Story idea: "A Reliable Source of Evidence" by Steve Orr
Alt title: "Code of the Conglomerate"
A contractor, a former EEO Counselor, new to corps of Investigators who, naturally enough, investigate Formal EEO Complaints, has been assigned to assist in the conduct of an investigation on the moon. After he arrives, he receives new directions from the owner of the firm he is working for, i.e. his current boss. He is being diverted to conduct an investigation on a prison planet. Solo.
(His sometime employer has a contract with the Bureau of Prisons to investigate formal EEO complaints. What is envisioned is that some conflict between co-workers or between employee and supervisor might give rise to an EEO Complaint. If it did, then the Investigator's boss would supply an investigator to do what is required by the Code of the Conglomerate.)
The Investigator is relatively new at this profession. Previously, he had served as an EEO Counselor in a federal agency on Earth. There are many similarities; but there is a lot of difference between providing counseling during the informal stage -- where only allegations of discrimination have been raised -- and investigating the actual formal complaint of discrimination. Also, he is fairly new to space.
He is being diverted because, as his employer put it, "The last guy I sent up there quit on me. Dang it! I need you to pick up where he left off. And, uh, Andy is it?, I need you to wrap it up lickety split. These things pay a flat fee, a goodly amount of money once you factor in the Conglomerate's reimbursement to us for travel costs, etc. But the only thing that makes this business profitable is to hit and git. You git my meaning? Don't spend a lot of time on this. Git his notes, do whatever he didn't do, then write the sucker up and git back here. Once I git paid, you git paid. Git me?"
"But, Mr. Weems, I'm still pretty new at this. Are you sure you want me? That sounds like something requiring a very experienced investigator."
"Now, listen, boy. There's nothin' to this. Besides, remember the first rule of public speaking."
"What's that, sir?"
"They only git what you give 'em."
"Uh, sir. I don't think I understand ..."
"They don't know you're a newbie. Don't tell 'em and they'll never know. Git it? Act like you know what you're doing. They sure don't know what you're supposed to be doing. So, allright? Hit and git?"
He could not muster the confidence of his employer, but could see nothing else to do.
"Yes, sir. Hit and, uh . . . get."
############################
BREAK BREAK BREAK
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The fact that an investigator has been called in means that earlier attempts to resolve the matter informally have failed.
After he arrives at the prison, and there conducts a preliminary inquiry, he determines that one of the prisoners was in a position to witness the events at issue.
Set in the future?? on a prison planet?? Orbiting platform prison??
COULD be that this is a prison run by the Conglomerate, the only thing like a government that exists between the various enterprises scattered around the galactic neighborhood. Some of the corporations and sole proprietors attempting to conduct business in space have learned, from hard experience, that some form of law and order had to be imposed on the activities of those people working out here, thus the Code.
Not everyone has joined the conglomerate, and thus, some do not consider themselves subject to their vaunted 'code.' It can be a bit sticky. One sop to this problem was the decision to pattern their few 'immutable laws' after those in place on earth. It is, in many ways, not unlike the old west in the United States mythos.
Complicating things is the fact that the FTL technolgies used by Conglomerate members to travel about the galactic rim is actually owned -- and controlled by -- the church. The church has its on space-going navy, or so it is said. Whether the navy belongs to the church is contested, most loudly by the navy itself. Regardless, the church has considerable influence in the affairs of those who live and work in space.
##########################
Andrew Gossett checked, again, to be certain the seat restraints were properly fastened. The monks had been chanting for over thirty minutes and it had him a bit on edge. Well, actually, he admitted, the whole thing had him on edge. Maybe if he could understand what they were saying he wouldn't be so tense. This was the only time in his life he wished he had taken Latin.
He supposed he would need to take a moment and write an apology to Mrs. Bryant for laughing in her face when she suggested he might well find Latin useful once he graduated. But then, he had never thought he would he would be traveling in 'outer' space with Latin-spouting monks.
His compartment on the ship was small, and, with its swing up writing surface and built in -- what was it they called it? Oh yes -- 'head', it was definitely utilitarian. Also, befitting his level of importance in the scheme of things, he decided, it was just about as far from the other people traveling on the ship. How else to explain that he was in a small room next to the monks? They had to be right next door. He could hear them right through the wall.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
IN DEVELOPMENT - "Another Name for Paradise" by Steve Orr
Another Name For Paradise
by Steve Orr
Chapter One - 808 Washington
Legend had it that Miss Ruth had once threatened to march down front one Sunday morning in Paducah's four largest churches and read from her appointment book. The impetus for this uncharacteristic behavior had been a particularly harsh crackdown by the recently elected Sheriff, a fellow who rode into office on a tide of law and order promises. Miss Ruth was supposed to have told one of the city fathers that she was as much for law and order as any other merchant, but if that johnny-come-lately ever leaned on her and her girls again, she was going to preach some sermons that would do more than curl a few toes, and that she promised no one would sleep through them.
I got this story from my mother, so I was inclined to believe it, as opposed to what I would have thought if my father had told it. Mama had her shortcomings, but dishonesty was generally not one of them. Daddy was a teller of tall tales and just could not be trusted to stick to the facts. Granny said you had to listen to him with just the right ear, but I hadn't found that one, yet.
THE BOGARD HOUSE
By Steve Orr
CHAPTER ONE
Dare
It ended badly. But, in the beginning, it was full of mystery and intrigue. And in the middle, there was adventure, and laughter. And, maybe that was enough.
Like most of our adventures, it began with Dare. He insisted on being called Dare. His real name was Darean (yeah, like that – with an “e”. We all thought his mom had misspelled his name.). Considering how he lived his life, maybe he was right. Dare did seem appropriate most of the time.
We were at Weird’s house when it all began.
I guess I should stop right here and explain about the names. We all had nicknames. Some of us chose our own, some of us had them bestowed upon us, and some us were driven to them by necessity. “Weird” Watts was really named Bob. Like Dare, he picked his own nickname. I don’t remember him as being any weirder than the rest of us. I think he just wanted to stand out. I always thought he was a little ashamed that he had such an ordinary name. When his teachers refused to call him Weird, he asked them to call him Robert.
Bear got his name from the rest of us, but it was a natural fit. He looked as much like one as a teenaged boy could. On top of that, he was the first in our group who’s voice changed. We used to call him “frog” before he got his growth spurt. I don’t remember who was the first to call him “Bear”, but it stuck. I can’t remember him ever complaining about that nickname. This was a boy who needed a nickname. His mom still called him Brucie.
Then, there was Ron. He was Mr. Young Democrat. We called him Guv, which he did not like. If we ever called him that at school, he just acted as if he hadn’t heard. But, from time to time, especially when we were all out camping or something, he would forget how important he was supposed to be, and, without realizing it, would answer to Guv just like it was his real name.
My nickname was Scarecrow. I can clearly recall the strained moment when I asked them to call me that. Each face carried a reaction ranging from puzzlement to curiosity to consternation. Ron, always the little adult, opened his mouth to ask me “why”. I could see his lips forming the word. I could tell they all wanted to ask. Nothing about me seemed like a scarecrow. I was never thin. And, while I was the tallest of our crowd, I wasn’t tall by any objective standard. I wasn’t really ugly. I was reasonably coordinated. There weren’t really any physical clues as to why. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them the reason. It was personal. After a several silent seconds passed, Ron closed his mouth; they all made eye contact with each other, then there was a little chorus of mumbled agreements. That was the end of it. From then on, they honored my request, calling me scarecrow, or, often as not, just ‘crow.
Okay, back to Dare. Like I said, we were all over at Weird’s. It was early evening of a day that had been a hot one. But, at least from my perspective, it had been a very good one. I had been taking American History in Summer School; four hours each morning, five days a week, for approximately one million years. On top of that, I had started working every afternoon at Sandy’s, a small fast food chain which required us to wear black slacks, a white shirt, a tartan plaid bow tie, and a tartan plaid beret. All summer I had been dressed that way. There was no time to go home and change between American History and Sandy’s, so I wore the shirt and slacks combo to school every day, sans the tartan plaids.
I had never worked so hard in my life. I was learning history every morning and hamburgers every afternoon. You can see how a guy might get a little confused, especially considering how little sleep I was getting. I couldn’t really read or study until I got off from Sandy’s, which was often quite late, and we were compressing a year’s worth of history into a summer. The
pace was brutal. I remember seeing
a bumper sticker one day while making the school-to-Sandy’s dash. It stated, “My child and my money go to the school of hard knocks”. I thought, Yep, that’s me! Maybe this’ll teach me to wait until the last minute to take a required course. The bloom was off the rose pretty early that summer.
What made that particular day such a good one was that I had, finally, finished Summer School. On top of that, the Assistant Manager at Sandy’s had decided I had that something special needed to elevate me from the lowly entry level position of “counter help” to the considerably more prestigious position of “grill assistant”. I was going to learn to cook on the grill. I was floating! Not only had they given me a 10 cent raise on the hour, I was learning the grill! So, as if I needed anything else to make it good day, the decision to train me as a cook had forced a schedule change. Since they needed me to come back on Sunday morning for training, they had to let me go early that Friday. Had to watch those “Wage and Hour Law” requirements for minors. I was sitting in Weird’s den by 4:00 PM, with no claims on my time until Sunday morning at nine.
The den at Weird’s house was perfect for a bunch of teenaged boys. There were several chairs, a Ping-Pong table, a player piano, a TV high up in a cabinet, and a separate bathroom. You could come in from the backyard via sliding glass doors or from the main house via a more conventional door that led in from the living room. Nothing we could do made any impression on the terrazzo floor. If you could add up all the time we spent in that room…had to be something like a couple of decades. It was very special to us; it was our clubhouse, our home-away-from-home, the place where we went to reclaim our sanity. I watched the first moon landing in that room. Probably the coolest thing was that Weird’s mom had nailed up some Greek letters over the living room side of the inside door. Weird said they spelled “hell” in Greek. That way, he said, when he and his siblings got on her nerves, his mom could tell them all to go there.
So, that’s where we all were that evening when Dare came loping in, slinging his helmet down onto one of the couches. Then, he just stopped and looked at us…very dramatic. After we got quiet, he still just looked at us. Finally, Ron said, “What?”
Still staring at us, Dare began to show a slow grin. Then, at full grin, he said, “Wait ‘till you hear this!”
That’s all it took. We had all heard that expression before. Whenever Dare had come across something truly interesting that’s what he said. Usually, though, he couldn’t contain himself. Usually, he just burst into ongoing conversations with whatever he had discovered. Something was different about this one. Bear and I looked at each other. Then, we put down our Ping-Pong paddles and zipped over to the sitting area.
Guv was already there. His torso was scrunched down into the heart of a large chair, while his head rested on one of the overstuffed arms and his legs jutted sideways off the other. He looked like the Little Dipper. I snagged a floor pillow with my left foot, dropping on to it as it plowed into the front corner of Guv’s chair. His booted feet made me nervous, hovering there above my head, especially those metal taps on his heals, so I scooted around to the other side.
Bear sat down on one of the couches. For some reason he liked them. None of the rest of us, Weird included, would park our butts on those things. They were too hard. The fabric enclosed foam rubber couch cushions did little to separate hardwood from gluteus maximus. Weird’s parents had spent a lot of money on this room, but for some inexplicable reason they went with the rugged look. The rough wood walls looked nice enough, but the built-in wooden “couches” served better as storage space, which they also were. My opinion was that they represented some sort of compromise between Weird’s Mom and Step-dad. Dad was the outdoors type, so I could just see him telling
the architect to be sure to include storage space for all their hunting, camping, and boating gear. Next, Mom would throw a fit because the storage spaces looked “tacky”. Quickly then, hoping to avoid complete meltdown and, not insignificantly, the possible loss of the job, the architect says, “Hey! How about this? Let’s make them bench style, make it so the seats are hinged at the wall, and we can put foam rubber cushions on them.” Wallah! The hard couches are born.
Weird was already on a floor pillow. Once Dare joined us down there, it left Guv and Bear looking down like some strange set of monarchs. All of this rearranging took mere seconds to accomplish. We all turned toward Dare, expectantly. He did not disappoint.
“You guys know how I work over at the Land Between The Lakes some?”
We did. Dare had started out volunteering up there when he was in the 8th grade. He helped the park rangers inventory the plants and animals, record the effects of various weather events on the LBL denizens, identify and map the historical sites…whatever. Over a very few years he went from unpaid gopher to receiving a wage as a “Researcher”. Also, it had the added advantage of getting him out of school sometimes. It was temporary and it was part-time, but that arrangement suited Dare just fine. His life was too full to be tied down by a full-time job, especially one that was more than twenty miles away. We had benefited from his LBL gig on several occasions. So, we not only knew about it, we approved. He looked around and saw us nodding our heads.
“I’ve been on a two-day. They needed me to stay overnight with a bunch of biology students who came over from one of the junior highs in Mayfield.”
His voice was easy, not revealing any of the excitement we saw in his eyes. Clothing his tenor was the mildest of nasal overtones, but they are so muted; there was a hint of Bob Dylan , a smidgen of Arlo Guthrie. Sometimes I found myself thinking that he sounded that way intentionally.
“Anyway, the students left at about 10:00 this morning. No one told me to go home, so I decided to stay. I had been wanting to explore some areas further south. I was tooling along on my Yamasaki, and starting to think about going back for lunch, when I turned up a dirt path. You know how that is; the deeper you get in to the LBL, the harder it is to tell if there was ever really a road there. At first, I thought this one was just a large animal trail. But, when I topped the rise, it widened into a one-car dirt road, twin tire ruts and all. The road dropped down fast, so I didn’t see it at first.”
“Didn’t see what?” I asked.
“I’m coming to that. The ruts were not really a problem. But, the rains had made lots of little canyons in the road. I had to work hard at keeping the bike upright. I shot forward along the top of one ridge. Man! That could’ve been bad! When it finally leveled off, I braked to a stop in the grass on the right side of the drive. I stood there for a few minutes, straddling my bike, just catching my breath. Once I settled down, I looked around. And, there is was.”
“There was what?” rumbled Bear.
“There”, said Dare, pausing for effect, “was the house.”
“It was amazing! It was huge!”, gushed Dare. Gone was the calm of a few moments ago. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right there in the middle of nowhere…a house. Oh! And, there was a garage, but not just any kind of garage. Oh no. This one had two gas pumps in front, with glass tops on them; kinds like big white raindrops. And there was some other kind of building, too. Couldn’t tell what from where I stood. The lake runs right in front of the house. The yard slopes down to it. There’s this big ol’ porch on it, too.”
He seemed unable to stop. He just went on and on describing the house. There was a basement, he said, saying you could tell because there were windows at ground level. But all the windows were covered with corrugated metal sheeting; the doors, too. It looked like it was two
stories, he thought. But there might be an attic or something; the roof looked like it crowned in the middle. He went closer. We all knew he couldn’t have done anything else; he was Dare. He said the metal sheeting at the back door had been pulled apart a little. It left an oval opening.
“I walked right in. I couldn’t believe it! This place was so cool. The first thing I came to was the kitchen. It looked old and new at the same time. I mean, the stuff in it was old; you know, not modern. But, it didn’t look like it had ever really been used. I thought that was weird.”
Then, glancing quickly at Weird, he said, “I mean, strange. There was dust on everything, but it looked kinda like new…like not used…I don’t know! Anyway, there was a room that had to be a dining room. It had a place in the ceiling that looked like a chandelier had been there. And, there was this room at the front that was probably a living room. The stairs lined up with the front door. Upstairs there was a bunch a rooms, bedrooms, I guess.”
Except for the pause to placate Weird, he had talked straight through. I never saw him take a breath. No doubt about it, he was excited.
Then, Bear brought him up short.
“So…uh…how could you see if all the windows were covered?”, he asked. Now, here was something any of us might have wondered about. But, none of us had caught it. Maybe we all would have, at some later time or on some later date, have realized that there was an inconsistency in Dare’s story. Maybe. But, right then and there, we all missed it. Everyone except Bear.
Bear did that kind of thing from time to time. You might think he was a little slow, by the look of him. But, you’d be wrong. Not that you would be wrong all by yourself. Lots of people underestimated him. On top of looking like a bear, he was about as talkative. He almost never volunteered in class. Since he was so quiet, people tended to think he had nothing to say. The truth was that he made good grades; A’s and B’s, mostly A’s. He just wasn’t the kind of person to compete in class, flinging his hand in the air, hoping the teacher would pick him to answer the question or do the demonstration at the board. He was content to mosey along, quietly turning in good papers, submitting his homework, and scoring well on exams. Most of his teachers were happy to leave things that way, too.
So, though quietly spoken, Bear’s question was a real zinger. Dare’s face was fun to watch. He had been so caught up in his own story that, at first, he had that sort of dazed look people get when you talk to them before they are fully awake. They heard what you said. They just can’t seem to make the words arrange themselves in any order that makes any sense to them.
But, that face didn’t last long. Pretty quickly, he moved on to the perturbed face. That’s the one where people are not really angry, just mildly ticked off that someone had the nerve to interrupt them. People like that haven’t really heard the question, either. It was, as far as they are concerned, just an interruption. And, they usually treat it like something you trip over while walking, never really stopping because of it, recovering mid-stumble and going ahead. For a second or two, it looked like that was what Dare was going to do.
Then, he got it. And you could see it happen. Slowly his face moved back in the direction of confusion. Now, he was wondering how that had been possible. The far away look in his eyes told us that he was replaying the events underlying the story he had been telling us. Seeing the rooms, looking around, now for the light source. Then, there it was.
“Oh, yeah”, dare said, realizing the answer. “Good catch, Bear!” And you could tell he meant it. “I hadn’t really thought about that. The basement windows were covered over, completely. Now that I think about it, I can see that the main floor windows were only covered partway up. The top foot or so was uncovered. They were too far off
the ground for someone to just walk up to. I guess they didn’t think there was any need to cover the upper part. The windows on the second floor were done the same way. Anyway, there was enough light to see by.”
“So, what did ya’ do after you went through the house?” asked Bear. I was beginning to wonder if Bear was going to ask all the questions.
“Well, what else could I do. I went to see Ranger Bob.”
It suddenly occurred to me that Bear had been maneuvering Dare, hurrying him along to this point. Definitely not Bear’s usual MO. Obviously, there was a good deal more that Dare wanted to tell us about the house. But, Bear knew that Guv and I would want to know about Ranger Bob more than we would want to know about the house. Knowing Ranger Bob was involved made a difference.
CHAPTER TWO
Ranger Bob
Ranger Bob was a State Police Officer. They were all called “Ranger”. Kentucky was a one-size-fits-all kind of state. State Police were assigned to all sorts of duties throughout the Commonwealth. Some worked the Highway Patrol, smokies. Some served in counties, doing such mundane things as giving driving exams. Some protected the Governor. Ranger Bob was assigned to work in the Center for Outdoor Education in the LBL, a plum position if you liked the outdoors, a real dead-end job if you were a city boy. COE was housed in one of those modern atrocities that were intended to look like they belonged in the woods, but really didn’t. Some urban artist’s concept for a log cabin. It wasn’t really a log cabin. Really, it was made of cinder block and steel beams, with just enough half-logs glued on to make it look really bad. As far as I was concerned, it would be difficult to imagine a building that looked more out of place. Several of its siblings were sprinkled throughout the LBL, and, for that matter, in every state park in the Commonwealth. People over forty seemed to like them just fine.
