A Stir of Echoes - By Richard Matheson Page 0,16

about-?" I couldn't find the word for it.

She nodded.

I sighed. "What is there to do?" I asked. "It's not something you can put your finger on. I dream about a strange woman." I hadn't told her yet that I didn't believe it was a dream. "I-think I can sense what's in Elsie's mind. I feel the same impact on my head that you do. I-pick up some of your thoughts about us needing sugar." I shrugged. "What do I have there to work with? How do I start?"

"You could go see Alan Porter," she said.

"There's nothing wrong with my mind," I said, turning away and looking out the window again.

"Well, what do you call it?" she asked. "It's happening in your mind, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it isn't a-a breakdown. If anything-" I paused a moment, realizing something. "If anything it's an increase, not a decrease."

"Does that make you feel better about it?" she asked. "You're frightened, Tom. Admit it. I can feel how you shiver at night when you have that dream. Call it anything you like. What matters is that all it's done is disturb you. And I think you should do something about it. Soon."

"All right," I said, uncertainly, "I'll... do something." I felt as if I were being forced into an undesirable corner, though. Certainly I was afraid of what was happening to me. Yet I was intrigued by it too. All day at work I'd kept picking up fragments of thought and emotion from the people around me in the office. Scraps of feeling irritation, boredom, weariness, daydreams, sexual and otherwise, wish fantasies. Vague disjointed visions and parts of phrases. I didn't know which person was thinking what, but that only enhanced the fascination.

One of them, for instance, was imagining himself-or herself on an ocean voyage that he-or she-had been on or wanted to be on. I swear I could almost smell the sea air and feel the roll of a ship under me. Another one was thinking of some woman and the vision was strained and ugly; tinged with the same overtones of what I'd sensed in Elsie's mind. It was a little sickening, yes, but still intriguing. I turned from the window as an idea occurred to me.

"I wonder," I began.

"Now what?"

"I wonder if I've become-or if I'm becoming a medium."

"A medium?" Anne put down a bottle of milk hard.

"Yes," I said, "why not?" The expression on her face made me smile. "Honey, a medium doesn't have to be a lumpy, middle-aged woman in a button sweater, you know," I told her.

"I know but-"

"Well, think about it," I said. "The word itself-medium-is a perfect description. It means a-middle place. That's what mediums are. They stand between the-the source and the goal, letting thoughts and impressions flow through them. They-"

"If you're a medium," she broke in, "just tell me one thing."

"What?"

She looked at me intently, accusingly.

"Why haven't you got any control over what's flowing through you? "

This continued to be the topic of our conversation at supper-interspaced with enjoining and commands to Richard to eat his food.

"No, I don't understand," Anne said. "You've been suffering with this thing. I can see a change in you already-yes, in just a few days," she insisted when I started to contest it. "You're pale. You're worn, tired."

"I know," I said. I couldn't argue. There were the headaches and the feeling of lead-boned weariness that followed every exposure to it.

"Well, I can't see it then," Anne said, irritated at my apparent reversal of attitude. "You agree it's hurting you and yet you tell me you don't want to do anything about it. Because you think you're a medium, or something."

"Honey, I'm not saying that," I said. "What I'm saying is that I want to see where it's going for a while. It is going somewhere; I feel it."

"Oh... feel, feel." She pressed her lips together angrily. "And what am I supposed to do at night when you jolt out of a sound sleep as if you'd been shot? I'm pregnant, Tom. I'm nervous too; real nervous. Do you think it's going to help me to be exposed to that every night?"

"Honey, I-"

The doorbell rang then and I got up and walked across the living room, wondering why I was feeling that tingling sensation. It was brief but most decided. While it lasted it was as if I were metallic and had passed into, then out of, a strong magnetic field.

I opened the door and saw Harry Sentas standing there.

"Oh."