"There must be something stupid in your more recent past. There's plenty in mine.”
Ben laughed. "I prefer to pretend it's all the folly of youth and not endemic foolishness.”
"I don't have that excuse.”
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Harper.”
I frowned into my coffee and changed the subject.
"Ben, how would someone make a knocking sound?”
Ben picked up the crook again and rapped it on the underside of the table, making a sharp noise. "Like that?”
The rap sounded very much like Mark's first efforts. "Exactly like that. Is that how all knocks are made?" I asked.
"Oh, no. You can use your feet, hands, knees, or a hard object concealed in your hand or clothes. A character in a book once used a tin box strapped to her knee. When she pressed it against her other knee, it deformed and made a cracking sound.”
That rang a bell and I wondered which book I'd read it in but couldn't bring to mind.
Ben gulped some more beer and continued. "The Fox sisters— they started the whole Spiritist movement by accident—used to crack the joints of their toes or rap their toenails against the floor to create raps, and even though people caught them at it and they even admitted it, people wanted to believe. So they did. Investigations of people like the Fox sisters and their imitators led to modern parapsychology.”
"They chose to believe. .," I repeated, thinking. "So parapsychology grew out of fakery?”
"The search for truth in the face of fakery," Ben corrected me, frowning. "A lot of the early investigators were magicians and scientists—Houdini was famous for debunking phony mediums. In fact," he added, reaching again into his bag, "one of the big names in modern skeptical investigation is another magician—James Randi. I brought you one of his books as well as one of Houdini's books. Neither of these guys is shy about showing how the trick is done. And they're both pretty blunt about what they think of the whole field. Although I think they're both wrong in condemning the whole without adequate proof.”
Ben was a bit defensive about it, but I reserved judgment. While I had more personal experience of ghosts and the paranormal, I wouldn't care to step forward and make any claims or attempt to prove any such thing to professional skeptics of the Houdini grade. As I'd already noted in Tuckman, the blindness of belief and desire isn't restricted to the oddball side of the discussion.
I put the books into my own bag as Ben finished his beer.
"Ben, could any of these techniques make a table break away from its sitters and run around the room?”
Ben chuckled. "Not without being about as obvious as a rhino in a bathtub. Some things can't be concealed at that proximity, no matter how good a psychological manipulator the magician or spiritualist is. And speaking of rhinos, Brian and Mara will be waiting dinner on me and we'd all like it if you would come, too. It's roast beef, and Mara might have some answers for you about glass and spirits. She did ask me to ask you…”
I hesitated, but Ben looked puppy-eyes at me. I gave in. Mara was a great cook—even without any witchcraft to help—and they were my friends as well as the closest thing I had to professional advisors in the Greywalker line. I smiled. "Dinner would be really nice. Thanks.”
"Great!”
We paid up and left, catching a few more stares from the patrons as we went. I wondered how many tables would be tilted tonight and how outrageous the beer-fueled stories would grow by Sunday morning. If they, too, wanted to believe, then I expected that by next Thursday it would be common gossip that the Five Spot was haunted by a fictional ghost of someone killed by the old counterbalance trolley, whose long-gone upper terminus the Five Spot now occupied.
When we walked into the Danzigers' house, the scent of savory meat and bread wafted to us along with a despairing cry of "Brian!”
Ben and I exchanged a look. He sighed, heaved his shoulders, and went ahead of me into the kitchen.
Brian sat in the middle of the kitchen floor in a pile of vegetables and lettuce, staring at the kitchen table and rubbing the top of his head. Mara, her new-penny-copper hair sweeping over her face, crouched beside him, holding a large bowl.
"Now, wasn't I after telling you you'd regret that? Hm? Smarts a bit, doesn't it?" she chided him.
"Owww. .," her son replied, patting his head with a lettuce leaf. Mara snatched it from him and put it into the bowl.
"None of that, y'wild animal. That's for eating, not for wearing.”
Brian stuffed the nearest chunk of vegetable into his mouth, then made a face and started to spit it out. Mara clapped a hand over his pursed lips. "Oh, no, you don't. It shan't kill you, so you'll go ahead and swallow it. Polite people don't go spitting out their food.”
Brian forced the lump down his throat. "Is not a people. Is a rhinerosserous!" he objected as Mara pulled her hand away.
"Well, polite rhinos don't spit, either. And they clean up their own messes or they have to go outside and eat thorny bushes in the garden.”
"Noooooooo. .," Brian wailed.
Mara shoved the bowl into his arms. "Then you'll clean up the mess, won't you? And you'll pick up every piece or you'll be eating the ones you miss later.”
Brian's lip stuck out in a very rhino-like fashion. He put his hands on top of his head and said, "Head hurts.”
"Yes, darling, I imagine it does." She kissed him on the forehead and stood up.
Ben gave her an inquisitive look. "What happened?”
"Rhino versus table," Mara answered, brushing off her skirts. "The table won, and the bowl of salad got jostled off and onto the rhino-boy's head.”
"Jostled?”
"Of course. Y'don't think I'd go pitchin’ salad on his head, now, do ya?" She grinned a little, radiating good humor in spite of the mess. "Hi, Harper. I see Ben cajoled you into dinner at the wild animal park.”
"How could I miss it?”
Brian was now crawling about on the floor, picking up the salad and beginning to enjoy himself. I hoped Mara wasn't planning on serving the salvaged salad, as Brian's idea of fun seemed to be to toss handfuls of greens and vegetable chunks in the general direction of the bowl while making various noises. If the pieces missed the bowl, he kept on trying until they made it in, by which time the salad looked quite grubby. Albert appeared behind Brian and seemed to be whispering into the boy's ear.
Mara relieved my anxiety by turning toward the fridge and announcing, "Meat's almost ready, so I suppose I'd better start a replacement salad. Why don't you stay with me while Ben sets the table and keeps an eye on the rhino-boy.”
That was fine by me.
"Now then," Mara began as she brought fresh produce from the refrigerator, "you wanted to know about mirrors and glass and their effect on the Grey.”
I nodded. "Yeah. There's some kind of filtering effect…”
"Hm. I'm not so sure about why the glass does as it does, but the mirror is probably acting in much the same way as silver does. It's reflective, of course, but it's also conductive—whether it's silver, or mercury, or mylar, it still conducts—and I've often suspected that the power lines that run through the Grey energize the metal in a mirror such that it becomes a mild barrier—literally reflecting the ghost from passing through—and most things either can't or won't push past.”
"Why don't they know it's a mirror when they see themselves?”
"Most ghosts are stone stupid. Unless it's been enchanted," Mara said, "most mirrors reflect what is, not what the ghost sees. Most ghosts see things as they were in their life, not as they are now. They certainly don't see themselves as wraiths. I imagine it's a bit confounding to come upon a reflection that doesn't answer your idea of yourself.”