Читать книгу The Complete Works - Stanley G. Weinbaum - Страница 48

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"I don't remember when I first noticed it," began Nick in a low voice, "but I'm two people. I'm me, the person who's talking to you now, and I'm—another."

Pat, looking very pale and serious in the dusky light, said nothing at all. She simply gazed at him silently, without the slightest trace of surprise in her wide dark eyes.

"This is the real me," proceeded Nick miserably. "The other is an outsider, that has somehow contrived to grow into me. He is different; cold, cruel, utterly selfish, and not exactly—human. Do you understand?"

"Y—Yes," said the girl, fighting to control her voice. "Sort of."

"This is a struggle that has continued for a long time," he pursued. "There were times in childhood when I remember punishments for offenses I never committed, for nasty little meannesses he perpetrated. My mother, and after her death, my tutoress, thought I was lying when I tried to explain; they thought I was trying to evade responsibility. After a while I learned not to explain; I learned to accept my punishments doggedly, and to fight this other when he sought dominance."

"And could you?" asked Pat, her voice frankly quavery. "Could you fight him?"

"I was the stronger; I could win—usually. He slipped into consciousness as wilful, mean little impulses, nasty moods, unreasoning hates and such unpleasant things. But I was always the stronger: I learned to drive him into the background."

"You said you were the stronger," she mused. "What does that mean, Nick?"

"I've always been the stronger; I am now. But recently, Pat—I think it's since I fell in love with you—the struggle has been on evener terms. I've weakened or he's gained. I have to guard against him constantly; in any moment of weakness he may slip in, as on our ride last week, when we had that near accident. And again Saturday." He turned appealing eyes on the girl. "Pat, do you believe me?"

"I guess I'll have to," she said unhappily. "It—makes things rather hopeless, doesn't it?"

He nodded dejectedly. "Yes. I've always felt that sooner or later I'd win, and drive him away permanently. I've felt on the verge of complete victory more than once, but now—" He shook his head doubtfully. "He had never dominated me so entirely until Saturday night—Pat, you don't know what Hell is like until you're forced as I was to watch the violation of the being you worship, to stand helpless while a desecration is committed. I'd rather die than suffer it again!"

"Oh!" said the girl faintly. She was thinking of the sorry picture she must have presented as she reeled half-clothed through the alley. "Can you see what—he sees?"

"Of course, and think his thoughts. But only when he's dominant. I don't know what evil he's planning now, else I could forestall him, I would have warned you if I could have known."

"Where is he now?"

"Here," said Nick somberly. "Here listening to us, knowing what I'm thinking and feeling, laughing at my unhappiness."

"Oh!" gasped Pat again. She watched her companion doubtfully. Then the memory of Dr. Horker's diagnosis came to her, and set her wondering. Was this story the figment of an unsettled mind? Was this irrational tale of a fiendish intruder merely evidence that the Doctor was right in his opinion? She was in a maze of uncertainty.

"Nick," she said, "did you ever try medical help? Did you ever go to a doctor about it?"

"Of course, Pat! Two years ago I went to a famous psychiatrist in New York—you'd know the name if I mentioned it—and told him about the—the case. And he studied me, and he treated me, and psychoanalyzed me, and the net result was just nothing. And finally he dismissed me with the opinion that 'the whole thing is just a fixed delusion, fortunately harmless!' Harmless! Bah! But it wasn't I that did those things, Pat; I had to stand by in horror and watch. It was enough to drive me crazy, but it didn't—quite."

"But—Oh, Nick, what is it? What is this—this outsider? Can't we fight it somehow?"

"How can anyone except me fight it?"

"Oh, I don't know!" she wailed miserably. "There must be a way. Doctors claim to know pretty nearly everything; there must be something to do."

"But there isn't," he retorted gloomily. "I don't know any more than you what that thing is, but it's beyond your doctors. I've got to fight it out alone."

"Nick—" Her voice was suddenly tense. "Are you sure it isn't some kind of madness? Something tangible like that could perhaps be treated."

"It's no kind your doctors can treat, Pat. Did you ever hear of a madman who stood aside and rationally watched the working of his own insanity? And that's what I'm forced to do. And yet—this other isn't insane either. Were its actions insane?"

Pat shuddered. "I—don't know," she said in low tones. "I guess not."

