Poltergeist g-2

by Kat Richardson

  "I'm trying to help and I need your kids' help to do that. I'm only asking for a few minutes of their time."

  "I still don't understand how my babies can help you," she whined.

  "They play with Celia. They know how to interact with it in ways we don't."

  "I still think it's Mark's ghost—"

  "That may be, but it's Celia that killed Mark and it's Celia we have to get rid of."

  She gaped. "Celia killed Mark?"

  I looked her in the eye and let the worst moments of this investigation well back up through me, every instant of understanding regarding Celia and what it was. Something of knowledge and horror arced across our shared glance and she recoiled, murmuring, "Oh, no. Did she really?"

  "I believe it did."

  She backed away a step. "That's terrible. Terrible." She shook her head, but she seemed to be trying to shake the monstrous images her mind conjured, not to deny their possibility. "All right. You can talk to the kids, but only for a while—they have to get ready for lunch with their daddy."

  "Thank you."

  She called them over.

  "OK, you guys, this is Harper and she wants to talk to you for a bit. Are you OK with that?"

  They looked at her, squirming with impatience, and nodded. "Uh-huh," they chorused.

  "Okey-dokey. Harper, this is Ethan, Hannah, and Dylan," she explained, pointing to each in turn. They looked at me with varying emotion. Ethan was suspicious, Hannah bored, and Dylan confused.

  "Hi," I started, bending down to their level. I felt like an awkward giant in their presence, since none of them was even five feet tall yet.

  They seemed like miniatures to me—I was sure they'd seem bigger up close. "Umm… I know you have a friend—a special friend—that other people can't see, and I wanted to ask you about her."

  "Him!" Ethan insisted.

  "Is not!" Hannah hissed back. She looked at me with clear, earnest eyes. "Our ghost is a girl."

  "Is not!" Ethan fired back. "He's a boy."

  "Oh, boy," I sighed. "Hey, can we go sit down on the swings? I feel like a frog bent over like this."

  Dylan laughed. "You don't look like a froggy. You look like a monkey."

  "Well, then… maybe we should sit on the monkey bars," I suggested.

  "Not monkey bars. It's a jungle gym," Ethan corrected. The pontificator of the family.

  I straightened up. "Jungle's a good place for a monkey, too, I guess. How 'bout we go there?"

  I glanced at Patricia for approval. She shrugged and made a bitter smile. "All yours, lady."

  Hannah and Dylan grabbed my hands and dragged me to the jungle gym. I saw only the thinnest collection of yellow energy hanging about and wondered if this was a wild-goose chase.

  Once we were at the jungle gym things changed fast.

  Hannah told me to sit on a swing while Dylan and Ethan climbed up to the top of the slide.

  "Celia is so a girl," she whispered to me. "Stupid Ethan."

  "How do you know?"

  "I can see her. She's right over there, right now." She pointed to the shadowed end of the yard where a cataract of greenery hung down near the ground. As I tracked her finger, the haze of threads firmed and grew into a column of pale yellow, pierced with bright shards of time. It had come to her call, though it was only a very small version of the thing that had stormed through room twelve on Wednesday. I'd guessed right: it was diminished by use and probably recharging, since it made no move against me.

  "OK, I see her, but she just looks like a blob to me," I admitted.

  "It's hard to tell. She's kind of shy." Hannah shrugged.

  The boys came down the slide with a ruckus and tumbled into the bark chips at our feet.

  "Hey," I said. "Can you see your friend and show her—him—to me?"

  Both the boys pointed to the same yellow haze. "There," said Ethan.

  "OK. When you play with your friend, do you have to do anything special?" I prayed they were articulate children and could explain their games.

  Ethan snorted. "Duh! You have to open the doors. Then you can go in the ghost land."

  I felt dizzy and was glad I was sitting. The ghost land. They didn't really… go into the Grey, did they? "Oh. I'm sorry. I don't understand. I don't see any doors. Can you show me how to open the doors? I'd like to talk to your friend, too." It was hard not to sound like a moron and talk down to them. I was sure I wasn't doing this right, but I was trying. And hating it.

