Shadow Games

by Doug Welch

  Chapter 7

  Shadows in the Machine

  I woke groggy, to the sound of Alex slapping her hand on my bedroom door.

  “Wake up Paris. It’s time to get up. Go take a shower. Tom will be here soon. It’s nine o’clock.”

  I didn’t need the time tick; I could see the sun. I’d slept nearly five hours, and in the Army, it would have been enough. However, I hadn't suffered sleep deprivation for a long time, and the events of the early morning had come with a price. I felt like shit.

  “All right. All right. I’m getting up.” I yelled through the door.

  I stumbled to the chair on which I kept my robe, and made my uncertain way to the bathroom.

  One hot shower and a shave later, I managed to walk with some confidence down to the kitchen. I needed some caffeine and carbohydrates.

  Entering the kitchen, I discovered that Alex, God bless her, had made pancakes. I wolfed down a plate full, heavily laden with syrup and butter, and sat back with a steaming cup of black coffee. Alex was somewhere in the front of the house, so I called out to her. “Has Tom called?”

  She didn’t answer for a few minutes, and I was about to call again, when she walked into the kitchen.

  “No, he hasn’t called, but he said he’d be here early, and if he left this morning, he could arrive at any time.”

  “Do we have enough food, snacks and stuff, to feed him?”

  “I hope so. We certainly won’t be able to get anything on Sunday in Jamestown. I was hoping you would barbeque some steaks. I‘ll make a salad and the trimmings. How about a good bottle of wine from the wine cellar?”

  “Good idea. Where’s the key?”

  “I left it in the desk in the study.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  I went to the study and retrieved the key from the desk.

  Descending to the basement, I looked around for the door to the wine cellar. It wasn’t visible. I vaguely remembered the area where Alex had indicated the door was, but when I searched closely, I couldn’t find it.

  About to give up and yell for help, I spied a small opening in the wall. I looked at the key, and compared it to the hole. It didn’t look like it would fit, but I tried it anyway.

  The key seemed to sink into the wall, and I could feel it fit into the mechanism. I turned the key, and a section of the wall swung out to reveal the space behind it.

  The space looked like a medium sized walk-in closet. Racked against all three walls were rows of bottles.

  I walked in to browse the racks, and toward the back wall, my foot struck something that rattled. I couldn’t see clearly in the darkened interior of the closet, so I felt around on the walls, and my hand found a light switch. I turned on the light, and knelt to examine what’d made the noise.

  In the light, I saw two cases of bottles in cartons. I checked the labels and was delighted to discover that the cases contained beer, not just any beer, but Blackened Voodoo beer.

  Blackened Voodoo was a specialty beer made by a company in New Orleans. I'd been to New Orleans on leave in the Army and had developed a taste for the brew. It was one of my favorites.

  The company’s brewery had been damaged by the hurricane. Finding the beer anywhere was hard. Discovering two full cases of it was like stumbling across a gold mine. I wondered how Dad had managed it.

  I decided that I didn’t care, so I took out one of the cartons, thought again, and then removed another. I closed and locked the wine cellar, and memorized its location.

  I carried the two precious cartons of beer to the kitchen. “Hey Alex, look what I found!"

  “What’s that?”

  “Beer, and not just any beer, Blackened Voodoo.” I open the refrigerator, and put the cartons in to chill.

  “Black – what?”

  “Not black-what, Blackened Voodoo. It’s a beer made in New Orleans. It’s really hard to find.” I checked the refrigerator’s temperature setting, and turned it down a notch. “Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  “If you say so...” She sounded dubious.

  “I’ll set the steaks to marinating. The beer will go good with them.”

  I prepared the marinade sauce, put the meat in it, and set it in the refrigerator. Then I took three large glasses with handles from the cupboard and put them in the freezer. They weren’t beer mugs, but they would have to do. As soon as I closed the refrigerator, there was a knock on the front door. Alex was busy with the salad makings, so I went into the living room and opened the door.

  “Hey, Tom. Glad you could make it. Come on in. How was the trip?”

  He came and looked around. “Great. It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Yeah, we’ve had sun for a week. It’s unusual for Kentucky. Pretty soon, the farmers will start worrying about drought. Come into the kitchen. There’s a fresh pot of coffee waiting.”

  We moved to the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table. Alex was at the sink, cutting cucumbers and tomatoes for the salad. She turned when we walked in, and smiled. “Hi, Tom.”

  “Alex, what’s up?”

  “Just making a salad for lunch. We’re having steak, baked potatoes, and salad.”

  “Maybe if we get done early enough, we can head to the lake for a swim,” I said.

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.” Tom looked disappointed.

