Scared, she decided suddenly. Badly scared. Of what? She glanced over toward the silent trees, said, “Why don’t you come with me then? The kayak will carry two.”
“No, I can’t. I—”
Great electric surges all about and through her—a violent burst of psi. And a rushing, grinding noise overhead. Something struck the water with a heavy splash ten feet away. Telzey jammed the acceleration button full down, swung the steering rod far over. The kayak darted forward, curving to the left. Another splash beside the boat. This time Telzey was drenched with water, momentarily blinded by it.
The bulk of the rock slide hit the surface of the bay instants later. She was clear of it by then, rushing along parallel to the shore. She shook water from her eyes, stabbed the brake button.
The kayak slammed against something just beneath the surface, spun sideways with a rending sound, overturned, pitching her into the water.
The kayak was a total loss. Face submerged, she could see it from the shifting surface, twenty feet down in the clear dark depth of the bay where it had slid after tearing itself open almost from bow to stern along a projecting ledge of rock. Feeling weak with shock, she lifted her head, stroked through angrily tossing water toward the shore where the man stood watching her. Presently she found a sloping sand bar underfoot, waded out.
“I’m so sorry!” he said, whitefaced. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Telzey’s legs were trembling. She said, not too steadily, “Just scared to death!”
“I would have come to your help—but I can’t swim!” He looked haggard enough but must be considerably younger than he’d seemed from the kayak, probably not much over thirty.
“Well, I can,” Telzey said. “So that was all right!” She gave him a brief reassuring smile, wondering a good deal about him now, looked up at the cliff on her right, saw the fresh scar there in the overhanging wall a hundred and fifty feet up.
“That was a mess of rock that came down!” she remarked, pushing her hands back over her hair, squeezing water out of it.
“It was terrible! Terrible!” The man sighed heavily. “I . . . well, I have towels and clothing articles back there. Perhaps you could find something you could use if you’d like to dry and change.”
“No, thanks,” Telzey said. “My clothes are waterproofed. I’ll be dry again in no time. You don’t happen to have a boat around, do you? Or an aircar?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Neither.”
She considered it, and him. “You live here?”
He said hesitantly, “No. Not exactly. But I’d planned to stay here a while.” He paused. “The truth is, I did use a boat to come across the lake from the village this morning. But after I’d unloaded my supplies and equipment, I destroyed the boat. I didn’t want to be tempted to leave too quickly again—”
He cleared his throat, looking as if he badly wanted to go on but couldn’t quite bring himself to it.
“Well,” Telzey said blandly, “it doesn’t really matter. If I’m not back with the kayak by dark, the resort people will figure I’m having a problem and start looking for me.”
The man seemed to reach a decision. “I don’t want to alarm you. Miss—”
“I’m Telzey Amberdon.”
He said his name was Dal Axwen. “There’s something I must tell you. While you’re here, we’ll have to be very careful. Or something may happen to you.”
She said cautiously, “What might happen to me?”
He grimaced. “I haven’t the faintest idea—that’s what makes it so difficult! I do know you’re in danger.” He cleared his throat again. “I’m sure this will sound as if I’m out of my mind. But the fact is—I’m being haunted!”
Something shivered over Telzey’s skin. “Haunted by what?” she asked.
Dal Axwen shook his head. “I can’t say. He . . . well, that’s why I came here today. I thought I might have escaped from him and that if I stayed hidden long enough, he’d stop looking for me and go away. But he found me—and it’s worse now than it was. He never tried to kill anyone before.”
Telzey said after a moment, “You don’t think that rock fall was an accident?”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t think he would go that far, but you can see why I wanted you to go away immediately. I hope I’m not alarming you too much. If we stay close together and are very alert until somebody comes to take you back across the lake, everything should still be all right.”
He didn’t sound convinced of it. Telzey said, “He wasn’t trying to get at you with the rocks?”
