Holy Terror Read online

  He padded off on his bare feet to fix Eleanor’s drink. While he did so, Conor leaned forward in his chair and said, ‘Bipsy? You and he were—?’

  ‘Close,’ Eleanor nodded. ‘Very, very close. But Sidney’s trouble is that he has to go off from time to time and commune with nature. He’ll wake up one morning and say, “That’s it, I’m gone,” and he’ll pack his bag and fly to New Mexico and spend the next six months living with the Zuñi Indians. He loved me, you know, in his way. But he never really understood what devotion meant. Well – not the kind of devotion that I needed.’

  Sidney came back with a White Witch for Eleanor, complete with sugar-dusted mint leaves, and a large glass of cold white wine for Conor. He sat down and said, ‘You didn’t come over just to say hello. Not that I’m complaining.’

  ‘Conor needs your help,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘This is nothing to do with hypnotism, I hope? I don’t get involved with hypnotism any more, except to write about it.’

  ‘Well… it is in a way,’ said Conor, and explained what had happened at Spurr’s Fifth Avenue. Sidney shook his head from side to side like a pendulum. ‘That’s a bad business. That’s a real bad business. But I can’t help you there. I had a tragic experience with hypnotism six or seven years ago and I swore that I’d never get involved in it again.’

  ‘You don’t have to get involved with hypnotism again,’ said Eleanor. ‘All that Conor needs to know is how he can find Hypnos and Hetti.’

  ‘I wish I could help, Bipsy. I really do. But I haven’t heard a word from Ramon in a coon’s age. I thought he’d gone back to Tijuana or wherever. Even if you could find them, what could you do? They’d shake your hand, and the next thing you knew you’d be waking up five hours later wondering what the hell had hit you.’

  ‘That’s what Ramon did to me,’ said Conor. ‘He shook my hand. He shook my hand and said, “Do you know me?’”

  ‘Standard hypnotic induction,’ Sidney nodded. ‘That’s why I won’t shake hands with people. And that’s why you can’t go looking for Hypnos and Hetti without knowing about hypnosis, and what powers it can give you, and how you can resist it; and that’s why I can’t help you, because I won’t have anything to do with it. Not any more.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Conor.

  ‘Well… I’m sure you don’t want to hear another sad story. You’ve got problems enough of your own.’

  Conor said, ‘I’m desperate, Sidney. And I’m so damned frustrated. If I can’t find Hypnos and Hetti then I’m going to spend the rest of my life as a fugitive. Nobody can go on running for ever; and one day I’m going to be crossing the street or stepping out of some market and smack! that’s going to be it.’

  Sidney stood up and walked across to the fireplace. Over the fireplace hung a huge romanticized oil painting of a Native American struggling with a bear.

  ‘A young girl came to me,’ he said, with his back turned. ‘Her name was Vanessa. She was anorexic, and she wanted to learn how to hypnotize herself so that she wouldn’t think that she was overweight. I refused at first, because she didn’t seem to be stable, you know? She was prone to mood swings, outbursts of weeping, that kind of thing. But she was persistent, and her parents gave me their blessing. So I taught her how to put herself into a mild hypnotic trance. I taught her how to convince herself that she was light as a feather.’

  ‘And did it work?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘Oh, yes. It worked only too well. Vanessa believed that she was so light that she could fly. One day she went to the top of the building where she lived and stepped right off the edge, thinking that the wind would carry her.’

  He paused, and licked his lips, and then he said, ‘She fell eighteen stories, right through a glassed-in conservatory. She was decapitated.’

  ‘How do you know it wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘Oh, there was a witness. One of her friends. Vanessa said, “Look at me … I’m as light as a dandelion-clock!” and over she went. That’s when I gave up hypnotism for good.’

  ‘Couldn’t you make one last exception?’ said Eleanor.

  Sidney gave her a world-weary smile. ‘I was always making exceptions for you, wasn’t I, Bipsy?’

  ‘Wasn’t I worth it?’

  ‘Oh for sure. I’m just sorry that you and me ended up the way we did. I hurt you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Come on. You were young. You had other things to think of.’

