Our Ladies of Sorrow
House of Shadows
It is October 14th, 2009 in San Antonio. An ad-hoc assemblage of Agents wait in a diner whose prices do not match either the service or décor. They are:
- Agent JETHRO: Colt Buchanan of the Texas Rangers
- Agent HORATIO: Special Agent Terrance Delacruz of the FBI
- Agent WALLADA: Professor Isabella Fernandez
- Agent QASIM: Naazim Dugal, DoD Social Worker
- Inspector Bravie Soto: Compliance Inspector of the National Indian Gaming Commission
They've been assembled here by a gin soaked louse of a federal agent they only know as LAMBERT. One of his many assets, an old man named Frank Ryder, is afraid of something and LAMBERT has put together this cell as a wellness check on a trusted asset who knows where the bodies are buried.
The Agents, mercifully, do not have to endure awkward small talk with each other very long before they spot a man matching the description of Frank Ryder on sidewalk, arguing with an old women as he walks past the window of their booth. He stops to turn to face her allowing the agents a clear view of his face when it shifts from anger to shock and fear. He backs away from her between two parked cars, mouthing the words "you? it can't be" before stepping onto the street and being run over by a mini-van.
Agent JETHRO is already halfway to the door when the old woman turns to walk away, a smile on her wizened face. Agents HORATIO and QASIM hurry to follow after JETHRO and attend to the stricken man. Emerging from the double doors, JETHRO spots the old woman headed north, far further ahead than she ought to be at the speed she's walking. Taking off in a sprint after her, she takes and left onto West Poplar only to find she's already at the end of the street and turning south onto San Pedro Avenue. Realizing his current tactic isn't working, JETHRO flags down a beat up Datsun with his Stetson and presents his Texas Ranger ID, ordering the extremely nervous stoner to drive him down the road.
Meanwhile, HORATIO and QASIM have rushed over to Frank Ryder's broken body on the street. A woman stands beside her mint green mini-van, hyperventilating as she repeats "ohmygod ohmygod" ad infinitum. A horrible, wheezy breath emerges from Frank Ryder's lips, his collapsed chest struggling to rise and fall. HORATIO doesn't need to be a doctor to see the man's life is measured in seconds now, and kneels to hear the dying man's last words between the bloody foam rising at his lips "three...three sisters...She can't be...she's dangerous." QASIM is calling an ambulance while WALLADA, still in the diner, drops her hands beneath the table and invokes the Voorish Sign. Turning her altered vision to the street, she she's that ineffable shimmer of a mark of death on Frank Ryder, wispy strings rising into the air and across the city to the West. To her, their is no ambiguity that some outré power wanted this man dead, though what and why remains a mystery.
JETHRO and his commandeered driver emerge onto San Pedro Avenue, past a Planned Parenthood and a drive thru liquor store. Heading south, the direction JETHRO swears he saw the old woman take onto the street, they manage to lay eyes on her walking up the steps into a somewhat run down old apartment building. Pulling over, JETHRO steps out of the car infront of the five story tan brick building, with a Grecian style bas-relief over the doors of three women dancing. Heading in, he finds a middle aged woman fussing over her mail box in the main hall. Identifying himself as a Texan Ranger, the woman is a bit taken aback but is otherwise cooperative. The only woman matching the description of the one he gives is Maria Infante of Apartment 302. Confident that there's no backway the woman could have slipped through, JETHRO steps back onto the street to call in the rest of the team.
Inspector Soto sips his coffee as he watches the chaos unfold before his Nokia rings. JETHRO relays to him his location and tells him to bring the others. Bravie readily agrees, hangs up, quickly drinks the rest of his coffee and finishes his grits, and then gathers the others as the ambulance and police arrive to scrap Mr. Ryder off the street. Piling into Bravie's rented Ford Taurus, they begin the drive.
QASIM realizes that LAMBERT should be updated, seeing as the parameters of their babysitting mission have drastically changed. LAMBERT quickly answers, is exasperated to hear the news, curtly tells QASIM "no you cannot put me on fucking speaker phone" and tells them that they should get to Ryder's apartment ASAP. He knows the address, 504 San Pedro Avenue, Apartment 303. He tells them to get there and try to sanitize the place best they can while he digs up the address of the Green Box Frank Ryder was maintaining for him.
It's not long before the team reforms in front of the Three Sisters Apartment Building, on 504 San Pedro Avenue.
They quickly relay to one another what they've learned in the brief time of separation and head in. Making their way up the stairs, the team decides to divide their labors. JETHRO and HORATIO will speak with Maria Infante of apartment 302 while WALLADA, QASIM, and Bravie will attempt entry into Frank Ryder's apartment.
