Frank Jagger THE SNOW MAN pt 2

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

In late 1929, we were almost a third of the way through the Century of Dreams and all things were in motion. Man and woman traversed the land and seas faster than ever before while rockets and flying machines proved that even the sky above was not the ultimate limit. The Callahan research laboratory, located in a desolate part of western Illinois, was dedicated to discovering the physics behind inertia and its relationship to the fabric of space time. I was being criminally instructed in the mysteries of the cosmos and the ways that the laws of physics could be broken by an almost painfully exuberant physicist-inventor when we were brought back to the familiar world by a cry for help.

I followed Joseph Callahan through knee-deep snow to the river. The eerie howling racket that had caused us to run from his research laboratory was now low guttural growls and tearing sounds. Callahan’s portable spotlight, held an arm’s length above us, showed a huge creature that looked to be made entirely of snow, except for a turn-of-the-century black hat perched on top of its enormous head. It was ripping apart a human body, where the frozen water met the bank. “Do something!” I yelled as a bloody dismembered arm skidded across the ice. A designer watch attached to the mutilated wrist looked strangely familiar.

            “It’s too late,” Callahan said with a laugh. “You are already dead!”

I gaped at the face on the dismembered carcass. It was like looking in a mirror. I’d often dreamed of having an identical twin that I could blame my mistakes on. This was a nightmare!

            “How can I be dead, if I’m about to upchuck the corn beef on rye I had for lunch?” I told him.

Callahan flipped a switch on the spotlight and the battery powered lantern projected ten times the luminosity. He trained the light on the snow creature. He grinned. The monster howled and stood erect.

            “The pupazzo has an aversion to bright lights,” Callahan said as if he was teaching a class of sixth graders, “and it will melt if it gets too warm.” He held out one arm as if to keep me from dancing with the monster. “My battery will only last a minute at this level. Let’s hope the Snowman decides to finish his dinner later.”

The creature stared at us with eyes that I discerned were made with lumps of coal. With a snort the monster lurched toward us, but Callahan adjusted the light so that a tiny very powerful beam reflected directly off one anthracite pupil in the huge frozen face. A low howl rose in volume until it became a shriek. “I don’t have the equipment to completely destroy the pupazzo right now,” Callahan said. “I was hoping that you would lure the creature here …  and you did. I’m sorry that it cost you your life!”

I stared once more at what remained of my bloody doppelganger and then at Callahan. “You’re sorry I had to die?”

            “I hope you have a lighter or at least a match on you!” Callahan said as he removed a squeeze can from his coat pocket and sprayed a thick stream of what smelled like kerosene toward the advancing beast. “I don’t smoke!”

I dropped my silver-plated Dunhill in the snow when, with a hair-raising howl, the beast suddenly charged toward us. I could feel the monster’s icy breath crawling down my neck like January wind sweeping a rooftop when I retrieved the lighter and frantically thumbed a flame to life. A streak of fire followed the flammable liquid and engulfed the creature in a ball of flame. Frozen fingers were inches away from my throat when the monster turned and fled across the ice, beating at the fire with arms made of packed frost and disappearing into a flurry of snow.

            “We must get back to the safety of my laboratory,” Callahan blubbered enthusiastically. I couldn’t believe he was still smiling. “The snow creature will learn very quickly not to fear fire. After all, what is there to burn?”

“I don’t know,” I sneered having just seen myself murdered, “suppose you tell me!” I slid the watch off the severed arm before I turned and followed 1929’s version of C. A. Rotwang as he skittered rat-like toward the buildings on the hill. The silver Rolex Oyster timepiece with blood running off the crystal was identical to the one I was wearing.

-------2-------

Callahan poured two mugs from a pot that smelled as if it had been sitting on a burner for a week. We were warming up inside his enormous laboratory. I was tempted to ask for a spoon. I drink my coffee black but I wasn’t sure the tar would come out of my cup without one. My numb fingers were beginning to sting and my tongue cringed when I took a first sip.

            “For many years I have been fascinated by the ability of all objects to move,” Callahan said. “The scientific community has led the world to believe that the vacuum we call space or the nothing that exists between all physical material is without substance or property. Max Planck’s hypothesis that all matter, including the energy waves they produce, can be divided into a number of discrete dark elements each with its own statuary point, supports my own conclusion that space is a finite and ever growing substance manufactured as expansion occurs outward in all directions!”

            “I graduated near the bottom of my class at Cloverdale High School,” I told him. “I didn’t take physics or any other foreign language. Can you translate what you just said into English?”

            “Neither matter nor energy moves,” Callahan said. “The statuary points in the direction of travel are duplicated as the fabric of space time is woven. We see reality only for a fraction of a second before it is replaced.”

            “That’s impossible,” I told him. “I plunked the coffee-cup on a table filled with Bunsen burners and test tubes and waved my fingers in the air. “I just moved my hand!”

            “An almost infinite number of hands, arms, legs … whatever … were duplicated at the speed of light and are still duplicating,” Callahan said. “We only glimpse the instant of creation.”

I could feel my head growing larger. I wondered if Callahan had anything to make it shrink, perhaps a case of gin smuggled in from Canada.

Callahan strolled toward a jungle of wires with a massive blue-glowing apparatus in the center  that looked like a threshing machine with electrical tubes for tines. “I’ve succeeded in creating a mechanism that places the universe’s loom in reverse,” he said. “I can roll back the fabric and select any point or bit of matter and energy along the way and bring it to life.”

            I was beginning to understand. “One of the points you selected, was a duplicate of me that the Snowman ripped apart by the river!”

            “The first night you arrived!” Callahan smiled, but when I didn’t return the gesture, he made a pretense of being sober. “Your points were gathered by way of an electrified Cranial Capture device much like a hatband that I placed on your head while you were sleeping.

            “Why make an exact copy of me if I’m only going to be torn apart by your snowman? This monster terrorizing the upper half of Illinois is also one of your creations I presume.” I was suspicious and also a little afraid of science. Callahan was obviously a genius, but he had no right to play God.

