no longer Pete's. The eyes had rolled back half into their sockets, and the lips were drawn back over his teeth in a rictus grin.

Two chairs went over, then a third, as everyone jumped back to put some distance between themselves and this thing that had appeared in their midst. There were gasps of shock, muttered blasphemies. Joanna saw Drew cross herself the way she'd seen Maggie do on the video. Only Sam remained fully in control of his responses, not letting go of Pete's shoulder as though the contact somehow grounded them both in a shared reality. “Who are you?” he said.

The rolled-back eyes focused up at him, and the teeth parted slightly. But the sound that came through them had nothing of Pete's voice in it. Nor was there any movement of his lips or jaw coordinated with the words. It was as though his body had no more life than a ventriloquist's dummy, its words projected from some hidden source elsewhere.

“She will not destroy me…not her…not you…not anybody…”

The moment the words were uttered, his eyes closed and he fell slackly sideways. He would have hit the concrete floor if Sam hadn't caught him. He came to with a start, like someone who had momentarily fallen asleep and hoped that no one else had noticed. But he found himself encircled by anxious faces.

“Hey, what's up?” he asked, looking from one to another. “I'm sorry, I guess I dropped off there for a second. Did I miss something?”

Sam strode over to one of the two video cameras and pressed a switch to eject the cassette. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. Frowning, he traced the cable from the camera to the transformer.

Pete came over, curious, and saw the problem right away. “Somebody's pulled the plug out of the wall, for God's sake…!” He replaced the plug in its socket. A handful of indicators glowed as power returned to the system. “How in the heck did that happen? I checked that plug myself before we started.”