MindQuake - Chapter 3

Chapter Three  (Truth and Reality)

7:43 A.M.  Tuesday

   
     "So what do we do now?"

     "Good question, thought Marcus.  Everyone was just staring at the pile of bodies on the floor.  Except for a couple of "Wow"s and a    "Jesus H. Christ!" inserted by Willie, the town's only male hairdresser, no one had said much of anything so far.  Gotta love that commitment.  Nothing says blasphemy like giving Jesus a middle initial.  Marcus's personal favorite exclamation was "Christ on a cracker!"  He grinned to himself just thinking about it.  He had yet to hear that one from Willie. He was young though, there was still time.

     Marcus looked across the room at the girl in the corner.  "Stacy, I'm not sure exactly.  I've never had to do this before."

Stacy Andrews was sitting way back in the far corner, trying to push her face through a mess of long black hair so thick it could double for rope.  Stacy was nineteen and a student at the community college.  Anyone who knew her would tell you that she was extremely bright and driven.  She was going to be a lawyer.  Nothing would hold her back, she said.  

     Nothing except a baby.  Ever since three months ago when she found out that her thing with Jason was a little bit more than a weekend fling, she had had to scale her plans back a bit.  Harvard could wait, she would get there in time.  Until then, she could pass the time taking basic classes here and raising her daughter. At least she hoped it was a daughter.  

     "Honey, leave the man alone," Jason broke in.  "He just had to kill someone.  Or something at least."

Her eyes flared up.  "What, you think I missed that?  It only happened right here in front of everyone, but you think that somehow I didn't latch onto that?"

     Jason was bright red, staring at the floor, "Baby, I--"

     "You what?  No what I mean is we just witnessed a serious incident here.  A crime.  Three people are dead, as far as we can tell.  Hell, Marcus killed one of them himself."

     "So?"

     "So we should call the police, dummy!  What else do you think we should do?"

     "Well I just--"

     "You just nothing.  Let me handle this.  I'm calling the police."  Jason looked away, embarrassed and defeated.  Stacy could be impossible sometimes, and all these new hormones were not helping.  They were making him crazy.  He just slicked back his wispy blonde hair, pulling it back into what would have been a pony tail and took comfort in the fact that she was right. 

Besides, Marcus agreed.  "She's right man.  We've gotta call the cops.  I mean look at all this."  He waved an arm towards the unmoving pile of flesh. It made a good point all by itself.  Plus, it was Marcus's neck on the line.  He was the one who decided to get all crazy and stab a man in the throat.  If that even was a man.

     Given what had just happened, and what he had done, Marcus seemed to be as calm as usual.  He was the only one not still breathing hard and in a panic.  Jason didn't see how anyone could possibly keep it together after having to bring someone down so violently.  He didn't consider himself to be a pacifist, but he wasn't a warrior either.  In Marcus's shoes, he'd be hanging his head over a porcelain bowl by now.   

     "Hey man, how'd you stay so calm?  I mean, you just killed a guy.  You saw blood spurt out and everything.  It’s still on you." His eyebrows were furrowed like he's been stumped at a puzzle. "Doesn't anything...you know, affect you man?"

     "Meditation, Jason.  It's not just the art of seeking calm, it's the practice of being calm.  Besides, that wasn't a man."

     "It wasn't?  I know he was weird--"

     "I think everyone saw that, Jason.  That thing may have started out as a man, but it most certainly became a monster.  And where I come from, monsters die."

     Stacy was already pulling out her cell phone, shaking her head.  "So should I call 911 or what?"

     Marcus had to think about that for a second.  It's not like there was an ongoing emergency still.  Everyone on the floor was very obviously dead.  Sirens and ambulances seemed like way too much for Marcus at the moment.  He was keeping it together pretty well so far, but even he had his limits.  

     "Call Sheriff Brown."  

     Stacy raised an eyebrow.  "Okay, makes sense I guess.   But what's the number?  I don't keep it on the top of my head you know." 

