Radu-Chapter XXXI (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXX
Radu-Chapter XXXI (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
8 pages approximate
Grace was horrified the next time she saw Marlowe. At no time had she ever seen so wretched excuse of a human being, and though she was not quite sure human was an appropriate term for him, she still felt waves of pity coursing through her for the first time in years. He was obviously in as bad a state as any person could possibly be. She knew what was wrong with him. She had seen it often enough. She had gone through it often enough herself.

“Marlowe, you need to get something quick,” she said. “These withdrawals are going to kill you.”

He laughed a bitter, sarcastic laugh.

“Do you know-how hard-it is to-find a- pure-or a Christian-heroin addict?” He laughed for a brief moment, and then he stopped and slammed his fist on the concrete floor.

“Then let me shoot up and take it from me like you have been doing.” she suggested, by now extremely worried as to how these withdrawals would ultimately affect him.

“You are too far along in your pregnancy,” he said with his teeth gritted. “The damage-could be-irreparable.”

He huddled up almost in a perfectly round ball on the floor, as though trying to hide. She went to the front of him and bent down, taking his matted hair gently in her hands, and then moving down to his chin. She held it firmly, and then lifted. He did not resist. He looked up straight at her, and she backed away in horror.

“Marlowe, these withdrawals are killing you,” she insisted. “I am serious. You are dying.”

“No,” he replied. “I am already dead. I know that is hard for you to comprehend. It was hard for me to comprehend what Marty Evans was going through as well, as I never allowed myself to get that far along. Now I know. Still I have no recourse. I have to do this.”

Sweat covered him like a deluge. He was burning and feverish, yet simultaneously seemed cold, shivering from the chills. The pain in his body was obvious from his expression, from the look in his eyes, which begged outwardly for comfort and pity.

“I’m sorry-you had to-see this,” he said, and suddenly he let out a roar much like a wounded animal. Grace started to fear he would be overheard. For three days now, he had not slept, though during the daytime he entered the crypt once reserved for him. She looked over toward the body, still covered with a sheet.

“Why did you bring her here?” she asked. “What do you intend to do with her?”

“Revive her,” he said simply.

Grace looked away from him. She began to fear she was initially correct all along. He was insane. At the same time, perhaps the nature of his delusion was the opposite of what it seemed.

“You have to stop this, Radu,” she insisted. “You are not Marlowe Krovell.”

“I know that now,” he assured her. “Why do you think I am so willingly going through this heroin withdrawal? How can I rid myself of Marlowe Krovell and yet allow myself to be enslaved by his addictions?”

She had no answer for that. She said nothing.

“Did you bring the CD player, and the recordings? I would like to hear them now. I want to prove something to you. In fact, put on Antichrist Superstar. I want to hear it.”

Warily, she did as he requested, and soon the strains of Marilyn Manson’s vocals and music reverberated through the now nearly completely restored basement of the old Krovell Funeral Home.

“If I had heard something like this in my old life, I would have thought the gates of hell had opened on the earth,” he said. “Now, I see it in an entirely different perspective. This was Marlowe Krovell’s favorite-artist, as unbelievable as it is to honor this creature with such a title.

“Did you know that Marlowe came in time to hate this music? Do you know why?”

“I have no idea,” Grace responded.

“He came to hate it for the same reason he initially loved it,” he explained. “It was her favorite.”

He now rose, made his way stiffly over to the body, and removed the sheet, to reveal the collapsing and now rapidly decomposing form of Raven Randall. She was still recognizable, despite the fact that exposure to the relative warmth of the open air, following its exhumation and brief period of freezing, hastened its further decomposition.

“She was the most vicious of all Joseph’s group,” Marlowe said. “Joseph himself feared her, though he was the only one who could really control her. Did you know she had three illegitimate children?”

He looked over at Grace, whose initial response was to ask him what was so particularly horrible about that, but she never got the words out of her mouth.

“She ate them alive,” he told her. She winced when he said this. “When she ate the last one, she convinced the others in the group to join in with her. It was George Dodd’s son, the one called Rhino. She did not tell him that until he had the child’s penis in his mouth. Then, she laughed at him. When he complained about her deception, do you know what she told him?

“Her exact words were ‘you should have known he was your son, Rhino. After all, your dicks are the same exact size.’”

Suddenly, Marlowe doubled over in agony, the pain of his withdrawals suddenly becoming unbearable. He wretched, and then vomited up a hideous bloody mass that wriggled on the floor. She looked at the glob of blood and mucous, enthralled yet sickened. She looked closely at it, and saw maggots squirming throughout.

“You see now what I have to put up with?” he said. “Sometimes I wish I’d stayed at Johns Hopkins.”

“Marlowe, you can’t bring her back,” she told him. “She is too far gone. Her brain will be too decayed. What would be the point of bringing her back anyway?”

“I have to know what was so special about Marlowe Krovell that she fell in love with him,” he explained. “I have to know what it was about him that she thought was worth saving from Joseph. Nothing that I know makes any sense whatsoever. Once I know everything else and can put it all in perspective, then maybe I will know what it is about him that makes him so persistent, so tenaciously determined to exercise control.”

“Yet, you say Marlowe murdered her because he thought she betrayed him in some way,” Grace recalled. “This might not be a good idea, even assuming it’s possible.”

“It’s the only way,” he answered firmly. “It’s the only way I’ll ever free myself from him and rid myself of this addiction.”

Suddenly, he jerked, as though he heard something from a distance.

“Did you hear that?” he demanded. “Turn that damn thing off.”

He indicated the CD player, whereupon she hurriedly turned it off.

“That laughter,” he said. “It was her. I know it. The same laughter when she told Marlowe she was breaking up with him, that he was a fool to think she could ever love him or anybody. The same laughter Marlowe heard after he killed her with an overdose some two weeks later, when-

“I remember now. Marlowe convinced Marshall Crenshaw not to sell to her, or to any of them. She came to him in desperation, and then-he killed her. She laughed that night, the same laugh. It was like she knew all the time.”

Grace watched, as he suddenly seemed calmer than he had since she first returned.

“Marlowe, I don’t hear a damn thing,” she said.

He did not answer her. He just looked at the dead form on the table, the body he had stolen from the city morgue.

“Out of all the dead bodies Brad Marlowe engaged in sex with, Raven Randall was the only one who would have appreciated the sentiment. She was also willfully arrogant in that way. She probably considered Marlowe Krovell’s murder of her out of jealousy the ultimate compliment.

“You are wrong, Grace. I will revive her, in every way. Once I have restored her, she will be a big help to me-a very big help indeed. She will be able to do things that, due to the peculiarities of the curse my brother Vlad put on me, I can never accomplish, at least as it stands now. That will change as well. In the meantime, I will need her help.

“Unfortunately, it might not be safe here for you. I am not quite sure as to the extent of the control I can initially exercise over her. You must leave as soon as you can. Go to your friends’ home and wait for my arrival. By that time, all will be well, I promise you.”

He looked over toward her, and it soon became obvious to him what she felt. She did not want to leave him alone in his current condition, and in his present state of mind.

“I will be fine, I swear,” he insisted. “Remember, I have Cynthia to look out for me. As soon as I have gotten over these withdrawals, she will feed me. She will sustain me. As for Raven-well, the world is going to change in a good many ways by the time you and I next see each other.”

“I have to go through it as well, don’t I?” she asked. “I mean, the same thing you are going through-the withdrawals.”

He looked at her, as though amazed at her seeming prescience.

“You are coming to full term soon,” he said. “The withdrawals will coincide with the birthing. All will be well. You will see. You are not afraid, are you?”

She tried to restrain her dread, but knew she could not hide it. The withdrawals were the only thing in life she truly did fear. It was not the pain she dreaded but the realization this was the one thing in her life she could not control.

“I would be a liar if I said I was not afraid,” she said. “I guess it’s just one of those things that have to be done.”

“You should leave now,” he said. “I really should get started to work as quickly as possible. I want her to be revived sooner rather than later. It is going to take a very painstaking and determined effort on my part. Nevertheless, Marlowe Krovell’s skills as an undertaker will serve me well. So will his addiction. The energy that I feel coursing through me, ripping me apart-how could he have lived with that for so long? How could he possibly have functioned? It was so much a part of him, that as it leaves, it hopefully will take all of him with it.”

“Very well, I’ll go,” Grace said. “You are sure you will be all right? I promised your grandparents I would look out for you. If something happens to you”-

He looked at her sadly at first, and then he smiled.

“They are not my grandparents, Grace,” he said. “They were Marlowe’s grandparents.”

“Of course,” she said. “I will go then. Take care of yourself. I will see you soon. Remember, we have much to do yet together.”

She turned to leave, but slowly.

“Grace-don’t worry,” he said. “Raven is not a threat to you, whether dead or alive. Your place in the world is secure, if not yet manifest. When the time comes, nothing will change that. As for that meddlesome priest-well, that is a different story. He will soon find that Raven will not be so amenable and eager for salvation as was Joseph Karinsky, nor as easily controllable as Sierra Lawson. What he went through with Spiral Lamont, in fact, will seem like, as they say these days, a day at the beach-whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.”

Grace looked at him in almost a sense of wonder. There were few people in the world she truly liked. She could in fact, after twenty-eight years of life, count them all on the fingers of one hand. Marlowe-or Radu-might in fact well make number six. The idea that the two of them might soon be amongst a very small cadre of elites with access to unlimited wealth and relative security, in the face of a world soon to be thrown into destruction and turmoil, made liking him much easier. At the same time, actually liking him made the prospect of the future much less grim.

She counted herself lucky that she fit into the overall scheme of things. There had to be a reason for that. She was privy to the promise, almost like a prophecy, that soon the world’s population would number not in the billions but in the hundreds of millions, at most seven hundred million-a mere tenth of the current world’s population. They explained the rationale behind their reasoning in unemotional, logical terms. There was in every epoch a point in time when the population was cleared-cleansed, in a sense-through some process of natural selection that served in the long run to strengthen mankind’s genetic structure, for the good of the species, and most importantly, for the overall good of the earth.

