OUR TOWN, USA
Like a rubber ball I’ll come bouncing back to you …
—Bobby Vee, “Rubber Ball,” Billboard #89 Top Hits of 1961
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The gathering consisted of the elite of governmental society. Some would say the real power brokers of that elite. That power being the wives of senators and House members.
For the guest of honor, there were whispered innuendos about her own motives in attending, but not one of the women present this night would be caught commenting on it. The guest in question used the occasions to conduct business without the prying eyes of the media or the security elements that constantly surrounded her.
The blond woman eased past her security team with a raised hand as she approached the hostess. She would leave them behind for her clandestine meeting. The lead security man nodded as she passed, and the agent spoke softly into the hidden microphone.
She smiled as she was greeted by the hostess. “You have a visitor. I have shown him into the study.”
“Thank you,” the woman said and then was shown in. The double sliding doors were closed as the man stood from a chair at a small table.
“I was expecting you forty-five minutes ago, Mr. Webber,” she said as she turned and faced the smaller man.
“It took more time than expected to get the request from Mr. Avery to myself. Then it took more classified digging than I had originally thought it would take.”
“Do you have the information?” she asked impatiently.
“Yes. And if I get caught, it will be no less a charge than treason. This is beyond classified. If the assistant director ever got wind—”
She held up a hand. “From what Mr. Avery has told me, you’re good at your job. So, instead of assisting my husband, you’ll be assisting me.”
The man sat down in the Queen Anne chair and then placed his briefcase on the table. He opened it and produced a thick file. Her brows raised when she saw the TOP SECRET stamp printed onto its front. Then the embossed departmental seal for the Central Intelligence Agency. Then he placed another, even thicker file on top of the first. This one had emblazoned in bright red lettering the seal of the United States Army. Then a third file was placed on the first two. This was from the Department of the Air Force.
“All three confirm what you suspected. Your father-in-law was involved to the top of his head and was the main participant in all three after-action reports from 1945, by the army, the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the old OSS, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. How your husband would be involved, there is no mention, considering at the time the boy was only three months old and living at home with his terminally ill mother.”
“Have you and Mr. Avery come to any conclusions about the town? Is there any financial connection to Moreno by either my husband or his father to the corporation—a paper trail, perhaps?”
“If the town is connected in any way to your future holdings, it’s buried so deep in the company’s financial infrastructure that you’ll find out in ten, maybe fifteen years of reading the fine print on thousands of deeds of ownership documents on what you own or do not own. I, as well as Mr. Avery, suspect that the corporation has no direct ties with Moreno.”
“Okay, what did you find?”
“I would rather place my findings in a written report to you, which I have already completed. I don’t relish the opportunity to revisit that damnable military operation.”
“Perhaps that’s a good place to start. My husband has dreams and nightmares about something that he never actually witnessed, but is so traumatized by it that it invades his sleep. So, start with the operation, and tell me why he’s haunted by something committed when he was but three months old.”
Webber swallowed and then pulled out that written report. “Operation Necromancer, conceived by Dr. Jürgen Fromm, from dates 1941 through 1945. Captured by special operation in Yugoslavia on June 13, ’45.”
“Read my father-in-law’s entry on that last day once more,” she said, wanting to hear the gruesome details again. Webber swallowed and took a sip of water. He picked up his report and found the day in question.
“June 13, 1945, 0240 hours,” Webber read. “Low-altitude jump was completed with the only casualty being Sergeant Leach, who sprained his ankle severely in the landing. Proceeded to the bunker complex fifteen miles outside of Belgrade with the assistance of the Slavic underground forces in the area. Attempted to contact by radio for verification of initial radio communiqué received two weeks ago in London by Major Dietz. Radio contact with German SS security unit was established with Major Dietz—”
* * *
The night was overcast when the gray-uniformed man stepped from the deepest shadows of the demolished structure that had been hit by no less than four Royal Air Force bombing missions over the area in the last year of hostilities. The Americans stood in a group with weapons raised. The members of the Yugoslavian underground stood aloof of the group. They had done what the Allies had asked of them and guided the soldiers to the underground complex. The Yugoslavian resistance melted into the shadows. The SS officer faced the men in front of him and in the waning moonlight started to raise his right arm in the air until he saw the American colonel raise his left brow. He lowered the hand.
“I take it you are Major Dietz?” the tall American colonel asked.
The German clicked his heels together in answer. He then reached for his sidearm. This brought an immediate response from the men attached to the Office of Strategic Services. Five Thompson submachine guns were raised. The major held his left hand up as his right withdrew the Luger semiautomatic from its holster. He offered it to the colonel, who took it and tossed it back to Captain Frank Perry, who caught it in turn and ejected the clip and then discharged the chambered round.
“My men will be taken into your custody, and our deal will be intact?”
“They will receive the treatment my superiors promised,” the colonel lied. He knew that every SS officer and enlisted man would face warrants for war crimes. “Just as long as you were truthful about this little camp you have here.”
The German major bowed his head and then gestured for the team of commandos to follow him. “All of my men, except for Fromm’s guard detail, have been disarmed. I do not wish them shot,” he said as he stepped into a battered and crumbling doorway.
“Goddamn Kraut speaks better English than I do,” Sergeant Leach said as he limped but followed the team onto a lift that had survived the bombings.
“When I produce Fromm and supply his journals and notes to you, I have your word as an officer that my men will—”
“Major, let’s not get into whose word is good while we stand in the middle of a city that is lying in ruins because of you. This is not a negotiation. If what we find is useful to us, you will be treated accordingly.”
The lift continued deep into the earth.
The major raised the gate when the lift came to a stop. He stepped out, and the commandos immediately saw the twenty SS personnel standing at attention. Their weapons were placed on the floor in front of them.
“Sergeant Leach, sit these men down and disable those weapons,” Captain Perry said as he followed the German major and his commanding officer, U.S. Army colonel Robert Hadley. The farther they traveled, the more oppressive the air became.
The major came to a large steel doorway and he stopped. He knocked three times and the doors opened. The Americans were greeted with the muzzle of a German Grease gun. The automatic weapon’s barrel was lowered by Major Dietz, and the SS sergeant holding the weapon saw his and then backed away, offering Captain Perry his weapon as he did so. The other two SS guards did the same. When the guards stepped away they saw a small man with graying hair and white coat sitting in a rolling chair. He was handcuffed to the chair’s arms. His glasses were askew. He spoke rapid German at the major, the goatee-style beard moving rapidly up and down as he sprayed spittle in his anger. Colonel Hadley looked at Captain Perry, who knew German from his college days.
“Our friend here is quite angry at his perceived betrayal,” Perry translated.
“I speak English very well, Captain … Perry, is it?” the small man in the chair said. “Whatever this fool has promised you, it will do you no good. The information you will seek is in my head and mine alone. Even if this traitorous pig gives you my journals, I am the only one who can interpret them.”
“Okay, you’ve demonstrated your ability to speak English; now shut the hell up,” Hadley said as he stepped past the chair and examined the large enclosure in the middle of the hidden laboratory. “Is this it?” The colonel moved to the front of the giant vaultlike structure and looked closer. He saw lines of rubber and metal running in and out of the steel like snakes emerging from holes in the ground. He saw viewing ports that had slide shutters on them, and then he saw the most outstanding feature was on the top of the vault—two large steel tanks that fed the lines running into the container.
“This looks like the pressure chamber we saw in the States, all right,” Captain Perry said as he too examined the vault. “Except for those tanks up there, almost identical.”
“And you have all the high-altitude experimental data, Major?”
“Well-documented data, Colonel. It’s all there.”
“High-altitude data—is that the goods you are selling the Americans, Major?” The small scientist laughed from his chair a few feet away. Dr. Jürgen Fromm used his feet to turn in his wheeled chair.
“Explain, Doctor,” Hadley said.
“I would not have contacted your organization, Colonel, if I did not have more to trade than high-altitude experiment results that the Allies have not previously discovered. That alone would not have saved the lives of me and my men.”
“You are not qualified to explain what happened. No matter what you study or even reverse engineer, you Americans will never grasp what I have discovered,” Fromm said confidently from his chair.
The German officer turned away and then angrily stepped toward the vault and up on a small platform that lined it for viewing purposes.
“Captain, behind you you’ll find a small switch on control panel B. It says viewing port, chamber one. Throw that switch, please.”
Perry looked at Colonel Hadley, who nodded that he should do as asked. He did. There was the sound of an electric motor, and then the viewing port in front of the major and colonel began to slide into the side of the thick steel. The major reached out and turned on the light inside.
“What in God’s name is this?” Hadley said as he turned angrily to face the seated scientist.
“That is high-altitude experiment 1193-A, oxygen deprivation at fifty-six thousand meters, the result of well over a thousand attempts to understand oxygen deprivation and its effect on pilots at altitude,” Fromm said with a satisfied grin that froze Perry’s blood as he too stepped onto the viewing platform. He turned back when he saw what that was inside. He looked at Fromm with murder in his eyes.
Arranged in a circle where each had died a horrid death were the sludge-like remains of many people. They could see that some were men and others women. From what they could see of their expressions, they had succumbed to a death that sent them to the afterlife screaming in agony.
“What in the hell did you do to these people, you son of a bitch?” Captain Perry said as he turned away from the horrid scene and faced the grinning doctor in his chair.
“By happenstance—sheer luck, really—the men and women you see in that section of the vault were from the same small village near the town of Sarajevo. We were lucky to have entire families involved that proved crucial to our inevitable result. It was a godsend for our accidental discovery.”
Major Dietz turned and walked to the control panel and hit another switch. Fifteen feet away, toward the back of the vault, another viewing port opened. The two Americans moved farther down. Perry did not want to see any more, but Hadley looked far more intrigued as he viewed the room through the reinforced glass.
“Not that I would not like to see all of you killed for the fools you are, may I suggest you flood the vault sprinkler systems with M-12, Major.”
Dietz looked at Fromm and then turned the opening valve on the mixing chambers on the top of the vault. The automated safety system kicked in with a hiss of flooding chemical rushing into the steel and rubber lines.
“Oh,” was all Captain Perry could get out of his constricting throat as the lights came up.
They were all layered in a pile in front of the wall that separated the two different sections of the vault, which they now saw was two rooms. The wall had windows almost exactly like the viewing ports on the outside so each could view the occupants of the opposite side. Hadley turned silently and looked at Fromm before turning back.
“As I mentioned, the last high-altitude test conducted for, and sponsored by, the German Luftwaffe, did not have the result we initially intended.”
“Fucking children?” Captain Perry said, sorely tempted to open fire on any German he now saw. He would start with those available, Dr. Fromm and Major Dietz.
“Yes, children. The children of the subjects you have just observed inside section A. Purely an accidental discovery because we were running low on slave labor, so we used the children to fill the role of adult subjects. It was just a lucky circumstance, as I said, that we had nothing but families left. That was the turning point on the initial discovery.”
“What result?” Hadley asked, staring at the moldering bodies in their small pile of humanity. None of them could have been any older than sixteen years of age. “All I see here is cold, calculated murder, the same things we are finding all through the eastern countries. Just more mass murder.”
“Yes, mass murder, but for a cause, Colonel, a cause. You will receive your high-altitude results from my files; you may even learn something new from them. But the discovery you are about to see is the real miracle here. What I have proven in this cesspool of a bunker is the very secret that all of mankind has wondered and dreamed about throughout human existence. The power of the mind and what it is capable of.”
Hadley and Perry stood before the madman in silence.
“Now you will see who holds the real bargaining position here. It’s not this fool with his Death’s Head cap on; it is I, a mere doctor of cardio and vascular theory. Now lower the chambers lights and watch the magic.”
Hadley nodded to Dietz. The lights, not only in the bunker but the vault itself, turned low.
“Examine chamber A, please, gentlemen,” Fromm said.
They both looked inside. Nothing had changed; the bodies of the parents were still arrayed in a semicircle against the wall of the vault.
“And now the children in chamber B, please,” Fromm said, watching the men move down to the next section and look inside as the metal lines above them hissed with pressure.
“If we did not have containment security, this experience would surely be your last, Colonel Hadley. It was too late for sixteen of my colleagues and twenty security men before we found the chemical makeup to contain them, weaken them.”
Once they saw inside, both Americans knew their lives had changed forever. Hadley’s eyes widened, and then Captain Perry felt his heart race to dangerous proportions.
“God Almighty, look at them all,” Hadley said.
“This is not God’s design, Colonel, it is mine.” Fromm laughed.
The view inside had affected Hadley for no other reason than he saw a way for him and his small team to benefit from, and in turn take something more than just honor out of this war. His mind began racing.
“Now shall you deal with the author of this amazing discovery, or do you wish to deal with the fool Dietz? Because without my knowledge, the experiment can never be duplicated.”
With his eyes locked on the activity inside the steel vault, Hadley flinched when something came at him at the viewing port. He heard the hiss above his head and a fine mist of something heavy and silver in color fell from a small shower-like head in the ceiling of the enclosure. He finally tore his eyes away and faced Captain Perry.
“Free the doctor, Captain.”
* * *
The CIA researcher placed the file report on the top of the pile of three folders, and then he looked at the back of the woman at the window as she finally turned and smiled.
“Thank you. And this has been verified as actually having taken place?”
“By no less than three agencies that do not falsify reports, ma’am.”
“Did you get the photos that I requested?” she asked.
“Mr. Avery has them. I also have an item that was found in a very old safe-deposit box account of your husband’s that even you knew nothing about.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small wooden box and placed it on the table.
She reached down and, with her expensively manicured fingernails, opened the box. She smiled; this time, the gesture reached the cold eyes.
“These are hers, you’re sure?”
“The only thing that your husband had safely hidden. Now you have them. The only thing physical that remains of the person in question.” Webber stood and replaced the stolen files that he had to return and put them back into his briefcase.
“Tell your Mr. Avery that I will await my payment.”
She held the item a moment longer and she didn’t notice Webber leaving. Once the sliding doors were closed, she placed the dark-lensed glasses back into the box.
MORENO, CALIFORNIA
The town was incorporated and designed like most small towns in America—four main streets that formed a square with a small courthouse, police department, and general civic center at its middle. The park surrounding these grounds was now overgrown to the point that most of the playground equipment was hidden from view by the dense cover of weeds and grass. Of the few businesses still operating in the once-thriving town, only the used record store operating out of the old K-Rave radio station on Main and Cypress was making anything close to a living. This was only because of the current trend of collectors buying up old-fashioned vinyl records.
The houses, once perfect little homes produced after World War II, were now shells of their former selves. Of the nearly 612 homes built from old aircraft parts and into prefab housing, over half of them were now scorched reminders of the industrial accident that happened in Moreno in the fall of 1962.
Of the old factory overlooking the town, all but two six-story brick walls had been knocked down during the explosion of that eventful year. The old Spanish mission and winery on the opposite end of town high up on the hill was still there. The winery was built next to the crumbling Spanish Santa Maria Delarosa mission. The winery itself had succumbed to the elements about 150 years after the mission’s own destruction by an earthquake in 1821. Both ruins overlooked the town as if in guardianship of what had once been, but never would be again.
* * *
The news camera was set up in front of the old Newberry’s Department Store, one of the tallest buildings inside the deserted town. Standing tall at four stories, it seemed to tower over the next-largest building, the old Grenada Theater, two blocks down. The young reporter was a smallish woman who was currently trying her best to cover her growing frustration toward the old man she was interviewing. It was for a throwaway piece for the eleven o’clock broadcast for the local ABC affiliate in Los Angeles. The old man was a cook who still operated the lunch counter inside the old sectioned-off area of the department store, which had been officially closed since the death of the town. Newberry’s, despite the disaster, kept operating for two more agonizing years before finally succumbing after the disaster. The man was frustrating for the mere fact he didn’t, or claimed at least not to, fully understand what happened that night in October 1962. Out of the thirty-three current residents of Moreno, the stories were familiar in their telling—that either they weren’t alive at that time, or they lived in some other part of the country when the events in the small, hidden town in the hills happened. The young reporter knew this was a story that would never make the news cycle even as a throwaway piece leading up to Halloween.
“Since the evacuation of the town fifty-five years ago, many had decided to stay even though the contamination unleashed that night threatened their very health and life. You were one of these people who chose to stay. Why, Mr. Leach?”
The old man wiped his arthritic hands on his filthy apron and looked at his watch as if to say she was taking up his valuable time, even though it was clear the lunch-hour rush inside the dead town was fifty-five years into the past.
“My father, Roland Leach, was one of the original five investors in Moreno.” The old man turned and gestured toward the four-story department store behind him. “Newberry’s was his crowning achievement. To have a department store in a burg this small was a gamble at the time, but the town was bustling back then, and it gave him and my mom the means to raise three children. Let’s just say I’m attached to the property and have chosen to finish my life here.” A sad look flitted across his old features as he turned back to face the reporter and her intrusive camera.
“So, you aren’t afraid of the groundwater here due to the factory explosion in 1962?”
“I’m still breathing, ain’t I?”
“Mercury poisoning doesn’t scare you?”
The man didn’t respond, looking at the reporter as if he were about to say something but held back.
“Mr. Leach, thank you for your time.”
The old man nodded and then turned and opened the once-proud double doors of Newberry’s Department Store whose name was etched into the once-stainless steel handle.
The woman lowered her microphone and then hissed a curse at the old man’s retreating form.
“How in the hell am I supposed to make this into a story?” She handed her microphone off to her soundman and then faced the deserted street called, of course, Main. “Mayberry, the ghost town, is not a very good pitch.”
“Yeah, right, at least Mayberry had Don Knotts; we have only Goober inside an old department store cooking greasy burgers for all four operating businesses. Hell, it’s not even an empty ghost town. And did you see that couple running the record store? Can you say Haight-Ashbury and the Grateful Dead?”
“Yeah, hippies in this day and age, that’s what’s creepy, not the deserted town.”
It was the hundredth time news organizations tried to get a firm story on the old town and the hundredth time the footage wouldn’t air on television. Outside of the disaster in October 1962, there just wasn’t an angle for a good story anymore.
The news van left and drove back to the real world.
* * *
The young face vanished back into the boarded-up front of the old theater. He took a deep breath, and then the brightness of a flashlight lit his face. He leaned against the old and cracked plywood and breathed heavily. He reached out and pushed the brightness away along with the offending hand.
“Damn, I thought that camera guy saw me when he got into that van.”
“Take it easy. Even if he did, do you think he’s going to go snooping around here in the dark looking for us? The only people we have to worry about are those security guards up at the mission and the idiots who live here. If we can’t dodge a few morons, we deserve to get caught.”
The boy leaning against the plywood barrier looked over at the girl standing next to his brave friend who seemed to fear nothing. He and the girl were a different story. They feared everything, including the ridicule they received from the asshole holding the flashlight. Dylan was a bully of the first order, and he did things according to how he was taught by his brutish father—ruthlessly and absolutely.
“Trespassing is trespassing, no matter how you look at it,” the emaciated, frightened girl with the arm-length tattoo of a twisted vine said to assist her boyfriend and let him know she shared his fear of this place.
“You both agreed. Those posters are worth a small fortune. On eBay, you can get as much as seven hundred dollars per print. There has to be at least a hundred posters down there.”
“What if they’re not there?” the boy asked as he finally moved away from the front windows.
“Look, my grandfather once lived in this dive and was the theater’s projectionist, and he swears they took nothing out of this place but a few dead bodies, and then they sealed it up for good. The only people inside this place are county and state inspectors—those environment assholes, checking for chemicals in the water. The damn posters and even a few old film prints are down there. That’s where everything was stored.”
The young thief wannabe leading them was intent on following through with his little heist of movie memorabilia, but the vision of riches was not transferring well to his two companions.
The light caught the left side of the twin sets of winding stairs that led to the upper balcony, which was mostly gone now. The fire in 1962 had spread quickly to the upper reaches of the Grenada, and that was where most of the young bodies had been found after the total collapse of the balcony itself.
The flashlight moved, and they saw the two sets of double doors that led to the first-floor seating of the theater on either side of that snack bar. Two of these doors, old Naugahyde-covered wood that had lost most of the golden tacks that had once given them beauty and that tuck-and-roll look, were now hanging on by a screw or two, and the view beyond these doors was dark and foreboding. Then Dylan’s light moved to the office of the theater manager, where they had already looked, and next to that, the door that led downstairs to the basement, where the real treasure was awaiting them.
“Well, let’s do this and then go make some money.”
The boy and his girlfriend looked at each other and knew in their silence both would indeed follow. As the door to the basement was opened with a loud creak, the musty air from below wafted to their nostrils and forced the three treasure seekers back a step. Most unsettling was the plaster art deco gargoyles looking down upon them from the ornate wall sconces that once circled the lobby. The beastly eyes looked as if their sculpted and very scary faces were happy for their visit.
“Smells wet,” the girl said as she tugged on her boyfriend’s arm.
Dylan stepped through the door and started down the wooden stairs. “There’s probably been water down here since the fire. Let’s just hope those posters were stored off the floor.”
The large circular beam of the flashlight finally settled on the lowest part of the basement. There was water. So much so that they could see small ripples as a rat or two scurried away from their sudden intrusion.
“Water and rats?” the girl said squeamishly.
The boy took her hand, and they continued down to the bottom.
“Is that a vault?” the boy asked. “Maybe the posters are in there?”
“Nah, my grandpa said that when the new Moreno National Bank was built in 1960, they moved the old Savings and Loan vault to the basement here in the theater. He said it was the only place in town big enough to store it and had a lift with enough capacity that could lower it down here. So, no money or anything worth anything is in there. What we’re looking for is right here.” The light settled on six steel cabinets that looked as if they rose above the one foot of water in the basement. They were school locker–style, and they were covered in dust and rust. The light played over them, and the anticipation rose. “Let’s just hope the tops of these things didn’t rust out.”
The two boys examined the locker-style cabinets as the girl stayed in place far behind them. She was looking at the old, rusty, iron-and-steel-framed vault before her. She reached out and felt the coldness of the iron and steel and then remembered she had a lighter in her pocket, which she reached for. Both boys turned when the lighter flared to life.
“I told you, there’s nothing in there,” Dylan said, giving her boyfriend a dirty look as if blaming him for not keeping the girl on point. He turned his attention back to the unlocked cabinets before him.
The girl kept her free hand on the coldness of the vault’s door. The flame from the lighter showed condensation on the facing of the vault’s door and a funny, silverish smear across the door’s seal. She ran her hand through the moisture and then smelled the wetness that was gathered. She recoiled as if smelling something dead. She quickly wiped the water and funny-feeling paint away and then stepped back as she though she felt the door vibrate before her.
A yelp of happiness filled the darkened basement as the first locker was opened.
“I told you!” Dylan said, not so carefully sliding the large rubber band down on the rolled-up print.
He handed the flashlight to his friend and then unrolled the old movie poster. Even the girl wandered over through the foot of water. She saw the poster, and even she had to smile.
“Unbelievable!” said Dylan. The light caught the colored print and all their young mouths fell open. “The very first one we come across!”
The poster was a famous one from the golden age of Hollywood. The block lettering was wide and bright at the top as the light caught the lithographed rendition of Lon Chaney Jr. in his role of the original Wolf Man. The paper it was printed on was thick, just like Dylan’s grandfather had said to look for.
“It’s was what was known as a four-ply, thirty-two by forty-four print.”
“What does that mean?” the girl asked, moving closer to the beautiful poster as the light played over Lon Chaney’s fierce makeup.
“It means it’s real. Original and one of the most valuable posters in existence. Get it now?”
The girl shot Dylan a dirty look as he let the poster roll back into itself as he reached for another after handing off the Wolf Man once again to the boy staring wide-eyed at the locker, awaiting more great news.
“Whoa, look at this!” he exclaimed as a full-view photo of a helmeted John Wayne met their astonished gaze. “The Sands of Iwo Jima. Can you believe it? Mint condition and dry as a desert sand dune.” He turned and looked at the two. “We’re going to score big on these.” He shoved the poster into the boy’s arms and then jerked the flashlight from his fumbling hand and then shined it into the cabinet. “Look at these! Let’s just hope we can get them in one load.”
The girl gave Dylan’s back a scowl and her boyfriend a shake of her head as she turned back to the vault and struck her lighter once more.
She moved back and examined the door again. For reasons she couldn’t figure out, she was curious beyond belief about this old vault. She tilted her head and looked it over. Her hand holding the lighter moved to the stainless-steel handle on the door. She smiled and reached out for the handle and turned it. To her surprise, it moved as if greased just the day before. It made a loud clack as it was turned to its stops. A loud bang sounded from the inside.
“Would you leave that damn thing alone?” Dylan said. “What did you do?”
“N-n-nothing,” the girl stammered as she stepped back from the heavy iron-and-steel door. The lighter in her hand flickered as if a cold breath of air had struck it. “I … I … turned the locking handle, that’s all.”
The bright light moved to the vault as both boys stepped toward it. Her boyfriend had an armful of rolled-up movie posters. Dylan moved next to the girl as the flashlight examined the vault’s door. He touched the strange silver paint.
“What is it?” the boy asked as he fought to hold all the posters.
“Damn mercury!” Dylan said louder than he had wanted to.
“Mercury? I thought you said that those old stories were just made up,” the boy said as he stepped back from the vault.
The girl was furiously wiping at her pant leg.
Dylan smiled. “I told you not to touch anything.”
The loud bang sounded again, shaking the very foundation they stood upon, enough so that the stinky water that covered their feet and ankles moved in ripples. This time, the light as well as their eyes went to the thick door. The sound had come from inside the vault. They looked from one to the other as they realized for the first time just how dark the basement truly was.
* * *
From the high vantage point above the town, the old mission and winery sat in abject ruin. While an historical eyesore to some, the two buildings had their own aura about them. When viewed, they seemed just two crumbling buildings, but inside, there was a totally different vibe as the cameraman had earlier stated. This vibe was one that few visitors could describe. But one thing they did feel that they knew to be a fact was one of being watched.
One mile away and farther down the hill known as Drunk Monk’s Road, the trespassing trio had just started feeling the strangeness of the steel vault inside the basement of the Grenada. Inside the collapsed building, the winery came alive.
The thirteen tons of roof debris that had collapsed the remains of the old winery in 1962 after the explosion of the factory on the opposite hill moved, and dust swirled in the flow and ebb of the draft that reached the lowest section of the ancient ruin. In what was once the root cellar, where barrels were once made by carpenters, there was another vault. This one was six times the size of the smaller version inside the burned theater, only this vault looked more like an old steel box. The debris covering the steel suddenly burst up and out, uncovering the hiding place. The welded-shut double doors of the vault bent outward, creating a crack in the seal, and what was once designed to keep the beast imprisoned failed as it had many, many years before.
As the sun went lower in the west, the darkness once more shot toward the world of the living.
The beast discovered the town had company, and those visitors threatened the one thing it ever cared for.
* * *
The boy nervously moved posters to his other arm and then reached out and pulled his frightened girlfriend away.
“Something just shifted inside is all,” Dylan said as he moved closer to the door. He listened.
This time, the bang was so loud that Dylan fell backward and splashed into the foulness of the rotten wetness. As he spat out the terrible-tasting water from his mouth, the handle on the vault spun crazily. Their eyes widened, and the movie posters, the treasure they had sought, fell from the boy’s arm as the girl flung herself away from Dylan and the vault.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the boy said as he turned away with the girl.
“Not without my—” Dylan began.
The crying sound was unmistakable. It started slowly at first, and then the sobs became deeper, more frantic. They all turned to the vault’s door once more, and then they knew that something was indeed inside.
The air turned foul as the light from the flashlight in Dylan’s hand slowly died. The heavy crying continued.
“Hey, turn that back on!” the girl cried out. “We have to get someone to help. That may be a child trapped in there.”
Dylan was hitting the flashlight with all the strength he could muster as the smell was also starting to consume his own senses. The beam flared to life and then went out. It came back on and then just as quickly died. He gave it another good whack, and then the light illuminated briefly just as the door at the top of the basement stairs burst open and then flew off its hinges. They all turned and looked up into the blackness as their hearts leaped from their chests. As the light moved upward toward the door, they saw something standing there as if it were looking down upon them.
The blackness at the top of the stairs didn’t move. Dylan backed away from the staircase, and then his legs gave out as all thoughts and dreams of money escaped him. As he fell, he moved the beam of light up and then his eyes widened as he caught the darkness start to move down the stairs. They heard the crying as it became louder and fiercer. Then the crying went from sorrowful to one of screaming anger. The change had come when whatever was at the top of the stairs made its presence known. Then the darkness started down, cracking the old wood as it moved.
The darkness stepped from the last stair riser. Dylan felt the water rise and then settle as something heavy added its weight to the sea of debris and filth floating in the basement. He backed away on his palms and heels. The light never left the darkness stepping from the now-broken stairs. Dylan started to shake as the darkness moved toward him. Again, he tried to move away, splashing as he did. Between the darkness walking toward him and the screaming anger seemingly soaking through solid steel, Dylan heard his two friends making a run for the stairs.
The darkness stopped and turned away from Dylan and faced the new sound. The water splashed. It was like something was walking through a large puddle. The water exploded outward as it shot for the stairs. The screaming inside the vault’s interior went from unrecognizable to actual words as whatever was inside was encouraging the blackness to stop Dylan’s two friends from escaping. Dylan heard the girl scream and the boy shout above him. Then he felt the impact as the girl was thrown from the staircase to the floor below. She hit with a loud splash of water and then the sounds of breaking of bones as her frightening scream was cut off like a shorted-out audio. Her broken and shattered tattooed arm slowly sank beneath the foot-deep water as the voice inside the vault became one of joy and satisfaction. As Dylan stood and started to turn, the light caught his friend in crime as he was lifted from the stairs and thrown across the basement to impact the cabinets where their riches had been stored. His body bent and broke as it struck so hard that his skin was pushed into the seams and vent openings on the old locker. His body popped free and joined his girlfriend in the waters of the basement.
The dark mass moved at lightning speed toward the remaining intruder and embraced him. The last thing Dylan could hear above the animallike derangement was his own spine being crushed by the enormous hand that stole the life from him.
The darkness roared with fury and anger, and then the basement became a blacker hole than it was before.
The joy from inside the vault settled to a cursory crying once more as if in remorse for the lives taken. Then the insanity started again as the last words broke free of the steel-reinforced vault.
“Find him!”
The blackness roared in delight as it was finally set free after half a century of being trapped like a wild animal. The darkness reached out and gently caressed the vault’s door. The ice that accumulated from the touch flaked away as the dark hand moved lovingly over the surface. Once more, the anger subsided from inside, and the crying resumed, except for one last command repeated through the sobs of loneliness and terror.
“Find him and bring him home.”
The blackness left Moreno and shot into the sky and smelled the day’s cooling air. It turned and then vanished like a wisp of dark cloud to the east.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
He was known as the most ruthless person in the world—and this was still a planet inhabited by men like Vladimir Putin, Assad of Syria, and Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Per many news sources around the globe, these men were considered tame compared to the man who was giving up his power under extraordinary circumstances. The ruthless way in which he treated adversaries and friends alike had finally come full circle. He had abused the power of his office, and now the American electorate had concluded that the man had to go. So, in five days’ time, the president of the United States was going to resign his office for health reasons halfway through his second term. The president wasn’t a well-liked man.
The First Lady of the United States was thirty-five years younger than her husband. Dean Samuel Hadley would soon return to his billionaire lifestyle and live out the rest of his lonely life with wealth and power, still a lord over thousands if not millions of ordinary people and employees. The First Lady wanted to be sure by the time the next week rolled around he would be limited not only in the wealth department but in the power realm of his life as well. She stood in the doorway of the office of the president’s chief of staff, Herbert Avery. He finally looked up as he carefully placed the legal documents into a secure file folder. He looked startled.
“It would be nice if you announced yourself. That would be the polite thing to do,” he said as he stood and gestured for her to come in.
She stood momentarily in the doorway with her arms crossed over her ample chest—a chest she had to cover for six years because of her station as First Lady of the country.
“You should keep your door closed when you have that stuff out.” The First Lady finally stepped into the office but was sure not to close the door behind her. Propriety still held sway over her actions. Right now, she was depicted as the wife of the insane man in the Oval Office, and that was where she wanted her persona to stay for the time being.
The chief of staff placed the file folder in his desk and then locked it. He smiled as she came in but noticed she did not sit.
“That ‘stuff,’ as you put it, is so complicated that even if someone saw them and studied them for a month, they wouldn’t understand them. As far as anyone is concerned, they are nothing but financial statements from the president’s holdings that will revert to his care after he leaves office, that’s all,” he said as he jauntily tossed his set of keys in the air and then pocketed them with a wink toward the stunning woman before him. “As far as his many faults as a husband and his proclivity toward extramarital affairs and proof of him having as many secretive women in his life as he does, well, that information is kept far from here, I assure you. I take it your meeting at the fund-raiser went well? I hope your skullduggery works.” Avery looked the First Lady over and then smiled. “Nice outfit, by the way.”
Catherine Emery Hadley ignored the compliment on her chosen attire. “So, after next week, we can move right in if your evidence of his adulterous leanings has been threatened? This new stuff that was uncovered by your friend in Virginia should strike a raw nerve, unhinging him even further. Then, when proof of adultery, attached to very strange behavior, is apparent to the courts, he will lose everything. The stockholders of his companies wish to end their relationship with him now at any rate.”
“If you can get the president to voluntarily see things your way.”
Catherine laughed as she moved toward the door. “When confronted with evidence of this last betrayal of the American people and his adoring, caring wife, his signing won’t be a problem. If I must expose old family skeletons to do so, I am ready for the bones to fall from the closet. Any judge in this country is as fed up with him as I am. Our divorce will work out the way I have planned from the beginning. His infidelity, his tenure as president, and with the saddened and brokenhearted wife, the bastard deserves what he gets.” Catherine looked Avery over and decided to ask even though it was upon her orders that the name and subject never be spoken aloud, especially inside the White House. “Did you place the pictures and the glasses where he will run across them?”
“Yes. I put some on his desk and another three in daily correspondence. The glasses are in plain sight under some files on his desk. I don’t know what you plan to gain by dredging up childhood memories inside that head of his. I just don’t see the point.”
“You’re not involved to ‘see’ the point, Herb. The things I had you plant where he could find them were done to assist the bastard in his legitimate jump toward insanity. If that file gets exposed by some gung-ho reporter, they’ll see that insanity runs in the family. He is as insane as his old man was.”
Avery smiled as he watched the mechanics of her devious mind playing across those beautiful eyes.
“Who is she?” Avery smiled as he asked the million-, or was it fifty-billion-, dollar question. “She the one from his childhood that got away?”
“Yes, Herb, she’s the one woman my husband couldn’t coax into bed.”
“Must have been a while back, because those are the only pictures available of her. Black and white, ponytails, and bobby socks.”
“You’re thinking too much, Herbert. You need to stop that.”
Avery looked up curiously as he watched her back. “Has he lost all interest in life? I just thought it was being president he was tired of. The way he’s acting, it’s like he just doesn’t care about anything other than being the biggest prick in the free world.”
“Give him a liquor bottle and women, and he’ll live out the rest of his life alone and happy, just the way he wants. But if he has other ideas, the things you placed where he can accidentally find them will send him off in another direction in life, and that’s into a mental hospital, where he truly belongs. All I have to do is show him what his precious daddy did in the war.”
“Unbelievable. One of the richest men, not to mention the most powerful leader in the world, and he just wants to drop off the face of the earth. Amazing. It’s almost as if he wanted everyone to hate him as much as he despised himself.”
Catherine’s eyes moved to an eight-by-ten glossy photograph of the president taken many years before, when he was only twenty years old. The bare-chested man staring at her from the photo wore nothing but a protective flak jacket and had a green beret tilted jauntily on his head. Of course, a smile was absent as they always were in pictures of his past. The framed picture was signed to Avery by her husband, and the sham way Avery had it displayed made the First Lady shiver. “By the way, when we leave here, I never want to see that thing again.” She paused at the doorway and waited for Avery to respond.
Catherine was gently pulled back into the office, and Avery reached out and closed the door.
“I keep that here to remind myself of who it is I work for.” He leaned farther toward her.
She laughed in his face as she turned to open the door. “His father has been dead since 1972. He’s a prick because he chooses to be a prick,” she said as she partially opened the door but was shocked when the door was closed from behind and hands gripped her shoulders. Avery didn’t see the smile that raised the corners of her red lips.
The attempted kiss was sudden. Catherine placed her hands on his chest and gently pushed Avery.
“Not until this thing is completed. That’s all I need is for another rumor to cloud the minds of those I need on my side when the time comes.” She smiled for a moment. “Your richly deserved reward will come soon enough.” She turned away and then stopped. His smile slowly came back until Avery realized this was nothing more than business and not a romantic pause. “Just make sure the deposition on his mental health is ready for all six boardrooms to see and sign.” She opened the door but paused in the hallway. “And take down the goddamn picture; I never want to see that again.”
Avery angrily shut his door.
* * *
The president stood behind his desk and watched the activity outside as protesters lined the street. They carried banners and placards stating that it was time for a change in Washington. His left brow rose, and he smiled as he was most assuredly in their corner. All interest in most things had waned in his life. He had billions waiting for him once he left office. He had a young wife who was currently trying to steal everything from him. At seventy-two years of age, he was ready to call it quits on his personal life. Money didn’t solve his nightmares and could not heal a past that was unsalvageable. Power was the same. None of it mattered, and he didn’t know why. For the past two years, he had been feeling this way. He knew he had treated people badly for the better part of his life, and again he didn’t know why. He had a mean streak in him, and there was no way to live with what his young wife called “the real people.”
He turned away when several members of his staff came in through the door of the Oval Office. The vice president was with them. He frowned when he saw Catherine was the last to enter. He nodded, and the Secret Service agent closed the door as they settled into the two opposite-facing couches. He noticed the First Lady remained standing. He smiled as he moved to the front of the desk. As he sat on its edge, his hand struck a pile of opened correspondence, and the letters scattered across the desk. Catherine watched as the president stacked them back into a pile. His fingers hit on one of the envelopes, and he picked it up as all in the office waited for him to speak. He pulled out an old Polaroid picture. He raised the envelope and saw that it was addressed to the White House with his name on it but no postmark. He pulled out the old shot and saw the black-and-white image. It was her, and his face could not hide the anxiety the faded Polaroid picture instantly instilled. He swallowed, as this was the fifth time in as many days the picture or her name had appeared as if by magic. He looked for Avery, but Avery had not arrived for the meeting just yet. Herbert had to know, since it was he who was the last to see the day’s mail before he placed it on his desk. He placed the photo back into the white envelope.
It was the vice president who cleared his throat to get Hadley’s attention. The president looked up like he was awakening from a bad dream. He blinked and then smiled briefly.
“You dropped something, Mr. President,” the thin man said and then stood from the couch and retrieved the item that had fallen to the floor. He stood and then handed the president the item. “Now those are dark sunglasses,” the vice president said as he smiled and then sat back down.
The glasses were of tortoiseshell frames and were plain looking, except for the dark green lenses. He held them in his hands, and he felt his heart race. He rubbed his thumb over the cracked lenses. The hardened frames were damaged and had partially melted around the earpieces. He started to raise the dark glasses to see them better when he realized his guests were waiting. He swallowed and then placed the glasses on top of the photo.
“Sorry.” He smiled but immediately lost it. His mind was racing in varying directions at one time. “Well, Jimmy, you ready to take over the reins?” he asked the vice president as his gray eyes kept flashing down to the desktop and the items there.
The nation’s vice president, James Harwell, sat motionless as the president smiled down upon him from on high, a position of strength he knew the man loved for its effect on visitors.
“Yes, I believe I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” he said as the other members of the closed circle of advisors didn’t make eye contact with him. “But somehow I still think this is some cruel joke you’re dealing me here.”
“Ah, just because you wanted this job many years before me doesn’t mean you would let me down. Our history says we’ll never be close. Hell, we may never even speak after next week. Just be ready to fulfill the office. I honestly think it’ll be in better hands with you than anyone.” He smiled. “The country will agree with you. It’s either this or be impeached. When all these so-called rumors are substantiated, believe me, you’ll want distance between you and me, and this is the only way to get that distance.”
“I don’t know what to say,” the vice president said as he turned his attention back to the silver-haired man behind the desk. “You’ve never even smiled at me before while you were in office. Now you just quit and give it all away. Excuse me, but I’m just astounded.”
The president smiled as he looked the group over. His dark eyes settled on the First Lady. “Just be sure the new First Lady likes doing things other than photo ops and she’ll be admired as most First Ladies usually are.” The smile devolved into a cruel line across his lips. “Some First Ladies, at any rate.” Again, the image of the young girl with a dark pair of sunglasses entered his mind. He grimaced and looked up and saw a hint of a smile on Catherine’s face as she left the Oval Office.
The man, learning on his desk, waited for the door to be closed and looked at the others. His smile and friendliness was gone. The door was once again opened by one of his protection team, and Chief of Staff Avery was escorted inside. Everyone noticed the two Secret Service agents remained this time.
Avery knew immediately that his covert and very-much-behind-the-scenes manipulations had been found out. He swallowed as the president smiled. It was the cat staring at the canary.
“Mr. Avery, it’s time we spoke candidly, and these gentlemen present are to witness your debrief. How exciting and unexpected. It seems you have been doing some digging in areas that have drawn the attention of some very smart people. Things about my finances. I think it’s time you come to the side of the Lord, Herbert.”
Avery felt his knees go weaker than a moment before as the president stood up and moved to the window just as the exterior lighting outside the office flared to life as the sun finally set.
“It has come to my attention that you and the First—”
The confused men in the room watching the man they all secretly despised became even more so when the president stopped speaking in midsentence. He stiffened, and then his eyes fluttered open, then closed, and then opened again.
“Mr. President, are you—”
Before the vice president could finish his own sentence, the lights inside the Oval Office went out. Emergency lighting immediately sprang to life, but they also dimmed and went dark. The two Secret Service men acted quickly by switching on the small flashlights they all carried. The beams illuminated the face of the president, and they moved aggressively as the man started shaking uncontrollably behind his desk. Then the president collapsed.
“He’s having a heart attack!” the vice president called out as they all stood to assist.
As the two agents moved to help, they came to a sudden stop when the man before them rose off the carpeted floor of the office and was flipped backward into the desk, where he landed and then rolled free. The president tried to rise, getting to his knees.
“God!” someone shouted as more agents came into the office. The light from the reception area briefly illuminated the strange scene inside. Then those suddenly went out as well. As the first Secret Service agent reached the president and attempted to help ease him back down to the floor, he was thrown backward into the wall. The impact shattered the drywall and sent the agent sprawling. The second agent watched in shock as his partner was literally thrown across the room. The door opened, and more flashlights and agents streamed inside.
Chief of Staff Avery had gone from a man about to be outed as the man collecting evidence for court proceedings with the assistance of the First Lady of the United States to watching a magic show inside the most powerful political office in the world. He stood in shock as more agents reached the choking president, who could not catch a breath as he tried to sit up from the floor, the agents assisting him. Three of these agents were brutally lifted from their feet just as they reached the downed man. They too were thrown against the wall by an invisible force inside the White House. Finally, a fifth agent reached the president. He started to lift the leader of the free world up by his jacket lapels, but the room suddenly shook as if they had been hit by a six-point earthquake.
“NO!” came the echoing voice that shattered the bulletproof glass that faced Pennsylvania Avenue. The men inside ducked as if a bomb had exploded, which many would attribute the event to later. The president was again lifted into the air so drastically that they thought his back would break. President Dean Hadley was spun twice, and then the action slowed. Then his body crumpled in midair and thudded to the floor. The flashlights followed him all the way to the carpet while men, even the Secret Service agents, stood frozen inside the darkened office.
“My God!” the vice president shouted again as even more agents and uniformed White House guards came streaming through the door.
Then they felt the pressure wave as something seemed to get momentarily stronger. The smashing of drywall came to the ears of all present. It was a strange thing to hear, but it was like someone was intentionally punching a wall. Then they all felt that whatever it was had vanished as the pressure lessened and the air became quiet and still.
The lights came back on to everyone’s shock. There were even a few yelps of fear as they did so.
The First Lady rushed in with several other armed men as the devastation inside the Oval Office was seen for the first time in the bright lights. The broken windows, the smashed walls, and the president who was now being attended to by three Secret Service agents.
“What happened?” the First Lady shouted, seeing for the first time the painted walls around the expensively furnished office.
As the president lay on the blue carpet while men tried to revive him, everyone in the room saw what had happened. The entire wall space had been damaged. As the First Lady moved her eyes from her hated husband, they fell on Avery, who had stepped up to the closest wall and saw what it really was.
“My God, what in the hell is going on here?” he said as the other shocked men saw what he was seeing.
Every inch of wall space was taken up. The pictures and portraits had been smashed and now lay on the floor. The badly damaged walls were totally covered, and they could not believe what had literally smashed into them. At least six hundred words were made apparent by the large holes that had been beaten into the walls. As the president lay comatose with medical staff finally taking charge, they all read the words that ran in a circular order on the light green paint and traveled from the trim of the ceiling to the mopboards.
Come home, and below that in six hundred words, repeated over and over again were physically annunciated through the holes that looked as if a large fist had punched them in that spelled out Boo!