The Experiment

Chapter One

PRESENT DAY

The old metal sign swung in the wind. Rusted by rain, it creaked and clattered against the wooden pole it hung on, barely attached but for two rustier screws. The Eastern Psychiatric Institute and Asylum was housed in a sprawling grey building that looked as old and worn down as the sign at the entrance gate. Sitting at the end of a long and unkempt gravel driveway, the Asylum’s harsh and weather-beaten exterior was a harbinger of the interior –bare bones...yet operational.

An exposed light bulb provided an eerie glow to an otherwise forgettable room, lifeless but for the young college-age woman who lay in the twin bed, staring at the ceiling. She was attractive in a plain, intelligent way. She barely blinked, looking through the ceiling at something only she could see.

Janice Cole had been admitted days earlier after a horrible accident at the physics lab she was working in, along with several of her student colleagues. When the lab had exploded in a fiery display, Janice had been the only survivor. The bodies of her friends were never recovered, but the authorities chalked it up to the incinerating force of the explosion, although they were unable to explain how Janice emerged relatively unscathed.

Unable to speak at the time, she had fully cooperated with her parents’ desires and gone to the Asylum with no protest, no fanfare. Her parents knew of the place’s great reputation, despite its otherwise cold, no-frills environment. The staff was the best there was along the Eastern Seaboard, and the success rate was close to perfect, for those who came in with parts of their minds missing in action.

For Janice, most of her mind was missing, although the doctors and nurses assigned to her had no idea where it had gone. They assumed she was crazy from the trauma of watching her friends perish in the fire.

She knew otherwise. She wasn’t crazy. In shock, perhaps, but not crazy. But she couldn’t tell them the truth, because God knew what they would do to her if she did. Lock her up good and long for sure, and she couldn’t stay there. She had to get stronger, healthier, and retrieve her sanity enough to get up, go home and find them.

Her friends, like her mind, had not perished in a fire.

They had gone through a door...or maybe it was better to say they had gone through a rip... in space and time.

They had gone into other worlds.

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

The campus was abuzz with activity. The beautiful main buildings were covered in ivy and the surrounding trees were in glorious full bloom. Students moved with excitement into the old main buildings, eager to learn, or at least to be with their friends and experience the fullness of college life.

John Loh staked out three seats in the large lecture hall, and before long, he spotted his best friends, Janice Cole and Brian Aubrey. Janice almost pushed Brian out of the way to sit next to John, and it made him blush. He had been told by a million girls that he was gorgeous – tall, dark hair, well-groomed. But he was much more concerned about the quality of his brain, not his body. His IQ was through the roof, thus making him the lead grad student in his physics department, if not the entire school.

He knew Janice had a thing for him but loved her as a friend.

“Hey, what up?” Brian said, plopping his much shorter frame into the seat next to Janice.

Brian was attractive, but in a rough around the edges way . At least that’s what Janice had told John. John had no idea what girls liked and didn’t like. It wasn’t a priority for him. He had a girl he dated now and then, and that was good enough. Or at least he HAD a girl, because they had broken up a few days earlier. John kept it quiet, not wanting the attention or the sympathy, especially since the former GF was the daughter of his physics professor, Doc Greeley.

“Wonder what the Doc has in store for us today?” John said, smirking. He knew his professor was a maverick and a risk taker, and no doubt Greeley was planning something interesting to shake up the boring lecture his grad students were forced to attend.

Physics class was John’s forte, and the lecture today, on behalf of the old and often cranky Professor Johnson, who struck John as a cross between Morgan Freeman and Neil deGrasse Tyson, was on a most intriguing subject. Resonance. The power of sound and vibration to alter reality. John knew Professor Johnson was a hard case with the science and would most likely not be singing the praises of his own protégé, Doc Greeley, who was at that very moment in the basement lab doing experiments that would get all of them kicked off campus if discovered. Hell, Johnson had to know what they were doing down there, even if the old guy just scowled and put up with it. He had to know.

Johnson strolled into the lecture hall, all six foot three of him. He was an imposing man, and one of the first African-American physicists to head up the department. John liked him, but he liked Greeley more. Greeley was Johnson set on fire. But John respected the fact that Johnson was the one who shaped and groomed Greeley into the wild-eyed, groundbreaking maverick of a scientist he was. There was always a mentor to every protégé. John was aware that his mentor was Greeley, and wondered someday whom he, in return, would act as mentor to.

He caught Janice looking at him and smiled. She was pretty, maybe a bit plain compared to most of the Ivy League women on campus. But her brainpower made her someone John admired and felt attracted to. Just not in...that way...If anything, her intellect was the magnetic force. He never thought of her in any other way than a friend and colleague.

Janice smiled back and turned away.

Professor Johnson clicked on his microphone. Behind him was a large whiteboard filled with mathematical equations and ratios.

“Resonance. Vibration. Frequency. A lot has been implied about the power of sound and vibration, what it can do, and what it cannot do...”

