Aeon Fourteen

by Aeon Authors

  “Looks like you got your message,” I said.

  * * * *

  The rain fell hard against the windscreen. It felt like it was never going to stop. I figured Joe's dad's cattle would be safe for another day—you couldn't picture anyone mutilating cows in this weather. Not even little gray aliens.

  The file names contained a reference to a place. The Fortean Café. Half an hour later, we figured it wasn't a place at all: it was a file server, and it was located only a two-hours drive away, in Hope's nearest neighbour, Arlington. From what we could figure out it offered “Fortean Celebrity Hardcore.” You know the type: Hitler's Secret Sex Tapes, footage of Lindbergh being anal-probed by Grays (this one true, for all I know), recordings of Monroe's rumored casting couch sessions.

  “Strange,” Joe said. “It's been offline since nine o'clock last night.”

  “I didn't know you guys had computers,” I said as we drove. Joe was in the passenger seat. He had a laptop open on his knees.

  “You'd be surprised,” he said. “Second biggest employer in Arlington is a software development company. Made a lot of money floating on the stock exchange a couple of years back.”

  “Whatever.”

  He smiled. “You don't like it much around here, do you?”

  “I've seen worse,” I said. “Not much worse, though.”

  The truth was more complicated. It always is. I grew up in a place much like this, when the whole country looked like it. I've travelled a lot since then. Things change. I guess, in some places, they change slower than others.

  I drove without speaking for a while. Then, “Don't you think it's a bit strange?”

  “What?”

  “The photos, the camera left in the car? Why would anyone want to leave us a message? Assuming it's not for the Grays’ benefit.”

  He thought about it. “I take it this hasn't happened before.”

  “No.” We'd never had a lead on the Marilyn murders. This was ... odd.

  “Think about it,” I said. “Why would Jane Norman have the pictures in the first place? She'd hardly want them as a souvenir.”

  He shrugged in the seat. “You never know.”

  “No,” I said. A thought was forming in my head. It wasn't a nice thought.

  He looked at me sideways, kind of like he was thinking the same thing I was. I thought he was. We didn't speak after that.

  Arlington was a pleasant enough town. The man we came to see—Milton Palmer, thirty-three, an employee of previously-mentioned software company—lived in a suburban house that looked like it came out of a ‘50s TV ad. A white van was parked in the driveway. It had blacked-out windows.

  When we got out of the car we both had guns. I guess Joe was thinking the same as me.

  There were no lights on, and no answer to my knock. I tried the door, and it was locked.

  That was the point when we were supposed to call the local cops. Instead, we went to have a look around the back, found the door.

  Joe kicked it in.

  “Mr. Palmer?”

  We found him in a large, windowless room. Joe had flicked on the light. There was a tripod, a camera, two computers, an open wardrobe with latex uniforms hanging neatly inside, a couch large enough to sit three, two lighting stands.

  And Milton Palmer.

  He was short, wore a stubble like a disused field of corn, a grin carved in his face like a crop circle.

  He didn't ask to see a badge. He didn't ask anything at all. He was lying on the sofa with a neat little hole between his eyes and a hell of a mess between his legs and he was so very, very dead. From the smell, he'd been like this for a while.

  * * * *

  Joe and I sat in yet another diner, on the edge of Arlington. It was lunch-time, though neither of us felt much like eating. We waited for Forensics to finish the official examination, but I could see in Joe's eyes he already knew what they'd tell us.

  Somebody did a thorough cleaning job on Mr. Palmer's little pad. Computer hard-drives, wiped clean. Cameras emptied of film. Missing flash-cards. No sign of prints, pictures, or scans. No sign Mr. Palmer had ever taken a dirty picture.

  That someone didn't do such a good job on the van. It could have been carelessness, but I didn't think so. I thought the killer wanted us to find the van just as it was.

  There were traces of old blood in the back of the van. Another tripod. In a hidden compartment, a couple of guns, serial numbers filed off.

  Joe's cell phone rang. He listened for several moments, killed the connection.

