Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  “Officious fools!” it hisses triumphantly, as if borrowing voice from the flames themselves. “What would England be without its dreams—and us to shepherd them?”

  o0o

  An insistent knocking brought Shrewsbury to what remained of his senses. He bolted up in bed, gasping for breath, pulling the covers up against the chill of the deep February night. Had he been shouting? Very likely…his throat felt dry and sore.

  He looked around, blinking in the dimly lit room. It was not his own; he was abed in a well-appointed guestroom at the home of barrister Ian Rutherford, Esq.

  An old friend and Cambridge classmate, Rutherford had made significantly better progress in the world than had Wendell Shrewsbury since their graduation together some twenty years before. Ian’s warm if unexpected letter inquiring into Wendell’s strange elusiveness these past few years, and inviting him to come rekindle their old friendship, had drawn Shrewsbury hesitantly out of hiding, hopeful that a change of scenery and some social interaction might relieve his…difficult condition.

  Apparently not.

  “Wendell? Wendell! Are you quite all right in there?” The knocking grew a little gentler, if no less insistent.

  It was the first night of Wendell’s visit—and, he feared, after this display, his last.

  o0o

  A quarter-hour later, the two men sat downstairs in Ian’s book-lined study. A coal fire had been laid and lit by Ian’s aged, live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Sapphira Lamblittle, and was now bestowing some begrudging warmth upon the room. This elusive comfort had been augmented by the half-drained snifter of brandy at Wendell’s elbow. He took another sip and adjusted the belt and lapels of his dressing-gown self-consciously. He could not meet his old friend’s eyes, choosing instead to watch the low flames, despite their dreadful evocation of his fiery dream.

  “I am terribly sorry for waking you—and Mrs. Lamblittle,” Shrewsbury ventured at last.

  “Not at all!” Rutherford cried, too cheerfully. “I am only glad that you happened to be here and not alone while suffering so terrible an episode.”

  “Ah…” Wendell gazed into the fire. “Well…Yes. It can be quite troubling…”

  “You’ve had such fits before?” his friend asked gently.

  “I have.” Wendell took another sip, nearly finishing the snifter, and set it down on the mahogany table beside him, only to have Ian reach for the decanter and pour him another generous glass. “Almost…every night.”

  “Every night?” Ian blanched and took a healthy draught of his own brandy, then shook his handsome head. “What devilish torment! Is there no one of sufficient expertise in such matters to offer you hope of relief?”

  “There was,” Wendell lamented. “There was…” The liquor was beginning to affect him…that, and the terrible paucity of sleep. Despair crept ever closer. “But he is lost forever now—and…I fear this torment I endure is all too richly deserved.”

  “The devil, you say!”

  “The devil, indeed.” Wendell teetered on the brink of indecision. He could make his excuses and leave tonight—or on the morrow, more politely—to continue bearing this burden alone. Or…

  A sudden resolve prodded him to speak before he quite knew he’d decided to. “Oh, Ian, dear friend, I cannot contain it any longer. I must tell someone, though it leave me in as much need of your legal assistance as of any medical counsel. Yet, confess I must, if only in the desperate hope that guilt acknowledged and justice satisfied may rid me at last of this endless nocturnal scourge. May I burden you, old friend, with a dreadful tale—from which I dare hope our long friendship might emerge intact?”

  His friend stared back, blue eyes glinting in the firelight. “After such an introduction, how am I to sleep now without hearing it?”

  “I fear you’d best not count on sleeping either way,” said Wendell. “Does the name Sir Rupert Collin Frost mean anything to you?”

  “I’ve heard of him, of course. Who hasn’t? Such a titillating catastrophe!” Ian leaned forward, keen interest on his ruddy face. “Did you know him?”

  “More than that,” said Wendell. “I was his research assistant for some years.”

  “You jest! How can I have failed to hear of this before?”

  “I have taken pains to see the fact unadvertised.” Wendell did not entirely succeed in keeping his voice steady.

  “Surely…” Ian said, “you weren’t there when…”

  “Oh yes,” Wendell whispered, lost in painful memory. “I was there. I am not sure I have ever truly left that night behind. It has not left me. That much is certain.”