     "Here, give me your phone."

     She looked at Marcus like he was crazy.  "Oh hell no!  You're all covered in blood and you wanna put your greasy-ass hands all over my phone?  You must be out your mind.  Just tell me the number."

     Marcus sighed inwardly and let that one roll right off.  Calm.  Calm leads the way towards righteous action.  Breathe.  He recited the number for Stacy who turned away as the phone began to dial.  Now that that was handled, Marcus felt a little better.  He sat down on the nearest stool at the counter and tried to maintain the calmness that he had just so smugly talked about.  

     But it wasn't easy.  They were all watching him.  Eleven people were in the shop that day, eating breakfast and carrying on like any other day when something crazy and terrifying had occurred.  Now all eyes were on him.  He tried to deflect their eyes with a passive look of non-interest, but they kept watching him all the same.  All except Stacy who was in the corner talking to the Sheriff, her head bobbing up and down as she spoke.  Marcus couldn't follow the conversation, but maybe it was better that way.  Stacy could handle it.
Marcus didn’t like being the new center of everyone’s attention, it made him light headed and weak.  He felt like he had just stepped off of a carnival ride, one that spins and loops and rattles you around, then dumps you back on solid ground where you wobble and try not to fall.  He didn’t understand their scrutiny, didn’t want it.  Just because he was the one that met the threat of the unnatural stranger head on and dispatched him with cold unfeeling, what right did they have to stare?  Wouldn’t they have done the same?  He was just the closest at the moment and had the best opportunity.  It’s not like it made him a different kind of person from them.  He was just Marcus, he worked at the shop. He liked it that way, simple and neat.  No complications.

     There was a pile of complications that used to be people on the floor, however, and he sensed that his nice orderly life was going to be overtaken.  And there was something about that explanation to himself that he wasn’t quite buying.  Would someone else have done what he did?  Would they have done something else?  He didn’t see it.  Was it just a survival instinct to fight back with such violence, or did he make a choice somewhere in there that this creature, whatever it was had to die?

     Calm he reminded himself again.  As he saw everyone keeping a close watch on him, he decided that it didn’t matter.  Choice didn’t matter, motivation didn’t matter.  Only righteous action mattered, and Marcus didn’t have any doubts about that one. 
The tension eased off a bit, and Marcus felt better.  The watchful eyes around him no longer seemed like a threat, they all seemed…concerned.  Now that he was calmer inside, Marcus felt a powerful hunger.  He wanted to tear into a muffin, but when he saw his bloody hands again, he changed his mind.  The muffin could wait.  

     When he looked up from his hands, Stacy was standing right in front of him, holding her phone closed between her palms.  She looked a lot less irritated now than she had been with Jason. “He says he’s on the way, honey.  And he says not to touch anything.  You gonna be alright?”

      Marcus waved it off, “I’ll be fine.  What did you tell him?”

     “Not much.  Just that we have a situation here and some people are dead.  And that he should probably hurry.”

     “Yeah, I guess he should.  He didn’t ask you any questions?

     “Not really.  He said these things are better off done in person.  He’s coming from the station, so it shouldn’t be long.

     “Cool, thanks Stacy.”  Marcus looked around the room at everyone watching him.  “Well, everyone just relax.  We’ll hang out here until Sheriff Brown can get here and handle the situation.  Is that okay with everyone?”

     Most just nodded their approval, too stunned to really say or do much else, but Willie stepped forward and detached himself from the rest. “Dude, I don’t know about these guys, but according to me, you just saved our skins from that freakazoid guy.  And to me, that makes you the King of Siam.  You can do whatever you like man.”

     Ten minutes later a squad car from the San Miguel police pulled up at the curb.  It rocked back and forth for a second, then the driver’s door opened and a squat, chubby man stepped out into the sunshine.  He wore a wide-brimmed hat and mirrors over his eyes.

