Interior Darkness: Selected Stories

by Peter Straub

  Harry thought it was neat that hypnosis could cure smoking, stuttering, and bed-wetting. (He himself had wet the bed almost nightly until months before his ninth birthday. The bed-wetting stopped the night a certain lovely dream came to Harry. In the dream he had to urinate terribly, and was hurrying down the stony castle corridor past suits of armor and torches guttering on the walls. At last Harry reached an open door through which he saw the most splendid bathroom of his life. The floors were of polished marble, the walls white-tiled. As soon as he entered the gleaming bathroom, a uniformed butler waved him toward the rank of urinals. Harry began pulling down his zipper, fumbled with himself, and got his penis out of his underpants just in time. As the dream-urine gushed out of him, Harry had blessedly awakened.) Hypnotism could get you right inside someone’s mind and let you do things there. You could make a person speak in any foreign language they’d ever heard, even if they’d only heard it once, and you could make them act like a baby. Harry considered how pleasurable it would be to make his brother Albert lie squalling and red-faced on the floor, unable to walk or speak as he pissed all over himself.

  Also, and this was a new thought to Harry, you could take a person back to a whole row of lives they had led before they were born as the person they were now. This process of rebirth was called reincarnation. Some of Dr. Mentaine’s patients had been kings in Egypt and pirates in the Caribbean, some had been murderers, novelists, and artists. They remembered the houses they’d lived in, the names of their mothers and servants and children, the locations of shops where they’d bought cake and wine. Neat stuff, Harry thought. He wondered if someone who had been a famous murderer a long time ago could remember pushing in the knife or bringing down the hammer. A lot of the books that remained in the little cardboard box upstairs, Harry had noticed, seemed to be about murderers. It would not be any use to take Albert back to a previous life, however. If Albert had any previous lives, he had spent them as inanimate objects on the order of boulders and anvils.

  Maybe in another life Albert was a murder weapon, Harry thought.

  “Hey, college boy! Joe College!”

  Harry looked toward the sidewalk and saw the baseball cap and T-shirted gut of Mr. Petrosian, who lived in a tiny house next to the tavern on the corner of South Six and Livermore Street. Mr. Petrosian was always shouting genial things at kids, but Maryrose wouldn’t let Harry or Little Eddie talk to him. She said Mr. Petrosian was as common as dirt. He worked as a janitor in the telephone building and drank a case of beer every night while he sat on his porch.

  “Me?” Harry said.

  “Yeah! Keep reading books, and you could go to college, right?”

  Harry smiled noncommittally. Mr. Petrosian lifted a wide arm and continued to toil down the street toward his house next to the Idle Hour.

  In seconds Maryrose burst through the door, folding an old white dish towel in her hands. “Who was that? I heard a man’s voice.”

  “Him,” Harry said, pointing at the substantial back of Mr. Petrosian, now half of the way home.

  “What did he say? As if it could possibly be interesting, coming from an Armenian janitor.”

  “He called me Joe College.”

  Maryrose startled him by smiling.

  “Albert says he wants to go back to the station tonight, and I have to go to work soon.” Maryrose worked the night shift as a secretary at St. Joseph’s Hospital. “God knows when your father’ll show up. Get something to eat for Little Eddie and yourself, will you, Harry? I’ve just got too many things to take care of, as usual.”

  “I’ll get something at Big John’s.” This was a hamburger stand, a magical place to Harry, erected the summer before in a vacant lot on Livermore Street two blocks down from the Idle Hour.

  His mother handed him two carefully folded dollar bills, and he pushed them into his pocket. “Don’t let Little Eddie stay in the house alone,” his mother said before getting back inside. “Take him with you. You know how scared he gets.”

  “Sure,” Harry said, and went back to his book. He finished the chapter on “Mind Power” while first Maryrose left to stand up at the bus stop on the corner, and then while Albert noisily departed. Little Eddie sat frozen before his soap operas in the living room. Harry turned a page and started reading “Techniques of Hypnosis.”

