The Unseen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

She didn’t sleep that night, of course, but lay awake against her pillows in the jasmine-scented dark, in a dazed state of overload. The basement scene had been weird beyond belief, and in moments she wasn’t exactly sure any of it happened.

Brendan had walked her to her car and there had been an awkwardness as if they had been on a first date—the weirdest first date in the recorded history of first dates: sitting in a basement with seven hundred file boxes around them, talking about poltergeists. The thought sent her into a fit of giggles that woke the cat, who stared at her from its pillow in unblinking reproof.

Get hold of yourself, Laurel ordered sternly. This is madness. You’re a tenure track professor at a major university and you’re seriously thinking of doing some sort of study on poltergeists?

And there was somehow another professor who was equally crazy enough to be contemplating it?

But you can end that right now—easiest thing in the world. It’s clear he has no idea about the Folger Experiment. You don’t ever have to mention it.

And really, she didn’t have any idea what “the Folger Experiment” meant; all she had was the vaguest idea where to start.

A house, her mind whispered back to her seductively. Uncle Morgan said, “The Folger House.” It’s a real place.

Brendan had confirmed what she had been thinking herself: Leish had been at the Rhine lab conducting an investigation into the Folger House. Before he died.

In fact, in all likelihood he was conducting the experiment when he died, she reminded herself, and the thought shot through her body in an icy chill.

And what do you really think you’re going to do if you do find the house? If she ever decided to tell Brendan that there was a house?

But she knew what they would do. It had been crackling in the air between them at the restaurant. Brendan wanted to follow in Leish’s footsteps. He wanted to find a poltergeist.

The thought made her shiver again… but she had to admit there was an excitement running through the chill.

She could pretend all she wanted that it was a psychological experiment. Really, what it was, was magic.

Her cell phone rang beside her, and she bolted up. The phone rang again, vibrating on the bed table. She had no idea who would be calling her. But she did.

She reached for the phone, felt its ring vibrate through her hand. She punched it on. “Hello?” she said warily.

“This is going to be so big.”

She wanted to laugh. She had no idea what was happening to her. She had no idea how he’d gotten her cell number.

“What is?” she asked, finally.

“You know.” Brendan’s voice thrilled through her, heating her to her core.

Now she did laugh. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do.”

There was a live, warm silence.

“Noon. In front of Bryan. I have something I need to show you.”

The silence again.

“Okay,” she heard herself saying into the dark.

By the time they met, of course, the doubts were back, gnawing around the edges of her consciousness. No matter how much she wanted to do this book, and no matter what a relief it was to think that she might not have to do it all alone, there was no reason to trust this man—none at all. But the day was gorgeous, trembling with the excitement of fall… tantalizingly warm sun and teasing wind that brushed at her cheeks and her legs and played with her clothes and hair, and she felt her heart lift as she hurried on the flagstone paths toward the sprawling stone and glass student union.

Inside the lobby, Brendan turned from a theater poster, and heat shot through her at the way his face lit up at the sight of her. He was slow crossing the room to her and she felt again the awkwardness of a date. He touched her arm and by silent agreement they moved immediately out of the bustling thoroughfare that was the Bryan Center, through the glass side doors onto the outdoor walkway, where iron tables were scattered between umbrellaed kitchen kiosks selling salads, desserts, and various ethnic foods. The whole upper walkway looked out over the tops of trees, the pond of Duke Gardens glimmering below between the maples. A strong wind gusted leaves across the pavement and swirled the trees, a promise of mystery and adventure.

They chose a table surrounded by nothing but empty tables, but once seated kept their voices low and kept glancing around as if they were on the lam from some government agency. Brendan’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Look, there’s no reason not to say it straight out. We both know what we’re talking about, here.”

She felt a wild urge to burst into not entirely sane laughter, but managed to keep control. “You want to track down a poltergeist.”

He looked across the table at her. “Don’t you?”

Now she did start to laugh.

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s the farthest reaches of human consciousness.” He said it with radiant conviction. “It might be pure discarnate personality, who knows? However you want to say it, I’m fine with that.”

Laurel’s smile died and she watched the students passing by, in groups, in couples. All animated with the same quality of—of life, longing, promise. And she realized she was jealous… she was tired of feeling worn out, discarded, used up before her time.

She thought of the test papers with Leish’s notation about the Folger Experiment in her roller bag and was two seconds away from reaching down to pull them out and hand them to Brendan—when he reached into his own backpack and pulled out a file folder and removed a single sheet of paper. He looked at her and his blue-gray eyes were serious, now.

“All right, here it is. I think Leish was brought in to investigate this case.” He handed her over a document, a police report form. She immediately noticed three things: it was old, typed on a real manual typewriter; it was dated March 13, 1965; and parts of the text had been blacked out. She glanced up at Brendan. He made a motion for her to read.

She bent over the page, and as she read, she felt a growing incredulity… and then a powerful surge of excitement.

Laurel reached the bottom of the page. As she turned the report over impatiently, a loud scraping sound made her jump nearly out of her skin.

