Rise of the White Lotus

by H L Stephens

  "Don't you worry baby girl," she said. "Your Uncle Julian is out there with the sheriff looking for you, and they are going find you in a jiff. You just stay put okay? You just keep talking to me. Tell me what happened today. Why did you run away from school?"

  I started to tell my aunt about the events in Miss Derwood's office but two things happened. I started to cry, which made it impossible for Aunt Irene to understand more than every other word of what I was saying, and the phone started beeping. I managed to tell my aunt through my tears about the beeping, and her response made me panic.

  "Oh God, the battery is dying," she said.

  I was right in the middle of saying, "Please don't leave me Aunt....." when the line cut out.

  I was once again alone in an ever darkening world. Only one thing remained for me to do. I started walking.

  As the sky grew dark, lights began to appear on the landscape, and I walked towards the nearest one I could see. Lights meant one of two things; people or major thoroughfares. I had run onto an abandoned dirt road that was unmarked and unlit. My best chance of getting back home in my mind was to navigate back to civilization, so I walked.

  My target of choice was an old gas station that had been abandoned years before I had been born. The downside to my selection was the fact that it was abandoned and had no attendant to help me. On the upside, it turned out I was not the only traveler who mistook it for a working station. Within a few minutes of my arrival, a car pulled in to get gas. When the driver realized the gas station was closed, he turned his car around and prepared to leave again. Then he saw me standing by the pumps like a little lost puppy.

  "Hey little girl," the man in the driver's seat called out. "Are you lost?"

  My mom had always taught me to be suspicious of strangers and to never, ever get into a car with one. I answered the man by asking him if he had a cell phone.

  When he said that he did, I said, "Please call the police and tell them where we are."

  Within fifteen minutes, a sheriff's vehicle pulled up, lights flashing. Almost before the car came to a stop, Uncle Julian jumped out from the passenger's side and ran over to me. I met him halfway across the asphalt. The smell of tobacco, motor oil, and Old Spice greeted my weary heart. I buried my face in his shoulder, intending never to surrender that spot now that I was there.

  Uncle Julian carried me back to the cruiser, all the while whispering, "I got you darlin'. Everything is going to be okay."

  After we got back to the house and my aunt had her chance to hug me and cry, I told Aunt Irene, Uncle Julian, and Sheriff Jeffries, Uncle Julian's friend from high school, everything that had happened with Miss Derwood - from the summons, to the shattering of the paperweight, to my running away.

  "God I hate that woman," Uncle Julian exploded when I was done. "Just once I wish she would say something like that while a grown up was present. She pulls this kind of crap on kids all the time, and you know what it boils down to no matter what? Her word against theirs. Remember what happened to Mary's boy? He nearly committed suicide because of that woman and her harassment. No one could do a damn thing about it because it was the boy's word against Miss Derwood's. Damn her!"

  "Uncle Julian?" I interrupted.

  "Yes darlin?" he said. "Sorry, I shouldn't curse around you, I know...."

  Uncle Julian was about to launch into one of his repentant speeches about how he was trying to do better about his crusty ways, but I interrupted him again.

  "Would it help if I recorded it?" I asked.

  All eyes were on me as I plugged my dead cell phone into the wall and proceeded to play back the entire encounter with Miss Derwood. The final nail in Miss Derwood's coffin came when I later played my recording for the superintendant of schools. Miss Derwood was fired from her job with extreme prejudice. I heard tell they made a special rail to ride her out of the state of Texas as well.

  Several things changed after the witch's dismal. Miss Derwood was replaced by Miss Porter who was infinitely nicer and truly interested in helping me as a student. She would become an advocate and a friend during my time in Ironco. In fact, every child who had ever been victimized by Miss Derwood became my friend. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I had slain the evil witch with my floating house, or in this case, with a recording from my cell phone, and the Munchkins loved me for it. Spy Craft and a New Identity

  My time with Uncle Julian and Aunt Irene was the happiest of my early life. With them, I knew laughter and joy. The dark memories were pushed to the farthest recesses of my consciousness so that I hardly knew they were there. It left room for what became my passion - learning. I was like a sponge absorbing everything I touched. We discovered my classes in school were not challenging me enough, and so Miss Porter worked with Aunt Irene to home school me for a time.

