Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

they made up.”
    Mr. Lougheed was a minute or two picking up the meaning of this.
    “It’s not a sign,” Eugene said.
    “Sign,” said Mr. Lougheed.
    “Like a spell. There’s a difference between this and a real sign, just as there would be a difference between a piece of gibberish and a real spell, though they might sound equally like gibberish to the uninitiated.”
    “I wasn’t worried about it being a—sign,” said Mr. Lougheed, collecting himself. “Is that what you mean, some kind of magic sign? I was worried about them defacing my door. They have no business being up here and no business painting on my door.”
    “Well I guess they thought it was a joke. Or they might have done it on a dare. They’re very childish—Rex and Calla are incredibly childish. Rover only looks childish, he is something of a mystery. He may have an old soul.”
    Mr. Lougheed was not interested in the age of Rover’s soul. He was interested in, dumbfounded by, the possibility that such a thing, a sign on a door, could have real meaning for someone who was not a total fool. “Do you,” he said in a voice of irrepressible intense curiosity, “would you, be alarmed by a sign on your door? Would you believe that such a thing could have a real effect?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “That is almost impossible for me to believe,” said Mr. Lougheed. He thought, sighed, and said more firmly, “That is impossible for me to believe.”
    “Impasse,” said Eugene agreeably.
    Mr. Lougheed thought that he should have realized then, he should have realized the extent of this kind of thinking, and he would not be taken aback now.
    “The world that we accept—you know, external reality,” Eugene was saying comfortably, “is nothing like so fixed as we have been led to believe. It responds to more methods of control than we are conditioned to accept.” When expounding something to Mr. Lougheed he was apt to talk in these eager and modulated sentences. When he talked to the trio downstairs he used a language sufficiently broken, tranced, and vague to communicate with them, apparently, on something close to their own level. “Its so-called laws are not final. The law you are thinking of says that a body like this”—he tapped Mr. Lougheed’s shoulder—“cannot move on top of water because it cannot attain weightlessness.”
    Still it could be a joke.
    “You believe that certain people have walked on hot coals and not received any burns on their skin?”
    “I’ve read about it.”
    “It’s commonplace. You’ve seen pictures? You believe it?”
    “It looks like it.”
    “But their feet are made of flesh and covered with skin which according to all we know should burn? Now doesn’t it seem that we have to admit that the mind can work in some way to control matter to the extent that some laws no longer apply?”
    “I’d like to see it control the law of gravity.”
    “It has. It has. People have been able to rise by their own will several inches off the ground.”
    “Until I see with my own eyes that wastepaper basket rise and float over my head,” said Mr. Lougheed with absolute conviction—though trying to stay good-humored—“I will believe nothing of the kind.”
    “Road to Emmaus,” said Eugene.
    He even knew the Bible. He was the only person under forty that Mr. Lougheed had come across who did. Not counting Jehovah’s Witnesses.
    “A wastepaper basket cannot control its own being, it cannot utilize energy. However if a person capable of utilizing a certain kind of energy were sitting where you are now—”
    He went on to talk about a woman in Russia who could pull heavy furniture across the room without bothering to touch it. The power was in her solar plexus, she said.
    “But what makes you think,” said Mr. Lougheed, “that you have these powers? That you can utilize energy or stop the flow of gravity or whatever?”
    “If I could stop anything it would be for the minutest space of time. Seconds only. I am nothing but a neophyte. But it would be enough to make people think. Also I am interested in leaving the body. I have never been able to leave this body.”
    “You have to make sure you can get back in.”
    “People can. People have. Someday it may be something we learn, just like skating. Now suppose I step out on the water and my apparent body— this body—sinks down like a stone, there is a possibility that my other body will rise, and I will be able to look down into the water and watch