Bones of Angels Read Free Page A

Whittington opened the iron doors of the sensory deprivation chamber he kept in one of the many labs he had outfitted in the basements and subbasements of the manor he had inherited from his great grandmother, Mary.
    He had been lying peacefully in the warm saline and water solution for almost two hours. The hallucinations had finally subsided, and he realized that he was hungry and thirsty. Totally nude, he climbed out of the chamber, toweled off, and put on a white terrycloth robe. He then went to the kitchenette at the end of the basement corridor.
    Reaching for various ingredients, he poured orange juice, gin, vitamin C, ginseng, and a raw egg into a blender and pushed frappe.
    “Done,” he said, pouring the mixture into a tall glass. “Ambrosia fit for Dionysus.”
    He drank the concoction in two swift gulps and reached into the cabinet over the sink.
    Whittington manor was the perfect place to conduct his experiments. He had a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton, but he had shunned teaching altogether. Even now, at sixty-four, he reveled in performing his own research. He was worth . . . well, it was quite a lot of money, though he never really calculated his assets. That sort of mundane task was for accountants and pencil-pushers.
    He had inherited the Whittington fortune, including the family’s manor, from his father, who had himself inherited it many years earlier from his mother, the eccentric Mary Highstreet Whittington. The manor, though an architectural puzzle in the extreme, suited Charles’ personality and pursuits perfectly. He was absorbed in many areas of research, both scientific and paranormal in nature: lucid dreams, auras, out-of-body experiences, telekinesis, remote viewing, and a host of experiments related to quantum theory. He loved the seclusion afforded by the rambling Victorian mansion.
    He was especially interested in wave-particle duality, an outgrowth of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which stated that reality depended on the mindset of the observer. Light was a particle, light was energy. One simply couldn’t pin down the exact nature of reality.
    Fortified from what he called his Ginseng Sling, Charles walked gingerly up a spiral staircase to the second floor. He entered the third door in a row of six. Three of the doors opened onto brick walls. Inside was a small chapel that his great grandmother had built, yet another measure to help protect herself from ghosts. Charles himself had never seen any of these military specters — not that he didn’t believe in their existence. Quite to the contrary.
    Charles sat quietly, looking at the altar and the crucifix hanging above it. He was not a member of any organized religion, although he harbored very firm spiritual beliefs. He liked to come to the chapel to let his mind wander.
    Today, he thought of his grandson, David Denton. Some called him Quiz.
    “Smart as a whip, that boy,” Charles said to himself. “And a very special young man. Oh yes, very special indeed.”
    On many occasions, he had heard Quiz speaking to himself, although Charles suspected that David was, in reality, speaking to someone else. Charles knew all too well what that was like.
    Charles rose, mumbling Hamlet’s famous line: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
    Charles climbed to the third floor, intending to take a power nap in his bedroom. Like Thomas Edison, he often lay down for an hour or two, awaking refreshed, ready to resume his esoteric work.
    On the third floor, he passed a corridor that admitted to no room and led absolutely nowhere. A voice at the end of the corridor summoned him.
    Charles paused, turned, and walked down the dark hallway. There was no one in the hall, but he was nevertheless attentive as the voice spoke to him.
    “Goodness me,” he said in response. “That could be very troublesome. Very troublesome indeed. I will try my best. I give you my word.”
    Within ten minutes,