'What are they saying?'
'Nothing. It means nothing.'
'Listen closely.'
'They don't speak in words.'
'Who are they? Who's whispering?'
'Oh, Jesus. Listen. Jesus.'
'Who are they?'
'Not people. No. No! Not people!'
'It isn't people whispering?'
'Get them off! Get them off me!'
'Why are you brushing at yourself?'
'They're all over me!'
'There's nothing on you.'
'All over me!'
'Don't get up, Bruno. Wait--'
'Oh, my God!'
'Bruno, lie down on the couch.'
'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.'
'I'm ordering you to lie down on the couch.'
'Jesus, help me! Help me!'
'Listen to me, Bruno. You--'
'Gotta get 'em off, gotta get 'em off!'
'Bruno, it's all right. Relax. They're going away.'
'No! There's even more of them! Ah! Ah! No!'
'They're going away. The whispers are getting softer, fainter. They're--'
'Louder! Getting louder! A roar of whispers!'
'Be calm. Lie down and be--'
'They're getting in my nose! Oh, Jesus! My mouth!'
'Bruno!'
On the tape, there was a strange, strangled sound. It went on and on.
Hilary hugged herself. The room suddenly seemed frigid.
Rudge said, 'He jumped up from the couch and ran into the corner, over there. He crouched down in the corner and put his hands over his face.'
The eerie, wheezing, gagging sound continued to come from the tape.
'But you snapped him out of the trance,' Tony said.
Rudge was pale, remembering. 'At first, I thought he was going to stay there, in the dream. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I'm very good at hypnotic therapy. Very good. But I thought I'd lost him. It took a while, but finally he began to respond to me.'
On the tape: rasping, gagging, wheezing.
'What you hear,' Rudge said, 'is Frye screaming. He's so frightened that his throat has seized up on him, so terrified that he's lost his voice. He's trying to scream, but he can't get much sound out.'
Joshua stood up, bent over, switched off the recorder. His hand was shaking. 'You think his mother really locked him in a dark room.'
'Yes,' Rudge said.
'And there was something else in there with him.'
'Yes.'
Joshua pushed one hand through his thick white hair. 'But for God's sake, what could it have been? What was in that room?'
'I don't know,' Rudge said. 'I expected to find out in a later session. But that was the last time I saw him.'
***
In Joshua's Cessna Skylane, as they flew south and slightly east toward Hollister, Tony said, 'My view of this thing is going through changes.'
'How?' Joshua asked.
'Well, at first, I looked at it in simple black and white. Hilary was the victim. Frye was the bad guy. But now ... in a way ... maybe Frye's a victim, too.'
'I know what you mean,' Hilary said. 'Listening to those tapes ... I felt so sorry for him.'
