Promptly at eight o’clock the following night Mr. Mason delivered Mrs. Mason to the house. After some preliminary discussion, Mrs. Mason took the same comfortable chair she had occupied the night before and Paul and Sybil seated themselves opposite her. The lights were lowered, yet there was enough to make out anything or anyone that might appear in the room.
“Shall I take the telephone off the hook?” Paul enquired.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Mason replied. “If it rings I won’t hear it anyway, and one of you can answer it.”
“Very well,” Paul said. “What do we do now?”
“Nothing. Just sit quietly for a moment, empty your minds of all thoughts if you can to make yourselves more receptive to the energies, to the vibrations in this room. I need your assistance in this if I am to succeed. If you are tense or if your mind races from one thought to the other, we will not be successful. Do you understand?”
“Right,” Paul replied, realizing how difficult it would be for him to empty his mind of his insistent desire to find the treasure. In fact, nothing else mattered to him anymore. For several days now he had not even called his office to find out how things were. Sybil had noticed that his tenseness had increased remarkably. More and more Paul seemed like a man possessed, driven by a strong ego that would not accept failure. Sybil felt uneasy in his presence now, but dared not tell him so. She hoped that, once the treasure was found (and she had no doubt that it would be found) Paul would revert to his usual sweet self. She did love him, and she had every hope that his strange behavior, caused by his extreme desire to find Don Pedro’s treasure, might undergo a change for the better. She was willing to take the chance that it would.
Paul himself was looking forward to an exciting evening. He had no doubt that Mrs. Mason could perform what he expected her to do: namely, pinpoint the place where the treasure was buried. Although he had not been present at a session similar to the one they were now going to have, he felt no qualms about it nor did he expect anything particularly out of the ordinary. In fact, he felt it would be very much like a telephone conversation over a long distance in time and space. He had the tape recorder and pencil and paper as well and had set up a camera next to his chair, just in case there was something to record on film.
Once again Mrs. Mason closed her eyes, set back in the chair and allowed her body to become relaxed. After a while, the previous state of traveling clairvoyance overcame her and her voice, at first very low but gradually increasing in strength, was being picked up by Paul’s tape recorder.
“I see the place,” Mrs. Mason said, trembling with emotion, “I see a grave. Someone is digging a grave. They are Indians, many of them, and they seem to be very agitated. Now I see someone bringing a box and putting it into the ground. I hear voices, muffled voices, but I can’t make out what they are saying.”
Paul bent over to hear her more clearly. “Where is the place? Where is the grave?” he asked.
But Mrs. Mason did not reply directly. Instead she continued to speak, describing the scene from the past.
“Now they are bringing him—a man, a body—it is the body of a man. He is upright. They are placing him into this grave upright. They are burying him on top of the chest. The Indians do not know the chest is there. Now they pass by and they throw something into the hole; I can’t make it out. Now they are closing the grave. They are putting earth into it—more and more earth. I can hear the sound. Now I see the grave closed. The men turn away. They file past the spot. They are all gone now. The sky is gray and it is beginning to rain.”
“Where is the spot? Can you show me where it is? Can you lead me to it?” Paul could hardly restrain himself now. He was ready to start digging this very instant. But again Mrs. Mason paid no attention to him. She was witnessing another scene now.
“I see another day. It is a gray day. I see a garden. It is this garden; yes, it is this land. The ground is waterlogged with much rain. I see a young boy playing in the garden. Now he is throwing a ball into the air. Now he runs after the ball.”
Paul was unimpressed with this. He didn’t want to hear about a boy playing ball in his yard. He wanted to know where the treasure was buried. But Mrs. Mason continued relentlessly.
“Now the boy is in the back facing the ball. His foot hits on something in the ground. He bends down. It is something white. I am looking at it. It is a skull; yes, it is a skull.”
“Oh my God!” Sybil said, horrified.
“The boy touches it. He gets a shovel and digs around it. Now he picks up the skull. He is playing with it. He is using it as a football!”
Paul was ready to shake the medium to get more information, but Sybil restrained him. His excitement, however, had communicated itself to her as well. While Paul was trembling out of greed, she was trembling out of fear that Mrs. Mason might be hurt somehow by the spirit giving her this information.
“Where is it? Can you show us the place?” Paul said, trying to hold himself back as much as he could, but unable to disguise his eagerness.
“Terrible, terrible,” Mrs. Mason replied, paying no attention to them. “This is a terrible thing that should not have been done! It should not have been done! This is sacred ground. The boy should not have done this. There will be terrible revenge upon all of them—all of them. The Indian says they must all die; every one of them!”
Sybil drew back, her face white with fear.
Suddenly Mrs. Mason’s eyes widened, as if forced open by an unseen hand. Her lips let out an unearthly scream, as she rose stiffly to her feet. She stared at Paul for a moment, as if she did not recognize him. Then, before he could stop her, she was running across the living room towards the door, with Paul and Sybil in hot pursuit.
“My God, I hope she won’t fall,” Sybil said.
But Paul was not concerned with such matters. Grabbing a flashlight as he passed the entrance door, he followed Mrs. Mason into the garden. When Sybil caught up with him, he was standing next to her as she pointed to a little mound at the extreme end of the garden. There was an expression on her face that Sybil had not seen before. It was a face paralyzed by sheer terror.
Somehow Paul and Sybil managed to get Mrs. Mason back to the house and revive her. A sip of brandy and some water helped, and a few minutes later she was herself again. This time she remembered nearly everything that had happened.
She warned Paul to be very careful; if he did not heed her advice, she added, he might suffer dire consequences. But Paul had no intention of giving up his quest. He thanked her, paid her the agreed-upon fee, and took her down to the waiting car. Her husband drove her away into the night. Sybil waved, but Mrs. Mason did not wave back.
Tomorrow they would start to dig. As Sybil returned to the house, a cold shudder ran down her spine. It wasn’t because of what she had just witnessed, nor was it because of the terror that seemed to surround the business of finding Don Pedro’s treasure. It was something more than that: an uncanny feeling of terrible things yet to come. But she felt powerless to stop any of it, unable to interfere with fate.
That night, Sybil could not fall asleep; she tossed restlessly for hours. When morning came, she was exhausted, and finally drifted off into a dreamless sleep. When she awoke, the sun was already high in the sky; Paul was already gone.
A look out the window showed her where he was: out in the garden by the little mound at the back, ready to begin his attack on the treasure of Don Pedro.