EL HEAD, THE BUGLE MAN, THE LITTLE BOY & THE BIG LIZARD PART TWO

 EL HEAD, THE BUGLE MAN, THE LITTLE BOY & THE BIG LIZARD :
The Final Destruction of El Head

Section Two

As the members of Company X went to their respective stations I sat and reviewed the memories I had received from Mr. Morgue, from an engineer's point of view. This submarine we had stumbled upon was one of the latest from Japan. It was a Sen-Taka Class I 209 released from the Kure Dock yards in February of 1945. There had only been eight others built in this class but it was one of the fastest and modern of the submarines. The problem was that it had been hastily built.

 

Divine providence, combined with faulty engineering had lead to the submarine surfacing near us.
 
This sub was equipped with a schnorkel, a device attached to the periscope which re-circulated air, making surfacing almost unnecessary. According to the memories of the men I reviewed the schnorkel had not operated consistently from day one.
 
I examined and took the schnorkel apart. While my borrowed hands were still pliable and coordinated I used the machine shop on board to re-configure several defective parts of the schnorkel.
 
Once fixed the schnorkel allowed us to stay submerged at a maximum depth of 360 feet. We sped on our way to Japan. I had surmised that this was our destination long before I had shared blood with Brann and the others. I had also deduced what their main mission was all about.
 
Neither the US or Japanese Navies crossed our paths, the latter was scarce and impotent and the US was preparing for a full scale invasion of Japan.
 
However on July 28, a small Japanese submarine off the coast of Taiwan spotted us. When we refused to answer its radio hailing, it threatened to fire upon us. Our torpedoes were already on their way. The Japanese sub sank with all hands on board.
 
Brann had Mr. Morgue monitor the radio frequencies for news of the gadget, it or Little Boy. Yet we were ordered to maintain a strict radio silence.
 
Brann would get, if not necessarily news then a few fleeting sensations of thought from a tenuous bloodlink with General MacArthur, the secret Commander of Company X. As of July 30 1945, MacArthur had not heard when Operation Centerboard would go into effect. It was his impression that the Executive Branch was going soft.
 
Brann angrily refused my offer to boost his link with MacArthur.
 
On August 1, we were startled into wakefulness by a klaxon horn. Ray Fuerte and Choctaw Williams were on monitor duty. They had spotted an American destroyer. We had wandered into the naval blockade of Japan. Brann called for evasive maneuvers but the destroyer tracked us with sonar and dropped depth charges. Although we were well rocked we escaped without damage or injury, or so we thought.
 
We stopped all movement and lay still in the depths. Brann jettisoned a can of oil and some trash to look like flotsam. We took the time to search for damage to the submarine but found nothing.
 
At approximately 2:00 a.m. on August 2 three hull seams split open and water poured into the submarine. We surfaced as fast as the sub would rise but the strain tore the submarine in half. We were still fifty feet down when a wall of water poured over us. Somehow we made it to the surface.
 
Brann had had the foresight to grab an self-inflating raft, I had grabbed some rations, the men of Company X had wrapped their weapons in rubber cloths.
As we were waiting for it to inflate, a slight ghost pain crept up my leg. Looking down I saw a gray flash and the tip of my foot break the water like a boat's prow.
 
Ray Fuerte screamed as a hole opened up in his side. His innards flooded the waters like so much chum. I found it odd that these sharks were attacking people, they usually would not. However with all the dead sailors in the Pacific in the last four years, some sharks must have gained a healthy taste for human flesh.
 
We climbed up in the life raft. Our last sighting had been Amami island, we were some 300 miles from Japan. Our radio had sunk with the submarine as had most of our weapons. I had the sword I had taken from the Japanese Captain. Brann and Williams retained their sidearms and Four Eyes had brought up his M-16 with a few rounds of ammo.
 
The life raft came equipped with rubber sails and aluminum masts. Brann hauled the sail up and lashed it. He went over to the farthest part of the raft and sat facing towards the sail. He reached inside his soaked shirt and pulled out a small waterproof bag and pulled the contents out. Inside were four waterproof maps and two Philippine cigars each about a foot long. One was wet down half its length.
 
Brann shook his head glumly and split the wet cigar in half and threw it in my general direction. He bit the off of the shortest one and spit the cigar end at me. Sticking the six inch cigar in his mouth Brann said, "Did you know I was a masked vigilante for a while, a so called superhero? When the General figured out what I was doing he ordered me to stop. The papers called me The Bugler. Here's why."
 
Brann stuck his hands in front of his mouth, one after the other around the unlit cigar. He curled them about the cigar pursed his lips and began blowing, his fingers moving like they were pumping valves. To my amazement a clear, loud bugling sounded, reverberating across the ocean waves. Along with the bugle sound came a blast of a strong wind which filled the sail and pushed us forward a few feet.
 
Brann spoke around his cigar and through his curled hands. "I can play several songs, "the Charge", makes this wind pushing on anything in front of where I blow. "Taps' will knock out a person standing in front of me when I blow it. "Reveille" levitates objects or people about two feet off the air but that one really takes a lot of my energy. I can also blow "A Mighty Fortress is My God" this makes this invisible barrier around me, making me bullet proof. I’m gonna try and blow us to Japan but I can't do it all in one sitting. So I need you to make us invisible again."
 
Brann began blowing the "Charge". He played for two hours with three two minute rests between each set. In little spurts we sailed to Japan. I concentrated on keeping us invisible. Williams and Four Eyes had to keep tacking the sail and keeping the lifeboat's rudder on a steady course. Willie the Snake kept guard. Without the lively Ray Fuerte to spark things up the crew was a pretty solemn bunch. Four Eyes and Willie the Snake played poker with invisible cards. They both won and lost millions of dollars from each other.
By mid-afternoon their rations were gone, so I dangled my arm outside the raft when Four Eyes spotted a shark. As the shark took my arm, Williams summoned the Bear and killed it with ursine punch to the head. They dined on raw shark meat, I was glad I no longer needed to eat.
 
We traveled some hundred miles that day, making it to the southernmost tip of Tanega island. We hid in a secluded cove. The island literally crawled with Japanese military, this island being fortified for the forthcoming invasion of the Japanese home islands.
 
By nightfall I suffered from the effort of maintaining an continuous invisible shield about us but I persisted despite the returning agony of a brain strain I had not felt for years.
 
