Breakers
He had said it would be good that
they would see to it. Well, she would
see to it. They better not start anything.
They just better not. She did not know if
her gift had come from the lord of light
or of darkness, and now, finally finding
that she did not care which, she was
overcome with an almost indescribable
relief, as if a huge weight, long carried,
had slipped from her shoulders.
Blooming Using the Touch
She had gone in only five minutes before,
She had grown a little wary of the terrific strain
after opening the gas main (it had been easy;
using the power seemed to put on her heart and lungs
as soon as she pictured it lying there under the
and internal thermostat. She suspected it would be all
street it had been easy), but it seemed like hours.
too possible for her heart to literally burst with the
She had prayed long and deeply, sometimes
strain. It was like being in another s body and forcing
aloud, sometimes silently. Her heart thudded and
her to run and run and run. You would not pay the cost
labored. The veins on her face and neck bulged.
yourself; the other body would. She was beginning to
Her mind was filled with the huge knowledge of
realize that her power was perhaps not so different from
POWERS, and of an ABYSS. She prayed in front
the powers of Indian fakirs, who stroll across hot coals,
of the altar, kneeling in her wet and torn and
run needles into their eyes, or blithely bury themselves
bloody gown, her feet bare and dirty and bleed-
for periods up to six weeks. Mind over matter in any
ing from a broken bottle she had stepped on. Her
form is a terrific drain on the body s resources.
breath sobbed in and out of her throat, and the
church was filled with groanings and swayings
Every Breaker begins with a number of darks equal to
and sunderings as psychic energy sprang from
their Anima. Expending darks takes a lot out of a per-
her. Pews fell, hymnals flew, and a silver Com-
son s brain and body. If darks are emitted too rapidly or
munion set cruised silently across the vaulted
too frequently, the Breaker will suffer worse and worse
darkness of the nave to crash into the far wall.
physical symptoms. Death, usually by heart attack or
She prayed and there was no answer. No one was
stroke, is the inevitable result.
there or if there was, He/It was cowering from
her.
For example, a Breaker with 10 darks uses 1 dark (10%
of her total). Three rounds later, she uses another dark
(now her total used within the last 10 rounds is 20% of
Once a Breaker realizes his or her potential, (s)he
her maximum). At this point she suffers a headache. If
gains a vague understanding of psionic powers
she uses another 2 darks within the next six rounds, she
and concepts.
will suffer a nosebleed in addition to the headache.
Darks Symptom
To use a power, a Breaker makes an Anima
used
percentage check against the Resistance number
20% Headache (-2 Anima)
listed on the matrix.
35% Nosebleed (-1 Appearance, -1 Fortitude)
50% Numbness (-3 Dexterity, -3 Strength)
75% Hemorrhaging
Breakers may lose Sanity by using telepathic
90%+ Blackout / coma
powers. Every time a specific power is used, the
Breaker must make a Sanity check or lose the
Sanity Points listed. Like any other Sanity loss,
Darks return at the rate of one every ten rounds. Break-
no more than the maximum listed loss can be
ers recover from numbness, nosebleed, and headache (in
reached.
that order) at the rate of one condition every ten rounds.
Hemmorrhaging Breakers must succeed in a Luck check
or lose 1d6 points from Strength and Dexterity. This
condition abates with 24 hours of rest.
If the Breaker expends 90% of her darks, she must suc-
With a mind-link and enough patience, one
ceed in a Luck check to merely black out. Failure means
Breaker can teach another Breaker any power
a coma. A second Luck check is needed to stop her
besides Facilitation.
Anima score from being permanantly lowered by one.
Psychic Death
Sue tried to pull away, to disengage her mind,
to allow Carrie at least the privacy of her dying, and
was unable to. She felt that she was dying herself and
Darks expended: all remaining
did not want to see this preview of her own eventual
Sanity Loss: 3/2d4+2
end.
