They follow him around the property as he dowses it, using an L-shaped rod made of metal, keeping up a running commentary as he walks.
“Geologists can only hope to strike a water table at approximate depths,” he says. “Dowsers will tell you exactly where to drill and exactly how deep, tell you the quality and amount of the water you’ll find. They call it water-witching, sure enough, but it’s not witchcraft, it’s more exact.”
Did they know that, in the winter, woodpeckers “dowse” in the tree trunks for frozen worms? “Never miss either,” Whitman says.
Did they know that donkeys are so good at finding water that, in Mexico, dowsers are called ‘burros’?
Did they know that a statue of a Chinese emperor made in 2200 B.C. shows him dowsing? That the Kabbalists had instructions for dowsing in 1275 A.D.?
And consider the Bible. “Says ‘And Moses smote the rock with his rod and water came forth abundantly’. Dowsing, friends.”
People think that dowsing is only for water, he tells them. “Wrong. Use it to find minerals, ores, oils, cables, wires, pipes, sunken ships, crashed planes, buried treasure, lost objects, anything.”
The standard approach to finding water says that water sources depend on rain. “What we look for is what we call ‘primary’ water,” says Whitman. “Permanent, in underground veins, not depending on rain. I find you water, it won’t go dry, I can promise you that.”
If Robert’s interested, there’s going to be a Dowsercon in a week in the adjoining county. “Mighty interesting,” he says. “You’d like it. Lots of good material.”
He stops as the L-rod dips down. “Here she be,” he says. “You won’t have water pressure troubles now. You may blow out your pipes the pressure’s going to rise so much.”
He points at Robert. “And don’t forget to move your bed,” he says.
Robert drives Ann home. She is feeling better now. She will “play the game” with her mother, keep her insights to herself and Robert will help her to develop them as time goes by if she wants it.
They embrace and he kisses her goodbye.
He goes home and starts working on his article about psi.
To his astonishment, water is struck exactly where the dowser told him to drill, at the exact depth, the pressure almost exactly what Whitman said it would be.
The little man is not surprised. “Told you it would be there,” he tells Robert. “Moved your bed yet?”
Robert says he hasn’t. It’s a water bed and kind of heavy.
“Water bed?” says Whitman. “Even worse. You better move it.”
He tells—and we see dramatized—a true story about a Vermont family doctor, Herbert Douglas, M.D.
“Dowser told him about ‘vile’ water or ‘black streams’ underneath the ground which can trigger off arthritis and other ailments.
“Dr. Douglas, he was dubious. Until he learned to dowse himself.”
We see Douglas checking, with a split-fork twig, around the beds, chairs and couches of arthritic patients. To his amazement, fifty-five consecutive cases, without a single exception, he finds that the twig reacts to intersections of underground veins of water.
“Over a period of time,” says Whitman’s voice over the dramatization, “twenty-five of those people agreed to move to a different place to sleep.
“All twenty-five improved substantially or were completely free of pain,” he finishes.
That day, Robert takes the time to drain his water bed, move it across the room and re-fill it.
He can scarcely believe it when, in the morning, he wakes up without an aching back.
“Why not?” asks Whitman on the telephone. “I told you you would, didn’t I?”
Robert telephones Peter and convinces him he has to go to the Dowsercon with him.
North Africa, 1943. Retreating German troops have blown up all the water wells and General Patton is saying, “The only thing that can defeat us in Africa is lack of water!”
CAPTAIN RALPH HARRIS, A LANKY OFFICER WITH A Virginia twang in his voice, tries to get in to see Patton. He is turned back until Patton hears him saying loudly, “Dammit, we need water here! I can get you water!”
He is taken to see the General and tells him that, if he can get hold of a forked willow stick, he can find enough water for 600,000 men.
Patton stares at him, then growls, “I’ll fly you in a whole damn tree!”
He does and Harris cuts himself a divining rod. Then he and a highly skeptical geologist Colonel drive out into the desert in a jeep.
“In North Africa water runs in veins,” he explains to the Colonel. “Northwest to southeast.”
The Colonel grunts, a disbeliever.
Harris asks him to stop the jeep. He gets out and walks across the sand, the forked twig held in front of him. Groaning softly in disgust, the Colonel drives after him.
Nothing happens for a while. Then the twig bends down. “Oh, yes,” says Harris. “Here we go.”
Right in the middle of the sand, much to the Colonel’s disgust, a well is drilled. “All we’ll find is more sand,” he predicts.
Instead, a well comes in, bringing up two thousand gallons of water a minute!
Patton, hearing of this, gives Harris a hug. “Now there’s no way I can lose this war!” he cries.
CUT TO Dowsercon, the speaker finishing. “Fourteen wells were brought in by Captain Harris. The next time he saw General Patton was in Sicily and the General, seeing him, said, “Here’s my water captain!”
Another man gets up to speak.
“The great American naturalist Loren Eisley said of water,” he begins, ‘“its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future, it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water’.”
CAMERA MOVES IN ON Robert and Peter in the audience, CLOSING ON Robert as the man continues.
