The Entity, page 29
He became scared. He could distinguish between what people truly meant and what they expressed. He could perceive the hypocrisy that strangers tried to cover up. And so Mehan spent much time in the privacy of his own bedroom, to avoid the agony of communicating with people.
Then he met Eugene Kraft. Kraft had been teaching a course on the philosophy of science. Mehan was his best student. Kraft could see that there was a reason for Mehan’s determination besides preparing himself for a Ph.D. in the field of philosophy. After the final examination, Kraft invited him to his apartment. Mehan understood that Kraft was sounding him out, but he suppressed what was in his mind. He had lived too long with a secret buried too deeply.
“You’re not in this for the units,” Kraft observed.
“I guess not.”
“Am I overstepping bounds if I asked you what your real interest is?”
“No—I just— It’s difficult to say.”
Kraft studied Mehan. Mehan was frightened. Frightened of the world, of himself.
“You seem unsatisfied with science.”
“No. But rats running across an electrified grid is not the science I had in mind.”
Kraft realized that Mehan wanted to come out of his shell. But he needed a pull, and Kraft took a chance.
“Do you know Dr. Elizabeth Cooley?” Kraft asked.
“I’ve heard of her.”
“Next semester I’ll be her assistant. Would you like to meet her?”
Mehan looked carefully into Kraft’s eyes.
“Yes,” he finally said, very softly. “Very much.”
After two more semesters, Mehan switched his major to parapsychology. He was interested in the thought transference projects.
In another semester he became a research assistant. His parents felt he had thrown away his career. They gave him an ultimatum. Either he continue to work for a degree that would enable him to teach, or join his father in the paint manufacturing plant, or leave home.
Mehan spent two weeks in the YMCA before Kraft found out about it and invited him to share his own apartment.
It was when he met Dr. Cooley and Kraft that Joe Mehan finally found himself on firm ground. Here were people who had a different experience of life, who, like himself, were abnormally sensitive to thought. In this positive atmosphere, Mehan was able to expand his abilities, so that by the end of the year, he was known as the most reliable transmitter and receiver of thought pictures on the West Coast. Dr. Cooley advised him, however, to keep that fact quiet except for strictly professional work.
Mehan’s parents found out about his specializing in parapsychology. When they learned he was joining Kraft in graduate school in the same department, they removed his name from their will. Mehan tried to be philosophical about it. He understood their fears for him, their intense desire that he work in the traditional world. But he had dedicated his life to something else. Where it would lead, he did not know. All he was certain of was that, without Kraft, he would have been drowned a long time ago in the vicious sea of isolation and social ridicule.
“Okay,” Kraft said. “Tell me what you got.”
“Three owners, five occupants before the Moran family,” Mehan said. “Built in 1923 by the Owens Real Estate and Development Corporation. First owner, a laborer for the railroad. Italian. Worked on the Hollywood-Santa Monica line. Died 1930. Next owner, a shopkeeper in paints and hardware. Sold the house in 1935. Next, a disabled farmer from Oklahoma. Very large family. Moved out 1944. House vacant one year.”
Kraft raised an eyebrow.
“Anybody could have moved in,” he muttered.
“Derelicts, transients—I thought of that. I don’t know what it could mean for us.”
“Go on.”
“Then came a Japanese widow. Lived there until 1957. Died in the house. Next resident, retired grocer. From Ohio. Moved out 1973.”
“That leaves several vacant years before Mrs. Moran moved in.”
Mehan nodded. He replaced the notebook into his pocket.
Kraft rubbed his eyes wearily. “Lots of old people,” he muttered. “Different psychic patterns. Several deaths. What does it all add up to, Joe?”
Mehan shrugged. “Got me. Something gave us those pictures.”
There was a long silence as Kraft slipped a Vivaldi record from its jacket and placed it on the stereo. Soon the sweet, spiritual sounds of the Renaissance flooded the apartment.
“Okay,” Kraft said. “What do we know from the literature?”
“Some kind of electrostatic activity seems to be the most reasonable answer,” Mehan said. “Maybe we should check with the meteorology department. The ionization layers shift during the seasons. It has an effect on people.”
“All right. And I’ll work on more complete patterns of electromagnetic waves in the house.”
Mehan nodded. Suddenly he became deflated. “Christ. This is going to run into money.”
Kraft sat down and sighed. “Maybe we should start thinking about applying for grants,” Kraft said.
“With what? All we have are—”
“We have some photographs—enough to show what we’re on to.”
Mehan shrugged. “All right. Maybe. Let’s send a few feelers out.”
They listened to the Vivaldi. Kraft seemed to feel optimistic now, considering the grants. Their photographs were not perfect, but they were tantalizing. He realized he should outline a detailed budget for the additional equipment they would need.