With each successive cleansing, mankind became more adaptable towards the next period of adjustment. At this particularly important period, due to mankind’s hitherto unknown scientific and technological advances, an elite corps arose, one that could not only guide the process along, and ride the tide of nature’s wrath, but also hasten it, even focus and direct it in a partnership with the forces of nature.

She had known of this for years, yet disregarded it as an insane fantasy. She went on with her life, her struggles with addiction, her life as a prostitute, even as she struggled to mold her life into one with some meaning, as a reporter. Yet, even at best, her life seemed meaningless.

When she learned the truth regarding Aleksandre Khoska, she had not been surprised. Khoska was not one of those people she liked, though he was not one of the masses of multitudes that she disliked or despised. He was one of those few, rare individuals for whom she had mixed feelings. She understood in time that she merely reacted to the man and his own nature. Khoska himself walked in both worlds. He was a mixture of good and bad, of spirituality and opportunism. He was also one of the strongest men she ever knew, and in his own way, admirable.

Yet, what made Khoska strong would also be his undoing. She looked down now upon the agonized body of Marlowe Krovell, inhabited now by the ancient spirit of an ancestor dead now for centuries. What she saw transpiring she realized was much like the molding of tempered steel. She was obliged to follow that path, the same one on which she had up until this point guided him. Though she dreaded it, she oddly looked forward to it, embraced the potential it promised.

Radu was strong, as was she, and she knew now they would both grow only stronger, and together would be an insurmountable force. Most importantly, the child she carried within her womb would combine both their qualities. The child she would soon give birth to would own the world. She would in fact be the mother of a brand new epoch.

As Grace Rodescu considered these things, she slowly came to realize she had nothing to fear by leaving him here on his own. In fact, it was vital that she do so, that she leave him to carry on this important, pivotal struggle. She said goodbye to him one final time, and then ascended the steps to the outside world.

He watched her leave, and he restrained himself from any further spasms, holding back the pain as he shivered. The conflicting heat and cold tore him with much greater ferocity than it would an average person with even the worse of fevers. After so long, he could stand it no longer. He cried, openly and fiercely, until finally, he wailed. Finally, once more time, he roared, the pain now so unbearable he almost wished he could destroy himself and put an end to it.

As he thought these things, however, he saw his brother Mircea, but only for an instant. Mircea he saw replaced by yet another brother, Vlad, imprisoned and vowing revenge on him and his former Turkish allies, as he set about the apparently insane game of impaling captured birds and mice on makeshift stakes. It was far more than a game, however. It was a magical ritual, one in which Vlad Dracula, his accursed foe and brother, surrounded himself with not the accoutrements of some hidden cult of satanic magic, but with sacred objects of the church. He burned the Koran, the same one Radu himself had been presented as a gift by the Turksih sultan, and which Vlad acquired through subterfuge, through one of the many spies he had installed in Radu’s court. He watched as Vlad infused sacred wine with the blood and the rotted entrails of the sacrificed creatures, as he uttered vile curses in the name of the Christian God Radu had tacitly denounced in favor of Allah and His prophet Muhammed, and the sacred Koran, being obliged to do so for political reasons.

He watched as Vlad instructed his minions as to how the wine was to find its way to Radu, where he would eventually drink of it. As a result, Radu became afflicted with numerous diseases. Any one would have killed him and spread throughout the countryside. The worse of all however, was his insane thirst for the blood of the innocents, of those baptized and sanctified, who in those days were the only ones with the power to resist him.

Radu returned the favor to his brother, though this was impossible for him to accomplish to the same degree, not being that well versed in the ways of magic and witchcraft. Now, however, Vlad was gone-Radu was still here, after five centuries of a death that knew no peace. He would be the final victor after all, in this age when the powers of the church instilled not wonder and faith to the extent that it once did, but instead provided Radu with what was more akin to fresh livestock.

Soon, he would live and rage within a world that would turn back to God in desperation, and yet be all the more helpless before him as a result. When he died, finally, as all men must-even one such as he-it would be, finally, in peace. As he thought on these things, he could see in an instant, throughout the following five centuries, how every child in successive generations born to the daughter of Radu Dracula, ritually exposed to the natural bodily gasses that his remains constantly produced, formed a bridge between him and his descendants.

He saw at last the ancestors of the Krovell family, in America, continue the ritual tradition with their own children. Yet, it was different. Perhaps because of the peasant bloodstock Irenea had been compelled to marry into, these immigrant children did not take well to the exposure. The oldest girl suffered from the plaque. The oldest boy became unhinged. The third child seemed not affected at all, but he expressed an insurmountable urge to return to Romania, though he in fact was born in America. This child watched as his older brother became madder by the day, and the two younger children, while both wise beyond their years, became wicked to an extent none would suspect children capable, engaging in sexual perversions with each other they had not the guile to conceal.

He watched helplessly as the older boy tied them to chairs, and set fire to the room in which he bound them, in the attic of the old tenement slum apartment in which the family lived at the time. He watched as the rest of the family took what belongings they could, Magda impressing on Lawrence to rescue the old trunk, risking his life in the process, while the two children waited up in the attic, tied, gagged, and helpless.

When the cleanup crew found them, nothing remained but their skeletons and everyone assumed they ran up to the attic in panic, until further investigation revealed this was in fact the origin of the fire. The assumption from that point was the two children might well have inadvertently started the fire themselves-the same fire that spread from its point of origin and soon engulfed most of Baltimore.

He watched as the same mayor that outwardly refused outside help for the city of Baltimore, ended killing himself in despair, when money, sent in private from charitable organizations, vanished. He watched all this, because he knew to where the money went-into the private coffers of the Krovell family. This was due to the wiles of the gypsy Magda, and her yet young daughter Irenea. They both managed through subterfuge to steal the money. He watched, knowing the truth about the faked suicide, knowing they murdered the mayor of Baltimore. Then Lawrence Krovell, with new wealth at his disposal, purchased a former Romanian mission once used by representatives of the Phenariot regime-the same mission that would soon become the Krovell Funeral Home.

He watched as the crazed older son, consumed with grief and with guilt over his actions, hung himself in the attic of the new home.

He watched as the new son was born, and as the lone surviving of the previous children years later pursued his dream, and returned to Romania. He watched as this descendant of his visited his own official gravesite, occupied in reality by an unknown peasant. He watched as this descendant found the others, the gypsies who were his cousins. He watched as they initiated him into their tribe, and fed him the sacred blood. He watched as he at first reluctantly and then eagerly pursued the rites of his initiation, by abducting a live child, baptized and sanctified. He watched as he fed on the child in the presence of his tribe, and then he knew at last, the true reason why Marlowe Krovell so loved the person whose rotting cadaver now rested on a metal examining table in the restored basement of the Krovell Funeral Home.

It now became clear to him, even as he watched the American soldier later abducted by relatives of the baptized infant, with officials of the church that had proven more dogged in their determination to avenge the child’s murder than he imagined. They found him, took him out to a remote area, and executed him, fearing his standing as an American volunteer during the war in which he was a noted hero would not engender the authorities to try him fairly, even as they also themselves shared the fear that such an event would endanger their chances for American aid.

He watched as the men gathered around him and passed sentence, as he sat there defiantly and looked into the faces of Corneliu Codreanu, then a young man, and his confederates. They included the Khoska family-that same family that would take his young wife into their home, the same family who would see to the upbringing of her and her child, until that child married Ion Ionescu. He saw it all unfold, and realized all this as well was a mere part of the tapestry that was his destiny.

It took five hundred years for it all to unfold. Now, he went through a new kind of birth, as the ravages of years of heroin abuse by his current host descendant tore at his every limb. He pounded the ground as he cursed, but eventually he became calmer. He became steadier. Though yet sick and feverish, he perceived an end to the struggle. For one thing, his desire for the heroin was no longer a craving, unrelenting in its ferocity. Now he just wanted it to be well. At the same time, he understood this was perhaps the most deceptive, therefore the most dangerous, aspect of the addiction. Yet, a part of him begged for relief.

No, he realized. It was not he who begged for the heroin-it was Marlowe Krovell. He rose, and painfully, sickeningly, walked over to the rotting corpse of Raven Randall. He had work he had to perform.

“Cynthia!” he called out. He then looked over toward his supplies. Yes indeed, he had work to perform. Within under a minute the vulture appeared at the head of the doorway that led upstairs to where the first floor of the old funeral home was just now halfway through the process of renovation.

Radu dropped down to his knees and craned his head upwards. Cynthia let out a squawk, flew down to his open mouth, and disgorged her predigested blood and meat.

“Cynthia, wherever do you find these people-a Girl Scout, eh? I can tell by the taste she was obviously a good Christian girl. So what was her story? Oh, I see now. The others constantly teased her, and so she ran away from her troop. How then did she die, from exposure? Did you kill her directly?”

He looked into the seemingly mirthful eyes of the female vulture that was in effect his surrogate mother, and saw the events unfold. A group of men, all of them sick, all of them hungry, but mostly, all of them insane-violently insane. He recognized these men. He knew them. He remembered them from the hospital. They had survived the blast, and to his amusement, realized that, in what was a wholly unexpected development, the hospital released them as per Tariq’s apparent orders. Then, they were taken somewhere by-Detective Berry, who took an interest, it seemed, in their spiritual well-being. For the first time in days, he laughed out loud, an effort that caused him not a small amount of pain.

Now, left alone in the woods, their only refuge an old abandoned cabin where Berry checked on them sporadically, they stumbled upon the lost girl. They then had their way with her-not all of them, however. One of them strangled the girl in an impotent rage, and killed her before the others could stop him. Then, in a fury, they killed the man who had deprived them of their chance for sexual pleasure. Afterwards, they left to hunt more victims. Cynthia fed off the carcasses of both of them.

