Chapter Twenty-Two. Helen, 1964
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
At age eighteen, Helen Hopkins could count on one hand the things she had going for her: a steady job, her own bedroom in a boarding house, trim ankles, and a neck so long it rivaled Audrey Hepburn’s.
Plus, she’d recently moved to Boston, which held possibilities, even if none ever seemed to present themselves to Helen.
Her only other choice would have been to remain in her widowed mother’s tiny, rundown home on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut, where she wouldn’t have a decent job or her own bedroom, let alone the prospect of romance.
“Miss Hopkins, is that you? You have a visitor,” her landlady called as Helen came through the door from work.
Helen could hardly believe her ears. She never had visitors.
She hung her coat on the rack in the hallway, smoothed her hair, then stepped into the living room, where her landlady was serving coffee to a broad-shouldered man whose back was to her.
He stood up and turned around and extended his hand, saying, “I’m Dr. Silas Trimble.”
After the landlady excused herself, Dr. Trimble removed a booklet from his briefcase and smoothed it open on the coffee table.
Helen recognized the article from the American Society for Psychical Research journal with the headline “Remote Viewing: A Case Study, October 1963.” She had a copy of the article upstairs in her scrapbook. She knew every word of it intimately; it was written about her.
“Are there any inaccuracies or exaggerations in this report?” Dr. Trimble asked.
Helen shook her head. “Everything is true, just like I told the man who interviewed me.”
Dr. Trimble asked her to recount the experience detailed in the article, and she did: A few months earlier, she’d been near the end of her shift at the wafer factory when the sudden, overpowering smell of mud filled her nose and lungs.
She threw her arms over her head, fearing the building was about to tumble down atop her.
Her breathing was rapid and shallow; she sensed a great wave—taller than any of the buildings in the city—was about to crest, then crash down.
She could hear the screams of victims, then silence.
Her coworkers had gathered around her, and Helen realized she’d slipped off the stool and crumpled onto the floor.
She had told them of her vision, and her manager pointed to the window. “There’s no storm,” he said. “This building is made of steel; nothing could bring it down. Did you fall asleep on the job? Knock your head?”
Helen shook her head vigorously. “I was wide awake.”
He shrugged and told her to get back to work. But the strong aroma of mud and dank water lingered in the air, even if no one else on the factory line could smell it.
Then news came from across the Atlantic: a landslide in Italy. Tumbling rock and mud, the Vajont Dam breaking, a great crescendoing wave that claimed thousands of lives in the Van Pola landslide at the same moment of Helen’s experience.
Helen might’ve been dismissed as a hysterical woman, but there were half a dozen witnesses who verified her account of what she had seen, felt, and smelled.
“When I saw a newspaper advertisement that the psychical society was looking for such stories, I went in for an interview,” Helen told Dr. Trimble. “You see, it wasn’t the first time I’d had such a vision.”
He smiled, which seemed jarring given the horror she’d just described. “I’ve been looking for you for quite some time,” he said.
Dr. Trimble wasn’t the man of her dreams. He was too old, too gruff, and besides, he not only had wiry gray hair sprouting from his ears, he was married.
But he was the first person who ever believed Helen was special.
Special enough to deserve to live in a brand-new city in the South, where the weather and pace were milder. To be given a free dorm room. Proper meals, rather than the toast and tea she made on the hotplate and in the kettle in her room.
Dr. Trimble had come all the way from Virginia to see Helen, and he wanted to bring her back with him.
“I’ve reached an agreement with the university president,” he said while Helen pretended not to notice her landlady eavesdropping in the hallway. “We’ll match your salary, and your room and board are free.”
“How soon would you like me there?” she asked.
“I’m driving back tomorrow. Ideally, you would come with me,” Dr. Trimble said.
It seemed too good to be true.