The Girl With The Flaxen Hair

The Girl

With The Flaxen Hair

-A Novel-

Jay Rayl

Copyright

Library Of Congress (2004)

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Prelude

- All Alone on the Planet Earth -

-1-

It rained.

On a clear night and with a sky full of stars, it rained.

And because it was raining, the girl with the flaxen hair wept.

She wept because as she lay there in the tall cool summer grass it seemed to her that the entire earth beneath was pushing her away, away from home and into all the cold dark places of that other world we call outer space.

And even though she was watched over closely by the solicitous eyes of six billion corporeal souls, there wasn’t one amongst them who possessed the power to keep her from falling off the planet. She would be destined to live the rest of her life apart, alone in space.

And somewhere out there on a small planet orbiting near an insignificant star, she very likely would someday die.

Already she felt very much alone.

She was the first of her kind.

How she had arrived at this point would be a story she could tell for a thousand years.

She held tightly onto the grass she laid upon, digging her fingers into the moist soil. She didn't know how much longer she could hold on.

Someday soon she would be expected to leave this planet, and it would be hoped that she would take something of these six billion souls with her

Someday soon she would be surrounded only by a sky full of stars, with nothing to push at her back and nothing to dig her hands into and no sense of any direction home.

Someday, sooner than expected, being alone would be the only world she would ever be able to recall.

And so, because of this, she wept.

The rain stopped.

Suddenly, her eyes were drawn to the horizon, and there, silhouetted by the early light of another dawn, a man patiently waited to say good-bye.

She knew that he had a story to tell as well.

Joe Plato

- 2 -

Joe Plato was a bad man.

Bad: as in cruel, abusive, immoral.

Bad: as in spurious, malevolent, spiteful, brutal.

Bad: as in just plain mean.

He was a man at odds with himself and at war with the world.

He was a man who seemed always irritable and invariably annoyed.

And he did not seem to mind this at all.

Such was his reputation.

And more often than not, he lived up to his reputation.

At forty-eight, he figured it just didn’t matter anymore. He was unmarried, and in fact had probably never really been in love. For all intent purposes, he had no family, or at least never contacted any of them. He made few acquaintances, even fewer associates, and he had no friends. He was a person completely unto himself. And for his line of work, this was probably best.

For Joe Plato was a bounty hunter and a damn good one. The best.

And it was, knowing this, that he entered the rundown East Side ghetto tenement at Grant and Tenth with a loaded gun and every intention of using it.

‘Dead or alive’. It didn’t really matter to a man like Joe Plato.

What did matter was that there was damn good money in this one; at least twenty grand. And for the last week or so he knew he was getting very close.

It was near midnight, late February, raining, and of course, cold.

Joe was tired and hungry, and a little more irritable than usual. He had felt he should have closed this case long before now. After almost a year, it was time for him to cash in.

The front door to the tenement should have been locked, but, of course, it wasn’t. And, of course, only a single bare bulb lit a hallway and stairs that should have been a lot less dark.

Maybe someone was waiting for him, maybe not. It didn’t really matter.

There would be nothing here that Joe couldn’t handle.

He turned back towards the street, and for a second caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of the closed door: the black trench coat draped over his thin frame, black straight hair pulled aside a rather bony, ashen face, and dark empty eyes that made little reflection at all.

His image in the window neither surprised, repulsed, pleased, inspired or intrigued him.

Joe moved quickly down the dim hallway, the sound of his trench coat made an ominous tremolo like the rush of a cold fall wind over dead leaves. He was not concerned with keeping his presence unknown. He believed stealth was neither desired nor called for. As it was, he cleared a wide swath with the scythe he wielded. No one came forth to challenge him. They kept well out of sight.

Joe kept his eyes straight ahead.

He could hear the faint voices of frightened tenants huddled behind the closed doors. But he was not concerned with these people; they knew better than to interfere with him. His business was with one person only, Case BD-4948, A.K.A. J.R. Santiago. His crime was of even less concern to Joe: murder, embezzlement, molestation, run away slave? It really didn’t matter. It was all the same to Joe. All he knew was ‘dead or alive’. The real name of this case was ‘Twenty Grand’, paid on delivery.

