The Entity, page 41
On the fourth floor it was peculiarly dark. The overhead lights in the lobby had been replaced with dim yellow bulbs. A student looked up pleasantly from a desk which blocked access to the corridor.
“May I help you?”
“What are you? A guard?”
“We like to screen the observers.”
“Well, tell them that Gary Sneidermann is here.”
After a while the student returned from the inner recesses, lost in darkness, of the interior.
“Dr. Cooley would like to know the exact nature of your visit.”
“Friendly observer,” Sneidermann said, trying to stay unruffled.
“All right. In that case, follow me.”
Sneidermann followed the student down the corridor. The light became dimmer and dimmer. Soon it was positively dark. Then Sneidermann realized how quiet it was. They turned a corner, and continued walking. The air was stuffy, as though the halls had been sealed off somewhere.
“It’s like the goddam pyramids in here,” Sneidermann mumbled.
The student, ignoring the remark, opened the door to the observation room. Inside were a wide variety of screens, on some of which appeared the image of Carlotta in what appeared to be her own house.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Sneidermann,” Dr. Cooley said warily, extending her hand.
They shook hands.
“I’m just here on my own,” he said. “Nothing official.”
“I understand that. If you have any questions, please come to me. The others are very busy.”
Sneidermann folded his arms. He looked around. The video monitors were on the wall, installed rather high, so that he had to look up to see them all. They were in color, probably very expensive. Then he saw Carlotta on the screens, entering the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the enormous, carved wooden bed and began to make notes in a large vinyl book. Now Mehan stepped into view. Sneidermann’s heart skipped a beat. His gaze shifted to another monitor focused on an area which was essentially empty, only boxes of electronic equipment. Kraft appeared in the screen, scratched his head, unaware he was being watched, and pulled several small instruments from the box. In the screen to the left, Carlotta laughed gently at something Mehan had said.
“She seems very relaxed,” Sneidermann said.
“She is. She sleeps very well. No tranquilizers.”
Sneidermann thought he detected a note of disappointment in Dr. Cooley’s voice. He shot a glance at her, unable to read her thoughts. Then he saw, through the open door, the door to the experimental chamber, with its shining new lock. It infuriated him, somehow, and yet he had no real grounds to protest.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Mr. Kraft engineered that assembly. We are going to install it on the rampart over the experimental quarters. It insures a level of ionization identical to what was measured at her real house.”
“You’re bombarding her with radiation?”
“This is science, Dr. Sneidermann, not science-fiction. Every organic cell on earth is constantly bombarded by ultraviolet rays, cosmic rays, and many other forms of energy. What we are trying to do is to shape her environment here so that it exactly matches that of her house on Kentner Street.”
Sneidermann figured it made no more sense than anything else they did. Nevertheless, he had a vague impression that Dr. Cooley was hiding something.
“Why?” he asked.
“To induce the entity to appear.”
Sneidermann looked at Dr. Cooley. He wondered whether the woman had ever suffered a mental collapse of her own.
“You’re going to catch it?” he asked incredulously.
“To observe it. If we can.”
“Suppose—to take an extreme possibility—it doesn’t come?”
“Then it doesn’t come,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “I told you, Dr. Sneidermann. We don’t invent anything here.”
“I would like to speak with Carlotta,” he said.
Dr. Cooley paused, sizing up the resident. “No. We’d rather keep her in isolation.”
“Only for a moment.”
“I will have to be firm on this, Dr. Sneidermann.”
Sneidermann looked from Dr. Cooley to the monitor screens. Carlotta was explaining something to Mehan, her arms gesturing expansively; then she smiled.
“You see?” Dr. Cooley said. “She’s in excellent spirits.”
Sneidermann stumbled into the dark corridor. For an instant his sense of direction was confused. Then he saw the door to the experimental chambers. He stepped up to the door. He had to confront her, to remain in contact with his feelings as he did so, to learn why she had begun to obsess him. He had to take charge of his life again.
He suddenly leaned against the door. To his surprise, it yielded. Undoubtedly, no one expected him to try to enter. No—it opened because Carlotta had opened it from the inside. She was now stepping into the corridor. It caught Sneidermann by complete surprise.
“Carlotta,” he said hesitantly.
For an instant she was startled, not expecting anyone in the darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she recognized the figure before her. Then she said shyly, “Hello, Dr. Sneidermann.”
Sneidermann caught a glimpse of the quarters behind her, a perfect duplication of the house he had visited once before.
“They’ve made a natural environment,” she said, almost proudly. “To trap him.”
“Is that what they’re telling you?”
“That’s what they’re doing.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I want to believe it.”
Her eyes sparkled in the deep shadows of the corridor. Sneidermann wanted to grab her, to force her to listen, to penetrate those walls she had let them erect around her.