Knocking on the door of Apartment 302, HORATIO and JETHRO are greeted by the face of an elderly Hispanic woman with frizzy hair and a small gold crucifix around her neck peering through the gap in the door, still held by the chain lock. She is most definitely not the woman they saw. She refuses to let them in her apartment, and seems to speak Spanish much better than English, and is made more willing to talk by HORATIO's fluency. They ask her about Frank Ryder, her neighbor, who she has...had a low opinion of. She considered him a sinful and proud man, and considered his friend Kurt Winter of apartment 201 to be little better. They're able to quickly find out that she has a very low opinion of the moral character of everyone in this building, such as the "whorish single mother" or the "heathen evangelical chino" or perhaps the worst "the devil worshipping harlot in apartment 301." With the gossip acquired, Ms. Infante promptly slams the door shut.
While HORATIO and JETHRO both interview and distract the old woman down the hall, WALLADA, QASIM, and Bravie set about getting into Frank Ryder's locked apartment. Observing the apparent age of the building, Bravie suggests the "credit card trick" and with his Criminology of 60% he is more than happy to demonstrate as he slides a card between the door and the wall and beats the old lock.
Entering into Frank's apartment, they are greeted with the scent of pipe tobacco, old books, and old man. His apartment is lined with books shelves containing books ranging from mysteries to Greek tragedies. Notable sights are the framed Death's Head Hawkmoth, A Hugo Award, and an open and annotated copy of the Paramental Factor on the coffee table. WALLADA makes a beeline to Ryder's desk and filing cabinet, QASIM begins looking through the books, and Bravie opens up the old man's fridge to find half a six pack of Heineken that he promptly offers to his fellows. Rebuffed, he opens one for himself and sits on the leather couch to drink while QASIM and WALLADA conduct their search. The search manages to be fruitful for everyone, as WALLADA is able to find the financial records and key to the Law Office of Darnell Green and Bravie finds between the couch cushions what appears to be Frank Ryder's notebook, which he reads aloud to the others as they search the apartment.
Journal Entries of Frank Ryder…Had the dream again. Started like the other times, like a sex–dream from the old days (oh how I miss those days— even just the dreams!), but then turned into a nightmare. Just a black shape hanging there above me, crushing me, holding me fast while its pale-yellow eyes burned through me. Woke in a cold sweat…
…Night hag. Now I remember! A little research at the old Temple of Knowledge down the street jogged some dusty brain cells. I’m having night hag attacks—at my ripe old age! Maybe there’s a story in this, or even a full–blown novel. Ghosties were never my forte though, and these days I’m afraid jotting down more than a shopping list would require dusting off more brain cells than I have left to me. Ah me! This is more the purview of Messrs. Campbell and King anyway…
…So Kurt has them too. Not terribly surprising. I seem to recall that 10% of the population have seen the Night Hag at least once. If true, there’s probably another “victim” or two here in the Sisters somewhere. Maybe I’ll ask Maria to say a prayer for me. But I probably won’t, and she probably wouldn’t anyway…
…Having read Hufford & Ahern, I’m beginning to wonder—is she real?…
…Talked to Ahern, but all he wanted to talk about was The Oyster Men, rather than the Hag. He told me nothing I didn’t already know. Kurt, on the other hand, thinks we’re definitely haunted. This seems to amuse him. Oh to be young and fearless—and foolish! —again…
…Who are these 3 Sisters, anyway? Faith, Hope & Charity? Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos? Stheno, Euryale & Medusa? Old Will’s Weird Sisters? They look Greek or Roman to me. Have to ask Mrs. Starrett about them some- time. She’ll probably send me a bill for the answer. But the thought remains: do the 3 Sisters have anything to do with the haunting? Have to have Kurt see what he can find out about this place—especially the fire that closed off the top two floors. Did someone die up there and leave a nympho- maniac ghost?…
…I AM haunted. Whispers in the dark. The damned hag. Paranoia. Crazy Maria stares at me. That little Wills waif stares at me. I’m going mad. Need to get away. Away from the Sisters, away from the damned hag. Fresh air. Fresh scenery. I’d go back to Kingsport if I wasn’t afraid of what my dreams might be like there, NOW…
…Thom. De Quincy, Levana & Our Ladies? Something to do with hallucinations or drug–dreams a la Confessions? Must check to see…
…What have I done? What have we done? I should feel alive, renewed. I did feel that way at first, but now… I can’t believe I was so stupid. Stupid, stupid old fool. I have undone us. Undone us all…
Finishing the interview, JETHRO decides to pull the car around while HORATIO checks in on the cleaning team. As they relay what they found while HORATIO gives the place a once over looking for hiding places, QASIM mentions finding a heavily redacted service record of an Air Force reconnaissance pilot named Fox Kempfer, as well as an in depth record of his early life and a painstakingly detailed list of personal details garnered from long term surveillance. A final entry written in handwriting other than Frank Ryder's is the speculation of his recruitment for a "Section Delta of the NRO." This puts HORATIO in a cold sweat as he looks through the file to see the face of a man he killed in Vermont, and to see what that man looked like as a child, as well as to see the faces of his parents and bothers.