And, Ranger Bob liked his HQ, as he called it. We all knew this because he had told us so on several occasions. Over the course of almost three years, we had heard a great deal about Ranger Bob’s life and philosophies, though never voluntarily. Ranger Bob was already a part of our little world. He had dated Dare’s Mom. They were an item for a few years. He had lasted all the way up to the “why-don’t-we-move-in-together” stage before she broke it off. This was a record for her. Since her divorce from Dare’s Dad, twelve years ago, no one had ever lasted that long.
As often as we had heard from Ranger Bob, it didn’t hold a candle to how many times we had heard dare’s Mom say, “No man is going to live in my house!” When one of us reminded her, and one of us always did, that Dare’s Dad had lived in that house with her, she would quick-take-a-drink of her scotch, then say, a little defensively, “I was young.”
Whenever our little group found itself sans Dare, we would speculate on why Ranger Bob had lasted so long. Her usual pattern was to date a man for all he was worth, then, without warning, her relationship radar kicking in, she would kick him loose. Before Ranger Bob, the longest just-dating-not-a-couple period had been seven months. Somehow, Ranger Bob had managed to stay below the radar for almost three years.
One day, shortly before Ranger Bob blipped on to the radar, something happened to Dare’s Mom. Maybe there’s an official report somewhere. Or, maybe not. She said she took a tumble down the stairs on her way to the cellar one morning. Well, she did drink. I don’t know what the grownups thought, but our little crowd was suspicious; all except Dare. Whatever happened, it wasn’t long before Ranger Bob was out of the scene. One day, he was there grilling steaks out back, and the next, he was history.
Dare was devastated. He just about worshiped Ranger Bob. Even with us hinting, he couldn’t make the connection between his Mom’s bruises and Ranger Bob’s departure. Dare had met Ranger Bob at the
LBL, been mentored by him at the COE. Dare had been the one to introduce his mother to Ranger Bob. In the four years Dare had known Ranger Bob, the man had taught Dare almost everything which made Dare, Dare; woodcraft, water skiing, every kind of sport, rappelling, spelunking, camping, even how to maintain his Kawasaki. In fact, Ranger Bob had convinced Dare’s Mom to let him buy that scooter in the first place. He was like a Dad to Dare. Dare’s real Dad had been out of the picture so long, that Dare was starved for it. To be fair, all of us had benefited from their relationship, too. Guv, Bear, and I had learned most of those things from Dare after he learned them from Ranger Bob. For whatever reasons, none of our fathers did those kinds of manly things.
So, while it was difficult for us to think badly of Ranger Bob, none of the rest of us held him in quite the same esteem that Dare did. It looked like Ranger Bob might have a dark side.
CHAPTER THREE
Legend of the Bogard House
For many years, folks in the western hills of Kentucky had been making their own brand of “moonshine” whiskey. During Prohibition, Al Capone had connected with these folks to buy as much of the illegal brew as they could cook up. The story goes that a man named Bogard was the person primarily responsible for the success of this particular enterprise. Of course, the day finally came that the “great experiment” finally came to an end. Congress lifted the prohibition on alcohol. But, not before Capone took steps to ensure a steady supply of West Kentucky whiskey.
Capone, in a move intended to both reward Bogard for his loyalty and success, and to “lock in” the moonshine, built Bogard a house in the western hills of Kentucky, smack dab in the middle of moonshine country. Supposedly, Capone knew he was asking a lot to have one of his most successful lieutenants pick up and move from Chicago to the middle of nowhere. To make sure Bogard stayed loyal, Capone built him a luxury home.
The house was two stories above a full basement. It had everything; all the modern conveniences. All the plumbing was indoors, along with the bathrooms. There was a gasoline-powered generator, housed separately, which supplied all the electricity they would need. The living room and dining room, which flanked the hall leading from the front door, were large and beautifully appointed. A large, banistered gallery fronted the house. It was said that dances were held there. There was a large, modern kitchen with hot and cold running water, a gas stove, and, eventually, an electric refrigerator. On the second floor were three large bedrooms and another large bathroom. The master bedroom had its own bath. And, throughout the house, there were closets of every kind.
Taking into consideration the remoteness of the new home, Capone had a full garage built behind the house. Inside was a fully appointed machine shop, with everything needed to repair an automobile, from tires to engine.
In every way, the Bogard House was elegant and grand. It would have fit perfectly with the better homes in Chicago, nestled among those occupied by Chicago’s wealthy. Some of the words used to describe the finished house were opulent, elegant, beautiful, and vast. In its day, it was a mansion.
Then, there were the secret rooms.
The legend says that the Bogards were to live in the house, giving lavish parties, enjoying the deep woods which surrounded them, fishing in the nearby streams; living the life of landed gentry. But, all of it was, they say, a sham. Supposedly, during the dark of the new moon, an airplane would land at night on the road running in front of the house. The pilot would then go to the generator house where he would find numerous jugs of whiskey left there by local farmers. He would leave the agreed price in place of the jugs, load the latter on the plane, and fly back to Chicago.
Supposedly, Capone designed secret
rooms into the house, so that the moonshine could be hidden during
times of high scrutiny from Federal agents. Legend had it that there were false walls, scattered throughout the house. Also, law officers were, supposedly, aware that something was going on. The problem lay in proving it. But, they say that no officer of the law ever found the secret rooms in any of the raids.
Going In
After tramping around all about the grounds, oo-ing and ahh-ing over the gas pumps in front of the garage, gawking at the sheer richness of everything, we finally found our way back the Beetle and the Ford Econoline van. For some reason, I was not as happy as I should have been. For all of the excitement to finally be here, to finally be able to see, first hand, everything Dare had been saying, there was another something tugging at the edges of my thoughts. I felt…well, I don’t know what I felt. And the not knowing put me out of sorts. Once or twice I had caught Guv giving me the ”What’s up?” look. All I could do was shrug. I hadn’t known then, and I didn’t know now.
Once we had all taken in the outside, there was only one thing to do. We would have to go in. For a few minutes, we all just stood there and looked at the house. It was immense. It was, in reality, even bigger than Dare had remembered. Standing there beside our vehicles (our trusty steeds), the engines off, no more shuffling feet, no one making any kind of noise at all, I sensed that nature was conspiring with us to be quiet. Not that there was no noise. The wind was soughing lightly through the treetops. All of us could hear the lake making little lapping sounds at the shore a few yards away. But, that was about it. No birds, none of the usual nature sounds. Looking from face to face, I could see that we all had sensed it, that this was one of those moments, one of those special times. So, we just stood there, taking it in.
Finally, Dare said, “Let’s go.” But, he spoke quietly, and as reverently as I had ever heard him. We all walked forward as a group, loosely scattered around an invisible, but acknowledged, central point. Friends returning from Viet Nam had told me they had been taught in Boot Camp to march in straight lines, then un-taught it when they got in country. The experienced soldiers in Viet Nam had learned, sometimes the hard way, to ensure that the troops were spread out, less of a target. Scattered distribution seemed to work the best over there. What I noticed that day, as we prepared to enter the Bogard House for the first time, was that we were doing the same kind of thing. None of us had been in the military, yet. So, maybe it was something that people just did.
But, I think, that on some level, we all felt we were at risk, and that we had, just naturally, scattered; some kind of primal thing so that the whole tribe is not at risk. For myself, I still felt a small concern, some little niggling doubt about what we were gong to do. A line from The Raven flickered through my thoughts (…gently rapping on my chamber door…). I brought up the rear, as I almost always did. Somehow, along my short life, I had developed the idea that I was the rear guard. By that point, it was just something I did, without ever thinking about it. As I came to the opening, I stopped and looked back. Everyone else had already gone inside. Standing there on the top step, looking out at the garage, the drive, the generator house, I finally got it. I knew what was wrong.
It felt like someone was watching us.
Still troubled by that feeling, I crossed the threshold. I must have stood out there longer than I realized. Once my eyes adjusted to the considerably darker interior, I could see that everyone was staring at me. "What's the matter?" asked Guv.
"Nothing," I said. "Why?"
Deadpan, he replied, "You've got that look you get when you're thinking someone is about to violate your constitutional rights." For about a second, he maintained a serious expression. Then, someone, Dare I think, didn’t quite smother a snicker. Guv’s face contorted, and
all of the guys burst into laughter.
For my part, I tried to maintain a stern expression, but the grin kept breaking through at the corners. Finally, I couldn't hold it anymore, joining them in the joke. We laughed and laughed, to the point of tears.
And then, just as we were getting it under control, I looked over at the girls. All it took was for the guys to follow my gaze to set us off, again. The look on their faces! Clearly, they all thought we had gone over the edge.
Finally, we settled down to the point that I could explain. Looking at Betty, but including all of them with my voice, I explained, "See, I've got this thing about being blamed when it's not my fault. I get pretty upset." I could hear Dare snickering, this time, while I struggled to make sense of our rough joking. "They've all known me long enough to have seen me get that way. And Guv", I swung my gaze to pin him with the words, "knows just exactly how to push that button."
Looking back to Betty, I could see I wasn't being successful in explaining our little outburst, and I found that a bit frustrating. I was starting to wonder if it was just one of those 'guy things'; maybe they couldn't understand because they weren't 'wired' the same way we were. Before I could continue, Betty said, "And now you have that 'these people aren't smart enough to understand me' look."
"Dang!" cried Dare, gleefully. "She's only been going out with the boy for two weeks and she already knows the other look!" This set off a whole new round of laughter among the guys. This time, though, their dates joined in. Sensing that I had, somehow, stepped in dater's quicksand, I hastened to explain myself.
"Betty, I'm sorry. It's not that I thought you couldn't understand." I had decided, wisely I think, to leave out the part about it being a guy thing. " I just thought I wasn't doing a very good job of explaining."
Tartly, she said, "Oh, I understand it just fine. I just don't think it's funny."
I don't know if it was the new look on my face, or if it was the gales of uncontrolled laughter gushing forth from our friends, some of who were now rolling on the floor, but a smile began to crack through Betty's stone face. Then, we were all laughing.
Of course, leave it to Bear to make it something special. Walking over to Betty, he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. Then he took one of her hands into his two massive paws and said, as quietly as his deep, resonant voice allowed, "You are his match, if not more. We've been waiting a long time for you. Welcome."
There was a glow to the moment, negative thoughts forgotten. The joy and excitement of discovery finally overcoming the concerns we had all been experiencing. This was the Bogard House. We had come here to explore it. And we were in.
For want of the nail, the shoe was lost
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost
For want of the horse, the rider was lost
For want of the rider, the battle was lost
For want of the battle, the war was lost
No, I don’t know who wrote that. I don’t even know if I got it right. It was something I learned in school, but not, maybe, as well as I should have. I missed it on the test, too. Anyway. I had cause to remember it about an hour after we entered the Bogard House. And it was all because of Dare’s date.
Dare’s companion for our adventure was a little honey named Jenny. All of us guys were a little bit smitten with her. I’m not sure how to explain it, except to say that she had the kind of looks that no guy can resist; she was girl-next-door cute. And, to top it off, she wasn’t stuck on herself like a lot of other good-looking girls. But, that day, we were all a little put out with her. Jenny could be a little ditzy, at times. Which was all the more frustrating since we all knew she maintained a straight-A average.
The problem, in fact, most of that day’s problems, had started when one of the other girls, Nora, snidely
pointed out that Jenny had worn the
wrong shoes. In fact, Nora was about to become a big problem. But, more on that, later.
“Jenny-you-ditz! You wore the wrong shoes!” accused Nora.
This was the kind of thing Nora did, and she did it often enough that we all wondered just what it was Guv saw in her. They had been debate partners before they started dating, so maybe that explained some of it. Maybe.
Anyway. Once Nora raised the issue, we could all see that she was right. Jenny was wearing healed, platform shoes. They, along with her short-shorts, showed off her legs nicely, and the combination would look good @ a dance. But they were just plain wrong for stomping around in the wilds of the LBL.
“What’s WRONG with my shoes, Nor?” Even as teenaged boys, we could recognize the menace in her voice. Nora, of course, was oblivious to it.
“You silly goof! You’re wearing platforms!” persisted Nora, obliviously.
“I KNOW I’m wearing platforms. I put them on. I should KNOW what they are."
Probably, everything would have worked out just fine if we had only just let them settle it between the two of them. But, no. We all jumped in like it was the Noble Park pool on a hot summer day.
IDEAS: he finds his grandfather's journal covering the period of prohibition & TVA flooding & the Bogard House. Goes to visit granddaddy in the "home". G has Alzheimer’s & is in and out, often reliving some part of his earlier life. Some parts of this may help solve the mystery.
Have G to have been part of "Bonus Army" march on DC in June 1932. also a connection to Ness & Capone, boot-legging & the Bogard House. Have him hide his journal in the crown of the BH, anticipating the TVA flooding & expecting the house to be under water or at least surrounded by it.
He has implicated someone in this little history, someone w/a political future in KY & possibly federal.
The Sheriff of Lyon county becomes involved w/current adventure, creating problems for our teen friends, "raiding" a group that have camped out in a chapel during a storm. The headlines scream "GHOULS!" as the Sheriff accuses them of desecrating the adjacent cemetery.
CHAPTER ??? -- Sunset Manor
I really hated coming here. After I had seen what I had seen, there was nothing else to do. If the answers were anywhere, they were here. The first whiff of that antiseptic hit me like a solid blow. Along with it came the realization that I had been dreading this.
I loved my grandfather. Among the pantheon of relatives my parents connected me to in Paducah, Grandaddy had always been a favorite of mine. To be fair, there weren’t many of my family I didn't like, and most of those had had the decency to move somewhere else.
Still, Grandaddy was special to me. I don't know if it was in spite of or because of the strained relationship he had with my father, or if it had nothing to do with that at all. For some reason he had singled me out for special attention. In the sprawl that was our local relatives, attention was often mistaken for affection. I couldn't tell you if Grandaddy actually cared for me or not, but he paid attention to me and had done so since I was a child. What can I say? Maybe I was just easy.
Still and all, visiting him here was one of the most difficult things I did. I loved him, but I hated this place. I had been coming here for almost two years, each time the resistance to it greater than the time before.
Our church youth group came here, sometimes. On Sunday afternoons we would sing, a cappella, the old hymns, most of which we didn't even sing in church anymore. That's what they wanted, though, and that's what we gave them.
Our Youth Director made the choice of ‘homes’, and what process he used to arrive at his choices was beyond our meager reasoning skills. For a few weeks it would look like the rotation was progressing alphabetically, and then, without warning, he would break that sequencing. For a while, we speculated, he seemed to be working a geographic pattern centered on the church building. But that was no more dependable that the other. The pattern always
broke. Worst of all, we sometimes went to the same place two or three times in a row. It kept me on pins and needles.
The problem was that I never knew in what condition I would find my grandfather. Sometimes, he was lucid and active, and at times like that I would start to wonder why he was in such a place at all. Other times, though, it could be bad --very bad. I never wanted to see him that way when I was with my youth group. I don't think I could take it. I know how that sounds, okay? I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
What would he be like today, I wondered. I was praying for lucid. Something told me that time was getting short, and that I might not be able to just wait until some future lucidity.
by Steve Orr
Chapter One - 808 Washington
Legend had it that Miss Ruth had once threatened to march down front one Sunday morning in Paducah's four largest churches and read from her appointment book. The impetus for this uncharacteristic behavior had been a particularly harsh crackdown by the recently elected Sheriff, a fellow who rode into office on a tide of law and order promises. Miss Ruth was supposed to have told one of the city fathers that she was as much for law and order as any other merchant, but if that johnny-come-lately ever leaned on her and her girls again, she was going to preach some sermons that would do more than curl a few toes, and that she promised no one would sleep through them.
I got this story from my mother, so I was inclined to believe it, as opposed to what I would have thought if my father had told it. Mama had her shortcomings, but dishonesty was generally not one of them. Daddy was a teller of tall tales and just could not be trusted to stick to the facts. Granny said you had to listen to him with just the right ear, but I hadn't found that one, yet.
THE BOGARD HOUSE
By Steve Orr
CHAPTER ONE
Dare
It ended badly. But, in the beginning, it was full of mystery and intrigue. And in the middle, there was adventure, and laughter. And, maybe that was enough.
Like most of our adventures, it began with Dare. He insisted on being called Dare. His real name was Darean (yeah, like that – with an “e”. We all thought his mom had misspelled his name.). Considering how he lived his life, maybe he was right. Dare did seem appropriate most of the time.
We were at Weird’s house when it all began.
I guess I should stop right here and explain about the names. We all had nicknames. Some of us chose our own, some of us had them bestowed upon us, and some us were driven to them by necessity. “Weird” Watts was really named Bob. Like Dare, he picked his own nickname. I don’t remember him as being any weirder than the rest of us. I think he just wanted to stand out. I always thought he was a little ashamed that he had such an ordinary name. When his teachers refused to call him Weird, he asked them to call him Robert.
Bear got his name from the rest of us, but it was a natural fit. He looked as much like one as a teenaged boy could. On top of that, he was the first in our group who’s voice changed. We used to call him “frog” before he got his growth spurt. I don’t remember who was the first to call him “Bear”, but it stuck. I can’t remember him ever complaining about that nickname. This was a boy who needed a nickname. His mom still called him Brucie.
Then, there was Ron. He was Mr. Young Democrat. We called him Guv, which he did not like. If we ever called him that at school, he just acted as if he hadn’t heard. But, from time to time, especially when we were all out camping or something, he would forget how important he was supposed to be, and, without realizing it, would answer to Guv just like it was his real name.
My nickname was Scarecrow. I can clearly recall the strained moment when I asked them to call me that. Each face carried a reaction ranging from puzzlement to curiosity to consternation. Ron, always the little adult, opened his mouth to ask me “why”. I could see his lips forming the word. I could tell they all wanted to ask. Nothing about me seemed like a scarecrow. I was never thin. And, while I was the tallest of our crowd, I wasn’t tall by any objective standard. I wasn’t really ugly. I was reasonably coordinated. There weren’t really any physical clues as to why. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them the reason. It was personal. After a several silent seconds passed, Ron closed his mouth; they all made eye contact with each other, then there was a little chorus of mumbled agreements. That was the end of it. From then on, they honored my request, calling me scarecrow, or, often as not, just ‘crow.
Okay, back to Dare. Like I said, we were all over at Weird’s. It was early evening of a day that had been a hot one. But, at least from my perspective, it had been a very good one. I had been taking American History in Summer School; four hours each morning, five days a week, for approximately one million years. On top of that, I had started working every afternoon at Sandy’s, a small fast food chain which required us to wear black slacks, a white shirt, a tartan plaid bow tie, and a tartan plaid beret. All summer I had been dressed that way. There was no time to go home and change between American History and Sandy’s, so I wore the shirt and slacks combo to school every day, sans the tartan plaids.
I had never worked so hard in my life. I was learning history every morning and hamburgers every afternoon. You can see how a guy might get a little confused, especially considering how little sleep I was getting. I couldn’t really read or study until I got off from Sandy’s, which was often quite late, and we were compressing a year’s worth of history into a summer. The
pace was brutal. I remember seeing
a bumper sticker one day while making the school-to-Sandy’s dash. It stated, “My child and my money go to the school of hard knocks”. I thought, Yep, that’s me! Maybe this’ll teach me to wait until the last minute to take a required course. The bloom was off the rose pretty early that summer.
What made that particular day such a good one was that I had, finally, finished Summer School. On top of that, the Assistant Manager at Sandy’s had decided I had that something special needed to elevate me from the lowly entry level position of “counter help” to the considerably more prestigious position of “grill assistant”. I was going to learn to cook on the grill. I was floating! Not only had they given me a 10 cent raise on the hour, I was learning the grill! So, as if I needed anything else to make it good day, the decision to train me as a cook had forced a schedule change. Since they needed me to come back on Sunday morning for training, they had to let me go early that Friday. Had to watch those “Wage and Hour Law” requirements for minors. I was sitting in Weird’s den by 4:00 PM, with no claims on my time until Sunday morning at nine.
The den at Weird’s house was perfect for a bunch of teenaged boys. There were several chairs, a Ping-Pong table, a player piano, a TV high up in a cabinet, and a separate bathroom. You could come in from the backyard via sliding glass doors or from the main house via a more conventional door that led in from the living room. Nothing we could do made any impression on the terrazzo floor. If you could add up all the time we spent in that room…had to be something like a couple of decades. It was very special to us; it was our clubhouse, our home-away-from-home, the place where we went to reclaim our sanity. I watched the first moon landing in that room. Probably the coolest thing was that Weird’s mom had nailed up some Greek letters over the living room side of the inside door. Weird said they spelled “hell” in Greek. That way, he said, when he and his siblings got on her nerves, his mom could tell them all to go there.
So, that’s where we all were that evening when Dare came loping in, slinging his helmet down onto one of the couches. Then, he just stopped and looked at us…very dramatic. After we got quiet, he still just looked at us. Finally, Ron said, “What?”
Still staring at us, Dare began to show a slow grin. Then, at full grin, he said, “Wait ‘till you hear this!”
That’s all it took. We had all heard that expression before. Whenever Dare had come across something truly interesting that’s what he said. Usually, though, he couldn’t contain himself. Usually, he just burst into ongoing conversations with whatever he had discovered. Something was different about this one. Bear and I looked at each other. Then, we put down our Ping-Pong paddles and zipped over to the sitting area.
Guv was already there. His torso was scrunched down into the heart of a large chair, while his head rested on one of the overstuffed arms and his legs jutted sideways off the other. He looked like the Little Dipper. I snagged a floor pillow with my left foot, dropping on to it as it plowed into the front corner of Guv’s chair. His booted feet made me nervous, hovering there above my head, especially those metal taps on his heals, so I scooted around to the other side.
Bear sat down on one of the couches. For some reason he liked them. None of the rest of us, Weird included, would park our butts on those things. They were too hard. The fabric enclosed foam rubber couch cushions did little to separate hardwood from gluteus maximus. Weird’s parents had spent a lot of money on this room, but for some inexplicable reason they went with the rugged look. The rough wood walls looked nice enough, but the built-in wooden “couches” served better as storage space, which they also were. My opinion was that they represented some sort of compromise between Weird’s Mom and Step-dad. Dad was the outdoors type, so I could just see him telling
the architect to be sure to include storage space for all their hunting, camping, and boating gear. Next, Mom would throw a fit because the storage spaces looked “tacky”. Quickly then, hoping to avoid complete meltdown and, not insignificantly, the possible loss of the job, the architect says, “Hey! How about this? Let’s make them bench style, make it so the seats are hinged at the wall, and we can put foam rubber cushions on them.” Wallah! The hard couches are born.
Weird was already on a floor pillow. Once Dare joined us down there, it left Guv and Bear looking down like some strange set of monarchs. All of this rearranging took mere seconds to accomplish. We all turned toward Dare, expectantly. He did not disappoint.
“You guys know how I work over at the Land Between The Lakes some?”
We did. Dare had started out volunteering up there when he was in the 8th grade. He helped the park rangers inventory the plants and animals, record the effects of various weather events on the LBL denizens, identify and map the historical sites…whatever. Over a very few years he went from unpaid gopher to receiving a wage as a “Researcher”. Also, it had the added advantage of getting him out of school sometimes. It was temporary and it was part-time, but that arrangement suited Dare just fine. His life was too full to be tied down by a full-time job, especially one that was more than twenty miles away. We had benefited from his LBL gig on several occasions. So, we not only knew about it, we approved. He looked around and saw us nodding our heads.
“I’ve been on a two-day. They needed me to stay overnight with a bunch of biology students who came over from one of the junior highs in Mayfield.”
His voice was easy, not revealing any of the excitement we saw in his eyes. Clothing his tenor was the mildest of nasal overtones, but they are so muted; there was a hint of Bob Dylan , a smidgen of Arlo Guthrie. Sometimes I found myself thinking that he sounded that way intentionally.
“Anyway, the students left at about 10:00 this morning. No one told me to go home, so I decided to stay. I had been wanting to explore some areas further south. I was tooling along on my Yamasaki, and starting to think about going back for lunch, when I turned up a dirt path. You know how that is; the deeper you get in to the LBL, the harder it is to tell if there was ever really a road there. At first, I thought this one was just a large animal trail. But, when I topped the rise, it widened into a one-car dirt road, twin tire ruts and all. The road dropped down fast, so I didn’t see it at first.”
“Didn’t see what?” I asked.
“I’m coming to that. The ruts were not really a problem. But, the rains had made lots of little canyons in the road. I had to work hard at keeping the bike upright. I shot forward along the top of one ridge. Man! That could’ve been bad! When it finally leveled off, I braked to a stop in the grass on the right side of the drive. I stood there for a few minutes, straddling my bike, just catching my breath. Once I settled down, I looked around. And, there is was.”
“There was what?” rumbled Bear.
“There”, said Dare, pausing for effect, “was the house.”
“It was amazing! It was huge!”, gushed Dare. Gone was the calm of a few moments ago. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right there in the middle of nowhere…a house. Oh! And, there was a garage, but not just any kind of garage. Oh no. This one had two gas pumps in front, with glass tops on them; kinds like big white raindrops. And there was some other kind of building, too. Couldn’t tell what from where I stood. The lake runs right in front of the house. The yard slopes down to it. There’s this big ol’ porch on it, too.”
He seemed unable to stop. He just went on and on describing the house. There was a basement, he said, saying you could tell because there were windows at ground level. But all the windows were covered with corrugated metal sheeting; the doors, too. It looked like it was two
stories, he thought. But there might be an attic or something; the roof looked like it crowned in the middle. He went closer. We all knew he couldn’t have done anything else; he was Dare. He said the metal sheeting at the back door had been pulled apart a little. It left an oval opening.
“I walked right in. I couldn’t believe it! This place was so cool. The first thing I came to was the kitchen. It looked old and new at the same time. I mean, the stuff in it was old; you know, not modern. But, it didn’t look like it had ever really been used. I thought that was weird.”
Then, glancing quickly at Weird, he said, “I mean, strange. There was dust on everything, but it looked kinda like new…like not used…I don’t know! Anyway, there was a room that had to be a dining room. It had a place in the ceiling that looked like a chandelier had been there. And, there was this room at the front that was probably a living room. The stairs lined up with the front door. Upstairs there was a bunch a rooms, bedrooms, I guess.”
Except for the pause to placate Weird, he had talked straight through. I never saw him take a breath. No doubt about it, he was excited.
Then, Bear brought him up short.
“So…uh…how could you see if all the windows were covered?”, he asked. Now, here was something any of us might have wondered about. But, none of us had caught it. Maybe we all would have, at some later time or on some later date, have realized that there was an inconsistency in Dare’s story. Maybe. But, right then and there, we all missed it. Everyone except Bear.
Bear did that kind of thing from time to time. You might think he was a little slow, by the look of him. But, you’d be wrong. Not that you would be wrong all by yourself. Lots of people underestimated him. On top of looking like a bear, he was about as talkative. He almost never volunteered in class. Since he was so quiet, people tended to think he had nothing to say. The truth was that he made good grades; A’s and B’s, mostly A’s. He just wasn’t the kind of person to compete in class, flinging his hand in the air, hoping the teacher would pick him to answer the question or do the demonstration at the board. He was content to mosey along, quietly turning in good papers, submitting his homework, and scoring well on exams. Most of his teachers were happy to leave things that way, too.
So, though quietly spoken, Bear’s question was a real zinger. Dare’s face was fun to watch. He had been so caught up in his own story that, at first, he had that sort of dazed look people get when you talk to them before they are fully awake. They heard what you said. They just can’t seem to make the words arrange themselves in any order that makes any sense to them.
But, that face didn’t last long. Pretty quickly, he moved on to the perturbed face. That’s the one where people are not really angry, just mildly ticked off that someone had the nerve to interrupt them. People like that haven’t really heard the question, either. It was, as far as they are concerned, just an interruption. And, they usually treat it like something you trip over while walking, never really stopping because of it, recovering mid-stumble and going ahead. For a second or two, it looked like that was what Dare was going to do.
Then, he got it. And you could see it happen. Slowly his face moved back in the direction of confusion. Now, he was wondering how that had been possible. The far away look in his eyes told us that he was replaying the events underlying the story he had been telling us. Seeing the rooms, looking around, now for the light source. Then, there it was.
“Oh, yeah”, dare said, realizing the answer. “Good catch, Bear!” And you could tell he meant it. “I hadn’t really thought about that. The basement windows were covered over, completely. Now that I think about it, I can see that the main floor windows were only covered partway up. The top foot or so was uncovered. They were too far off
the ground for someone to just walk up to. I guess they didn’t think there was any need to cover the upper part. The windows on the second floor were done the same way. Anyway, there was enough light to see by.”
“So, what did ya’ do after you went through the house?” asked Bear. I was beginning to wonder if Bear was going to ask all the questions.
“Well, what else could I do. I went to see Ranger Bob.”
It suddenly occurred to me that Bear had been maneuvering Dare, hurrying him along to this point. Definitely not Bear’s usual MO. Obviously, there was a good deal more that Dare wanted to tell us about the house. But, Bear knew that Guv and I would want to know about Ranger Bob more than we would want to know about the house. Knowing Ranger Bob was involved made a difference.
CHAPTER TWO
Ranger Bob
Ranger Bob was a State Police Officer. They were all called “Ranger”. Kentucky was a one-size-fits-all kind of state. State Police were assigned to all sorts of duties throughout the Commonwealth. Some worked the Highway Patrol, smokies. Some served in counties, doing such mundane things as giving driving exams. Some protected the Governor. Ranger Bob was assigned to work in the Center for Outdoor Education in the LBL, a plum position if you liked the outdoors, a real dead-end job if you were a city boy. COE was housed in one of those modern atrocities that were intended to look like they belonged in the woods, but really didn’t. Some urban artist’s concept for a log cabin. It wasn’t really a log cabin. Really, it was made of cinder block and steel beams, with just enough half-logs glued on to make it look really bad. As far as I was concerned, it would be difficult to imagine a building that looked more out of place. Several of its siblings were sprinkled throughout the LBL, and, for that matter, in every state park in the Commonwealth. People over forty seemed to like them just fine.
And, Ranger Bob liked his HQ, as he called it. We all knew this because he had told us so on several occasions. Over the course of almost three years, we had heard a great deal about Ranger Bob’s life and philosophies, though never voluntarily. Ranger Bob was already a part of our little world. He had dated Dare’s Mom. They were an item for a few years. He had lasted all the way up to the “why-don’t-we-move-in-together” stage before she broke it off. This was a record for her. Since her divorce from Dare’s Dad, twelve years ago, no one had ever lasted that long.
As often as we had heard from Ranger Bob, it didn’t hold a candle to how many times we had heard dare’s Mom say, “No man is going to live in my house!” When one of us reminded her, and one of us always did, that Dare’s Dad had lived in that house with her, she would quick-take-a-drink of her scotch, then say, a little defensively, “I was young.”
Whenever our little group found itself sans Dare, we would speculate on why Ranger Bob had lasted so long. Her usual pattern was to date a man for all he was worth, then, without warning, her relationship radar kicking in, she would kick him loose. Before Ranger Bob, the longest just-dating-not-a-couple period had been seven months. Somehow, Ranger Bob had managed to stay below the radar for almost three years.
One day, shortly before Ranger Bob blipped on to the radar, something happened to Dare’s Mom. Maybe there’s an official report somewhere. Or, maybe not. She said she took a tumble down the stairs on her way to the cellar one morning. Well, she did drink. I don’t know what the grownups thought, but our little crowd was suspicious; all except Dare. Whatever happened, it wasn’t long before Ranger Bob was out of the scene. One day, he was there grilling steaks out back, and the next, he was history.
Dare was devastated. He just about worshiped Ranger Bob. Even with us hinting, he couldn’t make the connection between his Mom’s bruises and Ranger Bob’s departure. Dare had met Ranger Bob at the
LBL, been mentored by him at the COE. Dare had been the one to introduce his mother to Ranger Bob. In the four years Dare had known Ranger Bob, the man had taught Dare almost everything which made Dare, Dare; woodcraft, water skiing, every kind of sport, rappelling, spelunking, camping, even how to maintain his Kawasaki. In fact, Ranger Bob had convinced Dare’s Mom to let him buy that scooter in the first place. He was like a Dad to Dare. Dare’s real Dad had been out of the picture so long, that Dare was starved for it. To be fair, all of us had benefited from their relationship, too. Guv, Bear, and I had learned most of those things from Dare after he learned them from Ranger Bob. For whatever reasons, none of our fathers did those kinds of manly things.
So, while it was difficult for us to think badly of Ranger Bob, none of the rest of us held him in quite the same esteem that Dare did. It looked like Ranger Bob might have a dark side.
CHAPTER THREE
Legend of the Bogard House
For many years, folks in the western hills of Kentucky had been making their own brand of “moonshine” whiskey. During Prohibition, Al Capone had connected with these folks to buy as much of the illegal brew as they could cook up. The story goes that a man named Bogard was the person primarily responsible for the success of this particular enterprise. Of course, the day finally came that the “great experiment” finally came to an end. Congress lifted the prohibition on alcohol. But, not before Capone took steps to ensure a steady supply of West Kentucky whiskey.
Capone, in a move intended to both reward Bogard for his loyalty and success, and to “lock in” the moonshine, built Bogard a house in the western hills of Kentucky, smack dab in the middle of moonshine country. Supposedly, Capone knew he was asking a lot to have one of his most successful lieutenants pick up and move from Chicago to the middle of nowhere. To make sure Bogard stayed loyal, Capone built him a luxury home.
The house was two stories above a full basement. It had everything; all the modern conveniences. All the plumbing was indoors, along with the bathrooms. There was a gasoline-powered generator, housed separately, which supplied all the electricity they would need. The living room and dining room, which flanked the hall leading from the front door, were large and beautifully appointed. A large, banistered gallery fronted the house. It was said that dances were held there. There was a large, modern kitchen with hot and cold running water, a gas stove, and, eventually, an electric refrigerator. On the second floor were three large bedrooms and another large bathroom. The master bedroom had its own bath. And, throughout the house, there were closets of every kind.
Taking into consideration the remoteness of the new home, Capone had a full garage built behind the house. Inside was a fully appointed machine shop, with everything needed to repair an automobile, from tires to engine.
In every way, the Bogard House was elegant and grand. It would have fit perfectly with the better homes in Chicago, nestled among those occupied by Chicago’s wealthy. Some of the words used to describe the finished house were opulent, elegant, beautiful, and vast. In its day, it was a mansion.
Then, there were the secret rooms.
The legend says that the Bogards were to live in the house, giving lavish parties, enjoying the deep woods which surrounded them, fishing in the nearby streams; living the life of landed gentry. But, all of it was, they say, a sham. Supposedly, during the dark of the new moon, an airplane would land at night on the road running in front of the house. The pilot would then go to the generator house where he would find numerous jugs of whiskey left there by local farmers. He would leave the agreed price in place of the jugs, load the latter on the plane, and fly back to Chicago.
Supposedly, Capone designed secret
rooms into the house, so that the moonshine could be hidden during
times of high scrutiny from Federal agents. Legend had it that there were false walls, scattered throughout the house. Also, law officers were, supposedly, aware that something was going on. The problem lay in proving it. But, they say that no officer of the law ever found the secret rooms in any of the raids.
Going In
After tramping around all about the grounds, oo-ing and ahh-ing over the gas pumps in front of the garage, gawking at the sheer richness of everything, we finally found our way back the Beetle and the Ford Econoline van. For some reason, I was not as happy as I should have been. For all of the excitement to finally be here, to finally be able to see, first hand, everything Dare had been saying, there was another something tugging at the edges of my thoughts. I felt…well, I don’t know what I felt. And the not knowing put me out of sorts. Once or twice I had caught Guv giving me the ”What’s up?” look. All I could do was shrug. I hadn’t known then, and I didn’t know now.
Once we had all taken in the outside, there was only one thing to do. We would have to go in. For a few minutes, we all just stood there and looked at the house. It was immense. It was, in reality, even bigger than Dare had remembered. Standing there beside our vehicles (our trusty steeds), the engines off, no more shuffling feet, no one making any kind of noise at all, I sensed that nature was conspiring with us to be quiet. Not that there was no noise. The wind was soughing lightly through the treetops. All of us could hear the lake making little lapping sounds at the shore a few yards away. But, that was about it. No birds, none of the usual nature sounds. Looking from face to face, I could see that we all had sensed it, that this was one of those moments, one of those special times. So, we just stood there, taking it in.
Finally, Dare said, “Let’s go.” But, he spoke quietly, and as reverently as I had ever heard him. We all walked forward as a group, loosely scattered around an invisible, but acknowledged, central point. Friends returning from Viet Nam had told me they had been taught in Boot Camp to march in straight lines, then un-taught it when they got in country. The experienced soldiers in Viet Nam had learned, sometimes the hard way, to ensure that the troops were spread out, less of a target. Scattered distribution seemed to work the best over there. What I noticed that day, as we prepared to enter the Bogard House for the first time, was that we were doing the same kind of thing. None of us had been in the military, yet. So, maybe it was something that people just did.
But, I think, that on some level, we all felt we were at risk, and that we had, just naturally, scattered; some kind of primal thing so that the whole tribe is not at risk. For myself, I still felt a small concern, some little niggling doubt about what we were gong to do. A line from The Raven flickered through my thoughts (…gently rapping on my chamber door…). I brought up the rear, as I almost always did. Somehow, along my short life, I had developed the idea that I was the rear guard. By that point, it was just something I did, without ever thinking about it. As I came to the opening, I stopped and looked back. Everyone else had already gone inside. Standing there on the top step, looking out at the garage, the drive, the generator house, I finally got it. I knew what was wrong.
It felt like someone was watching us.
Still troubled by that feeling, I crossed the threshold. I must have stood out there longer than I realized. Once my eyes adjusted to the considerably darker interior, I could see that everyone was staring at me. "What's the matter?" asked Guv.
