"My guts are on fire," he complained, pushing back a hank of curly, brown hair that blocked his blue-eyed vision. W. J. Isaias, the young psychic healer who had cured hundreds of ailing people, was empathetically suffering some unknown person’s pain.
The slim, handsome Reverend Tony Sergio looked up from his Mexican Sunday paper, squinting his black eyes to avoid the glare. "I’m sorry you have to endure this." "Do you have a mental picture of this afflicted poirson who is bonded to you?" he said in the Brooklyn accent that slipped out whenever he was nervous.
"Psychically I ‘see’ a tall woman in a shapeless dress. Her face is a blur. Worse than the pain is her awful despair. I have to find her quick and heal her. She’s dying." He negated the thought that he might die too.
* * *
Veronica Webster knew she was dreaming. The debilitated "Young Lioness of Real Estate", as Fortune magazine called her, deliberately hovered in limbo between sleep and wakefulness to enjoy the blurred vision: a tall man beckoning to her, attracting her with magnetic blue eyes and a dark-haired man smiling and in some vague way delighting her. Yet even in this dreamy state she knew she was lying in a four-poster bed in her ancestral southern colonial home, expecting to live no longer than a week.
She tried to retain the essence of the vision-like dream. It was probably a morphine hallucination, but it was better than the nightmares that haunted her in the hospital: the shadowy specters with cup-sized eyeballs and fiery red corneas. Watching. Waiting. Like death.
"I’m sorry I woke you, Miss Veronica." Maria, who had run the household for eighteen years and was more like a kindly aunt than a servant. Maria unfolded a program from her apron pocket and pointed to the picture on the left. "That’s Reverend Sergio. They call him ‘The Singin’ Preacher’.
"Who’s the man with the stare?"
"That’s the healer, Isaias--like in the Bible. He has a gift of God. "Why don’t you come with me tonight, Miss Veronica. This is the healer’s last night in Houston." "At every meeting the healers ask if any incurable person would like to come and live with them so they can guarantee healing."
"Guarantee? That’s preposterous."
"Mexico, on top of a mountain."
"Mexico!" Veronica smiled dreamily. How nice it would be to go back. Mexico in June would be comfortable at a high altitude. But how could she travel in her condition?
She felt the healer’s eyes again, boring into her mind. But, what if these two marvels could help her beat death? An intriguing thought. If they failed, what could she lose? Medical science failed her too. And if she met with violence or dropped from exhaustion, a quick death would be a blessing.