21 - A Question of Synapses
Pat almost ran the few blocks to her home. She hastened along in a near panic, regardless of the glances of pedestrians she chanced to pass. With the disappearance of the immediate urge, the composure for which she had struggled had deserted her, and she felt shaken, terrified, and weak. Her arm ached miserably, and her wrenched shoulder pained at each movement. It was not until she attained her own door-step that she paused, panting and quivering, to consider the events of the evening.
"I can't stand any more of this!" she muttered wretchedly to herself. "I'll just have to give up, I guess; I can't pit myself another time against—that thing."
She leaned wearily against the railing of the porch, rubbing her injured arm.
"Dr. Carl was right," she thought. "Nick was right; it's dangerous. There was a moment there at the end when he—or it—almost had me. I'm frightened," she admitted. "Lord only knows what might have happened had I been a little weaker. If the Lord does know," she added.
She found her latch-key and entered the house. Only a dim light burned in the hall; her mother, of course, was at the Club, and the maid and Magda were far away in their chambers on the third floor. She tossed her wrap on a chair, switched on a brighter light, and examined the painful spot on her arm, a red mark already beginning to turn a nasty blue, with two tiny specks of drying blood. She shuddered, and trudged wearily up the stairs to her room.
The empty silence of the house oppressed her. She wanted human companionship—safe, trustworthy, friendly company, anyone to distract her thoughts from the eerie, disturbing direction they were taking. She was still in somewhat of a panic, and suppressed with difficulty a desire to peep fearfully under the bed.
"Coward!" she chided herself. "You knew what to expect."
Suddenly the recollection of her parting words recurred to her. She had told Nick—if Nick had indeed heard—to come to the house, to come at once, tonight, if he could. A tremor of apprehension ran through her. Suppose he came; suppose he came as her own Nick, and she admitted him, and then—or suppose that other came, and managed by some trick to enter, or suppose that unholy fascination of his prevailed on her—she shivered, and brushed her hand distractedly across her eyes.
"I can't stand it!" she moaned. "I'll have to give up, even if it means never seeing Nick again. I'll have to!" She shook her head miserably as if to deny the picture that had risen in her mind of herself and that horror alone in the house.
"I won't stay here!" she decided. She peeped out of the west windows at the Doctor's residence, and felt a surge of relief at the sight of his iron-gray hair framed in the library window below. He was reading; she could see the book on his knees. There was her refuge; she ran hastily down the stairs and out of the door.
With an apprehensive glance along the street she crossed to his door and rang the bell. She waited nervously for his coming, and, with a sudden impulse, pulled her vanity-case from her bag and dabbed a film of powder over the mark on her arm. Then his ponderous footsteps sounded and the door opened.
"Hello," he said genially. "These late evening visits of yours are becoming quite customary—and see if I care!"
"May I come in a while?" asked Pat meekly.
"Have I ever turned you away?" He followed her into the library, pushed a chair forward for her, and dropped quickly into his own with an air of having snatched it from her just in time.
"I didn't want your old arm-chair," she remarked, occupying the other.
"And what's the trouble tonight?" he queried.
"I—well, I was just nervous. I didn't want to stay in the house alone."
"You?" His tone was skeptical. "You were nervous? That hardly sounds reasonable, coming from an independent little spit-fire like you."
"I was, though. I was scared."
"And of what—or whom?"
"Of haunts and devils."
"Oh." He nodded. "I see you've had results from your letter-writing."
"Well, sort of."
"I'm used to your circumlocutions, Pat. Suppose you come directly to the point for once. What happened?"
"Why, I wrote Nick to get in touch with me, and I got a reply. He said to meet him in the park at a place we knew. This evening."
"And you did, of course."
"Yes, but before that, this afternoon, he called up and told me not to, but I insisted and we did."
"Told you not to, eh? And was his warning justified?"
"Yes. Oh, yes! When I came to the place, it was—the other."
"So! Well, he could hardly manhandle you in a public park."
Pat thought of her wrenched shoulder and bruised arm. She shuddered.
"He's horrible!" she said. "Inhuman! He kept referring to Saturday night, and he threatened that if I moved or made a disturbance he'd let Nick suffer the consequences. So I kept still while he insulted me."
"You nit-wit!" There was more than a trace of anger in the Doctor's voice. "I want to see that pup of yours! We'll soon find out what this thing is—a mania or simply lack of a good licking!"
"What it is?" echoed Pat. "Oh—it told me! Dr. Carl, what's a synopsis?"
