Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [111]
I could tell from Dr. Kessel’s manner that he had scant respect for the pioneers, and even less for Father’s amateur knowledge of electro-therapy. By his own estimate, he had already advanced far beyond the discoveries of the 1870s, and he was not modest about it. His responses to Father’s queries grew shorter and sharper, while Father grew more and more sceptical. Finally, Mother stepped in, putting a hand on Father’s elbow.
“Does it matter, Charles? We don’t need to understand how it works, so long as it does. Dr. Kessel knows what he’s talking about.”
Father frowned and stuck out his lower lip. He wasn’t so sure that Dr. Kessel knew what he was talking about.
“Have a little trust,” she went on. “What do we have to lose?”
“What indeed?” A small, tight smile appeared on Dr. Kessel’s face. Mother’s way of putting it didn’t much please him either.
Mother overrode his ill humour. “How soon can the treatment start, Doctor?”
“There will be a payment required. A donation to fund further research.”
“Of course.”
“In that case, we may start tomorrow.”
Mother’s eyes widened. “But . . . You don’t need to do tests first?”
Dr. Kessel uttered a humourless laugh like a dog’s bark. “I see he is healthy and young. Only tired by lack of sleep. My mechanism will cure him.”
No doubt it had a longer technical name, but he always spoke of it as his mechanism. His mechanism and my bad thoughts . . .
He snapped his fingers and turned to the attendants. “Show them to their rooms, please.” That was the end of the interview.
THE ATTENDANTS TOOK us to our rooms in the guest wing. I remember one of them had a strong Yankee accent—the surprise of his American twang was the sole observation that could penetrate the fog now enveloping me. He had a friendly, rough-and-ready sort of face, and his name—as I learned the next day—was Mr. Henry J. Hungerford.
My spirits had sunk with the declining sun. For me, the end of the afternoon meant only one thing: the approach of night and impending nightmares. It was a cycle I went through every twenty-four hours. The foreboding of nightmares was like a dark aura that changed the appearance of ordinary objects in my perception, painting them with deeper shadows and edges of lurid colour. Whether the impression was produced by an actual nightmare brewing in my brain, or merely by my habitual expectations, I cannot say.
You would suppose that such a state of dread would set my pulses racing and keep me from sleep. So it might have been on the first, or second, or fiftieth occasion. But when that same foreboding acquired the inevitability of night after night after night—and stretched ahead with the prospect of endless future nights—then the effect was, on the contrary, soporific. Like a leaden weight, it dragged me down and rendered me dull and insensible.
However, that night was different. I think some gleam of hope had entered my soul. In spite of his lack of personal charisma, Dr. Kessel had been absolutely confident as to the powers of his mechanism. It was just enough to counteract my usual torpor. I lay awake and listened to the rising wind outside, soughing through the trees and shaking the loose frame of my window.
I have said that, in certain random moments, my senses functioned with unusual clarity. Sometimes, I think, my heightened acuity far exceeded any normal sight and hearing. Lying under the sheets in Dr. Kessel’s institute, I heard—or seemed to hear—a sound carried on the wind, but not of the wind itself. It was a sound of moving mechanical parts, the faintest rhythm of recurring thuds and clanks.
A fancy came over me then, so wild and odd that I almost laughed aloud. The mechanism awaited my inspection—did I dare visit it now? You must know that mine was no bold or hardy temperament; night terrors had extinguished whatever stock of impulsive animal spirits I had been born with. To creep outside in the middle of the night was, for me, almost unthinkable. Yet I thought of it; and the thought grew and grew until I acted