“And they operate on negativity. They aren’t angels, Meg. You’ve done your homework, and what you’ve found is that there was enough negativity in the circumstances of their deaths to power a small city. Chances are they want something.”
“What?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“But you think I might be in danger?”
A long pause, then, “Yes.”
Meg took a deep breath. “There are still things I want to know. And I have an idea where to look.”
“What? Where?”
“The what I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a matter of learning how I can reassure these—ghosts—in order to put their souls to rest.”
“You’re out of your depth here, Meg. What makes you think you can do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the where?”
“In the coach house. It stands on the same foundation as the barn in which the boy burned to death. I’ve had an aversion to the place since we moved here. But now I want to go in. I have to, for some reason.”
“Listen to me, Meg, it’s not a good idea.”
“But it springs from my impulse voice, Krista, the one you told me about.”
“You may only think that. It may spring from . . . their . . . influence. Wait until your husband is there with you.”
“That may be a long time. Oh, don’t worry, Krista. My friend Wenonah is coming to spend the night. I won’t be alone.”
“Good. That’s something at least.”
“Yes, well, thanks, Krista. You have helped.”
“I’m glad. But remember my caution. I’m serious!”
“I understand.”
“I hope to see you soon. It doesn’t have to be in a professional environment, either.”
“I’d like that. Bye, Krista, and thanks again.”
“Goodbye.”
Meg looked at her watch. It was 10:45 p.m. Wenonah wouldn’t arrive for a good hour. Meg went into the bedroom for a sweater. The walk from the house to the coach house was a short one, but she vividly recalled the chill that had gone through her the last time she was in that building.
Doctor Krista Peterhof allowed ten minutes, twenty, then a half-hour, to go by. The sick sensation in her stomach would not let up.
Meg’s situation was more than disconcerting. Krista’s mind kept picturing Meg as a splashing swimmer treading water—comfortable on the sun-drenched surface—and oblivious that the water activity had attracted dark, shadowy things below. Menacing things for which she was no match.
Krista’s own impulse voice got the best of her. She went to the phone book.
She had been rude in their last conversation, she knew. Still, she had to voice a warning to someone.
It took only a minute to find the listing for K. Rockwell on Pine Grove Avenue.
Krista drew in breath and dialed.
“Hello?” The voice at the other end was sleepy and unfriendly.
TWENTY-THREE
We are not just highly evolved animals with biological computers embedded inside our skulls; we are also fields of consciousness without limits, transcending time, space, matter, and linear causality.
Stanislav Grof
Meg unlocked the side door that led to the verandah and stepped out. The balcony above protected her from the light, misty rain. It was dark. The full moon was a prisoner of the clouds and haze.
The columned porch had no steps or other point of entry, so if she were to go out to the coach house she would have to retrace her steps and exit the side door at the rear of the house. If she were to— ”
Meg realized now that she was giving herself an out, a chance to reconsider her decision.
She stood at the north end of the verandah, facing the darkened coach house, one hand upon the balustrade, the other holding closed the sweater. Did she dare go in? What would she find?
As she stood there, her gaze fastened on the dilapidated coach house, bits of the most recent dream flashed in her mind like a strobe light. In the lighted moments she saw not the coach house, but the original barn; not the two pairs of upstairs windows, but a single aperture. The building was ablaze. Meg felt as if she had one foot in the present and one foot in 1911.
Immediately, instinctively, she knew she was standing on the very spot on which Alicia Reichart had stood, helplessly watching the fire and smoke overcome her son.
Meg shuddered. How terrible it was, she thought—no, she seemed somehow to know, the empathy was so great—to watch one’s own child die in so horrible a way. Her hand moved to her belly.
The moment passed. The experience seemed to heighten Meg’s desire to go into the coach house. She turned around now and passed through the door leading into the dining room.
The key to the coach house padlock was on a huge ring of keys she and Kurt had been given upon the closing. She thought she had remembered Kurt’s saying that he had put them in her grandmother’s buffet. She looked through the antique that had fitted so snugly into the alcove, absently thinking what a shame it would be to have to move it out.
The ring was not in either of the two top drawers. Neither was it in the pair of cabinets beneath, nor in the wide, heavy drawer at the bottom. But as she stood up, she saw the ring sitting atop the buffet, big as life. She knew it had not been there a minute before. Or had it?
Meg picked up the ring and moved quickly to the rear now and stepped out of the side door into the drizzle and dark. Still no moon. The resounding effect of the ring of keys as she walked reminded her of a tintinnabulation of a tambourine.
It took only a minute or two to arrive at the overhang of the coach house door. The entrance was situated in the front, facing the drive, and to the left of the dilapidated, inoperable, double garage doors.
She fumbled through the keys, searching for the likely one for an old and rusty padlock. Several looked promising but didn’t fit.
The dampness seemed to penetrate her skin. Her heart was racing. Why did she feel such urgency? Why did she feel like an interloper on her own property?
The fifth key turned.
The lock clicked, opened.
Meg removed the padlock, pulled open the door, and placed the lock—key and ring still attached—inside on the second stair.
