Nectar of the Ungodly: A Mike Dodge Tale

Palm Shadows

Gilbert, Arizona

6:26 p.m.

October 31, 2022

I’d already encountered a full set of Avengers — the virtual Pokemon of Halloween – a few Harley Quinns (PG version), a coven of witches both old-school and merched-out Hocus Pocus, a few stragglers who hadn’t yet outgrown their siblings’ Woody the Cowboy duds, and one small, un-ironic Trump.

“And who might you be?” I beamed as a tot in a horned fur hat and face paint approached. Then I placed it – a hometown AZ boy, in fact, known for his superficial interest in indigenous wizardry and supervising the rehabbing of the U.S. House floor year or so back.

“Dunno,” the kid muttered. “I asked Mom to let me be Antman, but Daddy said this was more, more ‘original.’ I don’t even know who I am.”

“A not uncommon condition these days,” I suggested. The boy stood mutely, and I apologetically dumped a half-dozen Snickers into the unfortunate little shaman’s bag.

The screams broke my contemplation on contemporary parenting, and I stumbled toward the source of the terrified shouts, near the communal trash and recycling bins. A knot of children were clustered on the lawn of the currently vacant 158, some sobbing, others attempting to calm or console the youngest ghouls, a few gathered in a tight circle around what appeared to be a prone Viking. Thor.

“What happened?” I breathed, reaching for my iPhone as I gently nudged the other trick-or-treaters.

“It was him, it,” a teen voice stammered. The boy wore a red-and-blue Spidey suit, his mask in his clenched fist. “It attacked them, the kids. We tried to stop him, it, whatever, and it grabbed Eric.”

I checked the fallen Eric’s pulse, and punched 9-1-1 into the phone as presumably more responsible grownups approached from several directions.

“Yeah, we got an assault victim here at the Palm Shadows complex in Gilbert,” I told the dispatcher. “Near the corner of Val Vista and, er, Palm Shadows Way. Sure, I will.”

Spiderman blinked by the light of the outsized, unnaturally luminous moon. “Is he gonna be OK?”

“Gawd, I hope so. Who attacked you guys, ah, what’s your name?”

“Troy.” He glanced about, suddenly self-conscious. He kneeled next to me and leaned in.

“The ghost,” Troy whispered. “In 127.”

“It must’ve been those punks,” a harsh voice rasped as I processed Troy’s statement. It was Hank, the authoritarian president of the HOA — just what the situation needed. Hank viewed me with glacial suspicion, like even at 64, nothing would fix my shit like a good military school. Hank also was no fan of cultural diversity, and ‘punks’ was his delightful name for the kind of kid beginning to moan on the ground.

“Hank, chill the hell out,” I said evenly. I scanned the lawn. Disney princesses peered dismally into empty bags; hollow plastic pumpkins and ripped paper sacks littered the landscape.

“Stealing candy from fucking children,” Hank rumbled.

**

Luckily, Jesus arrived with the uniforms. Not the Son of God one; Hay-zeus, of the Gilbert PD. It had been about nine years ago we’d first met, after I found a dead minimart robber seemingly killed by, well, never mind. We’d had a few lunches over the intervening years.

 “Yeah. Here’s the thing,” Jesus said as I handed him a cup of black coffee. “Your Mr. Brewer is fairly shall we say riled about this situation. I don’t want some Trayvon Martin scenario if he mobilizes a neighborhood watch like he says.”

“The average age in our little Shangri-la is somewhere around 157. We’d essentially have to infarct all over evildoers.”

“Strange nobody at all saw anything – nobody running away, nobody fleeing with a shitload of Reese cups or gummy worms. Thoughts, Michael?”

I sighed. “Heard any good ghost stories lately?”

Jesus settled in, and I told the tale of the late Peter Crews, the strange disappearance of his father, and the unusual sights and sounds associated with Unit 127.

“And you think there may be something to this?” he asked simply.

“I got no idea. Tonight was probably just a mean-spirited Halloween prank that went too far. People are assholes.”

Jesus smiled. “I’ve missed your bright and generous spirit.”

“Well, sure. But here’s something to think about. If nobody saw the attacker, and there seemingly wasn’t a candy trail anywhere, then maybe a logical conclusion is they ducked into one of the units. They’re still here.”

