Ionic Relapse: Book One of The Doll Man Duology (Volume 1) Read online

  Midnight would soon be upon him.

  With surprising clarity, Michael instantly obtained this knowledge. A slight calm rushed through his body like a trickle of ice water rolling down the hot flesh of his back. The situation had gotten far beyond his control; he knew it. He didn’t know exactly how this would end, but he had seen the man's face. That fact left very little to the imagination.

  He internally chanted to himself that he wasn’t ready to meet Jesus.

  “I want you to know something. It’s very important that you know this before I do what needs to be done.” The man’s voice was garbled with what Michael interpreted as muffled laughter, but were actually suppressed tears. “This isn’t in any way your fault. I know you’re wishing and regretting that you ever got into my car, but I want you to know that there was never any other way. You will always and forever get into my car, no matter the timeline or dimension. Our destinies are intertwined like the spiderwebbed patchwork of an Indian dreamcatcher.” The man went silent for several seconds before adding, “You ever seen a dreamcatcher before, Mikey?”

  Michael uttered a short yes as his overwound nerves quivered and shook his whole body like a scared puppy. The few remaining teeth in his head chattered loudly in nervous waiting.

  “Dreamcatchers are an interesting concept. The Indians claim that they are designed to filter out bad omens and dreams. You’re supposed to hang them above your bed as you sleep.” Michael watched the man's feet shift in the dry foliage as he felt the grip on the gun loosen.

  The man’s memory soon slipped effortlessly into full view.

  “I was at a flea market once up in Farmington as a kid with my grandmother. I saw a dreamcatcher that must’ve been at least six feet around. It hung on the back wall of one of the rickety booths, and at first I couldn’t make sense of it. With its intricate webbing and loose crown of feathers, my uneducated mind could only rationalize its origins to the existence of wild gigantic spiders. Fuckin' spiders! Possibly the ones that the government had genetically engineered to invade underground Nazi bunkers in World War Deuce. Could they have gotten out somehow after the war?”

  He reflected only momentarily before abandoning the theory.

  “I imagined spiders so huge that their radioactively charged webs could snatch full-grown birds right out of the sky. The idea became too much to handle, eventually driving me into hysterics until my grandmother was forced to take me home. I left the flea market that day convinced that somewhere out in this fucked up world there were giant needle-legged spiders crawling down chimneys and taking up residence in people's cluttered attics or poorly lit basements while they slept.

  “I didn’t sleep for two weeks straight after that. I was so terrified of waking up and seeing my reflection in numerous stainless black mirrors popping out of that hairy-knuckled face. Its fuzzy feelers sticky with acidic goo dripping down from its gnarled slit of a mouth, eating clear through my skin to reveal raw muscle and bone. My blankets and sheets turned into a tight silk webbing from all the tossing and turning on the nights when sleep had been unavoidable. It got to the point where anytime I started to fall asleep, I had to slam a copy of the Ol’ Testament on my knuckles to bring me back.”

  The man paused again as if his point got lost somewhere in the bewildering thoughts of giant insectoid creatures eating his face as he slept.

  “As I got older,” the man continued solemnly, “I learned that those giant framed webs were actually spiritual tools for trapping evil thoughts and intentions. I learned, in fact, that the webs were designed to catch those giant spiders, trapping them from further poisoning the mind. I was then faced with a new, unavoidable question. How much evil shit can one person attract if they need a six-foot dreamcatcher?”

  The man asked the question rhetorically, pausing for dramatic effect. The gun wobbled and shook in his hand. Slight, spastic tremors put an uneven balance on the cold steel loaded against Michael’s skull.

  “I know, the idea that we are open receptors to demons and mystical, dark forces seems ridiculous today, but sometimes I wonder. I wonder if maybe the collective human consciousness is a lot like that giant dreamcatcher, netting the biggest and baddest negative entities that bleed in through worlds unseen. The Indians must have realized this and made a second more physically external filter of sorts to keep those things out of the body and mind.

