Challenger, Professor (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Spiritualism -- Fiction
“Yes, I know you can. I say, Jock. I wanted to tell you that I told your
mother I had seen you. She said her Church taught her it was wrong.”
“I know. And that I was a demon. Oh, it is rotten, rotten, rotten, and
rotten things will fall!” His voice broke in a sob.
“Don’t blame her, Jock, she believes this.”
“No, no, I don’t blame her! She will know better some day. The day is
coming soon when all truth will be manifest and all these corrupt
Churches will be swept off the earth with their cruel doctrines and
their caricatures of God.”
“Why, Jock, you are becoming quite a heretic!”
“Love, Uncle! Love! That is all that counts. What matter what you
believe if you are sweet and kind and unselfish as the Christ was of
old?”
“Have you seen Christ?” asked someone.
“Not yet. Perhaps the time may come.”
“Is He not in Heaven, then?”
“There are many heavens. I am in a very humble one. But it is glorious,
all the same.”
Enid had thrust her head forward during this dialogue. Her eyes had got
used to the light and she could see more clearly than before. The man
who stood within a few feet of her was not human. Of that she had no
doubt whatever, and yet the points were very subtle. Something in his
strange, yellow-white colouring as contrasted with the faces of her
neighbours. Something, also, in the curious stiffness of his carriage,
as of a man in very rigid stays.
“Now, Jock,” said Mailey, “give an address to the company. Tell them a
few words about your life.”
The figure hung his head, exactly as a shy youth would do in life.
“Oh, Uncle, I can’t.”
“Come, Jock, we love to listen to you.”
“Teach the folk what death is,” the figure began. “God wants them to
know. That is why He lets us come back. It is nothing. You are no more
changed than if you went into the next room. You can’t believe you are
dead. I didn’t. It was only when I saw old Sam that I knew, for I was
certain that he was dead, anyhow. Then I came back to mother. And”--his
voice broke--“she would not receive me.”
“Never mind, dear old Jock,” said Mailey. “She will learn wisdom.”
“Teach them the truth! Teach it to them! Oh, it is so much more
important than all the things men talk about. If papers for one week
gave as much attention to psychic things as they do to football, it
would be known to all. It is ignorance which stands----”
The observers were conscious of a sort of flash towards the cabinet, but
the youth had disappeared.
“Power run down,” said Mailey. “Poor lad, he held on to the last. He
always did. That was how he died.”
There was a long pause. The gramophone started again. Then there was a
movement of the curtains. Something was emerging. Mrs. Linden sprang up
and waved the figure back. The medium for the first time stirred in his
chair and groaned.
“What is the matter, Mrs. Linden?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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