I hear, far off, at some forgotten door,

A music and an eerie faint carouse

Sometimes within the brain's old ghostly house, 

And stir of echoes down the creaking floor.

 

  -Archibald MacLeish "Chambers of Imagery"

 

ONE

 

  "THE DAY IT ALL STARTED.

  A Hot, August Saturday-I'd gotten off work a little after twelve. My name is Tom Wallace; I work in Publications at the North American Aircraft plant in Inglewood, California. We were living in Hawthorne, renting a two-bedroom tract house owned by one of our next-door neighbours, Mildred Sentas. Another neighbour, Frank Wanamaker, and I usually drove to and from the plant together, alternating cars. But Frank didn't like Saturday work and had managed to beg off that particular day. So I drove home alone. As I turned onto Tulley Street, I saw the '51 Mercury coupe parked in front of our house and knew that Anne's brother, Philip, was visiting. He was a psychology major at the University of California in Berkeley and he sometimes drove down to L.A. for weekends. This was the first time he'd been to our new place; we'd only moved in two months before.

 

  I nosed the Ford into the driveway and braked it in front of the garage. Across the street Frank Wan-amaker's wife, Elizabeth, was sitting on their lawn pulling up weeds. She smiled faintly at me and raised one white gloved hand. I waved to her as I got out of the car and started for the porch. As I went up its two steps I saw Elizabeth struggle to her feet and adjust her maternity smock. The baby was due in about three months. It was the Wanamaker's first in seven years of marriage.

  When I opened the front door and went into the living room, I saw Phil sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of Coca Cola in front of him. He was about twenty, tall and lean, his darkish-brown hair crew-cut. He glanced in at me and grinned.

  "Hi, brother man," he said.

  "Hi." I took off my suit coat and hung it in the front closet. Anne met me in the kitchen doorway with a smile and a kiss.

  "How's the little mother?" I asked, patting her stomach.

  "Gross," she said.

  I chuckled and kissed her again.

  "As they say," I said, "hot enough for you?"

  "Don't even talk about it," she answered.

  "Okay."

  "Hungry?" she asked.

  "Ravenous."

  "Good. Phil and I were just about to start."

  "Be right with you." I washed my hands and sat down across from Phil, eyeing his blindingly green polo shirt.

  "What's that for," I asked, "warning off aircraft?"

  "Glows in the dark," he said.

  "Helps the co-eds keep track of you at night," I said. Phil grinned.

 

  "Now don't you two get started again," Anne said, putting a dish of cold cuts on the table.

  "Whatever does you mean?" Phil said to her.

  "Never mind now," she said. "I don't want any needling session this weekend. It's too hot."

  "Agreed," said Phil, "needling excluded. Agreed, brother man?"

  "And spoil my weekend?" I said.

  "Never mind," said Anne. "I can't face that and the heat both."

  "Where's Richard?" I asked.

  "Playing in the back yard with Candy." Anne sat down beside me with a groan. "There's a load off my feet," she said.

  I patted her hand and we started eating.

  "Speaking of Candy," Anne said, "I trust you haven't forgotten the party tonight at Elsie's."

  "Oh my God," I said, "I did forget. Do we have to go?"

  Anne shrugged. "She invited us a week ago. That was excuse time. It's too late now."

  "Confusion." I bit into my ham on rye.

  "Brother man seems less than joyous," Phil said. "Elsie's shindigs no goo'?"

  "No goo'," I said.

  "Who is she?"

  "Our next-door neighbour," Anne told him. "Candy's her little girl."

  "And parties are her profession," I said. "She's the poor man's Elsa Maxwell."

  Anne smiled and shook her head. "Poor Elsie," she said. "If she only knew what awful things we say behind her back."

  "Dull, huh?" said Phil.

  "Why talk?" I said. "Go to the party with us and see for yourself."

  "I'll liven 'er up," said Phil.

 

* * *

 

  A little after eight-fifteen Richard fell asleep in his crib and we went next door to Elsie's house. In most marriages you think of a couple's home as theirs. Not so with that house. Ron may have made the payments on it but the ownership was strictly Elsie's. You felt it.

  It was Ron who answered our knock. He was twenty-four, a couple of years older than Elsie, a couple of inches taller. He was slightly built, sandy-haired with a round, boyish face that seldom lost its impassive set; even when he smiled as he did then, the ends of his mouth curling up slightly.

  "Come in," he said in his quiet, polite voice.

  Frank and Elizabeth were already there, Elizabeth settled on the red sofa like a diffident patient in a dentist's waiting room, Frank's thin body slouched in one of the red arm chairs. He brightened only a little when we came in, raising his bored gaze from the green rug, straightening up in the chair, then standing. I introduced Phil around.

"Hi!"

  I glanced over and saw Elsie peering around the corner of the kitchen doorway. She'd cut her dark hair still shorter and bobbed it still tighter, I noticed. When we'd moved into the neighbourhood, she'd had long, drabby blond hair.

  We all said hello to her and she disappeared a moment, then came into the room with a tray of drinks in her hands. She was wearing a red, netlike dress which clung tightly to the curves of her plump body. When she bent over to put the tray down on the blondwood coffee table, the bosom of the dress slipped away from her tight, black brassiere. I noticed Frank's pointed stare, then Elsie straightened up with a brassy, hostess like smile and looked at Phil. Anne introduced them.

 

  "Hel-lo," Elsie said. "I'm so glad you could come." She looked at us. "Well," she said, "name your poison."

  What happened that evening up to the point when it all began is not important. There were the usual peregrinations to the kitchen and the bathroom; the usual breaking up and re-gathering of small groups- the women, the men, Frank, Phil and myself, Elizabeth and Anne, Elsie and Phil, Ron and me-and so on; the drifting knots of conversation that take place at any get-together.

  There was record music and a little sporadic attempt at dancing. There was Candy stumbling into the living room, blinking and numb with only half-broken sleep; being tucked back into her bed. There were the expected personality displays-Frank, cynical and bored; Elizabeth, quietly radiant in her pregnancy; Phil, amusing and quick; Ron, mute and affable; Anne, soft-spoken and casual; Elsie, bouncing and strainedly vivacious.

  One bit of conversation I remember: I was just about to go next door to check on Richard when Elsie said something about our getting a baby-sitter.

  "It doesn't matter when you just go next door like this," she said, "but you do have to get out once in a while." Once in a while, to Elsie, meant an average of four nights a week.

  "We'd like to," Anne said, "but we just haven't been able to find one."

  "Try ours," said Elsie: "She's a nice kid and real reliable."

  That was when I left and checked on Richard- and had one of my many night time adorations; that standing in semi-darkness over your child's crib and staring down at him. Nothing else. Just standing there and staring down at his little sleep flushed face and feeling that almost overwhelming rush of absolute love in yourself. Sensing something close to holy in the same little being that nearly drove you out of your mind that very afternoon.

  I turned up the heat a little then and went back to Elsie's house.

  They were talking about hypnotism. I say they but, outside of Phil, Anne and maybe Frank, no one there knew the least thing about it. Primarily, it was a dissertation by Phil on one of his favourite topics.

  "Oh, I don't believe that," Elsie said as I sat down beside Anne and whispered that Richard was fine. "People who say they were hypnotized weren't, really."

  "Of course they were," Phil said. "If they weren't, how could they have hatpins jabbed into their throats without bleeding? Without even crying out?"

  Elsie turned her head halfway to the side and looked at Phil in that overdone, accusingly dubious way that people affect when they have to bolster their own uncertain doubts.

  "Did you ever really see anyone get a hatpin jabbed in their throat?" she said.

  "I've had a five-inch hatpin in my throat," Phil answered. "And, once, I put one halfway through a friend of mine's arm at school-after I'd hypnotized him."

  Elsie shuddered histrionically. "Uhh," she said, "how awful"

  "Not at all," Phil said with that casual tone undergraduates love to affect when they are flicking off intellectual bomb-shells. "I didn't feel a thing and neither did my friend."

  "Oh, you're just making that up," Elsie said, studiedly disbelieving.

  "Not at all," said Phil.

  It was Frank who gave it the final, toppling push.

 

  "All right," he said, "let's see you hypnotize somebody then." He squeezed out one of his faintly cruel smiles. "Hypnotize Elsie," he said.

  "Oh, no you don't!" Elsie squealed. "I'm not going to do terrible things in front of everybody."

  "I thought you didn't believe in it," Phil said, amusedly.

  "I don't, I don't," she insisted. "But… well, not me."

  Frank's dark eyes moved. "All right," he said, "who's going to be hypnotized?"

  "I wouldn't suggest me unless we want to spend the whole night here," Anne said. "Phil used to waste hours trying to hypnotize me."

  "You're a lousy subject, that's all," Phil said, grinning at her.

  "Okay, who's it gonna be then?" Frank persisted. "How about you, Lizzie?"

  "Oh…" Elizabeth lowered her eyes and smiled embarrassedly.

  "We promise not to make you take your clothes off," Frank said.

"Frank." Elizabeth was thirty-one but she still blushed like a little girl. She wouldn't look at anybody. Elsie giggled. Frank looked only vaguely pleased. Elizabeth was too easy a mark for him.

  "Come on, Elsie," he said, "be a sport. Let him put you under. We won't make you do a strip tease on the kitchen table."

  "You-" Ron started to say.

  "Oh, you're awful!" Elsie said, delighted.

  "What were you going to say, Ron?" I asked.

  Ron swallowed. "I-I was going to ask Phil," he said, "you-can't make someone-do what they don't want to do, can you? I mean-what they wouldn't do? If they were awake, I mean."

  "Oh, what do you know about hypnotism, Ronny?"

 

  Elsie asked, trying to sound pleasantly amused. The acidity still came through.

  "Well, it's true and it isn't true," Phil said. "You can't make a subject break his own moral code. But- you can make almost any act fit into his moral code."

  "How do you mean?" Frank asked. "This sounds promising."

  "Well, for instance," Phil said, "if I hypnotized your wife-"

  "You could make her do something wicked?" Frank asked, looking at Elizabeth pointedly.

  "Frank, please," she almost whispered.

  "Say I put a loaded gun in her hand," Phil said, "and told her to shoot you. She wouldn't do it."

  "That's what you think," Frank said, snickering. I looked at Elizabeth again and saw her swallowing dryly. She was one of those pale and pitiable creatures who seem constantly vulnerable to hurt. You want to protect them and yet you can't. Of course Frank wasn't the easiest man in the world to live with either.

  "Well, for argument's sake," Phil said, smiling a little, "we'll assume she wouldn't shoot you."

  "Okay, for argument's sake," Frank said. He glanced at Elizabeth, a hint of that cruel smile on his lips again.

"But," Phil said, "if I were to tell Elizabeth that you were going to strangle her and told her that the only defence in the world she had was to shoot you right away-well, she might very well shoot you."

  "How true," said Frank.

  "Oh, I don't believe that," said Elsie.

  "That's right," I joined in. "We have a friend named Alan Porter-he's a psychiatrist-and he gave a demonstration of that very thing. He had a young mother under hypnosis and he told her he was going to kill her baby and the only way she could stop him was by stabbing him with the knife she was holding, it was a piece of cardboard. She stabbed him all right."

  "Well, that's different," said Elsie. "Anyway, she was probably just playing along with a gag."

  "Look," said Phil, gesturing dramatically with his hands, "I'll prove it to you right now if you want. Just let me hypnotize you."

  "No, sir," said Elsie, "not me."

  "How about you?" Phil asked Ron.

  Ron mumbled something and shook his head with a faint smile. "He's already half hypnotized," said Elsie, kindly.

  "Can't I get me a customer?" asked Phil. He sounded disappointed.

  "How about you, Frank?" I asked.

  "Uh-uh," he said, smiling as he blew out cigarette smoke. "Don't want ol' Lizzie knowing what's in my dirty old subconscious."

  Elsie giggled and Elizabeth pressed her lips together, having failed in the attempt to smile.

  "Well, that leaves you, brother man," said Phil, looking at me.

  "You don't really think you could hypnotize me, do you?" I needled.

  "Don't be so darn sure," he said, wagging a finger at me. "You arrogant ones are the first to topple."

  I grinned, shrugging. "So what have I got to lose?" I said.

 

TWO

 

  FIRST OF ALL, PHIL ASKED THAT ALL THE lights be put out except for one dim wall lamp over the fireplace. Then he had me stretch out on the sofa while Ron went into the kitchen to get extra chairs. Gradually, everyone settled down. When the rustlings, comments and coughs had finally ceased, Phil spoke.

  "Now I can't promise anything," he said.

  "You mean we're going through all this for nothing?" Elsie asked.

  "Some people are harder to hypnotize than others, that's all," Phil said. "I don't know about Tom. But you, for instance, Elsie, would be a good subject, I'm sure."

  "Flattery will get you nowhere," Elsie said. "You just hypnotize your brother-in-law."

  Phil turned back to me.

  "All right, brother man, you ready?" he asked.

 

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Cagliostro."

  Phil pointed at me. "You just watch out," he said, "I have a feeling you're going to be a good subject."

  "That's me," I said.

  "Okay." Phil shifted in his chair. "Now everybody get quiet, please. Any distraction will break it up until the actual hypnosis takes place." He leaned forward and held out his forefinger again.

  "Look at it," he said to me.

  "Fine looking finger," I said. Frank snickered.

  "Quiet, please," Phil said. He held the finger about six inches from my eyes. "Look at it," he said. "Keep looking at it. Don't look at anything else, just my finger."

  "Why, what's it gonna do?" I asked.

  "Poke you right in the eye if you don't fermez your big fat bouche." Phil jabbed the finger at me and I shut my eyes instinctively.

  "All right," Phil said, "open 'em up. Let's try again."

  "Yes, sir," I said.

  "Now look at the finger. Just the finger. Don't look at anything else. Keep looking at the finger, the finger. I don't want you to look at anything but the finger."

  "Your nail is dirty," I said.

  Everybody laughed. Phil sank back in his chair with a grimace and pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes.

  "Like I said," he said, "a lousy subject."

  He looked over at Elsie.

  "How about it?" he said. "I'm sure I could hypnotize you."

  "Uh-uh." Elsie shook her close-cropped head vigorously.

  "Let him try, Elsie," Ron said.

"No-o." Elsie glared at him as if he'd suggested something vile.

 

  "Come on, champ," I said to Phil, "let's put me under now."

  "You gonna play it straight," he asked, "or you gonna play it for the gallery?"

  "I'll be good, sir, Mr. Mesmer, sir."

  "You will like…" Phil leaned forward again, then settled back. "Well, let's forget the finger," he said. "Close your eyes."

  "Close my eyes," I said. I did.

  "Dark, isn't it?" said Frank.

  I opened my eyes. "Not now," I said.

  "Will you close your eyes, you clunk," Phil said. I did. I took a deep breath and settled back on the pillow. I could hear the slight breathings and chair-creaking’s of the others.

  "All right," said Phil, "I want you to listen to me now."

  I pretended to snore. I heard Elsie's explosive giggle; then I opened my eyes and looked at Phil's disgusted face.

