This second set of excerpts from The Murder Rule is from Part Two and features narrator Bobby Jones, who tells his story about how he got involved as a rock band roadie, including his time with the band featured in The Prodigal Band Trilogy, and then how and why he joined two cults (one supposedly Christian, the other the new age Church of the Circle of Unity featured also in the trilogy and which sided with evil), and left the evil cult and was ‘punished’ over that move. Bobby also appears in Part One. Unlike Part One, though, most of the characters are Americans and most of the action takes place in the USA. The following excerpts are © 2023 by Deborah Lagarde.
In the first excerpt from Chapter One of Part Two of The Murder Rule, Bobby is phoning his parents as he needs their help.
Foggy Memories
Bobby Jones is my name.
Well, I think it is.
That is what my parents told me it was. Over the phone.
There I was in the middle of Richmont, California. Talking to my parents over a pay phone at a phone booth two blocks from the Richmont Church of the Circle of Unity where something had just happened to me, but I cannot remember what.
Funny, that I could remember my parents’ phone number, but not my name, and not what I had been doing the previous several hours in the basement of a church after being in a basement at the occultist Hellside Horror House in the fancy section near the beach by Richmont. And it took me hours to remember even that.
I had dialed my parents’ phone number. Rotary dial? Push button dial? Couldn’t remember. But I knew the phone number. Collect call. I had no money on me. Was my money stolen? I can’t remember.
My dad, a Dallas dentist, answered the phone.
“Hello?”
I responded, “Dad?”
“Bobby?”
“Um—who?”
“Bobby? Is that you?”
“Bobby?” I turned my head in wonder, then asked my dad, “Bobby? Who’s Bobby?”
Mr. Jones, on the other end of the line two hours ahead in Dallas, Texas, turned his head around to my mother. His wife.
“Is that Bobby?” she asked, nervous. It was 7 a.m.
“Yes, dear.” Voice shaking. “It’s Bobby, but—but—”
“But what?”
Turned to his wife. “It’s Bobby, all right! I know it, but he doesn’t!”
I heard what my dad was telling my mom.
“Is my name Bobby?” I shouted into the phone hoping dad would hear my shouts and tell me.
Nothing on the other end, so I shouted louder. “Dad! Mom! Why are you calling me ‘Bobby’?”
Dad whispered to his wife, “Bobby is shouting, asking me if his name is Bobby.”
“Well—”
Jones then shouted back into the phone, “Yes! Your name is Bobby!”
“Bobby is my name? Is that you, dad?”
“Yes! Bobby, why did you forget your name? What happened?”
While Jones spoke into the phone, he thought, Are you on drugs, son? How else could you forget your name? And where are you?
“Uh, dad, it’s gonna take a while to tell it, and anyway, I don’t remember all the details—”
“Well, Bobby, come on home and tell us what happened.” Short laugh. “If you can remember where you live—”
“Uh, no I can’t come home, dad. Because I’m not where you think I am.”
“Well then, Bobby, where are you?”
“Um—”
“You are in Dallas, I take it?”
“Um—No dad. Not Dallas. Richmont.”
“Richmont?” Taken aback, Dad shouted a whine. “You’re in California?”
“California?” Mom nearly screamed. “How in the blue blazes—”
I heard my mother’s scream. “Uh—yeah, Richmont, California. Sorry I never told you but I’ve been here since last year—”
Mortified. “Last—year? Bobby—last year?” Anger built up inside Dad. “Why in the devil didn’t you tell us you—what? Hitch-hiked? To California? Why the devil—California?” Livid now. “Why you—!”
My dad cussed at me over the phone. Meaning, he was mad as hell.
Bobby then explains how and why he left home in Dallas, Texas, and then hitchhiked to the fictitious Bay Area city of Richmont, California. He managed to buy a used van where he lived in a parking lot, then managed to become a rock band roadie in 1992-1993—by invading ‘rock band tour parties’ given by a horror TV channel owned by a celebrity couple at their Hellside Horror House estate in Richmont.
My first Hellside party crash
That phone call to home was at about 5 a.m. in mid-June, 1993. In the previous hours, I had snuck into a party for one of America’s top rock bands through a backside wall of hedge-bushes facing a pond at the north end of the Hellside Horror House estate of pop culture-TV stars Andre’ Cool and Cheetah Nightshade, owners of that cable and satellite television horror and occultist channel. The place was a little over a mile from the beach.
Since I had done a few hours of roadie ‘work’ for this same band the previous fall and a full-time roadie for this band recognized me, I had no trouble fitting in and found myself involved in some occultist ritual in the Hellside Horror House basement.
Among nearly a hundred wasted rockers, groupies, roadies, and others touring with the group as well as friends of the Hellside owners from the nearby Church of the Circle of Unity run by Cole Blessing, I found myself snorting several hits of skank—which, I found out later, was laced with jimsonweed, a poisonous leafy green plant that grew wild in the Southwest.
Jimsonweed, also called Datura, if eaten even in small amounts, could send a person into fits and seizures and even death. But, ground up into dollops in tiny amounts, jimsonweed was a hallucinogenic added to the cocaine-opioid drug known as skuz.
Several snorts of a drug I had only used once or twice before sent me into a crash in the basement on the tiled floor in a room with what looked like a sacrificial altar. Don’t know when I woke up, but around 3 a.m., I found myself on another floor in another basement—at the local Church of the Circle of Unity roughly two miles from Hellside. I have no idea how I got there.
Then Bobby gets to the point of his phone call.
Back to my phone call with dad.
“Yeah, dad, I could use some money since someone either stole my wallet or I lost the money that was in it—”
“So, you lost your driver’s license too?”
“Yeah, and about that apartment, dad. If I’m gonna get a new license I need an address, right?”
Dad was curious as well as nervous. “You do have a post office box, I hope.”
“Yeah, I do. Thank God, since you couldn’t send me any money if I didn’t.”
“Now I don’t know about California, Bobby, but in Texas you need a home address to get a driver’s license since you have to have a local address.”
“Speaking of Texas,” I laughed into the phone, “my driver’s license is a Texas driver’s license.”
“With a California license plate? I wonder how the cops—”
Laugh again. “Speaking of cops, look dad, I’ve never been stopped by any cops.”
“Then I guess you’re not in Texas—” Chuckle.
“But I guess losing my old driver’s license is not such a bad thing, then.”
And on and on about getting a new license and a new apartment.
A week later, I got the money in the mail. Cash. Enough to get the new license—I used the home address of a new friend of mine I called fat Ralph.
Who lived in his own parents’ basement.
Until about a month later, I continued to live in the van. Parked at Ralph’s parents’ driveway.
The next post will likely come toward the end of August and will feature Chapter One of Part Three of The Murder Rule. Part Three, narrated by Lloyd Denholm (who narrated Part One), features more murder plots, again on ‘power players’ who turn against the evil agendas of ‘the rulers of this world,’ only this timeline in many ways matches the present-day so-called ‘great reset’ narrative. I am still working on the final edit of The Murder Rule.
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