The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival (25 page)

“Wow! Good timing.” Matt said. The rain
drummed against the windows and wind whistled in the doors.

Telia walked over to the front door to get a
better view of the storm moving over the house. “Oh, hey, Matt, you
got a delivery--there’s a package on the front porch.” She brought
the box in the house. “It got a little damp. No big deal
though.”

She set the box on the kitchen table and
started to get ready to go to work at their antique store, “The Red
Barn”, for the afternoon. Telia managed the store while Matt spent
his time on the road, and spent lots of time engaged in his
research.

Matt checked the box. It had no return
address. “Aha.” he said. He’d been waiting for the package for a
while. He locked the box inside a desk drawer in his study.

He went into the bedroom where Telia was
getting dressed. “Hey Tee, I am going to try an experiment tonight…
I’ll head into Cleveland and stay there overnight. If you wanna go,
we can get a hotel room and leave Tracy with Mom and Dad.” He
kissed her on the neck and she looked at his reflection in the
mirror.

“Experiment…” skepticism pervaded her voice.
“What kind of experiment?”

“Oh, the usual hoodoo.” he waved it off. He
tried to keep her informed about his research, but he was so far
down the rabbit hole, now, that he gave up explaining the
details.

“Sure, sounds like fun.”

Telia and Matt left Tracy with his parents
and drove downtown. He rented a hotel room that overlooked the
baseball stadium. The game was set to start at about 7PM, and they
got there a couple hours early and had dinner on W6th street. They
made small talk about customers in the store, and made some vague
plans about another prospecting trip down south.

“So….” she said, “what’s this experiment
about?”

He put his food down. “I told you what
happened at the Serpent Mound… I want to try that again.”

“Bananas Foster?” She arched her eyebrow.

“Yeah. I know that was some pretty weak tea,
but I think I figured out a formula for doing it on a larger
scale.”

“Maybe this time it’ll be Cherries Jubilee?”
she laughed. Telia was aware of the Wells family business, but
hadn’t really been initiated into its deeper secrets. She
considered it to be a weird hobby of an eccentric family.

He laughed. “Maybe that’ll be the message
this time. Anyway, I want you to participate.”

“How?” she was surprised he asked her.

“Stay with me while I’m doing it. Also, I
want you to write a sentence on this paper--anything, something I
can’t just guess at. Put it in this envelope, and don’t show me.”
He handed her a piece of hotel stationery.

“You’re going to do a magic trick?” She was
smiling devilishly and started thinking of crazy things to
write.

“I’m going to go take a leak… Don’t write it
until I’m out of sight so I can’t cheat.”

“Alright.” she said in a sing-songy voice.
She waited for him to go into the bathroom, then wrote “
Our
waitress has nice big titties
.” She sealed up the envelope.

He returned a few minutes later. “You did it?
Something I couldn’t guess accidentally.”

“Oh, never in a million years.” She
laughed.

Matt meditated in the hotel room and cleared
his mind. He was very relaxed. He pulled a flask out of his
bag.

“You’re going to have a drink?” she asked.
“I’ll have one, too.”

“I’m not sure you want this.” He sniffed it
and frowned.

“What is it?”

“Peyote tea… that’s what came in the mail.
Well the extract anyway.”

“You’re gonna trip balls?” she asked. She was
incredulous. He never did drugs and neither did she.

“No… well, I don’t know. I’m just doing a low
dose. Anyway, the idea is not to hallucinate, this is really
protection
.”

“From evil spirits….” she chuckled.

“Tee, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen... Well,
I’m glad you haven’t.” He sniffed it again. “OK. Down the hatch!”
he swallowed. “Ugh. That’s gross.” he made grimacing faces.

“How long does it take?” she said.

“I can feel it already… OK. I’m going to
meditate again, sorry for being so boring, but if you can hang
around, I’d appreciate it.. I have no clue what this stuff will do
to me.”

“OK. But if you run naked down the hall, I’ll
probably just take a picture.”

He lounged back on the bed and started to
reach out with his mind. She curled up next to him and watched him
breathing, and in a few minutes she actually dozed off.

He had the same expanding, deepening feeling
he felt at the Serpent Mound, but he managed to remain relaxed and
focused inward. The stadium full of people were a sea of minds that
together provided a doorway to the other side. The inky black of
the back of his eyelids give way to shapes, indistinct gray
billowing shapes.

“Hello?” he sensed a voice.

“Uh, hello?” he thought. “Who is this? I’m
Matthew Wells.”

“I’m Paschal Beverly Randolph.”

“Wait, what?” Matt thought. He sensed
mirth.

“I assume you made it over based on my work.
When one of you crosses over it’s like a beacon. In this case, it’s
like a pinhole camera into the physical world.”

“Can you see me?” Matt thought.

“My perception of you is indistinct. I
perceive a purple fuzzy form. Are you taking my elixir?”

“Peyote actually.” Matt thought.

Matt felt a sense of mirth. “You will only
remember this like a dream.”

Matt thought, “Where are we?”

Matt perceived a feeling of loss and sadness,
“It’s no place. It’s no where. What year is it?”

Matt thought, “2010. It’s summer, July 2nd.
It rained this morning. I’m in Cleveland.”

He felt Randolph’s sadness mix with anger and
loss. “What I’d give to feel the rain on my skin again and smell
the breeze! With no heartbeat, no legs to swing, no days and
nights, and no music, time is indistinct.”

“Do you sense anything when I’m not
here?”

“Yes… This place is consciousness, not only
of people, but of animals, plants, the Earth itself, the planets,
and that deep sonorous hum you feel, that’s the Sun.”

“What can you tell me of the other entities
that are here?” Matt thought.

