Children Were Injured by stefan eber

My publisher asked me to cover an interesting item he picked up from a reliable source about a recent series of strange occurences over a 72-hour period in Pacific Village, a small town on the remote northern coast of California. A team of doctors had been choppered in due to some kind of tragedy, but nobody seemed to be able to get to the facts.

I was sent to investigate.

Pacific Village is known smirkingly as the most politically correct place in California…and thus the USA. I knew it would be tough to get real interviews, If there were a story, it would already have tramped in and out of the news cycle by the time I got it, living remotely as I do out here in the deep woods of Washington State.

I loaded my gear into the big truck while the engine warmed. I may not be the first responder to a good story, but I am often the last to leave, and I don’t finish a job until the paperwork’s done.

I went straight to the Constable, the local cop. He wasn’t going to say a word because of an ‘ongoing’ investigation, except to say some children were injured and doctors were called in.

After I mentioned to Constable Raves how proud I was of my son-in-law, a lead investigator for Homeland Security, he loosened his tongue to admit many children were injured seriously, but the perpetrator was not human. An animal injured the children.

He was not sure what kind of animal, however, or the extent of the children’s injuries, so I went to the Prospector Tavern to find a drunk. I bought him a double and then another and he began to talk.

Wilton Dredge confessed he was the regional Coroner, and that he couldn’t discuss the case other than to say the children were all deceased. Twelve of them

Next I would find a dreadlocked hitchhiker and pry him with cannabis. I drove four minutes along a gravel road between the woods and the bluffs overlooking the ocean when I met Crosley Admiral Packard III, known locally as Canadu.

We rolled in the big truck and stared at the ocean while passing my glass pipe. I loaded four or five bowls before Canadu got mellow enough to respond to my questions.

“Man…” Canadu hung his eyes out the windshield to the far horizon, pulling thoughts out of his ass…

“…what difference does it make what kind of animal it was? He pondered slowly… “a bunch of kids got eaten…end of story.” He drew down on a fat budlet.

“A bunch of kids got eaten??”

“Man…what difference does it make…I mean the kids were injured, what difference does it make how they got hurt….?”

I pulled the big truck to a halt and let the dust settle. I looked over at Canadu and struggled to get into his dull grey, bloodshot eyes.

“If you make a big deal about it”… he drawled, “…folks will start fucking with animals, hurting them and stuff….revenge…you know how people are.”

I loaded another bowl and went in for the kill shot. Canadu’s eyes glazed over, one perched on the Pacific…one on the dashboard. I framed my words carefully and launched them into the soft territory of his mind.

“Don’t you think it is important to the story what kind of animal was involved here..?” I puffed “…especially if it has eaten a dozen children?” I exhaled a nine-foot cloud of marijuana smoke into the light ocean breeze playing around the big truck.

“An animal fucked up” he said “maybe we should find out why.”

London Hewes was a brickbuilt matron I met at Foursquare Gospel, a bland, one-room whitewashed cabin on the outskirts of Pacific Village. She seemed to be taking refuge there on a weekday morning. My gut, generally my best friend, told me it wasn’t because of the heat.

“Oh, yes,” she said, wringing a napkin in her hands… “Mr. Canadu is right…If an animal misbehaves, it’s only because we humans have driven them to do so.”

Harly Thrasher, an old guy, skinny as a rail in cowboy boots and a leather vest walked in the door and joined our conversation.

“Mrs. Hewes is right, I believe.” He sat down in one of the metal folding chairs and locked his buzzard eyes into a thousand yard stare.

“You see, we here at Foursquare believe every act of sin deserves forgiveness…why, it just makes things easier on all of us.” Harly and Mrs. Hewes nodded in unison, the smell of stale coffee filled the room.

I was too late for the doctors, the bodies had been removed and the town was clamming up fast. Sometimes, if I don’t know what to do I don’t do anything. I decided to stroll the beach to look for driftwood.

If I keep my eyes on the sand, something would eventually come to me, I thought to myself as I wandered among the seaweed and shells, scrambling crabs and gulls. Mist worked its way in from the sea, drawn to the warm bluffs and evergreen trees basking in the sun.

A yellow sunhat hovered over a thin woman who looked like she had just sailed in from Atlantis. Willow Ash sat on a log steadying her hat in the breeze. A wildlife biologist and village resident, she wrote the acclaimed novel “Gaiattica”…a testicle-tingling tome revealing what men have to look forward to in our Brave New World.

“I am not surprised at all that a grizzly bear would act in such a manner,” she mused, examining a rounded, white nail… “somebody probably messed with her babies and she reacted naturally.”

She offered me a lemon poppyseed muffin and I sat down, staring at its fragrant, golden crust.

“You mean to tell me a grizzly bear came into your village, tore up and ate twelve of your children and you are okay with that?” I pulled the crown of my muffin apart and stuffed it in my mouth.

