The following week Miss Locher did not appear for her appointment. This did not really alarm me, for, as you know many patients—armed with a script for tranquilizers and a single experience of therapy—decide they don't need any more help. But by then I had developed such a personal interest in Miss Locher's case that I was seriously disappointed at the prospect of not being able to pursue it further.
After fifteen patientless minutes had elapsed, I had my secretary call Miss Locher at the number she gave us. (With my former secretary—poor thing!—this would have been done automatically; so the new girl is not as good as you said she was, doctor. I shouldn't have let you insinuate her into my employ… but that's my fault, isn't it?) Maggie came into my office a few minutes later, presumably after she'd tried to reach Miss Locher. With rather cryptic impudence she suggested I dial the number myself, giving me the form containing all the information on our new patient. Then she left the room without saying another word. The nerve of that soon-to-be-unemployed girl.
I called the number—which incidentally plays the song about Mary's lamb on the push button phone in my office—and it rang twice before someone answered. This someone had the voice of a young woman but was not our Miss Locher. In any case, the way this woman answered the phone told me I had a wrong number (the right wrong number). Nevertheless, I asked if a Miss Locher could be reached at that number or any of its possible extensions, but the answering female's voice expressed total ignorance regarding the existence of any person by that name. I thanked her and hung up.
You will have to forgive me, my lovely, if at this point I had begun to feel like the victim of a hoax, your hoax to be exact. “Maggie,” I intercommed, “how many more appointments for this afternoon?” “Just one,” she immediately answered, and then without being asked to, said: “But I can cancel it if you'd like.” I said I would like, that I would be gone for the rest of the afternoon.
My intention was to pay a visit on Miss Locher at the, probably also phony, address on her new patient form. I had the suspicion that the address would lead to the same geographical spot as had the electronic nexus of the false phone number. Of course I could have easily verified this without leaving my office, but knowing you, sweet one, I thought that a personal visit was warranted. And I was right.
The address was an hour's drive away. It was in a fashionable suburb on the other side of town from that fashionable suburb in which I have my office. (And I wish you would remove your own place of business from its present location, unless for some reason you need to be near a skid-row source that broadcasts on frequencies of chaos and squalor, which you'd probably claim.) I parked my big black car on the street I was looking for, which also turned out to be the main street of the suburb's shopping district.
This was last Wednesday, and if you'll recall it was quite an unusual day (an accomplishment I do not list among all your orchestrated connivings of my adventure). It was dim and moody most of the morning, and so prematurely dark by late afternoon that there were stars seemingly visible in the sky. A storm was imminent and the air was appropriately galvanized with a pre-deluge feeling of suspense. Display windows were softly glowing, and one jewelry store I passed twinkled with electric glory in the corner of my eye. In the stillness I strolled beside a row of trees, each of their slender trunks planted in a complex mosaic along the sidewalk, all of their tiny leaves fluttering.
Of course, there's no farmer need to describe the atmosphere of a place you've visited many times, dear love. But I just wanted to show how sensitive I was to a certain kind of portentous mood, and how ripe I'd become for the staged antics to follow. Very good, doctor!
Distance-wise, I only had to walk a few gloomy blocks before arriving at the place purported to be the home of our Miss L. By then it was pretty clear what I would find. There were no surprises so far. When I looked up at the neon-inscribed name of the shop, I heard a young woman's telephone voice whispering the words into my ear: Mademoiselle Fashions. A fake French accent here, S.V.P. And this is the store—no?—where it seems you acquire so many of your own lovely ensembles. But I'm jumping ahead with my expectations.
