Shadows Out of Time

Kingsport Tea WILL MURRAY

I came to Kingsport for its tea. I had worked all over New England. Mine is a gypsy existence. One does not remain in one place for very long. And if one does not regularly improve his skills, one soon grows stale and unreceptive.

The late Colonial house stood at the crooked end of Nightjar Lane, its back to the pounding Atlantic, within sight of the obdurate hulk called Kingsport Head. Salt hung in the early Spring air like a cool astringent. The establishment was a decorous New England white, trimmed in stark black. White paint had stopped being a luxury a century before, but the older homes clung to this opaque sheen of wealth and propriety the way a naked corpse clings to the sere dignity of its burial shroud.

The shingle beside the door spelled it the old-fashioned way:

KING’S PORT TEA ROOM

The apostrophe had been dropped at the close of the Colonial period. The town name collapsed to a single word — after a brief period of unsatisfactory hyphenation — at the end of the 19th Century. I learned these trivial facts only later.

A doleful chime announced my arrival. I stepped into the house’s substantial confines, whose wainscoting was unexpectedly heavy, almost coarse. The hardwood flooring under my feet felt warpy but solid. It was as if I had stepped on the deck of an old Arkham merchantman in dire need of holystoning.

The tight-faced hostess bore a black leatherette menu.

“I called earlier,” I told her. “The name is Carl.”

“Take a seat, Carl,” she said, retreating with her unopened menu. “Miss Theresa will be with you presently.”

I took the table nearest the door. The reading area occupied what had been the connecting parlor and dining room of the old dwelling. A dozen round ebony tables filled the dual space, each emblazoned with a gilt sign of the Zodiac. The wallpaper was tan and gold. One had to look closely to notice the subtle Egyptian motif. Odd touch.

Miss Theresa slid into the chair across from me and smiled with vapid sincerity. Gray and sixtyish, she possessed the toothy demeanor of an old-time Yankee. I took her for a faded Leo.

“I’m Miss Theresa.” Her S’s whistled Yankee-style. “I understand you’d like to come to work for me.”

“I can read any deck,” I said firmly. “Also, crystal, flame, smoke, water, you name it.”

“That is all well and good, but do you do tea?”

“No. But I—”

“We’re very traditional here. Kingsport is an extremely conservative town and our clientele is a bit on the mature side. Most querents prefer tea to Tarot.”

“I’ve been reading cards for nearly 20 years,” I stated.

“Can you read palm?”

I nodded. “Intuitively. I never studied.”

“Good. If you can read the palm, you can learn tea leaves.

Are you willing?”

Keeping my face a mask, I appealed to her Leo Sun: “If that’s what it takes to work for the famous Theresa Terrill.”

She beamed. “Excellent. You can start instanter.” Theresa lifted her voice. “Dorinda. Two cups of the special blend, please.”

The tea came in white bone China cups, with a traditional pewter creamer. I drank mine straight, with just a touch of sugar. Theresa sipped hers clear and unsweetened with the watchful concentration of a cat lapping milk.

“I will read your leaves and you will read mine,” she announced at last.

I drained the last of my cup, leaving only the dark dregs. Taking the cup from my hands, she turned it around three times. Peering deep within, she began speaking in a dim, distant voice.

“I see you are not merely psychic, but clairvoyant.”

“True,” I admitted.

“Good. What happened when you were twenty-seven?”

“A lot of things.” She was good. I had buried that indiscretion after paying my debt to society.

One fading eyebrow crawled upward. “Do I see a quarrel with your last employer?”

I shrugged. “I was their top cartomancer. You know how it goes. Too many appointment readings came my way. Jealousy followed.”

“The Foxfield Tea Room has a surly reputation.”

She hit the nail on the head. I hadn’t mentioned my prior employer by name.

“‘The MacDonalds of fortune telling’, they called it,” I admitted. “Pull them in and shove them out. Popcorn astrology. Rainbow readings. Sunshine séances. The whole gamut of carnival-style fortune telling.”

Theresa’s tone grew firm. “We do not use that term here. You are a psychic reader. We stand for no gypsy stuff here. Nor do I allow death predictions. Prognostications of inheritance are allowed if they do not point to a specific death event. You may inform a client of infirmity or disease, but you are not under any circumstances to suggest specific medicines or treatment. Instead refer them to their personal physicians. Is that clear?”

“I understand.”

“And you must learn tea. Starting now.”

I took her cup. Upending it onto its saucer, I tapped the bottom three times, restored it to its proper perch and focused all my attention within. Some leaves had fallen loose into the saucer. The remainder huddled in moist blackish patches and canals inside the cup’s concave surface. Within I saw…mulch, compost, peat moss and unraked leaves. I had been so focused on blocking the old woman from seeing into the innermost recesses of my mind I had slipped into a Beta state. I shifted over to my right brain hemisphere and went into deep Alpha.

The tea leaves just lay there, mute. I could feel the flop sweat popping out of my brow. Tea had always baffled me. It was my psychic Achilles’ heel.

“It’s just a question of focus,” prompted Theresa. “Relax. A practiced psychic can read anything from the creases of the palm to the interlacing patterns of bare tree branches against the sky.”

A clump of wet tea leaves clinging to the side of the cup suddenly suggested a shape. Familiar, but elusive. My eyes scoured the room, came to rest on an old sea painting over the fireplace mantel. The rough resemblance of the tea leaves to the many-sailed craft depicted in sun-cracked oils was one of those synchronicities that make my business so interesting.

“Why am I getting a ship?” I asked.

Her smile was thin. “This establishment has its origins in the flourishing tea trade of the 1850s. The original owner was a tea merchant. His Clipper, Blue Moon, brought the first Kingsport tea from old Siam to Massachusetts. When the tea trade dwindled in importance, he converted his home into a modest inn. Later, it evolved into my little tea room. So you see,” she said, taking the cup from my hands, “we have quite a tradition to uphold.” She peered within. “Remember what I said: absolutely no death predictions. You have to curb that negativity. Where is the Scorpio in your chart?”

“Moon.”

Her left eyebrow arched. “Just moon?”

“And ascendant,” I reluctantly admitted.

Both brows shot upward. It was the first expression of real emotion to mark her puffy face. “You have come to the right place. Most of my readers are Piscean or Cancerian psychics. I need a Scorpionic reader. You will do nicely. Can you start now?”

