Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (18 page)

Let us examine that idea, since it is
crucial.

Inductive reasoning is when you notice that
little Johnny has bleary eyes, a runny nose, fever, and little red
blotches about the skin, and you pick up the phone and tell Dr.
Jones that Johnny has the measles.

You have taken various noted particulars and
put them together into a general assumption: Johnny has the
measles.

Dr. Jones receives this information, but is
aware that you do not have a medical diploma and do not therefore
belong to the AMA, so he asks you if Johnny has a fever, are his
eyes bleary, and does he have little red blotches upon the body. He
is exercising the deductive mode.

He has taken your general assumption and
broken it back down into particulars.

In a well-organized human
mind, both modes are operating pretty much all the time. If someone
comes up to you and tells you that Johnny has the measles, and you
look at Johnny, and he is exhibiting none of the symptoms of
measles, you are probably going to disagree with that someone—at
least until you take Johnny's temperature and look closely for
spots.

Thus, between the two modes, you exhibit a
certain ability to discriminate reality—what is true and what is
false; you can exercise judgment.

In hypnosis theory, the subconscious is
purely subjective and deductive. It cannot discriminate or judge
sensation or even thought: in fact, it does not think, was not
designed to do so except in a most elemental sense, is merely a
plastic web, so to speak, on which is impressed instructions to the
motor nerves and in which is stored the living memory.

In trance, so the theory goes, the conscious
mind is shoved aside and the subconscious brought to the fore,
under the direct influence of an outside mind, which imparts
information directly onto the receptive, nondiscriminating
subconscious web—which is always there and ready to serve, even in
sleep—in effect bypassing the judgmental functions of the
conscious, or thinking, mind.

So if you are in trance and I tell you it is
very hot in here, you will sweat; if I say it is cold, you will
turn blue and shiver; if I say you have the measles, and the trance
is deep enough, you will break out in spots imitating the measles
rash and you will probably run a fever and develop bleary eyes and
all the other symptoms.

Your subconscious is thus
responding dutifully to the stimuli placed in it and reasoning
deductively to harmonize your body and your being with the truth it
has been told, and it accepts every stimulus as "truth" without
question or even the power to question, because this is what it is
designed to do.

Form, fit, and function; conscious and
subconscious designed to work as a team; aspecting all levels of
human activity; a human soul growing into its own individual
potential for what reason only God knows.

Curious thing about hypnosis, though. A
subject in even the deepest trance does seem to exercise some sort
of threshold judgment in matters very dear to the soul, suggesting
that the duality of functions may not run as deep as may appear;
the mind is still the mind, a cosmic entity, and it may be pushed
just so far.

For example, a person who will not kill in
the waking state cannot be forced to kill in trance. A truly chaste
person awake is a chaste person in trance. The moral imperatives
sometimes take a quirky twist, though: a hypnotized woman who
disrobes entirely without a qualm under hypnotic demand balks at
removing her wedding ring; a man with holes in his socks refuses to
remove his shoes but picks up a dagger and attacks a dummy upon
command; a minister of the gospel will tell ribald stories and
agrees to sexual seduction but will not take the Lord's name in
vain.

Most experimental hypnotists have
discovered, though, that wiles succeed where strong-arms fail.

All sorts of bizarre
effects may be produced by simple suggestion placed into the
subconscious receptive. Through positive hallucination, an oak
tree may appear beside the couch and the subject will describe the
birds in it and even try to catch them if you ask him
to.

Through negative
hallucination, all the furniture in the office may disappear and
the subject will wander around for hours seeking a place to sit
down.

These effects may even be triggered or
"operated" weeks or months following the registration of a
posthypnotic suggestion, with the hypnotist nowhere about.

But I was speaking of wiles.

The woman who will not disrobe may be
tricked into doing so through simple negative hallucination, by
which she believes herself to be alone in the room and preparing
for her bath.

The man who would abruptly awaken if ordered
to kill may be tricked into picking up a knife and attacking the
first person to enter the room if he had been told to expect a
maniac who meant to murder his children and rape his wife.

Is your hypothesis already formed?

Are you ready to leap ahead of me, again,
now?

Please wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Chapter Twenty-Two:
Communicating

"Can you hear me, Karen?"

"Yes, of course, I can hear you."

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you, I am quite
comfortable."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes."

"Who am I?"

"You are Ashton Ford."

"And who are you?"

"I am Karen Highland
..."

"Do I detect a certain confusion in that
response?"

"Is that what you want?"

"I want the truth, Karen, always the truth.
Do not let my questions become your answers. You are not to attempt
to interpret what I want. You are always to reply truthfully, to
the very best of your ability. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, I understand that."

"So, now, tell me ... who are you?"

"I am Karen Highland. And
..."

"Yes?"

"I don't know. I am Karen Highland."

"Okay, let's rest it awhile. Don't become
agitated, just let it rest for now, but we are going to come back
to it, so be ready. How old are you, Karen?"

"I will be twenty-five years old."

"Soon?"

"Yes, soon."

"Any anxiety about that?"

"No."

"Again, though, you seem a bit undecided
about your age. I am going to ask the question again. I want you to
think about it, very carefully, before you give me the answer. How
old are you, Karen, in your totality of expression?"

"In my totality
..."

"Yes."

"I will be twenty-five. I would be thrice
that."

"Say that again."

"I will be twenty-five. I would be thrice
that."

"Should we say, then, that there are two
Karens?"

"If you want to say that."

"It is not what I want, dear. Give me the
truth."

