sky. The clarity of the day had been short-lived A pall of clouds
concealed the moon and stars. The sky very dark, and he was gripped by
the curious certainty great and terrible weight was falling toward them,
bright against the black heavens and therefore invisible, but falling
fast, faster….
CANDY KEPT a choke hold on his fury, which reacted its leash. strained
like an attack dog trying to!” He rocked and rocked, and gradually the
shy visitor grew bolder. Repeatedly he felt the invisible hand on his
head. Initially it lay upon him as lightly as an empty silk glove, and
it stayed only briefly before flitting away. But as he pretended to be
disinterested in both the hand and the person to whom it belonged, the
visitor grew more daring, the hand heavier and less nervous.
Though Candy made no effort to probe at the mind of the intruder, for
fear of scaring him away, some of the stranger’s thoughts came to him
nonetheless. He did not think the visitor was aware that images and
words from his own mind were slipping into Candy’s; they were just
leaking out of him as if they were trickles of water seeping from
pin-size holes in a rusty bucket.
The name
“Julie” came several times. And once an image floated along with the
name-an attractive woman with brown hair and dark eyes. Candy wasn’t
sure if it was the visitor’s face or the face of someone the visitor
knew even if it was the face of anyone who really existed. There were
aspects that made it seem unreal: a pale light radiated from it, and the
features were so kind and serene that it looked like the holy
countenance of a saint in an illustrated Bible.
The word
“flutterby” leaked out of the visitor’s mind more than once, sometimes
with other words, like
“remember the flutterby” or “don’t be a flutterby.” And each time that
word flitted through his mind, the visitor quickly withdrew.
But he kept coming back. Because Candy did nothing to make him feel
unwelcome.
Candy rocked and rocked. The chair made a soft sound creak… creak…
creak… creak.
He waited.
He kept an open mind.
… creak… creak… creak…
Twice the name
“Bobby” seeped from the visitor’s mind and the second time a fuzzy image
of a face was linked to another very kind face. It was idealized, like
Julie’s face. Recognition stirred in Candy, but Bobby’s visage was not
as clear or detailed as Julie’s, and Candy did not want to concentrate
on it because the visitor might notice his interest and be frightened
off.
During his long and patient courtship of the shy introvert many other
words and images came to Candy, but he didn’t know what to make of them:
-men in spacesuits
“Bad Thing”-a guy in a hockey mask-“The Home”-“Dumb People”-a bathrobe,
a half-eaten Hershey’s bar, and a sudden frantic thought: Draw Bugs, no
good, Draw Bugs, got to Be Not More than ten minutes passed without
contact, and Can started to worry that the intruder had gone away for
good. But suddenly he was back. This time the contact was strong, more
intimate than ever.
When Candy sensed that the visitor was more confident, knew the time had
come to act. He pictured his mind as a steel trap, the visitor as an
inquisitive mouse, and he pictured a trap springing, the bar pinning the
visitor to the kill plate.
Shocked, the visitor tried to pull away. Candy held him a pushed across
the telepathic bridge between them, trying storm his adversary’s mind to
find out who he was, where was, and what he wanted.
Candy had no telepathic power of his own, nothing to equal; even the
weak telepathic gifts of the intruder; he had never re anyone’s mind
before, and he did not know how to go about it. As it turned out, he
did not need to do anything except stop himself and receive what the
visitor gave him. Thomas was name, and he was terrified of Candy, of
having Done Some thing Really Dumb, and of putting Julie in danger; that
kind of terrors shattered his mental defenses and caused him to disgorge