And yet more Crossed Wires

Say Hello to Sister Stephanie

Sister Stephanie McAllister was an unusual nun for a couple of reasons. Primarily, she was odd because she actually had a direct line with the entity she believed to be God and had had that line since she could remember. Secondly and perhaps most unusually, was that Sister Stephanie was very specifically tasked by Him on many occasions. Even though she didn’t much care for His methods here on planet Earth, she followed His will well enough and understood the Big Plan as clearly as any mortal could. But she still groused occasionally at Him or for His methods. Why, she frequently wondered, did He always have to create really Evil bastards? Was it just to piss her off? She spoke out at him about the subject quite often; and then in His all knowing way he would simply chuckle and say to her, all in good time, dear daughter.
“All in good time my left tit,” she would sneer back. But she trudged on, even in spite of her sometimes reluctant approval. She really did love the Big Guy and did his bidding as well as she could.
And what about this getting old s***?
She clapped her hands together, took a deep breath and said, “No more!” She was deeply aware of the fact that complaining got her nowhere. Right now there was some doing to do. There was a vicious new fish in the her pond and it was starting to grow, starting to feed on the pretty little ones that she had been set to tend to from afar. These were some of His chosen pretties and He would not like them to continue to be preyed upon by such a loathsome creature as this new vile thing. How it even got in the pond to begin with was a mystery to her at the moment. When she asked for enlightenment on the subject, He had no answer at all: just a cosmic shrug, she thought.
Lord, did she hate the cosmic shrug!
With new resolve, Sister Stephanie led her senses back outward, toward the here and now, suspending her meditations to take a better look at her surrounding environment. She stood now in the diffuse late afternoon light that filtered into the moist, rich environment of her conservatory. The aromas of herbs and spices played like music to her sense of smell and colorful, blooming tapestries of flowers brightened her spirit. Outside, she knew, it was cool and that there would soon be rain. Here, hidden away in an obscure part of the Blue Ridge mountain range, was her convent. It was a convent of one. It was home. Rain was good here.
Though she lived by herself, she was never without company. There were a select few who knew how to make the pilgrimage into her world and they visited when called or when moved to do so. She maintained all the contact to the outside world that she required through her friends and, of course, her little ones. Her friends would always happily provide her with such things she might need for her gardens or for fixing a roof or the like and would come when asked to help her gather and cut firewood for her stoves.
Her friends always looked forward to being called, for Sister Stephanie would always have a wondrous meal awaiting them. They would lovingly sup together over her sumptuous stews, rich with fresh herbs, root vegetables and the occasional rabbit or plump squirrel and were always delighted with her garden fresh salads. When her apples or plums were in, pies and turnovers were plentiful, topped with freshly whipped cream when the cream was provided. Best of all, thought everyone, was her simply magical hearth-baked sourdough bread; she would always bake enough to send a few extra loaves home to the families and neighbors of those who came by to visit.
Another gift shared by Sister Stephanie, and perhaps the most revered by her friends, was her story telling. Sister Stephanie wrote in a most imaginative way; her writer’s voice was hypnotically lyrical, intelligent and supernaturally descriptive. All of those qualities and more came out when she read aloud. It seemed as though she was gently reading inside of your mind as well as warmly speaking to your ears. The stories themselves seemed to be chapters of a larger work, fit together into an almost recognizable pattern that was there and yet still mysterious and intangible. Some would go home and try to tell their friends or their children the same stories, but they always seemed to come out incomplete, cute or clumsy. Those that heard her speak her stories knew otherwise.
Tomorrow morning she would have her friends wake up and feel a need to come up and visit. With what was left of the afternoon, she would make the preparations for their arrival. Tomorrow afternoon they would all break bread together and she would tell them a new story.
For the right now, there was a lot of doing to do. The most important things needed to come first, of course.
She needed now to rely on her favorite; the scared-but-strong, young and constantly confused one was always sensitive to the infrastructure. Very soon, he would be in great need of her help because of the very fact that his help would be needed by the others to put a stop to this new thing in the pond. He was such a tender entity, this Joe, but he had to be given a perhaps too dangerously strong boost and it had to be done very quickly. His stalwartly coming around to his place in this situation was imperative. There were others who would require help as well, and Sister Stephanie hoped that between her and her Joe that they could do the right things.