Bravie wipes off his finished Heineken bottle and puts it in the trash, noting a large amount of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans inside. Taking the chance to search his bathroom before leaving, Bravie notices a recently filled out one time prescription for Ambien that was barely used if at all. Noticing HORATIO eyeing the Ambien hungrily, Bravie hands it over and promises to keep it between the two of them.
The Agents decide to get rooms at the nearby America's Best Value Inn next to I35. Well, QASIM, WALLADA, JETHRO, and HORATIO do. Bravie chooses to take full advantage of his many hotel reward points to get his own suite at the Marriott Rivercenter. Bravie's view manages to be a mite nicer than the filled in pool the other Agents' rooms look onto.
WALLADA spends the rest of the day at the library researching the phenomena of "hag riding" mentioned both in Ryder's notebook and the chapter of the Paramental Factor he had open, finding it to be a fairly common phenomena worldwide. She also takes this time to look into Frank Ryder, finding him to have been a somewhat successful novelist of sci-fi and detective fiction in the 60s and 70s and worked as a travel writer in the Caribbean and Latin America throughout the 80s.
QASIM makes use of the motel's free Wi-Fi, conversations with LAMBERT, and their own status within the DoD and VA to look more into Frank Ryder, confirming that he had no next of kin and that he served with the US Navy as a Chief Petty Officer commanding a swift boat in Vietnam and later did work with the State Department in Latin America. Posing as a representative of Frank Ryder's VA, QASIM puts in a call to the SAPD to arrange taking custody of Frank Ryder's body tomorrow. As QASIM gets up to leave for dinner , he notices the fluttering from behind his window blinds. Pulling them back, he sees a death's head hawkmoth much like the one he saw in Frank Ryder's apartment. Opening up the window, the moth flies away into the city.
Once settled in, JETHRO takes this opportunity to canvas the motel to see if anyone knows anything about the Three Sisters building. Most don't answer, the few who do are more amazed to see an honest to god Texas Ranger than anything else, with a pair of men in snapbacks and Red Eyed Cookie Monster tees offering him a hit of meth while trying to take a photo with him. Politely declining, JETHRO's canvas turns up little with one exception.
Knocking on the door of a room directly across the filled in pool from JETHRO's own, a horrifically burned man in a white beater and blue boxer shorts answers the door. Introducing himself as Private Lenard Kowolski of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, he invites him in to share some Jack Daniels, explaining he's been living here for about a month. He tells JETHRO he sees the play of light and shadow around his spirit, that it is a haunted world and he's gotten to bear witness to it, that he can hear things from other places and others times, that he can still hear D'Ron screaming in the burning Humvee, that he see the world inverted like through the cracked wind shield of that flipped Humvee. He tells JETHRO that he'll find what he's looking for, because they've already found him. He smiles and tells JETHRO he's both blessed and damned to be in their gaze. He tells JETHRO good luck.
With the coming of night, WALLADA finds she's unable to sleep and makes the best use of it by setting up a fake sci-fi blog so she can pose as a blogger writing a memorial for the late Frank Ryder when she makes contact with Kurt Winter, the late Frank Ryder's neighbor and friend. She braves the crack head by the stairwell to venture into the night to get some energy drinks and on the way back notices an eagle perched on the railing across from her room door.
Having scored some Ambien, HORATIO is able to fall fast asleep in his shared room with JETHRO, but the night is not peaceful. According to the red-liten digital clock it's 4:00 am when HORATIO wakes up to the darkened room, unable to move. He hears the sound of the door opening. Hyperventilating, trying to scream but unable to, HORATIO watches as a black figure moves past JETHRO asleep in his bed, as it stands at the foot of his own bed, as it crawls over it to sit on his chest. Feeling the crushing weight of the hag, HORATIO looks into the leering face of the crone they saw at Frank Ryder's death, a cruel joy in her black eyes.
What feels like an eternity is in reality only a few minutes as HORATIO's screams, muffled by his own mouth and paralyzed throat, finally awakens JETHRO who flips the light on revealing nothing. Having slept with his boots on, JETHRO quickly clears the room before attending to HORATIO, offering him his flask of whiskey. After a few minutes, and a call to WALLADA, HORATIO is able to calm down, but feels both drained and very angry. Deciding that he's not going back to sleep, HORATIO goes for a walk in pre-dawn San Antonio, eventually ending up at the Alamo just as the sun rises in the east.
As 6:00 AM rolls around, JETHRO gets up to see that HORATIO hasn't returned and that there's an ambulance in the parking lot, with a covered stretcher being rolled out of Pvt. Kowolski's room. Quickly getting dressed, JETHRO asks the housekeeper what happened and learns Private Kowolski hung himself with his belt last night. No one refuses the Texas Ranger when he makes his way into Kowolski's room and finds a neatly folded note on the made bed.
IT ALL ENDS HERE FOR ME. THE REST FALLS TO YOU
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