(carrie let me GO)
(Momma Momma Momma oooooooooooooo
OOOOOOOOOO)
The mental screams reached a flaring, un-
believable crescendo and then suddenly faded. For
a moment Sue felt as if she were watching a candle
flame disappear down a long, black tunnel at a tre-
mendous speed.
(she s dying o my god i m feeling her die)
And then the light was gone, and the last
conscious thought had been
(momma i m sorry where)
and it broke up and Sue was tuned in only on the
blank, idiot frequency of the physical nerve endings
that would take hours to die.
She began to run, breathing deep in her chest,
running from Tommy, from the fires and explosions,
from Carrie, but mostly from the final horror that
last lighted thought carried swiftly down into the
black tunnel of eternity, followed by the blank, idiot
hum of prosaic electricity.
The after-image began to fade reluctantly,
leaving a blessed, cool darkness in her mind that
knew nothing. She slowed, halted, and became aware
that something had begun to happen. She stood in
the middle of the great and misty field, waiting for
realization.
Her rapid breathing slowed, slowed, caught
suddenly as if on a thorn
And suddenly vented itself in one howling,
cheated scream.
As she felt the slow course of dark menstrual
blood down her thighs.
Learning to shine A pleasure to Break
She opened her eyes. She looked at the hair-
And because to Break is divine, Dinky
brush on her bureau.
said. He was also looking at Eddie. The way the
Flex.
half an hour after you shoot up can be divine. If you
She was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy.
know what I m talking about.
It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh.
Grunt.
They lost something else, too, Ted told
The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau,
them quietly. There s a novel by Ray Bradbury
slid out past the point where gravity should have top-
called Fahrenheit 451. It was a pleasure to burn
pled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string.
is that novel s first line. Well, it was a pleasure to
Carrie s eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in her
Break, as well.
temples. A doctor might have been interested in what
Dinky was nodding. So were Worthington
her body was doing at that instant; it made no ratio-
and Dani Rostov.
nal sense. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths
Even Sheemie was nodding his head.
per minute. Blood pressure up to 190/100. Heartbeat
up to 140 higher than astronauts under the heavy g-
load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94.3°. Her body
was burning energy that seemed to be coming from
nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electro-
encephalogram would have shown alpha waves that
were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.
She let the hairbrush down carefully. Good.
Last night she had dropped it.
She opened her eyes.
Flex.
The bureau rose into the air, trembled for a
moment, and then rose until it nearly touched the ceil-
ing. She lowered it. Lifted it. Lowered it. Now the bed,
complete with her weight. Up. Down. Up. Down. Just
like an elevator.
She was hardly tired at all. Well, a little. Not
much. The ability, almost lost two weeks ago, was in
full flower. It had progressed at a speed that was
Well, almost terrifying.
Every game the Breaker succesfully uses his or her
powers, she makes a Sanity check. A successful check
means the Breaker gains 1d2 darks.
Clairvoyance
Alain, are you listening?
Alain, who knew perfectly well that Roland wasn t speaking of
Resistance: 16*
his ears or his attention-span, nodded.
Darks expended: 3-8
Do you hear anything?
Sanity Loss: 0/1
Not yet.
Keep at it.
I will... but I can t promise anything. The touch is flukey. You
know that as well as I do.
Just keep trying.
If the Resistance Test fails
by a small margin, the target
may (at the Controller s
Then he left, standing on the porch for a moment to verify he
discretion) detect the attempt.
still had the Bar K to himself. Of course he did. Yet for a blink or two,
there at the end, he d felt uneasy almost as though he d been scent-
ed. By some sort of In-World telepathy, mayhap.
There is such; you know it. The touch, it s called.
Aye, but that was the tool of gunslingers, artists, and lunatics.
Not of boys, be they lords or just lads.
Facilitation
For another thing, Ted had come to realize by the mid-
nineteen-thirties that what he had was actually catching. If he
touched a person while in a state of high emotion, that person
Resistance: 10
for a short time became a telepath. What he hadn t known then
Darks expended: 5+
was that people who were already telepaths became stronger.
