start with red
“A demon? No, I don’t think you are a demon. A *demo*, maybe, ha.”
“Thanks, Keith.”
“Call me Dad.”
She wasn’t going to call him that. She’ll stick with Keith, but she doesn’t say any kind of name for a while. Just to pretend she’s forgotten.
She wonders about the man at the table next to them again. Obviously a *recorder*. She’s almost got a name for *him*. Besides bastard. Keith notices the stare, whispers over: “This man bothering you?” Keith was thinking he could be giving her the eye. She has that way, he knows. Heck, if he were 20 years younger and he didn’t know this was his daughter… But he had to climb out of those depths, back into the present. He was Keith B., former drummer of the Blown to Smithereens and some others. Safely retired from all that rock n’ roll lifestyle and its wildness. He was tame now. He was ready to present himself as a nice and decent father for a change. Sobered up, cleaned up. He didn’t *die* in that Room (for instance). And neither did she for that matter.
—–
“He doesn’t remember me,” Biff Carter says to the camera without moving his lips. “Nor she, although she’s getting there. Almost a name now. I can read what’s in her mind. It’s the same as this book.” He hold the book up for us to see.
00370102
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Lynne
The novel was first staged as Edith, or The Earl’s Daughter in New York in 1861[1] and under its own name on 26 January 1863 in Brooklyn; by March of that year, “three competing versions were drawing crowds to New York theaters.”[4] The most successful version was written by Clifton W. Tayleur for actress Lucille WESTERN, who was paid $350 a night for her performance as Isabel Vane.[4] Western starred in East Lynne for the next 10 years.[4] At least nine adaptations were made in all, not including plays such as The Marriage Bells that “used a different title for the sake of some copyright protection.”[5]
As the more melodramatic aspects of the story became dated, there were several parodies and burlesques made, including East Lynne in Bugville with Pearl White (1914), Mack Sennet’s East Lynne with Variations (1917), and in 1931 the comedy East Lynne on the WESTERN Front in which British soldiers fighting in the World War I stage a burlesqued version of the story.[2]
“Westeasterners (open the book)”:
checking in with collage artist Barry Deboy (Mountainair)
I’m not sure what the new story will be but I’m pretty certain it will involve The Void, the place before birth, after death. The satchel contains secrets in its pages.
Nearby Baker Bloch stares into the water. Tough to tell if he is asleep or not. In a way he has to be — we all do. To even exist on this plain of reality. He dons the red cap of an artist again.
43 bucks should cover it for this wannabe cowboy of the plains.
Wooboostoock (Baltimore)
The 2 parts of the letter appeared before him, as if by magic. “Abra-” ended the first page and “-cadabra” began the next. Baker has much to ponder.
—–
He landed just out of sight with his out-of-place swimming trucks and beachy attitude. Arthur Kill, still confused over his role, still confused over who he *is*. Arthur? Kill van Kull, a much tamer cousin? Or, dare he speak the name, Lemont. Lemont Sanford. The overseer, the one who controls. Not him, though. Not yet. But he has to choose a cousin in the meantime. Else: this keeps happening.
—–
“*Not* here. Not on my watch,” speaks bartender Zane Tar, holding out a stop hand. “We know about the castle.”
“You *do*?” But Arthur knew he had to move on. These were military people at the bottom of it, good at digging out information. This was, in essence, an extension of Rose Heaven, where his user had gotten in so much trouble looking for the fabled Murdochh Castle of Loch Ness. “It was all a misunderstanding,” he’d said in his head to them, the collective, so many times now, a defense set on repeat.
“Actually,” he decided to say, “I’m just looking for a child named Archie,” and then took his leave. He would keep them hanging this way. Because Archie would lead them right back to “East Lynne” and confuse the heck out of them, for at least a while, until they could get their bearings. He’d check back later to see what they’d come up with in the meantime.
—–
“See you later, Clyde.”
“Good day, sir.” The policeman made a note about the HUD being missing this time. Cousin? he pondered, probably also reading his mind. Military people, pheh. But he’d try to use all that to his advantage… we’ll see.
Western
He had to face it now. This basement was his new home. Wheeler has chosen.
Moving on (and up)…
Barry DeBoy was *soo* happy. He’d found another Tintown, huzzah! And right on the outskirts of a proper town just like the other one in Mortons Gap. Some kind of doppleganger effect going on here fer sure.
