I was not alone and wondered if I should turn and leave or try knocking on the dark green door. Indecision is like staring at the barrel of a laser pointed to your head with the red kill light blinking. Slowly I took several steps and stopped at the two stairs leading up to the tiny porch. The white chair looked decrepit from where I stopped to examine the cabin but now I saw a newly purchased piece of furniture. I glanced down and saw the porch floor was clean level and raised a foot to climb up. I stopped before contacting the first step when the ornate glass doorknob turned.

Before realizing it I had hastily backed up fifty feet ready to turn and flee. I had no weapons and didn’t want a physical confrontation.

The door opened slowly without making a sound. I felt my jaw drop as the opening door revealed a woman dressed in white gowns. Her feet were bare. Her raven black hair with threads of gold that sparkled enticingly hung in a way that made me think it was braided loosely so it cupped her face.

When our eyes met, I stopped breathing. Hers were silver so intense I knew looking away would require more effort than I had left inside me. She stood about five-five tilted her head questioningly but said nothing.

Then she lifted her hands, which let me see she was holding a white owl that stood two feet tall. How I missed I didn’t know.

The owl’s eyes were gold, then turned scarlet as it swiveled its head to examine me. After a few long seconds it turned its head to look up at her. As it did its eyes glided then became silver like hers.

Shaking my head broke the spell I felt I was under and gave me a chance to draw a long breath and finally speak. “I was walking through the forest hoping to reach the ocean within a week or so. I didn’t expect to find anyone out here. The pandemic has…” I stopped when she moved as if her action was the sound of a voice interrupting me.

She bent enough so the owl could move from her arms to the white porch chair. Then she straightened and said with a voice like silk and satin. “You must come in for tea.” She sounded like she knew me. “I am aware of the pandemic and assure you it will not ever reach here.”

She turned and entered the cabin without looking back to see if I’d followed. So I did.

Passing the owl, I slowed and glanced down carefully to see if it watched me. Its eyes were closed as if I now bored the glorious creature and it slept soundlessly after accepting my presence. I suspected it would awaken and show its anger otherwise.

The door closed behind me, with a nearly inaudible click despite my not touching it. The pressure inside the cabin seemed different than outside. I had the urge to clear my ears like I would after reaching a higher altitude.

I located the woman after walking through a small sitting room furnished sparsely with a red and green upholstered loveseat and matching armchair. A plain oak wood coffee table stood in the middle.

The floor was bare wide wood, planks some as wide as sixteen inches.

She was pouring tea from an ancient, intricately engraved silver and gold teapot into matching cups. The steam smelled seductive with invitation.

I sat on a white chair that matched the one on the front porch and two others around a circular white table with a carved center leg with four extended legs that ended that in lions’ claws. A small white porcelain sink, half-refrigerator and two-burner stove completed the area we were in.

I watched her take a small sip of streaming tea, winced internally, but she didn’t seem to react to the heat. As she drank her eyes closed her lips tilting into a small smile of pleasure.

She placed her cup on a matching saucer and waved her hand at my cup. “Please drink.”

As the sun rose, I heard an upsurge of wildlife. Songbirds’ crescendo a breeze rustling the leaves, pine needle overhead, and a light drizzle to trigger activity. Once on the ground, I shook out the knots that kept the hammock in place and quickly packed everything. The rain grew with intention, and I sought shelter.

There was nothing nearby so I continued to walk eastward knowing there would be abandoned towns not far away. Most small towns and villages now stood empty after the pandemic’s slithering tentacles grew quickly in number fed by smothering blood clots of ignorance and hate and then finally rotting death.

Steadily, the trees seemed closer together. It smelled primeval, damp earth wet pine heavy green moss first cluttering the animal trail I chose and then clinging with a destiny of domination up tree trunks.

The air was heavy wet as was the ground layered with decades of rotting pine straw, leaves, bark, and tree limbs. Ah but the odors felt seductive, charming my concerns until I worked my way up a hill where no hill belonged.

The forest seemed to spread arms of invitation allowing me to see and then enter a small clearing. Not much more then a hundred fifty feet wide, but certainly intentional. I knew of its intention due to the small cabin on a foundation of fieldstones that sat in the middle. The structure had the same green moss covering the west sides and roof, but somehow seemed lived-in despite its state of disrepair. The hand hewn lap siding and shake shingles looked ancient but still solid.

