Poltergeist (13 page)

A careless "OK, Mom" came back, but the kids were already back in motion.

I gave her a sideways look and spotted a bright yellow gleam around her head. "Your kids know about the project?”

"Oh, God…yeah. Sort of." Her mouth turned down as she spoke and her vowels seemed to spill out the corners. "It's not like you can miss the stupid thing with their dad gone all the time. It's their best little playmate—most kids have imaginary invisible friends, mine have an honest-to-goodness poltergeist to play with.”

"Are you certain this is Celia at work?”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "What else would it be? It's not like I have any other life outside my home, my kids, and this project.”

Bitterness spilled out with every flooding word. She felt abused by life—although I thought that for a woman with no college degree and no apparent skills or charm, she hadn't done too badly in a socioeconomic sense. I wondered if her whining was bred from her husband's constant absence or the other way around. Half a life led in the shadows of a successful man to whom she no longer felt more than a mechanical duty might lead to many things. Yet she would not break from him, except to join this insane project. She was on the fence about the whole thing—life, family, project.

She'd been a drama major in high school—a bit of a drama queen to my mind—and that seemed to have been the high point of her life. I got the idea she resented the children who kept her tied to her gilded cage and that she wanted attention from someone, anyone—preferably male—and the project had seemed like a place to get it. But it wasn't working out so well. She didn't fit in with the younger members or the older members, and the only person she'd ever had a reasonable conversation with was Mark, whom she'd driven home once when his bike had a flat tire. She didn't really like any of the rest of them, though she wouldn't say so. But she did believe that their poltergeist was real, that they'd made things move and caused the knocks and light flickers through their own power of the mind. She didn't see any contradiction in the idea that everyone else was hateful, yet they somehow worked together.

As she babbled on, bemoaning her life, I glanced at the three kids who had sat down on the ground with a pile of cedar chips and leaves and were tossing them up one at a time. Once in a while, one of the leaves or chips would make a sudden shift to the side and the kids giggled. What were they doing? I peered at them through the Grey and could see a scribbled yellow shape, continuously shifting, stabbed randomly with silvery shards, hovering around them and moving the wood and leaves. Patricia noticed I'd stopped listening and looked at the children also, her yellow thread stretching toward the uncanny shape of the same color.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

She threw her hands into the air. "Who knows? They're kids!" She balled her fists on her hips and shouted. "Hey, stop that! You're getting dirty!”

I took a step closer to the kids and their Grey companion, but as they turned to look at Patricia, they saw me moving toward them. The kids jumped up, dusting at their clothes, and the yellow shape imploded with a muffled bang that sounded a lot like the table raps from the recordings and left a weird ringing in my head. I frowned and peered harder at the kids, but there was only the thinnest yellow strand now, looping around them from a source in Patricia's body, and the thread which had tied her to the shape now pointed only to the empty space where it had been.

I looked back at her. She was making a big-eyed face at her kids, oblivious to what had just happened in the Grey. "Well? You have another fifteen minutes before we have to go upstairs and get cleaned up to see Daddy. Better make the most of it.”

The children jumped up and scurried back to the business of playing on the jungle gym. We went back to talking.

Patricia didn't believe the phenomena were being faked. She became defensive when I asked if she'd ever experienced anything like it before and I had the strong impression she was lying. Pecking at her a bit, I got her to admit she'd had some "odd experiences" as a teenager, but she wouldn't go into detail. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn she'd been the focus of a classic poltergeist haunting—emotional whirlwinds leading to increasingly bizarre events in a bid for attention, a self-justifying sense of persecution. Before I could broach the subject, though, she looked at her watch and turned away from me with her shoulders hunched.

"I have to go." She called out, "C'mon, you three! Time's up! Gotta get cleaned up for Daddy!”

The kids sent up a collective whine, but they dragged themselves toward their mother. She began to herd them toward the nearest tower and its elevator, dismissing me with an absent flap of her hand.

I watched her go, then started to make my own way out to the sprawling hillside staircase for which the complex is named, past the brushed steel sculpture of pi and the tiers of waterfalls. I shook my head as I went down the steps toward Western.

