A Voyage of Understanding
By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin
Part of the Sinclair Narratives
July 13th, 1923:
Seward, Alaska
“Do you have the time?”
“No sir,” responded a man wearing the uniform of a WWI doughboy, “I’m supposed to be keeping watch; this is the president’s Train after all.”
“No, what time is it?” continued the portly man in his fifties. He was well-worn beyond his years, showing signs of hard drinking by his pallor and the roadmap running across his nose. His voice was taxed by speaking over the steam that was being released by the pistons. He seemed well accustomed to smoke billowing around him in tight quarters. It was hard to tell where the cigar smoke stopped and the steam began. “The time my boy?”
“I’m sorry Mr. President, I didn’t see it was you…3:45, sir,” said the gentleman, looking up from his Waltham Depollieur wristwatch.
“… Let me think for myself—I’ll ask my own questions. I’ll get to it; now hush up!”
“Sorry sir,” the guard said, removing his cavalry hat to see him better as if it would remove his confusion.
“Oh, nothing. My traveling companion is a bit pushy.”
“Yes, sir, ... um, why are you not in your Pullman?” continued the guard as he began pulling on his jodhpurs.
“My friend here wants to know your opinion of Washington—what the ‘John Doe’ thinks of us cronies,” said the president as he seemed to be trying to hush his compatriot with his hands as he rose and fell in the window.
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Candidly and honestly?”
“Yes and nothing less.”
“Well, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
“I fear I never had to worry about my enemies, but my friends and my wife—you haven’t seen her, have you…?”
“I was noticing her and her elegant traveling companion boarding that strange Dodge toward the front of the train.”
“I keep thinking the car got turned around in some Keystone Cops caper after it stalled on the tracks—I keep thinking the train cars behind it will squish her at any moment,” the president said, hanging his head from the window. Then he looked up at the patrolman with a smile, “One could hope—yes, OK! My friend is obstinate on learning your opinion…”
“Well, I never felt, well, having Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury—it’s like giving the robbers keys to the bank and having his favorite hunting dog’s pup the guard dog of the Federal Reserve.”
“You think Crissinger is his lapdog.”
“Well…yes, sir,” continued the tall Irishman, who just squared his shoulders and lengthened his back to its full extent. “Tariffs might’ve supplied our fair nation in the past, but not since the Sixteenth Amendment and its sire, The Federal Reserve Act.”
“How so?”
“Well it made us all debtors,” he continued as he looked up at him sideways, not breaking eye contact, with his calvary hat back on. “Imports paid for your way in the past; now we pay Mr. Morgan and his bank. Mellon is handing out copies of the vault keys to his friends, cutting taxes on them...”
“Once you get him going, it seems like our new friend here can get a good jag on; never mind, continue please.” Harding said to the person inside the compartment.
“...as the rest of us carry the vault on our shoulders. He needed an income tax to pay the interest they proffered from a Congress mortgaged to the hilt—with us little guys paying it.
“He doesn’t hold back.”
“Farmers are suffering as the store merchants raise their prices without foreign competition and the bankers foreclose on the family farm. They are forcing the farmers off their farms since they require workers in their factories. Merchant Bankers will never let a tariff succeed.”
“My friend here just pulled me up by my short hairs,” said Harding as he looked back over his shoulder. “I did leave government in the hands of people my wife thought were smarter than I. You rise quickly in this cesspool that way.” He paused with some sad remembrances and then continued, “I’m also afraid, when you begin to be more self-assertive…you can count the end of your days.” After, Daughtery had seen him throw Forbes up against the wall asking what had been carried out in his name; it was the beginning of the end, and he knew it. He unleashed the hydra.
“How so...” he continued to tip his hat further up with his brow furrowed like his fields back in New Jersey.
“Oh, never mind—what is your name?”
“Sergeant Ralph Dowgin of the New Jersey State Troopers, General Wood asked General Schwarzkopf to spare a special detail for your train, sir.”
“Would you like a hit…?”
Ralph looked both ways before he reached up to grab the president’s silver flask. Even when drinking with the president, you had to be careful during Prohibition.
“Don’t worry, it’s not Mellon’s hooch—though I’m afraid it’s Daugherty’s.”
Ralph just smiled and handed it back. “That Teapot, I think, is a magician’s sleight of hand to hide the bigger rabbit….” he faded out to the train whistle that lost the round to the orchestra of steam that churned away his last words like a night of shaken martinis.
“Sergeant, what was that…” he asked as the train pulled away with his head and shoulders out the window before he turned to smack his friend’s hands down.
“I know; you told me there was more. I should have had you deep within my kitchen cabinet—do you want a snort? I can’t drink this stuff no more…
“It goes right through you,” Warren continued after a snicker. “Me too; you should smell my hearth after an all-night poker game. My bladder shrunk to make room for my belly, I’m afraid...”
“Sir, may I get you anything?” asked the porter.
“Get my friend here an Old Fashioned; I think that used to be your drink,” Warren looked at his friend, who only shrugged. “Oh, I get it; it goes right through you….”
“Mr. President, what goes through me…”
“Not you, him,” he went on as he looked back at his friend. “Charles, that’s right, he can’t see you.”
Next to Warren was Forbes’s lackey Cramer, who committed suicide, or was murdered, to make sure the Veteran’s Scandal ended with Forbes. Little worse for wear with an external hairy red epiglottis hanging above his right ear. He wore a shawl-collared sweater and a Stetson wool fedora, still immaculate, despite his murder in March. Charles was proud that his fashion sense was not besmirched in death if he could not say as much about his coiffure.
Warren jut looked at him, taking him in fully for the first time and winced a little. Then Cramer changed his wardrobe into something more Dickensian. ‘Hope that is a little better, the head piece is a little uncomfortable for me though; I know what Christ felt like now, dam holly leaves!”
“Sir, your wife is looking for you,” interjected the porter. Even this Nigerian felt easy enough to command the president, as was the common air of those friends he couldn’t keep off the train. He did look forward to his time with Wallace, his corn-fed Secretary of the Interior. A man of humble and astute mind, if anyone, came from the common clay. And his son Henry A.
“OK, you can go now; I’m not sitting in that death trap with her. Now Charles...”
“Excuse me, sir!”
“I’m not talking to you now; you can leave. Go, shoo! Off with you!” Warren said as he closed the compartment door on the escaping porter.
Now back in June, he met Jesse Smith in the most peculiar of ways. He just stood to relieve himself in the hearth once more, not trusting any of the people at the poker table. One hand was on his hose as the other kept his cards against his chest. He heard a soft, meek voice over his shoulder, “Excuse me.”
He sprayed across his Oxfords as he dropped more than his cards.
“What…” he exclaimed as he almost zipped up some skin as he stepped back into the ashes and hit the mantle. His brain was confused as his nerves pushed him off the mantle toward the disembodied voice. Only when his head began spinning did he see Jesse out of the corner of his eye. The more he focused, the clearer he got, allowing him to look straight at him. Smith still had some mustard-stained napkins and bubble gum wrappers around his collar like some strange bib. Daugherty had his brains blown out over the garbage can of his hotel room not to get charged extra by the management.
Warren vaguely remembered this man Daugherty had running hooch and paper bags of money between Capone and his poker buddies. He was the type most people would just step on his shoes on a bus and continue on by.
When he gained the courage, he looked to his ‘buddies’ to see their expressions, but they were like an Eskimo after he got caught with another woman, frozen on his doorstep, after trying to pick his own lock.
“Ignore them; if the steak is red and the bourbon free, they will still be there when I’m done with you.”
“What!”
“I was a pushover like you; I just came about it cheaper.”
“Hmm...”
“I know what it feels like to have a hand up my ass, too,” Smith frowned. “The only difference is your wife has your balls in her clench, and I have Daugherty’s, hmm, in my clench. I could never see what was behind me, but I will give you that ability.”
Harding was silent and dumbfounded.
“I’m that Dickensian ghost of the past,” Smith continued as he took Daugherty’s martini from his hand. “It’s not the first time I shared this pig’s spit, so don’t worry.”
“That is the least I’m worried about...”
During the evening he went through his past and returned from Tir na nÓg to find the game never paused as he returned to the table and folded with his ash and charred cards.
He proceeded to rewrite his will, stopped drinking, and got on the first train out of Washington.
Nobody from that poker game was invited.
…
The second of three who visited him was Cramer, who used Sergeant Dowgin and others that day, at each station stop, to show him the present state of the nation.
As he left the compartment and Charles behind, he didn’t leave to find his old bitch of a wife but sought out the Wallaces and the old doc, who must be enjoying their break from his insistent, continuous, if not monotonous, all-week bridge games. That is where I met the president, Henry Sinclair; everyone’s favorite immortal... I would be if I could tell most folks.
Schwarzkopf had asked the man in the Baltimore Coat to join the president after he expressed concerns over his life. I was also contacted by the latest Comptroller of the Currency, Daniel Crissinger, who replaced Mellon’s stooge, to meet the latest Dupin on board.
After Poe’s faked death, President Tyler appointed him secret agent Dupin, named after his detective, to protect him from Webster, Clay, and Calhoun who had recently assassinated President Harrison. Poe and I kept Tyler safe, but we lost presidents Polk and Taylor afterward. In time, the comptroller took over our agency.
Eventually, Poe, the man in the Baltimore Coat, died in his eighties quietly outside of Boston near where his mother grew up. Me, I just go on like the rock of ages. Recently, I had to give up my life as Edward Searle and buy another headstone. It’s been a while since I openly used the name Henry Sinclair, which I was baptized in the 14th century in Orkney.
They did try digging up my body, though this time…
On the train with me was Bjorn, one of my reincarnated third-generation Viking crew, who sailed with me looking for Vinland. By his 18th birthday, his memory of that life flooded back within the haze of a vat of mead and some Jimsonweed I snuck into his drink. To most people, he looks like my muscle. However, he stopped wrestling me when he was sixteen. He was never much for foibles.
I was sitting with Henry C. and Henry A. and Doc, waiting for the latest man in the Baltimore Coat. I was catching up on The New York Times and my friend’s paper, The Daily Dispatch out of Manchester, England. The story has not changed in five hundred years, but the details and names have changed.
“Why are you always reading those rags?” Bjorn asked. “What do you care about what is going on in Whatthefuckistan!”
I left him waiting for my response while I finished my licorice. It’s much better than chocolate; it takes time to finish chewing it, and it prevents hand-to-mouth disease. “One world,” I answered as I folded the paper on my lap.
Bjorn had that sideways, lost dog look when the president joined our table in the dining car. Not a card in sight.
“It’s good to sit and listen for a while; please continue on…”
“Warren, I think you sat too long in your life and just listened,” the elder Wallace said as he sipped his tea. “This country would have been better off if you were president for the last two years.”
“I’m not sure,” Harding said, looking at his lap with his arms out, taking stock in his person. “I’m just a hick newspaper editor and the premium stock of an Ohioan of the second class.”
