NOTE: THIS IS NOT IN CHARACTER INFORMATION THAT OTHER CHARACTERS IN PROJECT TENEBROUS WOULD HAVE. IT IS, HOWEVER, SORT OF FUN.

Page 1: JIM
1st Panel

The first few pages of the book are in golden-age style, with lots of bold and capitalization for style and emphasis.

Sepia-tone photo of a disintegrating bar and ranch in the high deserts of California. At the top of the page, in rough scratched handwriting across the negative in all capitals, like claw-marks is the crooked handwriting of Shellshock, 'JIM.'

Horses are tied up outside between the Joshua trees, hot-rods are parked in the distance. The Sierra Nevada range sits diminutively far away in the distance from this concentration of low-rent desert dwellers. A whitewash sign reads, "Pancho's Fly-Inn Happy Bottom Riding Club." The only light outside in the dusk twilight is a red neon sign proclaiming the availability of BEER.

INSET box, typewritten: "Muroc Dry Lake Bed, Mohave California. 1958."

"Beer call."

2nd Panel
In gray tones we see PANCHO BARNES, aging barnstormer and proprietor of the Fly-Inn behind her bar. An assortment of variously shaped and sized bottles stands behind her all quizzically marked "whisky." A slam is heard out of view of an ancient screen door.

PANCHO: "Shelton, don't you stand in my door like some MOUSE-SHIT SHEEP-HERDER, get over and order something, you miserable pud-knocker."

3rd Panel
We have panned around to see the rest of Pancho's awful establishment. Pilots in various Naval and Air Force uniforms are sitting around dirty tables covered with the detritus of what is obviously an early day of hard drinking. Inset box, handwritten voice of the Narrator: "This was where it was all happening. Going farther, faster and higher than anywhere else on Earth. Or off earth. And I guess this is really where it all started. Where the FATES lit the CANDLE I was going to ride to orbit and then some."

4th Panel
Commander Jim Shelton has joined Pancho at the bar, she is hugging him with one arm and dexterously pouring whisky into a juice-glass with the order.

Pancho: "Don't look, but they're offering Kinch your prime seat Jimmy. This shot's on me sugar."

Shelton: "It's not done yet,Pancho."

Page 2: Jim
1st Panel

Leaning back on two legs of a rickety chair we see a slight middle-aged man in a flight jacket without military wings. He had a huge mug of beer in one hand, nearly empty. In the background, we see the other pilots leaning in to eavesdrop on the conversation in the center of the room.

Inset box, handwritten: "That was Kinchloe, the civilian who broke my speed record in the D-552 last week. My wife, Jane, begged me not to take that flight. Said GOD TOLD HER I'd auger in. Now Kinch was at the top of the pyramid. And I admit, I couldn't stand it when they offered him the prime shot in Bell's hottest ROCKET PLANE."

"To the left is Colonel Paxton, director of the X-20 project and all of our C.O. On the right is the chief engineer from Bell Aircraft, some German named Von Braun. Paxton does the talking."

"TEST PILOTS can smell fear."

Kinchloe: "Well Colonel, some people say you can't fly above the exosphere. They say Shelly over there, his ALTITUDE RECORD is like a FARM you can buy in the SKY. Engineer's say it's an absolute, like the circumference of the earth. Controls lock out, your plane will buffet waaldly. It's like a DEMON in the thin air."

Paxton: "Well, Kinch, we feel the X-20 is ready for powered flight. Into space. It's a BIG FIRST for the United States against the Russians. You.ll have the FIRST AT-BAT in the RACE into OUTER SPACE."

Kinchloe: "Maybe they's right about Jimmy's line. Maybe it is an absolute, or maybe it ain't. Engineer's never been of the ground."

Kinchloe: "Or maybe, gentlemen, that line can only get crossed for a particular sum. One-hundred and fifty thousand. Non-negotiable, as usual gentlemen."

Von Braun: "What? Are you crazy Herr Kinchloe?"

2nd Panel
Kinch has gotten up from the table and stands in the doorway, hanging on the doorjamb.

Kinchloe: " Like I said, non-negotiable as usual. Call me when you're ready to go."

Inset box, handwritten: "It was that simple to the CIVILIANS on the field at Muroc back then. Kinch wanted a ton of money for each flight. But me, I was cheap at the price of $281 A MONTH in flight pay. I wanted that first flight, and in spite of the workings of my wife's angels they gave it to me."

3rd Panel

A lithe, short and young JAMES SHELTON in his Navy Aviator jacket sporting a huge wristwatch stands clean-cut at this filthy bar. He has a juice-glass of whisky in one hand and gestures an airplane maneuver with the other as he talked with the graying PANCHO. The test pilot Den Mother has a hammer and a picture to hang in her hands.

