Surreal continuing story: walking through doors and passageways

NDP · December 12, 2003, 6:16am

“We understand you’re suspicious about the activities of the so-called J&J Pie Shop.”

“Yes,” I tell him. “We’re actually on the verge of getting a search warrant for the place.”

“Finally!” Zack Peters exclaims. “Let me tell you, I haven’t had a minute’s rest since that place opened up. There is definitely something weird going on there.”

“That’s true,” agrees Larry Gutierrez. “In fact, there are some things we want to warn you about before you do anything else.”

“By all means, tell us,” Alice says.

“Well,” Eccles begins, "you really should…

dougie_monty · December 12, 2003, 1:44pm

“…do some kind of background check on Janna Jamieson and some other women—and some men—who go up there.”
“Men?” I ask.

“Well,” says Eccles, “I don’t mean customers…”
Now Hermione and Winifred arrive. They are off duty but still in uniform. They sit nearby; Alice introduces them to the others.

Jason continues. “These are men who carry heavy packages in and out of Room 7.”
“Who are they?” asks Joan.

“There are two husky black guys,” answers Eccles, "James Smith and Kevin White. And there are two blond fellows, Ole Lindqvist and Boris Petrov. I see the four men now and then.”
“There’s a saving grace,” Zack adds. “They’re courteous at the bar and they know their limit—but I wouldn’t want to meet any of them in a dark alley!”

I see Hermione and Winifred taking notes.
“And there are women to watch out for,” adds Charlotte Alton, a pale woman who is nearly 70—and looks it.

“There’s Jill Kemp, who is 6’1” and looks like she could pull a plow.
“Hester Warren is barely five feet tall, but she sometimes carries brass knuckles or a blackjack—she accosted me in the upstairs hallway once and Mr. Short blocked her. She won’t cross Short. Nobody in the Grange Hall will.” (All the other Grange Hall people present nod in agreement.)

Suddenly I feel a shiver and get a sense of seeing something—three fleeting scenes that seem to be events in the immediate future. Nothing frightening; it appears to be just routine information.
Alice and a few others present react.

“Are you all right, ______?” Alice whispers to me.
I smile. “I’m OK,” I say. “I must have shivered from a temperature change.” Alice looks skeptical.

“Oh,” adds Charlotte. “And there’s Cheryl Stewart, who seems to know how to handle all kinds of guns. My husband and I are NRA members and we sometimes see her at the local rifle range.”
“Cheryl is an ex-cop,” says Winifred.

“Well,” comments Hermione, “It’s good you told us about that. We’ve been gathering information about the J&J operation and we’re about to go to the D. A.’s office to petition for a search warrant for Ms. Jamieson’s place. Would you Grange Hall people give Winifred and me statements?”
The seven businesspeople agree.

“We’ll also want to talk to Mr. Short later,” Hermione says to Winifred. They leave with the seven, and go to the conference room.
Joan now tells Alice and me, “Well, you two should be able to go out tomorrow morning to Mr. Brown’s lot to dig up that urn.”

“Excuse me, Joan,” says Alice. She turns to me.
“Let’s go up to the back row and talk.” She and I walk up that way, our arms around each other’s waists. We sit in the back row.

She looks me straight in the eye. “You just had a psychic vision, didn’t you?” She clasps my hand.
I smile. “Yes, I did. I guess I’ve become precognitive. I saw visions at the old Mell-O-Tone store, the Grange Hall, and the emergency ward at Kaiser Permanente.”

Alice now gives Joan a telepathic message.
Joan comes to sit with us. “Tell us what you saw.”

“I saw the Mell-O-Tone place unoccupied—odd even in the case of an abandoned store.” I remember, and so do Alice and Joan, about what we did when we found that the room Alice and I were sleeping in was bugged.
“I saw Willard Marsh fall down the stairwell in the Grange Hall.

“I saw two men on gurneys in the emergency ward, with Dr. Luglio.”
Joan reacts. We bid goodbye to the others at the Morpheus and get into my Lexus. Before we leave, I ask George Galloway, Daniel, and George Sharp to come along. They are puzzled but agree.

At the Mell-O-Tone store we see the door locked; the place is bare, as we see through the large picture window. I even see a cobweb across the door.
“From what I see here I’d guess that there hasn’t been anyone in here for three days.” George Galloway makes the same assessment.

Now we go to the Grange Hall. We meet Mr. Short, who says, “You’re too late—Willard Marsh was here and he fell down the stairs a few minutes ago. I’ve called 911.”
We look in the stairwell. The sixtyish Willard Marsh lies unconscious on the stairs, lying in such a way as to indicate he was walking downstairs. Nearby is a can of WD-40; a plastic jar rolls down and lands at our feet.

