Chapter 1

February, 1947

He was gaining on me! I was already pumping my bicycle peddles as hard as I could, but that bastard was so much bigger and stronger than me that I really had very little chance to escape.

I had been bullied by him since I transferred to this school four months ago. He sat right behind me in the string of classroom desks and just would not leave me alone. He kept poking me in the back until I could take it no longer; suddenly, I whirled around in my seat and stabbed him in the hand with a freshly sharpened pencil as hard as I could. The point went in about a quarter of an inch and broke off. The bastard let out a sharp grunt, stared me in the eye, and muttered, "I'll get you!"

I knew I was in serious trouble. My only hope was to cut out of school as soon as the last bell rang. I ran to grab my bike and head for home. Since it was Friday, I would be safe for a few days if I could get home before I was caught. I was pumping as hard as I could and not paying enough attention to the street ahead of me. I never saw the crack in the pavement; my bike stopped dead and I didn't.

I had no idea how long I was immersed in blackness. Finally, I struggled toward the light, but I was sorry I did—I had the world's worst headache. Then I heard the voice of an angel, "Don't try to move, honey. I'll get the doctor."

A minute or two later, with a great rustle and bustle, the doctor came dashing through the door. "Bruce! Bruce, what a relief! You're awake at last! Hell, it's 1947—you'd think that somebody would come up with a safety helmet for bicyclers!"

After a quick, but thorough, examination, he turned to the nurse and said, "Please have somebody tell the McLouds that their son is awake and they can see him, now."

"Dr. Johnson, what's wrong with me and can I have something for the world's worst headache?" I groaned.

"Bruce, I'll give you a complete rundown as soon as your parents get here. No point in repeating myself. Meanwhile, nurse, please get him some aspirin plus codeine for the headache."

About a half-hour later, another storm came through the door. This time it was my mother and father, both appearing to be overjoyed that I was finally awake and back in the land of the living. After some gentle hugs and kisses from both parents, things settled down a bit and Dr. Johnson began to explain, "I'll go into a little more detail than usual, since Bruce really doesn't know what happened. Bruce, first of all, you have pretty routine breaks in your left arm and wrist, which I am sure you have noticed by now. But the really significant injury was to your head. You literally cracked your skull when you hit the pavement and had a major concussion. This has had you knocked out for almost four weeks, so don't be surprised at how weak you feel. We have learned a lot about physical therapy as a result of the war, so you should be up and about in a short time. But, stay off your bicycle for awhile! We want to keep you in the hospital for a while longer to be sure there's no relapse and to start you on your physical therapy. Well, any questions?"

My mother immediately wanted to know when she could take me home, but Dr. Johnson wouldn't say anything beyond that it would depend on how I responded to therapy. Dad just said that he was glad to see that the McLoud hard head was at last good for something, and he was looking forward to me getting home safe and sound.

At the end of three more weeks, I was released from the hospital with an admonition to keep up my exercises and permission to return to school as soon as I felt like it. School work was no problem since I was in the sixth grade and already reading and doing math at eleventh grade level. I had already read the textbooks from cover to cover, so I really had no catching up to do. All I really wanted to do was to return to school so that I could graduate to middle school.

Ah, there's the rub. As soon as I returned to school, no doubt I would encounter the bastard again. This time, there would be no escape, since I did not have my bicycle. Oh, well, I might as well get the agony over with, so I decided to return to school the next Monday.

Mother delivered me to school and even ushered me all the way to my room. It was a little embarrassing to be babied like that; I fully expected to be teased for the rest of the day. However, I was really surprised when I did not get even a sneer from the bastard. But I would not get off!

At lunch time, as usual we marched to the lunch room. We had a hour for lunch. Of course, we did not need an hour to eat; the unused part of the hour was playtime. When I walked out of the lunch room to the yard, who was the first person I met—the bastard. This time, he did sneer at me and ordered me ahead of him to a secluded part of the yard. Once we were out of sight of the adults, he grabbed my left arm (he was left handed) and raised his to strike me. There was a great pain that shot through my arm because he pinched down exactly on my broken wrist. Without thinking, I reacted by pushing at his chest as hard as I could to try to break away. Suddenly, there was a tremendous jolt of pain in my head and the bastard went flying about fifteen feet away. Not being completely stupid, I ran like a bat out of Hell.

