It was the most fucked-up thing that ever happened to me, dude. I was in two places at once, like past and present. Yet I wasn’t anywhere. I could see everything that was going on in Virginia’s living room. Blood and my sister coming in from two directions, everyone yelling at eachother waving guns and asking about me and there I was, sitting on the floor yelling back, “You fucking idiots, here I am! Can’t you see or hear me?” I felt solid to myself but it was if I didn’t exist.
It was my greatest fear, being a ghost, not seen or heard, like I never existed. For years I always thought it was such an irrational reason for freaking out that I never told anyone else about it except for Clarissa and even then I waited until the night she died to tell her. Now I was realizing to my horror that maybe it wasn’t so irrational, after all.
Then almost like I had another head, this one tuned to the past, I was just getting out of Coffey’s car and Virginia ran up to another me and wrapped me up in a hug just like the day we met. Except nothing like it seemed real. Then back to the screaming, my sister putting Virginia in handcuffs, Blood doing the same thing to Coffey. Laura picked up my skateboard, took something out of one of my trucks and hugged it. Then everyone drove off and leaving the dogs alone outside. They were still whimpering and I wondered if even they could see and hear me or were scared shitless by that Nazi asshole that tried to snatch me.
I got off the floor and looked up to where he was and saw nothing but the bullet holes that Coffey put in the ceiling. Then he and Virginia were back. They were on the back deck while I or some other version of me was playing with the dogs. I walked to the back yard until I realized my feet weren’t touching the grass and that I was levitating. Being able to fly almost made up for my not being seen or heard.
I flew above my other self and tried to get my own attention. The dogs could see me or had seen me, whatever. Then Virginia was getting something, spinach maybe, out of the freezer and soon she started making the dinner I already ate while I set the table again. I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or time-traveling but I wanted to check something out. If I was just a spirit somehow and if this was where my body somehow had gone, I wondered what would happen if I tried to merge with myself. I concentrated while someone with an Australian or English accent was whispering to me, “You got the right idea, mate. No worries. Keep concentrating.”
(Sydney, Australia, May 2000)
Even after she got recruited by ADEPT shortly after killing a man, Mathilda Hogan never told them about her most potent, and dangerous, ability. In her out of body experiences, when she’d travel the world in her astral projected form, she wasn’t merely restricted to the present time frame. Somehow, she was able to channel that energy backwards so that she could go back to the past. It was almost like being a ghost and reliving a never-ending residual haunting except she’d discovered in the past year that she wasn’t confined to doing the same things infinitum ad nauseum. Then she realized as she developed this ability with manic singlemindedness that she could actually inhabit living hosts. In her astral form, she couldn’t interact with people in any way but if she took over a person’s mind and body, she was able to actually influence past events.
Like most ten year-olds who would discover this ability, she wasted her newly-found and rapidly developing powers by changing things that related solely to her. That math test she’d flunked last month was now, whether or not she earned it, an A+ when she inhabited Mrs. Macdonald’s corporeal being. Her cousin Bennie who’d once sat on her head last summer was forced to walk into a drainage ditch, spraining his arm. Thinking in such a small, solipsistic manner, she wasn’t in danger of influencing world events. No matter how much this butterfly flapped her wings, it wouldn’t result in a hurricane on the other side of the world.
Today it almost all changed and the implications scared the shit out of her.
Despite how rapidly her powers were developing, she still wasn’t close to using them maturely. What should have been a primary consideration was to her a secondary one, namely the security of her corporeal being during her OBE’s. Most ten year-olds take their safety for granted and naturally assume no one will do their bodies any harm. Yet that didn’t mean it wasn’t disturbed. While hop-scotching from one body to another in Sydney during her out of body experiences she’d never sensed anything wrong or untoward happening to her body. Mathilda’s assumption was that it had remained undisturbed, especially since she’d generally go into her trance in areas more secluded than her bedroom. Pop was gone but her Mum wouldn’t understand and would probably freak out if she walked in and found her only child in a catatonic state.
There was a favorite spot from which she loved to project, an abandoned building in the brush on the outskirts of Sydney. She wasn’t sure what it used to be but it didn’t matter. She was foolhardy and adventurous by nature and could never recall feeling fear or any real sense of trepidation that children typically fear when confronting the unknown. It was empty, it never seemed to be inhabited and that was good enough for her.
Slipping into a body was a sensuous feeling. There was never any sense of invasion, especially since her temporary possessions never seemed to result in any ill effects worse than profound confusion to her hosts. It was almost like putting on a really thick but warm coat. She could inhabit their minds and know their innermost thoughts and while she couldn’t understand some of the thoughts of the grownups in whose minds and bodies she’d inhabited these past few months, some of them did disturb her.
On this day, Mathilda had walked into this abandoned building made of cinderblocks, her rucksack of schoolbooks still on her back. She walked into her usual room, an abandoned office that had a desk and a beat-up black leather couch. She decided she’d like to see the famous opera house in Sydney that she’d seen countless times from a distance but had never actually seen up close. So Mathilda lowered her breathing, concentrated and began to lift from her body, free-floating toward the famous piece of architecture. It was weirdly beautiful, its clamshell-like structure reminding her of the shell of a Texas armadillo. Yet it was another thing entirely to be actually able to walk inside it like a normal human being. So she chose the body of a stout, middle-aged woman. As usual, her host shuddered as Mathilda began her benevolent possession and was completely unmindful of the dark man who’d just entered the cinderblock building and came upon her lifeless form.
