DISSOLVE.
“It is amusing to consider,” he says, “that the event which was, in a very real sense, the birth of parapsychology (The Fox Sisters) may have been, after all, nothing more nor less than a case study in survival.”
DISSOLVE.
“It is terribly significant,” he says, “that the rising sense of crisis and alienation in the world is occurring simultaneously with the ecological destruction of our planet. Man being an organism-environment, would he not suffer with the damage being wrought upon that larger organism-environment of which he is an integral part?”
DISSOLVE.
“I see a future using psi; a future I hope you live to see, Robert,” he says. “Scientific research aided by psychic means. Law enforcement agencies solving crimes and locating missing persons through psi. Historians and archeologists using psi to aid their research into historic figures and cultures. Psychiatry aided by psychic means to help understand the roots of neurotic and psychotic behavior. Disaster prediction agencies run by psychic means forecasting accidents, earthquakes, unexpected events.”
DISSOLVE.
“In spite of everything we’ve done,” he says regretfully, “forty-nine percent of America’s elite scientists regards psi as only ‘a remote possibility’, seven percent as an ‘impossibility’. And the twenty-nine percent sympathetic to it cite ‘personal experience’ as their reason.”
DISSOLVE. Cathy is back now, Carol awake. Peter very weak now.
“Dr. Elmer Green,” he says, “theorizes that there is a field of mind surrounding the earth similar to the field of gravity and magnetism. That awareness of this field can be extended through meditation, yoga, hypnosis, psychedelic drugs…”
His voice slows down and stops. He chuckles feebly. “Enough of lecturing,” he says. “I have proclaimed my final proclamation.”
Cathy is crying now. She asks Peter’s forgiveness for her “cold and dreadful” treatment of him since their return from England.
Peter strokes her cheek tenderly. “My dear, my dear,” he says, “You are an honest human being doing what you believe in. More cannot be asked.”
He smiles at her. “Give me a kiss now,” he says.
Her tears fall on his face as she does. “It’s a kiss I want, not a bath,” he tells her, smiling.
Robert leans over impulsively and kisses Peter on the cheek. Peter whispers, “Give me a trivia question, quickly.”
Robert’s mind goes blank. Then, impulsively, he asks, “How does a jewel thief know which pearls are worth stealing?”
Peter nods. “All right,” he mumbles.
Moments later, he looks alarmed and reaches for Carol. “My love,” he says, “I’m so sorry!”
He dies in her sobbing embrace.
Peter’s funeral. Unlike the other men attending, Robert wears a light-colored suit. He doesn’t want to wear black for Peter; somehow, it seems wrong. It is June 17.
Carol appears to be bearing up; quiet and sad but not ill. Her brother has arrived from London to be with her.
Cathy gives the eulogy, recounting her years with Peter. The casket is closed. Following the ceremony, it will be flown to England for interment in a family plot in Cambridge.
Robert, staring at the casket, has a fantasy. The lid pushed up by Peter, his arm reaches out, his finger pointing at a part of the casket, his voice inquiring hollowly, “What’s this called?”
Robert smiles at the thought, lowering his head so no one will see. A sudden indrawn breath and when he lifts his head again, his eyes glisten with tears.
When the service is over, Robert and Cathy invite Carol and her brother out for something to eat but Carol says they have other plans. Robert and Cathy drive home instead.
En route, Cathy speaks again of her guilt about the way she spoke to Peter regarding his survival study. Especially since she realizes now that his motivation was a sense of his own impending death.
“That’s all it amounted to, anh?” Robert says, unable to disguise his unfavorable reaction to her observation.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
He feels impelled to pass on to her what Peter told him about his need for “something more”, some kind of “connective tissue” between the various phenomena of psi. “Some kind of link.”
“We all hope for that, Rob,” she says.
He starts to say more, then restrains himself. What good would be served by telling her that Peter had also said that her approach to psi was losing its appeal to him too?
Instead, he puts his hand on hers as they drive to Connecticut. At one point, he looks over and sees tears running down her cheeks.
“I’m going to miss him so,” she murmurs.
Robert’s association with ESPA ends abruptly.
It happens at the Psi Workshop over the July 4th weekend.
This is a highly technical gathering, intended, Cathy tells him, to make it clear that ESPA is devoted to providing explanations for psi which are unassailable by science.
This being the keynote of her approach to psi, she is very active in the Workshop.
Robert is very bored.
He watches as she demonstrates the use of a new electronic random target generator designed to test precognition and clairvoyance.
“The machine has four stable internal states,” she tells the audience. “A million pulse-per-second oscillator sends pulses to an electronic counter which passes through each of its states two hundred and fifty thousand times per second.”
Robert conceals a yawn behind his hand.
CUT TO a man theorizing the operational mode of psychometry, Robert and Cathy listening.
“Assume that each individual radiates a unique wave field which acts as a ‘carrier’ wave for all information relevant to that individual,” the man says. “Objects in contact with this field absorb the radiation and become a link to the carrier field. Psychics holding the object tune in to this field and become linked with it.”
