Touchy and Feely

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Sam, I could use some mayo, but don’t trouble yourself if you’re not going into a food store.’

  ‘No, I can bring you some mayo. Hell of a day out there. I wouldn’t go nowhere at all if I didn’t have to.’

  ‘Like a cup of coffee before you go?’

  ‘Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to be making too many comfort stops, not in this weather.’ He looked through to the living room, where Mr Boots was lying in front of the fire. ‘Hi there, Boots! Look at you! Don’t know why they call it a dog’s life, when he’s indoors warming his nuts and I’m out driving in twenty below.’

  Mr Boots barked, and thumped his tail against the rug.

  ‘I reckon that dog’s more human than most humans,’ said Sam. He tiptoed into the living room in his snow-boots and roughly tugged at Mr Boots’ ears. ‘Look at those eyes! There’s real genuine intelligence, behind those eyes! I’ll bet he could give you a mean game of backgammon, if God had given him fingers, ’stead of paws!’

  It was then that Sam saw the DeVane cards laid out on the coffee table. He turned around to Sissy and said, ‘Still telling your fortunes, then?’

  Sissy gave him an almost imperceptible nod. It had been the DeVane cards which had first warned Sissy that Beth was seriously ill. Beth had been losing her balance and dropping things, and at first she had thought it was nothing but her natural clumsiness. But Sissy had turned up La Pierre D’Achoppement, the Stumbling-Block, which showed a woman tripping up and falling into a chasm, at the bottom of which pigs were tearing at the flesh of living people.

  At Beth’s request, Sissy had told her fortune with the cards from the day that her illness had been diagnosed, and she had been able to predict Beth’s gradual deterioration with dreadful accuracy. Her muscles wasting away; her inability to walk; to dress herself; or to take herself to the toilet. Her inability to chew her food, and swallow; and worst of all, her inability to speak.

  Beth had wanted to be ready for each stage in her illness before it happened, and Sissy had told her, although she had lied about the day she was going to die.

  Sam took off his glasses, polished them with his scarf, and then peered at the cards with interest. ‘So what’s in store for us? All good news, I hope.’

  ‘To be honest with you, no. The cards have warned me that two storms are coming, although I don’t exactly know what that means, not yet. Then this card came up . . . the Headless Doll, which meant that some child was going to be orphaned. The next thing I heard of, some poor young woman in Canaan had been shot dead by a sniper, and her poor little girl lost her mother.’

  ‘I heard about that on the news. You really think this card predicted it?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And I think these other cards are connected with it, too, although I still don’t understand how.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sam, standing up straight. ‘Hard to know what to do about it, I’ll bet.’

  ‘I thought of calling the police, but Trevor said that they wouldn’t take any notice.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they would. Besides . . . you remember what it was like with my Beth. You told her what was going to happen to her, but there wasn’t nothing she could do to stop it, was there? And nothing I could do, neither, although I would have given my life, if it would have made any difference.’

  Sissy reached out and laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘Sam,’ she said, and he knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘Maybe you should ask the cards about it, theirselves,’ he suggested. ‘Like, what should I do to stop this thing from happening, whatever it is?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re very good at telling the future, but they’re not particularly helpful. In fact they’re downright abusive, at times.’

  ‘Why don’t you try it, all the same?’

  ‘OK. Why don’t you take off your boots?’

  She sat down on the couch while Sam went back into the kitchen to take off his boots and his coat. She didn’t need to do a full reading. All she had to do was lay two more cards on top of the two Predictor cards, and then a third card across them, horizontally. The first two cards would tell her if there was any point in her trying to change the future, and the third card would tell what she actually had to do, if there was.

  Sam came back in as she was turning up the first card. ‘Les Trois Araignées,’ she said, holding it up.

  ‘Hm. Looks like three spiders to me.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it is. Three spiders. But if you look close, you can see that they’re all spinning the same web. This means that whatever is going to happen next, it depends on three things, or more likely three people, all working together.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘Could be either. Two spiders are white and one spider is black, which means that one spider has evil intentions while the other two are comparatively harmless. But if the black spider can persuade the two white spiders to work for evil, then the three of them could do very great wickedness between them. If you look closer, you’ll see that there are tombstones in the background, hidden in the grass.’

  Without a word, Sam took a pack of Marlboro out of his shirt pocket, shook out two, and lit them. He passed one to Sissy and they both sat in silence for a moment, blowing out smoke. ‘I see you’re beating that craving just as good as me,’ he remarked.

  Sissy turned over the second card. This was unexpected. Les Menottes, the Handcuffs, which showed a shallow stream, under a gibbous moon. A naked woman being led across stepping-stones by two men wearing pointed hoods. The woman’s wrists were fastened together with a decorative chain of assorted flowers: roses and chrysanthemums and daisies. There was a strange distracted smile on her face, as if she were thinking about something very pleasurable.

  ‘So what does this mean?’ asked Sam. ‘Hanky-panky in the park?’

