Nightmare Fuel / Heretical Edge

• They very concept of the Bystander effect. Every magical, nonhuman creature in this setting cannot be perceived by ordinary people. At all. A monster could be standing in front of you, having just ripped off your arm, and you would have no idea. Bystanders can't even form memories of the supernatural. Someone just told you how vampires came to earth? You'll forget it by the end of the conversation.
  • The Bystander Effect also targets technology. Cameras? Recording equipment? Useless because Strangers produce a field that stops them from working as long as they're in range. There are entire societies of Heretics, vampires, angels, and countless other creatures (including non-sapient bestial monsters) walking around earth affecting the course of human events and the majority of mankind has no idea.
  • To reiterate, every single Stranger on this page produces this effect.
• Ammon. Freaking Ammon. At first glance he appears to be nothing more than an ordinary, cheerful little boy. Then he introduces himself and makes a suggestion, and you find yourself going along with it, whether you actually want to or not. It doesn't matter what Ammon suggested, maybe he thinks you should give him a ride somewhere or that you should be a little more mean when you insult someone... or maybe he wants you to hand your gun to that nice store clerk you were just robbing so she can shoot you (after he suggested that you beat the living hell out of her, of course), or that you should shove a gas nozzle down your throat and drown yourself with it. He has absolutely no conscience and no regard for the lives of others. He just wants to see and do interesting things. But since he's a sociopathic sadist, his definition of "interesting" invariably includes brutal Cold-Blooded Torture. Also, he's Flick's half-brother. And he's so excited to meet his big sister...
  • That Compelling Voice is not his only power, by the way.
  • At one point, he mentions that he keeps a lot of pets. So not only does he grab people at random to play with, he holds on to the people he likes to keep abusing them. And make no mistake, he's abusing them. Ammon's chief desire in life is to "feel things," and he thinks the best way to accomplish that is by finding people he likes and torturing them because maybe he'll feel bad for them if they go through enough pain. That's why he was so ecstatic to learn he has a big sister, because people always care more about their family. Right?
• The fate of the Akharu (who the Heretics named vampires), an entire race that was cursed to need blood. What happens if they don't get it? Paralysis, a living undeath that forces them to lie there, helpless to move or defend themselves even as they're completely aware of their surroundings. And the race that cursed them are still out there, seeking to finish the job.
• Once you find out that Strangers are not Always Chaotic Evil, it doesn't take long to realize how Crossroads Heretics must appear to them. It's an entire organization of powerful beings armed with advanced Magitek weapons who want to kill everything that isn't human for the unspeakable crime of not being human. They don't care if a "Stranger" is actually guilty of anything, living peacefully, or even if they're a child. They want to kill every single one of them. Except for the ones they keep as "research specimens."
  • What's really scary is the mindset behind most of this. It's not just that most Crossroads Heretics see all Alters as evil monsters, it's that they genuinely don't get that many "Strangers" are people. It goes beyond basic or willful ignorance in some cases. Certain hardliners literally can't comprehend the idea of a nonhuman being as friendly or even as intelligent as a human being. They're not just Fantastic Racists, they're Human Supremacists (which is incredibly hypocritical considering that Heretics are Transhumans who obtain their powers by overwriting their genetics with Alter DNA).
    • Some of them are so convinced of the righteousness of their behavior that they will do anything, no matter how morally reprehensible, to maintain their status quo. In their minds, their actions are totally justified.
  • From the same perspective, Eden's Garden is almost as bad. Instead of indiscriminately slaughtering them, Gardeners will enslave the Strangers they deem acceptable. Eden's Garden may be more accepting of Strangers than Crossroads, but they still consider them unfeeling servants at best.
  • Even if you're not a Stranger, Crossroads and Eden's Garden can be pretty creepy. More than one reader has taken note of how their heavily isolated societies recruit and indoctrinate teenagers and pre-teens to their cause (a process which involves rewriting their parents' memories) and either compared them to or outright called them cults.
    • And that comparison only grows more apt as more is revealed, like the fact that a disturbing number of Bystander-kin recruits have traumatic pasts that tend to leave them socially isolated and more likely to accept the establishment's view of things.