"Nothing," I said. "Why?"
Deadpan, he replied, "You've got that look you get when you're thinking someone is about to violate your constitutional rights." For about a second, he maintained a serious expression. Then, someone, Dare I think, didn’t quite smother a snicker. Guv’s face contorted, and
all of the guys burst into laughter.
For my part, I tried to maintain a stern expression, but the grin kept breaking through at the corners. Finally, I couldn't hold it anymore, joining them in the joke. We laughed and laughed, to the point of tears.
And then, just as we were getting it under control, I looked over at the girls. All it took was for the guys to follow my gaze to set us off, again. The look on their faces! Clearly, they all thought we had gone over the edge.
Finally, we settled down to the point that I could explain. Looking at Betty, but including all of them with my voice, I explained, "See, I've got this thing about being blamed when it's not my fault. I get pretty upset." I could hear Dare snickering, this time, while I struggled to make sense of our rough joking. "They've all known me long enough to have seen me get that way. And Guv", I swung my gaze to pin him with the words, "knows just exactly how to push that button."
Looking back to Betty, I could see I wasn't being successful in explaining our little outburst, and I found that a bit frustrating. I was starting to wonder if it was just one of those 'guy things'; maybe they couldn't understand because they weren't 'wired' the same way we were. Before I could continue, Betty said, "And now you have that 'these people aren't smart enough to understand me' look."
"Dang!" cried Dare, gleefully. "She's only been going out with the boy for two weeks and she already knows the other look!" This set off a whole new round of laughter among the guys. This time, though, their dates joined in. Sensing that I had, somehow, stepped in dater's quicksand, I hastened to explain myself.
"Betty, I'm sorry. It's not that I thought you couldn't understand." I had decided, wisely I think, to leave out the part about it being a guy thing. " I just thought I wasn't doing a very good job of explaining."
Tartly, she said, "Oh, I understand it just fine. I just don't think it's funny."
I don't know if it was the new look on my face, or if it was the gales of uncontrolled laughter gushing forth from our friends, some of who were now rolling on the floor, but a smile began to crack through Betty's stone face. Then, we were all laughing.
Of course, leave it to Bear to make it something special. Walking over to Betty, he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. Then he took one of her hands into his two massive paws and said, as quietly as his deep, resonant voice allowed, "You are his match, if not more. We've been waiting a long time for you. Welcome."
There was a glow to the moment, negative thoughts forgotten. The joy and excitement of discovery finally overcoming the concerns we had all been experiencing. This was the Bogard House. We had come here to explore it. And we were in.
For want of the nail, the shoe was lost
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost
For want of the horse, the rider was lost
For want of the rider, the battle was lost
For want of the battle, the war was lost
No, I don’t know who wrote that. I don’t even know if I got it right. It was something I learned in school, but not, maybe, as well as I should have. I missed it on the test, too. Anyway. I had cause to remember it about an hour after we entered the Bogard House. And it was all because of Dare’s date.
Dare’s companion for our adventure was a little honey named Jenny. All of us guys were a little bit smitten with her. I’m not sure how to explain it, except to say that she had the kind of looks that no guy can resist; she was girl-next-door cute. And, to top it off, she wasn’t stuck on herself like a lot of other good-looking girls. But, that day, we were all a little put out with her. Jenny could be a little ditzy, at times. Which was all the more frustrating since we all knew she maintained a straight-A average.
The problem, in fact, most of that day’s problems, had started when one of the other girls, Nora, snidely
pointed out that Jenny had worn the
wrong shoes. In fact, Nora was about to become a big problem. But, more on that, later.
“Jenny-you-ditz! You wore the wrong shoes!” accused Nora.
This was the kind of thing Nora did, and she did it often enough that we all wondered just what it was Guv saw in her. They had been debate partners before they started dating, so maybe that explained some of it. Maybe.
Anyway. Once Nora raised the issue, we could all see that she was right. Jenny was wearing healed, platform shoes. They, along with her short-shorts, showed off her legs nicely, and the combination would look good @ a dance. But they were just plain wrong for stomping around in the wilds of the LBL.
“What’s WRONG with my shoes, Nor?” Even as teenaged boys, we could recognize the menace in her voice. Nora, of course, was oblivious to it.
“You silly goof! You’re wearing platforms!” persisted Nora, obliviously.
“I KNOW I’m wearing platforms. I put them on. I should KNOW what they are."
Probably, everything would have worked out just fine if we had only just let them settle it between the two of them. But, no. We all jumped in like it was the Noble Park pool on a hot summer day.
IDEAS: he finds his grandfather's journal covering the period of prohibition & TVA flooding & the Bogard House. Goes to visit granddaddy in the "home". G has Alzheimer’s & is in and out, often reliving some part of his earlier life. Some parts of this may help solve the mystery.
Have G to have been part of "Bonus Army" march on DC in June 1932. also a connection to Ness & Capone, boot-legging & the Bogard House. Have him hide his journal in the crown of the BH, anticipating the TVA flooding & expecting the house to be under water or at least surrounded by it.
He has implicated someone in this little history, someone w/a political future in KY & possibly federal.
The Sheriff of Lyon county becomes involved w/current adventure, creating problems for our teen friends, "raiding" a group that have camped out in a chapel during a storm. The headlines scream "GHOULS!" as the Sheriff accuses them of desecrating the adjacent cemetery.
CHAPTER ??? -- Sunset Manor
I really hated coming here. After I had seen what I had seen, there was nothing else to do. If the answers were anywhere, they were here. The first whiff of that antiseptic hit me like a solid blow. Along with it came the realization that I had been dreading this.
I loved my grandfather. Among the pantheon of relatives my parents connected me to in Paducah, Grandaddy had always been a favorite of mine. To be fair, there weren’t many of my family I didn't like, and most of those had had the decency to move somewhere else.
Still, Grandaddy was special to me. I don't know if it was in spite of or because of the strained relationship he had with my father, or if it had nothing to do with that at all. For some reason he had singled me out for special attention. In the sprawl that was our local relatives, attention was often mistaken for affection. I couldn't tell you if Grandaddy actually cared for me or not, but he paid attention to me and had done so since I was a child. What can I say? Maybe I was just easy.
Still and all, visiting him here was one of the most difficult things I did. I loved him, but I hated this place. I had been coming here for almost two years, each time the resistance to it greater than the time before.
Our church youth group came here, sometimes. On Sunday afternoons we would sing, a cappella, the old hymns, most of which we didn't even sing in church anymore. That's what they wanted, though, and that's what we gave them.
Our Youth Director made the choice of ‘homes’, and what process he used to arrive at his choices was beyond our meager reasoning skills. For a few weeks it would look like the rotation was progressing alphabetically, and then, without warning, he would break that sequencing. For a while, we speculated, he seemed to be working a geographic pattern centered on the church building. But that was no more dependable that the other. The pattern always
broke. Worst of all, we sometimes went to the same place two or three times in a row. It kept me on pins and needles.
The problem was that I never knew in what condition I would find my grandfather. Sometimes, he was lucid and active, and at times like that I would start to wonder why he was in such a place at all. Other times, though, it could be bad --very bad. I never wanted to see him that way when I was with my youth group. I don't think I could take it. I know how that sounds, okay? I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
What would he be like today, I wondered. I was praying for lucid. Something told me that time was getting short, and that I might not be able to just wait until some future lucidity.
IN DEVELOPMENT - "Conflict" by Steve Orr
Conflict
by Steve Orr
"From time immemorial, the purpose of a navy has been to influence, and sometimes decide, issues on land." Edward L. Beach
The long feared, and some said, inevitable, European expansion began the still dark morning hours of April 23, 2103. Citizens of the United Kingdon awoke to discover their islands completely surrounded by the EU navy. Officially, it was described as "military manuevers". Coming as it did on the heels of a two-week EU "house cleaning" where the parliaments of member countries were disbanded, often at gunpoint, the UK and its allies, who had all publicly condemned that powerplay, quickly raised the specter of retaliation, clearly fearing invasion.
Interviewed on CNN, EU Premier Karl Hoffman, speaking from Valkerie House in Berlin (the EU capitol for over 40 years at that point), used the term "war games" to describe the situation. He downplayed the concerns being raised by the UK, saying, "The Atlantic is a very big ocean. We can conduct our manuevers wherever we want. It is simply more cost-effective to do so in the eastern Atlantic." He then refused to accept any more questions on the topic.
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN, Ninth Edition, 2199
The Captain of the vessel was actually a Lieutenant. However, becaue he was in command of the vessel, he was, by naval tradition, Captain of it. It was wholly appropriate for his crew, as well as all who came aboard, to call him Captain and to give him the deference due that position.
It did not, however, change that fact that he did have superiors and had to follow the orders issued to him by those who outranked him.
And therein lay the problem. He had just been given an order with which he had no intention complying.
The proper response one gives to a superior who has issued one an order is "Aye Aye, Sir." Each of the three words had a purpose. The first signified that the recipient of the order had heard and undersrtood it. The second word indicated a willingness to carry it out. The third word was an acknowledgment that the issuer of the order had the right to give it to the recipient.
Lieutenant Gerald "Jerry" Steveson spoke the words automatically, realizing after that he had, at the very least, laid the groundwork for his own courtmartial, and, very possibly, secured the eternal damnation of his immortal soul. The former because he had every intention of disobeying the order, and the latter because he was going to lie to his crew. The latter, to his thinking, was by far the greater sin.
The vessel was not a ship, was in fact far too small to ever be confused with a ship. Officially, it was a not even a boat, but rather "vessel, seagoing, rescue.". Its designation, carefully stencilled on either side of the bow, was SRV-001, and it was the only vessel of its kind.
The Navy wasted nothing. The fact that a technology leap had made the vessel obolete before it could be launched did not keep the Navy from putting her to sea. It simply meant that no others would be constructed. It also meant that no one wanted to serve aboard her. Assignment to SRV-001 came to be viewed as a negative thing by both the rank and file as well as the corps of officers. A Captain or Commander who was assigned to SRV-001 was generally considered to have erred in some way that would prevent their ascention to a "real" ship.
by Steve Orr
"From time immemorial, the purpose of a navy has been to influence, and sometimes decide, issues on land." Edward L. Beach
The long feared, and some said, inevitable, European expansion began the still dark morning hours of April 23, 2103. Citizens of the United Kingdon awoke to discover their islands completely surrounded by the EU navy. Officially, it was described as "military manuevers". Coming as it did on the heels of a two-week EU "house cleaning" where the parliaments of member countries were disbanded, often at gunpoint, the UK and its allies, who had all publicly condemned that powerplay, quickly raised the specter of retaliation, clearly fearing invasion.
Interviewed on CNN, EU Premier Karl Hoffman, speaking from Valkerie House in Berlin (the EU capitol for over 40 years at that point), used the term "war games" to describe the situation. He downplayed the concerns being raised by the UK, saying, "The Atlantic is a very big ocean. We can conduct our manuevers wherever we want. It is simply more cost-effective to do so in the eastern Atlantic." He then refused to accept any more questions on the topic.
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN, Ninth Edition, 2199
The Captain of the vessel was actually a Lieutenant. However, becaue he was in command of the vessel, he was, by naval tradition, Captain of it. It was wholly appropriate for his crew, as well as all who came aboard, to call him Captain and to give him the deference due that position.
It did not, however, change that fact that he did have superiors and had to follow the orders issued to him by those who outranked him.
And therein lay the problem. He had just been given an order with which he had no intention complying.
The proper response one gives to a superior who has issued one an order is "Aye Aye, Sir." Each of the three words had a purpose. The first signified that the recipient of the order had heard and undersrtood it. The second word indicated a willingness to carry it out. The third word was an acknowledgment that the issuer of the order had the right to give it to the recipient.
Lieutenant Gerald "Jerry" Steveson spoke the words automatically, realizing after that he had, at the very least, laid the groundwork for his own courtmartial, and, very possibly, secured the eternal damnation of his immortal soul. The former because he had every intention of disobeying the order, and the latter because he was going to lie to his crew. The latter, to his thinking, was by far the greater sin.
The vessel was not a ship, was in fact far too small to ever be confused with a ship. Officially, it was a not even a boat, but rather "vessel, seagoing, rescue.". Its designation, carefully stencilled on either side of the bow, was SRV-001, and it was the only vessel of its kind.
The Navy wasted nothing. The fact that a technology leap had made the vessel obolete before it could be launched did not keep the Navy from putting her to sea. It simply meant that no others would be constructed. It also meant that no one wanted to serve aboard her. Assignment to SRV-001 came to be viewed as a negative thing by both the rank and file as well as the corps of officers. A Captain or Commander who was assigned to SRV-001 was generally considered to have erred in some way that would prevent their ascention to a "real" ship.
IN DEVELOPMENT - "The Devil: And What If I Do?"
THE DEVIL: AND WHAT IF I DO?
By Steve Orr
"If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don't, and what if I do?"
Dorothy Parker
#
The light, from the spill of the projector and the frozen image it splashed across the screen, wasn't nearly enough to illuminate the entire room. The corners, and the upper tier of seats were too far for the light to penetrate.
The two men, not exactly enemies but not really friends, sat with an empty seat between them. The older man studied the face frozen on the screen. He noted, with the swift but sure analysis of a professional, the salient features of the person they were here to discuss; open, honest expression, clear, focused eyes, hair neatly combed . . . didn't look like a terrorist to him.
Keeping his gaze fixed on the screen, he said, "Bryan Samson Bonfanti. What kind of parents would saddle a kid with that combination?" But it was a rhetorical question and the younger man knew it.
The older man continued, "How did you come to have this video? And why did he talk to you?"
These, the younger man knew, were real questions. "Believe it or not, it was a simple case of mistaken identity. He thought I was his lawyer. I'm not sure it would have mattered. I sensed he was ready to talk to anybody who would listen. Still, the mistake made it that much easier to get what I wanted. You'll see. He was eager to prove his innocence."
The older man looked unconvinced. "How do you know he wasn't just putting on a show for the camera?"
The younger man smiled. It was not a nice smile. "He never knew he was being recorded. The pickups were built into a pair of glasses I wore. Like I said, he thought he was talking to his lawyer.”
For the first time since the projector had been turned on, the older man looked away from the screen. His eyes flicked quickly over the younger man, a new-found respect in them. "Who else knows about this recording?"
"So far, just you. I came to you first."
The older man recognized the gesture for what it was, a sort of peace offering. A show of respect. His regard for the younger man moved a bit, if not toward friendship then certainly further away from enemy.
Returning his gaze to the screen, he said, "All right. Show me."
The younger man raised a remote, aimed it at the projector and pressed a button. The face on the screen started talking.
#
"Okay, I guess you're right. Skipping around isn't going to help. All right. From the beginning. I was well into my fourth year of grad school when my advisor lost her mind. At least, I assume that's what happened. That must be what happened. Seemingly overnight, she up-and-left her husband, running off with a guy who had just received his Masters in English Lit. He was one of those good looking guys who can spout appropriate poetry for any occasion; the good stuff, too. I have to admit, I was a little jealous . . . not about my advisor and him. I mean about the poetry. Women love that stuff. I get what she saw in him. But pretty boy or no, how do you make a living with that degree?
"Anyway. Suddenly I was foundering. I discovered that no one else on the faculty thought my thesis topic was as groundbreaking as she had. I hadn't exactly expected members of the faculty to beat a path to my little corner (I shared an office with a couple of third-year's). But I certainly expected better than I got. The best offer I had was from this one Prof who said. 'Mr. Bonfanti, I will lower myself to serve as your advisor if you will simply gut your work, bleed it out, and build something else inside the skin.' Yeah, yeah, I know. You're right. He didn't really say that. But that's how it felt. His recommended changes amounted to another four years worth of work. That sounded an awful lot like starting over, to me.
"I was desperate. I think that explains why I was so happy to get the invitation. Well, all right, it wasn't really an invitation, but it might just as well have been. Some weeks earlier I did the very same thing hundreds of grad students had done every year for the past twelve years. I requested an interview with The Devil. It's almost SOP.
"If you were pursuing an advanced degree in psychology, sociology, criminology, heck, almost any 'ology', you wanted to interview Old Nick. It was the Holy Grail of academia. If you could get that interview, you could write your own ticket. The worst advisor couldn't screw your life over, if you could talk to The Man.
"You probably remember the bizarre string of murders attributed to him. Of course, there's quite a bit which isn't generally available to the public. I mean, you could get it through the Freedom of Information Act, but, frankly, most of it's pretty sick. Unless you have a professional interest, I recommend you avoid the details.
"I bet you know about all the layers, though, right? Nesting, they called it. He didn't just kill people. He killed them with multi-layered references to poetry, quantum physics, history, literature, politics, you name it. Even obscure references from the dark arts; alchemy, magic.
"The profilers, of course, were the first to realize what he was doing. Buried within those layers were clues to his past and future murders. That's when the authorities began to realize just what a genius they were up against.
"You had to solve one layer before you could even discover the clue to the next layer, and so on. Once they began to crack the clues, the authorities realized, pretty quickly, that this guy knew a lot of things. One disturbing aspect, among many, was that some of those things he knew were supposed to be secret.
"There were so many bizarre aspects to the case. Remember that guy from the Department of Justice who was interviewed on CNN? Said it was like a really violent video game come to life? I hear he's on permanent detail to Butte, Montana.
"Even more interesting, from a criminology perspective, was that Old Scratch left plenty of his fingerprints at every scene. Every murder was different from the others -- there didn't seem to be any pattern -- so it was the fingerprints that finally clued someone to the fact that these were the work of a single killer.
"The generally accepted theory is that he wanted to be discovered. My theory is that he wanted to be caught. Why else leave clues? Even extremely obscure ones? He was playing a game; one that only smart people could play. Still, and history proves me out on this, someone did eventually figure out the clues. And, someone did eventually use them to track him down. You can't tell me he was smart enough to devise them but not smart enough to know they would lead to him.
"The fingerprint thing: they submitted them through VICAP and got several hits, but no identity. All they knew at the time was, whoever the killer was, he had never been fingerprinted. There were all those hits on unsolved murders. And remember the embarrassment when they discovered the hits on the supposedly solved murders? Seventeen different people adjudged to be murderers were exonerated. Too late for nine of them.
"But, of course, you know all that from the media coverage. Just like you know about him never giving them his name when they finally caught him. Well, unless he really is 'The Devil.' Interviewing him is the dream of many a grad student, along with many college professors, psychiatrists, policemen, various kinds of federal agents, and not a few heads of state. He's turned down everyone. In all the time since his capture, h's never consented to one, single interview. But, for reasons I hoped to get him to reveal, he decided to break his silence. And I was going to be the one who would be there when he did it.
"OK, I admit it. I'm ambitious. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't wise. But, really, what would you have done? I think if you had been notified that your request to meet The Devil had been approved, you would have done the same. I needed a win. From where I was drowning, it looked a lot like a life preserver. When the word got out, people started treating me with deference. Suddenly, nobody thought my thesis needed quite so many changes. I felt respected.
"That's how I came to be there that day."
The older man watched as Bonfanti reached for something out of camera range. When his hand reappeared, there was a paper cup in it. Bonfanti lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip, then another. For a few seconds he just stayed that way, cup to lip, eyes staring off into some internal distance.
