Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (28 page)

And where was she now?

Westmore called a private research consultant he knew
from his newspaper days, to do some searches on Deborah
Rodenbaugh, and he asked for a complete make on the
background and financial portfolio of Hildreth himself.
How did he get so rich? Vivica and others claimed he was a financial genius, yet the basic web searches Westmore had
done on his own revealed no traces of the man whatsoever,
which seemed very odd ...

"Did you hear what that kook Cathleen says she's going
to do tonight?" Mack asked him in the kitchen. He fixed
some espresso, diddling around. "She's going to do some
sort of a seance."

Westmore was not surprised. In this house? "What, to
contact the dead?"

"To contact Hildreth." Mack smiled sarcastically and
walked away with his coffee.

"Come in here," Nyvysk said, surprising Westmore.
"There's something you might want to see ..."

Westmore went out to the atrium. "What's this about
Cathleen doing a seance?" he asked.

Nyvysk chuckled. "It's not quite what you're thinking.
Cathleen's a mentalist-that's a sort of medium-and she
can put herself in what we call a theta-trance, which sometimes solicits communication-prone spirits. Some surviving spirits are very talkative, Mr. Westmore, to an annoying degree. But what Cathleen will do isn't like anything you've
read or seen in movies. No Ouija boards, no people sitting
around a table with their pinkies and thumbs touching."

"Cathleen seems pretty diversified," Westmore observed.
"You only do one thing the tech stuff. Adrianne only
does the out-of-body thing. And Willis does the touch
thing-"

"Target-object tactionism," Nyvysk corrected.

Westmore frowned. "Right. But I take it Cathleen has a
number of skills."

"Oh, yes. She's clairvoyant, she's trance-inductive, she's a
scryer-a crystal-gazer, in other words-and quite paranormally sensitive."

"Is she famous?"

"In her field, yes, quite famous. She keeps to herself
much more now. You rarely see her on TV anymore.
Twenty years ago was another story. Do you know what her
claim to fame is?"

"Not a clue."

"She's a psychokinetic."

"She can move things with her mind?"

"Oh, yes. She stopped doing it publicly a long time ago.
She got in some trouble; someone was injured. A wall she
was holding up-mentally-fell on someone."

"A spoon-bender, you mean."

"Mr. Westmore, there was a time when she could bend a
crowbar. She could look at a car jack, and raise a car."
Nyvysk cast an amused glance. "But you don't believe that,
do you?"

"Sorry, but I gotta see it to believe it."

"Your skepticism is not only healthy, it's crucial. And now, here's something you can focus more of your skepticism on."

Westmore noticed some computers and screens that
Nyvysk had set up on a William and Mary trestle table.
Nyvysk explained, "I've set up a small observation post
down here so I don't have to keep running up and down
the stairs all the time," the bearded man said. "And I
thought you'd like to see exactly what an ion signature
looks like. The readings thus far have been ... interesting."

Westmore focused on a flat-panel screen. He saw a blank,
black screen.

"Do you know what zeolite groups are?" Nyvysk asked.

"No."

"Do you know what labile ions are?"

"That's a big negatory, professor," Westmore admitted.

"Ions are charged sub-atomic particles; they're in everything," Nyvysk began. "What my scanners detect are ions in
the air. Any physical body, in any space other than a vacuum,
will disrupt the ionic environment, and these disruptions can
be monitored. Heat, moisture, movement, minuscular radiation given off by the skin, will cause airborne ions to fluctuate or even reverse their electrical charges. Follow me so
far?"

"I ... think so," Westmore said.

"A human being walks into a room, ions around that
physical body change in a detectable manner. But the same
is true of revenants, discorporated entities, subcarnates---the
manifestations we were discussing earlier."

"Ghosts," Westmore said. "Leftover spirits of dead people."

"Exactly. That's what we're looking at now"

Westmore looked more closely at the screen. "It's just
black. Nothing there."

11
"Wait ...

Westmore kept looking and eventually wisps of something luminous, like dandelion-yellow glitter, moved across
the screen. "So you're telling me that that-"

"-is a revenant. A ghost."

Westmore frowned. "What if a live human being walked
into the room?"