Sometimes He really pissed her off. This was one of those times and she thought so in His general direction.
What came back was that cosmic shrug again. Boy, how she hated that!









What Bobby Saw While Napping With The Penguins

It wasn’t easy being Bobby during the minutes that elapsed after his fall onto the dry dock floor. It wasn’t easy at all.
At first, Bobby had no sense of anything outside of his mind. He knew he was conscious on some level, had a distinct sense of his own Bobbiness, but beyond that it was as if he had wandered off and left his body lying in a ditch somewhere. What he was experiencing was an onslaught of very graphic movie-clip-like images that were telling a frantic, horrific story. He was the camera’s eyes and ears but he definitely wasn’t directing the action.
There is a very angry, darkly dressed man running away from a twisted and chunked up body piled like too many meaty Leggos in one crazy heap, dripping thick red and blue ooze into small puddles and then there’s the laughter, and more laughter and then...a dog is screaming its final trapped-by-its-hind-legs howl, bays briefly into a starless void as it folds up like a hairy accordion and hits the ground hard, stops breathing, eyes open to the uncaring universe...where master?, the dog is wondering as it’s essence goes away on permanent puppy vacation somewhere where rabbits and cats run free. . .
Bobby snapped around again, in a cold and sticky sweat, his sheet a tangled mess around him: what the f***?
There were few things that disturbed Bobby to the bone, and being in a hospital with fragmented memories, hallucinations and I.V. drips in his arms were three of those things. He didn’t know s*** about s*** and that bothered the normally very perspicuous Mitts to the Nth. The true b**** of it was that he could do absolutely nothing about it. He was stuck: lost and alone in his own head and pinned to a bed.
No, Bobby! You’re not alone!
A voice unlike anything he’d ever heard before was hollering at him, as if through a megaphone in the distance but really there, in his ears, at the same time...
“Nurse!” Bobby howled, pressing his distress button repeatedly. “Nurse! I’m in pain! I need drugs now!”
The discomfort Bobby felt was like nothing he’d ever encountered. It was an inside of his head itchy rash, on the verge of being an ache. And somehow he knew that the drugs wouldn’t make it go away at all. I’ve got brain damage or some s*** or else I’ve totally lost my...
No! the voice insisted, clear and strong again in his mind.
You’re okay. It’s somebody you haven’t heard from in a long time talking to you. It’s me, Joe, Bobby! Your brother.
By the time Bobby could even begin to wrap his head around what he had just heard, just experienced, two doctors and his usual day nurse were in the room and all over him. Before he could even think to protest, a needle was inserted into his hep-lock and he was, within seconds, off to the cool dark spaces again, playing with the penguins.




Meet Carl

Carl really wanted to just simply retire. He was twenty five years into a career with the FBI and pretty much felt like it. He’d been there and done that, as most folks would say. As he sat at his desk in the Roanoke field office, moving his notorious bull-dog-puppy eyes around at his small but effective team, he thought a lot of things that had absolutely nothing to do with the stack of case files on his desk. Actually, the only thing on his desk that interested him at the moment was a small but effective document that would, if signed, end his tenure with the Federal Bureau of Investigation with one brief stroke of his pen.
When the thing he suddenly thought was a stroke hit him directly between his ears, it was a good thing that he had all two hundred seventy pounds of him planted in his government-issued, semi-ergonomic chair. What followed was by no stretch of the imagination anything that had anything to do with been there, done that. It took a few seconds for his cadre to even vaguely register their master’s distress.
What caused the distress went something like this: a voice screamed at him, I need help! I’m shouting as loud as I can that there is a f****** sick bastard running around loose in Virginia and he’s all f****** wrong and I need a cop or a P.I. or anybody who can help. This f***** is killing people and there are more to die! Please, help! Customer needs assistance, call out the dogs, whatever. Help! My name is Joe! Joe Allen! Someone out there has to have the same s*** going on in his or her head as me! I’m begging! Please, please, please shout the word enough in your head if you hear this!