  ‘I guess.’ Sidney’s pain was self-evident.

  Eleanor stood up and took hold of Sidney’s hands. ‘You can’t go on regretting the past, Sidney.’

  ‘Why not? I’m seventy-eight now. I don’t have much of a future.’

  ‘Neither will Conor if you don’t help him. Come on, Stanley. Please. Pretty please.’

  She gave him a look that was almost ridiculously coquettish. Sidney looked away, looked back, and then burst out laughing.

  ‘I can’t believe you! You’re damn well flirting with me, aren’t you, just like you always did!’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like it.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I like it. And – all right, I’ll see what I can do to help you out.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ said Eleanor, and kissed him twice.

  Chapter 11

  Sidney took them to a local restaurant called the Richmond Inn, a cozy colonial building with red checkered tablecloths and decoy ducks over the fireplace. They sat outside on the veranda overlooking a small paved garden. Conor ordered ham hock and peas, while Eleanor chose a smoked chicken salad. Sidney said that he wasn’t hungry and contented himself with repeated handfuls of salted pecan nuts.

  There was no wind here, absolutely none, and the garden was so hot that it looked as if they were seeing it through polished glass.

  Sidney ordered a bottle of dry white wine. Before the waiter could open it, Conor lifted it out of its earthenware cooler. ‘Here,’ he said, showing it to Eleanor and Sidney. ‘A perfectly ordinary bottle of wine. But watch.’

  He wrapped the bottle in his napkin so that only the neck protruded. Then he nicked the foil cap with his knife, peeled it back and folded it so quickly that neither Eleanor nor Sidney could see what he was doing. He banged the bottom of the bottle on the table, so that the cutlery jumped. There was a second’s pause, and then the cork dropped onto Eleanor’s place-mat, with a tiny man sitting astride it, fashioned out of foil.

  Sidney couldn’t help laughing. ‘That’s about the fanciest way of opening a bottle of wine I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘You should have been in vaudeville, too,’ said Eleanor.

  Conor shook his head. ‘It’s only a trick my Uncle Dermot taught me. He said that stage magic was a good lesson in life. People will believe what they want to believe, even when you prove them wrong.’

  ‘Very much like hypnotism,’ said Sidney.

  As they ate, he explained the difference between clinical hypnotism and stage hypnotism. He had a curiously soft, droning voice that reminded Conor of a bee going from flower to flower. ‘Before I went on the stage, I was a clinical hypnotherapist. Studied eight years at Temple University in Philadelphia under Milton Erickson. I took up public performing more to make a point than to make a living – although I did make a living, and a very good one. I simply wasn’t impressed by any of the stage hypnotists, even the famous ones. They were all so clumsy … and some of them were positively dangerous. I mean, gosh, it was like handing a loaded revolver to a three-year-old.

  ‘Most of the time they were putting their subjects into trances that were far deeper than they needed to be. In the Forties and Fifties I used to go see guys like Ralph Slater or Franz Polgar, “the World’s Fastest Hypnotist”. But they couldn’t hold a candle to clinical hypnotherapists like Erickson.

  ‘Somebody like Erickson could hypnotize you without even talking to you. I had breakfast with him once, and although he never put me into what you might call a formal trance, he kept making this repetitive little movement with
his hand and before I knew what I was doing I had reached out spontaneously and picked up the pot of coffee on the table. He had given me a nonverbal request that he wanted another cup.

  ‘A good hypnotist doesn’t have to swing a pendant in front of your eyes, or say any of that stuff like “sleep … sleep … your eyes are getting heavy”. He can use a whole variety of nonverbal techniques to induce catalepsy – and he can have you in a trance before you know it. That’s what Ramon Perez and Magda Slanic were especially good at. I’m pretty convinced that at least one of them must be a clinically trained hypnotherapist. I talked to Perez a few times when Hypnos and Hetti were performing in cabaret off Seventh Avenue, but Perez wouldn’t answer any questions about his act, or where he learned it. He used to say that his talent was “una maldición” – a curse – but whether he meant it was a curse to him or a curse to other people, I never found out. It was certainly a curse to you, Conor.’

