Authors: Sezin Koehler
9:20 PM LAPD Headquarters
S
pecial Agent Rosario Quatro and Assistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz, along with an entire squadroom of detectives at the downtown station, watch footage of Los Angeles firefighters battling the blob with canister after canister of ammonium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate.
One news helicopter has fallen into the beast’s bulbous form, and several LAFD ’copters also went the same route as the beast continues to lay the path of the ten freeway to waste in its pursuit of the ocean.
More news ’copters fill the sky, filming from a distance, not interested in following fate with Katie Hernandez and the Channel 5 aerial team, may their souls rest in peace.
The creature slimes its way into the ocean, disappearing under the waves as LAFD continue their assault on its matter, herding it to the water now that it’s clear the blob has its own final destination.
Quatro wonders will survive in the ocean’s deeps or reemerge to terrorize Los Angeles or some other city at an unspecified future point?
Ortiz wonders if it will continue to grow at the rate they’ve witnessed, or will the water slow it down?
Neither scenario is comforting.
The other detectives and assorted staff in the squad room—for the first time—feel grateful their civil servant salaries never allowed for homes in the path of the blob, having had to settle for split level houses in The Valley, an area of LA which has remained wholly untouched by the creature in its ocean-ward trajectory.
Nobody would have ever believed that the gargantuan pink mass that has destroyed a huge chunk of Los Angeles County started as a sliver of vulval-looking ooze that slithered from between the legs of a Crane Massacre survivor, had they not seen an earlier iteration of the beast on a witness interview tape. In fact, Ortiz is thinking they’re probably going to have to release Una O’Doole’s recorded statement to the public as proof. How else will they explain the origins of this incredible monster? Even watching it now, it’s hard to believe. And after today they’re all ready to believe absolutely anything.
Kaleanathi, The Smog Goddess
T
his is not happening! This can’t be happening! Not again! You have moved the Heavens and still your tributes elude your grasp! Because they
are
yours, and only yours. You marked their souls, plain as the Devil. And even he wouldn’t dare touch them now. Yet, their special circle of torment remains empty.
You let loose the grandmother of all screams and short circuit the power grid in Los Angeles. You simmer and steam above the concrete streets, many of which have been destroyed by the blob creature. You siphon human pain. You push people into violent acts. And it still isn’t enough power to finish your spell. How can you not have enough power? How?!
There must be another way, you boom through the celestial plane. But your sister Elementals have abandoned you. And Mother, The Ancient One has put aside her fury at The Ethereals in hunting you down to put you back in your menial place as lowly goddess of smog.
But Mother is weak. The Ethereals even weaker after blocking your magic. You can feel the energy deficit and its imbalance rippling outwards.
They’ve cloaked your tributes.
But they can’t cloak them forever.
You will not be thwarted.
Surely there is one among your sistren Elementals who would help you finish this? One who would not betray you, abandon you in your greatest moment of feeding need as did those traitors, skulking off from your wrath and hiding from Mother’s impending fury. Someone powerful you’ve overlooked. Someone aching for a good fight.
You will be redeemed. Even if it’s the last thing you do.
As you’re cloaked in the maelstrom over Los Angeles, feeding on lesser beings, you promise you will have those stolen souls at any cost. You send your vow up into the celestial sphere where it reaches Mother and your coward sisters.
Until the moon runs red with blood, you’ll never give up.
10:00 PM LAPD Press Room
U
pon hearing of Hell House—and that his main contributor is revealed as America’s top serial killer, of children no less—Mayor Ellis resigns, leaving Governor Bernard Brooks to handle the entire show, in turn wishing he could hand it over to Assistant Chief Ortiz and wash his reputation of it all. He can’t.
At the very least, the blob has finally been contained and its remainder submerged in the ocean, not before razing a huge chunk of Los Angeles.
Governor Brooks thinks, wonders how long it’ll take to elect a new mayor amid all the fallout.