  ‘I’ve never turned up this card before, not in all the years I’ve been telling fortunes. These three people are very intimately linked. Maybe not related, maybe not lovers, but very close to each other in some way. The handcuffs are only made of flowers, which tells us that the woman has been willingly enslaved. This card may be throwing some light on our spiders . . . explaining what their relationship is. But look at the moon. The moon means madness. Whatever these three people are doing together, it’s a kind of collective lunacy.’

  Sam coughed, and cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ve about lost me here, Sissy. Spiders, handcuffs. I don’t know. When you were reading Beth’s cards, it all seemed a whole lot clearer.’

  ‘That’s because we were close to Beth, and we knew what was happening to her. But these people, whoever they are, we don’t know anything about them at all. Not yet, anyhow. But we will. You wait and see. By the time we’ve finished, we’ll know them better than they know themselves.’

  ‘Well, if you say so. What’s the last card? I’d better be making tracks soon, before this snow gets too deep. Four inches, that’s what they forecast. Up in Maine they got eight.’

  Sissy took a deep drag on her cigarette and set it down in the big blue ashtray. She turned over the third card, and it showed two people standing in a heavy snowstorm, each with one hand raised beside one ear. Les Écouteurs Dans La Neige. The Listeners in the Snow.

  ‘Two people,’ said Sissy, and she could feel her cheeks flush. ‘Two people, standing in the snow, listening.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I think that’s you and me.’

  ‘How do you figure that? They could be anybody.’

  ‘But it’s the last card, it’s the one that’s supposed to tell me what to do now.’

  Sam made a face. ‘OK. One of those people may be you, but there’s nothing that says that the other one’s me.’

  ‘Yes, there is. This card tells me what I’m supposed to do now. And it’s snowing, isn’t it? And you’re the only other person here.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do?’ said Sam. ‘Stand out in the snow and listen?’ He held
his hand up to his ear like one of the characters on the card.

  ‘We could try it.’

  ‘Sissy, you know how much I respect what you can do with these cards. But I don’t think you have the first idea what any of this means.’

  Sissy held her head in her hands and stared at the snow card as if she expected it suddenly to speak, and tell her what it meant. She was sure that the figures on the card were Sam and herself. But Sam was right. She didn’t have any idea what it signified, or what she was supposed to do about it, even if she did.

  All the same, she had an overwhelming feeling that the cards were trying to tell her something important. They gave her the same sensation that she got when the phone rang in the small hours of the morning. Whoever was calling, and whatever they had to say, you just knew that it wasn’t good news.

  ‘Put your coat back on,’ said Sissy.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put your coat back on, we’re going outside.’

  Sam crushed out his cigarette. ‘OK, if you say so. But I think you’re sending your beagle down the wrong rabbit-hole.’

  He shrugged on his coat and put on his boots, while Sissy buttoned up her blue fur-collared parka. ‘Do you want a Cherry Mash?’ she asked him, holding out the bag. ‘Trevor bought them for me.’

  ‘No, thanks. I just ate lunch.’

  ‘Oh, go on, it gives me an excuse to have one.’

  They both unwrapped a Cherry Mash, and then they stepped outside into the snow. It was so silent that they could hear a snowplow clearing the highway, over two miles away. ‘So what do you think we’re supposed to be listening for?’ asked Sam.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Sissy.

  They waited and waited, and Sam did a little shuffle to keep his feet warm. ‘I can’t stay too much longer, Sissy. I have to go to Torrington before the bank closes.’

  ‘Well, OK,’ Sissy conceded. ‘Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe I should do the cards again, to see if I’ve made a mistake. The cards can be sly, you know. They won’t lie to you, but they can lead you up the garden path.’

  ‘Beth was like that.’

  ‘Beth? I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Oh, she never told an untruth, not once. But she had a rare talent for making you think what she wanted you to think.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sissy. She took his arm and they went back inside, into the kitchen. ‘I guess you’d better be on your way.’

  But at that moment, the clock in the hallway chimed three. And at the same time, with what seemed like unnatural loudness, the anchorwoman on the TV news said, ‘State police detectives say they have a new witness to the shooting yesterday of Mrs Ellen Mitchelson, who was gunned down in her own back yard in Canaan by a single rifle shot. So far they are refusing to identify the witness, or to say exactly what fresh information he might have given them, but they say they are hopeful of making an arrest “within hours rather than days.”’

  ‘However, police are still asking people in Canaan to keep their eyes and ears open for anything that strikes them as suspicious.’

  ‘Eyes and ears open,’ said Sissy. ‘Sam . . . we’ve been listening in the wrong place.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Sissy? Listen, I really have to make tracks.’

  ‘We should have been listening around Canaan, where that woman was shot.’

  ‘Well, how do you know that?’

  ‘I just do. I can feel it. And they said so, on the TV.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it? It’s snowing like a bastard out there. You’re going to wander around Canaan with one hand held up to your ear, expecting that you’re going to hear what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just know that I have to go there.’

  Sam took hold of both of her hands. ‘No, Sissy. This is just a senior moment, that’s all. You’re letting yourself get carried away.’

  ‘Sam . . . I can’t describe it to you. I feel like I’m quivering, like a compass needle.’

