The New Assault

by Steven Spellman

  It was a humbling thought and one that distracted Sam from the sight of two small children watching him from one of the buildings nearby. The children’s building looked bad, even considering that most of the buildings here should’ve been condemned long ago. Every one of the building’s windows were broken out completely, much of the roof was caved in, and large cracks snaked everywhere in the brick façade. The building looked as if it could collapse at any moment. Certainly not a place for two small children. When Sam noticed them, he was shocked. Both kids had large eyes that stared out from horribly tight and shrunken faces. They both leaned heavily upon the empty window seal as if they couldn’t stand upon their two legs without the support. Their hair was matted to their heads and saturated with dirt and grime, and as far as Sam could tell it had been that way for a long time. It was the look in their eyes that shook Sam the most. There was real exhaustion in their eyes, not the fatigue of overwork, rather a dimmed glint like they were both dying from some terrible disease. Their eyes were bloodshot, low, and they had a distant unsteady gaze to them that suggested that these children were close to losing consciousness.

  Sam began walking toward the children. He felt drawn to them. They were a horrible spectacle that demanded his attention in the same way a particularly gruesome car wreck would draw a passerby. As he walked closer and could see the kids more clearly, the spectacle became more gruesome. These poor kids were in desperately bad shape. Their skin looked as if it had once been brown but now was a horrible ashen grey. They looked like burned out charcoal briquettes. Many of the people that lived in this section of the city were in ill health one way or another, but this was different. Sam was tempted to reach into the children’s young minds and access their memories to discover what in the world could’ve happened to them, but he hesitated. The sight of them was so horrendous that he was sure he’d find something worse than he’d ever experienced inside their young brains. He hesitated, but he did eventually reach out with the grasp of his telepathy. He had to. Just as the sight of these children drew him irresistibly forward, so the possibility of what horrors might await him in their minds demanded his attention. He reached out mentally, but his own mind collided with a barrier. As far as Sam could tell, the children’s minds were being shielded from him by another mind with much stronger telepathic abilities. Dr. Crangler.

  “It is very good to see your face again after so long.” Sam heard the doctor answer into his brain. Sam looked around him nervously before he caught himself; this was a mental voice; he would not be able to gauge which direction it came from with his physical senses. He took a deep breath and struggled to summon his focus. He needed to try to gauge the doctor’s exact location, but there was no need as, a moment later, the doctor walked slowly from around the nearest corner of the building. He was a tall, gaunt man with a full head of hair that was silver almost to the point of complete whiteness. He walked with a slightly unsure step, as if he could only barely trust his legs. His clothes were dusty and ruffled, and his face looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days. Sam could not hide the surprise in his mind.

  “So…you expected me to look vastly different…perhaps more doctor-like?” the doctor asked telepathically.

  Sam hesitated. He didn’t have the doctor’s ability to conceal his mental self, so he made the only choice left to him, to answer truthfully. “Well,” Sam said, “I’m not sure what doctors are supposed to look like when they’re not at work, but I’d be lying if I said I’d ever expected a particularly famous Doctor like yourself to look … well, like you do.” There was a moment of silence as the doctor looked on. He didn’t seem offended. In fact, he smiled just faintly. It was a smile that made Sam feel as if he had said something wrong. “Of course,” Sam added, quickly “when you’re the world renowned Good Doctor Crangler I guess you can look however you want to look.”

  An image flashed into Sam brain of Albert Einstein in his later years, with his characteristic unkempt grey hair strewn in every direction. Sam had seen the same photograph years ago of the famed scientist and he quickly realized that Dr. Crangler had reached into his memories and pulled the image from them. Sam knew from experience that it was a relatively simple thing to reach into a person’s mind and view their memories. It was a completely different thing to isolate a particular memory, a particular image, and present it to the person themselves. It was only then that he realized that he himself hadn’t been reaching into people’s mind, but only looking, as a person might look through a window into someone’s private home. What the doctor was doing was reaching into his mind, and the more Sam considered it the more he felt as if the doctor weren’t simply looking through the windows of his house but climbing through them into his private abode. Sam felt vaguely violated.

