Hologram: A Haunting Read online

  A closet was positioned at the top, its door now open. It appeared empty, but she dared not step into its void.

  She moved to the right, in the direction of the apartment’s four rooms. The bathroom—on her left—came first. She craned her neck, taking in the white of the walls and old porcelain fixtures that shone fuzzily through the gloom. Much of the plaster lay in heaps on the floor, victimized by frozen pipes of past years.

  Another few steps brought her down the hall to the bedroom—on the right. From the hall she could see that it was small and empty. She could make out a few hangers and cellophane garment bags that littered the floor near the closet.

  Meg continued on. The dining room was next. She turned left and entered it. A brass or pewter chandelier glinted darkly. She dared not touch the wall switch.

  She passed quickly through the room to where she knew a tiny galley kitchen was situated. She was at the rear of the structure now where a small window looked down into the alley. She peered out. Nothing below was visible.

  Even in the darkness, everything in the coach house seemed as it was when Mrs. Shaw had taken them through it. Nothing unusual, nothing out of place.

  Meg chuckled to herself. Fine detective she was. She had thought that because little Claude had died on these premises she would find here the source of energy that had been disturbing their lives. It was not to be. The energy must be in the main house.

  So much for my impulse voice!

  It was then that she smelled it. Dead flowers—decaying violets—sickeningly sweet and rotten. Strong enough to gag her. It came on a cold breeze as if someone had passed nearby.

  Meg felt blood rushing to her face, felt it pulsing at her temples. An icy hand seemed to grasp at her heart—the whole room grew suddenly cold. She could see her breath.

  Meg wanted to run in the direction she had come, but her feet wouldn’t move.

  She listened.

  There was only one room left to investigate—the living room.

  Amazed—and appalled—she found herself moving in that direction. As if she had no will of her own.

  She was in the hallway before she knew it. A right turn would provide an escape route. Her mind said right, but her feet moved left. Like in her dreams, she was not in control. Just a few steps would bring her into the living room.

  She moved as if in slow motion. The small bit of living room in her sight line revealed nothing. But a faint glow seemed to emanate from the room’s interior.

  The other smell assaulted her now. The smell of ash, human ash.

  Again, she thought of retreat. She wanted to run. But again her feet carried her forward—and all at once she was standing in the living room, her heart pumping like a puppy’s, her face drained of blood.

  There in front of the nonfunctional arts and crafts fireplace stood two figures, staring at Meg as if they had been waiting a very long time for her to come calling, yet certain that she would come to them.

  Meg’s first thought was that these were two real persons. How had two people come to be standing in this abandoned and locked building? She couldn’t imagine. They were that real.

  These were not spirits. Nothing filmy or fuzzy about them. Were they ghosts? No author of ghost stories had ever offered up figures like these. Not Henry James. Not Stephen King. They defied the stereotype. Meg was certain that if she conjured up the nerve to go over and touch them, she would find them made of matter.

  Yet they seemed so still. Like statues and expressionless. She looked for the lift of the chests, the flare of nostrils, for surely they must be breathing. But there was no lift, no flare, no sound of breath in the room that—aside from the thump of her heart—was silent as a crypt.

  It wasn’t air that was key to their existence, she finally realized. And perhaps this was their crypt. These were not living people. She shivered at the cold that had enveloped her, the fear that suffused her.

  When had the boy’s expression changed? He was smiling now. Or had he been smiling when she entered? She wasn’t certain. The smile was simple and genuine, yet immeasurably sad. Take away the sadness and he was the image of the picture she had found in the Calumet Room. And he was the boy who had chased Rex up the stairs and out onto the balcony. He was Claude Reichart.

  Yes, he seemed three-dimensional, flesh and blood, but as Meg studied him, she became aware of a facet that defied sense. A subtle luminescence pulsed and glowed about him, a kind of electricity that perhaps was his life—at least in the manner it was being manifested to her.

  His smile was reaching out, warming Meg, taking her in like a harbor welcomes a ship long at sea. Her eyes became helplessly transfixed by his gaze. His were the eyes of emeralds.

  Suddenly, she felt a rush of energy, an electrical charge within herself—starting in her feet—moving through her legs—streaming hotly upward through her body. This supersensible energy tore through her like a cyclone until she felt herself being carried with it—out of and away from her own body—and then toward and into the boy.

  Meg had never taken any kind of hallucinatory drug, yet she was able to think to herself now—as this was happening—that this is what the experience of LSD must be like.

  She felt at one with herself, with the boy, with the universe.

  She was not merely feeling empathy for the boy. She was a part of him. His sense of sadness was all-pervasive, and it entered every area of her consciousness. She felt his tragedy, the tragedy of a life cut short in its prime, the tragedy of a talent never to be realized.

  Then she was falling, spiraling deeper into what must be the core of the boy. The experience reminded her of the Flying Turns, a God-forsaken amusement ride that had made her very ill as a child.

