“Is that all?”
“Something’s not right here, Charlie. We’ve got a hospital director who until recently acted like he had a serial killer in his basement instead of a ten-year-old girl. We’ve got a file on said girl that reads like a medical textbook on diagnostic procedures, except when it comes right down to diagnosing anything. We’ve got a family that for all intents and purposes didn’t exist a week or so ago, insisting that their granddaughter is the spawn of the devil—”
“Let’s cut to the chase here, Miss Chambers. What you’re saying is you’ve discovered a case for the X-Files. I’ll be Scully to your Mulder. Have you seen the girl’s head spin around? Any speaking in tongues? Projectile vomiting?”
“You’re impossible.”
“Honey.” Charlie leaned across the table and touched Jess’s arm. “I am telling you to let it go. Get away for a while and fly to Florida. Take a break and clear your head. We’ll all be here when you get back.”
“I can’t leave now.”
“You should. You’re getting this confused with your feelings for your brother, everything that happened to you when you were young. You’re like a greyhound after that rabbit. But even greyhounds take a few minutes to lie down in the sun.”
“She’s stopped swallowing her medication, Charlie. I can’t afford to take a few minutes. I have to decide whether I break her confidence, or say nothing and risk a setback in her treatment.”
“How do you feel? What does your heart tell you to do?”
“That’s just it. How can I know when I can’t even decide if she’s unstable or not?”
They sat and drank for a while in silence. The music throbbed like a heartbeat. Charlie closed her eyes and moved with it. Then she opened her eyes and said, “Have you thought about talking to someone? I mean, if you insist on playing this silly game of yours?”
“A therapist?”
“Someone who specializes in the sort of thing you mean. Not a spiritualist or medium, but a gen-u-wine scientist. Double-blind experiments, the works. Very above-board. There’s a group right outside of Boston related to the Rhine group in, where is it, Carolina? I only mention it because I happen to be friends with someone who works for them.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Charlie,” Jess said tiredly. “Maybe you’re right. I am just trying too hard to make up for something. My brother, maybe.”
“Well, honey.” Charlie touched her hand gently again. “That might be true. But you ever need that number, you let me know.”
—15—
It’s possible to help this girl Jess thought as she made her way back to her apartment in the early morning hours, the sounds and smells of the bar still with her like ghosts in her clothes. Really make a difference. But the first thing we must accept is that the traditional analytical approach may not work. A good psychologist tries to unlock every door, using any key available.
And if those keys don’t fit, you look for the ones that you aren’t even sure exist.
Sitting down at her desk, her head still pleasantly thumping from the beer, she opened up her MacBook and jotted down everything she could think of relating to her feelings about this case. She stared at the words floating on the glowing screen, typed in a few others. There was more to add but she didn’t know where it fit. Wasserman and Shelley and their places in all this. Mrs. Voorsanger’s strange description of her granddaughter’s first year of life. Maria suddenly quitting. And those… incidents she could not seem to shake. The way she had felt the first time she had visited Sarah. And the second visit, the shattering light-bulbs, the way the air crackled with a presence unseen but definitely there.
One thing was certain; regardless of the truth surrounding Sarah’s supposed paranormal abilities, Sarah herself believed them. Her frustration after her attempt to open the locked playroom doors was proof of that.
The question remained; should she tell Wasserman Sarah had stopped taking her pills?
For most of the following Monday, Jess’s thoughts were occupied with more mundane things. Lately she had allowed her grades to slip, something she had never done before, and she concentrated on getting to class on time and taking good notes. Her class with Professor Shelley did not meet until Thursday, for which Jess breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know what she would say to the woman yet. Lately Professor Shelley had seemed preoccupied. Perhaps the visit with Sarah’s family had upset her more than she let on.
After her last class ended, Jess made a quick sandwich and grabbed her laptop and book bag. She walked the three blocks to the Brookline Library through an early evening chill, seeing the imposing stone and brick building as if for the first time, though she had been there many evenings in the past. Now it seemed to dig itself into the hill, or rather rise up out of it like some Gothic stone castle, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it that way before.
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.