Tamper

By Bill Ectric

"Good mysteries are never just mysteries. They’re usually a combination of engaging literary fiction with compelling characters, an interesting plot with twists and the skillful layering of several genres, including history, mystery, and, in the case of Bill Ectric‘s novel Tamper, also a dab or two of the paranormal. Whit, the narrator of the novel, is on an expedition to understand his past." - Claudia Moscovici, author of Velvet Totalitarianism, reviewing Tamper for Literature Salon.

"I very much enjoyed reading Tamper, an original mix of Fortean insight into the paranormal and a coming-of-age novel." - Adrian Dover, Creator of
The Ladder: A Henry James Website

"For a book described as The Hardy Boys meet William S. Burroughs, Tamper is a surprisingly tender book about growing up on the edge of magic." - Eric D. Lehman, Professor of English, University of Bridgeport, author of Bridgeport: Tales From the Park City

Tamper was the word used by real-life pulp science fiction writer Richard Shaver, who sparked a controversy in the 1940s when he claimed that underground mutants were beaming invisible rays into his brain, "tampering" with his mind. In the novel Tamper, young Whit begins to suspect that Shaver had experienced a dark truth.
"When Bill Ectric wants to make a story weirder, he just adds events from his life - a life that is stranger than anything he invents." - Steve Aylett, author of LINT and Slaughtermatic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Ectric
• Release date: Apr 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458129727

Bill Ectric

Bill Ectric likes to erase the line between mysticism and science, often blending the genres of mystery, humor, science fiction, psychological drama, and metafiction. His short story collections include Time Adjusters, in which insurance companies use a new light-bending technology to capture images of future disaster areas so they can unfairly deny coverage to those who need it most, and Space Savers, a blend of science fiction and the supernatural about a sinister plot to control the residents of a retirement home. He is also featured in the Litkicks book Action Poetry: Literary Tribes For the Internet Age. On the internet, Bill's writing has appeared on Literary Kicks, Mystery Island, Candlelight Stories, The Beat, Empty Mirror Books, Dogmatika, Syntax of Things, Lit Up Magazine, and Letters to McSweeney's. Bill has wanted to be a writer for as long as he can remember, but got side-tracked when he went against his hippie tendencies and impulsively joined the Navy after graduating from high school in 1972. His duties at the Naval Air Station in Rota, Spain included towing and fueling jet aircraft. When off duty, Bill ran wild in Spain, Morocco, London, and Greece. In those days, he didn’t get much writing done, but is now making up for it with gusto. Bill is rarely specific about his past escapades, preferring to let his stories speak for themselves, with some blurring between reality and fiction. Bill’s first novel, Tamper, is about a boy named Whit who grows up in the 1960s obsessed with paranormal research, B-movies, and strange noises drifting up from the basement of his parents' house. By the mid-70s he is experimenting with drugs and seeing a psychiatrist. In the 80s, Whit and a small circle of friends decide to seek out a reclusive mystery writer and travel to the Mediterranean island of Malta, where, according to an actual 1940 National Geographic article, a field trip of children and their teacher disappeared while exploring the underground tunnels of the Hypogeum catacombs and were never seen again. Bill lives with his wife and son in Jacksonville, Florida. By day, when not writing, Bill mows the lawn and complains about the heat. By night, he sneaks around in the back yard, convinced that the garden gnomes are “up to something.”

Book preview

Tamper

by

Bill Ectric

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Bill Ectric

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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For Roger Bolen

~ ~ ~

"While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

thro’ many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

~ ~ ~

Chapter One

1972

The photograph showed a procession of ghostly orbs floating through an eerily lit room toward the camera.

One explanation for the glowing spheres is that dust particles, stirred by my presence, had reflected the bright flash from the camera, causing an optical illusion. Roger and I didn’t accept that cop-out any more than we believed a few scraps of aluminum foil weather balloon could account for the plethora of witnesses to the UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. As far as we were concerned, this was going into our newspaper, The Astral Beat, as a ghostly manifestation.

I had taken the mysterious photographs with my 35mm camera in the pitch-dark basement of an old, abandoned church. In the summer of 1972, a few days after graduating from high school, I entered the church through a side door, stepped over rat droppings and busted pews bearing rusted screws, and crept down the dank concrete steps.

