Mouse Trap

By Isabeau

Mouse Trap by Isabeau In the big bad world of cyberspace, those we little know have found a secret home. They are wallflowers and wolves, certifiable and sane, emerging suddenly from the hidden places. Expectations are high; the dangers immeasurable and chat rooms bring them together with the click of a mouse. Mousetrap will make you think twice before logging on again.

Stacey suddenly found herself flat on her back; wrists and ankles tied to stakes. A moment later, she could see the pole come smashing down; the ancient symbols rushing at her, she recognized them all at once, and shrieked her last; Staceys head snapped off at the neck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 5, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469116556

Isabeau

Author Biography Isabeau is a well-traveled author, musician, wife and grandmother, active in her church and community and working with non-profit organizations, publishing numerous websites that reach the four corners of the world. She and her husband make their home far away from their high school alma mater. Since childhood, Isabeau has traveled cross-continental, visiting family and friends and enjoys the benefits of a wide cultural background.

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Copyright © 2005 by Isabeau.

Library of Congress Number: 2004097700

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Cast of Characters

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my good friend and fellow writer, Lisa Allen, for her painful honesty and astute grasp of reality in creating Mousetrap’s storyline. Lisa, you are truly an amazing woman!

To all the rest of the folks who put up with me while I hibernated in the last stages of this book, I thank you for your patience as it was all coming together.

Thank you, God, for allowing Mousetrap to teach a much-needed lesson, if only to a few.

Isabeau

Prologue

The year was 1958. It was a time of confusion and suppressed individuality, when teenagers were either juvenile delinquents or model miniature adults.

On the day that the doors were thrust open, a light haze covered the morning sky. It was chilly for September. That day, the birthday of Damocles High School was a day that would not soon be forgotten by its first inhabitants.

They came from older, more established schools. Schools that had a history—a foundation—a decent football team.

The school was a low slung structure, made up of several unattractive bungalows that passed for classrooms and had none of the charm of back east schools, where brick and ivy were the norm, where tradition had been set in stone. There were several larger buildings, and although they tried valiantly to look school-ish, they fooled no one.

The lunch area was mostly made up of benches in an outdoor area, but later, a full cafeteria and staff would grind out mystery meat burgers (rumored to be kangaroo) to its unsuspecting consumers.

The Multi-purpose room (a brand new invention that was an excuse for the old fashioned auditoriums of bigger and more established schools) served as a place for school dances as well as school plays. Later, dance functions would be moved to the gym, where one could drink punch and bask in the unmistakable stench of dirty gym socks. They were only too glad to have added Dionysus Hall, which smelled faintly of mildew and served now as the center for school functions.

The Gym was the only building that reminded anyone of a real school. The parquet floors had a waxed wood odor with a squeaky resonance when one walked on them in tennis shoes. Later, the odor of warm, sweaty bodies would permeate the walls and add to the ambience.

But for now, Damocles High was shiny and new and its students had no idea of where their first encounters would lead them.

* * *

The two girls walked tentatively on to the school grounds, their ponytails bobbing in the wind like perky identification badges; poodle skirts moving gently as they walked, while they took care not to soil their new white buck shoes.

Gee, this is really scary isn’t it? It doesn’t even look like a school.

I know. My old school had three stories. I heard that they are going to let us pick names for our classes and for the whole school and write a song and stuff like that.

That’s good, I guess. Look! The boys are sort of cute don’t ya think?

Yeah, sort of . . . maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

I hope not. I don’t know anyone but you. Golly! I wonder where we’ll be in forty years?

In 40 years? Don’t be weird! That’s OLD. We’ll be dead in 40 years . . .

Cast of Characters

(Shown alphabetically by first name)

Ashley, a very special nurse.

Billie Bradley, Class of 1967, lived in Owensville all her life. Billie has a history of drug abuse, dropped out of high school in her junior year to have son, Zuma.

Chloe Seltzer would-be Class of 1975, behaved more like a nun than anyone else Jane had ever known, Chloe, was her oldest friend, managing to evade all men up to this point in her life. She attended Damocles High, but moved away for her senior year. When Jane moved to Bali in 1990, she followed.

