The Unseen (11 page)

Laurel had the clear impression that Anton was reciting a policy he might not completely believe in himself. She felt her way carefully.

“I don’t know much about it, but as a researcher I have to wonder … how can you study a phenomenon like a poltergeist in a laboratory setting?”

Anton smiled at her strangely. “You can’t.” As she stared at him, trying to interpret this, he half-turned. “And now, Dr. MacDonald, I’ll see you out.”

There was no option of refusal; the interview was over.

She followed Anton back out into the spotless corridor and he opened the front door for her.

Just before she stepped out, she suddenly turned to him. “How did Dr. Leish die, do you know?”

Another beat of stillness. Then Anton said, “It was a heart attack, I believe.”

They looked at each other, and Laurel was sure he was lying. “At forty-one,” she said. “What a shame.”

“I agree. Good night, Dr. MacDonald.” He shut the door on her.

As she drove home on the nearly deserted highway through the dark tunnel of trees, her unease grew.

He’s lying.

Partially or even totally, but he was lying. Laurel struggled to regain her bearings. Had she completely given away her game by asking Anton about the house? On the other hand, she’d gotten exactly the information she’d come for: the Folger House was not only a real thing, but something significant, if not top secret—that was clear from the mysterious and arrogant man’s reaction.

And the confluence of dates—Leish at the Duke lab just before it closed—if Uncle Morgan was right and Folger closed the lab, then whatever the Folger House was, she was sure Leish had something to do with it.

She turned onto her block and parked her Volvo by the curb outside her house on the quiet, deserted street. All up and down the block, lights were on above the wide porches, but there was not a soul in sight beyond the shadow of a prowling cat. Wind whispered through the oaks and crape myrtles.

Laurel shut the car door and moved to the trunk, opened it to get out her wheeled book bag.

And suddenly the sense of being watched was overwhelming.

She turned under the diffuse light of the streetlamp. A breeze picked up and dry leaves rolled past her feet in a small flurry.

She could see no one, not on the porches, or inside a car.

She grabbed her bag, heaved closed the trunk lid, and hurried up her walkway for the door.

On the porch she pressed the book bag into the door frame, holding it up with her body as she dug in her purse for her keys. Her heart was pounding, completely out of proportion to the situation, but she was overwhelmed with a sense of urgency.

She found the keys, fumbled the door open, and slammed it behind her, locking it.

All right, now?
she chided herself, as she leaned against the wall—but she was shaking.

Nothing to be afraid of …

Then she thought of Anton’s cold dark eyes, and was not so sure.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

There is no question that each of us has inherent psi ability. This is the bedrock of all modern paranormal investigation. The more pertinent question is—do we have the courage to claim it?

—Dr. Alaistair Leish,
The Lure of the Poltergeist

Her notebook was gone.

Laurel stood with hands on hips, surveying her Psych department office—now even more chaotic than usual, an explosion of papers and files and pulled-out drawers after her increasingly frustrated search. The gargoyle outside the window leered in at her as if it were in on the joke.

She’d returned to her office that morning after her troubling visit to the Paranormal Research Center, started to pack her roller case for another foray into the basement of Perkins, and realized the notebook was missing: the three-subject Blue Devils notebook from the student bookstore that she’d been taking notes in. It was the ninth notebook she’d filled with notes from the Rhine files. The others were at home, lined up on a shelf in one of her overflowing bookcases.

She’d looked through, under and around every single piece of paper and file on her desk, in the three desk drawers, through every bookshelf in the tiny office. Nothing.

Am I losing my mind?

She thought briefly of the feeling she’d had of being watched, last night.

Okay, now that’s crazy. Isn’t it? Who would want my random notes? Who could even read my handwriting?

But she had no time to ponder—it was Friday and she had a full day of classes, plus office hours. The carillon bells in the clock tower were chiming five before she was able to lock the door of her office and hurry down the stairs and across the quad through a blustery wind and rush of escaping students to Perkins Library. Down in the basement she checked her table, and the coat closet; she even went back to the shelf and looked through the last box she had been sorting through yesterday morning to see if she’d absentmindedly put it back into the box with the actual files.

It wasn’t anywhere.

Which means nothing,
she thought. She’d once turned her entire condo upside down for a book that she found a week later in the freezer beside a quart of Honey Vanilla Häagen-Dazs.

But the more she looked, the more certain she was that she had left the notebook on her desk in her locked office.

She sat on the edge of the long table, and thought back to Kornbluth’s unsolicited visit to her office. He’d been sitting on top of her desk, obviously scanning the materials on the desktop.

Did I see the notebook after that? I don’t think I did.

But would he really be brazen enough to steal a colleague’s research material? Should she confront him?

There was a step behind her and she turned, startled.

Ward stood behind her, between the shelves. “It’s Friday night,” the librarian informed Laurel dryly. “I’m leaving for the evening. But you can lock up behind you, if you’re staying. Just pull the doors shut as you leave. Closing bell’s at quarter to ten.”

Laurel was surprised and grateful for the vote of confidence. “I appreciate it,” she said.

Ward looked behind her at the rows of boxes. “Well,” she said, and turned to go.

“I have a question,” Laurel said suddenly, and Ward turned back, waiting. “I wondered if you had ever seen anything, or heard anything, about a Folger House.”

Laurel didn’t know why she was asking the librarian, except that for Whatever reason she trusted her. At least, she trusted that the librarian had no vested interest in the research Laurel was doing, the way that others in the department would have.

“I haven’t been into these files,” Ward said.

“But … maybe someone else has asked? I just wondered if you had ever seen anything or heard anything about a Folger House … if it was familiar at all.” Laurel was painfully aware that she was grasping at straws.

Ward looked at her through the thick owl glasses. “Folger. No. Never heard of it.”

