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Stacy was compulsively running her fingers through her hair. She looked across at Deirdre, sitting perched on the kitchen bench chewing on her nails. Gone was any hint of the person good in a crisis, but Stacy was still encouraged. She cleared her throat.
‘You were amazing,’ she said. Deirdre gave her a blank look. ‘With Marcia. You kept your cool.’
Deirdre just blinked at her, then looked down at the floor, and Stacy wanted to cry. Deirdre wouldn’t talk to her anymore. Would barely touch her. That’s why it was so important that Deirdre be with them on this job. Stacy had to convince her the afterlife was real. Swallowing, she raked her hands through her hair again, hating the way they were shaking.
‘I guess we should make some dinner,’ she said on a sigh.
‘Why do we have to do it?’
Stacy shrugged. ‘Because the guys are busy, and we have to eat?’
Deirdre hopped down from her perch and yanked open the fridge. ‘Wish we could order in. Is there a pizza place or KFC in that piddly town down the road?’
‘I don’t know. A KFC, I think.’
‘Good. Gimme some money and I’ll go get a couple buckets of chicken.’
‘You know I can’t eat that stuff, Deirdre.’ Stacy sank onto one of the chairs and barely resisted putting her head in her hands. She wondered if she was up for this job after all. Straightening, she sucked in a deep lungful of air. Yes, she could do it. It was important. What the Ghost Crew did was important – proving the after-life, and now, proving that the human mind was capable of more than anyone believed. If there was no mystery to life, and no life after death, then what was there for her? A slow, seeping decomposition after the cancer had had its fill?
‘I’ll get you some coleslaw. Come on, Stacy, I didn’t come here to cook. Maybe we can work out a roster or something, now that Marcia isn’t here, but that’s tomorrow.’ She waggled her fingers in front of Stacy’s face.
There was no point arguing. ‘In my wallet upstairs,’ she said and Deirdre bounded from the room. Now that there was no one to watch her, she rested her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, determined not to give in to the sneaky urge to tears.
‘Are you all right? I can come back later, if I’m disturbing you.’
It was the professor, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath all the way across the big kitchen. She shook her head. ‘It’s just been a long day, that’s all.’
He gave her a grave nod, and made his way too deliberately across the room, to sit at the table, not quite opposite her. She looked at him and wondered what his story was. Something seedy, she guessed now, noticing again the shiny knees in his trousers. She bet, if he pulled his sleeves down from where they were folded to his elbows, the cuffs would be frayed. If he was really a professor, he was one without a position. Perhaps the drinking had something to do with that. He was trying hard not to look drunk, but his eyes were unfocused and bloodshot.
‘What do you think’s going on?’ she asked, not hoping for much from him. In fact, right now, all she wanted to do was to go upstairs and stretch out on the bed, preferably with Deirdre beside her. She was tired, bone tired. Touching the pill bottle in her pocket, she winced. Not supposed to be carrying them about. But it was time to take another of the little white tablets. She took her hand away. She’d wait.
James was shaking his head, slowly from side to side. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and Stacy saw something in his eyes that made her frown.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, her voice unintentionally sharp.
An apologetic grin creased the older man’s face. ‘I seem to have been suffering under an illusion when I came here.’
She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, that I was under the impression, that the show was mostly a lot of clever editing and special effects.’ He licked his lips. ‘Entertainment, my dear. All just for entertainment. Not, ah, real at all.’
Stacy’s mind went back to the dark, flitting figure on the film Jeremy had shown them, and she shivered, a frisson of excitement going through her. ‘That’s what it usually is,’ she said. Cleared her throat. ‘We get little things – lights switching on and off, sometimes something will seem to move, one of us will claim we felt something.’ She blinked. ‘But you’re right, of course, it’s entertainment. Reality TV, just a bit of fun on the telly.’
‘Except this time.’
Stacy had to suppress the thrill those words gave her. Her head swirled with everything that happened just this day. She wanted confirmation. ‘Is it real?’
The professor’s hands were trembling, and she watched him grope out with one, as though searching for a glass, then realise what he was doing, and hide his hands in his lap. He coughed. ‘Psychopomps,’ he said.
