Dark Benediction by Walter M. Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

swallowed hard. Her maiden name had been O'Brien.
    "1 don't know you," she snapped.
    His name was trying to form in her mind. She refused to allow it. The young man sighed.
    "I'm Kenneth Grearly, if you really don't know." He stepped back a pace and lifted his hat toward his head. "I—I guess I better go. I see this disturbs you. I had hoped we could talk about it, but—well, good night, Mrs. Waverly."
    He turned and started away.
    " Wait!" she called out against her will. He stopped again. "Yes?"
    "Were—were you watching me—while it was raining?"
    He opened his mouth and stared thoughtfully down the street toward the light. "You mean watching visually? You really are repressing this thing, aren't you? I thought you understood." He looked at her sharply, forlornly. "They say the failure to communicate is the basis of all tragedy. Do you suppose in our case ... ?"
    " What?"
    "Nothing." He shifted restlessly for a moment. "Good night."
    "Good night," she whispered many seconds after he was gone.
     
    Her bedroom was hot and lonely, and she tossed in growing restlessness. If only Frank were home! But he would he gone for two more weeks. The children would be back on Monday, but that was three whole days away. Crazy! It was just stark raving crazy!
    Had the man really existed—what was his name?—Kenneth Grearly? Or was he only a phantasm invented by a mind that was failing—her mind? Dancing naked in the rain! Calling out to shadow shapes in the brush! Talking to a specter in the street! Schizophrenic syndrome dream-world stuff. It could not be otherwise, for unless she had invented Kenneth Grearly, how could she know he had sore feet, an impacted wisdom tooth, and a head cold. Not only did she know about those things, but she felt them!
    She buried her face in the dusty pillow and sobbed. Tomorrow she would have to call Dr. Mensley.
    But fearing the specter's return, she arose a few minutes later and locked all the doors in the house. When she returned to bed, she tried to pray but it was as if the prayer were being watched. Someone was listening, eavesdropping from outside.
    Kenneth Grearly appeared in her dreams, stood half-shrouded in a slowly swirling fog. He stared at her with his head cocked aside, smiling slightly, holding his hat respectfully in his hands.
    "Don't you realize, Mrs. Waverly, that we are mutants perhaps?" he asked politely.
    "No!" she screamed. "I'm happily married and I have three children and a place in society! Don't come near me!"
    He melted slowly into the fog. But echoes came monotonously from invisible cliffs: mutant mutant mutant mutant mutant ...
    Dawn came, splashing pink paint across the eastern sky. The light woke her to a dry and empty consciousness, to a headachy awareness full of dull anxiety. She arose wearily and trudged to the kitchen for a pot of coffee.
    Lord! Couldn't it all be only a bad dream?
    In the cold light of early morning, the things of the past night looked somehow detached, unreal. She tried to analyze objectively.
    That sense of sharing a mind, a consciousness, with the stranger who came out of the shadows—what crazy thing had he called it?—" some sort of palpable biophysical energyform, analytically definable."
    "If I invented the stranger," she thought, "I must have also invented the words."
    But where had she heard such words before?
     
    Lisa went to the telephone and thumbed through the directory. No Grearly was listed. If he existed at all, he probably lived in a rooming house. The University—last night she had thought that he had something to do with the University. She lifted the phone and dialed.
    "University Station; number please," the operator said.
    " I—uh—don't know the extension number. Could you tell me if there is a Kenneth Grearly connected with the school?"
    " Student or faculty, Madam?"
    "I don't know."
    "Give me your number, please, and I'll call you back." "Lawrence 4750. Thanks, Operator."
    She sat down to wait. Almost immediately