The first time I went to a psychic, it was pretty much an accident. I was cutting down a side street in the city when a rough, vaguely feminine voice called out to me from a recessed alcove I hadn’t even noticed until I was jumping at the noise. When I looked over, I saw a big, heavy-set woman wearing a long, beaded dress and a thick shawl. It was hard to say for sure, but I thought I spied a large and distended hump beneath her trappings, but I wasn’t about to stare, and she was already talking again.
“Tell your fortune, sir?”
I wanted to say no, but I wasn’t pressed for time and I felt embarrassed for maybe looking at her hump too long, so I nodded and walked over, taking a seat in the camp chair across from her small wooden table when she gestured to it with a long-nailed hand. I asked her how it worked, and she said she just needed five dollars and my palm.
I gave her the money and extended my right hand, trying not to wince or pull away when she gripped my wrist tightly and pulled it closer. She looked at my palm, but the back of my hand too, studying it for more than a minute before she started sniffing it. She had a short, stubby nose set in a round-dinner plate of a face, but she still managed to take in deep breaths as she pulled my outstretched hand closer still. I was about to say something when she made a clucking sound in the back of her throat and looked up at me.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll be dead soon.”
I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice. “What? What’re you talking about? That can’t be what you see.”
Pursing her lips, she gave a massive shrug. “It’s the truth.” Yanking my hand forward again, she ran her tongue across my palm, letting go even as I let out a disgusted squawk. “Yes, no doubt about it.”
Staggering up from the table, I wiped my hand on my jeans. “Fuck you, you creep. I should call the cops.” I wasn’t sure what I’d be calling them for, but it sounded good at the time. The woman just stared at me sadly, and after a moment of impotent frustration, I turned and strode away.
I thought about the odd encounter throughout the day, but it wasn’t until I was laying in bed that night that I started to really wonder and worry. Why would she say that? Assuming she was just a fake wanting to make money, wouldn’t she be smarter to tell me happy things? About how I was going to make money or find true love, and how, for just a few dollars more, she could find some more details for me.
But what if she was the real deal?
I turned over, tucking my pillow under my head angrily. That was stupid. There were no such things a real psychics. I was a sucker for ever going to one in the first place.
And yet, three days later, I found myself at another one.
This was in an upscale part of town. I’d been there to meet a blind date, and when they texted they had to cancel, I decided to take advantage of where I was and eat at the restaurant I’d picked out anyway. It was as I was heading back to the parking deck that I noticed a small but tasteful shop on the corner. It said “Telulah’s Occult Items and Curiosities”, and below that, a small hand-painted sign added that “Tarot readings are available.”
I’d never been to a psychic before earlier in the week, but despite my declarations that all psychics were frauds, I still found myself worrying about the palm reader’s death prophecy. After a moment of internal debate and external pacing, I decided to enter Talulah’s, telling myself that it wasn’t to get a second opinion, but only to reinforce to myself that it was all a sham.
The interior of the shop was cluttered and dark, with neat shelves creating a maze to the back of the store where I saw a counter and register. The air smelled of sandalwood, and I found myself weirdly comforted by the banal quality of it all. I’d never been to a psychic in the past, that was true, but I’d been in a few new age shops, and this looked like more of the same. I was about to call out when a voice called to me from a curtain behind the counter.
“Back here, boy.”
Glancing around for anyone else, I saw no sign of a customer or shopkeeper. They had to be talking to me, and I had no one else to talk to, so…Sucking in a deep breath, I walked behind the counter and parted the curtain. The room beyond was more brightly lit by candles and a lamp standing atop a wooden sideboard against the far wall. The rest of its surface were covered in various decks of what I assumed were Tarot cards, but my gaze quickly traveled to the figure sitting at the large table dominating the middle of the room. It was a lean-faced man, his age hard to gauge between the thick bush of his salt-and-pepper beard and the shadows cast by the hooded cloak he wore. Did all the psychics in this town dress in costume? Stifling a laugh, I gave him an awkward smile.
“Are you Telulah?”
He smirked, his mouth twisting as though it tasted something sour. “Telulah is my mother.” Glancing over to the sideboard, he pointed at me and then one of the deck of cards. “Bring me those, please. The ones with the purple crane on the top.”
Following his finger, my eyes landed on the deck right away. Scooping it up, I carried it over to the table and set it down like an offering. The man nodded and then looked up at me. “Sit down, boy. I can’t do your reading with you looming there, can I?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I pulled up the cushioned chair that was nearest my side of the table and waited expectantly. For his part, the man just stared at me for several moments before smiling.
“First time, huh?”
