Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 (18 page)

We sat quietly for a minute or so, then he turned to me.

"Dr. Huntley, I want you to come stay with us until we can find some way to stop these goings-on."

"Why, I'd be glad to, only I don't know about such things. Doctors don't—Perhaps wc can find some psychologist " I stammered.

"No. I don't want an outsider," Orne replied. "Maybe we can cook up some arrangement for you to stay at the house without arousing any suspicion. That would be best."

After some discussion I agreed to this arrangement, with the excuse that repairs to my house made boarding out easier for me. As I could promise no results, I made my fee low, and only chargeable if something favorable were achieved. So that evening I started a case daybook, carefully avoiding technical terms which would influence diagnosis. I give you herewith an abridged version of this case history, day by day:

DISTURBANCE AT THE ORNE PLACE

June 3, 1949—The homestead is a two-and-a-half story frame building, with an

WEIRD TALES

ell—a typical New England fannhouse. Built a century and a half ago, it appears to be in sound condition. The hand-hewn timbers, tenon and mortice and trunnel-fitted, the pine panelling throughout downstairs acknowledge this antiquity, and conceivably help provide whatever susceptibility may be needed for psychic manifestations. It is neither extremely isolated or otherwise, though it would appear so to a city-dweller, for seventy-five yards separate it from the nearest neighbors. The location on the edge of Whittaker Intervale, against the wooded slopes of Dawn Mountain would be agreeable, though lonely in winter when the sun goes down early in the afternoon.

Anne Orne, Oliver's wife, is a small, energetic woman who does a great deal of work, though with all the stir of a wren in a dust-bath. Oliver also is a worker, running his own extensive farm and hiring out with his tractor and other farm and lumbering machinery. Eliza Blaine is an attractive, well-bred girl of fifteen, with large brown eyes and brown hair. Judging by her voice and manners she would appear to be of an even, genial disposition, without perceptible neurotic tendencies surely. She had been adopted the summer before, following the death of her father, a distant relative of Mrs. Orne. Before coming to Whittaker Intervale she had lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where her father had given her ft number of benefits in education and upbringing.

The first occurrence prior to my arrival at the Orne Place, was in April. Eliza had just bidden her foster parents good night at the door leading from the kitchen which shuts off the back stairs and prevents drafts from dispelling the heat in winter. Oliver saw the door shut, and heard the girl's footsteps ascending the stairs. Then, half a beat behind them another footstep started up. Eliza was nearly at the top of the stairs before Oliver gathered his wits and opened the door. She was alone there, turning to look down at him beneath the bare light bulb. Her face wore a strange, devilish smile, compounded of mockery, yet fearfully, terribly alien.

Oliver stood dumbfounded, turning over in his mind whether Eliza had somehow prankishly skipped upstairs, but was unable to fit this deviltry with her character. So he ended up, staring gape-jawed until she turned, snapping off the light and proceeding in the dark to the next light switch just inside her room. When Oliver turned back into the kitchen, his wife looked up, nonplussed, from her darning. Their discussion made no headway with the matter, partly perhaps since Oliver somehow omitted telling his wife of Eliza's strange expression. They concluded that this might have been a freak of sound involving the wood frame of the old house, and called to mind reports of similar happenings.

IN THE latter part of May on a rainy afternoon, the minister, Mr. Brainerd, came to call. Mrs. Orne was in the kitchen frying doughnuts, while Eliza was washing clothes, using set-tubs and a washing machine in the ell, also connected to the kitchen by a door. Mrs. Orne naturally exclaimed regarding the condition of the house, her hair and dress while Mr. Brainerd climbed from his car. Nevertheless, after shedding these fluttering preliminaries of a parishional call, she had settled Mr. Brainerd, a young, easygoing fellow, over coffee, fresh doughnuts and discreet gossip. He sat facing the open eil door, where Eliza was continuing her work. His coffee cup was halfway to his lips, which were pursed with intent to retract if the liquid proved too hot, when a cake of soap floated through the air coming from the ell and swinging in a near ninety degree arc, to settle in the soap dish by the kitchen sink. That was one cup of coffee Mr. Brainerd did not drink.

Several minutes later, when Mr. Brainerd and Anne Orne looked into the ell they found Eliza caught by nervous laughter, badly convulsed, apparently from the effort of her performance. Indeed the two mystified witnesses had to put her on the front room couch and minister to her with damp cloths, smelling salts, or whatever they thought best. There was no trace of the diabolical about her expression then. On

MR. HYDE—AND SEEK

recovering she claimed she knew nothing of the episode, being quite unable to explain her attack of hysteria.