  Wendell accepted another refill of his brandy, cleared his throat, and set out to confide at last the lurid truth of Lord Frost Collin Frost’s spectacularly fatal attempt to rid England forever of nightmares.

  o0o

  “You know, of course, that Lord Frost was a brilliant man of science.”

  “Of course,” Ian murmured. “Sleep research, was it?”

  Wendell nodded. “And not merely sleep—he was also enquiring into the anatomy, and possible uses of dreams.”

  “Yes,” said Ian. “I read his Systems and Practices of the Nocturnal Mind with great interest. A seminal tract. Quite revolutionary.”

  “You cannot begin to know…the half of it,” said Wendell.

  “Do tell.” Ian settled more comfortably into his chair. “I am awash with curiosity.”

  Wendell knew that he was stalling for time, considering his approach, as though just the right combination of words might somehow sanitize the awful truth.

  He took another swallow of brandy, then stared again into the fire as he spoke. “Though it’s been scarcely more than whispered beyond certain inner circles since his…horrific demise, Lord Frost believed that nightmares might not be merely dreams at all, but invasive psychonomic parasites—an entirely new and utterly uncatalogued form of life which preys upon, or engenders some malevolent symbiosis with, the dreaming human mind.” He kept his eyes firmly upon the low flames, anxiously awaiting his friend’s response to this outlandish assertion.

  “Please, go on.” Ian’s voice was low and calm.

  Wendell risked a glance at the barrister, finding him apparently at ease. “During my employment with him, Lord Frost did, in fact, invent, and was perfecting, a series of ingenious devices capable of extracting these parasites from the minds of numerous tormented subjects. In fact,” he ventured timidly, “we had managed to imprison a fair collection of these…creatures…in hermetically sealed glass vacuum bells for study and extermination.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Wendell sighed. “It’s likely treason to be telling you all this. But I don’t care…Not anymore. What can they do to me that could be worse than what I suffer now?”

  “Treason! Good God, man! Why?”

  Wendell considered his impeccably educated, worldly friend, wondering how he of all people could fail to grasp the implications. “Imagine our advantage over other nations, were the sleep of all English citizens—and theirs alone—never troubled by such anxieties and terrors; if every head in England woke well rested each morning; if England’s children grew up free of the subconscious fears that so distort and disable young minds elsewhere in the world. How many fewer criminals might we have to cope with? How much more fearless confidence might this country’s future generations take for granted in the course of their endeavors?”

  “You don’t mean that he intended to keep such a boon secret from the wider world?”

  “Indeed. He was commanded to do so by none less than the prime minister.”

  “What of Scotland?” Ian asked, a slight resentment creeping into his heretofore encouraging tone. “And Ireland? Would all of Her Majesty’s subjects have so benefitted, or only those closest to the throne, if you take my meaning?”

  “I do not know, old friend,” Wendell said, shaking his head. A lump of sorrow—or anger—settled in his chest. “Nor shall we ever know. Not now…”

&
nbsp; o0o

  Ian soon proved so engrossed, that, against all expectation, Wendell found himself warming to the task of describing Frost’s ingenious devices. Chief among them, he explained, was a massive piece of sealed headgear rather like the helmets worn for deep sea diving. This ‘extraction bell,’ as Frost had called it, was encrusted with smaller mechanisms cleverly contrived to produce, through the highly pressurized release of steam from tiny pinholes, ultrasonic frequencies inaudible to human subjects but extremely unpleasant to the fiendish parasites. Upon penetrating the subject’s brain, these frequencies had compelled the ethereal creatures to flee through various orifices in the victim’s head. From there, sonic devices had moved along tracks attached to the vacuum hoses, generating a moving pulse which forced the fleeing beasties through a network of complexly valved and insulated vacuum hoses sealed to the headgear. In this way, the parasites had been conveyed into large glass bell jars, instantly vacuum-sealed by pumping out their atmospheric contents through a sonic barrier which the creatures themselves would or could not pass. The gaseous parasites alone were left inside to be observed through various filters and lenses, and experimented upon by numerous other means and mechanisms of Frost’s invention.

