Radu-Chapter XVI (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments:

Prologue and Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV

RADU-Chapter XVI
A Novel by Patrick Kelley
24 pages approximate

Harvey Caldwell was determined the April Sandusky case was not going to be forgotten by the people of Baltimore, by the media, or in fact by the nation. He had worked too hard in his career to right the wrongs perpetrated on people of color throughout the many centuries of American history. He was at Birmingham. He was at Selma. He was in Washington in 1963. He had been in march after march, had done jail time, and was once beaten badly. The beating he took in Mississippi resulted in a badly damaged tooth, and he still had the gold crown he wore as a reminder. He would never forget where he came from.

He had met Doctor King, in the early days of the Civil Rights struggle, and had marched with him, though he in fact was a mere lad of fifteen at that time. He had just turned eighteen not too long before the death of King in Memphis. When he heard the news in Baltimore, he cursed. He felt he should be there, at the scene. He had just enough money to get there by bus. He was not in the least bit annoyed by the fact that everybody on the bus looked at him as if he might at any minute step out of line. He had come to expect it by then.

He visited the scene of the King assassination. Many of the brothers there in Memphis talked about burning the motel to the ground, but he told them they should view it as sacred ground, as a place where a martyr willingly gave up his life for the cause of justice and equality. Naturally, they did not understand. He reminded them about King’s earlier speech about his feelings that he might not be long for the world. Despite this, he was concerned not for himself, but for the cause. Caldwell always believed that he saved that hotel from being overtaken and destroyed, but he could never prove it. That bothered him greatly.

What good did it do to accomplish great things if there was nothing to point to in the way of a public record? He may have temporarily changed the minds of a small number of brothers, but he could not hope to change their hearts permanently. For that, he needed a following.

Caldwell decided to become a preacher. For a while, it was rough sledding. He attracted a small following. He started preaching about the corruption of the city of Baltimore, and the nation. After a decade of toiling tirelessly, he finally found himself with an ever-growing congregation. After a decade as a virtual unknown, his sermons attracted attention on a statewide level. Jesse Jackson visited him and offered him a position as an executive in the Baltimore office of Operation Push. It was a tempting offer, but Caldwell declined.

He would be required to open up his books to the light of day, and a great many things would not meet with approval. He received a great deal of financial support from sources of dubious ethics. He accomplished great things with those funds, but at the same time, he understood all too well that much was expected of him. He started the Blackbirds Nest, a home for unwed mothers, and the Baltimore Renewal Center, a drug addiction and alcoholic treatment facility. He founded Operation Resume, which aided convicted felons in their quest for educational and job training opportunities.

Finally, he started Operation Crackdown, an agency designed to offer counseling to gang members, establish a community liaison to the police, and a neighborhood watch group, all geared toward cleaning up the inner city neighborhoods.
Of course, he continued as an unabated and unabashed force for cleaning up City Hall, and reforming police corruption.

He was getting sick of it. Nothing ever really changed. He was at this point 51 years old and had his own comfortable nest egg. He wanted to quit while he was ahead. He wanted to live while he was yet young enough to enjoy it. At the same time, he realized it could not hurt to keep the money coming in, and the only way he could do that was by appointing adequately qualified officials to run his different agencies, people he could trust. They would just have to know enough to keep the operations running smoothly. He would still be the executive director, of course, and would have to put in appearances at various meetings and file the appropriate paperwork, but that would not be a problem.

He filled most of the positions easily enough, but the one problem area was with Operation Crackdown. That particular organization required a firm hand and, more importantly, political acumen and a media savvy sense. Not just anyone would do, and he worried greatly as to how he would pull this off.

In fact, he had many sleepless nights due to this dilemma. One night, he dreamed he was standing in front of that old hotel in Memphis. He found himself realizing he was dreaming, and wishing he had burned the motherfucker down. Sure, he would have went to prison, but after a small amount of time, he could have gotten out of prison, went through a reformation process, found the lord, and as a result would have started out as a famous person as opposed to all the thankless years he devoted to the process in virtual obscurity. He could have retired ten years ago with twice as much money as he now had.

Then he saw the Memphis hoods whose names he no longer remembered. He looked at them and suddenly, their faces became clear to him again, and he even knew their names. Out of the roughly thirteen or fourteen there that night, one of them was named Jimmy, one was named Earl, and one was named Ray. Now by God, how could he have forgotten that? He looked at them now, sweating, angry, and afraid, some of them obviously high. Yet, one of them looked at him with steely cold determination.

“We’ll do whatever you tell us, brother”, he said.

Caldwell woke up almost immediately, the first time in years he woke up fully aware, refreshed, and in fact-awake. Damn, he thought. Why the hell didn’t he tell me that before? On that night, so many years ago, he just looked down at the ground, while a couple of the others just laughed. Yet, in the end, they did what he said.

He looked over now at his wife, who still slept, and who, now that his children were grown and away from home, looked older than ever.

“I should have burned the motherfucker down”, he said.

His wife stirred when he said this, and opened her eyes, obviously still dazed.

“Just don’t let me know about it”, she said.

“Oh, just shut up and go back to sleep, Wanda”, he said.

That very day, he called a meeting with a former gang member named Marshall, a kid who just turned twenty, a kid he had just two years ago put through rehab and encouraged to renounce his former gang lifestyle, yet at the same time, a kid who was street smart and savvy. Marshall was a smart kid, an A student, and wanted to go into politics, and considered a law degree to that end. Caldwell offered him another deal, a better deal. He would offer him a job with Operation Crackdown. While there, he could still go to community college as a first step in pursuing a law degree. Sure, it was not Harvard, but if it worked out, it would have a lot more credibility than any Ivy League institution-at least in the streets and, more importantly, at the voting booth.

“Do you really think I’m qualified for this?” Marshall was amazed at the offer.

“If I didn’t think so do you think I’d make the offer?” Caldwell knew he had the right man. Marshall was ambitious, talented, energetic, and creative. He was also suitably ruthless. Caldwell knew that Marshall left the gang lifestyle, but the gang lifestyle never left Marshall. He would fit right in with his little organization.

He agreed to the offer, tentatively, whereupon Caldwell drove him on what he called the “grand tour”. He introduced Marshall to all the appropriate contacts at City Hall, in addition to various church and civic leaders. Finally, he took Marshall on the most important part of the tour. A warehouse, one that while not wholly abandoned, and thus still kept under suitably passable maintenance, was otherwise unremarkable.

Caldwell pulled up to the front of the building and started walking back toward the loading docks.

“What are we doing here?’ Marshall demanded.

“Just follow me, and when you see the inside, don’t act surprised. It would really be a good idea if you don’t say anything to anybody, either.”

Marshall knew of course what the place was, so it was easy enough to follow Caldwell’s instructions to not be surprised by the seemingly thousands of pounds of marijuana being loaded off trucks into crates. When Caldwell saw that Marshall, in fact, was not in the least surprised, his jaw dropped. It worried him greatly.

“You knew about this?”

“Of course I knew about it”, Marshall replied. “Hell, everybody knows about it.”

He took a few deep breaths, as he felt he might collapse there on the spot. Finally, he regained his composure and, pulling himself together, he looked at Marshall and gave him what amounted to the first order to his newest Administrative Assistant to Operation Crackdown.

“Let’s get the hell out of here”, he said.

.“So who the hell is everybody? How in the hell did they know about the warehouse? How the hell did you know about it?”

They were now out of sight of the warehouse, and Caldwell was now beginning the process of making phone calls, to his various contacts in the capital, and to those at City Hall. Many of them he had just this day spoken to, but he had to be sure of something. He had to be sure someone was not getting ready to send him up the river.

“It ain’t nothing to worry about”, Marshall told him. “Just the guys on the street, you know, the real brothers. Nobody you have to worry about. What you thinking, the guys are going to snitch on you? Get real, Brother Caldwell.”

“Bullshit! I am going to have to shut down operations there and move probably out of the fucking city. Do you know how dangerous it is for too many people to know about that place? Especially people that I do not even know about? How long has this been public knowledge anyway?

“Look, I’m glad you told me all this,” he said, “and I appreciate you thinking it’s no big worry, but one thing you got to understand, some things you just can’t spread around. A warehouse full of drugs constantly going in and out at all hours of the night is one of them. So if there’s anybody you know of that knows about this shit, I need to know about it.”

Marshall gave him a list of names-seventeen in all that he knew for a fact had knowledge of the warehouse business. They were all, as he said, brothers-former gang members who, although they had criminal records, were at the same time, technically, law-abiding, upstanding citizens of the community. They knew better than to open their mouths. In fact, it was all the difference in being able to sleep with your gun within arms reach, and having it under your pillow with your finger on the trigger.

Caldwell met all of them over the course of the next three days, and on the last day, in June of 2001, the 17th Pulse was born. Marshall, however, was not wholly convinced of his place in Caldwell’s organization. Marshall was trustworthy, and somebody like that, with his obvious talents, did not come along everyday. At the same time, his concerns made sense. Marshall had street credit-perhaps a little too much street credit. Also, he was young, and would be an oddity as even an Assistant Director of a large organization.

The more Caldwell thought about it, the more certain he was that this was the case. Marshall, he decided, would be more valuable as the de facto, yet unofficial head, of all Caldwell’s enterprises-an enforcer. All decisions would go through him.

One of the first projects Caldwell put Marshall in charge of was in promoting and encouraging investment in black businesses in the inner city. Far too many blacks in Baltimore were frequenting white owned establishments, who of course owed nothing to the good offices of the Reverend Harvey Caldwell.

It came to his attention that an establishment known as the Krovell Funeral Home conducted the funeral arrangements for the three first victims of the 17th Pulse-three people who also knew a little too much about the good Reverends enterprises than was good for either him or, especially, themselves. Caldwell sent Marshall to check out the Krovells. Unfortunately, he could uncover nothing of any significance about the family, or the business, which was one of nearly a century’s duration in the city.

Yet, Krovells was not in close proximity to the neighborhood, and in fact, it was in the Northeaster part of the city, close to the Baltimore County line. Despite this, they did a significant business in Baltimore, and it did not take Marshall long to understand why-Krovell’s offered competitive rates. Marshall attended the funerals for all three men, and found himself the object of attention from someone who turned out to be the Krovell’s then sixteen-year-old son, Marlowe, who seemed to view him with a great deal of curiosity.

The younger teen approached Marshall, and after engaging in casual conversation for about ten minutes or so, took him off to the side. Something was obviously on his mind.

“Did you kill these guys?”

“Hell no”, Marshall replied uncomfortably, shocked that this kid would even consider asking him such a thing.

“Bullshit”, Marlowe said. “You might not have pulled the trigger yourself, but you know something about it. You are the only person who attended all three funerals. I can tell you are nervous about something. Plus, you act like you don’t really care anything about them.”

“Well, hell, Sherlock, what am I supposed to do, cry my eyes out, or maybe I should sing some kind of negro spiritual? C’mon man, you are silly.”

“Awright, if you say so”, Marlowe replied. “Look I don’t give a shit. I just want to buy some pot from you.”

Whoah, wait up here”, Marshall replied, now even more indignantly. “So ‘cos I’m black you just know I can sell you some reefer? Kid, you are too much.”

“Well, I really want something stronger, but I figured you would want to be sure you can trust me first”, Marlowe said.

“Stronger?”

“Heroin”.

That was the beginning of a long-standing relationship between Marlowe Krovell and Marshall Crenshaw, who saw this as an opportunity to insinuate himself into a different social circle. Marlowe had the appearance of a Goth, with his dark clothing and jewelry, his long, jet black dyed hair, and dark eyeliner. Although he turned out to be pretty much a loner even as a Goth, his association with Marlowe eventually led to other contacts. He met the more socially active Marty Evans through Marlowe, which led to still other contacts, including eventually a man, just turned eighteen, by the name of Milo Jackson.

Milo became one of his best wholesale customers, in fact, and through him, he met a girl by the name of Raven Randall, who at the time lived with a seemingly affable yet dim-witted guy named Rhino. Raven wanted a change, and so he set her up with Marlowe, who fell madly in love with her. She soon after died of a drug overdose, and though Rhino was distraught, Marshall suspected him of complicity. He was stupid, but he had friends other than Milo who were more than happy to tell him about Raven’s betrayal. At first Rhino refused to break up with her, insisting she was just using Krovell. In fact, she confided to him she wanted to get embalming fluid from Marlowe, lots of it. When Marlowe refused, she broke up with him, then died several days later.

Now, Marlowe was distraught, and wanted more heroin than usual, but Marshall was more than happy to oblige him. Shortly afterward, Milo was busted and sent to rehab, for about the fourth time in his life. Out of necessity, Marshall began dealing directly with Milo’s best friend, Joseph Karinsky, a person who really gave Marshall the creeps. Nevertheless, he was for now his lifeline into the Goth community, and Caldwell wanted that lifeline kept open.

It was a minor competition with the Russian mafia, which operated out of The Crypt. As long as it did not get too far out of hand, the competition was good for business. In fact, it helped insure a steady stream of merchandise from one source when, for whatever reason, the other experienced difficulties, as was the case from time to time. As long as it remained not too obtrusive, it would not be a problem.

In fact, Caldwell’s gang, through Marshall, formed a kind of loose trial partnership with the mob, a tentative agreement to provide a guaranteed secondary supply of drugs when needed. Marshall merely agreed to insure quality, and to adhere to obvious limitations outside of those rare times when the mob needed Caldwell’s suppliers. The money was not that important, in fact it was actually negligible. To Marshall-and to Caldwell-that lifeline was what mattered.

It was a practical arrangement for Milo, and later for Karinsky, as well. For some reason, they were not well regarded in the Goth community, though they seemed at first glance to fit right in. There was something about that bunch that was mysterious and even foreboding. Marshall could not quite put his hands on it, but Marlowe told him that, according to Raven, Joseph Karinsky ran what amounted to a cult with himself as, not just a High Priest, but what amounted to a living god. When Marlowe asked her what kind of rites they practiced, she told him Dionysiac. He assumed that meant merely that they drank wine, got high, and worshipped Dionysius.

Marshall thought there was more to it than that, and when he heard rumors of body parts being found scattered about the outskirts of the city and county, of how they seemed completely drained of blood and were actually murdered by being torn alive, limb from limb, he heard rumors pertaining to the involvement of the Karinsky cult. He also heard what was rumored to be the real reason for the death of Raven Randall. She did not merely die of an accidental overdose-she was murdered. Her breakup with Marlowe was the apparent reason for it. She had not broke up with him over an argument, or for his unwillingness to supply the embalming fluid it was rumored the gang used to heighten the effects of the marijuana they purchased from Marshall-a charge which Karinsky staunchly denied. The truth, however, was perhaps as sinister, or more. She broke up with Marlowe to protect him from Joseph, and from what he and the others had planned for him.

When he confided this to Marlowe, his long time associate said nothing, and betrayed no feelings one way or another. That was the last time he ever saw Marlowe, until soon before the murder-suicide of his parents, and his own near murder. At any rate, Crenshaw had long maintained the Krovell funeral home should be off-limits to any kind of boycott by any of Harvey Caldwell’s followers, and Caldwell acceded to that.

For the most part, Marshall Crenshaw proved to be every bit as valuable as Caldwell imagined he would be. He soon became the de facto enforcer, keeping tabs not just on the inner workings of Operation Crackdown, but on all of Caldwell’s civic organizations. He cut staff, those he considered dead weight, and in other ways cut or minimized expenses, while bringing in fresh blood in the form of community volunteers. He increased the effectiveness of the various organizations. Because of this, he increased the flow of contributions, both the legal and the illegal ones. To this end, he kept his own set of books, books that were privy to no eyes but the Reverend Harvey Caldwell.

Within four years, Harvey finally became a millionaire, with money in offshore accounts that required not one dime of taxes, yet which was easily accessible. At the same time, all of his various charitable organizations were enjoying greater influence than ever. That meant greater political clout, as well as the greater potential to do great works. Harvey Caldwell believed in keeping it real. That was, after all, what it was all about, and justified the increased personal wealth from which he benefited.

However, things started spiraling out of control over the course of just the last few months. First, Caldwell discovered, somewhat belatedly, that Marshall arranged a date, of sorts, between Marlowe Krovell and April Sandusky. This resulted in the unfortunate woman’s savage murder, her throat reportedly ripped open and the blood drained from her body. Word then got out that April, far from being the devout Christian woman she portrayed herself to be, had been involved with the 17th Pulse, who were now widely suspected of complicity in the crime.

As if that were not bad enough, almost an entire high school basketball team lay dead, as the entire city mourned along with their community, school, and in fact the nation. Only two survived, for now, and both would live the lives of complete vegetables. The cause seemed to be marijuana soaked in lethal amounts of embalming fluid. The perpetrator seemed to be a sixteen year old girl from Virginia, rumored to be a member of the Gothic sub-cult whom Marshall himself supplied.

Now, the girl was in jail, and currently also charged with the murder of her own family, who died, suspiciously enough, in the same way April Sandusky had been murdered. Originally, a fire was set which disguised somewhat the nature of the deaths, as well as the amount of time they were actually dead. However, a great deal of circumstantial evidence pointed to their deaths as being of several months duration. Investigators derived this evidence from the carcasses of several cattle which had wandered off and which had died at various intervals. There were as many as twelve carcasses found all together. One had been dead for as long as four months, and was all but a skeleton.

