Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (7 page)

 
          
"I
think," Dylan said, gently so as not to startle the woman across the
table, "that you could use a hot drink. A cup of tea would be in order, I
think, and then you can tell us the whole story start to finish."

 
          
Dr.
Palmer left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Truth
Jourdemayne
looked at Winter.

 
          
"Have
you ever read anything about the paranormal, Ms. Musgrave? " Truth asked.

 
          
"Please.
Call me Winter." She said it with faint reluctance—Winter loathed false
intimacy—but so far these people hadn't said she was crazy, so she at least
owed them the use of her name. "And no, I haven't. Hocus-pocus bores me:
Steven Spielberg and Uri Geller and all that stuff."

 
          
"That
isn't quite what I was thinking of," Truth said, smiling to blunt the
rebuke. "Well, to put it as simply as possible, it sounds to both
Dylan—Dr. Palmer—and me as if the problem you're describing may fit into one of
the rather broad categories established to describe paranormal events."

 
          
"Aren't
you going to run some tests before coming up with that one?" Winter
snapped. The woman across from her shook her head, not seeming offended in the
least by the question.

 
          
"Unfortunately,
one of the problems with these psychic abilities is that they tend to come and
go as they please—and like cats, they don't respond well to being shown off for
the neighbors. Anyone who says he can produce psychic phenomena on demand is
probably a fraud."

 
          
"So
even if you tested me, you wouldn't find anything," Winter offered
grudgingly.

 
          
"Probably
not," Truth admitted. "Still, we'd appreciate it if you'd let us run
our standard battery of screening tests on you—"

 
          
"Screening?
Why? Do you think I'm making this up?" Winter said, suspicious again.

           
"Screening," Truth
repeated firmly, "to find out if you demonstrate any other potentials than
this poltergeist you seem to have. It's rare to find a psychic only showing one
ability—
precogs
will also exhibit clairvoyance;
telepaths, telekinesis. . . ."

 
          
"I'm
not a psychic," Winter protested. "You said
poltergeist
—isn't that a ghost? I told you I was haunted!"

 
          
"A
poltergeist is not a ghost. The word itself is German, and means 'noisy
spirit,'" Truth began. "Today we often call it RSPK phenomena, for
Recurrent Spontaneous
Psychokinesis
. There's a whole
range of activity broadly classified as 'poltergeist phenomena'—moving
furniture, smashing dishes—oh, yes, and unlocking doors and windows as well—
that seems to be being done by some malicious or mischievous entity; but as far
as anyone seems to know, there is no ghost or spirit—Dylan would insist we call
them 'discarnate consciousness'—involved. Poltergeist activity usually centers
on a person, not a place, and let me emphasize that
all
cases of poltergeist activity eventually stop—usually when the
locus
matures, because most of the
loci
of poltergeist activity are girls
just entering puberty."

 
          
There
was a pause, while Winter digested what she'd just heard.

 
          
"But
I'm not," she said flatly.

 
          
Just
then Dylan returned with the tea things on a tray and passed the cups around
the table. The tea was hot and already sweetened; some odd-yet-pleasant herbal
blend. Winter didn't really want any, but at least holding the white stoneware
mug gave her something to do with her hands. There were biscuits on a tray as
well, giving the whole meeting an absurdly genteel air that somehow angered
Winter.

 
          
"I
agree that you're older than most victims—tell me, was there a poltergeist in
the family when you were a child?" Truth asked, holding her own cup.

 
          
"Don't
be ridiculous," Winter said shortly.

 
          
"RSPK
is the most obvious explanation," Dylan acknowledged, sipping his tea,
"because it is random, irrational, and—it can't be said too many times—not
under the control of the person to which it is attached. It just seems to be a
statistically random flare-up of
psychism
; which is
why it affects ten times more girls than boys and generally occurs at puberty,
when the entire body's already in an uproar. Emotional stress also seems to be
a factor, and you did say you'd been under psychiatric treatment?" he
added casually.

 
          
"You
do
think I'm crazy! You think I'm
doing this myself!"

 
          
"Ms.
Musgrave—Winter—please—" Truth began, but as Winter went to set her mug
down on the table it went spinning out of her hand, hurtling across the room to
shatter against the wall beside Dylan's head.

 
          
"And,
of course, being the victim of a poltergeist can be very stressful
itself," Dylan finished calmly.

 
          
"I—
I'm sorry," Winter stammered. "I didn't mean to throw it at you—it
just slipped. ..."

 
          
She
looked from one face to the other, and saw they did not believe that she had
thrown it at all.

 
          
"All
right," Winter said harshly. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, and
she resented her weakness with all her heart. "You've convinced me. I'm
haunted by a poltergeist. Now how do I get rid of it?"