“Yes.”

It was as simple as that. I filled out no application. No references or social security number were asked for. Not even my last name. Last names are jealously guarded in this business.

As she handed me over to the hostess, Miss Theresa fixed me with her brittle blue eyes and said, “I have a strong feeling you will be impressed before you are finished here.”

“I hope to be very impressed,” I countered gallantly.

“You will be impressed,” she repeated. The warmth went out of her tone like an abruptly-banked fire.

It was a slow afternoon. By the southern bay window, a bluehaired matron was having her palm read. Two teenage girls sat in a corner taking notes as a big albino Black ran cards on them.

Dorinda escorted me to the sunroom break area, wordlessly handing me a yellow pamphlet entitled Learn to Read Tea Leaves. I saw that Miss Theresa was the author. No surprise. It had a homemade look.

I had no time to read it. A minute later, the albino came in, followed by the woman who had been reading the old lady’s palm. He introduced himself as Thom, and I saw that he was not a true pink-eyed albino, but some kind of ethnic amalgam. The woman was a tight-lipped super-Virgo I took to have been married twice before and was on the prowl for Number Three. She called herself Starla.

“Swap readings?” Thom asked after guarded introductions had been made.

“Sure.”

Putting up my walls again, I went first. I read him divinationstyle, going through the seventy-eight cards in my Rohrig deck, and speaking to any card that spoke to me.

The first card gave me a solid hit. “You had a pet monkey when you were young.”

His face lit up. He spanked the card table with a big hammy hand. “A spider monkey! I can’t believe you got that!”

If I’ve heard that phrase once in my life, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Every psychic has.

Other trivia popped up. I kept it light. No need to dredge up old pain and buried traumas. Every psychic has a sad past. I saved the best for last.

“I am seeing a dream you had in the last, two, perhaps three days,” I began. “I am not seeing it clearly. A dark wind — a hurricane, or tornado. Much confusion, and fear.”

His meaty face quirked up in surprise. “You’re good. Three nights ago I had this dream. Man, it was weird. California was coming apart in an earthquake. The winds kicked up fierce as a hurricane. The skies were full of blood-red lightning. It felt so real I woke up with my heart pounding, my pajamas drenched.”

I nodded. “Did you tell anyone about this dream?” I asked.

“No.”

“So only God and you knew about this dream?”

“That’s right.”

I smiled a slow Scorpionic smile. “God and you, and now me.” I use that line a lot.

By the end of the reading, everyone had relaxed. I was accepted. I read Starla next. She was the house astrologer. It was a relationship reading, of course. I told her to be on the lookout for a Sagittarius man. I wasn’t surprised when she asked my sign after that. Knowing how Gemini energy sets Virgoan teeth on edge, I told her I was a Triple Gemini. That killed the predatory gleam in her eye. When Starla was called to the floor for a horoscope reading, she didn’t bother coming back to read me in return.

Business was slow until the dinner hour had passed. Soon, customers began trickling in. The hostess took their order on a yellow tablet, marked down the corresponding Zodiacal glyph, and handed the slip to an available reader. Most slips read “Tea.” “Tea-Astrology” combinations were common too. Traditional Tarot was not popular in arch-traditional Kingsport, Massachusetts. But there were a few. I took them all.

My first floor reading was routine. I could tell by looking at the tall brunette that she had come over an infidelity question. I didn’t need to read her cards to know her fears were justified, either.

I broke it to her gently. She took it well. Only one tear. The rest was therapy.

That first night, I relied on my cards and my natural psychic ability. When I took my first tea reading, I intended to use the leaves as props. At Capricorn, a woman in her fifties sat stonily, hardly saying a word as I intoned, “I feel you come to me with a deep concern over one issue.”

Tight-lipped, she nodded. The cagey type. Her demeanor said: Prove to me you’re psychic. Show me that you can read me.

Ignoring the leaves, I rested my eyes on her age-spotted wrist, and focused my mind. I got it instantly. A flash-insight, like a camera shutter clicking.

“There is diabetes in your family,” I said.

“There is,” she admitted.

“But you don’t have it.”

“No.”

“But you are at risk for the disease.”

She leaned forward, her voice softly urgent. “I know I am. What do I do?”

Not being a medical intuitive, I had no idea. People think just because you can pull information out of thin air, you can call up miracles, too. In desperation, my gaze went to the tea leaves. One shaggy clump reminded me of a swimmer. As the image formed, the tiny brown figure seemed to actually…move. It was uncanny. In the past, Tarot card images had mutated before my eyes, but this was different. The little pseudo-figure was actually swimming, in place.

“You need to swim,” I suggested.

“I’ve been told that,” she said. “It’s excellent exercise.”

“Swimming will keep you healthy.”

Her walls dropped. The rest of the reading was a breeze.

Reading after reading, the tea leaves showed me things I never dreamed possible outside of Tarot. Almost alive in their psychic animation, they did all the work for me. With each reading, I found my palms sweating with a growing excitement. I had never been so clairvoyant. I was something more. I was transpsychic. I got exact dates. I could hear the dead whisper in my ear. My confidence grew. Everything I had heard about Kingsport tea was true.

The floor shut down promptly at 9:30. I cashed in my slips, and when no one was looking, palmed a china cup whose leaves still clung to its interior.

That evening in my studio apartment, I brewed water and recycled the leaves. I drank down to the dregs, performed the ritual of the three turns, then looked deep into the cup. I was seeking the secret of Kingsport tea, whose occult powers I had been hearing of from other readers for so long that its promise had drawn me to this quaint coastal town like a dark Siren’s summoning.

I saw the ship again. A three-masted Clipper ship of olden days. It lay at the precise bottom of the cup, perfect as a cameo. As I turned the cup around, searching out associated images, the multiple sails seemed to crack and luff in a wind. Another clump of tea formed a shuddery full moon split by a wisp of cloud. The Blue Moon. I wondered: Could Kingsport tea be a century old? Could they have preserved sufficient quantities of the black stuff for so long that well into the 21st Century they were still drawing on that 19th Century Siamese store?

I was destined to find out. I could feel it in my bones. And deep in my marrow I felt an unaccustomed chill. Maybe it was that chill, or perhaps I so lusted for the secret of Kingsport tea that I wanted to be a part of it, and it a part of me. But I swallowed those bitter dregs whole.

That night, I dreamed of tea Clippers and dark, alien seas. And a blue moon filling with red blood. It dripped down in crimson lunar drops to stain mainsails and jennys, and coat the deck under my soles until my feet slipped as if on wet snow. I was trying to get off, but my feet kept slip-sliding out from under me. I remember screaming that it was my own blood seeping down with the gory moonlight.

The next day was dead. There were four readers on, every one of them itching for a reading slip. I played it casual. No point in getting competitive, especially with the women readers. In the matriarchal environment of a tea room, it could get nasty.

Thom gravitated toward me. He had that world-weary look that came from reading the same people in the same environment for far too long. I knew his kind well. “The Psychic Damned,” I called them.

“I stay out of the kitchen as much as possible,” he explained, sotto voce.

“I hear the same damn male-bashing complaints I was hearing fifteen years ago. Sometimes it drives me crazy.”

“I get Aztec stuff around you,” I said casually.

Thom perked up. “I’m a gumbo of White, Black and American Indian,” he admitted. “My Indian name is White Black Man, or Black White Man. I forget which. I don’t know about Aztec. They were mean mothers.” His muscular brow burrowed. “What a minute. I had an ancestor who was a Filipino Conquistador.”

“There’s your Aztec blood,” I said.

Thom showed me around the place. Most of the windows still had their original Sandwich glass. The doors had been replaced over the life of the house, but the Holy Lord hinges— so-called because they were cast to resemble the joined letters H and L, and crafted to dispel witches and other malefic entities — had been preserved. Thom was as proud of these details as if he owned the place. A sure sign of a lifer.

“See this counter?” Thom said, bringing a fist down on the heavy surface on which the tea was made. “Notice the slant?”

“The floor must be sinking,” I ventured.

“Built that way. This place is what they call a shipshape house. Everything slopes for drainage.” He turned over a cup of unfinished tea. Brown fluid ran down at a slope and into a little gunnel, where it emptied into a white plastic bucket. “Selfcleaning, 19th-century-style,” Thom remarked, grinning.

“The original house had a dock at the rear where the tea would come in,” he went on. “One night about 1867 the Blue Moon came in during a Nor’easter. Ran smack into the back, taking out the dock, splintering the entire house and everything else. They couldn’t rebuild the Clipper — the Arkham shipyards had stopped making merchantmen — so they salvaged what they could of house and ship and built this place.”

“You’re kidding me. This house used to be a ship?”

“This,” he said, gesturing around the cramped little plumcolored pantry with its heavy rough-hewn cupboards, “was the first ship to make the Kingsport-to-Siam run. She sailed down the coast, rounded Cape Horn, up the west coast of South America to San Franscico to lay in supplies, then straight on across the Pacific to the Gulf of Siam. Did it in sixty days flat.” He opened one age-discolored cupboard. On the inside surface, a chicken-track dance of initials were carved into the wood every whichway. “Some of these were made by Blue Moon sailors,” Thom explained. “After you’ve been here a year, you get to carve your own initials in here too. It’s tradition.”

I suppressed my smile. I had no such plans. “Where do they get their tea now?” I asked casually.

“Same place as always. Siam.”

“You mean Thailand. It hasn’t been Siam since I don’t know when.”

“Guess you’re right. Miss Theresa always calls it Siamese tea. Makes it sound more exotic, I suppose. Anyway, when the Blue Moon was cannibalized to build this place, old Captain Terrill retired from shipping. The day of the Clipper ship was over anyway. When they opened up the Suez Canal, Clipper speed became obsolete. Steamships and square-riggers replaced them all. But no ship ever clipped so much as a day off the Blue Moon’s top run. That’s why they called them Clippers. They clipped off the nautical miles. Liverpool to New York was fifteen days. Hong Kong to San Francisco was thirty-three.”

I interrupted: “Where do they keep the tea now?”

“Basement. Only Miss Theresa and me are allowed down there.”

He opened a lower cupboard, and pulled out a small teakwood coffin of Far Eastern design. “I’m supposed to bring up a day’s supply at a time, no more.” He shoved the box back, closing the door. “She guards that damn tea like it was gold.”

“It is gold…for her.”

Thom laughed. “You got that right.”

As he was showing me around, I asked, “How do they get their tea these days?”

“Search me. By air, I guess. But you’re asking the wrong person. I’m a psychic, not a shipping clerk. I only know what I’ve soaked up from working here, and I don’t ask questions I don’t need to know the answers to. Heard a lot of this from Miss Theresa years ago. But as she’s getting along in years, she keeps upstairs a lot. Listens in on the readings over hidden mikes sometimes.”

“Nosy type?”

“I think they call it quality control now.”

I grunted. It was enough to know I’d have to watch my mouth as well as my mind. But I’d guessed as much. Once you get accustomed to knowing other people’s secrets, it becomes an addiction.

“You know,” Thom said suddenly, “this place is haunted.”

I countered, “What tea room worth its salt isn’t?”

“We have the usual ghosts — some of them readers who don’t know they’re dead — but that’s not what I meant.” His voice grew low and gravelly.

I leaned in close.

“One night I was cleaning up after the night crew had gone home and I looked out the window. I saw a ship — a tea Clipper. It was the old Blue Moon.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Thom shook his head solemnly. He pointed to one of the bay windows that overlooked the ocean. “It lay right out that window. If you look closely, you can make out the rotting piles of the old Tea Room dock.”

I drifted over to the window. The water was lapping against a double row of broken black pilings. I could also see that the window reflected the painting of the Blue Moon over the mantel. In the right light, at a certain angle, the painting could reflect in the old glass. So much for ghost ships, I thought. But Thom didn’t need to know that. Psychics love our superstitions.

I did two readings that day, both routine. The tips were good. They doubled my money. I went home thinking I had to get into that basement. But I needed to bide my time, too. The door to opportunity opens widest when it opens of its own accord.

By varying my shifts, I got to know the day and night crews. They were not much different than others I had worked with over the last twenty-odd years. Their stories sounded all the same. Pain makes people psychic, and Theresa Terrill’s Tea Room was awash with personal horror stories guaranteed to open your third eye — or close your earthly eyes in death. These people were survivors. I got to know every one. But I needed their trust. So I awaited the perfect opportunity.

It came just after Labor Day.