  Describing these marvels gradually transported Wendell back to the happier days of his mentorship under Lord Frost. As a man of science himself, Wendell could not help but admire the genius behind such a truly elegant system. He even began to recall some of the pride he’d once taken in his own contributions to their work. “We were going to change the world!” he declared, waving his empty brandy glass expansively. “Top government ministers—I mean top ministers—” he fixed Rutherford with a knowing gaze “—visited our laboratory every week, eager for our latest reports and demonstrations. And rather ready with support, if you take my meaning…Lord Frost’s fortune, though vast, was not inexhaustible, and groundbreaking scientific research is not for the financially faint of heart.”

  “I can well imagine,” his host said, replenishing Wendell’s beverage once again.

  Shrewsbury took another fortifying swallow. Confessing himself had clearly been the right decision. He already felt his awful burden dissipating. How much torment might have been avoided had he found the courage to try facing all this sooner? In fact, he wondered what had kept him hiding all this time. Could even that be laid to the pernicious influence of…but no. Those were the musings of a madman, alone in the dark with his thoughts. He was not that madman, and not alone tonight.

  The thought returned him to his surroundings. The coal fire was burning low; Mrs. Lamblittle must have retired once more.

  “A truly fascinating tale, Wendell,” Ian said, pouring a bit more brandy into each of their glasses. “But…I find no evidence within it to explain your earlier assertion.”

  “What assertion do you mean?”

  “That this nightly torment you endure is well deserved?”

  “Ah yes, of course,” Shrewsbury muttered, gazing downward. His prideful reminiscences collapsed and fell away. “I shall hasten to the point, then, so that we may both have hope of at least a few hours slumber before dawn.”

  “Do not rush on my account!” Ian leaned back in his overstuffed chair. “But tell me: did you not undergo the experiment yourself? Or was Lord Frost unable to perform this extraction of your own nightmares?”

  “Ahhh…” All unknowing, and from entirely the wrong way ’round, his host had hit upon the dark heart of it. “No, more’s the pity; I never did. Had I experienced anything resembling an overt nightmare during those last fateful months, I’d doubtless have been bolted into Lord Frost’s collection device as fast as you could say Wee Willy Winkie, and that would have been the end of it.”

  “The end of what?” his old friend asked with visibly rekindled interest.

  “If only I had seen the truth in time,” Wendell lamented, “I’d likely enjoy a station far loftier than yours by now.” Ian’s smile dimmed somewhat, but Shrewsbury gave it no thought as he fell deeper into reverie. “Alas. No such happy fortune is accorded me.” He took a larger draught of brandy than good manners might have countenanced, and heaved a sigh of resignation. “Here’s the awful truth of it, then.”

  Ian set his brandy down, and leaned forward in his chair to listen.

  “I must assume,” Wendell said, “that one of these fiendish creatures somehow glimpsed the nature of our activities while sorting through the contents of my own mind at nights. Not only that, but it apparently then had the cunning to conduct itself in ways not recognizable to me as nightmare…Not then. No…”

  “I am…not sure I take your meaning,” Ian said, in a stiff voice. Wendell glanced up at him. The shadows of the dying fire played upon his old friend’s face unpleasantly, though Ian smiled as if anticipating some reassuring explanation.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Wendell thought, gripped now by the determination to unburden himself completely of this dreadful secret. “I believe it infects me still.”

  “What?…One of these parasites you speak of?”

  “The very creature whose tender ministrations you so mercifully interrupted earlier this evening,” Shrewsbury acknowledged.

  Ian withdrew into the shadows of his plush chair, and raised the snifter to his lips, obscuring his expression.

  “Once they are housed in the skull,” Shrewsbury explained, “such creatures can live and grow, apparently, watching and waiting, biding their time…”

  “You speak of these…parasites…as if they had intelligence and agency,” Ian observed.

  Wendell leaned forward, gazing at his friend. “But they do—it does! These are no mere automatons, mindlessly feeding and breeding and dying like so many other members of the animal kingdom. They think. They plan, and scheme,” he whispered, half forgetful of his friend, “but subtly, oh so subtly.”

