Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) (24 page)

I was dressed down in front of everyone, called a malingerer, and threatened. Then the beast ordered Dr. Hook to discharge me as soon as possible.

By the time he left, I realized that life is indeed a dream, where personas shift shapes, assume roles, and trade guises without changing the essence of their natures. Stegman was a protégé, if not the heir apparent, to Gottreich.

None of us could breathe regularly until he was gone. We had to wait for Evil to pass before we dared speak.

Someone had alerted Bobby to the goings-on and he showed up later, bearing an envelope.

“Mum, I never did give you that letter from your friend Claudia. Now she sent a second one, and this one is marked
URGENT
.”

I nodded and sighed.

“Bobby, I think I know what’s in Claudia’s letters. I’ll read them at home.”

There seemed nothing for me to do but pack my things. That’s just what I was doing when Dr. Draper stopped by to say good-bye and to apologize for the beast’s deportment. Apparently Stegman was one of the neuro-gurus the Kingdom had recruited to staff their expanded new neurosciences division. I also had the temerity to ask if he happened to be the surgeon who had operated on Mona Klingerman the night previous.

I didn’t have to ask, but I did. Innocence victimized again by the cruelty of science, and the little girl had come back screaming earthquakes again. The child was now my ally, and from here on out, we had two mortal adversaries: one lurking in the land between life and death, and another here in the real world. The old Kingdom and the new.

But there was something else. A delightful surprise.

Dr. Draper said that Dr. Massingale had asked a favor of her—namely, to convey me to see an experimental psychologist, a Ph.D. in psychoacoustics, Dr. Jeremiah Duling, who had been pleased to examine my hearing tests and the tape I’d made that fateful day in the elevator and would be further pleased to meet with me and discuss his findings. I think the doctors were all feeling a little sorry for me, now that word had got around about the treatment I’d received from Stegman.

Dr. Duling had heard that I was wondering if perhaps the sounds that I had tried to tape did not occupy the spectrum audible to the normal human ear. He had sent word to Dr. Massingale that the situation was far more complicated and needed explaining.

En route, Dr. Draper told me how, over and above audiology and otology, they now had a new department of neuropsychology, complete with doctors who study psychoacoustics and neuro-audiology. All part of the grand new expansion.

She also warned me that Dr. Duling was something of a pure scientist, and that it was entirely possible that neither one of us would come away with any understanding of what he’d said to us, unless I happened to have an advanced degree in psychoacoustics.

“Is he more open-minded than those flatlanders you sent me to in otology?” I asked.

She answered my question by showing me into Dr. Duling’s office, where I saw a large rumpled man behind a large messy desk flanked by what looked a triptych of flat-panel computer monitors.

After introductions, he almost never looked at us. Instead he seemed to be pulling documents or files up on the screens in front of him and peering into them—an odd sensation for us, because we could see only the backs of the monitors and his brow furrowing as he studied them.

I almost announced that there were human beings present, but I let Dr. Draper run the show instead.

“The patient has mild age-related hearing loss,” said Duling. “While overall hearing diminishes with age, there is a well-known effect of broadening in the bandwidth of hearing in the elderly, resulting in better temporal resolution. To be precise, better temporal fine structure discrimination.”

“Ooo-kay,” said Dr. Draper.

I could see by the look on her face that Dr. Draper understood no more of it than I did. But I was all ears anyway and had a good feeling about it.

“Are there lay terms that might convey what you just said?” asked Dr. Draper.

Duling glanced up and barked, “Because she’s
old
she may hear stuff in complex sounds that normal people can’t hear. How’s that?”

“Yes,” said Draper. “Good.”

I nodded and kept my thoughts to myself:
Of course I hear stuff in complex sounds that normal people don’t hear. I’m clairaudient, for God’s sake.

“She also has a history of tinnitus,” said Duling. “Not a problem for us in deciphering the tape. Like everyone else, she sometimes exhibits the well-known phenomena of OAEs, or otoacoustic emissions.”

Dr. Draper’s eyes opened a little wider, but Duling didn’t notice.