“I’ve called this live press conference so we can as a community, begin to come to terms with everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours.”
The governor pauses.
“To begin: Our City of Angels was attacked by a terrorist organization early this morning, in a catastrophe that took the lives of more than thirty thousand of our youngsters. My deepest condolences to the families of everyone affected by this tragedy. We have apprehended three of the perpetrators and the FBI and CIA are in process of bringing the rest into police custody. We received a full confession, and while it does nothing to allay our sadness at the terrible loss of life, we can take small comfort in knowing this was an isolated incident.”
The governor pauses again, giving a journalist occasion to shout, “Where are the survivors? Who are the survivors? And where did the blob come from?”
Governor Brooks clears his throat. “As our colleague has just pointed out, yes, there were sixteen survivors. The LAPD will have a chance to give you further details on this, but these survivors…grew from body parts found at the site of the Crane Mansion.”
The press crowd works up to a dull roar of questions.
“We have no explanation for this at this time, but we do have video evidence of the incidents. We are all working toward a scientific understanding of how this happened.”
“And what of the attack on the hospital? Who’s responsible?” Amy Chen from Channel 5 news shouts, having replaced Katie Hernandez; the news doesn’t grieve.
Governor Brooks continues, his throat like sandpaper. “Yes, there was an attack on Spruce-Musa Hospital earlier this evening, and law enforcement is also working overtime to determine who instigated the attack and arrest the responsible parties. The survivors are safe in police custody—”
Chaos breaks out in the pressroom as reporters from all around the world call into question the leadership of the Los Angeles county police force, the mayor’s office, as well as the governor’s.
“And let me also note,” Brooks has to shout to be heard, “the blob creature has been neutralized. We are working towards explanations for all of these events—”
The crowd turns ugly, and quick, another of too many riots on this insane day.
“We want the citizens of Los Angeles to know how deeply sorry we are for the incredible loss of more than thirty thousand lives yesterday, our hearts go out to the families of those affected, and we as a city are all affected by this deepest of calamities—”
A notebook flies at the governor’s head. A purse follows. An apple. A shoe. In quick succession. An LAPD escort whisks away Governor Brooks as he ducks from the physical and verbal barrage of the conference room, while Deputy Chief Gabriel Ortiz attempts to subdue the disgruntled journalists who are already convinced a cover-up or elaborate hoax is in the works, and has been in the works since Los Angeles’s skyline went up in flames at twelve-thirty in the morning, November first, of the year 2000.
Detectives Atticus Red Feather and Synthia Günn watch the fracas on television with the group of survivors, who’ve settled into the safe house and are again surrounded by myriad take-out food containers, all except Cherie, Connie, and Teresa, whose exertions of the day have them resting fitfully in the bunk rooms. Their friends tried to convince them to return to the hospital, but they’d all had enough of hospitals for forever.
An unexpected rash of goosebumps spreads through the group watching TV as the riot breaks out onscreen and the mayor is attacked by the mob of angry journalists and citizens who crashed the press conference. The survivors, Red Feather, and Günn collectively swallow the unease that creeps into their full bellies, feeling a new bad on its way.
Citizens of Los Angeles
A
t home the eleven o’clock news turns from the Governor’s press conference riot to regular programming, a rerun of a syndicated sitcom you’ve seen a dozen times already.
You’re numb. It’s all background noise anyway, and will be for a long time.
You won’t find out about the Countess Barona’s Hell House for a month. In the wake of such huge loss of the Crane Mansion Massacre the Barona story would be too much, so decide network executives. And the LAPD and associates are grateful for the extra time to put the pieces together before new scrutiny.
When you do eventually hear about Hell House and the hundreds of tortured and murdered children you feel another piece of your soul break away, shattering. What meager innocence left in the world gone for good.
You’ll watch the news and re-runs without really seeing them, thinking about your son, your daughter, your partner, your friend lost in the ether of unspeakable misfortune.
