Poltergeist

"Yeah, that's going to be the tricky part," I agreed with no small irony. First I'd have to stalk the wretched thing.

Mara snorted a laugh and went back to her own food. I watched Ben lay strips of reflective tint as thin as spider silk onto the glass and smooth them into place with a tongue depressor.

Brian crowed for more food and bounced in his seat.

"Oh. . blast," Ben swore, wrinkling a strip of the tint. He removed it with a single-edged razor blade and for a moment I wondered where it had come from, since I couldn't imagine anyone actually shaving with one.

I turned my attention to Mara and Brian—who wore more of his breakfast than he ate, since he insisted on raising his spoon as high as possible before pouring its load of waffles and applesauce toward his mouth. I counted us all lucky his arms weren't longer.

As we observed the spectacle, I asked, "Do kids have some kind of touch with the Grey that adults don't?”

They both paused before answering. Ben looked a bit curious, while Mara seemed mildly surprised.

"But of course they do," Mara said. She glanced at Ben.

He nodded, looking back to the flask. "Definitely. Children's perceptions of the world are different than those of adults. We know that they don't have certain types of brain structures, hormones, physical and mental developments, and so on before certain ages.”

"Babies don't develop depth perception until five months and more, and who knows what's going on while they learn to coordinate their eyes with their minds?" Mara added, trying to wipe her offspring down a bit. "Stop wigglin'! Are you a boy or a worm?”

"Worm!”

She raised her eyebrows. "Are ya now? Shall I put you out in the garden? Would you like a nice bit of dirt for lunch? We've some lovely fish guts for ya. Da and I shall have the fish.”

"Blech!" Brian shouted.

"All right, then, boy. Sit you still while I find your face under here…" Brian squinched his eyes and pursed his mouth while his mother wiped his face clean. She took advantage of the momentary lull to talk. "Yes, children seem to see the Grey things a bit more easily than most adults.”

"The theory," Ben said, "is that perception of the Grey is caused by the lack of a certain filter in the brain. The filter is something you develop partially by nature and partially by enculturation. Most people could see more if they weren't so thoroughly enculturated to ignore certain things. We learn to focus and to tune things out because our modern society offers too many stimuli for the human brain to sort efficiently otherwise. One of the first things we learn to stop seeing is the things others tell us we can't see. It takes a pretty stubborn mind— or one with a faulty filter—to persist in seeing things the rest of the world says aren't there. Now, my personal theory is that there's some other brain structure as yet unrecognized that determines the 'depth'— so to speak—of the Grey filter or if you have it at all. You see, that would explain why someone like me still can't see the Grey, even though I've been dismantling the culturally emplaced filters for years. Most people are literally Grey-blind, just as some are color-blind.”

Finishing with her son, Mara offered him a bit of plain waffle. "But there are as many theories as there are stars," she warned. "Some'll say it's an early contact with the Grey that keeps your mind open to it. Others that it's passed down by heredity or teaching. Or it's something you catch, like a dose of measles, or build up from contact, like fluoride in the water. You could be after arguing for any of them or all of them. But children do seem to have an affinity for it that adults often lack. And why are you askin'?”

I sipped coffee for a moment. "I couldn't get the hang of moving around to track the thread in the Grey. The whole layers-of-time thing didn't make sense to me," I explained. "I tried asking Carlos about it.”

Mara looked startled and stared at me, for a moment distracted from Brian. "Carlos? Why would you be going to him?”

"Because he has retrocognition—he can look at the past—and I thought he might see the Grey more like I do and know something more about time.”

"Did he?" she asked.

"A little, though he made it clear I was wrong about any similarity in our perceptions of the Grey. He kind of gave me the creeps about it.”

"More than usual?”

I remembered his hungry look and shivered. "Yeah." I shook it off. "Anyhow. I was thinking that I must just be doing it wrong and I needed some idea how. The children of one of the séance members play with the poltergeist. Like Brian seems to play with Albert. So it has to be easier than what I was doing. Or at least it has to be something a child can do. I'm going to talk to the kids' mother.”

"Right now?”

"As soon as we're done here. But that brings us back to genies in bottles.”

"Oh, yes. The ghost-catcher," Mara replied. "How is it?" A glob of sticky apple splattered onto her shoulder. "Oh, Brian!”

Brian's eyes got very large. "Uh-oh." He wriggled down to the floor and bolted for the hall.

Mara growled and closed her eyes. "Do you suppose he's a changeling? Because if so, I'd like a try at having him changed back. I'd walk through Galway and broken glass mother-naked if it would buy me a quiet week.”

"You could just give him more whiskey," I suggested.

"Never again," she moaned, getting up to chase after him.

"You can't just. . cast a spell on him to be quiet and come back?”

" 'Twouldn't be a good idea. Abuse of power and all—not to mention the side effects. I'll catch him the old-fashioned way. With guile and cu

She laughed, then snuck out of the room on silent feet. I turned to look at Ben. He was gri

"I suspect she does use a little magic," Ben said. "She's so much better with him than I am.”

"You're not too bad.”

He laughed. "Praising with faint damns. Anyhow. How do you like it?”

He held up the glass vessel. Most of the lower bulb was now covered in a thin, dark blue coating that raised a rainbow sheen. If I peered at it through the Grey, the covered part looked black and solid. In the normal world, I could just see through it if I squinted a bit and got my head at the right angle.

"It's great," I said, a little surprised at how good it was.

Ben smiled. "Thanks. I'm not much good at arts and crafts, so I hope I've done it right. I'll finish up the neck and you can have it.”

I raised my coffee cup. "I hope it works.”

Ben's laugh was a bit rueful this time. "You're not the only one." He concentrated on his work as he continued, keeping his eyes down. "I hope this is a better guess than the last time.”

My heart sank at the memory of how badly I'd misjudged things on my first Grey outing, and I could almost smell the reek of burning again. I was still carrying reminders in the knot of Grey implanted in my chest and the magical resistance that kept me from speaking of certain things.

"There is no fault on your part," I said. "What went wrong at the museum was my fault—just mine. How many times have I said so?

Do I need to speak another language to make you believe that? Quick crash course in Russian—teach me how to say 'mea culpa' and we can stop there.”

He frowned at me. "Why?”

I couldn't say. The words would not come out, corked up with guilt and magical compulsion. I just shook my head and felt heavy. "It's not you," I muttered.

Ben finished the bottle in silence, slipped the black rubber stopper into the neck, and handed the whole thing to me. We could hear Mara and Brian coming back along the hall, the floorboards singing with their steps.

"Be careful with it.”

I took it with both hands. "I will." Then I smiled at him—a big, fat, footlights-to-second-balcony grin. "It'll be fine. Thanks.”