"How many Karens?"

"Yes."

"There is but one Karen."

"One Karen?"

"Yes."

"Let us put it this way, then. To the one
Karen, how old are you?"

"I will be twenty-five."

"To the one who is not Karen, how old are
you?"

"I would be thrice that."

I had stumbled into something hot, already,
hardly a minute into the dialogue. There is an almost eerie quality
to this particular type of session with a subject in very deep
trance, at every time I have experienced it. The personality is
there before you, spread open like a book, though the script is
written in indecipherable symbols; you may turn the pages by verbal
prompting, but only the personality under review may read what is
written there.

So it is a game of wits in which you probe
and the subject responds in usually a very direct and limited way.
However, personalities even in deep trance will sometimes attempt
to evade an honest response and may even openly resist or simply
awaken if you get too close to a moral imperative. In that
connection, please remember the discussion above.

This session with Karen is particularly
eerie. She appears to be wide awake and our eyes often clash, but I
am not dead certain as to who or what is behind those eyes.

"Let us tie this back to the earlier
confusion, Karen, when I asked you to identify yourself, and let us
place these responses regarding identity and age into a single
package, then let us put that package away for the moment. When we
come back to it, though, I will ask you only for the package and
you will give me the package unscrambled in language that I will
understand. Okay?"

"Okay."

"We will give that package
a name. We will call the package Highland. When I ask for Highland,
you will open the package for me. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Who am I?"

"You are still Ashton Ford."

A bit of sarcasm there, see, even in deep
trance. Eerie.

"Why did Karen seek out Ashton Ford and
engage his services?"

"Why?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because ... Karen is in trouble."

Hell, I was not sure as to exactly whom I
was dealing with now.

"Karen is in trouble?"

"Serious trouble, yes."

"How can Ashton Ford help Karen in this
trouble?"

"He is doing so. Keep it up."

Eerie, yeah. I was not talking to Karen,
now, though the voice seemed the same. Whomever I was working with,
at this point, did not seem to be "in trance." Yet Karen definitely
was in the deepest of trances.

"There is a sexual confusion?"

"Yes. But that is minor and easily overcome.
You understand the problem, Ashton. Do not abandon her."

"To whom am I speaking?"

"You are speaking to Karen."

Yes, at that very moment, I was. This may
seem very confusing—and I must admit to a certain confusion within
myself, at this point, but already I was beginning to pick up the
subtle nuances of the play unfolding here.

Let me see if I can explain it, as I was
beginning to understand it, myself, in some coherent fashion. Karen
was in hypnotic trance—probably as deep a trance as any I had ever
witnessed. In that mode, her personality was spread before me in a
most receptive state. I could ask it questions and it would
respond, using Karen's regular motor functions as the vehicle of
expression. But another personality, another entity that did not
appear to have its source in that trance-receptive mind, was also
present—perhaps no closer, physically, to Karen than I was, but
nevertheless present and also using Karen's regular motor
functions as a vehicle of expression.

If that sounds confusing to you, here, think
of what it was doing to me, there.

"Are you still comfortable, Karen?"

"Yes."

"You have no discomfort or pain of any
kind?"

"I have no discomfort or pain of any
kind."

"That was not a suggestion. It was a
question."

"I understand. I am fine, thank you."

"Great. Stay comfortable.
I am going to ask a very important question. Stay comfortable while
you examine the question and give me the truthful answer. Did you
kill Carl Powell?"

"No. I killed the werewolf."

"Which werewolf is that?"

"The one that was in possession of
Carl."

"Who told you that a werewolf was in
possession of Carl?"

"The operator told me."

"Which operator was that?"

"The one immediately preceding you."

"Give me a name."

(Silence).

"Give me a name, Karen."

"I don't remember the name." There was a
pause, then one of those subtle shifts. "There is a blockage
there."

I was getting help, from God knows
where.

"Work around the block."

"We cannot work around the block."

Maybe I did not tell you during the earlier
discussion: A hypnotic suggestion (read that, command) can have
both a positive and a negative connotation. The subject's own name
may be "blocked" by the simple suggestion that he will no longer be
able to remember it. Even a numerical concept may be blocked: tell
a subject that the number three no longer exists and he cannot
perform mathematical computations involving that number. He will
not be able, even, to utter the word or to evince a "three"
concept.

The most significant thing
to me, though, in this particular connection, was the information
that "We cannot work around the block." Wherever the help was
coming from, it was limited by the physical route. So maybe that
"other personality"—whatever or whomever—was in pretty much the
same relation to "in-trance Karen" as I was. Interesting idea.
There she lay, between us, both of us using her.

"We will let it go for now, then, and maybe
we will come back to it later. Stay comfortable."

"I am comfortable."

"Okay. Think about this carefully, now,
before you answer. Did you kill your mother and father?"

"I killed my mother."

"Your mother is ... ?"

"Dead."

"Yes, but give me your mother's name."

"My mother's name was Elena."

"You killed Elena?"

"Yes."

"How did you do that?"

"I blew up the boat."

"But you did not kill your father?"

"No."

"He was on the same boat, wasn't he?"

"No."

"No? TJ was not on the boat?"

"TJ was on the boat. I killed TJ too."

"Let's do this again, Karen. Did you kill
your mother and father?"

"I killed Elena and TJ."

"But you did not kill your father?"

"No."

"Who killed him, then?"

"The cancer killed him."

Well, hell, where were we headed? Never
mind, I knew exactly where we were headed. And it scared hell out
of me.