  “No problem, I'll find something to fit you. Later, at lunch, I have a treat, Blackened Voodoo beer.”

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  I snorted. “Hah. Peasants. Both of you. Blackened Voodoo is just the best beer made in New Orleans, that’s all.”

  “He’s been like this all morning,” Alex said. “I’d pray for his sanity if he had any. I hope it’s as good as he says it is, otherwise, if we don’t like it, he’ll be sulking all afternoon.”

  Tom laughed. “Well, if we plan to hit the lake, I suppose I’d better get right on the computer. This could take a while.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  He walked to the hallway. “I need to get some things from my car.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you in the study, and I’ll have the computer up and running.”

  Tom shook his head. “No, don’t turn it on, I need to boot it from a CD, so I’ll have to set it up first.”

  Changing my mind, I followed Tom to his car, where he removed a briefcase from the front seat. We went back to the house. “Did you have a wind storm here?”

  He pointed to the severed branch laying on the ground and the splintered stub on the tree.

  I gave a noncommittal shrug and didn’t say anything, but I decided to clear up the evidence as soon as I could.

  In the study, he removed a CD from the briefcase.

  I noticed it was plain, without any writing on it. He powered the computer on, and with a few keystrokes prevented the operating system from running.

  He changed the boot sequence in the computer, setting the CD as the first priority. He slipped the apparently blank CD into the drive, and rebooted the computer.

  As he worked, he explained, “This CD has some programs on it that I got from one of my hacker friends. It depends on how recently the computer has been updated as to which program will be the most effective. I’ll keep trying until one of them is able to mesh with the system, and then the real work begins. The trick is to hack the system without making it inoperable.”

  He worked steadily. The process took time, because each time a program failed to produce the desired results, he had to reboot and start all over again. After a while, I became bored just sitting and watching, so I went to the kitchen to find Alex.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window. I sat down across from her. “He’s still working, it’s going slow.”

  She turned to study me. “Paris, I heard the gunshot last night, what did you do? Did you...”

  “Shoot them? No. I – uh – persuaded them to relocate, as in northern Tennessee. I gave them a ride to encourage them.”

>   Her eyes grew wide. “How did you... no, I don’t want to know. Did they say anything about who they were, or what they were doing here?”

  “No, but I learned something from what they did and didn’t say. I’ve got the man’s wallet. It has his identification, which happens to be false. At least he said it was. I still plan to check. But what I did learn is very interesting.”

  Alex frowned. “Define interesting.”

  “Well, the first and most important thing is that they apparently cannot come near the house without experiencing severe pain.”

  Her eyes opened in amazement. “What? Are you sure? That’s weird. What’s so special about the house?”

  “I don’t know, but that leads to my second suspicion. I think that last night they were trying to overcome or reverse whatever aspect of the house prevents them from entering it.”

  She shivered and stood up as though wanting to bolt. “That’s just scary. That means they want to get in, and the only reason they would want to do that, is to get to us.”

  I made calming gestures with my hands. “Not necessarily. If they wanted to harm us, they could wait until we leave the house. No, I think they want something that’s inside the house.”

  Alex moved aimlessly around the kitchen. “Whatever could be here that would be so important to them?”

  “It’s a big house. We haven’t checked every part of it. We've already found something in a place that we certainly weren’t expecting. Remember the dispatch case? I haven’t gotten a clue as to what that something could be, but the concept fits with what I have been able to learn. There’s something else. I don’t understand it, but when I asked the woman who they were and who sent them, she said that their minds had been imprinted. She said that they were physically incapable of telling me anything.”

  Alex stopped moving and stared at me. “Is that like brainwashing or something?”

  “No, I know a lot about interrogation techniques from my Army training. You can break a person, and get him to tell you anything, but it takes a long time and a lot of pain, and frequently the information is worthless. Most of the nonsense you read in books or see in the movies is bullshit. I’ve heard of imprinting, but it’s usually associated with animal behaviors, and it has nothing to do with preventing someone from revealing information under interrogation. This woman acted like a robot at times. It was bizarre.”

  Hers eyes strayed to the hallway. “Well, where did they come from? Do they have a car parked around here somewhere? Maybe we can break into it, and find out who they are.”

  “According to the woman, they were driven here and dropped off. That means we’re dealing with more than just those two, and it also means that there’s some organization behind it.”

  She grimaced. “Thanks. That makes me feel real secure,” she said sarcastically. “Couldn’t you have lied? Now, I’ll be looking over my shoulder at every stranger.”

