A Ghost for a Clue

by C L R Draeco

  I walked slowly up the stairs, my mind caught in a knot of uncertainties.

  Was this bishop going to end up being more trouble than he seemed? Now that Truth was doing better, was Torula ready to talk about Pangaea, or was she going to prolong the torture?

  I tripped on a step, glanced up, and looked straight into Roy’s befuddled face.

  “For such a bright and sunny mornin’, everyone sure is glum around ’ere.”

  Starr and Torula turned away, unsmiling, and settled down at their stations.

  I took a seat at the other end of the computer console and pretended to work. I cast a covert look at Torula, waiting for her to glance my way, but she just sat staring at her monitor.

  Roy straddled the chair next to mine. “So where the hell’s Brighton?”

  “I’m here.”

  Starr let out a stifled squeal and twisted around to glower at the deathly pale Eldritch who had walked in soundlessly behind her.

  The man let his gaze alight on each of us. “I am here today not as an observer but as a participant.”

  “What do you mean?” Torula asked as the rest of us exchanged glances.

  “You have given your brother a device. A barrier depriving the spirit access to your brother’s life force. His source of strength. I am here to take the boy’s place—as a surrogate channel.”

  A few seconds of silence passed, then Roy blew out a raspberry of a laugh. “You’re shittin’ us, right?”

  Starr frowned. “Eldritch, I don’t think we should go through with this. We need to slow down and consider the consequences—”

  “Consequences of what, Dr. Benedict? Of your decision to expose our studies to the Church?”

  “Yo, hell, you did what?” Roy’s eyes bulged out at her.

  “I didn’t expose anything. The bishop who was here is my uncle. I happened to mention to him that my greenhouse might be haunted.”

  “Happened to mention?” I asked. “Like a ghost story casually spilled out of you.”

  Starr lowered her gaze and brushed her hands over her skirt, as though the sleek fabric needed further smoothening. “He asked how things were at work, so I told him. Then he insisted on coming here so he could pray and bless the spot where Thomas appears.”

  I squinted at her. A blessing from a bishop. Was that the full extent of her threat? Definitely not something that could do any damage.

  “He’s a bishop. He coulda done a lotta damage!” Roy cried, and I gaped at him. “He might’ve shooed our research subject away.”

  “I extremely doubt that,” Torula said.

  “Hell, Thomas better not be gone, ’cause there’s still a helluva lot I gotta learn from ’im,” Roy said, brow knotted, lips pursed. He seemed to have gotten more invested in this project than I’d expected.

  “Then let’s not delay any longer so we can see if we still have a hyperwill project on our hands.” Eldritch planted his icy gaze on Starr. “Shall we begin?”

  She clutched her tiny crucifix pendant as she gazed at the cluster of papayas. “Psalm 121, verse seven. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life.” She made the sign of the cross, and then sat down.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Roy said and settled down into his post at the console. “This is Roy Radio, broadcastin’ live over the Dead Zone.”

  I clicked on my dashboard too, activating the Verdabulary, and a hush fell over the place. We all glanced around—scouring the surroundings for any sign of an apparition like hunters waiting for a camouflaged creature to emerge from the wild. Even the plants seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation.

  While the others hoped for some ghostly revelation, I was fearing the effects on Truth. What if the hyperjammer couldn’t hold off the effects of EM signals boosted by our equipment?

  Seconds ticked by, but nothing happened.

  “You think the amps might have come loose again?” I mumbled at Roy.

  “No way.”

  I was about to check when Eldritch spoke. “Are you familiar with biathletes, Mr. Radio?” The so-called psychic closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and released a long-drawn-out exhale.

  “Uh . . . yeah?” Roy said.

  I checked the readings on the monitor.

  Eldritch continued to talk in a slow, rhythmic—almost hypnotic—manner. “Those Olympic athletes thunder down a ski slope . . . hearts pounding . . . then in seconds, calm themselves to fire a rifle . . . with extreme accuracy.” He paused, taking in a lungful of air, and exhaled. “Mediums do the same thing. We close our eyes . . . steady our breath . . . and bring ourselves to the alpha-theta border . . . in seconds.”