I blinked. “First? Oh, yeah. First time. For Tarot, at least.”
He nodded and gestured to the purple crane deck. “Take the index finger of each hand and put them on top of the cards and then slide the deck over to me. Then we can begin.”
“Oookay.” I did so, and as soon as my fingers were lifted, he had scooped up the deck and was shuffling it one-handed with a degree of dexterity that made it look more like magic than just a display of skill. He cut the cards once, twice, and then shuffled again before putting out an intricate pattern of face-down cards across the table.
I thought he would go through each card individually with me—dramatically revealing them one by one as he explained their meaning. Instead he flipped them over quickly and without pause, glancing at each before moving wordlessly on to the next. When he was done with the last, he looked up at me, the large nostrils of his long, hooked nose flaring as he studied me in silence.
“What? What is it?”
He shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry, boy. But you’re going to die very soon.”
That night, I had a dream. In it, someone knocked on the door, but when I went to open it, no one was there. But after that, wherever I went in the house, I had this terrible feeling of dread, like someone was watching me or something was coming that I couldn’t stop. I remember that I searched the house but found nothing, and I was about to leave when I heard something above…
I woke up shaking and crying, and after I got myself together, I vowed I’d never visit another psychic. I just had to put it all behind me and stop freaking myself out. And that’s exactly what I did for the next few days. By the end of the week, I didn’t think about the psychics as much, and I’d decided it was just some weird practical joke they were playing. It was true that the first had only gotten five bucks and the other had never even been paid, but not everyone did stuff for money. Maybe they just enjoyed fucking with people, and either way, I was over it.
And then today I came home from work to find a beautiful young woman sitting in the middle of my hallway. Her face was breathtaking, with full red lips curving below a delicate nose and large eyes of deep blue. Though it was hot outside, she must have been freezing, as she was bundled from head to toe in a mound of blankets so large I didn’t know if I could even make it past her to the door of my apartment. Not that I wanted to. My heart quickened as she smiled at me, and I was about to introduce myself, offer to help, say anything to engage this magical creature further, when…when…
The bottom of the mound of blankets was heavily soiled, and trailing from it, trickling toward me across the uneven, warped tile of the building’s third-floor hall, was a small, meandering line of what looked like shit and piss. Gagging slightly, I took a step back. Was she sick, or…I heard the girl giggle.
“Tell you your fortune, mister? I can read your aura for you.”
I looked up at her, my stomach still rolling from the growing stench, when I saw something shift under the blanket. The girl saw where I was looking and smiled wider, her eyes looking bright and manic in the dim hallway’s light.
“I can see…I can see…yes, I see everything.” Her expression fell from a too-cheery smile into an exaggerated pout as she looked up at me with solemn eyes. “I’m afraid you’re going to die soon, mister.”
Acting more on instinct than thought, I ran forward and leapt past her, banging against the wall as I tried to avoid touching the woman. I was terrified she’d reach out for me, but she never did, and when I reached the end of the hall and looked back, she was gone. Shuddering, I opened my door and fumbled my way inside, hands shaking so badly it took a couple of seconds shutting the door back and three tries to lock it again.
I thought about telling someone about everything that’s happened or asking for advice, but who would believe me? I don’t understand what’s happening, why these strange people are after me and what it all means, and I can’t expect anyone else to either. In the end, I decided to write it down here, both as a record and because maybe, when I can reread it, I’ll find a way to either stop what’s happening or come to realize that things are not what they seem to be.
But just now, as I write this last, I heard something. A stealthy sound, but definitely in here with me. A few feet behind and high up, if I had to guess. So I’m turning on my webcam.
It’s all of them. It…they’re perched up in the corner of the room, their twisted collection of flesh and limbs and heads all one horrific mass like a writhing mound of pink mold against the far wall. I see the chubby arm and the dinner plate face of the fat woman that licked my hand. The bony wrist and gaunt countenance of the bearded man who read my Tarot.
And the delicate fingers of the beautiful lady, rubbed into the befouled filth that drips from their belly and sucked clean between her bright teeth and rose-colored lips. Her head is in the center of the three stalk-like necks that protrude from the nightmare biomass they all share, and when she meets my eyes on the camera, she extends her face out another foot closer before giving me a gruesome, grimy smile. She says it’s time.
I’m too scared to move or turn around. Too scared to do anything but type this as I watch the camera, watch them crawl off their place on the wall on three misshapen legs. I’m begging them to stop. To let me go. They all just start laughing, raking a table out of the way as they hobble toward me. The sound they make is terrible. Oh God, please help me. Please help meeeeeeeefjksljlksfdsa