I'd only gotten the bare bones of information out of her and never had a chance to ask if she'd had any further contact with Mark. Annoying as she was, I'd have to find another time to talk to her.

While she might not be causing any of the phenomena herself— legitimately or not—it was possible she was putting in a bit of extra energy and boosting the effect of the rest of the group. She was the only one of the participants I'd seen so far who seemed to have daily contact with Celia—if the thing I'd glimpsed was, indeed, the group's construct, which seemed likely. It bred an odd feeling in me on sight and sent a flash of frost over my bones. The sudden lassitude that had fallen on me when it left bothered me and I wondered why it had happened. This ghost unsettled me more than most.

A rich man might enter the gates of heaven more easily than a 1972 Land Rover can find a parking space on Capitol Hill on a Saturday afternoon. Especially if it wants to be within walking distance of Broadway. I finally gave in and paid to put it in a tiny surface lot at the north end of the main strip. Any other day I’d have taken a bus up from my office in Pioneer Square, but I had too many people to see to do without the Rover.

As I parked, I heard some kind of J-Pop bubblegum music of bleats and tweets with a mechanical drumbeat issue from my purse. It took me a moment to realize it was my cell phone. I didn't yet connect the silly little song with a phone call—I'd have to change it, when I could figure out how. I dug into my bag and answered the phone.

"Oh. Hi, Harper. I thought I was calling your pager.…”

"It's OK, Ben. I got a cell phone and the number is being forwarded for a while. What can I do for you?”

"Well, it's more what I can do for you. I found some information about the table-tapping business and I was hoping you'd have some time later today to see it. Mara's chasing rhino-boy for a while, so I can show you exactly what the books describe, if you want.”

"That would be great. When and where?”

"Uh…four? At the Five Spot up here on Queen Anne?”

"Happy hour? OK.”

Ben let out a sigh. "Yeah, happy hour—well, quiet hour by comparison, at least.”

I laughed. "I understand. I'll see you there. Thanks, Ben.”

I shut the phone off and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

By the time I reached the Harvard Exit Theatre, the first shows were more than halfway through—a film from Poland and an American independent film I'd never heard of. I asked for Ian Markine at the ticket window—which really was a window in the side of the building—and was told to go right in and wait until he came down from the third floor.

The theater was a large, bland brick building in a sort of mock Georgian style. Over the door the words "Women's Century Club" were preserved on the decorative cement surround. Inside, the lobby was freshly renovated and more like a posh living room from the flapper era than a theater. It was a long, narrow room with a patterned wall-to-wall carpet, a fireplace, cozy chairs, bronze Art Deco lamps, and a glossy black grand piano. There was a constant flicker of silvery ghosts—tracks of memory worn into the room—and a few squiggles of Grey energy rippling around the lobby.

Seeing no sign of anyone, I ducked into the washroom.

As I was standing over the sink with a handful of foamed soap, I glanced up into the mirror and blinked in surprise. There was someone standing behind me, but I hadn't heard anyone. I turned my head and the worlds slid over each other. The woman standing behind me was a ghost, without a doubt. Well, she could wait.

I rinsed my hands and turned to look at her. She was a plump woman with an intense gaze. Her dark hair was dressed back into a bun at the nape of her neck and her clothes were those of a fashionable matron of the Jazz Age. She frowned at me.

"I imagine you're a woman of sense, even if you stir up hornets by profession," she said. Her voice was firm, but quiet.

"Pardon me?”

"I have always believed women were the equal of men, but they must both come by their rewards honestly. Dishonesty repels me. That brooch is an outright fake. Like her claims to my family. Were it in my power, I'd throw it in her face, the jumped-up hussy. I hope you will tell her so.”

She turned and strode from the room, fading into the mist of Grey time before she reached the door.

"Flabbergasted" seemed an appropriate word at that moment. I looked around for the ghost in the immediate Grey, but she'd moved too far away and I couldn't find her nearby in the living mist of the space between worlds. "Who are you?" I called out, but she didn't answer. Nor did anyone else. I didn't have time to go searching through the Grey for her and wondering whom the ghost was so angry about.

