Washington, DC, November 9th
“That much of a temperature variance, huh? Man, that’s off the charts, Elle, even in my experience,” Oliver Blood said as he paced his office. As promised, his best field agent had called him right after leaving the police station. While the news was welcome, it was far from happy. It seemed as if Dietrich was winding up and planning something big, as in Jonestown big. Blood got a queasy feeling down to his DNA that the German terrorist merely killed 53 people who were all probably in Who’s Who just as a trial run. If that was the case, where would he stop? “Alright, lemme know if you find anything else out. What?” He listened on his secure satellite phone. “Alright, bring your brother in, for whatever good it’ll do. Well, not here, obviously. A neutral spot but nothing too public. Alright, bye.”
Oliver Blood stopped pacing as soon as he terminated the connection and folded his long, lean frame into his leather swivel chair. What Agent Moss said about the autopsy photos and results almost made him glad it was she and not he who had to look at them. Some of them, according to her, died with their faces frozen in expressions of horror.
The agency knew through the Xe (formerly Blackwater) security detail that was also working surveillance that that Stasi prick was in Baghdad just a couple of weeks ago to help rid the Iraqi government, if it could be yet termed an actual government, of a certain belligerent entity named Mursi al Islamiyah. The word was that the now-infamous Charles Graner was the guy who offed him but since al Islamiyah was a proven terrorist and associate of Osama bin Laden, there was no dustup over the accidental death. In fact, when Graner was brought up on charges under the UCMJ, neither al Islamiyah’s name or death was even mentioned in the indictments. No doubt, the Bush administration that was so tough on terror was secretly worried about al Qaida backlash over Mursi’s death by misadventure.
Blood shuddered to think what Dietrich could do with a hundred or even just a few dozen entities as pissed off as al Islamiyah would’ve rightly been. In fact, the African American agency Director deeply suspected that he didn’t have to look any further than the aftermath of the Sheraton massacre. Yet if Dietrich came into possession of the technology that they were all but convinced he possessed, then how was he paying for it? As far as they understood it, such machinery that would have to be involved would take up enormous resources not to mention energy. And he wasn’t close to being convinced that whatever money Dietrich got from his industrial-scale “investigations” would provide him with enough to cover such overhead expenses.
Bottom line: Someone even above Dietrich was funding him but who? And to what end?
Braintree, MA, Nov. 9th
When Laura came back from where she went that morning and told me she’d set up a meeting with this Blood dude, I thought of all the times I’d been called to the principal’s office. No matter what I did, and I’d pulled some doozies in school, no trip to Mr. Croaker’s office compared to the dread I felt at that moment. She could tell I was getting freaked out and she said,
“Adam, Honey, it’s OK. Look, it’s true that almost no one gets to see my boss considering the line of work we’re in. I know it seems like something out of PG 13 rated action movie for an ordinary kid to meet an intelligence agency head but we all understand that you’re a civilian. No one’s going to be shining desk lamps in your face or anything.” She smiled to reassure me and it almost worked. Almost. If anything, I was far from ordinary. All the same, about as far out as I’m willing to go is wearing an Emo ‘do of two different colors. Other than that, I just wanted my life back, to be normal.
I was suspicious of my sister’s motives for wanting to hook me up with this dude. She kept saying that she wanted me to help them but that didn’t wash. How could I help them, an Emo boy on a skateboard who probably had hallucinations and one with a psychiatric history, at that? Helping them, my skinny Jewish ass. She was trying to protect me from something or someone that she wasn’t telling me about.
Laura’s kid brother always had a mobile, expressive face and it was obvious to her that he still didn’t trust her. That stung badly enough but what stung her even more was the fact that perhaps he shouldn’t. The nature of her business being what it is, she couldn’t tell even her own flesh and blood, at least not right away, about what the stakes could be. It was a given to her that her brother Adam was a sensitive, a bridge of flesh and bone that could make a vital connection between the worlds of the quick and the dead. And seeing, hearing and communicating with them en masse were perhaps not the extent of his undeveloped abilities. Just because their payroll was the smallest of all the government’s intelligence agencies didn’t mean they had the fewest troops.
During her training right out of college, Laura learned something fascinating: According to anthropologists and other scientists, it was estimated that something between 65 and 75 billion people had lived and died on the planet earth before the present population. Obviously, not all of them come back as paranormal entities otherwise supernatural sightings would be much more commonplace than they already are.
Yet it was estimated that at least several million of those 65-75 billion lost souls died yet were never truly laid to rest. Between war, famine, plague, pestilence and purges, the sheer number of human beings who had suddenly died before setting their house in order couldn’t even be imagined. Laura shuddered to think that most of not all of them, sensing Adam’s abilities when he was briefly dead, would come back to him appealing for resolution or salvation.
He was always a sensitive plant and she just knew deep in her bones that he wouldn’t be able to handle such a massive intrusion on his personal space. In fact, it was during such a time when Adam had his attempt two years ago. The sightings and encounters, albeit on a much smaller scale, were enough to drive him over the edge and one such noxious spirit, perhaps just for shits and giggles, told her brother he’d be better off if he opened a vein.
