Chapter One of The Horla

Doctor Rogoff’s waiting room was no better than ten years before. It was comfortable enough, but remained a dreary place. And much like Adam himself, it had not worn well over the intervening years, becoming in fact, quite tacky. Nor did it help much that another patient, sitting across from him, a guy he couldn’t quite place, looked nevertheless, somewhat familiar. Unreasonable to hope that this other man eyes averted or no, had not spotted him as well. So much for getting oneself discretely repsychoanalized at Doctor Rogoff’s.

But maybe it wouldn’t come to that. He’d heard that nowadays there were all kinds of new drugs for just about every kind of mental disorder. His new condition could possibly be dispensed with expeditiously, biochemically, and he wouldn’t have to deal with the prospective embarrassment of running into other Washington familiars week after conceivably endless weeks in this oppressive antechamber from out of which two or three psychiatrists other than his own Rogoff fished their flaky catches, ushering them into adjacent consulting rooms so as to either manipulate them or convince them of something or other.

A new condition? Was he really feeling different from that other time? Was he not every bit as anxious as he’d been back then? Well... anxious, yes. But it wasn’t the same. Because now it was something else, something entirely unexpected. After all the years of assuming it was finished and done with, he’d been taken over once again by the same old evil one. This present anxiety wasn’t about too much alcohol, or women, or guilt. It was about his Horla. The Horla, incredibly back again, after leaving him alone for thirty odd years and allowing him not a moment’s peace.

“Adam. Good to see you. Come on in.”

Rogoff, now gray-bearded and no longer fastening his collar, or for that matter even bothering to draw up his tie, had revealed himself. He stood before the open doorway to his consulting chamber, looking affable enough, yet intent.

Adam, without saying a single word to his doctor, merely rose with a nod and was directed inside, where Rogoff pointed him towards the familiar old leather chair. It now showed further signs of hard wear with more than a few new coffee stains and several burn holes from cigarettes Adam didn’t remember.

Doctor Rogoff, except for the raggedly trimmed beard, looked and sounded much the same. But his consulting room, a privileged and spacious chamber with ornate fireplace befitting his professional seniority, appeared to have been kept up no better than the run-down gathering place outside. Its oriental carpet had become quite threadbare in places and previously gaping cracks in the leather cushion of his own armchair had become so widened that its interior felt padding protruded outward through them as soon as he got seated.

Adam was addressed a second time. “Make yourself comfortable, Adam.”

However seedy his surroundings, the old boy still remained his grandly commanding self.

“Well then. What’s up?”

“Is that how we begin, nowadays? With a `What’s up?’”

“Come on now, Adam. Let’s not waste time with any of your old picayune compulsive crap. For God’s sake, get to it. Let me in on whatever’s eating you now. And Christ. Don’t get any idea we are `beginning’ anything. I have attained the ripe old age of seventy-eight and have no intention of ever again putting in three hours a week, and maybe years and years, with the likes of someone like you.”

“You still consider me your very worst patient?”

“Well if not the absolute worst, you’ve always been right up there.”

“Thank you very much. And what do you mean by `compulsive’? You never told me I was compulsive.”

“What in God’s name would you call this? When... let me in on it, would you? Can I hope to get you started? What will we have to go through before I get the semblance of a straightforward answer to a simple question like, `How are you’?”

“That’s not exactly how you put it. You said `What’s up?’”

“Okay. How are you?”

“You still getting ninety-five an hour?”

“Don’t change the subject. I said `How are you?’. Damn it. So answer the question. And ninety-five is not what I charge for something like this. For this, from you, I want one-fifty.”

“Terrible. I feel absolutely terrible. Did you save your old notes?”

“What notes?”

“The ones you used to scribble. You know. In that ratty old spiral notebook of yours while I ventilated and just about spilled my guts out. Over there on that lumpy old couch of yours. Hey man. Where’d it go to? Damned if that smelly old thing isn’t gone.”

