That title sounds rather “Gandalf-ish”, doesn’t it?

My regular readers at the old site always loved a good mystery, and I finally have one for you on this new site. I’ve made mention of paranormal activity on the increase for those involved in the Rose Red expedition and here on the TechStar property but I haven’t really taken time to explain. I will soon, I promise. But for now, I’m a bit distracted by this.

I came home from a lunch meeting with a local magazine editor to contract some book reviews (there’s no rest for writers, not even on Saturdays) and found my kitchen counters almost entirely covered in a thick substance as clear as water but more sticky, almost the consistency of cough syrup with a little gelatin added in. I know I’m not doing a very good job explaining it…

The first thing it brought to mind was that scene from Ghostbusters with the eggs frying on the counter. (Nick would laugh at that.) But the second thing it brought to mind was the one ectoplasm shot they did in the miniseries based on the Rose Red events (if you recall, it lands on Bollinger’s shoulder before he’s hoisted into the house). Ectoplasm has hardly ever been reported in Rose Red, but the caretaker did once find the dead plants in the solarium coated in a substance he thought looked like dew, only clinging even thicker to the branches and weeds.

My suite overlooks what once was the solarium, and now is part of the rose garden. There’s no other direct connection between the solarium and my suite. I can’t help but feel, given the strange history of it all, whatever ectoplasm and solarium ties there are belong somehow to Sukeena. The solarium has always seemed to be her domain.

Why is it in my suite? I don’t know. Maybe all my research and recent longing for Nick have made the spirits restless. I’m not afraid. I’m only puzzled. I’ve taken as good a photo as I could. (That’s above.) But it’s hard to show the consistency of something clear on a flat surface in “still life”. I was going to take photos of it on my hands and play with it to show you how it moves, but I was strongly advised not to touch it any more than I did when I first discovered it.

I couldn’t think who to call once it hit me that I had something truly inexplicable going on. Only the superintendent and myself have keys to my condo. There’s no sign of forced entry and I have an alarm system anyway. There are no leaks upstairs (i.e. some kind of weird condensation or substance from a leaky pipe in the condo above me). I called the super to check if he’d been around, and he’s been working all day at another TechStar property. Whatever this is came from within.

I’d have called Nick, but of course that’s not an option. Steve wouldn’t know how to explain it and it would only freak him out (sorry Steve). Annie doesn’t communicate perfectly and I’ve only met her a couple times anyway. So I called the only other Rose Red survivor I know well, one who can potentially help me, and who cares about my well-being: Emery Waterman.

Visitors of the old site will know that Emery and I are friends – I let him room with me in Nick’s and my old townhouse after he sold his mother’s house.

So it was Emery who told me to stop handling it. He said he’d come over tonight and spend the night in my “haunted” guest room. I don’t have to tell you, I’m sure, what an enormous sacrifice this is on his part. He hasn’t been back to this property since he and the other survivors left the roses before the mansion was demolished. Neither of us know what to expect. Are the souls I believe are still here going to assail him like they did eight years ago?

As a post-cognate perhaps he’ll be able to shed more light on what happened, since he can see both the immediate and the distant past. If the spirits want to play with him they shall, I’m sure. It may be I have set into motion something huge – I have the first literally tangible signs of potentially paranormal life here. Is it the first concrete sign of Rose Red reawakening? I am about to reunite Rose Red with one of the few who escaped its clutches.

Our only safeguard from spilling the full can of worms, assuming the worms remain wriggling here as evidence seems to suggest, is that Emery is not the same person he was then. His personality is remarkably changed even if his talents, and his memories, remain. He’s still a powerful psychic, but gone is the negativity and vulnerability Deanna and Pam’s twisted Rose Red incarnations played upon. Emery stands on his own two feet now. “Not there” is an even more potent command.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Posted in: Personal | |
Post tags: bollinger, emery, nick, steve, sukeena

1 Comment »

1. [...] Remember the stuff all over my kitchen counters that I assumed was ectoplasm? I’d never seen ectoplasm before, but I knew there was an ectoplasm-like substance once found in the solarium, and it tends to be associated with the paranormal. Mary worked her forensics magic and examined the sample Emery collected before we cleaned it up. [...]

   Pingback by Unraveling Rose Red » Results of Emery’s Investigation: Rose Red Loves a Surprise — March 20, 2009 @ 4:33 am

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