Searching for Eddie: One of Us

By J.P. Conrad

Does the human race really possess mostly ignored, sometimes academically researched faculties - a.k.a psychic abilities - that could help us overcome societal and planetary pandemics?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982250638

J.P. Conrad

J.P. Conrad, Jahrgang 1976, ist gelernter Mediengestalter und diplomierter Werbetexter. Seit seinem Debütroman, dem Thriller "Totreich", hat er sich ganz diesem Genre verschrieben. Die Kombination aus Suspense und augenzwinkerndem Humor ist sein Markenzeichen. Als großer Verehrer von Alfred Hitchcock zollt er diesem in seinen Büchern immer wieder Tribut. Conrad lebt mit seiner Familie im Taunus.

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Copyright © 2020 J. P. Conrad.

Screenplay Copyright 2005

Novelization Copyright 2018

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-5062-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-5063-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:   07/28/2020

Thank you to the Edgar Cayce

Foundation and Association

for Research and Enlightenment,

Virginia Beach, Virginia

for their information and co-operation.

Contents

Chapter 1    Yesterday and Today

Chapter 2    Frogs

Chapter 3    Thirty Years Later

Chapter 4    Prospects

Chapter 5    Prospecting

Chapter 6    Perpetual Emotions

Chapter 7    Birdbrain

Chapter 8    Stowing Away

Chapter 9    Hide and Chase

Chapter 10    Rescues

Chapter 11    Mines and Matter

Chapter 12    Re-united states

Chapter 1

YESTERDAY AND TODAY

A rooster crows in the distance of breezy windows of a white stone and wood house. The door is opened by a man with greying hair who watches a restored 1920s Ford navigate down the road nearby, and it makes him feel like he’s four years old or thereabouts. Kiepfer waves to his neighbor, picks up a milk bottle and cream from the front porch cooler, then ambles to the kitchen where he pours freshly brewed coffee, adds the whitener and some sorghum to his cup, and heads for stairs across the room, leading to his cellar.

He checks a cabinet, collects some electrical supplies: fuses, a long cord, some small, dish-shaped metal parts, and he makes his way from the basement, up outside steps, across the drive, and toward an old, wooden barn in need of some repair.

Kiepfer sets down his equipment after he reaches a converted stall/ office. He leads the one old mare out to pasture, and he pours feed into her box on the fence. He rubs his hands over her head, combs her mane and tail, brushes her glossy coat before he starts to return to the stable.

You’re one nice lady, Jessie.

Back at the barn, Kiepfer connects cords and extensions, adds a few of the small dish receivers to an outside location, closes the stubborn window as much as the cord allows. He makes his way back inside, thumps his forehead at forgetting a key step in his idea. He hurriedly retrieves the tractor from its outdoor parking space and drives it inside to a wide aisle down the center.

By afternoon, Kiepfer has installed a sort-of radio aboard the tractor and connected up the outside receivers to it. He finally twists a dial. He stares at his invention a long while, not sure if this is absolutely dumb or genius, but something his mind has been stuck on and crunching for more than a few years. His forefinger hovers above a switch, he closes his eyes. And toggles the key. Nothing. He gives it a minute, wondering what he did wrong. Still nothing.

Just as he opens his eyelids in an oh-well moment, what can he try next, a crackling noise, like an old phonograph record, starts to play–a voice-like sound, faint at first, and then light blooms into view, similar to an old movie, but in color.

In the midst of the dim barn aisle, Kiepfer witnesses holographic pictures of a middle-aged man lying on a sofa. He looks asleep, but the inventor knows who he is and that the man’s sleep-like state is deceptive. An assistant watches, along with another person, a well-dressed executive who holds a slip of paper in his hand.

Eddie is ready for inquiries, the assistant explains.

Kiepfer rubs palms across his eyes and forehead, and not without a timid smile: this is what he’s been working toward for years.

It’s important I find out who is responsible, the executive tries to inject gravity into his request.

The one who brought about the accident in question is still in your employ and needs replacing, the sleeping man responds, not sounding at all tired.

You mean fired?

If you fail to heed this warning, it will happen again. Fortune will not be kind to you in the states of Virginia and West Virginia.

He’ll be all right. I’ll talk to him. You, you better check your facts!

But the seemingly asleep man on the couch only responds a short, noncommittal, We are through.

Kiepfer’s device goes grey, he thinks to turn it off, but then it dimly brightens again under a lone incandescent bulb outside somewhere, and unexpectedly, the inventor beholds a railroad station, its sign locating it in western Virginia. Though he can make out a switchman, the time looks to be night, as Kiepfer scoots closer to the edge of his seat.

The railroad employee carries his lamp as a train pulls out, and the man walks past the track switching mechanism, but he’s distracted by a deer nearby.

Get on with you! Hey!

He swings his light toward her, and the doe rushes and jumps off, into a dark field and woods nearby.

Down the line, a radio plays twenties music, and the same railroad executive who’d requested the information from the sleeping psychic stands outside a private car as he thinks and smokes a cigarette just before turning in. He finally retires to his personal car, which for the moment is stopped on the rails, out of traffic.

