Henry Kuttner - Ghost

But the shadows darkened invisibly. The grey, leaden sky of the Antarctic had never depressed Crockett before; the distant mountains, gigantic ranges towering like Ymir’s mythical brood, had not seemed sentient till now. They were half alive, too old, too tired to move, dully satisfied to remain stagnantly crouching on the everlasting horizon of the ice fields. As the glaciers ground down, leaden, powerful, infinitely weary, the tide of the downbeat thrust against Crockett. His healthy animal mind shrank back, failed, and was engulfed.

He fought against it, but the secret foe came by stealth and no wall could keep it out. It permeated him as by osmosis. It was treacherous and deadly.

Bronson, squatting in silence, his eyes fixed on nothing, sunk into a black pit that would prison him for eternity – Crockett pictured that and shuddered. Too often these days his thoughts went back to illogical tales he had read; M.R. James, and his predecessor Henry James; Bierce and May Sinclair and others who had written of impossible ghosts. Previously, Crockett had been able to enjoy ghost stories, getting a vicarious kick out of them, letting himself, for the moment, pretend to believe in the incredible. Can such things be? “Yes,” he had said, but he had not believed. Now there was a ghost in the station, and Ford’s logical theories could not battle Crockett’s age-old superstition-instinct.

Since hairy men crouched in caves there has been fear of the dark. The fanged carnivores roaring outside in the night have not always been beasts. Psychology has changed them; the distorted, terrible sounds spawned in a place of peril – the lonely, menacing night beyond the firelight’s circle – have created trolls and werewolves, vampires and giants and women with hollow backs.

Yes – there is fear. But most of all, beating down active terror, came the passive, shrouding cloak of infinitely horrible depression.

The Irishman was no coward. Since Ford’s arrival, he had decided to stay, at least until the psychologist’s experiment had succeeded or failed. Nevertheless, he was scarcely pleased by Ford’s guest, the manic-depressive the doctor had mentioned.

William Quayle looked not at all like Bronson, but the longer he stayed, the more he reminded Crockett of the other man. Quayle was a thin, dark, intense-eyed man of about thirty, subject to fits of violent rage when anything displeased him. His cycle had a range of approximately one week. In that time he would swing from blackest depression to wild exultation. The pattern never varied. Nor did he seem affected by the ghost; Ford had said that the intensity of the upcurve was so strong that it blocked the effect of the integrators’ downbeat radiation.

“I have his history,” Ford said. “He could have been cured easily at the sanitarium where I found him, but luckily I got my requisition in first. Se how interested he’s getting in plastics?”

They were in the Brainpan; Crockett was unwillingly giving the integrators a routine inspection. “Did he ever work in plastics before, Doc?” the Irishman asked. He felt like talking; silence only intensified the atmosphere that was murkiest here.

“No, but he’s dexterous. The work occupies his mind as well as his hands; it ties in with his psychology. It’s been three weeks, hasn’t it? And Quayle’s well on the road to sanity.”

“It’s done nothing for … for this.” Crockett waved toward the white towers.

“I know. Not yet – but wait a while. When Quayle’s completely cured, I think the integrators will absorb the effect of his therapy. Induction – the only possible treatment for a radioatom brain. Too bad Bronson was alone here for so long. He could have been cured if only –”

But Crockett didn’t like to think about that. “How about Quayle’s dreams?”

Ford chuckled. “Hocus-pocus, eh? But in this case it’s justified. Quayle is troubled or he wouldn’t have gone mad. His troubles show up in dreams, distorted by the censor band. I have to translate them, figuring out the symbolism by what I know of Quayle himself. His word-association tests give me quite a lot of help.”

“How?”

“He’s been a misfit. It stemmed from his early relationships; he hated and feared his father, who was a tyrant. Quayle as a child was made to feel he could never compete with anyone – he’d be sure to fail. He identifies his father with all his obstacles.”

Crockett nodded, idly watching a vernier. “You want to destroy his feeling toward his father, is that it?”

“The idea, rather, that his father has power . I must prove Quayle’s capabilities to himself, and also alter his attitude that his father was infallible. Religious mania is tied in, too, perhaps naturally, but that’s a minor factor.”

“ Ghosts! ” Crockett said suddenly. He was staring at the nearest integrator.

In the cold clarity of the fluorescents, Ford followed the other man’s gaze. He pursed his lips, turning to peer down the length of the great underground room, where the silent pillars stood huge and impassive.

“I know,” Ford said. “Don’t think I don’t feel it, too. But I’m fighting the thing, Crockett. That’s the difference. If I simply sat in a corner and absorbed that downbeat, it would get me. I keep active – personifying the downbeat as an antagonist.” The hard, tight face seemed to sharpen. “It’s the best way.”

“How much longer –”

“We’re approaching the end. When Quayle’s cured, we’ll know definitely.”

– Bronson, crouching in shadows, sunk in apathetic, hopeless dejection, submerged in a blind, blank horror so overwhelming that thought was an intolerable and useless effort – the will to fight gone, leaving only fear, and acceptance of the stifling, encroaching dark –

This was Bronson’s legacy. Yes, Crockett thought, ghosts existed. Now, in the Twenty-First Century. Perhaps never until now. Previously ghosts had been superstition. Here, in the station under the ice, shadows hung where there were no shadows. Crockett’s mind was assaulted continuously, sleeping or waking, by that fantastic haunting. His dreams were characterised by a formless, vast, unspeakable darkness that moved on him inexorably, while he tried to run on leaden feet.

But Quayle grew better.

Three weeks – four – five – and finally six passed. Crockett was haggard and miserable, feeling that this would be his prison till he died, that he could never leave it. But he stuck it out with dogged persistence. Ford maintained his integrity; he grew tighter, drier, more restrained. Not by word or act did he admit the potency of the psychic invasion.

But the integrators acquired personalities, for Crockett. They were demoniac, sullen inhuman efreets crouching in the Brainpan, utterly heedless of the humans who tended them.

A blizzard whipped the icecap to turmoil; deprived of his trips topside. Crockett became more moody than ever. The automats, fully stocked, provided meals, or the three would have gone hungry. Crockett was too listless to do more than his routine duties, and Ford began to cast watchful glances in his direction. The tension did not slacken.

Had there been a change, even the slightest variation in the deadly monotony of the downbeat, there might have been hope. But the record was frozen forever in that single phase. Too hopeless and damned even for suicide, Crockett tried to keep a grip on his rocking sanity. He clung to one thought: presently Quayle would be cured, and the ghost would be laid.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the therapy succeeded. Dr. Ford, never sparing himself, tended Quayle with gentle care, guiding him toward sanity, providing himself as a crutch on which the sick man could lean. Quayle leaned heavily, but the result was satisfying.