Swim in the Lake of Fire

By Harden Taylor

It seemed like swimming in a calm, cool lake. I hardly noticed them disappear, one at a time, here and there for no common reason I could see until suddenly, the benign water roiled, turned to fire and the evil vision rose in full view.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harden Taylor
• Release date: May 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452427584

Harden Taylor

Yes, I was a cog in the industrial machine, grinding out reams of technical and business writing to support the once mighty American manufacturing colossus. But something happened in the early spring of 1995 – a bolt of lightening from the god of letters. “Fiction,” She said. Bit-by-bit I tried it, a little more each year till it became for me the quixotic enterprise it is today. Yet, I can’t complain, though my family may from time-to-time, because I found in this experience a liberation of style and content that is very appealing, drawing me into a new kind of grinding – a love/hate enterprise that wears the repetitive trudge down to fine dust.Recognition for my short stories (in descending chronological order):• “One Dish at a Time” – Honorable mention in the 2007 New Millennium Writings Short-short Story Contest.• “Mentors” – Honorable mention in the 2006 New Millennium Writings Short Story Contest• “What Will You Do for Me Yesterday?” – Published in the 2005 Dan River Anthology and was in the top five out of 75 submissions to Jerry Jazz Musician Magazine, June 2004 short story contest.• “A Rock by Moon World” – Honorable mention in the SpecFicWorld.com’s 2005 Speculative Fiction Contest magazine out of 93 entries.• “Where’s Jason” – Finalist in the 2005 Abroad Short Story Writing Contest. All finalist attended workshops & lectures given by Michael Bishop, Dan Chaon, Margaret Drabble, Anne LeClaire and Margaret George in Bourdeilles, France.• “Experiments of the Mad Chemist” – Semi-finalist in the 2005 New Millennium Writings Short Story Contest.• “In an Instant” – In the top five in Jan. 2005 Jerry Jazz Musician short story contest.• “Numbers Four and Five” – In the top 10 out of 90+ submissions to Jerry Jazz Musician Magazine, March 2004 short story contest.• “Stones, New and Old” – Honorable mention in the Whim’s Place on-line short-short story contest, May 2004 and published online 2004 by Whim’s Place.• ”Theraxis Comes to Visit” – In the top 14 for the SpecFi World magazine 2nd quarter 2004 short fiction contest and was in top 10% out of 1200 entries in the 18th Consecutive New Millennium Writing competition closing July 2004• “Flying Flowers” – In the top ten in the September 2004 Jerry Jazz Musician short story contest.My body of work (Fiction only):v Four full-length novels under my copyright –ÿ Project 334 – The first person to leave the solar system discovers and attempts to understand a battered civilization. His presence generates conflict (this is the first expedition.) – unpublished.ÿ Cerulea – A History of the Second Expedition – A pregnant female Robinson Crusoe-type story. She raises her children & incestuously created grand children alone on a forbidding planet – unpublished.ÿ Outhouse by the Moon – A series of murders at a small midwestern university by a Christian doomsday cult of prominent citizens leads to revelations of a terrible conspiracy – unpublished.ÿ A Rock by Moon World – Two twelve-year-olds discover a Lilliputian world ripped apart by war. They save them from the rages of a maniacal leader – published on Kindle. Based on my short story of the same name.v Completed short stories – This is an eclectic assortment of over 40 stories with different styles, themes and character portraits ranging in length from 240 to 40,000 words.v I have other novels short stories and poems in various stages of completion, including sequels to Project 334 /Cerulea and A Rock by Moon World.

Book preview

Prologue

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The note from USPS said I had packages at the Oak Park Post Office and proper identification was required. Neither my wife nor I had ordered anything; it was not Christmas nor was there any family birthday to trigger such a strange event. The level of security was also puzzling, though it did occur to me that, as a safety officer in a manufacturing concern, a whistle blower might have been in the process of trying to make some noise. Thinking of this, I approached the post office with some trepidation.

When I arrived to pick up my mail, I noticed the name and address of the sender: Victor H. Dittmer, Chief of Police, Fairview Police Station, 102 South Bryant Street, Fairview, IL, 60623. After showing my ID and signing some papers, I took custody of three tightly bound and taped boxes, each weighing about 20 lbs.

Of course I knew of Police Chief Dittmer - who hadn’t - but my personal connection to him of late was thin. His deceased wife was my wife’s cousin on her mother’s side. Family scuttlebutt and my own experience with him years before had it that Victor was a serious man of high character, but had been sorely strained by the tragic events in Fairview. Still, I had not been involved in the case in any manner and had not had any contact to speak of with his side of the family in recent years. This was simply the result of busy lives in different locations not allowing many opportunities for contact.

I took the boxes home and closed myself off in the den to examine their contents and to assess the situation. It quickly became clear that Victor had started to write a book on the subject of the Outhouse Murders and had provided me with all the documents, audio tapes and video tapes he used for his research as well as his unfinished rough draft. I was shocked and terrified since Victor and others had publicly warned the world that the danger was not completely past and the future was unpredictable. I immediately obtained Victor’s phone number and called him. His phone did not answer and his machine did not pick up. A week later it was evident Victor had disappeared without putting any of his affairs in order, save this one. The boxes contained no explanation for his disappearance and only a short note from him asking me to keep these materials in a safe place and to complete what he started. He gave me permission to seek their publication if I cared to accept such a dangerous challenge and mentioned that he had written permissions from many of the people involved to use their words.

The level of trust in me he demonstrated by sending me his confidential documents may have come from our collaboration years ago. It was our failed attempt to write a novel depicting the raw streets of Chicago from the point of view of a police officer - his experience and my writing. During that time we were close and mutually supportive but we drifted away from each other as our families developed.

After discussing the many issues involved with my family and receiving their endorsement, I decided to seek publication and to do this electronically. I have chosen to present Victor’s writings as he created them (with moderate editing) and have selected what I felt was relevant from the three boxes to include in the finished version of the book. I also followed Victor’s vision by presenting the voices of the participants directly wherever possible. These appear as transcripts of audio, video, phone mail, e-mail, computer records, paper diary entries, police reports, letters and notes. I labeled and briefly explained each participant’s entry and put all of these in regular font, including Victor’s diary entries. Victor’s post entry comments explaining or amplifying the participants’ entries I put in italics. I did the same for his editorial comments. These I edited significantly, though I never changed the intent or factual detail of his remarks.

At this point, my comments stop and the voices of the participants and Victor’s words take over.

Victor’s Introduction

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The story of the Outhouse Murders has provided morbid delight to thousands and justified foreboding to those who understand the underlying threat. It certainly will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Yet for all the articles, news stories and blogs that have provided facts, half-truths and blustery pontifications, the direct experiences of the participants have not been heard. This report I have prepared for the purpose of telling their story as directly as I can. I also hope to warn as many people as possible about the evil threat, which lies hidden in the future.

I had thought that my many years as a police officer in the dangerous western precincts of Chicago, had made me emotionally impervious to the ugliness of crime. The bloody murder scene, the weeping of survivors, the despair of poverty and addiction; all this I experienced almost daily, but hardened as I was, I was not prepared for the crimes that made Fairview Illinois infamous. Not only was the suffering of the victims beyond the scope of anything I had seen before, but the perpetrators belied the images conjured up by the word criminal. These were offenses so well hidden, so unexpected, so extreme that they plunged far below the depths of ordinary morbid imagination.

My intimate experience with this case has given me the necessary grist from which to build a story in need of telling. I have lived with it since the late summer of 1999 and I expect it will be around in one form or another while I’m drifting away on my deathbed. Though I know the ugly physiology of this story as well as a physician knows his patient, my patient’s affliction, being a malignancy of the mind, has proven itself barely containable, much less curable. It has left all of us who have engaged the patient frustrated and bewildered. But we have not given up our struggle to destroy the disease at its roots.

The story of the Outhouse Murders follows. The facts are here, undisguised, a damning tale to be sure, but a true one.