You’ll get on with work, the maintenance of a normal life, but there’s a hole in you, a void that will never find filling, no matter how much you might want to heal.
You’ll think about moving, but you never will. The memorial site keeps you in Los Angeles’s fold. It’s there you’ll find solace in the company of others who lost as much as you did, on whose shoulders you can cry without speaking, they who understand with just one pained glance. Cold comfort in sunny climes.
And every time you look toward the Hollywood Hills and you see the space where the Crane mansion used to be, or drive through the massive reconstruction efforts rebuilding the ten freeway, Beverly Hills, and the path from Hollywood to the beaches—you’ll remember like it was yesterday:
That day the sky opened up and took your heart with it.
Sezín Koehler
November 2010–April 2015
Prague, Czech Republic
Cologne, Germany
Boca Raton, Florida
Lighthouse Point, Florida
Afterword
Whew! You made it through my second mad little book baby. And thank you. I hope you enjoyed the ride.
Forgive me another few moments of your time to address an issue that I feel needs addressing. From 2002–2006 I worked as a freelance reporter at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva covering a variety of mostly indigenous peoples’ issues as they sought not just land rights and intellectual property rights, but basic human rights that were being denied by virtually every government on this planet.
During that time I had the honor of being taken under the wings of a number of different elders and spokespeople, some Native American, some indigenous Canadians, South American, Australian Aboriginal, and Maori. These friendships—and sometimes tutelages—completely changed my view of the world, my place in it, and helped me heal from a variety of traumas that remained open wounds.
Since those life-changing years I am persistently troubled by the non-indigenous appropriation of indigenous narratives, and often in fetishistic, racist, and just plain insulting ways. I came to the conclusion that in spite of my personal experiences visiting my adopted grandfather Tony Black Feather in Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota and my hundreds of hours of conversations with elders from around the world I would not step my non-indigenous foot into the waters of narratives of and about indigenous peoples.
And then Detective Atticus Red Feather appeared to me in a dream. And his story was so clear, I felt I knew him. He even looks a little like Grampa Tony’s long-dead son Michael, even though their lives couldn’t be any more different.
I struggled with whether I should honor that dream when I had made an agreement with myself to not be one of those non-Natives including a Native American character into my story.
“Let The Spirit Lead,” Grampa Tony was famous for saying. Those of us who love and remember him indeed do our best to live by those sage words.
The Spirit lead me to Pine Ridge, The Spirit showed me Atticus Red Feather, The Spirit—whether I want to admit it or not—was with me while writing this book. Why else would it be that of all the hundreds of characters who have appeared in these pages, the only one I have ever dreamed about was Atticus? In fact, the story he tells Special Agent Quatro and his partner Günn about the cold case involving the murderous old man and his deformed son was actually something that I myself dreamed through the eyes of Atticus Red Feather. It was the only time something like that has ever happened to me, and it was a singularly bizarre experience. I woke up literally not knowing who I was. Not to sound all
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-y but it means something.
So, I went ahead with Detective Atticus Red Feather. I love him the most, but please don’t tell any of my other monsters that.
And I think Grampa Tony would have been proud of me for Letting The Spirit Lead me to Detective Red Feather.
Even though it may not seem like it on the surface—this being a crime horror hybrid novel and all—the actual driving force behind everything I write has propelling it a desire for social justice, equality, and the advancement of human rights for women and minorities around the world. Even if it takes sometimes being offensive, not politically correct, and getting in your face about social and cultural inequalities. It’s not an accident that the majority of my main characters are women of color and hybrids of assorted ethnicities (and sometimes even species) and many of them are living with the repercussions of sexual violence.
Detective Atticus Red Feather is one of the ways I honor my Grampa Tony and his family, my Aunty Charmaine White Face, my time on Pine Ridge, and all the amazing and wonderful and sad years I spent working with indigenous peoples’ struggle for human rights. I hope I did them justice, and more so I hope I did them proud.
Mitaku Oyasin.
We are all related.