Superstition

by David Ambrose

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

What do you do when reality as you know it seems to shift under your very feet? Brace yourself for a thrilling, chilling, supernatural roller coaster ride of a novel from one of England's best known suspense writers. As creative thought forms begin to take on a life of their own, the waking nightmare that evolves will have you shivering with delicious dread. It all begins when parapsychologist Sam Towne and journalist Joanna Cross decide to conduct an experiment to see if it's possible for a group to deliberately create a ghost. Or maybe it started with the psychics who cursed Joanna when she exposed their fraud in her last magazine article. Either way, soon the question is how to stop it! David Ambrose, who began his career as a screenwriter for Orson Welles, exhibits his flair for the dramatic in this contemporary ghost story. Narrator Richard Ferrone's sonorous voice draws you in and holds you spellbound as you consider the fragility of everything you think you know.

Release date: December 14, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

PROLOGUE

He gazed across the street at a house indistinguishable, except in detail, from the ones on either side. It had a door of a green so dark that it was almost black, with its number—139—picked out in plain brass characters. To one side and above it were symmetrically proportioned windows, their light lending a haze of warmth to the chill November dusk. Framed within them he could see an interior of clean lines and ordered spaces; from where he stood he had an angular glimpse of paintings, furniture, and works of art arranged in what looked like a pleasing mixture of the antique and the new.

It was a prospect that he would normally have found inviting, but all he felt now was a profound apprehension, verging on dread, of what and who he was about to meet in there.

Sam had spoken to Ralph Cazaubon on the phone only once—less than an hour ago. He knew nothing of him apart from what Joanna had told him, which did not include the fact that they were married. “My wife” was how Cazaubon had referred to her. It made no sense that Joanna and this man should be married, and it filled him with an aching sense of something far more disquieting than jealousy, and to which he could not yet give a name.

He noticed a couple of passersby dart a curious glance in his direction, and realized that he had lost track of how long he had been standing there. A few minutes at most. He waited as a cab picked up a fare in front of him and pulled away, then stepped off the curb.

The house seemed to grow, filling his field of vision as he approached. He had the fleeting impression that it was reaching out to him, enfolding him, preparing to absorb him. He felt a moment of irrational panic, but forced himself on without breaking his stride.

As a scientist, Sam was committed to a rational response to all things. Reason and logic, he believed, were the only tools at man's disposal in any attempt he might make to penetrate the mystery of his being; though how far they could take him on that quest was becoming, at least to Sam, increasingly open to doubt. These past months had seen the widening of a gulf between things that had happened and any ability he may once have had to make sense of them. It was a gulf into which the shadow land of superstition had begun to insinuate itself, spreading into every corner of his mind like the gray mist of the Manhattan twilight that settled all around him into every crack and crevice of the city. Superstition, he now knew from painful personal experience, was the one thing against which reason offered no defense.

He climbed the stone steps and reached out to push the bell, deliberately suppressing any hesitation that he felt. He heard it ring somewhere distantly, then waited, forcing from his mind any preconception of the man whose footsteps he half imagined he could hear coming toward him.

A moment later the door was opened by someone tallish with a well-groomed mass of thick, dark hair. The man's eyes were dark, with an inquiring, steady gaze. He wore a comfortable tailored jacket in a good tweed, gray trousers, a knitted tie. His shoes were polished wing tips in a rich burgundy and looked handmade. Sam would have put him in his late thirties.

“Mr. Cazaubon? I'm Sam Towne…”

They didn't shake hands. Cazaubon looked as though he might under normal circumstances have had a pleasant smile, but at the moment he was as wary of Sam Towne as Sam was of him. When he stepped back from the door in a wordless invitation to his visitor to enter, there was an assurance in his movement that was more than just physical; it spoke of breeding, a sense of who he was—and probably, Sam thought, of old money.

“As I told you on the phone, my wife isn't here yet,” he said, leading the way into the drawing room.