“They were discovered about ten or twenty years ago,” said Duling. “Her ears, our ears, in the proper circumstances actually emit very low-level sound, not just spontaneously, but these can also be
evoked
in response to external acoustic stimulation.”

“Again, the lay terms might be helpful,” she said.

“How shall I put this,” said Duling. “In some circumstances, using the proper sensitive equipment, it is possible for scientists like me to
hear the ringing in your ears
! How does that grab you?”

“How exciting!” I said.

“I’m glad someone’s impressed,” he said. “Now, all of this would be moot when it comes to the particular tape you made in the elevator, except for one fortuitous accident. When you had your episode or fainting spell, your recording device landed literally millimeters from your ear.”

“That’s what Bobby said!” I could barely contain myself. “I don’t know why. I don’t think I did it on purpose.”

“So,” he continued, “I examined the tape for very faint echoes of the sounds actually heard by your ear, as those very faint sounds otoacoustically echoed back into your recording device. To be clear, these are sounds
you
hear because age has endowed you with superior temporal fine structure discrimination. Us youngsters can’t hear them, which means we can’t echo back those sounds the way your ear does. But us youngsters
can
hear the very faint echoes of what
you
heard if those echoes got captured on the tape. Got it?”

Even Dr. Draper was on the edge of her chair now.

“So what I did,” he continued, “was take your tape, especially the end of it, and perform what we call fine grain analysis. We strip away extraneous noises one by one. We do signal averaging and we gradually dig the signal out of the noise.”

“Uh, how about some more lay termi—” began Dr. Draper.

“Naw,” said Duling, “I’ll just play it for you. Is this what you heard?”

He clicked his mouse and stared into his computer screen, and miracles and wonders, I heard the poor child’s voice. Crying. Calling out to us from beyond the grave. I was gooseflesh head to toe.

“There’s more distortion than I’d like,” he said, “but is that it?”

Dr. Draper was white, for the forlorn voice affected her the way it did me when I first heard it.

“This is—” she began.

“Kinda creepy if you ask me,” said Duling.

BY THE TIME I
got to Lenny’s bedside, it was night. Late. A winter storm was breaking outside. Lenny was rousing himself to moments of lucidity, but his breathing was failing fast. I was able to ask for his help and explain what needed to be done in the moments immediately following death.

I was a woman on a mission until I stopped and reminded myself to
be
in the moment, even though the moment was fraught with so much life. And death.

“Lenny,” I said, “here we are at the end. My sweet, handsome lover.”

I kissed his cheek and rubbed eucalyptus and spearmint oils on his scaly old skin. That made him smile. I knew he was still with me.

One more time, for the ages.

The sunshine ward was quiet, except for the soft beep of his morphine pump and snow blowing softly against the windows.

He turned his head to one side, almost as if Lenny the warrior didn’t want an old woman to see his face just now.

“Is that you, Sally?”

“Yes, Lenny,” I said. “I’m here.”

“Where have you been all my life, Sally?”

He chuckled, but I saw a tear bead up in the corner of one eye.

“I’ve been ghost-hunting, Lenny.”

He laughed. “You and your ghosts.”

“Yes,” I said, “Sally and her ghosts.”

“How I loved you, Sally. You and all your crazy ghosts.”

“All my crazy ghosts,” I said.

I started covering him with rose petals. Combing his white hair. Touching his body tenderly, while he could still feel me.

“You want to do it in a chair again, Sally?”

Still had his sense of humor, but his breathing was agonal, coming and going in fits, punctuated by alarming episodes of complete stillness, during which I was afraid that he’d already gone.

“Only the once,” I whispered.

“Only the once,” he said, “but it was for the ages.”

I felt a single tremor rumble through the building.

I’d used all the petals, covered him in them.

“This is the big one, isn’t it?” he asked. “Those Japs couldn’t kill me, but now here I am, all broke down.”

“Are you afraid, Lenny?”

He smiled. “A little.”

“Don’t be. You’re just passing over to all those crazy ghosts. I’ll be coming soon; I’m an old biddy myself.”

“Sally…do you hear a bell?”

I listened, and indeed I could hear the girl’s bell, ringing ever so faintly.

“You still want me to find the little girl for you?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

His mouth fell open, and he was still.