Johnson’s booming voice required no microphone, but amplified, it reverberated throughout the hall like thunder. The man was commanding in presence. John listened, enrapt, although a part of him was waiting for the inevitable stunt that Doc Greeley was most likely cooking up at that moment.

“The use of sonic vibration,” Johnson continued, pacing the floor, “in physics and science has led to all kinds of strange theories about things like levitation of the blocks that made the pyramids. While still theoretical, sonic levitation is mathematically and physically possible, as illustrated by the video you saw last week of the use of infrasound to levitate an insect...Even NASA has gotten into the act with an object called the sonic jackhammer, that can literally penetrate solid earth with nothing more than sound waves...”

John felt his cell phone vibrate and took it out of his pocket. He checked it.

“Got a text from the Doc,” he said, holding the phone so that Janice and Brian could read the screen. The text read:

“Stand by for action!”

“Oh, what is he going to pull now?” Janice whispered.

Brian shook his head, but he was smiling.

Professor Johnson continued, “Now most of what you see on the Internet and YouTube is just theory, or pure rumor and pseudo-science. Sound vibration has not been proven to levitate a large block of stone weighing several tons.”

The lights dimmed and a video came on a screen that lowered over the whiteboard.

“This particular experiment was done at Northwestern Polytech in China and involved a goldfish. Note the fish suspended between a metal sound emitter and reflector. But do remember that a goldfish is very tiny and made of mostly water, which responds well to electromagnetic field manipulation. To levitate anything larger and more solid at this point is just not possible...”

The students watched as, on the screen, a goldfish levitated between two metal objects.

***

Greeley took a bite out of his sandwich and sipped from a steaming hot cup of coffee. He was almost ready. He fired off a quick text to John, his grad student. As he finished the sandwich, Doc Greeley got up and walked to the center of the basement lab, where he placed a large brick onto a small card table. He walked back to his work desk and adjusted the dials on a transceiver and amplifier, tuning down a dial that read in Hertz until it stayed at 20 Hz.

“How low can you go...” Greeley grinned, moving to the amplifier.

“One more for the road, baby,” he said.

The room began to shake.

***

Professor Johnson suddenly stopped mid-sentence as the entire lecture hall shook. Students screamed, some scrambling for the exits in a panic.

“Stay calm, everyone, it’s just a small earthquake! We do get those now and then, remember? Please stay in your seats!” Johnson called out.

As quickly as the shaking began, it stopped, and the panicky students laughed it off, returning to their seats.

“Holy shit,” John said. “He’s gonna get us all busted with this stuff!”

“I can’t wait until tonight’s experiments,” Janice said, breathing heavily.

“Neither can I,” John whispered.

Professor Johnson cleared his throat loudly through the mike.

“Let’s get back to our lecture. We don’t have all day, students.”

***

Greeley watched in fascination as the red brick hovered in mid-air. He got up and walked over to the table, almost afraid to reach out and actually touch the brick. He didn’t want to disrupt whatever forces were floating it two feet above the tabletop.

“Not possible, my ass,” he said.

The room had shaken violently from the initial frequency change, responding to the vibration of 20 Hz, beyond the range of human hearing. But even though it couldn’t be heard, it could be felt, and from Greeley’s own experimentation, it could itself become a force of nature. A force he hoped to take to the extreme.

He returned to his desk and turned off the transceiver and amplifier, sending the brick crashing down to the table, once again a victim of good old gravity.

***

They sat around the worktable in the darkened lab. John operated a digital recorder and video camera, making sure they were focused on Greeley, who sat at the end of the table. Greeley wore the God Helmet and his eyes were covered by ping pong balls.

“Hang on, lemme make sure the camera is on you,” John said, repositioning the video camera.

“OK, hurry, this thing is uncomfortable. I can feel a strange pressure already,” Greeley said.

John was thrilled to see that his mentor had made his own God Helmet. They could be ordered on the Internet, but quality was paramount for their experiments. Greeley had constructed this one out of an old bicycle helmet, attaching electrode wires that were hooked up to a portable EEG/stimulator located at the front of the helmet. It looked like a bizarre alien contraption, but as long as it worked, they were good to go.

John couldn’t wait to try it himself, but of course his professor had first dibs on it.

“Gonna switch to Beta-3 waveform.”

John adjusted a dial on a device sitting on the table in front of him.

“It’s almost like someone pushing on my temples,” Greeley said, “around the temporal lobe. Oh shit! I’m moving! I’m floating now! It’s like I can feel myself floating outside of myself!”

John smiled, excited by the fast results.

“Go with it, Doc. Keep going.”

“What the fuck? What is that? I think there is someone there,” Greeley said, his voice just above a hush.

“Can you see who? An actual person?” John asked.

John was more than aware of the God Helmet’s ability to cause users to hallucinate and sense shadow people, even experience a paranormal presence or a sense of religious rapture. It had to do with the part of the brain being stimulated, the same part of the brain that caused déjà vu, and grand mal seizures in epileptics. And it was the same part of the brain that allegedly activated during poltergeist activity in the human host.

If you believed in that sort of thing. John wasn’t sure, since there was no valid scientific proof of anything paranormal. But it did intrigue him that the same part of the temporal lobe was the culprit in so many unusual experiences.

“I sense it more than I see it,” Greeley said. “Shadowy, like a thickening of the air around it...that is totally fucking cool!”

Greeley took off the helmet and set it carefully on the table, removing the ping pong balls from his eye sockets. He rubbed his eyes as if waking from a long sleep.

“Man, that thing gave me a headache,” Greeley said.

He took a blue squishy ball off the table and squeezed it over and over.

“When can I give it a try?” Brian asked.

John thought he sounded like an eager puppy.

“It’s late, and I have a dinner date, kids, so how about tomorrow? Then you can all have a shot at it,” Greeley said.

“You gotta booty call?” Brian asked.

“Naw, with my lovely daughter. Not ready to wade back into the dating pool yet.”

Greeley squeezed the ball tightly.

“You’re gonna pop that thing,” John said, amused.

“Trying to give up smoking...it’s a bitch. This takes off some of the stressful edge.”

As they rose to leave, Janice turned back to Greeley.

“I think I’ll pass on the Helmet. I have no real desire to have my brainwaves messed with or see a shadow figure,” she said.

“Suit yourself,” Greeley said, winking at her.

John sighed. He had hoped Janice would be brave enough to give it a shot. He knew for sure he would. Brian was a shoo-in, too. He had his own paranormal investigation group on campus. Mention the word ghost or paranormal and Brian was all over it.

John liked to think one day they would discover the science behind what people labeled the paranormal. But for now, he passed it off as anomalies of the mind and the environment that were just misunderstood and misidentified. Like most UFO sightings. Planes, drones, military craft, stars and planets. Identifiable stuff misidentified.

“By the way, what did the old bastard talk about today?” Greeley said.

“That old bastard is your boss,” John said, “and he started on the wild and wacky theories involving infrasound. Part two of the lecture is tomorrow. Should be good!”

“Man, if he had any idea what I had up my sleeve, he’d shit his pants. See you guys tomorrow night, and on the down low, remember? Somebody bring some food, too. I could go for Chinese.”

“I’ll grab some from Chan’s on the way in. Great stuff,” Brian said.

Brian and Janice walked out together, leaving John alone with Greeley.

“So, what DO you have up your sleeve, Doc?”

Greeley grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

“In due time, my man. In due time!”

***

The lecture hall was full. Johnson stood down below at the podium, again a commanding presence in a dark brown suit. He leaned over the podium, which was about two feet shorter than he was. Behind him, the large screen was blank. He read through his notes as the final wave of students trickled into the room and took their seats.

John sat with Janice and Brian.

“Wake me up if I start snoring,” John said.

Janice poked him in the ribs, laughing.

“We will get started in a moment, students. Please take your seats and turn off your cell phones. I think your texts can wait,” Professor Johnson said.

Half the students obliged. The other half, including John, just turned down their ringer volume.

They all settled in for the long haul.

***

Greeley leaned over and turned on a piece of equipment that looked like an ordinary DVD player. But as he adjusted the dial, it emitted a deep hum that literally rattled the nearby overhead pipes. He turned down the transceiver to 25 Hz, and the hum intensified. Now the walls of the room began to shake.

“All aboard the Greeley express,” he said, lowering the dial to 23 Hz...then 22 Hz...then 20 Hz...

He began to sing and dance in his chair.

“Just a little bit lower now...how lowwww can you go. How lowww can you go...”

The room responded to the resonant frequency, vibrating to some unseen force. Greeley’s coffee cup flew off the table and crashed onto the floor. The table itself began to slide forward and Greeley grabbed onto it to keep it in place.

“And now...ladies and gentlemen...the ghost frequency itself...”

He dialed down to 19 Hz.

There was a blinding white light and a loud static pop, followed by a powerful boom that killed the power to the basement lab. The white light continued to glow, intensifying so brightly that Greeley cried out, shielding his eyes.

Then the light and the vibration ceased. All was quiet, and dark, except for the blinking red light of a video camera on a tripod in the corner of the lab.

***

Janice shifted in her seat.

“Did you feel that?”

John sat forward.

“Yeah...yeah...”

The lecture hall shook, as if the walls were about to cave in. Students looked around curiously, shouting and calling out.

Professor Johnson stopped talking mid-sentence and stepped quickly away from the screen, just as it came crashing to the floor only inches away from where he had been standing.

John looked up in time to see the overhead light fixtures shaking. He yelled for Janice and Brian to protect their heads as glass shattered and spilled down like rain.

Then the lecture hall went pitch black.