The story printed here is a work of fiction and the characters and incidents bear no relation to any persons living or dead. The work is copyright and may not be reproduced without written authority from David Townsend.

UNDERMIND

OTHER PEOPLE DREAMING JASON

 

 

They came even while Jason sat among other children at school. Between the sums and a list of the rivers of Queensland and the spelling there crept long tentacles of shrieking darkness prickly hands and hot wetness horribly mixing everything up, and he escaped from it by drifting into a little cloud he had found, a light comfortable wispy island of safety in the back of his mind.

 

Nicki made a decision and reached for the phone. "Hello, Dr. Parkhurst? Fred? Hi!  how's tricks?" She felt that she sounded a little nervous. "This is Nicki Konstantinidis. Class of '91 and all that. I need a bit of advice."

"Greetings, kid! How's the school? Wouldn't psychology be fun without people? And what did I leave out of my wonderful lectures? Surely you learned everything at my feet?"

"Well yes but ...." Nicki's heart lifted a beat. Fred was fun, and he was unflappable. No problem too big or too small. "No, it's actually an abuse thing you mentioned, but didn't elaborate on, and I'm just wondering whether I've bumped into it."

"What's the problem?"

"Eleven year old boy. Very subdued and dependent. Going down hill in every area, - increasingly disturbed and confused. I'm wondering about some kind of abuse, but everything I run on him has a nil result. And you mentioned something about the covert manipulation of dependent children, but I'm uncertain, don't have evidence, and don't want to poke about and stir up a hornet's nest."

Fred's cheerful voice steadied her. "You're not falling for the high drama stuff are you? Can't tick all the little squares in the textbook so it must be something exotic? I mean, I'm not putting you down, but what do you have apart from what you've told me?"

Nicki shrugged into the phone. "Nothing really, he doesn't show any evidence of physical abuse, though he's got an odd pattern of blocks about blood. He doesn't respond to any sexual stuff, but has a strange response for nudity. His family goes to some church he won't talk about. Says he doesn't understand, but he's got queer ideas about having to appease God. And then his self-identity isn't coherent, he looks on his body as being fragmented and alien in a way, and.."

Fred interrupted. "All this stuff is the 'nothing really' that you didn't mention before? I must have messed up the Communication lectures as well! Is there any indication that he has been hypnotised?"

"I don't think he has any awareness of any induction techniques. He does go to sleep sometimes when he goes out with his parents to church. Don't blame him."

"Bullying at school?"

"Nil. I checked with the staff."

"Great. You haven't yet got around to telling me why you decided to rush for your favourite father-figure once you had a think about it all."

"No." Nicki paused. "I can remember that when you mentioned covert manipulation, you said that if the therapist suspects there is a problem, and there is a nil response to every test, that itself is a strong positive result."

"Mmh. I have been known to say wild things like that. What do you plan to do next?"

"I suppose that I ought to refer it up the ladder, but I really am terrified of stirring up an uncontrollable mess about nothing. I'd like you to see him, but the Department won't let me ask you in on it, I bet."

"You don't need a whole fandango to ask me in. I'll drop by on a supervision visit for your Master's Degree."

"But I'm not doing a Masters!"

"Yes you are. Your application is just coming up on my computer!"

"You're a wicked manipulating old father-figure." She laughed into the phone. She felt the warm glow of salvation.

 

- o  O o -

 

Nicki migrated from Greece when she was thirteen. She'd had five brothers, limited English, and parents bent on her early marriage. Her iron will had beaten them all. She had been a school psychologist for three years, had her own flat and car, and was the despair of matchmakers. But if anyone had told her before she started training how many staff negotiations there would be to shift a case a centimetre forward, how many disinterested parents she would meet, she wouldn't have started, iron will or not.

Well, that wasn't really true. There were just enough small successes to make it all worthwhile. She supposed that every job had boring routine. And there were challenges. Like Jason.

Jason with the blank face and occasional too sweet smile. Jason who until twelve months ago had been a barely average performer with low but acceptable social interaction. Jason whose performance had nose-dived to the point where his grade six teacher wanted to know whether there was some sort of galloping dyslexia he hadn't heard about.

To date Nicki had established that he wasn't dyslexic, was capable of producing an IQ of 104 on a good day, had normal ability, and no hobbies. He watched TV all the time at home, except when he went out with his parents to some church. His reading was below average. Under stress he became very confused.

She had started him reading stories to her, special stories. Nicki had Readers that didn't get into the classroom. Readers most carefully programmed to elicit all sorts of reactions from the reader. Jason wasn't enthusiastic but did what he was told.

