The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
ILLNESS AND WEARINESS, DELUSIONS OR WHAT?
Then I became so ill that I could hardly drag myself about. I had given up some of my work, writing to say that I did not feel equal to it.
By this time I was whispering all day long in my rooms as if talking to some unseen person thinking he was Tony, who always seemed to be there though I knew he was far away.
I can't quite remember when it was that I found my lips being moved to say things that I felt were being said—Yes I do—it was first when that night I found myself saying, "I'll do it—I'll do it! I'll do, do, do it." etc. What he meant to do and why he meant to do it I don't know but he seemed to be making up his mind decidedly.
I fancied all the time it was Tony I was talking to, though it was proved when he came back that it had not been he at all.
By that time I must have seemed extraordinary to any person looking on—I moved slowly and was made conscious always that I was being overlooked and criticised by others. I felt vague about everything, spoke to and was answered by Tony who was travelling with a Mr. Hughes, who did not seem to believe in me.
The first time I was conscious of this was when I was filling my coal-bucket and found myself smiling as if I were very interested and amused. I knew that it was not my smile. Then it was that I was first conscious, I think, of being overlooked by someone who was amused. Then I began to hear "voices." They used my name freely, calling me "Tina Malone," and spoke of me scoffingly and jeeringly, criticising and commenting on all I did. My heart used to beat very hard and I felt very tired and vague.
As I write this and look back and know how my people looked on, worried and distressed, thinking it was all imagination, and telling me to forget all these ideas, I think "How little we know of what is passing in another's mind though they are standing beside us, and how helpless we are when we try to voice our troubles and they will not understand."
Heaven alone knows what my sisters supposed it to be. I told them "Hypnotism," and felt that it was hypnotism. They told me "Don't say such things. Get that idea out of your head," quite angrily they said it.
All alone I had to battle with it, not understanding it, not knowing how to fight nor what weapons to use.
Here is a copy of a letter I wrote to Tony at the time, but suddenly frightened, for some reason or other, of voicing such things, I kept it in my desk and did not send it.
"My heart is beating hard and painfully. I have the 'foreign' breathing as of some other being than my own—a gulping in my throat, as if this being, whoever it is, were gagged, and at the same time I hear names being bandied about and played with, one protesting, the other sometimes pretending to take my part and apologise, etc., and a swelling of my body as if their presence, whatever it is, were expanding my lungs, etc., so that it is painful to me to breathe, and I feel as if I cannot bear the pressure of my clothes. When this goes off—this consciousness of another presence, I get back my usual feeling of freedom. It is on me now, the awful feeling, and a gulping and a sighing "Oh dear!" in someone else's voice—the voice of this odious masked creature. This has only returned since Wednesday night. I was feeling more than well and free from all this terrible trouble. I feel now as if death is the only thing that will free me. What can it be? The awful idea has occurred to me that the person who is causing it has just returned from a holiday and (I suppose without knowing the trouble he or she is causing) is just killing me.
"11.25—The influence has gone now. I heard voices trying to deter me from writing—but the breathing is still here as if someone were sleeping peacefully or relieved. Just before this happened (as if the gag were removed) a feeling of nausea—a sort of coughing as of sickness. Then followed repetition of a faint I had had after I had taken gas some years ago. Then a fake scene supposed to take place here in my rooms, of a person begging another to stop and 'get away you brute,' afterwards asking for a drink of water."
It was while Tony was away. He used to come and see me regularly while he was at home and though, when I was not "attacked" I was quite my ordinary self, he used to listen when I talked of this outside influence, and tried to understand it, and I felt he was privately trying to find the cause.
But it was at that time when he was away and his letters came and I lost interest and forgot to answer them that the worst happened.
One morning, after a sleepless night in which I imagined that someone I was linked up with, was feverish and that I must not move, I lay for about half an hour in one position, a voice begging me to lie still, that someone was in a straight-jacket and every movement I made hurt it.
"Keep your eyes shut," I heard whispered.
I shut my eyes. I had the impression of someone protecting another—this other whose shadow I was—lying still.
So I lay there with my eyes shut, just as if I were dead, my arms across my breast, almost afraid to breathe.
And then, as I lay for fully half an hour I heard a voice out of somewhere say: "Look at her, Naomi! Is she hypnotised? Look at her. Give me your hand—Here! Look!"
It was the voice of the White Priestess and I heard Naomi's voice say:
"Tina! Tina! Are you dead? Tina! Speak!"
But I lay still, my eyes shut, obeying the voice near my pillow, painfully longing to move but determined to endure it heroically.