Robert sighs. Cathy looks at him. He manages a smile.
CUT TO a roundtable discussion, Robert watching Cathy as she says, “Materialism does not deny the existence of consciousness. It merely tries to explain it in physical terms. Slow but sure progress is being made in brain research in understanding the physical basis of the mind. When we were in Russia –”
Robert tunes out. He is back in London, hearing his Aunt Myra tell him, “Your father has been pestering me unmercifully. He insists you take over his ‘dig’ whatever that may be. He says it’s most urgent, it will answer all questions.”
CLOSE ON Robert’s face as he stares into his remembrance, his aunt’s voice repeating in his mind, “—it will answer all questions.”
“What’s the matter, Rob?” Cathy asks him at lunch.
He smiles. “Nothing, sweetheart.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Oh—” he gestures vaguely. “The usual. The feeling that I should be somewhere else.”
“Arizona?” she asks, smiling faintly.
This time he isn’t quick with a reply. “I don’t know,” he says, surprising her.
She says she’s sorry he isn’t enjoying the Workshop as much as she is.
Maybe Elmo’s speech will give him a few laughs.
It turns out to be distinctly otherwise.
To the best of his observation, Stafford tells the audience, there is no justification from physics for the existence of psi.
Everyone looks at him in startlement.
Regarding ESPA’s testing procedures, Stafford goes on, the results of their studies in distance perception, telepathy and precognition seem “most likely” due to coincidence. Further, there is a dependence, by ESPA, on “shaky” statistical analysis. Arguments put forward by ESPA for the feasibility of these phenomena, moreover, are based on “distortions” or the writings of physicists as well as “complete ignorance” of relevant and important areas of physics.
“In brief,” says Stafford, “all phenomena observed by ESP
A during my period of witnessing were either happenings by sheer chance or due to natural causes. An inability to recognize the role chance or nature can play has led ESPA to give unwarranted importance to these events. When examined with care, the so-called evidence for these phenomena collapse to nothing.
“I have searched for the supernatural and not found it. In the main, all I have encountered is poor experimentation, shoddy theory and human gullibility. All claimed paranormal phenomena are in total contradiction to established science.”
He smiles at the audience.
“The mystery of existence is not to be gained by searching for strange paranormal powers possessed by humans,” he says. “Such powers could only operate by means of electromagnetic action and we have established beyond question that there are no abnormal electromagnetic signals during so-called paranormal events.”
By now, Robert is so angry his face is like stone as he hears Stafford finish by saying, “On the evidence presented, therefore, I am here to state, unequivocally, that the paranormal is completely normal. ESP is dead.”
Applause from the back. The audience turns as Stafford walks to the rear of the room and joins a smiling Westheimer. The two depart together.
“That son of a bitch,” says Robert, incredulously. “It was a set-up right from the start!”
Easton takes the microphone, his expression grave.
“In the final analysis,” he says, “what can be said in answer to accusations of naïveté, delusion and incompetence in our work?”
He removes a slip of paper from his billfold and unfolds it. “This statement was made by Sir William Crookes around the turn of the century,” he says. He reads it aloud.
“Will not my critics give me credit for some amount of common sense? Do they not imagine that the obvious precautions which occur to them as soon as they sit down to pick holes in my experiments have occurred to me also in the course of my prolonged and patient investigation?”
He folds the slip of paper and returns it to his billfold. “I propose that we continue,” he says.
“So much for the intent of your Workshop,” Robert says as they drive home that afternoon. “Unassailable by science, my foot.”
“The Workshop isn’t going to die because of Stafford,” she responds.
“Stay tuned for a full report on Westheimer’s program tonight,” Robert says.
“It was disappointing, I admit,” she says.
“Disappointing?” he says. “Is that all it made you feel—disappointment? He had a knife blade poised to plunge in ESPA’s back from the moment he arrived with Dirty Donald.”
“Perhaps he did,” she says. Still, her major disappointment is that a physicist of Stafford’s reputation is turning his back on psi. “We need them,” she says.
This makes Robert bristle and they get into an argument the gist of which is Cathy’s adamant refusal to go past a certain point in psi, her insistence on a strict materialistic explanation for every phenomenon in the field.
“I’m sorry, but that is the explanation,” Cathy says.
“No,” he tells her. She’s wrong. And if that’s where ESPA draws the line, he’s out of ESPA.
“Where are you going, Rob?” she asks. “What’s on the other side of the line? Spirit messages?”
He’s quiet for a few moments before he says, “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She doesn’t sound it.
“I believe there’s more,” he tells her. “And I’m going to find it. Tests and lab procedures aren’t enough for me anymore. I want to know more.”
“Like what?” she asks, irritably.
“Like where we came from and how we got here,” he says.
She looks at him for a few moments, then gazes somberly through the windshield. He’s glad she doesn’t ask him to explain what he just said.
He has no idea whatever why he said it.
