Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Relax, and the phenomena will sweep into the dusty attic of your mundane minds like beautiful, rare birds."

"And out like bats," Temple suggested under her breath to Electra.

"Bats are very mystical creatures," came the response, "sacred to the Chinese."

"So were dragons, but we don't see too many of them around today."

"Shhh!"

Mynah, the White Witch, had stepped into their midst. She bowed her dramatically silver head that reminded Temple of hippie* girl heyday haystack hairdo: partedin the middle and flowing to the fingertips.

Mynah extended her beringed hands as if following a stage direction.

"We are here on serious business, despite the frivolous nature of the setting. We are here to raise the Master. We are here to be the One Voice that can call him back from Beyond. For seventy years he has resisted all summoners. Now we call, and he will come. The world"--her dark eyes flashed to the refrigerator corner, where Crawford Buchanan's uncharacteristically dark suit was silhouetted by stark white and the camera rode over his shoulder like some unlucky star--"the world will see and we will prove that the spirit domain is a more potent realm than any imagined here on Mother Earth."

She bowed her head even lower as a tremor began in her fingers; shaking the fine silver shackles on her right hand and then her arms up to her body, until gown and moonstones and waves of sterling hair all vibrated to a trembler of silent thunder.

"Goodness," Electra murmured.

"As Mae West pointed out in one of her films, 'goodness had nothing to do with it.' That's a stage trick, Electra. Total muscular tension results in total tremor. A plus B equals--"

"Quiet now!" Oscar Grant's black-clad arms elevated. "First, I must introduce a, well-known presence among us, just flown in from Machu Picchu. Edwina Mayfair."

A polite murmur indicated the familiarity of the name, though the stubby woman seemed a poor representative of such an apparently fabled personage. Oscar Grant quirked her a smile of acknowledgment before continuing. "We now will be conducted above in silence."

He nodded to the kitchen door, in which was framed the homely figure of Mynah's husband.

"Hell-o," Electra mouthed without voice.

The man nodded to her and Temple, introducing himself in a voice cursed with a perpetual frog-in-throat sound that went oddly with his overweight.

"I am William Kohler. I will conduct you. Follow me." He jerked his shaggy head over his shoulder and began to lumber up the stairs like a Russian bear in black.

The psychics flowed after him like puppets, Temple and Electra last, reluctantly so, but Crawford & Camera had refused to precede them.

"Bats!" Temple railed to Electra as they mounted the dark, narrow back steps. "I hate leaving my tote bag behind. And I hate having Crawford and his damn cameraman tailing my rear in this cabbage-patch dress up these stairs."

"I'm sure that's not the kind of phenomenon they're interested in filming, my dear."

Temple was not so sanguine, knowing cameramen's propensity for capturing humanity from its absolutely worst angle in the name of cinema verite. But she kept the required silence, expressing her frustration by stomping up the stairs with green-giant emphasis, so each step sounded like the ominous knock of an unseen force.

Through the thin partitions between themselves and the action attraction that comprised the haunted house, Temple could hear shrieks and rattling rails and moans.

Great mood music.

After a half flight they went along a wooden ramp until Temple glimpsed the central scaffolding, and then it was up two and a half flights of narrow, barely lit wooden stairs. Temple, hearing the gears and groans of the adjacent ride, tried to walk more softly so as not to ruin the paying customers' special effects.

At last a door opened before them, more heard (thanks to a built-in creak) than seen, so they dutifully trooped into the dark, following Kohler's harsh whisper.

"Step right this way, folks." He led them into a dim room with darkened walls. The^e was just enough ambient light to show his face, perspiration-sheened by the trek up three flights of stairs.

"All right. Mr. Cameraman at the end of the line, dowse that spotlight before you get to the door. Thanks. We want you folks to get set and seated first, then we crank up the lights as if you just appeared here. So follow along, end of table's fine," he told Oscar Grant, directing him to a seat. He immediately added an apology.

"The table is oval, not quite round; we couldn't get a round one that big up those stairs.

And... there, I guess." He nodded his imperiously waiting wife to the chair on Oscar's left. "Ah, next ... an-other fella. Might as well do boy-girl, boy-girl like in the movies. Professor Mangel.

And you, miss, the redhead. One of the redheads, I guess." Electra sat with an airy, settling motion of her muumuu.

"Now I guess one of you media boys--"

"No!" Temple objected in the semidark. She could see what was coming with "boy-girl, boy-girl." Crawford, then her, hand in hand.

"Okay, I guess I'll sit next. And you, miss. The other redhead."

Temple complied, surprised to discover that much as she often lamented her flaming red hair, neither did she like being "the Other Redhead."

"Now, who've we got left? Mr. Cameraman? Oh, you stand. Is that right? Well, the, Mr., uh--"

"Buchanan, Crawford Buchanan," came the deep, eloquently phony tones from behind Temple.

She visibly cringed. The sheen on William Kohler's broad, corrugated forehead became dewdrops.

"Ah, the media guy should go farther along, where you can get a good view of everything."

At an oval table, in a theater-in-the-round setting, Temple thought, that doesn't make sense, but she would endorse any excuse to keep out of range of Crawford Buchanan.

Yet Mr. Mynah might not be able to pull it off. His frown deepened even as his voice clogged more. "That means, ahem, that... that leaves, next to Miss Temple, ah--"

"I'm afraid we've run out of boy-girl, sonny," said a fruity yet brisk voice. "Mr. Media Guy can settle on my left, if Miss Temple doesn't mind sitting next to one of her own gender--?"

"Not at all!" Temple caroled, happy to have the Hat between her and Crawford, and hopefully his snooping cameraman.

"Well, then," the older woman's deeply assured voice continued, "that leaves D' Arlene and Agatha to hold down the fort on Oscar's left, but we still have almost perfect segregation of the sexes so the spirits have no hanky-panky among the mediums to complain of. Let us all sit and have at it."

Temple felt the air shift as Edwina Mayfair leaned toward her to say in a confidential tone, Tm an expert at this, young lady; don't worry about a thing." A reassuring hand pat, ending in an encouraging clasp. Temple was surprised to feel thick cotton between herself and the other woman, and glanced down at the hand gloved in black that enfolded hers.

"I'm a very powerful medium," Edwina whispered. "I try to cushion my seance partners from the worst."

Temple thanked her lucky stars that someone strongly maternal sat between her and Crawford Buchanan, though being merely one body apart didn't seem quite enough when they were dealing with the disembodied.

On Electra's right, the professor cleared his throat, purely for attention. His voice rang clear and confident. "Someone must lead. I, being a neutral party, will decide. Much as Ms. Sigmund bears the respect of this entire assembly, I feel that Houdini was a man from another era, who would respond best to a masculine summoning, and Mr. Grant is perhaps our best publicized member. Hence, I have asked Mr. Grant to do the honors."

Silence held. Temple wondered how happily the woman in white took news of her reduction to a supporting role when she was dressed to deliver the crucial aria. She certainly slid Oscar Grant a poisonous glance.