clearing away some of the dry, uninteresting stuff he rarely got a chance to tackle during the course of a normal week, stuff he usually ended up doing on his own time.
Now, as he picked up the receiver and said hello, he fished out the drawings and spread them open on the desk in front of him. The underwater eyes were white and vacant where the technician had scraped away the coloring.
“Hi, Dr. Bowman. It’s Mike from Hematology. It’s blood all right.”
“Human?”
“Human,” the technician said. “A-negative.”
“Thanks,” Scott said. “I appreciate it.”
His heart loped uneasily as he hung up the phone. The old man’s blood type was O-negative; he’d checked it on his chart before meeting with Steve Franklin.
If it isn’t his own blood, then where did he get it?
Scott touched the still-bandaged tip of his right index finger...and then he knew.
He groped in his hip pocket and dug out his wallet. Opening it, he fished clumsily through the plastic sleeves, letting the collection of cards contained there drop one by one to the desktop—medical license, CMPA membership, VISA, American Express—until he found the one he was looking for. A powder-blue card, slightly dog-eared. The Red Cross had given it to him the one time he donated blood. On it were his name, address, and blood type: A-negative.
* * *
It was weird—almost too weird—but after a while Scott thought he had it figured out. He’d done some reading on the paranormal—with the amused interest of the skeptic, granted, but he was familiar with most of the ground rules—and had seen a couple of the better-made motion pictures with talents like clairvoyance as their themes. Characteristically, some sort of physical contact had to be made between the psychic and his subject, often something as simple as the touching of hands. If this was true, then surely blood would work the same way. Evidently, after he cut his finger on a sheet of the old man’s paper, the artist had retrieved some of the blood—which had served as the physical connection between them—and used it to stain the eyes in the sketch. The blood explained why the old man had tuned into Scott that day and not one of the students.
Sitting at his desk, trying to reason this stuff through, it occurred to Scott with something like shock that he had become an instant believer in precognition. All of his thoughts regarding the old man were meaningless now without this phenomenon as a given. In the wake of this realization, he found himself quietly reexamining everything he’d previously cherished as truth. Indeed, he began to question his entire concept of reality. If precognition was possible—and he was firmly convinced now that it was—then what other wonders—and horrors—existed out there, just beyond the range of normal human perception? How many dozens of the other things he’d laughed off during his lifetime might actually be real? The whole thing made him feel odd, offtrack somehow, as if he’d stumbled off the globe and landed on a new planet, identical to Earth in every detail...and yet deeply and fundamentally different.
Scott felt a thick clot of panic massing in his throat. Some decrepit old crone using his blood to peer into his future—that was bad enough. But why the perverse use of the blood as part of the drawing? That was the bit that crawled under his skin and festered there.
Over it all, though, one question continued to burn. Was he just a mindless crone? Could he be as far gone as he appeared and still tap into whatever psychic stream he panned his visions from? Wasn’t it entirely possible that if someone were to give it an honest try, perhaps using hypnotic suggestion, the old man could be reached? As far as Scott knew, no one had yet made such an effort. It was a lamentable truth in medicine’s dealings with those labeled as senile: the label was readily handed out—and once it was, no one paid its victims much further heed.
Darkly
Now, as he picked up the receiver and said hello, he fished out the drawings and spread them open on the desk in front of him. The underwater eyes were white and vacant where the technician had scraped away the coloring.
“Hi, Dr. Bowman. It’s Mike from Hematology. It’s blood all right.”
“Human?”
“Human,” the technician said. “A-negative.”
“Thanks,” Scott said. “I appreciate it.”
His heart loped uneasily as he hung up the phone. The old man’s blood type was O-negative; he’d checked it on his chart before meeting with Steve Franklin.
If it isn’t his own blood, then where did he get it?
Scott touched the still-bandaged tip of his right index finger...and then he knew.
He groped in his hip pocket and dug out his wallet. Opening it, he fished clumsily through the plastic sleeves, letting the collection of cards contained there drop one by one to the desktop—medical license, CMPA membership, VISA, American Express—until he found the one he was looking for. A powder-blue card, slightly dog-eared. The Red Cross had given it to him the one time he donated blood. On it were his name, address, and blood type: A-negative.
* * *
It was weird—almost too weird—but after a while Scott thought he had it figured out. He’d done some reading on the paranormal—with the amused interest of the skeptic, granted, but he was familiar with most of the ground rules—and had seen a couple of the better-made motion pictures with talents like clairvoyance as their themes. Characteristically, some sort of physical contact had to be made between the psychic and his subject, often something as simple as the touching of hands. If this was true, then surely blood would work the same way. Evidently, after he cut his finger on a sheet of the old man’s paper, the artist had retrieved some of the blood—which had served as the physical connection between them—and used it to stain the eyes in the sketch. The blood explained why the old man had tuned into Scott that day and not one of the students.
Sitting at his desk, trying to reason this stuff through, it occurred to Scott with something like shock that he had become an instant believer in precognition. All of his thoughts regarding the old man were meaningless now without this phenomenon as a given. In the wake of this realization, he found himself quietly reexamining everything he’d previously cherished as truth. Indeed, he began to question his entire concept of reality. If precognition was possible—and he was firmly convinced now that it was—then what other wonders—and horrors—existed out there, just beyond the range of normal human perception? How many dozens of the other things he’d laughed off during his lifetime might actually be real? The whole thing made him feel odd, offtrack somehow, as if he’d stumbled off the globe and landed on a new planet, identical to Earth in every detail...and yet deeply and fundamentally different.
Scott felt a thick clot of panic massing in his throat. Some decrepit old crone using his blood to peer into his future—that was bad enough. But why the perverse use of the blood as part of the drawing? That was the bit that crawled under his skin and festered there.
Over it all, though, one question continued to burn. Was he just a mindless crone? Could he be as far gone as he appeared and still tap into whatever psychic stream he panned his visions from? Wasn’t it entirely possible that if someone were to give it an honest try, perhaps using hypnotic suggestion, the old man could be reached? As far as Scott knew, no one had yet made such an effort. It was a lamentable truth in medicine’s dealings with those labeled as senile: the label was readily handed out—and once it was, no one paid its victims much further heed.
Darkly
Similar Books
