Reborn

Interlude on Central Park West—I

Mr. Veilleur wasn't sure what it was at first.

It came as he was half sitting, half reclining, half dozing on the living-room sofa while a news special on the effects of the Tet offensive in Vietnam filled the nineteen-inch screen of their brand-new color television. A feeling, a sensation, a prickling in his hindbrain. He couldn't identify it, but there was an ominous feel to it.

A warning?

As it grew stronger it seemed in some way familiar. Like something from the past, something he'd known before but had not encountered for many years.

A presence!

Suddenly alarmed, he shook himself awake and sat up.

No. It couldn't be.

He rose from the couch and went to the window where he stared out at the naked trees of Central Park below. The park was bathed in an orange glow from the setting sun except where it was blocked by the buildings rising along Central Park West. His own apartment building cut a thick swath of shadow into the light.

The feeling was growing, getting stronger, more defined, flowing from the east, from straight across town.

It can't be!

He saw his ghostly reflection in the window glass: a large-framed man with gray hair and a lined face. He looked sixtyish but at this moment he felt much older.

There was no doubting the feeling, yet how could it be? It wasn't possible!

"What is it, dear?" his wife said in her thickly accented English as she entered the room from the kitchen.

"It's him! He's alive! He's here!"