particular self-proclaimed prophet received her impressions of the future by gazing into a glass doorknob.
Thirty atrociously written pages had convinced Claire Wynkoop, the town of Belford’s librarian, that Tomorrow’s Forevers was “Today’s Tripe,” definitely not a book for library purchase; the review copy would be returned. Claire considered most of the “studies” of the paranormal to be sheer nonsense, or worse, malicious frauds to generate new fears for the already fearful.
Claire closed the book. Just above the nape of her neck was a pulsing ball of tension and, in the center of her skull, a feeling she could describe only as “an itch impossible to scratch.” There was, too, the vibrato of a single, high-pitched note ringing in her ears, the constant sound that had been amplified in the day-long stillness of the library.
Symptoms of her hypertension or perhaps an adverse reaction to the new prescriptions meant to lower her blood pressure? She could not deceive herself. All the premonitions she’d experienced in her sixty years— Not that many but every one was one too many !— had been heralded by her feeling this way, the way she did now.
She tipped back her head. Though Claire Wnykoop’s hair had made the transition to snowy white a decade earlier, she was a woman who wore her age well. Her neck was neither wattled nor excessively wrinkled, and the lines bracketing her mouth were friendly, indicating she’d spent more time smiling than scowling. She prided herself that weight was not a factor contributing to her high blood pressure; she was no heavier at sixty than she’d been at twenty, and while she granted that some of her pounds had “relocated themselves,” she carried herself with the erect dignity of one who’d gone to school at a time when posture was a vital part of the elementary curriculum.
Claire’s eyes, however, were not what they had once been, so she peered at the western sky through the upper lenses of bifocals. The isolated puffs of white cloud, the fine, golden ball of sun against the tranquil blue, made for a peaceful scene, so lovely that it was hard to accept that something bad was on Fate’s calendar.
It was. She knew that. What? When? Shedidn’t know yet. Nor did she have any guarantee of clear, comprehensible answers; often her visions were vague, as though she were seeing abstract-impressionist paintings in motion. It was only rarely that a premonition jumped into three-dimensional focus.
But inevitably her future glimpses were not assurances of glad tidings. Others with psychic gifts might predict winning racehorses or know that a tumor would prove benign. Claire’s intuitive impressions varied only in the degrees of misfortune they foretold.
She felt this precognition— You nasty thing ! — lurking just past the border of consciousness. Glumly, the told herself, I will see what I see when I see it. That was how the tricky whatsis operated. She could neither avoid a look at the future nor hasten its arrival.
When Claire rose, book in hand, she was dizzy and a shower of sparkling angel’s hair floated before her eyes. Definitely hypertension, she thought. Her dizziness passed and she went into the house, leaving Tomorrow’s Forevers on the kitchen table. In the living room, she clicked on the old, nineteen-inch black and white television. She seated herself on the couch for the Channel Nine News. The six o’clock anchorman was smiling as he reported the firing squad deaths of forty-six “enemies of Islam” in Iran. The “close-up” reporter smiled through his feature on teenage suicide. On a commercial, a woman grinned at learning her husband preferred stuffing to potatoes.
Claire had enough of capped-teeth artificiality and she got up and turned off the set. The picture vanished, leaving behind a white dot in the center of the screen, a white dot that glowed and spun as something cold and spider-legged scurried down Claire’s spine.
Claire
Thirty atrociously written pages had convinced Claire Wynkoop, the town of Belford’s librarian, that Tomorrow’s Forevers was “Today’s Tripe,” definitely not a book for library purchase; the review copy would be returned. Claire considered most of the “studies” of the paranormal to be sheer nonsense, or worse, malicious frauds to generate new fears for the already fearful.
Claire closed the book. Just above the nape of her neck was a pulsing ball of tension and, in the center of her skull, a feeling she could describe only as “an itch impossible to scratch.” There was, too, the vibrato of a single, high-pitched note ringing in her ears, the constant sound that had been amplified in the day-long stillness of the library.
Symptoms of her hypertension or perhaps an adverse reaction to the new prescriptions meant to lower her blood pressure? She could not deceive herself. All the premonitions she’d experienced in her sixty years— Not that many but every one was one too many !— had been heralded by her feeling this way, the way she did now.
She tipped back her head. Though Claire Wnykoop’s hair had made the transition to snowy white a decade earlier, she was a woman who wore her age well. Her neck was neither wattled nor excessively wrinkled, and the lines bracketing her mouth were friendly, indicating she’d spent more time smiling than scowling. She prided herself that weight was not a factor contributing to her high blood pressure; she was no heavier at sixty than she’d been at twenty, and while she granted that some of her pounds had “relocated themselves,” she carried herself with the erect dignity of one who’d gone to school at a time when posture was a vital part of the elementary curriculum.
Claire’s eyes, however, were not what they had once been, so she peered at the western sky through the upper lenses of bifocals. The isolated puffs of white cloud, the fine, golden ball of sun against the tranquil blue, made for a peaceful scene, so lovely that it was hard to accept that something bad was on Fate’s calendar.
It was. She knew that. What? When? Shedidn’t know yet. Nor did she have any guarantee of clear, comprehensible answers; often her visions were vague, as though she were seeing abstract-impressionist paintings in motion. It was only rarely that a premonition jumped into three-dimensional focus.
But inevitably her future glimpses were not assurances of glad tidings. Others with psychic gifts might predict winning racehorses or know that a tumor would prove benign. Claire’s intuitive impressions varied only in the degrees of misfortune they foretold.
She felt this precognition— You nasty thing ! — lurking just past the border of consciousness. Glumly, the told herself, I will see what I see when I see it. That was how the tricky whatsis operated. She could neither avoid a look at the future nor hasten its arrival.
When Claire rose, book in hand, she was dizzy and a shower of sparkling angel’s hair floated before her eyes. Definitely hypertension, she thought. Her dizziness passed and she went into the house, leaving Tomorrow’s Forevers on the kitchen table. In the living room, she clicked on the old, nineteen-inch black and white television. She seated herself on the couch for the Channel Nine News. The six o’clock anchorman was smiling as he reported the firing squad deaths of forty-six “enemies of Islam” in Iran. The “close-up” reporter smiled through his feature on teenage suicide. On a commercial, a woman grinned at learning her husband preferred stuffing to potatoes.
Claire had enough of capped-teeth artificiality and she got up and turned off the set. The picture vanished, leaving behind a white dot in the center of the screen, a white dot that glowed and spun as something cold and spider-legged scurried down Claire’s spine.
Claire
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