His wife has already dressed for bed, kisses him as he removes slippers and covers up with a smile, and he’s deeply asleep in a few minutes.

A distant train whistle blows as she reaches to turn out the light and closes her eyes, laying her head upon her husband’s back. The hypnotic turning wheels seem to get closer in her dream, when she suddenly wakes to a much louder whistle. She glances out to see a locomotive feet from her window, in a futile, skidding attempt to stop before it rams them. The railroad executive wakes too, remembering the warning, and he covers his wife’s screams and his own terrified eyes as the oncoming engine crashes into their car.

Outside, the slowing but still moving train pushes the private carriage across the Virginia state line and on into West Virginia before it can finally come to a halt.

Kiepfer sadly turns off the device remembrance receptors, hands over his eyes at all the sadness the human race draws to itself.

Just a few years down the road from Kiepfer’s electronic, past-life radio experiments, a sliver of bright yellow sun slides above wooded horizons of semi-rural Virginia, circa early 1970s. A small boy in bed in his upstairs room rubs a hand across his forehead. The hand stops when he hears a voice, not his mother’s or his father’s; it comes from his own space, it seems.

Time to start, Ray. Today’s the day.

Ray bolts to upright, contemplates for twenty seconds, and he returns a happy Okay to the Voice that sometimes visits him, though he’s never yet seen where or from whom it comes. Now he thinks on it again, he can’t be sure whether it’s a man or a woman, boy or girl, but it’s always helpful, and it’s never gotten him into trouble when he does what it asks.

So, at the same time that he jumps from his bed, he hears a large truck enter their long, rural drive. He peeks through curtained, third-floor windows, and he sees a moving van back in to park at the front door.

A short few minutes later, Ray enters the kitchen through its swinging door entry to find his mother has already beaten him there; maybe she finished her outside chores already?

Yours is on the table. Fried or scrambled?

Mmm–scrambled!

Eat fast or they’ll move it under you! she jokes with a smile, but Ray’s not altogether certain whether Mom’s kidding him or not, doesn’t take the time to sit or do his napkin, before he digs into his cereal bowl and then the eggs.

A half-hour later finds Ray leaning against a giant red maple tree in view of the driveway. He stretches in a wake-up yawn, while watching two sturdy moving men confidently clear the front door, then hoist the comfortable cranberry and beige sofa–that he’s napped on from infant to eight, where he is now–out the entry and into their long, box truck. Ray’s imagining himself still asleep on the couch inside the dark van, when a sudden knock on the back of his head jolts him into the day-light.

You’re It, Ray! his three-year-old neighbor, Neal, is behind him, along with Neal’s neighbor, Katie Camden, who’s Ray’s age, and he smiles to her, as Ray buries his head into his folded arms against the maple tree.

One, two . . . three . . . Ray starts a slow, even count, hears their feet, Katie’s anyway, skim away across the dewy grass. But the smile he’s had since he saw them suddenly droops.

Seven . . . eight . . . nine. . . . Ten! he shouts, and even before he hears a little-kid giggle near the tree, Ray stretches his long right arm behind the trunk, pulls Neal around to face him, but Neal giggles so hard, he can’t run before he’s tagged, and Ray puts his own foot for-ward to take off.

You’re It, Airplane. Neal buddy.

Neal, still giggling, buries his nose against the tree, to which Ray cocks his head, thinking he heard it, the tree probably can’t help but giggle, too.

One, two, three . . .

No peaking, Ray laughs over his shoulder, races to the woods in Katie’s direction. As he runs out of hearing–

Five . . . six . . . three . . .

Ray finally finds Katie, who has slowed down since Ray made Neal the It person. He glances back to Neal by the tree, after they move through a few more tall shrubs for cover.

I have to stop playing this, Ray declares and holds his head in a guilty gesture.

W, why?

Ray stops walking, looks seriously into her face. I see where you all run to without even opening my eyes. Right here–he puts his left index finger in the middle of his forehead, an inch above his brows.

Really?!

Not always. Just in this game. Mostly. Let’s hide in the old barn. Doesn’t look like Neal’s granddad’s around.

Better hurry, she looks back toward Neal, leaning against the tree, but no longer counting. They head for the distant, old wood barn at Neal’s place before the still-giggling three-year-old turns around to the hunt.

Several minutes before they get there, Neal’s grandfather enters his workshop from the opposite side. He knocks knuckles against some sweet-smelling cedar planks neatly stacked to dry. A new Lionel train engine and cars await set-up on a broad, sturdy table readied for the job. Kiepfer smiles–Neal’s sixty-year old grandfather–an experimenter for almost as long as he is old. He tinkers again with the broadcast radio, a solution jar, and an antenna with terminals hooked up to a tree planted in a large, clay pot. He slides goggles over his eyes–just in case.

Behind him are photographs of Neal, Neal’s Dad–who is Kiefper’s Air Force pilot son, and an old, autographed picture of psychic Edgar Cayce–on a dark wood desk with Kiepfer’s name plate in the lower corner.

Kiepfer pokes at the steel terminals, disappointed, but as he turns away, the hammer loop on his overalls–tool in it–attracts the nameplate magnet. Sudden sparks fly from his fingers to the tree contraption and solution jar. Kiepfer’s not sure if it was an electric shock, or his mental shock. He slams into the wall as he jumps aside, groggy, but downright gleeful, watching another hologram form inside the barn.

He glances to the old picture on his desk, as he witnesses a light, airy room, mid-1920s wall calendar, and a man, Eddie himself, lying on a couch that Kiepfer sees through a glass office door. A stenographer flips a page, and she takes notes from this psychic reading in progress.

Yes, we have the body, a reading begins slowly, "the work of perpetual motion. Marion . . . Marion. His circulatory system, coronary system–

But the hologram changes, Kiepfer’s eyes take in a hospital room, a nurse and doctor read an Allied, World War I soldier’s chart, converse in French accents.

He’s over the gas poisons, but his pneumonia does not look good. The doctor still studies his chart, glances to the soldier’s unconscious form and back to the chart and numbers. They don’t see a white light issue from the patient’s body, floating up through the ceiling.

The scene changes again–Kiepfer tries to take it in–a beach in the past, he guesses–as Kiepfer puts aged hands over his forehead. He watches two illumined forms, glowing, he thinks it looks like, and Kiepfer shakes his head as they walk along the sand.

The patient no longer seems ill at all. The other–some sort of brighter light surrounds him, as Kiepfer moves his opened fingers over his eyes to watch what he has only read before: a reading from one of Eddie’s abundant file of inquiries.

The angelic light form draws a paper-like substance in the air, with scientific-looking diagrams on it.

I’m not ready to go, the soldier intones.

I’m not ready to take you! You must see to it that work on this device is begun, for it will save the world from certain environmental disaster.

But–

The Sleeper will help you.

Suddenly, the hologram is going transparent, just the old barn and the stalls and a horses’s name plate are clear. Kiepfer finally hears Eddie’s voice fading out, but over that, kids’ voices, rapidly getting closer. He shuts off the radio device, hides behind a half-wall of the old, unused stall across the aisle and in back of him.

From outside the door, Just go in here and lie down, Katie’s concerned tone suggests. She and Ray enter the barn, but Ray stops suddenly.

What? Katie asks.

I . . . no . . . it’s gone. This sounds nutty. I have to tell you–please don’t laugh like the kids at school. When we were running down here. I could’ve raised up and floated. Ray notes Katie’s brows arch.

It’s weird, I know. But I saw this man. On a couch. And a, a beach. And plans–like, like architectural, or, or a machine. Just barely, though. Keep? What’s that mean? Ray shakes his head, blinks his eyes, sits on some straw bales.

Kiepfer’s eyes just peer above the half-wall, amazed.

But then, a puppy barks happily somewhere outside, apparently following the kids, and sticks his basset nose through the bright, narrow gap in the door.

Go home, Lucky, Ray instructs.

The door opens, and clever Neal follows the dog. Good job, Lucky– Grampa will kill us if he finds us in his lab!

Oh, Airplane–

But Katie’s cut off, as they suddenly catch adult voices, distant and getting closer, calling for them to come on.

You’ve gotta go, Ray, she shakily adds.

But Ray is looking at the pictures, the equipment, old and yellowed manuscripts on a drafting table, the train with what looks to be a new kind of engine and drawings next to it. A notebook, with a name or a nickname on it.

I know this stuff.

Neal tugs at them to leave. Come onnn! I told you.

Ray activates the radio device, curious, and braver than he feels.

No! Neal yells, and pulls Ray’s hand back, but he hits the knob accidentally. They’re all knocked over when out jumps a white light forming a most beautiful angel, it looks like.

The kids, half afraid, half in wonderment, turn to run, Katie grabs Ray’s shirt tails. Neal keeps going toward the exit, but stops and turns, still reluctant to leave.

Wait, Katie intones, wondering why she said that, but then, the angel clearly talks.

When you find the right channel, Edgar will speak.

Parents’ voices follow the angel’s, who disappears. The kids bump into each other trying to race quickly from the barn. Neal rushes out in his uncoordinated run. Ray trips over Lucky, sends the dog flying head-first into an old horse plow, dead.

Oh gosh! Get up, Lucky. Lucky? Ray stares, shocked into complete stillness. The adult voices come closer, not quite there yet, though.

Just pick him up, a tearful Katie tells him.

Ray puts his shaking hands over and under the dog, starts to raise him slowly, but a healing light from Ray’s touch covers Lucky, brings him back. Lucky licks Ray’s face as though nothing miraculous happened, glad to see you. Katie and Ray rush out of the barn, Katie staring at Ray, until she trips, recovers, still staring at him. Ray puts Lucky down, and the dog runs, seeming perfectly normal and happy, toward Neal.

Kiepfer watches them leave, digests with a dawning light the scene that he’s just witnessed. He goes into a jig, to the phone and dials, laughing at the miracle.

A woman’s voice answers, Cayce Organization.

"He’s back. I knew it. He’s back, and I know who he is!! This is Keep.

Who? Sir. Sorry, but we get these calls all the time.

From Ray’s front yard, one moving van drives off, a yearling thoroughbred neighs in the distance at