Sanity Loss: none
Exponentially stronger.
I really did not understand that my talent goes far be-
yond progging and Breaking. I m like a microphone for a singer
or a steroid for a muscle. I . . . hype them. Say there s a unit
of force call it darks, all right? In The Study, twenty or thirty
people might be able to put out fifty darks an hour without me.
With me? Maybe it jumps to five hundred darks an hour. And it
jumps all at once.
Good-mind
For one thing, being near working Breakers made talk
unnecessary. What they called good mind kicked in as you
Resistance: 10
walked down the third-floor hallway on either side, from either
Darks expended: 1
elevator, and when you opened the doors giving on the balcony
Sanity Loss: none
good-mind bloomed in your head, opening all sorts of percep-
tual doorways. Aldous Huxley, Pimli had thought on more than
one occasion, would have gone absolutely bonkers up here.
Sometimes one found one s heels leaving the floor in a kind of
half-assed float. The stuff in your pockets tended to rise and
hang in the air. Formerly baffling situations seemed to resolve
themselves the moment you turned your thoughts to them. If
you d forgotten something, your five o clock appointment or
your brother-in-law s middle name, for instance, this was the
place where you could remember. And even if you realized that
what you d forgotten was important, you were never distressed.
Ted had gotten on his knees beside the struggling,
screaming woman and motioned for Dinky to get kneebound on
the other side of her. Ted had taken one of her hands, then nod-
ded for Dink to take the other. And something had flowed out of
them something deep and soothing. It wasn t meant for Jake,
no, not at all, but he caught some of it, anyway, and felt his
wildly galloping heart slow.
And then Ted, Dinky, Dani, and Fred joined hands.
They made what Ted called the little good-mind. I could feel
it even though I wasn t in their circle, and I was glad to feel it,
because that s one spooky old place down there. She clutched
her blankets more tightly. I don t look forward to going again.
A Breaker in the good-mind may add one point of Anima to her
power resistance tests for each other mind (i.e. in a group of
five Breakers, they may each add up to four points of Anima to
resistance tests).
Line
Only you got something, too. He can see it on the
candy-rack, a bright yellow mark something like a handprint.
Snickers bar?
Resistance: 15
Darks expended: 3
Pete walks outside, ignoring the tinkle of the bell, ignor-
Sanity Loss: none
ing the rain, which now really is rain. The yellow is on the side-
walk, but fading. The rain s washing it away. Still, he can see it
and it pleases him to see it. That feeling of click. Sweet. It s the
line. It has been a long time since he s seen it so clearly.
Mind-spear
And God, how he comes to understand that! For one
thing, his wild talent (as the pulp science-fiction magazines
Resistance: 16
sometimes call it) is actually physically dangerous under the
Darks expended: 7
right circumstances. Or the wrong ones.
Sanity Loss: 0/1d3
In 1935, in Ohio, it makes Ted Brautigan a murderer.
The purple dusk of that summer night deepens suddenly
to full dark, then lightens up again, then deepens once more.
It s his eyes, doing the trick that so amazed the second doctor
almost twenty years before, but Ted hardly notices. His attention
is fixed on the fleeing man, the son of a bitch who just mugged
him out of his wallet and spoiled his face in the process. He s
never been so angry in his life, never, and although the thought
he sends at the fleeing man is innocuous, almost gentle
(say buddy I would ve given you a dollar if you d asked
maybe even two)
it has the deadly weight of a thrown spear. And it was a
spear. It takes him some time to fully accept that, but when the
time comes he realizes that he s a murderer and if there s a God,
Ted Brautigan will someday have to stand at His throne and
answer for what he s just done.
