Chapter 22: An Old Threat Returns

Later in the day, Tamara had her office aide period and she found that the office was surprisingly quiet. Miss Wojinsky, however, was bursting with the need to pass on some juicy gossip. She hustled Tamara over to a corner of the room.

“Dr Barello was called to the district office. But I heard the conversation before she left—Mrs Leonard was with her and they had the phone speaker on. It was the superintendent. He told them that those two guys called from the med school hospital. They claimed that they were assaulted here and were forced to strip. They were made to stand under hot lights and then Barello had demanded that they leave.”

“They said that? There were almost nine hundred people who saw what happened...” Tamara started.

“Barello told him that some kids recorded much of the thing on their phones and now it’s all over social media, so that if he wanted to see what really happened, he should check out Tik Tok where it’s going viral. Including the strip tease. So the super asked her how she could let such a thing happen at her school and she really let him have it. She told him, more or less, as I recall, ‘First, you let someone come here to run an assembly without telling me what it was about—he had the nerve to tell me that if I knew, then I would stage a disruption. That, sir, impugns my character and I will be requesting a formal apology from the school board for that remark of his. Then he had the audacity to use a sexual innuendo and suggestive language in talking with one of my students. Third, he and his companion voluntarily stripped off their clothes in front of many hundreds of minor children.’

“The super told her that the guy claimed that he was forced and she told him to just watch the videos; no one was anywhere near him on the stage. And, Barello asked him, since she was kept in the dark about the purpose of the assembly, how was it possible that the school could plan to stage a response which so closely reacted to what Rodriguez said in his speech? She also told him that there was no one backstage during the assembly, just two microphones were active, and that she herself had confirmed that fact immediately after the two left the stage. That’s when the super asked her to come to the district office. She took a couple of teachers who were at the assembly with her to back her up.”

Tamara was nodding her head. “Wow, that’s quite a story. D’you think she’s in trouble?”

“Uh uh; the super didn’t sound angry. He sounded ... weary ... like he’d rather be somewhere else. Very far away else. Oh! You know something else? He told her that kids in lots of schools heard about what happened here and are starting to refuse to be in the Program. He said it’s disrupting the schools all over the county.”

Tamara chuckled. “Nice. I’m really happy about hearing that. I’m so happy we have our spiritual protectors here—kept us from having the Program start here.”

“You know, I’m not from your culture—look at my name?—really. Is that stuff for real, like the haunting?”

“I’m guessing that 90 percent of Haitians, native or born here, have an affinity for our spirits. Maybe not so much for those who are Protestants, they don’t believe in the Catholic idea of saints, but that’s what the Haitian spirits are—like the saints. They guide believers and to us, praying to them is more accessible than praying to Bondye, the One God, is.”

Wojinsky smiled. “Yeah, I’m Catholic and we pray to the Virgin Mary and there are special days that we observe for our saints, so I know exactly what you mean.”

Tamara nodded. “The major difference is that we Haitians believe that we have a special relationship with certain spirits and given the right circumstances and motivations, we believe that spirits can occupy worshipers’ bodies for an amount of time. So I can’t explain what happens here ... some kind of group hypnosis? Who knows.”

At home later, Wilson told Nadine and Tamara that he still had ominous feelings of a threat but no specific idea where it was coming from. Tamara told them about the assembly and how it ended.

Nadine shook her head. “You’re becoming quite creative. You still have the feeling that the lwa continue to support you?”

She nodded. “Dad, do you know when you feel Ogorin’s presence?”

“Like a feeling of leaning on you?”

“Yeah. And a chuckling in your head. And whenever I do something that helps protect kids, I feel bathed in comfort and I feel that Erzulie Mansur is close. Oh, another thing. I think I got help when I recorded the lwa voices. When I played them back at school, they sounded so much better than they did when I played them after I finished the recording. It could be better speakers, but still...”

University of Miami Medical School: early September

The next day was Tuesday and in the afternoon, Tamara was at the medical school MRI lab, making some adjustments to a coil assembly.

Dr Beauford had stopped off at the MRI control room to speak to her.

“Say, Tamara, there’s word going around about strange happenings at your school. A colleague of mine, a neurologist, was asked to consult in a case where two people had burning sensations on their skin whenever they tried to wear clothing. They had been at your school. I don’t think patient confidentiality applies because the event seems to be common knowledge—besides, they’re not my patients.”

“I may have seen something like that happen, actually,” Tamara grinned. “I believe they stripped because their skin was hot or something.”

