Alexandra Sokoloff - The Unseen

Get hold of yourself. Now is not the time to freak out .

Brendan had lied to her, betrayed her. It’s worse than with Matt. That was just an engagement he broke off. This is jeopardy. This is criminal .

And then the anger came, and that was good.

The anger rose and fell in waves, and she rode it like the gentle rocking of a boat on the ocean. It was both calming and powerful. She breathed and burned as she lay tied to the bed of a madman, and tried to force her thoughts into some kind of order.

Think. Think. Think .

You have to get out of here, get Tyler and Katrina out before they start that séance. That cannot happen. It must not happen .

How can I get out?

She yanked and pulled at the ropes. She could move her hands, her fingers, but her arms were bound tightly.

She twisted on the bed, looking around the room. Her eyes fell on the circle cut into the window.

Uncle Morgan .

The card was in her pocket—the one she pulled from the dream. The realization of it stopped her racing thoughts.

I saw him and he gave me the card .

Somehow, wherever that was, it was a real place. Real enough. Can I get to it now?

She lay still on the bed and thought of the white room. She closed her eyes, breathed in… and saw it in her mind’s eye: the room she had been in when she walked among the file boxes and found the Folger test charts, the room she had been in when she tested with Tyler, the room she had been in in her dream, with Uncle Morgan as a young man. She saw its dreamlike whiteness, felt its indistinct contours, felt the coolness of the air, saw it becoming substantial around her…

Her heart beat steadily and slowly and she became aware of the pulse in her wrists. Then she realized she could move not just her hands, but her arms. The ropes were no longer binding her. She opened her eyes, lifted her hands, and sat up from the bed.

She was in the white room… it glowed faintly around her. All of the furniture and details of Brendan’s room had disappeared, but there was a door at the other side of the glowing white.

Laurel stood from the bed and walked across the whiteness to the door. She felt light, insubstantial; she moved with a dreamlike detachment.

She reached out and opened the door—

And found herself looking in on the great room.

She was standing in the archway. The room before her was recognizably the house but its contours were indistinct—nothing seemed clear. Is this a dream?

The dining-room table was set up in the middle of the room with four people around it.

They’ve started the séance already , Laurel thought in a panic. But something was wrong. There was the bank of equipment across the room, only it looked different, primitive, and the screens were intact, not smashed. And there were several arrangements of sofas and chairs and tables in the room, and carpets as well, three separate conversation areas in an elegant arrangement. The gilt-framed mirrors were there, too, intact on the walls.

Laurel understood with a jolt that she was looking at an entirely different group seated around the dining-room table.

Two young men and a young woman of college age were seated at the table. An older man stood with a clipboard, blond hair and high cheekbones. I know him , Laurel thought, electrified, but she could not think from where.

As Laurel hovered in the archway, fascinated, she saw the young woman speak, but Laurel could not hear, only see it, like watching a television with the sound turned down.

Across from the dark-haired young woman was a black-haired young man who also seemed familiar—the slant of his eyebrows and the prominent cowlick. At the far end of the table was another young man who was strangely familiar as well—with crystal-bright eyes in a round boyish face. They were all dressed in clothing that was instantly identifiable as from a previous era because of its formality. The young woman’s short dress and Jackie Kennedy bouffant decided it. The sixties.

There was something odd and distancing about the entire room and the people in it… and Laurel realized there was no color. Everything was black and white.

I’m on film, then , Laurel thought, and promptly forgot there was anything strange about that.

She tried to look around the rest of the room, to get more details about the group, the time, the situation. She felt that she was looking through a fog: though some details were sharp and clear, the perimeters of the room were hazy. But as she stared harder, trying to focus, she suddenly recognized some familiar pieces of equipment: the dice machine with its oblong Lucite tube, and the black felt-covered particle board with its Zener card displays.

It’s the Duke group , she thought in a rush of understanding. Leish’s group. Dr. Leish… Victoria Enright… Rafe Winchester… and the crystal-eyed boy is Uncle Morgan. What are they doing here? What am I doing here?

The young woman was speaking again, but Laurel couldn’t hear her. She watched as all three men watched the young woman covertly; there was a sexual charge that Laurel could feel from where she was standing. Then suddenly a RAP sounded, reverberating through the room. All four at the table reacted with excitement, looking up, talking quickly. Laurel heard the RAP but not the voices. The tension was electric in the room.

And suddenly she felt a chill, like a cold draft.

Laurel .

She stiffened. Someone had spoken her name very clearly.

She looked around the room. No one in the room was looking at her. The round-faced boy was looking down at the table, at a pack of cards he held in his hand.

Laurel .

She heard it again. And then she realized: the voice was in her own head.

She glanced around the room surreptitiously. Who was it? Who was speaking to her?

She stared toward the table. Victoria was speaking, soundlessly. The round-faced boy with the electric eyes was concentrating on the cards. The Zener cards. There was one card in front of him—the bold black O.

Laurel , the voice said again in her head, and now she knew. Young Uncle Morgan.

He said her name again, quite clearly, but she saw that he had not moved his mouth. Somehow, he was speaking inside her head.

Play the cards with me. Come sit and listen .

She glanced at the others warily.

They can’t see you .

Laurel’s eyes lingered on Leish, with fear.

He can’t hear us. It’s his great anger—he has no ability at all .

Laurel stepped out of the archway, walked across the misty room to the table, and sat down across from him. None of the others acknowledged her. The cards were spread out between them.

She looked back into the boy’s eyes—so familiar… and even through the strange black and white she knew they were blue, Carolina blue.

She had no idea how to express the things that she wanted to say—she had no idea how to begin.

Just ask , he said, and his thought was as warm and comforting as a caress. Concentrate on the card and say what you want to say to me .

She concentrated all her being into the words, and thought at him: Is this the past?

She felt immediately exhausted from the effort, but was rewarded with the tug of a sad ghost of a smile at his lips. And then a haunted look that wrenched her heart.