Poltergeist

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 di

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. "Di

"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-pe

"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 gri

"How could I miss it?”

Brian was now crawling about on the floor, picking up the salad and begi

Mara relieved my anxiety by turning toward the fridge and a

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.”

"I suppose. . but what about the glass, then?" I asked.

"I've been thinking about that," Ben piped up from behind us.

I swung around so I could see both of them by just turning my head.

"You see," Ben started, brandishing a handful of silverware, "I think what you're seeing there is a sort of material resistance. The energy state of the Grey is extremely high and fast—we've discussed this before, you recall—”

"Yes, I remember.”

Brian made motorboat noises under the table as he pushed the bowl merrily around the floor, trailed by Albert, who stuck half through the table as if it weren't there. I found myself watching the ghost, rather than Ben.

"OK, so the particles of energy that make up the Grey travel much more slowly through the dense material of something like glass or brick or stone, but we only see them in glass because when they are slowed down to a certain degree, we experience a sort of persistence-of-vision illusion. That's why you can see a ghost in a photograph when there was none visible at the time—”

I interrupted him, refocusing on Ben. "You can? I thought those 'spirit photos' were all exposed as fakes.”

"Oh, the ones taken by charlatans in the same era as the Spiritist Church were mostly fakes, but you can spot those easily. Others seem to be legit. Odd images of people or things where no one was at the time, but they fit in the picture. They don't have to be old photos. They could be anything from any time, taken with any camera.”

I'd seen photos like that—some snapshots taken by my mother or friends from college—and found some of them disturbing beyond reason. They never seemed to merit that disquiet, but I'd never shaken it. "OK, assume I buy the idea. What's your theory?" I asked.

"I think the ghost's reflection on the surface of the glass lens persists long enough for the camera to capture it. If you could see through rocks or bricks, you could see the ghost reflected in the side of a building, too, but since most materials aren't transparent, you can't see the reflection of the ghost.”

"That doesn't explain why I see less Grey when I look through a window.”