  Ethan made a dramatic shrug of disgust and turned toward Celia.

  "Come on," I urged the other kids, "you guys, too. Hannah. Dylan. Show me how. I'm a stupid monkey, remember?"

  Dylan giggled. Hannah and Dylan joined their older brother and I faded down into the Grey. I could hear Patricia's slight gasp behind us and I prayed she'd stay out of it. I was doing this far too often, but it appeared I would have to do it a few more times. I'd have to break the habit when this miserable case was over.

  The shifting cloud-world of the Grey was uncannily empty—the building rested in a hole dug from the cliff edge and little history existed here. The kids didn't have a presence so much as an impression; they made odd child-shaped holes in the fabric of the mist, limned in bright energy that fluttered through the spectrum as I watched. As I stared at them, the kids shifted and turned a bit sideways, moving their hands vertically up and then horizontally across. Where their hands disturbed the mist, a bright line appeared that resolved into a door shape. I felt sick. It was a doorway, just like the doors of dragon smoke and light I'd seen when I first came in contact with the Grey. The kids had called up a door. They'd turned sideways to it first… looking at it from the corners of their eyes, just as I'd had to do, in the beginning. Were they all little Greywalkers? Was it possible? They stepped through their door. But they still didn't have a presence in the Grey. What the hell was going on?

  I sank down lower, to where the hot grid of the Grey became visible through the mist. The children looked like dark blotches now, standing on a tilting floor of mist.

  As I stared at the structures around them, I saw that the Grey was full of layers just as the Danzigers had said, fluid things, like thermo-clines in the ocean, yet cutting through one another like rock strata. The kids were standing on one and Celia's weird yellow tangle on another. They moved toward the poltergeist, edging sideways, pushing with their hands and shoulders, slipping in between the layers and sliding on to new ones. I was dismayed at their approach—not much different than what I'd tried to do with Mara. But it didn't seem so hard for them. What were they doing that was different than what I'd done at the Danzigers'? They seemed to slip right onto the layers…

  Slipping. Moving sideways. It was always easier to see the Grey sideways. Mara had always referred to my sudden unexpected jolts into the Grey as «slipping» — a sort of sideways movement. That's what I'd done wrong: I'd tried to go at it forward, straight on. And the time layers had been there, but they'd been stiff and heavy. But I didn't need to move them. I just needed to slide onto them. Sideways!

  Carlos had said that time would feel to me like rocks in a stream— eddies in a current. I put out my hand, into the Grey, toward the stacked and tilted layers of time… and felt ripples, corrugations and fluttering edges. Standing sideways to them, I ran my hand along the stacks of ripples and they fanned like cards, flashing snapshots of time. I put my hand on one and pushed a little, just like tilting the table with Ben.

  And I was in, sliding into time. I found the right layer—the one with a pale yellow edge the same color as Celia—and slid onto it, stalking toward the poltergeist and the children across the ghostly playground. Strange prickling sensations grated against my skin when I got close to Celia.

  The bright, gleaming shards that hung in the structure of the entity shivered and rang like wind chimes. Looking at them was disorienting— the surfaces seemed solid, yet contained a baffling twist that came back on itself without end. I could see the children playing near those fragment
s, darting through Celia's web of energy like those fish that swim unharmed through the stinging tentacles of sea anemones. The thin yellow strands that fed the entity spun out for a distance until they broke off in sudden dark slabs of immovable space—the walls of the towers that were sunk around us into the timeless cliff. I could follow one thread with my eyes back to Patricia, who stood looking anxious beyond the heavy mist between herself and me. I could also see my own thin thread running into the mess that was Celia.

  I moved a little closer and the entity recoiled from me, as if it knew I meant it harm. With a sudden rush of red and a blast of heat, it vanished. We all tumbled back, landing hard in the bark of the play yard by the jungle gym. I just lay on my back for a moment while the kids giggled and picked themselves up.

  Patricia rushed toward us. "Are you guys all right? Did you fall?"

  "We're fine, Mommy," Hannah said. The boys were gruffer in their reassurance.

  Patricia couldn't seem to decide what tone to take with me. She scowled, but didn't say anything.