Further forensic evidence revealed the evidence of nicks on several of the human skeletal remains, which intimated that a bloody, barbaric crime had occurred of the utmost savagery. Also dead and similarly butchered-though this crime was determined to have occurred at a much later date-had been a private investigator by the name of Peter Domenic.

Caldwell found this worrisome-very worrisome indeed! Domenic was more than just a private investigator. He was, although a former FBI agent, a hired gun of the Russian mafia, with a more specific connection to its Romanian branch, which was a particularly violent branch of an organization that was itself a notably ruthless one. Why were they involved in this?

More importantly, to what extent was Marshall involved, and why?

Then, when he did not think things could possibly get any worse there was what seemed to be a terrorist attack at, of all places, John Hopkins University Hospital, which left 38 people dead. Caldwell prepared a statement to the effect that this terrible incident should not detract from the overall needs of the community, or in the effort to bring to justice the true killers of April Sandusky. He started to make the accusation that the whole incident was a ploy specifically meant to draw attention away from the murder, and from the demands for justice and accountability. Understandably, he realized in retrospect, his PR people strongly advised against this type of language.

“No offense, Reverend Harvey, but that kind of thing can really come back to bite you on the ass,” one of them warned him. He acceded to what he assumed was their better judgment, hard though it was to do. He had yet not issued a statement. He was too worried about Marshall, who had unfortunately disappeared. No one had seen him for over two weeks, and no one seemed to know where he was. Caldwell called the current leader of the 17th Pulse and, though it was irregular, asked to meet with the gang.

Spooky Gold, the leader of the gang, was not in a good mood, and made no bones about it.

“I’m sick of hearing about this bitch”, he said. “She was a ho, she was my ho, his ho, everybody ho ho, but everybody be talkin’ like she was some kind of goddamn Mother Theresa. Now I can’t walk down the street without the cops bustin’ me for anything they can think of, includin’ spittin’ on the sidewalk or jaywalkin’. So what the hell happened to you and this clout I keep hearin’ so much about?”

“Oh, fuck you, Spooky Gold, I got you out didn’t I?” Caldwell was incensed at the insinuation that he could no longer take care of his own. “What the fuck do you want, a public apology? Give it time, I’ll get you that, and a lawsuit against the city on top of that. They know they fucked up, that is why they be looking and acting hard. Just suck it up for a while, and they will settle before the lawsuit ever goes before the bench.”

“Suck it up, hell”, another of the guys said. “I can’t leave my crib without them driving by, driving by my momma’s house, and got everybody on the street afraid to even say ‘hey now’. What the fuck is up with that shit?”

All the other gang members nodded and voiced agreement with this.

“Look, I know it’s hard, but these things take time”, Caldwell was saying as he found it increasingly hard to hide his agitation. “You guys are supposed to be tough, you supposed to be able to take it. God, what is all this whining about? Do you guys think you can stand up to the Russians? Shit, those people are going to run you out of here in under six months if you don’t pull yourself together. You know it could well come to that if you show weakness. Those people are not our friends. They just tolerate us as a matter of convenience. By the way, has anybody heard from Marshall? For all I know they done away with him already.”

“We put feelers out, just like you said. The only person I heard anything from was that old preacher from April’s church”, Spooky said.

“Brother George, yeah, that’s right”, another one said. “But he said he wants to talk to you in private, says he refuses to talk about it with anybody else.”

For a few seconds, Caldwell took all this in, and then slammed his fist on the table.

“Fuck that senile old fool, I ain’t got time for him”, he said. “His idea of community action is makin’ sure the boys and girls ain’t feelin’ each other up in the church pews on Sundays. He’s ridiculous. In the meantime, we got the feds crawling all over Baltimore because of a fucking terrorist attack at John Hopkins. People are going around ripping people apart and drinking they dead momma’s and daddy’s blood. Somebody is poisoning high school ball players with pot laced with embalming fluid that, by the way, probably came from Marshall. In the meantime, the neighborhood is under lockdown in all but name, and so business is going to hell. Yet, I’m not supposed to worry about any of it getting’ back to me.”

He looked around, desperately wanting to kick their asses or do something to get them in gear and back out on the street doing something-anything. Now they suddenly could not even look at him. They just looked all around at each other, one was whispering to another, and they were obviously worried about something.

“All right, what the fuck is going on?” he demanded. “You know something I don’t know and that’s not good. In fact, that worries me greatly. Whatever the fuck it is, spill it. Spooky? Toby? Ratchet? Hacksaw? I’m fuckin’ waitin’.”

“It’s about Marshall”, Spooky finally spoke up as the mood in the room suddenly became oppressively dismal. “And it’s about”-

He looked around the room, then back to Caldwell.

“It’s about what happened at the hospital. Ratchet, you want to tell him or should I?”

Within the space of four seconds, a good deal of the color went out of the face of the Reverend Harvey Caldwell, and for a brief instant, he saw himself back as an eight year old. He found himself inexplicably back in the late 1950’s, at a fair in Virginia, on a long ago summer day when he and his siblings went to visit their uncle. They attended the fair, and were amazed to see so many black people in the same place with so many white attendees.

He separated himself from his brother and sisters and out of curiosity attended the “minstrel show”. All of the performers were white, sung incredibly bad renditions of a few negro spirituals, but mostly white folk songs, while all made up in black face. They seemed to have black shoeshine polish all over their faces, with white grease paint around their eyes, and heavy red lipstick over their mouths meant to facilitate the illusion of what he heard derogatorily called by the crowd “nigger lips”.

At one point somebody in a white sheet that looked suspiciously like Ku Klux Klan attire came walking out with his arms up in the air and moaning in a high pitched wail at one man who acted with the persona of a tough, street wise black that put Caldwell in mind somewhat of a pimp. When he saw the Klan ghost, however, his eyes widened, his lips quivered, and he seemed to lose control of his voice. “WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WELL” he screeched, and then hurriedly explained to his gathered friends that he just thought of something he had to do. None of the others seemed to see the apparition.

Well, who the fuck would not be afraid of that, Caldwell thought to himself. He overheard somebody offer a woman a drag off his cigarette while telling her not to “nigger lip” it. By that time, he had enough, and left the tent, where three men and two women then confronted him. One of the women gazed at him in mock lasciviousness.

“You want to go out with this woman, boy?” one of the men asked him.

“No”, Caldwell said.

“You sayin’ I ain’t good enough for you, colored boy?” the woman demanded.

“He’d damned well better not be sayin’ that about ma sister”, another of the men said.

“I didn’t say that”, Caldwell replied.

“Oh, so you’re sayin’ you think she’s good lookin’ then”, another man said, and produced a knife, which he began paring his nails with, while glaring ominously at young Harvey Caldwell.

“No, I just sayin’ I don’t mess with white womans or white girls either one”, Caldwell said. He knew the whole crowd was obviously drunk. “I believe in stickin’ to my own kind.”

“You better not be lyin’ to me, boy”, one of the men now said in the most threatening tone Caldwell ever heard, before or since. “Cos I’d rather come home one day and see my woman getting fucked by a dog or a monkey as to see her in bed with a fucking nigger”.

“I swear I would never ever mess with a white woman, mister”, Caldwell pleaded as the man suddenly advanced toward him with the knife.

Then, the man stopped, and looked down at the ground, and suddenly, the others in the group looked unsure of what to say, as they glanced around at each other uncomfortably. The man then backed up and told him to “go ahead and get the hell out of here”.

He ran, as fast as he could, until he found his siblings, looking agitated at him having disappeared. Yet, they could tell he was terrified at something, one of them remarking that he looked like he had “seen a ghost”.

He was afraid, in fact, that he came close to becoming a ghost that day, but he did not say anything. He felt humiliated by his fear and was loathe giving voice to it. He told them he was afraid because he lost track of them. He was never so relieved, in fact, as when he found them that night. He never told them or anyone, what happened, until years later in the nineteen eighties, in one of those church services where he finally opened up and laid his soul bare to the congregation. It was one of those more memorable sermons, and established him as a major voice in Baltimore racial politics and civil rights advocacy.

Now, his brother was a lawyer, married to a white judge, and his sisters were married to successful businessmen, one of whom also was white. They barely remembered that day, and acted as if they wondered if he made the story up-though of course they never openly said as much, at least not to his knowledge.

Yet, on those rare occasions when he felt fear, or any kind of alarm, he remembered that day, yet another instance of how his innate skill with the spoken word got him out of trouble, or swayed a group of people in one way or another. Now, the original, seventeen charter members of the 17th Pulse looked at him strangely, as though waiting for his instructions. They waited for his permission, to either speak or not speak. The news they had was obviously grim, and Caldwell was for once at a loss for words.

“You know, I never fucked a white woman in my life”, Caldwell said. “I never really ever wanted to-but you know something? I think I’m going to, just one time before I die. God damn, I deserve it.”

“Hey boss, you want a woman I can get you one, any color any time, no problem”, was the exuberant promise made now by Toby, considered the Romeo-in fact the lead pimp-of the group. As he was in charge of the prostitution racket the Pulse operated within the inner city, he felt confident he could deliver on such a promise. However, Caldwell had no interest in any inner city crack whore or heroin addict, of any color.

“If I want a sex change operation, I’ll go to a surgeon”, he said. “I ain’t going to let my fuckin’ dick rot off to save a few thousand dollars.”

“That’s cold, boss”, Toby said with a somber shake of the head.

“No, what’s cold is you keeping shit from me”, Caldwell said. “I know Crenshaw is the man who keeps me in the loop, but he’s evidently either run off, or he’s dead. I think you know which one it is. I hope you are not about to tell me he died in that hospital blast. I know he went there a couple of times to see that Krovell kid. I saw the names of people listed as dying in the blast, they were all released, and his name was not there as either dead or injured. So what exactly are you saying?”

He waited impatiently as they just looked around at each other, unsure of how to tell him. He was starting to get more pissed off than worried.

“Damn, somebody spill it”, he demanded. “Waiting for you guys to say something is like watching grass grow. What the fuck is wrong with y’all?”

“I was the one that made the bomb”, Ratchet finally said.

“I was the one that delivered it in that old Fed Ex truck, and took it to the psychiatrists office. I stood there whistling like an idiot while he signed for it. Psychiatrists give me the creeps.”

This came from Mercury Morris, who seemed the most nonchalant one of the group. Caldwell gazed over at Toby the pimp.

“I guess you’re the one that killed the doctors wife and kidnapped his kids”, he said.

“That was me that killed the wife”, replied Spooky Gold. “I didn’t have shit to do with the kids though. That was Big Fish.”

“Hey, I was good as gold to those kids, too. I brought along halal snacks and brought them each a milk shake. I figured Washington would be a long trip without their mother with some black guy they never seen a day in their lives. They were crying when I got them to the mosque. I guess they were glad to see their own kind.”

Caldwell just looked with his arms folded, his head cocked, as he bit his upper lip with his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“You guys are real fucking funny”, he said. “Do you think this shit is something to joke about? Well, I tell you, if anybody ever hears you talking like this, do you know they will probably be only all too happy to take you serious? You might want to think about that before you start pulling these kinds of sick ass jokes. This ain’t the fucking fifties, you know. We don’t all have to be comedians just to get by or to make ourselves feel better about our misery.”

Then he looked at all of them and saw that no one was laughing. No one was smiling. No one was winking, or trying to control their mirth. They were all not only serious, but also grim.

“Okay, where the woman’s body? I’m talking about Raghda Tariq. I know part of her was stuffed in that box, they found a piece of her skull and a couple of teeth and some hair that matched her DNA. Somebody stuffed her head in the box, at least.”

“I took her brains out and stuffed the detonator up inside her skull”, Ratchet replied. “Marshall said the doctor needed to see her head in that box, and wouldn’t be likely to mess with anything else in there. I used her head to hide the detonator just the same.”

“Me and Toby dumped her body in the Delaware River,” Spooky continued, “in eight different suitcases, weighted with lead. Don’t worry, I doubt it will ever turn up.”

Caldwell now had to set down. He knew he should be incensed, but for the time being he was too shocked, and too terrified, to allow himself to feel this emotion. Anger was a luxury he felt he could not afford to indulge. He only wanted to know one thing.

“Why?”

“Marshall said it had to be done”, Spooky replied, “but he couldn’t say why, only it was a matter of life and death.”

“Oh-my motherfucking God”, Caldwell said. “You’re all for real, ain’t ya? Ohh-my motherfucking God. And you all just went along with this shit? Why?”

“You told us to do anything he said”, Hacksaw replied. “Well, and we all got two hundred grand apiece.”

“WHAT? Where the fuck did that come from?”

“From Tariq’s bank accounts,” Hacksaw said, “seven different ones in four different banks, and a money market fund at some brokerage”, Hacksaw replied. “I transferred that much offshore to fourteen different accounts, in less than four hours, the very day all this was done. 3.6 million dollars total, including Marshall’s cut. The doc was loaded, more than seventeen million all together.”

“I got the account info from Ragda Tariq”, Spooky explained. “It was easy. All I had to do was keep reminding her how Big Fish had her kids and I could call him anytime.”

“So you all murdered 38 people for 200,000 dollars apiece? Incredible!”

“Yeah, I wish we could have got more, but Marshall said if we tried to transfer more than what I did it would raise red flags”, Hacksaw explained. “It’s too late now, I’m sure the codes have all been changed.”

“So how did you pull this shit with the cops watching you twenty four seven?” he demanded.

“Because they been stupid enough to let us know they be watching us”, Spooky said. “It was easy to give ‘em the slip.”

“But you”-he pointed now to Mercury-“you delivered the fucking bomb in a truck they probably know you use, and you’re probably all over the hospital security tapes. I hope you like where you sent your share of the money, ‘cos I advise you to be heading there pretty fucking quick, my friend.”

“Sent it all to the Caymans”, he replied, as the phone suddenly rung. Spooky Gold answered it, as Hacksaw continued trying to reassure Caldwell that “I wore a white toup and dark glasses with a bulky jacket, so nobody should recognize me. They don’t know about the truck, they have no reason to know about it. This was the first time we used it in more’n seven months, and it’s been stripped now, so no worries.”

“Oh, no-no worries whatsoever”, Caldwell shouted loudly, as suddenly Spooky waved to get Caldwell’s attention.

“It’s Marshall”, he said. Caldwell almost tripped over his feet lunging for the phone.

“Where the hell is you at?” he demanded, and waited for a few seconds for the address. “Good, you stay the fuck put and don’t let anybody in till I get there.”

“Did you sweep this place for bugs?” he then asked Hacksaw, almost as an afterthought.

“Yeah, not long before you got here, it’s clean.”

“Me and you got a little meeting to attend”, he told Spooky. “Let’s go. The rest of you stay put right here. Don’t call anybody, and wait till about four in the morning, then gets you asses home and stay there for a few days. I got a restraining order on the works against the Baltimore police, but it might take a few days for it to go into effect. I’m hoping they don’t come up with any reason to not approve it-or rescind it. You don’t need to be giving them any reasons.”

Caldwell actually would dearly love to take out the whole gang, including its sullen leader, who now accompanied him to his gray Land Rover. How, he wondered, could they do anything so brazenly stupid-so monstrous? Marshall had a lot of explaining to do.

When they arrived at the small apartment in an upscale section of Northern Baltimore, Caldwell hoped city officials, a good many of whom lived in this general area, would not notice him. He realized he was letting his imagination get the better of him, but he seldom found himself in danger of serious legal trouble. This was something that was completely off the charts. If his complicity in the Pulse’s activities ever got out, it would completely ruin him. Everything he ever worked to accomplish would turn to shit. He knocked on the door of the apartment. Marshall opened it almost immediately, and Spooky entered after Caldwell.

“Well, well, well, if it ain’t Osama Ben Crenshaw”, he said. “Quite a cave you got here.”

“It’s not like that”, Crenshaw said, but Caldwell just looked at him in amazed revulsion.

“38 people, dead”, he said. “38 innocent people.”

“I thought you always said there ain’t no innocent people”, Spooky Gold observed.

“Shut up!” Caldwell shouted.

“38 people”, he repeated.

“37”, Crenshaw replied.

“I wasn’t including the nut job they found down in the basement-or Ragda Tariq”, Caldwell snarled as he got up into Crenshaw’s face. “I was taking about 38 people on three floors of one hospital. 38 people, and you nit picking about the numbers? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Marlowe Krovell was included in that number, but he wasn’t killed. He’s out there, somewhere”, he said.

“Is that what this was about? You went through all this shit to kill one man? Well, good for you, you sure got him, didn’t you? Not that it makes any difference now, but yeah, he’s dead, he tried to hide under Tariq’s desk. What the hell difference does it make if one man out of 38 is alive or dead, the point is-you, my friend, committed mass murder.”

“You all committed mass murder”, he clarified as he looked menacingly in Spooky’s direction.

“It was Krovell”, Marshall said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It was his plan, to get out of there. He’s even the one that set the bomb off after Mercury delivered it. I don’t know about any body, all I know is he left some body parts there- some teeth, a little finger, and his appendix.”