Chapter 1 - About the Transition

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I’m sitting in the kitchen watching big chunky snowflakes lumber down from the gray formless sky. They settle between blades of un-mowed grass, each flake waiting for a gentle union with its followers. Here, alone in a house that once was a scene of constant delightful chaos, I listen to silence while I envy the snowflakes for the soft grip of love they give one another. Watching their slow descent tears out another memory from underneath my mind, another December back in 1984:

"When I came home from college everybody I knew had moved away. The houses, the trees, the streets were the same ... but it was different ... different people, a different feeling. This is the same in a way. It looks like a small town should ... even the snow all neatly shoveled ... but somehow it’s not right." Helen said this on our first exploratory trip to the small town that would soon thereafter be our home.

After searching the wide ring of suburbs and satellite towns around Chicago for months, a decent opportunity for employment had finally emerged. It came from Heinrick Heini Rogers, the Chief of Police in Fairview Illinois, a small town southwest of Chicago that neither Helen nor I knew. He needed a number two man - one who would serve as an example of exemplary police professionalism, one who would help him get these kids to be better officers. His kids ranged in age from 21 to 65. I later discovered that his real reason for hiring me was to keep an election campaign promise to ... clean-up the Police Department of Fairview Illinois so help me God! The issue was competence more than corruption but it still had caused a great deal of local consternation. I was to be his Mister Clean and Dr. Smart. Of course, he explained, there also would be investigative and administrative duties but he really needed more than anything for me to help him upgrade his men (and one woman). He looked at my résumé, saw my masters degree in criminology, my service awards and my exemplary performance awards over fifteen years experience on the bloodiest streets of Chicago with no promotion and rightly surmised that I was looking to escape a corrupt and dangerous place. He hired me at the end of our first interview. As I walked out of his office I felt elated but when I looked over at Helen I saw apprehension on her face. She sensed something she could not explain - a feeling that this calm and tidy town harbored something very much the opposite below its surface

This may be why Helen described our initial experience in Fairview during the spring of 1985as culture shock. We had some misgivings about the move before we made it but these were offset by our intense desire to escape Chicago. At the time, it seemed anything would be better than the city. It took only a few months in peaceful Fairview to realize how well adapted we were to the noise, commotion and stimulation of the City of Big Shoulders and how much accommodation a small town requires. Helen found it almost impossibly oppressive and colorless at first. The infrequent cultural events at the university helped somewhat. But she had left behind a stimulating job as a nursing administrator in a major hospital with no certainty of finding employment in Fairview. She also missed easy access to the theatres, concerts and many other private and public cultural events that Chicago offered. It took her almost a year to find a tolerable job for three quarters the salary of the old one

And, as I feared, our three children found this new environment initially alien, even hostile though later they were able to leverage the panache of being from Chicago into a tolerable status. Their resilience and overall good cheer lifted my spirits many times over the years. It still does whenever I talk with any one of them.

I was, for months, at a total loss trying to fathom the thinking and feeling of my new charges. They were mostly farm boys from the area who found the car, the uniform, the badge and the gun more than adequate compensation for low pay. There had been no educational requirements to speak of. A high school diploma and a two month probation period during which they were briefed in the local laws likely to be violated and the most elementary (and often ignored) paperwork requirements. State law and professional police standards were undoubtedly being regularly flouted. Fortunately for the local population, the incompetence never took a violent turn - no strong-arm tactics or vindictive investigations. Hardly any investigations at all, in fact - just laissez-faire lassitude run amok. It was Heini’s unconscious filtering mechanism, I believe, that kept out truly sadistic or sociopathic candidates for the position of police officer in Fairview. Somehow, Fairview managed to stay under the radar of media scrutiny, mainly because they had not had a newsworthy crime in anyone’s memory, though subliminally, the threat of ominous Chicago was never that far away.

Much to his credit, Chief Rogers gave serious attention to the rising tide of public complaints about the incompetence of his force - it was, after all, his mandate to assure the public that his force could deal with any unwelcome outside threat. He found the funds for and insisted on the implementation of a plan we worked out which involved training for the entire staff through Hollyburn University and the serious use of a bonus/performance review system. It has, over the years, made a big difference in a positive direction.

