Part 7 (1/2)
Dilated eyes, tremulous limbs, backward looks; all these things showed that something had brought this unfortunate family to the verge of a panic that reached the very limits of their control.
The doctor was an adept at dispelling that sort of jumpiness. Such a mental condition was the worst possible for combating ”influences,” whatever they might be.
He acknowledged his introductions with easy confidence, and then he held up his hand.
”No, no, nix on that. Give me a chance to breathe. D'you want to ruin my appet.i.te with horrors? Let's eat first and then, you can spread yourselves out on the story. No ghost likes a full stomach.”
He was purposely slangy. The immediate effect was that his hosts experienced a measure of relief. The man radiated such an impression of knowledge, of confidence, of power.
The meal, however, was at best a lugubrious one. Conversation had to be forced to dwell on ordinary subjects. The wife evinced a painful disinclination to go into the kitchen. ”Our cook left us two days ago,” she explained. The boy was silent and frightened. The sick man said little, and coughed a dry, petulant bark at intervals.
The doctor, engrossed in his plate, chattered gaily about nothing; but all the time he was watching the invalid like a hawk. James Terry did his best to distract attention from the expert's scrutiny of everybody and everything in the room. By the time the meal was over the doctor had formed his opinion about the various characteristics and idiosyncrasies of his hosts, and he dominated the company with his expansive cheerfulness.
”Well, now, let's get one of those satisfying smokes in the jimmy pipe, and you can tell me all about it. You” a” selecting the lady a” ”you tell me. I'm sure you'll give the best account.”
The lady, fl.u.s.tered and frightened, was able to add very little to what her husband had already described. There was nothing to add. A baffling nothingness enshrouded the whole situation; but it was a nothingness that was full of an unnamable fear a” a feeling of terror enhanced by the ”shapes” of the wife's psychic imaginings. A nameless nothing to be combated.
The doctor shrugged with impatience. He had met with just such conditions before: the inability of people to describe their ghostly happenings with coherence. He decided on a bold experiment.
”My dear lady,” he said, devoting his attention to the psychic one, ”it is difficult to exorcise a mere feeling until we know something about the cause of it. Now I'll tell you what we ought to do. When you sit at your table for your little seances you get raps and so on, don't you? And you spell out messages from your 'spirit friends, isn't it? And you'd like to go into a trance and let your 'guides' control you; only you are a little nervous about it; and all that kind of stuff, no?”
”Why, yes, Doctor, that is just about what happens, but how should you know all that?”
”Hm,” grunted the doctor dryly. ”You are not alone in your foolishness, my dear lady; there are many thousands in the United States who take similar chances. But now what I want to suggest is, let's have one of your little seances now. And you will go into a trance this time and perhaps you a” I mean your guides a” will tell us something. In the trance condition, which after all is a form of hypnosis a” though we do not know whether the state is auto-induced or whether it is due to the suggestion of an outside influence a” in this hypnotic condition the subconscious reflexes are sensitive to influences that the more material conscious mind cannot receive.”
Mrs. Jarrtett's plump hand fluttered to her breast. This was so sudden; and she had really been a little bit afraid of her seances since this terror came into the house. But the doctor was already arranging the little round table and the chairs. Without looking round, he said: ”You need not be at all nervous this time. And I want your brother particularly to stay in the room, though not necessarily at the table. Jimmy, you sit aside and steno whatever comes through, will you.” And in a quiet aside to his friend, he added, ”Sit near the switch, and if I holler, throw on the lights instantly and see that the sick man gets a stimulant. I may be busy.”
Under the doctor's experienced direction everything was soon ready. Just the four sat at the table, the Jarrett family and the doctor. The sick brother sat tucked in an arm chair by the window and Jimmy Terry near the light switch at the door. Once more the doctor cautioned the brawny Terry: ”Watch this carefully, Jimmy. I'm putting the sick man's life into your hands. If you feel anything, if you sense anything, if you think anything near him, snap on the lights. Don't ask anything. Act. Ready? All right then, black out.”
