My classes the next day? Nothing felt worth my attention, I was so preoccupied. I thought about my last dose of medication hidden in an empty ice cream wrapper at the bottom of my freezer. The only teacher I was looking forward to learning from was Mr. Mori after school was over.

  There was one interesting incident with Doctor Warmal however. I was going to the bathroom from another class, and caught him coming at me in the hallway. We locked eyes — he must have recognized me right away, but for a long time made no facial expression or sign. Not until we almost passed each other, when out of the corner of his mouth he said:

  “You are still healing. Don’t push yourself so far.”

  Here in the quiet hall, just the two of us, side by side. It’s true that my power was fading with each day removed from my last treatment. If he was anyone else though, then I would have still been able to feel something in his mind. I was convinced now that he felt the same as Ramsey: just an empty hole that I couldn’t stare into without fearing the fall. Whatever the Mind Flayer did, it wasn’t finished them.

  “Yes sir.”

  After school it was only Lei and I driving to her grandfather. Ramsey and Arnold had basketball practice. Lei felt more shy and awkward when it was just the two of us. I never would have noticed that from her casual body language alone, but it was impossible not to feel when we were alone in the car together. I didn’t tell her that I’d been cut off from my regular supply of medication. It didn’t seem fair that I should have secrets when she couldn’t, but I didn’t want her to think less of me for losing the source of my power. Instead I told her about my suspicion with Ramsey and Doctor Warmal.

  “Did the Mind Flayer possess them? What’s it doing?” Lei asked. “Do you think it can be in both their heads at once?”

  “Maybe it just wanted to play basketball and be a teacher.”

  Lei rolled her eyes. It was a charming, cartoonist expression.

  “What do you think the hunger wants?” she asked.

  “To be fed, of course.”

  “By what?”

  I opened and shut my mouth. I hadn’t considered that. To me it was like a monster which must want to devour people. But the psychic world overlaid with our own without interacting directly. When I got closer to it, I didn’t feel like my body was being devoured. It was my mind being attacked.

  “It wants to eat thoughts,” I decided. “Your grandfather said the Old Ones were made of thoughts, right?”

  “Then maybe the Mind Flayer didn’t possess anyone. Maybe it just ate their thoughts and left them empty.”

  That was unsettling. “But it did speak through Ramsey last night.”

  “Okay, so once someone is empty, the Mind Flayer can fill them with his own thoughts. Next time we go into the woods — if we get attacked — then maybe we shouldn’t try to clear our mind and meditate. That could be exactly what it wants us to do. Maybe we should try to fill our minds with as many thoughts as we can to remind us of ourselves.”

  “You do still want to go back then? Even without your grandfather?”

  Lei parked the car on the street outside her grandfather’s house. She looked over at me very seriously and asked: “Do you know any poetry?”

  I shook my head. “Some songs maybe, why?”

  “Find the words or thoughts that your soul most resonates with. Find something which lights your heart on fire. Then try to remember it when the Mind Flayer tries to empty you out.”

  “What should I think about?” I asked.

  She shrugged and hurriedly exited the car, flushing as she went. I waited a few seconds before following her, so it didn’t seem like I was trying to spy on her thoughts.

  Thankfully, Mr. Mori’s training today wasn’t more meditation. He smiled and waved us into his garden. There was a dainty wooden coffee table perched on the stones beside the stream. There were a dozen glass jars on top, with cloth lids sealed with string.

  “Fireflies?” I guessed.

  Lei giggled. “I thought that too the first time I saw them.”

  Inside the jars glowed bright little lights. Each of them was dominantly one color or another, but they were also mixing and swirling between adjacent shades like ink mixing in water.

  “Hello Lei. Good afternoon, Martin. Thank you for coming and embracing the Psychic Curse Club. I wouldn’t have blamed either of you if last night had been enough.”

  “The things won’t stop seeing me, even if I stop seeing them,” I said. “Of course I want to be ready.”

  “Today I have captured some stray thoughts for you,” Mr. Mori gestured at the glass jars with a sweeping wave of his white robe. “Some of them have come from me. Some of them I caught in the wild. Your job today is to catch and release them.”

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  “What, like with a net?” I asked.

  Lei giggled again. I felt foolish.

  Mr. Mori smiled patiently. “If it helps you to visualize a net, then give it a try.” He pulled on the string which secured one of the lids. The string unknotted itself smoothly, and the cloth slipped loosely to the side. A blue spark within floated into the air, drifting lazily about on unfelt winds. It looked like a floating seeds which could be planted to grow a Christmas tree. One jar at a time, Mr. Mori pulled on the strings and released the colorful thoughts into the air.

  One of the red thoughts lazily wandered in my direction. I reached out and grabbed at it with my hand. I passed straight through, feeling nothing but a tingling sensation.

  “How’d they stay in the jars then?” I asked.

  “The secret is in the string.” Mr. Mori winked.

  “Here, I’ll show you,” Lei said. She walked toward the blue thought which lingered in the air. Mr. Mori stepped politely out of the way and let her follow it. She took a deep breath and held her nose as though she was about to dive. Then she plunged her face through the light. The blue wave washed over her face, soaking into her skin and illuminating before being absorbed into her. Then it was gone.