It worried Sam that she wasn't there. He wanted to ask where in God's name she could have been since the events of that morning—events of which, he felt reasonably certain, this man in front of him knew nothing. But he held his tongue. He must tread warily, proceed with caution. As much as he needed to know that Joanna was safe, he had to avoid antagonizing Cazaubon. He needed to talk to him, find out who he was, and many other things about him; he had to ask more questions than any stranger had a right to ask.

Sam knew he must have sounded odd on the phone. Yet he could see that the other man was at least initially reassured by his appearance. There was nothing very threatening about Sam Towne. Of medium height and build, about the same age as Cazaubon, he looked what he was—an underpaid academic with little in the way of worldly ambition or material achievement. He glimpsed his reflection in the big Venetian mirror over the carved stone fireplace and realized how shabby he looked in these surroundings, with his raincoat hanging open over a well-worn corduroy jacket, denim shirt, and jeans.

“I'm sorry,” Cazaubon said, as though correcting an omission of protocol on his part, “can I take your coat?”

Sam slipped it off and handed it over. “I don't intend to take up any more of your time than I have to,” he said, as though by way of reassurance.

Cazaubon nodded and went out into the hall, where he hung the coat on an antique iron stand. “Can I offer you a drink?” he said as he returned, good manners not entirely concealing the suspicion he still felt.

“No—thank you very much.”

“Then why don't you sit down and tell me what this is about.” Cazaubon indicated an Italian sofa in oatmeal fabric, then sat in an armchair across from it, and waited.

Towne leaned forward, caught himself twisting his hands, and laced his fingers to keep them still.

“This is all going to sound very strange. I gather from what you said on the phone that your wife has never spoken of me or the work that I've been doing…”

“To the best of my knowledge she hasn't, Mr. Towne—sorry, Dr. Towne I believe you said.”

“I'm a research psychologist at Manhattan University,” Sam began. “I run a project investigating various kinds of anomalous phenomena.” He felt his fingers start to twist again, pulled them apart, and made an open gesture as he ran through the usual brief litany with which he began any explanation of his work. “Basically, we've been looking into the interaction of human consciousness with measurable physical devices and systems. It covers fields such as telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, remote viewing…”

Cazaubon's eyes narrowed slightly. “You mean you're some kind of psychic investigator?” he asked.

“Broadly speaking, yes, though I dislike the word ‘psychic.’ It's vague and implies a prejudgment of the phenomena we're observing. We're psychologists, engineers, statisticians, and physicists. There are seven of us, though we work with other departments in the university as well as outside groups and individuals.”

“What does all this have to do with my wife? To the best of my knowledge she has no experience of such things, nor any interest in them.”

Sam had to be careful here. He still didn't know who or what he was dealing with. The man across from him looked normal enough, civilized, thoughtful. But he couldn't be sure of anything anymore.

“Someone with your wife's name, or I should say using her maiden name, Joanna Cross, has been involved in a program I have been running for some time.”

Cazaubon looked at him with a disbelief that bordered on hostility. “That's impossible. I would have known about any such thing. You must have made a mistake.”

“Perhaps. If so, I'm here to clear it up.”

Cazaubon got to his feet with a restlessness that, it seemed to Sam, he was trying to conceal. He walked over to the fireplace, looked down into the empty grate, then turned once more to his visitor.

“You mean that some woman has been going around using my wife's identity? Is that what you're saying?”

“I don't want to alarm you. I'm sure there is some explanation…”

“Forgive me, I think this is very alarming indeed,” Cazaubon said, his tone hardening. “And quite possibly a matter for the police.”

“No, it's not something for the police,” Sam responded with more weariness than urgency, as though such a course would merely be a waste of time. “As a matter of fact the police are already involved—in a way.”

“How?” Cazaubon shot back, his voice tightening with concern.

“Two men have died today.”

Seeing the flash of alarm in the other man's eyes, he added quickly, “Your wife—or this woman calling herself your wife—was not directly involved. She wasn't even present when it happened.”

“Then why are you here?”

Towne hesitated. How could he begin to explain without sounding like a lunatic? His fears for her, like his deep misgivings about this man across from him, were not the kind that could be summed up quickly or expressed in any easily intelligible way. “I'm sorry,” he said eventually, “it's very hard to explain without your wife actually being here.”