"Then you'd see a similar effect."

"All right. How do you know that's not Cathleen or
somebody?"

"Look."

Westmore's eyes widened. Now the black screen was full
of the luminous wisps. That's a lot of ... something all of a
sudden.

"Here's the room in normal light, from a patch through
the video camera" Nyvysk flicked a switch, and the room
stood devoid of any persons.

It was the Scarlet Room.

When Nyvysk put the black screen back on, more ion
activity could be seen, off and on.

Then it all dissipated back to total blackness.

"I've recorded some interesting ion signatures in there
today, but actually nothing spectacular. Perhaps later
tonight, the activity will become more frenetic."

"Oh, sure, it's interesting," Westmore agreed. "But any
skeptic could look at that and say it could easily be fake. It
could be manufactured with a simple digital editor on a
computer." Westmore smiled. "Just like crop circles and pictures of fairies and paper plates for UFO's. They would
think that you manufactured it. Same thing with the EVP's."

"Of course they would, and of course I could easily do
something like that," Nyvysk admitted. "But I didn't. I'm not looking for credibility. I'd like nothing more for this
house ... to just be a house."

Now Nyvysk smiled. "I've seen a lot worse."

"Proof of demons?"

"Oh, yes. In Toledo, I helped a monsignor exorcize a
ninety-year-old woman and transpose a demon named
Zezphon into the body of a mule. The mule lost all its hair
at once, turned dark-red, and ran mad through the town
square, excreting all of its internal organs through its anus."

Charming, Westmore thought.

"This is an active-element infrared thermograph,"
Nyvysk said next. He clicked something on the computer
and suddenly Westmore was looking at a murky-green
screen. Nyvysk went on: "A human being entering this
room would generate an orange outline." Then he hit the
intercom switch and said, "Okay, Karen. Go on in."

On the screen, a fluctuating orange shape, in a human
outline, flittered across.

"That's Karen in the room?" Westmore asked.

"Yes. It's the Jean Brohou Parlor."

Where the hookers were killed, Westmore remembered.
Hung upside-down. Beheaded over buckets.

"The infrared element picks up confined heat signatures," the older man was saying. "But what would the
presence of a discorporate entity register?"

"I don't know"

Another click, and the screen reversed. Karen disappeared, but now Westmore could see gray-blue shapes-on
the floor. They were moving.

"Humans give off heat from their bodies. Spirits are the
opposite. They're cold. Those shapes are-"

"Ghosts on the floor," Westmore said.

"If you will."

Westmore watched in a macabre captivation. Eventually
two of the gray shapes rose-human shapes-dragging two
other shapes off the floor and suspending them upside
down. The motions which followed were obvious: the two
standing outlines slowly cut off the heads of the hanging
figures. Blue blobs-the heads-were cast aside.

"Think there are real people in there play-acting?"
Nyvysk clicked back to the green screen, showing Karen's
outline standing there. Then he cut the IR system, reverting
back to the normal video camera. A very normal Karen
stood there plainly. No one else was in the ornate parlor
with her. She seemed bored, so she walked to the bar and
poured herself a drink.

That's definitely not a ghost, Westmore concluded.

"Let me show you something else. We have many tools,
as I explained the other day. Manometers and aneroid
barometers measure divergences in air pressure, slidetomographs can sometimes detect incipient presences in
walls, cement foundations, etc., resonance imagers similar to
those used by clinicians can even detect revenant presences
in living beings, as in possession, hygrometers measure variations in humidity. But the quickest and most effective way
to tell if a house is charged? A simple thermometer."

"What?" Westmore said dumbly. "How do you take a
ghost's temperature?"

"Not the ghost, the room that the ghost is in. I don't
like the term `ghosts' but we'll use it for simplicity's sake.
Most types of ghosts will lower the temperature of the area
of space they occupy, sometimes to an exact configuration
of their spirit-body, sometimes just a spot-because they
have no bodies. Other ghosts will raise the temperature of
that area of space. Psychotic ghosts, in particular. Still oth ers can raise or lower the temperature of that space, often
instantly."

Spirits 101, Westmore thought.