  “Are we intentionally made this way, or are some people systematically designed with bigger dreamcatchers than others? Does everyone have an internal dreamcatcher, or is it specially passed on to those deemed fit by some higher entity? It certainly feels that way sometimes…” He trailed off into incoherent whispering and soft chuckling. The gun scraped dull lines into the soft skin of Michael’s forehead as the man fought to control whatever internal struggle was going on inside of him at that moment.

  “It’s something I have to do!” the man suddenly snarled, his demeanor becoming erratic like a feral dog. “If I don’t, then it won’t stop. If it doesn’t stop, then I’m gone. Poof. Nilch. No more.” The man then violently pistol-whipped Michael in the temple, sending the boy spinning facedown into the dirt. “Why can’t you see that?!” he screeched repeatedly as he towered over Michael’s shapeless body. After a grueling couple of minutes, the yelling stopped. All was silent.

  Nothing moved.

  Michael felt the man’s hands on him, but the touch this time was different. Instead of the death grip that tore him from the car earlier, nursing hands guided him to his knees. The gentle hands helping him get his balance and lightly brushing the dirt out of his hair could have been someone who loved him. The extreme polarization in events completely paralyzed Michael. All he could do was kneel and watch the hanging shadows through swollen, blood-tinted eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Michael,” the voice, now a serenade of deep loathing and genuine sadness, breathed to him. “I took too long.”

  Michael said nothing as he heard the man make his way back across the dirt. He had enough time to pick his head up before the gun went off, shattering the quiet stillness of the dense forest. In one loud pop, the back of Michael’s skull ruptured open and misted everything within a fourteen-foot radius. Even the air, suspended by the rosy beams of triangular light pouring out of the still running Buggy, had a rusted texture to it now. The inside of what made Michael Brown's internal dreamcatcher was now microscopically scattered in more places than it ever would have known. Wet, grey chunks mixed with gummy strings of sinew, hair, and bone showered down around them like a morbidly manufactured confetti bomb.

  Dazed, the man hesitantly stepped back and coldly surveyed the scene. He listened to the gunshot echo through the distant hills and valleys; the owls cried back defiantly in their nocturnal Morse code.

  After listening to the creatures of the night slowly come back out of hiding, the man sat by Michael’s crooked remains. He chain-smoked half his pack of Pall Malls before walking over to the Buggy and turning off the engine. In the faint, borrowed blue light of the full moon, he grabbed his keys and opened the trunk. Inside were: a shovel, a switchblade, kerosene lantern, hacksaw, leather gloves, hatchet, rope, and a fifth of Jack Daniels.

  Wayne King twisted open the bottle of Jack and gargled down two large gulps. A hot tingle bloomed in his stomach and rippled its way through his aching bones; his throbbing brain eagerly soaked up the bitter juices like a big grey sponge. Once fully submerged in the amber liquid, he grabbed the rest of his tools and got to work.

  The new cycle had officially begun.

  Chapter 2

  April 3, 2006

  12:35 pm.

  Hampden, Maine

  “Very good, Brady,” Ms. Craig said dryly over her slanted wire-framed glasses and shiny alloid pen. Poised behind her paper-stacked desk, she jotted something down in her grade book in tiny frantic stabs before turning her gaze back to the boy standing anxiously at the front of the room. “Although,” she continued, “in your next oral report, I would prefer if you refrain fro
m using the term scrawny dickhole to describe certain people you disagree with. I can see you are passionate about the recently proposed gun laws and have strong feelings to express, but keep in mind that we are in a government run school building. So, mind your P’s and Q’s, please.” She pushed out a thin smile, looking more like an iguana lapping at a piece of sour fruit than the fit, newly middle-aged, single woman who gave up dreams of professional dancing to babysit a bunch of illiterate monkeys.

