Inside it was warm and bright. Recent renovations had put the sparkle back into a space that had grown tired and worn. At the reference desk she asked for a stack pass, and slipped down into the lower level, where she stashed her bag in one of the cubicles nestled beyond rows of musty books. It was a good place to sit and think, suspended over the back alley and silent as a tomb. The light in the stacks was dim and thick with dust, but the cubicles were made of a much friendlier wood, and built into the side of the building like bubbles in a submarine.
She left her book bag in the cubicle and returned to the main floor. Computer monitors lined the walls beyond the information desk. She found a free one and began a search. Soon she had gathered an impressive pile of books, which she stacked on the cubicle desk. She began to scan through them, starting with the earlier titles. Some were based upon specific cases of hauntings and "expert mentalists," and those she set aside; others were filled with technical experiments on dice throwing and remote viewing techniques.
A full hour later, she had begun to get discouraged. The books were filled with outdated experiments and philosophical ramblings. Then she picked up a book called The Reach of the Mind, and the name on the cover made her pause. J. B. Rhine. At the Fingertip, Charlie had mentioned the Rhine group. Curious, she opened to the beginning of the book, and skimmed down the first few pages. More philosophical bullshit. Jess flipped farther into the book. There she found something that gave her pause.
The effects of narcotic and stimulant drugs (on ESP and PK) are like those produced on higher mental activities. Large doses of narcotic drugs force performance in tests to drop practically to the chance level... the drugs do not, on the other hand, nearly so quickly or so seriously affect the efficiency of the sensorimotor functions.
Sarah's comment about her head being "fuzzy," the "gray days" that came upon her and blanked out her memory. A symptom of drug therapy, especially the heavy one employed by the Wasserman Facility. She remembered how Sarah had blacked out during their second visit, how Maria had moved so quickly to administer the injection. How the big woman's hands had trembled as she held the syringe up to the light and bent to the unconscious girl's arm.
A simple sedative to calm the heart, Jess had assumed at the time. But now she wondered whether Maria had had more sinister intentions. The woman was obviously superstitious. It would not be too large a stretch to imagine that she had come across this passage in Rhine's book, or something similar, and, fearful of whatever imagined threat she believed Sarah held for her, decided to take matters into her own hands.
She read on, through descriptions of tests on students and supposed "sensitives," through the piles of data and the secondhand accounts of paranormal events. The book seemed desperate to prove something, but in the end she found nothing that convinced her of the existence of anything other than coincidence. And yet something was beginning to form in her mind, the raw substance of a possible answer. She flipped through another of the books about alleged poltergeist phenomenan and psychokinesis, looking for something she had read earlier.
Finally she found it, a passage about a young woman named Esther Cox who had lived at the turn of the century. Esther became the center of attention when a supposed poltergeist began terrorizing her family's home. Loud banging noises occurred at all hours. Boxes flew around the rooms. Water boiled in the girl's presence. Fires burned all over the house, resisting efforts to put them out. Esther's sister had a boyfriend, and it was rumored that this boyfriend had tried to rape Esther one night, and the strange activity had begun at that point. A best-selling book on the subject was written by a man named Walter Hubbell.
Esther was described as a plain and psychoneurotic girl under eighteen years of age. She lived at home in poverty, sharing a bed with her sister. A girl who had already exhibited signs of mental instability; a rape or attempted rape could likely have pushed her over into a full-blown psychosis. She might have caused the pranks herself, Jess thought, and not even been consciously aware of it. In fact it was very likely. Most supposed poltergeists were connected with adolescents in some way. Strange events in "haunted" houses always seemed to occur when the teenage son or daughter was around, and disappear when they left.
Put it together with what we know to be true. There was a biological theory, lately advanced, that introduced the idea of gradations of mental illness. Many researchers believed that a group of genes were responsible for the majority of mental diseases such as schizophrenia, and that it was possible to inherit one or several of these genes without becoming a full-blown schizophrenic. This person would become a "schizotypal personality," and would exhibit a milder form of the disease. Such a person would be suspicious of others, prefer isolation to groups, would be preoccupied with unusual ideas such as UFOs or belief in the paranormal.
And anyone or anything that encouraged those beliefs would only serve to reinforce them.
Which led her back to Sarah. A girl who had very likely inherited one or more of the "schizophrenic genes" from her mother. A girl with developmental problems, regressed to an earlier childhood stage, experiencing delusions of grandeur, omnipotence, a powerful need to have control over herself and her world. At such a young age, she had been taken away from an abusive family. Isolated. Poked and prodded. And naturally those rumors, the stories her family had told, would persist. You couldn't stop things like that, even in a medical environment. All it would take were a couple of superstitious orderlies. ...
Convinced that she had finally found what she was looking for, Jess packed up her bag and returned the books to the reference room to be reshelved. Sarah was not a true schizophrenic, of that she was sure. She had not been misdiagnosed, exactly; it was simply a matter of degree. The girl could have a milder form of the illness, which would become more or less severe depending on the circumstances, hence her remarkably quick "recovery." She would be suspicious of people trying to help her, exhibit odd behavior, even fits. At the same time she would seek out attention, crave acceptance. She would believe herself to be gifted, even psychic, and she would perpetrate any sort of prank or trick to prove it to others.
As she walked quickly through the deepening twilight, leaves crunching under her feet, Jess tried to imagine that Wasserman would not have come to the same conclusion. Impossible. He was an expert in the field; surely he would be familiar with the latest theories.
Then why had he treated Sarah so roughly? Why had he kept her from the proper treatment for this type of disorder? Why had he isolated her, put her in restraints, treated her so heavily with drugs? And most of all, why had he brought in a young graduate student and risked exposing all the mistakes he had made?
But those were questions for another time. Right now Jess felt as if some great crisis had been turned away, an abyss looked into and then avoided. She would concentrate now on continuing to gain Sarah's confidence and they would see from there.
First thing tomorrow.
--16--
The private helicopter landed at Downtown Manhattan Heliport (DMH) at 6:43 p.m. An attendant scurried tree and opened the passenger door, and then held his hand out to assist those disembarking. A white-haired man and a blonde woman in business attire climbed off the fold-down steps and nodded to the attendant. They looked like wealthy middle-aged lovers on a date, but they were not. Far from it.