***
On Friday, they brought three subjects into the office who thought they were involved in a customer service experiment. Instead they tested Scott’s ability to read others over distance.
“Where do you get these people?” Scott asked.
“Craigslist, mostly.” Dr. Blackwell handed Scott another dose of Alprazolam.
Elizabeth escorted a man and two women into the office and everyone shared coffee and danish over light conversation for thirty minutes. Scott greeted each one with a smile and a warm handshake, careful to make physical contact in some way.
Then the doctor made the formal pitch. “Thank you all for joining us today. I have a simple task for each of you. I will provide each of you with an address and some cash. I want you to go to that location and call my receptionist when you have arrived. Stay at that location for one hour, and then return here to complete a customer service survey.”
Scott thought the survey was a lame ruse.
One by one the subjects accepted the envelopes and then left through the front door.
“Now Scott, I am trusting that you did not read anyone before they left.”
“You have my word, Doc.”
“I want you to read each person, even though they are quite some distance away from the office. Also, I’m going to record the session and let our guests view it when they return. Choose one vision for each person, but exercise discretion in your selection of events. I don’t want to embarrass any of our volunteers.” The comment seemed out of place for Dr. Blackwell, since he never seemed concerned about the feelings of others, before. Then he quipped with a peculiar smile, “At least not this time.”
Within a half hour, everyone had called the office to let the doctor know they had arrived. Scott resumed his place in the arm chair and began to relax. Dr. Blackwell set up a video camera while Scott was preparing. When Scott relaxed, he pushed the record button.
An hour or so later, everyone returned.
“Thank you for your help today,” Dr. Blackwell said. “Each of you will receive compensation when we dismiss in about an hour. In fact, your compensation will be double what you were promised.”
No one objected, and they took seats around the office.
“I must confess,” he added. “You were not selected for a customer service evaluation. That aspect of your instructions was a contrivance, if you will. I did that in an effort to ensure that the results and data are pure. The real purpose of this experiment was to test psychic ability over distance.”
The man who looked older then the two women scoffed. “Are you serious?”
“I appreciate your skepticism,” the doctor said. “Bear with me for a few moments, and I feel confident you’ll all be pleased.”
He directed them to turn their attention to the monitor hanging on the wall in the back of the room and pressed the play button on the video camera. “If anything you hear sounds familiar, please speak up.”
Scott watched his image appear on the flat screen and grimaced. He looked older, ancient.
“Someone is making announcements on a P.A. System,” on-screen Scott said. “I hear applause and I walk out onto a small stage. There’s a fairly large crowd, mostly teenagers before me. Another announcement is made. I see the announcer. It’s an older man, bald, wearing a suit. A young lady, looks like a high school senior, joins me on the stage. She’s dressed in a formal gown.”
Scott heard a gasp from one of the women in the room.
“More ladies join us. Another lady approaches with a silver crown—very ornate. Obviously, I’m in a coronation of some sort.”
“Well that rules me out,” the old man said.
“It’s me!” a woman squealed. “I was queen of my high school prom.”
On-screen Scott continued to describe the event, explaining how the person in the vision was crowned and the crowd cheered.
“That was over fifteen years ago,” the woman said. “It was the best thing that happened to me in high school.”
Dr. Blackwell paused the video playback and said, “Ms. Sherwood, you were situated three miles away at a coffee shop, am I correct?”
“That is right.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Blackwell said and pressed the play button on the camera.
On-screen Scott continued to describe his visions. “Okay, I’m selecting another story. I hear water, waves. I smell salty air. I’m standing next to a rail on a cruise ship. It’s a large ship.”
“I hate cruise ships,” the old man said.
“It’s me,” the other woman said.
Scott’s video image said, “We’re pulling into port. The water is absolutely gorgeous—turquoise. We’re still a ways from the dock.”
Scott heard a sniff from the woman.
“I’m holding a vase with a top. No, it’s an urn. The wind is blowing away from the ship and I open the top and pour the contents, a gray powder, out into the air. It’s caught by the breeze and it spreads out over the water.”
Dr. Blackwell paused the tape again. “Is that familiar?”
“Very,” the woman whispered. She wiped an eye with a tissue. “My husband loved to vacation in St. Thomas. We must have taken ten cruises there. His last wish was that I would spread his ashes over the water.”
“For the record,” Dr. Blackwell said. “She was in the mall four miles away. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” she replied. “It’s a wonderful memory.”
“Guess I’m next,” the old man said.
“We’ll see,” He pressed the play button again.
Scott realized that the video was boring, on the surface. He was emotionless with little movement. But his words had power. “I must be in a hallway. I hear loud noises and echoes in here. Yeah. I’m in a long line. Soldiers. Everyone is dressed in military gear. Guy in front of me has a blond crew cut. Someone is yelling for us to pipe down.” On-screen Scott grimaced and turned his head, as if not wanting to see something. “Someone just opened a door and the sunlight outside is blindingly bright. Now we’re jogging, running through the doorway and out to an airport runway. We’re all carrying duffle bags, but I can hardly feel the one over my shoulder.”
