Haggopian and Other Stories

Divination, Observers of Times, Enchanters, Witches, Charmers, or Necromancers. All claimed to work their Wonders through Intercourse with dead & departed Spirits, but I fear that often such Spirits were evil Angels, the Messengers of the Dark One & yet more ancient Evils. Indeed, among them were some whose Powers were prodigious, who might at Will inhabit the Body of another even at a great Distance & against the Will & often unbeknown to the Sufferer of such Outrage…”

• • •

She put down the papers, sat back and looked at me quizzically.

“That’s all very interesting,” I said after a moment, “but hardly applicable to yourself.”

“Oh, but it is, Love,” she protested. “I’m George’s twin, for one thing, and for another—”

“But you’re no witch or necromancer!”

“No, I wouldn’t say so—but I am a ‘User of Divinations’, and I do ‘work my Wonders through Intercourse with dead & departed Spirits’. That’s what spiritualism is all about.”

“You mean you actually take this, er, Alhazred and spiritualism and all seriously?” I deprecated.

She frowned. “No, not Alhazred, not really,” she answered after a moment’s thought. “But he is interesting, as you said. As for spiritualism: yes, I do take it seriously. Why, you’d be amazed at some of the vibrations I’ve been getting these last three weeks or so. Very disturbing, but so far rather incoherent; frantic, in fact. I’ll track him down eventually, though—the spirit, I mean…”

We sat quietly then, contemplatively for a minute or two. Frankly, I didn’t quite know what to say; but then she went on: “Anyway, we were talking about George and how I believed that even after that first occasion he had a bit of an idea that I was at the root of the thing. Yes, I really think he did. He said nothing, and yet…

“And that’s not all, either. It was some time after that day on the beach before Sis could be convinced that she hadn’t been saved by me. She was sure it had been me, not George, who pulled her out of the deep water.

“Well, a year or two went by, and school-leaving exams came up. I was all right, a reasonable scholar—I had always been a bookish kid—but poor old George…” She shook her head sadly. My uncle, it appeared, had not been too bright.

After a moment she continued. “Dates were set for the exams and two sets of papers were prepared, one for the boys, another for the girls. I had no trouble with my paper, I knew even before the results were announced that I was through easily—but before that came George’s turn. He’d been worrying and chewing, cramming for all he was worth, biting his nails down to the elbows…and getting nowhere. I was in bed with flu when the day of his exams came round, and I remember how I just lay there fretting over him. He was my brother, after all.

“I must have been thinking of him just a bit too hard, though, for before I knew it there I was, staring down hard at an exam paper, sitting in a class full of boys in the old school!

“…An hour later I had the papers all finished, and then I concentrated myself back home again. This time it was a definite effort for me to find my way back to my own body.

“The house was in an uproar. I was downstairs in my dressing-gown; mother had an arm round me and was trying to console me; father was yelling and waving his arms about like a lunatic. “The girl’s gone mad!” I remember him exploding, red faced and a bit frightened.

“Apparently I had rushed downstairs about an hour earlier. I had been shouting and screaming tearfully that I’d miss the exam, and I had wanted to know what I was doing home. And when they had called me Hester instead of George! Well, then I had seemed to go completely out of my mind!

“Of course, I had been feverish with flu for a couple of days. That was obviously the answer: I had suddenly reached the height of a hitherto unrecognised delirious fever, and now the fever had broken I was going to be all right. That was what they said …

“George eventually came home with his eyes all wide and staring, frightened-looking, and he stayed that way for a couple of days. He avoided me like the plague! But the next week—when it came out about how good his marks were, how easily he had passed his examination papers—well—”

“But surely he must have known,” I broke in. What few doubts I had entertained were now gone forever. She was plainly not making all of this up.

“But why should he have known, Love? He knew he’d had two pretty nightmarish experiences, sure enough, and that somehow they had been connected with me; but he couldn’t possibly know that they had their origin in me—that I formed their focus.”

“He did find out, though?”

“Oh, yes, he did,” she slowly answered, her eyes seeming to glisten just a little in the homely evening glow of the room. “And as I’ve said, that’s why he left home in the end. It happened like this: