"Sins of the Father"

Raygun in hand, black robes flowing in the wind, the witch’s hat slightly askew, I head for the Salem Slot cemetery. It’s not too far from the bend in the railroad I was originally searching for, a bit further along in the hills outside of town. I follow a dirt path, the lucky lighter leading the way, a lone moon shining brightly. Branches twist and snarl above me, owls hoot, rats scurry, but I’m not afraid anymore, ‘cuz I’m me and that’s the bee’s knees.

I don’t know what I’m gonna say to Dr. Funny when I see him. Maybe just a one-liner before I goop-ify him. I tighten my fist around the bakelite grip of the raygun. If he truly does have Bobby and Conny, I need to be careful...

I arrive over a crest outside of town sometime later, and he’s there waiting for me. The cemetery looks similar to a cul-de-sac, mausoleums for dead pilgrims arranged like suburban homes, little tombstones like blades of grass. There’s Indians buried here too I guess, but they don’t get markers. There's a truck parked just outside. The path through the cemetery leads me towards the center, the focal point of the swirling dead, and there he is, sitting atop an old grave, a large mausoleum behind him with a lit lantern hanging from a post over the door.

“Welcome home, dear,” Dr. Funny greets, one leg crossed over the other. He wears a fedora over his gray head of hair and puffs rings out of a corncob pipe. He’s dressed in a white (mad) scientist overcoat with black khakis. He glances around the cemetery. “Quite a stage we got here, huh? Audience of dead men.”

I immediately point the raygun at him. He doesn’t look particularly troubled.

“Hold your horses, champ.”

Several agents emerge from the shadows, hauling Bobby and Connie with them. I sigh in relief, since they haven’t been tortured or nothing. I was afraid they’d be black and blue by the time I got here, but the only thing that’s odd about them are the red eyes (‘course, it would’ve been better if they hadn’t been captured in the first place…)

“Bobby, Connie, hang in there!”

Neither of them answer. They can only chuckle and stare blankly at the ground. Spittle drips from their mouths.

I step towards Dr. Funny. “What’d you do to them?”

He shrugs. “I only gave them what they wanted. Just some reefer. My own strain, mind you, mixed with the Tibetan death bell flower and the xneu23781h5 plant of Zeta Reticuli.” He looks at my friends with an amused smile. “Poor things. They’re in the throes of reefer madness now. Mere minutes to live. Only I know how to heal them. Drop your gun, and I'll make it happen."

My hand shakes. Dr. Funny is right in my sights...

"You swear you'll heal them?"

Dr. Funny places a hand on his heart. "I swear."

I toss the gun away. "Now-"

Dr. Funny snaps his fingers. Out of the darkness, dozens of ragged girls emerge. All of them wear modified Stalhelms with cathode tubes sticking out the sides, telegram wires connecting a box on the helmet to the back of their brains. These girls, malnourished, dressed in dirty uniforms, are my classmates at the School.

"Stop!" I cry out, but they don't stop. They get closer and closer, so I raise my fists, but Mary Lou, these are you classmates being mind controlled. Can you really hurt them? Can you really punch out this twelve-year-old in front of you?

I just can't. Maybe I'm a fool. I try to flee, maybe get to some high ground, but they're on me, grabbing my arms and legs. They smell like burning flesh and make no sound as they hold me tight, no matter how much I squirm. 

Now that I'm a captive audience, Dr. Funny stands up. The mausoleum behind him rumbles until its stone walls and roof crumble away entirely, revealing a large bell made of steel and covered with a similar array of tubes and wires. 

Dr. Funny looks proudly at it. "Die Glocke. One of my many inventions. Von Braun has his rockets, but I have my devices of the soul. The Ahnenerbe heard of my university work and recruited me for the 1939 expedition to Tibet, and that’s when I found my true calling. To turn the living into the dead - well, that's quite easy, you know. But to turn the dead into the living, only a mind as great as I mine could pursuit such an odyssey in all seriousness.”

"Just heal Bobby and Connie already!"

“Patience, Marie Louise. I gave them a specific dose of the drug so they would remain alive long enough for us to converse.” He shrugs. “I’m not evil, after all.”

“You’re pure evil.”

“Am I?” Dr. Funny sits back down on the tombstone.

I jab a finger at him. “You killed the mother on Maple Street. She had a baby, too, little more than a toddler, and she can’t be me, ‘cuz I’m alive, and I saw her ghost. So…you must’ve…”

He cocks his head. “Killed the baby? Oh yes, I had to leave no loose ends, you see. We didn’t just cross the Elbe willy-nilly. I was high on the American’s list, just as high as von Braun. He has his rocketry, and I have my research into life and death. All the drugs I’ve administered, the experiments I’ve done - the body can survive hypothermia for a long while, Marie Louise, those prisoners greatly impressed me - the Americans had use for them. Have use for them, mind you.”

