Old Man Eerily Gathers Armed Cult Following in the Millions
A Young Unspecified Agent Arrives in Area of Old Man’s Suspected Provenance in Search of Details, Information Regarding His Identity
Notwithstanding Gramps and his phenomenal whirlwind success on the talent show, the overwhelming favorite to win was a guitar-strumming country singer; beautiful voice, strong lilting tenor, cracking on those crucial notes the way the folk just loved for a country voice to crack, it was so heartbreakingly lovely. After all, people hadn’t completely lost their senses.
But if the country singer won, it would be against someone who actually had no right to really be on the show – Gramps – because he was a joke. So even if things went this way, something was still not right about the whole thing in a very big way.
The country singer was the first up, and when he got done singing and playing his own composition, he received a standing ovation. The cheers kept coming and coming; his performance had been so moving, as it swept the audience, the camera could find someone crying in every row.
After the commercial break, Gramps was up.
But whereas all of his preceding acts were an average of around 7½ minutes, already a bit long by TV talent show standards, this time his number – which was exactly the same as his other ones insofar as what he did – lasted around 20 minutes, or three times as long, using the entire Act 3 of Philip Glass’s chamber opera “The Photographer”, as the music, and there was nothing anyone did, or appeared able to do to stop it.
When it was over, the reaction was one of mesmerized silence – no one was able to move. The nationwide TV audience did not quite know what had happened or what was happening. No one did. There wasn’t very much left of the hour, with the show finally due to end and all, but with two more contestants to go, the station and all the affiliates and syndicates broadcasting the show across the country that night went into 20 minutes of commercials. When the commercials ended the show came back, and it was clear it would somehow go for a second hour, knocking the other shows that were to follow one hour out of their time slots. To fill up the time, instead of getting to the next two contestants, the show decided to run some of the show’s most memorable moments from the season, which, significantly, did not include Gramps.
But that’s not what’s important.
By the time the show was over, it was down to the country singer and Gramps, and to the seeming relief of everyone, the judges gave it to the country singer, with Gramps taking second place. Well, Gramps just looked down as he always did, without changing his expression or even moving, as if none of it mattered, or even as if he wasn’t, and hadn’t been, quite senile all along and never really understood what had been happening in the first place.
The country singer reached over to shake Gramps’s hand, and when Gramps didn’t raise his hand to shake, the country singer took it and shook it himself and then let it drop and it was like Gramps didn’t know shit all about it – he just stood there.
But you could see the pained expression on the country singer’s face as he bowed to the audience and tried to smile, acknowledging his win, because he knew his victory had really been a defeat – of the worst kind – of the kind that ruins a career in showbiz forever. Before he had even gotten started, he knew it was over. Everything that he had been working toward his entire life was now shattered, and for the rest of his days in the entertainment world, no one would even give him the time of day. He had a choice – to kill himself or fill out that application at Walmart.
It would have been better had he lost. It would have been better had he lost! Losing to Gramps would have made his career. But now, with Gramps the loser, it would be Gramps who would get the national spotlight, while this country singer, with his beautiful lilting voice and everything, would fade into obscurity. Because the country singer did not win against a worthy contender, which would have justified him savoring this very moment and everything it meant from that moment on, screaming, crying, whooping it up, jumping up and down while hugging his overjoyed loved ones on stage, rioting in his glee, but had instead beaten a colossal evil joke that had gotten way out of hand, beyond anyone’s control, and of benefit to no one, except the program, which had broken every viewership record to date on the books.
That very night, he would go on to kill himself.
By now, Gramps had a fanatical following, and it was already immense, and it kept on growing – frightfully. He was on tour across the country, giving concerts all the time – doing the same exact thing with the arms, except to different music, except now it didn’t really matter what the music was or whether his arm thrusts were in sync with the beat or not. One time, for example, he did his interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” – the whole thing, which was exactly like his interpretation of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Holst’s “Mars”, except for it being Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”.
When it was over, as with every other show he gave, Gramps just disappeared. And then all Hell broke loose. The entire arena ran riot and hundreds of people died – some, not just falling out of the higher tiers, but zealously throwing themselves to their deaths. Others cast themselves to the ground, begging to be trampled underfoot – and they were.
Wherever Gramps played, no venue was ever big enough anymore. Crushes of numberless crowds would be pushing against the walls from the outside, perhaps hoping in this way to gain some piece of Gramps. A group called The Thug Puppets appeared seemingly out of nowhere and began to open for him, ostensibly to calm the masses down and get their minds off Gramps, but they only succeeded in riling them up the more.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, Gramps had imperceptibly become G.R.A.M.P.S. – not the person, if that’s what you could call him, but the act, the thing: thrillingly ominous and foreboding, vast, looming, unknown, and utterly terrifying. What could those letters mean?
And as for the followers of G.R.A.M.P.S., who like to refer to themselves as Grampsons, why, they must number in the hundreds of thousands by now, if not the millions.
“And if it ain’t the millions, friend, it soon will be. That’s them that you see out there, pacing up and down in front of this here diner.”
“Yeah? And why are they carrying rifles and submachine guns.”
“Say they got a Constitutional Right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. But if you or I were to invoke that right, friend, walking around with a shotgun or a bow and arrow, we’d be stopped right quick; probably throwed in jail.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“We ain’t no Grampsons.”
“I see. Hey, mister, can I get another cup of coffee here?”