“Very good, Cynthia,” he said. “A little girl, a virgin, raped and killed by a madman deprived of that medical formula to which he himself was dependent, just as I am dependent on this accursed heroin. You have restored my faith, old girl. You have served me well. Now, I must work. Go outside then, go and stand watch that you may warn me of the approach of any who might intrude on this most important and sacred work I must perform.”

He watched Cynthia fly out as he walked to the CD player. He turned it on. He walked then, still shaking, feverish, sweating, and racked with pain, back to the corpse of Raven Randall. He craned her head backward with his right hand cupped under the back of her neck, and he opened her mouth. He disgorged the digested matter into her mouth, and then gently set it back.

Gently, almost tenderly, he combed her hair. He then reached for the makeup kit, the one Marlowe Krovell always used. He extracted the different colored tones and shades and lined them up, along with the scissors, the tweezers, and the sutures. He extracted the rubberized putty compound that he hoped he would have to use no more than sparingly.

He allowed the talents of Marlowe Krovell to come to the fore of his consciousness as he began to work, as Marlowe’s love for the dead and vastly evil and vicious woman also came to the fore, having previously been denied the opportunity before to work on the only woman he ever truly loved-the woman he in fact had murdered.

He felt his own energy draining into the cadaver, as the dead, cold flesh took on new warmth, tingled under the application of his own energy flow, and seemed to vibrate with a new kind of vibrancy as he reached for the drill. Gently, carefully, he took a mallet and, at the temple, delivered a firm and steady, yet gentle blow. All around her skull, he went in a circle, until he made small holes at roughly four inches apart, a total of five of them. He then took the small hand held circular saw, and he began cutting. Finally, he removed the skullcap.

Her brains exposed, he cradled them gently into his hands, and closed his eyes, and hummed. It was working. He could feel the vibrations within the mass of decaying brain matter, as it came to life. After twenty minutes of this, he removed his hands and set about the arduous task of replacing the top of her head. He was much calmer now as he inserted the needle and thread, and sewed. Soon, this part was complete. He moved down to her chest cavity, her stomach, and her abdomen. He noted that the further along he got, the more vibrant and filed with life energy the cadaver seemed.

He continued with renewed vigor, as he made incision after incision with scalpel in hand, quickly yet concisely filling each incision with extractions of his own spittle, which mixed with what remained of the decaying oils that had once been fatty tissue and flesh. He added as well drops of his blood, though this served to weaken him considerably. He went down the length of her torso, her buttocks, her back, her hips, her arms, her legs, her hands and her feet.

He stood back and surveyed his handiwork. As he saw his bodily fluids seeming to react favorably, he sewed up the incisions, one at a time, and then applied the make-up putty, which would in time dissipate as the incisions healed-or so he hoped.

When he moved to her vagina, he felt Marlowe’s passion welling up inside him, searching for a release. The vagina was moist, tingling with sensation. It pulsated-but Radu stepped backward and surveyed one final time the extent of his as of now more than two hours worth of handiwork. He saw everything now. He saw the truth at last. He saw the true intent of Raven Randall in those last weeks of her life. She had intended to kill Marlowe Krovell all along. She intended the entire time to bend him to her will, and lure him out to where he would become what she always determined he would become-just another one of her victims.

Radu saw all this, and finally, at long, long last, Marlowe Krovell, somewhere deep inside his subconscious, saw it as well. Radu cried, allowing the truth to manifest in a deluge of emotions, as he crawled in agony toward the mirror. He looked inside it, and inside the now truly fading and defeated mind of Marlowe Krovell.

“Now you know, Marlowe,” he said. “Now you know.”

He felt a brief flash of pain as he closed his eyes, and fell to the floor on his knees. The sickness of the withdrawals was gone, and with them, the spirit of Marlowe Krovell. He had succeeded. Yet, he was exhausted, so much to the point he wanted not to wait for the sunrise to return to his crypt.

It had been more of a struggle, these last few months of life during which he tried to make his will predominant, than the entirety of the previous five hundred years which he spent locked in the confines of that old iron trunk, fortified with tar and sealing wax. During that long period of confinement, at least his spirit was his alone. These last few months were a constant battle for dominance, and for his very survival. He was now exhausted, more so than he ever was. Never did he need to rest more than now.

It was, however, a rest he would take with the assurance that he and he alone would awake in the morning, in a body that he shared now with no one else. He was exhausted, but at the same time, he felt a sense of exhilaration unknown to him for years, since the time he was a teenager and he played about the palaces of Istanbul and roamed the streets of the bazaars, amazed at the fine goods readily available to even many commoners. How amazed he was at the time, in that though he was a prince from a royal bloodline, he never knew anything but privation in his little backwater principality.

There was constant struggle and strife, famine and disease, death and fear. It was a struggle to acclimate to his new surroundings, when his father handed he and his brother Vlad over to the Turkish sultan as hostages. Vlad never did, but he, Radu, eventually came to love the opportunity to live his life free of despair and destitution, of the fear of the fate which came eventually to his father, and to his brother Mircea-his skin scalped from his face while he lived, red-hot irons driven into his eyes.

When the sultan, his friend, appointed him the Voivode of Wallachia, he wanted to bring true civilization and prosperity to the region. More importantly, however, he wanted to bring hope in place of the despair that had been the lot of the people for centuries. He wanted them to have the same peace and hope for life, for they and their children, as he enjoyed. The boyars, however, had other ideas. They betrayed him, and plotted his downfall and destruction, while Vlad, who foolishly resisted the Ottomans, waited in the wings to return to power. He would do so, eventually, and the end result of his brief return to power was yet more centuries of repression, poverty and despair for the people who betrayed him.

He would never make that mistake again. Now, he wanted to live only for himself. The world of the ignorant and superstitious could never appreciate the opportunity for the gift of true peace and prosperity. Give the masses any opportunity and they in time would squander it, and betray even their greatest benefactors. All it took was the direction of a few high placed, deceitful, and manipulative upper class nobles and priests.

No longer would Radu fall prey to the whims of humanity. He now had a new opportunity, and he would not squander it on the likes of them. They now existed for his benefit, and he would pursue his life to the fullest, and at their expense. He would begin soon. For now, he must rest. He was exhausted, yes. Nevertheless, he was finally at peace, and would sleep well this day, and awake in the morning fully refreshed, and hungry for blood. He would eat well the next day, he decided. He closed his eyes and for once, in his mind's eye, he could see his own true image, the form of Radu Dracula. He smiled in a sense of profound satisfaction and contentment.

Then, he felt a cold hand clamp his right shoulder with a grip of iron. In shock, he looked up into the mirror, into the cold, piercing light blue eyes of Raven Randall.

She looked at him and laughed with obscene hatred, and everything once more went dark.

Green Bay Mayor Blasphemes The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Calling a Christmas holiday display for The Flying Spaghetti Monster (pictured above) silly, Mayor Jim Schmitt of Green Bay Wisconsin has declared a moratorium on all religious displays. This is a reversal of an earlier ruling of the Green Bay City Council which invited all religions to include religious displays alongside the Nativity Scene put up by City Council President Chad Fradette.

Problems arose after a Wiccan symbol was stolen and damaged. The mayor then declared the whole idea was causing controversy and hard feelings, which was the opposite of what was intended.

Yeah, just wait until the Green Bay Packers lose the Super Bowl, if they even make it that far. If Bret Favre throws a lot of interceptions and fumbles a lot, though, don't blame him. You won't see him, of course, but it could well be The Flying Spaghetti Monster reaching out with his noodly appendage.

Hat Tip to Religion Clause

RAmen

Yule Aspects

This coming Yule, in which the birth of the God is celebrated, has, like all Yules, its own unique qualities. One way in which we can observe and celebrate this is by observing its astrological aspects, much as you would the natal chart for a child born this day, at the precise time of the Winter Solstice.

It is, in effect, the astrological birth chart of the God himself. Just as an ordinary birth chart can give us valuable insight into the latent potentials inherent within a human being, this is true as well of the God, and the way in which he will manifest throughout nature in this year.

Pluto is now at a degree of close conjunction with the Sun, while Mercury is at a similar closeness. The Sun in fact will be almost exactly between the two, separated from both by a mere two degrees. At the same time, the Sun is at a near complete opposition with the planet Mars, which is retrograde, and will be at a complete opposition to the Sun by midnight Christmas Eve and throughout Christmas Day. During the Solstice, however, Mars is more in opposition to Mercury. That Mercury is the planet of messengers, and on the opposite side of the sun from Pluto, the planet of destruction, while faced with this opposition to Mars, the planet of war and strife, need not necessarily amount to an omen of destruction. However, it might well herald an adversarial aspect, one that might well be described as a hindrance to growth and advancement, if only temporarily.

Fortunately, we also have Jupiter in perfect conjunction with the Sun, which gives us reason for optimism in the face of gloom and doubt. Nevertheless, look for a series of serious weather conditions, with possibly brutal cold in some regions, with near blizzard conditions under harsh winds. Earthquakes are also by no means out of the question, nor should volcanic activity be surprising. Here is the reason for this-

Jupiter Sun Mercury Earth Mars

These four planets line up in exactly this order, with our planet being situated between the Sun and Mars, while Jupiter is on the far side of the Sun from earth and Mars. The gravitational pull from such an alignment, at this time of the year, might well have considerably serious consequences.

The reason Venus is not in this graph is due to the fact that it is not lined up in such a way with the Sun as to be in direct or close alignment with us from our perspective. She is, in fact, at an angle which is of minor effect in any way, though her trine aspect to Uranus in Pisces, and her square one to Neptune in Aquarius, could bestow an illusory feeling of calm and peace, even beauty, in some areas.

