Adrift on Ethereal Seas

Adrift on Ethereal Seas Stories of Science, Suspense and the Supernatural by Richard Van Doren   Copyright 2019 Richard Van Doren   TABLE OF CONTENTS A Suburban Haunting The Ghost Next Door System Virus Seeing Things Exile Jesus and the Monster An X-mas Carol The Wacko Factor Deep Quarantine Under the Ice God’s Green Earth The Mountain at Night Incubator Desperate Measures Moonglow E.L.E.   A Suburban Haunting   My name is Walter Finchley and I have a story to tell - a tale so eerie and bizarre it could curl the hair on a corpse and haunt the dreams of unborn children. OK, that's a bit much. It's strange, anyway. Trust me on this. Before I launch this peculiar narrative, I have to disclose my profession. I am a clergyman. WAIT! Don't stop reading yet! No one has to tell me or any of my peers how far our once-respected calling has fallen in the estimation of the general American public. The evidence is everywhere. My wife and I stroll into a gift shop in Cape Cod? Key West? the Jersey shore? - somewhere, anywhere - and I see blanketing an entire wall little plaques with maudlin words of praise to hundreds of popular careers - dog groomers, subterranean sanitation specialists, exotic dancers included - but not one word, even on the clearance rack, to acknowledge the fraternity of M.L. King, Billy Graham, Jim Jones, David Koresh . . . Little Marky Squire, the next door nine-year-old, whose papa Ted will be attending a regional business meeting on fourth graders' career day, confides his anguish to me after I retrieve a tennis ball from under our back hedge. He has no one to come and wow his class with a unique perspective on the trials and tribulations of employed life. He'll be the only kid in class without adult representation. In an uncharacteristic display of magnanimity, I offer my services, to which Marky frowns and promises to get back to me. An hour later he knocks on our front door to inform me that his cousin Jeff, a community college student who stocks shelves at the local supermarket three nights a week on the graveyard shift, has reluctantly agreed to make an appearance. One more. My beloved calls to my attention the latest Time Magazine survey of our exalted nation's most respected professions. Hey, wait! Didn't I see something like that forty years ago in the same periodical? And wasn't the clergy tied with doctors for number one? My beloved coughs out a chuckle and lights another cigarette. "You're not even mentioned," she smirks, "and the list stops at fifty entries." Wives. God created wives to take away a man's fear of death. Dear Savior, I am truly thankful for the sacrifice you made on the world's behalf, but for married men it was a wasted effort. Anyway, back to the story. All of this serves to explain why in the face of a request from two local graduate students I had to forcibly suppress an embarrassing surge of several bodily functions. They came to me BECAUSE I am a clergyman, so stating this out front is kind of - like - important? "Reverend Finchley, you were referred to us by a former parishioner of yours, Mark Gleason." "Gleason," I replied, "yeah, I think I remember him. Isn't he doing time somewhere?" The students exchanged uneasy glances. "Uh, no," the one who identified himself as Chris Winter continued, "He's a frat brother who's pursuing a Masters in Biomedical Engineering." "Oh," I answered with astonishing keenness of wit, rubbing my eyes to camouflage the redness, "Must be some other Mark Gleason." Once again, the two paused, clearly discomfited, fighting the impulse to link eyes a second time. Hey, I may be a lot of things - and I am a lot of things - but a sneering purveyor of hellfire and brimstone I'm not. If you want to look at each other that badly, I thought, get a room. "Reverend Finchley," the one named Jason Tarpley began, "We're both detectives and students of parapsychological phenomena. In other words, we seek out those sites reputed to be . . . haunted, for lack of a better word, install specialized electronic surveillance equipment, and wait to see if that reputation is earned honestly." OK, they weren't Jehovah's Witnesses or a wealthy panhandler (wealthier than I am, anyway) hitting up Pastor Spineless, so my hand slipped from behind the door I had originally intended to slam in their faces - not exactly a heartfelt Christian response, I admit, but still somewhat restrained, in my opinion. I straightened up and donned my most pensive and inquisitive expression, hoping to exude wisdom and reserve. They later confessed they thought I was about to collapse from an all-night bender. "Reverend Finchley," Jason went on, "did you hear about the Lewis family? Do you keep up with local news?" Mention of the Lewis name sobered me instantly. Not that way. Come on! The Lewises, a family of four, attended our church for three years before moving across town and transferring to another congregation less than two minutes from their home. I baptized Mike and Lacey's two daughters Charlotte and Cynthia, who would have been nine and seven today - if they had lived. Since they moved away four years ago, I had not caught a glimpse of any of them, although I learned second-hand that their new church served them faithfully. Knowing they were happy with the move, my attention to their lives evaporated almost immediately - and, I confess, much of my special affection for them did as well. There were no hard feelings, mind you. Even when the best of friends move apart, they get busy with other things and their memories of each other quickly fade. So, when I heard the news, I dug out an old church photo directory and stared at their picture, which like everyone else's was professionally taken in the basement of Stanley Hall by Tim DiCenza, a son of our congregation who was starting his own photography business. I remember them posing for the picture. Maybe the shock brought it all back in such detail. Mike and Lacey stood above and a little to the outside of the two girls. Their smiles were brought to vivid life by that familiar textured blue portrait