  “So…this nightmare you’ve been suffering…is not just a living organism lodged within your mind, but actively contriving some enduring plan to harm you?” Ian asked.

  Shrewsbury nodded miserably, aware that he had finally outpaced his host’s credulity.

  “But why?” Ian pressed. “I too have nightmares from time to time. Who does not? They do not remain after waking to keep waging some campaign against me. Even if you are correct, and these dreams really are the work of some elusive organism, what purpose could a parasite have in persecuting the host from whom it presumably benefits?”

  “Revenge, I assume,” Shrewsbury replied with a desolate shrug. “We persecuted others of its kind, and would certainly have done as much to it if we had guessed in time that it was there. Having used me to defeat my mentor, it now seems to derive more pleasure from my extended torment than from just dispatching me as it contrived to do to poor Lord Frost.”

  Ian set his snifter down abruptly and lurched forward in his chair. “Surely you’re not claiming that this insubstantial…insect is somehow responsible for Lord Frost’s death!”

  “It…and I,” Shrewsbury murmured, once again unable to look anywhere but into Ian’s dying fire.

  “I do not believe it,” Ian said. “I would sooner think you mad, old friend, than a murderer of any kind. I will help in any way I can, financially if necessary, and, of course, you may count on my absolute discretion, but I think you must seek help immediately in regard to this delusion that you suffer.”

  “That is very generous,” Shrewsbury said in disappointment, “but I am quite certain that this is no delusion. Would that it were! I am well aware of how incredible these claims must sound, but the entity of which I speak is, sadly, all too real. You have not seen its cousins in the laboratory as I have. You…were not there…that night…”

  Elsewhere in the house, Wendell heard footsteps and the muffled thump of a closing door. Mrs. Lamblittle, no doubt, up again for something. He hoped she might consider coming in to tend the waning fire.

  “What did happen…that night?” Ian pressed, if less enthusiastically than before.

&
nbsp; That night…Wendell thought despondently.

  “It started well before then,” he said at last. “Having discerned the threat we posed to it before we discerned its threat to us, the pernicious demon refrained from inflicting any overt nocturnal terror. Rather, it simply hid within my mind, subtly manipulating both my thoughts and dreams to induce within me a growing urge, first to prove, and later to aggrandize myself before Lord Frost. It exploited my propensity for pride, my vanity and weakness for conceit. No gentler description is merited, I fear. I found myself increasingly compelled to pretentious displays of zeal for meticulous detail and obsessive perfection in my work, not that I found anything strange in such behavior. What young man does not seek the attention and approval of his employer in hope of advancement? Unfortunately, this new proclivity soon proved so insatiable that I began inventing opportunities to demonstrate my usefulness by fixing things that were not broken—first between myself and the lesser members of Lord Frost’s staff and household, then between myself and Lord Frost, himself, and eventually presuming to improve upon the lab’s equipment and devices themselves…”

  “What sorts of improvement?” Ian asked.

  “Small things. Trivial, in fact…at first.” Shrewsbury sighed. “Needless attention to parts I thought wanted lubrication or polishing to remedy some rough edge or improper motion. Things meant to have no real impact beyond that of impressing upon Lord Frost what a careful, knowledgeable, important resource I was. Indeed, Lord Frost was initially delighted by my industrious attention to detail—which just encouraged my evolving mania.” Wendell gazed bleakly at his host, who stared back in silence. “How is one to know he builds a weapon, Ian, if he never sees more than the one small piece he’s given to contribute at a time?”

  “I…could not say,” his friend answered carefully.

  “They are diabolic creatures, these nightmares,” Wendell said. “This one, anyway. By this excessive maintenance, it learned at least as much as I did about our equipment’s every part and function. I saw nothing then save my own good works, and cannot say, even now, exactly when I shifted from inconsequential meddlings to more significant attempts to usurp both the direction and implementation of Lord Frost’s research. No longer content merely to magnify myself as his assistant, I now hoped to engineer recognition and reward as a peer and co-author of the breakthroughs we pursued.”