Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

It was from this incubus of terror that she looked to Channing to free her, and she told him her story in the morning with the first real feeling of hopefulness she had had at any of her interviews with doctors. For she had heard great things of him from former patients, and his appearance and manner, in addition, seemed to inspire her with confidence. Moreover, he was the first nerve-specialist she had consulted, and she hoped that what had been a mystery to others might be capable of solution by one who had given his life to the study of such matters.

Channing listened intently to the account of her experience, and noticed at once the profound emotional upheaval produced in her even by its description. But he was puzzled, none the less, to explain it. He was silent for a time, after she had finished; and when he spoke it was to ask her a question which surprised her.

“Is this your first child that you are expecting, Mrs. Arkwright?”

She hesitated a moment.

“Yes,” she said at last; and Channing was quick to catch her meaning.

“You have lost a child, perhaps? Is that it?” he asked her gently.

She nodded; and again he noticed how moved she was at the recollection.

“I had a baby by my first husband,” she murmured. “It died at birth. I was very ill at the time, and very unhappy,” she added.

Channing watched her with that veiled scrutiny which was habitual with him. This woman, he thought, would not be made unhappy easily. For it was to her marriage she had referred, he knew, in that simple statement. It would have been unnecessary otherwise. He must know more about that marriage.

But he must lead her to speak of it of her own accord, for only so would he hear the whole story. He knew too well the evasions and omissions so easy and so welcome in the direct answering of the most searching of questions. So he never asked direct questions except as a means of getting an unconscious answer to some other question which he dared not put. To get a patient to talk at all was usually sufficient for his purpose, for, once launched on a stream of conversation, it was rare that they did not at length let out the truth.

He began therefore by being strictly impersonal. No woman, when she generalizes, can avoid a personal application, so he started now with a little talk on dreams.

“They are just a hotchpotch of memories,” he said easily, “like turning over a scrap-book at random, or picking up stray bits of a jig-saw puzzle. The scrap-book of your mind is what we call your subconsciousness, and its bits and pieces are the raw material of your dreams. That’s why they are usually such rubbish, you know, and such meaningless jumbles of nonsense.” He smiled encouragingly at her, but she did not smile in return.

“Mine isn’t just a jumble,” she said, with a shudder. “It’s too terribly clear and vivid. And besides, it never varies. That’s what makes it so awful.”

“I know,” replied Channing. “I’ve been told that so often that I’ve no doubt of it.”

Mrs. Arkwright turned to him quickly. “You’ve known others, then, who have dreamed the same thing, like I do, over and over again?”

For the first time a note of relief sounded in her voice. It was something to feel that she was not the only one on whom this ghastly thing had fallen.

Channing turned in his swivel chair, and ruffled the pages of his bulky case-book, filled with the records of his patients’ woes.

“I could read you plenty of stories here, just like your own,” he said.

“And you cured them?”

“I think I can say I helped all of them to cure themselves. That’s getting as near boasting as I like to permit myself.”

Again he smiled warmly at her, and this time he was rewarded. She sat a little straighter in her chair, and her voice shook when she spoke next.

“Then for heaven’s sake help me!” she said huskily. “I thought when I married this time that I had done with horrors forever!”

Charming was never so casual as when he spoke with a purpose, and he toyed now with his tortoise-shell glasses as though he were making small talk over the tea-table.

“As a rule recurrent dreams are due to the fact that some original impression has been so violent that it emerges, not as a jumble, but as a whole, with every detail of the incident almost as vivid as the original. That was the case, of course, with the ‘battle-dreams’ of shell-shocked soldiers. In your case, of course, that can’t be the explanation. But a recurrent dream may be the symbol of some such experience. It is sometimes a symbol, for instance, of some period when the dreamer was profoundly unhappy, living in terror of some one, or something of that sort, you know.”

Mrs. Arkwright’s eyes were burning, and there was a flush on her high cheek-bones.

“You mean it would help you — to cure such a person — if you knew that?” she said.

Channing was even more casual than before. “That’s the sort of thing,” he answered, and continued to play with his glasses.