  • You do not need to be entirely human to become a Heretic. If you're a Half-Human Hybrid, the Heretical Edge will work on you. But it might show you a memory from your Stranger-ancestor's life, revealing to you that you're part-Stranger. And then you'll go through school being told that you're an evil monster for what you are, leading you to live in utter paranoia and terror of your classmates or teachers finding out and murdering you for it.
  • Certain aspects of the Heretic ability to absorb Stranger powers are really fucking creepy. Namely, the fact that when a Heretic kills an Alter and absorbs their power, the transition is accompanied by a wave of intense pleasure. That's right, Heretics basically orgasm when they kill things.
    It's Almost Like Someone Deliberately Designed The Heretics To Be Rewarded When They Kill. But That's Just Crazy Talk.
    • In this regard, Eden's Garden Heretics are a bit creepier than Crossroads Heretics. Their Heretic Sense takes the form of a surge of adrenaline and hunger, as if anticipating a hunt. So when a Crossroads Heretics sees a Stranger, their sense screams DANGER-DANGER-DANGER at them. But when a Garden Heretic sees a Stranger, their sense yells FOOD-FOOD-FOOD.
    • At one point Flick and Shiori are talking about the powers they've gained when they stop, having abruptly realized how creepy it is that they're so cavalier about killing things. Flick then realizes that she would have had trouble stomping on a mouse only a few months earlier, prompting her to wonder if the Heretical Edge messed with her head when it made her a Heretic.
  • But one of the scariest things about these organizations is that they may very well be doing more good than harm. Make no mistake, they do a lot of harm. But (as other entries on this page prove) there are legitimately evil Alters out there (called "Nocen" by other Alters). Even those who aren't evil can still be dangerous by being non-sapient monsters like the amarok or Well-Intentioned Extremists like the angels or the Akharu factions that want to use humans as Cannon Fodder. Thanks to the Bystander Effect, these arrogant, xenophobic hypocrites (and their more reasonable colleagues) really are humanity's best defense against supernatural threats.
  • One of Flick's classmates, Zeke Leven, at one point describes the "tourist-busters," Heretics who stake out travel hubs like airports, bus stations, etc, to kill any Strangers they find preying on human travelers. Or just any Stranger they find, period. Flick quickly notes to herself that there undoubtedly are murderous Alters that actually prey on humans, but most are probably just trying to travel. Zeke says his mother Sophronia, a Committee member, likes to joke that the duty is sometimes like "shooting fish in a barrel."
    • Sophronia also invented a proximity spell that causes Alters who activate it to need to use the bathroom. Then Heretics lay in wait in the bathrooms to murder them when they can't fight back... Flick puts it best when she hears this:
    Honestly, it sounded more like horror movie stalker-type tactics than heroic guardians, but I wasn’t going to tell Zeke that.
    • But what's really horrifying about this conversation is the sheer glee with which Zeke describes the tactics his mother uses on a regular basis. It's more than a little disturbing to see a teenager get so excited about wanton slaughter.
• When Ammon first appeared, the author said that he is "adorable" compared to his father. That is not an exaggeration. Leaving out the fact that this is the guy who raised Ammon to be like that, he's worse in almost every way. He's more ruthless, more of a sadist, and far more powerful. The one thing he doesn't have that Ammon does is a Compelling Voice. He prefers to give people the choice of whether or not to obey him. That is, the choice between obeying and being punished for disobeying.
  • He definitely Would Hurt a Child. Or enslave one. He has even less regard for the lives of others than his son, and has pushed at least one species to the brink of extinction for the sake of gaining their corpses to make use of. And when he has time, he will go out of his way to cause his victims as much emotional pain as he can. For fun. All he cares about is what will amuse or intrigue him and being able to do and get whatever he wants. And he wants Felicity Chambers.
