Not for Mortal Eyes

Jen entered the lab holding two large coffees. Her coworker, Edwin, gently set down a beaker of blue liquid and turned around. “Good morning, Dr. Liu,” he said, tapping his foot to the jazz tune “Something’s Coming” by Dave Grusin. “Ready to capture a few dreams today?”

“Edwin, we’ve been working together for five years now. If you don’t quit with all that ‘Doctor’ nonsense, I’m going to stop bringing these fancy lattes you love so much.” She smiled and offered him a cup. “Just ‘Jen,’ okay?”

“Hold on,” Edwin said. “I’ll have to rewire my brain first.” With a stroke of his gray beard the scientist stared intently at the ceiling and repeated the words “Just Jen” several times before taking the coffee. Then he winked and said, “Thanks, Just Jen.”

Jen rolled her eyes and set her cup down. She grabbed a lab coat off the wall and wrapped it around her petite frame, then paused to wipe her thick-rimmed glasses on the stiff fabric. Edwin glanced sideways at her, appreciating that although she was young, she conducted herself with a maturity and efficiency beyond her twenty-nine years. Her devotion to science had often evoked in him thoughts of the daughter he never had.

“Guess you decided to come in early this fine Saturday morning,” Jen said, poking fun at him for adding Saturdays to their schedule, not that she had any kind of social life she was missing out on. She paused amid the lab’s flurry of activity: microscope illuminators, clunky computers, the sleep lab surveillance monitor, and, of course, the tiny radio tuned to Edwin’s favorite jazz station. Coffee, jazz, and science, he often said, were the only things that kept his “old butt” going. Not even marriage could compete with his unwavering goal to digitally reconstruct a human dream, which, thanks to Jen, was now becoming a reality.

And it was all hinged on their serum, a concoction that was becoming increasingly successful at amplifying the electrochemical pathways in dreaming, mammalian brains. In conjunction with a prescribed dose of the blue liquid, receptors on a tiny scanner implanted near the test subject’s secondary visual cortex recorded and digitized the amplified brain activity and relayed it back to the central computer; there, data were filtered through a complex program and assembled into static images.

After nearly five years of calibrating various components, including an array of electrodes and other devices, the scientists had finally neared their goal of producing crisp, detailed images from a human dream, the implications of which were certain to unravel many of the brain’s mysteries, including consciousness.

“So how’s the serum shaping up?” Jen asked, clipping on her university badge.

“Oh, quite nicely. I think there’s a chance for optimal results by late morning.” The elder scientist handed Jen some papers scribbled with formulas and notes. “Just modify the serum as indicated here—see, at the bottom there—then we’ll run some tests before Jim gets in.”

“Jim’s in today?” Jen sighed. “Sometimes he makes me miss the rats.”

“We’ve come a long way from testing on rats,” Edwin said. “I for one was getting tired of endless dream captures of fuzzy maze walls and cheese.” He laughed.

“I know, I know. I was only kidding. Really. I’m glad you found him. It’s just . . . well, never mind.” Sensing a slight flush in her cheeks, Jen scrunched her forehead and quickly flipped through the pages of the revised serum. “Wow, this could be the one we’ve been waiting for,” she said. “This could work!” And although she secretly despised Edwin’s jazz, her fingers snapped along with the music as she walked over to her work station at the other end of the lab.

A short time later Jim Coal, their test subject, was just starting to wake up from a nap in the sleep lab down the hall, dozens of multi-colored electrodes webbed over his head.

“Dr.—er, Jen, come take a look at this.” It was Edwin calling from the computer desk. Jen came up behind him and leaned over his shoulder, arms folded across her chest. “What is it?”

“That last batch of serum . . . well, here—just look.” He pointed to a slightly blurry, colorized image on the computer screen; a digital capture from Jim’s dream. “See that? Doesn’t that sort of look like—?”

“Jim’s father!” Jen gasped. “That looks a hell of a lot like Jim Sr.”

Edwin held up a black & white photograph from Jim’s file. It showed Jim in a Little League uniform, his father standing to his right, a possessive hand on the boy’s slumped shoulder. The man wore a military style haircut.

Jen bit her bottom lip to contain her excitement. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “This is without a doubt the best image we’ve ever gotten!”

“Yes, the serum’s much improved,” Edwin said. “But I think we can do better.” He tapped the desk with his fingers and scrutinized the image. “Another hour or so of tweaking should do the trick.”

Jen grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll go see if Jim’s willing to stay a bit longer.” She turned and rushed out the door.

Meanwhile, Edwin grew thoughtful as he further compared the man in the photograph to the one on screen. Both images clearly showed the same person—a tall, imposing figure with broad shoulders, square jaw, and close-set eyes.

According to Jim, his father had been physically and emotionally abusive to both him and his mother. His mother, too afraid to divorce the man, had taken the brunt of the abuse. It all came to an end on the day his father’s smoking corpse was discovered in the woods behind the family home. Although the police had initially suspected foul play, a final report concluded that Jim Sr. had died of self-immolation. The cause: financial-related stress, gambling debts, and other misfortunes. Things might have turned out okay for Jim had it not been for the nightmares, nightmares in which his charred father stalked him in every conceivable setting, nightmares that had grown more realistic and threatening over time.

Those same dreams had been the source of Jim’s depression and sporadic employment as an adult. When Edwin first encountered him on a late night walk about town, the man was curled up on a heap of garbage in the yellow spray of an alley light, writhing in the clutches of a nightmare. Edwin shook the man awake to console him, then handed him his number. Jim called a few days later, which led to his becoming a test subject for Edwin’s dream project. Edwin did fudge facts in the paperwork a bit, choosing not to reveal the man’s occasional lack of dependability and frequent benders. But it was Edwin’s inclination that Jim’s participation would not only help alleviate his vivid, ever-worsening nightmares—in conjunction with therapy, of course—but that it would also produce the best possible results for the experiments because his dreams were so vivid. In light of these factors, occasional tardiness and hangovers were tolerated.

Now, after several months of trial and error, Edwin found himself staring at what was once considered a scientific impossibility—an image from the realm of human dream; the image of a man, no less, this one standing in a sort of mist or smoke, his eyes aglow.

*     *     *

Edwin appeared at the doorway of Jen’s office around one o’clock, holding a bottle of cheap champagne and two disposable cups. Jen looked up and swallowed a bite of her sandwich.

“Edwin! Where’d you go, man?” She shoved a romance novel beneath a messy pile of papers as a few breadcrumbs tumbled from her lower lip. “Don’t you realize how creepy it is around here when no one’s around? I thought you were going to run another test before lunch.”

“I did, but this time I wanted to surprise you.”

Jen put her sandwich down and glanced at the champagne. “What’s that, the secret ingredient for perfecting the serum?”

Edwin released two quick grunts that more or less qualified as a laugh. “No, not exactly.”

“Good news then! Well, pop that sucker and tell me all about it.”

After the champagne was poured, Edwin handed her a cup and then raised his own. “Well, it’s been five long years,” he said, “but today—”

“So the serum’s at optimal performance? You got a focused image in proper color?” Jen’s face lit up like a cat watching sparrows at a birdfeeder.

“Yes. Coupled with a larger injection, the upgraded serum worked perfectly. We got a crystal clear image from Jim’s most recent dream. His father again, though a bit monstrous this time.” He paused. “Hmm. It’s unfortunate he hasn’t been able to shake off these nightmares about his father. They’re actually getting worse, I think.”

Jen nodded sympathetically.

“At any rate, everything syncs up now: the serum, the scanner implant, Jim’s electrochemical activity. The latest calculations are the magic formula, if you will, and we’re getting an image every three and a half seconds. When Jim returns from lunch we’ll do a full run, capture an entire dream cycle without interruption.”

“That’s wonderful, Edwin. We’ll get hundreds of successive images!”

“And, the first usable dataset for our big paper.” Edwin blew out a deep breath. “We did it, Jen. We finally did it. Here’s to us. Here’s to dreams.”

“Corny, Edwin,” Jen said, clipping his cup, “but I’ll play along.”

Edwin raised an eyebrow, suddenly hesitant to drink. “Hmm, perhaps we should keep our heads clear.” He set his cup on a nearby shelf crammed with scientific journals. Jen lifted hers even higher. “Ah, to hell with it,” she said, “we deserve it.” She winked at Edwin and gulped down the champagne.

A deep, scratchy voice entered the room. “What do we have here, a celebration?”

“Ah, Jim. Come in,” Edwin said, gesturing with his arm.

