The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (new ebook reader .txt) 📕

“Why⁠—yes,” the youth answered, hesitating as if puzzled. “Yes, I suppose I could.”

“Let’s see you, then.”

“But⁠—” Horror was in his voice.

“No, Dr. Carl!” Pat interjected in fright. “I won’t let him!”

“I thought you declared yourself out of this,” said Horker with a shrewd glance at the girl.

“Then I’m back in it! I won’t let him do what you want⁠—anyway, not that!”

“Pat,” said the Doctor with an air of patience, “you want me to treat this affliction, don’t you? Isn’t that what both of you want?”

The girl murmured a scarcely audible assent.

“Very well, then,” he proceeded. “Do you expect me to treat the thing blindly⁠—in the dark? Do you think I can guess at the cause without observing the effect?”

“No,” said Pat faintly.

“So! Now then,” he turned to Nick, “Let’s see this transformation.”

“Must I?” asked the youth reluctantly.

“If you want my help.”

“All right,” he agreed with another tremor. He sat passively staring at the Doctor; a moment passed. Horker heard Pat’s nervous breathing; other than that, the room was in silence. Nicholas Devine closed his eyes, brushed his hand across his forehead. A moment more and he opened them to gaze perplexedly at the Doctor.

“He won’t!” he muttered in astonishment. “He won’t do it!”

“Humph!” snapped Horker, ignoring Pat’s murmur of relief. “Finicky devil, isn’t he? Likes to pick company he can bully!”

“I don’t understand it!” Nick’s face was blank. “He’s been tormenting me until just now!” He looked at the Doctor. “You don’t think I’m lying about it, do you, Dr. Horker?”

“Not consciously,” replied the other coolly. “If I thought you were responsible for a few of the indignities perpetrated on Pat here, I’d waste no time in questions, young man. I’d be relieving myself of certain violent impulses instead.”

“I couldn’t harm Pat!”

“You gave a passable imitation of it, then! However, that’s beside the point; as I say, I don’t hold you responsible for aberrations which I believe are beyond your control. The main thing is a diagnosis.”

“Do you know what it is?” cut in Pat eagerly.

“Not yet⁠—at least, not for certain. There’s only one real method available; these questions will get us nowhere. We’ll have to psychoanalyze you, young man.”

“I don’t care what you do, if you can offer any hope!” he declared vehemently. “Let’s get it over!”

“Not as easy as all that!” rumbled Horker. “It takes time; and besides, it can’t be successful with the subject in a hectic mood such as yours.” He glanced at his watch. “Moreover, it’s after midnight.”

He turned to Nicholas Devine. “We’ll make it Saturday evening,” he said. “Meanwhile, young man, you’re not to see Pat. Not at all⁠—understand? You can see her here when you come.”

“That’s infinitely more than I’d planned for myself,” said the youth in a low voice. “I’d abandoned the hope of seeing her.”

He rose and moved toward the door, and the others followed. At the entrance he paused; he leaned down to plant a brief, tender kiss on the girl’s lips, and moved wordlessly out of the door. Pat watched him enter his car, and followed the vehicle with her eyes until it disappeared. Then she turned to Horker.

“Do you really know anything about it?” she queried. “Have you any theory at all?”

“He’s not lying,” said the Doctor thoughtfully. “I watched him closely; he believes he’s telling the truth.”

“He is. I know what I saw!”

“He hasn’t the signs of praecox or depressive,” mused the Doctor. “It’s puzzling; it’s one of those functional aberrations, or a fixed delusion of some kind. We’ll find out just what it is.”

“It’s the devil,” declared Pat positively. “I don’t care what sort of scientific tag you give it⁠—that’s what it is. You doctors can hide a lot of ignorance under a long name.”

Horker paid no attention to her remarks. “We’ll see what the psychoanalysis brings out,” he said. “I shouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing were the result of a defense mechanism erected by a timid child in an effort to evade responsibility. That’s what it sounds like.”

“It’s a devil!” reiterated Pat.

“Well,” said the Doctor, “if it is, it has one thing in common with every spook or devil I ever heard of.”

“What’s that?”

“It refuses to appear under any conditions where one has a chance to examine it. It’s like one of these temperamental mediums trying to perform under a spotlight.”

Pat awoke in rather better spirits. Somehow, the actual entrance of Dr. Horker into the case gave her a feeling of security, and her natural optimistic nature rode the pendulum back from despair to hope. Even the painful black-and-blue mark on her arm, as she examined it ruefully, failed to shake her buoyant mood.

Her mood held most of the day; it was only at evening that a recurrence of doubt assailed her. She sat in the dim living room waiting the arrival of her mother’s guests, and wondered whether, after all, the predicament was as easily solvable as she had assumed. She watched the play of lights and shadows across the ceiling, patterns cast through the windows by moving headlights in the street, and wondered anew whether her faith in Dr. Carl’s abilities was justified. Science! She had the faith of her generation in its omnipotence, but here in the dusk, the outworn superstitions of childhood became appalling realities, and some of Magda’s stories, forgotten now for years, rose out of their graves and went squeaking and maundering like sheeted ghosts in a ghastly parade across the universe of her mind. The meaningless taunts she habitually flung at Dr. Carl’s science became suddenly pregnant with truth; his patient, hard-learned science seemed in fact no more than the frenzies of a witch-doctor dancing in the heart of a Rhodesian swamp.

What was it worth⁠—this array of medical facts⁠—if it failed to cure? Was medicine falling into the state of Chinese science⁠—a vast collection of good rules for which the reasons were either unknown or long forgotten? She sighed; it was with a feeling of profound relief that she heard the voices