Mer Rouge (Part 23)

The screeching cicadas pierced through the cold silence as the sweat built up on the deputy’s neck. Not a peep was uttered by the suspicious duo. Not even a slight movement. They sat there hard and still like marble statues. The deputy stepped toward the grass and spat out the last remaining hulls between his teeth. “Well boys, are you gonna show me some identification?”

Nothing changed. He looked them up and down but couldn’t make heads or tails on what they might be hiding. They didn’t seem nervous. Not even a bead of sweat was apparent under all that leather. The deputy nearly asked them to step off the bike but before he did, a rickety pickup rounded the corner and sounded the horn. “Evening deputy!” the driver shouted. It was Hopper returning to his farm. The deputy turned his back and waved before resuming his duties. And when he did, the duo was gone. Vanished. Only the bike and the puny sidecar remained.

Ricketts drew his service revolver and searched the treeline. When he came up with nothing, he charged across the road and looked there. Out of options, he returned to the squad car and radioed in. “This is Ricketts. I’m out here on Highway Three and I urgently need another deputy…”

Before he could finish the request, a gigantic fireball exploded underneath his vehicle, lifting it a foot or two in the air before crashing back down. Then, out of the shadows, the brothers reappeared and assessed the carnage. The flames flashed brilliantly through their reflective shades. Satisfied with the destruction, they boarded the bike and kickstarted the engine. But clinging on to dear life, Ricketts pushed the drivers side door off its hinges and fell face first onto the pavement with revolver still in hand. His legs were blown off below the knees, left arm mangled, and his hair and clothes were burning into black carbon. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed with his dying breath. And in his final act, he emptied the revolver in the duo’s direction. Befuddled, the brothers flattened themselves to the ground and drew their weapons. But they watched the deputy pitiably claw his way across the road before the patches of fire spread and consumed him whole in the middle of the asphalt.

The brothers stood up and straightened themselves out and they faced each other for a hot moment. One nodded and the other returned it. Then they climbed on the bike and roared on into Vicksburg.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 22)

The putrid and rank possum’s corpse laid on the southbound lane headed into Vicksburg. For three days it festered under the sweltering August heat, with red guts spattered on both sides of the road before spoiling and flattening into a pancake with a few scant shit flies picking at its remains. On the northbound side, Deputy Gene Ricketts rested his squad car underneath the large sweetgum lined up on the left side entrance to the old Hopper farm by the lonesome highway. With the driver’s side door open, he spat countless sunflower seed hulls into the unkempt grass while Don Williams softly played. But when the sunflower seeds couldn’t keep his mind off the spittin tobacco, he turned to the 100 proof Jack in the concealed thermos on the passenger’s side floor. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the heat ratcheted up ten degrees every hour. As the time slowly passed, the deputy would dab a rag across his forehead. Eventually, the song faded out and the radio station transitioned to the latest country hit. And as it did, the deputy looked down the road towards the north. A mile or two ahead, through the unbearable Mississippi heat and mirage waves, a small motor vehicle came barreling towards him—an easy speeding ticket, likely his only for the day. He squinted his eyes. It was a motorcycle clearly, but with something peculiar. It had a sidecar. The deputy closed the door and cut on the engine and waited for the bike to roar past him. And when it did, the siren blared and the Warren County squad car sped away from the dirt patch on the side of the road and left a cloud of red dust lingering behind.

The bike didn’t put up much of a fight. Upon noticing the deputy behind, the driver pulled over and braked. The squad car stopped two or three meters away. Deputy Ricketts climbed out, shades concealing his eyes, and he slowly sauntered towards the offending vehicle. There were two men—one on the bike and one in the side car. Neither turned around. Neither made a sound. “Well boys,” the deputy said, “that’s one helluva knucklehead ya got there. Not sure if the sidecar is street legal. But I might let it slide.”

The two men—decked out in black leather, mud washed denim, and wearing German-made half helmets—remained silent. The deputy looked at the license plate. “Ontario?” the deputy beamed. “Canadian, eh?”

They said nothing.