All of Sydney had, of course, been on alert for what the press had dubbed The Bushman. He was a child predator of the worst sort in much the same manner as his American counterpart Edd Corn, the infamous child rapist-murderer who terrorized New England for years.
Unlike Corn, however, the half white/half aboriginal Bushman didn’t make any distinction between genders. Those 13 and under were fair game. And the ponytailed little girl sitting in a lotus position in his usual crime scene was the perfect age.
Oh, she was lovely and he guessed that if her eyes were open they’d be just as lovely, too, and he wondered what color they were. Amazingly, she hadn’t heard him enter the building even though the metal door creaked and his feet dryly shuffled on the sandy floor. He knelt before her, looking at her lithe, supple form, the skin on her perfect thighs a light caramel color. Her fine, glistening dark blonde hair was flawlessly pulled back in a sort of half ponytail, exposing and framing her gorgeous, oval face.
He snapped his fingers before her closed eyes and got no reaction. He had no idea why she was so insensible or what she was doing here but he wasn’t about to question the gods whether they were crazy. Instead, he’d gratefully accept this present from them and the Bushman got up and locked the door from inside.
The woman whose body she’d inhabited walked far more slowly than she would’ve liked. She wasn’t from Down Under at all but another American tourist there to see whatever few noteworthy sites Australia had to offer. She complained to her husband that her body didn’t feel right and admitted to feeling a sense of anxiety and urgency. That, of course, was Mathilda trying to get her to walk toward the famous building more quickly but it and the heat only seemed to tax the heavyset woman’s cardiovascular system. The girl shuddered with disgust as the woman began to sweat profusely. While occupying a host body, she could feel everything from the workings of the endocrine system to the cardiovascular to the neurological. She felt sexual desire for the first time while occupying adult bodies and she found she liked it if not necessarily the thoughts that came with it.
Mathilda realized she’d chosen too hastily and scouted about for a younger and more mobile body when she felt a tugging on her own. She couldn’t imagine why she was feeling that since she was not really here but back in the derelict building kilometers away. Then she had the sensation of being laid flat and pinned in place even though this host body and her astral self were perpendicular to the ground. What legs she would’ve had experienced a sense of being gently but forcibly spread. Then a sharp phantom pain between her thighs. What the bloody hell…?
She decided to abandon her sightseeing tour and abruptly left the corpulent woman’s body in favor of her own. She passed over the city of Sydney as quickly as the weird laws of paranormal physics allowed as she sped over the city, the brush, toward the building, through the building, down the hall. Mathilda saw a large man’s silhouette hunched over the couch and, beneath his naked body, her own, her flowered print dress lying in a crumpled heap on the floor next to the leather futon.
Imagine their mutual shock when Mathilda’s green/hazel eyes suddenly flew open like a doll’s and predator and prey looked at eachother.
Mathilda Hogan soon became a household name, albeit briefly, after her attacker was found dead. It was quickly established by Sydney police that her assailant and rapist was none other than The Bushman. His real name was Roland Davies and he’d been terrorizing parents across Australia for just over two years. The official body count of his exploits stood at 13 but Sydney police had every reason to fear it was actually much higher.
Of course, despite the fact that this little ten year-old girl was somehow able to do on her own what the police couldn’t, despite the relief that swept over the nation from Prime Minister Howard on down, some questions had to be answered. For starters, what was she doing in that building to begin with? She could have just said that Davies had abducted her on her way back from school but it wouldn’t have explained why she never took the bus that dropped her off a few doors from home. Mathilda wasn’t a liar by habit, anyway, and she frankly told the authorities at the hospital that she walked into the building.
It also didn’t explain how or why Davies would then suspend his rape of the girl to take out of its leather scabbard a buck knife with a blade ten inches long and two inches wide and violently jab it into his right eye or why Mathilda Hogan was also complaining of pain in her own undamaged right eye. She frankly told them how that had happened, too.
Also unexplained was why a certain Yank intelligence agency developed the liveliest interest in Mathilda. After speaking with her single mother, who was all too glad to pass off responsibility of her headstrong and adventurous daughter to people with the resources to give her structure and the education she needed, they’d secured unlimited guardianship of Mathilda. They brought her back to the States and, when she was old enough, even subsidized her pursuit of a four year degree at Georgetown University.
Mathilda always had the ability to go back to past events and she knew that she could change her personal history by simply avoiding that building or tracking down her rapist and killing him before he’d manage to lay a filthy hand on her body. But that would’ve meant never meeting Oliver Blood, ADEPT, powers developing to the point they had and never “meeting” Adam, that smoking hot, wickedly sexy boy.
If she’d changed all that, if she’d never caught the attention of Oliver Blood with her frank and open description of her psychic powers, she wouldn’t be who she was. And Mathilda Hogan liked very much who and what she was. Certainly, she would never be nearly as powerful as Adam Moss would one day be. Yet she was still perhaps the most dangerous of the adepts currently employed by the agency. However, sometimes, in her dorm room or at headquarters in unguarded moments, 19 year-old Mathilda Hogan wondered if her reluctance to go back and change history was just simply fear of seeing her dead assailant once again.
Hopefully, Adam would be braver than that since he’d absorbed her power to go back to the past and had suddenly demonstrated a latent ability of teleporting his body elsewhere.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Bone Bridge: Chapter 32
The dogs were no longer barking. It was like a mournful keening, as if someone very loved by them was suddenly taken away. They almost sounded like wolves calling out for a moon that no longer existed.
