Brian Lumley - Psychomech 01, page 15
Wyatt sighed. ‘Then how do you know what’s in the papers?’
‘I always know, that’s how!’ The tramp turned his red-rimmed, suddenly wild eyes on Wyatt and Maas. ‘Christ, I see it, don’t I?’
‘You see it?’ Maas’s interest matched Wyatt’s scepticism.
‘Right. I see it in my dreams. All the rape in the world. All those vile bastards sticking those poor girls. Oh, some of ’em ask for it, right enough - but what of the poor little innocents who don’t, eh? And what of me, who suffers it all?’
In answer to which, Maas and Wyatt could only shake their heads ...
Then there was more probing to be done: questions about family, friends, the police; people who might know or want to know where George Hammond was; all seemingly innocent, casual, and all answered in an encouraging negative. Only George himself knew where George was, and as for family and friends: they no longer existed. The police? Oh, no - he’d always steered clear and had never had any trouble with them. No, George was no trouble to anyone - except himself. It was the dreams, you see? The dreams of rape. Which could only ever be drowned out in a bottle of decent booze.
By which time he had all but finished off an entire decanter of good sherry!
The sherry did for him, however, and he went down for the day; which was all to the good. It allowed Wyatt and Maas time to prepare for the night. Neither one of them had thought to check the morning papers, where they might easily have verified what Hammond had related to them about certain events of last night. Or to be more exact, Maas had considered checking - only to put the idea from his mind. It would be too much of a coincidence, too much to hope for. Later he would remember and check out of sheer curiosity - but by then it would be too late and Hammond already on the machine.
For scattered throughout the newsprint were the usual brutalities, of which not a few dealt with sexual attacks on lone females. Seven miles away in Chichester an elderly spinster had been raped by a burglar. In Winchester a girl had been threatened obscenely but had managed to frighten off her attacker. In Bognor Regis two girls had been dragged into a van, driven away and attacked in nearby woods. One of them had escaped but the other had been raped repeatedly by three drunken bullies, until police officers had caught them in the woods, still taking their terrible pleasures of the by then unconscious girl. And all within twenty-five miles of Wyatt’s house ...
For all Psychomech’s electronic and mechanical intricacy, the theory behind the machine was simplicity itself. The majority of human minds harbour certain fears, each of them specific to the individual. When these are common-place they are easily recognized and named - such as claustrophobia and agoraphobia, to name two of the commonest. But fear is a much more complicated thing than that, and its sources are far more diverse than enclosed or wide-open spaces.
Psychomech’s purpose (as explained by Maas to Wyatt long ago when first he started to build the machine) was this: first of all to excite the subconscious fear areas of the subject’s psyche, then to feed both body and mind with the strength necessary to overcome the fear, the while gradually removing the fear stimulus. A dream would be the result, induced and controlled, a dream in which the subject would come face to face with his own worst nightmares - those things he most feared, the demons of his mind - which he would then overcome and destroy. Which was in effect the entire foundation of psychiatric theory and practice: to make a mind face up to and gain mastery over its own deep-seated fears. And all to be performed through the magic of Psychomech.
But Wyatt knew nothing of the machine’s principal function, which could only come into play after these initial exorcisms had taken place; knew nothing of the theory that an entirely liberated fear-free mind would realize its full ESP potential, would in fact turn man into superman. Maas, however - Maas could read the machine’s charts and graphs and so learn the full scope of its success or failure -he did know. And whereas Wyatt had agreed that George Hammond should become a guinea pig, only Maas knew how far the experiment would go. Last time there had been failure, true, when the subject’s fear-centres had been overstimulated without back-up or relief from the machine; but this time ... And what if Hammond really did have this ESP power he had mentioned, this mental apparatus for remote viewing, which allowed him to see distant occurrences ’in his dreams’, as he had it?
... In the evening Hammond came briefly awake, and was immediately subdued with a little food and several large glasses of brandy; which saw him safely out of the way until around 10.30 that night. When next he started to recover but before he could fully rouse himself, Maas gave him a mild general anaesthetic and with Wyatt’s help wheeled him into the machine room where they attached him to Psychomech. And there at last, with the many monitors taped securely into place on Hammond’s head and body and with the machine fully programmed, the experiment was ready to begin.