“Come back to—therapy.” He almost said, “. . . to me.”
She smiled ruefully.
“You’re like a little boy, Dr. Sneidermann. Always wanting something you can’t have.”
“Carlotta,” he said huskily, “deep in your heart you know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“They’re frauds.”
Carlotta turned angrily from him.
“You keep saying the same thing over and over,” she said. “I don’t even know why you bother.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“It’s because I care for you.”
She laughed, crudely, surprised, but without malice.
“I care very much for you, Carlotta.”
She seemed unnerved. She stepped back, tucked her blouse into her skirt more tightly, then looked at him again, confused.
“Well, you’re a very strange man, Dr. Sneidermann,” she said.
“I just don’t want you to close yourself off,” he said. “Sometimes you have to make contact even with just one person, or else you lose touch with reality.”
“I tried,” she said bitterly. “And what happened? Jerry won’t answer. He’s as good as dead to me now.”
“But not everyone is like Jerry. Sometimes you have to reach out, right through the pain, the misery—”
“What are you trying to say, Dr. Sneidermann?”
“I’m trying to say,” he said, mustering the vestiges of his dignity, “that you and I can make that contact.”
Carlotta was silent. Her dark eyes glistened, animal-like, in the dark corridor.
“I don’t want to make contact,” she said.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
There was an impasse. Sneidermann could no longer read her face. He had lost his distance from his feelings. All he knew was that they had overmastered him in Carlotta’s presence. Sneidermann had never felt so alone. In a flash he understood why Dr. Weber had learned to harden himself against human feelings in dealing with patients. The pain, the isolation of it, was unendurable.
“I appreciate your concern,” she said, with a strange finality.
“All right,” he said, confused. “I guess that’s why I really stopped by. To make sure you knew that.”
Without another word, Carlotta opened the door and entered the chamber. The heavy door swung shut, automatically locked after her. But he had caught a vision of her before it closed, a vision that was to torment him in his sleep. The outline of her figure, in the pretty blouse and skirt, alone in her make-believe world. The eyes penetrating, as helpless as they were demonic, destroying every vestige of his own independence. He knew now that, whatever happened, their destinies had mingled. He stepped stupidly, clumsily, backward, trying to find his way out of the corridor.
An hour later Sneidermann listened patiently as an overweight man explained that he could not keep himself from ordering the largest size of dessert in a restaurant. But in Sneidermann’s inner eye he saw Carlotta, her figure nearly visible beneath the blouse, and her eyes, burning and black.
As he listened to the drone of the obese man’s monologue, Sneidermann discovered a truth of psychiatry, one that only comes with experience. Some patients, in spite of every last bit of your discipline, will bore you, anger you, or seem downright obnoxious. Disturbed by this revelation, Sneidermann redoubled his efforts to help the man in front of him.
In his dormitory room, smoking, thinking, late at night, Sneidermann reflected that only a few months ago there had been no such thing as feelings. Psychiatry was a cool, precise discipline, a surgery of the mind. But now, he understood that no man was immune from his feelings. He realized that he had to confront the Moran case and everything it meant to him, or forever lose his own psychological independence.
Scrubbing his mind of all thought save Carlotta Moran, he tried to view her clinically and in as objective a light as possible: a not-so-young, somewhat pretty woman with three children, one nearly a man; a sick, deluded victim of her own deeply repressed transgressions and guilts, struggling to survive in a hideous nightmare of her own construction. That much was clearly evident. That much he could see and understand. But the element that constantly baffled, that resisted analysis and understanding, was himself. What the hell was he doing in the center of her distorted landscape? What weakness in him had caused him to succumb to this schizoid temptress? Among psychiatric circles it was considered a cliché. If it weren’t so fraught with all the elements of a steadily building tragedy, it would be truly laughable—a black comedy with him, Sneidermann, the star performer.
A smile came to his lips as he suddenly visualized his mother’s stunned face upon hearing the good news. “Hey, Ma, I’m in love with a crazy lady. No, she isn’t Jewish.” The smile on his face grew and grew, and soon he found himself laughing—on the edge of tears—uncontrollably.
That same afternoon, Carlotta received a call from Jerry’s lawyer. She was informed that, since neither she nor Billy had pressed charges, the state had accepted her letter and ruled her injury an accident.
“Then he’s free?” she whispered, biting her lip.
“Well, yes, you could say that.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s been released. He’s legally free. But I don’t know where he is.”
Carlotta held the receiver tightly. She felt she was in the middle of the worst disaster yet.
“When was he released?”
“About five days ago.”
Carlotta hung up. She called his business in San Diego. She was not given any information about him, not even whether he was still working for them. Nor would they accept a message. But Carlotta knew what it meant. Jerry was afraid. He had panicked, flown, and he was gone. She could not blame him. But with his absence, now made permanent, something snapped inside of her.