At the front stood a porch about as wide as three doors, two steps up off flat stones set in the forest floor. The porch roof was adorned with a string of eight colored flags, solid colors blue white red dark blue white dark blue white and red. The porch roof was held erect by a pair of tree trunks with the branches cut off leaving stubs behind. There was a green front door stained by time’s encouragement and a white kitchen chair with an arched back. To the right of the porch the cabin angled back forty-five degrees or something close to that with what appeared to be a room extending off that side. To the left was a lean-to. I saw a second story window leading me to think there was a loft as the cabin was quite compact. A galvanized metal smoke stack rose from the rear of the cabin. It had a cross piece at the top to keep sparks and ashes from filtering into the surrounding woods.

I stood fifty feet away and was about to walk around the oddly out of place structure but stopped as if I’d bumped into an invisible wall. A thin light grey tendril of smoke twisted like distorted serendipity into the damp heavy air.

 

Three days, or nights later, 3am. First I twisted and broke open a disposable razor and sliced open the flesh above the identification chip injected under my flesh below the left elbow. Once it was removed, I was just Stanton Wilson a guy six foot two weighing 183 with dark brown hair and light green eyes. The digital version of me was gone. I wondered if I would eventually miss it.

I drove my electro towards the only opened road. By the time I was within a half mile of where it exited the county, I saw the blockade at the approach to the Pangbourne Bridge. White red and blue lights strobing as if they alone could create a barrier. Engaging all wheel drive and inflating the tires for off-road I turned onto a narrow dirt pathway not used in decades. I knew since I’d driven it to escape before. But this time I wasn’t planning a return. A few dozen miles into the forest untouched by logging in almost a century, I discovered that the last major storm downed trees totally blocking the dirt roadway.

I shut down the electro and gathered my supplies. By the time I finished a light rain fell. I shrugged into all weather gear and disabled my vehicle. It would not run or power up without the chips and fuses I removed and sealed in a waterproof pocket in my backpack.

To be safe I left the dirt road, and headed in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. I was at least a week’s walk from the shoreline, but my time was now mine again. After several hours as night slipped dark fingers around me, I strung a hammock twelve feet above the ground between the trunks of long leaf pines. With a climbing rope, I carefully rolled on the hammock hanging my pack above my feet. The rain stopped and the moon poked between overhead tree branches. It looked like a silver white lopsided grin, that seemed more threat than invitation.

For the first time since the pandemic dragged its blood and flesh dried claws throughout the land, I felt safely protected by obscurity. Sleep was a welcome companion and I wrapped my soul around its stillness and slept until dawn.

Then I recalled a lesson from my grandmother. She raised me after my parents ODed in a local park.

She said: Honestly, you hear the songs of spring for about three months of the year. Then it becomes memory and like all memories time distorts it twisting it into something it never was. And we…we try to reconstruct those memories, but this only makes them less than they were before. We must cherish the moment when the memory is created knowing that’s all we’ll ever truly have. Before and beyond it’s like wavering red light boldly slicing up the ocean’s horizon as the sun rises and then sets.

Memories, I knew was now humanity’s best possible future.

That’s why we shoot pictures and make recordings toss selfies all over social media. We’re afraid of losing yesterdays, the fragile memories of moments, a gentle touch, a parting hug, a smile filled with meaning of love quavering at the revelation of its eventual loss.

This is a core segment of the human condition, which lets us know a few uncomfortable truths about ourselves, and others. We are basically afraid of much of life and that fear … it’s an irrefutable revelation if we let that slip.

And it slipped then for me. I walked to the river and tossed my comm-unit into its center where rapid currents would suck it into tomorrow without me, selfies and all.

Then finally after seven weeks of daily blood draws I knew I helped no one. This time being an immune meant only that I’d live until they finally drained my veins and arteries. They never revealed that truth. It revealed itself. Then I concluded that I’d die soon since they, the doctors and lab techs, decided I could let them do two draws a day.

And the reaction of people like you added to my decision. You see I made the mistake of telling trusted friends and family. “You’re an immune you must help us. You’re a coward if you leave. I don’t believe anything you say or do matters. You have to help us even if it means you die.” I decided then to never look back.

Instead of supporting the med-sci teams working to end the pandemic many chose to dance around a deranged corrupt leader like ancient pagans around a stone circle with a bonfire at its center flames reaching for heaven as an invitation to the gods of their creation longing to conjure good spirits and never understanding they chose demons instead. Demons devoted to their destruction.

The first two pargraphs

I left on the fifty-seventh day. After what I decided was one too many blood draws. At first I was glad to contribute, to keep those in my town from dying. That’s what the people in authority informed me that I had the power to do. A vial a day didn’t seem likely to cause me harm. After all I’m an immune. One of less then a hundred in the country.