He concentrated and felt a sick pain rip through his
head. The mind-spear flew. Trampas let go of Dinky and gave
Ted a look of unbelieving reproach that Ted would remember to
the end of his life.Then Trampas grabbed the sides of his head
like a man with the worst Excedrin Headache in the universe,
and fell dead on the grass with his throat swollen and his tongue
sticking out of his mouth.
Mind Transfer
Jake had no idea how good his mental connection to Oy
actually was, but thought he would soon find out.
Oy!
Resistance: 14/18*
The calling voices of the low men were now horribly
Darks expended: 5
close. Soon they would see the boy and the bumbler stopped
Sanity Loss: 1/1d4
here and break into a charge. Oy could smell them coming but
looked at Jake calmly enough anyway. At his beloved Jake, for
whom he would die if called upon to do so.
Oy, can you change places with me?
It turned out that he could.
*Resistance is 14 for a willing participant
and 18 for an unwilling one.
Oy tottered erect with Ake in his arms, swaying back and
forth, horrified to discover how narrow the boy s range of bal-
ance was. The idea of walking even a short distance on but two
legs was terribly daunting, yet it would have to be done, and
done at once. Ake said so.
Oy tried to bark his frustration. What came out of Ake s
mouth was a stupid thing that was more word than sound:
Bark! Ark! Shit-bark!
Oy got up by putting Ake s back against the wall and
pushing with Ake s legs. At last he was getting the hand of the
motor controls; they were in a place Ake called Dogan and were
fairly simple. Off to the left, however, an arched corridor led
into a huge room filled with mirror-bright machinery. Oy know
that if he went into that place the chamber where Ake kept all
his marvelous thoughts and his store of words he would be lost
forever.
Luckily, he didn t need to. Everything he needed was
in the Dogan. Left foot . . . forward. (And pause.) Right foot .
. . forward. (And pause.) Hold the thing that looks like a billy-
bumbler but is really your friend and use the other arm for
balance.
Precognition
I hate that noise, Alain said. He sounded
morose and sleepy. In fact, he had been troubled
Resistance: 16
by odd dreams and premonitions all night things
Darks expended: 1-6
which, of the three of them, only he was prey to.
Sanity Loss: 0/1
Because of the touch, perhaps with him it had
always been strong.
He was gathering the wad of wrinkled bills up
from the board when his eyes happened on the
Wheel again. The warm concern for her that had
been in them faded out. They seemed to darken
again, become speculative in a cold way. He s
looking at that wheel the way a little boy would
look at his own private ant colony, Sarah thought.
She thought: He can t be content until he s lost
it all back.
And then, with strange certainty: But he s not
going to lose.
What do you say buddy? the pitchman asked.
On or off, in or out.
Shit or git, one of the roustabouts said, and
there was nervous laughter. Sarah s head swam.
Johnny suddenly shoved bills and quarters up
to the corner of the board.
What are you doing? the pitchman asked,
genuinely shocked.
The whole wad on 19, Johnny said.
Postcognition
Johnny took off his gloves and put them in his coat pockets.
Then he knelt and began to brush the snow away from the seat of the
bench. Again Bannerman was struck by the haggard pallor of the
Resistance: 14
man s face. On his knees before the bench he looked like a religious
Darks expended: 2-5
penitent, a man in desperate prayer.
Sanity Loss: 0/1
Johnny s hands went cold, then mostly numb. Melted snow ran
off his fingers. He got down to the splintered, weatherbeaten surface
of the bench. He seemed to see it very clearly, almost with magnifying
power. It had once been green, but now much of the paint had flaked
and eroded away. Two rusted steel bolts held the seat to the backrest.
He seized the bench in both hands, and sudden weirdness
flooded him he had felt nothing so intense before and would feel
something so intense only once ever again. He stared down at the
bench, frowning, gripping it tightly in his hands. It was . . .
(A summer bench)
How many hundreds of different people had sat here at one time
or another, listening to God Bless America, to Stars and Stripes
Forever (Be kind to your web-footed friends . . . for a duck may be
somebody s moooother . . . ), to the Castle Rock Cougars fight song?
