Memories of Leng
Chapter 2

Disclaimer: As before, i do not own anything. The Cthulhu Mythos belongs to Howard Philip Lovecraft, August Derleth and others among that Revered Circle. Delta Green belongs to Pagan Publishing.

Synopsis: The Stork Dance is performed, the audience becomes enraptured... and shadows move within shadows. Meanwhile, a break in the case develops.

Glaston High School Auditorium, Glaston, upper Worcester Co., Massachusetts
November 17th, 2007

Joseph Clayton watched from his seat on the center aisle as Pete Tallier finished his act. The young man had performed a folk-dance from his ancestral Quebec, a homeland his family had left more than a century ago for jobs in the New England furniture industry. He himself had finished his act more than an hour ago, having opted for a simple folk dance and traditional Norman costume with a top hat. Of course, using a hat-rack instead of a dancing partner had been a bit... unusual; with Marie being so involved in her own routine, he had had to make do with what he could get.

But now, as Joseph finished clapping in approval of the previous act, he realized that his girlfriend was due to come on. What would actually happen was a complete mystery to Joseph; Marie had kept a tight lid on her act by practicing at home and while she had spent much less time with him than normal, she had stressed how important this was for her. So, respecting her wishes, he'd kept his distance and wished her luck. Now, with his parents sitting beside him, the Trinhs just across the aisle and after weeks of mystery, he was finally about to discover what the big secret was.

The male student in charge of the event came forward after Tallier left the stage, dressed in traditional Greek costume. "Next up is Marie Trinh, who will be performing a traditional 'journey rite in two parts' from the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'The Stork Dance'!" He exited downstage right as the lights dimmed even further than they had, the only illumination the bright center of the spotlight focused on the place he had been. Slowly, almost dramatically, the spotlight edged back towards the rear wall until it revealed a lone figure wrapped in a white cloak, face obscured by something.

Utter silence pervaded the auditorium before the sound system gave off the squeal of a needle scratching on a record and the sounds of soft, high flutes began wafting upon the air. It was then that the figure started walking forward on bare feet, segmented anklets of carved jade just visible below the hem of the long, black skirt while the white cloak draped over the arms and... it almost looked like some sort of hat or strange mask was concealing the figure's head. Suddenly, pipes of a lower pitch, possibly oboes, started playing a mournful tune and the figure stopped suddenly, lifting it's head to face the crowd.

A spoonbill... with a black beak. So that was what that big fuss with the paper-mache was about.

The dance was in two parts. The first was a mournful, melancholy arrangement that supposedly was intended for farewell ceremonies. Zithers, oboes, various other instruments of the right mood and the creaky, brittle, almost sad songs of old women set the tone for the dance, a carefully choreographed routine that either imitated the intricate placement of a wading birds steps or imitated the slow soaring of those same birds. This was the Song of Departure. The second part, that of Arrival, was more...upbeat in its cadence. After the record was flipped, the plucking of lutes and brighter zithers, the delicate clanging of some sort of bells, jollier wind instruments and the celebratory singing of young women replaced the melancholy mood of earlier. The dancers steps also changed, with sudden, sprightly movements becoming the norm as imitations of courtship displays and feeding were performed.

Throughout the dance, the audience had been enraptured by what was happening onstage. While Joseph was certainly enjoying his girlfriends act, he was not so enraptured that he failed to notice that several very strange things were happening in the darkened theater. The first change he noticed was the background odor. Slowly, over the course of the act, the smell in the theater had changed from the dry, dusty smell of upholstery and the hot metal of lighting equipment to... well, there was river mud, water thick with life, plants growing in the sun and warm wind. It wasn't a bad smell, but there was no real way that it could be coming from anywhere in the building.

Other strange things were... shapes in the darkness. During the first part of the dance Joseph could have sworn that he glimpsed shadowy shapes moving in the aisle beside him, shapes that almost looked like... wading birds. During the second act, he could almost imagine that the silvery shapes of gliding birds were being outlined by the residual glare from the spotlight, though that could easily be passed off as wafting dust.

Except that there wasn't that much dust in the theater.

Thirdly, and much less unusually, an elderly man with thinning, almost white curly hair, wire rim spectacles and a short beard was watching the performance with interest, almost... studying it. Joseph had never seen him in the town before, so who was he and why was he here?

And had he or anyone else seen the apparitions?

When the dance was done and Marie (who had revealed herself at the end of the dance by taking off her headdress and taking a bow) had left the stage, Joseph kept thinking on that thought during the remaining acts. The smell had faded and gone, the shadows and shapes were no longer there but the mere hint of their possibility shook him. He was a person of science, of logic, of well-produced nature documentaries; in the real world, things like this did not happen outside the heads of crazy people.

However... the very thought of the ghostly shapes thrilled Joseph, filled him with fantastic wonders and terrors not felt since he was a boy of five. And, thought the young man, it did not truly matter if it was wonderful or terrible, or if Marie could control or even knew about this sort of stuff. All that truly mattered was that... well, at the level of base wonderment, the entire experience was remarkably exciting.

