The past is a dangerous place
“The tape turned my bowels to water,” said Peter.
Jake had been at the window, looking out at the glass-and-steel canyons of Docklands. He turned towards Peter, noting how boring lawyers look when not in court. “What?” he said.
“I think you’d better see it.”
“Don’t be a drama queen,” said Jake.
“I’m not,” said Peter. “I’m a legal advisor to this
newspaper. And I think you should see the tape.”
David Iliff/Creative Commons
Something in his voice gave Jake pause. “All right,” he said
at length. “Tell Michelle to set it up. But bugger off for now, I need to see
tomorrow’s feature layouts.”
Peter turned to go. He paused in the doorway.
“What,” said Jake again.
“I do not think you understand the gravity of the
situation,” said Peter. “Stella’s husband may sue.”
“Good. Think of the column inches,” said Jake.
The other shrugged and went off across the newsroom. He was
ignored by the subs, who were in the white heat of their day – that time in the
late afternoon when all the copy must be made ready so the layout people can
start casting off and asking for a cut here, a subhead there.
Jake looked at his desk. It should be clear now, ready for
the first mock-ups of tomorrow’s Daily Morning News front page. But
there were several large sheets on it, mostly pen-and-ink drawings of a
caricature weasel. The weasel was accompanied in some frames by a stoat and an
otter. Across one was scrawled: Proposed comic
strip. Mike and the Mustelids. They were a submission from some
art-school hopeful. The art director had
brought them in for Jake’s opinion (which was brief and clear) and then
neglected to take them away. He sighed. “Michelle,” he yelled. His assistant swayed
in on six-inch heels. “Michelle, get these back to Derek, would you. He’d
forget his balls if they weren’t in a bag.”
“Yes Jake,” she replied. “Is ten tomorrow OK for the tape
viewing?”
“I suppose so.”
“Who’d you want there? Peter says it’s sort of sensitive.”
“Who did Pete say?”
“Him. And William Bristow.”
“What, Bill the Brief? In person?” Bristow was a barrister.
“That’s a bit heavy. No-one else?”
“Peter says it’s all a bit grave and we don’t want gossip,
like.” She looked at her phone. ”He wants one other person in on it, says
you’ll need their advice. Dr Amery.”
“Who’s Dr Amery when he’s at home?”
“She’s a clinical psychologist,” said Michelle.
“Oh,” he said. He was about to ask why the Daily Morning
News needed a clinical psychologist but not for the first time that day, a
voice inside told him to shut up. He watched Michelle, not without pleasure, as
she swayed out of his office. Then he noticed the latest edition of Private
Eye, no longer masked by mustelids. It was folded back at the Street of
Shame column.
The Daily Moron News has a problem. Where’s its
star columnist, Saucy Stella the Fleet Street Slag? (Or Stella Boggs, to use
her proper name.) Her column’s been absent for three weeks now. Moron
insiders say something’s gone very wrong. Saucy Stell went off to the backwoods
of Birmingham to write an exposé of alleged fraudulent hypnotherapist Arnold Merriweather.
It’s a change from her usual headlines. Workshy scroungers! Benefits!
Palestinian victimhood! Woke councils! All grist to her mill. Trouble is, she’s
now in hospital, gabbling incoherently [what’s new – Ed.]. The sinister Merriweather
put her under then stole her sooooul…
He tossed Private Eye back on his desk. “We’ll sue
the buggers,” he muttered, but something felt wrong.
He swivelled back towards the window. I do miss Fleet
Street, he thought, remembering his visits as a spotty teenager fifty years
ago, watching his compositor father work the Linotype machine, the slugs cast
in the hot metal, the clatter of the keyboards, the men assembling the formes
and finding themselves a word over and yelling for a sub to come and edit on
the stone. Then off for a pint in the cool plain upper room of the Printer’s
Devil in Fetter Lane, gone now, torn down years ago to make way for some
plastic palace. And a walk later to the Embankment, across Fleet Street, past
El Vino, which would be heaving with barristers and journalists; and down
Bouverie Street, seeing the lorries drawn up with the huge bales of newsprint
that were hauled up by ropes on beams that stuck out across the road and worked
in through the huge doors way above the street.
Colin Smith/Creative Commons
All gone now. But we haven’t changed, thought Jake. All the
news that’s unfit to print and sue us if you dare.
