Another story? This is the third chapter from a novel I was intending to write, and still may.

I envisioned it as a trilogy, science fiction for young adult readers, something very popular right now. It went from The Esper Club to The Esper School and finally in volume three The Esper World. Extrasensory perception is still an issue, and I imagined a group of young bright high school students who formed a club to research the phenomenon, learn its secrets, master them and develop their own capabilities. I’m even in it myself as Mr. Sterling, the kind, somewhat inspiring and permissive teacher who lets the students take control.  Volume Two would take them from a club and then an approved class to a total school involvement, and that would lead to Volume Three, The Esper World, where, with new found powers, these wonderful empathetic young people would guide the planet to the kind of ideal world I myself wanted to see. What a good idea. I didn’t have the time necessary to work on it, and I suspected anyway that it might be beyond me to figure things out and put together a narrative that would satisfy me and any possible reader. But the third chapter, Encounter, can stand alone, though it frustrates the reader who wants more. Bearing that frustration in mind, and I share it, I at least submit for your approval what appeared in The New Infinity Review, Volume III, Number 12, 1976-77. 

The town, by the way, is imagined Temecula before it developed. Not that it matters.

Encounter

The sun was everything. Heat, oppressing and emanating from the limp leaves of not quite trees, dried grass in patches, ancient dust ages deep dry as isolation waiting everywhere for some motion to stir it heavily and let it settle again.

Rocks and desiccation. The granite hills of the desert forming an illusory valley, only here the stuff of life incipient, everywhere the dry winds hanging in the hot moveless air.

The town visible from the road but once inside the road lost, only the street, the main street, straight and short, holding the clustered buildings clinging as if for comfort or warmth, afraid to stray too far from the center or be overwhelmed by undeniable nature in its insistent aridity. The town, clumsily concealing from itself that it had no reason to exist.

The house, peripheral, squat, long unpainted, boards and a roof, crooked slat fence, grass scruffs, impassive windows surprisingly unbroken. A sufficient sense of mystery. A small sign by the door, adequately lettered:

“Spiritualist: Readings.”

Glen, standing at the gate, conscious in his blackness of his startling presence in this place so far removed from any real world, laughed to himself, “If I take off my shoes, I would be too much for them, barefoot, mixing my dust with theirs.”

But he felt it. Primal and essential where everyday existence is absolute, there could be no distraction, no sham, nature present and each one his own intermediary.

On the porch, a hand raised to knock, a pause. “Shall I give her the chance to foresee my coming, to throw open the door with great theatricality anticipating my knock? Must I be prepared for falseness even here, or can I give myself up to the flow of events wherever they carry me?” He struck the doorpost three times, sharply, recognizing in this announcement that his objectivity was gone.

The door opened and she stood there.

“Come in,” she said.

Simply so.

A gray skirt, long, a blouse faded, more nearly mauve than any other color, bracelets and a necklace of Navajo silver and turquoise, graying hair kept back by a calm red scarf. Face of earth. And eyes, intelligent, probing, conscious of their power. Old, but how old one need not determine.

“Sit down, please.”

A table, a parlor. But no crystal sphere, no hanging cabalism. Glen, impressed, half aware of the role he had prepared himself to play to find from her what he must know, half aware of the cloth under his arms leaning across the table, small, round, the woman glancing at his hands, turning them over, looking into his face.

Slow, long, silent, she searched his face, deeper and deeper, his eyes held by effort from retreating, returning that disturbing gaze.

“I cannot help you.”

That was all she said. Did she suspect his other motives, that he was testing her ability, judging her? Did she Know? Really Know?

She stood to show him it was over. He must go. He thrust money toward her.

“No,” she said. The door closed behind him, the air closed behind him, the town was gone, he had never been there.