The candles placed around the room flickered. Both Leonard and Damian were in the far corner near the computers, and they flinched and watched the flames of the closest candle flicker slowly back to life after being nearly extinguished. They looked at each other with wide eyes. The flashing lightning and the sound of the rain slowly ate away at the veteran investigators’ nerves.
Everyone in the large second-floor space jumped when they heard a rending of metal near the front wall near the large windows were. Damian and Leonard shot to their feet as the candles blew out.
“Oh, come on,” Damian said as his eyes adjusted to the total dark.
The sound of metal on metal echoed on the empty floor as Gabriel and Jennifer tried to see John in the darkness but could only discern a vague outline on the bed. Suddenly, the overhead lights flashed and then went out. They all had fine red dots dancing in their eyes as if they had been surprised by a bright flash of a bulb in a camera. Then the fluorescents buzzed to life, and then just as quickly went out, and then came on and steadied. They all heard the hum of electricity as it once more coursed through the once-busy department store.
“I sure as hell hope that’s Harvey screwing around downstairs,” Leonard said as he looked around nervously.
Gabriel moved toward the noise, and Damian fell in step with him as they made their way to the front of the second floor. Gabe flinched at the extreme brightness of the lights and shielded his eyes as he looked up. He could actually feel heat coming off the tubes in waves.
“Okay, now this is fucked up,” Damian said as he came to a sudden stop.
Gabe lowered his hand, and his eyes widened. “Not a very clinical observation, but I must say that I concur, that is fucked up.”
The escalator, looking as if it had just been repaired and cleaned, was running as smoothly as the day it had been installed late in 1958. The rubber handrail slid along silently as the steel stairs folded into one another.
The lights flickered once more and then came on, making them all flinch in the sudden brightness. When they looked up, the escalator was there as it had been for the past fifty-plus years, broken and silent.
“Uh, guys, you may want to see this,” Leonard said from the front of the floor. He was staring out into the night and was silhouetted by a bright flash of lightning.
As Gabe, Damian, Jennifer, and Julie gathered by the thirteen-foot window next to Leonard, they saw the lights of Moreno flickering, first one side of Main Street and then the other. Even past Main they could see lights flare to life in the old abandoned tract homes that had been built for Hadley’s employees and hadn’t had power supplied to them since 1965. It was a brightly illuminated kaleidoscope of lights that reflected off the rain-soaked streets.
“What’s happening?” Julie asked, her eyes reflecting the strange light show being staged for them. Sparks exploded from long-dead electrical transformers and fell into the water coursing down Main Street.
“John’s having some kind of effect. Whatever this thing is, it’s reacting.”
Leonard looked over at Gabriel. “Is that good or bad?” he asked, hoping for an answer he was prepared to hear. Gabriel didn’t answer.
At the pounding of feet coming up the empty stairwell, they turned as one and saw Casper, Peckerwood, Bob, Linda, and finally Harvey as they came through the door.
“We can’t get out of here,” Harvey said as he immediately walked to a window and raised a chair up in the air. Gabriel and the others watched wide-eyed as he threw the chair as hard as he could at the window. The foldable steel chair hit the glass and rebounded back into the room. “It’s the same thing on the first floor.”
“Look!” Julie said as the newcomers to their little party moved over to where they stared out of the front set of smashed windows.
Down on the street, they saw two men in blue windbreakers as they made their way hurriedly down the street toward the FBI’s new command post inside the old Pacific Bell phone exchange. Before they reached the door, the man on the left was lifted into the air, and his body was thrown as if he weighed nothing at all. They watched in horror as the body flew through the air right at them. The man hit just below the windowsill and then slowly peeled away to fall the thirty feet to the street below. Everyone observing tried to move away, but that didn’t stop them from seeing the end result.
“You people done pissed something off!” Casper said as he reached down and picked up the trembling Yorkie. Peckerwood shook in the old man’s arms.
“Leonard, we still don’t have communications with the search teams outside?”
“Nothing; it’s like our phone service is cut off.”
“This ain’t no God doing this, at least the kind we used to believe in,” Harvey said as he stepped away from the glass.
“Damn it, that’s about enough of this crap,” Damian said as he stepped back from the window and pulled his firearm. He took aim and fired three times into the top portion of the window’s crown. The bullets ricocheted off, making all duck and cover.
“Whoa, Quick Draw,” Leonard said as he finally removed his hands from his ears.
Damian cursed as he placed the nine-millimeter back into its holster.
“Look!” Jennifer said.
All eyes went back to the street. They saw the second man standing and staring their way as if he could see them all perfectly from two hundred feet away. Even beyond him, a few more of the other agents from inside the phone exchange were watching and pounding on the glass window trying in vain to get the FBI agent’s attention as he stared at them.
“What’s he doing?” Julie asked as they too watched the man standing on the sidewalk after his companion had just been tossed to his death. The agents inside were still pounding on the glass desperately trying to get the man to enter the exchange.
They saw a small child with a shaved head and ragged clothing walking through the rain right down the center of Main Street. The water was up to the child’s ankles and was rising steadily.
“Harvey, who in the hell is that?” Damian asked. He pounded on the glass as the agent standing there staring up at them smiling as the child approached. “Are there kids left in this town? I thought you said everyone was gone.”
Harvey’s eyes widened as he saw the child move with intent toward the unsuspecting agent. The agent was transfixed on the Newberry’s building across the way.
“There is no one in town and especially no children. The last family moved out yesterday; I told you that.”
“That’s not a boy; it’s a little girl, and she has company,” Jennifer said as she pointed out the window.
A bright streak of lightning brightened the darkness that had gathered in Moreno. Down the alleyways and the cross streets came several more children; Gabriel quickly estimated there were at least twenty of them, all with shaved heads and dressed similarly in ragged clothes.
“Leonard, get to your job!” Gabriel admonished the small man, who stared wide-eyed at the scene below.
Damian tossed Leonard the camera, and the computer man rapidly took pictures, the flashes bouncing blindingly off the glass.
The small girl whose bare feet seemed to step on the running waves instead of being submerged by them stepped onto the sidewalk. She looked up at the agent and then turned their way. Julie gasped as another flash of chain lightning illuminated the child’s blank and blackened eyes. The girl smiled and turned away. She tugged on the agent’s leg, and he looked down, his smile never leaving his face. He leaned over, and she whispered in his ear. He nodded, turned to look at his fellow FBI agents inside the building, then turned back to face Newberry’s. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his service weapon. Without losing the creepy smile, he raised it to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Linda and Casper screamed as the man collapsed into the gutter and then was partially washed away. The agents tried unsuccessfully to break the glass fronting the exchange. They were all helpless as they watched the small child join the others as they gathered at the center of Main and Jefferson Streets and watched the town. They were in a circle, and as they faced the buildings around them, Leonard continued to shoot photos of them.
“Good God, Gabe, what is this?” Jennifer asked.
“I don’t know, but we have to be prepared for anything until John comes back.”
“Whatever those things are, they’ve come back to finish what they started back in ’62,” Casper said, Peckerwood barking in agreement.
“I seen them kids before,” Harvey said as he finally managed to turn away from the awful scene outside.
“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.
“That night, we saw them kids. We thought they were all from out of town here to trick-or-treat. They were everywhere. The movies, standing on porches with other town kids. Not harming anyone but also not carrying bags for collecting candy neither. They came in the store. They were at the Grenada Theater. They were everywhere.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Damian asked, cursing the old man’s memory.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Casper said. “They was standing on our porch that night. You’re right, Harve, they was everywhere.”
“You too?” Damian asked.
“I swear, I didn’t remember until just this minute. It’s like it was erased from my mind and then there it was.” He looked at Gabriel. “Doc, that’s the thing that killed us that night.”
“You mean things, don’t you?” Leonard said as he finally lowered the camera after getting his fill of the strange and haunting children below.
“No, in the end that night, they were one. They were one when they knocked that helicopter out of the sky. They were one when those federal boys were attacked last night. Now they’re split again.” His eyes were haunted as he looked confused. “That thing didn’t want us to remember until it was ready for us to.”
“Well, it sure as hell seems like they’re ready now,” Leonard said as his eyes went back to the storm-tossed night and their creepy new company.
“Leonard, keep trying the radio, the computers, anything you can. Warn the other agents out searching to stay out of the town until this thing has done what it came here to do.”
“Okay, Prof, I’ll see what I can—”
The lights went out for the last time.
* * *
John Lonetree was not in a normal dreamwalk as he had been a hundred different times since childhood. He knew he was not in control. He was firmly of the belief that either Gloria or something far worse was his tour guide. Instead of being scared, he was fascinated with the images of a split town and his journey through it. Part of him was with Gloria inside the Bottom Dollar, part with Dean inside the police station, and part was somewhere he never expected to be—the factory on the hill. He was now in the same room with the two men he most wanted to hear from.
* * *
The plant conference room was empty with the exception of a lone form. He sat at the head of the long conference table and stared out of the window at the rain that was slowly coming to an end. The lights of the town he created were bright from down below. From the plant’s high vantage point, he could see the neon display of the Grenada Theater as the lights played brightly on the shiny sidewalk where teenagers were lining up for the Monster Mash spook show later in the evening. His thoughts were on his son. He pushed the phone away from him after the call from Chief Thomas—another of his club of friends from the war. His men were everywhere in the town’s government, as he always liked to have full control of Moreno. He was about to leave for the police station when the conference room door opened and a familiar face stared in at him.
“Well, how did your trip to LA go? Find any interesting new music groups?”
Former captain Franklin Perry entered, being sure to close the door behind him. It didn’t go unnoticed by Robert that Frank reached behind him and then flicked the lock. Evidently, this was a business meeting. Robert eased himself back down into the large chair.
“I’m sure your cronies in the system informed you where I was at since early this morning.”
Hadley remained quiet. He raised that right brow of his and that infuriated Perry more than anything. He remained standing as he faced his former friend.
“How long have you known?”
“Known what, Frank?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. Our good Dr. Jürgen Fromm was never deported back to Germany.”
Hadley remained silent as he took in Frank. He shook his head sadly.
“Do you think we would allow him to go back to Germany, or even deport him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes, and then sit looking like fools as he explains where he has been the past seventeen years?” Hadley laughed. “What he has been doing at the behest of the United States government?”
“You tried to eliminate him, didn’t you?” Perry asked, placing his hands on the back of a chair. By the way his knuckles turned white, it was clear he was angrily expecting the truth from his former colonel.
“Me? No, not at all. After the agency stopped funding the doctor and his work, I couldn’t have cared less what they did with him.”
“So, you’re saying Washington authorized his official removal from life?”
“That’s about the way of it.” Robert watched Perry, whose hands did not relax.
“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”
“You chose to end your partnership on that day in 1958. You wanted nothing more to do with this madness, so why should I ask advice from a disloyal former officer?”
“Disloyal, because from the very beginning I was against involving us in this nightmare?”
“You seemed to have come off almost as well as the rest of us. Or don’t you like the easy life that very same project provided you with?”
“We’re cursed for doing what we did. This entire town is tainted for it.” He leaned forward, his hands still pressing into the back of the chair. “We’re as guilty as that German maniac for hiding the truth of what he did.”
Hadley stood from his chair and faced Perry. “It’s all over, Frank.”
“Yeah? Well, here’s something you didn’t know. Fromm is alive and well and running loose in this country again. It seems your agency friends failed to do their jobs. The crazy bastard escaped and is here somewhere. I’ve seen him on more than one occasion.”
“That’s absurd; I would have been informed.”
“Yes, since your friends in higher power have always been so forthcoming in that regard. Don’t you see? We were as evil as that bastard for funding his work and supplying him with work space. A whole town founded on this man’s evil intent! This factory”—he gestured around him—“all for him. We’ve supplied him with mercury to keep that evil alive, and now he’s back.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hadley said, staring at Frank.
Perry slammed the chair into the table as he turned away in anger.
“I will say this: it is perfect timing on your part, Captain.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It seems my son and your daughter have been poking around where they shouldn’t. They came into my house and took the one piece of evidence that could get us all—and I do mean all of us—hanged.”
“That goddamn journal. You kept it, didn’t you?”
“I was instructed to keep it. Now they have it. Your snooping daughter and a boy that I have plans for. This could not only ruin his chances for him to be who I think he can be, it could turn him against me. You need to get your head out of your sanctimonious ass, Frank, and talk to that girl of yours. She has designs on my boy, and that will never happen. He needs more than a blind girl on his arm.”
“Why, you son of a bitch!” Frank said as he moved toward Hadley.
“You don’t want her involved with Dean; you hate him as much as I despise your arrogance and deep-seated tendency to righteousness.”
Perry stopped his advance.
“My boy’s waiting in a jail cell because of what he did to protect that daughter of yours. This I cannot have. I will get with the parents of the boys who have pressed charges against him and settle that little score, but you need to get to town and explain to Gloria why it’s in her best interest as well as yours to give back that journal. My boy would never have had the inclination to do something like this if she hadn’t influenced him. Now I suggest you go get that journal, or we could be in for some embarrassing questions about our postwar activities.”
“We all should have stopped this back in 1945 when you suggested it after finding Fromm in Yugoslavia. We knew the atrocities he committed in the name of science, and still we all saw a chance to make some money after the war. But we never thought about what was in those vaults and the reasons they existed in the first place.” He turned for the door. “Maybe we deserve what we get.”
Hadley watched him leave. He picked up the phone and connected to the police department. “Thomas, keep Dean there until I arrive. Then I want you to canvass the entire town. It seems Dr. Fromm isn’t as dead as we were led to believe.” He hung up and sat heavily into his chair.
He knew the big plans he had for Dean were close to becoming a moot point. The scandal alone would isolate him and his son from the world for the rest of his life.
“Goddamn you, Fromm, and your little ghosts. You may have just gotten us all hanged.”
* * *
Police Chief Thomas hung up the phone, wondering just what sort of trouble was brewing on the busiest night in Moreno’s history. This wasn’t shaping up the way the colonel had planned at all. The chief and several other founding fathers of the town had been assured that Jürgen Fromm and his experiments would vanish forever. He shook his head as he faced Dean sitting in a chair next to his desk. He looked dejected and angry. He went to the wall and removed a large set of keys.
“Okay, the colonel said to lock you up until he gets here.” He made a gesture toward the teenager, indicating for him to get on his feet.
“Anything the man says, right, Chief?” Dean said as he stood up and straightened the letterman’s jacket.
Thomas didn’t answer, taking Dean by the elbow and leading him to a door. Dean saw the three jail cells and made up his mind. The chief opened the first cell, stepped aside, and gestured the boy in. Dean stepped up but stopped short of entering.
“We know what you and the others have done, you know,” Dean said as he slowly turned toward Thomas, trying to make his bluff seem as plausible as he could. “We know about the ruins. We know about Dr. Fromm.”
That was it. That was the total package of everything he and Gloria had discovered from his father’s office. It was enough to make Thomas stop cold and allowed his true facial color to appear. It was white.
“You don’t know crap, kid. Anyone as rich and spoiled as you can’t know anything but girls and cars and how much Daddy gives you in allowance.” He leaned in and started to push Dean into the cell.
“Sorry, Chief,” Dean said as he took a quick step back, snatching the ring of keys, and then with his left hand reached for the chief’s gun and with his right pushed him into the cell, where the man stumbled and fell face-first into the unmade bunk. Dean quickly closed the door and then just as fast placed the .38 revolver on the floor across from the cell along with the keys, out of reach Thomas’s reach.
“Boy, you don’t want to do this,” Thomas said as he quickly gained his feet and reached through the bars. Dean easily stepped back out of reach.
“I think I just did it, Chief,” he said as he reached for the door handle and left the cell area.
At that exact moment, a sliver of John’s mind was following Dean, and another part of him was inside the darkened Bottom Dollar Bar and Grill.
* * *
Gloria sat far back from crowded dance floor and the busy bar. She could feel Charlie’s eyes on her, and she slowly raised her right hand and flipped the bartender the finger.
“How does she do that?” Charlie said, eyeing her a moment longer before passing the extra bartender they had on for Halloween and heading for the storage room.
Gloria cocked her head to the right and listened. She heard a sound familiar from the past years of helping her father in the bar. She heard the storeroom door open and then close. She moved quickly, assuming it had been Charlie who entered the storeroom, as he would never trust their part-time bartender to get in with the stock. She started moving in between tables that had yet to be occupied. She cursed herself for not having her cane with her, but it was inside Dean’s car. She braced herself as she moved dangerously fast. She managed to only bump three tables as she made her way toward the back door that led into the alley. She didn’t stop to listen for Charlie; she went straight to the door and pushed it open. Before she could take a step, she felt her nose crash into something unyielding. She knew she had been caught.
“Hey!” said a voice as Gloria rebounded away and was starting to turn in the opposite direction to make another break for the front door when two strong hands grabbed her.
As she was turned, she brought up her right hand and punched outward. She felt her knuckles connect, and then she heard, “Ow!”
“Oh, God, Dean?” she asked as she covered her mouth with both hands.
Holding his nose with one hand, he reached out and took Gloria by the hand with the other and pulled her free of the Bottom Dollar. He started running with her flying behind him.
“They took the keys to my car,” he said, his voice strange after the blow to his nose.
“Stop running. I know where we can go to hide. They won’t think of looking for us there.”
* * *
Main Street was packed. Children, as tradition called for, started their trick-or-treating by hitting all the businesses first. The stores stayed open late for the event, and busloads of children invited by Moreno from out of town came to share in the joint celebration of Halloween and the ending of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Costumed kids dragging their parents by the hand made for a good cover as Dean and Gloria walked down Main without attracting attention to themselves. Dean kept glancing at the police station and was relieved not to see his father’s Caddy parked out front. That meant his break had yet to be detected.
Gloria stopped just as they reached the Grenada Theater. Dean looked at the long line of teenagers just starting to get tickets from the box office. Several of them called out to Dean, but he turned away as if he hadn’t heard them. Three boys at the end of the line, however, took notice. Jimmy Weller punched Sam Manachi on the arm to get his attention as he pointed out the new arrivals.
“They’ll show up here later; everyone does eventually. We can take that bastard then,” Sam said, not very interested in revenge at the moment.
“He’ll never see it coming,” Jimmy said as his eyes bored in not just on Dean but Gloria also.
* * *
Dean looked around as Gloria leaned in to him. He looked at the marquee high above his head.
Halloween Monster Mash
The Tingler—House on Haunted Hill—The House of Wax
Starring Vincent Price
Hosted by K-Rave Radio and Freekin’ Rowdy Rhoads—Tonight, 9:00 p.m.
The red plastic letters were bright and coupled with the flashing neon were damn near blinding. They saw the K-Rave step van out in front as teenagers crowded around Freekin’ Rowdy Rhoads as he unspooled a reel of microphone wire. Freekin’ Rowdy looked up from his adoring and very irritating teenybopper fans and saw Dean and Gloria looking none too good after their flight. He got a curious look on his face as he took the two in. He finished with his wire, winked at Dean, and raised his hands up in a boxer’s stance, jabbing at the air. Dean gave him a dirty look.
“Come on. We can cross now. Hurry—I feel eyes all over us.”
“Maybe that’s because everyone sees us,” Dean said as Gloria angrily pulled him into the street.
Again, they failed to see the man in the dark trench coat and fedora follow at a discreet distance.
* * *
As the two-man security team moved past the broken south wall of the old winery just below the shattered and ancient remains of the Spanish mission, the boy held the girl tightly. Gloria felt his strong arms on her as he lowered her to the dead grass surrounding the old ruins. She felt the chill go through her as the butterflies rose from her stomach. She was beginning to feel anticipatory chills when Dean touched her, and she found herself liking it. She cursed her weakness at the thought of having this stuck-up, snobby boy enthrall her so much that she could nearly swoon at his mere touch. She shook her head, his arms holding her in place as the security team moved past. It would be a cold day in hell—her father’s favorite saying—before she ever admitted that weakness to him, or anyone else, for that matter. She shrugged his arms from her back.
“Okay, Troy Donahue, they’re gone.”
The boy looked over at Gloria in the rising moonlight. Although her words were sharp and harsh, he could detect a hint of a smile on her lips. He shook his head.
“Don’t call me Troy Donahue; the guy’s a phony, just like his pals Kookie Byrnes and Fabian—a disgrace to rock and roll, if you ask me. Now how in the hell can you tell if they’ve moved past us or not? I’m beginning to think you’re not blind at all.”
Gloria tilted her head and smiled as she faced Dean. “Blind doesn’t mean deaf. They’re still wearing their raincoats; they squeak.”
“But they were sixty feet away,” Dean said as he took in her face in the brief flash of moonlight clearing the dark clouds above. Even tumbled and tossed, the girl was beginning to dig a deep trench in his soul.
“Come on,” she said as she stood from the grass and placed her hand on the broken wall. “Give me a boost.”
Dean shook his head but cupped together his two hands nonetheless and hefted her light body up until she vanished over the low-slung adobe wall. “Blind, my ass,” he hissed as he quickly checked where the two security men were and then deftly and athletically followed Gloria.
She was waiting for Dean, and she held out her hand. He stared at it a moment and then looked around the abandoned winery and mission one last time.
“Come on. I can do a lot of things without sight, but running isn’t one of them.”
Dean took Gloria’s hand in his own and ran toward the mission’s front entranceway. He stopped and looked around the parking area, and when he was satisfied the two security men were in their guard shack, he pulled on her hand once again until they had run all the way across the gravel surface as quietly as possible. He saw the doorway and hoped it wasn’t locked as they ran up the thirteen steps and then without hesitation opened the door and entered. He pulled her against the wall and listened.
“I’ve never been here after dark,” he said as he gripped her hand tighter.
“I do it all the time,” she said, trying to catch her breath.
Dean shook his head as he caught himself watching her chest rise and fall in the small security light just inside the doorway.
“You mean you come here and get around security on your own?”
Gloria smiled as she pulled on him this time, leading him to the steel door that led to the subbasement of the ancient Spanish winery.
“Oh, you thought you were pulling off something impossible? Sorry to ruin your high-handed opinion of yourself.”
“Look,” he said as she stopped only a foot away from the steel door, “we can stop this right now. I can talk my father into most anything, even taking the police chief prisoner. We may never be able to prove your little ghost story anyway. We can stop right now and go back to what we do best.”
“What? Bebopping around town in your hot sports car, impressing all the admiring girls?” Gloria removed a set of keys from her sweater pocket and handed Dean the ring.
“Yeah, something like that,” he said. He used one of only two keys on the ring, guessing wrong in the first attempt. He tried the other key, and the lock popped free of the steel hasp. As the door opened, Dean looked down a long, very dark staircase, and he swallowed. “Of all the people I could have picked to fall for, I get Nancy Drew.”
For some reason, Gloria got mad and shook her head.
“What?” he asked as she angrily stepped by him and entered the stairwell.
“You can play games with the other girls in school, but don’t try to bullshit me, Dean Hadley. How many girls have you fallen for this month alone? Five? Six?”
“You don’t know me at all. Maybe if you could see instead of just hear the gossip, you would know I’m not like that. Most of the time anyway.”
“Well defended, Sparky,” she said as she started down the darkened stairs.
Dean stood rooted to the spot, as he had never in his life heard a girl talk like that before. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Is that what he got by declaring he had fallen for her?
Gloria hesitated at the bottom of the stairs and turned toward Dean, her dark glasses covering angry eyes. “Are you coming, or do you want to make peace with Daddy?”
“I’m sorry I opened my mouth. When we’re done, you can go back to hating the world, and I’ll go back to making my plans to get the hell out of Moreno and away from my father,” Dean said as he shook his head for the hundredth time that day. He turned on the light switch and saw that the stairwell was almost new in appearance. His nerves took a nosedive; something was wrong with this place.
He joined her at the bottom. Gloria used her hands in the darkness that was her world and made her way to a second door. This one was thick and extremely cold to the touch.
“Turn off the lights until we go inside.” She waited until she heard the click of the light panel.
“This so-called vault is in there?” he asked as he examined the door with a small penlight.
“Would you turn that off until we’re inside?” she said harshly under her breath as she grabbed the keys from his hand.
Again, Dean was amazed at her unseeing prowess. He watched her deftly place a key into a deadbolt locking mechanism. The door clicked.
“Are you sure there’s a vault in here?” Dean asked as he nervously turned and looked up the darkened staircase. “And we’re sure this has something to do with my father and yours?”
“Your father and my father installed the vault back in 1948,” she said with a grin as she stepped into the room. She was angry at her perception that Dean was playing games with her. She was quickly finding out that she was indeed capable of getting hurt by a boy.
“Look, this poor little blind girl act is getting a little—” Dean closed his eyes as the harsh lights inside the deep and dark basement flared to life, successfully stemming his insult about her blindness and his monetary disposition.
“Welcome to Alcatraz South,” she said as she stepped aside and allowed a full view into the basement. She moved quickly to the L bend and then vanished. Dean, looking at the strange equipment mostly covered by drop cloths, followed nervously. It reminded him of the old Universal film Frankenstein.
He stopped when he saw Gloria standing at the bend in the room with a large smile on her gorgeous face. Dean admired her momentarily until he saw what she intended for him to see.
The vault was as large and impressive as she’d said it would be. The lines running to it had deteriorated through the four years the lab had been shut down, but the tanks sitting atop looked new.
“This is the prison cell that holds the mysteries of life,” Gloria said, smiling widely as Dean’s silence told volumes about his amazement.
He gaped as he took in the tiled floor, the stainless steel desks, and the vault that dominated the room. Along the walls were many pieces of scientific equipment he had never seen before, all covered in a thick coat of dust. Oscilloscopes, x-ray machines, and other systems he could never identify until he saw them on television years later. Gloria left him standing with his mouth agape and returned to the large steel door. She closed it and stepped back until she heard a familiar hissing of air.
Beyond the bend in the room, Dean felt the pressure in his ears increase and then relax once the seal was made when Gloria started the air pumps in the back. The room, as she had claimed, was now completely soundproof to the outside world. She returned to Dean.
“What in the hell are our fathers up to placing this thing down here?” he asked as he moved ever closer to the giant stainless steel vault. “This is what they and that Nazi doctor were hiding?”
The vault was dead center of the back portion of the immense basement. It was a twenty-by-twenty-seven-foot rectangle and was reminiscent of a shoe box made of thick, hardened stainless steel. This advanced research lab was hidden from the small town and its occupants.
“I take it that your report would have centered around that thing? What’s in there?” he asked nervously as Gloria rejoined him. Dean looked down at the girl he had gone through the last four years of school with but had never exchanged two words with before last Friday’s afternoon class.
“Not riches, not gold, not the nuclear launch codes for the president to use against Nikita.”
“Then what?” he persisted as he took in the vault and its sliding windows covered in darker, thicker steel.
“Look, do you want to see this or not?”
Dean looked from the vault to an angry Gloria. “Yes, but you do know that this has little to do with a school report now, don’t you? I hate to break it to you, but this jive stuff is not right. We’re into some serious trouble.”
“Maybe I never really intended this to be written down in a school report. Maybe I just wanted to tell someone, anyone. Then you came along. Who better to tell than the son of the man responsible for placing it here?”
“May I remind you that my father wasn’t the only one to hide this thing down here. Your dad isn’t exactly above all of this.”
“I didn’t know that for sure until today.” She bit her lip and angrily shook her head. “No, that’s a lie; I knew it all along. You’re right; they are all involved, and we probably are in some serious trouble.”
Gloria felt her way to a dark corner where he couldn’t see what she was doing. He heard her shuffling things around, and a moment later, she reappeared with a small box. He watched her place it on the floor at the vault’s giant door. She placed a hand on the cold steel and patted it lovingly as she opened the top of the small portable phonograph.
“Oh, are we going to listen to records now, just the two of us? I think the kids in school will gossip about this.”
“Look, I’m sorry for acting like a bitch to you, but please don’t insult my intelligence by declaring undying love. I don’t like being hurt.”
Dean stepped up to her and gently touched her shoulder. As she stood, he kissed her. Gloria remained frozen as he stepped back. Then she reached out and pulled him close, and they kissed deeply. They finally parted.
“By the way, if you’re lying to me, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“Deal,” he said with a winning smile. His stomach did backflips as Gloria knelt beside the small black box. “I doubt there’s anything in there that will save us from our fathers’ wrath.”
“Oh, ye fools of limited imagination,” she said mockingly. She cranked the handle on the small phonograph, winding the interior spring. “I started with a battery-operated player, but I was going through batteries until my dad thought evil things about me.” She giggled, and Dean didn’t understand her advanced and bawdy humor. He was starting to believe he knew nothing about this girl until his mouth fell open as he finally caught the joke, smiling despite his growing concern at the way she spoke outside of the classroom.
The seventeen-year-old senior hesitated before lifting the needle to the spinning record and looked up. Her face was magical to Dean. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time in clear daylight. Gloria was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. His buddies in school would never believe it, even after he beat the crap out of them that very morning. They had never seen beyond her walking cane and dark glasses before this week had started. He cursed the wasted years.
She went to the facing of the vault and placed a hand on the cold exterior just below the large combination tumbler lock at its center. Dean watched as she leaned her cheek to the door and, with a hand splayed lovingly on its surface, proceeded to scare the hell out of him. “Alley?” she said in a normal tone of voice.
“Alley?” Dean said curiously.
“Yeah, Alley Oop. That’s not its name, but I get the impression its very, very large, so maybe it’s a caveman. Who knows? I just call it Alley Oop. Sometimes it speaks as one person, and other times many of them. Maybe as many voices as twenty or more. I can never be sure. When it’s angry or put out, it’s always one person. When calm, many. At least that’s what I think.”
Dean just pursed his lips, silently admitting to himself that little Gloria might be nuts. Beautiful, but very much off her rocker. He still smiled at her as though he had never seen such beauty before.
“If we could have understood what was written in that journal, we wouldn’t be guessing at what it is; we would know,” she said.
“Let’s just hope that damn ticket seller doesn’t find it before we get it back.”
“It’ll be safe. It’s under the ticket machine.”
Dean watched the vault’s facing. “Maybe your friend, or friends, aren’t home tonight.”
“Alley, come on. We have someone here who wants to meet you.”
Dean shifted from foot to foot as he thought about what could be inside. “Uh, I don’t know if I do. Don’t you need air in those things in order to, like … breathe?”
A curious look came over Gloria’s features. “For people, yeah,” she said in her irritatingly smug tone. “Alley?”
“For people?” he asked nervously.
Frustrated, Gloria returned to the small record player fronting the vault’s giant door. Gloria lowered the old-fashioned needle to the spinning forty-five vinyl record. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis began playing. Dean’s brows rose as he watched the strange events unfolding before him. He involuntarily took a step back, his black tennis shoes squeaking as he moved. Gloria ignored Dean’s fear and went to the vault’s door once more.
“I bought this for you. I thought you might like it,” she said, fogging the stainless steel door as she spoke. The song droned on, and Gloria felt her face flush somewhat. “Come on, Alley.” She half turned toward a wide-eyed and fearful Dean. “Believe me, he doesn’t bite. He’s a spoiled jerk for the most part, and he’s mean at times, but when you get to know him, he’s—” She again faltered. “Well, he’s not like his daddy. I kind of like him.”
Dean was about to say something when a loud and very clear thump sounded through the steel door. It was loud enough that Gloria pulled back and looked at the vault with her unseeing eyes.
“It doesn’t care for your father—or mine, for that matter. It expresses itself like that. I don’t think it’s a friendly sort of acknowledgment.”
“Look, Gloria, I don’t know what’s in there, but nothing can live in a sealed vault,” he said, trying hard not to doubt her.
The song on the record player finished, and Gloria gave her schoolmate a look that said he needed to be a little more open-minded.
“I never said it was alive, did I?”
“You have to be nuts to think that.”
“I’ve been coming here secretly since 1958. Believe me, Mr. Skeptical, it’s in there.” She again leaned into the door and listened. Dean knew that it would be impossible to hear a voice or anything else on the other side of ten inches of stainless steel.
“Gloria, listen to yourself; you’re talking to an empty box. Not only that, but you’re admitting to talking to it since 1958. People will think you’ve gone on the long sea cruise to insanity.”
Gloria pulled her ear away from the vault and looked toward Dean blindly through her dark glasses. Her confident look faltered for the first time.
The boy saw the hurt look. “Hey, I didn’t mean that, but there has to be some other logical explanation for what’s really in there.” He stepped tentatively forward and took her small hand. “Sorry.”
“It’s in there,” she insisted as Dean hugged her.
Neither one of them noticed the bright fluorescent lights overhead dim when they made contact. Gloria leaned into Dean and felt his warmth and even his fast-beating heart.
“This whole thing about the report was to prove to myself that I’m not insane.”
Before he realized what he was doing, he kissed her. Gloria’s stomach was doing backflips as he very reluctantly parted their embrace. She knew that the two were meant for this. She also knew that she had fallen hard for him.
Dean swallowed as he took in Gloria. She was standing still, unmoving, unseeing. She closed her eyes behind her dark glasses as she took a step back. Her hands tried to find a chair, but instead her left foot hit the phonograph. The needle jumped, and the turntable turned and Elvis picked up in mid-song as Dean reached out and caught her. He was just pulling her toward him to kiss her again to take the subject as far away from the strange basement as he could when the vault door rattled in its airtight frame. Both he and Gloria jumped and stared at the vault. Dean placed his arm around her shoulders as another loud bang sounded from the vault’s interior. This time, the combination dial spun and then flew off the center of the door and rang sharply off one of the steel tables. They both jumped again as this time the door bent outward.
“You don’t think Alley’s the jealous type, do you?” Dean said as Gloria became frightened for the first time since starting her sojourns to the old winery years before when she was twelve.
“I don’t … this has never happened before,” she said.
They waited for the action to continue, but the vault and its internal activity ceased. Dean held Gloria tighter.
“The fools did not believe me. I knew you were the key, but they refused to listen.”
Dean and Gloria felt their blood go cold as they turned to face the German-accented voice. The man was wearing a black trench coat, and he was just removing the wet fedora with his free hand. In the other, he held a Colt .45 semiautomatic aimed at the two.
“Whoa,” Dean said as he maneuvered Gloria behind him. “Why the gun, Pops?”
He felt Gloria stiffen behind him.
The old man looked from the two teenagers to the gun he held. “Yes, rather dramatic, I know, but there are certain men in this town that would like to do me harm. They have tried before, you know? Therefore, the gun.”
“Dr. Fromm?” Gloria said as she tried to step from behind Dean, but he held his ground and kept her at bay.
“Yes, I am he. I also know you, my dear. I’ve watched you for four long years.” He kept the gun pointed their way as he moved to a small box on the side of the vault. With darting, nervous looks toward the two startled teens, he lifted a small hatch, and then a roll of paper fell free. He tore it away, making sure his gun hand never wavered. He smiled as he studied the readout.
“Man, you want to lower that gun? You’re scaring the girl,” Dean said with as much bravado as he could muster.
Dr. Jürgen Fromm smiled again, the bright fluorescents flashing off his gold bridgework. Dean envisioned the creep in a Nazi uniform or at least the evil white coat seen in movies.
“You stand only feet away from the greatest discovery in world history, something that, if loose, could devastate any enemy on the planet, and you’re afraid of a little gun?” He laughed aloud. “This graph says that for the four hundred and thirty-sixth time, our little blind girl has received a reaction from the interior—an accomplishment we have not been able to achieve since we moved operations from Europe. I must know what attracts them to you.”
Gloria wouldn’t be held back any longer. She removed Dean’s restraining hand and then faced the doctor.
“You say they? There is more than one, isn’t there?”
Dean did his best to concentrate on the gun aimed their way and consider how he could get them out of there without getting shot like Liberty Valance.
“Oh, yes, my dear, more than one indeed. There are twenty-seven, to be exact.”
“Then why do I get the feeling there is only one most times?”
“They are stronger together. I documented this many years ago, back when they were active for us. When they are frightened or angry, they come together as one. Very powerful.” Fromm became thoughtful. “It all started out as a high-altitude experiment, you see.” The gun moved right along with Fromm as he walked toward a control panel.
“High altitude? What in the hell is that?” Dean asked as he continually watched the man before him, awaiting an opportunity.
“The Luftwaffe, or what you would know as the German Air Force, financed my work in the hopes of fighting off high-altitude disorientation for their bomber and fighter pilots. Two groups of subjects in the final test—that’s what is in there, young lady.” He flipped a switch on the control panel, and the sliding door on the farthest end of the vault opened with a soft hum. He kept the gun on them and then waved it toward the vault. “You can see the results of high-altitude sickness inside section two.”
Gloria turned her head and for the first time was nearly grateful for being blind. She nodded at Dean, who stepped up to the vault and climbed a small boxlike step and looked inside just as Fromm turned on the interior light. He fell back so hard that he stumbled and crashed to the floor. He couldn’t catch his breath as Gloria reached for him in the darkness of her world.
“Hard at first, is it not? But necessary.”
Gloria ignored Fromm’s words as she tried and failed to lift Dean from where he sat trying to catch his breath. Finally, he managed it, and his anger showed on his face as Fromm again smiled.
“You’re a butcher!” Dean finally managed.
“No, no, no, my American friend; I’m a creator. There were only butchers in camps that killed for no gain. This”—he patted the steel vault lovingly—“is for science and knowledge, not the slaughter of life for no other reason than to kill over prejudice. Science is exacting and has no room for emotion. No, not a butcher, but a creator of life. That in there is life.”
“All I see are dead people,” Dean said as he began to lose the cool demeanor that he had practiced over many years.
Gloria straightened. The look was directed at Fromm. “Bodies?”
Dean finally managed to stand on shaking legs. This was not how he saw his Halloween night unfolding.
“Yes, bodies. These subjects were older. They were the parents of section B. In a chance experiment before shutting down the project near the war’s end, we decided to induce stress on the last test. We filled one compartment with parents of … of—”
“Jews,” Gloria said angrily.
“No, not at all. As I said, young lady, it doesn’t matter the test materials; it only has to do with the results. Purely by accident, but we most assuredly had results. No, not Jews, but families taken in whole from the cities of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, minor folk who would never be missed. We didn’t need Jews, whose fear of death was muted by their treatment and also their knowing that death was as eventual to their kind as the rising of the sun. Their complacency would have skewed the results. No, just families.”
“What did you do?” Gloria asked with tears welling up under her glasses.
Fromm hit a second switch, and the gentle hum of a motor returned. This time, a small view port at the front side corner opened. Dean could see the light from inside. He watched Gloria and knew he had to finish this thing. He stepped quickly to the metal step and peered inside. His hand went to his mouth, and then he quickly leaned over, dry-heaved, and stumbled free of the step and rested his head on Gloria’s shoulder, trying to stop from shaking with fear and loathing at what Fromm and his Nazi backers had done.
“What’s in there?” Gloria asked with a whisper.
Dean finally got his breathing under control. He swiped at a tear in his eye and faced Dr. Jürgen Fromm.
“You sick bastard. What did you do?”
Fromm reached out and flipped both switches, and then the two viewing ports closed.
“Dean, what have I been talking to in there?” she asked, not knowing if she wanted to really know.
“Children, a lot of them. All dead, decayed.” His lips trembled. “They look as if they tried to claw their way through solid steel. I saw small scratches in the steel where they tried to get out.”
“As I said, twenty-seven, to be exact.”
“Why?” Gloria asked as she took Dean into her arms.
“As I said, the discovery was all an accident. To place maximum stress on the test subjects, we had seventeen families, some with one or two children at prepubescent age. At seventy-two thousand feet, the parents, inside section A, were deprived of oxygen, and if you don’t know the pain involved, I can assure you it is extreme. During this process, we wanted to see what the stress level was on younger subjects at altitude, so we opened the main viewing port between sections A and sections B housing the children. As their parents in the next room fought for life, dying in the most horrid way you can imagine, the children were witness as their own oxygen depletion was started. Can you imagine the horror a child faces when watching a parent fight for life? Then that terror turned to pain and agony for themselves. The emotion inside these compartments caused a most unusual result. While the parents inside died, the children fought—oh, how they fought to live. We observed not fear in the end but pure hatred—hatred in its purest form. Rage. Magnificent rage.” He gently tossed Dean a pair of heavy, bulky glasses and then threw the switch for section B once more. He adjusted the light setting and gestured for Dean to place the glasses on. He did. “Now see the result your fathers saw in 1945.”
Dean stepped onto the steel step and, with a nervous look back at Gloria, he looked inside the dark compartment.
The green-tinted images were all staring at him as he looked inside. Their eyes were dark and their clothing ragged. The ghostly images stood near their physical bodies where they had fallen in agonizing death throes, their greenish skin riddled with pressure breaks in the arms and legs. Their faces were stretched and hung loose on the nearly invisible frames. Still, they watched Dean as if they were curious as to his intent. He removed the glasses and then threw them at Fromm, who simply moved out of the way as they flew by him and hit the control panel. Several lights went off as the glasses broke against the steel.
“You created ghosts?” he said as he once more placed a protective arm over Gloria.
“A remarkable feat. Accidental, mind you, but very satisfying.” Fromm moved away from the control panel, but the gun never left the area of Dean’s belly. “Can you imagine terror so complete, hatred so palpable that the spirit refuses to die? The anger that has the power to manifest in a physical form? Needless to say, your army wasn’t that hard to impress; they saw remarkable prospects for a weapon that could infiltrate an enemy stronghold without notice. No, your fathers were quite impressed with my work.”
“What went wrong?’ Gloria asked as she took Dean’s hand and held it tightly.
A saddened look came to Fromm’s face. “They ceased their activity five days after transferring the vaults from Eastern Europe. There wasn’t one documented case of spiritual activity at all. Until you,” he said as she took several steps toward Gloria. “You are the key, as demonstrated tonight. They have an affection for you. They react. Now you will demonstrate what you do for your fathers so I can get my project back. It took me four years to get to this point. The federal authorities finally believe I am dead, and for the first time since they tried to eliminate me, I am here, and now they will see I was right.”
“That day four years ago, when you caught me down here, that was the day Dean’s father shut you down, isn’t it?”
“Yes, after your father, Captain Perry, forced him to. But that was also the very day you initiated contact with my children. Now with my journals and with your demonstration, we can move forward with my children.”
“You have no right to call them that,” Gloria said angrily.
“I have every right!” he screamed, and Dean pulled Gloria away. Fromm stepped forward and without warning hit Dean in the head. As he collapsed, Fromm placed the .45’s barrel against the back of Dean’s skull. “Now we will have cooperation when your fathers arrive, or our little spoiled friend here gets a bullet. Do we understand each other, Gloria?”
When she glared up with hatred behind her dark glasses, Fromm became unhinged and slapped her across the face with his free hand. She didn’t cry out, but Dean made to attack as his vision returned from the blow he had received. Fromm once more hit Dean as he dove and missed. Dean sprawled on the cold floor as Gloria crawled to him.
“I asked if we understood each other.”
“You son of a bitch, leave him alone!” she said as she threw her body over Dean’s.
Jürgen Fromm began advancing on the two intruders when he saw something that froze him in place. Silver-colored fluid was spewing all over the top of the vault. The main lines of mercury had been closed, and the pressure behind them exploded into them. The change was so sudden, the old steel-reinforced hoses gave way. Mercury went in all directions as Fromm panicked. He looked around him and then saw what had happened. When Dean threw his glasses at him, they had missed and struck the purge switch for the mercury containment system.
“My God!” he cried as he ran to the console to reengage the lines, but it was to no avail.
“What is that?” Gloria screamed over the noise of the escaping mercury.
“It’s the only thing that keeps my children at bay. Mercury is a natural defense against their force. It will eat them away if they touch it. Even being near it makes them weak!”
The ten-inch-thick vault door suddenly bent in its reinforced frame. This time, a weld broke somewhere with the sound of a shotgun blast. Dean and Gloria backed away on the floor toward the door leading to the outer room.
“Jesus, we’re all alone here,” Dean said. “Everyone’s either at the plant working their second shift or at Newberry’s or the spook show at the Grenada. Fromm, do something! Get Gloria out of here.”
Bang! The frame rattled again, and this time, they saw the upper-left corner of the vault being pushed outward. Dean saw the thickness of the steel as it was wrenched forward by something on the other side of the thick door.
“Alley, stop it!” Gloria shouted above the noise of escaping mercury and air and also of the horrid wrenching of hardened steel.
“I don’t think it wants to be in there anymore, Gloria, and frankly, I don’t want to wait around to meet your buddy Alley.” Dean stood with renewed strength and pulled Gloria to her feet. He turned and stared at Fromm, who still had the gun pointed their way. Then, as if he knew what was coming, Fromm turned from the startled teens and ran for the door.
Gloria spun on her saddle shoes and pulled Dean’s hand as she turned for the inner door to the basement. The roar of a caged and enraged animal sounded as the bent section of steel thrust forward even more.
“Alley Oop is pissed!” Dean said as he and Gloria broke through the door and made for the stairs, close behind Fromm.
Behind them, they heard the ten-inch steel door explode outward and smash into and then through the reinforced inner wall of the basement.
Gloria and Dean knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that hell had just escaped from its confinement and wanted to avenge a brutality that had occurred during a distant war.
John wanted to stay and see the entity. He found he had less control of what he saw. Even though the entity had been explained by the nutcase Fromm, John was not at all convinced that this threat was the only one the Dean of the future faced. He felt his body was being dragged through the lower basement just as the entity made its first appearance. Now he knew the importance of mercury to the town of Moreno; it was meant to protect, and that was the reason for the abnormal amount the factory went through. It was for electrical fencing that enclosed a nightmare. His body was now flying past the laboratory at great speed as events started to pick up.
Behind him, the entity was free and was now roaring its pleasure. The old winery shook, and pieces fell from the ancient adobe walls and ceiling.
Halloween was now rockin’ and rollin’.