She closed the door behind her.
She paused, peering up at what she knew was a long, straight, steep staircase. It was fully dark at the top, eerily silent.
Damn! She had not thought to bring a flashlight. Too bad, she wasn’t about to go back for one.
Meg remembered now that they were paying a tiny separate electric bill for the place, and her hand reached for a nearby wall switch. It was round and mounted on the surface of the wall. It was old and loose to the touch. Meg flipped up the switch.
The bulb in a pot metal fixture at the top of the stairs flashed on, illuminating the dirty and well-worn stairs. Almost at once, the bulb sounded an alarming buzz, flickered momentarily, and went out, plunging the stairwell once again into darkness.
Meg had the presence of mind to turn the switch off. No sense in having the thing short out any more than it had. It could be dangerous. Going back for the flashlight was still a possibility, but she didn’t want to afford herself the very real temptation of a full retreat.
Taking hold of the wooden banister to the right, she pulled herself slowly up the stairs.
At the top and to the left, a window provided a view of the backyard. She peered down into the gray and black mist, barely discerning white stepping stones leading to the alley. She felt her vertigo pull at her and looked away.
A closet was positioned at the top, its door now open. It appeared empty, but she dared not step into its void.
She moved to the right, in the direction of the apartment’s four rooms. The bathroom—on her left—came first. She craned her neck, taking in the white of the walls and old porcelain fixtures that shone fuzzily through the gloom. Much of the plaster lay in heaps on the floor, victimized by fro
zen pipes of past years.
Another few steps brought her down the hall to the bedroom—on the right. From the hall she could see that it was small and empty. She could make out a few hangers and cellophane garment bags that littered the floor near the closet.
Meg continued on. The dining room was next. She turned left and entered it. A brass or pewter chandelier glinted darkly. She dared not touch the wall switch.
She passed quickly through the room to where she knew a tiny galley kitchen was situated. She was at the rear of the structure now where a small window looked down into the alley. She peered out. Nothing below was visible.
Even in the darkness, everything in the coach house seemed as it was when Mrs. Shaw had taken them through it. Nothing unusual, nothing out of place.
Meg chuckled to herself. Fine detective she was. She had thought that because little Claude had died on these premises she would find here the source of energy that had been disturbing their lives. It was not to be. The energy must be in the main house.
So much for my impulse voice!
It was then that she smelled it. Dead flowers—decaying violets—sickeningly sweet and rotten. Strong enough to gag her. It came on a cold breeze as if someone had passed nearby.
Meg felt blood rushing to her face, felt it pulsing at her temples. An icy hand seemed to grasp at her heart—the whole room grew suddenly cold. She could see her breath.
Meg wanted to run in the direction she had come, but her feet wouldn’t move.
She listened.
There was only one room left to investigate—the living room.
Amazed—and appalled—she found herself moving in that direction. As if she had no will of her own.
She was in the hallway before she knew it. A right turn would provide an escape route. Her mind said right, but her feet moved left. Like in her dreams, she was not in control. Just a few steps would bring her into the living room.
She moved as if in slow motion. The small bit of living room in her sight line revealed nothing. But a faint glow seemed to emanate from the room’s interior.
The other smell assaulted her now. The smell of ash, human ash.
Again, she thought of retreat. She wanted to run. But again her feet carried her forward—and all at once she was standing in the living room, her heart pumping like a puppy’s, her face drained of blood.
There in front of the nonfunctional arts and crafts fireplace stood two figures, staring at Meg as if they had been waiting a very long time for her to come calling, yet certain that she would come to them.
Meg’s first thought was that these were two real persons. How had two people come to be standing in this abandoned and locked building? She couldn’t imagine. They were that real.
These were not spirits. Nothing filmy or fuzzy about them. Were they ghosts? No author of ghost stories had ever offered up figures like these. Not Henry James. Not Stephen King. They defied the stereotype. Meg was certain that if she conjured up the nerve to go over and touch them, she would find them made of matter.
Yet they seemed so still. Like statues and expressionless. She looked for the lift of the chests, the flare of nostrils, for surely they must be breathing. But there was no lift, no flare, no sound of breath in the room that—aside from the thump of her heart—was silent as a crypt.
It wasn’t air that was key to their existence, she finally realized. And perhaps this was their crypt. These were not living people. She shivered at the cold that had enveloped her, the fear that suffused her.
When had the boy’s expression changed? He was smiling now. Or had he been smiling when she entered? She wasn’t certain. The smile was simple and genuine, yet immeasurably sad. Take away the sadness and he was the image of the picture she had found in the Calumet Room. And he was the boy who had chased Rex up the stairs and out onto the balcony. He was Claude Reichart.
Yes, he seemed three-dimensional, flesh and blood, but as Meg studied him, she became aware of a facet that defied sense. A subtle luminescence pulsed and glowed about him, a kind of electricity that perhaps was his life—at least in the manner it was being manifested to her.