I interjected, “You know what is round on both ends and hi in the middle.”
Warren snickered but remained silent. The rest just looked from one to another. Henry C. looked at Warren, but he only smiled. Henry asked.
A man had just entered the car and was now sitting next to me, “O-Hi-O.” He was wearing a slightly out-of-fashion brown duster with wide lapels.
He offered his hand to me. His grip was stronger than the grippe on your colon, surprising for a man as diminutive as him. “Major General Smedley Butler.”
I knew him from the papers, but I thought he was taller.
Harding looked up at him and then scanned the room. He then realized that the patrons at the tables on both ends of the car and the ones in the middle were all over six feet by the way their heads reached the upper windows. Then he made eye contact with the gentleman on the outside of the rear right table. He nodded at him, and Sergeant Dowgin came and sat next to him.
“Mind if I return the favor?” Ralph took his teacup and liberated some applejack. “Try this; my brother makes it back on the farm; it’s better than any Piney gin he has confiscated going to Capone.”
“Is it a conflict of duty having your brother bootleg?” asked Warren.
“No, he outranks me, for now, that is…” His brother was a captain in the NJ State Police.
It was then Doc took Warren’s cup, “Pretty smooth, express my thanks to…”
“Dave.”
“To Dave.”
Smedley raised the glass Ralph poured him, as me and the Wallaces hoisted mugs of hot chocolate.
The night went on through the mirth to the other side of concern.
“Who do you think it is?” I asked.
“I just started to take account of the last two years; I was too busy glad-handing and shuffling in smoke-filled rooms to see clearly,” answered Warren. “Those pushing for Civil Rights know me for saying one thing and my ‘administration’ doing another, so I lost them after Tulsa, needless of my speech. Tensions are high. Then the same goes for the unions,” Warren said. He made a speech in Oklahoma after black and white veterans opened up war on each other with the airforce bombing the town after a white girl yelled at a black boy in an elevator.
“You might still have them; is there any truth that you might have some African blood?” I asked.
“...For the business-minded, I gave too much hope to the slaves of Pharaoh. Overseas, some think Lenin was poisoned. He began switching from railroads to tractors, you know H.C., that many bankers want to see those Reds dependent on our grain supplies so in the end they want to see Morgan’s railroad friends succeed.”
“True, I did work with the McCormicks to get some tractor deals in Russia, they seemed to dry up suddenly.” H.C. Wallace answered.
Warren paused and looked to his lap and raised his left hand before his chin adjusted his gaze out the window, “Morgan also would like the Germans’ reparations lowered so they would begin to pay back the Allied Nations so they can pay back the Bank of England and his bank on their loans.”
“Why so?” Bjorn asked.
“In the end, he is using Mellon to pay the Germans to serendipitously fill his wallet. Double-dipping as it is, through his wife and Rothschild friends he owns the Bank of England along with the Fed,” Warren answered. “ I wouldn’t put it past him to have one of his many employees seek me out like a prairie dog looking out at the morning sun.”
I have known from the first time I met Jack; he was George Peabody, the founder of JS Morgan & Co., when Julius Spencer was his junior partner.
In later life, George had a Time Machine built in the middle of the Bank Plaza Building in Salem. He found Doc Holyoke’s laboratory in the basement of his old Salem Savings Bank. The Doc was looking into longevity, hoping to publish his findings in his New England Journal of Medicine. He came across the idea of time loops through bobble heading.
He realized that as you nodded off, you entered another dimension of time while daydreaming. Furthermore, he could remember entire conversations in which, on our side of the curve, only seconds had passed. And vice versa, when you felt like seconds passed, and you missed someone’s entire train of thought. He practiced extending and shrinking time and developed an apparatus to further his abilities.
It was Rev. Bentley working for Thomas Perkins. Perkins gave Taft’s father the building for their crypt for the Skull & Bones. Bentley was the biggest voice calling Rev. Morse of Yale a fraud with his Illuminati scare. It was he who helped Holyoke along to the other dimension, permanently, in his sleep before his hundred and first birthday. A little something from Stephen White’s lab in the North River. White got away with the murder that the Tell-Tale-Heart was based on. He was the money behind President John Quincy Adams.
“Henry,” the three of us turned to Ralph, “Um, Sinclair, that is, you haven’t tried any?”
I lifted my glass back to him, but I settled back with my hot chocolate on my lap and began looking out the window.
Bentley lived in the house Edward Derby was confined to in his wife’s body as she went about town in his. It was also built by Crowninshield, who brought the stoned elephant to America before Stephen White poisoned him. White planned Harrison’s assassination with Clay and Webster.
I think that Lovecraft character who has been prying about Salem keeps daring to write a story about Derby’s curse, something about a thing on the doorstep. I tried reading one of his tomes, it is now a doorstop on my doorstep.
“Sinclair,” Henry A. called, “tell them about the time with the monkey and midget donkey!”
I bobbed my head awake. I waved and smiled, allowing him to finish the story.
So Bentley offered Holyoke’s finds, for a price, to Peabody. It wasn’t till after the Civil War that Peabody raided Charles Grafton Paige’s laboratory before he burnt it down. Then later Paige, in his section of the Smithsonian, did manage to mix his science of electromagnetism and superconductors with Holyoke’s findings to have a working machine. Before that lab caught fire too…
Peabody didn’t trust his partner’s son completely, so he would zap back in time to become Jack Morgan. Then, when his father, J.P. Morgan, began to be a burden trying to control the newly created Fed, he simply made sure he permanently nodded off too, and ran it as Jack. Stephen White killed Harrison in hopes of making the Fed at that time.
“Sinclair, I was about to check your pulse,” Henry A. said as I bobbed back in time…for us to go through a tunnel.
Nothing happened.
As we broke through the darkness, during the momentary blindness as our cones adjusted, a volley of shots broke through the window.
Ralph slammed the president’s head under him as he pulled his pistol. Dupin pulled out his Winchester and scanned out the window. In the distance, the train continued to bend in front of our car.
The shots stopped, and there was no one in sight. Maybe it was someone in the many trees we were passing under now at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Sir, we should retire to your Pullman and close the steel shutters,” Smedley ordered. The car also had a concrete floor and roof between two layers of two-inch steel.
“Gentlemen,” Warren began, “are you ready for another round of Bridge?”
Hoover just walked in to check on his president and balked at the thought. Next to him was Keno, brandishing his rifle he had since storming San Juan Heights with our departed friend, Teddy. Roosevelt that is. General Wood was in Cuba then too. Harding defeated him in the Republican Primary. Could Wood be positioning soldiers on the front cars that Smedley wasn’t under the control of? The red cars...
I walked over to the bar to get another hot cocoa. The Nubian porter was behind the bar shaking a martini. I looked to tip him, but when I looked up, I saw him morph into the old professor from the Miskatonic University. “Oh, hi, Albert.”
He had my cocoa ready for me. “Hello, Henry!” he said as he finished adding anise and some cinnamon.
“Perfect, as usual,” after sipping the nectar. “I know Taft is on board keeping the Illuminati informed, but I haven’t seen him much.” President Taft’s, now Superior Court Justice, father founded the Skull & Bones.
“You know that old adage about tomcats inflamed after coitus and getting stuck?” I nodded back, sipping my drink. “Taft had eaten some bad oysters with this red Irish lassie and swelled up—I heard she was hoping other parts than his stomach would grow, but they can’t extricate him from the compartment. They just keep sending fresh girls in.”
I shivered. “I have seen that naturalist enough in my life.”
“Hughes is in the next compartment; they have been competing with each other. They were sending the girls back and forth. They have been fighting over the bench and bed,” laughed Albert.
“What?”
“They both vie to be Chief Justice.”
“Oh, Taft could do more lasting damage for Yog-Sothoth and the Illuminati through the years on the court.”
“His lodge brother, Henry Luce, just put out their propaganda rag, Time,” the old professor went on polishing his mugs. “This train is worse than the contingent the Popes brought that destroyed that town, with all the whoring that created the conclave…”
“Yeah, I heard Morgan was told by Schacht for Luce to interview some WWI corporal—some guy named Hitler they’re promoting…”
“Schacht is up to something. Overnight he transforms the German economy from four million marks to the dollar to be on par? Sounds fishy. I wonder if they plan to wreck our Supreme Court like they are doing in the Weimar Republic.”
“Hindenburg is trying to keep public opinion up by ‘erecting’ a large dirigible with his name blazing on it like a large international billboard,” I said as I had stepped back and poked my hand through the bottom of my pocket. “I think it will go over like a led balloon.”
“How about those gams?” Albert said, pointing to the woman frozen in the car entrance. “Why didn’t we let them wear pants before—did you see her bum before she sat down? You couldn’t see that in a skirt.”
I looked at the Nordic beauty to my right frozen on a daiquiri, but still smoking...
“I hear Schacht is insisting on putting Thor’s Cross on the tail fin; the Thule are up to no good again. You believe they are still trying to call Norwegian a Germanic language—Old Norse is the root of Germanic…a hundred years ago Germany didn’t even exist!”
“Not that one—the blonde next to you, behind you...” Albert pointed and looked her up and down, ignoring how I tried changing the conversation. He took his time and let a little drool escape before he wiped his mouth. Albert could afford the look safely since she was caught in a Nordic blast, even though you could see a little bit of eyebrow go up in scorn.
“She isn’t Caroline.”
“And you’re up tighter than a librarian tying her bun for Sunday mass, worrying about the redheaded half of his mother’s twins at the office Christmas party who grabbed her buns, thinking he left his buns in her oven—loosen up! Pucker up and sock her one.”
“Come on, who do you think took the pop shot?”
“Cherchez la femme…”
“I have looked already; she is not my type,” I said, looking back at the girl at the entrance.
“You’re pathetic—your sentence will be over sooner than later. Have you heard that the Soxs are playing their first game under their new owner?”
“They are playing this new team in New York, the Yengees. Twain would have loved a New York ‘Baseball’ team!”
“Those bums!” We both agreed and I shared some of my licorice with him; I forgot about his bad teeth…
Continued on the Last Story...
So I, Cthulhu, is wondering who ruined my sheets?
Origami Unicorns
Life is pretty simple, Tyson told himself, “We decanted you in the lab. After we copy the memories of your donor onto your brain, then we will release you into the custody of your owner. The most powerful man in the galaxy who created you as a way of getting even with the person whom you are a clone of.
“The memories he gave you belong to one Tyson Michael Lane,” the man who looked just like him said. Lane was a rising star in the Interstellar Rocket Racing League. The young man known for his fearlessness and love of danger. Unfortunately, this trait existed both on and off the track. Now the alpha clone Tyson had filled in the beta clone; neither are still functional...
Tyson had made an enemy of Roland Raycraft. The owner of Raycraft Interstellar. The firm that had invented the artificial wormholes that made interstellar travel possible. Being the owner of this technology made Raycraft the most powerful man in the history of mankind.