“OK, you know the drill,” Blood said to Elle, “I take the front and you take the back. We don’t know what this Coffey asshole’s state of mind will be when we go in. But we do this by the book. No matter who they got in there, we’re still professionals.”
“I gotcha,” Laura said, pulling her hair back in a hasty ponytail. She was filled with trepidation and Blood hadn’t seen that look since she was a rookie.
“Look, I know that’s your kid brother in there. That’s why I’m doubly countin’ on you staying frosty and doing the right thing, alright?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just worry about Coffey if he tries to keep me from my brother.”
“Yeah, that’s what I am worried about,” Blood said as they exited the Lincoln that was parked on the dirt road below the house.
They stiff-armed their guns pointing down then split up when Blood nodded. They tried to get backup from their agency but were told there was no one they could get in the area within the time Oliver wanted to infiltrate the house. The homing beacon had emitted a shrill, constant signal when they came upon it, meaning at least the kid’s skateboard was still on the premises. He just had to trust that Elle knew her brother as well as she claimed and that he’d never leave behind his skateboard.
Blood could hear shouting. He could hear Coffey yelling, “Where’d he go?!” and some woman yelling back “I don’t know!” He could also hear dogs, three or four maybe, barking and baying in the back yard and he hoped they were fenced in or tethered to something sturdy because they sounded fucking huge.
He kicked in the front door and trained his Browning 9 mm at Coffey who had his back to him and his own 9 mil pointed at the ceiling. A second later, Elle came in through the rear, her gun also aimed at Coffey’s head. Every room was dim and Blood instantly realized every light in the house was off, which was odd considering it was well into dusk and almost dark out.
“Drop it, Coffey! Federal agents.” Coffey released his grip on the gun and it swiveled upside down so the barrel faced the floor.
“Where’s my brother, you piece of shit?!” Elle hissed through her teeth as she took his gun, flung it across the room and pushed Coffey face-first on the couch in one smooth motion. “Answer me, Goddamn it, or so help me God…!”
“Elle, lemme handle this. You go secure the area.”
“Oh, fuck that keep-the-recruit-busy bullshit. The area is secure.”
“Moss, I said stand down.”
“Look, my brother doesn’t know where he is, either. The boy just… disappeared.”
“Bullshit, lady. People don’t just vanish into thin air. Now where did you put him, Ed? I’m not going to ask you again.”
“I told you, that prick came in, tried to snatch him, he dropped your brother after I pumped a few rounds into him and then he just… Poof.”
Elle looked up at the ceiling. Right where the top of the wall met the ceiling she could barely see in the gloom three bullet holes and she wondered why in hell Coffey would be firing 12 feet in the air if he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” Laura asked the buxom redhead.
“Virginia Hobbes. I’m the homeowner and Eddie is my brother. And he’s telling you the truth. Some flying asshole in a Nazi uniform suddenly appeared above our heads, your brother Adam was dangling five or six feet in the air then suddenly the place was full of ghosts.” Elle knowingly looked at Blood and he returned the look.
“What?” Ed asked his sister. “Full of ghosts? Right here?”
The lights suddenly came on when the solar panel batteries began expending their reserves and everyone looked up. The air vents of the centralized heating system also kicked in.
“Yes. I could only see the Nazi scumbag who tried to take Adam but I felt the presence of the others. They were protecting the boy.”
“So that’s why it was so fucking cold in here.” Coffey turned around on the sofa and sat normally. For a half minute there he was facing the back of the couch and it was obviously playing hell on his back. “Look, Laura, what we’re saying is true. That fascist fuck just popped in here, tried to snatch Adam then he just disappeared.”
“What about Jodl?” Blood asked, holstering his weapon. “Did they go at the same time or did Adam vanish first?”
“I… don’t know. I think they disappeared at the same time. I noticed Adam disappearing first because he was still on the ground. The other guy, the Nazi, was flailing around like he’d been attacked by a swarm of bees. Then I looked up and he was gone, too.”
Blood passed his large hand over his close-cropped, snow white hair and puffed out his lips in a deep sigh. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Coffey and Virginia.
“What do we do with them?” Elle asked her boss.
“They’ve seen too much. Cuff ‘em.”
“What? Bullshit, you fuckin’ dandelion.” But Elle still had her Glock 26 trained on him.
“Shut up. Adam wouldn’t be missing if it wasn’t for you, asshole.”
“Oh, you got a lotta nerve. The kid couldn’t even trust his own sister. I didn’t tell him to run off. He took off on his own.”
“And if you hadn’t been tailing us, you fucking asshole,” Elle said, taking a quick step toward him, “he wouldn’t have had anywhere to run. What the hell were you doing following my brother, let alone federal agents?”
“E-nough! Moss, chill. The. Fuck. Out. You sound like you’re arguing with your baby brother. I will handle this, capish? Now cuff the lady. I got Coffey. They’re comin’ with us.”
“With us to where?” Elle said as she broke out her set of cuffs.
“Back to headquarters.”
So I was finally getting a taste of what some of my suspects experienced when I'd put them in the back of a cruiser. It didn’t give me any more empathy over what brief misery we must’ve put them through when we racheted the cuffs too tight and shoved them in and making them tighten up some more. Those pricks I’d arrested as a patrol officer and a homicide detective deserved what they got. I didn’t.
I had a lot to think about as I spent a big part of the ride to the nearest airport in the back seat trying to reach the handcuff keys in my right front pocket. Since my wrists were cuffed behind my back, it was virtually impossible and I could only move my arms and shoulders so much to the right. So far I was barely able to get the tips of my right fingers into the opening of my side pocket.