Colleen Farrington Ellis, Class of 1972, a dizzy blonde or genius when it comes to mankind? Colleen was the perfect hostess, full of warmth and amity towards her fellow man. She was content and busy in the real world, but happy to join the new site. She and Jane become instant friends.

Matilda Carden, Jane’s Mother, first name Matilda, a widow, originally from Capri. Matilda, a.k.a., Grandma Carden’s, no nonsense approach to life comes from deep Sicilian roots. But would her daughter ever get it?

Harley Crackens, a would-be Class of 1963, life is a party. The gals he met online were his life when he wasn’t trying to get rich quick. He even dated them in real life. He was loveless and lonely for the human touch when he happened upon the new site. Whether or not the site survived did not concern him.

Jane Carden Smith, administrator of Damocles Online, Class of 1975, born and raised in Owensville. Jane was happy in Bali. Her desire was to reconnect folks who had dispersed around the world. Unproven and untested characters in the high-tech global world of cyberspace suddenly surround Jane.

Jon Jakes, Class of 1990, he was African-American and the offspring of warring parents. Jon was sure that with his past, he could handle any hostile situation that arose. He was doing his part in this world, so he thought.

Ken Kaylor, Class of 1974, charming, single, and possessed a cutting wit, Ken was a photographer by profession. He could keep a chat party in stitches for hours. Then go home and dream of her, his one true love.

Lucy Lowe, would-be Class of 1965, Lucy’s charm-free disposition is not what drew folks to her first. She could disarm the most distrustful of people in any circumstance. She imagined that she gave the group a sweet sense of stability. In chat, she drew out those with signs of a bitter struggle yet unresolved from back in their school days. But Lucy had an agenda.

Norton McLeod, Class of 1990. Norton has always been there for Jon. They’d known each other since preschool. Norton would gain wisdom through the coming weeks as he faces himself boldly and fills in the missing pieces of his past.

Patrick Smith, Class of 1975, he is Jane’s husband and father to Phoebe. Though very busy in his career, he is not too distracted to feel suddenly protective of his wife.

Phoebe Smith, age 17 and daughter of Jane and Patrick Smith. Through the innocence of a child, sometimes-clear perspective is made. Phoebe is a budding anthropologist and happy about her mother’s continuous projects at the Damocles site. That is, until she stumbles across an enigma.

Sarah Klein, age 12 and daughter to Barbara and Zachary Klein, Sarah is forthright and will teach her parents the lesson of their lives.

Stacey Fleming Warren, Charter member, Class of 1958 moderator of Damocles Online, Stacey has a deep and throaty voice, which has always been an advantage to this otherwise petite gal. She is the eldest of them all and a charter alumna member of Damocles High School’s first graduating class. Stacey would risk her own life defending the honor of her school. Lucky for her fellow Swordsmen, she’s also their dearest friend. Too bad they just don’t get it.

Susan Grimes, Class of 1961, Susan shares little of the career that allows her to do some globetrotting. Susan seems a bit naïve, but sticks around until the end.

Tab Twick, would-be Class of 1982, Tab, was quickly approaching the crises years of the 40s; he has never faced exactly what he was. Tab had come full circle and was back now at his hometown, a teacher at his old high school, the one he quit—his last chance as an educator lay in his ability to either do it right or fool them all.

Wanda Haze, Class of 1980, owner of Damocles Online and wife to Nick. She launched that fateful site one warm September day to bring some excitement into her dull life. Be careful what you wish for.

Zachary Klein, Class of 1973, a sensible grad/lawyer who is not afraid to take anybody on—in the real world. He and his alumnus wife, Barbara, relocated to Maine years ago, but would he ever be rid of his dreary hometown?

Chapter 1

It was the beginning . . .

Wanda, It will never work! exclaimed the pragmatic Jane. There are just too many Swordsmen to gather to one meeting place online.

It was a brisk autumn in the new millennium and forty-two years since Damocles High School opened its doors for the first time. Hardly anything was different about the school, except for the iron bars that now locked its students in six hours a day—those bars were nonexistent in 1958.