Sheriff Lionel Brown wasn’t in the best shape for a police officer and no one knew that more than he did.  He had made peace with the fact that he liked pies and coffee cakes a whole lot more than he liked sit-ups a long time ago.  Instead, he focused on upholding the law, and over the years earned a reputations as an honest but formidable cop.  His record of collars and pursuits was impressive.  It was this record and the first name of Lionel that got him the nickname of “Lion”.  The Lion was well known throughout New Mexico, and he was respected across the board.  

     He peered in through the open door towards the passenger seat, “You coming out of there or what?”

     “Yes, sir. “

     Deputy Lucas Carlisle was thirty, and still fairly new to the department.  He was intelligent and honest, two qualities of outstanding police officers, but be was also very eager to succeed.  Too eager, really, and it made Sheriff Brown very nervous.  Ambition was a fine thing, but in this line of work, being too eager with too little experience was dangerous.  In the Lion’s experience, that combination often led to the good guys coming back with bullet holes.  Or not coming back at all.  

     Carlisle had a young wife and an infant son at home, so the Sheriff usually tried to steer him away from danger.  But you can only restrain a man so long.  The deputy was becoming restless performing the day to day tasks of a police station.  Brown could see that, anyone could.  So the Lion had decided to take him under his wing and take him out into the field before that restlessness became recklessness.

     Brown had to admit, he didn’t really know what he was getting himself into, though.  Carlisle was a talker.  And that’s putting it mildly.  The Sheriff was a quiet, reserved man who stood on his record.  Having to lead this jabbering rookie around everywhere was really making him think about how easily guns go off.  My god, he sounded like a gossiping woman sometimes!

     He would never shoot the man, of course, but a good solid Tasering?  Well, the Lion thought something might be said for that.

Carlisle got out of car and walked around to the sidewalk.  His thin frame looked almost comical next to Brown’s.  He squinted in the bright sun.  “So what’s the deal here, Boss?”

     “Don’t know really.  Didn’t say much on the phone.  Probably better that way.” 

     “Why do you say that?”

     “Helps to keep an open mind.  Quiet now, these people are bound to be shaken.  Best let me do the talking.”

     The Sheriff didn’t think that admonishment would really stop Carlisle from chiming in, but it might discourage him.  The Lion could be quite intimidating if he felt like it. 

     “If you say so, Boss.”

     “I do,” he grunted.  Carlisle seemed to take the hint.

     The Sheriff was grateful for his obedience, it would make this thing go so much smoother.  “And buy yourself some damn sunglasses, son.  This is the desert.”

      When they walked through the door into the shop, it was like stepping into another world.  

     The two men stood inside the entryway and looked around to see scared faces and hopeful eyes looking up at them.  Sheriff Brown peeled of his sunglasses and put his hat under his arm.  Carlisle was at least respectful enough not to gasp.  He tried to avoid people’s eyes though, speaking to the populace was the Sheriff’s thing.  Carlisle just shoved his hands into his pockets and decided to wait until he was needed.  He got the feeling that there was big trouble today, and he did not want to screw up on a big trouble day.

     The Sheriff looked around the room and said, “Morning, folks.  I’m Sheriff Brown.  This here is Deputy Carlisle.  We’re here to help you out and try to figure out what happened here.  But first things first.  Which of you is Stacy, the young lady from the phone?”

Stacy raised her hand from the back of the room.

     “Good.  Just sit tight for now darlin’.  And Marcus?”

     “Here, sir” Marcus gave a weak wave.

      “Ah, there you are.”

     Marcus was till on his seat at the counter.  He was still trying to ignore the new way everyone was looking at him.  It wasn’t really working.  And he felt exhausted for some reason that he couldn’t figure out.  It had only been a moment’s worth of action, not like he had gone running for miles.  But that was how he felt.

     “Well Marcus, why don’t you show me what we’ve got here and then we’ll see if we can’t piece things together, and get everyone back to normal.” For such a big man with a powerful reputation, the Sheriff could be as cuddly as a teddy bear when times required.

