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Post by Senator on Mar 10, 2016 23:07:46 GMT -5
He was out in the barn, with the cat and the ghosts.
He'd never seen them, the ghosts, but the staff and the boarders, as well as the occasional child had all spoken to him about odd sounds, half seen movements, and shadows on the other side of windows.
At night, often before bed, he would go out and spend time with the resident mouser. On nights like this, where the snow gives a blanket of quiet over everything, the barn cat nested in the man's arms half tucked inside an old military style coat.
In silence, he was happiest. The only disturbance came in the form of the constant purring from his little companion.
Years ago, the cat had just appeared. After months of being called simply, the grey ghost, it had made itself at home moving among the hooves and boots, and ever since was something of a barn mascot.
"You know, Karl," the man said to the cat, "this last one almost did me in." He patted his furry comrade and was repaid with a few licks. "I'd be joining The Ladies if it wasn't for strange luck." His words were muffled by the earnest attention of a raspy tongue trying to groom the old man's mustache.
The Ladies, as he called them, were two women who once lived on the hundred year old farm. A root cellar beside the stable had stairs that dead-ended against the back of what was now a wash stall. Most sightings of the women were in what was described as "Amish looking" clothing and centered around that spot. What is now the stables had once been the main house. While he himself had never seen the apparitions, or felt a strange presence, or heard unexplained sounds, he was just superstitious enough to speak to them and wish them peace every night he spent some time with Karl.
He, and Karl, were not surprised when the door to the stables opened and a man walked in, shaking snow from his hat. Taller than his host, younger by a decade or two. He carried something wrapped in a dish towel in a manner that telegraphed the fact he wanted to get rid of the parcel as quickly as possible.
"I found something, Senator," the visitor said.
The old man nodded. The title was more ceremonial than having any link to politics. It spoke more to his age and his desire to speak for others, and his penchant for feeling like the oldest person in the room, regardless of actual age.
He did his best to hide the aggravation in his voice. "Hello, Fisherman," he said.
"We're sending over a dossier to you now. The investigation is complete. We... well, we aren't sure what we found." The Fisherman shut the door behind him and sat down in a well worn director's chair beside one of the stalls. Between him and the Senator was a small trunk that doubled as a table top. The parcel was set there. "The subject was followed to an attic above a closed bar downtown, by the river. There's a history of drunk college kids who come up missing in fall and then pop up in spring when the river thaws. We expected an abattoir, and hopefully some answers to the Smiling Face Killer. What we got was..." The Fisherman gestured with a vague hand wave, "a cheap DIY altar to Xipe Totec. Corn stalks, red feathers... a snake skin."
The Senator arched an eyebrow. "No blood? Nahuatl, the Flayed God? You are sure?"
The Fisherman nodded. "Press board television stand with assorted gris-gris that looks like it came from the people who do the art on fast food Mexican restaurant walls. No blood."
The Senator got up and placed Karl on the ground. The pair walked around the corner to a shelf where the cat food was stored. As he prepared Karl's dinner, he said, "So there is nothing at the altar, you said. And the altar looks slap-dash with generic Meso American motifs. I am imagining it looked like a low rent Dia de los Muertos Ofrenda." He poked his head around the corner as he mixed the food and set the dish on the ground. "Well, Fisherman, that would make sense. I have been telling you for the duration of your little adventure that the person you are chasing for the last three months is probably a young man barely out of his twenties. He is displaying the classic buffet style of worship that simply plagues us Americans; picking a little bit of dogma A, a little bit from mitzvah B with a helping of gospel C when it is convenient; not the ear-marks of some newfangled pretender death cult. Americans simply do not have the stomach for an old fashioned death cult. What your team has discovered, Fisherman, is a man-child with most likely a copy of Simon's Necromonicon. The most ancient thing about it is if it still had the receipt from Waldenbooks inside the cover."
He wiped his fingers on the hem of his coat and returned to his friend.
"It's more than that, Senator," The Fisherman said. "We thought this was going to lead us to what has been happening at the college bars. There wasn't blood at the altar, I said. We did find it on one wall. He'd clawed his way through the plaster, breaking through the wood slats to a small nook behind everything."
The Senator gestured for his friend to get up and follow him out into the snow. "What was inside? The bauble you brought, I assume."
The Fisherman picked it up and slowly unwrapped it. It was a cube with intricate patterns in metallic inlay. "You know what this is. You've seen one like this."
Seeing the thing staggered the old man. "The Construct of Eternal Agony. One of the last wave of those damnable puzzle boxes."