With this episode the story took form and spread through the community. I was called in, though my examination brought nothing positive to light. For the record, the story that the doughnuts in the bowl on the kitchen table flew onto the coat hangers against the kitchen wall is the invention and whole cloth embroidery of some absent party—a village loafer, probably,—for both Mr. Brainerd and Anne Orne deny any such occurrence.

June 6, 1949—In return for a couple of weeks with a limited practice, I had to put in more time at the hospital. Evenings were more apt to be free, and so far I have managed to be on hand most evenings, though nothing has yet happened during my stay. This evening the four of us were seated at the kitchen table reading—or in Eliza's case, writing a letter to a Portsmouth chum.

A mouse had been scampering in the walls, though I had not been particularly conscious of it until I happened to notice Eliza reflecting a moment over her letter. I could almost see her attention caught by the creature's slight scuttlings and squeak-ings. Perhaps a sudden muffling of the atmosphere was responsible, as if a focus of attention of some sort were being established. Then all at once Eliza's face changed, taking on the wholly tense preoccupied expression of a cat about to spring. A full, taut minute thus, and then she gave a slight forward thrust, just the shadow of a lunge I would call it. From the wall a shrill, agonized mouse-cry piped. The Ornes looked up in surprise at the blank wall, and its hidden, strangely-racked victim. Neither Eliza nor I turned a heeding head; I of course being concerned with her reaction. While she—well, I think I must yield my medical judgment and say she acted as one possessed, as if the "person within her personality" were supplanted, her mind being temporarily tenanted by a diabolical force. No, this poltergeist is no mere prankster's connivance.

A moment following the mouse's last cry, soon reached in rapid diminuendo,

Eliza thrust the very tip of her tongue briefly between her teeth, and in doing so seemed to be released to herself and regain her own personality. Seeing the three of us watching her (rather than the blank wall behind which was a still mouse) she shook her head slightly.

"Gosh, I must nave dozed off. I feel awfully tired. I didn't snore, did I?"

I assured her that she hadn't, that wc were merely looking up because we thought we had heard a mouse in the wall.

"Yes, I guess I must have heard him scampering around. Funny, you hear a noise like that and hardly realize it."

Shortly after that she retired for the night

JUNE 7, 1949—I've been thinking a good deal today about the human brain as an organ. Now the heart is fairly plainly a pump—one can comprehend its function upon inspecting it, as in dissection. And so on with all the other organs, their functions can be readily comprehended upon examination. But the mass of gray matter which comprises the brain cannot be thus comprehended as the source of thought process. One cannot see where or how this viscera-like mass permits one to pilot an airplane and carry on a conversation at the same time, or to cope with a novel problem such as the present one of conjecture concerning poltergeists. Since we cannot yet look into the brain and get very far by induction, all we know about it is what we feel and experience ourselves, or what we observe in others. Therefore, I conclude, if phenomenal accomplishments are directed by the brain, of which the brain's possessor is wholly unaware, the fact that these functions were directed by the brain would defy detection.

Thus, for example, the recent experiments at Duke University with cards, regarding "mental telegraphy," or the age-old business of making a divining rod indicate the subterrene presence of water -—these in the human brain—or the homing instinct in the pigeon's brain, suggest that certain functions of the brain may exceed anything we have yet ascertained.

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Putting it another way, if we say, "I think, therefore I am," the "I am" cannot directly challenge or enlarge upon the "I think." And if an unaccounted relationship between forces of the mind and external objects, and conjecturably forces in the environment exists, there's simply no telling of it.

June 11, 1949—Whatever it is, it's getting stronger, growing like a malignant tumor. Each successful exercise of dominance over Eliza's mind increases the power of the next manifestation, which may be less capricious, and not content with a mouse, for a victim. That Eliza is possessed by a malevolent entity or grotesque preternatural schism of split personality—or whatever in hell it can be called, for it is surely spawned of hell,—is apparent to me, whether my terms fit the textbooks or not.

Eliza and I started the evening with a game of checkers. This would prove di* verting while keeping me posted on her mental state. She sat in the chair Rev. Brainerd had occupied, facing the ell, the kitchen sink (this is from the chair occupant's left to right) a window into the area of front yard which might be called the ell courtyard. We played across a corner of the full-sized tabic in order to reach the board readily. Her game was undistinguished, and free from devious tricks or wild gambles. My own is orthodox, too; I'm merely noting the less artful nature of this girl of half my age.