“Right over here, sir.”  For some odd reason, Marcus chuckled a little as he spoke. “Piece this together.”

     While the Sheriff was hunched down, examining the scene Marcus sidled up next to Sarah.  She was staring absent mindedly out of or into the window.  It was hard to tell, but he could certainly see that she was scared.  She wasn’t trembling anymore, but she looked lost in herself, trying to make sense of the unexplainable.  She wasn’t even aware of it, but Marcus noticed that she was shaking her head back and forth ever so slightly.  He could only imagine how she felt, watching her whole sane, comfortable world disintegrate.  Now there were monsters, monsters that were real.  He guessed that probably everyone else felt the same to some degree.

     As he got close, however, he learned he was wrong.

     “I know what you’re thinking.”  She kept her voice low and her eyes firmly focused on the glass.  “You think I’m a fragile little girl and this probably broke my mind.”

     “I don’t think that.”

     “You’re a terrible liar.  Anyway, the problem is not that I can’t accept what I just saw happen.  I know what I saw.  The problem is that I still don’t believe it.  It doesn’t play in my head.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “Well…I can string the events together in my head and remember what happened, but it doesn’t feel like truth to me.”  She finally broke her gaze and looked at Marcus.  “It all seems like it happened outside of reality.  You know like in some crazy dreamworld where shit like this is supposed to happen.  But that stuff is supposed to stay between book covers, Marcus!  I remember it happening right here in the real world, right in front of my face.”

     He heard her choke a little, “And that’s hard, Marcus.  That’s why I’m stuck here looking out the window.  Because I didn’t want to believe in a reality like this.”

     Marcus wished he had something better to say, but felt only empty himself. “No one does, Sarah, but I’m reminded everyday that reality doesn’t make much sense anyway, so why should this?  Answers don’t matter, don’t look for answers.  We just have to find our way through.  Gonna be alright for now?”

     “Yeah,” she said, and turned back to the window. “For now.”

     “Marcus?” Sheriff Brown was calling him from the apex of the madness.

     “Sir?”

     “Son, you better come take a look at this.” Marcus came up behind the Sheriff, careful not to get a good view.  

      The Sheriff stared into the tangled mess on the floor.  “What in the hell happened here?”

     “That’s a really long story, sir.  And I don’t think I really know for sure.”

     “Enlighten me.”

     “Begging your pardon sir, but I don’t think we should talk here.  We should probably do this at your station.

     “Is that so?” the Lion grunted.  He did not seem to be pleased by the presumption.  He lifted up the dead stranger’s hand and looked at it intently, searching for something. “Look son, this is serious business.  I’m here because people are dead.  Now I can keep this discreet or not, but I need some answers from you, I need to know what you know.  I’m not sticking my neck out for you again without some reassurance.  Not after last time.”

     Marcus winced.  Apparently there were hard feelings.  He had kind of hoped the Sheriff had forgiven him by now.  

This was going to get more complicated.  

     “I know what you’re thinking, but I assure you I’m not trying to be deceptive.  There are just some details involved here that I can’t really explain.”

     “What, in front of these people? Or to me?”

     “Well not to anyone, sir.”

     He grunted in disapproval.  “Try.”

     Marcus was becoming exasperated.  He started to care less how things sounded, or how he was perceived,.  “All right, fine.  The truth then.”

     “The truth.”  He was waiting.

     “Well, sir the truth is that this older gentleman in top came in from the outside all covered in blood.  He changed his face into a dog and used his teeth to rip Frank’s throat out.  When Jeremiah tried to pin him down, he changed his face to an insect and stabbed him with some sort of stinger.  Then I jumped over the counter with a knife and stuck it in the old guy’s throat. Then we called you.”

      It speaks to the Lion’s character that he didn’t make a face or give away much reaction during Marcus’s recitation.  He didn’t even blink. His eyes just narrowed as he seemed to think about possibilities.

