The Dream Operator

by Mike O'Driscoll

  I do not know how long I remained in this condition, nor can I swear to the veracity of my observations. When I woke again, weak sunlight streamed through the window and Dr. D– stood over me. “You’ve had quite a turn,” he said. “Had it not been for your friend, God alone knows what might have become of you.”

  “What happened?” I managed to say.

  “Theodore! You are recovered?” It was Mr. P–. He rushed to my side and clasped my arms. He looked somewhat dishevelled and spoke in an agitated manner such that I could barely understand a word. I looked imploringly at the doctor.

  “A terrible state of affairs,” the latter said. “Griswold has betrayed our trust.”

  “Betrayed?”

  “The scoundrel was in the process of relieving M. Valdemar of his possessions when you must have disturbed him. It seems he assaulted you but luckily, P– arrived before he was able to carry off Valdemar’s valuables. Though he has made good his escape, a warrant has been issued for his arrest. It is only a matter of time.”

  I looked to P– for confirmation and saw him merely nod, as if distracted. Despite my confusion, I ascertained that he was keeping some other matter from me. “What is it?” I asked. “Tell me!”

  “Well…” Dr. D– began.

  “It’s Valdemar,” P– said. “We have resolved to make an attempt at wakening him.”

  “But surely he has already woken?”

  A half-smile crossed P–’s lips. “There has been a change, but he remains entranced.”

  At this point Dr. F– arrived and we removed to Valdemar’s chamber where Mr. P– began to make the customary passes over his still form. To my consternation I noticed that his body had returned to its former state of icy rigidity. Initially, P–’s attempts at reanimation had no discernible impact, but after a while, Valdemar’s eyes opened and his irises became partially visible, followed moments later by a sulphurous and foul-smelling liquid which flowed out from beneath the lids.

  Mr. P– quickly asked him what he felt or what his wishes were, which prompted a violent quivering of Valdemar’s tongue and that same unspeakable voice which had so shocked me previously.

  “For God’s sake!—give it to me now or let me die before they come again!”

  We were greatly disturbed at this outburst and none seemed to know what to do. Then P– resumed his passes in a futile attempt to calm the patient. It was apparent to me that this was merely prolonging Valdemar’s suffering and unable to bear it any longer I seized P– and pleaded with him to put an end to it. He seemed on the verge of panic, unwilling to proceed, but when he looked at the faces of the two doctors, he gave a slight nod and I released him. As he made hurried gestures over Valdemar, the latter’s body spasmed, his face contorted, and blood and ichor began flowing profusely from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. In seconds, the bedsheets were awash with blood and as we watched in horror, a final, hideous scream tore from his throat and then M. Valdemar was still.

  Dr. F– pronounced him dead and on examining the body, he commented on the profound wasting of flesh and muscle that the patient had suffered in his final few weeks. In truth there remained little enough of Valdemar to require the use of a coffin.

  *

  Although the fate of M. Valdemar was the cause of much speculation in the months following his demise, by the year’s end it had faded from the public consciousness. Despite my failure to come up with a satisfactory explanation for his death and the unpleasant memories that still, on occasion, troubled me, I returned to my medical studies, firmly resolved to counter superstition and ignorance through reason. At the same time I withdrew from Mr. P–’s society, a task made easier by his increasing literary fame and his removal, along with his young wife, to New York some four years after the events described.

  *

  I cannot say what prompted Mr. P– to rekindle the flames of controversy by publishing the erroneously titled “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”, other than that perhaps he assumed his fame granted him exemption from truth. Indeed, the story would not have come to my attention had it not been for a colleague who knew that I had once been acquainted with the author. As I intimated at the outset, it was this fictionalised version of events that prompted me to return to my memoranda in order to write a true account of Valdemar’s fate. Studying my record for the first time in nearly five years I was struck by my youthful naïveté; things which I had hitherto ignored or dismissed as trivial, now assumed an importance that helped me see through P–’s duplicity; incidents which at the time had seemed inexplicable, now, with the benefit of hindsight, were susceptible to rational scrutiny. Not the least of those questions which had puzzled me, was the diagnosis put forward by Doctors D– and F– as to Valdemar’s condition. Upon investigation, I discovered that neither was held in quite the high regard I had been led to believe. Indeed, Dr. F-’s license to practise medicine had been removed less than six months after the death of M. Valdemar, following the misdiagnosis of a case of typhus which led to an outbreak of the disease in the poorer part of the city. Both doctors were also known to have been over-liberal in their prescription of certain substances to patients whose conditions did not warrant their use but whose financial means permitted them to indulge their cravings.

  Having ascertained that Mr. P– was one such person, it took no great leap of imagination to guess at the nature of the mysterious solution I had found in his case. Subsequent research revealed DeQuincey’s Mixture as a compound of alcohol and opium, imported from England. Although this was a crucial discovery, linking as it did P–’s erratic behaviour with my own subsequent willingness to accept what I knew to be impossible, it was not until I reread the last few pages of my memoranda that I was able to make the final connection. In the course of my own medical practise I had had occasion to witness the effects of an abrupt cessation of opium ingestion on those who had become dependent on it. Recalling the need in Valdemar’s eyes I recognised it as that same awful need I had witnessed in the eyes of those abandoned souls housed in the cells of the city’s insane asylum.

