A Ghost for a Clue

by C L R Draeco

  “I’m hoping the facts will come to prove that our abilities are a gift from nature and not from demons. And that not all psychics are charlatans out to make a living from the dead.”

  “But aren’t you?” I asked and motioned at his sleek Savile Row garb. “Making a killing from the dead, I mean.”

  The glint in his gaze returned. “This is my vocation, Mr. Morrison. It’s not part of my portfolio.”

  Torula slumped back into her seat. “I can’t comprehend this. You had us sign NDAs when in fact you openly study these things?”

  Mr. D raised a cautionary finger. “Not the Green Manor, no. Its reputation of being a legitimate botanical research facility is ironclad.” He held out his hands, straightening his fingers as he scrutinized them. “These get pricked every so often for blood sugar analysis. Nearly all my life, I’ve been dependent on insulin shots. And the Green Manor continues to make invaluable contributions to the pharmaceutical industry towards the treatment of diabetes and other diseases that plague us. But despite all the wonders of medicine, death remains incurable. So can you blame me for wanting to know what awaits?”

  “Dr. Benedict,” Eldritch said, looking intently at Starr. “I assure you, I am here only to discover how nature enables our consciousness to live on after death. I’m hoping, once we understand how it works, we can then communicate with our lost loved ones so we can help them move on.”

  “So you’re saying you’re doing this purely for their benefit?” Starr asked.

  He looked intently at her and nodded. “My only purpose is to help ensure that the dearly departed rest in peace in paradise.”

  She clasped her hands together like a young Mowgli dazzled by a serpent’s speech and answered Eldritch with a subtle smile. “In that case, if our goals are aligned, then . . . I believe it’s time we explored the science behind hyperwills.”

  Eldritch frowned. “Why do you use that word?”

  “You mean hyperwill?” Starr glanced at Torula. “Dr. Jackson proposes that we not use labels with so much folkloric baggage. So ‘hyperwill’ is a term derived from someone’s will to survive gone on hyperdrive.”

  “Or like a hyperactive will to survive,” Torula said, glancing my way but stopping short of looking me in the eye.

  So that’s why she couldn’t tell me what it meant. The very root of the word was grounded on the premise that the visual phenomenon was “alive.”

  “Hyperwill.” Eldritch grimaced like a connoisseur who’d just been offered cheap wine. “I find the term rather crass. And it already taints the subject with your own, personal lore.”

  “I think it’s good enough to keep outsiders from knowing what we’re dealing with, ja? We’ll be calling this Project Hyperwill.” Mr. D looked at me and nodded towards my unsigned NDA. “And with you on the team, we will have a balanced and diverse range of perspectives, ja? Torula is committed to objectively study the hyperwill. Eldritch and Roy believe in it. Starr has a stake in it. While you, Bram, are here simply because we need you. Not your credentials. Only your vibration.”

  All right. That does it. I’m outta here. I rose from my seat. “Listen, I don’t understand why you think my coming here triggered the events—”

  “It all started after your arrival, honey,” Starr said with a raise of her brow.

  I frowned at the absurd suggestion. “That’s just a coincidence.”

  But then, Torula gave me a barely there grimace.

  “You can’t be serious.” Who the devil could convince even her of that? “You’re making me the cause of all this?”

  “I think it’s awesome, man,” Roy said. “It’s like you got a super power. You can frickin’ summon the dead!”

  “Bloody hell.” I looked at Torula. “Spore, you can’t go along with this. Not with a medium at the helm.”

  “Hey, man,” Roy said, suddenly sober. “I know a lot o’ psychics can be tricksters, but not all of ’em are. So whaddaya say we keep an open mind, huh?”

  “With all due respect,” I said, looking at the chairman, “if you’re aiming to establish credibility for the project, we should be working in a more controlled environment supervised by senior scientists.”

