The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Eight Read online

  The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio Eight ~

  Randall Allen Farmer

  Copyright © 2013 by Randall Allen Farmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio Eight ~

  Author’s Introduction

  This novella length document is a collection of short pieces, stand-alone and otherwise, related to “In This Night We Own” (Book Six of the Commander series). As with the extra features common to DVDs, the various parts of “The Good Doctor’s Tales” are not essential to the story “In This Night We Own” tells; instead, they add to it.

  Hilltop

  “The glorious Focus will meet with you now,” the guard said to Iris Casso. He looked like all the other guards standing over Iris’s cowering household, tall and broad shouldered, with a fanatic’s eyes and no hint of humanity.

  No, not guards, Iris thought. Escorts. They called themselves escorts, and she had chosen to believe it. No matter that they had kidnapped her entire household from their home in St. Louis. At night. No matter that so many of them, so well-armed, stood over them now. They said they had come to invite her to live in Pittsburgh for a while. Certainly this was all a misunderstanding, with good reasons for the invitation she didn’t yet know.

  Iris was, frankly, petrified.

  Focus Iris Casso was tall and thin, with wavy black hair done up in the style of the World War II pinup girls, and she faced the world with unflinching optimism. That attitude was a challenge to maintain just now.

  Bea’s baby howled, terrified yet again, and the other children picked up their parent’s fear. Two other young ones started to cry, and Iris’s people huddled closer to her. Iris got up from the floor and tried not to let her knees shake. They all needed her to be strong.

  “Thank you,” she said, maintaining the illusion as best she could. Billy and Sten stood up to be her bodyguards, but the broad shouldered escort shook his head.

  “You don’t need your guards here. We’ll guard you.”

  “Oh. Of course. Well then, thank you.” Billy and Sten didn’t look happy, and Iris echoed their emotions, but she shook her head and the men sat again.

  Four of the broad shouldered guards escorted her from the guesthouse with its locked doors and barred windows, up the hill to the personal Pittsburgh home of the Focus. The estate was a beautiful place, but Iris couldn’t appreciate the beauty right now.

  She didn’t understand why they picked her to kidnap. She had no special capabilities, no special brains. When other people talked about her, they mentioned her good heart and her down-to-earth sensibility. She knew of hundreds of other Focuses in the country, and her down-to-earth sensibility let her understand her ordinariness.

  Something was wrong, and Iris had no idea what.

  “Why did you bring me here?” Iris Casso said to the Glorious Focus, as carefully polite as she could manage. She was a guest. She told herself so. Firmly.

  “I’m saving your life, Iris,” the Glorious Focus said. The Glorious Focus’s eyes were beautiful and magnetic, sea green and hypnotic. Frighteningly compelling. She traced the sign of the cross on Iris’s forehead. “We’re going to keep you out of St. Louis for a while. You’ve become a target. There’s no way we can risk a sensible Focus with five years of experience in saving lives.”

  The sign of the cross burned on Iris’s forehead, then faded. In an instant, Iris became oh-so-comfortable around the Glorious Focus. She remembered the Glorious Focus’s name: Shirley Patterson. She had been a fool. Why had she considered Focus Patterson so dangerous? Had she actually been afraid of her? All her worries evaporated. Focus Patterson was a friend, her truly best friend.

  She had never met Shirley Patterson before. Iris had heard rumors, of course, enough to suspect Focus Patterson might be a witch right out of Macbeth. Here, though, Iris recognized Focus Patterson’s glory, glowing with a soft internal light radiating from her magnetic green eyes. The Glorious Focus stood perhaps an inch or two taller than Iris’s five eight, and had waist length rich wavy blonde hair with silver highlights, done up in a single thick braid, and bound with leather thongs. She wore a dress made from barely off-white linen, edged in Celtic knot work. Medieval. A large diamond studded pewter cross hung down between her ample breasts. Her manner was kind and distant, as if part of her was off visiting somewhere else, leaving her with a faintly vulnerable look.