Although quite reluctant to do so I disengaged myself from the body of the Japanese sailor and had Four Eyes shove it into the drink.
Brann ate huge portions of the shark and fell into an exhausted sleep becoming comatose for nearly nine hours.
 
Next morning was August 3 and we awoke shortly after sunlight. I should say they awoke because having disposed of a body, I no longer needed to sleep.
After a breakfast of fruit and ripe shark Captain Brann sounded the "Charge" and we began sailing for Japan.
 
A Japanese patrol boat heard the bugle and raced after us. Although I could shield our sight from the minds of the pursuing Japanese, the sounds of the bugle were something I could not disguise, not to so many at once. The Japanese laid down a barrage at the sound of the bugle, several hit near the life boat forcing me to drop our aura of invisibility and erect a mental barrier which kept us from harm. Each shell impact weakened the barrier so I could not withstand the shooting for long and told Brann.
 
Blowing taps, Brann swept his invisible bugle across the Japanese patrol boat three times in quick succession before all the Japanese had slumped over unconscious. We had neither the time nor the temperament to rescue two of the Japanese sailors who fell overboard.
 
When we reached the Japanese island of Honshu we would have to sail silently, supplemented by rowing. Brann bugle would have every patrol boat in the area chasing us. By mid-morning we reached the coast of Honshu, Brann collapsed into a deep and restless sleep. Mr. Morgue, Willie the Snake, Corporal Williams and Four Eyes rowed upstream on a rotating schedule.
 
By noon we were just outside of the mouth of the Bungo Channel.
 
No one but Brann knew which way to go. He was so deep in an exhausted sleep that it took the best part of fifteen minutes to wake him.
 
Brann stared at us with half lucid eyes.
 
"We need to know where to go, Captain." Williams said softly. He knew how sound carried on the water and did not want to alert anyone.
 
"There are four target sites. I don't know which one they have decided upon."
Not knowing of any other way, Brann reached out and contacted General MacArthur through their blood link. I used a good portion of my mental powers to supplement Brann's telepathic link, the rest was spent making certain we remained invisible.
 
MacArthur was surprised at the clarity Brann could mindspeak with him. Recognizing my mind pattern, MacArthur unconsciously revealed a deep and abiding contempt and hatred for me. He told Brann that the target city was Hiroshima and broke contact, eager to get my presence out of his mind
Brann frowned at hearing this name.
 
"Hiroshima is the most difficult of the projected targets, so far as we are concerned. Our mission in the other cities, Kobe, Tokyo or Kyoto would have been to locate and free the prisoners of war before Operation Centerboard took place.
 
"Hiroshima does not have a prisoner of war camp but since it is a major manufacturing city and a major communications hub it is heavily manned by military personnel and is heavily fortified. Our mission is to disable the anti-aircraft capabilities and the communications network."
 
Staring at Brann I asked, "When are they going to drop the bomb?"
 
"Goddamn you, stay out of my mind.'" screamed Brann. His voice echoed across the sun bright waters.
 
"I did not read your mind. I had deduced the nature of your mission from the first day. Despite having been on a tropical island, I have kept abreast of modern science and knew it was only a matter of time before a fission bomb was built. I had heard that Germany and the US were in a race to make one and so with Germany out of the picture, the US won the race. Being a rather parsimonious nation, I know the US would not spend so much time and finance on a weapon they did not intend on using.
 
"As for my involvement, since nothing else has seemed to destroy me, why not try what had created me, atomic radiation. MacArthur believes that this will be a good way to dispose of me and to his surprise I concur. So when is the due date for the birth of the new age?"
 
"Two days, provided the weather cooperates." Brann remarked, I could feel his distrust of me singing through the air like a high tension wire. He motioned for Williams to begin rowing. He sat back and lit his cigar with two matches and lay back puffing. His clouds of cigar smoke drifted out of our invisibility shield and hung over the ocean like a mist before slowly dissipating.
 
Having little time to waste, we set off immediately, sailing up the narrow, Bungo Channel. The Channel was very crowded with marine vessels and we had to sail and row without conversing. The trip was mainly a blank for me because almost all of my concentration was used in maintaining an invisible shield. If we were detected, the results could be fatal not only for the mission but for the US war effort. The nuclear strike was needed to end the war and save a million or so American lives.
 
After being inside the Bungo Channel for a few hours I began experiencing some very strange sensations. My powers faded steadily, then suddenly blossomed forth stronger than ever and slowly faded again. My companions noticed this waxing and waning because we fluxed in and out of visibility.
 
At first, I had trouble concentrating because there was a constant itching, buzzing crawling through my brain and a thousand of scrambled, jumbled discordant voices filled my ears with a distant static.
 
As we moved further into the Channel the buzzing became a hissing, growing steadily into a shrill, piercing whistle which filled my ears and mind with solid, white noise babble. The sound became solid spikes driven into my eardrums. My eyes watered leaching out the remnants of moisture in my head, specifically from my still vital eyes and brain. I realized that if I could not stop this process I would dry out, yet I would still live in some paralyzed, half life existence even worse than the one I already had.
 
Dropping the invisibility shield, I concentrated on the sound, investigating it telepathically. The sound became visible to my eyes, it was a flowing ocean surrounding us, an ocean of multicolored waves, particles, beams, webs and flickers of light.
 
"Four Eyes switch to infra red or ultraviolet eyes and tell me what you see."
Four Eyes did so and shrugged. "I just see a lot of radio transmissions and the radar net.
 
Having never been so close to such a massive outpouring of electro-magnetic energy I never thought that it would affect me so. This vast field of electro-magnetic energy shorted out my powers. I had unconsciously attempted to override it but without the proper energy signatures, it was like shoving to magnets with the same polarity together, all you get is repulsed.
 
Instead of going against the current, I had to find my way into the current and flow along with it.
 
We sat exposed along the side of Eta Jima island, in the Hiroshima bay for about a half an hour before I found the proper way of entering the energy field.
 
Once I flowed with the field, the pain and the pressure in my mind disappeared. The energy field throbbed beneath my mentality like rapids pushing a raft along towards a waterfall. The problem was keeping my mind from being swept along and over the edge. After a few moments I discovered a way of riding the currents without being sucked up by them. The energy field changed in my perception. It was not so much as a river or ocean but a vast electrical current like a light socket and I was a bulb ready to plugged in.
 
With some sense of excitement and fear, I plugged my mind into the electrical field.
 
