7
"Between the episodes of 'I just wanna die' there are long stretches of weary hopelessness, possibly interspaced with blips of fresh air, where, for a moment, you feel something else. Not normal, persay, but you see the green of the leaves, taste the zing of the Thai, and hear the earnest soul moving through the passion of their music. In reality, there are much more blips of happiness than darkness, and that happiness lasts far longer than any pain, but, for some reason, we are all hyper aware of our pain, like dogs being trained by a cattle prod. Only takes one or two shocks to get the message across. We remember it. Possibly for the rest of our lives.
But it doesn't make the happy times any less worth it."
Temperature readings came first. Then I got to sit at the monitors and watch a sorta fast forward speed run of the night. Lin sat next to me through all this, dark circles under his eyes from night watch.
"Dude, head to bed. You're not his underling in teaching torture."
Lin didn't even look at me. "I'm making sure you don't miss anything."
I shivered. Awesome cool voice. If I could just pop it into a seashell, like Ursala. "You mean something actually happened?"
He just looked at me. I felt heat spread across my neck.
"Lin's right," said the prof from across the room, where he was going through some random data of who knew what. I'd probably find out soon. "If you already know what you're looking for, you won't have the experience of having to find it for yourself."
"Is it necessary to test positive for psychic whatever to come on these trips with you?"
"No." A click of the laptop. "I plan on having those in my upper classes take an entire semester of cases. But, since you are the first generation…" he gave me a look not much different from Lin's.
Since I was first generation, there wasn't anybody qualified to take the upper classes yet.
"Sooo…this is like an extra credit course?"
"Are you listening?" said Lin sharply, taping the headphones on my head.
Oh, yeah. I was listening to the EMT while watching some of the tapes. A program filtered out the white noise, and every now and again I'd hear a scuffle or a horn outside. So far, at 4am, only one person had got up to flush the John. Good night, all in all.
But I had to watch the recordings for EACH camera…
Fast forward or not, by the time I finally finished it was 11:30. Lin had left for bed hours ago, and Naru had popped in and out to call the others to watch with me, but it was only me he looked at when the final tape finished.
"Analysis," he ordered.
"Yes, Boss," I said as robotically as I could. "There were cold spots around the banister and stairs as well as near several rooms, but only for small amounts of time. Only one stayed put the entire time, suggesting it is naturally caused and there's a drainage of heat there."
"Window or door?" he said.
"A vent," I said. And yes, we were expected to include those in our temperature reports. "And, there was this one sound clip."
I had left the video paused on it just to impress my boss.
The sound that came out was muffled, blipped with white noise, but the sound had the same cadence as a woman's voice, raising and falling to words I couldn't quite make out.
"As far as I know, Ayako sleeps like a mummy, but the sound wasn't near my room or hers. It came from the unused guestroom 6 on the top floor."
"Well, answers the question if a tree falls in a forest…" said Takigawa, shrugging.
"No sightings?" he asked. "Or breaks in taping or the like?"
"I do listen in class, I know, shocker, and no. Nothing that I couldn't explain."
"Is that all you have to report?"
Ugh, like asking in Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, 'is that your final answer?' Makes you all uncertain and plaintive.
"So…far?"
"Well, let's hear from your peers before we get the final answer from Lin."
Great way to fill me with confidence, Boss.
But, it soon became apparent that Takigawa and Ayako had not much more to add to that. Several guesses as to what the womanly-like voice could have been saying, but the prof stopped them from theorizing about why there were so many cold spots around the stairs.
"It is crucial that we do not apply our hypothesis at this step. It can and will distort how we see that data. Save it for the end."
"Or when you're dangling from a rope over the banister," I said, because Takigawa and Ayako didn't have masochistic death-by-handsome-professor wishes.
I had remembered the dream I had the night before, and the rough something around my neck had connected in my head as a noose.
Unnervingly, the prof seemed to catch that.
"Did you dream that last night?" he asked.
I gave him a blank look. "Yes…?"
He sat back into his Xavier pose, hands held folded horizontally in front of his chest, almost like a too-low shelf for his jaw should it drop.
"What did you dream last night?"
I blinked again, as I had never thought that my dreams had been any reason as to why he brought me. I mean, I had a dream about him, for heaven's sake. Maybe he really is a narcissist…just wanted to bring along a girl that dreams of him.
That thought made me even more reluctant to rehearse it, as, yes, the professor had been in there.
