They

by J. F. Gonzalez

  When he arrived home he opened the garage door and pulled the car in, parking as far to the left as possible so Frank could ease his vehicle in. That had been Vince’s idea. If they were on to Frank he didn’t want them to find out where he was living. He made sure he wasn’t followed on the drive home, and he knew Frank would be even more wary. Therefore, when he closed the garage door behind them he felt a great sense of relief as it rattled down. Frank stepped out of his car, a tall silhouette in the darkened garage, long hair flowing down to his shoulders. He was brandishing a handgun. “Turn on the light.”

  “Jesus Christ, man!” Vince felt instantly nervous at the sight of the gun.

  “Just turn on the fucking lights!”

  Vince reached over and turned on the garage lights.

  Frank stood still for a moment, weapon ready. It was a two-car garage with no storage space above, but there was a small makeshift closet against the wall. He motioned to Vince with the gun. “Move out of the way,” he said, as he stepped forward and swung the door open.

  Vince almost jumped, as if expecting something to leap out at them. Frank inspected the closet quickly. The storage space was empty.

  “Okay,” Frank said, motioning for Vince to follow him. “Stay behind me and be quiet.”

  He followed Frank into his house, heart racing madly as the formidable figure crept silently through the house, opening closets stealthily, checking out available hiding places. They covered the kitchen, the downstairs bathrooms, the living room, den, and dining room. Then they headed upstairs, Frank looking more like an undercover narcotics agent than a science-fiction writer paranoid that some shadowy organization was about to kill him. He moved with precision and stealth, his body flattened against the wall as he swung open doors to bedrooms, checked under beds, looked in closets. Finally, when all the rooms had been checked and cleared, Frank relaxed. They were in the second floor hallway. He flipped the safety on and stuck the handgun in his jacket. “We’re cool. Now I gotta pee.”

  “Me too,” Vince said. He pointed downstairs. “There’s a bathroom downstairs. I’m going to get out of these clothes. Feel free to make yourself at home.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said, heading downstairs.

  Vince went into his bedroom, relieved himself in the master bathroom, and then shed his work clothes quickly. He left his clothes on the bed and rummaged around in a dresser for a pair of shorts and a tank top. He found a pair, donned them, and gave his appearance a quick glance in the mirror. His face looked flushed, his eyes slightly wild looking, but that was to be expected under the circumstances. He’d just learned some pretty hideous things today. Whether they were one hundred percent true still remained to be seen, but the adrenaline running through his body was a sure sign that Frank’s story had affected him physically. It felt like his nerves were alive, squirming under his skin.

  When he went downstairs he found Frank sitting on the cream colored sofa in the living room. Vince headed toward the kitchen. “Anything to drink?”

  “Water would do,” Frank said.

  “Evian okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  Vince got two bottles of Evian out of the refrigerator and carried them into the living room. He handed one to Frank, who twisted the cap off and drank deeply. Vince sank into a plush seat by the sofa and twisted the cap off his bottle. They relaxed for a moment, lost in the sounds of peaceful silence. There was a light summer breeze blowing through the living room window, and it felt nice to just chill out for a little bit. If it had been any other day Vince would have just been content to lay here and let his mind drift, letting his body relax limb by limb, muscle by muscle, until he could feel his mind detaching itself from his body. But that wasn’t going to be the case today. His mind was so cluttered with what he’d learned that he didn’t know if he’d be able to sleep.

  “So what do we do now?” Vince asked.

  Frank didn’t look at him as he answered. “I’ve sent my wife and kids away. I made the arrangements two days ago.”

  Vince looked at him, astonished that he’d taken such steps.

  “Brandy knew something was getting heavy. She knew it had something to do with my mother, with what Mike and I were investigating. And up until two days ago she was good about giving me my space. She’s what any man who makes his living as a writer can ask for.” Frank smiled. “She’s a good woman.”

  Vince sat calmly, waiting for him to go on.