Chapter 2 - About An Unexceptional Place

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If you’ve traveled the mid-west, through its towns and small cities, you would instantly recognize Fairview Illinois. The words crime scene would not come to mind. All the shaky stalwarts of the past were here - the 120-year-old county courthouse, the restored store-fronts, streets lined with ageing houses, wrap around front porches and enormous trees. Its proximity to I55 had spawned relentless armies of modern commercial enterprises. A throbbing bulge of fast food, motel and supermarket sprawl had extended its pseudo pods into the aged body of Fairview and met its match in economic battle with the exotica oozing from Hollyburn University. Occult bookstores, coffee houses, record shops and specialty food stores waged silent war with Wendy’s, Motel 6 and Amoco gas stations. The winner in this glacially paced war is still in doubt.

Beneath the day-to-day busyness of business in Fairview, resentment between the townies(citizens not associated with Hollyburn University), Hollyburn students and University faculty smoldered. Socio-economic differences contributed to the tension, the townies being more frequently working people or farmers while the students normally came from affluent families. But, there were no riots, no bomb throwing militants spreading panic and hate - just quiet but eternal grumbling over bear claws at Josey’s Family Diner every morning - a way to make life interesting when the bulk of it seemed insidiously dull.

Meanwhile, abutting the quaint downtown, close to Fairview City Hall, Central Park and the Fairview County Courthouse sprawled the campus of Hollyburn University. Here, students, alone or in small clusters pored over Chaucer, Beethoven or the wonders of organic chemistry while they consumed their bear claws in the mess hall-like cafeteria. They complained about the institutional food and the ever-deepening piles of homework assignments then trudged reluctantly from painted block-wall classroom to painted block-wall classroom. Theirs was a world sharply confined to the pages of books and the voices of professors during class hours and abandoned to various grades of naughtiness during the off-hours. For a curious few, the concept of studying was not dead.

The faculty of Hollyburn was a separate breed. Most lived in a strange isolation - mistrusted by the basically anti-intellectual townsfolk, held in distant awe by the students, resented by the non-academic staff, they tended to fall within themselves in what one of them described as splendid imprisonment. Dr. Phillip Ellington, the Chancellor of the university, fought an ongoing battle against this isolation with limited but significant success. He attempted to break down these barriers to communication and understanding by holding cross-cultural campouts and other social functions.

Though neither large nor famous, Hollyburn was fairly well known in the Midwest as a moderately progressive liberal education institution traditionally strong in the arts and music but also with an up-and-coming science program on the undergraduate level, the result of the Chancellor’s hard work over many years. They offered a number of good masters and a few doctoral programs in art and music and were toying with the idea of a post-graduate program in some of the biological sciences, especially as they related to genetic engineering. In odd contrast to many similar private schools, Hollyburn always seemed to be flush with funds, the result, it is said, of the Chancellor’s diligent efforts to woo private capital.

The students were similar to those found in many private schools - most from up-scale backgrounds, with a smattering of socioeconomic others put there by a variety of private and government loans and grants. The well-funded scholarship program specialized in the development of students from poor, parentless backgrounds who had displayed high achievement potential. University policy asserted a strong commitment to respect for cultural differences and financial support to make up for some of the wide disparities of birth. Active implementation of these policies made Hollyburn one of the most diverse campuses in the nation, much to the consternation of some local folk who could never have afforded the tuition and had no hope of help.

The exception to all this was sports. Sports scholarships were never an option since the school administration found them culturally unpalatable. As one might expect, the sports nuts of the world pointed to this deficiency after the Hollyburn Murders became public and said, See? Without sports, terrible things happen! I would direct the attention of these people toward Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Communist East Germany for a little history lesson on this point.

In appearance, Hollyburn was generic new college - clusters of one, two and occasionally three story buildings, lots of glass and brick boxes with a few attempts at architecture built on a sprawling green with knots of planted and indigenous trees. There were two modest hills, one to the east of the arts building and one at the south end of the hundred-acre campus. The rest was Midwest dead flat. Several stands of old trees thoughtfully preserved by the developer added some grace to this otherwise bland landscape.