“Well, let’s be optimistic,” Kraft said. “What about the paranormal aspect?”
“Take your choice. It could be directed psychokinesis. Caused unconsciously by any one of the people in the house.”
“Even the visible events?”
“I think so.”
“All right. What else?”
“It could be a projection,” Mehan continued.
“Yes,” Kraft agreed.
“In which case it could be from a living person in the house or—”
Kraft looked up.
“Or dead.”
Kraft leaned back in his chair. The pleasant, refined strains of the Vivaldi cellos always relaxed him, made his thoughts come more easily.
“A third possibility,” Kraft muttered. “It’s a sort of stored information in the environment that’s reconstructed by the presence of certain unique individuals.”
“You mean us? We act as the heads in a video-tape recorder or the needle in a phonograph allowing the information to play itself back?”
“But in this case our consciousness is doing the animating.”
“Well, what kind of energy could account for this audio-visual display?”
“That, my friend, is what we have to find out.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Well, hell, man,” Mehan said, his spirits rising. “All we can do is keep pounding away. Sooner or later we’ll narrow it down to what the hell it really is.”
Kraft leaned back on his couch, thinking.
“Whatever it is,” Kraft said, “let’s hope it comes back.”
Their thoughts soared along with the music—gently settling on the tiny house on Kentner Street.
Kraft and Mehan returned that night. The first thing Kraft did was to test under the house for current leakage. There was a slight electromagnetic indication. He took several sheaths of wire from his car and grounded the house at the key points. Then he interviewed Billy and the girls while Mehan queried Carlotta in the kitchen. Kraft was convinced that Julie was above average in intelligence. But something about Billy was enigmatic. Billy glared at Kraft.
“When you felt it,” Kraft asked, “was it like a rush of wind?”
“No,” Billy said. “I mean yes. Like a wind.”
“You felt a grip?”
“He beat Billy up,” Julie said.
Billy flashed a look at Julie to keep quiet, which Kraft caught. Kraft was sure that Billy was hiding something. He spoke too deliberately, measuring out his words.
“Well, you know,” Billy said, “that’s just the way it seems.”
“Did you ever see anything? Besides the objects flying?”
“No.”
“Mommy does,” Kim said.
“Shut up, Kim,” Billy said.
“Your mother sees something?” Kraft asked. “You mean, the sparks?”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “That’s all.”
“How many times did she see these things?”
Billy shrugged. “Ask her.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Five, six times. Maybe more.”
“Always the same thing?”
“More or less.”
“But when you felt it, you saw nothing.”
“Right. I didn’t see nothing.”
“Did your mother see anything that time?”
“I never asked her.”
Kraft asked the girls if they had ever seen anything. Julie and Kim shook their heads. Kraft wondered why Billy was hostile. Probably a normal protective reaction, he thought.
“Did you ever hear noises?” Kraft asked Julie.
“Sometimes.”
“What does it sound like?”
“Like a broken airplane.”
“It’s just the pipes under the house,” Billy said.
“He called Mommy a—”
“Shut up, Julie,” Billy warned. “The man is trying to help Mommy and you’re telling him stories.”
Kraft scratched his head. He hoped Mehan was having better luck with Carlotta. Kraft had the feeling that the phenomena were much more variable but that Billy, like most lay people, was afraid to talk about it much.
“Okay,” Kraft said, smiling. “Maybe we can talk later.”
“Sure,” Billy said. “Any time.”
In the kitchen Carlotta was answering questions that Mehan methodically read to her from a long series of printed sheets. Kraft went into the kitchen. Having the children in the house had changed the atmosphere. It was calm, almost heavy, unlike the charged air of the night before.
At ten o’clock Billy and the girls left the house to spend the night with the Greenspans. Carlotta was ashamed that Kraft and Mehan witnessed the disintegration of normal life. But she wanted to take no chances.
Mehan placed a series of meters around the hallway and the bedroom. He found that the ion concentration was high, but not abnormally high. When he opened the bedroom door, only a faint odor seeped out around him. It was a little after 10:00. It would be another long night.
Kraft and Mehan sat on hard kitchen chairs to discourage comfort. Their cameras were both locked on tripods, poised for action. The windows and electric lights and mirror had all been sealed off with black paper and black electrician’s tape to give them long exposures.
At around 3:00 in the morning Kraft jerked awake. Mehan had slumped over, hitting Kraft’s shoulder. Kraft shook him awake.
“It’s getting cool,” Kraft whispered.
“Just the morning breeze.”
Carlotta was asleep in the bedroom. Kraft and Mehan waited two more hours and then stood up heavily as the dawn came into the bedroom.
Carlotta stirred enough to watch them go. As they packed up their cameras and took them outside, she put on her robe and went barefoot out to them.