“Sure thing, son. Here you go, and don’t you mind none about what this here fella’s saying about no Grampsons and such. You just relax and enjoy your coffee. We don’t want no trouble around here with no unnecessary foolish talking about things nobody knows about is true or not.”
“Hee, hee, hee… yeah, you just go ahead and listen to ol’ Earl behind the counter here. ‘Cause Earl, there, he a bit worried. Can’t say I blame him. Been running this place for nigh on thirty years, haven’t you, Earl?”
“That’s right. It’ll be thirty-two next month. What’s your name, son?”
“Hee, hee, hee… never you mind that, Earl. Can’t you see this boy didn’t just come off the road to take a load off and mosey on up to this here counter for a cup of coffee. He come here for some answers as to some curious questions he has as to what-all’s going on; isn’t that right, son?”
“Now, wait a second, here. That first part of your statement was correct. I didn’t come here looking for trouble. I just came off the road to take a little break, brush the dust off, have a cup of coffee, maybe a little something else. I don’t mind stopping, and I don’t mind spending the money, if you don’t mind sharing some of your hospitality. Because if you don’t want me here, it’s not much trouble to me – I can just go and find what I’m looking for somewhere else. I didn’t know anything about any… Grampsons, or whatever the hell you call them.”
“Ssshh… quiet there, boy. You sure don’t want no trouble bandying that moniker about like it don’t mean nothin’. You want to get your head blowed off?”
“Now, Ned, stop scaring the boy. Stop talking all this nonsense about… about… Ned, they got the Constitutional Right to carry them weapons and they just exercising it, doing nobody no harm.”
“Yep, Earl, they exercising it, all right, and they about to exercise it right into your diner, asking for food and donations, just like they do with everybody, and if you don’t pay, well, then… That’s right, Earl, you just go ahead and sit on down. Don’t say nothin’, just sit down and think about what you going to give them when they come in here, and then think about whether they going to think it’s enough, given how many of them are out there and what kind of establishment they figure this is. And even if they think it’s enough, you still got to worry if they going to think you gave them what you did with the proper amount of enthusiasm and support, because in a lot of ways, Earl, that’s really the most important part of everything they want, and if they don’t perceive you gave them that, then…”
“All right, Ned, that’s enough. I give them what they want. Ain’t no one going take from me what-all I worked all of my life to get. I give them what they want and they going to go, and everything’s going to be all right. That’s right, sir, everything’s going to be all right.”
“Well, Earl, I sure as hell hope so. Sure it will, Earl. I’m right here, and I’m going to help you pull it off.”
“I’ll be appreciating that in an awful mighty way, there, Ned. Thank you, my friend.”
“’T’ain’t nothin’ at all. I’ll help you pull it off for sure. I’ll be right here. Because you see what we’re talking about here, son?”
“Hey, I already said, I didn’t come here for any trouble. I just want to have my coffee and I’ll be on my way. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the company and the information.”
“That’s right, son. I know it’s about information. Bet you wanting to know where all this comes from. Bet you came here looking for the root of this evil. Bet you want to know the name behind it, ‘cause nobody knows – who this Gramps is, that is.”
“Nobody?”
“’Cept me.”
“Well, would you like to tell me about it?”
“Ooo-wee, you sho is a subtle one, ain’t you. ’Cause you listen here, now, and you listen good. You look out that window, and you see that fainting outline of them mountains way out yonder north of here?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Thems the Blue Ridge, and that’s where it comes from.”
“What do you mean?”
“Boy, there is evil, and then there is evil. There is the evil that a man can do for any reason you give him, but he thinks about what he’s doing. And then there’s the evil a man does not thinking at all. It’s part of him, innate to him, his inner nature. When he thinks, he thinks through it, the evil, it working in him, moving him, making him breathe, like an instinct, the most primary and essential one, just like you or I fart or blink our eyes. Now, there’s no more evil in this country than what comes out of this here State of Georgia, and in the State of Georgia there’s no more evil than what comes out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and coming out of the Blue Ridge, there’s no more evil than what comes out of the Davies’s.”
“The Davies’s?”
“It’s an entire clan. There are clans in those Blue Ridge, most of which is evil, which is to say, they all evil, and there are clans that are more evil than the others, but there is no clan more evil than the Davies clan, and out of that entire clan, Jeb Davies is the most evil of all.”
“Gramps? The old man? His name’s Jeb Davies?”
“The very same.”
“And how do you know all this, whereas, it seems, no one else does?”
“’Cause I’m a Davies. It’s just that some of us is more successful than others. What you say, Earl, should I think about it and bring them in?”
“Sure, Ned, just go ahead and do your thinking, and let’s get it over with, and I’ll ask you if you could influence them in the most kindest and politest of ways, projecting your thinking at them, if you know what I mean.”
“Now, don’t you worry about it ’t’all, Earl, not one bit.”
“I thank you greatly, Ned. You be having anything else, there, son?”
“Sure, I’ll have some more coffee – in fact, just keep it coming – and I’d like a large glass of orange juice, some toast, if that’s possible, with butter, and some bacon and eggs, sunny side up – you can leave them pretty wet, if it’s not too much trouble; I like them when they run. And after I’m done with that, I may want something more. I’ve suddenly gotten hungry.”
“Mighty hungry, son?”
“That’s right, sir, mighty hungry.”
End of alien materials series, April 29, 2014