  “Who am I a target of?” Iris said. “What is this place, anyway?” The place made her think of paradise and heaven, all soft and fuzzy around the edges. This place felt good.

  Patterson’s expression barely changed and she didn’t look at Iris as she spoke. “This is my home, which my household has christened Hilltop. Follow me, and I’ll show you what targets you.”

  Iris followed Patterson through her immense and richly appointed home, the center of a household spreading out across an entire neighborhood, made up of over a half dozen Focuses. Other skittering captive things served the glorious Focus as well, things better left unnoticed.

  Such an odd place. Iris marveled at televisions hovering in the air, strange talking machines, and the mechanical eyes that floated and followed. She might have found it frightening once, but not now. Now Patterson’s home was marvelous, like the Hollywood set of a sci-fi movie.

  “Here is my viewing room,” Focus Patterson said, her voice dreamy and her eyes still not quite on Iris. “Before you and your Transforms leave, we’re going to train you in our ways. Teach you some better ways to be a Focus. You won’t be able to make your entire household a place like this, but you will gain some of our benefits.”

  The viewing room spread around her, large and rich, with polished wood and marble. Five women Transforms and one Focus worked here, no one Iris knew. A giant television covered one entire wall, showing an indistinct picture of an abused nearly Focus-beautiful woman leaping animal-like through a giant sized jungle gym, chased by a hard butch-looking woman. The reception wasn’t very good. The unknown Focus took her hand off a finely carved wooden pillar, and the picture abruptly vanished.

  “Gloriana,” the Focus said to Patterson, and bowed slightly.

  “Focus Romer,” Focus Patterson said in response. “You know of Focus Casso, from the Dreaming?”

  Focus Romer nodded. The strange television was the Dreaming?

  “I don’t understand,” Iris said. “We’re all awake, aren’t we?” When Iris dreamed, she did so at night. Only then did she experience the visions and hear the voices.

  “Awake, yet dreaming,” Focus Patterson said. “The two states can be merged in a sufficiently advanced Focus. Working together, we can also arrange for our surroundings to show the Dreaming. We’ll teach you how. Little miracles to start with. More, later.”

  “But how?”

  “We call it consecration,” Focus Romer said. “You know of bad juice?”

  Iris nodded.

  “If you put enough bad juice in a large enough place, you can consecrate it. Make it holy to Jesus and God, and call the Holy Spirit to inhabit the former badness,” Focus Romer said. “Once the Holy Spirit inhabits a household, the household itself can be called on to help, in all sorts of ways. Don’t think we make these images appear ourselves. The Holy Spirit, not us, does this work.”

  Something in the way Focus Romer talked echoed the half-asleep diction of Focus Patterson. Disturbing. The talk of the Holy Spirit also disturbed her. Iris had been ra
ised an Episcopalian. When someone said the Holy Spirit possessed them, the first thing anyone in her family would have wondered was whether the man downstairs was actually in control.

  Iris concentrated her mind and her metasense, not on either of the Focuses, but on something simple, a wall covered in fantastic machinery. The whole wall made her skin crawl, as if it moved around and rearranged itself when she didn’t pay attention to it. As if the walls were almost alive. Unnerving.

  As she concentrated, the fantastic machinery vanished, as did the finely appointed wall. Instead, Iris found herself staring at an old, worn down and dirty corrugated metal wall, like one might find in a factory or machine shop, with junk piled up against it. She turned, and saw the two Focuses. Focus Romer’s dress was dirty, a smudge of dirt streaked the left sleeve of Focus Patterson’s dress, and Patterson’s pewter cross had no diamonds. With the illusions gone, pain stabbed into Iris’s brain like a knife, the worst bad house bad juice headache she ever imagined possible. The bones in her hands ached, as if they tried to grow. She gasped for breath and only barely avoided screaming.

  “It’s not worth fighting, Iris,” Focus Patterson said, so gentle.