  There was no vertigo now, strangely, as she plunged into the space the boy inhabited. Darkness narrowed all about her as if she were enclosed in a sarcophagus. Then colored lights streamed past her at an astonishing speed—but it was she moving, not the lights. She knew that she had moved out of the boy’s core, into a greater, wider expanse.

  But the sadness that had been the boy’s did not diminish. Conversely, it increased here, magnified many more times than the boy’s. She came to feel—and she knew this instinctively—the sadness of every person who had died young, everyone who had died with his songs unsung, lives unlived.

  The thought that this could only reflect the holotropic universe that Krista Peterhof had described, as well as Jung’s positing of a collective unconscious, entered her own consciousness in a nanosecond.

  Meg had never felt such sadness, such despair. She endured it for what seemed an eternity. When she felt she could take it no longer, that very thought seemed to empower her, and she realized she held the secret of withdrawal. Her mind called forth the energy, and it streamed—through her feet and legs—through her body—propelling her consciousness past prisms of light—through the tunnel of darkness—into and out of the boy’s luminescent pulse—and into her own physicality.

  She looked at little Claude. No speech was needed between them. Instead, an electrical current—a mental telepathy—left nothing unsaid, nothing misunderstood.

  She understood his pain, suffered with him, consoled him. He knew that she comprehended his sadness. His smile, not without sadness, had widened slightly, again the change happening without her seeing it. Such was movement in their world.

  An innate sense of accomplishment, of inner peace, descended on Meg like a golden nimbus. She became flushed with pride that she had been able to abate the child’s pain. She had communicated to him that he was to let go of the past and give himself over to what was to come.

  This is what has driven me here—to this house, to these souls. Meg believed that the validation of their pain would make it possible for them to make the full crossing to the other side, to lift them to what Krista had calle
d the higher level of the astral sphere. No more clinging to a tragic past—or the physical world.

  Meg became aware that the woman was standing closer to the boy now. Again, she had seen no movement. It was Claude’s mother, of course—Alicia Reichart. She was dressed in black except for a bit of white luminescence at the wrists and neck. Her face was ageless—not as young as in the 1910 photograph, nor as old as she must have looked at the time of her suicide at fifty-four. The features were strong and attractive in the way some people call “handsome.” And, yes, there was that mole on her left cheek.

  Meg assimilated all of this information about the woman in an instant, for it only took that instant for her to realize that she should turn away.

  But she could not.

  The woman had already commanded a power that entranced Meg. The woman’s eyes appeared colorless little pits that opened to—what? Grief? Yes—and more. This was not the sadness of a little boy. This was deep grief, deep regret, deeper anger.

  Dangerous anger.

  When the uninvited surge came from deep within Meg, attempting to propel her spirit from her and into Alicia—as had happened with Claude—her reaction to stop the energy flow was immediate—and just as powerless. She was dealing with a force beyond her own league. A lethal force.

  She felt herself speeding toward the woman.

  Just as the siren Circe drew in Odysseus, the woman pulled Meg to the vortex of her energy. She plummeted into a quarry of sorrow. This time the vertigo was present. As she fell—her stomach in turmoil—she experienced what she interpreted as the loss of a child. Iron gray grief pressed in on her, crushed her, raped her.

  She had become one with Alicia Reichart.

  As with Claude, however, the journey did not stop there. She passed into a dark tunnel, spiraling down into a wider, boundless world, the world of the collective unconscious. The grief—seemingly already limitless—became more acute as she found herself taking on—actually experiencing—the grief of every mother who had lost a child.

  Time here lengthened, became a torture as the wailing women seemed to reach for her. Every moment brought with it new pain and hurt. She had been warned about being drawn into the lower astral realm. She sensed myriad beings flocking to her, draining energy from her, attempting to grasp hold of her, to drag her into their midst. Alicia and the others meant to keep her here. Nothing reigned here but evil.

  Meg consciously worked to summon energy to counter whatever it was that caused her to enter this dimension. She prayed like never before, focusing, calling on light and life and all things good—and on God. She began to move upward—slowly at first—then faster, away from the reaching hands—through the great abyss—through the tunnel—and into the confines of Alicia Reichart’s force.

  It was here that she felt as if she were moving through an erupting volcano, one that flowed hot and red with pain and angst and anger.

  At last, Meg found herself within her own form. She was staring at the woman. She knew now, instinctively, what the game was all about. It was all too clear that no reassurance or validation would hold back the flow of negativity within and from the woman. This was a lost soul. Meg had somehow been one with her, feeling the loss of her family, living her last years in an asylum, hanging herself in a cell—and most of all, never forgetting, never forgiving the loss of little Claude, the killing of his talent and future.

  And yet, Meg made the attempt at consolation. She tried to communicate her feelings, her understanding, to the woman.

  In a crosscurrent, the woman made known her desires to Meg. She wanted more than validation—she wanted Meg’s full empathy and had for weeks been working to that end. She expected Meg to surrender her individuality, her soul, to her. And the soul of Meg’s fetus would be surrendered to the energy that was Claude.

