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

‘I don’t want to!’ screams Elvira Wallin. ‘I don’t want to!’

‘Calm down.’ Dr. Lohrman sounds calm. And very far away. The whole apartment smells of dampness. Her leg itches all over. Where the thing in the cellar usually touches her. Before it creeps up towards her belly.

‘Lie down again.’ Dr. Lohrman hasn’t moved a muscle. ‘If you’d be so kind.’ Elvira Wallin blinks. Finally sees the doctor. Two steps away. Sitting in his armchair. His glasses shine so that you can’t see his eyes. She didn’t see him earlier. She didn’t see anything. Not the desk. Not the green curtains. Not the paintings. A sailboat over by the window. Dancing elves directly opposite. They’re dancing in the grass. Damp grass. A dark night. She thinks about something mother told her. About a dance at Stora Skuggan.

Elvira Wallin lies down slowly.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Don’t worry. In these conversations sometimes strong feelings emerge. That’s all right.’

‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘Oh, no. What is it that you don’t want?’

‘I don’t want to go to the hospital.’

‘Has someone said you’ll be sent to a hospital?’

Elvira Wallin is silent several moments. Someone calls out down on the street. A horse whinnies.

‘No one is thinking of sending you to a hospital, Fröken Wallin. That’s why we’re here. Instead of the hospital.’

‘So you’re not thinking of putting leeches on me?’ Elvira Wallin laughs at how stupid that sounds.

‘No indeed.’ Dr. Lohrman laughs with her. ‘But I have a bucket of them in the kitchen. If you’re obstinate.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Almost.’

Elvira Wallin exhales. Concentrates on her corset. Her back itches. The edge of her right stocking is wrinkled.

‘Do doctors really use leeches nowadays?’

‘Occasionally perhaps. In any case to treat high blood pressure. Not for your sort of problem.’

‘Thanks. I think.’

‘Nowadays we use conversation. That is the latest scientific development.’

‘It sounds crazy.’

‘Think of it like the story about the troll. If one draws the nasty and troublesome things out in the daylight, they crack.’

‘It sounds like a fairy tale.’

‘It was a metaphor.’

‘I understood.’

‘We doctors have started having these conversations in recent years. And if conversation doesn’t help then we use massage to treat nervous disorders. With a machine.’

Elvira Wallin looks at the doctor. Her blouse chafes at her neck. ‘Machine?’

‘Oh, yes. A mechanical contraption that massages women with nervous troubles. I can give you a demonstration.’

‘Not on my account, thanks.’

‘But then you must talk with me.’

‘I promise.’

‘So, where were we?’

Elvira Wallin doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes. Concentrates on things that itch.

‘Fröken Wallin?’

‘Yes?’

‘The staircase. The backstairs. Can you describe what you see?’

‘It’s cold. And damp. It smells bad.’

‘Smells of what?’

‘Moss, I think. Peat. Rotten vegetables. The floor is cold.’

‘But what do you see?’

Elvira Wallin moves her head in astonishment. Looks around with her eyes shut. ‘Nothing. It’s dark.’

‘Is there no light at all?’

‘No, maybe a little from the staircase. But it’s very long.’

‘How can you see where you’re stepping in the dark?’

‘I walk carefully.’ Elvira Wallin hesitates. ‘And I’m holding someone’s hand.’ She gropes at the air in front of her. Without opening her eyes. Carefully grasps an invisible hand. Moves her legs. Tenses her abdomen. The chaise longue is small. Narrow. She extends her right wrist a little. Dr. Lohrman writes. Scratch, scratch.

‘So that I won’t fall,’ continues Elvira Wallin. ‘And won’t go astray.’ She sounds like someone who’s trying to talk about one thing while she’s reading about another. Absent. She looks around. Sees nothing in the darkness. Doesn’t know whose hand it is. It smells worse now. More moss and mold. Hears those sounds. A rustling. Sounds like someone is dragging a sack over a floor.

‘It’s good you have company.’ Dr. Lohrman talks very low. As if he’s afraid of frightening her. Elvira Wallin nods guardedly. As if she in turn doesn’t want to frighten the one holding her hand. She doesn’t want to be left alone in the cellar. For she is not wholly certain that she’s dreaming. About the damp and the darkness. About something playing in her undergarments. Stroking her foot.

‘Yes,’ she says at last.

The little room stinks so badly that she recoils. She gets dizzy. Things creep over her feet. Maybe rats. Eels. Up her calves. The hand she’s holding feels strange. Like it’s made of leather. A gloved hand that isn’t really a hand. It’s too narrow. Soft. She presses gently against it. Like one does when shaking hands. Fröken Wallin, how do you do. And the hand releases her hand and grips her wrist instead. Hard.

‘The patient,’ Dr. Lohrman wrote several hours later, ‘then freezes. With her right hand in the air in front of her. As if she is holding someone’s hand while she talks. She looks at her hand. With her eyes closed. All is calm and quiet and one hesitates to ask a new question that might interrupt the process going on within the patient. Then suddenly the patient is seized by the greatest confusion and horror. The patient feels as though she is falling and being embraced by some sort of monstrosity, and this delusion becomes so real to her that she falls off the chaise longue and tries to crawl backwards away from that imaginary attacker. At last I get Fru Hansson’s help in holding the poor girl still until after several minutes’ struggle she falls into a sort of light sleep. The whole time during the fit, the patient has her eyes wide open without seeing and is unreachable like someone in a hypnotic trance. The patient comes slowly to her senses, all the while complaining of severe paroxysms in her stomach, thigh, and lower abdomen. She thrashes with her body and kicks with her legs. The poor young woman’s clothes end up in disarray and it takes all my and Fru Hansson’s strength to prevent her from flailing her arms and clawing at the phantasms that besiege her.’

Dr. Lohrman and Fru Hansson laid Elvira Wallin on the chaise longue. Fru Hansson spoke to her reassuringly and straightened her clothes. Elvira Wallin leapt like a fish each time Fru Hansson touched her legs or hips.

Dr. Lohrman fetched laudanum. And the mechanical massage apparatus. He was unsure of what he should do. Was it more important for the girl to get rest, or that she get over the convulsions that were plaguing her? He needed to consult some colleagues. Talk with Dr. Sondén. Write a couple of letters to German colleagues. Lohrman was fairly certain that the girl’s symptoms were mental. A compulsive dream that took on a physical manifestation. But it could also be something physical that Elvira Wallin couldn’t explain and therefore wove into a dream. Anything whatsoever from colic to pregnancy. The massage apparatus could probably help there. Just in case.

Once Elvira Wallin has settled down, she has to answer questions about her body. Shameful questions. The doctor stands over by the window while he asks them. Looks at the traffic and tugs at his beard while he asks about her stomach. If she experiences pain when she passes water. If she is troubled by colic? Gas? That monthly thing. Has she gotten it? Does she drink wine? Does she eat a lot of cabbage? Onions? Fru Hansson sits beside the sofa and looks at her. A stern, black-­haired woman with chapped hands. She has narrow lips and could be twenty-­five or fifty-­five years old. Elvira Wallin answers truthfully. She has no problems with her stomach. Eats moderately. Almost never takes strong drink. The monthly business comes as it’s supposed to.