It was a half-heard sound in a dark room, a sound which hung in Malcolm’s head, existing partly in the dream and partly in the real world without committing to either which startled Malcolm from sleep far too early in the morning.
The uncertainty of perception confused Malcolm, the sensation of being hopelessly surrounded by darkness and of being in a room which pervaded with the sudden and jarring silence that comes only to someone who has woken from a nightmare just before death, but is not yet ready to open his eyes and find out if he really was just dreaming. In his dream, whatever it was he had been fighting was pouncing on him, but he usually slept through the scene of his own death. Transitions from dream to waking were a gray area of experience, leaving a confusion of what was true and what wasn’t for later interpretation.
The blue digits of his alarm clock strobed brightly, pulsated, as his eyes tried to adjust. 3:00. Too early. It wasn’t time to get up for work yet. Not even close. At least a couple of hours yet to wake up, or more, or less. Damn morning math, unreliable as the universe on a windy day.
His first coherent thought of the day was tinged with paranoia. What caused him to wake? He’d heard a sound, it had just come back to him, or maybe the telepathic perception of movement in the room, but now that he was more awake, he was sure it was definitely something external to the dream itself. His joints resisted him, his motor responses fought his desire to turn, to find a position that wouldn’t knot his muscles by the time the alarm went off, every thought fell to sleep. His eyes were still heavy, groggy, desiring to remain closed, forcing him back under to delta wave, rapid eye movement and more nightmares.
The next time he woke up, the covers had tangled around him, wrapped around his leg, and wound its way up his chest, wrung into his clenched hand, another fitful surrender to the subconscious. He forced his eyes open. The sun must have been just rising above the horizon, a small amount of blue light slipped casually in around the shade. Even this dim light was shockingly painful, unexpected, lambent, and so far away a desperate man would see it as salvation, but would never be able to reach it. He wondered if he was waking in a dream within a dream, and scanned the room for clues. Had he left his shirt draped like that over his dresser, or a shrouded figure? Could be a trick of the mind. He couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried. He pushed hard, his heart started beating faster under the strain of his exertions, the dull thud of that beat grew louder in his head, isolating him further from any normal reference point, he became an island of fear surrounded by an unfamiliar ocean. Time, too was off, he realized. He thought it was just moments since he’d last found wakefulness, but couldn’t be sure, and he still lay immobile. He tried to see the clock, but it was out of view and blurry. Clouded perception. Something was somewhere, of that he was certain now, and the light beyond the blinds got further and further away.
Then the sound came again, its direction indistinct, coming from everywhere and nowhere, but closer. He was being hunted. Since he couldn’t move his head, his hearing was pure monophonic, and non directional, the attack could come from any direction. His confusion told him to be wary, but something kept him from knowing quite why, something getting weaker by the second. It sounded like his distempered cat, its claws looking for a blood fix. It couldn’t have been the cat. The cat never left the front room, and had died years ago. Malcolm blinked and grunted, trying to break whatever force was holding him from the slightest movements.
The sound came again, just at the edge of perception. It was real, he was certain now, as he was certain now he was awake. The blinking was working, pulling him out of hypnogogic delusion.
Early morning noises made him suspect the worst. Human intruders didn’t come into apartments like his. It had to be something far worse; even the best of charms and wards couldn’t guard against every kind of demon or spell. The urge to sleep pulled at him much stronger than if he’d woken up early and was still drowsy, the pull felt unnatural, impossible to resist. It eased any fear he had, comforted him like a sweet lie, lulled him and gained strength in the incantation into forgetting why he was wavering in and out of sleep.
Then he heard more sounds, and a half-felt tug came at the blankets near his feet, then a movement on his chest, the sensation of something with no weight pouncing. He awoke again, this time suddenly fully aware, and eye to eye with a Mara. Malcolm could only catch a slight edge of its form in the low light, the glow of its eyes faintly illuminating Malcolm’s face. The illumination was like a candle, traveling only those few inches before being lost in the darkness.
Malcolm shuddered in surprise, his body convulsed, every muscle fired once in unison trying to break free of the Mara’s hold, and the Mara uttered a singular unimpressive squeak of surprise. Prey never moved that much when under its control, the prey never moved at all. The little creature closed in anyway, feeling confidence in its powers. Another warning sign it ignored: Malcolm continued to stare directly into its eyes. The Mara went on with its feeding, sensing that the prey had already moved into the first stage of fear: awareness. It wrapped its tiny hand around Malcolm’s throat, just a little squeeze and the resulting dip in oxygen would induce panic.
It didn’t know the predator-prey relationship it had until now been enjoying was changing by the moment, Malcolm was alert now, and saw through the deception, saw it for what it was. Malcolm’s perception was this: a small, translucent green creature, knee high to someone shorter than Malcolm, large bright yellow insect-like eyes, a large round head supported on a tiny body, strangling him softly with delicate hands more befitting something out of a cartoon than a predator. What the Mara thought Malcolm saw was this: desiccated flesh stretched taught over a huge frame, claws long enough to go all the way through, tattered black skin stretched over bone wings, spiky gray hair covering its body. Or maybe just eyes, large and glowing red, a body unreliably outlined by dark perched above the prey. Or maybe two figures in the room, lights outside the window, the abduction psychodrama.