  Meg swallowed hard and fear ran through her like a river. The woman plotted a kind of possession, and Meg’s own holotropic experience told her that such a thing might actually be possible. It seemed a new twist on what Krista had labeled dual unity.

  Panic boiled up within Meg. She could only blame herself. She had actually considered this possession scenario previously—and had scoffed at it. And before that, she had deliberately opened herself up to the forces in the house.

  She had been a fool and now stood fully vulnerable before something evil and powerful. And what’s more, she had endangered the life and soul of her unborn child.

  Why hadn’t she listened to Krista?

  All right, I thought myself strong enough to deal with this. Now I will have to prove it.

  Meg’s body stiffened as she summoned a reserve she didn’t know she had, wordlessly communicating to the woman now that she would be no party to her scheme. That she would resist. The woman was dead. Her time—and Claude’s—had come and gone. It was terribly sad and tragic—but it was so. She must allow herself and her son to pass over, to experience whatever was next.

  The energy that was Claude seemed receptive. Meg sensed that it had been his mother whose own intense goals and regrets held him to the lower realm of the astral plane.

  The woman, however, was in no way receptive—and when Meg attempted to underscore her argument, Alicia Reichart let the stakes of the game be known—if Meg didn’t submit to her will, neither she nor her child would live.

  Meg’s stomach dropped. She knew now there was no arguing with, no convincing this woman who had died in an asylum, this woman who had waited decades for someone like Meg—and her child—to happen along. There was no saving Alicia Reichart. Meg could save only herself.

  “Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!” she cried.

  She heeled about and ran. She felt the heat of anger, the stench of death, at her back, and under her feet the very floorboards vibrated.

  The top of the stairs was dark as pitch. Meg stopped, afraid to go down, afraid to fall. She couldn’t see the drop beneath her, but just knowing it was there brought on the old vertigo. She pressed her hands to her belly, her child.

  “Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!” Meg cried, knowing these were not her words, only that some recall of hers had brought them up. “Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!”

  Alicia had moved from the living room, had followed her. Meg could not detect her in motion, however. But with every blink of the eye, the woman appeared closer.

  In this instant, Meg realized what the phenomenon reminded her of—a hologram! To watch the woman bearing down on her in this frenetic sort of motion was like looking into a hologram.

  Somehow, the ghost of Alicia Reichart seemed all the more dangerous.

  Meg’s hand instinctively went for the wall, found its mark, pushed the switch up.

  The light above her came on with an explosion. Flames shot out from the hanging fixture and moved in two directions—along the ceiling down into the stairwell—as well as down the hall and toward the figure of the woman.

  Meg started down the stairs, holding onto the banister, running, each stair bringing a jolt, knowing even in her panic what a fall could mean for the baby.

  At the bottom, she found the door closed tight and fast. As if it had been locked! She looked at the step where she had left the padlock. It was gone. She knew this was the work of Alicia.

  Meg looked up the stairway and could see nothing but flames. No escape there.

  At that moment, at the top of the stairs, she witnessed a great flare and an explosion that she could only think was the energy that had been Alicia Reichart.

  Meg had no time to feel relief. She had to escape—or face her own death. The hall was filling with smoke, and she began to cough.

  She saw that there was a door that led into the garage. She turned the knob and the door opened.

  Meg stepped down. It was dark inside. She stumbled about in the directi
on of the front garage doors, metal doors she knew to be broken in their closed position. Kurt had tried unsuccessfully to open them the first weekend. But they were her only chance.

  She could smell the smoke seeping down through the floorboards and air ducts. The building would burn to its foundation, just as the old barn had done.

  She felt one of the rusty doors and tried it. It wouldn’t budge. Hunching over, she tried to move it with the strength of her shoulders and hips. Its locking apparatus was rusted solidly in place. If Kurt had been unable to open them, what hope did she have?

  The smoke was thickening now. She could hear the voracious roar of the fire above her. The materials of the coach house were like tinder that had dried for ninety years. Pockets of the fire were beginning to break through the floor and lick at the underside of the floorboards. How could fire move so rapidly?

  Meg knew to get down on the cement floor for the best air. She did so and crawled to the other door. Its lock moved! Thank God!

  Yet the door did not lift.

  She was starting to choke now.

  She prayed to hear sirens soon, prayed that some neighbor had seen the flames.

  From her lying position, she pushed at the door.

  It held firm.

  When she took her hands away, she felt warm liquid running down her right hand. She was bleeding, cut on metal that had partially rusted away.

  Ignoring the cut, she thought that enough of the weakened door might give way, allowing for an escape. Meg maneuvered her body so that her feet pressed against the door’s bottom. She kicked out. Again and yet again.

  So rusted was the door that metal fragments began to fall away.

  Lying on her back, through the smoke she could see the flames fully digesting the floorboards above her and spreading to the joists. The heat would soon be as deadly as the smoke.