“I got rid of it. We do things differently nowadays. We’re much less analytical. More direct...supportive. And sometimes, pharmacological.”

“And maybe more sanitary, I should hope. But you kept your notes, right?”

“They’re probably around here somewhere. Why?”

“Well...you remember the Horla?”

“The what?”

“Son-of-a-bitch. How could you possibly forget something like that? Check your notes, man. Or were you writing letters to your kids or maybe just doodling back there, once you got settled in and feelin’ comfy? Or even grabbin’ quick naps? You wanta know somethin’? There were times I suspected as much. After all, you had me damned well blindsided. And anyway, how could I know if you were actually payin’ any attention to what I was sayin’? I was doin’ all the talkin. Hardly ever was there so much as a peep out of you.”

“It is now two hundred dollars an hour and going up.”

Undeterred by that prospect, Adam flashed his revelation.

“The Horla? The Horla is what had me between nine and thirteen. Just like in the story by de Maupassant. He’d get on to me, all of a sudden, every so often, and have me feeling like I was gonna faint. Like I was sinking, slipping away, maybe even dying. And he’d also make me do things, all sorts of things, over, and over, and over again.”

“Like I said. You were compulsive and obsessive regarding much of what you did. But I don’t remember any claim of your being under the influence of something supernatural. How would you spell that?”

“Horla. H-O-R-L-A. And I’ll say it again. Not once did you ever make a diagnosis of me bein’ obsessive-compulsive. Christ. If that’s what you were thinkin’, I sure as hell had a right to know about it. Tell me this. Couldn’t you get yourself sued for something like that? Isn’t there some kinda right and standard way for psychiatrists to conduct themselves so people like me are protected against that kind of a screw-up?”

“No there isn’t. We are not into cookbook psychiatry, yet. Or cookbook medicine either, for that matter. We physicians have considerable clinical leeway, thank God. It’s called professional discretion. But it’s sure wonderful having you back, Adam. I’d almost forgotten how lively you used to make it around here. Now ... is there anything I can do for you aside from rummaging through my old files and searching for your god-damned Horla?”

“It seems to me you never believed in God. The way I remember it you always said it was unnecessary. You even called it totally incomprehensible, how any one could go for something that foolish. And yet, this is the fifth time you’ve called on Him since I’m in here. Do you realize that?”

“What I’m realizing is that I couldn’t possibly be needed for something like this. So how about letting me off the hook? I’ll just go and settle down in one of the other consulting rooms with a real patient. You know. Like someone who’s here to talk about their concerns and wanting to be helped. And if you like, you can stay right where you are for the balance of the session. You can even make believe I’m still here and jabber your fool head off to your heart’s content.”

“If you absolutely must take a leak, go right ahead. Otherwise, don’t make a move until I’ve had my hour’s worth.”

“These days I’m only doing forty-five minute sessions. Thank God.”

“There. You did it again. When did you get yourself converted? Seems like every other word out of you is `God’.”

“Look Adam. Nine years ago, in a certain way I thought I’d been delivered when you stopped coming by to see me. But now it looks like I need to be delivered again. And I’m open to any help I can get. From whatever quarter I can devise.”

Minutes passed in silence, neither one of them conceding the other more than a glance. Adam started it up again, almost angrily.

“I have to do everything a dozen times. It’s just like when I was ten years old.”

“That’s called checking. You’ve always had a bit of it. And no matter what I used to say concerning your tendency in that direction, you’d insist invariably on writing it off as part of your inclination to be careful, even meticulous, in everything you did.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Now I remember. You handed me that cock-and-bull line about it being my way to save myself from dying. By getting everything just right, you know...perfect, I was thinking, but all the same subconsciously, that I could hang on just about forever. What a crock! Look, none of this stuff is about me being a perfectionist. It’s about me going fucking well nuts. I am staring at my garage door, looking at it over and over again, with no let-up, just to be sure I’ve really run the fucker down. I am turning off the stove, twenty, thirty, times. Man! One of these days I’m gonna bust a knob off’a the damned thing. And in spite of all this shit I am spending more than an hour every night trying to convince myself that, finally, I’ve really got the place locked up good enough so I can head upstairs and hit the sack. That damned Horla is back here again after all these years, and with a vengeance. You got any ideas as to how we handle this situation or do I go and get myself one of them exorcists?”