Wrapping it back up, The Fisherman handed it over to his friend. The Senator was loathe to touch it. "Why did you bring it to me? I don't keep mementos of the things I help you find." It wasn't the truth. There was a storage unit an hour away with detailed records of the work the Senator had taken part in investigating. 8mm film canisters that bore names like Haeckel's Children or PS12 (inoculation results 1965) written in marker on masking tape sat on shelves next to bottles marked Children's Adrenal Tincture and holy relics belonging to religions that died off when humans were young to this world.
"Because we trust you to find a way to destroy it. We didn't know what it is called. The victim, our target, wrote on the wall in his own blood."
The Senator pocketed the evil box. "What did he write?"
"I opened it. Save me God."
(to be continued)
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Post by Senator on Mar 11, 2016 23:29:08 GMT -5
[Four months later...]
"Abigail, I don't see why you feel I need spoiling," The Senator said. He tried to stifle a smile and only partially succeeded. "It isn't my birthday, or any special holiday." He was fishing for the root of her insistence he come to Maine to see her.
"Because you were one of John's dearest friends. And because it is an excellent excuse for you to fly up to the island." She reached across the table and affectionately squeezed his hand. "And it has been far too long since you had any kind of vacation."
She sat back as the waiter arrived with their meal. A platter piled with layers of fried shrimp, fried oysters, and soft shelled crab was set between them.
"Thank you," The Senator said. "We'll also have the crab legs, and the lobster mornay."
"Perfect," the waiter said. "We can serve that in a bread bowl, if you'd like? The kitchen is getting creative these days."
The Senator smiled. It showed in his eyes. "You've talked me into it. Tell them to wow me." The additional dishes would take some time to prepare, giving them the opportunity to talk freely.
The restaurant looked like a forgotten bait shop converted into the perfect seaside rustic dive to drink and talk local gossip. The food was simple, and what The Senator called "honest". The word artisanal did not appear within leagues of the kitchen. Words like bacon-butter, tomato jam, or truffle oil would get a person a funny look and a ride to another place to eat in the back of someone's truck.
"In another life, I think I must have been a sailor," he said to Abigail. "Places like this... the lapping of the water at the docks... the sound of sea birds." He shook his head to shoo away the encroaching tide of wishful thoughts. "So where were we?"
Abigail was a strong woman. Handsome, almost striking, in a severe way with hair gone prematurely silver making her look more attractive. She was a good decade younger than the man who sat opposite her. She was a self styled witch, with wards and sigils tattooed and branded all over her body. Sometimes, she was The Senator's lover; something that not impeded by her marriage. She felt it was a complicated situation, but The Senator didn't, and he saw no reason to ruin his friend, John's marriage with something as meddling as the uncomfortable truth of an only occasional physical need.
"You could retire from it all, you know. Settle down. John's been gone for years. The kids are grown. We were good, you and I." She bit into a shrimp.
For the briefest of instants, he thought of the work she'd put into her tattoos and brands. Symbols he'd traced as if he read them like braille. It made him think of her husband, his friend, and brighter days. "You know we would hate each other, eventually." Adding, "Besides, there's people I can still help. A little rounder around the edges and a little bit more grey in my hair and beard; but there's work to be done. You know that."
She teased him. "Everyone hates everyone, eventually. You can't live alone with the horses and cats, you know. Your misanthropy only goes so far." She took a sip of her drink. "Then again, you always were a soft touch for anything with four legs that wandered by."
"That's because people will disappoint you. Animals?" He shook his head and breathed out a half chuckle. "They are always going to be animals, true to their nature." Leaning back in his chair, he laced his fingers over his stomach and drank her in, looking at her as if he was hungrily committing her to memory. "Years ago, I had a two day debate with a Roshi in San Diego on whether or not animals had a Buddha nature. At one point, he said that my desire for them to have it tainted my argument. I countered that by saying In Truth, it is not for the love of Creatures that Creatures are dear; but for the love of the Soul in Creatures that Creatures are dear. And if there is a soul, there is a Buddha nature."
"That's beautiful. What is it from?"
"The Upanishads. Roshi said that I was jumping holy text and cheating. We agreed to disagree and I took him out to dinner for humoring me." The Senator leaned forward and picked up a soft shelled crab. "You didn't have me come up here, really believing I would pack it all up and settle down, Abigail. Something is going on. Level with me."