Cazaubon frowned. “Look, Dr. Towne, my wife is an intelligent woman and a free agent, but I'm not sure I can have you upsetting her with a wild story about some total stranger pretending to be her—especially at the moment.”

He stopped, as though deciding not to elaborate on those last words, but his tone implied that she might be in some particularly delicate state: unwell perhaps; burdened by some problem; or maybe simply pregnant. Whatever the reason, Cazaubon made it clear that he was prepared to defend her against any intrusion or unnecessary worry.

“I understand how all this must sound,” Sam continued lamely.

“Do you? I don't even know who you are, apart from what you tell me.”

“You can call up the university.”

Cazaubon was silent for a moment. Sam felt that he would make the call, if not immediately then later. He hoped he would.

“Look,” he said, attempting the conciliatory tone of a reasonable man, “perhaps we can clear this thing up without troubling your wife. Do you happen to have a photograph of her that I could see?”

“Of course I do. Though I'm not sure what that would prove—except maybe to show you that this woman you're talking about is obviously not my wife.”

“At least it would be a first step.”

Cazaubon started across the room toward an ornate Chinese cabinet, but stopped as he pulled open a drawer. They had both heard a sound in the hall.

As she entered, Sam felt himself pulled to his feet more by sheer nervous tension than politeness. Cazaubon had already crossed the room to kiss her lovingly on the cheek, clearly happy and relieved to see her.

“Darling,” he was saying, “this is Dr. Sam Towne of Manhattan University. He's been telling me a rather odd story…”

He stopped because Sam had gasped audibly. Both Cazaubon and the woman who had just entered turned their gaze toward the man who stood with his mouth slightly open and his pale blue eyes staring, unblinking, at her. His face was white and he looked to be on the verge of passing out.

Sam Towne had not been ready for this.

Something impossible had happened.

ONE YEAR EARLIER

1

Eleanor (Ellie) Ray was not quite sixty, though most people meeting her would have guessed her to be at least ten years older. It was an impression she cultivated; the grandmotherly touch was worth hard cash in Ellie's business.

It was difficult, looking at her now, plain and dumpy, barely five feet tall, to imagine Ellie as she once had been—the high-kicking, fishnet-stockinged, feathered and sequined glamor half of “Wanda and Ray,” a comedy and magic act that had somehow eked out a living for twenty long, hard years on the road. She had been “Wanda,” and “Ray” had been Murray Ray, her husband. She was a dancer when they met, but too short for the chorus line, and not talented enough to be a single act. She worked up a couple of novelty numbers with another girl who was over six feet, and they played a few dates in the Catskills, but their bookings quickly dwindled from a handful to none, and Ellie was thinking about getting out of the business altogether when she met Murray.

He was only a year or two older than she, but already established and a pro, though not a star. He probably never would be. He was a funny-looking little guy, not much taller than she was, but kind of sweet. They'd found themselves on the same bill a few times that season, and he'd started showing her magic tricks backstage as a way, he hoped, of getting her into bed. She knew perfectly well what he was up to, and had already made up her mind to cooperate. It was easy come, easy go in those days. Sex was as good a way as any of passing the time after the show or between jobs.

But the magic was something new, and the fascination she found in it took her by surprise. She started practicing some of the tricks he'd shown her. Murray told her she had talent. All it takes, he said, was application—and that she had. To Ellie it was a last chance to avoid waiting tables, which was probably all she'd get offered outside the business.

They'd married three months after they met, but it was another year before she joined him on the stage. It took time to work up a new act, and Murray had been right about application. It was the little tricks, the throwaway stuff, that were really grueling to master. The big illusions were surprisingly simple and largely mechanical. But that wasn't their style; for one thing they didn't have the money to buy and transport the equipment that was needed. So they did it the hard way, with timing, patter, careful misdirection, and muscular dexterity. By the time she trod the boards with Murray, Ellie's small, short-fingered hands concealed a strength that few men could equal. She could flip cards, hide chiffon scarves, and switch marked dollar bills—all with a smile on her face that never flinched, even when the pain shot up to her elbows and sometimes all the way to her shoulders. It'll get better, she told herself. Practice makes perfect. When I'm really good, it won't hurt so much.