And then a knock came at the door and my sister, Bessie, came in.
They were anxious about me, all my family, but they thought it was imagination and that I was just "run down."
"Here's a letter for you. I've brought it in from the hall table," she said. "What's the matter? Aren't you well?"
I hardly dared move my lips. This entity I was attached to was begging me—or the protector was—not to move my lips if I could help it.
I signalled to her with frowns to put the letter down and not to worry me.
But Bessie was not to be put off like that.
"Here's your letter." Then in a sensible voice: "Tina! Don't be silly—get up! Why don't you read your letter?"
As I write now I am able somewhat to see clearly what was going on.
I say again at this time, I must have been experiencing what so many seemingly insane people must often suffer. My mind was full of ideas that were as real to me as if were taking part in a play. I understood that somewhere somebody was so attached to me that every movement I made was made by this other who was in pain and was caused pain by my every movement.
I lay there signalling and frowning to my sister not to disturb me.
She stood there, looking at me, her sister, who lay like a log, arms still, words coming through lips which were scarcely allowed to form them, seemingly allowing foolish "hallucinations" to take possession of her and make her make a fool of herself.
"Get up, Tina!" she said angrily. "Don't go on like a fool."
I frowned, and with furtive movements held out my hand for the letter which someone begged me, the voice at my pillow, not to read just yet.
It is hard to believe just now when I am well and these "hallucinations" have altogether left me, that these things really happened, but I left that letter of Tony's unread all that day, not because I did not want to read it, but because the voices begged me to put off reading it "just yet." They kept begging me to "shut down my mind" that my thoughts "went through," and I tried to make my mind a blank—so hard I tried.
Naturally my sister was alarmed and before long she had rung up the others and they came to see me.
By the time they came—an hour or two later—I had in imagination, lived through much—Still with the knowledge that there was someone, somewhere, whose every movement was linked with mine, and who was too ill to move, I went, moving cautiously, into my sitting-room, too afraid of rough movement to dress. I slipped on a dressing-gown and, although I was hungry, I could not go to find any food, but placed myself in a corner of my sofa and lived the life of the mind with this unseen person, trying not to think any thought that might hurt, trying hard, to shut down my mind because thoughts "went through."
It was there my sisters found me.
There I sat as I had sat all day, in my dressing-gown, huddled up in the corner of the sofa, made to feel that every movement I made gave pain to someone else—somewhere, anywhere—far away—The whole day long, although I was hungry and longed to get dressed, I sat there.
The three of them came in together and begged me not to be foolish and asked if I would let them send for a doctor.
At last I gave in to this and suggested one the family knew. I told them I had written to Mont Jones, the barrister friend who had always understood things so well in the old days.
Dr. Morton came.
To my surprise he called me by name—a thing he had never done before.
I asked him if he knew the signs of hypnotism but he said he did not and begged me to go away to new surroundings and be active.
I said:
"Anyway, I'm getting food here for a book," and I said it brightly and smiled.
He took up some pamphlets that lay on the sofa beside me and threw them aside angrily as if they were rubbish. They were some books on occultism.
"Then write a cookery book," he said, "That's what you had better do."
He turned to my eldest sister—what they had told him about me I don't know.
"She had beter go to stay with you," he said, adding in an undertone, "if you can put up with her."
"I have written to my friend, Mont Jones," I said, "and asked him to come and see me this afternoon. I want to tell him about this."
As he went out I heard him say to Kitty:
"Tell Mr. Mont Jones it's all right."
I thought that was rather officious of him. Whether my sisters rang up Mont Jones or not I don't know, but he did not come.
My sisters took me in hand then and persuaded me to dress, but I was made to feel that Tony had been brought home by Mr. Hughes very ill and was telepathing to me to go and see him, and I said I must go at once to Manly, where he lived.
I insisted on going and Kitty furiously and against her will said she would not let me go alone—She would go too.
"Why can't you be sensible," she said. "Aren't you tired of being made a fool of—You'll find it's only a hoax."
"No," I said, "I'm going."
I showed them I was going. I put on my things and Kitty, half beside herself, came too.
But when we got there there was no such street and we came home tired and wretched.
And so it went on—Kitty begged me to go to stay with her and I promised, but said that Tony had asked me to go to the theatre with him on Tuesday and had taken seats—So she stayed the night with me.
These attacks were so curious, for they did not last—Tony had seen me two or three days before, when I had been well and so when he had told me he knew the theatre would drive the blue devils away I accepted joyfully.