  “Two days ago when I knew we were going to contact you, I told her everything I found out. Naturally, she was horrified. Then I called her mother and told her everything. Her reaction was naturally the same as her daughter’s. The three of us talked, and I told them that the best thing for them until this was over was for me to send Brandy and the kids to her mother’s and have Wendy make arrangements to get them out of California. So that’s what we did. We packed up, and I drove them to Wendy’s that night and saw them off. And believe me, it was hard.”

  Vince could only imagine. For a moment Laura’s features swam to the surface of his mind again and he saw himself in Frank’s situation. Up against a secret organization that knows you exist, that knows you’re aware of their secrets and can kill you at the push of a button. If he were in Frank’s shoes he wouldn’t be that concerned for himself; he’d be more concerned for his wife.

  “I have no idea where they are now,” Frank said. He took another hearty drink of water, set the bottle down on the end table by the sofa and sighed. He leaned back into the comfort of the sofa and crossed his legs. “I know they’re safe. Wendy is keeping my literary agent informed as to what’s happening and I’m getting the news from Peter, who’s sort of acting as a message hub for the whole thing. Peter has no idea what’s going on. He thinks Brandy and I split up.”

  “So what do we do tonight?” Vince asked.

  Frank looked at him. “We make a plan of action.”

  THEY MET MIKE Peterson in the back booth of a Round Table Pizza Parlor, located in the Mission Viejo Mall.

  Frank called him from Vince’s living room around four that afternoon and they spoke briefly. Vince busied himself in the kitchen, running last evening’s dishes through the dishwasher and tidying up. When Frank was finished he walked over to the breakfast bar. “Mike wants to meet you. Tonight.”

  “Fine.” He wanted to meet Mike Peterson as well.

  “He’ll back up everything I’ve told you. And if you’re up to it, we’d all like to fly out to Pennsylvania as soon as possible.”

  “What for?”

  “To do more checking.”

  “On whether my mother was involved with The Children of the Night?”

  “No,” Frank said, downing the rest of his Evian. “To find out why they’re trying to get back in touch with you. Mike wants you to tell him what happened at the airport, too.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”

  “Yeah, I did. He was just as surprised as I was. He didn’t think they would take such drastic measures. He says what happened to you at the airport isn’t part of their M.O.”

  A chill went through Vince’s spine but he tried not to show it as he put the remainder of last week’s dishes in the dishwasher. He closed the dishwasher, flipped the switch, and started the load. “Do you think…that whoever it was that tried to kill me and Tracy wasn’t…that they weren’t part of The Children of the Night?”

  “I don’t know.” Frank leaned his tattooed arms on the breakfast bar. “But they’re involved somehow. You’re having these dreams for a reason. And you’re remembering your past for reasons that go beyond the traditional Satanic Ritual Abuse syndrome.”

  “You mean there’s a technical term for people like us?”

  Frank grinned. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fortunately, ninety percent of those cases are outright frauds. Therapists planting false memories in the fragile minds of their patients to make a quick buck. The sad thing is these people seriously undermine the real threat that’s out there.”


  “That groups like The Children of the Night are really involved in stuff like this?”

  Frank nodded.

  Vince leaned on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, facing Frank. He was beginning to get hungry, and their rendezvous with Mike was only forty minutes away. “You know, I’m glad you said that because for a moment I thought I was caught in a bad dream.”

  “What do you mean?” Frank asked.

  “Well, I’ve heard stories about Satanic Ritual Abuse before,” Vince began. “And to tell you the truth, I just dismissed it as something unsubstantiated. There was a case here in Mission Viejo in the late eighties when a pair of sisters sued their parents for abuse they claimed to have suffered at their hands when they were forced to participate in satanic rituals. One of the sisters claimed she was a breeder for Satan. She said she bore three children, all of who were killed a few days after they were born in ritual sacrifices. She claimed to have vivid memories of this; both of them did.”

  “The case was thrown out of court,” Frank said, with the all-knowing sense of one who has done his homework.