  “I assure you, I’m not doing anything I won’t soon teach you to do, Sam.” Dr. Crangler answered, reading what was in Sam’s mind, “I also assure you, I have no interest in violating you, young man. And you are a young man. You don’t understand such things yet, but you will, in time. With my help … but there is one thing I must request of you, Sam, that you use your mind, not your mouth, to address me.” Sam’s mind immediately asked why. “If I am to teach you to be more capable with your ability you must practice constantly, and the best practice is real world experience. The more you use your ability the stronger it will become, so you must use it as much as possible.”

  So, The Good Doctor had already taken for granted that Sam would be his pupil? Sam wasn’t yet sure how he felt about that. He wasn’t sure he liked how suddenly things were progressing between himself and the doctor, especially considering what the doctor had done to the guards. And the children…

  “Don’t worry, young man, I will explain all.” The doctor turned to return into the dilapidated building, “Come, follow me.”

  Sam followed. He had the striking suspicion that he did not have much of a choice.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was a real struggle for Sam to communicate relying solely upon his telepathy. He was surprised that all that practice with his father didn’t make it easy. Sure, he was capable of it, just as he was capable of talking using only his mouth, but communicating mentally with Dr. Crangler was vastly different than it had been with Geoffrey. His experience with his father had been like learning a daunting new task with a trusted and experienced friend. Communicating with the doctor was like performing a new routine, completely nude, before a seasoned professional. The doctor’s ability seemed to greatly outpace anything Sam had sensed from his father during their lessons, and with the doctor’s mind shielded as it was, there was no telling just how far he actually did outpace Geoffrey.

  “You shall know all I know, in time.” Dr. Crangler answered Sam’s unspoken musings. “For now, you must trust me.”

  Sam grimaced. it would take some time for him to get used to the doctor answering questions and addressing concerns that he had not spoken or even intended him to hear. He and the doctor sat now, upon two dusty simple wooden foldable chairs in the middle of what had once been a large living room. A small fire burned brightly in the room’s fireplace, but it didn’t appear as if anything else in the room had been used in a long while. There was furniture; two leather couches, a recliner, a huge television set, and a large standing Big Ben styled clock. Everything was destroyed. The leather couches had been shredded to ribbons and all the stuffing reduced to disgusting grimy pulp, thanks to the collapsed roof that let in whatever rain might fall from the sky. The recliner was in equally bad shape except that all the stuffing had been removed and now only naked, bent metal coils remained. The clock and television both had shattered glass faces. Only dangerously sharp and jagged shards lining the edges, remained. The simple wooden chairs that Sam and the doctor sat upon were the only things in the room that were still in a single piece. Even the floor was in desperately bad shape. Besides being covered in a thick layer of dust and grime just like everything else in the room—the result of years of dust and sediment
from the decay outside, made even more grimy by whatever moisture that fell through the open roof—there were huge ragged holes everywhere in the rotting wood of the floorboards. There weren’t very many of these gaping holes, but some of them were large enough for Sam to stand in.

  The holes in the floor made Sam wonder why the building wasn’t completely overrun with rodents and insects. Certainly, the doctor had food here, so why hadn’t every vermin that was nearby come to pilfer it?

