Free The White Hands and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels

about having communicated with the dead. He insisted that a horrible secret had been revealed to him. Investigation of the transcripts he had made whilst experiencing the visitations revealed disturbing hints about the nature of consciousness after death. But the most extraordinary claim of all was that he had begun to communicate with his own dead spirit. However, he would not be drawn on the exact nature of these exchanges. What was apparent was that his mental state had suffered a dramatic collapse and, only a few weeks later, he was found to have committed suicide. There were those in the Society who followed in his wake, unable to resist the lure of the forbidden knowledge that their dead selves might impart to them. Those who did not succumb to the temptation abandoned all association with psychic research. There were hints that the revelations experienced were based on the concept that it is the dead that sustain the structure of the waking world through their dreams and that all living existence is illusory.
    When Slokker came to a part of the pamphlet featuring a sepia photograph, one hundred years old, of the members of the Société des âmes mortes, he nearly dropped the thing in fright. Even had there not been a list of names beneath the photograph, he would have recognised the face of the man in the second row at the extreme right. It was that of Deschamps, or some identical ancestor. But this was not the worst of it. The other faces also seemed familiar, though they were blurred. One had a curious resemblance to the old concierge. And sitting next to him was someone whose identity could scarcely be mistaken. It was Slokker’s own face that stared back at him from the photograph.
     
    ***
     
    Although Slokker tried to dismiss these strange events and revelations from his mind, he found that his nightly compulsion to return and gaze into the mirror of the psychomantium was overwhelming. The drugs helped him to sleep and he still had recourse to binding his feet to the bed, but events soon overtook him, despite all of his precautions.  
    One morning, just as he had finished shaving, the mirror above the sink filled with the silvery-white glare. Slokker’s normal, bleary-eyed reflection was replaced with an image of his leering corpse-face. Its eyes had sunk deep into black-rimmed sockets and the yellowish skin stretched tight over the skull, drawing the lips back from teeth made prominent by the flesh’s decay. Hair was plastered down horribly across its mottled forehead. The face was close enough to touch and though it materialised for only a moment Slokker could trace each lineament of decay. It seemed to lean forward towards him, confidentially, and whispered:
    ‘You are simply a dream . . . and I am tired of dreaming.’
    Then it was gone.
     
    ***
     
    After that, Slokker could not bear to be alone. For hours, he tramped the streets of the city, seeking people, crowds. He sat in cafés during the afternoon and mingled with revellers in the evenings, but despite all his efforts to join in he was gripped by the idea that all this was merely scenery, abandoned backstage.  
    While he was out drinking himself into a state of oblivion in a bar close to Sacre Coeur, a group of his fellow medical students came across him, slumped over a corner table. They pressed their company upon him, enquiring after his health with real concern. Slokker was glad of their attentions and lost himself in evasion and claims that he would soon return to the University and complete his studies. But as his drunken elation reached its height, when even he half-believed that his fears were caused by nothing more than nervous exhaustion that would be overcome with time, he happened to glance at a mirror hanging on the wall behind one of his friend’s heads. There again was the silvery brightness and his dead, decaying face twisted into an expression of malign contempt. But this time it was not a momentary visitation; the image