  “So will I, Sis. I have a feeling that this isn’t over, and I can’t predict what’s going to happen next. So, looking over your shoulder may be a good idea for a time. What I do know is that we need help. We need answers, and I‘m hoping that damn computer will supply some of them.”

  She walked to the hallway. “Speaking of that damned computer. I think I should go and see how Tom’s doing. I need to talk to him anyway.”

  “Good. You do that. Meanwhile, I want to go outside and remove some evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “A tree branch.”

  Alex gave me an uncertain look and headed to the study, while I went to the tool shed.

  I found the tree saw, and walked out to the front yard. I trimmed the splintered branch close to the tree, and carried both the stub and the branch back to the barn, where I piled both pieces on the brush-pile. I realized that if the cops looked hard, they’d find the evidence, but it was my farm, and if they wanted to look, they would need a search warrant. I went back to the study to join Alex and Tom.

  “How’s it going, guys?”

  “Slow,” Alex replied, “I don’t know how Tom can be so patient.”

  “Well,” he said, “you have to keep trying. Hackers are very patient. Sooner or later something clicks, and then there’s the ‘aha’ moment. That’s when everything drops into place, and you know just what to do. Your father was very computer savvy. He protected the machine very well. None of the old exploits have worked, and I’m about to try the newest techniques I know of. If these don’t work, then the problem’s going to become more complex.”

  He booted the machine again and typed a few commands. Then he checked a list of program names until he found the one he wanted. He typed some more commands and ran the program. “Aha,” he said.

  “Tom, you deliberately waited until I came into the room to do that.”

  “I did not.” He sounded indignant.

  I grinned. “Did too.”

  Tom gestured to the keyboard. “Anyway, all this is going to let me do is create a new administrator account. Now the hard part begins.”

  “It gets harder?”

  He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. “Yes, I’ll be able to view the list of user names, but not the passwords. The passwords are up to you and Alex. You knew your father. You two are the only ones who would have a chance of guessing his password. Otherwise, the passwords have a hundred and twenty-eight bit encryption. It could take years to break them. ”

  He rebooted the computer, but this time, allowed the system to start normally. He entered the new administrator name, and the new administrator password. He opened the user account manager, and we all stared at the list of user names that were displayed.

  antique lady

  French Tart

  Shadow Master

  shining bright

  ranger officer

  Historians Quest

  Administrator

  I mentally groaned. Dad had been creative with words. “Alex, do you recognize any of these names?” I asked, after reading the list.

  “That’s mine,” she said, pointing to one of the names in the list, “'antique lady'. Dad gave me a power user account. I can do everything but get into his files and modify the computer. You should have one here, too. Dad created one for you in case you needed to use the machine. There should be one for Mom, but all the rest, I don’t know.”

  I thought for a moment. “Let’s see, ‘ranger officer’ that’s the name I use on my home computer, I’ll bet that the password’s the same. I gave it to him. What’s Mom’s user name?”

  Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, ‘French Tart‘? Was Mom from France? No, that doesn’t sound right. Dad never used anything like that when referring to Mom. How about ‘shining bright’? That sounds more like Mom.”

  “Okay, ‘shining bright’ for Mom, so that leaves four names...”

  “The Administrator account is the one I restored, but who’s Shadow Master?” Tom asked.

  I glanced at Alex. She shrugged again. “Beat’s me. Maybe Dad was into computer games.” She looked at Tom.

  “One way to find out,” he said, “let’s see which name is the administrator account.” He opened a new screen in which was displayed the details of the accounts. “According to this, ‘shining bright’ is the computer administrator. All the others are power users.”

  I was surprised. After everything that’d happened, I’d expected the Shadow Master account to be the administrator. To discover that the computer was keyed to the account name that we assumed was Mom's didn’t make sense. Could it be that Dad was a lot more subtle than I’d supposed?

  “I haven’t got a clue.” I said.

  “Me either. Let’s break for lunch,” Alex said. “Paris, you get the gas grill fired up, and I’ll finish the fixings.”

  “Great, I’ll check to see if the beer is cold enough. Come on, Tom. Let’s go outside and do the man stuff.”

  He laughed. “Man burns steaks.”

  Alex glared at me. “He’d bett
er not. I like mine pink inside.”

  “Hey, I’m a good cook. You guys have no faith.” I opened the refrigerator and checked the bottles of beer. They were not as cold as I would have liked, but they would do. “Here everyone, have a beer.”

  “I’ll wait until lunch is ready,” Alex said.

  “Okay –. Tom?”

  He examined the bottles with a dubious look. “I’ll try it.”

  I opened two bottles and gave one to Tom. I reached into the freezer compartment and removed two of the now frosty cold glasses. We took the beer and the glasses outside to the grill.

