999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [329]
He looked down into his teacup. “Oh, I’d always theoretically believed in the soul. Matter cannot reflect upon itself. But my grief needed more than that, it needed evidence.”
“And so here you are trying to prove that there are ghosts.”
Case looked up into her eyes with a warm, slight smile.
“Do you think I’ll succeed, Anna?”
“Yes. I think you will.”
Abruptly the rain slackened off to a patter.
“And what of you, Anna?”
“Me?”
“Yes, how did you come by your gift?”
“My gift?” She said it with a trace of bitter irony.
“You said that very oddly,” Case observed.
Trawley stared out the window.
“My gift,” she said dully.
“Yes, how did you come by it, Anna? By the way, there’s an ancient Egyptian version of Genesis in which God says repeatedly to Adam, ‘You were once a bright angel,’ then describes how he and Eve have been stripped of the faculties of telepathy and knowledge at a distance. Perhaps it was natural to us once. Were you bom with it, Anna?”
She turned and stared down at her tea.
“No,” she said softly. “I wasn’t bom with it at all. It came when I’d suffered a severe concussion. I was driving my four-year-old daughter to school. The road was icy. I skid and hit a pole. She was killed.”
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry.”
The psychic looked up, staring off with concern.
“Someone’s frightened. I’m feeling someone’s terror.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Case.
Trawley turned and searched his eyes inscrutably.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m just guessing.
“Guessing what?”
“That you’re sensing our esteemed Mr. Dare. I really think he’s half frightened to death.”
“Yes, that could be.”
Case’s brow knitted slightly. “He asked me if he’d brought along two little dogs. What a question!”
“Yes, he asked me that, too.”
“What did you tell him?”
She looked suddenly blank.
Case waited, and then turned to another subject.
“Have you ever tried reaching your daughter?”
“Yes, I have.”
“With success?”
“I don’t know. I reached someone.”
“You’re not sure of it?”
“Dead people lie. They’re just people.”
He leaned back and pressed his palms against the edge of the table. “How amazing you should say that!” he declared.
“Well, it’s true.”
“No, I meant it confirms something for me.”
“Really.”
Case seemed to grow energized; his eyes sparkled. “There’s a fascinating book by a Latvian scientist named Raudieve who claimed to hear voices of the dead on a tape recorder. It’s called Breakthrough: Electronic Communication with the Dead. Do you know of it?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Right. The author says more or less the same thing as you: that the dead know no more than when they were alive and gave false and often contradictory answers to his questions.”
Trawley nodded.
“The voices were faint,” Case went on, “and quite fleeting, almost buried under amplifier noise, and with a strange and unexpected lilting rhythm. Some moaned and said ‘Help me’ and seemed tormented. Others seemed content, even happy. Raudieve heard one voice that he was able to recognize, an old colleague from medical school. Raudieve asked him to describe his situation in a word or two—the voices are so difficult to hear and detect—and he answered distinctly, ‘I’m in class.’ Is this striking you as balmy, by the way?”
Trawley gently shook her head but her eyes smiled faintly.
Case went on: “Another time Raudieve asked—of no one in particular, he says—’What is the purpose of your present existence?’ and he heard back very clearly, ‘Learning to be happy.’ What a statement! When I read it I got the strong feeling that what Raudieve was in touch with was precisely the afterlife described by C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, with the dead being all in the same place, really; it’s how they perceive it makes it heaven or hell; and their perception is shaped