Joe stopped and looked towards the top of the stairs at the end of the hall. A broken window there let in the worst part of the storm outside. The single bare bulb driven by the wind cast a strange sway of shadows throughout the hallway.

Then, to Joe’s right, a door cracked open, and a frail hand reached around the old wood of the door’s frame. It was unmistakably the hand of a young girl.

Joe smoothly drew his revolver from his coat pocket. Stay in your room! Don’t interfere.

The hand pulled back and the door closed without a sound.

He then moved quietly up the stairs.

The steps creaked, but Joe did not begin to imagine that his visit would be any kind of surprise. They knew he was coming: the huddled voices knew he was coming, the frail hand knew he was coming, and more importantly, the man behind the first door at the top of the stairs knew he was coming. It really was no secret. And that was the beauty of the whole thing: there was nothing anybody could do about it. Joe was the bounty hunter; the law was on his side. He had a license to kill if the situation called for it. To Joe this was no different than cornering a tracked animal in or out of season. And like most animals, people were no different.

At the top of the stairs, Joe again caught a glimpse of himself sporadically lit by the spasms of lightning flashes. He was amused at the misshapen face that stared back at him in the remnants of this shattered window. Then he turned away from his twisted visage and checked the knob of the first door on the left.

It was unlocked and so he entered the room.

It was dark, as he had expected. The shaft of light the opened door exposed threw a sad glow on the sickly figure huddled in the far corner of the room. An old, rusted handgun lay a few feet in front of the young man, with a half dozen shells strewn about the floor. It was a small gun, like Joe’s: a twenty-five caliber. But Joe never figured he needed anything too big. He did all his killing at close range. It was enough. Besides, he would only be killing a human being, not some big game animal.

Joe took a few steps towards the slight frame huddled before him and pulled a set of cuffs from his back pocket. However, the small man in the corner did not offer up his hands. In fact, he did not move at all. For a second it was very still, without a sound.

But even inside here, the storm drew around them, sending a slow roll of thunder down the hallway and up the stairs and into the dark room. Soon, a gust of wind followed and filled the air with the fog of a dusty haze.

Suddenly, there was a noise at Joe’s back, and he turned quickly to the door.

It was the young girl with the frail hand. And though she had not been outside, her hair and face dripped with wetness. She tried to speak, but all that came was a faint plea, Si quiere, mister. as she took a step towards Joe. With the light to her back, she posed a dark, threatening figure to Joe. Perhaps too she had a gun. Perhaps not.

What difference did it matter. Joe Plato did not have to give reasons for anything he did here tonight.

With a swift deftness, Joe slapped one of the cuffs quickly to the young girl’s wrist and threw her to the ground; then dragging her to a nearby radiator heater, he locked the other cuff to a pipe on the wall.

Funcione, Juan. Salga de aqui!

Shut up! Joe laid her out with the butt of his handgun.

Then he turned back towards the far corner of the room. The small man slowly rose and stared at Joe in disbelief. He then lunged for the gun on the floor before him, and fumbled trying to push a shell into the chamber.

You killed her!

Joe had not needed an excuse in the first place. It was ‘dead or alive’.

A single gunshot reverberated for several seconds throughout the entire tenement.

The young man only had a chance to release some weakened scream before he fell silent, the rusted gun and few shells scattering dully on the hardwood floor throughout the room.

Joe then swiftly took the cuffs off the stunned young girl, slipped them in his coat pocket, and with a single motion, hoisted the body of the dead man onto his shoulders and carried him down the stairs and through the hallway to the front door.

Once outside, he bounded over the curb, tossed the body onto the back seat, started the car and drove quickly away, the rattling cadence of a cracked muffler fading into the low rumbling of the passing storm.

In the hallway, doors slowly opened, and the tenants took one step out into the dim light.

Without a word, they first looked up towards the top of the stairs, and then slowly turned their blank expressions back towards the empty street.