What happened back at my sister’s place made a lot of sense and it helped answer some questions about the murder scene at the Ritz Carlton on Halloween night. The first thing that came to mind was the drop in temperature. It was colder and bitterer than my mother in law when I got plastered and threw up at our wedding reception. But after Adam fell, it was almost like a freezer and Virginia and I could see our own breath. That was pretty consistent with what I’d seen and felt in the aftermath of the Halloween massacre. I thought of the ice crystals on Mrs. Dumont’s face.
And even though I knew Adam’s dance card was for some reason filled by Beetlejuice and company, even I had a hard time believing his stories about that Nazi prick who’d offed the Christianson family until I saw him with my own eyes. The flashlight that I shined at him actually went through him even though he looked solid. But it was the look in Adam’s green eyes that terrified me. He may have been defiant up until the moment he disappeared at Virginia’s feet but the look on his face was absolutely identical to the one that Chaz had on his face just before Clossey…
In a way, I tried to empathize with Laura because if anything she was even more emotionally attached to the kid than I ever had a right to be. It wasn’t quite the same thing as what I went through but her brother disappeared under the most incredible of circumstances and she had no idea if she’d ever see him alive again. Right after she cuffed my sister and before Blood led us outside, I saw her pick up Adam’s skateboard off the living room floor. She cried and had hugged it against her chest exactly the way I did Chaz’s after he was taken from us.
I looked over at Virginia as I slowly twisted my shoulders to try to get my hands deeper into my pocket. She stiffly sat up straight, her eyes closed as if in concentration. Years of seeing Virge indulge in weirdness when we were growing up taught me to never interrupt her when she was doing that yoga shit. So I left her alone while I tried to get my handcuff keys and prayed that where ever he was, Adam was nowhere near that Nazi prick.
“OK, you know the drill,” Blood said to Elle, “I take the front and you take the back. We don’t know what this Coffey asshole’s state of mind will be when we go in. But we do this by the book. No matter who they got in there, we’re still professionals.”
“I gotcha,” Laura said, pulling her hair back in a hasty ponytail. She was filled with trepidation and Blood hadn’t seen that look since she was a rookie.
“Look, I know that’s your kid brother in there. That’s why I’m doubly countin’ on you staying frosty and doing the right thing, alright?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just worry about Coffey if he tries to keep me from my brother.”
“Yeah, that’s what I am worried about,” Blood said as they exited the Lincoln that was parked on the dirt road below the house.
They stiff-armed their guns pointing down then split up when Blood nodded. They tried to get backup from their agency but were told there was no one they could get in the area within the time Oliver wanted to infiltrate the house. The homing beacon had emitted a shrill, constant signal when they came upon it, meaning at least the kid’s skateboard was still on the premises. He just had to trust that Elle knew her brother as well as she claimed and that he’d never leave behind his skateboard.
Blood could hear shouting. He could hear Coffey yelling, “Where’d he go?!” and some woman yelling back “I don’t know!” He could also hear dogs, three or four maybe, barking and baying in the back yard and he hoped they were fenced in or tethered to something sturdy because they sounded fucking huge.
He kicked in the front door and trained his Browning 9 mm at Coffey who had his back to him and his own 9 mil pointed at the ceiling. A second later, Elle came in through the rear, her gun also aimed at Coffey’s head. Every room was dim and Blood instantly realized every light in the house was off, which was odd considering it was well into dusk and almost dark out.
“Drop it, Coffey! Federal agents.” Coffey released his grip on the gun and it swiveled upside down so the barrel faced the floor.
“Where’s my brother, you piece of shit?!” Elle hissed through her teeth as she took his gun, flung it across the room and pushed Coffey face-first on the couch in one smooth motion. “Answer me, Goddamn it, or so help me God…!”
“Elle, lemme handle this. You go secure the area.”
“Oh, fuck that keep-the-recruit-busy bullshit. The area is secure.”
“Moss, I said stand down.”
“Look, my brother doesn’t know where he is, either. The boy just… disappeared.”
“Bullshit, lady. People don’t just vanish into thin air. Now where did you put him, Ed? I’m not going to ask you again.”
“I told you, that prick came in, tried to snatch him, he dropped your brother after I pumped a few rounds into him and then he just… Poof.”
Elle looked up at the ceiling. Right where the top of the wall met the ceiling she could barely see in the gloom three bullet holes and she wondered why in hell Coffey would be firing 12 feet in the air if he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” Laura asked the buxom redhead.
“Virginia Hobbes. I’m the homeowner and Eddie is my brother. And he’s telling you the truth. Some flying asshole in a Nazi uniform suddenly appeared above our heads, your brother Adam was dangling five or six feet in the air then suddenly the place was full of ghosts.” Elle knowingly looked at Blood and he returned the look.
“What?” Ed asked his sister. “Full of ghosts? Right here?”
The lights suddenly came on when the solar panel batteries began expending their reserves and everyone looked up. The air vents of the centralized heating system also kicked in.
“Yes. I could only see the Nazi scumbag who tried to take Adam but I felt the presence of the others. They were protecting the boy.”
“So that’s why it was so fucking cold in here.” Coffey turned around on the sofa and sat normally. For a half minute there he was facing the back of the couch and it was obviously playing hell on his back. “Look, Laura, what we’re saying is true. That fascist fuck just popped in here, tried to snatch Adam then he just disappeared.”
“What about Jodl?” Blood asked, holstering his weapon. “Did they go at the same time or did Adam vanish first?”
