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increasingly disconcerting. It became harder and harder to dismiss them, to write them off as the result
of a draft or of the flare of a passing automobile's headlights. I couldn't believe that my subconscious
was responsible for what I was feeling. I'd never in my life had an imagination this good.
"I am here for you to use. I am here for you to communicate through," I noted mentally, thinking that I
could coax the activity forward in the same way as such comments had done the other evening. Each
time I did, the phenomena intensified. I felt like someone exploring a nightmare, coolly observing its
forms and colors and happenings in order to report to those who were still awake.
"I have a very strong thrill, a very strong chill ... a very strong, pervasive chill in the whole body, a
very pleasant feeling - a sort of hypnotic sort of, like an anesthetic. I see sort of a rolling, boiling mist -
dark purple and sort of yellow." Beneath my closed eyelids, carpets of frothy color unrolled and
dissolved, only to be replaced by other vibrant patches of lovely hues. "Uhumm, there's quivering in
my head," I noted. The quivering was similar to the unexpected contortions of the other evening. "My
left eyelid is beginning to quiver. The corner of the eye is really vibrating. It's pulling back toward the
left side of my face. Both eyes are beginning to quiver. The muscles are contracting, the eyelids ... the
muscles at both sides, the sides of the eye, are constricting. They're pulling up. The upper part of my
mouth is being lifted by constriction of the muscles. The muscles are very tight now; the muscles must
be quite constricted."
I felt as though my head were being manipulated by a number of finely tuned vises, the musculature
being pushed this way and that, constricted and extended without any conscious effort on my part. It
was as though unseen hands were massaging my flesh into what must be ludicrous positions. I was
concerned that this was happening - it was not a pleasant or easily overlooked development - but I felt
that I was still in control of it, that at any moment I could shut down this face-making show. I had only
to say "No," to reassert my mastery of mind and body, in order to take the steering wheel back from
whatever was guiding it now. I felt that strongly; but I was still a bit wary because I did not know it.
My feeling was founded on faith.
"The muscles are painfully tight," the tape recorder heard me say. "It's very black where I'm at, very
peaceful." My voice dragged out the word, fleshing out the pleasant feeling. "Visual impressions like a
light show, black with whirls of light color, rippling, changing very liquid colors, blue turned to green
against a field of black." It was the first time that I'd seen the two colors together during this episode,
but it wasn't going to be the last. During the coming months, the image of blue and green lights
mingling, melding, and separating again would become as familiar as the shape of my own hands.
"Many colors against a field of black, very bright colors, really lovely colors. ... A chill. I feel like a
child in kindergarten learning the ABCs."
I had Lona's watch with me, thinking that I might give psychometry a try. It hadn't looked very
difficult when Irene Vitello and Mary McGuire had done it. They'd merely held the item in their hands
and tossed it back and forth between their fingers. The one difference was that they were allegedly
psychic, while I was not, but given the fact that it didn't cost anything extra, I thought it was worth a
try.
I picked up Lona's watch and fingered its shape.
"As I rub it, I get a strong chill," I said. "And I'm seeing blue."
For no obvious reason, I suddenly found myself speaking to Lona. "Lona?" I asked, like a person who
has just wandered into a dark room and wonders if someone is there. As soon as I said her name, there
was an overpowering sensation of cold throughout my body.
"Oh, a very strong chill," I remarked, my words sounding more like a groan than speech. "My eyes are
tightening up again. I'm seeing black, blue-black. Lona, is this you?" I asked. The question was insane,
rooted in nothing substantial, but I could not deny it. I heard no answer, but my whole being resounded
with the response.
"The upper half of my body is catatonic," I gasped, "with this pleasant electricity. And it's very black,
with this neon blue strung through it Oh, my eyes are wincing up, and the side of my face, my whole
upper face is distorted, and I hear rushing in my ears like wind. An echo in my ear. It sounded like
wind coming down a tunnel. And all, every part of my body feels like it's" - I paused, considering how
to describe exactly what I felt - "like it's somewhere else," I said.
"Oh, this rushing!" I enthused, carried away by the intoxicating sensations. "Eye muscles relaxed, but
now they're doing their number again, their dance again. They wrinkle up on the sides completely
uncontrollably and sort of pull the top half of my face up in a strange - it would be a smile, except that
it's not. It's distorting my mouth and changing the sound of my voice." The tape recorder bore silent
witness to the contortions and to the strangled syllables.
I continued to handle the watch, and as I did, the impressions changed.
"I'm sort of feeling it... and I can sense her wrist, and it's as though I have my hand around her wrist, as
though I'm holding her hand." I knew that Lona was dead and gone, knew that I would never touch her
again, but I seemed to be experiencing a strong memory of what it was like to hold her hand in mine. It
was a nice, intimate souvenir of our relationship. "I'm sort of seeing the watch with my fingers; I can
see it in my mind's eye. I can see its edges and its surface, its straps."
Finally I set the watch aside and attempted to relax a bit. I was not used to this sort of workout. The
sensations slowly subsided, like water gradually returning to rest after a storm, but then, as though
sensing the approach of another low front, the waters began to turn choppy once more.
"On the right side of the head, there's a faint numbness, a faint pain - on the front right side of my
head." My voice reflected my disbelief. I was lying on my back on a comfortable, if somewhat well-
worn bed, in a quiet, well-ventilated room. It was the middle of the night, and there were few cars
passing by outside. My family was asleep. In short, there was no reason why I should be feeling
anything but groggy. Instead I was feeling a strange pain on the right side of my head, a part of me that
was actually affected by nothing but air.
"There's a sudden - I'm seeing green, blue, and green, and blue again, and green again, and blue." It
was as though a flickering green-and-blue pinwheel were spinning slowly in the midst of a midnight
haze; the colors appeared and disappeared, only to reappear again. "And there's a sharp pain down the
right side of my head," I suddenly cried out. "It feels like someone has struck me with something on
the right side of my head. It's as though the right part of my head might have been smashed in with a
rock or something."
I wondered if this might be a migraine, but discounted that possibility. I had never before in my life
had one, and there seemed little reason for one to pounce upon me now.
"The right side of my head feels very ... numb, damaged; it feels pushed in, from the bottom of the
right eye up to the hairline. It feels as though that whole side of my face is pushed in, caved in." I was
very disturbed by the sensation and debated whether I'd proceeded too far. Perhaps I was no longer in
control of the situation.
"The pain on the right side of my face seems to be burrowing a bit deeper into my head. I have this
mental image of a head which is all caved in on the right side, the upper right-hand side. It's as though [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]