The Horror Megapack by H. P. Lovecraft & Seabury Quinn

Author:H. P. Lovecraft & Seabury Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, suspense, stephen king, short stories, zombies
ISBN: 9781434438980
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

LUCIFER, by John D. Swain

The notorious Remsen Case was table-talk a year or so ago, although a few today could quote the details offhand. Because of it, half a dozen men were discussing psychic trivialities, in a more or less desultory way. Bliven, the psychoanalyst, was speaking.

“It all hinges on a tendency which is perhaps best expressed in such old saws as: ‘Drowning men clutch at straws,’ ‘Any port in a storm,’ or, ‘A gambling chance.’

“When men have exhausted science and religion, they turn to mediums, and crystal-gazers, and clairvoyants, and patent medicines. I knew an intelligent pharmacist who was dying of a malignant disease. Operated on three times. Specialists had given him up. Then he began to take the nostrums and cure-alls on his own shelves, although he knew perfectly well what they contained—or could easily enough have found out. Consulted a lot of herb doctors, and long-haired Indian healers, and advertising specialists.”

“And, of course, without result,” commented the little English doctor.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Bliven. “It kept alive the forlorn spark of hope in his soul. Better than merely folding his hands and waiting for the inevitable! He was just starting in with a miraculous Brazilian root, when he snuffed out. On the whole, he lived happier, and quite possibly longer, because of all the fake remedies and doctors he spent so much money on. It’s all in your own mind, you know. Nothing else counts much.”

“All fakes, including the records of the P.S.R.,” nodded Holmes, who lectured on experimental psychology.

The little doctor shook his head depreciatingly.

“I shouldn’t go as far as that, really,” he objected, “because, every now and then, in the midst of their conscious faking, as you call it, with the marked cards and prepared slates, the hidden magnets and invisible wires and all, these mediums and pseudo-magicians come up against something that utterly baffles them. I have talked with a well-known prestidigitator who has a standing bet of a hundred guineas that he can duplicate the manifestations of any medium; and yet he states that every now and then he finds himself utterly baffled. He can fake the thing cleverly, you understand; but he cannot fathom the unknown forces back of it all. It is dangerous ground. It is sometimes blasphemy! It is blundering in where angels fear to tread.”

“Piffle!” snorted Bliven. “The subconscious mind explains it all; and we have only skirted the edge of our subject. When we have mastered it, we shall do thing right in the laboratory that will put every astrologer and palmist and tea-ground prophet out of business.”

Nobody seemed to have anything to answer, and the psychoanalyst turned to the little doctor.

“You know this, Royce,” he asserted, a bit defiantly.

“I don’t pretend to follow you new-era chaps as closely as I ought; but I recall an incident in my early practice that is not explicable in the present-day stage of your science, as I understand it.”

Bliven grunted.

“Well—shoot!” he said, “Of course, we can’t check up your facts, but if you were an accurate observer, we may be able to offer a plausible theory, at least.

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