“I… don’t know. I think they disappeared at the same time. I noticed Adam disappearing first because he was still on the ground. The other guy, the Nazi, was flailing around like he’d been attacked by a swarm of bees. Then I looked up and he was gone, too.”
Blood passed his large hand over his close-cropped, snow white hair and puffed out his lips in a deep sigh. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Coffey and Virginia.
“What do we do with them?” Elle asked her boss.
“They’ve seen too much. Cuff ‘em.”
“What? Bullshit, you fuckin’ dandelion.” But Elle still had her Glock 26 trained on him.
“Shut up. Adam wouldn’t be missing if it wasn’t for you, asshole.”
“Oh, you got a lotta nerve. The kid couldn’t even trust his own sister. I didn’t tell him to run off. He took off on his own.”
“And if you hadn’t been tailing us, you fucking asshole,” Elle said, taking a quick step toward him, “he wouldn’t have had anywhere to run. What the hell were you doing following my brother, let alone federal agents?”
“E-nough! Moss, chill. The. Fuck. Out. You sound like you’re arguing with your baby brother. I will handle this, capish? Now cuff the lady. I got Coffey. They’re comin’ with us.”
“With us to where?” Elle said as she broke out her set of cuffs.
“Back to headquarters.”
So I was finally getting a taste of what some of my suspects experienced when I'd put them in the back of a cruiser. It didn’t give me any more empathy over what brief misery we must’ve put them through when we racheted the cuffs too tight and shoved them in and making them tighten up some more. Those pricks I’d arrested as a patrol officer and a homicide detective deserved what they got. I didn’t.
I had a lot to think about as I spent a big part of the ride to the nearest airport in the back seat trying to reach the handcuff keys in my right front pocket. Since my wrists were cuffed behind my back, it was virtually impossible and I could only move my arms and shoulders so much to the right. So far I was barely able to get the tips of my right fingers into the opening of my side pocket.
What happened back at my sister’s place made a lot of sense and it helped answer some questions about the murder scene at the Ritz Carlton on Halloween night. The first thing that came to mind was the drop in temperature. It was colder and bitterer than my mother in law when I got plastered and threw up at our wedding reception. But after Adam fell, it was almost like a freezer and Virginia and I could see our own breath. That was pretty consistent with what I’d seen and felt in the aftermath of the Halloween massacre. I thought of the ice crystals on Mrs. Dumont’s face.
And even though I knew Adam’s dance card was for some reason filled by Beetlejuice and company, even I had a hard time believing his stories about that Nazi prick who’d offed the Christianson family until I saw him with my own eyes. The flashlight that I shined at him actually went through him even though he looked solid. But it was the look in Adam’s green eyes that terrified me. He may have been defiant up until the moment he disappeared at Virginia’s feet but the look on his face was absolutely identical to the one that Chaz had on his face just before Clossey…
In a way, I tried to empathize with Laura because if anything she was even more emotionally attached to the kid than I ever had a right to be. It wasn’t quite the same thing as what I went through but her brother disappeared under the most incredible of circumstances and she had no idea if she’d ever see him alive again. Right after she cuffed my sister and before Blood led us outside, I saw her pick up Adam’s skateboard off the living room floor. She cried and had hugged it against her chest exactly the way I did Chaz’s after he was taken from us.
I looked over at Virginia as I slowly twisted my shoulders to try to get my hands deeper into my pocket. She stiffly sat up straight, her eyes closed as if in concentration. Years of seeing Virge indulge in weirdness when we were growing up taught me to never interrupt her when she was doing that yoga shit. So I left her alone while I tried to get my handcuff keys and prayed that where ever he was, Adam was nowhere near that Nazi prick.
The Bone Bridge: Chapter 31
They were known as the rarest and most powerful of all adepts. They were more powerful, in fact, than any psychic, medium, ghost or spirit. They were gatekeepers and never more than one had ever existed at a time.
Neither the living nor the dead could ever divine why or how these keepers of the gate separating their worlds were chosen. Some said personal virtue, others said pure evil and still others opined that it was a random choice that was conferred on one like a supernatural lottery. Likewise, it was never ascertained by whom this honor was conferred or whether it was the random, chaotic process of a cosmic scheme of things or intelligent design.
Every generation or two had one for at least 10,000 years. Some were virtuous, some were evil while most were neither. A few were famous and most others obscure. They were male and female, young, old and in the middle, Caucasian, black, yellow and brown. But there was no one common denominator uniting them. Adam Moss was the strangest choice in centuries, thought Jodl as he was on his way to where the boy was.
The last gateman before Adam Moss died hours before his near-fatal car accident. There was also speculation that those who had died young, suddenly or violently had committed some taboo, had violated some cosmic order and that such a transgression necessitated an abrupt adjustment.
Only two things were agreed upon by all who knew of the gatekeeper: S/he was theoretically the most powerful human in at least two dimensions and that their ability to wield that power depended upon them remaining alive. And Dietrich, Jodl had long since reasoned, was a fool for wanting this Jew boy dead even before he’d become cognizant of the full scope of his powers.
For reasons that even Dietrich didn’t realize, the Moss boy, Jew or gentile, was worth infinitely more alive than dead. Fuck Dietrich and his mysterious employer and underwriter. As Jodl hurtled toward the Moss boy’s unique and potent energy signature, he knew precisely how best to use him.
I had to admit for an older lady, Ed’s big sister was starting to grow on me and, no, it wasn’t just because of her big hooters (although that was part of it). Sometimes I thought that she was coming on to me but maybe that’s because she’s warm and sexual toward all males. Or maybe it’s because I remind her of her dead nephew.