Axwen shook his head. “He intends to destroy me. Everything indicates it. But not directly—not physically. If he wanted that, he’d have done it by now. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent it.”
Telzey was silent. At the instant she’d felt that eruption of energy, a tight protective screen of psi force had closed about her mind. While Axwen was talking she’d lightened it carefully, gradually. And now that she was looking for indications of that kind, she could tell there was something around on the psi level. A mentality. She had the impression it was aware of her, though it wasn’t reacting in any way to the thinning of her screen. Otherwise, she couldn’t make out much about it as yet.
She looked at Axwen. He was watching her with a kind of anxious intentness.
“You say you don’t know what he is?” she asked. “Haven’t you seen him?”
Axwen hesitated, then said wonderingly, “Why, I think you believe me!”
“Oh, I believe you, all right.” Telzey said. “Those rocks were up there, part of the mountain, a long, long time! It really seems more likely something started them down on purpose at the moment I was under them than that it just happened.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re still almost a child,” Axwen said, nodding. “But it’s a relief in itself to find someone who accepts my explanation for these occurrences.” He looked up at the cliff and shivered. “He’s never done anything so completely terrifying before! But it’s been bad enough.”
“You’ve no idea at all who’s doing it?” Telzey asked.
“He’s something that can’t be seen,” Axwen said earnestly. “An evil spirit! I don’t know what drew him to me, but he’s selected me as his victim. I’ve given up any hope of ever being free of him again.”
An electric tingling began about Telzey’s screen. The psi mentality was active again, though on a relatively minor level. Her gaze shifted past Axwen’s shoulder. Thirty feet farther along the shore, sand swirled up and about silently as if more and more of it were being flung high into the air by shifting violent blasts of wind in this wind-still bay. Then the sand cloud collapsed. Falling, it seemed to outline for a moment a squat ugly figure moving toward them. Then it was gone.
All right, I’m already scared, Telzey told the psi awareness mentally. You don’t have to work at it.
She sensed no response, no reaction whatever.
Couldn’t it hear her?
She moistened her lips, puzzled, looked up at Dal Axwen’s worried, sad face.
“Let’s walk around in the open a bit while I dry off,” she suggested. “How did all this get started?”
Axwen couldn’t say precisely when his troubles had begun. There’d been scattered occurrences in the past few years which in retrospect indicated it was developing during that period. He was an attorney; and sometimes at his office, sometimes at home, he’d discover small articles had been displaced, were lying where he hadn’t left them. It seemed inexplicable, particularly when they happened to be objects he’d been handling perhaps only moments before. Once he found a stack of papers strewn about the carpet as if by a sudden gust of wind, in a room into which no wind could have penetrated.
“It was mystifying, of course,” he said. “But those events were quite infrequent, and I didn’t really think too much about them. They didn’t seem important enough. Then one night a door started slamming in my home. That was half a
year ago.”
He lived alone, and was awakened from sleep by the sound of the door slamming loudly shut. Startled, thinking it might be a prowler, though the house supposedly was prowler-proof, he went to investigate. The door was one which normally stood open. He opened it again, went on through the rest of the house, found no indications of an intruder or anything else to explain what could have caused the door to close with such vehemence, and went back to bed. Half an hour later, the door once more slammed shut. This time, Axwen left it closed, or thought he did. Nevertheless, shortly before morning, he was awakened for the third time by the slamming of the door.
It was a disturbing experience, but the following nights remained quiet. One morning then, Axwen was having a talk in the office with one of his clients, a pompous and self-important man. The discussion was interrupted presently by the fact that each time the client began to speak, there’d be several loud thumps in the walls of the office. Axwen apologized but could offer no satisfactory explanation for the continuing interference, and the client soon left.
That was the first of a series of events which gained Dal Axwen the reputation of being an ingeniously offensive practical joker. The next victim was a lady distinguished by a towering coiffure, with whom he was trying to reach an amicable settlement on behalf of a client. He had almost achieved his purpose when the coiffure blew off. “It was exactly as if a blast of wind had lifted it from her head,” Axwen said. Without it, she was quite bald, and there were several other people present. She left in a fury, and Axwen lost his client.