I had a bad feeling the moment I laid eyes on the man. He was Asian. Short. Brutish. There was an aura of contained violence about him, like a snake tightly coiled to strike.

“Who wants him?” Dorinda asked, dangling a slip between two bloodless fingers.

Thom almost shuddered. “Not me.”

“I read him last month.”

Starla sniffed, “Let Carl have him.”

I snapped up the slip.

The moment I sat down with him, I knew he was a dead man. I think he knew it, too. I got violence and drugs around him. Not that he used them. He dealt in them. He eyed me in a challenging way. Death was in his cold, otherwise-unreadable eyes.

I decided to go for broke.

“There is an old saying,” I began. “Perhaps you have heard it: ‘A shred of time is worth a bar of gold.’”

His hematite orbs gleamed.

“Gold you have in plenty,” I went on. “Time you have little. It is running out. You have a grave choice before you. To flee or to stay. To meet your fate, or to escape your fate.”

His voice came out of his slack mouth in thick whispers. “I cannot alter my destiny. I am tied in with family. They are my blood, and I am theirs. If I run, I die.”

“Blood relatives in this life may be blood enemies in the next,” I countered. “Why not recognize them for what they are in this, and preserve your life so that in the next, Karma is reversed?”

His thin lips became a thoughtful seal. I hammered the point home from every angle I could intuit, but I saved the best for last. I showed him what lay at the bottom of his cup.

The skull inside was a crude black curse. The client’s eyes opened, narrowed, then sank to veiled slits. A hundred dollar bill fluttered to the table top as he slipped out.

“I don’t think he’ll be coming back,” I told the others.

And he never did. That made me a hero, even though I had violated the cardinal law of psychic reading. Karma is an immutable force in the universe, but I believe in observable justice. Sometimes you have to be the instrument of such justice in this life.

Week by week, month by month, I insinuated myself into the warp and woof of the tea room. And kept a sympathetic ear open for gossip — which is just a vulgar word for information.

The day-to-day running of the tea room was left to the hostess, Dorinda — a burnt-out retired reader the owner had kept on out of charity. She was useless as an information source, refusing all offers of a free reading. I concentrated on cultivating Thom, who every morning took the empty teak coffin from the plum pantry into the padlocked cellar, brought it back brimming with loose dry tea, and who every night returned what remained to the basement store.

“I notice the special blend is tasting kind of stale lately,” I said one Autumn afternoon as we were cooling our heels in the north sunroom. The floor was empty. It was eighty-six degrees. The tourists were taking in a last look at Martin’s Beach, or if they could afford it, busy shopping down on Cape Cod.

Thom stretched his long legs out and said, “Don’t let it worry you. It gets thin about this time of year. But Miss T. never lets the store run out.” He cocked an eye toward an astrological calendar on the wall. “December coming up soon enough. New tea always comes in on the second new moon every December. Has since 1853.”

“Good,” I said.

“We shut down the whole month of December. Anybody tell you that?”

“No.” But it made sense. December is dead wherever you read. Caught up in Christmas shopping, few splurge on psychic readings.

Thom looked at me suddenly. “You planning a sea cruise?”

I shook my head. “I’m an earth sign. I hate the water.”

“Earth sign? Thought you were a Gemini.”

“That was for Starla’s benefit. She’s a Virgo. Couldn’t have her knowing I’m a Taurus. She’d be on me like paint on plaster.”

Thom laughed good-naturedly. “My moon’s in Taurus. Rising too. It mellows out all my dark, Scorpionic tendencies.”

I started. I’m a Sun Taurus. On the night I was born, a full Scorpio Moon was rising in concert with the constellation of Scorpio. Thom was my natal opposite. But I didn’t tell him that. I learned a long time ago never to give out my astrological information. Knowledge is power, and when you understand a person astrologically, you know them better than they know themselves. Without realizing it, Thom had handed me the key to controlling him. As a Double Taurus, he’d fallen into a classic Taurean rut. Only one thing would prod him out of it: money.

Lots of it.

I immediately went to work on him.

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?”

“Too long,” he admitted.

“I’m getting you need a change of pace.”

His shoulders rolled. “Do I ever! But I can’t make this kind of money reading Tarot in some chintzy storefront, or out of my apartment. Tea is my lifeline.” He lifted a cup of the stuff in salute. “Good old Kingsport Tea.”

I shuffled my Rohrig deck, made a fan as perfect as if created by Mother Nature, and said, “Pull three on whether or not you need a change of pace.”

Thom drew three cards into a neat pile and handed them to me. I laid them out in a spread. The Chariot came up, followed by the Death card, and lastly the Sun.

Thom squinted at the array of vivid images. “I don’t read that deck. What are they saying?”

The cards were warning, Don’t Trust Anything You Hear. But I slanted the reading for my own purposes.

“They say you need to move on, or you’ll die,” I said solemnly.

Thom sat up in his chair. “Die?”

“The Death card might mean either way,” I amended.

Thom grew reflective. “I have been giving shaky readings lately. Last weekend I was just throwing down cards. Wasn’t getting hardly any information at all. And you know how I hate doing mechanical reads. I don’t trust them.”

I nodded. I had the same problem, too. But the moon was in Aries then. I always read badly under an Aries Moon. Given our similar astrological energies, Thom would, too. But I kept that insight to myself.

“The Sun came up last,” Thom mused. “That means I’ll pull out of it, won’t I?”

I made my face frown a negative. “I’m getting you need to go live in a sunshine state. Florida. Arizona. California, maybe.”

“They say there’s a lot of positive energy around Sedona,” he mused. “Always wanted to check it out for myself. I think I have some Navajo blood. I’d fit right in.”

I went for his soft Taurus underbelly. “I hear out in California, a thirty-minute reading goes for two bills. Some psychics set up shop on the beach. Think of it: you hang around all day, soak up the rays, watch the bikinis, knock out two-three easy readings and you’ve pulled down a day’s pay without squeezing your brain into dry sponge.”

Various thoughts crawled across Thom’s pale bulldog features. Anyone could have read them.

I drove the point home. “Maybe you ought to think about wintering out there. Get in touch with your native American roots, then move on to Venice Beach, or Malibu. If you like it, stay. If you don’t, come back. You hate winter, don’t you?”

“I drag myself from November through March,” Thom said, staring at the cards. I had picked up Seasonal Affective Disorder around him once before. He seemed unaware he had the problem.