The real Tyson slept with his wife.
Elle Dumont Raycraft was the Helen of Troy to Raycraft’s self-aggrandizement, Zeus. Lane was going to pay a Promethean price for his dalliance and there was no Hercules in sight.
The Tyson Michael Lane clone smirked at the copied memories of what the real him and Mrs. Raycraft had done behind her husband’s back. He told himself that his real self should have known better, but admitted the challenge was just too hard to resist.
The last memory to get programmed into his brain was of him and Elle meeting in the room above the small Arabian restaurant, in the Martian Quarter on Nguyen World. They enjoyed each other, poking her husband in the eye with their affair. Now the Tyson clone would pay for the sins of the donor.
As his rocket raced past Jeminar IV’s north pole, the clone collected the actual memories he had since his creation. He was not sure if he was going to win this one…
He was the first of two clones to lose this race.
…
“Where am I?” Tyson, or Ty001, had asked as he opened his eyes to find himself on an examination table.
“The bio-lab,” a doctor had told him. “Do you know who you are?”
“Ah, yeah,” he had laughed, not yet knowing he was a copy and not who he thought he was.
The doctor asked how he was feeling. Tyson jumped up. He was wearing a white one piece suit with TML 001 monogrammed on the front. He looked at the entrance to the section of the bio-lab he was in.
“Calm down,” a voice in Tyson’s head had told him, “rash action may lead to this program taking harsh measures.”
Ty001 stopped in his tracks. There was a separate AI voice implanted in his brain.
“So Raycraft caught us,” Lane told the doctor and TY001.
“Affirmative,” to Ty001’s amazement, the AI voice in his head was audible to others and projected his creation on their will.
Lane stumbled; the doctor had grabbed him before he could fall.
“I’m not really a clone,” Ty 001 had whispered in stunned disbelief.
“You most assuredly are,” his inner voice confirmed, “Your acceptance of this fact will make our relationship far more conducive.”
“Why?,” Ty 001 blurted out.
“That is up to Mr. Ronin to tell you,” the doctor informed him.
“Who is Mr. Ronin?” Ty001 asked, unsure what was happening and surprised that the AI voice let him still talk.
“You and the others on the team will be meeting him in an hour’s time,” the AI voice informed him.
“Others?” Lane had questioned, out loud, as his head spun.
The doctor looked to respond, but thought better of it and lead the two, or three of them, down the hallway. There on the examination tables were two more copies of himself. Lane’s jawed dropped.
“I would like you two clones to meet TY003 and Ty004,” the doctor said. In the long room, there were several more that didn’t wake up yet.
TY003 and Ty004, Lane wondered. “Where is TY002?” Lane had asked the doctor, fearing he knew the answer as he played with an origami unicorn he kept in his pocket.
The doctor just looked at him, peering over his glasses.
It was really true, Lane had to admit. He was a clone, along with the rest. He was only TY002. Where was the real him? What did Raycraft or this Mr. Ronin want with him...them?
The memories in Ty002 finished downloading into his brain.
The first clone on the table opened his eyes and immediately stared at TY001.
“A clone!” TY003 blurted out while jumping off his examination table.
“You are both clones,” Ty001’s inner AI voice told TY003.
“Fuck, we are the Borg...” Ty001 yelled, hitting his head.
Ty003 then looked to his left and saw TY004 still receiving memories. He jumped back while swearing.
“Language,” the AI had stated, followed by Ty002 shaking as if he had been shocked.
“Damn,” Ty001 whispered.
This was followed by an immediate shock which left TY001 on the floor along with TY002.
…
Ty001 was shaking himself free of the truth of his life. His brief existence would come to a quick end if he did not concentrate on the task at hand. Mr. Ronin had warned him and the other two clones, present, that losing had consequences. Not trying had consequences. Ty004 had come in dead last in the first race of the day while TY003 had won his while taking a lot of risks.
Now TY001 looked and could see with half a world to go, he was still in fourth place out of six contestants. He did not want to learn what consequences Ronin had told them about when they met; not sure what was happening to Ty003 and Ty004. He pulled back on the stick and the engines on his rocket racer went full throttle.
The entire vehicle shook from the gained momentum. Tyson (Ty001) immediately moved into third place. The equator that was also the finish line loomed with dancing red lasers shooting into the sky. Tyson’s rocket moved up on the rocket in second place. Tyson activated the shooter.
In legal rocket racing, the League banned things like weapons and ramming. On worlds outside the Confederation’s legal sanction, it was anything goes. Illegal rocket racing was a deadly spectacle, but highly popular. Tyson held the throttle in his right hand while lining the projectile blaster up with his left. The rocket continued to shake as he went even faster.
“GOTCHA!,” Tyson exclaimed as his shots hit the other racer, causing them to veer out of his way, even as the sound of someone’s weapons hitting his rocket echoed through the craft.
Tyson looked and saw a red light appear in his holo-rep of the rocket’s status.
“Number 3 booster going offline,” the AI in his head reported.
“Thanks Jiminy,” Tyson told the AI program as he grimaced.
There was no way he would catch the lead rocket now. To make matters worse, the remaining two ships still in the race were coming up fast behind him. One was close, but the other was going full speed. Tyson did his best to put his trembling craft between the faster opponent and the finish line.
“How’s our armor?,” Tyson demanded to know from the AI as the rocket behind his own opened fire on him.
“73%,” the AI reported, “61%.”
The armor had gotten down to 38% by the time Tyson had gotten across the finish line. His opponent continued to fire, bringing the armor down to 12%. Tyson looked at his screen.
“Who the Hell is that?,” he asked the AI.
“The adversary in question goes by the code name Blue Valkyrie,” the program informed him.
He barely won the race.
“Good job Juan,” the chief mechanic Dkomo Aweji told Tyson as he landed in the Ronin Racers’ staging area.
The Chief mechanic called TY001 Juan, TY002 Doos, and TY003 Tree as a joke. He couldn’t care less for Ty004. The canopy popped open once he had landed. Looking over his shoulder as the tech team helped him out of the smoking vehicle. He saw the redhead who almost killed him get out of her ship. She was the Blue Valkyrie. She was heading to the winner’s circle.
Ty002 had already been there yesterday, taking second. He smiled a smug smile at Tyson.
“First place,” Tree said, “not bad.”
TY004 was beside himself in more ways than one. Not only had he come in last, but his rocket was totaled from the previous race. It would have to be written off. He had now to find out what Mr. Ronin’s consequences were...
To find out look for the next episode...
Strainer’s Farm
The first installment of
Into the Wood at Night
by Michelle LeBlanc
I walked into Dawn’s convenience store. It was an abnormally small town, and I noticed people staring at me. I grabbed a box of non-dairy powdered protein packets, mouthwash, a case of soda, and some beef jerky. I headed to the counter.
“Do you mind?” I snapped at the onlookers. I turned to smile at the pharmacist. “Excuse me, are the scripts ready for Ruby Wolf; do you carry ephedrine sulfate tablets...?” I asked. That’s the pill form of my inhaler. My inhaler was out of stock.
“The what?” she asked with a thick Southern accent. “Wait...are you Gunner Wolf’s niece? Huh…”
“Yes. Do you have the ephedrine sulfate tablets? They are for my asthma.” I informed her. “They told me my regular inhaler is not in stock.”
“I’ll ask the pharmacist, “she said. “I’ll be right back; do you believe in those things your uncle hunts?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “What things?”
“You know, the Bigfoot!” she said in a hushed voice, leaning in close. “Your uncle is in charge of that investigation group that hunts them.” Looking over her glasses she asked, “Do you believe in them?”
“Once again, what are you talking about?” I asked querulously.
“The Bigfoot, you do not know? I am sorry; I’ll be right back,” with a self-aggrandizing swagger, she left for the storeroom.
My uncle was in charge of watching me and my two brothers this summer. Our mom and her boyfriend went away for the season. I was not a fan of my cousins, since I was the only girl in a group of six boys...
Apparently, according to this woman, my uncle and his buddies were known in town as Bigfoot investigators. Later I found out they were in a group called the BigFoot Investigators Association. I, for one, was not a believer.
My cousin Oakley and my brother Randy walked into the store.
“You ready there, trouble?” Oakley teased. We usually called him Oak.
“Found them!” the cashier said a she rang me up for the ephedrine sulfate tablets. I paid and we left the store to go back to the cabin.
Chapter 2
The ‘Carey’ scene
Little did I know, this wasn’t my uncle’s actual cabin, but a local man named Earl Strainer’s family farm. I don’t know why he lied to me that it was his place. I think Uncle Gunner only said it was his cabin, at first, so I would agree to go with them.
Me and my brothers, Robbie and Randy, were eating dinner with my Uncle Gunner and his sons Oak, Stetson, Knox. His sons just helped themselves to the food on the table, where me and my siblings waited for them to finish loading their plates. I guess you had to fight for your food here or go hungry. Uncle Gunner’s cell rang, and his sons stopped mid bite of their steak tips and stared at him. I was just finishing up my salad.
They put their food down, so I knew it was important...
“Ya, mixed company. OK. I will gather the boys. We will meet you and the guys.
“Yes, we will be leaving in 20 minutes.” Gunner stated.
“Finish up dinner,” Uncle Gunner ordered. “You guys pack up. We got 15 minutes to get out of here. Oak, stay with Ruby and lock up the animals in the barn—lock it up tight and call me if there is a problem.” My cousins nodded and quickly got ready. My brothers just blindly followed.
They grabbed their rifles and packed their duffel bags into the Jeep. The doors were off, and it looked ready for business. They hopped in and drove off into the night. I figured they were going out for some hunting with Gunner’s friends.
…
“Make it quick. See those cows over there?” Oak asked, “They are scared. There is something in the yard.”
I figured he was just trying to scare me.
“I’ll start with the chickens.” I said.
The ground shook with a loud bellowing growl. The hairs on the backs of our necks stood up. I looked at him.
The noise was between the barn and the cabin. We had no idea which way to run. The sound was right in the middle, somewhere, with us!
“Forget about the damn chicken!” Oak said, while taking out his phone. “Guys! It’s in the yard.
“We are unarmed.”
“Oak! What the hell was that?” I questioned, half not believing this was happening.
“Shh! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but get in there with the cows,” he ordered. “I know; they might nip. It’s just until we can get to the cabin or the barn. I’m sure you’re not going to like it, but...” Oak was cut off by some more growling. He motioned for me to haul ass under the cable fence, “As close to the back as possible!”
I was afraid of some of the cows that bit, and he knew that. All I could see were the 20 cows, back-to-back, mooing and backing away from the noise. I stepped into something, and I slipped. Oak helped me up.
“Don’t worry about what you stepped in; that thing is coming our way. He took a few steps closer and noticed some sort of water on the ground. He aimed the light on his hat at it. Then he looked up, and we could see there was blood on the back of the silo. The bushes were bent down, forming a new bloody trail. Two feet into the trail, there was the remaining half of a bovine.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered, half crying out at this point.
