Chapter 19a: The Legend of Primenet Com

(A Special Halloween Chapter)

"When  your life becomes cluttered
so it is all you can do to make it to the next day,
Pause, and look at the sky.

Listen to the unfelt winds curl the clouds in the spring,
   Live in the coolness of rain on grass in the summer,
      Let the falling leaves drop on your shoulders in the autumn,
         Learn the warmth of a kitchen in the winter,

and remember,

somebody's making a ton of money off it,
and it ain't you, Chester."

-- Found in the papers of Nicktoon Angora

elen and Rob had wearied of the crowd that had been massing all night in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and found themselves wandering out past the parking lots and past, beyond the harsh glare of the high-pressure sodium lights and into the darkness of the downtown side streets.

Their conversation drifted with the night winds from topic to topic, until -- during one of those extended silences that occur between friends from time to time -- they realized that they had drifted onto the road that Melhi and Heath had mentioned some time ago. The street was dark and undefined, but for the light streaming out from one shop with a yellow awning. The entire mise en scene was reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting, and Helen and Rob were drawn to the open door of the shop, which was tended by a funereally dark, gaunt man.

"Please, please. Come in. Have a seat. And a Twinkie." From a plate piled high with grey, spotted Twinkies, a spider skittered down and into the shadows.

"Helen, I think we'd better be getting back to--"

"Nonsense. Keep an old man company." The gaunt man sat down on a old mahogany stool. "Let me tell you a story..."

"If you go north along the Hudson, up from New York towards the Tappan Zee, right about the time the traffic lets up you come to a small city by the name of Tarrytowne. This glen, some two hundred years ago, was also known by the name Greensburgh; either name aptly described it, a quiet village in the trees of the Hudson where one could slow down and relax for a while. In those days, it's said, the 'Tarrytowne' name was given by the housewives, in honor of their husbands who would tarry at the local tavern for hours on end, watching Bob Newhart reruns on a mule-powered television, and complaining about how their spouses hate when they sit down at the TRS-80 and connect up to what would one day be the Internet, though in the 1700s was composed of two piles of sticks tied together with a flaxen cord and went by the name ye olde Internette."

"Internette, huh?" Rob grunted, hardly paying attention.

"Keep in mind that this was a small agricultural village, whose main cash crop was vowels. The soil was particularly good for growing vowels, and the farmers had quite a market for them. They would sell their i's and o's to the immigrant Italians who had settled in New Hudson, and their a's and u's (and sometimes y's) to the people in what would one day become Brooklyn. But nobody really needed the e's, so the Tarrytownies would use them themselves. So, Ye olde Internette.

"Not far from here, maybe a mile or two, was an even more rural glen, a "glenne-glenne," as it were, known as Primenet Com. It was a typical Dutch-inhabited town, the primary building of which was known simply as The Clubhouse. This sprawling structure was dormered and added onto many times over its life, until at the time our tale is told, it stood three stories high and had over two hundred rooms, as well as a crude mule-powered Ferris Wheel, which was known simply as Ye Olde Wheelye Ryde, as Mr. Ferris had not yet been born.

"While vowels were the source of the town's economy, rumors were its primary source of entertainment. The Townies prided themselves on being able to spin a rumor on any subject whatsoever, and this pride was well borne out. Enchantment, for instance. Rumor had it that the area was bewitched.

"The dominant spirit that was said to haunt this enchanted region was the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a life. The official rumor had it that he was an Indian who had been drowned whilst fishing in a ria of the Hudson which flowed nearby; he would ride forth in nightly quest of a life, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passed along the hollow, like a midnight blast, was owed to the swinging through the air of the devil-spawned trout which had dragged him to a watery grave.

"He was known by the name of the No-Life Horseman of Primenet Com.

"In this town there lived a man, or -- more precisely - a teacher, for as years went on he considered himself defined more by his profession than by his soul. His name was Nickabod Crane."

Helen groaned, and made a move to rise from her chair and leave; but the gaunt shopkeeper placed a bony hand on her shoulder and she settled back to her chair. She took the hand and placed it in her pocketbook, figuring it might be good for a candy tray later when she got home.