Heads and Foote
“Baker Bloch said there was some kind of bookstore here with the 2 page letter. No bookstore. No letter. Just some kind of clothing boutique without any clothes, right 88’s? Oh,” Wheeler continues speaking, just to herself she realizes as she looks around. “Not in this scene.”
Oh well, she thinks silently now. Might as well primp while I’m here. Shocking pink should do.
Stick in hand she tries to pucker up for the mirror but ends up just emitting a yawn. High up here, she realizes. Mountain air.
A little later:
“Laundry?” A beep sounds. Arthur Kill realizes his clothes are done. Now maybe he can find out who he actually is.
00370107
Janice spots a 15 speed bicycle hanging on an apartment wall upon exiting the Slaashsides subway, first of a succession of bad signs…
The stinking green pocketbook is still there, check.
So is Burro Alley.
—–
Johnny’d come back from a serious bike trek. He needed to replenish.
“New Mexico, pheh,” he mutters while gobbling.
Aztec warrior (photo by Barry DeBoy, present)
Actually, 10 + 11:
https://fredscruton.com/folios/lange/
maze
I arrived at the hotel and Duck was already there. I made peace with it. I tried to write but Duck kept quacking and shacking the floor. I took up read. The bag shushed loudly. It was tired of the quacking too. Nervous about meeting Mother.
The bed is a bathroom.
—–
A call interrupted my dream. I awoke in the same position as sleep, one seamlessly changing over into the other. Which was real I couldn’t help but ask. “Hallo?” It was Hucka D., wondering how I was. She wanted to join me as soon as possible, her other engagement ended. She wanted to come back home, if in a different part of the state. She wanted to reinvestigate… herself.
—–
I went back to sleep after playing “Gunn Mobile Home Trailer Park: Your Darkness” until 3 in the morning. Just to keep the boogieman away. I finally succumbed. Should have never played that game so long. I had another nightmare about The Void.
Only now I recall that Hucka D. will be arriving before tomorrow’s yesterday. And, yes, there she is. At the door. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, knocking and knocking. I couldn’t get up out of the bed. I voided myself — disgusting. It was all over the place. I couldn’t let Hucka see me this way. “Hallo, hallo?” she cried, and then went away. I looked down. I was not disgusting. It was all a dream again. Caused by the Duck.
A call awoke me, real this time. It was Hucka D. She had been delayed by another project. She would instead be arriving Munday, a day which I knew didn’t exist — not one of the happy ones. The Duck quacked the bag shushed. Dreams…
upper central New Mexico
“We do know that Tintown, this second found one outside Madril, was totally unique, although others have tried using the same general energy found in the area. Like this one about 20 miles away, a more elaborate place but missing something — slide 2 please, Hucka D.
“And then this one, in turn, 20 miles below it — slide 3 please. This one is an attempt at a town actually made out of tin but it turned out to be just a cemetery.
“Why was the one in the 1st slide unique for us, you might ask? What made it so different? Slide 4, please.
“Because it contained The Void.
“I’ll open up The Table for questions now.”
broken cowboy
So here it is, thought Barry DeBoy, out of the hotel and its Duck and back on the plains, thankfully. To find the actual Void.
“On your right!” shouts passing biker Johnny Cage. But there was only left. Collision. KaBAMM!
Mission accomplished well enough, as he checked. Johnny will be able to afford pheasant tonight. Barry: back to Duck.
—–
“It hurts soo bad, Hucka Doobie.”
“There, there,” she consoled, reaching over and patting his remaining good arm. “The doctor said it will take days, even months.”
“Must… get… back, ahh.” He collapses in pain. Hucka D. knew The Void could wait. But she had to stay with him now fer sure. She looks over. That darn quacker! I’ve got to do something about it once and for all.
There was always… Maw.
—–
She picked up the receiver of the green phone, dialed all the numbers except 4.
“Hallo?”
Turns out she was just downstairs, what are the odds?
Centre’s edge
Slowly but surely, a past formed in the present, tiny Tintown revealed again. The tiny mountain in the background — a hill, really — being the link.
Suddenly he was there, staring at The Void.
Not as big as he thought it’d be. Not really big enough to crawl into, even. His mind settled on the club. Shakespear’s, he found out.