My mind became a burning flame yet I felt no pain. A tidal wave comprising a million thoughts and sensations rode over me but like a surfer, I steered my way around them and rode the wave out.
 
The world became transparent and fluorescent at the same time, I could see the molecular, electrical, anatomical, atomic and chemical structures of everything surrounding me. Every mind near me became an open book. The power in this energy field was too much for my mind to utilize so I backed out of it, creating mental dampers letting through the amount of energy I needed.
 
Using but a small fraction of the electro-magnetic field, I created an impenetrable invisible barrier and siphoned energy into my fatigued companions. My skull, they tell me sat on the floor of the raft and glowed a brilliant pale green as my eyes burned with blinding blue lights.
 
This episode left me with a great deal of unease, if this little bit of energy could fill me with such power, then what might the power released from nuclear fission do to me? I wondered if we had all miscalculated. Being at the center of an atomic explosion might not kill me at all, it was conceivable that it might prolong my half life, driving me further into madness, filling me with unfathomable power, corrupting me even further.
 
For the sake of my soul and for the sake of the world I prayed that this would not be the case.
 
With renewed vigor, my companions rowed towards Hiroshima proper. We traveled along the west coast of Eta Jima Island and across Hiroshima bay.
Captain Brann had pulled out one of the four waterproof maps he had kept on his person.
 
One map showed Hiroshima and highlighted Company X's mission targets. Hiroshima was composed of six deltaic islands, looking much like a human hand, the fingers being the various islands. Eight rivers separated the islands from the mainland and from each other. About a hundred or so bridges connected the islands to one another. The Aioi bridge stood out because it connected the three middle islands in a T-shape, the commander of the bombing run had selected this bridge as his Aiming Point.
 
Not only was the Aioi bridge centrally located but it was quite near the Chogoku Regional Military Headquarters, the Hiroshima Communications Bureaus, the Kempe Tai (Secret Police) headquarters and Hiroshima Castle which contained ammunition and supply depots and the civil defense headquarters. Also in this general area were stationed some 40,000 soldiers.
 
Brann's mission was to cripple the communications and defense capabilities of the city prior to the attack. This was to ensure the safety of the bombers and to prevent a military evacuation of the target site, rendering the strike ineffectual.
Once their mission was complete Company X was to get as far from the city as they could and hole up until the invasion or surrender. There was a good chance they would not escape in time but they were willing to take that chance.
 
Their orders concerning me had been to capture and transport me to the target site. The lead lined box I was supposed to be imprisoned within was to be dropped into the Aioi river just under the bridge. MacArthur hoped I would be vaporized when the bomb detonated. However since I had volunteered to go along with my execution, Brann offered me to choice of being dropped off at the bridge or accompanying them on their mission.
 
I told them I would decide when we reached the Aiming Point.
 
We reached the mouth of the Motoyasu river at 10:00 p.m. on July 5, 1945. My companions rowed slowly and silently up the river. Four Eyes kept a close look out, using his night vision. I maintained the invisibility shield, a mere child's play with all the energy at my disposal. The difficult part was in not pulling into much energy or to lose my mind in the barrage of a million thoughts swirling about in the energy field.
 
"Captain, I thought Hiroshima was on the no hit list." Four Eyes asked. He referred to cities not bombed by U.S. Planes.
 
"Yeah, it and the other possible target sites. why?
 
"Looks like somebody bombed the mess out of them. They got all this rubble just piled up in big, fat rows."
 
"Ain't bombing, its a firebreak. They got three of them in the city. They know its only a matter of time before they get bombed, Hiroshima being a major port and industrial town.' Mr. Morgue informed us. He answered Williams stare. "The submarine we took over was named INSIDE SEA and that refers the area around the Hiroshima. The Captain was from Hiroshima and knew what was going on in his home town."
 
Brann told Four Eyes to give him a running commentary of what he saw and for Mr. Morgue to interpret it. Brann reasoned it would give us some current intelligence.
 
The Motoyasu river had been a densely populated area but with the devastation of homes pulled down to make fire breaks, the river banks were mighty thinned out. Four Eyes saw very little road traffic. Mr. Morgue explained that all private autos had been confiscated for metal as had all taxis. The only vehicles allowed on the streets were military vehicles, transportation and supply trucks and bicycles.
 
Mr. Morgue said that the naval blockade and the loss of the Chinese territories showed how badly the war was going for the Japanese home islands.
Very few supplies were being shipped into this major port, except for military supplies. The ordinary people were subsisting on a bowl of rice and a few vegetables a day. They had taken to eating reeds, brambles or sorrel as a rice substitute. Grubs, beetles and worms of all kinds were roasted and eaten. Coal for heating was becoming scarce and balled up and charred newspapers soaked in water were used instead. Clothing was so scarce that men and women wore the same sort of outfit, a high necked buttoned jacket and trousers. The only available soap was made of rice bran and caustic soda.
 
Kindergartens and middle schools were closed, the children drafted into volunteer brigades to pull down houses and add to the firebreaks. Children from twelve upwards and all sound and healthy adults were drafted to work at the munitions factories.
 
The peak population of Hiroshima had been 340,000 due to forced evacuations there were now only 280,000 left. 70,000 homes had been destroyed to make the firebreaks.
 
This was a nation on the verge of collapse. To Four Eyes remark on this matter, Mr. Morgue said that this was quite probably true, however the military faction in power would not surrender so easily. They were training the common people to fight a guerrilla war if necessary, children were being taught to make and throw soda bottle bombs and old folks were training with bamboo spears. An invasion would be costly in Allied lives.
 
As we neared the Aioi Bridge, I felt the energy field increase about me. More effort was required to dampen the energy flowing into me and to keep errant thoughts from creeping into my mind. Distantly a flicker of a familiar thought pattern passed by my mind. It was not someone I recognized but amongst the thousands of minds thinking in Japanese, someone was thinking in English. Extending my consciousness, I experienced the emotions of fear, anger and despair. Ghost pains shot through my mind as I established a slight mind link, he had been badly beaten and was in serious pain. Nearby I found several more similar minds.
 
"Captain Brann, there are American prisoners in Hiroshima." I whispered in my bodiless voice.
 
"What! There's not supposed to be a camp here."
 
"There isn't, they’re the remaining members of a flight crew shot down a few days ago. They are being held in the Castle."
 