  I picked myself up, dusting off wood chips and shaking them out of my hair.

  "Well?" Patricia demanded. "Did you get what you wanted?"

  "Yes," I answered. I was a little out of breath and felt a touch shaky.

  "Is it Mark?"

  "Huh?" It took a moment for me to put the comment into context. "No, I'm sure it's not, but I'm not a medium, so—"

  "You're not? But you—" She cut herself off and her expression grew a bit alarmed.

  "I what?" I asked.

  "You… I don't know. I thought you were the ghost for a minute."

  Well, that answered a question, of sorts.

  "No, I'm no ghost," I said, smiling at the idea. I looked down at the kids who had lined up by their mother. "Thanks, you guys. That was really helpful."

  Hannah and Dylan smiled. Ethan frowned. "You made him go away."

  "Maybe. Sometimes they just go away on their own," I replied. I wasn't sure how I knew that. Guessing? Or dredging something up from memories I'd buried a long time ago?

  Ethan would have said something more if his mother hadn't given him a swat on the backside. "Don't be rude. Now head upstairs. Go see Daddy!"

  The kids scampered toward the elevator.

  Patricia looked at me with a spooked expression.

  "Do you need a lift to the funeral?" I asked.

  She took a step back from me. "No. I'm not going. I can't get a babysitter and I can't just leave them with their father." She shook her head and kept backing. "And I don't want to see you here again. I don't want you near my kids again." Then she turned and bolted after her children, catching up to them and pushing them toward the elevator, fear boiling off her in anxious orange clouds.

  As she ran away, I could see her strand of yellow energy turn a dull ash color, knotting on itself and vanishing through the buildings toward wherever Celia had fled. Before the elevator doors closed between us, it snapped and fell away like a burned branch collapsing into broken coals and cinders.

  I let myself out, heading back for my office, and found myself laughing, aching gusts of amusement that brought tears to my eyes. If Patricia could have seen me, I imagined it would have confirmed her apparent opinion of my threat level.

  Now I knew how this Grey time thing worked, but I needed an area with more history and mess to practice in. I could think of no place better suited than the messy historic district. And no one would be too surprised by a person acting a bit odd there; I'd have plenty of company.

  Back in Pioneer Square, I saw what I'd expected to see: the Grey, streaked with glimmering layers of history, sheet-thin sections of time riven with sudden cracks and upheavals like sedimentary rocks pitched to the surface by a massive earthquake. Knowing what to look for and how deep into the Grey, I could spot tracks, shards, and loops of time scattered and strewn over the broken landscape of the Grey, each disordered slice or spire spinning out a ghost image or a pall of sensation. When I moved near them I felt the same prickling on my skin I'd felt near Celia, rather like the feeling of shaving with a dulled razor.

  It was noon on a Saturday and Pioneer Square was moderately busy with locals. I was destined to look like a freak of some kind with this experiment, so I didn't worry about which kind. I turned in at the alley near my office building. Sinking into the Grey, I moved near one of the zones of heavy time striation and ran my hand along what seemed to be the edge. I felt it prickle and rime a cold flutter against my palm.

  Back when I first met the Danzigers, Albert had led me through a tunnel open only in another time. I had done it by accident then. I could do it again on purpose. I didn't try to push them this time; I just nudged the layers of time sideways, letting them tip and looking at them as they slid over each other, flickering silver images of history in the cold mist and hot neon of the Grey. When I found one that looked empty and different, I concentrated on holding it and let myself slip.

  The sickening pitch of sudden movement through the Grey made me retch. I hadn't experienced that sensation in quite a while and I didn't like the reminder. With an abrupt jerk, I staggered to a stop— though I hadn't moved in space. Swallowing back a rush of bile, I looked around. The soft orange of my office building's terra-cotta walls was gone and a building of wood and shingle stood in its place. Across the brick street another wooden building bustled with business where my parking garage normally stood. I stepped to the door that led to the nearest building and tried to open it. It resisted my efforts and I had to concentrate very hard on moving it. At last, it swung aside and I went through.

