She also let ship that she and Proctor used to have an ongoing dialogue on the occult.
“So how is Professor Proctor? Have they let him out of the hospital yet?” Finn asked when she mentioned Proctor.
“Oh, Finn, of course you wouldn’t know. On the night of your accident, dear Proctor passed away.”
“He’s dead?” Finn chuckled bitterly. “Lucky bastard.”
“Finn, don’t say that. Proctor was a mentor and friend to you. You should grieve for his loss, not look for an opportunity for self-pity. Pity will poison your life.”
“Life, what life? If I ever get out of here I will be a freak, a travesty, a parody of a man, half a man.”
Mara shook her head slightly.
“What? No more sage advice, Mara?”
She would not rise to the bait so they had sat in silence awkwardly for a few minutes before she recalled a prior engagement and left.
He had not really expected her to come back, but a day later the nurse had brought in a book called, Theory of Possession in the Caribbean.
On the cover was a yellow Post-It note. There was a message written in neat, spiky letters. “Let’s discuss next week.”
She came back every week after that to discuss a different topic.
A month into his recovery, Bex’s brother David came by to visit. He had flown in from America when he had heard of Bex’s disappearance. He looked like Bex, with the same dark hair, same pale blue eyes, but he had a little more intensity to his gaze than Bex did, more focused. Finn remembered Bex saying that he was a lawyer or something in America, something to do with the movie industry.
David averted his eyes when he was talking to Finn, but Finn was getting used to that. Most people would look out the window when they spoke to him. If they turned to him they usually focused on his blanket or looked over his head. Very few people would look into his ravaged face or gaze into his remaining angry eye.
David got to the point, “I know this is difficult to talk about, but I need to know anything you can remember about the night Bex disappeared. Anything that might give us a clue about where she is, or if she’s …” He took a breath, “No longer with us. Is there anything else you may not have told someone?”
Finn did not answer right away, pretending to consider the request. Over the past few weeks Finn had come to the conclusion that the more he told people about what he remembered, the worse things would be for him. When he was first able to talk he described in great detail everything that he remembered. When he stuck to his story, they started to bring psychologists and psychiatrists to the sessions. They were considering adding exotic cocktails of psychotropic drugs to his IV when he realized that the truth would probably land him in some mental institution swaddled in a cotton wool drug fugue. He recanted his story and agreed that it was plausible that his original story was constructed by his subconscious to fill in a void in his memory, or some such nonsense. He decided that lying was better than a stay in a hospital of indeterminate length.
“I’m sorry, David. The whole night is a blank. I don’t remember anything at all. I don’t even remember being on the beach.”
“Please, I am begging you. Is there anything you can remember, anything at all?” David got up and closed the door to the room and sat down. He actually made eye contact and held Finn’s right hand. “I know I am not supposed to mention it, but they said when you first came around you had a story about what happened, a story about monsters or beasts. Is there any truth to it?” Finn did not answer. “Look, I know they wouldn’t believe you, but I have seen things, scary, unexplainable things. Bex and I both did, when we were kids. I’ve seen things in Hollywood too and not just your regular Hollywood freak show shit. If she really was taken by someone or something, I need to know. It may be the only thing that can save her.”
He clenched his fist and a tear of frustration rolled down David’s face. His eyes flicked back and forth between Finn’s eye and his patch.
After an uncomfortable silence, Finn relented. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but do not repeat this to anyone else. And don’t let them know that I told you. I have no desire to see the inside of a mental institution. Agreed?” David nodded. Finn started to speak.
On her way into the hospital for her weekly visit with Finn, an attractive man with dark hair and blue eyes bumped into Mara. He absently apologized and continued on his way; he seemed troubled.
When she reached Finn’s room, she could see he was troubled.
“Why so down, Finn?” She was not what you would consider subtle.
“You are kidding. Have you seen my copulating face?”
“Finn, you can’t put me off like that. We know each other too well now. It isn’t your face or injuries. It’s something else. What is it?”
“Bex’s brother was just here. He wanted to know what happened that night. I told him.”
“What? The truth? Are you sure that was wise?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure that I care anymore. I just wish I knew something, anything, about Bex. He’s the same. The uncertainty is killing him. I had to tell him, whether he believed me or not.”
“Did he? Believe you, that is?”
“That’s the troubling part. He did believe, right away, without hesitation. You know, I could almost convince myself that it didn’t happen the way I remember. I could almost believe that my mind made it up. Then along comes someone who believes me. First you, now him, even Jonni. I think Jonni believes me. I don’t think he’s just trying to spare my feelings. I don’t think he’s just avoiding calling me crazy. He doesn’t operate that way.”
Mara thought before she spoke. “There is more in existence than we can possibly imagine. The universe is complex and diverse. You know that; you’re the one with the physics Ph.D. I look at your injuries and your story makes sense. Blaming this on some group of local thugs with knives and bats and acid just does not add up. I was on the beach, and I heard nothing before I found you. You would have been screaming, Bex too. You’re not the type to be deluded by your unconsciousness.”