The murky morning sky of Owensville this day was airbrushed in dirty brown, and orange-yellow, but the locals didn’t seem to notice. Only those who moved away from Owensville remembered dolefully the town’s depressing vista and underlying peculiarities. The now-failing Griffith Plastics Factory, with its ugly gray-black smoke billowing up from its smokestacks; a hot and stifling smoke, which curled down low, like gnarled tentacles around the high steeple of Owensville Church Light that was once busting its seams with cheerful members, but was now rotting to pieces.

Owensville Church Light was once alive on Sunday mornings with people who gathered together before God to worship Him. As much as the people loved to worship, their own young Pastor Charles did not see the need to teach the Word of God, neither did he even once encourage his congregation to study their bibles. That’s the way it was back in 1916. Alas, young Charles, who died suddenly, wasn’t there to protect his hapless flock when they found themselves suddenly exposed to the wolf.

Left without a shepherd, the people continued to attend Sunday morning services, not having a clue as to how to go about replacing their pastor and just enjoying the worship. But it just wasn’t the same without Pastor Charles and the flock, for the most part, was ripe for the subtle, worldly country club mentality that entered into their happy little church with its newly self-appointed leader; a layman by the name of Alexander L. Griffith, founder and CEO of Griffith Plastics in 1910, and employer of nearly every member of Owensville Church Light.

Mr. Griffith, who had attended Owensville Church Light every Sunday for years for the sake of appearance, used his newly gained position at Church Light to speak, preach and get all fired up about his own brilliant ideas. He spoke philosophically and used big words like modernization and progressive thinking and wowed the congregation into trusting solely on themselves to turn the entire world into a Utopian paradise, and that they could begin right there at church. The congregation, in turn, let him say whatever he wanted for fear of retribution in the form of being fired from the plastics factory.

It was a challenge living in Owensville, Ohio during Alexander Griffith’s reign. Craig and Matilda Carden yanked their kids out of church faster than you could say pass the basket the first time Mr. Griffith was allowed to usurp a preacher’s place in the pulpit, and finished their children’s Christian training at home for the duration of their childhood. The Cardens became part of a remnant of faithful Christian families in Owensville, forming a small home church that rotated for years from house to house, and providing fiery sermon fodder for Griffith.

The Church Light congregation sang to God less and less, never really considering why they began singing to Him in the first place, their Sunday morning glow fading ever so quietly, as an icy cold void veiled their troubled church.

Alexander L. Griffith, over a short period of time, had succeeded in turning Owensville’s only church into his own business venture; unnaturally yoking to it a variety of outside interests, including the blatant partnering of a secular private school that openly ignored God and His simple desire for his people; that of living a simple life in obedience to God and of living a life of prayer and seeking His face in the Holy Scriptures, and using every opportunity to share the joy in it all. The congregation should have known better; should have been prepared. They could have kicked the wolf out once and for all, but they simply didn’t know what was happening to them.

If having taken over Owensville Church Light wasn’t bad enough, Alexander Griffith grew more and more uncomfortable with praise and worship time and one day declared that Sunday morning services would be no more than thirty minutes in length. Griffith developed a very short temper with his staff and those witnessing an outburst would make excuses for him because of his pastor-like position in the church. Wasn’t he then, after all, worthy of double honor? The staff would chant double honor to themselves while sweeping up the aftermath resulting from one of his most volatile eruptions.

Owensville’s inevitable spiritual death could be traced right back to Griffith’s sermons on progressive thinking and a philosophy of life that demanded reliance on itself to the exclusion of a providential God. And Griffith, whatever convictions he spoke of, suffered a stroke at the age of fifty-nine and was never able to utter another word. He died in 1947 at the age of sixty-seven. A very young third wife and brand new baby daughter survive him.

Owensville did anything but progress during Alexander Griffith’s reign. His dream of a Utopian Owensville began with paving it over with cement. After that costly expenditure, he raised taxes to fund his many projects, which the tax-heavy townsfolk were understandably eager to see come to fruition. The only things they ever saw come about was the Griffith’s new mansion set amidst tall trees and hedges with pearly gates that kept the townsfolk out; the other was the fact that Mr. Griffith had changed his title, which was now Reverend Alexander L. Griffith.

