Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy (15 page)

Hypnosis? Gus read that one all the way through.

Volunteers wanted for experimental group sessions combining hypnosis and psychodrama. Group members will be placed in a light trance and asked to act out their emotional problems. $20.00 remuneration per session. Registration in Room 117, Mercer Hall
.

Dr. Harrison J. Algren
,

Project Director

Harrison J. Algren, Harrison J. Algren. Sounded familiar. Gus pulled out his notebook. Ah, yes—Algren was one of the two who'd refused to give him an appointment because they weren't taking any new patients just then. Well, if Algren was directing experimental studies at Pitt in addition to keeping up with his own practice, he probably didn't have much time. Gus felt a sudden urge to volunteer for the great and noble experiment of combining psychodrama with hypnosis. Besides, it sounded like an easy way to pick up twenty bucks.

Mercer Hall, the bulletin board notice had said. Gus left the Cathedral of Learning and headed toward that complex of buildings called the University Health Center. He headed up DeSoto Street. Some of the Health Center's buildings were on top of a hill; Mercer Hall was one of them.

Gus found the building and went looking for Room 117. It was an office, with a long counter separating the office workers from the outside world. Gus told a middle-aged woman behind the counter why he was there and was handed a registration form to fill out. It was six pages long. Under
Occupation
he wrote “student”; it was simpler. He still looked like a student.

The section asking for personal data was relatively short; the bulk of the form was given over to questions that were truly personal. They ranged from “Do you ever dream of buildings on fire?” to “How often do you masturbate?” This registration form was really a little test designed to weed out the more obvious nut cases.

Gus felt a surge of pleasure; the art of test-taking was something he'd mastered years ago. Tests were just another form of puzzle, especially if they were of the true-false, fill-in-the-blank, multiple-guess sort. The wording, the frequency with which certain subjects were repeated, the exact placement of questions within the test—all these were clues to the kind of answers the test-makers wanted. Gus chose answers that would make him appear average, normal, standard—whatever term the psychologists preferred. With just a touch of neurosis to keep him from being unbelievable. The final question was: “Why have you volunteered for this project?” Gus wrote, “For the money.” That was one motive that would never be questioned anywhere, any time, under any circumstances.

When he was finished, the middle-aged woman took back the form and glanced at his name. “You'll be contacted by someone connected with the project, Mr. Bilinski—to make the final arrangements.”

Once they decide I'm not crazy
. “Fine,” Gus said.

“If you're selected for the project,” the woman went on, “you'll be asked to attend one session a week for six weeks. They've scheduled sessions for three different times during the week—Monday nights, Thursday afternoons, and Saturday mornings. Which would be most convenient for you?”

“Is Dr. Algren directing all three sessions?”

“Dr. Algren is directing the project, but the only session he's taking himself is the Monday night one.”

“Monday would be good.”

The woman wrote “Mon” in the corner of his application. “You'll be contacted soon.” He was dismissed.

It didn't take long. The next night Gus got a call asking him to report to Room 404 of Mercer Hall at 7:30
P
.
M
. the following Monday.

There were only eight of them in the group. Gus was surprised; he'd expected a larger number. All eight were about the same age. They were seated in a circle, Gus between a girl wearing thick-lensed glasses and another who kept pulling nervously at her hair.

Dr. Harrison J. Algren was a solid, authoritative-looking man in his forties. He moved and spoke with a self-assurance that Gus frankly envied. Dr. Algren was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. He had two youngish assistants, whom he introduced without any honorifics—graduate students, no doubt. Dr. Algren gave a little speech that was designed to reassure as much as explain.

“We're not going to try any drastic new techniques on you,” he said. “In fact, we're not doing anything new at all. What's going to happen here has been done many times before—combining hypnosis with psychodrama is not new. What we're interested in is accumulating data. We have six separate situations we're going to ask you to act out. Tonight will be the first.

“You filled out a questionnaire when you registered for this project,” he went on. “Your answers indicate all eight of you are among the seventy to ninety-five percent of the populace that are capable of going into a trance. This doesn't mean you are weak-willed. Just the opposite. It means you are bright and imaginative and with good powers of concentration. It means you are capable of becoming deeply involved.”

Well, aren't we wonderful
, Gus thought.

“One common misconception I'd like to clear up,” Dr. Algren said. “The word hypnosis comes from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. But that's wrong. Hypnosis is not sleep, nor even similar to sleep. It's not even a state of unconsciousness. You can think and talk and hear other people. You can move around and do things. There's no unique physiological difference between a person under hypnosis and someone who's not. But in a hypnotic state—and at the suggestion of the hypnotist and with your consent—you will be able to experience new perceptions and usually recall buried memories as well.”

Aha
, thought Gus.
Recall buried memories
.

“Our procedure will be this. Each of you will be taken separately into another room and put into a light trance. Then you'll come back here, and the psychodrama will begin. Tonight the subject is fear. We're going to ask a couple of you to act out what it is you're most afraid of. Next week we'll ask others to play the starring roles, and so on.”

For the first time it occurred to Gus that he might spill out some things that ought to be kept secret—such as the fact that his real reason for being there was to find out whether Algren was a villain or not. But it was going to be only a light trance, and Algren had said “with your consent”—it ought to be all right.

When Gus's turn came to be hypnotized, he went into a small room with one of the graduate students. She was a woman in her late twenties, and she had something of the same confident air that Algren had.

She started off by saying, “You're going to go home feeling more relaxed than when you came in.”

“Yeah? You're sure of that?”

“We give you a posthypnotic suggestion.” She smiled disarmingly. “We have an ulterior motive. We want you to look forward to these sessions.”

Gus laughed and put himself in her hands.