“Hucka D.,” he said when awakening. “You were right.”
numbers
spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
“The Selah’s don’t count since they are mere pauses,” further explained Hucka Doobie, going over her theories again, the basis for Charles Nelson Blinkerton’s “Shakenstein”. *Her* book. “Thus (the word) spear is 46 from the end of the psalm, and shake is 46 from the beginning, see. In-between: 109. This must be the King James version to work. No NIV. This would have been The Bible in Shakespeare’s own day.”
“Did he actually do this — code this?”
“I would say: no.” She paused. She looked at the cast still on his arm, due to be removed this Friday. The latest signature on it: his own maw’s. Right downstairs she was all the time, ready to explain to us that the “swastikas” on the front of the hotel she ran were actually Navajo “whirling logs”, which can spin both ways, swastika and non-swastika like. “Spiritual symbols they are,” she said. “The hotel was finished in 1923, long before the rise of Nazism and their adoption of the emblem.” Then she discussed a small town in upper New Mexico, near the top of the state where it meets Colorado, which changed its name from Swastika to Brilliant just for this very same reason. “They succumbed to the pressure of WWII and the rise of Hitler and the removal of a lot of German and Japanese things from our culture, especially hot issues like this. We didn’t. As Swastika, Ontario put it — in a similar situation — *we* came up with the name before Hitler. He can’t just take over our town heritage and make it his own. That’s just more appropriation.”
“Sounds like you’ve studied this quite a lot,” Hucka Doobie said downstairs while listening.
“Oh, I have. You get that question all the time so I wanted to be prepared for it.” She hesitated bringing up Unity Mitford. No time for that now. There was a box for that which she kept in back, safely tucked away to be revealed at the right place, the right moment. This was not that moment, she knew. Brilliant Number One *and* Two. Shakespear Club.
Back in the present, cast ridden Barry requests they start at the beginning again, take it from the top and work down.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake
harnessing the energy
They renewed their vows before really, actually heading out into new life, her in black and pink this time to better match his blue and black. So speaks the magical Abra-cadabra laundromat, the place of the clothes. Cold, damp basement no more for Lemont Sanford, now truly in control and not subordinates Arthur Kill and his more sophisticated cousin Kill van Kull. At least for a while, for this morning, for the next hour.
Their new, good friend and 3rd wheel Edward Daigle performed the ceremony, since he was qualified that way, as he also explained in one of their basement escapades out and down on Cable Isle, the place Arthur Kill was buried, at least for a while, a morning I believe. About an hour. Before Wheeler went down in the grave after him and swished or mopped away all the heat and fire and brimstone with her magic swishy mop and told him to rise up and then go down. For a particular reason of course. “Basement,” she indicated, pointing toward the slanted cellar doors nearby after he unsuccessfully attempted to just dust himself off and exit through the front gate of the dinky cemetery with its one or two plots — wouldn’t work, Wheeler knew. “Await me and my orders. We have an important choice coming up. Which (she eyed him keenly) *cousin* will you be?” She knew it could even be both at once. The basement has that power.
not-so-charming host
“Is this the one with my father in it?”
“Just keep watching,” Hucka Doobie requested to her sometimes lover, all times friend Barry DeBoy, secretly, way down deep, our own blog core leader Baker Bloch again. Thus the question… and the confusion. Only Hucka Doobie can see this through.
—–
“Is that the Vampire Planet?”
“Close,” answered Hucka Doobie. “Very close.” And it was upon them.
—–
“What’s all those Shakespeare quotes at the bottom of the screen about?” continued DeBoy with the questions after they arrived at the studio.
Hucka Doobie sighs. “That’s what we have to get to the bottom of.”
Pause. “Oh.”
“Shakespear Club.”
“Yes. Of course.” He continues to study as this line fades and the next one appears. “Antony and Cleopatra,” he believes. Although it’s been a long time. Something about indecision…
Spaced Ghost receives his first guest.
Bootheel
The Void had come to Mountainair in January 2008, drove right through the middle of the town *basically* unnoticed. Probably on a bike. Probably unmotorized so as to cut down on the attention. Barry found this out on his computer back at the hotel, only 2 blocks away from the passage. The Void was making a statement, he knew. Best to get out of town before “accidents” happen again. The Duck was presently gone but for how long?
“The bottom of the state,” he urged to Hucka Doobie that night. “That’s probably what it means.”
And indeed Shakespeare is to be found there. Hucka D. knew the area well.
Sunklands 