He felt a sense of fear and foreboding. “Do
not speak of them lest they come for you! There are some like me
who crossed over and retain some sense of humanity, however most
are twisted malignant things, and there are ancient ones, much
older than mankind, powerful ones who manipulate men, nations. They
are very dangerous. They’re toxic to a mind like yours.”

Matt thought, “I come here to learn, to
protect humanity from them.”

He perceived anger, “Fool! Go back. I’ve
given you warning.”

He felt Randolph depart. Matt searched for
Telia, but it was futile, like trying to find an outlet to plug in
a lamp in a dark room. Gauzy shifting shapes flowed past like tiki
torch smoke. He stopped wandering and tried to focus his
imagination on their time at the restaurant earlier in the day. He
perceived the heavy stationery paper but the effort to concentrate
pulled him back into normal consciousness and he lost the
connection. He opened his eyes.

“Shoot.” he muttered.

Telia stirred. “Hmm… Wha?”

“It’s only 9:30?” he said. “Very weird. It’s
exactly like a lucid dream. Absolutely no sense of time.”

“What happened?” She sat up.

“Well, I think it worked. Yeah, I think it
did. I met Paschal Randolph, well, I think. I couldn’t really
see
anything, just billowy shapes. He said I looked purple.
Unfortunately I don’t remember much. Really it’s exactly like a
dream.”

She perked up. “I had a dream, too. We were
at the restaurant. You went into the bathroom, and I heard you
talking. Someone said, ‘Fool! Go back’. Then you came back and
looked at the envelope.”

“Hmmm.” he grunted thoughtfully.

“What?” she was annoyed. He had a habit of
punctuating his inner thoughts with sounds. It was a habit that
drove her crazy. “Use your words, buddy.”

“Believe it or not, you picked up on my
conversation with Randolph. He said, ‘Fool! Go back. I’ve given you
warning!’”

“Oh come on! Bullshit.” she said. “Maybe you
spoke in your sleep and I heard it.”

“Yeah and then I tried to imagine I was
looking at what you wrote…”

“Pshaw.” she said. “Well what did it
say?”

“‘Cherries Jubilee’?” he laughed and rubbed
his face. “Oh, shit. Unfortunately, that’s when I snapped back.
It’s a really delicate balancing act, remaining in that state and
doing anything useful.” He pretended to be balanced on a high wire.
“But I did much better this time ‘round.”

She handed him the envelope. He opened it and
started laughing hysterically. “You’re right! I
never
would
have guessed you wrote that. But she did have some big
titties!”

Her eyes narrowed and she swung her leg over
him and wrapped her arms around his head. “You better only look at
these, mister!”

Robbie and David drove the kids to a dairy
farm in the country southeast of Nashville, while Johnny and Dana
stayed behind at Kenny’s
Star Chariots
.

Johnny and Dana monitored the fallout from
their Vampire raid in Nashville, and tried to map the Nashville
connections to Goldstein’s flesh trade network. The raid didn’t
make the news, and apparently wasn’t reported to the police. Any
trail to Goldstein’s people dried up and blew away. As the days
passed, they started helping out at
Star Chariots
. Johnny
helped Kenny in the shop, and Dana put the office into order and
worked the phones.

As the weeks went by in his new life, Johnny
began to realize how incredibly constrained and domesticated he’d
been before. He began to understand how Robbie’s network of friends
and family worked. It was a surprisingly large economy and culture
that paralleled the mainstream of the United States. It was a very
human
, non-system of barter, favors, and gifts that
functioned without finance and without a discernable organization.
Johnny began to realize he could employ his full set of talents,
his entire intellect, and his whole moral self as one of the
individuals who lived outside the walls of the Empire. Every
individual out there was a free agent.

In their down time, Kenny and Johnny worked
to bring the old Flxible Clipper tour bus back to life. It was
slowly turning into an improbable ground-based surveillance and
communication satellite.

When they finished work on the engine and
transmission, they decided to take it on a test drive around the
property. Kenny brought out a bottle of cheap sparkling wine.

“Yo Dana!” Johnny shouted inside the
shop.

She trotted over and said, “You called,
sir?”

Kenny pushed his ballcap back on his head.
“She needs a name,” he gestured at the bus.

Dana put a hand on the steel body. “She’s
alive. You brought her alive.”

Kenny said, “Just barely! Needs some new
paint, too. Make her shine!”

“I kinda like the whole rat rod thing.”
Johnny said.

Kenny grimaced, “Ohhh she needs to be all
dressed up to be a proper
southern
girl. Right now, she
barely fit for cookin’ meth!”

Dana hugged the bus. “Hey! She’s
sensitive.”

Kenny chuckled, “Ooohhh sorry.” he went over
and kissed the metal.

Dana said, “That’s better.” and stroked the
metal.

“Hey! Hello there!” Johnny pointed up at the
roof. The red and white face of a fox was looking down at them.

Dana and Kenny backed up to look. Kenny
laughed, “well ain’t that the most amazing thing… she’s likin’ that
warm metal. Clever! She went up the ladder…”

“
Flying Fox
?” Dana asked.

“That’s a good name!” Kenny laughed. Johnny
nodded.

“Well, let’s leave her alone before we do a
proper christening. She’ll find her way down.” Kenny said. They all
went back inside and let the fox keep her comfortable perch.

Robbie and David drove the kids to a farm
that was about 60 miles outside Nashville. None of the kids spoke a
word since their ordeal, and they remained huddled together at the
back of the bus. Robbie and David were also quiet and trying to
process the nightmarish scenes.

David finally said, “I think Johnny had a
good point about that video.”

Robbie was glad to return his thoughts to
strategy. He moved over in the seat opposite David. “You mean that
it’s unbelievable?”

David nodded. “Even worse than that, if we
get it out there without the context… It’s really just a snuff
film.”