The Mara realized then something wasn’t happening it was expecting, the energy rush of feeding wasn’t coming. The thought that something was wrong broke through its primitive thought process a very brief moment before it was too late.
Malcolm knitted his brow, and reached up. Now it was the Mara panicking, now it was the Mara being strangled. Now it was the Mara that was screaming and tumbling through the air, striking the wall, falling to the ground, and now it was Malcolm feeling only drowsy and angered, and knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep.
The Mara ran through its instinctual devices, wondering what it had done wrong, but then it saw its prey rise and look directly at it. It wasn’t the time for learning processes. It was the time for survival. It looked for a way out of the situation, but no ideas were forthcoming. The thought occurred to it to flee, but as this thought flashed through consciousness like an uncertain leap into fog, it found Malcolm standing overhead, impassible. The cornered Mara geared up the fiercest responses it could muster.
Malcolm recoiled his leg and kicked the Mara, his foot striking with a satisfying thud that felt as if this creature had a measurable mass. This always troubled Malcolm, how they had no weight but still could be felt and handled, were just as deadly as anything anyone else could see. The physics of the phenomena was something Malcolm had only just begun to study.
The Mara doubled over, coughed and moaned. Malcolm could have just picked it up at this moment, but the first kick hadn’t satisfied Malcolm’s frustration enough, and so he kicked again, and again for good measure. He hesitated a moment as the creature, still only half-seen by morning light, tried to recover. As he recoiled his leg for another strike, he decided the maximum of frustration he could take out on this creature had been reached, and he just wouldn’t be salved in this way, and so he picked it up again by the throat and carried it, kicking and protesting like a petulant child, its little hands prying at Malcolm’s grip. Malcolm walked it down the hall with a calm as if this were just a matter of course.
Turning left into the kitchen, his eyes landing on the coffee maker on his counter. The little glass pot waited to fulfill its purpose in life, and it gave Malcolm a new thought on this early morning, a thought of his curse, a thought of his ability, his own personal stigmata, and how it just cost him another morning’s sleep. And a thought of coffee. How much of a relief it would be to wake up to a simple cup of coffee without something like this happening. It didn’t seem like it would be too much to ask. Malcolm paused here, holding the Mara, and flipped the switch on the coffee maker. The light cheerfully obeyed the command, it gave a promising gurgle, and then continued to his back door.
As Malcolm opened the door, the Mara screamed loudly, a sharp and piercing cry that cut especially deeply in the auditory nerve this early in the morning like a demonic dog whistle, and Malcolm was the only one who could hear it., a parting shot at Malcolm. He dropped the mara to the stoop, as nonchalantly as if he were putting out a cat. The Mara began to writhe, rolling on its back, kicking and turning, but it was too late. Its figure began to dissipate and disintegrate in the sunlight as it got to its feet. It ran for the open door, but it had already mostly disappeared, only its legs were running, then only its calves and feet, then only its left foot stepped on the threshold of his apartment before also disappearing into a vapor. Malcolm stepped away, back inside, to his cereal, coffee and newspaper.
The cereal he chose from a systematic filing order in his pantry was the same cereal he’d been eating every Tuesday since he was seven: Cap’n Crunch. He removed the milk from the refrigerator and a bowl from the cupboard. He opened the jug of milk and poured, but only a small trickle came out. Funny, it was fresh two days ago. Two bowls of milk, two glasses at night before bed, about four cups, far less than the gallon. Something else was consuming the milk. It wasn’t possible to be out of milk, not at all, but there it was. The anomalies of the morning had to be recorded before anything else happened.
June 24th, 2003: Woke up early this morning. I had no choice. A Mara was trying to strangle me. Mara feed on fear and helplessness, then leave you bewildered and seemingly untouched, leaving you to wonder if it all really happened.
Awareness. You must be aware of something to fear it. Prey is never afraid of the hunter hidden perfectly behind the dark undergrowth. Fear is part of the hunt, and the prey must see the hunter, hear the hunter, smell the hunter to fear it.
When you feed on fear, apprehension is the appetizer.
This is how a Mara feeds: First the Mara lets you know its there by making a slight sound, drawing attention, letting you imagine the worst; a hostage mind running through its worst case scenarios is its playground. It is nocturnal and has learned you are more susceptible to horrific imaginings if it strikes at night. You create your own image, confront the menagerie of your nightmares, making the prey complicit in its own predation.
Most prey visualizes a much larger creature, its own natural predator, or visualize simulacra over other things in the room, giving common objects a form that is anything but small and impish or familiar. Usually it appears huge, frightful, or numerous.
You’re paralyzed before it touches you. Your heart starts pumping faster, supplying blood to muscles that cannot move. Some victims might fall prey to a heart attack right here, ruining the meal for the Mara. The Mara needs a captive and alert prey. Only then will the Mara reveal itself.
In the end they’re only a nuisance, a weak species, almost never fatal. I don’t even need to cast a spell to kill them, which was good, because I had no pen and paper handy. Since they are so prone to nocturnal hunting, they have an intolerance to sunlight. If they were more common, or deadly, I’d keep a sun lamp on my night stand. As it was, my weapon was just below the horizon.
I killed it, of course.
I don’t really mind Mara attacks, not like the bigger demons, but it’s a damn ugly thing to wake up to. I also ran out of milk.
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