His practice declined rapidly in the following months. There were periods in which nothing happened, but he never knew when a previously solid chair might collapse under somebody whose goodwill was essential to him, or other even more disconcerting things would occur. At home, he was no happier. He began to wake up at night to hear somebody walking heavily about the room. When he turned on the light, the footsteps stopped and no one was there. He took to sleeping with every part of the house well illuminated, but assorted manifestations continued. His office staff presently came in for its share of mystifying and alarming experiences and deserted him. Replacements didn’t last long. His reduced business required less attention, but he did need at least one qualified helper.
In desperation, he advertised for a strong-nerved, adventurous person who could do secretarial work. Since he was offering four times the standard salary by then, there were numerous applicants. Axwen believed in being honest and explained to each precisely what could be expected. Most of them departed quietly before he’d got very far. But one bold and muscular female, who’d been a policewoman for fifteen years, decided to give it a try. At the end of her first day at work, she admitted to having had a few queasy moments though she couldn’t say exactly what had caused them. Axwen heard her come into the outer office to start work next morning. She seemed in good spirits. A minute or two later, he heard a scream and the slamming of the entry door. He rushed out, found his new secretary-receptionist had left.
“I called her at her home that morning,” he said. “She wouldn’t tell me what had happened but stated she wouldn’t come back to work for me at any salary. And she refused to talk to me again. I didn’t try to replace her. It didn’t really seem to matter. My business was almost nonexistent anyway. I feel he’s out to destroy me, and he may have nearly succeeded. I’m a religious man, but I’ve thought several times of doing away with myself.
“That was only a few days ago. I haven’t been back to the office since. He didn’t make himself too noticeable, as if satisfied for the moment with what he’d accomplished. But last night at my home there was a continuing series of disturbances—enough to make it impossible for me to get to sleep. It was as if he’d decided to drive me out of my mind. Finally I drugged myself heavily and fell asleep almost at once. I slept for a full twelve hours and woke up more refreshed than I’d been in weeks. There were no indications that my persecutor was around. That’s when it occurred to me that if I went far away and hid for a while, I might be able to rid myself of him permanently. I acted on the thought at once, picked out this resort at random from a listing, flew up here, bought a boat in the village, loaded it up with camping equipment and supplies, and set out across the lake. This bay seemed ideal for my purpose. Then, when I was beginning to feel almost certain that I was free of him at last, he let me know he’d found me again.”
“How did he do that?” Telzey asked.
“I had set up my shelter and was reaching for one of the food containers. It exploded just as I touched it. I wasn’t hurt in the least. But I knew what it meant. I could almost hear him laughing at me.”
Axwen added, looking dolefully at Telzey, “I don’t remember very well what happened most of the rest of the day. I was in a state of total despair and fear. I remember lying here on the sand, thinking I might never get up again. Finally I heard you call me.”
Some time passed—
Axwen stirred suddenly, lifted his head, and observed in a startled voice, “It seems to be getting dark very quickly!”
Telzey glanced over at him. They were sitting on the sand now, a few feet apart, looking toward the lake beyond the bay. She felt tired and tense. Her face was filmed with sweat. She’d been working around inside Axwen’s mind for some while, investigating, probing. Naturally she hadn’t let him become aware of what she did.
It had been instructive. She knew by now what manner of entity haunted Axwen, and why he was being haunted. She knew how to end the haunting. The question was whether she could get Axwen to believe her—more specifically whether she could get him to believe her in time to do any good. The haunter wasn’t far away, and eager, terribly eager, to destroy her, the psi who seemed to stand between itself and its prey. It had appalling power; she couldn’t match it on that direct level. So far, she’d been holding it off with a variety of stratagems. But it was beginning to understand what she did and to discover how to undo the stratagems. It couldn’t be too long before she’d find she’d run out of workable defenses.
