Physician, heal thyself

Written for a Ghost Story competition submitted to the Times. It didn't win, but it is a sort of homage to all those Victorian spiritualists who may not have been right about the afterlife, but helped put the Gothic in Hammer Horror...

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I would not have been more shocked to see Marianne - when I opened my front door - if she had returned from the dead. I had not laid eyes on her since the night Charlie, my boyfriend, told me that he and my best friend - Marianne - were having an affair and planned to marry. Twelve months later I was still recovering from the shock.

"Please," she said in a quiet, urgent voice, "I need to talk to you. It's about Charlie."
"Has he left you too?" I snapped.
"No, it's nothing like that. I know it's late but can I come in?"
As a psychiatrist my door was always open. As a jilted lover I wanted to slam the door in her face; but her wretched expression stopped me. I held my anger in check as I reluctantly let her in.
We sat on opposite sides of the lounge, protagonists at a peace conference.
"Believe me", she began, "You are the last person I would have dragged into this, but I'm scared and I don't know where else to go".
I poured the forlorn figure a strong drink, made a double for myself and asked her to explain this unwelcome appearance.
"It all started about six months ago with some terrible recurring nightmares. I was chained to a pillar in a vast, dimly lit stone vault. In the shadows hundreds of indistinct people milled about. Then one of them detached itself from the crowd and came towards me. It was Charlie, but as he moved closer I could see he was a corpse, deathly white and surrounded by a foetid smell. He held his hands out, as if imploring me to help him. Each time I would wake up screaming."
"Marianne, people experience vivid dreams like this all the time. This is just a manifestation of some buried trauma," I said soothingly, wondering if perhaps guilt was at the bottom of it all.
She continued as if she hadn't heard me. "Then one morning, wide awake, I saw Charlie walk down the hall and into his study. Not unusual you might think, but Charlie was in Stockholm on business at the time. Over the next couple of weeks, I would find broken ornaments all over the house and our wedding pictures were smashed to pieces. I would see Charlie walking about when he wasn't there, always accompanied by that dreadful smell from my nightmare. When he was home, I tried talking to him about it, but he's become distant, reserved and different somehow. I don't know how to explain it all. Tell me, am I going mad?"

In ten years of practice I had never heard anything quite like Marianne's case. I tried to forget the personalities involved and concentrate on the problem.
"Marianne, it is obvious something is dreadfully wrong here, but I don't feel I can treat you or Charlie, you must see that."
"Please" she wailed, breaking into tears, "You must help us. I can't face going to anyone else."
Marianne could have been lying about her experiences, maybe as a bizarre way of forcing reconciliation between us, but I didn't think so. I had known her a long time, and until recently, trusted her implicitly. Charlie was one of the most stable men I knew. That is why I loved him. I really did not have to think about my course of action. If nothing else, here was a whole thesis waiting to be written.
Besides, Marianne and I had been close until Charlie intervened.
"I need to spend some time with the pair of you. I'll come down over the weekend, see things for myself. But you must promise me that whatever actions I recommend will be followed to the letter."
She nodded through her sobs and I was set to confront a bitter past. Physician, heal thyself.

I arrived on the Saturday morning at the beautiful eighteenth century country cottage where they had set up married life. My stomach churned like a cement mixer when Charlie opened the door.
We spent the rest of the day being bloody civil to each other and then I retired early, before we ran out of chit-chat. Marianne had been right about one thing: Charlie had changed. He wasn't the fun loving, caring man I knew. He was sullen, morose and withdrawn. Maybe it was my presence affecting him, or perhaps it
was married life.
That night, I had a vivid dream of my own. I was in a huge, dank, stone vault - perhaps the one in Marianne's dream. It became apparent that souls were being processed, like fish in a sardine factory.
Those being created were allocated to human births. Those having died were being sent on, to the next level of existence. But there was a problem. Some dying souls were being reborn as humans, taking the place of new, unnurtured spirits. There was an atmosphere of panic as dead souls were being lost.
Everything was going wrong...

I woke up in a sweat to hear someone moving along the passage outside. It sounded like Charlie. I thought it might be a good time to talk to him alone. I followed him along the hall, down the stairs, into his study and entered behind him. Charlie was not there. He could not have come back past me. So where the hell was he?