Carl didn’t listen to that last bit in the least. He cupped his ears with his big been-there-and-done-that hands and tucked his head into his voluminous chest, mussing his tie knot.
“Enough!” he barked out loud, as if hollering and choking at the same time.
When Carl shouted at all, it was very scary to most people. Accordingly, everyone in his crew turned heads and dropped jaws at nearly the same time. Sandy Carver, his good friend and partner of seven years--seated across from him--dropped a nearly full fist’s worth of M and Ms that were just short of her mouth onto her desk and actually flinched toward her service weapon.
“I hear you, Goddammit!” Carl said, lowering his voice. He noticed his people looking at him like he’d gone completely over the bend and thought to himself, I really f****** need help.
Then the voice came back: NO! I need help! Who are you? I hear you loud and clear. Oh! There are other people there who can’t hear me, right? Get away. Tell them you’re allright!
Carl looked at his crew and said in as steady a voice as he could muster, “I’m okay guys. I’m just a little out of sorts. Think I need a drink of water. This sludge we call coffee is f*****’ with my head. That was some damn day dream, for a fact!”
Carl’s partner, Sandy, looked hard and careful at him, thought she saw beads of sweat coming off of his perfectly shaved bald head. She knew from experience that this meant one of two things: he was either hungry or very upset about something. She also knew from experience to let him work it out.
All she said was, “You okay, boss?”
Carl looked at her with his bull-dog-puppy eyes and nodded briskly.
“I’ll be fine, Sandy. I was day dreamin’, for sure. I think I had some kind of flashback to our last case. Let me go to the head and splash some water on me and I’ll be fine.”
“You go, boss. No worries.”
Carl heaved his two hundred and seventy pound frame out its government issued chair, brushed himself down and straightened his tie. A few members of his team were still giving him the fish eye and he figured he should put that to bed.
“Look folks: twenty three days and counting! Then ya’ll don’t have to worry about my fat ass bugging you. I’m fine, guys. I just got the old-timers.” He gave one his best mea culpa shrugs.
Everyone chuckled, except Sandy, and went back to whatever it was they were doing. There were several open cases on just about everyone’s agenda and there were only a handful of agents dealing with them. The budget cuts were getting deeper by the day.
As Carl headed out of the main office toward the restrooms it became clear to him that there were several explanations for that voice he heard in his head. None of them made any good sense. He knew what he heard, though, and it scared him.
He got nearly to the male head when it happened again.
Do you still hear me? Don’t answer out loud!
“No, hell no,” Carl said defiantly, very out loud, and violently pushed the door open into the latrine. “Not only no, but no f****** way Carl Earl James is gonna crack up after twenty five years of good service! No!”
Carl! So that’s your name! said the voice.
The sound of this voice was so clear, so real in his mind that he really didn’t have any idea what to do. It was going to be a one way trip to the psych ward, he figured, for certain.
Calm down Carl, the voice said. Please! This is real. I’m what you would call a psychic, or something like that...it doesn’t really work that way, but I am truly talking to you in your head. I know you think you’re going nuts but I can prove you’re not!
“Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m not crazy. I’m just hearing voices and talking to myself in the head. Just great.”
You’ll seem less crazy to other folks if you shut up and just think what you want to say, the voice said.
Carl decided to play along with this delusion then. Visions of straight jackets and electro-shock therapy played in his mind.
Okay, he thought.
This is important, Carl. There is a crazy f*** out there, right now, killing girls, young women. You want proof you’re not crazy, well then fine: look me up. My name is Joseph Michael Allen, my social is...”
Hold up there, Carl thought.
What?
If you really are talking to me in my head and I am completely psychotic, how is your social security number going to help me?
Joe actually thought about that for a second.
Tell you what, Carl...look me up anyway. Show my info to your team, crew, whatever, and tell them that you’ve got hunch about something. Can you do that?
Carl had to admit that in the back of his mind it made sense. One simple action, one trip to the funny farm or...