  “Greenhouse 3C’s setup has proven conducive to the apparition,” Mr. D said. “Would you transfer a creature from the wild into a controlled environment to observe its natural behavior? And as far as leadership is concerned, no one else in this room has dealt with the afterlife as much as Eldritch, ja?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, though it was too late for that, “but someone in the scientific community would be—”

  “More qualified to head something he knows nothing about?” Eldritch asked. “That’s like saying only an atheist is qualified to prove the existence of God.”

  “That wasn’t my point,” I said.

  “We understand your point,” Mr. D said. “You want someone objective and neutral. Someone who has no stake in it or faith in it. Isn’t that what we already have in you?”

  I swallowed and glanced at Torula.

  “It’s a Catch 22, Bram.” She shrugged. “A well-regarded scientist could give the study validity. But as soon as he accepts our project’s credibility—he loses his.”

  “And what happens to ours?” I asked.

  “I think you mean ‘ours.’” Torula gestured towards Roy and Starr. “Like I said, we can handle this.” She smiled reassuringly, which left me even more uneasy.

  My gaze stumbled its way back towards the flimsy paper in front of me. If I left now, it would tell Torula only one thing: That strangers believed in her idea more than I did.

  “No,” I said and took a deep breath. “I meant ours.” I grabbed a pen and signed the bloody paper. Now, all I had to do was figure out how to get this over with in a day or two, tops.

  “Cool! Now we’re in business.” Roy gave a loud clap and rubbed his hands together. Starr gave a little laugh, her bubbliness inching its way back in, while Torula still had that frown marring her brow—which was puzzling. If she was concerned about NASA disapproving, the NDA should have eased her mind about that.

  A knock came on the door. “Mr. D.” An office person peered in. “I’m sorry, sir. We need to get going.”

  The chairman nodded and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to leave it up to Eldritch to take things forward from here.” He strode towards the door. “The manor has nearly every variation of botanists and microbiologists there are. And Eldritch has tapped some of them, so he can share scientific evidence with you that complements Dr. Jackson’s theory.”

  As Mr. D exited, the purported medium walked towards one corner of the conference room. He stopped next to a trolley holding a wire box the size of a small microwave oven made of copper screens.

  “I would like to begin by clearly stating that I do not expect you to delve into the supernatural. In fact, I want you to stay grounded in what is nothing but natural. Just as in the example that I have with me now.” With a shift in his gaze, Eldritch indicated the copper-screened box.

  “It’s a Faraday cage,” Roy said blandly. “A radio frequency suppressor.”

  “Our facility in London has managed to replicate an experiment first conducted in 1995 by a microbiologist named Matsuhashi and his team. This is its reproduction. Inside are two Petri dishes that prove bacteria can communicate remotely despite airtight containers separated by a two-millimeter iron sheet.”

  Roy walked over and peered inside it.

  “I know of that experiment,” Starr said.

  “So do I,” said Torula. “The conclusion was that, although the bacteria were incapable of sending chemical messages, they were able to communicate by using sound waves.”

  “Yo, y’all back up there a bit,” Roy said, pointing at the metallic box. “How the hell can you tell that bacteria are ‘talkin’?’”

  “Simple,” Torula said. “Bacteria exposed to nonpermissive stress conditions were observed to promote colony formation and—”r />
  Starr cleared her throat. “Allow me to explain, honey,” she said, smiling at our multi-syllabic friend. “Picture this: There are two groups of prisoners sealed in airtight glass cages separated by an iron wall. Group One gets exposed to highly stressful, deadly conditions. Everyone in Group One dies. But in Group Two, a few prisoners ‘acquire’ the ability to survive when exposed to the same harmful conditions later on.”

  “The horror that happens to one group does something beneficial to the other,” Eldritch said. “Survival is zero if there is no first population that bequeaths their tales of suffering. It is clear proof of a primordial form of ESP.”

  Now I’d heard everything. It was remarkable how Torula still kept a straight face. A comic strip popped inside my head of bacteria reading my future as they crawled across my palm.

  “Heck, it’s prob’ly just infrasonic communication,” Roy said. “Like Morse Code that only bacteria can hear.”