            “I needed your help, but I knew it would be very dangerous. I decided to use a duplicate in case something went wrong. The monster that came to life from a child’s effigy was not one of my creations but I take full responsibility,’ Callahan said as we walked into another room. A massive steel and cast-iron floor safe was suspended about three feet off the floor by what looked like only the beam from a cheap battery operated light. “As you know, Chicago has been controlled by underworld figures for some years. Capone and other gangsters extort money from legitimate businessmen as far away as California. The Mayor and the Chief of Police are merely employees of these mobsters. A week ago, three of Machine Gun McGooganheimer’s thugs tried to shake me down for two-thousand dollars in protection money. While we were negotiating, one of the mobsters secretly snatched a Cranial Capture device that I had used in a previous experiment outside the lab. It was placed around a silk top-hat as a mourning-band to disguise its function. Stealing is second nature to these ruthless thugs.”

            “So one of the mobsters kipped your special hat,” I said. “What made the Snowman?”

            “The experiment I referred to, was performed on a prison inmate named Peter Brandon Boils,” Callahan said. He flipped off the light and the floor-safe hit the floor with a boom that jarred my teeth. “A particularly unsavory character with a history of violence. I needed a test subject who would be disposable if the experiment went wrong. Unfortunately Mr. Boils refused to wear the hat, fought with the guards and the experiment was a failure. However, during the struggle, a bit of Mr. Boils’ DNA, Frederick Griffith’s molecule of inheritance, must have collected inside the device and was activated after the hat was stolen by McGooganheimer’s associates!”

I remembered discovering the bodies at the mob-fronted barber shop called Under Your Hat. The gangster probably wanted the fancy hat because of where he worked.

            “I can only surmise,” Callahan said. “That the hat was too large and the gangster threw it away. Thugs are not noted for extensive brain capacity, and that the same hat was found by children who placed it on a snowman. The Cranial Capture device not only duplicated the snowman but also injected part of Peter Brandon Boils into the creature. Mr. Boils has a history of violence against unions, police and the mobsters who control them … this would explain the aggressive nature of the subject.”

            “Subject Hell!” I told him. “You’ve got a monster running around the state with a bunch of Pit Bull Boils’ brains leaking from its frozen carrot-nose and it has already killed dozens of people! How are you going to stop it?”

            “By using you for bait,’ Callahan said. “It was no accident that I picked you to help me neutralize the monster. It was partly your investigation into union violence that helped send Mr. Boils to prison for a dozen attacks and murders. The creature holds a genetic hatred for you and will seek to destroy you at every opportunity.”

            “In that case, duplicate me,” I said. “If I’m going to die again, I’d like a front row seat!”

            “Unfortunately the only working Cranial Capture device is the one the Snowman is wearing,” Callahan grinned. “Perhaps when we retrieve it.”

I didn’t have time to think of a smart come back. At that moment alarms began to sound throughout the complex. “We have visitors,” Callahan seemed thrilled, judging by the 1,000 watt grin on his face.

I realized the only thing I really wanted … was for the brilliant, but obviously stark-raving-mad, scientist from western Montana to stop smiling.

-------3-------

From an upstairs window of Callahan’s office we looked down on a half dozen mob goons exiting a black Essex sedan parked in the snow covered lot. All of them were packing heat. “What did you tell McGooganheimer’s associates when they demanded the two grand?” I asked Callahan. He was almost giddy with joy as he watched the approaching Chopper Squad.

            “I told them to come back today and I’d give them twenty-grand cash,” Callahan spurted.

            “You got that much dough on yah?” Most of the bank vaults I’d been in held less.

            “Of course not,” Callahan laughed. “I just said that to give me time!”

I didn’t know what the valedictorian of Cloverdale High School had in mind as I followed him downstairs, but this had better work better than the Snowman experiment. McGooganheimer’s boys were here to collect on a cold stormy night and if they didn’t get what they were promised they were likely to fit us both with Chicago Overcoats … the kind you were buried in.

Fritz Lefty Mensal was known for his onion-bulb nose. Three of the others I recognized by the rings above their ape-like knuckles. These I had unfortunately seen up-close and for almost an hour in a mob garage the year before. They pushed past Callahan without an invite. Two of them crowded the space behind me. I could smell blood, and the fear that goes with it, reeking from their overshoes. Whatever dirty business these goons had been involved in before they came to the research lab … they had really stepped in it.

            “We came for the twenty-five grand you owe us,” Lefty snorted. He sounded like he was blowing his nose every time he pronounced a vowel.

            “The amount we agreed on was twenty grand,” Callahan told him. I could swear Callahan was fighting to keep from laughing as he led us all down a long hallway.

“Twenty grand …. Twenty five,” Lefty said. “You ain’t got the cabbage you get plowed under!”

“Right this way, gentlemen!” Callahan giggled. “I hope you brought bags … twenty grand is a lot to handle with your bare hands!”

The long hallway ended in a circular room about sixty-feet in diameter behind a bulk-head door that looked like it came from a submarine. In the center stood a huge open safe with bundles of paper money spilling onto the floor. “I’m sorry most of it is in fives and tens,” Callahan said. “Just as well, large notes attract attention from income tax Feds like Elliot Ness.”

Four of the thugs were already across the room dropping their guns as they filled their pockets with the bundles. “Damn! I thought you was putting us on,” Lefty said as he and the remaining goon rushed to join the others. “We might have to kill you quick and easy instead of the fun and games we had planned.”

An argument broke out as several thugs reached for the same bundles of dough. Callahan used the opportunity to activate a switch hidden in the wall. The floor beneath the men seemed to vanish while the safe and the bank-notes stayed suspended in the air. Fritz Mensal and all five men plus their weapons plunged into obviously cold water at least twenty feet below the floor level. Lefty came up spurting. “You bastard!” he gasped. “You cheated us!” Several of the men were retrieving Thompson machine guns from the five-foot deep water, even though I knew from experience that the guns were useless when wet.

            “Not at all!” Callahan was laughing hysterically. “I promised you twenty grand and I delivered!” He pressed another button in the wall and a recessed gate opened in the pool. Long jagged tails made the water churn. “Twenty, I might say very hungry Grand Monitor Lizards originally from Indonesia. I located one species with exceptional size and remarkable aggression, it weighed in at three-hundred twenty pounds. I then duplicated him nineteen times as part of my early experiments with non-humans. Sorry about the cold water, but a decline in temperature gives the Komodo Dragon a voracious appetite!”