It’s also kind of cool that Coffey and I have something in common in that we both have big sisters who sometimes tweak us and treat us like we’re still little kids.
There was one time in Vienna when Coffey saw a hornet on his sister’s window. He scoped out the place looking for something to trap it in. Finally he just put his hand over the yellowjacket. The fucking thing must’ve been stinging the shit out of him. But he kept the insect in both his hands until he could shoulder open the door and set it free.
He looked at his hands, cursed under his breath and walked into the bathroom. I asked Virge,
“Why didn’t he just swat that hornet?”
“Because he killed enough as a Green Beret, Sweetie.”
“He was a Green Beret?”
“A long time ago. He does this now, freeing the lost and trapped, saving the hopeless, giving second chances, no matter what the cost to him. He began doing this when he first went into the police academy but especially after Chaz died.”
I looked outside and remembered it was a chilly November day and that in the act of freeing and helping it, he might’ve wound up killing the damned thing.
Ghosts don’t always subscribe to stereotypes. Sometimes they don’t oblige us and take the form of entities wearing sheets and dragging chains. Ghosts can also be memories and they can dog and haunt you just like the real thing, saying “Boo!” in an infinite variety of ways.
For over 15 years, Chaz, Bea and I had populated our neighborhood, our city, with ghosts of ourselves. Supermarkets, bike trails, ball fields, skateboard parks and board shops, restaurants. We’d saturated the place with memories, memories that now take on the guise of residual hauntings.
Residual hauntings and the events therein never change, the subjects unaware of the still-living. It’s terribly, cruelly unilateral as you can’t interact with them while they affect you in ways they can’t imagine or would care to. Each memory is a ghost of Bea, Chaz and me. Without knowing it, we’d created a city of ghosts in our images. Every place my boy had been to, everywhere he walked or skated on his board is both infinitely more precious and more painful. Even here at my sister’s house, I’m surrounded by ghosts and almost all of them look like my dead boy, the only child I’m ever going to have.
So is it any wonder why my heart went out to this poor kid whose life had also been co-opted by the dead?
In a way, it was almost like her former addiction to those webcam sites where models would do live sex shows for two or three bucks a minute. Even after she’d disconnect, she’d weaken, log on again and put another $30 on her maxed-out credit card. It was worse than heroin. Then she’d find her favorite model if he was logged on, send herself to where he was whether he was in Bogota, Colombia, St. Petersburg, Russia or Manila, Philippines and have her way with whatever lucky soul she’d inspire to a monstrous orgasm and ejaculation.
Mathilda Hogan found herself addicted to Adam Moss and his sexuality, his stunning good looks and sweetness of temperament. Oliver just told her to hightail it back to ADEPT headquarters, which was where she was now, not to continue her supernatural surveillance. But she found herself in a safe room at headquarters, wet-hacking herself back into Adam’s world and immediately felt cold, which was never a good sign.
“Is it getting cold in here or is it just me?” Virginia asked Adam. She reluctantly let go of his hands and gathered her knit sweater around herself.
“You’re right,” he said, looking outside. The sun hadn’t gone behind a cloud. It was chilly outside but since none of the windows were open, there was nothing that could account for the sudden drop in temperature. In seconds, it had gotten so cold in the living room, Adam and Virginia could see their breath. Then she finally said, “Someone’s here,” as she stood up and called for her brother.
I’ve heard my sister call out my name before in all kinds of moods. She’d call to me when she was pissed off, exasperated or when she’d try to charm me into doing something that neither of us wanted to do. But I’ve never heard Virginia summon me with dread and panic and her voice was laden with both. That’s why, even though my hands were still stinging from that damned yellowjacket, I already had my gun drawn when I left the bathroom and immediately noticed that the rest of the house was like a reefer and all the lights were off.
Outside, all four of Virginia’s dogs were howling like it was the end of the world.
Because of all the times I’ve been surrounded by ghosts, I can tell you from first-hand experience, dude, that when they come calling, a good sign of their presence is when the temperature drops and batteries drain. Back when I was a kid and I was studying the paranormal, I read somewhere that when ghosts manifest, they draw energy from the air and ghost hunters with fresh batteries would have them drained in seconds just before shit happened.
Virginia didn’t have a normal electrical hookup. She’d explained to me that her home was powered with solar panels and stored in batteries somewhere. That meant that whoever had arrived at her house had a shitload of energy to suck up. And just as Coffey came rushing out of the bathroom, the lights went out and we had no illumination but whatever little we were getting from the sunset.
“Virge, where’s your flashlight?” I called into the darkness, my eyes still adjusting. The lights were on in the bathroom but by the time I burst through the door they were all off. I or anyone else who knew that Virginia had solar panels to light and warm the house would’ve assumed that we’d gotten enough sunlight to power the whole place for days.
“The kitchen drawer. Don’t get the battery-powered one. Take the silver one that cranks.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” I heard. But it was Adam’s voice. Both of them knew something that I apparently didn’t. So I went rummaging through her drawer and finally found a silver thing that looked more like an electric shaver than a flashlight. I thumbed the rubber-coated on-off switch but nothing happened.
“How the hell do you turn this thing on?” I said asked as I rushed back into the living room. The crank was recessed and I had to pull it out and wind the thing up to power up the capacitor. It whined and whined like a remote control car until I could get the thing to light and when I shined it toward the couch, I wished I hadn’t. Adam was suspended about six feet in the air while Virginia was trying to pull him down by his ankles.
“Don’t just stand there, you dumb shit,” she yelled, “do something!”