On-screen Scott began to suck in air. “There’s an airplane, a big, propeller plane, in front of us. We’re heading for it. One by one we climb up the steps and into the plane.”
Dr. Blackwell paused the recording once again. “Mr. Wright?”
The older man paused a moment, then said, “I can’t deny it. I have to admit, I thought the other two of you were faking it. Like this was some set up. But, that was me, boarding a plane in the Philippines for ’Nam. I served there eighteen months.”
“It sounded accurate?” Dr. Blackwell asked?
“Hell, yes. The kid in front of me, with the crew cut? He died in a grenade blast.” Then, he said, “I was so scared that day, heading off to war, I almost pissed my pants. Sorry ladies.”
“And you were in a sports bar, while Mr. Moore did his reading, right?”
“Yeah. Watching replays of weekend football.”
“Well, I’d like to thank each of you for participating in this study. You can collect your payment at the door.”
Each person stood to exit, but instead, they approached Scott one by one and thanked him.
“That was incredible,” the first woman said.
“You are truly gifted,” the other said.
“I’ve always been a skeptic,” the man said. “But I’m a believer, now.”
“Impressive,” Dr. Blackwell said after everyone had left. “How do you feel?”
Scott thought for a moment to find the right word. “Humbled,” he said.
***
Scott and Dr. Blackwell took some time away one morning and visited a coffee shop down the street in a quaint little brick building bordered by a consignment dress store on one side and a print shop on the other. The morning air was brisk, but not cool, and the tables outside on the sidewalk invited them to
bask in the sun.
Sipping lattes and cappuccinos, they talked about how the study was progressing. Dr. Blackwell commented on the clarity of Scott’s visions and how easily he had picked up the skill. He added that Scott had been able to focus on one certain person and exclude others, sounding like the professor he may have been. “What you are experiencing will shake the medical world, proving the existence of psychometry, the ability to know details about a person by simply touching them. Except, in your case, you can selectively screen out some people while focusing on the ones you want to read.” Something in his voice, his tone, sounded as if such advances were trivial and well within his expectations.
Dr. Blackwell’s view made sense to Scott. He mentioned that but also said the visions seemed to help some people. Most people seemed touched that others recognized, even validated their experience. Then there was Debbie, who was hurt by his comments.
The doctor brushed his words away with a wave of his hand.
“There is one thing that bothers me,” Scott said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the false visions. A few people didn’t recognize a vision or two.”
“Yes, I too have been concerned about them. But I remind you that they are rare. The literature, as you know, lacks a great deal on the subject of psychometry. Who knows why some are true and others are not. You know, even Babe Ruth didn’t bat a thousand.”
“What do you think causes them? They seem so real, just like the others.”
Dr. Blackwell sighed, deep in thought, and chewed on the edge of his mustache. “We are treading in territory that has never been explored. Perhaps someone else’s visions, perhaps mine, have bled over into your readings. You know how two radio stations that are close to each other on the dial sometimes bleed over into each other’s bandwidth? Maybe that’s what is happening.”
Scott paused and let his analogy soak in.
“But then, on the other hand…”
Scott looked up from his coffee cup.
“From an entirely philosophical view, I have absolutely no proof in this hypothesis.” The doctor began.
“What if the visions you see are not time-bound. That is, they are outside the bounds of our definition of time,” sounding like a college professor again.
“Well how can I view them?”
“How could you view any episodes at all? It’s a mystery. So why should we assume that viewing anyone’s experience would fall into our concepts and definition of time.”
“Okay,” Scott said, but he felt he didn’t understand everything he had heard.
“If the visions are not limited by time, then you could be seeing things in the past as well as things that have not happened, yet. Perhaps one of the reasons some of our subjects did not recognize certain events is because they will happen in the future…or may not happen at all.”
“Then how can I see them?”
“You could if you captured events outside the dimension of time.”
“Wow. That is heavy.”
“Yes it is, isn’t it?” He sipped on his cappuccino, looking like a blue ribbon winner at the science fair.
“So I’m telling the future?”
“The possible future, Scott,” he said.
Scott paused in thought. “So perhaps fortune tellers in the past, you know, like gypsies, actually saw things that might happen in the future.”
“Highly unlikely, but remotely possible,” Dr. Blackwell said. “Remember, Dr. Dekhtyar created a drug that kick-started your abilities and those of your mother. The medication I have prescribed served as a catalyst, a booster, to make it easier to access these visions.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“For a gypsy to tell the future, she or he would have to be genetically predisposed to do what Dr. Dekhtyar’s drug did as well as what my prescriptions did. That seems a bit far-fetched.”
“It all seems far-fetched,” Scott said.
“I’m afraid the gypsies simply figured out a way to con people.”
Scott sensed he was right. He wondered if Dr. Blackwell might have a bit of a con artist in him.
***
At the beginning of the week, Dr. Blackwell decided to try another type of remote viewing experiment. Scott downed an Alprazolam pill and a cup of water and sat opposite him at a table. One at a time, the doctor held up large, white, plastic-coated cards containing various symbols—squares, circles, triangles, stars and diamonds—that only he could see. He asked Scott to try to describe which card he held.
Scott gave it a shot, but couldn’t see any of the symbols. His ability didn’t work that way so he started guessing. Then he became bored, so he decided, on a whim, he would try to read Dr. Blackwell’s visions. That turned out to be a little tricky because he had to read between guesses so the doctor wouldn’t know what he was doing.
“I see a star,” Scott said. Dr. Blackwell jotted something down in a notepad. Scott saw several stories as he read the doctor. He chose one and viewed a graduation ceremony.
He stood in line to walk across the platform to receive a diploma. As he reached for the scroll he noticed his sleeve contained three stripes—signs of a doctoral student.
“I think it’s a square,” he said. Again the doctor jotted something in his notebook.
Scott relaxed and continued to read Dr. Blackwell.
He saw someone come up to congratulate him. Scott didn’t recognize the person but heard him call him by the name, “Dr. Blackwell…”
He backed out of that vision and into another.
Scott was there. He yelled something incoherent. The doctor was in a house that Scott didn’t recognize. He shouted. He felt anger. “I’m not going to let you out of this so easily,” he yelled. “I’ve invested a lot of effort and resources into this project and I’m not going to give up.”
The doctor appeared to be talking directly to Scott.
He wondered if he was seeing a future event or one of the false visions.
“I don’t care,” Scott saw himself say. “I don’t want to do this anymore. You’ve been profiting from my abilities and it makes me feel shitty—like I’m doing something wrong.”
“You wouldn’t even know you had these abilities if it weren’t for me,” Dr. Blackwell said. “We’re going to continue the study.”
“Scott? What symbol do you see?” the real Dr. Blackwell broke through the images. He was holding up another card.
“Oh, sorry.” He rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “I think it’s a square.”
“You said, ‘square’ for the last three cards,” Dr. Blackwell said.
“That’s what I see.” Sarcastically, he added, “Maybe you need a new set of cards.”
Blackwell grimaced.
Then he heard himself say, “What you’re doing is wrong. You’ve cheated people—blackmailed them. I’m going to the police.”
“No,” he shouted at Scott. He picked up a heavy object, a vase of some sort, and swung it in Scott’s direction, striking him in the temple and knocking him against a nearby counter. Blood oozed from a gash in his head. “I’ve put years into this research.” He swung at Scott again, knocking him to the floor. “You will not stop me.”
“Scott?” the real Dr. Blackwell demanded. “What card am I holding now?”
“Uh, square, no. You’ve got a circle,” Scott said.
“Hmmmm,” the doctor responded.
In the vision Dr. Blackwell’s hands trembled. He knelt by Scott and took a pulse. His heart beat slower than normal, but still strong. A sense of panic and desperation flooded over him. He couldn’t let Scott go to the cops. He had to clean this mess up.
Reaching down, he opened Scott’s mouth and poured several tablets from a prescription bottle into his mouth. He stood up and grabbed a whisky bottle from a nearby wet bar, screwed off the cap and poured the liquid after the tablets. If police found Scott’s body, they’d assume he had overdosed and hit his head while falling.
“S
cott,” Dr. Blackwell said. “You don’t seem to be taking this exercise seriously. What does the card say?”
In his vision he took a pillow from the couch and placed it over Scott’s face. He pressed it down, forcing all of his weight on the pillow. The body beneath him began to squirm, to fight for life.
When the squirming stopped, Blackwell glanced in a mirror. Sweat poured from his balding head causing his glasses to slide down his nose. His steely goatee glistened from perspiration. He needed to get rid of the body…just in case.
After catching his breath, he bent over and picked up Scott’s feet and dragged them toward the door, into the garage and to the rear of his Black BMW. He popped the trunk and hefted the body into the back.
After closing the trunk, he leaned back against the car, out of breath once again.
It took every ounce of Scott’s will to keep from reacting to the vision he saw of Dr. Blackwell suffocating him. He inhaled like a diver preparing for an underwater swim. Try as he might to focus on the cards, he couldn’t concentrate. Frustrated, scared, he broke off the exercise. Shaking his head, he said, “Dr. Blackwell. I can’t. I’m just not feeling well today.”
The vision had disappeared.
“Could we wrap this up? Maybe tomorrow.”
“Certainly, Scott,” Dr. Blackwell said. He stood up and gathered the cards and notepad and walked back to his desk. “Tomorrow, same time. All right?”
Scott stood. He nodded and wobbled toward the front door. “See you then,” he said, not sure he ever wanted to see Blackwell again.
He left for home…and Grace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next week Dr. Blackwell invited Scott to attend a special dinner sponsored by a group of technology investors. They dined in an elegant restaurant in the business district. Scott had never been there and doubted he ever would go there again. His wallet couldn’t afford the check and his diet couldn’t take the rich cuisine. His idea of a nice dinner out was taking Grace to Qdoba for tacos.
2nd Sight: Capturing Insight Page 8