Daniel takes a sniff. “That’s slippery elm,” he says. The jar is out of our way and we don’t touch it. Alice takes pictures with her Minolta and calls Bob Long on her cell phone.
The paramedics arrive. They examine Marsh. As they put him on a litter, Daniel sniffs. “I smell WD-40 and slippery elm on his shoe soles,” he says.

Bob Long comes in. He takes a statement from Mr. Short, and then carefully examines the jar and the can of WD-40.
“Unless I find someone else’s fingerprints on the jar or the can, we may assume Marsh put this on his own shoes and deliberately fell down the stairs, knocking himself out,” Bob says. This baffles us. The paramedics take Marsh away; Bob uses tongs to pick up the can and the jar. “Save me your pictures, Alice,” he says as he leaves.

We go now to the emergency ward at Kaiser. We meet Dr. Ferruccio Luglio.
“They just brought two men here from the Wells Fargo Bank downtown,” he says. “There was an attempted bank robbery and the men were shot. Their names are Tyler Bullruss and Winston Coulter. They’re both in critical condition.”
Threshold operatives! Alice, Joan, and I all think to each other.

“Do they know who shot him?” George Sharp asks.
“Yes,” says Ferruccio. “A man named Ken Ellison.” We react.

“Where is he?” I ask.
Dr. Luglio answers grimly, “He was just taken to the morgue.”

NDP · December 13, 2003, 7:05am

“Was he also shot?” Sharp asks.

“Yes” Ferrucio answers. “I only have some of the details, but it seems Mr. Ellison was in some sort of ‘Mexican Standoff’ with Mr. Bullruss, Mr. Coulter, and an undercover cop. As you can probably guess, Mr. Ellison lost.”

“Somebody’s seen Tarantino movies too many times,” I comment to Alice.

“How about the cop?” Joan asks. “Is he okay?”

“He isn’t as badly hurt as the other guys,” Furrucio says. “I was just told he’s being brought here in a police car.”

As he says this, the ER’s sliding doors open and in walks…

dougie_monty · December 13, 2003, 1:15pm

…Parker. He asks Alice, Joan, and me, and the others, to go with him into the nearby cafeteria.
Just before we get up to go there, however, a police car pulls up near the emergency entrance. Two uniformed cops get out and help a third man, in a suit, out of the rear seat. He has a large, crude bandage around his left calf. The cops carry him, with his arms over their shoulders, into the ER, where attendants sit him in a wheelchair.

“That’s Lieutenant Clay!” Alice says.
“Yes,” says Parker. “He was at the bank. The police got a hot tip that someone was coming in to knock the bank over. They called the guards, and Don went in posing as a customer. He stood close enough to the three to hear them plotting the stick-up. He told me telepathically that he reached for his gun as soon as he saw Ellison apparently reaching for one.

“Then the confusion started. The three got really arrogant with each other and started squabbling. Bullruss and Coulter pulled guns and started arguing with each other and with Ellison, ignoring Don. A bank guard, with a gun, tiptoed up from behind and ordered them, in a booming voice, to drop their guns. Coulter turned to point his gun at the guard, but Ellison and Bullruss weren’t through arguing.

"Coulter fired first—he missed the guard by a few feet and put a hole in the back wall of the bank. Bullruss started to fire at Don. Ellison wasn’t through arguing and jostling, and with his gun he accidentally shot Bullruss in the groin. In sort of a chain reaction, Tyler then shot Don in the leg with a Saturday Night Special. Ellison fired again, shooting Coulter through the upper chest; the guard fired and shot Ellison in the heart—killing him instantly. Coulter aimed his gun at Don, who, despite his own injury, shot Coulter in the side.”

“Did anyone else participate in the robbery?” Daniel asks.
“We don’t know of anyone,” says Parker. “Don didn’t mention anyone.”

Alice, Parker, and I, and the others, go into the cafeteria for coffee. We mull over these events.
Now we get a pleasant surprise. An attendant wheels Don Clay, in hospital clothes and with a better bandage on his leg, over to us. Dr. Luglio follows.

We all get up. Parker speaks first. “How are you doing, Don?” he asks.
Don smiles. “Just fine, Mr. Parker,” he says. “I’ll be on my feet in a week or two; but I’m to have physical therapy. They got the bullet out right away.”

Dr. Luglio says, “Bullruss and Coulter are still in critical condition. They should be in the jail ward by now.”
“Was anyone else around the bank along with those three guys?” asks George Sharp.