"Where was I? Oh, yes. Nickabod. He was a tall man, and gangly, or at least may be so described here in the absence of any damning JPGs. Gangly, yeah. Young, too; why not. Handsome and muscular. Rich. Talented. Master of Time, Space, and Dimen-"

"Ahem." Rob cleared his throat.

"Hmm? Oh. Excuse me. Anyway, a teacher. His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs, and the windows -- like Nickabod -- were partly glazed.

"When school hours were over, Nickabod would often walk some of the children home. Especially the girls. This, of course, was grist for an entire subdivision of the town's rumor mill, and much was whispered behind his back. A year earlier, his girlfriend had left him over these very rumors; he had come home to find her packing her bags, as she loudly exclaimed that she just heard tales that he was a pedophile. In the emotional wash of the moment all he could answer her was, 'Well, that's a pretty big word for a nine-year-old.'

"In truth, Nickabod was simply fearful to walk home alone. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what tensed tendons did he jump at the echoes of the sepulchral voice floating out of his neighbors' windows, with the unearthly threat of "You've got mail!" And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the No-Life Horseman himself on one of his nightly thwacks!

"But there was a demon who beset poor Nickabod more than any of these imagined phantoms. And the demon was a woman, a woman by the name of Flaminka Van Tassel."

"Van Tassel?" Rob caught the old shopkeeper's eye. He clicked it a few times, making Snapple Cap noises, then gave it to Helen who bounced it hard on the floor and caught it in her pocketbook. "That was her name? Tassel?"

"Don't ask. Her stage name," the shopkeeper explained, rummaging through a box for a replacement eye. "She was the daughter of one of the town's wealthy Dutch founders, Edam Panderflesh. He was a native of Rhode Island, a state which serves the useful purpose of being a place to buy gas when one is traveling to a more important state, like, say, Connecticut or Massachusetts. Each of her outfits had the Panderflesh family crest embroidered on it; two charges sable on an argent tincture, abutting the Panderflesh "P," like this:

                              |\__/\__/|
                              |        |
                              |   :P   |
                               \      /
                                \____/

"Tassel?" repeated Rob, trying to picture something.

"Shut up," the shopkeeper interrupted. "This story might have ended happily, were it not for the existence in this town of another man, a burly, roaring man by the name of Brad Van Brunt. He was broad-shouldered with short curly black hair, and from his great powers over the members of this community he had received the nickname of Brad "The Dad" Bones, by which he was universally known. And he was intent on winning the hand, and other associated organs, of the fair Van Tassel."

Rob seemed intent on something in his mind's eye. "Hmm? Spinning tassels?"

"Shh," Helen suggested.

"Now, Brad was not overtly the kind to simply lay waste to a thin rail of a man such as Nickabod, and so preferred to simply torment the man with a series of practical jokes and petty annoyances. A parcel that Nickabod had sent to Van Tassel, for instance, mysteriously disappeared; the town's rumor office was called into special session, and -- working through the night -- delivered by morning the hearsay that perhaps the fledgling U.S. Postal Service was now under control of the Brad's Primenet Com Mail Delivery System, and therefore will likely be delivered months later to someplace outside of Zimbabwe, in triplicate.

"And so things went, for a time, not -- unfortunately so, in Brad's eyes -- having any effect whatsoever on the current state of affairs between Nickabod and Van Tassel. Until one day, when a letter arrived at Nickabod's schoolhouse door. It bore the

:P

seal of the Panderfleshes; within, the envelope contained an invitation to a Nor'easter Ball to be given at Ye Olde Internette Cafe across the Hudson, as well as a coupon for six free rumors with purchase of a dozen at the ferry terminal.

"Now, Ye Olde Internette Cafe was a local watering spot for the community's younger inhabitants, a place where people could come, relax, and stare at the little piles of twigs which had been thoughtfully placed on each table. The idea was that you paid five Dutch Guilders at the bar for a wild mouse, then held the mouse in your hand, and -- rubbing it over the table - stared at the piles of twigs until you went insane.

"It was, they said, the wave of the future. But for poor Nickabod, it was his doom."