The Professor announced, “It's the water, you see.”
“I'm afraid I don't.”
“Water! You know what water is, don't you?”
“Um. Yes,” I said, altogether unsure of my answer, “but I thought that you said that it was about the light.”
“Yes, yes! That's my end hypothesis, lad! The reaction and interaction with light is what I hope to demonstrate or at least provide reasonable grounds for further investigations. Well, actually interaction with matter might have to come before that, but overall I'm glad you were paying attention,” he said gruffly, annoyed that I should have interrupted his run. “But that's all the way over there, in the future. We're over here, at the start, and we need, first of all, to investigate causality between the environment and the activity of our subjects.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“But back to water! Why water? Why not water! It's the stuff of life. Remove water, you remove life; this is unquestionable. By symmetry, add water, you add life. Hmm. I need an example...”
The Professor took a book out from his shelf and flipped through with his fingers before pointing to an entry. I looked at it, surprised.
“Yeast?”
“Yeast!” he cried, turning the book back to himself. “It's not the best example, I am sure, for there are other nematodes and seeds that would suit as better examples, but this is one with which you are familiar, yes?”
“Yes, Professor. I once worked at a bakery.”
“Then you'll know all about it! Yeast, you see, is a living organism. We know this, because it grows and multiplies. It thrives, you know, on your skin, in bread, in beer! Beer!”
With that, he darted from the room, coming back with a bottle and two glasses. He seemed to be in an extraordinarily good mood. Certainly much more chipper than I suspected he might have been, given my poor performance. He poured out the brew and handed me a glass, complete with a crisp, frothing head.
“Cheers!” he said.
“Cheers,” I replied uncertainly. “Is this standard for a laboratory?”
“Um. No. No, Laddie, but, like you mentioned, it's Saturday, and, what's more, I think a celebration is in order. And, um, it's part of the demonstration,” he said hurriedly. “The yeast, you see, can lie dormant when dehydrated, sitting happily in a state of nullity for years on end, only to spring back into life when a drop of water touches it!”
“I see.”
“Tell me, how long can a man live without water?”
“Not long, I would imagine.”
“But how long? Days at most. Yes? Without food he might survive even a month, who knows, but water, water is the stuff that keeps him going! It's what makes plants grow. It's what makes fish swim! It's what drives the clouds and the rain and the sea! Rivers flow from the mountains to the sea. The tide moves everyday. Water gives motion and motion gives life.”
“I see.”
“I don't think you do! And that's not a slight at you, not at all, because it needs a little more explanation. For if we make the statement that water is the stuff of life, so what is to say that water, with its amazing properties, is not bound to life?”
“Bound to it?”
“In science, we have the principle of symmetry, and it works well on many levels. If A leads to B, one may argue, then surely B can lead to A? For example, if an electric current may make a magnetic field, then cannot a magnetic field create an electric current?”
“I don't know. Can it?”
“Yes, from what I have heard. It's an exciting prospect, isn't it, that one might create a current without the use of messy piles, only from a bunch of magnets so arranged,” he hummed, looking off to the wall. “Electromagnetism, it is called, a most fascinating read, but that is not in my field of expertise, and that is not what we are discussing right now. No, it was only to serve as an example.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“So, you see, using the principle lets us imagine that, if one thing leads to another then, given the right circumstances, the other may lead back to the one.”
“So with water?”
“Yes, water. Imagine, if you will, a parched field. It has a few tufts of grass poking out from it, all barren and dry, looking much like a desert. Then the rain comes! It soaks the ground. It threatens to flood it, it is so strong! All night and all day it rains, the skies rumble, the lightning strikes,” he bellowed, enacting with his hands the rain clouds. “The wind blows to a gale, and the water drenches everything above and everything below, to a depth we cannot imagine! Then, to the barren field, life springs forth!”
“But there must be a difference between a field of wheat that has been sown and a dilapidated house off Grosvenor.”
“The principle is still the same! Now, listen. I'm not sure how good your mathematics is, and there is no doubt in my mind that we will need to work upon it rigorously, but trust me when I say that, through my research I have derived that there is a strong correlation between water and suspected activity,” he explained. “And that includes running water, subterranean water, precipitation, lakes, rivers, bogs, ha! Even just the damp.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“It was raining last night.”
“I noticed.”