  I carefully poured my bottle into the glass, and took a drink. Ah. Just as I’d remembered it.

  I anxiously looked at Tom while he sampled his glass. “Well?”

  “I ordinarily don’t like dark beer, but this is damn good. I wonder what’s in it.”

  I took another pull and sighed. “Voodoo magic! Seriously, I think it’s got chicory in it.”

  “Well, who would have thought?” Tom said.

  I checked the propane bottle on the grill, opened the valves, and lit the burners. They seemed to burn properly, so I shut it off.

  I left Tom sitting with his beer, and went back to the kitchen to get the steaks. While I removed the meat from the refrigerator, I spoke in a whisper to Alex. “How much do you think we should tell him?”

  “I don’t know. – He’s a really generous guy. – If we tell him too much, he’ll insist on helping us, and if we’re really in some kind of danger, he will be too...It’s a hard decision. – Maybe, just tell him about the problem of who our parents are. – Why don’t we just play it by ear?”

  “I agree. Okay, nothing about shadows, or any stupid crap like that. He’ll think we're crazy. Agreed?”

  She nodded.

  We took the food out to the back porch table. Alex returned to the kitchen to get the plates and silverware, and laid them on the table. I fired up the burners on the grill and removed the steaks from the marinade. I laid the meat on the grill, and adjusted the flame. “Okay, Alex do you want your beer now?”

  “Well, I don’t know...”

  “Take a drink from my glass, and see how you like it. If you don’t want any after that, I won’t push it.”

  She sipped a little from my beer, and frowned. Then her expression changed and she smiled. “Hey, that’s good.”

  “I’ll get you one.”

  “No, I’ll just finish your glass, you can open another one.”

  I flipped the steaks over, and went back to get another beer. I returned to the porch and continued tending the steaks. “So, Tom, what’s so important about the passwords on the computer?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

  He barked a laugh. “You don’t fool me. What’s on that computer that has you so anxious? I’ll tell you this, your father placed a shit load of data on that machine, and he used a kick-ass encryption program to protect it. Why would he do that? He definitely didn’t want anyone who didn’t know the passwords to be able to read it.”

  I cringed inside. We’d have to tell him something. “So, you think the computer password will unlock the data?”

  “That’s my best guess. You know, this started because the computer was acting slowly? Well, it’s slow because it’s packed with tens of thousands of files, to the point where there’s little disk space. That’s a lot of data.”

  “Well, Dad was a researcher, and a college professor. I imagine he collected a lot of data about his work...”

  “Okay, but why encrypt it? Come on Paris, you’ve got to do better than that.”

  I looked at Alex. She shrugged. I turned to Tom. “I’ll be honest with you, we don’t know. In fact, we didn’t know it was encrypted until you told us. The reasons we need to look at the data are complicated.”

  “Paris, I want to help you guys. I don’t want to pry, but, unless I know what we’re looking for, I don’t know how to help.”

  I forked the steaks off the grill and put them on a serving platter. “Let’s eat while we talk.”

  We loaded up our plates and commenced to eat.

  “Mmmh, good steak,” Alex said.

  “Thank you, madam, just one of my famous culinary delights.”

  Tom finished a bite. “It is good. Now, about the computer?”

  “One track mind. Alex, can you tell him about our parental problems?”

  She threw an annoyed look at me, and turned to Tom. “Okay, Tom it’s like this, we ran across some documents that seem to indicate the woman we thought was our mother was not our mother – birth mother that is – it’s so complicated. We both know she was our mother. Neither of us could have loved her more. But, – if she wasn‘t our birth mother, then why? Why didn‘t they tell us? It wouldn‘t have made the slightest bit of difference in the way we felt about her.”

  “Oh. That's hard. To have that happen after they passed away – I can’t imagine how you felt.”

  I interrupted. “Devastated is a good word. But, there’s more. We both inherited a large amount of money, money that we never knew our father had. I’m worried, now more than ever, that the money is tainted. Dad’s lawyer swears that the funds are legitimate, but why go to such extreme lengths to hide the data that might prove it? So, you see, we have an overwhelming need to look at the data on that computer.”

  Tom looked down at his plate. “Sorry guys. Sorry I was so insensitive of your feelings. I should have known better.” He raised his head and looked at me. “Paris, you’re one of the good guys at the company and Alex,” his head swung to her, “I can’t begin to describe how much I respect and admire you. It’s just that when I saw how that computer was protected, – well you don’t see that kind of thing, unless the person who owns it has a shit load of secrets to hide. Something like a mob boss who doesn’t want the Feds to put him in jail. It‘s not something you ordinarily see on a home computer.”