His smile was reaching out, warming Meg, taking her in like a harbor welcomes a ship long at sea. Her eyes became helplessly transfixed by his gaze. His were the eyes of emeralds.
Suddenly, she felt a rush of energy, an electrical charge within herself—starting in her feet—moving through her legs—streaming hotly upward through her body. This supersensible energy tore through her like a cyclone until she felt herself being carried with it—out of and away from her own body—and then toward and into the boy.
Meg had never taken any kind of hallucinatory drug, yet she was able to think to herself now—as this was happening—that this is what the experience of LSD must be like.
She felt at one with herself, with the boy, with the universe.
She was not merely feeling empathy for the boy. She was a part of him. His sense of sadness was all-pervasive, and it entered every area of her consciousness. She felt his tragedy, the tragedy of a life cut short in its prime, the tragedy of a talent never to be realized.
Then she was falling, spiraling deeper into what must be the core of the boy. The experience reminded her of the Flying Turns, a God-forsaken amusement ride that had made her very ill as a child.
There was no vertigo now, strangely, as she plunged into the space the boy inhabited. Darkness narrowed all about her as if she were enclosed in a sarcophagus. Then colored lights streamed past her at an astonishing speed—but it was she moving, not the lights. She knew that she had moved out of the boy’s core, into a greater, wider expanse.
But the sadness that had been the boy’s did not diminish. Conversely, it increased here, magnified many more times than the boy’s. She came to feel—and she knew this instinctively—the sadness of every person who had died young, everyone who had died with his songs unsung, lives unlived.
The thought that this could only reflect the holotropic universe that Krista Peterhof had described, as well as Jung’s positing of a collective unconscious, entered her own consciousness in a nanosecond.
Meg had never felt such sadness, such despair. She endured it for what seemed an eternity. When she felt she could take it no longer, that very thought seemed to empower her, and she realized she held the secret of withdrawal. Her mind called forth the energy, and it streamed—through her feet and legs—through her body—propelling her consciousness past prisms of light—through the tunnel of darkness—into and out of the boy’s luminescent pulse—and into her own physicality.
She looked at little Claude. No speech was needed between them. Instead, an electrical current—a mental telepathy—left nothing unsaid, nothing misunderstood.
She understood his pain, suffered with him, consoled him. He knew that she comprehended his sadness. His smile, not without sadness, had widened slightly, again the change happening without her seeing it. Such was movement in their world.
An innate sense of accomplishment, of inner peace, descended on Meg like a golden nimbus. She became flushed with pride that she had been able to abate the child’s pain. She had communicated to him that he was to let go of the past and give himself over to what was to come.
This is what has driven me here—to this house, to these souls. Meg believed that the validation of their pain would make it possible for them to make the full crossing to the other side, to lift them to what Krista had called the higher level of the astral sphere. No more clinging to a tragic past—or the physical world.
Meg became aware that the woman was standing closer to the boy now. Again, she had seen no movement. It was Claude’s mother, of course—Alicia Reichart. She was dressed in black except for a bit of white luminescence at the wrists and neck. Her face was ageless—not as young as in the 1910 photograph, nor as old as she must have looked at the time of her suicide at fifty-four. The features were strong and attractive in the way some people call “handsome.” And, yes, there was that mole on h
er left cheek.
Meg assimilated all of this information about the woman in an instant, for it only took that instant for her to realize that she should turn away.
But she could not.
The woman had already commanded a power that entranced Meg. The woman’s eyes appeared colorless little pits that opened to—what? Grief? Yes—and more. This was not the sadness of a little boy. This was deep grief, deep regret, deeper anger.
Dangerous anger.
When the uninvited surge came from deep within Meg, attempting to propel her spirit from her and into Alicia—as had happened with Claude—her reaction to stop the energy flow was immediate—and just as powerless. She was dealing with a force beyond her own league. A lethal force.
She felt herself speeding toward the woman.
Just as the siren Circe drew in Odysseus, the woman pulled Meg to the vortex of her energy. She plummeted into a quarry of sorrow. This time the vertigo was present. As she fell—her stomach in turmoil—she experienced what she interpreted as the loss of a child. Iron gray grief pressed in on her, crushed her, raped her.
She had become one with Alicia Reichart.
As with Claude, however, the journey did not stop there. She passed into a dark tunnel, spiraling down into a wider, boundless world, the world of the collective unconscious. The grief—seemingly already limitless—became more acute as she found herself taking on—actually experiencing—the grief of every mother who had lost a child.
Time here lengthened, became a torture as the wailing women seemed to reach for her. Every moment brought with it new pain and hurt. She had been warned about being drawn into the lower astral realm. She sensed myriad beings flocking to her, draining energy from her, attempting to grasp hold of her, to drag her into their midst. Alicia and the others meant to keep her here. Nothing reigned here but evil.
Meg consciously worked to summon energy to counter whatever it was that caused her to enter this dimension. She prayed like never before, focusing, calling on light and life and all things good—and on God. She began to move upward—slowly at first—then faster, away from the reaching hands—through the great abyss—through the tunnel—and into the confines of Alicia Reichart’s force.
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