The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters

by Baku Yumemakura

  As Hosuke watched, the meat and viscera began to clump together and bond, forming a grotesque creature-like shape. The sight was difficult to interpret, even as a metaphor. In the mind, the same object can assume any number of meanings depending on the observer. Similarly, even a minute shift in the mental state of any given observer is enough to cause the same object to alter its appearance. At that moment, Hosuke observed the following:

  a twisted sneering desk the color of dripping blood with hate protruding from a drawer within a woman’s breasts which eats the taste of shit as it transforms into a speckled black sound before twisting inward and becoming a human hand that sprouts pubic hair which flowers into a gaping anus on the palm where the fingers are penises that crawl into the anus to be devoured as it screams a solid form and consumes itself before transforming into an ecstatic infinity of color and scatters out and away

  That was what Hosuke perceived visually, but each segment of information could have been construed in any number of ways. What he had just seen could have been nothing more than an ephemeral fragment of thought, something that had flashed across the man’s mind while winning a game of mahjong. Equally, it might have been a memory of flavor, perhaps of a bowl of ramen he once ate.

  It is rare for any single memory to resolve into a fixed visual form. Shapes, colors, and sounds are transformed into abstract emotion, and they interact in complex arrangements. The self is infinitely more elaborate than the surface consciousness; it contains the much deeper facets of the mind such as instinct and even the subconscious.

  Hosuke paid careful attention to everything floating around him; it was clear that something was wrong. The floating debris all showed signs of having been forcefully pulled apart, not having peeled away naturally from the self. It was looking increasingly likely that something had travelled through the man’s mind, devouring it in its wake. He noticed something like a black, parasitical maggot clinging to an element of matter. It was the same substance he had used to facilitate his dive from the entrance to the trauma; perhaps drool from the jaws of whatever abomination had eaten through the man’s mind, left behind as it had rampaged through the man’s cognitive muscle. Whatever the case, it was obvious that this thing had invaded from the outside.

  The fragments were too scattered, it would be difficult to glean any useful information from them. He had so many questions. Who was this man? What had happened to him? Why did he try to steal Kukai’s mummified body? Then there was the matter of the A-class Diver that had submerged himself in the man’s consciousness before him. The Diver was still connected to the Psyche Converter next to Hosuke’s physical body. His name was Kagawa, and his retrieval was part of Hosuke’s mission.

  What had happened to him? Hosuke found it hard to believe that it had been the black maggots. They were harmless enough if left alone; all that was needed was a psyche suit. Even a C-class Diver would be able to handle them.

  Hosuke continued to navigate through the thin atmosphere of the man’s empty self. Even though most of it was gone, there was not a complete mental vacuum. The deformed chunks of floating meat would eventually join to form a new self, but by then the man would have either lost his mind or fallen into a permanent coma. As things stood, it was impressive that the man was still alive. He had been in a near-death state when Biku’s men resuscitated him.

  Hosuke waded on, sampling the various pieces of detritus. The timeline was all over the place, and he had yet to find anything of use. One memory had been physical pain from when the man was an infant, while another had been from his childhood, perhaps his grieving for the death of a dog or a cat, and so on. If the order of his memories were intact, it would have been easy enough to filter for visual and aural memories from a particular time, but as things were that would be next to impossible. The only upside was that while the man’s mental trash had not been welcoming, it had also not been overly belligerent.

  Hosuke became aware of a localized physical pain. The sensation was not that of pain in the traditional sense, more like the recognition of a foreign body attempting to force itself through his skin. If Hosuke had been a first-time Diver and not a seasoned professional, the feeling would have registered as pain.

  Dozens of the black maggots had attached themselves to his body. One of them was attempting to breech his suit. To Hosuke they looked like rainforest-dwelling bloodsucker leeches; regardless of how well you protected your arms and neck a few would always manage to break through. He flicked it away, but no matter how many he disposed of, more would swarm in toward him.