I let the reading hang in the air while Thom absorbed it.

Behavioral experts claim the public is gullible. That’s one reason why they consult psychics. But no one has greater faith in psychic prevision than the professional reader. We know what it’s like to plug into a higher source of information. We know how it feels to see a clairvoyant image hang in the air before our mind’s eye. We understand the subtle whisper of the clairaudient warning. And we can chart how often we see true and clear, because our clients come back to validate our predictions for us. When you total up the hits and misses, we have a better track record than the meteorologists. Thom was digesting my suggestion. As a Scorpio-Taurus, he was stuck in a happy rut that his Scorpionic tendencies would eventually rebel against, I knew. I was merely helping the process along.

Over the next month, I dropped psychic hints.

“I’m getting Sedona around you,” I would say. Or: “I’ll bet they don’t rake leaves in the high desert, or shovel snow in Malibu.”

Thom would laugh dismissively. But I began to catch him looking at travel brochures.

One October day, he burst in to announce, “I’m flying out of here next week. Boston to Phoenix, and on to Sedona. No winter blues for me this year.”

It was as easy as that.

They gave Thom a going-away party. Everyone treated him to a bon voyage reading. His chart was drawn up. All the auspices were favorable. A good time was had by all.

After the tea room shuttered for the night, Thom and I hung around to clean up. For the last time, he read me:

“I’m getting a sea cruise.”

I made a face. “Not a chance in Hades. Can’t sail and I don’t swim.”

Thom gave out a great belly laugh. “Typical Taurus. But I’m just telling you what I see.”

“I’ll send you a validation postcard if it ever happens,” I promised. “Which it won’t.”

“Deal.” We shook hands.

Before Thom left, Miss Theresa put in an appearance. Thom surrendered his key ring with quiet ceremony. You would think he was handing over the keys to Fort Knox.

I was not surprised when Theresa quietly offered them to me, saying, “Why don’t you lock up for the night, Carl? It will be your responsibility from now on.”

“Thank you,” I said, keeping my walls up. As the only male reader left, I was the logical one to get the scut work. I made it sound like an honor. Her Leo ego practically purred.

The taxi took Thom away. Miss Theresa retired upstairs. The day’s tea had been stowed in the cellar long before, so I pretended to lock up, walked down the street and disappeared into the chill October night.

At seven past Midnight, I slipped back, reentered and stood in the middle of the darkened tea room floor. I sensed various presences. It wasn’t that the ghosts only come out at night, but their more subtle energies are not easily detected amid the buzz and bustle of the day. I tuned them out. They did not matter to me. Most were long-dead readers, anyway. I would not end up like them — so stuck to a life and locality that even in death they could not move on into the Light.

Once my eyes were accustomed to the webby gloom, I sought the cellar entry door with its ebony-painted Holy Lord hinges. It was padlocked, but the key ring offered up an old brass skeleton key that fit. The ponderous padlock broke apart with a rattling clatter.

Quietly, I descended. Easing shut the door behind me, I flicked on a pencil flashlight, and moved down the tread-worn steps. The air down here smelt of salt and spray, as if the fishy Atlantic was slowly seeping in through the foundation stones. Or possibly the rafters were still soaked in the brine that had swallowed the wreck of the old Blue Moon.

The tea stood openly in stacked oaken chests, high up on rough pine pallets above the flood line. Old chests, bound in salt-rusted iron straps. Pirates surely buried their booty in such chests. The chests were padlocked, too. I chose one, attempted to insert various keys to it. None fit. From a pocket, I drew a stainless steel pick. My talents are not merely limited to the psychic.

The lock surrendered after a long period of ratlike squeals and squeaks of metal. Carefully, I lifted the heavy iron-bound lid.

The tea lay wrapped in nautical oilskin. I undid the flaps, exposing heap upon heap of blackish Orange Pekoe cut leaves that make me think of rich tropical loam.

The smell was spicy, exotic, instantly intoxicating. Regulating my breathing, I slowed my brainwaves, easing down into an Alpha state, then doused the flash.

It was a hunch that made me kill the light. As I inhaled the aromatic scent, I touched the tea with trembling fingers, psychometrizing the treasure trove of slightly moist leaves. My eyes began to apprehend things in the dark. I saw a Clipper pull into a wild jungle port. Amber-brown Asiatic natives came to the crude dock bearing chest after chest of freshly harvested tea leaves. They made strange signs as they traded the chests for gold and silver. Other, more exotic objects were traded, too. I perceived a faceless ebony idol, and sensed part of its name — hotep. It meant nothing to me.

Then the Blue Moon cast off. I could see her clip off the miles back to America. I saw her tear into the teeth of gales and storms, as indomitable as a gleaming sword. My ears were assaulted by the tortured creaking of her stout timbers, the cracking of her stressed sails. High winds howled about my face.

The dirt floor beneath my feet turned hard and unstable, like a tossing ship’s deck. I felt transported, as if back to that hard era where seamen spent months of their lives husbanding strange cargoes and argosies across vast, unforgiving oceans. Hastily, I slammed down the lid to choke off those intoxicating fumes.

Whatever made Kingsport tea what it was, it could rob a man of all connection to earthly reality. And for that reason, I knew I had to find out where it came from. I had to go to the source. For with a reliable supply of Kingsport tea, I would become the most powerful psychic of modern times. No more thirty-dollar a half-hour readings for me, with two-thirds of the fee going to the house.

Exhaling in long gusts to clear the tang of tea from my lungs, I crept back to the first floor, restored all locks, and stole away— to sleep and dream of a future certain to be mine. A future built upon a mountain of magical tea.

Over the next few months, I got to know Miss Theresa well. I had become her good right hand. In time, she trusted me enough that I received the keys to the cellar tea store.

Cautiously, I brought up the subject of Kingsport tea.

“There is no tea like it on earth,” she confided one evening, warming to the subject. “The leaves are the highest grade. They are not the lesser leaves like Pekoe cut or Pekoe Souchong. There are no fannings in my tea. We get our store from the same plantation that my great-great-great grandfather Esau Terrill founded in ’53. It’s still there, unchanged and undisturbed by the dreary modern world. Every November the tea is harvested and set upon withering racks. And each December, a new store is laid in for the year to come. Tradition is so important here, you know.”