One of the more than ten-foot long creatures grabbed one of my ring knuckle friends and dragged him under the water while the others wailed. “You can keep your dough!” Lefty screamed. “Let us out of here … and we all go home as pals!”

            “I like you, I really do,” Callahan told him. “But I promised my test subjects a ham dinner when my experiments were completed. Have you seen the prices of pork in the grocery stores … even with a depression starting? All that money suspended in the air above you is actually useless. I duplicated a ten and two fives a thousand times. It looks good except that the serial numbers happen to all be the same. You could spend the loot in small towns a bill or two here and there but eventually someone would catch on. No, this is a far better way to satisfy my obligations. Human flesh is supposed to taste just like pork … let’s hope I never have to find out!”

One of the lizards was chewing on Lefty’s ear and Callahan started to laugh. I dragged him from the circular room before I too went hysterical. The screams stopped when I closed the heavy door.

-------4-------

            We were upstairs in Callahan’s office watching the snow fall. An hour before I’d went outside and found a bottle of Old Taylor whiskey in the back seat of the Essex sedan. I poured us both another drink and the bottle was almost empty. “If you had the Cranial Capture device back you could make all the booze you wanted … right?” Callahan only nodded.

            “I had a full-proof plan to end this adventure,” Callahan said. For the first time in the last three days I saw him without at least a grin. “It’s this blasted snow that has me worried!”

            “If not today, then tomorrow … a snow plow will come along,” I assured him.

            “It’s not the roads,” Callahan said. “It’s the Snowman. He gets larger with every snow flake that falls …”

            “How large?” I asked. The absence of his normally joyous expression had me worried.

            “When the children first created the Snowman it was at most five feet tall more likely four.” Callahan reasoned. “The monster that ripped your other you apart at the river had to be three times that big … say twelve to fifteen feet!” I had to agree. In my memory the creature had seemed as big as a tree. “That means that even with the light snow we’ve had, the monster has tripled in size every twenty four hours!”

            “But you can stop it?” Callahan looked at me and laughed but it wasn’t a happy sound.

            “Science is a thing of dreams … as well as nightmares,” he said.

We watched in silence as the snow relentlessly came down, heavier than I’d ever seen it. We talked about the future. Callahan believed that people would someday use telephones no larger than a pencil box, all motors would run on gravity and that men, and perhaps even women, would one day walk on the moon. I wondered about the many rooms in his lab that I had not yet seen.

It was just before dawn when we heard footsteps like Marne artillery shells exploding across the drifting valley floor. 

The monster was coming … and we waited.

THE END?

I hope you enjoyed this story dear reader. You are the only reason I write. If you would like to read more about Cloverdale "The strangest small town on Earth" Please purchase my latest book of short stories CRAYON MONSTERS from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Cloverdale-CRAYON-MONSTERS-Randall-Peterson/dp/1517660068 Thank you !!!!

Frank Jagger THE SNOW MAN

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

Throughout history, the human race has danced before,  sometimes during, but never after tragedy unless it is perceived to be minor. An orchestra reportedly played cheerfully on deck as the RMS Titanic slipped below the icy water of the north Atlantic in mid-April 1912; it was their last performance. America in the 1920’s was a roaring party, too amazed by a century born of stunning technology to stress about prohibition. People moved faster than ever before and they flew through the air and cavorted all night long in private clubs called Speakeasies. The Wall Street crash at the end of October 1929 was but a shot in the dark, meant to scare away the bears from a bull market. The music was still playing seven weeks later … you just had to know where to look – or listen. The banks all still had plenty of money … they just didn’t exactly have it in their vaults.

It was two nights before Christmas; or, if you wanna be a putz about it, the night before Christmas Eve. Homicide Detective Winze shoved me toward a chair that had been broken and put together a dozen times. He closed his door. His friends, and some of his enemies, refer to him as Dutch. I call him lots of things behind his back, but always Harvey to his face because, as I often remind him, it was the name of a favorite dog I lost right after I moved to Illinois. Harvey hates me … and the name his mother printed on his birth certificate. I was obviously in his cluttered downtown office, complete with a dried-out Christmas tree lurking in the corner, because he needed something.

“Not all the fish inside Under Your Hat ended up on ice yesterday,” Dutch informed me as he lit a cheap Autokraft Box cigar that smelled like a dog turd and then blew the harsh smoke in my face. “Victor Albert Di Pasqua was in the basement getting more hair tonic when the music started. He missed the Lake Michigan prom by thirty seconds.”

I didn’t know anyone had been killed in the mob-controlled barber shop, I only steal my neighbor’s newspaper on Mondays, but I wasn’t about to say so. Vick Itchy Fingers Di Pasqua was a free-lance hit man for Capone, Moran and a dozen other gangsters. The hair tonic was most likely one-hundred eighty proof gin smuggled in to the Windy City by snow plow from Canada. I’d been to the lousy clip and tire joint only once, three years ago, but didn’t go for getaway driver Ramone Brunetti’s extra wide white-wall shaves around the ears. Everyone knew the place was a front for the rackets. “You found Harvey!” I pretended to be overjoyed and pointed at the stogie in Dutch’s mouth. “Whenever me and the mutt would go for a walk,” I told the captain. “I’d always pick up and wrap his gutter torpedoes in yesterday’s copy of the Chicago Daily. I never did try to smoke them!”

Dutch smiled and placed the foul smelling cigar in an ashtray just before he hit me. Only one leg on the chair broke. One of the cops must be good with glue and screws. I hoped my dentist was. Another cop came in, dusted me off and apologized for the captain’s bad mood. Dutch quickly forgot about the whole altercation … I didn’t.

