Teek

by S. Andrew Swann

  Up to 1956, it looked like this had been Francine June Boyle’s record of Mom’s childhood. The last picture was a color-faded Kodachrome of four-year-old Carol on a swing.

  Francine had been quite a photographer, and all the pictures had been taken by her. Allison had wished to see a picture of her grandmother, Francine.

  Allison got her wish on the next page, in the worst possible way. On much newer backing paper, was a yellowing newsprint picture of Francine. It fronted her obituary. April 26th, 1956. The sight moved Allison, though she had never known her grandmother— even though Mom had told her that both her parents had died a long time ago.

  The next clipping was from an old copy machine. The copy paper was slick, yellowing, and brittle. The ink was much grayer than Allison would expect from a modern Xerox machine. The copy was of a news article dated three days after the obituary. It announced the arrest of Franklin James Boyle in connection with the death of his wife. Between the lines Allison could see hints of horrifying abuse. The mere mention of two other children who died before Carol was born…

  This wasn’t anything Mom had spoken about. Even so, Allison didn’t need Mom to tell her what probably happened to her infant aunt and uncle.

  Her mother was four years old when these things happened. She must have had to hunt down these clippings years after the fact.

  The next pages were on old mounting paper of a different color. Each was a family group shot. In each one Carol Boyle was in it somewhere. The families were all different. Mom had been living with foster families nearly all her childhood.

  It became disturbing to see how few of the pictures showed Mom smiling.

  One particularly ugly picture didn’t look like a family shot. In it were three men whooping it up in front of a TV that had seen better days. What could be seen of the house was a scene of beer bottles and ashtrays. The picture was a blistered black-and-white Polaroid that had been folded in half so the two pieces had fallen apart. It was held together with yellowed cellophane tape.

  The next page was another news clipping folded over itself to fit in the book. Allison unfolded it gently, expecting another obituary. What she got was totally unexpected.

  The paper was from 1965 and the headline read, “Poltergeist Rampages Trailer-Park Home.”

  “What?” Allison whispered.

  From the story, one fine June day, for no apparent reason, miscellaneous objects in the trailer owned by the Cobb family began to be thrown about. Ash trays, beer bottles, bric-a-brac— and in one notable incident the family TV— flew around inexplicably, driving Mr. Cobb and his two sons out of the trailer. The incidents happened repeatedly, and supposedly once in front of the eyes of the reporter.

  There had been no injuries, “unless you count the TV, which Mr. Cobb demonstrated as being dead on arrival.”

  The incidents revolved around the Cobb’s foster daughter. “‘Started about the time the wife took ill,’ said Mr. Cobb.” The Cobbs reluctantly had to give up the child.

  The child, of course, was Carolyn Boyle.

  Allison flipped back to the damaged Polaroid. That could be the inside of a trailer. She looked at the three men swilling beer in front of the TV. She thought of that TV flying across the room and smashing on the far wall. Probably served them right.

  More families, and pictures of Carol as a teenager. Carol with boys. Carol looking somewhat happy. But every few pages would be a new family shot, and after that new family, the high school in the background pictures would change. The scrapbook was becoming a severely depressing document.

  Then, filling a page, was an acceptance letter to Duke University.

  More pictures. Mom protesting the Vietnam War. Mom marching in Washington. Mom making some sort of speech to a congregation of her fellow students. Mom receiving her degree.

  The degree was in the scrapbook, folded in quarters to fit. Allison unfolded it, read the degree, and said, “Psychology, Mom?” That didn’t make much sense. Mom was an accountant.

  People change careers…

  Then came the picture Allison had seen before, the man in the uniform, posed before the American flag. Her father.

  More pictures. Mom in a lab coat for the Prometheus Research Institute. Mom making house. Mom pregnant.

  No wedding pictures?

  Then it was Allison’s baby pictures. Allison kept flipping through domestic scenes. Then the pictures abruptly ended.

  Allison looked around, checked for pages sticking together, falling out, looked in the box. But the last page was ten years old, at least. The last picture was Allison, in her Smurf jammies, Cat in the Hat with ragged tail jammed in the crook of her arm.

  The same things she was wearing when Mom abandoned Dad in Dallas.

  Were Mom and Dad ever married? Allison wondered. It wasn’t a question that had ever occurred to her before.

  She didn’t know what to make of the album.

  Mom had kept a scrapbook cataloging a lifetime of pain. It made Allison’s current problems seem paltry by comparison. Mom did know how Allison felt. Mom probably knew better than she did.

  She bent to replace the scrapbook in the box. The remainder of the box was filled with books. Allison was so used to boxes of books in this house that she’d barely noticed the titles.

  Now one caught her attention, a textbook.

  Parapsychology. 2nd Ed.

  Para-psychology?

  Allison flipped the scrapbook open again, to Mom’s degree.

  She’d misread the calligraphy, it read Parapsychology.

  She flipped through Mom’s university pictures and now saw that she was celebrating her degree with the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory.

  Allison’s mouth felt a little dry.

  She wondered what the Prometheus Research Institute had researched.

  The books in the box were all related to Parapsychology. Poltergeists. Psychokinesis. Telekinesis. There’s a difference?

