Chapter 12
The Futile Race
…two days later
6:00 p.m.
Audrey and Walter tried to keep the family going for the sake of the other kid's but everyone's mind
was always on the one piece of the family puzzle that was missing. Megan set the dinner table
without being asked to do so. She really didn't want to eat Mom's meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
Drake was right it really did look like Josh's broken foot.
But, they had to continue on with their lives while at the same time trying to desperately find Drake's
whereabouts before it was too late.
Drake Parker was in a dead state while Firefly sat on the living room sofa at Nine Shady Grove
Road reading his Bible. His given brother, Jaguar, was putting labels on the cassette tapes for their
Bible studies. Even though both young men were on the same sofa neither one of them
acknowledged the other one's existence. When Cameron walked in the room carrying a cup of
coffee they did not look up. They did not utter a peep. But their bodies jumped in the air making him
very pleased as he walked by.
The girls were washing the supper dishes and Butterfly was getting ready to take the mop out of the
small utility closet. He placed the finished coffee cup on the counter. Their bodies also jumped in the
air. They knew his presence was all encompassing. He installed his fear into them.
He was blessed.
Cameron walked to the screened in back porch area and took his tape recorder out and spoke,
"This is the sound of obedience."
There were two things that needed to be done tonight. Two things that didn't need to go on tape.
He walked back inside to see Butterfly filling up the metal bucket with hot water from the sink as
Hydrangea washed the long table with a washcloth.
Cameron went to the small shelf by the refrigerator and placed two red capsules in two small Dixie
cups.
"My daughters, the rest of your evening chores can wait."
They walked over to him and took the capsules that weren't part of neither the daytime nor
nighttime "vitamin" rituals without question.
"Please go upstairs and see what I left for you on your bed."
"Yes, Lord Cameron."
There were no interactions between the brothers and sisters as they passed the boys to get upstairs.
There was no idle chit-chat between the two young women as they walked to their rooms.
Panther was fixing the tire on the van in the garage just as Cameron had instructed him to do after
supper.
"Panther, rise up, my son."
He walked behind Cameron upstairs into the kitchen where his nighttime vitamins minus the sleeping
aids were waiting for him.
"….If you have to wait until they are all asleep that is fine. Stay guarded. Once you are in the house
place these devices where I told you to earlier. Take as many digital pictures inside and outside the
structure as you can fit into this camera. Make sure you park the van a few blocks away from the
house."
"As you wish, Lord Cameron."
"Firefly and Jaguar come into the kitchen for your nighttime 'vitamins'."
"Yes, Lord Cameron."
He had them sit on the long wooden bench.
"I am afraid I failed you, my sons,"
They were all full of panic and trepidation.
"No!"
"You're love and light."
"We love you!"
"Ever since that sinning woman was in this house I cannot get her out of my mind. Having healthy
sons such as yourselves being denied your manhood isn't right. So after you finish your juice come
back into the living room so I can make it right."
"Yes, Lord Cameron."
When Firefly and Jaguar emerged from the kitchen the living room floor was transformed
into a makeshift bed complete with pillows and their sisters under the covers wearing their simple
silk white chemises.
"Don't be afraid, my children," he finished lighting the white candles that went all around the room,
"Love one another."
Cameron poured each of them a glass of red wine mixed with his special powder.
He sat in the chair as far back as he could be without needing to put on his glasses so he could sit
and watch the events unfold around him.
The girls called for their brothers on each side of them.
"Firefly, lay down next to me," Butterfly said
There was something familiar about a woman's touch, but it was locked deep inside with all of the
other stuff in his internal trunk marked 'Drake Parker'.
Cameron was content to let this play out for awhile. They were sinning.
They were failing his test, yet at the same time he was despising it,
he was loving every minute of it.
"Megan, you need to eat." Audrey said in a soft voice
"Are you telling me you're hungry?"
"Fair enough, but we all need to eat." She took a sip of iced-tea.
Without that list of numbers that Adrianne provided they were back to square one.
No one in this town knew who Cameron DePalma was and it wasn't like San Diego was a small
town on the outskirts of nowhere.
"We'll get him back, sweetie." Walter tried to cheer her up.
"I don't think that's going to happen, Walter."
Josh was lucky to be at school instead of this dinner table being force-fed
positive dinner conversation about her brother's return.
They weren't going to say it was wrong of her to be calling Walter by his name,
infact, it was something that Audrey had chosen to tolerate before Drake even got
wrapped up in Cameron DePalma's life.
She just wished they would be honest about the whole situation. She tried to be positive, but as the
days were turning into months there was no way he was coming back, at least not in the way they
had known and loved him.