  Every morning, I woke up, got ready for school, left through the front door, walked clockwise around the house, and entered the front door again. This time, instead of entering my home, I was entering the classroom of my teacher, Ms. Ashbury - that being my aunt's maiden.

  I would spend the day under her tutelage, learning things no other child my age would learn, and at the end of the day, I would retrace my steps around the house counterclockwise and return 'home' to share with my aunt all I had learned that day.

  It was during this time that I first learned about assassins, spy craft, cryptography, and espionage. These topics were part of our history lessons, but it was the personal aspects of these lessons which drew my interest like nothing else could.

  Like so many other things, Aunt Irene had stories to tell; stories from her family's history, which meant, as far as I was concerned, it was part of my history as well. To a little girl, nothing could compare to having a family member way-back-when who spied on the enemy or helped develop and decipher encrypted messages during wartime. Such possibilities in family stories were certain to keep a child's interest.

  To incorporate the lessons into everyday activities, Aunt Irene and I developed our own secret code, using one of her great uncle's 'unbreakable codes' as a model. We left encrypted messages for each other around the house to decode. Uncle Julian called them 'gobblygook', but he always said it with a smile. I loved it.

  When I wasn't in school learning amazing things with Aunt Irene or playing outside with Iggie, I was working in the shop with Uncle Julian. He taught me about cars and mechanical devices. We worked on everything from alternators to boilers to grandfather clocks. If it was mechanical, we had our hands and heads in it. But Uncle Julian wasn't just teaching me how to repair things.

  "Anyone can learn how to fix something Jane," Uncle Julian told me one day after I had put together my first carburetor without any help from him. "Just about any idiot can use a manual or follow instructions. It takes skill, however, to tear something down, learn everything you can from it, and then reconstruct it without leaving a mark upon it. It takes even greater skill to cause a failure in a machine without someone being able to detect what you did to cause the failure."

  "You mean like sabotage," I said.

  "Precisely," he replied. "The greatest skill....the skill that shows you have mastered it all, is being able to catch the bad guy that did the breaking. That is the kind of skill I want to pass onto you, Jane."

  "You mean you know how to do all of that?" I asked.

  Uncle Julian nodded.

  I couldn't imagine such a spectacular need in little ole Ironco, Texas. The closest thing to sabotage this place had ever seen was when Mister Jasper mixed up the covers to the underground tanks at the local gas station right before delivery and ended up selling premium gas at a regular unleaded rate.

  "Well, darlin'," Uncle Julian said, "I haven't always just been a wrench turning mechanic. There was a time when I worked for the NTSB. I was a lead investigator; the best they had in fact, and I'm not bragging when I say that, Jane. It is simply the truth. It was my job to probe transportation-related accidents. I did everything from performing stress/strain an
alyses on metals to determining failure points on engine parts. Did you know manufacturers can design a part in such a way that they can force it to fail when and where they want it to?"

  I shook my head.

  "I know it sounds crazy, but it's true," he continued. "It can mean the difference between a minor failure that causes a mere inconvenience to the user and a catastrophic failure that kills people."

  "What happened?" I asked. "Why don't you investigate anymore?"

  Uncle Julian smiled a sad sort of smile.

  "Well, darlin', it's a long story with layers that even I haven't unpeeled yet," he said, "but I can tell you what was the biggest factor for me. I saw some of the darkest aspects of the human heart in that job; what people were willing to do to one another for greed or revenge or sometimes just cause they didn't feel like coming to work the next day. Seeing that, day in and day out, does something to you, and I got out before it left a permanent mark on me as a man." When he saw I was troubled by what he had said, he smiled, and stroked my hair.