  So much pain. Iris had no earthly idea what to do, and she couldn’t think past the savage agony. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to learn the secrets of these crazy illusions. She didn’t believe in this consecration business, and most certainly didn’t believe this had anything to do with God or the Holy Spirit.

  She just couldn’t find any way to escape.

  “Leave yourself open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Focus Romer said. She came over to Iris, who backed away. Romer’s eyes were sea green, just like Focus Patterson’s. So were all of the Transforms in the building. All sea green. Not just illusions – real. Everyone she had seen in the place had sea green eyes. Iris backed into the corrugated steel wall and found she had nowhere to go. Creatures out of nightmare crouched around her, shadows filled with threat. Focus Romer gently touched Iris’s arm, her voice steady and persuasive. “It’s all right, Iris. Seeing through the consecration is something we can all do, if we need to. Normally, we don’t – the gifts of the spirit are so much more enlightening. Let us show you truth, Iris. Let our Gloriana show you the enemy targeting you.”

  Something terrible happened here. Iris knew all the way down to her toes that she couldn’t let it consume her. She would lose something if she did – she didn’t know what, but what she risked was important.

  Yet, this hurt so much. Iris gritted her teeth and tried to think of a way out, but no way came to her. She endured the pain anyway, agony, knives and hot pokers stabbing up through her spine and into her brain. She had to escape, but she saw no route for escape.

  Focus Romer and Focus Patterson waited patiently. So calm and peaceful.

  Iris looked around and found no way out. She couldn’t fight something like this – whether the Holy Spirit or not, something surrounded her – and if she tried, she would only anger her hostess. One must be polite. Iris relaxed, and let the consecration take her.

  The pain stopped. The richly appointed room reappeared in all its glory. Iris relaxed. She had made the wise decision, she understood now, and couldn’t understand why she had resisted. These were all good people here. Hadn’t Focus Patterson said she and her people didn’t kill? The other first Focuses did, but not Gloriana, the first queen Elizabeth reborn. Now that Iris knew and recognized Focus Patterson, she became much more at ease. Gloriana was a good Christian queen, the only force of goodness and Godliness across the entire Transform community.

  “This is your enemy,” Gloriana said. She touched the carved wooden pole, now beautiful again, and a picture appeared. Iris screamed as the Monster appeared in front of her, so lifelike the Monster almost looked ready to leap out of the screen at them. Only, this wasn’t a Monster, because the creature had a male organ longer than Iris’s forearm. She stepped back in horror. The huge creature, a palomino werewolf, paced a rundown rural home, a place of violence, complete with bloodstains on the walls and floor. Three creatures, half woman, half Monster, followed him. He led them into a room built to their giant scale, and he unfolded what was to him a tiny gas company map. A map of St. Louis, with a red circle drawn at Iris’s household’s location.

  “What is that thing?” Iris said, her voice rising to a piercing shriek. Focus Romer grabbed her arm and quieted Iris’s panic with the aid of the Holy Spirit.

  “He’s a Hunter, the male version of the Arm,” Gloriana said. “Evil incarnate. His dark master promised him a present, a Focus. You. These Hunters have been kidnapping and killing Transforms for over a year – not the Arms, as we had originally thought. Something vile had been hiding the truth from us, the Hunters’ dark master we believe, but we now can understand what others risked their lives to learn.”

  Iris shrunk back into Focus Romer’s embrace, shivering in fear. “I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing!”

  “Of course you don’t. Nor do we want the Hunter to get hold of you,” Gloriana said. “To protect you, we’re going to teach you how to bring the Holy Spirit to your household. Hunters and others of their ilk have no defense against the Holy Spirit. It will fill them to bursting, make them lose their minds and become mere animals. We can teach you to tame such animals.”

  “Won’t he strike somewhere else, then?”