The moon is waxing full, though not completely so, nor will it until that midnight of Christmas Eve and the night after, when it will then be in conjunction with the planet Mars and thus become a part of that mass opposition to the Sun, Jupiter, Pluto, and Mercury. On the day of Yule, however, it moves into a square aspect with the planet Saturn in Virgo, foretelling an impatient quality, moving toward emotional turbulence and release on the night of Christmas Eve.

All things considered, a damn good night for an old-fashioned fertility ritual, due to the conjunction of the Sun with Jupiter, in celebration of the birth of the god.

YULE
22nd December
Sun enters Capricorn-in conjunction with Mercury, Jupiter, Pluto, opposition to Mars
Moon enters Gemini-square Saturn, moving into conjunction with Mars
Mercury 2nd degree Capricorn-superior solar conjunction
Venus 19th degree Scorpio-squared Neptune, trine Uranus
Mars retrograde 3rd degree Cancer-solar opposition, opposition Jupiter, Mercury, Pluto
Jupiter enters Capricorn-solar conjunction
Saturn 8th degree Virgo
Uranus 15th degree Pisces-trine Venus
Neptune 19th degree Aquarius-squared Venus
Pluto 28th degree Sagittarius-solar conjunction

Mike Huckabee Appeals To Canadians-Save Your National Igloo

It was awful nice of Mike Huckabee to agree to make a public appeal to save the "Canadian National Igloo". You know, that's the great big giant igloo where the Canadian parliament meets, and which is endangered.

What, you didn't know that? Yeah, it actually sounds pretty fucking stupid, don't it? Nevertheless, Canadian television interviewer/comedian Rick Mercer convinced Huckabee it was true, and persuaded him to make this "public service announcement."


Mike Huckabee Makes Appeal To Save Canadian National Igloo
Anytime I link to YouTube, you know it's got to be something special. I got this one from Rufus at Grad Student Madness and just had to go that extra mile.

It explains why so many people in the media are interested in the Huckabee campaign. You have to admit it is somehow heartening to know that a major political figure and candidate for the highest office in the land is capable of being as big a fucking idiot as the rest of us.

Of course it could be a problem if he is actually elected. I can see it now-

Mike Huckabee agrees to take Vladimir Putin on a a snipe hunt.

Mike Huckabee grants tax breaks to business towards purchases of brick stretchers and buckets of steam.

Mike Huckabee is persuaded by his cabinet, on the grounds that it is a secret cabinet tradition, to engage in a circle jerk.

Mike Huckabee might be a nice guy and well-meaning and all, but if he is this dumb-well, you make the call.

The Chemical Conspiracy

A major player in the baseball steroid scandal was left out of The Mitchell Report, says Bruce Reed

It's that damn George W. Bush's fault. When it became obvious his dad was going to lose the 1992 election, he became desperate for the Texas Rangers, whom he owned at the time, to get into the playoffs, so he made a trade for Jose Canseco.

He also has supporters among the many names listed in the Mitchell Report, as well as other names that weren't listed but, by gum, should have been.

See what happens when you play in the Bush Leagues? You get corrupted every time.

As for you, A-Rod, we'll catch you yet, damn you-it's just a matter of time.

Gordon Brown's Cordial Invitation To The Taliban

I don't know why British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to talk to the Taliban, or what he thinks he can accomplish by engaging in any kind of dialogue with them. Evidently he was in a coma during the time they destroyed ancient Buddhist statues despite widespread and consistent international appeals. Or maybe it never occurred to him to wonder why, out of all the world's nations, only three of them-Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan-recognized their regime during their time in power.

I think more than likely he's too naive to understand that asking for a dialogue would probably be seen by them as asking for terms. Those terms would probably amount to them telling Brown, over a cordial cup of tea, to "get the hell out of our country and we won't kill your people".

Of course, according to this article, the Brown government insists the Taliban are not really that powerful, that many of their fighters are farmers that are forced to join their militias at "the point of a gun".

Even if that's true, their assessment of that aspect seems pretty contradictory to me.

Then, they go on to say that we should separate the Taliban from the Pakistani radicals and Al-Queda that have infiltrated the country. Yeah, good idea, let's just forget the fact that Al-Queda went there to begin with at the invitation and with the support of the Taliban, who refused point blank to turn Bin Laden over to the US after 9/11.

With all the evidence pointing to Bin Laden, they refused to even talk about it. So what does Brown have that makes him think they will come to the negotiating table in good faith?

In the meantime, Canada seems to be poised to withdraw from the conflict. Little wonder, as they are one of the few nations there that actually have a combat operations role, the others being the US, Britain, and the Netherlands. While there, their casualties have been the proportionate equal of those suffered by the US, while no progress is to be seen.

All the other nations there, such as France and Germany, are limited to non-combat functions. No wonder the Taliban is resurgent. Somebody somewhere is making a hell of a lot of money off Afghan opium production, and if Brown does talk to the Taliban, somebody somewhere should throw that in there.

Nobody seems to want to cut that source of Taliban money off, for some strange reason. With that kind of weakness on display for all the world to see, why should the Taliban talk to Brown, or to anyone else?

What started out as a war is turning into a blood sport, and the Taliban are the ones that seem to be on the winning side. Much more and it might be legitmately described as their national pasttime.



2bvq25

Radu-Chapter XXX (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXX
Radu-Chapter XXX (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
10 pages approximate
Phelps had no idea what he was getting himself into when he agreed to drive Khoska out into, it turned out, a remote area of West Virginia just across the Maryland border. His desire to turn back, however, seemed to grow with every passing mile. He was an urban creature by nature. Trips to the county never seemed to work out well for him. Still, he wanted to help Grace Rodescu because he considered her a friend and colleague, and realized that whatever she was involved in may well be big.

Phelps struggled for years to make a name for himself as a news photographer, but certain unfortunate aspects of his personality seemed to stand in the way. This might be his one last chance to make his mark in the world of real journalism. The fact that Grace may have indeed been tied up with some international sex slavery ring, may even have been victimized her own self, as a child no less, hinted at the prospects of something that was more than just big. It might possibly be explosive.

“So you say these people are big name businessmen and politicians,” Phelps noted as they moved past the Maryland state line into what promised to be a trip to the wilds of civilization.

“Not all of them are, I am sure,” Khoska replied. “Certainly, most of their clients are men of wealth and power. They are the kind of people that due to the natures of their positions in society are obliged to silence. From what I understand about these things, they are vetted and cleared by way of an arduous process that might entail months, if not years. They are wiling to pay dearly for the opportunity to indulge their perversions. Then, of course, once they are in so deep, there is no turning back, even if they wanted. They are open to extortion by the nature of their crimes.”

“And you say this deceased son-in-law of yours was one of the ringleaders,” Phelps continued.

“He was not at the very top of the leadership,” Khoska affirmed. “However, he was highly placed. This of course was before I discovered his involvement and turned him in to the church hierarchy. Afterwards, he and a small group of others were defrocked. Sometimes I am at wonder that I have remained alive over the more than ten years since this occurred.

“On the other hand, there is a saying, perhaps you have heard of it. Revenge is like fine liquor. The longer it ages, the more it is to be savored. Of course, there is also the prospect that in the case of revenge, it is more difficult to trace its point of origin.”

“So what does all this have to do with this place we’re going?” Phelps demanded. “You say this is the place you first met Grace.”

“It is a cabin,” Khoska replied. “It used to belong to a man named Karl Groznyy. Technically, it still does, though under an assumed name. I have made it a point to continue paying the utilities and taxes on the property-in his name, of course-for the last thirteen years. Still, it has been all of that time since I have set foot on the place and as such, I have made no repairs to it. It goes without saying then that you should not expect it to be anything other than ramshackle and run-down at this point.

“I hope that my memory will suffice to ensure we take the right roads. As I told you before, it is very remote.”

They remained silent most of the remainder of the way outside of what times Khoska informed Phelps as to the proper turns to make. The old priest realized that, for all these years, his memory seemed all but engraved with the mental map seared into his mind from all those years ago. The closer they got the more certain he was as to the correctness of their route.

“I still don’t understand why it is you wanted to involve me in all this,” Phelps stated. “What is it you think I can do to help?”

“You want to help your friend, for whatever reason,” Khoska replied. “I know enough to realize that you might be one of the few people she trusts. I am almost one hundred percent positive she will turn to you at one point or another. When she does, I am of the hopes that you will help her, though not in the exact way she will unfortunately seek your help.”

“You want me to turn her in, assuming she’s doing something illegal to begin with,” Phelps observed.

“Not turn her in to the authorities, so much as keep me abreast of her movements,” Khoska assured him. “I know enough to realize it is almost a certainty you will agree to help her. In a sense, I wish you would not, for I fear your life might be in danger. Grace will discard you like worn out underwear once she uses you for all she can get. I know you do not want to believe this, but I have a feeling you shall more than believe it, within the hour. We are almost to our destination.

“In about twenty minutes, there will be a narrow, paved road that leads up a steep hillside. Hopefully, it will not have been overrun by the shrubbery that used to merely hide it from view. Groznyy paved it his own self shortly after he purchased the property, but he did not do so until the road is quite out of view from the one on which we are on now. He feared otherwise the entire road would be washed out.”

Khoska pointed out the turn off and Phelps cautiously angled his vehicle into what appeared to be merely a small clearing, and then began what was actually a torturous ascent up a muddy embankment.

“Are you sure about this?” he demanded. “I could blow my damn engine trying to get up here.”

“It’s not much further, I promise,” Khoska replied.

Phelps cursed under his breath as he continued, fearing the thickness of the foliage would be as much of an impediment as the steepness of the hillside due to the slow speed he was obliged to drive. Finally, he made it through to where there was indeed a paved road, yet his back tires now seemed mired in the muddy dirt at his back. He continued, shifting the gears of his van, at times slipping backwards, as the dense foliage surrounded them at the front and on all sides. Finally, with one final thrust on the accelerator, he positioned all four wheels of the van onto the narrow blacktopped road. It was easier at this point to drive trough the dense brush, which he yet was obliged to struggle through all the way to the top of the more than one hundred foot hill.

