Take that last old house he had been in—but never would be in again!—at
Anne Haven. There he actually visualized the hand—a thing as big as a
washtub at first, something like smoke or shadow in a black room moving
about over the bed and everywhere. Then, as he lay there, gazing at
it spellbound, it condensed slowly, and he began to feel it. It was
now a hand of normal size—there was no doubt of it in the world—going
over him softly, without force, as a ghostly hand must, having no real
physical strength, but all the time with a strange, electric, secretive
something about it, as if it were not quite sure of itself, and not
quite sure that he was really there.
The hand, or so it seemed—God!—moved right up to his neck and began to
feel over that as he lay there. Then it was that he guessed just what
it was that Mersereau was after.
It was just like a hand, the fingers and thumb made into a circle and
pressed down over his throat, only it moved over him gently at first,
because it really couldn’t do anything yet, not having the material
strength. But the intention! The sense of cruel, savage determination
that went with it!
And yet, if one went to a nerve specialist or doctor about all this, as
he did afterward, what did the doctor say? He had tried to describe how
he was breaking down under the strain, how he could not eat or sleep
on account of all these constant tappings and noises; but the moment
he even began to hint at his experiences, especially the hand or the
noises, the doctor exclaimed:
“Why, this is plain delusion! You’re nervously run down, that’s all
that ails you—on the verge of pernicious anemia, I should say. You’ll
have to watch yourself as to this illusion about spirits. Get it out of
your mind. There’s nothing to it!”
Wasn’t that just like one of these nerve specialists, bound up in their
little ideas of what they knew or saw, or thought they saw?