The Premise

The Beings are with us. They have been here longer than humans and coexist on the same planet. The only question is..., when will they decide they no longer need humans?! Join two young midshipman as they first, seek to contradict the Premise of alien existence on earth, then struggle to stay alive once the aliens focus their attention on them.

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The PremiseThe Vampire OriginsBy C. F. LaMoraAuthorHouseCopyright © 2016 C. F. LaMoraAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-5246-0360-1CHAPTER 1"There are only two things that you really need to know about me," said Terry, leaning forward in the chair to stare intently at the middle-aged, well-dressed man sitting across the table from him. "First, I believe in UFOs, aliens, werewolves, vampires, elves, gnomes, trolls, and the abominable snowman." Terry spoke with an intensity that demanded attention, and despite the seemingly incongruous nature of his declaration, his face spoke volumes about his sincerity.The man opposite him merely nodded and indicated with a slight wave of his hand that he should continue.Terry leaned back in the chair. His glance traveled over the man to the gray, cinder block walls, the bars on the windows, the Italian guard at the door with the holstered nine-millimeter pistol, and down to the shackles attaching his wrists and ankles to the ringbolt in the floor of the cell."Second, I did not kill my best friend, Mark!"The gentleman sitting opposite him leaned forward and gently placed his hand on the knee of the young American, whose shoulders were now shaking slightly, whether with suppressed anguish, guilt, or remorse was unknown, but he was definitely overcome by some strong emotion. "Please, signore," said the man. "I am here only to help you. I am your consigliere, your umm — how you say? — lawyer. No? You must trust me and help me to understand everything. There are many people who say this and who say that about what happened. You must make it clear to me. I need to know all so I can help you. Io necessito sai tuto para ajudarte, capice? Do you understand?"Terry, his shoulders steadying, looked up and nodded. "Well, 'everything' will take quite awhile."The man leaned back in his chair and smiled. Then he motioned to the guard and spoke rapidly in Italian before looking back to Terry and saying, "I will get us some café, no? You can begin. We have as much time as it will take."Terry looked down at the shackles and up at the window, listening to the muted sounds of the chimes of Saint Peter's echoing down through the streets of Rome to the headquarters of the Roman carabinieri police station where he was being held."What should I call you, signore?" he asked."Ah, perdona," said the man, who rose to his feet and bowed gracefully in one smooth motion. "My name is Don Giuseppe Mangione di Luco. And I feel I must warn you that, unlike your American system of justicio ... umm, justice, in Italia, you are guilty until you prove your innocence. So you must be very — how you say? — onesto, honest, with me, no? So that we may prove you innocente.""Of course," said Terry. "But your ability to believe me may be more of the problem than my honesty.""Only to try me," said Don Antonio, reseating himself and removing a pad from the briefcase at his feet.The sound of church bells also reminded Terry that it was Christmas Eve and he should be with Sarah, not sitting in this cell talking to some Italian lawyer. "Well, I guess I have to start from when Mark and I were young ..."CHAPTER 2Two friends had never been more unlikely. Although Mark and Terry were both born and raised in the same small town in northern New York State (not "upstate," as the New York City people called anything north of White Plains). Both went to the same schools and played with the same small group of children their whole lives. But they came from very different families and lived on opposite sides of the tracks — literally. Harrisville was a town composed primarily of miners and farmers, with very few upper-class families like Mark's and equally few lower-class families like Terry's.Mark's father was the area veterinarian. With the large number of dairy farms in the region, along with quite a lot of small-animal pet work, Dr. Richard Woods, his wife, Marge, their elder son, Mark, daughter, Sherry, and younger son, Kevin, were considered very well off by the entire community. Dr. Woods was on the town council, sat on the county board of commissioners, and was the pack leader for the local Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. These were, in the 1960s and early 1970s of the boys' youth, honorable distinctions for both himself and his children.Terry's father was a brakeman on the railroad. Despite his natural intelligence and good humor, his reputation was hampered by his five brothers' histories of antisocial behavior. This was an era when your family connections determined who would associate with and talk to you or your children. And everyone in Harrisville, possibly in the entire northern tier of Saint Lawrence County, knew the LaPointes and avoided social contact. The family was considered "rough" in a time when most adult men were veterans of either World War II or the Korean War (or both, as in Terry's father's case), and rough was a way of life. But the LaPointes were different. They were "mean drunks," some would say, and on more than one occasion, they said this in Terry's presence.Having a father from a rough family was not the only challenge Terry faced as a youth. His father, Terrance Francis LaPointe Sr., had another, much more serious failing. He had never actually married Terry's mother. Although Annette Marie Pistolacci