The young girl with the frail hand walked silently down the stairs and stood before the opened door Joe had just passed through. She deliberately messaged her wrist that had moments earlier been cuffed, completely ignoring the blood darkened bruise on the side of her delicate face. Then she pulled her black hair back off her forehead as the other tenement residents gathered closely behind her staring where the bounty hunter had just exited.

A sudden, unnatural gust of warm wind from some unknowable place rushed through the opened door and raced past their faces. Unexpectedly, the eyes of the tenants brightened slightly, and some even forced a faint, enigmatic grin.

The young girl, however, only raised her chin slightly. Nothing more.

She was not about to pass judgment on the bounty hunter. Not tonight.

There was no need to.

It was known that Joe Plato was a bad man.

But all of that was about to change.

Unlocking The Human Illuminations

- 3 -

My god, they’re all going to die!

Shut up, Elliott. The voice in the darkness, straightforward and surgical, and coldly detached, seemed to breathe down his back. Keep your head about you.

But what’s going to happen to all of them?

The other doctors in the narrow bunker ignored his sense of panic as they scrambled to secure parkas and pull on thick gloves. But Elliott just stood there, looking out the narrow, thick-paned window. Occasionally, he rubbed at the glass with his sleeve, removing some of the frost that was condensing there. But, try as he might, the view outside did not improve much. Through the blindness of night and a scrim of freshly blown snow, he could barely make out the small planes that lined up on the runway, seven in all, private jets. They sat there, waiting for some clearing that might give them a chance to break-out through the storm. Their take-off spot lamps cut through the blowing snow, and the heat from their engines occasionally sent ghostlike clouds of hot steam running wildly passed several of the crew standing around the planes. Just then the glass fogged over again, and Elliott gave up trying to clear it. He turned away from the window just as the doctors opened the door to rush out to the planes. The icy wind was enough the send Elliott reaching for his parka, gloves and wool scarf.

What are we supposed to do now? Cried Elliott. What do we do when we get there?

The last doctor to leave the bunker pulled the door tight, and some quiet returned to the room.

Hastings and Elliott were alone now.

Elliott waited there for some final instruction under the sway of a single bright spot. But the professor said nothing.

Only a slow, rhythmic wheezing could be heard from the far end of the room.

Elliott reached up and steadied the light. The steel cowl lamp now cast a conical shaft of cold light directly over Elliott, throwing a frosty glow on the rough features of his round face.

Damn it, Hastings, say something!

The man standing in the corner, cut in half from the waist up by shadow, clutched a black leather briefcase.

Get a hold of yourself, Elliott. Calm in the voice from the darkness conjured up the image of a much more stout man than in reality existed. His voice crawled out of the darkness again, and it was as cold and impassive as any semi-disembodied voice could hope to personify.

Elliott. I want you to take the files. The voice, Hastings’ voice, drew a long breath before he spoke again. Just in case.

Elliott stopped pulling at the fingers of one of his gloves and walked over to Hastings. He stopped scarcely a foot away from the man, and yet even this close he could not see the professor’s face in the deep shadow where he hid. He imagined that the doctor should have a drawn expression, that his eyes should be cast downward, reddened, and that even maybe he would be crying. But he could see nothing, he heard nothing in Hastings’ voice, and he sensed no tears. And then Elliott realized that it was himself he was thinking of, that he was the only one who was fighting back tears.

Take the files. Hastings offered the briefcase to Elliott, and without any hesitation, he took it. Then Hastings reached into his pockets and pulled out a pair of gray leather gloves; but rather than slipping them on, he just wound them like stretched rope, twisting them so tight that the joints in his fingers formed tense knots.

The sound of straining leather was a poor substitute for words unspoken.

Elliott just stared at the professor’s gloves. What the voice had failed to say, the hands chose to confess. Elliott lifted his head, turned and hurried towards the door of the bunker. He was about to open it when he stopped and turned back to Hastings.

What is going to happen to them?

Hastings stopped tearing at the gloves and quickly slipped them on each hand. I don’t know, Elliott. I really don’t.

What do you mean, you don’t know? What about all the tests and all those experiments? What about the promises? What about all that talk of unlocking the human illuminations?