  “One important point,” Eldritch added. “We gave our Petri dishes a unique coating. They block out sound waves.”

  “No frickin’ way.”

  The bacteria in my mental cartoon strip began doing semaphore. Shapeshifting to do sign language. Wearing headsets and listening to Morse Code—

  Holy shite. I nearly jerked at my own thought and suddenly knew what I needed to do. It’s time to put an end to all of this afterlife bullshit. “Can you lend us that Petri dish setup?”

  “Why?” Eldritch asked.

  “First thing tomorrow, Roy and I can get to work and show you what’s really going on. It’s right up his alley.”

  Roy scrunched up his face. “It is?”

  “I’m afraid I have previous commitments,” Eldritch said. “I can’t join you, but . . .” He gestured towards the Faraday cage. “I welcome you to discover the origins of the mechanism by which a soul leaves the body and gets to speak with the living after death.”

  17

  My Mother’s House

  (Torula)

  I had one clear destination in mind after we all left the conference room: My mother’s house. Bram may have belittled what he was risking by investigating a so-called haunting, but what I had at stake was something I couldn’t brush aside.

  Mom led me into the floral-scented comfort of my childhood home. Daytime had come to an end, and yet she looked as fresh as early morning in her peaches-and-cream lounge dress.

  “They’ve legitimized the research, Mom. That means we’ll keep trying to repeat the event.”

  “Good,” was all she said, then turned towards the patio.

  “That doesn’t bother you?” I addressed her auburn hair as I trailed her in bafflement. “If there’s any correlation between what we’re doing at the lab and what Truth is seeing, then he could be exposed to it more often too.”

  She didn’t even glance backwards when she answered. “He sees it anyway, whether or not you conduct any experiments.”

  He what? “How could you treat this so blithely? If it weren’t for Starr’s financial predicament, I would’ve been happy if it got cancelled entirely.”

  “Doctors always need to weigh the side effects of a treatment versus the progression of a disease. Not that I’m calling the apparition a disease, but you know what I mean.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Wind chimes tinkled their greeting underneath her rose pergola. Lit by warm lamplight, a porcelain tea set waited on the table, printed with dainty pink and white flowers that almost perfectly matched the ones that clambered around and above us.

  Mom leveled her gaze at me, and I willed myself not to blink or look away. “Ghosts are clues. Like smoke or a scream or the smell of gunpowder, they’re evidence you can’t hold in your hand. They’re fleeting, close to intangible and witnessed by only a few—yet they hint at something mysterious that could happen to any human being. That’s why you need to investigate.”

  “What if it does Truth more harm than good?”

  She poured us both some tea. “I’ll be keeping a close watch on him. He’ll be all right.” She gave me a reassuring smile.

  I lifted my teacup and blew on the steaming hot brew, its aroma of jasmine competing with the fragrance of roses around us.

  “It’s good you were able to convince Bram to help you,” Mom said, pouring milk into her cup.

  “I didn’t. In fact, I wanted him to leave. He’s up against the impossible with NASA already, with his ambition to become an astronaut. The last thing he needs is something to discredit him.” I took a sip of tea in hopes it would make me as tranquil as my mother was.

  “Sweetheart, you need Bram for these experiments to go on. Your feelings for him are obviously what’s fueling the paranormal. His presence is affecting your psychic energy by way of your libido.”

  I sputtered on my tea and spilled some on myself.

  “You’ve been thrown off balance, Tor.” Mom calmly handed me a table napkin. “Something changed when Bram arrived. The eustress—the positive tension over seeing him again—has amped up your hormones. Haven’t you considered that possibility?”

  “Hormones, as a possible factor, is something we’ve considered, yes. But in the end, we saw no connection.”

  She gave a subtle, one-sided shrug. “Then look again. Many so-called psychic episodes are clearly associated with hormonal fluctuations. Poltergeists are most commonly linked to the presence of an adolescent. And it’s prevalent among people experiencing severe emotional stress. Even pregnancy or a new baby appears to trigger paranormal activity. Find some way to test it.”

