He turned and walked away with eyes widened, unnerved by what he had wrought. He assured himself it was just part of the process, the necessary learning curve. He was bringing forth a new world order, but had no way of knowing all the different sorts of creatures that would inhabit it. No matter; they were all his subjects and they would all do their part in the cleansing.
It didn’t strike Mrs. Potter as odd that he was giving her something for a skin condition. He was, after all, a generic servant and gofer. Over time, he had proven himself so helpful to the tenants of the Mercado that they came to him with all kinds of problems and ailments. Maintaining their trust allowed him to keep track of anomalous events in what was essentially an Art Deco petri dish. For example, while she was barely complaining, Mrs. Potter had brought the appearance of ectoplasm around her door to his attention. Monitoring ectoplasm transfer rate was critical, as it was a direct indication of his success in supercharging the particles unique to postlife existence. More ectoplasm was leaking through with each passing day, a very positive sign. Until his magnificent accomplishment, only a handful of phantoms had managed to penetrate the barrier—through a fortunate combination of force of will and the unique configuration of their spectral particles. His device would make it possible for any ghost to return to this world.
All ghosts.
He entered his basement kingdom and removed his jacket, hanging it carefully by the door. Deeper inside the room, faint creaking and scraping sounds echoed off the hard surfaces.
Yes, Daddy’s home.
He walked over to his workstation, which was cluttered with test equipment and devices in various stages of assembly and development. He gazed into a large mirror on the floor and, his chest swelling with pride, addressed the roiling chaos on the far side of the glass.
“Who put the imp in Mrs. Potter?” he asked. “I know you are all anxious, but we must be patient. The guests are starting to complain. We don’t want any spoilers before the big show.”
He stared deeply into the mirror, which opened onto the astonishing spirit world. Ghosts, both human and demonic in appearance, phased in and out of what resembled dense clouds of smoke. The other side was easier to see now, another measure of his success in weakening the barrier between existences. The ghosts were scratching and clawing at the glass, so very eager.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Not long at all.
14
At the world headquarters of the Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination, Erin and her three colleagues stood around the table admiring the array of Holtzmann’s latest accomplishments. She was scaling down the proton cart into a portable pack and working on a few other ideas. Basically, everything she had made was smaller, lighter, more mobile, more powerful—she had definitely upped her game and their arsenal. The phone rang from the other side of the dining room. Erin shot their fifth wheel, AKA Receptionist Kevin, a questioning glance, and on the fourth ring he dutifully picked up the phone.
Yay, she thought. Progress.
“Hello?” he said, and then paused, apparently listening to what the caller had to say.
Erin’s enthusiasm immediately faded a bit. Kevin had forgotten to mention the five-word name of their organization. All those hours of training apparently had been for nothing.
“Not with me, you don’t!” he said, and hung up the phone.
Erin frowned. “Uh, Kevin, who was that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t like him.”
Good grief, he’s like a dog that can’t be housebroken. She considered pointing out the incident to Abby, but realized she’d just turn things around and claim he was “using his own initiative.”
Meanwhile, Holtzmann was continuing her debriefing. She seemed perkier than usual.
“So based on our findings from the subway field test, I added an amplifier using microfabricated dielectric laser accelerators to speed up the particles before entering the DLA device. Portable and wearable for maximum flexibility. And we’re just getting started.”
Holtzmann gestured at the inventions-in-progress on her banquet table workstation and was about to continue when Erin jumped in. “Okay, well, one life-threatening device at a time, please. So it fires. Then what?”
Abby picked up the ghost trap they had attempted to use in the tunnel before things got totally out of hand. “Then we add the reversible tractor beam with Holtz’s hollow laser inside this guy, and wah-lah. We are gonna catch us a mother-effin’ ghost!”
Abby and Holtzmann proceeded to do a high-five ritual as complicated as any cheerleader routine. This was their thing, their we-have-worked-together-forever statement. Erin looked on glumly, aware that if Kevin was the fifth wheel, then she was the third.