  “That’s interesting. That makes it more important than ever to know what’s in it.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Alex said. “This subject is too depressing.”

  We spent the remainder of the time eating lunch and making small talk. Tom and I had another beer, but Alex declined. “If we’re going to the lake, someone has to be the designated driver.”

  After lunch, we went back to the study. Tom sat at the computer while Alex and I hovered around him.

  “So, where do we go from here?” I asked.

  “We’ve got to be careful,” he replied. “This encryption program is designed to wipe out the data if it thinks that someone is trying to hack it. It’s going to provide limited chances to access it. I don’t know how many tries you’ll get. It’s better to have an idea of what password to enter before you attempt it. Why don’t we start with passwords we know?”

  “I know my password works,” Alex said. “Why don’t we try yours?” She looked at me.

  “Okay, Tom, enter my user name and password.” I repeated it to him.

  He switched users, and entered the password. The computer changed to a new screen, this one had a photograph in the background. It was one of my old Army pictures with me in uniform, holding an M–16.

  Tom browsed through the computer icons, looking for files.

  “Not much here,” he said, “just some CAD drawings.”

  “CAD files? I never put CAD files on this computer. I wonder what they’re doing here.”

  “What’s a CAD file?” Alex asked.

  “They’re drawings, designs, plans – whatever. They’re used to construct or manufacture something. CAD stands for computer aided design. Open one of them,” I said to Tom.

  “The program that opens these files is not installed. Your workstation might open them, but they won’t open on this computer.”

  Okay, let’s make a copy of the files, and I’ll load them up later on the workstation.”

  He made a copy of the files on a compact disk, and we laid it aside. We turned our attention to the remaining u
ser names.

  Tom quietly studied the screen. “I don’t think we should tackle the administrator password right now, but we need to figure out how to access the three remaining users, and I have an idea.”

  “And that is?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen this kind of trick before. Notice how some of the other user names are spelled with capital letters? With encryption software like this, you have to be careful that you embed clues as to what the passwords are. That way, if you forget a password, you can recreate it from the clues. The capital letters are the clues. You either rearrange the letters to spell out the password, or the letters are the initial letters of the password. It’s hard to guess, unless you know something about the person who set this up. That’s where you two come in, you knew more about your family than anyone else.”

  He wrote the letters on a clean sheet of paper.

  FTSMHQ

  “Humm,” Alex said, “no vowels.”

  “That’s normal,” Tom replied. “You have to mentally insert the vowels.”

  “Okay, let’s start with French Tart.

  We started playing around with the letters, trying different combinations, but nothing seemed to fit with what we knew or more accurately, what we suspected, was the subject of the user name.

  “Damn. This is frustrating.” I said. “Why don’t we give up and start with the next one?”

  “Wait a minute,” Alex said. “Tom, do we have to use all of the letters?”

  “No, definitely not. Remember, the combination was just to jog someone’s memory.”

  “Okay, try ‘fetish’.” She clutched the chain that draped around her neck.

  My eyes widened. “Yes, that’s got to be it.”

  Tom looked dubious. “Okay, we’ll try – fetish it is.”

  “No! Wait. Type it with a capital 'F'.”

  “You sure?” He looked at me suspiciously.

  “I'm sure.”

  He typed the password into the computer, and we waited expectantly while the machine cleared the screen. Soon the display changed to reveal a few icons on a plain background. We were in.

  “How did you guess that?” Tom asked. “No, never mind, it’s your business, I don’t need to know.”

  “It’s something Dad said,” I replied nervously, “he was obsessed by our mother.” It wasn’t a complete lie. He did say he was intoxicated. “Fetish also means obsession.” I looked at Alex. “Good guess, Sis.”

  We checked the data in the computer. There were hundreds of files in multiple directories.

  “Let’s make a copy of this,” I said. “We’ve got enough here to keep us busy for awhile. Maybe something in the house will give us a clue as to the passwords for the remaining users. Let‘s pack it in and hit the lake.”

  “Just be careful,” Tom said. “If you piss off this software, it won’t just kick you out. It’ll wipe the hard drive. And I mean wipe. It will destroy the data so that even the Feds can’t recover it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. How many chances will it give us to get the password right?”

  “One, maybe two, but don’t push it. If the computer starts behaving strangely, shut it off immediately. Don’t even try to power down, just pull the plug from the wall, and call me.”

  “Yes doctor Tom. Come on, let’s grab another beer since Alex is driving, and I’ll find you something to swim in.”

  We spent the remainder of the day at the lake, swimming and sunning at the docks. I spent a lot of time floating and swimming in the cool, clear water, while Alex and Tom talked.

