The Unseen (8 page)

It was unmistakably the same building.

She stood on the rough marble of the portico, looking up at the building from the Leish film, an elegant copper-domed structure, Greco-Roman, with four tall white columns on the portico.

Laurel stepped forward and tried each one of the heavy double doors. Locked. She moved back to look up at the building again.

The sign above the doors read BALDWIN AUDITORIUM, and it was not the kind of building she would have expected to house an academic department. So, had a building of original classrooms that had contained the parapsychology lab been converted into an auditorium? Or had she made some sort of mistake? Perhaps the shot of the building from the old film she had seen had been an aesthetic choice rather than the actual building that had housed the Rhine Lab?

She was fighting an almost crushing sense of disappointment as she walked down the steps.
But what did you really expect to see? It was a lab, not a haunted house,
she told herself.

It was a cold day, overcast and misty from the night’s rain, a hint of winter before fall, and the drifting fog made Laurel feel even more alone in the vast and strangely deserted quad. Most of the former academic buildings had been converted to freshman dorms, and compared to the constant activity and traffic of West it seemed like a ghost campus—only an occasional student going in or out of the residence halls.

At the foot of the grass circle below the auditorium was a towering bronze statue of Duke University founder Washington Duke, seated in a bronze easy chair. Only “seated” was not exactly the correct word. The founder was more precisely “slouched” or “sprawled” in the chair, cigar in mouth, bronze hands loosely gripping the rounded armrests of the chair, legs flung carelessly wide apart, with the ease and arrogance that only comes with vast wealth, and looking pretty much as if he still owned the place. Laurel circled the statue in a sort of awed admiration; she’d never seen a statue with quite such … attitude.

A voice spoke behind, her, a low, lazy drawl. “Thinkin’ of climbing up?”

She turned, startled—and was even more startled to see Tyler Mountford standing on the grass, watching her.

“Everyone does it.” Tyler’s eyes flicked up to the statue of Washington Duke, then back to Laurel, with insolent amusement. “That ol’ dog has had more sorority girls in his lap than three generations of lacrosse teams.”

Laurel almost laughed. “I’m sure,” she said, willing her face not to redden under the boy’s sly smile. She suddenly wondered if he had followed her from class. “I think I’ll pass, though.”

He glanced around the deserted quad. “What are you doing all the way over here on East? Nothing but freshman and theater geeks over here.”

I might ask the same thing of you,
she thought. While she was annoyed at his intimate and knowing tone, she realized she might be able to get information out of him, so she smiled as she answered.

“I’d seen photos of that building”—she turned and indicated the domed auditorium—“and I wanted to come take a look … but it’s locked. Do you know—was it always an auditorium? Or did there used to be classrooms there?”

“Looking for the Rhine Lab?”

She started, and he smiled slowly at her, enjoying her discomfort.
How did he know?

He shrugged. “You’re from California, aren’t you? Y’all are into all that spooky shit.” He looked at her challengingly.

“I don’t know,” she found herself responding without thinking. “From all I’ve been reading, you have a whole lot more ghosts here in the South.”

“Yes, we do.” His drawl extended all vowels for at least three syllables, and she was uncomfortably aware of feeling the words like an illicit caress. She was immensely irritated at this automatic sexual response she was having to a kid who was at least ten years younger than she was.
That’s the last thing you need,
she thought.
Leave. Now.

Instead she found herself saying aloud, “So the Rhine Lab
was
in that building?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, his eyes gleaming.

“How do you know?” she demanded.

That lazy shrug. “I’ve worked crew on some shows.”

This seemed to her unlikely in the extreme and she was about to say so, when he smiled crookedly. “Gut class. Easy five units.”

She studied him, still skeptical. “I can’t see it.”

“I had a band for a while,” he said, and his face was suddenly closed.

Now that makes some sense … that musician indolence. And probably didn’t have the guts to risk the family inheritance by telling Daddy he was going into music.

“What’s your major, anyway?” she asked casually.

His smile twisted again. “Business, what else?”

“Ah. Oldest son?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.”