  4

  At eight-thirty that night the two boys sat alone in the kitchen, on opposite sides of the table covered in yellow bamboo Formica. From the living room came the sound of Sid Caesar babbling in fake German to Imogene Coca on Your Show of Shows. Little Eddie claimed to be scared of Sid Caesar, but when Harry had returned from the hamburger stand with a Big Johnburger (with “the works”) for himself and a Mama Marydog for Eddie, double fries, and two chocolate shakes, he had been sitting in front of the television, his face moist with tears of moral outrage. Eddie usually liked Mama Marydogs, but he had taken only a couple of meager bites from the one before him now, and was disconsolately pushing a french fry through a blob of ketchup. Every now and then he wiped at his eyes, leaving nearly symmetrical smears of ketchup to dry on his cheeks.

  “Mom said not to leave me alone in the house,” said Little Eddie. “I heard. It was during The Edge of Night and you were on the porch. I think I’m gonna tell on you.” He peeped across at Harry, then quickly looked back at the french fry and drew it out of the puddle of ketchup. “I’m ascared to be alone in the house.” Sometimes Eddie’s voice was like a queer speeded-up mechanical version of Maryrose’s.

  “Don’t be so dumb,” Harry said, almost kindly. “How can you be scared in your own house? You live here, don’t you?”

  “I’m ascared of the attic,” Eddie said. He held the dripping french fry before his mouth and pushed it in. “The attic makes noise.” A little squirm of red appeared at the corner of his mouth. “You were supposed to take me with you.”

  “Oh, jeez, Eddie, you slow everything down. I wanted to just get the food and come back. I got you your dinner, didn’t I? Didn’t I get you what you like?”

  In truth, Harry liked hanging around in Big John’s by himself because then he could talk to Big John and listen to his theories. Big John called himself a “renegade Papist” and considered Hitler the greatest man of the twentieth century, followed closely by Paul XI, Padre Pio who bled from the palms of his hands, and Elvis Presley.

  All of these events occurred in what is usually wrongly called a simpler time, before Kennedy and feminism and ecology, before the Nixon presidency and Watergate, before American soldiers, among them a twenty-one-year-old Harry Beevers, journeyed to Vietnam.

  “I’m still going to tell,” said Little Eddie. He pushed another french fry into the puddle of ketchup. “And that car was my birthday present.” He began to snuffle. “Albert hit me, and you stole my car, and you left me alone, and I was scared. And I don’t wanna have Mrs. Franken next year, cuz I think she’s gonna hurt me.”

  Harry had nearly forgotten telling his brother about Mrs. Franken and Tommy Golz, and this reminder brought back very sharply the memory of destroying Eddie’s birthday present.

  Eddie twisted his head sideways and dared another quick look at his brother. “Can I have my Ultraglide Roadster back, Harry? You’re going to give it back to me aren’cha? I won’t tell Mom you left me alone if you give it back.”

  “Your car is okay,” Harry said. “It’s in a sort of a secret place I know.”

  “You hurt my car!” Eddie squalled. “You did!”

  “Shut up!” Harry shouted, and Little Eddie flinched. “You’re driving me crazy!” Harry yelled. He realized that he was leaning over the table, and that Little Eddie was getting ready to cry again. He sat down. “Just don’t scream at me like that, Eddie.”

  “You did something to my car,” Eddie said with a stunned certainty. “I knew it.”

  “Look, I’ll prove your car is okay,” Harry said, and took the two rear tires from his pocket and displayed them on his palm.

  Little Eddie stared.
He blinked, then reached out tentatively for the tires.

  Harry closed his fist around them. “Do they look like I did anything to them?”

  “You took them off!”

  “But don’t they look okay, don’t they look fine?” Harry opened his fist, closed it again, and returned the tires to his pocket. “I didn’t want to show you the whole car, Eddie, because you’d get all worked up, and you gave it to me. Remember? I wanted to show you the tires so you’d see everything was all right. Okay? Got it?”

  Eddie miserably shook his head.

  “Anyway, I’m going to help you, just like I said.”

  “With Mrs. Franken?” A fraction of misery left Little Eddie’s smeary face.

  “Sure. You ever hear of something called hypnotism?”

  “I heard a hypmotism.” Little Eddie was sulking. “Everybody in the whole world heard a that.”