The colorless image of Hollyburn University did contain one ironic knot - the Hollyburn Outhouse. Hagan Engineering and Construction, run by the environmentally and socially conscious Ronald Hagan followed the will of the community when building the university and covered the infamous Hollyburn Outhouse with concrete block, brick and ceramic tile. This was a compromise between those community leaders who wanted the eyesore and its accompanying grotesque legend removed and those who wanted the financial and status benefits of a fine university located in the heart of town. Since the terms of the land donation on which the university was founded required that this little wooden shack remain standing on its original site for eternity, completely enclosing it was a suitable solution to the problem. All the locals and most of the students, staff and faculty of the university knew of the outhouse and its history. Only very few people knew the truth about what lay behind the small bronze plaque affixed to the wall in a hallway of the Arts Building. None of these people were indigenous to Fairview.

As a police officer, my primary contact with the University was to quell the occasionally excessive exuberance of periodic hormonal outbursts erupting from the student body. Hollyburn, being so pathetic in the sports world, did not generate much enthusiasm at sporting events and as a result, not much need for police action. Thus, pent-up gonadal energy was normally released in goofy pranksterism and general drunkenness. Again, not a serious cause for concern, at least not on the scale I had experienced in Chicago. As one might expect, before the incidents as we sometimes euphemistically refer to the events of September 1999, the thrashing of large angry fish never rippled these gentle waters.

Although the incidents marked the public start of the terror, its hidden beginnings extended back many years. 1994 was, it turned out, the year in which the perpetrators’ tree of pain began to bear secret fruit. It continued unabated and undetected until it burst into public view and then blossomed into a flower of unimaginable evil. I will never stop regretting my blindness to the events unfolding before me in the early years.

I decided to start my chronicle of events with the aftermath of my wife’s death in a car accident in April 1993. It was this terrible event that introduced me to people I never would have otherwise known - people principle to the case of the Outhouse Murders.

Chapter 3 - Year 1993

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04/28/93 WEDNESDAY 5:34 PM - MY DIARY

Finished the arrangements for Helen’s stone today. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to do it - kind of the final thing. Unreal - I kept thinking I’d surprise her with the design - like she could see it through the casket and six feet of soil. I’ve got to get back to reality. But how? This guy who came to the funeral from Hollyburn, Dr. Ellington I think his name was. Tall guy. Said I should see a grief counselor. He said talking directly face-to-face with someone who listens helps. Sounds like something that might work so, I think I’ll give it a try. Nothing else has cut through this gloom. I’ll call the counselor he recommended tomorrow.

9:14 pm

Heini was very generous giving me as much paid time off as I need to deal with all this. He promised to take me fishing in a couple weeks, said I could take off whenever I really needed it. He knows I won’t abuse it. What a contrast to McClorsky in Chicago. That asshole wouldn’t give his grandmother time off for her own funeral. But still, I’ve got to get over this.

05/07/93 FRIDAY 9:30 PM - MY DIARY

I couldn’t get out of bed this morning. Called Heini. He said it’s OK to stay home, nothing special today. I just don’t feel right about it. I feel so depressed I can’t move. Something ... a fog, a deep cloud of doom - it covers everything. Getting out of bed in the normal manner was too tough. I rolled out and crawled to the living room to get my diary - to get you. It took a half hour to get myself up on this chair and open you up. I’m not even crying anymore. Just paralyzed. This is not anyway to live. When nothing is worth doing, when the smallest movement carries such a huge weight, it’s nearly impossible to find the energy to do my job. Chief’s going to get tired of this. I already am.

05/10/93 MONDAY 7:28 AM - MY DIARY

Now I know what was behind that cloud in my head. When it cleared, I found myself staring at my nine millimeter. I don’t remember when I put it away - sometime around the funeral I think. For some reason I don’t remember, I locked it up in the safe. That’s something I’ve never done before. It seemed a threat, an enemy in some way - a hunk of metal that could come alive and kill me. Then, early this morning, two or three this morning, I got it out and laid it on the kitchen table. It was just lying there, looking at me trying to make up its mind whether or not it was going to shoot me. I made a pot of coffee, sat down and stared at it. I don’t know if it’s loaded. Could be, if I forgot to unload it. I wouldn’t do that, normally, but now is not normal. If I put it back, this will happen all over again. The only way to do it is wear it. It will shut up if I wear it.