Green summer leaves, smoky haze of fall like a memory of cornhusks
and men with rakes in mellow dusk. The thud of the big snare drum.
Mellow gold trumpets and trombones. School band uniforms . . .
(for a duck . . . may be . . . somebody s mother . . . )
Good summer people sitting here, listening, applauding, hold-
ing programs that had been designed and printed in the Castle Rock
High School graphic arts shop.
But this morning a killer had been sitting here. Johnny could
feel him.
Psychic Shield
The boy stood close to him, his body poised. His eyes took in
Resistance: 12
the Slow Mutants only as they passed, not traversing, not seeing more
Darks expended: varies*
than they had to. The boy assumed a psychic bulge of terror, as if his
Sanity Loss: 0/1
very id had somehow sprung out through his pores to form a telepathic
shield.
*One dark is expended for
each Sanity point that would
otherwise be lost.
Note that Psychic Shield does
not protect against loss in-
curred by using this power.
Purge
Oww, Jesus!
Sitting up drove two monstrous bolts of chromium pain into his head. He
clapped his hands to his skull and rocked it back and forth, and little by little the
pain subsided to a more manageable level.
Resistance: 17
No concrete sensory input except this rotten headache. I must have slept on
Darks expended: 6+
my neck or something, he thought. I must have
Sanity Loss: 1/1d4+1
No. Oh, no. He knew this headache, knew it well. It was the sort of head-
ache he got from a medium-to-hard push . . . harder than the ones he had given
the fat ladies and shy businessmen, not quite as hard as the ones he had given the
fellows at the turnpike rest stop that time.
Andy s hands flew to his face and felt it all over, from brow to chin. There
were no spots where the feeling trailed away to numbness. When he smiled, both
corners of his mouth went up just as they always had. He wished to God for a light
so he could look into his own eyes in the bathroom mirror to see if either of them
showed that tell-tale blood sheen ....
Push? Pushing?
That was ridiculous. Who was there to push?
Who, except . . .
His breath slowed to a stop in his throat and then resumed slowly. He had
thought of it before but had never tried it. He thought it would be like overloading
a circuit by cycling a charge through it endlessly. He had been scared to try it.
My pill, he thought. My pill is overdue and I want it, I really want it, I re-
ally need it. My pill will make everything all right.
It was just a thought. It brought on no craving at all. The idea of taking a
Thorazine had all the emotional gradient of please pass the butter. The fact was,
except for the rotten headache, he felt pretty much all right. And the fact also was
he had had headaches a lot worse than this the one at the Albany airport, for
instance. This one was a baby compared to that.
I ve pushed myself, he thought, amazed.
For the first time he could really understand how Charlie felt, because for
the first time he was a little frightened by his own psi talent. For the first time he
really understood how little he understood about what it was and what it could
do. Why had it gone? He didn t know. Why had it come back? He didn t know that
either. Did it have something to do with his intense fear in the dark? His sudden
feeling that Charlie was being threatened (he had a ghostly memory of the pirati-
cal one-eyed man and then it floated away, gone) and his own dismal self-loathing
at the way he had forgotten her? Possibly even the rap on the head he had taken
when he fell down?
He didn t know; he knew only that he had pushed himself.
The brain is a muscle that can move the world.
Jesus, he whispered. Am I really clean?
There was no craving. Thorazine, the image of the blue pill on the white
plate -- that thought had become unmistakably neutral.
I am clean, he answered himself.
Next question: could he stay clean?
Pyrokinesis
Oh, she knew the Devil s Power. Her own grandmother had it. She
had been able to light the fireplace without even stirring from her rocker
by the window. It made her eyes glow with
(thou shalt not suffer a witch to live)
Resistance: 11
a kind of witch s light.
Darks expended: 1-4
Sanity Loss: 1/1d3
Charlie turned toward them. As she did so, half a dozen other men,
John Mayo and Ray Knowles among them, broke for the porch s back
steps with their guns drawn.