  “Right,” Vince said. “At the request of the defense, both women were examined by psychiatrists and other medical experts. The sister who claimed that she’d been a breeder was examined by a gynecologist who testified there were no signs that she’d ever given birth.” He shook his head. “So when you showed up today and started on this thing, I was prepared to chalk your story up to something for the tabloids. But the thing that kept me from dismissing it is that—”

  “You remember.”

  “That’s right,” The memories flashed through his mind. “I remember. And I know for a fact that nobody planted any memories in my mind. These things started before Laura was killed. Hell, they started intensifying in their imagery before I even started therapy.”

  “The question that now remains is the one I posed before,” Frank said. “Why are we having these dreams now, and why does it seem that these people—whoever the hell they are—seem to be coming back for us?”

  They looked at each other across the breakfast bar. Finally Vince answered that question with the best answer he could summon up. “I don’t know.”

  They left the house five minutes later for their meeting with Mike.

  Mike Peterson was already seated in a back booth when they arrived. There were two families seated at tables in the front of the restaurant; aside from that, the place was empty. Mike had already ordered a pitcher of Iced Tea, and as Frank and Vince stepped into the corner booth, obscured by shadows and lit by shaded lamps that hung from the wall, he saw Mike Peterson was a middle-aged man who appeared to be in reasonably good health. He was dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt with the words Palm Springs stitched across the chest, and white sneakers. His graying blond hair was swept back over his head, making no effort to conceal the bald spot that had taken root at the cap of his forehead. His eyes were blue and sparkled with a sense of wariness as he regarded Vince.

  After introductions were made, the men sat down at the table. Mike got down to business immediately. “How do you feel about all this, Vince?”

  Vince shrugged. “Overwhelmed is the best way to describe it.”

  Mike nodded. “Frank felt that way, too. So did I. The important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It’s okay to think what Frank has told you is something paranoid, something that couldn’t happen. It’s a normal reaction. You wouldn’t be human if you felt otherwise.”

  Vince thought that was a strange thing to say. You wouldn’t be human otherwise. But he kept quiet about it and let Mike continue.

  “Before we go on,” Mike said, trading glances between Frank and Vince. “Does anybody want anything to eat?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. He rose to his feet and clapped Vince on the back. “How ’bout we order some chow?”

  “Great.” Vince got up and followed the two men to the front counter of the pizza parlor. His stomach was rumbling; he hadn’t eaten all day.

  They put in their order—a large deep-dish pizza with pepperoni and olives—and returned to their corner booth. Mike introduced himself to Vince more formally and gave him his background.

  He explained that he was a retired high school history teacher. The reason he’d become involved in this was simple: Jesse Black, Frank’s natural father, had been his best friend. They’d grown up together in El Paso, Texas, had even gone to college together, served in the military. Then Jesse had moved to California where the job prospects in computer engineering were in their infancy stages. Jesse had earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics, and the most he could have gotten on the employment ladder in Texas would have been teaching high school math. “Jesse was more ambitious than that,” Mike explained as they waited for their order. “So he moved to California in 1960, landed a job as a Computer Operator at an insurance company. He met Gladys Silva in 1962, they were married the following year, and Frank was born the year after that.” Frank remained unemotional as Mike gave Vince the brief history lesson. “For the first three years of their marriage, all appeared normal. At least on the surface.”

  Mike turned to Frank. “Are you sure you can hear all this?”

  “You’re talking to a guy who once wrote a scene in a horror novel about a man who was pulled through a quarter-inch drainpipe,” Frank said, waving for Mike to go on. “I’m fine with it. Really.”

