"Better. They're abstractions, like triangles and circles and things. And they're fitted together in order. The triangle with the circle in it and the square comes around it and it moves all very smoothly, and it makes me feel better." (Note: When people are asked at random to draw the first figure that enters their minds, 30 percent will draw a triangle.

Nobody knows why this is the case.)

"Did she want you to feel better?"

"I don't know. Nobody said anything about it to me."

"This person — you saw somebody when you were twelve years old. Was that the same sort of person?"

"Yeah."

"Exactly?"

"I don't know. Looks about the same."

"You said she was very tall and thin."

"She's always sitting down. She's got a lotta legs and arms."

" A lot?"

"I mean four." (Two legs and two arms.) "But she's so thin, and her arms are especially thin. She has sort of hands that look like they might have gloves on. You know, I've seen her before."

"Go back to when you saw her before. Try to go back to another time."

"When?"

"Whenever you saw her before."

"I've seen her lots of times."

"Lots of times?"

"Sure. I've seen her lots of times. I hate to think about that. Christ. I really do. Really do.

It's very hard to think about that. It's like I'm being horsewhipped. I'm just not going to think about that. I don't want to think about it."

At this point Dr. Klein no longer wished to continue the hypnosis because of my evident distress and awakened me. My first words on waking up were, "It was like my head was in a vise right at the end. Like I was being beaten, whipped. Horrible Why would it be that intense?"

"It seems like there's a lot of bad feeling here."

"It was like a stone. A stone blocking me."

The night after that hypnosis session I became aware of an almost palpable presence before me. It was the image of her. After my careful scrutiny it had lingered past hypnosis into my conscious life. As I walked home that night I could see it before me just as it had been in the long room, staring at me with its great, dark eyes.

I had the impression during hypnosis that I had been going somewhere that afternoon, someplace I wasn't supposed to go, almost as if, having been drawn to buy a house in that particular area in the first place, I was overreacting to the impetus and was on my way right into their laps. Can it be that there is some sort of lodgement or projection into physical reality where these manifestations congregate? Or is it simply that visitors have established a base in the general neighborhood... or, perhaps, have been there since time immemorial.