The Dream Killer of Paris by Fabrice Bourland

tight suspension sent me flying up to the canvas roof over and over again) to ask Lacroix to explain exactly what the Marquis de Brindillac had been working on.
    After decades spent studying sleep according to the most rigorous rules of physiology, the scientist’s ideas had been shaken by his growing awareness, through Professor Richet and his associates at the Institut Métapsychique, of the work of a certain Frederik Willem Van Eeden, a Dutch psychiatrist who had methodically recorded the contents of his dreams for twenty years. In 1913 he had noticed that, during certain dreams, he remained perfectly aware that he was in the process of dreaming. He had described that mental state in an article for the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). During a so-called lucid dream, the cognitive faculties are not suspended; the sleeper experiences the dream very intensely, gliding through a dream-like world which seems surprisingly real,while still being able to reason with clarity and even remember his waking life. As he has almost total control of the dream, he can transform it at will, make characters appear or disappear, act according to plans drawn up in advance, defy the laws of nature, fly and pass through matter.
    In truth, Frederik Van Eeden didn’t discover lucid dreams. Aristotle and Descartes had recounted their brief experiences of this kind. In particular, in 1867 a French orientalist, Hervey de Saint-Denys, had discussed the subject in a book which had gone unnoticed at the time, Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger (Dreams and How to Control Them). However, since Hervey, no serious work had been carried out and, with the exception of Van Eeden’s article, lucid dreams had been almost completely forgotten.
    The Marquis de Brindillac had also scrupulously recorded thousands of his dreams in his notebooks. Some were undeniably in the lucid category. From the day he had made this discovery, Brindillac had devoted all his energy to studying and elucidating this strange state of mind.
    Despite repeated attempts, Lacroix had been unable to discover the precise stage the scientist had reached in his work. However, he must have obtained some results because the directors of the Institut had been planning to organise a lecture before the end of the year, to which Europe’s leading experts in psychic research would have been invited.
    ‘Which makes a visit to these gentlemen even more necessary,’ declared Fourier, who was sitting in the front seat.
    ‘Yes. And I wonder what the Marquis was intending to tell them all.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Lacroix. ‘But knowing him, it must have been damned important.’
    A hole in the road bounced me up to the ceiling again and, as Ifell back on to the narrow seat, I almost crushed the book I’d taken from the château.
    ‘By the way,’ I continued, ‘earlier, we found a book under the Marquis’s bed. It’s called Le Comte de Gabalis or Discourses on the Secret Sciences .’
    ‘Yes, I noticed it once or twice among the pile of books on his desk.’
    ‘I’m sure I’ve seen the title somewhere before but I’ve racked my brains and I can’t remember where. On the inside cover it says it was written in 1670.’
    ‘By a certain Abbé Montfaucon de Villars, yes. A strange fellow, that one! After a career as a cadet of Gascony, he made a name for himself as a literary adventurer in Paris before being mixed up in a dark vendetta, for which he and his accomplices were sentenced to be broken on the wheel. But the Abbé obviously managed to escape that fate because he died a few years later, his throat cut by outlaws on the road to Lyons.’
    ‘Ah! The roads were much more dangerous than today,’ growled Fourier as a bend negotiated at full speed almost sent us into a ditch. ‘Would it be too much to ask, Lacroix, for you to drive more slowly?’
    ‘Apologies, Superintendent. To return to Abbé de Villars, jokers spread the rumour that ethereal