  "All right, all right," I promised, "I'll be good." I closed my eyes. "Go ahead," I said, "I'll be good."

  "Honest Indian?" Phil enunciated.

  "That's pretty strong language to use in the company of these fine women," I said. "However, honest, as you say, Indian."

  "All right. Shut your eyes then, you bum."

  "Now that's a poor way to win my confidence," I said. "How am I supposed to venerate you when you talk to me like that? Alan Porter doesn't-"

  "Will you shut your fat eyes?" Phil interrupted.

  "Shut. Shut," I said. "You may fire when griddy, Redley."

  Phil took a deep and weary breath. "Oh, well," he said. Then he started talking again.

  "I want you to pretend you're in a theatre," he said. "An enormous theatre. You're sitting near the front. It's completely black inside."

  Across the room I heard Elizabeth's slight, apologetic throat-clearing.

  "There's no light in the theatre," Phil went on. "It's completely dark-like black velvet. The walls are covered with black velvet. The seats are all made of black velvet."

  "Expensive," I said.

  They all laughed. "Oh… shoot," Phil said. I opened my eyes and grinned at him.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said.

  "Oh… the heck you are."

  "Yes, I am. I am." I closed my eyes tight. "See? See? I'm back in the theatre again. I'm in the loges. What's playing?"

  "You are a son of a b," said Phil.

  "Sir," I said, "control. Go ahead. If I don't stay quiet, I give you permission to hit me on the head."

  "Don't think I won't," Phil said. "Someone hand me that lamp." He was quiet a moment. Then he said, "You really want to go on with it?"

  "Brother man," I said.

"You…" Phil cleared his throat. "All right," he said, patiently.

  I won't go into the complete progression; it took too long. It's hard to get serious when you're in a group like that. Especially when Phil and I were so used to heckling each other. I'm afraid I broke up many a moment when he thought he had me. After a while Elsie got bored and went in the kitchen to get food ready. Frank began to talk softly with Anne and direct an occasional, acidulous comment our way. A good hour must have passed and we were still nowhere. I don't know why Phil kept on. He must have felt I was a challenge. At any rate, he wouldn't give up. He kept on with that theatre bit and, after a while, Frank stopped talking and watched and, except for a slight clinking of dishes in the kitchen, there was only the monotonous sound of Phil's voice, talking at me.

  "The walls are dark velvet, the floors are covered with dark velvet rugs. It's black inside, absolutely black. Except for one thing. In the whole pitch-black theatre there's only one thing you can see. The letters up on the screen. Tall, thin, white letters on the black, black screen. They spell sleep. Sleep. You're very comfortable, very comfortable. You're just sitting there and looking at the screen, looking, looking at that single word up there. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep."

  I'll never know what made it begin to work on me unless it was sheer repetition. I suspect my assurance that I couldn't be hypnotized helped too; an assurance of such illogical magnitude that I took it for granted. I didn't even try to get hypnotized. To quote Elsie- I just played along with the gag.

  "You're relaxing," Phil said. "Your feet and ankles are relaxed. Your legs are relaxed, so relaxed. Your hands are limp and heavy. Your arms are relaxed, so relaxed. You're beginning to relax all over. Relax. Relax. You're going to sleep. To sleep. You're going to sleep."

  And I was. I started slipping away. By the time I felt the slightest trickle of awareness as to what was happening to me, it was too late. It was as if my mind-or, rather, my volition-were a moth being set into congealing wax. There was a faint fluttering as I tried to escape; but all in vain. I began to feel as I had once when I had an impacted wisdom tooth taken out. The oral surgeon had jabbed a needle into the exposed vein on my left arm. I'd asked him what it was for and he'd said it was to stop excess salivation. I guess that's what they always say so the patient won't be afraid. Because it wasn't for. that, it was a fast-acting general anaesthetic. The room started weaving around me, everything got watery in front of me, the nurses leaning over me wavered as if I were looking at them through lenses of jelly. And then I woke up; it was that fast. I didn't even realize when I'd lost consciousness. It seemed as if I'd closed my eyes only a second or two. I'd been out cold for forty-five minutes.

  It was just like that again. I opened my eyes and saw Phil sitting there grinning at me. I blinked at him.

  "What'd I do, doze off?" I asked.

  Phil chuckled. I looked around. They were all looking at me in different ways; Frank, curious; Ron, baffled; Elizabeth blank; Elsie half afraid. Anne looked concerned.

  "Are you all right, honey?" she asked me.

  "Sure. Why?" I looked at her a moment. Then I sat up. "You don't mean to tell me it took?" I said, incredulously.

  "Did it ever," she said, her smile only half amused.

  "I was hypnotized?"

  That seemed to break the tension. Everybody seemed to talk at once.

  "I'll be damned," said Frank.

  "My goodness," said Elizabeth. Ron shook his head wonderingly.

  "Were you really hypnotized?" Elsie asked. There was very little distrust left in her voice.

  "I… guess I was," I said.

  "You know it," Phil said, unable to stop grinning.

  I looked at Anne again. "I really was?" I asked.

  "If you weren't, you're the best little actor I ever saw," she said.

  "I never saw anything like it," Ron said quietly.

  "How do you feel?" Phil asked me and I knew, from the way he said it, it was a loaded question.

  "How should I feel?" I asked, suspiciously.

 

  Phil forced down his grin. "A little… hot?" he asked.

  Suddenly, I realized that I was hot. I ran my hand over my forehead and rubbed away sweat. I felt as if I'd been sitting in the sun too long.

  "What did you do-set fire to me?" I asked.

  Phil laughed out loud. "We tried," he said, "but you wouldn't catch."

  Then he calmly told me that, while I was stretched out like a board between two kitchen chairs, he'd sat on my stomach and run a cigarette lighter flame back and forth along my exposed legs.

  I just sat there gaping at him.

  "Let's have that again," I said.

  "That's right," he said, laughing, delighted at his success. I looked over at Anne again.

  "This happened?" I asked, weakly. She got up, smiling, and came over to me. Sitting down she put her arm around me.

  "You sure are a dandy subject, love," she said. Her voice shook a little when she said it.

  Ten minutes later we were all sitting around the kitchen table, discussing my hypnotism. I must say it was the first time I'd ever heard an animated discussion in Elsie's house.

  "I didn't," I said, laughing.

  "You sure did." Anne made an amused sound. "There you were, twelve years old again, telling us about somebody named Joey Ariola who must have been a beast from the way you talked about him."

  "Ariola." I shook my head wonderingly. "I'll be damned. I'd forgotten all about him."

  "You just thought you'd forgotten," Phil said.

  "Oh… I don't believe anybody can remember that far back," Elsie said. "He was just making it up or something."

 

  "He could go back a lot farther than that," Phil told her. "There are authenticated cases where subjects go back to prenatal days."

  "To what?"

  "To before they were born."

  "Oh…" Elsie turned her head halfway to the side again. Now that the vision of me stretched calcified between two of her kitchen chairs was beginning to fade, she was regaining dissent.

  "That's right," Phil said. "And there's Bridey Murphy."

  "Who?" asked Elsie.

  "A woman who, under hypnosis, claims she was an Irish girl in her previous life."

  "Oh… that's silly," Elsie said. Everybody was quiet for a moment and Elsie looked up at the clock. She shrugged at Phil.

  "It's not time yet," Phil said.

  "Time for what?" I asked.

  "You'll see," Phil told me.

  Elsie got up and went over to the stove. "Who wants more coffee?" she asked. I looked at Phil a moment longer, then let it go.

  "What else did I say when I was-I mean when I thought I was twelve again?" I asked Anne.

  She smiled and shook her head. "Oh… all sorts of things," she said. "About your father and-your mother. About a bike you wanted that had a foxtail on the handlebars."

  "Oh, my God, yes," I said, delighted at the sudden recollection. "I remember that. Lord, how I wanted that bike."

  "I wanted something else when I was twelve," said Frank.

  I noticed how Elizabeth looked down at her coffee, her pale red lips pressed together. Everything about Elizabeth was pale; the shade of her lipstick, the blond of her hair, the colour of her skin. She seemed, in a way, to be partially vanished.

  "I wasn't after any bike at twelve," Frank said.

  "Man, we know what you were after," I said, trying to make it sound like the joke that Frank had not intended it to be. "What else did I talk about?" I asked Anne before Frank could say any more.

  I noticed Ron looking up at the clock now, then glancing over at Phil. Phil pressed down a grin-as did Frank. Elsie came back to the table and put down another plate of little glazed cakes.

  "Well, I don't think it's going to happen," she said. "It's already eleven."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "Let's see," Anne said as if I hadn't spoken, "you talked about your sister and-about your room. About your dog."

  For a second I remembered Corky and the way he had of putting his old shaggy head on my knees and staring at me.

  "What's the joke?" I asked, because there was one obviously. "Why are you all looking like cats who swallowed the mice?"

  At which point I took off my left shoe and put it into the refrigerator.

  I turned to face their explosion of laughter. For a moment I actually didn't know what they were laughing about. Then, suddenly, I realized what I'd just done. I opened the refrigerator and peered in at my dark shoe placed neatly beside a covered bowl of peas.

  "What'd you do that for?" Phil asked, innocently.

  "I don't know," I said. "I-just wanted to, I guess. Why shouldn't-?" I stopped abruptly and looked at Phil accusingly. "You crumb, you," I said, "you gave me a post-hypnotic command."

  Phil grinned, returned to glory again.

 

  "He told you," Elsie declared. "You knew just what you were doing."

  "No, I didn't," I said.

  "You did so," said Elsie, pettishly.

  "Say," said Frank, "what if Tom was a girl and you gave her the post-hypnotic command to-oh, well, never mind, my wife doesn't like that kind of talk. Do you, Lizzie old girl?"

  "He's always making fun of me," she answered with attempted lightness. Her smile was pale too.

  "I hope you didn't give me any other post-hypnotic suggestions, you idiot," I said.

  Phil shook his head with a smile.

  "Nope," he said, "that's all, brother man. It's over."

  Famous last words.

 

THREE

 

  THE PARTY BROKE UP ABOUT ONE. Until then we sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and putting down Elsie's high-calorie cakes; talking about what had happened during the hypnosis.

  Apparently it had been a roaring success. I'd not only gone rigid between those chairs, I'd laughed like a crazy man over nothing. I'd cried like a baby over nothing. That is, over nothing visible. Of course I had something to laugh and cry over. Phil was feeding it to me.

  And I shivered and chattered my teeth on an ice floe in the Arctic. I sweated and gasped for water as I lay on the blazing sands of the Sahara. I drank too much nonexistent whiskey-glass by glass-and got owl-eyed, silly drunk. I grew knotted up with fury, my face hard and red, my body shuddering with repressed hatred. I listened to a Rachmaninoff piano concerto played by Rachmaninoff himself and told everyone how beautiful, how magnificent it sounded. I held out my arm and Frank hung from it and Phil stuck straight pins into it.

  A roaring success.

  I guess we could have gone on all night talking about it. It isn't every day that such intriguing fare enters one's life. But we had two expectant mothers on our hands and they needed their rest. Besides which, I suspected Elsie got a little fed up after a while. It was too far removed from her scope to be more than passingly interesting.

  Anne, Phil and I said good night to Frank and Elizabeth after we'd left Elsie's house and they went across Tulley Street to their house as we went to ours.

  There was a half hour or so of mute-voiced preparation for bed. I got the army cot out of the closet in Richard's room and unfolded it while Anne got bedding from the hall closet. Phil made up the cot and then we all got into our pyjamas, washed our faces, brushed our teeth, said our good-night words and retired.

  I couldn't sleep.

  I lay beside Anne, staring at the ceiling. There were springs in my eyes. If I shut them they jumped open again. I kept staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the night-the rustle of a breeze-stirred bush outside the window, the creak of the mattress as Anne moved a little, the faint crackling settle of the house; up the street, a dog barking briefly at some imagined foe, then relapsing into sleep.

  I swallowed dryly and sighed. I turned on my side and stared at the dark bulk of the bureau.

  "What's the matter?" Anne asked, softly.

  "Oh… can't sleep," I answered.

  "You sick?"

 

  "No. Too much coffee, I guess."

  "Oh. You shouldn't drink it at night."

  "I know. Well… you go to sleep, sweetheart. I'll be all right."

  "Okay." She sighed drowsily. "If you feel sick, wake me up, now," she said.

  "I'm not sick." I leaned over and kissed her warm cheek. "Good night, little mother."

  "Night."

  She stretched out and I felt the warmth of her hip against mine. Then she was still except for the even sound of her breathing.

  I lay there; waiting for something, it seemed. I just couldn't shut my eyes. I felt as I had at college after I'd spent about five hours at intense studying-my mind swimming with information and intelligences; turning over and over like a machine somebody forgot to turn off.

  I rolled onto my side. Nothing. I turned on my back and closed my eyes. Sleep, I told myself. I had to grin in the darkness as I remembered Phil's earnest voice telling me to sleep, sleep. Well, by God, he'd succeeded. I couldn't needle him on that count. He'd really pulled a fast one. I would have laid odds he couldn't hypnotize me. But he did-and with not too much trouble either. As soon as I'd stopped razzing him and relaxed, it had happened.

  I turned irritably onto my side again and punched at the pillow. I heard Anne mumble something and I clenched my teeth. I was going to wake her up again if I didn't stop this twisting and turning.

  Why was I so restless? I'd had coffee, yes, but not a pot of it; maybe three cups altogether.

  I frowned to myself. Was it possible the hypnosis had done this? Maybe Phil had forgotten to tie up loose mental ends. Maybe he'd given my brain a spin and neglected to break it.

 

  No, that was ridiculous. He'd obviously known what he was doing. It was coffee and conversation. Living in this neighbourhood I was taking too much of the first and getting too little of the second.

  I sighed heavily. My brain was alive. That's the only way I can express it. Thoughts spun through it like heated gases, sparking and iridescent. Memories came and went like flashes of half-seen light. My mother, my father, Corky, high school, grammar school, nursery, college, campus grass, books I'd read, girls I'd loved, ham and eggs-exactly how they tasted.

  I sat up and actually shook my head as one would shake a clock. Only I didn't want to start it, I wanted to stop it. But I couldn't. It seemed as if my mind were throbbing; like a living sponge in my head, swelling with hot juices of thought, squeezed of remembrance and devising.

  I stood up, breathing harshly. My body was tingling, my chest and stomach felt taut. I moved across the rug, then stopped in the doorway and shut my eyes.

  "My… God," I remember muttering, only half conscious of speaking. I shook my head. Thoughts were stampeding. Frank, Elizabeth, Ron, Elsie, Anne, Phil, my mother, my father; all of them running across the screen of my mind as if projected by some maniac cameraman. Dozens of half-shaped impressions zeroing in on me, knitting plastically into a hot core of multi-formed awareness.

  I swallowed again and went into the bathroom. I blinked at the glaring light, shut the door and stepped over to the mirror with a lurching movement. I stared at my blank face. It told me nothing.

Something wrong. I don't know whether I said or thought it. But the idea was there. Something was wrong. This was more than coffee nerves, more than animated talk rebounding. What it was, though, I didn't know, I didn't know at all.