“No,” says Don. “The officers who brought me in said the three guys parked a car behind the bank. According to DMV records, it’s owned by TH Enterprises.”
We all nod. “Once again,” says George Galloway, “Threshold knows how to pick ’em.”

“What about your physical therapy?” asks Alice.
Don says, “I found I can have any physician or therapist provide that. I think I’ll ask Dr. Clouse if she can provide therapy in Mr. Galloway’s gym.”

“It’s fully equipped,” assures Galloway. “You’re more than welcome.”
“I have to go on rounds now,” says Dr. Luglio. “The attendant will be back for you in a few minutes, Lieutenant. I’ll get back to you later.” We bid Ferruccio goodbye for now. He leaves with the orderly.

“I don’t have far to go to return to ER,” says Don with a smile.
Parker tells me, “Those were impressive visions you had, _______. They suggest to us that Threshold may be foundering. There’s nobody in their hideout at Mell-O-Tone; Willard Marsh seems to have gone bonkers; and the three ‘leaders’ got shot up in a bank. Matthew Red Wing apparently imbued you with an impressive ability.”

“Clouding minds ain’t half bad either,” I say. Alice, sitting next to me, clasps my hand snugly.
The orderly returns to wheel Don back to ER. We bid him goodbye; he’ll be at the Morpheus soon enough.

We all return to the theater ourselves. I hear bagpipes skirling.
“It looks like Lorna’s and Jock’s guests have arrived,” says Alice, though nobody unfamiliar is present, except for one man standing with Jock on stage playing bagpipes. Alice identifies him as Jock’s friend from the Outer Hebrides, Angus McPherson. They play traditional Scottish music.

Alice and I know that in the morning we’ll have to go out to Stan’s lot to dig up Madame Zoozoo’s urn. Jeanette, Johnny, Phil, and Jerry—still in my guise as I am in his—sit with us. We tell them about our travels, and my visions.

Jock and Angus finish; we applaud. They step down and greet us. The brawny, towheaded, bearded Angus shows us he too has a DXM ring. He says…

NDP · December 14, 2003, 7:42am

“I hear you’ve been doing good work for the DXM League.”

“I guess we have,” I admit. “If you don’t mind my saying, how long have you been a member?”

“Since I was 17,” Angus answers. "I have some long-standing family connections to the League. It seems the Outer Hebrides is rife with…

dougie_monty · December 14, 2003, 1:18pm

“…weird conspirators—they’re not all in the States. But I understand you’ve done plenty to deal with Victor Lemoyne, the minions of Henry Sikes-Potter, and the Threshold people.”
“I guess word gets around pretty fast,” I comment.

“Within the League it certainly does,” says Angus. “I guess you don’t get the newsletter here.”
“Newsletter?” I ask, puzzled.

Alice explains. “The newsletter was started only this year—and the technology hasn’t yet been installed to produce it and distribute it in our West Coast office at the Galaxy 100 Mall. But what with the Internet, e-mail, and faxes, they’ve recently begun preparing a West Coast edition.”
“I’d sure like to see it,” I comment. “I wonder how many issues we’ve missed.”

“Maybe two or three—they began issuing it in mid-May elsewhere. It comes out every other month,” says Alice.
Angus now smirks. “I heard you were Lorna’s cousin Daphne for a while, ________.”

The others smirk and giggle, including Alice.
“All right, already,” I say, slightly annoyed.

Now it’s time to change the subject. I ask, “Angus, have you dealt with ‘weird conspirators’ yourself as a DXM person?”
“Indeed I have,” he says. “Last April we flushed a bunch of punks out of a public school in Lewis. They were pushing drugs. Their ringleader was a weaselly little Cockney named Quincy Davies.”

This changes our mood real quick.
“Was it something I said?” asks Angus, seeing the discomfiture in our expressions.

“I think you just chased him across the pond,” I say. “We drove him out of the Morpheus ourselves not long ago.”

“Did your Quincy Davies consort with two women named DeMoss and Chester?” Angus asks.
“Why, yes,” says Alice. “And he faces deportation, although he has already amassed a considerable criminal record here.”

Angus nods, grimly.
“When I was in Lewis,” he says, “Davies had been to a doctor in Glasgow who said he had an incurable disease, last January—and Davies had no more than one year to live.”

This makes us all turn grim.
“He could have left a better legacy in one year than the one he has,” says Alice.

“Well, what are you doing now?” Angus asks.
We’re all seated. Buster approaches and looks up at Angus.

“Hello, Kitty,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Buster,” says the cat. He jumps onto Angus’ lap, and purrs.

