[continued from previous message]

Mac rises refreshed and invigorated after a night’s sleep sans nightmares. Trekking to Doc’s apartment he goes straight through the unlocked door starting coffee in the kitchen. Two mugs in hand he cheerfully steels himself for Pierce’s grumbling
about being awoken early, stunned to find his friend glumly sitting cross legged on a mountain of pictures get hit in the head by a polaroid zipping out of the pestilent one eyed monster. Daniels accepts the coffee mournfully.
Shoulders drooping, pointing towards the offending front windows, “It’s all for naught Mac.”
Trevor peaks out to see the steeplejacks are covering the scaffolding in tarpaulins to protect passersby from flying debris the masons are creating, ruining Doc’s experiment in time lapse photography. At a loss for words he grabs the focus of last
night’s pandemonium and takes a fresh look inside the leather knapsack examining the amber boxes in the fresh light of a new day.
“What incantation from paradise flew up your skirt and took residence?”
“I’m just in a good mood, let me breathe old friend.”
“You had a night without the dream?”
“Au contraire Mon frère, I dreamt I was an Eagle living on a beautiful high mesa spending a whole, warm breezy moonlit night; flying with the thermal currents soaring and diving freely.”
Pierce sings out airily trailing off to an eerie whistle. “Your strange,
don’t change, McBain.”
“This from the dark prince of extreme weirdness”
Already halfway through the coffees both old friends drop their jaws when McBain triggers the hidden drawer on the amber book; revealing a stack of thin gold plates covered in strange runes and pictures. He slides the thin bottom drawer in and out
three times: it withdraws from within disappearing. “Way-way-way-Whoa!” Turning the book in midair, “Did you see that?” Unable to detect the hidden
edge again he takes the other book out twirling it around looking for secret compartments. The
lid opens when upside down and Pierce’s pocket pad from last night’s escapade drops onto the carpet of expended Polaroid snapshots. “I had a good idea for a song just as I was falling asleep and looked all over for that.” Pierce slides the pad in
his bathrobe pocket.
“Well maybe they are as precious as Fussy Gussy the flower boy pretends,”
quips Trevor.
“Since those cigar boxes full of cash started showing up I bought one of those safes you bolt to the floor from the inside.” Pierce wonders if he should alert Tatianni and Templeton or let it be.
Harris knocks on the open door of Doc’s apartment calling in asking to borrow some instant or ground coffee. Frank follows Doc as he passes from the bedroom to the kitchen, while Mac continues scrutinizing the amber books. In the kitchen while Pierce
is scooping fresh coffee grounds into a bowl. “Do you have a sheet of paper; I need to write down some lottery picks?”
Doc hands Frank the pen and pocket pad from his bathrobe pocket. Harris fans a few pages looking for a blank one. “No luck there all filled up Pierce.” Handing the pad back and grabbing a napkin he starts scribbling. Daniels begins
reading the
filled pages. “This pad was empty.”
“Is it your handwriting?” Frank asks and Doc replies, “I am not sure.” Mac enters with the amber books in tow shedding a polite nod and hello
to Harris. “What is this all about?”
“Bill Templeton dispatched me to hand carry a purchase he finalized with an
antiquities dealer north of Flagstaff. He deals in amber books if you want to ride along for an appraisal; the planes on the tarmac. With both books in his left hand McBain
gets six inches away from Frank’s face.
Eye to eye, “I know both you crazy old spooks are up to something, but I’m in a good mood…”
Pierce having examined the pocket pad to find every page is inscribed with beautiful songs he’s never heard: eases a book out of Trevor’s hand as Mac continues, “So I am going to play along.”
Placing the pad inside the book he shakes it three times and takes the pad out finding it is still filled with songs. Scowling at the coffee mooching civil service spy-boys, “I am going to!”
Harris laughs from his belly, “If you insist. But not in that bathrobe please.”
Another hour is spent subtly cajoling and hastening the young men’s slow doddering exit from The Harland. Risking allowing Doc to drive the foursome arrive at the air base and are steered towards a 737 Boeing T-43 Gator used for training navigators
as combat systems officers.
“Where’s Bill’s Gulfstream? Trevor asks and Harris replies, “I need range and speed today.”
Nearing the end of the four hour flight; Trevor with help from Harris gets the pilot to receive clearance to circle the Grand Canyon at five thousand feet. Doc is wrapped up in the state of the art electronics of the training consoles and periodically
reexamining the pocket pad and amber mysteries. Trevor is drinking in the natural beauty staring out of a large visual observation window in the map compartment. Enthralled by the timeless primeval beauty below, Mac raises a set
of binoculars recognizing
two eagles. He watches their wide wingspan lift them skyward landing atop a spacious colorful mesa; and becomes cognizant of his recent dream, feeling an uncharacteristic kinship with the two primordial sojourners.
“As crazy as this may sound I think the amber books are haunted. They are some type of artist’s prison where slave labor writing songs and poems is required to redeem your immortal soul.”
McBain carries on chewing gum vigorously staring at the birds that have resumed flying.
“If you say so.” Sensing Doc’s moodiness he adds “I’ll ask the pilot to boost the oxygen; Frank’s contact has expertise on the subject; you can check out the supernatural angle with him.”
Doc not mollified, “This level of creepy is outside the range of my weird meter’s calibrations.”
“Maybe you filled the notebook with poems and forgot. Either way you have some mint songs.”