"Damnation! Well we can t let them boys get blowed up if we can help it. Mr. Morgue, you and the Bear do what damage you can to the communications and defense capabilities. Four Eyes and I will try and get them boys out."
 
"Find me a body and I will go with you, Captain Brann. ' I said, feeling caught up in the patriotic moment.
 
Brann gave me a look like he swallowed something bitter. "Very well, once we are ashore, Mr. Williams procure a body for El Head. Four Eyes proceed to the radar and defense stations disable them discreetly. Mr. Morgue disable what vehicles you can and the cable car line. Snakeman eliminate the Mayor and any Commanding military officers you can find. Corporal Williams, take out what anti-aircraft positions you can locate. Since time is short, we will not make a rendezvous. As soon as you complete your missions, head for the hills as fast as you can. Godspeed to you all.
 
The members of Company X discarded their distinctive jump suits and headgear, wanting to be taken as downed servicemen rather than spies. By now they knew they had nothing to fear from me. They shook each others hands when we reached the Aioi bridge. Mr. Morgue sank the boat while Williams lumbered off. In the dark distance we heard a roar and a scream. Williams returned carrying a body under his left arm. It was a young soldier about seventeen years old.
 
Captain Brann hewed off the head and the others held up the body and placed me upon it. As I adjusted to my new body, the three noncoms of Company X hurried off to fulfill their missions.

El Head, The Bugle Man, The Little Boy and the Big Lizard- Part One

 EL HEAD, THE BUGLE MAN, THE LITTLE BOY & THE BIG LIZARD :
The Final Destruction of El Head

Section One

Transcription of statement given by Eiko Barnes, a patient of Dr. Hermann Blodgett. While undergoing past lives therapy in April of 1992 Mrs. Barnes related the following anecdote.

 

My name is Paul Crane, I am a disembodied head which remains in a state of half life. I have been known by several names throughout my long half life, the most prevalent being El Head, El Cabezo Diablo and El Jefe.
 
Until the mid twenties I was not certain as to what had caused my condition. I had a general idea of what the substance was called but not of its properties or effects on human tissue. It was radium, that same substance used in modern medicine yet which turned the beautiful Madame Curie into the Vampire Queen of Paris. I was one of the first known freaks caused by radium, at least one of the freaks whose direct cause can now be traced back to radium.
 
I and four others became blood brothers in the American West when we found gold in a Nevada valley in 1870. This valley was so permeated with radium and uranium that all the dirt, grass, water, air and even the gold in that valley was radioactive. This radiation had a swift and permanent mutagenic effect on us. The sharing of blood was also key to our transformation because one of our number was suffering from mercury poisoning, a factor which affected his blood and ours when the mercury mixed with the radioactive dirt.
 
My partners attempted to kill me, leaving me a disembodied head with a dismembered and slowly decaying corpse. I had to drag my corpse around with me wherever I went until it disintegrated. In addition to a half life, the radiation had given me mental powers which increased the longer I existed.
 
Over the next few years, I tracked down my blood brothers and killed them one by one. As my agents in these activities, I used humans who had shared blood with me. They became known as my Headsmen or Head's Hunters. I had discovered by accident, as did my former partners that the act of sharing blood or semen would cause the recipient to become influenced by us, depending the strength of their characters. The fluid exchange also caused mutagenic changes in some humans. We created several mutants in this fashion.
 
Fortunately, our mutants were not like the victims of Madam Curie's vampirism, where the recipient of the mutagenic change could also transmit the change. Our mutations primarily lasted one generation and most of our recipients were rendered sterile, although some did have progeny.
 
Even though by the late thirties, I was in the South Seas, I did hear of super powered heroes and villains bursting on the public scene. I wondered how many were related to me by blood.
 
I left the United States in early 1899 and traveled to the South Seas, hoping that the Head Hunters could give me release from my tedious half life. They could not but it was here that I discovered that I could animate a fresh corpse by tapping into its spinal column. The head hunters supplied me with a supply of bodies and I supplied them with heads.
 
I became their King of sorts and by the late thirties I controlled many of the smaller islands between the Philippines and Australia. By design I avoided, the more civilized areas, because they were painful reminders of what I had lost. Also to rule a civilized land, you must control so many minds that it takes too much power and eventually everything collapses. I learned that on a smaller scale in Oklahoma when I took over several ranches. Perhaps someone :'n a complete and healthy body would not have as much trouble as I did, but I will get to that eventually.
 
I came to the Philippines in the 1899 just after the Spanish American war. At the time I did not know the United States would be interested in ruling the Philippines. I found this intolerable. While I did not start the Philippine revolution, I kept the Philippine resolve going by controlling a few secret Headsmen. One of my American Headsmen became US Army Chief of Staff and one of my Philippine Headsmen became the President of the Philippines.
 
In hindsight, I should have made an effort to expand my influence, to make some headway into the Japanese Empire. My failure to do so cost millions of lives. You who know my history, if there is indeed anyone out there who does, may wonder at my guilt. Yes, I do feel guilt. I went through a long period where human life meant less than nothing to me. I would implement any scheme I thought necessary for my immediate or future comfort, despite the cost in human lives.
 
Once having mastered the ability to wear fresh corpses, I changed bodies rapidly, often two or three a day. Yet I found that the sensations I felt were fleeting, despite how many bodies I wore. Killing a man so I could taste or touch for an hour or so palled on me after a decade. Eventually I used bodies until they were to the point of disintegration and then I would execute convicted criminals to get another body.
 
During the late twenties and thirties my ambitions waned as did my desire to live. I allowed my pirate empire to collapse, concentrating my sphere of influence to a few, small islands near Borneo. My people were pirates and would raid for me but I was searching not for power, not for vengeance and not for a new way to live vicariously, but for knowledge. They would stop passenger ships, marine vessels and other sorts of craft and steal books. I studied all I could find about radioactive materials and their effects.
 
I don't know exactly when it was that I discovered that my mental powers were electro-magnetic in nature. Perhaps about the time that radio finally reached the South Seas. Yet it was only rarely that I could sense radio broadcasts, being far from the range of radio frequencies.
 
I was unaware of the growing, ambitious power of Japan until it was too late. It was not until I felt the deaths of several of my blood linked in the Philippines that I knew about the Japanese invasion.
 
Even my island was not immune from Japanese incursions. Whenever a Japanese patrol would land on our island, my head hunters became guerrilla fighters and I wore several Japanese bodies.
 