*
“Actually a few people are after this hypnotherapist chap,”
said Peter.
“Arnold Merriweather?” said Jake. “Yes, I believe so. That’s
why I sent Stella to look into him.”
“From now on say it was her own idea,” said Peter. “It might
be safer if we go to court.”
They were seated round the table at one end of Jake’s large
office. At the other end of the room was a 65-inch TV mounted on the wall.
There were several others on the other walls though not on Jake’s desk. There
was little else in the office. (“Would you like bookcases?” Michelle had asked
when it was fitted out. “What for?” he had asked, puzzled.) The sole adornments
were facsimiles of some of his favourite front pages and a picture of Jake with
the proprietor and his wife. The latter had, at the time, just had her boobs
done and the sun cast shadows in her cleavage like the Grand Canyon at dawn.
“There are a couple of cases.” Bill the Brief shifted in his
seat. He was a lengthy cadaverous figure in his 60s with a hawk-like beak of a
nose and bushy eyebrows. Jake couldn’t look at him without the urge to say
“M’Lud” and stick his thumbs in his lapels. “A Midland cleaning contractor is
suing him.”
“That’s that Featherstone bloke, isn’t it,” said Jake.
“Wasn’t he in dispute with his workforce or something?”
“The union were after him,” said Bill the Brief. “They said
his cleaners were working 60-70 hours a week. The law says 48 hours. Featherstone
said they’d all opted out of the limit, which is legal but voluntary and he was
denying shifts to guys who wouldn’t opt out. Someone grassed him up to the
union.”
“Seems he was underpaying people as well,” said Peter. “Entering
them on the books as apprentices so he didn’t have to pay the full minimum
wage. Some of ’em were asylum seekers without permission to work.”
“Oh, and there were a couple who got sick from the cleaning
fluids,” said Bill the Brief. “Mixing ammonia-based cleaners with bleach,
apparently. And descaling agents. The union alleged breathing problems,
chemical burns and other fun things. He claims the victims weren’t working for
him. The union says they were.”
“What a nice chap,” said Jake. “Can’t see as that’s got
anything to do with this hypnotherapy business though.”
“His daughter bought him a hypnotherapy session with
Merriweather for Christmas,” said Peter. “She thought it could help him give up
smoking. Apparently Merriweather regressed him to the 1840s and he found
himself working in a coal mine as a 12-year-old, which distressed him greatly.
He has decided to sue.”
He picked up a piece of paper. “This is a transcript of the
session supplied in evidence. Featherstone is talking under hypnosis – Merriweather
prompted him with questions now and then but we’ve edited that out for clarity.
“My name is Percy Armstrong and I am 12 years old. I have
worked in the pit since I was about six, first as a trapper but now I be a
hurrier. We pull the corves from the face where the hewers cut the coal. There
is a leather belt around my waist, gurl belt we calls it and a chain goes back
to the corve and sometimes a girl behind pushes, thrusters we call them. The
passage is low so she’ll push with her head. It hurts my knees to crawl through
it, it is so low. You ask the weight of the corves, well I don’t rightly know
but they say two hundred pounds maybe.”
Peter looked up from his paper. “At length Featherstone became very distressed. It seems he ‘remembered’ being badly burned when a candle ignited some fire-damp and then ‘remembered’ dying in great pain not long afterwards. We have tried to check this but parish records are often incomplete, and we can’t be sure of the exact date or location.”
“You’re not suggesting that the man was really remembering a
past life, are you?” said Jake. “How would he have any case against Merriweather?”
“They’ll argue that it’s a case of cryptomnesia,” said
Peter. “That’s when someone sees something that appears real under hypnosis but
has actually read or seen it somewhere in real life and has forgotten it. In
the case of Featherstone, much detail on child labour in the mines was
collected as testimony to a Royal Commission chaired by the Earl of Shaftesbury
in 1842. It may be that Featherstone had seen this, perhaps at school. If the
regression sparked an episode of cryptomnesia and distressed the subject, it
may be that Merriweather should not have regressed him.”
“Jesus,” said Jake. “Is there anything in this hypnotherapy
lark, or is it all bullshit?”
“Oh no, hypnotherapy is quite legitimate,” said Dr Amery.
