The Truth of a Kaleidoscope Mind
From Wicked Ink
In a 1950s Craftsman house steeped in the weight of the departed, Fredrick Michael Anderson faces a daunting task: preparing his late mother's home for auction. Battling memories of a turbulent childhood marred by gender conflicts, Fredrick delves into the cellar alongside his faithful friend Chalsey. Amidst unearthed relics, Fredrick stumbles upon his locked diary, triggering a chilling revelation.
Within its pages lie secrets of his father's sinister past, fracturing Fredrick's fragile psyche. Unleashed by the diary's opening are dormant spirits—some benevolent, others malevolent. As Fredrick grapples with Dissociative Identity Disorder, his mind splinters into distinct personalities. Amidst this psychological turmoil, a battle of good and evil ensues within the haunted confines of his home.
Confronting his family's dark truths, Fredrick must navigate the volatile terrain of his own mind. Cryptic messages from a flapper ghost serve as a guide, unraveling his family's sinister history. To survive the malevolent forces unleashed by the diary, Fredrick must confront his inner demons, embracing painful truths and finding strength within. In this supernatural horror tale, the boundary between the paranormal and the psychological blurs, leaving Fredrick to confront the ghosts of his past and an uncertain future.
Reviews
“I must say, this book is an enthralling delight. From the very beginning, you can’t wait to learn more about the two main characters. It grabs you & holds your attention all the way through…you won’t be disappointed. I really look forward to reading anything else this wonderful author, brings to the table!”
“I do want to say that I was blown away by this book and how much I was so underwhelmingly unaware of Dissociative identity disorder. I still thought it was called multiple personality disorder. Boy was I wrong. The character of Frederick Michael was so well written that for me it normalized DID and if him and I were in the same room I would have not batted a second thought at the different personalities within Frederick Michael. I loved how much I learned. The story of how Frederick Michael overcame their past and trauma was so well written I found myself crying and not wanting to put the book down until I finished it. I was rooting so hard for their success. The character of Chalsey was also super cool. I don’t want to ruin the story or spoil anything. But the ending was beautifully done. Just like the man said: It made all the difference. ❤️❤️❤️❤️”
“This book was truly a wild spooky ride! Patrick really delivered on the creepy factor with the demon and spirits that were in this book. There were so many layers to this dark and disturbing story, that in the end was wrapped up nicely. I appreciate the author inserting his own personal experience with DID. It gave us a true insight and understanding on how a person with DID feels and thinks.”
“What if what we remember is actually a lie. Brilliantly written. Sometimes you have to fall apart to become whole. I absolutely loved this book. It’s refreshing to read something that steps away from the normal.”
"The Truth of a Kaleidoscope Mind" manages to cover a lot of ground in a fast-paced manner, offering a supernatural tale of grief horror and spiritual menace. It's impressive how balanced the story is: parent-son relationships dominate the narrative with several rough and uncomfortable moments, interspersed by nice portrayals of friendship and moments of emotional support, though ultimately the author seems to eschew psychological horror in favor of a haunting house tale. I personally appreciated this very much, since I was worried the story would develop in familiar, self-indulgent ways or drown the reader in ambiguity, instead of facing the haunting head on. Thankfully, however, this is a Gothic-adjacent story, meaning that it has beautiful prose, atmospheric ambience, remains respectful towards trauma, yet its focus exceeds the supernatural and dives back into the psychological confusion of shocking revelations about oneself. This makes for an original, two-pronged story, one that combines information (I was amazed how misinformed I was about Dissociative Identity Disorder, for example) with great imagery. I recommend the book to horror fans who enjoy following this kind of insightful two-sided plottting, and who can appreciate the difficulty of one's finding closure after a haunting past trauma.”
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Michael Fredrick Anderson’s car tires crunched on the gravel as he pulled into his mother’s driveway. Or, rather, this red brick house and its gravel driveway had belonged to his mother. Fredrick stopped his white Toyota Camry under a towering silver maple tree and stared through his bug-splattered windshield at the Craftsman house, caught in time in the 1950s, with its porch swing, white porch columns, and old rusted TV antennae alongside a gray satellite dish.
Beside him in the passenger seat, his best friend Chalsey Montgomery leaned forward and gazed through the windshield as well. “It’ll be strange to walk in and not be greeted by your mom.”
Fredrick snorted. “If you weren’t helping me, I’d kill myself rather than face this.” He knew he shouldn’t make such dark jokes, given his history, but he was in a dark mood. He turned off his car and lumbered out, his body tensing more with each step. Around him the summer blasted him with cheer, as if to slay him with toxic positivity: the golden morning sun, the circling songs of a mockingbird, and an azure sky with puffy white clouds painted onto the horizon. The grass glowed in the sunlight, and his mother’s snowball bushes bloomed with stunning whiteness at each end of the porch.