  One book, a blue-covered seventies’ paperback with a cracked spine, had the title “TK: Mind Over Matter”

  The text-strewn cover made clear that T. K. was an abbreviation for telekinesis. The cover was a montage of dated photographs. Someone who could do a seventies’ bad haircut retrospective held a bent spoon. Some woman waved her hands over a compass.

  Allison’s eyes couldn’t stay away from those two letters, “T. K.”

  She could see that, if used often enough, the abbreviation would shorten itself even further. From the two syllable “tee kay,” perhaps, to the one syllable, “teek.”

  I can’t be thinking what I think I’m thinking.

  Allison gently put down the scrapbook.

  “If I take this idea seriously. I have gone crazy.”

  But what happened to Chuck? I was looking right at him. Who else was there to, to…

  The phrase that came to Allison’s mind was “crack his pants like a whip.” That’s what happened to him, the popped seams, the towel snapping sounds. Allison could picture it all too vividly.

  “But I didn’t touch him.”

  That’s the point, isn’t it?

  Allison backed away from her mother’s box as if it were filled with live snakes. Recent events flew around in her mind, finding patterns to fall into.

  The headaches. The sense of something awakening in her skull.

  Her room trashed without a memory of her moving. She even remembered, now, back at David’s party, she had heard that table upending in time to the worst of her throbbing skull. Dozens of memories of things moving of their own volition around her; her stuffed animals; the books David had been carrying in the library, the ones that had made a left turn in midair. The fact she could rip her notebook out of Chucks hand, even…

  Her father had said, on the phone, “If she’s a teek.”

  Her mother had been a parapsychologist. Mom had been the center of a poltergeist event when she was thirteen.

  It made sense.

  “Yes, sure, uh-huh. It makes lo
ads of sense. It even explains what happened to Chuck. But how come you’ve never done it consciously?”

  Well, I’ve never tried.

  It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

  Allison unzipped her duffel bag, and pulled out Babs. She placed Babs on the bed, on top of a pillow.

  Here’s where I get to show myself how silly I’m being.

  “Here goes. Babs, hop!” Allison, still feeling half-scared and half-silly, thought at Babs as hard as she could.

  Something opened inside her head, an invisible hand feeling through space and matter, latching on to her stuffed animal. The effort hurt, but not as bad as her headaches.

  The stuffed rabbit flew off the bed and slammed into the ceiling with a thud. And it stuck there.

  Allison’s jaw dropped. She took a step back, staring at the ceiling and the rabbit now spread-eagled there. She tripped over the box of books and fell with a crash, landing on her backside in a tangle of paranormal literature. The pain of the forgotten film canister digging into her behind broke her concentration.

  Babs fell from the ceiling, bounced off the bed, and landed at her feet. The rabbit’s frozen smile seemed to say, “What took you so long?”

  TEN

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Tuesday October 26, 1999

  10:45 AM

  Allison tore through her mother’s books, frantically searching for some explanation. She didn’t know what she was looking for. All she knew was that the universe was playing games with reality, and if she didn’t find her bearings quick, she’d crawl into a corner and start whimpering.

  It would be very reassuring to find something in black and white that told her what had just happened, and why. The books didn’t cooperate. In the first place there were just too many of them, ranging from textbooks to pocket paperbacks that shed pages when she cracked their spines. Even when it became obvious that the majority of these books dealt with wholly mental phenomena— telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, and such, not her problem at all— the mass of text was too much to absorb.

  What she did scan was universally unhelpful. The giant Parapsychology textbook had whole sections on Psychokinesis, but it all seemed to be about dice rolling and probability. What she read was very boring, very statistical, and made it a lot less surprising that her Mom had made the peculiar leap from parapsychology to accounting.

  From the look of the textbooks, parapsychology was accounting.

  Nothing in there about levitating rabbits.

  Despite her frantic search, she found nothing that matched what she seemed able to do.

  Unless she counted the poltergeists. They, at least the case-histories Mom had gone through with a highlighter, were the only events Allison could find where it looked like someone was— telekinesing? teeking?— large objects. Only it didn’t seem that the people central to the events were in control of the matter.

  Allison dropped the last book in disgust and looked at Babs again.

  Am I imagining things?

  Allison concentrated on the rabbit again. She felt the weird disorientation she’d felt after her last bad headache. She had the sense of seeing too much. She closed her eyes and the feeling, instead of disappearing, grew more intense. She felt a nagging sense that, out of the corner of her mind’s eye, she could see around, maybe even within objects. Her dislocated vision made it seem as if the universe was turned inside out and she was looking inside herself to see— everything.

  “Too weird,” she whispered.

  She felt her mind reaching for the stuffed rabbit. The sense of touch from her mental fingers seemed numbed and fuzzy, as if the matter they contacted was semi-liquid. When she grabbed the rabbit with her mind, it was like trying to hold a thin pudding. She had to embed the whole object within her mental grasp— like wrapping it with clay— or it would slip through her fingers.

  Allison opened her eyes to assure herself that the world hadn’t melted on her. Seeing the world with her eyes tempered the disorientation, but didn’t make it go away.

  As she watched, she made Babs rise, slowly.