“I’m sorry nothing happened,” she said.
“That’s all right,” Kraft said.
They packed their equipment into the car. Kraft realized that he would have to figure a way to automate the meters. They could not do this night after night.
“My health isn’t going to hold out,” Kraft muttered, half serious.
Carlotta waved to them as they drove off. It was four nights now. Four nights of blessed peace. Four lovely, dreamless sleeps. When she had awakened to see Kraft carry the small camera out the door, it was like rising from a pleasant, dark void. Now she felt calm and rested. Cindy had agreed to stay out of the house while Kraft and Mehan were investigating. But now she wanted to telephone her, tell her the good news. She looked at her watch. It was 6:30. Soon she would have Billy and the girls over for breakfast. She fastened the red robe around her waist and felt the cool dew underfoot as she walked onto the lawn, admiring the water drops hanging on the stems and leaves of the roses and lilies. This morning, she decided to repeat the blueberry pancakes bit for breakfast. The kids had loved them.
She went inside.
In the cupboard she found the pancake mix, the syrup, the powdered sugar, but no more blueberries. She substituted strawberries, an experiment. Billy loved them with whipped cream. She smelled the whipping cream. It was as fresh as a country morning.
There was a crash. It came from the bedroom.
She sliced a quarter stick of butter into the bowl. She added flour.
A second crash, louder than the first. Something thrown against the wall.
She put down the bowl. Everything was silent, fresh, and crisp in the air. She smelled lilacs. Strong odor of lilacs. She noticed it was coming from the bedroom. She went into the living room. The whole house was filling with the scent of lilacs.
Glass twirled and tinkled merrily in the bedroom, like musical chimes.
She cautiously stepped into the hallway and peered through the partially opened bedroom door.
The glass stopper to her cologne bottle was bouncing delicately at the base of the wall, near the night stand.
She opened the door wide.
A cosmetic bottle lifted from the dresser, twirling lazily, and came apart in mid-air. The pink powder and pad exploded, sending a shower of pleasant-smelling pink over the room.
“That will clean up the stink!” she said, laughing.
She took a step into the room. The sunlight was caught in a shaft on the cloud of cosmetic powder. It looked almost iridescent, hanging, slowly drifting down to the floor.
A glass butterfly from the dresser rose, disintegrated, sending a shower of rainbow-colored wings gently through the air.
“More!” she suddenly yelled, clapping her hands, laughing.
The alarm clock rose into the air. As it hung over the bed, the alarm gave off a soft chime, exploded in slow motion, and the pieces of metal flew like feathers, wafting down in the air.
Carlotta stamped her feet. Suddenly she burst into a shrill laughter. She had suffered so much that now this puny show was an admission of his impotence and his coming defeat. She could not stop laughing.
“You can do better than that!” she yelled, clapping her hands, stamping her feet.
The curtain wavered, separated, and tore loose from the rods. The gaily colored material floated over her like enormous butterflies.
“Is that all you can do?” she cried, wiping the tears from her eyes. “My girls can do better than that!”
All the pieces on the floor, the metal and glass, liquid and powder, undulated in a slow pool, drifting up and then down.
Carlotta stamped her foot on a perfume bottle. It burst into slivers.
She laughed.
She stepped on the curtains, catching her feet. They fluttered to the floor and were still.
“You’re dead!” she yelled. “You’re dead!”
Shards of glass and bric-a-brac flowed around her like a river. She stepped on them, laughing, dancing, crying.
“Dead!” she yelled. “Dead! Dead!”
16
Carlotta rode a long wave of euphoria. Sometimes it seemed like a dream. But the girls showed it in their faces, Billy in his behavior, in the way he whistled tunes to himself and joked with her. She could scarcely believe it. But it was true. A full week and there had been no attacks.
Sometimes it became cold. The smell fluctuated, disappeared, and grew again. Sometimes the visible formations frightened her, the wall shaking terrified her, but the presence of the cameras, the automatic shutters, the recording devices in the hallway, and Kraft and Mehan themselves—repulsed him, frightened him, and he never came closer than a few feet away without dissolving into sparks, clouds, and cold waves. He seemed angry, furious, but frustrated. Whatever they were doing had diminished him. For the first time since October, Carlotta began to enjoy waking up in the morning, seeing the sunlight streaming into her bedroom.
And best of all she no longer felt guilt for not having told them the full truth. What was the point of telling them any more than they had seen and photographed? It was over, gone into the nightmare of the past. Exposure would mean publicity, ridicule—and worse. Welfare would know. They’d subject her to a battery of tests to determine if she were fit to take care of her own children. She’d lose them. And so Carlotta rationalized her silence. She, the children, Cindy, and George formed a tight, tacit bond to keep the secret from the cold and dangerous scrutiny of a cynical world.