Finally, they were there. Khoska could barely see the house through the grown up grass and trees, as he hoped the roof was yet intact, though from what he could see of it, it seemed undamaged.

“Holy shit, Grace used to live here?” Phelps demanded.

“For no more than a couple of weeks,” Khoska replied. “She was in the process of recovering from severe injuries she received while in the course of being raped by four men, who as it happened intended to murder her. Groznyy took pity on her and saved her, or she would have surely died that night from her injuries and from exposure, after they abandoned what they thought was her dead body. Groznyy discovered her wandering the countryside, in a daze.

“Then, after he transported her to this place, he had the misfortune to allow his sentimentality to get the better of him, and he imagined himself to be in love with her. Things did not turn out so well for him. But, enough of this monologue. It is time for you to see this for yourself. Come, let us go inside.”

Phelps followed him warily into the cabin. Khoska had kept the keys to the cabin in a secure place after all this time, and though the lock was rusty, it took him no more than three minutes to unlock the door, which opened with some difficulty, as the wood was quite warped. It swung open with a creak, as one of the hinges was especially loose. All of them needed oiling.

Khoska was pleasantly surprised that the lights yet worked, though they served mainly to reveal the severe need for cleaning from the dust and mold that accumulated over the many years since he last had been here. He made his way toward the master bedroom, urging Phelps to follow behind him. He did, though warily, having brought along his camera.

Khoska unlocked the bedroom door and entered. The first thing he noticed was the window, which after all this time yet remained unbroken, though tree limbs brushed against and covered it. He had silently prepared himself for the worse sight, toward which he soon heard Phelps let out a gasp.

“Who in the hell was that?” he demanded, indicating the partially mummified and skeletal remains of the man who remained in the same position in which Khoska last left him.

“Karl Emil Groznyy,” Khoska replied, then indicating the aluminum baseball bat that set on the floor beside the bed. “That is the weapon with which Grace murdered him in his bed.”

Phelps stared at the old priest in disbelief, but recovered his composure long enough to quickly take a series of photos.

“All right, even if that is true, she was a kid,” he stated after he finished shooting. “She had just gone through hell, and this guy, regardless of his later intentions, you say yourself was a part of the group that victimized her, and she knew that. Is this what you were trying to warn me about? This is what you think makes her some kind of cold blooded killer?”

“No,” he replied as he moved toward the mold covered oak dresser that set off to the side of the king sized bed. “What makes her a cold-blooded killer are the things she did in the years following this night. This you see before you now was only the initiatory stage of what was to become a spiritual malignancy that would in time claim many victims, most of whom were, unlike Groznyy, innocent of any wrongdoing.”

He opened the drawer, and found the dead man’s gun. Alongside it, he found a leather-bound address book.

“You left this guy here all this time, and you never reported it,” Phelps observed. “Why?”

He looked at the skeleton, his skull caved in and his brains long decomposed. His tattered nightclothes all but gone, he could discern the extent of mummification that occurred over the years. Though Grozny’s face was long gone, a good portion of his torso remained, dried and leathery, due to the intense cold of those first few weeks in which his body lay, with no heat circulating throughout the remote cabin.

“I could never bring myself to return here,” Khoska replied. “I don’t know for sure why I continued paying the bills on the place. I had this crazy idea I might eventually make some kind of sense out of what happened here this night so long ago. I wanted to come up here and give him some kind of decent burial, but never did. I wanted to come up here and look for some kind of clues, but I never did. Now, I’m afraid I might be far too late.”

Khoska now thumbed through the pages of the address book, but saw few with any names, his being one of the few exceptions. He never realized this. What if someone had discovered this crime scene, and this address book? The authorities would have certainly contacted him. What would he have told them? How would it have looked had they discovered he made regular payments on the property?

“So what was it Grace was supposed to have done after this?” Phelps repeated.

“I secured her adoption into a good family,” Khoska replied. “They were Americans of Romanian descent. They raised her as their own child, loved her and cared for her, and saw to all her needs. Both they and I helped her through years of therapy, and secured her passage into college.

“Then, one day, she recovered her memory, at the age of sixteen-in fact, it happened on the night of her sixteenth birthday party. It came flooding back to her in a torrent. Fortunately, she seemed to recover, following more hospitalization and intensive therapy, but she was never the same after that.

“Within five years time, the entire family was dead. It started with the oldest girl, who developed a severe case of a particularly virulent strain of flu. Grace moved in with her, and cared for her. In the meantime, Grace went through all her money. By the time she went through every last penny, the poor woman was dead, at a very young age, from an illness that, though certainly serious, by any account should not have been fatal.

“Grace used all her money on drugs-on heroin. She later started an affair with the husband of yet another sister. That sister was killed as the result of a bizarre accident. She tripped and fell down the stairs, after she as well came down with a mysterious illness. The husband of course inherited quite a bit of money in an insurance settlement that amounted to more than a hundred thousand dollars.

“He later died an apparent suicide, and a large portion of his money disappeared. Curiously, a similarly large amount of money ended up deposited in Grace’s account. She went through it quickly, of course, presumably as well spent on drugs. It goes without saying, I should add, that Grace was a frequent companion of the husband following the wife’s demise, and was a frequent houseguest of the couple before her death as well.”

Phelps looked at him in disbelief, not sure whether to believe him or not.

“That’s all you got?” he demanded. “You got any proof to go with all this, or is it all just supposition?”

Khoska was more than slightly amused, despite the gravity of the events described.

“You work for a paper that reports the most bizarre gossip and rumors imaginable as though it were all fact, yet you question the veracity of stories I have worked diligently to confirm over the course of years,” he observed. “Every word I tell you is true. I will tell you something else. Grace Rodescu by all rights should have been imprisoned years ago, but was not. Someone has been looking out for her. Who this might have been I do not know, though I have my suspicions.

“If she were not imprisoned for the things I told you, then it perhaps would have been appropriate were she charged with the murder of an older foster brother, one who in fact told her some months before his death that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Shortly afterwards, he was the victim of a house invasion that ended with him brutally beaten to death by unknown assailants, rumored to be members of the Seventeenth Pulse. It so happens that Grace was said to have a connection with this group at the time-a drug connection, of course.”

“Rumors, suppositions, and innuendo,” Phelps declared. “I know about that brother. I’ll have you know Grace wanted the paper to look into it. She was sure he was involved with the mafia and owed them money.”

“And of course nothing ever came of this, did it?” Khoska inquired. “Doubtless this was due to the fact that that the only criminal connection the young man had was in fact incidental, and through Grace. I somehow doubt she told you of that, however, or of that brother’s true feelings towards her, and why he had those feelings. Well, I will tell you. It had to do with yet another foster brother, one whom she in fact engaged in an affair with. It was not technically incest. Of course, I seriously doubt it would trouble Grace if it were. It was more a practical necessity. See, this young man himself was a drug addict, but he had the misfortune as well to suffer an injury on the job. He was incapacitated, and drew a great amount of workman’s comp. Grace, being a drug addict herself, helped him spend his money over the course of four months, until he died of an overdose.

“Grace, being Grace, continued to cash his checks in order to pursue her addiction, until this was eventually discovered. She was charged, of course, but the charges were dropped, for whatever reason. There is actually no longer a record of any of this, so you need not bother to look for it. I assure, you, however, it is all true.

“Just like it is true how she constantly borrowed money from yet another of the sisters, until that sister had enough and told her no more. A few days later, the house burned down around her, leaving her dead. I think Grace got all of two thousand dollars out of that escapade, which went quickly. Still, this was all the unfortunate woman had laying around the house. Had it been no more than two hundred dollars instead of two thousand, I am sure it would have been all the same.”

Phelps was now silent, and grim. He did not want to believe any of this, but something about it all rang painfully true.

“Grace was always bad for borrowing money,” he said. “I know I’ve loaned her more than six hundred dollars myself here and there, and I’ve never gotten a dime of it back. Well, not in money anyway.”

“In other words, she let you fuck her, to use the vulgar expression,” Khoska observed as he continually flipped through the address book. “With Grace, of course, that is certainly a more appropriate terminology than something such as making love, which is something I seriously doubt she has ever experienced.

“Her foster parents are dead, of course,” he continued. “Yes, she saved them for the last. The mother died of a heart attack. Grace was at this time the sole survivor, and she moved in with the bereaved widower, and took care of him. She took care of him, all right. He died two weeks after the woman was buried, a supposed suicide. Grace of course inherited everything. She also quickly went through every penny of this inheritance, including the money from the proceeds of the sell of the house.

“All of these things, by the way, occurred within a span of time that amounts to roughly two years and ten months. Although she has nothing left to show for it, Grace within this amount of time managed to destroy the hopes and dreams of an entire family of people that loved and protected her, took her in with open arms, and did everything they could possibly do to help and support her.

“I never told you of course about the three children, her foster nieces and nephew. That is just as well, of course, as there is nothing to tell. They seem to have disappeared. I often wonder if they are yet alive, holed up in some hellhole, forced into prostitution and child pornography, as Grace herself had been. I sometimes think that would appeal to her sense of irony.”

“All right,” Phelps said, more sadly than defiantly. “I get it. You don’t have to go any further. I just don’t understand why you think I can help you, or how. I hope you paid the water bill on this place. I need to go to the john.”

“There’s no sewer, just a septic tank. The water is from a well Groznyy dug himself. I would not advise drinking any of it.”

Phelps nodded and walked out. As he left, Khoska looked toward the phone. Luckily, it was a standard phone, not dependent on batteries, which would surely have died after so many years. He only hoped the phone wires, which lead through the dense foliage, were intact. He picked up the phone and, though there was a dial tone, he immediately noted the static.

