“Why didn’t you tell me?” Red Feather asks.
“I just did.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I made an appointment for next week. You know I’m up for promotion. And I’m so not the mom type. I feel guilty saying it, but there are way more negatives than positives.”
“Makes sense, Syn. Just tell me what you need and I’m there.”
Fresh tears seep from her eyes. “I also can’t help but think that the baby saw everything I saw in that house today. I think it might be irrevocably damaged before it even had a chance.” She starts weeping again, her uterus spasms.
“Fuck, Syn. I’m so sorry.”
Günn nods, sniffling. “You’ll see. It’s worse than the worst things you’ve ever imagined.” Her stomach turns, she gags again. No more puking. Please. “They’ll want both of us over there.” Günn fights flashbacks.
Right now Red Feather has never wanted to see anything less in his life.
“I didn’t want you blindsided. And I needed to get away from there,” Günn says, shaking her head as if to dislodge a host of bad memories. “Since we’re having a heart to heart or some shit, I think I might be gay.” From now on Günn plans to have all her cards on the table, all the time, face up.
“Say what?” Knock Red Feather over with a feather and he’ll never get back up.
Günn’s confession comes out in a waterfall. “I’ve always felt so detached from myself. Like I’m watching this blonde chick living my life and not even caring. I mean, dude, you’re more emotional than me.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I don’t think I ever gave anyone a chance, and I never learned how to love healthy. And I was fine with that. I had work, and drugs, and then booze replaced the drugs. And work, always work.”
“None of this is news to me, Syn.”
“Fuck, ’Cus, just let me get it out!” Günn’s voice raises a hysterical pitch.
Red Feather holds his hands up. Don’t shoot. She used his nickname. This is serious.
Günn continues. “You know that survivor, the dancer from Vegas?”
“The one with the pheromones?”
“Cherie, yeah.” Günn finds herself smiling just thinking about her. “We had the most amazing connection. For the first time in my life suddenly everything made sense. She felt it, too. And that’s why I had to go after Lily. Because suddenly I knew. Everything came into focus. And it was because of her.”
Red Feather nods, considering. “I’m all for your happiness, Syn, but how do you know it wasn’t her mojo power?”
Günn shrugs. “After Hell House? Everything else today? I don’t even care. I want to give a real relationship a chance. I deserve it. And so do you.”
“And the baby?”
“I told her. She’s cool with whatever I decide to do. ”
“You told her before you told me?” And he thought nothing else would surprise him today.
“Man, I told you, her and I, we have a connection. It just came out.” Günn side smiles, “Sort of like you telling the werewolf about doing peyote.”
Red Feather blushes. “Touché.”
Günn takes another long drag from her cigarette. It doesn’t taste good anymore. She stubs it out.
Red Feather does the same. “This is the most you’ve ever spoken in one go in all the years I’ve known you.”
“Shut up or I’ll never do it again.” Günn smiles.
“It’s good. I like it.” Red Feather puts his arm around her in a sideways hug.
“And if you tell anyone you saw me cry I’ll have your nuts.” Günn warns. “I shit you not, partner.”
Red Feather mimes locking his mouth, throwing away the key.
“Thank you,” Günn says. “For everything. I mean it.”
“Thank you right back,” Red Feather replies.
Detectives Günn and Red Feather enjoy a silent moment of comfort together. Partners first, briefly lovers, and finally friends.
“What’s been going on over here? Everyone inside?” Günn asks, anything else to distract from her thoughts of Hell House.
Red Feather shakes his bandaged head. “Jeez. No, the survivors aren’t here anymore.”
“What? Where are they?”
“You just want to see your girlfriend and tell her you lurve her,” Red Feather teases.
Günn elbows him for real, hard enough to leave a bruise. “Piss off.”
“Jesus, Günn. You need to get some meat on your bones, you’re gonna cut me with that thing.”
Günn flips him the bird.
Red Feather smiles, rubbing his side. “We had another situation, so they’re at the safe house down on Magnolia.”
Günn nods. “Yeah, so? Spill, partner.”
Red Feather lets out a deep breath and tells Günn about the localized earthquake, the lightning, and what could only be considered some sort of metaphysical attack on West Hollywood PD that targeted only the Crane Mansion Massacre survivors. He also fills her in on the Roswell Institute battle.
Günn listens and accepts his account without arguing or trying to put a forensic spin on it.
Red Feather feels that shiver come over him again, the one that’s telling him it’s time to move on from this chapter of his life.
9:20 PM LAPD Headquarters
Special Agent Rosario Quatro and Assistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz, along with an entire squadroom of detectives at the downtown station, watch footage of Los Angeles firefighters battling the blob with canister after canister of ammonium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate.
One news helicopter has fallen into the beast’s bulbous form, and several LAFD ’copters also went the same route as the beast continues to lay the path of the ten freeway to waste in its pursuit of the ocean.