Sinister? Maybe. Normal? Not in the least. But very definitely exciting.

But... maybe it would be best not to mention it until Marie brought it up.

Later

After the show, as students were putting away their costumes and props and donning their late-autumn outerwear, Joseph approached his girlfriend who, with dress, cloak and headpiece in a garment bag, was heading out the door after her parents. "Hey, Marie... about what you did on stage tonight?"

"Yes?" Questioned Marie as she turned towards Joseph. As a courtesy, he would never mention it but he could tell that something was weighing on her mind. The impression that she was on the very edge of flight made it seem that, perhaps, she was aware that strange things had happened.

Strange things... but not necessarily bad things.

"I just have to say that you really hit a crowd pleaser tonight. I don't think any of the other acts got as much applause as yours did." With that, Joseph saw Marie's face lighten from the mask of apprehension that had been there into a gratified smile.

"Thanks. You wouldn't believe how grueling the practicing was and then the costume and making all those fake pendants and charms... after all that, I was hoping it would get a good reception." With that, she turned back and began walking out into the early night air, over to the parking space where her parents had parked their combination commercial van and personal conveyance.

Joseph had actively resisted losing himself in the weirdness that had struck him in the auditorium. However, he could never resist losing himself in his girlfriends smile.

Perhaps because one was familiar and one was a bit... odd.

Running to catch up with Marie, he wanted to ask his girlfriend something. "On a different subject, I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight. Maybe we could catch a movie, go bowling, something like that."

"I'd like to but I really can't." They were almost at the Trinhs van when Marie leaned in close to Joseph to whisper conspiratorially. "Dad got a call from the cops when the Polish guy was on. They arrested someone vandalizing the front of the shop, and we'll probably be busy all night with statements, forms, the insurance guys and all the other police stuff."

Though he was disappointed, Joseph Clayton knew that something like this couldn't be delayed. "Alright, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight." After getting an answer back in the form of a goodnight kiss (which still made him blush despite himself), he watched Marie depart toward her parents vehicle. The question came back to him, after all these weeks, of who in this town could be angry or stupid enough to be implicated in the vandalism spree that had plagued the Leng Trinh restaurant.

At Roughly the Same time, Glaston Police Station

As Constance Blake entered the interview room, she reflected on the fact that it had to have been a pretty slow couple of weeks when they pulled the Chief of Police out of her office for a break in a vandalism case. On the other hand, she'd finished the normal paperwork an hour before and had been flipping through a fishing catalog with the squawk-box on beside her when Lt. Anderson had come in. He'd told her that they'd arrested some punk kid trying to bust up the Trinh's restaurant, the culmination in a series of events that had been the height of municipal intrigue for weeks. As she got a look at the culprit, she was a little surprised.

"Punk kid" indeed.

As she sat down across from suspect, Chief Blake tapped the case file, a few reports inside a paper folder, against the table. "You know," she began dryly, "we get quite a few idiots through here: gang members, druggies, people who've taken offense one to many times. We just haven't ever got one who was this high up in the High School Math Club." She dropped the file in front of Than Quang Due, a young man who, besides having a Sino-typical naming structure, was short, thin, bespectacled and looked amazingly like a 12-year old for someone who was actually 15. He and his parents had moved here the the summer and had set up a jewelery shop a few blocks over from Leng Trinh. Up until this, Due had never been anything but a model student, a respectful son and a bright (if somewhat timid) young man. "So, why'd you do it?"

Due looked at the middle aged woman with a gaze that mixed deference with surprise in the face of seeming insanity. "Because no one else would! Because this town has tolerated... people like that for so long.". There was a touch of bitterness in his voice but also surprise. Were these people so stupid that they didn't recognize a threat in their very midst?

"Look, I don't know what's going on, but I know that it stops right now." Constance stood up and, even at 5'1", the sight of her leaning over the suspect should have been intimidating to the boy. But then Blake began asking almost rhetorical questions "What is this about anyway? You ask out their daughter and get refused? Well, if that is it, this was between you, her and the Clayton boy. No need to get mad at her parents." It was then that another idea came to the Chief of Police. "Or is this because they're Hmong?"

At this, Due's face carried a look of utter incomprehension.

"Look, I realize that there's some bad blood carried over from the War. But you have to realize something too: this is America, the land of opportunity, of freedom. This is the land where people should be able to get away from the madness, where every little feud and squabble is best left back in the old country. Now, your parents and the Trinhs are going to be here soon and if you're smart, you will apologize; Thuc Van and Thanh Thi are good people, they're liked in the community and as sure as God made little green apples, they didn't deserve any of this."

It was then that realization dawned on Due. The people who had informed him and sent him on this mission had mandated secrecy... but apparently he and they weren't the only ones good at keeping secrets.

With a look that held a touch of arrogance, a smidgen of fascinated bewilderment and, especially in his grin, the hint that he was not totally mentally hinged, Due asked a question that infuriated Constance Blake. "You have no idea what they are, do you?"