  "Listen," he continued, "Just because there were aspects to what I did that made me leave the job, doesn't mean I didn't love the job, and it doesn't mean having the skills is a bad thing. I have never seen a more natural gift with machines or a keener eye than yours. I want to teach you everything I know. Who knows, one day, you may need these skills someday when you least expect it."

  I talked to my aunt later about Uncle Julian's time with the NTSB; more specifically about why he left. It just seemed like working for the NTSB would be more exciting than sitting around dusty old Ironco, turning wrenches for the local population. I imagined all of the places Uncle Julian must have travelled to and all the people he must have met. By the time I was finished in my wild imagination, my Uncle Julian was darned near a superstar.

  "Why would he give all that up, Aunt Irene?" I asked.

  "It's complicated," my aunt replied.

  I gazed at my aunt with that little kid I'm-not-dropping-the-subject-until-you-answer-me-in-a-satisfactory-way stare, coupled with the pitiful please-please-please hand grasp and the innocent fluttery eyes.

  "Oh alright," Aunt Irene groaned with a capitulatory smile on her face. She plopped down in the chair next to me. Her face took on a serious demeanor as she spoke. "I want you to understand that what I am telling you now Jane is very personal. It goes to the heart of who your uncle is as a man; as a human being. You must never speak of what I am about to share with you with him or anyone else, unless your Uncle Julian brings it up. Do you understand?"

  I nodded.

  "Good," she said. "Now, your uncle was working on a case. The exact details are fragmented because your uncle has never given them all to me. He tells me things when he is able to share them. I don't push him beyond that. What I know is this. He was investigating an aeronautics firm that made parts for small airplanes. Complaints kept coming in that a particular part was failing and causing the engine to shutdown in flight. The reports also said the engine would fire back up again due to some kind of failsafe. I can't tell you all the technical stuff cause I don't remember all of it, and I don't care to remember. What I can tell you is your uncle had a feeling about the case. He tried to get it red flagged, but his boss said he had to have proof first. The agency was all about numbers and data and all that crap, not gut feelings. Your uncle kept digging, doing what he does best. Well, while he was trying to get the agency their proof, another plane had that part fail in flight, except this time, the failsafe didn't trigger. Everyone on board died, and your uncle blamed himself for it."

  "But it wasn't his fault," I said.

  "It doesn't matter sweetheart," Aunt Irene said. "When a man sees his hand touch something that brings death to another, he can't help but feel tainted by it. That's what happened with your uncle. He quit his job with the NTSB and came back here to Ironco. Sometimes a dusty little town in the middle of nowhere is exactly what the heart needs to heal. This arid soil has a way of sanding off the muck the world has a habit of depositing on the soul. With as desolate as this place may seem to most people, it has a way of cleansing the heart."

  Aunt Irene was right about dusty little towns. My heart had done much in the way of healing since I had arrived. I had not forgotten what had happened to my family; it just didn't rule my every waking moment the way that it had when I first arrived. I was finding peace as much as one can after such a tragedy.

  People knew who I was in Ironco, but not because I was the girl whose family was massacred. I became known as Jane; just plain Jane. I felt like I was becoming part of something wholesome and good.

  When I turned nine, Uncle Julian finally married Aunt Irene. I got to be a flower girl in their wedding. The whole town came out to our house to witness the momentous occasion; partly because none of them ever thought the day would come. Over the years, many a bet was won and lost over the status of my aunt and uncle's potential marital bliss. People told me at the reception their wedding was my doing.

  I stayed with Iggie's folks while my aunt and uncle went on their honeymoon. Again, the whole town pitched in money to help make it happen. They went to Florida so Aunt Irene could finally get white sand in her shoes.

  The same year as their wedding, Aunt Irene and Uncle Julian adopted me as their own. I still remember the day they broached the subject with me. They sat me down looking so serious, I thought I had done something wrong. The trouble was I could not think of anything I might have done to warrant a scolding.

  They hemmed and hawed so much, I finally said, "what did I do?'