“Well … thanks,” Laurel said. “Enjoy your weekend,” she added with effort.

“Oh, I will.” Ward walked off with a bit of a spring to her step, leaving Laurel with the sneaking feeling that the dour librarian had a more active social life than she did.

Laurel stood in the middle of the tables. Though she did not hear the door close, she knew Ward was gone by the sudden absence of energy—the dim, cool, faintly moving air surrounded her and she was alone.

Alone with seven hundred boxes of unfathomable mystery.

She felt like crying, something very near defeat. She knew she had already spoken the word “Folger” aloud far too many times, was being far too obvious about her intentions. And she now had only a week until she had to meet with Dr. Unger and she had nothing. Nothing.

She looked around her at the aisles and aisles of bookshelves, the hundreds of file boxes with their frustrating chaos.

Their carefully engineered chaos.

How many weeks had she been doing this, now? And what had it gotten her?

The book seemed more and more like an elusive dream. The truth was, she was looking for something she’d probably never find. She was like the poltergeist investigators, wanting so much to find some proof that they chased the most intangible wisps.

Yet a defiant voice rose from somewhere inside her:
Somebody else thinks there’s something real, there. Kornbluth, Anton—whoever stole my notebook …

But where? Seven hundred boxes and she’d been through thirty-two, and she was no further to finding anything remotely like a pursuable topic.
What chance do I have, after all?

“Might as well hire a medium,” she muttered to herself.

And that thought stopped her still.

Well, who needs a medium?
she thought recklessly. “It runs in the family, doesn’t it?” she said aloud into the cool silence.

It runs in the family,
her uncle agreed, inside her head.

Everyone has inherent psi ability,
Dr. Leish added, also inside her head.
The more pertinent question is—do we have the courage to claim it?

Laurel stood, and surveyed the shelves filled with file boxes. “All right, then,” she said under her breath. “If everyone has it, let’s see what we’ve got.”

She walked slowly to the middle of an aisle and stood, closed her eyes and took a breath, uncertain how to proceed.

“You have to pay attention,”
her uncle whispered in her head.

Great. Attention to what?

“The Folger House,” she said aloud, her eyes pressed shut. “Anything on the Folger House. I need to find it. Where is it?”

She could hear the distant whir of a fan, the cool rush of air on her face from above.

It’s here somewhere. There are records for everything else. It’s as easy as opening one of these boxes.

She pictured herself lifting a lid, seeing the word folger on top of a page.

Leish’s voice was in her mind again.
“Perhaps what we call reality is simply an agreement that the less imaginative among us have decided upon.”

She took a step in the aisle without opening her eyes, and paused … her whole body relaxed, but poised … listening with something other than her ears.

She took another step, and then another, hands hovering by her side, working her way down the aisle, moving with a slow, trancelike step. At the end of the aisle, without opening her eyes, she moved deftly around the end of the shelving, surprised at how clearly she felt the presence of the shelves. In her mind’s eye she could see the boxes around her as if they were in a white room, with indistinct contours, as if the walls were actually a fog of white. Time had stopped: she was suspended in a sense of being that was beyond physical; her body seemed to have lost its boundaries, and she registered the information in the boxes like touch on her skin.

She moved slowly, down one aisle, up another … all the time in the world. And then she felt it. In the middle of the third aisle, something like a magnetic pull.

It was so clear and yet so subtle that she was afraid to breathe.

I’m making this up, I must be.

The backs of her ears were tingling… .

She eased another step forward … and the feeling was gone. She froze … then slowly, slowly stepped back …

… and again felt the subtle pull … the fine hairs on her forearms were standing straight up.

Okay … okay …

She reached out a hand—and felt the magnetism like a gentle vacuum, pulling at the center of her palm. She let the pull take her palm, forward, forward …

… and suddenly felt her hand flat against the side of a cardboard box.

Her eyes flew open.

Her hand was pressed up against a box, number 642, at about eye level on a shelf. She was no longer in a dreamy trance; her heart was beating a mile a minute.

She breathed in, and reached up to pull the box from the shelf. It was heavy, like the others, obviously full to capacity.

Too impatient to haul the box back to her table, she put the box on a lower shelf and lifted the lid, staring down into the box at the row of files and documents and pages. Her palms were sweating. She wiped them absently on her skirt.

Unlike in her mind’s eye, there was no document with FOLGER clearly spelled on the top.

Well, go on,
she told herself, crossly, to dispel the almost unbearable nervousness.

She took out a stack of papers from the front. By now she was used to skimming, and she zipped through the pages, searching only for the words:
Morgan MacDonald, Folger House, Alaistair Leish
, and
1965.

The documents were discouragingly familiar: bills, memos, pages and pages of personal letters.

Just breathe,
Laurel told herself.
It’s there. Just look.

She reached into the box for another stack of papers …

And then there it was. She knew it the second she saw it: a thin paper-clipped sheaf of pages, all test-result charts—the same Zener-card test charts she’d already seen hundreds of in the files. The names of the subjects had been redacted (she held them up to the light but was not able to read any names through the slashes of black marker), and relabeled SUBJECT A, SUBJECT B, SUBJECT C. But all three of the test scores were through the roof, the highest she’d come across: 51 percent correct, 55 percent correct, and an astonishing 75 percent correct.

And on each test, someone had scribbled at the top in bold spiked handwriting, the same authoritative slash of penmanship:

FOLGER EXPERIMENT—start date 4/03/65

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Laurel realized she’d been holding her breath for some time, and forced herself to exhale. She shuffled through the test forms again, just to make sure she really was seeing what she was seeing.

It was what she’d been looking for. There
was
a Folger Experiment. whatever it was, it took place just before the parapsychology lab was shut down. And it had involved test subjects with ESP scores higher than any other recorded test subjects she’d ever come across in the literature.