Above her, above Adam was a guy in a Nazi uniform perfectly answering the kid’s description of the guy who murdered the Christiansons.
Mathilda had never seen this guy before. He was dressed in the uniform of a Nazi officer but looked almost real enough to pass for human. But this so-called human was levitating about seven or eight feet in the air and holding up Adam by his clothes while he struggled to free himself.
“Lemme go, you fuck!” the kid was saying.
Even in her astral projection, Mathilda could feel the cold and immediately sensed there wasn’t much energy in the air from which to draw, which further weakened her. At least while she was unsuccessfully guiding the kid and his handler to headquarters, she could draw energy from the cop’s constantly-charging 12 volt car battery. Traveling from place to place she could also draw from power lines and other EMF sources. But now there was virtually no electromagnetic field with which to energize herself and she immediately felt weaker. The only other alternative was to draw from the life force from the three living people in this house and after that accidental fatality in Sydney nine years ago, she vowed to never do that ever again. But what choice did she have?
Then she saw others, real spirits, flocking toward Adam, including the girl that she’d cruelly impersonated a couple of days ago. And that just further drained the EMF in the whole house.
The next thing I knew, I was hurtling back to the floor and that had something to do with that Nazi fuck named Yodel letting me go and Virginia tugging on my feet. I landed on top of her and we both wound up on the floor. I could still feel the ice cold sensation on my back from where he grabbed my clothes from behind. Coffey came running into the living room training Virginia’s little wind-up flashlight on him and fired three shots through him and into the wall where it met the ceiling. Yodel just smiled down at him as he produced some more scalpel things like the ones he used to practically decapitate the Christiansons.
The piece of shit stopped smiling when he found himself surrounded by the Christianson twins, Clarissa and a shitload of other ghosts that I never saw before, including some really hot chick with an Emo hairdo that looked at me with the same “I wanna fuck you” way “Clarissa” did on the road.
Neither the living nor the dead could ever divine why or how these keepers of the gate separating their worlds were chosen. Some said personal virtue, others said pure evil and still others opined that it was a random choice that was conferred on one like a supernatural lottery. Likewise, it was never ascertained by whom this honor was conferred or whether it was the random, chaotic process of a cosmic scheme of things or intelligent design.
Every generation or two had one for at least 10,000 years. Some were virtuous, some were evil while most were neither. A few were famous and most others obscure. They were male and female, young, old and in the middle, Caucasian, black, yellow and brown. But there was no one common denominator uniting them. Adam Moss was the strangest choice in centuries, thought Jodl as he was on his way to where the boy was.
The last gateman before Adam Moss died hours before his near-fatal car accident. There was also speculation that those who had died young, suddenly or violently had committed some taboo, had violated some cosmic order and that such a transgression necessitated an abrupt adjustment.
Only two things were agreed upon by all who knew of the gatekeeper: S/he was theoretically the most powerful human in at least two dimensions and that their ability to wield that power depended upon them remaining alive. And Dietrich, Jodl had long since reasoned, was a fool for wanting this Jew boy dead even before he’d become cognizant of the full scope of his powers.
For reasons that even Dietrich didn’t realize, the Moss boy, Jew or gentile, was worth infinitely more alive than dead. Fuck Dietrich and his mysterious employer and underwriter. As Jodl hurtled toward the Moss boy’s unique and potent energy signature, he knew precisely how best to use him.
I had to admit for an older lady, Ed’s big sister was starting to grow on me and, no, it wasn’t just because of her big hooters (although that was part of it). Sometimes I thought that she was coming on to me but maybe that’s because she’s warm and sexual toward all males. Or maybe it’s because I remind her of her dead nephew.
It’s also kind of cool that Coffey and I have something in common in that we both have big sisters who sometimes tweak us and treat us like we’re still little kids.
There was one time in Vienna when Coffey saw a hornet on his sister’s window. He scoped out the place looking for something to trap it in. Finally he just put his hand over the yellowjacket. The fucking thing must’ve been stinging the shit out of him. But he kept the insect in both his hands until he could shoulder open the door and set it free.
He looked at his hands, cursed under his breath and walked into the bathroom. I asked Virge,
“Why didn’t he just swat that hornet?”
“Because he killed enough as a Green Beret, Sweetie.”
“He was a Green Beret?”
“A long time ago. He does this now, freeing the lost and trapped, saving the hopeless, giving second chances, no matter what the cost to him. He began doing this when he first went into the police academy but especially after Chaz died.”
I looked outside and remembered it was a chilly November day and that in the act of freeing and helping it, he might’ve wound up killing the damned thing.
Ghosts don’t always subscribe to stereotypes. Sometimes they don’t oblige us and take the form of entities wearing sheets and dragging chains. Ghosts can also be memories and they can dog and haunt you just like the real thing, saying “Boo!” in an infinite variety of ways.
For over 15 years, Chaz, Bea and I had populated our neighborhood, our city, with ghosts of ourselves. Supermarkets, bike trails, ball fields, skateboard parks and board shops, restaurants. We’d saturated the place with memories, memories that now take on the guise of residual hauntings.
Residual hauntings and the events therein never change, the subjects unaware of the still-living. It’s terribly, cruelly unilateral as you can’t interact with them while they affect you in ways they can’t imagine or would care to. Each memory is a ghost of Bea, Chaz and me. Without knowing it, we’d created a city of ghosts in our images. Every place my boy had been to, everywhere he walked or skated on his board is both infinitely more precious and more painful. Even here at my sister’s house, I’m surrounded by ghosts and almost all of them look like my dead boy, the only child I’m ever going to have.
