Terror Illusion

by James R Conway

As they rounded a corner, Karen could see the Ravensgill railway station about a hundred yards ahead. Jonathan looked at his watch.

  “The next train back to Leeds is in about ten minutes, or there’s another one in about three hours.”

  “If it’s all right with you I would like to get the later train,” said Karen.

  “That would be great! I can show you some more of the station and we could talk a bit more.”

  They walked across the car park in front of the station and walked into the booking hall. Jonathan got out his keys and opened the door to his private quarters. When they got inside, they removed their overcoats and hung them up. Then Karen sat down on the sofa and pulled off her boots. Jonathan took the boots into a back room as Karen slipped on her own shoes.

  “I’ll brew another pot of tea, if you like,” said Jonathan, “and then we can go and take a look at my study.”

  Karen stood up. “That will be nice,” she said.

  “Come into the kitchen while I make the tea.”

  Karen followed Jonathan into the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table while Jonathan filled the kettle and put it on the gas stove to heat up. As Jonathan started setting up a tea tray with mugs, spoons and a teapot, Karen started to speak.

  “Jonathan, do you have any interest in politics?”

  Jonathan looked up from his tea preparations and in a tone that was somewhere between surprised and defensive he said, “Why do you ask?”

  Karen felt that she had to be careful how she pursued this line of questioning. She did not want Jonathan to feel he was being interrogated but on the other hand, she was still having trouble coming up with ideas to suggest to Jonathan.

  “The way that you talk about things,” said Karen, “your experience living and working in America, the reasons that you came back to England. I’m trying to establish how you think, your view of the world.”

  Jonathan smiled. Karen relaxed. It seemed to her that Jonathan had a pretty good attitude to life and that helped to build her confidence in talking with him and asking him sensitive questions.

  “I don’t mind admitting that my time in America pushed my political views to the left,” said Jonathan.

  “To the left?” said Karen. “Frankly, I’m surprised!”

  “Yes, to the left,” said Jonathan. “What’s the saying? ‘ If you’re not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative when you are older, you have no brain.’ Well, I was exactly the opposite way round. When I was at university, I was absolutely the establishment man, pro-business, pro-government. But as I grew older, I became more and more cynical about that kind of thing, especially when I saw the effects of unbridled capitalism on the working people of America. I often say that when I arrived in America my politics were somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun; when I left they were somewhere to the left of Karl Marx!”

  “Would you call yourself a communist?” said Karen.

  “Not really. I suppose I would call myself a socialist.”

  Jonathan picked up the tea tray. “Would you like to carry on this discussion in my study?” he said, and without waiting for a reply, he went out of the back door of the kitchen, carrying the tea tray and turned right along the platform. Karen followed, closing the kitchen door behind her.”

  At the end of the platform, there was another building. It was two stories high. The lower storey was made of brick with a door and a couple of windows. The upper storey had wood-framed windows all the way round the building. There was a metal staircase leading up the outside of the building to the upper storey.

  Jonathan paused at the bottom of the stairs.

  “This used to be the old signal box,” he said. “It controlled the trains coming through Ravensgill Bridge. They are all controlled electronically now, from control rooms in Leeds and Carlisle, so I converted it into my study.”

  Jonathan looked up the stairs then turned to Karen.

  “Go on up and open the door. I’ll bring the tea.”

  Karen climbed the stairs, opened the door and stepped inside. She held the door open as Jonathan came in and put the tea tray down on a desk just inside the door.

  “What a delightful office,” said Karen.

  It was a bright room, with windows all around. There was a polished hardwood floor and the room itself was a mixture of Victorian engineering and high technology. Along the side of the room nearest the tracks was a large metal frame with about ten long metal handles. On the wall next to the frame, there were several very old looking polished wood cabinets with dials and brass bells and clocks on them. On the other side of the room, where the view from the windows looked west down the valley towards the village, was a long low workbench on which was a desktop computer with a flat-screen monitor, a laptop computer, a television, a phone, a stereo unit and several books.