took the name LaPointe, she had not been able to marry Terry Sr. because he was already married. A war bride, or "fifteen-minute wife" he married just prior to his departure for WWII, had consistently refused to grant him a divorce, making him unable to wed the wonderful woman he met upon his return from nearly twenty years of military service. That made Terry Jr., despite the love and affection both his mother and father held for each other and their children, a bastard. That word, in northern New York during that time, was more than just a slur on your origins as a human being. It was an epitaph of your future in the community.Terry Sr., or "Big Terry," as he was called, worked hard, loved his "wife" and two children — Terry and his older sister, Yvette — and went to church each Sunday, where he pledged sobriety and diligence to a God he had long thought abandoned him. His nature was one of ingenuity, and he was constantly "improving" some gadget or fixture in their humble home beside the tracks on Railroad Street. "Little Terry" absorbed and developed the same trait of inquisitive development from a father who thought it natural that his son should know about, and understand, the calculations for estimating sheering weights of freight, surface pressure of boxcars, and the dynamics of train motion, which constituted a small portion of the work that absorbed him.Terry's mother, Ann, played her part by instilling what she considered socially acceptable traits in both of her children. She insisted on proper grammar and sentence construction from the time both Terry and Yvette were old enough to gabble. She did not condone baby talk or childish ways, expecting from them proper (meaning adult) behavior at all times, which made for an interesting childhood for both. Whatever the discomfort, certainly her attitude toward correctness enhanced their ability to learn and absorb materials once they embarked upon their educational path, as his mother always referred to their school days.But Ann was not haughty. Far from it. She was very sensitive to the social status of her children because of her indiscretions. As such, Ann was determined to armor them with every possible benefit of good behavior and proper etiquette she was capable of superimposing on what turned out to be two very intelligent and extremely stubborn children.Despite the fact that Mark and Terry lived in a very small town, they were not often thrown together until one day in early summer of 1968, when both boys were in fourth grade.On the corner of Route 3 and Main Street sat Welton's World Famous (at least that was what the sign said) Bakery. The parking lot was a notorious hangout for the tough kids from the tracks, including the local bully, Dwight Mitchell. Now some boys got their growth spurts in junior high and some much later, but few attained the size and bulk Dwight had at the age of ten. Dwight's size was combined with a vicious disposition, which had been developed from being regularly subjected to a drunken father bent on taking out his anger at his dissolute life on someone he could actually dominate. This treatment had created in Dwight a bully mind-set that was a real threat to smaller and younger children.Mark had been walking home from Little League practice and was in the habit of cutting across the parking lot and jumping through the back fence of Mr. Dalton's yard to cut the corner off and arrive at his home on High Street that much sooner.Usually, Dwight did not bother High Street kids. He'd learned long ago that the parents of such children usually complained of any ill treatment to his father, which resulted in more unwanted attention to Dwight. But that day, Saturday, following a lively Friday night at the Mitchell residence on Railroad Street, Dwight, bearing the fresh bruises of fatherly affection, was in the mood to lash out.Dwight and his cronies — a group of four smaller, though not necessarily younger, kids — sat on the curb. Watching Mark's approach, Dwight saw only the new cleats hanging from tied laces around his neck, smart black Keds, and a Louisville Slugger bat with a Big League-style first baseman's glove threaded through the knuckle hole. All were obviously gifts from a loving family. That day, with the new black-and-blue marks aching to remind him of his own "loving" family, Dwight's anger burst into a bright, hot flame of rage that he needed to vent.Disregarding the age-old formula of taunt, threat, and push, necessary to work into a fight in that era, Dwight leaped to his feet in abuse-generated rage, strode toward Mark, and leveled him with a roundhouse right.Initially startled by the absence of preliminaries, the cronies began the necessary chant, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Dwight's back was to the door of Welton's, and so he did not see Terry emerge with a donut in his hand, the product of earning a nickel from his grandfather by weeding his tomato plants all morning.Maybe Dwight would have been more concerned had he seen the look that crossed Terry's face, first of pity, then anger, and then resolve. He certainly would have taken notice of the sharp move of Terry's arm as he threw down the hard-earned donut and sprinted across the intervening twenty-five feet because the resulting blow in the middle of the back by Terry's shoulder certainly got his attention.Terry wrapped his arms around Dwight upon impact of the flying tackle, and both boys fell in a heap across Mark's legs where he still lay, stunned from Dwight's unexpected blow.Dwight, with the breath knocked out of him, lay gasping as Terry released his grip and rolled to a sitting position across the bigger boy's waist. Mark, finally regaining his senses, pulled his legs