Montauk Mayhem Read online

  6:00 AM, Traveling Carnival, Montauk, NY

  The sun wasn’t up yet as Glenn coasted with his lights off, to a stop outside of the carnival. He could see Andromeda’s trailer from the distance. He had a large styrofoam cup full of black coffee and took a sip and leaned back to watch. It was about a half-hour later when he saw a light go in the trailer and another thirty minutes until he saw headlights turn onto the road behind him. The sun was rising, so he slid down in his seat as a Lincoln Town Car passed by.

  It pulled onto the grass of the carnival grounds and up to the trailer. It sat idling for another ten minutes before Andromeda walked out and climbed into the back. He slid further down in his seat as the car pulled back out and went by him. As they turned the corner, Glenn started his car and did a U-turn to follow them. They headed out on Montauk Highway toward the point. He kept a distance and when they turned toward Camp Hero. He kept straight and passed the road before circling back. There was a guarded gate. He drove only close enough to stay out of sight before he turned into the woods, deep enough not to see from the road. He left the car on foot.

  He realized the walk to get wherever he was going was longer than he thought. He jogged for a half-mile before something caught his toe and he tumbled to the ground. He looked at what got him and saw it was concrete. A manhole of sorts. A square concrete pad with a smaller circle in it hinged with a metal handle. He gave it a tug and felt it budge. He got behind the hinge and gave another try. It opened.

  He stuck his head inside the hatch and saw there was some light at the bottom. A metal ladder on the side of the hole led down four feet before opening into a tunnel. He closed the lid and looked around in case he wanted to find it again. He continued his trek.

  A helicopter came overhead and landed somewhere on the base. He figured that was the direction he needed to go. A half-mile later he saw a clearing and a dirt road with a cottage on the other side. He checked if it was clear and ran across to the side of the building. He went to look in the window and realized it was fake. It was a painting of a window. More fake windows were painted on the back. Down the road was a hill with a radar tower. Along the way a few other small cottages. He got closer and saw they too were fake. He came to an intersection of paths where a church stood. The concrete steps and door were real. It opened and two soldiers in fatigues and army-green T-shirts walked out. Glenn ducked behind a tree as they jogged toward the radar tower on the hill ahead.

  He followed being careful to stay in the edge of the woods. He heard a vehicle coming from behind and dove to the ground. As it passed, he lifted his head and saw it was the police chief’s cadmium-blue Plymouth Volare squad car. He climbed to his feet and picked up his pace. He broke through the cover of the trees to cross the road and got as close to the radar tower he could without being on the open hill. From the back of the tower, he saw another two-story concrete building. In front of it was the car he followed and the chief’s.

  Glenn waited tired and thirsty, wishing he had brought water. He looked at his Swatch. An hour passed before anyone came out of the building. He heard the helicopter fire up in the distance, then the steel door of the building opened and Andromeda exited toward the Lincoln followed by a guy in a suit and tie and another in a tracksuit. They took off before the chief waddled down the steps and to his cruiser. The whole thing tilted as he plopped down in the driver’s seat. He pulled away. Another man came out and held the door for a gray-haired guy in a suit. A young soldier came up to the building, driving a golf cart. The soldier got out and extended his hand and greeted the man as Mr. Gray.

  Glenn flashed back to ripping the card for Louis Gray from Roger Black’s Rolodex after he had shot him in his office. He squinted to catch a better view of his face. If it was him, he was the only other person he wanted dead. He was the head of Project Monarch. Roger’s boss, the one orchestrating the torture and brainwashing of not only soldiers like himself but civilians. Women and children. Condoning, ordering and maybe even committing many horrors.

  For two years, Glenn tried to find Louis Gray and his old unknown Fiancé, with no success. He had given up trying to find either one. He wanted to put it behind him and try to start a quiet anonymous life somewhere new, somewhere remote like Montauk. But now his past was catching up with him again. Old demons don’t stay down.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday, August 8, 1983

  3:30 PM, Montauk Manor

  Glenn fell asleep when he got back to the manor. His dreams brought him back to his time in the program. He was lying bound in a hospital bed with his arms in cardboard tubes. Electrodes on his head and volts going through his body making his body shake as the force flew through him up to the top of his head pushing to break his skull into pieces at any instant. He heard Lindsey’s voice calling his name. The force subsided. He saw the photograph in Roger Black’s office from when she was a little girl holding his hand, clutching the stuffed rabbit in the other. She was calling Glenn’s name, over and over. He saw Roger walk to her, rip her dress off her body with a bloody knife in his hand.

  He jerked awake and sat up on the edge of the bed. He walked to the kitchen and heated water on the stove for coffee. He went to the sink and splashed water on his face and the teapot screamed. He turned off the faucet and the burner and dropped in a heaping spoon of Taster’s Choice in a styrofoam cup next to the stack of phone books on the counter.

  He walked downstairs and entered the stairwell for the basement. As he went down half a flight, he heard voices and smelled someone smoking pot. It was two of the construction workers on the next landing. As he approached, they tried to hide it. One of them was holding his breath, trying not to exhale with the smoke from the joint rising from his hand behind his back.