I left, shaking my head and wondering whom or what I'd just met. I returned to the comfortably opulent lobby preoccupied.

"Nice, but stodgy. Sort of the anti-Gatsby, don't you think?”

I turned sharply and came under the beam of a toothpaste-ad smile. Blue eyes twinkled at me with well-schooled charm above that glittering white expanse of dentition. A yellow thread seemed to ring around his head and shoulders like a halo.

I nodded with a reflected smile. "Yes, it is. Very East Egg." I watched his smile broaden—he even had dimples. "I assume you're Ian Markine." He was the handsome white guy dating the Asian woman from the project. I'd watched him untangle her black hair from her earrings.

His eyes sparkled a bit at his name. "Yes, I am. You must be Harper Blaine, then.”

I just nodded. He was about my own height but where my brown hair was straight, his was wavy. He had remarkable good looks that he seemed well aware of, though he made a show of the opposite. His hair was just a little mussed, his spotless white shirt a touch too large, tie carelessly knotted, but still smooth. It looked like being young and sexy took a lot of work and I was glad I didn't have to do it, myself.

"You wanted to talk about Tuckman's project, right?”

"Yeah. Do you have time?”

"Oh, yeah. The audience won't be coming out for a while and nothing's had a chance to get messy yet. Why don't we sit by the fire? No one will mind.”

I agreed and Ian led me to one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace. He sat down near me, rather than across the hearth, and leaned over the chair's arm to look me in the eye.

"So, what do you want to know?" His eyes were lit from within by some amusement.

"When did you join the project and why?”

He chuckled and there was an odd glimmer around him, like color fragments reflected in a warped mirror. I'd never seen anything like that before. "Back in December I was feeling…stagnant. You know—you keep on doing the same thing, seeing the same people, and it gets dull. So I thought I'd find something outside of the sociology department—that's my major—that would give me some new people to get to know. I admit I'm"—he broke off to laugh at himself—"well, I'm always kind of studying any group I'm in, and sociologists are just not fun to watch. They're never disarmed. And there's not much that's further away from functionalism than making your own ghost, you have to admit. It does start to smack of collective behavior, of course, but I just try to enjoy it, instead of analyzing all the time.”

"So this is a mental break?”

"Yes. And they're a good bunch of people.”

"Interesting?”

He laughed again. "Yes, they're great people. We get along well. Ana and I have been out a few times for drinks with Mark and Ken— good times. Well… I have to admit that Terry's an ass, but I don't have to deal with him, so it's no issue. Most of the time it's fun. It's certainly been rewarding.”

I raised my eyebrows. "In what way?”

He smiled crookedly, looking down. "It's not good of me, I know. I just find it difficult, sometimes, to be everything to Ana. She's the center of my universe but… it's been good to have a few other people in it, to make some other friends. That's very selfish of me, very thoughtless of Ana.”

"That's Ana Choi, correct? She's also on the project.”

He looked up. "Yes. Please, don't rat on me. I don't want Ana to think I like them better than her. We can both be a little jealous and I assumed this was confidential," he rushed on, his blue eyes begging, but there was a flicker of dimple as he gabbled and that sparkle of strange color.

"Of course it's confidential, Mr. Markine." I wondered why he'd brought it up so fast.

He sighed and sat back. "Harper, you don't know how much that relieves me. This experience—with the project—has been so remarkable and I don't want to ruin it.”

"And how do you think the project is going?”

"Terrific! It's great! Sometimes it's very exciting. Wednesday, for instance, we really had something going." He gave a low whistle. "It was impressive, but, you know it's pretty tiring. We were all completely blown out afterward. Wow.”

"Have you ever thought that the phenomena were faked? Even just once in a while?”

He blinked and lowered his head to stare at me. "Faked? No. I mean, that's just—well, why bother? We do so well without anybody faking anything. And wouldn't we notice if it was? It's not as if you can hide something that can move a table around like that. I've been working in this place a long time and I've seen some of the equipment you'd need to do that—there's still a ton of the old stuff in the storage attic. It would be far too obvious.”