“Cow. It was a cow,” Oak said.
“Where the hell is the rest of it?” I cried.
We then heard the bloodcurdling bellowing of the creature again. It was overhead on the roof of the silo. We saw it on two legs, and it had the rest of the cow in its mouth.
Do I dare say to you what it was?
A...a...Umm...Umm, bigfoot!!!!!
What seemed like a gallon of blood, along with the carcass leg, fell out of the bigfoot’s mouth. It roared again as the cow leg fell on me. I screamed as I was knocked onto the ground. I was slightly dazed from being hit with the cow leg, which was almost my weight.
The bigfoot jumped down off the silo like it was nothing. I was so dizzy. Oak helped me get the bloody guts off of me. I jostled the lid of my tablets, but the blood was making my hands slippery and I dropped them. I was wheezing as I bent over to pick them up.
I did not see where it went.
I felt Oak tug on my arm. The next thing I knew, we were in the barn. We locked up. I took off my hoodie, which was drenched in cow blood. I took one of the horse’s blankets and wiped my face, hair, and pants, but I was still covered in blood. Oak handed me his ginormous hoodie, which I was swimming in. There was more growling.
“Oh, shit!” I cried. “I do not want to die here.”
“Ruby! Get down into the storm cellar. Now!” Oak yelled at me as he grabbed a pitchfork and followed me down the ladder. Below, I ran to the farthest point in the small stone cellar. I was breathing heavy, hoping the tablets would kick in. I wish that pharmacy had my regular inhaler...
“What the shit was that?” I faced him. “Please don’t let that be you and the guys messing with me.”
“I cannot get into this with you now,” he snapped. “Please just be very quiet. If that thing comes down here, it can go bad, fast. If it does, I will stab it and do my best for us to trap it long enough for us to leave.”
There was some grumbling, and we could hear the barn door burst open. We held our breath as we heard someone or something climbing down. Oak made sure to have his hat light off before we climbed down. When the thing reached us, Oak screamed! I tried, but I didn’t have enough air yet, but I could tell you I was screaming in the inside.
To our relief, it was Stetson. Oak almost hit him in the face with the pitchfork.
…
“There you guys are!
“You scared the shit out of me!
“You almost hit me with the damn pitchfork!” Stetson gasped.
“You? I damn near pissed myself!” Oak said, looking up exhausted with his hands on his knees. “That Bigfoot was huge!”
“What the hell happened to you?
“You’re drenched in blood!
“What the hell are you doing way the hell down here?” Stetson exclaimed.
Chapter 3
The Aftermath
“The Bigfoot dropped half a cow carcass on her, along with a gallon or more of blood, as it fell out of its damn mouth!” Oak told my uncle.
We were OK, for the exception of my slight injuries.
“Oak, Robbie, and Randy stay in the house in case it comes back—I will do another check of the perimeter with Strainer,” Uncle Gunner ordered. “We will be in for the night and assess the damages in the morning.
“Let me see your head a second, Ruby, um... yeah... most definitely a concussion,” Uncle Gunner assessed. “I’ll evaluate you again when I get back to see if we are going to the hospital tonight or laying low till morning.”
“Is it safe for me to shower and change…” I asked, petrified. I had never been more scared in my whole life! Gunner and the boys walked out of the living room.
“I would try to hug you and comfort you, sis, but you are so ripe!” Robbie said as he backed away. “Damn, you stink!”
“Good lord—you stink!” Randy laughed. “So potent! Better you than me!”
“Shut up!”
I loved my brothers…
I still say I should have stayed at Gunner’s actual place and not here. Nevertheless, I took a shower. It was an old-fashioned shower with a giant metal sunflower head and these strange levers. How do you turn the water on...
I dressed again; with all those boys around, I didn’t want them to tease me in my footie pajamas. I went to where they were in the kitchen eating cookies and soda. “Guys! How do I work the damn shower? The thing is older than Gunner.”
Oak came back into the bathroom and flipped the levers back and forth, which turned the water on. “There you go. If the water shuts off before you are done, you may need to re-flip them.”
I rolled my eyes, completely annoyed. This old as hell shower was going to be a pain in the ass, and I was not in the mood.
I quickly learned to appreciate the shower at home.
Chapter 4
A Hunting We Will Go...???
“We got orders from Uncle Gunner and Strainer to meet up with them,” Randy stated.
“Oh hell no!” I yelled. “You can go play bigfoot investigators or hunters all you want. But I’m staying in this cabin until morning. Whichever of you morons is still alive can drive me out of here.” Especially with my concussion.
“I know you are freaked out, but our orders are to go help them,” Robbie stated.
“Sorry, but I do not care about orders. I had my share of Bigfoot for my entire life!” I cried. My head hurt a little, and I was dizzy, so I sat down.
“Just think about the story you will have for Aurora!” Randy stated, trying to convince me to go with them. Aurora was my friend who knew about different types of monsters and demons. Until now, I loved her, but that part of her I thought was a little strange…
“I would rather live to fight another day,” I cried. “My head hurts!”
“How about if you get part of Robbie and Randy’s cut of their payday?” Oak asked.
“What pay, I’m getting paid? No way, I’m giving her half!” Randy opposed. “Hell no!”
“Make it a very nice cut of their money, and you have a deal—no take backs!” Ruby was messing with her brother.
I was still very uneasy concerning the bigfoot.
“Honestly, I wanted to go home in the morning or to the hospital.”
Randy felt relieved he didn’t have to give me half of his windfall.
…
They gathered up more ammunition and all the guns and items for booby-traps that they could carry. We grabbed some water and headed out.
We ended up at a campsite a mile and a half into the forest, where we met Uncle Gunner and Strainer. There was a gunshot 500 feet in front of us as we left the truck. Oak leaned over as if to shield me.
“Who the hell was that? No one is supposed to be in these woods except us,” Stetson stated to Gunner.
“Kids! Stay back;” Uncle Gunner ordered, “we will go ahead to see who it is.”
“Who’s there!” Uncle Gunner yelled. He had a voice that carried and was louder than using a megaphone! I would hate to get in trouble in that household!
“Doctor Stevens!” he yelled back. “We have a permit to be here. I think I shot it!” He was with three other people.
Both groups looked for blood or any evidence that a bigfoot was there. Stetson searched for some broken branches where the creature was running. He found a specimen. We followed the trail another 500 yards… Then it came running, and it grabbed Stetson. They rolled around on the ground.
The next thing we knew, one of the people in Doctor Stevens’ group shot randomly into the night and shot Stetson in the arm. The bigfoot ran off before the sun could rise.
…
Morning came as we approached the farm. I never thought I would be excited and happy to see that beat-up cabin in my life. We were all exhausted and empty-handed regarding the bigfoot. My uncle and his kids felt completely robbed of their chance of capturing him. My brothers and I just sat with our jaws hanging...
Some of us were more beaten up than others. Stetson had the worst of it, followed by my concussion and possibly, a broken nose. Stetson seemed still shaken and he stank ,worse than I did the other night, like bigfoot bad.
Uncle Gunner seemed the most shaken and stirred; the ten million dollars that the government promised him for a living bigfoot, and significantly less for a dead one, had slipped through his fingers.
…
We all had our turns to shower and change and get bandaged up before we got together to go as a group to the local hospital.
We got to the hospital, and I was admitted for my concussion and broken nose. Stetson was admitted for his gunshot wound. The bullet had left out the other side of his arm. The next day, I was released from the hospital by Uncle Gunner. Stetson still had to stay a few more days. We were getting into to Gunner’s Jeep when he got a phone call.
“Strainer?
“It’s back?
“We are on our way,” Uncle Gunner responded.
“Are you ready for another adventure?” he asked us.
Stay tooned for the next addition of:
Into The Woods at Night
A Horse is a Horse, of Course, of Course...
Part of the Centaur’s Tail
by Cory McNeil
Quirke Residence
Pelham, NH
Saturday, January 23, 1999
4:56 am
Thomas James Quirke had a busy day. He had drove up and down the town looking for stock footage for the local funeral home. The owner of the funeral home had been on an access TV show and Quirke had been the volunteer who directed the show. More importantly he had edited a montage about the funeral home for said show. Now the director wanted to hire Tom to put together memorial videos for their clients.
So once Quirke finished his day job serving seniors at the community center he signed out a camcorder and went off to collect the video he would need. Normally one was not allowed to sign out the station’s equipment for their own projects but the stock footage he shot would also be useful to the Access TV station for bumpers and other projects there.
Halfway through the filming the shots he needed to collect it began to snow. This was a good thing as it added an extra element to the shots. It was also a bad thing because now Tom had to double back and retake half the shots to include the snow. Driving also became more difficult with the usual morons who couldn’t drive under normal situations.
Thus it came to be that Tom Quirke was even more tired than usual when he got back to his Uncle’s house. Uncle Jim let him stay in the basement rent free. All Tom had to pay for was the house’s internet. Uncle Jim didn’t have any before Tom moved in.
“Cable TV,” his Aunt Maeve would say, “is a luxury we do not need.”
He argued the need to be connected to the World Wide Web. His uncle backed him up and his aunt relented, as long as he paid for it. She also told him, no adult channels. Quirke agreed knowing full well his aunt had not figured out you did not need a TV anymore to see certain things.
Quirke’s dreams that night were strange, indeed. He was on a great plain. From his POV he could see the storm in the sky. A herd of wild horses was charging straight towards him. He could not get out of the way. In truth, he could not move at all. The wall of frothing horse flesh rapidly approached. Tom screamed.
“Aargh!!” Quirke yelled as he fell out of his folding bed then jumped up slamming his head into the ceiling.
Uncle Jim yelled something from upstairs. Tom was stunned and collapsed. Something did not feel right. When he tried to stumble to his feet he saw the hooves. Uncle Jim came down the stairs.
“Sweet Lord!” Jim exclaimed when he reached the basement.
Tom rubbed the top of his head where he had struck the pipes in the ceiling. His aunt started to call out, asking what was going on. Uncle Jim stared, now silent, with words bubbling to the surface but being unable to form. Tom looked behind him to see he had an auburn horse body. He looked at his Uncle also with words unable to form.
“Should I call 911?,” Jim asked his nephew, “or Ripley’s Believe it or Not?
---- *** ----
There was a police car outside the Quirke Home. The blue lights glistened off the light snowfall. A fire truck left to go to another scene. Many neighbors milled about outside. Inside, Tom Quirke sat on the floor of his uncle and aunt’s basement. The cops and firefighters were down there now along with his uncle Jim. His Aunt Maeve was upstairs dealing with all the people now in her home.
“The news says it’s happening all over the world Jimmy!” she hollered from the kitchen, where she was still able to see the TV in the living room.
“So, uh, Tom,” one of the officers, Patrolman Derek Hanley coughed, “you haven’t been, uh, you know, kind a too intimate, like Catherine the Great style, with any horses have you?”