“And the house received that rain. It rained over the roof and down the pipes, it leaked into the cavity and dripped onto the floor. It made a couple of puddles. It probably even added to the musty smell by allowing a mould colony or three to propagate, eh?” he giggled, a foreign noise to pass from his lips. “And so, can we not suggest, from the principle of symmetry, that if the waters bring life to the fields, if they bring life to the desert, surely, surely they can bring life to the barren house?”
My eyebrows dropped. I was conscious of them. I did not wish to appear doubtful, or angry, or show any emotion, really, but there they were, pushed down so hard over my eyes that I had trouble seeing the Professor.
I drank some of my beer to hide my face.
“What is it, lad?” he asked.
Evidently my manner showed through the glass. I took my time, lowering the glass carefully, so that I might choose my words carefully.
“Professor,” I said, “I'm a little out of sorts at the moment. There's something, well, many things, but one thing in particular I should s...”
“Oh, out with it!”
“You said, um, in fact, you made it quite clear, precisely, that there was no mistake...”
“I haven't got all day, lad!”
I blustered, “You said that the house was for calibration! You said that there was nothing unusual about it! But there was everything unusual about it! Everything!”
A dribble of beer trickled down my chin, but I was so maddened that I did not care for it, nor for the light spray that came with my words.
“I expected to be within a house without motion, without noises, without voices! I was prepared to do my best, to record instruments with as much accuracy and diligence as I could. What kind of base reading could I get from a house that was so – so troublesome?” I burst.
The Professor put his glass down, smirking to himself. I did not know him so well as I do now, and, if I had known then what I know now, I would have suspected straight away that the cunning fox had well and truly pulled the wool over my eyes.
He hitched himself onto a stool, so that he was perched above my small frame, and he smoothed his goatee in thought.
“Lad,” he said, tugging a little at the end, “could you be calm for a second, just breathe a little, and think. Think about my position as a scientist. I needed readings. I can train a monkey to take readings.”
“So I'm a monkey?” I fumed.
“No. Listen. I needed readings. But I needed accurate readings. I can train any vagrant off the street for this.”
I remained silent. He was building up to something, and interrupting him would do no good.
“But more than this, I need unbiased, accurate readings. And this is something that I cannot drill into just anyone.”
“I am unbiased, Professor,” I blurted. “I only recorded what I heard and saw!”
“And I would accuse you of being nothing but! That, my laddy, is why I had to bend the truth a little. That particular house, you see, had presented me with many, many opportunities as a scientist to explore and investigate things that do not belong,” he explained. “It is a house rich in activity, and, if I could, I'd spend more time than is healthy in that place. But, back to you. If you had gone in, expecting to experience this or that, why, the recordings would have to be thrown out! Your own interpretations would have biased the results and made the whole investigation useless.”
I scratched my head, unsure.
He went on, “Now I have excellent evidence, lad, excellent, untainted evidence. This is such wonderful stuff! Can you testify to all that you wrote?”
I nodded, “Of course, Professor.”
“And you would do so under scrutiny by my peers?”
“What, um, kind of scrutiny?”
“The intense kind. The only kind that matters. That kind that will determine whether you are a liar, a blithering fool, or someone of reasonably sound mind and body. I should hope you prove yourself to be the latter,” he said pushing his chest out.
“My notes hardly constitute strong evidence, Professor. Would it not be considered hearsay?”
His smile dropped from his face a little, then returned just as quickly. I thought I might have offended him some, but, if this was the case, he did not show it.
“Indeed it would. Indeed. And that is why you must be strong in your resolve.”
He poked underneath his desk and drew out an envelope.
“I returned to the house this morning, bright and early.”
“Did you?”
“I took the liberty of investigating the shelf you mentioned. I saw, immediately, where it was that you had placed your hand, and I saw, too, the print next to it. Both were fresh marks.”
“Yes, Professor, that's right.”
“Rather than take a photograph, which would hardly be of interest, I applied a technique I learned a little while ago. I took some parchment, applied some solvent to one side and, with a steady hand, I took an impression of the dust!” he said, drawing out the parchment.
I looked at it with curiosity, seeing how the dust clung to the white cloth. Rather than leave the evidence where it might spoil, I understood, the Professor decided to take it with him! The two prints, parallel to each other, showed up quite clearly.
“Can you say which one is yours?” he asked excitedly.
“That's my hand,” I said, pointing to the lighter patch on the left.
