Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Out of the Night
If you think it's an easy life being a mystic, you ought to try telling fifteen fortunes a day, at $25 a time, and then see whether you're quite so keen on it.
At the same moment that Karen Tandy was consulting Dr. Hughes and Dr. McEvoy at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, I was giving old Mrs. Winconis a quick tour of her immediate prospects with the help of the Tarot cards.
We were sitting around the green baize table in my Tenth Avenue flat, with the drapes drawn tight and the incense smoldering suggestively in the corner, and my genuine simulated antique oil lamp casting pretty mysterious shadows. Mrs. Winconis was wrinkled and old and smelled of musty perfume and fox-fur coats, and she came around every Friday evening for a detailed rundown of the seven days ahead.
As I laid out the cards in the Celtic cross, she fidgeted and sniffed and peered across at me like a moth-eaten ermine scenting its prey. I knew she was dying to ask me what I saw, but I never gave any hints until the whole thing was set out on the table. The more suspense, the better. I had to go through the whole performance of frowning and sighing, and biting my lips, and making out that I was in communication with the powers from beyond. After all, that's what she paid her $25 for.
But she couldn't resist the temptation. As the last card went down, she leaned forward and asked: "What is it, Mr. Erskine? What do you see? Is there anything about Daddy?"
"Daddy" was her name for Mr. Winconis, a fat and dour old supermarket manager who chain-smoked cigars and didn't believe in anything more mystical than the first three runners at Aqueduct. Mrs. Winconis never suggested as much, but it was plain from the way she talked that her greatest hope in life was for Daddy's heart to give out, and the Winconis fortune to come her way.
I looked at the cards with my usual elaborate concentration. I knew as much about the Tarot as anybody did who had taken the trouble to read Tarot Made Easy, but it was the style that carried it off. If you want to be a mystic, which is actually easier than being an advertising copywriter, or a summer camp warden, or a coach-tour guide, then you have to look like a mystic.
Since I am a rather mousy thirty-two-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio, with the beginnings of a bald patch underneath my scrubby brown hair, and a fine but overlarge nose in my fine but pallid face, I took the trouble to paint my eyebrows into satanic arches, and wear an emerald satin cloak with moons and stars sewn on it, and perch a triangular green hat on my head. The hat used to have a badge on it that said Green Bay Packers, but I took it off, for obvious reasons.
I invested in incense, and a few leather-bound copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a beaten-up old skull from a secondhand store in the Village, and then I placed an advertisement in the newspapers which read: "The Incredible Erskine — Fortunes Read, Future Foretold, Your Fate Revealed."
Within a couple of months, I was handling more business than I knew what to do with, and for the first time in my life I was able to afford a new Mercury Cougar and a quad stereo with earphones to match. But, as I say, it wasn't easy. The constant tide of middle-aged ladies who came simpering into my apartment, dying to hear what was going to happen in their tedious middle-aged lives, was almost enough to drown me forever in the well of human despair.
"Well?" said Mrs. Winconis, clutching her alligator pocketbook in her wrinkled old fingers. "What can you see, Mr. Erskine?"
I shook my head slowly and magnificently. "The cards are solemn today, Mrs. Winconis. They carry many warnings. They tell you that you are pressing too hard toward a future that, when it comes to pass, you may not enjoy as much as you thought. I see a portly gentleman with a cigar — it must be Daddy. He is saying something in great sorrow. He is saying something about money."
"What is he saying? Do the cards tell you what he is saying?" whispered Mrs. Winconis. Whenever I mentioned 'money,' she started to twitch and jump like spit on a red-hot stove. I've seen some pretty ugly lusts in my time, but the lust for money in middle-aged woman is enough to make you lose your lunch.
"He is saying that something is too expensive," I went on, in my special hollow voice. "Something is definitely too expensive. I know what it is. I can see what it is. He is saying that canned salmon is too expensive. He doesn't think that people will want to buy it at that price."
"Oh," said Mrs. Winconis, vexed. But I knew what I was doing. I had checked the price-rise column in the Supermarket Report that morning, and I knew that canned salmon was due for an increase. Next week, when Daddy started complaining about it, Mrs. Winconis would remember my words, and be mightily impressed with my incredible clairvoyant talents.
