EXPLANATION
‘The Thirteenth Candle?’ Well, it is meant to be a logical
title derived from what I am trying to do. I am trying to
‘light a candle’ which is far better than ‘cursing the dark-
ness’. This is my thirteenth book which, I hope, will be my
Thirteenth Candle.
You may think it is a very little candle, perhaps one of
those birthday-cake candles. But I have never had a cake of
any kind with candles—never even had a birthday cake!—
and now with my restricted sugar-free, low-residue diet of
not more than a thousand calories is too late to bother.
So indulge me; let's pretend that this Is ‘The Thirteenth
Candle’ even though it be as small as the candle on a doll's
birthday cake.
CHAPTER ONE Mrs. Martha MacGoohoogly strode purposefully to her
kitchen door, a tattered scrap of newspaper clutched in a
ham-like hand. Outside, in the parched patch of weed-
covered ground which served as ‘back garden’ she stoppedand glared around like a cross bull in the mating season
awaiting the advent of rivals. Satisfied—or disappointed—that there were no rivals for attention in the offing, she
hurried to the broken-down fence defining the garden
limits.
Gratefully propping her more than ample bosom on a
worm-eaten post, she shut her eyes and opened her mouth.
‘Hey, Maud!’ she roared across the adjoining gardens, her
voice echoing and reverberating from the nearby factory
wall. ‘Hey, Maud, where are ya ?’ Closing her mouth andopening her eyes she stood awaiting the results.
From the direction of the next-house-but-one came the
sound of a plate dropping and smashing, and then the
kitchen door of THAT house opened and a small, scraggy
woman came hopping out, agitatedly wiping her hands on
her ragged apron. ‘Well?’ she growled dourly. ‘What d'yawant?’ ‘Hey, Maud, you seen this?’ yelled back Martha as shewaved the tattered piece of newsprint over her head.
‘How do I know if I seen it if I haven't seen it first?’snorted Maud. ‘I might a done, then, on the other hand, I
might not. What is it, anyhow another sex scandal?’ Mrs. Martha MacGoohoogly fumbled in the pocket of her
apron and withdrew large horn-rimmed spectacles lavishly
besprinkled with small stones. Carefully she wiped the
glasses on the bottom of her skirt before putting them on
and patting her hair in place over her ears. Then noisily
wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve, she yelled out,
7
‘It's from the Dominion, my nephew sent it to me.’
‘Dominion? What shop is that? Have they got a sale
on?’ called Maud with the first show of interest.
Martha snorted in rage and disgust, ‘Naw!’ she shouted
in exasperation. ‘Don't you know NUTHINK? Dominion, you
know Canada. Dominion of Canada. My nephew sent it to
me. Wait a mo, I'll be right over.’ Hoisting her bosom off
the fence, and tucking her glasses into her apron pocket, she
sped down the rough garden and into the lane at the
bottom. Maud sighed with resignation and slowly went to
meet her.
‘Look at this!’ yelled Martha as they met in the lane at
the garden gate of the empty lot between their two houses.
‘Look at the rot they write now. Soul? There ain't no such
thing. When you're dead you're DEAD, just like that—POOF!’
Her face flushed, she brandished the paper under poor
Maud's long thin nose, and said angrily, ‘How they get
away with it I don't never know. You die, it's like blowing
out a candle and with nothing after. My poor husband, God
rest his soul, always said, before he died, that it would be
such a relief to know that he wouldn't meet his past
associates again.’ She sniffed to herself at the mere thought.
Maud O'Haggis looked down the sides of her nose and
waited patiently for her crony to run down. At last she
seized her opportunity and asked, ‘But what is this article
which has so upset you?’
Speechlessly Martha MacGoohoogly passed over the tat-
tered fragment of paper that had caused all the commotion.
‘No, dear ' she suddenly said, having found her voice again.
‘That's the wrong side you are reading.’ Maud turned over
the paper and started all over again her lips silently form-
ing the words as she read them. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed.
‘Well I never!’
Martha smiled with triumphant satisfaction. ‘Well,’ she
said. ‘It's a rum do eh, when such stuff can get into print.
What d'ya make of it?’
Maud turned over the page a few times, started to read
the wrong side again, and then said, ‘Oh! I know, Helen
Hensbaum will tell us, she knows all about these things. She
reads BOOKS.’