“We have some talking beasties in Scotland’s League division. One is a fluffy black-and-white cat named Archie, who lives in the office and goes on espionage missions.”
“I’ve done some of that in my time,” comments Buster.

“To answer your question, Angus,” says Alice, “We’re about to locate a book of incantations…”
“Is that perhaps one used by Madame Zoozoo?” Angus asks.

I shake my head. “We’ll have to get that newsletter!”
Alice says, “I’ll ask Parker or Joan to get some facsimiles made up.”

I continue. “We’re going out to a lot a few miles from here, for the book, in the morning. Do you want to come along?”
“I’d like that,” says Angus. “Mrs. Sharp offered to put me up at their place, and I’ll be out to your lot bright and early tomorrow.”

Alice and I spend the next hour or so telling Angus and other guests who have come in, as much as we deem proper to tell, concerning the others at the Morpheus, our work elsewhere, and our personal lives. Among the guests are Jock’s parents, and Lorna’s; I recognize Mrs. McManus from the picture Lorna showed us.
“Well, the wedding will happen just after we finish our mission to dig up the book,” I say.

Angus and the kin of Lorna and Jock meet our whole group out in the conference room. Again, not all of these are DXM people—only a few newcomers besides Angus are—so Alice and I use discretion in what we say.
We now return to the Sharps’ place. Angus meets Fred and Lupe, along with Salbert, who has just finished some successful gold prospecting. He says he’ll tell us about his strike later.

Alice and I retire to Bedroom No. 35. As is our wont, we have another long conversation in bed, before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

In the morning, rested, Alice and I get up, shower and dress; we go down to breakfast. Lupe is serving Angus, Fred, Salbert, Jeanette, Stan and Louise—and Lorraine Adler, who shows us a copy of the Red Tide—the school newspaper—mentioning the disappearance of Dennis Montrose and Andrea Torrance. Angus says…

NDP · December 15, 2003, 7:42am

“I find it curious that the description of Andrea Torrance matches Alice to a tee. What are the odds of that?”

I can tell from Angus’ tone of voice that he’s aware that we and the DXM had something to do with the “disappearance” of the two students.

“Actually, I look like a lot of women,” Alice says. "In fact, I’ve had people come up to me and ask for my autograph because they’ve mistaken me for–

GRRURRRRWAAABT!

Before Alice can finish her sentence, we hear loud thunderous gurgles coming from outside. Having no idea of what the source of the noise is, we rush to the Sharp’s living room window and look out in stunned amazement to see…

dougie_monty · December 15, 2003, 1:37pm

…a huge purple blob, about ten feet high, wobbling in the driveway like a giant lump of raspberry Jello.
The sight stuns Eloise, Angus, and others, but Alice and I aren’t fazed. We step outside, to the dismay of the others, and approach the blob, which quivers as we step up within a few feet of it. It does not give off an odor.

From within the purple mass, Alice and I hear a voice say, ,Ah! Wie geht’s Ihnen?“
We nod. “I recognized you,” Alice and I say in unison. ,Und, bitte, sprech auf englisch.“

“Very well,” says the voice.
“What was that dreadful sound you made?” Alice asks.

“That was a sigh,” says the blob. “I have been looking for you both for months. I believe I met you literally on the highway when you were coming back across town from that silver dealer.”
“Loora’s place,” I comment to Alice.

“I want to be of help,” says the purple mass. “You may call me Masse or Die Masse—‘the mass’ or ‘the blob.’ I sense you have been combating evil forces around here and I can scare people for you, like the Blob did in that Steve McQueen movie. Watch this!”
Die Masse disappears and reappears all over the yard, saying, “Here I am!” “No, here!” “No, here!” “No, I’m over there!”

“We understand,” we say.
Die Masse at your service—*,zu ihren Dienst.“ *

“Your point is well taken, Masse,” says Alice. “You want to assist us by scaring bad guys away. Do you appear only as a shapeless mass?”
“No,” says Masse, “watch this!”

The raspberry-colored blob changes shape—becoming a twelve-foot tall human skeleton! :eek:
“Or this!” The blob changes shape, becoming a raspberry-colored statue of Saddam Hussein, lying on the side, as if toppled from a pedestal.

“That seems appropriate right now,” says Alice.
“Or this!” says the blob. Now it shapes itself like a forty-foot-tall purple gorilla.

“Grape-Ape!”™ it says.
“Better not stay that way,” I say. “You don’t want to infringe on someone’s copyright.”

“That’s true.” Die Masse now shapes itself into a solid retaining wall, up against the windowless part of the mansion’s front wall.
Now we hear a round of applause. We turn around and our entire group stands on the porch, applauding the permutations of Die Masse.