  “Hey guys, you don’t have to hide from me. I’m not Five-O.”

  “You want a hit, man.”

  “Sure, I’ll take a hit,” as he reached out for the handoff.

  Glenn took a long pull and asked, “Hey, you guys find a tunnel under this place, somewhere?”

  They laughed.

  “Yeah, man. It’s deep.”

  “Yeah? You see where it went?”

  “No, we followed it for like fifteen minutes but it was dark and just kept going.”

  “Until he heard a rat or something and got scared,” the other one said with a laugh.

  “Those tunnels freak me out, man. There're all kinds of stories about what they lead to. When I was in school, there were stories of kids that went into them and were never seen again.”

  “Really? When was that?” Glenn asked.

  “Back in the seventies sometime, I’m not sure. A bunch of kids found a tunnel opening and two of them explored it and never came out.”

  “You said tunnels, there’s more than one?”

  “Supposedly, this is the only one I’ve ever found but I have friends who say they found a sealed entrance to one in the woods before.”

  “Can you show me where it starts?”

  They went to the basement and entered a small room that appeared to be a walk-in closet with primitive wooden shelves along the walls filled with paint cans of a multitude of colors and various other compounds and supplies. At the back was another door that led into what appeared to be a narrow hallway.

  Glenn followed it down a hundred yards before it took a ninety-degree turn and opened wider. It was dark and there were stacks of old wooden dining room chairs. Glenn cracked his knee on an overturned chair leg and stopped before turning back.

  Chapter Nine

  Monday, August 8, 1983

  10:000 PM, Robin’s House

  Robin opened the pill bottle her girlfriend gave her and took two before offering them to Glenn.

  “Yeah, I could use one,” he said.

  It was Valium. He popped one in his mouth and washed it down with a swig from the Moosehead bottle.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

  “That’s good. That’ll help you sleep. You need
to get some rest.”

  She gave him a kiss and headed to her bedroom to change. She was going through the motions, now. A zombie-like state. It would be the first time she washed and slept in the four days since Michael went missing.

  Glenn felt horrible he couldn’t tell her anything about what he had seen at Camp Hero or that he was sure Michael was there alive and that Andromeda and the chief were both in on his disappearance.

  Robin came out after her shower in pajamas and asked Glenn to lie with her until she fell asleep. He got into her bed and she put her head on his chest. Glenn stroked her head and within minutes she was sound asleep. It wasn't long after that Glenn followed.

  His dreams tread a distant but familiar path starting with dark wet fear and merciless killing in Vietnam to the torture of his training. Then to finding Lindsey, her death and his killing of Robert Black. He dreamt of being bound to a stretcher and sinister surgeons approaching with knives. He tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound, until he did and then as he screamed he left his body, flew to the ceiling. As he came down, it was no longer him bound below but Michael. Robin fell to her knees beside the stretcher, crying hysterically and pulling at her eyes and face.

  He woke sweating and short of breath. He sat up, breathed deeply and wiped his forehead. His hand was dripping. He got up, put his pants on, went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He tried to recall his dream as he saw flashes of another woman. One he recognized. He wondered if it was the fiancé Lindsey had told him about that he still couldn’t recall. He recognized Lindsey in his dreams. He always wondered whether it was simply programming or did he have some kind of ability. He held out a small hope he would find her one day. If he somehow found that past part of his life maybe he could fit back in and hide there. Live out his days like a normal person.

  He knew he couldn't stay there with Robin. If that was Louis Gray he saw at Camp Hero it wouldn't be long before they put it together with the chief, and came for him. If they didn't know it was he who killed Robert Black, they suspected it and if they didn't they would look for him anyway, since he disappeared from the program.

  He had been AWOL for years and liked it that way. He was caring a lot for Robin, but sticking around any longer would be a death sentence. Maybe for both of them. In either case, he wouldn't be with her long and he wanted no more harm to come to her. She was already suffering and he could only bring her more pain.

  He went to the bathroom and washed his face. He stared in the mirror, trying to measure his strength. He wondered what he was doing there. Why he ever came to Montauk. How he could ever believe he could just start fresh–a normal life. How could he provide her anything while in hiding? How could he hope to save her son when he couldn’t save himself? He dried off his face with a towel and put on his T-shirt.

  He headed toward the front door when she came out to find him.

  “You sneaking out?”

  Glenn stopped dead in his tracks. He paused a moment before turning around.

  “I'm sorry, Robin. I can't stay. I want to but I can't. There are people looking for me and I think they've found me.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “You are leaving… Now in the middle of this, you're going to walk out?”

  “You don’t understand these are evil men.”

  “Who are these men? Do they have anything to do with Michael? You know something, don't you? About Michael. Where did you go today?”

  “I'm sorry, Robin. I can't do this.”

  He opened the door and walked out.

  She followed and yelled from the porch as he walked to his car.

  “You’re right you can’t do this. You know something. You can help my boy!”

  Glenn kept walking and didn't look back. He got in his car and took off to the Montauk Manor. He went to his room and packed his duffle bag. The sun was rising as he left Montauk.