  Conor said, ‘I always thought that I was too darn suspicious for anybody to hypnotize me – too wary. You know, I’m a cop. I’m actually trained to be suspicious. But I’ll tell you one thing for sure: I’m never going to let it happen again.’

  Sidney nodded sympathetically and Conor found himself watching him nod. His eyes were unfocused as if he were staring not at Conor’s face but at the creeper-covered wall just behind Conor’s chair.

  ‘You thought you were too suspicious. You thought you were too wary. But you forget that it’s very comfortable, going into a trance, and it doesn’t take long for you to feel that you don’t care whether or not you are going into a trance or not, you recognize that your suspicions and your hostility are quite unfounded.

  ‘Of course you know you will never let anybody put you into a deep trance again but a light trance is very comfortable. You can allow yourself to be taken into a light trance while still staying alert

  ‘And

  ‘Doing your job properly

  ‘And

  ‘After all a light trance is very, very comfortable. In fact it’s unbelievable how comfortable it is, how restful. You don’t have to move or talk or let anything bother you.’

  Conor couldn’t take his eyes off Sidney’s nodding head. He knew where he was. He knew that he was here, sitting at the lunch table with Sidney and Eleanor, and yet he wasn’t.

  ‘You don’t want to go into another trance, do you?’ said Sidney. ‘You know that you would much prefer to be doing something else

  ‘And

  ‘While you’re thinking about that, there’s something else, isn’t there? So why don’t you look at it?’

  Conor felt strangely light-headed. He turned toward the restaurant door and there was Lacey in the kitchen. The table was covered in newspaper and she was mixing paint.

  ‘Lacey?’ he said. She turned and smiled at him, and brushed a wispy hair away from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Did you paint the bedroom door yet?’

  She shook her head. Conor could hear music in the background, and traffic.

  Sidney said, ‘Lacey … that’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s been painting the bedroom.’

  ‘Where is she now, Conor?’

  ‘There … in the kitchen. She’s mixing paints.’

  ‘Maybe she needs some help. Why don’t you take her that paintbrush?’

  Sidney pointed to the large paintbrush on the table in front of him. Conor picked it up, pushed back his chair, and walked across to the restaurant door and right inside. He laid the paintbrush on the kitchen table and then he leaned forward and gave Lacey a kiss on the forehead.

  ‘Conor, you’re awake now,’ said Sidney.

  Conor said, ‘Of course I’m awake.’ And then suddenly he looked around and found himself standing inside the restaurant next to a table where an elderly couple were staring up at him in alarm.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry,’ he told them. He turned to Sidney, who was leaning back in his chair and smiling. ‘I guess I, um – I guess I thought you were somebody else.’

  He went back outside, but as he did so the elderly man called after him, ‘Pardon me, sir. But I think you’ve forgotten something!’

  He was holding out the large wooden salad spoon which Conor had put down in the middle of his corned-beef hash.

  ‘You hypnotized me,’ said Conor. ‘I was alert. I was aware. I didn’t want to be hypnotized. So how the hell did you do it?’

  It wasn’t difficult. You’ve been under a whole lot of stress lately, mental and physical. I simply suggested that you would find it relaxing and comfortable to go into a very light trance, and that’s what you did. There are so many people like you who think that nobody can ever hypnotize them, but I’d say that ninety per cent of the population are susceptible to hypnotic induction.’

  ‘So what did I do? Why did I put that spoon in that poor old guy’s lunch?’

  ‘You imagined it was something else – a paintbrush. You were taking it to your girlfriend Lacey. You saw her in the kitchen, mixing paint.’

  Conor shook his head. ‘I don’t remember thinking that it was a paintbrush. I don’t remember anything.’ He was impressed. He couldn’t help being impressed. But he was annoyed, too, because Sidney had been able to manipulate him so easily and because he had made a fool out of him, however gently he had done it. The elderly couple were eating peach-and-vanilla ice cream now and watching everything he did with deep suspicion.

