Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/85

 his teeth and washing his face were easy. No ordeal there. But shaving was a shuddering time of terror that had to be agonized through every morning.

And now...

"It's impossible!"

But it was possible.

It was there... plain to see... plain to see.

Even as his eyes clung to the mirror, and his mouth was drawn thin with horror, his reflection was laughing at him. His hand stole to his face... his reflected hand didn't. There were new lines in his face, but his mirrored face was full and untroubled. His eyelids twitched uncontrollably, but not so in the likeness that was flung back at him. Horribly, silently, the face in the mirror kept laughing and laughing.

It had been a week ago that he had first noticed. A week ago that his reflection had rebelled. A week ago that his mirrored personality had begun defying him. It might have begun sooner, He hadn't noticed... until...

Until one morning it had winked obscenely at him. And ever since...

E REMEMBERED, now, the ancient Germanic legend of the man who had met his double. It had been wringing its hands. Death. He fought himself, but his eyes shot toward his reflection. It was grinning... wringing its hands....

The psychiatrist wielded his pen with sure, broad strokes. A man untroubled by personal ghosts. A man who slew the morbid fancies and terrorizing thoughts of others. He scratched a last notation, his lips forming the inaudible words "psychosis ... auto-suggestion...."

Jay squirmed forward in his chair as the psychiatrist leaned back and studied him.

"Does... does it mean I am crazy?"

The other's full, rich carefully practiced tones fell upon Jay Swarz like a protective benediction: "No. Absolutely not. You are as sane as... well, as I am." This last accompanied by a resonant chuckle.

"Then the thing I see can't hurt me?"

"It is impossible for it to hurt you. Impossible, because you do not see it."

"But Doctor—"

"Please. A moment." Well-manicured fingers interlaced themselves across a well-padded stomach. "From what you have told me, you are a man pursued by phantoms. It is not you fault, Mr. Swarz. You have related how your boyhood was completely dominated by a thorough abnegation of healthy emotion. No outlets. No outlets at all. Well, sir, what is the result?"

"What?"

"As you grew older, Mr. Swarz, you cast off the narrow outlook with which you were most effectively swaddled. You didn't know it, but you did. And, due to the inexorable law of nature, you began to think for yourself. That, of course, brought its... er... problems.

I... don't understand."

"Let us put it this way. A man who has been perishing of thirst will not allow logic to stand in his way when he is confronted with plenteous water. He will drink and drink until he is uncomfortably sated. If undeterred he will become rather sick. You, Mr. Swarz, are that thirsty man."

"I... see...."

"Exactly. You had a thirst for normalcy. It was, during your childhood, consistently denied to you. You left 3—