Hypnotizing Maria

Chapman’s departed husband,” he suggested to a teenage girl, “standing before you now. Can you describe Mister Chapman for us?”
    “Yes, sir,” she said, unblinking. “He’s tall, slender, brown eyes, black hair combed straight back, a small mustache. He smiles as though he is awfully happy. He is wearing what look like riding clothes, formal and ... dashing, I guess you’d call it, a black bow tie ...”
    After her description his photograph flashed onscreen for the audience to see, the man in different clothes, but as she said. A sling supported his arm, sprained or broken not long before the photo was taken, but it was the man, all right. Somehow she saw him, unless the girl was cheating, already clued about the subject, which Jamie Forbes doubted.
    “He loved riding, and his horse ...,” his widow whispered to Blacksmyth, then repeated it, a soft voice in the microphone, when he asked her to tell the audience.
    So it went, as Blacksmyth delivered on his promise, astonishing powers brought forth, from people as ordinary as Jamie himself had been the evening before.
    Is this audience, he wondered, all past-show volunteers, trying to understand what happened to us last week?
    It was all he could do to keep from reliving his own trance, came the show’s final act. There the three volunteers on stage. One stepped back as the hypnotist pressed gently on a shoulder, the second began to fall and was caught at once, the third resisted the touch. First and third excused with thanks and applause, courtesy somehow important to the showman.
    Jamie strained to catch Blacksmyth’s words, softly spoken to the remaining volunteer, tried to read his lips. All he caught was the word “voyage.” The hypnotist said something different to her than he had to Jamie the night before, took a few more seconds with her.
    “And what is your name, ma’am?” he asked for all to hear.
    “Lonnie,” she replied, a firm voice.
    “That is correct!” he said. Waiting for the laughter to die, he raised his voice, continued. “Now Lonnie, have you and I ever met, have we ever seen each other before this evening?”
    “No.”
    “That is true,” he said. “Lonnie, if you will kindly step this way...”
    Nothing could Jamie Forbes see that pointed an arrow: “Hypnotist,” toward the man on stage; no label for her: “Already in Trance.” Just two people walking slowly together, an everyday moment.
    They moved from the edge of the stage to the center. She continued three steps farther by herself, as though unaware she was alone, turned, and began to look about her.
    Jamie’s hands went cold. He knew what she was seeing: walls, stone, the prison cell. But there was nothing around her. Nothing. Air. Stage. Audience. Not the sheerest curtain, no mirrors, no tricks of lighting.
    Yet her face clouded, as he knew his had. What had become of the door? Where had Blacksmyth gone?
    It hadn’t occurred to him: where was the light coming from? Nor did it occur to her. He wondered if she saw the burnt torch-mark on the stone.
    He watched her reach to the invisible wall, touch it. Push against it, move left, push again.
    She may be imagining a different sort of stone, he thought, but she had created it just as hard, just as solid.
    “Hello ...” she said. “Can anybody hear me?”
    The audience chuckled, of course we can hear you. We’re right here!
    Jamie Forbes didn’t smile. About now, he had been a little frightened.
    Frightened of what? Why had he been afraid?
    Trapped, that’s why. Locked in stone. No doors, no windows, stone ceiling stone floor . . . bug in a teacup, no way out.
    All of it wrong, he thought, watching. Blacksmyth had said to walk down the steps, had murmured something more. At the bottom of the steps was the door. Every minute as real as yesterday. Tonight he saw it differently—the stage, an empty stage with that poor woman walled by her own mind.
    The audience smiled, fascinated, while it was all Jamie could do to keep himself in the seat, stop himself from bolting down the aisle to the stage, rescue her, save her ...
    From what, Jamie, he thought, save her from what? How do you unhypnotize someone sunk deep in knowing that massive walls which you cannot see are pressing in on her, imprisoning her, no food no water, air itself running out?
    Who could have reached him, told him his walls were fantasy and made him believe it?
    I wouldn’t have seen rescuers, he thought. Not until they were close