WALLS OF THE DEAD by Billie Sue Mosiman Page A

off or she thought she might have gone mad with all the streams of thoughts like a million light ribbons streaming toward her night and day from every living creature she encountered. She would slam the door of her mind. That's how she envisioned it--a slamming of a door. When she did that, people were as opaque as dirty dishwater. When she opened the door again, she could read them.
    This gift gave her a leg up on the students in grade school, high school, and college. She graduated early and entered Berkeley by the time she was sixteen.
    She didn't really use the gift to cheat her way through life or to do anyone harm. She knew instinctively that if she were to use it in self-interest or against another, it might vanish. She wasn't sure of that because she'd never tried it, but in some way she just knew. Not that she wasn't tempted. She once wrote down a list of all the ways she could use her ability to make money, interfere in people's lives, and get herself promoted to powerful positions. In the end, she couldn't do it.
    The Idea came to her in her twenties once she had gotten her degrees and was hired on at Berkeley as an assistant psychology professor. The Idea gave her life meaning. It drove her. She had been haunted by the loss of her parents all of her life, and although she knew it had to do with the house they lived in, she didn't know what she might do about it. Then the Idea came to her that she might expand her supernatural ability beyond reading minds in a psychic way to reading the minds of that which was not human.
    She wanted to read animals. Inanimate objects. She wanted to read the world and what comprised it--the earth itself. If she could train herself to do that, she could certainly read a house. The house that sat at 2242 Maycroft in Hayden, Alabama.
    Questions ate at her for years, for decades. Why had the house killed her parents? Why had it not killed her, too? How could a house be as alive as people who walked the earth? How was it a repository of such hate that it could reach out and take the lives of the innocent?
    Being a psychology professor, Linda realized her gift and her goal to read other than human beings, must remain a secret. She could not tell anyone, ever. Psychology was a science and science did not allow for mumbo-jumbo, for ghosts and shadows that walked, for houses that could rise up and strike down a married couple sleeping peacefully in their bed.
    The first inkling Linda had that she might be able to read an animal was when she was on a day trip to the zoo. It was a brilliant spring day and she hadn't anything else to do on that Saturday. She meandered down shaded lanes past giraffes and elephants, through the snake house, past the bird sanctuary. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers. She thought about getting something to eat at one of the little food carts scattered throughout the zoo--maybe a hot dog...and cotton candy. She came upon the gorilla exhibit where a Silverback lived with his harem of females. He was outside of the man-made caverns this day, reclining like a majestic god on a slick, brown slab of rock. Linda stood at the guard rail fence, pondering his great wide chest, his beautiful human-like hands, and the fine intelligent brow. She wondered what he was thinking...
    I hate you like all the rest. You're not so different, woman.
    She came upright, her spine stiffening, and frowned. Had she really heard him say that to her? She inclined her head, staring hard at the gorilla's face. Are you talking to me?
    Who else? How many of you do you think can read my mind?You're the first. Fancy that.
    What she had hoped one day to be able to do had happened without her even trying. She was so stunned her mind emptied and she was wordless.
    What do you want to know, what's your game, woman? he asked.
    Linda leaned a bit over the fence and projected her thoughts to him. Are all of you as intelligent and self-aware as you?
    The gorilla swiped with one large hand at