Superstition
Authors: David Ambrose
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London
Copyright © 1997 by David Ambrose
All rights reserved.
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First eBook Edition: October 1998
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ISBN: 978-0-446-55412-1
Contents
Also by David Ambrose
The Man Who Turned into Himself
Mother of God
Hollywood Lies
To Lulu, Mick, and Daisy In whose house this book was conceived and by coincidence completed eighteen months later Whatever coincidence means
T
his novel is based on an experiment that actually took place in Toronto in the early seventies, and which has been widely written about in the literature of parapsychology. The best account is that written by two of the participants, Iris M. Owen and Margaret Sparrow. Their book,
Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis
, unfortunately out of print and hard to obtain, is a classic in its field.
I am indebted to Brenda J. Dunne and Michael Ibison of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program for taking the time to show me some of the extraordinary work they are doing in the field of consciousness-related physical phenomena.
Margins of Reality
(Harcourt Brace) by Robert G. Jahn, the director of PEAR, and Brenda J. Dunne is essential reading.
John Beloff's
Parapsychology: A Concise History
(Athlone) provides an admirably clear and restrained overview of the subject, and led me to the challenging and closely argued articles and papers of, among others, Helmut Schmidt and Brian Millar.
Other writers whose work has been particularly stimulating include Kit Pedlar, Stan Gooch, Michael Harrison, Alan Gauld, and A. D. Cornell.
My thanks to Joanne McMahon of the Eileen J. Garrett Library at the Parapsychology Foundation, Inc., New York, for her help when I was researching this book. Also a special thanks to Michaeleen C. Maher, the New York—based investigator of paranormal phenomena, for talking to me at length about her work and impressing on me the rigorously high standards with which it is carried out.
“There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.”
Francis Bacon 1561–1626
“Superstition: An ambiguous word, it probably cannot be used except subjectively.”
Encyclopædia Britannica
H
e 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.”