Chapter 3

On March 23rd, the manuscript continued, Wilcox failed to appear; and
inquiries at his quarters revealed that he had been stricken with an
obscure sort of fever and taken to the home of his family in Waterman
Street. He had cried out in the night, arousing several other artists
in the building, and had manifested since then only alternations of
unconsciousness and delirium. My uncle at once telephoned the family,
and from that time forward kept close watch of the case; calling
often at the Thayer Street office of Dr. Tobey, whom he learned to
be in charge. The youth’s febrile mind, apparently, was dwelling on
strange things; and the doctor shuddered now and then as he spoke of
them. They included not only a repetition of what he had formerly
dreamed, but touched wildly on a gigantic thing “miles high” which
walked or lumbered about. He at no time fully described this object,
but occasional frantic words, as repeated by Dr. Tobey, convinced the
professor that it must be identical with the nameless monstrosity
he had sought to depict in his dream-sculpture. Reference to this
object, the doctor added, was invariably a prelude to the young man’s
subsidence into lethargy. His temperature, oddly enough, was not
greatly above normal; but the whole condition was otherwise such as to
suggest true fever rather than mental disorder.

On April 2nd at about 3 p. m. every trace of Wilcox’s malady suddenly
ceased. He sat upright in bed, astonished to find himself at home and
completely ignorant of what had happened in dream or reality since the
night of March 22nd. Pronounced well by his physician, he returned
to his quarters in three days; but to Professor Angell he was of no
further assistance. All traces of strange dreaming had vanished with
his recovery, and my uncle kept no record of his night-thoughts after a
week of pointless and irrelevant accounts of thoroughly usual visions.

* * * * *

Here the first part of the manuscript ended, but references to certain
of the scattered notes gave me much material for thought–so much, in
fact, that only the ingrained skepticism then forming my philosophy
can account for my continued distrust of the artist. The notes in
question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons
covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his
strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a
prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends
whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports
of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time
past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but
he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any
ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original
correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and
really significant digest. Average people in society and business–New
England’s traditional “salt of the earth”–gave an almost completely
negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless
nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March
23rd and April 2nd–the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific
men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description
suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there
is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.

It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came,
and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to
compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half
suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having
edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently
resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow
cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been
imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told
a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion
of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams
being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s
delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported
scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described;
and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless
thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with
emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with
leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on
the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later
after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of
hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely
by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal
investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a
few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often
wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as
puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever
reach them.