She drifted off into a reverie. In that unguarded moment, I shifted my consciousness over to my left temporal lobe, and listened psychically. Faintly, as if whispered into my brain by a soft-voiced ghost, I got one word: Siam.

And I knew she spoke the truth about where to find the timeless tea. Strange that I heard Siam, and not Thailand. I threw my qualms away. This was a breakthrough.

Miss Theresa shook off her memories. “I should do your chart, Mr. Shaner. I am an accomplished astrologer, as well as a card reader of the old school. I happen to have a Grand Trine in Fire. Did you know that?”

That made her a Sag Moon and Aries Rising, or the reverse, on top of that Leo Sun. Anyone with that much fire in her chart was someone you didn’t cross — or crossed very, very carefully, if you must.

“I would be honored,” I said gallantly.

She smiled toothily. “Give me your exact birth data.”

I hesitated. This was probably the most dangerous moment since I had come to Theresa Terrill’s Tea Room. But there was no time to think. I broke a rule and gave the old lioness my true birth data. Couldn’t chance her intuiting a lie, psychically or astrologically. If I so much as shaved my birth hour to a.m. instead of p.m., that would change the Rising Sign and all of the houses. She’d know when she drew up the chart that I was no Gemini rising, even if I hadn’t already spilled those beans at our first meeting. I only hoped she didn’t detect my intentions via my planetary picture. For there is an old astrological saying: “Scorpio is the thief.”

I jumped back to the subject. “How did trade with Siam start?”

Theresa folded the paper slip on which she had written my birth particulars. “During the reign of King Mongkut, the most honorable and long-lived Siamese ruler in history. Mongkut had been a Buddhist monk for nearly 30 years before he was elevated to the Siamese throne. Siam in those days was the only Asian power to resist colonial rule.” Touching my wrist, she lowered her voice. “It was said he dabbled in forbidden arts and practices. The tea trade made him rich, and world-famous, for Siam was not, and is not today, a tea-producing nation. But the tea that did grow in the inaccessible regions of the Khorat Plateau was potent in ways that transcended all other teas.”

“Never heard of Mongkut…”

“He was also known as Rama IV,” Miss Theresa purred. You would have thought she was related to the old potentate. “The monarch of The King and I was based upon his illustrious life,” she added.

It sounded like hyperbole, but my psychic guts were telling me it was the truth. That impressed me. I sensed that the Terrills owned King Mongkut back in those days. Nothing ever changes. Not politics or power. That’s why I figured on setting up shop in Washington DC when I scored what I wanted. My chart was presented to me on Halloween night. Miss Theresa analyzed it for me in the kitchen, after closing.

“You are ambitious,” she began. “Over-ambitious, actually, and need to curb that tendency, as you are inclined to overreach. I see great intelligence, but this is a difficult chart. You are used to it, but it would break a lesser man.”

“I consider myself strong,” I allowed.

“Scorpio Moon. Moon on the ascendant. Twelfth House Moon. Twelfth House Neptune. Pluto in Leo on the Midheaven. All powerful psychic indicators. You are in the correct profession.”

“I hope so.”

“I see an ocean voyage in your future, Mr. Shaner.”

I started slightly. Thom had seen that too. It wasn’t unusual for confirmatory information to surface astrologically after it had been picked up by other psychic means. In fact, it was more the rule than the exception.

“I have nothing planned,” I told her.

“I see you being impressed.”

“About what?”

“In reference to the ocean voyage,” she said thinly. “It is a long one. And quite challenging for you. Like nothing you have ever experienced.”

“Can you see where I’m going?”

“Asia. Have you ever desired to see the Orient?”

She was getting too close.

“Never. Furthest thing from my mind, in fact.”

She pursed her lips. I expected more, but she eased off into another subject. “Venus in Aries. You do not remain in love for very long, and I fear you may never marry.”

I let out my breath, realizing for the first time it was as pentup as if I were awaiting a judge’s verdict.

The reading told me little about myself that I didn’t already know. She wrapped it up by saying, “I see that you will remain in my employ for a very long time, and you will be a very agreeable servant of this enterprise.”

I smiled as sincerely as possible. That part was probably employer-employee encouragement, and not predictive. At least, I trusted not. The only way I would stay with Theresa Terrill’s Tea Room was if she bequeathed it to me. And I wasn’t getting that. I wasn’t getting that at all.

November was unusually brisk, business-wise. I found myself working six days a week. By this time, I had all but abandoned my cards. When I read clients, I read their tea leaves. And I read them superlatively. Some days it got so hectic, Miss Theresa would stir from her second-floor aerie and read clients as well. If required to read cards, she used ordinary playing cards. You have to be very good to do that. There’s not much help in a fifty-two-card Bicycle deck.

“Why are we so busy lately?” I asked Starla one day.

“Kingsport society knows we’re shut tight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. They’re getting their New Year’s readings early.”

“What does the crew do during December?” I wondered.

“I go to West Palm Beach. There’s a New Age bookshop down there where I do progressed charts. I make almost as much money in December as I do the rest of the year here.”

“There’s a lot of money down there,” I admitted. “Where does Miss Theresa winter?”

“I really don’t know.” Her voice turned tight and bloodless, like a constricted artery.

“I’m getting a weird vibe from you,” I prompted.

Starla hesitated. If she hadn’t been so fried from doing too many readings, she might not have given me anything. But her guard was down. “One year I came back from Florida a week early,” she said, her voice growing furtive and whispery. “I took a walk, thinking I’d drop in on Miss T.” She looked around.

“And?”

She whispered it: “The tea room wasn’t here.”

I looked at her. Starla had been a practicing astrologer so long she could tell a person’s sun sign at a glance. If you asked her the planetary positions on a given day, she invariably rattled them off from memory. Consequently, she walked around in a state of perpetual Alpha spaceyness. She had surrendered to the timeless flow in return for the powers granted. I didn’t know whether or not to believe her.

“What do you mean—‘wasn’t there?’” I asked.

“There was just a wet cellar hole. I thought Theresa’s had been blown out to sea in a storm, and I was out of a job. But a week later Miss T. called me in. When I showed up, this place was sitting right here, where it always was.”

“Maybe Miss Theresa went to Florida, and took her house with her,” I joked. It fell flat.

Starla’s voice was thin as glass now. “I saw what I saw,” she insisted. “I told no one.”