The younger man's voice now came from the speakers. "Brian? I need for you to tell me everything. What happened that day?"
Bonfanti's gaze returned to the present and he looked directly at the hidden camera.
"Sorry. My mind keeps jumping ahead to the weird parts. OK. That morning started off much the same as mornings had for almost two weeks, cold and rainy. Fall had come late to the Boston area. Oh, we had had a little scare when a near frost had hit in early October. But that was quickly followed by one of the warmest, most pleasant, Indian Summers you would ever wish for. It was even comical watching the local weather anchors try to diagnose the situation. The best they could do was "unseasonably warm temperatures". It's like having a doctor tell you that the reason you are exhibiting all those symptoms is that you have a cold. Thank you very much, Doc, I think I could have gotten that far on my own.
"So, for a couple of weeks, we were pretty smug people. Strutting about, soaking up all that sunshine. Of course, Fall did come. It always does. The leaves fell and blanketed almost everything that wasn't moving, visually stunning as always. The sad part was that, before even one of them could swirl about in the wind, the winter rains began . . . early. The weather Docs said, "unseasonably cold temperatures". And, that's how it had been for over two weeks. Chilling rains greeted us each morning, then were gone by nightfall. Everywhere there was a blanket of slick, soggy, brown leaves.
"Don't get the impression that any of this dampened my excitement. There was an irrepressible grin on my face as I drove out from the city toward Walpole. As I came up on the prison, I couldn't see the recently constructed Spenser Facility for the Criminally Insane. It was located behind, and well away from, the main building and grounds. I drove around back and discovered a large patch of mud where the parking lot will someday be, but certainly not before Spring. Thirty or forty other vehicles formed four uneven rows. I parked my GEO more or less in line at the near end of row four.
"Once inside, out of the deluge, things started off pretty well. The Devil had only been in Spenser a little over a month. Who knows, maybe the change of digs had affected his decision to see me. At that point, it really didn't matter to me how I had come to be there. I was still marveling that it had come my way, at all.
"After changing into a pocketless blue jumpsuit and given what I assumed was the standard briefing, I was allowed to go into the ward.
"My expectations were blown away from the very start. First, even though there was plenty of room, his was the only cell on that wing or hallway or whatever. This hallway was a long tube, about seven feet in diameter, and it dead-ended into a wall just outside the cell. But, that was only the beginning of the unexpected. At the end of the tube, I had to turn to the left to face his cell. That's not really the right word for his living space.
"I had expected to find 'Silence of the Lambs'. What I discovered, instead, was more like a Jordan's Furniture showroom. It was a studio apartment/home office; nice furniture, brightly lit. The floor, though, was not part of the package; a thick coating of shiny, plastic-like material bonded to concrete. While three of the walls extended the 'showroom' ambiance, one was decidedly different, the one I was looking though. It was composed of some sort of super strong material produced by Lexan, and it had a lot of holes in it. Each hole was about two inches in diameter and set about six inches apart. The wall looked like some kind of high tech Swiss cheese. To my way of thinking, it was the only thing that looked like it actually belonged. Some psychologists had designed the whole shebang.
"I found that someone had thoughtfully placed a folding chair directly in front. Pulling the chair back as far as it would go, I sat down opposite the Swiss-cheese-wall. He was standing in a far corner, his back to me, and for about five minutes did not look my way or give any other indication that he even knew I was there. Then he just came strolling over to take a seat on the other side of the wall. Through the holes I could hear the 'swish-swish' of his orange jumpsuit intermingled with the 'ching-ching' of the chains. Behind him, I could see large, barred windows set in the outer wall, well over twenty feet off the floor. Not much light came in through them. But, then, the rain allowed little light to reach the ground anywhere in New England.
"The Devil did not disappoint. He looked even younger than in his photos, and he was even more handsome. You could pass this guy on the street without ever thinking he might be a serial killer, though you might have a twinge of jealousy. He had the kind of looks most guys would like have. I had been told that many women found him extremely attractive. Sadly, some of them who found him so didn't survive.
"He broke into my musings, his well-modulated voice sounding almost British in its sophistication. 'I assume that you wish to know something of my art.' That's what he called it -- art. When he said it, something skittered up my spine. Never saw that word in the papers, did you? One word and I already had enough for an entire thesis. He smiled at me, seeming to know what I was thinking. It was a nice smile; humble, self-deprecating. I got the feeling he knew what he had just done; that it had been deliberate. Of course, the real question was, had it been a gift or would there be a price?
" 'Oh, there's no charge for that one, young man,' he said, again seeming to read my mind. Y'know, interviews with police had suggested he did this kind of thing all the time. The official position was that he was extremely adept at reading faces and body language. Still, it made me shudder again. He saw that, too.
" 'Now, now. Just relax,' he suggested in smooth and soothing tones. 'I thought it might whet your appetite, a nice appetizer. Really, would I invite you here just to send you away? No, no. We have a lot to talk about, you and I. I'm going to talk about many things, and I have decided that you are to be the one to whom I will speak. And, as I suspected from you query packet, you have very little curiosity as to why I've chosen you. You are far more interested in what I have to say and in how it will save you from academic extinction. That's good.'
"See what I mean? Where did he get that 'academic extinction' thing? I didn't put that in the query packet.
" 'However,' he continued. 'I want you to know why I chose you. The reason needs to be part of your published works, and there should be several of those what with all I'm going to tell you. I picked you because you are a genius. Ah! I can see I surprised you with that one! Ha! Oh, marvelous! This is tasty! I thought you might not know. Those chumps who run the universities never want the real ones to know. Well. More on this, later.'
"He was actually chortling at this point. It didn't take long for me to go from stunned to angry. I was being played, and I didn't like it one bit. If not for the strength of my ambition, I would have walked out right then. Looking at my face, he was swept along by a new wave of chortling. Finally, still in his mirth, he waved me back to my chair. Without realizing it, I had actually started to leave.
" 'Sit, sit', he laughed. 'Oh, I am sorry for this. You can't know how long it has been since I have laughed. Once it started, I had a devil of a time with it.' He was calming down, and sitting back down. Had he, too, been thinking of going somewhere?
" 'Please. Sit', he said, almost back to his original voice. 'I know I am laughing at you not with you, but you caught me off guard. Do you realize that that never happens? You are . . . unexpected. I realize that you are not going to believe everything I tell you, but believe this; the last time anyone caught me off guard, with anything, was well before you were born. Now, to business.' The shift in mood was instantaneous. These wide mood shifts were unnerving. I began to suspect that maybe I ought to have given this enterprise a little more forethought.
" 'Here are the rules', he explained. 'I know you are interested in my activities of the past few years, what I call my red period. And, I will give you some heretofore unknown information. Say, for example, how I chose my subjects, and, say, umm, perhaps how I decided which clues would nest within which others. Oh, close your mouth. You'll drool on that nifty little jumpsuit. They hate that, you know.'
" 'The rules, young man, the rules.' I focused, but I was now seeing everything through a thick fog of ambition and anticipated glory. 'Before I give you even one of those morsels, I will tell you something about my history on this planet. You know, I've been at this for a very long time. There is a lot to tell. I want you to be patient. Listen to what I say. Converse with me about it. If that part goes well, then, periodically, I'll share some things about my more recent activities. Do you agree to the rules?'
"I nodded, dumbly. What could I say? If he wanted to ramble on about being The Devil, well, that was almost as valuable as the other. I'm sure I could co-publish with one of the psych's. In fact, there was this cute redhead, a third year, who might be very grateful to be included. I'd been searching for a good line to use on her. Hey, want to co-publish a paper about The Devil? That should do it.
" 'Come, come', he said, a bit testily. 'I can't have you drifting off every time you think of some plum you're going to pluck once you get out with these treasures of mine. Pay attention.' He was right . . . to business.
" 'Can you speak?' he asked."
" 'Of course', I replied calmly. Only it didn't actually come out that way. My voice broke like a 12-year old boy's, ending in a pitiable squeak.
'He smiled. He had me and he knew it."
#
A few minutes went by, during which, I swear, he was silently gloating. Finally, he tossed one leg over the other and let out a little sigh. That's when he told me he invented vampires.
"You invented vampires." I could hear the disbelief in my voice. Could he?
"Oh, yes. It was great fun! Running around Europe, biting people. Ah, those were the days! There are few things headier in life than starting legends."
"Starting legends? Do you mean you . . . ?"
"What? Oh! You thought I built one! Ha! Ooooh. Did you think I sneaked into the good doctor's laboratory to stitch stolen body parts into a vampire? Ha!" He said la-bor-atory. And he was making fun of me again. I would have interrupted, but he wouldn't have heard. He was having too good a time chortling.
"This is rich! When I said I 'invented' them, you thought I made them! Too good! Silly, boy! Vampires aren't real. How could they be? I was playing a joke. I just wanted to make problems for the Walkers."
"The Walkers?"
He gave me a look. I'd say 'mild concern' if it were anyone else. With him, I wasn't sure.
"What do they teach you people these days? You've never heard of the Walkers? How about the Wanderers? No. I see it in your expression. How about the 'people who never die' or maybe 'the undead'? Of course, after I co-opted 'the undead' for my vampire con, it was used for little else. Now that I think about it, I would guess 'Wanderers' would be the most current usage."
I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was important to him, for some reason. Why else tell me?
Finally, exasperated, he said, "The Wanderers are people who have never died."
That's when I made the unfortunate mistake of saying, "Oh! You mean immortals!"
"Immortals?" he thundered.
The word exploded from his mouth, along with a wide spray of saliva. His eyes bulged, his skin purpled, and the muscles of his jaws rippled. The rage flashed across his face. I started to move back, but he held me in place with those eyes.
"Don't be a dunce!" he roared. "Everyone is an immortal!"
Then, as quickly as it formed, the storm was gone. But its replacement may have been worse. Next he fixed me with a sneer, and spoke the word in a whisper, with obvious disgust.
"Immortals?"
He looked at me. His face seemed to be showing surprise.
"Did I make a mistake?" he mused.
I think I could have actually left right then. He was pacing, hands behind his back, looking nowhere, really -- lost in thought. The only sound was the ceaseless tattoo of the rain, considerably muted but still discernable even down here; and, of course, the light jingle of the chains. If I had only gone then, I think he would not have known, and maybe he would have forgotten about me.
Turning back to me, he seemed to sense my thought. "Yes," he said calmly, all business again, "perhaps we should just end this. You are, obviously, not the person you appear to be on paper." I could hear the shadow of the sneer in his voice. That's when pride stepped in and ended the fight or flight debate going on in my gut. I was too the person I appeared to be on paper, and more besides that, thank you very much! I thought frantically, looking for a strategy, on the edge of panic. Then, I had it.
"Wait", I said as calmly as I could muster, "how could you make a mistake?"
As simple as that. He sat back down across from me, just looking at me for a few seconds. Then, with an 'ah ha' look on his face, he said, "A test. That's what we need here."
He struck a comical pose, one leg over the other at the knee, one hand cradling the other elbow, an index finger laid along side his temple. His face took on an exaggerated thinking look, eyes scrunched shut, mouth tilted upward in a crescent of quizzical.
He held that pose for about a minute. Then burbling happily, he called out, "Got it!"
Locking eyes with me, and sounding as if he was sure I would not know the answer, he asked, "Is the glass half empty or is it half full?"
I hated that kind of game. But, what was I to do? I needed this...really needed this. If this fell through, I could pretty much kiss my doctorate goodbye. I had no idea what it was he wanted to hear me say, but I certainly knew the correct answer to that question. So I played along.
"Neither", I ventured, "the glass is always full."
"Really", he said, sounding, and looking, dubious. "Why is that?"
"Easy", I replied. "Gas fills any space not occupied by liquids or solids."
One eyebrow went up; the left one.
Quickly he said, "There are time-travelers on the planet. Identify them."
It was weird. He was asking me questions I knew the answers to. "Everyone is a time-traveler," I shot back. "We all travel through time, just in one direction, toward the future."
The right eyebrow joined the left.
After about thirty seconds, stretching out the word and sounding relieved, he said, "Oooo-kayyyyy. Maybe you're not stupid. Maybe you're just uneducated. OK. You can stay. But, mark my words. You, young man, are on probation. Let's try to keep the more idiotic thoughts from finding voice, shall we?”
He now looked as he had when I had arrived; handsome, urbane, intelligent, in control. Mentally, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Throwing himself back into the chair, he said, “Now, where were we?”
“Vampires?” I ventured. “How did you, uh, pull that off?”
“Vampires.” He thought for a few seconds, then said, “All right. But, we’re coming back to the other matter. Don’t think I’ll forget.”
He settled himself a bit more, then announced, airily, “Progeria and Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”
"Zero pig . . . what?"
“Progeria and Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”
“What’s ‘Prog...’?' ...what's that?"
“That, young man, is how I ‘pulled it off’.
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
Out of the blue, he stopped talking; seemed to stop seeing me, looking though me like I wasn’t even there. His eyes went from playful to hateful in an instant. He was glaring murderously at a point somewhere over my right shoulder when he said, "I thought you were dead." By this time, he was starting to shake with that rage I’d seen, earlier.
It really confused me at first. It was like he was talking to someone else. I got the creepiest feeling someone was standing behind me even though there had been no noise to suggest that. Still, the feeling wouldn't go away. Turning my head slowly to the right, I almost jumped out of the chair when I saw a guard mere inches to my right. How had he done that? I never heard a sound. It was like he had just appeared there. Looking up, I found that the guard was not seeing me, either. His gaze was fixed on the cell.
#########
INSERT SECTION ABOUT THE RECORDING OF THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE DEVEL AND HIS KEEPER. THEY CONFISCATED A MINI-RECORDER FROM BONFANTI. YOUNGER MAN STOPS THE VIDEO AND PLAYS THE AUDIO TAPE FOR THE OLDER MAN
"I thought you were dead."
"More precisely, you thought I was out of your life forever."
"Always my fondest wish."
Looking about, the guard said, "You have gotten yourself into quite a fix. Aren't you afraid they will discover your secret?"
"Is that a joke? Did Mr. Serious actually attempt humor? They have me jialed on multiple counts of murder most foul. They don't have a death penalty in this state. And, most importantly, they won't release me to the states that do until I've served my 5 consecutive life sentences here. I think I can figure something our before I have to start serving number two. Besides, maybe someone will try to kill me. Two of the guards, here, are related to several of my victims. The Commonwealth doesn't know, but thosae two do and they are both angling to work on this ward. Intersting times, eh?"
#########
When I looked back, The Devil was no longer seated just on the other side of the Swiss-cheese wall. He was standing where he’d been when I first arrived, in the corner with his back turned.
I eyed the guard. Something about him seemed familiar. He, on the other hand, did not look at me, but continued to stare mutely at the prisoner’s back. There was a kind of longing in his eyes.
I decided I would have to be the one to start any conversation we might be going to have. So I said, “Say fella, you gave me quite a scare. You’re pretty quiet on your feet.”
No response; not even any indication he’d heard me.
"So, was he talking to you? What did he mean by that? Why would he think you were dead?"
His gaze still fixed on the distant corner, he said, "A very long time ago, he did something, something terrible. As a result, I was imprisoned by an enemy of our family.” His voice didn’t go with his look. The uniform, combined with rippling muscles laid over a tall frame, made for a formidable appearance. He looked like he could handle himself in a riot, if you know what I mean. I expected the voice to be rough, harsh, like the army drill instructors I’d seen in movies. Instead, it was well modulated, pleasant, almost melodious. There was a slight Mediterranean accent.
“You mean he, like, sold you into slavery or something?”
His face turned toward me, surprise etched in it. “There is wisdom and understanding in your words. Yes. That is an excellent way to characterize what he did. He cut me off from my family in my youth. I was imprisoned, forever barred from all that I loved. My life was over.”
I wasn’t sure I really understood any of that, but I wanted to keep him going. I sensed there could be some great fodder for my dissertation somewhere in the relationship between these two men. “You say you were ‘forever barred’, yet here you are, free as a bird.”
######
"So, you've come to get your revenge?"
He seemed genuinely surprised.
"Revenge? I'm not here for revenge. When did revenge ever make anything right? Can you think of one instance where it undid any wrong, brought anyone back to life? No, I'm not here for revenge."
"Then . . . what?"
"I'm here because . . . I spent all these years searching for him because I'm his keeper. And how could I do that justice if I couldn't even find him?"
"You're his keeper? That's a strange way to talk about the Devil."
He snorted; then barked out a laugh. “The devil! Not that old thing! He used to do that when we were children. 'Ooooh! I'm the devil!' I always laughed. And it always made him angry when I did."
He continued to chuckle to himself. For someone who had been imprisoned for . . . well, for many years, he didn’t seem very bitter. In fact, he seemed positively chipper.
"Well, if he’s not the devil, then who is he?"
"His name is Cain."
UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED!
The younger man used the remote to freeze the picture. He looked at the older man.
Sensing the cue the older man said, "So, what is it the Office of Antiquities wants from the Society of . . . ."
"What I was hoping, "interjected the younger man, "was that you might do me a favor."
The older man regarded the younger without expressioin for several seconds. Finally, he said, "What favor would you have me do for you?"
"Don't kill him."
Again, the older man regarded the younger without expression. Eventually, he reached into a pocket of his coat and retrieved a small communicator. He pressed a button, waited, then spoke into the device, "Hold."
He then returned his gaze to the younger man; this time, clearly indicating his question with his look.
"There is so much we can learn from him and through him! He's going to want to find answers to the many questions raised by his encounter with Cain and . . . the other. We can have those same answers as soon as he has them! Think of what we can learn."
"And, what" asked the older man, "will keep him from telling the whole world about this? What if he can convence other scholars that he is telling the truth? What happens then? How do we protect ourselves then?"
"We get him to do his work in Rome."
"And why would he be willing to come to Rome?"
"Simple. We offer him a full ride. He's a doctoral candidate. How can he resist? You heard what he said about his situation at his current university. All we have to do is get one of our schools to offer to accept his previous work. And, like I said, pay for it all."
The older man slipped back into his expressionless visage. After two full minutes of silence, he lifted the device back to his lips and spoke, "Abort."
Standing, he turned to the younger man and said, "You realize, the two of us will have to work closely on this."
The younger man looked discomforted, but nodded in the affirmative all the same.
"And" said the older man, "my folks will have to handle the transfer out of the jail.
By Steve Orr
"If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don't, and what if I do?"
Dorothy Parker
#
The light, from the spill of the projector and the frozen image it splashed across the screen, wasn't nearly enough to illuminate the entire room. The corners, and the upper tier of seats were too far for the light to penetrate.
The two men, not exactly enemies but not really friends, sat with an empty seat between them. The older man studied the face frozen on the screen. He noted, with the swift but sure analysis of a professional, the salient features of the person they were here to discuss; open, honest expression, clear, focused eyes, hair neatly combed . . . didn't look like a terrorist to him.
Keeping his gaze fixed on the screen, he said, "Bryan Samson Bonfanti. What kind of parents would saddle a kid with that combination?" But it was a rhetorical question and the younger man knew it.