Fred steps forward. “I watched all of your transmutations, uh—‘Mass,’ and that’s impressive. We’ll want to discuss this with you later. Would you mind holding that ‘pose’ for us for a little while? We have other business to finish up inside the house, and we’ll be back outside to discuss this before we leave. We have work to do across town.”
“Sure,” says the purple wall. “I can hold any pose indefinitely. I’ll wait here for you.”

We bid Die Masse goodbye for right now, and go back to the kitchen.
“How about that!” I say. “A German-speaking blob wants to help us!”

“We do need all the assistance we can get,” says Alice, “and winsome ten-foot-tall blobs don’t show up every day.”
“I’ll want to discuss this with Parker or Breastly,” says Fred.

“Now,” says Angus, “Whom do you resemble, Alice?”
“Well,” she answers, “before I let my hair grow long, people used to associate me with Velma of the Scooby-Doo cartoons.” She scoffs. “I got compared with a cartoon character!”

“You resembled me, too,” says Louise Brown. Stan again wraps his brawny arms around his petite wife.
“Well, let’s get out to the lot,” says Stan. “That thing is forty feet down so we won’t use shovels—I asked Joe Bradley to meet us there with a digging machine I rented.”

Our group—Alice, Angus, Fred, Salbert, Jeanette, Lorraine Adler, and Buster—gets into Eloise’s big van. Before we leave the Sharps’ property, we tell the purple wall, “We’re going out to Siddely Street near Douglas Place.” Die Masse acknowledges and vanishes.
“What can that thing do for us out there?” Jeanette asks, with Buster sitting calmly on her lap.

“It can appear, one course at a time, as a retaining wall behind the digging site to block the view of nosy neighbors,” I say.
We get to the lot on Siddely. Joe Bradley has brought the digging machine out there. We sense the presence of Luigi Luglio, who signals to us that Madame Zoozoo’s urn is still down there, with the book of incantations within. Luigi will signal to Joe and Stan where to dig.

,Ich bin hier,“ says the disembodied voice of Die Masse, ready to become a wall.
As we watch Joe and Stan work, Alice, with Louise, Angus, Fred, Jeanette, Buster and me looking on, continues to tell Lorraine whom she seems to resemble.

NDP · December 16, 2003, 7:03am

“I got the whole ‘Velma’ of Scooby Doo thing when I entered Cambridge,” Alice explains. “I was only 15 at the time and had the bad judgment to frequently wear large orange sweaters and round glasses.”

“You went to Cambridge when you were only 15?” asks a mildly surprised Angus. “I was unaware of that.”

“Yes, but I don’t like to call too much attention to it,” Alice answers. "Anyway, after a year or so, I started letting my hair grow longer so the comparisons to Velma stopped. But, at that same time, the movie–

CLANK!

Joe and Stan have hit something. I automatically think it’s the urn but then I realize they probably haven’t gone down deep enough yet.

I fear they may have forgotten about something before digging. “Did you check this area for any water mains or gas lines?”

“We checked and doubled-checked for any type of utility line that might be running through here,” Joe answers. “That’s one of the first things we did.”

“You don’t think that’s the urn?” Louise asks.

“I don’t know,” Stan says as he carefully makes his way into the hole. “Let’s take a look.”

We all peer over the rim and watch Stan dig away the dirt from the place where the clanking noice came from. Soon, he reveals…

dougie_monty · December 16, 2003, 1:16pm

“This is some sort of box.”
Angus and I jump out of the van. We’re both wearing old clothes so we don’t mind getting dirty. And, for that matter, Alice, Jeanette, and Louise are also in old clothes—roomy sweatshirts and comfortable old jeans.

Jeanette opens her huge purse. “Here, ladies!” she says. She hands Alice and Louise large barrettes. The women thank her and tie their hair up—Louise’s hair is just barely long enough for this—and they and Jeanette, her own hair tied up, fasten scarves over their heads.
We gather around the hole. The digging machine has gouged out a round hole fifteen feet across, with steps added, yet—a testimony to Joe Bradley’s talent.

“Excuse me,” says Joe as he emerges from the digging machine and joins us at the rim of the hole. He leans over and looks down past Stan and the box. He uses his radar sense.
“Nothing else there but this box and the urn, which is forty feet down,” Joe says. Lorraine doesn’t know about Joe’s radar sense and puzzles over how he could tell that.