Ellie sat back and looked down at her hands, wrinkled now and speckled with liver spots. She turned them over, curling them like claws. The strength was still there when she needed it. There was no screw-top jar or bottle that didn't yield to her iron grip. She smiled as she remembered that weight lifter who'd gotten fresh with her one time in Atlantic City, until she'd grabbed him by the balls to let him know she wasn't happy. He'd never been the same man again.

She came out of her daydream and looked up. The murmur of voices was growing. Glancing through the rectangle of glass in front of her, which from the other side was just a mirrored fragment in one of the twin starbursts on each side of the stage, she could see the auditorium was already almost full. She looked down at her watch, an ostentatiously cheap one with a plastic strap that she always wore for work; the Cartier that Murray had given her on her last birthday was kept carefully in a drawer at home. Time enough to show that off in a few months when they were out of here, enjoying the bonanza they'd been building toward these last few years.

Negotiations for the sale of the place were discreetly in hand, and looked certain to net them enough to live out their days in comfort. Ellie had never been to Europe, and dreamed of seeing Paris, Rome, and London. Annual winter cruises in the Caribbean beckoned. And of course—this was the jewel in the crown for Ellie, the fulfillment of a life's ambition—there would be a town house in central Manhattan. The girl from New Jersey would end her days as an Upper East Side matron, living in the kind of house to which her mother had taken that long subway ride to scrub and clean every day of Ellie's childhood. It was a triumph that would lay to rest some ghosts for Ellie—the only kind of ghosts that she believed in.

A thin smile played on Ellie's lips at the thought, but died almost at once. It would have been so nice, she couldn't help thinking, to have had it all thirty years ago.

But still, better now, far better now than never.

Joanna Cross found a seat toward the back and to one side. It was a vantage point from which she could see everything without being conspicuous. It was already enough that she was younger than most of the people drawn to this place and others like it. Even the staff was largely middle-aged or older, apart from some of the behind-the-scenes and maintenance people, who didn't on the whole have much contact with guests.

There was, however, one trance medium who couldn't have been more than thirty, but he was the exception. And he was talented. His séances involved a luminous tin trumpet that floated in the dark and through which spirit voices spoke. Occasionally billowing clouds of ectoplasm spewed forth from his body, taking on the forms of dead departed loved ones of the sitters, while glittering points of light skipped and shimmered over people's heads. That it was all just some gigantic conjuring trick was obvious to Joanna. The only thing that amazed her was other people's inability to see what they didn't want to see, and their willingness to believe what they wanted to believe. Or needed to.

That was what got to her. On one level it was just silly but relatively harmless. On another it was the merciless exploitation of people who had suffered loss and tragedy and who needed help. Instead they had been tagged as suckers and taken on a cynical ride that, more often than not, would leave them penniless. That was why Joanna was going to put Ellie and Murray Ray where they belonged: in jail if she could, but at the very least she meant to expose and ruin them as a warning to others of their kind.

And there was no shortage of others like them. Since she had started researching these articles for the magazine, Joanna had been amazed at the size of the psychic industry. From the corner clairvoyant and palm reader to organized compounds like this, it was a business that turned over millions, maybe billions of dollars every year—most of it in cash, with the rest largely sheltered by well-meaning but misguided legislation that allowed any fraud to pose as the founder of some church and claim charitable status. That was no doubt why the auditorium in which Joanna now sat was referred to on the plan of the Camp Star-burst compound as “The Cathedral.”

Her gaze drifted from one to the other of the glittering glass and mirror structures on the walls at each side of the stage. They were, in all their vulgar ghastliness, an obvious reflection of the “starburst” theme. And behind one of them, Joanna knew, was the place from where Ellie Ray was able to look out, as she was probably doing now, and control the proceedings.

Joanna looked down at her watch. It would be starting soon. With any luck, for sure if she had her way, it would be the last séance that would ever be held in this place.