  ‘Listen to me, Sissy, you know what that quivering is? It’s your need to show the world that you’re still useful. I get it from time to time, just the same as you do. It’s because we’ve found ourselves old and alone, without even a partner to appreciate us, and we feel like we’re surplus to requirements.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Sam. You’re so wrong. I have to go to Canaan.’

  Sam released her hands. ‘You can go, Sissy. I’ll even take you there, if you like. But it’s a copper-bottomed waste of time.’

  Sissy went back to the coffee table, and turned over the next card in the DeVane deck. She peered at it through her spectacles, and then she handed it to Sam and said, ‘There! If that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is!’

  Sam looked at the card skeptically. La Famille du Déluge. It showed a mountain landscape, under a thundery sky, and in the distance Noah’s Ark, tilted at an angle. In the foreground stood Noah and his wife, as well as his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and their wives, and their children, too. Ham was resting his hand on one of his son’s shoulders, but the boy had his own hand raised to his ear.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Sam, handing it back.

  ‘Shame on you, Sam, not knowing your Bible! Ham’s son was called Canaan. And look what he’s doing. He’s listening. It’s Canaan, listening, get it?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Sissy, you’re putting eight and six together and making nineteen.’

  ‘All right, if you don’t believe me, I’ll call Dan Partridge and ask him to run me up to Canaan.’

  ‘Dan Partridge? That lunatic? There’s no way you’re driving up to Canaan in no blizzard with Dan Partridge.’

  Sissy kissed him on the cheek. ‘Then it looks like you’ll have to take me, doesn’t it?’

  Incy Wincy Spiders

  Feely opened the front door. Robert was standing in the porch, hunched up with cold, his coat-collar pulled up to cover his mouth. There was no sign of his car outside, so Feely looked up and down the street, but he couldn’t see it anywhere.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean, “what is it”?’ Robert protested. ‘I went back to the diner to pick you up, and you weren’t there!’

  ‘Well, no, I was here.’

  ‘Oh, you were here. Great. You couldn’t have left a message or anything?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were coming back.’

  ‘Did I tell you I was going to come back?’

  ‘Yes, you did. But you said twenty minutes.’

  ‘Christ almighty.’ Robert shook his head in disbelief. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Feely turned around to Serenity, who was standing a little way behind him.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Robert. ‘I’m Robert Touche.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Serenity.

  Robert explained, ‘Fine, I’m good. How are you? Feely and me, we were kind of traveling together.’

  ‘So he told me.’

  ‘I thought he was going to wait for me back at the diner but when I came back he wasn’t there so I asked the woman behind the counter if she’d seen him leave and she said yes she’d seen him leave with you and you lived here on Orchard Street.’ He took a breath and said, ‘Serenity, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Robert cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them. ‘Pretty damn nippy out here, Serenity. Do you mind if I come inside?’

  Serenity turned her mouth down and shook her head. ‘I don’t really think so.’

  ‘Ha! Well, OK! It’s just that I wanted to ask Feely here if he was traveling any further. You’re still headed north, right, Feely, and I’m still headed north, so you’re welcome to come along. I’m not twisting your arm or anything. You’re good company, that’s all. But if you’re staying here . . . or you want to hitch a ride with somebody else, that’s totally up to you. Totally.’

  Serenity reached up behind Feely’s back and began to twist his curls with her fingers. ‘What do you think, Fee
ly? Do you want to chill out here for a while? Or do you want to go along with—what did you say your name was?’

  ‘Robert Touche. But call me Robert. Or Touchy, if you like. That’s hilarious, don’t you think? I pick up this one guy in the middle of a blizzard and he calls himself Feely. And people are always pronouncing my name wrong and calling me Touchy. So Touchy and Feely. That’s hilarious, don’t you think? Well, I can tell you’re laughing on the inside.’

  Serenity said, ‘What do you want to do, Feely? Like he says, it’s totally up to you.’

  ‘He was the only one who had the benignity to stop for me,’ Feely admitted.

  ‘You see?’ said Robert.

  Feely wanted to go on heading north, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go on heading north with Robert. He didn’t believe that Robert would ever let him down. After all, hadn’t he come looking for him now, to see if he still needed a ride? But there was something desperate about him that made Feely uneasy. Something dangerously unpredictable, and accident-prone.

  Robert jiggled around and said, ‘Maybe you could let me in for just five minutes so that I can thaw out my feet and we can talk it over.’

  ‘OK, then,’ said Feely. The wind was slicing through the front door and the wind-chimes in the kitchen doorway were jangling as wildly as alarm bells. ‘Serenity . . . is that OK with you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Serenity, without enthusiasm.

  Robert stepped inside and Feely closed the door. ‘I didn’t see your car,’ said Feely.

  ‘I parked it round the corner, out of sight. You remember last night, when we had that minor contretemps with that truck? I don’t really want the truck company making any claims against my insurance. You know what it’s like.’

  Without taking off his coat or his boots he headed directly for the fireplace and stood in front of it, with his hands outstretched. ‘I’ll tell you something, Feely, when I walked into the diner and saw that you were gone, I really thought that I was never going to see you again.’

  Feely said, ‘I got talking to Serenity.’

  ‘That’s a beautiful name, Serenity. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.’