Dearest | Page 2

had been the hard-bitten
captain of a hard-bitten company, fighting Moros in the jungles of Mindanao. Then,
through the early years of the Twentieth Century, after his father's death, he had been that
rara avis in the American service, a really wealthy professional officer. He had played
polo, and served a turn as military attache at the Paris embassy. He had commanded a
regiment in France in 1918, and in the post-war years, had rounded out his service in
command of a regiment of Negro cavalry, before retiring to "Greyrock." Too old for
active service, or even a desk at the Pentagon, he had drilled a Home Guard company of
4-Fs and boys and paunchy middle-agers through the Second World War. Then he had
been an old man, sitting alone in the sunlight ... until a wonderful thing had happened.
"Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate of his," Stephen suggested. "If that
won't satisfy you, I don't know what will."
* * * * *
It had begun a year ago last June. He had been sitting on a bench on the east lawn,
watching a kitten playing with a crumpled bit of paper on the walk, circling warily
around it as though it were some living prey, stalking cautiously, pouncing and striking
the paper ball with a paw and then pursuing it madly. The kitten, whose name was
Smokeball, was a friend of his; soon she would tire of her game and jump up beside him
to be petted.
Then suddenly, he seemed to hear a girl's voice beside him:
"Oh, what a darling little cat! What's its name?"
"Smokeball," he said, without thinking. "She's about the color of a shrapnel-burst...."
Then he stopped short, looking about. There was nobody in sight, and he realized that the
voice had been inside his head rather than in his ear.
"What the devil?" he asked himself. "Am I going nuts?"

There was a happy little laugh inside of him, like bubbles rising in a glass of champagne.
"Oh, no; I'm really here," the voice, inaudible but mentally present, assured him. "You
can't see me, or touch me, or even really hear me, but I'm not something you just
imagined. I'm just as real as ... as Smokeball, there. Only I'm a different kind of reality.
Watch."
The voice stopped, and something that had seemed to be close to him left him.
Immediately, the kitten stopped playing with the crumpled paper and cocked her head to
one side, staring fixedly as at something above her. He'd seen cats do that before--stare
wide-eyed and entranced, as though at something wonderful which was hidden from
human eyes. Then, still looking up and to the side, Smokeball trotted over and jumped
onto his lap, but even as he stroked her, she was looking at an invisible something beside
him. At the same time, he had a warm and pleasant feeling, as of a happy and affectionate
presence near him.
"No," he said, slowly and judicially. "That's not just my imagination. But who--or
what--are you?"
"I'm.... Oh, I don't know how to think it so that you'll understand." The voice inside his
head seemed baffled, like a physicist trying to explain atomic energy to a Hottentot. "I'm
not material. If you can imagine a mind that doesn't need a brain to think with.... Oh, I
can't explain it now! But when I'm talking to you, like this, I'm really thinking inside your
brain, along with your own mind, and you hear the words without there being any sound.
And you just don't know any words that would express it."
He had never thought much, one way or another, about spiritualism. There had been old
people, when he had been a boy, who had told stories of ghosts and apparitions, with the
firmest conviction that they were true. And there had been an Irishman, in his old
company in the Philippines, who swore that the ghost of a dead comrade walked post
with him when he was on guard.
"Are you a spirit?" he asked. "I mean, somebody who once lived in a body, like me?"
"N-no." The voice inside him seemed doubtful. "That is, I don't think so. I know about
spirits; they're all around, everywhere. But I don't think I'm one. At least, I've always
been like I am now, as long as I can remember. Most spirits don't seem to sense me. I
can't reach most living people, either; their minds are closed to me, or they have such
disgusting minds I can't bear to touch them. Children are open to me, but when they tell
their parents about me, they are laughed at, or punished for lying, and then they close up
against me. You're the first grown-up person I've been