“Lenny?”

He smiled again, and his diaphragm jerked and drew in one spasmodic breath.

I pulled out my candle and set it on the tray table next to us.

“Lenny, remember what I told you about the candle. When you pass over, you’ll be in the First State after death, a space you must cross over to reach the light. If I’m right, the little girl I’m looking for is there. She hasn’t gone on, and I don’t know why. I don’t even know her name. You’ll see a light—a lovely bright light. You’ll want to go into it. But don’t! Not right away! Call for the little girl! Linger in Swedenborgian space, Lenny. Put her in touch with me. Tell her to blow the candle if she hears me. She won’t let you lead her to the light, but tell her I want to help her if she will let me. I feel we are sisters outside of time in some way that I don’t fully understand yet. Tell her I must know her name. I must find out what happened to her.”

Lenny’s jaw dropped and he fell completely still.

I lifted his hand and kissed it, felt tears on my cheeks.

“Lenny, are you still there?”

Nothing. Then the candle blew sideways.

I was all plucked gooseflesh, shaking with excitement.

“Lenny, is she there, Lenny? Is the little girl there?”

Again the candle guttered and shot sideways.

“Do you see my little girl, Lenny?”

Yes, said the flame.

“Can you speak to her?”

A long second or two of nothing. I knew the time couldn’t last, Lenny would pass over any second.

“Lenny, ask her to blow the candle twice if she can hear me. Please, Lenny?”

The darkness seemed to open at my feet into a dark chasm separating here from hereafter. A long silence, then the candle guttered once, then again.

Time stood still the moment I saw the second fluctuation of the flame. I had made contact with the little girl, a spirit in the beyond, the voice that I had heard in my travels in the borderlands.

“My child, I know you can hear me. And you know I can hear you. We’re sisters in some way. I know it.”

I stared into the candle flame.

“Can you still hear me?”

The flame was blown sideways, as if a living person blew across it.

“Child, in death we cross over to the light, where we rediscover all the moments of our past life and freely combine them in eternal dreams. But I fear that your dream is a terrible nightmare, my child, and so you cannot cross over into the light. I so want to help you, dear. But I can’t help until I know what happened. Can you tell me? Can you tell me what happened to you?”

The candle guttered sideways again, as if in reply.

“Yes? Oh, my dear. Who hurt you? Was it one sworn to heal? Is that why you haunt these halls? Was it a doctor?”

Whoosh,
the flame was blown violently and completely out. A glass broke and I felt a cold aura pass through the room. A gust of Evil that made me tremble.

I looked around for the thing, but all I could hear was laughter, the malicious spirit of a young boy from the sound of the voice.

“I command the other spirit to leave us. Leave us in peace. I’m not afraid of you! Why won’t you let me talk to the girl? Why do you interfere? Leave us in peace!”

I heard more wicked laughter reverberate. Then the pitiful cries of the child tore holes in my heart.

The Evil One said, “Hail, Mary, full of disgrace. The Lord has abandoned thee. The Lord has abandoned little Mary in the valley in between.”

“Mary?” I said, and I heard her cries anguishing the night. “Mary, is that your name?”

I lit the candle. It seemed to gutter momentarily, then stabilized.

“Mary, is that your name, child? Is it Mary?”

A gentle breath blew across the flame. One time.

“Don’t listen to Evil, my child. I won’t abandon you, and neither will the Lord. I’ll help you, Mary. Look at us! We hear each other. Your voice is real. I can hear it. I’ll soon know what happened to you and how you were lost.”

For one instant I stood outside of time, much the way one does in the textbook mystical experience. I saw time as both particles and waves, a vast collection of individual seconds, innumerable as water molecules in all the oceans of the earth, and also saw it as a single undivided eternal moment, a moving image of eternity.

I knew the child was crying out from beyond the grave against the crimes of science. Against the suffering of the innocents. Against the pain of the few in the name of the greater good. Evil will always be with us, but you and I, Mary, will make our stand against it in the here and now, in the faraway past, and the life yet to come. Before our work is done, we may have to journey even farther back in time, to the place where Evil touched you, my dear.