  I started to run a glass of water but the sound of the splashing seemed unnaturally loud and I twisted off the faucet. I drank a little but it tasted like cold acid and I poured it out and set the glass down.

  Turning, I flicked off the light, opened the door and padded to the doorway of Richard's room. I listened. All I could hear was Phil's breathing. I stepped over to the crib and put my palm on Richard's back. They're so quiet at night, I remember thinking distractedly. Then I felt the faint rise and fall of his back and I drew away my hand.

  I went into the hall again, trying to calm myself. I walked into the living room and looked out the back window a while. I could see the dark shape of Richard's wagon out on the back-yard grass and, over on the next block, the bleak illumination of a street lamp. The neighbourhood was deathly still.

  I twisted around suddenly.

  Nothing. Just darkness and the black outlines of the furniture. Yet I would have sworn I'd heard something. I shuddered and felt the muscles of my stomach draw in spastically. I ran a shaking hand through my hair. What in God's name was happening?

  I walked to the other side of the room and sank down on an easy chair. I sighed and lay my head back wearily. The tingling at my temples increased. I could almost feel it physically. I put my fingers to my temples but there was nothing. I put my hands on my lap and stretched out my legs.

Rising. Something was rising in me. As if I were a vessel into which was being poured alien cognizance. I felt things, sensed things-things I couldn't understand, things I couldn't even clearly see; shards of strange perception. Perceptions impossible to grasp flowings and flashings in my mind. It was like standing on a fogbound corner and seeing unknown people rushing by-close enough to catch a glimpse of, not close enough to recognize. It got stronger and stronger. Awareness deluged into my mind. I was the channel for a million images.

  Which stopped. I raised my head.

  Until that moment I had never known what it was to be so afraid my breath was stopped, my body functionless, myself incapable of doing anything but stare in helpless shock.

  She was in her thirties, pale, her hair in black disarray. She was wearing a strange, dark dress with a single strand of pearls at her throat. I sat rooted to the chair, my limbs dead. I stared at her.

  I don't know how many minutes passed while that woman and I looked at each other. It didn't occur to me to wonder why it was I could see her so clearly in the darkness, why there was a sort of sourceless light on or rather, in her.

  Minutes passed. I knew that something had to break the awful silence. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn't. There was a dry, clicking sound in my throat.

  Then, abruptly, breath spilled from my lips.

"Who are you?" I gasped.

  The woman edged back-although I never saw her limbs move. She was almost to the window.

  And breath was gone again, gone with a sucking sound of terror. I felt myself pressing back against the chair, my eyes stiffly set, my lips shaking. Because I could see the lamp on the next street-

through her.

  My cry was weak and short-a strangling sound in my throat. I sat there looking at the spot where the woman had been standing. How long I sat there I don't know. I couldn't get up. I must have been there for an hour or more before I dared to stand and slowly, tremblingly, as if I were stalking something deadly, move over to the spot where she had been.

  Nothing.

  I turned and rushed into the bedroom. It was only when I had slid frightenedly under the covers that I realized how cold I was. I started to shiver and couldn't stop for a long time. Fortunately, Anne was sleeping soundly. At least five times I started to wake her up to tell her-but every time I was stopped by the thought of how frightened she would be. Finally, I decided to tell her in the morning. I even tried to tell myself I'd had a nightmare, that it really hadn't happened at all.

  Unfortunately, I knew better. I knew that something had happened to me that I'd never believed could happen to anyone. So simple to put the word itself down; all it takes is a few elementary turns of the pencil. Yet it can change your entire life.

  The word is ghost.

 

FOUR

 

  I SPOKE IT THE NEXT MORNING AT BREAKFAST.

  I'd been unable to when we'd first gotten up. For a few minutes, of course, there was the inevitable rush of rejection toward what I'd seen. What I'd tried to do the night before, I tried again-to believe that it was only a febrile dream. One's mind can far more easily accept that sort of explanation. There's reason to it, something to grasp hold of; even when it isn't true.

  I'd been unable to speak, too, because it seemed so completely inappropriate. It just didn't fit in with good mornings and kissing’s and dressing and getting Sunday breakfast ready.

  But when Richard was finished eating and had gone out into the yard to play, and Anne and Phil and I were sitting at the kitchen table over coffee, I did say it.

 

  "I saw a ghost last night."

  It's fantastic how the most terrifying of statements can sound absurd. Phil's reaction was to grin. Even Anne smiled a little.

  "You what?" she asked.

  Her smile was the first to fade. It went as soon as she saw how serious I was.

  "Honey, what do you mean?" she asked. "You dreamed it?"

  I swallowed. It's not what one could call the easiest thing in the world to talk about.

  "I'd like to think that," I said, "but I… can't." I looked at them both. "I really saw one. I mean I was awake and I saw one."

  "This is on the level?" Phil asked.

  I didn't say anything. I just nodded.

  "When?" Anne asked.

  I put down my cup.

  "After I got up last night," I said. "That is, this morning. It must have been about two."

  "I didn't hear you get up," she said.

  "You were asleep," I told her. Even as I spoke, a rush of crude hope filled me that it really had been a dream.

  "This was-after you told me you couldn't sleep?" she asked. I could tell she didn't believe me; rather, didn't believe that I'd seen what I said I'd seen.

  I said yes. I looked at both of them and shrugged with a helpless, palms-up gesture. "That's it," I said. "I saw a ghost. I saw it."

  "What did it look like?" Phil asked. He didn't even try to conceal his fascination. This was meat for him.

  I drew in a ragged breath, then shrugged again as if I felt slightly ashamed of what I was saying. As a matter of fact I think I was; a little.

  "It was a woman," I said. "She was-in her thirties, I'd say. Had dark hair and-was about, oh, five-foot-six. She was wearing an odd dress-black with a strange design on it. And there was a string of pearls around her neck."

  There was a moment's suspension, then Anne said, "You saw this?"

  "I saw it," I said. "I was in the living room, sitting on the green chair. I looked up and-she was standing there." I swallowed. "Looking at me."

  "Honey…" I couldn't tell what I heard more of in her voice-sympathy or revulsion.

  "You really saw it then," said Phil, "I mean with your eyes?"

  "Phil, I told you," I said, "I saw it. It wasn't a dream. Let's toss that out right now. It happened. I got up, I went into the bathroom. I heard you sleeping. I checked Richard to see if he was all right, I looked out the back window at the yard. I sat down on the green chair-and I saw her. Like that. I was awake. It wasn't any dream."

  I noticed how Anne was looking at me. It was a complex look, compounded of many things-curiosity, withdrawal, concern, love, fear; all of them in the one look.

  "Before this happened," Phil said, "what was your mental state? I mean, why couldn't you sleep?"

  I looked at him curiously. "Why?" I asked.

  "Because I think you were in a state of mental turmoil. Before you-let's say-saw what you did."

  "Phil, I did see it," I said, a little impatiently now. "Come on. I just won't go along with this dream idea. Don't, for God's sake, humour me. I'm not a mental case."

  "Of course you're not," Phil said quickly. "I didn't mean that for a second. What you saw was as real to you as I am, sitting here across from you."

  I didn't know exactly what he was driving at but I said, "Okay, then. That's settled."

 

  "You were in an aroused mental state, though," Phil said. It wasn't a question this time.

  I looked at him a moment, warily. I didn't want to be led to any pat conclusion about this. But of course I had to say yes to his statement.

  "All right," he said, "and I imagine you even have a headache now. Do you?"

  "A little one." I felt myself start. "How do you know all this?" I asked.

  "Because it follows a pattern, brother man," he said. "You had a hallucination as a result of-"

  "Phil…" I started.

  "Listen to me."

  "Phil, it wasn't a hallucination! You were right before, not now. What I saw was as real to me as you are, sitting there."

  "Of course it was. Do you think that makes it actual?"

  That stopped me cold. It's the sort of question that can topple anything; make even the most objective reality spin away into tenuous nothingness. I sat there staring at him blankly, feeling that light pulse of pain in my head.

  "What do you mean?" I finally asked.

  "Simply this," he said, "people have had hallucinations before-in broad daylight, much less dead of night. They've shaken hands with their hallucinations, talked with them."

  "What you're trying to say," I said, unable to keep from smiling a little, "is that your old brother-in-law is ready for the hatch."

  "Oh, hell, no," Phil said. "That woman exists. I don't know where-or when. But she's real. I mean she lives somewhere-or did live somewhere. She's someone you've known or seen-or maybe haven't seen; that isn't necessary. The point is, what you saw wasn't a ghost. Not in the usual sense of the word anyway-though plenty of so-called ghosts would fit into this category."

  "Which is?" I asked.

  "Telepathic images," Phil said. "If one person can see a card with a symbol on it, another person can see what looks like a human being. I mean see it. Your mind was keyed up high because of our little experiment last night. You saw this woman. Naturally, the first thing you thought of was ghost. That's the trouble with our attitude-not just yours, Tom.

  "People won't believe in reasonable, verifiable phenomena-things like hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance. No, that they won't accept. But they see something and, in a second-whammo!-they're off the edge, flying high. Because they're not prepared, because they can only react with instinctive emotion. They won't accept reasonable things with their minds but the fantastic things they'll swallow whole when their emotions are brought into play. Because the emotions have no limits on belief. The emotions will swallow anything-and they do. As witness yourself. You're an intelligent man, Tom. But the only thing you thought of was ghost."

  He paused and Anne and I stared at him. He'd sounded just like Alan Porter.

"The end," he said, grinning. "Pass the basket."

  "So you don't think I saw it then," I said.

  "You did see it," he answered, "but in your mind's eye. And, believe me, brother man, seeing it that way can be just as realistic to you as seeing it the ordinary way. Sometimes a lot more realistic."

  He grinned. "Hell, man," he said, "you were a medium last night."

  We talked about it some more. I didn't have much to offer, though-except objections. It's a little hard to let go of a thing like that. Maybe the human reaction is to cling to it a little. As Phil had indicated, it's a lot more "romantic" to see a ghost. Not so really thrilling to write it off as "mere" telepathy.

  It was Anne who broke it up.

  "Well, we're doing a lot of talking about this," she said with her true woman's mind, "but we're missing the whole point. What I want to know is-who was this woman?"

  Phil and I both had to laugh at the combination of curiosity and wifely suspicion in her voice.

  "Who else?" Phil said. "One of his girl friends."

  I shook my head.

  "I wish I knew," I said, "but I can't remember ever seeing her." I shrugged. "Maybe it was-what's her name?-Helen Driscoll."

  "Whoozat, whoozat?" Phil asked.

  "She's the woman who used to live in this house," Anne told him. "She's Mrs. Sentas' sister; the woman who lives next door."

  "Oh." Phil shrugged. "Could be."

  "So I saw the ghost of Helen Driscoll," I said, straight-faced.

  "Except for one little thing," Anne said.

  "What?" Phil asked.

  "She's not dead. She just went back east."

  "Not west," said Phil.

  The headache got worse. So much worse that I had to beg off going to the beach that afternoon. I made them go without me; told Anne not to worry, I'd take an aspirin and lie down until the headache went away.

  They went a few minutes past two, piling into Phil's coupe with basket, blanket, beach bag, lotions, et al. I stood on the porch waving to Richard as the Mercury gunned up Tulley Street. Like so many young men Phil liked to be doing about fifty before he shifted into third.

  I watched until the car turned left onto the boulevard; then I went back inside the house. As I started to close the door I saw Elizabeth out on her lawn again, white gloved, poking a trowel at the garden soil. She had on a wide-brimmed straw hat that she and Frank had bought in Tijuana. She didn't look over at me. I stood there a moment watching her slow, tired movements. The term "professional martyr" occurred to me and I put it off as unworthy.

  I shut the sight of her away with the door. Anyway, I had my own troubles. For a moment I wondered where Frank was, deciding that he was either sleeping in his house or else stretched out on the beach, ogling girls. I shook that off too. It simply wasn't my business.

  I turned and stood looking at the spot where the woman had been. A shudder plaited down my back. I tried to visualize her but it was hard in the daylight. I went over to the exact spot and stood on it, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on my ankles. It was almost impossible to believe that it hadn't been a dream.

  I went into the kitchen and put on some water for coffee. I leaned against the edge of the sink counter while I waited for it to boil. It was very quiet in the house. I stared down at the multicoloured spatter design on the linoleum until it swam before my eyes. In the cupboard I could hear the alarm clock ticking. It reminded me of Poe's story about the telltale heart. It sounded like a heart beating hollowly behind the shielding of the cabinet door. I closed my eyes and sighed. Why couldn't I believe Phil? Everything he'd said had been so sensible-on the surface.

  There was my answer, I decided. What I felt wasn't on the surface. It was a subterranean trickle of awareness far beneath the level of consciousness. All right, it was emotion. Perhaps emotion was a better gauge for things like that.

 

  "I said come in here!"

  I started with a gasp, my head jerking up so fast it sent electric twinges along my neck muscles. For a moment, I actually expected to see the woman in the strange black dress standing before me again.

  "Ron!" I heard then. "I mean now!"

  I swallowed and blew out a long, trembling breath.

  "All right," I heard. "All right. What about that?"

  I couldn't hear Ron's answer. You never could. Elsie might have been conducting a vituperative monologue across the alley.

  "I told you at breakfast, damn it, I don't want your damn clothes laying all over my house!"

  Amusement broke into sound in my throat and I shook my head slowly. Dear God, I thought; her house. She didn't want his clothes lying all over her house. Ron was a boarder there, not the legal owner. A man's home is his castle, I thought, unless his wife makes him live in the dungeon. I wondered for a diverting moment what kind of match Ron and Elizabeth would make. One thing for sure, I decided, it would be the quietest damn house on the block.

  "And what about the oven?" Elsie asked. "You said you were going to clean it this weekend. Well, have you?"

  It made me cringe to hear talk like that. I felt my hands curling up into instinctive fists.

  "One of these days," I muttered, half myself, half imagining myself as Ron, "one of these days. Pow! Right to the moon!"

  My punch at the air sent jagged lines of pain through my head. Laughter faded with a wince. I couldn't stay amused anyway. There was my own problem. It wasn't over. No matter what Phil said, it wasn't over.

  I was drinking my coffee when I heard bare feet padding in the alley. I looked up and saw Elsie come up onto the back porch. Through the film of the door curtains, I saw that she was wearing a black bathing suit.

  She knocked. "Anne?" she called.

  I got up and opened the door.

  "Oh, hi" she said, quickly rearranging her smile from one of polite neighbourliness to one of mathematical seduction. At least that was the effect I got.

  "Good afternoon," I said.

  The bathing suit clung to her plumpness as if she'd been dipped into it rather than pulled it on.

  "Tom, could I borrow those raffia-covered glasses?" she asked. "I'm having some relatives over tonight."

  "Yeah. Sure." I backed away a step, then turned for the cupboard. I heard her come in the kitchen and shut the door.

  "Where's Anne?" she asked. The sound of the question was innocent. Yet, for some reason, I knew it wasn't.

  "Gone to the beach," I told her.