He recognized one of the numbers Groznyy had written down years before, and it made his heart ache. He quickly dialed the number, and sure enough, his own son, Philip Khoska, answered.

“Hello, who is this?” the easily recognizable voice of his youngest son inquired. “Is anybody there?”

Khoska considered the prospect of addressing his son, but was not quite sure what to say. How deeply involved in this was he, he wondered? He also recognized the number of his late son-in-law Voroslav, both numbers, like his own, circled. Is this the reason Groznyy had turned to him in desperation after all, so many years ago?

“Karl, is that you?” his son finally asked. Khoska gasped when he heard this.

“Come on Groznyy, talk to me,” he insisted. “Where have you been all this time? We need to talk. You know that, why else would you have called?”

Khoska was now too stunned to speak, even if he wished to. What would Phillip say if he knew it was he calling from Groznyy’s number?

“It’s not too late, Groznyy. We can work it out. You know the time is short. We all know, Karl, how you saved Grace Rodescu. Yeah, you betrayed us all, but that has been years ago. We can work something out. It is not too late. You can pull through this, my friend. You can be one of the survivors, or you can die like all the rest of the”-

After this, the line filled with static, so Khoska heard nothing. He cursed under his breath, even though he dreaded the prospect of the words spoken this night by his son and their meaning. It occurred to him then that his son would now know the general area from which the call originated. Could he possibly trace it somehow to this exact location? Suddenly, the line cleared, if just briefly, and Khoska could hear now the increasingly agitated voice of his son.

“You need to get to a better line, Grozhny,” he said. “Better yet, you should come to the compound, before it’s too late. You know about Morrison, I take it? It won’t be much longer. He’s going to bring everything crashing down. I’ll be ready. Will you?”

Suddenly, Phillip hung up at his end, terminating the call. He turned uneasily, unsure of what it all meant, and looked toward the long dead remains of Karl Emil Groznyy.

“Groznyy, what were you involved in, my friend?”

He looked toward the door, to see Phelps standing there looking at him, looking very disturbed, even curiously frightened.

“I guess we can go on now,” Khoska said as he deposited the address book within the pockets of his robe.

“Did you forget to tell me about something?” Phelps asked, obviously more anxious now than previously.

“Who’s the Girl Scout?”

“The Girl Scout-what Girl Scout?” the now bewildered Khoska asked.

“The one laying in the other bedroom, dead, that’s what Girl Scout.” Phelps answered.

Quickly, Khoska pushed past him and out the door, down the hallway to the bedroom that sat across the hall from the bathroom. He entered the room, only to see the form of the young girl, obviously dead for some time. Cautiously, he approached her.

“She has not been here that long,” Khoska said, trying to control the anguish at the sight of such a young girl. “She must have gotten lost and found her way here before she died. Who knows how long she has been sought?”

Phelps was now taking pictures of the dead girl’s body to Khoska’s consternation. Then, he noticed something.

“Wait just a minute,” he said. “If she died here, what the hell has been eating her? Look at this!”

Phelps pointed out the gashes on the girl’s naked abdomen. Khoska made a superhuman attempt to control his horrified revulsion as he looked upon the marks left by what appeared to be talons in close proximity to the gash from an apparent scavenger.

“If I didn’t know better I would swear it is the work of a vulture,” he noted. “Still, as you said, why would she be here?”

“That does it!” Phelps declared. “I’m getting the hell out of here. When we get back to Baltimore, I’m calling the authorities and leaving an anonymous tip. I hope there is nothing here that can tie you to this place. That guy in there I don’t care about. Whoever she is-that is a different story. By the way, did that creep have any food in here?”

“He had it well stocked, yes, what difference does that make?”

Phelps moved swiftly into the small kitchen that Groznyy had years before built and equipped with a year-and-a-half worth of provisions. He moved to the refrigerator, only to discover upon opening it that it was nearly bare, save for one very interesting exception. Phelps retuned with an unopened bottle of Samuel Adams Beer.

“I might be wrong, but I don’t think this beer was brewed thirteen years ago, or at least it wasn’t readily available around here-if at all.”

“I think you’re right,” Khoska said, growing more visibly alarmed. “We had better leave, and quickly.”

Before Phelps could respond, the door quickly flew open, and a group of men entered, looking alternately amused, concerned, alarmed, curious, enraged, to outright hysterical.

“Well who the hell are you boys?” one of the dirty, grubby looking men asked.

“Oh-shit!” Phelps muttered under his breath, as another of the men walked up to Khoska.

‘That’s a right purty dress you’s wearing there, hon,” he said with a lecherous sneer.

“Better step away from him Luther,” the first man advised him. “Something tells me they ain’t here to play.”

“Well I’m a-gonna play with him anyway god damn you!” the wild-eyed man shouted, his eyes suddenly transformed in the space of an instant from glazed over lust to savage hatred and defiance.

“Fine, fine,” the other man replied as he held up his hands in an entreaty of peace, as a third man, seemingly the youngest of the group of five, produced a long, thick handled knife with which he pared his nails while gazing with a sadistic smile at Phelps.

“I get the nigger,” he said. “I always did love to play with niggers. They are fun to play with.”

“Try to stay calm,” Khoska told Phelps, who seemed now on the verge of tears.

“Don’t you talk to me, you fucking old fart,” he replied with a hiss.

“Why don’t you take that perty robe off,” Khoska’s admirer suggested, as a fourth man entered, one who seemed only vaguely aware of his surroundings, as he lurched forward and backward while he mumbled incoherently, seeming to concentrate on his right arms and hand as he shook it in unison with his steps.

“No, I will not take this robe off,” Khoska replied firmly, yet as calmly as he could manage. He then addressed the one man who seemed to be the most relatively stable of the group, as yet a fifth man entered, one who had black eyes that blazed with a fury, yet seeming not to be directed towards him or Phelps, but toward the knife of the youngest man of the group.

“My son sent me here to check on you,” Khoska announced. “He wants to make sure you have all the provisions you need, enough to do you for a few more weeks if necessary.”

To his consternation, the man produced a cell phone.

“Why didn’t he call us and let us know you were coming?” he demanded. “Why did you bring that nigger with you?”

“Don’t mind him, he’s just a servant, one of the good ones,” Khoska replied with a desperate glance toward Phelps, who merely shook his head in silent anguish. “He wanted me to come but did not want you to know. He wanted to be sure as to how things were really going.”

“Oh, so he don’t trust us?” the man asked. “Well, that makes sense. Kind of like a surprise inspection, huh?”

“That’s exactly what it is, exactly-a surprise inspection. I am afraid he is going to be displeased at the young lady you have brought up here. People will be looking for her, you know.”

They looked around at each other and smiled. The young man giggled like a silly schoolboy.

“They already have been,” he said. “They split up in groups of three.”

“Hey, Charlie, bring ‘em in here,” the older man shouted, whereupon two more men entered, in the company of three obviously terrified young girls dressed in scout uniforms. They looked to all be no more than about twelve years old. One of the girls cried inconsolably as one of the men gripped her around the waste from behind and held her back tightly up against his groin, as he swayed in a rhythmic motion.

“I hope you brought us some more beer,” the apparent leader of the group said. “We sure can use some.”

Khoska was now frantic, and knew that nothing short of a miracle would deliver him from the predicament in which he now found himself.

“No, I’m afraid not,” he said. “He wants you to be ready to leave here within a couple of days. He will be sending someone else here soon to take you some place else, a place much better than this. In the meantime, you must let these girls go.”

“No,” the young man replied. “Not until we have our fun. After we get us some we’ll send them on their way-provided they shut the fuck up, that is.”

He said this with a threatening glare toward the one girl who cried loudly, but this only made matters worse. Her crying enraged the young man, who shouted for her to shut up, and then struck the young girl across the face so harshly her glasses went flying off and almost halfway across the room. Khoska automatically lunged toward the young man, but a sudden sharp pain sent him sprawling toward the floor, as everything went black.

He found himself at the kitchen table, sitting upright, as Groznyy poured what seemed to be red wine into a glass.

“It’s been a long time, my friend,” he said. “Come, let us have a drink. Let us drink some wine, and talk of Romania.”

Khoska knew he was dreaming, or hallucinating, or possibly as dead now as Groznyy, who now poured the wine in his own glass, as he looked at Khoska with a genial smile on his face.

“You were intending to warn me about them all the time, weren’t you, Groznyy. You wanted to warn me about Voroslav, and about Phillip-about my own family. That is why you came to me to begin with, isn’t it?”

“Khoska, there is plenty of time for such serious matters,” Groznyy replied. “This wine, it is really much better than the shit they used to make in Romania, even better than what they make there now. It is better even than good Bulgarian wine. This in fact is a very old vintage. Some might consider it an ancient one. Please, drink”-

Khoska, reluctant and yet curious, took the glass and sipped the wine, as Groznyy looked on approvingly, and yet expectantly.

“Groznyy, my God, man-this is not wine, this is blood.”

The face of Karl Emil Groznyy now took on a deadly serious aspect as his eyes and his voice burned into Khoska’s consciousness.

“That is always the way of it, though, is it not? The blood is the life.”

He awoke with a pounding ache from the back of his head, only to see Phelps in the course of wiping his head with a damp cloth. He lay stretched out on the old dust-covered sofa. His vision was blurred, but gradually coming more into focus.

“It’s about time your old ass came to,” Phelps said. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Those men,” he said. “What about the girls! Where are they?”

He strained to rise, feeling dizzy and nauseous, as Phelps helped him up.

“They found some wine in a locked closet in the cellar. Evidently, your friend expected unwanted company at some point. They picked the perfect time to have a party with it. They just run out of the booze left them by whoever brought them up here. They have been here ever since the hospital bombing. They were all Johns Hopkins mental patients. I thought I recognized a couple of them from their pictures in the paper. We’ve been doing a series of exposés about their release. It was explained as some kind of bureaucratic snafu.”