More news ’copters fill the sky, filming from a distance, not interested in following fate with Katie Hernandez and the Channel 5 aerial team, may their souls rest in peace.
The creature slimes its way into the ocean, disappearing under the waves as LAFD continue their assault on its matter, herding it to the water now that it’s clear the blob has its own final destination.
Quatro wonders will survive in the ocean’s deeps or reemerge to terrorize Los Angeles or some other city at an unspecified future point?
Ortiz wonders if it will continue to grow at the rate they’ve witnessed, or will the water slow it down?
Neither scenario is comforting.
The other detectives and assorted staff in the squad room—for the first time—feel grateful their civil servant salaries never allowed for homes in the path of the blob, having had to settle for split level houses in The Valley, an area of LA which has remained wholly untouched by the creature in its ocean-ward trajectory.
Nobody would have ever believed that the gargantuan pink mass that has destroyed a huge chunk of Los Angeles County started as a sliver of vulval-looking ooze that slithered from between the legs of a Crane Massacre survivor, had they not seen an earlier iteration of the beast on a witness interview tape. In fact, Ortiz is thinking they’re probably going to have to release Una O’Doole’s recorded statement to the public as proof. How else will they explain the origins of this incredible monster? Even watching it now, it’s hard to believe. And after today they’re all ready to believe absolutely anything.
Kaleanathi, The Smog Goddess
This is not happening! This can’t be happening! Not again! You have moved the Heavens and still your tributes elude your grasp! Because they are yours, and only yours. You marked their souls, plain as the Devil. And even he wouldn’t dare touch them now. Yet, their special circle of torment remains empty.
You let loose the grandmother of all screams and short circuit the power grid in Los Angeles. You simmer and
steam above the concrete streets, many of which have been destroyed by the blob creature. You siphon human pain. You push people into violent acts. And it still isn’t enough power to finish your spell. How can you not have enough power? How?!
There must be another way, you boom through the celestial plane. But your sister Elementals have abandoned you. And Mother, The Ancient One has put aside her fury at The Ethereals in hunting you down to put you back in your menial place as lowly goddess of smog.
But Mother is weak. The Ethereals even weaker after blocking your magic. You can feel the energy deficit and its imbalance rippling outwards.
They’ve cloaked your tributes.
But they can’t cloak them forever.
You will not be thwarted.
Surely there is one among your sistren Elementals who would help you finish this? One who would not betray you, abandon you in your greatest moment of feeding need as did those traitors, skulking off from your wrath and hiding from Mother’s impending fury. Someone powerful you’ve overlooked. Someone aching for a good fight.
You will be redeemed. Even if it’s the last thing you do.
As you’re cloaked in the maelstrom over Los Angeles, feeding on lesser beings, you promise you will have those stolen souls at any cost. You send your vow up into the celestial sphere where it reaches Mother and your coward sisters.
Until the moon runs red with blood, you’ll never give up.
10:00 PM LAPD Press Room
Upon hearing of Hell House—and that his main contributor is revealed as America’s top serial killer, of children no less—Mayor Ellis resigns, leaving Governor Bernard Brooks to handle the entire show, in turn wishing he could hand it over to Assistant Chief Ortiz and wash his reputation of it all. He can’t.
At the very least, the blob has finally been contained and its remainder submerged in the ocean, not before razing a huge chunk of Los Angeles.
Governor Brooks thinks, wonders how long it’ll take to elect a new mayor amid all the fallout.
“I’ve called this live press conference so we can as a community, begin to come to terms with everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours.”
The governor pauses.
“To begin: Our City of Angels was attacked by a terrorist organization early this morning, in a catastrophe that took the lives of more than thirty thousand of our youngsters. My deepest condolences to the families of everyone affected by this tragedy. We have apprehended three of the perpetrators and the FBI and CIA are in process of bringing the rest into police custody. We received a full confession, and while it does nothing to allay our sadness at the terrible loss of life, we can take small comfort in knowing this was an isolated incident.”
The governor pauses again, giving a journalist occasion to shout, “Where are the survivors? Who are the survivors? And where did the blob come from?”
Governor Brooks clears his throat. “As our colleague has just pointed out, yes, there were sixteen survivors. The LAPD will have a chance to give you further details on this, but these survivors…grew from body parts found at the site of the Crane Mansion.”
The press crowd works up to a dull roar of questions.
“We have no explanation for this at this time, but we do have video evidence of the incidents. We are all working toward a scientific understanding of how this happened.”
“And what of the attack on the hospital? Who’s responsible?” Amy Chen from Channel 5 news shouts, having replaced Katie Hernandez; the news doesn’t grieve.
Governor Brooks continues, his throat like sandpaper. “Yes, there was an attack on Spruce-Musa Hospital earlier this evening, and law enforcement is also working overtime to determine who instigated the attack and arrest the responsible parties. The survivors are safe in police custody—”
Chaos breaks out in the pressroom as reporters from all around the world call into question the leadership of the Los Angeles county police force, the mayor’s office, as well as the governor’s.
