Pipeline (5 page)

“Go on,” Leah said, clasping Tracy’s hand in
hers, reassuring her.

“Then I left the hospital, got inside my car,
and turned on the radio. There were commercials on, and as I drove,
something happened. The radio began flipping through the stations,
and I watched the dial as it rolled back and forth on its own. I
never touched it. After a few seconds, it stopped on the song that
was playing just before we left the party that night.
Unbelievable--but it stopped when it found that song.”

Brett Taylor was listening and taking notes,
verbatim.

“Then I confided in my friend, Marcia. She
knows I’m not crazy and even suggested that I contact someone with
knowledge in this field.”

Another nervous chuckle escaped her, as she
still clung to the hope of some logical explanation that would
dispel the darkness of this nightmare like a new, rising sun.

The four focused faces stared back at her in
unbroken sobriety, unable to provide that logical explanation and
confirm reality for her.

“So, I was about to contact you,” she said,
“and while I was typing, another one of those strange calls came
through. I answered again. When I turned back to the computer
screen, this was typed across the e-mail I was about to send.”

She handed over the printed e-mail and
pointed to her name typed over and over across the page in capital
letters. Tracy was aware that if they were to think she was nuts,
now was the time.

“I saved and printed it, because I wanted you
to see it.”

The four looked it over, still taking notes,
and then Dylan turned to her.

“May we keep this for our records?” She
consented and Dylan handed the paper over to Leah, who filed it
away in a folder and began to write.

“Then...I saw him,” she said. The
pronouncement lifted all heads in her direction as though she’d
dropped a silent bomb. Sidney sat up straight and leaned
closer.

“When?” he asked, knowing his prediction had
come to pass.

“Just before I came here. I didn’t know what
else to do.”

“How long ago?” he pressed with the urgency
of a cop about to nab a crook.

She glanced at her watch.

“About forty-five minutes, now.”

“Tell us exactly what you saw.”

She sat back and closed her eyes, tuning in,
recalling the finest of details.

“I felt like someone was standing over my
shoulder, but I didn’t turn around, and I could see from the
reflection in the computer screen that there was no one there. I
finished what I was doing, and I got up from the chair. I stretched
my legs for a second, and I turned around. There he was. His face
wasn’t in my mind but right in front of me.

“I closed my eyes and tried to shake it away;
I thought I was seeing things. I opened my eyes again, and he was
still there and even more vivid. But something was strange. He
looked like he was there, but he wasn’t there, like he was part of
the surroundings. Then I saw him move, and he moved fast! And then,
he was gone.”

Sidney and Leah nodded their heads in
recognition, as Tracy finished recalling the shock of her life with
a voice that had turned misty. Their young, but seasoned lives had
been filled with encounters and experiences with the Great Beyond,
and they knew first-hand of the terror that could be involved: the
fear, the mental trauma, physical strain, and often heartache. They
tried to make her understand.

“You see, Tracy,” Sidney said. “When someone
passes on, they are supposed to ‘move on’ to the other realm, that
is, what most people call ‘Heaven.’ Unless, they go to Hell, which
might be more applicable nowadays.”

She cracked a smile at the truth of it.

“But some people don’t move on. They feel
they have unfinished business in this world, or they’re afraid to
leave their loved ones. Sometimes they can’t accept that they’re
dead, and there are some who don’t even know they’re dead. There
are quite a few reasons a spirit cannot exit. Some lose their way,
but some prefer to roam the Earth. We call these spirits, ‘ghosts.’
So, you’re accurate when you describe him as ‘being there, but not
being there.’ After death, they are no longer in this world as we
are. But they can remain attached to it, if they so choose.

“What interests me most,” Sidney continued,
“is that you’ve seen him. After reading your e-mail, I had
predicted that you would. It’s not often that they make contact
this way, through means of technological communication, and so
there are few studies on it. But from my experience, that type of
contact is usually followed by a physical manifestation.”

