At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

by David Bischoff

  We scurried after him.

  We were traveling, it seemed, in some weird combination of chiarascuro corridors. It felt very Alice in Wonderland -- no, very like an old silent movie I saw called Cat and the Canary with slanted ceiling and tilted hallways. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t Crossland Senior High School.

  We ran along for a ways, my heart in my throat. I was so swept up in the moment, I didn’t have time to think clearly or to be too afraid. The President must be saved! came the thought. The President must be saved! But as the weird landscape whizzed by and the adrenaline dried up, it wasn’t doubt or even weariness that crept in -- but fear at the oddness, fear at the total strangeness.

  What was this place?

  “What is this place?” said Harold as we halted at a forking of corridors, while Senator Clarke paused, seemingly to get his bearing.

  “It’s another dimension,” said Cheryl, her voice trembling a bit. “It’s kind of outside space and time. We can only endure it a while.”

  “It intersect with every point of our planet,” said Emory. “Yet is generally inaccessible, save for penetration effected by what you might call “the magical”.

  “Those books,” I said. “Were they some kind of spell casters?”

  “No reason to go into the technology of it now,” said Senator Clarke, catching his breath. “Suffice it to say that Canthorpe and his minions have kidnapped the President. And not for ransom or for any length of time that can be measured in Earthly dimensional chronometers. The intention will be, in fact, to bring him back and dust him off and let him give his speech and let him be on his way --”

  “So what are we doing here?” objected Harold.

  “What troubles our cause,” said Senator Clarke, “are the changes the creatures intend to effect upon President Johnson in the interim. Changes they have effected before!”

  “What?” I said.

  “Oh man -- what -- kind of like The Manchurian Candidate?” said Harold.

  The Manchurian Candidate was a famous book and movie of the early 1960’s about an American soldier brainwashed by the Red Chinese, who then runs for American political office.

  “The comparison,” said Senator Clarke, “is not unwarranted.”

  “But you say they’re werewolves?” said Harold. “Why would Bela Lugosi want to stop Lon Chaney, Jr?”

  Senator Clarke jerked a bit, as though suddenly distracted.

  His ears pricked up a bit.

  And then he became Sherlock Holmes again.

  “This way,” he whispered. “Quickly!”

  He sprinted off, and if we didn’t want to get lost (which I certainly didn’t, not in this place) we had to follow.

  We followed.

  A few more twists, a few more turns and then suddenly, we were in some larger chamber. Great bowled ceiling swept up from ribbed ways. Along the sides of the walls, clung tentacles of cords of sort, of various shapes, sizes and colors. The rolling mists at our feet seemed heavier, thicker.

  “There!” said Senator Clarke.

  He pointed.

  President Johnson was seated in some sort of chair, with his back against the wall. The cords or tentacles or whatever they were that clung to the wall like circuitry on some board wrapped around him. From this wall dangled a helmet. It was fitted snugly around the President’s head. Strands of disheveled hair poked out from the edge of the metal. His arms were all akimbo. His bold red tie hung out from his expensive blue jacket like a leering tongue. His face was pale.

  I gasped.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “He doesn’t look good. Is he sick?”

  Senator Clarke hurried to his side. He knelt and grabbed up the President’s arm. His hands found the President’s wrist, and he felt for a pulse.

  “He’s fine. But you’re right, he doesn’t look good. I must remove this apparatus, though, immediately before any kind of brainwashing can be effected.”

  Harold looked around nervously. “Where the heck is Canthorpe?”

  “Obviously he and his henchman are off to procure some needed implement.” Senator Clarke’s hands fixed on the helmet and worked with it. The attachments and helmet off surprisingly easily. Then, one by one, somehow the Senator removed the other attachments.

  The President moaned.

  “Lyndon!” said Senator Clarke. “Lyndon, wake up!” His delicate hands slapped the President’s face gently but firmly. Receiving no immediate response, he worked more diligently. Soon, he got a response.

  President Johnson’s eyes fluttered upon. Those dark eyes looked out blearily into this strange world.

  “Another heart attack!” he yelped. His eyes fixed upon me. He grabbed my arm. “Bird! Don’t leave me, Bird!”

  Well, I certainly wasn’t Lady Bird Johnson, his wife and I certainly wasn’t Lynda Bird Johnson, his daughter. But I was honored to have the President think so.

  “So sir. I’m just Rebecca Williams of Crossland Senior High School.”

  “Crossland High,” he said. He felt his chest and seemed relieved that there was no pains happening there. “Oh yeah. Mah speech. I remember now.” His eyes alighted on Senator Clarke. “Clarke, you son of a bitch. What the hell is goin’ on!”

  “Lyndon, we’ve got a problem,” said the Senator. “You’ve been kidnapped to a very strange place and we’ve got to get you out .”

  Lyndon’s eyes traveled around the tilted hallways. “Looks like the cellars of Hell to me.”

  “Not far from it, sir,” said Emory. “We’ll explain everything later. Right now we’ve just got to get you away from --”

  A roar sounded across the room.

  All our eyes turned.