The deputy strolled up to the front of the bike to gander at their faces. His brow furrowed. Like him, the two men had their eyes concealed behind reflecting shades. Their faces looked cut from stone, each sporting a dark chevron mustache. If the deputy had to have guessed, he would have reckoned they were twins. “My my,” Ricketts spoke, “don’t you two make quite a pair.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 21)

Oren lifted his head back as the smoke of freshly lit tobacco filled his eyes. He squinted a tad as he glared at the priest. He exhaled. Then he waved away the smoke. “I’ve heard the name before,” he told the priest..

The priest nodded. “You should have. He was a famous conquistador.”

Oren smirked, spat on the floor, and took another drag. “So you’re saying he shares a name with a famous conquistador?”

“No. I’m saying he is Hernando De Soto.”

Oren failed to contain his disbelief. He quickly guffawed then shook away his doubt momentarily. But before he said anything, he took the jug of shine. He drank of it and tried to work through the priest’s logic. “Let me get this straight,” he said, “Hernando De Soto is still alive because he found the fountain of youth. Now he’s hoarding it and pretending to be a judge of some city in the armpit of America. Did I get this right?”

“That’s a pretty asinine way of putting it. But yes.”

“It’s asinine. But that’s what you’re telling me.”

“Look son. I ain’t asking you to believe me. But I am asking you for your help. This fountain is the last of its kind. We destroy it, save your brother, and this curse on mankind is over with.”

“Last of its kind?”

“Yes. There were other fountains all around the world. I was a part of a holy order sworn to destroy all of them. Now I’m the last of that order. I destroy this fountain and my life’s mission is complete.”

“Uh huh. So, uh, how do you propose we destroy this fountain?”

The priest leaned back and stroked his long white beard. Then he gazed out past the shit smeared windows to the tall, scraggly grass outside and thought. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” he said. “As I’m sure you can imagine, it ain’t gonna be easy. Of course, it doesn’t help that we ain’t the only ones lookin for it either. The Nine boys seem to have gotten a head start.”

Oren’s headache was starting up again. “Oh for fucks sake, who are the Nine boys?”

“Well, really they’re just called the Nine. But there’s only two of them.”

“Are they out to destroy the fountain too?”

“No. They aimin to take it.”

While struggling to understand this convoluted quandary, Oren thought it best to start pounding the shine. And in the midst of lingering between inebriation and a full blown concussion, it occurred to him that his objective remained—retrieve his brother and get the hell out of Louisiana. If he could find those stolen vacuum cleaners, that would be nice too. He kicked the tires with the priest. Maybe there was a solution in all this nonsense. “So are you gonna let em take it?” Oren asked.

“Shit. I don’t know which is worse—the Nine boys or Moorhouse Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

“How fuckin bad could it be? You said there were only two of them!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 20)

The priest took out a pack of matches and struck one. He lit his cigarette and then Oren’s and flicked his wrist a few times to snuff out the flame. And like all the other crap he had owned, he tossed the discarded match onto the floor. His eyes narrowed as the smoke rose. He took a drag and then another and leaned forward as his voice lowered to a haunting gist. “Mer Rouge is a sinister place,” he spoke.

Oren, non plexed, looked the priest dead in the eye. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“I mean, the sheriff. The mayor. The judge. They ain’t what they seem.”

“Uh huh”

The priest dabbed on the cigarette and let the ash fall to the floor. “They come from a cursed past that should be buried under the sands of time. No man hailing from this age should ever utter their names. Their conquests. The things they discovered here. Humanity should have never of found.”

Oren, slightly irked, rubbed his forehead with the cigarette dangling between his fingers. “I’m not following,” he said.

“Here. Have some more shine,” the priest said. He handed him the jug and Oren took a small swig. The priest tapped on his cigarette again and continued. “No man was meant to live forever,” he warned. “I’ve been around the world and if there’s one lesson I’ve learned is that death is as vital as the air we breathe. Despite our instincts, immortality is a curse. It’s damnation. It chains us to an inescapable and abominable past that must be castigated.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

The priest slapped the cigarette out of Oren’s hands. “Listen to me goddamnit! There’s something here! In Mer Rouge! Something that needs to be destroyed and sent back to Hell!”

“Well spit it out damnit!”

“Alright alright.” The priest calmed himself and picked up the shine jug. “It’s the fountain of youth,” he said. “Judge Castor controls the fountain of youth.”

Despite his instinct to laugh, Oren entertained this story. “I thought that was in Florida.”

“No. It’s here in Louisiana.”

“That’s even worse.”

