Ancient Sorceries Read Online

“I had never

given a thought to such matters so far as I know–-“

“Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps?”

“Never—before my adventure; but I have since,” he

replied significantly.

There was, however, something still on the man’s

mind that he wished to relieve himself of by confession, yet could only

with difficulty bring himself to mention; and it was only after the

sympathetic tactful-ness of the doctor had provided numerous openings

that he at length availed himself of one of them, and stammered that he

would like to show him the marks he still had on his neck where, he

said, the girl had touched him with her anointed hands.

He took off his collar after infinite fumbling

hesitation, and lowered his shirt a little for the doctor to see. And

there, on the surface of the skin, lay a faint reddish line across the

shoulder and extending a little way down the back towards the spine. It

certainly indicated exactly the position an arm might have taken in the

act of embracing. And on the other side of the neck, slightly higher

up, was a similar mark, though not quite so clearly defined.

“That was where she held me that night on the

ramparts,” he whispered, a strange light coming and going in his eyes.

It was some weeks later when I again found occasion to consult John

Silence concerning another extraordinary case that had come under my

notice, and we fell to discussing Vezin’s story. Since hearing it, the

doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his

secretaries had discovered that Vezin’s ancestors had actually lived

for generations in the very town where the adventure came to him. Two

of them, both women, had been tried and convicted as witches, and had

been burned alive at the stake. Moreover, it had not been difficult to

prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was built about 1700 upon

the spot where the funeral pyres stood and the executions took place.

The town was a sort of headquarters for all the sorcerers and witches

of the entire region, and after conviction they were burnt there

literally by scores.

“It seems strange,” continued the doctor, “that

Vezin should have remained ignorant of all this; but, on the other

hand, it was not the kind of history that successive generations would

have been anxious to keep alive, or to repeat to their children.

Therefore I am inclined to think he still knows nothing about it.

“The whole adventure seems to have been a very vivid

revival of the memories of an earlier life, caused by coming directly

into contact with the living forces still intense enough to hang about

the place, and, by a most singular chance, too, with the very souls who

had taken part with him in the events of that particular life. For the

mother and daughter who impressed him so strangely must have been

leading actors, with himself, in the scenes and practices of witchcraft

which at that period dominated the imaginations of the whole country.

“One has only to read the histories of the times to

know that these witches claimed the power of transforming themselves

into various animals, both for the purposes of disguise and also to

convey themselves swiftly to the scenes of their imaginary orgies.

Lycanthropy, or the power to change themselves into wolves, was

everywhere believed in, and the ability to transform themselves into

cats by rubbing their bodies with a special salve or ointment provided

by Satan himself, found equal credence. The witchcraft trials abound in

evidences of such universal beliefs.”

Dr. Silence quoted chapter and verse from many

writers on the subject, and showed how every detail of Vezin’s

adventure had a basis in the practices of those dark days.

“But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man’s own

consciousness, I have no doubt,” he went on, in reply to my questions;

“for my secretary who has been to the town to investigate, discovered

his signature in the visitors’ book, and proved by it that he had

arrived on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill. He

left two days later, and they still were in possession of his dirty

brown bag and some tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in settlement

of his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The daughter was

absent from home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he

described her, told my secretary that he had seemed a very strange,

absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his disappearance she had

feared for a long time that he had met with a violent end in the

neighbouring forest where he used to roam about alone.

“I

so as to ascertain how much was subjective and how much actually took

place with her as Vezin told it. For her dread of fire and the sight of

burning must, of course, have been the intuitive memory of her former

painful death at the stake, and have thus explained why he fancied more

than once that he saw her through smoke and flame.”

“And that mark on his skin, for instance?” I inquired.

“Merely the marks produced by hysterical brooding,”

he replied, “like the stigmata of the religieuses, and the

bruises which appear on the bodies of hypnotised subjects who have been

told to expect them. This is very common and easily explained. Only it

seems curious that these marks should have remained so long in Vezin’s

case. Usually they disappear quickly.”

“Obviously he is still thinking about it all,

brooding, and living it all over again,” I ventured.

“Probably. And this makes me fear that the end of

his trouble is not yet. We shall hear of him again. It is a case, alas!

I can do little to alleviate.”

Dr. Silence spoke gravely and with sadness in his voice.

“And what do you make of the Frenchman in the

train?” I asked further—”the man who warned him against the place, a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats? Surely a very singular

incident?”

“A very singular incident indeed,” he made answer

slowly, “and one I can only explain on the basis of a highly improbable

coincidence—”

“Namely?”

“That the man was one who had himself stayed in the

town and undergone there a similar experience. I should like to find

this man and ask him. But the crystal is useless here, for I have no

slightest clue to go upon, and I can only conclude that some singular

psychic affinity, some force still active in his being out of the same

past life, drew him thus to the personality of Vezin, and enabled him

to fear what might happen to him, and thus to warn him as he did.

“Yes,” he presently continued, half talking to himself, “I suspect

in this case that Vezin was swept into the vortex of forces arising out

of the intense activities of a past life, and that he lived over again

a scene in which he had often played a leading part centuries before.

For strong actions set up forces that are so slow to exhaust

themselves, they may be said in a sense never to die. In this case they

were not vital enough to render the illusion complete, so that the

little man found himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the

present and the past; yet he was sufficiently sensitive to recognise

that it was true, and to fight against the degradation of returning,

even in memory, to a former and lower state of development.

“Ah yes!” he continued, crossing the floor to gaze

at the darkening sky, and seemingly quite oblivious of my presence,

“subliminal up-rushes of memory like this can be exceedingly painful,

and sometimes exceedingly dangerous. I only trust that this gentle soul

may soon escape from this obsession of a passionate and tempestuous

past. But I doubt it, I doubt it.”

His voice was hushed with sadness as he spoke, and

when he turned back into the room again there was an expression of

profound yearning upon his face, the yearning of a soul whose desire to

help is sometimes greater than his power.