His voice was light and mocking, but she could hear the simmering anger underneath. She supposed his family went to Duke, too, the father at the very least, but probably a whole line of them. She decided not to push the questions, for the moment.

She turned and looked at him straight on. “Who told you where the lab used to be?”

He leaned back against the base of the statue, hands gripping the marble edge, a pose strikingly similar to the captured arrogance of the statue. “The old guys from the scene shop talk about it. Say it’s haunted, because of all the Rhine experiments.”

“Haunted?” She stared at him.

“Oh, they’re just mainly trying to haze us, I know. But things go missing down in the shop, and sometimes the lights go weird, and they say it’s because of all those kids that Rhine brought in and tested. The kids from the haunted houses. The shop guys say they brought the ghosts in with them.”

Laurel was strangely electrified, even though she knew the prevalent theory was that poltergeist phenomena had nothing to do with ghosts.

She realized she was holding her breath, and was suddenly annoyed with herself.
What are you looking for? What do you expect, here? What the hell is this about, anyway?

Tyler was watching her like a cat. He smiled slowly. “You’re really into it, aren’t you?”

“Curious,” she said, briefly. “It’s all curious. So what else have they told you, the ‘old guys’?”

He shrugged, pushed off the granite slab on which he was leaning. “What were you looking to know?”

Good question,
she thought to herself. “Has anyone ever said why the lab closed down?”

He smiled, a strangely humorless smile. “Well, it’s kind of a shock they ever let it happen at all, isn’t it? Studying ghosts and such on a college campus?”

“Have you ever seen anything happen, in there?” she said suddenly.

He looked at her, and after a long moment he smiled. “Can’t say I believe in that stuff, Dr. MacDonald.” His smile broadened. “It was just you were interested, and all. Has anything spooky ever happened to you?”

She found her skin heating. “I—no. You mean ghosts? Nothing.”

He sat back, studying her. “Ghosts—or anything. You’re into this for a reason, aren’t you? Doesn’t just come out of nowhere …”

She looked into the drifting fog, and her dream came back to her. The clock that read 3:33 A.M. The dog barking in the distance. The fire siren. The curtain blowing at the window.

I saw it all.

She snapped back to the present. Tyler was still watching her, leaning on the base of the statue again, ankles crossed, smiling faintly.

“Well, thanks, Tyler,” Laurel said stiffly. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Anytime,” he drawled, and dipped his head, a mocking little bow. She could feel his eyes on her back as she started off across the lawn.

She suddenly turned back to him and called out. “Have you ever heard of a Dr. Alaistair Leish?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Can’t say I have.” He tilted his head. “Why?”

Laurel had a strange impulse to answer, when she noticed two coeds with Duke sweatshirts approaching the statue behind Tyler. One scrambled up into Washington Duke’s lap, while the other giggled and aimed a camera phone. At the flash of the camera, Laurel halted in her tracks.

“Of course,” she said aloud. “Of course.” Before Tyler could speak, she had turned and was running, across the grassy yard again toward Perkins Library.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Laurel pushed through the doors of the Special Collections room and approached the rolltop desk. Ward gave an exaggerated sigh and reached for the keys to the basement.

Laurel gasped out, still breathless from her mad dash across campus. “Actually … I was wondering if the library kept a collection of school yearbooks … and where I might find those.”

On the third floor, Laurel sat at a table with stacks of yearbooks in front of her and a panoramic view out the window in front of her. After two weeks in the basement it was strange to sit at a library table with a view of trees and Duke Gardens and the spires of the Chapel, rather than the windowless gloom of the underground.

As she began to browse the yearbooks, one thing was immediately clear: the parapsychology lab had been a vital, vibrant part of university life. In nearly every yearbook since the lab’s opening there were candid and posed photos of Dr. Rhine, his wife and colleague Dr. Louisa Rhine, other professors and assistants, and students. Laurel turned the pages and saw history go by in the progression of photos on the lab, the evolving postures and attitudes of the students, along with the changing hairstyles and tie widths and skirt lengths.