  “Gii,” one of them shrieked.

  “Gii.”

  “Gii!” The squirming mass of black maggots began to cry out together, resonating with the first.

  “Kii, Kii!”

  “Kii, Kii!” Each made a tiny, thin noise and together the sound was loud enough to be annoying. The numbers continued to swell, as the creatures cried out in unison. All of the maggots in his vicinity began to converge; in a moment, Hosuke found himself surrounded by a vast number of the things. He had been discovered, fresh meat. They began to group and merge into each other, growing in size.

  “Kii!” They were no longer maggots or lice, the creatures had transformed into a swarm of starved rats. Their movements were sluggish, but Hosuke could feel their hunger stabbing at him like an endless series of pinpricks. They were like planaria, primitive organisms driven only by the need to consume.

  Hosuke took out some of the surface consciousness he had stored in his suit, soaked it in his scent, and carefully lobbed it toward the rats. It drifted toward them before suddenly popping, the sphere fissioning into dozens of smaller spheres. The rats went for the scent-impregnated matter as a single, writhing mass.

  Quite the bunch. The creatures had sparked his curiosity.

  Hosuke noticed something odd. Outside of their individual movements, all of the fragments of consciousness, even the rats, appeared to be rotating in a single orbit. Everything was following a centrifugal, circular motion, slow like a crawling slug. There was a vortex somewhere nearby.

  Hosuke searched for the nexus of the gradually rotating maelstrom when he spotted a thin membrane layered over the void. He watched as the mental atmosphere was gradually funneled through it.

  Just as there are many rooms and corridors within a house, there are also many compartments to the self. Hosuke suspected that he was gazing at the entrance to one such room, but the entrance before him had no shape. Entrances to rooms in the mind always reveal themselves in the shape of an object.

  Did this happen when the man lost his mind, or was it always like this? Probably the former, Hosuke thought. Whatever happened to cause the destruction of the man’s mind would have taken the entrance along with it. The membrane he was looking at was protective. It would have bandaged over the exposed gap in order to protect the interior, but something had forced its way in. The membrane had partially mended, but it was still thin where the intruder had broken in, enough to cause the one-directional flow of mental atmosphere. The membrane had stranded the black rats and other fragments of consciousness, they could not cross it.

  So what had gone through? Something with clear purpose. Maybe Yukio Kagawa, the Diver was still here, somewhere inside the man’s consciousness. Hosuke focused his thoughts and his outline began to flicker; he re-assumed his real-world physical appearance. He was free to take any form he wanted in the mind, but it was easiest to be himself. The mental effort required to maintain the form was only slightly more than that needed for the amorphous cloud shape he had been until now. Even his beard returned and his psyche suit recast itself as the dirt-encrusted clothes he had worn in the mountains only a few days ago.

  He swam down through the void until he came to rest on the membrane. Concepts such as gravitational up and down, of course, do not exist in the mind. Hosuke had decided that the membrane would be ‘down’ as an expedience; it just made things easier.

  He channeled his thoughts to the other side of the
membrane, toward the entrance of the room. Even though it had collapsed, the memory of its form would still be present in the void. Hosuke was attempting to bring it back. Enough mental atmosphere was being sucked in to use as building blocks, probably enough to completely rebuild the entrance, and now that he had assumed human form again, the entrance would adapt itself in a way that was accessible to the human mind. Again, it just made his job easier.

  Something began to form in front of the membrane below Hosuke’s feet. It was a huge, charcoal-red slab of meat.

  Now there’s something. Hosuke stroked his beard. A woman’s genitals had appeared through the other side, black pubic hair shimmered across the void like a living organism. The partially opened split was moist and glossy, ruby curtains of flesh contracted like the mouth of some obscene fish; a viscous, sultry perfume wafted upward. It was the first complete image Hosuke had seen since entering the man’s empty self.

