Patricia put a spray of dried flowers in the center of the table and fussed with them as the others walked around. Something Grey and powerful was visible to me in there, even though the glass made it fuzzy and ill defined. I could see the swirling yellow mass I associated with Celia and feel the surge of cold. I heard Dale Stahlqvist and Wayne Hopke on the audio monitor arguing about the possibility of Mark's ghost appearing.
"Does anything look odd to you guys?" I asked, half expecting that they could see the strong Grey activity, too.
Terry and Quinton looked down at the boards as the participants gathered around the table. "Some of these EM readings are higher than normal," Terry said. "The new room barometer is also indicating rising pressure. We'll have to compare it to the outside pressure later. Those guys are kind of wound up, though, so it could just be that.”
I nodded and looked back into the room. My earlier fatigue had revved up to nervousness, though I thought I shouldn't care.
The group had distributed themselves around the table at equal distances so their fingertips, resting lightly on the surface, never touched one another's. Ian had ended up almost sideways to the mirror between Cara and Wayne with Ana on Wayne's other side. Ken was right in front of the mirror between Ana and Patricia, who had Dale Stahlqvist on her left looking straight into the booth. Cara—the cut on her cheek still covered in a gauze patch—had the spot between Dale and Ian. Someone had turned on the stereo and it let a smoky blues guitar bleed moodily into the room.
Wayne cleared his throat and started to speak, but Dale Stahlqvist cut him off. "Good afternoon, Celia," he started, giving Wayne a sharp glare. "Are you with us?”
The table bulged upward in the middle, deforming like a balloon filling with air. Its metal-shod feet dug at the carpet and the flowers slid off onto the rug. I felt my own knot of Grey tighten in my chest and the air in the booth tasted metallic.
Terry looked up from his display of monitoring instruments. He sounded worried. "I'm seeing a static charge building up. And the temperature in the séance room is dropping.”
"What?" Tuckman demanded. "How much?”
"Five degrees in one minute," he said, shaking his head and staring back down at the panel. "Most of my electrical monitors are acting up. I'm guessing magnetic interference. . ”
"It was clear during the tests," Quinton stated. "It's not the new equipment—that's working fine.”
A thunderclap cracked the air of the experiment room.
The participants looked nervous, shooting glances at one another from the corners of their eyes. I could see the hazy yellow wad of energy was now streaked with sudden jagged welts of red. As I stared, the haze seemed to pull into pieces and draw back together, then apart, drifting from the center of the table toward the participants. The largest clouds of energy moved toward Ken, Ana, Ian, and Cara, fired with red and yellow flashes. Smaller balls like heat lightning twitched in the direction of Wayne, Patricia, and Dale.
"Celia?" Dale asked in a nervous voice.
"Maybe it's Mark…" Patricia suggested.
The table quivered, as if gathering itself.
"Nonsense—" Cara snapped.
The table sprang upward and fell back, digging its feet into the carpet. It jerked and shuddered, writhing under their fingertips like an animal in pain. Patricia yipped as it trampled her foot.
Hot light flared over the table in pure white fury and I felt a sympathetic bum along my limbs. The table spun under its brilliant Grey canopy, rising on one leg and striking Cara and Ian hard in the ribs. Cara dropped to her knees as the table knocked into Ian a second time before coming back down. Ian staggered backward, holding his side as the rest stared around.
"The pressure—" Terry started.
The stereo erupted in a burst of uncoordinated noise as the table rushed toward the glass divider, rising off the floor with a sudden bump. Alarms squealed and pinged in the observation room.
"No!" Terry shouted at his instruments. "It can't do that!”
"There's nothing wrong with the device," Quinton said, poking the monitors with his meter, but his face was pale. "But it's getting awfully hot—”
The table crashed into the glass, gouging a hole as big as a beach ball. Icy air gushed through the breach, dragging a stink of smoke and acid into the booth. I gagged on it and bent my body around a sudden punch of discomfort as the table thudded back to the floor. Unobstructed by glass, I could now see the four large power masses hovering over Cara, Ian, Ana, and Ken. Ken's Grey walls and Ian's prismatic flashes had vanished as if burned away. The four miniature storms of energy tore at the table in pulses of red and yellow.
Shouts broke out in the séance room. The table, cloaked in throbbing, paranormal fire, lurched into Ken, ramming him against the wall below the shattered window. Ana shrieked as the table attacked him again and again. Ken flailed and disappeared below our view, the hot red and yellow energy still hovering over him like a carrion bird on the thermals.
A bright orange flash struck the stereo and it blared a jumbled cacophony of swing music, chopping up "Jumpin' at the Woodside" with "In the Mood" and "Sing, Sing, Sing.”
"Stop it!" Tuckman demanded, jumping up and blocking all exit from the observation room. Terry and I stared over his shoulder toward the pandemonium, appalled.
"I'm not doing anything!" Terry shouted.
"The meters are flipping out. There's something really nasty in there," Quinton snapped. "Where's the damned fire extinguisher?”
I couldn't keep track of which angry knot of energy had done what anymore. The room was thick with the dizzying strobe and strain of Grey forces, a rising tsunami of fury and panic. A cataract of books rushed up from the bookshelves and pelted down on the people in the room. Something red snatched at Patricia's head and she shouted in pain. A spangle of blood and the bright shape of her earring arced to the floor.
Under the boiling storm of Grey, the table lurched again, scrabbling its feet against the floor like a bull and jerking toward the corner beside the door. Ana was in its path, half crouched on the floor, covering her head with her arms. Nearby, Dale had flattened himself over Cara. Ian, Ken, and Wayne had all vanished onto the floor near the broken observation room window.
On the video monitor, there was no violent storm of light, only the strange movement of shadows from the swinging chandelier. I could see Wayne patting at Ken's legs, his voice steaming in the room's uncanny cold, sound smothered in the screaming of the stereo, then turning his head to watch the table.
I looked back through the broken window. Trailing red and yellow streamers, the table charged toward Ana. She dodged, jumping over the Stahlqvists and Ian, and ran up onto the couch, still covering her head with her arms as if she were being bombarded by an invisible flight of ravens.
The table jerked forward, changing direction and tipping toward the sofa cushions. Ana bounded across the upholstery, her feet skimming over the back, to leap off the arm of the sofa nearest the door as the table crashed down onto the couch.
Wayne ran to catch her, scooping her from the air with a ropy arm. He wrenched at the door handle. It came away in his hand.
The table bounced and wheeled on its edge, sweeping toward the door.
Beside me, Quinton and Terry began beating at the monitor board with their jackets as smoke erupted from below. "Get out! The panel's catching fire!”
Dale Stahlqvist snatched at a leg of the rolling table, pulling it away from his wife and Ana. Red and yellow light strobed in the room, lending a disjointed, horror-film aspect to the scene. Patricia picked up a wooden chair and began to beat at the rogue table, screaming at it as blood ran down her neck.