“You still in politics?”

“Sure. I just signed up a couple of newly elected damned- fool congressmen. And they’re doin’ exactly as I tell them. Although my main hustle, like always...if you remember, is fund raising. But what’s that got to do with any of what I’m telling you?”

“It’s just that obsessive-compulsives seem to get worse, or have flare ups, following life style changes or set backs at work. That’s what may have happened to you the last time. And listening to you now, I’ve been wondering if this was just more of the same.”

“You sure you remember my case? The way I recall it, Herr Doctor, my old problem was not about being obsessive-compulsive. It was all about too much booze, too many women, not a helluva lot of sleep, and an evaporating bank account, mixed with a good enough dose of anxiety and guilt over my wife maybe finding out. If `checking’ is your word for what I’m doing this time, the only thing I ever `checked’ out back then was whatever good looking chick happened to be coming my way, and how to hang out with her without being nailed either by the wife, or anyone else who might recognize me. I grant you, like with everything else I’ve ever been into, I was pulling it off just about perfectly, but ultimately at one hell of a price. Somehow the wife found out anyway. Next thing I know she’s dumping me and taking me to the cleaners. So one fine day right after that, I just straight out got my act together, stopped acting so fucking self destructive, and quit coming in here to see you. But never, never, not even once, did you make me out for some kind of a big time obsessive-compulsive freak.”

“You simply repressed what I was telling you. At the time it wasn’t the main problem for you anyway...that is, emotionally. Besides which, back then your compulsive tendency was easy enough for you to cope with. Now, and for some reason we may or may not ever be able to identify, that particular behavioral inclination has simply recurred and gotten a bit worse.”

“Simply? I just love the way you see things. Look man. My brain has been invaded by the Horla. It has taken over my mind. It is jerking my chain, pulling all the strings. It is in control of my every thought, my every move.”

“Look. Use your head, Adam. Don’t go bonkers over some silly French ghost story you read a million years ago when you were a naive and impressionable kid. What you’ve described to me is a well known clinical syndrome. And nowadays much more is understood about it than even a couple of years ago. Today, we have several effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder. By combining drugs and behavioral therapy it’s possible to obtain a better than sixty per cent improvement rate. And we no longer approach it as a psychodynamic problem. It’s all about neurotransmitters in the brain and anatomical deviations from normal. In fact, with certain kinds of x-rays or scans, we can actually detect physical changes in the brains of such patients.”

“You mean you can take a picture of the inside of my head and see the Horla? Well zap him on out of there. And I want the fucker one hundred per cent gone. Sixty percent is for the birds.”

“Adam, I hate to say it, but you are an even worse listener now than you were nine years ago. The way this sort of thing still goes, if there’s to be any chance at all for it to work, is that you describe your symptoms. Then, you listen very carefully while I try and come up with solutions. But the way I’m seeing it, based upon your present attitude, you might just as well head right on out of here and either find yourself that exorcist or simply do your own zapping. Meaning you could go and shoot yourself in the head. And if you should opt for the second course, thinking you can nail your damned Horla but miss your brain, then you are even crazier than I have ever given you credit for.”