I kept a low profile during the rest of lunch period and then slipped quietly back to my desk. Strangely, I never again saw the bastard. I later found out that he went directly to the principle's office right after lunch and dropped out of school; he was over sixteen years old, so he could do that. What a relief! The rest of my school year was much easier.

My mother picked me up after school and took me home. After that day, she always delivered me and picked me up on school days for the rest of the year, unless I had another ride.

Naturally, when I got home that fateful day, I wondered how I had so easily gotten away from the bastard. To my surprise, I found that I could remember exactly what happened in excruciating detail; in fact, I could remember everything that happened since noon that day.

I replayed over and over my strange adventure until finally I noticed something odd: I had never touched the bastard! He went flying before my pushing hand had even started to move! Now, I was really interested. It was easy to associate the pain in my head with the push, so there was a connection. For a couple of years, my father had been buying the pulp science fiction magazines, and I read every word. Therefore, I was familiar with the concept of Extra Sensory Perception and wondered if that explained my strange experience. I was willing to put up with pains in the head if I could work ESP. I determined to test myself right away.

Since I had already done it once, I decided to try Telekinesis. I sat in the chair in my room and looked around for something to move. I decided to start small, so I tried to move the pencil on my study desk. Nothing happened! What was I doing wrong? Oh, yeah, I had ordered the pencil to move, but I had not told it which direction. This time, I told the pencil to move up and it jumped to the ceiling where it appeared to stick. OK, I had told it to move up, but I had not said how far to move. Details, it's all in the details. Obviously, I needed to practice. But wait, where was the pain I had felt before? Could it be that I would no longer feel the pain? Maybe, the original pain had been caused by "tearing" the cover off my ESP and that was it. I sure hoped so. In any case, I decided to put off testing any other potential abilities until after I had a reasonable control over my TK. Oops, I had better get that pencil off the ceiling before it falls and hurts someone.

Next question? Who could I tell of my great good fortune? I was bursting to tell somebody—but wait. Maybe I should think about this awhile before my big mouth gets me into trouble. I can't tell Mother; she'll think that I am sick and need to rush to the doctor. I can't tell Dad; he'll brag about it all over town (he already does brag about my grades). I have no siblings and I have not had time to make close friends, since we have only been living here about six months. Oh, well, I'll just try to keep a cap on it.

OK, back to practicing TK. I kept at it until supper and appeared to get it pretty well under control. I would try something else after supper. When Mother called, I left immediately for supper; I was famished.

Mother's main remark at supper was, "Bruce, where did you get such an appetite? You've eaten twice as much as you usually do. I just don't know where you put it all."

Dad rescued me with, "Oh, don't nag the boy. Remember that Bruce has had to live for weeks on hospital food, and now he has a chance to eat the good stuff you make."

Nothing more was said on that subject.

Not long after returning to my room, I noticed that there was a buzzing in my head. It sounded like a radio somewhere off in the distance. I started paying attention and realized that I was "hearing" my mother and father's thoughts. With only a little effort, I was able to understand exactly what they were thinking. I quickly tried to find a way to block these thoughts, since this could get embarrassing. I remembered one of the stories about "shielding" against a mental probe, so I started to build my own shield. I tried various things until I got a workable shield which would service itself without my specific attention. Once all external thoughts were blocked, I worked on admitting only one source at a time. This took a little more effort to learn, but once learned, did not need constant attention. This was enough work for one night, so I went to bed.

I spent the next week working on my other abilities until I had honed them to my satisfaction. I was most pleased to discover that I had a healing ability. I quickly completed the healing of my broken bones, though not much was really required. I did set up a routine for my subconscious to scan my body regularly and repair any defects found. I had to work a bit before I was able to kill invading bacteria and viruses, but I had that resolved in relatively short order. I practiced on my parents: Mother had the tiniest of breast cancers beginning to form which I was able to kill; Dad had the beginnings of arthritis which I cleared up. The only limitation of my ability to heal was that I had to touch the bare skin of the patient, but a simple handshake was sufficient if it lasted the necessary few seconds. I was gratified to find that I did not need any conventional medical knowledge to do the healing; the body knew what it needed and had no difficulty telling me.