I defended my own but did not seek to expand my influence outwards. I worked with the US forces but did not seek an alliance with them, despite one of my Headsman becoming Allied Commander of the Pacific.
 
I discovered late in the thirties when a plane passed nearby, that for a time I could hear the thoughts of people close to the radio beams. Once I tried using a high powered radio transmitter but soon abandoned it as too dangerous to my people. The Japanese or Americans could triangulate on us and bomb us. Not wishing to put my people in jeopardy I desisted with my experiments.
 
The war passed slowly and we were never quite certain who held which islands. News filtered in only when I overhead passing radio transmissions and the thoughts of those near the radio beam.
 
In early July of 1945, I felt a presence I had not felt in nearly twenty years. One of my blood linked was drowning not too distantly from where I resided. Immediately, I sent out a search and rescue party.
 
That they found him alive and well gratified me, however several members of the search and rescue team were shot down in a surprise attack. This so enraged me that I nearly called for a massive attack on the rescued party but my days of wanton slaughter were over.
 
My Head Hunters strode into my village a few hours later held at gun point by several men dressed in a combination of US Army combat gear and what looked like costumes out the Buck Rogers cartoon strip I saw in the occasional newspaper. These Americans wore silvery jumpsuits, goggles and earmuffs but wore combat boots and carried M-16's. From their garb, I knew that they were not members of the regular army. Somehow their thoughts were shielded from me. I could not read one thought from any of them. Three of them carried a heavy box with wheels attached to its bottom.
 
I recognized their leader right away he being blood linked to me. He was a tall middle aged black man carrying a backpack and a fifty caliber machine gun. A cloud of smoke whirled about his head from the large cigar he smoked. It looked like a Luzon cigar being close to a foot long and several inches in diameter, like smoking a small log. He had Captain's bars affixed to the shoulders of his silver suit.
 
"Phineas Brann, as I don't live and don't breathe. After nearly eighty years of service in the US Army you've finally made Captain?"
 
Taking the cigar from his mouth, he grasped it in his fist and stabbed at me while speaking "Don't crack wise, Mr. Crane. Our mission is to escort you to a destination wherein you will be terminated. We have developed special gear to withstand your mental powers and to neutralize you. You have the option of coming along peacefully."
 
"I may go peacefully. Tell me who your men are and what's the plan."
"We are a special combat force formed by General Douglas MacArthur back when he was Army Chief of Staff. I was his first recruit. All of my recruits are men marred by your blood or the blood of your partners."
 
Brann used his cigar as a pointer, starting with a man barely four feet tall and yet seemingly four feet wide. "We got Ray Fuerte, a super strong dwarf known in the wrestling world as the Tiny Terror. He is a grandson of your friend, Dio Fuerte, the Lizard Boy and some woman he raped. Also there is Chock Williams also known as the Bear because he manifests as one when he becomes extremely angry." This was a tall, stocky built man with faintly Indian features.
Next was a tall man with a wiry build, jittery in nature. He was introduced as Willie the Snake, because he could move as fast as one and when he struck at someone his fingers jetted poison tipped darts.
 
Next was a robust, cheerful looking black man. Captain Brann introduced him as Mr. Morgue. His delightful ability was to stick his fingers into the brain of the recently dead and absorb their memories and learned skills.
 
The last soldier was a short man wearing glasses. He was called Four Eyes. This was not merely because he wore glasses but because this glasses focused and controlled his natural ability to see in the infrared spectrum, telescopically for up to five miles, fluorescent to some extent and microscopically. Without these glasses his optic nerves were barraged by all four visions at once and the influx of sight effectively blinded him. Least ways this is what they told me at that time.
 
"We are the members of Company X chosen to deal with you."
 
"What is this Company X?"
 
Brann took a deep puff on his cigar and glared at me for a second, then he laughed. "Alright play your little games, Crane. We are a special unit formed to deal with the domestic menaces caused by your blood born mutations. After the war started we became commandos and partisans fighting behind enemy lines. Our mission, as if you did not already know, is to capture the man responsible for the start of World War II and take him to his final judgment."
 
I had to laugh at that, although slightly flattered by such an estimate of my power.
 
"Because I influenced the outcome of a few battles you believe I caused World War II? I had nothing to do with it. Even if I did, isn't out of your jurisdiction to try, convict and sentence me to death without a trial."
 
"Do you deny that you were in Europe in 1887?" shouted the dwarf, Ray Fuerte. I saw a lot of Dio in his features. He had the same hatred for the world at large.
His question shocked me. I had thought my visit to Europe was a well kept secret. Needing to leave the Southwest for a while, I had traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as they toured Europe. I had kept hidden except for a few times when I had wandered about in the background. Seeing nothing to gain by lying, I admitted that I was in Europe during the time mentioned.
 
"We know you were because Buffalo Bill mentioned something about you in his diary. Once your presence had been confirmed, it was simple enough to see your mind controlled web at work." Fuerte continued.
 
Had I shoulders I would have shrugged. "I do not have the faintest idea of what you are talking about.
 
"Skunk Man." Brann replied as if this was an answer. He blew a cloud of smoke at me as it punctuated his remark.
 
"Whom or what is this Skunk Man?" I asked feeling slightly bewildered, for the first time in ages I was not able to read minds past confused conversation.
 
"He was your blood spawned European puppet during the Great War". said Willie the Snake.
 
"I have never heard of the man." I said with complete honesty.
 
"Skunk Man was a British secret weapon during the Great War. He was a freak of nature, one of your freaks. He had the ability to exude noxious and deadly gases from his body, you can image from where. He infiltrated German lines and cut loose with some gas which killed or disabled the Germans. In early 1939, when we were researching the life of one of Skunk Man's victims we traced Skunkman's ability back to you. It was this link that has condemned you." The man named Four Eyes said in a curiously dispassionate manner. No expression could be read on his face and his eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses of his glasses.
 
"Because some Limey with fatal flatulence and hazardous halitosis kills some Germans in the Great War, I started this war? Stop dancing around, tell me straight out what it is you think I did."
 
Brann flicked a few inches of cigar ash onto the ground and stared at me as if he could not believe that I was being so difficult.
 
"Alright. Skunk Man did not come in contact with any radioactive material in his life. The only possible connection we could find was that he attended Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as a boy in London. It was undoubtedly there that you exchanged blood with him and made him one of your creatures.
 
