Chapter 4
The Green Street train to Boston Harbor was full to capacity.
Harper was seated next to a man who kept rubbernecking to look at her tablet.
She eventually put it away and pulled out a paperback.
He stopped peeking, but she could feel the barely contained conversation on his breath.
He wanted to ask her about her book, the puzzle game on her tablet where she guided a ghostly pale figure through a thousand Escheresque rooms.
He would ask her about her black hoodie with BSI Okeanos Marine Research Institute embroidered on the sleeve. He would tell her stories about how he had gone to MIT and how BSI was great but it sure wasn’t MIT. Harper could feel all of this and more pulsing out of his pores.
Harper glanced to her right. Standing next to her was an older man; he’d stood and given her the seat when she boarded and with dad-like energy insisted that she sit.
Even that slight movement sparked the man next to her into a stream of words; through her headphones, all Harper heard was “A BSI girl, huh? Your dad must be proud, I was a …” His words were like nails on sheet metal.
Ignoring him, Harper stood, pulling her backpack from under her seat as she rose.
“Excuse me, but do you want to swap? I really need to stretch my legs, you take the seat for a bit.”
“Well, if you insist. You’re sure now?” he asked cautiously, then looked to the man next to her. Getting the subtlety, he nodded in silent communication.
Harper shuffled forward a bit, adjusting her balance to the motion of the train. She could feel her former seatmate was shooting daggers at her from behind.
Harper wasn’t nice. She had been told this on multiple occasions.
In primary school, her progress reports had marked her as “unfriendly and aloof,” which was, in Harper’s estimation, a bit far-reaching as far as assertions went for seven-year-olds.
She wasn’t always nice, but she was rarely wrong, and she knew when no good was going to come of a situation.
Carli had called it “weird psychic” and, in combination with Harper’s odd dream life, declared it a revelation.
In the name of research hours, she had made Harper go through a thousand Victorian-era spiritualism tests, all as fodder for her dissertation. Harper had failed them all, mostly.
In a particular standout, Carli had decided that she was going to use the Victorian Spiritualism science to solve the mystery of Harper’s recurrent and oddly vivid dreams. Harper was blindfolded and set with a marker and piece of butcher paper.
This had taken place in the anthropology department commons room, with an audience of undergrad students in the Science of Spiritualism course that Carli TA’d.
The idea was that while Harper was blindfolded, Carli would sound a small silver bell that was supposed to summon the spirits.
In the simulated dark of the blindfold, Harper would be contacted by her dream guide and shown a vision.
She would then blindly write the impressions on the butcher paper with the dream guide to steady her hand.
Harper had laughed when she’d heard the setup.
“Indulge us,” Carli had begged. “It keeps the class interesting, and my advisor is granting research hours for this. No one expects this to work, but it is a documented spiritualism test that the Fox Sisters themselves were subject to, and absolute gold for my research hours.”
So Harper had indulged Carli and allowed herself to be introduced to the group and blindfolded.
She sat there in perfect blackness, hearing the low murmurs and rustle of expectation from the small audience.
She had felt the table shift ever so slightly when Carli had sat down across from her, and then, nothing.
Then the ping of the silver bell. Harper did feel her body relaxing, and marveled at how soothing the sound really was.
But there was no dream guide, no visions, her hand stayed still, the butcher paper empty.
Harper wondered how long they would all sit in silence, watching her not be psychic.
Finally, more to end the thing, she picked up the marker and, feeling with her fingertips to make sure she was over the butcher paper, she wrote the first thing that came to mind.
A moment later, Carli pulled her blindfold off and Harper was looking at her work:
789
“Well, folks, as you see …” Carli had gone on to explain that just like in the Victorian Spiritualism days, results did vary, and were not always accurate. The mediums of old would chalk it up to the spirits being restless or mixed energy in the room.
“789?” a girl in the audience interrupted.
“Yes, that’s what it says, the dream guide has spoken.” Carli smiled and continued into the myriad ways that the mediums of old would fake results or twist the conditions of the experiments.
Later that evening, Carli had bounced into Harper’s room and landed on her bed.
“789,” she declared joyfully.
“Yeah, I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not psychic.” Harper looked up from her desk.
“A student just emailed me.” Carli looked at Harper expectantly.
“Does she want her money back, ’cause she’s going to have to talk to the bursar’s office, I’m broke,” Harper said with a slight grin.
“$7.89 was the exact charge at the coffee cart where she stopped after class today. 789.” Carli looked inordinately pleased with herself. “Weird psychic.”
“Psychic only about utterly mundane things that impact exactly no one. Whatta talent,” Harper had replied, but secretly she felt a strange sort of pride.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry. Like really sorry.”
Harper snapped out of her memory as a commotion broke out behind her on the train. Harper looked back to see coffee dripping from the man’s hair and seeping into the shoulder of his gray suit jacket from a teenager’s spilled travel mug.
“Oh, I’m fine, don’t fuss … at least it was iced coffee,” he replied with a comforting smile to the horrified teen.
Harper pulled a travel pack of tissues from her pocket and held them out.
He nodded his gratitude and took the tissues, pulling one out and wiping the side of his face.
“I’m beginning to see why you wanted to switch.
” He winked, thinking it was just coincidence, which it was, maybe.
Harper turned her headphones to noise cancellation once more. She immersed herself into her paperback and let the minutes fold into each other as the harbor grew ever nearer.