  “Hey! That’s not fair!” Lei protested. “It’s just a list of chores to do!”

  “The blue thought was one of mine,” Mr. Mori admitted, chuckling.

  “That doesn’t seem so hard.” I went after the red one again, although it was floating higher and harder to reach. I had to jump to get my face through it. Again only the tingling sensation on my skin. I looked up to see it was still floating above me and did not absorb.

  “To catch a stray thought, you must believe the thought is your own,” Mr. Mori said. “You are not pushing your body through the thought, but telling your body that it created the thought.”

  The red light came back around, and I gave it another go. I didn’t really understand what Mori meant, but I did my best to tell myself I was thinking the red thought. I told myself I created it inside me, and it escaped. It would always be my thought, and I could always understand it. Miraculously the light flashed brighter, and my vision disappeared completely. When it cleared, I wasn’t looking at the garden anymore.

  I looked at a massive crowd of people marching down a street nearby I recognized. They were dressed in ordinary clothing, but they didn’t look like any crowd I’d ever seen. They marched in perfect synchronization. More uncanny than the marching, one scratched his ear and a hundred others did the same. They turned their head from side to side as one. There was nothing particularly choreographed about their random movements. This didn’t seem like a play or an act to me. The whole crowd looked at me together. They began to cheer in a unified wave of sound.

  The cheering dissolved into the bubbling stream. The red light melted into the peaceful garden. I was shaken and dumbfounded.

  “The red one is a thought I picked up in the woods last night,” Mr. Mori admitted. “I had a look at it myself. What do you think it means?”

  “The Mind Flayer,” I said at once. “It’s emptying people out and filling them with something else.”

  Mr. Mori nodded sagely. “Yes. I think that is very possible. You see why I made you and your friends leave the woods so quickly. We were too slow to save poor Ramsey, I’m afraid.

  “You think the Mind Flayer got him too?” Lei asked. “Why would you still let him in our private club then? I should tell him not to come tomorrow.”

  Mr. Mori shook his head. “I have outlived all of my enemies. All who remain are friends. I would not fight the will of the Old Ones. Instead, we should learn from him, and understand how to help those like him who have been afflicted. I have another thought which I captured from the woods last night. It is still in my head though. I will now show you how to set a thought free.”

  Mr. Mori took one hand and placed his middle finger on one temple, with the thumb on the other. He then pinched the fingers together at his forehead and drew them away. A long thin strand of white light pulled out of his head like unraveling a string. When the light broke free, it formed a ball in the air like others to float towards me.

  Lei performed the same motions in her own head. “Here Martin. This one’s for you. We’ll trade.” She soon released a lavender light which floated into the air.

  “This time you are imagining the opposite,” Mr. Mori said. “A thought currently in your head does not belong to you. It is a foreign thing which has wandered in by mistake. You never created it, and cannot understand it. It means nothing to you, so you must pull it out and let it go. This is especially useful when you are trapped in destructive thoughts, or a grief you cannot overcome. It is also good for sending messages.”

  I placed my own fingers and concentrated. I didn’t know what thought to give Lei. I felt like there had always been an imbalance though, with me looking into her head without her looking back. So it was only fair to give her something important. I thought about a night with my mother when I was very young, before she left my father. My father chased her down the street. She was shouting at him. She wasn’t all there mentally on a good day, and on the bad nights like this, it was more like she had a fit. She stopped every so often to pick up a rock and throw it at my father. Then she started running again. I remembered how she would become paranoid and think someone was watching her, or chasing her, and that she had to get away from us. My father pretended it was a game, but his panic and shame were real. I hated that memory. If it left me and never came back, I would be happy.

  That didn’t happen to me, I told myself. That was somebody else. And now I’m letting it go. A story I heard, nothing more. A sickly greenish light pulled free from my head. And it was gone. Not only gone, but so far removed that I couldn’t even remember what thought I sent. I watched Lei pass through my green light and absorb it into her skin. I felt nervous as she did, because I didn’t even know what thought I had given her. She gave me a painful look though, and I figured it must have been something I was better off without.

  I captured two more thoughts during practice that day. The first was the lavender one from Lei. It was her on an airplane looking down at the city at night. But no, I had to tell myself that wasn’t her at all, but me who flew on that plane. That was my thought, my memory, and I was the one filled with happiness and excitement. I was going to America where everything was possible, and movie stars walked down the street.

  “That’s a lovely memory,” I said. “You shouldn’t give me that. I’ll give it back. I don’t know what I gave you, but I think it was something awful.”

  Lei shook her head and smiled wistfully. “This is my thought now. That is your thought. We must believe that for it to work.”

  “It is good practice to write down which thoughts you are giving away before they are sent,” Mr. Mori said.

  The second thought I captured was the other one Mr. Mori found in the woods. They sounded like the Mind Flayer after it took Ramsey. The words felt alien and evil in my mind, but they were my words, and my thoughts now.

  “The war begins when Fortuna is awake. Spread the word.”