Poltergeist

I made a face. "You're right. I shouldn't keep you. And these clips aren't exactly Oscar-quality material.”

Quinton gri

"OK," I said, and watched him snatch up his backpack and coat as he headed out the office door.

I returned to the séance recordings and notes, though I had to concentrate harder now that Quinton had left. The group continued to ask Celia about baseball for a while. The knocks got more firm as they went on and the table rocked several more times, though I suspected that was still under the control of Tuckman, Terry, and Mark. There wasn't much more to that session, since the members grew tired and ended the séance early. During the review session afterward they'd been elated by the knocks, and most hoped the phenomena would get bigger soon. Mark, I noticed, had said very little once the knocks started and not much more after the session. Mark's statement in the file confirmed he'd made none of the knocks after the first one. In spite of the participants' hopes, Tuckman had worried that additional table manipulations might be too much reinforcement too soon and requested that Mark and Terry not escalate the effects until further notice.

They'd done as he asked. In the following six sessions, the knocks had become common but the table continued to move only under the secret manipulations of Tuckman and his cohort.

One month after the first Celia knocks, however, the table got into the act on its own, making a dramatic jump straight up that knocked some of the sitters out of their chairs. The jump had exceeded the height available from the magnetic pulses by several inches and left a clear gap between the table and floor on the infrared recording. Neither Mark nor Terry had claimed any responsibility for the movement. After that, the group stood at the table. As I watched the recordings, I began to put names and dossiers with faces and make note of interactions.

The phenomena became more pronounced as the sessions progressed and the group began to think of the table as Celia's primary manifestation. Celia developed a distinct personality in the knocks and table movements. She liked swing music and would sometimes cause the table to «dance» around the room in a clumsy, teetering way by lifting three legs a little and pivoting on the fourth, or hopping it with all four legs off the floor at once. She learned to flicker the Christmas lights in patterns to match the music, if she was in the mood. She liked movies and was a fan of Tyrone Power, though she liked modern films, too. The young Caucasian man—his name was Ian—who always sat with the Asian woman, Ana, suggested that Celia snuck into movie houses since she didn't need a ticket and everyone had laughed. Celia had rattled on the tabletop for several seconds, which the group interpreted as laughter. What they agreed upon was like law.

Celia's taste in films and music would change a little depending on which members of the group were present. She also had a bit of a magpie streak and often dumped the women's purses or played with their jewelry. Several times Ana's hair got caught in her swinging earrings and had to be disentangled by Ian while Ana winced.

One of the most interesting sessions occurred when Ken, the young Indian man, brought in a portrait of Celia he'd made on his computer. It was very similar to the picture of the woman I'd seen on the wall of the séance room, except that her hair was darker and the picture showed her from the hips up—her outfit was a rather provocative black dress. The table had roiled with excited knocking and teetered about on the rug as though impatient when he offered to show it off.

Ken had pulled a page from his bag and put it down on the table. The table became quiet and heavy, sinking against the floor as if the magnets had pulled it down, though the infrared indicated no such activity.

Ken hadn't noticed. He looked around at the group, then down at the table. "What do you think? Do you like it?”

Nothing.

"You don't like it.”

The table thumped with two loud bangs neither Mark nor Terry had made.

Ken frowned and nibbled his lower lip, his brows pinching and quirking. "Yes, you don't like it?”

Two more loud thumps.

"OK. What don't you like about it? The hair?”

The group had taken turns asking questions about her looks as Ken tried to use his pens to adjust the picture to Celia's satisfaction. There had been no hesitancy in the answering raps. Even though the group wasn't sure what Celia looked like, Celia was. The hair was too dark, the dress was too sexy, and she objected to the generosity of curves Ken had given her—they were just a bit outrageous. By the end of the session, the group had become convinced of Celia's existence and they left the room both happier and more thoughtful than usual.

When Ken had returned with the new portrait in a week, the table capered and bounced in approval. The artist was pleased—even relieved—at the response. From that date on, the table had become more and more active and had a particular fondness for Ken, sometimes chasing him like a friendly dog in a way the booth controls could not have caused. Ken seemed to be taking the whole thing a bit more seriously as well, concentrating on the table and biting his lower lip.

Tuckman had tried isolating Ken to see if he was causing the changed phenomena. The table would still perform if he didn't come to a session, but it wasn't quite so demonstrative. If the group was smaller than four, Celia would not manifest at all—not even a knock or a flicker of the lights—no matter which members were in the room. Tuckman tried every combination of participants, even putting Terry and Denise, the department secretary, in the room—but no matter the combination, the table remained inert and the lights static until there were four or more members of the séance team in the room with it, when the movement, knocking, light-flickering, and noises would occur with varying intensity. The level of the phenomena seemed to be incidental to how many participants more than four—or which ones—were present, but the table's actions toward Ken continued with odd partiality for quite a while. Terry and Denise were ignored.

After several more hours, I still hadn't finished the whole set of discs and notes, but I had lost my ability to concentrate and it was growing late. I threw in the towel and headed home.

On the drive to West Seattle, 1 thought about the project. I could see how Tuckman would be upset by the unusual levels of PK activity the team was currently recording. It was a lot to swallow, since it takes a pretty powerful ghost to move objects at all, much less cause thirty-pound tables to dance. Quinton had shown me that the systems in place didn't have the power or the leverage to move the furniture as I'd seen it move, either in person or on some of the recordings. But unless someone else could show me how it was done mechanically, I'd have to assume the table was moving by itself—or by the power of the group, at least.

I was also bothered by the apparent movement of the Grey power line out of its alignment with the rest of the grid. Normally lines of that size lay near the ground, and I couldn't see any reason for it to be where it was. It seemed likely that the grid link was providing additional power to the phenomena. If the group had moved it, that, of itself, was extraordinary, though I doubted I could explain that to Tuckman.

None of this had shed any light on Mark Lupoldi's death. It wasn't my case and Solis wouldn't appreciate me poking around in it, but I couldn't help wondering about the co