What I did not expect were the sheer lengths to which you would go in order to arouse my sense of strange revelation. Was this, I pray, done to bring us closer in the divine bonds of unreality? Anyway, I saw what you wanted me to see, or what I thought you wanted me to see, in the window of Mile. Fashions. The thing was even dressed in the same plaid-skirted outfit that I recall Miss Locher was wearing on her only visit to my office. And I have to admit that I was a bit shocked—perhaps attributable in part to the strange climatic conditions of the day—when I focused on the frozen face of the mannikin. Then again, perhaps I was subliminally looking for a resemblance between Miss Locher (your fellow conspirator, whether she knows it or not) and the figure in the window. You can probably guess what I noticed, or thought I noticed, about its eyes—what you would have me perceive as a certain moistness in their fixed gaze. Oh, woe is this Wednesday's child!
Unfortunately, I was unable to linger long enough to positively confirm the above perception, for a medium-intensity shower began to descend at that point. The rain sent me running to a nearby phone booth, where I had some business to conduct anyway. Retrieving the number of the clothes store from my memory, I phoned them for the second time that afternoon. That was easy. What was not quite as easy was imitating your voice, my high-pitched love, and asking if the store's accounting department had mailed out a bill that month for my, I mean your, charge account. My impersonation of you must have been very good, for the voice on the phone reminded me that I'd already taken care of all my recent expenditures. You thanked the salesgirl for this information, apologizing for your forgetfulness, and then said good-bye. Perhaps I should have asked the girl if she was the one who helped rig up that mannikin in the window to look like Miss Locher, if indeed the situation was not the other way around, with Miss Locher following the fashion of display-window dummies. In any case, I did establish a definite link between you and the clothes store. It seemed you might have accomplices anywhere, and to tell you the truth I was beginning to feel a bit paranoid standing in that little phone booth.
The rain was coming down even harder as I made a mad dash back to my black sedan. A bit soaked, I sat in the car for a few moments wiping off my rain-spotted glasses with a handkerchief. I said I was becoming a bit paranoid and what follows proves it. While sitting there without my glasses on, I thought I saw something move in the rearview mirror. My visual vulnerability, combined with the claustrophobic feeling of being in a car with rain-blinded windows, together added up to a momentary but very definite panic on my part. Of course I quickly put my glasses on and found there was nothing whatever in the backseat. But the point is that I had to check in order to relieve my spasm of anxiety. You had succeeded, my love, in getting me to experience a moment of self-terror, and in that moment I, too, became your accomplice against myself. Bravo!
You have indeed succeeded—assuming all my inferences thus far are for the most part true—perhaps more than you know or ever intended. Having confessed all this, possibly now I can get to the real focus and “motivating factor” of my appeal to you. This has much less to do with A. Locher than it does with us, dearest. Please try to be sympathetic and, above all, patient.
I have not been well lately, and you well know the reason why. This business with Miss Locher, far from bringing us to a more intimate understanding of each other, has only made the situation worse. Horrible nightmares have been plaguing me every night. Me, of all people! And they are directly due to the well-intentioned (I think) influence of you and Miss L. I'll describe one of these nightmares for you, and therefore describe them all. This will be the last dream story, I promise.
In the dream I am in my bedroom, sitting upon my unmade bed and wearing my pajamas (Oh, will you never see them?) The room is partially illuminated by beams from a streetlight shining through the window. And it also seems to me that a whole
galaxy of constellations, although not actually witnessed firsthand, are contributing their light to the scene, a ghastly glowing which unnaturally blanches the entire upstairs of the house. I have to use the bathroom and walk sleepily out to the hallway… where I get the shock of my life.
In the whitened hallway—I cannot say brightened, because it is almost as if a very fine and luminous powder coats everything—are these things lying up and down the floor, on the upper landing of the stairway, and even upon the stairs themselves as they disappear into the darker regions below. These things are people dressed as dolls, or else dolls made up to look like people dressed as dolls. I remember being confused about which it was.
But people or dolls, their heads are all turned in my direction as I emerge from the bedroom, and their eyes shine in the white darkness. Paralyzed—yes!—with terror, I merely return a fixed gaze, wondering if my eyes are shining the same as theirs. Then one of the doll people, slouching against the wall on my near left, turns its head haltingly upon a stiff little neck and looks into my eyes. Worse, it talks. And its voice is an horrific cackling parody of speech. Even more horrible are its words, as it says: “Become as we are, sweetie. Die into us.” Suddenly I begin to feel weak, as if my life were being drained out of me. Summoning all my powers of movement, I manage to rush back to my bed to end the dream.