A lanky man of thirty, with dark stubble and a prematurely aged face, staggered in through the doorway.

Edwin clasped his hands together. “Glad to see you back. How was your lunch break?”

“Meh,” Jim said, glancing at Jen. He always looked at Jen, even when answering Edwin’s questions. “My headache didn’t take much of a break.”

“Hold on, I’ve got some aspirin,” Jen said, her voice becoming slightly more feminine. She bent to the lowest drawer of her desk, exposing a hint of cleavage. The look on Jim’s face gave the impression that he was imagining her in fewer clothes.

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” he said, still watching Jen as she put the aspirin back. “This is what I get for sitting at the bar all night.”

“Jim,” Edwin said, “we’ve had an incredible breakthrough. We’re finally getting the results we’ve been hoping for! Just a few more sessions and we can talk about extracting that device from your secondary visual cortex. We—”

“My what?” Jim’s eyes and mouth slid down together, as if connected.

Edwin put a hairy-knuckled finger to the back of his own head. “Your secondary visual cortex, remember?”

Jim rolled his eyes. “Oh yea, that. Gotcha.”

“I know we’ve kept you in the dark for a long time now,” Edwin went on, “so as to not influence the experiments, of course, but very soon we’re going to let you in on all the details. We’ve made a magnificent breakthrough, and its implications are going to greatly impact the scientific community, if not the world.” He paused for effect. “Don’t be surprised if you find yourself quite the celebrity.”

“Celebrity?” Jim pointed at his own head. “Visual cortex, the golden fucking egg, right?” He glared at the ceiling, “Hey dad, you catchin’ this? These scientists here are gonna make me rich and famous. And you never thought I’d amount to a hill of snake shit, did ya.” He snorted to himself.

“You really should consider joining us at the conferences, Jim,” Jen said. “You know, to tell everyone how we forced you to be our guinea pig.” She looked at Edwin and then at Jim, a smile on her face.

“Ah, a guinea pig,” Jim said. “I like that. Much cuter than an ol’ ugly lab rat, right?” He inflated his cheeks and scratched the stubble on his chin. Jen laughed over her hand to hide one of her bottom teeth, which was crooked.

Edwin held out the sleeping pills he’d produced from his lab coat. “You ready, Jim?” he said.

The man raised his arms in mock surrender. “Alright, alright! Jeez, you scientists—all work and no play.” He popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them without water, then wriggled out of his jean jacket and dumped it on a nearby chair. “I’m all yours,” he said, grinning at Jen.

*     *     *

“Wake him up, wake him up!”

Edwin was shouting as he and Jen burst into the sleep lab. Electrodes were popping off Jim’s head in all directions as he thrashed around on the bed. Jen ran up to his side, only to be knocked away by a wild arm, her glasses flying off and hitting the floor. “I said stay away from me!”

Edwin pushed down on Jim’s shoulders.

“You’re burning in hell!” Jim raged on. “You can’t hurt us any—” His eyes suddenly flew open and he glanced around, confused. “What the hell’s going on?” Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

“You were having a nightmare,” Edwin said, catching his breath. He let go of Jim’s shoulders. “We’ve never seen you so upset.”

Jen retrieved her glasses and assessed the damage. There was a small vertical crack in one of the lenses.

“Are you okay?” Edwin asked her.

“Yes, you?”

“Fine, fine.” He scratched the back of his head. “That must’ve been some dream, Jim.”

Jen put her glasses back on. “Edwin, I think we should call it a day.”

Edwin rested his hands on the back of a nearby chair. “Was that some side effect of the new serum?”

“I doubt it,” Jen said, “but I’ll definitely look into it.”

Jim labored to sit up, his eyes furtive and glossed over. He shook his head, breathing heavily. “He’s comin’ for me. Fucker’s comin’ for me and he ain’t gonna stop. I need to get out of here. I need a drink.”

“That’s not a good idea, Jim,” Edwin said. “You need to take it easy for a few minutes. And who? Who’s coming for you? Your father?”

Jim squinted at the elder scientist. “You know what, man? I really don’t need a therapy session right now. Just leave me the hell alone.”

Edwin backed off. “Alright Jim, alright. We’ll go. Take as much time as you need. But come and find us as soon as you’re ready. I’d like to conduct one more test while we’ve still got you here. Okay?”

