There’s this quote from Michael Herr
in his book, Dispatches, that struck
a chord with me some years after getting out of the Army. I was taking night
classes for my BA in History and one of said classes was on the Vietnam War in
Film. Herr says:
“I keep thinking about all the
kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to
Vietnam to get wiped out for good. You don’t know what a media freak is until
you’ve seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when
they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making
war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off
for the networks. They were insane, but the war hadn’t done that to them. Most
combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few
firefights, but there were always the ones who couldn’t let that go, these few
who were up there doing numbers for the cameras… We’d all seen too many movies,
stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain
connections difficult” (Dispatches, 1977).
Herr was a war correspondent for Esquire
magazine who sadly passed away in 2016. What he saw during those gut-and-glory
days he eventually wrote about in 1977, nearly ten years following the events
that took place in the book. It’s an interesting notion, that some things take time to process. If you
haven’t had the chance to read his work, you need to. It’s very thought
provoking. He’s also the mastermind behind most of the narration of Apocalypse
Now and the script for Full Metal Jacket—not exactly what you’d call pro-war
movies. The reason why I quoted the above statement of Herr’s is because I feel
it sums up my own feelings regarding my experiences in the Iraq War, OIF
(Operation Iraqi Freedom), and learning to live with those memories today and
learning how to express them.
Allow me to explain.
There seems to be a surge of “war
stories” finding their way into the media nowadays. I’m in no way saying this
is a bad thing; I wish there were more veteran
writers. However, I’m somewhat suspicious when I see books marketed as “another
action-packed heroic tale of contemporary military service.” Such as from a
Navy Seal’s perspective or some high ranked officer sharing their “retelling”
of command with low fidelity storytelling. I’m not trying to be quip here, nor
am I trying to call out any one individual or author. What I am trying to call
out is similar to what Herr stated in the quote shared above. There seems to be
this carnivorous appetite for war stories, but not war as it really is, rather
war from a heroic narrative, or worse, war stories where soldiers are
nothing more than pawns in a Mad Hatter’s political chess game. I feel these
kinds of stories are for people who do not have a genuine interest in the
reality of war from the perspective of, say, Joe-Shmoe from Littlerock, Arkansas. These kinds of stories are for
people who want to be entertained, not enlighten to the cruel banality of
combat and every broken soul that comes when one person begets violence upon
another living person.
Those war movies, the ones where
soldiers live high adventure lives…they didn’t tell or show you the other
stuff. The feeling that comes when someone is trying to take your life. And the
feeling of taking a life. Aiming your rifle into a car, looking into the eyes
of a father or brother, someone’s son
and the terrified expression of the woman sitting next to them, or the kids in
the backseat, but you squeeze the trigger anyways because they could very well
be driving a car bomb into your convoy, trying to kill you and your brothers and sisters.
I signed up for the U.S. Army in
Sept 2001 and was honorably discharged in February 2008. Roughly seven years of
service, including three tours in Iraq, 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and finally
2006-2007. The last tour was probably the hardest, not only was my deployment
extended for the great 2007 Iraq War troop surge (Operation Arrowhead, I
think), but my squad were involved in more combat engagements than in any of my
previous two tours, and on top of that, I had someone other than my parents
waiting for me at home.
My wife and I had just met a few months before I
deployed. She stayed with me the entire deployment. We wrote dozens of letters
to each other, we chatted on the phone and on the internet, when circumstances
made it possible. She supported me, with more than just care packages, but by
giving me focus, reminding me that I was more than just a soldier. I had
someone waiting for me. Someone I needed to live for. It’s a sad fact of war,
that its easiest when you feel like your life is disposable. The moment it’s
not, well…things become complicated. Being away from her was the hardest thing
I’ve ever done.
Let me say, I don’t mean to sound callous towards my parents, I
love my parents very much, but with my wife it was different. For the first
time, I couldn’t imagine myself dying and not being afraid. Not just for the
circumstance (bodily suffering) but for the recompense of leaving her behind
(emotional suffering). I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be robbed of this
imagined life we could’ve had together. I didn’t want to lose that. And I
didn’t want her to suffer for my loss.
