me while I wasdictating. I was amazed at what I read and could hardly believe I haduttered it."
"And why?"
"It was so distorted. The words, indeed, were mine so far as I couldremember, but the meanings seemed strange. It frightened me. The sensewas so altered. At the very places where my characters were intended totickle the ribs, only curious emotions of sinister amusement resulted.Dreadful innuendoes had managed to creep into the phrases. There waslaughter of a kind, but it was bizarre, horrible, distressing; and myattempt at analysis only increased my dismay. The story, as it readthen, made me shudder, for by virtue of these slight changes it had comesomehow to hold the soul of horror, of horror disguised as merriment.The framework of humour was there, if you understand me, but thecharacters had turned sinister, and their laughter was evil."
"Can you show me this writing?"
The author shook his head.
"I destroyed it," he whispered. "But, in the end, though of course muchperturbed about it, I persuaded myself that it was due to someafter-effect of the drug, a sort of reaction that gave a twist to mymind and made me read macabre interpretations into words and situationsthat did not properly hold them."
"And, meanwhile, did the presence of this person leave you?"
"No; that stayed more or less. When my mind was actively employed Iforgot it, but when idle, dreaming, or doing nothing in particular,there she was beside me, influencing my mind horribly--"
"In what way, precisely?" interrupted the doctor.
"Evil, scheming thoughts came to me, visions of crime, hateful picturesof wickedness, and the kind of bad imagination that so far has beenforeign, indeed impossible, to my normal nature--"
"The pressure of the Dark Powers upon the personality," murmured thedoctor, making a quick note.
"Eh? I didn't quite catch--"
"Pray, go on. I am merely making notes; you shall know their purportfully later."
"Even when my wife returned I was still aware of this Presence in thehouse; it associated itself with my inner personality in most intimatefashion; and outwardly I always felt oddly constrained to be polite andrespectful towards it--to open doors, provide chairs and hold myselfcarefully deferential when it was about. It became very compelling atlast, and, if I failed in any little particular, I seemed to know thatit pursued me about the house, from one room to another, haunting myvery soul in its inmost abode. It certainly came before my wife so faras my attentions were concerned.
"But, let me first finish the story of my experimental dose, for I tookit again the third night, and underwent a very similar experience,delayed like the first in coming, and then carrying me off my feet whenit did come with a rush of this false demon-laughter. This time,however, there was a reversal of the changed scale of space and time; itshortened instead of lengthened, so that I dressed and got downstairs inabout twenty seconds, and the couple of hours I stayed and worked in thestudy passed literally like a period of ten minutes."
"That is often true of an overdose," interjected the doctor, "and youmay go a mile in a few minutes, or a few yards in a quarter of an hour.It is quite incomprehensible to those who have never experienced it, andis a curious proof that time and space are merely forms of thought."
"This time," Pender went on, talking more and more rapidly in hisexcitement, "another extraordinary effect came to me, and I experienceda curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived external thingsthrough one large main sense-channel instead of through the fivedivisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You will, I know,understand me when I tell you that I _heard_ sights and _saw_ sounds. Nolanguage can make this comprehensible, of course, and I can only say,for instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a visible picturein the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And inprecisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially thecolours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings Iheard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French bindings nextto them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike the chattering ofstarlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and those green curtainsopposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notesof a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these sounds when I lookedsteadily at the different objects, and thought about them. The room, youunderstand, was not full of a chorus of notes; but when I concentratedmy mind upon a colour, I heard, as well as saw, it."
"That is a known, though rarely obtained, effect of _Cannabis indica_,"observed the doctor. "And it provoked laughter again, did it?"
"Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase made me laugh. It was solike a great animal trying to get itself noticed, and made me think of aperforming bear--which is full of a kind of pathetic humour, you know.But this mingling of the senses produced no confusion in my brain. Onthe contrary, I was unusually clear-headed and experienced anintensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously alive andkeen-minded.
"Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to an impulse tosketch--a talent not normally mine--I found that I could draw nothingbut heads, nothing, in fact, but one head--always the same--the head ofa dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features and a verydrooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was amazed, as you mayimagine--"
"And the expression of the face--?"
Pender hesitated a moment for words, casting about with his hands in theair and hunching his shoulders. A perceptible shudder ran over him.
"What I can only describe as--_blackness_," he replied in a low tone;"the face of a dark and evil soul."
"You destroyed that, too?" queried the doctor sharply.
"No; I have kept the drawings," he said, with a laugh, and rose to getthem from a drawer in the writing-desk behind him.
"Here is all that remains of the pictures, you see," he added, pushing anumber of loose sheets under the doctor's eyes; "nothing but a fewscrawly lines. That's all I found the next morning. I had really drawnno heads at all--nothing but those lines and blots and wriggles. Thepictures were entirely subjective, and existed only in my mind whichconstructed them out of a few wild strokes of the pen. Like the alteredscale of space and time it was a complete delusion. These all passed, ofcourse, with the passing of the drug's effects. But the other thing didnot pass. I mean, the presence of that Dark Soul remained with me. It ishere still. It is real. I don't know how I can escape from it."
"It is attached to the house, not to you personally. You must leave thehouse."
"Yes. Only I cannot afford to leave the house, for my work is my solemeans of support, and--well, you see, since this change I cannot evenwrite. They are horrible, these mirthless tales I now write, with theirmockery of laughter, their diabolical suggestion. Horrible? I shall gomad if this continues."
He screwed his face up and looked about the room as though he expectedto see some haunting shape.
"This influence in this house induced by my experiment, has killed in aflash, in a sudden stroke, the sources of my humour, and though I stillgo on writing funny tales--I have a certain name you know--myinspiration has dried up, and much of what I write I have to burn--yes,doctor, to burn, before any one sees it."
"As utterly alien to your own mind and personality?"
"Utterly! As though some one else had written it--"
"Ah!"
"And shocking!" He passed his hand over his eyes a moment and let thebreath escape softly through his teeth. "Yet most damnably clever in theconsummate way the vile suggestions are insinuated under cover of a kindof high drollery. My stenographer left me of course--and I've beenafraid to take another--"
John Silence got up and began to walk about the room leisurely withoutspeaking; he appeared to be examining the pictures on the wall andreading the names of the books lying about. Presently he paused on thehearthrug, with his back to the fire, and turned to look his patientquietly in the eyes. Pender's face was grey and drawn; the huntedexpression dominated it; the long recital had told upon him.
"Thank you, Mr. Pender," he said, a curiou
s glow showing about his fine,quiet face; "thank you for the sincerity and frankness of your account.But I think now there is nothing further I need ask you." He indulged ina long scrutiny of the author's haggard features drawing purposely theman's eyes to his own and then meeting them with a look of power andconfidence calculated to inspire even the feeblest soul with courage."And, to begin with," he added, smiling pleasantly, "let me assure youwithout delay that you need have no alarm, for you are no more insane ordeluded than I myself am--"
Pender heaved a deep sigh and tried to return the smile.
"--and this is simply a case, so far as I can judge at present, of avery singular psychical invasion, and a very sinister
Three John Silence Stories Page 4