8:12 AM

Heini said it would be OK to come in at ten. I put on my weapon a half hour ago and it’s OK, it’s back under control. I called that therapist or councilor or whatever. She agreed to take me on Wednesday when I said it was very important. I perhaps should have said it was an emergency. But there’s no telling what she would have done. I think ... no, I’ll hold out till Wednesday.

05/13/93 TUESDAY 6:47 PM - MYDIARY

I got through the day without making a complete fool of myself but Heini asked me if I was all right at least three times. Seng asked what he was doing wrong. He wasn’t doing anything wrong and I told him that but he just looked odd and excused himself. Then Bill said I should go home, get into bed and try getting up from the other side. All I did was remind him to fill out his observation form. I seem to be giving off some kind of negative radiation I can’t see. I hope my appointment tomorrow does something for this. I’m scaring myself.

05/12/93 WEDNESDAY 8:54 pm - MY DIARY

Well, I did it. Saw Dorothy Spavik, MSW and a bunch of other stuff by her name. I’d guess she’s mid fifties. Handsome woman. Well-built but trim, almost oriental face. Somehow, she makes me feel comfortable. She said I should continue with this journal, describe feelings, events, experiences no matter how much energy it takes. I think she’s right about that. My instincts pushed me in that direction. Takes some of the sting out of what’s happened, to put it into words. Talking and writing - never realized the value in it before. It’s just so hard to do. Takes so much energy, just to start it, then after getting started, jumping over that 8 foot razor wire fence in my head ... or in my body. Maybe it’d be easier with a voice recorder. They’re so little and convenient. I could do it lying down. I don’t know about playing it back though. Listening to my own squeaky voice could be depressing. But the benefit comes from the recording. No, wait, Dorothy said listening to myself could be very helpful, could put things in perspective. I could be both the participant and the observer. That’s all she is, an intelligent observer. Parrots back what I say. I think I’ll try it. I think Dorothy’s trying to put herself out of business.

05/15/93 SATURDAY 4:14 pm - MY DIARY

I bought a little Sony tape recorder with a clip-on mic in case I ever need to use both hands doing something else while I talk in my diary. It takes a couple AA batteries, has a nice leather case and fits into just about any pocket I have. I tried a test run and found out my voice is not as squeaky as I thought. Seems the phone machine - where I got this impression - does not have very good fidelity for the human voice. When I think how people I know sound on it - if they didn’t give their names, I might not recognize some of them. From now on, it’s the tape machine for diary entries.

This seems to be working, this writing, talking and getting listened to. The cloud has lifted. I can look at my weapon and not feel it is some kind of ominous being - really a feeling of suicidal intent as Dorothy described it. Dorothy was startled; maybe even frightened when I first mentioned it but she calmed down when she saw I had it under control. She seems to have a lot of confidence in my ability to pull away from those dark feelings. They are a reaction to losing Helen and also, I think, to living alone. This house was so full of noise - good noise, comforting noise. Now, with the kids away and Helen gone, it’s like living in a tomb. But it needn’t be. I can make it a bit more my own. That’s not wrong, not disrespectful to her. It’s just getting on with life.

05/16/93 SUNDAY 8:29 PM - MY DIARY

Spent all day fishing with Heini in Silver Lake, always within sight of his cabin. He must be a great money manager or else make a Hell-of-a-lot more than I - what’s a Chief of Police in a small town supposed to make? Anyway, it’s a nice cabin. Not huge but well supplied. TV, VCR, sound system, a small but very nicely appointed kitchen, LP gas. Fireplace in the main room with a huge couch and two easy chairs. Outside he’s got a pier and a small boathouse plus about five acres of land. We fished, caught some bass and catfish, went on a hike and had fish for dinner, just he and I. I had lots of questions about living alone - logistics, social stuff, women, etc. Most of the time we were talking about that kind of stuff. He implored me to not get seriously involved with a woman for at least six months, preferably more than a year. Sounded very reasonable but also very lonely.