It was 11.10 P.M. when Maas administered the required drug, an opium derivative, and switched the machine on. The preliminary phase of dream-inducement, fear stimulation, confrontation, battle and victory would take between two -and two and a half hours to complete, but Maas had told Wyatt that it would take six. He required the extra time to check Pschomech’s secret but primary function: to supply Hammond’s mind with an extrasensory" boost which Maas should be able to monitor on his screens and graphs. In this way he hoped to develop a finer measure of control over the input calibration.
With Hammond strapped down and sinking rapidly into his own subconscious world - which would soon become peopled by the most hideous nightmares he would ever experience, dreams of brutalized women, red rape and mindless perversions, where only the dream-Hammond himself might intervene and so destroy the cancer of his psychosis - Maas left Wyatt to keep watch and went downstairs to make sandwiches. Wyatt’s servants, a living-out cook and cleaner and an odd-job man, had been given today and all of tomorrow off. Maas himself was, ostensibly, the estate’s gardener; but in fact professional help had to be called in quarterly to keep the gardens up to scratch.
The German made sandwiches for himself and Wyatt, gathered up the morning’s newspapers (already sixteen hours out of date), and retraced his steps upstairs. He delivered Wyatt’s food to him in the machine room, then went into the psychiatrist’s study to eat and read the papers. As he ate and read, so the lines of a frown slowly began to crease his forehead. In minutes his sandwiches were forgotten as he tore through the newsprint, pausing briefly here and there and then hurrying on. And by midnight he had pieced together the whole thing, a complete corroboration of what Hammond said he had ’seen’.
And it was now plain to Maas that Hammond had, must have, second sight. Oh, yes, for he had seen just such men before, when long ago he had tried to build Psychomech for Hitler! The man was a remote viewer, beyond any reasonable doubt. And Maas believed he knew how it had come about. His wife’s experience at the hands of her rapists - or rather, his mind’s constant preying upon by that horror - had developed into something away and beyond any ordinary psychosis. In some inexplicable way latent ESP powers had been awakened, a clairvoyance concerning itself solely with sexual attacks upon women. And so sensitive had his remote viewing become that Hammond had almost been driven insane. He must have been an extremely strong man, for instead of succumbing he had gone ’on the road’, where only his incessant wandering and the occasional bottle were able to ease the nightmarish empathy he felt for the victims of those brutal crimes his mind detected in their enactment and showed to him in ESP visions.
Maas was jubilant. Normal ESP patterns, even boosted one thousand per cent, might be difficult to detect on the cheap calibrators Wyatt’s tightwad money had provided -but Hammond’s ESP patterns should be quite abnormal. Why, he should be able to detect them right now, before ever Psychomech supercharged the tramp’s mind.
He deliberately forced himself to a semblance of calm and finished his sandwiches, even though they now tasted like straw. Then he went through into the machine room where Wyatt was checking Hammond’s functions. On the bed of the machine - not really a bed so much as a padded platform complete with straps and manacles - Hammond was sweating freely and twitching spasmodically. Dwarfed by Psychomech’s electrical and mechanical bulk, his grimy, naked tramp’s body seemed very tiny and insignificant; but when Maas tuned in the additional monitoring system he could see at once that this was not so. No, Hammond was in no way insignificant. On the contrary, he was a very extraordinary man.
‘Hans,’ Wyatt mumbled round a mouthful of food, ’what are you doing?1 Without waiting for an answer he continued: ‘Are you sure he’s OK? I mean, heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, temperature, adrenalin -everything is up. Up and rising.’
‘I see it,’ Maas answered calmly. ‘It’s only to be expected.’ He turned down the power to those screens he had been watching, faced Wyatt. ‘Look at him. The anaesthetic has long since worn off and Psychomech the hypnotist has taken over. His worst fears are realized as he comes face to face with them. He wades thigh-deep through violent, vicious scenes of rape run rampant while the machine prepares him for battle, feeds him those impulses which will turn him into a psychotic killer - but only in his dreams. When he is through, Rape will be banished. Aided by Psychomech he will have destroyed Rape. He will no longer fear but despise Rape. It will no longer ride him through life like some morbid hag clinging to his back.’
