The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

I’ve told some of you about how everything I write comes true. Sometimes it’s just coincidental, like when I wrote about a scientist who broke a liquid helium machine at Fermi to kill a demon in The Hidden, and a day or so later, a liquid helium machine had a problem at CERN. Ok, so that’s just a coincidance (sic, c.f. Robert Anton Wilson). So was when I wanted to create a backstory for a Rosetta Stone type of journal and remembered a Romantic poet who died in a fire trying to save his books, screaming “By the immortal gods I will not move!” who also happened in real life to be a translator.

But then there was, in the same story, a character I created who was a University of Chicago linguistics prof who transplanted a village of Guatemalen Abuelitas to Chicago to learn their nearly extinct Mayan dialect and then a month or so later found out about a University of Chicago linguistics prof who transplanted a village of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their nearly extinct Mayan dialect. Don’t worry, so far as I can tell, none of them have ben murdered by the professor in a ritualistic manner. Yet.

And that’s just the beginning of all of these synchronicities. When you start lining up the coincidences, and there are so many, you’re tempted to stop defining them as coincidence and start narrowing down the conspiracy, or begin to apply the hipcrime vocab definition of coincidence, “You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.”

So this has struck again. I’ve just finished my warm up to Inside, and I’ve edited Inside up to where I had written before, so now it’s time to strike out and put new words at the end of the manuscript. My next scenes? An attention seeking pastor at a conservative church burning Michael’s painting because he found it offensive, and both sides of the argument try to manipulate the media for gain. Well, substitute “Koran” for “Michael’s painting” and you’ve got today’s news cycle.

Either the world is reading my mind, or it is handing me research material again. Any way, this is going to get interesting.

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.

Chapter four is being split between two episodes since there are four scenes. This is the first part of it. If you’d like to sign up for the podcast, click here:

I’ll be getting closer to a regular schedule soon, our mending is going well, as are most of the other projects. I’d like you to check out a relatively new one, The End of the World Times, the Journal of a (hopefully) Alternate Future. You should enjoy it. We have 4 writers currently uploading material and two more coming on-line soon.

Also want to let you know about The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group. This is my podcast about writing, and I’m going to start covering writing The Hidden on it with the next episode. What this will amount to is a kind of director’s commentary that you would listen to if you had the DVD of the movie of this storyline, but I don’t play them both at once here because that would be confusing. I’ll discuss the decisions behind the storyline, some of the secrets, backstory, and some of the things that went on around writing this book. I have an odd habit of things that I write coming true in very odd ways, and that will be a running theme with the podcast analysis.

But for now, Chapter 4a

The sun dripped down the distant skyline, its reflection oozed down the buildings, and passed through the pollution to color everything the shade of rotten blood. The air hung still, infectiously humid, stagnant. This was the joy of Chicago summers, hot, humid, and sticky. The day was feeling longer and longer for Tobias, the result of too much time spent wandering in the open.

Times like these that the streets made the streets their most hostile; Tobias didn’t know who was watching, or what situation might arise to ensnare him. The police knew his face from numerous run-ins and the street had eyes and teeth of its own. It could spot a person in distress from blocks away, and swallow him whole in a second. A rival gang member on an incursion could take you out without the courtesy of letting you see who’d done the killing, a hit and run driver could be thirsty for a victim, a beggar might pull a knife. Any of these events were not just possible, but likely if you showed a hint of weakness at the wrong moment.

The worst thing running around in his head, though, was a single image: the shop keeper, growing pale, groaning, falling over, turning blue, his skin sinking in, turning transparent, skin cracking open, and then it flashed out, his mind couldn’t take it anymore, and he found he’d walked another block without noticing anything. Over and over for blocks it happened, and it didn’t get any less jarring through repetition.

But of all the things that could kill, stop or otherwise harm him, his biggest fear was facing up to his brother Wesley. The streets may have been dangerous, but his brother was his best protection. His fear was that word spread like an outbreak on the street. He needed to call Wesley, come in, face up to it, save as much face as possible.

He flipped open his cell phone. Nothing happened. He tried opening and closing it again, detaching the battery, blowing on the contacts, as if that ever did anything, and then reattached it. Nothing. He shook it. Still nothing. The battery was dead. This struck him as odd. His battery had never died so quickly, and it had been fully charged when he left the house. It didn’t matter, facts was facts, he needed to find a payphone.

