A Stir of Echoes Page 6

Chapter Six

  WHEN I GOT HOME FROM WORK Tuesday afternoon I put the bag on the kitchen table.

  "What's that?" Anne asked after we'd kissed.

  "The sugar," I said.

  She looked at me a moment.

  "Do I dare ask," she said, "how you knew we needed sugar?"

  "You didn't ask me to get it?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Anne shook her head. "Well," she said, "maybe this thing will come in handy after all. " It was a poor attempt at a joke.

  I put the box of sugar in the cupboard and took off my suit coat.

  "Hot," I said.

  "Yes. "

  Anne started to set the table and I stood by the kitchen window watching Richard and Candy run in erratic circles as they chased a butterfly.

  "Tom?" I heard Anne say. I looked back. "What are you going to do?"

  "You mean about-?" I couldn't find the word for it.

  She nodded.

  I sighed. "What is there to do?" I asked. "It's not something you can put your finger on. I dream about a strange woman. " I hadn't told her yet that I didn't believe it was a dream. "I-think I can sense what's in Elsie's mind. I feel the same impact on my head that you do. I-pick up some of your thoughts about us needing sugar. " I shrugged. "What do I have there to work with? How do I start?"

  "You could go see Alan Porter," she said.

  "There's nothing wrong with my mind," I said, turning away and looking out the window again.

  "Well, what do you call it?" she asked. "It's happening in your mind, isn't it?"

  "Yes, but it isn't a-a breakdown. If anything-" I paused a moment, realizing something. "If anything it's an increase, not a decrease. "

  "Does that make you feel better about it?" she asked. "You're frightened, Tom. Admit it. I can feel how you shiver at night when you have that dream. Call it anything you like. What matters is that all it's done is disturb you. And I think you should do something about it. Soon. "

  "All right," I said, uncertainly, "I'll. . . do something. " I felt as if I were being forced into an undesirable corner, though. Certainly I was afraid of what was happening to me. Yet I was intrigued by it too. All day at work I'd kept picking up fragments of thought and emotion from the people around me in the office. Scraps of feeling irritation, boredom, weariness, daydreams, sexual and otherwise, wish fantasies. Vague disjointed visions and parts of phrases. I didn't know which person was thinking what, but that only enhanced the fascination.

  One of them, for instance, was imagining himself-or herself on an ocean voyage that he-or she-had been on or wanted to be on. I swear I could almost smell the sea air and feel the roll of a ship under me. Another one was thinking of some woman and the vision was strained and ugly; tinged with the same overtones of what I'd sensed in Elsie's mind. It was a little sickening, yes, but still intriguing. I turned from the window as an idea occurred to me.

  "I wonder," I began.

  "Now what?"

  "I wonder if I've become-or if I'm becoming a medium. "

  "A medium?" Anne put down a bottle of milk hard.

  "Yes," I said, "why not?" The expression on her face made me smile. "Honey, a medium doesn't have to be a lumpy, middle-aged woman in a button sweater, you know," I told her.

  "I know but-"

  "Well, think about it," I said. "The word itself-medium-is a perfect description. It means a-middle place. That's what mediums are. They stand between the-the source and the goal, letting thoughts and impressions flow through them. They-"

  "If you're a medium," she broke in, "just tell me one thing. "

  "What?"

  She looked at me intently, accusingly.

  "Why haven't you got any control over what's flowing through you? "

  This continued to be the topic of our conversation at supper-interspaced with enjoining and commands to Richard to eat his food.

  "No, I don't understand," Anne said. "You've been suffering with this thing. I can see a change in you already-yes, in just a few days," she insisted when I started to contest it. "You're pale. You're worn, tired. "

  "I know," I said. I couldn't argue. There were the headaches and the feeling of lead-boned weariness that followed every exposure to it.

  "Well, I can't see it then," Anne said, irritated at my apparent reversal of attitude. "You agree it's hurting you and yet you tell me you don't want to do anything about it. Because you think you're a medium, or something. "

  "Honey, I'm not saying that," I said. "What I'm saying is that I want to see where it's going for a while. It is going somewhere; I feel it. "

  "Oh. . . feel, feel. " She pressed her lips together angrily. "And what am I supposed to do at night when you jolt out of a sound sleep as if you'd been shot? I'm pregnant, Tom. I'm nervous too; real nervous. Do you think it's going to help me to be exposed to that every night?"

  "Honey, I-"

  The doorbell rang then and I got up and walked across the living room, wondering why I was feeling that tingling sensation. It was brief but most decided. While it lasted it was as if I were metallic and had passed into, then out of, a strong magnetic field.

  I opened the door and saw Harry Sentas standing there.

  "Oh. " I was surprised. "Hello. "

  "Evening," he said. He was a tall, heavy-set man who, somehow, always looked unsuited to the clothes he wore. He would have looked more natural in overalls and a cap; maybe a grease stain across his florid cheek.

  "I come to get the rent," he said. "Figured I'd save you a trip over. "

  "Oh. " I nodded.

  "Who there?" Richard came padding into the room and I heard Anne call him back.

  "Well, isn't it two days yet?" I asked Sentas.

  "Figured you'd wanna get it out of your hair before then," he said.