Unit 116

By the time Sarah and her BGFs returned from the country extravaganza at the Desert Star Theater, no invisible candy bandit had been apprehended, though Eric Valdez was stable, having suffered an asthmatic episode but no grave physical injuries. A half-week later, when aforementioned BGF Felicia haunted my afternoon lounge nap, there remained no resolution.

“We’re gonna be on TV,” Felicia declared.

“Better change my shirt then,” I responded.

“Reality show,” she continued. Our neighbor cattycorner bunkered in every Monday night with bachelors and bachelorettes and Wednesday with survivors who I doubt would survive a hangry border collie. “Ever heard of Phantom Flip? They find a haunted house, rehab it, roust the evil spirits, and help unload the place. Pete Crews’ sister in LA sold the producers on Unit 127. Your buddy Brewer hates the idea, but the board outvoted him, probably to piss him off.”

I suddenly warmed to the notion.

Unit 127

 “Yeah, yeah,” Seth Moritz nodded eagerly, peering about Unit 127. His girth cast odd shadows in the trio of studio floods set up by the Phantom Flip crew. “I am definitely picking up something.”

The paranormal investigator, who normally scouted locations before the carpenters and exorcists came in, paused before a mission-style entertainment center and indicated a small, primitive-looking figure in leathers and feathers.

“The kokopelli is an important spiritual totem for many Southwest Indian tribes,” he Wikisplained. “It represents the natural and supernatural spirits that pervade Native American culture. I’m getting a really strong sensation…”

“I’m getting that too,” Hank grunted from behind the tape across the patio door. “But your cameras are blocking the toilet.”

“Alright, CUT!!” the show’s host/director hollered, slapping a bug on his neck. The nose-ringed troll turned on the throng of complex onlookers. “This is a hot set, asshole. Can’t you read?”

“Dude, c’mon,” I tried. Hank glared John Wayne doom on me, then stumped back toward his bungalow.

Moritz exhaled. “Thanks,” he nodded.

 “Kachina,” I responded.

“Gesundheit?”

“It’s just, well, you’re holding a katsina or kachina, a spirit being venerated by the Hopi and other Southwest Pueblo cultures. There are more than 400 different ones, each representing a different animal, plant, entity, location, or idea. A kokopelli is just one type of kachina. I did some, uh, research, little while back.” Hands-on, but that’s a story for another prompt.

“Sure,” Moritz said, then pivoted back to the camera.

“The kachina is an important spiritual totem for many Southwest indigenous tribes,” he intoned. “It represents the natural and supernatural spirits that pervade Native American culture, in this case perhaps a bird spirit, maybe an eagle or a hawk. I’m getting a really palpable sensation here…”

My work here was done. The zero gravity lounger awaited. I was a bit surprised a half-hour later when the ghostbuster/flipper appeared at our patio gate.

“Thanks for the notes earlier, bro,” he smiled. Expectantly. I waved him in. “So, your neighbor Felicity…”

“Or Felicia,” I suggested.

“She said you chased off the psycho attacked those kids Halloween night. Dude, wow.”

“I was just the first one on the scene. Candyman was already in the wind.”

Moritz’ chair creaked. “Candyman. Candyman. Hah…”

“Jordan Peele already bought the rights. You know: ‘Candyman, Candyman, yada yada.’” You didn’t get your own zero-gravity chair by tempting even fictional fate.

“So, Mike. You think what happened with the kids was a natural thing?”

I frowned. He nodded back toward Unit 127. Then Moritz’ eyes fixed at a point behind me.

“You think it was a native bird god ghost?”

His attention returned. “Oh, that kachina shit was just for drama,” Moritz assured me. “Plays better than the old guy ghost haunting a condo thing. That’s a little Goosebump-y, ya know?”

I straightened. “You think, what, the thing people think they’ve seen in 127 is Frederic Crews?”

“Bear with, bro. So Pete Crews cracks up on I-60 one night about two years ago, I got that right?”

“He worked for a Scottsdale biotech company. His dad had some kind of severe neurological condition. I only saw the old guy a couple times.”

“Sounds like a grind,” the producer suggested. “Maybe the son, you know…?” He did the throat-slit thingie. “Maybe buried him in the desert late at night?”