  We ate dinner at the Marina Inn and talked about the gossip at work, Tom‘s band, and his musical career. After dinner and before the sun started dipping below the horizon, we drove back to the farm.

  I parked the car. “I had a good day.”

  “So did I,” Tom said, “It was good to get away from the city. I love the country –”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but while Tom and I were talking, he had an idea about the computer,” Alex said, “about one of the passwords, and I want to try it.”

  “It was something you said, Alex, not me.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “Well, she said that your dad used to say that ‘history is fated to repeat itself’. She also said that your dad talked a lot about fate, so I thought, fate uses two of the letters in the group, and it might be worth a try...”

  “What user do you suppose?”

  Alex interrupted. “The historian user.”

  We entered the house and went back to the study. We started the computer, and Alex and I stood aside to allow Tom to operate the machine. He entered his password into the machine, and after it stopped performing its unfathomable tasks, he switched users, and entered the ‘Historians Quest’ user name.

  “Okay, here we go,” he said, and typed in ‘fate’ for the password.

  The machine paused for a moment as if digesting this newest event, and then displayed a message. ‘Warning: Bad user name or password. Please reenter password. Computer will shut down in 60 seconds if the correct password is not entered.’ A timer appeared on the screen, and started counting backwards.

  “Damn!” Tom said. “If it shuts down, it may scramble the passwords, or substitute alternate passwords to prevent someone from hacking it. We’ve got a problem. This software is smart and vicious. We need to enter the correct password and do it quickly.”

  “If it’s not ‘fate’ then what is it? We need to think. Where‘s that paper you wrote the clues on?”

  I grabbed the paper and stared at the letter grouping. What combination of letters could possibly fit the ‘Historians Quest’ user name? I thought furiously. Fate seemed to fit with the name. I had heard Dad talk often about fate. Somehow it just seemed to be right, but if fate wasn’t the password, then what could it be? I looked at the screen. I grew panicky. Surely, a minute had passed while I was thinking. The screen showed thirty-four seconds remaining, and the seconds clicked down. Alex removed the sheet from my hand and stared at it intently.

  “Okay, what have we got uh – fate, fated, – no – there’s no ‘D’ in the list. ‘Fate – fates, humm – fates? That uses three of the letters. Let’s try ‘fates’”

  I stared at the screen, momentarily paralyzed. The timer displayed fourteen seconds.

  “What ever we’re going to do, we better do it now.” Tom snarled.

  “Enter the password,” I said calmly.

  Tom entered the password with nine seconds on the display. We held our breath. The display paused. It seemed to hang in suspended animation for an eternity. Finally, it cleared, and a normal screen with normal icons appeared.

  Tom let out the breath he’d been holding with a sigh. “Damn. That was close. All that work would have been wasted, down the drain.”

  “I think we’d better be more careful in the future,” I agreed shakily. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Tom scanned the previously unreadable directories and whistled. “Now, I know why we started this in the first place,” he said, “the internet traffic files are clogging up the machine. There’s something like thirty thousand files on the drive.”

  He examined the other directories on the computer. “There are some files on this directory that seem to be data and some word processing files. It looks like your father was doing some type of research.”

  “So, what do we do next?” I asked.

  “Well, there’s too much here to tackle now. I can delete the internet files. That will make the computer run faster, but before I do, I want to make a copy of them and clone the computer. I have some software at home that can trace your father’s actions to see what he was interested in. – That is if you want me to, I don’t want to pry. – Do you want me to do that?”

  I looked at Alex. She nodded. “Yes, please. I think we would both like to know.”

  “I think we could all use a beer after this,” I said. “I know I could.”

  After the files had been copied
, and the computer shut down, we all sat around in the living room. Tom and Alex drank coffee while I nursed a beer.

  “I’ve got to leave soon. Otherwise, I’ll be real late getting back home. Unlike some people I could mention, I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

  “Huh. You think I’m not working? You should see the load Harvey piled on me. I think he‘s getting more work out of me here, than he would if I was back at the office. By the way, tell him that I’ve figured out a way to shave off about two-hundred grand from our costs. That will warm his larcenous heart, and get him off my back.”

  He laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell him – exactly what you said.”

  The conversation lagged.

  “Listen, you two, I don’t know what kind of problems you’re having, it’s none of my business. But, if you need some backup, just let me know.”

  “Thanks for the offer, Tom, we appreciate it, and thanks for all your help. We certainly couldn’t have done this by ourselves. As for involving you in our problems, it may be premature, but I will keep it in mind.”

  We loaded up Tom’s equipment. Alex gave him a smile and a chaste kiss on the cheek, they spoke a few words, and he drove back to Cincinnati.