Decades later, gloomy and weary Owensvillites in blue jeans and red or brown-checkered flannel shirts walked by the old church, only vaguely acknowledging its existence, knowing fully of its history, disgusted with the very thought of a God who cared for them, and completely ignorant of God’s presence in every detail of their town. Two generations of Owensvillites blamed their bitter fate and poverty on the faithless Mr. Griffith, forgetting that it had been their own choice to follow him. Such is human nature to find a scapegoat for one’s own sins. This present generation was nearly God-free.

But there was that remnant. One particular lady of remarkable faith, fully aware that Owensville had been enslaved, that its citizens were somehow caught in a terrible plight of its own making, prayed and prayed and prayed some more. This woman had much hope in her fellow Owensvillites, who had every reason to repent and turn back to God, but did not; could not. If they had known who she was, would they kill her or embrace her?

Owensville’s golden cornfields were long gone, replaced by military-style cookie cutter housing tracts with weedy green lawns; houses cheaply built after the war now falling apart some fifty years later. Open-air malls had shot up in and around surrounding cities for a hundred miles. Other towns supported the lucky junior college and vocational school throng of young people, since no one in his right mind had reason to place a college of any type in that dreary cement city. Anyone coming in had a sense that progress had entered in, but somehow got its foot stuck in the door.

Kids still cruised up and down Owensville’s Main Street in souped up cars with those diehard classic accessories, ever available on the Internet. Cars would be the last hobby to die in Owensville, Ohio, even if the streetlights regularly went out and they had to cruise in the pitch-black darkness. Cars cruising at night were like Christmas lights to the town, offering brightly painted color schemes and a giving the town a little life in the otherwise dull evenings. The town’s puny power plant struggled to stay alive with the only technology it allowed in for the first time in two score: Computer technology and Internet service. You would think that a new power plant would have been foremost on the late Alexander Griffith’s to-do list in the breaking ground of his new utopia.

Jane Carden Smith, Damocles High School, Class of 1975, was one of those lucky ones who left Owensville for good. Living on the island paradise of Bali in the Indonesia Islands near the mainland and Hong Kong, she was privileged to wake up each day in Bali’s tropical beauty, a brilliant blue sky almost every morning and in the lush green surroundings of Ubud on the green mountainside and an hour’s drive from Bali’s capitol of Kuta.

Bali was a sharp contrast to her worn out birthplace, ten thousand miles due East. Instead of a fading lawn she fought to keep alive, mango and guava trees stood proud and willowy in her garden, bulging with its orange fruit. Ripe green avocado hung on it’s tree just outside her kitchen door, sweet white lychee and yellow apple bananas, added to the ambience of this pleasant, heavenly reality she had called home now for ten years.

Jane was forty-three this year. Her tall stature and peaches and cream complexion accented deep blue eyes and a head of wavy auburn hair, making her stand out from the locals and they affectionately called her Americana. Jane wore a variety of island dresses, Indian cotton, in green, brown, or blue, with a little pattern or tropical flowers. She was aging well, though no skinny-mini. Jane was one of those women who had always lived a clean, substance-free life. She liked her simple existence, treks to Kelating Beach two-hundred meters away, to watch the sunset, the serenity of the sea in smooth, elegant waves rolling softly, the evening sun sparkling on the water.

Jane never got island fever, though Bali was not even a hundred miles in length and half that in width at its widest girth. The landscape changed, as did its geography, from its picturesque rice terraces and pristine crater lakes to its fast flowing rivers and deep ravines to the lush green Monkey Forest (a favorite haunt of the Smith family). Or the contrast between the white sands of the south shore and the rocky treacherous north shore with its none other than six active volcanoes, providing the north coast with gray or black volcanic sand.

It was nice having the option of dual citizenship as a Balinese/American citizen, so as to be able to come and go as she wished. Americans like herself were good for Bali’s struggling economy.

