"Kate Wilhelm - Julian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

That night he had another nightmare, the third that week. He did not call
anyone, or make any noise, and when he got up he did not turn on any lights
for fear his mother would come to see what was wrong. He sat in a straight
chair in his dark bedroom, shivering and wide-eyed. There was no memory of
what the nightmare had been about. Only when he began to fall asleep in the
chair, sitting upright, did he go back to bed.

....

He got by in high school, and his first years of college. He knew he was a
constant source of disappointment to his parents, and he was a constant
source of unhappiness to himself because of his own behavior that he realized
was highly neurotic. He had irrational dislikes that set him apart from
others. He would not shower or bathe. He washed all over, using as little
water as possible. He refused to go swimming, or to participate in any water
sport at all. If it rained he carried an umbrella and wore gloves, no matter
what month or what the temperature was. He knew he was considered a prude
because he did not like girlie magazines or nudie shows. People probably
thought he was a latent homosexual because he avoided girls altogether. He
knew he was afraid of them, and that this fear was as senseless as the others
on the long list that made life hellish for him.

One day his psychology class discussed childhood fears. There were the usual
things -- menacing shadows of tree limbs on the bedroom floor; the creakings
of houses that went unnoticed by daylight and became magnified after dark; a
mother's illness and absence with its accompanying feeling of abandonment.
Nothing very different from those discussed by the professor had been
revealed. It was both reassuring and disturbing to find such predictable
patterns. Then Kim spoke up.

"I came out of a deep sleep with fires blazing all around me and I thought I
was in hell, that I had died and gone to hell. I had a bunch of nightmares
after that, and to this day I have a pretty irrational few of fire. What had
happened was that our electricity had gone off during the night, and it was
in the middle of winter, so my mother had taken me out to the living room to
sleep in front of the fireplace. And I woke up."

Other more specific, more personal experiences came out then. One remembered
early fears related to brakes squealing and metal clashing -- a carryover
from being in an accident when she was two. Another recalled awakening to
find himself in a bathroom filled with steam, and the fear of being scalded
in the tub of hot water -- his mother's desperate attempt to relieve his
croup as a baby had been to open his congested bronchial passages with steam.

Julian listened and tried to remember something from his own past that was
similar. There had been a mild episode when he had been left alone at night
once and the apartment had been filled with noises, but he knew that was not
in the same category as the fears being discussed now. He had had nightmares
off and on for years, but he had decided they were induced by a difficult