  Robin called the police station to talk to Chief Lutz.

  Chapter Ten

  Tuesday, August 9, 1983

  10:000 AM, Camp Hero

  There were three wings, each with a barracks for a dozen boys divided into age groups. The youngest with boys five or six years old and the oldest group with bunks for thirteen to seventeen-year-olds. Michael and Johnny Miller will have bunks there when they are ready to be mixed in with the others. The kids in these underground barracks were truly the lost boys. Runaways, abandoned, homeless, sometimes given away or sold. They screened them for potential abilities before they gave them a bunk in the barracks. Most through testing, but some were screened before arriving. Many of them came with advanced psychic abilities. Their commitment, allegiance, and control developed at Camp Hero. The methods went beyond the border of torture and not everyone survived.

  It was the same type of program that Glenn had gone through as a Delta while in the military and in Project Monarch. Some boys would become sleeper agents trained to perform missions on command with no knowledge of the training or recollection of performing the missions afterward. To accomplish this, they would have to break them. Torture them so badly that their minds would fracture as they disassociate to survive. Then they would put them back together, by design. They used the same monarch programming techniques of deprivation, electrocution, and drugs mainly LSD to break them down mentally. Then they could implant alter personalities with their own triggers and instructions. Some were transferred to other programs at different locations and some sent to private interests. Those with advanced psychic abilities were used in sub-programs dedicated to remote viewing, telekinesis, and more. Those were the ones being sought after at Camp Hero.

  Those lucky enough to perform well during their testing spent their time training their minds with telekinesis and remote viewing exercises. Those with more disposable abilities became the subjects of other types of testing. Those merging man and machine, brain and computer, brainwaves and microwaves. They used some to test electrical implants in the brain that would allow them to be turned on and off with a switch. Sometimes the switches could turn on or off certain behaviors, other times they just turned off the subjects forever.

  They trained Glenn to be an assassin during his Delta training and used the same tactics at Camp Hero. But they weren’t developing assassins they were creating psychics and time-travelers. They selected Michael and Johnny for their advanced psychic abilities. They would be the elite of the group. But they didn’t come willingly like most of the other the boys they found in the city. They’d have to break them hard before they’d be mixed in with the other boys and placed in their specific training programs. For now they were in isolation. A state of deprivation. In complete darkness, silence, and solitude with no intake of stimuli or sustenance. They would be bound and blindfolded for days before they could be programmed.

  They strapped Michael to a stretcher with his limbs tied down in darkness when they came in and moved him. He remained blindfolded as they escorted him to the next room.

  “What do you want with me? Let me go, please. Please, just let me go home. I know nothing, I can’t tell anyone anything. Just let me go.”

  They stood him up with his bound hands hooked on a chain and pulley. They pulled his arms up and stretched him to an uncomfortable position with his feet barely touching the floor, on orders of Director Gray. He wanted the process sped up and Michael put into training to replace Damon if needed. After a day on the hook, he’d be evaluated, and physically abused more if needed before moving to the next level of training.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tuesday, August 9, 1983

  9:00 AM, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY

  It annoyed the chief being summoned to Brookhaven to see Louis Gray again. He thought Gray was a prick. Only his own interests in mind and willing to eliminate anyone in his way. He hated his face; he hated his pointy little goatee, and he hated having to come see him. An hour and half drive each way was a waste of his time and ruined his whole routine. His knees cracked and his back ached as he cl
imbed the steps to the entrance, pulling himself upward by the metal railing. “Too bad we don’t all have a fucking helicopter,” he said to himself as he got to the top of the stairs. He swung open the door and thought about getting a drink.

  As he looked in the boardroom he was struck by the lit floor-to-ceiling painting of a dancing Lord Shiva within a circle of flames, and a universe emanating from it extending the length of the wall. He realized Mr. Gray was on a conference call, and he came to a stop and backed up but Mr. Gray waved him in and the chief squeezed in a chair at the conference table.

  Mr. Gray stood with his back to the chief facing the mural, “General, what we can do here at Brookhaven coupled with the achievements we’re making at Camp Hero we can change the world. Hell, we might change not only the future but the past. I’m sure the military has a few do-overs you’d like to have.”

  “We’ll work it out when I see you in D.C., just get that damn mess cleaned up there in Montauk,” came back over the speaker before the general hung up.

  “You have any idea what we’re doing here, Lutzie?” Louis Gray asked rhetorically.

  “I’ve been wondering that the whole ride down here.”

  “I don’t mean in this room. I mean five-hundred feet beneath us.”

  “I have no idea, sir.”

  “Below us spins the old Atom Smasher, now we call her Isabelle. A Particle accelerator. You know what we can do with that? No, you wouldn’t.”

  The chief took his hat off and laced it on the table. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one up as Gray continued his speech.

  “We can create an anti-matter portal to other dimensions, to other points in time and space. Time-travel chief and what we’re doing in Montauk is essential for using the energy here to accomplish our goal. And your girl Andromeda is about to fuck everything up!”