world had known about the Duke parapsychology lab.
And even more puzzling: Why had all those years of research been sealed?
Why seal it all up for so long?
“Why?” she said aloud.
Across the room there was a sudden scraping slide and crash.
Laurel leaped out of her chair, which toppled to the ground behind her as she spun in the direction of the crash.
The window had slid shut on its own, falling violently against the sill.
Laurel stood staring at it with her heart racing in her chest. After a moment she approached cautiously.
The window was old, of course, an archaic counterweight device, the ropes of which were either cut, or sprung, or painted shut on half the windows in the house.
“It’s an old house,” she told herself, unaware until she heard the words that she’d spoken them aloud. “And the wind …” Her voice sounded shaky in the twilight silence of the room.
But right there: a perfect example of what she’d been reading.
I actually psyched myself into believing for half a second in some kind of paranormal visitation. Just exactly what happens in these poltergeist incidents.
She moved back to the long table and looked down at her notebook, at the notation she had made:
Leish died April 1965
???
It bothered her. It didn’t merely bother her, it gnawed at her. Why?
It was a genuine mystery. Leish was only forty-one when he died. Did he die in the middle of some investigation? Without realizing it, she spoke aloud: “He died the same month that the lab shut down. Within weeks.”
And then a thought struck her that sent chills through her.
Could his death possibly have anything to do with the lab shutting down?
She grabbed her notebook and a pen and wrote quickly.
Leish was at Duke in 1965?
Leish died in 1965
The lab shut down in 1965
What happened?
Then she almost jumped out of her skin—as the phone shrilled on her desk behind her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Laurel shot to her feet with a rush of guilt, as if she’d been caught doing something illicit. The number displayed on the phone screen was her mother’s and Laurel picked up to Meredith’s no-nonsense voice.
“Are you in the middle of something?”
Although Meredith could not possibly see what she was doing, Laurel closed her notebook and slid it into her desk drawer as if to hide it from her mother’s eyes.
“Just doing some work on my research proposal,” she said, and instantly regretted saying it aloud. Try explaining to Meredith that you’re researching poltergeists—that will go well. Maybe I left my entire mind back in L.A …
“Is everything okay, Mom?” Laurel asked quickly, to divert any questions, but in truth she was wondering. Meredith never called, never did anything, without a good reason.
“It’s your Aunt Margaret. She’s been trying to get through to you, to ask you over for dinner.”
Laurel felt another stab of guilt. Since the dream breakup, she was in the habit of going a week or more without checking her phone messages. It was another symptom of her disappearance into oblivion.
“I’ll call her tomorrow, Mom,” she promised. “I’ve just been … settling in. I’ve been busy with this project—”
“What project is that?”
“It’s an educational testing series I’m developing,” Laurel lied. There was a long silence on the phone. Laurel didn’t try to fill it.
“Laurel, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” her mother said bluntly.
Laurel felt her cheeks burn. No, Mother, I have no idea whatsoever. Aloud she said, “I’m adjusting, Mom. Really. I—Duke is great, my house is lovely. I’m sure I’ll be happy here.”
Whatever happy is.
Meredith sighed. “Call your aunt.”
“I will.” Laurel promised, and characteristically, Meredith hung up without a good-bye or another word.
Laurel set down the phone and looked around at her study: the teetering stacks of books she’d already collected on psi, telepathy—and poltergeists, don’t forget poltergeists …
She glanced uneasily up at her calendar on the wall. Her appointment with Dr. Unger was circled in red—only two weeks away and she was no closer to a research proposal than she had been on her first day. But there was something here, something she didn’t understand, but something big.
“I know it,” she said softly.
Outside the window, lightning cracked, branching white light through the sky.
CHAPTER NINE
The French psychologist Jacques Lacan said, “Trauma repeats almost inevitably.” Freud called this the “repetition compulsion.” Both psychologists were talking about the psychological traumas passed on within families, from generation to generation. But one theory of hauntings is that houses repeat trauma as well.