Free Otherworldly Maine by Noreen Doyle Page B

important function in his work. In any case, she indicated further that sometimes there were empty packing cartons scattered on the porch. The local postmaster/general store proprietor confirmed that a few times each year Griswold Masterson received shipments from laboratory supply companies around the country. But when our reporter asked the gray-faced postmaster what he could tell us about the weight and size of those boxes, and about what might have been inside them, his voice hardened:
    â€œDidn’t pay attention, and I wouldn’t want to know. And stop coming around here botherin’ me! I got work to do.”
    The fire that destroyed the two-story, stick-built house on Cobalt Hill may indeed have gotten started through spontaneous combustion, as Marshville residents contended—those dried-out magazines springing into flames. Or maybe a bolt of lightning set it off. Or a kerosene lamp left lit by mistake may have been knocked over by the wind. An act of nature may well have been the cause. But with the attitude the town maintained toward Masterson and his work, one had to wonder. Certainly our reporter did. However, she was unable to come up with any evidence of arson, conspiratorial or otherwise. Of course, Rev. Ossip saw it as neither an act of nature nor man:
    â€œGod was righting a grievous wrong.”
    Sifting through the ashy remains in the Masterson basement, EQMM ’s reporter made an important find: a few fragments of yellow, lined manuscript pages, written in what is undoubtedly the hand of Griswold Masterson. Tragically, most of Masterson’s papers must have been destroyed by flames, and even sections of the fragments salvaged—preserved by mere chance under a slab of fallen boilerplate—were damaged by heat and water. In attempting to piece together a skeleton of Masterson’s thoughts, the editors have bracketed words that were obliterated or not entirely readable, corrected misspellings and obvious grammatical oversights, and are publishing the fragments in the order that seems to offer the greatest continuity. But the total sense of these elements will probably never be known:
. . . in the Practical Future—a psychological response to immediate human needs, the second is the Theoretical Future—a cry for more time to experience Man’s potential. In pursuing the Practical Future we are expressing a [desire to preview particular] events so that we might alter their outcome in some way that is meaningful to our existence. In pondering the Theoretical [Future], we are attempting to break out of the [limitations of our flesh]—to participate in a time beyond our physical life span . . . .
    After countless attempts to discard faulty reasoning, it became clear that bridging the Practical and Theoretical would have to be accomplished not entirely physically, not entirely spiritually, but through a journey involving mind and body . . . .
    . . . and still another discipline, that of philosophy. Specifically the question of an immortal presence in the universe. If the world as we know it was indeed shaped through a process of evolution, certainly that development had to be set into motion. It needed a Prime Mover. But how events are shaped in the future will depend on Man . . . .
    There is no more. While we suspect hundreds of these handwritten sheets were destroyed (bear in mind the technical aspects of his experiments have barely been alluded to in these fragments), who can say for sure?
    In searching the ruins of the house, our reporter came across the remains of jars and test tubes—apparently smashed by the volunteer firemen. She also recovered a charred corner of a schematic drawing that seems to correspond to the stainless-steel cylinder the sheriff and his deputy reputedly found in Masterson’s basement the morning before the fire. That was the day Beryl Ward reported the Hermit Genius missing. The reporter didn’t get to see the cylinder itself,