  He looked at me, gave me a small nod. A nod that said, you were right.

  “The bullets from the guns in the van matched the ones found in two of the most recent Marilyn murders,” he said. “The blood in the van—it was AB.”

  I said, “Marilyn's was AB.”

  “The DNA matches, too.” He shrugged. “Looks like we got your serial killer.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It sure looked that way. It was perfect, watertight, but for one thing: if Milton Palmer was the Marilyn killer—then who killed Jane Norman only last night? And for that matter—though I wasn't going to lose sleep over it—who killed Palmer?

  I had some ideas about that. I preferred them to remain private. “Come on,” I said. “Let's get back. We've got a funeral to go to tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  Joe had rushed the funeral through. Not a funeral, really. The body was to be cremated: standard procedure in a case like this, though all I ever dealt with on that front were the Marilyns, thankfully. They were people who weren't supposed to exist. Like me, for that matter, but I still wasn't dead. I guess that's a good thing.

  I dropped Joe off at the police station and drove away. The rain started to fall again as we left Arlington and by now it was getting dark and the rain wasn't going away.

  I stayed in a motel on the outskirts of Hope. I had a long bath, then sat up in bed and switched on the TV. It came on to show Monroe singing River of no Return.

  Patterns in the rain.... I switched it off and killed the lights. Goodbye Marilyn Monroe.

  Sleep came swift and without warning. Like a flying saucer.

  * * * *

  The phone woke me up. It was dark outside. The rain lashed against the windows.

  “Amelia? It's Joe.”

  I fumbled for the light. Hit the TV remote. An expanding square of light opened on CNN. I was half afraid it would be Marilyn again. You never know with cable.

  “What time is it?”

  “Five a.m.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear away the cobwebs. “What's happened?”

  His voice sounded like it came from a galaxy far far away. “They caught the guy who did the diner last night. Three previous convictions for armed robbery. The police caught him drunk-driving and pulled him over. Found the Uzi, some of the cash. That salesman in the diner, remember him? Guy had his wallet on him. Pictures of the salesman's family still inside.”

  I switched channels. All I could find was The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy poured water over the wicked witch, and she was melting.

  Joe said, “It's an open and shut case.”

  And I started to laugh.

  * * * *

  “So Palmer finds himself another Marilyn, this one close to home, he takes some dirty pictures, then tries to finish her off ... they fight, she kills him. She cleans up his pad, makes a runner. Stops at the Barbie-Q on the way out of the state ... ends up shot by accident.”

  “Right.”

  Another day, another coffee. “Does it ever stop raining?” I said.

  Joe smiled. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”

  “I'd believe that sooner than I'd believe that fairy-tale you just told me.”

  “I don't really care who killed Palmer,” he said. “This way it's neat. Life's one big fucked up series of coincidences, that's all. Fort knew that. The Grays are happy with it. No one needs to go looking for patterns in the rain.”

  “Right.”

  “A
melia...” he sounded tired. I wondered if he got any sleep at all last night. By the dark smudges under his eyes I'd have said no.

  “I can buy Jane Norman as a victim,” I said. “I can even see her as an impulse killer, sure. Self-defense, no argument there. But she wouldn't shut down the server and professionally wipe out everything our favorite pervert had stored in his studio. If she was that good she wouldn't have been posing for those pictures for him in the first place.”

  “You don't know that. Even when she did things she didn't like, Monroe was never a victim, Amelia. She was tough. Did you know she was the first woman in Hollywood to form her own production company?”

  “No shit.”

  “I'm just saying.”

  “Look,” I said. “You're happy, the little guys upstairs are happy, everyone is happy. Let's forget about it.” I looked out of the window, at the gray world outside. “Let's go to the funeral.”

  * * * *

  It was an open and shut case. Milton Palmer was a bona fide psycho. Someone, somewhere, twenty-five years ago, set out to make a whole set of baby Marilyn Monroes. And Milton Palmer, nineteen, twenty years later, figured it out, and set out to kill them, one by one. Kill them and take pictures.