  It was difficult to do anything in this shadow of the past. Everything resisted my attempts to move it—Carlos had said the past resisted bending. I found it easier to wait for someone else to open a door and slide through behind the oblivious memory of the person than to try and wrestle the doors myself. The shades demonstrated a wide range of consciousness. Some saw me and treated me as if I were like them; others didn't see me at all. A very small handful saw me, but seemed aloof or upset by my presence, and some of those tried to talk to me or touch me. I shook them off and looked for a way out of this plane of time—this temporacline?

  It was much harder to spot the layers and shards of time from inside one but I caught the cold eddy of one's edge and tilted it, sliding again toward something. I felt several forces tugging at me, like currents, and headed for the strongest, jolting back to the alley behind my building and out of the Grey. That wasn't quite what I'd wanted, so I tried again, sinking into the Grey, searching for the corrugated ripples of time planes. Again I found them, but I studied them more this time, looking for something specific.

  I finally found one with no building in front of me and pushed it aside, then slid with the same sickening sensation of vertigo. This time, mudflats dropped away beneath me and for a moment I hung in the air at the street level of my own time. A sense of panic rescued me and I scrambled back to a more built-up time. I didn't want to risk falling to the original mudflats and then trying to reemerge in a building that sat twelve feet higher. But I stayed in the Grey this time. No sudden dump back into the normal.

  At last I pushed it back and leaned against the alley wall, catching my breath. I felt as if I'd just completed a heavy workout. Glancing at my watch, I cursed. I had twenty minutes to get to Lake View Cemetery.

  CHAPTER 26

  The cloud cover was solid and lowering but still not a drop of rain had fallen. The expectant chill was perfect for a funeral. When I arrived, the service had already started. The crowd was large and I spotted a lot of familiar faces: Phoebe and the staff from Old Possums; most of the poltergeist crew; Amanda; and a cluster of people so blank and worn with grief and shock that they had to be Mark's family. I also saw a large hot spot of yellow energy hovering over the crowd like a poisonous storm waiting to break.

  Following the threads of yellow from the mass, I spotted each of the séance members: Ken and Ana; Ian several feet behind them, bleak-faced; Wa
yne with his arm around Frankie's shoulders as she sniffled; Tuckman near Mark's parents; Terry alone. No sign of the Stahlqvists or Patricia Railsback. As I picked them all out, I noted one more face: Detective Solis. He was staying to the back where the rolling ground rose a little. I worked my way around toward him, thinking that the presence of Celia at the funeral further ruled out either of the Stahlqvists as the killer—I expected to find the entity cleaving to its master.

  I stopped next to Solis. He didn't look directly at me, but cut me a glance from the corner of his eye and inclined his head a little. "Still working?"

  "I knew Mark," I replied in a quiet voice.

  "Yes. Not, I assume, so well as Cara Stahlqvist knew him."

  "No. And I noticed she's not here, so you don't think she's the murderer."

  "She's an interesting piece of the puzzle."

  "In what way?"

  "This case turns on a woman and her lovers—those she accepted and those she rejected. We confirmed Mrs. Stahlqvist's affair with Lupoldi and the information you gave us about the brooch—very dramatic. She preferred to make the advances—to choose rather than be chosen—she rebuffed others even though her relationship with Lupoldi was stormy."

  "Others?" I asked.

  He jerked his head toward the cluster of Tuckman's youngest subjects. "The usual sexual stupidity."

  I wondered which of them he meant—if not all three. Cara's interests didn't seem to lie with women, so that let Ana out. But I recalled Ian's attention to her bustline and Ken's sudden bitter tone at her name. All three had been hurt in the séance, but Ana least. Was the woman at the center the killer or the cause?

  I wasn't convinced of the Stahlqvist-Lupoldi scenario, though it might look good to Solis. If Cara had grown tired of Mark, their stormy relationship might have gotten lethal—or been cut short by her husband.

  Maybe Ana had lied to me when she denied close contact with Mark. I stared at the members of the rotten triangle and wondered which of them might have taken «no» as a mortal insult. The yellow strands of Celia gleamed against the leaden sky above them.