“Now, it just sounds like Dateline.” 

His eyes flicked beyond me again for a millisecond, then returned. “Soo, maybe Pete’s on his way back from planting Pop under a saguaro when Frederic’s vengeful spirit steers him right into a guardrail.”

“See?” I said. “There’s your ghost story.”

**

“Oh, God no. I don’t think it was a ghost.”

Sarah nodded, muting Frasier.

“See, one thing, Jesus told me Eric Valdez had extensive but fairly minor subcutaneous bruising — over most of his upper body. It looks like something–”

“Someone,” my bride amended.

“– applied intense, vigorous pressure to the boy. So if you were gonna call it anything, it would be a poltergeist. Ghosts normally are associated with a place, Moritz told me. Poltergeists are troubled spirits associated with a specific person or family. If this house is haunted, it would be unusual for the ghost to have attacked those kids nearly a half-block away. But why would a poltergeist attack a bunch of kids? None of them even live here.”

“You having popcorn?”

“Meh. I think we still got cashews. You want to hear the weird part?”

“’Til tossed salads and scrambled eggs.”

“Jesus says the electric’s been off while the siblings fight over selling or renting or Air B-and-B-ing 127 to supernatural rehabbers. But Jesus and his guys found water jugs all over the place, filled, half-filled, empty. Some overgrown with mold.”

“Mold?”

“And the place is infested with ants, though there’s been no food there for a couple years.”

Sarah shivered. I knew from30 years of marriage it wasn’t about anything paranormal.

**

Frederic Crews as it turned out was something of an Audubon for the latter 20th Century — major environmentalist before Al Gore was cool. Catalogued every bird and mammal in the Southwest. Popped up from time to time on PBS or the evening news, warning about Man’s reckless fascination with technology. It seemed curious his son would be working for Biodigm, even designing sports drinks and retail nutraceuticals.

I yawned, docked the iPhone, doused the lights, and began to navigate toward the master bedroom.

Then the shrieking started.

**

“Perp broke his neck and several bones besides, probably some internal damage, too,” Jesus reported. The ME had taken Moritz away hours before Sarah would let me hightail it for 127. 

“Maybe a squatter?” the detective continued as he peered into the living room beyond my patio POV. “Family hasn’t been out here forever.”

“With this kind of violence? This sounds psychotic. Something human but not quite human about all this.”

“There is this. Hernandez?” A rotund tech tossed a large evidence bag across the room. Jesus snagged it, displayed the bagged kachina that had occupied Peter Crews’ entertainment center.

“Figure’s intact – no damage or blood. I think Moritz grabbed it after the attack. Maybe he really believed in all this.”

“Or maybe…” I stopped. “A second, please.”

I hobbled back to our patio and stared at the object Moritz had been fascinated with the afternoon before. It was simple, cheap – probably a million of them throughout the Valley. A small creature hovered about the red-and-yellow contraption. Alien eyes, a needlelike beak, nearly invisible wings that practically teleported it a few houses away when it spotted the behemoth planted near its food supply.

**

Biodigm Technologies

Scottsdale, Arizona

2:35 p.m.

“Hummingbirds,” Craig Van Alston echoed, a sardonic grin on his thin lips. Jesus grinned back. The young CEO’s mock amusement faded.

 “Hummingbirds can hover in mid-air by flapping their wings 12–80 times per second, and they’re the only bird that can fly backwards,” I opened. “ Thanks to high metabolism, they can fly up to 35 miles an hour.

“Birds have the lowest genome size of any vertebrate — about half as much genetic yumminess as us. Smaller genomes, larger cells, and that means lousy gas exchange and more sluggish metabolism. Birds need mega-super metabolism to fly, and hummingbirds? How am I doing so far?”

“You’ve got the gist of it,” Van Alston murmured.

I resisted a fist-pump. “Smaller genomes mean easier gene-mapping, and once you have the map, you unlock the secrets of gene expression —turning traits on and off. Genetic engineers have looked at fish DNA for cold tolerance in crops. My guess is, you guys wanted to unlock the secrets of mega-super metabolism. Miracle weight loss?”