The pattern of swimming fish and drifting sea anemones disappeared from Ellie's computer screen as she hit a key. She called up the file that she'd assembled earlier in the day when she got the list of who'd be coming. They were mostly first- or second-timers who'd heard about the place from friends. Handled right, most of them would be good for several visits, and some of them represented potentially rich pickings. These latter would be singled out for longer individual séances with key mediums in the next day or two.

Ellie scrolled the information up the screen. Everything was there, all the information she needed, ordered, concise, and detailed—and duplicated in the box files that she kept for backup. Of course, she would have to put the right names to the hundred-fifty-odd faces out there, most of them belonging to people she had only spoken to for ten or fifteen minutes at the most. But she had a mnemonic for that, a trick she'd learned from a memory act years ago.

A sound behind her made her turn. Murray came in wiping his nose with a huge white handkerchief. He'd had a chill and she'd been quite concerned about him this past week, but he'd worked through it and never missed a séance. He seemed to be picking up now, though he was still unhealthily red in the face. She absolutely had to get him on a diet soon. He was carrying far too much weight for a man of his age. All his suits had been let out to the limit, and half of them he couldn't get into at all anymore.

“Ready to rock ‚n‚ roll,” he said, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. He picked up the slim battery pack by the computer and sat down with his back to Ellie. It was their usual routine. He fixed his earpiece securely in place, then sat still as she fed the threadlike filament that ran from it down the inside of his shirt collar and out through the little opening cut just below the shoulder blade. She pulled the end of it around and under his arm and plugged it into the battery pack, which he slipped into the special pocket in the lining of his jacket. She tapped the microphone in front of her, and he nodded. The connection was live.

Ellie waited a moment, checked once more through the rectangle of glass that everyone was ready, then cued Mark, their stage manager, to get the show under way.

Mark's stage-trained voice resonated impressively over the big speakers in the auditorium. “Ladies and gentlemen, the séance is about to commence. Mrs. Ellie Ray is here to welcome you with a few words of introduction.”

The curtain rose on a stage that was empty except for a massive straight-backed chair placed dead center—a throne in red velvet and mahogany. A rainbow of pale pastels moved constantly though all but imperceptibly across the ornate drapery behind. Ellie strode out from the wings, all smiles and holding up her hands to both acknowledge and arrest the ripple of applause that greeted her appearance.

“Now then, my dears,” she began, “we're all friends here, so just relax and let yourselves enter that quiet frame of mind that will help you touch your loved ones on the other side. The vibrations are very good in here. Very good. I can feel the spirits are drawn here and to all of us gathered here today. Always remember, the spirits want to make contact. They're just waiting for you to open your hearts and your minds, as I know you are doing at this minute, and they will come to you. My husband, Murray. You all know Murray…”

Murray waddled out, beaming over the assembled faces, took the hand that his wife held out to him, and gave a little bow, but not too much of one: the last thing he and Ellie wanted people to think was that they might once have been in show business.

“Murray will be with you on your journey to the spirit world today,” Ellie continued, “and for those of you with us for the very first time, let me explain what's going to happen…”

As she spoke, Murray seated himself on the throne and Ellie produced a black silk scarf which she made a big show of tying securely over his eyes.

“If you want to make contact with anybody on the other side, all you have to do is raise your hand and one of our two volunteers—that's Merle and Minnie, there they are, on either side of you, giving you a little wave—will bring you a microphone. Now the microphone is only so the rest of us can hear you. If you don't want to speak your question out loud, the spirits will understand. They'll know what's in your heart, and they will respond through the medium, through Murray here. All you have to do if Merle or Minnie points you out is direct your thoughts to the spirit world, and your loved ones will respond through the medium. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can hand over some personal object, a watch or a key ring or a piece of jewelry or whatever, either your own or belonging to a loved one who's passed on. The vibrations will pass through the medium to the spirit world, and to whoever it is that you wish to make contact with.”

Finally satisfying herself that the blindfold was secure, Ellie stepped back a few paces.