Pierce unable to formulate an effective counter argument grabs a pair of binoculars and begins studying the Colorado River, turning another minute portion of the canyon into sand.
Doc lightening, “It’s beautiful. It would probably take a warehouse full of Polaroids, the size of the moon, to track the evolution of that ancient water moccasin’s movement through time.”
Five laps completed the Boeing T-43 pilot sets his bearing for the Luke Air Force Base runway while Trevor and Pierce strap themselves into seats across from Alex and Harris.
Touching down a base worker drives a red 1979 Ford econoline van over to the plane. Harris takes the wheel and the four men arrive in Flagstaff, stopping for a late lunch at an outdoor restaurant in the center of town. The travelers load the table with
their favorite foods and beverages. Trevor notices what seems to be a white Rastafarian with blond dreadlocks walking up and down the street tapping his watch every time he turns around. Pierce casts a suspicious eye on a young black man who stops his
bicycle near the mirror of their van parked by the curb. Stopping eating Pierce comes along the rear of the econoline approaching on the street side. The cyclist says in a friendly way, “I’m just checking my eyes, not trying to get you suspicious.”
Pierce replies, “I have allergies to,” watching the cyclist depart; Pierce checks to make sure the knapsack is safe. Over towards Harris he asks, “Where is the dealer we are supposed to meet?”
Frank looking up, “Overlook seven on Grand Canyon drive. Try to relax, finish
your lunch”
“Going full on spookville then.” Pierce responds frowning, “Hopefully you
guys brought guns”
An hour later parked at overlook seven; everyone gets out for a stretch. McBain offers to get coffee from the convenience store up the hill on the roadway. Standing outside the store he puts the coffees down to call Templeton
on the pay phone.
Reassured all is well he picks up the four cups with both hands wondering why the girl inside didn’t give him a cardboard tray.
A Cicada bug came into view ten feet away from the small puddle of coffee where he had set the cups down. A wasp also began to stir, attracted to the tiny pond of sugary brew. An aspect of nature unknown before his first trip out
west as a boy was the
Cicada. At first enraptured by natures churning periodic symphony, eventually the creature disgusted McBain. Their rhythum at first soothed and enchanted him; but eventually, it became annoying in its constancy and relentless occupation of every
susceptible empty space. The wasp rises from the sweet coffee.
Trevor watches the wasp fly towards the Cicada; circling confidently and then
diving.
It attacks the Cicada from behind securing a perch on its back with its thorny feet, disabling its opponent’s ability to take flight and escape. Its deadly purchase acquired; it moves slowly, as the two enemies roll on the cool tar of the stores shady
side. The wasp is able to get its pincers into the Cicada’s neck and main strata. It chews off its first pink claw; then another, until finally the Cicada moves no more and the wasp advances to the soft area, under the Cicada’s teeth and chin.
Looking down at the wasp Trevor sees the triumphant warrior looking at him. Their eyes make contact and lock deeply. The wasp doesn’t fly away refusing to leave its prize. Mac moves to step on the Cicada. When his foot comes down the wasp concedes
flying out from under the heal of his bull hide leather cowboy boot, just as the corpse of its vanquished opponent is reduced to a liquid pulp: to be left for the coming days intense Sun and its desiccating fiery heat. The wasp known
as The Cicada
Killer flew three circles around Trevor counter-clockwise before returning to the small pond of sweet coffee he dropped. Mac goes back into the gas station’s snack shop, grabbing a cardboard tray and returning to the van he distributes the caffeine to
his companions.
Trevor getting restless asks Harris, “What time is that antiquities dealer supposed to arrive?”
Harris and Alex are stretched out on the thickly padded shag carpeting of the cargo area and Pierce and Trevor are listening to music softly in the vans two front seats. “Before sunrise.”
McBain groans and abandons the van. Stepping over a two foot retaining wall, he
carefully walks down the hill towards the edge of the Grand Canyon. The lip is difficult to spot so Trevor maintains a vigilant presence of mind until recognizing the outline
of a dwarf tree that he gauges
is prudently reachable, clinging to a threshold of the dark abyss . Inching closer Trevor slips his left arm around the circumference of its timeworn trunk
sliding downward until firmly rooted.
Pierce fed and bored slips into dreamland listening to the Widget Groks on Flagstaff’s 106.1 FM.
“There’s a black man walking down the road. He don’t care the color of your sins .
Nor ancient seers rolling in their graves and the curses they called in.
A restless crowd starts whispering wondering how they’ll ever pay.
For playing peek a boo an hopscotch upon the book of days.
The fetid tombs, the broken visions; are not to be displayed or forever to be
mistook.
We’ll ring the bell. We’ll shut the light. We’ll finally close the book.
If you see a black diamond floating in the sky,
That would be my ride home; waiting for me to decide.
The winter was hard the summer came slow.
The spring brought in fashions the fall forced to go.
I’m pondering, what is true love; while I lay here with you sleeping.
Tis the nature of the seasons that always leaves some in need of weeping.
Here I lie sleeping, sleeping here with you.
Wondering if this is meant to last; wondering if this love’s true.
When you look at me to long, you slowly go insane.
I wonder shall it ever pass; or must I board the outbound train.
If you see a black diamond floating in the sky,
That would be my ride home waiting for me to die.
We’ll ring the bell. We’ll shut the light. We’ll finally close the book.
Either way it happens I know that I go free, resting in hallowed consecrated brooks
returning to the sea. Either way it happens I know that I am free.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)