“Wouldn’t someone have noticed a missing house and reported it?”

“Down here in this lonely back end of Kingsport?” she countered. A shudder seized her.

Starla had a point. The tea room stood on what was once called Terrill’s Neck, an isolated finger of sand and eel grass sheltered from view of land. No other dwellings were built within sight. No one ventured down Nightjar Lane except to have their fortune told.

“Interesting yarn,” I said, mentally classifying it with Thom’s ghost Clipper. But I got one useful nugget out of it: Miss Terrill wintered outside of Kingsport. This would fit into my plans— how I did not yet know.

I started to see the old salt hanging around the tea room the week before Thanksgiving. I found him loitering in the cellar one night as I replaced the remainder of the day’s tea. He was dressed like an Innsmouth lobsterman, his muscle-knotted face resembling a raw steak garnished with cold clam-gray eyes.

“Who are you?” I blurted out.

“Mind yer business,” he growled. He was horsing the empty tea chests from their pallets to the old disused coal bin. I had the feeling he intended to pull them up the chute with the ropes that lay about the dirt floor in confused coils.

I rushed upstairs to report the apparition to Miss Theresa.

“That’s old Cap’n Terrill,” she said. “Leave him be, and he will return the favor.”

“Relative of yours?”

“Every Kingsport Terrill is related to my family, distantly or otherwise.” The silence that followed told me I was dismissed.

Business was brisk that day. I saw little of Cap’n Terrill, and thought no more of him.

I was reading at Libra when a light dusting of snow swirling outside the window caught my gaze. Two readings later, the dusting was a thick pall.

Dorinda grabbed me as I was collecting a five-dollar tip from a matron who came in needlessly worried about a neck tumor. I had pronounced it as nonmalignant.

“We’re closing early,” she undertoned. “Nor’easter coming. I’ve locked the front door. Your next reading is your last.”

I took the slip, thinking: I’ve been waiting for opportunity. Here it is knocking.

The reading was difficult. Excitement made my mind race, and I kept popping out of Alpha. The tea leaves did most of the work anyway. I felt like the prop, instead of vice versa. Such is the potency of Kingsport tea.

“I see a bird on wing,” I told the woman. “A flight to warmer climes, perhaps?”

“I always winter in the Caribbean,” she said. She had that sun-bleached blonde look so many upperclass Kingsport women had.

I warned of her spousal infidelities, but she brushed that concern away. Obviously she had married for money. She didn’t seem to have any vital issues, so I told her she would outlive her husband. That brought a bloodless smile to her lips. She tipped me a twenty, and hurried out the door into the teeth of a gathering gale of sleety snow.

Dorinda locked the door after her, and the tea room stood in silence. It was the end of the season. And it had come like a stealthy thief.

We gathered in the kitchen. Miss Theresa came bustling down, looking fretful and impatient.

“Normally it is my custom to treat my readers to a Thanksgiving dinner on the night before the holiday season starts,” she said. “But circumstances prohibit it this year. Let me just wish you all happy holidays, and we will all gather here again on the second of January.”

Readers began filing out to find their cars in the blow. The abruptness of it all was unsettling. Not many goodbyes were said.

I was putting on my topcoat when Miss Theresa accosted me.

“Mr. Shaner, I will have my keys.”

I gave them up without a quiver of regret.

“Now you must go,” she said, showing me to the door. “I must shutter the windows and be away before this thricedamned storm gathers its full strength.” Her voice had lost its thin Yankee gentility. She was all business now. The door cracked open, letting in a gust of bitter air and freezing particles.

“Be happy to help,” I offered.

“That is Cap’n Terrill’s duty,” she coldly returned.

“See you in the New Year, then,” I said, exiting. But she was already locking the door behind me.

I pushed out into the snow. The Nor’easter pushed back. Squinching my eyes shut and lowering my head, I tried to make headway, but the wind was too stiff. I wasn’t planning to go far, anyway. Creeping back, I found the cellar window that once doubled as a coal chute. It opened easily. I had unlatched it when I got the day’s tea that morning.

Feet first, I slid down the coal-dust-smeared chute and awaited nightfall. I was still without a plan. Perhaps I would accost the old woman, and pry from her the exact location of the family tea plantation in modern Thailand. Possibly a more elegant solution would present itself. It didn’t much matter. As long as I got what I wanted.

Darkness fell howling. I stood inured to it, immured in the ancient cellar like a man loitering in his own tomb. I rather enjoyed the delicious feeling of imperviousness to the roaring elements. It appealed to the same Scorpionic side of my personality that had compelled me to play among the headstones and tombs of the old Copp’s Hill Burying Ground as a child.

I let time pass. Examining the open chests, I found only a crumbly pound or two of Kingsport tea. It had long since lost its aromatic pungency. Yet even in its weakened state, it filled my head with strange fancies.

King Mongkut came to life in my mind’s eye. I saw him, shaven of skull and attired in saffron and maroon vestments, and standing before that basalt idol with the inexplicably Egyptian name, ceremonially pouring what appeared to be copper vats of rich red wine into a dark soil that would give back the nutrients added therein in the form of bushels of fresh green tea leaves. Normally, I do not smell things psychically, but I detected a metallic odor that was unmistakably blood. Intuitively, I knew it was human blood.

I shuddered in spite of myself. Blood sacrifice. That was what nourished the strange soil that gave up the dark leaves of Kingsport tea. No matter. It was the final product, not its manufacturing process, which concerned me. If I had to spill human blood to maintain my supply of tea, I would do so without conscience or compunction.

The thick boards above my head were creaking in the incessant wind buffeting the old home. The great timbers of the frame — the very timbers that gave shape and form to the hull of the long-lost Blue Moon—groaned like a stirring giant. But I felt no fear. For over a century, this place had survived gales and hurricanes without losing its structural integrity. Just hold together for another night, I beseeched whatever gods might be, and I will have what I most lust for.

Above my head, I detected footfalls. Time to act!

Climbing the stairs, I came to the entry door. It fell open at a touch. I eased it wider, hoping the Holy Lord hinges would not make a betraying creak. They obliged me.

Stepping out into darkness, I moved from pantry to kitchen, into the reading rooms. All was dark. The universe outside was a white howling madness.