  "You mean you're all alone?" she said. "Yum yum." It was supposed to be a joke but, like Frank, Elsie was incapable of obscuring her motive with words.

  "That's right," I said, pulling open the cabinet door. Suddenly I felt that tingling in my temples again. It made my hand twitch. I looked back over my shoulder, half expecting to see that woman. There was only Elsie.

  "You should have told me," she minced. "I'd have put on something more-appropriate."

  I swallowed and took down the glasses. I had the very definite inclination to tell her to get out of the house. I didn't know why. There was just something about her that disturbed me. And it wasn't the obvious thing either.

  "How long are they going to be gone?" Elsie asked.

  I turned with the glasses.

  "Why do you ask?" I made the mistake of smiling as I said it.

  To Elsie it probably looked as if I slipped at that moment. I didn't. I reeled as a wave of raw sensation hit me. I caught for balance at the sink and managed to catch myself without breaking a glass.

  "No reason," she said, obviously taking my slip for a form of fluster. "Why? Should I have?"

  I stood there looking at her. She wasn't smiling. She stood there without moving, one hand on the out-jutting curve of a hip. I noticed the line of dewy sweat across her upper lip and how the sunlight behind her was shining through the golden aura of hair along the edges of her shoulders, arms and neck.

  "Guess not." I walked over and handed her the glasses. I don't know whether it was an accident that our hands touched. I jerked mine away a little too quickly to hide it.

  "What's the matter, Tom?" she asked with the tone of voice used by a woman who is convinced she's irresistible.

  "Nothing," I said.

  "You're blushing!"

  I knew I wasn't; and realized that it was a trick she used to fluster the men she flirted with.

  "Am I?" I said coldly. That desire was thrusting itself through me; the desire to push her violently from the house.

  "Yes," she said. "I'm not embarrassing you in this suit, am I?"

  "Not at all," I said. I felt physically ill standing so close to her. She seemed to radiate something that wrenched my insides. I turned to the door and opened it. "I have a little headache, that's all," I explained. "I was just about to lie down."

"Oh-h." The sympathy was false too; I felt it. "You lie down then. Lying down can help a lot-of things." She finished as if it were an afterthought.

  "Yes. I will."

  "I'll bring the glasses back tonight," she said.

  "No hurry," I answered. I wanted to scream into her face-Will you get the hell out of here! Repressing it made me shiver.

  "That was quite a party we had last night," said Elsie. Her voice seemed to come from a distance. I couldn't see her face distinctly.

  "Yes," I managed to say, "very interesting."

  "You really knew what you were doing, though, didn't you?" she told me.

  I nodded quickly, willing to say anything to get her out. "Yes. Of course."

  "I knew it," she said, satisfied. I closed the door halfway. "Well." Elsie took a deep breath and the bathing suit swelled in front. "Thanks for the glasses," she said as if she were thanking me for something else.

  I closed the door behind her and gasped dizzily.

"Get in that backyard!" Elsie screamed.

  I jumped so sharply I banged my knee against the door. As I bent over, rubbing it, I heard Candy outside in the alley, whining.

  When Elsie was gone I sank down at the table and closed my eyes. I felt as if I'd just climbed out of a well. I tried to tell myself it was only imagination but that didn't work. Mind ran second again, poor competition for my emotions. I felt dazed and weakened. On the surface that was senseless. Elsie was quite ordinary, not very attractive. She'd never bothered me before. I'd always felt slightly amused by her antics.

  I wasn't amused now. I almost felt afraid of her.

 

  And, no matter how I went about it, there was only one explanation. I'd seen behind her words, behind her actions. Somehow I'd been inside her mind.

  It was an awful place.

 

FIVE

 

  I TOLD ANNE ABOUT IT that night after Phil had left for Berkeley. Richard was asleep and we were getting ready for bed. I was in my pajamas, Anne undressing by the closet.

  "I don't understand what you mean," she said when I'd finished.

  I shook my head slowly. "I don't blame you," I said somberly. "I don't understand it either."

  "Well… what is it?" she asked. "You say you felt repelled by her but-" She didn't finish; just stood there looking at me.

  "That's it," I said, "I-I think I must have known what was going on in her mind. I don't mean her thoughts exactly; not words or sentences." I gestured helplessly. "What was behind her words I guess. What she felt."

  "My God," Anne said. "You make her sound like a monster."

 

  "Maybe we're all monsters underneath," I said.

  I saw her shudder a little as she drew on her robe. She came over and sat down beside me. We were quiet for a moment.

  "All right," she said, "forgetting about Elsie for the moment. Do you think this is a carry-over from last night? Like… seeing that woman?"

  "I don't know what else it could be," I told her.

  She bit her lower lip. "What could have happened?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "You saw it. Did I act- strange in any way while I was under hypnosis?"

  She looked at me worriedly. "Not that I can remember," she said. "I've seen people hypnotized before. I've seen Phil hypnotize other people. They didn't act any different from the way you did."

  I sighed. "I don't get it then."

  "You should have told Phil," she said. "Maybe he could have done something."

  "How?" I asked. "As far as he was concerned the hypnosis was everything he wanted it to be. He'd just say I'm a little keyed up."

  "I know, but…"

  She looked so disturbed that I tried to sound a little less worried about it.

  "Telepathy, you can have it."

  "You really think that's what it is?"

  "I don't know what it is." I shrugged. "I guess that's as good a word as any."

  "It's-such a remote word," she said. "You hear it spoken once in a blue moon. You read about it occasionally. But you never really think about it in personal terms."

  "Well, maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions," I said. "It may just be a simple old nervous breakdown."

  She put her hand over mine.

 

  "Well, if this… sort of thing goes on," she said, "we'll go to Alan Porter." She smiled wryly. "Or something."

  I smiled back. "Or something; maybe to an asylum."

  "Honey, don't talk like that."

  "I'm sorry." I put my arms around her and we pressed together.

  "I got a friend in here needs a daddy," she murmured. "Not some character in a padded cell."

  I kissed her. "Tell your friend," I said, "I accept his terms."

  I saw her again. It was the same as it had been the first time; the strange dark dress, the string of pearls at her throat, the hair all uncombed, a frame of tangled blackness around her white face. She was standing in the same way by the back window, looking at me. This time I could see more because I wasn't incapacitated by shock. I could see that she had a look of pleading on her face. As if she were asking me for something.

  "Who are you?" I asked again.

  Then I woke up.

  For a few moments, a surge of almost overwhelming relief flooded through me-and, with it, recognition. Phil was right, it hadn't been a ghost. It hadn't even been telepathy but only a dream. She wasn't real. I was safe. All these thoughts in the space of seconds.

  And gone sooner. Because I felt that tingling in my head again, that cramping tension in my guts. That same twisting aggravation of the flesh that had driven me from my bed the night before. And I knew-as surely as anything I had ever known that, if I got up and walked into the living room, she'd be there waiting for me.

 

  I pushed my face into the pillow and lay there shuddering, fighting it. I wasn't going in there. I simply wasn't going in there!

  Suddenly I froze, listening. There was something in the hall; I heard the sound of it. A swishing crackle of a sound-like the skirt of a moving woman.

  Abruptly, there was a cry.

Richard! A blade of terror plunged into my heart. Gasping, I threw back the covers and jumped up, rushed across the floor, lunging into the hall, into Richard's room. He was standing in his crib, crying and shivering in the darkness. Quickly, I pulled him up and pressed my cheek to his.

  "Shhh, baby, it's all right," I whispered. "It's all right, daddy's here." I felt a shudder ripple down my back and I held him tightly, patting his back with shaking fingers. "It's all right baby; daddy's here. Go to sleep, sweetheart. It's all right."

  I felt his fear; felt it as distinctly as if it were a current of icy water trickling from his brain to mine. "It's all right," I said. "Go to sleep now. Daddy's here." I kept on talking to him until he fell asleep again. "It's just a dream, baby. Just a dream."

It had to be.

  Sunlight. And, with it, what passes for reason-a desperate groping for solace.

  I'd only dreamed about the woman, imagined the rustling skirt; and Richard had only had a nightmare. The rest was fancy, a disorder of the nerves. That was my conclusion as I shaved. It is amazing how much one is willing to distort belief in the name of reason; how little one is willing to trust the intuitions of the flesh.

  A combination of things served to bolster my conclusion. The aforementioned sunlight-always a strong factor in enabling one to deny the fears of the night. Add to that a tasty breakfast, a sunny-countenanced wife, a happy, laughing baby son, the first day of a week's work, and you have arrayed a potent force against belief in all things that have no form or logic.

  By the time I left the house I was convinced. I walked across the street and up the alley beside Frank and Elizabeth's house; it was Frank's turn to drive. I knocked on the back door and went into their kitchen. Frank was still at the table, drinking coffee.

  "Up, man," I said, "we'll be late."

  "That's what you always say," he said. "Are we ever late?"

  "Often," I answered, winking at Elizabeth who was standing at the stove.

  "False," said Frank, "false as hell." He got up and stretched, groaning. "Oh, God," he said, "I wish it was Saturday." He walked out of the kitchen to get his suit coat. I asked Elizabeth how she was.

  "Fine, thank you," she said. "Oh, we'd like you and Anne to come to dinner Wednesday night if you're free."

  I nodded. "Fine. We'd love to." Elizabeth smiled and we stood there a moment in silence.

  "That was certainly interesting the other night," she said then.

  "Yes," I said. "Too bad I didn't get to see it."

  She laughed faintly. "It was certainly interesting," she said.

  Frank came back in.

  "Well, off to goddamn Siberia," he said disgustedly.

  "Darling, don't forget to bring home some coffee when you-" Elizabeth started to say.

  "Hell, you get it," Frank interrupted angrily. "You've got all day to horse around. I'm not going shopping after working all day in that lousy, goddamn plant."

 

  Elizabeth smiled feebly and turned back to the stove, a flush rising in her cheeks. I saw her throat move convulsively.

  "Women," Frank said, jerking open the door. "Jesus!"

  I didn't say anything. We left the house and drove to work. We were seven minutes late.

  It happened that afternoon.

  I'd just come out of the washroom. I stopped at the cooler and drew myself a cup of water. I drank it and, crumpling the cup, threw it into the disposal can. I turned and started back for my desk.

And staggered violently as something heavy hit me on the head.

  At my cry, several of the men and women in the office turned suddenly from their work and gaped at me. My legs were rubbery under me and I was lurching sideways toward one of the desks; which I caught at desperately and clung to, a dazed expression on my face.

  One of the men, Ken Lacey, ran over to me and caught me by the arm.

  "What is it, fella?" I heard him ask.

  "Anne," I said.

  "What?"

"Anne!" I pulled away from him, then staggered again, my hands pressing at the top of my head. I could feel terrible shooting pains there; as if someone had hit me with a hammer.

  Several other people came hurrying over.

  "What is it?" I heard one of the secretaries say.

  "I don't know," Lacey said. "Somebody get him a chair."

  "Anne." I looked around with an expression of panic on my face. I wouldn't sit down.

  "I'm all right, I'm all right," I kept insisting, managing to pull away from Lacey again. They watched me in surprise as I ran to my desk, threw myself down on the chair and grabbed the phone. They told me later I looked like a very frightened man. I was. The only trouble was I didn't know what I was frightened about. I only knew it had something to do with Anne.

  The phone kept ringing at home with no one answering. I writhed in the chair and (they said later) the tense, stricken look on my face got worse. I punched down the button and dialled again with shaking fingers. I didn't look over to where they were standing, watching. I kept the receiver pressed to my ear.

  "Come on," I remember muttering in an agony of inexplicable dread. "Come on. Answer!"

  I heard the phone picked up.

  "Hello?"

  "Anne?"

  "Is this you, Tom?" I recognized Elizabeth's thin voice and I felt as if someone had kicked me in the stomach.

"Where's Anne?" I said, barely able to breathe.

  "She's on the bed," Elizabeth told me. "I just found her unconscious on the kitchen floor."

  "Is she all right?"

  "I don't know. I called the doctor."

  "I'll be right there." I slammed down the receiver and jerked my coat off the hat rack. I must have looked like a maniac as I raced out of there.

  The next half hour was sheer hell. I had to rush to Frank's department to get the car key-and that took a pass. Then I had to get another emergency pass to leave the plant. I raced across the parking lot until I got a stitch in my side-and, naturally, Frank had parked as far from the gate as it was possible to get. I gunned the car across the lot at sixty miles an hour, screeching to a halt at the gate, showed my pass, then jolted into the street.

  It was pure luck I didn't get arrested at least a dozen times on that drive home. I passed red lights, stop signs, blinkers. I passed on the right, turned left from the right-hand lane and right from the left-hand lane; I broke every speed law there is. But I got home in twelve minutes.

  I skidded to a halt and was out of the car before the motor sound had faded. I raced across the lawn, leaped onto the porch and slammed through the front doorway.

  I found them in the bedroom, Anne on the bed, Elizabeth sitting beside her. Richard slipped off the bed as I entered and ran to me.

  "Hi, daddy!" he said, cheerfully.

  "Hello, baby." I stroked his head distractedly and moved quickly to the bed. Elizabeth got up and I sat where she'd been.

  Anne smiled weakly at me. Her eyes didn't seem to focus very well. I saw that Elizabeth had put the ice-bag on her head.

  "Are you all right, honey?" I asked.

  Anne swallowed slowly and smiled again. "I'm all right." She more framed the words with her lips than spoke them aloud.

  "Where's the doctor?" I asked Elizabeth.

  "He hasn't come yet," she told me.

  "Well… where in God's name is he?" I muttered. I looked back at Anne. "What happened?" I asked. "No, no, never mind. Don't talk. You're sure you're all right? You don't want me to take you to the hospital?"

  "No." Her head stirred slightly on the pillow.

  "Daddy, mama faw down." Richard was by my side now, looking at me very intently. For a second I seemed to see Anne standing in the kitchen, reaching upward-

  "Yes, baby, I know," I said, putting my arm around him. I looked back at Anne. "You're sure you're all right?"

  "It's all right." Her voice was a little clearer.

  "How long ago did you call the doctor?" I asked Elizabeth.

  "Just a few minutes before you called," she said.

  "How did it happen?" I asked. "Did she faint?"

  "I came over to say hello," Elizabeth said. "I found Anne on the kitchen floor. I think a large can of tomatoes fell off the top shelf and hit her."

  I stared at her blankly. Then I turned to Anne.

  "On… the top of your head?" I asked, slowly.

  Her lips moved. "Yes."

  The doctor came about three and said that the only complication was a big goose egg on Anne's skull. I phoned the plant and said I wouldn't be back. Elizabeth said she'd pick up Frank at four fifteen.

  A little before five o'clock Anne insisted she was all right and got up to make supper. While she was at the stove I sat at the table with Richard on my lap and told her what had happened.

  She stopped stirring and looked over at me strangely.

  "But that's fantastic," she said.

  "I know it is. But it happened."

  She stood there motionlessly, staring at me.

  "No, why bother telling him?" I said.

  Her face went blank. "What?" she asked.

  "I said why bother telling him?"

  "Telling who?"