‘Aw! I can't BEAR that woman,’ retorted Martha. ‘Say,
d'ye know what she said to me the other day? She said,
8
“May beets grow in your belly—God forbid, Mrs. Mac-
Goohoogly.” That's what she said to me, can you imagine
it? The CHEEK Of the woman. Pfah!’
‘But she got the gen, she knows her stuff about these
things. and if we want to get to the bottom of THIS’—she
violently fluttered the poor unfortunate sheet of paper—
‘we shall have to play her game and butter her up. Come
on, let's go see her.’
Martha pointed down the lane and said, ‘THERE She is,
hanging out her smalls, fancy hussy she is, I must say. Get a
load of them new pantie hose, must be on a special some-
where. Me, good old-fashioned knickers is good enough for
me.’ She raised her skirt to show. ‘Keeps yer warmer when
there is no man about, eh?’ She laughed coarsely and the
two women sauntered down the lane towards Helen Hens-
baum and her washing.
Just as they were about to turn into the Hensbaum
garden the sound of a slamming door halted them. From
the adjacent garden a Pair of the Hottest Hot Pants appeared.
Fascinated, the two women stared. Slowly their gaze
traveled upwards to take in the see-three blouse and vapid,
painted face. ‘Strewth!’ muttered Maud O'Haggis. ‘There's
life in the old town yet!’ Silently they stood and goggled as
the young girl in the Hot Pants teetered by on heels as high
as her morals were low.
‘Makes yer feel old, like, don't it?’ said Martha Mac-
Goohoogly. Without another word they turned into the
Hensbaum place to find Mrs. Hensbaum watching the girl
going on the beat.
‘The top of the morning to you, Mrs. Hensbaum,’ called
Martha. ‘I see you have Sights at your end of the lane, eh?’
She gave a throaty chuckle. Helen Hensbaum scowled even
more ferociously as she looked down the lane. ‘Ach! HER!’
she exclaimed. ‘Dead in her mother's womb she should be,
already!’ She sighed and stretched up to her high clothes-
line, demonstrating that she DID wear pantie hose.
‘Mrs. Hensbaum,’ began Maud, ‘we know as how you are
well read and know all about such things, so we have come
to you for advice.’ She stopped, and Helen Hensbaum
smiled as she said, ‘Well now, ladies, come in, and I will
make a cup of tea for you this cold morning. It'll do us all
good to rest a while.’ She turned and led the way into her
9
well-kept home which had the local name of ‘Little Ger-
many’ because it was so neat and tidy.
The kettle was boiling, the tea was steaming. Mrs. Hens-
baum passed round sweet biscuits and then said, ‘Now,
what can I do for you?’
Maud gestured to Martha and said, ‘She has got a queer
sort of tale from Canada or some such outlandish place.
Don't know what to make of it, meself. SHE’LL tell you.’
Martha sat up straighter and said, ‘Here—look at this, I
got it sent from my nephew. Got himself in trouble over a
married woman, he did, and he scarpered off to a place
called Montreal, in the Dominion. Writes sometimes. Just
sent this in his letter. Don't believe in such stuff.’ She passed
over the tattered scrap of paper, now much the worse for
rough handling.
Mrs. Helen Hensbaum gingerly took the remnant and
spread it out on a clean sheet of paper. ‘Ach, so!’ she
yelped in her excitement, quite forgetting her normally
excellent English. ‘Ist gut, no?’
‘Will ye read it out to us, clear like, and tell us what you
think?’ asked Maud.
So Mrs. Hensbaum cleared her throat, sipped her tea, and
started: ‘From the Montreal Star, I see. Monday, May 31st,
1971. Hmmm. INTERESTING. Yes, I to that city have been.’
A short pause, and she read out:
‘Saw himself leave his body. Heart Victim Describes
Dying Feeling Canadian Press—Toronto. A Toronto man
who suffered a heart attack last year, says he saw himself
leave his body and had strange, tranquil sensations during a
critical period when his heart stopped.
‘B. Leslie Sharpe, 68, says during the period his heart was
not beating he was able to observe himself “face to face”.
‘Mr. Sharpe describes his experience in the current issue
of the Canadian Medical Association Journal in part of a
report by Dr. R. L. MacMillan and Dr. K. W. G. Brown, co-
directors of the coronary care unit of Toronto General
Hospital.
‘In the report, the doctors said, “This could be the con-
cept of the soul leaving the body.”
Mr. Sharpe was taken to hospital after his family doctor
diagnosed a pain in his left arm as a heart attack.
