Chapter Five
~
Nick stood at the lectern that substituted for a podium and addressed the few participants scattered on benches throughout the room. In the back of the room were those few people who had come in late, including one figure concealing his face under a large hat. Before he began his eulogy, Nick displayed the walking cane that he had ambled in with and mentioned that Doug had given it to him as a gift about two months before.
Doug’s body lay in the white coffin positioned on the left side of the room. The large-billed cap that he always wore covered his head – Nick had only glimpsed his bald head once when he had been adjusting his cap one afternoon in his backyard – and his arms were folded across his chest while his fingers held his Swiss Army knife. Next to the coffin was a screen showing projected slides of Doug as a much-younger man with red hair -- the evidence of his Scottish heritage. This was a red-haired man that Nick had never seen in person.
Caroline, his widow, had specifically requested that Nick, as a former professor of literary-mythology and cryptozoology at Marvin Green College in Atlanta before he resigned to become a self-employed traveling writing consultant, choose and read a poem in Doug’s honor. To this end, he read the William Ernest Henley poem “Invictus” because, as he explained after the poem, Doug was always his own man who believed that he could master his own fate. Nick did not mention that he was unlike a friend of his back in Illinois, Corey Braedon, who considered fate to be an excuse for occasional failures.
In addition, he read one fragment from the Robert Browning poem about a person reaching for the unobtainable.
In his speech, Nick referred to the brick and wood house as Doug and Caroline’s castle on the hill with their dogs on the roof and Doug’s carnival in the backyard. The carnival was Nick’s name for his collection of wooden sheds and shacks that he and a former African American student at Marvin Green College had constructed together. For three months in the fall of the preceding year, he had worked gratis for Doug, donating his time and his efforts to help with organizing his disorganized system of accumulating tools and scraps of wood. His main task was to paint, and this he did even while the former student took it upon himself to become Nick’s superior and issue commands and complaints.
“Doug,” he said, “was a raconteur who loved to expand a discussion or an anecdote into a story. One time, we were driving in his car when he pulled over to a house owned by our former Marvin Green College colleague Dr. Jane Sanders to tell how the architecture of the place was a bungalow style patterned after houses in India.”
Jane Sanders was among the mourners seated near the back. She smiled at Nick’s reference. She, as a professor of psychology, had worked at Marvin Green for over ten years before Nick was hired.
“I learned,” Nick continued, “never to ask Doug the time because I was afraid that he would tell me the history of watchmaking.”
Mild, polite chuckles.
No one, since Nick’s arrival for the service in the funeral home, had mentioned the way Doug had died. He understood why, of course, as it was an unpleasant subject since it dealt with his driving over a cliff and suffering a broken neck. This was not surprising considering the violent nature of the collision at the bottom of the ravine, except that his pale body was still propped up behind the steering wheel in manner that made him look stiff like a mannequin. This was something that Nick was still unable to accept as normal.
Caroline smiled during Nick’s oratory and told him, after the service, that he was spot-on with his choice of the Henley poem and the Browning reference. Three more persons spoke after Nick, two of Doug’s former African American students and a law professor who told an anecdote of his own. Neither Caroline nor the law professor mentioned the manner of Doug’s death.
Do not mention your suspicions, Nick, said the voice inside his head.
What? Nick thought.
Do not go into details that they do not need.
Who are you inside my head?
Even Earl did not mention the cause of Doug’s death as he drove Nick home after the service. “I guess you saw the man in black with the large hat.”
Nick nodded that it had not escaped his brother’s notice. “Yes. He spoke to me.”
“What? What the fuck ‘d you just say?”
“I picked up his thoughts. I know they were directed to me because he mentioned my name.”
“Telepathy?” Earl flicked the turning signal to announce their left turn. “Right. Did he mention his name?”
“Yes. At first, I thought it was Ingrid Gould or something.”
***
From:
Nicholas Sterns, PhD
Marvin Green College
Atlanta, Georgia
Member: Fortean Society
Writer/editor<nsterns@____________.com
To:
Corey Braedon, MFA
Humanities Division
McAbee University
McAbee, Illinois
<cbraedon@___________.org.com
~
“My friend Corey:
“I appreciate your email letting me know about the strange sightings in Warrick, the town where you and I grew up. I remember years ago people there talked about a large, flying creature to which they gave various labels. Maybe because of that you won’t immediately dismiss what I am about to tell you that can’t be explained outside of the paranormal or speculation in fringe physics.