With the click of the switch the room was in darkness through which came only the petulant cough of the sick man. As the eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom there was sufficient glow from the moonlight outside to distinguish the dim outlines of figures.
”This is what you usually do, isn't it?” asked the doctor. ”Hands on the table and little fingers touching?” And without waiting for the reply of which he seemed to be so sure, he continued, ”All the usual stuff, I see. But now, Mrs. Jarrett, I'm going to lay my hands over yours and you will go into a trance. So. Quiet and easy now. Let yourself go.”
In a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time the table s.h.i.+vered with that peculiar inward tremor so familiar to all dabblers in the psychic. Shortly thereafter it heaved slowly up and descended with a vast deliberation. There was a moment's stillness fraught with effort; then a rhythmic tap-tap-tap of one leg.
”Now,” said the doctor authoritatively. ”You will go into a trance, Mrs. Jarrett. Softly, easily. Let go. You're going into a trance. Going going...” His voice was soothingly commanding, hypnotic.
Mrs. Jarrett moaned, her limbs jerked, she stretched as if in pain; then with a sigh she became inert.
”Watch out, Jimmy,” the doctor warned in a low voice. Then to the woman: ”Speak. Where are you? What do you see?”
The plump, limp bulk moaned again. The lips moved; inarticulate sounds proceeded from them, the fragments of unformed words; then a quivering sigh and silence. The doctor took occasion to lean first to one side and then to the other to listen to the breathing of Mr. Jarrett and the boy. Both were a little faster than normal; under the circ.u.mstances, not strange. With startling suddenness words cut the dark, clear and strong.
”I am in a place full of mist, I don't know where. Gray mist.” A labored silence. Then: ”I am at the edge of something; something deep, dark.” A pause. ”Before me is a curtain, dim and misty a” no, it seems a” I think a” no, it is the mist that is the curtain. There are dim things moving beyond the curtain.”
”Ha!” An exclamation of satisfaction from the doctor.
”I can't make them out. They are not animals; not people. They are dark things. Just a” shapes.”
”Good G.o.d, that's what she said before!” The awed gasp was Mr. Jarrett's.
The sick man coughed gratingly.
”The shapes move, they twine and roll and swell up. They bulge up against the curtain as if to push through. It is dark; too dark on that side to see. I am afraid if one might push througha””
Suddenly the boy whimpered: ”I don't like this. It's cold, an' I'm scared.”
The doctor could hear the hard breathing of Mr. Jarrett on his left as the table trembled under his sudden s.h.i.+ver. The doctor himself experienced an enveloping depression, an almost physical crawling of the cold hairs up and down his spine. The sick man went into a spasm of violent coughing. Suddenly the voice screamed: ”One of the shapes is almost a” my G.o.d, it is a” through! It's on this side. I can see a” oh G.o.d, save me.”
”Lights, Jimmy!” snapped the doctor. ”Look to the sick man.”
The swift flood of illumination showed Mr. Jarrett gray and beaded with perspiration; the boy in wildeyed terror; Terry, too, big-eyed, and nervously alert. All of them had felt a sudden stifling weight of a clutching fear that seemed to hang like a destroying wave about to break.
The sick man was in a paroxysm of coughing from which he pa.s.sed into a swoon of exhaustion. Only the woman had remained blissfully unconscious. The voice that had spoken out of her left her untroubled. In heavy peacefulness she slumped in her trance condition.
The doctor leaped round the table to her and placed his hands over her forehead in protection from he did not know exactly what. A chill still pervaded the room; a physical sense of cold and lifting of hair. Some enormous material menace had almost been able to swoop upon a victim. Slowly, with the flas.h.i.+ng on of the lights, the horror faded.
The doctor bent over the unconscious lady. Smoothly he began to stroke her face, away from the center towards her temples. As he stroked he talked, softly, rea.s.suringly.
Presently the woman shuddered, heaved ponderously. Her eyes opened blankly, without comprehension.