"What about me? asked Mrs. Winconis. "What is going to happen to me?"
I stared gloomily at the cards.
"Not a good week, I'm afraid. Not a good week at all. On Monday you will have an accident. Not a serious one. Nothing worse than dropping a heavy weight on your foot, but it will be painful. It will keep you awake Monday night. On Tuesday, you will play bridge with your friends as usual. Someone will cheat you, but you will not discover who it is. So keep your stakes small, and don't take any risks. Wednesday you will have an unpleasant telephone call, possibly obscene. Thursday you will eat a meal that does not agree with you, and you will wish that you never ate it."
Mrs. Winconis fixed me with her dull gray eyes. "Is it really that bad?" she asked.
"It doesn't have to be. Remember that the cards can warn as well as foretell. If you take steps to avoid these pitfalls, you will not necessarily have such a bad week."
"Well, thank God for that," she said. "It's worth the money just to know what to look out for."
"The spirits think well of you, Mrs. Winconis," I said, in my special voice. "They care for you, and would not like to see you discomfited or harmed. If you treat the spirits right, they will treat you right."
She stood up. "Mr. Erskine, I don't know how to thank you. I'd best be getting along now, but I'll see you next week, won't I?"
I smiled my secret smile. "Of course, Mrs. Winconis. And don't forget your mystic motto for the week."
"Oh, no, of course not. What is it this week, Mr. Erskine?"
I opened a tattered old book that I kept on the table next to me. "Your mystic motto for this week is:
'Guard well the pips, and the fruit shall grow without let.'"
She stood there for a moment with a faraway smile on her withered old face. "That's beautiful, Mr. Erskine. I shall repeat it every morning when I wake up. Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful session."
"The pleasure," I said, "is all mine."
I showed her to the elevator, taking care that none of my neighbors saw me in my ridiculous green cloak and hat, and waved her a fond farewell. As soon as she had sunk out of sight, I went back into my flat, switched on the light, blew out the incense, and turned on the television. With any luck, I wouldn't have missed too much of Kojak.
I was just going to the icebox to fetch myself a can of beer when the telephone rang. I tucked the receiver under my chin, and opened up the beer as I talked. The voice on the other end was female (of course) and nervous (of course). Only nervous females sought the services of a man like The Incredible Erskine.
"Mr. Erskine?"
"Erskine's the name, fortune-telling's the game."
"Mr. Erskine, I wonder if I could come round and see you."
"Of course, of course. The fee is twenty-five dollars for your ordinary glimpse into the immediate future, thirty dollars for a year's forecast, fifty dollars for a lifetime review."
"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 than 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."
Miss Tandy was screwing a handkerchief around and around in her fingers. Her voice was soft and light, but it carried a prickly kind of conviction that made me distinctly uneasy. I watched her as she spoke, and she seemed to believe that whatever she had dreamed about was something that had actually happened to her.
I took off my Green Bay Packers hat. It was a little incongruous, under the circumstances.
"Miss Tandy, that's a very odd dream. It is always the same — in every detail?"
"Exactly. It's always the same. There is always this fear of what is coming out of the ship."
"Hmm. And you say it's a sailing ship? Like a yacht, something like that?"
She shook her head. "It's not a yacht. It's more like a galleon — one of those old-time galleons. You know, three masts and lots of rigging."
I pulled my nose some more and thought hard. "Is there anything about this ship which gives you a clue to what it is? Is there a name on it?"
"It's too far away. It's too dark."
"Does it fly any flags?"
"There is a flag, but I couldn't describe it."
I stood up and went over to my bookcase of occult paperbacks. I pulled out Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted and a couple of others. I laid them out on the green baize table and looked up one or two references about islands and ships. They weren't helpful. Occult textbooks are almost invariably unhelpful, and often they're downright confusing. But that doesn't stop me from drawing a few dark and mysterious conclusions about my clients' nocturnal flights of fancy.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Graham Masterton Collection Volume One"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
