Hearing What Is Not Spoken

What Tom would come to call his ‘gift’ came to him when he was just a boy of ten. At first he thought that it was just his imagination running wild with a voice it did not have before. But over the passage of a few days, he began to understand it for what it was. He knew what people were thinking by hearing the words that emerged from their minds, but did not through their tongues. .

He remembered his grandfather George telling him when he was a little younger that a few generations back, members of his family were thought to be wizards and witches because it was said that they had a magical power. The old man told him that this ability typically skipped a generation, so he had better beware, as his father had no such gift. Tom did not know what to say in response, so he said nothing, as much as his mind was filled with a mixture of doubt and hopeful belief. His grandfather then looked closely at him, staring at his head and said, “No Tom, I really mean this.”

Later on that day, he wondered whether his grandfather might be something of a wizard himself, and that could mean that he might be the next in line for the magic. On both counts he would have been right.

The beginnings of his awareness of the gift came in a very emotional situation a few weeks later. Tom’s mother was crying and sobbing. When he asked her what was wrong, she would not tell him right away, no matter how often he posed the question to her. She did hold him tight, but said nothing at first.

           But soon he heard her voice even though her mouth was not moving. And the tone of what he heard was of a deeper tone than what he was accustomed to regarding the words coming from his mother’s lips. The mouthless words that were repeated over and over were “My husband has left me. Your father has left us.” Eventually those words would be repeated through his mother’s speaking voice. But sounded different somehow, less spooky.

           The next time he saw his grandfather George, he stared at Tom, nodded his head ever so slightly, and Tom heard his grandfather’s inner voice say, “Yes, it skips a generation. I hope that you use it well. I’m pretty sure that you can hear me now.”

Working with the Gift

           It turned out that the gift helped Tom achieve good grades at school. When his classes were engaged in writing tests in the classroom, he would listen to the thinking of his fellow students, the ones who received the best grades. They generally thought their answers through before they wrote them down.

           Eventually he would go to law school at university, and would do quite well. The gift certainly helped. Upon graduation, he was soon hired by a prominent legal firm in town, where he soon demonstrated that he excelled at defending their clients. They did notice that he was kind of fussy as to who he wanted to defend, but his success rate gave him a lot of freedom of choice with his boss and his colleagues.

Being able to read the mind of the accused helped him to choose to work with those clients whom he knew were innocent because that is what their inner voices told him. If he knew through mind reading that a potential client was guilty, he would not take such a person on. This certainly did help his track record as a lawyer.

Tom became something of a heroic figure in town because of his success with clients whom many people believed were certain guilty because of their reputations and often because the so-called hard evidence was heavily against them.

As a man he had decided that he would not use the gift for ‘purposes of evil’ as he would call it, a term he picked up from his grandfather George. He knew that he would have done very well as a poker player, making easy money but he thought that to be a great wrongful use of the gift that he had been given. He felt that with the gift came responsibility.

           But ‘the gift’ also caused him some difficulties with the girls and eventually women he went out with. In the latter cause they were sometimes motivated more by the possibility of sharing his earnings than they were by his often bashful character. Fortunately it was so easy for him to detect differences between their spoken words of praise and warmth, and their unspoken but still heard critical thoughts. Fortunately for Tom, his eventual wife, Bessie, would speak the truth of her thoughts, so he knew she would be the right one for him. 

None of their children would have the gift. Tom was somewhat disappointed by this, but not surprised. They were of the skipped generation. He would not speak to them about his gift. He did hope that he would live long enough to learn that at least one of his grandchildren had the gift. He could help them understand what it was, and for what purposes it should be used. Grandfather Tom would be modelled on grandfather George.

The End of the Gift

His grandfather had told him rather indirectly with his talking of wizards and witches a second time a few years after he first spoke to him about the family ‘magic’, that at some point the gift would come to an end. In his words “There is one thing, I have not told you about the wizards and witches. When they reached a certain age, their powers would begin to diminish.” Unspoken, but still heard by Tom were two thought words coming from his grandfather: “Mine included.”

           His own discovery of this diminishing of the gift came about in a case when he was in his late fifties. Try as he might, he could not find through thought reading whether the potential client was guilty or not. The thoughts were mere whispers beyong his hearing abilities. The result was that his client was proven guilty beyond the famous ‘shadow of a doubt’. This was the first case that he had ever lost in his long career. He knew that it was time for him to retire. His mind was too old to be certain about potential clients. But he had a certainty about his wife.