May and her parents were Christian Scientists, part of a little congregation in Glenrock. Derek had read lots of books about the afterlife and telepathy and dream interpretation, and when May first started telling him about her religion, he was very interested. It didn’t sound like the usual boring church stuff. The Christian Scientists believed in faith healing and the power of prayer; they wouldn’t let doctors come near them. He was amazed when he learned that May had never received a single vaccination shot.
For days he asked her constantly about the church. He would have done anything to be with her every minute of every day, so when she invited him to come to Sunday school with her, he happily accepted. To prepare him, and because she didn’t know where the church stood on poltergeists and telekinesis, she lent him her copies of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, whose pages were cluttered with little jangling metal markers and underlined in pale-blue chalk. It didn’t take him long to find passages about hypnosis, mesmerism, and animal magnetism. Mary Baker Eddy, the church founder, went on about them at length, and with great vehemence.
Derek considered himself an expert in hypnosis. He had studied the Selkirk book until he knew the inductions almost by heart. He had looked at several other scientific manuals in the adult sections of the Glenrock Public Library. At one time or another, he had hypnotized all the kids in the park—all except May, that is—without complication, and to everyone’s great enjoyment.
He soon discovered that Mary Baker Eddy was full of misconceptions about hypnosis; her opinions were tantamount to superstition. She believed under hypnosis the subject surrendered his will, falling totally under the power of the hypnotist. She thought the hypnotist enslaved his subject through the use of magical passes. This might have been understandable in Mary Eddy’s case. At the time she was writing, so-called mesmerists had traveled the country performing in side shows, using hypnosis for stunts and entertainment, playing on the primitive fears of their rustic audience. She had been deluded by wild, vaudevillian hype.
But so much time had passed! Hypnosis was a science now. There was no such thing as animal magnetism. Trances were induced not by mesmeric passes but by guided relaxation. Dentists, psychiatrists, and doctors used hypnosis regularly. It was safe. It was scientific. There was no reason in the world for modern Christian Scientists to hold onto Mary Baker Eddy’s antiquated misconceptions, when hypnosis was so safe and practical that even a twelve-year-old could master it!
By the time Sunday came around, Derek was ready with his arguments. His mother let out the cuffs of his one good suit, teasing him gently about going to church for the sake of a girl when he had never shown interest before. May’s parents pulled up in their big black Mercury—fat with fins and gleaming chrome, but slow and somehow stately. May’s parents were quiet and pleasant but rather starved looking, like apple dolls carved too thin and dried too long. They had lived in the desert for many years before moving here. Derek had never seen May’s father wearing anything except a white shirt, black slacks, thin black tie, and hard black shoes. Her mother dressed simply; her only accessory was a black pillbox hat with a veil. They said very little on the drive into Glenrock. He sat nervously in the back seat, regretting he had come, until May quietly took his hand and gave him a smile that made everything all right.
The Sunday school teacher, by contrast, was plump and quick and merry. After the sermon, she took Derek by the hand and led him downstairs to one of a half-dozen big round tables where children were gathering in groups with other teachers.
She introduced Derek all around, and May blushed when the teacher said that Derek was her special friend, and wasn’t it wonderful that she had brought Derek along to church? The teacher opened to the first passage they’d been assigned to study, but as soon as she asked if there were any questions, Derek politely put up his hand.
“Oh, Derek how wonderful. What do you want to ask?”
“Something about hypnosis.”
“Well, that wasn’t part of the assignment, but—well, you’re our guest today, so go right ahead. Does everyone understand what Derek’s talking about?”
The other children nodded with huge eyes; under the table May squeezed Derek’s hand. He cleared his throat and stood up.
“Mary Baker Eddy has it all wrong,” he said.
The teacher nodded politely, as if she hadn’t heard him, then cocked her head. “Maybe you could tell us what you mean by that,” she said, still very pleasant because he was after all a guest and she was just naturally a very nice lady.
“I know a lot about it,” he said. “I mean—I’ve done it myself.”
“Have you now?”
“And I’ve studied it, and it’s not at all what she says. It’s scientific. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“That’s very interesting, Derek. I’m not sure the other children here have studied the passages about hypnosis; it’s a little grown-up for them.”
“I have,” said a girl at the table.
“It’s animal magnetism!” a boy said giddily.
The fearful thrill in their voices told Derek they had perused those sections most eagerly of all.
“Only God should control your soul,” said another girl, turning livid eyes on Derek. “Hypnosis is evil.”
“Now, Lisa, Derek is our guest—”
“What is animal magnetism?”
“They can turn you into a bar of iron and walk all over you!”
“It’s like when a snake sees a bird and the bird gets hypnotized—”
“I heard about one guy who thought he was a dog—”
“Children…”
“—and it stands there staring until the snake eats it.”
“—and whenever you said ‘Here, boy!’ he’d get down on all fours and start barking!”
“Children, that’s enough now.”
“Evil,” said the girl again, still glaring at Derek.
“He is not,” said May, clutching Derek’s hand harder now. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“Please, May, Samantha, settle down. I think we’d better get back to our lesson plan, if that’s all right with you.” She gave Derek a big smile. “Now if you’d like to put together a presentation on hypnosis, we’d be glad to hear what you have to say. It sounds very interesting.”
He had expected more argument from her. Flustered, he could only nod. He had been hoping to impress May with his arguments, but instead the teacher had avoided an argument altogether; she seemed all too willing to listen, at the proper time.
After the meeting, he expected some repercussion—perhaps the teacher would take May’s parents aside and whisper about him—but nothing of the sort transpired. They bundled back into the car, Derek carrying a handful of literature for church youth. He read articles about faith healing, including one about a boy who’d gotten a terrible haircut and prayed to God to fix it and make everything better; but in fact what happened was God helped the boy be at peace with his haircut, which was a more economical solution than magically transforming the hair itself. Even so, Derek was disappointed to learn that the “miracles” of Christian Science were really rather prosaic.
But if his debate on the truth about hypnosis had lacked a climax, it had at least impressed and intrigued May, who began to question him about what the hypnotic state was like—a question he couldn’t answer, since no one had ever been able to hypnotize Derek himself. He’d let other kids in the trailer park read the inductions from the book, playing the part of hypnotist, but Derek was not susceptible to suggestion. He wanted desperately to go into trances, to have the wild mental adventures he dreamed up for the other kids, but no. He was always the one in control, the wide-awake logical one, concocting dreams but never involved in them. He was able to put himself into mild self-hypnotic states, where he felt adrift and sleepy, but it wasn’t the same as delivering yourself into the hands of a guide.