 
          
"The
most important thing to do is to eliminate stress from your daily routine as
much as possible, and—unrealistic as it sounds—try not to let it worry
you," Truth said soothingly. "We can run a test series here, but that
shouldn't affect a poltergeist one way or the other, and as I say, there's no
documented cure. I
can
recommend some
harmless herbal teas that may help; there's a store in
Glastonbury
called
Inquire
Within
that keeps several mixtures made up. Don't be put off by their
window display, the owner is more into herbs and crystals than black magic.
I'd also suggest meditation, if you're—"

 
          
"Meditation?"
Winter said
incredulously. "I tell you there's this
thing
stalking my life across three states, killing animals and
leaving them strewn around for me to find, and all you can suggest to do about
it is to
think happy thoughts?"

 
          
The
tuning fork on the table began to hum faintly.

 
          
"What
would you prefer—electroshock?" Truth snapped back. "Haven't you been
listening? All of this—nasty as it is, frightening as it is—is coming from
you.
A poltergeist is a sort of psychic
seizure, and maybe they can find the part of your brain where it's happening
and burn it away, but there won't be very much of you left afterward. The only
thing you can do is minimize the damage, clean up after it, and try to find out
why
it's happening."

           
"/
don't want to know why it's happening! I want it to stop!"
Winter
shrieked over the sound that suddenly filled the room: the buzzing, ringing,
beeping cacophony of a dozen different warning bells. Her heart hammered until
it seemed that her head would burst with its next beat, and once again she was
trembling so hard her teeth chattered. She flung herself out of her chair and
ran for the door, her only thought to escape before worse happened. Dylan
Palmer grabbed her before she could reach it; she cried out and struck at him.

 
          
"Running
won't solve anything," Dylan said firmly, holding her until she stopped
struggling. He released her slowly; Winter stayed where she was, panting and
wild-eyed.

 
          
The
sound intensified; the unholy racket of a dozen different devices, from the
security system to the smoke alarm, that had all gone off at once.

 
          
"It's
probably a quake," Truth said calmly. "Dr. Martello said he'd be
running a series today with that new Dutch psychic, the teleport; and the
machines we use to measure PK are very sensitive. But I do wish they'd shut
them down." Almost as Truth spoke she got her wish, as one by one the
blaring sirens stopped and there was silence again.

 
          
As
if some wave had crested and ebbed, the frantic tension that had filled Winter
since the discovery of the pieces of cut clothesline was gone, leaving her
hungry, exhausted, and wishing only to sleep. She sat down again and took a
biscuit off the tray, biting down and closing her eyes as the sweetness filled
her mouth.

 
          
"Tell
me, Winter, how did you come to rent
Greyangels
Farm?
Amsterdam
County
isn't exactly along the beaten track,"
Dr. Palmer said.

 
          
"It's
beautiful, isn't it?" Winter said. She heard the grogginess in her voice,
and hoped he wouldn't ask a question that would make her admit that she had no
idea how she'd come to be at the old farmhouse.

 
          
"You
probably remembered the place from your student days," Dr. Palmer said.
"Old Mr.
Zacharias
was always trying to rent the
place—not that it ever stayed rented for very long," he added to Truth.
"It isn't haunted, unfortunately."

 
          
"Student
days?" Winter echoed blankly.

 
          
"When
you were at
Taghkanic
..." Dr. Palmer began, and
stopped when he saw the look on Winter's face.

 
          
"I
went to college here," Winter said in an uninflected voice.

           
Both women were looking at Dylan
Palmer now. "Winter Musgrave," Dylan repeated to himself, as though
making certain of getting it right. "You were Class of 'eighty-two. So was
I. You audited Professor Mac-
Laren's
Introduction To
Occult Psychology course; I can't remember why—" Dylan said.

 
          
Winter
stared at Dylan as if she'd never seen him in her life. "I've been here
before?" she said.

 
          
Truth
felt the hairs on her neck and arms rise up in a primitive animal response to
the uncanny.

 
          
"You
went to school here," Dylan said, taken aback by Winter's response.
Whatever he'd expected when he'd brought up the subject, it hadn't been this.

 
          
"I
went to school here," Winter echoed inanely. Her voice held no inflection.
"I don't remember. Why don't I remember?"

 
          
But
she did remember, a little. Enough to know that Dr. Palmer spoke the truth,
even though she had not suspected it until this moment. She'd come back here
because she'd come from here. "If this is true, why don't I
remember?" Winter repeated plaintively.

 
          
"I'm
not a psychologist," Truth began carefully, "but sometimes the mind,
under trauma—"

 
          
"But
I haven't had any trauma," Winter interrupted. "I've had a perfect
life. I had a wonderful job; I liked what I did; I was good at it. I had no
problems." Panicked, she cast her mind back into the past, beyond the
blurred memories of the past year. There were the details of her life, sharp
and clear; a comfortable, ordinary life without surprises or disappointments.

 
          
"You
don't remember anything?" Dr. Palmer asked. Winter hesitated.

 
          
"What
was your major in college?" Truth asked.

 
          
And
now the fear began, because Winter didn't remember that either, and
everyone
remembered their college major.
She couldn't even remember getting her diploma! She gazed at Truth in mute
appeal.

 
          
"Winter
didn't graduate," Dr. Palmer said slowly, thinking backward more than ten
years. "I remember you left school a few weeks before graduation," he
said to her. "No one ever knew why."