The Unseen (22 page)

“Audra called. The Historical Society said yes. We can rent the house for a month as long as we take out our own hazard insurance and sign liability wavers. It’s been empty for so long they jumped at the chance. I suspect they know they’re never going to be able to sell it.” His face was glowing like the leaves.

She was obviously still in shock from the trees because instead of saying, “No,” she said, “How much?”

“I’ll cover it,” he said grandly. “It’s going to pay off beyond our wildest dreams. We’re already authorized for work-study money—I talked to Marcia this morning.”

By now Laurel was listening to him with a fascination bordering on trance.
All this—overnight?
Maybe she was still asleep.

“Now, first, we put out a notice for test subjects.” He motioned to the long cork bulletin board mounted on the wall ahead of them, heavily stapled with flyers and posters and work-study announcements. “Make up some flyers with tear-off phone numbers, put up a notice on the departmental Web site. Marcia authorized ten dollars an hour. That’ll bring ’em in—beats working. Oh, and I already rescheduled your meeting with Unger so we can go in together—”

They rounded a corner and without warning he pulled her into a corridor and backed her against the wall, very close, only his book bag between them. She drew a startled breath, thinking he was going to kiss her. He leaned forward and shook his head slightly, mouthing, “Shhh.”

He held her eyes as they stood there, frozen. Someone hurried by in the intersecting corridor behind him.

Laurel, flushed and completely unable to breathe, was fixed on Brendan’s eyes. She had no idea who they were avoiding.

The footsteps continued down the hall and faded away.

Brendan took a slow step back from her. She let her breath out. Brendan glanced back toward the hall. “Kornbluth,” he said, and looked around the corner in the direction the footsteps had disappeared, checking to see if he was really gone. “I don’t trust him. He was very interested in the files when they first opened up. I think he never could get an angle … but we don’t want him guessing what we’re doing.”

Laurel nodded, trying not to let on that she was still completely reeling from their close encounter.
What is
wrong
with me?

“He’s definitely interested,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He came to my office and grilled me when I started looking through the files. I don’t even know how he found out I was doing it.”

“Academia. Nothing is secret.”

“And someone stole one of my notebooks from my office,” she said, without thinking.

Brendan stiffened. “You’re kidding. When? What was in it?”

Now Laurel felt uncomfortable. She’d forgotten that she’d suspected Brendan of stealing it.

“It was last week—”

Brendan interrupted sharply. “Anything about the Folger Experiment? The high scorers?”

“No … no, it was before I knew about all that,” she said. “It was a notebook of notes I’d taken while I was down with the files. It was really just my own scribblings and I don’t know if anyone else could even read most of it, but … my office is always locked when I’m not in it.”

Brendan’s eyes were gray and moody. “Well, I know the guy. He won’t give up. From now on we meet off-campus if at all possible. Your place or mine?”

And that was how they ended up back on her porch, in the blazing autumn sunset, planning a testing series.

The “Call for Subjects” flyers were easy enough to lay out on OfficePro and Brendan had brought colored paper. As the flyers printed out, Laurel and Brendan stepped out to the porch, where at least there were the rocking chairs to sit in.

“We really are going to have to get you some furniture, you know,” Brendan smiled at her.

Laurel felt heat in her cheeks at the word “we.”
Forced pairing,
she reminded herself grimly, and busied herself by handing over copies of several personality tests. Apparently presciently, she had been collecting a file of the standard psychological tests that the Rhine lab had used. The NEO Personality Inventory, or NEO PI-R, was a psychological testing series of 240 questions that measured the Five Factor Model (FFM) or so-called “Big Five” personality traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator categorized subjects according to sixteen traits: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving.

Laurel was all business as she explained to Brendan, “We know Leish used the Zener card and dice tests to find his high scorers. But for our own study I’d first like to catalogue all our volunteers using Myers-Briggs, the Neo-PI-R, and the PBS.”

“PBS?” Brendan asked, flipping through the test sheets.