Across the table, Brendan was on his feet, instantly apologizing, “Sorry. Sorry.” She realized the horrible screech had been his metal chair scraping the concrete as he pushed it out. “I was just going to tell you that that’s all there is. I could only find the one page.”

Laurel felt a wave of frustration bordering on fury. She stared at him.

“I know—it’s maddening, right?”

Her mind was racing so fast she didn’t even respond. It was a real poltergeist house. The Folger House?

“Where was this?” she asked aloud.

Brendan shook his head glumly. “I have no idea what town, or even if it was in this state. But the time frame is too much to be a coincidence, right? The report was dated March 13, 1965, and mid-March is exactly when Leish’s name started showing up on Rhine lab documents.”

She looked down at the police report, the tantalizing details, the blocked-out portions. “I’ve been reading reports of poltergeist occurrences for weeks now,” she said slowly. “The details are classic. But I haven’t come across this particular occurrence. Not in 1965.”

“Neither have I,” Brendan agreed. “Believe me, I’ve been scouring the Net and the available literature. And it’s much bigger than Seaford. The rock showers, the sound displacement—and those were early manifestations. So why wasn’t this getting national attention?”

“What about the names?” She suddenly leaned back in her chair and held the page of the report up to the sunlight, trying to read the names that had been blocked out.

“Yeah, I tried that, too. You can’t read anything underneath. The weird thing is, I’m not sure there is anything underneath.” Brendan’s face was serious, focused.

She glanced past the paper at him, then looked more closely at the sun shining dimly through the blacked-out sections of the report. It was true—she couldn’t see a single character underneath the black, and no impressions of typewriter keys under the blacked-out parts, either. “So what does that mean? It’s a copy?” But she already knew that made no sense—she could see the impressions of typewriter keys under all the rest of the document.

“Well, it could have been retyped without typing in the names, yes, I guess, if they really wanted to preserve anonymity.”

She lowered the page and stared at him. He tapped the page with his pen.

“But the date is too close to be coincidental. Leish shows up working at the Rhine Lab right after the date this sheriff’s report is filed. I’m sure they brought him here to investigate a poltergeist.”

“Or…,” she said slowly, “they brought him here to create one.”

Brendan looked at her, mystified.

The wind gusted, blowing leaves past them on the walkway, and Laurel felt a chill run through her, a palpable sensation of danger. She looked around them… at students chattering in line at the food kiosks, professors striding by on the walkway. No one was looking at them, she couldn’t see anyone she recognized, but the sense of not-rightness was paralyzing. She had a sudden, almost overpowering feeling of menace. She started to shiver.

“What?” Brendan said, automatically lowering his voice.

“I don’t know… something wrong… something bad…” She could barely speak through the overwhelming need to flee. “I think we need to go somewhere else.”

He did not ask her why, just zipped his backpack and stood.

They found a private conference room in the library.

“Who did you see out there?” Brendan asked her, when the door was safely shut. The room was small, just a table and four chairs. Laurel took a deep breath. She felt shaky, but the amorphous feeling of danger was fading.

“I’m probably just being paranoid,” she hedged, and glanced out the small glass window in the door.

“Doubtful. We’ve got some competitive people in this department. Ruthless, really. Next time we should meet off campus.”

Next time? she thought. Already there’s a next time?

Brendan’s face had darkened, and he was silent for a moment. “So all right, what are we trying to get at, here?”

Laurel felt a conspiratorial thrill as she walked the small room, gathering her thoughts. “Leish’s overall hypothesis was that it was the expectation of the group—the affected family and the investigators—that created a poltergeist?”

“Yes…,” Brendan said, raising his eyebrows.

“Then maybe—maybe that report was a fake.” He looked at her, mystified. She sat on the edge of the table beside him, unconsciously lowering her voice, even though they were completely alone. “Maybe that’s just the story he gave out to his team.”

“What team?”

Without realizing she was doing it, she stood again. “What if you put a group of researchers together to study the effects of expectation on a paranormal investigation? Only you use research assistants who test off the charts for ESP and PK abilities?”

She turned and looked at him, watching comprehension dawn on his face. “So you tell these high scorers they’re going in to investigate a poltergeist, provide some corroborating documentation… and see if one shows up? I think that would be freakin’ awesome,” he finished, delighted. “But how do you know—”

She reached to the floor, lifted and set her roller bag on the table, and removed the paper-clipped sheaf of high-scoring tests. Brendan was pacing behind the table, as if he no longer could sit still, either.

She handed the test charts across the table.

He read the first one while standing—and his eyes widened. “Holy shit.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the table, flipping quickly through the tests, then going back and looking a second time, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth between scores, comparing. “This is—”

“I know,” Laurel said, her voice sounding giddy to herself. “Look at the dates.”

“I know,” Brendan said, with the same dazed exuberance. “Late March to early April. So Leish put together a team of super-scorers…” He looked up at her. “These are higher test scores than even Pierce and Linzmeyer.”

“I know. I don’t know how he found them—”

“It’s like putting together a PK pressure cooker—”

“If you believed in that kind of thing,” she said, with a straight face.

He stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Busted,” he admitted. He looked over the tests again, and she saw him frown and point to the notes, in Leish’s spiky handwriting. “What’s this? ‘Folger Experiment’? It’s noted on all three of the tests. Who’s Folger?”

In a split second she decided to keep that part to herself. You’ve said way too much already. You don’t know him. Not at all.

She shrugged, hopefully casually. “I don’t know. But there’s a linear progression with the dates. The police report, dated right before Leish’s name starts to show up on Rhine Lab documents, then Leish’s notes on all the ESP and PK tests, then the high scorers being culled from that series of tests and pulled for ‘The Folger Experiment.’ And the notations on the test papers are definitely in Leish’s handwriting.”

“And then the lab shuts down just six weeks after the start date of the experiment,” Brendan finished. “Something happened, all right. Something big. Let’s review.” He paced behind the table as if he were in front of a classroom. “One: The Rhine Lab is on a roll. They’ve reinvented themselves and taken paranormal investigations to a new level by starting field investigations of poltergeist activity. These investigations are getting them national attention. Two: A police report surfaces of electrical disturbances and rock showers and sound displacement at an undisclosed location.” He paused. “The report may or may not be real, but for the moment, let’s take it at face value.

“Three: Paranormal investigator Alaistair Leish suddenly shows up at the Rhine lab, attending meetings, conducting tests. It’s Leish’s theory that poltergeists are created by the expectation of the involved parties, including investigators. Four: Leish does a series of ESP and PK tests and culls a group of high-scoring testers for an experiment he calls ‘Folger.’”

He glanced at her and Laurel tried to keep from squirming uncomfortably. I can tell him anytime, she told herself. Just wait.

After a second, Brendan continued, pacing back and forth, gathering momentum as he thought aloud. “So, either A: Leish has made up a poltergeist house with classic manifestations to take his high-scoring team into to test his hypothesis that researcher expectation can create a poltergeist; or B: he’s taking his high-scoring team into an actual poltergeist house to see how the presence of the team and its abilities will affect the manifestations.” He stopped pacing dropped into a chair, and looked at Laurel, his face alight. “Either way it’s revolutionary.”

She found herself, against her will, warming all over her body.

Brendan held up an index finger. “And then—six. Within six weeks of the start date of the experiment, the Duke parapsychology lab is closed, and all the laboratory files sealed.”

They sat in silence, overwhelmed by the implication.

Something big…

Brendan’s face had taken on a faraway look. He suddenly slammed his hand on the police report on the table between them. “We need to find this house.”

“What?” she said, feeling caught up in something far beyond her control.

He looked at her. “‘How can we not devote our lives to pursuing that question?’”

She felt a shiver, as if she were hearing Dr. Leish speak directly through him, and she was two seconds away from telling Brendan everything—about Uncle Morgan, about the Folger House, about her dream, all of it.

Then she felt herself pull back.

What is this “we” stuff? “We” this and “we” that. It was a technique commonly used by criminals, con artists, serial killers, called “forced pairing.” Get the victim to drop her guard by pretending you and she were a team.

“You’re leaving out the obvious, aren’t you?” she said aloud, and there was an edge to her voice.

Brendan frowned, lifted his hands in puzzlement.

“That there might have been a good reason that the experiment was covered up?” she said pointedly. “That maybe something bad happened?”

“Like what?” he asked, perplexed.

“Do you know that that Leish died in April 1965, the same month as the experiment?”

Brendan stopped for just a fraction of a second. “He died of a heart attack—” he started.

“At forty-one?” she demanded.

“It happens,” he countered, defensive.

“How do we know it was really a heart attack, anyway?” The only evidence she had for that was Anton’s word—another man she didn’t trust.

“What are you saying, that he was murdered?” Brendan asked skeptically. “He was scared to death?” That stopped her. “I don’t get what you think happened.”

She hesitated. What do I think?

“I don’t know,” she said finally, “and you don’t either. But whatever it was, it was bad enough to shut down a world-renowned department that had been functioning for thirty-eight years. It wasn’t just shut down—someone locked up all the research files and tried to erase all physical trace of the department’s existence. I mean, they turned it into an auditorium—”

He was staring at her, perplexed. “An auditorium—what are you talking about?”

“Baldwin Auditorium…. ” But she was having a bad feeling, suddenly.

Brendan shook his head. “The old Rhine Lab was in the East Duke Building. The building was torn down in 1978.”

Laurel’s face and chest flushed with the heat of humiliation. So Tyler had been completely having her on—it was all a big joke. All lies. All of it.

Her head was ringing; it felt as if the room were closing in on her. She pushed back her chair and stood—she just had to get out.

“I have a meeting with a student,” she lied, and grabbed her book bag. “I have to go.” In a flash she was out of the room.

Students looked up from their study carrels as she barreled past them toward the elevators.

“Wait a minute—Mickey!” Brendan had pulled open the door of the conference room to call after her.

Mickey? She registered in some part of her brain. But she just kept going, nearly running, through the library.