Megan wished they would just face the facts that Drake for all intents and purposes was already
dead.
Two hours later the wind was howling outside and the weather forecast was calling for a
thunderstorm.
The sisters were tied together by their arms and legs with thick leather belted straps and tied to a
wooden beam in the living room so they would be in the upright position.
"You were supposed to resist the sin! You made your God very ANGRY!"
Cameron gave Firefly and Jaguar a bag of rocks.
"Before your punishment begins, you will stone the whores."
The only instructions he gave was for them not to aim at their heads. They would be useful later.
"Walter, I don't know," Audrey tried to keep her mind on folding the laundry. She didn't want to
tell her husband that she felt like someone was watching them. The mother of three didn't want to let
her paranoia get in the way of them finding her baby.
"Think about it, Audrey. A night out will do us good and the money goes to charity."
Despite the true wisdom in the "money goes to a good cause" bit, it felt wrong and foolish to go the
damn opera with their son missing and in a possibly dangerous cult.
KDJY sponsored what was called "A Night Out at the Opera"; the idea was to cater to the wealthy
citizens of San Diego to open up their pockets for a different charity each year. This time around it
was for breast cancer research. A cause Audrey would have normally supported since that's how
she lost her mother twenty years ago, but it seemed terrible to go to the salon and get her hair done
and put on her best gown to go to the opera while her son's whereabouts were unknown.
Maybe, Drake would be found in a month, and then she'd have more important things to do than go
to the opera such as apologizing to her son for being an awful mother and never letting him out of her
sight again.
"I'll have to think about it. Please take this laundry basket upstairs."
She needed to finally take the linens off Drake's bed and put new ones on.
In the event that he would be coming home she wanted the sheets to be clean.
Audrey had to believe with every fiber of her being that her son was going to return home.
Cameron's anger rose to the surface as he cleared his small dresser with one swift motion of his
hand.
With shaking hands he opened up one of his locked drawers to take out one of his microcassette
recorders, "A night out at the opera? A night at the opera! What is there to think about? My media
darlings you better take note those middle-class bourgeois hypocrites
DO NOT LOVE MY SON!"
He turned the machine off and threw it on his bed. Upon drugging his daughters once more after the
stoning he kept them tied and ordered them to slither up the stairs like the
"filthy serpent women they were" to their rooms.
The boys kept throwing rocks at them and calling them any variation of tramps, harlots, and whores.
Just when they made it up the stairs they slid back down again unable to get to the top.
Cameron stood at the top of the stairs.
"YOU WILL STOP THIS FOOLISH NONSENSE! MY CHILDREN HAVE SINNED
TONIGHT!"
Minus Panther who went into the prayer room in the basement to read the Bible passages Cameron
assigned after he returned from his mission.
"LET these sinning harlots slither their way up the stairs."
He was at ease watching the anguish in their faces, the pain evident, their bodies exhausted as they
finally slid their way up to the top of the stairs. But Cameron did not say which room to go into
which made Butterfly and Hydrangea fight with each other in slurred yet rapid voices.
"N-n-n-oo! M-m-y r-room!"
Each young woman trying to force the other one to go into her direction as if they were a
two-headed monster divided over which way to go.
The boys just stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Lord Cameron's commands.
This was going along just as he planned it, for he had written it over two thousand years ago.
11:45 p.m.
Little girls were supposed to be asleep by 11:45 p.m., but Megan Parker didn't think she was a little
girl anymore and who could possibly sleep.
The thunderstorm broke and all that was left was a mild drizzle tapping at her window like crickets.
She threw the blankets off her and went to her computer. Without telling her parents she put one of
the missing posters they had distributed all over town on her website.
The young girl wanted to see if anyone signed the guestbook or e-mailed her with an update.
"Where are you, Drake?" she whispered, she tried not to jump when her phone rang.
No one liked to be on the edge and that's where this journey was taking their whole family.
"Hello? No, it's not too late, Mindy. You think you found something on Cameron DePalma? That's
great. How come you are telling me this and not Mom and Dad?"
"Because, I don't want them to worry in case it turns out to be a false lead."
"Fair enough. Send me an e-mail. Thank you, Mindy."
Megan hung up the phone feeling a tiny bit satisfied. Maybe, this was enough?
"You aren't going to win, Cameron," Megan said to the empty room as she went back to her bed.
"You aren't going to win, you bastard."
She didn't want to cry, but that was exactly what she did before falling into another rough sleep.
After he sedated his daughters and threw them in the locked bathroom. Cameron walked down the
stairs in pointed strides to squarely take care of his disobedient sons.
