The Dead Zone(81)

It was page three of the previous week's issue. The headline story dealt with a reporter's 'expose' on the handsome second banana of a TV crime show; the second banana had been suspended from high school twice (twelve years ago) and busted for possession of cocaine (six years ago). Hot news for the hausfraus of America. There was also an all-grain diet, a cute baby photo, and a story of a nine-year-old girl who had been miraculously cured of cerebral palsy at Lourdes (DOCTORS MYSTIFIED, the headline trumpeted gleefully). A story near the bottom of the page had been circled. MAINE 'PSYCHIC' ADMITS HOAX, the headline read. The story was not by-lined.

IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE POLICY of Inside View not only to bring you the fullest coverage of the psychics which the so-called 'National Press' ignores, but to expose the tricksters and charlatans who have held back true acceptance of legitimate psychic phenomena for so long.

One of these tricksters admitted his own hoax to an Inside View source recently. This so called 'psychic', John Smith of Pownal, Maine, admitted to our source that 'it was all a gimmick to pay back my hospital bills. If there's a book in it, I might come out with enough to pay off what I owe and retire for a couple of years in the bargain,' Smith grinned. 'These days, people will believe anything - why shouldn't I get on the gravy train?'

Thanks to Inside View, which has always cautioned readers that there are two phony psychics for each real one, John Smith's gravy train has just been derailed. And we reiterate our standing offer of $1000 to anyone who can prove that any nationally known psychic is a fraud.

Hoaxers and charlatans be warned!

Johnny read the article twice as the snow began to come down more heavily. A reluctant grin broke over his features. The ever-vigilant press apparently didn't enjoy being thrown off some bumpkin's front porch, he thought. He tucked the tear sheet back into its envelope and stuffed it into his back pocket with the rest of the mail.

'Dees,' he said aloud, 'I hope you're still black and blue.

2.

His father was not so amused. Herb read the clipping and then slammed it down on the kitchen table in disgust. 'You ought to sue that son of a whore. That's nothing but slander, Johnny. A deliberate hatchet job.'

'Agreed and agreed,' Johnny said. It was dark outside. This afternoon's silently falling snow had developed into tonight's early winter blizzard. The wind shrieked and howled around the eaves. The driveway had disappeared under a dunelike progression of drifts. 'But there was no third party when we talked, and Dees damn well knows it. It's his word against mine.'

'He didn't even have the guts to put his own name to this lie,' Herb said. 'Look at this "an Inside View source". What's this source? Get him to name it, that's what I say.

'Oh, you can't do that,' Johnny said, grinning. 'That's like walking up to the meanest street-fighter on the block with a KICK ME HARD sign taped to your crotch. Then they turn it into a holy war, page one and all. No thanks. As far as I'm concerned, they did me a favor. I don't want to make a career out of telling people where gramps hid his stock certificates or who's going to win the fourth at Scarborough Downs. Or take this lottery.' One of the things that had most surprised Johnny on coming out of his coma was to discover that Maine and about a dozen other states had instituted a legal numbers game. 'In the last month I've gotten sixteen letters from people who want me to tell them what the number's going to be. It's insane. Even if I could tell them, which I couldn't, what good would it do them? You can't pick your own number in the Maine lottery, you get what they give you. But still I get the letters.'

'I don't see what that has to do with this crappy article.

'If people think I'm a phony, maybe they'll leave me alone.'

'Oh,' Herb said. 'Yeah, I see what you mean.' He lit his pipe. 'You've never really been comfortable with it, have you?'

'No,' Johnny said. 'We never talk much about it, either, which is something of a relief. It seems like the only thing other people do want to talk about.' And it wasn't just that they wanted to talk; that wouldn't have bothered him so much. But when he was in Slocum's Store for a sixpack or a loaf of bread, the girl would try to take his money without touching his hand, and the frightened, skittish look in her eyes was unmistakable. His father's friends would give him a little wave instead of a handshake. In October Herb had hired a local high school girl to come in once a week to do some dusting and vacuum the floors. After three weeks she had quit for no stated reason at all probably someone at her high school had told her who she was cleaning for. It seemed that for everyone who was anxious to be touched, to be informed, to be in contact with Johnny's peculiar talent, there was another who regarded him as a kind of leper. At times like these, Johnny would think of the nurses staring at him the day he had told Eileen Magown that her house was on fire, staring at him like magpies on a telephone wire. He would think of the way the TV reporter had drawn back from him after the press conference's unexpected conclusion, agreeing with everything he said but not wanting to be touched. Unhealthy either way.

'No, we don't talk about it,' Herb agreed. 'It makes me think of your mother, I suppose. She was so sure you'd been given the ... the whatever-it-is for some reason. Sometimes I wonder if she wasn't right.'

Johnny shrugged. 'All I want is a normal life. I want to bury the whole damn thing. And if this little squib helps me do it, so much the better.'