"A synopsis! You know perfectly well."
"I mean applied to physiology or psychology or something. It—he told me he was a question of synopsis."
"This devil of yours said that?"
"Yes."
"Hum!" The Doctor's voice was musing. He frowned perplexedly, then looked up abruptly. "Was it—did he by any chance say synapses? Not synopsis—synapses?"
"That's it!" exclaimed the girl. "He said he was a question of synapses. Does that explain him? Do you know what he is?"
"Doesn't explain a damn thing!" snapped Horker. "A synapse is a juncture, or the meeting of two nerves. It's why you can develop automatic motions and habits, like playing piano, or dancing. When you form a habit, the synapses of the nerves involved are sort of worn thin, so the nerves themselves are, in a sense, short-circuited. You go through motions without the need of your brain intervening, which is all a habit amounts to. Understand?"
"Not very well," confessed Pat.
"Humph! It doesn't matter anyway. I can't see that it helps to analyze your devil."
"I don't care if it's never analyzed," said Pat with a return of despondency. "Dr. Carl, I can't face that evil thing again. I can't do it, not even if it means never seeing Nick!"
"Sensible," said the Doctor approvingly. "I'd like to have a chance at him, but not enough to keep you in this state of jitters. Although," he added, "a lot of this mystery is the product of your own harum-scarum mind. You can be sure of that, Honey."
"You would say so," responded the girl wearily. "You've never seen that—change. If it's my imagination, then I'm the one that needs your treatments, not Nick."
"It isn't all imagination, most likely," said Horker defensively. "I know these introverted types with their hysterias, megalomanias, and defense mechanisms! They've paraded through my office there for a good many years, Pat; they've provided the lion's share of my practice. But this young psychopathic of yours seems to have it bad—abnormally so, and that's why I'm so interested, apart from helping you, of course."
"I don't care," said Pat apathetically, repressing a desire to rub her injured arm. "I'm through. I'm scared out of the affair. Another week like this last one and I would be one of your patients."
"Best drop it, then," said Horker, eyeing her seriously. "Nothing's worth upsetting yourself like this, Pat."
"Nick's worth it," she murmured. "He's worth it—only I just haven't the strength. I haven't the courage. I can't do it!"
"Never mind, Honey," the Doctor muttered, regarding her with an expression of concern. "You're probably well out of the mess. I know damn well you haven't told me everything about this affair—notably, how you acquired that ugly mark on your arm that's so carefully powdered over. So, all in all, I guess you're well out of it."
"I suppose I am." Her voice was still weary. Suddenly the glare of headlights drew her attention to the window; a car was stopping before her home. "There's Mother," she said. "I'll go on back now, Dr. Carl, and thanks for entertaining a lonesome and depressed lady."
She rose with a casual glance through the window, then halted in frozen astonishment and a trace of terror.
"Oh!" she gasped. The car was the modest coupe of Nicholas Devine.
She peered through the window; the Doctor rose and stared over her shoulder. "I told him to come," she whispered. "I told him to come when he was able. He heard me, he or—the other."
A figure alighted from the vehicle. Even in the dusk she could perceive the exhaustion, the weariness in its movements. She pressed her face to the pane, surveying the form with fascinated intentness. It turned, supporting itself against the car and gazing steadily at her own door. With the movement the radiance of a street-light illuminated its features.
"It's Nick!" she cried with such eagerness that the Doctor was startled. "It's my Nick!"
22 - Doctor and Devil
Pat rushed to the door, out upon the porch, and down to the street. Dr. Horker followed her to the entrance and stood watching her as she darted toward the dejected figure beside the car.
"Nick!" she cried. "I'm here, Honey. You heard me, didn't you?"
She flung herself into his arms; he held her eagerly, pressing a hasty, tender kiss on her lips.
"You heard me!" she murmured.
"Yes." His voice was husky, strained. "What is it, Pat? Tell me quickly—God knows how much time we have!"
"It's Dr. Carl. He'll help us, Nick."
"Help us! No one can help us, dear. No one!"
"He'll try. It can't do any harm, Honey. Come in with me. Now!"
"It's useless, I tell you!"
"But come," she pleaded. "Come anyway!"
"Pat, I tell you this battle has to be fought out by me alone. I'm the only one who can do anything at all and," he lowered his voice, "Pat, I'm losing!"
"Nick!"
"That's why I came tonight. I was too cowardly to make our last meeting—Monday evening in the park—a definite farewell. I wanted to, but I weakened. So tonight, Pat, it's a final good-bye, and you thank Heaven for it!"