The older man continued, "How did you come to have this video? And why did he talk to you?"
These, the younger man knew, were real questions. "Believe it or not, it was a simple case of mistaken identity. He thought I was his lawyer. I'm not sure it would have mattered. I sensed he was ready to talk to anybody who would listen. Still, the mistake made it that much easier to get what I wanted. You'll see. He was eager to prove his innocence."
The older man looked unconvinced. "How do you know he wasn't just putting on a show for the camera?"
The younger man smiled. It was not a nice smile. "He never knew he was being recorded. The pickups were built into a pair of glasses I wore. Like I said, he thought he was talking to his lawyer.”
For the first time since the projector had been turned on, the older man looked away from the screen. His eyes flicked quickly over the younger man, a new-found respect in them. "Who else knows about this recording?"
"So far, just you. I came to you first."
The older man recognized the gesture for what it was, a sort of peace offering. A show of respect. His regard for the younger man moved a bit, if not toward friendship then certainly further away from enemy.
Returning his gaze to the screen, he said, "All right. Show me."
The younger man raised a remote, aimed it at the projector and pressed a button. The face on the screen started talking.
#
"Okay, I guess you're right. Skipping around isn't going to help. All right. From the beginning. I was well into my fourth year of grad school when my advisor lost her mind. At least, I assume that's what happened. That must be what happened. Seemingly overnight, she up-and-left her husband, running off with a guy who had just received his Masters in English Lit. He was one of those good looking guys who can spout appropriate poetry for any occasion; the good stuff, too. I have to admit, I was a little jealous . . . not about my advisor and him. I mean about the poetry. Women love that stuff. I get what she saw in him. But pretty boy or no, how do you make a living with that degree?
"Anyway. Suddenly I was foundering. I discovered that no one else on the faculty thought my thesis topic was as groundbreaking as she had. I hadn't exactly expected members of the faculty to beat a path to my little corner (I shared an office with a couple of third-year's). But I certainly expected better than I got. The best offer I had was from this one Prof who said. 'Mr. Bonfanti, I will lower myself to serve as your advisor if you will simply gut your work, bleed it out, and build something else inside the skin.' Yeah, yeah, I know. You're right. He didn't really say that. But that's how it felt. His recommended changes amounted to another four years worth of work. That sounded an awful lot like starting over, to me.
"I was desperate. I think that explains why I was so happy to get the invitation. Well, all right, it wasn't really an invitation, but it might just as well have been. Some weeks earlier I did the very same thing hundreds of grad students had done every year for the past twelve years. I requested an interview with The Devil. It's almost SOP.
"If you were pursuing an advanced degree in psychology, sociology, criminology, heck, almost any 'ology', you wanted to interview Old Nick. It was the Holy Grail of academia. If you could get that interview, you could write your own ticket. The worst advisor couldn't screw your life over, if you could talk to The Man.
"You probably remember the bizarre string of murders attributed to him. Of course, there's quite a bit which isn't generally available to the public. I mean, you could get it through the Freedom of Information Act, but, frankly, most of it's pretty sick. Unless you have a professional interest, I recommend you avoid the details.
"I bet you know about all the layers, though, right? Nesting, they called it. He didn't just kill people. He killed them with multi-layered references to poetry, quantum physics, history, literature, politics, you name it. Even obscure references from the dark arts; alchemy, magic.
"The profilers, of course, were the first to realize what he was doing. Buried within those layers were clues to his past and future murders. That's when the authorities began to realize just what a genius they were up against.
"You had to solve one layer before you could even discover the clue to the next layer, and so on. Once they began to crack the clues, the authorities realized, pretty quickly, that this guy knew a lot of things. One disturbing aspect, among many, was that some of those things he knew were supposed to be secret.
"There were so many bizarre aspects to the case. Remember that guy from the Department of Justice who was interviewed on CNN? Said it was like a really violent video game come to life? I hear he's on permanent detail to Butte, Montana.
"Even more interesting, from a criminology perspective, was that Old Scratch left plenty of his fingerprints at every scene. Every murder was different from the others -- there didn't seem to be any pattern -- so it was the fingerprints that finally clued someone to the fact that these were the work of a single killer.
"The generally accepted theory is that he wanted to be discovered. My theory is that he wanted to be caught. Why else leave clues? Even extremely obscure ones? He was playing a game; one that only smart people could play. Still, and history proves me out on this, someone did eventually figure out the clues. And, someone did eventually use them to track him down. You can't tell me he was smart enough to devise them but not smart enough to know they would lead to him.
"The fingerprint thing: they submitted them through VICAP and got several hits, but no identity. All they knew at the time was, whoever the killer was, he had never been fingerprinted. There were all those hits on unsolved murders. And remember the embarrassment when they discovered the hits on the supposedly solved murders? Seventeen different people adjudged to be murderers were exonerated. Too late for nine of them.
"But, of course, you know all that from the media coverage. Just like you know about him never giving them his name when they finally caught him. Well, unless he really is 'The Devil.' Interviewing him is the dream of many a grad student, along with many college professors, psychiatrists, policemen, various kinds of federal agents, and not a few heads of state. He's turned down everyone. In all the time since his capture, h's never consented to one, single interview. But, for reasons I hoped to get him to reveal, he decided to break his silence. And I was going to be the one who would be there when he did it.
"OK, I admit it. I'm ambitious. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't wise. But, really, what would you have done? I think if you had been notified that your request to meet The Devil had been approved, you would have done the same. I needed a win. From where I was drowning, it looked a lot like a life preserver. When the word got out, people started treating me with deference. Suddenly, nobody thought my thesis needed quite so many changes. I felt respected.
"That's how I came to be there that day."
The older man watched as Bonfanti reached for something out of camera range. When his hand reappeared, there was a paper cup in it. Bonfanti lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip, then another. For a few seconds he just stayed that way, cup to lip, eyes staring off into some internal distance.
The younger man's voice now came from the speakers. "Brian? I need for you to tell me everything. What happened that day?"
Bonfanti's gaze returned to the present and he looked directly at the hidden camera.
"Sorry. My mind keeps jumping ahead to the weird parts. OK. That morning started off much the same as mornings had for almost two weeks, cold and rainy. Fall had come late to the Boston area. Oh, we had had a little scare when a near frost had hit in early October. But that was quickly followed by one of the warmest, most pleasant, Indian Summers you would ever wish for. It was even comical watching the local weather anchors try to diagnose the situation. The best they could do was "unseasonably warm temperatures". It's like having a doctor tell you that the reason you are exhibiting all those symptoms is that you have a cold. Thank you very much, Doc, I think I could have gotten that far on my own.
"So, for a couple of weeks, we were pretty smug people. Strutting about, soaking up all that sunshine. Of course, Fall did come. It always does. The leaves fell and blanketed almost everything that wasn't moving, visually stunning as always. The sad part was that, before even one of them could swirl about in the wind, the winter rains began . . . early. The weather Docs said, "unseasonably cold temperatures". And, that's how it had been for over two weeks. Chilling rains greeted us each morning, then were gone by nightfall. Everywhere there was a blanket of slick, soggy, brown leaves.
"Don't get the impression that any of this dampened my excitement. There was an irrepressible grin on my face as I drove out from the city toward Walpole. As I came up on the prison, I couldn't see the recently constructed Spenser Facility for the Criminally Insane. It was located behind, and well away from, the main building and grounds. I drove around back and discovered a large patch of mud where the parking lot will someday be, but certainly not before Spring. Thirty or forty other vehicles formed four uneven rows. I parked my GEO more or less in line at the near end of row four.
"Once inside, out of the deluge, things started off pretty well. The Devil had only been in Spenser a little over a month. Who knows, maybe the change of digs had affected his decision to see me. At that point, it really didn't matter to me how I had come to be there. I was still marveling that it had come my way, at all.
"After changing into a pocketless blue jumpsuit and given what I assumed was the standard briefing, I was allowed to go into the ward.
"My expectations were blown away from the very start. First, even though there was plenty of room, his was the only cell on that wing or hallway or whatever. This hallway was a long tube, about seven feet in diameter, and it dead-ended into a wall just outside the cell. But, that was only the beginning of the unexpected. At the end of the tube, I had to turn to the left to face his cell. That's not really the right word for his living space.
"I had expected to find 'Silence of the Lambs'. What I discovered, instead, was more like a Jordan's Furniture showroom. It was a studio apartment/home office; nice furniture, brightly lit. The floor, though, was not part of the package; a thick coating of shiny, plastic-like material bonded to concrete. While three of the walls extended the 'showroom' ambiance, one was decidedly different, the one I was looking though. It was composed of some sort of super strong material produced by Lexan, and it had a lot of holes in it. Each hole was about two inches in diameter and set about six inches apart. The wall looked like some kind of high tech Swiss cheese. To my way of thinking, it was the only thing that looked like it actually belonged. Some psychologists had designed the whole shebang.
"I found that someone had thoughtfully placed a folding chair directly in front. Pulling the chair back as far as it would go, I sat down opposite the Swiss-cheese-wall. He was standing in a far corner, his back to me, and for about five minutes did not look my way or give any other indication that he even knew I was there. Then he just came strolling over to take a seat on the other side of the wall. Through the holes I could hear the 'swish-swish' of his orange jumpsuit intermingled with the 'ching-ching' of the chains. Behind him, I could see large, barred windows set in the outer wall, well over twenty feet off the floor. Not much light came in through them. But, then, the rain allowed little light to reach the ground anywhere in New England.
"The Devil did not disappoint. He looked even younger than in his photos, and he was even more handsome. You could pass this guy on the street without ever thinking he might be a serial killer, though you might have a twinge of jealousy. He had the kind of looks most guys would like have. I had been told that many women found him extremely attractive. Sadly, some of them who found him so didn't survive.
"He broke into my musings, his well-modulated voice sounding almost British in its sophistication. 'I assume that you wish to know something of my art.' That's what he called it -- art. When he said it, something skittered up my spine. Never saw that word in the papers, did you? One word and I already had enough for an entire thesis. He smiled at me, seeming to know what I was thinking. It was a nice smile; humble, self-deprecating. I got the feeling he knew what he had just done; that it had been deliberate. Of course, the real question was, had it been a gift or would there be a price?
" 'Oh, there's no charge for that one, young man,' he said, again seeming to read my mind. Y'know, interviews with police had suggested he did this kind of thing all the time. The official position was that he was extremely adept at reading faces and body language. Still, it made me shudder again. He saw that, too.
" 'Now, now. Just relax,' he suggested in smooth and soothing tones. 'I thought it might whet your appetite, a nice appetizer. Really, would I invite you here just to send you away? No, no. We have a lot to talk about, you and I. I'm going to talk about many things, and I have decided that you are to be the one to whom I will speak. And, as I suspected from you query packet, you have very little curiosity as to why I've chosen you. You are far more interested in what I have to say and in how it will save you from academic extinction. That's good.'
"See what I mean? Where did he get that 'academic extinction' thing? I didn't put that in the query packet.
" 'However,' he continued. 'I want you to know why I chose you. The reason needs to be part of your published works, and there should be several of those what with all I'm going to tell you. I picked you because you are a genius. Ah! I can see I surprised you with that one! Ha! Oh, marvelous! This is tasty! I thought you might not know. Those chumps who run the universities never want the real ones to know. Well. More on this, later.'
"He was actually chortling at this point. It didn't take long for me to go from stunned to angry. I was being played, and I didn't like it one bit. If not for the strength of my ambition, I would have walked out right then. Looking at my face, he was swept along by a new wave of chortling. Finally, still in his mirth, he waved me back to my chair. Without realizing it, I had actually started to leave.
" 'Sit, sit', he laughed. 'Oh, I am sorry for this. You can't know how long it has been since I have laughed. Once it started, I had a devil of a time with it.' He was calming down, and sitting back down. Had he, too, been thinking of going somewhere?
" 'Please. Sit', he said, almost back to his original voice. 'I know I am laughing at you not with you, but you caught me off guard. Do you realize that that never happens? You are . . . unexpected. I realize that you are not going to believe everything I tell you, but believe this; the last time anyone caught me off guard, with anything, was well before you were born. Now, to business.' The shift in mood was instantaneous. These wide mood shifts were unnerving. I began to suspect that maybe I ought to have given this enterprise a little more forethought.
" 'Here are the rules', he explained. 'I know you are interested in my activities of the past few years, what I call my red period. And, I will give you some heretofore unknown information. Say, for example, how I chose my subjects, and, say, umm, perhaps how I decided which clues would nest within which others. Oh, close your mouth. You'll drool on that nifty little jumpsuit. They hate that, you know.'
" 'The rules, young man, the rules.' I focused, but I was now seeing everything through a thick fog of ambition and anticipated glory. 'Before I give you even one of those morsels, I will tell you something about my history on this planet. You know, I've been at this for a very long time. There is a lot to tell. I want you to be patient. Listen to what I say. Converse with me about it. If that part goes well, then, periodically, I'll share some things about my more recent activities. Do you agree to the rules?'
"I nodded, dumbly. What could I say? If he wanted to ramble on about being The Devil, well, that was almost as valuable as the other. I'm sure I could co-publish with one of the psych's. In fact, there was this cute redhead, a third year, who might be very grateful to be included. I'd been searching for a good line to use on her. Hey, want to co-publish a paper about The Devil? That should do it.
" 'Come, come', he said, a bit testily. 'I can't have you drifting off every time you think of some plum you're going to pluck once you get out with these treasures of mine. Pay attention.' He was right . . . to business.
" 'Can you speak?' he asked."
" 'Of course', I replied calmly. Only it didn't actually come out that way. My voice broke like a 12-year old boy's, ending in a pitiable squeak.
'He smiled. He had me and he knew it."
#
A few minutes went by, during which, I swear, he was silently gloating. Finally, he tossed one leg over the other and let out a little sigh. That's when he told me he invented vampires.
"You invented vampires." I could hear the disbelief in my voice. Could he?
"Oh, yes. It was great fun! Running around Europe, biting people. Ah, those were the days! There are few things headier in life than starting legends."
"Starting legends? Do you mean you . . . ?"
"What? Oh! You thought I built one! Ha! Ooooh. Did you think I sneaked into the good doctor's laboratory to stitch stolen body parts into a vampire? Ha!" He said la-bor-atory. And he was making fun of me again. I would have interrupted, but he wouldn't have heard. He was having too good a time chortling.
"This is rich! When I said I 'invented' them, you thought I made them! Too good! Silly, boy! Vampires aren't real. How could they be? I was playing a joke. I just wanted to make problems for the Walkers."
"The Walkers?"
He gave me a look. I'd say 'mild concern' if it were anyone else. With him, I wasn't sure.
"What do they teach you people these days? You've never heard of the Walkers? How about the Wanderers? No. I see it in your expression. How about the 'people who never die' or maybe 'the undead'? Of course, after I co-opted 'the undead' for my vampire con, it was used for little else. Now that I think about it, I would guess 'Wanderers' would be the most current usage."
I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was important to him, for some reason. Why else tell me?
Finally, exasperated, he said, "The Wanderers are people who have never died."
That's when I made the unfortunate mistake of saying, "Oh! You mean immortals!"
"Immortals?" he thundered.
The word exploded from his mouth, along with a wide spray of saliva. His eyes bulged, his skin purpled, and the muscles of his jaws rippled. The rage flashed across his face. I started to move back, but he held me in place with those eyes.
"Don't be a dunce!" he roared. "Everyone is an immortal!"
Then, as quickly as it formed, the storm was gone. But its replacement may have been worse. Next he fixed me with a sneer, and spoke the word in a whisper, with obvious disgust.
"Immortals?"
He looked at me. His face seemed to be showing surprise.
"Did I make a mistake?" he mused.
I think I could have actually left right then. He was pacing, hands behind his back, looking nowhere, really -- lost in thought. The only sound was the ceaseless tattoo of the rain, considerably muted but still discernable even down here; and, of course, the light jingle of the chains. If I had only gone then, I think he would not have known, and maybe he would have forgotten about me.
Turning back to me, he seemed to sense my thought. "Yes," he said calmly, all business again, "perhaps we should just end this. You are, obviously, not the person you appear to be on paper." I could hear the shadow of the sneer in his voice. That's when pride stepped in and ended the fight or flight debate going on in my gut. I was too the person I appeared to be on paper, and more besides that, thank you very much! I thought frantically, looking for a strategy, on the edge of panic. Then, I had it.
"Wait", I said as calmly as I could muster, "how could you make a mistake?"
As simple as that. He sat back down across from me, just looking at me for a few seconds. Then, with an 'ah ha' look on his face, he said, "A test. That's what we need here."
He struck a comical pose, one leg over the other at the knee, one hand cradling the other elbow, an index finger laid along side his temple. His face took on an exaggerated thinking look, eyes scrunched shut, mouth tilted upward in a crescent of quizzical.
He held that pose for about a minute. Then burbling happily, he called out, "Got it!"
Locking eyes with me, and sounding as if he was sure I would not know the answer, he asked, "Is the glass half empty or is it half full?"
I hated that kind of game. But, what was I to do? I needed this...really needed this. If this fell through, I could pretty much kiss my doctorate goodbye. I had no idea what it was he wanted to hear me say, but I certainly knew the correct answer to that question. So I played along.
"Neither", I ventured, "the glass is always full."
"Really", he said, sounding, and looking, dubious. "Why is that?"
"Easy", I replied. "Gas fills any space not occupied by liquids or solids."
One eyebrow went up; the left one.
Quickly he said, "There are time-travelers on the planet. Identify them."
It was weird. He was asking me questions I knew the answers to. "Everyone is a time-traveler," I shot back. "We all travel through time, just in one direction, toward the future."
The right eyebrow joined the left.
After about thirty seconds, stretching out the word and sounding relieved, he said, "Oooo-kayyyyy. Maybe you're not stupid. Maybe you're just uneducated. OK. You can stay. But, mark my words. You, young man, are on probation. Let's try to keep the more idiotic thoughts from finding voice, shall we?”
He now looked as he had when I had arrived; handsome, urbane, intelligent, in control. Mentally, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Throwing himself back into the chair, he said, “Now, where were we?”
“Vampires?” I ventured. “How did you, uh, pull that off?”
“Vampires.” He thought for a few seconds, then said, “All right. But, we’re coming back to the other matter. Don’t think I’ll forget.”
He settled himself a bit more, then announced, airily, “Progeria and Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”
"Zero pig . . . what?"
“Progeria and Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”
“What’s ‘Prog...’?' ...what's that?"
“That, young man, is how I ‘pulled it off’.
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
# BREAK – MUST WRITE THE BRIDGE TO THE FINAL TWO SCENES – BREAK #
Out of the blue, he stopped talking; seemed to stop seeing me, looking though me like I wasn’t even there. His eyes went from playful to hateful in an instant. He was glaring murderously at a point somewhere over my right shoulder when he said, "I thought you were dead." By this time, he was starting to shake with that rage I’d seen, earlier.
It really confused me at first. It was like he was talking to someone else. I got the creepiest feeling someone was standing behind me even though there had been no noise to suggest that. Still, the feeling wouldn't go away. Turning my head slowly to the right, I almost jumped out of the chair when I saw a guard mere inches to my right. How had he done that? I never heard a sound. It was like he had just appeared there. Looking up, I found that the guard was not seeing me, either. His gaze was fixed on the cell.
