MAUREEN THORSON
MAUREEN THORSON
INTERLUDE:
BOTH GOD AND THE DEVIL
CLAIM POWER OVER STORMS
In 1928, a Kentucky-born psychic and “medical clairvoyant” named
Edgar Cayce built a hospital in Virginia Beach.
Though it soon closed, the hospital paved the way for the new-age
Association for Research & Enlightenment, still going strong on
Atlantic Avenue.
Children in Virginia Beach (if no one else) know that Cayce built his
hospital here because an angel told him in a dream that the town would
never again suffer a direct hit from a hurricane.
And that is also why Pat Robertson furiously makes the trip from the
CBN studios on Centerville Turnpike to the Virginia Beach fishing pier
anytime a hurricane gets within 500 nautical miles of town,
to pray the storm away
lest Edgar Cayce get the credit.
Because Cayce and all his efforts, as Pat Robertson (if no one else)
knows, are “the work of the devil.”
INTERLUDE:
INVOCATION FOR A FAIR
NUMBER OF VICTIMS
An apprentice defendant
sieges with bleach
his little beachside empire.
So the blood will out.
So the sand.
Meantime, he’s a hex
made of sex and jet engines.
The kind a girl’s hair
can snarl in. The kind
she’s told to thank
for the kink that creases
her throat. If she lives,
she’ll know that life
doesn’t make empty threats.
That, like anchors
or surplus ordnance,
some men look better
at the bottom of the sea.
INTERLUDE:
THE BROKEN SEALs
Our scene’s The Bayou, a New Orleans-themed nightclub “for the 90s,”
boasting a “laid-back, casual approach.” On Pavilion Drive, inside what
used to be the Radisson before they put up the new Convention Center.
On the last night of her life, a woman just old enough to drink dances
till three, then catches a ride from two Navy SEALs.
The police find her body eight days later, in the woods an hour west of town.
A Navy doctor who requests anonymity tells a reporter what everyone
already knows:
“The special operations field attracts a certain kind of sociopathy.”
INTERLUDE:
ON DET. DON RHYMER
A 34-year veteran of the Virginia Beach Police Department, he has a
side gig consulting on occult crime.
Shows up in all the news reports about the vampire case. Was there
for the broken SEALs, and the ape, and the D&D murders and for Evie,
too – though whether the police were called in on that, I don’t know. No
reason they would be, I guess.
As an advertisement for his consulting business, Det. Rhymer authors
a thirty-page training manual titled “Ritual Crime and the Occult: The
New Youth Subculture.”
Reading it, I can’t tell if he believes in the devil, or just believes that
other people believe, and if they’re going to commit crimes because of
that, you might as well know what they’re thinking. What he does say
is this:
“When you ignore evil, you become the servant of evil.”
Evil’s servants always do more work than asked.
INTERLUDE:
AND HE SHALL APPEAR
Our scene’s the parking lot of Wild Water Rapids, the town waterpark,
off General Booth Boulevard. The aquamarine, sinuous curves of the
highest slides peek above the scrim of loblolly pines.
Here, on the night of January 2, 1989,
Hugh Mongous burned.
A 65-foot tall, twenty-two-ton fiberglass and foam gorilla wearing red
swim trunks.
“Fire enveloped the ape from his toes to at least 10 feet above his head.”
Arson suspected. News reports speak vaguely of a flaming arrow
piercing the big ape’s belly.
The police speculated that it was an out-of-control new-year’s prank.
But at Trantwood Elementary, we all knew it was the work of Satanists.
They had sacrificed Hugh Mongous
to their dark and twisted god.
INTERLUDE:
THE LAMENT OF HUGH MONGOUS
Seven years in state I lay,
my charred carcass the resort
of Virginia Beach’s raucous crows.
To be reborn from smoke,
I first was made a candle,
splendid in the starless dark.
And then my long, indecent,
unkempt years as meadow trash,
too heavy an example to haul away.
Not just rapids are wild.
The reviled mind that flung me
here, in the shadow of the flumes,
coruscated with chlorine, bathed
in children’s summery screams,
shamed me with blasphemy so sudden
that even now, it catches me aflame.