“We feel its offensive to blame the grizzly bear, who is simply acting out of impulse. There is no point in punishing the poor animal.”

I assembled notes in my head as I headed north, tossing around ideas on how to approach my thin story. I grabbed my Blackberry and called New York.

‘A grizzly bear, hundreds of miles off turf, eating children and terrifying citizens is of no concern to any of the locals, for fear of placing blame on the accused, who is innocent by nature of her species.’

My sparse, run-on pitch didn’t fly with Baz Hoaz, my publisher.

“Shoot the damn bear,” he said “then you’ve got a story.”

I stopped in Cave Junction for breakfast at my favorite restaurant. Full of coffee and calories, I turned around and headed back to the coast

My gut smelled a rat. It wasn’t just the Farmer’s Breakfast I plowed into at my favorite restaurant in Cave Junction…I expected that repast to extract its toll from every organ in my body.

I know enough about the Griz to know the story was a cover.

To suggest a grizzly bear was too insane to know what she was doing is to suggest Hannibal Lecter couldn’t get a date or plan a meal. Grizzlies don’t go South. They don’t gamble.

Some salmon and some berries…

I drove and drove…the big truck rolling on cruise control at 1600 RPM...Toni Braxton on the Bose sound system for 300 miles into the dusk, picking my way into the foggy hills past vineyards, orchards, horse ranches and roadside markets.

There was no bear. Therefore, no bear to shoot.

“What sort of creature could inflict so much damage on a community without revealing itself?” I mused into my digital recorder, pulling the mighty truck to the side of the road to compound my thoughts onto my laptop, perched reflectively on the console between the seats.

“And why?” I ruminated as the sun dropped from the sky.

Were my witnesses, all of them, lying to me? I grabbed my Blackberry and called my son in law. Of course, he warned me he could not divulge any forensics information. A few moments later some lab reports popped into my e-mail.

A single grizzly bear was responsible for the horrific crime.

My phone rang and my son in law asked why I was in my big truck on the banks of the Russian River when I could be staying in a nice lodge, with continental breakfast 450 yards south southwest?

I was going to remind him that I try not to leave a trail while on a story, but he interrupted to warn that using a phone is about as subtle as wandering the freeway with an axe.

My friend in Haifa sent me all the cell phone call records from the area during the time in question. I sat in the big truck watching the sun go down behind the mountains, staining the river into a deep red ribbon with flecks of cotton candy in a golden sky.

Guzzling cold beer and listening to Toni B, I discovered many calls from the area were to a series of Baltimore numbers. Another call to Haifa confirmed they were NSA numbers.

A chill ran up my spine, and suddenly the brew wasn’t so refreshing. I turned off my Blackberry and computer and sound system and sat in the dark, considering my next move.

About an hour into my meditations I heard gravel crunching up the hill behind me on the road that leads down to the river where I was parked…illegally, no doubt.

A vehicle parked on the side of the road idling for a few nervous moments before turning and heading back up the hill.

I knew I was had. If I was going to get a story I would have to ditch all my gear and go in simple. Not a pencil or a scrap of paper, but enough marijuana on my person to be in clear violation of any law just so I had a thin justification for my presence in what just happened to be the heart of cannabis cultivation country.

Right. Precisely what I’d do were I were someone else.

I fired up the big science truck, dumped the empties, turned on the phone, computer and music and rolled…half tipsy, middle of the night…right. Do the unexpected.

Parked on a dirt logging road overlooking Pacific Village I added up what I knew and didn’t know. I knew that after twenty minutes of four-wheeling and with all electronics off I should be secure, huddled under a vast Madrone tree, next to huge boulder.

I could rest and think. I knew everything I had heard so far, including the conversations with Baz Hoaz, my publisher, was at this point highly suspect. Baz knew there was no bear from the start, but I baffled about what the old codger didn’t know.

Pesky DNA found in the presence of mutilated remains does reach a bit beyond speculation, and even without eyewitness accounts the perpetrator looked like a bear, walked like a bear and even ate like a very angry bear.

A very hungry, very angry bear.

My subambulatory calculations indicated a bear, grizzly or otherwise, would have to weigh a thousand pounds and stand fourteen feet tall a to consume near that amount of….

Terrorists!

It hit me like a sandbag: Terrorists must have infiltrated the village, stolen the children for ransom and completely fabricated a few crime scenes to strike panic into the locals.

Ironically, they didn’t want publicity. NSA knew what the terrorists were after, and I knew NSA knew I was here, as well.

A tap on the window snapped me to attention. I knew the difference between the tap of a pistol barrel and the tap of a metal flashlight, so I only jumped a few inches. I turned the key and rolled down the window, my LCP .380 auto in my fist.