Quirke glared so hard at his former classmate, that it made where he banged his head hurt.
The other cops and firefighters all laughed at what Hanley was suggesting. Only Tiffany Baylor, the paramedic, did not. She finished examining Quirke and told him is upper half was alright except for the bump on his head.
“I’d give you some painkillers,” she told him as she put her equipment back in her medical bag, “but I am not sure how you would react to them.”
“S’ok,” Tom told her while rubbing the Band Aid she had put on the top of his head.
“I think we’ll have to cut through one of your walls,” the oldest firefighter told Uncle Jim, “make a ramp for your nephew to get out of your basement.”
“Hole!” his Aunt bellowed from above. “In one of my walls?!!”
“It’s the only way to get Tommy out of the cellar,” Jim looked up the stairs and told his wife.
“Will our insurance cover that?” Maeve asked back down to him.
“Auntie,” Tom blurted out upset by her, “I can’t stay downstairs in your basement half man, half horse!”
“Maybe you can write it off as an expense for the handicapped?” Officer Hanley suggested.
“Derek,” Quirke turned on the cop, “I am not handicapped!”
Quirke almost unthinking rose to his hooves. Only Baylor’s quick intervention stopped him from banging his head again. She ordered him to sit back down. Being the first day with 4 new legs Tom awkwardly did as he was told.
An older man with a medical bag came down the stairs. It was the veterinarian, Dr. Ben Weisner. The memory of when his first dog, Buttercup, had to be put down in ‘81 rushed back to Quirke. He knew it was wrong to associate Dr. Weisner with the death of his first pet but he still did. Buttercup was 5 when Tom was born and 12 when He got sick.
“Where’s Maggie?” Tiffany asked as Margarette Weisner had taken over for her father when he retired.
“Same as him,” Weisner answered as he motioned towards Tom.
Everyone stared at the retired vet. He walked over and started examining and questioning Quirke. He told everyone that he hoped to find a way to reverse his daughter’s condition and he thought that maybe by comparing another case of this Equine Transformation he may get closer to the answer.
“The good news is your centaur body is in fine shape,” Weisner sighed, “the bad news is I am no closer to finding a cure for all of this.”
“So what do I do?” Tom asked trying to contain the panic growing inside him.
Weirdly, two different hearts started to beat faster. He forced himself to calm down. Weisner and Baylor talked about whether they should give him some drugs to help with the pain and panic. In the end, they decided not to. Better safe than sorry.
---- *** ----
“Excuse me,” Tom told the people around him as he tried maneuver to reach his computer, “uh, excuse me.”
“Hey!” Patrolman Hanley yelled as his foot almost got crushed.
“Tommy,” his uncle chided him, “this isn’t the time to play arcade games.”
Quirke grimaced. Tiffany the paramedic went to check on Derek’s foot. Tom halfheartedly apologized to his former classmate. He finally angled himself in the right direction.
“Won’t be needing this anymore,” Quirke muttered as he wheeled the desk chair out of the way.
“Maybe,” Weisner told the transformed man, “ not for now, but I am determined to find a way of reversing this.”
The retired veterinarian started packing up his stethoscope and other devices. Uncle Jim asked if he was leaving already. The older man nodded. Quirke asked if he could stay until Jimmy was safely out of his basement.
“There’s other cases I have to check on,” Weisner grunted, “the whole Mullen family has been transformed.”
“Auntie!” Tom yelled upstairs. “Get off the phone!”
“I am talking to your Aunt Sharon in Florida!,” Maeve yelled back. “It’s happening there too!”
“The Sunshine Farm?” Uncle Jim blurted out and Weisner nodded.
“The whole lot of them,” Hanley interjected while wincing as Baylor slid off his shoe.
“Sorry,” Tom muttered again when he heard Derek wince.
Aunt Maeve yelled down that she was off the phone. The cellar was filled with the sound of Tom’s modem firing up and connecting. Quirke was going to check his CompuServe, AOL, and also his Juno accounts. When he was connected he saw lots of new chat rooms filled with people. He stared as the magnitude of whatever it was that was happening sank in.
“You don’t own a horse Thomas?” Dr. Weisner asked as he made his way around Quirke’s hindquarters.
“Don’t really need one now,” Tom answered while still staring at the monitor.
“True,” Weisner nodded as a theory died in his head unsaid.
The doctor excused himself as he made his way past Tom.
“I did go horse riding last week,” Quirke told the vet, “part of a shoot.”
Weisner turned around and asked if Tom had been alone or with someone else.
“I was with Steve,” Quirke told the animal doctor.
“Francemir?,” Hanley asked, “remember his graduation party?”
Steve Francemir’s folks owned Kuna Plumbing. They were rich. The biggest graduation party for the Class of ‘91 was held at his place. Steve had the biggest pool and it was heated.
“Remember Creech made out with the Torrino twins?,” Hanley asked with a laugh.
“Yeah,” Tom answered not really paying the patrolman his full attention.
“You’ve Got Mail,” the computer told the centaur.
DDWizardKing: Hey Tom (His friend Dean Dowell greeted him.)
TJQuirke74: Hey DD
DDWizardKing: Did you hear? The police are all over the Sunshine Farm, its CRAZY!!!
TJQuirke74: Yeah, I’ve heard.
YaboiCreech69: Wassup Nedrs!
DDWizardKing: Hey Creech, did you hear about the cops at the Mullens place?
Yaboicreech69: Something weird going on cop cars and fire trucks all over town
TJQuirke74: you are not going to believe it
Quirke started typing out what had happened to him and what was happening at the Sunshine Farm and in Florida.
“Is Steven Francemir on?” Weisner asked.”Can you speak to him?”
Quirke checked. Neither of his friends, Steven Francemir or Stephen Miller were on. Quirke told the vet this. The doctor asked if Tom could call his friend. Quirke told him he would page him. Weisner nodded.
“Thomas,” Weisner told the transformed young man, “I have to go to the Sunshine Farm check on Steven; call me.” The veterinarian scrawled his number down and handed it to Quirke.
“Sorry,” he gave a sheepish smile, “I burned all my business cards at my retirement cookout.”
“Check on Franko,” Quirke nodded, “no problem.”
Dr. Weisner told Tom that everything was going to be alright and made his way upstairs. Quirke typed to his friends he needed to hang up so he could call Steven.
Hanley, Uncle Jim, Tiffany and the other paramedic had gone to the cellar’s one window. Something had their attention. With effort Tom maneuvered behind them. Looking over their shoulders he saw his teenage neighbor from down the street, Erica Boyd. She wore a Hello Kitty sweatshirt and nothing else.
Her long Purple hair flowed in the wind. Her Mother was yelling at her to stop. She was chasing her daughter with a blanket. From the waist down Erica had the body of a purple horse.
Seeing another person like himself gave Tom a huge sense of relief. It was sort of a misery loves company deal... He saw Mrs. Boyd with the blanket and quickly grabbed one of his own blankets. Looking back to the window, his neighbor was exuberant with joy as she galloped down the street.
We hoped you enjoyed this Prequel to the Centaur’s Tail, look for further tails!
I’m glad no one has cloned me, since I have jockeyed my way through the universe, ruining many sheets along the way. For I have eaten more chicken than any nebulous octopi-monster has ever seen...
Bjorn and the Jersey Devil
A Trollheim Tale
by Jonathan Hulton
One day, while walking through the Thousand Acre Woods, Bjorn was caught by surprise. Was he startled by a sasquatch?
Maybe a man-eating Mhuwe!!
No, it was a tall, talking dodo of sorts...
Bjorn just passed Pop-Pops as he journeyed to take a dip at 21 Lakes. Pop-Pops was shaping some trees again above the Disappearing Pond.
Bjorn waved to Pop-Pops and continued on. Further down the trail, he cut himself on some cat briar as he went around a puddle.
Distracted by the blood, he looked up to be surprised by this critter as it chowed down on some wintergreen.. 
“What are you?”
“Is that kind of rude? I didn’t ask you about those horns growing out of your head—though you have a nice tail...”
“I’m married and I have a daughter...”
“I’m just jealous; to tell the truth, I’m envious. My cousins have long, fine tails—mine is a little stubby.” Gast said, pointing at his short, wagging tail. “It’s sort of a sore spot with me, especially when I occasionally get tripped up running from those sasquatch hunters from Philly. My cousin once got caught, and they plucked him to make one of those goofy mummers costumes.”
“Well—”
“Right. I’m a Gastornis—well, that is what I just found out; my family and friends just call us the Birds. Gaston Planté; I never met the guy; neither has anyone in my family,” said Gast, with one wing to his chest and the other out as he bowed. “G. gigantea of the Gastornithidae family, as I have been told. These bone hunters I had seen skulking through the Pines I overheard describe us once before they got into this fabulous fist fight, almost as monumental as the Sullivan fight at Ong’s Hat. Cope kicked Marsh’s but!”
“Could you be what people have mistakenly called the Jersey Devil?”
“Don’t get me started on that old story Franklin started—Leed’s Devil, a story he made up to sell almanacs—you know I got drunk with him once outside the Cedarbridge Tavern. Boy, did I surprise him when I pulled down my hood to expose this honker of mine, Jersey Devil… My tail is not as long as the stories say; I wish it was. Though my wings are nicer than those on the wanted posters.”
“Did you have any predators? How did you live so long? I’m assuming you were walking with the dinosaurs, or at least some of your family were.”
“The T-Rex—nasty sort. I spread around crushed blueberries mixed with bobcat poop to keep them away. I got a bag right here; do you want to take a sniff?”
“No thanks, but T-Rex has not been around here in quite some time—“
“See it works. Though I don’t need it—I’m—quite scary.”
“How so?”
“I just scared away a whole coach of Quakers just this week; in fact, I was so scary, I ran a mile away from myself.”
“What? Never mind, I once caused a whole carriage to run,” said Bjorn.
“How?”
“I ran away, and they chased me.”
“Can you help me carry some of these bags of lichen back to my house?” Gast asked as he pointed to his right.
“Sure, where do you live?”
“If I told you, you might rob my house.”
“Oh, come on—do you live behind 21 Lakes?”
“You know a fish once saved my life?”
“How so?”
“I was starving,” Gast said, rubbing his stomach.
“I’m glad I took this shortcut through this beautiful garden.”
“How so?” asked Gast.
“If I could meet such a confounding critter as you here, imagine what I would have found within the catbrier through the gorge.”
“Hey, I’m famous—haven’t you seen my face on those wanted posters?”
“I don’t care who sees your face, as long as you don’t show it to me again..”
“Am I that aggravating?”
“No—I apologize.” Bjorn said, holding his hand on Gast’s shoulder with a smile. “I just got dunked by the Great Serpent crossing his pond. Now, can I help carry those bags for you?”
“OK.”