  "You just said we should-tell Phil," I said, "didn't you?"

  "Tom, I didn't say anything."

 

  There was a hanging pause. "You didn't?" I finally said.

  "No."

  I swallowed. I leaned back against the wall, hearing Richard tell me about a worm he and Candy had found in the back yard; not aware of the fact that I could see, in my mind, the actual scene of the two children kneeling on the soil, bent over, staring intently at the wriggling coils of the worm.

  "What next?" I murmured. "Good God, what next?"

  The dream again. Waking up with a gasp of terror, staring at the blackness, knowing she was in the living room waiting for me. Wanting to shout Get out of here! Burrowing under the covers instead, pressing close to Anne, shaking and terrified. Hearing the sound of a rustling skirt in the hallway, rushing to Richard once again as he woke up, crying. And, in the morning, another, dull, clinging headache, another stomach ache. A sense of depletion-of having been used. And the inevitable attempt to convince myself it was only a dream. Futile now.

 

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?

 

SEVEN

 

  ARE YOU GOING TO TELL FRANK AND Elizabeth about it?" It was almost five on Wednesday; we were in the bedroom. Anne was sitting on the bed brushing Richard's hair, and I was putting on a fresh shirt. In a few minutes we'd be going across the street for dinner.

  I slipped the sport shirt over my head, then stood looking at their reflection in the bureau mirror.

  "Are you?" she asked.

  I shook my head.

  "No, why bother?" I said. "Frank would laugh at the whole thing."

  It was quiet then. I knew what Anne was thinking. I'd been thinking the same thing. I also knew she didn't want to think it. I didn't want to either. It was too important. And, really, we had no right to dwell on it. What did we have for evidence? A shapeless feeling in the dead of night. The flash of an instinct, a brief second during which the yearning to believe in something beyond seemed to have become a realization, an acceptance. That wasn't enough; not enough at all.

  I turned and leaned against the edge of the bureau. Anne avoided my eyes.

  "Pitty shirt, daddy," Richard said.

  "Thank you, baby," I said.

  "Welcome," Richard said; and, for a moment, something seemed to pass between us; a sort of understanding. Then he had turned away.

  I looked at him and thought how much easier it would be to raise him if I could only believe. All those ever-present dreads would be ameliorated fatal illness, being run down by a car, being killed by any one of the myriad accidents to which a child is so horribly vulnerable. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could believe that he was safe.

  For a moment Anne's eyes met mine.

  "I do know one thing," I said impulsively. "There's something around us. I don't know what it is but it's something. And it's there, Anne. It's there."

  I remember the look she gave me. How, for a moment, she pressed her lips to Richard's white-blond hair.

  "It would be so nice," she said, almost to herself, "so nice."

  Frank let us in.

  "Greetings, fellow sufferers," he slurred. His beer-sweet breath fogged over us. "Hobble the hell on in."

  As we entered the living room, Elizabeth came out of the kitchen. It wasn't hard to tell they'd been fighting. Even if I hadn't sensed the swelling of tension in the air, I could see that Elizabeth had been crying.

  "Hello." She came toward us, forcing a smile, not looking at Frank. "Hello, dear," she said to Richard.

 

  Frank caught her around the waist as she came up to us and I saw his white fingers dig into the soft flesh of her stomach.

  "This is my wife, Lizzie," he said. "Lizzie, mother of my unborn brat."

  Elizabeth pulled away with a pained grimace and stooped down before Richard… hate!. .. The word seemed to flare in my mind the way a bulb does just before it has burned out and gone black.

  "You look so handsome, Richard," she said. There was a break in her voice. "That's a pretty suit."

  "Never tells me I'm handsome," Frank said.

  "Pity?" Richard plucked at the shirt and held the bright material out toward Elizabeth.

  "Oh, yes. So pretty."

  "Well, sittenzie down, guests," said Frank, "and name your poison-to quote the immortal lines of that world-famous bitch, Elsie Leigh."

  "You are in a good mood," I told him.

  "What, goddammit, is your pleasure, goddammit?" Frank said.

  "Nothing for me," Anne said stiffly. I said a glass of wine if he had some. He named off three. I said sauterne.

"Saw-terne-coming goddamn up." Frank lurched away toward the kitchen with a belch.

  Elizabeth straightened up, a strained smile on her face.

  "He's had a bad day," she said, trying in vain to make it sound amusing. "Don't pay any attention to him."

  "Are you sure you want to bother with us, Liz?" Anne asked softly. "We wouldn't mind if-"

  "Oh, don't be silly, dear," Elizabeth said and I sensed a wave of taut unhappiness rushing through her. In the kitchen Frank belched again ringingly. "Key of C," he said.

 

  "Oh… before I forget," Elizabeth said, "did I leave a comb at your house the other day?"

  Anne clucked. "For heaven's sake," she said. "Yes. You did. I've been meaning to bring it back at least a dozen times and I keep forgetting. I'm sorry."

  "Oh, that's all right, dear," Elizabeth said. "I just want to know where it is. I'll pick it up sometime."

  "saw-terne." Frank came back in the room with a filled glass in his hand.

  "I'll get dinner ready," Elizabeth said, starting for the kitchen.

  "Let me help you," Anne offered.

  "There's nothing to do," Elizabeth said, smiling. The smile faded. Frank was blocking her way. "Frank," she said, pleadingly.

  "Lizzie doesn't talk here any more," he said. "Do you, Lizzie?"

  "Frank, let me by." Her voice was strained.

  "Oh, she's so mad, so mad." He pawed at her shoulder. "You mad there, Lizzie?"

  "I'll help you, Liz," Anne said, getting up and taking Richard's hand. Elizabeth opened her mouth as if to speak, then didn't. I could sense the gratitude and anger mixed in her. Frank stepped aside as Anne came over and the two women and Richard started into the kitchen.

  "One pregnant woman," itemized Frank, "one little boy. Two pregnant women." He blew out a whistling breath." 'Tis the season to be jolly." He snickered, "Pretty good, eh?" he asked me.

  "Just as funny as it can be," I said.

  "You don't think that, you sober bastard" he said. He handed me the glass roughly and some of the wine spilled up over the edge and across my hand. "Ooops," said Frank, "oops, oops."

  He just about fell down on the arm chair.

 

  "She's mad," he said, "just 'cause I told her to try and lift the refrigerator so we wouldn't have to bother having a kid." Chuckling, he reached for his can of beer. He held it out.

  "Here's to un-knocked-up femininity," he toasted. "Long may the hell they wave." He hiccupped and drained the can. Abruptly his face grew flatly sullen. He dropped the empty can on the rug.

  "Babies," he said, bitterly, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. "Who the hell invented them?"

  If I'd had any intention of telling them about the woman, Frank dispelled it quickly. He kept drinking until dinner was on the table and then kept on all through it, barely touching his food. It got to the point where, when Elizabeth-in a desperate search for diverting conversation-mentioned my strange phone call when Anne had been knocked unconscious, I shrugged and said it had only been a coincidence. I just didn't want to talk about it there.

  I thought of the way mediums often describe their entrances into haunted houses-how they sense alien presences in the air. Well, that house was haunted too. I felt it strongly. Haunted by despairs, by the ghosts of a thousand cruel words and acts, by the phantom residue of unresolved angers.

  "Babies," Frank kept saying as he stabbed vengefully at his food, "babies. Are they valid? Are they integral? Do they add up? Are they the goddamn sum of their parts? I ask you."

  "Frank, you're making it-" Elizabeth started.

  "Not you," he interrupted, "I'm not asking you. You're sick in the head about babies. Babies are your mania. You live babies, you breathe babies." He looked at Anne and me. "Lizzie," he said, "is baby happy. Alla time, alla time-'when we gonna make a baby?' 'When we gonna put sperm to egg?' and-"

 

"Frank. . ." Elizabeth's fork clinked onto her plate; she covered her eyes with a trembling hand. Richard stared at her, wide-eyed. Anne reached across the table and put her hand on Elizabeth's.

  "Take it easy, man," I said. "You trying to give us indigestion or something?"

  "Sure," Frank said. "Easy he says. Easy. You try to take it easy when something that isn't even alive yet eats up all your money."

  He shook his head dizzily.

  "Babies, babies, babies," he chanted. He glanced at me suddenly. "What are you looking at me for?" Superficials were gone. He looked at me as if he hated my guts.

  I blinked and lowered my eyes. I hadn't been conscious of staring at him. I'd only been conscious of the twisted, angry wellings in his mind.

  "Just looking at an idiot I know," I said.

  He hissed in disgust.

  "I'm an idiot, all right," he said. "Any guy's an idiot who makes babies."

  "Frank, for God's sake!" Elizabeth pushed up from the table shakily and put her plate in the sink.

  "Richard," said Frank, "don't make babies. Make girls. Make whoopee. Make trouble. But don't make babies."

  The remainder of the meal, dessert and all, was eaten in a tense silence broken only by vain attempts at dinner conversation.

  Later, Frank and I went out for a drive. He'd kept on drinking and was getting more and more abusive to Elizabeth so I suggested we go for a ride. I took our car so I could do the driving. I told him I had to get gas for the next day anyway.

  "Don't matter," he said, "I'm not going to work anyhow. Why should I?"

  As we pulled away from the curb Elsie came out of the house in a sun suit and waved to us, then bent over to pick up the hose.

  "Fat bitch," Frank snapped. The impression I got from him was not one of anger, though-unless it was angry lust.

  We drove in silence a while. Frank had rolled down the window on his side all the way and his head lolled out of it, the cold night wind whipping his dark hair. I kept my eyes straight ahead, heading toward the ocean. Once in a while Frank muttered something but I paid no attention. I kept thinking about life going on, every little realism driving one farther from any thinking about the other things.

  Once we'd seen a hypnotist on television. He had a young woman in a trance and she was very calmly giving him facts and figures about her former life in Nuremburg in the 1830s.

  At first I'd been glued to the chair, absolutely spellbound. The woman talked fluent German even though she was American for four generations back; she described buildings and people; she gave dates, addresses, names.

  Then, as I watched, the little realities began to impinge. I felt the bump in the chair cushion I was sitting on. My head itched. I was thirsty and I took a sip of Coca-Cola from the glass on the magazine-strewn coffee table in front of me. I heard the rustle of Anne's clothes as she shifted her weight beside me on the sofa. I became aware of the smallness of the television tube in relation to the room. I heard an airplane pass overhead and noted the books in the bookcase. And this woman went on talking and talking and gradually this incredible thing became ordinary and dull. I sank back against the sofa back and watched without too much interest. I even changed to another channel before it was over.

  It was the same way now. Feeling the hard seat under me, the steering wheel in my hands, the sound of the Ford's engine in my ears, seeing, from the corner of my eye, Frank sitting there glumly, seeing the lights flashing by-it was all too real; too matter-of-fact. Everything else seemed unacceptable. The woman was, once again, a dream. And all the rest- even to the sensing of Frank's and Elizabeth's thoughts seemed imaginative fancy. Something to be explained away.

  After driving about twenty minutes we stopped at a bar in Redondo Beach and sat in a back booth, drinking beer. Frank drained three glasses quickly before dawdling over the fourth. He rubbed the ice-sweated bottom of the glass over the smooth table top and stared at it.

  "What's the use?" he said, without looking at me.

  "Use of what?" I asked.

  "Use of everything," he said. "Marriage and kids and all the rest of it." His cheeks puffed out with held breath, then he expelled it noisily. "I suppose you want a baby," he said.

  "Sure."

  "You would." He drank a little beer.

  "I take it you don't," I said.

  "You take it right, buddy boy," he said bitterly. "Sometimes I’d like to kick her right in the goddamn belly just so she'd… uh-" He squeezed the glass in his hand as if he wanted to splinter it. "What good is a baby to me?" he asked. "What the hell do I want with one?"

  "They're pretty nice," I said.

  He fell back against the booth wall. "Sure," he said, "sure. So's a little money in the bank. So's a little security."

  "They don't eat money, Frank," I said, "just a little mush and milk."

  "They eat money," he said, "just like wives eat money. Just like houses and furniture and goddamn curtains."

  "Man, you sound like a frustrated bachelor," I told him.

  "A frustrated husband," he said. "I wish to hell I was a bachelor. Them, buddy, was the goddamn days."

  "They were all right," I said, "but I'll take these."

  "You can have 'em," he growled. He blew out disgusted breath again and played with his glass. "Isn't bad enough," he muttered, "I have to practically beg her for some when she's normal. Now she's got a whole goddamn bag full of tricks she uses to kick me out of bed."

  I guess I laughed. "Is that what's bothering you?" I asked. I didn't feel very telepathic at that moment. It caught me by surprise.

  "You bet your goddamn life it bothers me," Frank said. "She has the sex drive of a goddamn butterfly. Even when she's normal. Now…"

  "Frank," I said, "believe me, pregnancy is not abnormal."

  "The hell it isn't," he said. "It's a waste of flesh." He leaned forward and his face was hard and intent. "Well, buddy boy," he said, "I'm not taking it lying down." He snickered. "To use the vernacular." He looked around in the way men do to indicate that their next remarks are going to be shattering revelations.

  "There's a little redheaded job at the plant," he said.

  I was surprised again.

  "Oh, she knows about it," he said. "Old Lizzie knows all about it. What the hell else can she expect, though? A man needs it. That's all. And I need a lot of it. It's a matter of simple arithmetic."

  He went on telling me about the little "job"- redheaded, petite, tight-sweatered and sheathed with hugging slacks. She brought papers to the accounting department and dropped them off there.

  "I don't get much eating done at lunchtime," Frank said, winking.

 

EIGHT

 

  I CAN'T STAND HIM," Anne told me as we were getting ready for bed that night. "He's loathsome. He's got that poor woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

  I pulled off my second sock and dropped it into my shoe.

  "I know," I said.

  "All she wants is a baby," Anne said. "God! You'd think she was asking for the moon! She doesn't ask a thing of him; not a thing. He doesn't help her with anything! He goes out by himself whenever he damn well pleases. He begrudges her every cent she spends no matter how carefully she budgets. He yells at her and abuses her. I've seen black and blue marks on that girl-bad ones."

  She slung the hanger over the closet bar. "And she doesn't say a thing," she said. "All she wants is a baby.

 

  Seven years of marriage and that's all she asks. And him …"

  "Maybe that's her trouble," I said. "She lets him get away with too much."

  "What can she do?" Anne asked, sitting down at her dressing table and picking up her brush.

  "Leave him?" I suggested.

  "Where would she go?" she asked, brushing with short, angry strokes. "She hasn't a friend in the world. Both her parents have been dead for nine years. If you and I ever broke up, I, at least, could go home to my mother and father for a while to get over it. Elizabeth hasn't a place in the world to go. That's her home over there. And that-pig is making it a hell."

  I sighed. "I know," I said. I lay back on the bed. "I wonder, does she really know he's having an affair with-?"

  I stopped. I could tell from the way her head had snapped around what the answer was.

  "He's what?" she asked, slowly.

  We looked at each other a moment. She turned away.