screen behind them, Mike's on a not-quite-homely face that radiated warmth. He was one of the few men I knew who actually looked better with a moustache. His wide sideburns and long bushy black hair completed the '70s look, although most of us doubted he was making a fashion statement. He was actually pretty clueless when it came to style. Lacey bought him some nice threads, but he never seemed to know how to wear them together. To her public mortification, he often overruled her advice and chose his own duds. But it was all good natured. The couple clearly loved each other. Lacey dressed like a fashion designer, but completely without pretense. She had a great eye for make-up, kept herself immaculately groomed, but no prima donna she. As she explained several times, Lacey took loving care of the greatest blessings God had given her, her family and her physical body. Several members launched personal health regimens because of Lacey, and I believe her influence prevented some premature passings. Too bad it couldn't prevent her own. I remember choking up when I saw her face. Until that moment I had not believed that you could literally choke on a sudden, unexpected wave of grief. I don't feel emotions very strongly, anymore. It's not that I ever nursed a burning passion for Lacey, or anything like that. In truth, I always thought of her as a very close friend of the daughter I never had. It's just that, whenever I looked at her, I saw extraordinary talent and ambition - class, if you will. And Mike didn't really measure up. A nice guy? Absolutely! Hard working? You bet. But not really in the same league with Lacey. If she felt as I did (and several others), she never let it be known. Lacey always looked happy, and even more significantly - content. And now this beautiful, gifted, smiling woman with the flowing dark blonde hair was dead. And so were her daughters, Charlotte and Cynthia, who were blessed in their too-short lives with looking much more like their mother than their dad, blonde also, with gleeful smiles that proudly displayed rows of crooked teeth begging for braces. Only Charlotte reached the age when they could be affixed for permanent results. "As you know," Tarpley continued, "the Lewises . . . met . . . an untimely end last fall . . ." "Yes, I am aware of that," I answered impatiently. "Were you also aware, Reverend," Winter hurried on, "that another family - of five - the Del Vecchios, took up residence in the Lewis household six weeks later? That they enjoyed a week of relative peace before running from the house in the middle of the Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend, never to return?" I remembered something to that end. In truth, I quickly looked away from any related story like I would from a particularly nasty road kill. That's how much it hurt - and turned my stomach. "Maybe it was just an Amityville Horror thing," I suggested quietly, referring to that famous true story where another family in Long Island, New York, ran terrified into a howling storm to escape the ghosts of five people murdered there years before. Investigators practically dissembled and reassembled every brick and shingle, camped out there for several weeks - and experienced nothing. This all led to the conclusion that, one, either the family suffered from mass hysteria brought on by the power of suggestion, or two, the financial burden of living in a house beyond their means necessitated an extreme ruse to recoup their losses. Book and movie rights conveniently filled that need. Several residents have lived there since without incident. "There are some similarities, we must admit, Reverend," Tarpley continued, "the Del Vecchios were cash strapped and they reluctantly moved into the Lewis house because of the slashed sale price." Although sharp instruments were not employed in the Lewises' demise, we all stiffened at the unfortunate terminology. "They've been living with state assistance at a welfare motel ever since - not exactly a trade up from their previous circumstances." "So, something must have scared them pretty badly." "It would seem so, yes sir," Winter replied, continuing to show me unwarranted deference. "In fact, we know so, Reverend Finchley," Tarpley put in. "That's why we're here. We need somebody to . . . verify our findings, someone who's not as vulnerable to the power of suggestion as we might be." "How much of the Lewis story do you know, Reverend?" Winter pushed on. I shrugged. "Just the basic details. I don't know the chronology of events or any other specifics." Like I said, when I heard the news I shut as much of it out as I could. "That's actually a good thing," Winter continued. "The fewer preconceptions you have the better."   "You have to what?!" Marguerite, my other half rasped. Even in my current state of self-deprecation, I could not bring myself to call her "better." I mean, you've got to be humble to make it over to the next life - true - but there are limits. "I have to stay the night," I said. She smirked while running boney fingers through her long, stringy black hair. It made me wonder if that were some frightful potion percolating on the gas range. "Are they cute?" she asked with feigned innocence. This, of course, fulfilled her daily quota of unveiled slams to my virility. Although we hadn't bumped uglies in quite a while, we still managed to becalm ourselves on occasion, so I considered her playful scorn unfair. "Adorable," I answered. "I might even spend two nights." As it happened, I spent three. When the pale green van pulled into our drive, I saw Winter and Tarpley sitting up front, and only the legs of two additional occupants behind them. Seated, the young men appeared to be the same height, but Tarpley actually stood about six inches taller than Winter. Both sported long hair and patchy beards, Tarpley's reddish blonde and wavy and Winter's brown and straight. Despite these differences their baggy jeans, tight t-shirts and disintegrating sneakers filled out the omnipresent college man's uniform and made them virtually undistinguishable from each other.