After a month I began to feel weak. It’s nothing they told me. You’ll feel better after a good meal and a day or two of rest. Then while I rested in my tiny riverside house I witnessed the bodies offloaded from unmarked vans being carried to a large deep-sea fishing boat tied to a remote access dock. I stopped counting at sixty-three knowing there would be more to come.

In 2554, the World is Coming to its End, unless an impossible mission through 600 years of time travel succeeds.

Maternal instinct knows no boundaries, including the nano-neural-net intravenously installed in Dannia Weston’s mind to repress her identity, allowing her to perform a mission 300 years before her time.

Transported to the year 1954, Dannia becomes a woman with a mid-twentieth century persona, college educated with an aptitude for mechanical invention. Due to her work during the war, she is employed by the U.S. government on a secret project. But what no one knows—including Dannia or those who sent her back to tinker with the mechanical past to reduce future pollution—is what might happen should she become emotionally involved in 1954.

The 2254 science team programmed the nano-net to prevent the possibility of pregnancy, but each person reacts to strong emotional stimuli differently, and using birth control not available in 1954 is out of the question.

When Dannia falls in love with Peter Hersh and becomes pregnant, her hormones erode a small section of the nano-chained network that stabilizes her new identity, triggering a mild memory rebirth…and threatening her mission and the fate of the world.

Quiet footfalls traced a path up the steps from the downstairs sitting room, along the abbreviated hallway, and into the Vicar’s bedroom. The nearer to the bed they got, the more softly they fell.

Slowly becoming aware of the intruder, he struggled to gather the remnants of his composure. He felt movement on his bed. The vicar sat up violently, tears still wetting his face. He fumbled for the candle on the small table next to the bed. And although only seconds had passed, the vicar felt the dread of one expecting to meet death before the next breath. His hand quaked and he knocked the candle on the floor.

Fingers lightly brushed his arm. He heard himself shout, “No. Not yet.” He held his breath, now afraid exhaling would be the signal, and waited for the end.

The hand on his arm patted him too softly for it to belong to Blutleer. Willington still held his breath. Slowly, he started to black out.

Mary timidly called, “Peter?”

The vicar sucked air noisily. “My God, Mary, you frightened me beyond words.”

“I’m sorry if I did. I felt so alone and heard you moving about. I thought maybe we could talk, or something …”

The vicar kicked off the blanket and swung his legs over the side of the bed as he moved to get the candle from the floor. Before he finished he felt a tug on his nightshirt.

“Do we need candlelight?” Mary whispered. “Isn’t the moon’s light enough, Peter?”

The vicar turned to her, reached out, and touched her warmth. Mary had worn a light cotton nightgown. He watched her rise from the bed, walk to the window and he gasped as she opened the curtain. The moonlight silhouetted her, penetrated the gown, and illuminated a shadow within its embrace. As she walked to him, the gown both hid and revealed her youthful figure.

“Please, Mary. You don’t understand what you’re doing.” His words sounded feeble, and he knew it.

Mary did not immediately respond. She continued to walk to him and stopped when she stood very close, knees touching his knees. Her hands found the edge of her nightdress and very slowly began lifting.

“No,” The vicar said, weakly and too late. His eyes took control and coaxed the rest of him to follow their lead. He felt his heart rate increase. His breathing became shallow. No longer resisting, his hands reached for her as the nightgown cleared her shoulders. His fingers moved and traced the lines of her collarbones then down gently etching her sensitive flesh.

“I want to lay with you.” Mary’s words slid out to caress him. She lifted the cotton sheath over her head and reached to drop it on the mattress. The night air shimmered on her flesh with a gentleness that matched Willington’s touch.

His stare followed her hand as she let the gown fall on the bed and lifted both slender arms overhead. His eyes, fully accustomed to the darkness, examined all the details her movement brought to his attention, the swell of her round breasts, her hips, and the flatness of her stomach and the vee tuft of red hair between her thighs. His hands slid down from her breasts to her hips. Her skin was warm responsive silk.

He groaned as a light caught his eyes.

The gold medallion he had hung on the doorknob sparkled with illumination that seemed to spring from within the Willington coat of arms. He stared, transfixed, as the illumination concentrated into a thin beam, shot across the room, and bounced off the crucifix he had hung above the bed. The thin ray lit only the head of his Savior. Looking over his shoulder, the vicar ignored Mary.