I struggled with these emotions
every day and a buried them. I buried them because you can’t dwell on that shit
when you’re in the shit. You have to focus on the day to day, on the mission.
Never considering the consequences of what happens to all that emotion, rage,
anger, despair, terror, fear when the mission is over and your back home living
that dream.
When I
got out of the Army in 2008, I didn’t have a plan. I was burnt out with
deployments—having already served three tours in Iraq and ready to start a new
life with my soon to be wife, Kaia. I wanted that. I wanted my American Dream.
But I struggled. And for a long time, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I
sought help from the VA and was turned away, told I had nothing to worry about,
just a bad case of “separation anxiety.” I never went back. I figured I was
alone in this fight. No one cared. Just my wife and family. So, I kept myself
busy, kept my thoughts focused on tasks and projects. Night school kept me busy
for a few years, but once I graduated, I needed to occupy that time with
something. Sitting around with nothing but my thoughts…no, I couldn’t do that.
It would kill me. So—I wrote. It came naturally. I had penned a few short
stories back in the day, even did poetry here and there on deployment, but
nothing I was willing to share with anyone, under any circumstance. Well…except
for maybe in death, because if I was dead then I guess I couldn’t really do much about someone reading
my stuff.
In 2008, after being pushed by
family to do the college thing, I finally agreed. I’m glad I did. College
helped with more than just furthering my career. Slowly, through the course
from 2008-2014, I began to open up and write about my experiences in Iraq. I
didn’t really want to at first, again, back to the “glamorization of war,” I
feared any attempt to recount my experience would be a cheapening of it, a
cheapening of other veteran’s experiences by attempting to sell my own. I
didn’t want to do that, but I felt drawn to write something.
My first attempt was during a
creative writing class into my second semester at San Jacinto Community
College. The assignment was to write a short narrative story, so I wrote,
“There will be Ghosts.” From there I dove head first into fiction-writing. I
began a little science-fiction piece which never came to fruition, and probably
never will. I consider these first works to be a learning
curve, not something I’d want to see published. A dabbling, if you will, in the
creative cosmos, finding my voice and all that fun stuff. When I transferred
to the University of Houston-Clear Lake to finish my degree, I had to put my
fictional writing on the back burner and focus almost exclusively on my history
studies. While this may seem like a setback, I do not see it that way. In fact,
I believe these years hardnosed historical study gave me an element lacking in
my previous fictional-writing attempts. Dedicating myself to my studies gave me
a depth I wouldn’t have been able to include in my work otherwise. My studies
focused on 20th century Germany, namely the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. I
also took Vietnam War history classes, Texas history, and a class on the Civil
Rights Movement, each class taught from the ground-up. This is a somewhat
relative new way of teaching history. Traditionally, history is taught from the
top, that is, from famous generals and presidents or other such impressive
folk. From the bottom-up, history is taught from the Joe-Shmoe perspective, the everyday lives of everyday people. It
was fantastic. A new way of looking at our world and the people that fill it by
giving them relevance. And in turn, made me believe that perhaps my story had
relevance. In 2014, I graduated from the University of Houston-Clear Lake with a Bachelor of Arts in
History…now what?
Suddenly I found this huge pocket of
empty space. My mandatory studies were over. I had nothing to keep my mind
focused. And as I said before, unable to focus on something forced me to dwell
on shit that shouldn’t be dwelt on. I decided to get back to fictional
writing as a means to keep my mind busy, keep me sane, and present a challenge.
I wrote two short stories soon after graduating. “Hobo: a horror short story,”
and “Are you hungry, dear?” Both are of the horror genre. And before you ask,
“why horror,” let me be brief and just say that I’ve always been a fan of
horror and dark fiction, ever since my big sister let me watch “Night of the
Living Dead” one Friday night. And even before then, I read Goosebumps and then
grew into Stephen King. It made sense for me to gravitate to the genre that I
felt most comfortable. And besides, horror gives us the most honest and
straightforward medium for social commentary…sometimes we need that ugly
non-decorum.