Oren reached for the priest’s smock and took out the pack of cigarettes along with the book of matches. He took one out and put it to his lips. “So uh, how did this Judge Castor come to control the fountain of youth?”

“Cuz he ain’t Judge Castor.”

“Is that right?” Oren asked with a shade of snark. Then he waved out the match.

“That’s right,” the priest nodded. “His real name is Hernando De Soto.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Chappie

I was driving 90 in a 35 in my brand new Fiat 500L when my mind started to wander. Whatever happened to Niell Blomkamp, I thought. So after crashing my Serbian-made piece of shit into the side of a Cracker Barrel, I crawled home with a lacerated artery and put on my copy of Chappie to see where it all went wrong. And truth be told, I had some mixed feelings. But thankfully, after losing several liters of blood, my thoughts suddenly became clearer.

Was it a bad movie?

Was it a good movie?

So it was just a meh movie?

Also no

Like any movie that swings for the fences, it is all of the above. So Blomkamp is like Icarus in many ways. And he shouldn’t be punished for that. He should be celebrated. But the problem with Chappie is that it tries to do too much in the span of two hours. As a result, this is one of those rare films that I think deserves to be longer. Yet, with that said, in an era prior to the 2010s, this story could have been easily told within a 120 minute timeframe. Blomkamp did it in 2009, very very successfully. District 9, the film that put him on the map and is the spiritual predecessor to this movie, clocks in at 1 hour and 52 minutes. The very same techniques that Blomkamp deployed there were also used for Chappie.

So what changed?

I felt that District 9 asked a lot out of its audience by sacrificing plot minutiae in favor of style, flow, and emotional resonance. It worked. But this Blomkamp recipe is quite exacting and elusive — it won’t work every time. It arguably didn’t work for Elysium and it didn’t quite work here. Strangely, in my view, what failed Elysium and Chappie were two different things. For Elysium, it was casting (Matt Damon was horribly miscast). But for Chappie, it is a more common and recognizable reason—an uneven script. I can applaud Blomkamp for wanting to explore the nature of consciousness, soul, and one’s relation to their maker, but it was done too heavy handed. Additionally, the set up was clumsily executed as it’s about 20 minutes and heavily contrived. “Chappie”, or the robot that would become Chappie, needed to land in the hands of Die Antwoord at around the 10 minute mark. Hugh Jackman’s character, and his inter office rivalry with Dev Patel, needed to be introduced with the primary plot already underway. The performances are effective, including the ones from Yolandi and Ninja of Die Antwoord, and especially from Dev Patel. The problem though is that Patel’s character is undercooked. Or overcooked depending on how you want to look at it because the quality of this movie is so hard to describe. A studio note from me would have been to make Patel less of an idealist and more of a tech-savvy but self-serving businessman whose appreciation of Chappie grows over the course of the film. Of course, his inter office rivalry would have made the film even more derivative of Robocop. But as I often say, who gives a shit? The point is to make Chappie the emotional core that all the violence and chaos orbits around.

But for all of its faults, for better or worse, Chappie is undeniably Blomkamp’s vision. The final sequence of action set pieces and the confrontation with Jackman feels earned. This is where Niell Blomkamp shines — the movie has a strong heart with blood pumping through its veins. (Which I won’t have for much longer until the paramedics arrive 😬)

Mer Rouge (Part 19)

The priest stomped back into the shed with his head a-buzzin. He couldn’t help but gnaw on his fingers as he tried to figure what the police knew. While lost in the fog of his own mind, Oren initially paid him little attention. But as panic mounted, the priest’s belly rumbled. First he ransacked the small cupboard of goods, littering more crap and much needed food onto the already cluttered floor. Then he turned his eyes toward Oren and barked. “GIMME THEM GODDAMN PEANUTS!”

Oren looked up from his nearly depleted cup. “But I almost ate them all!”

“Just give em to me!”

The priest yanked the cup from his hand, fork and all, and frantically chowed down. Oren was vexed. The ceaseless slurping and moaning wasn’t helping either. When the priest finished the last of the peanuts, he threw the cup over his shoulder and released a hellish fart. “Much better,” he said. Then he uncorked a jug of moonshine and gulped down.

Oren scratched his head. “So I take it that wasn’t the cops that chased us last night?”

“Nope,” he said and then loudly belched.