Robert decides to discontinue his association with ESPA and remains at home while Cathy continues working there, commuting to Manhattan by train; Robert drives her to the station each morning, picks her up each afternoon. Their relationship is becoming strained and Robert feels increasing guilt about it. He talked her into coming to the United States. Now he is, in a sense, leaving her high and dry.
Nonetheless, he is unable to return to ESPA. He attempts to start work on a book about their trip to Russia but loses interest quickly.
He visits Ann and winds up talking about it with her. He doesn’t know what to do, he tells her. If he accepts the will in order to read the journal, he is committing himself to Arizona and he isn’t sure that, in spite of what he feels, it might not be a sidetrack that would throw him off completely.
With her limited experience but, now, strong conviction about ESP, she can only suggest that he be true to his feelings. He hugs and kisses her and thanks her for the good advice.
The night of the day he sees her, he has either an OOBE or a dream, he isn’t certain which; it partakes of both.
He finds himself in the Arizona desert, walking across moonlit sands toward a distant temple wall.
Standing in front of the wall is his father.
Smiling.
Robert contacts Williker and tells him that he’s made up his mind; he’ll accept the terms of his father’s will.
He drives into the city and meets the lawyer, gets a packet of papers and discovers, to his stunned surprise, that part of the will includes ownership of the house in Flatbush. His father never sold it.
The journal is in a safety deposit box. The lawyer will send it to Robert in a few days.
Leaving Williker’s office, Robert goes to a phone booth and calls Ruth. Did she know that their father had never sold the Brooklyn house?
For the first time Robert can recall, there is a sound of alarm in Ruth’s voice as she tells him that she didn’t know that; she always thought they rented it.
Robert must not go there, she adds. He must sell the house immediately, using the money for the Arizona dig if that is what he means to do; though she can think of many “more spiritual” uses for the money.
“But don’t go into the house,” she says. “It can only do you harm.”
Struck by the urgency in her voice, Robert talks it over with Cathy at lunch; he has called her at ESPA.
Her response is not one of involvement with the house situation.
“You’re going to Arizona?” she asks.
“Just long enough to see if there is any reason for him to be there”, he answers. He tells her of the dream (or OOBE) he had the previous night. She nods but her expression remains one of distress.
“It won’t be that long,” he tells her. “It may be over in a few days.”
She is not convinced and their parting is a tense one.
He sits alone in the restaurant for a while, then, on impulse, checks a Brooklyn yellow page directory and picks out a realty office in the general vicinity of the house.
Calling them, he speaks to a lady realtor and tells her that he owns a house and wants to sell it.
She tells him that she’d like to look at it. He hesitates, then says he’ll show it to her.
“How about this afternoon?” she asks.
It is raining as he parks in front of the house.
Robert draws in ragged breath. “Wouldn’t you know it?” he says, nodding grimly.
He almost leaves, starting the motor again, muttering, “Forget it.”
Something stops him. “This is ridiculous,” he tells himself. He’s going to show the house to the realtor, period.
He removes the door key from its envelope and leaves his car. He gets a little wet propping open the gate, then hurries to the front porch and stands there waiting, looking at his wristwatch.
The lady realtor is not on time. Robert waits some more, then, impulsively, unlocks the front door and pushes it open.
The door thuds against the wall inside. He looks in. “No ghosts, please,” he mumbles
.
The front hall is shadowy because of the overcast sky. Robert’s breath labors. He wants to go in. He doesn’t want to go in.
Curiosity gets the better of him. Quickly, his eyes avoiding the staircase, he enters and walks into the living room.
He shudders. It is like the dream become reality. The rain on the windows. The white curtains. The gloomy room. Only one thing missing. The music.
A truly eerie sequence as he walks through his old house. He has not been there for over thirty years yet it all seems familiar to him, every furnishing as he remembers it.
Each place he looks at reminds him of the past and we hear ghostlike sounds of voices, movements, laughter, the clink of dishes, the sound of a piano being played—sounds recalled from his childhood as he moves through the living room, the dining-family room, the kitchen.
He opens the cellar door in the kitchen and peers down into the black depths.
“No way,” he mutters, shivering as he closes the door.
He returns to the front hall. The lady realtor has still not arrived. He fills his chest with air; stands immobile. Then he turns and looks up at the head of the stairs.
Only shadows there. He blinks and sighs with relief. “If she’d been standing there—” he says. He swallows dryly.
He waits again. “Come on, come on,” he says.
The woman doesn’t come. Robert takes in heavy breaths again, braces himself.
Then he walks determinedly up the steps, covered with chills as he ascends, staring fixedly at the spot where his screaming mother had stood in his recurring dream, waiting to pounce on him.
He reaches the spot and stands there. Closes his eyes. “All right,” he says. He waits, opening himself to whatever may happen.
Nothing does. Just the silence of the gloomy house broken only by the faint spatter of rain on roof and windows.
He opens his eyes and looks down the hallway at the door to his mother’s room.
It stands ajar.
He is motionless. Does he dare? Breath shakes in him.