by Theo Cage
"The spew that one gets off the web," he grumbled to no one in particular, his wife just below him in the sunroom. She was painting small yellow glyphs onto the side of a piece of homemade pottery. "Chapertah! Do you remember him? Indra Chapertah? From that conference in Phoenix on . . . what was it?"
"Complimentarity," she answered, her voice far away in thought.
He laughed. "Complimentarity. Right. Science finally meets the New Age. What sludge!" Then he huffed, flipping over another page of a thick sheaf of computer printouts.
"Mister We Are All One With The Protons. Did you have to put up with that kind of nonsense when you taught at Princeton?" Tamara had a degree in Physics and taught for several years at a number of American colleges. They had met five years before in Mexico, both escaping from long over-tired marriages. She spoke carefully, her eyes on the small brush marks she was taking pains with.
"First of all, Chapertah is a Cosmologist, not a Physicist. He's into the macro, not the micro. He has excellent credentials – won the Messner Accomplishments Award in ninety-seven."
"He's onto something else now," he said.
She smiled, remembering Chapertah, a short ball of energy with a sharp mind. She loved his accent; that sharp clipped Calcuttan singsong. "Doesn't surprise me. He likes to wander about," she said, imitating it.
"Yes, well he's wandered quite far afield this time. Now he's translating the Bible."
Tamara looked up from her work for the first time. She was well over fifty, but her eyes sparkled like a teenagers. She cocked her head in a way he loved. "Must be his idea of a joke, Kam. Aimed at crusty old researchers like you who turn that lovely shade of purple every time some intellectual steps over your foul line."
Kam dropped the pile of computer paper on the desk beside him and rolled himself across the floor. "Was that another Sports metaphor? We're really going to have to get you to town one of these days to a Hockey game or something before you burst."
She dipped her brush into the enamel. "The Raptors are playing Saturday."
Kam looked down at her, past the railing into the sunroom. "Here we sit in the lap of Mother Nature, surrounded by the best chunk of arboreal forest on the continent, and all you want to do is drag us to the big city and watch a bunch of height-mutants throw balls into hoops?" He laughed good-naturedly." I'm convinced your family must have dipped into someone else’s gene pool at some point."
She had her face close to her work, her eyes squeezed tight. "I'd be careful, O'Brien. Them there's fighting words to a Koblaski."
Her father was George Koblaski, a Russian Jew and brewery magnate. Her mother was a painter. In the end, the family fortune was based more on a collection of delicate works of art than the useless paper the Koblaski stock turned into during the recession. George Koblaski was a scrapper too. He died in a bar room brawl at the age of 72.
"Besides, dipping into the odd gene pool can be a survival technique." She winked at him. "And it's fun too."
"The Koblaski's have always been over-sexed. But you can't seduce me. I only married you for your brains."
She giggled because she knew better. "You American's are such liars."
Kam rolled back to his work desk and picked up the printout again, unable to put it out of his thoughts. Could it be possible that someone else had produced this drivel and used Chapertah's name to embarrass him? It wouldn't be the first time.
"Look at this, Tamara. He's done an analysis of Revelations. Sent me the whole thing. Does he think I have nothing else to do? Did you put me on his researcher assistant’s goofy mailing list?"
"It's a compliment, Kam. Who else would he know that would even bother to look at something like that without accusing him of going senile? He's got an IQ that goes right off the charts." She knew this thought pleased him, the idea of a world-class mind coming to him for suggestions. "And he's very charismatic. Maybe he's working at becoming another Maharishi."
"Sure. Why not? We have such a shortage of prophets today."
She wiped her hands with a towel. "But he has no interest, I'm sure. He's always been immune to the idea of power and money. Just look at the way he dresses. You have to love the guy for that."
"Hey, I've been immune to power and money my whole life and look where it got me?"
"My undying love and affection is what it got you. And if you don't watch it, we'll have that little walk down to the pier where I forget to lock the wheel brakes on your chair."
Kam sat up uneasily and lifted himself out of his seat. His right foot still throbbed where he had cut through to the bone of his ankle in a chainsaw mishap a few weeks before. He hobbled to the railing. "I knew there had to be a reason why you were so anxious to get me into this contraption. It makes me feel like Perry Mason."
Tamara laughed, got up and went to the window overlooking the landing. "Not Perry Mason, my TV-handicapped husband. Ironsides." She couldn’t blame him for the mistake. They didn’t even own a television.
"Whatever. Anyway, I just hate commenting on projects where I have no expertise."
"Now that is the biggest lie I have ever heard from you,” Tamara laughed. “Ignorance has never caused you a seconds hesitation in the five years I've known you."
Kam groaned loudly and pretended surprise. "Why did I ever marry a Physicist? They understand exactly how much energy it takes to get a horse to water, but they can't get the research grant to pay for the trough. That's why you love me. I may be dumb, but I know how to figure out how to pay for the trough."
She looked up at him. "And a lovely trough it is, too."