 

 

Jason looked away from Miss Konstantinidis towards the plump little man in the brown cardigan who said he was just visiting. "Call me Fred," he had said, "You interested in tiny drawings?" He had a piece of paper about the size of a postage stamp and a very sharp pencil. He put the paper on the desk and said he could draw a story about Jason. He started to tell a story about Jason as he drew and Jason gradually fell into the story. Somehow the paper got bigger and the story got bigger and some parts of the story frightened Jason and Fred said they would hide those bits on the other side of the paper and Jason need not remember them. There were some parts of the paper that stayed blank and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't find anything to put there. Fred didn't seem to worry about this and said that they might fill them in another day. The story went on for a long time but Jason didn't know that and when he went back to class he half-remembered a short story about him and a rabbit while he waited for Miss Konstantinidis to do some papers.

 

- o  O o -

Nicki leaned back in her chair. "Is that what I think it is? Hypnotically installed blocks to part of his memory, and against another hypnotist?

"Yes, but don't kick yourself for not picking it up. The induction is covert, done in a religious ritual. But it's done deliberately. In a cult, and the operator will be into a power kick as well as fairly skilled."

"What can we do about it?"

Fred gazed out of the window at the grey row of classrooms. "Not much. The parents will be in on it if it's religious. They'll raise hell about their civil rights if we interfere with that. Whoever is controlling him will know if we intervene to break up the existing pattern, and they may make him suffer because of that."

"Do you know what has happened to him?"

Fred produced eight sheets of paper he had used with Jason, and turned them over. In places there were strange marks made by Jason corresponding to the blanks on the other side. "Next time we will have him dream these."

 

A dream.

 

His face is young - perhaps he is eleven. The features are soft in the candlelight. Golden hair falls down almost to his shoulders. His eyes are unfocused, his attention somewhere far past the candle-flame, beyond the black draped walls of the cellar. There is a slackness, a lack of muscle tone, an emptiness.

The boy's chest rises and falls in time with the slow music. The breaths are high and shallow. The lower ribs barely move in the dim light. His arms are skinny, the muscles indistinct. The fingers spread over the base of the bowl seeming over-long.

As the tempo of the music increases, he sighs, and raises the candle. His breathing shifts down, but his gaze remains loose. The only evidence of his awareness of the present is the gentle movement of his belly in perfect time with the music.

The tempo of the music again increases. His belly maintains the rhythm. He seems to be a little more aware, tensing and flexing his naked body.

The first whiff of incense reaches him, and he shudders and pulls himself together. The candle is raised further and he steps into the circle drawn on the floor. He waits motionless.

There is a loud bray from a ram's horn, and he walks towards the altar. He is uncircumcised. No surgeon's knife has ever touched him. He is a virgin.

The priestess awaits the offering of the candle. It is made from black wax. The child who carries it is pure and protected to maintain that purity. It is necessary for the ritual. When he is older, it will be different.

The child reaches the altar and presents the light to the priestess. There is a delicious silence in the cellar. Some of the worshippers have heard rumours of a more ancient ritual. In that, it is whispered, the priestess would have bent the child's head back over the altar and slit his throat to drink the living blood.

But there are remnants yet of ancient days. She bends over his neck and kisses him.  He backs to his place outside the circle. Someone drops a cloak over him. It is chilly in the cellar. He will have more to do soon. The number of pre-pubescent children who can be trained for this work is limited.

The incense and the chanting are soporific. After a while someone prods him forward. He drops the cloak at his feet and lets hands from behind garland him with flowers. He is entranced, but his stomach knots in anticipation of the coming ritual. His parents and the leaders here have told him that it is necessary for the farmers in the country, so that everyone can have food and good fortune. He reluctantly accepts the privileged role.

Garlanded with flowers he walks into the circle again, and approaches the priestess. Others have joined her around the altar. They are all masked except him.

He is surrounded and lifted onto the altar and held there while the chanting continues. He does not understand what is intended. There is only the black candle burning now. The priestess watches him while she chants, and perhaps hungers for the ancient ways.

The chanting reaches fever pitch and the priestess seizes the substitute sacrifice and touches him with something warm and feathered and living, marking his head, the palms of his hands, his heart, his navel, his genitals, and his feet. Then with a great shriek she cuts its throat. The blood spurts over him. The bloody flapping creature touches the points of his body again. The chanting goes on and on and on.

He is lifted off the altar and wrapped in a towel. A woman takes him from the cellar to the bathroom. It is not his mother. It is an older woman who bathes him and dries him and dresses him as he responds like an automaton. Not until she has taken him into the lounge does she begin to focus his attention on the present, on the TV, on the world he shares with other children.

