Something in that statement didn’t feel completely correct, but I kept my partial disagreement to myself. There had been a woman in the earth, a woman who was part of the energies, and yet, who wasn’t. Whether she was a witch or not, I hadn’t been able to tell, but if Unit Eighteen thought witch, then how was I going to prove her not? Worse, what if I was mistaken? I openedCSM-Nellon my laptop, and merged the new GPS coordinates to my own sat map. I drew a slow breath as I absorbed the potential meanings of the locations. In the background, I listened to the unit members discuss the psy-meter readings, the bizarre actions of the humans who had first come to the attention of KEMA, and the multiagency law enforcement involvement that was taking place as of dawn.
“The first family, at what we’re calling Point A”—Rick indicated the house with a laser pointer—“was reported by a guy on the way into work. Family of five, all in their yard, walking in a circle. In their nightclothes. Children not wearing shoes. The man buck naked. KEMA techs tested them without interfering and they redlined. Then local LEOs got another report, extended family of seven. That would be Point B. KEMA started driving around, looking for activity, and found the third one. We’re calling it Point C, also five adults, some from out of town, visiting.There haven’t been any other reports of suspicious activity. All three families redlined. KEMA set up privacy tents and cordoned off the houses and yards.
“The sheriff deputies are evacuating the nearby families,” JoJo said, pulling on three earrings in her left ear. It looked painful, but this wasn’t the first time I’d seen her pulling on her earrings. It was a tic, indicating she was mentally occupied and trying to draw correlations from insufficient evidence. “The Red Cross is involved. So are county services, offering support and advice.”
Rick leaned forward, his fingertips on the table, taking his weight, a lock of his black-as-midnight hair swinging forward over his forehead. He said, “Since this situation is clearly not contained, and since we don’t have a source or explanation for the paranormal activity, the DIC called in the FBI to assist. They are currently acquiring warrants for the houses.”
“Did they leave the people walking?” I asked. “In their yards? Undisturbed?”
“No. The victims are being taken to University of Tennessee Medical Center for isolation, testing, and treatment. How do you think this might be relevant to our part of the investigation, Nell?”
“I don’t know. How did they take it?” I asked. “The people, I mean. Being taken away.”
Rick referred to his notes on his tablet. “No one was responsive until paramedics attempted to remove them from the site where each was found, at which time violent psychosis resulted. As of the last report, all are medicated, on psychotropic meds; no one is coherent as to date, place, or time. Why?”
“I’m not sure. Are the remaining geese still swimming in a circle at the pond site?”
“The geese were swimming in a circle?” Rick asked.
“Yes. It’s in my report.” I shifted my own maps up onto the main screen, and added in a split screen one of the photos from the pond site. “We had two dead geese at the pond, here and here.” I pointed. “You can see the live geese, clearly swimming in a circle. The dead ones were not in the circle. While I was reading the land, a third goose died, and when it did, a line of energy attached it to the deeps.” I could see them watching me in my peripheral vision, could feel their interest, but I didn’t look up. I pulled up the shots of the accident site where the truckdriver had hit the deer. “Were the deer walking in a circle before they were hit and scattered all over by the impacts?”
Rick nodded yes.
“And there are the houses in a triangle with people walking in circles.
“Hmm,” I said. “If you look, the three sites for each of the redlining activity—pond geese, deer origination site, and humans, form a second triangle, much bigger. And all the affected beings and creatures were moving in circles. So... what if there’s a wider circle on the outer limit?” I made a blue circle on the map, one that used the three triangle points to define the circumference.
T. Laine sucked in a breath I could hear in the sudden silence. Despite the fact that the woman in the deeps hadn’t been proven to be a witch, we had just discovered complicated witch magic geometries. A working of the highest order.
I went on. “Rick said that there was no way witches set up a working this large. So I started searching for companies that might have been involved in energy research, maybe something using tech to expand a magical working. Specifically paranormal energy research or research into how magic works. Maybe for weaponization. I started out with a simple five-mile diameter from each site. No reason for the five miles,” I added. “I had to start somewhere.
“Using the first two sites, I narrowed down the possibilities of companies that might have made a mistake with some kind of paranormal energy and I came up with more than twenty, initially. Now, using the same five-mile-diameter circles, I can eliminate most of the companies. And that leaves six, all of them in the general area of the center of the triangle and proposed witch circle made by the three sites of the disturbances.” I punched the names up on the screen.
Rick said softly, “Alocam, Inc., LuseCo Visions, C-Corp Development, Kamines Future Products, Rosco J. Moose, Inc., and San-Inc. Why did you come up with this when we didn’t?”
It wasn’t the first time he had asked me this. It seemed my brain worked differently from the others’. I shrugged and, after one look at his face, dropped my eyes to my laptop. I had to make this sound professional and smart, and not hokey or stupid. I took a breath to center myself, straightened my spine, and said, “With the exception of T. Laine, who thinks in terms of small workingsby witches and about mathematics, the unit thinks about sections of the city, neighborhoods, infrastructure, magical beings, and paranormal crimes committed by magical beings. It’s the box you all think in. It’s a big box, but it’s still a box.
“The box I think in is different. I think in terms of the land, of the earth, of its shapes and hills and valleys and water sites.”And the presences beneath the ground,I thought. “That’s my personal thinking box. So I looked at the proximity of the three sites to the hills, the rivers, and the creeks, and to the energy sources that might affect the actual ground around them.” I shrugged again. “The small thing, the dancer, in the ground yesterday and the day before wasn’t acting... I guess you could say it wasn’t acting like I thought it should. It was acting like a kid or a puppy, demanding and playful and temperamental. Because it wasn’t acting in what I think of as a natural manner, I considered the possibility that it might be a man-made problem, or have a man-made origination that stimulated a problem with something else.”
“Like a working with a built-in AI, capable of self-evolution,” Rick murmured. It wasn’t the first time artificial intelligence programs had come up.
“And then the woman spoke to me.”
“The woman you couldn’t positively identify as a witch,” T. Laine said, tucking her hair behind her ear.
I thought of offering her some of my hair goop, but there might a social protocol about that, and so I refrained. “I honestly don’t know what she was. As to the other stuff, you’uns got lots better ideas in that department.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tandy said. “You just came up with an insight and ideas that we haven’t discussed.” But I noted that he didn’t say that my ideas were totally new, so I was guessing that others had had similar thoughts.
“How about the people who have been to each of the sites?” I asked. “And who had contact with the deer? Any sign of odd psysitope readings?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Rick said. “We’re thinking that people were hit by a directed working, and these psysitopes dispersed after a time.”
I said, “I think I saw a wildlife camera mounted in the trees at the pond site. If we can get access to the footage, that might help us see what happened to the geese who died.”
Rick said, “Nell, you and T. Laine go to the pond site and see what’s happened to the geese. Get the wildlife cam footage if you can, or find who has it and ask for it. If they refuse, we’ll get a warrant. The dead deer were sent to Richmond, to PsyCSI. I expect prelim necropsies back in a few days. The living deer were taken in by the University of Tennessee’s Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries Department. Assuming things don’t change with what you learn at the pond, I’d then like you to swing by the school and see what’s happened to the deer.”
“I’ll get the dead geese sent on too,” T. Laine said.
