Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
Not until then did he feel the mystic's firmly gentle hands on his
shoulders, urging him down, and know that he was not actually dying.
He lay back for a moment, gasping great gulps of welcome air into his
lungs.
"I think you will be all right now," Lima said.
"You were right when you said the experience would not be pleasant,"
Bennett said, still battling for breath. "I hope the results will be
worth it."
"I believe you will find that they are," Lima told him reassuringly.
"Also, it can be of assistance to you in still another way. The
sequence your dream followed--being a natural, perhaps even a
probable, aftermath of your past decisions and movements--could
actually happen. Therefore it would be wise to avoid such decisions
in real life."
* * * * *
At the end of two weeks, Bennett had collected all the information he
needed on Tournay's illegal activities. The investigator he hired was
very thorough, and unearthed several other incriminating schemes in
Tournay's past. With the evidence he had on hand, Bennett was certain
that Tournay would be convicted in any court.
This time he intended to evade the fate he had suffered in the dream
by acting differently. He hired a shrewd lawyer--the best
obtainable--had him draw up the evidence in legal form, and presented
it to the district attorney, with the demand for Tournay's immediate
arrest. He knew that immediate action would be his best protection.
That evening, when he left his office building, he felt the peace of a
man whose task has been well done.
It took almost a full second before the sight of the long gray car
jerked his thoughts from their pleasant introspection and back to
dread reality. Tournay's black-browed face leered at him as it had in
the dream and he felt his body tense as it waited for the pistol slugs
to strike.
His mind scurried in its trap within his head and, strangely, it
turned to the mystic for help.
"Lima!" he called desperately.
* * * * *
Again Bennett felt himself struggling with that awful exertion to drag
his body from the couch on which it lay.
"It's all over now," he heard Lima say.
He sat up. "What happened?"
"This will be hard to believe," Lima said, "and I will not try to
prove it to you, but it is true. The mind has many powers which cannot
even be imagined by anyone who has not lived with those powers as I
have. When you called me, your mind attuned itself with mine, and its
need and its demand were so powerful that together we turned time
backward. You are now back in my dressing room, and it is the exact
time at which you originally came out of your dream."
"That's impossible!" Bennett protested.
"Nevertheless, it happened. I only ask you to keep in mind one thing.
Someday, when your mind has been made more facile, you will understand
how I am able to do this. It will even appear logical to you. Now,
however, the only thing I can tell you is _believe it_!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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