Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

dear,” she said, “I’m afraid I can’t offer you a lot of hope. Honestly, I don’t see a future for this project. Now, things could change. I don’t know how hard you’re working on it now, or how far along it is, but I get the feeling, I really feel strongly, that nothing will change until you put a lot more energy behind it. I know it’s hard, trying to do two things at once, but I just don’t think this is going to fly until you’re able to devote a lot more time to it. Does that make any sense?”
    I nodded. “Thank you,” I said, and felt very ashamed of myself.
    Chris said, “Well? She got it, didn’t she? Will you tell what the question was?”
    “Rosalie, you tell them.”
    “Rebecca wanted to know when her book would be published.”
    I gasped. Her answer had been good, in fact perfect, but I’d had no idea she’d know exactly what the question was.
    “You aren’t writing a book!” Chris said.
    “Well, it was a parlor trick, so I asked a trick question. I figured if Rosalie was any good, she’d know it was a trick.”
    “It doesn’t work like that,” said Rosalie. “A big part of this is knowing what questions to ask. If I’d thought to ask if you were sincere, I might have found out there was no book, and then I’d have really looked clever. Instead, I took the question literally.”
    I thought about her answer. “Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with your information source. But how did you know the question?”
    She turned her palms up. “I went to see another psychic who does this same thing, out of a garage down the peninsula. Couldn’t believe it, but couldn’t resist trying. What do you know, it worked. I haven’t got a clue how I do it. But I do have to hold the paper; that much I figured out. Now Ivan’s clairsentient, so you’d think he’d be the one, but he only gets it if it’s a relationship question. You’d think health would be his specialty, but Moonblood’s better on that. Your partner, by the way, is a genius on fire.”
    “Fire? Why didn’t you tell us about the Oakland Hills?” Hundreds of homes there had been destroyed by fire the year before.
    “Nobody asked me,” said Chris. “But remember that time I told you your transmission sounded funny and you’d better have it checked?”
    “I was impressed that you knew what a transmission sounded like. But it wasn’t that, by the way. It was something to do with the gas line and the manifold.”
    “I don’t even know what a horn sounds like. I just knew something in there was about to go up in flames.”
    “Oh.” This was a little like having a guardian angel.
    “Well, look, let’s do your reading. You get to ask us a question, and we’ll all work on it.”
    Rosalie said, “Okay, we’re going to ground. That means we’ll get ourselves in a receptive state, like a focus. In fact, why don’t I start it, and then everybody can finish their own way.”
    “Wait. How do you know when you’re ready to read?”
    Chris said, “I get a little body sensation.”
    “A twitch or a tickle or what?”
    “Well, it’s like—” She stopped, looked puzzled. “Maybe it isn’t a body sensation. It’s kind of a ‘ping’, only it isn’t a sound.”
    “That certainly clears things up,” said Tanesha. She looked at me. “Look, you just know, okay?”
    “Let’s go,” said Rosalie, and they all closed their eyes. “Imagine you have a red cord running down your spine, all the way, till it comes out your body. Drop it now, drop it into the Earth; drop it through the floor, through the neighbor’s apartment, through all seven floors to the basement. Drop it through the basement, into the soft Earth. Go down gradually, ever gradually through the layers; go through the roots you find there, down, down, until you hit bedrock, and go through the bedrock, down, down, until it starts to get warm. Go farther, till you get to the Earth’s core, its molten white-hot core, and start to draw some of the Earth’s energy up through your cord.”
    She went on another few minutes, during which the Raiders were instructed to raise the Earth’s energy into their bodies and then return it to the Earth on the left side of the cord, so that a continual circuit was formed. I didn’t get it, but it certainly wasn’t spooky, and I did see how it could focus your mind. Gradually, each person’s eyes popped open. Ivan asked for something of mine to hold, and I gave him my watch.
    Rosalie said,