A cold perspiration broke out all over me. I could hardly drive. My hair tingled at the roots. For it had seemed to me at that moment that hands other than my own had wrenched that wheel from mine in a demonic lust of murderous intent. Try as I would, I could not throw off the thought that a nameless fetidity had me in its control at that moment, and was even now within the car bent upon my destruction.
Was I, a psychiatrist of years’ standing, versed in all the processes that produce disturbance in the human brain, skilled in treatment — was I falling headlong, powerless to help myself, into the depths? I fought the very suggestion, but to little avail. The dark night, the wild and mountainous nature of the country (where the hospital had been erected for the sake of quietness and seclusion) combined to produce a feeling of unknown forces, malignant in their fury toward man and the sons of man, that I could not dismiss.
But more than all was the nauseating, overpowering effect of that clammy fog, like a breath of evil that rode with me, enveloping me in its chill blast. I laughed aloud at the notion of a presence other than my own in the car, and the laugh, muffled by the turgid breath that surrounded me, echoed in weird accents from the rear of the car. My voice had sounded strange like the laugh of an actor who is not interested in his role. I even turned to the rear of the coupe, as if expecting to see the presence there, but my darting eyes revealed nothing.
“This must cease,” I told myself, as I turned on the heater. It may have been the comforting warmth produced, or it may have been an unconscious assurance that the laws of nature still continued to function — my turning the switch had proved this. I did not know what was the true cause, but as the heat within the car increased, my spirits warmed, too, and I found myself driving with my accustomed care, and utterly without the meaningless fears that had overwhelmed me so few minutes ago but so many ages since, as it seemed to me.
The air inside the car was clear now; the drops of moisture had disappeared from the instrument board, and my hand grasped the steering wheel with its accustomed firmness. It was becoming uncomfortably hot, and at last I switched off the heater. As the air cooled, my spirits cooled, too. I felt the same senseless dread stealing over me again, and I watched with intense anxiety for the reappearance of those drops of moisture on the dashboard. Seeming to materialize from nothingness, they came.
The air within the car thickened, and again caressed me with its voluptuous and sickly folds. As the lights of the hospital appeared upon the crest of a ridge ahead of me, I began to tell myself that I had to turn on the heater once more. But my will was not equal to the act. I drove on in a kind of dream, blithely careless of anything in the world. The steering wheel responded easily to my touch; it even seemed to spring from under my hand as I swerved around treacherous corners where chasms thousands of feet deep yawned below, missing the edge by a scant few inches.
I drove on, heedless, in the dense opacity. I could see nothing now. But the wheel seemed to have a magic of its own. I felt the car bumping and undulating like a roller coaster. My head crashed against the roof. The springs bent with an ominous crack. I felt the wheels slithering sideways as though someone were pulling them from their course, and finally, with a terrific crash, the coupe turned over and would have capsized completely if the pillars that marked the entrance to the hospital had not partly prevented it from falling.
Dr. Prendergast and two of his associates opened the door and dragged me out half-dazed into the night.
“What’s wrong, Randall?” said Prendergast anxiously.
I stood there, stupidly, hardly knowing what answer to make.
“We’ve been watching you for some time. We saw your lights five miles away. You’ve been driving like a man in a dream. Look!”
I turned, and saw the tracks of the car in the lawns before me. I had left the driveway and traveled across the hills and valleys of the landscape garden. A chill dread came over me. I could see the tracks of the car clear out into the road beyond. I could even see the headlights of another car traveling along the same road that I had come — miles away. In the soft air there was no moisture; above, the stars twinkled along their age-old courses. The fog had lifted!
With a new fear clutching at my heart’s vitals, I spoke to them.
“The fog — the rain — it made it impossible for me to see. I couldn’t find the road half of the time. I never saw such a night!”
“Fog? Rain? There’s been no fog and no rain. Why, we could see your headlights for miles. The night is as clear as a crystal!”
“But there was fog, right up to a minute ago. The car was wet with it, I tell you.”
As I spoke, I reached my hand to the windshield, intending to prove my assertion. In amazement, I looked at it. There was no trace of moisture — none at all! I stooped to the grass, and buried my hand in it. There was no rain upon it. It was even a little dried up, and I could see it had not been watered for some time. Again I pierced the night. There was not a cloud in the air anywhere, not a bank of fog between the hospital and the city.
“What you need is a stimulant. Come inside, and I’ll give you one,” said Dr. Prendergast, taking me cautiously by the arm.
Fearful for my own sanity, I stumblingly entered the hospital. As I took one last look around, I thought I saw a thin wisp of sickly vapor curling around the green lawn before me, like a wraith of yellow venom, and while my distraught nerves tingled in every fiber, there came to me the muffled echo of a mocking laugh.
Half walking, half sliding, I was taken into the hospital.
“Feel better?” asked Dr. Prendergast, when I had gulped the stimulant that he had handed to me.
In the cheerful air of the doctor’s private office I felt my fears to be of the flimsiest. I even felt constrained to laugh aloud at them. But the memory of that ride was not so easily effaced. However, I made light of my experience, saying that I had had but little sleep, and night-driving did not agree with me. Dr. Prendergast gave me a curious look from his slanted eyes but said nothing.
We left the office, and taking the elevator, were soon in ward 3 — the ward where the mental cases were confined. A nurse met us with a chart in her hands.
“How is the patient?” asked my colleague, with more than usual interest.
“Still delirious, Doctor,” answered the trim little nurse.
“We shall take a look at him,” he remarked, walking toward a cot in a far corner of the room. “There he is,” he added, to me.
Before us lay a pallid-looking figure. His black hair was tousled, as though he had been tearing at it with his fingers. His eyes were surrounded by deep, hollow circles that made him look like a grim precursor of death itself. He was talking inarticulately, and holding a disjointed conversation with some imaginary creature that he alone saw.
As I sat beside him, he burst into a frenzied laugh. Lifting his emaciated hand toward me, he pointed a skinny finger into my face.
“Ha! ha! Here’s another one to rob the Master. You came too late — the Master saw to that. Ha! ha!”
“Quiet yourself,” said Dr. Prendergast in a soothing voice. “You are going to get well, but you must not excite yourself in this fashion.” “Going to get well? Oh no, I’m not — The Master saw to that. I’m going soon, very soon. I’m going to join the Master. Deep down — where he waits for the faithful. That’s where I’m going. Why should I want to live? Why should I wait around when there is work to be done?” “What sort of work?” I inquired, hoping to relieve the compression within him by allowing him to talk.