“We’ve likewise had incredible developments take place down here in Atlanta, starting with the death of my former colleague at Marvin Green College. The startling thing about Howard’s death is that his face, when they discovered his body in his car at the bottom of a deep ravine, looked as if he had died of fright.
“You know I’m not just scholar turned schizophrenic, since you saw on the roof of your friend’s farmhouse something with red eyes like I thought I saw staring through the window while I was with my Japanese therapist, Misato. But what I saw was undoubtedly in my mind because I had been reading about them, but I believe that you really saw one – a moth-man.
“Say hello to your friend Cooter and stay in touch with me through the Internet or our phones. Keep me posted of any developments. If you have any suggestions regarding what I might do down here in the South, let me know before I fly up there.
“Nick”
***
“Sounds like it was a strange letter,” the chairperson of Corey’s department told him.
“Sort of,” he said in a low voice as he looked at her. With her office window behind her, Connie Morison was mainly a silhouette.
The story that Nicholas Sterns had told him in his email letter had sounded incredibly bizarre, and if anyone other than his learned friend had related it to him, he would have deleted it and tried to dismiss it. However, Nick – whose brilliant mind was possibly being eroded by the real or imagined demons with which he was struggling -- was not a crackpot, and Corey failed to consider himself to be able to label anyone else mentally unstable.
“But your friend in Atlanta is right,” Connie said. “It might be what you need: going up to visit your friend on his farm.”
Cooter Lewis had invited Corey to visit him and his father on their farm located south of the Warrick Bottoms. He had just starting teaching at a community college near Warrick in west-central Illinois. At the college, he had met Ellenor Mehrtens. After dating for not much longer than a semester, they talked about getting married and taking over the farm that her father cared little about because he was on the road as a county health inspector. Of course, her younger brother Gordon was still living on the farm, so he became Cooter’s brother-in-law.
As a teacher at McAbee University, Corey would have a long break between semesters. “I need to let Margaux Strickland know if I am going to go up to Warrick over the Christmas break. Because of the economy, the university wants us to take unpaid furloughs anyway to cut their costs. She needs to know so she can make plans to watch my apartment and feed my cat for me. Why am I still unsure if I should go? Since we must take unpaid furlough days anyway, I might as well visit Cooter as sit alone in McAbee .”
“I agree,” Dr. Morison said. “Picking squash on your colleague’s farm near here was therapeutic for you. Going to Warrick might be too. It sounds like it might be lovely, a town overlooking the Mississippi River.”
Corey nodded. However, it would be bleak wintertime in Warrick. Naked trees. Gray skies. Maybe even colder than McAbee.
***
I need something to drink.
Corey thought of the near-empty refrigerator and two liters of cranberry juice he had left on the top rack. He lifted out the jar and unscrewed the lid. He felt around until he found a small glass in the dark. Gus, his ginger tabby, was curled up on the throw pillow on the sofa, his favorite sleeping place when he was not next to Corey’s feet in the bed.
Oh, well. Maybe Connie is right.
Nick Sterns was still down in Atlanta, fending for himself since the HBC called Marvin Green had cut him free after losing its accreditation. At least, they had not objected, as had McAbee University who had sent him to Mindanao to teach as part of an overseas program, to his articles about unexplainable aerial phenomena.
“Boom!” Something sounded in the next apartment and shook the walls: heavy metal rock music. Then voices. Laughter. Gus, disturbed from his sleep, unfolded himself and stretched.
The party his neighbors were having was still going on. He didn’t know what time it was, but it felt like it was way past the witching hour.
Doesn’t matter. Can’t sleep anyway.
Corey dragged himself to the front room window and pulled aside the curtain. In the distance, beyond the antennas and rooftops of the town of McAbee, he could see the smokestack of McAbee University, a dark monolith standing erect amidst the deluge of wind-blown snow. Down below him stretched out the brick-inlaid courtyard and the parking area beyond it where he had parked the old car that he drove.
I’m sure not driving up to Warrick, if I go.