Once I finished describing it to the best of my abilities, forcing through that, yes, he had been there and saying stuff in front of the watching ears of my classmates, I tried to keep a straight, 'this is just a report, I'm a pro' look on my face. Was this going to start being a thing? Oh dear lord, please let me not have an inappropriate dream with my professor in it. Yes, he's cute, but no, I don't want to encourage that. Negative two and ten, man. Negative two and ten.
As usual, the prof was very good with the poker face.
"That's a very symbolically heavy dream," he said, after a minute or so of unnerving quiet.
"Spiders tend to do that," I said dryly.
"Everyone has dreams with spiders in it."
"Yes," said Professor Davis. "But the placement of symbols next to…other indicators can give evidence of a measure of clairvoyance. And since she passed my test for having a clairvoyant type instinct, it isn't a bad idea to be open to all the possible areas it could be expressed in."
Takigawa let out a low whistle. "Clairvoyance? You gonna be telling the future and stuff?"
I wrinkled my nose at him. "What did you test positive for."
Takigawa grinned and stuck a thumb to his chest.
"High spiritual power, man. Not in my brain at all. It's in my soul."
Ayako faked a gag. "How can you even test a soul?"
"Through…quizzes?" he looked to the professor. "Help me out here, sir?"
The prof shrugged. "I had three slots to fill and you're my only Buddhist student. Christian exorcists are far more common than Buddhist, and yet Buddhist has a longer history of expelling spirits that didn't go through a dark age."
Takigawa gaped at him. "You brought me…because of my religion?"
The prof gave a straight-lipped kind of wicked smirk, except a straight line was probably the closest he'd ever get to smirk.
"And because of your religious sensitivity," he shrugged. "You can do all the moves of being religious and devote, but it doesn't matter an inch if you're heart's not in it. That's harder to find than you think."
"That wasn't me though, right?" said Ayako, nervously. "I mean, I don't really have any sort of... religion…"
"You tested positive to at least a small level of PK-L, a psychic-kinetic effect over living objects. How that is expressed I'm also keeping an eye out for, but I suspect it may have to do with plants."
She gave him a bland look. "Since I'm allergic to most things furry?"
"It's just a guess on my part."
"Got to wait till the end to hypothesize," I said. No, it wasn't because I wanted all his attention. No, it wasn't because I liked playing word smack with him…
Shut up.
He gave me another one of those cool glances. He didn't answer me.
"In that case," he got to his feet. "I'll go wake up Lin. He didn't leave a report to me, so there couldn't have been anything major."
He went out. I listened to his steps on the staircase, tap tap.
"Speaking of people flirting like ten-year-olds," Takigawa aimed a smirk at me. "You and the prof? Really?"
Face-Flame on!
"Are you kidding me? He's ten, I'm like negative two, that would be suicidal!"
Ayako wrinkled her nose again. "Negative two?"
"You know, on a scale of one to ten, he's like a ten—"
She snorted—loudly. "More like an 8. The personality ruins the face."
"He's like batman," I said with a grin. "All grim and serious and sarcastic and no-nonsense business."
"Well, if you go by that," said Ayako, "Any guy who doesn't say too much and happens to be around you when they say something rather dry could pass."
I dropped my head back. "Point is, it ain't going to happen, I'm not suicidal," but maybe masochistic. "End of story."
Takigawa, however, was frowning.
"I wouldn't say you're a negative 2."
"Not fishing for compliments," I said to the wall behind me.
"Oh, come on, you totally want to be rated by a guy." He smiled, showing all his teeth. "I promise, you're over a five."
"I really don't want to know." And I didn't. I had lost interest in dating guys…almost as soon as I got interested, really. Maybe having your mom die on you and you being afraid of being a psychopath could do that. And high school boys were shy, delicate creatures. Unless encouraged by the girl, they usually hid.
"You're like a seven and a half."
"Kid, she said she didn't want to know!" snapped Ayako.
"Kid? Just how old are you?"
"Younger than you are, most likely."
'Twenty-seven. What are you? Thirty?" he snorted. "Communications major?"
Stink eye of death from Ayako. "Pre-med major, thank you very much, with a communications minor. Communicating effectively is half the work in finding the cure."
"Says who?"
"Says her dad," I said, bringing my head up to give him a droll stare. "Her parents head a hospital. Don't start this battle. You won't win."
I couldn't miss the sense of gratitude Ayako wafted my way.