"Oh, Nick dear!"
"It was touch and go whether I came at all tonight. It was a struggle, Pat; he is as strong as I am now. Or stronger."
The girl gazed searchingly into his worn, weary face. He looked miserably ill, she thought; he seemed as exhausted as one who had been engaged in a physical battle.
"Nick," she said insistently, "I don't care what you say, you're coming in with me. Only for a little while."
She tugged at his hand, dragging him reluctantly after her. He followed her to the porch where the open door still framed the great figure of the Doctor.
"You know Dr. Carl," she said.
"Come inside," growled Horker. Pat noticed the gruffness of his voice, his lack of any cordiality, but she said nothing as she pulled her reluctant companion through the door and into the library.
The Doctor drew up another chair, and Pat, more accustomed to his devices, observed that he placed it in such position that the lamp cast a stream of radiance on Nick's face. She sank into her own chair and waited silently for developments.
"Well," said Horker, turning his shrewd old eyes on Nick's countenance, "let's get down to cases. Pat's told me what she knows; we can take that much for granted. Is there anything more you might want to tell?"
"No, sir," responded the youth wearily. "I've told Pat all I know."
"Humph! Maybe I can ask some leading questions, then. Will you answer them?"
"Of course, any that I can."
"All right. Now," the Doctor's voice took on a cool professional edge, "you've had these—uh—attacks as long as you can remember. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"But they've been more severe of late?"
"Much worse, sir!"
"Since when?"
"Since—about as long as I've known Pat. Four or five weeks."
"M—m," droned the Doctor. "You've no idea of the cause for this increase in the malignancy of the attacks?"
"No sir," said Nick, after a barely perceptible hesitation.
"You don't think the cause could be in any way connected with, let us say, the emotional disturbances attending your acquaintance with Pat here?"
"No, sir," said the youth flatly.
"All right," said Horker. "Let that angle go for the present. Are there any after effects from these spells?"
"Yes. There's always a splitting headache." He closed his eyes. "I have one of them now."
"Localized?"
"Sir?"
"Is the pain in any particular region? Forehead, temples, eyes, or so forth?"
"No. Just a nasty headache."
"But no other after-effects?"
"I can't think of any others. Except, perhaps, a feeling of exhaustion after I've gone through what I've just finished." He closed his eyes as if to shut out the recollection.
"Well," mused the Doctor, "we'll forget the physical symptoms. What happens to your individuality, your own consciousness, while you're suffering an attack?"
"Nothing happens to it," said Nick with a suppressed shudder. "I watch and hear, but what he does is beyond my control. It's terrifying—horrible!" he burst out suddenly.
"Doubtless," responded Horker smoothly. "What about the other? Does that one stand by while you're in the saddle?"
"I don't know," muttered Nick dully. "Of course he does!" he added abruptly. "I can feel his presence at all times—even now. He's always lurking, waiting to spring forth, as soon as I relax!"
"Humph!" ejaculated the Doctor. "How do you manage to sleep?"
"By waiting for exhaustion," said Nick wearily. "By waiting until I can stay awake no longer."
"And can you bring this other personality into dominance? Can you change controls, so to speak, at will?"
"Why—yes," the youth answered, hesitating as if puzzled. "Yes, I suppose I could."
"Let's see you, then."
"But—" Horror was in his voice.
"No, Dr. Carl!" Pat interjected in fright. "I won't let him!"
"I thought you declared yourself out of this," said Horker with a shrewd glance at the girl.
"Then I'm back in it! I won't let him do what you want—anyway, not that!"
"Pat," said the Doctor with an air of patience, "you want me to treat this affliction, don't you? Isn't that what both of you want?"
The girl murmured a scarcely audible assent.
"Very well, then," he proceeded. "Do you expect me to treat the thing blindly—in the dark? Do you think I can guess at the cause without observing the effect?"
"No," said Pat faintly.
"So! Now then," he turned to Nick, "Let's see this transformation."
"Must I?" asked the youth reluctantly.
"If you want my help."
"All right," he agreed with another tremor. He sat passively staring at the Doctor; a moment passed. Horker heard Pat's nervous breathing; other than that, the room was in silence. Nicholas Devine closed his eyes, brushed his hand across his forehead. A moment more and he opened them to gaze perplexedly at the Doctor.
"He won't!" he muttered in astonishment. "He won't do it!"