I hit the panic button and a siren screamed. Lights flooded the area from the roof of the science truck as I stared into the terrified, pale face of a woman in jungle fatigues holding a flashlight, trying to cover her ears.

I was out the door and behind the suspect with every advantage available in the field. The sudden silence was as merciless as the aural assault system as I hit a remote switch.

“I’m Clyta Mercy!” The woman screamed as the sound went dead. Her nose roamed around her face and her eyeballs swirled as she dug a finger deep into her ear.

“I own this property that you are on…trespassin’ on, at that.”

I holstered my Taser and introduced myself. With ringing ears, half blinded by the halogen light array, we shook hands.

“Look,” she spoke in a low voice, “everyone in the village knows why you’re here.” She shook her head. “If you hadn’t shown up with that big truck, the leather jacket and those fancy ways, you might have gotten somewhere with someone.”

She got close enough so I could see her face by moonlight.

“Because of that truck, now everyone in a fourteen mile radius knows you are here.” She smiled weakly in her gray curls.

“If you are smart you will leave now.” Her eyes widened.

“If I tell you the whole story, I will have to kill you.”

I followed Clyta Mercy up the hill toward a log and stone-built cabin filled with light. I immediately observed there was no dog traipsing about the premises sniffing at my feet, barking in my face.

“Dogs are noisy” she replied, answering my question. “They can’t do anything that I can’t do myself, and they attract trouble. When I mentioned it seemed mighty lonesome out here on the side of the hill, with little but a blanket of stars overhead for company, she smiled:

“Precisely the point, my friend.”

The cabin was large for one person, filled with handmade furniture and roughhewn appointments it seemed like the haunt of a real pioneer. A buffalo gun hung over the huge stone fireplace like it had been there 150 years. A cat slept in a curl, stuffed into a little round bed on the hearth in the glow of a crackling fire,

“I’ve heard of your work” Clyta said as she offered me hot cocoa. “…and I read an extract of your report on Bigfoot that you published earlier this summer. My husband and I were researchers for many years…exopolitics, the paranormal, multi dimensional life forms, and such.” She sipped her cocoa and stared at me with serious grey eyes.

“The Bigfoot girl, the one that initiated your story...” she smiled, “…the one in the g-string…”

“It wasn’t a g-string, it was a thong” I quickly explained “I could never figure out how it got in my gear.”

Again, she smiled.

“How about some more cocoa?”

“You claim in your report that ten years ago the Bigfoot girl raided your camp while you were out scouting one day, found the ‘thong’ in your gear and tried it on.” Clyta chuckled.

The cat woke up, shook its furry black head, and without even looking in my direction walked over and jumped into my lap like I had always been there. It instantly curled up and fell back to sleep.

“And then last summer you found the Bigfoot girl again and she still had the ‘thong’on, only she has grown around it in some parts, rather like a dolphin stuck in a plastic six-pack carrier.” She grimaced.

I shrugged my shoulders to seal my confession.

“All true” I said, “she was a lovely creature.”

“She was murdered by her own family for coming into contact with me. She had been shunned for a decade because of the thong, but when I showed up her people couldn’t tolerate.”

“Yes” said Clyta, “so I read. An honor killing, of sorts.”

She walked over to a huge rolltop desk, the very type Mark Twain used to sleep in, and opened it to reveal three computers busy at work. I furled the cat into my chair and walked over to the desk as Clyta pulled up a website featuring “Toni, the Bigfoot Girl.”

Thong and all, there she was, strutting across her colorful homepage with a blue and white striped parasol, a huge pair of sunglasses and the thong. The site featured Toni, the Bigfoot Girl discussing her life, talking about her trips to Hollywood, learning to drive a big truck and dancing with the stars. She gleefully reported a film role in the offing.

“Apparently you aren’t the only human to communicate with Bigfoot Girl.” Clyta smirked.

“You were punked, eber” she smiled again, “hoaxed by the Bigfoot media machine into believing they are savage beasts. Those of us with more familiarity with them know them to be anything but fearsome, just fearsomely aromatic.”

“They think the very same of us.” We both chuckled.

“Herb…my inconveniently deceased husband, was certain that Bigfoot is an interdimensional hybrid, capable of transforming itself to blend more readily with its surroundings. Rather like the off-planet species who seem so comfortable in our midst.”

She rattled around in the kitchen as she spoke. I saw three articles Toni had written about me. One seemed particularly flirtatious.

“Herb used to say that the grizzly bear evolved into a polar bear as it went north, but if it went south, it had to evolve into something much more curious.” A delicate tapestry of silence filled the cabin. Clyta stopped stirring in her bowl for a moment and all that could be heard was a crackle in the fireplace.

“The children” I muttered. “Children were injured.”

Clyta lay her spoon on the counter and stared at me. “The further south they go, the more they evolve and hybridize.”