“From earliest times, man has built his most sacred places where water appears,” he says. “Why is this so? Stonehenge and Avebury, for instance, show patterns of underground water. Similar patterns are said by dowsers to exist beneath all ancient religious sites.”
CLOSER TO Robert.
“William Lewis, the Welsh dowser, made a study of the way in which single, giant stones in these ancient sites are affected by the water beneath them,” says the man.
“He detected an energy, partially magnetic in nature, that emerges in spiral form from the stones which seem to be placed deliberately to act as amplifiers for an earth force that waxes and wanes with the lunar cycle.”
Closer to Robert.
“These sites were apparently chosen because this earth force was felt to be most powerful there,” says the man. “According to tradition, at certain times a vital life stream was re-generated there, creating a connection between mankind and some kind of cosmic force the nature of which we no longer seem to comprehend.”
E.C.U. of Robert. He is sitting in the audience. But he is gone, watching something very strange.
A vision.
Shafts of light piercing downward through the clouds, meeting shafts of energy shooting up from the earth, the meeting of the shafts creating a dazzling spectacle of light.
CAMERA ZOOMS IN on the blinding light and we see what look like jewel-bright globules appearing from nothing, spilling down across the earth.
Robert blinks. He is back. With no idea whatever what he has just observed. Still, he is closer now.
To his coming destiny.
Peter stops by the house and, to Robert’s startlement, gives him an enthusiastic bear hug. “You did it!” he cries.
Did what? asks Robert.
Hasn’t he read the paper? Peter asks. Robert says he hasn’t and Peter takes it from his pocket.
The story is on page three. Scotty Winston has been arrested on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He has confessed to having a young show girl brought to his Tahoe house while his wife was gone and giving
the girl amyl nitrate “poppers” to arouse her, not knowing that she had a heart condition. When the girl suffered cardiac arrest while taking a shower and died, Winston had panicked and called a “friend” (who he refuses to identify) to “dispose” of the body.
Robert is impressed by the story but still confused. “I did very little,” he says. Why the hug?
Because, my dear friend, Peter tells him, Elaine Winston’s father has contributed five hundred thousand dollars to ESPA in payment for services rendered.
Robert is stunned. “Half a million dollars?”
Peter nods delightedly. With a small part of which Peter and Teddie (and Robert if he’ll go) are being sent to Russia! The Russians have heard about Teddie and asked to observe him.
“What an opportunity!” Peter exults. “No one’s been there for years!”
Not only that, he continues, they are also going to spend some time in England at a “real-live, purebred” haunted house!—Harrowgate, a “fresh” study, never before investigated. “I was desolate about missing the Tahoe experience,” Peter says. “So you can imagine my delight at this!”
Robert suggests that a generous sum of money be sent to Rosalyn Hutchinson since she is more responsible than him for information gotten about the Tahoe house; and she can use it.
Peter nods. “Splendid thought,” he says. “I’ll talk to Easton right off.” He looks at Robert. “You’ll go with us, of course.”
Robert isn’t sure. It sounds exciting certainly. Still, something has been happening inside him lately and he has a feeling that going might sidetrack him from that “something”.
His human side wins out. Whatever else is involved, it will be a legitimate opportunity to see Cathy again. That he can’t resist.
“Sure I’ll go,” he says.
“Wuintoquadagintillion huzzahs!” cries Peter.
The number one followed by one hundred and thirty eight zeros, he explains with a chuckle. “Even larger than a googol.”
“I take it, then, you are enthused,” says Robert, repressing a smile.
Peter whips off his hat and a yowl and hurls it as high as he can, then begins to do an elephantine Irish jig, providing his own musical accompaniment.
SIX
February 20th. A limo stops at Robert’s house to pick him up, Peter and Carol already inside. She seems animated for the first time since Robert met her. She is going to her beloved England again, her family and friends. Her cheeks seem to flow with health.
The limo takes them into the city to pick up Teddie. Robert runs upstairs to get him. An awkward, embarrassing scene, Carla morose and bitchy. “You could have said you wouldn’t go unless they paid my way as well,” she says through clenched teeth.
Teddie tries to downgrade the length and interest of the trip but Carla isn’t buying. She refuses to kiss him goodbye, storming into the bathroom and slamming the door.
“Hail and farewell to the conquering hero,” Teddie mutters. Robert doesn’t know what to say.
Conversation in the car is desultory. Seeing how gloomy Teddie looks, Peter tries to cheer him up with praise. If Teddie’s distance perception results had not been so phenomenal, they would never have gotten visas into Russia for a trip of this kind.
“They probably plan to convert me into a Bolshevik,” Teddie growls.
They reach the airport and board the flight for London, Peter sitting with Carol, Robert with Teddie.
En route, Robert takes advantage of Teddie’s captive presence to try understanding his own psychic emergence.
He tells Teddie about his out-of-the-body experience in San Francisco. Has Teddie ever had a similar occurrence? Teddie shakes his head. Unless, he says, it is assumed that all his distance perceptions are a result of long-range OOBE’s; not an unlikely assumption.
Robert nods. “But never an actual… floating around by the ceiling, seeing your body below on the bed.”
“No, thank God,” says Teddie. “It would give me vertigo.”