The Messiah cried red tears.

“Oh, good Lord. No.” The vicar pushed Mary from him, his hands on her breasts. “I can’t do this now. God help me, I can’t.” He looked at her and back at the cross. The light had expanded and he saw the droplets run down the tiny body. They dripped from the crossed feet onto the headboard, and then splashed against his pillow.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I cannot just now. It’s too soon.” He lied and leaned sideways. He reached out, extended a forefinger, and prodded the red spot where his head had left an indentation. It felt wet.

Should it be? He wondered, as he sniffed his fingertip.

Mary still stood by the bed, youthful innocence lost in the moment that for him had passed, certain her beauty would be the victor in the end. She climbed onto the bed, ignored the look of surprise that crossed the vicar’s face and lay where he had a moment earlier. She lifted her knees and yelped when he yanked her into a sitting position, and forced her to cover herself with the nightgown he thrust at her.

The vicar examined her head. He had witnessed a drop land squarely in the middle of her forehead and splatter to dot the surrounding area. He touched her, heard her respond as if confused, and then he sighed loudly when his hand came away clean and dry.

“Blutleer! Damn, you to hell again! Leave me alone.” He jumped up, went to the medallion and tore it off the doorknob. It scorched his palm, and he dropped it.

Behind him he heard Mary pleading for him to stop, that she was afraid. He wanted to, but rage was all that remained inside and it controlled him.

Vicar Willington, for the first time in his life accepted anger and savored its strength. He didn’t know if God felt the need to punish him or if Blutleer had again managed to invoke spirits to haunt him. He knew he must find a way to stop the evil, whether that meant killing Blutleer or dying in the attempt. Either will provide relief.

 

Excerpt from “Templars Fire a Gothic Vampire Novel”, copyright 2015 all rights reserved

Noir writers wrote with a detachment most of the world felt during the years after World War 2 when a sullen hush washed across battered nations numbed by the task of recovery. Many of those writers were themselves combat veterans, and, I suspect, used writing as a means of recuperation from what we now understand as PTSD. It was as if they pictured their story plots, like men standing in the shadows of alleys while out on Main Street life progressed through the struggles writers used to convey their protagonist’s adventures but did not necessarily partake in.

 Although, I believe noir fiction began under the ink stained fingers of John Carroll Daley while he wrote for the Dime Detective Magazine in the 1930s. His protagonist Race Williams was as brutal as life in the Great Depression, used violence to uphold the law as he, Race Williams, interpreted it. Readers enthralled by Daley’s writing, let the story’s darkness shed the light of hope into lives lived, at the time, hand to mouth, which helped create the genre.

 Mickey Spillane, who I was fortunate to spend time with during the last years of his life, as a young boy read Daley’s stories and later used what he’d learned when he walked Mike Hammer off the pages of comic books and into one of the most successful mysteries ever written, I, The Jury.

 While I was a young boy, I read Mickey’s books, and the pacing, tension and almost machine gun style of writing turned the pages for me. I think that perhaps noir fiction is similar to modern Jazz as introduced in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a free form style of writing, which at times drags the reader along, coddles the senses with imagery, and at other times jerks him up in his chair as if daring him to relax and read. The characters are in your face people, with each other, and a film of tension dangles between them like spider web filament.

  * * *

When I created Marlowe Black and his illegitimate son Michael Hacker McKaybees, I wanted the tension between them to navigate plots. Marlowe Black whose pregnant fiancée was murdered in the early 1950s (the plot for Death Leaves a Shadow) refused to ever again consider marriage. He avoided intimate relationships, staying around until emotions grew thick, and he began glancing over his shoulder should his new love face the retribution his first one had due to the nature of his profession.

 When the woman who would become Hacker’s mother, announced her pregnancy in 1971, Marlowe immediately decided that he would not be seen with his child therefore giving the boy the opportunity to live. Marlowe knew he had dragged some of his enemies through the previous decades and felt their hypothetical breaths on the back of his neck.

 Now, in the twenty-first century, Marlowe, although a man nearing eighty, continues to work as a PI. He had kept an eye on his son, and provided for him and his mother. He felt pride as the boy grew into a man, but stayed away.

 Until the day when an old army buddy’s son, a New York City cop, was brutally murdered and he and Hacker were considered prime suspects. Then all the rules changed, and Marlowe Black knew it was time to educate his son about dealing with criminals the old way, using fists and guns. Shoot first and ask questions should one of the enemies, be lucky, or unlucky enough to remain standing. For more read “And Come Day’s End.”