Dylan sat with his elbows perched on the
table and hands folded together, exuding a grand, authoritative
presence over the meeting and observing as the funny guy faded away
into the serious and superior intellect that was the real Sidney
Pratt. The lead investigator then spoke.

“Tracy, this rare occurrence that Sidney
refers to has a name. It is known as ‘The Pipeline Effect.’ It is
said to occur when a spirit tries to make contact via means of
technology. Technologies such as: telephones, radios, transmitters,
televisions, video and from what you’ve described to us today, the
computer, have all, at one time or another, been used by the dead
as ways to communicate.”

“You’re a first, kid,” Sidney said, nudging
her. “At least for us, anyway.”

“But not entirely, Tracy,” Dylan said. “The
four of us all have our reasons for being here. We all have, or
have had, some connection with the other realm at some point in our
lives, and it is what drives our research. Brett and I have spent
years studying electromagnetic frequencies, radio waves, and other
forms of sound and technology used in this type of research. Leah
and Sidney are two very gifted people who are of great benefit to
the society. Both have been endowed from early childhood with
abilities that have made them subjects of the society’s research.
So, you are not alone, Tracy. Leah, why don’t you begin with your
story?”

He turned his focus toward the doll faced
girl who drew nearer to the table. The seer was about to tell her
tale.

* * * *

“It all started when I was about five years
of age, and my parents moved us into a house on Cedar Drive. My
mother was a Realtor, who had purchased it cheap from an estate
sale, and it was a colossal, three story, colonial style mansion
that seemed to keep its history locked inside. As I stood outside
looking in for the first time, I felt a dark cloud pass over me,
one that left me speechless and unable to explain the jagged
feeling of fear I felt, or that vibe of dark uncertainty that
somehow escaped its stone structure.

“It was lonely in that house for me. My
mother was obsessed with renovating the house and restoring it to
its ‘former glory.’ My father, a lawyer, was always busy with an
endless parade of clients. Soon, I began my own ritual of exploring
the various rooms of the house. It was then that I encountered
Agnes.

“I was playing with a ball one day in the
third floor hallway, when I was distracted by the pungent scent of
perfume that wasn’t my mother’s. My ball had rolled into a room at
the end of the hall, one I hadn’t explored yet. I went inside and
there she was, sitting in the old rocker, one of the many antique
pieces the prior owners had left behind.

“She was a woman of about seventy-five, and
she had the sweetest smile. She sat knitting, and rocking, and
motioned me forward, and then the ball rolled back towards me. She
had moved it. I knew she did—I saw her.

“She could speak without moving her lips and
beckoned me to sit down beside her. One day, my father saw me
talking as I sat next to her rocker.”

“‘
Leah, honey, who are you talking
to?’” I heard the confusion in his voice.

“‘
Agnes,’” I said to him. I hadn’t
realized he couldn’t see her, but he did see something.

“It was later that night that I overheard my
parents fighting. My Dad expressed his concern to her that I was
talking to someone who wasn’t there.”

“‘
So what,’” she said. “‘All kids have
imaginary playmates! She’s five!’”

“‘
The rocker was moving!’” He was
yelling at her. “‘How do you explain the rocker rocking back and
forth and then coming to a complete stop on its own?!’”

“It was then that I realized that my father
hadn’t seen Agnes but saw the rocker moving. He knew that something
was dwelling among us in that house. It continued for hours: my
father telling her that he hated the place, and my mother yelling
that he wasn’t going to ruin the chance of her owning her dream
home.

“Days went by, and they seemed to grow even
further apart. I would run to Agnes to get away from their
screaming, and she’d always be there, in that room. One day, my Dad
walked up to the third floor to get me.

“He had decided to take me with him on an
excursion down to the basement. I became fascinated with the vast,
dank, labyrinth that seemed to stretch out for miles underneath the
house, with its maze of walls built of limestone piled high into a
catacomb structure. The walls gave way to long, winding corridors
that led to cobwebbed rooms and passageways where secret tunnels
were rumored to exist, and that legend still persists to this
day.