Extinguishing my hand-held light, I aimed at nothing and clicked the shutter a few times, each flash illuminating a desolate array of dusty angular junk for a lingering microsecond. After developing the film, we were amazed to see spectral orbs of light floating in the church basement.

Roger and I were enthusiastic fans of anything involving unexplained mysteries. This was before the actual television shows, Unexplained Mysteries, Ghost Hunters, or In Search Of. There were plenty of books and magazines on the subject, but reading other people’s accounts of strange phenomena was not enough for us. We wanted to be a part of it.

We proclaimed ourselves investigators of the paranormal. Our friends Anne and Nancy proclaimed us goofballs who embellished the truth to legitimize our games and to convince local businesses to buy ads in our otherwise amateur rag, the aforementioned Astral Beat.

Roger was a natural born PR man. Almost seven feet tall and still in shape from playing high school basketball, he could be imposing, but most of the time he was friendly and articulate. To tone down his intimidating stature, Roger’s girlfriend Anne, an aspiring hairstylist of the emerging scissor-cut school, feathered his thick brown curls to contour naturally around his head, a popular coiffure among rock musicians that year. He usually wore an open white buckskin vest, with western tassels, over various band logo T-shirts.

Roger had recently sold a full-page ad to Rock City Records & Tapes because the store manager, Meg Longino, was into New Age.

You know about that Wicca commune in Roanoke? Roger asked her. How the local churches are harassing them for supposedly practicing witchcraft?

Yeah, man, said Meg, chin raised, eyes obscured by the ruby glint in her rectangular granny glasses. I read something about that in the paper. The Wicca folk should have freedom of religion like anyone else! They observe the seasons, man. The cycles of the harvest.

And, added Roger, They have herbs and roots that heal sickness and bring visions. The big drug companies don’t like that because they don’t want anybody to learn about natural healing. My friend Whit is writing a story on it.

Fight the power, agreed Meg Longino quietly. Yeah, I’ll buy an ad.

My attempt to look hip was nowhere near as seamless as Roger’s was. My hair always looked like it needed a trim because I only went to the barbershop when pressed by my parents, and refused to go again for two or three months. This resulted in choppy, ragged bangs and fuzz on the back of my neck. Still wearing slacks and shirts my mother bought me at the department store where she worked, I showed the world that I eschewed convention by pulling out my shirttail as soon as I left the house, and by drawing colorful patterns on the white toes of my Converse sneakers with ink markers.

At least one psychiatrist has labeled my lifelong thirst for a genuine supernatural experience obsessive. This obsession, or as I prefer to call it, field of study, would eventually carry me across the ocean and, some would say, propel me into insanity. Others say I was insane from the get-go. Looking back, I always did have a secret morbid side, even as a child.

Roger said he believed in the paranormal as much as I did, but he always told me, Whit, I know we are convinced, but we have to construe it for our readers.

We had developed a system of presenting supernatural phenomena that we called the three-point construct. There always had to be at least three points. The ghostly orbs floating in the church basement is a perfect example. We looked up the history of the church to see if we could dig up any dirt.

According to the archives at the public library, the abandoned Gothic structure had once been Grace Lutheran Church until the Lutherans built a bigger, more modern facility, and sold the old church to the city. Some people wanted to tear it down and build a parking garage for City Hall. Others voted to preserve the church as a historical landmark due to its 19th Century Gothic architecture, with the high pointed steeple, stone archways, stained glass windows, and bell tower. The Town Council formed a committee to avoid doing anything for a while. That was two years ago.

We scanned the obituaries for people who had died under the Lutherans’ tenure. A man named Crebnor Miles had died from tuberculosis on August 3, 1912 at the age of forty. The wife, son, and daughter that survived him held a memorial service at Grace Lutheran Church, where they were members.

We looked up the church in an old book about our small town, called A History of Hansburg, Virginia.

This is perfect! said Roger in a loud whisper. Look.

Back in 1910, the book said, a fire destroyed several buildings and apartments in the downtown area. The Lutheran church didn’t burn, so it provided temporary shelter to all the people who lost their homes to the fire. Neighbors donated clothing, blankets, pillows, and food. The assemblage soon discovered that one man among them had tuberculosis. Fearing that his wife and children might also be infected, they quarantined the whole family in the basement of the church. Could that man have been Crebnor Miles?