Charlie s eyes widened a little, and Andy felt something hot pass
by him in a warm puff of air.
The three men at the front end of the porch had got halfway toward
them when their hair caught on fire.
A gun boomed, deafeningly loud, and a splinter of wood per-
haps eight inches long jumped from one of the porch s supporting posts.
Norma Manders screamed, and Andy flinched. But Charlie seemed not to
notice. Her face was dreamy and thoughtful. A small Mona Lisa smile had
touched the corners of her mouth.
She s enjoying this, Andy thought with something like horror. Is
that why she s so afraid of it? Because she likes it?
Charlie was turning back toward Al Steinowitz again. The three
men he had sent running down toward Andy and Charlie from the front
end of the porch had forgotten their duty to God, country, and the Shop.
They were beating at the flames on their heads and yelling. The pungent
smell of fried hair suddenly filled the afternoon.
No, don t, he said in an almost conversational tone of voice.
Don t
It was impossible to tell where the flames began. Suddenly his
pants and his sportcoat were blazing. His hair was a burning bush. He
backed up, screaming, bounced off the side of his car, and half turned to
Norville Bates, his arms stretched out.
Andy felt that soft rush of heat again, a displacement of air, as if a
hot slug thrown at rocket speed had just passed his nose. Al Steinowitz s
face caught on fire. For a moment he was all there, screaming silently
under a transparent caul of flame, and then his features were blending,
merging, running like tallow. Norville shrank away from him. Al Steinow-
itz was a flaming scarecrow. He staggered blindly down the driveway,
waving his arms, and then collapsed facedown beside the third car. He
didn t look like a man at all; he looked like a burning bundle of rags.
Get out, Andy said hoarsely. Get out quickly. She s never done
anything like this before and I don t know if she can stop.
I m all right, Daddy, Charlie said. Her voice was calm, collected,
and strangely indifferent. Everything s okay.
And that was when the cars began to explode.
Sigul-making
Anyway, I was looking out and there were these flies
Resistance: 10
buzzing around at the top of the window, you know how they
Darks expended: 3
do. I didn t like the sound, but I couldn t reach high enough,
Sanity Loss: 1/1d4
even with a rolled-up magazine, to swat them or make them
go away. So instead of that, I made these two triangles on had ever seen: not just sankofites but japps and foud-
the windowpane, drawing in the dirt with the tip of my finger, ers and mirks. I wrote and drew until I was pink dust
and I made this other shape, a special circle-shape, to hold halfway to my right elbow and Ma s piece of chalk
the triangles together. And as soon as I did that, as soon as I was nothing but a little pebble between my thumb
closed the circle, the flies there were four or five of them and finger.
dropped dead on the windowsill.
At the end, I realized I had to make it stron-
It was a Saturday, bright and early, and I didn t have ger, and the way to do that was to make it just for the
to go anywhere near Mrs. Bukowski s if I didn t want to, dog. I didn t know its name, so I printed BOXER with
but that day I did want to. I got out of bed and threw on my the last of the chalk, drew a circle around it, then
clothes just as fast as I could. I did everything fast because made an arrow at the bottom of the circle, pointing
I didn t want to lose that idea. I would, too I d lose it the to the rest. I felt dizzy and my head was throbbing,
way you eventually lose the dreams you wake up with (or the the way it does when you ve just finished taking a su-
boners you wake up with, if you want to be crude) but right per-hard test, or if you spend too long watching TV. I
then I had the whole thing in my mind just as clear as a bell: felt like I was going to be sick . . . but I still also felt
words with triangles around them and curlicues over them, totally eventual. I looked at the dog it was still just
special circles to hold the whole shebang together . . . two or as lively as ever, barking and kind of prancing on its
three of those, overlapping for extra strength. back legs when it ran out of slack but that didn t
bother me. I went back home feeling easy in my
Mrs. Bukowski s dog wasn t sleeping in. Fuck, no. mind. I knew Mrs. Bukowski s dog was toast.