“The Paranormal Belief Scale.” She’d found it referenced in numerous articles in the literature on paranormal testing and had been intrigued enough to hunt down a copy. “It’s a twenty-six item, self-report scale designed to evaluate the subject’s preestablished paranormal beliefs in seven different categories: traditional religious belief, psi belief, witchcraft, superstition, spiritualism, extraordinary life-forms, and precognition. Test subjects are asked to rate their agreement with statements from: ‘There is a heaven and hell’ to ‘A person’s thoughts can influence the movement of a physical object,’ on a scale of 1 to 7, a ‘1’ meaning ‘Strongly disagree’ and ‘7’ meaning ‘Strongly agree.’ It will help in assessing the level our subjects’ expectations coming into the experiment.”

Brendan looked up from the list and stated very seriously,
“The Loch Ness Monster of Scotland is real.”
He waited, looking at her, and she realized he expected her to answer.

She hesitated. “Uh … one. Strongly disagree.”

“Huh. I would have fought you for that, when I was ten.” He moved on to the next question.
“There is a devil.”

“Oh, for …” she started and he raised his eyebrows.

“You want to ask our subjects to take a test you wouldn’t take yourself?”

She rolled her eyes, but answered. “Strongly disagree.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “I’d watch who I said that to around here. Buckle of the Bible Belt, you know.” He consulted the test, read the next question. “
Some individuals are able to levitate objects through mental forces
.”

Laurel opened her mouth to speak—and suddenly flashed on a sunny kitchen, the knives and forks dancing on the table in front of a sweet-faced, smiling man with Carolina blue eyes …

Brendan was watching her. He leaned forward suddenly. “All right, Mickey, what is it you’re not telling me?”

Her face flushed. “I don’t know what—”

“No evading.” He stood from the rocker. It tipped violently back and forth, as if someone were still sitting in it, rocking angrily. He sat on the porch rail, directly in front of her, so there was no avoiding him. “You’re holding back on me and it’s time you came clean. What is it you’re looking for, here? What
do
you believe of all of this? What do you know about Folger that you haven’t been telling me? How did you know about it to begin with?”

She sat back her own rocker so hard she hit her head against the top slat with a jolt, but the tears in her eyes were not from the pain. “My uncle,” she said. “He was one of the original Rhine test subjects, a high scorer. He’s the one who mentioned the Folger House. That’s how I knew it was a house that had shut down the lab.”

Brendan stared at her with a look that was half disbelief, half growing excitement. “Was your uncle part of the Folger Experiment?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “But I think …” She stopped.

“What, Mickey?” he said softly.

Now the tears ran down her face. She brushed at them, and looked out on the hazy lights of the streetlamps, composing herself.

“Tell me,” Brendan said, leaning forward on the rail, until his forehead was almost touching hers.

“He’s very lost,” she whispered.

“Okay. Okay.” He stood, and pulled Laurel gently up with him. “Let’s go see your uncle, Mickey.”

In an unexpected bit of luck, Aunt Margaret’s Cadillac was just pulling out of the drive as they turned the corner of the block. “Wait, stop!” Laurel whispered, and Brendan did, and they watched as the Cadillac turned the corner at the end of the street and disappeared into the night.

They parked down the street, in case Margaret abruptly returned. Laurel felt like a spy as they hurried up the walkway under the shadows of magnolia trees. Glowing white flowers dotted the dark above them. On the stoop, Brendan rang the doorbell several times, with no answer. He looked at her.

Laurel stepped back on the porch and looked up at the house. She visualized the small, dark, cozy library at the back of the house; saw Morgan sitting in the chair with his half-glasses on, reading
A Princess of Mars.

Uncle Morgan,
she said, but it was inside her head.

They waited. Brendan started to ask, “You think we should—” but she shook her head slightly. “Shh.”

And suddenly the door opened a crack in front of them and Morgan was peering out.

Seated in the study, Laurel and Brendan on the small leather couch across from Morgan’s deep leather chair, Laurel introduced Brendan. “Uncle Morgan, this is my—friend, Brendan. He’s a professor at Duke, too, in the psychology department.”

Morgan looked them both over solemnly, without saying a word.

“We’re—,” Laurel gestured to Brendan, “we’re going to be doing a research study together.”