"During the Great War with few exceptions people exposed to his gases were permanently injured or killed. They did not recover rapidly and then return to their units to finish out the war. However one of these victims did just that. He was a Corporal decorated several times for bravery.
 
Before the war this Corporal had been a ne 'er-do-well portrait painter and want-to-be architect. He had lived a rather Bohemian life and worked occasionally but spent most of his time going to the opera or sitting in coffee shops. After the war he became radicalized involving himself in right wing politics."
 
Brann was working himself up into a deep anger, his brown skin flushed to an almost ebony hue. His voice rose and soon he was shouting.
 
"After the war, almost to the minute after he had recovered from his gas attack he displayed this uncanny, almost supernatural ability to mesmerize and motivate large masses of people. His speeches were bland, almost boring when read as a text. Yet people responded to them almost orgiastically, as if under some massive mind control.
 
Brann somehow sensed that I had no idea of whom he was talking about. He screamed "His name is Adolf Hitler and he is one of your creatures!
 
Even in my isolated island, I had heard of Adolf Hitler. If he was one of my blood spawn, I had not known it. I had never felt any connection to him but then I had never tried.
 
I sat silently for a minute. Thinking back, trying to remember if I could have accidentally given this so called Skunk Man part of my essence without realizing it.
 
A pistol shot. Yes, that was it. Once I wanted to get a close look at Annie Oakley's shooting and see if there was anything supernatural about it. I had wondered if she were somehow one of us, the freaks caused by radiation. As it turned out I was too close to the plates because one of the shattered plate shards clipped me and neatly snipped off a piece of my flesh. It was not a large piece, perhaps the size of a fingernail clipping.
 
The flesh tumbled down and I saw it fall into the popcorn box of a young boy. He ate a mouthful of popcorn but seemed to have no ill effects so I figured he must have dropped it or else it had missed the box.
 
It is possible that I may have indirectly caused Adolf Hitler to gain some sort of power but why should this condemn me to death? Was he worse than any other dictator?"
 
Phineas Brann gave me a look somewhere between disgust and pity. Pursing his lips, he stared at me in silence for a second or two, taking the opportunity to suck in a cloud of smoke from his burning log. "I guess, maybe you didn't know. I guess the General and I have hated you for so long and for so hard we thought you capable of just about anything."
 
He looked away from me for a moment, then he back, his face a hard stone mask. "Still, a man has to own up to his actions. If you forgot to set the brake on a car and it went rolling down the hill and killed some little kid, that man ought to be responsible for that crime right?"
 
"Yes," I answered.
 
"Get the folder. Show him the photos. "Brann said his jaw clenched and teeth digging deep into his cigar.
 
Mr. Morgue reached into his backpack and brought out a fat pouch wrapped in oilskins. 'These photos were taken earlier this year in April and May. They are of places called Dachau, Belsen, Treblinka and Auschwitz."
 
Mr. Morgue stood before me and showed me all the pictures in that pack. I need not detail the horrors that I saw, everyone knows what went on in those camps. The piled corpses, the smoking ovens, the living skeletons, all these foul images swirled into my brain in some hideous collage.
 
I cursed because I no longer had any eyelids, I could not close my eyes, I could not shut out the constant sickening images. As the horrors piled up one after another, my anguished moans turned into soft screams of rage. For the first time in eighty years I wanted to cry, to wash humanity's filth from my eyes. Yet I felt strangely glad that I had no stomach else I would have vomited for hours.
Had I set the car in motion? Were the deaths of all those children, of all those people my responsibility? Was my blood, even diluted in this great degree the direct cause of this extermination? Were the deaths of eight million men, women and children my legacy?
 
It had taken me almost sixty years to realize that on the day of my resurrection, I had been given two paths to follow. To use my mental gifts and long life for good or for evil. I had chosen the latter path and it had brought me only momentary satisfaction. Over all the evil path had brought me only misery.
I had tried to escape from the evil that I had caused, to hide away from the responsibility of the deaths and misery I had made. Yet a man cannot run from his conscience, a man cannot avoid the consequences of his actions forever. Eventually they catch up to you and then there's hell to pay.
 
It was time to pay the piper, the long dance was over and the band was played out.
 
My motives were not nearly as altruistic as they may sound. I had wanted to die for several years. If Brann and his men could kill me I would allow it. Hell, I welcomed it!
 
"Very well, Captain Brann. Take me to where ever we must go".
 
"Just like that?" He asked suspiciously. He also sounded disappointed that he and his men would not get to use their fancy equipment to capture me.
 
"Just like that. I am tired of living."
 
"Alright but at the first sign of trouble, I am slapping you in the box." He blew a gray cloud towards his men and then thrust the red hot tip of his cigar through the cloud to point at the box on wheels.
 
At my request Phineas Brann chopped off one of the heads of my former villagers and then dragged the body near me. He did so with some reluctance. His men regarded me with a general loathing after I had taken up berth in the neck cavity of Sulewa, one of my former friends.
 
Standing on two good legs again, I followed Company X into the rain forest of my island. Not trusting me, they kept on the goggles and earmuffs. I had no idea of our ultimate destination.
 
We reached the shore of our lagoon.
 
Brann snubbed out the remnants of his cigar now down to about four inches in length. He opened his backpack and put the cigar butt inside a waterproof package. Brann told Mr. Morgue to radio the sub that they were ready for pick up. Mr. Morgue took out a small radio set and attempted to call a submarine. There was no answer.
 
"Four Eyes. Search and locate."
 
The short man known as Four Eyes took off his goggles. He immediately stuck on a pair of glasses with orange colored glasses. Slowly and in small increments he swept his head around in a semi-circle starting at his left shoulder and ending at his right.
 
"I don't know if it is ours or not, Captain, but there is a US sub about three miles away and near the bottom. It has been breached. There are bodies floating around it, apparently it was only recently attacked."
 
Brann's face flushed an even darker shade than usual."Suggestions, gentlemen?"
 
No one had any. I spoke up. We could take one of my ships. Since I don't know where we are going I leave it up to you to decide."
 
"We could do it, Captain. Maybe something else better will come along and get a faster ride but until then that sounds like our best option. "Willie the Snake said.
"We have twenty four days until zero hour, gentlemen. Unless the Japs are stubborn we will not get another chance."
 
