The Complete Short Stories

Larsen gestured with his glass. ‘Wait a minute, though. When I was sitting on the sofa reading Kretschmer I didn’t actually see myself, any more than I can see myself now. So where did the superimposed images come from?’

Bayliss put away his notebook. ‘Don’t take the analogy of the film strip too literally. You may not see yourself sitting on that sofa, but your awareness of being there is just as powerful as any visual corroboration. It’s the stream of tactile, positional and psychic images that form the real data store. Very little extrapolation is needed to transpose the observer’s eye a few yards to the other side of a room. Purely visual memories are never completely accurate anyway.’

‘How do you explain why the man I saw in the garage was transparent?’

‘Quite simply. The process was only just beginning, the intensity of the image was weak. The one you saw this afternoon was much stronger. I cut you off barbiturates deliberately, knowing full well that those stimulants you were taking on the sly would set off something if they were allowed to operate unopposed.’

He went over to Larsen, took his glass and refilled it from the decanter. ‘But let’s think of the future. The most interesting aspect of all this is the light it throws on one of the oldest archetypes of the human psyche — the ghost — and the whole supernatural army of phantoms, witches, demons and so on. Are they all, in fact, nothing more than psychoretinal flashbacks, transposed images of the observer himself, jolted on to the retinal screen by fear, bereavement, religious obsession? The most notable thing about the majority of ghosts is how prosaically equipped they are, compared with the elaborate literary productions of the great mystics and dreamers. The nebulous white sheet is probably the observer’s own nightgown. It’s an interesting field for speculation. For example, take the most famous ghost in literature and reflect how much more sense Hamlet makes if you realize that the ghost of his murdered father is really Hamlet himself.’

‘All right, all right,’ Larsen cut in irritably. ‘But how does this help me?’

Bayliss broke off his reflective up-and-down patrol of the floor and fixed an eye on Larsen. ‘I’m coming to that. There are two methods of dealing with this disfunction of yours. The classical technique is to pump you full of tranquillizers and confine you to a bed for a year or so. Gradually your mind would knit together. Long job, boring for you and everybody else. The alternative method is, frankly, experimental, but I think it might work. I mentioned the phenomenon of the ghost because it’s an interesting fact that although there have been tens of thousands of recorded cases of people being pursued by ghosts, and a few of the ghosts themselves being pursued, there have been no cases of ghost and observer actually meeting of their own volition. Tell me, what would have happened if, when you saw your double this afternoon, you had gone straight into the lounge and spoken to him?’

Larsen shuddered. ‘Obviously nothing, if your theory holds. I wouldn’t like to test it.’

‘That’s just what you’re going to do. Don’t panic. The next time you see a double sitting in a chair reading Kretschmer, go up and speak to him. If he doesn’t reply sit down in the chair yourself. That’s all you have to do.’

Larsen jumped up, gesticulating. ‘For heaven’s sake, Bayliss, are you crazy? Do you know what it’s like to suddenly see yourself? All you want to do is run.’

‘I realize that, but it’s the worst thing you can do. Why whenever anyone grapples with a ghost does it always vanish instantly? Because forcibly occupying the same physical co-ordinates as the double jolts the psychic projector on to a single channel again. The two separate streams of retinal images coincide and fuse. You’ve got to try, Larsen. It may be quite an effort, but you’ll cure yourself once and for all.’

Larsen shook his head stubbornly. ‘The idea’s insane.’ To himself he added: I’d rather shoot the thing. Then he remembered the .38 in his suitcase, and the presence of the weapon gave him a stronger sense of security than all Bayliss’s drugs and advice. The revolver was a simple symbol of aggression, and even if the phantom was only an intruder in his own mind, it gave that portion which still remained intact greater confidence, enough possibly to dissipate the double’s power.

Eyes half closed with fatigue, he listened to Bayliss. Half an hour later he went back to his chalet, found the revolver and hid it under a magazine in the letterbox outside the front door. It was too conspicuous to carry and anyway might fire accidentally and injure him. Outside the front door it would be safely hidden and yet easily accessible, ready to mete out a little old-fashioned punishment to any double dealer trying to get into the game.

Two days later, with unexpected vengeance, the opportunity came.