ā | Valack: "Did you bring the book? [...] Very nice. First edition. Of course, there was only one printing." Lydia: "There is no T.R. McCammon, is there?" Valack: "No." Lydia: "You wrote the book." Valack: "That's right, Lydia. Maybe you've already guessed that it's not just a book." Stiles: "What is it?" Valack: "A tool. Designed to open your eyes." Stiles: "To what?" Valack: "To them-- the Dread Doctors." |
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ā Gabriel Valack, Lydia Martin, and Stiles Stilinski about The Dread Doctors novel in Amplification
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The Dread Doctors Novel is a book written by Gabriel Valack (under the pseudonym T.R. McCammon) intended to be used as a tool to trigger memories that have been suppressed by the Dread Doctors, though the book also seems to work to help trigger memories suppressed as a result of trauma as well. Valack used a pseudonym to prevent his professional reputation as a physician to be tarnished any more than it already was by his life's work, and only one copy was ever officially printed.
At some point, the book fell into the possession of the Dread Doctors, who then had one of the Chimeras they created, Theo Raeken, give the book to Tracy Stewart, another one of their Chimeras, knowing that the McCall Pack would eventually stumble upon it. After reading the book, Tracy began experiencing horrifying flashback-hallucinations regarding her experimentation by the Dread Doctors, which was further heightened by the night terrors she was already having.
Sure enough, Malia Tate ultimately found the book in Tracy's bedroom after the Chimera had been killed by the Dread Doctors due to her failure as a test subject. She then brought the book to school with her, where it was subsequently examined by Lydia Martin and Theo Raeken. The pack then decided to make copies of the book so that they all could read it, believing it was the best way to figure out if they had had memories of contact with the Dread Doctors that may have been erased. After reading the book, Malia, Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinski, and Lydia all subsequently suffered flashback-hallucinations of their repressed memories, though it was implied that these memories were suppressed as a result of the trauma associated with them, rather than because the Dread Doctors made them forget.
While Kira, a Thunder Kitsune, initially had difficulty reading the book due to the fact that it was a language trick, which Fox spirits are known to have difficulty understanding; after reading the book backwards at her mother, the Celestial Kitsune Noshiko Yukimura's suggestion, she, too, was able to trigger the memories of the Dread Doctors using a lightning rod in Kira's eye to overpower her inner Fox spirit. Since this point, neither the book nor its copies have been seen.
Excerpts[]
Several pages of the book were displayed, though the order in which these pages are meant to appear remains unknown, and the amount of text shown varies based on how much of the book appeared in the frame:
"It was her salvation.
As if she knew what Judy was thinking, Amy keened and hissed a challenge. Her jaw extended impossibly low, revealing rows of deadly fangs.
With a roar, Amy charged her friend. Judy swung the bat as hard as she could and connected with the side of Amy's head. The creature went down, but was up again before Judy could react. In an instant the bat was out of her hands and clattering at her feet. Amy swiped her taloned hands, ripping Judy's shirt and the skin beneath.
Judy cried out as she collapsed to the floor.
Before she knew it Amy was on top of her, but not before Judy could get her foot up and under Amy's chest. Amy snarled and squirmed, gnashing her teeth inches from Judy's face. With all of her might, Judy kicked as hard as she could, sending Amy backwards against the concrete wall.
Amy righted herself, looked back to Judy and--
Crack! Judy smashed the bat across [...]""[...] and gave it a sickening twist. His legs stopped kicking and hung loosely beneath him.
With a sob in her throat, Judy watched the Surgeon toss Aaron off the catwalk and into the dark water below. Then, the Surgeon's bright eyes fell on her. Judy recoiled, her hand falling on a large rusted wrench.
Leaning forward, the Surgeon raised a gloved hand, but Judy struck out with the wrench. The large tool cracked against the side of the Surgeon's mask. He stumbled back and Judy struck him again and again.
Falling backwards, the Surgeon collapsed into the elevator. The wire-walled box creaked and groaned after years of neglect and exposure to the elements. The cable holding the elevator box in place vibrated under the [...]""[...] the floor and roll away. Her chest rose and fell again and again as she sucked air into her lungs. As the adrenaline began to wear off. Judy felt her eyes sting with tears. She looked away from the twisted remains of the creature that was once her friend as a wail escaped her lips.
With a labored step, Judy turned toward the open door at the end of the walkway. Blood pounded in her ears every step of the way like the droning of a great cloud of bees. She pushed the door open until it clanged against the outside wall. Night air filled her lunges and for the first time in weeks Judy felt like everything was going to be all right.
She stepped outside into the darkness [...] And ran like hell. [...] The peculiar V-shaped mouth with [...] the absence of brow ridges, [...] beneath the wedge-like [...] of this mouth."Users of the Novel[]
Several of the supernatural and unnatural beings in Beacon Hills read the novel, which allowed them to trigger repressed memories in the form of flashback-hallucinations.
- Tracy Stewart
- After Tracy read the novel, she began experiencing flashbacks in the form of hallucinations of her memories of being experimented on by the Dread Doctors, who then used their Memory Manipulation powers to make her forget. She began seeing the Doctors around the school and her home, which ultimately led her to wander back to the Dread Doctors Operating Theater for her final "treatments."
- Malia Tate
- After reading the book, Malia's memories of the car crash that killed her adoptive mother, Evelyn, and her adoptive sister, Kylie, in the early 2000s when Malia was about nine years old. She began having these flashbacks while she was driving in Theo Raeken's car and it nearly caused her to be hit by oncoming traffic. The flashbacks led Malia to realize that it wasn't her first transformation on the full moon that caused her family's deaths, but it was instead her biological mother shooting at the car that caused the crash, and Malia simply shifted for the first time out of the stress and trauma of the shoot-out.
- Lydia Martin
- After reading the book, Lydia's repressed memories were triggered by seeing a small bald patch behind Sydney's ear, which caused her to recall a memory of when she was a small child, where she disobeyed her mother Natalie's orders and came into Eichen House, where she found her mother and a nurse tending to her grandmother Lorraine, who had performed trephination on herself and warned Lydia that "they are coming for all of us."
- Scott McCall
- Scott's flashbacks after he read the book were triggered when his biology teacher, Mrs. Finch, mentioned his intention to become a veterinarian. He then began to have an asthma attack for the first time since he became a Werewolf due to the fact that his flashback involved his very young past self having a stress-induced asthma attack after he and his dog, Roxie, were attacked by a rabid Doberman. Younger Scott was then brought to the hospital's emergency room, where Melissa urged him not to talk.
- Stiles Stilinski
- Stiles' flashback was triggered by his presence in the hospital, where he believed he was seeing his mother in a hospital gown walking up to the roof. While there, he saw his younger self being attacked by his mother, who was in the middle of a frontotemporal-dementia-induced delusion that caused her to become paranoid that Stiles was trying to kill her. Despite the younger Noah Stilinski attempting to talk her down, she still tackled Stiles and began clawing at him.
- Kira Yukimura
- Kira was the last to trigger a flashback-hallucination of her repressed memories due to her inner Kitsune spirit's difficulty with language tricks. After her mother Noshiko suggested that she read the book backwards, she finally was able to see her repressed memories, which involved the Dread Doctors, glamoured into invisibility, pulling her out of her family's car and laying her on the hood, where they jammed a lightning rod into her left eye and summoned a lightning bolt into it, which overpowered her Kitsune spirit and kept her inner Fox and her inner human in conflict.