Read Online The manitou by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

five
minutes of searching she still hadn’t come up with a name In the end, she gave
up.
    “I just can’t
help you, Harry. Some of these guys are okay when it comes to fortune-telling,
or putting you in touch with your long-lost Uncle Henry, but I wouldn’t trust
any of them with anything serious.”
    I bit my
thumbnail. “How about you?” I asked.
    “Me? I’m not an
expert. I know I’m a little bit psychic, but I’m not into all the greater
arcana and that stuff.”
    “Amelia,” I
told her, “you’ll have to do. At least you’re genuinely psychic, which is a
damn sight more than I am. All you have to do is track down this signal or nightmare
or whatever it is. Just give me a clue to where it could come from. I can do
the rest by ordinary detective work.”
    Amelia sighed.
“Harry, I’m busy. I’m going out to a dinner party this evening, and tomorrow I
promised to take Janet’s kids to the park, and on Monday I have to open the
store, and I just don’t have a single moment.”
    “Amelia,” I
said, “a girl’s life is at stake. That girl is up there in the Sisters of
Jerusalem Hospital right at this very moment, and she’s dying. Unless we can
find out what her nightmares are all about, then she’s just not going to last
out.”
    “Harry, I can’t
make myself responsible for every girl who’s dying. This is a big city. Girls
are always dying.”
    I wrung the
phone in my fist, as if I could squeeze Amelia into helping me. “Amelia,
please. Just tonight. Just for a couple of hours.
That’s all I’m asking.”
    She put her
hand over the phone and talked to MacArthur. They burbled and murmured for a
while, and then she came back on.
    “Okay, Harry,
I’ll come. Where do you want me to be?”
    I checked my
watch. “Come round to my place first. Then I think we’ll have to go on to the
girl’s apartment. It seems to be there that the dream started. Her aunt gets
them as well, only not so bad. Amelia, I know this is a drag, but thank you.”
    “I’ll see you
later,” she said, and put down the phone.
    The next thing
I did was dial Mrs. Karmann, Karen Tandy’s aunt She was obviously sitting by the phone, waiting for news of Karen, because she
answered almost immediately.
    “Mrs. Karmann?
This is Harry Erskine.”
    “Mr. Erskine?
I’m sorry, I thought it was the hospital.”
    “Listen, Mrs.
Karmann, I went to visit Karen today. She’s still pretty weak, but the doctors
think her chances might be improved if they knew a little bit more about her.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Well, you
remember I called you yesterday about your dream. The one
about the beach. Karen came and saw me and told me that she’d been
having a dream just like yours. The doctors think it’s possible that there
might be something in the dream – some due or other – that could help them to
cure Karen’s condition.”
    “I still don’t
see what you’re getting at, Mr. Erskine. Why didn’t Dr. Hughes call me
himself?”
    “He didn’t call
you because he couldn’t,” I explained. “He’s a medical specialist, and if any of
his superiors found that he was messing around with spiritualism, they’d
probably sack him on the spot. But he wants to try everything and anything to
help Karen get well again. And that’s why we need to know more about that dream
you’ve both been having.”
    Mrs. Karmann
sounded confused and anxious. “But how can you do that? How can a dream give
anyone a tumor?”
    “Mrs. Karmann,
there are plenty of proven connections between people’s minds and their state
of health. I’m not saying that Karen’s tumor is psychosomatic, but it’s
possible that her mental attitude toward it is making it more difficult for the
doctors to cure her. They aren’t operate until they
understand what it is, and why it affects her so badly.”
    “Well, Mr.
Erskine,” she said quietly, “what do you want to do?”
    “I’ve already
contacted a friend of mine who’s something of a