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

‘A little later, when the patient is sleeping, I talk with the mother. She wants to know everything about her daughter’s condition. She strikes me as both curious and concerned and tells me that when she was young she was afflicted by similar nightmares. Before she married and, however, not with the same intensity. It seems to me that it pains her to see her daughter suffering the same kind of torments as her. She is very inquisitive about my methods and conclusions and what I have learned about her daughter’s dreams.’

‘She says I give her a key?’

‘Yes. To the cellar. It’s common for family to be incorporated into dreams. The mind plays with the things it knows best.’

‘How preposterous.’

It all soon becomes a habit. In the evenings, Elvira Wallin sleeps full of laudanum. At night, the nightmares come. In the daytime Elvira Wallin stays in bed. Slumbers for long periods. She drinks tea and eats biscuits. She is warm and languid. Pale but lucid. She reads the newspapers. The Family Journal. Magazines about art, news, and fashion. Bathes. Doesn’t want to go out. Hedda Wallin is supported by her friends who come to visit. One and another two and two more. They look in and greet Elvira Wallin. Are worried, but encouraging. They sit in the parlor and talk with Hedda Wallin. Elvira Wallin hears them talking far away. But never about what. She wants to sit with them. To be grown up and talk about balls and theater and suffrage. Not to be sick and tired. To be hungry for something besides applesauce and laudanum. To be happy and not just want to scratch herself all over.

Dr. Lohrman comes every afternoon. With the machine in its case. Elvira Wallin wants massage. That makes her calm. Almost happy. Affectionate. One afternoon she asks little Signe to come and kiss her. She says terrible things when she refuses. That Signe too will surely be ridden by the dragon. As soon as it rides Elvira Wallin to death, then it will come straight for Signe.

‘Are we merely alleviating the symptoms of something incurable?’ Fru Wallin asks when the doctor is about to leave for the evening.

‘Right now we are only alleviating the symptoms.’

‘I’m very grateful to you for admitting that. And for doing what you can. No one did as much for me when I was sick.’

‘I hope I’ll be able to get at more than just the symptoms.’

‘You’re very persistent. But sometimes maybe all we can do is just alleviate suffering. Until the problem resolves on its own.’

‘Do you think it will resolve on its own?’

‘My dreams stopped.’

‘I want to understand. That is modern medicine. One understands the mind and cures it.’

Fru Wallin laughs. ‘Understand the mind? Can one ever do that?’

‘I think so. If one looks deep enough.’

‘And you aren’t afraid that the abyss will stare back at you?’

‘Not really. It’s another person’s mind we’re talking about. Not some kind of inferno.’

Dr. Lohrman asks Fru Wallin politely about her dreams. If she recognizes her daughter’s nightmare. Whether she too scratched her legs. He doesn’t dare ask about the worst details. If she also thought that snakes crept inside her. Fru Wallin doesn’t want to answer. The dreams were dreadful and private. And they disappeared when she got pregnant. ‘Maybe I was afraid of ending up an old maid,’ she laughs.

But Elvira Wallin isn’t pregnant. And she soon claims that she doesn’t dream anymore about going down the stairs. She doesn’t remember her dreams anymore. Dr. Lohrman is sure it’s the laudanum that makes her not remember. He takes the matter up with Fru Wallin.

‘Could it be something other than ghosts in your daughter’s head?’

‘What would it be?’

Dr. Lohrman wonders. Looks at Fru Wallin’s hair. It’s almost white. Simply but faultlessly done up. ‘That someone is assaulting her here in her room and the dreams and all the theatrics are a defense against the trauma.’

‘You and I both know that you’re the only man who comes around here.’

‘Besides the night-soil men.’

‘But they only come for a little while every other day. And Andersson escorts them. One can’t have such people running around loose in one’s home.’ She laughs. And looks tired. ‘You can do better than that, Doctor.’

‘Can she be meeting someone?’

‘A boy, you mean?’

‘Why not? I’ve seen both the youths who live in the rear house. Charming young men, to be sure.’

‘Do you seriously think that my daughter runs out at night to cuddle with a poor student? And moreover that she’s playing at being crazy in order to hide it?’

‘It was a hypothesis.’

‘Signe lives on the ground floor of the rear house. She keeps an eye on who’s coming and going. It is after all my house.’

‘And I suppose you’ve asked her if Elvira comes round there.’

‘Naturally.’ Fru Wallin sounds pleased. ‘Signe sees who comes and goes. She may be young, but she’s a shrewd girl with sharp eyes.’

Dr. Lohrman investigates the backstairs. One afternoon when Elvira Wallin is sleeping and her mother is entertaining two women from a handcrafts society. It’s a narrow spiral staircase with narrow windows, one between each floor. It is barely wide enough for two people. Not more. Down at the courtyard there is a little landing. A door leads out to the yard. Unlocked. A door leads to the coal cellar. Locked. He asks the housekeeper Andersson who has the key. It’s hanging on a hook by the stove. Where it always hangs. Where else would it hang?

He asks Elvira Wallin. Over and over again.

‘What are you doing up at night?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘This morning your mother found you in the kitchen. And yesterday on the floor in your room. You were very scared when Fru Wallin woke you. What were you scared of?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘The same snakes we talked about before?’

‘I don’t know. I was just very tense.’

‘Do you know why you were lying on the floor?’

‘I had fallen out of bed?’ Elvira Wallin giggles. It strikes Dr. Lohrman how impudent she’s gotten the past few days. Pert. Disrespectful. It might be the laudanum talking. ‘Maybe I dreamt I was in a shipwreck?’

He asks little Signe if she has seen Elvira Wallin in the yard. Or in the rear house.

‘Never,’ she answers in the Värmland dialect. ‘I’ve never seen the young miss in the yard. Or in the house. What would she go there for?’

‘And in the kitchen?’

‘Almost never. Sometimes when the young children are there, maybe. The mistress and miss leave us to ourselves in here.’ She gives Lohrman a look that says he should do the same. The household is full of stiff-­necked women.

‘And the backstairs?’

‘What would she be doing there?’

‘You see the staircase windows from your room, right?’

‘Yes. But they’re narrow windows.’

‘Can you keep an eye on them tonight? For the young lady’s sake. And if you don’t say anything to your mistress, there’s a copper for you as a reward.’

‘Why shouldn’t my mistress know?’

‘Because she might unconsciously want to protect her daughter.’ Signe nods. Pretends to understand, illiterate maid that she is.

‘One wonders,’ writes Dr. Lohrman, ‘if the laudanum really has any effect other than to keep the girl’s dreams and reality separate from one another? Can it be that the horrors that were previously played out in the theater of her dreams are now raging hidden behind the opium’s curtain? And what kind of unforeseen effects can that have on the poor girl? Or can one safely ignore the little she perceives of the dreams? If the girl were still lying quietly in her bed and only her unconscious fantasies were running all over the place then it might be all right, but now she is walking in her sleep. The girl could hurt herself. Worse than the scratches she’s already gotten. Realized today that Fru Wallin’s shame over her daughter’s sickness may be making her unconsciously hinder me in my work. Perhaps she is afraid she will be blamed for her daughter’s condition.’