"You mean that you wake up and imagine that you hear people whispering?"

"That's right. Whispering, whispering, whispering. All around me."

"Who are these people?"

"I don't know."

"What are they whispering?"

"I don't know."

"Do you have the feeling they're trying to tell you something?"

"Yes. But I can't make it out."

"Do you have a theory, a hunch? Can you make a guess?"

"I can't hear the words exactly, but I know they're saying bad things."

"Bad things? In what way?"

"They're threatening me. They hate me."

"Threatening whispers."

"Yes."

"How long do they last?"

"About as long as the ... creeping ... crawling."

"A minute or so?"

"Yes. Do I sound crazy?"

"Not at all."

"Come on. I sound a little crazy."

"Believe me, Mr. Frye, I've heard stories much stranger than yours."

"I keep thinking that if I knew what the whispers were saying, and if I knew what was crawling on me, I'd be able to figure out what the dream is. And once I know what it is, maybe I won't have it any more."

"That's almost exactly how we're going to approach the problem."

"Can you help me?"

"Well, to a great extent that depends on how much you want to help yourself."

"Oh, I want to beat this thing. I sure do."

"Then you probably will."

"I've been living with it so long ... but I never get used to it. I dread going to sleep. Every night, I just dread it."

"Have you undergone therapy before?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I was afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of what ... you might find out."

"Why should you be afraid?"

"It might be something ... embarra.s.sing."

"You can't embarra.s.s me."

"I might embarra.s.s myself."

"Don't worry about that. I'm your doctor. I'm here to listen and help. If you--"

Dr. Rudge popped the ca.s.sette out of the tape recorder and said, "A recurring nightmare. That's not particularly unusual. But a nightmare followed by tactile and audial hallucinations--that's not a common complaint."

"And in spite of that," Joshua said, "he didn't strike you as dangerous?"

"Oh, heavens, no," Rudge said. "He was just frightened of a dream, and understandably so. And the fact that some dream sensations lingered even after he was awake meant that the nightmare probably represented some especially horrible, repressed experience buried way down in his subconscious. But nightmares are generally a healthy way to let off psychological steam. He exhibited no signs of psychosis. He didn't seem to confuse components of his dream with reality. He drew a clear line when he talked about it. In his mind, there appeared to be a sharp distinction between the nightmare and the real world."

Tony slid forward on his chair. "Could he have been less sure of reality than he let you know?"

"You mean ... could he have fooled me?"

"Could he?"

Rudge nodded. "Psychology isn't an exact science. And by comparison, psychiatry is even less exact. Yes, he could have fooled me, especially since I only saw him once a month and didn't have a chance to observe the mood swings and personality changes that would have been more evident if we'd had weekly contact."

"In light of what Joshua told you a while ago," Hilary said, do you feel you were fooled?"

Rudge smiled ruefully. "It looks as if I was, doesn't it?"

He picked up a second ca.s.sette that had been wound to a pre-selected point in another conversation between him and Frye, and he slipped it into the recorder.

"You've never mentioned your mother."

"What about her?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"You're full of questions, aren't you?"

"With some patients, I hardly ever have to ask anything. They just open up and start talking."

"Yeah? What do they talk about?"

"Quite often they talk about their mothers."

"Must get boring for you."

"Very seldom. Tell me about your mother."

"Her name was Katherine."

"And?"

"I don't have anything to say about her."

"Everyone has something to say about his mother--and his father."

For almost a minute, there was silence. The tape wound from spool to spool, producing only a hissing sound.

"I'm just waiting him out," Rudge said, interpreting the silence for them. "He'll speak in a moment."

"Doctor Rudge?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think...?"

"What is it?"

"Do you think the dead stay dead?"

"Are you asking if I'm religious?"

"No. I mean ... do you think that a person can die ... and then come back from the grave?"

"Like a ghost?"

"Yes. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Do you?"

"I asked you first."

"No. I don't believe in them, Bruno. Do you?"

"I haven't made up my mind."

"Have you ever seen a ghost?"

"I'm not sure."

"What does this have to do with your mother?"

"She told me that she would ... come back from the grave."

"When did she tell you this?"

"Oh, thousands of times. She was always saying it. She said she knew how it was done. She said that she would watch over me after she died. She said that if she saw I was misbehaving and not living like she wanted me to, then she's come back and make me sorry."

"Did you believe her?"

"Did you believe her?"

"Bruno?"

"Let's talk about something else."

"Jesus!" Tony said. "That's where he got the notion that Katherine had come back. The woman planted the idea in him before she died!"

To Rudge, Joshua said, "What in the name of G.o.d was the woman trying to do? What sort of relationship did those two have?"

"That was the root of his problem," Rudge said. "But we never got around to exposing it. I kept hoping I could get him to come in every week, but he kept resisting--and then he was dead."

"Did you pursue the subject of ghosts with him in later sessions?" Hilary asked.

"Yes," the doctor said. "The very next time he came in, he started off on it again. He said that the dead stayed dead and that only children and fools believed differently. He said there weren't such things as ghosts and zombies.He wanted me to know that he had never believed Katherine when she'd told him that she would come back."

"But he was lying," Hilary said. "he did believe her."

"Apparently, he did," Rudge said. He put the third tape in the machine.

"Doctor, what religion are you?"

"I was raised a Catholic."

"Do you still believe?"

"Yes."