“Look. Let’s just say I’m not exactly enthralled with the odds you’re offering. That’s because I’m really in a worse way than maybe you appreciate. For instance. All I have to do is dial a telephone number and that same stupid number keeps repeating and repeating in my head until I get to dial some other number or do something, anything, involving numbers. Right now it’s eleven o’clock, right? It took me quite a while to walk over here from my office. Let’s say maybe twenty minutes. But you wanta hear something pathetic? All the time I’m walkin’ over here, the last number I dialed before I left the office is repeatin’, goin’ round and round in my head without a moment’s let-up. It’s fucking horrible. And even worse than that. Sometimes out of nowhere, absolutely nowhere, there are numbers poppin’ up in my brain I can’t even account for. So if your saying, assuming I get drugged up to your satisfaction, that all I’ll really have to deal with is forty percent of this crap, then I’m a goner anyway, a sure-fire goner. And the decent thing for you to do is find some legitimate way to put me out of my misery.”

“Are you feeling depressed?”

“Is that supposed to be a serious question? Where in hell you comin’ from, doc? In my situation, who wouldn’t be? Of course I’m depressed. All I think about is how the Horla had that guy at the end of the story. The poor bastard couldn’t take it any more and decided to knock himself off. How he did it was never quite spelled out. But even so, the other weird thing is I’m dead certain, anyway, that he hung himself in his own clothes closet. Man. I can even see him hanging there.”

Rogoff chose to ignore that little bit of coloration.

“The only reason I asked about depression is I think you ought to be aware of the fact that the drugs we use for this condition are all strong antidepressants. They’ll probably give you a lift.”

“Great. I can enjoy bein’ miserable. Right, doc? Listen. Tell me this. Think any of the other shrinks around here might just happen to have a better handle on all of this? Today, I’ve got time to burn anyway. Should I just head back on out and sit in the waiting room? Maybe one of the younger hot shots workin’ out of this place knows something you’re not on to. How about it? Want to set it up for me?”

“Being negative, Adam, is not the answer. What’s wrong with simply starting treatment and seeing what comes of it? Who knows? You might do better than the published claims.”

“What’s the downside? The side effects? This isn’t like that toxic psychiatry one of your buddies down the block is always screaming about on TV, is it?”

“Some patients feel keyed up. They call it being wired. Otherwise, maybe there’d be a little nausea, or headache, or dizziness, but nothing that ordinarily lasts. If you get jittery or have trouble sleeping, I can always give you something to combat that. The drug I’ve been using for obsessive-compulsive disorder is Prozac. We start with a low dose and then gradually increase it. And at the same time you’ll be coached in what we call the behavioral approach. I can refer you to someone who specializes in that sort of thing.”

“How do you go about that?”

“Well first off, a therapist goes with you to where you do most of your checking and encourages you not to do it. If with that kind of support you are able to resist performing the compulsive act, then after awhile you may be able to hold off on your own. That’s it in a nutshell.”

“You hit on exactly the right word for it. It’s nutty. God damned nutty as hell. Just say `no’, right?”

“Adam. If you insist on being negative, we will get nowhere.”

“Any of these so called therapists young and good looking?”

“I’ll see what I can do. Didn’t you just get finished saying you were cured of all of that?”

“Look. Maybe if you team me up with someone who says nothing but `yes’, I’ll be able to make with a `no’. You know, get myself kind of inspired. Just a suggestion, that’s all.”

“All right then. Any real questions?”

“None I can think of right now.”

“Okay then. I’m writing you a prescription and I’ll see you in a week. If you call back, the secretary will have the name and number of a behavioral therapist.”

“Look. If this doesn’t work out, how about one of those new laser treatments? I hear they’re terrific.”

“I’m not sure how that’s relevant to what we’ve been talking about.”

“Well, the way I understand it is that a laser ray can destroy tissue just about anywhere, even in your eye, and without hittin’ anything else that happens to be close by. So instead, like you said, of me in some kind of desperation shooting myself in the head and eliminating once and for all, not only the Horla but myself as well, all kidding aside, what’s so unreasonable about zapping the Horla real selective like, with the laser?”

“A regular gun would be much more preferable. Get on out of here, Adam. Just start the medicine. Take two a day.”