“His appendix!” Caldwell looked at him in amazement. “You are really fucking fried ain’t you? That’s it, you’ve been smoking some of that embalming fluid. Look, I’m telling you they found Krovell’s body, under the desk-badly burned and blown all to hell, but intact, more or less. His uncle identified it from a birthmark and tattoos, and a couple of moles. Then it was confirmed through dental records.”

“I’ve seen him since then”, Marshall insisted. “He told me he’d protect me, but he lied. He said there is nothing he can do for me, so I came here. Look, I am getting the fuck out of here, but before I go-Spooky. You remember that promise you made a while back. The vow you and the guys made-the one I told you to drop?”

“Yeah, what about it?” the gang leader said.

“You have to do it.”

“Why? What’s the point?”

“Just do it, please. It is a matter of honor. If you don’t-”.

“Fine, I’ll do it, don’t worry.” Spooky flashed a sign that indicated the honor of keeping one’s vows. Marshall was relieved to see that the gang leader now indicated he would see this carried out. At the same time, Caldwell viewed this exchange with a great deal of suspicion.

“What vow?” he demanded. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but from now on you do nothing that you don’t put through me first, is that fucking understood?”

“This ain’t about you, Brother Caldwell”, Marshall replied. “This is about duty and honor. You do know what that is, I trust.”

“How dare you talk to me that way”, Caldwell hissed. “And what the fuck is that smell? Damn it smells like you bleached the whole place down.”

“No, just the bathroom”, Marshall said. “Somebody jumped me early this morning and beat the shit out of me. I never even got a good look at them. After I made it here I bled and puked all over the place.”

“Yeah, well you missed a few drops of blood outside the bathroom, there on the floor.”

“Shit, yeah, I guess I did”, Marshall replied, though he seemed unnecessarily agitated, even overly concerned, over something as relatively minor as a few drops of blood. He noticed something else that troubled him greatly about Marshall’s story. Caldwell approached him cautiously and looked him over.

“You don’t look beat up to me”, he said.

“I heal fast”, Marshall replied.

“Yeah-uh huh”, Caldwell said. “Speaking of this place, just whose fucking apartment is this, anyway? Maybe more important, where the fuck did you bury him-or them?”

“Oh, man, no, that ain’t right”, Marshall said with an agitated wave of his hand. “This is my girlfriend’s crib. She ain’t here right now.”

“Hey, is this your girlfriend here, Marshall? Wheew!”

Spooky Gold was obviously impressed at the photo of the young white woman with the long, flowing dark hair, who he now showed to the skeptical Harvey Caldwell. She seemed by all appearances clean cut, though she alluded to a sensuality that exuded even from the recent still photograph. She hardly seemed to be the type of girl who would associate with the likes of Marshall Crenshaw.

Marshall smiled and shook his head.

“She’s a catch, ain’t she?” Marshall said with a smile. “Her name is Lynette Khoska. This is her apartment, so you guys can’t be here much longer. She’ll be home soon. I don’t want her involved in this shit, any more than she already is.”

“Bro, I won’t open my mouth, I promise”, he said. “Please let me meet her. I’ll be what you call the soul of discretion, I promise.”

Spooky Gold was joking lasciviously, but Marshall seemed overwhelmed by depression. Caldwell could not help but feel that Marshall was genuinely agonized over something he just could not bring himself to discuss-or admit.

“I still want to know what this is, about George”, Caldwell demanded. “What is it this fool wants to talk to me about in private, something that has to do with you?”

“I told him about everything”, Marshall said. “I told him how your organization was a front for our drug and prostitution and gambling ring. I didn’t so much tell him as I just admitted it. He already knew. He wants to talk to you about it. You don’t have to worry about him going to the cops-he just wants your help.”

“You admitted all this shit to that busybody?” Caldwell was beside himself. “I think at this rate I. the one that better be heading to the Caymans.”

“I told you it wasn’t anything to worry about. Have I ever steered you wrong yet?”

“Oh, no, you’ve never fucked up, to my knowledge”, Caldwell answered scathingly. “Come on, Spooky, let’s go see what that old fool wants. As for you, my friend, we are far from finished here. We will be talking again. Count on that.”

“Yeah, I guess we will one day”, Marshall replied, then fell silent, until he finally addressed Spooky Gold.

“Goodbye, Spooky. Remember the code”.

“What?” Spooky answered strangely, but then held up a fist. “Yeah, right-the code. I’ll get it done, brother.”

It was close to midnight as Caldwell and Spooky Gold exited the apartment and made their way toward Caldwell’s Land Rover. Caldwell stopped about halfway down the steps that led from the apartment to the street below. His curiosity suddenly kicked in.

“I wonder where that girl is he’s living with”, he said. “With my luck she was in another room recording every fucking thing we was saying.”

“Oh man, Marshall wouldn’t do that, would he?” Spooky replied. “You really think he would?”

“Yeah, if he hasn’t killed her and cut her up in a million pieces”, Caldwell said bitterly. “The shit he’s done lately, nothing would surprise me.”

As Caldwell spoke, Spooky noticed another of the apartment building residents walking toward his car. The man stopped and looked at the two of them suspiciously, as he got in his car and started it up. As he did this, however, he simultaneously began the process of making a call on his cell phone.

“You see that shit?” Spooky asked. “You don’t reckon he’s calling the po-po, do you?”

“What the hell for?”

“Uh-‘cos we black?”

Caldwell thoughtfully pondered the question, but decided it wasn’t likely.

“If anything he’s probably calling his wife to tell her to make sure she don’t answer the door and to keep them locked,” he said. “White people are crazy. Here, watch this, I’m going to walk over and motion for him like I’m wanting to ask something. I bet’cha he’ll burn rubber getting the fuck on out of here. Twenty dollars?”

“Yeah, okay, you’re on”, Spooky said. “I bet’cha he answer you anything you ask, and try to act like he thinks there ain’t a thing strange about two brothers in a white neighborhood at night. I bet’cha he’ll wet his pants, too, though.”

Caldwell nodded his head and chuckled.

“Well, I guess you want to throw your money away”, he said. “They’d love to see your ass coming in Atlantic City, nigga. C’mon let’s do it.”

Caldwell motioned for the man, but was not disappointed when he rolled down the window of his sedan and asked if he could help.

Caldwell asked if he knew directions to the nearest police station, as he thought he saw two suspicious looking men walking through the neighborhood. They were a couple of grubby looking white men, he said. The man regarded Caldwell’s remarks suspiciously, but at the same time gave him the directions he asked for, which was about seven and a half blocks from the spot where they were. Suddenly, Spooky Gold pushed Caldwell off to the side and, grabbing hold of the man’s shoulder, simultaneously flung the door open.

“Get your ass out of there”, he said, and pulled the hapless and terrified man out of the car. He then explained that he thought he saw something that looked like it was on fire, but all he saw now was a carryout box from a drive-through restaurant, with an insignia of red flames. Spooky Gold apologized to the man, who got back in the car and, obviously very angry, backed out of the driveway. When he pulled out, he did indeed squeal his tires.

Well, damn, I guess you won the bet after all”, Gold said. “Motherfucker didn’t even piss on himself. I must be off my game.”

As he said this, he extracted his wallet and produced a twenty-dollar bill, which he proffered to Caldwell, who just stood there and looked at him as if he was looking at a sub-human species of vermin.

“You keep it”, he said. “I have an idea you are going to need it, real soon like. I think we better get the fuck out of here before you get us killed.”

At that moment, however, the resounding noise of a single gunshot filled the quiet night air, as both men looked at each other in shocked silence.

“That sounded like that might have come from Marshall’s crib”, Caldwell said.

“Oh, shit”, Spooky replied, and ran up the steps in bounding leaps, overstepping the last one and nearly tripping. He entered the door quickly, and saw Marshall, slumped over in a recliner, his brains spattered out on the back of the chair and the wall behind him, as the gun slowly dropped from his now limp and lifeless hands to the floor below him.

“Marshall, why the fuck did you do that?” he asked the now lifeless body as he looked around the room. He looked once more upon the face of the still photograph of Lynette Khoska and, as a special television report showed the various faces of hospital staff and patients killed in the John Hopkins terrorist attack, he almost absent-mindedly picked up the gun. It was hot, so he wrapped it in a bandana, and, after seeing it still had ammo, he stuck it down his trousers.

He sat on the sofa as he wondered what he should do next. He watched the screen as the faces of Dr, Abdul Tariq and his wife Raghda suddenly displayed on the screen, under the caption “Terrorist Mastermind-No Love So Strong”. Good, he thought. As far as the police were concerned, Tariq was the perpetrator of the atrocity, as opposed to being just another victim. Doubtless, the many inexplicably large withdrawals of cash from his accounts to many unknown, hopefully untraceable offshore banks would further facilitate that illusion. Of course, there was the apparent contradiction inherent in his seemingly suicidal intent, but evidently, the speculation was that the bomb went off faster than he planned. The host of the CNN News Special now repeated the earlier theory that perhaps the one lone, unfortunate psychiatric patient in his office disrupted his plans.

“Krovell is still alive though, right bro?” He looked over at the still form of Marshall Crenshaw, and shook his head, silently bemused at the torment his formerly trusted associate obviously suffered. He started to leave the apartment, cautiously, fully aware that Caldwell had probably left already. It would be a long walk home. Luckily, he still had enough money to take a cab. Caldwell was right. Before he made it through the door, the phone rang, and Spooky stopped and listened to the voice of Lynette Khoska cheerily leaving the invitation to “leave your name and number and I’ll get with you soon”.

He then listened as the voice of the same woman, though not quite as chirpily, said “Marshall, it’s me, sweetie, I’ll be home a little late. I’m at grandfather’s church, and you know how that is.”

Damn, her voice is sexy too, Spooky mused, as he Marshall, wherever he now was, “what the fuck was wrong with you, bro?”

He decided he needed to take a piss. It was no telling how long it would be before he found a cab in this neighborhood, at this time of the night, and he was in too big a hurry to wait until he found a convenience store or other place with a public lavatory. He entered and as he pissed, the fumes from the excessive bleach almost overwhelmed him. He held his breath.

Damn, he thought, these white people around here are some motherfuckers, he thought, as he considered the possibility that Marshall’s new girlfriend might have had an ex-boyfriend, or possibly friends or family members that did not appreciate her flair for the exotic when it came to her choice in men. He finished pissing hurriedly as he fully prepared to walk out into the night, secure in the knowledge that if some group of white motherfuckers decided to jump him, they would learn a much-needed lesson in civility. That kind of thing pissed Spooky Gold off to no end and, as he finally made it out the door, he found himself actually hoping somebody would start some kind of shit like that with him.

Fortunately, Caldwell was also still there, to his surprise. The Land Rover was running, and Brother Harvey was politely attempting to extricate himself from the attentions of a neighborhood woman who now talked to him, probably someone who recognized him. Spooky walked up beside the woman and nodded.

“He’s not answering”, he then told Harvey clearly enough to make sure the woman heard him. “He must have left right after we left the last time. Too bad, he would have wanted to know about the concert.”

“Well, you should have remembered to tell him the first time we was here”, Harvey said with a wary attitude of dread, though playing along with Spooky’s dialogue for the benefit of the strange woman who did indeed recognize Caldwell from a number of TV appearances.

“Well, anyway, it is such an honor to get to meet you”, the woman was saying. “You do such great work, and I promise you I will certainly donate to The Blackbird’s Nest.”

Spooky got back in the passenger’s side of the car as Caldwell warily watched the woman, who turned once and, with a smile, said chirpily, “I might even volunteer for that.”

Caldwell smiled at the woman, while addressing his passenger.

“What the hell happened up there?”

“He’s dead. He shot himself.”

“That’s what I thought”, Caldwell said. “And here at least two people saw us right outside his apartment, and at least one of them recognized me. Can things possibly get any worse?”

“Not for him they can’t.” Spooky said. “That’s a hell of a way to go, though”.

“Yeah, it’s called the coward’s way out”, Caldwell declared as he carefully drove away.

“Everybody gots they breaking point, Brother Caldwell”, Spooky replied. “You, me, everybody. One thing at least, the girl is definitely alive, she just called and left a message telling that fool she’ll be late.”

“I feel sorry for her when she gets home from wherever she’s at. Finding somebody in your home that you know, dead, whether it is murder or suicide is something you do not get over in a hurry. Marshall never thought of anybody but himself, though, so that don’t surprise me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help her out”, Spooky said.

“Yeah, I know how you’ll help her out,” Caldwell declared as he put on a CD of an old rhythm and blues group called The Four Tops. “I need something to mellow me out. I guess you’d rather hear Nellie, but I’m afraid I left him out of my collection.”

“Yeah, too bad, but this is fine too”, Spooky replied. “Man that is one hot number. I kinda feel bad for her. That girl looks like she never had a hurtful thought in her life, and now here she is getting’ ready to find that fool and will be accused of killing him.”

“Yeah, they’ll question her and all, no doubt, but I’m sure they’ll see that no-good Marshall did himself in. I just hope they don’t ever get a clue why.”

“I guess the gun being gone will make it look more like a murder, don’t ya think? Maybe they might think her father killed him. She looks like she comes from a well-off family, just judging by her clothes, some of her furniture and other belongings. That’s probably why Marshall got his ass jumped. I didn’t touch anything either, though maybe I should have took something.

“Damn, yeah, that would make it look like a robbery”, he said as he snapped his fingers in frustration. “Well, I got the gun anyway.”

“You didn’t!” Caldwell shouted. “What the fuck did you go and do a stupid thing like that for?”

“To look out for her, that’s all”, he said. “I can find a lot of people that wouldn’t mind killing Marshall. Hate to say it, but he was kind of a smart-ass punk, and he could be a real asshole. I can always come up with somebody that was just a little too fucked up this night to really remember for sure where he was, and all I got to do is plant this gun on them and turn they asses in.”

“Yeah, then you get to be a knight in shining armor to the pretty little white woman, huh”, Caldwell said. “In the meantime here we are driving around with a gun that was just used in a homicide. The po-po could pull us over any time, especially after your shenanigans back at the apartment, where we just happened to be when he done himself in. You’re really batting a thousand tonight, you know that?”

“You still going to George’s house?” Spooky acted as if he never heard a word Caldwell said. He had other things on his mind. “’Cos if you are then I’m going too. Fuck that old fool. If he knows something that involves me, I need to know about it. There ain’t no telling what that fool Marshal told him.”

“Let’s just hope we make it that far”, Caldwell said. They drove for close to forty minutes before they finally made it to the home of the Reverend Christopher George. One lone light shined from the living room window of the house, which sat by the church at which George had been pastor for over forty years. Caldwell remembered George as a preacher in his late twenties, how he worked the crowd, how the spirit seemed to come alive. It was George in fact that encouraged the teenage Caldwell to devote his life to the ministry of Christ, who put him through Baptist Seminary, who sponsored him through donations from the church. It was George who allowed Caldwell to act as itinerant preacher in his own church, where he performed substitute duties, such as during the time when George married Cassie, the beautiful but somewhat egotistical deacons daughter who now suffered from the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

It was George who then got him established in the little mission church on Seventeenth Street, where Caldwell languished and toiled in obscurity for going on a decade, before the rape and murder of two young white girls by one of George’s parishioners. At first, there were rumors that the crime was committed by two Baltimore police officers, who then tried to lay the blame on the troubled thirty year old addict. Caldwell spoke openly and with great aplomb about the need for justice, and the need for the truth. For too long was the black man accused of crimes against whites, while the totality of crimes perpetrated by white society and the system itself on blacks for the most part remained unaddressed. He preached with a ferocity and intensity he never knew he possessed, and the marchers were out on the streets, demanding the release of Jacob Hartley.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Hartley called Caldwell to his cell, ostensibly for the purposes of spiritual guidance and reassurance. He then, in the privacy of his cell, confessed to the crime. The girls were fourteen and sixteen. He stalked them both over a period of three weeks each and, merely two weeks apart, raped and killed them. He cried and begged forgiveness. Caldwell informed him of two facts. One fact was that he was a dirty motherfucker. The second was-he would have him know-there would be no forgiveness for him if he allowed other innocent men to be falsely accused of the crime, whether or not they were convicted or even tried.

Caldwell convinced the man to confess to his crime, and then he swallowed his pride, and called a press conference, at which he apologized for any harm to the good names of the men falsely accused, and to their families. For a while, Caldwell was a pariah in certain segments of the black community, most especially to the Reverend George, who was astounded that, as he put it, Caldwell would “turn on his own kind.”

“He might be your own kind, motherfucker, but he ain’t mine”, Caldwell replied.

“Brother Caldwell, what has happened to you? Did it ever occur to you he might have been beaten or coerced into making that confession?” George was livid with Caldwell, and it was all he could do to keep from striking him down. However, Caldwell was unmoved by his anger.

“It might have occurred to me if I didn’t know for a fact I didn’t beat him or coerce him. Hell, he looked fine when I saw him. He even told me he knocked the girl’s teeth out to keep them from biting him. Did you know that? I didn’t. Now what do you want to bet another thing they ain’t yet released to the press is the fact that they had semen in their stomachs?”

“Somebody could have told him all that, it doesn’t prove a thing”, George said stubbornly.

“No, he’s telling me the truth”, Caldwell insisted. “I can tell when somebody’s lying to me, and that fucker ain’t lying.”

