FullReads

“Then, all at once, the things in the room again presented their funny side to me and set me off laughing more furiously than ever. The bookcase was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown, the way the clock looked at me on the mantelpiece too comic for words; the arrangement of papers and inkstand on the desk tickled me till I roared and shook and held my sides and the tears streamed down my cheeks. And that footstool! Oh, that absurd footstool!”

He lay back in his chair, laughing to himself and holding up his hands at the thought of it, and at the sight of him Dr. Silence laughed, too.

“Go on, please,” he said, “I quite understand. I know something myself of the hashish laughter.”

The author pulled himself together and resumed, his face growing quickly grave again.

“So, you see, side by side with this extravagant, apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the fear. It was terror masked by cap and bells; and I became the playground for two opposing emotions, armed and fighting to the death. Gradually, then, the impression grew in me that this fear was caused by the invasion–so you called it just now–of the ‘person’ who had wakened me: she was utterly evil; inimical to my soul, or at least to all in me that wished for good. There I stood, sweating and trembling, laughing at everything in the room, yet all the while with this white terror mastering my heart. And this creature was putting–putting her–“

He hesitated again, using his handkerchief freely.

“Putting what?”

“–putting ideas into my mind,” he went on glancing nervously about the room. “Actually tapping my thought-stream so as to switch off the usual current and inject her own. How mad that sounds! I know it, but it’s true. It’s the only way I can express it. Moreover, while the operation terrified me, the skill with which it was accomplished filled me afresh with laughter at the clumsiness of men by comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close upon the heels of the comic. Oh, doctor, I tell you again, it was unnerving!”

John Silence sat with his head thrust forward to catch every word of the story which the other continued to pour out in nervous, jerky sentences and lowered voice.

“You saw nothing–no one–all this time?” he asked.

“Not with my eyes. There was no visual hallucination. But in my mind there began to grow the vivid picture of a woman–large, dark-skinned, with white teeth and masculine features, and one eye–the left–so drooping as to appear almost closed. Oh, such a face–!”

“A face you would recognise again?”

Pender laughed dreadfully.

“I wish I could forget it,” he whispered, “I only wish I could forget it!” Then he sat forward in his chair suddenly, and grasped the doctor’s hand with an emotional gesture.

“I must tell you how grateful I am for your patience and sympathy,” he cried, with a tremor in his voice, “and–that you do not think me mad. I have told no one else a quarter of all this, and the mere freedom of speech–the relief of sharing my affliction with another–has helped me already more than I can possibly say.”

Dr. Silence pressed his hand and looked steadily into the frightened eyes. His voice was very gentle when he replied.

“Your case, you know, is very singular, but of absorbing interest to me,” he said, “for it threatens, not your physical existence but the temple of your psychical existence–the inner life. Your mind would not be permanently affected here and now, in this world; but in the existence after the body is left behind, you might wake up with your spirit so twisted, so distorted, so befouled, that you would be spiritually insane–a far more radical condition than merely being insane here.”