Unwilling to stay in the room, the test subject poked his way into the hallway; the voice of a confident speaker drew him out of his quandary and toward a half open door. Through it, a small group of people were spied staring attentively at a woman in a peach tracksuit, who read from a prepared statement. There were enough folding chairs (the unpadded variety) for five individuals, although only four were in attendance. An elderly couple sat together, and were joined by two gentlemen: One, fretting over cat hair on his pants leg, wore a scuffing nylon windbreaker, while the other younger person looked like he was there to write an article for a school newspaper. These were presumably fellow lab rats, although they did not appear representative of any obvious demographic.
The beaming presenter explained the object of the assembly in a British adventure show accent. “It is your task to meditate on this target, visualize the coordinates given you, and jot down impressions you form.”
Lucien did not know to what target the woman referred, and surveyed the wall behind her speculatively, assuming she referred to a dark patch of plaster. It looked like a place where a microwave oven may have sparked, caught fire, and left a scotched mark.
The young man blurted, “I see The Star of Bethlehem.”
The woman reminded him. “We have not yet begun the remote viewing. Besides, the target is only something to meditate on. It is not to remind you of something similar.”
“But it looks like The Star of Bethlehem,” he insisted.
“Is that a tiny person under it?” the nervous man next to him quizzed (buying into the premise of a star). “Or is that someone very far away on an orbiting planet?”
“You two are prejudicing the others,” complained the presenter.
The older gentleman, styling a coiffure and mohair sweater, leaned into his own misperception. “I was told we would be investigating ghosts, not sitting in a utility closet staring at wall stains.”
“Ghosts?” grunted the man clad in nylon.
“Please be quiet!” demanded the woman.
The senior man, sidestepping the directive, pointed at his dowdy wife. “She has seen a ghost. The ghost of my first wife—in a pink housecoat in our master bedroom.”
“Please!” insisted the presenter. “This is an experiment in telepathy, not apparitions! I am going to place you in separate rooms!”
The participants squirmed in their chairs, but submitted to her request to quiet.
The interloper in the doorway seized the confusion to study the unremarkable dark spot on the wall. This was a hole and not discoloration. It was arguably made with an auger and purposefully placed. A peering pupil and iris, belonging to someone sporting broad white lapels, formed within its opening. Was this a researcher documenting the reactions of these test subjects?
In his discomposure, Lucien failed to notice how the presenter’s unwelcoming gaze fell on him. He fled, yet was thwarted in the completion of his escape on meeting with a bolted stairwell door. The absconder was compelled to pass the same remote viewing room in pursuit of another exit, yet was surprised to find the contentious ‘seers’ disbanded. They had not passed him in traffic.
Stepping around their chairs, he crept up to the wall and let his eye hover warily over the curious hole. His line of sight dropped like a plumb line into a cavern, where curtains, the color of coagulated blood, lined a narrow corridor on the other side of the wall. An overhead light globe was unseen from this vantage. It presumably swayed from a cord over the shimmering velour. Shadows, reacting to it, enlarged and shrank in the fabric folds, and suggested to the viewer impatient villains waiting to leap from the wings. This eerie effect likely owed to the spying researcher quitting his station too hurriedly and bumping his head on the low hanging fixture.
A section of curtain on one side of this cordoned passageway thrust forward abruptly. The observer waited to discover its logic, and directly the curtain moved again, only this time it was clinched where a small piece of it appeared tied in a bunch. This wad was yanked, as by a length of seamstress thread, and comically resembled a scarf snake. No thread was seen to traverse the corridor, and by a creeping process the wad came to bear the likeness—that is to say, the outline—of a human finger inside it. The digit at first wiggled in its small noose, but then turned to poking the air in front of it with emphasis, connecting vaguely (and with disapproval) to the notion of a voyeur’s eye. The gesturer in the curtain then convulsed. This agony, whether real or staged, persisted until the drapery resumed its natural proportions and the pantomime was ended.
A door along the wall bearing the peephole was unlocked, and the corridor it presented ran parallel to the one showcased. This area was much darker, and instantly produced another lab-coated individual clutching a clipboard. A startled Lucien could not say if this was the technician of his acquaintance due to his inability to adapt rapidly to an unlit environment. Regardless, his way was not barred.
“You must be the exterminator,” the welcomer declared, and waved the trespasser through.
Assuming the appearance of purpose, Lucien sauntered in the direction indicated, allowing the associate to slip out the door and close it behind him.
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.