  “Actually, I don’t call it an office,” said Jonathan. “Now I’m retired, I call it a study!”

  “Oops, sorry!” said Karen, with a giggle.

  “When the weather is clear there are beautiful views from up here,” said Jonathan. “On a clear day you can see Morecambe Bay and the mountains in the Lake District.”

  Jonathan pointed to the old Victorian ironwork on the other side of the room.

  “Those are the levers that controlled the signals and points for the trains in the old days. I decided to leave them in to add to the atmosphere.”

  “It’s perfect!” said Karen, clapping her hands together.

  Jonathan poured two cups of tea and handed one to Karen.

  “Let’s go and sit down,” he said.

  They walked over to the workbench and sat in the two high backed office chairs there. They swivelled to face each other.

  They sat in silence for a while and Karen thought it best to let Jonathan set the pace of the conversation. She could see very clearly that Jonathan was a complex person, a person with a great deal of mental energy. But right now, he was really struggling to apply that energy to something that he thought useful. Karen was not sure about Jonathan’s real motivation. Was it fame, fortune or fulfilment that Jonathan was looking for? She suspected that it was a little of all three, with fulfilment being the most important to him.

  Jonathan swivelled his chair to look out of the window, smiling at Karen as he did so. He put down his cup of teas, picked up a pen and started to chew the end of it. His face tightened up into a frown. Karen suspected that Jonathan had something that he wanted to tell her but he seemed to be having difficulty knowing what to say. Though she felt rather awkward at the silence between them, she resisted the temptation to interrupt Jonathan’s thinking.

  Suddenly, Jonathan turned back to face Karen.

  “You work with a lot of authors, don’t you Karen?”

  “Yes,” said Karen, “that’s the main part of my job.”

  “I suppose you see a lot of stuff that is…well…confidential?”

  “Of course, all the time. When an author is working on a new book, a new idea, we usually want to keep it under wraps. Quite often, I don’t even tell the London office what is going on. There are so many false starts and twists and turns when you are creating a book. It can be quite an ugly process, sometimes.”

  Karen laughed. She felt a bit more relaxed now that Jonathan had started to talk, but Jonathan still had rather a tortured look on his face.

  “If I told you something,” said Jonathan, “or showed you something, you could keep quiet about it, then? Not tell anybody else?”

  “Absolutely!”

  She wondered what on earth Jonathan wanted to tell her. Was it some dark secret from his past?

  “Do you remember how I told you about the car crash? How I was in a coma for three months?”

  “Yes, I do. As I said, you seem to have made a remarkable recovery.”

  “Well, once you damage your brain, things are never quite the same again.”

  Jonathan paused for a moment.

  “Don’t worry!” he
said quickly, “I didn’t turn into a monster!”

  Karen was feeling rather edgy about how the conversation was going and Jonathan seemed to have noticed her nervousness. Here she was, miles out in the country, alone with this person that she had only known for a few hours. She scanned the room, looking for possible escape routes but trying not to make it obvious to Jonathan.

  “No, Karen! Don’t be alarmed.”

  Jonathan’s voice was calming and Karen felt slightly reassured. It was probably best to get whatever this was out into the open and deal with it.

  OK,” said Karen, “Go ahead.”

  Jonathan smiled and beckoned to Karen.

  “Move your chair a bit closer.”

  Karen had lost a lot of her apprehension and it had been replaced with curiosity. She rolled her chair over so she was face to face with Jonathan.

  “Now,” said Jonathan, “I need you to just relax in your chair and look at my face. Try to empty your mind of thoughts. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be quite all right. This will only take a few minutes. Don’t worry if you feel a bit drowsy.”

  “What happens if something goes wrong?”

  “I promise you, nothing will go wrong. Trust me. You ready?”

  Karen had no idea what was about to happen but there was only one way to find out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or something like that. She nodded towards Jonathan, leaned back in her chair and looked at Jonathan, noticing how his blue eyes were so bright, almost intense. Almost immediately, Karen started to feel rather sleepy. What was happening? Was Jonathan trying to hypnotise her? She did not really want to close her eyes. She wanted to see what was going on. But she did feel very drowsy. Perhaps she could just close her eyes for a moment. No! The curiosity to see what was going on overpowered her need to nap and she forced herself to open her eyes again.