“Then who were they?”

“It was the West Carroll Sheriff.”

“And?”

“He was asking me about your truck explodin. He had to have gone to the Moorhouse Parish Sheriff but I don’t reckon they told him shit.”

“Was he lookin for me?”

“Yeah he was lookin for ya.”

“Is there a warrant or something?”

“No. But I wouldn’t trust these fuckers as far as you can throw em. So don’t go runnin to the West Carroll sheriff for help! Ya hear?”

“I know that. But how the hell am I gonna get my brother out of jail?”

“Just shut the fuck up. I’m thinkin.” The priest took another gulp of shine. And then another. He didn’t have the courtesy to offer some to Oren. Finally, after drinking nearly half a jug, he sat it down on the frail wooden table and lifted his leg. A second passed and then a tiny, pitiful fart eeked out of his asshole and he leaned forward while clutching his stomach. “Oof. Peanuts and shine are kickin in. Just a moment,” he uttered. Then he stood up, arms still wrapped over his belly, and he stormed out the back of the shed. After about five maddening minutes, the priest came back inside fully refreshed. “Goddamn,” he kept repeating. Then he sat back down at the rickety ass table and pulled out a cigarette, this time offering one to Oren. “Okay son,” he began, “better start drinkin this shine because you ain’t gonna believe what I’m fixin to tell ya.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 18)

The priest waddled nonchalantly across the unkempt yard. His eyes ogled the dilapidated church. When DuPont saw him, he stepped out of the cruiser and rested his hands on top of the opened door. He watched the priest. The West Carroll sheriff had presumed that this man of God noticed his squad car roll up. He had presumed wrong. The priest seemed oblivious. He was mindlessly gawking off into nothing with his thumb up his ass. The sheriff loudly cleared his throat.

“Oh, forgive me! I didn’t see you there!” the priest lied. “What can I do for you, officer?”

DuPont removed his Stetson and extended his hand. “I reckon I should introduce myself. I’m Sheriff DuPont.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Ya know, I’m ashamed to admit this, but I didn’t know we had a Greek Orthodox Church until someone pointed it out to me the other day.”

“That’s quite alright, sheriff. The diocese just sent me out here. This church hasn’t been used in years, so I’m just wandering around trying to figure out what bullshit needs to be done to fix the place up.”

“I see,” said the sheriff. “Well I won’t keep you long. But there was an incident last night involving an explosion. It occurred about half a mile away from here. Off Kurtzy Road. Did you happen to see anything? Hear anything?”

“No sir. Don’t believe so.”

“Are you certain? The incident occurred about that-a-way,” the sheriff pointed towards the northwest. “It would have been a very loud explosion. You certainly would have heard it from this distance.”

“No sir, didn’t hear nuthin. What time did this happen?”

“Couldn’t say at this point. Probably before midnight.”

The priest squinted his eyes and stroked his long, grey beard. “Hmm. Well I went to bed quite early last night. And I’m a pretty sound sleeper.”

“What time did you lay down?”

“Oh I couldn’t say. Round eight.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see.” Then he placed the Stetson back on his head. “Well if you hear anything, please let my office know.”

“Yes sir. I will.”

DuPont sauntered back to his cruiser and the priest resumed gawking at the church. But as the sheriff opened the door, he spoke up once more. “One other thing, padre.”

This Priest bit his tongue.

“We don’t get too many new faces around here,” the sheriff said. “But you’re always welcome to stop by the sheriff’s office. We like to work closely with the faith leaders in our community. And besides, we need a new chaplain. I encourage you to apply.”

The priest smiled and waved. “I may do that, sheriff!”

DuPont returned the wave and planted himself in the driver’s seat. The priest turned around and walked back toward the church. But before the sheriff started the engine, he called out again. “Also, father!”

The Priest concealed his annoyance.

“There’s a gentleman we’re on the look out for,” DuPont shouted. “A black fella, about five foot eight. His name is Oren Waits. He’s not in any trouble, at least not with us, but if you see him, tell him I want to talk to him.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Move over citizen Kane

Why do we watch movies?