“This was a strange case, my colleague told me. There are all kinds of reasons for psychosomatic illnesses but this one was a doozy. The two appeared at the E.R. naked and when they were asked to put on gowns, they did and then claimed skin pain and the E.R. doctor actually observed their dermatitis and urticaria; their skin temperatures also became elevated. I was asked if I thought if any imaging studies would show anything. Functional MRI can indeed detect the presence of functional brain disorders related to neurogenic problems, but I told him that in this case, I didn’t think they’d be useful.”

“Did they say what happened?” Tamara asked.

“Only that they were giving a school presentation and suddenly it became very hot. They were so uncomfortable that they took off their clothes. When they tried to dress, it was too painful.”

“What did your ... um, colleague think?”

Beauford thought for a second. “That this was strange but not unprecedented. There are a number of psychological diagnoses that can explain symptoms which have no apparent physical cause. You want the technical lecture?”

“Sure,” Tamara grinned. “Hit me with your worst.”

“Remember, you asked. There’s Munchausen syndrome. That’s a rare factitious disorder where the person pretends to be ill or deliberately tries to produce symptoms of illness in themselves. My colleague ruled that out. Then we have conversion disorder. That’s a condition where an issue in a person’s mind disrupts how the brain works. The symptoms happen because the brain “converts” the effects of that triggering issue into functional disruptions of the person’s brain or nervous system. It results in real, physical symptoms that the person can’t control. People with this condition often feel pain, sometimes with other symptoms and sometimes on its own. My colleague thought that this was a possibility, but having two people present with this problem at the same time was ... ah ... not just atypical, but difficult to understand.

“Another possibility of what happened to them could be a mass psychogenic illness; that’s a functional neurological disorder which is another brain problem that’s not caused by an obvious physical problem, and it can happen with groups of people who are connected in some fashion, such as having similar jobs. An example of this kind of problem is known to the public as the ‘Havana Syndrome,’ where it’s believed by many medical authorities that extreme job stress, together with the suggestion that some type of sonic attack was being perpetrated on their sites, caused the victims to experience similar neurologic symptoms. Those symptoms are real and very painful, but they are actually created by the brain. This could be the cause of those two people’s problem.

“But more likely it’s related to something called the ‘nocebo effect’; that’s when the person has no expectation of having a particular symptom and then experiences that very symptom in the body. It’s another proof that the brain is capable of producing all sorts of real physical symptoms. So how can the brain produce physical symptoms, you ask? Let’s look at their rashes first.

“If a person experiences increased levels of stress hormones in the body, adrenaline and cortisol, those hormones can increase one’s heart rate and blood pressure, suppress digestive system activity, and also affect the immune system. Immune system changes caused by stress hormones may lead to inflammation in the body. Thus we can see rashes, itchiness, and changes to the skin. And next, looking at pain, the mind can cause pain without a physical source. It’s called psychogenic pain, and it happens when the person’s pain is related to underlying emotional, behavioral, or psychological factors.

“Enough?”

Tamara nodded, grinning.

“So these patients may have received a psychological and emotional shock which somehow persuaded them to remove their clothes. And now their brains and bodies have somehow developed a conditioned response to wearing clothing—when they do, they experience pain and rashes from heightened levels of stress hormones. That would be my diagnosis, but hell, I’m just a brain surgeon, not a psychiatrist.”

“That sounds good—better than what people in my school are saying,” Tamara told him.

“And that is...?”

“Ha. That the school is haunted and that the Vodou spirits cursed them.”

Beauford shook his head. “I may not be a psychiatrist but I do know something about the mind. There’s some real truth behind those curses or hexes. The hexes can trigger a psychogenic illness in a person, even leading to his death. The medical theory is that the curse or hex causes such psychological distress in the believing person that the person subsequently behaves as if the curse was real. That’s when something like the ‘nocebo effect’ may play a role. The outcome is that the person, believing himself to be cursed, stops eating or caring for himself while awaiting his expected demise. Such cases have appeared in the medical and psychological literature, in fact.”

“So they will themselves into illness or death,” Tamara commented.

“Exactly.”

“How long do you think that they will need to stay naked?” she asked.

“Until a shrink gets them to understand that the problem is all in their minds.”

On Wednesday, Tamara was back in high school. She felt like she was living two separate lives, and in a sense she was. Her classes at the university were so different, both in their structure and the students. Her university classes had no classroom drama—usually. There had been some drama in her Tuesday morning class—excitement, really, over the unique news that some school officials had been stripped, instead of the students, when they had tried to start the Program. The students enjoyed the idea of a fitting payback. None of the native Floridian University of Miami students had experienced the Program, but some from out of state had encountered it in their school; a couple had even been participants. The instructor had to wait until the class settled down.