  There, standing at the doorway, was Principal Canthorpe, his eyes blazing with rage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  PRINCIPAL CANTHORPE’S EYES seemed to glow like coals.

  He growled, and that growl was as loud and threatening and unnerving as anything I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It made the hairs on the nape my neck stand up.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” he demanded

  Senator Clarke stood up tall and straight and dignified. “In the name of the United States Government, I demand you return us to our rightful stations.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Senator Clarke.” Canthorpe said. “Thought that spell would work on you as well. But then vampires would seem to have been immune.” Those eyes, yellow now, cast over toward me. They flared. “But ah, my goodness… Those fangs of yours have been busy of late, haven’t they? You’ve got recruits.”

  I stood up. “I didn’t realize you spelled werewolf -- “h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e” -- Doctor Canthorpe.”

  Those baleful yellow eyes flared. Canthorpe roared.

  “Shut your foul mouth!”

  “I believe you buried a barb deep in a Republican hide, young lady,” said President Johnson.

  “And you too, you miserable …” The werewolf cut a snarl off, half-delivered. His lips curled up, showing large, sharp teeth. He turned around, and gestured.

  Moments later, a group of ten huge wolf-men marched in. They were seven feet tall, with bulging muscles and their heads looked far more wolfish than mannish. They gathered round the Principal snarling and leering at us, but seemingly held at bay by Canthorpe’s silent command.

  “Meet my pack!” he said.

  They snarled almost in unison, as though this were some call and response.

  “Take them and chain them. You know where!” said Canthorpe, pointing at us. “But leave that girl with me and the President Johnson. I believe she might have her uses.”

  The pack descended upon Senator Clarke, Emory, Cheryl and Harold. I found out very soon that in fact vampires were no match to werewolves in terms of strength. They got carried off in
short order.

  But as he was being dragged off Emory shot a look at me.

  “Keep your mind open,” he stage-whispered. “Keep your mind open, Rebecca.”

  “Hendricks!” Canthorpe raged meanwhile, not noticing. “Where are you, damn you!”

  The custodian scampered up. In his hands he held a box.

  “Is that it?” said Principal Canthorpe.

  “I think so, my Leader.”

  “Leader,” mused Johnson. “Bobby Baker used to call me that back in mah Senate days.”

  “And the Nazis called Hitler Der Fuhrer, didn’t they?” I said.

  “Well, we’re going to have to get them both hooked up now,” said Canthorpe.

  “Both?” said Hendricks. “But why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The two approached us.

  It didn’t take long for President Johnson to get hooked up just the way we’d found him, and chained back to the wall.

  I also quickly found myself in similar garb, similarly harnessed and chained. The helmet was tight and it scraped against my forehead.

  “It would appear,” said President Johnson. “That my brain is gonna be washed out deeper than that gulley on mah daddy’s cotton farm he kept tryin’ to fill!”

  “And not for the first time, is my guess,” I said. “But I’m not sure why the honor is being extended to me.”

  Principal Canthorpe grinned. “I told you, my dear, I saw great potential in you!”

  The custodian stood up from his business over me.

  “But I don’t understand, Mr. Canthorpe,” I said. “I thought you were a patriotic American! The things you say to us. The flags in your office --”

  Canthorpe swiveled on me, eyes flaring.

  “I am a patriotic American. More patriotic than you can understand!”

  “Well, I’ve never known a patriotic American before who kidnapped the President.”

  “There are things you do not know about the truth!” Canthorpe thumped his chest with a fist. “The truth about what it truly going on below the surface.”

  “You seem like just a crazy supernatural creature to me!” I said.

  “No. I am a patriotic American, working against a grave danger to our country. A danger that the everyday politicians choose to ignore.”

  “The Communists? We’re not ignoring the Communists? Besides, are they really all that powerful or persuasive? I mean, I’m a no nothing teenager and no way do I want to have the kind of life that people in Communist countries do.”

  “Oh, but you do not understand the truth about who the Communists truly are!” said Canthorpe. “Let me tell you about the Lupinist Clan who took over Russia decades go, took over China and North Korea and North Vietnam -- and now threaten South Vietnam.

  “They are insidious!

  He pounded on his chest with a fist.

  “From time immemorial we valiant, brave Wolvine Clan have battled the forces of the Lupinists overseas -- and in their attempts to infiltrate this great country!

  “They are masters of deceit!”

  “The Lupinists and their accursed communism is a vile infection in the Breast of Gaia! These cruel cysts in the backside of Mother Earth must be lanced before -- “

  He was interrupted by a snarling Hendricks.

  “Leader, there is another unanticipated problem…”

  “Well, my friends,” said Canthorpe. “I will leave you to get acquainted a bit while I put out another fire. But don’t get too comfortable.”

  With a toothy smirk, the werewolf left the room, leaving me with a President of the United States whose hands were tied.

  And I was in the same situation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  “WELL YOUNG LADY,” President Lyndon Johnson said. “Looks as though I’ve gotten you into a Texas sinkhole of trouble.”