Khoska rose and saw all the men sprawled out. Some of them were obviously dead. Only two of them, the young man with the knife and the fierce looking man with dark eyes, seemed yet alive, though obviously very deathly sick. The dark eyed man groaned loudly.

“My God!” Khoska muttered.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence they ended up here, and judging by all that horseshit you were talking about somebody sending you here to check on them, I don’t think you do either. I will tell you one thing, though, whatever brought them here, God had nothing to do with it.”

Khoska looked down toward the coffee table, and saw a Bible. He saw something else-a book of instruction for the Catholic faith.

“Only in a very obscene, hellish way,” Khoska replied. He then turned toward Phelps, who looked exhausted.

“What happened to the girls?”

Phelps looked back toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

“They’re gone,” he said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They exited the cabin to the break of day, and Phelps noticed the vulture, perched on a protruding trunk. Khoska saw it as well. It looked as though it laughed at them silently, curiously amused by their presence here this morning, as the sun just now rose. Khoska looked down the hillside, now overgrown with weeds, the same place where he first saw Grace Rodescu on that day when she seemed recovered from the trauma of her previous assault.

“Are you coming?” Phelps asked. Khoska looked over toward him. Phelps was seemingly numb, almost in a state of shock. Khoska noted how his wrists looked bloody from the effort of freeing himself from the ropes that bound him throughout most of the night. He must have known deep down how lucky he was to be alive. Khoska had not yet been conscious enough for it to sink in, though it gradually did. As Phelps started up the van, he gasped, and then cried loudly. Then he stopped, and cursing loudly, he put the van into gear, and drove away slowly.

As they left, Khoska looked once more down the ravine, and from this vantage point saw a glimpse of the old creek. A part of him hoped he would see some sign of life, but in this place of death, he knew it was just as well he did not. Suddenly, Phelps stopped.

“Our being up here didn’t change a damn thing,” he observed. “Everything that happened up here tonight that didn’t involve us would have happened without us, just the way it did, maybe just a little quicker, that’s all. I did not need to see that. I did not need to see any of it.

“They intended to hunt down the whole troop, all fifteen of them, plus the camp leader and the other two adult women with them. They were going to get them all while they hunted for the missing girl. Do you know what they said? They said they were saving them from the world, and that it was going to be hell on earth soon. They kept talking about something called Radu. I don’t guess you know anything about that?”

Khoska stiffened when he heard this, but was not quite sure how to respond

“They were insane,” Khoska said. “What would you expect them to say? Certainly, nothing sensible I should hope. Did they mention who it was who brought them here?”

“They didn’t mention your son, if that’s what you mean. They did not say anything about that. They had other things on their minds. They made the girls pray, before they made them strip, and sing, and dance, while they watched and”-

He could not go on. He stopped and took a deep breath.

“Before they could get to the point of killing them, which I’m sure is what they intended, they were unconscious from the effects of the wine. The girls grabbed their clothes and ran away. They did not stick around to help us, not that I blame them. I had to free myself.”

Khoska once more noted the swollen, bloodied wrists of the photographer, and wondered that he had the strength and nerve to drive away from here.

“So what is it about this son of yours?” Phelps now asked. “You mentioned him for a reason.”

“I was desperate,” Khoska explained. “I found my son’s number in Groznyy’s address book. They were involved in some way, but Phillip had nothing to do with this. When I called, after all these years he remembered Groznyy’s phone number. He assumed I was Groznyy calling him. He thought Groznyy was still alive. No, someone else was responsible for this abomination. I have no idea yet who.”

“Do you have a son named Berry?” Phelps asked. “One of them mentioned something about-you know something, fuck this.”

Suddenly, Phelps got out of his van and walked back toward the cabin, almost before Khoska could raise an objection. When he did so, Phelps waved him off, leaving Khoska to fear his intentions. While Phelps was away, he breathed deeply and said a prayer of thanks for his evident salvation from what could have been a night of unmitigated horror ending in destruction. As he sat there, the one thought reverberated throughout his brain.

Berry. It had to be the Lieutenant. He was up to his neck somehow in this business, from beginning to end. How could he ever hope to prove it now? Should he confide his suspicions with Phelps? Soon, the muckraking newspaper photographer returned to the van, opened the back door, and deposited something inside. He then returned to the driver’s seat, and began once more the long, torturous ride downhill.

“They’re all dead. I got pictures of them, as well as the dead Girl Scout and your friend. By God after what I went through tonight, I deserve to get something out of this. It was all I could do to keep from setting the whole damn place on fire. It would not take much for me to go back and do it now. At least your friend would get somewhat of a send-off. Seeing as how he saved our asses from beyond the grave and all, it seems appropriate. On the other hand, I figure if I do burn the place down, that would destroy whatever evidence there might be to catch these people, whoever or whatever they are.”

Soon, they were back down at the bottom of the hill, the descent not near as torturously difficult as the trip up the hill had been. Soon, they were winding their way back to Baltimore. Khoska had the overpowering urge to sleep, but feared doing so. He knew that soon, pictures of the remains of the long dead Karl Groznyy would stare out from newsstands and grocery counters across Maryland and beyond.

“So, do you have any idea who this Berry might be?” he asked.

“He is a Lieutenant with the Baltimore Police Department,” Khoska replied. “I would advise you to keep this to yourself until we can be certain of finding something in the way of proof. I will tell you one thing about him though.”

Phelps said nothing, as they soon found their way to more familiar terrain, Phelps now barreling toward the Maryland border as though yet in fear of his life.

“I’m waiting,” he said, as though fearing the worse.

“When Grace was apprehended for cashing her dead foster brothers workman’s comp checks, and it was discovered she used the money for drugs, it was Berry who was assigned to her case. It was Berry who went on to investigate her role in the suspicious deaths of her other family members.”

He waited, allowing this a few moments to sink in, as Phelps slowed considerably, his eyes focused firmly on the narrow, winding road, yet intent on the words Khoska spoke.

“It was Lieutenant James Berry,” Khoska finally concluded, “who in fact I am sure now destroyed any evidence he might have discovered concerning her role in those events.”

Khoska felt a wave of relief concurrent with dread. What if he were wrong, he wondered. There was always that possibility and he had been down so many dark and misleading paths, he could not be completely sure this was not yet another one. At the same time, as the lights of the beckoning and yet threatening metropolis glistened in the distance, he felt a sense of near certainty, and breathed deeply, yet sadly.

“Why would he be doing all this?” Phelps asked. “What possible reason could he have?”

“I wish I knew, Mr. Phelps,” Khoska replied sadly. “I only wish I knew.”

What Have We Got To Lose?

It just occurred to me, after my post about the death of Ike Turner, that some might be curious as to why, even though I call myself a pagan blogger, I post as often as I do about seemingly non-pagan topics such as this. Well, there is a very easy answer to that. Culture is a kind of magic in its own right. When you stop to think about it, the first play, the first musical composition, the first dance, the first drawing, sculpture, etc., is almost inarguably traceable back to those prehistoric times when the earliest magical shamans gathered their tribes around and performed some ritual geared toward appeasement or entreaty of what was perhaps more often than not some malignant deity.

Tribal elders would look on as the villagers and tribesman took part in dances to the rhythmic beat of ancient percussion instruments, and would sing and recite poetry, all in the hopes of insuring fertility, protection of the tribe, blessings on marriages, funerals, rites of passage, and ascensions of new chiefs and tribal elders.

To some extent, these traditions remained more or less intact, and are with us to this day. In other cases, they became more and more extravagant. In many of these cases, they went on to lose their original spiritual significance, at least outwardly.

Nevertheless, regardless of whether we view them as ceremonial, religious, high culture, or mass “pop culture” entertainment, still they speak to us on some inner level. To some extent, they enrich us all. Even mind-numbing nonsense serves a purpose. No, it is not a lofty purpose in all cases, but it nevertheless has its place, and its importance. We are better for its presence in our lives, generally speaking of course.

Not long before Ike Turner died, he had committed to producing and playing on an album by a new rock group called The Black Keys, which is a power-duo along the lines of the White Stripes. For whatever reason-perhaps Turner’s growing illness, or perhaps another reason-the project fell through. Now, of course, it is too late, as I do not believe any tracks were ever recorded.

That is really too bad. Who knows what we lost? Take that question to another level. What would it be like if we could have a recording, a modern state of the art CD, containing the actual recorded work of Mozart or Lizst? How about an actual violin concerto by Vivaldi? What if we could actually have a recorded film of an original Shakespeare play, performed live at the Globe Theatre, with the Bard himself in the cast? For that matter, can you picture an original, first time performance of The Oresteia, or The Frogs? For that matter, an old Roman farce? You can almost imagine the cameras panning over the crowd, and see Augustus laughing heartily at some off-color pun.

Even something as simple as an old Wild West barroom singer during the Gold Rush, while prospectors and ranch hands gather around for an afternoon of much-needed leisure daydreaming about the girls they left behind to “strike it rich”.

How much richer would we be? Just a thought. Cultural expressions, even the presumably basest sort, are a part of human nature, and provide both an outlet, and inspiration. It was almost inevitable that some day mankind would develop a means to record and preserve both the best and the worst, and everything in between. You might even consider it a gift of the gods, in a manner of speaking, one to compliment yet another, as a way of saying “bravo”.

Bringing Best Wishes And Joy This Holiday Season

Some of you who have been reading the first draft of my novel, tentatively titled Radu-which I am now trying to publish every five days-may have long ago come to the conclusion “he’s just making this shit up as he goes.” Well, you would almost be right, especially at first. As the book progresses, however, I have noticed that it seems to have taken on a life of its own and gone in directions I never foresaw when I initially started writing it.

One conspiracy, involving an international sex-slave ring, has turned out to have, hidden unbeknownst within its ranks, an even more pernicious cabal-a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Of course, I won’t say here what that is, so this is just to inform you that it will be revealed in the up-coming Chapter 32, which will be published on Christmas Day, and will be at the top of the main page for the following three days. There will be two more chapters between now and then, but this one will be the one that finally reveals the nature of this hidden, inner conspiracy.

