Barbara Erskine - Lady of Hay

© 1986

Edinburgh 1970

It was snowing. Idly Sam Franklyn stared out of the dirty window up at the sky wondering if the leaden cloud would provide enough depth to ski by the weekend.

“Tape on now, Dr. Franklyn, if you please.” Professor Cohen’s quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. Sam turned, glancing at the young woman lying so calmly on the couch, and switched on the recorder. She was an attractive girl, slender and dark, with vivacious gray-green eyes, closed now beneath long curved lashes. He grinned to himself. When the session was over he intended to offer her a lift back into town.

The psychology labs were cold. As he picked up his notebook and began a new page, he leaned across and touched the grotesquely large cream radiator and grimaced. It was barely warm.

Cohen’s office was small and cluttered, furnished with a huge desk buried beneath books and papers, some half-dozen chairs crowded together to accommodate tutorial students, when there were any, and the couch, covered by a bright tartan blanket, where most of his volunteers chose to lie while they were under hypnosis, “as if they are afraid they will fall down” he had commented once to Sam as yet another woman had lain nervously down as if on a sacrificial altar. The walls of the room were painted a light cold blue that did nothing to improve the temperature. Anyone who could relax comfortably in Michael Cohen’s office, Sam used to think wryly, was halfway to being mesmerized already. Next to him the radiator let out a subterranean gurgle, but it grew no hotter.

Professor Cohen seated himself next to the couch and took the girl’s hand in his. He had not bothered to do that for his last two victims, Sam noticed, and once more he grinned.

He picked up his pen and began to write:

Hypnotic Regression: Clinical Therapy Trials

Subject 224 Joanna Clifford 2nd year arts (English)

Age: 19

Attitude:

He chewed the end of the pen and glanced at her again. Then he put “enthusiastic but open minded” in the column.

Historical aptitude:

Again he paused. She had shrugged when they asked her the routine questions to determine roughly her predisposition to accurate invention.

“Average, I suppose,” she had replied with a smile. “O-level history. Boring old Disraeli and people like that. Not much else. It’s the present I’m interested in, not the past.”

He eyed her sweater and figure-hugging jeans and wrote as he had written on so many other record sheets: Probably average .

Professor Cohen had finished his preliminary tests. He turned to Sam. “The girl’s a good subject. There’s a deep trance established already. I shall begin regressing her now.”

Sam turned back to the window. At the beginning of the series of tests he had waited expectantly at this stage, wondering what would be revealed. Some subjects produced nothing, no memories, no inventions; some emerged as colorful characters who enthralled and amazed him. But for days now they had been working with routine ill-defined personalities who replied in dull monosyllables to all the questions put to them and who did little to further their research. The only different thing about this girl-as far as he knew-were her looks: those put her in a class by herself.

The snow was thickening, whirling sideways, blotting out the buildings on the far side of the street, muffling the sound of the car tires moving north toward the city. He did not bother to listen to the girl’s words. Her soft English voice sounded tired and blurred under hypnosis, and he would have to listen again and again to the tape anyway as Cohen transcribed it and tried to fathom where her comments, if there were any, came from.

“And now, Joanna”-the professor’s voice rose slightly as he shifted on the high stool to make himself more comfortable. “We’ll go back again, if you please, back before the darkness, back before the dreams, back to when you were on this earth before.” He is getting bored too, Sam thought dryly, catching sight of his boss glancing at his watch.

The girl suddenly flung out her arm, catching a pile of books on the table beside the couch and sending them crashing to the floor. Sam jumped, but she seemed not to have noticed. She was pushing herself up onto her elbow, her eyes open, staring in front of her.

Cohen was all attention. Quickly he slid from the stool, and as she stood up he moved it out of her way.

Sam recovered from his surprise and wrote hastily: subject somnambulant; moved from couch. Eyes open; pupils dilated. Face pale and drawn .

“Joanna.” Cohen spoke softly. “Would you not like to sit down again, lassie, and tell us your name and where you are.”

She swung around, but not to face him. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the middle of the room. She opened her mouth as if trying to speak and they saw her run her tongue across her lips. Then she drew herself up with a shudder, clutching at the neck of her sweater.

“William?” she whispered at last. Her voice was husky, barely audible. She took a step forward, her eyes still fixed on the same point. Sam felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle as he found himself looking at it too, half expecting someone or something to appear.

His notebook forgotten, he waited, holding his breath, for her to speak again, but she stayed silent, swaying slightly, her face drained of color as she began to stare around the room. Disconcerted, he saw that huge tears had begun to run slowly down her cheeks.

“Tell us where you are and why you are crying.” The quiet insistent voice of Professor Cohen seemed to Sam a terrible intrusion on her grief, but to his surprise she turned and looked straight at him. Her face had become haggard and old. “William,” she said again, and then gave a long desperate cry that tore through Sam, turning his guts to water. “ William! ” Slowly she raised her hands and stared at them. Sam dragged his eyes from her face and looked too. As he did so he heard a gasp and realized with a shock that the sound had come from his own throat.

Her hands had begun to bleed.

Electrified, he pushed himself away from the window and reached out toward her, but a sharp word from Cohen stopped him.

“Don’t touch her. Don’t do anything. It’s incredible. Incredible ,” the older man breathed. “It’s autosuggestion, the stigmata of religious fanatics. I’ve never seen it before. Incredible!”

Sam stood only feet from her as she swayed once again, cradling her hands against her chest as if to ease their pain. Then, shivering uncontrollably, she fell to her knees. “William, don’t leave me. Oh, God, save my child,” she whispered brokenly. “Let someone come. Please…bring us…bring him…food. Please…I’m so cold…so cold…” Her voice trailed away to a sob and slowly she subsided onto the floor. “Oh, God…have mercy on…me.” Her fingers grasped convulsively at the rush matting that carpeted the room, and Sam stared in horror as the blood seeped from her hands onto the sisal, soaking into the fibers, congealing as she lay there emitting dry, convulsive sobs.

“Joanna? Joanna!” Cohen knelt awkwardly beside her, and, defying his own instructions, he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Joanna, lass, I want you to listen to me.” His face was compassionate as he touched her, lifting a strand of her heavy dark hair, gently stroking her cheek. “I want you to stop crying, do you hear me? Stop crying now and sit up, there’s a good girl.” His voice was calm, professionally confident as the two men watched her, but there was growing anxiety in his eyes. Slowly her sobs grew quieter and she lay still, the harsh rasping in her throat dying away. Cohen bent closer, his hand still on her shoulder. “Joanna.” Gently he shook her. “Joanna, are you hearing me? I want you to wake up. When I count three. Are you ready? One…two…three…”