Caldwell started to walk out, and turned his back, but George was not finished. He reminded Caldwell of all the hard work they had done over the last decades, the small yet not insignificant gains made for the cause of civil rights and equality. Something like this could set those gains back a half century.

“No, you’re wrong”, Caldwell said, not in the least surprised at George’s reasoning, which he perfectly understood. “The only thing that can set us back is fear, and ignorance. Humble yourself, Brother George. Get down on your knees and pray for wisdom and guidance. It might feel good.”

Yeah, Caldwell now thought to himself, those were the good old days. Those were the days when he really, truly believed. Those were the days when he thought he was on his way to making his mark in the world, to making a real difference. Now, he knew one unsettling truth. Nothing ever really changed. Bigotry and intolerance reared its ugly head every day, only in more subtle ways. It never really went away, nor would it ever die. It just adapted to changing societal pressures. Nevertheless, the same degrading poverty still runs rampant through the black community, along with the fear, and the ignorance. Nor was it all necessarily the fault of the white societal power structure. It was not even the fault of those such as George and others in the black community-including himself-who played the system and perpetuated it for their own benefit. It was just an unfortunate fact of nature. The reality merely existed. The innate reality gave rise to the conflicting power structures, breathed life into them, and gave them power.

Voicing opposition to them provided an outlet for frustrations at them, but at the same time it also, in fact, strengthened them. Caldwell knew that all too well, and it bothered him greatly, as they approached the door of his old and former friend and mentor. He remembered how he had joined with Reverend George and the other protestors in a march to demand leniency for Jacob Hartley. How he in fact led a protest outside the prison walls, and continued that work after the execution, joining in the overall movement to abolish the death penalty as some cruel remnant of archaic Middle Ages European justice, usually reserved for the underclass of society.

It was not Caldwell, however, but Christopher George, who counseled Hartley on his last few days of life in the early nineties, when the final appeal was over. George convinced him to disavow his former confession. He declared himself a victim of police coercion. Evidence was produced that pointed to the white girls as being truants and drug users, of questionable character and morals, in trouble in school and with the courts. All this was true, as it was that the two police officers initially accused by Hartley’s attorneys indeed had been in contact with the girls and their families over some of these issues. Regardless of the facts, George was determined to renew the issue, and Caldwell found himself in the position of having to defend his own position.

It worked out well for him. In the long run, it not only proved a minor threat at best to his overall strength in the African American community-and this only grew stronger over time-but it enabled him to portray himself as a true advocate of racial peace and healing. As he knocked upon the door of Christopher George, however, he knew he would soon be in the presence, and home, of a man who demeaned him, publicly and privately, as an Uncle Tom. To George, Caldwell merely played the civil rights advocate like a court jester, a man who, in his personage as a firebrand, amounted to little more than just another black cliché’. Caldwell was, to George, a one-man minstrel show.

George in fact often referred to Caldwell as the Meadowlark Lemon of the Civil Rights Movement. Caldwell bristled when he thought of this. True, he had a lot of white supporters and contributors, but most of his supporters were black. He made a career out of attacking the system, and the institutional prejudice that permeated it. He was anything but a clown. He rarely even told jokes in his sermons or speeches, and when he did, there was nothing conciliatory about them. He suddenly found himself knocking on George’s door in outright anger.

“Open the door, you old bastard”, Caldwell demanded, suddenly feeling the frustration of two decades welling up inside him.

George opened the door, but when he did, Caldwell was shocked, and almost even humbled by the appearance of the defeated old man who stood in front of him. He reeked of fear and despair.

“I told you I wanted to see you in private”, George said.

“What you got to say to me you can say in front of him or not at all”, he said as he indicated Spooky Gold, who just looked at the old preacher with a menacing glare.

Georges’ mumbled assent was all but unintelligible as he opened wide the door and motioned for them both to enter. His wife was sitting on a recliner in the living room, and Spooky looked at her suspiciously, though she seemed unaware of their presence. She suddenly just laughed loudly and said hello to some unknown person by the name of “Jolly”, who she invited for a cup of tea.

“Don’t you think you should send her to a place where she can get some care?” Caldwell asked the older preacher.

“I can’t afford it”, George replied. “I can’t even afford to retire. All of us don’t have a business selling drugs and running prostitution rings, you know-and yes, I do know.”

“You don’t know jack shit, old man”, Spooky replied.

“You let me handle this”, Caldwell replied, whereupon Spooky merely harrumphed under his breath, and looked as though he was looking for a place to spit.

“Do you want to put her to bed?” Caldwell asked. “There’s no reason to involve her in this.”

“There’s nothing to involve her in”, George replied. “She don’t know what we’re talking about to begin with. I didn’t bring you here to talk about your business anyway. I just need your help. I want to get the hell out of Baltimore. It’s vital that I leave here. You might say it’s a matter of life and death. The thing is, I don’t have the money to leave here, not and live any kind of a decent life. I want your help. I would be willing to work for you in some capacity, if you insist. I know there is something somewhere I could do where I would be useful. But I have to leave Baltimore, the sooner the better.”

Caldwell looked then at the old man’s eyes, and saw he was exhausted. He looked as though he hadn’t had a good nights sleep in over a week. Something was very wrong here.

“So what exactly did Marshall tell you?”

“Just that the Pulse didn’t have anything to do with April’s murder, and I should stop pushing the police to arrest them for it”, he said.

“That’s it?” Caldwell was suddenly dumbfounded.

“That and she was actually murdered by somebody named Joseph Karinsky and some more people that run with him in some kind of Satanic cult”, he said.

“And this is the shit you wanted to tell me in private?” Caldwell wondered when it was coming, the threats of blackmail, and wondered why he had not actually come out with it by now. Suddenly, Cassie George was up on her feet, and started dancing, and singing some kind of nonsense about kissing under rainbows.

“Do you care if I take her upstairs? It won’t take but a few minutes.”

“Yeah, just hurry, I ain’t got all night”, Caldwell said.

The two of them watched as the old preacher led his wife up the stairs. She offered no resistance, though she curtsied and bowed to invisible attendees at some make-believe social event that was probably something akin, Caldwell realized, to a cross between Cinderella’s Ball and an introduction to hell.

“What do you make of that?” Caldwell asked Spooky, who looked to be growing more impatient by the minute.

“Just his bullshit finally is catching up to him”, the gang leader replied. “I know what he is about to tell you, but I am going to let you hear it from his own lips. I want to watch the old fucker sweat.”

Caldwell noticed now the TV was on, with the volume lowered. A news program was on, and now he saw the Karinsky gang, in news footage replayed repeatedly over the course of the last two days. All six of them were now under arrest, and the film showed them all and gave their names, but focused specifically on the sixteen year old Debbie Leighton, and especially on Joseph Karinsky who, while being lead away in handcuffs by police escort, looked toward the cameras and lasciviously bared his teeth in a mock vampire pose. For an instant, he forgot about Spooky Gold standing there behind him. He wondered if George was intent on revealing him to be the ultimate source of the drugs the gang used in their demonically inspired rituals, and in the course of their violent murder spree.

Why would Marshall have confided in George as to Karinsky’s supposed involvement in April’s death? What purpose would there be in setting these people up to protect Marlowe Krovell, if that maniac was truly dead, as Caldwell knew he had to be? He watched in amazement as the young Leighton girl confided that she worshipped Karisnky, that he was an incarnation of God, of Dionysius, of some fool named Vlad the Impaler-and Adolph Hitler. She claimed her parents were of no importance, they were just another form of livestock who refused to evolve. Joseph was her father, her brother, her son, and her lover.

“Just keep talking, little lady”, Caldwell mumbled to himself as the Reverend Christopher George returned from upstairs.

“How do you know she’ll stay up there?” Caldwell asked him.

“I gave her something to put her to sleep”, George explained.

“Then let’s get this over with”, Caldwell said. “I don’t want you working for me, because I don’t trust you any more. I’m not saying I won’t help you. I’ll do that, within reason, for the sake of older and better days between you and me. But I want to know the truth, and that means everything. What is so important that you have to leave Baltimore, and what exactly does it have to do with me?”

“Because you are as responsible as I am”, George stated. “You are responsible for that girl’s death. It was your people that killed her, and I am responsible for driving her to them.”

Caldwell looked at Spooky, perplexed at what he was hearing.

“He’s talking about April”, he explained.

“She was doing volunteer work for me one night”, George explained, “and-we were alone, and I drugged her, and raped her. I did it with Marshall’s help. He was here once, trying to talk me into laying off the Pulse, telling me it was time to start preaching a different sermon. We were arguing, when April came in. I think he could tell by the way I looked at her, the way I suddenly changed, and mellowed in her presence-he knew I was in love with her.

“He called me a few nights later, asking me if I thought about what he said. We argued for a few minutes, and then he brought up April. I guess that’s when he knew he had me. He told me he would send me something in a day or two. All I had to do was put a few drops in any woman’s soft drink, and she would be mine for the taking. I could do what I wanted, and she would never know.

“Two days later, I got this shit in a bubble wrapped manila envelope, in a vial. I waited two weeks before I finally got up the courage to ask her to stay over one Sunday night and help me with some things in the church. She did it, and-God help me-I went through with it.

“I swear to God, it didn’t feel like rape at the time, but I did. I raped her, and when it was over, I hated myself, I swear I did. But then she woke up and, when she asked me why I did that, I knew she knew, she was aware of what I done, and she hated me for it. She said that she wanted to save herself for a good man, a worthy man, and now here she was, lost to a lecherous old hypocrite, her dreams ruined. She was crying, and I apologized, and she hit me, over and over, until I-I raped her again. Then I told her to get the hell out.”

“Well, you old motherfucker”, Caldwell said.

“Are we through here?” Spooky replied. He looked as if he wanted to leave, but Caldwell waved him off.

“I met that girl once, and she worked for me a few times doing volunteer work at the Blackbird’s Nest”, he said. “Was that some good stuff? God damn, I bet that was some fine shit. But you being the first to hit that? I don’t know whether to cheer or throw up.”

“Will you help me or not?” George now seemed beyond desperation. He seemed frantic.

“Why? What’s the point. She’s dead now, and you said yourself the people that killed her are those people that have been arrested for other similar murders. She ain’t ever going to tell anybody-not now.”

“Don’t you see you’re responsible?” Caldwell shook his head and said the hell he was.

“She went to Marshall, and Marshall set her up with the Pulse”, he said. “She didn’t tell him that she wanted the Pulse to kill me. They all had her, they all passed her around, and they agreed, but then Marshall said no, it would cause too big a police investigation. They would come after the Pulse, because I kept on preaching against gangs, especially them, urging people to keep their kids away from them and call the police whenever they knew of anything to report. Marshall said it would look too obvious, and besides, it wasn’t worth the risk, or the suspicion that would fall on not just the Pulse, but your whole operation. Your whole organization might be in jeopardy.”

“Is this all true?” Caldwell was now directing his attention to Spooky Gold, who affirmed that it was.

”Then April threatened to call the police, but by then Marshall had her on heroin, told her she had to forget about it. Said she had to learn to go on with her life. But she couldn’t forget about it. Then Marshall fixed her up with these people, and according to him, I guess they are the ones that killed her.

“They butchered her, just like they butchered that girl’s parents, and some other people they victimized. Then come to find out, Marshall has been selling drugs to these people, marijuana and God knows what else.”

“Oh my God”, Caldwell said. He knew what was coming. He had nothing to do with the girl’s death. He barely knew her. Nevertheless, if it got out that he had even an outside connection with it, it would be the biggest scandal to rock his organization since the one time one crazy woman accused him of rape.

That had been a lie, but it looked suspiciously like the truth, because Caldwell had appropriated funds for the woman’s sick mother, or so she claimed. In reality, she used it to pay off a drug debt, and then wanted more, but Caldwell refused. Then he found himself charged with a crime he never committed or ever intended to commit, and had to explain why he just handed over twenty thousand dollars to a woman that was obviously a drug addict.

He learned from that mistake, and quietly, secretly got the mothers of his two illegitimate children out of town. Now here he was in danger of accusations of complicity in a crime allegedly committed by a group of psychotic weirdoes, the true nature of whose activities he had never been aware of until a few short days ago.

And to beat it all, they were innocent of this one crime, which was actually committed by an even crazier motherfucker who somehow convinced Caldwell’s most trusted lieutenant to blow up a hospital. A man who, though he was obviously dead, Marshall claimed was alive. Now Marshall was dead, driven to the depths of despair that even the supposed love of the prettiest fucking white girl Caldwell had ever seen, at least in picture format, couldn’t drag him out of.

Why had Marshall told these things to George? Why drag him into it? He finally realized-he had no choice.

“Fine”, he said. “For the sake of my organization, I’ll do it. You decide where you want to go, and I’ll see that your wife is taken there. I’m assuming you want her there.”

“As long as I’m alive I do, yeah, but I want you to swear to me that if something happens to me you’ll take care of her.”

“I’ll do that now if you’d let me”, said Caldwell. “But if you insist on keeping her, fine, I promise, I’ll take care of her.”

Spooky Gold seemed touched by this, even misty eyed.

“That’s really good of you, Brother Caldwell”, Spooky said. “Do you really mean that? When he dies, you promise to take care of her?”

“Of course I mean that”, Caldwell replied. “I am a man of my word above all.”

“That’s all I needed to hear”, Spooky said. Then he drew Marshall’s gun from his waste and, right before Harvey Caldwell’s horrified eyes, he put one bullet into the chest of the Reverend Christopher George, who with a shocked and pained look on his face, moaned as he slumped to the floor.

Before Harvey Caldwell could say one word, Spooky Gold then walked nonchalantly toward the bleeding, dying Reverend Christopher George, and pointed the gun at his forehead.

Caldwell sprung into action. He stepped between the would-be assassin and his wounded, helpless prey. He did something he hadn’t done in months. He preached. He preached from the book of Matthew, from the Book of Revelation. He preached from the Old and the New Testaments.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Brother Caldwell”, Spooky warned him. “I made a blood oath to April, and I’m keeping it.”

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom,” Caldwell now quoted desperately. “Fear not him who is able to kill the body, but fear Him who is able to cast body and soul into hell.”

“What is that supposed to mean”, Spooky replied with a look of agitated perplexity. “I ain’t afraid of him, or nobody.”

“You kept your vow, all right?” Caldwell was desperate and running out of Bible versus. “You shot the bastard, now let it go.”

“I didn’t pledge an oath to shoot him”, Spooky declared. “I pledged to kill him. Well, the fucker’s still breathing.”

“You also pledged to Marshall not to kill him”, Caldwell reminded him.

“He released me from that, just this night.”

“He wasn’t in his fucking right mind, though, ain’t that obvious? Even if he was, he’s the one that went back on his word.”

“Uh, just to be clear, let me remind you he’s the one that gave George the drugs that fucked her up the night that old vulture raped her.”

“Then his word ain’t worth shit”, Caldwell replied.

“Well, mine is”.

“No, wait”-Caldwell was desperate, and decided on one last, desperate attempt to appeal to reason.

“You kept your word to both of them. You shot him, and if he dies, well and good. You kept your oath to April. He’s not dead yet, though, so if you leave it at that, you kept your oath to Marshall. Even if the motherfucker lives, he’s going to suffer for the rest of his life. He’ll be a hopeless invalid because of this wound and probably be in pain the rest of his life. Even better, he’ll live what days he has left knowing the reason for his suffering, and the rightness of it. Now tell me that ain’t fulfilling your oath. Tell me April wouldn’t feel she got the justice she deserved. Look at him. He won’t ever rape anybody else now, that’s pretty fucking obvious.”

Spooky Gold looked down at the helpless, decrepit old man who moaned in agony, as his blood pooled around him. The chances of him living very long were slim, he decided. Even if he did survive, Caldwell had a point.

“Fine, I don’t know why you care, but yeah, it makes sense”, he said. “Enjoy your bullet, old man.”

Caldwell breathed a sigh of relief, but then started to wonder exactly what he would do now.

“All right, now I tell you what, you take my Land Rover to the strip club ten blocks from my house, lock it up, and call yourself a cab. Not from the club, though, call it from the liquor store seven blocks from there. If it has closed by the time you get there, call from the outside pay phone. And don’t say a word of any of this to anybody, including the rest of the Pulse.”

“Okay, but what’s this all about”, he asked.

“You let me worry about that. I’m worried some people might have seen us here. You just go out and take the car, and try not to let anybody see you.”

Spooky looked toward the old man on the ground, amazed that he was not only still alive, but desperately holding on to consciousness.

“Hope you’re ready for hell, old man”, he said. “What you be going through now don’t even begin to compare.”

“Let me do the preaching’, “Caldwell replied. “You just get the fuck out of here and do what I told you. And make it fast.”

Spooky left, and in a couple of minutes, Caldwell could hear the engine of his Land Rover start, after which the vehicle sped away. He looked cautiously out the window, but saw no sign of anybody around. The old man was moaning pitifully.

“Please”, he begged. “Don’t let me die like this. Oh God, it hurts so bad.”