I don’t have an answer here, I’m genuinely asking why do we watch movies? Is it to think? Feel? Be entertained? Be turned on? To mindlessly pass the time? I really wanna know. I’m asking because I’ve come across a startling problem. Well, it’s not so much of a problem per se as it is something that we as a society have overlooked. And not just the average movie goer either. Critics and the film intelligentsia have long disregarded what they have known all along—Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most competent movie ever made. Of course, the AFI continues to acknowledge this. It remains ranked in the top 100 movies of all time. But somehow I feel it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Like, we know it’s great. We just can’t comprehend how great.

I’ve racked my what little of my brain is left trying to address why that is. Raiders came at a time when Steven Spielberg was shitting out hit after hit. First came Jaws. Then came Close Encounters of the Third Kind (let’s forget 1941 for the moment). A year after Raiders, Spielberg released what some might call the pinnacle of his blockbuster era, ET. Meanwhile, George Lucas was in the middle of producing the OG Star Wars trilogy staring Harrison Ford, who was in the midst of cementing himself as the greatest leading man in Hollywood history. So we had three great minds at the height of their creative powers converging on one project. And it worked. It worked so well that we’re still struggling to understand it.

First the casting of Harrison Ford. As is well known, Tom Selleck was originally selected to play Indiana Jones. No doubt, he would have been good. But I implore anyone reading to go watch Selleck’s audition tapes. He’s intense. A little on edge. Kurt Russell gave a similar reading for Han Solo. When you compare Russell’s audition to Ford’s, you realize what an inspired choice it was to roll with Ford. Why? Because Harrison Ford looked liked he couldn’t have given less of a fuck. And that’s part of his charm. Lesser filmmakers, perhaps even filmmakers that many would consider great, might have gone with Kurt Russell or a more intense “actor’s actor”. But Lucas and Spielberg didn’t and their careers were rewarded because of it.

But something that always bothered me about the movie was its conclusion. If you recall, Indiana Jones was dispatched to find the Ark before the Nazis did. After some back and forth in Egypt, Jones secures the Ark in the greatest action sequence of all time and then stows it away on a ship. While in the Mediterranean, the Nazis intercept the vessel, take the Ark, and bring it to an isolated island with Indiana Jones secretly in tow. Jones is caught and is forced to be present when the primary antagonist opens the Ark, which unleashes the wrath of God, killing all the Nazis on the island and leaving only Jones and Marion alive. So if you think about it, Indiana Jones didn’t do much to save the day. IN FACT, it would have been better for the United States to not dispatch Indiana Jones and let the Nazis find the Ark for themselves to presumably open it in Hitler’s presence where he and all of the other high ranking Nazis would have been violently killed. So had US officials done nothing, World War II would’ve never happened. In other words, Indiana Jones started World War II.

But the important thing here is that none of this matters. Your brain didn’t notice this wild act of incompetence because writer Lawrence Kasdan tried to tell you this would happen in the opening scene. When we’re introduced to Indiana Jones, he’s in the middle of a South American jungle trying to steal a golden idol. After surviving numerous threats to his life, he achieves this only to have it pried from his hands by a rival archeologist. This sequence of events establishes Jones as an incredible archeologist in addition to being a scrappy survivalist, but in the world of Raiders, the field of archaeology is filled with treachery and avarice. So Indy can’t win em all. Even though Jones ultimately ends up with the Ark, it is pried away from him by higher powers, allegedly to be studied by “top men.”

And that’s the genius of this film. It begins as it ends. Where many might see a mindless, albeit well executed action/adventure movie, is actually quite well thought out. It’s little pieces like this that make Raiders of the Lost Ark the most competent movie ever made.

Mer Rouge (Part 17)

Oren was drenched in his own sweat while stowed away in a hotass shed behind Saint JohnChrysostom Greek Orthodox Church near Oak Grove. His brain was pounding. He stepped outside to heave and he found a puddle of petrified and fly infested vomit resting in the ankle high grass. He reckoned that it must have come from him. He didn’t recall. He didn’t recall much of anything from the hours prior. But the late summer mugginess beared down on him like a woolen blanket and he stumbled back into the shed and reached for an old aluminum canteen with only a speckle of water remaining. The piss warm liquid soothed his throat momentarily and then he coughed and collapsed to his knees. While fetaled on the ground, the priest came in. The holy man helped him back to his bed and offered him a white paper cup. When Oren looked at the cup’s contents, he nearly heaved again. After stirring the orangish ooze, the priest placed a small pill in his hand and Oren side eyed him.

