Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (9 page)

He was inspecting my hurts during that
little monologue.

"Damned lucky, I'd say, that this is all you
got out of it. One inch less stretch and you would have ended up a
leaky bag of bones at poolside."

I winced at that analogy, but let it pass
without comment.

He flipped the sheet back over me and
repeated, "Damned lucky."

I asked him, "Are you finished?"

He sighed as he replied, "Yeah. Just wanted
to check you out, firsthand. Don't get much chance to play doctor
around here, you know."

I sat up and reached for the cigarette he
was then lighting. He passed it over and lit another for himself.
I said, "Thought doctors are against smoking."

"Sure we are," he replied. "Damned things
will kill you. But then so will sex, booze, airplanes and
automobiles, and just plain food if you eat too much. Actually we
start dying at conception. It would be just as valid to describe
living as controlled dying. It's always in process."

"Matter of spatial relationships," I
suggested.

"More or less," he agreed.

I asked, "Why was Marcia in the pool? I saw
her at about a quarter after seven, at which time she had not yet
dressed for dinner. Thought that's where she was headed when she
left me."

He said, "Too much to drink, no doubt.
Happens every week. Probably wanted to take a little dip and sober
up. Guess she just passed out in the pool."

I reminded him, "She was naked."

He informed me, "Nothing
unusual about that. Soon as the sun goes down ... Marcia prefers
nature in the raw."

I said, "She was wearing half a bikini and a
hip- length robe when I saw her earlier."

"Yes. We found them in a chair on the patio.
Also the dregs of pure whiskey in the bottom of a water glass."

I made a guilty face and told him, "It was
still half full when she carried it away from my room. And a fifth
of Jim Beam was half empty."

He asked, casually, "Did you two get it
on?"

I replied, "Not at all. She was in my face
over Karen. Called me a bastard and a con man, ordered me out of
the house."

Powell grinned. "Well, that's Marcia."

I asked, casually, "What is Karen?"

The grin faded. He took a
thoughtful pull at his cigarette and told me, "I studied your
portfolio quite thoroughly, you know. I recommended your contract.
You should accept it. I feel that you can be very helpful with
Karen, maybe decisively so, lord knows more helpful than I have
been."

I grunted.

He continued without pause: "I like your
background, Ash. Nicely rounded, and you've gone into areas I've
only recently begun to think about. I believe that could be Karen's
out, perhaps her only out."

"Out of what?" I wanted to know.

He ignored my curiosity. "Indirectly, at
least, I suppose I'm responsible for you two getting together in
the first place. I sent her to Zodiac."

That one surprised me. I told him so.

He ignored that too, went on to say:
"Reality can be very elusive any time you try to pin it down. I
have spent the past twenty-two years studying the mind and, hell, I
still usually feel like a blind man trying to lead the blind."

The guy was reaching me. I found myself
wondering more about him than about my client. I asked him, "Is
that why you sold your soul to the Highlands?"

The grin came back as he inspected that
query. "Don't make the mistake of thinking that your soul is an
island, Ash. It's as much a part of the continent as your body is.
It is immune to being bought and sold because the original owner
will not release the title."

Well, anyway, that was an alternate point of
view to the one offered by Kalinsky. Or was it?

I said, "Which original owner is that?"

He said, "Good and evil
are mere states of mind, aren't they? I know I don't have to tell
you that because I know where you've been, but just so you'll
understand that we are more or less on the same wavelength. They
are simply alternate views of the same reality."

"We live in an asymmetrical universe," I
pointed out, testing him.

"Ah yes," he replied instantly, "but it was
pure symmetry before the bang."

I thought, bingo, but said aloud, "Which
side of the mirror image do you suppose we inhabit?"

"Does it really matter?"

I replied, "Maybe not."

"Suppose for the sake of argument," he said
soberly, "that both God and Satan do indeed exist, co-equals, each
ruling his own half of the image. We, you and me, do not know which
side of reality we inhabit. Do we not run a hell of a risk, then,
in choosing sides?"

I grinned and told him, "You are suggesting,
then, that we do have that choice."

"Quite the opposite. This is for the sake of
argument, remember. God or Satan, whichever rules here, is a
cosmic force with absolute power. If God is on our side, as we are
constantly being implored to believe—which means, in the same
sense, that we inhabit God's side of reality—then how can Satan
manifest power here? And if Satan does not manifest power in our
reality, then where do we get all the agony, all the greed, all the
brutality?"

I suggested, "Reason from the other
end—start with agony, greed, brutality, and tell me which reality
that describes. Sounds to me, in that argument, like we came down
on the wrong side."

He said, "Exactly."

I said, "But maybe asymmetry is purely a
mathematical concept, and maybe our math models have the same
limitations as the dimensioned minds that fashion them. Maybe we
have asymmetrical minds, Carl. Could we ever then see true
symmetry—and would we even recognize it if we did?"

He slapped his leg and said, "Jesus! You've
struck a nerve!"

I suggested, "We all are a bit premature in
handing down judgments on cosmic questions. We can't even find
cosmos, can we? So how the hell do we circumscribe it?"

"Exactly!"

I said, "What kind of sick is Karen?"

He replied, "Dreadfully."

I pointed out, "If I am
going to help ..."

He got up and left the room, returned a
minute later with a bottle and two glasses, sloshed some whiskey
into each and handed me one, belted his, wiped his lips with the
back of his hand, said, "It's a violation of ethics, but I am going
to regard this as a consultation, so I'm holding you to
confidentiality too."

I said, "Okay," and belted mine.

He refilled the glasses, peered into his,
said, "She has an unresolved sexual conflict."

I said, "Tell me about it."