Patrick Smith, Jane’s husband of twenty-plus years, had a sophisticated air about him. He was barely as tall as Jane, liked very little his work uniform of black slacks with a white dress shirt. He had deep blue eyes and a square jaw, an executive man’s haircut with a long thin braid at the base of a head of curly blonde hair. You almost couldn’t tell that Patrick wasn’t local, except for maybe his blue eyes. At home, he was comfortable in jeans and tee shirts and almost never wore shoes.

Patrick made his living as somewhat of a city planner. He fought earnestly to keep Bali from too much western industrial growth and influence. Patrick was much influenced by the historic tales that his Grandpa Smith related to him about the subject of Progress and Modernization.

Owensville Public roads were always in need of repair, especially since the majority of Balinese went to and fro on the narrow roads, packed precariously on one family scooter. Street traffic moved like they did in England, forward traffic on the left, oncoming traffic on the right. Often entire families could be seen riding down the terrible roads; women in long dresses road sidesaddle to the left for an easy dismount just in case they needed to leap off their precarious transport and into the green foliage adjacent to the road; just in case their scooters hit one of Patrick’s pet peeves and personal undertakings; the countless potholes.

Sunsets at home in Ubud were noisy occasions. White Bali Mynah birds sporting beautiful crests with black masks around their eyes chattered raucously in the flame trees nearby. They depended on one another, had an instinctive sense of union, and perched in their lofty abode, they nestled closely together each darkening orange-blue sunset, their chorus building up to a nearly deafening climax. It was a prattling, chaotic crescendo, followed by a sudden and eerie hush when the sun finally disappeared on a glittering black and blue horizon.

Patrick, who foresaw in March of 1998, that having a computer in the house would be good for the kids, introduced Jane to the modern world of home computers as well. As cyber cafés were popping up all over Kuta and Ubud, the new computer was a turning point in Jane’s life, reconnecting her with home and the outside world.

Not that Jane needed a life. In fact, the opposite was true. Having lived in three states in a period of twenty-four years of marriage, two of them company relocations, Jane spent the first half of the nineties, the wife and mother of a US Navy geographical bachelor. Patrick, happy to be off to the unknowns in his midlife years, granted Jane the reluctant double role of Mom and Dad in his long absence. It was a time of poverty and trial, followed by five years of peace and quiet.

Jane’s faith in God bestowed on her at an early age and resulting strong set of values permeating from a hard but interesting secluded life in Owensville made her quite a survivor. To Jane, people were of utmost importance; the petty grievances of a limited social life were to be overlooked. She was on a local prayer chain at church and heard of plenty who were in need of healing, emotional and/or physical, and she followed the results of those prayers closely. Answers came in a variety of awesome and miraculous ways. Aside from God, Jane treasured her husband and daughter most of all on this earth. In Bali, a variety of eastern mysticism was present, but the church itself was alive.

Jane’s daughter, Phoebe, was a free-spirited, petite young woman. Her stature was similar to her grandmother’s as well as her very wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. She volunteered herself out to various local causes in and out of church and was the unmitigated social butterfly of the family. The locals liked her well enough; Phoebe brought the poor of them food and clothing and spent time tutoring their children after school. If you live in Bali then, as a rule, you must cherish its children. Phoebe read to the little ones her favorite classic children’s stories and the Balinese children loved to hear them told over and over again. Phoebe would go away to college soon, an event that she did not like to think about as it meant that she would be leaving her family, friends and the children that meant so much to her.

Phoebe always did march to her own drum, acutely aware of what was going on around her. She loved animals and trips deep into the densely green Monkey Forest. In Bali, monkeys roamed free and could be found playing near the roads there. One needed only to pull over and present to them a food offering to become their friend. The fact that an older monkey could be dangerous never crossed Phoebe’s mind. She knew just what to do to calm him down.

The Smiths took advantage of the many activities Bali offered in their ten years since their relocation. Jane and Phoebe enjoyed snorkeling with the brilliant reef and coral fish and exploring the colorful coral of Menjangan Island. Patrick took Jane diving near Gondol on the north shore this summer.

Jane managed to elude the new off-white computer until June of 1998. It sat stoically in her office for months before she ventured near. But its tempting email feature for simple and economical communicae made her succumb to it in the end; even her mother was online—somewhat.

