#thomas warren

Prologue

True to his nature, Howard Strand was a difficult man to locate.

A few false starts and slammed doors of neighbors later, though, the stranger was sure he was climbing the steps to the correct house. It was a gorgeous, sprawling monstrosity of late Victorian architecture, with a wraparound porch and only a used car and a battered basketball hoop in the driveway to remind him that this was 20th century small town America and not the opening of one of Henry James’s horror stories.

“Are you looking for something?”

The stranger was squinting at the windows, trying to gauge if it was movement he saw at some top floor curtains. That must have been why he hadn’t heard the young man rounding the corner. No— a kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen, still at that age when puberty makes nothing about the body or face seem to fit right. It had been the height that threw him off: already this boy was his height, with a grim stillness that made him seem older.

He now knew the answer, but asked anyway: “Is this the Strand residence?”

“Who wants to know?” The boy stared at him with a calm flatness, the blue of his eyes striking in the rest of him— skin tanned by the sun, which had likewise shot some faded gold into his hair. This kid would be brown-haired by 25, the stranger mused, and then realized that he was now in a staredown with someone who probably didn’t even shave yet.

“I’m a friend of Howard Strand’s.” That got him a bemused tilt to the kid’s eyes. “And a colleague.”

For answer, the boy brushed by him, trailing the smell of sweat and mown grass, unlocked the front door, and held it open.

“Thank you,” said the stranger, as he stepped into the cool darkness.

The boy brushed past him, depositing keys, backpack, and jacket on various tables and hooks by the front door. “Dad,” he called out, his voice deeper and more resonant this time, filling the space, “I’ve just let a strange man on our porch inside the house. If he kills us all, it’s my fault.”

“If he kills us all, Richard, wouldn’t that be his fault?” Howard Strand emerged, silhouetted in a door frame. “Good to see you, Warren. Give me a moment with my son, please?” He extended a hand to the boy, who approached with the balky shuffle native to teenagers.

Warren nodded, turning his eyes to the room. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he was still awed. There were rows and rows of objects in locked curios, the walls paved even up to the high ceilings with paintings in heavy, ornate frames— one of which may or may not have been a Moreau, another of which he was quite certain was one of Meret Oppenheim’s earlier works. A wooden crate, opened but with the lid replaced, perched by a row of shelves lit by a lamp, even though the sun was high in the late afternoon, spilling through tall windows and heavy drapes.

It was possible Strand had designed this space to impress potential clients, but knowing how secretive the man was, Warren found himself doubting it.

“I want to check on Mom first,” Richard was saying. Out of the corner of his eye Warren saw the kid shift from foot to foot, an incredulous look on his face.

“She’ll be fine. Cheryl is home.”

The boy retreated into an adjacent room, closing the door behind him and, for some reason, looking over his shoulder at Warren as he did so.

“Have a seat,” Strand shut the study door behind Warren, who was busy admiring the rows and rows of books lining the walls. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Not necessary,” replied Warren, settling himself into one of the two seats opposite Strand’s desk. From the next room, he heard an odd click, confusing, until the sounds of a piano— Chopin, Etude Op. 25– flooded the air.

“As in, we have a lot to go over, or you don’t think you’ll be here long?”

“Both. Plus, I’m still riding the high of discovery.”

“So the Beringen connection checked out, then?”

“It has. A rain of lizards, frogs, scorpions, snakes, other venomous animals for several days shortly after the appearance of ‘the tail of a dragon’ in the night sky, which apparently landed with a magnificent explosion.” Warren found himself leaning forward, elbows on knees.

This caused Howard Strand to lean back in his chair, eyes sparkling. Their paths had diverged some time ago, but Warren had to admit that middle age suited the man. He was still, if not more so, striking and distinctive, as though someone had taken a conventionally handsome man and sharpened him.

“And after that?” Strand was saying. Warren tore his eyes away from the man’s face, pausing. Chopin’s arpeggios pried at the edges of his concentration; this was a difficult piece, he knew. The kid playing it was actually pretty damn good.

“You know the timeline isn’t clear.”

“In historical research, timelines never are. But I doubt you came all the way to Summersville, in the middle of nowhere, to hedge about timelines with me.”

“I have nothing but time, Howard. You know that.”

“You and I both know that’s a lie: you have many, many things, and time is one of them. Time is something that I do not have. So give me a convincing argument about why I need to leave the side of my family and travel with you all the way to Asia Minor.”

Strand walked Warren to the front door, plans for future excavations rattling around between the stranger’s ears.

Piano thundered around the two men, louder out here in the hall. Warren idly wondered if it could be heard through the entire house before he stopped, thunderstruck, realizing that the kid in the next room was playing the 5th movement of Etude Op. 25. And if it wasn’t perfect, it was next door to it.

The 5th movement in E minor. The “Wrong Note” etude, fraught with minor seconds. Notoriously hard for someone who didn’t, like Chopin, have perfect pitch. And this kid had it down.