Together they gazed at the beleaguered man ...
Hammond reeled across the shallow, misted depression of a moonlit valley of scabrous trees and jutting, weathered rock formations, like the ruins of some vast and ancient fortress long fallen into decay. His eyes were tight-shut and he held his hands to his ears, vainly trying to insulate himself against the horror spawning all about in the night. Mist eddied about his calves, swirled where he stepped, a warm mist rising from hideous hollows of depravity and lust. But even with his hands clamped over his ears he could not shut out the bestial grunting, the screams of ravished women and girls; and through the soles of his staggering feet he felt the shuddering of the earth to the incessant, frenzied pounding of naked flesh. The entire valley, whose expanse stretched away to black, low-domed hills, seemed full of heaving, fighting, writhing bodies; where with each passing moment women would come running, screaming, panting, fleeing before leering gangs of pursuers, only to be caught, stripped naked and hurled down into the mist. White limbs would kick spastically upward, straining violently before falling back exhausted; and brutish backs and buttocks would work in a frenzy of near-mechanical hat while gangling beast-creatures stood about waiting their turns. All about Hammond as he stumbled through his nightmare, the shallow valley was alive with an unending orgy of rape!
He tripped over an extended, shuddering female leg and fell to his knees, his eyes popping open automatically as he threw out his arms to break his fall. Agonized eyes gazed into his through tendrils of mist - his wife’s eyes/ She lay there in her rags, soiled and broken. Hammond sobbed and reached for her but a hairy fist crashed into his temple. He flew over on to his back, got to his knees, gazed through dripping blood that mercifully obscured his vision. But not enough. Slave ring mouths descended upon his wife’s breasts, biting deep and drawing blood; dirt-clogged fingers clutched her thighs as a grunting, hunched figure drew her on to himself as if she were an old garment.
Hammond screamed and surged to his feet, crashing against a gnarled black tree where a bloodied figure flopped spread-eagled, bound to the rough bark, her dark head lolling. He knew her ravished figure, her black hair, the voice now choked and sobbing that mumbled its terror into the rotten glow of the night. Again his wife! Rough hands pushed him aside, sent him staggering into the rising mists as squat, naked figures converged on the tree, scrambling to be first with this tortured creature whose body had already suffered a hundred rapes.
Hammond could take no more of it. All of them - all of these tortured souls - were one and the same woman. They were his wife, suffering again and again that horrific rape which had robbed her of her very humanity.
He fell on a white thing that laughed like a hyena as its buttocks contorted in the foul, swirling whiteness. He dragged it upright, a man-beast spurting semen as it came to its feet from bleeding, violated flesh. Hammond’s knee smashed into the creature’s throbbing groin, his hurled fist broke through its teeth, his forking fingers stabbed deep into eyes already glazing as the creature toppled. Then—
A dozen of them converging on him, all hair, swollen genitals and grinning yellow teeth, leaving the crushed bodies of their female victims for the moment to give their attention to this new diversion. Hammond whirled, saw the ring of inhuman faces closing, the bestial half-animal things that crowded to drag him down...
Hammond was not winning his battle, that was plain. Psychomech’s controls were now set to give him maximum aid, to ensure his victory over whatever terrors beset him in his nightmare - but he was not winning. The horror was too great, his psychosis too deeply rooted. On the bed of the machine he writhed and thrashed, his sweat a river that washed him and ran grimy over the bed’s padding. His straining flesh was cut by the straps, his wrists and ankles chafed where the manacles - for all that they were padded -gripped him. His choking, terrified scream rang in the soundproofed room, sending Wyatt staggering back in naked fear. A physically weak man, the psychiatrist could not bear to watch the torture Psychomech inflicted upon its subject.
‘Hans, for God’s sake - the machine’s killing him! We have to stop this.’
‘No, no!’ Maas shook off the other’s trembling hands. ‘This is the peak. From now on it goes in his favour. Look—’ And while Wyatt’s eyes went back to the shrieking, pitiful man on the machine’s bed, Maas flicked the switch which brought Psychomech’s surge into play. The surge: that ESP boost to the man’s already massive psychic powers.