The Troll’s Daughter
Andrew Lang’s Pink Fairy Book
There was once a lad who went to look for his place in the world. As he went along, he met a man who asked him where he was going. He told him his errand, and the stranger said, “Then you can serve me; I am just in want of a lad like you, and I will give you good wages—a bushel of money the first year, two the second year, and three the third year, for you must serve me three years and obey me in everything, however strange it seems to you. You need not be afraid of taking service with me, for there is no danger in it if you only know how to obey.”
The bargain was made, and the lad went home with the man to whom he had engaged himself. It was a strange place indeed, for he lived on a bank in the middle of the wild forest, and the lad saw no other person there than his master. The latter was a great Troll and had marvelous power over both men and beasts.
The next day, the lad had to begin his service. The first thing that the Troll set him on was to feed all the wild animals in the forest. These the Troll had tied up, and there were both wolves and bears, deer and hares, which the Troll had gathered in the stalls and folds in his stable down beneath the ground, and that stable was a mile long. The boy, however, accomplished all this work on that day, and the Troll praised him and said that it was very well done.
Next morning, the Troll said to him, “To-day the animals are not to be fed; they don’t get the likes of that every day. You shall have leave to play about for a little, until they are to be fed again.”
Then the Troll said some words to him that he did not understand, and with that, the lad turned into a hare and ran out into the woods. He had plenty to run for, too; though for all the hunters’ logic, they could not shoot him, the dogs barked and ran after him wherever they got wind of him. He was the only wild animal that was left in the woods now, for the Troll had tied up all the others, and every hunter in the whole country was eager to knock him over. But in this, their logic met with no success; there was no dog that could overtake him and no marksman that could hit him. They shot and shot at him, and he ran and ran. It was an unquiet life, but in the long run, he got used to it when he saw that there was no danger in it, and it even amused him to befool all the civilized hunters and their pet dogs that were so eager after him.
Thus, a whole year passed, and when it was over, the Troll called him home, for he was now in his power like all the other animals. The Troll then said some words to him that he did not understand, and the hare immediately became a human being again. “Well, how do you like to serve me?” said the Troll, “and how do you like being a hare?”
The lad replied that he liked it very well; he had never been able to go over the ground so quickly before. The Troll then showed him the bushel of money that he had already earned, and the lad was well pleased to serve him for another year.
The first day of the second year, the boy had the same work to do as on the previous one—namely, to feed all the wild animals in the Troll’s stable. When he had done this, the Troll again said some words to him, and with that, he became a raven and flew high into the air. This was delightful, the lad thought; he could go even faster now than when he was a hare, and the dogs could not come after him here. This was a great delight to him, but he soon found out that he was not to be left quite at peace, for all the marksmen and hunters who saw him aimed at him and fired away, for they had no other birds to shoot at than himself, as the Troll had tied up all the others.
This, however, he also got used to it when he saw that the hunter’s logic could never outwit him, and in this way, he flew about all that year until the Troll called him home again, said some strange words to him, and gave him his human shape again. “Well, how did you like being a raven?” said the Troll.
“I liked it very well,” said the lad, “for never in all my days have I been able to rise so high.” The Troll then showed him the two bushels of money that he had earned that year, and the lad was well content to remain in his service for another year.
Next day he got his old task of feeding all the wild beasts.
When this was done, the Troll again said some words to him, and at these, he turned into a fish and sprang into the river. He swam up and he swam down, and he thought it was pleasant to let himself drive with the stream.
In this way, he came right out into the sea and swam further and further out. At last, he came to a glass palace, which stood at the bottom of the ocean. He could see into all the rooms and halls, where everything was very grand; all the furniture was white ivory, inlaid with gold and pearl. There were soft rugs and cushions of all the colors of the rainbow, and beautiful carpets that looked like the finest moss, and flowers and trees with curiously crooked branches, both green and yellow, white and red, and there were also little fountains that sprang up from the most beautiful snail shells, fell into bright mussel shells, and at the same time made a most delightful music, which filled the whole palace.
The most beautiful thing of all, however, was a young girl who went about her business all alone. She went from one
room to another but did not seem to be happy with all the grandeur she had about her. She walked in solitude and melancholy and never even thought of looking at her own image in the polished glass walls that were on every side of her, although she was the prettiest creature anyone could wish to see. The lad thought so too while he swam around the palace and peered in from every side.
“Here, indeed, it would be better to be a man than such a poor dumb fish as I am now,” said he to himself; “if I could only remember the words that the Troll says when he changes my shape, then perhaps I could help myself to become a man again.” He swam and pondered and thought over this until he remembered the sound of what the Troll said, and then he tried to say it himself. In a moment, he stood in human form at the bottom of the sea.
He made haste to enter the glass palace, then went up to the young girl and spoke to her.
At first, he nearly scared the life out of her, but he talked to her so kindly and explained how he had come down there that she soon recovered from her alarm and was very pleased to have some company to relieve the terrible solitude that she lived in. Time passed so quickly for both of them that the youth (for now he was quite a young man and no longer a lad) forgot altogether how long he had been there.
One day the girl said to him that it would soon be time when he must become a fish again—in a few days, the Troll would call him home, and he would have to go, but before that, he must put on the shape of a fish; otherwise he could not pass through the sea alive. Before this, while he was staying down there, she had told him that she was the daughter of the same Troll whom the youth served, and he had shut her up there to keep her away from everyone. She had now devised a plan by which they could perhaps succeed in getting to see each other again and spending the rest of their lives together. But there was much to attend to, and he must give careful heed to all that she told him.
She told him then that all the kings in the country round about were in debt to her father the Troll, and the king of a certain kingdom, the name of which she told him, was the first who had to pay, and if he could not do so at the time appointed, he would lose his head. “And he cannot pay,” said she. “I know that for certain. Now you must, first of all, give up your service with my father; the three years are past, and you are at liberty to go.
“You will go off with your six bushels of money to the kingdom that I have told you of, and there you will enter the service of the king. When the time comes for his debt to become due, you will be able to tell by his manner that he is not at ease. You shall then say to him that you know well enough what it is that is weighing upon him—that it is the debt that he owes to the Troll and cannot pay but that you can lend him the money.
“The amount is six bushels—just what you have. You shall, however, only lend them to him on condition that you may accompany him when he goes to make the payment and that you then have permission to run before him as a fool.
“When you arrive at the Troll’s abode, you must perform all kinds of foolish tricks, see that you break a whole lot of his windows, and do all the other damage that you can. My father will then get very angry, and as the king must answer for what his fool does, he will sentence him, even though he has paid his debt, either to answer three questions or to lose his life.
“The first question my father will ask will be, ‘Where is my daughter?’ Then you shall step forward and answer, ‘She is at the bottom of the sea.’
“He will then ask you whether you can recognize her, and to this you will answer ‘Yes.’ Then he will bring forward a whole troop of women and cause them to pass before you in order that you may pick out the one that you take for his daughter. You will not be able to recognize me at all, and therefore I will catch hold of you as I go past so that you can notice it, and you must then make haste to catch me and hold me fast.
“You have then answered his first question. His next question will be, ‘Where is my heart?’ You shall then step forward again and answer, ‘It is in a fish.’ ‘Do you know that fish?’ he will say, and you will again answer, ‘Yes.’ He will then cause all kinds of fish to come before you, and you shall choose between them. I will take good care to keep by your side, and when the right fish comes, I will give you a little push, and with that, you will seize the fish and cut it up. Then all will be over with the Troll; he will ask no more questions, and we shall be free to wed.”
When the youth had gotten all these directions as to what he had to do when he got ashore again, the next thing was to remember the words that the Troll said when he changed him from a human being to an animal, but these he had forgotten, and the girl did not know them either. He went about all day in despair, and he thought and thought, but he could not remember what they sounded like.
During the night he could not sleep, until towards morning he fell into a slumber, and all at once it flashed upon him what the Troll used to say. He made haste to repeat the words, and at the same moment, he became a fish again and slipped out into the sea. Immediately after this, he was called upon and swam through the sea up the river to where the Troll stood on the bank and restored him to human shape with the same words as before.
“Well, how do you like to be a fish?’” asked the Troll.
It was what he had liked best of all, said the youth, and that was no lie, as everybody can guess.
The Troll then showed him the three bushels of money that he had earned during the past year; they stood beside the other three, and all six now belonged to him.
“Perhaps you will serve me for another year yet,” said the Troll, “and you will get six bushels of money for it; that makes twelve in all, and that is a pretty penny.”
“No,” said the youth; he thought he had done enough and was anxious to go to some other place to serve and learn other people’s ways, but he would perhaps come back to the Troll some other time.
The Troll said that he would always be welcome; he had served him faithfully for the three years they had agreed upon, and he could make no objections to his leaving now.
The youth then got his six bushels of money, and with these, he betook himself straight to the kingdom that his sweetheart had told him about. He got his money buried in a lonely spot close to the king’s palace, and then went in there and asked to be taken into service. He obtained his request and was taken on as a stableman to tend the king’s horses.
Some time passed, and he noticed how the king always went about sorrowing and grieving and was never glad or happy. One day the king came into the stable, where there was no one present except the youth, who said straight out to him that, with his majesty’s permission, he wished to ask him why he was so sorrowful.
“It’s of no use speaking about that,” said the king; “you cannot help me, at any rate.”
“You don’t know about that,” said the youth. “I know well enough what it is that lies so heavy on your mind, and I also know of a plan to get the money paid.”
This was quite another case, and the king had talked with the stableman, who said that he could easily lend the king the six bushels of money but would only do it on condition that he should be allowed to accompany the king when he went to pay the debt and that he should then be dressed like the king’s court fool and run before him.
He would cause some trouble, for which the king would be severely spoken to, but he would answer for it by saying that no harm would befall him.
The king gladly agreed to all that the youth proposed, and it was now high time for them to set out.
When they came to the Troll’s dwelling, it was no longer on the bank, but on top of a mountain stood a large castle, which the youth had never seen before. The Troll could, in fact, make it visible or invisible, just as he pleased, and, knowing as much as he did of the Troll’s magic arts, the youth was not at all surprised at this.
When they came near this castle, which looked as if it were made of pure glass, the youth ran on in front as the king’s fool. He ran, sometimes facing forwards, sometimes backwards, stood sometimes on his head and sometimes on his feet, and he dashed in pieces so many of the Troll’s big glass windows and doors that it was something awful to see, overturned everything he could, and made a fearful disturbance.
The Troll came rushing out and was so angry and furious that he abused the king with all his might for bringing such a wretched fool with him, as he was sure that he could not pay the least bit of all the damage that had been done when he could not even pay off his old debt.
The fool, however, spoke up and said that he could do so quite easily, and the king then came forward with the six bushels of money that the youth had lent him. They were measured, and they were found to be correct. This the Troll had not reckoned on, but he could make no objection against it. The old debt was honestly paid, and the king got his bond back again.
But there still remained all the damage that had been done that day, and the king had nothing with which to pay for it. The Troll, therefore, sentenced the king either to answer three questions that he would put to him or have his head taken off, as was agreed on in the old bond.