  "That's fine," she said in that falsely calm voice a woman manages to achieve when she is at the height of her fury. "That's just fine. That really ices the cake. That really does."

  I smiled without amusement.

  "So she doesn't know," I said. "He said she did."

  "Oh, he's-he's a… there isn't any word bad enough." I shook my head slowly.

  "That's a real nice situation there," I said. "I feel like a soap-opera character living in this house. On one side we have a wife who kicks the guts out of her husband. On the other side we have an adulterer and a drudge." I got under the covers. "I wouldn't tell her if I were you."

 

  "Tell her?" Anne said. "Good God, I wouldn't dare. If anything could snap her right down the middle, that'd be it."

  She shivered.

  "Tell her. Oh… God, not me. I shudder to think what'll happen if she finds out."

  "She won't," I said.

  We were quiet a while. I lay there looking at the ceiling, wondering if I was going to have that dream again-mentally feeling around the house; as if my thoughts were insect antennae quivering, searching timidly, ready to recoil in an instant at the slightest touch of anything.

  But there was nothing. I began to think that maybe the keyed-up state Phil had left me in really was fading; that I was, already, below the level of awareness, and now it would keep sinking until I was as I had been before. Frankly, it made me feel a little disappointed. It was an intriguing capacity. I found myself almost straining to revitalize it in myself. Of course it didn't work. It wasn't voluntary.

  A few minutes later, Anne got in bed beside me and we turned out the lights.

  "You-think you're going to dream tonight?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't think so, though."

  "Maybe it's gone."

  "Could be."

  Silence a while.

  "Honey?" she said then.

  "Yes?"

  I heard her swallowing.

  "About…"

  "About last night?" I asked.

  "Yes. I-I'm sorry I let myself get out of hand."

  "It's nothing to be sorry about, honey."

  "Yes, it is," she said. "It's pointless to think about such things just because of-what's happened."

  "I guess," I said. I rolled onto my side and put my arm over her.

  "You-promise we-"

  "All right," I said, "we won't talk about it."

  "I-just don't think it's-sensible," she said.

  "I suppose not," I said.

  She kissed my cheek. "Good night, honey," she said.

  "Good night," I said. On the bedside table, the radium-faced clock read eleven-thirty.

  "No!"

  I wrenched up from the mattress, awareness razoring in my mind. My eyes were wide open, stiffly set. I stared toward the living room.

  Anne had jolted awake with me. I heard her now, her voice shaking.

"Again?" she asked.

  "Yes. Y-es."

  "Oh… no. No"." She sounded almost angry.

  We sat there a few moments. I could feel my chest rising and falling with fitful motion, the breath gushing out through my nostrils. My lips were sealed together, my heart thudded harshly, off-time.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked. There was a scared, embittered challenge in her voice.

  "What-can I do?"

  She drew in a rasping breath.

"Get up and see."

  I twisted around. "Honey, what is it?"

  "What is it? What kind of question is that? You know what it is. Now get up-" A sobbing broke her voice. "Get up and go in there."

  Breath shuddered in me. I felt myself shaking helplessly. Every time I thought about the woman she seemed to flare into strengthened clarity in my mind - white-faced and staring, her dark eyes asking for something.

  I caught my breath.

  "All right," I said. I don't know if I was talking to Anne or to the woman. "All right." I snapped aside the covers and dropped my legs over the side of the bed.

  "Honey." The anger was suddenly gone from her voice. Only concerned fear remained.

  "What?" I asked.

  "I… I'll go with you."

  I swallowed dryly. "You stay," I said.

  "No, I-I want to. I want to."

  I rubbed a shaking hand over my face and drew away cold sweat. I knew I should make her stay.

  "All right," I heard myself saying. "Come on then."

  I heard the liquid rustle of her nightgown as she got up. I saw the dark outline of her figure against the window. I stood and we came together at the foot of the bed. I felt her hand clutch at mine and I grabbed it tightly. It was cold and dry; it trembled in my grip.

  I took a deep breath and tried to stop the shaking of my stomach muscles. They were tight and cramped again. I felt that hot, needling pulse at my temples.

  "All right," I said. "Come on."

  Did ever two people stalk the darkness more slowly? We moved as if our legs were lead, as if we were statues come only half alive. We edged to the door in whispers of movement; and all the time my heart kept beating faster and faster and I thought I could almost hear the beat of it. My hand shook now too. It was no comforting strength to her. How can there be comfort from a frightened man?

  We reached the hall and stopped as if by mutual consent. Between us and the living room was a door. We stood there shivering in the darkness; then jolted with shock as, in the other bedroom, Richard stirred a little. Then I heard Anne's voice, barely audible.

"Open it" she said.

  I set myself. I gripped her hand until I'm sure it must have hurt her.

  Abruptly, I kicked open the door.

  We both recoiled automatically, braced for the worst.

  Then it all seemed to drain away with a sudden recession. Our hands fell apart.

  We walked into the empty living room. The tingling in my head was fading, the knots untying in my stomach.

  I saw Anne lean against the wall.

  "You bastard," she said clearly and there was only amused relief in her shaky voice. "Oh, you double-dyed bastard."

  I swallowed.

"Honey, I… thought she was in here."

  "Sure you did, ducky," she said. "Sure you did." Her hand patted me and I felt how it shook.

  She took a deep breath.

  "Well," she said, "shall we retire?" I knew from the sound of her voice that she would have screamed her lungs out if we'd seen anything.

  "In a moment," I said.

  She went back to bed. I heard her climb under the covers and heard her say, "Come on, Madame Wallace."

  "Right away."

  I went to bed and lay quietly beside her. I didn't tell her about the cold, damp breeze that had passed over me as I'd turned from the living room.

 

NINE

 

  WELL, I GOT US A BABY-SITTER FOR TONIGHT, " Anne told me cheerfully when I got home Thursday afternoon. I lowered my gurgling son from my shoulder and put him on the floor. I kissed my wife.

  "Good," I said. "Fine. We can use a night out after what we've been through."

"Amen," she said. "I feel as if I've done ten years' field work for the Psychical Research Society."

  I laughed and patted her. "And how's the little mother?" I asked.

  "A lot better now, thank you, Mr. Medium."

  "Call me that again and I'll punch you right in the belly," I said.

  It was a forced joke. I couldn't tell her about the dull headache I'd had all day, the small stomach ache, the continuing of awareness. She was too happy for me to start it again. And, for that matter, I wasn't certain. As always, it was vague and undefined. And I was damned if I was going to bring up feelings again.

  "Who's the sitter?" I asked while I was washing up for supper.

  "The girl Elsie told us about," Anne said. "She's really a deal too. Only charges fifty cents an hour."

  "How about that?" I said. I thought about it a moment. "You sure she's reliable?"

  "You remember what Elsie said about her," Anne said. " 'Real reliable.' "

  I remembered.

  I drove over to get the girl a little before eight. She lived about four miles from our house which wasn't too satisfactory but we'd been looking for a baby-sitter a long time and I wasn't going to quibble. We needed a night out badly.

  I braked in front of the girl's house and started to get out when the front door opened and she came out. She was heavy and the tight blue jeans she wore did nothing to conceal it. She was wearing a brown leather jacket and there was a faded yellow ribbon like a streak of butter through the drabness of her brunette hair. She wore shell-rim glasses.

  I pushed open the door and she slid in beside me and pulled the door shut.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Hello." Her voice was faint. She didn't look at me. I released the hand brake, checked the rear-view mirror, then made a fast U-turn and started back.

  "My name's Tom Wallace," I said.

  She didn't reply.

  "Your name's Dorothy?"

  "Yes." I could hardly hear her.

  I drove a few blocks before I glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead at the road, looking very somber. I'm not sure but I think it was at that moment I began to feel uncomfortable.

  "What's your last name?" I asked. I didn't hear what she mumbled. "What was that?" I asked.

  "Muller," she said.

  "Oh. Uh-huh." I signalled, turned right onto Hawthorne Avenue and picked up speed again.

  "Have you sat for Elsie long?" I asked.

  "Elsie Long?"

  "No. I mean Elsie Leigh. Have you been babysitting for her very long?"

  "No."

  "I see." What was there about her that disturbed me? "I-uh-we were wondering if you had a time limit," I said. "We assumed that-"

  "No," she interrupted.

  "Oh. I thought maybe-with school and everything."

  "No."

  "I see. Your mother doesn't mind, then."

  She didn't answer. Suddenly I seemed to get an impression in my mind-that she had no mother.

  "Is your mother dead?" I asked, without thinking; or, rather, thinking aloud.

  Her head turned quickly. In the darkness I could feel her eyes on me. I knew I was right even though she didn't speak.

  I cleared my throat.

  "Elsie mentioned it," I said, taking the risk that I was right as well as the risk that Elsie didn't even know about it.

  "Oh." From the way she said it I couldn't tell if she'd spotted my lie or not. She looked at the road again. So did I. I drove the rest of the way without a word, wondering what it was I felt so uneasy about.

  When we got to the house Dorothy got out of the car and walked to the front door. There she waited until I came up on the porch and opened it for her. I noticed how short she was.

  "Go on in," I said, feeling a crawling sensation on my back as she walked past me into the living room. Somehow it made me angry. I'd hoped for a pleasant evening of forgetfulness with Anne. Now all the disturbances were beginning again inexplicable and enraging.

  Anne came out of Richard's room into the living room.

  "Hi," she said.

  Dorothy's lips twitched into a mechanical smile. I saw that her white, thick-featured face was dotted with tiny pimples.

  "The baby's asleep," Anne told her. "You shouldn't have any trouble with him at all."

  Dorothy nodded. And-suddenly-I felt a shocking burst of dismay in myself. It made me catch my breath. When it left-almost immediately-it left me limp.

  "I'll be ready in a second," Anne said to me.

  I forget what I answered except that it was said distractedly. Anne went back into the bathroom to brush her hair and Dorothy stood by the back window, near where I'd seen the woman. Momentarily, I felt that cold, knotting sensation in my stomach. I smiled nervously at the girl as she glanced at me. I gestured toward the bookcase.

  "If you-uh-care to read anything," I said, "feel free to-"

  Her eyes fell from mine. She still had her jacket zipped to the neck, her hands deep in the slash pockets.

  "Take off your jacket, why don't you?" I said. She nodded without looking at me.

  I gazed at her a moment. What I felt was-as it had always been-without definition; more a sense of vague, remote discomfort than anything else.

  "Well, there's the television set," I said.

  She nodded once more.

  I went into the kitchen and got myself a drink of water. It tasted brackish to me. I remember pressing my lips together furiously, telling myself-Enough! You're going to enjoy yourself tonight if it kills you!

  "If you get hungry," I called to Dorothy, "feel free to take whatever you want in the icebox."

  No sound.

  As I went back in she was just starting to take off her jacket. I caught a momentary glimpse of breast outline much too heavy for a girl her age. Then the jacket was off, her shoulders had moved back into normal position and the large blouse she wore had fallen into veiling looseness around her. A flush darkened her cheeks. I walked past her as if I hadn't noticed. I went into the bathroom and looked over Anne's shoulder into the mirror.

  I smiled back at her reflection.

  "You all right?" she asked.

  "Sure. Why do you ask?"

  "You looked a little peaked."

  "I'm fine," I said. I drew a comb from my inside coat pocket and ran it through my hair. I wondered if she noticed the slight shaking of my hand. I wondered if she had any idea that I was considering the possibility I was losing my mind.

  "Oh, Dorothy," Anne said as we were leaving.

  "Yes." Dorothy got up from the sofa.

  "You'll have to lock the door from the inside. We can't do it with a key."

  "Oh." Dorothy nodded once.

  "Well, good night," said Anne. "We'll see you later."

  Dorothy grunted.

  I cannot describe the crushing sensation I felt when I heard the sound of the door being locked by Dorothy. For a moment I stood there rigidly, feeling my stomach muscles tighten. Then Anne took my arm and, forcing a smile for her sake, I escorted her to the car.

  "Did I tell you, you look gorgeous tonight?" I asked as I slid onto the front seat beside her.

  She leaned over and kissed me lightly. "Kind sir," she said.

  I held her a moment, breathing in the delicate fragrance of her perfume. By God, I vowed, I am going to stop this damned nonsense. Enough was enough.

  "You smell good," I said.

  "Thank you, darling."

  Then I looked up toward the house and thought I saw Dorothy watching us through the parted blinds.

  "Honey, what is it?" Anne asked.

  I drew back, smiling; rather unconvincingly, I'm afraid. "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "You positively twitched."

  "Did I positively twitch, love?" I tried to cover up. "It is passion, it is desire."

  She cocked her head a little.

  "Oh so?" she said.

  "Oh so, indeed," I said. "Don't think you can hide behind your condition."

  "Well, you're the freshest damn chauffeur I ever hired," she said.

  I grinned and started the engine. As we pulled away from the curb I glanced at the house again and this time there was no doubt; I definitely saw the blinds slip back into place. Something jerked in my stomach and I had the sudden impulse to jam on the brakes and go running back to the house. I actually had to fight the inclination. My foot jerked on the gas pedal and the car jolted a little.

  "Easy does it, Barney Oldfield," Anne said.

 

  "It is your presence, Madame, that undoes my foot," I said and managed to keep from my voice the turmoil I felt. My hands would have shaken if they hadn't been clamped so tight over the steering wheel. Self-anger only made it worse.

  "Oh, did you ask her if she has a time limit?" Anne asked.

  "There isn't any," I answered, wishing immediately that I'd lied and said we had to be back at eleven- at ten.

  "Wonderful," Anne said, as I'd feared, "we can enjoy ourselves without keeping one eye on the clock."

  "Yeah." The charm failed this time. I couldn't keep what I felt out of my voice. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anne look over at me as I turned onto the boulevard.

  "That was a very inconclusive yeah," she said.

  "Not at all, my-" I started, then stopped. I realized that it was Richard I was concerned about and Anne certainly couldn't object to that. If only I could put it in such a way that she wouldn't think it was the "telepathy business" again. I was actually beginning to get a guilt complex about it.

  "Well," I said, hesitantly, "I…just feel a little dubious about staying out too late the first time. After all, Elsie's recommendation is hardly a national seal of approval."

  "No," she said. "Well… we won't stay out past midnight. We can do a lot by then anyway."

Midnight. I clenched my teeth and sat there stiffly. That was no triumph at all. I still felt like going back and taking the girl home. But that was ridiculous.

  I told myself.

  We talked a while about where we were going, finally settling on The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach because it was relatively close to home and also a nice place to have a few drinks and listen to some good modern jazz. That decided, conversation was taken up mainly by Anne while I drove and fretted.

  "Honey, there is something wrong," Anne finally said in the middle of a sentence. "Don't you feel well?"

  I realized that, as a matter of fact, the headache was getting worse. I could ignore that, however. That wasn't my concern at the moment.

  "No, there's nothing wrong," I said, irritated at myself for feeling the need to lie. "I'm just-oh, a little worried about leaving Richard with that girl."

  "Honey, Elsie said she was fine."

  "I know. I-" I shrugged and smiled awkwardly. "I guess I sound like an old lady. I just want to feel sure about Richard, though."