“We’re covering ground broken by the Rhine parapsychology lab,” Brendan jumped in helpfully. “I understand you might know something about that, sir.”

Uncle Morgan looked off toward the door to the covered porch but Laurel had the feeling he was really looking a million miles away.

“Were you at the Folger House, sir?”

Laurel winced at Brendan’s directness, but Morgan spoke instantly. “No,” he said, and the word was startling in the quiet of the study. “No no no.” Laurel felt a flood of relief, hearing it. Brendan glanced at Laurel.

“You weren’t part of the Folger Experiment?” Brendan pressed.

“Experiment?” Morgan said, looking bewildered.

Laurel felt as if a weight had been lifted from her.
I was wrong.

“But you did do some work in the parapsychology lab, didn’t you, sir?” Brendan asked. Morgan just looked at him blankly. “I understand you’re very gifted with cards,” Brendan tried. Uncle Morgan looked at Laurel reproachfully and she felt her chest tighten with guilt.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Morgan,” she said. “But Brendan’s a friend. I wish you would talk to him. I think it would help—”

“They never came back,” Morgan said.

Laurel stopped. There was a heaviness in the room; the air felt thick with meaning.

“Who didn’t?”

“All of them. They never came back from that house.”

Laurel’s heart was beating practically out of her chest. “Uncle Morgan, we need to know more about that. Are you talking about Rafe Winchester?” Morgan blinked rapidly. “Victoria Enright?”

Morgan’s eyes filled with tears. “Victoria …” he whispered. His chest heaved with a sob.

Laurel reached out, covered her uncle’s hand with hers. She felt the gentle pressure of his fingers. “What happened to her, Uncle Morgan?” Laurel asked.

He shook his head, mutely.

“What about Dr. Leish?”

Morgan shot to his feet, so fast Laurel fell back against the sofa.
“No. No. No.”
His face was crimson, the cords in his neck stood out starkly as he screamed it.

Brendan leapt up and held his hands out in front of him, a gentle, appeasing gesture “It’s all right. No more.”

Morgan sagged. “No more,” he whispered.

Brendan took the older man’s arms very gently and eased him back down into the chair. He looked over his shoulder and said to Laurel, “Go make some tea.”

Laurel rushed to the kitchen, where she fumbled in the cabinet for a mug and found tea bags in a china jar. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely tear open a bag.

They never came back.

By the time she returned to the study, carrying a steaming cup of Earl Grey, Uncle Morgan was slumped back in his chair with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in sleep. Brendan stood beside him, two fingers on Morgan’s wrist, looking at his own watch. He set Morgan’s hand gently in his lap.

“It’s okay.” He turned to Laurel, and took the tea mug, set it quietly down on the end table, and nodded to the door. “Better to leave him,” he whispered.

Driving Laurel home, Brendan was silent, staring out at the dark tunnel of road, and that deepened her unease. She was about to speak when he said suddenly, “Well, I understand why …” He stopped. “Has he always been that way?”

He didn’t have to explain what way he meant. Laurel swallowed. “I haven’t seen him since I was a child. I really only met him again a month ago. My mother said he changed the year she graduated from high school, 1965,” she said, her voice hollow. Brendan glanced at her from the driver’s seat. “But he graduated, and the other two work-study students, Victoria and Rafe, didn’t.” She turned to look at him in the light from the dashboard. “What is it, do you think?”

Brendan shook his head, and his usual guileless grin was twisted. “I think he may have had some kind of trauma. But I’m not a clinician, Mickey, and neither are you. Even if you were, it would be unethical and just plain not a good idea to diagnose a family member.”

“Trauma,” she repeated.

“But you heard him: he wasn’t at the Folger House. So let’s not go working this into your conspiracy theory.”

“But what if he
was
there?” she asked, low.

Brendan turned and looked at her in the dark of the car. “Well, Mickey—I suspect there’s only one way you’re ever going to find out,” he said to her, and she did not have to ask him what he meant.

The answer was in the house.

She tossed and turned in her bed
(alone … )
for hours, until she finally gave up and went downstairs and out on the porch, where she stood on the steps, looking up at the black night sky.