At 2:10 in the morning, the green numerals on his DVD player winked out. The storm had, he assumed, reached blizzard strength. He grinned to himself as the next-door partiers cheered and applauded. Someone made the sound of a wolf howling.
“Hey, Jane,” a girl yelled. “Where d’ you keep your candles?”
Corey awaited the host’s answer.
In the blackness with only Gus’ body rubbing against his ankles, he remembered the emergency number of the county mental health hotline. He could call them at any time and talk to a counselor. He had done it before when a panic attack, following his nightmares about the flying creature, had threatened to immobilize him. He had sat on the toilet, staring in horror at the bathroom floor.
That, he remembered, had been his night of hell on earth. Severe depression. Horrible, obsessive thoughts and self-disgust threatened to rip him asunder. He had not then had Gus, and having a cat, he told anyone who would listen, made a subtle difference.
At that time, he had blamed his colleague Nick Sterns for being down in Atlanta instead of here in the Midwest where they both had grown up. Nick would have accepted his call at any time of the night or morning. Nick was in therapy; he would understand. However, he was a cryptozoologist always running off somewhere in Atlanta to work with colleagues or even paranormal researchers. When that happened, he might as well reside at the edge of the universe.
Adrenaline shot through him as he thought of Lucy: artificial bravery on his part, perhaps. Or the belief that he cared little about what happened to him.
***
Nicholas Sterns’s recorded notes: Microcassette tape recorder:
“I have pushed back the seat and am reclining now. I’m next to the window where I can hear the sounds of the jet engines outside as we barrel north across the country toward the Midwest. No one is sitting in the seats next to me, so I think I can talk into this recorder without drawing much attention.
“My brother Earl drove me to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. I will fly to the St. Louis Lambert International Airport. From there, I’ll take the Metro link to downtown St. Louis where I’ll jump onto an Amtrak and take it all the way up into Illinois as far as Macomb.
“Maybe it is not surprising that I cannot stop looking for a flying creature the size of a Piper Club outside my window. Supposedly they can fly as fast as a speeding car – up to 100-miles-per hours — but I doubt that they can keep up with a jet. Maybe, however, it helps them that time is not linear, as Einstein said, that it winds around through the universe creating these vortices through both time and space. But can they create them or merely utilize them? I am guessing that they can only do the latter since, despite their abilities, they cannot play God. They are not immortal.
“I received an email message from Corey, using Cooter Lewis’s computer on his farm. I think I know what the birdmen are up to. They may not have the all-encompassing ability to play God, but they can manipulate what people see.
“Corey reported that a young man named Gordon Mehrtens who had been reported missing was found covered with mud and his eyes staring at nothing. He was taken to an institution across the river in Gate City, Iowa.
“Corey mentioned a woman he just met there in Warrick by the name of Selena Herrmann. She is an education psychologist who also teaches at the community college in the area. From what I’m told, she was the woman who found this Mehrtens youth wandering around in a daze on the Warrick Bottoms.
“Lina and I talked about it on the phone and discussed what we think the situation is. Lina knows about Place Memories, which is a theory in parapsychology to explain visions or apparitions or other phenomena. We wonder if trans-dimensional beings want to seal off Warrick.
“I’m not a parapsychologist myself, but I have, of course, delved into this area as part of my cryptozoological studies since leaving Marvin Green College in Atlanta. I learned how to read Viking Runes and Tarot cards, but I haven’t yet decided how much trust to put into them.
“The other passengers in this plane are wearing their headphones to watch the TVs on the backs of the seats in front of them, so they’re not paying attention to what I am recording. Some are looking up at the video map showing our progress north; others, like me, are looking out their windows.
“I am looking down at the fluffy blanket of clouds, trying to imagine the swirling of time. I can remember other flights when the plane I was on was scooting past what looked like a tunnel through the clouds. I can’t remember ever flying into one, however.
“I checked online catalogs while in Atlanta and decided to order an EMF and cold spot detector. I gave as my address Lina Wibosono’s address at McAbee. I told her about it, and she agreed to mail it to me in Warrick. From what I remember, there is a post office facility on the other side of the street from the closed movie theatre, next to an old hardware store.
“This will be the first time I will be back in Warrick in over a decade.”
He clicked off the micro-recorder and put it into his lap.
He looked out the window at the layer of clouds drifting beneath.
***