  We couldn't find the pictures. They were gone for good, and I wasn't sorry. The only set was on the cheap digital camera found in Jane Norman's car, and Joe had the camera destroyed. Prints too. The last remains of Jane Norman were in a vase. Her ash was being scattered into the rain. It seemed as good a way as any to go.

  She was the ... seventh? Eighth? That I saw cremated over the last five years. Maybe Palmer didn't work alone. There was no way to be sure, but I thought he did.

  I didn't want to know who killed him. By the time the ashes were gone and the vase was empty, I already knew.

  * * * *

  She was standing away from the small group. She wore a long, black coat with a hood lined in fur. She looked a little like she did in Niagara, only older. But she still looked like she meant business. And I thought, someone else was looking for the killer all those years, besides me. Someone else who followed the pattern of the rain.

  I don't think anyone else saw her. She turned, once, and looked at me, and she nodded. And that was that. When I next looked she was gone, and there was nothing to testify she had ever been there.

  Nothing but the rain, and it wasn't telling.

  * * * *

  Joe drove me to the airport as the rain fell. It felt like it had never stopped, and now I thought that it had a purpose. It was irrational, a little fanciful, but it's what I thought, wired on coffee and lack of sleep and an overabundance of death: I thought that the skies were crying. They were crying now, crying for Marilyn, crying for all the Norma Jeanes. They were mourning America itself, where legends are made of celluloid and print, of flammable material, and are so easily reduced to ashes.

  I sometimes think like this, but it passes.

  We got to the small airport and I got on the plane. I used to fly the bloody things. Now I was a passenger. Things change.

  Joe was standing in the downpour. He waved, and his lips moved. I think he said, “Goodbye, Amelia Earhart.”

  The plane took off; and Hope disappeared through the rain.

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  The Diadem

  by Mikal Trimm

  "'The Diadem’ started out (in my mind, at least) as a story for my daughters. My intentions were good, at least—sadly, once the words started coming out, things went all pear-shaped, and I ended up with this story. Oh, my kids could still read it, sure, but I'm not sure they'd be recommending it to their friends..."

  * * * *

  “Wake up, princess. It's your birthday.”

  Julia smelled Father's Old Spice aftershave, an honest scent. Her dreams faded into the dawn-book, where all the important wishes are recorded.

  Daddy told her that, long ago. Back when he was still Daddy, not Dad or Father. Back when she still felt like a princess.

  Back when she still believed.

  “Oh, she's in dreaming-angel mode.” Mommy-Mom-Mother whispered in a voice still gentle, even after all this time. Julia wanted to giggle, remembering the days when Mom—no, Mother, would sprinkle glitter around her sleeping form and swear it was angel-dust the next morning.

  But that was in the days of tooth-fairies and Santa and a giant pink bunny hopping around with a basketful of kaleidoscope-colored eggs.

  I'm sixteen, guys. I don't need this anymore.

  Still, she played the game. She feigned sleep, even when the tickling began, even when her parents tore the sheets off the bed and squashed her between them, laughing and poking.

  Like they were the kids.

  When the whole thing got old, she opened her eyes, shrugged her shoulders against their closeness, and gave her morning declaration:

  “I gotta go to the bathroom. Could I have at least some privacy, please?”

  Her parents left her, both of them pausing to bow in obsequiousness. In concert, no less.

  Julia still heard their conspiratorial whispers as she rose and dressed.

  * * * *

  When she finally made it to the breakfast table, her parents lived in another world. Father wore a cloak—well, one of Mother's old shawls tied around his neck—and no-this-isn't-really-happening tights. Other strange garments as well, but these two embarrassments struck her senses first.

  She wanted to run. She wanted to grab a breakfast bar, slide through the front door with a wave and a luvya, and high-tail it to the school bus before she felt the need to comment on this newest proof that her father no longer existed in the same plane she did.

  Too late. Father bowed low, ushering her to the table.

  “Mo-ther!”