  “What was that about?” I said to her, after he left.

  “Oh, I told him to give me a call when he knew the next date that the band was playing, and I’d be there.”

  “I thought you were going to tell him about Caesar.”

  “I did. Don’t worry. I know a lot of nice girls who are looking for guys. I plan to bring some of them with me, and I told Tom that I was interested in someone else. That’s how the subject of fate got started. It was just fate that Caesar and I met.”

  “You’re putting a lot of faith in a chance encounter.”

  She grinned. “I know. Isn’t it exciting?”

  I just shook my head and rolled my eyes. I would never understand women.

  We went back to the study.

  “I want to check out those CAD drawings.”

  “Okay, while you do that, I’ll browse through the files contained under the ‘French Tart’ name. They probably have something to do with the woman Dad wrote about.” I noticed that Alex carefully did not mention the words ‘mother’ or ‘birth'.”

  I grabbed the disk that contained the CAD files and sat down at the workstation. Powering up the machine, I loaded the files and checked them. They seemed to be generic CAD files, but they were very large. It was my experience that CAD files of that size contained a lot of detail.

  Checking the first of the smaller flies carefully, I recognized what I was seeing, an overview of the basement remodeling for the farmhouse.

  Laid out in layers, each layer contained the details of the construction of that particular layer.

  With all the layers visible, it looked like a confusion of crisscrossed lines and labels. I knew from experience I would have to hide the other layers, and examine each layer individually to understand the details of the construction.

  I wondered what feature of these plans could account for the size of the other files. I studied the layers, one by one.

  Most of them were normal plans for the framing and finish work, but one of them, the layer closest to the old walls of the basement, was plain. It depicted a false wall that was fastened to the original stonework of the basement walls. It contained no construction details, simply a reference to another set of drawings.

  I opened more of the referenced drawings, the large ones. One of them contained a detail of the false wall construction.

  I puzzled over the drawing as I studied it. The false wall seemed composed of multiple materials sandwiched together. I looked at the bill of materials which listed each layer and its specifications and then checked the detailed drawings for each layer. They were mind-blowing. I rose from my seat.

  “What the hell. Alex come and take a look at this.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got to see this, you won’t believe it. Hell, I don’t believe it.”

  She rose from the desk and came over to the workstation. She stared at the screen. ”Okay, I’m here. So, what am I looking at?”

  I sighed and sat back down. “I forgot. You don’t read engineering drawings.”

  I opened one of the drawings that depicted the construction details. “This is a drawing of the remodel of the basement of the house. At first glance, it looks like any other construction project. But look here.” I opened the layer showing the inner wall.

  “This portion shows something unusual. There’s an inner wall composed of several types of metals and in some cases, wood. They’re sandwiched together and applied to the original walls of the basement. Then the studs and paneling are added to that.”

  “So? What’s so unusual about that? Isn’t it some kind of insulation or water barrier?”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but then I looked at the detailed drawings for each layer. Check this out.” I opened the drawing that had startled me. There was a design embossed into the layer.

  “Does that design look familiar?”

  “Huh. I don’t know, I think I’ve seen it before. – Oh my god.” She reached into her blouse and pulled out her medallion. She stripped off the velvet jeweler’s bag, opened the locket and compared the design on the medallion to the one on the screen.

  “It looks like my medallion, but it’s not. The designs are different.”

  “That’s not all. The material that this layer is made of? – Its pure gold. It’s thin, but it must have cost a lot of money. In addition, each layer has a different design. Some of the designs seem to connect to the next design on the next layer. Not only that, but there are some metal rods attached to the layered wall, and they extend through the building supports right up to the roof. They’re also attached to the house wiring.”

  “What is it?” Alex asked.

  “I have never seen anything like it. –Remember when you told me Dad and the contractor argued about the remodeling? Now, I know why.”

  “What does it do?”

  “That’s a good question. I’ve got a suspicion, but if I’m right, I haven’t a clue as to how it works. Maybe there’s something in these files that will provide an answer.”

  “Speaking of the files, I’ve read a few of them. We were right. They concerned that woman that Dad knew.”

  “French Tart?”

  “Huh. French whore is more like it. Apparently, Dad hired private investigators to find out where this woman went. It seems they found several incidences where a woman of her description spread her legs for a man, and then each time, she disappeared. The other men were looking for her too.”

  “They had a description?”

  She bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “She was consistently described as a beautiful brunette woman with a French accent. She had amber eyes.”

  I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. “Looks like there’s no doubt then.”

