Shivers by William Schoell Page A

attack, or I accidentally—or purposefully, I should say— tapped into someone else’s thoughts. Or someone else’s reality. I’m not sure which.”
    “Well, that’s not altogether unusual for you, Eric. Although I must say, this business about psychic attacks does sound interesting.”
    “I wish that’s all it was. Interesting. Actually, the experience put me into a severe mental state —left me drained and panicky—and quite frightened the wits out of me.”
    “You’d better go over it. In detail,” Emily said. He did.
    By the time he was finished relating the events of the evening, Emily had started her third cigarette. She always smoked rapidly when something particularly intrigued her.
    “And you think that the ‘nightmare’ you had last evening was somehow related to the drunk who approached you at the subway?”
    “Yes. I’m sure of it,” Eric replied. “The feelings I had were the same. The images I saw were similar.”
    “But it wasn’t until after you went to bed that you saw anything especially . . . coherent?”
    “That’s true. I only picked up random bits and pieces from the derelict’s mind, but they were the same as the bits and pieces I saw later at home in bed when I began to relax. Then I began to let the images saturate my mind so that I could see a clearer, yet more complex, picture.”
    “What’s your explanation for it?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t believe the drunkard was behind it all. It was all he could do to keep himself alive. If he is alive. At this point, who can tell?”
    “Do you think someone deliberately fed you those images, wanted you to see what you saw?”
    “No. No, I realize now that that wasn’t the case. I would have had an easier time of it, for one thing. Even if I had been picking up the thoughts of someone who was unaware of my existence, it still wouldn’t have been quite so hard to get a fix. No, I think instead that I tapped into an uncommonly powerful mental force or forces. Frighteningly powerful. I was susceptible because I had been thinking about the derelict all night, and I’m sure that what I saw had something to do with him. His mind, as insane as it was, was still very strong.”
    “Was it his mind you ‘encountered?’ Someone’s nearby? A neighbor’s, perhaps?”
    “If the images had come from nearby, there would have been a residue, a presence, all about me in the morning. Besides, I would have known by now if another sensitive lived in my building.”
    “It’s a big building.”
    He tapped his head playfully with his index finger. “I’ve got a big mind.”
    She laughed and got up from the seat. “Let me get us some coffee and we’ll talk about this some more. I’ll only be a moment.”
    “Fine. I could use a cup.”
    She returned five minutes later with two cups and some packets of sugar. They each finished preparing their coffee, then returned to the subject at hand.
    “Well,” Emily said cheerfully, “now that we’ve determined the cause, let’s discuss the effect. You suffered extreme paranoia, depression, abject loneliness, claustrophobia . . . let’s see, did I leave anything out?”
    “Yes. I subjected myself to an old western. Something I’d never do if I was in my right mind.”
    She giggled. “I love westerns. But to each his own. You craved companionship. You felt that the four walls were closing in on you. That the bathroom would devour you if you stepped inside. Trapped. Enclosed. Like inside a mouth.”
    He swallowed the coffee and nodded. “Yes. A singularly unpleasant sensation, I assure you.”
    “No doubt. Your feelings of terror started to subside only when you turned on the TV?”
    Eric placed his hand on his cheek, trying to remember. “Yes. No—it was earlier, my blue bedroom. I couldn’t stand anything dark or bright. The terror changed into a fear—of those extremes in color, or tight, cramped spaces. Then, I became horribly depressed. I felt pathetic, sad about my lot in