She was a grey-haired woman of maybe 50, a little severe but not unfriendly. “It’s
used to treat certain conditions or help people break harmful habits. The National
Health Service accepts that. But it doesn’t pay for it, and warns you should
select a hypnotherapist with care. Also hypnotherapy is contraindicated if you
have psychosis or some types of personality disorder.”
“So maybe Featherstone should not have been ‘put under’ at
all?” said Jake.
“No, perhaps not, if Merriweather was not sure of his medical
history,” she replied. “In particular, past-life regression is a specific form
of hypnotherapy that seeks to uncover the causes of trauma or behaviours, which
it is thought may lie in previous lifetimes. But past-life regression is not recognised
by all hypnotherapy professionals. It can worsen certain psychological
conditions and because someone under hypnosis is suggestible, it can implant
false ‘memories’ and distress the patient.”
“Wasn’t there a Welsh chap who made a splash regressing subjects?
There was a TV programme,” said Peter.
“That’s right. Back in the 1970s,” said Dr Amery. “It was
something of a sensation at the time. He was a serious hypnotherapist who
wanted to treat people. But many critics ascribed the tapes to cryptomnesia.”
Peter looked at his notes. “Featherstone isn’t the only
patient of Merriweather’s who’s been talking of suing. There was that bloke who
runs a chain of wholesale butchers.”
“Ah yes,” said Bill the Brief. “Charlie Mayhew. Charlie’s
Country Meats. Big supplier to the supermarkets. I defended him a few years
ago. Multiple animal welfare violations. Alleged, I should say. What was he
doing at a hypnotherapist’s, anyway?”
“He hoped Merriweather would help him stop drinking,” said
Peter. “Hypnotherapy’s often used for things like that. You look into people’s
lives under hypnosis and find where the negative behaviours come from. Except
it didn’t work, did it. Because he reckoned he’d been regressed as a worker in
a 19th-century Chicago slaughterhouse. He says he woke up screaming ‘The blood!
The blood!’ and he can’t eat meat anymore.”
“Didn’t Upton Sinclair write a famous novel set in the
Chicago stockyards?” said Bill the Brief. “Maybe Mayhew had read it and
forgotten he’d done so? Cryptomnesia again.”
“That’s the suspicion.” Dr Amery frowned. “But hard to
prove. What about the Brighton case?”
“We’re not acting for them,” said Peter. “They won’t talk to
us. But we heard about it. In that case the subject ‘remembered’ under hypnosis
being beaten to death by ‘her’ husband. But in waking life she was a he and had
recently been divorced by his wife, who alleged assault. And quite serious
injuries, as I recall.”
“There’s a pattern building up here, isn’t there?” Dr Amery
looked thoughtful.
“Still, it all looks like cryptomnesia,” said Peter. “But
whatever. If this comes to court, it will be alleged that Stella the Fleet
Street Slag, sorry Ms Boggs, has had a psychiatric episode as a result of being
regressed for the newspaper. There may be legal implications.”
“This is all a bit weird for me,” said Jake. “Besides, even
if I did send Stella to expose this bloke, that doesn’t make us liable, does
it? You’d have to prove she suffered harm as a result. Where’s the evidence?”
“The fact that she’s lying in a hospital bed, moaning and
gibbering,” said Bill the Brief.
“Jesus,” said Jake.
“And this,” said Peter.
He clicked the remote and the video started to run on the
large screen. They saw Stella, lying on a couch, shot from above so that her
face was straight to camera; then there was a voice from someone out of shot,
presumably Merriweather. It was an old man’s voice, low, soothing, foody.
“Stella, you are descending a staircase,” said the Voice.
“At its foot is a place of peace. Relax yourself, and let the world… wash… over
you…”
“This is new-age woke bollocks,” said Jake.
“Drift,” said the Voice. “Drift upon the sea.”
Stella’s eyelids fluttered; bit by bit they closed. At
length:
“What can you see?” asked the Voice.
Stella, eyes still closed, replied in a strange language.
“Stop here,” said Jake. “Have we run that past anyone? What
language is it?”
“We don’t know,” said Peter. “My office sent a clip to a
linguist but he didn’t recognise it and sent it on to a philologist.”
“A what?”
“A bloke who studies the origins of, and links between,
languages. He reckoned it sounded like Carib, or an archaic Arawakan language
from northern South America.”
