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The Child - Six “No, you didn’t,” she argued. “That was over an hour ago, and I checked your room right after they left. You were asleep.” “Huh-uh, I was in here,” he insisted. “You were mean! You wouldn’t answer me when I talked to you, Mama. I saw my uncle and aunt and Sally right here. They said could I go with them, and you said no! But I wanted to go, I wanna go right now!” Teddy’s mother picked him up and gave him a couple of swats on the backside. “You stop that temper fit right now,” she commanded and sent him back to his room. He calmed down for the moment, but later when he repeated his story about being in the kitchen and seeing the relatives, he was angry and bewildered when no one believed him. And when she managed to get him alone for a moment, his grandmother cautioned him to stop talking about such things. “They’re going to think you’re mighty strange and peculiar, Teddy,” she said. ‘Things like that just don’t happen. And if they did, they’d be bad things. You’re too young to know about King Saul and the witch of Endor, but it’s right there in the Bible. You’ve got to stay away from such dark things, child.” She hugged him tightly. “Grandy loves you, Teddy,” she whispered. “You’re my good little boy, my little dear one, and I'll always take care of you. But you’ve got to watch out, all your life. There’s a lot of good in this world, and there’s a whole lot of bad, too.” He let his grandmother comfort him. He hadn’t under- stood why she was so concerned, any more than he had understood what had happened to him. But if Grandy said it was wrong, then it must be so, he thought. And when no one mentioned it again, the incident was soon forgotten. Years later, in 1975, it all came back to him, though. Ted was living in Atlanta then, actively involved with the King’s Gate Spiritualist Church. He was a full-time bank employee, but he devoted several evenings a week to the study and practice of his psychic work. He did private readings and occasional public presentations, fascinating the audience as Masquerade of Angels 44 The Child - Six he picked out person after person to scan and discuss. He saw scenes of their past and visions of their future that later quite often proved to be correct. It was during this time that a couple of very odd incidents occurred. One night Ted woke up, and, moving as if in a dream, he went to the typewriter, inserted blank paper, and began to click at the keys. A story was clear and full in his mind, a story of a little boy-“Karly Kane,” a voice told Ted-chasing a rabbit in a field. It began with Karly walking home for lunch, with a small rabbit in his arms, when he was overcome by fatigue and went into the shade of a tree. His awareness changed sudden- ly, expanding, and then he found himself in a different place, slipping into unconsciousness. When he awoke, he heard beautiful music. A voice from an unseen source guided him through a misty wonderland of wild creatures, and nearby a group of small children sang. The music made Karly think of heaven. There were about thirty children dressed in blue, and he reached out to touch one of them. “No,” the voice said, “you cannot be with them at this time.” Karly grew angry, screaming and kicking against the voice and the force that restrained him. And suddenly every- thing changed. The children were gone, the shade tree was gone, even his rabbit was gone, and Karly was alone in the sun, longing for home. Ted finished the story and went right back to bed. It was only the next morning, when found the neatly typed pages on his desk, that he recalled getting up sometime during the night and writing it, although he had no idea what had moti- vated him or how he had managed to do it at that hour. The second time this happened, Ted had even less mem- ory of the event. He woke one morning and found another neatly typed piece of writing, several pages in length, lying beside his typewriter. He lived alone, so there was no one else who could have typed them, but the words he read were completely unfamiliar. He had a vague, hazy memory of get- ting up during the night, but he couldn’t remember doing anything else, especially typing. Still, he must have been the Masquerade of Angels 45