When survival is key, it’s best to look at your assets and threats, evaluate each for its own merits, take inventory, make decisions, always keep moving. He had allies, shaky and tentative alliances, everyone that spent time as a plaything of the streets had to have some, and the more you had the less chance the streets would eat you. But those alliances all had prices, and he owed more favors than he’d given. He didn’t have much more room on his street credit card. He couldn’t count on everyone in his gang. They’d without a doubt protect him, but most were out for their own advancement, and they would use this to their advantage if they could find an angle.

Some of the allies had told him the cops came around asking with urgency, just a routine matter, the usual line. But they were detectives, not the beat cops. Detectives never came around on routine matters, you never saw them in the bad neighborhoods like the beat cops. The beat cops knew where Blooddog territory ended and Lunatic Species territory began, who was in power and who wasn’t. Beat cops were Tobias’s main problem. They knew Tobias was out there, and they all knew their beats.

He hadn’t returned home since this morning, and he hoped his mother was too drunk to care about anything when he got back. If he malingered long enough, she would have reached the bottom of her bottle, and dropped it by her side on the way to an alcoholic slumber, a cancerous liver, and a terribly painful end. She wouldn’t come out looking for him.

He decided in the end that it was best to keep it in the family, regardless of how much grief Wesley would give him. It was time that he stopped avoiding the issue, and faced it with some amount of dignity. He convinced himself that this was the way he would grow into an adult, a leader, to face up to his mistakes.

He thought these were his biggest problems. He coughed twice, he felt a constriction in his lungs like he had asthma. He kept telling his mother he should get checked for it. His chest felt constricted, his throat felt like it was closing in. His asthma was picking a bad time to come back, but he figured the stress wasn’t helping it any.

The demon perched on his shoulder. When riding something like this, it limited its effect as best it could. It was unnecessary energy expense. All around it, the demon sensed food, but it all moved too quickly to be easy prey.

Tobias found a payphone outside of a gas station, picked it up and deposited his quarters. One of his first lessons was to always use a payphone for business so there was no evidence in the telephone records of who called who. Payphones were getting scarcer these days, finding one that hadn’t been vandalized beyond usefulness was even harder. He picked up, deposited change, and dialed.

The phone picked up on the first ring to the sound of a hard and cautious voice.

“Yeah,” Wesley said.

“Wesley. I’m in trouble,” Tobias was suddenly pleading. He didn’t expect to be suddenly broken practically to tears. He thought he’d be able to maintain his composure. Some adult he turned out to be.

“Tobias? I heard the cops are out for you. What’ve you done this time?”

“I didn’t do a thing. I got caught up in somethin’. Don’ even know what. But, the cops is looking for me.” He turned around quickly, keeping an eye out for cars or cops.

“What’s the problem? Did you get into a fight?”

“No, It jus’ happened. I didn’t do nothing.”

“Uh-uh. Ain’t buying it. Where’s my gun?”

“I ditched it. Had to.”

“You ditched it? I just got you that gun. Shit, that was a good gun, too.”

“I need a lawyer, bro.” Tobias was ashamed to admit it, but he knew he needed it.

Wesley sighed. It was one more time through this routine. “Shit. I’ll call Ellis. Come home. He’ll bring you in,” he said in disappointment, adding the obvious, “And keep out of sight.”

The laws that govern coincidence insist that as soon as things like this are said, a Newtonian equal and opposite force must come into play. This force happened to be a police car, which drove by mostly minding its own business. Tobias was well past the point of playing it cool, the stress of being out and pursued all day had burned out his patience for playacting. He panicked, cowered, turned, hid his face. It was instinct, but the wrong one, he immediately realized that his rash decision just nailed him. The police decided it was worth a second pass to investigate. They slowed down suddenly, put on their lights, and blew the siren once.

“Oh, no. No. Shit,” he said, but there was nowhere to go.

“Tobias, what is wrong?” Wesley yelled through the receiver, hoping to get a straight answer out
of a messed up little kid.

Tobias decided not to try to get away, but to make his continued failure quick and painless.

“I gotta go, bro. I’ll call you in a couple hours.”

Tobias hung up the phone and raised his hands as the police got out of the squad car. They were angry at him for making them get out of their air conditioning in the heat, and it showed, their faces immediately scowled, angry that they were forced out of comfort.

“This better be worth it,” one said to the other, wiping the beaded sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The other nodded his head in agreement. He pulled his shirt and vest away from his body to get some air.

The officers were quickly on him, asking him for identification. This however, was mere formality. They knew who they had, they’d seen him around many times, and had picked him up at least once before each. They read him his Miranda rights, put on the handcuffs and helped him into the back seat of their car.