A loon call echoed across the lake and a breeze shook the tree branches above the sunroom. A few fat raindrops hit the glazing, making Tamara turn back toward the lake. It was early summer, but the days had stayed cool and wet. The clouds beyond the far western shore were darkening. She needed some sunshine to shake the damp winter out of her bones, but somehow she knew that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Climate change was depressing. She felt the rumble of distant thunder.
"Maybe you should shut down your computer, Kam. Looks like a thunderstorm is on the way"
Kam took his bifocals off and rubbed his jaw. "It's not in the weather report. "
"Take it from a Physicist. Weather is chaos. Chaos resists predictions. More importantly, insurance doesn't cover acts of God."
"God again. Fine, I surrender." He flopped back in the wheel chair, rolled over to his paper-strewn desk and started shutting down his PC. He listened to the fan whine down into silence.
The screen flickered, went dark, and then for just the briefest second, flashed a symbol, which seemed to fade more on Kam's retina than on something as substantial as the computer screen. He saw a seven-headed beast, jaws dripping blood. In its coiled claws were searchlights. The head of one of the beasts – the regal profile of Indra Chapertah. In one of the other, jaws wide, his wife's frail body. Then the image faded before he could unfold his spectacles and push them back onto his freckled nose. Despite the roaring heat from the wood stove only feet away, he felt a hard shiver ripple through his body. For the first time he could remember since hearing the news of his first wife's death, his hands were shaking.
CHAPTER THREE
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name is … Abaddon. (The book of Revelations)
Claude Gauthier had only been on the Internet for about a week with a new ISP, when he started getting messages that disturbed the hell out of him. The first one came only a day after first signing on. The message was labeled 'To the Baby Killer'
From: [email protected]
To: babykiller –
We know your secret. And it's safe
with us. For now.
Abaddon.
A joke? Junk mail designed to get your goat? He'd heard about this stuff on the Net, although he didn't expect it so soon after setting up a new email address. He'd bought a shiny new computer toy at a downtown mall near his office. It had
everything he wanted. Now, every time he saw it sitting there on his desk, like a little gray Buddha, a foreboding traced steps up his backbone.
The next day, reluctantly, he clicked into his e-mail account.
From: [email protected].
To: babykiller
Little Herman was sweet. He sends
his regards and Polaroid's.
If you'd like to see more
< look here>
from Abaddon.
Claude's hand froze. He knew the name Herman. It gurgled up from past memories like swamp gas, foul and hot. Polaroid's he thought? Could there have been Polaroids? All those years ago? He clicked the mouse pointer on the 'look here' command. The screen changed. His heart began to stutter in his chest.
You need AVI Player to access
Video on-line. To download
press AVI. Play.
A movie? Was someone sending spam movies out over the Net? He loaded the video player software – fiddled with his set-up for a good half hour until he had it working, his hands shaking. His wife told him she was going to bed and padded up the staircase to their upstairs bedroom in the loft overlooking the lake. He went back to his home page and clicked into e-mail again. The message was back. He asked for the movie, and when it played on his screen, small and lurching in the top corner of his monitor, he felt his throat restrict to the point where he was certain he was dying.
This wasn't a Polaroid. It was an actual movie. Grainy with age. And it was him. His chest bare and his paunch accented by the high contrast images. Herman was a boy, about fourteen, blond hair, a thin emaciated chest, his hair short, a military style cut. Claude was behind him, pushing hard against the young prostitute.
Claude let out a stifled moan and clicked on the close button, but the image continued to cycle. Again and again he slammed into the thin naked backside of the young boy. He heard a sound on the stair. His wife. He clicked the mouse again and again. The video continued to run.
"Claude? Are you alright?" she asked.
He hit the power button on the monitor, saw the image shrink, the screen go dull gray in the dark of the study. She turned the corner at the stair and looked in.
"Claude?"
"Just a computer problem," he said, almost trance-like. His wife shrugged and returned to their bedroom. It would probably be hours before he finally came to bed. The new job, she thought.
After that incident, he had stayed away from the computer for a week. But one night, he turned it on hesitantly, anxious to finish a report he was making to the board the next morning. Claude was the newly appointed President and CEO of Vulcan Industries, a worldwide operation centered in Toronto that produced special plastic products for the military and the automotive industry. His salary had shot up from $150,000 a year to over $400,000 along with his newly increased responsibilities. With stock options, and a profitable year, he could make over a million, easy.
The thought of a million dollars made Claude feel light-headed. How long had he waited to be rewarded for all those years of working long into the night, all those trips, the thousands of backs slapped while holding that fixed corporate smile? So, he had made a stupid mistake a few years ago. A simple buying trip to Germany and far too much to drink; a few demons unlocked; a visit with a darker side he hadn't known before. Don't they call that self-discovery?
He had worked far too hard those last few months of 2002. He was unwinding that December, but like the good executive, doing it away from home, away from prying eyes. He had heard about the shops and the clubs in Hamburg where anything goes – live sex, orgies, young girls and boys. They fascinated him, perhaps more than he liked to admit, and all the pressure of the foreign purchase they had just made with a German auto-parts manufacturer was rolling off of him now and he felt a little giddy with success. He was looking for a release.