  I nudged a dial ever so slightly on the console, just before Eldritch opened his eyes.

  Roy gulped. “Do you see anythin’?”

  Eldritch looked at the foot of the stairs, shifted his gaze to the shrubs nearby, then squinted and tilted his head. “He’s very dim. Like a man standing in the shadows.”

  “I see him,” Torula whispered.

  “Me too,” Starr said. “He seems weak.”

  “Whatduh?” Roy said. “I don’t see a damn thing.”

  I stared at the same spot, and a distorted image of the hyperwill faded into view, like a diffused reflection twisted and crammed into a warped and slender mirror. And then I felt—more than heard—a deep and palpable sigh that came without a sound. My hair bristled. Even though my mind knew this was just some old transmission, it was impossible to remain unaffected. It was the reason horror movies would never die.

  The image grew in clarity, and Thomas’s face became recognizable. A prickling sensation traveled down my spine as the image rotated, afloat, and looked at Torula with its amber eyes.

  A pleasant male voice issued from the Verdabulary. “Dry not do iris cold.”

  “Shit,” Roy said. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “He’s just standing there, looking at me.” Torula took a step towards the stairs. “Are you all right?”

  The apparition moved its lips, but no words came.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  It gave no response, and then Torula winced and staggered back. “I think . . . I need to sit down.”

  Christ. I dragged a chair over. “What’s wrong?”

  She laid a hand over her brow as she took a seat.

  Eldritch spoke with urgency. “You must break the connection immediately. Otherwise, Thomas might attach to you.”

  “Nuh,” Torula said. “Abbey fan winsome vilify meek arson.”

  “Spore?” I asked, bewildered.

  “Hurry, take her outside,” Eldritch said.

  I expected her to resist, but she meekly put one foot in front of the other as I ushered her down. Her knee buckled, and I held her fast. Jesus. What was this experiment doing to her?

  “They stink in snow and whirl,” she babbled as she walked. “I’m dirigible.”

  I held her tighter with every labored step to get her outside. I looked back at the hyperwill just as its jaw detached, dangled, then fell to the ground.

  “Turn it off, Roy,” Starr cried. “Hurry!”

  The figure floated towards us. “Tell her . . .” The words resonated in my head just as the image held out blue flowers. Then its arm came off, and the vision crumbled to ashes.

  30

  Using Symbols

  Torula sat recovering on a low stone bench encircling the base of a tree, the thick canopy giving us ample shade against the sun.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  She nodded, with head bowed, but said nothing. That didn’t reassure me one bit.

  I glanced at the nursery entrance about fifteen meters away. What if the Verdabulary was magnifying the effects of EM fields on her instead of Truth?

  Starr hustled over and handed Torula a tumbler of water. “Say something, honey.”

  “I’m all right. Thank you.”

  “Oh, heavenly mercy.” Starr clasped her hands together and heaved a sigh; i
t seemed her concern for her friend now outweighed all her other worries. “You sound normal again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were speaking in tongues,” Eldritch declared, as though it were an undeniable fact.

  Torula gave me a questioning look as she took a sip of water.

  “Your words were jumbled,” I said.

  “Slurred, maybe, but not jumbled. I was just asking for mefenamic acid. I thought I was going to get a full-blown headache, but it’s gone now.” Torula put down the tumbler. “I need to call my mom so I can—”

  “Truth’s all right,” I said. “I’ve called and checked.”

  “Looks like our hyperjammer did its job, huh?” Roy punched me lightly on the arm.

  “That doesn’t make these experiments any less dangerous,” Starr said. “It did this to Tor, and God only knows what it’s done to poor Thomas. I saw him turn into ashes.” Accompanied by a faint rustle of leaves and a strong scent of flowers, that last statement sounded eerier than it should have.