Mutually stunned by profound weirdness, Clyta and I sat for long moments while we cogitated. She picked up the rhythm with her spoon once more, and I caught whiffs of cinnamon and nutmeg.

She seemed to be reading what was left of my mind.

“We could have a bigger problem than a bear,” she said as she slid a pan into the oven. “A multidimensional, shape-shifting hybridized killer may be among us. We’ll have some cookies in a few minutes.”

If you don’t look you won’t see…look a little less you might see more, I thought to myself. It was hard to listen to my gut with a fat chocolate oatmeal cookie in my fist but I had the feeling I was getting farther away from the real answers, the stuff I need to build my story.

From the warm, hilltop perch overlooking the ocean bedded beneath dazzling array of stars it seemed as though the possibilities laid out before me were endless:

Had the government injured, mutilated and/or kidnapped, rendered or tortured those children, or some of them…or was a cartel, rogue bank, off-planet conspiracy, or a religion, a food or a drug somehow involved? Immigrants certainly played some mysterious role or were the children themselves the ones who brought this upon themselves?

Could one crazy preacher have brought this upon the world? Was it a virus hatched in Maryland? A mutant game? Or maybe, as Clyta seemed to suggest, a multidimensional, shape-shifting, hybridized Bigfoot brought havoc to the village.

There seemed to be cursory evidence to indicate any variation of influence upon the facts was possible. No single theory seemed to hold more water than another. We took our cookies out onto the deck.

The sky was full of mischief, and I was not a reliable witness to any of it. In the middle of the night, a head full of sugar, how could I possibly explain all the things I see moving around up there? It seemed to me that what I was really looking for was another cookie.

Clyta appeared in the dark with a fat one in her hand.

I awoke on the sofa after dream-filled sleep, a fuzzy warm body stretched out alongside my leg. We stretched simultaneously. The cat hauled itself onto my stomach and into a curl. An exotic whiff of the bean tore at my snout and my brain raced at the thought of another day.

The sun crawled over a hill to the east of us and spilled its golden light over trees and pastures, grazing animals and villagers below then down to the misty water. A heron winged overhead, headed out to sea.

Clyta and I sat on the deck with banana bread and coffee…maple syrup and soy milk in hers, fresh goat milk in mine.

“Some dear friends of mine are in the area and are coming up the hill for breakfast” she said, “you are most welcome to join us. They might have a thing or two to say about the missing children.”

“They are aliens…off-planet variety.” She sipped her coffee nonchalantly, as though she meant they were Republicans.

“They live in France and are touring America for the first time at ground level. You might find them interesting.”

‘French aliens.’ I thought to myself. They probably have a dog.

“They have a dog” she said… “a very annoying one. The dog considers itself superior to its masters, naturally, and its masters consider themselves superior to humans, of course…and then, they’re French.”

I scratched the cat’s belly and it purred.

It lay on its back on my lap in complete abandon, warmed by the sun, scratched by a friend, it purred softly in a deep sleep. A knot of swallows flew overhead as Clyta brought a fresh round of coffee.

Fortunately, the dog would not come out of the Land Rover because it decided it was allergic to cats. It sat in the back seat and stared out the window sullenly, completely insulted.

“We don’t understand” whined Manfrique, the tall one.

“Alouette never acts like this” Alovu said suspiciously.

For a moment it seemed to me like there was a swamp somewhere I could be draining. I could be painting a house in New Orleans.

Manfrique nibbled at a crabcake.

“We understand you are investigating the attacks upon the children of the village.” He propped a crumb onto his little fork.

Suddenly, Alovu chimed in.

“If it weren’t for your hostility toward ‘aliens,’ as you call them, as well as your antagonism against gays, dogs and the French,” he smiled, “we might be able to help you.”

‘Jesus’ I thought to myself.

“Jesus was gay” chimed Alovu, “get used to it.”

“Everyone is telepathic where we come from, not France, of course” Manfrique explained carefully. “Here, telepaths are hunted and killed. The entire structure of your civilization is supported by secrets. The psychoenergetics involved are phenomenal, especially for humans.”

“You should be ashamed.” He sniffed quietly.

“It’s true” said Alovu. “Most human minds are not worth reading, but collectively, they have great potential as an information processing base. We don’t like to talk about people. It’s usually a waste of time.” He dabbed his lip carefully with a napkin and smiled at his mate.

“Alovu is correct.” Manfrique lay down his little fork.

“The attacks upon the youngsters certainly appear random” he said, “but upon closer examination a pattern emerges that is interesting.”

Clyta and I glanced at each other. She offered me a slice of peach pie, baked with peaches she canned last summer.

“Alovu and I had only to stroll down the main street of Pacific Village to get a fairly good idea why these were not random attacks.”

We stopped eating. He had our attention now.

“There is an element of regularity that could be described mathematically” he continued, “but for starters, all the victims were young, the assaults happened at night and in the village. Hardly random”

Clyta and I sat silent, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“What do you know about the victims?” Manfrique stared coldly.