There was remarkably little hocus-pocus. Mostly the procedure consisted of her telling Gus how good he felt. She must have told him in the right way because soon he became aware of a feeling of lightness that was most pleasant. When she told him he could go back into the main room, he actually asked her if he was hypnotized.

“A light trance,” she said. “Receptive to suggestion, that's all.”

Algren talked to them again, relaxing them even further.
He has one of those nice voices that sound familiar even when you've never heard them before
, Gus thought. Algren stressed the fact that all the members of the group were students (good thing Gus had fibbed), building up their sense of shared problems and goals. Gus looked at the other members of the group and felt close to them. He smiled at the girl with glasses sitting next to him; she smiled back.

Then Algren asked if someone wished to come forward and serve as the protagonist of their psychodrama. Without hesitation the girl with glasses volunteered. The one whose fears were nearest the surface?

The girl's name was Polly, and she “shared” with the group the fact that she'd begun to have severe bouts of depression. As she talked, she seemed to be discovering how deep-seated her own fears were. Gus found himself becoming worried, feeling Polly's anxieties.

Dr. Algren asked her to be more specific about what she was afraid of. The first thing that came out was that Polly had only recently learned she had glaucoma. There were other fears, but Polly's thoughts were dominated by her fear that she might go blind.

Then Dr. Algren asked the other members of the group to play the role of some part of Polly's body.

“I'll be her eyes,” Gus heard himself saying. Others volunteered to play her heart, her mind, her hands. For some reason one person wanted to play her toenails.

Dr. Algren played the stage manager. He called one “character” at a time to improvise a scene with Polly. When Gus came on to play “Eyes,” Polly turned on him with fury.

“You've let me down!” she screamed. “I depend on you, I've always depended on you—and you've let me down!”

“You think this is something I want?” Gus yelled back. “You have to take care of me!”

Dr. Algren allowed the tension to build a little further before he started bringing things to a close. The drama ended with Polly at least symbolically reconciled with all the parts of her body.

“How do you feel?” Dr. Algren asked her.

She gave an embarrassed laugh. “Like a fool.”

“Why?”

She just shook her head.

“Because you revealed your fears here?”

“No, because I see I haven't been very realistic about my problems.”

“Do you feel more capable of dealing with them now?”

Polly's face lit up in a big smile that made everyone in the room feel better. “Yes, I do. I'm still afraid of losing my sight—but it's a fear that can be lived with. I don't have to drown in it.”

A spontaneous cheer broke out among the group. One of their own had just made a bit of progress in controlling her life.

They performed one other psychodrama, in which a big, burly football player revealed his fear of his father. He was even afraid of his father's voice.

Something clicked in Gus's mind.
You will be able to experience new perceptions and recall buried memories as well
, Dr. Algren had said. No wonder his voice had sounded so familiar. Gus had heard it before.

On Megan's telephone, saying
Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made
.

An even dozen words. That's all. But Gus could hear them as clearly in his head as if Algren were speaking them right then.
Hold it; store it away; think about it later
.

Gus went through his part in the football player's personal drama. This time the group members acted out those things about the father that intimidated the son; Gus was “Disapproval.” The ending wasn't as satisfying as in Polly's story, but the football player said he felt better about a few things.

Then the graduate student who'd put Gus into his light trance was standing before him, saying something. Gus suddenly realized he was no longer in a hypnotic state.

“How do you feel?” she asked him.

He felt great. “I feel great,” he said.

She smiled and moved on. He felt great—but at the same time uncertain.
Was
it Algren's voice he'd heard on the phone? He was no longer sure. Could hypnosis make you imagine things that weren't true? He listened to Dr. Algren's closing remarks and unsuccessfully tried to recapture his earlier certainty.

The two graduate students were distributing checks for twenty dollars each. Then some members of the group started to drift out the door. Gus went up to Dr. Algren and asked him for an appointment.

He shook his head. “I'm sorry, I can't take any new patients until this project is completed.”

“A consultation only,” Gus said. “Please. Just long enough for me to explain the problem. I need advice. Perhaps you can send me to someone else if you can't take on any new cases yourself.”

Dr. Algren shook his head again.

“Fifteen minutes is all I'll need,” Gus said worriedly. “Ten minutes—you can give me ten minutes, can't you?”

Dr. Algren looked annoyed. “Very well. My first appointment tomorrow morning is at nine. Be at my office in the Kinderling Building at a quarter till. I'll give you fifteen minutes.”

Gus thanked him effusively. Then he hurried after Polly to ask for her phone number.

CHAPTER 10

“He was there to see Dr. Gerald Pierce, Snooks,” Megan said into the phone. She and Gus had decided on an ornamented version of the truth to satisfy their nosy friend.

“Dr. Pierce? He's specializing in hypnotherapy.”

“I know. Gus has a personal problem—he didn't tell me what it was and I didn't ask. But when he watched you hypnotizing me, he got to thinking maybe hypnosis could help
him
. It took him a while to get up the courage to do anything about it.”

“But why Dr. Pierce? Why didn't he come to me?”

Megan sighed. “He said he didn't want to get you caught up in his problems when you were already so deeply involved in mine. Personally, I think he's just shy about revealing himself to you. Some things are easier to tell to a stranger.”

Snooks murmured agreement; that was true enough. “Well, Dr. Pierce is a good man. He should be able to help Gus, whatever the problem is.”

Megan made a sound of regret. “Gus hasn't gone back. I guess that first interview didn't go too well. He may end up coming to you after all, Snooks.”

Snooks nodded, and then remembered Megan couldn't see her. “I'm ready when he is. And Megan, ah, I'm sorry I was so quick with my accusations the last time we talked.”

“Don't worry about it. We're all a bit edgy.”