(44) Dead Like A River

We were seated at the table, holding hands.

Top sat at the head of the table, his back to the fireplace. He held the hand of Moira, on his right, and the hand of Neal, on his left. I sat directly across from Neal. On my left was Moira; on my right, at the end of the table opposite Top, was Joe, whose hot damp hand I held gingerly, reluctantly. Moira's was squeezing mine, but Joe's was like a trapped bird too frightened to move.

Next to Neal sat Roberta, holding his hand and her son's with the thrilled look of a chorus-line dancer. Everyone else had either a tense or a bemused expression, excepting Top, but Roberta seemed completely out of touch with what the rest of us were feeling. She was enjoying this. She gave no sign of concern over what sort of upheavals might transpire, as though she had no expectations of anything out of the ordinary run of seances. Top, as usual, exuded a serene confidence.

It was Neal who looked bemused, maybe because of my wary expression, a mix of tenseness and a positive skepticism; not doubting the likely arrival of an apparition, but of what Top intended for it.

Joe was staring at Top with something akin to adoration. In his view, I supposed, Top was a possible savior, his one best hope of bringing out what was struggling to expose itself outside of him. He was sweating. I suspected that Top had communicated with him through a call or a text, unbeknown to us, but my suspicion didn't carry much weight. Top had other and more effective ways of communicating.

I recalled the telegnosis he had used on Moira, Neal, and me, influencing our line of thought. He could have done the same with Joe, and likely did. But Roberta, I felt, by the look of her, had not been touched by either Top or Neal. I was thinking that Top wanted her mind to be innocent of all motives, to be at ease and receptive.

I would look occasionally at Moira out of the corner of my eye. For the most part she stared at the table, its surface softly colored by the candlelight, but would flick glances at each of us; mostly at Roberta. I never once saw Roberta look at her, but she frequently smiled at Joe, apparently unconcerned about her son's fragile hold on a turmoil of emotions.

Top began by intoning "Alicia Grimes," in a lilting repetition, gazing at Neal as he did so. This seemed to irritate Neal. He shifted his shoulders and said to Top, "She fears me. She isn't coming."

I presumed this to be a case of reverse psychology; taunting the spirit as a means of drawing it out into the open.

Though Roberta's smile remained, her eyes were puzzled, but pleasantly. She leaned a little away from Neal and looked at him, awaiting an explanation.

But it was Top who spoke. "Alicia is here, and we will all see her in a moment. Fear you? No she hates you."

"We fear what we hate," Neal said, "and hate what we fear. She is here, but will not manifest. All of her residual energy is being expressed through fear. Or hate, if you wish."

Top leaned back and suppressed a chuckle. "Do you feel the temperature in the room beginning to drop? She is drawing on the energy in the air. Like that candle flame consuming oxygen, she is breathing into her essence that mysterious thing that we do not know the nature of. Energy. Or should I say mind? There is no difference between the two, they are the same. But what is it, besides the names we have given it?"

I was not surprised by Top's philosophical lecture. He never lost an opportunity to philosophize.

We were attuned to the room's temperature, anxious to detect a cooling trend. I heard Roberta gasp "Ah," and saw that her face was in a zone that was neither a smile nor a look of anxiety, but of a dawning confusion that took all the enjoyment out of her. Moira's hand trembled. Joe's was almost burning with a slimy heat. Behind Top's chair a vague white blur was forming. Neal stared at it steadily, his bemused look hardening into one of uncertainty and intense curiosity. Top had his eyes closed. He was smiling grimly.

I could tell that Moira, Joe, and Roberta were sensing something that I could not; the identity of the gradually manifesting spirit. There remained for me the question of cause, as to whether this was a ghost of some type or an extension of Top's consciousness. In either case the identity of the apparition was a true one. This was a spirit of a person whom Top knew, and it didn't much matter whether it was a ghost of the dead or of a living memory, or evaluation, in Top's mind.

As its facial features came into an adequate clarity, transparent and colorless, I thought at first that this was an image of Alicia. Then I noticed that Roberta was truly frightened. Moira, like Top, had her eyes closed, but unlike him she was hunkered against me and shivering. Joe's hand was pulling away from mine, but I gripped it tightly, knowing that it would not be in his best interests, nor Moira's, to let him break the circle.  I glanced at Neal's grimness that matched Top's, then up at the apparition.

The face had changed to that of a man's, unfamiliar to me. It was clearly staring at Roberta.

She started to say something, her lips trembling, but the face changed again as Moira groaned at me, "Edgar," and it became utterly demonic. I knew then that the key to understanding all this was not Moira and Roberta, but Roberta and her husband.