The manitou (4 page)

Karen Tandy
puffed smoke. “You mean that my dream is a signal?
But what
kind of a signal?

And where could
it come from? And why does it pick on me?”

I shook my
head. “I don’t know why it’s picked on you, and I don’t know where it’s from.
It could have come from anywhere. There are authenticated reports of people in
America having dreams that have given them detailed information about people in
other countries far away.

There was a
farmer in Iowa who dreamed that he was drowning in a flood in Pakistan, and the
same night there was a monsoon rain in Pakistan that killed four hundred
people. The only way you can account for stuff like this is by thinking of
thought waves as signals. The farmer picked up the signal, through his
subconscious mind, from a Pakistani guy who was drowning. It’s weird, I know,
but it has happened.”

Karen Tandy
looked at me appealingly. “So how can I ever find out what my dream is really
all about? Supposing it’s a signal from someone, somewhere in the world, who
needs
help,
and I can’t find out who it is?”

“Well, if
you’re really interested in finding out, there’s one way to do it,” I told her.

“Please – just
tell me what to do. I really do want to know. I mean, I’m sure it’s something
to do with this – tumor thing, and I want to know what it is.”

I nodded.
“Okay, Karen, then this is what you do. Tonight, I want you to go to sleep as
usual, and if you have the same dream over again, I want you to try and
remember as many details –

factual
details – as you can. Look around the island and see
if you can spot any landmarks. When you go down to the river, try and map out
as much of the coastline as you can. If there’s a bay or something, try and
remember the shape of it. If there’s anything across the river, any mountain or
harbor or anything like that, fix it in your mind. Now there’s one other thing
that’s very important; try and get a look at the flag on the sailing ship.
Memorize it. Then, the moment you wake up, note everything down in as much
detail as you can, and make as many pictorial sketches as you can of everything
you’ve seen. Then bring it to me.”

She stubbed out
her cigarette. “I have to be at the hospital by eight tomorrow morning.”

“Which hospital?”

“Sisters of Jerusalem.”

“Well, look,
because it’s obviously important, I’ll drop by the hospital and you can leave
the notes for me in an envelope.
How’s that?”

“Mr. Erskine –
Harry, that’s terrific. At last I really feel I’m getting down to something.”

I came over and
took her hand in mine. She was cute, in her pixie kind of way, and if I hadn’t
been utterly professional and detached from my clients, and if she hadn’t been
going into hospital the next day, I think I would definitely have taken her for
dinner, a friendly ride in my Cougar, and back to Erskine’s occult emporium for
a night of earthy activity.

“How much do I
owe you?” she said, breaking the spell.

“Pay me next
week,” I replied. It’s always boosted the morale of people who were going into
hospital if you asked them to pay you after their operation. It suddenly made
them think that perhaps they were going to live, after all.

“Okay, Harry,
thank you,” she said softly, and stood up to leave.

“You don’t mind
finding your own way out, do you?” I asked. I flapped my green gown around by
way of explanation. “The neighbors, you know. They think I’m a transvestite or
something.”

Karen Tandy
smiled, and said goodnight. I wondered how good it was really going to be.
After she’d left, I sat down in my armchair and had a long think. There was
something wrong with all this. Usually, when my clients came fluttering in to
tell me their dreams, they were standard
technicolor
epics of frustrated sex and erotic embarrassment, like going to a cocktail
party with the Vanderbilts and finding your shorts around your ankles. There
were dreams of flying and dreams of eating, and dreams of accidents and
nameless fears but none of the dreams had ever had the uncanny photographic
clarity, and the same totally logical sequence, as the dream of Karen Tandy.

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.

I looked at my
watch. It was midnight.
A good time for ghosts and spirits
and a good time to be getting to bed.
Tomorrow, I was definitely going
to take a look at what Karen Tandy had scribbled down in her envelope.

T
he next morning, Saturday, an orange sun showed up at around
half-past ten and the snowy streets started to turn into heaps of brown slush.
It was still freezing cold, and my Cougar stalled twice on the way to the
Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital. Passers-by went splashing along the filthy
sidewalks in coats and mufflers, faceless black figures out of a winter’s
dream.

I parked right
outside the hospital and went into the reception hall. It was warm and ritzy in
there, with thick carpets and potted palms, and the murmur of conversation. It
seemed more like a holiday resort than a home for the sick. I was greeted at
the counter by a smart young lady
with a white starched
uniform and white starched teeth
.

“Can I help
you?”

“Yes, I believe
you can. There was supposed to be an envelope left here for me this morning. My
name’s Erskine, Harry Erskine.”

“Just a moment,
please.”

She sorted
through a pile of letters and postcards, and eventually came back with a small
white envelope.

“The Incredible
Erskine?” she read, with one eyebrow lifted.