“Mr. Di Pasqua showed up at Under Your Hat for a business meeting yesterday morning just before nine,” Dutch went on. “Itchy said a bunch of neighborhood brats had rolled together a snowman right next to the barber shop entrance, although no one saw them do it. The snowman was right out of Adam magazine. The frozen Sheik had coal chunks for eyes, was wearing your grandpa’s black silk top hat and had one of your grandma’s dried garden carrots for a nose. Itchy and some of the boys were going back outside and knock the damn thing down when Ramone sent him to the basement for tonic. You can’t have a bunch of kids hanging around a grown-up business; it causes all kinds of problems. Itchy was just coming from the back-room when the funeral music started … bam bam bam. He claims he got a good look at the shooter just before he ducked back down the stairs and crawled into some furnace piping. Seeing all of his pals iced by a Johnny Thompson M1928 must have turned his brain to mush. One of my detectives found him down there hiding an hour after you left.” I started to protest that I hadn’t been anywhere near the dive in, wouldn’t be caught dead there, in fact, but Dutch waved me to silence and his next words stunned me to silence - “Itchy swears on his mother’s grave it was the kid’s snowman that did the killing!”

Since Itchy wasn’t born but hatched under a stone, there were so many things wrong with that sentence I didn’t know where to start … in fact no part of this fairy tale made sense … least of all, why Dutch felt the need to involve me … unless it was to point out the one fact that was as clear as the snout on his pig-like face. In a voice of clear reason, I stated slowly, as though talking to a child;

“If Itchy was hiding in the cellar all this time, who reported the murders?”

“You did,” Dutch’s tone suggested he wanted to hit me again. But then something about the way my mouth gaped pleased. He smiled like he’d just caught me in a whopper of a lie as he opened a notebook. “You told us all yesterday morning that you stopped by Under Your Hat just after nine for a shave and haircut!”

-------2-------

I figured it was a frame-up. I hadn’t talked to Dutch or any cop for over a month. Funny but I couldn’t remember right off where I was yesterday morning. I decided to play along; most frame-ups collapse with their own weight. “So do you have this Snowman locked up? I didn’t know the Chicago PD had a refrigerated cell. What if the suspect melts before you can drag him into court?”

“You know damn well it was snowing heavy when we arrived!” I could almost see the steam pour from Dutch’s ears.  “There was no snowman, no tracks, and we had to shovel slush from the street to roll the corner’s gurneys inside!” Dutch leaned across the table and grabbed me by the throat. He had big hands. “If I find out you know something you ain’t saying, I’ll have you sharing a crowbar hotel room with Peter Brandon Boils!”

Dutch didn’t scare me, but spending the night in that particular downtown jail cell did.  Pit Bull Boils was a monster handed, psychopathic, eastside, strike-breaking, gorilla, famous for wringing disgruntled union member necks like chickens. He enjoyed his profession and in between dames and jobs sometimes twisted a single head for a donut and a glass of beer.

I decided to come clean. “I don’t know anything about your snowman,” I told Dutch, “and I don’t remember anything about yesterday.” I was being honest.

Dutch probably would have knocked me around some more, but the precinct phones were ringing like a high priced tomato basket on two-for-one night. “I want you back first thing in the morning with your three friends Who, Where and Why,” he told me.

I decided to pay a visit to Linda Dice Clayton. She was still officially Machine Gun McGooganheimer’s five-syllable property, she would be forever, but even though she was still breathtaking, the hardest-moniker-to-pronounce gangster in Chicago had lost most of his interest after she’d become pregnant. I walked through the Grand Terrace Cafe where an entertainer I’d dated for a few months was singing a sexy version of Walk Right In by Cannon's Jug Stompers. Kit Malone had a voice like an angel and unfortunately a memory like a horse-track bookie. She was another story. I walked low in the crowd toward the stairs.

L.D. opened the apartment door above the lounge wearing a see-through French nightgown and an J’ai été en attente pour vous smile that vanished when she saw who was knocking. The still gorgeous former nightclub dancer slapped me hard. I could hear a baby crying in a back bedroom. “Going out for a pack of cigarettes!” she spat the words. “I waited for you to come back until the sun came up!”

I felt like I was losing my mind. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I did the day before. One thing was certain. I wasn’t in this apartment with her. A night with L.D. was something a person never forgets. My head was swimming as she pulled me inside. I was pacing in front of a steam radiator as she got dressed and took care of her child. I reached in my jacket pocket and pulled out an empty pack of Chesterfields … I like ‘em … and they satisfy. “Got a cigarette?” I begged. She slapped me … again.

-------3-------

            I spent the night trying to get back into L.D’s good graces. Early in the morning I got lucky: she didn’t kill me. She shoved me into the hallway with a handshake and a tin-can cup of cold Joe. The baby laughed. A retired garment worker named Judy Wong tended her six-month-old daughter Margene for six dollars a week. L.D. worked in a bank for thirty-five. The smell of Daniel Josier Eau de Parfum lingered in the air as I dragged down the stairs and was overpowered by the harsh smell of muggle smoke drifting toward a high ceiling. I hated being me as I stared at a candle-lit Arcadia mirror on one wall of the Grand Terrace Cafe.

A floor bass and a trumpet player were the only band members who refused to break up with the night. They played and softly sang Blind Blake’s Diddie Wa Diddie in the dark … I walked on over. There's a great big mystery … and it sure is worryin' me … it's Diddie Wa Diddie … it's Diddie Wa Diddie … I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means.

A black-as-a-crow musician pointed to a mouse skittering across the dance floor as he thumped an open D string. “Me and Satch we learned our notes in New Orleans and our manners in Atlanta,” he whispered in a voice filled with religion. “We don’t pack it up till the last paying customer leaves. Ain’t that right Pops?”

            “What did the rodent pay?” I asked as I watched the mouse vanish into a chewed hole in one of the stage baseboards.

Pops blew a finale note on his trumpet and smiled like thousands of sunrises to come as he picked up a marijuana cigarette burning in an ash-tray beneath a poster for Cab Calloway and dragged deeply. “Attention!” he laughed.

-------4-------

           

 It felt like a dream. I wanted to be sure who I was, where I was and what I was doing. I watched the famous negro musicians load up their gear … and then Frank Jagger went out into the snow covered streets of Chicago  looking for … satisfaction.

Nick Dunes, flashed a grin like a broken picket fence, as he stood halfway in the slushy street hawking an early morning edition of the Chicago Times. A half starved dog lingered next to him. The mutt looked like he’d take your arm off for an open can of Strongheart dog-food. “The Snowman strikes again!” Nick called to last minute shoppers jamming the sidewalks. They obviously hoped the cash they begged from the struggling banks would last until Santa’s sled arrived. “Nine Capone associates dead in hotel blaze!”