While these shorts were fun, they
also gave me some traction toward my first full-length novel, Reinheit.
Reinheit was
published originally under Booktrope’s horror imprint Forsaken, and now
currently resides with Shadow Work Publishing. The story was, to be frank, the
most serious thing I’ve ever written at that point in my writing career, other
than my wedding vows of course. But let me be clear, this was not my “Iraq War”
piece, though, as a writer you have to draw emotion from somewhere, and it
would seem a lot of my emotion still streams from my experiences in Iraq. I
think some of that bled into Reinheit.
As for the story, I tapped into my history education and focused on Nazi
Germany. I didn’t want this to be just a historical fiction piece, I wanted to
say something about some of the issues going on in 2014, in the media, and on
social websites, such as Facebook. The total disregard of looking at people as
simply that, people. Reinheit drew from real history, but the story
was really about the here and now. A school teacher dealing with an abusive
husband, an SS officer pushing himself to carry out his ghastly orders, a thug
of a husband who views the world from a very narrow hall, an old man looking
for redemption, and of course, a curious armchair with a very dark purpose.
While
penning Reinheit, I was able to further develop my “writers voice.” When you
read a lot, which is a must if you want to write, you kind of take on the voice
of the authors you are reading. You need to write to chisel away all those
voices, and hopefully find your own in the process. I think this is intended to
be an ongoing thing. The more you chisel, the more defined your voice becomes,
until maybe reaching some point when your aged and withered and giving lectures
to a new generation of writers. Reinheit helped define my own voice and
gave me the necessary encouragement to tap into my fears—my PTSD—my suffering
and vulnerability. The ugliness I have inside. And expose it for readers to
read in the form of storytelling. And so, I’m still writing. Still struggling
to capture those buried emotions. I’ve found it therapeutic writing about all
this, the people I’ve seen get hurt and the people I’ve hurt. Yes, in fictional
stories, but for those who know—those who’ve been there, the fiction is all too
real. My latest book, Palace of Ghosts, is my recent conjuring of
the memories that have been buried too long. Here I am, ten years since the war
and still struggling. But the struggles are being managed better, and I know I
have a voice. The pen is my medicine.
Again, I cannot write heroic, though
I know a lot of whom I consider to be heroic. I don’t want to pass the war off
as some grand adventure. I want to rip the decorum off war, the shininess of
it. I want to bring audiences into the preverbal trenches of “All Quiet on the
Western Front.” I want to bring an air of hardnosed poetry as Philip Larkin had
done for his own generation with his masterpiece, “MCMXIV.” And above all this,
I want to be direct and honest, no matter how difficult or depressing that
may be. Even for myself, rehashing brutal memories. Pages on real, raw, and utterly
difficult subjects. While hopefully still entertaining
to read, because of the relationships between characters and the situations
they find themselves, but not solely to entertain, but to discuss the reality
of war and living with the memory of war. I want to talk about PTSD, anger,
war-guilt, and suicide because these are discussions that need to happen by
getting away from the myth of supermen and the disconnect of high-adventure
combat by focusing on the naked ugliness of it and how we can live with
those memories through expression…and the sad gut punching fact that many
veterans cannot live with the memories of war…
While there will always be “those”
books that do not give much substance to the echoes of war, I’ve been seeing
more and more veteran writers coming forward from the trenches, unabashed by
unrepentant honesty. BRAVO! There was a Vanity Fair article called, “The Words
of War” that included a few of these up and coming writers of poetry, novels,
and screenplays. I felt encouraged reading it. Hell, I still do. Seeing fellow
veterans picking up the pen and expressing themselves. I’m proud to be part of
this “Lost Generation,” for as Elliot Ackerman, one of the veteran writers
mentioned in the article, puts it, “it might have been better to be part of the
‘Lost Generation’ than the lost part of a generation.”
