Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”

I told ’Gene that here was evidence of the subconscious mind throwing up something which had been buried deep into it years before.

“I know nothing about that,” said he; “but as I lay there repeating those words over and over a great peace came to me. The shapes at my side disappeared, and I could walk away from that frightful place. Then I felt a hand on my head which somehow I recognized, and another smaller hand caught at my thumb. They loosened those hateful bandages and let in the light. Then I saw—as I seemed to know I should—my wife sitting beside me, and the little girl holding my hand.”

I could assure ’Gene that I completely believed his story, for I have also felt the strong emotions and imaginings which stir the deaf at such times. Always the head noises grow louder when light is withdrawn from our hearing eyes, and the voices which go with subjective hearing become more pronounced. Probably the deaf are more sensitive to subconscious thought than are those who hear well; we are deprived of much of the sound which stimulates many trains of conscious thought. Also we deaf must naturally deal with the past where most subconscious thought is buried. I believe that the deaf hold very closely to memories and associations of childhood—our long, quiet hours of reflection are largely filled with remembering the most vivid impressions we have received.

Perhaps this accounts for some of the terror which the darkness brings. Many of us remember the horrible shapes which peopled the black night around our beds, and lurked in shadowy corners, often emerging to dance grotesquely in the moonlight. When I was the “boy” on a New England farm there was only one room in the house which was reasonably warm in Winter, but at eight o’clock the old farmer would point with unmistakable significance to the tall clock in the corner, and there was nothing for me to do but to rush through the cold parlor, up the colder stairs into the still colder attic, where my bed was in the shadow of the great central chimney. Needless to say, I undressed in bed. Then down under the covers I lay and trembled at the snap of the frost. Once a piece of plaster fell from the unfinished wall above me and struck my shoulder; again “Malty,” the gray cat, crawled in through a hole in the roof and sprang upon my bed, striking terror to my soul, though she really came as an old friend. The appearance of this unknown crawling thing on my bed inspired a frenzy of fear—but I knew that it would do me no good to scream or call for help. My aunt was deaf, while my uncle slept like the proverbial log; both log and deaf ear are alike, unresponsive to sound. Also, I realized that the journey downstairs with my story would have been unprofitable (and freezing!). I should have been sent back with a scolding and perhaps a blow. My own little children sometimes waken in the night with some of these vague terrors, and I have known them to run through the dark to their mother’s bed, where they are always taken in. My old folks were not cruel or even consciously unkind; they merely lived in an arid region where understanding and imagination could not come. They knew nothing of ghosts and goblins, so why should a child fear them? Darkness was really a good thing, if one didn’t waste lamp oil. So I lay alone with the terrors until sleep banished them. I could not see that they must be futile, since such an unsubstantial foe as sleep could master them.

Of course, thousands of grey-haired persons can recall just such terrifying childhood situations. Usually as we grow older the memories fade away, though they are never entirely lost; they are probably waiting in the subconsciousness for darkness and a worried mind to bring them forth. They are clearer to the deaf, and nearer to the surface of consciousness; hence they are more easily roused to play their strange tricks upon us. It seems strange to me that novelists have rather neglected this strong emotion of fear, and it is particularly remarkable that they have seemed to slight the mighty struggle to overcome it, which all deaf people know.

Some years ago I planned to visit a New England town to attend a college celebration. I had never been in this particular locality before, but I supposed I should find a large town with full hotel accommodations, so I took a night train. At about eleven I alighted at the railroad station, and, to my astonishment, found myself in complete darkness. The train made but a brief stop; it hurried off like a living thing, glad to escape from the lonely place. I watched the last glimmer of its rear light disappear around a distant curve, and then I was completely wrapped in a dense, inky blackness, through which I could feel the moist fingers of a thick, creeping fog. They seemed to clutch at my face and throat. For an instant the old wild terror seized me, and then there came an impulse to rush through the blackness desperately—anywhere—to escape the clinging things which seemed to be reaching for me. But I stood still, and finally there came to me a sort of amused sense of adventure—I remembered the night in the hotel when I wandered about the dark passage and ran into a drunken man. The fight sobered him, and as he led me back to my room he thanked me, for he said that his wife was waiting up for him.

Now my first thought was to locate the railroad station. That would at least prove a starting point; but I had absolutely no idea in which direction to start, for I could not even tell whether any buildings at all were near. The last light on the train had traveled east, but I had turned around several times since I watched it out of sight. I dared not call out; I remembered the deaf man who was shot and nearly killed under similar circumstances. Being lost in the darkness, he called for help, not knowing that he was near a farmhouse. The farmer heard him and pointed a gun from the window, calling:

“What do you want? Stand still or I’ll fire!”

The deaf man continued to advance; the farmer fired at random and shot him down. I knew better than to call out in the darkness. I did not even dare walk freely about, for I know of a man who in the darkness about a railroad station ran into a mowing-machine; another became entangled in a roll of barbed wire. These incidents stayed in my mind quite vividly, and I will confess that I got down on my hands and knees and crawled carefully in what I hoped was the direction of the station. Foot by foot I crept along, and at last I came up against what I took to be a picket fence. Then a dull light began to glow down the track. The midnight freight rumbled by, and its headlight showed the station behind me. I had crossed the road in my travels, and now I slowly recrossed it. With arms outstretched, I ran into the building. I carefully groped my way around it, much as a blind man would have felt his way along a wall. But he would travel with greater confidence, trusting to his ears to warn him of approaching danger. I passed one corner and proceeded to the other side, but suddenly there came to me a feeling that someone was near me in the dark! I cannot describe the uncanny, “crawly” sensation which envelops a deaf person when he senses an unseen presence. I suffered acutely until I actually ran into a man who also seemed to be feeling his way along the wall. He told me afterward that he had spoken to me several times, but, of course, I did not answer. Happily he had no pistol or he would have fired. As it was, each clutched the throat of the other, and we struggled like two wild animals. I had the stronger grip, and I think I know the vulnerable point in the throat. At any rate, his hand dropped, and I knew from the quiver inside his throat that he was gasping for breath.