Claude never had any intention of showing up at a club called the Raskeller, but his German guide, a tall boneless agent for a German auto dealer, drove him there sometime after three in the morning, his mouth droning on constantly about German superiority. Claude's head was spinning, his stomach churning, but more important, he was horny. Impossibly turned on by the wild life in the streets and the garish club fronts and his remoteness from any kind of civilization he recognized. It was like waking in an erotic dream.
He recalled, sitting there in the back seat of the stretch Benz, an experience he had in University– his one and only brush with homosexuality. Of course, he told himself later, it was closer to a bi-sexual encounter. That sounded more like self-discovery, didn't it?
He still got it up over a woman. That hadn't changed. In fact, it was right around this time that he had met Maureen, and there was a lot of sex there. Good sex, he liked to tell himself, feeling better already. Then, everything in his life returned to normal. But now that he was trolling the Oranienburger Strasse his German business-aide smirking at the smorgasbord of delights available on the street, his mind numbed by too much Russian Vodka, so he just said fuck it, and let himself go.
Before he knew it, he was locked in a small paneled room with a person of indistinguishable gender who expertly complied with his slurred wishes. All he really remembered after were the eyes, what he saw of them. And some other body parts that made up a fleeting inventory of forbidden images. O.K. He had to admit it to himself later on the plane, nursing an enormous hangover; he had had sex with a young male. It was a stupid thing to do and unforgivable. He had escaped from Germany like a man possessed knowing that the incident, all ten minutes of it, was volatile enough to blow up his marriage, his career, his family and likely alienate him from most of his friends for life. It haunted him for months after, but all it became was a huge error in judgment whose danger seemed to recede with time. He hadn't even thought about it, even remotely, for at least a year. And now here it was. On his computer monitor in his den in their home in the Muskokas, a million miles from a dingy club that must have seemed colorful and exciting once when seen through senses jangling with alcohol and a handful of uppers.
His sons were older now. They might even understand what the pictures meant. His wife would be devastated, especially by the visual evidence.
Just like mourning, he thought. I've moved past denial now. I am into the resistance mode and sliding quickly towards acceptance. The instant he called up the icon for his spreadsheet program, a small blue square appeared in the middle of his screen. It flashed a message "E-mail received". Claude felt his balance go. A wave of nausea hit him hard. Was this just his imagination after all? Guilt working at him, like something out of a Twilight Zone episode? He moved the pointer to the blue square and clicked the mouse button hard.
Claude (may we call you Claude? Or do you prefer The Baby Killer?) Everything that has happened to you since your sweaty German adventure has been an illusion. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you will feel better about your destiny and the sooner we can get on with the really important things in your life. You have two choices, which considering the nebulous bullshit most humans slog through on a daily basis – is not a totally unappealing prospect.
Do we have a meeting of the minds here? You still with us Claude? Don't get lost in dreamy considerations about how your life would be different if you could just have kept your manicured grip off Herman's ass for a few minutes. We can playback your little German home movie anytime you'd like if you’re beginning to feel uncertain about its veracity. It's there for the asking?
Here, my friend, are your two choices.
1) Do nothing. In this event, your future is quite certain. The video, along with all the pertinent data, will be delivered by courier to Business Week magazine, the National Enquirer, all three major TV Networks, CNN and the New York Times. We're fairly certain they will take more than a casual interest in it, you being the neophyte President of such a profitable and sexy international operation. But there's more.
The little boy you sodomized, died of complications the following day – intern
al bleeding, hemorrhaging and various other indignities and injuries. The German authorities, spurred on by this heinous act of violence and depravity, have been looking for you for years. So once this gets out, news of your crime, they will demand your immediate arrest and extradition. Of course, your business-career will evaporate.
The criminal charge will void your fat retirement package and that one million dollar company loan you just made to buy the new house, will immediately become due and payable. You might as well go to jail. Where else are you going to live?
Your wife loves you, Claude, but how long will she be willing to wait for her pedophile pauper to be released from a German jail - while she scrapes by on welfare? Lawyers are expensive, you know. That is, if you survive the stint in prison. Do you know what the prison population likes to do to child molesters?
2) Keep the job, the pension, your life insurance, the love and respect of family and friends. Only one sacrifice will be required – your instant response to our request for help. There will only be one. After that, if you survive, you will be free of this thing forever. How do you know that? We have a reputation to uphold. But be aware. We're not going to ask you to do something simple. No such luck.
And don't expect your project to be an easy one. We might ask you to do something that will dirty those professional hands of yours. Murder. Mayhem. You name it. Of course, there will be no excuses. You were chosen because you're the type of guy who gets the job done without whimpering. That's what we expect. Follow our simple directive and you will never hear from us again. Ignore us at your peril. We will contact you when you are needed.