Heini seemed to be struggling with something. He wants to do a good job, he wants to be respected but he has trouble asserting himself - the very things he needs to do to get respect and do a good job. It took me long enough to learn that in Chicago. I’ll probably have to learn it all over again here. Tried to talk about this with Heini but he quickly changed the subject to all the wonderful goodies he has. Probably best not to fish in these waters too much. After all, he is my boss.

07/10/93 SATURDAY 6:46 PM - MY DIARY

It’s been a busy day. I packed all Helen’s things into boxes and stored them in the attic. I kept a bunch of our pictures in the living room but all the rest went upstairs. Fifteen big boxes. Clothes ... so many clothes. Maybe twice or more times what I have. I never realized it before - how important clothes are to a woman. And she was a modest dresser. At least I never much noticed ... I wonder if it hurt her that I never said anything about her clothes. I have to ask Dorothy about that.

All her books I stacked in the extra bedroom. It would be a good library/office. With her books in there I’d be reminded to read them from time-to-time but there would be no presence in the bedroom. Strange why that seems like a good idea.

07/11/93 SUNDAY 1:04 PM - MY DIARY

Something must have set it off. Maybe all the activity yesterday. I had a terrible dream. Helen and I were driving along a dirt road, by an old abandoned farmhouse. There was a barn, a chicken coup, a few other wrecks floating around the farmhouse that were unrecognizable. She stopped the car right next to the mailbox post and said, Here it is. I got out of the car thinking there was a question I needed to ask her before she left but couldn’t think of it. Then she drove away, disappearing in a huge cloud of dust. I remembered the question. It was about whose turn it was to fix dinner. It was mine but I had to go shopping first. I felt confused at first then alone then afraid as the sun set with me just standing there in the dark, not knowing when she’d come back to get me. I got very angry that she was taking so long. Then, I woke up.

I’m having those feelings again - that God-awful threat coming from my weapon. Just cold metal, completely dead, yet not. Think about this. It’s depression, trauma, you will recover. I called Dorothy and thank God she was home. Her calm reassurance was a blessing. Understandable she said, not unexpected and manageable. I had to admit I stopped taking the antidepressant too soon. Plus putting all of Helen’s things away yesterday. Hang in there with it for a few more months and then it would no longer be necessary she said. She will contact the Doc about it; make sure the dose is right. Just knowing someone will pick up the phone, listen and do something - that’s therapy. Thank God I don’t have to do this completely alone.

09/08/93 WEDNESDAY 9:12 PM - MY DIARY

Dorothy agrees. I’ve been tapering-down on the antidepressants for two weeks and so far no adverse reactions. She said I’m not completely out of it yet but if I continue with the therapy, my diary and try to develop more social contacts, I’ll make it just fine. I feel in my guts that she is right. I think it’s time to start going back to church. Summer shutdown is over. Zoe is back from her summer sabbatical. It will be good to hear her again. Not much to look at but a mind as big as the Universe and a heart to surround it.

09/19/93 SUNDAY 3:13 PM - MY DIARY

Went to church today. Fairview Unitarian. First time in a while - long while. This place never ceases to amaze me. Met this fellow, name is Franklin Handen. Very weird, probably psychotic but fascinating. Short, maybe 5’ 4, could be thirty and balding prematurely or 40 and right on cue. Funny, scrunched-up face with small, narrowly spaced eyes, brown hair - no trace of gray - and a short, scraggly black beard. Found it hard to place him as a type. Fairly tight fitting jeans, trim figure, short sleeve sport shirt, yet what comes out of his mouth is absolutely bizarre. He believes there is a sinister plot on the part of religious fundamentalist to take over the world by capturing the minds of wealthy older men - men who have done their power thing and now need to make peace with God so they can smooth their way into Heaven. Seems he has this chart on disk (he was passing out 3.5 floppy disks to anyone who would take them) that purports to show all these secret relationships between famous rich old men and fundamentalist groups, especially the Family Politics Association of America. Admittedly the FPAA as they acronymize themselves are rather kooky on some issues but I was skeptical and told him so. To my surprise, he didn’t get offended. I suppose he gets a lot of skepticism as his campaign rolls through the many ears it encounters. I told him I didn’t think the conspirators he mentioned had the foresight and brainpower to construct such complex plots and even if they could, they would be obvious to the