So is it any wonder why my heart went out to this poor kid whose life had also been co-opted by the dead?
In a way, it was almost like her former addiction to those webcam sites where models would do live sex shows for two or three bucks a minute. Even after she’d disconnect, she’d weaken, log on again and put another $30 on her maxed-out credit card. It was worse than heroin. Then she’d find her favorite model if he was logged on, send herself to where he was whether he was in Bogota, Colombia, St. Petersburg, Russia or Manila, Philippines and have her way with whatever lucky soul she’d inspire to a monstrous orgasm and ejaculation.
Mathilda Hogan found herself addicted to Adam Moss and his sexuality, his stunning good looks and sweetness of temperament. Oliver just told her to hightail it back to ADEPT headquarters, which was where she was now, not to continue her supernatural surveillance. But she found herself in a safe room at headquarters, wet-hacking herself back into Adam’s world and immediately felt cold, which was never a good sign.
“Is it getting cold in here or is it just me?” Virginia asked Adam. She reluctantly let go of his hands and gathered her knit sweater around herself.
“You’re right,” he said, looking outside. The sun hadn’t gone behind a cloud. It was chilly outside but since none of the windows were open, there was nothing that could account for the sudden drop in temperature. In seconds, it had gotten so cold in the living room, Adam and Virginia could see their breath. Then she finally said, “Someone’s here,” as she stood up and called for her brother.
I’ve heard my sister call out my name before in all kinds of moods. She’d call to me when she was pissed off, exasperated or when she’d try to charm me into doing something that neither of us wanted to do. But I’ve never heard Virginia summon me with dread and panic and her voice was laden with both. That’s why, even though my hands were still stinging from that damned yellowjacket, I already had my gun drawn when I left the bathroom and immediately noticed that the rest of the house was like a reefer and all the lights were off.
Outside, all four of Virginia’s dogs were howling like it was the end of the world.
Because of all the times I’ve been surrounded by ghosts, I can tell you from first-hand experience, dude, that when they come calling, a good sign of their presence is when the temperature drops and batteries drain. Back when I was a kid and I was studying the paranormal, I read somewhere that when ghosts manifest, they draw energy from the air and ghost hunters with fresh batteries would have them drained in seconds just before shit happened.
Virginia didn’t have a normal electrical hookup. She’d explained to me that her home was powered with solar panels and stored in batteries somewhere. That meant that whoever had arrived at her house had a shitload of energy to suck up. And just as Coffey came rushing out of the bathroom, the lights went out and we had no illumination but whatever little we were getting from the sunset.
“Virge, where’s your flashlight?” I called into the darkness, my eyes still adjusting. The lights were on in the bathroom but by the time I burst through the door they were all off. I or anyone else who knew that Virginia had solar panels to light and warm the house would’ve assumed that we’d gotten enough sunlight to power the whole place for days.
“The kitchen drawer. Don’t get the battery-powered one. Take the silver one that cranks.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” I heard. But it was Adam’s voice. Both of them knew something that I apparently didn’t. So I went rummaging through her drawer and finally found a silver thing that looked more like an electric shaver than a flashlight. I thumbed the rubber-coated on-off switch but nothing happened.
“How the hell do you turn this thing on?” I said asked as I rushed back into the living room. The crank was recessed and I had to pull it out and wind the thing up to power up the capacitor. It whined and whined like a remote control car until I could get the thing to light and when I shined it toward the couch, I wished I hadn’t. Adam was suspended about six feet in the air while Virginia was trying to pull him down by his ankles.
“Don’t just stand there, you dumb shit,” she yelled, “do something!”
Above her, above Adam was a guy in a Nazi uniform perfectly answering the kid’s description of the guy who murdered the Christiansons.
Mathilda had never seen this guy before. He was dressed in the uniform of a Nazi officer but looked almost real enough to pass for human. But this so-called human was levitating about seven or eight feet in the air and holding up Adam by his clothes while he struggled to free himself.
“Lemme go, you fuck!” the kid was saying.
Even in her astral projection, Mathilda could feel the cold and immediately sensed there wasn’t much energy in the air from which to draw, which further weakened her. At least while she was unsuccessfully guiding the kid and his handler to headquarters, she could draw energy from the cop’s constantly-charging 12 volt car battery. Traveling from place to place she could also draw from power lines and other EMF sources. But now there was virtually no electromagnetic field with which to energize herself and she immediately felt weaker. The only other alternative was to draw from the life force from the three living people in this house and after that accidental fatality in Sydney nine years ago, she vowed to never do that ever again. But what choice did she have?
Then she saw others, real spirits, flocking toward Adam, including the girl that she’d cruelly impersonated a couple of days ago. And that just further drained the EMF in the whole house.
The next thing I knew, I was hurtling back to the floor and that had something to do with that Nazi fuck named Yodel letting me go and Virginia tugging on my feet. I landed on top of her and we both wound up on the floor. I could still feel the ice cold sensation on my back from where he grabbed my clothes from behind. Coffey came running into the living room training Virginia’s little wind-up flashlight on him and fired three shots through him and into the wall where it met the ceiling. Yodel just smiled down at him as he produced some more scalpel things like the ones he used to practically decapitate the Christiansons.
The piece of shit stopped smiling when he found himself surrounded by the Christianson twins, Clarissa and a shitload of other ghosts that I never saw before, including some really hot chick with an Emo hairdo that looked at me with the same “I wanna fuck you” way “Clarissa” did on the road.
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