  "Honey, don't you think I do? I asked Elsie all sorts of questions about the girl. And I spoke to her father this afternoon before setting it up."

  "Her mother's dead, isn't she?" I said.

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  I cleared my throat. "Dorothy told me," I said. I wished more and more that I could let out the whole damned business; tell Anne it hadn't gone away, that I was still picking up thoughts and feelings and I simply didn't trust the girl. I felt childishly secretive for not saying it. And yet, when I looked on the other side of the inconclusive coin, I knew I had just as much reason not to say it. If I did, I'd start another rise of panic in Anne and, very possibly, malign a girl whose only fault was being overweight. After all, hadn't I been wrong about the woman the night before?

  Which helped not at all. That was the worst part of all this. Logic I could doubt. What I felt, I never really questioned. Beside which, I wasn't sure I had been wrong about the woman.

  All this I kept mulling over while Anne told me about Dorothy, my mind constantly oscillating between the foundation of reason and the fluidity of emotion. I'm afraid I didn't hear much.

  She was fifteen; I heard that. She lived with her father and eight-year-old brother. She attended junior high and sat for several people. Her father also worked at North American; he was a welder on the night shift.

  Nothing there to disturb me; but, of course, that didn't help. What disturbed me, now as always, was what was behind the fact-the emotion behind the word, the thought that lurked behind the barricades of silence. That was what had bothered me with Elsie and-

Elsie!

  It suddenly occurred to me. The sick, revulsed feeling I'd gotten with Elsie-it had been very similar to the sensation I’d gotten with Dorothy.

  For a few moments that made me feel better- logically. The cruel, enervating demands of puberty were not such a mystery-and not such a menace.

  "So are you convinced, daddy?" Anne asked at the conclusion of her report on Dorothy.

  I nodded. "I stand bowed," I said, "chastened. Heat up the humble pie. Onward to jazzland."

  Anne laughed softly and shifted closer to me. She closed her hand over my leg.

  "In-deed," she said.

  I managed to convince myself that I wasn't concerned any more.

  At least until we'd parked, gotten out of the car, walked to The Lighthouse, entered its quaint din, gotten a table near the piano side of the bandstand, ordered drinks and started listening to the delicate, atonal fancies of a piece called "Aquarium." Then it started again.

 

  Sitting there, my hand wrapped around the icy height of my Vodka Collins glass, staring at the ecstatic facial expressions of the writhing bass player, I started thinking about Dorothy.

  Every thought was a cold dripping of premonition inside of me. What was it about her that was wrong? Why did I fear her? What could she do to hurt Richard? That was the crux of it, of course. What could she-?

  Anne said something, breaking the chain of thought. The music was too loud, though, and I couldn't hear. I could tell from the expression on her face, however, approximately what it was. I leaned forward.

  "Tom, what is it?" she asked, tensely.

  I shook my head, smiling vaguely and she turned away. I looked at her. Dread kept piling up in me. Tell her, I thought. Tell her, for God's sake! Make a mistake if you have to-but don't just sit here like this-sick with fear.

  I touched her arm and she turned.

  I didn't say anything. For a long moment our eyes held and I knew she felt what flickered between us as surely as I did. Then, with a tightening of her lips, she drew on her topcoat and picked up her handbag.

  When the door had swung shut behind us, cutting off the wild sound of music, she started for the car.

  "Honey," I started to say.

  "Never mind, Tom."

  "Listen," I said irritably, "do you think this is for me?"

  She made a little hopeless gesture with her right hand and didn't answer. When we reached the car she stood there waiting for me to unlock it. For a moment I was about to say something about being sorry, and going back to The Lighthouse. But I knew I couldn't. I unlocked the door quickly and she got in. I slammed the door and found myself running around the front of the car.

  I started the motor and pulled away from the curb, gunning it. At the corner I had to stop sharply for a red light and it made me hiss impatiently. I knew Anne was looking at me but I couldn't look back. I began to sense that she knew what it was. Knowing that only increased the dismaying fear that was eating at me.

  When the light changed I jammed my foot down on the accelerator and the Ford leaped forward and roared up the winding grade that led toward the coast highway.

  Now that I'd given up trying to fight it, the dread mounted quickly. My mind seemed to flee ahead to the house. Abruptly, I was on the porch. I was in the living room and the lights were out. I was in the hall and there were no lights in the entire house. I made a frightened sound and Anne looked over at me quickly. I heard her start to say something, then stop. The Ford raked around the corner and headed north on the highway. I don't know what part of me paid attention to the driving. Most of me was in that house, searching, panic-stricken. Richard! I heard myself call out.

Richard!

  The car never seemed so slow before. Sixty was a creep, fifty a drag, forty was standing still. Waiting for a light was an agony of prescience. I knew that Anne wanted to speak but didn't dare. I didn't want to speak; I only wanted to get home in a second.

  By the time I pulled up in front of the house I was shaking. Switching off the engine, I shoved out the door and raced across the dark lawn, leaping onto the porch with one panicked bound. Behind me I heard the other door slam shut and the fast click of Anne's +following heels. I didn't even bother knocking. A single twist of the knob told me the door was still locked. Turning quickly, I ran past Anne as she started up the porch steps.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "Back door," I gasped.

  "There are no lights," she said in a falsely normal voice.

  I didn't answer. I darted around the corner of the garage and sprinted up the alley.

  The back door was wide open. I started in, then, abruptly, whirled and lunged out again, driven. Instinctively, I turned to the left and ran into the back yard.

  She was cringing in a dark corner when I found her. In her arms, a blanket wrapped around him, was Richard.

  Without a word I took him from her and turned away. A terrible, half-mad sound broke in Dorothy's throat. I didn't stop. I carried Richard toward Anne who was standing at the end of the alley.

  "What is it?" she asked in a thin, frightened voice.

  "Turn on the kitchen light," I told her.

  Backing off, she turned and hurried into the house. The kitchen light flared on.

  Anne gasped as I carried Richard in. "No," she whimpered.

  "He's all right," I said, quickly. "He didn't even wake up."

  She followed me across the living room into the hall, turning on the lights. In his room, I set Richard down into the crib and unwound the blanket. Anne came in, a look of sick dread on her face.

  "Is he-hurt?" she asked.

  "I don't think so." I turned on the overhead light and Richard stirred fitfully. I seemed to feel a dread that was his. It was sinking away; gone in an instant. He began to snore peacefully.

 

  "Oh, my God." She would have fallen if I hadn't caught her. I led her into the hall, bracing her with my arm, turning out the light in Richard's room as we left.

  "It's all right," I said, "it's all right, Anne."

  Her face was like wax. "What if we hadn't come back?" she whispered.

  "We did come back," I said. "That's all that matters."

  "Oh, Tom, Tom." She began shaking in my arms.

  "It's all right," I told her.

  I held her for several minutes. Then I said, "I better take her home."

  "What?" She raised her head.

  "The girl. She lives too far away to walk."

  Anne swallowed, her lips trembling. "I'm calling the police," she said.

  "No, no, no," I said, "it wouldn't do any good."

  "Tom, this could happen again!" Anne said, looking terrified. "She'll try to kidnap someone else's child!"

  "No, she won't," I said. "She's been sitting for Elsie all this time and never tried it. I don't know why she tried it tonight but I'm sure it won't happen again."

  Anne shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know."

  I tried to get her into bed but she wouldn't go. As I left the house she was standing in Richard's room, looking down at him.

  Dorothy wasn't in the back yard. I went out to the street and looked toward the boulevard. Up on the next block I saw her walking erratically. I got into the car and followed her.

  She kept stumbling from the aura of one street lamp to the next, obviously blinded by grief, unable to tell which way she was going. I cruised behind her until I saw her heavy body pitch forward onto a lawn and lie there, twitching. I stopped the car and got out. When I reached her she was pulling up grass with her hands and teeth and sobbing like an animal.

  She made a retching sound as I helped her up. In the light from a nearby lamp, her dark eyes stared dazedly at me.

  "No," she said. "No. No. No."

  "Come on, Dorothy."

  She started to fight me suddenly, whining, her lips wrenched back, saliva running between her clenched teeth and her jaw. I had to slap her before she went limp and allowed herself to be led to the car.

  As I pulled away from the curb she started to cry again, shaking with deep sobs, her hands pressed across her face. At first I thought the noise she was making was only the sound of grief. Then I realized she was trying to talk-and, although I couldn't hear the words, I knew what it was she was saying.

  "No, I'm not taking you to the police," I said. "And I'm not telling your father. But I'd get help, Dorothy. I mean it. And I don't want to see you in our neighbourhood after tonight."

  I was sorry I'd said the last but it came out automatically.

  The rest of the way she sobbed and kept making those sounds of animal grief. I studiedly avoided her mind. When we reached her house, she pushed open the door and stumbled up the path. I pulled the door shut and made a fast U-turn. At that moment I didn't care what happened to her. I never wanted to see her again.

  When I got home Anne was sitting on the living room sofa, still wearing her topcoat.

  "Is he all right?" I asked.

  "Yes. I took his things off. He's all right."

  I noticed how pale her face was and realized that I hadn't been protecting her from anything; a woman has her own kind of knowing. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her.

  "It's all over, Anne," I said.

  It broke in her. She gasped and pressed her face against me. I felt her trembling.

  "It's all right," I tried to comfort her.

  After a while she calmed down and drew her head up. She looked at me with an expression I couldn't have fathomed just by looking at. Yet I knew what she was feeling-awe, withdrawal, anxiety.

  "You knew, didn't you?" she said, quietly.

  "Yes," I said, "I knew."

  Her eyes shut. "Then it hasn't gone," she said. "It's still with us."

  "Can you regret that now?" I asked. "If it had gone, we'd still be at The Lighthouse, thinking everything was-"

  "Don't-" She pressed a hand over her eyes and began to cry softly. This time there was more relief than sorrow.

  A broken laugh emptied from me unexpectedly. Anne looked up in disturbed surprise. "What is it?" she asked.

  I shook my head and felt tears welling into my eyes.

  " 'Real reliable,' " I said.

 

TEN

 

  THERE WAS NO DREAM THAT NIGHT.

  It wasn't needed; Anne and I both knew that what Phil had started was still very much with us.

  We spoke of it the next morning. Richard was still asleep. He'd woken up the night before when we'd taken off his pajamas again to reassure ourselves that nothing was wrong with him. He was making up for the lost sleep now. Anne and I sat drinking coffee in the kitchen before I went to work.

  "Are you going to a doctor now?" she asked.

  "Why?"

  I saw how she attempted to hide the movement at her throat by sipping some coffee.

  "Well… is it something you want?" she finally asked.

  "It's not as if I asked for it," I said.

  "That's not the point," she said.

 

  "Well…" I stirred my coffee idly. "It's also not as if I were sick. You admit yourself it probably made all the difference last night."

  She hesitated. Then she said, "Yes, I admit it. That doesn't change the rest of it, though."

  "The rest?"

  "You know what I mean."

  I knew. It was with me even then; the taut pressuring at my skull, the queasy unsettledness in my stomach, the fearful memory of the woman, the dread of things unknown which might become known.

  "All right, I know," I said. "I still can't believe it's a-a harmful faculty."

  "What if you start reading my mind?" she asked. "You already have, a little. What if it becomes- wholesale?"

  "I don't-"

  "How would you like it if you were-exposed to me; naked to my mind?"

  "Honey, I'm not trying to-to probe at you. You know that. The few little things I've picked up were inconsequential."

  "Like last night?" she asked.

  "We're talking about you, honey," I said.

  "All right," she said and I sensed that she was almost nervous in my presence; it was a weird feeling. "All right. But if you can pick up those other things you can pick up what I think too."

  I tried to joke but it was a mistake.

  "What's the matter," I said, "do you have something to hide? Maybe a-"

  "Everyone has something to hide!" she burst out. "And if they couldn't hide it, the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is."

  At first I felt only stunned. I stared at her, taking the fallible course of wondering if there was something hidden behind her words. Then I knew that there wasn't, that she was right. Everyone has to have a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible.

  "All right," I said, "you're right. But I think I'd have to concentrate before I could-read your mind or anything."

  "Did you concentrate on these other things?" she challenged.

  "They were different. They were feelings, not-"

  "Won't you admit anything?" she asked.

  "Honey, this-power, whatever it is, may have saved our baby's life last night. I'm not anxious to kick it aside just like that."

  "You'd rather torment me with it, is that it!"

  "Torment you?"

  She looked into her coffee and I could tell from the taut, fitful way in which she breathed how upset she was. I knew in other ways too.

  "All right," she said. "All right."

  "Oh… come on, Anne," I said. "Stop making me feel guilty for this thing. Is it my fault? It was your idiot brother who started it off."

  I'd meant-with that unfortunate misconstruing of the male-that it should be a sort of joke. It didn't come out that way. Certainly she didn't take it that way.

  She pretended not to take it at all. "Then you're not going to a doctor?"

  "What in God's name could a doctor do?" I asked, angry at my own fallible defences. "I'm not sick!"

  Anne got up and put her cup and saucer in the sink. She stood looking out the window bleakly. He is sick. I knew that was what she was thinking.

  "I'm not-sick," I said, adding the final word so she'd think I was just repeating myself, not answering her thought.

 

  She turned to face me. Her expression was very grim.

  "Tell me that tonight," she said, "when you wake up shuddering."

  As I drove up to the house late that afternoon I saw Elsie watering her lawn. She was wearing tight yellow shorts and a yellow sweater several sizes too small for her.

  As I got out of the Ford she was just setting down her sprinkler on the small, rectangular patch of grass between our driveways. She straightened up, put her hands on her hips and took a deep, calculating breath. Her sweater, had it been wood, would have creaked.

  "There," she said. "That should do it."

  "Without a doubt," I said, nodding, and pulled up the garage door. Already I felt that trickling of intrusion in my mind again. I pressed my teeth together and turned back to the car.

  "Hey, what happened last night?" Elsie asked. "I called Dorothy today and her father said she's not baby-sitting any more. What'd you do-hypnotize her?" A twisted thread of thought from her mind told me what she half-imagined I'd done. I felt my stomach churning.

  "You got me," I said, blandly. "Nothing happened."

  "Oh?" She sounded disappointed.

  I got into the car and drove it into the garage. As I got out and slammed the door I saw her standing out there, hands still pressed to her hips, shoulders designedly back, waiting. I started to walk toward the back garage door, then realized that would be too overt a rebuff and, with a sigh, I went back out the front way and reached up to lower the overhead door.

  "I'm having some friends over tomorrow night," Elsie said. "Why don't you and Anne drop by? Might be fun."

  "We'd like to, Elsie," I said, "but we're having dinner at her mother's house tomorrow night."

  "Oh? That's a long drive." Anne's mother lived in Santa Barbara.

  "I know," I said, mentally kicking myself for picking such a poor lie. The door banged down. "We don't see her very often, though." Oh, well, I thought, we can always eat out and go to a drive-in movie.

  Elsie ran smoothing hands over her shorts.

  "You sure you didn't hypnotize Dorothy and tell her not to sit for me any more?" she asked. There was a mince to her voice too; the kind she had in her walk.