And in the middle of the floor stood two facing figures: Miss Theresa and old Cap’n Terrill. They were deep in low, earnest conversation and took no notice of me.

Cap’n Terrill was saying: “We must sail now, mistress, lest the ship come apart in this blow.”

“Tradition demands we sail with the new moon, and return with the blue. I will not brook breaking with tradition, captain. Misfortune will result, according to the stars.”

“Curse yer stars!” The old salt flung his arms open, as if to encompass the entire environment. “Look about ye! She’s shaking and complaining. What if she’s carried out to sea in this state? What will ye do then, I ask?”

Miss Theresa started to object, but the old seaman cut her off.

“Damn yer eyes, woman! I built this ship long before you were born, and I’ll not stand by and watch her be destroyed all over again! You may be the owner, but I am captain. Before God and the Infernal One, my word is law and my will shall be done!”

The words lifted above the howl and whine of contending winds. They registered on my ears, but my brain refused them.

At that moment, the house gave a sudden sideways jerk. Then a jolt knocked me off my feet. My heart went into my throat. I thought the structure had been thrown off its foundations. Another jolt flung me in the opposite direction. It felt like an earthquake.

Stifling a cry of fear, I scrambled to my feet. I was heard.

“Who is that?” Cap’n Terrill demanded. “Who goes there?”

Miss Theresa’s reply was cool and unconcerned: “Just a new member of the crew, Esau. Pay him no heed.” Something in her words frightened me more than Terrill’s challenging bellow.

I made a run for the back door. It refused to open. The door stood in its jamb, as firm and fixed as a tomb portal. The kitchen window had been shuttered from without. No exit there.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. The house was heaving, its floor — no, its deck — no dammit its floor, was warping and rolling as if the raging Atlantic had swept in to carry it off into the storm. I rushed to the pantry window. It was a small octagonal pane, but large enough for my purposes.

In the darkness, I could not find the latch. It was not where it should be. The wood frame felt cold and steely, and I had the curious impression I was fighting to open something other than a conventional window.

Heavy booted feet came up behind me. I turned — and caught a flash glimpse of Cap’n Terrill, wrapped in a slick yellow Sou’wester, his wind-reddened features a knot of angry meat, lifting an old belaying pin high.

It came crashing down. I did not hear the crash.

When I awoke, there was thick blood in my mouth, tooth fragments on my tongue. I expelled these. Groaning, I climbed out of a malodorous bunk bed in some dark space.

The whining howl of winter winds buffeted the dark walls of the room. I did not recognize it, for the clanking of heavy chain drew my attention away from my surroundings.

I was in fetters and leg irons, I saw. My soul grew cold.

Going to the solitary window, I found an octagonal port. It resembled the pantry window, but was fixed. The world beyond its porthole-style glass was a cold white confusion. Where was I?

The room was small and cramped, its walls a dark plum hue. Like the tea room pantry, but even more unlike it. There were familiar cupboards. I opened one. It was empty. But on the reverse of the door lay a discernable profusion of carven initials. I recognized Thom’s distinctive brand. And Starla’s. I shrank from the impossible sight.

Was I dreaming?

Fumbling open the only door, I came upon a set of rough-hewn plank stairs identical to the tea room’s cellar steps. But this was not that cellar, though the heavy damp atmosphere possessed a similar musty salt tang.

Dragging my chains, I fought my way upward. The plank risers tossed and rolled, fighting me with every uncertain step.

A ship! I thought. I’m aboard a ship…

Sometimes you can be too psychic. Sometimes you can see your own doom. I had heard of this happening. As I struggled toward a heavy oaken door, weird impressions and images hit me hard. Stubbornly, I pushed these figments away. I did not want them. For once in my life, I had no desire to foresee the future. My prospects, even fragmentary and semi-apprehendable, were more than my mind could bear.

But reach the door I did. I shouldered through, only to be slapped by a faceful of salty sleet. Heart pounding, I forced myself on. My fettered feet skidded on a pitching, rolling, warpy surface. I knew it was a ship’s deck. For what else could it be, with three tall masts rearing up into the white curse of a raging Nor’easter? The mast tops themselves disappeared in the infinite ghostly swirl. But the rank upon rank of wind-troubled sailcloth bespoke of wilder days, ancienter times.

I spied Cap’n Terrill planted before a heavy oaken ship’s wheel. His eyes were hard on his course. If he perceived me, he acknowledged me not. I shouted at him:

“Where am I, damn you?”

His weatherbeaten expression changed not a flicker.

“What ship is this? Tell me the name of this vessel!”

He spat to one side, but was otherwise silent.

Making a loop of wrist chain, I flung an angry swipe. It went clean through him, impotent as my furious shouts.

Recoiling, I stumbled back, my lungs sobbing for breath, heart bursting with fear and anger. I wheeled.

And there she stood: Miss Theresa Terrill. She was bundled up in a Mackinaw coat, seeming as impervious to the storm as her descendant, or ancestor — or whatever Cap’n Terrill was in truth.

“Welcome aboard the Blue Moon, Mr. Shaner,” she said without human feeling.

And in that moment, I knew. Clairvoyant flashbacks detonated in my brain. The fragments I refused to see resolved into a chain of clairvoyant connections. The tea room built from the timbers of the shattered old tea Clipper. The December shutdowns. Starla’s impossible cellar hole. My intuiting Siam instead of Thailand. I understood all. Her destruction notwithstanding, the Blue Moon continued making her annual run to the Gulf of Siam and back, long after Siam had become Thailand. The evil tea that was no longer grown and harvested in this century could yet be found — back in the past, where King Mongkut still ruled through brute power and dark wizardry.

This was the true secret of Kingsport tea, whose leaves my scarlet life’s blood would shortly nourish. I knew this. Psychically, spiritually, undeniably, I foresaw my fell fate. I was destined to meet my doom a century before my birth. God alone knew what havoc that would wreak on my Karmic cycles.

I croaked out, “I should never have let you draw up my chart.”

“I told you that you would be impressed,” Miss Theresa intoned. “ Impressment is an old Kingsport tradition, too.”

Behind her, a shadowy Pharaonic mass loomed against the whirling white chaos. Black, faceless, terrible, it was perceptible yet not physically present. No mouth uttered its name. But in the clairaudient silence of my damned soul, I received it clearly: Nyarlathotep.

The howling winds swallowed my scream of wordless terror.