William Rabkin - Psych - A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

Spooky music started playing out of the computer’s speakers as the page loaded. Red text flashed over a black background: Fred Larison, Psychic Detective. The glowing ENTER HERE button was surrounded by pulsating skeleton hands.

“At least I don’t feel that cheap,” Shawn said.

Gus clicked the ENTER button, and the opening screen wiped away to reveal a black-and-white photo of a thin, balding man with a pencil mustache and a pronounced overbite staring directly into the camera. Underneath, more red type exclaimed that master psychic Fred Larison was available to solve the deepest mysteries of life, rates quoted on application.

“Sure, I’m going to trust him to solve the deepest mysteries of life when he can’t tackle the basic mystery of finding a decent Web site designer,” Shawn said.

Gus picked up the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the page. After two rings, a recorded voice informed him that the number he’d dialed had been disconnected or was no longer in service.

“He also can’t solve the mystery of how to pay his phone bill,” Gus said. He hung up and keystroked back to the search engine. The next entry down was a news article titled “Psychic Solves Mystery.”

“Does it mention if it was one of the deepest mysteries of life?” Shawn said.

“Let’s find out.” Gus hit the link, and a page popped up from the Jefferson City Gazette, “Central Missouri’s News and Classifieds Leader.” A picture showed the same man, still wearing the mustache but this time adding a cape to the look. He was holding an open jeweler’s box with what appeared to be a large diamond inside.

“‘Renowned local psychic Fred Larison solved one of Jeff City’s most perplexing mysteries yesterday when he used his mental prowess to find a two-carat diamond that had been lost since the days of the Civil War,’” Gus read. “‘The owners, Misses Bonnie and Eugenia Frakes, twin sisters, eighty-three years young, had searched their entire lives for the gemstone their late grandmother Prudence Winsocket had hidden from marauding raiders during the Civil War. But Prudence, living up to her name, went to her grave without ever telling a living soul where she had hidden the jewel. Larison’s answer? Forget about talking to the living. He contacted Prudence directly at her address in the afterlife and asked her what she had done with the precious stone.’”

“I can’t believe this,” Shawn said.

“What? That there are other psychics working the same scams as you?”

“That anyone gets paid for writing this badly,” Shawn said. “And this guy Peter Jones calls himself a reporter. I’ve never met Fred Larison, and I can tell from two thousand miles away that he’s a fraud.”

“Not everyone has your sharp eyes,” Gus said. He pointed to the photo. Next to Larison, two old ladies stared at him with a look that would be considered indecent if the faces sharing it had even one unwrinkled square inch between them.

“Can you make that bigger?” Shawn said.

“Really? You want to see him better?”

“Not him. The person standing behind his left shoulder.”

Shawn tapped the screen to show Gus what he was talking about. There was a hint of a face peeking out of the shadows. Gus centered the cursor on the face and clicked his mouse. The small section of photo enlarged. What had been a small blur of white was now a big blur of white.

“Okay, now focus in on that face,” Shawn said.

“Okay,” Gus said. “No, wait. I just remembered. This is reality, not Mission: Impossible. And this computer just shows me what’s on a Web site. It can’t make faces out of mush.”

“Not much of a computer, is it?” Shawn said. “Let’s see what else they say about Larison.”

Gus clicked back to the search page and scrolled through the list of links. Many of them were references to the Gazette ’s article on various sites devoted to psychic phenomena. At the bottom of the page, there was another Gazette article: “Local Psychic Wows Tough Critics.”

“Let’s see that one,” Shawn said.

This story was also written by Peter Jones, and if anything it was even more breathless in its prose.

“They say that hardened cynics make the toughest audiences, but harder still are those minds that don’t know enough to doubt what they believe. Such a crowd was faced by local psychic celebrity Fred Larison when he brought his bag of mental tricks to Suzie McKee’s first-grade class at Harry S Truman Elementary School last Friday. By the end they were all won over by Larison’s psychic stylings. Some had even decided to give up dreams of growing up to be policemen, astronauts, or nurses to follow him into the realms of worlds unknown.

“And they say public schools don’t educate children,” Shawn said.

“I don’t remember my first-grade teacher being that hot,” Gus said, looking at a woman who was partially hidden behind Larison’s cape. “And I certainly don’t remember her wearing hot pants to school.”

“Mrs. Wilson had her charms,” Shawn said, peering at the screen. “And since she was built like a cement mixer, not wearing hot pants was definitely one of them. But that’s not Suzie McKee.”

Gus craned his head to the screen to study the image. “How do you know?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time studying those legs,” Shawn said. “That is definitely Tara. The question is, what’s she doing there?”

“Maybe she was held back in first grade fifteen times,” Gus said.

“Wait-here.” Shawn scrolled down the page. “‘Larison was as always ably assisted by his lovely assistant.’”

“Tara was Fred Larison’s assistant?”

“More than that,” Shawn said. “It says here that Larison never needed to give her instructions. ‘When asked how they worked together, the lovely helper, who chose not to give her name, said that she took her orders from Larison psychically.’”

“How does it feel to learn you weren’t the first?”

“I’m devastated,” Shawn said. “Let’s find out why she left him.”

Gus went back to the search engine and hit the button for a second page of hits. Shawn pointed to a listing halfway down the page. “I think I figured it out.”

Gus clicked the link, which led to a page of funeral listings provided by a mortuary in central Missouri. “‘Memorial services will be held today for Fred Larison, noted local entertainer.’”

“Entertainer, ha!” Shawn said. “At least someone there wasn’t fooled by that fraud.”

Gus continued reading. “‘Mr. Larison died in St. Joseph’s Hospital Tuesday night after suffering a broken neck in a freak accident.’ Blah blah blah.”

“No dependants.” Shawn pointed to the end of the article. “I guess Tara took his last name without his permission.”

“At least we know why she left him,” Gus said. “He’d have to be a pretty good psychic to keep sending her orders even after he died.”

“We know more than that,” Shawn said. “We know that I was wrong. Dead wrong.”

Gus noticed that Shawn’s face had gone pale.

“When you say wrong, you mean about something unimportant, right?” Gus said. “Like pickles are really good on a burger, or Gremlins 2 wasn’t really better than the original.”

“I mean I was wrong about everything,” Shawn said. “I looked at Tara and saw innocence. I missed every sign. How could that be?”

“How could what be?”

Shawn waved weakly at the monitor.“How did Larison die?”

Gus glanced back at the screen. “In an accident. He broke his neck.”

“Uh-huh. How did Enid Blalock die?”

“Didn’t she fall down the stairs in an empty house?”

“And?”

Gus began to see the pattern that Shawn had already recognized.