‘What are they?’
‘Guides, to accompany the newly dead from this world to the next.’
She didn’t understand. There’d been a lot of research she’d set herself in the course of working with The Ghost Crew, but she’d never come across these psychopomps before. But it sounded good. There wouldn’t be psychopomps if there wasn’t an after-life.
‘And they’re birds?’
‘A variety of creatures. Birds, dogs, deer. Some shamans perform the same function.’
‘What function, though? Exactly? Why are they here?’
The drunk professor shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘How much do we know about the history of this house?’
‘It’s supposed to be clear. Darryl and I agreed before in planning that we were going to use somewhere clear for this experiment. I never heard about this magic stuff until he told us the other morning.’ Had that been only yesterday? How long had they been here now? Her fingers twitched against the fabric of her pocket again.
‘I think the answer is around here somewhere. In the house.’ He stared with bleary eyes around the room. ‘Or in the temple.’ His gaze fastened on hers. ‘There’s more going on here than we know.’
They stayed like that for a long moment, staring at each other, Stacy biting at her lip, pain and excitement burning inside her. Then the kitchen door banged, and Martin barged in.
‘We’re all set,’ he said, smelling of tart perspiration and red bull. Stacy’s sense of smell was heightened since the cancer. She didn’t know why.
‘All set for what?’ she asked, forgetting.
‘Ah, the séance, of course. It’s still going ahead, right? I mean, personally, I think it’s more important than ever.’
‘As far as I know, why?’ she asked, wondering why he’d think it might not be. She shot a glance at the professor. Maybe he’d said something. He was obviously scared out of his wits. She felt a moment’s contempt for the old drunk, and wondered why Darryl had even asked him to come along on the show. They’d never needed anyone else before. Still, she allowed – they wouldn’t know about the psychopomp thing, if it hadn’t been for the old man. And the psychopomps sounded like a very good thing.
‘Because something is going on here!’ Martin said, shaking his head with exaggerated emphasis and interrupting her thoughts. ‘The atmosphere here is perfect for our experiment. Everything we’ve done so far has been amplified a hundred-fold.’ He leaned forward over the table. ‘I reckon, if we go ahead, we could be talking about full body manifestations.’ He blinked at her from behind his glasses, then straightened. ‘Here’s our opportunity to make history. I’m not going to let you ruin it now.’
‘What?’ Stacy said.
‘Ruin it. I won’t let you ruin it. I can tell you’re having second thoughts. You’re thinking we should pack up and go home, but I’m telling you that’s the last thing we should do. Totally, absolutely the last thing we should do.’
‘Martin – I’m not having second thoughts, except, there’s room for a bit of caution, right? Did you see what happened to Marcia? That thing pushed her.’ She’d tried not to think about that bit.
He was shaking his head again, violently this time. ‘We don’t know that. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s almost impossible that it should have pushed her.’ He held up his hands to tick off his points. ‘For starters, we haven’t manifested it strongly enough yet. It’s just a smudge on some film – which is totally amazing, but the next stage is the full manifestation, like I said. It’s all set perfectly for us. The behaviour of the birds tells us that this is the perfect time and place for our experiment. It’s already having an effect.’
Stacy held up her own hand. ‘It’s all right Martin,’ she said. ‘We already decided we’d stay and go ahead, you don’t have to convince me all over again.’
He blinked and his hands fell down to his sides. ‘You don’t want to give it all up?’
‘No. And it’s not even my call. That would belong to Darryl.’ She glanced at the professor, then looked back at Martin. ‘Besides. I’m as keen as you to go through with our experiment. We need to prove the afterlife exists.’
The professor hummed a moment. ‘Technically, the only thing this experiment would prove, is that the human mind is a powerful thing.’
Stacy shook her head. ‘No, it’s one step along to proving there’s a next world. That life after death is real.’ She needed it to be real and so she smiled at Martin. ‘Everything’s ready, you said?’ He nodded. ‘Good. Deirdre will be back shortly with dinner, and then we can get started.’ She looked at Martin in satisfaction, ignoring the weight of the professor’s drunk and frightened gaze.