Stories from Everybodys Magazine, 1910 | Page 8

but Jennie, though plainly fascinated, uttered a protesting
plaint. "Oh, please stop! You don't know how you frighten me!
Dorothea has had some awfully queer things happen to her, and it
scares me almost to death when she tells about them."
Mirth followed the announcement of Dorothea's occult powers, which,
needless to say, had come as a surprise to her immediate family.

Dorothea paid no attention whatever. Instead she rose to her feet and,
flinging her arms wide, yawned elaborately. It was a delicate
suggestion, which caused the men to look at their watches, and the
party forthwith dispersed.
Dorothea, for all the sand in her shoes, seemed to walk to the house on
air. The inspiration had arrived, fully accoutered, as it were, on the
breath of Jennie's complaint.
The work in hand called for the dexterity of the true artist. With
managerial instinct, Dorothea, repelling any attempt at conversation,
waited only until Jennie was comfortably ensconced in bed, to turn the
lamp down so that it glimmered in sickly fashion, before beginning
proceedings. Then, seating herself beside the bed--an eerie figure in her
straight, white gown--she shook her head dismally and indulged in a
heartfelt sigh. Jennie, her nerves already on edge with the ghost stories
of the hour before, turned startled eyes upon her.
"What is the matter? What is it?" she inquired anxiously.
"I--feel--strange," said Dorothea. She turned upon her victim a face full
of uncanny suggestion. Divested of its perpetual smile, it seemed to
Jennie as unfamiliar as a room from which an accustomed piece of
furniture had been moved.
"I feel--strange. Something terrible is happening somewhere.--I can
tell--I always can--I am going to have a vision--I can feel it--It always
comes like this." With a quick hand she extinguished the lamp. "It will
come in a dream," she muttered. "Let me sleep, oh, let me sleep!"
She made a sweeping pass with her out- stretched hands and, after a
dramatic pause, fell heavily on her pillow, where she instantly
proceeded to fall into a deep and trance-like slumber--a slumber that
prevailed through the terrified questionings, whimperings, and agitated
shakings by her friend.
It is an awesome thing to seek repose beside one wrapped in trance; it
is worse to traverse unlighted halls and ghostly stairs in an effort to

awake the gifted medium's family. Wrapped in terror as in an icy sheet,
after divers Herculean efforts to rouse the log beside her, the responsive
victim fell into a troubled slumber with her head well under the
bedclothes.
The gray dawn was in the room when she was awakened by what
seemed to be muffled sobs from--the figure beside her. In an instant
wide awake and palpitating, she fell upon Dorothea. "What is it? Oh,
what is it?" she cried.
"I have had it," said Dorothea in a sepulchral whisper. "The vision.
Oh," she turned dramatically from the instant question, "I can't bear to
tell you!--It was about you."
"Dorothea, you've GOT to tell me! I think you're HORRID. I'm going
right downstairs to tell your mother."
"Of course I'm going to tell you," said the sybil crossly. She resumed
her chest tones hurriedly. "I must tell you. It was sent to me to tell you.
I wanted to prepare you."
"Prepare? Oh, Dorothea, what WAS it?"
Dorothea stood upright on the bed, and her eyes assumed the
expression of those that see inward--Jennie stared at her, hypnotized,
breathless.
"I saw a room," chanted the inspired one, "a room in a large city. I can
see it now. It is a bedroom. There are blue rugs on the floor, and the
furniture is oak. It has two windows. There is a canary bird in one, and
the other has a seat with blue cushions."
"Why, that is my mother's room, Dorothea! You know it is."
"In the bed a woman is lying. She is sick. She is turning from one side
to the other--she says, `Oh, where is my daughter? I want my daughter!
Why doesn't she come back to me?'"

"Oh, Dorothea!" Jennie, tearful and excited, began to draw on her
clothes. "That was my mother! It must have been! Oh, Dorothea!"
The sybil drove in the fine point again. "`Why doesn't she come back to
me?'" she reiterated.
The program that had proceeded so smoothly now received an
unexpected hitch. Jennie paused suddenly in her garmenting, relief
growing in her face.
"After all," she observed, "I don't believe mother had anything more
than one of her sick-headaches. She has them all the time. I wouldn't go
home just for that. I do believe that is it, Dorothea."
It was time for rapid thought. Another moment and the fine dramatic
work of the morning would have gone for naught. For a moment
Dorothea staggered, but for a