There’s nothing there to unlock! Hastings shook his fists and his voice had a thin crack to it. I don’t know what miracles you people expect! I don’t know if any of this will work. All I do know is that some of them are dying. What do you want me to do, Elliott, turn them over to the police; and then we’ll all go to prison. Is that what you want? Is that what you think we should do?

No. But sending them away like this. What chance will they have? Elliott asked.

I don’t know. But I don’t know what else we can do for them now.

Maybe nothing. It just seems cruel. Like throwing children out of the house, especially on a night like this. Elliott reached for the door and was about to leave.

Elliott. Before you go, turn out the light, would you.

Sir?

It’s not needed here any longer.

As you wish. Elliott turned out the light.

They’re all going to die, aren’t they? Hastings’ sad words were a small voice in a dark room; a small voice that seemed to be resigning itself to the reality of the situation.

Elliott was discouraged by the professor’s sudden change of heart. I’m afraid it looks that way, sir. And with that said, the young assistant pushed his way out into the blowing snow.

On the tarmac, the small planes were taking a beating by the late winter storm. Elliott closed the bunker door, straightened his thin wire-rim glasses and then turned directly into the wind. Briefly, the storm seemed to clear, and a break in the clouds showed the skyline glow of Anchorage set against a range of stark white mountains and a light scattering of polar stars. Elliott secured the briefcase under one arm, turned and started towards the doctors who were huddled by the first plane. They formed a tight circle and seemed to be warming themselves by some unseen fire lit for the keeping of a midnight vigil. Elliott pulled his other arm up slightly over his forehead so as to shield his eyes and slowly made his way to the others as a fresh surge of blowing snow continued its assault. When he joined them, he noticed that they seemed to be looking at one another, questioning the wisdom of what they were doing, seeking some affirmation.

Well? One of the doctors questioned.

I’ve got the files. Elliott answered. Hastings says we need to leave now, whether the storm lets up or not.

We shouldn’t split them up.

Elliott recognized the voice, but buried under the thick hood of the parka and a heavy pair of goggles, he could not see the face.

We’ve been over this. We have a better chance if we split up. Now’s not the time to debate this. We have to get out of here. Elliott urged them.

What about the storm?

We’ll have to take a chance. We can’t wait any longer. The police are on their way.

What about Hastings? Someone else asked.

He’ll find his own way. Elliott conveyed that to them not fully understanding himself how the professor was planning to follow them. But knowing Hastings as he did, he imagined the professor had made his own special arrangement.

A sudden gust of wind nearly knocked them off their feet, but when they saw that a clearing window had opened, the doctors climbed hurriedly onto the planes and within minutes they were ready to taxi. Elliott, still waiting on the tarmac, quickly called for the lights, and before he could tuck his two-way radio back into a fold of his parka, runway spots and floods washed the entire scene in a brightness capable of inducing a mild degree of snow blindness.

The planes quickly rolled into position for take-off.

Elliott stood off to one side and shielding his eyes, cautiously surveyed each plane that passed in front of him. Inside, the young faces pressed against the windows looked so scared. And being scared, they seemed like such children. Except that they were not children, and indeed had never really been allowed to experience childhood. He wondered if indeed they all would soon be dead. The experiments had started with such promise. It was a noble thing, something unselfish, something necessary, and now this. Running away in the darkness. Trying to escape something they could not outrun.

Elliott walked over to his plane, the last one, and was about to board when the face in the window over the wing caught his eye. The others had looked so scared, but for some reason, this one didn’t. She was different. She even looked different. She always had. That pale yellow hair, even here, even now, was a striking image of some gilded halo framed in the small plane window. Maybe there was some hope. Maybe they all wouldn’t die. Maybe she would be the one. It would only take one. Maybe this was the face, the face that quietly looked down at him.

She had been the last one.

Elliott pulled himself up into the fuselage and one by one, the seven planes punched their way into the moonless night sky riding the vibrant fires of screaming jet engines; and soon each was indiscernible from the bright stars that were emerging from the clearing storm.

When they had all gone, the flood of runway lights still burned on, but they now seemed pointless, wasteful. And they would have continued to light nothing had not the door to the bunker slowly opened and