James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

Elvira Wallin has lain down on Dr. Lohrman’s chaise longue. In his consulting room on Drottninggatan. Two stories up, next to K.L. Lundberg’s department store. The doctor has a nice place. And there’s a housekeeper somewhere back in a kitchen. That feels important. That Elvira isn’t alone with a man. Even if it’s in broad daylight. And he’s a doctor. Once a field surgeon in the guards. In father’s company. And warmly recommended by Fru Sandell. They’ve exchanged greetings. Elvira Wallin has taken off her hat and cloak. Said ‘no, thank you’ to tea. She has lain down on the chaise longue and tries to lie still. But it feels strange to be lying down when he is sitting. And it itches. On her neck and on her back. On her legs. Everywhere. And she can’t lie there on Dr. Lohrman’s chaise longue and scratch herself like some flea-­bitten dog. Elvira Wallin wonders. Is she hysterical, like Fru von Kantzow says? Or have her dreams simply settled into a bad habit? Like a cat chasing its tail. For in the dreams she’s always walking down the stairs. In petticoat, corset, and underwear. It is midnight and she dreams that she is awake and stepping out of bed. It is quiet and everyone is asleep and nothing can be heard from the street and she must walk up and down the stairs. Every night.

‘You don’t walk in your sleep?’ asks Dr. Lohrman when they have finished talking about the weather and traffic jams on Tegel­backen.

‘I don’t think I have ever walked in my sleep, Doctor.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I’ve never woken up walking on Upplandsgatan, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You never daydream?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘Do you feel that time passes at different speeds? As if you’d missed some hours? That you’re not sure whether you’ve really had lunch or not? That the day feels like you were reading a book and happened to skip a chapter?’

Elvira Wallin laughs that disarming sort of laugh that every eighteen-­year-­old girl has at hand. And shudders. ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she wants to say. ‘It’s like that all the time lately. I awaken in the morning and can’t remember the evening before. I go out for a stroll and the very moment I come home I can’t remember where I’ve been. I talk with mother but don’t remember what about. I’m tired all the time. I hurt everywhere. Everything is like a dream except for the dream.’ The dream about going down in the cellar.

But she keeps silent. Dr. Lohrman writes something. Scratch, scratch, says the pen. Elvira Wallin thinks about how it itches. On her thigh. She asked her mother if it’s really proper to lie on the doctor’s chaise longue in this way, but mother reassured her. Dr. Lohrman is a doctor. And just as you must show the doctor your leg if you twist your ankle, so must you lie down and relax if you’re twisted in the head. That doesn’t sound so nice. Although mother smiles when she says it.

Elvira Wallin thinks about how the dream at first smells like her bedroom. Stove. Lavender and soap. The warmth as she walks past the stove. Out in the hall. It’s colder there. She doesn’t have her nightgown on. Out on the staircase. Even colder. She gets goosebumps on her arms.

‘Is the door open?’ asks Dr. Lohrman.

‘The front door?’ Elvira Wallin has to think. Stretch her hand out in front of her. Pretend to touch the door. ‘It’s the kitchen door,’ she says. Astonished by her own dream. ‘To the backstairs.’

‘Shouldn’t that be locked?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t you know you were going down the backstairs?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it before.’

‘Did you think you were going down the main staircase?’

‘Yes. I assumed so. That’s where I go. When I’m awake.’

‘In just your undergarments?’

‘Yes.’ Elvira Wallin feels herself blushing.

‘And then underground?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not out into the courtyard?’

‘No. Down in the cellar.’

‘Through a cellar door?’

Elvira Wallin answers without thinking about it. ‘Yes. Mother gave me a key.’

Dr. Lohrman doesn’t ask about mother. He writes a little instead. Elvira Wallin wonders whether she really got the key from her mother. In the dream. She is unsure. The chaise longue feels uncomfortable. A horsehair tickles her neck. And what is mother doing on the backstairs? Something inside her left boot itches. Chafes.

‘And you are certain that you have never really done this?’

‘Done what?’

‘You never go out late at night?’

‘I’ve come home late before. From soirées or from the theater. But I’ve never gone out in the middle of the night like a ghost.’

‘And never in your underclothing?’

‘What do you think!’ Elvira Wallin doesn’t like that question.

‘And not on the backstairs?’

‘No.’

‘Not even when you were a child?’

‘We didn’t live on Upplandsgatan then. We lived in the country.’

‘The country? I thought your father had a flat on Stora Nygatan.’

‘Yes, but he was the only one who lived there. Mother and I lived in Stureby.’

Dr. Lohrman falls silent. Elvira Wallin closes her eyes. She can see the stairs before her. Smells the odor of damp and mold. Her back itches from her corset. It itches. She wants to scratch.

‘Do the backstairs in the dream look like the real stairs?’

‘I think so. Maybe. I don’t have any reason to go there.’

‘Do you have to open another door?’

‘Pardon?’

‘When you walk down the backstairs and go down to the courtyard. Do you have to open a door to go down into the cellar? Was that the one your mother gave you a key to?’

‘I don’t know.’ Behind her eyelids, Elvira Wallin looks around. Mother is standing there. She nods and gives her the key. And Elvira Wallin walks down the stairs. The long staircase down to the cellar under the house on Upplandsgatan. She dreams. Looks behind her eyelids. Feels a dream cold against her skin. Along her calves. The stone steps are cold. And she is barefoot. She thinks about how she knows the floor. The stone staircase. The dream is so real. There’s some small stuff on the stairs. Gravel. And it grows damper the further down she goes.

‘Is it the real cellar that you’re going down into?’

‘How should I know that? I’ve never been there.’ Elvira Wallin wonders. Her corset itches. Her calf itches. Dr. Lohrman’s office smells of tobacco.

‘What do you think? Is the place something you remember from when you were little?’

‘No.’

Elvira Wallin looks up at the ceiling. Sees the white-­painted planks. She blinks. Doesn’t want to say any more. It’s so real. The mold and chill. As soon as she closes her eyes, she walks down the next flight of stairs. Stagnant water. The cold stone under the soles of her feet. A cold wind creeps up her legs. She knows precisely how the dream continues. What is going to happen. When it gets cold and it begins to move. When it hurts and when it becomes unbearable. She knows what she is luring out. From the first gust till the moment when she faints, sweating and screaming. And wakes up.

She sits up.

‘I don’t want to go down there.’

‘But you do. What is it that compels you to dream the same thing over and over again?’

‘I don’t know!’ Elvira Wallin almost screams. And is so ashamed that she blushes. And thinks that mother’s friends are right after all. She’s hysterical. She’s hallucinating. They should send her to a hospital. And she knows what they do with hysterical girls at the hospital. They put them in ice water until they calm down. Lock them in small rooms. And big men hold the little misses tight and attach large leeches to their throats and breasts so the leeches will suck everything bad out of them.