  Finally, progress. The sides of his mouth lifted upward, white teeth showed under his beard. It was the first time he had smiled since Diving into the man’s mind.

  4

  Hosuke swam through the warm, fleshy interior.

  The humid atmosphere had almost returned to a standard level of mental pressure. The corridor of flesh he was passing through, the entrance of which had been female genitalia, seemed to be relatively untouched by whatever had happened. Hosuke had not been particularly surprised to discover that the entrance had been a woman’s vagina. It suggested that the corridor led toward the man’s instinct or to a room near it. The black creatures would not be able to penetrate directly into the instinct.

  He wondered what would be waiting for him. Hosuke had fashioned a number of weapons in preparation. One of them, not particularly inspired but potentially useful inside the membrane, was a collection of the black creatures from outside.

  The mental pressure gradually increased, and the thick, sweet-perfumed soup of the air became progressively more viscous.

  Here we are. He came into an area bathed in crimson light, a womb. There was a baby of about two years drifting toward the center. It had curled its arms and legs into a ball, knees bunched to its head. The cavern was tinged with a husky, dark-red light. The mucous-like air was the amniotic fluid.

  Hosuke advanced toward the baby. Visually, it appeared to be almost double Hosuke’s size. The image was grotesquely real, its pure white body was spattered with thick globs of blood; it was a pale, blood-soaked baby. The globules were sections of atmosphere that had penetrated through the entrance and congealed on its skin like blood; they were gradually being absorbed into it. The corridor that Hosuke had come through was, for all intents and purposes, an umbilical chord. The baby was hugging a curious object to it, something like a stone the size of its head. The baby was asleep, breathing gently as it clutched the object to its belly.

  As I’d suspected. There was a crystalline field around the stone made from the same energy as the suit Hosuke was wearing. The difference was while Hosuke’s suit was his protection against the outside, the other had become a jail for whatever was inside. Instead of protecting the object, it was holding it captive.

  Hosuke took a ball wrapped in surface consciousness from his pocket. It was one of the black creatures. As Hosuke removed the barrier from the ball it began to wriggle, morphing into a black, rat-sized maggot. It squirmed through the air, heading toward the baby before glomming onto its back. One of the red globules began to shrink from around it as the creature appeared to begin feeding on the blood that had clotted on the baby’s white skin.

  The maggot shrieked. At the same time a horrific scream reverberated throughout the womb. The baby’s face had become disfigured with pain; the inside of its gaping mouth was a blood-like crimson. Its lips tore a line up to its ears. Dark-purple blood poured from the fresh wound. The baby opened bloodshot eyes. They were those of an adult.

  The stone tumbled from its arms. Hosuke pulled the maggot from the baby and floated toward the stone. He began to massage it. Over the course of a few minutes the stone started changing, gradually morphing into a cloudy, mist-like substance. It assumed a human shape. The transformation continued to a point, then stopped. Whoever it was, he was unable to form a clear image like Hosuke.

  Yukio Kagawa? Hosuke asked. His thought waves would reach the man directly. The man-shaped fog flickered one way, then the other. Hosuke was unable to tell if the man had nodded or shaken his head.

  Yukio Kagawa, right? Hosuke continued to massage the form with his hands. Eventually, a face began to resolve inside the mist; the man’s hair hung over his forehead, but his cheeks were too long, his eyes twisted out of position. The flaws were subtle, but they were enough to give the face a shockingly alien appearance.

  Kagawa, right? The face nodded, unable to issue a voice. His eyes shifted back to a more normal position.

  The stone, Kagawa said, the sound issuing in gusts from his throat, I was making a stone.

  What happened?

  It got me.

  What did?

  That thing. Kagawa looked across to the baby. Its eyes were closed again. It had curled into a tighter ball than before.

  The last part of the man’s self, Hosuke said. Kagawa took hold of one of the black balls containing the maggots.