The demon sniffed at the police officers. They smelled healthy and fit. They did not have the scent of the struggle for survival. The energy he’d expend in weakening and corrupting them would be greater than the benefit of feeding from them. He waited for easier prey.

The ride to the central processing station in Chicago was slow and shameful. Tobias thought everybody in his neighborhood saw him being driven in the back seat of the patrol car. It was nothing they hadn’t seen before, but it still hit him like this every time, probably his mother’s influence. His cough grew stronger, phlegmy, more violent on the way, got worse every block. He thought it might only be due to the stress, the rotten city air, the heavy Chicago humidity. He couldn’t do anything about the snot, it dripped onto his jeans and the plastic seat of the squad car. He shivered, and considered asking the cops to turn down the air conditioning. He knew they wouldn’t listen, but the shivering made him look nervous, and the nervousness made him look guilty, even though this was the first time he wasn’t.

He played the game. They led him in the front door of the station, and he dutifully followed, dragging his feet on the broken sidewalks only as much as was proper. There were formalities to every situation. When his feet hit the tiles of the polices station, he scuffed along again, to show a proper amount of indignation. It was all a matter of meeting expectations.

The police station was cooled mostly with ceiling fans. The air conditioners that teetered in the windows couldn’t hope to keep up with the number of bodies and the amount of activity in the front rooms, so Tobias was always uncomfortably in a draft. The wooden chairs they forced him to sit in while they did the initial processing were seemingly designed to automatically cause a knot in his back, as if he were leaning on a stone that jabbed only where it would irritate him the most. This made him more bitter and aggravated while the desk sergeant, a plumpish Hispanic woman in the dark side of her forties, searched out the proper forms for admission and processing. Tobias had plenty of time to brood while a pile of triplicate forms accumulated on the desk before her.

Next came the check-in gauntlet. Nami was contacted, and they booked Tobias Stinson on one count of attempted robbery at Nami’s direction. Despite the futility of the charges, it would be near midnight when the booking was complete, and they would be sufficient to hold Tobias until he could be questioned in the morning.

Tobias was pushed along to the fingerprinting station, a tall table with cards and ink pads. The officer here filled in another blank on the paperwork, and drew a card to take Tobias’ prints. Tobias had been through it before, and so when his hand was firmly clutched, his fingers dipped in ink and rolled on the pads, he kept his expression straight and clean, emotionless despite the offensively suspicious gaze in the officer’s eye.

The demon sniffed at the officer, but again held off feeding. He could bide his time. Somewhere near there was proper prey, ripe prey. The scent of corruption was in the air, the scent was close.

The fingerprints done, Tobias was escorted to the next station.

The backboard measured Tobias at five nine. He knew the poses. The flash went off, and he turned without being prompted. When they checked the image, they saw a minor smudge over Tobias’ shoulder. They assumed it was due to a fingerprint on the lens, but his image was unaffected, so it was acceptable.

The demon had never been so exhausted as it had been since it came through. It had never needed to feed so much, its desperation for food had become so tangible he could almost eat it, but it’s species didn’t metabolize desperation. Usually it found its prey after desperation had taken hold, done its work, brought the creature to the beginnings of decay.

Tobias was then escorted through the lockup, his personal items confiscated, cataloged, and bagged: One pair shoes, Nike Jordans size 10; one pair jeans, black; one belt, leather, black; one athletic jersey, Chicago White Sox; one gold bracelet; two gold necklaces, one wallet containing fifty-six dollars; eighty-three cents loose change. This was placed in a large bag, at which point he was issued an orange jumper, and canvas shoes that couldn’t be made into a weapon.

The file officer uncapped a sharpie and said, “Name?”

Tobias replied sullenly, “Tobias Stinson.”

“Name?” The demon replicated the syllables. It was still learning the ways and languages of this new world.

“Age?”

“17.”

“Age?” the demon asked, not knowing what it was asking. “Age?” it asked again, louder. Still no response. There was no recognition at all.

“Age!” it shouted. Still nothing.

This covers roughly 2/3rds of chapter 2. In this episode, the main plotline of the story begins, and we meet a few new characters. I’ll be posting the text in a separate blog post, and Malcolm has a journal entry.

A couple points of news:
My short story “Tev” is kicking off the season for the Horror Addicts Podcast. The episode will premier on June 7th. We’re talking about maybe doing an interview. We’ll see if it all works out. Here’s the flyer for the show.

I’ll be hanging around Duckcon in Naperville June 12-14. Find me there.