I tossed the kid a dime and asked for a paper. “What did you do with the last copy?” he scowled as he handed it over. “Use it to start another fire?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him. The front page of the paper showed Alphonse Capone and some nervous business partners standing outside the Regal Hotel as the structure burned. At least three fire trucks were pictured trying to put out the blaze.

            “You bought the first copy when I cut the bundle,” Nick said. “I ain’t sayin’ nothing … but you start messing with the big guy you can buy your newspapers somewhere else!”

            “How long ago was I here?” I asked.

            “Geeze, you didn’t look drunk … you don’t know!” Nick shook his red hair. “About twenty minutes ago! You climbed in a hack and headed downtown.”

A cab was parked in front of a movie theatre across the street advertising Clara Bow in The Saturday Night Kid on the marquee. I was pretty sure it was the same one. The hacks in Chicago all have their territories just like everyone else. “I thought I just gave you a ride?” the cab driver looked at me like I was the actor from The Man from M.A.R.S.as he started his engine.

            “I forgot something,” I told him as I climbed in the back. The seat smelled faintly like Daniel Josier’s expensive perfume.

            “Was it your jet-pack,” he asked eyeing me suspiciously. “I drove right back here!”

            “Let’s do it all over,” I told him as I handed over a silver dollar. “Lately, I’ve been forgetting things.”

-------5-------

The cab-driver dropped me off at the same police station I’d been to the night before. Not right in front, but a half-block away. The street was crawling with cops, some were lying on the ground. Blood had turned the snow red in many places. More flashing lights were arriving all the time.

Detective Winze was standing next to a half dozen uniformed officers. He was giving a young cop, shivering like a cow in a meat locker, the third degree. “He was covered in snow,” the young officer insisted. “If it was some kind of mask … it was good!”

            “And he had a carrot for a nose?” Dutch’s voice was drawing attention but no smiles.

            “It was some kind of vegetable … orange.” The kid hung his head.

            “How many we got going to the morgue?” Dutch asked two attendants pushing a gurney through the snow.

“About sixteen,” a white-faced ambulance attendant stammered, “and twice that many going to the hospital.”

I tried to walk past without being noticed. Dutch saw me. “At least I know where you was this time,” he said. “we’ll finish after I clean up this mess.” I saw a cop covered with blood talking to some of the police who had just arrived. “There was no weapon,” he argued. “The monster just tore us apart!”

            “We got us a Jack Dempsey killer knocking off mobsters and now using his fists on cops!” One of the newly arrived officers complained to the others.

            “There was no fists!” The blood smeared cop sounded incredulous, like he couldn’t believe what he was actually about to say, but he said it anyway. “It was a snowman!”

           

-------6-------

Over the past forty-eight hours, the only time my mind had been entirely clear was when I’d been listening to the jazz musicians in the Grand Terrace Café. Or maybe my brain only appeared clear because theirs had been so foggy. I wanted to know what I’d done yesterday. That blank part of my memory worried me more than an effigy made of snow killing mobsters and cops.

I owed four hundred and nineteen bucks to a high-rolling bookie named John Storm on the west side. I scratched up twenty a week just to stay alive. He had an army of guys working off the interest on their debts by keeping track of other in-too-deep gambling deadbeats. If anybody knew my whereabouts all the time day or night it would be him.

            I waited for an hour and a half to get in to see him. A steady line of men and a half-dozen women filed in and then out of his office every three minutes. Most had a look of desperation and an unwavering burn your fingers with matches determination as they try to convince themselves that after this there would be absolutely no more gambling. Most would be pitching pennies in a back alley five minutes from now if they found a dime on the street or made a buck hooking freight monkeys on the docks. “Where was I yesterday?” I asked as I finally got into his office.

Any other mug would have jeered, “you serious, buster?” But nothing fazed this guy, ever. Storm rolled a high back chair over to a large filing cabinet. “What time?” he asked as he pulled out a thick file with my name on it.

            “All day,” I told him.

He laughed without humor. “Stay away from the chinks and their Fi-do-nie he advised. “It’s bad for your business … and mine.”

It wasn’t worth it trying to convince him that I didn’t smoke opium in Chinatown. My three minutes were almost up.

            “Joseph Callahan’s lab out on Parkland road,” he said. “9:14 AM until 7:36 PM.”

            “And the rest of the time?”

            “How the hell would I know,” he said. “I ain’t your baby sitter.”

I gave him the last twenty in my wallet. I had two fives left and a handful of ones.

            “I might have some work for you,” he said as he dropped the bill in a desk drawer next to what looked like a 357 magnum. I’d bet money the gun was loaded.

            “I don’t keep track of dead beats,” I told him.

            “I know,” he said. “My brother in law did some work for me occasionally mostly as a driver. My kid sister has cried herself to sleep every night since the cops found his body. I want to know who put him on ice. Bring me a who and how and your account goes clean.”

            “You’ve got an army of eyes and ears that cover this whole city,” I said. “Surely someone heard a shot?”

            “That’s the problem,’ he wasn’t plugged,” Storm said. “He was found in the center of the Illinois State Highway just north of Kankakee. His truck was upside down in a ditch. He was frozen as solid as a two-hundred pound ice-cube. His eyes were open. Whoever …whatever did this to him … I think it scared him to death!”

-------7-------

It cost me five bucks to rent a car, another five for gas. I was almost broke. No cab driver would venture into this part of Western Illinois. The locals, those that hadn’t moved away, called the wasteland Devil’s Field. Four thousand acres of long dead vegetation and stale seed that refused to grow. The Bureau of Land Management puts out hundreds of fires every year but not one flame fighter would venture into this part of the state even in daylight. The twisted remains of trees turned to charcoal lined both sides of a snow packed road like mourners at a funeral as night loomed. And as darkness fell, so did snowflakes, bigger than a man’s hand.

            I’ve only seen lightning during a snowstorm twice, never with such demented intensity. Million volt tridents of electrical mayhem arced directly overhead and turned white blankets of sky black. A crash brought down an ancient burned oak onto the drifted road and I plowed into a ditch. I would have stayed in the half buried car but I could see tiny lights on a hill. It had to be Callahan’s lab, I felt surer of that then I did my own name. The only problem was, no matter what Storm said, I’d never been here before.