We had our three-point construct. If anyone questioned the connection between Crebnor Miles and the Lutheran church, we had (1) the obituary, officially documenting his memorial service at said place of worship. If anyone doubted that people had ever been (2) quarantined in the church basement, we had a record of that. While there was no record that Crebnor Miles had been among that group, or for that matter, that anyone actually died in the church basement, I had (3) a photograph of disembodied spirits floating in that very place!

I have a good feeling about this one, I said. I think there’s something to it!

Oh, me too, Roger agreed. Me, too. What we need is a quote. We need to visit Old Baxter.

Old Baxter lived across town at the end of a dirt road. His mobile home, ensconced under a shady chestnut tree amid briars, vines, and wildflowers, was actually a 1946 Airfloat travel trailer, made of aluminum and magnesium from refurbished World War II airplane parts.

The trailer looked like a space-age moon rover, something out of Buck Rogers. Looking back, I would call it retro, with the clean stylish lines of a solid-state art deco radio. A horizontal red stripe ran along the side, under the windows and across the door. I almost expected to see tailfins. The forward curve on the front end of the trailer held a convex observation window, flanked by two convex vent panels, textured with silvery ridges.

The first time we visited Baxter, to arrange a liquor transaction, he confided that sometimes, late at night, he saw the ghosts of an ill-fated flight crew that still refused to abandon their station. That disclosure had given us material for Issue Number One of our tabloid.

Baxter usually needed a couple of dollars for some tonic.

I mix it with sassafras root for my arthritis, he explained.

We gave Baxter enough money to get two bottles of whiskey, one for him and one for us. It was a good way to score alcohol until we were old enough to buy it ourselves.

You boys can wait in the backyard, he said. I’ll be right back.

Behind the camper trailer, in a patch of dirt by the chestnut tree, we sat in decorative but corroded wrought iron chairs that must have looked good twenty years ago at some sidewalk café. Roger rested his arms on a round, glass-topped table, rolling a joint. Insects buzzed in the honeysuckle-scented sunshine beyond our shaded nook. By the time Baxter returned from the liquor store, the buzzing had clicked into a symphony synchronized with the sparkling molecules around us.

Leaving his bottle inside the trailer, Baxter emerged from the back door with a coffee cup full of whiskey. He handed our bottle to Roger, who opened it, took a sip, and handed it to me.

What you boys want to know? he asked.

Do you remember something about people being put in the basement of the Lutheran Church after the big fire?

Oh, I know what you’re talking about, said Baxter in a vague tone. I was just a little feller, but I’ll never forget it.

In 1912? I said.

That’s right, said Baxter. I’ll never forget my daddy tellin’ me about it. ‘Course I was only, uh, not born yet, but yeah. Human beings herded into a cold stone basement like cattle. A terrible chapter in the history of Hansburg . . .

Chapter Two

1982

Glenda Wells tried to tell herself there was no reason to be afraid, alone in the semi-darkened room, a wood-paneled writer’s study filled with mementos of the man’s life and work. A collection of puzzle boxes from all over the world, books, journals, a small model of Stonehenge, the requisite human skull, paintings and prints (mostly surrealism and pop art), and on the writer’s desk, an IBM Selectric typewriter with a blue-grey matte finish.

This room, and the rest of the house, had been the private property of writer Olsen Archer for over twenty years, and tomorrow it would be open to the public, but in tonight’s dusk, the house floated in limbo between those worlds. Glenda Wells was not supposed to be there but she was technically not breaking any law. She had a key, after all. She was the real estate agent who arranged for the sale of the house from paranormal investigator Olsen Archer to the Hampton Literary Society.

Still wearing the smartly tailored blue business skirt and jacket, plastic nametag identifying her as Vice President of Virginia Coast Realty, Glenda strode purposefully across the carpet in her high-heels. The room was silent except for the zzt-zzt of her nylon hose chirping between her ample thighs. With dissatisfaction, she noticed there were still some last-minute jobs that needed completion before the opening day ceremony in the morning.