Palace
of Ghosts
Thomas S. Flowers
Thomas S. Flowers
Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
Date of Publication: March 5,
2019
ISBN: 978-1-988819-14-3
ASIN: B07NTQWWQG
Number of pages: 275
Word Count: 62K
Cover Artist: Luke Spooner
Tagline: Evil resides in Amon
Palace. Something worse came to visit.
Book Description:
Four veterans of the Iraq War
seeking a cure for Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder arrive at a notoriously
haunted house in the bogs of Galveston Island called Amon Palace.
Samantha Green, a friendless
former Army K-9 handler looking for a way to put her loss behind her.
Brad Myers, a lighthearted former
Military Police Officer severally wounded in war wanting nothing more than a
good night’s sleep.
Andy Lovejoy, an overweight light
spoken drone operator who once watched the war from above now questions who he
has become.
Marcus Pangborn, a headstrong
Marine who desperately wants a dead friend’s forgiveness.
The group joins Doctor Frederick
Peters, an experimental psychologist looking to prove his exposure theory
hypothesis, and his two assistants, Tiffany Burgess and Dexter Reid.
At first, their stay seems to
conjure nothing more than spooky encounters with inexplicable phenomena. But
Amon Palace is gathering its powers—and soon it will reveal that these veterans
are not who they seem.
Palace
of Ghosts
By
Thomas S. Flowers
Chapter
1
Missing Persons
Detective Carter
studied the man across the table through the smoky haze of stale cigarettes. He
paid close attention to any clue that could give away some other reasonable
explanation than the insanity that had just been confessed. Manila envelopes
and folders spread out before him, containing recent photographs and reports of
what remained of the old mansion out in the bogs on Galveston Island by
Boddeker Road. The fire was substantial to say the least, leaving only skeletal
remnants of charred stone and soot of what was once a magnificent estate. And
among the destruction spread out on the table in interrogation room 2B, six
separate missing persons reports. Reaching down, he switched off the recorder,
flipped the tape and resumed the interview.
“Maybe we should
throw you back in holding for another twenty-four hours—see if that gets you to
start talking reasonably,” Carter’s partner, Detective Harley Warren, growled.
He walked around the room and stood behind the suspect. He leaned close to his
ear and whispered, “What you’re giving us, Doc—well, we ain’t buying it. I
think maybe you’re a shit liar and can’t come up with a more realistic story.
You want to know what I think? I think maybe you did something to your
patients. Maybe you lost your temper and—" he made a slicing motion with
his thumb across his neck.
Squinting
against the harsh fluorescent light above them, Carter focused on the suspect’s
reaction. But all he saw was more of the same.
The suspect
propped his head up with his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples, eyes
closed. “I’ve told you what happened, I know its hard to believe, but—”
“Hard to
believe? I’d say this was all a waste of our time.” Warren stood but remained
behind the suspect. “There are six people missing—six, don’t you think their
families deserve closure? Just tell us where the bodies are and then we’ll let
you go see the wizard, get your own personal padded cell.”
The suspect
scoffed. “Missing? They aren’t missing—they were taken, but long before coming
to Amon Palace. Whatever happened to them happened in Iraq.”
Warren made a
face. “Again with this crazy bullshit.”
“Its not
bullshit—I’m telling you what happened, you simply don’t want to listen. The
suspect glanced behind him, speaking to Warren directly.
Warren waved him
off. “Fancy talk, Doc. But where does it leave us? I’ll tell you, I think you
just scored a free ride to the insane asylum. Three hots and a cot, you’ll be
living like a king while the parents of the people you killed suffer. All
because you’re too chicken shit to tell us what really happened.”
The suspect
looked into his palms and said, mostly to himself, “Insane? Maybe I am
insane—God, I wish I was.”
Carter cleared
his throat. “Okay, Doctor Peters, let’s take it slow. Let’s see if we got this
straight. What you’re telling us is that you put together this group from
patients you were treating at the VA hospital, right?
“Correct,”
Peters nodded. “An experiment in exposure therapy.”