The lights seemed less than a mile away,  I shivered with every step I took. And it was getting colder, even though the snow stopped falling after I began to walk. The sky had cleared twenty minutes later. It was slow going. The drifts of star reflecting snow came almost to my knees. A frozen river dusted with snow lay almost exactly halfway between my stuck rental car and the Callahan Research Center. I was just starting to cross the wind swept ice when I spotted the footprints. About nine inches across, they looked like they could have been made by a giant bear but without toes. I had a gun in my coat pocket but my fingers were so frozen I didn’t think I could pull a trigger.

            I was climbing the far bank when I heard a low thump, thump, thump coming from the direction of my abandoned rental car, growing louder as it approached me. What looked like swaying lamp light appeared from the direction of the lab. A far off voice shouted something. I could make out one word a frantic order to … run! Behind me, the cracking river ice sounded like a flock of sheep being slaughtered. Almost against my will, I turned to look back, and saw what my gibbering mind could only describe as a monster had started across the river – after me! Fear raced through my veins, my legs wanted to race too, but it was impossible to run in the deep snow. Even through my extra thick winter coat, I felt a blast of ice cold breath on my back and neck as I stumbled and turned at the last minute … and then I screamed.

TO BE CONTINUED …

WOODLAND part 2

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

Jeff and Tracy both turned and ran toward the GTO headlights still glowing on the side of the gravel road a hundred yards away. A distorted reflection of the hitchhiker they’d dumped in Vegas, swinging upside down and naked over a fire, flickered across the GTO’s burnished coachwork. Their feet moved in sluggish slow motion. An insectile buzzing came from inside the transparent dome partially buried in the forest floor behind, and the breathtakingly beautiful girls, all of them identical enough to be Sorcha’s fraternal twins, were closing fast. Long fingernails tore at the boy’s legs, feet and hair. “This is your home now, this is where you were meant to be,” a dozen sultry voices insisted. From behind came the screams of Bluecat as he once again passed through the flames. The headlamps of the GTO were very close now but it was too late. The smell of damp loam covered them as a dozen grasping hands caught and pulled them to the forest floor.

            “Wake up!” Tracy reached across and jerked the steering wheel just as a semi-tractor trailer roared past the careening GTO. The angry truck driver had obviously been trying to blow them off his oncoming lane with an air horn.

            “What the Hell?” Jeff gripped the wheel, jammed his foot on the brake and skidded to a stop his heart still pumping from … a dream? The stereo was blasting the Who’s song Going Mobile …when I'm drivin' free, the world's my home.

            “You’re wasted!” Tracy’s eyes showed white all around as he opened his door. “You better let me spell you off.”

Jeff staggered out of the car and lumbered to the other side, shaking his head and trying to come awake. His feet moved like they were still in the nightmare, slow and sluggish. “It was a horrible dream,” he told Tracy. “Sorcha and a bunch of girls who looked just like her were going to eat us.”

            “We all have to die sometime!” Tracy grinned as he started the car. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

The thick forest rushing past on both sides of the road seemed to be crowding the two lane highway. Jeff felt exhausted, but way too scared to close his eyes. He didn’t want the strange visions to come again. He slid out the rolled-up plastic sandwich bag filled with weed they had hidden under the shifting console and rolled a lopsided joint with shaking fingers. The back of his neck throbbed where the fork shaped mark had appeared the day before. Jeff pushed in the cigarette lighter and then ejected Who’s Next and put in The Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers while he waited for the dash lighter to pop out. His ears were begging for something softer. Jeff lit the joint, inhaling deeply as he pressed the track button and cycled through the four songs playing at the same time.  He blew a cloud of smoke toward Tracy just as the highway left the forest and rounded a rocky cliff-side showing the moonlit Pacific Ocean to the left … things are not what they seem Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams.

-------2-------

Tracy pulled onto a gravel road that led to a secluded beach area. “I think it’s better if we sleep on the sand rather than in a morgue,” he said referring to their near miss with the truck.

“People don’t sleep in morgues,” Jeff yawned. “They just act like they are dead.”

“And every performance worthy of an Oscar,” Tracy told him as he stopped the car.

A large wave rolled onto the rocky beach about every minute; Tracy and Jeff placed their sleeping bags a safe distance above the wet sand and receding foam.

            “Ever wonder if there is any intelligent life out there in the vastness of space?” Tracy asked as he folded a jacket to make a pillow.

            “If there is, it didn’t come from Earth,” Jeff said turning the dial on a transistor radio. “Think of all the politically retarded people who are voting for a crook like Nixon.”

            “If I ever saw a UFO, I’d walk right up to it.” Tracy told him.

The rock group America was singing A Horse with no Name.

            “There has to be at least a million other planets out there with intelligent life on them …” Jeff mused. And then he laughed. “Tracy Gold the other white meat! With that many life-forms, they can’t all be vegetarians.”

And the story it told of a river that flowed … made me sad to think it was dead …

They talked for almost an hour and then the conversation slowed. A full moon rose over the Pacific during a long silence and chased away all the lingering stars to the east. A gentle breeze tried to coax another laugh from the two almost men … but they were gone away to another world. The ocean is a desert with its life underground … and a perfect disguise above …

Long scissor-like appendages pulled Tracy from the sleeping bag and lifted him high into the air. He tried to scream but his voice-box was unplugged. A creature resembling a ten foot tall praying mantis, and moving with a lurching insectile gait, dragged him along the beach. Another hideous apparition carried Jeff as they traveled across the wet sand toward a house-sized blue-green glowing sphere just under the water a dozen yards out from a rocky cliff-side in the distance. There were others, many of them coming from all directions. Tracy heard a muffled scream and grinding metal as another of the monsters ripped away both sides from an overturned Chevelle Malibu next to the highway and pulled out two people. A door banged open and an elderly man sprinted from a beach bungalow, dressed only in striped pajamas, pursued by at least three of the creatures.

            A fire burned inside a circle of fallen boulders. Dozens of buzzing colossal sized monsters hunched in the surrounding gravel roasting fresh-caught meat on long metal forks over the flames. The goddess Sorcha stood on top a mountain-sized rock; apparently she was the only human not being prepared for a meal. “This really is the most amazing place in the world,” she told Tracy with a look of remorse, “but our food must always be clean.” Her voice became an insect like hum a buzzing sound that grew louder.