One of my natives, brought a small fishing boat into the lagoon. I had a plentiful supply of dried foods and gasoline for its small engine. We set off in a north-eastern direction through the South China Sea and into the Philippine Sea.
We chugged and sailed along for a good two weeks. Ships were sparse as were the thousands of vessels from the US fleet. I had expected every inch of these waters to be filled with US ships but they had already moved past this area.
 
During this time the men of Company X warmed up to me a bit although they still kept their distance perhaps because of the rotting corpse I rode. Still, I managed to learn something about each man and about the Company X itself.
Company X had been formed by General MacArthur back in 1935. he had recruited several strangely powered individuals to secretly assist the FBI and aid in overseas espionage. At the beginning of the war there had been twenty-five members of Company X. Two had were double agents for the Axis and had been eliminated. Ten had been killed during the course of the war, five had retired with injuries. One was missing in action. Two were currently in the European theater of the war, aiding in discovering secret Nazi war criminals.
 
Ray Fuerte was the prankster of group, he was a lively little man with a sharp, sarcastic wit. He reminded me of my dear friend Dio, his grandfather, yet Ray seemed more adjusted to his size and more at peace with the world. Dio had such a hatred towards the world that he had a god awful mean streak, I must confess I exploited that trait to it fullest extent. Another log added to the pyre built for me in Hell, no doubt.
 
Fuerte kept the others at ease by joking, insulting and carrying on. He was one of the few members of Company X without a criminal record. He had been recruited by MacArthur shortly after the war broke out. Fuerte had attempted to enlist in every branch of service he could but was rejected because of his size, despite the fact that he could lift one ton and was highly acrobatic.
 
Willie the Snake was a rather high strung man I found this rather odd considering his former occupation had been a Mafia hit man. Willie was the descendent of Jeff Justice Bolane, Donegal Ryan's second banana. Ryan had been one of my arch enemies and one of the men who had killed me.
 
Willie was jittery because he preferred killing from ambush not in combat and because he had smoked his allotment of cigarette a few days into their mission. He was a chain smoker who not only smoked his cigarettes but those of Four Eyes, Fuerte, Williams and Mr. Morgue.
 
Corporal Williams was a quarter Choctaw Indian. He had been raised as a typical farm boy but his visiting grandfather had urged him to get in touch with his Indian ancestry. He had attempted to go on a vision quest on his own without a spirit guide. Williams had succeeded in contacting his totem animal, a grizzly bear but the bear had marked his soul so that when Williams became angry the Bear would be summoned.
 
This was what he told me, I later discovered that only the first part of the story was true. His father had regularly beat the boy, often to the point of senselessness. During one beating Williams had fought back and his bearish aura had manifested and tore his father to shreds. Williams had been recruited out of the insane asylum where he had been confined.
 
Mr. Morgue or Eric Dee Williams was also a criminal of sorts. He had been working as an assistant in the morgue, preparing the bodies for autopsy and other scut work when he accidentally discovered his talent. He said he had been lifting a brain out of a skull to be put in a jar of formaldehyde when his hand had slipped and his fingers had slipped into the brain tissue. He had absorbed the person's memories. Mr. Morgue had decided to improve his mind and had, over the course of two years, selectively drained the brains of teachers, doctors, lawyers and anyone who had an interesting vocation.
 
Mr. Morgue had begun law school and would probably graduated with honors except that he panicked on the day before he was supposed to take his bar exam, he went to the morgue and drained the brains of a judge and two lawyers who had been killed on a fishing trip. His supervisor had caught him doing the last one.
 
Mr. Morgue also had been recruited from an insane asylum. This was not as unjust as it may sound. Although, Mr. Morgue put on a happy go lucky face I could sense that he was deeply disturbed. He was having trouble containing all the memories in his mind, despite the fact that he had discarded all unwanted memories. His control was slipping, he would sometimes go to the far side of the deck and stand by himself. His face would go through contortions as if undergoing rapid mood changes. He was a time-bomb ticking away.
 
Another tormented soul was Four Eyes or Dave Peelers. He appeared to be a tall thin bookwormy type of guy but underneath that facade was a man filled with rage, fear and guilt. I do not know what caused it but I do know that he needed strict structure in his life and expected everyone else to need it also. He lived by an ironclad schedule with no deviations, he played games exactly by the rules with no deviations. He was sullen and close mouthed about his past yet expected everyone else to share their secrets with him and sulked if they did not.
 
Four Eyes used his telescopic sight to scan the horizon and the ocean depths for any sign of an American vessel from whom we could hitch a ride.
 
One day from his perch on the prow, Four Eyes went rigid.
 
"Sub off the stern, Captain. Two miles distant about two hundred deep. It's a Nipper, Sir."
 
Brann gestured for his men to gather around. "Counsel gentlemen. Do you believe that it is feasible for us to capture and use this submarine for our own purposes?"
 
I believe so, Captain said Corporal Williams. If we can get it to come to the surface."
 
"They have to surface every so often to replenish their air supply. We just have to be nearby when that happens." Ray Fuerte added and cracked his knuckles. They popped like a Gatling gun firing one staccato burst.
 
Nobody asked the obvious question, who was going to run the damned thing if they ever did get hold of it?
 
Following Four Eyes directions, our boat trailed the Japanese Submarine. If it took any notice that we were following it, the submarine made no effort to either shake us nor dissuade us in any fashion.
 
Two days later we were rewarded with the sight of the ocean surface boiling as the prow and body of the submarine broke the surface. Brann asked me how serious I was to make amends for my previous life. I told him deadly serious. He asked if he could make us invisible to the Japanese as we approached the submarine.
 
I agreed and began concentrating on the task. Although I had not practiced this stunt in about twenty years I discovered that my powers were undiminished and were still quite formidable.
 
As our boat bumped against the side of the submarine, Ray Fuerte, Willie the Snake and Choctaw Williams climbed the side ladder to the submarine's deck. They each began tapping on a hatch cover until they heard the bolts slipped and the seals broken.
 
Ray Fuerte's hatch was the first to open. He sent the Japanese sailor who opened it careening back down the ladder with a smashed face. The sailor knocked over several climbing upon the ladder and Ray jumped inside.
 
