Council of Peacocks

by M Joseph Murphy

  “That’s why I’m here. Just make sure you’re able to deal with whatever we find. I don’t want to go through this and have you wake up in the middle of it because it is too scary. Are you ready?”

  Josh looked back at the misty figure of Wisdom from his memory and nodded.

  “Then follow me.”

  Wisdom pointed to the left, toward a red-painted wooden door with a shiny blood-red doorknob. He motioned Josh to open it. Josh looked down and saw that he was dressed in a set of black robes similar to the ones Wisdom wore. Everything seemed much more real than a dream. He could almost hear himself breathing. He walked over to the door, turned the knob and pushed. It opened to Tommy Delonki’s room. He saw the scene Jessica had helped him remember. There was Tommy on the bed. Over by the closet was the 12-year-old version of himself pointing a finger up at the Edimmu. Nothing moved. It was like walking into a wax museum.

  “Now this is different,” Wisdom said. “The way they are looking at you. I haven’t seen that expression on an Edimmu since I was a child. I’d almost think…”

  “They loved me.” Josh knelt down and studied the frozen face of his memory-self. “I felt it. They cared about me, like I was a nephew or something. How is this possible, Wisdom? How can a person block this much stuff out of their mind? Until a few days ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself. Now it turns out it was all a huge lie.”

  “And how would you have gone about the day-to-day routine of your life if you knew all this? Would a 12-year-old boy really be able to focus on his schoolwork if he knew he was pals with the monsters that came out of the closet at night? It’s one of the interesting things about the human mind: its capacity to dis-remember is almost as great as its ability to store things. Humans block out much more prosaic memories than this. Rape, murder, adultery. It’s obvious, to me anyway, that you – or at least a part of you – decided not to remember certain aspects of your life because it did not fit in with what you thought your life should be. So let’s not focus on the ‘whys’ or the ‘hows’ of you not remembering. For now, let’s focus on the ‘what’. Shall we see what’s on the other side of that closet?”

  Josh felt his head swim. The images around him became foggy and distorted in a blur of motion. Then they snapped back into place even more solid than before.

  “Focus, now, Josh. I have a bit of control over what’s going on here, but if you are going to lose it, we might as well stop right now. We haven’t even seen the fun stuff yet.”

  “I can hardly wait.” Josh maneuvered his body around the frozen memory of himself and the Edimmu and walked into the closet. Whatever he had expected, he found something else.

  Instead of clothes hanging from hooks or toys scattered like landmines on the floor, he found an entrance to a cave. He stepped past the threshold and looked back at Tommy’s room. It looked so bright and human compared to where he was now. The cavern floor was smooth and grey, covered with dirt and pebbles, but the walls were sharp and jagged. Stalagmites jutted down like teeth while the rocky wall reached out toward him like claws and barbed wire. The ceiling was only about 12 feet from the ground, and the cave was no more than 6 feet wide. It left him feeling claustrophobic, as if he was literally walking through an esophagus and into the belly of the beast.

  “Well, I didn’t expect us to get here so quickly.” Wisdom still stood at the threshold. He surveyed the cave, hands on hips.

  “Where is here?”

  “Nowhere on Earth.” Wisdom stepped forward and motioned for Josh to walk with him. They moved away from the door, deeper into the cave. Josh had to duck several times to avoid the sharp teeth hanging from the ceiling. “Some call this place Axeinus. Others call it the Black Sea. You could call it a prison if you want. Close enough for our purposes. Remember Elaine telling you about the Orpheans, the demons that made you all Anomalies? This is where they live.”

  Josh felt a shiver run through him. The knowledge that he could feel something at all, even though this was supposed to be a dream, made him feel all the more vulnerable.

  “But…”

  “Yeah, I know. There’s not supposed to be a connection between the Edimmu and the Orpheans. If anything, given their past, they should be mortal enemies, not in bed with each other. But what I’m most curious about is how you, a human, found your way here. We would only be here if you had a memory of this place, a dimension where no physical being should be able to go.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my father was right. I am an idiot. Someone changed the rules of the game and I know nothing about it.”

  For Josh, it felt like they wandered through the dark cave for hours. Like a normal dream, reality moved in a strange way. His movements felt doubly removed – more like watching stop action photos than a movie of himself. Each footstep was a moment in time placed side-by-side with the others without any sense of continuity. It was impossible for him to judge the distance they travelled. At times, Josh was certain they were spiraling downwards or walking sideways even though the path before them continued to move in a straight line.

  Eventually the air in the cave grew brighter.

  “There’s something up ahead.”

  Wisdom nodded. “Let’s hope it’s an answer.”