Laura wondered if such entities lived in one massive, common dimension or if they flitted back and forth randomly across others, including our own. Either way, one thing was for sure: Just as with the living, the dead, too, have their good and bad elements. And Laura’s agency had it on pretty good faith from which side Dietrich was recruiting. All that was required of him was to find the right one, the one that could rally, unite and organize an army unlike any ever seen before. And if Dietrich did that, then they, too, would need their own rally man.
Laura looked at her innocent kid brother as he struggled with a calculator while catching up on his math homework. She cupped his face with her hand and smiled sadly.
I so incredibly didn’t need this. Every time things start to get shitty at home, my folks briefly get all orthodox and Hasidic and bring the rabbi over. They brought him to the hospital when Clarissa and I were there a couple of years ago and it can’t be said that he did a damned bit of good. Apparently, it’s the same in a lot of households: Ordinarily secular families calling in the big guns when they run out of real answers. Catholics bring in priests who try to talk you into feeling guilty about something, Protestant ministers who try to talk you into voting Republican and neurotic rabbis who come to see if you’re properly neurotic, too. I liked Rabbi Green well enough on a personal basis but when he began talking about the Torah I’d start checking the insides of my eyelids for cracks.
“Honey, you’re going through a tough time with these things you’re imagining and Rabbi Green here…”
“I’m not imagining things! They’re there, Mom.”
“OK, whatever, Honey,” she said. I hated it when she patronized me. Every time she does that I feel like hopping on my skateboard and coasting all the way to Venice Beach. “Rabbi Green here just wants to talk to you and maybe help you through this.”
I looked at our family’s rabbi, who at least had the courtesy to wear his civilian clothes instead of going all Men in Black. As far as rabbis went, I guess he was pretty cool. He didn’t have the heavy beard that a lot of Hasidic rabbis do and was secular enough so that he could rap with people on an earthly level. Laura seemed amused by the whole thing as she leaned against the doorway. I wanted to make a face at her just for old time’s sake.
“OK, Rabbi, let’s go in the kitchen,” I said as I slouched down the hall.
“So, what you’re saying, Adam, is that you’re seeing dead people again.” He said it as a statement rather than a question. Using the phrase “seeing dead people” could’ve made it sound like he was ridiculing me but I could tell he wasn’t.
“Yeah, obviously. I can even see their old wounds. They tell me how they died. They tell me to contact their families. I’m not a Goddam… I’m not a medium. I really don’t need this.”
“Do you see any of them now?” He asked as if he was afraid to hear the answer. He should’ve been. We were fucking surrounded. I was learning to tune them out somewhat. It was their voices that distracted me more than anything. Like I told Clarissa on our last night together, I can’t not listen. But ignoring these poor people when they come to me asking for help makes me feel wicked guilty.
“Yeah,” I simply said, nodding my head. About 15 ghosts were standing behind Rabbi Green’s chair and a couple of them were really fucked up. I didn’t even want to know how many were behind me. The one word I hear more often than not is “Help.” Up to a point, I could appreciate their situation but their selfishness was really beginning to tick me off. I was ready to take back what I said about them bringing their manners with them from the grave ‘cuz it seems the first thing people forget after they die is how to wait in line. Then again, they may do that because they’re really not aware of each other’s presence. I don’t know enough about that shit. Maybe Laura and that Blood dude could educate me.
“It’s getting rather chilly in here, isn’t it?” It was getting so cold in the kitchen that the rabbi had to zip up his windbreaker. Another few degrees and we could’ve seen our breath.
“Yeah, that happens when they show up. It especially sucks during the winter.”
“Have they given you their names?”
“Yeah. Some of them knew you were coming over. Some of them are here to see you, not me.”
“They’re here to see me, you say?” he asked pointing to himself.
“Remember old man Friedman? The old dude who ran that second hand general store in downtown?” Rabbi Green nodded. “He’s got his hand on your left shoulder right now and he’s asking you…” I listened more closely since Friedman was talking in a whisper. “I can’t make out what he’s saying but he’s trying to make contact. Some are louder than others. Wait, I hear him now.” I paused to listen. “He said he always had the hots for your wife. That’s really the only reason he went to shul in the morning. He was trying to make atonements because he was guilty about wanting to bone your wife.”
Rabbi Green touched his left shoulder with his right hand and looked at it. He must’ve felt the cold spot that Mr. Friedman left behind. Actually, a lot of guys in the synagogue have the hots for Bertha Green, including my old man, mainly ‘cuz she had probably the biggest tits in Braintree. He was looking more and more freaked out by the second and I looked at him as if to say, “Welcome to my world, bitch.”
“Have they…? OK, Adam, listen closely and tell me the truth. Have they told you which one is… the true religion?” I looked at Rabbi Green for a long time before answering him.
“I don’t know what you’d call it, Rabbi, but let’s just say you all got it wrong.”
Rabbi Green never said another word to me and he beat it the hell out of there without even so much as a “Shalom.” And this time I don’t think it was because of Mom’s horrible gefilte fish.
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