  “Thomas is fine,” Torula said, using one hand to tame her hair against the breeze. “What you saw was an exact replay of a vision I had in the FR3.”

  “Do you understand what it means?” Starr asked.

  Torula shook her head.

  “He’s communicating by using symbols,” Eldritch said, turning to look towards the nursery. “Spirits use images and memories they pick up from the medium’s mind.”

  A bit of unverifiable trivia that gives psychics something to do. And get paid for.

  “The departed have no choice but to make do with what they can connect with,” Eldritch said. “That’s why the meaning often becomes blurry. Sometimes, the message could get lost entirely.”

  “Like how?” Torula asked.

  “They could use another person to represent someone you don’t know. Or they could move objects around or hide them to send a message. A missing watch could be a reminder of an important appointment. Misplaced eyeglasses could mean there’s something you need to see. In communicating with the departed, you must look for themes or meanings beyond your personal interpretation.”

  Make things up, that’s what he means.

  “He always tries to hand me forget-me-nots.” Torula spoke looking at the green grass at her feet, as though trying to find a translation written on the ground. “And he said, ‘Tell her.’ But I don’t know who ‘her’ is or what he wants me to say.”

  “Florence,” Starr said. “Didn’t you once hear him say Florence?”

  “Does it even matter anymore?” I asked. “It’s like a replay of an old SOS message from a ship that’s long sunken to the ocean floor.”

  They all looked at me like I was some party pooper who’d just crashed their Ouija get-together.

  “Hey, man,” Roy said. “If you got a message from outer space, would you care less if the aliens sent that message light years ago? You’d still wanna know where it came from and what they’re tryin’ to say.”

  “Yeah, because searching for life outside our planet makes sense. But picking up shreds of information on stray EM waves—it could just be something that spilled out of YouTube.”

  Eldritch turned his icy gaze on me. “You seem to think ghosts are petty, Mr. Morrison. No apparition has yet taught anyone how to cure a disease. Or solved a mystery science can’t explain. That’s why all this seems irrelevant to you.”

  I let out a tired sigh. “I’m glad you see my point.” Though it was clear he was only beginning to make his.

  “The tragedy of death leaves the departed distraught over seemingly mundane matters. About not having said goodbye to one’s parents. About leaving behind children, friends, loved ones. Who will care for them, comfort them, make sure they end up fine? That’s the reason they stay on. It’s for the everyday things that matter most to the very few. And they can’t leave until they know they’ve set things right.”

  “Set things right?” Pent up feelings surged inside me, and I clenched my fists as I struggled against a sudden seething. “My parents died when I was fourteen. They had a lifetime of things left to help set right for me—things as petty and mundane as they come . . .” I shook my head as I sifted through a turmoil of words in my head.

  “Bram.” Torula laid a hand on my arm. “Nothing like this ever happened to me either, but things changed. Maybe, when your parents passed away, the conditions were . . . just not right.” She looked at me, her eyes seeing the pain no one else did; she was the one I had leaned on the most when I had come close to falling apart.

  “Yo, man.” Roy laid his hand against his chest. “It’s an ability I don’t have either. But just ’cause you can’t hear a dog whistle doesn’t mean no one’s been blowin’ it.”

  “Your friends are right, Mr. Morrison,” Eldritch said. “Hyperwills commune directly with our minds. It’s an ability for us to receive the messages. And if a spirit is able to move objects around, it’s by tapping into the medium’s latent telekinetic capabilities—even without the medium knowing.”

  Starr’s eyes grew wide open. “You mean, my husband could have been . . . tapping me? Or my children?”

  Roy scowled. “Then why do they all skip me?”

  “These psychic abilities lie in our genes,” Eldritch said. “We have the capacity, and you either don’t have it or your ability is too weak.”

  “You’re sayin’ it’s not in my DNA?”

  Torula snorted. “There’s no such thing as a ‘psychic gene,’ Roy.”