In this action Maas knew he took a chance, but he had no choice. For once Wyatt was right: Psychomech was killing Hammond. Even with the defence input at maximum, still the mental disease eating at the man’s mind was winning the subconscious battle. To apply the surge now was a pure gamble, but there was something Maas must know before Hammond succumbed and died. And after all, if he did die, who would miss a tramp ... ?
Weighed down by a mass of revolting, lusting flesh, Hammond knew now the terror of a woman tormented by sex fiends. The beast-men were sunken to such levels of depravity that all flesh had become one to them. Their vile bodies worked even against each other as they fought to violate Hammond where he writhed, pinned face-down in mist and mire. Exhausted, on the brink of the pit itself - that dark chasm named Death - he searched desperately for reserves of strength which he knew were already drained... and found them not drained but brimming, overflowing!
Strength!
The awesome, miraculous powers of God and the devil combined, filling Hammond in an instant. A surge of power impossible! He rose from the mist in slow grandeur, unhurried in his newborn, as yet untested might. He rose up, Behemoth hurling off his foes, with burning eyes that tore the mist and steamed it away, revealing the rottenness that gasped and heaved beneath. And those monsters of his dream too slow to release him were the first to know his wrath. In easy, effortless ecstasy he drew their scabby arms from torn sockets, and with fists like swinging scythes he disembowelled them and sent their tatters flying in red ruin.
His fiery eyes sought out the demon hordes that endlessly coupled with the stark, screaming innocents of this realm of horror, shredding the mist and sending aloft clouds of steam like exhalations from hell. And wherever he found the foully jerking flesh of Rape he struck, striding like a death-dealing avenger through the steaming valley, his hands scarlet with the slimy blood of those he slew.
And fast? - he had the flickering speed of a snake’s forked tongue, though to him it seemed his pace was measured and that of his enemies dull and sluggish. And sharp? - his hands and feet and knees and elbows - even his jutting jaw and his very teeth - were razor edges to the stunned and suddenly quivering flesh of his enemies. He cut, crushed, tore, dismembered, destroyed them, his fury such that not a beast of them survived his onslaught; and when it was done a sun rose slowly over that valley of horror, and the ragged women - those poor ravished females - covered themselves as best they could and crawled away, scarred but free now of the night’s menace.
And Hammond, the world’s greatest weapon against the mindless flesh-lust of Man, could at last lie down and sleep on earth where green grass pushed upward to the light through the dust of crumbling toadstools. And he feared no more the monster Rape, banished for the moment, at least -from his dreams. . .
The time was 3.30 A.M. and the sweat had dried now and grown chill on the faces of Maas and Wyatt. Their shirts stuck to them clammily.
Wyatt’s face was grey with worry, lined with fear not yet fully subsided - but Maas was triumphant. His play, however dangerous, had paid dividends.. Following the surge, Hammond had drawn on Psychomech’s backup systems like a human leech, his body seeming to gulp at the intravenous nozzles supplying it with adrenalin, plasma, oxygen and sugars. So vast his intake that he seemed to swell on his platform, his hands knotting and relaxing, knotting and relaxing. And when he had opened his eyes ...!
That was what had frightened Wyatt the most: Hammond’s scarlet eyes opening like bleeding pits, and the lunatic smile that had remained frozen on his face while all of Psychomech’s screens and printouts recorded tremendous brain activity. Maas had been obliged to shout at the psychiatrist then, to restrain him from switching off the machine completely. But now it was over and Hammond slept a true sleep, his eyes closed, his breathing regular, a normal smile on his face. He seemed clean somehow, bathed not only in his own sweat but in some inner stream. Like an innocent child sleeping and pleasantly dreaming. And where Wyatt had been left drained by the experiment, Maas felt only a soaring sensation of complete success. For on those screens which only he understood he had read Hammond’s psychometries, had seen what the ESP surge had done to the tramp, how his perceptions had expanded far beyond all previously known levels of metaphysical or parapsychological activity. The Superman was no longer a dream: Psychomech had solved the final question. Now it was only a matter of time and further experimentation, and the machine was not only the answer but the key. There could now be - would be - a Fourth Reich, with Maas the superhuman leader, Der Neuerer Grossfuehrer!