“Just try to hang on”, Caldwell said. “I’ll get you help, but I have to set it up. I have to know something first. You know you can’t say a word about what happened here tonight, right? As far as you know, I was here, I was in the bathroom, and somebody that you don’t know and never saw before came in and shot you, and took off in my car, right? You have no idea who it was, just some guy demanding money, looked like a crack head or something. I come out, heard what happened but didn’t see it, and I called the ambulance. Got that?”

“Yes-I swear”, George promised weakly, but Caldwell could tell he was sinking fast. If he was going to save this man’s life, he knew he had to work quickly. Yet, he had to try. He could not allow himself to be complicit in a cold-blooded murder, however justified it may have seemed. He was already responsible for too much turmoil, heartbreak, and tragedy. He managed to live with all of it, and deluded himself into thinking it was all part of the unavoidable realities of life. Now, he was looking his handiwork straight in the nearly lifeless eyes. Now, he was directly involved. He was staring hell right in the face, and it was not a pretty sight.

He rose, went to the phone, and called his home. His wife answered, and told him he would be home soon, he was calling from the house of Christopher George, who called and asked for his help. The two old friends turned long time enemies had made peace, and come to an understanding.

His wife was delighted, of course, and exuberantly praised the Lord. She knew that God could heal even an old wound such as this one, she reminded him. He listened impatiently for a couple of minutes, and then told her, somewhat bluntly, that he had to hang up. He would be home shortly.

He retuned to the side of the old preacher, who stared outward in horror. He was still breathing, though barely. He had lost a lot of blood, though luckily the wound inflicted by Spooky Gold, while disabling, would not ordinarily be a mortal one if treated quickly. At the same time, George was a relatively feeble old man, and time was running out.

Suddenly, Caldwell heard a noise from upstairs, and then he remembered-Cassie, George’s wife. He could hear her walking around, having evidently freed herself from her bonds. Caldwell had no choice but to go upstairs and check on the woman. He hurried up the stairs and into the master bedroom. Sure enough, there the woman was, in nothing but a nightgown, open at the front to reveal her panties. Caldwell found himself thinking that she was, for her age, yet an attractive woman, but she seemed understandably dazed. Caldwell saw no signs of any ropes, or shackles of any kind. He did see, though, that the woman had evidently vomited beside the bed.

“Help me”, she said. “Brother Caldwell, is that you? Oh my God, please help me.”

“You-you recognize me?”

Caldwell was now more mystified than ever. What else was going to happen this night? Cassie George seemed to be dazed, and weak, but at the same time, she seemed aware now not only of him, but of her surroundings. She also seemed to be desperately afraid. She was supposed to be suffering from advanced dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease, which she seemed to have contracted suddenly. George had explained that she had it for years-she merely “hid it well”.

Now, Caldwell looked desperately around for the woman’s medication, and found some unmarked medicine bottles that contained what looked to be Thorazine.

“Is this your medicine”, he demanded. “He’s had you on this?”

“Please-don’t make me take that. He makes me take that stuff because I know about”-

She started crying, and Caldwell just looked at her warily. He almost knew what was coming.

“He raped that poor girl, April. She come to me and told me about it. I confronted him and-“

Now she started crying uncontrollably, and Caldwell comforted her as best he could.

“Don’t; worry, Miss Cassie”, he said. “He’s never going to hurt you again. He’s never going to hurt anybody, ever again. You have my word on it.”

Caldwell now almost flung himself out of the room, and down the steps. He did not know now what to do. He had vowed to save the old fool’s life, and he would do just that. Unfortunately, he had never counted on this. George would have to deal with this issue the best way he could. One thing Caldwell would not tolerate, however, was any continued mistreatment of Cassie George. How she might deal with the matter once restored to her right mind and health was up to her. George would have to accept the consequences. It was time now for him to call the police. He would merely tell them that while here, he discovered the poor unfortunate woman in her current state after the shooting, and had no idea what was going on.

He called the police then, and phoned in the report as he planned. While visiting the home of the Reverend Christopher George, and while in the bathroom there, an unseen intruder entered the home and shot George, and then left. By the time Caldwell returned to the living room to find George lying in a pool of blood, he discovered his Land Rover stolen, thanks to him having carelessly laid his car keys on the coffee table in front of the sofa. He checked on George’s wife, only to discover George had been keeping her drugged on Thorazine.

Having completed the report to the police and assuring them he would wait until they arrived, he lit a cigarette. He needed to go the bathroom. What a night, he said to himself as, upon entering the lavatory, he suddenly noticed the blood. It was all over the place, though in spots. It was on the commode seat and inside the commode. It was on the bathroom floor, and on the wall. It was even on the inside of the door. Worse, the whole place now stunk, as if the entire Baltimore City Sewer system had backed up specifically into the bathroom of The Reverend Christopher George.

Caldwell pissed, and wondered what it meant. He finished, and when he opened the door, he saw more spots leading from the bathroom out into the hallway. The lights were now out, and Caldwell fumbled around in the dark as his eyes gradually adjusted to the enveloping darkness.

George must not have been as weak as he thought, he said to himself. He looked toward the floor where George had been sprawled, and saw that he had indeed pulled himself up, gradually, though he was on his hands and knees, groaning in pain, as he heard the voice of a woman. He then saw the feminine form standing behind George. Suddenly, she was down on top of him. How the hell did Cassie get down here so fast, he wondered? Oh my God, Caldwell realized-she is going to finish him off now. He had to do something.

“You are mine”, the woman said. “You are going to be my little toy for all eternity. Your soul belongs to me now, and I am taking it with me, straight down to my home in hell, right down in the sewer where you belong. I have until the end of time to slowly rip you apart, piece-by-piece, slowly, inch by agonizing inch, over and over and over again.”

George was wailing pitifully as he begged for mercy, but the hateful woman standing over him, even now tearing at his flesh, just laughed hideously, demonically.

“Cassie”, Caldwell said. “Please-you don’t want to do this.”

Suddenly, George wailed, as the woman stood and faced Caldwell, who suddenly recognized the woman who smiled sadistically as she slowly approached him, with her arms outstretched, a lascivious sneer on her lips, now covered with the blood of the all-but-dead Brother Christopher George.

He looked with unmitigated horror on the hellish sight of the woman-on the inhuman features of the living dead form of April Sandusky. Her throat ripped completely open in a gaping, horrendous wound, she advanced now on Caldwell, closer and closer, with her arms outstretched. She reeked of rotted flesh and blood, of the sewer, and of death and hell. Her dead eyes exuded a maniacal hatred.

“Do you want a piece of me, motherfucker?” she demanded in a guttural, animalistic, and otherworldly voice that reverberated from some black, unspeakable level of hell.

For a minute, he could say nothing, as his mouth opened, and he tried to form whatever words might come to his mind. No words of entreaties for mercy, however, were forthcoming. For once in his life, Harvey Caldwell was speechless. For once in his life, Harvey Caldwell lost control of both his bladder and his bowels at the same time. For once in his life, Harvey Caldwell was helpless.

“He is going to pay for what he did to me, for all eternity”, she said as she drew closer and closer. “Do you have any fucking thing to say about it?”

Harvey Caldwell’s eyes widened and felt as though they might bulge until they popped out of the sockets. April laughed insanely as she drew closer, closer. Caldwell’s mouth went dry as his lips swelled, and his hair seemed to stand on top of his head. At last, he found his voice.

“WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WU-WELL”-

For the first time in fifty years, Harvey Caldwell ran, out the door and into the streets, out into the darkness, as the evil, ravenous laughter seemed to follow him. He ran, until he no longer even realized he was running. He ran, until he realized he was no longer running. He no longer knew where he was.

He found himself strapped onto a cot on an ambulance, at the break of day, as the police questioned him. George was now dead, they said. As he reported to them, he was shot, but he was also, while still alive, subjected to as savage a degree of mutilation as ever noted, even by the standards of the most seasoned, veteran murder detectives. It was in fact one of the most brutal crimes in Baltimore history. His wife was alive, and would soon recover from the effects of the over-medication to which George had evidently subjected her. The Reverend Harvey Caldwell unfortunately had no knowledge whatsoever of what they were saying.

That was the night the Reverend Harvey Caldwell lost his mind. He was never able to speak of the events that occurred on that early morning, and so he was never able to give any kind of description or account, other than what he previously phoned in to the police, which he in fact also no longer remembered doing. The fact was he never really remembered what he saw or heard that night, the night that April Sandusky finally claimed the soul of the Reverend Christopher George.

Oh, Reverend Harvey Caldwell never forgot that, to be sure. Not for so much as one minute did he ever forget that. It was just every other memory of his life that completely vanished.

Cold Comfort

The US House of Representatives has sponsored a non-binding resolution calling on Japan to acknowledge it's role during World Warr II in forcing something like 200,000 Asian women to work in brothels for the pleasure of it's Imperial forces.

Of course, somebody has brought up the issue of reparations, which is apparently the main reason the Japanese have been reluctant to issue more than an official apology, while some have even denied responsibility on the part of the government or the Japanese military.

Seems like an easy enough way to compromise would be to find out what the going rate was for a blow job, a piece of pussy (or ass), and an around the world. Assume each one of these 200,000 women engaged in sex an average of twenty times a week, or maybe round it off to a hundred times a month.

200,000 times twenty dollars (let's just use that as an average) would amount to four million dollars a day worth of sex. Four million times one hundred would equal 400 million dollars.

Over a one year period, this adds up to 4 billion, eight hundred million dollars. Let's multiply this by ten, which is about the amount of time many of these brothels were in operation.

You now have a grand total of 48 billion dollars.

Come on now, guys, you had your fun-time to pay the piper.

Repo-Starring Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton "owned the role" when she auditioned, and came out on top of a total of thirty actresses trying out for the role. In the movie version of the Broadway rock opera, she plays the daughter of a wealthy organ transplant magnate played by Paul Sorvino.

"Repo! The Genetic Opera" takes place in 2056, in which the human race is almost destroyed, and must rely on organ transplants to survive.

I don't know, for some reason I have an idea she might have "owned" this role due to some pull, but I concede I might be wrong. At any rate, this seems like a Lindsey Lohan type of thing, but of course Lindsey has her share of shit right now to work through, what with chasing after assistants and their families at breakneck speed while drunk and high and in possession of cocaine, and running over your friends foot while in the process of doing this is never a recommendation for woman of the year.

But if Paris can turn her life around and actually contribute something to the society pages besides a cunt shot, more power to her.

Moore Trouble

Michael Moore has been subpoenaed by the Bush Administration, according to this report. Well, I guess they took exception not so much to the movie Sicko as they did to his disregard on the ban on travel to Cuba, where he took three 9/11 emergency workers who, for whatever reason, can't get the health care they need in New York, either through the city or the federal government.

Moore's detractors point out that he has willingly allowed himself to be used as a propaganda tool by Castro's communist government.

Moore's supporters contend that Moore merely pointed out the inherent unfairness of American health care. It's hard to refute their point that if anybody deserves to have government pick up the tabs for their health care-whether it be the city of New York, the state, or the feds-emergency workers of 9/11 deserve that, especially since their health problems are not only significant, but traceable to the events of 9/11.

Bear in mind that in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the government declared there was no viable health risks to workers in the area, despite the fact that monstrous quantities of chemicals were released into the atmosphere.

I look at it this way-fuck politics, in this situation. This isn't a left/right, or a Democratic/Republican issue. This is a matter of common decency and humanity-what there is left of that.

These three men were apparently in great ifo not desperate need of medical care which they, for whatever reason, could not afford, and which was not being provided by any numbers of government arms and agencies of the US that should have been obliged to provide this care.

Moore, for all his faults-and they are legion-provided this care. I don't give a flying fucking rat's ass how he did it. It is irrelevant to me whether he took them to an American specialist, a Canadian clinic, a Cuban hospital, or for that matter to a Ugandan witchdoctor.

Regardless of his ultimate intentions, he helped them, and from their perspective, that is a good thing. For their sake alone, I am glad he did.

Surgeon General Bullshit

So, did the Bush Administration hold up it's Surgeon General's report for political reasons, as is intimated in this article from Truthout.org, or was this done for more valid reasons? Truthout seems to be saying the Bush Administration was determined that any such report would of necessity promote Administraion policies. Officials deny this, of course, and insist they just disagree with the tone and science of the report.

And so, to a point, do I? To wit:



A
few of the issues it focuses on, such as AIDS treatment and research,
have been public health priorities for the Bush administration. But
others - including ratifying the international tobacco treaty and
making global health an element of U.S. foreign policy - are more
politically sensitive. The report calls on the administration to
consider spending more money on global health improvement, for
instance. And it warns that "the environmental conditions that poison
our water and contaminate our air are not contained within national
boundaries... . The use of pesticides is also of concern to health
officials, scientists and government leaders around the world."

Uh, international tobacco treaty? Gee, I wonder what that is all about? And the call for health regulations of sugar, and other "fattening" foods?

Still waiting for someone to give me a reason why *I* should vote Democratic in 2008.

Not seeing a reason here.

Take Bill's Wife-Please!

What kind of person was Hillary Rodham, before she became a Clinton, as a young sophomore college student? Well, according to a friend from those days, she was easily depressed, considered herself an agnostic, and an "intellectual liberal and an emotional conservative".

At one point, she called herself a misanthrope, and admitted she, at that particular time, disliked people in general and certain people specifically.

More importantly, she said all this in letters to her friend, now an obscure college professor at a woman's college, a man who has now released thee letters, soon to be published.

Is this part of a strategy to humanize Hillary? Or is it all a part of a "vast right wing conspiracy" meant to point out her potential flaws and the dangers of electing such a person-with a family history of depression-to the Oval Office?

This article from the Independant points out the correlation to the deep depression Hillary underwent in the first two years of the Clinton Presidency, in the aftermath of the suicide of her friend Vince Foster, the Health Care debaucle that was, in a political sense, basically her own personal contribution to later-term abortions, and the 1994 mid-term elections, for which she was to a great extent blamed for the Democrats being swept out of power in both houses of Congress.

Well, if she does win, let's just hope she keeps an eye on Bill's blow jobs, and personally makes sure no one else finds out about them. A situation like that could do permanent damage to Republican spin about Democrats being afraid to go nuclear.

The Burmese Python

Most people probably have never heard of Burma, and half of those who have (including me) could probably not find it on the map. I do know it is on the border of Thailand, thanks to having read this series of articles in The Independent.

This one talks of the excesses which are perpetrated daily on the population by what the article refers to as the nations illegitimate government.

This one focuses in a general way on the history of the nation over the last forty years, and how it's democratically elected leader, Suu Kyi, has been-due to her popularity with the masses-kept under house arrest for twenty years.

Burma was a former British colony, and the brutality the people have endured since it was relinquished is on a par with the same kind of atrocities noted in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and similar places, yet it has not received the attention, or anything approaching the same degree of international aid.

There are multiple reasons for this. One, the British government does a good deal of business with the regime, as Burma is a land rich in natural resources. Additionally, the foreign trade Britain engages with the regime is based on slave labor. Furthermore, aid is restricted by the very regime who evidently is committing intentional genocide against it's ethnic minorities, many of whom languish now in refugee camps in neighboring Thailand.

Here, rape is a weapon of war, and torture of political dissenters is an everyday fact of life. Recently, many British MPs have insisted action be taken against the regime, but in the meantime, the Python continues to squeeze, aiming apparently to slowly strangle the life and soul of the nation, and swallow up the carcase while it basks in the sun of international trade, ignorance, and general indifference.

Gonzales-When Ass Kissing Turns To Biting

If anybody has any idea Alberto Gonzales is going to be asked to resign, or will do so on his own, or will be prosecuted this year, in my opinion you are wrong. Gonzales is here for the long haul-well, that long haul being defined as roughly between now and October (Surprise, surprise) of next year.

I just have an idea somebody, somewhere, is sitting on potentially explosive information regarding this obvious political hack, something that can be tied directly to Bush and possibly some GOP Senators as well.

In the meantime, this guy has got to be like a chancre sore or a dull toothache to the Bush Administration, and to the Republican members of Congress. It just gets worse and worse, and the more he opens his mouth, the more obvious it becomes that he is lying, hiding something, obfuscating, and just generally showing how incompetent he really is.

Here, let me give you an example:

Gonzales is asked whether it was at the direction of President Bush, when he went to the bedside of then hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft to get the ill AG to sign off on Bush's warrantless wiretapping efforts. This program met with a great deal of resistance amongst senior members of the Administration.

Gonzales refused to answer the question directly. He refused to say yes or no, one way or another. Now, what the hell does that tell you?

That, perhaps, he didn't want to be caught in yet another lie-like the one where he said the program didn't meet with any "serious objections" from any members of the Administration.

Well, it has been said that Bush is going to keep Gonzales for two reasons. One, it would be extremely difficult, maybe impossible, for him to appoint a successor to Gonzales that would be to his liking. I'm assuming here this means to his political liking, not incompetent.

Also, Bush is tenaciously loyal-stubborn, in fact.

Well, the Democrats don't really want him gone either, obviously. By the time the election rolls around, it won't really matter whether they can tie Gonzales to Fred Thompson or Giuliani, or whoever the GOP nominee turns out to be.

He'll be tied in general to the GOP-that's all that matters.