  "No, that's Phil's department," I said, turning away. "Say hello to Ron for me. Sorry about tomorrow night."

  She didn't answer. She must have been aware of the fact that I was avoiding conversation. There was no help for that. I just couldn't take much exposure to her mind.

  When I opened the front door, Richard came running out of the kitchen. "Daddy!" he cried.

  As I swept my son into my arms I felt a burst of love from him. He kissed my cheek and tightened his small arms around my neck. Inchoate, wordless affection seemed to pour into me; love beyond words, beyond expression, a surging of trust and need and unquestioning devotion. Sometimes I think the whole experience-with all its hideous points-was worth it for that brief moment.

  "Hello, baby," I murmured. "How are you?"

  "Hi," he said. "How you?"

  I pressed my face against his warm neck. Then Anne came out of the kitchen and the sensation dwindled. I walked over to her and kissed her. It wasn't returned.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Hello, Tom," she answered, quietly. That sense of withdrawal was still in her. I kissed her again and put my arm around her. She tried to smile but it was strained.

  "I went to a doctor today," I said.

  For a second there was a leaping of hope in her mind but then it funnelled off. She looked at me bleakly. And? The word touched my mind.

  "And?" she asked.

  I swallowed, smiled. "Nothing," I said, trying to make it sound like consolation. "I'm in perfect physical shape."

  "I see." Quiet; subdued.

  "Honey, I did what you asked."

  Her lips pressed together. "I'm sorry," she said, "I can't help it."

  After she'd gone into the kitchen, I sat down with Richard for a few minutes and talked to him. Presently, I put him down and went to wash up for supper.

  "The girl left her glasses here last night," was the first thing Anne said at supper.

  "Oh? Well…" I made a disconcerted sound. "I really don't think I'd care to take them back. Maybe we can mail them."

  "I threw them out," she said flatly and I felt a momentary burst of that protective hatred that had been in her the night before. I decided then that I'd have to concentrate on not anticipating her words. Her thoughts were coming too clearly now, too easily.

  "Did you give Elizabeth her comb?" I asked.

  Anne shook her head. "No. I forgot."

  "Oh."

 

  Silence a while. Then, as if it were the usual thing, I turned to Richard with a smile.

  "Did you baby?" I asked. "What was she-"

  Anne's fork crashed down on her plate.

"Tom, he didn't say anything." Her voice was so restrained it shook.

  I stared at her a long time before looking down at my food.

  "Mama?" Richard asked. "What, mama?"

  "Eat your food, Richard," she said quietly.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes.

  "Oh, I… forgot to tell you," I said finally, "I'm not working tomorrow. I don't have to."

  Anne picked up her coffee cup without looking at me.

  "That's nice," she said.

  I jolted up with a rasping cry, my body alive with apprehension.

  Everything had suddenly been torn away; my life was only this moment of sudden waking and staring toward the living room where the woman was, waiting for me.

  Then I became conscious of Anne awake, looking at me in the darkness. She didn't speak. She didn't make a sound; but I knew the angry fear in her.

  Deliberately, ignoring every impulse screaming in my mind, I lay back and let breath trickle from my lungs, then lay there fighting the need to shiver violently. I clutched at the sheet with talon like ringers and closed my eyes tightly. My brain seemed lightninged with awareness, my body tense and sick with it. But I had to pretend it was nothing. I knew she was there, waiting.

  I don't know how long it was that I struggled against the pull of that woman. She was a living presence to me now. I actually hated her as I would hate another human being; hated her for being in there, for trying to drag me to herself with cords of icy demand.

  Only after a long while did I sense a breaking up of her power. Still I remained tense, ready to fight. Only when it had passed completely did I let my muscles go limp. I lay there, strengthless, knowing that Anne was still awake.

  I jolted again when the lamp clicked on.

  For a moment she said nothing; just looked at me without expression. There the resistance in her seemed to drain off. She looked at me more carefully.

  "You're soaking wet," she said.

  I looked at her speechlessly, feeling the cold drops trickle down across my cheeks.

  "Oh… Tom." She threw aside the covers and suddenly ran from the room. I heard her go into the bathroom, then she came back with a towel. Sitting quickly on the edge of the bed, she began patting my face. She didn't say anything.

  When she'd finished, she put down the towel and brushed back my damp hair with her fingers.

  "What am I doing to you?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "I should be helping you, not fighting you," she said.

  I must have looked very frightened and very hapless because she leaned over and pressed her cheek against mine.

  "Tom. Tom," she whispered, "I'm sorry, darling."

  After a few moments she kissed my cheek and sat up. I could tell from the obdurate expression on her face that she was going to try to face it fully and resolutely.

  "She-was in there again?" she asked.

  "Yes."

 

  "And… if you'd gone in," she said, "do you think you'd have seen her?"

  I drew in a deep breath and let it flutter out.

  "I don't know," I said. "I just don't know."

  "You're sure she exists, though," she said, "I mean-"

  "She exists." I knew she had been about to ask me if I was sure the woman didn't exist in my mind only. "I don't know who she is or what she wants here but… she exists." I swallowed. "Or did"

  "You… really think she's a-"

  I shook my head tiredly. "I don't know, Anne," I said. "It doesn't make sense. Why should a place like this be haunted? It's only a couple of years old-and the only person who ever lived here was Mrs. Sentas' sister. And she just went east." I smiled wryly at the memory. "Not west," I repeated Phil's little joke.

  She had to smile.

  "Tom, Tom," she said, "remind me to kick my baby brother right smack in the teeth the next time we see him."

  "Will do," I said weakly.

  She hesitated a moment, then said, "You think maybe we should-"

  "No," I said, forgetting my resolve not to anticipate her words. "I don't think Phil could help. Although it wouldn't hurt to write him and tell him to cut out hypnotizing people if he doesn't know what he's doing."

  "I'll write in the morning," she said.

  In a little while, she turned off the lamp and lay down beside me.

  "Do you forgive me?" she asked.

  "Oh, honey…" I put my arms around her and felt the warm fullness of her body against me. "There's nothing to forgive."

 

  Which was when it came to me; simply, with absolute clarity.

  I started to tell her, then stopped.

  "What were you going to say?" she asked.

  I swallowed. "Uh… in order to get out of going to another of her damned parties," I said, "I told Elsie we were going to your mother's tomorrow night for dinner."

  "Oh." Anne made an amused sound. "So what do we do? Take in a drive-in movie until it's safe to return?"

  "Exactly."

  I lay there quietly, holding her close. What I'd started to say to her hadn't been about Elsie. I'd only said that to conceal my original words. Because, as I'd started to speak them, it had occurred to me that Anne might not want to hear them; whether she believed them or not. And, somehow, I felt that she would believe them now-even though the working out of them might be only an accident. After all there was a fifty percent chance of my being right no matter how or why I made the prediction-that our coming baby would be a girl.

 

ELEVEN

 

  THE LETTER WAS DELIVERED SHORTLY AFTER TEN THE NEXT MORNING.

  I took it into the kitchen to Anne, wondering why I felt so uneasy about it. I could see, from the handwriting on the envelope, that it was from her father. For a moment, I thought about my telling Elsie we were going to see Anne's mother that night; and wondered if it had been more than a coincidence.

  Anne opened the letter and started to read it. I watched the expression of worry come into her face.

  "Oh, no," she said.

  It is your mother. I almost spoke the words aloud; then, quickly, closed my mouth before she noticed. She looked up.

  "Mother's ill," she said.

  I stared at her. I could hear the clock ticking on the cupboard.

  "No," I said.

 

  She thought I was referring to the letter. She went on reading it and I felt a great weight dragging down inside of me. I kept staring at Anne, beginning to feel sick.

  "Dad say she's-"

  She stopped instantly and looked at me in blank surprise.

  She started to speak, stopped again. She did this several times. When, at last, she managed to force it, I knew it was against her will.

  "What is it?" Her voice was low and frightened. I shook my head suddenly.

  "Nothing," I said. My voice sounded brittle and artificial.

  She kept looking at me. I felt my heart thudding heavily. I couldn't take my eyes from her. I saw her chest shake with uncontrolled breath.

  "I want you to tell me what it is," she said.

  "It's nothing." I felt dizzy. The room wavered around me. I thought I was going to fall.

  "What is it?"

  "It's nothing." Like a brainless parrot repeating. I kept staring at her.

  "Tom-"

  That was when the phone rang.

  The sound that came from me was terrible. It was a moaning sound, a guttural, shaking exhalation of fright. Anne actually shrank back from me.

  The phone kept ringing.

"What is it?" Her voice was hollow, ready to shatter.

  I swallowed but the lump stayed in my throat. The phone kept ringing, ringing, I tried to speak but couldn't. I shook my head again. That's all I could do; shake my head.

  Suddenly, with a gasp, she pushed by me and I stayed rooted there as she ran across the living room into the hall. The ringing stopped.

 

  "Hello," I heard her say. Silence. "Dad!"

  And that was all. Absolute silence. I pressed both shaking palms down on the sink counter and stood there staring at the spread ringers.

  I heard her hang up. I stood waiting. Don't, I thought. Don't come in here. Don't look at me. I heard her footsteps, slow and heavy, moving across the living room rug. Don't, I begged. Please. Don't look at me.

  I heard her stop in the kitchen doorway. She didn't speak. I swallowed dryly. Then I had to turn. I couldn't bear it, just standing there with all her thoughts assailing me.

  I turned.

  She was staring at me. I'd seen a stare like that only once before in my lifetime. It was on the face of a little girl who was looking at her dog lying crushed in the street; a look compounded of speechless horror and complete, overwhelming disbelief.

  "You knew," she said.

  I reached out an imploring hand.

  "You knew" she said-and there was no hiding the revulsion in her voice now; the fear. "You knew this too. You knew before he called."

  "Anne-"

  With a gagging sound, she whirled and fled the living room. I started after her. "Anne!"

  She rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. I banged against it just after she'd locked it. Inside, I heard the start of her dry, chest-racking sobs.

  "Anne, please!"

  "Get away from me!" she cried. "Get away from me!"

  I stood there, shaking helplessly, listening to her heartbroken sobs as she wept for her mother who had died that morning.

 

* * *

 

  She left for Santa Barbara early that afternoon, taking Richard with her. I didn't even ask if she wanted me to go along. I knew she didn't. She hadn't spoken a word to me from the time she'd come out of the bathroom till the time she drove away. Dry-eyed and still, she'd packed a few of her and Richard's things into an overnight bag, then dressed Richard and herself and left. I didn't speak to her. Can you speak to your wife at a time when you are a horror in her eyes?

  After she'd gone, I stood on the lawn looking at the spot where the car had turned left onto the boulevard. The sun was hot on my back. It made my eyes water the way it glinted metallically off the sidewalks. I stood there a long time, motionless, feeling empty and dead.

  "You too, haah?"

  I twitched sharply as someone called to me. Looking across the street I saw Frank in his shorts coming out of his garage with a lawn mower.

  "I thought you were a staunch supporter of Saturday work," he called.

  I stared at him. He put down the mower and started toward me. With a convulsive shudder, I turned away and went back into the house. As I closed the door behind me, I saw him picking up the mower again, squinting quizzically toward our house. He shook his head and then bent over to adjust the grass-catcher.

  I turned from the door and walked to the sofa. I sat down and lay my head back. I closed my eyes and saw, in my mind, the look on her face when she had come back from the telephone. And I remembered something I'd said to Anne the night after Phil had hypnotized me.

  Maybe we're all monsters underneath, I'd said.

  About two-thirty I got the lawn mower out of the garage and started working on the front lawn. Staying in the house was more than I could manage; it was a closet of cruel reminders. So I put on my shorts and tennis shoes and tried to forget by labouring.

  It was a fruitless effort. The monotonous act of pushing the whirring mower back and forth across the grass, if anything, enhanced introspection. Then again, in the state I was in, I doubt if there was an activity in the world which could have made me forget.

  To put it simply-life had become a nightmare.

  Not even a week had passed since that party at Elsie's house; yet, in those short days, more incredible things had happened to me than had happened in the previous twenty-seven years. And it was getting worse; much worse. I dreaded the coming days.

  I thought about Anne, about the horror in her eyes as she realized that I'd known her mother was dead- even before her father had phoned. I put myself in her position. It wasn't hard to see why she'd reacted as she had. The double shock of dread and grief could have snapped anyone.

  "Hey, there."

  I started and looked around. Harry Sentas was standing on his porch looking at me and I realized that I was halfway onto his lawn, cutting a crooked swath lower than the level of his grass,

  "Oh, I-I'm sorry," I said, flustered. "I must have been dreaming."

  He grunted and, as I turned with a nervous smile and started back again, I saw, from the corner of my eye, Sentas step down off his porch to examine the damage.

  I kept mowing without looking up until he'd gone into his house again. Then I dropped the mower and went in for a towel. I sat on the edge of the cool cement porch, mopping at my face and staring across the street at Frank's house.

 

  I thought about picking up his and Elizabeth's thoughts. I thought about his having an affair with a redhead at the plant. I thought about Elsie hiding the carnal clutter of her mind behind a face of bland innocence; about her brow-beating her husband mercilessly. I thought about Sentas and his wife and the tension that always seemed to be between them. I thought about the bus driver up the block who was an alcoholic who spent half his weekends in jail; about the housewife on the next street who slept with high school boys while her salesman husband was on the road. I thought about Anne and myself, about the incredible things that were happening to us.

  All these things taking place in this peaceful neighbourhood of quiet, little houses basking in the sun. I thought of that. It reminded me of Jekyll and Hyde. The neighbourhood was two creatures. One presented a clean, smiling countenance to the world and, beneath, maintained quite another one. It was hideous, in a way, to consider the world of twists and warps that existed behind the pleasant setting of Tulley Street.

  So hideous that I got up and started mowing again and tried to blank my mind.

  It was about then, I think, that I considered the possibility that I was losing my mind. I mean considered it. Before that it had been a droll fancy to smile about. It was no longer that.

  It was something I had to face. My mind was a prism. It broke up thought rays and scattered them into visions and impressions. That was simple enough. The difficult part lay in determining where those rays came from-without or within.

  While I was finishing up the lawn, Ron came out of his house and got into their Pontiac convertible which was standing in the driveway. He made a little gesture of greeting with his hand and squeezed out a smile. I smiled back.

  "May I borrow your edger?" I called.

  He looked blank a moment, then nodded.

  "Is it in the garage?" I asked.

  "I think so."

  After he'd driven off, I finished up the lawn, emptied the grass-catcher and put the mower back in the garage. Then I went into Elsie's garage (like the house it, too, seemed to belong only to Elsie). I looked around in the gloom but couldn't find the edger. I stopped for a few moments and thumbed through a magazine from the pile of true confessions and screen romances which were Elsie's only mental fare. Once, when she'd brought herself a small, wrought-iron bookcase, she'd come over and asked if she could borrow some books to display that night at a party- books with pretty jackets, she'd specified. She didn't notice that I'd slipped in Ulysses and The Well of Loneliness. For that matter, I doubt if any of her guests noticed either.