  He leaned his big wrinkled forehead – not unlike a handsome bassett hound’s – into his hands. He certainly looked as mournful as a bassett hound. “You and my other fellow American’s.”

  I gazed at him a long moment.

  He seemed sadder than words can say, like a father on Christmas Eve with no toys to put beneath his children’s tinseled tree.

  I felt a pang of sympathy and was suddenly flapping my lips without a thought to what I was saying.

  “Mr. President,” I said. “I took American history and I took civics. I think you’ve accomplished great things.”

  “I sure as hell have tried, Miss,” He looked at me. “Long as we’re cellmates, we might as well get on a first name basis. I’m Lyndon.”

  “Rebecca.”

  “I do believe of Sunnybrook Farm! You are a bright girl!”

  “More like the Daphne Du Maurier novel, Mr… I mean, Lyndon.”

  “Rebecca, mah wife Lady Bird can’t even get me to read history and biography books, let alone novels. But I do believe I saw the movie. Laurence Olivier? Correct?”

  “That’s right. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.”

  “Now that Olivier, that man can act! He’s in that Hamlet too.” His eyes grew wide. “There are things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, undreamt of in your philosophy.” Those dark eyes grew haunted as a lonesome prairie at midnight. “I wonder how many other times these hairy sons of bitches have hauled my butt into this damned place?”

  “So….So you see… It‘s not your fault.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Vietnam,” I repeated.

  “Oh. Vietnam.”

  “They’ve been brainwashing you into getting into Vietnam … for their own purposes.”

  “Thousands of brave American boys dying in a war that looks un-winnable.” Lyndon Johnson sighed. “Oh, I’m culpable enough…in a big way, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, back in ‘64,” he answered, “I thought I wanted that landslide win so bad.. I didn’t think straight. I thought, Hell. Let’s show that Goldwater a Democratic President ain’t soft on Communism.”

  “But maybe afterward you would have de-escalated without…all this...” I snapped my fingers. “Yes! That must have been what happened.”

  “This damned… well, I don’t know what to call it,” said the President. “This damned vampire and werewolf business.”

  “Yes.

  There was silence for a moment.

  He shook his head sorrowfully.

  “You know, Rebecca. I’ve been a fool. A damned fool. When I was a boy, I picked cotton in the Hill Country of Texas. I watched my Daddy -- a fine man -- fail and fail and fail. When I was in college, Rebecca, I worked a chain gang one summer under the hot Texas sun for tuition money. Rebecca, I suffered. I suffered hard. But you know what? I didn’t suffer a fraction of what I saw other folks suffer.

  “And I thought, If there’s one good thing that I can do with this skill I have…This skill I have to work with people, to talk people into things…. Well, then it should be to help people not suffer so much. And you know, later when I taught school…I saw Mexican kids suffer….And always, always I saw black folks suffer.”

  His brow furrowed.

  “But you know what, Rebecca.” He took a deep mournful breath, a lonely sound. “All along I see now that everything is just a power struggle. And what I wanted most of all wasn’t to help folks -- but to help myself. Help myself to power. Glory in it. Get high on it.”

  “Now I know.

  “And it’s beyond even my worse Texas sized dreams… Texas sized nightmares, I should say.”

  He shook his head and his loose hair swirled.

  “Worse. I’ve just been a tool of the Forces of Evil.

  “I wonder if I can ever be a tool of Forces of Good.”
/>   He raised his eyebrows and turned to me. He looked at me almost imploringly.

  “And if so, how?

  I took a deep breath.

  I thought.

  “You’re so human!” I said.

  “Well, I do pull down my pants to take a …. oh, pardon me, Rebecca. I’m a damned boor and you’re clearly a real lady.”

  I smiled.

  And then it came to me.

  The answer.

  It came so fast I didn’t see how stupid it was. It just sort of rushed out of my mouth like a train on a whoosh of hot air.

  I said, “Say, isn’t it an election year?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why not just not run.”

  He looked up.

  His dark eyes blazed.

  And for a moment, I thought maybe he was a supernatural being.

  “Not run for another four years of a job I fought for, bled for -- for three damned decades?”

  “Yes! I mean, after all..” I cocked my head and raised a finger, pointing it at him. “You might lose anyway.”

  True fear crossed his face.

  He nodded sadly.

  “That’s for sure.”

  “And if you don’t run…I mean you can help get things straight. Not just with Vietnam. But these forces of evil. Maybe they aren’t really evil, anyway. They’re …They’re just a part of life…. A part of everything.”

  President Lyndon Johnson sat up straight.

  “Well, cover me in a ten gallon hat of cow manure. That’s a damned good idea!”

  He nodded.

  But then his eyes grew doubtful.

  “But how the hell do we get out of this…you know, unaltered. For me to do all this?”

  I nodded.

  “I think I’ve got an idea on that score too. Let me tell you about Principal Canthorpe. He’s a martinet. He likes to be in charge. And you know what? He says he’s a patriot. He’s got American flag all over this school And a huge one on the wall of his office. He plays the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful at the drop of the hat from dawn to --”