Jen shot Edwin a look, but the scientist had already turned to leave.

“We’re going to help you through this,” Jen added, putting her hand on Jim’s shoulder. “We’re going to help you get better.” The man shook his head and stared down at the floor.

*     *     *

Back in the main lab, Jen and Edwin sat scrolling through a series of incoming images, each a digitized slice of Jim’s recent nightmare. Jen opened her notebook. The first image revealed a woman bathing nude inside what appeared to be a large, horizontally-severed cactus. “Um, is that me?” Jen squinted at the screen. “Shit. How embarrassing.”

Edwin didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent.

Jen focused on the oversized breasts. “Well, at least he compliments me,” she said, a bit creeped out. She began to take notes:

IMG-5800: Dr. Jen Liu bathing nude inside top of large, horizontally-severed cactus in desert landscape.

IMG-5801: Water in cactus has turned red. Is this blood?

IMG-5802: Hundreds of fissures shooting out from base of cactus in all directions.

IMG-5803: Entire image appears to be engulfed in flame.

IMG-5804 to 5806: Dark box suspended in space.

IMG-5807: Inside a dark room (inside box?), stars and galaxies visible through transparent floor, walls, and ceiling.

IMG-5808: Blurry, human-like figure curled up in far corner, heart and veins visible through skin, fire spread across bottom of transparent floor.

Jen pointed at the figure. “That looks like a child.”

Edwin pulled at his beard as he waited for the next image.

IMG-5809: Entire image has the appearance of fire again.

IMG-5810 & 5811: Bluebird on charred wooden floor in an odd “courtship dance”—its wings extended forward.

“This dream is much more vivid than his recent ones,” Edwin said, “and the symbolic imagery quite chaotic and random. Something very interesting is going on with Jim today.”

IMG-5812: Bluebird lifeless, its body twisted in two directions as if mutilated by invisible hands.

“Ew, that’s not nice.” Jen grabbed a can of soda off the table and cracked it open.

IMG-5813: Back inside dark room, figure standing in center, appears to be an adult, flames still visible beneath transparent floor.

IMG-5814: Figure closer, resembles a young Jim Coal, looks frightened, gun in right hand, gasoline can in left hand.

IMG-5815: Jim standing at edge of woodland with items from previous image.

IMG-5816: Entire shot composed of flames.

IMG-5817 to 5819: A young Jim smiling (maybe crying), floating in space with hundreds of white butterflies spiraling around him.

Edwin touched Jen’s arm. “Look at this one,” he said. “See the time here? This is where he got upset.” IMG-5820: Jim’s mouth open as if screaming, butterflies on fire, trees burning in background.

IMG-5821: Close-up of Jim Coal Sr. (Jim’s deceased father) taking up entire frame, eyes bright red.

“This is getting horrific!” Jen said.

Edwin’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s fascinating!”

IMG-5822 & 5823: Image blurry and unrecognizable.

IMG-5824: Another close-up of Jim Sr.’s face, seemingly angry.

IMG-5825: Image blurry and unrecognizable.

The images continued to switch between the blurry and angry close-ups of Jim Sr., representing nearly fifteen seconds of dreamtime.

IMG-5830 (last image before Jim woke up): Another close-up of Jim Sr.’s face, bordered by fire, mouth wide open and full of sharp teeth.

Jen dropped her pencil. The computer started beeping.

“Edwin, a new set of images is coming through!”

They turned to the video monitor where Jim could be seen thrashing around on the bed in the sleep lab. “Dammit! He must’ve dozed off,” Edwin said, jumping to his feet. “Jen, stay here and get the data saved to the external hard drive, and be sure to keep recording the sleep lab. I’ll go help him.”

“Edwin, be careful!”

The scientist nodded and took off down the hall. Jen wheeled herself in front of the computer and clicked on the window of incoming images. The first revealed a dark, broad-shouldered figure in an ember-colored haze. The figure materialized as she clicked ahead, its closely set red eyes seeming to glare right into the tiny receptors in Jim’s brain. The figure broke forward with each successive image, by degrees becoming the distorted physiognomy of Jim’s father. Then, without warning, it took on the gruesome aspect of an archetypal demon.

Jen gasped and knocked over her soda.