“He’s good,” Warren heard himself blurting out.

I mean, they’re scary, yes, in the sense that they can be dangerous, but human beings are both terrifying and dangerous, too. Flying in an airplane is dangerous. The fact that humanity has smallpox stored in a vault in the Center for Disease Control is outright horrifying. But it is exactly for that reason our responses should not be panic. Do you let the fear of a car wreck prevent you from ever traveling? Of course not. Most of us buckle our seatbelts, get insurance, and drive defensively.

We must face our fears, or be ruled by them. This is the theme of The Black Tapes Podcast.

Marie Curie provides adequate perspective here:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Compare this to Strand in 211:

“[The Gospel of Thomas] describes how it is knowledge, rather than faith, that grants salvation, which constitutes eternal rest, describing ignorance as a nightmare.” 

When Richard Strand maintains that he created the Strand Institute to continue his father’s work, I suspect what he meant is that he, like his father, wants to free humanity from its fear of the unknown. I don’t think he wants to take away our fears-- he strikes me as sensible enough to understand that fear is necessary to our survival. He just wants to show us that most things we fear, when we see them for what they are, can be overcome.

People bitch all the time that Strand doesn’t show empathy or compassion, but I go back to the Strand Institute letters, and I do hear a man capable of compassion. What he doesn’t offer to Maria Rodriguez or Robert Torres, though, is pity, or telling them what they want to hear (like Alex does). Neither of those things will help them, and the first is outright insulting.

That’s one of the many reasons why I mostly don’t get supernatural horror-type entertainment. Sure, there are ghosts and spirits everywhere, including demons. Why should that be frightening? Why do we need to have an exterminator mentality: “Ghosts in my house! OMGWTFBBQ221111!!!!1eleventy CALL AN EXORCIST!” when it can just be, “Look, just don’t sneak up on people or break shit, and stay out of the bathroom when my kid is in there, but you’ve got the run of the place, and let me know if you need something.”

I suppose it’s frightening if you believe as Clara Simone and Alex do, hemmed in by Christian hegemony: that’s it’s humanity’s world, that it was made for and given to us, because we’re the special beings chosen by its creator. But is leaving that belief behind such a terrible thing? Are we so greedy that we can’t share the universe with innumerable other entities?

I don’t know if it’s canon, but early in the TBTP universe, Alex interviewed Aaron Mahnke, the creator of Lore (and the even better show, Unobscured; I left Lore for Unobscured quite awhile ago). I can’t quite find the point exactly where it was mentioned, but they both talked about how fear of demonic possession can be a stand-in for fear of loss of control. I suspect at the heart of Alex’s fear of demons (she also seems to have a mild blood/injection fear) might just be a fear that, as a matter of fact, the world as she’s taken for granted isn’t what she thinks it is. That there might actually be things she doesn’t know, can’t explain...

That she might be capable of things she thought impossible.

That’s honestly terrifying, when you think of it. I’ve mentioned on my blog elsewhere, but the idea that you’re actually in control of your life is rarely a pleasant one. “The devil made me do it” is a surrender of agency, an excuse. If you’re in charge of your life, that means you actually have to fix the shit you broke, be it yourself, an object, a relationship (Alex, and her friendships with Nic and Strand), or a family (Strands, both pére and fils).

Strand has to do this, too, of course-- the entire workings with DaivaCorp (DaevaCorp? Whatever. Thomas Warren’s Project for World Domination.) and it being wrapped up with a supposed “family ability” that got him singled out and that he may have been denying for years means that, sure, his paradigm is broken, too. But the existence of his black tape collection indicates he knew something like this was on the horizon anyway. He was already fixing his shit, however he knew how.  Alex, on the other hand, had to confront her own misconceptions and fears, fast and out of nowhere.

And that? That, my friends, is fucking overwhelming.

And it’s why I think Alex’s personal drama, Alex’s struggle against her own fears, is the most compelling story of TBTP. It’s why this podcast is Alex’s story, not Strand’s. It’s honestly why I don’t want to believe Strand is a Big Bad: because early on, he sees that in Alex, and that’s why he likes her.

Give ‘em Hell, Alex.

In the “Epic of Creation” (in Myths from Mesopotamia), when Tiamat is ready to avenge Apsu’s death, she gives to her champion, Kingu, the Tablet of Destinies.  In the process of victory, Marduk takes this tablet and wears it himself.  (The text implies that the tablet can worn on the body as some sort of talisman; I imagine it similar to Athena’s aegis.)   This tablet also appears in “Anzu”-- in general, it appears to confer the right to rule, some sort of legitimacy.

According to the end of season 2 TBTP, DevaCorp (DaevaCorp?) and Thomas Warren are working on something in conjuction with “the Horn of Tiamat” which is related to the Strand family.  From the season finale, it sounds like Warren needs Strand’s cooperation to reach a certain degree of success with that research.