"No. Horrible, cruel, bestial, devilishly cunning, evil—but not insane. I don't know what it is, Pat. I know that the fight has to be made by me alone. There's nothing, nobody in the world, that can help."

"Nick!" she wailed.

"I'm sorry, Pat dear. You understand now why I was so reluctant to fall in love with you. I was afraid to love you; now I know I was right."

"Nick!" she cried, then paused hopelessly. After a moment she continued, "Yesterday I was determined to forget you, and now—now I don't care if this whole tale of yours is a mesh of fantastic lies, I love you! I'd love you even if your real self were that—that other creature, and even if I knew that this was just a trap. I'd love you anyway."

"Pat," he said seriously, "don't you believe me? Why should I offer to give you up if this were—what you said? Wouldn't I be pleading for another chance, making promises, finding excuses?"

"Oh, I believe you, Nick! It isn't that; I was just thinking how strange it is that I could hate you so two nights past and love you so tonight."

"Oh God, Pat! Even you can't know how much I love you; and to win you and then be forced to give you up—" He groaned.

The girl reached out her hand and covered his; it was the first time during the evening that she had touched him, and the feel of his flesh sent a tingle through her. She was miserably distraught.

"Honey," she murmured brokenly. "Nick, Honey."

He looked at her. "Do you suppose there's a chance to beat the thing?" he asked. "I'd not ask you to wait, Pat, but if I only glimpsed a chance—"

"I'll wait. I don't think I could do anything else but wait for you."

"If I only knew what I had to fight!" he whispered. "If I only knew that!"

A sudden memory leaped into Pat's mind. "Nick," she said huskily, "I think I know."

"What do you mean, Pat?"

"It's something Magda—the cook—said to me. It's foolish, superstitious, but Nick, what else can it be?"

"Tell me!"

"Well, she was talking to me yesterday, and she said that when she was a child in the old country, she had seen a man once—" she hesitated—"a man who was possessed by a devil. Nick, I think you're possessed by a devil!"

He stared at her. "Pat," he said hoarsely, "that's—an impossibility!"

"I know, but what else can it be?"

"Out of the Dark Ages," he muttered. "An echo of the Black Mass and witchcraft, but—"

"What did they do," asked the girl, "to people they thought were possessed?"

"Exorcism!" he whispered.

"And how did they—exorcise?"

"I don't know," he said in a low voice. "Pat, that's an impossible idea, but—I don't know!" he ended.

"We'll try," she murmured, still covering his hand with her own. "What else can we do, Nick?"

"What's done I'll do alone, Pat."

"But I want to help!"

"I'll not let you, Dear. I won't have you exposed to a repetition of those indignities, or perhaps worse!"

"I'm not afraid."

"Then I am, Pat! I won't have it!"

"But what'll you do?"

"I'll go away. I'll battle the thing through once for all, and I'll either come back free of it or—" He paused and the girl did not question him further, but sat staring at him with troubled eyes.

"I won't write you, Pat," he continued. "If you should receive a letter from me, burn it—don't read it. It might be from—the other, a trap or a lure of some sort. Promise me! You'll promise that, won't you?"

She nodded; there was a glint of tears in her eyes.

"And I don't want you to wait, Pat," he proceeded. "I don't want you to feel that you have any obligations to me—God knows you've nothing to thank me for! When—If I come back and you haven't changed, then we'll try again."

"Nick," she said in a small voice, "how do you know the—the other won't come back here? How can you promise for—it?"

"I'm still master!" he said grimly. "I won't be dominated long enough at any time for that to happen. I'll fight it down."

"Then—it's good-bye?"

He nodded. "But not for always—I hope."

"Nick," she murmured, "will you kiss me?" She felt a tear on her cheek. "I'll stand losing you a little better if I can have a—last kiss—to remember." Her voice was faltering.

His arms were about her. She yielded herself completely to his caress; the park, the crowd passing a few yards away, the people on near-by benches, were all forgotten, and once more she felt herself alone with Nicholas Devine in a vast empty cosmos.

An insistent voice penetrated her consciousness; she realized that it had been calling her name for some seconds.

"Miss Lane," she heard, and again, "Miss Lane." A hand tapped her shoulder; with a sudden start, she tore her lips away, and looked up into a face unrecognized for a moment. Then she placed it. It was the visage of Mueller, Dr. Horker's companion on that disastrous Saturday night.