  “Test what?” I tossed aside the dampened tissue. “That’s all just anecdotal evidence, Mom.”

  “Hormone treatments have been shown to increase the transmembrane protonic electrochemical potential difference by several millivolts. Bram’s presence could very well be having the same effect on you.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re equating Bram to a hormone treatment?”

  “Weren’t biologists the ones who introduced the word ‘pheromones’ to the world?” She flourished a hand down my torso. “The mere presence of a man can affect your body’s chemical makeup.”

  “Mom, if sexual attraction were enough to conjure up ghosts, then everyone over the age of twelve should’ve seen one by now.” I got up, abandoning my calming tea, and made my way into the house.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To have a talk with Truth. I’ll probably have a more sensible discussion with a three-year-old.”

  Mom followed me as I climbed the stairs and walked down an old, familiar hallway where lavish Kashmir carpets muffled our footsteps.

  “What are you going to ask him?” she asked.

  “I need to find out if it scares him. I don’t want to go through with this if it scares him.”

  The sound of a child giggling cut into our conversation. “You’re funny.” Truth’s voice drifted towards us through his open bedroom door.

  Goose bumps crawled up my arm. “Who’s with him?”

  Mom rushed towards my baby brother’s bedroom with me right behind her. We paused at the doorway at the sight of Truth lying in bed, smiling with his bright blue eyes fixed on nothing visible at the foot of his bed.

  I held my breath and waited for a man in blue to slowly appear.

  Truth waved his tiny hand at the empty space. “Bye,” he said, then yawned and rolled to his side.

  A cold gust of nothingness moved through me as a featherlight touch stroked me beneath my chin, tracing my jawline. The hair on my scalp prickled, and I leaned away.

  “Truth, darling?” Mom sat on the edge of his bed and felt his forehead. “Who were you talking to?”

  He pointed at me. “Her friend.”

  I shuddered and took a cautious step into the room. “What does he look like?”

  “Stars!” Truth wiggled his fingers in front of his face. “Many stars and gold eyes. He’s nice.”

  I know. Despite my sentiments, I kept my face expressionless.<
br />
  “Do you know his name, sweetheart?” Mom asked.

  Truth shook his head and snuggled into his pillow.

  “What do you talk about?” I asked.

  “Stuff.” Truth yawned again. “I’m tired.”

  Mom brushed his blond hair with her fingers, lulling him to sleep. “He doesn’t have a fever,” she said in a low voice, “but he’s been on bed rest for days and keeps getting weaker.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “Blood tests show increased blood urate levels and oxidative stress, but he can’t give a decent diagnosis.” Mom rose from the bed and headed out. “I’m calling your brother, Trom. Maybe an endocrinologist can figure this out better than an assembly-line pediatrician could.”

  I glanced around the room, not really knowing what I was looking for. “Truth, can you tell me more about your visitor?”

  The soft snoring of a little boy was my only answer. I stared at the empty space at the foot of his bed—anticipating something both real and surreal to make its presence felt.

  Mom was right. The incidents here kept happening whether or not we were conducting experiments, and maybe, what we planned to study could explain—and help treat—what was ailing Truth.

  On my way out, I paused at the doorway and looked around Truth’s room again. “Leave my brother alone,” I whispered to the unknown.

  Right after I’d said it, I realized it was a foolish and useless thing to do. Stay rational, Torula. It was easy—so easy to slip into how others handled the bizarre. I had to find a better way to deal with this than just “urging” it away.

  18

  A Psychic’s Apprentice

  If I had a flower for every time you made me smile, I’d have a garden. My breathing had nearly stopped when Torula said that to me and smiled. Then she had that slip of the tongue about kissing me, and she seemed to resent the possibility that NASA was sending me somewhere out of reach. All the signs told me I was on more solid ground now, making me confident to tell her about Pangaea. And yet, when I had asked her out to dinner last night, I was turned down in favor of yet another talk she needed to have with her mother.