Dark Benediction

staring. She could see little of him. Dark raincoat, dark hat, slender shadow. Was he looking toward her? She was desperately frightened.

Suddenly the man chucked the paper hag in the gutter, stepped off the curb, and came sauntering across the street toward the wall. He removed his hat, and crisp blond hair glinted in the distant streetlight. He stopped three yards away, smiling uncertainly at the vines.

Lisa stood trembling and frozen, staring at him in horror. Strange sensations, utterly alien, passed over her in waves. There was no describing them, no understanding them.

“I—I found you,” he stammered sheepishly. “Do you know what it is?”

“I know you,” she thought. “You have a small scar on the back of your neck, and a mole between your toes. Your eyes are blue, and you have an impacted wisdom tooth, and your feet are hurting you because you walked all the way out here from the University, and I’m almost old enough to be your mother. But I can’t know you, because I’ve never seen you before!”

“Strange, isn’t it?” he said uncertainly. He was holding his hat in his hand and cocking his head politely.

“What?” she whispered.

He shuffled his feet and stared at them. “It must be some sort of palpable biophysical energy form, analytically definable—if we had enough data. Lord knows, I’m no mystic. If it exists, it’s got to be mathematically definable. But why us?”

Horrified curiosity made her step aside and lean her arms on the wall to stare down at him. He looked up bashfully, and his eyes widened slightly.

“Oh!”

“Oh what?” she demanded, putting on a terrible frown.

“You’re beautiful!”

“What do you want?” she asked icily. “Go away!”

“I—” He paused and closed his mouth slowly. He stared at her with narrowed eyes, and touched one hand to his temple as if concentrating.

For an instant, she was no longer herself. She was looking up at her own shadowy face from down in the street, looking through the eyes of a stranger who was not a stranger. She was feeling the fatigue in the weary ankles, and the nasal ache of a slight head cold, and the strange sadness in a curious heart—a sadness too akin to her own.

She rocked dizzily. It was like being in two places at once, like wearing someone else’s body for a moment.

The feeling passed. “It didn’t happen!” she told herself.

“No use denying it,” he said quietly. “I tried to make it go away, too, but apparently we’ve got something unique. It would be interesting to study. Do you suppose we’re related?”

“Who are you?” she choked, only half-hearing his question.

“You know my name,” he said, “if you’ll just take the trouble to think about it. Yours is Lisa—Lisa O’Brien, or Lisa Waverly—I’m never sure which. Sometimes it comes to me one way, sometimes the other.”

She swallowed hard. Her maiden name had been O’Brien.

“I don’t know you,” she snapped.

His name was trying to form in her mind. She refused to allow it. The young man sighed.

“I’m Kenneth Grearly, if you really don’t know.” He stepped back a pace and lifted his hat toward his head. “I—I guess I better go. I see this disturbs you. I had hoped we could talk about it, but—well, good night, Mrs. Waverly.”

He turned and started away.

“Wait!” she called out against her will. He stopped again. “Yes?”

“Were—were you watching me—while it was raining?”

He opened his mouth and stared thoughtfully down the street toward the light. “You mean watching visually? You really are repressing this thing, aren’t you? I thought you understood.” He looked at her sharply, forlornly. “They say the failure to communicate is the basis of all tragedy. Do you suppose in our case… ?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shifted restlessly for a moment. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she whispered many seconds after he was gone.

Her bedroom was hot and lonely, and she tossed in growing restlessness. If only Frank were home! But he would he gone for two more weeks. The children would be back on Monday, but that was three whole days away. Crazy! It was just stark raving crazy!

Had the man really existed—what was his name?—Kenneth Grearly? Or was he only a phantasm invented by a mind that was failing—her mind? Dancing naked in the rain! Calling out to shadow shapes in the brush! Talking to a specter in the street! Schizophrenic syndrome dream-world stuff. It could not be otherwise, for unless she had invented Kenneth Grearly, how could she know he had sore feet, an impacted wisdom tooth, and a head cold. Not only did she know about those things, but she felt them!

She buried her face in the dusty pillow and sobbed. Tomorrow she would have to call Dr. Mensley.

But fearing the specter’s return, she arose a few minutes later and locked all the doors in the house. When she returned to bed, she tried to pray but it was as if the prayer were being watched. Someone was listening, eavesdropping from outside.

Kenneth Grearly appeared in her dreams, stood half-shrouded in a slowly swirling fog. He stared at her with his head cocked aside, smiling slightly, holding his hat respectfully in his hands.

“Don’t you realize, Mrs. Waverly, that we are mutants perhaps?” he asked politely.

“No!” she screamed. “I’m happily married and I have three children and a place in society! Don’t come near me!”

He melted slowly into the fog. But echoes came monotonously from invisible cliffs: mutant mutant mutant mutant mutant…

Dawn came, splashing pink paint across the eastern sky. The light woke her to a dry and empty consciousness, to a headachy awareness full of dull anxiety. She arose wearily and trudged to the kitchen for a pot of coffee.

Lord! Couldn’t it all be only a bad dream?

In the cold light of early morning, the things of the past night looked somehow detached, unreal. She tried to analyze objectively.

That sense of sharing a mind, a consciousness, with the stranger who came out of the shadows—what crazy thing had he called it?—“some sort of palpable biophysical energyform, analytically definable.”

“If I invented the stranger,” she thought, “I must have also invented the words.”

But where had she heard such words before?

Lisa went to the telephone and thumbed through the directory. No Grearly was listed. If he existed at all, he probably lived in a rooming house. The University—last night she had thought that he had something to do with the University. She lifted the phone and dialed.

“University Station; number please,” the operator said.

“I—uh—don’t know the extension number. Could you tell me if there is a Kenneth Grearly connected with the school?”

“Student or faculty, Madam?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me your number, please, and I’ll call you back.”

“Lawrence 4750. Thanks, Operator.”

She sat down to wait. Almost immediately it rang again. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Waverly, you were calling me?” A man’s voice. His voice!

“The operator found you rather quickly.” It was the only thing she could think of saying.

“No, no. I knew you were calling. In fact, I hoped you into it.”

“Hoped me? Now look here, Mr. Grearly, I—”