Joe didn’t, couldn’t do back of the mind. He stayed quiet.
“Okay,” Carl said out loud. He left the head and went back into his crew’s main space. He went directly to his partner and looked her dead-on in the eyes.
“I need you to look someone up for me.”
Sandy glared at him in deep concern. She had known Carl for seven years and had never seen him so agitated. It was like he was on drugs, which she knew was impossible.
“Okay, boss. Tell me.”
“Joseph Michael Allen,” he said. He hoped that something came up. Otherwise the loony bin was going to be his next stop, just short of his much anticipated retirement.
Sandy went to her computer keyboard, south of her desk, and started tapping. The flat screen, liquid crystal monitor went blank for a second and then the AFIS data base logo popped on screen. She typed in the name Carl had given her.
What happened next nearly pushed Carl into cardiac arrest. Sandy was blown out too.
There was a security lock on his history, profile, everything. A top level security lock, plain and simple.
Carl screamed out in his mind, What the f***, Joe?!
I’ll tell you all about me if you agree to help me, Joe sent back.
Carl looked sideways at Sandy and resigned himself.
“This is big, Sand,” he said. “Real big.”
Sandy looked at him hard again, saw the sweat creeping from his forehead. She knew when he was telling the truth and that was the matter of it right that instant. He looked like he was going mad, but she knew better.
“Fill me in, Carl,” she said.
Carl looked at her with more than usual love and respect; he couldn’t lie to her, never had.
“We have a very big problem,” he said.
If you bring her in, she has to trust you implicitly, Carl. Obviously she doesn’t hear me.
Carl made a waving gesture, as if swatting at a gnat.
“Sandy. What would you say if I told you that I have some kind of off the charts psychic connection to somebody who is trying to stop a serial killer?”
Sandy looked at the floor, wishing she had better shoes and a ticket out of this life, and nervously ran her fingers through her hair.
“I’d say either you’ve gone completely crazy or if what you’re saying is true then we need to get real busy. Which is it?”
“I think this is real,” said Carl.
Ask her to look up my brother, Carl. Mitterando, Giuseppe. He works at a shipyard in Newport News, but I think he’s in a hospital now.
“This is proof or dare,” Carl said. “Send the white jackets if this doesn’t pan out. Okay, Sand?”
“What the f*** are you talking about?” Sandy was so confused that she started to think that maybe she was loosing it. Carl was not only her mentor, but her stability. If he was freaking, she naturally had to freak too.
“Do this. Look for a Mitterando, Giueseppe.”
Sandy reluctantly went back to her keyboard and punched the information in.
“Well I’ll be f***** by...” she trailed off.
“What?” asked Carl.
“This tags to Allen, but it’s an open file. This guy pops real and squeaky clean. He shows as a first class ship fitter, etcetera, etcetera. Carl! Where in the f*** is this s*** coming from?”
Do you believe me now? Joe whispered in Carl’s head.
So what the f*** then? Carl thought, lashing out.
Touch your partner and hope she doesn’t pull her weapon out and shoot you. If she’s in for a penny, she’s gotta be in for the full pound. Just do it. I can link, I think. Are you ready to get intimate with her? I mean, really intimate? Your choice.
It took Carl all of about thirty seconds, sweat beading even more profusely on his forehead, to make the decision.
“Sandy, do you trust your old fart partner?”
She was still completely nonplussed about all of the information that she was seeing.
“Look, boss, we’ve been through a lot. Yeah? I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. What do you want?”
“Hold my hand,” he said.
“This isn’t a mid-life crisis thing, or some s***, is it boss?”
“No, girl. You know me better than that.”
She timidly complied, not really knowing why.
In an instant, her world changed so dramatically that she would never be able to be just a special agent. She, Carl and this other guy suddenly became one; it was just for that moment. And that moment was enough to change the way she thought about her boss and her world in general.
They saw. They knew. And they were afraid, together.
There was work to do and it had to be done quickly. The loss of lives of countless others could not be comprehended. They all saw the pure hate flowing outward from that single source. The tobacco spitting cowboy.
