Graham Masterton - The Manitou

I picked up the telephone and dialed. It rang for a couple of minutes before it was answered.

"Hello?" said an elderly voice. "Who is this?"

"Mrs. Karmann, this is Harry Erskine. I'm sorry to trouble you so late."

"Why, Mr. Erskine. How nice to hear your voice. I was in the tub, you know, but I'm all snuggled up in my bath towel now."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Mrs. Karmann, do you mind if I ask you a question?"

The old dear giggled. "As long as it's not too personal, Mr. Erskine."

"I'm afraid not, Mrs. Karmann. Listen, Mrs. Karmann, do you recall a dream you told me about, two or three months ago?"

"Which one was it, Mr. Erskine? The one about my husband?"

"That's right. The one about your husband asking you for help."

"Well, now, let me see," said Mrs. Karmann. "If I remember it rightly, I was standing by the seaside, and it was the middle of the night, and it was awfully cold. I remember thinking I ought to have put my wrap on before I'd come out. Then I heard my husband whispering to me. He always whispers, you know. He never comes out loud and shouts in my ear. He was whispering something I didn't understand at all, but I was sure he was asking for help."

I felt distinctly strange and worried. I don't mind messing around with the occult when it behaves itself, but when it starts acting up, then I start getting a little bit of the creeps.

"Mrs. Karmann," I said. "Do you recall seeing anything else in your dream, apart from a seashore? Was there a ship or a boat out there? Did you see any huts, or a village?"

"I can't recall there was anything else," replied Mrs. Karmann. "Is there any particular reason you want to know?"

"It's just some article I'm writing on dreams for a magazine, Mrs. Karmann. Nothing important. I just thought I'd like to include one or two of your dreams, since they've always been very interesting."

I could almost see the old lady fluttering her eyelashes. "Why, Mr. Erskine, that's awfully nice of you to say so."

"Oh, one thing more, Mrs. Karmann. And this is important"

"Yes, Mr. Erskine?"

"Don't tell anyone else about this conversation. Nobody else at all. Do you understand me?"

She let out breath, as though the last thing in the whole world that would ever occur to her would be to gossip.

"Not a whisper, Mr. Erskine, I swear."

"Thank you, Mrs. Karmann. You've been a terrific help," I said, and I laid down the phone more slowly and carefully than I've ever done in my life. Was it possible for two people to have identical dreams? If it was, then maybe all this bunk about signals from beyond could be real. Maybe both Karen Tandy and her aunt Mrs. Karmann were capable of picking up a message from out there — from out of the night, and playing it through in their minds.

I didn't take any notice of the fact that Mrs. Karmann claimed it was her husband trying to get in touch with her. All elderly widows thought their husbands were floating around in the ether, anxiously trying to tell them something of vital importance, whereas what their phantom partners were probably doing out there in spiritland was playing golf, squeezing the ghostly tits of nubile young girls, and enjoying a few years of peace and quiet before their erstwhile wives came up to join them.

What I thought was that the same person was trying to get in touch with both of them, trying to communicate some nameless fear that had gripped her. I guessed it was probably a woman, but you couldn't really tell with spirits. They were supposed to be more or less sexless, and I guess it must be hard trying to make love to a luscious spirit lady with nothing more substantial than an ectoplasmic penis.

I was sitting in my flat thinking all these irreverent thoughts when I had the oddest sensation that someone was standing behind me, just out of my line of vision. I didn't want to turn around, because that would have been an admission of ridiculous fear, but all the same there was an itching feeling in the middle of my back, and I couldn't help casting my eyes sideways to see if there were any unaccustomed shadows on the wall.

Eventually, I stood up, and threw a rapid glance backwards. Of course, there was nothing there. But I couldn't help thinking that something or somebody had been — somebody dark and monkish and silent. I whistled rather loudly and went to pour myself three or four fingers of Scotch. If there was one kind of spirit of which I thoroughly approved, it was this. The sharp bite of malt and barley brought me down to earth in very rapid order.

I decided to cast the Tarot cards, to see what they had to say about all this. Now, out of all the mumbo-jumbo of clairvoyance and spiritualism, I have a certain respect for the Tarot, in spite of myself. I don't want to believe in it, but it has a peculiar knack of telling you exactly what kind of state you're in, no matter how hard you're trying to hide it. And each card has an odd feeling about it, as though it's a momentary picture from a dream you can never quite recall.

I shuffled the cards and laid them out on the green baize table. I use the Celtic cross arrangement of ten cards because it's the easiest. "This crosses you, this crowns you, this is beneath you, this is behind you…"

I asked the Tarot one simple question, and I obeyed all the rules and kept it firmly in front of my mind. The question was "Who is talking to Karen Tandy from beyond?"

As I laid out the cards, one by one, I couldn't help frowning. I had never had such a peculiar reading in my life. Some Tarot cards hardly ever come up, and when they do, they strike you straight away because they're so unfamiliar. Most people's readings are full of minor litigation cards, or cards that show anxiety about money, or arguments in the home — all the lesser cards in the suits of cups and wands and pentacles. You very seldom see cards of terrible disasters, like The Tower, which shows tiny people hurled out of a castle by a jagged flash of lightning, and I had never once turned up Death.

But Death came up, in his black armor, on his red-eyed black horse, with bishops and children bowing in front of him. And so did the Devil, with his hostile hairy glare, his ram's horns, and naked people chained to his throne. And so did the Magician, reversed. This way round, the Magician's card signified a physician or magus, mental disease and disquiet.

I sat staring at the cards for almost half an hour. The Magician? What the hell did that mean? Did it mean that Karen Tandy was mentally disordered? Maybe it did. Perhaps that tumor on the neck had affected her brain. The trouble with these damned cards was that they were never specific enough. They gave you four or five varying interpretations, and you had to make your own mind up.

The Magician? I shuffled the cards again, and used the Magician card as my question. To do that, I had to place it in the center of the table, cover it over with another card, and lay out the Celtic cross all over again. The cards would then give me a more detailed explanation of what the Magician was all about.

Nine cards went down, and then I turned up the tenth. I had a very weird sensation in the bottom of my stomach, and I started to feel that someone was watching me again. This couldn't be possible. The tenth card was the Magician, too.

I lifted the card that covered my question card, and under there was Death. Perhaps I'd made a mistake. All the same, I was pretty sure I'd laid the Magician down first. I took up all the cards again, and placed the Magician firmly down there on the table, and covered it over with the two of wands, and went on putting down cards until I came to the last one.

There was nothing on it at all. It was blank.

I didn't believe in all this fortune-telling stuff, but I definitely got the feeling that someone out there was telling me loudly and firmly to mind my own business.