  But something had changed. Jonathan wasn’t there.

  Gone were all the computers and screens, to be replaced with several big books, which were full of hand written entries. Karen leaned forward in her chair. The books seemed to be records of train arrivals and departures at Ravensgill Bridge station. Karen stood up and looked through the window above the books. She could see the view of the valley with the village in the distance.

  Behind her, Karen heard a bell ring three times, followed by a clacking sound, like a two blocks of wood being clapped together. She turned around to face the other way, towards the side of the signal box that faced the tracks. She could see the row of old iron handles that were used to control the signals and the points at the station.

  She saw a man wearing a peaked cap and dressed in dark blue trousers and a white shirt with braces and rolled up shirt sleeves, revealing muscular arms. He reached over to one of the large iron handles and pulled it towards him, grunting with effort as he did so.

  She thought she ought to introduce herself to this man, as he looked rather official.

  “Hello,” she said. “My name is Karen Wilson. I’m a friend of Jonathan Long.”

  The man in the peaked cap did not respond.

  Karen heard the sound of a train whistle. She had seen steam trains in films and she recognized the high-pitched scream of the whistle. She turned round to look out of the windows on the south side of the signal box where the tracks curved away through the hills. In the distance, behind a hill, she could see white steam billowing up and in a few moments, she saw a train appear round the curve. It was an old steam locomotive hauling four carriages up the slope towards the station.

  Karen knew that railway enthusiasts preserved old steam locomotives and occasionally took them out for a run. This must be one of those special railway enthusiast trains. She watched the train as it slowed down passing the signal box, preparing to stop at the station. She looked along the platform and towards the bridge beyond. A man in a dark blue uniform and wearing a peaked cap came out of the station buildings as, amid a great cloud of steam, the train pulled to a halt.

  Several of the carriage doors swung open and passengers stepped down onto the platform. Two ladies dressed in 1940-style suit dresses got out, then two more ladies dressed in khaki army uniforms and wearing army caps stepped out. These ladies were followed by four young men in army battledress, each carrying a kitbag. All the passengers walked along the platform and turned into the booking hall in the middle of the main station building.

  Karen hear the sound of an engine and she saw an ancient motor bus pulling up on the road outside the station The passengers from the train climbed aboard and the bus chugged away down the hill towards the village.

  Karen turned her attention back to the window above the workbench. There was an old style calendar hanging there with large squares for each day. At the top of the page, Karen could see the month and year:

  December 1943

  Karen sat down in her chair and rubbed he eyes, then she looked up. The study had been restored to the way it was with all the computers and screens and with Jonathan sitting there grinning. Karen didn’t really understand what she had just seen. She would like a few answers.

  “What did you think of that?” said Jonathan

  Karen did not know how to respond. She sat for a few moments, alternately looking around the signal box and at Jonathan. Jonathan’s grin changed into a quizzical look. He was clearly looking for some kind of response from Karen.

  “Well?” said Jonathan.

  “I’m not sure that I really understand what I was seeing. There was something about it that didn’t quite fit. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.”

  “I suppose the easiest way of putting it is that you were looking at a dream,” said Jonathan. “Well, an hallucination actually, but in my book an hallucination is just a more realistic dream.”

  Karen shook her head. Either this was a very clever trick using some kind of special effects or it was the most amazing thing that she had ever seen.

  “Does anyone else know about this?”

  “Just the doctors.”

  “Are you kidding me Jonathan? I mean, is this one of your special effects, like you used to do in Hollywood?”

  “I swear there is no trickery, no special effects. What you just saw was absolutely real.”

  “But it was me that was having the dream or hallucination or whatever you call it.”

  “Remember I told you about that car crash in California and how I was in a coma for three months.”

  Karen nodded.

