#014: Contexts

Several things troubled me about that interview with Marcia. There were content problems and context problems. How much could I believe? Was there any reason for not believing all of it?

Putting the thing in context with our first two encounters, I had to first make allowance for the fact that the first two were colored by alcohol while the third was not only cold sober but also post-trauma.

And while two and possibly three moods or personality movements had been displayed during those interactions, at least one apparently dominant character trait came through in all three: forthrightness, a sort of natural honesty. There was a refreshing directness to that character, even when she was trying to be otherwise.

Even so, she had displayed an amazing candor in revealing her plan to run away with Carl Powell. I must tell you here, though—and I hope you can take the comment as clinical, without ego—that I have noted a tendency among women in general, who know about my background and interests, to be sometimes embarrassingly candid with me in highly personal matters, even some who are normally secretive and deceptive with others.

So much so, in fact, that I have had to recognize a certain intimidation factor inherent in the label of psychic—not nearly as much in men as in women, however—to the degree that I have learned not to discuss my work or "talents" in purely social contacts. I have found that women are generally more receptive than men to the reality of psychism—that is, more believing. I have an interesting theory to explain that, but I will not go into that here.

The point is that I am frequently told much more than I really want to know about a woman's interior life—as if to say, what the heck, he already knows it anyway so let's talk about it.

That factor could have been at work during that late-night conversation with Marcia Kalinsky.

I decided to accept—at least for the moment—the question of basic context and go on to the more troubling questions of content. And, really, a lot of bothersome stuff had been developed during that brief talk.

The most bothersome to me, vis-à-vis Karen Highland, was the information about her dead mother, Elena. A lot of powerfully operative stuff, there—operative, that is, upon the developing mind of a child—possibly traumatic stuff. No way could I miss the obvious, there: Was Elena the ethereal companion? If so, did she exist as an actual disembodied entity drawn to this plane by the frustrations of previous life here or did she exist purely as a traumatized spin-off from Karen's own troubled consciousness.

Bear with me, please. I am contextualizing content, here. This is important stuff, much too important to bang against a stone wall of preconceived notions.

Karen had given me to understand that she did not know the identity of this "visitor." She had also stated that the visits had begun in her early childhood, had grown more frequent in later years—and, I gathered, personally bothersome to Karen during recent times.

She claimed very little conscious memory associated with either parent, even though she was fourteen years old at the time of their deaths. She had also told me of a certain confusion in distinguishing dreams from actual events.

Could her memory of childhood visits, which she now likened to the ethereal visitations, actually be confused memories of actual physical events involving her actual mother during those infrequent periods when Elena was "between institutions?"—and was that now the source of a traumatically spun-off psychic-companion personality?

Her father, TJ, was—by the record—as much a recluse as his father, JQ, which means that he must have been under roof, so to speak, throughout Karen's early life. Why, then, did she exhibit such careless memory of her father?

Carl Powell, if I could believe my conversation with him, had her diagnosed as an Electra. In the Electra complex, a female child is in love with her father and hates her mother as a competitor for the father's affection. If he had probed through her conscious and subconscious memories to that extent, could he have missed entirely the ethereal companion?"

Or had Carl Powell been as big a rat as Terry Kalinsky now seemed to be shaping into and had he merely helped to manufacture a psychopath—or an apparent psychopath—to help Kalinsky keep control of the Highland billions?

Was Karen Highland a psychopath or merely a victim of human greed?

Was she a killer?—and I had to take in, now, the question of her own parents, Bruno, perhaps even Bruno's brother—who thus far was only a postscript, but not a forgotten postscript, to this developing drama—Marcia's mishap in the pool, and of course Karen's psychiatrist and Marcia's imputed lover, Carl U. Powell, M.D.

It was a time for answers and all I had were questions.

And don't tell me to use my psychic powers. I do not use them, they use me.

But I would have gratefully accepted any small crumbs that they would feel inclined to toss my way.

Time was quickly running out for Karen Highland. And maybe for Naru Springsteen. I had to find some answers, and I had to find them damned quick.