The two people from the demolished car were already being thrust into the water and scrubbed with needle-like appendages.

The cold water activated his vocal cords and Tracy managed a half bubbling scream through chattering teeth.

Jeff was laughing as he unzipped and crawled out of his wet sleeping bag. The wave of salt water that had rolled over them was receding leaving foam and clots of seaweed on the shore. “Being from Montana, we don’t think about things like high tide!” He lifted Tracy’s wet bag by the foot end and dumped him onto the sand. “Next time, I pick where we camp out!”

Tracy gathered his bag and the jacket he’d used for a pillow into a wet bundle and picked up the now buzzing radio. He shook his head as they stumbled toward higher ground trying to shake out the nightmare. A second wave washed over their ankles and sucked the sand between their toes as it receded. “Without that wet dream we might have slept forever!” It was mid-morning the sun was climbing the sky. The beach was empty there was no glowing sphere, no feast … and no fires.

-------3-------

The turnoff sign read: Woodland 3 miles. “You think Sorcha is going to be waiting with the keys to the city?”

            “Who cares?” Jeff told him. “I hope her home town at least has a Laundromat where we can wash and dry our sleeping bags.”

            “With four-hundred nineteen people, they’ll be lucky to have a cop!” Tracy pointed to the welcome to Woodland sign that appeared around a last curve. A single main street lined with two-story brick buildings obviously built in the twenties and thirties loomed before them. Traffic was light but the first car to pass going in the opposite direction was filled with girls. At least four eager faces turned and stared, most were smiling; several hands waved “You’re going the wrong way!” Jeff joked trying to grab the steering wheel.

Tracy swerved into the parking lot of a used car lot and was turning around when a convertible MG pulled beside them. Both girls inside the tiny sports car were smiling. “Is it true what they say about boys from Montana?” A girl with a gleaming Goldie Hawn Laugh In grin and short shaggy-cut hair asked.

            “You can torture me all day and all night, but I’ll never talk,” Jeff told her with a laugh.

            “What is it they say about us?” Tracy demanded.

Both girls were giggling. “That men are men … and the sheep are scared,” the other girl blurted.

            “That hurts,” Tracy said, dramatically clutching his heart. “I thought angels were supposed to be kind!”

            “So you think we’re angels?” The first one asked, smiling and fussing with her hair.

            “Is there a Laundromat in this town?” Jeff asked thinking about the wet sleeping bags.

            “Follow us,” the girls said.

The Wash and Dry stood across the street from Woody’s Drive-In. They decided to get something to eat while their clothes were being laundered. “Two double cheeseburgers, two large fries, Woody’s special all-meat burrito, a large Coke, a strawberry milkshake and two apple pies,” Tracy told the girl who roller-skated out to wait on them. He glanced at Jeff. “You want anything?” The girl giggled. “No I guess my friend ain’t hungry,” Tracy told her.

The two boys watched as the girl skated back to the building. There were several other cars in the lot, all of them full of females. “You notice anything weird about this town?” Tracy asked as he lit a cigarette.

            “All the girls look like they could be Sorcha’s sisters and there seems to be a serious shortage of guys in town,” Jeff told him.

            “Not that I’m complaining,” Tracy said. “It just seems a little off.”

            “There’s a whole universe beyond Cloverdale,” Jeff said. “Sometimes you really do find what you’re looking for.”

The girl on skates was back. “Sorcha decided to give you your food for free if you’ll roll us a couple of numbers,” she said. Tracy looked toward Woody’s building. A half dozen smiling and waving girls had their faces pressed against the large glass windows. Both boys recognized the hitchhiker they’d picked up in southern Utah by her smile.

Are there any parties going on in town,” he asked as he pulled the baggy from under the shifting console and began to roll the joints.

            “There’s always a party,” the girl said. “We get off at eleven.”

-------4-------

The order was doubled when they got it. There was no way they could eat that much. They stored the rest in a cooler filled with ice and promised to be back when Woody’s closed. Two girls in a flat-bed farm truck pulled up next to them at the only stop-light. “You guys old enough to buy booze?” a pretty red-head asked.

            “Of course we are,” Tracy lied.

They followed the girls to a California State Liquor Dispensary just outside of town. “That crappy fake ID you use in Cloverdale probably won’t work in California,” Jeff told him.

            “I bet they don’t even ask for it, Mate!” Tracy tucked in his shirt and combed his hair back and under an Andy Capp hat he pulled from under the seat, before he went in the store. “My exquisite British accent gets them every time!”

            “Are you two chicks going to the big party the girls at Woody’s told us about?” Jeff asked as they waited for Tracy. He was taking an extra-long time.

            “Of course. We’re going with you,” the redhead said. “They were climbing into the GTO’s backseat when Tracy came out of the store smiling broadly. He looked at Jeff. “I told you I was born with overflowing charm,” he beamed as he passed the paper bag to the girls.

            Just then a woman walking past who looked old enough to be a great grandmother stopped and hugged Tracy seductively as he tried to open the car door. “Next time you want me to buy you boys some booze … or anything else, just come right out and say so,’ she cooed.

Jeff’s face was in his hands trying to hold back a laugh as Tracy slid into the passenger seat. “Didn’t I tell you this town was full of women?” Tracy blurted.

-------5-------

Tracy was filling his pressurized can with water when Jeff Bland, leaning out the passenger side of a Plymouth station wagon, careened across the Conoco parking lot and soaked him with an APW fire extinguisher. Girls from both cars opened fire and the service station asphalt was turning into a lake.

            “Haven’t you girls got anything better to do than try to drown two boys from the Big Sky State?” Tracy looked like he’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. He was obviously having the time of his life.

            “The real fun doesn’t start until it gets dark,” a pretty brunette in the car said. She looked at a red and golden glow sinking on the western horizon. “We have a band and three kegs. Everything starts in about an hour.”

“Tracy and I need to shower and change our clothes before the party,” Jeff said as he climbed into the GTO. “We’ll meet you gals at Woody’s in about forty five minutes.”

            “Need any help?” a female voice from the back of the station wagon asked followed by a chorus of laughter.