Patty didn’t seem to care that she was being left out—if anything, she was amused—but Kevin slid Erin a comforting glance and said, “Don’t worry. We can have our own high five.”
He started high-fiving her. It was crazy and Hulk-like with immense arms, impossible to follow. All she could think about was living through it and avoiding permanent injury. The sequence ended with him lightly slapping her neck.
“Okay, I’m good, thank you, Kevin,” she said, her head reeling, fighting to remain upright. He didn’t seem to be aware of his own strength.
Holtzmann patted her on the back. “I’ll teach it to you later,” she promised.
Erin was touched by their efforts to make her feel included, misguided though they were. Kevin was a plug-in night light in terms of brilliance, Holtzmann was a certified genius, but both were kind at heart.
The TV was turned on, but set to mute. They were still hoping their Reddit might go viral, or someone else would report a sighting in the subway tunnel, but so far there had been nothing.
Picking up one of the new proton packs, Holtzmann turned her attention to Patty. “C’mon. Let’s get you fitted up with one of these.”
“Okay,” Patty said. As she took in the hazardous-looking assemblage, her eyes narrowed. “Is it safe?”
Holtzmann’s expression grew serious. “To be clear, nothing in this lab is safe.”
She led Patty over to her workbench by the buffet table’s sneeze shield. The smeared and smudged glass looked like it hadn’t been disinfected in years. Erin took their departure as her cue and stepped up to Abby. She steeled herself to do something she should have done a long, long time ago.
First she had to swallow a bit gulp of pride and antipride, which was also known as shame.
Here goes.
“Abby,” she began, “that time I didn’t show up? I—I didn’t try to call.” Her face was hot. “I lied. I was just so tired of being the big joke. I’m sorry.”
A flicker of a grin crossed Abby’s mouth. “I know.” There was a beat between them, and then Abby said, “Well, you’re here now, right?”
A rush of genuine joy swept over Erin; it had been so long she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that emotion. It was so good to be back together with Abby again. She’d sacrificed so much to hide who she was and keep a lid on her fears. She had let herself forget how important friends were. Well, no more. She had rejoined the friend zone.
And it was a great place to be.
* * *
There were now four portable proton packs hanging from the wall like commando gear. Erin and the other women warriors sat in a booth in front of an open box of New York–style pizza. They were eating it while it was still hot and talking with their mouths full, getting to know each other better.
“So, how did you two meet?” Patty asked Erin and Abby as she deftly folded over a cheese-dripping slice, her second. She took a big bite, tip first, skillfully steering the inevitable drip of olive oil away from her fingers and onto the cardboard box.
“Oh, Abby transferred to my high school junior year,” Erin explained.
Abby took up the thread. “We started sharing ghost stories and bonded immediately. All the other kids were getting drunk and going to parties and we
were like ‘that’s stupid.’” She wrinkled her nose.
“Also, we weren’t invited to any parties,” Erin said.
Abby gave her an incredulous look, as if she had just given away the secret of cold fusion. “Well, we also put out a vibe that indicated we were not accepting any invitations,” she said.
Erin shook her head. Abby was rewriting history. If they’d been invited to any parties before the “vibe” went out, she would have remembered it.
“Why were you so into ghosts?” Patty said. “Had either one of you actually seen one?”
Erin pretended to chew what she had just swallowed, stalling. It was that sensitive a topic for her. Abby didn’t say anything, letting her tell the story if she wanted to, and skip it if she didn’t. It had been a long time since Erin had shared Mrs. Barnard with anyone. It seemed weird to hide it from Holtzmann and Patty.
“Yeah,” Erin said. “When I was eight, the mean old lady who lived next door to us died. That night, I woke up and there she was standing at the foot of my bed. She was just staring at me, and then blood started coming out of her mouth. She slowly started falling toward me. I pulled my covers over my head and waited until morning.”
