“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Well,” I said to Jane after breakfast, “I suppose that if I don’t write some sort of account of what happened yesterday that I’ll regret it later. I really don’t feel like doing it, though....” My stomach felt empty. I had the uneasy feeling that it might signify my worries that yesterday’s “guest,” a Mr. Fred Conyers, might return.

Fortunately, I started shaking my head right away. Fred looked pained but kept talking very smoothly, as Seth. I can’t reproduce everything he said, and how he said it because of the lack of time. The afternoon was cold. I wore my summer thongs on bare feet, and a plaid shirt and jeans, and began to shiver before long. I didn’t realize that when Fred’s Seth told me Fred was getting cold, he really meant it. I couldn’t believe what was happening, and was already wondering what to do to get out of the situation. I saw no car parked nearby.

“If you don’t let me in your house I’ll just die,” Fred said. By now he’d taken two hardcover books from a bag, and given them to me. One by Jerszy Kosinski and one by Somerset Maugham. The latter was an expensive anthology. In one he’d written a note on a blank page to Jane, and to me in the other. Check their phrasing for a close approximation of the way he talked. Fred also handed me a thick, neatly tied package of brown paper and yellow string—The Christ Book, he said, which was for Jane and me, and for Prentice-Hall. I didn’t open it, and still haven’t. When I asked him where he was really from, he said Denver, and that his address was inside the package. It wasn’t on the other manuscript. Nor was I quick-witted enough to ask if he had a family, if anyone knew where he was, or what he did for a living—if he worked, or could—or how he found our house in the first place. I wondered if he was schizophrenic. He appeared to be harmless enough.

The water wasn’t hot yet. When I looked out on the back porch Fred was gone. The door was half open. I had instant visions of him wandering away, not really meaning to, but perhaps getting lost—and wearing my best coat. His bags sat there on the ramp Frank Longwell had made for Jane’s chair. A moment later Fred came back into view from in back of the garage. “I had to go to the bathroom,” he said, tightening the coat around him. He didn’t seem to be so cold now. I told him I’d called the police, and he nodded. “Fred means you and your wife no harm at all,” he said, speaking for Seth again. I told him I knew that. I still wanted to know what he was going to do when he’d left here.