BOTH GOD AND THE DEVIL
CLAIM POWER OVER STORMS
In 1928, a Kentucky-born psychic and “medical clairvoyant” named
Edgar Cayce built a hospital in Virginia Beach.
Though it soon closed, the hospital paved the way for the new-age
Association for Research & Enlightenment, still going strong on
Atlantic Avenue.
Children in Virginia Beach (if no one else) know that Cayce built his
hospital here because an angel told him in a dream that the town would
never again suffer a direct hit from a hurricane.
And that is also why Pat Robertson furiously makes the trip from the
CBN studios on Centerville Turnpike to the Virginia Beach fishing pier
anytime a hurricane gets within 500 nautical miles of town,
to pray the storm away
lest Edgar Cayce get the credit.
Because Cayce and all his efforts, as Pat Robertson (if no one else)
knows, are “the work of the devil.”
INTERLUDE:
INVOCATION FOR A FAIR
NUMBER OF VICTIMS
An apprentice defendant
sieges with bleach
his little beachside empire.
So the blood will out.
So the sand.
Meantime, he’s a hex
made of sex and jet engines.
The kind a girl’s hair
can snarl in. The kind
she’s told to thank
for the kink that creases
her throat. If she lives,
she’ll know that life
doesn’t make empty threats.
That, like anchors
or surplus ordnance,
some men look better
at the bottom of the sea.
INTERLUDE:
THE BROKEN SEALs
Our scene’s The Bayou, a New Orleans-themed nightclub “for the 90s,”
boasting a “laid-back, casual approach.” On Pavilion Drive, inside what
used to be the Radisson before they put up the new Convention Center.
On the last night of her life, a woman just old enough to drink dances
till three, then catches a ride from two Navy SEALs.
The police find her body eight days later, in the woods an hour west of town.
A Navy doctor who requests anonymity tells a reporter what everyone
already knows:
“The special operations field attracts a certain kind of sociopathy.”
INTERLUDE:
ON DET. DON RHYMER
A 34-year veteran of the Virginia Beach Police Department, he has a
side gig consulting on occult crime.
Shows up in all the news reports about the vampire case. Was there
for the broken SEALs, and the ape, and the D&D murders and for Evie,
too – though whether the police were called in on that, I don’t know. No
reason they would be, I guess.
As an advertisement for his consulting business, Det. Rhymer authors
a thirty-page training manual titled “Ritual Crime and the Occult: The
New Youth Subculture.”
Reading it, I can’t tell if he believes in the devil, or just believes that
other people believe, and if they’re going to commit crimes because of
that, you might as well know what they’re thinking. What he does say
is this:
“When you ignore evil, you become the servant of evil.”
Evil’s servants always do more work than asked.
INTERLUDE:
AND HE SHALL APPEAR
Our scene’s the parking lot of Wild Water Rapids, the town waterpark,
off General Booth Boulevard. The aquamarine, sinuous curves of the
highest slides peek above the scrim of loblolly pines.
Here, on the night of January 2, 1989,
Hugh Mongous burned.
A 65-foot tall, twenty-two-ton fiberglass and foam gorilla wearing red
swim trunks.
“Fire enveloped the ape from his toes to at least 10 feet above his head.”
Arson suspected. News reports speak vaguely of a flaming arrow
piercing the big ape’s belly.
The police speculated that it was an out-of-control new-year’s prank.
But at Trantwood Elementary, we all knew it was the work of Satanists.
They had sacrificed Hugh Mongous
to their dark and twisted god.
INTERLUDE:
THE LAMENT OF HUGH MONGOUS
Seven years in state I lay,
my charred carcass the resort
of Virginia Beach’s raucous crows.
To be reborn from smoke,
I first was made a candle,
splendid in the starless dark.
And then my long, indecent,
unkempt years as meadow trash,
too heavy an example to haul away.
Not just rapids are wild.
The reviled mind that flung me
here, in the shadow of the flumes,
coruscated with chlorine, bathed
in children’s summery screams,
shamed me with blasphemy so sudden
that even now, it catches me aflame.