Darker Than You Think (33 page)

"I
know you think so," Glenn agreed. "But the mind under
stress can play odd tricks with cause and sequence. Perhaps you
really invented the dream after you learned of his death, and
inverted the sequence to change effect to cause. Or perhaps you
expected him to die."

"How
could I?"

"You
knew he would be driving down Sardis Hill," Glenn said smoothly.
"You knew he would be very tired, and in a hurry." The
sleepy eyes narrowed slightly. "Tell me this—did you know
anything about the brakes on that car?"

Barbee's
jaw sagged slightly.

"Nora
had told me they needed fixing."

"Don't
you see the picture then?" Glenn nodded cheerfully. "The
unconscious is alert to every suggestion, and it seizes every
possible device for its own expression. You knew when you went to bed
that Chittum had every probability of an accident on Sardis Hill."

"Probability."
Barbee whispered that word, shivering. "Perhaps you're right."

Glenn's
sleepy hazel eyes dwelt upon him.

"I'm
not a religious man, Mr. Barbee—I reject the supernatural, and
my own rational philosophy is founded on proven science. But I still
believe in hell."

The
dark man smiled.

"For
every man manufactures his own private hell and peoples it with
demons of his own creation, to torment him for his own secret sins,
imagined or real. It's my business to explore those personal hells
and expose their demons for what they are. Usually they turn out to
be much less terrifying than they seem. Your werewolf and weretiger
are your own private demons, Mr. Barbee. I hope they appear a little
less dreadful to you now."

Barbee
shook his head uncertainly.

"I
don't know—those dreams were very real." Almost savagely
he added: "You're pretty clever, Doctor, but there's more going
on than just hallucination. Sam Quain and Nick Spivak are still
guarding something in that wooden box. They're still fighting a
desperate battle against—I don't know what. They're my friends,
Doctor." He gulped hard. "I want to help them—not to
be the tool of their enemies."

Glenn
nodded with an air of satisfaction.

"Your
vehemence tends to establish my suggestions —though you mustn't
give too much weight to my offhand comments at this exploratory
session." He shifted lazily, to look at the clock. "That's
all the time we have just now. If you wish to stay at Glennhaven, we
can meet again tomorrow. I think you had better rest a day or two,
before we schedule your routine clinical examinations."

He
nodded toward the door, but Barbee kept his seat.

"I'll
stay, Doctor." His voice quivered urgently. "But there's
one more question I've got to ask right now." He searched
Glenn's bland brown face. "April Bell told me that she once
consulted you. Has she any— any supernatural powers?"

The
tall psychiatrist rose gravely.

"Professional
ethics forbid me to discuss any patient," he said. "If a
general answer will make you feel any easier, however, I can tell you
that I helped my father investigate thousands of cases of so-called
psychic phenomena of all kinds—and I have yet to see the first
case in which the ordinary laws of nature fail to apply."

He
turned firmly to open the door, but still Barbee waited.

"The
only real scientific support of extrasensory and psychokinetic
phenomena has come from such studies as those at Duke University,"
he added. "Some of the published results purporting to show the
reality of ESP and the mental manipulation of probability are pretty
convincing—but I'm afraid the wish to demonstrate the survival
of the soul has blinded the researchers to some grave flaw in their
experimental or statistical methods."

He
shook his head, with a sober emphasis.

"This
universe, to me, is strictly mechanistic. Every phenomena that takes
place in it—from the birth of suns to the tendency of men to
live in fear of gods and devils—was implicit in the primal
superatom from whose explosive cosmic energy it was formed. The
efforts that some distinguished scientists make to find room for
operation of a free human will and the creative function of
supernatural divinity in such apparent defects of mechanistic
determination as Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty—those
futile efforts are as pathetic to me as the crudest attempt of a
witch doctor to make it rain by sprinkling water on the ground. All
the so-called supernatural, Mr. Barbee, is pure delusion, based on
misdirected emotion and inaccurate observation and illogical
thinking."

His
calm brown face smiled hopefully.

"Does
that make you feel any better?"

"It
does, Doctor." Barbee took his strong hand and felt again that
sense of puzzled recognition, as if he had found some strong
forgotten bond between them. Glenn, he thought, was going to be a
powerful, loyal ally. "Thanks," he whispered fervidly.
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear!"

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

As
a Serpent Strikes—

Nurse
Graulitz was waiting for him in Dr. Glenn's outer office.
Surrendering wearily to her competent control, Barbee telephoned
Troy's office and told the publisher he wanted to spend a few days at
Glennhaven for a check up.

"Sure,
Barbee!" Troy's rasping voice sounded warmly sympathetic.
"You've been killing yourself— and I know Chittum was your
friend. Grady'll get the
Star
out.
I believe in Archer Glenn. If there's any difficulty about financing
your treatment, have him call my office—and don't worry about
your job."

Barbee
stammered his thanks, choked with a sudden tightness in his throat.
Preston Troy wasn't altogether bad, he decided. Perhaps he had been a
little too severe in his own judgments on the Walraven campaign and
that rather sketchy circumstantial evidence in April Bell's
apartment.