  Eleanor took hold of his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Sidney would never do anything to harm you, believe me. He’s just showing you.’

  Conor said, ‘The difference is, Sidney, you talked to me. You talked me into that trace. But Ramon Perez only shook me by the hand and said, “Do you know me?”’

  Sidney clapped another handful of nuts into his mouth and vigorously chewed. ‘That’s right. That was a textbook handshake induction. It’s very effective indeed. What you do is, you begin by shaking hands with your subject in the normal way. “Oh, hi, how do you do?” You can do it to anybody. But it’s the way you let loose that’s important. You draw your hand away with a gentle touch of your thumb, a kind of trailing sensation with your little finger, a touch of your middle finger, too. This feeling is enough to distract your subject’s attention. It makes him uncertain, and at the same time it gives him or her a feeling of expectancy, that something important is going to happen.

  ‘At this point, you lift your subject’s wrist – but very, very gently, so that it doesn’t even feel like an upward push. Then you give a downward touch. The subject’s hand is left in midair – not going up and not going down. They can’t move it unless you tell them to.

  ‘That’s when you say something confusing like “Didn’t I see you in Memphis last year?” – which makes your subject turn inward. He’s looking for an answer, some kind of orientation, and you’re encouraging him to go into a trance by asking him questions which make him look inside of himself. The whole nature of hypnotic trance is inner direction and searching. Your subject is so preoccupied with rummaging around inside of his mind that he experiences anesthesia, or a temporary lapse in vision or hearing, or a feeling of déjà vu.

  ‘The thing of it is that some level of light trance isn’t at all unusual, even in everyday life. Think of all the times when you’ve been hungry or thirsty or tired but you’ve put those feelings aside because you’ve had a job to do – some case to solve. Your inner search has taken priority over your physical demands.’

  ‘I still don’t see how Ramon Perez could have hypnotized me so quickly.’

  ‘OK. You want quick? Give me your hand.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to do this.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. Trust me, I’m a hypnotist.’

  Conor reached out across the table and Sidney took hold of his hand. His fingers were dry and gentle and caressing. He said, ‘Something’s happened to your hand. It’s numb. You can’t lift it.’

  Conor tried to raise his arm but it wouldn’t move. It did
n’t feel heavy, but it felt anesthetized, as if he could have stuck needles into it without feeling any pain at all. He tried to wriggle his fingers but they wouldn’t respond.

  ‘Now you’re going to lift up your arm … that’s it, higher, higher, higher.’ Sidney touched Conor’s knuckles to prevent him from taking it up any further. ‘Good … now you’re going to lower it. You’re all right now. All of your feeling is starting to return. Feels a bit sore, doesn’t it? Feels like you’ve broken out with some kind of a rash.’

  He was right: Conor felt a burning sensation, as if he had brushed up against poison ivy. ‘How do you do that?’ he said.

  ‘It takes training, but fundamentally it isn’t difficult. You have to care about people, that’s all; and learn to recognize what their anxieties are. Most people have the answers to their own problems right there, right inside of themselves. They want to confront them but they daren’t. All a hypnotherapist does is to reassure them that they can cope with them, that everything’s going to be manageable. Oh, and by the way, your rash has cleared up.’

  The burning faded. Conor turned his arm this way and that, but there was no sign of any redness whatsoever.

  ‘Could you train me to do that?’ he asked.

  ‘For sure. You seem to have the right kind of demeanor for it. You speak quietly. You give off a strong sense of inner authority. You’re experienced in dealing with people – particularly people with problems.’

  ‘And that would help me to handle Hypnos and Hetti? Always supposing I can find them, of course.’

  Sidney nodded. ‘I could show you most of their induction techniques, and how to be resistant to them. You’d just have to bear in mind that they’re two of the best hypnotists ever.’

  ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘It depends what level of competence you want to reach. I could teach you basic trance induction in a matter of days.’

  ‘And would you?’

  Sidney hesitated, but Eleanor said, ‘Come on, Sidney … Conor and I could stay here for a long weekend. It would be just like old times.’