  Abruptly, the cave ended. They stood on a cliff at the edge of a large cavernous valley. The ceiling rose high above Josh, disappearing into the shadows. The ground dropped sharply at least forty feet to the floor of a vast mechanized area that reminded Josh of a factory. The valley spread out as far as he could see in all directions. He also noticed they were no longer alone. Hundreds of workers moved about on the floor below. He was so overwhelmed by the numbers that it took him several moments to realize the workers were not human. Most of the creatures had horns, and a few had tails. Aside from the grey overalls they wore, the workers had almost nothing else in common. Some had blood-red skin while others looked like solid shadows, animated patches of night sky moving among the machines. There were also pockets of Edimmu, some in their angelic disguise – all blond hair and white-winged majesty – but the majority were in their natural reptilian form. Their black wings hung limp on their backs. Several flew or hovered near pipes that ran along the ceiling. Most of the valley floor was filled with conveyor belts and robotics, large metallic arms moving metal parts from one belt to another, streams of sparks where mechanical devices welded objects together. He followed the flow of the assembly line until his eyes fell on something that looked like flesh.

  “What the hell is that?” Josh saw patches of red that glistened like raw meat covered in blood stretching for yards. At the edge of each patch was a row of metal rings and thick wires.

  “You’re looking at it too closely,” Wisdom said. Something in the tone of his voice made Josh shiver. He glanced at Wisdom and saw the man’s lower lip quiver slightly. “If you keep looking only at the parts, you’ll never see the big picture. That’s what Propates meant. I have been so stupid. Look higher up and take in the whole thing at once.”

  “The whole thing?” Josh let his eyes race to the top of the machine. It was several kilometers above him and it took his brain a moment to process what he was seeing. He covered his mouth. He was not sure if he was going to scream or laugh. “That’s … that’s not possible.”

  At the top was a head. From this distance, it was hard to judge how big it was, but he guessed it was as large as a football stadium. Now that he acknowledged what it was, he could easily make out the flicker of eyelashes and the slight flare of the nostrils as it took in each breath. Even though this was a dream, he was absolutely certain that what he was seeing actually existed. At the same time, he knew there was no way it could exist. A gigantic ring of metal encircled its very-human looking head and another ran around its chin. Large metal spears jutted out of each of the head’s temples. These were connected to tubes that ran down to various parts of the machinery below. There was no skin on the face. It glistened like a rec
ent scab, blood glistening over blue veins and tender tissue. Josh shook his head, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. The whole area beneath it, all the way to the ground, was a humanoid body, also skinless and punctured with metal tubes. Small tumors protruded from various parts of its body, tumors that moved like dreaming eyes behind closed lids. Josh prayed the creature did not open its eyes.

  “Unless I’m mistaken,” Wisdom said, “that is Propates. The real one. I think I’m beginning to see what’s going on here. This might be a good time for us to leave. Technically this is a dream but you never can tell how real things like this are. Shall we?”

  Josh was about to leave when something caught his eye. Over by one of the machines was a figure he recognized: a man in a tuxedo of maggots and beetles, a man with eyes that were far too much like his own. Around the man were a number of Edimmu, their wings tight against their backs.

  “Wisdom,” Josh said. “I think that’s my father.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Wisdom stopped mid-step and followed Josh’s eyes down to the floor.

  “Well, well, well, this certainly is interesting.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “We’re acquainted,” Wisdom said with a grimace. “Let’s get out of here before he sees us.”

  Josh followed Wisdom’s lead away from the edge of the valley and back into the cave. He waited to speak until the entrance to the factory was far behind them.

  “Who is Propates? And what did you mean by ‘the real one’?”

  Wisdom shook his head and placed a finger to his lips with a soft shushing sound. He stopped at a flat part of the cave wall and laid the palm of his hand against the black stone. At his touch, stone faded away and another red door appeared. He turned the handle and pushed the door inwards. It opened to a bright sun-filled field filled with white and purple wildflowers and knee-high grass. Josh followed Wisdom out of the Axeinus. When he looked behind him, the door was nowhere to be seen. They were in a valley surrounded by tall white-capped mountains. There was no sign of humanity anywhere.

  “That’s better.” Wisdom snapped his fingers and two plush red loveseats appeared. He sat on one and took a deep breath. “To make a very long and complex story short and simple, the Council of Peacocks is an organization started in Greece over two thousand years ago. They worshipped an all-seeing God with 100 eyes. They called him Argus Propates. They believed in the pursuit of knowledge without being bound by the restrictions of morality and social convention. Some people believe there are things humans have no business learning. I have to say I fall into that crowd. I can think of at least fifteen things I know myself that I don’t think your average person should know.”

  “Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, arrogant?” Josh looked down at his body and saw he was now dressed in a black trench coat. His mind must have created it to combat the slight chill he felt on the wind, even though he knew there really was no wind. “If you’re capable of dealing with these things, what makes you think other people don’t have the intellectual capacity to deal with them?”

  “Well, you’re right. It probably is arrogant, but you missed my point. I’m not saying humans don’t have the intellectual capacity to deal with these little facts. Not everyone is a moron, after all. It’s just, knowing certain things makes it difficult for the average human to go about and do the average human things he or she needs to do. Take those demons, for example. Just imagine Mrs. Peggy-Joe Housewife. She has a husband and two little children. How does she put her children to bed at night and tell them there are no monsters in the world, if she finds out that there really are monsters? How does she sleep at night knowing that any moment something could creep out of the shadows and take her children away? Should she really have that kind of knowledge? Or would it be better for her to really believe there are no monsters?”

