The Fortuneteller
5

And then to Tom's horror, the old man, the army officer from this vision of the future, turned slowly toward him and, impossibly, was staring at him, seeing him. And in his eyes there was the same fire like live coals burning into Tom's mind.

Tom dropped the hand and there in the chair was the child staring at him, staring at him, and the eyes! Oh God--the eyes were the same. This thing in the guise of a human child--this must be the monster, the evil, the cause of the holocaust. Satan himself.

Kill it! Tom's hands were around the monster's throat, squeezing.

"What're you crazy!" the mother screamed, and her hands tore at him. He let go. The boy was unconscious but still breathed.

Even as the child lay blue and limp in the chair, he knew he could not kill the thing he saw. The orange glow had fled and now raged in the mother's screaming face. He stumbled backward from nails that tore at him, fists that beat at him, and from those eyes that flamed like the nightmare vision.

Never turning from the eyes, he groped behind him for the door, his shirt streaming in tatters and his blood welling in long furrows on his arms, his face.

"Stop him!" the mother shrieked to the street. "He tried to kill my kid!"

People stopped to look. Someone said, "Hey!" and grabbed at him. Heads popped out of upstairs windows to see what the commotion was.

"He tried to murder my kid! Don't let him get away!" the woman howled.

He turned. There was nowhere to run. Hands lunged for him and in the faces that belonged to the hands were eyes of the same cold fire. It was there in Mrs. Del Vecchio's eyes as she stood by the Pizzeria door. It was there in Marita Gomez's eyes across the street, whose hands went to her head as she cried, "Aiy! I rented my room to a murderer!"

"Cretins!" he yelled. "Morons! I did it for you! To save you!"

The eyes of blue and orange fire that were the witness and the cause and the mirror of the destruction of the world were there in the faces of the cops who clamped his hands behind him and began dragging him away.

As he passed a large plate glass window, he happened to glance in and there--oh, there--in the reflection were two figures dragging a third between them down the street. And in all three faces pinpoints of fire burned outward at him where eyes should have been.

-END-