The distressed parents finally forgot the unfortunate incident, but the child never did. In the recesses of his memory a grotesque and hideous mask wavered always just out of sight, awaiting its chance to loom out of the darkness, awaiting the sudden unexpected moment when it would leap into light and petrify him with pure terror.
The show window of a toy store might bring it lunging out at him. He might be swept with acute panic upon glancing up at a billboard advertising a traveling sideshow. Once he nearly fainted on the street when a weirdly masked "Man from Mars"—advertising a local movie—strode around a corner in front of him.
The fear remained with him through his childhood, through his adolescence and on into full maturity. It seemed impervious to the rationalizing of his adult years. It would not be argued away. Its roots had pierced the psychic marrow of his being and resisted all his efforts to wrench them out.
The obsessive fear haunted him to such an extent that he finally consulted a reputable psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist patiently heard him out and then painstakingly explained in simple layman language that his early childhood experience had made an impact on his impressionable, too-vulnerable young mind all out of proportion to its actual importance. He pointed out that the mask fear was far more than a physical one. True, the child had been buffeted by the circus crowd, had been shoved and pushed down between the seats—painfully and perhaps severely bruised. But the fear went deeper than that. When the lights in the circus tent went out, the child had been holding tight to his father's hand. The father represented security, comfort, protection, home. Suddenly the child was hurled into milling blackness and then out of the darkness appeared a hideous leering face which bore down on him with apparent evil intent. So—the psychiatrist explained—in Mr. Apondee's subconscious mind the mask—or any mask—had come to symbolize the loss of security, of stability and protection. It symbolized all of the inherited and acquired fears which lurked in Mr. Apondee's own psychic depths.
Mr. Apondee listened and he was impressed. He felt better. He believed that he now thoroughly understood the origin of the mask terror, and in understanding, he judged, was exorcism.
But this was only partially true. Although the explanation tended to alleviate Mr. Apondee's mask fear, it by no means entirely dispelled the fixation. The fear remained, buried deep in Mr. Apondee's psychic being, and even though it no longer flickered into furious life at the smallest draft of provocation, still it went on smouldering.
In his early thirties Mr. Apondee got married, and if his marriage had its occasional "ups and downs", it was probably no better and no worse than the average. All considered, it might be termed reasonably successful.
Probably Mr. Apondee believed it far more successful than did his spouse. Mrs. Apondee was frequently exasperated by her husband's lack of enterprise, by his timidity and by his tendency to accept rather than alter his lot.
But after the first few years she seldom complained. It did no good, and in any case Mr. Apondee had plenty of laudable qualities. Although his job was a modest one, he worked steadily at it. He didn't drink, nor stay out at night, nor grumble about the meals.