  “Very astute observation.” Dr. Crangler answered, and Sam found that he hadn’t flinched as much at the doctor answering his unspoken inquiries. Apparently, he was becoming accustomed to it. “Actually, it brings us to one of our first lessons. Rodents and insects don’t have quite as complicated a mental presence as humans, but they do think. Just not in the same way.” The doctor opened his mind up to Sam just wide enough for Sam to see into his memories that he’d learned to communicate with anything that possessed a brain, no matter how small, or a nervous system, no matter how simple. He’d learned long ago how to keep even the insects and rodents from ever approaching his domicile. As far as the food source was concerned …

  “Mind over matter is not just a phrase of wit.” Dr. Crangler said. He allowed Sam to experience yet more memories. In those memories Sam saw that the doctor had learned also to control his own biological functions via his telepathy. Not completely, not yet, but the doctor was able to subsist off a small fraction of what a normal human being was required to eat or drink to sustain life. “That brings us to the children …” The doctor said, reading in Sam’s mind that he had begun to make the connection. The doctor closed his own mind and Sam was again barred out of his head. “Let us see if they are in as a decrepit condition as they would appear … come.” He said as he turned and began to walk toward a hallway leading away from the living room. Sam followed, and every step was an uneasy one. Where was The Good Doctor leading him? What would he see once they reached their destination? It didn’t help his angst that the doctor knew everything he was thinking, even at this very moment.

  As he followed behind down the hallway, watching the doctor’s back, the thought resurfaced in his mind that Dr. Crangler could be a necessary benefit to him. His father had begun to teach him to hone his telepathic ability, but his father was no longer around. Certainly, he would practice on his own, but he could never hope to raise his ability to the level his father had attained, not before the storm came. He could certainly never hope to raise himself to Dr. Crangler’s level, not on his own. Only with the doctor’s help was there any chance. He continued staring at the doctor’s back. He needed The Doctor’s breadth of ability, no matter how it came, no matter the cost. This strange, powerful Doctor might just be the worlds—as well as Sam’s—only hope.

  The doctor stopped abruptly. “I am glad you have finally come to the only conclusion that exists.” Sam heard in his mind. “Now, you are ready to behold my work …” the doctor stopped near one of the open doors that lined the hallway. He stepped across the threshold and Sam understood that he was supposed to follow. What he didn’t know was what exactly awaited him inside the room. Those children looked so awful. Sam wasn’t sure he was ready to discover how they had gotten that way. He wasn’t sure he could stomach it. It didn’t matter, he would have to stomach it. The doctor was waiting. When Sam walked into the room he immediately noticed that it was vastly different from the living room. There was real furniture in here, chairs and a single sofa, everything still intact. There was no television, broken or otherwise, and no glittering glass fragments littering the floor. The room was dusty but not completely covered in dirt and grime like the living room. The biggest difference was that the ceiling was still intact. The glass in the room’s only window was still whole in its frame.

  There was a thick, dingy film covering the window that allowed only a weak, milky light to bleed into the room. That, along with a roof that was still there to block out the sun made the room considerably darker than the living room. It wasn’t dark enough that Sam couldn’t see, but it was enough that he had to focus more carefully on what he was seeing. Right now, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The two children from earlier sat in the middle of the room upon the bare, dusty floor, completely still and silent. They both looked shrunken and terribly pallid, even from behind. Sam could see every rib standing out distinctly against the pale, tightly drawn skin of their small backs. They both looked like living skeletons. What were the two of them doing, sitting perfectly still and facing the filmed window like tiny statues? Sam couldn’t even be certain that they were breathing? As he continued to gaze upon them he was struck with the thought that somehow, the doctor was influencing these children far beyond anything he’d expected. Perhaps he was even controlling their minds. It was the only explanation for how either of them could maintain such a rigid posture. They were both so gaunt, so obviously malnourished that they should’ve lacked the strength to sit upright.

  “Now,” the doctor said, “let us look into their minds and see what we find there.”

  Sam reached out mentally and found that whatever had blocked his telepathy from the children’s minds before was no longer there. He peered cautiously into their consciousnesses and was shocked to find that their mental selves were vastly different from their physical reality. On the outside the children looked as if they were wasting away, but on the inside they suffered no hunger, no thirst, no lack of any kind. In their minds they were filled with so much great food—pizza, and hamburgers, and grilled cheese sandwiches, and French fries—that they couldn’t have eaten another bite if they’d wanted to. In fact, in their minds, the children had just finished two separate meals that were much too large for either of them. They both had stomach aches. Sam was so shocked that he walked around the children to get a better view of them. It was difficult for him to believe that they were so well fed in their minds when they were so malnourished in reality. He stepped in front of them and saw that, yes, they were still the spitting images of starvation in action. He watched both images, the one he beheld with his mind, and the one he beheld with his eyes, for a long time before he was able to overcome the shock.