  “I don’t see how it’s any better for her not to know. Maybe if she knew, she could protect herself. Set up defenses against the demons.”

  “That’s just it, Josh,” Wisdom leaned forward. “There are no defenses against them. They come and go as they please. They choose their victims at random. Nobody out there can stop them. Peggy-Joe can’t send the police after the demons, can she? You can’t shoot things that aren’t physical. It’s like fighting fear with a shotgun. Knowledge may be a weapon but it has no power over the dark things that crawl out of the night.”

  “So what are you, Wisdom? Are you one of those dark things?”

  Wisdom leaned back and looked at Josh for a long time. Then he lowered his eyes and chewed on his lips for a moment. “I might be. I can usually convince myself that I’m something more evolved than the Orpheans, but we’re more alike than I care to admit. Once I was a boy, innocent and stupid. Then the creature I call father turned me into something else. I spent years doing very bad things. I have a set of standards I live by. I try to do as much good as I can in the world. Maybe that’s enough.” He nodded his head a few times. “I have to believe it’s enough.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, the Argusites were pursuers of knowledge. There were religious wars in those days just like there are today. They fell out of favor, went underground and stayed there. But their desire for learning wasn’t stopped by dwindling membership and state sanctions against them. If anything, oppression fed their desire. They saw the roadblocks as a sign that the Powers-That-Be were trying to oppress them, prevent them from true knowledge. They hid out with the Yezidi, another spurned religious group. The surviving members of the Council met a former student of mine, a man called Propates. Not the one we saw back in those caves, mind you, just a man with enough power to be dangerous. He offered them knowledge, lots of it, and the things they learned changed them. You know how it is. Once you know certain things about the world, you can’t look at anything the same way again.

  “When you’re a kid, you learn about pain by burning your hand on the stove. And you change. You learn to be cautious. You learn that the world can hurt you. Up to that point you have absolute faith in the world. It’s not even that you feel invulnerable. You are innocent and pure because you have no concept of vulnerability. When you get older you find out that there are deviants in the world who steal children. You change again and learn not to talk to strangers. You start to realize your life could be destroyed in a single moment of someone else’s psychosis. When you get even older you realize that it is not the strangers you have to be afraid of. It’s your friends and relatives that can hurt you the most. You learn not to trust other people. Finally, you get to a stage in your life when you realize the biggest threat to your well-being is yourself. Now you can forget about trust altogether. Most people, if they’re lucky, go through this stage and learn to believe in something else, something outside their Selves. Something bigger. Karma, destiny, God. They start to see the patterns in life. If they are not lucky, well, life starts to look an awful lot like Hell.

  “The Argusites learned a whole set of thought patterns not conducive to daily life. They changed their name to the Council of Peacocks and they made themselves a plan. They decided to recreate the hundred eyes of Argus in the bodies of one hundred fully-realized humans, each with the power and knowledge these thought patterns bestow. They believe if they do this they can resurrect their dead god and start a new age on Earth. Blah blah blah – your typical religious zealot crap. The problem for them is that most human beings really can’t handle the things they learn. Physically. No, I’m definitely not going to tell you what the patterns are. You’re not like other humans, but I still don’t think you could handle the crap they deal with. You see, the knowledge that Propates gives them sort of works in levels. You see one weave of the pattern and you have this eureka moment. Your mind, your body and your sense of your spirit go through this transformation. Then you’re able to see another thread in the tapestry, you follow it until you can see the whole pattern and – voila! another eureka moment. On and on until you reach the point they call ‘Eyeness’, where you see
and appreciate all the patterns of Creation. Seems like a waste of time to me. They spend their whole lives learning what they’ll know instantly upon dying. So instead of enjoying the world around them, they waste their days in an impossible search. Well, whatever. To each his own.”

  “None of this explains why you’re out to get them.” Josh sat down, finally, on the other loveseat. Even though he was just dreaming, his feet were starting to hurt from being on them for so long. “What’s so bad about resurrecting their god or the pursuit of higher knowledge? It just sounds like a New Age cult.”

  Wisdom nodded. “Yeah, except for the whole stealing babies and human experimentation thing.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh, I skipped that part, didn’t I? I always do that. There’s a lot more to the Council than just expanding their consciousness. They want to create a super-race, people that could survive the process of achieving Eyeness. Only problem, being a secret society, they don’t exactly create a Facebook page and hand out flyers to attract new members. They prefer the Nazi approach. They steal children and teenagers and conduct genetic experiments on them. Sometimes it is surgery. Other times it’s radiation. Either way, they always mix in their magic and certain brainwashing methods. Sometimes their experiments actually survive. I’ve seen far too many examples of their failures.

  “So what does that make you? Are you some sort of, I don’t know, police force or vigilante out there to stop threats to world peace?”

  “Yeah, I know. Kind of hard to swallow, isn’t it? Well, since we’re being honest and all, I’ll tell the real reason I started curtailing the actions of the Council. Boredom. Not very heroic, I know, but when you’ve been alive as long as I have, you need a reason to keep going. A raison d’être, as the French would say. It was either this or the aliens.”

  “The aliens? You mean those UFO things are real?!”