“Are you certain?”
His tone of voice made me doubt myself. I squinted as I looked a little closer. Something was not right.
“No, that won't do, lad! You need to be definitive! I ask you a straightforward question, and any answer you give must be as straightforward. My peers will accept nothing less.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, um, yes, that's the one,” I said, nodding my head.
“And there is no doubt?”
“It's the right shape and size, I suppose, only that, if my memory is correct, I made my mark on the left, but that one on the right, I am certain, is mine.”
“Aha! Good lad. Well spotted. Well spotted indeed!” he laughed, turning the parchment around. “That's because when I took the impression, like so, the prints come out as a reflection of their true self. Your honesty is compelling.”
I patted myself on the back mentally, remaining stoic on the outside. “Yes, Professor.”
“What makes this remarkable are a few things. Firstly, as you have noted the event in your journal, it corroborates exactly what it was that you recorded, to the point where it is the actual evidence that we are looking at. Secondly, the size and shape of this print doesn't match your hand, and it certainly doesn't match mine,” he said, holding up his plumper digits for inspection. “And unless you have hands of differing sizes, then it indicates quite clearly that this print was made by someone else!”
“Yes, Professor.”
“But let us go one step further. Here, please put your hand in this, then make a hand print on this other parchment,” he said, offering a bowl of charcoal.
Very soon I had made an impression that very closely resembled my hand print in the dust.
The Professor looked satisfied. “That will do. Thank you, lad. While it's not proof, it certainly locks in the evidence for scrutiny at a later date, you know, in case anything should happen.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don't know. Maybe if your hand grows bigger, or you lose a finger or an arm! Ha!” he laughed, then grew a little more sombre. “The second, more interesting facet, is that your hand has a definite form to it. See? It looks like a hand print. There are your fingers. This is your palm. In fact, if you look closely enough you can even make out features here and here, lines that exist on your hand that make you unique.”
I looked at the print, then my own, blackened hand. “I see. Like this bit here.”
“You might want to wash that off. But, yes, there are features and there is form. But this print here, this unknown hand, what can we say about it? I looks very much like your hand print, in the same attitude and finger spacing,” he said demonstrating in the air. “But it lacks the definition! It is, without question, a hand print, as you and I both agree, but it is obscure, almost like a memory of a hand print. I contend, therefore, that without anything definitive about it, with nothing to make it unique as a hand print, that no human hand made this mark.”
My mouth dropped a little. His words rippled through the laboratory. I swallowed involuntarily.
I clarified, “An animal, perhaps?”
“What animal do you know of with a hand shaped like ours, with the same form of digits, with no prints or lines and that could have been in the house at the same time as yourself?”
“But,” I began, “I don't understand, Professor! Something must have made that mark!”
“Indeed. That is possibly the only conclusion we can draw, however weak it may seem, for anything further is speculation.”
“So it's useless as evidence, then?” I asked, both dismayed and confused.
“Not at all. Evidence is still evidence. It relies upon the nature of its derivation and its persistence. Its strength, however, comes from the context, the circumstances surrounding its discovery. Since we've ascertained that neither you, nor I, could have made the mark, that it was fresh, and that there was no one in the house besides ourselves, it holds more weight than if it had been taken under different circumstances,” he explained. “And this is why your credibility must be infrangible.”
“Yes, Professor.”
He sealed the parchments in an envelope, wrote the date and time upon the outside, then returned to his seat.
“Now all that's left to do is transcribe the notes from the journal, side by side, and compile a formal record of the night,” he said, sighing quietly. “Science is mostly administration, you know.”
He indicated to his shelves on the wall opposite, each of them holding books upon books, each filled with meticulously recorded notes.
“We'll start on Monday.”
“Will that be all, Professor?” I asked.
He looked up with annoyance. “What? No, lad, that will not be all!”
I guess my tone must have sounded a little impudent. I had been fired for less. Familiarity was not something favoured by employers, it would seem.
“I – I didn't mean...” I began.
“For there was one more thing to come out of last night! One very, very important piece of evidence. My lad, I owe you an apology!”
It was such a strange notion, that my employer might apologise to me, I was at a loss. “No, Professor, um...”
“Don't argue! An apology you deserve and one you shall get! I am sorry. There. I admit that when you first came to my door, I thought you were just another light-headed whelp.”