As in her college classes, the Edison kids were still chattering about Monday’s dramatic event. They were even more wound up by the news from social media that the Edison kids were being regarded as heroes for resisting the Program and as models to be emulated. Their chat page on the anti-Program website was being examined by kids from a lot of Florida schools and though the plans and ideas discussed there had been never used in practice, kids from the other schools were adopting those ideas.

When she heard voices coming from the auditorium as she passed by, she peeked into it to see who was there. Rojas noticed her and beckoned her over.

“Of all the days for me to miss by being sick...” he began.

“How are you feeling now?” Tamara asked.

“Just a stomach bug. Felt fine by the afternoon.” he answered and Tamara nodded. “These guys here are tearing apart the place. They’re trying to find any physical evidence of what happened on Monday.”

“Oh. I didn’t see anything unusual when I set stuff up and Barello didn’t either. Everything was locked up over the weekend too. Oops, I think a wireless mike was damaged. It felt hot after that guy used it. I tagged it but didn’t get to check it because Barello told me to just close up and go to class.”

“Yeah, I saw it. It’s shot. Something shorted and it overheated, but how that could happen with a battery is weird. Hey, like everything else is weird about this place.”

One of the men came over. “Is this the student you mentioned who was running the sound board on Monday?” he asked.

“Yeah, Bob, this is Tamara. This is Bob Ayers from the school district.” They greeted each other. “According to the principal, Tamara just came in here on Monday to turn on the system. Right, Tamara?”

She nodded.

Ayers asked, “See anything unusual—like something where it shouldn’t be, or something connected to the board?”

“No, there wasn’t anything, Mr Ayers. But, you know, I wasn’t looking specifically for anything. It looked the same as it did on Friday, I guess, and on Monday morning, everything was still locked up. Just before the assembly, I unlocked everything, turned on the system, and got out the mikes. One for Dr Barello and the other for that guy. That’s basically all I did to set up on Monday.”

Rojas added, “Barello confirmed that she saw nothing connected to the board when she checked it just after the assembly ended. She apparently knows a little about sound boards.”

Ayers scowled. “The district sent me here to find out how your school set up a sound program to play a set of disembodied voices. I guess your sound board and the attached gear does have that capability, but it would take a fair amount of prep time and unrestricted access to the system. Who has the keys?”

Rojas said, “I have a set. The office has a backup set in their safe. I had the keys all weekend; left them in my pocket by mistake. I usually keep them in my desk.”

“And who else knows how to run the board?” Ayers asked.

“A sophomore, Judy Gilbert. She’s being trained. Tamara’s my assistant, um... ‘best girl’ they call it. She’s captain of the AV Squad and stepped into the role when we lost the two kids we had spent a year training. They moved away. Tamara took to learning the sound and light systems like a natural. She’s been around electronics her whole life, it seems. She’s helped me troubleshoot stuff going back maybe two years now, right, Tamara?”

She nodded. “Yeah. When I was a freshman.”

“Judy wasn’t even here Monday, either; she must have gotten the same bug that I had,” Rojas added. “So no one else knows how this setup works, I’m sure. And definitely no one had the opportunity to set up anything like you described happened. Tamara, Dr Barello told me about it. What did you think?”

“What I thought? What happened just about blew me away. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening ... um, but last spring? The rumor is that something happened then. I heard that a room got hot and I heard strange voices coming on the P.A.”

Rojas said, “Right. I do know about that. It was a mystery that time too. Anyway, Bob, anything more you need?”

“No. I’m not sure what they expected us to find, anyway. I looked at the videos that were on social media. The voices were ... just voices. But the people described them as if they were unworldly. But that’s likely because of the phone mikes; they compress frequencies and, well, they’re not intended to be studio quality. And there’s nothing anywhere on the stage to cause heat. All the lighting is by LEDs. And there’s nothing up here that can melt cell phones either. So, we’re done. Thanks for the help, Hector.”

Rojas shook his hand and Ayers walked away, collecting his gear and assistant.

“I just popped in ‘cause I heard voices,” Tamara told Rojas. “I was in college classes yesterday so I didn’t hear about what happened then.”

“Not a lot. Lots of chatter among the kids. Some community members showed up in the afternoon—wanted to consecrate the auditorium, they said. So Barello let them in and they did some kind of ceremony. That was all.”

“I wonder what the consecrat...” Tamara started and the bell rang. “Oops. Gotta get to class now. See you later.”

The remaining day was quiet, but when Tamara got home, she found both parents there.

“Hey, hello,” she called when she walked in. “How come you’re both home?”

“My premonition told me that the danger was to your mom and was this afternoon or tomorrow,” Wilson told her. “We were talking about what it could be.”