"Humph!" snapped Horker, ignoring Pat's murmur of relief. "Finicky devil, isn't he? Likes to pick company he can bully!"
"I don't understand it!" Nick's face was blank. "He's been tormenting me until just now!" He looked at the Doctor. "You don't think I'm lying about it, do you, Dr. Horker?"
"Not consciously," replied the other coolly. "If I thought you were responsible for a few of the indignities perpetrated on Pat here, I'd waste no time in questions, young man. I'd be relieving myself of certain violent impulses instead."
"I couldn't harm Pat!"
"You gave a passable imitation of it, then! However, that's beside the point; as I say, I don't hold you responsible for aberrations which I believe are beyond your control. The main thing is a diagnosis."
"Do you know what it is?" cut in Pat eagerly.
"Not yet—at least, not for certain. There's only one real method available; these questions will get us nowhere. We'll have to psychoanalyze you, young man."
"I don't care what you do, if you can offer any hope!" he declared vehemently. "Let's get it over!"
"Not as easy as all that!" rumbled Horker. "It takes time; and besides, it can't be successful with the subject in a hectic mood such as yours." He glanced at his watch. "Moreover, it's after midnight."
He turned to Nicholas Devine. "We'll make it Saturday evening," he said. "Meanwhile, young man, you're not to see Pat. Not at all—understand? You can see her here when you come."
"That's infinitely more than I'd planned for myself," said the youth in a low voice. "I'd abandoned the hope of seeing her."
He rose and moved toward the door, and the others followed. At the entrance he paused; he leaned down to plant a brief, tender kiss on the girl's lips, and moved wordlessly out of the door. Pat watched him enter his car, and followed the vehicle with her eyes until it disappeared. Then she turned to Horker.
"Do you really know anything about it?" she queried. "Have you any theory at all?"
"He's not lying," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "I watched him closely; he believes he's telling the truth."
"He is. I know what I saw!"
"He hasn't the signs of praecox or depressive," mused the Doctor. "It's puzzling; it's one of those functional aberrations, or a fixed delusion of some kind. We'll find out just what it is."
"It's the devil," declared Pat positively. "I don't care what sort of scientific tag you give it—that's what it is. You doctors can hide a lot of ignorance under a long name."
Horker paid no attention to her remarks. "We'll see what the psychoanalysis brings out," he said. "I shouldn't be surprised if the whole thing were the result of a defense mechanism erected by a timid child in an effort to evade responsibility. That's what it sounds like."
"It's a devil!" reiterated Pat.
"Well," said the Doctor, "if it is, it has one thing in common with every spook or devil I ever heard of."
"What's that?"
"It refuses to appear under any conditions where one has a chance to examine it. It's like one of these temperamental mediums trying to perform under a spot-light."
23 - Werewolf
Pat awoke in rather better spirits. Somehow, the actual entrance of Dr. Horker into the case gave her a feeling of security, and her natural optimistic nature rode the pendulum back from despair to hope. Even the painful black-and-blue mark on her arm, as she examined it ruefully, failed to shake her buoyant mood.
Her mood held most of the day; it was only at evening that a recurrence of doubt assailed her. She sat in the dim living room waiting the arrival of her mother's guests, and wondered whether, after all, the predicament was as easily solvable as she had assumed. She watched the play of lights and shadows across the ceiling, patterns cast through the windows by moving headlights in the street, and wondered anew whether her faith in Dr. Carl's abilities was justified. Science! She had the faith of her generation in its omnipotence, but here in the dusk, the outworn superstitions of childhood became appalling realities, and some of Magda's stories, forgotten now for years, rose out of their graves and went squeaking and maundering like sheeted ghosts in a ghastly parade across the universe of her mind. The meaningless taunts she habitually flung at Dr. Carl's science became suddenly pregnant with truth; his patient, hard-learned science seemed in fact no more than the frenzies of a witch-doctor dancing in the heart of a Rhodesian swamp.
What was it worth—this array of medical facts—if it failed to cure? Was medicine falling into the state of Chinese science—a vast collection of good rules for which the reasons were either unknown or long forgotten? She sighed; it was with a feeling of profound relief that she heard the voices of the Brocks outside; she played miserable bridge the whole evening, but it was less of an affliction than the solitude of her own thoughts.
Saturday morning, cloudy and threatening though it was, found the pendulum once more at the other end of the arc. She found herself, if not buoyantly cheerful, at least no longer prey to the inchoate doubts and fears of the preceding evening. She couldn't even recall their nature; they had been apart from the cool, day-time logic that preached a common-sense reliance on accepted practices. They had been, she concluded, no more than childish nightmares induced by darkness and the play of shadows.