  • His name is Fossor, and he's so dangerous and feared that the pre-Crossroads Heretics tried to banish him from earth rather than actually kill him. They failed. Why? Because's he's a necromancer that had already conquered his homeworld at that point, which had a population big enough for him to use the inhabitants to circumvent the curse they saddled him with. How? The curse made it so he could only walk on earth by stepping on the ashes of his enemies. So he farms his homeworld for ghosts that disintegrate into ashes he can step on. The Hereteics thought he wouldn't so easily sacrifice the lives of his servants to walk around. They were wrong.
  • At one point he gets his own mini-interlude, which opens with him casually turning terrified woman to become a zombie while telling her how lucky she is that he's "saving" her from an endlessly dull life in a boring job, all after murdering her coworkers. Why is he doing this? Because it's a dentist's office. Specifically the office of Flick's dentist, on a day when she was twelve and scheduled to get some teeth pulled. He then proceeds to amuse himself by prompting her to discuss how much she hates Joselyn before sedating her, taking pictures of her while unconscious to show Joselyn, and then actually pulling her teeth, all while she has no idea who or what he is.
    • This happened not long after Flick's friend Miranda moved away. Fossor is happy to hear that's she's left, as it means "his prize" has been further isolated and that he won't have to expend the effort to remove Miranda himself. He then considers tracking Miranda down and abducting her to surprise Flick with once she's old enough to collect.
• In most settings, angels are the benevolent messengers of God. In Heretical Edge, angels are Scary Dogmatic Aliens hellbent on "guiding" the development of mankind for their own ends.
  • It gets worse. 9-09 reveals that Angels are bodysnatchers and created the Bystander Effect.
    • Go to the Animorphs page and look up all the Nightmare Fuel associated with the Yeerks. Yeah.
    • Everything on here about the Bystander effect? Their fault. Everything about Heretics targeting innocent Alters? Also their fault. The Angels have a whole lot to answer for.
    • The above is not helped by the usual mindset of any of their operatives sent to Earth. Emotional intelligence and awareness is a very rare trait among them. For perspective? The group for the most part doesn't understand that Gaia would take Avalon being framed... poorly.
    • Sariel's stealth infiltration tactics when she was still working for the Seosten. Yes, she doesn't leave her targets prisoner in their own body. Instead, she just rides along and nudges or quickly takes control as needed. Just because you think you aren't the mole doesn't mean you aren't. And you can't even trust that your thoughts are all your own.
• The fire in Asenath's second interlude. It's not a fire monster or anything, just a house fire (albeit one that was started by Heretics). That doesn't make it any less terrifying when we see three children almost suffocate in the smoke.
• We get to see what it's like to be on the business end of a high-end Heretic as an innocent Alter in Interlude 8. Imagine being chased by a teleporting terminator for nothing other than being born the wrong species.
• The mercifully brief description of what a gang in Colombia almost did to Sean when he was twelve is a terrifying reminder that humans can be just as bad as any supernatural monster.
• The Hiding Man. Oh dear lord, the Hiding Man. A mysterious, unknown Stranger who for whatever reason went on a child abduction spree in Koren Fellows neighborhood when she was ten. It's not just that he (or whatever he is) abducted children. It's also that he seemed to go out of his way to terrify them beforehand. He would make sure the kids knew they were being stalked days before he actually took them. And we actually get to see what he would do before abducting them in Koren's interlude. He would just toy with them from behind the Bystander Effect, messing with their heads solely for the sake of frightening them. Fortunately, he was stopped before he could take young Koren.
  • Except not really. It turns out that the Hiding Man is a Fomorian who engineered his entire terror spree for the sole purpose of convincing Crossroads to accept Joselyn Atherby's granddaughter as a student. Which he reveals years later, on Thanksgiving just a few days after he murdered and replaced her father, hooked himself up to sixteen kidnapped infants to use as human shields, and implanted Koren's arms into her own mother to force her to manually pump Abigail's heart. Talk about fucking Body Horror. Oh, and what the Heretics thought was the Hiding Man from Koren's childhood was actually just some poor sap the Fomorian modified to the point of being nonhuman to use as a patsy.
  • He was stalking Koren for seven years.s
• Mateo was once captured by homophobic werewolves and tortured by being shocked in the dick to turn him straight.