My face blushed. What sort of apology was this? I had nothing to say, so that was what I said.
He went on, “I'm a proud man, too proud in many respects, but not so proud to know when I should be contrite. You, you see, have a special characteristic about you. You're a fast learner, this I can see already, and you have an attention to detail, despite your inattention to the obvious.”
He swigged his beer, smacked his lips and looked up at me.
I shook my head. “Um.”
“I haven't finished. You see, while I thought you were fooling about when we were upstairs, for that is certainly what it seemed, you were obviously experiencing something altogether unworldly.”
“Yes, Professor, I was,” I blurted. “It was like my head, um, and the air, it was, ah, thick, and then, and then...”
“And then you were grasped by an icy hand?”
“Yes! Yes, I noted it down!” I said, unsure whether I wanted to remember the experience.
“And how would you describe it?” he asked. “I have your notes here, and these are fine, but do you think, while the memory is fresh in your mind, that you could put down in words the sensations you felt?”
I put my beer down, picked up a pencil and started to jot down everything. I noted how the air was viscous, how it became almost laborious to breathe, how the temperature dropped palpably. I noted how the fingers felt upon my palms, the attitude of my hand in the air and the proximity to the electroscope. Then I wrote of the voice!
“So, what's that then?” it had said, no, it had asked!
My writing became shaky at this point.
“I see that this has disturbed you somewhat?” the Professor asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes, Professor. Although, strangely enough, writing this down here has helped to, um, make things more clear.”
He humphed, “Clarification. Always comes when you lay things out in front of you. Now, if you would, could you discern the nature of the voice? Male? Female? Old? Young? Foreigner? Native?”
“Please, Professor, how can I if I didn't see the speaker?”
“Every voice has traits, Laddie, and as humans we are perfectly adept at picking these traits up. I'm not asking for your word, I only want your opinion.”
“Well, in that case, I should say it sounded young and feminine. Perhaps that's not quite right. It sounded like a young boy.”
“A boy?”
“Yes.”
“Would you write that down in your statement?”
I did so. He looked pleased with himself as he read over what I had written.
“Huh. A boy. How about that, eh? Thank you, lad. You given me much today, so I shall give you something. Here.”
He carefully finished his beer and put the glass to one side. I tried to do the same, but could finish but a mouthful. From his satchel he produced a series of photographs.
“I had these developed this morning. These you can see are with flash. These dark one here are no flash. These ones are the infra red ones.”
He put them onto the desk, adjusted his spectacles and fiddled with his goatee and flipped through a few of them with me.
“The problem with science, you see, is that if something is not repeatable, then it cannot be admitted. I was looking for that little orb, and I spent all morning, all damn morning looking for it. As soon as they were developed I was stooped over these pictures, magnifying glass in hand, poring over every minute detail. I was convinced, you see, that there was nothing of merit in the photographs,” he lamented. “I was this close to throwing them in the rubbish! Only the requisite rigours of my scientific training stopped me.”
He shuddered lightly.
“I was so sure, so sure! So much so that I fell victim to the very same problem I accused you of.”
I ventured, “Which is?”
“I didn't look for the bloody obvious, lad!” he hissed, removing the top photographs from the pile.
I looked down, letting my half empty beer glass slip from my fingers to fall messily on the floor. On any other day I would have apologised profusely to make up for it, but my eyes had arrested my full attention. There was no orb, or flecks of dust in this image instead, there, on the photograph, was me, my back turned to the camera, stooping low over the equipment.
Next to me was the unmistakeable impression of a small boy, squatting down next to me, appearing to be looking inquisitively at the equipment upon the floor. His arm was outstretched, and his hand, the image shows quite clearly, was resting upon mine.
“It seems you've made a friend,” the Professor giggled. “I can only assume he is attracted to your youth. What possible interest could an aged, doddering coot be to a young boy?”
I nodded, being the best movement I could muster. I traced the outline of the boy with my finger lightly, remembering the sensation of his touch. I shuddered at the memory.
“Again, I was blinded by my surety. For so long I had probed and prodded at that old house, convinced that the haunting there was nothing more than what we might call a residual haunting.”
I looked up, confused. “Residual?”
“It's a classification that I've noted from my studies. Things happen at the same time around the same place, the same number of bangs upon a wall, the same creak of a floorboard. This is the reason I chose to study this ho