  It felt as if the rabbit was going to slip out of her grasp like a wet watermelon seed and hit the ceiling again. However, she managed to maintain some control. Which was hard, since she felt as if she was losing her mind.

  Babs hovered there, in midair. Allison slowly got to her feet, staring at the stuffed animal.

  I’m doing that. I have to be doing that.

  “Either that, or I’m comfortably sedated in a mental ward somewhere.”

  Allison made Babs rise to eye level. She spun the rabbit around, turned it over, and made it orbit her head. The rabbit complied with her mental efforts with increasing ease. Soon Allison had Babs jumping and swooping, hopping over the bed, doing pirouettes.

  After a while, Allison discovered that the fear and disorientation had given way to wonder. As Babs flew across her mom’s bedroom, Allison began to smile.

  Eventually, Rhett poked his black head in to see what was up. His eyes caught sight of Babs, floating in midair. Rhett ran halfway into the room, past Allison’s feet, to stare at Babs, transfixed. Allison made Babs swoop down and buzz the cat.

  Rhett leapt straight up, mewing, turned, and hit the ground running. He shot past Allison and she could hear his little cat feet machine-gunning down the stairs.

  Allison laughed a real, honest laugh, the first one in quite a while. It felt good. Allison flew Babs down, into her arms, and hugged the rabbit.

  Mom, why didn’t you tell me?

  CLEVELAND, OH: Tuesday October 26, 1999

  11:38 AM

  Fred Jackson stood in the hall outside the glass-fronted offices of “Levy, Mahyer & Boyle Assc.” He stood between a drinking fountain and a potted plant, in the corner of an L-shaped corridor. Down one arm of the L were the offices, down the other were the two elevators serving the building.

  Barney had a position on the opposite side of the building from him, where another L mirrored off of the elevators. Between the two of them they had every access to the floor, elevators and stairs, covered. An additional pair of men had taken position down in the parking garage, waiting for Carolyn Ann Boyle to show.

  In the half-hour since Fred’s field team had taken position, she hadn’t.

  The digital clock over the elevators turned from 11:38 to 11:39, and a soft beeping came from Fred’s breast pocket. Fred slipped a cellular phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. It wasn’t a true cell phone, since it didn’t use the public cell network— but it was less obvious than a walkie-talkie.

  “Yes?” he said into the pseudo-phone while switching his gaze casually from the office to the elevators and back again.

  “Elroy says she’s doing it again.”

  Fred shook his head. “Wait for us, George.”

  “Something’s happening—”

  “Your job’s to keep an eye on the girl. Just keep an eye on the girl.”

  “You should have the mother by now…”

  “George, don’t make me explain things to you again. We do things in order.”

  “I’m sorry, but the activity here is making me nervous.”

  “Don’t make decisions in times of stress, George. It’s not your forte. Wait for us. Good-bye.” Fred folded the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

  More minutes passed. Fred took a sip from the fountain. At 11:41 his pseudo phone beeped again. He flipped it open.

  “Yes?”

  “She’s here, Northwest elevator. Rocky is following, Northeast elevator. I’m in the parking garage.”

  “Acknowledged.” Fred said. Then he hit the button that would activate Barney’s beeper, warning him that the target was on her way.

  ◆◆◆

  Carol rode the elevator alone up to her office, just as she had every day for years. She knew, however, that this was the last time, even if nothing happened, even if there was a safe ever-after for Allie. Carol had spent the morning committing several felonies in preparation f
or leaving the state. She had visited five branches of the same bank so she could withdraw nearly twenty-five thousand dollars from her company’s escrow accounts without causing any alarm. It was in her purse now, ten bank checks and two-thousand in cash.

  In the damage of her retreat, her second career would be as finished as the first.

  What she had to do now, while the office was empty for lunch, was to doctor a half-dozen spreadsheets and files to cover her tracks. It was a job she didn’t relish, but if she left as is, she would find the police after her as early as tomorrow morning.

  Can I do this? Abandon everything in my life again? Uproot Allie again, after what she’s been through?

  All of the buried wounds had come to the surface. Not just leaving John, but her own role in an evil that might be coming after her own daughter.

  She rubbed sleep from her eyes and thought John’s baby-killer comment was well earned. She’d been such a hypocrite, going from college activism to work at a place like Prometheus. That was something she couldn’t blame on John, since she met him at PRI.

  The doors opened on her floor and she stepped out, barely watching where she was going. She’d lost herself in self-recrimination. She hadn’t wanted to believe John’s warnings, not just because Allie was such a normal, happy child. That might have been excusable. Carol was afraid the primary reason was that she never wanted to admit the evil she’d once worked for, or that she’d been hiding from that responsibility for eleven years.

  She almost ran into the man before he said her name.

  “Carolyn Boyle?”

  The name brought her up short, and she stood staring at a balding man with slate gray hair. On his tie was a clip showing an eagle in flight. The man had an easy smile, like a politician. He held out his hand as if he wanted her to shake it.

  Carol clutched her case close to her and took a step back. “W-who are you?”

  “I’m special Agent Fred Jackson, ASI. I was hoping that you’d come with me to answer a few questions.”