  "I see. " I cleared my throat. "Well, if you want to wait, I'll go make out a check. "

  "I'll wait," he said.

  I went back into the kitchen and got the check book out of the cupboard drawer. Anne looked questioningly at me and I shrugged.

  "Who that?" Richard asked.

  "The man next door, baby," Anne said.

  "Man ness door?"

  I made out the check, tore it out of the book and brought it to Sentas.

  "Obliged," he said, taking it.

  "Oh, incidentally," I said, "I wonder if you'd get this door lock fixed. "

  "Door lock?"

  "Yes. It can't be locked from the outside. When we leave the house we have to lock it from the inside and leave the patio door open. "

  "Oh?" he said. "I'll see about it. "

  "We'd appreciate it," I told him as he turned away and stepped over the plants onto the lawn. I watched him a moment walking toward his house. Then I shut the door and returned to my supper.

  "Is this going to happen every month?" Anne said. "I thought it was an accident the first two times. "

  "I don't know. " I shook my head. "I don't like it, though. " Anne shrugged. "He's just worried about his money, I suppose. "

  "His wife's money," I said. "According to Frank she's the one that's loaded. " She smiled, shaking her head. "Good old Frank," she said. "Always has a good word for everybody. " I exhaled. "Well, I don't like Sentas," I said.

  Anne looked up from her plate. "Is this your-medium business?" she asked.

  "Honey, you make me sound like some kind of freak. "

  "Well, I'd say it's a little freakish, wouldn't you?"

  "Feakish," Richard said, "feakish, mama. "

  "Yes, baby," she said.

  "Well, I don't regard myself as a freak," I said.

  "Oh, come on," she said. "Let's not be so sensitive about it. "

  "You're the one that's sensitive. "

  "Don't you think I have some reason to be?" she asked, irritably.

  "I know it's hard on you but-"

  "But you're getting a bang out of it, so that's that. "

>   "Honey, let's not argue," I said. "Look. I'll let it go on a little while longer. I promise you if it gets on your nerves, if it frightens you or anything, I'll-I'll go to Alan Porter. Is that fair enough?"

  "Tom, it's you that's getting frightened and nervous. "

  "Well. . . Fm willing to stick it out a while longer," I told her. "I confess it makes me curious. Doesn't it you?"

  She hesitated before answering. Finally she inclined her head in a grudging gesture.

  "Oh, it's. . . unusual, all right," she said, "but. . . well, if it throws our whole life out of balance, is it worth it?"

  "I won't let it do that," I said. "You know that. "

  Before we went to sleep that night, we came across something that provided a definite clue. I'd asked Anne to try and remember what had happened during the hypnosis and whether Phil had said anything that might have started me off.

  She remembered two things. Neither was definite, of course; you never do find anything definite in something like this. But both were highly suggestive.

  One remark was made when I was reliving segments of my twelfth year. Phil had said, in answer to somebody's question, "No, there's no limit to what his mind can do. It's capable of anything. " The second remark came when Phil was bringing me out of the hypnosis-and here, to me, was the key.

  "Your mind is free now," he'd said to me. "There's nothing binding it. It's free, absolutely free. " It's something he'd said a hundred times before to hypnotized subjects. As I understand it, it's a command designed to prevent the subject's mind from retaining any suggestions inadvertently given which might later prove harmful. As I say, Phil had used it a hundred times; he verified that later. Yet, for some reason, with me it had backfired.

  I sat up with a gasp and felt the cold night air pressing at my sweat streaked face; felt my heart pounding as I stared frozenly toward the living room.

  She was in there again.

  I sat there rigidly, my stomach muscles cramped and twitching, trying to make myself get up and go in there. But I couldn't. Will power was swept away. I saw her in my mind and it was more than I could do to get up, walk in there and find her, white and still, staring at me with her dark eyes.

  "Again?"

  I started with a frightened grunt and my heart leaped so hard it seemed to jolt against the wall of my chest. Then I swallowed with effort and drew in a long, shaking breath.

  "Yes," I muttered.

  "And. . . she's in there?"

  "Yes. Yes. "

  I felt her shudder against me.

  "Tom," she said and there was something different in her voice; something that didn't question. "Tom, what does she want?"

  "I don't know," I answered as if, all along, we had both accepted the woman as objective reality.

  "She's-still there?"

  "Yes. "

  "Oh. . . " I thought I heard her sob and I reached out to touch her. I felt her hand against her mouth. She was biting the heel of it-hard.

  "Anne, Anne," I whispered, "it's all right. She can't hurt us. " She pulled away her hand. Her voice broke over me in the darkness.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Are you just going to lie here and let this thing go on? If she's really in there, if she's what you say she is. . . "

  I think we both stopped breathing at the same time. I stared at the dark outline of her, feeling my heart thud slowly, draggingly.

  "Anne?" I heard myself murmur.

  "What?"

  "Don't. . . don't you believe what Phil said? That it's-"

  "Do you believe it?"

  I felt my hands shaking and I couldn't answer her.

  Because suddenly I realized that I didn't believe what Phil had said. That I'd never believed him. It wasn't telepathy; it was something more.

  But what?