The faces of the audience expressed only fear of the unknown; fear and a blank lack of understanding. The doctor controlled his impatience and continued his lecture.
”I can't go into the complete theory of occultism here and now; but this much you must understand,” he said, pounding his fist on his knee for emphasis: ”it is an indubitable fact, known throughout the ages of human existence, and re-established by modern research, that there exist certain vast discarnate forces alongside of us and all around us. These forces function according to certain controlling laws, just as we do. They probably know as little about our laws as we do about theirs.
”There are many kinds of these forces. Forces of a high intelligence, far superior to ours; forces of possibly less intelligence; benevolent forces; malignant ones. They are all loosely generalized as spirits: elementals, subliminals, earthbounds and so on.
”These forces are separated from us, prevented from contact, by a” what shall I say? I dislike the word, veil, or curtain; or, as the Bible puts it, the great gulf. They mean nothing. The best simile is perhaps in the modern invention of the radio.
”A certain set of wave lengths, ethereal vibrations, can impinge themselves upon a corresponding instrument attuned to those vibrations. A slight variation in wave length, and the receiving instrument is a blank, totally unaffected, though it knows that vibrations of tremendous power exist all around it. It must tune in to become receptive to another set of vibrations.
”In something after this manner these discarnate so-called spirit forces are prevented from impinging themselves upon our consciousness. Sometimes we humans, for reasons of which we are very often unaware, do something, create a condition, which tunes us in with the vibration of a certain group of discarnate forces. Then we become conscious; we establish contact; we, in common parlance, see a ghost.”
The lecturer paused. Vague understanding was apparent on the faces of his fascinated audience.
”Good! Now then a” I mentioned elementals. Elementals comprise one of these groups of discarnate forces; possibly the lowest of the group and the least intelligent. They have not evolved to human, or even animal form. They are just a” shapes.”
”Oh, my G.o.d!” The shuddering moan came from Mrs. Jarrett. ”The shapes that I have sensed!”
”Exactly. You have sensed such a shape. Why have you sensed it? Because somehow, somewhere, something has happened that has enabled one of these elemental ent.i.ties to tune in on the vibrations of our human wave length; to break through the veil. What was the cause or how, we have no means of knowing. What we do know about elementals, as has been fully recognized by occultists of the past ages and has been pooh-poohed only by modern materialism, is that they are, to begin with, malignant; that is, hostile to human life. Then again a” now mark this well a” they can manifest themselves materially to humans only by drawing the necessary force from a human source, preferably from some human in a state of low resistance; from a sick man.”
”Oh, my a” my brother?” Mrs. Jarrett gasped her realization.
The doctor nodded slowly. ”Yes, his condition of low resistance and your thoughtless reaching for a contact in your seances have invited this malignant ent.i.ty to this house. That is why the sick man has taken this sudden turn f or the worse. The elemental is sapping his vitality in order to manifest itself materially. So far you have only felt its malevolent presence. Should it succeed in drawing to itself sufficient force it might be capable of enormous and destructive power. No, no, don't scream now; that doesn't help. You must all get a grip on yourselves so as calmly to take the proper defensive precautions.
”Fortunately we know an antidote; or let me say rather, a deterrent. Like most occult lore, this deterrent has been known and used by all peoples even up to this age of modern skepticism. Savage people throughout the world use it; oriental peoples with a sensitivity keener than our own use it; modern-white people use it, though unconsciously. The literature of magic is full of it.
”It is nothing more or less than iron. Cold iron. The iron nose-ring or toe-ring of the savage; the mantra loha of the Hindoos; the lucky horse shoe of your rural neighbors today. These things are not ornaments; they are amulets.
”We do not know why cold iron should act as a deterrent to certain kinds of hostile forces a” call them spirits, if you like. But it is a fact known of old that a powerful antipathy exists between cold iron and certain of the lower orders of unhuman ent.i.ties: doppelgangers, churels, incubi, wood runners, leperlings, and so on, and including all forms of elementals.