I mean, he disappeared. I stood there, not believing my eyes: He was gone. Suddenly I felt woozy, spun around or thought that I did, and found myself sitting at my desk, head slumped over on it, resting on my arms. Ram-Ram definitely was not in the room. The only conclusion I could rationally draw was that I’d fallen asleep after he left, and dreamed that he’d disappeared. Then why didn’t I remember him leaving? I reached for my drink. It wasn’t there! My gaze flew about the room. There were no used glasses on the end tables. There was no bottle of liquor either. I rushed into the kitchen and to my amazement found the bottle in the cupboard with no indication it had been moved.

Nearly beside myself, I walked as calmly as I could back to the living room. The wicker chair sat where it always had. This time I poured myself a real drink and sat down to collect my thoughts. Ram-Ram hadn’t been here at all. I hadn’t moved the wicker chair into the hall. The entire episode had been a dream then, I decided. As soon as I finished my notes, I must have fallen asleep and my concern about Ram-Ram and my need to talk to someone must have triggered—

My thoughts broke off. The dream explanation just wouldn’t do. The entire interview had been too clear. I began to think that despite … everything … in some way, Ram-Ram had been here. Had I moved the chair in the same unknown fashion? Was Ram-Ram actually still in the hospital? I tried not to ask the next question, but could not avoid it. Had Ram-Ram been here in an out-of-body state?

He couldn’t have heard the typewriter if he wasn’t home. So how did he know about the manuscript? Or, impossible as it seemed, was the affair all my own creation, not a dream, but a complete hallucination? If so, I was in trouble. Again I worried for my own sanity, but I was actually too angry—healthily angry, I thought—to think I was mad. I had seen Ram-Ram. Now I refused to doubt my own perception. And I hate practical jokers. So if Ram-Ram had played some kind of psychological or psychic trick on me, I was going to get to the bottom of it.

In other words, I decided to go over to the sanatorium later that very afternoon.

Chapter Seventeen

Ram-Ram the Godologist and Case History 9871: J. Christ