let her breath out. Brendan glanced back toward the hall. “Kornbluth,” he said, and looked around the corner in the direction the footsteps had disappeared, checking to see if he was really gone. “I don’t trust him. He was very interested in the files when they first opened up. I think he never could get an angle … but we don’t want him guessing what we’re doing.”
Laurel nodded, trying not to let on that she was still completely reeling from their close encounter. What is wrong with me?
“He’s definitely interested,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He came to my office and grilled me when I started looking through the files. I don’t even know how he found out I was doing it.”
“Academia. Nothing is secret.”
“And someone stole one of my notebooks from my office,” she said, without thinking.
Brendan stiffened. “You’re kidding. When? What was in it?”
Now Laurel felt uncomfortable. She’d forgotten that she’d suspected Brendan of stealing it.
“It was last week—”
Brendan interrupted sharply. “Anything about the Folger Experiment? The high scorers?”
“No … no, it was before I knew about all that,” she said. “It was a notebook of notes I’d taken while I was down with the files. It was really just my own scribblings and I don’t know if anyone else could even read most of it, but … my office is always locked when I’m not in it.”
Brendan’s eyes were gray and moody. “Well, I know the guy. He won’t give up. From now on we meet off-campus if at all possible. Your place or mine?”
And that was how they ended up back on her porch, in the blazing autumn sunset, planning a testing series.
The “Call for Subjects” flyers were easy enough to lay out on OfficePro and Brendan had brought colored paper. As the flyers printed out, Laurel and Brendan stepped out to the porch, where at least there were the rocking chairs to sit in.
“We really are going to have to get you some furniture, you know,” Brendan smiled at her.
Laurel felt heat in her cheeks at the word “we.” Forced pairing, she reminded herself grimly, and busied herself by handing over copies of several personality tests. Apparently presciently, she had been collecting a file of the standard psychological tests that the Rhine lab had used. The NEO Personality Inventory, or NEO PI-R, was a psychological testing series of 240 questions that measured the Five Factor Model (FFM) or so-called “Big Five” personality traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator categorized subjects according to sixteen traits: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving.
Laurel was all business as she explained to Brendan, “We know Leish used the Zener card and dice tests to find his high scorers. But for our own study I’d first like to catalogue all our volunteers using Myers-Briggs, the Neo-PI-R, and the PBS.”
“PBS?” Brendan asked, flipping through the test sheets.
“The Paranormal Belief Scale.” She’d found it referenced in numerous articles in the literature on paranormal testing and had been intrigued enough to hunt down a copy. “It’s a twenty-six item, self-report scale designed to evaluate the subject’s preestablished paranormal beliefs in seven different categories: traditional religious belief, psi belief, witchcraft, superstition, spiritualism, extraordinary life-forms, and precognition. Test subjects are asked to rate their agreement with statements from: ‘There is a heaven and hell’ to ‘A person’s thoughts can influence the movement of a physical object,’ on a scale of 1 to 7, a ‘1’ meaning ‘Strongly disagree’ and ‘7’ meaning ‘Strongly agree.’ It will help in assessing the level our subjects’ expectations coming into the experiment.”
Brendan looked up from the list and stated very seriously, “The Loch Ness Monster of Scotland is real.” He waited, looking at her, and she realized he expected her to answer.
She hesitated. “Uh … one. Strongly disagree.”
“Huh. I would have fought you for that, when I was ten.” He moved on to the next question. “There is a devil.”
“Oh, for …” she started and he raised his eyebrows.
“You want to ask our subjects to take a test you wouldn’t take yourself?”
She rolled her eyes, but answered. “Strongly disagree.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “I’d watch who I said that to around here. Buckle of the Bible Belt, you know.” He consulted the test, read the next question. “Some individuals are able to levitate objects through mental forces.”
Laurel opened her mouth to speak—and suddenly flashed on a sunny kitchen, the knives and forks dancing on the table in front of a sweet-faced, smiling