Now Alice, Louise, Jeanette, Joe Bradley, Angus and I help Stan lift the heavy box out onto the ground. We get a chill when we see what it is.
“This is a coffin!” says Stan. :eek:

I turn to the van. “Fred, hand me Alice’s Minolta,” I say. He does so, and, my hands clean, I snap several pictures of the coffin, which is apparently wood faced with a thin coating of steel.
Lorraine, apparently sensing another story, steps out of the van with her notebook. Fred takes out a cell phone and calls Bob Long.

The sergeant arrives a few minutes later, with Hermione, in a black-and-white unit. They step out of the car and start to write out a report.
“You dug that coffin out?” Sergeant Long asks.

“Yes, just a few minutes ago,” say Joe and Stan.
“Go ahead and open it,” says Bob.

Gingerly, Stan and Joe approach the coffin and try to pry the lid open. Bob approaches; Lorraine can’t see him use his psychokinetic stare on the box.
Meanwhile, I notice that Die Masse has fashioned itself into a retaining wall, looking like one made of concrete blocks colored reddish purple.

Bob, Stan, and Joe manage to pry the lid all the way open. “Ecchhh!” they say when they see what is inside.
And I see why. As I approach the coffin to take pictures, I wince myself.

“This body looks as if it was buried about 65 years ago,” says Bob. It’s badly decomposed—it’s a skeleton with huge pieces of putrefied, discolored flesh clinging to the bones.
“Look at this!” I say.

I photograph a large leather pouch, about the size of a wrapper for a loaf of sliced sandwich bread, that was put into the coffin along with the body, which is in a shroud which itself has decomposed badly. The pouch is held shut with leather drawstrings; I have no idea what is inside it.
Hermione takes a pair of tongs she keeps in the police unit. She catches the drawstrings on the tongs and carefully lifts the bag out of the coffin, and sets it on the ground nearby. I take more pictures of the pouch.

“Close the coffin,” says Bob. “We’re going to have to identify the body.”
Lorraine approaches. “Do you own this lot, Mr. Brown?”

“Yes, I do,” says Stan. “I bought it about two years ago from Victor Lemoyne.”
“Well," says Ms. Adler with a chuckle, “I don’t think he owned the lot when the body was buried. I’ll go to the county archives and do a historical title search.”

Hermione takes the pouch and gives it to Fred in the van.
“We’ll have the coroner’s office send a van out here for the body,” says Bob.

You’re doing it the hard way, says Luigi Luglio, telepathically; he is present though invisible. I think I may know who the body is—and I’m sure Red Nicholas does too, no matter when he was ensconced beneath the Morpheus. Alice and I acknowledge.

Stan and Joe now resume the digging. Sure enough, forty feet down, they literally hit pay dirt. Conveniently, the top of the urn has a ring built into it. Stan raises the digger and replaces the digging heads with a hook, so he and Joe can lift the urn out. With help from Bob, Stan slips the hook through the ring. He signals to Joe, who lifts the line. Stan leaps out of the hole. The line raises the stone urn out; it looks much like a pot-bellied stove. Joe lifts it out and onto the ground. I take more pictures. We all react to the sight of the urn; oohing and aahing.

Stan, Joe, and Bob open the lid—it has something of a screw top. There’s a musty smell inside. Stan removes a thick book with a leather cover. He hands it to Alice and me. Joe quickly fills in the hole. The coroner’s office sends a van; after talking to Bob and Hermione, the attendants lift the coffin, with the body inside, into the back of the van. They drive away.

Alice opens the book, which has the name “Zuzinda Rimpau” handwritten on the title page.
As I begin to ask Alice what movie she was referring to when the digger hit the coffin, we all look at the first pages of the printed text.

“Well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” I say. The others nod. “It looks like we’ll have to call Pete and Loora.”
The book is written in Dutch.

NDP · December 17, 2003, 6:46am

“I know some Dutch,” Alice states. “Granted, I’m not as fluent as Pete or Loora but I’ll be able to tell you what a few pages say before they arrive.”

“Well, give it a shot,” I say to her.

Alice reads the first page. But, as she does, I see her eyes widen with horror and the color drain from her complexion. A line from Procol Harum starts repeating in my head:

That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

“Good Lord,” she murmurs.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What does the book say?”

An ashen-faced Alice turns toward us and says…

dougie_monty · December 17, 2003, 1:33pm

“Madame Zoozoo must have been a practitioner of black magic,” Alice says. “Some of the incantations and descriptions on the first page appear to be calls to the Devil!”
This rattles all of us.

“Now I know why Red Nicholas is likely to know about that body,” I say. “He of the Wiccan rites.”
I look at the title page again. The very last line is the year the book was published—1885.