“It was a treasure trove for my mother’s
renovations, with colonial furniture and artifacts everywhere, all
left behind for the passing centuries to hide.

“Dad and I were playing Hide and Seek when I
ran into one of the countless rooms and hid behind one of the
rounded arch doors that creaked with ages of atrophy. My eyes
turned to see what was behind me, and there, I saw a woman sprawled
across the stone cold floor.

“She was naked, clad in only her skin that
had turned a shining, soft purple, and her eyes cast a fixed stare
back at me. The blackened bruises were strung across her neck like
a medallion, and I could swear that she blinked. That was the
loudest I have ever screamed to this day.”

Tracy sat in awe; her lower jaw loosened and
dropped.

“You found a dead body?”

“No,” Leah said. “I had a vision of one. What
I was seeing was the past. My Dad came running into the room, and I
was pointing to the corpse on the floor that to him wasn’t
there
.

“He screamed for me and ran into the room,
then pulled me up into his arms, shaking me. I could do nothing
except point, trying to catch my involuntary heaves of breath that
were outrunning me. He turned and saw nothing, and with the same
rush with which he had entered the room, he whisked me out and
away.

“The next thing I recall was that he had
confronted my mother, and their fighting had escalated into what I
knew would be the end of them. My Dad tried hard to convince her
that we needed to get away from that house, for my sake, because
something was tearing us apart ever since we’d moved in. My mother
refused to see what was happening to us. She had a renovation crew
at work inside the house, and the workmen often stopped and
eavesdropped, wondering if they should even finish what they had
begun.

“Then, stranger happenings began to occur:
glass breaking for no reason, sounds of footsteps, whispers, and
occasional shouts, haunted us night and day. Lights would flicker,
and the temperature would turn ice cold even with the fireplace
roaring. At times, a smell like rotten meat would invade the house,
and then vanish as quickly as it had flourished.

“Dad awoke on one occasion with scratches on
his face, hands, chest, and back. I am certain that he’d seen
something that night. He began to change, to weaken as though
surrendering. Then, one of the workmen fell down the giant
staircase and broke his neck. He survived, only to be paralyzed
from the neck down, swearing that he was pushed, though no one had
been there.

“Mom began to slip away from us, sitting
motionless and quiet with no signs of life in her eyes. She was now
a prisoner of that house, locked in some hypnotic spell, and the
only release seemed to be death. I don’t think she even recognized
me, or my father, who was executing some plan to get me away from
there and get Mom help. He kept telling me not to worry, that it
would all be over soon. I prepared for bed on what would be the
last night I would ever spend in that house.

“He tucked me in bed that night, and I lay
awake, thinking. Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
The air in the room had changed, and I even thought it might have
been Agnes. I sat up in my bed and looked over by the chair in my
room. I felt my heart stop from the horror in front of me.

“There, was the same woman I saw in the
basement. A man was clutching her by the throat, wringing her neck
backward and forward until the naked, vulnerable victim fell limp
in his grasp. Another man stood behind them, watching and seeming
to be enjoying it. Her eyes were pleading with me. Her hand was
outstretched, and there was nothing I could do but scream.

“My hysteria rang out through the house, and
it had been only seconds when the door flew open and the lights
filled the room, hurting my eyes but defeating the darkness. My Dad
snatched me out of bed like a rag doll and ran so fast, carrying me
down the huge staircase that I thought we would tumble. The next
thing I knew we were out the front door, without my mother. I would
never see the horrific visions of that house again, except in my
mind.”

Leah gazed into the black surface of the
table, as though it displayed her memories in motion. The bulk of
her story had been told, but the tale remained unfinished, and
Tracy stared, astonished.

“My Dad left me with my grandmother, and then
he went back for my mother. I don’t know what happened in that
house during that time, but whatever it was--it destroyed the only
family I ever knew. My mother committed suicide in that house; she
had hung herself from the top balcony. Dad came home eventually,
after spending time in the state hospital. He’s all right now and
still sees a psychiatrist, but he won’t ever mention what happened
when he went back, if he even remembers.