  “How is this possible?” he asked, audibly.

  “While you’re here …” The Doctor tapped his temple “only with your mind.” He answered, reminding Sam to rely completely upon his telepathy for communication. Sam asked the question again, telepathically.

  “Mind over matter.” The doctor answered. “The body cannot keep the mind alive without the proper biological mechanisms, but the mind can push the body to a nearly unlimited extent. It’s quite amazing, actually.” The doctor sounded pleased with himself.

  ‘Amazing’ wasn’t exactly the word that came to Sam’s mind when he glanced down at the children, but he could understand the doctor’s satisfaction, even if he didn’t completely agree with it. Dr. Crangler had obviously learned to harness the untapped powers of the mind, not only his own, but these children’s as well. Sam didn’t like the application, but he wondered what else The Doctor could make a brain do if he’d already learned how to make it keep a person alive without food? The possibilities were endless.

  “Exactly!” the doctor voice boomed inside Sam’s head. “Endless! There is no limit to what I can do given the right subjects … there is no limit to what I can teach you to do.”

  That was exactly what bothered Sam about all this. To Dr. Crangler these two small people weren’t people at all, but subjects. They weren’t children, they were guinea pigs, mere pawns to be tested and experimented upon. As soon as the thought surfaced in Sam’s brain he wished it hadn’t. Certainty, the doctor was eavesdropping on whatever he might think; would he still teach Sam once he knew that Sam saw him as a monster for what he was doing to these children? Did Sam still want to learn from him if this was how he chose to use his telepathy?

  “You’re still young.” The doctor answered. His mental voice didn’t sound angry. A little condescending perhaps, but not angry. �
��There is a world that you have lived in, but there is world beyond that world that you have only recently been introduced into. Just as the bear you encountered, there are beasts in that other world, beasts that can destroy you with a thought …” Abruptly, the doctor forcibly opened Sam’s mind—Sam was stunned by his strength—and his skull was instantly filled with a piercing wail that was louder than anything he had ever heard. It was like the cry of an ambulance’s siren but with the power of a jet engine. Two jet engines. There was no variation in the sound. It was a continuous, droning bellow. Sam felt his entire world tremble with the power of it. The sound was in his mind but the strength of it brought stars to his vision and sent crippling jolts of pain down his arms and legs. He saw the sound, he heard the sound, he felt the sound. For the time that it lasted the entire universe was swallowed up inside it. Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the wail ceased as Dr. Crangler closed Sam’s mind against it.

  Several minutes passed before Sam realized that the sound had stopped. The mental reverberation alone was enough to overwhelm him for that long. When he was able to open his eyes he realized that he was upon his knees, his torso doubled over and his head cradled tightly in his trembling hands. He had no doubt the sound would’ve killed him had it lasted much longer. “It would have.” The doctor said, “This is what awaits all who must share our ability in the world to come if I should fail in my experiments.”

  “What was that!” Sam demanded as soon as he could speak.

  “That, my son,” the doctor answered calmly “is the Hum.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Sam could still feel the Hum in his bones, but especially his skull. Nearly an hour had passed since the harrowing experience, but the echo lingered. Perhaps it was only the memory of the Hum that remained and not a true echo. Sam couldn’t tell. All he knew was that it was difficult to focus on what the doctor was saying, even telepathically, with the ringing still inside his head. Sam also couldn’t tell if the Hum had been a mental phenomenon or a physical one. It had felt like both and at the same time it had felt as if it were far above either. What Sam did know was that it had given pain a completely new definition for him.