  “Paris – it makes me ill to think that this – creature was our birth mother. Jenn – Mom – was our mother. Listen to me, I can‘t even call her by her proper name.”

  “Alex, that just proves your case. Genetics has nothing to do with being a mother. This French woman, Sybil, proves that. But, haven’t you wondered? I mean, Dad was fair-haired, but Mom had glossy black hair.”

  “Yes it was. It was blue-black, like Elizabeth's until it started to turn gray, and she had the deepest blue eyes. She was beautiful. She was wonderful. I loved her so much. I miss her.” She started to cry.

  “Alex, let’s make a bargain. Let’s agree to call Jennie mother, and this other woman Sybil. Then we’ll never mention it again. We’ll lock it away. Seal it in our hearts and in our minds. – Come on, – we can do that.”

  “You’re right,” she moaned, “but oh God. It hurts.”

  I put my arms around her and let her cry. We sat like that for a while, holding each other, until her crying abated.
r />   I got up, and brought over a box of tissues. “Here. It’s a good thing we stocked these around the house. I imagine we‘ll be using them often before this is over.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that it hits me – blind-sides me – every now and then.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, “it never really goes away. Elizabeth said that it gets easier with time. I hope she’s right, because I couldn‘t stand hurting like this for the rest of my life.”

  We sat in silence for a while.

  Finally, Alex spoke. “Paris, there's more in those files.”

  “What?”

  “It seems that this – Sybil, was dropping litters.”

  “What do you mean, litters?”

  “Well, not exactly litters, there was only one other set of twins, and they were both boys, but over a six year period of time she gave birth to an additional three other children – other than us, that is.”

  “Do you mean we might have five half brothers and sisters?”

  “Two half-brothers and three half-sisters.”

  “Oh hell, could this get any more complicated? Do the files say where they are, or what happened to them?”

  “The files are named in chronological order. I haven’t got that far yet, but Dad apparently had investigated this for some time. Some of the files are more recent.”

  I thought for a while. “Read the remainder of the files, I want to start on the Historian files, to see if there is anything that relates to the house.”

  We each settled to our tasks. I waded through the mass of files in search of a clue that might explain the weird construction in the basement.

  The files seemed to be related to ancient accounts of mysticism and folklore. There were several files on the druids, Norse gods, and pictures of ancient symbols. A whole directory was devoted to witches, wizards and tales of demonic possession. Several directories contained huge amounts of data on reports of people who had disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances, and speculation on the subject of the ‘Shadow People’.

  I decided to look at the pictures. I examined each of them. Some were actual pictures of runes and symbols found at archeological dig sites. Some were from books on Norse and English mythology, and some were from oriental mythology.

  Each appeared to have similar characteristics. If I combined elements from each of them, it would nearly equate to something I had already seen. Each of the pictures contained some, but not all, of the features in the designs that I had seen in the CAD drawings.

  I read the captions under the pictures. Most of the captions described designs that provided protection, a few talked about how the symbols were meant to ward away evil spirits, or provide barriers against possession.

  In my mind, the whole subject seemed ridiculous. Assuming that these symbols could do what they were purported to do, and assuming that the danger they were meant to deflect was real, what physical mechanism was involved in their power? No, the idea was a bunch of superstitious nonsense.

  Yet Dad, who I knew to be a levelheaded and skeptical man, had had these designs incorporated into the walls of his basement.

  “I’ve found something, Alex.”

  “So have I,” she replied.

  “What did you find?”

  “No, you go first, and then I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay, I think I may have an idea as to the meaning of the alterations that were made to the basement, but I haven’t any idea of how they might work, or if it’s just some screwy superstitious nonsense. Remember the crazy trespassers that I gave a free ride to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, remember when I said that the woman would not come near the porch?”

  “Vaguely,” she said.

  “In fact, when I tried to drag her to the porch, she damn near fainted. She fought me every step of the way. From what I’m seeing here, I think that the designs are meant to ward these people away and the weird construction is designed to amplify the warding effects. I don’t have a clue as to how that might work, it defies all known science and logic, but it seems to be effective. Alex, they can’t enter the house. Apparently, so long as we stay in the house, we’re safe. The same effects may apply to our medallions. Maybe that‘s why Dad wanted us to wear them.”

  “I hope so, because if what I’m reading is true, we’re going to need that protection.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember that I said we had five potential half brothers and sisters?”

  I nodded.

  “Dad apparently hired private investigators to keep tabs on them as they matured. – That is, until about ten years ago.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  “Because there was nothing to investigate. You see, about ten years ago, they started to disappear. They’ve simply gone, vanished into thin air, and no one can find them. –By the way, from their physical descriptions –they look remarkably like us.”