  “Only a few Focuses have the right mentality to be a Hunter’s Pack Mistress, only powerful Dreamers such as yourself.” Gloriana closed her eyes, and the picture changed to show shadowy creatures approaching Focus Adkins’ apartment building. Iris knew the place well, from many reluctant visits. The shadowy creatures followed one of Adkins’ woman Transforms as she went out in a car, ran to the car when the car stopped at a stop sign, and kidnapped the woman. “This single kidnapping caused such a chain of events and miscalculations so convoluted even I cannot unravel their full complexity. The Hunters and their secret master are dangerous, and would be more so if they gained more Pack Mistresses.”

  More? ‘More’ didn’t sound good to Iris. “Why don’t the other Focuses know this?”

  “Why?” Gloriana said. “They are not worthy. Those who are worthy are not yet ready. A time will come when they become ready, because Judgment Day is soon approaching. Then, we will bring the Holy Spirit to them. Those who are not worthy, such as those who fashion themselves as witches, we have a fate waiting for them. Even our most trusted servants must choose between their sort of evil witchery or our true consecration to the Holy Spirit. When the time of choosing comes, we will cast out those who do not accept the Holy Spirit, and they will be Focuses no more. We can not only teach you to consecrate the Holy Spirit into your household, but we can also teach you how to keep your consecration secret, until the Day of Judgment approaches.”

  With all her heart, Iris wanted to be among Gloriana’s elect. It was the only true good Christian thing to do.

  Establishing the Houston Territory

  Salvaging Chicago

  (Carol Hancock’s POV)

  I found Chimeras doing every other night sweeps of Chicago. I was glad I had flown into Indianapolis and rented a car there instead of flying into Chicago directly. I had no particular interest in alerting the damned Hunters to my presence. Paranoid, and on guard, I found Chimera juice traces, about eight miles apart, a regular hunting grid. The one covering the area of my interest was – bless my bad luck – Enkidu. They weren’t even attempting to hide themselves.

  I didn’t want a fight; when I took back Chicago I wanted overwhelming force and no chance of failure. I had neither, nor the necessary permission from my boss, Keaton. Right now, I only wanted my people, at least the ones who had avoided jail and death. I went down my list and confirmed my fears. I found Luke and Indy, my moneymakers, in jail, and my fence, Moose, long gone, in the state pen. Police Sgt. O’Malley had indeed killed himself when he got exposed. Following Keaton’s instructions, I didn’t check on Pete. The darker p
art of my organization was gone, wiped out to the last cheap handgun.

  I growled in annoyance and continued my stealthy work, ready to hunt down what remained of the clean side of my operation.

  My first target on the clean side of my operation, Greg, was doing just fine. He was, of all things, engaged to Ying Tien. The gym, however, the one I had spent so much time on, was bankrupt. In a couple of weeks, the estate of Mr. Oldman, my moneyman, would be auctioning off my gym equipment. Mr. Oldman, my moneyman, wasn’t worth salvaging. His health had deteriorated and he now spent about half his time in the hospital. The Tiens were losing ground monetarily again due to Grandma Tien’s inability to run a kitchen. I repressed the urge to arrange for her to have a fatal accident. I gave up on Absoth. He had quickly slid back into alcoholism without my help. Dick, the mailman, did fine. My control on him still held and he still followed my advice, meaning his life had turned around.

  I visited Dick first, but my disguise no longer mattered. He knew I was Carol Hancock, Arm and serial killer, but we made due. I offered him a job as my operations manager in Houston, with a substantial raise. He took the job, so I tagged him. He had earned both by not screwing up his life after my capture. I assigned him the task of buying my own gym equipment at auction and getting the damned shit shipped to Houston.

  Then I went and visited the Tiens, after an intense search of the area around the China Garden to make doubly sure the police, FBI and the Hunters didn’t have eyes on them. The Tiens occupied a special place on the clean side of my operations, because I had used them as fraudulent references, and because I had once killed a Chimera on their front doorstep. I exercised more caution here than with the others – Keaton’s faux-Hancock spree from Dallas to Youngstown and every medium sized town or larger in-between had stirred up the Feds more than I had ever experienced in my tenure as an Arm. Connecting the Tiens to me wasn’t impossible.