“Thank you, Mara. That means a lot. Anyway, astral projection?”
“Yes, what did you think of the book?”
“Actually, I already knew quite a lot about this subject from the psi side. Remote viewing, out of body experiences, that sort of thing. We usually focus on detecting the effects with unprepared people. The Russians and Americans tried to militarize the effect with specialists, of course. They admitted to some limited success. Of course, even if they had been wildly successful they wouldn’t have reported it, nor would they have admitted absolute failure and the waste of budget.”
“What did you think of the occultist angle on the subject?” Mara asked.
“It was interesting; we’ve found the effect can be magnified in the lab setting when we block out external sensory information.”
“Really, did you have a sensory deprivation tank available in the Parapsychology department?”
“No, nothing so exotic or expensive. We cut ping pong balls in half and taped them over the subject’s eyes and then shined a red light on their face, nice and relaxing. We also played white noise through headphones, that sort of thing. So I can see that on the occult side of things that meditation could potentially increase the likelihood of astral projection. I could also see how the rituals suggested could help. If you are focused on a complex series of steps, you can lose awareness of your surroundings.”
“You know many of the ancient esoteric groups had initiation rites that involved meditation, fasting, pain, drugs. All of which could induce hallucinations. What do you think? Could the reports of astral projection really just be hallucinations?” Mara was playing the skeptic. They often took opposing positions for their conversations. Not that they necessarily held the position, but logical argument helped them both to crystalize their thoughts and ideas.
“Prior to my incident on the beach, I would agree. Now I am much more likely to accept things like astra
l projection as being more than just artifacts of a distressed brain. I actually had some very odd experiences when I was first gaining consciousness after the accident.”
“Odd? What do you mean by odd?”
“It seemed like I could hear your thoughts when I was lying there.”
Mara tilted her head in thought. “Are you thinking true telepathy, mind reading?”
“I don’t know. It could have been a drug-induced hallucination.”
“But you don’t think it was. You wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.”
Finn paused and gathered his thoughts. “I don’t think it was a hallucination. It made sense what I heard. I suppose heard is not the right way to describe it. Maybe detected is the right word.”
“Okay, let’s assume that it was real. Can you read my mind now?”
“Nope. I think it had something to do with my state of mind at the time. The pain, both physical and emotional, seemed to overcome some sort of block, allowing me to pick up on your thoughts.”
“Interesting, maybe you should torture your subjects in an experiment sometime.”
The right side of his face twitched briefly, a partial smile, quickly gone. “That’s an experiment that would get some press. Seriously, the more I read and learn about the esoteric arts of the ancients, the more it seems like the rituals and initiations were used to overcome mental blocks. To free the mind, open the third eye, et cetera.”
She was often delighted by his ability to grasp the concepts and to rapidly evaluate the different aspects of each subject. If only he had been one of her students, she might have had more interest in teaching.
Mara leaned forward. “Yes, yes, I agree. The experiences you had when first gaining consciousness may indicate that your ordeal, however tragic, may have opened some previously closed doors. Have there been any other odd occurrences?”
“Not that I’ve noticed, except for some vivid dreams, nightmares, really. But, I hear nightmares are pretty common in my situation. I don’t remember them particularly well. I just know I wake up feeling terrified and a little sad.”
“Have you tried a dream diary?”
“Oh, you mean writing down the dreams as soon as I wake up?”
“Yes, I have been doing it for years. It is amazing how much you can recall when you train yourself to record your dreams. It is like telling your brain not to purge the memories.”
“I suppose I could try it. Although I am not sure I want to remember.”
“I believe in the power of dreams. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something, but you are not paying attention. If you start listening it may stop shouting at you through nightmares.” Mara looked at him expectantly.
Finn sighed. “Okay, I’ll try. If there is anything interesting, we can talk about it next time.”
“Good. I will look forward to it.”
Northern Frontier, Year 7875 in the Reign of Enki II
Hael’s first command, the Ninety-First Legion, was deployed to the Northern Campaign the day after Graduation. The new Legion was not made up of entirely new soldiers — that was a recipe for disaster. Only about twenty percent of the troopers and officers were green, while the rest had varying levels of experience — from twenty-year grizzled veterans to blooded boys who had managed to cling to dreams of glory following their first battle. The greenest of the green troopers and also the youngest was Bral, Hael’s aide de camp. On the day of deployment, Bral was not well enough to travel, so the Legion had left without him and marched north
The Host Healers has accelerated Bral’s natural healing abilities, but accelerated healing had a price and that price was pain. The Healers could speed up the mending process, but in doing so they compressed the amount of pain he would feel into a shorter period of time. The result was that Bral found himself leaving through the City’s Peace Gate a month behind the Legion, with an arm that was almost completely healed after paying the price of pain, a price he gladly paid to get out of the Academy. It was the beginning of a journey to what he hoped would be a happier time in his life. Anything would be better than spending another minute in the Academy, or so he thought at the time.
It turned out that he was wrong.
The Peace Gate was much wider than the Desert Gate to the south — it needed to be, as it was the gate through which every Legion left the City for either the Eastern or Northern Campaigns. The purpose of the Legions and the Campaign were to subdue the Feral and ensure peace in the City, hence the gate’s name. That the means of maintaining peace was the application of death, destruction and slavery on a massive scale was of little interest to the Host; only the resulting peace mattered. Veteran troopers half-jokingly referred to it as the War Gate or the Death Gate, depending on how black their humor.
Bral hoped a week, travelling at a hard jog, would allow him to catch the Ninety-First. The Legion was marching as fast as a thousand troopers with support and supplies could move, so not very quickly, and much slower than a single man, desperate to leave his past in the dust behind him.
As Bral started a ground-eating jog, his thoughts turned to Hael, who had risked the ire of an emperor for his little brother. Bral knew that he could never repay Hael for saving him once again.
Bral had worshipped his middle brother long before Hael had dealt with Samael, and long before he had rescued him from the hell of his existence at the Academy. Hael had been protecting him for as long as he could remember. Before the bullies at the Academy there had been Lucan, his eldest brother.
Lucan, the beautiful one, the one who expected people to bow down before his glory, the one who punished and broke all who opposed him. Actually it was more than that; he punished and broke all who did not worship him.
To be fair, Lucan was quite glorious. He was the most handsome of the three brothers. He was the tallest, he was smart but not the smartest, he was strong and he could be charming when he wanted something he could not get by force. His biggest faults were his ego and the existence of Hael. Hael was proof that Lucan was not the pinnacle of Guest existence, which did not sit well into Lucan’s world view. Bral could only imagine Lucan’s rage at finding out that Hael was given command of a Legion. The thought brought a small smile to his face.
Lucan liked to prove his superiority through the humiliation of others, and his favorite target when he had been growing up had been Bral. As they lived in the same house, Bral had been readily available and he was younger, smaller and sensitive. In essence he was an ideal target. Hael was also younger and smaller than Lucan but was not a viable target.
Bral could remember the last time Lucan had tried to enforce his will on Hael. Hael had seen Lucan take a ball from one of the smaller neighborhood boys and played a game of keep away. After an hour of the game the boy started to cry and Lucan started to laugh at him. Hael and Caleb managed to retrieve the ball from Lucan and had sent the boy on his way. Later that night, Lucan, not appreciating his fun being cut short, had rigged a full chamber pot so that it emptied on Hael’s head when he left his room the following morning.
The result was a disgusting mess and a brutal beating.
Hael beat his older, larger brother into unconsciousness with his piss- and shit-covered hands and feet. That was the last time that Lucan had tried anything with Hael.
The year that Lucan left for the Academy had been the happiest year of Bral’s life. He had Hael to himself, mostly. They had been inseparable, mostly due to Bral mercilessly tracking down Hael and his brother’s best friend, Caleb, wherever they went. They could occasionally give him the slip for an hour or two, but eventually he would find them and they would all laugh about it. It had become a game.
And then that happy year of his life ended and Hael left for the academy. Clea’s company had made it bearable.
He made an effort to not think about Clea or Caleb.
Then, when he finally rejoined his beloved brother in the academy, his own personal hell began.
He made a firm decision to think of
his future. A future brighter than any he could have imagined.
As Hael’s aide de camp he would not be bunking in with the other soldiers, but would share Hael’s command tent, so he could provide whatever was needed whenever Hael needed it. The position also came with enough authority to prevent others from bullying him. The crowning glory of it all was that he had been able to leave the Academy early. He owed Hael his life and his sanity.
Bral put his past away and then he put his hopes and dreams away, as he needed to focus on running if he was going to catch the Legion in a week.
The latrines were getting fresher. Based on the stench of the fecal trenches and the decrease in the number of maggots in the trenches, Bral expected to catch the Legion the following day.
He had been traveling at a brutal pace for five days, so it looked like he would beat his seven-day target by an entire day. Hael would be proud of him. Or so he hoped.
The sun was almost down and Bral toyed with the idea of pressing on through the night before deciding that the prudent course of action would to find a secure place to rest up overnight. There was no good reason to risk injuring himself while running in the dark.
Off to the side of the road, Bral saw a boulder with a flat top that would make a good spot to camp.
Bral was able to jump and grab the top of the boulder and pull himself up. The top was fairly flat and level. The sides tapered slightly to a smaller bottom, which would make it difficult for any of the usual predators to get at him. It was certainly more comfortable than the trees he had been sleeping in since he left the City.
Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) Page 22