As she paused in telling the story, she realized her entire body was tense, steeled to defend against the expected and familiar laughter and teasing. Instead, Patty nodded and gave her a sympathetic look. So Erin continued, delivering the astounding punch line.
“She did that every night for a year.”
“What?” Patty cried.
Holtzmann exclaimed, “Whoa!”
“I told everyone, but no one believed me.” Words began to rush out of her in a torrent. “My parents thought I was crazy. They had me in therapy for years. All the kids at school made fun of me. Called me ‘ghost girl.’” She looked over at Abby. “But Abby believed me right away.”
“Hey, I believe you, too,” Patty announced.
“Hmm, I have some questions,” Holtzmann said, then winked at her.
Erin smiled back. It was such a relief to get this off her chest.
Then it was Patty’s turn to let down her hair.
“You know, I never connected with the other kids, either,” she admitted. “Mostly because I was into books. I think my experience was perhaps less traumatic than yours.”
Kevin stepped up, a thoughtful expression on his face as he casually played with something in his hands. Apparently he had overheard their conversation.
“Erin, if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will,” he said.
She was surprised that he had been paying attention. He usually walked around completely oblivious to everything but his own bizarre interior life. Even now, he was goofing around with whatever he was holding.
“Thank you. That’s really nice,” she said. A bonding moment, unexpected, but welcome.
“Kevin.” Abby’s voice was measured, strained. “What’s in your hand? Now Erin recognized the object—the grenade shape, the folded material in the center that looked like an air filter. It was the piece of equipment she had picked up at the Kenneth T. Higgins Institute to throw across the room when she stormed in to tell them that Abby’s upload to Reddit had gotten her fired. The object that Holtzmann and Abby had said would kill them all if she dropped it.
“What? This?” Kevin smiled and began tossing the thing back and forth between his hands like a tennis ball.
“Kevin, no!” Holtzmann shouted.
Abby joined in the panic. “Do not let it fall!”
Their fright was contagious. Realizing that he was in danger, Kevin started juggling it like it was a hot potato, bouncing it on his palms. No longer in control, he overcompensated with one hand, then the other, fighting to keep it in the air. He was on the verge of losing it for real.
“Just stop juggling and put it down!” Holtzmann bellowed.
Erin considered rushing him and attempting to scoop the gizmo out of his hands, but what if that only made things worse and he dropped it?
Kevin managed to slow the back and forth, and keeping his eyes locked on it the whole time, caught it in his cupped hands. He set the thing down on the table and hurried away, his face drawn and pale.
“Jesus Christ,” Abby said.
Everyone took a deep breath and hit reset. They slid out of the booth to stretch their legs and walk off the tension.
Patty pointed at something on a round table near the lobster tank and said, “Hey, what’s this?” She picked up the photo and showed it to them.
It was of Abby and Erin as geeky teenagers standing beside the poster describing an experiment. Clad in black turtlenecks, they glowed with happiness and excitement.
“Science fair!” Erin gasped.
Abby grinned. “I found it this morning.”
Patty turned the photo to look at it again. A smile spread across her face as she read aloud the title on the poster in the picture. “‘The Durable But Not Impenetrable Barrier!’ What does that mean?”
It meant that I had a friend, Erin thought.
15
It was senior year at C. W. Post High. Erin and Abby pushed an overloaded, liberated, Felpausch Market shopping cart through the teacher parking lot and onto the winding asphalt path that led through the little campus. It had a wonky front wheel that kept sticking and making them correct course. They circumnavigated the few puddles left over from a late spring rainstorm and headed for the tallest building on the grounds, the red-roofed gymnasium that had always reminded Erin of an outsized barn. Students with arms loaded with boxes were already entering through the open double doors. A paper banner strung over the entrance said: C. W. Post High School Science Fair.