  “Hypnotism, stupid, not hypmotism.”

  “Sure, hypmotism. I saw it on the TV. They did it on As the World Turns. A man made a lady go to sleep and think she was going to have a baby.”

  Harry smiled. “That’s just TV, Little Eddie. Real hypnotism is a lot better than that. I read all about it in one of the books from the attic.”

  Little Eddie was still sulky because of the car. “So what makes it better?”

  “Because it lets you do amazing things,” Harry said. He called on Dr. Mentaine. “Hypnosis unlocks your mind and lets you use all the power you really have. If you start now, you’ll really knock those books when school starts up again. You’ll pass every test Mrs. Franken gives you, just like the way I did.” He reached across the table and grasped Little Eddie’s wrist, stalling a fat brown french fry on its way to the puddle. “But it won’t just make sure you’re good in school. If you let me try it on you, I’m pretty sure I can show you that you’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”

  Eddie blinked.

  “And I bet I can make you so you’re not scared of anything anymore. Hypnotism is real good for that. I read in this book, there was this guy who was afraid of bridges. Whenever he even thought about crossing a bridge he got all dizzy and sweaty. Terrible stuff happened to him, like he lost his job and once he just had to ride in a car across a bridge and he dumped a load in his pants. He went to see Dr. Mentaine, and Dr. Mentaine hypnotized him and said he would never be afraid of bridges again, and he wasn’t.”

  Harry pulled the paperback from his hip pocket. He opened it flat on the table and bent over the pages. “Here. Listen to this. ‘Benefits of the course of treatment were found in all areas of the patient’s life, and results were obtained for which he would have paid any price.’ ” Harry read these words haltingly, but with complete understanding.

  “Hypmotism can make me strong?” Little Eddie asked, evidently having saved this point in his head.

  “Strong as a bull.”

  “Strong as Albert?”

  “A lot stronger than Albert. A lot stronger than me, too.”

  “And I can beat up on big guys that hurt me?”

  “You just have to learn how.”

  Eddie sprang up from the chair, yelling nonsense. He flexed his stringlike biceps and for some time twisted his body into a series of muscleman poses.

  “You want to do it?” Harry finally asked.

  Little Eddie popped into his chair and stared at Harry. His T-shirt’s neck band sagged all the way to his breastbone without ever actually touching his chest. “I wanna start.”

  “Okay, Eddie, good man.” Harry stood up and put his hand on the book. “Up to the attic.”

  “Only, I don’t want to go in the attic,” Eddie said. He was still staring at Harry, but his head was tilted over like a weird little echo of Maryrose, and his eyes had filled with suspicion.

  “I’m not gonna take anything from you, Little Eddie,” Harry said. “It’s just, we should be out of everybody’s way. The attic’s real quiet.”

  Little Eddie stuck his hand inside his T-shirt and let his arm dangle from his wrist.

  “You turned your shirt into an armrest,” Harry said.

  Eddie jerked his hand out of its sling.

  “Albert might come waltzing in and wreck everything if we do it in the bedroom.”

  “If you go up first and turn on the lights,” Eddie said.

  5

  Harry held the book open on his lap, and glanced from it to Little Eddie’s tense smeary face. He had read these pages over many times while he sat on the porch. Hypnotism boiled down to a few simple steps, each of which led to the next. The first thing he had to do was to get his brother started right, “relaxed and receptive,” according to Dr. Mentaine.

  Little Eddie stirred in his cane-backed chair and kneaded his hands together. His shadow, cast by the bulb dangling overhead, imitated him like a black little chairbound monkey. “I wanna get started, I wanna get to be strong,” he said.

  “Right here in this book it says you have to be relaxed,” Harry said. “Just put your hands on top of your legs, nice and easy, with your fingers pointing forward. Then close your eyes and breathe in and out a couple of times. Thinking about being nice and tired and ready to go to sleep.”

  “I don’t wanna go to sleep!”

  “It’s not really sleep, Little Eddie, it’s just sort of like it. You’ll still really be awake, but nice and relaxed. Or else it won’t work. You have to do everything I tell you. Otherwise everybody’ll still be able to beat up on you, like they do now. I want you to pay attention to everything I say.”