“The fuck is this?”

“It’s Beano.”

“What for?”

“It’s for them boiled peanuts. Them things are fart bombs.”

Oren shrugged and swallowed the pill. He picked up the stem of the fork and swooshed it around the cup. Then he sampled the food. It occurred to Oren that the devil himself must be nothing compared to the wrath of a Cajun man’s asshole. And despite a famished stomach, his throat resisted.

“Is this what you people eat down here?” he asked the Priest.

“Well, that and moon bugs.”

The priest reached into his cassock pocket and pulled out a small lobster-like creature. It crawled slightly in the palm of his hand. “I have a whole pool of these things out back. I can get a pot boiling and get em fixed up for ya.”

Oren shook his head. “I’ll stick with the boiled peanuts.”

The priest lifted his shoulders and placed the creature back in his pocket. Then he handed Oren a fresh canteen of water. “Who was that feller you was with last night?”

“What feller?”

“That white feller in the back of your truck.”

“He’s my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“I was adopted.”

“No shit?”

Oren winced as he shoveled more soggy legumes into the face hole. Then he took the fresh canteen and swallowed. “Think he survived the crash?”

“I know he did. The sheriff got him. But I reckon they think you’re dead.”

“Shit.”

“You’re goddamn right shit. Don’t know what they’ll do when they find out you’re not.”

“I gotta get him out of there.”

“Your brother? Good luck.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Not even the best pettifrogger from New Orleans can get a man out of a Moorhouse Parish jail. You have to consult with a higher power.”

“You?”

“That might not even be enough.”

The Priest’s ears perked up as the sound of crushed gravel whispered its way into the shed. He sprung up from the ramshackled cot and glanced through mud smeared glass to see a West Carroll Parish Sheriff’s cruiser pull up to the church. The priest turned to Oren. “Stay here,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 16)

For Chuck Norris

Hutch couldn’t help but gape at the Judge’s long and gnarly fingers as they danced across the ancient church organ. He couldn’t see his face. From behind, stringy white hairs dangled from beneath a black felt pork pie hat and what little skin showed was as white as a fantail pigeon. He didn’t speak. He only communicated through that haunting and ungodly organ. Hutch couldn’t help but jest. “The fuck is this? Transylvania?” he smirked.

The tall and gaunt man turned his attention away from the sheriff and shot him a bone chilling glare. “Show some respect you pissling!”

Hutch backed down. “Forgive me. You must be Riff Raff.”

The gaunt man, not getting the reference, lifted a finger to the air as if to make a great proclamation. “I am the mayor of Mer Rouge!” he declared.

Hutch was rueful. “Oh forgive me,” he explained. “I am honored to be in your presence.”

The mayor nodded. “Much better,” he said. Then he straightened his tailcoated tuxedo jacket and polished out his accent. “Now, you are responsible for killing two of my men. Why?”

Hutch became apoplectic. “Hey bud! I didn’t kill nobody! We were chased away by the sheriff and his gang! One guy got shot and one guy got ran over but that was they own damn fault!”

“Poppycock!”

“No it ain’t no poppycock neither!”

“But you knew that priest,” Dirk chimed in.

“I don’t know that priest from Adam!”

“He seems to have known you.”

“Shit. Maybe he was just a nice guy. You don’t seem to have too many of those around here.”

The judge laid onto the keys and the ghostly sound of a church organ again pummeled its way through the ether. All eyes shifted to him. After a moment of unearthly silence, the judge raised his decrepit finger and a gargantuan hooded figure resembling a Byzantine eunuch stepped forth and presented him with a grail. The judge took the chalice and raised it to his lips. His head slightly turned and Hutch could see the folds around his mouth. His pail skin pierced through the faint candlelit shadows. As the judge lifted the cup, the water dripped from both ends of his crinkled lips. When he finished, he returned the chalice to the eunuch and again turned his back towards Hutch. The Mayor and Dirk stood as still as a boggy creek bed. As the judge held his fingers over the faded white keys, the eunuch leaned forward. The judge turned to him and whispered in an unintelligible if not ancient and demonic tongue. The eunuch’s face turned sullen. When the judge completed his fiendish dictate, the eunuch stood straight up and turned his ghoulish eyes towards Hutch.

“Find the priest,” he ordered.

TO BE CONTINUED…