  "Nothing, nothing at all, it's just...." Uncle Julian began and then trailed off.

  Aunt Irene took Uncle Julian's hand, gave it a big squeeze, and said, "Just say it Jules."

  Uncle Julian let out a great sigh.

  "We want to adopt you Jane as our daughter," he blurted out. "Now just hear me out before you say anything. We know we can't take the place of your parents, and we don't aim to. It's just....it's just, well, you are like a daughter to us, and we love you. We want to be a family....I mean I know we are family and all, but we want you to be ours and feel like you are ours and like we are yours." Uncle Julian scrubbed at his face and hair. It was something he did when he was flustered. "What I mean is....hell, I'm not making any sense....Irene, can you help me out here please?"

  Uncle Julian might have said more had I not knocked the wind out of him with my bullet hug. That is what he called the hugs I gave him when I ran into his arms at full speed and wrapped my arms as far around him as I could reach.

  "So is that a yes?" Uncle Julian asked with a chuckle.

  "Yes," I whispered.

  It was all I could manage through the tears.

  Iggie got to witness me become Jane MacLeod. It was the second name I assumed in my short life; Jane Shores having been my first. Yes, Jane Shores was my name before my family was murdered. Jane MacLeod became my name after they were gone. It would not be my last identity, but it was by far my happiest.

  So many beautiful memories surround my time as Jane MacLeod. In fact, when the darkness threatens to consume me, I cling to those memories like a life preserver for a drowning soul. They are in a sense my salvation as I creep through my valley of death. I cling to the hope they will one day help bring me forth from that bleak valley altogether.

  My life was joyful once more until just after my fourteenth birthday when the specter of my past returned yet again to cast its shadowy presence upon my life.

  The Devil and His Due

  The Devil may wear Prada but his minions drive dark sedans. I can still remember the feeling of dread that crept over me at the sight of one parked outside of my house one hot summer day as Iggie and I walked back from town, slurping slushies in the hot summer sun. We were debating whether we should wend our way to the creek and try our hand at pole fishing.

  "Who's that I wonder," Iggie said, taking another slurp from his icy drink.

  "Beats me," I replied, but some part of me knew the devil h
ad come to Texas.

  I wish now that we had kept walking; heck, I wish we had hidden ourselves behind a bush and never come out. Perhaps things would have turned out differently in my life, and I would still be in Ironco slurping slushies in the hot sun with my best friend. But that's not what happened. We didn't keep walking, and we didn't hide. We walked right past the car and into the house.

  The first thing I saw was the tearstained cheeks of my mom, Irene. Her eyes rimmed with red from anguish, unabated. The next vision was of my dad, Julian, face as pale as my mother's. He had enough Cherokee in his bloodline to make him as brown as a nut in the summer, so it took some doing to cause such a pallor to come upon him.

  I thought perhaps someone had died. I rushed into the room to find out who it was. Then I saw Agent Howard. The sight of him stopped me in my tracks. He had been my archangel when I was seven, saving me from the horrors of my murdered family and the equally terrifying foster system that enveloped me after their loss.

  Now as he stood there in my living room, that same angel was tarnished somehow. Fallen from grace, like the unholy third of the Host of Heaven that were banished. My gut screamed it in waves of nausea.

  An unseemly smile blossomed upon his face, sending chills down my spine. I imagined if coyotes had lips, they would offer just such a smile to a rabbit right before they ate him. I said not a word, but stood there transfixed; unable to speak beyond the shock that had overtaken me.

  "You don't remember me," Agent Howard said through his weird little smirk.

  Somehow I found my voice, and it was not pleasant when I answered.

  "I know who you are, Agent Howard," I replied.

  No inflection entered in my voice. It was as lifeless as I felt. Agent Howard smiled at my recollection.

  "You have changed quite a bit Jane since I saw you last," he said.

  I looked him up and down, scrutinizing every detail of him, the way one does a toxic waste spill or an infected sore. He had the same careless, disheveled appearance he had before. Even the mustard stain was there.