  A cry for sanity. Sometimes it worked.

  Not today. Mother waltzed in from the kitchen, carrying a plate of pancakes that would feed several small third-world countries. With a ta-daa! that sounded like God on the seventh day, she placed the plate before Julia, bowing again and shuffling back in subservience, her head down, eyes averted.

  “For our Queen.” A solemn pronouncement. Not one giggle.

  Julia stared at the whipped cream and strawberry face gracing the top pancake. Just stared. There were no words to describe the situation, really. Other than swear words, maybe. Words she wasn't allowed to use in decent company, as Mother would say.

  “I'm nobody's queen, Mother. And I'm running late for school, and I so can't eat all this sugar this early, and it's been fun, but—”

  Father's hand on her shoulder, a solid force, loving yet firm. “One moment, milady. You must have your crown.”

  Oh, no.

  But yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Father reached behind his back, pulled something out from beneath his shirt—gag—and held it out to her. He then fell to one knee and, echoing Mother, bowed his head.

  Eyes averted.

  Hands trembling.

  Oh, please!

  A crown, of sorts. Really more of a circlet. Something in the vague shape of her head, covered in tinfoil. Like the plastic costume jewelry she wore back when she was six or seven.

  Back when she still believed.

  Back when she was too stupid to know the difference between fiction and reality.

  She could scream, of course. She could launch a vicious tirade against her parents, letting them know in explicit detail where they went wrong with her, why their stupid little fantasy games should've ended when she still wore Barney underwear, why she hated this whole charade, why, why, why...

  She looked at Father's ridiculous outfit, noticed Mother's even more preposterous attempt at finery—was that her wedding dress, for goodness’ sake?—and finally looked at the pitiful little faux crown they'd concocted.

  Sad, really.
But.

  Easier to play the game and get it over with.

  “Fine. Give me the, um, crown.”

  She stuck her hands out, gesturing for a little haste here with her fingers. Father rose, his knee popping with the movement, and placed the tacky circlet in her hands.

  A spark. A strange current through her body. Dizzy, dizzy, and her parents faded with the walls—

  —and she knows the kingdom is falling, her true father murdered, her mother the Queen on her deathbed, and these kneeling, trusted ones before her are not her parents at all, no, merely dedicated servants. They've raised her as their own, yes, lived in a nightmare world of machines and apathy, technology and madness, just to ensure her safety from the assassins hired by the royal family's enemies. Budgets, debt, mortgages—all subterfuge, all indignities borne willingly by her surrogates merely to prove their dedication to the throne, their love for the Princess.

  All this drudgery. Burdens carried to keep her alive, even in this sad, mercenary world. No magic. No riches. Only a thin, shining thread of hope for a better life...

  Julia clutched the crown, feeling the weight of it now, not tinfoil and plastic, no, but pure gold laid over an even finer, heavier metal. She strained to read the fine scrimshaw of runes pulsing under her fingers as she ran the circlet through her hands, while an inner voice translated the gist of the inscription with ease:

  For the One who is Destined

  For the One who is True

  For the Hinter-life Queen

  May Her Reign be Everlasting

  Julia dropped the crown. It hit the breakfast table with a blunted clatter.

  Then, as if proofed against magic, the wood of the table leached the essence from it. The crown bounced once, flipped, and landed in her plate.

  Plastic and tinfoil, crude and ugly.

  The once-powerful coronet lay there, a misshapen lump, ensconced in a quicksand of soggy pancakes and congealing whipped cream.

  A shuffling of feet. A shifting of garments.

  Julia looked up to see her servants—no, parents, idiot!—dismantling their outfits. Mother unpinned the shawl from Father's shoulders and Julia caught a glimpse, a quick glimmer, of a proud man in fine, fine court clothes and Father released the eyehooks at the back of Mother's dress and Julia blinked once, twice, felt wetness on her cheeks at the blurred vision of a handsome woman in a lovely, star-shaming ensemble and Julia reached once more for the crown, syrup-sticky and flour-enfouled...