Kat Richardson: Poltergeist

Idealistic and romantic, Celia—who had often flown with Jimmy—earned her own civil aviation license and left school altogether in May 1941 to volunteer with the Air Corps Ferrying Command, flying planes from the factories to the training fields and transshipment points. When the Ferrying Command became the WASPs, she stayed on, in spite of Jimmy's objections. Celia never saw Jimmy again. She was killed in 1943 when the B-26 Marauder she was ferrying crashed on landing at MacDill Army Air Base in Tampa, Florida. The notorious «Widowmaker» bomber had claimed another victim, while, ironically, Jimmy—the combat fighter pilot—survived the war unscathed.

Tuckman's group had committed this story—flaws and all—to memory and concentrated on making Celia a real person in their minds. With the Philip experiments as a guide, the group made Celia the focus of their thoughts and attempted to create the right mental and emotional atmosphere to foster poltergeist phenomena they could attribute to her. They'd been successful from a very early stage—with the help of Mark and special equipment installed in the room. Now they were just trying to see how powerful the unaided phenomena could get. At least that's what they thought.

I glanced through the participant and staff dossiers—Tuckman had not included one for himself—trying to get an idea of what the group members were like, but they seemed very dry and bland on paper. I thought I might have better luck with the video, so I gathered the files and the disc and hauled them home where I could watch the disc while eating dinner.

Chaos, my ferret, kept me company while I ate. She clambered around trying to find a way to snatch a mouthful of whatever I had and doing her war dance, hopping and chuckling and waving her bared teeth around, whenever she was thwarted—which was more often than not. She managed to dump my water glass twice and get halfway across the table towing a slice of bread backward by humps and jumps before I gave her something else to do.

"OK, goofus," I said, scooping her up and touching my nose to hers. "Enough of that. Jar time for you." I'd discovered that she liked to crawl into a large mayonnaise jar I'd tried to put in the recycling bin. Putting the jar on the floor with one of her balls inside was guaranteed to keep her occupied for ten or fifteen minutes—an eternity in ferret terms—as she squirmed about, in and out, trying to catch the ball as the jar turned and rolled around the kitchen linoleum. If the ball escaped out the open end, she skittered after it, slipping and hopping across the slick floor until she caught the ball and returned it to the jar, wriggling her way inside and starting the whole show again. I smiled at her antics and finished my dinner while the first séance videos flickered across my TV screen.

As I watched, occasional Grey blobs streaked through my living room and small objects fell off the bookshelves with or without the assistance of Chaos. I let the things lie and smacked the floaters aside with a mild irritation at the unusual level of activity. I put it down to the fact that since I was paying more attention to the Grey than usual, it was paying more attention to me.

The first segment on the video was unremarkable. Eight people sat around the table in the séance room I'd seen earlier, chatting and discussing "Celia." They were self-conscious and, except for some false-positives, nothing much happened. By session three, Tuckman's group had managed to make some knocks and the table had rocked a bit from side to side and scooted a short distance across the floor. The lights flickered on the colored light board and the overhead lamp swung. Nothing seemed out of the realm of mechanical fakery or very simple PK and I wondered how much the phenomena had changed since the early sessions. But, as I'd expected, I couldn't see any Grey indicators on the video, so I couldn't tell if they hadn't had any Grey activity or if the recording just hadn't been able to show it. The video wasn't very good quality—hastily copied for me on the secretary's computer from what was obviously not an original master to begin with. I'd have to judge their real ability by tomorrow's session.

I sighed, shook my head, and reached for the phone. I was going to need some help to understand the room's mechanics. I paged Quinton and waited for him to call me back. He was a renaissance man of technology, though he didn't seem to own a phone or a computer of his own. He could hack, kludge, or wing anything. He'd once installed an alarm system in a vampire's car for me. No matter how bizarre Tuckman's setup turned out to be, I doubted it would ever beat running a panic button into the spare tire well of a classic Camaro that sported two inches of dirt in the trunk.

It drizzled on Wednesday, the sky that homogeneous Seattle gray from horizon to horizon that lasts from mid-October through the first of May. This is the weather some people claim induces suicide—difficult to credit when you consider Seattle's death rate is lower than most US cities its size and its homicide rate equally small. I suspect it does contribute to our large number of bars, though.

I'd decided to pack the ferret along for the investigation of the séance room since she was curiosity personified most of the time and good at finding small openings and hidden things—usually when I didn't want her to—which could be useful.

I spotted Quinton outside St. John Hall. He was standing under a tree near the doorway, wearing a full-length waxed drover's coat and hat against the rain, though some had managed to get into his close-trimmed beard, somehow. His long brown hair was pulled back and tucked into his collar. He kept his coat on as we collected the keys and went upstairs.

"What's the setup?" he asked.

"This group is trying to create psychokinetic phenomena in a series of monitored séances with a fake ghost. Some of what they get is caused by the sitters, but some of it is caused by the technicians in the booth and a ringer in the room. What I need to know is what equipment are they using, what does it do, and has any of this stuff been tampered with or added to."

"OK," he replied, opening the door to room twelve.

"Is it always like this?" Quinton asked, looking at the small room and its overload of furniture.

"I'd assume so. It was this way yesterday." Well, physically, at least.

Quinton hung his coat up by the door while I put the ferret on her leash. Once harnessed, she scampered around, digging at the floor and looking for holes. I glanced around and noted that the ball of energy threads was hot and bright under the table—even hotter than the day before and grown to the size of a beach ball with an unpleasant, beach-wrack stink and streaks of red. The sound was now a buzzing howl. I pushed the Grey away and used a trick Mara had taught me, pulling the edge of the Grey around me and Chaos to make a shield between us and the pulsing thing under the table.

Quinton walked around for a while, then stopped.

"I'm going into the observation room for a minute. I'll be right back," he said.

I could hear nothing but some creaking of the floorboards once he'd left the room, closing the door behind him. I guessed the room was pretty well soundproofed. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Tuckman had gone to a lot of trouble with this room.

Quinton returned and put a sensor wand against one of the walls. "Thought so—power switch for all of this is in the other room. Now that it's on, I should be able to find the toys." He lay down on his back under the table, waving various devices at the furniture and rug, then began crawling around the rug itself, following some kind of invisible electronic spoor. I cut a glance into the Grey and saw that the ball of energy almost seemed to shy from him. He didn't notice.