 

Nicki sat white-faced. "Do you think that's what happened?"

"Hardly matters," said Fred. "That's what he thinks happened. And that is the mess that we can't interfere with, or the proverbial hits the fan and he stays a victim."

"You mean I just let him keep degenerating. Do nothing?"

Fred grinned his conspiratorial grin. "Ah, I didn't say that. I said we can't interfere with what's there. I didn't say there is nothing to be done."

"Well?"

"Let's have another session, and, meanwhile, if he starts to exhibit any aberrant behaviour, you get me down here like a rocket. And what you see and hear me do you will not, repeat not, use on anyone until you have had some long hours working with me. OK?"

 

 

After a session at school with Fred, Jason persuaded his mother to call Nicki to say that he needed special help with reading, and Nicki told her that there was a program at the University which could assist Jason, funded by a Foundation. Jason's mother gave permission for him to attend.

Nicki sat off to the side and watched Fred. His pencil and paper took Jason into a long boring story in which Jason found a tunnel that went round behind the borders of his consciousness and over the edge of his mind and down the outside so they could make an entry without anyone up top being aware of it. "You know how rabbits like going underground," said Fred. "Well, we are going undermind." Undermind was a world unknown to Jason, a deep and secret place found by twisted pathways and magic words, a room at the very centre of his being. There in this room he improved his reading, and learned other things about growing-up and protecting himself which later occurred to him from time to time, and also other things which he never thereafter consciously remembered because without Fred he couldn't get back into the room. And if, later, he paused and thought he was on the verge of remembering something odd about his reading therapy, he was filled with a gentle joy and memories of a story about .... rabbits? .... well, he couldn't quite recall it, but it had been fun.

 

 

Nicki said to Fred, "You really are a wicked manipulating old father-figure."

He smiled at her. "And to prove it, you, dear Nicki, are going to have the joy of doing a twenty-thousand word thesis on the use of covert multi-level hypnosis in therapy."

 

Jason began going regularly to the University for reading therapy. Jason's parents could detect a slow but steady improvement. They were concerned that when Nicki dropped the boy at home, he often looked drawn and sleepy, but Jason wanted to keep going, and he was improving, so they raised no objection.

 

 

His face is young - perhaps he is eleven. The features are soft in the light of the candle he carries. Golden hair falls down almost to his shoulders. His eyes are unfocused, his attention somewhere far away.

The boy's chest rises and falls in time with the slow music. As the tempo of the music increases, he sighs, and raises the candle. His breathing shifts down, but his gaze remains loose. The only evidence of his awareness of the present is the gentle movement of his belly, in perfect time with the music.

The first whiff of incense reaches him, and he shudders and pulls himself together. The candle is raised further and he steps into the circle drawn on the floor. He waits motionless.

There is a loud bray from a ram's horn, and he walks towards the altar.

The priestess awaits the offering of the candle. It is made from black wax. The naked child who carries it is necessary for the ritual.

The child drops the candle, and passes out on the floor. A fortnight later he vomits at the altar, and faints again at the following gathering. He is not included in the next ritual. He faints whenever his parents want to take him to the gathering. The priestess visits him, and tries to heal him with chants. He faints. The local GP says fainting is not all that uncommon in boys of his age on the verge of puberty. His parents reluctantly leave him at home several times, but they seem to be less welcome than before, then remain home with him.

 

Miss."

"Yes, Jason."

"Why does Fred tell all these funny stories instead of making me read them?"

"Are they funny ha ha or funny peculiar?"

"Miss.

A pause. "Both. He's telling me about some hairy green caterpillars that do really strange things while they're travelling through space in a flying cocoon. It's amazing stuff."

"Amazing stuff!" Her eyes lit up. "Now that's a bit of Fred's stuff. Next thing you will be telling me that it's fa-a-a-a-ntastic!"

Jason wriggled with pleasure. "He did say that I was."

"Well, he also said that you wouldn't have any trouble with High School next year. Do you feel OK about that?"

"Yes, it'll be fa-a-a-an ........ Miss, what did he mean when he told you, 'Fa-a-a-a-ntastic you should beware of Greeks bearing gifts particularly when they have a bunch of flowers?'"

Nicki giggled. "He's being a manipulating old father figure and he matched me up for my research with a Greek post graduate man who turned up the first day in a suit clutching flowers."

"Are you going to marry him?"

"God, you're worse than Fred. Get on with your reading."

Another wriggle of pleasure.

"Yes, Miss."

 

 

 

 

©  David Townsend

The poem printed here was written as part of the basis of a seminar on grieving for professional careres. The work is copyright and may not be reproduced without written authority from David Townsend.