That dog was a firm believer in rooty-tooty, do your duty. It Three days later the dog was eating the old
saw me coming through the picket-fence and went charging dirt sandwich.
to the end of its rope as hard as ever, maybe even harder, as
if some part of its dim little doggy brain knew it was Satur- Mr. Shermerhorn said Mrs. Bukowski s boxer
day and I had no business being there. It hit the end of the for some reason started running around the tree he
rope, boi-yoi-yoinng, and went right over backward. It was was tied to, and when he got to the end of his rope
up again in a second, though, standing at the end of its rope (ha-ha, end of his rope), he couldn t get back. Mrs.
and barking in its choky I m-strangling-but-I-don t-care way. Bukowski was out shopping somewhere, so she was
I suppose Mrs. Bukowski was used to that sound, maybe even no help. When she got home, she found her dog lying
liked it, but I ve wondered since how the neighbors stood it. at the base of the tree in her side yard, choked to
I paid no attention that day. I was too excited to be death.
scared. I fished the chalk out of my pocket and dropped down The writing on the sidewalk stayed there for
on one knee. For one second I thought the whole works had about a week; then it rained hard and afterward
gone out of my head, and that was bad. I felt despair and there was just a pink blur. But until it rained, it
sadness trying to fill me up and I thought, No, don t let it, stayed pretty sharp. And while it was sharp, no one
don t let it, Dinky, fight it. Write anything, even if it s only walked on it. I saw this for myself. People kids
FUCK MRS. BUKOWSKI S DOG. walking to school, ladies walking downtown, Mr.
But I didn t write that. I drew this shape, I think it Shermerhorn, the mailman would just kind of veer
was a sankofite, instead. Some weird shape, but the right around it. They didn t even seem to know they were
shape, because it unlocked everything else. My head flooded doing it. And nobody ever talked about it, either, like
with stuff. It was wonderful, but at the same time it was re- What s up with this weird shit on the sidewalk? or
ally scary because there was so fucking much of it. For the What do you suppose you call something that looks
next five minutes or so I knelt there on the sidewalk, sweat- like that? (A fouder, dimbulb.) It was as if they
ing like a pig and writing like a mad fiend. I wrote words I d didn t even see it was there. Except part of them must
never heard and drew shapes I d never seen shapes nobody have. Why else would they have walked around it?
Telekinesis
I thought I might meet some other people like me if this was a
book or a movie (or maybe just an episode of The X-Files), I would
Resistance: 14
meet a cute chick with nifty little tits and the ability to shut doors
Darks expended: 2+
from across the room but that didn t happen.
Sanity Loss: none
There was the sprinkler system. She could turn it on, turn it on
easily. She giggled again and got up, began to walk barefoot back
toward the lobby doors. Turn on the sprinkler system and close all the
doors. Look in and let them see her looking in, watching and laugh-
ing while the shower ruined their dresses and their hairdos and took
the shine off their shoes. Her only regret was that it couldn t be blood.
The lobby was empty. She paused halfway up the stairs and FLEX,
the doors all slammed shut under the concentrated force she directed
at them, the pneumatic door-closers snapping off. She heard some of
them scream and it was music, sweet soul music.
For a moment nothing changed and then she could feel them
pushing against the doors, wanting them to open. The pressure was
negligible. They were trapped
(trapped)
and the word echoed intoxicatingly in her mind. They were under her
thumb, in her power. Power! What a word that was!
She went the rest of the way up and looked in and George Dawson
was smashed up against the glass, struggling, pushing, his face dis-
torted with effort. There were others behind him, and they all looked
like fish in an aquarium.
And in a sudden, blind thrust, she yanked at all the power she
could feel.
Some of the lights puffed out. There was a dazzling flash some-
where as a live power cord hit a puddle of water. There were dull
thumps in her mind as circuit breakers went into hopeless operation.
