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Uncanny feats of memory, physical strength, spiritual power, agility: I’d be inclined to dismiss them if there weren’t so many instances supported by people who were there. In fact, I’d feel much more comfortable about the whole thing if I could dismiss all the spooky stuff as delusions.

Maybe it was just that I was able to create an atmosphere which destroyed people’s customary expectations, an atmosphere in which miracles could flourish. Anyway, it spooked the hell out of me. I even managed to spook a few doctors and nurses. That’s impressive spooking, considering the extensive spookproofing those people go through and all the antispook drugs they pumped me full of.

Somehow I managed to stumble onto some tricks of the holy-man trade. Call it cosmic disability compensation, a bonus dividend accruable on ego disinvestiture.

I doubt that I had much to do one way or another with the California earthquake or what was being broadcast on the TV or any of the numberless other things I felt responsible for. But I wouldn’t have taken such bizarre notions as seriously as I did if it hadn’t been for the smaller-scale miracles that were undeniably real. My notions of what I was and was not capable of were blown to smithereens.

I had some help from my friends. In folie à deux a crazy person is able to convince another person of his bizarre notions. Why not folie à cinq, six, sept, huit? My smaller-scale miracles worked on those around me much the same way they worked on me. When I started acting like I could control the weather or raise the dead, they couldn’t rule it out.

I hate to think I’ve come this far, carefully nourishing my credibility every inch of the way, only to blow it this close to the end. But if I were asked to swear on all that’s holy that I had no extraordinary powers, I could not do it. As uncomfortable as it made me, I had extraordinary powers.

I have no such powers now. I hope I never have them again. I’m glad there isn’t very much concrete evidence to back up the contention that I had such powers then. Mostly there are just some eye-witness accounts a good cross-examiner could make look pretty silly.

The worst thing about the powers was how little control I had over them. They coincided with the blanks. The more rational control I had, the less power I had. So the powers were to me a powerlessness. I didn’t have the faintest idea of what went on in those blanks. I’d come out of them and by the way people were looking at me and the questions they asked, I got bits and pieces of it. The bits and pieces added up to power, power I doubt that I would have trusted myself with even if I had been able to control it.

The power phenomenon had a neat, almost ceremonious ending which sets it apart from other things. The voices, visions, misperceptions, irrationality, bizarre behavior all faded fuzzily, much the way they had come. Milder versions still come to visit occasionally. I’d just as soon they didn’t, but as long as the powers stay away, I don’t mind too much.

It was a few days before Easter. I was in the little windowless room. Why I was there, when I was allowed to go to the bathroom, when food came, when pills came, were all a complete mystery. I had lost any hope that anything nice was going to happen. No one had come to visit me forever. No nurse, orderly, doctor, patient, no nobody wanted anything to do with me. I was hopeless.

But then a miracle. The door opened.

“Bring him in here.” A voice that can open doors. A voice that people with keys pay attention to. It was a lot more than could be said for my voice. And what’s more, a voice that seemed interested in me.

I was taken into the room diagonally across the corridor. It had windows, curtains, flowers, paintings, books, paper, pens. It was all anyone could ever ask for.

To whom do I owe this honor, this reprieve from windowless, everything elseless nothingness?

I owed this honor to Wally.

“Sit down, Mark.” I sat down. “My name’s