The Senator was like that. He joked that he never really did anything. He always knew someone. Someone who knew someone else that "had a guy" to fix whatever problem people brought to him. For all of the years he'd been up to his neck in nameless cults, hauntings, cursed relics, and phantasmagoria he'd actually never witnessed anything that made him fully believe in the occult. He believed that other people believed, and that was enough. He devoured arcane and religious texts like a child taken to comic books. He had folios that outlined alternate versions of history that ranged from James the twin brother of Joshua called Jesus, to Abraham Lincoln's suicide note.
"I wanted to make sure you still had the fire." She leaned to the chair beside her and pulled a pin out of her purse then slid it across the table to him.
He picked up the pin. "What is this?"
"There is a... group that I know. People like you and me. When we leave here, I am going to write an address on a piece of paper and show it to you. Memorize it before I burn the paper. When you get there, see a man named Bernard. You will be among friends."
(To be continued)
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Post by Senator on Mar 14, 2016 20:51:01 GMT -5
Last week...
It was another Saturday night where the streets are littered with the fragments of old ghosts and unremembered dreams; and the skeletons of hope tumble by on winds that smell like cheap beer and good whisky.
The people who live in the margins and seek out man-made families in the shadows that clutter the places in the city that, no matter where it is, would be called the wrong side, share laughs freely like small change tossed to men playing saxophones on street corners.
The Senator passed old black men with jaundice colored eyes. Their fingers gone nicotine flavored after a generation's worth of time spent with tobacco stuffed pacifiers that bought you a few seconds on each inhale to decide whether to scream or bark laughter in the face of the kinds of evil that only happen when poverty and indifference meet at humanity's crossroads. Women stand in doorways with prices written on the walls, and call The Senator by a different name and wave. On warm nights, he'll pull one down and do a few slow dance turns by streetlight. Then, for a moment, two people felt like they just might matter; and that moment had to last until the next night, or the next dose of anything that numbs came their way. It's easy to fall in love on the wrong side. Whether it's chemicals or settling for Mister Right Now instead of Mister Right, few drugs match the love of being needed and the need for being loved.
Down a street wet with recent rain and taken on the shine of fetish latex, The Senator whistled for a cab and waved off the driver's offer of a few grams of some powder that was probably cut with industrial cleaner. The Senator has a date with a woman named Rachel at a club not far from here past the midnight chess players, the food cart vendors, the street performers, and the men and women moving through existence like Tom Waits anti-heroes alternating between liquid courage and delirium tremens.
A couple of bucks were folded and handed through a slot to the driver, and The Senator walked out into the night. He tipped his hat old fashioned like to a corner of working girls who didn't speak English, and says an early goodnight before entering past a lot attendant barely able to stay on the angel's side of aggravated rape.
Rachel wasn't hard to spot. Sitting alone at a table. A skirt meant as an invitation. And the only woman in the place with her knees together.
She looked up at him with an accusation. "You know I hate this side of town."
"You hate everything not in the suburbs," he said as he lowered his boxy frame into a creaky wooden chair. "Besides, this is one of the best steak places in the metro area."
"The man in the parking lot has a shoulder holster. An armed guard for the parking lot. A parking lot that is fenced in. How in the hell do you even find these places?" She hadn't her water glass and the complimentary bread basket had gone untouched.
The Senator looked up and nodded at the server hovering in the near distance. "Amaretto sour for my friend, and I'll have a Godfather."
When the server walked away, The Senator slid an envelope across the table to the woman. Much younger than he was, she had red hair worn in a style that befit a pin-up, and a husky quality in her voice that held most men's attention. "This is what I was able to find. You did have relative who died because the butcher of a doctor who tried to perform a medical procedure that was quite illegal at the time, had no idea what he was doing."
Rachel looked over the photographs and handwritten notes. "What is this part?"
"That is a confession. The person responsible for sending your son the threatening letters and emailing him pictures of the grave admits to doing it simply to harass him. The picture of the grave? That isn't even your relative. It belongs to a woman named Katherine Cross. Her grave has the epitaph Murdered by Human Wolves, referring to the doctors who also didn't know what they were doing. Urban legends had sprung up... Werewolves, lynched by the Klan. She was unrelated to you in any way. This was just some punk who thought it would be funny to terrorize a child into thinking werewolves were real, inspired by those urban legends." When the drinks came, both Rachel and The Senator remained silent until they were alone again.
"I don't get it. Why? And you got him to confess to all of this?" She placed it all back into the envelope and folded it into her purse.
"Because people will always show their monstrous side if given an ounce of provocation." He sipped his drink and sat back against his chair.
Rachel looked around the room, and leaned forward. "Why my son?"
"Because the man was a predator. He'd done it before. Scare children, stalk them. Make them feel unsafe. I don't have evidence that he'd ever harmed one. But I wasn't going to take that chance. Not with you, not with the boy. The police have him now." The glass was set down. "Evil exists, Rachel. If anything I've learned, it is that the blackest of hate exists in the hearts of men, not the boogey men of old black and white films."
"Jesus." The color drained from her face. The tremor in her hand made picking up her drink impossible. The thought that someone might have wanted to hurt her son made the back of her throat burn with bile. She knew how personal the man across the table had taken this case. When her son was born, he visited her in the hospital. He never asked about the identity of the boy's father. She knew the answer and kept it from him. "What did you do?"
"The police have him," he said. It was all he was going to divulge. "There's something else. I have deposited some money into the bank account. I'm going on a trip. This was the last of my cases. I couldn't leave till I made sure the boy was safe."
"Where are you going?"
"That part is a secret. I have coordinates and a building number. A friend of your father and I gave me some clues to meet people with similar interests."
She arched an eyebrow. "A club of old men?" she teased.
"And women!" he laughed.
"You only go after the married ones anyway." She finally had the steady hand to take her glass. "To old married women," she toasted.
"And their daughters," he tossed back.
She was able to laugh, a hint of color crept up her neck and settled in her cheeks. "You are a dirty old man."
"Until I'm a dead old man."
When his glass was empty, he leaned on his elbows and held it between his fingertips. Looking over the rim of the glass, he said, "While I'm gone, I'd like for you both to move to the farm. Take care of the cats. Leave the running of the stable to the crew. The trainer is a feckless idiot and the lot of them are rich women who don't hear the word no often enough from bored husbands who keep them in enough wine to kill whatever emotions their Paxil and Zoloft hadn't killed off. So you can ignore them."
"You are coming back, aren't you?"
"With you at the farm? No reason not to." He winked and began to get up. "I'll settle up. We can head out. This neighborhood isn't safe for a single young woman."
"This neighborhood isn't safe for an army."
(to be continued)
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Post by Senator on Mar 19, 2016 19:26:26 GMT -5
I am not a good man.
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. Chandler wrote that. I disagree. You don't get over a broken heart. It stays broken. Dead men are given the forgiveness of time until we forget what kind of low rent, hateful individual they were in life. Sins are forgotten and replaced with sentences that begin with Remember that time when...
It was good to see Rachel and the boy move in. In truth, I didn't know how long I was going to be away. The coordinates were easy enough to plug in and get a location. The house number, or building number - Abigail was purposefully vague in that detail - was going to be another matter. "It isn't the number that is important. What is important is that it should be there in sequence." That's all she would tell me.
I had left a list for Rachel. Feeding times for the pets, brands of food, types of toys, methods of play. People who know me say that I spoil the cats that live in the house. I tell them that they need to step up their cat game instead.
Like I said, it's people who will break your heart.
The morning I left, I was making breakfast when I caught the bounce of her hair. In the summer months it changes from red to blonde. In winter, it slides back to auburn. She'd come downstairs and padded into the kitchen, giving me a peck on the cheek and her usual I love yous. She dropped her daily hints that we should make an honest man and woman out of each other while I pretended to be too old to hear. Younger than me by a dozen years, she is beautiful in ways that I can't believe still exist in the world. She reminds me of an old time pin-up; a dame in every gorgeous sense of the word. I thanked her again for agreeing to watch things while I was gone. She told me again that she was worried. That this time felt different. She was worried ever since I told her I thought I was being followed by a guy last week. It was the way he held his hands loose at his sides, making sure his hands weren't busy holding anything or tucked into his pants pockets. It was the way I have seen people move with guns secured in shoulder holsters under lightweight jackets or at the hip.
We said our goodbyes on the sofa. I was gone before the boy woke up.
Two hours later, I was on a plane with a belly full of pills and trying to ignore the child doing its best to drive me insane at full volume. My hands were steadying and after twenty minutes I was sliding into the zone; that period of bliss where you believe everything is going to be fine, right before you go emotionally numb and doze off to sleep. Sweet, dreamless sleep.
When I landed, I took my time as everyone else zippered into single file to leave the plane. I'd taken the precaution of having my luggage sent ahead to my hotel, and a driver waiting for me.
Waiting in the back of the car was a padded envelope I sent to myself. Pocketing the contents, I tipped the driver and told him I had changed my mind. My jacket felt heavier now. I adjusted the way it hung on my shoulders to make it less obvious.
One taxi cab later and I stepped out into a chilly city street. In the country, rain smelled like it had washed the world clean. Here it smelled like dried piss was given a misting to keep it fresh for all to enjoy. The general effect made the world smell like we were inside someone's kidney. And it was cold out. Do you know how bad something has to stink to smell it in the cold? People ignore it. It just becomes the new real, and part of the human condition. It's one of the reasons I hate the city.
Walking the few blocks to my rendezvous point, I thought about the work I've done; the people who had come to me over the years to help with weird problems. Cursed books, possessed dolls, forgotten folklore, volumes of books people believed to be magical... It never mattered that I thought these people were crazy. They thought it was real, so I helped them. We helped them, I should say. Me, The Fisherman, Abigail, a handful of others who all went by false identities or cryptonyms. We weren't paranormal investigators. Not really. At least I never thought of us that way. We were scientists, collectors, and self important academics. Once you got past the egos, we were glorified librarians with a sense of adventure, most of us. I don't know how many librarians have had to kill a man over information, or been killed.
I had been slowing down in my years. While not old my most conventional measurements... barely middle aged, really; the weight of the years comes on from time to time heavy enough to take me to my knees. Maybe this group Abigail sent me to can be the turn of a new page. We'll be a room full of Nero Wolfes sending our Archie Goodwins out into the world while we get fat on good food.
I was starting to feel hope when I saw the car. A silver blue color that was standard in most car lots these days. The drizzle was a cold finger down the back of my neck. Maybe that was what snapped me to attention. Maybe it was muscle memory that runs base line and I don't even realize that I'm paying attention. Across the street, parked the wrong way, facing the intersection, came to life. Exhaust puffed out from the exhaust.
The windows were tinted. The wipers weren't on. Rain kept dotting the windows. That was my first clue.
I waited with the small collection of people at the crosswalk. As the lights cycled through, the wrong way / no wiper using car stayed put. There was a man next to me talking into a cell phone, loudly. Standing out by trying too hard to blend in. He was dressed in a suit, a raincoat, and was holding an umbrella that he just opened. His shoes weren't made for running or the weather. There was no voice on the other side of that conversation.
He was my second clue.
When no one came to the silver blue car, and it never shut off, it became confirmation.
I was being followed. Dress-shoes-talks-to-himself next to me walked in synch with the rest of our group once we got the signal to cross safely.
I was half a block from the alley I needed to go down, per Abigail's instructions. My mind was flipping through options. Staying in a group was not a guarantee that I could get out of this in one piece. In today's world, crowds just meant more possible targets. Something to attract first responders.
I pulled my collar up and unzipped my jacket. My hands went in my pockets, holding the contents inside. The warmth felt good. I hadn't noticed that the cold was angering up the arthritis in my knuckles. I had a sportcoat on underneath, so if I had to ditch my jacket, it wouldn't be hard to blend in someplace else. Dress-shoes-talks-to-himself had his hands full with his cell phone and his umbrella. He probably had orders just to follow me and wouldn't break cover. So that gave me something to work with.
Halfway across the street, I moved away from the pod of pedestrians and headed straight for the car.
I'm not a good man. I have a weakness for the wives of people I know. It stems from a sense of self loathing. It festers under the skin like poison. When it meets the boredom of an under-appreciated wife who deals with kids, and bills and distant husbands, that poison is drawn out from a kind heart and ignored body that becomes a soft, warm, poultice. I go through pills like children go through PEZ. But it is my violent streak that I'm more ashamed of.
I'd broken bones of younger men dumb enough to not listen to me when I warned them. I've delivered ax handle beatings in the course of our work. I've turned off my ability to see an adversary as human and deserving of mercy, like it was on a switch.
As I approached the car, it bolted out into traffic and sped away. I braced for gunfire from a side window that never came.
My heart eventually began to slow down. Maybe it was in my head. Maybe it is time to get out of the game. I'm finding spiders under every rock because I want there to be spiders.
Maybe Rachel is right. One of these times she'll ask me if we should try again and this time settle down; and I should say yes.
I walked in circles, backtracks, and wove through crowds for the next hour before I stood in that alley. Along the way, I ditched my jacket and all of its contents.
I looked at a scrap of paper. She had given me a three digit street number. Nothing there looked like a business, or a club.
Oh Abigail.
I am not a good man. But I like to think that I do good things. Sometimes it takes a man who is not so much good, as he is willing to do things so others never have to. A man who blurs the lines between redemption and a means to an end. A broken man who gets up one more time knowing he'll get knocked down again.
I walked to the end of the alley and then returning, counted the steps until I reached the number I had thought was an address. And there was the door. Easily overlooked, tucked in a shadow, unadorned.
Armed only with the name Bernard, I went inside.
(End)
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