I sense the close presence of Luigi Luglio.
That was before my time, he thinks to Alice and me. But you should look to see if the rest of the book is in the same vein as Page One.

I hand the book back to Alice. She acts on Luigi’s hunch and turns to Page Two.
Alice reads several lines in the first paragraph. She catches her breath and, clasping my hand, loses her pallor.

“Freely translated,” she says, “the lines on Page Two, paragraph one, read, ‘This book is not for the timid reader, the dabbler, the casual student of magic. There are many types of incantations in this volume and the reader should be prepared to accept the most fantastic ideas and endeavors. The serious student will not be deterred by content that would frighten the dabbler away.
“‘Zuzinda Rimpau, August 1885, Oranjestad.’”

Alice skims through the book, looking at a random page here and there. She nods; apparently Luigi had the book pegged just right.
“Well, that statement on page 2 makes sense,” she says. “Madame Zoozoo did not want just anyone to find and read her book.”

I hold Alice close. She holds my free hand snugly.
Lorraine, curious about what we have found in the book, steps over, now that Stan and Joe have filled in the hole. She asks to see the book herself. Alice shows her the title page.

“Zuzinda Rimpau?” asks Ms. Adler. “I don’t know the name…oh, this book is written in another language.”
“Dutch,” says Alice. “The writer was in the city of Oranjestad in the Netherlands Antilles at the time she wrote it.”

“Oh, I see,” says Lorraine. “And you speak Dutch, Ms. Terwilliger?”
“Not very well,” Alice answers. “But I can translate Dutch to some extent.”

Well, it’s time to pack up. We step out of the way as Fred backs Eloise’s van up to the stone urn, whose capacity is about three times that of the average crock-pot. He opens the back doors to the van and Stan, Joe, Angus, and I lift it in. Alice takes a large baggie from her purse and puts the leather-bound volume into it, then puts the bag back into her purse. She also carries the leather bag I found in the coffin.

We get in the van, except for Stan and Joe; they back Stan’s old pickup onto the lot and trundle the digging machine onto the truck bed. They get into the pickup and drive off the lot. We wave to them as they drive off, heading back to the rental place.
“I’ll meet you at the Morpheus,” says Die Masse. “I’ll fashion myself into a purple car in your parking lot.”

“Use the one just to the north of the building, Masse,” I say. “That’s the private lot.” The purple “wall” vanishes.
We pile into the van and return to the Morpheus. We park in the private lot just as Die Masse appears, shaped like a raspberry-colored Deusenberg.

Lorraine stays with us; I thought she would cross the street and return to her office, but she seems ready to get the whole story on Madam Zoozoo’s book.
Inside, we go to the lounge and sit down, overwhelmed by our experience.

“What do we do with the stone urn?” I ask.
“Well,” says Fred, “It isn’t going anywhere. In a day or so, we can take it down to the Hellmouth to show to Red Nicholas.”

“I think we would to well to have Pete and Loora Oranjeboom translate the text of this book,” says Alice. “Go find them, Luv.” She kisses me.
I blush deeply; then I go looking for the senior Oranjebooms. In the conference room, I see little Maria playing “go fish” with Georgie Blonda. Cornelis and Hannah are in there with them.

“Maria,” I say, “are your parents around?”
“They’re in Mr. Sharps’ office, Mr. _______,” the little girl says.

I go there, and find Pete and Loora in the office with Betty Galloway and Eloise Sharp. I ask the Dutch couple to come with me into the lounge.
“We found the book of incantations,” I say, “and Ms. Rimpau wrote it in Dutch in Oranjestad. The first page was really upsetting to Alice when she tried to translate it.”

“I’ve seen books in the West Indies like that,” says Loora.
Now, in the lounge along with Pete, Loora, Betty, and Eloise, as well as our party from Stan’s lot, I ask Alice to show the Oranjebooms the book. She hands it to Loora, who reads the first page and reacts much as Alice did when she started to translate. Loora, too, settles down as she begins to read Page Two.

“Madame Zoozoo was wise to scare off the dabbler with that text on Page One,” Loora says. “For one thing…”

NoGoodNamesLeft · December 17, 2003, 1:45pm

Dear God, will this thread please die?!?

dougie_monty · December 17, 2003, 9:55pm

All in good time, NoName. :0
Meanwhile…

dougie_monty · December 17, 2003, 9:59pm

NDP · December 18, 2003, 7:12am

the contents of this book could be lethal to someone who only read parts of it and not the whole thing."

“In other words, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Alice says.

“Exactly,” agrees Loora. “Also, I notice there’s a curious footnote in here warning about unleashing of trolls.”

“Too late,” I mutter.

