Leaving Time(120)

“How to be psychic?”

“Sugar, it doesn’t work that way—”

“Well, how does it work?” Jenna presses. “You don’t actually know, do you? You haven’t had it work, in fact, for a really long time. So maybe trying something different isn’t a bad idea.”

She faces me. “I know you’re all about facts and figures and evidence you can touch. But you’re the one who said that sometimes when you look at the same thing a dozen times, it takes try number thirteen before what you’re looking for jumps out at you. The wallet, and the necklace, and even the shirt with the blood on it—all that stuff’s been waiting for a decade, and no one managed to find it.” Then she turns to Serenity. “You know I said last night that you were in the right place at the right time whenever we found those things? Well, I was there, too. What if those signs weren’t meant for you, but for me? What if the reason you can’t hear my mom is because I’m the one she wants to talk to?”

“Jenna,” Serenity says softly, “it would be the blind leading the blind.”

“What have you got to lose?”

She barks a frustrated little laugh. “Oh, let’s see. My self-respect? My peace of mind?”

“My trust?” Jenna says.

Serenity meets my gaze over the kid’s head. Help me, she seems to be saying.

I understand why Jenna needs this: Otherwise, it’s not a complete circle, it’s a line, and lines unravel and send you off in directions you never intended to go. Endings are critical. It’s why, when you’re a cop and you tell parents their kid was just found in a car crash, they want to know exactly what happened—if there was ice on the road; if the car swerved to avoid the tractor-trailer. They need the details of those last few moments, because it is all they will have for the rest of their lives. It’s why I should have told Lulu I did not want to go out with her ever again, because until I do, there will still be a sliver of hope in the door that she can wedge herself into. And it’s why Alice Metcalf has haunted me for a decade.

I’m the guy who will never turn off a DVD, no matter how crappy the movie. I cheat and read the last chapter of a book first, in case I drop dead before I finish it. I don’t want to be left hanging, wondering what will happen for eternity.

Which is kind of interesting, because it means that I—Virgil Stanhope, the master of practicality and the Grand Poobah of proof—must believe at least a tiny bit in some of the metaphysical fluff Serenity Jones peddles.

I shrug. “Maybe,” I say to Serenity, “she has a point.”





ALICE




One reason infants can’t remember events when they are very small is that they don’t have the language to describe them. Their vocal cords simply aren’t equipped, until a certain age, which means instead they use their larynxes for emergency situations only. In fact, there is a direct projection that goes from the amygdala of an infant to his voice box, which can make that baby cry very quickly in a situation of extreme distress. It’s such a universal sound that studies have been done showing that just about every other human—even college-age boys who have no experience with babies—will try to provide assistance.

As the child grows, the larynx matures and is capable of speech. The sound of crying changes as babies turn two or three, and as it does, people not only become less likely to want to help them but actually respond to the sound with feelings of annoyance. For this reason, children learn to “use their words”—because that’s the only way they can get attention.

But what happens to that original projection, the nerve that runs from the amygdala to the larynx? Well … nothing. Even as vocal cords grow up around it like heliotrope, it stays where it was, and is very rarely used. Until, that is, someone leaps out from beneath your bed at right at sleepaway camp. Or you turn a corner in a dark alley and a raccoon jumps into your path. Or any other moment of complete and abject terror. When that happens, the “alarm” sounds. In fact, the noise you’ll make is one you probably could not replicate voluntarily if you tried.





SERENITY




Back when I was good at this kind of thing, if I wanted to contact someone in particular who had passed, I’d rely on Desmond and Lucinda, my spirit guides. I imagined them as telephone operators connecting to a direct office line, because it was so much more efficient than having an open house and sorting through the hordes to find the individual I was hoping to speak to.

That’s called open channeling: You put out your shingle, open for business, and brace yourself. It’s a little like a news conference, with everyone shouting out questions at once. It’s hell for the medium, incidentally. But I suppose it’s no worse than putting out feelers and having no one show up.

I ask Jenna to find me a place that she thinks was special to her mother, and so the three of us trek back to the elephant sanctuary grounds, hiking to a spot where a giant oak with arms like a titan presides over a patch of purple mushrooms. “I come here sometimes to hang out,” Jenna said. “My mom used to bring me.”

It’s almost ethereal, the way the mushrooms create a little magic carpet. “How come these don’t grow everywhere?” I ask.

Jenna shakes her head. “I don’t know. According to my mom’s journals, it’s where Maura’s calf was buried.”