  “Okay.” Little Eddie made a visible effort to relax. He placed his hands on his thighs and twice inhaled and exhaled.

  “Now close your eyes.”

  Eddie closed his eyes.

  Harry suddenly knew that it was going to work—if he did everything the book said, he would really be able to hypnotize his brother.

  “Little Eddie, I want you just to listen to the sound of my voice,” he said, forcing himself to be calm. “You are already getting nice and relaxed, as easy and peaceful as if you were lying in bed, and the more you listen to my voice the more relaxed and tired you are going to get. Nothing can bother you. Everything bad is far away, and you’re just sitting here, breathing in and out, getting nice and sleepy.”

  He checked his page to make sure he was doing it right, and then went on.

  “It’s like lying in bed, Eddie, and the more you hear my voice the more tired and sleepy you’re getting, a little more sleepy the more you hear me. Everything else is sort of fading away, and all you can hear is my voice. You feel tired but good, just like the way you do right before you fall asleep. Everything is fine, and you’re drifting a little bit, drifting and drifting, and you’re getting ready to raise your right hand.”

  He leaned over and very lightly stroked the back of Little Eddie’s grimy right hand. Eddie sat slumped in the chair with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly. Harry spoke very slowly.

  “I’m going to count backward from ten, and every time I get to another number, your hand is going to get lighter and lighter. When I count, your right hand is going to get so light it floats up and finally touches your nose when you hear me say ‘One.’ And then you’ll be in a deep sleep. Now I’m starting. Ten. Your hand is already feeling light. Nine. It wants to float up. Eight. Your hand really feels light now. It’s going to start to go up now. Seven.”

  Little Eddie’s hand obediently floated an inch up from his thigh.

  “Six.” The grimy little hand rose another few inches. “It’s getting lighter and lighter now, and every time I say another number it gets closer and closer to your nose, and you get sleepier and sleepier. Five.”

  The hand ascended several inches nearer Eddie’s face.

  “Four.”

  The hand now dangled like a sleeping bird half of the way between Eddie’s knee and his nose.

  “Three.”

  It rose nearly to Eddie’s chin.

  “Two.”

  Eddie’s hand hung
a few inches from his mouth.

  “One. You are going to fall asleep now.”

  The gently curved, ketchup-streaked forefinger delicately brushed the tip of Little Eddie’s nose, and stayed there while Eddie sagged against the back of the chair.

  Harry’s heart beat so loudly that he feared the sound would bring Eddie out of his trance. Eddie remained motionless. Harry breathed quietly by himself for a moment. “Now you can lower your hand to your lap, Eddie. You are going deeper and deeper into sleep. Deeper and deeper and deeper.”

  Eddie’s hand sank gracefully downward.

  The attic seemed hot as the inside of a furnace to Harry. His fingers left blotches on the open pages of the book. He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked at his little brother. Little Eddie had slumped so far down in the chair that his head was no longer visible in the tilting mirror. Perfectly still and quiet, the attic stretched out on all sides of them, waiting (or so it seemed to Harry) for what would happen next. Maryrose’s trunks sat in rows under the eaves far behind the mirror, her old dresses hung silently within the dusty wardrobe. Harry rubbed his hands on his jeans to dry them, and flicked a page over with the neatness of an old scholar who had spent half his life in libraries.

  “You’re going to sit up straight in your chair,” he said.

  Eddie pulled himself upright.

  “Now I want to show you that you’re really hypnotized, Little Eddie. It’s like a test. I want you to hold your right arm straight out before you. Make it as rigid as you can. This is going to show you how strong you can be.”

  Eddie’s pale arm rose and straightened to the wrist, leaving his fingers dangling.

  Harry stood up and said, “That’s pretty good.” He walked the two steps to Eddie’s side and grasped his brother’s arm and ran his fingers down the length of it, gently straightening Eddie’s hand. “Now I want you to imagine that your arm is getting harder and harder. It’s getting as hard and rigid as an iron bar. Your whole arm is an iron bar, and nobody on earth could bend it. Eddie, it’s stronger than Superman’s arm.” He removed his hands and stepped back.