  “Paranormal abilities run in families, Dr. Jackson,” Eldritch said. “You have the gift, and so does your brother. The reason we’re called ‘Mediums’ is because we can also mediate communication for those who need their vibrations ‘fine-tuned,’ so to speak.” He turned towards me. “In your case, Mr. Morrison, you managed to see Thomas because of Dr. Jackson. Away from her presence, you wouldn’t be able to detect a hyperwill even if you walked right through one again.”

  “Hey! That’s just like inducin’ intermediate frequency translation.” Roy thumped me on the chest with the back of his hand. “Y’know, like havin’ one energy wave influence the characteristics of another.”

  “Which is why,” Eldritch continued, looking at me, “your parents may have tried to reach out, but you simply don’t have the genes to perceive them on your own, and no medium was around to assist. I can help if you would be open to—”

  “You caught it on video,” I said, shoving the evidence between him and me. “I doubt your camera has the genes that Roy and I don’t have.”

  “Good point,” Torula said, and we all looked at Eldritch to wait for his rebuttal.

  “It took me a while to figure that out,” he said. “But I got a clue when Dr. Jackson referred to that bluish manifestation as a third incident—distinguishing it from the one we couldn’t see a few seconds earlier. I believe, instinctively, you had sensed they were not the same entities.”

  Torula heaved a deep breath and gave a subtle nod. “It scared me. All the other incidents didn’t.”

  “What are you sayin’? We got two hypers hauntin’ us? Git outta here.”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” Eldritch said. “That second specter had appeared after you were all startled by a piece of metal falling to the ground. Unfortunately, why the metal fell is beyond the scope of the camera, so we can’t tell if the spirit itself had caused the metal to fall.”

  “And what if it had?” Starr asked.

  “It would indicate a spirit driven by mischief, something not at all a characteristic of Thomas. It would show that this one fed on fear, using it to generate enough energy to be visible to the naked eye.”

  “Damn. It does make sense,” Roy said.

  Only if you believe in the sixth kind. I glanced at Torula, thinking of grabbing her by the hand and leading her out the manor’s gates. As though to escape my hidden plan, she got up and walked towards the sun-dappled path leading to the greenhouse, just to the edge
where the shade given by the tree branches ended.

  “Please don’t go any farther, Dr. Jackson,” Eldritch said, approaching her like a bodyguard advising caution. “Be afraid of spirit attachment. It’s the reason why, with your brother protected, I had opened myself up, lowered my defenses to become the new channel. But it has obviously formed an attachment to you already.”

  “Maybe we should give ’er a hyperjammer too,” Roy said.

  “No.” Torula abruptly turned to face us. “Thomas is weak enough as it is.”

  “So what’re you plannin’ on doin’? Offer yourself again for ’is next meal? What if we’ve turned it into a cy-vamp?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” I said.

  “What?” Torula looked at me in disbelief. “You think Thomas has become a . . . cybernetic vampire?”

  “No. I’m worried the equipment might be amplifying the signal—and the side effects that go with it. That’s why we shouldn’t be doing any more experiments until—”

  “He’s draining her of hormones,” Eldritch said like the self-declared authority on the undead that he was. “That’s what’s happening. A spirit will always sap your strength when he drinks of your life force. It’s a primary source of nourishment. They’re attracted to high levels of it.”

  “Oh my,” Starr said. “Tor’s mother has the same suspicions.”

  Torula bit her lip and cocked her head, and I had no clue what to make of that response.

  “Spirits are very dependent on the emotions they stir,” Eldritch said. “You can almost identify a spirit by the flavor of emotions it leaves behind with each manifestation. The frightening ones feed on fear. Lustful ones feed on passion. Happy ghosts feed on joy.”

  I gritted my teeth and glanced at Starr, hoping she’d heed the Bible’s warning about consulting with mediums, but she looked so engrossed, Eldritch might as well have been a priest.

  “Does the manor have evidence that supports this theory?” Torula asked.

  “No. It’s a conclusion I made on my own,” Eldritch said.