She dressed and ate a late breakfast; her mother was already en route to the Club for her bridge-luncheon. Thereafter, she wandered into the kitchen for the company of Magda, whom she found with massive arms immersed in dish water. Pat perched on her particular stool beside the kitchen table and watched her at her work.
"Magda," she said finally.
"I'm listening, Miss Pat."
"Do you remember a story you told me a long time ago? Oh, years and years ago, about a man in your town who could change into something—some fierce animal. A wolf, or something like that."
"Oh, him!" said Magda, knitting her heavy brows. "You mean the werewolf."
"That's it! The werewolf. I remember it now—how frightened I was after I went to bed. I wasn't more than eight years old, was I?"
"I couldn't remember. It was years ago, though, for sure."
"What was the story?" queried Pat. "Do you remember that?"
"Why, it was the time the sheep were being missed," said the woman, punctuating her words with the clatter of dishes on the drainboard. "Then there was a child gone, and another, and then tales of this great wolf about the country. I didn't see him; us little ones stayed under roof by darkness after that."
"That wasn't all of it," said Pat. "You told me more than that."
"Well," continued Magda, "there was my uncle, who was best hand with a rifle in the village. He and others went after the creature, and my uncle, he came back telling how he'd seen it plain against the sky, and how he'd fired at it. He couldn't miss, he was that close, but the wolf gave him a look and ran away."
"And then what?"
"Then the Priest came, and he said it wasn't a natural wolf. He melted up a silver coin and cast a bullet, and he gave it to my uncle, he being the best shot in the village. And the next night he went out once more."
"Did he get it?" asked Pat. "I don't remember."
"He did. He came upon it by the pasture, and he aimed his gun. The creature looked straight at him with its evil red eyes, and he shot it. When he came to it, there wasn't a wolf at all, but this man—his name I forget—with a hole in his head. And then the Priest, he said he was a werewolf, and only a silver bullet could kill him. But my uncle, he said those evil red eyes kept staring at him for many nights."
"Evil red eyes!" said Pat suddenly. "Magda," she asked in a faint voice, "could he change any time he wanted to?"
"Only by night, the Priest said. By sunrise he had to be back."
"Only by night!" mused the girl. Another idea was forming in her active little mind, another conception, disturbing, impossible to phrase. "Is that worse than being possessed by a devil, Magda?"
"Sure it's worse! The Priest, he could cast out the devil, but I never heard no cure for being a werewolf."
Pat said nothing further, but slid from her high perch to the floor and went soberly out of the kitchen. The fears of last night had come to life again, and now the over-cast skies outside seemed a fitting symbol to her mood. She stared thoughtfully out of the living room windows, and the sudden splash of raindrops against the pane lent a final touch to the whole desolate ensemble.
"I'm just a superstitious little idiot!" she told herself. "I laugh at Mother because she always likes to play North and South, and here I'm letting myself worry over superstitions that were discarded before there was any such thing as a game called contract bridge."
But her arguments failed to carry conviction. The memory of the terrible eyes of that other had clicked too aptly to Magda's phrase. She couldn't subdue the picture that haunted her, and she couldn't cast off the apprehensiveness of her mood. She recalled gloomily that Dr. Horker was at the Club—wouldn't be home before evening, else she'd have gladly availed herself of his solid, matter-of-fact company.
She thought of Nick's appointment with the Doctor for that evening. Suppose his psychoanalysis brought to light some such horror as these fears of hers—that would forever destroy any possibility of happiness for her and Nick. Even though the Doctor refused to recognize it, called it by some polysyllabic scientific name, the thing would be there to sever them.
She wandered restlessly into the hall. The morning mail, unexamined, lay in its brazen receptacle, she moved over, fingering it idly. Abruptly she paused in astonishment—a letter in familiar script had flashed at her. She pulled it out; it was! It was a letter from Nicholas Devine!
She tore it open nervously, wondering whether he had reverted to his original refusal of Dr. Horker's aid, whether he was unable to come, whether that had happened. But only a single unfolded sheet slipped from the envelope, inscribed with a few brief lines of poetry.
"The grief that is too faint for tears,
And scarcely breathes of pain,
May linger on a hundred years
Ere it creep forth again.
But I, who love you now too well
To suffer your disdain,
Must try tonight that love to quell—
And try in vain!"
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