Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

It 1s hard for us to make you understand but I do understand you can not fight it 1 will not fight it they will try to stop you nothing shall stop me for I belong yes you belong will it be soon yes 1t will be soon very soon HES Very SOON. . .. Marvin Mason was unprepared for this sort of reception. Of course, Avis hadn’t written, and she wasn’t at- the station to meet him—but the possibility of her being seriously ill had never occurred to him. He had come out to the house at once, and it was a shock when Dr. Clegg met him at the door. The old man’s face was grim, and the tenor of his opening remarks still grimmer. They faced each other in the library downstairs; Mason self-consciously difident in khaki, the older man a bit too professionally brusque. “Just what is it, Doctor?” Mason asked. : ° “1 don’t know. Slight, recurrent fever. Listlessness. I’ve checked every- thing. No TB, no trace of lowgrade infection. Her trouble isn’ t—organic.” “You mean something’s wrong with her mind?” Dr. Clegg slumped into an armchair and lowered his head. “Mason, I could say many things to you; about the psychosomatic theory of medicine, about the benefits of psychiatry, about—but never mind. It would be sheer hypocrisy. “TPve talked to Avis; rather, I’ve tried to talk to her. She won't say much, but what she does say disturbs me. Her actions disturb me even more. “You can guess what I’m driving at, I think, when I tell you that she is leading the life of an eight-year-old girl. The life she did lead at that age. Mason scowled. “Don’t tell me she sits im her room again and looks out of that window?” Dr. Clegg nodded. “But I thought it was boarded up long ago, because she’s a somnambulist and—” ; “She had it unboarded, several months ago. And she is not, never was, a somnambulist.” “What do you mean?” “Avis Long never walked in her sleep. I remember the night she was tound on that window’s edge; not ledge, for there is no ledge. She was perched on the edge of the open window, already halfway out; a little tyke hanging through a high window. “But there was no chair beneath her, no ladder. No way for her to climb up. She was simply there.” : Dr. Clegg looked away before continuing. “Don’t ask me what it means. I can’t explain, and I wouldn’t want to. I'd have to talk about the things she talks about—the dreams, and the presences that come to her; the presences that want her to go away. 82 Comicdooks.co