With that said I will say no more, except be here for Chapter 32, when Marlowe’s granddaddy Martin explains the true meaning of the season, as he tells “The Christmas Story” to a somewhat captive audience.

Barak And Hillary

Why in the hell does he put up with this shit? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an Obama supporter, but shit, right is right and wrong is wrong. He should give as good as he gets, in my opinion. He should pull the same shit. Some of his supporters should just casually mention the fact that there are a good many unanswered questions concerning the suicide of former Clinton White House attorney Vince Foster. For that matter, official findings to the contrary, there is still some legitimate questions as to Whitewater, and Hillary Clinton’s work at the Rose Law Firm, where it is alleged by some that she served basically as a bag lady to deliver bribes, disguised as billing records, to then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Oh, and Hillary Clinton-isn’t she the one that fought tooth-and-nail to give children the right to sue their parents? Isn’t that a troublesome proposition at best? What was her connection with foreign campaign contributions to Bill’s 1996 re-election campaign, especially from China? Are there not legitimate suspicions that she has remained involved with these same shadowy figures?

What about Travelgate? Wasn’t it a bit heavy-handed on her part to just fire all those travel office workers and put in her own people, for no apparent legitimate reason? Of course, what would you expect from the woman who sponsored a nationalized health care initiative that amounted to a monstrously expensive bureaucracy, and did so in such a heavy-handed and secretive manner that it makes Dick Cheney’s energy policy meetings look like-well, bush league stuff?

Obama should do more than whine about this shit. He should hit back, and he should hit back hard, and fierce. He won’t though, because he is under the Democratic Party curse that insists a viable candidate should always run a “positive” campaign, and steer clear of negative politics. Never mind the fact that the people that adhere to this policy almost always lose.

In the meantime, the Democratic Party politicians in general are seen as wusses, while Bill Clinton, their first elected two-term President since Franklin Roosevelt-that same Bill Clinton who rewrote the book on gutterball politics-is one of the most admired men in the nation, possibly the world.

By the way, did you get a load of how Hillary, before the last debate, walked up to Obama and “apologized” for her campaign workers throwing aspersions about his past (and his present for that matter), that it was supposedly not any of her doing? Jeez, how condescending can you be? I almost expected her to reach out and rub his head. She definitely needs some luck from somewhere. She is not Bill. When he engaged in hardball politics, after all, he merely gave as good as he got, so people accepted that, due to the fact that he is likeable. She is not, and those tactics from her look petulant, arrogant, and shrewish. She is actually the last Democrat who should engage in these kinds of tactics, because of the simple fact that most people do not trust her to begin with, and even more people do not like her. If she wins, in her case it will be despite her personality and her campaign tactics, not because of them.

On top of all this, she is not engaging in this kind of behind the scenes hateful rhetoric against the people that might arguably deserve it. No, she is unfairly maligning a man who, politics aside, is arguably one of the nicest, most well meaning and genuine, major political candidates of our time. I disagree profoundly with much of his politics, but that is just a fact that should be recognized in all fairness. In my opinion, he is sincere, maybe even a true patriot, in the sense that he is a man who honestly wants to do what he feels would be good for the country.

Hillary wants to do good for Hillary. If she wins, may the gods help her enemies, both real and perceived. If she loses, you can gauge her intentions to run again by the number of appearances she makes on the Cable News Channels from that point on. It won’t be pretty. In the meantime, in my opinion, Bill Clinton is living on borrowed time-nothing like a sympathy vote when nothing else seems to work.

One thing is for sure, if Hillary does go on to win the nomination, and then the presidency, Oprah Winfrey had damn sure better go through her finances with a fine tooth comb and make sure every penny is in order and accounted for, because she will in short order be the recipient of the mother of all tax audits. I almost guarantee it.

True, Hillary’s tactics might backfire and Obama could claim the prize of the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately for him, if he continues with his current campaign style, that prize will end up being, in the end, the same as it usually is to a Democratic presidential candidate-a consolation prize.

Oh, And By The Way-India Has Nukes

Two Hindu gods, Ram and Hanuman (the monkey god) have been summonsed to appear in court by Judge Sunil Kumar Singh in order to help resolve a property dispute. They own the land, according to locals, that a priest claims was granted his grandfather by a former local king.

Now that the two gods seem to have so contemptuously flaunted the Indian justice system by failure to appear, the judge has issued a newspaper advert encouraging them to do so at once.

The judge's court is a "fast track" meant to solve disputes quickly. I think here is the crux of the problem. You see, the gods are immortal entities, and can't be rushed, as time has no meaning to them. The judge should try to exercise a little understanding, to say nothing of judicial restraint.

Lunar Tunes

If you re into astrology, this is actually a good astrology blog. I'd forgotten about it until I just started going over my bookmarks. After all these months, it's still regularly updated at least once every two weeks on average. Worth the time to check out.

Kid Nation

For those of you who are always upset and whining about the lack of family programming on television, you hopefully checked out the recent CBS reality series Kid Nation. I put off commenting about the show during it’s run mainly because I had this suspicion that it would turn out to have a phony, manufactured ending-like, for example, series bad girl Taylor winning the last “gold star” and turning out to be a “good kid” at the end. This, of course, would have been lame, and an obvious set-up.

Well, it did not turn out that way, so my concerns were unjustified. Nevertheless, from all indications, the show will return. When and if it does, I recommend it as good “family fare”. Yeah, it is kind of silly. The concept is something along the lines of “Lord Of The Flies” meets “Our Gang”, in a reality series format. A group of kids-in the first season there were forty of them, ranging in ages from eight to fifteen-inhabit an abandoned western mining town known as Bonanza City, somewhere in the desert of New Mexico, and run it with minimal adult supervision.

A gold star is awarded at the end of each episode, by the town council (four kids elected by all the kids to represent four competing divisions) according to who made the most valuable contribution to the community. Each gold star was worth twenty thousand dollars and went toward the child’s college fund. There were four color-coded districts, representing leaders, merchants, cooks, and workers, and a contest in each episode determined what color group was awarded which district.

It was a kind of race, and if all four groups completed the task, they got the choice of a special prize for the entire community, usually a choice of some practical, utilitarian item or some more fun, kid type prize. Usually, but not always, the town council picked the more practical item. To me, though, the so-called practical choices were in some cases not so practical. Books, for example, don’t seem too practical in a situation where everyone is expected to work so many hours a day in a community that is basically a temporary setting. The town council chose the books, and I would be willing to wager that a grand total of one chapter per child on average was read, if that.

In the series finale, three extra gold stars, worth fifty thousand each, were awarded to three different kids who the council decided were the overall best in certain categories throughout the series run.

This series came under a good deal of criticism, for the most part before it even aired, from the screaming meemies of society shouting out accusations of child abuse. That pretty much went by the wayside after the show actually aired.

A word of caution, however-these are by no means “regular kids”. You can make book on the fact that when kids are recommended and approved for appearances in this type of project, they usually come from the upper strata of society, at the very least from the so-called “upper middle class”. One of the kids, on the show’s web site, lists the person she admires most in the world as King Mohammed of Morocco-where she and her family vacations every year.

You get the idea. These are not kids, for the most part at least, whose families are in danger of being thrown out on the streets at the slightest downturn of the economy. Still, in a general sense, this prime time network program is worth watching with the kids and its even fun at times. Some scenes are even funny, if somewhat contrived. In one of the episodes I watched, one little boy who missed his mother and his girlfriend went into the saloon to “have a root beer and get it off my mind.”

Yeah, like I said, some things seem kind of lame and made up. But, as long as there are shows like this, people can’t really complain about the lack of family programming. What it all boils down to is the people that usually make these kinds of complaints generally don’t want anything BUT this kind of programming-which would be really fucking annoying.

One thing to bear in mind is, these were generally pretty smart kids. Yes, they performed well and most of the time made the most appropriate choices, so adults can point to these kids as “good role models” (with some exceptions). Nevertheless, these kids were also intelligent enough to understand that their parents, and a good deal of the country, would be watching them at some vague future date on prime time network television. I wouldn’t be too quick to be handing out any gold stars.

Death Of An Accidental Daddy

In 1952, Ike Turner entered a studio and, with his band, recorded the song "Rocket 88". The guitar amplifier tipped over, resulting in the first feedback sound distortion in recorded history. Rocket 88 is now considered by many the first rock and roll song, and Ike Turner is credited by many as being it's inventor (an honor also bestowed on Johnny Ace).

Ike Turner's private life was tumultuous, and probably had an effect on his creative output. He served time in prison for weapons and drug possession, but nevertheless will always be remembered for his musical career, especially for his discovery of future wife (though he later alleged they never actually married) Tina Turner.

The biggest hit for The Ike And Tina Turner Revue, as they and their band were called, was "Proud Mary", previously a Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, and which Ike and Tina took to number three on the American pop charts.

After a stint in prison, during which both he and Tina were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (she accepting his award on his behalf), Ike returned to music, and released several recordings, in the meantime winning an award for Best Comeback Artist and Best Blues Recording.

If any would like to leave a message of condolences for his passing to the family and friends of Ike Turner you can do so here

Some have apparently used the site as an excuse to vent their anger over Ike's alleged rough treatment of Tina, and such comments have been and will be deleted, understandably so. Come on, people, grow up.

Not to excuse any kind of abuse, but no one really knows the whole story. And, to paraphrase here Ike's own words-

"I may have slapped Tina, and I knocked her down here and there, but I never beat her."

No, I am not trying to be funny. Shit happens.

Ike Turner died at the age of 76. Though a cause of death is yet to be released, he is said to have suffered from emphysema. His web-site suggests that in lieu of flowers, to send a donation to your local school's music department.