Vision by Dean Koontz

to the master bedroom. He had gone downstairs to the library for a novel and had returned carrying a thick volume—not the book he’d been after. “I talked to Dr. Cauvel just now,” he said.
    Mary was sitting up in bed. She used a flap of the dust jacket to mark her place in the book she was reading. “What did the good doctor have to say?”
    “He thinks you are the poltergeist.”
    “Me?”
    “He says you were under stress—”
    “Aren’t we all?”
    “Especially you.”
    “Was I?”
    “Because you remembered about Berton Mitchell.”
    “I’ve remembered about him before.”
    “This time you recalled more than ever. Cauvel says you were under great psychological stress in his office, and that you caused the glass dogs to fly about.”
    She smiled. “A man your size looks just too cute in pajamas.”
    “Mary—”
    “Especially yellow pajamas. You should wear just a robe.”
    “You’re avoiding this.” He came to the foot of the bed. “What about the glass dogs?”
    “Cauvel just wants me to pay for them,” she said airily.
    “He didn’t mention money.”
    “That’s what he was angling for.”
    “He’s not the type,” Max said.
    “I’ll pay half the value of the dogs.”
    Exasperated, Max said, “Mary, that’s not necessary.”
    “I know,” she said lightly. “I didn’t break them.”
    “I mean, Cauvel isn’t asking to be paid. You’re trying to avoid the main issue.”
    “Okay, okay. So how did I cause glass dogs to fly about?”
    “Unconsciously. Cauvel says—”
    “Psychiatrists always blame the unconscious.”
    “Who’s to say they’re wrong?”
    “They’re stupid.”
    “Mary—”
    “And you’re stupid for believing Cauvel.”
    She didn’t want to argue, but she couldn’t control herself. She was frightened by the direction the conversation was taking, although she didn’t know why she should be. She was terrified of some knowledge that lay within her, but she couldn’t understand what that might be.
    Standing like a preacher, holding his book as if it were a Bible, Max said, “Will you listen?”
    She shook her head to indicate she found him too irritating to bear. “If I’m responsible for his figurines getting busted up, am I also to blame for the bad weather in the East, for the war in Africa, for inflation, for poverty, for the recent crop failures?”
    “Sarcasm.”
    “You encourage it.”
    The tranquilizer was doing her no good whatsoever. She was tense. Trembling. Like a shallow-water, feathery sea anemone quivering in the subtle currents that preceded a storm, she was nervously aware of unseen forces that could destroy her.
    Suddenly she felt threatened by Max.
    That doesn’t make sense, she thought. Max isn’t any danger to me. He’s trying to help me find the truth, that’s all.
    Dizzy, confused, on the verge of anomie, she leaned back against her pillows.
    Max opened his book and read in a quiet but urgent voice: “ ’Telekinesis is the ability to move objects or to cause changes within objects solely by the force of the mind. The phenomenon has most often and most reliably been reported in times of crises or in severe stress situations. For example, automobiles have been levitated from injured people, debris from the dying in fire-swept or collapsed buildings.’”
    “I know what telekinesis is,” she said.
    Max ignored her, kept reading: “‘Telekinesis is often mistaken for the work of poltergeists, which are playful and occasionally malevolent spirits. The existence of poltergeists as astral beings is debatable and certainly unproven. It should be noted that in most houses where poltergeists have appeared, there resides an adolescent with serious identity problems, or some other person under severe nervous strain. A good argument could be made that the phenomena often attributed to poltergeists are usually the product of unconscious telekinesis.’”
    “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I pitch those dogs around