     “So this bald fellow on top with the blood is your handiwork?”

     “Yes.”

     “And that is not his blood or the blood of these two unfortunates caked to the side of his head?”

     “Well I’m sure it all got mixed a little bit in the struggle, but that’s correct sir.  He walked in wearing that.”

     “Damn.  That means we have a second crime scene.”  He stood up and put his hat back on, twirling his glasses. “Probably more correctly, a first crime scene.  Son?” He put the mirrors back on his eyes and looked outside.  

     “Yes?”

     “We’d better go and discuss this downtown.”

The whole ordeal took up the rest of the day.  No one who was at the shop that morning got anything done.  What did get done was a lot of grunt police work, a lot more than these small town cops were used to dealing with.  There had been some accidents, to be sure, but Sheriff Brown couldn’t even remember the last time there had been a murder in San Miguel.  He’d never seen anything like this.

Witnesses had to give statements which had to be recorded and filed away. The immediate neighborhood had to be canvassed for outside witnesses and peripheral information.  The crime scene itself had to be cordoned off so that evidence could be collected and the detectives could do their work.  

     Overall, the Lion was overworked.  He had just seen the bodies get handed over to the county medical examiner.  He was awaiting reports on the causes of death, although he thought that each one was pretty damn obvious.  Still needed to hear the details, though.  

Only the bald headed stranger remained a mystery.  Not the cause of death, there was at the moment, still a knife stuck up to its hilt in his throat.  No, the mystery was who the hell was he?  Where did he come from?  No one seemed to know, and this was a pretty tight-knit community.  Maybe he was a traveler just passing through, or a tourist here to visit the hot springs, or go tromping through the caves.  He hoped the medical examiner would come back with an ID for him, give him someplace to start.  So far it felt like trying to climb up a mud slope and falling back on your ass every time.

He couldn’t even think about the story that Marcus told him.  Even all the way to the station, when pressed, he’d still give up the same story.  Always about changing faces, a dog and an insect, something long black and sharp.  It didn’t make any sense to the Lion.  Was the boy on drugs again?  It just didn’t fit into his philosophy of known facts.

     Few people know of the Sheriff’s philosophy of known facts, but Marcus happened to be one of them.  The “known facts” of the universe, according to the Lion were these:

     Jesus saves.

     Pie is good.

     That’s all there is.  It was a good, honest way to get through a life, and there just was not any room in there for nonsense about monsters with shifting faces.

     Yet he couldn’t believe that the kid would make it all up.  He was stupid and reckless at times, yeah, but he’s still young.  He’s got some time to work all that out.  Who wasn’t stupid and reckless when they were young?

     The Lion had met Marcus when he was mowing yards for money in high school.  He always did a good job of it and always had some interesting things to say, whether about the brainwashing of mediocre teen-candy pop music, or the dangers of radical neo-Marxism, or the importance of a good coffee grinder.  The kid seemed bright and personable, unlike most of the other little runts that just sucked forty bucks from your pocket and then vanished into thin air.  They didn’t appreciate the cost of actually having grass in this desert atmosphere.  The two ended up talking often, usually with iced tea in hand, in front of whatever sports channel the Lion had on but was not watching.  He would chat, and he would be polite, and then he would leave his glass in the sink and go about his business.  

      Things began to change, though.  Gradually, Marcus was less jovial and less talkative, seeming to deflect questions about his life or his family.  Then he stopped coming by at all, just dropped of the map for a while and the Sheriff had to pay some dopehead kid to come and screw up his expensive lawn.  He realized that he had come to miss talking with Marcus, and wondered what happened to him, if it was worth asking about.  After about two months, there was a knock at the Lion’s door one evening, and there stood Marcus with a sleeping bag.  He didn’t say a word, just shrugged his shoulders like a question, and the Sheriff let him inside.  In the morning, he woke to find his lawn neatly trimmed, the way Marcus always did it, and the sleeping bag rolled up by the couch.  