  These things. They got to the baby. It wasn’t even a baby when I found it, just the last few bits of his self. They must have joined together. Kagawa tossed the ball back to Hosuke. I saved it from these bastards, but look at me now. I messed up. The man turned out to be...

  A Diver, right?

  You knew? Kagawa’s face took on a surprised expression. It lost coherence for a moment before reforming. Only because he’d covered you in a psyche suit.

  That’s right, completely out of the blue. I fucked up, let him trap me in the suit. After that, there was nothing I could do. I knew I’d lose my mind if I was left like that. Hell, it’s already started, just listen to me complaining!

  So you became the stone?

  That’s right.

  You couldn’t have escaped?

  Maybe, if I tried.

  So why didn’t you?

  I found something pretty interesting, and I would have had to use it up in order to escape. I knew there’d be another Diver coming, that was the promise if anything went wrong. So I waited, keeping the information intact. I waited for you to come... waited...wait...till you came...waited...wai...ted...wait...wai...wa...wa...w...w...

  Kagawa’s eyes, nose, and mouth started to warp out of position. His body convulsed. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as his body jerked in cramped spasms. Hosuke used both hands to steady him. His face was pale by the time he finally returned to normal.

  How many days have I been inside?

  Almost two weeks.

  Kagawa’s cheeks stiffened, this time a true reflection of his emotions. When a Diver assumes human form, emotions reveal themselves normally. He had realized that his time as a Diver would be up.

  I’d planned an escape if no-one came in three days but...why? Kagawa said, his mind elsewhere.

  You’re not A-class, Hosuke said quietly.

  I had to lie. It was the only way to get the job.

  Okay, it doesn’t matter.

  Where is this, anyway?

  Probably the instinct, wherever that happens to be. Instinct is present in all people, in all living things; it exists independent of learning and experience. Apart from a few rare cases where the subjects are burned under intolerable levels of stress it never fully disappears, not while the subject lives. It inhabits areas of the mind far deeper than the attributes of memory and character, and, even if it is somehow destroyed, as long as a person’s cells remain intact it is the first element of consciousness to rebuild itself. While the facets of knowledge and emotion belong to higher-level mammals, instinct is far more primal; the proto state of all organisms. It exists at the deepest levels and is by far the most resilient aspect of the mind.

  Do you k
now what the strongest part of instinct is? Hosuke asked. Kagawa was silent. The will for self-preservation. This baby was so full of fear it retreated into a mother of its own making. That’s an extension of the desire to return to the womb. He built a vagina as the entrance, and this is the uterus. That’s why he chose the form of a baby.

  People often curl into a fetal position when faced with immediate danger. The black creatures had been attacking the remains of the man’s self, and Kagawa had helped it. It would have latched itself to Kagawa. The situation was not unlike a drowning man clutching at his savior, bringing them both down.

  Desperate not to be deprived of this final element of hope the man had drawn on a skill already known to him and wrapped Kagawa in a psyche suit, then fled through the nearest doorway toward the instinct. Kagawa’s undoing had resulted from two factors: that the man had been a Diver, and that he had chosen to escape into instinct. Kagawa had sought to protect himself by taking the form of a stone, but the self had already breached his defenses.

  So that’s it for me, I won’t be able to dive professionally anymore. It’s a shame that I had to burden another Diver. Kagawa drew out a green string, dotted with tiny red particles.

  What’s that?

  I told you I’d found something of interest. Here it is..here itsss...iss..is... Kagawa’s body warped. His face collapsed. Hosuke used his hands to steady the man until he returned to his original form. It feels like I’m losing my mind.

  I think it’s time to get you out of here. Show me that first.

  Here, try eating it.

  Hosuke took the thread and ate it. Wow, he muttered as he absorbed its flavor.

  In that moment the two men were struck by a powerful shock wave. It was as though they had plummeted from one to hundreds of meters in depth, the force of cognitive pressure increased exponentially. A deep wail rumbled around them. It was the sound of instinct howling.