Trembling, she continued to click through the images, watching in horror as the creature jumped out of frame, reappearing a few frames later dragging a person, dragging Jim, toward a now visible pit of fire. It raised the man high over its head, then tossed him carelessly into the pit with an image-by-image eruption of flame.

A long, terrible scream echoed past the doorway.

Jen jumped up. “What the—!”

Movement on the sleep cam caught her eye: There, in pulsating laboratory light on a blood-soaked bed lay Jim’s contorted, lifeless body, a frayed hole where his face used to be. At his side, covered in sizzling chunks of gore, stood the hairless, seven-foot demon from his dream, wisps of steam rising off the naked gray body. Seething red eyes danced in their sockets, while black, human-faced worms slithered maggot-like around its limbs. A grotesquely oversized mouth, with lips rolled back to expose an overabundance of sharp teeth, snapped at the air. By the time it turned to the camera and spoke, Jen was already out the door.

“Not for mortal eyes!” it snarled with a swipe of its hand, killing the video feed.

Jen stopped halfway down the hall to listen for movement. There the demon burst through the swinging doors like a rogue tank. It turned, glaring at Jen, then spread its arms to the walls and set them ablaze. Edwin stumbled out behind it and fell to the floor as smoke billowed from the laboratory.

“Edwin!” Jen cried.

The demon, no longer paying them any attention, entered a nearby lab and could be heard destroying it. Jen ran up to Edwin, who quickly got to his feet and clutched at her lab coat. “Our data!” he whispered harshly, balancing himself. “I’ve got to save our data!”

“But Edwin, that thing!”

“No, Jim’s the one it came for.”

“But what is it?” Jen said as they hurried back to the main lab.

“Jim’s father. Something. I don’t know. It just burst through his head. Small at first, then it just . . . grew and grew. From where, I don’t know. But I think we’ve seen too much, Jen. We’ve seen too much and it’s going to destroy everything!” He peered down the hall, eyes frantic. “Get outside, call for help. I’ll grab the hard drive and catch up. Go!” He turned and disappeared into the lab.

By now the demon was charging down the hall like an angry hog. In a panic Jen rushed back into the lab and tried shutting the door, but the creature came up behind her and burst in. Losing her balance, Jen turned and fell against the computer table. The demon took a step forward, but Edwin jumped in front of it and blasted it with a fire extinguisher. Jen leapt out of the way and maneuvered along the wall, holding her breath as waves of heat assaulted her from the doorway. There she paused beneath the billowing smoke as sprinklers rained over the roaring flames.

Edwin made a second dash for the computers. The demon, unfazed by the extinguisher, pulled the human-faced worms off its body and flung them at the equipment. Wriggling, they burst through the hardware with their grotesque heads and slithered inside, sending out sparks and smoke from the holes.

Edwin cursed.

The demon spun around and lowered itself to meet Edwin’s gaze. “Not for mortal eyes,” it hissed, inhaling hot saliva through gray teeth. Then, with a sharp crack of its jaw, the voice turned into that of Jim Sr. “Tell anyone what you saw here today,” he said, “and I’ll haunt you and that bitch for the rest of your lives. You hear me?”

Edwin gagged from its sulfuric breath and coughed. The demon, now laughing, turned and made its way back through the smoke-filled hallway to the sleep lab. There it shrank with a chaotic blur and climbed back into what remained of his son’s head.

Meanwhile, Jen and Edwin stumbled out of the exit doors and into the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Jen stopped abruptly, yanking at Edwin’s arm. “Delete all of today’s data,” she said, her voice trembling. “And destroy every file on Jim Sr. Okay? We can’t risk having that thing come back.” Coughing, she pulled the hard drive out of her lab coat and shoved it into Edwin’s hands. He stared at it blankly.

“Promise me!” Jen snapped.

Edwin flinched, his fingers gripping the device. “Jen, you did it. You saved our data!”

“Promise me,” Jen repeated, still coughing. She locked onto his bloodshot eyes, tears in her own. “Because what if next time, that awful thing comes for us?”

Edwin blinked, then turned to watch the long arcs of water from the fire trucks disappear into the rising flames. He managed a tired but affirmative nod. “I promise,” he said, placing a hand on Jen’s shoulder. She smiled weakly.

As the paramedics helped him into the ambulance, Edwin grew distant as he thought about the data clutched to his chest. At no point did he feel the black worm coiled around his ankle.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)