"Karen?" Nyvysk said back into the intercom. "I'm
turning off the active IR. Turn your probe-stick on and
just start walking slowly around the room. Up and down
motions."

"Okay." Karen put her drink down and picked up a metal
bar with four nodes on it. A handle sprouted from the middle of the bar.

"That's normal video," Nyvysk said. He pointed to another screen, totally black. "That's the feedback screen for
the probe. It's four bimetallic platinum thermometers. The
readings are sent down to me with a radio-wave booster.

Westmore's eyes peeled on the black screen. Suddenly he
saw four blue dots that moved forward, to and fro. At one
point, Nyvysk said, "Stop, right there," and they saw the
dots moving up and down, changing hues. Some glowed
minutely red, yellow, or orange for split seconds. "Right
there. Up and down, faster."

"You'd be surprised how often men have said that to
me," Karen mouthed over the intercom.

Westmore kept watching: a kaleidoscope of neon-like
streaks, most of which were varying hues of blue.

"I'm recording this for a collective playback," Nyvysk
told him, then back to Karen, "Thank you, Karen. Turn it
off and come back down."

Nyvysk clicked more tabs, but when the footage played
back, each sweep of the dots and streaks froze on the screen
while further sweeps accumulated as well. Soon, a shape was
forming.

"See?" Nyvysk said. "Now you know the process. Keep
watching and eventually an almost solid image will form. I'll be back in a few minutes. Have to make some iced-tea."

"So this is-"

"It's a revenant," Nyvysk said without much concern. "A
surviving discorporation-the spirit of a dead person."

Nyvysk walked off.

Westmore lit a cigarette and kept watching as more of the
gleaming image adhered to the screen. Alternately, he
clicked around the house through Nyvysk's patches into the
mansion's normal video outputs. He saw Mack walking
down a hall on the third floor, Willis wearing his perennial
gloves as he read through some old tomes in the study Adrianne sprawled on a high poster bed in one of the suites.

Karen walked in and placed the thermometer bar on the
table. "What's that? It looks like a painting with fluorescent
finger paint."

"It's you. Waving that thermometer thing in the parlor."

"You're ... kidding ... " She leaned over to study the
screen. Now the image was much more precise. A tall, lean,
and very human figure. "What is that?"

"I think it's Reginald Hildreth," Westmore said.

A theta-trance, the "theta" coming from the Greek word
for death: thanatos. Such a trance-almost always selfimposed-would allow the spiritual remnants of decedents
to share thoughts and visions with a living medium.

If said medium was good.

Cathleen was, or at least had been, known as very good,
and she knew why. She could tune her sexual aura like a radio wave. That aura functioned as a beacon. Her mind was
an antenna to the dead.

As fully trance-inductive, Cathleen had an array of options. Each location was different, each surviving circumstance unique. But she didn't have the nerve to go back to
the cemetery, especially at night, and the Scarlet Room was
simply too scary. Instead, she chose a sitting room on the
fifth floor, which was right next to the Scarlet Room and
had a stone balcony which faced the graveyard.

It was close enough.

There was no bed in the room; it was more of an anteroom for Victorian ladies to freshen up, Cathleen guessed.
Beautifully furnished, crocket moldings, hand-carved corner finials, all surrounding an expansive vanity. A long
arched-backed day-couch on mahogany scroll feet stretched
across the rear window The room was half-paneled, with
rosette imprints adorning brandy-colored wallpaper.

Cathleen dragged the day-couch across the plush carpet,
and stopped before the French doors, whereupon she
stepped out on the balcony and let the warm night rush
into the room.

Mental priming was always necessary; she had to acquaint
herself with her position. The night seemed to hover. She
could sense the five stories of height without having to see
the ground below; in fact, for a moment before her eyes adjusted, she imagined that there was no ground below. Eventually, she could see the opening in the woods that led to the
graveyard, and she thought intensely about what had happened to her there several days ago. A chill of dread shot up
her back, but deeper down came a shameful glow of excitement that made her nipples harden to pebbles beneath her
tank top.

Then she simply removed the tank top and cast it aside, as
if to offer her breasts to the eyes of the night.