Then the room exploded.

I awoke hours later in bed to find a concerned Marianne leaning over me with a damp towel and a limp expression.
"What happened?" I managed to whisper, remembering the explosion.
"We don't know. The whole room is a mess, everything in Charlie's study has been smashed to pieces, but there are no burn or scorch marks. You were untouched apart from a slight concussion. The police and fire people are here now, but they have no explanation for what happened, or how you escaped serious injury."
But I had a wild idea. In the course of some past research I had attended a lecture given by a Doctor Polari on psychic phenomenon. At the time I had been largely skeptical, but now I definitely had an open mind.

I phoned him the following morning and explained the situation. There was a long pause before he spoke.
"I have an explanation for you, one based on my own experience. The dream you had is the key. My research has shown that each human being contains a spirit, or soul, that is immortal. The soul is created, born and grows along with us, manifesting itself as our sub-conscious. When we die, it moves to a higher level, heaven if you like, taking our thoughts and memories with it. However, for reasons that we do not yet understand, sometimes a departing soul is reborn in another human form, trapped
and condemned to encounter a second mortal life. If the soul experiences physical death a second time it is lost forever, unable to pass over to whatever lies beyond. I believe that has happened in this case."

It all sounded very bizarre, but I had no rational explanation for what had happened.
"So Charlie is a trapped soul?" I asked 
"Charlie is the epicenter of the phenomena you have experienced, which is simply a soul lashing out in distress. It focuses on those people emotionally close to it and generates psychic disturbances, a kind of cry for help. Consciously the human host will have no idea of the dilemma the soul faces, but subconsciously the soul is fighting to escape being lost forever."
"What can we do, if your theory is correct?"
"I can arrange a seance to assist the soul depart to its proper place. It is the only solution I know of."

In view of everything that had occurred, it was obvious Charlie was beyond my help, my science and my rationale. If something was going to be done, I did not have a better idea than Polari's solution and agreed to his proposal.
The look of horror on Marianne's face was becoming permanent. When I explained the seance to her she almost fainted. But I reminded her that she had agreed to do everything I asked. She had no choice.
Charlie just said, "That will be fun", in a voice heavy with irony and went back into his study to continue cleaning up.

Dr Polari arrived at sunset and set up his paraphernalia in the drawing room. The table had alphabetic cards arranged in a circle around a cluster of candles that would provide the only light. The four of us were seated around the table at each main compass point.
We sat in silence as instructed. Polari went into a self-induced trance and we waited. After a time, the air itself became heavier, filling with a kind of dense, cold fog. Then Polari spoke:
"Can you hear me Sheridan?"
My heart nearly gave out when a voice beside me said quite gently and in a well-spoken English accent:
"Oh yes Doctor Polari, perfectly."
A gaseous form began to emerge from the candlelight until I could make out the luminous shape of a man dressed in black trousers and a striped waistcoat. He looked quite young and suave, with dark, slicked back hair and what I swear was a twinkle in his eye.
"Do you have a problem sir?" said the ghost.
"Yes Sheridan," Polari replied.
"One of us is trapped in human form and should be on the other side. Can you take them over?"

"Of course sir. Shall I take the lost spirit now?"
Polari turned to us. "Say your goodbyes quickly," he muttered.
Marianne and Charlie were in a state of shock.
"Marianne," I hissed, "Say goodbye to Charlie".
"No, not to Charlie," said Sheridan, looking directly through me, "To you."
"Me" I squealed.
"Yes, you are the soul trapped in a second existence. You have known one life already, although consciously you don't remember it. You are the one who has been causing all the mayhem. There has been a dreadful to do up there," he said looking at the ceiling, "and we must correct the mistake."
As he was speaking, I felt myself begin to float out of the chair, above the table, above the room, above the house, above life itself.
I found myself in the large, dank, stone vault I had seen in my dream. Sheridan stood next to me, pointing to a small wooden door.
"That is where you should have gone the first time", he said in a bored voice as I finished telling my story.
"Well, isn't death a bitch?" I said resignedly, "Do I need a ticket?"

Binneyink
03/98