“What’s that?” Loora asks.

“Oh, nothing,” I reply. “Have you come across anything else that’s interesting?”

“Yes,” she answers. "On the third page…

dougie_monty · December 18, 2003, 2:04pm

“…there is a series of descriptions of incantations listed in five languages, in this order: Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.”
“The five European languages used by settlers in the New World,” I comment.

I notice something else and add, “Oh, here’s a footnote, in all five languages: ‘The reader of this page may, after reading the first two pages, use a phrase ad libitem, [at pleasure] for example, to exorcise trolls.’”
Pete says, “I guess that’s like saying, ‘Hey, you damn trolls, take a hike!’”

Up to the time Pete spoke that phrase, I had sensed a rising din in the distance, and I had seen tiny, strange shapeless blobs. But when Pete said “Take a hike!” the sound stopped, replaced by an agonized scream reminiscent of the one used by Margaret Hamilton, when Dorothy spilled water on her in * The Wizard of Oz.* And the shapes vanish.
Loora hears the scream too. She stands straight up.

“Pete,” she says, “I think you just exorcised some trolls yourself!”
“So I did,” he says. “This is powerful stuff!”

The mother of “Ggrvmp” obviously knew her stuff.
Pete and Loora continue reading silently. Although they don’t say anything, Alice and I are fascinated.

We look at the pages as the Dutch couple read. Although the book’s main text is in Dutch, there are footnotes and partial translations into the other four languages here and there.
Then, speaking in precise unison, Pete and Loora translate the last paragraph of Chapter One:

As noted hereinbefore, it is not wise to read or attempt to use part of this text and ignore the rest. The wise reader will need to remember this point when attempting to use the categorized list of incantations in Chapter Two.
“See then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise.” –Efeziërs 5:15.

“That’s Ephesians?” I ask.
“Right,” says Loora. She closes the book.

“We’re going to want to prepare a translation of this tome,” says Pete. “We’ll write down a full translation into English, by hand, and then key the text onto the computer so you can have it on a CD-RW.”
“Don’t forget to leave us a copy,” says Joan Breastly, who comes into the room in a silvery-gray jogging outfit. We greet her.

“I thought you should know,” she says, “that Ragnarok, Inc., has filed for bankruptcy. The liquidation has already begun, and pieces like Arenkay, which manufactured the ‘boom box’ Jane Bradley’s son has, have come under more localized, and less sinister, control.” She faces Alice. “Your uncle Philip Greenwood has recovered from his stroke, and his company now owns and manages Arenkay.”
As Joan said Mr. Greenwood had recovered, I clasped Alice’s hand snugly. When Joan finishes her statement I embrace Alice tenderly.

“I understand you have the stone urn the book was in,” Joan continues.
“Yes,” I answer. “We have no use for it so we’re planning to take it downstairs to give to Red Nicholas.”

“Please wait on that until Parker gets here—I’ll take it up with him.” We agree to abide by Joan’s request.
Now we all return to the seats. Rehearsals have continued; also, Lorna, Jock, Angus, the senior McManuses and the senior Dumfrieses, along with Lorna’s bridesmaids, sit near the front, discussing wedding plans.

“I hope this all doesn’t take much longer, Alice,” I say as we hear the Scots speak in nearly incomprehensible burrs. “I sense that some of the Teeming Millions are impatient.”

Now Tomasso Luglio and Katrina Oranjeboom come on stage. Katrina is maturing now, so much that her bust and hips put a strain on the blouse and skirt she wears. They perform “Anything You Can Do” from Annie Get Your Gun; director Stanhouse, with Iggy still pinned to his sleeve, watches attentively, flanked by Lorraine Adler, Sylvia Goldstein—and Mabel Fafoofnik and Geraldine Safer. The latter two women wear rather stereotyped “sexy German girl” outfits, emphasizing their bosoms.

Alice, Joan, Fred, and I sit in the back row. “Kwisp & Kwake” finish their song. We all applaud.
Now James Parker joins us. We tell him all that has happened; he knows about Ragnarok. “I understand you want to give that stone urn to Nicholas. Go ahead, but wait until I can come down there with you. Threshold is about to totter—but don’t let your guard down.”

“We won’t,” Alice and I say.
We go down to the front rows. The Cigar Band is about to set up; Jeanette wears a rather mannish outfit over her un-mannish figure—a patterned flannel shirt and stiff jeans. She beckons for me to be Jerry Britton again for this set. As I come up on stage, I hear Lorna ask Jock what decision he made concerning what outfit he will wear to the wedding.

dougie_monty · December 18, 2003, 2:04pm