  “I had quite a lot of damage deep inside my brain. When I came out of the coma, I started to get hallucinations. What I call waking dreams. Really, the only difference between an hallucination and a dream is that you are actually awake during an hallucination, although like in a dream your physical body is more or less paralyzed. But to your brain, it seems very real. I’m sure that you’ve had dreams that seemed very real to you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Hallucinations are just more intense dreams because your brain is awake.”

  “So how did you make me dream. Did you hypnotise me?”

  “Not exactly,” said Jonathan. “I’ll try to describe to you how it works, if you’re interested.”

  “Yes, I’m fascinated!”

  “When I was in hospital I was actually blind and deaf. The brain injuries had broken some of the connections inside my brain. There was nothing wrong with my eyes or my ears, it was just that the signals were not getting through. They used a new experimental treatment where they implanted an electronic device in my head to restore the connections. It worked perfectly. I’m not familiar with all the neurological stuff that the scientists and doctors talk about so I use an analogy to help me understand it. It’s all to do with memory. Do you realize that we humans remember everything that we experience?”

  “Yes, I had heard that before.”

  “We never forget what we experience, it’s just a question of being able to recall the memory. My analogy is that there is a video recorder continuously running in our head, r
ecording all our thoughts and experiences in a continuous memory stream. Everything we see or hear is recorded. As more stuff is recorded, the older stuff is pushed further back into our memory. As this memory is written our brain attaches “hooks” or “keywords” to the recording to help with our recall. Are you with me so far?”

  “”I think so.”

  “There is a special part of this memory stream, right at the beginning of the stream, which handles our short term memory. That’s the memory that you keep in your head for just a few seconds, like when you look up a phone number and then punch it into the phone. You remember it just long enough to punch it in and then you probably forget it. Another example is when we are talking, like right now. We both have to keep the last one or two sentences in our short term memory so that we can keep track of what we are saying and make sense of what we are hearing. Anyway, short term memory is very limited so it has to be written out to the memory stream to make way for more.”

  “So our current experience, our here and now, that’s what’s going into our short term memory?”

  “Exactly! But also it goes into short term memory for a fraction of a second before it is passed on into our consciousness.”

  “I see where this is going. You get into my short term memory before it reaches my consciousness and you put thoughts and images in there that are not real? You build an hallucination.”

  “You’ve got it in one, Karen. But anyway, after the doctors in California put that electronic gizmo in my head I found that I could see people’s memory streams in my own mind’s eye.”

  Jonathan paused. “Does all this sound too crazy to you?”

  “Not at all! Carry on, it’s fascinating.”

  “To start with I noticed that if people were near me and I could look into their eyes, you know, make eye contact with them, I could see their memory stream. Of course, things were a bit fuzzy, a bit cloudy at first. I had vague images but gradually the images in my mind became clearer and eventually I found that if I concentrated heavily I could pick up quite a lot. I discovered that I could actually influence the information I picked up by thinking about the information I wanted, such as “What did you watch on television last night?” or “Where did you go on your last vacation?”

  “So how do you actually build an hallucination?”

  “After the circuit had been inside my head for a year or so I discovered that I could plant thoughts in other people’s heads. It was silly stuff at first, like attracting the attention of a barman or a waiter. I did not know what was happening at first. I would have in my mind a question for someone and they would answer before I had asked the question. Weird! It took me a few weeks before I figured out what was happening.”

  “You eventually found out what was happening?”

  “Yes. I was hooking into their short term memory and feeding it with my thoughts before it was transferred into their consciousness or written out to the memory stream.”

  “So what they were experiencing were actually your thoughts and imagination?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’m starting to get a grasp of this. If I have heard you right you can access people’s memories and you can put your thoughts into their heads and make them think they are seeing and hearing things that aren’t really happening.”

  “I think you’ve got that summed up pretty well.”

  “I’ve got a question, Jonathan. Can you see my memories and my thoughts right now?”

  “Oh no! I have to be really concentrating for it to work. Otherwise I would be overwhelmed when I was surrounded by people.”

  “Thank goodness, it could be quite embarrassing!”

  They both laughed.

  Chapter 7