A Dream of Ice by Gillian Anderson & Jeff Rovin

A Dream of Ice by Gillian Anderson & Jeff Rovin

Author:Gillian Anderson & Jeff Rovin [Anderson, Gillian & Rovin, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781476776552
Amazon: 1476776555
Goodreads: 25668486
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-12-06T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 13

Questions flooded Mikel’s mind as he watched the spectral figure.

Years before, he had attended a séance at the Group’s headquarters. It was an exercise to contact any surviving spirit of the ancients. Artifacts had been positioned around the table and Arni, the synesthete, had served as a very effective medium. Though the effort had failed in terms of opening a useful pathway, everyone felt a shift in the character of the room. There was a weight, a slight pressure of energy like shallow water. It was as if someone—or several someones—had been present who wasn’t present before. Flora, ever the one for empirical proof, declared it a form of group hypnosis and that was that.

Mikel had not been convinced. For him, the sensation had remained in the room for days after. Now he knew the truth: she had been wrong. The previous “recording” offered up by the tiles had shown living people. This one showed a soul, a ghost, a poltergeist, whatever label one wanted to attach to it.

This man and his colleagues believed in souls, Mikel told himself. They tried to bond them, to unify, to rise to some other plane. Had they succeeded? Had this one intentionally remained behind?

Or is that the fate of a soul that did not bond? he wondered.

Argh! To be so close yet unable to communicate with this man, he thought. To not to have the chance to study the room personally—

“Talk to me!” Mikel yelled.

The figure went about his wraithlike business. With a frustrated cry, Mikel drove the side of his fist into the tile. The image jumped ahead. Now there were two specters in the chamber: Pao and another, an aged woman.

“All right,” Mikel said to the tile. “Why did you stop here?”

There didn’t seem to be anything exceptional about the moment. Had the projection jumped to this spot because there was some kind of bookmark? Then, suddenly, Mikel realized something that sent a jolt through his belly. Or—

Is it real? Is this happening now?

His chest felt heavy under the weight of the thought even as his heart and mind raced.

He hit the tile again. The image did not change. That could only mean that this was no longer an image. Was he watching figures who were present now, behind the tiles. Were the stones relaying activity that was taking place behind them: the actions of spirits in the present day who had been here, he surmised, for untold millennia. He recognized one as Pao, the other was in shadows, barely visible.

As his eyes adjusted to the scene he saw more that confirmed his assessment. There were skeletons on the floor, close to one another. The bones had crumbled almost completely away, but Mikel could still make out the supraorbital ridge of a skull defining the hollow of an eye, and the arch of a pelvis. He felt the cold shock of realization. The skeletal remains belonged to these two souls.

Looking closer, he saw that the spirits were moving among scrolls and piles of stones with markings that appeared to shift and move, like animated drawings.



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