#########
INSERT SECTION ABOUT THE RECORDING OF THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE DEVEL AND HIS KEEPER. THEY CONFISCATED A MINI-RECORDER FROM BONFANTI. YOUNGER MAN STOPS THE VIDEO AND PLAYS THE AUDIO TAPE FOR THE OLDER MAN
"I thought you were dead."
"More precisely, you thought I was out of your life forever."
"Always my fondest wish."
Looking about, the guard said, "You have gotten yourself into quite a fix. Aren't you afraid they will discover your secret?"
"Is that a joke? Did Mr. Serious actually attempt humor? They have me jialed on multiple counts of murder most foul. They don't have a death penalty in this state. And, most importantly, they won't release me to the states that do until I've served my 5 consecutive life sentences here. I think I can figure something our before I have to start serving number two. Besides, maybe someone will try to kill me. Two of the guards, here, are related to several of my victims. The Commonwealth doesn't know, but thosae two do and they are both angling to work on this ward. Intersting times, eh?"
#########
When I looked back, The Devil was no longer seated just on the other side of the Swiss-cheese wall. He was standing where he’d been when I first arrived, in the corner with his back turned.
I eyed the guard. Something about him seemed familiar. He, on the other hand, did not look at me, but continued to stare mutely at the prisoner’s back. There was a kind of longing in his eyes.
I decided I would have to be the one to start any conversation we might be going to have. So I said, “Say fella, you gave me quite a scare. You’re pretty quiet on your feet.”
No response; not even any indication he’d heard me.
"So, was he talking to you? What did he mean by that? Why would he think you were dead?"
His gaze still fixed on the distant corner, he said, "A very long time ago, he did something, something terrible. As a result, I was imprisoned by an enemy of our family.” His voice didn’t go with his look. The uniform, combined with rippling muscles laid over a tall frame, made for a formidable appearance. He looked like he could handle himself in a riot, if you know what I mean. I expected the voice to be rough, harsh, like the army drill instructors I’d seen in movies. Instead, it was well modulated, pleasant, almost melodious. There was a slight Mediterranean accent.
“You mean he, like, sold you into slavery or something?”
His face turned toward me, surprise etched in it. “There is wisdom and understanding in your words. Yes. That is an excellent way to characterize what he did. He cut me off from my family in my youth. I was imprisoned, forever barred from all that I loved. My life was over.”
I wasn’t sure I really understood any of that, but I wanted to keep him going. I sensed there could be some great fodder for my dissertation somewhere in the relationship between these two men. “You say you were ‘forever barred’, yet here you are, free as a bird.”
######
"So, you've come to get your revenge?"
He seemed genuinely surprised.
"Revenge? I'm not here for revenge. When did revenge ever make anything right? Can you think of one instance where it undid any wrong, brought anyone back to life? No, I'm not here for revenge."
"Then . . . what?"
"I'm here because . . . I spent all these years searching for him because I'm his keeper. And how could I do that justice if I couldn't even find him?"
"You're his keeper? That's a strange way to talk about the Devil."
He snorted; then barked out a laugh. “The devil! Not that old thing! He used to do that when we were children. 'Ooooh! I'm the devil!' I always laughed. And it always made him angry when I did."
He continued to chuckle to himself. For someone who had been imprisoned for . . . well, for many years, he didn’t seem very bitter. In fact, he seemed positively chipper.
"Well, if he’s not the devil, then who is he?"
"His name is Cain."
UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED!
The younger man used the remote to freeze the picture. He looked at the older man.
Sensing the cue the older man said, "So, what is it the Office of Antiquities wants from the Society of . . . ."
"What I was hoping, "interjected the younger man, "was that you might do me a favor."
The older man regarded the younger without expressioin for several seconds. Finally, he said, "What favor would you have me do for you?"
"Don't kill him."
Again, the older man regarded the younger without expression. Eventually, he reached into a pocket of his coat and retrieved a small communicator. He pressed a button, waited, then spoke into the device, "Hold."
He then returned his gaze to the younger man; this time, clearly indicating his question with his look.
"There is so much we can learn from him and through him! He's going to want to find answers to the many questions raised by his encounter with Cain and . . . the other. We can have those same answers as soon as he has them! Think of what we can learn."
"And, what" asked the older man, "will keep him from telling the whole world about this? What if he can convence other scholars that he is telling the truth? What happens then? How do we protect ourselves then?"
"We get him to do his work in Rome."
"And why would he be willing to come to Rome?"
"Simple. We offer him a full ride. He's a doctoral candidate. How can he resist? You heard what he said about his situation at his current university. All we have to do is get one of our schools to offer to accept his previous work. And, like I said, pay for it all."
The older man slipped back into his expressionless visage. After two full minutes of silence, he lifted the device back to his lips and spoke, "Abort."
Standing, he turned to the younger man and said, "You realize, the two of us will have to work closely on this."
The younger man looked discomforted, but nodded in the affirmative all the same.
"And" said the older man, "my folks will have to handle the transfer out of the jail.
IN DEVELOPMENT - "God of the Multiverse" by Steve Orr
I have a theory. What I’m wondering is if I can postulate this theory and have anyone pay attention. Pure science will countenance any theory. However, pure science doesn’t usually rule the day. If science had always restricted itself to theories that the current scientists found plausible, well, we would be a long time coming to where we are today. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what happened. In every generation there seems to be only a handful of scientists who recall that science is about expanding the frontier of human knowledge. The majority seem to self-limit, restricting themselves -- and all they can dominate -- to pursuing whatever is currently the limit to believability. I understand part of this self-limiting behavior: limited resources. Someone has to make those triage decisions because there are, apparently, only so many resources available to pursue the validation of theories. Essentially, it is: Theories = infinite, resources = finite. Short of a miracle, there is never going to be a way for finite to catch infinite.
It’s the other part of the “limiteds” that I don’t understand. Why is it there are some who think they must restrict others? Oh, I understand the need for some to dominate others in the context of controlling available resources. At its base that is a survival instinct; preservation of resources derives from preservation of species. It is those dominators who aren’t stakeholders that puzzle me. These people learn of a theory, subject it immediately to whatever they use as a standard for the acceptable application of research resources, and then reject the vast majority as being outside that small bubble they think of as “worth pursuing.”
My theory is that there is a God. In fact, my theory is that there are many beings that, based on the power they wield, could be called Gods, probably would be called gods by us. It seems to me that any real scientist would grant me the right to formulate such a theory.
There comes a time when we must either embrace our beliefs or, out of nothing more than intellectual honesty, reject them and move on. I must confess that, for quite some time, I had been compartmentalizing my beliefs, picking and choosing where I would allow them to reign and where I had concluded they didn't quite fit the fact set.
This realization came to me in an oblique way. I was reading Philip Yancy's wonderful book, Soul Survivor, when I came across a swatch of philosophy that was new to me, or at least, something I had not truly considered up to that point.
Yancy stated that "Every writer has one main theme, a spoor that he or she keeps sniffing around, tracking, following to its source." When I read it, I was forced to pause and think what mine might be.
I have been writing for many years, going all the way back to Junior High School. Much, if not all, of those earlier efforts would not be publishable for adult markets. Some might not even still be something teens would want to read.
However, in later years, I have been writing a lot of fiction, pretty good fiction. Writing can almost always be improved upon, but I have been quite happy with my efforts. And this is because I have been able to actually write what it is I have been meaning to write. There is a great sense of accomplishment in that, just being able to know that you said what you meant to say, that when people read your work they actually 'get' it.
Another, equally important part of my more recent writing is that I have been doing just what Yancey wrote about. Looking back, I suppose I have almost always done this, but today's works do a better job of making it plain to the reader.
The theme I keep sniffing around is this: science and spirit need not be combatants. They can, in fact, co-exist in the same universe. Better than that actually, they can be perfectly intertwined. My thematic core is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God of Relativity, Superstring Theory, and the multiverse.
It’s the other part of the “limiteds” that I don’t understand. Why is it there are some who think they must restrict others? Oh, I understand the need for some to dominate others in the context of controlling available resources. At its base that is a survival instinct; preservation of resources derives from preservation of species. It is those dominators who aren’t stakeholders that puzzle me. These people learn of a theory, subject it immediately to whatever they use as a standard for the acceptable application of research resources, and then reject the vast majority as being outside that small bubble they think of as “worth pursuing.”
My theory is that there is a God. In fact, my theory is that there are many beings that, based on the power they wield, could be called Gods, probably would be called gods by us. It seems to me that any real scientist would grant me the right to formulate such a theory.
There comes a time when we must either embrace our beliefs or, out of nothing more than intellectual honesty, reject them and move on. I must confess that, for quite some time, I had been compartmentalizing my beliefs, picking and choosing where I would allow them to reign and where I had concluded they didn't quite fit the fact set.
This realization came to me in an oblique way. I was reading Philip Yancy's wonderful book, Soul Survivor, when I came across a swatch of philosophy that was new to me, or at least, something I had not truly considered up to that point.
Yancy stated that "Every writer has one main theme, a spoor that he or she keeps sniffing around, tracking, following to its source." When I read it, I was forced to pause and think what mine might be.
I have been writing for many years, going all the way back to Junior High School. Much, if not all, of those earlier efforts would not be publishable for adult markets. Some might not even still be something teens would want to read.
However, in later years, I have been writing a lot of fiction, pretty good fiction. Writing can almost always be improved upon, but I have been quite happy with my efforts. And this is because I have been able to actually write what it is I have been meaning to write. There is a great sense of accomplishment in that, just being able to know that you said what you meant to say, that when people read your work they actually 'get' it.
Another, equally important part of my more recent writing is that I have been doing just what Yancey wrote about. Looking back, I suppose I have almost always done this, but today's works do a better job of making it plain to the reader.
The theme I keep sniffing around is this: science and spirit need not be combatants. They can, in fact, co-exist in the same universe. Better than that actually, they can be perfectly intertwined. My thematic core is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God of Relativity, Superstring Theory, and the multiverse.
IN DEVELOPMENT - "Jack, Jr." by Steve Orr
Jack, Jr.
by Steve Orr
Renzy sometimes knew things. Like now, he knew his wife was, very soon, going to smoke another cigarette. Now that wasn't much of a knowing; almost anyone who spent time with her could have predicted it. Still, Renzy knew she was going to do it, and he knew that kind of knowing was different from the other.
More importantly, he knew things about his family. For instance, he knew that the story about his father marrying, sequentially, twin sisters, was not the truth. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth, either. He also knew that his brothers and sisters all thought it was the truth. What he didn't know, and wished he did, was why they all thought it was the truth. Why didn't they know the way he knew?
Across the table, Beryl reached out, snagged the pack of Kool's and shook one out. In a series of fluid motions, she placed the cigarette into her mouth, flicked open her lighter, lit it, snapped the lighter shut, and blew streams of blue-white smoke from her mouth and both nostrils. The amazing thing was how she could do that and still look elegant.
That was the only word he could think to describe Beryl Jeannette; elegant. And he knew he wasn't alone in his assessment of Beryl. This wasn't a knowing. This was from just observing. Her two sisters and three brothers were absolutely in awe of her. Of all of them, she was the one with the spark, the one who, they all agreed, was the greatest success. Renzy took issue with this, but never out loud. It seemed to him that Beryl's brother Wayne was doing better than any of them, financially. Wayne managed the local finance company and had plenty of business since the banks were so tight with their dough. And Beryl's sister Suzanne had married a Church of Christ preacher; how could you do better in the spiritual department?
Still, they all said it, and they all meant it. He knew they meant it, too. Really knew.
Knowing could be a bit of a problem. Renzy had learned, over the course of 35 years or so that he couldn't always depend on it. And if you couldn't always depend on something, how could you ever depend on it?
Oh, when he knew, he knew. It was just that, sometimes, he didn't know; couldn't seem to know. There were certain times, and certain people, that seemed resistant to his knowing. Renzy found that frustrating. Renzy spent a lot of time being frustrated.
It was one of his few real emotions. He knew that most people thought of him as "reserved", or "quiet", or even "taciturn." Really knew. No one ever thought "emotionless," though that would have been much closer to the truth. Every once in a while he would fake something, just to keep up appearances.
Still, when Renzy knew, he really knew. His daddy used to say he knew "like rocks were rocks and trees were trees." Of course, Renzy actually knew that rocks weren't always rocks and trees weren't always trees, but he agreed with what his daddy meant by it all the same.
Too bad his daddy was gone. Renzy would have liked to ask the old man about some things. Like what he could tell Renzy about his mother. And what he knew about Renzy's siblings. Renzy knew they were all related, but he also knew they weren't exactly siblings, not by most people's definition. And, of course, he would like to ask the old man about the big one.
Across the table, Beryl Jeanette pulled one last time on the cigarette, consumiing all but the menthol filter. She placed that in the ashtray and reached for the pack.
####
Renzy had known about the dog, of course. He'd known about it over a week before Beryl Jeanette brought it home from the "Humane Society." He also knew that wasn't the truth. The mongrel was the runt of the litter, hand delivered to Beryl Jeanette by a coworker who lived on a small farm just outside of town. What he didn't know was why she felt the need to lie about a thing like that. Surely she knew -- even she must have been able to know -- that he wouldn't care about a thing like that. But he was sure she had her reasons. She always did. And, being Beryl Jeanette, she would eventually tell him and anyone else who would listen. Still, it bothered him a bit that he couldn't know why she did that. Really know.
Renzy knew, without understandig any of the facts, he knew that he and his "sibs" weren't completely human. Really knew.
by Steve Orr
Renzy sometimes knew things. Like now, he knew his wife was, very soon, going to smoke another cigarette. Now that wasn't much of a knowing; almost anyone who spent time with her could have predicted it. Still, Renzy knew she was going to do it, and he knew that kind of knowing was different from the other.
More importantly, he knew things about his family. For instance, he knew that the story about his father marrying, sequentially, twin sisters, was not the truth. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth, either. He also knew that his brothers and sisters all thought it was the truth. What he didn't know, and wished he did, was why they all thought it was the truth. Why didn't they know the way he knew?
Across the table, Beryl reached out, snagged the pack of Kool's and shook one out. In a series of fluid motions, she placed the cigarette into her mouth, flicked open her lighter, lit it, snapped the lighter shut, and blew streams of blue-white smoke from her mouth and both nostrils. The amazing thing was how she could do that and still look elegant.
That was the only word he could think to describe Beryl Jeannette; elegant. And he knew he wasn't alone in his assessment of Beryl. This wasn't a knowing. This was from just observing. Her two sisters and three brothers were absolutely in awe of her. Of all of them, she was the one with the spark, the one who, they all agreed, was the greatest success. Renzy took issue with this, but never out loud. It seemed to him that Beryl's brother Wayne was doing better than any of them, financially. Wayne managed the local finance company and had plenty of business since the banks were so tight with their dough. And Beryl's sister Suzanne had married a Church of Christ preacher; how could you do better in the spiritual department?
Still, they all said it, and they all meant it. He knew they meant it, too. Really knew.
Knowing could be a bit of a problem. Renzy had learned, over the course of 35 years or so that he couldn't always depend on it. And if you couldn't always depend on something, how could you ever depend on it?
Oh, when he knew, he knew. It was just that, sometimes, he didn't know; couldn't seem to know. There were certain times, and certain people, that seemed resistant to his knowing. Renzy found that frustrating. Renzy spent a lot of time being frustrated.
It was one of his few real emotions. He knew that most people thought of him as "reserved", or "quiet", or even "taciturn." Really knew. No one ever thought "emotionless," though that would have been much closer to the truth. Every once in a while he would fake something, just to keep up appearances.
Still, when Renzy knew, he really knew. His daddy used to say he knew "like rocks were rocks and trees were trees." Of course, Renzy actually knew that rocks weren't always rocks and trees weren't always trees, but he agreed with what his daddy meant by it all the same.
Too bad his daddy was gone. Renzy would have liked to ask the old man about some things. Like what he could tell Renzy about his mother. And what he knew about Renzy's siblings. Renzy knew they were all related, but he also knew they weren't exactly siblings, not by most people's definition. And, of course, he would like to ask the old man about the big one.
Across the table, Beryl Jeanette pulled one last time on the cigarette, consumiing all but the menthol filter. She placed that in the ashtray and reached for the pack.
####
Renzy had known about the dog, of course. He'd known about it over a week before Beryl Jeanette brought it home from the "Humane Society." He also knew that wasn't the truth. The mongrel was the runt of the litter, hand delivered to Beryl Jeanette by a coworker who lived on a small farm just outside of town. What he didn't know was why she felt the need to lie about a thing like that. Surely she knew -- even she must have been able to know -- that he wouldn't care about a thing like that. But he was sure she had her reasons. She always did. And, being Beryl Jeanette, she would eventually tell him and anyone else who would listen. Still, it bothered him a bit that he couldn't know why she did that. Really know.
Renzy knew, without understandig any of the facts, he knew that he and his "sibs" weren't completely human. Really knew.
IN DEVELOPMENT - "Race" by Steve Orr
RACE
By Steve Orr
Now
Devereaux lined up the hood ornament with the centerline of the highway. The little chrome jaguar seemed to leap forward when he shifted its namesake into fifth. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel's leather cover, he pressed the already thrumming engine for more power. The yellow stripes dividing the highway seemed to shorten as he accelerated; lines, to dashes, to dots.
Having finally crossed over into Nevada, he could now drive as fast as the machine would go. And that, he hoped, was very fast indeed. He needed speed above all else right now.
He was headed due west. At this speed, the landscape, the road, the sky itself, all seemed to stretch out toward a central point on the horizon, growing progressively smaller the closer they got to that point. The bright sunlight, sitting squarely in the center of it all, gave him hope. At the same time, it made him want to hurry. It was very low in the sky, and he had to stay in the light until he reached his destination. He could already see fingers of darkness stretching over the roof of the car, reaching toward the west.
For a second he thought the fingers were reaching down to grab the car. He shook his head to clear it. That wasn’t good. How long had he gone without sleep, now?
The last time he slept was . . . ? It was before he stole the car. When had he done that? Was it two days, already? He knew he couldn’t spend another night awake. He had to rest, and that meant he had to hide. Of course, the great thing about driving west was that he had longer in the light. It would delay them some. Not much, but, maybe, just enough.
He knew some things about them they didn’t know about themselves. At least, he hoped they didn't know; he was counting on that to give him an edge. Sure, they knew how deadly sunlight was to them, more so since indulgence had produced that lovely hole in the Ozone layer. They really had to wait until deep in the night before coming out into the open. He was pretty sure, though, that they didn’t know about the other. Why would they? Not enough of it in the northeast that they'd notice.
He smiled. They may be vampires, but they weren’t geniuses.
Oh, they weren’t really vampires. But they were as close as GEN-EFEX could make them, weren't they? Whose stupid idea was that, anyway?
Oh, yeah.
His.
######
Then - 18 Years Earlier
It was one of those great fall days and Anson Devereaux, 'Son' to his friends, couldn't imagine how he could be happier.
As he Jogged across campus to the Science Center, the part of his brain that planned strategies and did math wizardry was focused on the work-study position he had just wrangled, Lab Technician-1.