Naturally strong in academics (and typing like the wind), Jane quickly found things to do online. After she had discovered how to utilize search engines to find a few relatives, she began using those search engines to look for her old high school friends, her fellow Swordsmen from Damocles High School in Owensville, Ohio. Her burgeoning hobby of looking for Swordsmen had turned into a major production in just a matter of weeks, and now two years later, it had developed into an impressive online directory work for the school. There were six hundred alumni to date who had registered in the ever-expanding online class directories. Her purpose for the project originally was in helping reunion planners to track down those who had disappeared between the cracks after leaving high school.

After a school fire in 1978, which burned down the entire building that housed all school records, Jane discovered that there was a very real need for a volunteer to track down former students. She took on this huge project, beginning with just a few alumni. What an amazing thing, to be able to find folks around the globe while she herself lived so far away from home! It was the magic of the Internet.

Jane’s enthusiasm was genuine. School files were being restored to reunion planners through the project, current addresses and email info added. Damocles High School personnel showed little interest in the fact that these records were being restored and at no charge, but Jane didn’t mind. With the advent of cyberspace, it was only a matter of time until all the Swordsmen were found. Not that all Swordsmen owned or had access to computers. Most folks who were online knew where at least a few could be reached, and so made it possible to develop a substantial directory in a relatively short time. But the directory work was an enormous undertaking for Jane, soaking up a minimum of eight hours per day. And she loved every minute of it.

Jane corresponded back and forth at least a couple of times with every graduate she found online. As she was the first contact since high school for the majority of them, she became privy to numerous life stories and mini autobiographies; they were sad, happy, mournful and bitter. Jane had a natural love for people and found each of their stories most fascinating and endearing. Most Swordsmen had never attended a reunion. About half of them had moved away, whether it was to attend junior college or vocational school in a nearby town or elsewhere, or begin a military career, or were smart enough to pursue a real education, join a commune (if you were a 60s or 70s grad), see the world in a variety of ways, or begin a family. Jane had a blissful and interesting two years working alone on the project and getting familiar with the many online faces.

Though Jane lived in Bali, she lived in the real world of human relationships. In other words, her eyes were wide open, which qualified her as an adult, and to her regret, sometimes becoming the unintentional mother to childish adults like Wanda, who showed up at a high school website and snatched her email address. This happened one day at the close of Jane’s two years’ peace and quiet.

It’s just too impractical, Jane reasoned vainly with Wanda on the voice chat on her computer. There are potentially fifty-thousand Swordsmen floating around out there in cyberspace. Their numbers multiply daily! There’s just you, Wanda, to keep a single chat room and message board website all together!

I will enlist help when I need it, Wanda insisted. She wasn’t going to back off.

Wanda was indeed very childish, having grown up in a traditional Japanese-American family in the Midwest. She was much younger than Jane, with straight black hair and beautiful, mysterious eastern eyes; an 80s graduate, unmistakably from the Midwest in her jeans, tank top and heavy cowboy boots. Wanda painted her makeup on at the crack of dawn, ready for any tingle of excitement that might allow her to forget the dullness and mediocrity that was her life, married to boring Nick. And she was a disappointment to her very strict father, who wanted a son to carry out the family name; it was an expectation this only girl-child could do nothing about.

Wanda sat eight hours a day in her cubicle, computerizing the records of the Gratingsville County Morgue in Owensville, to the strong waft of formaldehyde. Canned central air conditioning had little effect on that overpowering and very unpleasant reek of death that did little to hide the smell of rotting flesh.

Jane discovered, after a while, that Wanda was an only child and was used to having her own way.

Jane, this is a great opportunity. You have all this directory work done, and for what? There won’t be more than a hundred Swordsmen at most who’ll show interest in this website. I’m bored out of my mind here, Jane. You’re in paradise. Think of the others like me, stuck in their lives with nowhere to go. I, for one, need the escape.

Come on, Wanda, Jane argued. Your life can’t be that boring. Didn’t you say you were a fashion designer?

As she spoke, a gurney passed by Wanda’s office, bumping the wall. She looked up in time to