She no longer believed she would get better, or that they would get rid of the brutal visitor.
25
Dr. Cooley let the newspaper slide into the trash.
“Oh, God in heaven,” she murmured.
For the rest of the day, Kraft and Mehan looked like beaten dogs. Their anger began to mount slowly, though neither was certain exactly who had leaked the story. Dr. Balczynski denied everything.
“It was Weber,” Mehan said.
Dr. Weber found Dean Osborne at the buffet lunch table in the faculty club. They stood serenely, holding their plates in hand, as the line moved slowly forward, aproned waiters dipping ladles into soups, all the sounds muffled and quiet. The palms arched over the white-covered tables, and a steady whispered conversation was heard over the soft carpets.
Dr. Weber leaned forward, smiling ironically.
“I see you made the front page today,” Dr. Weber said.
“What? Oh, the American Inquirer.”
“How’s the reaction been?”
“Hectic,” Osborne admitted, his face showing weariness. “Very hectic.”
Dr. Weber chuckled and picked out several pieces of garnished salmon. The salad was robust, dietetic.
“Nice picture,” Dr. Weber murmured.
“What? Oh, the—er—”
“Entity, Frank. It’s called an entity.”
Osborne said nothing, started to walk to a table by the window. Dr. Weber sat down opposite him, setting his tray on a nearby rack. They began sipping their soup in silence. Osborne looked disgruntled. He knew Dr. Weber was needling him.
“What about it, Frank? Doesn’t this whole thing start to smell to you?”
“Oh, hell, Henry. A lot of things smell to me. I can’t close them all down.”
“But this is—”
“You know what they were doing in the fine arts building? Growing mold on an acre of bread! Is that art, Henry? What am I supposed to do, close down the Art Department?”
Dr. Weber chuckled.
“You know what the Theater Arts Department tried last semester?” Osborne asked, vigorously buttering his bread. “They were fucking on stage. That’s right. Fucking. Hell, if I’d known you could have gotten credit for that—”
Osborne drank his tea. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He still looked agitated.
“Frank,” Dr. Weber said gently. “This is a farce and it’s a dangerous farce. You have got to show some leadership. Stop it.”
“I have to follow the senate resolution.”
“I simply cannot understand your obstinance, Frank.”
Osborne looked back sharply, then looked down, slicing his salmon.
“Because I don’t like to be pushed, Henry.”
“Oh, come now.”
“You’ve been leaning on me for three weeks now and I’ve had it. The kids have a right to conduct an experiment. It’s no crazier than half the things that go on around here.”
“But the publicity, Frank—”
“That’s what I meant about being pushed, Henry. I know who leaked that to the press. Well, you hurt yourself on that one. Because I don’t like these cheap shots.”
Osborne began brushing crumbs from his lap.
“I don’t know how that happened,” Dr. Weber said with sincerity. “In any case, I see I’m licked.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
Dr. Weber ate, without tasting his food. He wondered where to go next. There was no place to go now.
Two days slipped by. Kraft and Mehan regularly checked the apparatus on the catwalk, from which they could see, twenty feet below, Carlotta in her duplicate house.
She seemed not to hear them working, though she was aware that monitors and scanning devices of various sorts observed her from the darkness overhead.
Kraft’s supreme interest was the double-pulse holography, a laser system that could produce a three-dimensional image and, once developed, transmit it to the observation deck in the darkness. That meant that any apparition, any event, could be played over and over in its full shape and color, but miniaturized, in a tiny three-foot square area. More importantly, the double-pulsing was extremely sensitive to changes in the object being photographed, and it included not only the visible light spectrum, but reached into the ultraviolet region and the infrared region as well.
There was, however, not the slightest indication on any of the recordings being made on a 24-hour basis that there was anything in the living quarters except a woman whose patience was growing thin, and whose thoughts had begun to stray, according to her log book, and grow dark with apprehension.
In the night she woke up, saw it was dark. She mumbled, half asleep, not realizing she was at the university.
The room was so strange. It was hers and it wasn’t hers. It was a dislocated reality. She felt like she was in a dream when she was awake, and awake when she dreamt. It was a giddy sensation, like being perpetually at the top of a roller coaster, and she did not like it.
It was very quiet. The air conditioner hummed from deep inside the bowels of the building. The strange shapes and shadows of her bedroom made bizarre sculptures out of darkness. Carlotta lay on the wide, soft bed, unable to sleep.
She got out of bed, put on her slippers, and telephoned Dr. Balczynski.
“I feel all right,” she said. “Only I can’t sleep. Can you give me a sleeping pill?”
“I’d rather not,” Dr. Balczynski said. “But I can send you a tranquilizer tonight.”