"Electra complex. Well ...
I don't really buy Freud's whole bag of tricks, especially not as
they would apply to the general population, but I guess that is the
basic Freudian weakness; he tried to extend clinical
psychology—that is, mental pathology, into an explanation of the
whole psychogenetic and sociopathic structure of mankind. As much
as to say that the diseased mind presents a valid diagram of
mankind in general. I don't buy that, never did. But Freud was a
genius, let's not sell him short. And Karen's personality profile
fits perfectly into the Freudian complex characterized by an
unnatural love for her father."

I said, "But Freud himself did not buy the
Electra complex."

"Touche," replied the good doctor, "but it
does not change anything. Freud did elaborate the Oedipus complex,
which is simply the reverse case. I have always found that the
sauce for the goose is equal sauce for the gander. But if you want
to get picky, call Karen's sauce an Oedipus complex and I won't get
mad at you. Point is, there is this unresolved conflict that is
simply eating her alive."

"Would you consider it characteristic,
then," I mused, "that she now claims to have very little feeling
for either parent?"

"If not characteristic," he replied, "then
certainly not destructive to the theory. Such complexes are caused
by feelings prisoner to the subconscious realm. That is where they
do their dirt. She could consciously hate her father while still
gripped by the guilt generated within the subconscious."

"You see it as a guilt trip, then."

"That is the destructively
moving force, yes. And, of course, in this case compounded by
feelings of guilt over the untimely death of both
parents."

"Why would she feel guilt over that?"

"Because," he replied, pausing to belt the
second shot, "she thinks she killed them."

I said, dumbly, "What?"

"Thinks she put a bomb on their boat. TJ had
been in bed, sick with the flu. Elena had already made plans to
take the boat out that day. TJ began feeling better and joined her
at the last minute. Karen backed out at the last minute, tried her
best to keep TJ home too. The boat exploded in flames forty feet
out of the slip. Karen thinks she did it."

I said, "Shit." Then I belted my second and
added, "So what do you think?"

"I think," said my new drinking buddy, the
mystic shrink, "that it is all very tragic."

Enter, now, our mutual good buddy and keeper
of souls, Terry Kalinsky. He is in a hell of a dither.

"Thank God I found you guys here!" he
yelled. "We got a hell of a problem!"

Powell placed the bottle on the floor beside
the bed and surged to his feet. "Is she ?"

"Naw, shit, it's Karen
again! She came in to see how Marcia was doing and Marcia flipped
out, said all kinds of crazy shit. Karen ran out into the goddamn
night and is right now wandering around the neighborhood somewhere
all alone in the damned dark. I sent all the men out looking for
her—very quietly, we don't want the guests in on this and
..."

Powell was already moving toward the door. I
was staggering around trying to find some clothing.

"... I'm just hoping you guys have some idea
where she may have gone. Jesus Christ, it's pitch dark out there
and that kid—"

I grabbed him by the chin to shut him up.
"What did Marcia say to her?"

"Aw, some crazy shit about—said Karen tried
to kill her, said she saw Karen watching her as she dived into the
pool—crazy, it's crazy!"

"How did Karen try to kill her, Terry?"

He laughed, almost hysterically. "By psychic
force, I guess, if you want to believe that shit. Marcia said Karen
held her under by psychic force. Can you believe that shit?"

I could, yes.

I could believe that shit.

Chapter Ten: Maxim

Is it possible to kill with the mind? It has
never been done, to my knowledge, under laboratory conditions—nor
have I heard of anyone in modern times being hauled into court
charged with psychic murder or manslaughter—but the literature of
mankind, including holy writ, is rich with examples of human
preoccupation with just that sort of power.

Consider, if you will, the witch scare of
early America—which, at its height, was but an extreme realization
of a centuries-old terror exported to the New World from England.
Consider also the voodoo priests who rule certain religious
convictions of the Caribbean area, also ages old and imported from
Africa.

I toss these two up as ready examples for
easy recognition by almost any literate person, but there are
thousands more, and they have their roots in virtually every
culture on the planet.

Of course such
preoccupations today are instantly labeled, by those in the know,
as superstitious clap trap. And maybe they are. We do not have to
look much farther than our television sets to realize that a
leading human trait is suggestibility, and that there are always
those among us who will seek to exploit that trait to their own
advantage. That could well be the real story behind today's
shamans, witches, and other black magicians, as well as
religionists of various hues.

But a pure scholar or scientist will want to
know a lot more than the evidence available today is able to tell
us about the origins of ideas in the human belief system. We may,
as a species, be naturally suggestible or gullible—but what made
us that way?

Can a shaman wield power
over any individual who has no living or genetic memory of an
actual "supernatural" event? And for a modern definition of
supernatural,
we have
only to look at the so-called Cargo Cults of New Guinea, born
during World War II among primitive tribesmen who could not make
the natural link between cause and effect with respect to their
"manna from heaven" dropped from American cargo planes.

To this very day the
shamans of New Guinea continue to build crude mock-ups of aircraft
upon mountaintops to attract the pleasure of gods long departed
from their skies, and they may well go on doing so for centuries
out of mind if their culture remains isolated from the tide of
human evolution. So somewhere about the year 2550, descendants of
the World War II shamans may begin to question this superstitious
practice, pointing out that no gods have been seen in the skies
over New Guinea in living memory and therefore probably never
were—so who the hell do these guys think they're
kidding?

I do not know how pure I may be as scholar
or scientist, but I do not close the door on witches or shamans or
any others without wanting to know a hell of a lot more than I can
know about the heart of their belief systems.

How did the witch idea get started? Did
someone see or experience something so mind-blowing as to anchor a
possibility within human psyche for generations to come?—and have
others added fuel to that possibility by duplicating, at least to
some extent, that experience?

Or how many "superstitions"—examined and
fully understood by the modern mind—would fall neatly into
"natural" but "real" categories, as easily and accurately
explainable as the cargo gods?