“Or just Stella having a laugh,” said Jake.
“No. He was sure it was a real dialect of some kind.”
“Well that’s not cryptom-whatsit then, that’s for sure,”
said Jake. “’Cos our Stell wouldn’t know an obscure foreign language. She has
enough probs just with English normally, be honest with you.”
“Ssh, something’s happening to her,” said Dr Amery. They
turned back to the screen. Stella was becoming agitated. She started to moan,
and then to shout, and to squirm on the couch. The Voice spoke quietly, his
words indistinct. After a while she calmed.
“Come back,” said the Voice, “when you are ready. I shall
count to five and you will awake, refreshed.”
She did awake but her eyes were staring, and she was
sweating.
“What did you see?” asked Merriweather. He sounded concerned
for the first time.
“I was at the water’s edge, where the jungle comes down to
the sea. The sand was brilliant white and the water deep blue and the trees
were full of birds – macaws, parrots? – parakeets.” She blinked. “I was with
others. We weren’t wearing much. We did not need to. It was warm.”
“Were you happy?”
“I think so. We were busy. We planted vegetables and yuca,
and fished, and the men hunted. We had enough to eat. But then things went
wrong.”
“What went wrong?”
Columbus greeted by Arawak Indians (Theodor de Bry/Library of Congress)
“The strange canoe came. With the big cross on its sails.
And these odd men waded to the beach and one fell to his knees and waved a
smaller cross.” She was silent for a moment. “They came to see us. They took
some people away. The men they made to work and the women…” She was silent for
a moment, and seemed to be breathing heavily. Then: “They wanted gold.
Sometimes cloth. Then the sickness came. Fever. We were exhausted and could
hardly move. Our heads hurt, and our backs. Vomit. Then red spots. Then blisters
full of pus. We died.”
Eyes wide, she was looking at the camera yet did not see it.
Then she screamed. The sound pierced the room. Bill the Brief sat
ramrod-straight, rigid; Peter covered his ears; Dr Amery her eyes. The screams
continued. Merriweather could be heard trying to calm her.
“Stop it! Stop the tape now!” yelled Jake. He grabbed the
remote from Peter but instead of stop, he pressed pause and Stella’s frozen face
filled the enormous screen, a distorted rictus of horror and terror. After a
moment Dr Amery took the remote and put the screen to sleep.
“Smallpox,” she said. “Stella described smallpox.”
*
The next morning, the weekly editorial conference was
underway around the same table.
“Dammit, we need fresh new features pages,” Jake was saying.
“I need ideas from you buggers.”
“Wildlife?” ventured someone. “Cute creatures?”
“We could tag an otter and follow it week by week,” said
someone else.
“You can’t interview an otter,” said Jake, who’d had enough
mustelids for one week. “Can’t we uncover people-smuggling in Parliament or
something?”
“When’s Stella the Slag back?” asked the art editor.
“God knows,” said Jake. He looked troubled. Then he
brightened.
“I got it, guys. I got it. This past-life regression thing.
Why don’t we put someone through it every week?”
“Great,” said the chief sub. “But you’re gonna need
volunteers.”
Michelle swayed in with Jake’s coffee.
“Michelle,” said Jake. “Would you like a reporting
assignment?”
“Oh yeah!” Her eyes opened wide. She nearly spilled the
coffee.
“Jake,” said the art editor, “are you sure this is a good
idea?”
When they’d all gone Jake paused to drink his coffee. On the
table was a proof from the previous week, a double-page spread with Stella’s last
feature. There was a picture of an expensive SUV outside a hotel in some
African city and another of two elegant Nigerian fashion models. Third World, Stop Your Whining, read the
headline. Colonialism did you no harm. Your
Countries Are Fine.
Stella, thought Jake, you were the best.
Hypnotherapy is a legitimate form of treatment that can be helpful to some individuals. Not all patients are suitable and in Britain the NHS warns against it if you have psychosis or some types of personality disorder. It also recommends selecting a hypnotherapist with care through a body such as the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society (NCPS) or the National Hypnotherapy Society (HS). Past-life regression is a specific form of hypnotherapy and Is not recognised by all professionals. For further information, see Willin, M. (2016): Past Life Regression in Psi Encyclopedia (London: The Society for Psychical Research). It is available online here.
More short fiction from Mike:
