First chapter of the new Harvey Banks story is written... Here it is... ONE I was in luck. Often a jail cell had to function as an office for me. Today there was an interrogation room available for me to set up shop. Don’t you just love flexible workspaces? The tabloid I used to write for went bankrupt a year ago, having lost the battle against the internet and TV. I’m an adaptable guy though so I went to work for the New York Police Department. Turns out they really needed some go-to-guy with knowledge about the weird stuff. You know, aliens, conspiracies, cults, demons and vampires. A ghost doesn’t leave forensic evidence and won’t let you slap the cuffs on. That’s the stuff I deal with for them. The pay’s okay, and I get away with drinking whiskey in the office as long as they higher-ups don’t see me boozing. You’d need booze too if you’d seen the stuff I’d seen. Most of my job consists of sifting through their files, looking for odd stuff, traces of the supernatural so I can get involved and try to close the case. I was reading through a file like that just now. The case involved a bunch of missing kids in Harlem. Four children between the age of six and nine disappeared during the course of the last four months. Two from the playground, two from their bedrooms while they were sleeping. The cops were unable to find any trace of them, rousting the usual assortment of sleazes and pedophiles from their beds and sweating them every way the law allowed them to, probably just crossing that line every now and then, kids being involved and detectives often being parents as well, so taking things a bit personally. Creepy shit, right? Still, not the kind of Fortean / X-Files kind of shit I usually get involved with. Until one witness, an old, senile black oldtimer mentioned the kids were taken by the Ton Ton Macoute. Now if you are bit versed in international history or just know your way around Google you might know Ton Ton Macoute used to be the name of a Haitian paramilitary force. The cops figured he was just rambling, or maybe reliving some nasty episodes from his life in Haiti before he came to the US. Detective Dolores Rodriguez even did a little bit of investigating into New Yorkers that were suspected to have been part of the Ton Ton Macoute, but that led to nowhere. I admire her thoroughness, proving once again she’s one of the best detectives on the force. She’s not used to looking at cases the way I am, though. I am more open to the impossible angles. You see, the name of the paramilitary force has its roots in the legends of a Haitian bogeyman, Uncle Gunnysack, which translates to Haitian as Ton Ton Macoute, who snatches unruly kids, puts them into a gunnysack and then eats them for breakfast. With the number of urban legends and cryptids I’ve discovered during my many years as a tabloid reporter I know it might just be a possibility this Ton Ton Macoute is real and has chosen Harlem as his hunting grounds. After having read up thoroughly on the subject I pulled the address of the old witness from the police files and fired up the engine of my old Dodge, heading for Harlem.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 09:53:47 +0000
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