Their senior guidance counselor, Mrs. Rice, had urged them to enter a project in the fair because it could help them nail down scholarships at the University of Michigan. Erin saw another side of it: simplifying their work for a lay audience was a way to organize and gain perspective on the gains and shortcomings of their research. In the year since she and Abby had met, they had accumulated a wealth of factual information and had assembled what they felt was a rational theoretical groundwork to account for spectral intrusions into this plane of existence.
Entering the cavernous building, they were met by Mr. Puccini, who stood just inside the doorway behind a little folding table, bow tie askew. He didn’t try to hide his frown when he saw them. As he handed Abby their location assignment, he glanced at the contents of the shopping cart, and through a forced smile said, “Good luck with that. I think you’ll find there’s some real tough competition this year.”
“Thanks for that information, Mr. Puccini,” Abby said brightly, then turned to Erin and gave her “the look,” which involved extending her tongue to its absolute limit, crossing then rolling her eyes. Erin had to choke back a giggle.
Their science fair project was largely incomprehensible to the Honors Physics teacher. Even though they tried to explain it to him twice, he got lost trying to follow the Lagrangian mechanics and gauge field theories that attempted to describe what they termed the “spectral ether”—the predicted medium through which spirits interact with our world. The second time they went through it with him even more slowly, but before they finished he threw up a hand and walked away, angry and red faced. Mr. Math-Macho Puccini didn’t like being upstaged by a couple of teenage girls.
“Let’s do check out the competition before we set up,” Abby said.
“Sure, why not.”
They pushed their cart down the middle aisle between two rows of long tables lined up on the basketball court. Students were busy assembling components of their projects, plugging in power cords, and sotto voce practicing scripted explanations for the judges.
The high points were: a three-foot-tall papier-mâché volcano complete with plastic palm trees and native huts—presumably prepped to erupt, it was somehow connected to a discussion on global warming; a multilevel, clear plastic maze stocked with glow-in-the-dark mice; chemical extractions of local plants
to make fabric dyes; and a science of refrigeration demonstration—which Erin thought bordered on cheating, since the student involved was the daughter of a local heating and air-conditioning contractor.
“This is strong competition?” she said.
“Why don’t you save time and strain, Gilbert,” Carl Lund said from the next table in line. “Push that junk straight to the Dumpster out back.”
Abby fake-laughed, but they both stared at his project as they rolled past.
He and his cohorts had constructed a pair of remote-controlled, robotic fighting machines. The combatants faced off on the tabletop. “Blade Face” featured parts scavenged from a five-and-a-half-inch power saw and had an extendable single claw hand, like the Terminator. The legend on the project poster said Blade Face seized hold of its opponent, pulled it close, and then gave it “the kiss of death.” Its opponent was “Señor Pain,” whose weaponry consisted of a hatchet wielded by a single arm swinging through 180 degrees of arc. According to the poster it could cock back and deliver twenty-five to thirty crushing blows per minute.
“Shit,” Erin said under her breath.
“Come on,” Abby told her. “Our spot’s near the end of the row.”
Erin began helping her unload the cart onto the empty table. She didn’t want to say it, but she was sure they were going to lose. Their exhibit consisted of a series of posters and drawings with titles like “Spectral Foam,” “Positive and Negative Ethereal Polarization,” “Proton Countermeasures,” and “Gauge Theory for Dummies.”
Written across the top of the biggest poster: “A significant coupling may well exist between spectral and Standard Model particles—a total of twelve gauge bosons: the photon, three weak bosons, and eight gluons.” The rest of the surface was covered with line after line of equations describing Lagrangian mechanics.
Reading the expression on Erin’s face, Abby said, “It’ll be okay. Don’t worry, we’ve got our secret weapon.” She took a boom box from the bottom of the shopping cart. “Spooky ghost sounds!”
Abby was so excited she was practically jumping up and down. Erin couldn’t help but crack a smile. The cassette tape in the machine was a copy they’d made of sounds supposedly recorded at the sites of documented ghost appearances. Kind of like The Blair Witch Project, a film they had memorized, only without the video.