Fredrick escaped all the cheer into his mother’s silent living room. The unnatural stillness and lack of human energy signaled to him that his mother was, indeed, dead. Houses and other buildings had a certain tranquility, an energetic motionlessness, that only occurred when no one was present. Fredrick had entered and shattered it. Standing in the barrenness where his mother had dwelled, he filled it wrongly with his own fluctuating energy. This was not the sobbing grief of movies or TV shows, but a deep, throbbing confusion, a lost hurt like a child wandering through an amusement park long after their balloon has flown away into the sky and their ice cream has melted on their hand, searching for a parent who would never materialize.
A stack of Southern Living magazines teetered on the end table by the beige rocker-recliner. Even to the end, his mother had paid for a subscription and had given him her magazines once she had read them, an odd book club sentiment he had given up trying to fend off. An embarrassed ache swelled in his chest. That stack of magazines had been intended for me. A teal windbreaker lay over the back of the crimson sofa, and his mother’s lavender purse sat on the sofa cushion. The hardwood floors shone in the sunlight pouring through the windows, revealing a lost stray hair. A live person’s marks covered the room, but these items no longer had an owner. Death was the ultimate, and final, abandonment.
A sixteen-pound, orange, tabby cat scrambled out of the kitchen, claws clicking on the floor as he raced around the hard rock maple furniture populating the dining room and living room, meowing and demanding food.
“You need to lose seven pounds before I try to re-home you.” Fredrick sighed as he trudged through the house, wondering why his mother had overfed every cat she owned. She’d killed their first cat with diabetes and complained when her newest cat, Largo, wouldn’t eat all the food she plied him with. Then Largo had gotten diabetes as well.
I’ve tried five brands of cat food, she’d griped. But he still only eats half of it.
It was easier to be angry with her than to feel any other emotion, even now. Eat, eat, eat, he retorted. No fight could break their relationship more than her death had. Eat and never stop eating because you only prove you love me if you eat it all. Fredrick’s family had been a Clean Your Plate type. So everyone had been medically obese, and his mother had verbally attacked him for losing down to a healthy weight.
Chalsey trailed Fredrick and the cat into the kitchen. Towering oak cabinets reached the ceiling. White tile and white appliances offset the otherwise claustrophobic effect created by the cabinets and island. She stood at the entrance to the cellar. Even from the stairs, they could see the walls lined with boxes.
Fredrick opened cabinets until he found where his mom had kept the dry cat food. There was no container. The twenty-pound bag of food was snipped open at the top, a plastic measuring cup inside. He swallowed a groan. Of course. The opened cat food smelled of feline vitamins. He picked up the scoop, grimacing at the orange-brown dusting of cat kibble crumbs crusted to the white plastic. “All right.” He eyed Largo. “I am not feeding you an entire cup of this.” He measured a quarter cup, shut the cabinet, and walked to the cat food dish at the end of the kitchen island on the floor.
“Where do you want to start?” Chalsey asked.
Fredrick paused, measuring cup hovering over Largo’s dish, and received an impatient meow for his negligence. He glanced into the cellar, uneasiness tightening his lungs. His memory of his childhood was patchy, but he recalled fearing the cellar even as a toddler. “Might as well go through the boxes first. After all, I can’t auction off stuff hiding in boxes. Also, I hate the cellar, so let’s get it out of the way.” He dumped the food into the cat dish and hated the sound of the kibbles raining down. It was like he could hear the diabetes-causing calories.
“Sure.” Chalsey marched down the stairs, all confidence. In most ways, she was the complete opposite of Fredrick: short to his tall, blonde to his brunette, bohemian to his khaki-bland. She’d gone to college in Washington state, graduating from the famous hippie but superior Evergreen State College. She’d left Kentucky as a pimple-faced, anxious teen whom boys ignored and returned radiating joy, a virtual goddess in flowing gypsy skirts, prairie shirts, and golden ringlets cascading down her back.
Fredrick had lived his entire life in Kentucky, gone to college there, and believed he’d die there, too. His too-thin, somber self moved through its days in polo or Oxford shirts and nondescript slacks, a history professor whose fire only showed when discussing slavery and human trafficking. “You’re the sun, I’m the new moon,” he muttered.
Chalsey had already disappeared around the corner, but she leaned backward, showing her heart-shaped face. “What?”
“Nothing.” Fredrick set the measuring cup in the sink and followed her down the gray concrete stairs. He wished Chalsey’s confidence could bleed into his veins like a blood transfusion of life force. I want a new life. I want to feel strong, not descend into some mid-life crisis.
Sunlight half-penetrated the tiny windows, leaving the cellar dim, and he yanked the chain to switch on the bare bulb overhead. A mix of cardboard boxes and plastic tubs greeted him. He spied the Christmas tree box and a stack of red and green tubs he knew held Christmas decorations. His mom had been a champion decorator, with three Christmas trees out every year so covered in gorgeous ornaments that the trees disappeared under a coating of glamor. Sleighs, reindeer, Santa figurines, angels, and teddy bears in winter clothes had congregated on every flat surface and in every corner.
In retrospect, he had seen the decline in her. She had decorated less each year for Christmas in the final five years of her life. Last Christmas, she only had one tree out. I should have known something was wrong.