“The School - hey, speed it up!”

Dr. Funny chuckles. “I can’t help it, daughter, we’re both prisoners to monologues sometimes. They put me on the Navy’s Project CHATTER. A truth serum. How quaint! That’s when they realized my true talents, and tapped me to head the Central Intelligence Agency’s MKULTRA. Population docility, through drugs, through beatings, through torture, even through humor. By working with my students at the School, I've found that with the right combination of propaganda, brainwashing, drug cocktails, beatings, and electrical impulses, anyone can be made docile. Watch.”

The bell glows a hot white, creating a corresponding crackle of radio noise in the helmet devices. Several girls plant me in the dirt, knees on my back, so they can join in on the salute towards Dr. Funny, arms all raised with the palm down.

"Christ," I mumble with a mouthful of dirt. 

Dr. Funny laughs. “The fools in Washington, they don’t realize what they’ve done. After Sputnik, they gave von Braun the keys to the warheads. I’m in control of the population. Shiro Ishii out of Unit 731 is handling biology and medicine. Edwin Walker will hand us the military. All we need is a crisis, and we’ll be goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Avenue tomorrow morning.”

“Hey,” sez Connie. “Wasn’t this whole shindig originally supposed to be about Halloween or something?”

Dr. Funny smokes from his pipe in amusement. “Indeed it is. This is the night where the line between living and dead is shortest. Now that you’re here, daughter, we can conclude this. All of these girls, they were crude test subjects. Good for docility and nothing more. But you are destined for so much more. You have a spiritual connection with the otherworldly."

He narrows his eyes. "But you have too much spirit. There's an independence in you that's incompatible with the reconstruction of national socialism in America. And no matter how much I beat it out of you, it just won't go away. How funny!"

The girls haul me towards my father. I lunge out for the raygun, but they hold me tight. Dr. Funny focuses on Die Glocke, which begins to shine and radiate heat. It starts to levitate, then spin entirely, just like a flying saucer. It moves so fast the wind whips at me, and I can barely keep my eyes open.

The girls tie ropes around me, the rough texture digging into my skin. And then, without further ado, they toss ol' Mary Lou beneath the spinning vortex. When I land, I gaze up and see stars, whole constellations, 'cuz this is a portal to another world I'm starting up into, the eye of the hurricane, it goes (on and on and on and on and on)^2 and then some, and is that music I hear, something sweet from the underworld...

"There's only one thing missing," Dr. Funny concludes. "My wife. Marie Louise, make our family whole again. Retrieve her from beyond the beyond."

Ignore the sweetness, ignore the call of Persephone, ignore the pull that made Lot's wife look back. You're dealing with a Nazi, Mary Lou. No time for shenanigans.

“No thanks, Jack. I already told my mother I got business to attend to with the living still, namely kicking yer ass!"

"Excellent, you've already spoken to her!"

"Too bad I hung up the phone already. I won't do your bidding, Dr. Funny-"

Die Glocke shocks me. Just like the electroshock therapy, it silences me, it burns me, 'cuz god it hurts it hurts...

But I won’t let up. “I thought you were evil for killing that baby…but you’re all kinds of messed up.”

This earns me a laugh from herr doktor. “Evil? Evil is a matter of perspective. If I was evil, and this was the Good War, why would I be invited to the America afterwards? Why would John Sunday, a citizen-soldier blown apart at the Bulge, be switched from killed in action to missing in action to alive, just to give me a new identity in the United States? The government already informed his wife that he was dead, though, so I had to kill her to stop the truth from spreading. Was that evil?”

“Yea?”

“And the baby. Not only did they pick John Sunday for me because he was destroyed beyond recognition, but because his daughter was the same age as you. Almost the same name, even. It was easy to get your paperwork done and have you take on her identity. His daughter was the real Mary Lou Sunday.”

Distant wind howls. I try to free myself, but the ropes are too tight, and smoke rises from burned skin. I grit my teeth. "You're crazy. You killed her!"

He shrugs. “I kill ten thousand babies at Sonntag and it’s called monstrous. The Allies kill ten thousand babies at Hiroshima and it’s called winning the war.”

“...Jack, are you seriously trying to do some moral equivocal thing about killing ten thousand babies?”

Dr. Funny taps on Die Glocke. “Last chance, Marie Louise.”

"Never."

He sighs. Not mad, just disappointed.

"Then you leave me no choice. I was hoping you would dive into the underworld and return with your mother, but it appears I'll have to make a deal with the devil. Your soul for hers."

The bell rings.