Darfur Accountability And Divestment Act

As of the very minute I am typing this post, there is live coverage on C-Span I of the House of Representatives discussion of the Darfur Accountability And Divestment Act, which is, if I understand i correctly, meant to encourage and support those states, cities, and universities who wish to divest of investments in companies that do business in the nation of the Sudan. Among other things, it provides a list of multi-national corporations that do business with the Sudan, and specifically those that do business with the government of Khartoum.

As of now, some twenty-two states have either divested of holdings in such companies or are considering doing so.

For the time being, this is about as good as can be hoped for. The UN is a helpless non-force, in fact a non-entity, owing to the influence of China, mainly, but also no doubt because of the influence of the many Arab/Muslim nations that would prefer to look with a blind eye toward what their "brothers"-Sudanese Arabs, known colloquially as "Janjaweed"-are doing to the non-Arab residents of Darfur.

This amounts to, as of now, roughly a third of a million Darfur residents killed, another roughly two thirds homeless, and about 2.4 million who are now living as refugees in UN camps. (Okay, so they are doing a little-a very little).

All so a specific group of Arabs can commit genocide-many times involving not only brutal murder, but rape and mutilation-with the long term intentions of settling land (a large proportion of which is fertile farm land) that doesn't belong to them, but to the residents of Darfur who have lived in the area for countless generations.

And yes, the government of Khartoum is complicit, from the top, at Khartoum, to the bottom, involving regional government and local officials.

It should be stopped, even if this has to involve chemical or biological weapons. If this totally wipes out every man, woman, and child of the Janjaweed-even if it only saves the life of one innocent Darfur resident-as far as I am concerned it would not only be justified, but commendable. If it causes the Khartoum government to collapse, that would be another bonus.

But until such time as the US and other "civilized" nations of the world are willing to stop playing nice with inhuman scum like the Janjaweed, then at least the Darfur Accountability And Divestment Act is a good first step.

All Politics Is Local (And Elitist)

I love it when I'm right. I'm pressed for time right now, but I will sometime later try to supply a link to an earlier post where I explained that the new touch screen voting machines, while they are probably easily manipulated for the purposes of cheating and stealing votes, are not necessarily a Republican tool alone.

Well, according to this story in the New York Times, evidently the Democratic majority in Congress has been told in no uncertain terms by a wide cross section of regional/local Democratic Party operatives* they should "delay"** their 2006 campaign promise for voter reform.

Look, folks, I'm not trying to be a dick. You are welcome to your little fantasies about how every time a Republican wins an election it's because of some world-wide conspiracy of Big Business and the national Republican organization to rig elections.

But, as I'm sure we all know, deep down inside, that is pure fantasy. (Every now and then I decide I'm going to make this a family friendly blog and so I say words like fantasy instead of fucking bullshit).

Okay, you can make the case for Bush's win in Ohio over Kerry-maybe. Well, more than likely, as you did have a corrupt Secretary Of State (Kenneth Blackwell) who seemed to go out of his way to insure a paucity of voting machines in heavily Democratic voting districts, such as Cleveland. (This, by the way, may have been as much about an effort to unseat Kucinich as to throw Ohio to Bush. I am planning to look into that possibility later).

By and large, however, this whole story is proof of that old saying-"All Politics Is Local". (Live Blogging Idea-I think this, or a variation, will be my post title).

In other words, what I am saying is-what I have always said is-local Republican Party leaders benefit from the potential to manipulate computerized voting machines, to be sure, but so do local Democratic Party leaders.

It helps them to keep people like me from challenging their hand-picked candidates in a primary contest. Therefore, it keeps the power of those local leaders intact, as it makes sure they field candidates who stay on the reservation.

Therefore, if I run as a Democrat who is opposed to any form of gun control, or any further taxes on tobacco products, or I renounce the constantly on-going drive to introduce yet another series of class-action lawsuits against, well name it-gun manufacturers, fast food restaurants, the alcohol industry, ad infinitum-they can keep me in check.

In a close primary election, which is the best that I as an unknown maverick primary candidate can hope for, they can rig the machine to where say one out of every 200 votes for me is thrown out, and another one of out every 200 votes for me is thrown to my opponent.

In the vast majority of cases such as this, the local political leaders hand-picked opponent will go on to win, though it might still be close. Yet, the election won't be so skewered as to raise eyebrows as to the seeming inconsistencies with polling data.

Of course, local Republican operatives can manipulate the thing in the same manner for their primary contests, and both parties can in a general election work to insure that any third party candidate is held down to maybe as much as a percent less of the vote than might ordinarily be achieved.

It's such an ingenious strategy it would almost be admirable, if it weren't so seriously corrupt. This is mainly because any such tampering, if it is caught, can always be marginalized as a "mere computer glitch".

So naturally the local party operatives have convinced the Democratic Congress it might be best to wait until 2012 to enact any voting reform legislation. There are just too many logistical and technical problems , etc., plus advocates for the handicapped are opposed to the legislation.

Surprise-Surprise!

By the time 2012 gets here no doubt it will have been decided to be a "non-issue".

And if anyone wonders why I am so adamant about this issue, and can make such allegations without proof, well, it's easy. Voting has always been crooked in the US, in some places more than others to be sure, and that corruption stems from the local/regional level, where the voting is controlled.

Once again-if people real want a national voting system that works, and is accurate, and tamper-proof, then all you have to do is adapt the voting system that has been utilized by Kentucky and New York for at least sixty years.

In almost every Presidential election, Kentucky will be one of the if not the very first state whose votes will have been totaled and announced nationally.

Did anybody ever wonder why that is? It is because Kentucky's voting booth, push button voting machines are fast, accurate, tamper-proof, and all but error-proof. They are fast, easy, and simple, and they leave a record of the votes that can be checked and verified.

They were adapted specifically becasue of early controversies in Kentucky over voting irregularities, whereupon Kentucky legislators adopted the same system adopted by New York in the wake of the Tamany Hall scandals.

But local/regional political operatives of both parties, after all, don't want a system that is fair, fast, efficient, and tamper-proof, nor do they particular care that much if it is error proof.

All they want is a system they can manipulate. That has bee proven, time after time, and they proved it in this case.

*Party bosses
**Kill it and hide the body

Radu-Chapter XV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)

Previous Installments:

Prologue And Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV

RADU-CHAPTER XV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
Pages-13 approximate

The black vulture waited. It knew it would have to be patient. It heard the crying of the infant, and having flown a great distance, she knew the human baby shared one thing in common with her. They were both hungry. The human infant’s young mother now fed the baby, which ceased crying as it hungrily gobbled up the food its mother now fed him. He was satisfied, and soon would sleep, if only for a brief time. The mother lay out as she allowed the rays of the sun to soak into her overly brown, overexposed skin. Suddenly, she called out so loudly, the bird flinched, thinking perhaps the mother of the child might have seen her.

Soon, the man appeared in response to the woman’s summons, and began massaging her back with the foul smelling substance people put upon their bodies. The man was getting closer and closer to the woman. The vulture watched impatiently as the man began removing the woman’s top. The woman pushed him away, however, as she looked all around. She was wary that someone might see her.

Soon, leaving the baby alone on the blanket, she quickly rose with the man and, taking him by the hand, led him toward the house. The woman lived there with the baby and the other man, not this one who seemed to only be around during limited times of some days, but the other man who in fact shared the house with the woman.

Before they made it to the house, however, the baby once more began crying. The woman returned, though she was agitated, and cleaned the baby, who had both urinated and defecated all over itself. When she finished cleaning the baby, she put a new clean diaper on him. The baby was unsatisfied, however, and so the woman fed the baby one more time, while the man stood there and complained. The vulture could tell that the man was very angry, which made the woman even more desperate to please him.

He told the woman he had to leave soon, so if they were going to do that thing they always did they would have to hurry. The woman said it would not take long, but the man told her he was going to have to leave, and so they would do it some other time. The woman however begged him to stay. She put the baby face down across her lap and sang to it as she burped it. Now, the baby was satisfied as she laid him down yet one more time.

The man said perhaps they should just bring the baby inside, but the woman said he might wake up and she wanted him to sleep. She was tired of having to deal with him all day, and she wanted to fuck before the man left. The man reminded her they had already fucked one time today but the woman was not satisfied. She wanted it one more time since the weekend was coming up and she would not be able to see the man until the following Monday. The baby would be fine out here for a few minutes, she said. He had not been in the sun too long and a little bit of time would do him good.

The vulture had watched the woman and the child for some time now. She was there when the strange man in the strange clothes came to see the infant, and held it as the woman and the other man stood there and watched. He seemed to be a man whom all others revered. The strange clothes that he wore were very much unlike those worn by most human beings. He seemed to be a very powerful man indeed, and the vulture knew she could not allow the man to see her. It would bode no good if he did. Therefore, the vulture watched quietly as the man said strange things to the infant and sprinkled something on him that seemed to be water.

That was just a few days ago. The infant was never alone at any time since then. She would have to wait, and be patient. She was hopeful the day had finally arrived.

For now, the woman seemed to have convinced the man to do as she asked, and so they walked to the inside of the house, leaving the now sleeping baby behind. The vulture knew the two people, the man and the woman, were going to have sexual relations. She could smell the pheromones the couple emitted, and those by the woman especially were powerful ones indeed.

The vulture spread her wings and walked to the edge of the house where she watched the infant and knew from experience the woman would be in the house long enough for her to do what she had to do. She hoped that no one would see her as she swooped down and, with her powerful talons, picked up the infant. The baby cried in horror of course. Unfortunately, she was unable to extract it from the thin sheet that the mother used to protect him from the sun’s harsh rays. She flew quickly away, certain that no one saw her. She would have to work quickly, just in case.

Unfortunately, before she made it far enough up in the air that she could begin her swooping flight to the south, something bad happened. The woman and the man saw her taking the baby. The woman shouted and cried, while the man picked something up and threw it at her. The vulture was too far up in the air, however, for him to reach her. All the same, she knew she had to get away. She made her way, swiftly, faster than she had ever flown in her entire life, until she made it to the spot where she needed to be. The baby for a few minutes lost his breath from the force of her flight, but now he resumed crying. The vulture wanted to kill him and eat him now, but she knew she had to wait.

She resumed her flight. That was something she could not afford to wait for, not since the man and woman did see her. She had no choice but to get away quickly before others attempted to find her. She knew somehow that other people would be looking in a desperate attempt to find the baby. She flew harder and faster than ever she had flown before. She had many miles to go to get where she needed to be.

The baby was once more silent. She slowed down from time to time in order to allow him to catch his breath. She needed to keep him alive. There was some place she had to go. This was an important thing she had to do, even if she did not understand it. She finally made it there, to the place from which she first noticed the baby and its mother strolling about the grounds. The man was there as well, the man who lived with the woman. She came to see him and they ate together, but after he left, she would sometimes stay around and talk to other men. Now here she was again, but it was not the woman she wanted to see, nor was it the man. No, those were the last people she wanted now to see.

From her perch of relative safety, she could see to the massively huge complex of buildings where people, countless numbers of them, constantly went in and out at all hours of the day and night. There was death in this place, constant death. That was what initially attracted her to the place, the tantalizingly seductive aromas of death. She one time intended to feed upon a dying man and even intended to hasten his death. However, the man had somehow managed to summon help in a way she could not hope to comprehend, simply by speaking into a very small object into which there could not possibly be any people. Yet, they came from some place, in response to his cries for assistance.

She followed the people the short distance to this place of death. Maddeningly, though this was a place of death, most of them never seemed to die. They healed, and they lived, and they left for the most part, to go on with their accursed existences eating flesh and vegetation passed through their fires and so devoid of any flavor or any other value, not even allowing it a respectable amount of time in which to become digestible. They engaged in wanton sexual activity with seemingly anyone that wished to indulge their shared weaknesses. They hid as they slept, in monstrous constructions similar to this one (though rarely as huge) that made the world further devoid of life from which to feed.

She was wary of eating one of them for she was sure their taste would be a fowl one. This was especially the case with this infant, whom she was compelled to eat now, as opposed to her preference of waiting a day or two after it died. She had no choice. The infant was still alive and was just now regaining its breath. It screamed now, and cried in horror. The terror that the infant emanated was exciting to her. All the same, she had to silence him.

She tore into the infant, which howled in agony as she gorged upon its torn flesh and its blood. Soon it stopped crying, somewhat quicker, thankfully, than she expected. She fed upon it’s inside organs and realized it was not the unpleasant experience she imagined it might be. Perhaps this was because it was a young human being. Whatever the case, she fed upon him, taking care to remove the sheet from around him, until soon enough there was nothing left of the infant but a thin, frail skeleton.

Her own hunger was satisfied, if only for a brief while. She had only one thing left to do. She looked toward the window, as she grew ever more impatient. She would have to wait, but it would be for just a little while. She could sense the person for whom she waited. She knew she had yet more time to wait. She knew what she had to do.

The woman named Grace Rodescu lay on life support. The bullet that nicked her artery luckily did no major damage, even though it lodged in her spine. Nevertheless, though no major organs were damaged, she lost a lot of blood. By the time Phelps discovered her, a mere twenty minutes after she was shot, she was almost dead. By the time she was transferred to the hospital by ambulance, she had in fact died once and been revived. The same thing happened in the emergency room.

She never saw Jesus Christ beckoning her to a white light. She did however see Khoska, praying for her soul. She wanted to hit him, but she ignored him for some time, until his prayers became louder and more annoying, and so she cursed him. She saw Grozhny, smiling at her, telling her to join him. He had the same glazed look in his eyes she suddenly remembered him having as she crawled into bed with him that night, right before she beat his brains out with the baseball bat.

She saw Grady, and Morrison, and many shadowy men and women, and girls. She saw Mikhail and Nadya. She wanted to ask them why they did to her what they did, but they merely turned their backs on her. She shouted, but they ignored her. They soon faded, as all the rest, only to be replaced by a figure in a dark gray robe whose face could not be seen, though two bright red orbs shone like beacons from what seemed to be his eyes. Somehow, she knew who the man was.

“Mircea”, she said. “I am dead then, right?”

She hoped she was but he did not answer her. She heard something behind her, and turned to see a trunk. A man stood beside it-a young man with long, dark, unkempt hair. He snickered, he giggled, and he cackled, as he wrote something upon a brick wall. She saw then she seemed to be in a prison yard and armed guards stood all around, but seemed not to notice her or the strange man.

She knew this man somehow. She had seen him before. Who was he? Her head was hurting, and the stress of the questions only made it pound that much worse. She approached him and, his back being to her now, she tugged at his shoulder. He turned, but he now had long, thick, flowing, wavy blondish hair and a moustache. He was larger, stronger, and met her surprised stare with an unflinching, steady gaze of steely determination in his bright green eyes.

“No, you are not dead and will not be until your time comes”, he said. “I promise you, you do not want to know when that time is.”

She could not help but look upon the writing on the wall, but before she could do so, she heard the voice of a man, beckoning to her. She turned to see the face of a Japanese man.

“You really must join us for supper, Grace”, the man said with a smile. He then laughed, and Grace suddenly found herself surrounded by darkness. She could not move. She breathed but with difficulty. She cursed in silent despair. She was yet alive, and she cursed. Somehow, she knew someone was with her.

Marlowe stood and looked upon the figure of the motionless woman, who was alive only because of some unfathomable machinery that forced the life to remain with her. He looked upon her in a sense of wonder. She knew him somehow, he realized, but it was impossible for him to know exactly how she knew him, in what way, or for how long. He only understood that, in some strange manner, she knew things she was not supposed to know. She had some knowledge of certain people in Marlowe’s life, people such as his Uncle Brad, people such as the strange woman who, while in a narcotic state, allowed herself to be marked with the permanently tattooed ink of a beard and moustache. She knew the mildly retarded man called Rhino. She knew the sad excuse for a female named Sierra Lawson. Somehow, she knew him. What did she know, he wondered, and how?

He delved into her memories, but they were a confused jumble of thoughts, mixed with dreams and imaginings that made it difficult to separate the truth from fantasy. He delved deeper and deeper. Then he finally realized something. The DVD, the recorded family pictures and home movies, replayed in a constant though confused glob in her mind. He realized something else, as well. This woman longed for revenge. More than a longing, it was a hunger and a thirst. This woman hated many people, perhaps with good reason. Still, what did it have to do with him?

He had to know more, and so he continued to delve deeper into her memories. Finally, he saw it-

“Oh, my goodness”, he said, and started to giggle. “You even know about”-

“Marlowe”, a voice suddenly shouted. “What are you doing here?”

It was Chou, Marlowe realized. How did he know where he was? He had to get rid of him somehow.

“You were supposed to be brought to my office. What are you doing in here? Where is Dooley?”

“I don’t know, he left”, Marlowe said. “The police came to see him. He was real upset when they finished talking to him. I think he forgot about me.”

“The police?” Chou was obviously alarmed, and quite concerned.

“I think they said his baby was stolen by a big bird of some kind. It was terrible.”

Marlowe then began giggling, cackling. As always, he tried to restrain himself, which usually had the effect of causing him to quiver and shake in mirthful madness.

“You seem to think it is quite humorous”, Chou observed, unsure of whether to take him seriously or not. “Come, I will walk you to my office. We have much to discuss.”

“Goodbye, Grace”, Marlowe said. “It was nice meeting you. When you need a fix, I’m sure you will find a way to let them know about it.”