Hi, Sandy, Joe said.
“F*** you,” she said out loud, startled by Joe’s mental voice, and quickly got up from her desk and bee-lined it to the female head.
Well that went well, Joe shot into Carl’s head.
Carl was over the edge.
Okay. What do you want us to do?
Joe was in the process of getting drunker, as usual, just then. The clarity and need of his psyche was starting to evaporate, slowly and inevitably. But he knew what had to be done.
Here is where I am. Meet me. Bring toys.
Carl got all of it in a visual burst: landmarks, snapshots of a store, a truck, a driver, but nothing specific. Then Joe was gone. There was a room number, a hotel and images of the I-80. That was it.
One thing Carl did trust about himself was his ability to work with few clues to get to the root of just about anything. He had a good idea of where this guy should be, if he really existed.
Sandy came back to her desk and plopped herself into her chair; she looked completely messed up. Her red hair was out of its usual tightly wrapped bun and her normally pretty green eyes were beet-red around the irises. She gave Carl a look that he had never seen. It was a combination of fatigue and despair, mixed with anger and frustration.
“So what the f***?” she said.
Carl shook his head slowly, turned it downward and tried to understand why had decided to wear a blue tie today. He looked like a big black Buddha, contemplating his navel.
“I guess,” he said, “I tell the director that you and I need to take a road trip.”
Sandy was looking at her nails, wondering absently if she’d gone ‘round the bend herself. She then, quickly, pulled her service piece out of its shoulder nest and checked it for ammunition and safety. She jacked the slide, locked and loaded, pushed the safety on.
“Let’s get it on, Boss,” she said firmly, standing up and grabbing her coat.
“It’s the funny farm for the both of us then, huh?” Carl said, feeling way too worn out all of sudden.
“I sincerely hope not, big guy,” she said, looking resolute. “I’m too young to go crazy.”
Carl got up and headed toward the director’s office. He straightened his tie and tucked his shirt in as best as he could.
Bad day, he thought. Very bad day.
What he didn’t know was that things were going get incredibly dangerous, incredibly worse.
He entered the Director’s office, sat down on the chair directly across from his big mahogany desk and presented his case in the most carefully couched terms that he could come up with.
Jack Ross was an astute man, wouldn’t have become the division Director if he were anything less. He listened carefully to what his agent, and friend, said. He had a habit of pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose when he was paying close attention to somebody talking to him. This wasn’t lost on Carl.
“I know this sounds crazy, Jack, but I got a gut on this one.”
“And you got this info from where, again?” Jack asked. What he’d heard so far smacked of untold sources, a little edge of deceit and a lot of concerted passion. Jack had known Carl for the better part of twenty years and he knew when the wool was being stretched. He also trusted Carl’s instincts implicitly. He had saved Jack’s life twice with his gut’s invisible insight.
“Look, Jack,” Carl pleaded, “You have to trust me on this. This could be huge. I know what I know. Sandy’s on board, too. Our open cases are already divvied up with the rest of the crew. A week, man, that’s all I ask. I’ll keep you in the loop.”
Jack couldn’t find a reason to deny his friend. He was trying, but Carl’s record was beyond solid. He also knew that Sandy was tuned up with Carl in a very unusual way. Their partnership was nearly supernatural.
“Allright, buddy. You and Sandy tidy up around here and go off on your wolf hunt. But I want total resource access here. I want you and Sandy to stick with me like super-glue on this.”
Carl managed a tired smile and heaved himself out of the chair.
“You got it, Jack. But we may need resources too. Can I count on the team if s*** gets wicked?”
Jack laughed. “If s*** does get wicked, I’ll get off my paper pushing ass myself and be in the field right along side of you two.”
Carl let loose a deep chuckle and nodded.
“Godspeed, buddy,” Jack said as Carl turned heel and left the office.
Jack didn’t think twice about the meeting and went back to his case files. The profilers had come up with a good idea about this new spree killer in Maryland and he was interested in their thinking.
He was also thinking about how nice it would be to back in the field.
You go, Carl, he thought. You go.