Willie the Snake stood over a hatch in a rather strange pose. His arms were pressed against his sides from the shoulders to the elbows, he held his forearms up and erect, his hands curled forward. Two pink cobra's ready to strike. When the hatch was open, he stood back and allowed the first two sailors to exit. He then flicked his hands downward like a snake's strike. Ten tiny darts shot from his fingertips and struck the two sailors. They fell to the deck's surface convulsing and salivating a vile, green foam.
 
Willie stuck his hands inside the hatch and rapidly flicked it several times. Screams and the sounds of dying agony followed. A few minutes later he jumped down the hatch.
 
Choctaw Williams stood above the hatch he had chosen to take. His jaw was set tightly and his eyes grew bright red. Brann told me Williams was working himself into a fighting rage. Williams gnawed his lips until they were ragged and bloody, a pink foam formed on his mouth and about his lips. I guess it was close to a Viking's berserker rage.
 
The more enraged Williams became the shinier he became. This nimbus of dark red light formed about Williams, sort of like the radiation which had surrounded my horse Brimstone. This radiation took on a definite shape however and it grew in size. Soon it appeared as if Williams were a man encased in a dark red grizzly bear's silhouette.
 
The first Japanese sailor who poked his head out of the hatch had it removed by one swipe of William's hand. As the headless body tumbled back into the hatch, Choctaw Williams leapt after it, growling and snuffling like a bear on the attack.
In the following few moments we heard growls, shrieks and lots of gunfire. Ray Fuerte poked his head out of one of the hatches and yelled an all clear. We climbed down the ladders and into the Japanese submarine. By this time I found this a difficult task because the body I was using was dry rotting something fierce and the muscles would hardly move.
 
There were Japanese bodies strewn everywhere.
 
Choctaw Williams was huddled, shaking and lethargic in one corner. As I watched he slipped into a fitful slumber. Mr. Morgue remarked when Williams summoned the Bear, he had to hibernate for an hour or so to regain his strength.
 
We discovered that the sub had a compliment of thirty one men. Twenty eight had been killed in taking the submarine and the remaining three had killed themselves. Two junior officers had shot themselves in the head and the man I took to be the Captain had run himself through with his sword.
 
I yanked the sword out of his body and decapitated a nearby corpse who had died by a blow to the head from William's phantom claws. Sitting the body up I sat next to it and evacuated the old body. No one rushed to aid me so I slithered onto the new body myself and slipped into the fresh corpse. The sudden rush of sensation was intoxicating but the smell of death soon became overpowering.
 
Ray Fuerte had closed the hatches but no one knew how to operate the submarine.
 
Mr. Morgue was busily hopping from one corpse to the next, jamming his index fingers deep into their ears. His fingers would sink up to the knuckles and he would shiver and convulse for a moment or so. He would yank out blood painted fingers and move onto the next corpse, ending with the Captain's.
 
Mr. Morgue's usually jolly expression was gone. His face was dispassionate yet had developed odd twitches around the eyes, cheeks, lips and jaws as if it were trying to mold itself into several different expressions at once.
 
"I got the knowledge and am processing it now but I ain't gonna be able to keep it all or run this sub all by myself. I never tried to do so many memories at once, I can feel them slipping away. I am gonna have to disgorge some of them but there ain't a one of you whose a mind reader. We done lost Radio Brain and Antenna last mission.
 
Phineas Brann looked disappointed and then grew angry. "Crud, then all of this was for nothing then." His gaze lighted on me and his face grew even more angrier and worried.
 
"Can you transfer memories from one person to the next, El Head?" he asked in a rather, imperious tone. Without using blood as a medium?"
 
"No, I can read thoughts and even relay thoughts from one person to the next but memories are more chemical than they are electro-magnetic, memories need a biological medium."
 
Phineas Brann slammed a fist against a bulkhead and left the imprint of his knuckles in the metal.
 
In the space of sixty seconds he made up his mind. "Well, we are on a suicide mission anyway."
 
Brann had his men fetch a cup from the galley. I cut a fingertip with the sword and squeezed the blood into it.
 
Brann said, "I cannot in good faith order you men to drink from this cup because while I would order anyone of you to sacrifice yourself for the good of the mission, this is a fate worse than death. If you drink there is a good chance you will become one of his creatures, even with the protective gear. His blood may also cause some drastic changes in you, perhaps negating, enhancing or even twisting the powers you now have."
 
Pausing, Brann quickly stripped off his protective gear.
 
"I will tell you this gentlemen, if we do not learn how to operate this submarine we will become sitting ducks for the US or Japanese navies. Nor will our fishing boat get us much further, we are almost out of gas for it."
Noticing the hesitation of the others, Brann said, " I will drink the first sip of devil's brew."
 
Phineas Brann's form shimmered as he stepped forward. The hand that took the cup from me was not that of a fifty years old man, nor even that of a thirty five year old man but that of a man in his early twenties. Yet it was undeniably Phineas Brann.
 
Noting the looks he received, Brann turned and shouted, "That's right! I'm aging backwards, this bastard did it to me. In the last two years I have regressed twenty years and the rate is increasing, in a few months I will be a toddler and after that an embryo. I won't be Bugle Man no more, but Fetus Man. I've been using a little of the mental power he gave me to generate this illusion of being forty. I'm willing to take the chance, are you?"
 
One after another the members of Company X drank, even Williams who had awakened during the course of our discussion. As soon as my blood had entered their systems I could feel them in my mind as extensions of my consciousness.
Brann's anxiety was stark and vivid and cast a weight upon the rest of us. Although I knew I could not end Brann's bitterness towards me, I opened my mind to his and demonstrated that my only desire was to end my existence.
He fell to his knees under the sudden onslaught of my mental powers. A second later he stood up, noticeably taller when he did as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
 
Mr. Morgue began crying, streams of liquid poured from his eyes and dripped onto the deck forming greasy puddles. This was how he disposed of excess memory, the unwanted memories having been transferred into a chemical format. Drinking his tears was an effective, if extremely rare method of transferring memories, since decoding the chemical messages inside them was a special trait. His tears were fatal to anyone who did not have this ability.
Using our blood link, I searched Mr. Morgue's mind and found all the information about the submarine. I copied these memories into my mind and then relayed this information into the minds of Company X, our shared blood replicated the chemical messages of these memories inside their brain cells.
 
After comprehending the implanted information about the submarine, Brann began barking orders, commanding his troops to man certain key stations.
 
Those two members not on sub duty had the pleasant task of collecting the dead bodies and jettisoning them through the torpedo tubes. The sharks had a feast that day.