Sure, it meant cleaning up everyone else's messes, but it also put him right where he wanted to be, in the University's genetics lab.
The competition had been steep, the other applicants being upper-class men and women. As a First Year, he should have been muscled out early in the process, but he had some offsetting advantages, genius being chief among them and financial need running a close second. This one-two punch took him through round after round of cuts until, finally, he found himself on the short list for the position.
It was at this point he made an enemy, Rand Elmore, a Junior taking all upper level classes. Rand was nosed out at the last by two factors; one, he had no financial need, but that, by itself wouldn't have sealed the deal. The clincher was that the Department Head was pro-ROTC, one of the other ways Devereaux was paying for his college education.
ROTC wasn't popular with many of his fellow students, but Devereaux ignored that. He'd make a deal with the devil, himself, if it would get him through college. So what if he had to give a couple years to the military after graduation? A short detour. He'd go in as an officer, and the country wasn't at war. How much trouble could that be?
The way he saw it, a little marching up and down,and some boot polishing, was getting him the job of his dreams. Well, not really, but definitely in the general neighborhood of his dream job. He guessed he would have to thank them, someday.
Now
Looking ahead, he thought he saw headlights in the distance. That would be bad. He had hoped to be a good deal farther along before dusk settled in. He saw it, again. Definitely headlights.
Without slowing, he eased the Jaguar back into the right lane. Out of the corner of his right eye, he watched the cacti and scrub brush accelerate into a blur as he pulled even with them. Gone in a flash.
Then
Another part of his brain, one that had only recently been awakened, was beginning to fill up with Marcia Bilderbach, 'Bil' to her friends.
In high school, dating had always meant pretending he wasn't as smart as he was. Dates had been excruciating experiences where he spent the entire time alternating between not understanding what his companion was talking about and trying to keep himself away from geek-speak.
Consequently, Devereaux avoided dating unless it was impossible to do otherwise. And, from time to time, it was impossible. Theirs was a small town, and, at least socially, a close community. His mother took note of his stance on dating, and made a point of arranging for him to escort this or that daughter-of-a-friend to this or that occasion requiring pairs composed of the opposite genders.
He didn't fight his Mother on these. He just got through them. Upon leaving for the University, though, he looked back with some pride on the fact that he had never, not once in 17 years, asked a girl out on a date.
All of that changed when Bil entered his life. Well, except for the 'asking her out' part.
Now
Soon, the lights became an eastbound 18-wheeler, heading toward the danger. But, of course, the truck driver didn't know that. Then again, just how much danger was there? Upon reflection, Devereaux decided that, for the next several months, even possibly the next few years, he was the only one who posed a threat to them. Possibly, just possibly, no one else was in immediate danger.
If they could control themselves....
Then
He'd been sitting in the Student Center luxuriating in the company of his two newest friends. Mark was his roommate, and was as smart in literature and philosophy as Devereaux was in the sciences. Sam lived in the next room and was a former high school jock as well as a former closet computer geek.
They were playing their favorite game -- 'what-if-it-was-real?' Somehow, over the past few weeks they had wondered from the path of pseudo-science, their erstwhile topic. They'd started out considering life on other planets, but quickly shifted over to more interesting questions such as the existence of Atlantis, things disappearing in the Bermuda triangle, and gates into the multiverse.
Unexpectedly they had detoured into fictional beings. They'd already tackled Moby Dick (maybe that's where they got off?), the Frankenstein monster, the Creature From The Black Lagoon (the easiest of the group, so far -- the genetics were pretty simple), and the Mummy (definitely the most challenging to-date).
It was the Mummy that got them onto vampires. They'd hit a wall trying to figure out just how the Egyptians, scientifically, could have produced a being that could walk out of a grave several millennia later.
The only way to 'win' the game was to 'prove' the situation with known or, on a stretch, believable science. No magic allowed! The only exemption to that injunction was something that could be shown to be subject to Clarke's Law. Anyone who played that card had better be ready to present a rigorous defense.
They'd been trying to work a stasis angle, unsuccessfully, when Mark did what it was he did so well. He asked the provocative question.
"What would they eat?"
####
From behind him he heard a husky female voice say, "Sonny Boy Devereaux?"
He hated that name.
He had been called 'Sonny Boy' all of his life by his family. He had tried all sorts of things to get them to stop using it. At school, he had signed all his papers as Anson; the faculty and staff had honored that. His few friends learned, quickly, to call him anything but 'Sonny'. Nothing, however, could change what his family did.
This time, instead of the old anger and resentment, he felt an electric frisson run up his spine, exploding out into his arms, legs, everywhere. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of his life; maybe the most pleasurable. He actually shivered.
He must have zoned out for a few seconds. He suddenly became aware of his friends, both sitting with their mouths hanging open, staring over his shoulder. Swiveling in his chair, he looked up into a pair of eyes the color of polished walnut, little flecks of gold highlights scattered throughout.
He uncoiled from the chair, standing up because that was what he had been taught to do. As he rose, he kept looking into those eyes, and they kept looking into his.
Still in something of a fog, his words came from habit. "Your mother a friend of my mother?"
She grinned. "Friend of a friend."
He was looking down at her now, able to take in her whole face. She had something of a tan, but not enough to hide the little flock of freckles wandering across the bridge of her nose. He had read and heard that some people's eyes sparkled. Until now, he had never realized something like that could actually be true.
The grin became a smirk. "You know your mouth's hanging open, right?"
######
#####
Then-
The solution, as is often true, actually came before the problem. The trick, he knew, was to recognize it for what it was to become. Often, people encountered the solution and thought it was another problem to be overcome.
He had been lucky, lucky to perceive its future value before anyone else tried to "solve" it. The first time it happened, they all wrote it off to carelessness on the part of the operative. That kind of thing had happened periodically; an operative would lose track of the time, be caught in direct sunlight. The immolation was an intentional feature of the program. No one wanted the wrong people to discover the exact nature of the operatives they were fielding. Total destruction was imperative, and the immolation protocol took care of that. Nothing was left but unidentifiable ash; nothing remained that could reveal be traced, even on a genetic level.
When it happened again, same general location, same general situation, Devereaux wondered if there might be more to it than simple carelessness. He began to keep track of the immolations, charting all the relevant data; date, time, location, weather, etc. Eventually, he saw it and decided to keep it to himself. One never knew when one might need a secret. he was under no compulsion to share what he'd learned; the spooks in charge of the program having long before decided the unexplained immolations were the work of some counteragent of an unfriendly country or organization.
***STOP HERE***
####
####
Now
Convinces his enemy to 'take down' the vampires. He reveals the secret to the man, and that is enough motivation for the enemy to overcome his natural reluctance to help Devereaux.
The science:
Devereaux designed them, genetically, then grew them for the US gov't. Their purpose was to be a weapon. Each one a perfect spy and assassin. He had made them so that they did not produce new blood, as well as certain other essential bodily fluids. Amazingly, it was a simple procedure to make bone marrow not make new blood. The original idea had been to ensure their loyalty by this means. The US military would guarantee them the essential replacement fluids upon the successful completion of their assignments. It was a sort of half-life. The plan, as explained to Devereaux, was that they would be motivated to return to base, assignment complete. They would be told that they must do so or they would die, something that was, in the most simplistic sense, true.
Genetics, though, are about life, and making them be about death was difficult to do. Devereaux came as close as the science would allow, and as far as his employers were concerned, it was a success. None of them, even the scientist, were sophisticated enough to understand that what he had given them was only an approximation of what they had requested. There were some loopholes, but not so anyone else would know. The level of sophistication needed to understand very few individuals on the planet shared the difference between what was requested and what was produced.
Frankly, by the time Devereaux was brought on board, many of the broader design decisions had been made. What he had to do, and all he cared to do, was make the genetic part work. He didn't care, one way or another, what their purpose was. The science was all that interested him. He loved the challenge.
The military wanted to restrict these 'operatives' to night work, only. So, Devereaux gave them his own version of Xeroderma Pigmentosum, and made them sensitive to light in the blue range. They needed to be fast, accurate, etc.; he gave them stronger leg muscles, enhanced ocular abilities. Everyone was amazed. For him, though, it wasn't all that hard. The enhancements were an easy thing to do when you were building a being from 'scratch'. Give those abilities to a normal human being? Now, THAT would be a challenge.
They wanted some failsafes, so he gave them that. And that was the source of the trouble. It was the failure of the failsafe factors that led to the big problem. The very mechanisms he had 'programmed' into the creatures to limit their lives, a sort of 'planned obsolescence', was responsible for a weapon becoming a nightmare.
They were breeding. They had become a new race.
By Steve Orr
Now
Devereaux lined up the hood ornament with the centerline of the highway. The little chrome jaguar seemed to leap forward when he shifted its namesake into fifth. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel's leather cover, he pressed the already thrumming engine for more power. The yellow stripes dividing the highway seemed to shorten as he accelerated; lines, to dashes, to dots.
Having finally crossed over into Nevada, he could now drive as fast as the machine would go. And that, he hoped, was very fast indeed. He needed speed above all else right now.
He was headed due west. At this speed, the landscape, the road, the sky itself, all seemed to stretch out toward a central point on the horizon, growing progressively smaller the closer they got to that point. The bright sunlight, sitting squarely in the center of it all, gave him hope. At the same time, it made him want to hurry. It was very low in the sky, and he had to stay in the light until he reached his destination. He could already see fingers of darkness stretching over the roof of the car, reaching toward the west.
For a second he thought the fingers were reaching down to grab the car. He shook his head to clear it. That wasn’t good. How long had he gone without sleep, now?
The last time he slept was . . . ? It was before he stole the car. When had he done that? Was it two days, already? He knew he couldn’t spend another night awake. He had to rest, and that meant he had to hide. Of course, the great thing about driving west was that he had longer in the light. It would delay them some. Not much, but, maybe, just enough.
He knew some things about them they didn’t know about themselves. At least, he hoped they didn't know; he was counting on that to give him an edge. Sure, they knew how deadly sunlight was to them, more so since indulgence had produced that lovely hole in the Ozone layer. They really had to wait until deep in the night before coming out into the open. He was pretty sure, though, that they didn’t know about the other. Why would they? Not enough of it in the northeast that they'd notice.
He smiled. They may be vampires, but they weren’t geniuses.
Oh, they weren’t really vampires. But they were as close as GEN-EFEX could make them, weren't they? Whose stupid idea was that, anyway?
Oh, yeah.
His.
######
Then - 18 Years Earlier
It was one of those great fall days and Anson Devereaux, 'Son' to his friends, couldn't imagine how he could be happier.
As he Jogged across campus to the Science Center, the part of his brain that planned strategies and did math wizardry was focused on the work-study position he had just wrangled, Lab Technician-1.
Sure, it meant cleaning up everyone else's messes, but it also put him right where he wanted to be, in the University's genetics lab.
The competition had been steep, the other applicants being upper-class men and women. As a First Year, he should have been muscled out early in the process, but he had some offsetting advantages, genius being chief among them and financial need running a close second. This one-two punch took him through round after round of cuts until, finally, he found himself on the short list for the position.
It was at this point he made an enemy, Rand Elmore, a Junior taking all upper level classes. Rand was nosed out at the last by two factors; one, he had no financial need, but that, by itself wouldn't have sealed the deal. The clincher was that the Department Head was pro-ROTC, one of the other ways Devereaux was paying for his college education.
ROTC wasn't popular with many of his fellow students, but Devereaux ignored that. He'd make a deal with the devil, himself, if it would get him through college. So what if he had to give a couple years to the military after graduation? A short detour. He'd go in as an officer, and the country wasn't at war. How much trouble could that be?
The way he saw it, a little marching up and down,and some boot polishing, was getting him the job of his dreams. Well, not really, but definitely in the general neighborhood of his dream job. He guessed he would have to thank them, someday.
Now
Looking ahead, he thought he saw headlights in the distance. That would be bad. He had hoped to be a good deal farther along before dusk settled in. He saw it, again. Definitely headlights.
Without slowing, he eased the Jaguar back into the right lane. Out of the corner of his right eye, he watched the cacti and scrub brush accelerate into a blur as he pulled even with them. Gone in a flash.
Then
Another part of his brain, one that had only recently been awakened, was beginning to fill up with Marcia Bilderbach, 'Bil' to her friends.
In high school, dating had always meant pretending he wasn't as smart as he was. Dates had been excruciating experiences where he spent the entire time alternating between not understanding what his companion was talking about and trying to keep himself away from geek-speak.
Consequently, Devereaux avoided dating unless it was impossible to do otherwise. And, from time to time, it was impossible. Theirs was a small town, and, at least socially, a close community. His mother took note of his stance on dating, and made a point of arranging for him to escort this or that daughter-of-a-friend to this or that occasion requiring pairs composed of the opposite genders.
He didn't fight his Mother on these. He just got through them. Upon leaving for the University, though, he looked back with some pride on the fact that he had never, not once in 17 years, asked a girl out on a date.
All of that changed when Bil entered his life. Well, except for the 'asking her out' part.
Now
Soon, the lights became an eastbound 18-wheeler, heading toward the danger. But, of course, the truck driver didn't know that. Then again, just how much danger was there? Upon reflection, Devereaux decided that, for the next several months, even possibly the next few years, he was the only one who posed a threat to them. Possibly, just possibly, no one else was in immediate danger.
If they could control themselves....
Then
He'd been sitting in the Student Center luxuriating in the company of his two newest friends. Mark was his roommate, and was as smart in literature and philosophy as Devereaux was in the sciences. Sam lived in the next room and was a former high school jock as well as a former closet computer geek.
They were playing their favorite game -- 'what-if-it-was-real?' Somehow, over the past few weeks they had wondered from the path of pseudo-science, their erstwhile topic. They'd started out considering life on other planets, but quickly shifted over to more interesting questions such as the existence of Atlantis, things disappearing in the Bermuda triangle, and gates into the multiverse.
Unexpectedly they had detoured into fictional beings. They'd already tackled Moby Dick (maybe that's where they got off?), the Frankenstein monster, the Creature From The Black Lagoon (the easiest of the group, so far -- the genetics were pretty simple), and the Mummy (definitely the most challenging to-date).
It was the Mummy that got them onto vampires. They'd hit a wall trying to figure out just how the Egyptians, scientifically, could have produced a being that could walk out of a grave several millennia later.
The only way to 'win' the game was to 'prove' the situation with known or, on a stretch, believable science. No magic allowed! The only exemption to that injunction was something that could be shown to be subject to Clarke's Law. Anyone who played that card had better be ready to present a rigorous defense.
They'd been trying to work a stasis angle, unsuccessfully, when Mark did what it was he did so well. He asked the provocative question.
"What would they eat?"
####
From behind him he heard a husky female voice say, "Sonny Boy Devereaux?"
He hated that name.
He had been called 'Sonny Boy' all of his life by his family. He had tried all sorts of things to get them to stop using it. At school, he had signed all his papers as Anson; the faculty and staff had honored that. His few friends learned, quickly, to call him anything but 'Sonny'. Nothing, however, could change what his family did.
This time, instead of the old anger and resentment, he felt an electric frisson run up his spine, exploding out into his arms, legs, everywhere. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of his life; maybe the most pleasurable. He actually shivered.
He must have zoned out for a few seconds. He suddenly became aware of his friends, both sitting with their mouths hanging open, staring over his shoulder. Swiveling in his chair, he looked up into a pair of eyes the color of polished walnut, little flecks of gold highlights scattered throughout.
He uncoiled from the chair, standing up because that was what he had been taught to do. As he rose, he kept looking into those eyes, and they kept looking into his.
Still in something of a fog, his words came from habit. "Your mother a friend of my mother?"
She grinned. "Friend of a friend."
He was looking down at her now, able to take in her whole face. She had something of a tan, but not enough to hide the little flock of freckles wandering across the bridge of her nose. He had read and heard that some people's eyes sparkled. Until now, he had never realized something like that could actually be true.
The grin became a smirk. "You know your mouth's hanging open, right?"
######
#####
Then-
The solution, as is often true, actually came before the problem. The trick, he knew, was to recognize it for what it was to become. Often, people encountered the solution and thought it was another problem to be overcome.
He had been lucky, lucky to perceive its future value before anyone else tried to "solve" it. The first time it happened, they all wrote it off to carelessness on the part of the operative. That kind of thing had happened periodically; an operative would lose track of the time, be caught in direct sunlight. The immolation was an intentional feature of the program. No one wanted the wrong people to discover the exact nature of the operatives they were fielding. Total destruction was imperative, and the immolation protocol took care of that. Nothing was left but unidentifiable ash; nothing remained that could reveal be traced, even on a genetic level.
When it happened again, same general location, same general situation, Devereaux wondered if there might be more to it than simple carelessness. He began to keep track of the immolations, charting all the relevant data; date, time, location, weather, etc. Eventually, he saw it and decided to keep it to himself. One never knew when one might need a secret. he was under no compulsion to share what he'd learned; the spooks in charge of the program having long before decided the unexplained immolations were the work of some counteragent of an unfriendly country or organization.
***STOP HERE***
####
####
Now
Convinces his enemy to 'take down' the vampires. He reveals the secret to the man, and that is enough motivation for the enemy to overcome his natural reluctance to help Devereaux.
The science:
Devereaux designed them, genetically, then grew them for the US gov't. Their purpose was to be a weapon. Each one a perfect spy and assassin. He had made them so that they did not produce new blood, as well as certain other essential bodily fluids. Amazingly, it was a simple procedure to make bone marrow not make new blood. The original idea had been to ensure their loyalty by this means. The US military would guarantee them the essential replacement fluids upon the successful completion of their assignments. It was a sort of half-life. The plan, as explained to Devereaux, was that they would be motivated to return to base, assignment complete. They would be told that they must do so or they would die, something that was, in the most simplistic sense, true.
Genetics, though, are about life, and making them be about death was difficult to do. Devereaux came as close as the science would allow, and as far as his employers were concerned, it was a success. None of them, even the scientist, were sophisticated enough to understand that what he had given them was only an approximation of what they had requested. There were some loopholes, but not so anyone else would know. The level of sophistication needed to understand very few individuals on the planet shared the difference between what was requested and what was produced.
Frankly, by the time Devereaux was brought on board, many of the broader design decisions had been made. What he had to do, and all he cared to do, was make the genetic part work. He didn't care, one way or another, what their purpose was. The science was all that interested him. He loved the challenge.
The military wanted to restrict these 'operatives' to night work, only. So, Devereaux gave them his own version of Xeroderma Pigmentosum, and made them sensitive to light in the blue range. They needed to be fast, accurate, etc.; he gave them stronger leg muscles, enhanced ocular abilities. Everyone was amazed. For him, though, it wasn't all that hard. The enhancements were an easy thing to do when you were building a being from 'scratch'. Give those abilities to a normal human being? Now, THAT would be a challenge.
They wanted some failsafes, so he gave them that. And that was the source of the trouble. It was the failure of the failsafe factors that led to the big problem. The very mechanisms he had 'programmed' into the creatures to limit their lives, a sort of 'planned obsolescence', was responsible for a weapon becoming a nightmare.
They were breeding. They had become a new race.
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