            “You girls are going to give me a heart attack!” Tracy moaned. “But what the hell? We all have to die sometime!”

Six girls climbed from the Pontiac leaving the boys alone for the first time since they arrived in the small town.

-------6-------

 “I’ve dreamed about this town all my life,” Jeff said as they unlocked room 419 at the forty-five-dollar-a-night Woodland Motel. He threw a suitcase onto one of the twin beds.

                        “I’ve only had one dream since we crossed the border into California,” Jeff said pushing the mattress to one side looking for cockroaches. His face looked uncertain as he remembered the nightmare where a screaming hitchhiker named Bluecat swung naked over a cooking fire.

            “I think that’s all I’ve had!” A smile slid off from Tracy’s face, the first time he’d looked solemn in hours. A vision of a glowing green globe just under the Pacific Ocean surface made him shiver. “I don’t think we’ve met one real guy since we’ve been in this town!”

            “There was that grease monkey at the service station who let us use his air compressor.” Jeff suggested.

            “Oh please,” Tracy told him. “He had the longest eyelashes and hadn’t shaved since … never and I swear I could spot a pair of boobs swinging under those baggy coveralls.”

            “But why the act? What could they possibly want?”

            “A good time?” Neither boy laughed.

“This is a lot of room for just a shower,” Jeff shook his head trying to change the subject. “I doubt if we’ll be sleeping here tonight!”

            “It’s time we grew up and put our fears behind us,” Tracy ordered as he held up a pair of tie dyed shirts. “Jimi Hendrix or Jerry Garcia?” he asked with a real laugh.

-------7-------

            Jeff was driving. Tracy rummaged through the box of eight track tapes. He stared at the cover featuring the band members wearing orange make-up and body stockings on the label to appear as if they were posing in the nude, then put Three Dog Night’s It Ain’t Easy into the player. Widow carry on 'til the band is gone …Widow carry on 'til the band is gone … blasted from the speakers.

Sorcha smiled and waved as she came out of Woody’s with a group of girls. “This will be a night you’ll never forget!” she yelled. The lights of the drive in went out the same time the parking lot came to life.

The GTO was the last of nine cars heading into the deep woods. The reverberated rumble of a heavily amplified rock band tuning-up could be heard in the distance. Tracy turned down the stereo and rolled down his window to listen. “Something is not right here,” he said.

            “The band sounds excellent,” Jeff said. “They’re live so they are not going to sound exactly like a recording.”

            “That’s the problem,” Tracy said. “They sound exactly like the recording.” He turned up the volume on the stereo a new song had just begun to play:  Want some whiskey in your water?

Sugar in your tea? The band in the woods was playing the same notes at the same time and singing the exact same lines.

            “So we got a band that lip synchs to recordings. These things happen!” Jeff said.

            “It’s not lip synching,” Tracy insisted. “He pulled the tape from the stereo and waited for a full twenty seconds. The band in the woods continued to play as he lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. They were close enough to see the stage … see the drummer strike the drums … see the pounding guitars … and the roaring fire. He reinserted the tape and then adjusted the loudness so the band outside and the recording in the car were both playing at equal volume. This is the craziest party that could ever be; don’t turn on the lights 'cause I don't want to see… The band in the woods was playing the same notes at the same time and singing the exact same lines.

            “Turn around!” Tracy begged. “Let’s get the Hell out of here!”

            “Are you crazy?” Jeff was staring at the girls already moving toward the car. “There must be a hundred beauty queens at this party!”

            “Whoever they are, they can’t make males and they don’t know anything about music,” Tracy insisted.

            “They? Who are you talking about?’ At least three girls were reaching for the door handle. Jeff smiled as he undid his seat belt.

Tracy reached across the seat and pushed down both his and Jeff’s door locks. “Look at the band … look damn close,” Tracy insisted.

The band was the standard motley group of ragged musicians except for one thing … they were all female!

Jeff started the car as a dozen fists with painted fingernails began to pound at the windows. Sorcha flung herself across the hood of the car, hanging onto the windshield wipers. “You’re not leaving already,” she said. It was not a question.

            Her mouth opened wide and a long green tongue, forked at the end, slithered across the windshield dripping yellow foam that hissed a cloud of orange steam when it contacted painted metal. Mama told me not to come! The furious pounding of the drums outside sounded remarkably like an extension speaker. Her eyes grew large and reptilian as she stared through the glass.

With a bang the side window shattered. Jeff jammed the transmission into first gear and spun the car in a circle. The girl playing bass swung her instrument at the skidding car and broke off the radio antenna leaving a foot long gash in the hood just as the stage collapsed.

Exotically beautiful faces were already changing as growing appendages reached in through the broken windows. Youth and innocence were replaced with insect-like shells and dozens of eyes totally lacking the concept of empathy.

            “Gaaaaahhhh!” Jeff stomped his foot on the gas pedal as a pair of scissor-like pinchers dug into his throat. The air inside the car smelled like a leaking truck battery. Tracy beat at the monster with his fists. The Pontiac’s heavy bumper bounced off a tree and then picked up speed. The volume on the stereo got jarred up all the way. I think I'm almost chokin' from the smell of stale perfume … Jeff jerked the wheel from side to side as he tore through a patch of wild raspberries and made it back onto the dirt road. The creature made a cry like fingernails dragging across a rusty oil drum as it lost its grip on the driver’s throat and tumbled with a buzzing shriek and a thump under the back wheels.

            The crowd of transforming girls was already receding in the distance.

Less than two minutes later they were back on Pacific highway 101 headed north. The ground beneath the car rumbled and shook making the forest vegetation lining the scenic coastal route dance to the music. That ain’t the way to have fun … A glowing green and orange globe rose into the sky behind them. Both boys held their breath. Seconds later, the otherworldly ball of pulsing light flashed brilliant as it streaked across the sky growing smaller until it became one of the stars. The stereo was still playing although Tracy had turned down the volume. “Shut it off!” Jeff’s open mouth was gasping for oxygen as he pointed to the stereo.

Tracy ejected the cartridge and after staring at it for a moment tossed it into the trees flying past. It was beginning to rain. A broken wiper streaked the windshield. The water suddenly came down like a waterfall. “Some nights just aren’t that great,” he said as he rolled up his window.

THE END ???