Available Darkness Season 1

some landmark that time had forgotten.
    An old, battered van sat solo at the far end of the lot.
    John wondered who he’d find waiting for him.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Caleb Baldwin

    “A drink, Caleb?” SAC Bob Cromwell asked as Caleb sat at the bar in his boss’s den.
    “No thanks.”
    Bob headed to the garage to grab a fresh bag of ice, and Caleb scanned the home, a monstrous estate on the river. The kitchen, larger than many living rooms Caleb had been in, was outfitted with custom maple kitchen furnishings, dark granite countertops, and appliances that shined with the latest in techno-wizardry. The house looked like something from Architectural Digest ; its asking price somewhere north of $4 million — a bit more than he figured his boss could afford — but Caleb had learned long ago never to make assumptions about people’s wealth.
    While the home was beautiful, it had all the warmth of a museum. The only hints of household personality in sight were the few tastefully framed photos on the fireplace mantle of Bob’s wife and college-aged daughter, both in Whistler on a ski trip. Bob, with his wide, owlish face and sharp nose, was absent from all but one of the photos, a Christmas portrait from at least six years ago, where Bob wore an unflattering green sweater with a sickly looking reindeer design. Caleb swallowed the urge to laugh.
    Bob returned with the ice, poured himself a glass of vodka and sat across from Caleb at the bar which separated the kitchen from the dining room.
    “How much do you know about Omega?” Bob got right to the point.
    Omega was the group that sat just above Caleb’s on the agency chart, the squad assigned to cases that Caleb’s own team was unable to solve. They made sense of the senseless and found natural explanations for supernatural events. Their success rate was said to be 100 percent, though Caleb had little interaction with them. Hell, he didn’t even know any of the members outside of Commander Mike Mathews, who headed up Caleb’s unit for nine years before his promotion. They rarely saw one another anymore, though, given that both men’s jobs kept them on the road for the majority of the year.
    “Well, I know they get our leftovers,” Caleb joked, “but beyond that, not a whole hell of a lot.”
    Bob took another long sip, finished off his drink and then poured another before reaching beneath the bar and retrieving a black folder with a blood-red “CLASSIFIED” stamped diagonally across the cover. Bob slid the folder across the bar.
    Inside, a stack of a dozen or so neatly organized black and white photos and a stack of nearly 40 pages of reports. Attached to the inside cover was a single sheet of paper which read, “PROJECT PHOENIX.”
    Caleb picked up the first photo, and noted the handwritten date along the bottom right hand border: July 14, 1947.
    In the photo, a black hooded, but otherwise nude man sat strapped to a large chair similar to the type sometimes used to restrain prisoners. His arms and legs were bound by leather straps and large metal buckles, his flesh was pallid and pocked with gray bruises. Caleb had trouble making out the man’s age, as he appeared hairless. Behind the man stood a gray wall with a black sliding panel which seemed to conceal a long rectangular window.
    Caleb turned to the next photo. A young man with a buzz cut in some sort of unrecognizable military-looking uniform stood behind the man in the chair. The military officer carried no weapons, patches, or badges to indicate his rank or branch of service.
    In the next photo, Buzz Cut had removed the prisoner’s hood. The captive was young, in his mid-twenties, hair wet (he at least had hair on his head) with sweat (or water) and eyes wide in terror.
    Caleb felt beads of his own sweat begin to blanket his forehead. He flipped to the next photo and saw the officer sliding open the black panel revealing a window behind them. A thick beam of brilliant light poured through the open window, spilling into the room and washing over the back of the strapped man. Though obviously not possible, it appeared that the shaft of light had sent the prisoner into a writhing fit of pain, his body arched taut, seemingly in attempt to break free of the restraints.
    Caleb gasped, his fingers shaking as he went to the next photo.
    The man was still in the chair, but now consumed in flames. Buzz Cut was no longer in the shot.
    The next photo was another view of the man on fire. The sequence