He felt he had the strength of the entire universe as he dragged them both into the kitchen.
"I will have SILENCE as you accept your punishment! I didn't think I had to tell MY SONS that
the whole point of your lesson was to REFUSE the female flesh!"
Walking over to the stove he turned the two front burners on high.
Their poisoned eyes grew big with an unspoken fear as their hands were placed on
the burners for ten long seconds while their numb souls would not to react on the
outside.
3:00 a.m.
"Walter! Walter! Wake up!" Audrey shook her husband awake.
"Audrey, what's wrong?" He actually believed this might be the moment where they found Drake
and could start rebuilding their lives.
She was waving something in the air, but Walter had to wipe the sleep out of his eyes to stop the
blurry vision.
"Someone has been IN this house!! Our house!! This is the tablet Adrianne gave me."
He got up to comfort his wife. She just must have misplaced the item,
but he wasn't about to tell her that.
"What makes you think that?"
"I found it in the back of one our kitchen cupboards. All of the pages have been ripped out! That
psycho Cameron DePalma was in our house, Walter!! I felt his presence before! He must have
Drake's keys. We're going to call a locksmith in the morning and change ALL the locks!"
There was no way Cameron would risk returning here.
She simply misplaced the tablet. But that wouldn't explain the missing pages.
All he could do was embrace his beleaguered wife.
Not that that was going to a damn bit of good.
3:30 a.m.
Cameron was on his own hands and knees in the living room watching over HIS sleeping sons on
the floor. There was verse he always liked to quote in his services. It was from Corinthians verse 7.
"We walk by faith, not by sight."
He kept saying over them. Much like the rebirth ceremony their eyes were covered with black
sleeping masks and their lips temporarily bonded shut.
The only good son of the evening was downstairs working on the digital blueprints that Cameron
wanted.
Cameron purposely didn't give them all of their nighttime "vitamins".
The both of them would be having the urge to scream at any minute.
"We walk by faith, not by sight. YES, RISE UP, my sons!"
Slowly with movements almost representative of a neighborhood drunk they were disoriented
walking into each other and the furniture.
Firefly had his hands in the air as Jaguar curled up on the stairs blocking his ears.
"Are you looking for me, my sons?"
Firefly feverishly waved his hands up in the air trying to desperately point at his mouth wondering
why it wouldn't open when he so desperately wanted to speak.
He tripped over his feet and wound up on his knees.
!!sye orLd meraCon!!
!!ehlp em!!
"You two are going to feel the wrath of me until you will sin no more!"
He punched Firefly in the stomach.
"You will NEVER touch a whore again and you WILL listen to me or be BANISHED from MY
kingdom FOREVER! I WILL NOT TOLERATE SIN FROM MY CHILDREN!"
Another punch this time in the mouth knocked him out cold. The same process was done with
Jaguar until he and the called again Panther carried each of them upstairs. Then the girls were placed
in their own beds. He then proceeded to take out the syringes to keep everyone but Panther
sleeping for 24 four hours straight as part of their atonement.
It never dawned on him that he was over medicating his children more than usual tonight.
"I want you to take your nighttime "vitamins" again that I left on the kitchen table and then go back
to the blueprints."
"As you wish, Lord Cameron."
Cameron proceeded to lock every open door including the basement room that Panther was
working in.
He slowly walked up to his room and shut the door. He took off his black blazer and hung it on the
closet hook. He poured himself a cup of hazelnut coffee from the machine and into a plain white
ceramic mug.
Cameron picked up small lot of toiletries that were on the floor from his earlier tirade
and put them back on top of the dresser.
With a steady hand he rewound the device and put the headphones in the jack.
"Hello? No, it's not too late, Mindy. You think you found something on Cameron DePalma?
That's great. How come you are telling me this and not Mom and Dad?"
"Because, I don't want them to worry in case it turns out to be a false lead."
"Fair enough. Send me an e-mail. Thank you, Mindy."
Really now. Do tell. He was Christ risen he already knew this.
"I found it in the back of one our kitchen cupboards. All of the pages have been ripped out!
That psycho Cameron DePalma was in our house, Walter!! I felt his presence before! He must
have Drake's keys. We're going to call a locksmith in the morning and change ALL the
locks!"
Like that was a deterrent. That whole family was a curse.
"You are right to be fearful, you bitch. I would be too if I was a sinner."
Cameron took off his headphones and headed for the tape recorder that he threw on his bed.
He was ready to record his final message of the night for the future of media posterity.
"Nighttime falls and all my children are well taken care of and loved.
No one loves these children more than I do."