Three More John Silence Stories
Page 26
to experienceyourself as a normal portion of it?" asked the doctor, leaning forward,deeply interested.
Mr. Mudge nodded a perspiring face in reply.
"I did," he whispered, "undoubtedly I did. I am coming to all that. Itbegan first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss ofconsciousness--"
"The spirit, of course, can never sleep. Only the body becomesunconscious," interposed John Silence.
"Yes, we know that--theoretically. At night, of course, the spirit isactive elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simplybecause the brain stays behind and receives no record. But I foundthat, while remaining conscious, I also retained memory. I had attainedto the state of continuous consciousness, for at night I regularly, withthe first approaches of drowsiness, entered _nolens volens_ thefour-dimensional world.
"For a time this happened regularly, and I could not control it; thoughlater I found a way to regulate it better. Apparently sleep isunnecessary in the higher--the four-dimensional--body. Yes, perhaps. ButI should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. For,unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owingto my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this newworld that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift ofa monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that Icannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings init. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picturethem to myself even, but can recall only the _memory of the impression_they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be inseveral places at once, for instance--"
"Perfectly," interrupted John Silence, noticing the increase of theother's excitement, "I understand exactly. But now, please, tell me alittle more of this alarm you experienced, and how it affected you."
"It's not the disappearing and reappearing _per se_ that I mind,"continued Mr. Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeingpeople and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and completeshapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters.Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; allthat I have considered beautiful in life--everything, from a human faceto a cathedral--appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all Ihave known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should beterrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voiceproceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as ahuman body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything andeverybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confusedin geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole, and thenext at Clapham Junction--or possibly at both places simultaneously--isabsurdly terrifying. Your imagination will readily furnish other detailswithout my multiplying my experiences now. But you have no idea what itall means, and how I suffer."
Mr. Mudge paused in his panting account and lay back in his chair. Hestill held tightly to the arms as though they could keep him in theworld of sanity and three measurements, and only now and again releasedhis left hand in order to mop his face. He looked very thin and whiteand oddly unsubstantial, and he stared about him as though he saw intothis other space he had been talking about.
John Silence, too, felt warm. He had listened to every word and had mademany notes. The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect uponhim. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with himsomething of that breathless Higher-Space condition he had beendescribing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficientlyfar along the legitimate paths of spiritual and psychic transformationsto realise that the visions of this extraordinary little person had abasis of truth for their origin.
After a pause that prolonged itself into minutes, he crossed the roomand unlocked a drawer in a bookcase, taking out a small book with a redcover. It had a lock to it, and he produced a key out of his pocket andproceeded to open the covers. The bright eyes of Mr. Mudge never lefthim for a single second.
"It almost seems a pity," he said at length, "to cure you, Mr. Mudge.You are on the way to discovery of great things. Though you may loseyour life in the process--that is, your life here in the world of threedimensions--you would lose thereby nothing of great value--you willpardon my apparent rudeness, I know--and you might gain what isinfinitely greater. Your suffering, of course, lies in the fact that youalternate between the two worlds and are never wholly in one or theother. Also, I rather imagine, though I cannot be certain of this fromany personal experiments, that you have here and there penetrated eveninto space of more than four dimensions, and have hence experienced theterror you speak of."
The perspiring son of the Essex bargeman and the woman of Normandy benthis head several times in assent, but uttered no word in reply.
"Some strange psychic predisposition, dating no doubt from one of yourformer lives, has favoured the development of your 'disease'; and thefact that you had no normal training at school or college, no leading bythe poor intellect into the culs-de-sac falsely called knowledge, hasfurther caused your exceedingly rapid movement along the lines of directinner experience. None of the knowledge you have foreshadowed has cometo you through the senses, of course."
Mr. Mudge, sitting in his immovable chair, began to tremble slightly. Awind again seemed to pass over his surface and again to set it curiouslyin motion like a field of grass.
"You are merely talking to gain time," he said hurriedly, in a shakingvoice. "This thinking aloud delays us. I see ahead what you are comingto, only please be quick, for something is going to happen. A band isagain coming down the street, and if it plays--if it plays Wagner--Ishall be off in a twinkling."
"Precisely. I will be quick. I was leading up to the point of how toeffect your cure. The way is this: You must simply learn to _block theentrances_."
"True, true, utterly true!" exclaimed the little man, dodging aboutnervously in the depths of the chair. "But how, in the name of space, isthat to be done?"
"By concentration. They are all within you, these entrances, althoughouter cases such as colour, music and other things lead you towardsthem. These external things you cannot hope to destroy, but once theentrances are blocked, they will lead you only to bricked walls andclosed channels. You will no longer be able to find the way."
"Quick, quick!" cried the bobbing figure in the chair. "How is thisconcentration to be effected?"
"This little book," continued Dr. Silence calmly, "will explain to youthe way." He tapped the cover. "Let me now read out to you certainsimple instructions, composed, as I see you divine, entirely from my ownpersonal experiences in the same direction. Follow these instructionsand you will no longer enter the state of Higher Space. The entranceswill be blocked effectively."
Mr. Mudge sat bolt upright in his chair to listen, and John Silencecleared his throat and began to read slowly in a very distinct voice.
But before he had uttered a dozen words, something happened. A sound ofstreet music entered the room through the open ventilators, for a bandhad begun to play in the stable mews at the back of the house--the Marchfrom _Tannhaeuser_. Odd as it may seem that a German band should twicewithin the space of an hour enter the same mews and play Wagner, it wasnevertheless the fact.
Mr. Racine Mudge heard it. He uttered a sharp, squeaking cry and twistedhis arms with nervous energy round the chair. A piteous look that wasnot far from tears spread over his white face. Grey shadows followedit--the grey of fear. He began to struggle convulsively.
"Hold me fast! Catch me! For God's sake, keep me here! I'm on the rushalready. Oh, it's frightful!" he cried in tones of anguish, his voice asthin as a reed.
Dr. Silence made a plunge forward to seize him, but in a flash, beforehe could cover the space between them, Mr. Racine Mudge, screaming andstruggling, seemed to shoot past him into invisibility. He disappearedlike an arrow from a bow propelled at infinite speed, and his voice nolonger sounded in the external air, but seemed in some curious way tomake itself heard somewhere within the depths of the doctor's own being.It was
almost like a faint singing cry in his head, like a voice ofdream, a voice of vision and unreality.
"Alcohol, alcohol!" it cried, "give me alcohol! It's the quickest way.Alcohol, before I'm out of reach!"
The doctor, accustomed to rapid decisions and even more rapid action,remembered that a brandy flask stood upon the mantelpiece, and in lessthan a second he had seized it and was holding it out towards the spaceabove the chair recently occupied by the visible Mudge. Then, before hisvery eyes, and long ere he could unscrew the metal stopper, he saw thecontents of the closed glass phial sink and lessen as though some onewere drinking violently and greedily of the liquor within.
"Thanks! Enough! It deadens the vibrations!" cried the faint voice inhis interior, as he withdrew the