The prof came back in then, looking almost shrimpy next to his very tall, broad-shouldered assistant. Lin had the squinty look of the newly woken up, but other than that there was not a trace of sleep on him. Hair brushed, button up shirt and tie, slacks, jee whizz.
"You missed movement on camera 5, around 03.45 hour, thirty seconds into the minute."
That made us all flinch. Movement? Hardcore movement? How could we have missed that?
We wasted no time spinning back around in our chairs and bringing up camera five info. I did the clicking through the computer as Ayako and Takigawa hanged over my shoulders and egged me faster with their body heat.
It was a camera set in one of the private baths (we had cloths and rubber bands to put over the camera when we were doing our business—hopefully nothing came to haunt us in our most private moments). I had to look to the map real quick to see who's room the bathroom was attached to, and I was surprised to see it was the professor's.
We wouldn't have seen it if we hadn't been looking for it. A fuzz of shadow, the faucet handle turned, not making a sound. The nozzle of the faucet was one of those bamboo shaped ones though, made to let out water as quietly as physically possible, so I barely caught the little tap of water meeting sink.
The professor closed his eyes and smirked. "Had to turn that off myself this morning."
The three of us students gave in sync groans of 'you just lost the game.'
"And that wasn't even a weird flicker or anything, that was hardcore," moaned Takigawa.
"In my defense, you two had already close to finished camera 5 when I came in," said Ayako.
"What were you doing all morning?"
"What do you think?" She flicked her hair, and I did take notice of her usually perfect makeup job. "Mai can be in boot camp, but I certainly don't have to."
Meanwhile, I had my head back again and my hands over my eyes, muttering to myself.
"Moving object…water…voice…temperature fluctuations of varying intensity, though nothing over three-degree difference…" Then suicide. "Do we have a map of where the suicides occurred?"
"Only a few. The rest are mere death certificates," said the prof. "And the few that occurred were hanging off the balcony on the third floor. Though one was an overdose of sedatives in one of the rooms on the second floor, but I'm not sure where."
Oh, yeah, that was comforting. Dead people. Wait, it was. Meant there was actually something here to see…maybe.
"Do we have the results of foundation testing and all that like, for settling and gas possibilities?" I asked.
"I requested that before I came. They've been done, and the foundation is sound. Natural gas isn't even equipped to this house."
"What other natural causes could…?"
"Very good, Mai. Ruling out natural causes before moving on to the supernatural."
"Why do you sound so surprised?"
"I don't know what you mean."
Takigawa giggled a bit and muttered, "and we're the ten-year-olds?"
The prof ignored him, probably because he knew just as well as I did that he was way out of my league, both in the station of being student and teacher and also because…TEN, man, TEN! And negative two!
"A common suicide method is to slit your wrists in the bathtub, using the running water to cover any sounds you might make," said Ayako, finger to her chin.
"Natural causes first," I said.
"I know that, it was just a thought. What could possibly turn on a sink by itself?"
"You'd be surprised," said the professor. "A change in water pressure on one poorly installed faucet can do a variety of tricks."
I'd never heard of that. Though it did make me groan to myself. I didn't even have a clue how to do a water pressure test on the house, let alone on a single sink. I didn't think knowledge of plumbing was necessary to hunt ghosts. Though the prof had mentioned that one must be a jack of all trades, in a way, knowing a little bit of everything—or, rather, in his words, "enough of everything."
"Mai, I'll walk you through a water test after lunch," he said. "Ayako, Takigawa, you may watch but do your best not to squabble. I don't want to hear it."
"Ditto to you," said Takigawa.
The prof gave him the cool stare. "Excuse me?"
"You know, like the Poke'mon!"
….nice save, Takigawa. That was sarcasm. Why the freak would we be talking about Poke'mon?
Thankfully, the prof wasn't all that interested in delving into that pack of Japanese merchandise.
"If there aren't any requests to cook lunch—"
"I will!" crowed Takigawa.
The professor just shrugged.
Author's note: I'm so sorry if her Jacky Chan references offended you or made this uncomfortable to read! I got rid of it the moment someone pointed out. I hope you all know I'm not racist in the least. I actually almost considered getting a degree in anthropology. ^.^ I love variety and differences. Next time I do something offensive, please don't hesitate to tell me, especially if you'd really love the story other than that one part. Again, so sorry! I have fixed. Enjoy.