free and got to his feet, just in time to stare down the braver of the cronies who apparently had started forward to help his idol."Don't," Mark spoke through clenched teeth. "Stay out of it!" he added, pointing a finger at the chest of the nearest crony.Dwight, regaining his breath, found to his amazement that he was now prone with Terry astride his waist, fist raised, staring intently down at him."Don't fucking move!" Terry yelled.The use of the F-word was an appropriate and accepted adjective in such circumstances, especially for trackside kids. It still had the desired effect of interrupting Dwight's immediate response of pushing the smaller boy off him. Terry, sensing the momentary hesitation, reached out and grabbed Mark's fallen Louisville Slugger and in one fluid move, slid the ball glove from the bat, pushed himself to his feet, and leveled that bat at Dwight's head."You move and I club your brains out onto the parking lot!" Terry said as he poked the bat into Dwight's chin.Dwight, used to pushing aside smaller, weaker kids, was not prepared for anyone as diminutive as Terry who was willing to threaten him. His anger and rage were now rekindling, and he pushed himself up to a sitting position with both hands on the pavement behind him. "When I get up, you better be running!" he barked, looking back and forth between Mark and Terry."Well, I guess you aren't going to get up then," said Terry. The swing of the bat and slap of wood onto flesh, followed immediately by the bellow of pain from Dwight, startled even the cronies. Dwight rolled back and forth on the pavement clutching his right shoulder where the Slugger had smacked into him as Terry, grabbing at Mark's shoulder, yelped, "Let's go!" and leaped away.Mark, with a glare at the cronies, stooped, grabbed his fallen cleats and tossed-aside glove, and raced after Terry who was heading, strangely enough, toward the hole in the fence at Mr. Dalton's backyard. Ducking through the fence and barely breaking stride as they passed within a foot of a startled Mr. Dalton working on his knees in his garden, the two boys raced across the grass, up the driveway to State Street, turned left, and streaked up the two blocks to the right on High Street. As the incline of the pavement increased (High Street was some fifty feet in elevation above Welton's bakery, although only some two hundred yards away), the boys started to slow. Mark's house, a huge brick Victorian, came into view, sitting slightly off the road. Along High Street in the front of the house was Dr. Wood's office, which was almost on the curb, a converted carriage house for the grand old home. The two boys slowed to a walk and finally stopped opposite Mark's driveway.Mark's left eye was swollen almost shut, and he was sure to have a remarkable shiner. He reached up and touched it, squinting with the mounting pain, but the unspoken moral code of youth would not let him leak a tear or utter a word about the throbbing pain that was only now beginning to make itself felt.Terry, looking away to give the other boy time to show some pain without being observed, studied the ground at his feet, the sidewalk, and finally Mark's house and lawn. He had been up on High Street off and on for years delivering newspapers, but he never really paid much attention to the houses other than that it took a lot to peddle up the hill and was pretty neat to coast down at the end of the route. The differences between this home and his own were things his youthful mind noted but took no real interest in. The fact that Mark's yard was large enough to accommodate a good game of touch football interested him more than the forty-some windows and three full floors the house displayed. His attention was soon drawn away from such observations when Mark muttered something."What?" asked Terry, turning back to the other boy."I said thanks," Mark replied, sticking out his hand in mimicry of what his father had told him was the appropriate response between men when a debt was owed.Terry, sensing the gravity of the moment, shook hands once, and then again. Then smiling at Mark, he muttered, "Yeah, well, you can thank me again when we are both beaten to shreds by Dwight on Monday at school."Thus began a friendship that would endure throughout the remainder of their youth and into adulthood. Each boy found in the other the compassion, interest, and support that neither received from anyone else. They were both alike and dissimilar, and the only real competition between them (if the spirited and ribald ribbing each gave the other could be called competition) was on the subject of girls. But that was some years in the future, and for the balance of elementary school and junior high (seventh and eighth grades not being dubbed "middle school" during the youth of the two boys), the boys spent virtually every waking moment in each other's company.Other friends came and went, some more permanent than others. Ricky Scranton was a longtime member of the small group, an underdog at school and the only kid who could drink milk through his nose with a straw. Gross, but in both boys' estimation it was an accomplishment that certainly was worthy of friendship.Childhood in that time was not without a background in world events that cast shadows over everyone. The Vietnam conflict was in full swing, as were the sixties, expressionism, Woodstock, and many other world-changing events. But in the north country of New York, things moved slower and were highlighted by natural wonders, irrespective of the greater world. (Continues...)Excerpted from The Premise by C. F. LaMora. Copyright © 2016 C. F. LaMora. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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