     Over that summer, the Sheriff got only bits and pieces of the story, only things like “My parents aren’t getting along” and “By the way, thanks for the place to crash.”  Marcus mostly just worked on people’s yards in the mornings, slept for a while, and then went out in the evenings.  The Lion never had to feed him, never had to scold him, Marcus was always there on the couch at night, and always out working in the morning light.

     Turned out the kid was right, and by the end of August, he got a call from his mother about the divorce.  She was moving to L.A. as she put it, “To get the hell away from here.”

     He never got a call from his father explaining anything.  There were rumors he was still around, although he had traded up to a big white house with a bean shaped pool and a blonde woman who had pool parties everyday.  There was even a silver Mercedes in the driveway, parked next to the fountain that ran night and day.

     To Sheriff Brown, it wasn’t just a rumor, he had seen it himself when he was called out for a noise complaint.  He never rode on calls like that, he wasn’t a hardass about parties. But 3:30 a.m. on a Tuesday with liquored up people screaming and kicking at the neighbor’s dogs is a bit much.  So he busted them, took their booze and wrote a ticket for noise violation, an expensive one.  It was torn up in his face by an irate man in a purple Speedo, but the Lion just smiled and the penalty hit the books just the same.  The Sheriff even smiled in court when the judge upheld the charge and made Marcus’s father pay the fine.   

     The weekend after the phone call from Marcus’s mother, Sheila was doing laundry and pulled a dimebag of pot out of Marcus’s jeans.  Always a good and honest woman, she showed it to the Sheriff.  The Lion had never felt so helpless, so deflated because as he saw it he had no choice.  He was an officer of the law and took his duties seriously.  He couldn’t have this in his house.  When he tried to explain all this to Marcus, however, his frustration got the better of him and he lost his temper.  After a lecture about upholding the law, he got angry and kicked Marcus out of the house.  The poor kid never said a word in defense.  He just grabbed his sleeping bag and a stack of books and shuffled out the door.  

     The Lion still felt bad about that day.  He knows that Marcus got off light on one hand, he could have gone to jail for that pot.  But he also knows that he never meant to be so hard on the kid.  Everyone screws up, everyone has secrets, and most importantly everyone needs help from somewhere to get through.  What if I was all he had? The sheriff couldn’t think like that though, not if he wanted to keep his job.

That was why he had taken the phone call this morning and responded to the shop so quickly.  Maybe things weren’t so bad, Marcus did call him for help after all.  Then again, that meant Marcus was in trouble again, but this looked like a whole different sort of trouble.  The sort that makes no damn sense at all.  The Lion shook his head and got back to work.

     He would help Marcus if he could, provided that he was in the clear and on the straight and narrow.  A lot of that would depend on answers from the dead men rolling away, and on the identity of some dog-faced insect man.  He couldn’t just discount Marcus’s story, even though it made no sense, because all ten other people in the shop saw the same thing.  He couldn’t believe they were all crazy.  Lying, yes, but crazy?  It doesn’t come in bunches like that.  They all had the same story.  

     A dog.

     A man.

     An insect.

     It gave him the shivers.

     Drinking strong black coffee to stay awake through the dark night, Sheriff Brown focused on a photo of the one solid clue he did have to work with.  

     A black Toyota 4Runner was found unlocked and abandoned in the shop’s parking lot.  Inside his deputies had found thickening pools of blood on the passenger seat and matted patches of short brown hair.

     There was also a pistol, a chrome .44 tucked into the center console, the only finger prints belonging to the bald dead man.  It was loaded, but super clean.  Lab said it was in perfect condition but had never been fired.  Blood smears across the console seemed to suggest someone was trying to open it.

     Someone in the passenger seat, struggling violently as they bled out and died, had reached for the gun.

     The Lion sighed and sipped his coffee.  A long day indeed.