J. Gonzalez - They

Vince could only imagine. For a moment Laura’s features swam to the surface of his mind again and he saw himself in Frank’s situation. Up against a secret organization that knows you exist, that knows you’re aware of their secrets and can kill you at the push of a button. If he were in Frank’s shoes he wouldn’t be that concerned for himself; he’d be more concerned for his wife.

“I have no idea where they are now,” Frank said. He took another hearty drink of water, set the bottle down on the end table by the sofa and sighed. He leaned back into the comfort of the sofa and crossed his legs. “I know they’re safe. Wendy is keeping my literary agent informed as to what’s happening and I’m getting the news from Peter, who’s sort of acting as a message hub for the whole thing. Peter has no idea what’s going on. He thinks Brandy and I split up.”

“So what do we do tonight?” Vince asked.

Frank looked at him. “We make a plan of action.”

THEY MET MIKE Peterson in the back booth of a Round Table Pizza Parlor, located in the Mission Viejo Mall.

Frank called him from Vince’s living room around four that afternoon and they spoke briefly. Vince busied himself in the kitchen, running last evening’s dishes through the dishwasher and tidying up. When Frank was finished he walked over to the breakfast bar. “Mike wants to meet you. Tonight.”

“Fine.” He wanted to meet Mike Peterson as well.

“He’ll back up everything I’ve told you. And if you’re up to it, we’d all like to fly out to Pennsylvania as soon as possible.”

“What for?”

“To do more checking.”

“On whether my mother was involved with The Children of the Night?”

“No,” Frank said, downing the rest of his Evian. “To find out why they’re trying to get back in touch with you. Mike wants you to tell him what happened at the airport, too.”

“Did you tell him what happened?”

“Yeah, I did. He was just as surprised as I was. He didn’t think they would take such drastic measures. He says what happened to you at the airport isn’t part of their M.O.”

A chill went through Vince’s spine but he tried not to show it as he put the remainder of last week’s dishes in the dishwasher. He closed the dishwasher, flipped the switch, and started the load. “Do you think… that whoever it was that tried to kill me and Tracy wasn’t… that they weren’t part of The Children of the Night?”

“I don’t know.” Frank leaned his tattooed arms on the breakfast bar. “But they’re involved somehow. You’re having these dreams for a reason. And you’re remembering your past for reasons that go beyond the traditional Satanic Ritual Abuse syndrome.”

“You mean there’s a technical term for people like us?”

Frank grinned. “Surprising, isn’t it? Fortunately, ninety percent of those cases are outright frauds. Therapists planting false memories in the fragile minds of their patients to make a quick buck. The sad thing is these people seriously undermine the real threat that’s out there.”

“That groups like The Children of the Night are really involved in stuff like this?”

Frank nodded.

Vince leaned on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, facing Frank. He was beginning to get hungry, and their rendezvous with Mike was only forty minutes away. “You know, I’m glad you said that because for a moment I thought I was caught in a bad dream.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

“Well, I’ve heard stories about Satanic Ritual Abuse before,” Vince began. “And to tell you the truth, I just dismissed it as something unsubstantiated. There was a case here in Mission Viejo in the late eighties when a pair of sisters sued their parents for abuse they claimed to have suffered at their hands when they were forced to participate in satanic rituals. One of the sisters claimed she was a breeder for Satan. She said she bore three children, all of who were killed a few days after they were born in ritual sacrifices. She claimed to have vivid memories of this; both of them did.”

“The case was thrown out of court,” Frank said, with the all-knowing sense of one who has done his homework.

“Right,” Vince said. “At the request of the defense, both women were examined by psychiatrists and other medical experts. The sister who claimed that she’d been a breeder was examined by a gynecologist who testified there were no signs that she’d ever given birth.” He shook his head. “So when you showed up today and started on this thing, I was prepared to chalk your story up to something for the tabloids. But the thing that kept me from dismissing it is that—”

“You remember.”

“That’s right,” The memories flashed through his mind. “I remember . And I know for a fact that nobody planted any memories in my mind. These things started before Laura was killed. Hell, they started intensifying in their imagery before I even started therapy.”

“The question that now remains is the one I posed before,” Frank said. “Why are we having these dreams now, and why does it seem that these people—whoever the hell they are—seem to be coming back for us?”

They looked at each other across the breakfast bar. Finally Vince answered that question with the best answer he could summon up. “I don’t know.”

They left the house five minutes later for their meeting with Mike.

Mike Peterson was already seated in a back booth when they arrived. There were two families seated at tables in the front of the restaurant; aside from that, the place was empty. Mike had already ordered a pitcher of Iced Tea, and as Frank and Vince stepped into the corner booth, obscured by shadows and lit by shaded lamps that hung from the wall, he saw Mike Peterson was a middle-aged man who appeared to be in reasonably good health. He was dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt with the words Palm Springs stitched across the chest, and white sneakers. His graying blond hair was swept back over his head, making no effort to conceal the bald spot that had taken root at the cap of his forehead. His eyes were blue and sparkled with a sense of wariness as he regarded Vince.

After introductions were made, the men sat down at the table. Mike got down to business immediately. “How do you feel about all this, Vince?”

Vince shrugged. “Overwhelmed is the best way to describe it.”

Mike nodded. “Frank felt that way, too. So did I. The important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It’s okay to think what Frank has told you is something paranoid, something that couldn’t happen. It’s a normal reaction. You wouldn’t be human if you felt otherwise.”

Vince thought that was a strange thing to say. You wouldn’t be human otherwise . But he kept quiet about it and let Mike continue.

“Before we go on,” Mike said, trading glances between Frank and Vince. “Does anybody want anything to eat?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. He rose to his feet and clapped Vince on the back. “How ’bout we order some chow?”

“Great.” Vince got up and followed the two men to the front counter of the pizza parlor. His stomach was rumbling; he hadn’t eaten all day.

They put in their order—a large deep-dish pizza with pepperoni and olives—and returned to their corner booth. Mike introduced himself to Vince more formally and gave him his background.

He explained that he was a retired high school history teacher. The reason he’d become involved in this was simple: Jesse Black, Frank’s natural father, had been his best friend. They’d grown up together in El Paso, Texas, had even gone to college together, served in the military. Then Jesse had moved to California where the job prospects in computer engineering were in their infancy stages. Jesse had earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics, and the most he could have gotten on the employment ladder in Texas would have been teaching high school math. “Jesse was more ambitious than that,” Mike explained as they waited for their order. “So he moved to California in 1960, landed a job as a Computer Operator at an insurance company. He met Gladys Silva in 1962, they were married the following year, and Frank was born the year after that.” Frank remained unemotional as Mike gave Vince the brief history lesson. “For the first three years of their marriage, all appeared normal. At least on the surface.”