“Now I'm going to leave you, but before I do I'm going to ask you all to remain very quiet for a short time while the medium enters the spirit world. After that you'll hear an announcement asking those of you with a question to raise your hands. Now very quiet, please, ladies and gentlemen…very, very quiet…”

The lights dimmed as Ellie slipped into the wings and Murray assumed the pre-trance position—head down, chest heaving with slow, deep breaths. Gradually a white spotlight opened up on him from directly overhead, glowing like a ray of heavenly light. After about a minute Murray slowly raised his head as though listening to something above and slightly to one side. Then he nodded as though in acknowledgment of some unseen presence.

Mark's voice came softly once again from the speakers over the expectant, waiting heads. “Ladies and gentlemen, the medium is ready. Please hold up your hands to indicate you have a question.”

From her vantage point at the computer, Ellie watched as Merle appeared uncertain which of the sea of waving hands to give the microphone to first. In an acting job of the first magnitude, she seemed to make a random choice—but it was no mistake when she handed the mike, as instructed earlier by Ellie, to a plump woman in her sixties whose husband had recently died, leaving her a high, seven-figure fortune in securities and gilt-edged stock…

Very smooth, thought Joanna, admiring the performance despite her contempt for it. Murray had answered several unspoken as well as, spoken questions, each time drawing murmurs of amazement from his audience. Now he was giving a demonstration of psychometry, turning over in his stubby fingers a brooch that a woman near the front had sent up. He mentioned names and places, cleverly playing out and embellishing the information that Ellie was whispering in his ear. It was impressive, but only if you didn't know how it was done. And Joanna knew.

Nobody showing up cold at the gate of Camp Starburst would ever be admitted then and there—not even if they waved a wad of hard cash under Ellie's acquisitive nose. If the wad was big enough they might be given tea in the Rays’ private quarters, and maybe even taken on a limited tour of the compound. In the course of all this they would invariably say enough about themselves to give the Rays a starting point. From then on it was routine.

The first step was to check them out on the psychic network that extended across the country and beyond. There was a surprisingly large army of believers who went from seer to medium to mystic, one after the other, often traveling long distances for a consultation. Had anyone told them that the information they were being fed about themselves had been faxed or e-mailed from the last hustler who had duped them, they wouldn't have believed it. Because they wouldn't want to. They preferred to hang on to the myths of spiritism.

If the network didn't come up with the goods, Ellie simply called up a detective agency to which she paid a regular retainer and had them dig up what they could. One thing was certain: by the time Ellie or Murray or any of their colleagues sat down for a séance with a sucker, everything that was about to happen had been planned and rehearsed to the last detail. There were no surprises in the spirit world.

But there was going to be a big one very soon. Joanna slipped a hand discreetly beneath the dark wig she was wearing and pressed the earpiece more firmly into place. The receiver in her purse was picking up every word that Ellie fed to Murray, and a recorder was getting it all on tape. Some of it was pretty juicy stuff; Ellie didn't bother to disguise her contempt for the suckers out there who bought what she and Murray were selling.

It was going to make good reading.

Ellie squinted through the glass to identify the woman near the back who had just handed something to Merle. It was that young woman, Rachel Clark, who was staying in Clouds Wing for the weekend. Ellie brought her file up on the computer screen. There wasn't much—just the fact that she had consulted seven mediums in the last few months, all in and around Philadelphia where she lived. She had wanted the same thing from all of them: to get in touch with her father, whom she had nursed through a long illness until his death the previous year. There was obviously some unresolved stuff there, though what it was remained vague.

“Dirty old sod probably been schtupping her since she was ten,” she muttered into the mike. “It's that girl with the dark hair that you noticed the other day—good tits under that baggy cardigan. Trust you to notice! Mother died when she was fifteen, never been married, engaged once, name of Johnny—nothing known about what happened to him. The old man manufactured kitchen equipment—sounds like there was money in it from the schools she went to.”

Ellie read off the remaining details as she peered through the glass to see what Rachel Clark had given to Merle. Murray was answering the previous question as Merle mounted the steps at the side of the stage. Careful timing meant that she had t. . .