“You-know her?” Chou was obviously stunned, even though he recently learned that Marlowe, like this woman, was a heroin user, though he managed to hide this throughout his evidently long period of use. Perhaps, he mused, they ran in the same social circles.

“I think she is going to die, poor woman”, Marlowe said. “That is too bad. She had so much to live for. Are you her doctor?”

“No, Marlowe, Sherman is her physician. Now, come along, we have to talk. How are you feeling about the lights now? Are they still painful?”

“There is nothing pleasant about them”, he said. “I prefer darkness, it is comforting. It soothes my nerves. Light is painful, and stressful.”

They took the elevator down to Chou’s office. When they arrived, Chou lowered the lights to a more comforting level, as he put on some music. It was a CD of Romanian folk songs. Marlowe listened with interest.

“What do you think of this, Marlowe?” he asked him. “I sent off for this on-line, I think it is quite good.”

“If I understood Romanian, perhaps I might enjoy it, but it sounds like gibberish to me. I hate it.”

“How do you know it’s Romanian, Marlowe?”

Marlowe tensed at this question, and bit his lip as he turned, a reaction that Chou noted.

“Actually, I hear you are quite the linguist, Marlowe”, Chou observed. Indeed, while under sedation, Doctor Tariq discovered that Marlowe was fluent not only in Romanian, but also in Polish, Turkish, and Hungarian. Additionally, he had a working knowledge of German and Italian.

“I guess you could say that”, Marlowe replied. “I even know English on an expert level, and have never studied it a day in my life.”

Chou found this display of sarcasm uncharacteristic, but Marlowe was not in the least amused.

“I am of Romanian heritage, and have studied languages privately, as a pastime.” he went on to explain. “Is that a crime?”

“Not at all, Marlowe, I just find it curious”, Chou explained. “Of course that is true about a good many things where you are concerned.”

In fact, a good many things about Marlowe Krovell were not merely curious to Chou, but alarming.

At times, Marlowe could engage in lucid and sensible conversations, but he invariably slipped into incoherence. Something was truly amiss, and the rounds of medical tests he had undergone were more than inconclusive. They brought up more questions than they answered.

At some unknown point in time, Marlowe Krovell had suffered a cardiac arrest that, by all rights, should have proven permanently fatal were it not immediately treated. Insofar as Doctor Chou had been aware, there was no record of any such occurrence. Still, the test results did not lie. At one point in the not too distant past-in fact, it seemed to have been very recently-Marlowe Krovell had died and, somehow, been revived. According to the full range of testing, which revealed bruising and scarring of his lungs, the intimation was the cardiac arrest might have come about in conjunction with drowning. As there was no record or knowledge of such an occurrence, this only heightened the mystery.

This was the least intriguing of the current batch of test results on Krovell, all of which had been triple checked to insure against contamination through some kind of lab mix-up. They showed that Marlowe suffered from syphilis-which, while certainly not mysterious, was disturbing. Chou noted it seemed to be a particularly virulent strain. Curiously, at the same time it seemed to be one of the oldest strains of the disease. As such, it should be treatable with antibiotics. Yet, somehow, it was as though the malignant bacterium that Marlowe contracted had somehow lain dormant for so long, in some strange way it had evolved.

Luckily, it seemed to be in remission. One possible explanation was that Marlowe’s blood supply was at as low a level as any living human being could possibly maintain life. His blood pressure as well as his pulse was incredibly low. This could possibly hinder the disease, and thus slow its advancement. Unfortunately, the very same thing might also doom him to a life of incapacitation. Medication required a certain level of blood-more to the point, it required a minimal amount of circulatory activity-in order to have any appreciable likelihood of success.

What disturbed Chou also was the dementia with which Marlowe seemed afflicted. His mental state, coupled with certain signs of physical disability, such as tremors of the left hand, seemed to suggest the syphilis had advanced into his brain. As of now, however, there were no signs of this, though it was true that some strains of the disease could hide so well they seemingly disappeared over time, concealing themselves until they further strengthened.

How could this be? When Marlowe was in the hospital, until after the beginning of this year, he had contracted no strains of syphilis, or any other kind of STD. Such an advanced stage as to invade the brain itself required an appreciable amount of time.

Nothing made any sense. However, there was no denying that Marlowe Krovell was clinically insane. He trusted Tariq enough to make that pronouncement, and had no need to see the patient to verify the veracity of the diagnosis. However, he was Marlowe’s family physician, and felt he should do so. At the same time, he was well aware that he was dealing with something that was entirely out of his league.

Marlowe was not in any kind of pain except when in direct sunlight, and even indirect sunlight made him noticeably ill. This as well as the insanity might be explained by porphyria. On the other hand, porphyria typically accompanied profound anemia. Although Marlowe did exhibit this symptom at various intervals, at other times his blood supply seemed to be abundant, at times even greater than normal.

Incredibly, it seemed as though his blood cells were replicating, and absorbed oxygen from some primary source besides his lungs, which were a secondary source at best. One consulting physician confided to Chou that Marlowe seemed to breathe only when he had something to say.

Over the last few days, Marlowe’s blood supply was at one of its most serious lows, and deemed in fact as being at a dangerous level of deprivation. The only thing to do was to give him blood transfusions. Massive amounts of blood transfusions, in fact, were all that could save him. It was all that could enable treatment of the syphilis. There was, however, another problem. Marlowe had contracted bubonic plaque. Though this seemed to be in remission, and was treatable, yet there was the potential that the massive blood transfusion necessary to treat it might inadverdently cause it to come roaring out of remission and pose a major health hazard. Therefore, he would have to place Marlowe in quarantine. Chou had no choice. If he did not do this soon, he ran the risk of endangering the entire hospital, both staff and patients. Chou felt it incumbent upon himself to turn to other more specialized experts. They were all as much in the dark as he was.

He was on top of everything else a schizophrenic, and due to his blood condition, this as well was untreatable by ordinary means. He had taken to having Marlowe anesthetized with a localized opiate, which seemed to work much better than any kind of injection, though it was nevertheless insufficient for Marlowe’s needs. It was for now his only option. What was he to do? He would have to try to explain it to him as best he could.

He dreaded bringing this up again. A mere three weeks previously, when Marlowe’s blood was at a dangerously low level, he informed him that he might require a transfusion. He had to explain what he meant, which was in itself an oddity. Most patients of even sub-normal intelligence understood what a blood transfusion entailed, yet Marlowe seemed completely mystified.

Once Chou made it clear exactly what he was talking about, Marlowe seemed completely horrified by the suggestion, and demanded he discharge him. He adamantly refused to discuss further the possibility, and for a brief while, Chou feared Marlowe might even become violent with him. Chou tried to reason with him, but Marlowe insisted that was the very thing that almost killed him before. Of course, Chou realized, he was obviously delusional, so he dropped the matter. Luckily, within two days, his blood supply had seemingly once more engaged in its mysterious replication process, and so, though there was no corresponding increase in pulse rate or blood pressure, his actual blood supply was back to normal.

Unfortunately, now his blood was once more at a dangerously low level, lower in fact than ever before. Chou had no choice but to assert his authority as Marlowe’s physician.

“Marlowe, my main concern is your physical health”, Chou said. “You have a good many illnesses that”-

“Birds and mice”, Marlowe said inexplicably. “That is how I got them.”

“Birds and mice”, Chou repeated suspiciously.

Suddenly Marlowe started once again laughing, cackling, as though in the throes of some private joke between him and God knew what. Chou stood by somberly, until he finished.

“Marlowe, we need to give you a blood transfusion. It is the only way we can cure you. Some of the diseases you have are quite serious. In fact, at least one of them that we suspect you might have is probably incurable, though it is treatable if it does turn out that you have it. The rest we hope to eradicate, but it will require a tremendous amount of blood. Unfortunately, there are risks.”

Chou took some time to explain the procedures involved and the possible side effects and ultimate repercussions if they failed. Marlowe seemed unconcerned. Chou was under no illusions whatsoever that Marlowe had the slightest idea what he said, despite the fact that Marlowe listened as though he himself were a consulting physician.

He was under no obligation to explain them to him at all, in fact, as he had express legal permission through his guardian, Brad Marlowe, to do whatever was necessary. Brad himself had volunteered to give him blood, but unfortunately, it was not suitable. Nor would Marlowe be happy about accepting blood from his uncle, at whom he was almost insanely angry. He refused even to see his uncle when he tried to visit him. He in fact refused to see anyone with the sole exception of one slightly older African American man by the name of Marshall Crenshaw. As Brad Marlowe had confided to him that Marlowe all but despised blacks, Chou considered this yet another oddity, and finally concluded that this man was, in all probability, a drug dealer.

Luckily, their visits were few and of short duration, and Chou could find no evidence of drugs or any other such paraphernalia smuggled to Marlowe by way of this man or anybody else. At the same time, it was not a great cause for concern, in that Marlowe’s pulse and blood pressure would make any illicit drug as nearly useless as any Chou might prescribe. It was an incredibly perplexing situation.

Now, Marlowe once more expressed displeasure at the prospect of a blood transfusion, but Chou informed him there was, unfortunately, no other option. At that point, Marlowe offered what seemed to him to be a solution.

“I will drink the blood”, he said. “That would work much better. You have to let me choose the person. Bring me a young child, preferably a baptized one. What would really be good is if you could find a young maiden, one who has just recently entered puberty, but has not known a man sexually. Or, if someone such as this is not immediately available, might there be a nun present? Blood from a devout nun is some very powerful stuff.”

Marlowe was obviously not joking. Chou merely looked at him in grim silence.

Chou of course knew a great deal more about Marlowe than his reluctant patient thought he did. According to Tariq, he suffered from the delusion that he was a person who lived centuries ago. It was not as uncommon a psychosis as many might think, though extremely rare nevertheless. Tariq considered it an escape mechanism in Marlowe’s case. In addition to his attempted murder, and the murder-suicide of his parents, Tariq suspected some form of long-term abuse dating back to some period in Marlowe’s early childhood. He in fact suspected both parents, and was especially suspicious of the mother. In fact, he suspected long-term sexual abuse.

“That is a fairly easy assumption to make, of course”, Tariq told him. “The thing is, it is not an assumption. Marlowe actually told me this. That is not the least of it. He also said he in fact murdered his parents, and then attempted suicide. He then insisted that ‘he’-whomever the entity ‘he’ supposedly is-actually saved Marlowe with the express purpose of inhabiting his body. It is all very complex. I tend to think he has adopted this persona as a means of dealing with the truth as he sees it. Otherwise, he would never be able to face up to it. In this way, he can purge the guilt from his system by means of confession and still proclaim his innocence, all while providing a valid justification for it.”

Of course, there was yet no explanation as to the onset of such a myriad of diseases, some of them of extreme seriousness. Where did they come from? Moreover, there was another mystery. Marlowe refused to discuss his past life, other than to confide, under sedation, that his given name had been Radu, and that he had in fact lived many centuries ago.

“Yet, most patients such as this have highly developed layers of memories which they wear like clothing. They are still every bit as delusional, of course, but the point is they are usually quite extravagant, and in fact tend to be highly accurate in their historical detail. The fact that he wishes to keep such memories to himself is most unusual. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is all but unheard of.”

After the sedation wore off, of course, he would revert to his usual foolish demeanor, making off-hand remarks that made sense to no one. At this time Marlowe was sedated somewhat, as well as he could be under the circumstances. Now, he was obviously starting to return to his usual level of lunacy, and Chou knew that any further discussions with him would be a waste of time. He prepared to accompany him back up to his room, in the limited access psychiatric wing of Johns Hopkins.

He told Marlowe to walk with him, but surprisingly, Marlowe told him he wished to sit in the patients lounge for a while. He was tired of sitting all day in his room. Chou considered this surprising, but on the other hand, Marlowe had become wholly unpredictable. His mental and emotional collapse had left him in a profound state of disarray, which Chou previously believed to have been due mainly to the incident of his parents’ deaths, and his own near murder. It all seemed obvious.

That of course was before the discovery of the syphilis, and the even more troubling evidence of bubonic plaque. However, the most mysterious thing by far was the potential diagnosis of porphyria. There was no medical history of this in his family going back four generations. Yet, it was a genetic condition, which was not contagious. Therefore, how could he possibly have contracted such a thing?

Nevertheless, in all the consultations he had conducted with every expert at John Hopkins and beyond, no one had any explanation for the seeming ability of Marlowe’s blood cells to replicate. This was unheard of, nor did there seem to be any genetic explanation for it. At the same time, without a doubt this was all that kept him alive, if only temporarily.

Chou walked him back to the psychiatric wing, and to the patients lounge there. Marlowe sat upon the most comfortable chair he could find, while Chou stopped briefly at the nurses station. After a minute, he turned and nodded to Marlowe, and then left. Marlowe was running behind time, and knew he had to work fast. The woman Phyllis was still there in the lounge, luckily. She was as usual clutching her Bible, which Marlowe realized she only pretended to read-constantly. He approached her, and she looked at him

“The end is coming soon”, she warned him. “Death and hell will be loosed and you, young man, will have your share in the Lake of Fire, and Hell, where the worm dieth not.”

As she said this, she pointed to his crotch.

“Hell is here in this building, Phyllis”, he told her. “You know that. It is down in the basement. You have the power to loose it all over the world. Well, you have the power to loose it here in this building, at least.”

Phyllis had formerly worked here on the maintenance crew, until the deaths of her husband and son in an auto accident for which she was at fault, having driven while greatly intoxicated, though she survived with minor injuries. Now, she was a patient. In her extreme state of paranoid guilt, she thought the entire world judged her harshly-which was indeed true of almost everyone that knew her, herself most especially.

She adopted a defensive persona that she projected onto everyone at the hospital, though she had made some slight progress because of her intensive therapy and medication. Nevertheless, she hated the world, because she thought the world hated her almost as much as she hated herself.

Now, Phyllis looked at him knowingly, as though a veil lifted.

“Are you that prophet?”

Marlowe cackled, and turned to insure he was not overheard.

“Sister Phyllis”, he said. “Your torment will soon be over. God has a mission for you. He wants you to go down to where the power center is. It is up to you, Phyllis, to put out the fires of hell. Do you really think the people here want to help you? Of course not, they mean to punish you for your past sins. They will never forgive you, nor will they ever allow you to forgive yourself, until you take matters into your own hands.”

“I know what to do”, she said. “But how can I get down there?”

“You have to wait until I clear the way for you. It will not be long. Remember, Phyllis, even if you have to forfeit your life for this sacred purpose, both your husband and son are waiting for you. They are waiting for you to join them in heaven, Phyllis. I can see them now. Just close your eyes for a minute and you can see them as well.”

“I-don’t want to”, she said. “I’m afraid to see them”

“You have to trust in the Lord, Phyllis, in the mercy of Christ”, Marlowe insisted. “Who do you suppose has them now, keeping them in his bosom, comforting them, filling their thoughts with joy and peace? They want you to join them away from this hell, Phyllis. Can you not see this?”

Phyllis closed her eyes, as tears streamed down her cheeks, while Marlowe extracted the cell phone his friend Marshall earlier smuggled to him. Marshall of course would do anything for money, or even for a reasonable hope of it. Now, he had yet one more reason, an even more compelling one than mere financial gain, to come to Marlowe’s assistance. In fact, his life depended on it.

The true yet now long dead Marlowe had dealt with Marshall, an African American drug dealer, out of necessity. The new Marlowe, once long ago dead and now returned to life, in a new form, a new identity, found the stored memories of Marshall to be most useful. As in fact was the drug dealer himself, for at least a short while.

The cell phone was the least of the aid supplied to Marlowe. What was undoubtedly the most important help Marshall promised to provide was a package.

Tariq should have received the package by now, though hopefully not too long ago. Marlowe had to make sure he was in the right place at the right time. That meant he had to work fast, as Chou had inadverdently interfered with him and threw his timing off. He still had hopefully enough time, but he knew he would really be pushing it as he called the downstairs maintenance crew and reported a bomb that was due to go off sometime this day, hidden somewhere down in the basement.

.“You know what you have to do, Phyllis”, Marlowe then said to the woman that was now a most vital part of his plans. “Are you ready to give these people the same hell they have been giving you these many months?”

Suddenly, the elevator to the basement opened, and some hospital guards and some maintenance workers entered the lobby along with some off-duty police that worked the hospital as guards. They were trying to spread the word as quickly as they could, pertaining to the bomb threat, in such a way as to avoid a general panic.

“Now’s your chance, Phyllis”, Marlowe said. “You know what to do. Stand over close to the elevator, and wait for me to divert everyone’s attention. Then, go down and do what you have to do.”

Marlowe now went about in a maddened state, screaming that a bomb would go off in the hospital soon. They were all going to die. As a result, pandemonium ensued as a good many of the patients, and quite a few of the hospital staff, started making for the exits, others trying to establish order, as one of the guards grabbed Marlowe. Phyllis made her way to the elevator, as suddenly Doctor Tariq appeared.

A couple of staff members accompanied him, while others tried desperately to deal with a good many of the other patients that were not so easily mollified. Marlowe himself feigned fear and demanded his discharge from the hospital. He looked around toward the elevator to see that Phyllis had entered and was on her way to the basement. No one noticed her actions, and so Marlowe screamed louder, then shouted in anger, as Tariq told the two attendants standing by him to take Marlowe into his office.

