J. Gonzalez - They

“Yeah, no shit. You don’t know that?”

Vince shook his head. “No. I don’t. My knowledge of what happens where I work is confined to my division and the executive branch. I get the quarterly reports and stuff, and I know there’s a list of the current board of directors somewhere in my office, but I’ve never paid attention to it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Frank said. “As you can imagine, when we learned this we freaked. It certainly made our mission more critical.”

“I can see why,” Vince said, the flutter in his belly growing colder. He turned to Frank. “Should I be worried? I mean, are you sure they don’t know about me?”

Frank nodded. “The headhunter that recruited you has no ties to any of Garrison’s companies. Their current executives have spotless records when it comes to dealing with Garrison’s former and current companies. It’s just a coincidence—a pretty fucking weird coincidence, I gotta admit, but it was too close for comfort.”

“So what about this Samuel Garrison?”

“He’s a killer,” Frank said, his face dark, unbroken by the comment. “He’s in charge of an international organization of killers, drug cartels, pornographers, white slave leaders. You name it, he has his hand in it some way.”

Vince took another sip of his Coke. “This is all so crazy. It’s like something out of Geraldo Rivera or something.”

“That’s why they’re so successful at hiding it,” Frank continued. “It sounds crazy to most people, therefore, they refuse to believe it. That enables them to carry on with their activities. They’ve also got people planted in various law enforcement and government organizations that make sure all their tracks are covered.”

It sounded like something out of the mind of a paranoid End-of-the-World wacko. Vince held his tongue.

“Once Mike and I identified the group we stepped back and started doing research at the library, looking through microfilm of old newspapers. We couldn’t find any proof or evidence this group exists. Not a bit.”

Vince shrugged. “They sound pretty secretive.”

“They are,” Frank said, taking a sip of Dr. Pepper. “I contacted the LAPD under the guise of an investigative reporter. I told him I was doing a book on unsolved crimes to connect some of the murders I’d witnessed—”

“You witnessed murders?”

“Oh yeah,” Frank said, matter-of-factly. He took another sip of Dr. Pepper. “I did.”

Vince leaned back in his seat, staring out at the park. His stomach was queasy. The more he listened, the more this was making him sick with dread.

“I got a chance to go through their files and do some poking around,” Frank went on. “I didn’t find anything. I spent a few weeks after that driving around in the Topanga Canyon area, Malibu, Mission Hills, Calabasas, Canyon Country. Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Just trying to jolt my mind. I remember spending time in a lot of those places when I was younger—Sam had a mansion in Bel Air, and I remember being there at a very young age. Anyway, I finally found something two weeks later: the house I’d lived in as a child, shortly after we moved back to Southern California.”

“Fountain Valley?” Vince asked, breathless.

“No, Tustin,” Frank said, taking another sip of Dr. Pepper. “Close enough, though. I spent a lot of time driving all over southern California trying to remember things, place locations with my memory. It wasn’t until I was driving in the Santa Ana Mountains that things started coming back. It was almost like I was being guided to the exact spot by some force. I remember driving past the cul-de-sac and something just popped into my mind and said that’s it ! I made a U-turn and drove through the neighborhood and saw it immediately. My house.”

He breathed heavily and at first Vince thought Frank was going to collapse emotionally again. But he regained his composure and continued. “I ended up obtaining copies of the mortgage records and deed to the property of the current owners. I did a background check on them. They turned out to be normal. I decided against going to the house and knocking on the door, introducing myself, telling them I grew up there and that I was just passing through the neighborhood. But God, did I want to see the inside of that place. Despite the fact that I lived nightmares in that house, I just had to go in there.

“I spent the next two weeks shadowing the owners,” Frank continued, leaning back in his seat casually, looking out at the park. “I learned their habits, their whereabouts. Then one day when they weren’t home, I broke in.”

“You broke in?”

“Yeah. Holdover from my days as an addict when I used to break into houses and steal shit I could sell for dope. I managed to slip through the back. I must’ve sat in the living room for thirty minutes, letting old memories wash over me the way waves lap on the sand of a beach. Then I hit all the rooms. I didn’t take anything. Didn’t touch anything. Just walked around, letting the memories come to me as I entered each room.” He paused, struggling with the next bit of memory that was coming to the surface. “And then when I got to a room that was an addition to the house—it was set in the back and was sunk down into the foundation by a few feet—the last memory hit me hard.” His voice lowered, his face grew stony as he remembered that long ago incident. “I saw my parents. Your parents. Opal and Paul—you remember them?”

Vince nodded. Opal and Paul had been a sweet older couple, very grandparent-like in appearance. Vince used to like being with them.

“There were others you’d probably remember as well. You remember the people our folks used to get together with?”

Vince nodded, his own memories now flooding to the surface. The people that used to come to the house—friends of his mom and dad, co-workers, people he referred to as “Aunts” and “Uncles,” people he thought until recently had been blood family—memories of their faces swam to the surface of his mind.

“Your folks were there, too,” Frank continued. He was gripping the steering wheel hard. “I don’t remember what I was doing at the time. Maybe I woke up in the middle of the night and heard a noise. I think my folks used to drug me on nights they had ceremonies. I remember my mother used to give me a pill with a glass of water before I went to bed on certain nights. I’d sleep all the way through. But one night I must have woken up and heard something and stumbled onto what they were doing in the den and later blacked it out of my mind.”

“What was it?” Vince asked, breathless with dread.

“They were in the middle of a ceremony,” Frank said. “They were dressed in black robes and cowls. The room was dark, illuminated by several burning candles. They were grouped around something lying on the floor. When I got there I remembered a frenzied chanting, and then I heard a wet thud and a cry, almost like a cry of passion. The group was huddled around whatever was on the floor and they parted briefly, allowing me a brief glimpse.” Frank gulped once, turned to Vince. His eyes were wide liquid pools of fear. “It was a body. A young man, kinda hippie looking. He was naked and they’d just killed him, stabbed him in the chest. One of them was cutting into his chest with a knife, and as I watched I saw somebody pull out his heart and hold it up. The heart was still beating, blood was running down the man’s hands. And they were all chanting something weird, like one long continuous voice.” He paused briefly, his voice deadpan. “And then the guy brought the heart to his mouth and bit into it.”

Vince winced.

“And it was passed around and everybody bit into it, everybody ate a piece of it. And then they all fell on him, tearing into him, rolling in his body like some insane orgy.” Frank paused for breath. “I don’t remember how I got back to my room, but the next thing I remember I was sitting up in bed. I was sweaty all over. I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing and then I heard a sound and realized what it was. It was them . Making sounds. Grunting, horrible sounds.”