“And let me also note,” Brooks has to shout to be heard, “the blob creature has been neutralized. We are working towards explanations for all of these events—”
The crowd turns ugly, and quick, another of too many riots on this insane day.
“We want the citizens of Los Angeles to know how deeply sorry we are for the incredible loss of more than thirty thousand lives yesterday, our hearts go out to the families of those affected, and we as a city are all affected by this deepest of calamities—”
A notebook flies at the governor’s head. A purse follows. An apple. A shoe. In quick succession. An LAPD escort whisks away Governor Brooks as he ducks from the physical and verbal barrage of the conference room, while Deputy Chief Gabriel Ortiz attempts to subdue the disgruntled journalists who are already convinced a cover-up or elaborate hoax is in the works, and has been in the works since Los Angeles’s skyline went up in flames at twelve-thirty in the morning, November first, of the year 2000.
Detectives Atticus Red Feather and Synthia Günn watch the fracas on television with the group of survivors, who’ve settled into the safe house and are again surrounded by myriad take-out food containers, all except Cherie, Connie, and Teresa, whose exertions of the day have them resting fitfully in the bunk rooms. Their friends tried to convince them to return to the hospital, but they’d all had enough of hospitals for forever.
An unexpected rash of goosebumps spreads through the group watching TV as the riot breaks out onscreen and the mayor is attacked by the mob of angry journalists and citizens who crashed the press conference. The survivors, Red Feather, and Günn collectively swallow the unease that creeps into their full bellies, feeling a new bad on its way.
Citizens of Los Angeles
At home the eleven o’clock news turns from the Governor’s press conference riot to regular programming, a rerun of a syndicated sitcom you’ve seen a dozen times already.
You’re numb. It’s all background noise anyway, and will be for a long time.
You won’t find out about the Countess Barona’s Hell House for a month. In the wake of such huge loss of the Crane Mansion Massacre the Barona story would be too much, so decide network executives. And the LAPD and associates are grateful for the extra time to put the pieces together before new scrutiny.
When you do eventually hear about Hell House and the hundreds of tortured and murdered children you feel another piece of your soul break away, shattering. What meager innocence left in the world gone for good.
You’ll watch the news and re-runs without really seeing them, thinking about your son, your daughter, your partner, your friend lost in the ether of unspeakable misfortune.
You’ll get on with work, the maintenance of a normal life, but there’s a hole in you, a void that will never find filling, no matter how much you might want to heal.
You’ll think about moving, but you never will. The memorial site keeps you in Los Angeles’s fold. It’s there you’ll find solace in the company of others who lost as much as you did, on whose shoulders you can cry without speaking, they who understand with just one pained glance. Cold comfort in sunny climes.
And every time you look toward the Hollywood Hills and you see the space where the Crane mansion used to be, or drive through the massive reconstruction efforts rebuilding the ten freeway, Beverly Hills, and the path from Hollywood to the beaches—you’ll remember like it was yesterday:
That day the sky opened up and took your heart with it.
Sezín Koehler
November 2010–April 2015
Prague, Czech Republic
Cologne, Germany
Boca Raton, Florida
Lighthouse Point, Florida
Afterword
Whew! You made it through my second mad little book baby. And thank you. I hope you enjoyed the ride.
&nb
sp; Forgive me another few moments of your time to address an issue that I feel needs addressing. From 2002–2006 I worked as a freelance reporter at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva covering a variety of mostly indigenous peoples’ issues as they sought not just land rights and intellectual property rights, but basic human rights that were being denied by virtually every government on this planet.
During that time I had the honor of being taken under the wings of a number of different elders and spokespeople, some Native American, some indigenous Canadians, South American, Australian Aboriginal, and Maori. These friendships—and sometimes tutelages—completely changed my view of the world, my place in it, and helped me heal from a variety of traumas that remained open wounds.
Since those life-changing years I am persistently troubled by the non-indigenous appropriation of indigenous narratives, and often in fetishistic, racist, and just plain insulting ways. I came to the conclusion that in spite of my personal experiences visiting my adopted grandfather Tony Black Feather in Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota and my hundreds of hours of conversations with elders from around the world I would not step my non-indigenous foot into the waters of narratives of and about indigenous peoples.
And then Detective Atticus Red Feather appeared to me in a dream. And his story was so clear, I felt I knew him. He even looks a little like Grampa Tony’s long-dead son Michael, even though their lives couldn’t be any more different.
I struggled with whether I should honor that dream when I had made an agreement with myself to not be one of those non-Natives including a Native American character into my story.
“Let The Spirit Lead,” Grampa Tony was famous for saying. Those of us who love and remember him indeed do our best to live by those sage words.
Crime Rave Page 36