They took him into Tariq’s office, and stood by as a female Administrator entered, telling Tariq they needed to try to calm the patients as much as possible. Tariq informed her that was exactly what he was trying to do. Marlowe now for his part seemed to have calmed down considerably.

“I think he will be fine now that he is out of the brighter lights”, he told them. As he said this, Marlowe looked over toward where he saw the large package, which stood almost a full foot above Tariq’s desk. As it was also about half the length of the desk and slightly larger from front to back, Marlowe realized he was lucky the psychiatrist had yet not found the time or the curiosity to open it.

The female Administrator was telling Tariq the bomb threat originated from somewhere in the hospital, and was likely a hoax. All the same, the police bomb squad was on its way, and they were going to prepare for an evacuation just in case. She expected it to go smoothly, she warned. The last thing she needed was a bunch of lunatics, many of whom were criminally insane, out on the grounds and being lost in the melee because people that were supposed to be professionals could not keep their nerve.

The woman was obviously frightened and trying to project a persona of discipline, but Marlowe could tell she was unraveling.

She stepped outside the door and talked to one of the off-duty police now stationed on this floor. Marlowe noted she seemed to be laughing at the patients who walked around in circles, some moaning, and some openly crying, while others laughed and made different unintelligible noises that indicated they had no idea what was going on. Luckily, all of Tariq’s patients remained confined to their rooms in the limited access area reserved for the most profoundly disturbed patients, some of them criminally insane.

Marlowe looked at the clock on Tariq’s wall. He had very little time indeed, maybe as little as five minutes, perhaps even less. He looked around to the side of Tariq’s desk, at the package. Tariq would never open it as long as he was in here, Marlowe suddenly realized.

“This kind of thing happens from time to time, Marlowe”, Tariq assured him. “Not here, thankfully, but in the vast majority of cases, when such things as these occur it is the actions of sick individuals wanting to cause a panic, or even for the sake of a sick joke. When you stop to think about it, if someone were to plant a bomb with the intention of killing people, what would be the point of calling before it exploded and warning his intended victims? Do you understand what I am saying to you, Marlowe?”

“Please call Dr, Chou”, he said. “He will want to know where I am. I think he has been looking for me. I hid from him and now, I am afraid”-

“Is that right,” Tariq replied. “I could have sworn he saw you earlier. Very well, I will call him”

Marlowe giggled at his little joke, and Tariq seemed annoyed when Chou informed him he had seen Marlowe not more than twenty minutes ago. Tariq then mentioned something about the bomb threat, evidently in response to something Chou said about the matter.

“Ali did it”, Marlowe then said. “I know he did. He said something big was going to happen at this hospital today.”

Marlowe now suddenly seemed frightened all over again. He started ranting about how one of Tariq’s Muslim patients, named Ali, would outwardly say that Tariq was not a good Muslim, and how Marlowe overheard him tell another man something to the effect that this hospital would make a good target.”

Ali was a Muslim outpatient of Dr. Tariq, and on a number of occasions Marlowe had overheard him ranting about Tariq, and about how the American nation was Satanic and anti-Islamic, and thus deserving of death. He engaged Marlowe in conversation one day out in the patient’s lounge, and accused Marlowe of being “demon possessed”

“It shows in your eyes, and in your manner”, the devout Muslim told him. “You even have the scent of demonic possession.”

As he said this, he began to walk away from Marlowe as much in loathing as in fear. It was Marlowe’s great pleasure to involve him in his little escapade. Moreover, it was a believable story, from the perspective of the Muslim Tariq.

“Did you hear that”, Tariq asked Chou, whereupon he repeated what Marlowe said. Tariq then said he was quite sure the two things were unconnected, when suddenly the sound of a distant, muffled thud preceded the failure of the lights. Suddenly, Marlowe found himself bathed in his beloved darkness.

“Oh my God, something has happened”, Tariq said, as he terminated his call with Chou and then reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a cell phone. He called someone and expressed concerns about the well-being of the patients at the hospital, many of whom were on life support. He had his back to Marlowe as he terminated one call and began to make another, this one to his wife. Marlowe proceeded to knock Tariq over the head with a paperweight, just hard enough to stun him temporarily, as the psychiatrist buckled down to the floor. Marlowe locked the door. He then proceeded to open up the package. Marshall did everything just as Marlowe instructed.

He quickly revived Tariq, who awoke in a confused daze, unaware of what actually happened. He looked at Marlowe, who returned his confused gaze with an idiotic grin as he apologized if he hit him a bit too hard. He then demanded that Tariq release him from the hospital.

“I-cannot do that”, the psychiatrist insisted. “I would not do it if I could.”

“Oh, but you will”, Marlowe insisted. “And you will do it now. You have a package by the way. I just now opened it for you. I have an idea it might be from someone who wishes you ill will. Would you like to peruse its contents? I believe you will find it adequately visible from the streetlights outside your window.”

Tariq looked toward the now open box he earlier received that he assumed was a delivery of Korans and other Islamic reading materials he a couple of weeks previously ordered for the benefit of an Islamic study group he recently had approved for his Muslim outpatients. When he realized what he saw, it horrified and sickened him. When he realized exactly who he saw, he was decimated.

“Raghda”, he said in heartsick horror as he looked upon the severed head of his wife of thirteen years.

“Oh, that was her name”, Marlowe said. “I hope the children will not be too badly hurt by this. Children need their mother. What exactly will you tell them, when you get them back?”

Tariq now cried pitifully, openly, loudly, and Marlowe began to fear someone might hear him outside the door to his office, even though from the sounds of it, it was bedlam in the hallways. There were frightened voices of patients, as well as hospital staff and guards, trying to cope with the loss of lighting and electric, obviously feeling their way about the hall in as near a panic as possible without the ability to run from the chaos.

Tariq now looked in Marlowe’s direction, with a look of savage hatred.

“You-are responsible for this”, he said incredulously. “You will pay for this and if my children are harmed-”

“Not yet”, Marlowe promised. “However, they both will soon be handed over to some people who think they are quite adorable, I am told. Unless, of course, you release me. Do not bother telling me that Chou must approve my release, I know that. I will deal with that little problem as a misunderstanding, if necessary.

“How do I know you will free my children if I do as you say?” Chou asked this now in the throes of despair.

“The major thing for you to know is they will most definitely be raped within the hour if you do not do as I say. To make it look good, by the way, you are to sign for not only my release, but all your other patients as well. Am I clear on that? I want it entered into your laptop computer. Once I am satisfied, you can communicate with your children from a place I am sure you will find to your liking.”

Tariq had no choice, and so, under the light of the outside street lamp, he drew up Marlowe’s release, as well as for his eight other current inpatients. He then, as Marlowe commanded, entered this all into his laptop computer.

As he was in the process of doing so, Marlowe began the process of removing his teeth. He had earlier put this off, but now began manually extracting them. He found it to be an amazingly painless procedure, and so by the time Tariq finished his own discharge and began to prepare yet another, Marlowe had extracted seven of his teeth.

They were useless at any rate, and would do more good left behind, he mused. Unfortunately, it was not quite enough. Therefore, taking one of his seldom breaths-a very deep one-he began probing around the area of his appendix. With the sharp fingernail of his right index finger, he scratched open a long incision, and then slowly, delicately, gradually started to insert first his index finger. As he spread the incision open, he slowly inserted his entire hand.

He watched as Tariq began to operate his laptop, onto which he would now place into his hard drive a record of the unorthodox discharges of all his patients, a good many of whom were in fact dangerously psychotic. Marlowe cleared his throat in order to command his attention. Tariq turned to see the unbelievable sight of Marlowe standing there with what appeared to be his hand inserted through a gaping wound in his side.

He then watched in horror as Marlowe, standing not four feet away from him, manually extracted his own appendix.

.“Is it true that this bodily part is actually quite useless?” Marlowe asked him this after Tariq, trembling in fear, informed him that the item he had removed was, indeed, his appendix.

“Very good”, Marlowe responded, as he then flung the extracted item under Tariq’s desk.

“Marlowe, please, I don’t know what you are thinking, but this will not work”, Tariq said desperately. “You are obviously very sick.”

“Indeed, and if I remain here I will only get sicker”, Marlowe replied. “Chou, that charlatan, is determined to put blood into my body that would be the same as poison to me. I cannot tolerate blood from just any source. It must be of the utmost purity, from a person who is themselves the epitome of purity. I only do what I have to do. Do you understand?”

Tariq knew it was useless to reason with this obviously deranged patient, and so he completed the demanded discharges, as he tried to keep his wits about him. He started to realize the entire hospital was in disarray, and he only vaguely considered the bomb threat. Suddenly, the lights were back on, and Marlowe was suddenly agitated all over again. They fixed them quicker than he intended.

He listened at the door as someone knocked upon it. It was the female Administrator who had talked to Tariq earlier. She was now begging him to open the door and let her in. She sounded very frantic, and it did not take Marlowe long to ascertain the reason for this. The doors to the limited access wing of the psychiatric unit now were open, if only temporarily, as were the patients rooms, and they all came piling out into the hallways and into the patients lounge. They seemed to have free reign of the entire floor, in fact, though no longer under cover of darkness.

“Keep your mouth shut, Doctor Tariq”, Marlowe said, as he suddenly, almost as an afterthought, pulled his left little finger from his hand. Perhaps he should leave a foot, he mused. After all, it would grow back, in time. Then he decided that it might well take too long to do that, and in the meantime, there was the problem of how exactly he would get very far on one foot.

Instead, he walked all about the office, spitting on the floor, and did the same under the desk, where he had deposited the teeth, finger, and appendix. He had to make certain there was some evidence of his presence in this place. This would do quite nicely, in fact a little too well. Still, he had no choice. If he decided to live openly at some future date, he would have to deal with the seeming contradiction then. And so, he allowed some blood as well to pour out into the room, an effort that weakened him considerably, as he had precious little as it was.

“I can’t just leave her out there with those maniacs”, Tariq protested as Marlowe took care to soak the appendix, teeth, and finger in some of his blood and saliva.”

“Yes you can and you will”, Marlowe assured him. “Whatever they do to her is none of your concern. What they might do to you most definitely is. To say nothing of what I might do if you disobey me.”

Someone had grabbed the woman, who was now begging someone-anyone-to help her, while one of the off-duty police could be heard telling someone to let her go. A gun went off, but then the same guard started screaming in pain, as one of the more violent patients tackled him onto the ground, allowing yet another one or more of the psychotic patients to re-establish control over the hapless female, who begged them not to hurt her.

“Ahhh, you’re such a purty little thang”, one of the patients told her as she cried pitifully. She then screamed as Marlowe could make out the sounds of ripped clothing. Perfect, Marlowe decided. He would be able to get away, hopefully once more under cover of darkness, as everyone obviously had other things on their minds.

“You will now call this number, and from this phone”, Marlowe commanded as he handed Tariq the cell phone along with a post-it note upon which was written a familiar number.

“This is the mosque in Washington”, he observed. “What is this for?”

“Just call the fucking number”, Marlowe said in exasperation.

Tariq did so, by now oblivious to the horrified screams of the Administrator just outside his door, or the insane laughter of the psychotic patients who now had free reign of the floors hallway. He hung up soon, with a look of sheer anxiety palpable on his face.

“My children have been at the mosque for over an hour”, he said. “A black American male dropped them off there, supposedly at Raghda’s instructions. According to him, something bad has happened, but they will not talk.”

“I am afraid I lied”, Marlowe said. “Your children were in fact raped, and the entire thing is now on film. I am afraid their lives will be quite useless to them if the film becomes the newest internet sensation. I hear many bad people will pay big money to see such a thing. It is really quite shameful.”

He once again started cackling, as Tariq looked as though he was ready to assault his former patient.

“Oh, calm down”, Marlowe said. “I am joking. They were not harmed. They have been told, however, that you murdered their mother, because she discovered your affiliation with some shadowy terrorist group. That phone you just used to call the mosque, by the way, was the same phone by which I phoned in the bomb threat. Now, get your ass up away from that computer.”

Tariq stood, and Marlowe reviewed his files, and then demanded that Tariq transfer them to the main drive of his office computer. Since the maintenance crew restored some of the power, he might as well make the most of it, he decided. It took Tairq all of ten minutes to accomplish this task, as Marlowe began to wonder how long it would take to restore order. Obviously, he mused, Phyllis had done her job well enough that only those things of the most vital necessity, such as patients’ life support devices, was for the time being fully functional. Only portions of the hospital’s lights and electrical outlets now functioned, as the clock on Tariq’s wall yet did not resume operating.

He found himself actually hoping that Phyllis was now in heaven with her departed son and husband, as she had probably herself now died as a result of the explosion, or electrical short-circuit she had caused which lead to the previous blackout. He knew he could not wait much longer, regardless of the prospect of someone seeing him. Tariq was crying, and praying, but Marlowe felt the sudden suspicion that Tariq was preparing to assault him, thinking ot take him by surprise. Why should he not do so? He knew now that his children were safe. He had nothing now to lose. Marlowe suddenly knocked him over the head with the same paperweight with which he earlier accosted him.

He then checked the files on Tariq’s office computer hard drive. Everything seemed to be in order.

Then, he pushed the button on the strange device within the package from which wires lead into the severed head of the unfortunate Raghda Tariq, and to other areas of the large package. He then opened the door, and stepped tentatively out into the hallway.

The woman was now screaming pitifully. She had obviously been brutally raped, and the patients-many of whom were, unbeknownst to them, “discharged”-now dragged her back toward the part of the floor that was usually limited access, back to their rooms, to “have some more fun” as he heard one man put it. The fools, he thought. Here they have a chance to escape, if just for a short while, and here they are heading back to the place of their confinement. He headed in the opposite direction, back towards the stairs. Everyone else was gone, except for the one lone guard who had been overpowered, and who, if he were not already dead, soon doubtless would be.

He left hurriedly. He ran down the hallway, knowing he would be in a great deal of trouble if the bomb failed to go off. When the explosion finally ripped through the hospital psychiatric unit, Marlowe could hear it from four floors below. The personnel left behind in the hospital, to see to the potential evacuation of the various floors, now scurried in terror, screaming and crying. One woman passed out, and lay on the floor alone, as Marlowe entered the room of Grace Rodescu. The machinery by which she was barely alive once more stopped functioning. The lights as well were once more off.

He then found the change of clothing Marshall had managed to place inside an unused dresser just hours ago. He changed into them though he realized it was tantamount that he remember to take his hospital gown with him. It would not do for one of the staff to find those carelessly left behind in this room.

He then found the crowbar left for him as well, with which he furiously pried at the reinforced screen of the window. It would not be long now. Soon, he would be free and far away from this place of insanity-this place of living death.

Grace could hear the wings of some monstrous bird flapping, and heard the same ungodly call she heard at the Leighton farm from the black vulture that fed upon the farmers dead cattle. She could feel the wind from its wings as it flew over her. She opened her eyes. How long was she in this place? She was in a hospital, hooked up to machinery. Yet, the lights were off, as was the power. She was in darkness, hooked up to a machine meant to keep her alive, yet a machine that no longer functioned. She remembered then hearing an explosion, the wailing of sirens, and people screaming in terror. Yet, she felt all alone as she opened her eyes. Suddenly, the most foul, sickening odor she had ever experienced assailed and overwhelmed her. She looked all around her.

As she did so, she saw the bird. She saw Marlowe Krovell.

Marlowe was down on his knees, his head craned upwards, as the black vulture, perched on Marlowe’s shoulders, reached toward his waiting, open mouth. The bird then regurgitated what looked to be blood and pre-digested matter inside Marlowe’s mouth. It seemed to go on forever. Marlowe hungrily swallowed the nourishment provided from the creature, which then turned and, with an unholy cry, quickly flew away.

Marlowe Krovell stood and turned toward the woman. She was alive. He stared at her, unsure of what to do, as a remnant of the vile concoction he had just swallowed gathered around his lips. Grace closed her eyes. She just wanted to sleep.

Curses-Memed Again!

This is a meme from Tom over at Tao Of Masonry, but it’s one that I have no problem taking time to do, because it actually gives me an excuse to engage in a little shameless self-promotion. I am supposed to list my five favorite posts. That will actually be fairly easy to do. I will start from number five and work my way up to number one.

The Last Days of Sodom And Gomorrah is actually a two parter, so I include it’s companion piece along with it as two posts in one. It’s my blog, so yes I can do that, to hell with the rules. I will put it (them) at number 5.

Me And Debra LaFave comes in at number 4.

Too Much Of A Good Thing is next on the ascending list, which I finally got around for editing a while back. I was in a big hurry when I wrote and posted that quite a while ago, but it is still one of my all-time favorites. Here it is at number 3.

A Teenage Sexual Fantasy has to be up there in the top five, and I put it at number 2.

Finally, my all time favorite post, of all time, and one which I doubt I will ever surpass, coming in waaaaaay ahead of the rest of the pack at Numero Uno is:

MASCOT MADNESS

I deserve an award for that one. It’s funny, and to many it will be infuriating. What the hell more could you ask for? Read it. Memorize it. Disseminate it to all your family and friends. Meditate on it. Make burnt offerings unto it.

Just read the damned thing.

Oh, and consider yourself tagged.