Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [115]
“Do you want to have nightmares for the rest of your life?”
Still I wouldn’t take the beaker.
“Let me talk to him,” said Mr. Hungerford.
He put an arm over my shoulder and led me aside. One of the other attendants came too. I expected Father or Mother to object—was this the role of a servant? But Mr. Hungerford didn’t dress like a servant or behave like a servant, and I soon learned the reason why. Besides, he had such an open, friendly manner, it would have been difficult to take offence. Even his Yankee twang was somehow agreeable.
“You’re a lucky fellow,” he began. “This is a great opportunity for you.”
I remained silent.
“I’ve been in your position, you know,” he went on, unperturbed. “Me and Mr. Jamieson here. We both had doubts about the mechanism. Right, Mr. Jamieson?”
Mr. Jamieson was the other attendant, a tall, thin man with a gingery beard. “That’s true indeed,” he said.
I began to have an inkling of their real circumstances. “You had the treatment here? I thought you were just . . . I mean, I thought you were . . .”
“Servants?” Mr. Hungerford laughed. “Half right, half right. We serve Dr. Kessel, but only because we choose to. You could call us gentlemen of independent means. Dr. Kessel helped us, so now we help him.”
“More than helped us,” Mr. Jamieson put in.
“Yes.” Mr. Hungerford accepted the correction. “He saved us. And he can do the same for you. What he does here is the closest you’ll ever come to a miracle in this world.”
“Are all the attendants ex-patients?” I asked.
“Sure they are. Though only a few ex-patients become attendants. Most folks go back to their jobs and families. But they’ve all found peace for themselves, same as us.”
“Did you have nightmares too?”
“Not nightmares, no. Mine were waking hallucinations. Terrible bad pictures in my head. I used to see blood running down walls, blood on faces, blood on cups and plates, everywhere. I reckon I’d have gone mad, except I came here for the treatment.”
He followed the line of my gaze as I looked towards Mr. Jamieson.
“Ah, Mr. Jamieson,” he went on. “Don’t ask him about his bad thoughts. He was in a seminary training to become a priest, but something went wrong and switched the other way. He used to hear a voice in his head telling him to do ugly, cruel, brutal things. There was a mighty weight of evil on his soul when his family brought him here. Two years ago he had the treatment, and he’s been a new man ever since.”
Mr. Jamieson merely smiled and nodded, letting the American tell the story on his behalf.
“What do you see when you look at us?” Mr. Hungerford asked suddenly. “How do we seem to you?”
I didn’t know how to answer such a personal question. “You seem . . . er, fine.”
“We feel fine.” Mr. Hungerford grinned broadly. “You should have seen us before the treatment. Now we’re happy as a couple of kings.”
He did seem happy. There was a twinkle in his eye and the hint of laughter hovering always round his mouth. I envied him.
“Think of it like having a tooth pulled,” said Mr. Jamieson. “Have you ever had a tooth pulled?”
“Yes.”
“Unpleasant experience?”
I pulled a face.
“But now? Are you glad you had it done?”
I nodded.
Mr. Hungerford snapped his fingers. “All the badness pulled out of you. See, it’s exactly the same. Will you give it a try?”
I nodded again.
“You won’t regret it, I promise you.”
They walked me back to the attendant with the sleeping draught. I suspect that the others had overheard every word; certainly they had begun no conversation among themselves in all the time we’d been talking.
“He’ll give it a try,” Mr. Hungerford announced.
Dr. Kessel merely nodded, as though he had never expected any other answer.
I drank off the milky liquid, which proved to be quite tasteless. Then, as intuition had foretold, Dr. Kessel instructed me to lie down in the box.
I climbed in and lay on my back, with my head pointing in the direction of the partition. The padding was as soft as eiderdown. The sweet-and-stale odour that pervaded the study at large seemed more concentrated here. Mr. Hungerford and Mr. Jamieson