Free The Witch of Napoli by Michael Schmicker

away. He had dark rings under his eyes and he looked like he had slept in his clothes. He put down the leather portfolio he was carrying, slumped into his chair, then took a deep breath, as if to compose himself.
    “I must apologize for my unprofessional behavior last night,” he began. “I assure you I do not normally act that way. I have spent the night trying to reconcile what I observed last evening with my lifetime of scientific training.” He rubbed his forehead as if trying to erase what he had witnessed at Alessandra’s apartment.
    “I am quite familiar with the subconscious mind, and the manias and hysterias it easily falls prey to, not to mention the tricks and limitations of human perception. But I freely admit to being baffled – even astonished – at what I observed with my own eyes last night.”
    Behind his desk, Rossi broke into a smile. Next to me, Alessandra moved to the edge of her chair, her hands clasped tightly together, nervously biting her lip. Lombardi pressed on.
    “Like all of you, I observed the bell rise up off the table, and hover in the air, then fly across the room. The light was dim but adequate, and I could discover nothing attached to it. I also felt a powerful blow to the face, without observing the perpetrator of that phantom blow. These are facts, and I am treating them as such. Perhaps the human mind has unknown powers Science has yet to discover – telekinetic powers which are available to us in exceptional situations, or peculiar states of mind.”
    Lombardi gazed across the room, as if recalling something, then turned to Rossi.
    “I will share a story with you, Professor,” he said, “an experience which has perplexed me for many years. It may or may not have a bearing on this matter.” He paused, gathering his thoughts, then launched into his odd story.
    “My youngest brother was always sick as a child. Three times a day, he had to swallow a foul-smelling medicine which he detested – a thyroid extract – which the maid served to him in a silver spoon, part of an antique tea set from Austria which my mother inherited and cherished.
    “After several months of this, my brother finally refused to take another spoonful. The maid was afraid of disobeying my mother, but couldn’t force him to drink it, so she held it out and waited for him to relent. My brother told me that he stared at the spoon, and felt a burning anger inside him, and the spoon began to turn hot in the maid’s hand, as in sympathy with his feelings, then the spoon handle began to curl up. She dropped it and fled the room, and was dismissed shortly afterwards by my mother who believed she had carelessly bent it.
    “My brother showed me the spoon. I didn’t believe him, and accused him of trickery, but he never changed his story. Indeed, after that, he submitted meekly to the medicine – frightened, as he confided to me, of seeing something scary happen again.”
    He paused to clean his spectacles with his handkerchief, then returned them to his nose.
    “I reluctantly confess to another unusual experience I had last night – an astonishingly vivid hallucination of what appeared to me to be my deceased mother. I attribute this to the fact that the anniversary of her death is fast approaching, and she has understandably been in my thoughts.” Lombardi sighed. “However, this visual hallucination was also accompanied by an auditory hallucination – I distinctly heard my mother’s voice. Such a combination is not unknown in the literature, but exceedingly rare.”
    Lombardi nodded towards Alessandra.
    “There was of course the possibility of ventriloquism on the part of
Signora
Poverelli, but that suspicion collapsed when the voice in my ear spoke to me in the native dialect of my race, and addressed me by an affectionate, pet name known only within my family. Though I cannot accept the existence of spirits, I admit to having no explanation for these facts.”
    “Professor,
we
saw the spirit