There was nothing else to be done but try to answer the Troll’s riddles. The fool then stationed himself just by the king’s side while the Troll came forward with his questions. He first asked, “Where is my daughter?”
The fool spoke up and said, “She is at the bottom of the sea.”
“How do you know that?” said the Troll.
“The little fish saw it,” said the fool.
“Would you know her?” said the Troll.
“Yes, bring her forward,” said the fool.
The Troll made a whole crowd of women go past them, one after the other, but all these were nothing but shadows and deceptions. Among the very last was the Troll’s real daughter, who pinched the fool as she went past him to make him aware of her presence. He there upon caught her around the waist and held her fast, and the Troll had to admit that his first riddle was solved.
Then the Troll asked again, “Where is my heart?”
“It is in a fish,” said the fool.
“Would you know that fish?” said the Troll.
“Yes, bring it forward,” said the fool.
Then all the fish came swimming past them, and meanwhile, the Troll’s daughter stood just by the youth’s side. When at last the right fish came swimming along, she gave him a nudge, and he seized it at once and squeezed it so hard that the Troll’s heart popped out of it before the fish swam away.
At the same moment, the Troll fell dead and turned into pieces of flint. With that, all the bonds that the Troll had bound were broken; all the wild beasts and birds that he had caught and hid under the ground were now free and dispersed themselves in the woods and in the air.
The Troll sat up from what only seemed to be a swoon. After the death of his wife, the princess’ mother, he lost all control of his emotions. The Troll locked up all the creatures of the forest, ruled by their instincts, which were not bound by logic. The kingdom fell prey to his justice, devoid of all mercy, for the universe he felt gave him none.
The pain in his heart was so intense, swimming in circles in his mind day and night, that it just manifested itself into a fish and swam away. He buried his daughter deep in the sea of his emotions, for her smile only reminded him of his love for his wife, and that pain was too great.
Only a fool of the heart could break through the Troll’s logic, acting as the trickster of the land, air, and sea to force him to feel once more. Only when he saw his daughter’s love for the fool did he remember the love he felt for her and her mother, and he smiled once more. No longer did this Troll king lose his head with his subjects.
The three of them entered the glass castle that turned as hard as flint and held their wedding, and all the kings round about, who had been in the Troll’s debt and were now out of it, came to the wedding and saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, keeping peace between them, and lived in his castle with his beautiful empress and her father in great joy and magnificence.
And if they have not died since they are living there to this day, wisely. It’s only when our leaders are emotionally burdened, many since childhood, do they misrule and abuse their subjects. These rulers were never healed by power or money but only by regaining their true hearts, which were swept away by fear and pain.
I don’t believe in cryptids, but I believe in myself and so should you. So follow my commandments: thou shall have no other Monsters before Me, you shall not bow dow to them nor serve them; For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, and thou shall have no carved image, albeit my own which I am selling for $15.99.
Voyage of Understanding
Continued...
“So who do you think is behind this?” asked Bjorn as he placed his back against the wall to allow the porter who called on Warren earlier to pass with a cocktail on a tray. I could see Prohibition was going on swimmingly. Even though the president quit drinking, it didn’t stop the Jazz Age any.
“Too many possibilities,“ I said, beginning to smirk.” I’m always looking to the Morgans… Not only do they own the Bank of England and The Federal Reserve, but JP is overseeing the creation of the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland. One bank to rule them all...”
Bjorn began drifting off—
“He is pretending it is to handle the war reparations. Just imagine what he could accomplish?” I continued not noticing.
“Um, yes; why should New York have two baseball teams—those Bums!”
“What?”
“Never mind, lets go.” he blurted. Bjorn continued down the hall with compartments to either side. I was teetering back and forth, but his shoulders were so wide he could only totter a quarter inch in either direction. “Hoover was talking about the BIS last night when he excused himself from the game; he despises the game now, with the weasel from one of Morgan’s subsidiaries. It seems Schacht and Hoover were discussing its prospects when he was in Germany and mentioned Lenin’s dislike of the project right before he suffered his stroke.”
“Hoover was playing baseball!”
“What are you talking about Henry!”
“Nothing—How did you hear that?” I asked, cocking my eye at him. “You’re a little too large to be obsequious.”
“By then he was deep in the vat,” Bjorn laughed. “I left the table and plied him full of my melomel. Plus, that sergeant made sure his mug was full of shine. It is the only way Hoover could tolerate the game now. Ralph and I made a few thousand off him last night alone.”
“Oh next time, let me in on that action.”
“Henry, you don’t even gamble..”
“I know, but it would of been fun to watch the train wreck.”
“You should of heard some of the blue stories about him and Warren. They make Henry and Becket sound like teenage pimple-bummed virgins,” Bjorn laughed.
“I did notice you two left before sunset,” I said, shaking my head as I kept his gaze. “Did you take him to the red car?”
“You know Warren isn’t constipated,” Bjorn laughed. “He uses that as an excuse to work his way through the car with a series of quickies—we just followed our Commander and Chief down the hall.”
“Not good; any of the suspects could send an assassin into the car,” I shook my head in concern.
“Smedley was frustrated, being left outside of the door—he made the strangest coitus noises, and Smedley just started laughing under his breath. You should see how red his face got later, when the severity sunk in, the noises grated on him.”
“I can see people talking with Dupin, excusing himself right after the president pretends to go to the john.”
“He has to follow him or have Ralph do it either way,” Bjorn laughed.
“Where are they now?”
“Warren is driving the train and I hear he is forcing his wife to feed the fire box…”
“This should be good…”
I led the way through the remainder of the red car through the dining car to the president’s Pullman. Five cars on was the Dodge. Bjorn and I got some exercise trying to climb over it to access the baggage cars before we could get to the engine. I felt like a bandit in The Great Train Robbery. Our suits were a bit smoky as we entered the engine.
“Keep shoveling, Florence; I love watching you from behind,” Warren said, eyeing his wife with a comic leer.
She threw some coal at him and wiped her brow, leaving another smear, or maybe she removed one? Hard to tell by now, but her dress was ruined. “Warren, you can keep your emerald!” she said, smacking the shovel into his chest. She left with Smith, the owner of the Alaskan Railroad; she has been keeping company with him in her Dodge.
“Ah alas, I thought she desired that token from the Punjabi puja,” he said, laughing. “I might still give it to her for the laughs she gave me. I haven’t seen her that bent over since our honeymoon—I could have used some of your mead, Bjorn.”
“Do you care about her dalliances?” I asked, noticing how open he was with her. “With Smith…”
Warren turned white as a ghost. “You can see him!”
“Yes, he was slapping her on the ass as they left…”
“Oh him, I have mine, and I can’t begrudge her her own,” then Warren slipped in close and whispered as he pointed to his left, “Him.”
“Who…”
“Never mind.” With that, Harding left the engine but only made it to the platform that joined the engine to the tender. He took a seat, enjoying the afternoon sun.
“You know,” the ghost of Smith said, “Cramer’s time with you is almost over.”
“Yeah, I have a four o’clock cabinet meeting on Cloud Nine.” The ghost of Charles appeared, looking at his watch sitting on the other side of Warren.
“So what have you learned?” Jesse Smith asked.
“I led the country into the deep end of the pool and after the bankers pissed in it.”
“That is about right,” Cramer’s ghost said as he poured Harding a drink.
Warren left the drink on his knee. “What now?”
“Not much; your life will be over with the next ghost,” Smith stated.
“Yup,” concurred the ghost of Cramer.
“What was the point of it all then?”
Cramer put his arm around his shoulder. “Learning. Things you learn now you won’t have to learn in the next life. Sometimes we give the ability for redemption without retribution. Consider yourself lucky!”
Warren left his empty cup behind as he stood and waved to Ralph to stop the train so he could escort him back to his Pullman, where he took a nap.
…
When Warren woke to relieve himself, he found the Unknown Soldier sitting by his bedside drinking what looked like Dowgin’s applejack as King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band played Chimes Blues on the phonograph, “I love that muggle on the trumpet; I think they call him Armstrong…”
“You are my final visitor?”
“I hope you don’t mind the hood—I’m not sure that I want to see what they pulled out of the trench in the mirror…”
“Can I get your name?”
“No way to prove it, but I am Corporal Frank Kane at your service,” he said as he swept into a bow with his right arm and then shook Warren’s hand. “From now on we will be sitting just out of sight watching you and the others for the rest of the trip.”
“I’m dead,” Warren asked, as he pulled up the covers to his neck.
“Well yes,” Frank shrugged as he put an arm on his shoulder.
Warren next found himself fully dressed, floating through the wall in the Pullman car where the others were playing poker. A young Frank Capra had just joined the game, but he and H.A. were deep in the weeds over Theosophy, the Common Man, Brotherhood, and the greedy over the needy.
“I always liked Whittier’s sentiment of bare feet and nature; granted, my family might be the wealthiest in Iowa, but I do admire the simplicity without money.”
“I always wanted to make that film one day; my mother said I was always schmaltzy… “
“I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and—a little lookin’ out for the other fella, too…” H.A. said, leaning into the young Sicilian.
“I feel the same; I try to put the John Doe and…”
The ghost of Smith leaned through the wall and added, “Smith.”
“Mr. Smiths into all of my stories.”
“H.C., they had the right idea. He had it all worked out. He used to say to me, ‘Son, don’t miss the wonders that surround you, because every tree, every rock, every ant hill, and every star is filled with the wonders of nature.’ I think he had it right.”
Capra poured him some of Bjorn’s melomel; he thanked him and placed it on the table. “Now the Senate should make these kinds of natural rules work; if you haven’t got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose, we are in trouble.”
“The country has been sinking since the bankers took over,” Capra said, taking a swig. “Nothing is naturally left in them. Morgan looked like he took several punches in the nose and kept on…”
“And let me tell you, Frank, when you become a guy with a bank account, they gotcha! Yes sir, they gotcha! Sad to say, I can be one of those helots…”
Sinclair sat and joined them when a Mexican waiter left Warren a martini. Warren got a little jumpy with his anti-immigrant stance, the recent death of Pancho Villa, and his refusal to acknowledge the new Mexican government. Well, Daugherty’s and Mellon’s refusal. He must of been napping during that meeting; again. Mellon was sending Gulf south of the border to exploit their oil fields.
“He seems a bit shifty,” the disembodied Harding said, pointing at the porter.
“That would be ruining the game—if I told you who the murderer was,” Corporal Kane said. “Don’t you like a good mystery? This is like the Mystery on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I love that Agatha.”
“You mean there is another; I thought the Orient Express ran from Moscow…”
“No, I gotta ride that one in the war—I will always remember Milly… just imagine if everyone was in on your murder: the mafia bootleggers, Morgan and Mellon, Hoover working for the Krauts and Reds, Daugherty’s minions, Villa’s corporals, veterans from Tulsa—the Ohio Gang sure left you with the bag.”
