8456893456983

attraction. A couple swung lazily from the overhead light fixtures. The biggest, a serving spoon,
dangled from the exhaust hood of the stove.
All kids had their own self-comforting mechanisms. John knew from long experience that for most
it was a thumb socked securely in the mouth. Abra’s was a little different. She cupped her right hand
over the lower half of her face and rubbed her lips with her palm. As a result, her words were muffled.
John took the hand away—gently. “What, honey?”
In a small voice she said, “Am I in trouble? I . . . I . . .” Her small chest began to hitch. She tried to
put her comfort-hand back, but John held it. “I wanted to be like Minstrosio.” She began to weep.
John let her hand go and it went to her mouth, rubbing furiously.
David picked her up and kissed her cheek. Lucy put her arms around them both and kissed the top
of her daughter’s head. “No, honey, no. No trouble. You’re fine.”
Abra buried her face against her mother’s neck. As she did it, the spoons fell. The clatter made
them all jump.
13
Two months later, with summer just beginning in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, David
and Lucy Stone sat in John Dalton’s office, where the walls were papered with smiling photographs of
the children he had treated over the years—many now old enough to have kids of their own.
John said, “I hired a computer-savvy nephew of mine—at my own expense, and don’t worry about
it, he works cheap—to see if there were any other documented cases like your daughter’s, and to
research them if there were. He restricted his search to the last thirty years and found over nine
hundred.”
David whistled. “That many!”
John shook his head. “Not that many. If it were a disease—and we don’t need to revisit that
discussion, because it’s not—it would be as rare as elephantiasis. Or Blaschko’s lines, which basically
turns those who have it into human zebras. Blaschko’s affects about one in every seven million. This
thing of Abra’s would be on that order.”
“What exactly is Abra’s thing?” Lucy had taken her husband’s hand and was holding it tightly.
“Telepathy? Telekinesis? Some other tele?”
“Those things clearly play a part. Is she telepathic? Since she knows when people are coming to
visit, and knew Mrs. Judkins had been hurt, the answer seems to be yes. Is she telekinetic? Based on
what we saw in your kitchen on the day of her birthday party, the answer is a hard yes. Is she psychic?
A precognate, if you want to fancy it up? We can’t be so sure of that, although the 9/11 thing and the
story of the twenty-dollar bill behind the dresser are both suggestive. But what about the night your
television showed The Simpsons on all the channels? What do you call that? Or what about the
phantom Beatles tune? It would be telekinesis if the notes came from the piano . . . but you say they
didn’t.”
“So what’s next?” Lucy asked. “What do we watch out for?”
“I don’t know. There’s no predictive path to follow. The trouble with the field of psychic
phenomena is that it isn’t a field at all. There’s too much charlatanry and too many people who are
just off their damn rockers.”
“So you can’t tell us what to do,” Lucy said. “That’s the long and short of it.”
John smiled. “I can tell you exactly what to do: keep on loving her. If my nephew is right—and
you have to remember that A, he’s only seventeen, and B, he’s basing his conclusions on unstable data
—you’re apt to keep seeing weird stuff until she’s a teenager. Some of it may be gaudy weird stuff.