The boy who had been holding the mike stand fell over on one of his
amps and there was an explosion of purple sparks and then the crepe
bunting that faced the stage was burning.
Just below the thrones, a live 220-volt electricity cable was crack-
ling on the floor and beside it Rhonda Simard was doing a crazed
puppet dance in her green tulle formal. Its full skirt suddenly blazed
into flame and she fell forward, still jerking.
It might have been at that moment that Carrie went over the edge.
She leaned against the doors, her heart pumping wildly, yet her body
as cold as ice cubes. Her face was livid, but dull red fever spots stood
on each cheek. Her head throbbed thickly, and conscious thought was
lost.
Telepathy
You shine on, boy. Harder than anyone I ever met in my life.
Resistance: 10
And I m sixty years old this January.
Darks expended: 1-4
Huh?
Sanity Loss: 1/1d4+1
You got a knack, Hallorann said, turning to him. Me, I ve
always called it shining. That s what my grandmother called it, too.
She had it. We used to sit in the kitchen when I was a boy no older
than you and have long talks without even openin our mouths.
Really?
Hallorann smiled at Danny s openmouthed, almost hungry ex-
pression and said, Come on up and sit in the car with me for a few
minutes. Want to talk to you. He slammed the trunk.
In the car Hallorann was saying: Get you kinda lonely,
thinkin you were the only one?
Danny, who had been frightened as well as lonely sometimes,
nodded. Am I the only one you ever met? he asked.
Hallorann laughed and shook his head. No, child, no. But
you shine the hardest.
Are there lots, then?
No, Hallorann said, but you do run across them. A lot of
folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don t even know it.
But they always seem to show up with flowers when their wives are
feelin blue with the monthlies, they do good on school tests they don t
even study for, they got a good idea how people are feelin as soon as
they walk into a room. I come across fifty or sixty like that. But maybe
only a dozen, countin my gram, that knew they was shinin.
She ll see we ve been up to something, Bobby thought with
dismay. It s all over my face.
No, Ted said to him. It is not. That is her power over you,
that you believe it. It s a mother s power.
Bobby stared at him, amazed. Did you read my mind? Did
you read my mind just then?
Teleportation
Susannah s heart sank. The mountain or perhaps you called
something like that a butte had to be eight or ten miles away. At the
very limit of vision, in any case. Eddie and Roland and the two young-
Resistance: 16
er men in Ted s party couldn t carry her that far, she didn t believe. And
Darks expended: special
how did she know they could trust these new fellows, anyway?
Sanity Loss: 0/1
On the other had, she thought, what choice do you have?
You won t need to be carried, Ted told her, but Stanley can
use your help. We ll join hands, like folks at a séance. I ll want you
all to visualize that rock formation when we go through. And hold the
name in the forefront of your mind: Steek-Tete, the Little Needle.
Across the room: 4
Shouting distance: 6
Line-of-sight: 9
Familiar location: 10
Unfamiliar location: 12
Different world: 15
Thought Control
Andy took off his corduroy jacket, folded it, and
slipped it under her head. He had begun to feel a thin hope.
If he could play this right, it might work. Lady Luck had
Resistance: varies*
sent him what Andy thought of (with no prejudice at all)
Darks expended: 4
as a pushover. He was the sort that seemed the easiest to
Sanity Loss: 1/1d4
push, right down the line: he was white (Orientals were the
toughest, for some reason); he was quite young (old people
were nearly impossible) and of medium intelligence (bright
people were the easiest pushes, stupid ones harder, and with
the mentally retarded it was impossible).
*Resistance = 25 - (target s Wit)
Andy pulled his wallet, which contained a single
dollar bill. He thanked God that this was not one of those
cabs with a bulletproof partition and no way to contact the
driver except through a money slot. Open contact always
made it easier to push. He had been unable to figure out if
that was a psychological thing or not, and right now it was
immaterial.
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