She skipped through to the sixties, reached for the 1965 yearbook, and opened it to the inevitable section on the Rhine Lab. Her eyes were immediately caught by a candid black-and-white photo of a mesmerizingly handsome, light-haired man. Laurel felt an electric thrill: the man was unidentified in the photo caption but she recognized Dr. Alaistair Leish from the film.

“Yes!” she said aloud, so forcefully that several students looked out from their study carrels. Laurel blushed to the roots of her hair, but she felt a rush of triumph at this proof of her intuition.

So it’s true: Leish was at the Duke lab. I knew he couldn’t stay away from the poltergeist research.

He was here, and he died.

She sat very still … then started turning pages impatiently. When she found the photo, she recognized it instantly: a handsome, ruddy, round-faced young man with bright, clear eyes that she knew were blue, Carolina blue.

Uncle Morgan …

There were no captions identifying the students, either. In the photo he was standing beside a lab counter, watching a dice machine with its rotating oblong cage.

To be sure, Laurel flipped to the senior portraits, and found his photo in the Ms—Morgan MacDonald. It was the same boy. He was laughing and glowing with youth and health, his eyes and face animated. There was a string of initials and notations under his name: Varsity Football, Varsity Baseball, Kappa Alpha …

Laurel felt an ache in her heart.

What happened, then? He was at university, he was in a frat, he played sports—he was alive and sound. He had a life.

She stared down at the yearbook.

I have to know what happened.

She was still brooding on the question as she halted in the upstairs hall of the psych department and reached for the door of her office, carefully balancing the armload of yearbooks (1960–1965) she’d persuaded the reference librarian to loan her, as she fished for her keys. A gratingly familiar voice called from behind her.

“I’ll get that for you.”

She half-turned, almost losing her stack completely, and saw J. Walter Kornbluth bustling up behind her. He deftly plucked the books from her arms. Unable to protest, Laurel forced a smile, unlocked her door, and pushed it open. Kornbluth marched into the tiny office and unloaded the books on the desk.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” Laurel said dutifully from the doorway.

“Happy to help,” Kornbluth said expansively. He looked over the volumes he had deposited with a frown. “Yearbooks?” Laurel thought his eyes lingered on the dates.

“Yes, my … my aunt is an alum … ,” she hedged.

Kornbluth turned, took in the office with a sweeping glance, and sat on the edge of the desk. “How are you settling in?”

Laurel paused, disoriented by the sudden and seemingly unwarranted attention. “Well … it’s a big change from L.A., that’s for sure. At least I’m not getting lost every time I get on the freeway. I’m enjoying the teaching—the kids are top-notch. And the campus is gorgeous… .” She stopped, painfully aware she was rambling, but Kornbluth smiled at her tolerantly.

“You’ve been putting in a lot of library time,” he said, and she froze.
So there
is
an agenda here.

“Yes, it’s like working in a castle, really—” she started, flustered.

“And then there’s the lure of the Rhine files,” he said cheerfully, but the look he gave her was shrewd. He was firmly planted on her desk, and short of leaving him unattended in her office, she wasn’t going to be able to avoid this conversation. Also, she was suddenly acutely aware that she had parapsychology notes all over her desk: all he had to do was glance down at a page and he’d know exactly what she was up to.

“It is fascinating, that all of that actually happened here,” she agreed, inching toward the desk.

“Finding anything of particular interest?” he pressed on.

“It’s
all
interesting, isn’t it?” she countered. “But it would take about twenty years to go through everything properly. They saved everything from soup to nuts.” (She had in fact found a can of petrified peanuts in one of the boxes.) “At a certain point …” She gave what she hoped would come off as a nonchalant shrug.

“It’s overwhelming, I know.” Kornbluth smiled with easy and completely false camaraderie. “Seven hundred boxes.” He widened his eyes.

Laurel smiled back, tightly.

“And it’s not really your thing, after all. Vocational testing, Myers-Briggs, a little Allport, a little Maslow …”

She fought not to let her surprise show. He’d obviously been checking up on her.
So he’s interested in the files. He thinks there’s something there, and he wants to make sure I’m not going to beat him to it,
she thought, and was immediately annoyed by her own paranoia.