Whatever those words mean, they were echoed by another woman’s voice, close by Cranston’s elbow.
“Canhywllah Cyrth!” This woman’s tone was a gasp. “I see it too! It will bring the Gwrach y Rhibyn!”
“She is materializing there upon the rock!” Madame Mathilda was shrieking anew, but her words were coherent. “She has raven tresses and her arms are ivory, she is reaching for the branch of lilac above the crystal pool!”
Apparently this referred to the Gwrach y Rhibyn, whoever she was, for the glimmers of light were no longer twinkling through the corner space of the blackout curtain. Calmly, Cranston waited to hear more. It came.
“In her other hand she holds a dirk!” There was hysteria in the medium’s high-pitched voice. “In one hand life, in the other death! Which is to be, you must ask her, for only she can answer!”
“Yes - yes -” Cranston could hear the words panted by the other woman. “I must ask her -”
“But you must wait!” screamed Madame Mathilda. “She is waving her hands, this woodland spirit, in token of farewell. The vision fades, all but the hands, now they are going into mist, but she is flinging tokens of this visitation. Here they are!”
The medium gurgled that last utterance. Something brushed past Cranston’s face and from the center of the room there came a clatter across the hardwood floor. Then those sounds were drowned by the hard, violent thud of the medium’s body landing on the floor, echoed by the crash of an overturning chair.
Other screams punctured the darkness, voiced by sitters who imagined that they too had seen the singular vision hysterically described by Madame Mathilda.
Strange how a cramped space, pitch-dark, could turn crazed shrieks into reality through the power of suggestion!