“Jesus Christ,
don’t you think these vets have gone through enough without you playing around
with their heads?” Warren barked.
“I was trying to
help them!” Peters cried.
“Sure you
were—sounds like you were trying to help your own career, if you ask me,”
Warren quipped.
Carter held up a
hand, glancing up at Warren, gesturing for him to ease off.
Warren rolled
his eyes but said nothing else.
“Okay, Doctor.
So, you put together this group for a week at Amon Palace?” Carter asked.
Rubbing his
temples again, Peters said, “I’ve told you all of this already. Yes, I acquired
special permission from Mrs. Driscoll. She allowed me use of her estate to
conduct the week-long experiment.”
“Mrs. Driscoll?
As in Elizabeth Driscoll, daughter of John Driscoll?”
“Yes, and niece
of Sir Christopher Driscoll.”
Carter glanced
up at Warren.
Noticing the
exchanged expression, Peters asked, “Why?”
Carter shifted
in his seat and looked Peters straight in the face, bracing for the reaction
that would come. “Elizabeth Driscoll has been dead now for over thirty years.
The estate passed on to another member of the family who had never bothered to
do anything with it. Amon Palace has been abandoned since the 1980s.”
As if on cue,
Peters’s hand dropped to the table. His eyes shot wide. “What?” he whispered.
Carter nodded,
“Whoever you talked with—if anyone, it wasn’t Elizabeth Driscoll.”
“That can’t be possible,” Peters stammered.
“Let’s assume
for now that whoever it was you spoke with, you believed it to be Elizabeth
Driscoll,” Carter said, scribbling gibberish in his notebook, a trick he’d used
a dozen times with perps. They see him writing something down after getting the
rug swept under them and get nervous. And with jittery nerves come mistakes.
“Can’t be—I
spoke with her…” Peters went on, glancing at the notebook, whispering to
himself. He looked up suddenly, “What about the Andersons?”
Carter frowned.
“Who?”
“Marge and John
Anderson.”
“Are you saying
there were others?”
“There should
be—they were the caretakers hired by Miss Driscoll.”
Exhaling, Carter
said, “Amon Palace has no caretakers—at least none on record.” He flipped
through some of the folders on the table. “And there have been no bodies
recovered as of yet at the crime scene.”
Peters resumed
rubbing his temples. “They have to be there, she hired them to take care of the
estate. I spoke with both on more than one occasion. And I saw them both on the
night of the fire…they were in the house.”
Warren stepped
forward and slammed his fist on the table beside Peters, filling the room with
a loud pang as he shouted, “Don’t you understand what we’re saying? The woman
you supposedly talked with doesn’t exist and there were no caretakers! Which
means your story is total fucking bullshit!”
Peters flinched.
“Okay, Doctor,”
Carter prodded on, “you brought this group in for an experiment. And then what,
spooky encounters start happening—are you telling us that Amon Palace is
haunted?”
Warren scoffed.
He stood back now, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his
barrel chest.
Smiling, Peters
said, “Go ahead and laugh, I understand. I didn’t believe either, not at first.
Haunted by some specter or specters or demonically possessed? That would be the
real question. Those familiar with parapsychology—of which I am not; I’m
paraphrasing here from what I’ve read—almost all cases with reports of
hauntings, psychic invasions, and the like, all bear a strong parallel to our
experiences within Amon Palace. Cold spots, slamming of doors or banging on
walls by some unknown; unseen force, retrocognition—and yet, according to
documents published by the Vatican, hauntings such as these sometimes serve as
the first manifestation of an entity ultimately bent on demonic possession.
According to said article, odors of human excrement or rotting eggs, sulfur can
be a characteristic clue of demonic infestation.”
More laughing
from Warren.
“As I said,
laugh if it makes you feel better. But what would you find more incredible,
that Amon Palace is; was indeed possessed, or at the very least haunted, or
that we all somehow shared the same hallucinations and grotesque
misinterpretations of fact?”
Carter leaned back
in his chair, pondering the possibility.