‘The following morning, Mr. Sharpe says, he remembers
10
glancing at his watch while lying in bed hooked to the
wires of a cardiograph machine and intravenous tubes.
‘ “Just then I gave a very, very deep sigh and my head
flopped over to the right. I thought, ‘Why did my head flop
over?—I didn't move it—I must be going to sleep.’
‘ “Then I am looking at my own body from the waist up,
face to face as though from a mirror in which I appear to
be in the lower left corner. Almost immediately I saw
myself leaving my body, coming out through my head and
shoulders. I did not see my lower limbs.
‘ “The body leaving me was not exactly in vapor form
yet it seemed to expand very slightly once it was clear of
me,” says Mr. Sharpe.
‘ “Suddenly I am sitting on a very small object traveling
at great speed, out and up into a dull, blue-gray sky at a 45-
degree angle.
‘ “Down below me to my left I saw a pure white cloud-
like substance also moving up on a line that would intersect
my course.
‘ “It was perfectly rectangular in shape but full of holes
like a sponge.
‘ “My next sensation was of floating in a bright pale yel-
low light—a very delightful feeling.
‘ “I continued to float, enjoying the most beautiful, tran-
quil sensation.
‘ “Then there were sledge-hammer blows to my left side.
They created no actual pain, but jarred me so much that I
had difficulty in retaining my balance. I began to count
them and when I got to six I said aloud, ‘What the . . . are
you doing to me?’ and opened my eyes.”
‘He said he recognized doctors and nurses around his bed
who told him he had suffered a cardiac arrest and he had
been defibrillated—shocked by electrical pulses to start his
heart beating normally.
‘The doctors said it was unusual for a heart-attack patient
to remember events surrounding the attack and that usually
there was a period of amnesia for several hours before and
after an attack.’
‘Well !!!’ exclaimed Helen Hensbaum as she concluded
her reading and sat back to gaze at the two women before
her. ‘How VERY interesting!’ she reiterated.
Martha MacGoohoogly smirked with self-satisfied plea-
11
sure that she had shown ‘the foreign woman’ something she
had not known before. ‘Good, eh?’ she smiled. ‘The real
Original McCoy of bunk, eh?’
Helen Hensbaum smiled in a quizzical sort of way as she
asked, ‘So you think this is strange, no? .You think it is the—what you call it?—the bunk? No, ladies, this is ordi- nary. Look here, I show!’ She jumped to her feet and led the way into another room. There, in a very smart book-
case reposed books. More books than Martha had ever seen
in a house before.
Helen Hensbaum moved forward and picked out certain
books. ‘Look,’ she exclaimed, rifling the pages as one handling old and beloved friends. ‘Look—here is all this and
more in print. The Truth. The Truth brought to us by one
man who has been penalized and persecuted for telling the
Truth. And now, just because some silly pressman writes an
article people can believe it Is true.’
Mrs. Martha MacGoohoogly looked curiously at the titles, ‘The Third Eye,’ ‘Doctor from Lhasa’. ‘Wheres- sat?’ she muttered before scanning the rest of the titles. Then, turning round, she exclaimed, ‘You don't believe THAT stuff, do you? Cor, flip me bloomin' eyelids, that's FICTION!’ Helen Hensbaum laughed out loud. ‘Fiction?’ she gasped at last. ‘FICTION? I have studied these books and I know they are true. Since reading “You-Forever” I too can astral travel.’ Martha looked blank. ‘Poor doll is mixing German with her English,’ she thought. ‘Astral travel? What's that ? A new airline or something?’ Maud just stood there with her mouth hanging open; all this was MUCH beyond her. All SHE wanted to read was the ‘Sunday Supplement’ with all the latest sex crimes. ‘This ustral, astril travel or whatever it is, whatever is it?’ asked Martha. ‘Is there REALLY anything in it? Could my Old Man, who is dead and gone, God Rest His Soul, come to me and tell me where he stashed his money before he croaked?’ ‘Yes, I tell you. YES, it COULD be done if there was a real
reason for it. If it were for the good of others—yes.’ ‘Heepers jeepers, cats in creepers,' ejaculated a flustered Martha. ‘Now I shall be afraid to sleep tonight in case my 12 Old Man comes back to haunt me—and gets up to his old
capers again.’ She shook her head sadly as she muttered, ‘He
always was a great one in the bedroom!’
Helen Hensbaum poured out more tea. Martha MacGoo-...
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