Chalsey pointed to the corner where a dollhouse sat on the shelf along with a collection of flower-printed boxes. “Don’t tell me these are all your old toys.”
Fredrick’s deep sigh seemed to expel his soul. He could picture the dolls, puffy stickers, and unicorns. A pink nuclear bomb could have exploded inside those boxes. “Gotta be. Figures Mom would make even the boxes girly. I thought she would disinherit me when I told her I’m a man.” He shuffled over to the shelves, his sneakers squeaking. Chalsey had been his best friend in high school, while he’d still been technically intersex but medically ruled to be female. Chalsey had missed his mother’s atomic explosion when he’d had gender-affirming surgery in college.
Or had it been gender-affirming?
“Despite Mom’s Herculean efforts, sometimes I feel like I have no gender.” Fredrick jerked the lid off a smaller box and discovered blue and red ribbons from Field Day in elementary school and a small gymnastics trophy, its brass discolored and spotted. With them was a flower-print diary, the word “diary” embossed in gold on the front.
“I didn’t throw this away?” Fredrick pulled the diary out of the box and considered its tiny fake gold lock. “I bet you can’t even read my handwriting. It was so bad in elementary school.”
“Mine, too.” Chalsey pulled the lid off another box, revealing a framed high school graduation picture: Fredrick with long ebony hair, makeup, and a girl’s class ring. “It’s hard to remember you looking this way.”
Fredrick wrinkled his nose. “It’s hard to see those pictures. I always felt so awkward as a girl.” He fished through the trophy box, looking for the keys to the diary. “I might have to break this lock.”
“You want to read it?” Chalsey put the lid back on her box and opened another, revealing three Barbie dolls and a rainbow-colored mass of Barbie clothes and shoes. “God, your mom really tried hard to girlify you.”
“Every day. All day.” Fredrick pulled on the thin piece of cardboard that held the diary shut, and it tore halfway. He yanked harder, and it ripped. Thanks to the force, the diary flew from his hands, and he snatched it back into his grasp by one corner. My only perk: excellent reflexes.
Chalsey picked up one Barbie. “What a classic! This is Peaches-n-Cream Barbie. This is probably worth real money.”
Fredrick only half-registered her words. The diary had fallen open a third of the way in. “Jesus, my tortured, nasty handwriting. It’s as bad as I remember.” The letters didn’t always stay between the lines, and his handwriting varied wildly, changing from blocky to bubbly or slanted to straight even inside a single sentence. “Let’s see if I have any luck reading it: ‘April 5. I had a fight with Angie today.’” He snickered. “Oh, imagine that. I don’t even know why we played together. We fought so much.” He squinted at his handwriting. “‘But I wish I’d stayed at Angie’s house. Dad was home alone when I got back. He took me to my room right away.’” Fredrick felt a chill shoot through him. Why does that scare me so much to read? “‘I always tell him how much it hurts when he touches me. But he won’t stop! He never stops.’” The word never was in all caps, underlined three times, and took up most of the remaining page.
Fredrick tasted metal in his mouth, and his teeth ached, a feeling all too familiar. He’d been having panic attacks since he was five. His heart thudded, raced, hurt, and he clutched his chest with one hand, his entire body trembling. That can’t—that can’t mean what I think it does.
Chalsey had frozen, the Barbie wearing an apricot ball gown still in her hand. She stared at Fredrick with wide brown eyes, all the blood seeping from her already fair complexion. “‘Touches?’”
“That’s not—” Fredrick burst into a laugh, sharp and hysterical. “I can’t mean—”
Abruptly, savagely, Fredrick began flipping through pages, spot-checking and skimming. Words and phrases jumped out at him: tried to hide in the closet...couldn’t pee for an hour...kept burning, and I cried...screamed at me...the look of victory on his face.
Fredrick dropped to the concrete floor, sitting on his heels and rocking back and forth. The diary fell from his hands, hitting the floor and snapping shut. Fredrick rocked and rocked, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true.”
But I can’t remember half my childhood.
But I’m 43 and still can’t bring myself to have sex with anyone.
But my therapist said I have all the symptoms and red flags of someone who’s been raped or molested.
Chalsey knelt by him and opened her arms. Fredrick accepted the hug but kept rocking, his habitual panic response. Chalsey rocked with him.
“It’s not fair.” Where did those words come from? “It’s not fair!”
“No, it’s not,” Chalsey whispered.
Fredrick stopped rocking as cold numbness fell upon him, an ocean’s worth of shock, deep and icy and dark. The numbness was his old friend, dogging him through high school and college, flattening his days until all he imagined was a straight, gray road through a gray desert. He welcomed now what he’d hated then, his flying pulse beginning to ease and slow. He stared at the mountains of boxes and tubs around him, wondering what other horrors they would reveal.
But in the back of his mind, shining like a tiny pinprick of light, burned a single hope: What other truths can I find? My life makes no sense, and I know it.
Michael Fredrick Anderson, born Martha Fredrick Anderson, felt himself die on the cold, cement floor and hoped his soul could claw its way back to life.