She didn’t know just when the moment would come. So she’d decided to bring Dal Axwen awake again and see how that man would respond now to a logical presentation of the facts. She didn’t expect he’d respond too well, but she had to try to get his help while it was still possible.
Axwen then had come awake and made his puzzled comment on the apparent shortness of the day.
Telzey said, “I guess it’s just turning evening at the normal time for this latitude and season.”
Axwen looked at his watch. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Strange—the last two hours seem to have passed like a dream! I recall almost nothing of what we said and did.” He shook his head. “So I seem to be losing my memory, too! Well, at least there’ve been no further manifestations.” He glanced at Telzey in sudden question. “Or have there been?”
“No,” Telzey said.
Axwen yawned comfortably, gazing over at her.
“It’s curious!” he remarked. “I feel very calm now, quite undisturbed. I’m aware of my predicament and really see no way out. And I’m concerned that you may come to harm before you’re away from here. At the same time, I seem almost completely detached from those problems.” Telzey said, “Mr. Axwen, what do you think of psis?”
He frowned slightly. “Psis?”
“People who read other people’s minds,” Telzey said. “Or they may be aware of something happening far away from them, or predict the future. That sort of thing. Sometimes they’re also supposed to be able to move objects around just by thinking about it.”
Axwen said judiciously, “I’d discount almost all of those reports as having no provable basis in fact. However, when something of the sort does appear to occur, I believe the so-called psis are unfortunates who have become the playthings of a supernatural agency. My own experience certainly seems to support that view.”
Telzey said, “You don’t think people should investigate matters like that too closely?”<
br />
“I don’t,” Axwen agreed. “Experimenters intrude on dangerous ground. At best, they’re wasting their time. Beyond that, they’re exposing themselves to mental and spiritual harm.”
Telzey nodded. “Well, that’s one thing,” she said. “Then there’s another thing. You try to be a good man, don’t you?”
He looked at her. “I try to be, certainly.”
“You never get angry at anyone?”
Axwen shook his head. “You’re a strange young person! However, it seems I don’t mind discussing my private views with you. No, I don’t approve of anger. It’s in conflict with my beliefs and philosophy. When I feel such an impulse, which isn’t often, I’m almost always able to overcome it. If I can’t overcome it, then at least I won’t express it or act on it.”
Telzey nodded again. “All right. Now some college psychology. Take someone who has about the average amount of human meanness in him. He knows it’s not good, and he’s trained himself, much more carefully than the average man, not to let it show in what he says or does. In fact, he’s trained himself to the point where he usually doesn’t even feel it. You remember that sometimes they find that someone who’s pushed part of himself down out of sight develops a second personality? One that’s more or less made up of what he’s tried to bury?”
Axwen said uncertainly, “This discussion is beginning to be rather confusing.”
“Let’s get back to the first thing then,” Telzey said. “Mr. Axwen, there are human psis, and they don’t have anything to do with supernatural agencies. I’m one. It’s been only a few months since I found it out, and I’m not too good at it yet. But I can read people’s minds if I’ll take the time and trouble. I’ve been studying your mind for almost the past two hours, and I know as much as I have to know about you now.”
He laughed shakily. “Under the circumstances,” he remarked, “I find your fancies a little disturbing! Of course, they are only fancies.”
“A couple of things happened when you were ten years old,” Telzey said. She went on talking a minute or two. Axwen’s face grew strained as he listened. She said then, “I might have hypnotized you a while ago, or given you a spray of dope and asked you questions and told you to forget them again. But you’d better believe I know what I just told you because I read your mind. It isn’t all I’ve done either. You’ve felt calm and detached till now because that’s how I arranged it. I’ve been keeping you calm and detached. I don’t want you to get any more upset than we can help.” She added, “I’m afraid you’re going to be pretty upset anyway!”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 232