  The trouble was, Vince didn’t feel one hundred percent fine with it. It was already gearing up to be grim. Mike Peterson continued: “By this time I was living out here as well, in Anaheim. I was married, and my son was born two months after Frank. In fact, I was in Jesse’s wedding, along with another old buddy of ours who’d also moved out to the West Coast. A guy by the name of John Llama. Anyway, the three of us were so busy back then with raising our families and getting started on our careers; John was a lawyer and had just gotten a job at a pretty prestigious firm downtown; I was teaching; Jesse was working his way up the corporate ladder. Our wives were able to stay home and raise the kids, be housewives. Back then it was financially possible for young wives to stay at home and raise kids while the husbands worked.” He paused, as if coming across the first rocky bump of the narrative that would take him down to hell. “Jesse didn’t tell me anything about what happened between him and Gladys, what caused her to…do what she later did. He didn’t tell me anything until years later. In fact, what I’m going to tell you is what John and I have been able to piece together throughout the years, with the help of Frank’s aunt Diane, Jesse’s sister.” He paused again, choosing his words carefully. “It seems that at some time when Frank was between the ages of one and two, Gladys met a group of people that we can simply call ‘hippies’.”

  Vince was nodding slowly through all this, listening carefully. Mike continued: “Gladys had some emotional problems before she and Jesse were married. That was all Jesse confided in me. Her mother had been an alcoholic, her father wasn’t much better; buried himself in his work to escape the mother’s drinking. Needless to say, there’s probably more that went on in that household that Jesse didn’t let on. With what we know about dysfunctional households, there was probably a great deal of abuse that went on. I’m sure Gladys suffered quite a bit of it. How much, we’ll never know. But Jesse loved her, and he was determined to do everything he could to make her life better for her and Frank. He started working longer hours so he could afford to move his growing family to a small house in Hawthorne. It was at this point that John and I assumed that Gladys met the hippies—and I’m sorry to use that term, because that’s the only word I can think of to describe them.”

  “They were hippies,” Frank said, taking a sip of iced tea. “It was the sixties. They were fucking hippies.”

  Mike nodded, a slight smile on his features creasing his face at Frank’s outburst. “Okay, they were hippies. Maybe they weren’t normal hippies—the kind that were largely benevolent, into the peace and love movement and all that pacifist bul
lshit. But they surely dressed like them. John and I think they might have lived next door to Jesse and Gladys and were nothing more than college kids. Gladys would have had a lot of time on her hands during the day and through most early evenings.” He glanced at Frank. “Frank himself doesn’t remember any of this period, but from what we’ve been able to gather, the hippies turned Gladys on to LSD and pot. They also introduced her to some weird spiritual stuff that probably didn’t amount to much at the time, but which soon got worse. Did Frank tell you about The Children of the Night?”

  Vince nodded.

  “We think they may have been early members. Of course, everything they involved her in was drug related and mixed with some of their teachings. Whatever it was, it was attractive to Gladys. She began neglecting Frank, and Jesse noticed quickly. This led to fights between them. Jesse’s mother, who used to fly out from El Paso frequently to visit, tried to help out. She was very troubled by it. At one point, Jesse took Frank to his in-laws during a brief separation.” A slight grin cracked Mike Peterson’s features. “Jesse didn’t care much for Gladys’ folks, but he also didn’t think her mother was that bad. Maybe she wasn’t. He certainly seemed to trust them with Frank more then he trusted his own wife.”

  Vince and Frank waited while Mike drank some iced tea. “To make a long story short they reconciled, moved out of the house and bought a place. I remember that house. It was in Gardena, right off Sepulveda and Vermont. It was a small two-bedroom place and the garage had been converted into a den. A nice place for a young couple to get a start. Jesse had been promoted to shift supervisor by then and was still working a lot. But he was doing it to build a nest egg for him and Gladys. He said they wanted another child.”

  He stopped at this point, his eyes flicking to Frank as if dreading to go on. Frank nodded at him, encouraging him. Frank’s features were stony, almost cold, with a faint underlying of dread.

  “Jesse tried to keep things going as normal as possible, but the influence of Gladys’ friends was strong. They kept showing up when Jesse was working, and it was then that she began having affairs.” He cleared his throat, looking down at the table. “Sometimes she would engage in sex in Frank’s presence.”