“You no doubt tracked down our federal permit request,” Van Alston breathed. “Hummingbirds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. EPA and Fish and Wildlife turned Biodigm down flat. So we put one of our offshore teams on the job. Greenpeace caught wind of it, so Project Hummer (I averted a giggle) became history. It was a stupid idea all along. The Dominican team recommended termination one month in. We moved on.”

“But Peter Crews didn’t,” Jesus ventured. “Did he? Crews kept working on the project from home, right?”

Van Alston nodded. “I knew his father was ill, and I offered him paid leave. He became agitated, said everything was fine.”

“He needed your resources.”

Van Alston glanced out his window, toward the mountains. “I went to his house in Gilbert, to talk to him. He wanted to be rid of me quickly, but as his supervisor, he felt obliged to offer me some coffee. And while Crews was in the kitchen, I heard it from behind the closed bedroom door. At first, I thought it was electronic, but you live out here long enough, you recognize it instantly. The idiot had a hummingbird — scratch that, it had to be a dozen or hundred hummingbirds. In his house. Can you imagine the fallout? Jesus, the greens would crucify us. I fired his ass a week later.”

“But Crews took a little something on his way out the door, didn’t he? Our lab people tell me Crews wouldn’t have possessed the at-home lab resources or funding necessary for gene transfer. He’d have had to use old-school technology. Recombinant DNA. Crews needed a carrier that could easily encode new genes and transfer them into a foreign organism. Did he walk out of here with a virus?”

“We inventory all bioorganisms stringently. None have left the premises. If Pete continued his work outside Biodigm…” Suddenly, Van Alston smiled. “Sorry. But we fired Pete in 2020. Early 2020?”

Jesus got it a second before I did. “Could he do that?” I asked in my best contralto.

The CEO shrugged. “If anyone could...”

**

It only took two days. A team in tactical gear confiscated Frederic Crews’ “food supply” before sealing the place in the middle of the night. Gallons upon gallons of sugar water, about the same formulation Sarah boiled biweekly for our feeder. On Halloween night, Frederic needed an extra boost.   

“That hummingbird kachina in Crews’ apartment wasn’t about faith or cultural enrichment or home décor. It was about hope,” I told Jesus as the ambulance pulled silently out. Without his “nectar,” the old man hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes after the EMTs strapped him very securely to a gurney.

“Frederic’s health deteriorated, but then the hummingbird project fell into Peter’s lap, and he saw a way to jumpstart his father’s life. If he could boost Frederic’s metabolism, he might slow the oxidation of age, speed his father’s regeneration and revitalization. Until, oops, Biodigm and EPA pulled the plug. So he did what he had to —rebooted his research. He had an ample supply of base genetic stock flitting around his own backdoor.

“Frederic was fading fast, and Peter’s actual work started slipping. Probably would have given up after getting canned, but then COVID gives him the transfer mechanism he needed. Who knows how Peter managed to give his dad the treatments. Maybe they started working, and Frederic didn’t ask questions. Or couldn’t.”

Jesus watched a hummingbird hiss by. “The Crews’ doc says Frederick probably would have started to go into full-blown dementia at the stage he was in in 2020. Day Van Alston visited Crews, he heard the results.”

“Rather than reenergizing or revitalizing his dad, I think Peter’s therapy pushed him into a hellish existence of mindless energy, mental and emotional chaos, a never-ending hunger. Like a hummingbird flitting perpetually from feeder to feeder, doomed to burning out without a constant infusion of sugar and carbs.”

“Then,” Jesus prompted, staring into the unit, at the destruction Frederic Crews had generated in withdrawal and fury.

“Peter realized what he’d done to his father. He could have just cut off Frederic’s sugar supply — the old man would have quickly crashed and shut down. But I’m guessing he didn’t have the heart. So instead, Peter took him for one last ride. Maybe to see the desert, nature. But this wasn’t his dad any more. Had to guess, Dad commandeered the car and steered it straight into that guardrail. Peter died quickly, but Frederic’s superpowered metabolism buffered the shock, helped him shake off the pain. He left Peter on the highway and just went home.”

“Forty miles?” Jesus said. Then it dawned. “What, homing instinct?”

This wasn’t making the Arizona Republic or the six o’clock news. Or probably Jesus’ report. And the surviving Crewses would unload Unit 127 for pennies.

“Seth Moritz invaded the wrong nest,” I concluded.