After I awake, screaming, my heart pounds like a mad prisoner inside me and it doesn't let up until morning. This is very disturbing for me, for there's truth in those studies relating nightmares and cardiac arrest. For some poor souls, that imaginary incubus sitting upon their chest can do real medical harm. And I do not want to become one of these cases.
You can help me, sweetheart. I know you didn't intend things to turn out this way, but that elaborate joke you perpetrated with the help of Miss Locher has really gotten to me. Consciously, of course, I still uphold the criticism I've already expressed about the basic absurdity of your work. Unconsciously, however, you seem to have awakened me to a stratum (zone, I know you would say) of uncanny terror in my mind-soul. I will at least admit that your ideas form a powerful psychic metaphor, though no more than that. Which is quite enough, isn't it? It's certainly quite enough to inspire the writing of this letter, in which I plead for your attention, since I've failed to attract it in any other way. I can't go on like this! You have strange powers over me, as if you didn't already know it. Please release me from your spell, and let's begin a normal romance. Who really gives a damn about the metaphysics of invisible realms anyway? It's only emotions, not abstractions, that count. Love and terror are the true realities, whatever the unknowable mechanics are that turns their wheels, and our own.
In Miss Locher I believe you sent me the embodiment of your deepest convictions, a love note if you will. But suppose I start admitting weird things about Miss L? Suppose I admit that she was somehow just a dream. (Then she must have been my secretary's dream too, for she saw her.) Suppose I even admit that Miss Locher was not a girl but actually a multi-selved thing—part Man, part mannikin—and with your assistance dreamed itself for a time into existence, reproduced itself in human form just as we reproduce ourselves with an infinite variety of images and shapes, all those impersonations of your flesh? You would like to have me think of things like this. You would like to have me think of all the mysterious connections among the things of this world, and of other worlds. So what if there are? I don't care anymore.
Forget other selves. Forget the third (fourth, nth) person view of life; only first and second persons are important (I and thou). And by all means forget dreams. I, for one, know I'm not a dream. I am real, Dr. —— (There, how do you like being anonymized?) So please be so kind as to acknowledge my existence.
It is now after midnight, and I dread going to sleep and having another of those nightmares. You can save me from this fate, if only you can find it in your heart to do so. But you must hurry. Time is running out for us, my love, just as these last few waking moments are now running out for me. Tell me it is still not too late for our love. Please don't destroy everything for us. You will only hurt yourself. And despite your high-flown theory of masochism, there is really nothing divine about it. So no more of your strange psychic deceptions. Be simple, be nice. Oh, I am so tired. I must say good night, then, but not good
Bye, my foolish love. Hear me now. Sleep your singular sleep and dream of the many, the others. They are also part of you, part of us. Die into them and leave me in peace. I will come for you later, and then you can always be with me in a special corner all your own, just as my little Amy once was. This is what you've wanted, and this you shall have. Die into them. Yes, die into them, you simple soul, you fool, you lover, you silly dolling. Die with a nice bright gleam in your eyes.
Drink To Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes (1982)
First published in Nyctalops #17, 1982.
Also published in: Songs Of A Dead Dreamer.
This version taken from: Songs Of A Dead Dreamer.
Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I had them altered in some way, suggest that I've tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs; they're not from some optometrist's bag of tricks, not the result of surgical mayhem. Of course they find this hard to believe, especially when I tell them I was also born with the full powers of a master hypnotist... and from there I rapidly evolved, advancing into a mesmeric wilderness untrod before or since by any others of my calling. No, I wouldn't say business or profession, I would have to say calling. What else do you call it when you're destined from birth, marked by fate's stigmata? At this point they smile politely, saying that they really enjoyed the show and that I certainly am good at what I do. I tell them how grateful I am for the opportunity to perform for such fancy persons in such a fancy house. Unsure to what extent I'm just kidding them, they nervously twirl the stems of their champagne glasses, the beverage sparkling and the crystal twinkling under a chandelier's kaleidoscopic blaze. Despite all the beauty, power, and prestige socializing in this rather baroque room tonight, I think they know how basically ordinary they all are. They are very impressed by me and my assistant, who have been asked to mingle with the guests and amuse them in whatever way we can. One gentleman with a flushed face looks across the room at my assistant, guzzling his drink as he does so. "Would you like to meet her," I ask. "You bet," he replies. They all do; they all want to know you, my somnambule.
Earlier in the evening we presented our show to these lovely people. I instructed the host of the party to serve no alcohol before our performance, and to arrange the furniture of this wonderfully ornate room in a way that would allow everyone a perfect view of us on our little platform. He complied obediently, of course. He also conceded to my request for payment in advance. Such an agreeable man, giving in to the will of another so readily.
At the start of the show I am alone before a silent audience. All illumination is cancelled except a single spotlight which I have set up on the floor exactly two point two meters from the stage. The spotlight focuses on a pair of metronomes, their batons sweeping back and forth in perfect unison like windshield wipers in the rain: smoothly back and smoothly forth, back and forth, back and forth. And at the tip of each baton is a luminous replica of each of my eyes swaying left and right in full view of everyone, while my voice speaks to them from a shadowy edge of the stage. First I give a brief lecture on hypnosis, its name and nature. After that I say: "Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to that tall black cabinet with the stunning gold embellishments running riot upon its surface. Within stands the most beautiful creature you have ever laid eyes on. She is everything you can imagine in the way of physical perfection. Everything. And just for you she is already in the deepest trance. You will see her." There is a dramatic pause during which my eyes fix upon that beast of a congregation, keeping my control. Then I look back toward the cabinet and softly utter the simple but strategic words: "Darling,
you may come out now."
The trick door opens, seemingly of its own will. Suddenly the audience emits a quiet gasp, and for a second I panic. Then there is applause, reassuring me that everything is all right, that they like the thing they see within the cabinet. What they see is standing upright inside, almost as tall as the cabinet itself. She is wearing a tiny outfit entirely of sequins, a vulgar costume whose rampant glitter somehow transcends the cliche, resurrecting its vaudevillian soul. Her gaze is fixed on an infinity slightly above the heads of everyone. "Darling?" I say invitingly. At this pre-arranged signal she begins to totter within the box. Finally she teeters into a forward fall, straight down toward the hard surface of the stage. At the last moment I rush over and catch her rigid and unflinching figure before it hits. There is applause while I restore her to a vertical position.
Now begins the performance proper, which is a regimented array of the usual mesmerian gimmicks. I place the somnambule's hypnotically stiffened body horizontally between two chairs and ask some behemoth from the audience to come up and sit on her. The man is only too glad to do this. Then I command the somnambule to become inhumanly limp, after which I stuff her into a small box which resembles a coffin. (And inwardly I titter at my tasteless joke.) Next I fire a gun loaded with blanks straight at her, not six inches from her face, and she doesn't wince one bit. We perform a few other routines in defiance of death and pain, afterward moving on to the memory tricks. In one of them I have everybody in the audience call out in turn his or her full name and birthdate. Then my somnambule repeats this information when requested at random to do so by individual audience members. She gets all the names right—and of course everyone is amazed—but she systematically fails to reply with the right dates. Instead she forecasts a future occasion which never coincides with the birthdate she was given. Some of the years of the dates she offers are in distant posterity and some disturbingly near. I express astonishment at my somnambule's behavior, explaining to the audience that portentous fortune-telling is not normally part of the show. I apologize for this ominous display of clairvoyance and vow to make it up to them with an unbelievably diverting finale. A blare of heavenly horns would not be inappropriate at this point.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 6