Warren jabbed
Peters with a finger. “If what you’re saying is even true—we only have your
statement to go off of. Convenient, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”
Peters shook his
head, “Certainly not convenient for Samantha Green, Brad Myers, Marcus
Pangborn, Tiffany Burgess, or Dexter Reid.”
Warren wound up
as if he was about to punch Peters.
“Okay, okay,”
Carter offered his hands again, urging his partner to cool down. “You bring
your experimental exposure group to Amon Palace and everyone starts seeing
things—but didn’t you say you wanted them to see this weird stuff? Triggers,
you called them, right?”
“The idea—the
experiment,” Peters exhaled, glancing sideways at Warren, “was for them to
spend a week unplugged from the rest of the world. No phones. No TV. No
internet. Completely isolated in an unfamiliar and potentially stressful
environment that could possibly trigger certain responses. At the time, I did
not believe Amon Palace was truly haunted. Exposure therapy works by triggering
patients, forcing them to confront buried trauma. But this was supposed to be a
place where I could safely monitor their conditions. There have been cases
before, therapeutic exposure experiments that have gone awry. I’m sure you have
heard of the former Navy Seal whose post-service time was spent helping
veterans with PTSD. He would take them to gun ranges, a known trigger for many
soldiers returning from war. The idea is the same—to help patients with PTSD
face trauma in order to heal. On one occasion, he had taken a veteran out who
had been struggling significantly. The veteran snapped. And in the end, he shot
and killed his would-be therapist and his friend. He was sentenced to life in
prison without parole. A horrible tragedy with three ruined lives. At Amon
Palace I wanted my patients to be able to face the memory of their trauma
without the fear of hurting loved ones or themselves. As they began to react to
the suggested belief that Amon Palace was in fact haunted, I would guide them
toward projecting what they feared the most—their own unique traumas.”
“Jesus Christ,”
Warren quipped again.
Carter silenced
his partner with a hand. “So, the experiment was designed for them to react to
being locked up in a creepy mansion under the pretense that the house was
haunted, and it worked?”
Peters nodded,
tears brimming his eyes. “And I confess, I pushed them—more than I should
have.”
Carter leaned
forward, he could sense they were finally getting somewhere. “What do you mean,
pushed?”
Looking up,
tears now trickling down his face, he said, “Hypnosis.”
“Hypnotherapy?
You put them in a suggestive state when they were already under duress?”
“Under duress?
No—they volunteered!”
“Only because
you promised a cure—didn’t you?”
“And it would
have worked too…but they weren’t who I thought they were—they changed into
something horrible.”
Carter sneered,
tired of this interrogation, tired of the lies and wild fantasies. “And why
didn’t it work, Doctor? Did your little hypothesis backfire? Did you have
visions of your career burning so you decided to burn everything else? Did you
kill them?”
“NO!”
“THAN WHAT
HAPPENED?”
“THEY WERE
TAKEN!”
Carter shook his
head, the feeling of defeat sinking in and the weariness of this prolonged
interrogation taking a toll. “Taken? Where, Doctor—and by whom?”
About
the Author:
Thomas S. Flowers is an Operation
Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom Army veteran who loves scary movies, BBQ,
and coffee. Ever since reading Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western
Front" and Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" he has inspired to write
deeply disturbing things that relate to war and horror, from the paranormal to
his gory zombie infested PLANET of the DEAD series, to even his recent dabbling
of vampiric flirtation in The Last Hellfighter readers can expect to find
complex characters, rich historical settings, and mind-altering horror. Thomas
is also the senior editor at Machine Mean, a horror movie and book review site
that hosts contributors in the horror and science fiction genre.
PLANET of the DEAD and The Last
Hellfighter are best-sellers on Amazon's Top 100 lists for Apocalyptic Fiction
and African American Horror.
You can follow Thomas and get
yourself a FREE eBook copy of FEAST by joining his newsletter. Sign up by
vising his website at www.ThomasSFlowers.com
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2onPLYV
Blog: https://machinemean.org/
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1 comment:
This looks very interesting. I enjoyed reading the post.
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