“Yes it is one hot potato…” Harding laughed, shaking Frank’s hand while Frank had his arm around his shoulder.
As they left H.A., Warren, and the empty body controlled by providence, Warren’s glass was seen to empty slowly on its own.
Anchorage, Alaska: July, 15th, 1923
The two apparitions floated over his wife’s Dodge as she had her legs hanging out the window and sailed to the car he first sat with Cramer in.
The train came to a halt. They watched from a distance as everyone, under guard, led by Smedley and Dowgin, to a cavalcade for the body of Harding to drive the last nail in the Fairbanks rail.
A great crowd was waiting for them. The apparitions just mingled in. The body of Harding was handed a sledge hammer. On his third swing...
Another sniper attempted to hit him and nicked his ear. The disembodied Harding grabbed his ear in sympathetic pain, “Oh, nothing happened…”
His wife came running after from behind the trees with the other Smith and pushed Smedley off of Harding and escorted him back to the cars. Smith avoided us. He rode in the last car.
Florence didn’t ride with Warren; he picked a fight over her and Smith, and she rode back to Seward alone with the driver. Sinclair thought he recognized the driver though.
Then we boarded the boat again and headed south. Warren picked a bunch of stag films and had the ship filled with seafood before departing. The Mexican crew on board filled the galleys and served the food.
Warren, after a certain film with a mule and midget, went to his wife’s cabin.
We all took a joyous relief from the bridge game. Sinclair’s hands were getting cramped. The Wallaces hung on the rail talking to Capra. Bjorn, Dupin, and Sinclair sat about telling tales of women. Sinclair just listened, thinking about Caroline. She passed four years ago from General Wood’s curse, the Bird Flu’s second wave. He would have another fifteen years till he married again in her next life; she liked starting fresh. I think he was immortal for the one reason alone, he hated childhood. What he even hated more is the time spent lonely looking for her again after she grew up.
“Quick, Warren is sick,” she said nonplussed. “I think he had some bad crabs or something.”
Doc led the way with at least five other doctors Warren invited on the trip.
When Sinclair got to his bedchamber, Doc was taking his pulse. “How are you feeling?”
“I woke up to find puke all over my shirt and bed. I even puked on my um…”
“Your wife said you had some bad crabs,” Sinclair said.
“I had the salmon mousse—she did give me some bad crabs, but that was years ago.”
Keno just walked in. “Louisa tends to come back with some fine seafood from her European trips; she is in Russia for her family’s gunpowder concern in Russia.” His wife was Louisa DuPont, and her family was making gunpowder since Washington’ army.
The disembodied Harding feared, “Him too, I kind a like the fella—he can tell a joke; you believe he got kicked out of his own social club for toasting the sinking of the Lusitania…”
Keno has been absent, keeping a rear guard or front guard on the train. He came with his Winchester again.
“What is the cable there?” asked the disembodied Harding.
He read the notice that Daugherty wanted Hoover to handle things if all else failed. Also, Daugherty has a man on his daughter if he doesn’t go along. His child out of wedlock was another thorn in his wife’s side.
“Is she going to be alright?”
“She is safe from them—her mother is another story…”
“Can’t be as bad as my mother…”
“Not much better…”
“So who knocks me off—Daugherty!”
“He is just a pawn in the big game of life. It’s always where the choo-choo goes.”
“I have put my choo-choo in enough tunnels to know!
“Needless, who kills me?”
“All will be revealed soon,” said the Unknown Soldier’ ghost.
August 2, 1923: San Francisco, California
The corporal and the president materialized in a hotel room occupied by Florence and Warren. Earlier he mangled the speech and withdrew to his room alone. Some say Florence almost broke the door down before he let her in.
She had all the doctors from the trip in rooms on either side and across from him, which kept Dupin, Keno, Sinclair, and Dowgin in rooms further off. At this moment, they haven’t appeared yet, being caught in San Francisco’s traffic.
The doctors and Florence drove with Harding. He seemed to begin to falter after Florence handed him a glass on stage. He seemed parched during the speech. It was within the first few words he began to stammer. His tongue was lost within a groove inside a hundred-year-old barn. It took the Russian ballet and a partridge in a pear tree to extricate his meanings from the quagmire his brain fell in. There would never be enough Lux Flakes to clean up this mess. He almost pissed into the podium, thinking he was at one of his K Street poker games.
Smedley and Dowgin had a hell of a time steering him off the stage to his car.
Sinclair noticed Louie, his old driver, was driving; he drifted away after Caroline died. They were chums.
He taught her to drive, Fast!
Sinclair had to learn to drive for the first time, ever, in all of his lives and hated it…
Louie saw Sinclair and just stared, lost for words.
There were lots of ghosts here in San Francisco for Sinclair. We weren’t far from Nobb Hill. Timothy had his art mansion and school burned down, blaming it on the earthquake.
On Nobb Hill, Sinclair (when he was known as Edward F. Searle) met an old lover from a past life, a magical soul from the Sidhe. With her fortune, they hunted for the grail in its various forms through Europe and Japan for four years before her demise. With her fortune, they prevented many affairs from happening that could have been worse than the War to End All Wars, but that is a story for another time.
Timothy was her adopted son.
Caroline was her trusted aide.
Sinclair made a point of looking him up later.
Louie, I swear at gunpoint, sped downhill, leaping over several crossroads with only Harding and his wife. Sinclair rode with Keno, who acquired a Salmson AL3, which won the new Le Mans Race a few months ago, and they couldn’t keep up with Louie in the limo. The rest followed in another car.
Luckily there was not a Doctor Miller in any of the cars; at least that was what I hoped.
Miller was present at the deaths of the presidents Harrison and Taylor. Poe and Sinclair failed to keep Taylor alive.
Sinclair Was beginning to think he and the new Dupin were going to fail again.
When we got to the hotel, Sinclair let Keno deal with the car as he rushed to his room.
Sinclair ran in and made it through the threshold before he was knocked on the head.
Yes, it was time for him and me to commune once more on Cloud 9 1/2.
I’m Harvey, a seven-foot púki in the shape of a hare who drinks any unattended glass of liquor.
“What is with... the rabbit!” yelled the disembodied Warren.
“Oh, he will be taking you past this realm,” answered the Unknown Soldier. “Harvey. Well, Harvey can look at your clock… and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like, with anyone you like, and stay as long as you like, and when you get back… not one minute will have ticked by. That is what heaven is like; he can even hold your hand in Akron and repeat over and over, ‘Poor, poor, poor, Warren’ before you’re ready to work on your retribution before your redemption. Take as long as you like, for as you see, time doesn’t exist.”
“Is he moving over there?” Warren said, pointing at Sinclair.
“Yes, I’m afraid for Henry’s sake they have been friends a long time. I think they met in the basement of some old doctor’s bank in Salem a long time ago, or was it a minute ago...” smirked the corporal.
Harding was dead on the bed.
…
“Cherchez la femme,” I repeated.
“You still with me Henry,” Harvey asked, “you should join the party too.”
“Yep, slightly disoriented,” I said, “I’m fine.”
Florence was frozen. She had dropped the candlestick and was now frozen as she was about to throw a bottle of poison out the window. The bottle was just resting on a breath.
“Why!” asked Harding. “I mean, we hated each other, but that is no reason to kill anyone. Most marriages don’t end that way. It’s more spiteful to keep each other alive...”
“Morgan arranged for you to meet George Harvey; you had such a tiny paper, and he figured he would impress you as editor of Harper’s Weekly,” Harvey told him. “Wasn’t it Harvey who introduced you to Florence?”
“The whole affair was staged…”
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts—Harvey you never told me you edited a paper too…” I said.
“I did find it strange when I handed your hat back; there were duplicate holes on either side…” Warren reflected.
“Yes, you had wondered what life would be like if you were more than a small-time editor, so I stepped in.”
Harding just sat down and began to remember saving George Harvey, bailey before he was going to jump off the bridge himself.
“You have the option to return, and I can rescue you from your decision to jump while ensuring your newspaper thrives as a reputable local source. Alternatively, you can choose to maintain your position as president and embark on your forthcoming ‘voyage of understanding,’ ” Harvey offered.
“I much prefer to be pleasant; I have tried to be ever so powerful…” Warren said.
“I wonder how the mystic editor Henry A. will handle the same bargain? I think he will accomplish some miracles before he gets to your point, Warren,” Harvey stated. “A long as he can move past that fiasco with the sharecroppers, the fool will send them to the wolves. We all need some work, especially those who want to rise above...”
I just sat back and listened.
“Can I do one last thing for this dimension, if I can call it that?” Warren asked Frank and Harvey. “Can I fix her wagon and put something in motion for the good of all before I go back to Marion?”
So Warren created a squad through a letter he had left in his pocket to be found by Smedley. It cued him in on Morgan and asked him to create a squad not only to protect future presidents but to kidnap them, fake their deaths, and deposit them on some Pacific island where nobody would believe them. So if anyone wanted to ‘Trump’ him as president, they could quietly set him up with a tropical drink with a little umbrella in it before he or she could do any more damage.
Morgan never found out about it. He even propositioned Smedley to lead a coup against Roosevelt while Henry A. was vice president.
Also, he implicated everyone in his murder, throwing a shoe into many gears. Nobody, to this day, knows who killed Warren. Though his wife didn’t get away with it. Morgan booked her on the largest boat in the world, owned by his White Star Line.
I love it when a plan comes together.
It’s a wonderful life after all…
Epilogue:
OK, did you find all of the connections? It is not imperative; if you didn’t. Though, it might be the only thing keeping Cthulhu from taking his size 14s and stomping on your head and neighing from your bedpost, while he fills your dreams of his tentacles fulfilling ever wish of your girlfriend...Though you have nothing to fear if you are on the good side of a Troll or two.
Well Florence Harding liked men with big feet in her Dodge, Ty found out what happens when you stick your foot in another man’s wife’s bed, Ruby went looking in the woods for big foot, Tom woke up needing a new type of shoes, Gast doesn’t mind his cloven hooves, but wishes he had more tail, and Ashlad made one hell of an impression on the Troll’s Daughter.
By the way the publisher wants you to know that Henry’s first novel is out in stores now that is based on the real murder which inspired the game Clue, reached the highest heights of our government, and inspired Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart. You can find Murder on the Common at your local bookstores and online at www.salemhousepress.com. The first novel in The Sinclair Narratives. Also you can find more Scandinavian folklore, myths, and tales from the world of Trolls in Chris Dowgin’s Trolls: A Compendium with over 500 illustrations. It’s the Scandinavian answer to Brian Froud’s and Alan Lee’s Faeries book. It covers everything in the magical world that the Vikings lived in.
~Professor Wilmarth
Find out all of the secrets that lie under your feet in Salem MA. Learn about the tunnels that were started in 1670’s and were still being used through Prohibition. The tunnels that created America’s first millionaires and the 1% that took over the country.
