Zero Regrets

(October 7-8, 2017)


23: The Abhorrence in the Attic

Pareidolia is the phenomenon of human visual perception that recognizes non-existent patterns, including pictures, in random stimuli.

You've heard the old story of the Man in the Moon, perhaps even made out the fellow's features when a silver full moon is shining down. Other people see not only the face, but the man's whole figure, bent over because he's carrying a load of firewood on his back, and they even see his little lunatic dog leaping up at his feet.

Or, to take examples the Pines twins knew well, the lazy summer-afternoon game of lying back on the grass and finding shapes in the clouds: a circus tent, a whale, a kitty cat with the body of a hamster. It could apply to hearing, too—Dipper once found a back-masked message on a recording that turned out to be the real deal, but if you record any length of speech and play it backwards, you'll hear first a nonsense jumble of sounds, but then perhaps some words may seem to come through the gibble-gabble: mreeep bwaak zinzig must beeble burn grawk dernigle my vootie shoes . . .. Don't listen to it. Or at least take off your shoes before burning them.

It's just that old devil pareidolia tricking you. Some people see the faces of saints in burnt whole-wheat toast, or Bigfoot in the shadows of a clump of trees, or a world in a grain of sand. That way madness lies. Push it far enough, and an electrical outlet with surprised eyes and an astonished mouth begins to whisper conspiracy theories to you.

But give us the right stimulus, and we all go a little bit crazy.

All because the human mind is hardwired (well, really gooey and squooshy wired, but whatever) to discover patterns that are in the mind, not in the world outside.

On the other hand, if the mind could not detect actual, meaningful patterns, Sir Alexander Fleming might never have discovered penicillin—"I say, my lab assistant's gone and let this bloody Petri dish full of agar develop mold, and for some reason none of the bacteria I wanted to grow has appeared. Oh, well, have him wash it out and start over again." Duck-Tective would never have realized that the mud puddle, the Fabergé egg, the noodle soup, and the ink stain on the ceiling meant "Quack quack-quack-quack quack MURDER!"

And Stanford Pines might never have comprehended that one out of perhaps a thousand ghost sightings had really sighted a ghost, that out of ten thousand faked knock-knocking poltergeists, one was actually an ethereal rap artist, and that his mundane philosophy did not account for every single thing in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.

Oddly, Dr. Pines was not what you would call a credulous man. Indeed, he was, at heart, a skeptic, but enough of a skeptic so he doubted even his own preconceptions. A physicist might dismiss a supposed haunted house as either a hoax, a misperception of physical processes, or the delusions of a disturbed mind. Stanford Pines went and checked it out and most often found some mundane phenomena at work.

But now and then—

Like this time. This was a now-and-then time. Something really did lurk in the attic of Colby Residence Hall.

After examination and research, Stanford Pines's educated hypothesis about the source of the suicides came very close to the truth. The thing, force, dynamic behind the deaths was an energy without life; a distorter of young minds; a killer without compassion.

Not that it was malignant. One must be sentient to bear malice. It was, perhaps, most like a plant or, better yet, a fungus. Plants require sunlight, rain, and soil to flourish. Fungi need only a medium—like a young person's life—in which to root, and, in place of moisture, some very fundamental superstitions, self-doubts, and fears. Everyone has them, some more than others. And those, the ones with more, offered rich, dark soil for the metaphorical abhorrent fungus to feed on.

Thus, like a fungus, the abhorrence in the attic slowly fed on these minds, grew on the feeding, and directed the mind into madness that, metaphorically again, tasted delicious. When a fungus loses one of its basic elements of support, it does not immediately die. It dries into dormancy. During the years when the inhabitants of the nearest room beneath it had no serious problems, insecurities, or fears, the abhorrence rested. However . . ..

When the abhorrence caught a vulnerable young mind in its coils, when the young person experienced agonies of fear and unending nightmare, when their suffering grew worse and then unbearable, when the wrenching of insanity drove them to desperate panicked self-destruction—that final moment was like a burst of energy straight to the abhorrence's vital center.

With each climax of death, it grew stronger. Its coils spread to cover more ground, to clutch the tighter at the next victim. The intervals between . . . feedings . . . shortened. The next victim need not be so emotionally stressed, so prone to believe in and fear ghosts and ghouls. A tiny crevice in the mind became enough for the abhorrence to send its deadly tendrils of fear creeping, creeping in.

Analogies always collapse eventually. Is it correct to liken the abhorrence to an ordinary fungus? Perhaps a poisonous one. The abhorrence pumped negativity and pain into susceptible minds. The victim could not pull herself out of the spiral—could not. Her thoughts became blighted, the processes of perception, thinking, and understanding warped. Every hopeful thought withered and rotted into corruption.

And yet the abhorrence did all this without awareness, without purpose, and without malice.

Its one imperative was this: grow stronger.

Which meant more deaths.

Having no sense of self, no organs of perception, the abhorrence had no sense of time. Yet in a way it quested, in the same manner, metaphorically, as a fungus sends out fine tendrils, mycelium, in search of nutrients. Something had just stung these tendrils—metaphorical again, since it felt no pain—when Wendy had taken the token that had been part of its summoning and its birth through the barrier.

She had felt only a lick of the fire. The abhorrence had taken much more damage. Without pain again, a considerable portion of its ghastly network had been seared away. It missed the severed and scorched connecting psychic tissue without knowing that it did.

Yes, this is all but impossible for a human mind to grasp. It is difficult for a human even to imagine, let alone comprehend, the nature of the abhorrence.

However, Stanford Pines had spent many years dealing with utterly alien forces and creatures. That night he slept little, because he thought, felt, and intuited that the abhorrence would brace itself against them and would even somehow counterattack.

Let's try another analogy, shall we?

Plants.

Plants can defend themselves without thought, without planning. The root of the cassava plant produces a harmless chemical that increases in volume when parasites or foraging animals begin to eat the plant. Perfectly inert inside the root, this substance can rapidly pass into every part of a plant under attack. As the insect or animal eating the plant swallows it, the digestive system of the browser triggers a drastic change.

The harmless chemical digests and dissociates into cyanide.

The attacker dies in agony.

Problem solved.

However—see the analogy breaking down—the abhorrence feasted not on substance but on minds.

And now, lightly wounded, it began to produce the psychic equivalent of glycol cyanide.

Even without a mind of its own, it began to produce defenses.

It did not understand or plan or care.

But if it prepared itself, the others would leave it alone.

They would die.

Problem solved.