Chapter 22

The weather alert voice was as robotic as ever. I’d always found it unsettling. Then again, no one tunes in to the weather band on a nice day just to verify the sun is high.

—funnel cloud sighted in Wheaton, and residents should take cover—

Alisha grabbed my knee so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. “Like a hurricane?”

Jibben was the one who answered. “We’re too far inland for a hurricane.” Alisha exhaled a shaky breath, and he went and added, “Funnel clouds are associated with tornadoes.”

“Like in the Wizard of Oz,” I added, with the intent of keeping her from tearing off my kneecap.

Jacob said, “Even if a funnel cloud were to touch down, the basement is the safest place to be.”

“But not during a flood!” Alisha said.

She had him there.

—has issued a tornado warning for the following counties: Cook, Lake, DuPage, McHenry—

Jacob tried to tune in another band—likely with the hope of dredging up some news that was a bit less harrowing—but all he could find was a distorted snatch of random pop music and some advertisements in Spanish. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to find anything helpful, he said, “Tornadoes usually blow through fast. I’ve never spent more than a couple of hours in a shelter.”

“And he’s from Wisconsin,” I added. “He should know.”

Jibben said, “Tornado durations can vary widely depending on their intensity and size. It’s possible for a tornado to persist for several hours under certain conditions. Each one is unique in its characteristics and lifespan.”

“Good to know,” I said testily. “But the point is, we’re talking hours. Not days. We just need to hold out a little bit longer.”

If there was ever a good time for Jacob to gloat, that time would be now. I didn’t like the look of the sky had become the understatement of the year. The next time he had a feeling about the weather, I’d run out and grab some toilet paper, beef jerky and bottled water.

Jacob came over and sat on the floor beside me with his back to the wall. “I hope Clayton knows enough to go in the basement.”

“Don’t they have tornado drills at school?”

“Who knows?” Jacob draped his arms over his knees and pressed his forehead into them. “I’m not sure if it even matters. He’s at that age where listening to authority figures is suddenly optional.”

Alisha clutched even harder—that woman had one hell of a grip. “I hope Kelvin didn’t do anything stupid. I shoulda called my sister to go get him when I had the chance.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Jibben said. While the rest of us had been wringing our hands over the various teenagers in our care, he’d been scouring the manifest. He pulled a piece of equipment out of the crate and set it on the tabletop.

The contraption was a tripod with foldable legs, but instead of a camera mount up top, there was a weight dangling from the center, and a plate on the bottom marked with concentric circles. “A pendulum,” Jibben explained. “We can use it to observe ambient vibrations that are too subtle for us to sense ourselves.” The weight swayed slightly. “Any minute tremors transmitted through the earth, structure, or atmosphere should cause the pendulum to move.”

I had my doubts as to how effective that might turn out to be, but I figured that anything that could keep us busy was a good idea.

Jibben said, “The plate at the bottom measures the swing. The larger the swing, the greater the force.” He levered up on his good leg, looked down from overhead and said, “Current distance, approximately 3.5 centimeters.” And then he made note of the time and jotted his finding down on the back of the manifest. “If we track the motion in predetermined increments, we’ll have some idea what’s going on out there.”

I had no idea if the tripod would do anything useful, but at least it distracted Jacob from his Clayton worries. He said, “How was this used to measure telekinesis?”

Jibben said, “The mechanics of the device make it possible for even a minute physical vibration to be measured and quantified. Telekinesis is notoriously subtle, and using an apparatus such as this will amplify the motion and make it much easier to detect, even without any costly sensors or electronics. An elegant solution.”

Everyone’s eyes went to the pendulum which was now just hanging there dead center, lifeless.

Though not for lack of trying. Because the way Jacob was staring at the pendulum, it was a wonder it didn’t blow through the far wall like a .45 caliber bullet.

If the pendulum was etheric, maybe it would.

I supposed I should be glad for small favors. No clue if it was possible to put an etheric hole in the wall. But if it was, that hole would lead straight to cold storage.

A thunderclap rumbled through the foundation, and the pendulum began to swing. Alisha looked from the pendulum to me, and gave my knee another painful squeeze. “Reminds me of my cousin’s gender reveal party. They hung a ring over her belly, so the way it moved—in a circle or a line—would tell if she was having a boy or a girl.”

“Utterly unscientific,” Jibben said without looking up from his notations. “Unless the point of motion is restricted in some way, a pendulum will swing back and forth. It’s simple gravity.”

“Oh yeah? Then why’s it going in a circle now?”

“The conservation of angular momentum. A tremor could easily cause it to deviate from its straight-line path—”

Alisha huffed. “Whatever. The baby reveal pendulum might not be all scientific, but it was fun. Isn’t that the whole point? And, by the way, it got the sex right.”

Even Jibben couldn’t be bothered to point out there’d been a fifty percent chance for that to happen. And if that pendulum were dangling from the grasp of a precog…maybe more

Back in Hinman’s time, pendulums were commonly used as divination tools. Something akin to Ouija boards or dowsing for water. And while I knew firsthand that Ouija boards could damn well channel the dead, they only worked in the hands of a medium. For anyone else, they were nothing more than a creepy toy.

Most people consider the Ganzfeld Reports incontrovertible proof that psychic abilities actually did exist, but in fact, they debunked even more common practices than they proved. Like a Ouija board, a pendulum was activated by unconscious micromotions from the hand that held it.

Looking at the pendulum now, suspended on its tripod, I couldn’t help but wonder. The pendulum could pick up vibrations from a hand, and most definitely from a tornado. But an etheric force?

No. Wrong plane.

Which was why Jacob could stare at it all he wanted without changing a circle to a line…or whatever it was he’d been trying to do.

He must’ve come to the same conclusion. He scowled and turned his focus back to the radio.

After a few cranks, the radio crackled back to life, and the weather robot was talking.

—funnel cloud touched down in Elgin. All residents urged to seek shelter—

“No one did the pendulum at my shower,” Alisha said. “I thought I was having a girl. I was sure of it. Everyone said, you carry high, that’s a girl-baby. Plus, the cravings. Anything sweet—especially strawberry milk. Couldn’t get enough of it. But chips? I could take ’em or leave ’em. Everyone knows, it’s salty for a boy and sweet for a girl.”

Jibben said, “And yet, clearly your ‘evidence’ turned out to be faulty.”

Alisha sighed wistfully. “I was gonna name the baby Imara. It means strong.”

I gently pried her hand from my knee, searching for something to distract her. “What about Kelvin—what’s that mean?”

“It’s a river in Scotland. I just liked the way it sounded.”

Jibben cleared his throat. “While I understand the human tendency toward magical thinking, the fact remains that the world operates on scientific principles. Motion, gravity, entropy—these forces dictate the workings of the universe in quantifiable ways.”

He leaned forward, eye twitching in emphasis. “Psychic powers are real, make no mistake. But even psi phenomena operate within certain boundaries. The human mind craves narratives to explain the unexplained. But the truth often lies in mathematics, measurement, replicable experiments—”

“Oh yeah?” Alisha grabbed my wrist and pointed my flashlight beam at the pendulum. “Explain that with your science.”

Dangling there from its tripod, the pendulum quivered like a bee doing a communication dance with its hive buddy. But the thunder vibrations we’d periodically felt coming up through the floor were utterly still.

“I’m sure there’s a logical reason,” Jibben said.

And then my flashlight beam flickered.