Robert then tells Teddie what happened to him at the Hotel Fremont, at the Tahoe house and at the Dowsercon. Has the older man ever had any experiences like that?
Teddie’s laugh is more a grunt. “You are turning into a regular three-ring ESP circus,” he says.
Robert nods, his smile a little grim. “Seems like it,” he agrees.
“No, I never had anything like that happen to me,” Teddie tells him. “As for that last thing, it sounds like something you would see in the Hayden Planetarium, not in your head.”
Robert sighs, agreeing again. It doesn’t look as though Teddie is going to be much help at all.
“Have you done anything about that house in Brooklyn?” Teddie asks him.
“No.” Robert shakes his head. “I don’t know what to do about it. After what you told me.” He tries to make an amused sound, only half succeeding. “I’m not exactly eager to try and get in. I probably couldn’t anyways. Who knows who owns the place?”
He starts to talk about Ann. Teddie must have had experiences with ESP when he was young. Any suggestions as to how he might assist Ann?
Teddie shakes his head. “You are talking to the wrong man,” he says. “If she were my child, I would beat her with a stick until it went away.”
“Why do you say that?” Robert asks.
At first, it doesn’t seem as though Teddie plans to answer. Then he says. “I hate to think of any young person suffering with ESP.”
Robert waits, presuming Teddie will continue.
He does. “I was ‘infected’ with it when I was seventeen,” he says. “An accident.”
He emits a barking laugh. “An accident, my backside. A damn guard threw me against a brick wall and I hit it head first. When I recovered I was psychic. Wonderful way to acquire ESP. Highly recommended by the folks at Good Housekeeping.”
“Where was this, Teddie?” Robert asks quietly.
“Dachau, where else?” Teddie answers.
“Oh, my God,” says Robert.
“He was not there,” Teddie says. “Not that I noticed anyways.”
He moves his hand in the air as though dismissing the subject. “I cannot re-live those days,” he says.
Robert puts his hand on Teddie’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Teddie makes a face. “I promise not to depress you any longer,” he says. “I will now revert to my usual, light-hearted, jovial self.”
The stewardess brings drinks. “I thought you’d never get here,” Teddie tells her.
Hours later. Carol is asleep. Peter, still wide awake, trades places with Teddie (who wants to sleep) and sits beside Robert.
Some idle conversation leads to Robert telling Peter what he “saw” at the Dowsercon, how he can’t get the vision out of his mind despite its utter incomprehensibility.
“What does it signify to you?” asks Peter, intrigued.
“I don’t know,” Robert answers, smiling in confusion. “Sunlight coming down from the clouds, bolts or—lines of energy going up from the earth to meet them, making a light show?”
Peter ventures a guess. “Well, the search for energies that make the universe function and the methods we might use to control them has always been an underlying theme of science.”
Robert laughs softly. “I doubt if I saw all that while zonked out at the Dowsercon,” he says.
Peter chuckles. “Probably not.”
The subject is changed when Peter started to speak about Carol. She has really come out of a “profound sadness” for the first time since they went to the States. He is pleased to know that she is going to get a chance to break up their year in Connecticut with a visit home.
This leads to talk about Cathy and, to Robert’s surprise, Peter reveals that he is well aware of what transpired between them. Further, he says, there is no doubt in his mind that Cathy loves him.
“Why then?” Robert asks in distress.
“You have to understand her background,” Peter tells him. “Her family is an ir
on-bound entity from which one does not break free easily. Her brother is engaged to a young woman of whom ‘mama and papa’ approve, a young woman they arranged for him to meet.”
It is the same with Cathy. Her meeting with Harry was arranged by her parents and, like her brother, she is unable to break free of the “enchanted circle” of the family unit. Her parents approve of Harry, ergo she approves of him.
Not that there is anything wrong with Harry; he is a lovely man. But making any judgement regarding her feelings about him, Cathy’s encumbered by her family’s viewpoint. What happened between her and Robert could never have happened in England, for instance. She would never have allowed herself to be that free, so close to her family.
“Not that her parents are mean in any way either,” he continues, “They’re tremendously genial people. But they’re strong. Unified in character and expectation. For Cathy to have gone into parapsychology is a feat in itself—and you see how adamantly she refuses to consider any explanation for psi other than those which physics might incorporate.
“So understand,” he finishes, “loving you is not enough to break the shackles on her, shackles she has been consummately content to wear these many years.”
The conversation shifts as Peter speaks again of his excitement about going to Harrowgate.
“I can’t tell you how many years I’ve been dying to hear the whisperings and scratchings of a pure-bred haunted house,” he says. “The footsteps, raps and clickings, thumps and bumps, the slamming of doors, the falling crockery, the distant screams, the hollow church music and singing of monks, the wraiths of Renaissance ladies drifting down gloomy corridors.”
Robert chuckles. “Don’t tell me we’re going to see all those things in one house,” he says.
“Unhappily, no,” says Peter. “The effects are limited, I’m sure, though, I’ve been promised, rather spectacular. No phantom coaches though.” He’s off again. “No men in grey flitting past casement windows. No banshee shrieks, no red-eyed demons glaring out of mirrors.”
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