A couple of framed pictures, which should have been hanging at eye level, leaned against the wall on the floor behind the desk. Plastic electrical outlet covers also lay on the floor in front of each outlet. She briefly considered hanging the pictures herself, and screwing the outlet covers to the walls, to save time in the morning. Then she noticed muddy footprints near the bathroom door. She had mixed feelings: Anger that the work crew had tracked mud on the floor, and fear that someone else might still be in the house. Now she wanted to get in and out as fast as possible.

The desk bearing Olsen Archer’s typewriter sat in the far left corner of the room, with just enough space between the wall and desk for an office-style chair to roll in and out. From this spot, one could survey the entire room and greet visitors. Glenda Wells pulled the rolling chair out from behind the desk so she could get a better view of the small, wooden panel in the wall, just above the baseboard and framed by more baseboard. An access panel for plumbing.

First, she pushed gently on the panel. How to open it? She pulled on the frame itself, top, sides, and bottom, thinking it might swing out like a door. Or maybe the whole thing would pop loose. It didn’t. Placing all ten fingertips firmly on the wooden panel, she tried to slide it up, down, left . . . it slid left! The panel seemed to be on a track behind the wall. Glenda slid it almost all the way open, leaving an inch of board visible so she could pull it closed again. The compartment behind the panel appeared empty except for a couple of pipes that led to a sink in the next room.

She reached in, fearful of spiders and nails, and felt around timidly, kneeling with one knee on the floor, hoping not to get a run in her hose. The tight blue business jacket stretched at the buttons, showing diamond shaped patches of white shirt.

Her fingers found an envelope taped to the inner wall and peeled it loose. Losing her balance, she plopped abruptly into a sitting position on the floor. She blew strands of hair off her perspiring face with an upward puff and leaned forward to close the panel.

Like electricity, terror bristled through Glenda Wells from head to toe.

A man’s face, deformed and inhuman, gazed up at her. Even more ghastly than the deformity was the silent shriek of unspeakable outrage, filling Glenda with both revulsion and self-reproach, as though she were the intruder.

Her mind reeled, processing disbelief into fear and panic.

Standing bolt upright, she staggered backwards, broke one of her high heels and sprained her ankle. She fell hard onto the rolling chair, which tipped over, spilling her onto the floor, white shirttail flapping, buttons torn from blue fabric. She crawled on the carpet toward the door, gasping for breath, losing both shoes and scraping her knees, ruining her hosiery.

Standing up at the door, Glenda Wells took a deep breath and screamed loud and shrill as she ran into the street. A car screeched to a halt to avoid hitting her. When the driver and passenger got out of the car to ask what was wrong, Glenda collapsed in the glare of the headlights and sobbed until the tears washed her blue eye shadow down her cheeks and into her mouth. Someone called the police, who arrived quickly along with an ambulance.

The next day, when the Literary Society opened Olsen Archer’s house to the public, near the sparkling Chesapeake Bay in Hampton, Virginia, Glenda Wells missed the ceremony. She was in the hospital, heavily medicated.

Roger and I were there. We did not see what frightened Glenda Wells that night, but we did see her wallow in panic and flee in terror, because we were hiding in the shadows. When she screamed, I nearly pissed on myself because, despite what people might think, we had nothing to do with the horrible face she saw.

But we got what we came for. In her panic, Glenda Wells had dropped the envelope she found taped inside the wall. Roger snagged it.

Chapter Three

1980s

You should stop blaming your parents for your quarrel with reality, said Dr. Carnes, casually.

He leaned back nimbly in his chair, hands behind his head, framed diplomas on the wall behind him. For a second I thought he was going to prop his feet up on the desk in front of him. My psychiatrist looked to be around thirty, not much older than me.

I’m not blaming my parents, I said. I’m just telling you what happened.

Well, go on, then. You say your mother gave you paregoric?

I studied the pastel Aztec pattern in the arm of my comfortably stuffed armchair. Nice texture.

You know what paregoric is, right? I asked, still looking down.

They stopped making paregoric in the late fifties, Dr. Carnes answered correctly. It was a medicine made from camphor and alcohol with a small amount of opium. They used it mainly to treat diarrhea and as cough medicine.

Very good, I said, looking at him. "Well, my mother says that when I was a baby, she