I didn't bother to tell him that modern stage rigs had come a long way since this had last been a live theater. Even as a mere chorus dancer, I'd seen my share of flying wire rigs and trapdoors that postdated anything in storage here. But I had to admit I wouldn't know anything about the equipment needed to fly a table with a roomful of people less than a foot away.

"One last thing and I'll let you get back to work. What would you think if I told you someone on the team had been faking phenomena?”

"I'd say you were mistaken.”

"But if it were true, who would you suspect?”

Ian frowned. "I don't like to point fingers…but I'd have to guess Ken. He's got a tricky sense of humor.”

And eyes for your girlfriend, I thought, and wondered if he'd noticed. But since it was Mark who was dead and not Ken George, I presumed Ian hadn't noticed. He didn't seem bothered by it if he knew and his ego didn't seem to have taken any dings as a result. He seemed like a typical, self-involved young man who wanted to look more knowledgeable and impressive than he was. I couldn't have cared less.

I got to my feet. "Oh, one more thing. Do you ever experience anything strange away from the group?”

"Well, not really," he confided. "A lot of people claim this place is haunted by several ghosts, including the ghost of Seattle's lady mayor, Bertha Knight Landes, but I've never seen anything like that. No apparitions, no mysteriously moving objects. Our ghost is PK by committee, remember? It doesn't work outside its own little room." Ian winked at me.

"I see. I think that's all I needed to know. Thanks for your time, Ian.”

He stood up and offered me his hand to shake. "It was no trouble," he said as I accepted the handshake. He closed his other hand over mine. I found his grip cold and just a touch too intimate as he smiled at me. "If you think of anything else, you have my number.”

"Yes, I do," I replied, stifling a sudden spike of anxiety and the same chilly sensation I’d felt when I saw the poltergeist with Patricia's kids. The thing seemed to be knitted to the members of the séance group, present even when invisible. I dreaded the next handshake from one of them if this feeling was going to be repeated.

In spite of his practiced charm, I was glad to remove myself from Ian's presence and head for my next interview.

Looking up at the woman on the wall, I had to squint against the sudden sunshine pouring through a tear in the cloud cover. I wondered why she'd chosen the outside climbing wall when StoneGardens offered walls inside, protected from the weather.

"Mrs. Stahlqvist," I called up. "I'm Harper Blaine, you agreed to talk with me about Dr. Tuckman's project.”

"Yes. Go ahead." She glanced up and scanned for her next handhold.

The gravel I stood on below her was damp and dark from the persistent sprinkling of rain that had started as I drove between Capitol Hill and Ballard—rain now turned to visual white noise by the shaft of sun. Even the Grey was hard to see and I couldn't tell much about her from this angle, other than the fact that she had no need to fear spandex. I knew healthy twenty-year-olds who didn't have the muscle definition of Carolyn Knight-Stahlqvist at forty. Her blond hair— nearly the same pale shade as her husband's—was woven into a smooth braid that hung like a pendulum as she moved up into the first overhang.

The hoots of boat horns from the canal locks nearby and the swish of car traffic on the street beside us forced me to yell. "This would be easier if you came down.”

Her snort echoed off the wall. "I said I could give you some time. I didn't say it would be exclusive.”

I shrugged. "When did you join the project?”

"January. Dale told you that.”

"Yes, but husbands and wives often have differing memories of events.”

"I've no doubt of that. Dale sees the world by his own light.”

"What about you?”

"Of course I do. Women in business have to make opportunities as much as seize them. I seized Dale when I had the chance and I'll hold on so long as I need him. We both get what we want and we don't interfere with the other's life otherwise." She dug a foot into an artificial crevice and pushed the other foot free, planted it against a knob and stood higher on the wall.

"Sounds a little cold-blooded.”

"It's business. Hot blood is for other endeavors—which is not what I married Dale for. Younger men whose ambition doesn't rise above the bedsheets are much better for that, anyway.”

"Is that why you joined the project—to find someone to rumple your sheets?”

She laughed a precise and modulated derision. "Plato was right about women being like library books—he just had the sexes wrong. I can check a man out of anywhere and put him back when I'm done. And it's what they want, so they don't complain. I really don't need a stalking ground. Most women don't, they're just too sure it's wrong to help themselves.”