  Incensed at Mr. P–’s machinations and by my own inability to see through them, I wrote to him, accusing him of having caused the death of M. Valdemar for his own, entirely egotistical ends. I charged him of complicity with the Doctors in misdiagnosing Valdemar’s condition in order to ensure his willing co-operation in an inhuman experiment. Lacking in confidence, I had let myself be persuaded that his illness was more serious than was in fact the case. For reasons I was unsure of, but which I suspected were connected to P–’s initial failure to mesmerise Valdemar, he had caused the latter to ingest some quantity of DeQuincey’s Mixture, which gave him the appearance of being mesmerised, while in fact he had succumbed to nothing more mysterious than a narcotic stupor.

  I further accused P– of having secreted some few drops of this opium tincture into the brandy I had drank on several occasions, in order that my critical faculties might be dulled. Thus assured of my compliance, I wrote, the experiment had proceeded. But what I could not understand, was why it had been prolonged over such an extended period. And why, having started to wean Valdemar off the drug, had he ceased in this course? Even when I had discovered Valdemar alone, there was a chance that he might have made a full recovery. Only two possibilities occurred to me: that P– had accidentally allowed Valdemar’s addiction to become so debilitating such that his condition became chronic and irreversible; or, that in pursuit of his own arcane interests, he had knowingly allowed Valdemar to die. In the process he had involved me in his corruption, something of which I might have remained unaware but for his need to offer his interpretation of the case to the public, an interpretation composed of lies dressed up as ‘facts’.

  Having seen his distorted version of the truth, I informed P–, I had been compelled to write my own account of the case, one which was not only at odds with his published interpretation, but one whose veracity I was willing to testify to in a court of law. My account was near to co
mpletion, I warned him, and I was seeking a publisher for it. I posted the letter to an address in New York and began the final revisions to my text.

  *

  One evening, less than two weeks later, I returned to my apartment after a trying day at the City Infirmary. After dinner, the housekeeper informed me there was a gentleman wishing to speak to me on a matter of some urgency. Despite my weariness, I told her to bring the fellow in. When he entered my study, I did not immediately recognise P–, for he had changed greatly in the few years since I had last set eyes upon him. His clothes were shabby and he seemed shrunken, as if some internal force had drawn him too much into himself. His eyes flitted nervously about the room before fixing on me and revealing something of the suspicions of one who has battled too much against the world.

  “Theodore,” he said. “How good of you to see me.”

  I tried to maintain a reserved manner and bade him be seated in an armchair before the fireplace. He lowered himself slowly into it and I detected a slight tremor in his limbs. I quelled a stir of pity and said, “You have come in response to my letter?”

  He sat forward, stretching his hands towards the fire. “Yes—I had intended to write but I felt that you would not believe me unless I came in person.” “You should have spared yourself the journey,” I said, harshly. “I am negotiating with a Mr William Burton for the publication of my account in a forthcoming issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine.”

  He watched the flames awhile in silence, his mind seemingly elsewhere. When, finally, he leaned back and spoke, he alluded to our past friendship before saying, “Please, grant me some of the trust you once did and believe what I am about to tell you.”

  “How can I?” I said. “You duped me, roped me into an experiment in which I would never have participated had I known the truth. To make matters worse, you compromise my reputation as a man of science by publishing your damn fiction.”

  “I should have taken more care to disguise your identity,” he admitted.

  “What possible motivation did you have for writing it?”

  He glanced at me, almost furtively, and said, “I will come to that.”

  “You had better,” I said, curtly.

  “I accepted the doctors’ opinion of Valdemar’s condition in good faith. If I hadn’t, I would never have proceeded with the experiment. Yes, you were right to say in your letter that self-interest caused me to administer the opium tincture after the failure of my initial attempt at mesmerising him, but I also believed it would alleviate his suffering.”

  “You were not qualified to make such a decision.”

  “You said that you believe my subsequent mesmerisation of Valdemar was a sham,” he went on, ignoring my interjection. “But on the contrary the drug had the effect of countering his unconscious resistance to entrancement. What you see now as narcosis, was a more profound case of mesmerism than any I had previously induced in a subject. But having succeeded, it was only when I attempted to draw him out that I discovered how distant was his removal from the material world. Failing to bring him back to consciousness, it was not until the following day that I noticed a slight change in his condition, one that prompted me to believe that he had returned to his normal self.

  “Seeing that the rigidity which had taken hold of Valdemar’s body had lessened, I listened a while to his respiration. As I did so, I heard a voice full of fear and pain, begging me to save him from some nameless threat. Panicked, I administered another dose of opium and within seconds he had once again become insensible.”