Alovu jumped in…“The oldest was a preteen.” He poked at his slice of apple pie. “The youngest was nine. Where we come from, these are not children.”

He was right. In America, these were not really children either. We all know that kids at this age are capable of anything and everything. Why would we assume the kids were innocent, the events random?

“Because you cannot see the pattern, you cannot see the obvious.” Manfrique passed on the pie, nibbling instead on a piece of toast. “The villagers are responsible, and two motives quickly emerge.”

“If there is blood on the street” pronounced Alovu, “property will change hands.” He seemed pleased with himself. “So you select victims who are the most noticeable in order to create the greatest fear.”

“While you are selecting victims,” Manfrique collated with Alovu, “why not pick young thugs who are ripping off crops, making far too much money for their age group, selling their bodies, stealing from their parents…but most importantly…putting the local economy in danger.”

“Politically correct people wouldn’t tolerate for long” said Clyta.

Back out on the deck, she and I sat with coffee, the Frenchmen with tea. A single blackbird winged past. A dove mourned.

We looked down on the village, swathed in mist that slowly devoured everything until the sun was full in the sky. Not much was said for most of an hour as we collectively filtered information.

“What about the so-called evidence…DNA samples, mutilated bodies…?” I threw the query at no one in particular.

“When the Twin Towers were destroyed we heard every explanation possible” offered Clyta “but in the end, we are still left with nanothermite. No matter what you conclude, we found nanothermite in the dust from the towers, so every story leads to nowhere from there.”

“Follow the money, or follow the honey” said Alovu. “Humans are anything but complicated. In Pacific Village, the money and the honey come down to the same place.” He smiled tightly.

“Where’s the nanothermite in the dust?” He asked rhetorically...

“It’s growing all around you.”

I couldn’t wait to get back to the big truck, get my leather jacket on and drive down the hill to Pacific Village for one last cruise down Main Street. I smiled and nodded at the locals as I rolled down the street, my sunglasses perched on my forehead like I owned the place.

So many things are true, whether we choose to believe them or not. Disbelief is the steady companion of free will, and often the deepest temptation is to believe nothing at all. As though the world and everything we know is created by us, and for our eyes only.

I was beginning to get the feeling I had meandered into the Village of the Damned as I slid the big truck into a parking space, grabbed my laptop and sashayed into Lola’s for a cup of joe. The joint was jumping, but I snagged a corner table as two hefty matrons got up to leave.

One shot me a dirty look that may have been simple dyspepsia, but other patrons seemed to be conning me with unculinary disfavor. No doubt the citizens of Pacific Village were leery of me, they had a nasty little secret and I was not about to leave until I uncovered it.

I opened up some documents forwarded by my son in law in Homeland Security. The grizzly DNA samples found on the remains of several victims appeared compromised, casting doubt on the veracity of the findings. The phone numbers in Baltimore were classified, but definitely NSA. A half-dozen properties were sold in a week.

Some of the victim’s remains were not related in any way to those parents who reported their youngsters missing. The owner of Heliflite, Inc. couldn’t prove the identities of the passengers he flew into Pacific Village. They claimed to be doctors, and showed identification. The remains had been flown with the passengers to a warehouse in Sonoma.

Heliflite’s security cameras recorded the license plate numbers on the Suburban that delivered the so-called doctors to the airstrip, and the vehicle was registered to Homeland Security.

A florid, haggard woman in an apron appeared at my table.

“There’s a phone call for you” she said as she filled my cup from a stagnant pot. “Over by the counter” she winged her elbow to the door. I picked up the receiver and listened as a man in a red flannel shirt and sunglasses walked past the window outside, staring in at me.

I knew at that moment that I was the most obvious point of interest in Pacific Village. A chill ran up my spine between twin Glock .40’s and up to my Bluetooth.

“Is this eber?” A pause, the voice asked again.

“We can see you, eber, so listen carefully.” The voice was digital, but very well done, according to the Translator XP I’d attached to the receiver. In two more second the Translator had the caller’s number.

“You have everything you need for your little bear story, now we want you to leave.” The Translator coughed up coordinates on the digital screen and displayed the exact location of the caller.

I have this one good eye. Like hearing too much Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix ruined my ears, seeing too much bullshit in life really screwed up one eye. I think differently because of that bad eye.

I swept the room with my good eye and let the receiver dangle on the cord as I walked quickly across the diner and into the rest rooms, Glock in hand. I was behind the caller as I walked in, and he watched himself get busted in the mirror. I took the fool’s phone and put it in my pocket. It’s really dumb, really, really dumb to fuck with a writer.

I like to talk a lot. Everybody knows eber is a talker. If I’m not talking about Toni Braxton or Sarah Palin or Jesus Christ, I’m talking about metaphysical shit, plain ol’ politics or Armeggeddon.

I said nothing as I decocked and slipped out of the men’s room.

I threw a buck on the counter to cover the coffee, grabbed my laptop and split the joint. I turned the key on the big truck and rolled. The SIMS card out of the fool’s phone slotted into the Translator XL, and wirelessly pulled up on my laptop screen every number in the phone’s call history, linking up a half-dozen calls to the Baltimore number. ‘Okay’ I thought to myself. ‘This is what writing is about.’

I clicked onto my GPS Base screen and it showed me several options for possible escape. The big truck turned onto Magnolia Street while I collected my thoughts. We stopped in front of a picture-perfect little Victorian cottage under the splendid lean of an ancient willow.

A little lady with a cloud of silver hair spun into plaits slowly drew a bamboo rake over her perfectly manicured lawn, a little white poodle nosed lazily, hovering about her every move and conning me slowly.

I like to make lists, I’ll tell you straight up. Hang around me long enough and you might be put on a list. I have no idea whether that is simply the nature of the writer or common practice of the psychotic.

Completely exposed, thoroughly made and being observed as I sat there in my big truck, I started a list of the things I would do if there was some way I came out of this adventure alive.

Going to Bavaria was at the top of the list, to the village where my people have lived for 1,000 years. I would go to my ancestral village, I would drink beer and have sex a woman who looks like she belongs on a label. I would live in a gable apartment over a bakery and write romantic novels by candlelight and watch the snow fall for centuries.

‘A pretty fair list’ I thought to myself, sitting in my big truck. ‘If I indeed made such a good list, I must be in serious trouble.’ My life, as well as the time we live in is nothing if not ironic. The Age of Irony.

“Hello, friend, you look lost” Her sweet voice retrieved me from catatonia and seemed to land me in a safe place. I was suspicious.

“I was about to have some tea on the patio with my friend” she pointed to the dog “perhaps you’d care to join us and I can help you find wherever it is you need to go.” She offered a little smile with warm eyes.

She came out on the patio with a porcelain tea pot and a saucer of butter cookies. Actually, maybe it was a plate. I took a picture. Her name was Virginy Gamlock, her family had been in Pacific Village from the beginning, and she presumed to know everything.

“I’ll bet you are having the devil of a time getting your story” said Virginy, pouring tea for the poodle and fussing with a recalcitrant Lilac.

“You needn’t say anything, I know what you’re thinking” she said quietly, “Why would I tell you what is going on if nobody else will?”

Her poodle lapped up the tea, crunched on cookies, delirious.

My senses were on full alert, every breath measured and heartbeat counted for. ‘Damned good cookies’ I thought to myself.

“There’s more to my life than baking cookies, thank you,” she said, refilling my cup. “I can help you with your story if you will do something for me.” Her smile grew, reaching into her silver curls.

“You are very charming, eber” she drew to my side with her shiny teapot and ravishing smile “you remind me of my late husband.”

A bit of cookie lodged in my throat. She hovered at my ear.

“Vampires” she whispered “that’s your story and I know them all.”

I choked.

“Now, I want you to meet my daughter.”

We got up to go inside, and I hit the remote to alarm the big truck. The cottage interior was completely antique. I’m no collector, but it looked to me as though nothing had been changed for at least 150 years or more, yet everything inside seemed brand new, never been used.

I followed Virginy up a narrow staircase to the landing and a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, scintillating in the afternoon sun. She knocked on a heavy oaken door and entered, as I hesitated. I caught a whiff of rare fragrances, nuanced by Rachmaninoff’s Symphony #4 playing softly in the background.

Her daughter stood in the corner of what seemed like a sitting room. Sunlight streamed through the window and onto her golden hair, forming a halo about her face. Her pale ivory skin seemed borrowed from some more angelic being than a simple human.

The willowy creature hovered under a portrait next to a hand carved bookcase in a shimmering white gown, her delicate white fingers clutched at her throat as though searching for a lost string of pearls. Her almost colorless lashes fluttered as she slowly raised her lowered lids to reveal a stunning pair of light blue, transparent eyes.

I, living as roughly as I do, could not help but feel I was intruding in this rarified place. A place where no one of my breed should ever be found, fit as we are for the open ground and vernal grottos, pounding seas and frothing headlands, the searing plains and storming fronts.

No more the raging beast have I ever felt before…half man, half something else, I foundered in the oxygen-thin atmosphere, struggling for breath but seemingly unable to extract it from my surroundings. My gut delivered the all-knowing verdict that I did not belong in this place.

Her face could not have been the result of the common forms of manufacture: bones, muscle and tissue. It had to have been formed from some other substance, something more pure and less subject to happenstance. It was as beautiful as a human face could possibly be, which my gut calculated could only mean it was not human at all.

She did not raise her eyes again until we were introduced, but I did not move to take her hand in greeting. I am always too biased by handshakes, I did not wish to spoil this auspicious beginning.

My mind raced through an index of variables, the one consuming me most ran on the tails of Virginy’s revelation about the blood-suckers. I supposed that if the hours were running closer to twilight I might be concerned. My crucifix and silver bullets were still in the big truck.

She was introduced as Phaedra, and I slipped into third-person mode, stepping outside of myself so as to get a better view of the proceedings. Then I slipped into fourth-person mode so I could keep an eye both eber and what he fondly regards as his Self.

These guys do really bad around women. Trust me. If it weren’t for the big box of fan mail he wrote to Toni Braxton currently housed at the FBI field office in Delaware, eber would be absent any love life at all.

But he’s not going to tell you that.

Phaedra’s eyes consumed me, as though I attempted to cross a river that suddenly became bottomless. I had nothing to cling to when her eyelids were fully raised. My mind kept saying to itself ‘the eyes are the window of the soul.’

Not generally in the habit of reciting homilies in moments of profound stress, I found myself reaching for something that didn’t exist.

Beyond her flawless features and form, heretofore perfection of her silence, the breathless, mysterious fragrance permeating the room, and beyond the arhythmic poundings in my heart, I retrieved a message.

Her scarlet rose lips parted slightly and she turned her face directly into mine. I got that feeling you get when you turn your back to the Grand Canyon while edging your heels inch by inch to the rim.

The Void.

It seemed I could not take my eyes from her, yet I could feel the sky outside fill with clouds and the sun settle on the horizon, clouds rimmed with blazing pink and sullen gold splayed colors across her face. Her skin absorbed the faintest hues and boldest strokes as on a canvas.

At once, I was terrified and intrigued. If she had no soul, what was that…presence within her? What was that power that strained my heart and loins, powered up with strange alchemy, driving me toward lust?

And catastrophe, one lazy hand on the wheel.

I grabbed at tiny silver flecks as I fell headlong into her eyes, nothing could hold me or even slow my descent. Everything seemed pale blue save for the sunset that roamed across her cheeks and brow.

The sun withdrew and the pinks turned to red, the golden to black as they fell from her face, leaving me with those deep blue eyes, now framed by soft lights flickering from the periphery.

“I am very pleased to meet you, eber.” She spoke from another dimension, it seemed. My brain raced to find the place that could manufacture such a sweet, yet erotic tone and bring it to me.

I blinked. Candles lit the room, there was a crackling fire.

“I’m a big fan of your work.” Rachmaninoff thundered.

Like swimming in a rip tide, I could not feel the difference between my head and my feet, could grasp for neither air nor stone. It seemed every filament of control had been abandoned for divine entry into the sacred place of her eyes.

It seemed glacial, but her fingers slowly withdrew from her slender throat, grazed across her silky bodice and took flight to seemingly meet my own. I, who fear nothing but my own darkness, contracted to meet her fingers with mine, finally closing the infinity between our digits.

Rachmaninoff ranged across a complicity of emotions, dredging each realm of tender passions, longing for eloquence. He tore at his music as though it were completely inadequate for his message.

The very instant our fingers touched the sky cracked open and filled the room with blinding light, the exploding thunder seemed to part her lips a millimeter more. Each bolt of lightening urged a fresh crescendo from Sergei Rachmaninoff, who flew into a rage of ecstasy.

In the beginning, it was a single finger that landed on the tip of my own. It was joined by a stronger, but shy partner who felt their way up my sizzling fingers, bringing their friends until her palm fell into mine.

They fit. I closed my fingers around her cool hand, and she around mine. My sight had already been stolen from me, my heart ripped from its underpinnings and now every feeling in my vocabulary was being drained from my body and into her hand, which I could not release.

The strangeness of my loins was both familiar yet completely quixotic to me. My brain and heart have been intoxicated before, but never with the result that now flooded my nether parts. I felt bold, invigorated…like an innocent angel with the horns of a ram.

Until I realized the car alarm in my pocket was going off.

I hastily excused myself and bolted down the stairs into full sunlight. The screeching sirens and flashing strobes of my alarm system brought a small collection of observers around the perimeter…clustered on the sidewalk, talking among themselves on the lawn.

Once the alarm was silenced, I saw the cause of its consternation, a piece of paper on the windshield, trapped under a windshield wiper on the driver’s side.

The paper was blank, save for a bright drop of blood, which slowly faded to nothing as I stood there scanning the knots of people studying me. Phaedra peered down at me from her window on the second floor, her scent still trailed me.

‘Gee’ I thought to myself…that’s pretty cool, except I can get fading blood from the back of a comic book. As for the pyrotechnics upstairs, it may have been blood pressure, my imagination.

Also, I’ve been living alone in the woods.

An unmarked, stainless steel Hummer with black windows and a thin bar of blue lights sat menacingly across the street. A shiny black windowless van with a dome on the roof parked a half block away and a Sheriff’s Department pursuit bike slowly idled up the street past where I stood, my key in the door of the big truck.

Neighbors and onlookers went about their business, disappearing into their homes while continuing to stare at me, or watch me out their windows. The rumble of the big engine was never more welcome as I dropped into gear and made a slow but determined exit.

Needless to say, I was not alone.

The Sheriff’s pursuit bike didn’t stay around long, but the black van, the stainless steel Hummer and some assorted vehicles followed me through the village and out onto the highway north. An old Cadillac hearse picked up the caravan at some point, and the half-dozen vehicles, my big truck in the lead, rolled up the winding road and into the mist.

The narrow, two-lane road hung to the edge of the cliffs as I made my way up the coast. The shoulder was so sparse and unforgiving it appeared one more inch of erosion would pitch the asphalt track onto the jagged rocks and pounding surf below.

I soon found a narrow margin between the roadway and a bluff that would allow me just enough room to park the big truck. The driver’s door hung nearly to the edge…I could see the rocks out my window. The other vehicles were forced to pass me by, then jockey for positions for the next ten minutes as I watched the circus from my perch.

I took out my stash, rolled a nice doobie and stretched my legs out on the seat, the back of my head hanging out the driver’s window. I sparked my lighter and quickly filled the cabin with the vagrant smell of success. The hearse rolled past again, still trolling for a place to park.

Nothing moved for a good half-hour, except for an occasional cloud of smoke evacuating the big truck and disappearing into the mist as I watched the sun drop toward the horizon. For the first time in days my kneecaps tingled, as though the constant force of gravity had momentarily been suspended of its duty.

A quickening of exhaustion swept over me, pulling me into the seat and tugging at my eyelids. ‘I must be vigilant’ I thought to myself, then I reconnoitered the stub of the joint.

‘I must be stoned’ I reckoned quietly to my Self.

I was rocked from my turgid slumber by a familiar but disturbing noise…as quickly as I could discern the sound two fighter jets soared past, shaking the sky only hundreds of feet above the ocean. They rose sharply and circled back marking their territory with wrath and thunder.

They were soon followed by four heavy helicopter gunships following the coastline from the south and headed for us. The highway filled with flashing red and blue strobes as a convoy of emergency vehicles rumbled up the coast in my direction.

Within moments, my little section of the Coast Highway One was littered with military vehicles followed by a half-dozen black Suburban agency vehicles with hidden lights flashing. They escorted a big yellow school bus up the highway and brought it to a halt next to my big truck, air brakes hissing to a lock.

Inches from my mirror, kids stared into my open window with big eyes and beatific smiles as I waved.

The four heavy gunships hovered overhead, trembling everything beneath them. They each trained brilliant spotlights on the bus and on the surrounding area. Me and the big truck were drenched in light.

An airy sound rose out on the horizon, like a soft tornado of human choruses that slowly and rapturously built into a wall of sound, followed by streaks and balls of light and flashing colors filling the eventide sky.

A huge golden orb suddenly materialized, hovering quietly as all other sounds faded to silence. A voice rose from the depths of the sea and fell from the heavens above. That voice was Morgan Freeman.

“Greetings, Earthlings. I have come for more children.”

Compressed air hissed as the school bus door opened.

A flaming sapphire ring appeared in front of the orb, intersected by a brilliant golden bridge that joined the orb and the bus.

“Well, eber, I’m so glad your boss sent you to cover this story” the huge Morgan Freeman voice expounded. “I am a big fan of your work.” The Morgan Freeman voice boomed, “You tell it like it is. No bullshit.”

The shiny faces of the children were framed by their uplifted arms as they floated from the school bus onto the bridge, and up to the orb.

“The last time I was here” said Morgan Freeman voice, “ the portal broke and children were injured on the rocks below. I took the remains into town. The parents can have closure, knowing how humans are.”

A long chain of shiny faces disappeared into the orb.

“I hope the incident didn’t cause any problems.”

In a flash the orb was gone. The military convoy turned around and rolled south, followed by the agency cars. The big yellow bus headed up the highway to eventually find a place to turn around, five miles away.

I was alone in resounding darkness. My ears rang from the jets, the choppers and the Morgan Freeman voice. I was half-blind as well. I dug around the seat for my lighter, fired the roach and smoked in the dark.

From the periphery, a sickly, yellow light hovered floated out there in the darkness. It curved and bobbed and grew closer, moving in from the north at ground level. It was followed by another light. A red one.

It was the old black hearse, rolling with one headlight, and a single taillight on the other side, heading back to Pacific Village. It slowed almost imperceptibly where I sat puffing the bones of my labor.

It was time to call New York with a fresh story pitch.