Yielding
again to Miss Graulitz, Barbee decided that he didn't need to drive
back to Clarendon for his toothbrush and pajamas, or even to attend
Rex Chittum's funeral. Obediently he followed her along the covered
walk from the main building to a long red-tiled annex.

She
conducted him through the library, the music room, the games room,
the hobby room, and the dining room. She introduced him casually to
several persons— leaving him uncertain which were staff members
and which patients. He kept watching uneasily for any glimpse of Mrs.
Mondrick, and presently inquired about her.

"She's
in the disturbed ward," the nurse boomed softly. "That's
the next budding, around the quadrangle. I hear she's worse
today—something upset her when she was out for her walk. She
doesn't have visitors, and you won't be seeing her until she's much
better."

Nurse
Graulitz left him at last in a room of his own on the second floor of
the annex, with the injunction to ring for Nurse Etting if he wanted
anything. The room was small but comfortable, with a neat little bath
adjoining. He had been given no key for the door.

The
windows, he noticed, were of glass reinforced with steel wire,
steel-framed, adjusted so that nothing much larger than a snake could
escape through them. But all that would scarcely be enough to
imprison him if he should dream again—he grinned wryly at the
fleeting thought—because they hadn't been clever enough to use
silver wire.

So
this was madness!

He
washed his face and sweaty hands in the tiny bathroom—noticing
that everything was cunningly designed, with no sharp edges anywhere,
or any support for a noose. He sat down wearily on the side of the
bed and loosened his shoelaces.

He
certainly didn't feel insane, he reflected—but then did any
lunatic, ever? He merely felt confused and utterly exhausted from his
long struggle to master situations that had finally been too much for
him. It felt good just to rest for a while.

Barbee
had wondered about insanity, sometimes with a brooding dread—for
his own father, whom he scarcely remembered, had died in the
forbidding stone pile of the state asylum. He had vaguely supposed
that a mental breakdown must be somehow strange and thrilling, with
an exciting conflict of horrible depression and wild elation. But
perhaps it was more often like this, just a baffled apathetic retreat
from problems grown too difficult to solve.

He
must have fallen asleep in the midst of such gray reflections. He was
vaguely aware of someone trying to rouse him for lunch, but it was
after four by his watch when he woke. Somebody had slipped off his
shoes and spread a sheet over him. His nostrils felt stuffy and his
head ached faintly.

He
wanted a drink. Perhaps he could have smuggled in a pint. Even if
whisky had put him here, he still had to have a drink. At last he
decided, not very hopefully, to try Nurse Etting. He sat up and
pushed the button that hung on a cord at the head of his bed.

Nurse
Etting was rangy and tanned. She had a comic-strip buck-toothed face,
and she appeared to have wasted unavailing pains on her mouse-colored
hair. Her rolling walk suggested that her athletic legs were bowed,
reminding him of a rodeo queen he had once interviewed. Yes, she told
him in her flat nasal voice, he could have one drink before dinner
today and not more than two afterward. She brought him a generous
jigger of very good bourbon and a glass of soda.

"Thanks!"
Surprised to get the drink, Barbee still felt a dull defiance toward
the smug assurance of Dr. Glenn and the briskly courteous efficiency
of the staff. "Here's to the snakes!"

He
tossed off the whisky. Unimpressed, Nurse Etting rolled out with the
empty glass. Barbee lay back on the bed for a while, trying to think
over what Glenn had told him. Perhaps that ruthless materialist was
right. Perhaps the were-wolf and the were-tiger had been all
hallucination—

But
he couldn't forget the peculiar vividness of his sensations, padding
over crisp frost through the fragrant night, seeing the starlit hills
with such wonderful sharpness through the eyes of that mighty
saber-tooth. He couldn't forget the warm feel of the naked girl
astride him, or the savage power of his leap, or the hot,
sweet-smelling spurt of Rex Chittum's blood. For all Glenn's
convincing arguments, nothing quite so real as that dream had ever
happened to him awake.

The
drink had relaxed him again, and he still felt drowsy. He began to
think it would be very easy for a snake to slide out through the
futile glass-and-steel barrier of that window as soon as the daylight
had gone. When he went back to sleep, he decided, he would just
change into a good, big snake and go back to call on April Bell. If
he happened to find the Chief in bed with her—well, a
thirty-foot constrictor should be able to take care of a fat little
man like Preston Troy.

The
radiator snapped, and he flung himself off the bed with a startled
curse. Such notions wouldn't do at all—Glennhaven was supposed
to cure him of those dreams. His head was choked up and still
throbbing slightly, but he couldn't have another drink until after
dinner. He washed his face in cold water and decided to go
downstairs.

Barbee
had always wondered about mental institutions. He thought of taking
notes for a feature story on this adventure; but Glennhaven, as the
evening wore on, began to seem remarkable for utter lack of anything
noteworthy. It began to appear as a fragile never-never land,
populated with timid souls in continual retreat from the real world
outside and even from one another within.