  P–’s eyes glistened wetly as he spoke and it seemed to me that he was speaking as much for his own benefit as for mine. Despite my disbelief, I felt pity for him, for it was obvious that the man was close to some kind of breakdown. This did not surprise me, for I remembered well his fondness for alcohol, despite his intolerance to it. And there remained the question as to his own use of opiates.

  “I swear to you, Theodore,” he continued, “I am in no doubt that when Valdemar spoke to me, it was from some other dimension, apart from our own reality. It was only because I was convinced death was imminent, and to prevent his further agony, that I continued to administer the drug. Yet when, after a week or more, he still clung to life, I resolved to wean him from it, believing that as the narcotic effect wore off, so he would return to a state of true consciousness.”

  “Why did you not persist in this course?”

  He leaned forward, shoulders hunched over his chest. “The longer I withheld the opium, the more disturbed he became. At no point did he emerge from the trance, yet without the shielding power of the drug, he was subjected to all manner of torment, the nature of which I could only guess at. Such was the horror he witnessed in that place, he begged me to either kill him, or give him that which would nullify his pain. After forty-eight hours I relented and began once more to administer regular doses of opium.”

  Hearing him speak thus, I could not help but recall the awful pleading tone in Valdemar’s voice when he had spoken to me immediately before I was assaulted. But it was P–’s next words that caused me to feel the clutch of ice-cold fingers on my spine: “I believe that what Valdemar saw in his mesmerised state, was a glimpse of Hell.”

  I felt the first stirrings of an old, familiar dread and in an effort to counter it I told myself that this was no more than superstitious speculation, the result of delirium on P–’s part. “How can you expect me to—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “Believe!” he said. “You must. For all our sakes. Please, Theodore, let me finish.” The intensity of his voice and the gaze which he now turned upon me kept me silent.

  “Towards the end I became sick at heart but I was at a loss as to how to end it without killing Valdemar. At this time I succumbed to a fever and was unable to attend him for some days. As I did not wholly trust Griswold, I had left no instructions with him to administer the opium. When I returned and found you there, I saw that you had witnessed the torments to which Valdemar was subjected without benefit of the drug. In my still enervated state of mind I imagined you would misinterpret his condition and do something to hasten his death. And so I acted on the spur of the moment and knocked you unconscious. Forgive me, but I believed I was saving his life. Over the next two days, I tried to discover some method of bringing him, unharmed, out of the trance. By the time you had recovered, I had resolved on the only course of action that lay open to me—to withhold the drug and attempt to waken him before the worst effects of withdrawal could act upon his system. As you saw, I succeeded in ending his mesmerisation, but not with the desired effect. I suspected that it would kill him, but that it would reduce him physically to such a state, I had had no inkling.”

  It was too much—whether prompted by a refusal to countenance such ravings or because I saw in P–’s revised tale little more than a wild attempt at self-justification, I cannot say, but I determined to close my mind to him. I got up from my seat and said, “Enough sir!—you do yourself no credit with such phantasies.”

  He forced himself to stand and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I do not ask you for absolution, Theodore—it is not yours to give. All I would seek is your belief that although my actions led to Valdemar’s death, I never wished that awful fate on him. As regards my publishing the tale, in writing it, I was attempting to exorcise those demons which have haunted me since his death. That I have failed to do so should not concern you. Let us agree that it is no more than I deserve.”

  I followed him out into the hallway, relieved that it was over. I opened the front door and waited for him to step out into the street. But he hesitated, as if remembering something else. “There is another reason I wrote the story,” he said. “One that might cause you to reconsider your intention to make public your version of events.”

  “What would that be?”

  “To serve as a warning to others who might attempt something of the same nature. You believe that all mysteries, no matter how irrational will yield their secrets if subject
ed to reasoned scrutiny. But believe me, not all can be understood by such means, and the fate of M. Valdemar is one such case.” With that he crossed the threshold and walked away into the night. We never spoke again.

  *

  As it was now close to Christmas and Mr Burton had given me until the end of January to hand in my manuscript, I put it aside to enjoy the season’s festivities. The Chief Surgeon at the City Infirmary was a Dr Hawthorne and I had received an invitation to dine at his home on Christmas Day. I was much taken with the prospect as it would give me the opportunity to become better acquainted with his only daughter, Frances, a handsome young woman of sixteen years. I had been introduced to her on one occasion, when she had accompanied her father to the infirmary in order, she had confided, to make a study of the conditions in a modern hospital. I must confess that I had it in mind to make an impression on Frances, and to aid my cause I went so far as to purchase a new suit on Christmas Eve.

  Returning to my apartment that evening, I found a letter waiting for me. I tore open the envelope distractedly and saw it was from P–. Angered at his persistence, I put it to one side and dealt with what I considered to be more pressing correspondence. I had still not read the damn thing when I set out for Dr Hawthorne’s residence on the following morning. Indeed, such was the charm and beauty of Miss Hawthorne, not to mention the favour she displayed towards me, that I had quite forgotten P– and his letter until I arrived home well past midnight and saw it laying on my desk, a bitter summons from the past. Reluctantly, I picked it up and read thus: