"I just want to know what's going to happen tomorrow. " The voice sounded young, and very worried. I took a quick mental guess at a pregnant and abandoned secretary.
"Well, madam, that's my line. What time do you want to come?"
"Around nine? Is that too late?"
"Nine is fine, and the pleasure's mine. Can I have your name please?"
"Tandy. Karen Tandy. Thank you, Mr. Erskine. I'll see you at nine."
It might seem strange to you that an intelligent girl like Karen Tandy should seek help from a terrible quack like me, but until you've been dabbling in clairvoyance for quite a while, you don't realize how vulnerable people feel when they're threatened by things they don't understand. This is particularly true of illness and death, and most of my clients have some kind of question about their own mortality to ask. No matter how reassuring and competent a surgeon may be, he can't give people any answers when it comes to what is going to happen if their lives are suddenly snuffed out.
It's no good a doctor saying, "Well, see here, madam, if your brain ceases to give out any more electronic impulses, we'll have to consider that you are lost and gone forever."
Death is too frightening, too total, too mystical, for people to want to believe it has anything to do with the facts of medicine and surgery. They want to believe in a life after death, or at the very least in a spirit world, where the mournful ghosts of their long-dead ancestors roam about in the celestial equivalent of silk pajamas.
I could see the fear of death on Karen Tandy's face when she knocked at my door. In fact, it was so strongly marked that I felt less than comfortable in my green cloak and my funny little green hat. She was delicately boned and pointy-faced, the sort of girl who always won races in high school athletics, and she spoke with a grave politeness that made me feel more fraudulent than ever.
"Are you Mr. Erskine?" she asked.
"That's me. Fortunes read, futures foretold. You know the rest."
She walked quietly into my room and looked around at the incense burner and the yellowed skull and the close-drawn drapes. I suddenly felt that the whole set-up was incredibly phony and false, but she didn't seem to notice. I drew out a chair for her to sit on, and offered her a cigarette. When I lit it, I could see that her hands were trembling.
"All right, Miss Tandy," I asked her. "What's the problem?"
"I don't know how to explain it, really. I've been to the hospital already, and they're going to give me an operation tomorrow morning. But there are all kinds of things I couldn't tell them about."
I sat back and smiled encouragingly. "Why don't you try telling me?"
"It's very difficult," she said, in her soft, light voice. "I get the feeling that it's something much more than it seems."
"Well," I said, crossing my legs under my green silk robe. "Would you like to tell me what it is?"
She raised her hand shyly to the back of her neck. "About three days ago — Tuesday morning I think it was — I began to feel a kind of irritation there, at the back of my neck. It swelled up, and I was worried in case it was something serious, and I went to the hospital to have it looked at."
"I see," I said sympathetically. Sympathy, as you can probably guess, accounts for ninety-eight percent of anyone's success as a clairvoyant. "And what did the doctors tell you?"
"They said it was nothing to worry about, but at the same time they seemed pretty anxious to take it off."
I smiled. "So where do I come in?"
"Well, my aunt's been to see you once or twice. Mrs. Karmann, I live with her. She doesn't know I'm here, but she's always said how good you are, and so I thought I could try you myself."
Well, it was nice to know that my occult services were being praised abroad. Mrs. Karmann was a lovely old lady who believed that her dead husband was always trying to get in touch with her from the spirit world. She came to see me two or three times a month, whenever the dear departed Mr. Karmann sent her a message from beyond. It happened in her dreams, she always told me. She heard him whispering in a strange language in the middle of the night, and that was the signal for her to trot over to
Tenth Avenue
and spend a few dollars with me. Very good business, Mrs. Karmann.
"You want me to read your cards?" I asked, raising one of my devilishly arched eyebrows.
Karen Tandy shook her head. She looked more serious and worried then almost any client I could remember. I hoped she wasn't going to ask me to do something that required real occult talent.
"It's the dreams, Mr. Erskine. Ever since this bump has started growing, I've had terrible dreams. The first night, I thought it was just an ordinary nightmare, but I've had the same dream every night, and each night it's been clearer. I don't even know if I want to go to bed tonight, because I just know I'm going to have the same dream, and it's going to be even more vivid, and very much worse."
I pulled thoughtfully at the end of my nose. It was a habit of mine whenever I was pondering something over, and probably accounted for the size of my schonk. Some people scratch their heads when they think, and get dandruff. I just tug at my hooter.
"Miss Tandy, a lot of people have recurring dreams. It usually means that they're worrying about the same thing over and over. I don't think it's anything to get het up about."
She stared at me with these big deep, chocolate-brown eyes. "It's not that kind of dream, Mr. Erskine, I'm sure. It's too real. With the ordinary sort of dream, you feel it's all happening inside your head. But with this one, it seems to happen all around me, outside me, as well as inside my brain."
"Well," I said, "supposing you tell me what it is."
"It always starts the same way. I dream I'm standing on a strange island. It's winter, and there's a very cold wind blowing. I can feel that wind, even though the windows are always closed in my bedroom. It's night time, and the moon is up there behind the clouds. In the distance, beyond the woods, I can see a river, or perhaps it's the sea. It's shining in the moonlight. I look around me, and there seem to be rows of dark huts. It looks like a kind of village, a sort of primitive village. In fact, I know it's a village. But there doesn't seem to be anyone around.
"Then I'm walking across the grass toward the river. I know my way, because I feel I've been living on this strange island all my life. I feel that I am frightened, but at the same time I feel I have some hidden powers of my own, and that I am probably capable of overcoming my fear. I am frightened of the unknown — things that I don't understand.
"I reach the river and I stand on the beach. It is still very cold. I look across the water and I can see a dark sailing ship anchored offshore. There is nothing in my dream which suggests that it's anything else but an ordinary sailing ship, but at the same time I am very frightened by it. It seems strange and unfamiliar, almost as though it's a flying saucer from another world.
"I stand on the beach for a long time, and then I see a small boat leave the sailing ship and start rowing toward the shore. I cannot see who is in the boat. I start running across the grass, back to the village, and then I go into one of the huts. The hut seems familiar. I know I have been there before. In fact, I can almost believe that it's my hut. There is an odd smell in it, like herbs or incense or something.
"I have a desperately urgent feeling that there is something I must do. I don't quite know what it is. But I must do it, whatever it is. It is something to do with the frightening people in the boat, something to do with this dark sailing ship. The fear seems to grow and grow inside me until I can hardly think. Something is going to come out of the ship which will have a terrible effect. There is something in that ship that is alien, something powerful and magical, and I am desperate about it. Then I wake up."