  “Sorry, Ms. Craig,” Brady said solemnly as he packed up his scattered brick of cue cards and floppy poster board. He scuttled over to the already flimsy stack and hurriedly placed his poster with the others. Very carefully, he placed the big laminate sheet protectively on the top of the already mounting pile. Probably to preserve all the carefully cut out magazine pictures of scantily dressed, hotdog-skinned sluts holding freshly lubed pistols and Rambo sized assault rifles.

  “Quite alright. Now…” Ms. Craig’s tiny blonde head bowed forward for a moment and then slowly raised back up. Her robotic, heat-signature eyes slowly scanned the uniformed rows of helplessly tense faces. “I believe it’s your turn, Mr. Halpern.”

  Kieffer Halpern, a thin, smooth-faced boy with an extraordinarily average appearance and build, slowly got up from his desk; his own rubber clad brick of cue cards curled in one sweaty hand. Calmly, trying hard to ignore the pressing eyes all around him, he slowly made his way to the front of the room.

  “Queeeeeef!” someone squealed like a stuck pig from somewhere in the back row. Kieffer ignored this and continued to set up his poster board with his narrow shoulders set against the class. Had the other kids been able to see his thin, slightly gaunt face among all the suppressed giggling and snickering, his outward appearance would convey a humble, preoccupied look of deep concentration. He looked lost in whatever was on the big maroon sheet he produced from the carefully collected pile of yet to be presented projects. The vibrant square of red reflected radiantly in his wide glassy eyes. His hard, open stare seemed to mirror the negative static energy stretching hungrily across the room; intricate red webbings branching and splintering wildly from the fluorescent sheet’s blurry crimson aura.

  With his back to the room, Kieffer felt the unseen mass of hungry eyes pulling at him. Each seated child, with their young, harvestable bodies, surged with balled up conductive energy: organic prongs functioning on nothing but faulty synapses and sensitive organs. Sadly, with no other purpose but to feed the machine until the parts wear out for good. That’s okay, though. We dematerialize back into the cosmos and start the whole process over. It’s the only kind of recycling that makes any sense, really.

  Who else in this room, Kieffer’s mind babbled as his body went through the motions, knows that we are all just custom leather-cased conductors?

  His mind briefly wandered to these barren lands of cynicism as his ears automatically received and decoded the pinched waves of sound rolling boundlessly in every direction of the cramped classroom. He had just set up his poster, and already he could hear disinterested voices starting to clamor behind him. The colliding of murmuring conversations, much like the rolling tide of the mighty oceans, meshed and bled together to form a new sound: an endless static chorus consisting of all layers and no tone.

  His mind could only take so much of the pointless chitchat that everyone around him constantly projected every second of every day. How much could one person possibly say to another without rambling? Not every conversation needs to be pleasant or necessary. Some things are better left unsaid. To constantly unravel every thought that comes across your mind is the self-admittance of a non-functioning cerebrum. A busted brain with a blown filtration system. The worst part is that in actuality no one really cares about what anyone else thinks or feels, anyway. The listening party just sits patiently through the active speaker's bullshit until it is their turn to unload.

  Kieffer couldn't stand the mindless mental dumps that spewed and trickled out of their mouths. Each pointless story or anecdote somehow more pathetic and conceited than the last. In times of incredible social poisoning, his mind would shield itself and draw inward like a wounded turtle. The droning noises remained, but his thoughts were pure and untainted. Only the truly personal bits of audio data made their way through his tough, fluid lined skull to his soft and porous ego.

  The truth is that a part of Kieffer, the one that stayed awake during social shutdowns, heard everything. It echoed and relayed these things to him in nearly every aspect of his life. Whether he was in the halls between classes or sitting in his room listening to Meshuggah albums while obsessively rereading literary classics like American Psycho or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, they always found him. Every name, every rhyme, every fake fart and queef always seemed to find its way to him in the end. Luckily for Kieffer, he could easily deal with the verbal taunting and childish bullshit that came with being classified as “different.”

