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“You begin with the toes, one at a time. You make your toes die. You will them to die. And if you’ve got the belief and the will your toes will die. That is the big job—to start the dying. Once you’ve got the first toe dead, the rest is easy. Then you put all your will into making the rest of the body die. I tell you, Darrell, I know. I’ve done it three times.
“By-and-by your legs are dead to the knees, and then to the thighs, and you are just the same as you always were.”
“And then what happens?” I queried.
“Well, when your body is all dead, you just leave your body. And when you leave your body you leave the cell. Stone walls and iron doors are to hold bodies in. They can’t hold the spirit in. You see, you are spirit outside of your body. You can look at your body from outside of it. I tell you I know because I have done it three times—looked at my body lying there with me outside of it.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” Jake Oppenheimer rapped his laughter.
“You see, that’s Jake’s trouble,” Morrell went on. “He can’t believe. That one time he tried it he was too strong and failed. And now he thinks I am kidding.”
“When you die you are dead, and dead men stay dead,” Oppenheimer retorted.
“I tell you I’ve been dead three times,” Morrell argued.
“And lived to tell us about it,” Oppenheimer jeered.
“But don’t forget one thing, Darrell,” Morrell rapped to me. “It is very risky. You have a feeling all the time that you are free. I can’t explain it, but I always had a feeling if I was away when they came and let my body out of the jacket that I couldn’t get back into my body again. I mean that my body would be dead. And I didn’t want it to be dead. I didn’t want to give Captain Jamie and the rest that satisfaction. But I tell you, Darrell, if you can make it you can laugh at the Warden. Once you make your body die that way it doesn’t matter whether they keep you in the jacket a month on end. You don’t suffer anymore, and your body doesn’t suffer. You know there are many people who have slept a whole year at a time. That will be with your body. It just stays there in the jacket, not hurting or anything, just waiting for you to come back. Try it.”
“And if he doesn’t come back?” Oppenheimer, asked.
“Then we will laugh at him, I guess, Jake,” Morrell answered. “Or, maybe, he will laugh at us: we are in this old dump when we could get away very easily.”
And here the conversation ended.
I lay long there in the silence, thinking about that Morrell’s proposition. Morrell’s method was so different from my method of self-hypnosis that I was interested in it. By my method, my consciousness went first of all. By his method, consciousness persisted last of all, and passed into stages so sublimated that it left the body, left the prison of San Quentin, and journeyed afar, and was still consciousness.
It was worth trying, anyway, I concluded. And, despite my sceptical attitude, I believed. I had no doubt I could do what Morrell said he had done three times.
Chapter X
Next morning Warden Atherton came into my cell to kill me. Next morning Warden Atherton came into my cell to kill me. His face showed it. His actions proved it. With him were Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, Pie-Face Jones[29], and Al Hutchins[30]. Al Hutchins was a prisoner, but he for four years he had been head trusty[31] of San Quentin.
“Examine him,” Warden Atherton ordered Doctor Jackson. “Will he stand it?”
“Yes,” Doctor Jackson answered.
“How’s the heart?”
“Splendid.”
“You think he’ll stand ten days of it, Doc?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t believe it,” the Warden a
I obeyed, stretching myself face-downward on the flat-spread jacket. The Warden seemed to debate with himself for a moment.
“Roll over,” he commanded.
I made several efforts, but was too weak to succeed, and could only sprawl and squirm in my helplessness.
So they rolled me over on my back, where I stared up into Warden Atherton’s face.
“Standing,” he said slowly, “I am sick and tired of your stubbor
He paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly.
“Well, if you don’t, you will put this jacket on. For ten days.”
The prospect was terrifying. I was very weak. Warden knew that it meant death in the jacket. And then I remembered Morrell’s trick. Now was the time to practise it. I smiled.
“These college guys are crazy,” Captain Jamie snorted.
“Warden,” I said quietly. “You can cinch me as tight as you please, but if I smile ten days from now will you give some tobacco to Morrell and Oppenheimer?”
“I guess you will die sooner, Standing.”
“That’s your opinion,” I said. “But since you are so sure of it, why don’t you accept my proposition?”
“All right, Standing,” snarled Warden. “Roll him over, boys, and cinch him till you hear his ribs crack. Hutchins, show him you know how to do it.”
And they rolled me over and laced me as I had never been laced before. The head trusty certainly demonstrated his ability. You see, Hutchins was a scoundrel. But I did not believe that I was going to die. I knew—I say I knew—that I was not going to die.
“That’s pretty tight,” Captain Jamie urged reluctantly.
“I tell you,” said Doctor Jackson, “nothing can hurt him. He ought to have been dead long ago.”
Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefinger between the lacing and my back.
“Hutchins,” he said. “You know your job. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”
They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket, and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.
“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the Warden to me.
I was able to smile up into the Warden’s face.
Chapter XI
The door clanged. I managed to writhe myself across the floor until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. I could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.
But though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying the experiment, he was prevented by the guards from replying.
I remember my serenity of mind. The customary pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Never was a man in better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Of course, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there was more to it. I had neither doubts nor fears.
I began my concentration of will. My body was numbing and prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die. There was the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me that it would be so. But I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint by joint it had died under the compulsion of my will.
The rest was easy, but slow. Joint by joint, toe by toe, all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the process went on. My flesh below the ankles had ceased. All below my knees had ceased.
29
Pie-Face Jones – Конопатый Джонс
30
Al Hutchins – Эл Хэтчинс
31
head trusty – главный староста