  It doesn’t take much effort to be labeled as an outcast. Ask any kid sporting faggy black nail polish above lengthy, but trendy, emocore band names scratched into their lily-white wrists. And while these certain individuals thrive on being stylistically different, purely for vanity sake, there is another kind of outcast who belongs to no group and who is almost always destined to a life of solitude: a sad existence of pondering things of old while ironically wasting the present. A mind succumbed to intense theological dramas, plagued with unprecedented self-doubt and loathing. The most untenable of all the cliques is, of course, its smallest.

  The socially reserved, and most times eccentric, intellectual.

  All you need to do to join the club is think for yourself. That’s it. Just form your own opinions and interests based on what moves you, not the masses. Once you manage that, you are an honorary member of the Snooty Club for book reading sophisticato’s who love to smell their own farts. Besides, Kieffer couldn’t blend in even if he wanted to. At the budding age of sixteen, he was already too far gone. The stink of anomalous thinking that clouded his every word and mannerism was unavoidable. He was so clearly separated from everyone around him intellectually, but mostly socially. Most people felt uneasy about his reluctance to seek any approval from those around him. The rumors attached to the memory of his dead dad didn't do him any favors, either. In a small town like this, even the dead live on through word of mouth. Their reputations passed down to the remaining relatives like worthless heirlooms.

  Kieffer never set out to be different; he just was. He couldn’t explain why he liked the things he liked. He had been pressed on it many times by various recurring characters in the recent years. When questioned, he was usually quick to deflect an answer. He also wasn’t oblivious to the fact that he had no close friends. When the last of his childhood buddies started high school and began to drift into different social cliques, Kieffer stubbornly stayed ashore; a lonely castaway stranded by his own devices. The isolation sometimes hurt, but really the acidic memories of his old friends were just harmless pinches compared to the other things. All he really needed to get through those long, tedious days were his literary escapes and the small reminder that he was free.

  “That’s enough, Chuck,” Ms. Craig scowled reflexively over her open grade book. “One more word out of you and it’s a week of detention. Got it?” She glared unblinkingly down at the boy from her large, slightly elevated, oak desk. Her almost childish five-foot frame was wholly forgotten once those blazing blue dagger eyes were set to kill on the now silent boy tucked solemnly into a desk in the back-left corner. Well known for her freak-outs, Naomi T. Craig was a timbre wolf in tan cocoa-buttered skin. By now, most kids at Hampden Academy had heard the rumors. Particularly of the one unlucky boy who years ago caught a projector to the face for refusing to keep his mouth shut during a lecture on cultural bias in the modern workplace.

  Chuck Pelletier, a toe-headed, barrel-chested boy of eighteen, was as rowdy as any young redneck enthusiast in the pine tree state. But, he wasn’t about to poke the bear. He did
n’t personally see the kid get his face dented in with someone's PowerPoint presentation, nor did he fully believe the ever-altering details that floated around the school. Still, he knew better than to piss her off. Their detached gazes met forcefully from across the cold room for only a second before Chuck finally submitted, pouting down at his graffiti-tagged desk in mild defeat.

  Ms. Craig's gaze shifted, filtering from red to blue, as she turned her attention back to the front of the room. “Whenever you’re ready, Kieffer.”

  Back still against the room, Kieffer unstrapped his note cards and glanced through them one last time. These are merely for insurance, he told himself with fluctuating self-confidence as his heart fluttered in his chest. He had spent weeks preparing this report, laboring over every line and phrasing. You won’t be needing them.

  He took a final glance at his poster board before turning around and stepping to the side. All quiet chatter and whispering in the room dissipated to silence. Against every rational thought spinning in his head, Kieffer forcibly shoved his reluctant brain into forming words.

  “For my Sociology report, I chose to cover the topic of serial killers and their influence on modern American ideals.” The words dropped like bricks once they left his mouth. Rows and rows of open, dumbfounded faces blankly stared up at him as he shuffled nervously through his cards. His brow began to sweat as he felt the psychokinetic weight of their narrow fish-eyed stares bearing down on his exposed ego. Digging down deep now for encouragement, he defiantly forged on against the deafening wall of silence.