Pancho: "I tell you this, the first guy above SHELTON'S LINE gets a free steak dinner with all the trimmin's."

Shelton: "I'll take mine medium rare, please."

Pancho: "You're a real want-to-be shit, Jim."

4th Panel Young woman, arm around a pilot to her right, holds a drink in her hand. Her other hand gestures to the pilot she sits close to. She looks expectantly at Pancho, who is hanging a picture on the wall behind the bar of a young pilot leaning on a P-51 Mustang. The gentlemen she is with at the bar looks embarrassed at the conversation she has with PANCHO BARNES.

Young local girl: "Hey Pancho?"

Pancho: "What sugar."

Young local girl: "Why don't the hotshots like Kinch and Shelly and ol' Bud here have their 'pitcher on the wall over there with the rest of 'em?

Pancho: ...

Young local girl: What's got them with the 'pichers so special?"

Pancho: .

Young local girl: "What'd you have to DO to get on the WALL ANYWAY???"

5th Panel Pancho turns around to face the young woman. Her pilot consort is turned away, looking away from us. The girl looks horrified and stunned at the answer. Off screen we hear a huge sonic CRA-BOOOOOMMMM!!! WOOOSHHHHH as a plane goes supersonic overhead.

Pancho: "You got to die, sugar."

Page 3: Jim 1st Panel

The desert lake floor, a B-52 sits off in the distance. Army jeeps surround the huge plane. In the foreground, we see a small shoe-shaped black plane with tiny triangle wings smoking. From the fuel lines we hear a horrible SHRIIEEEKKKK! Tanker trucks smoke with cryogenic fuels as they top off the black plane. In sloppy stenciling, red cursive on the nose tells us the plane is named "Holly."

Inset box, handwritten: "I got the call after I got home. Kinch was too steep this time, and the boys from Bell signed off on me taking the X-20A up for the first time. My wife cried, called her mother and left."

Inset box, written in female hand: "I can't stand it. You shoot dice with death. I can't stand the sound of an airplane. I'm leaving for my MOTHER'S HOUSE in SAN DIEGO, but I'll still PRAY for you, James. -- Jane"

"They paid me about TWO DOLLARS for the 40 minute flight, and I took it anyway. What the hell else was I gonna do, like they said in jet school, 'Never turn down a combat assignment.'"

"And I named the bird after my LITTLE GIRL, Holly. And as you know now, the name stuck."

Page 4: Shellshock Panel 1 We see in the thin cones of light from street lamps in a large parking lot a group of figures standing in a circle. It is late at night, the scene is colored in blues and grays. A large billboard on the side of the building behind the circle of people advertises, "25% off Men's Suits at the Houston Circle Mall Men's Store. Happy Father's Day."

At the bottom of the panel, an inset box, in the same clawed rough angular writing from the first panel of the book: "HOUSTON TX JUN 10 82"

In Jim's extremely near hand-print, a pencil has written on a slip of paper clipped over the picture of the mall parking lot:

2nd Panel A young girl with sparking iridescent blue eyes, like a star opal, is hunched on the ground with one arm up in a defensive posture.

Inset box, in Jim's neat print: "I hate it now. I gave up sleeping for fear dreams would bring it out. You seek out the most banal thing now to take your mind off the inexorable pang -- the need to RELAX an OVERUSED MUSCLE."

"Those poor kids."

---- Below this like needs comic-izing. It's told from the point of view of Cecilia's telepathic scan of Jim's origin at the Castle.

Jim was put to pasture in Houston at the Johnson Space Center and allowed to serve unofficially on a few space exploration boards. For a few years, things went pretty well. He had his pension and Life magazine money and no kids to support, though he did try to give Jane something for them. He felt guilty about not being around for his own kids with the flying and the time in the camp.

About 3 years in, things started to slip. In some places he could feel pins and needles, like little sparks. There was no radiation there, no sign of something wrong. But sure enough, it fueled whatever Shellshock is made of. Jim began doing things to try to make it go away.

One night before Father's Day, the itch to flash over was pretty bad. He took some ibuprofen and went to the mall to walk around before closing time. On his way out, a gang of teen-to-twentysomethings from Humanity's Protectors had cornered a young mutant girl, maybe 14 years old. She had sparkling eyes (a la Deus Ex), but no other obvious powers.

So Mr. Shelton is walking by just in time to see one of the toughs step over the line and hit the girl. Smack her. The gang mentality steps in, and they all get in the act, talking about how God only protects his creatures -- not her. Jim steps in and asks them to stop. She's just a kid, it's not her fault.

The mob immediately turns on him, and about a second later both Jim and the girl are surrounded. The toughs are not random high schoolers, but are well trained -- paramilitary -- and know how to hit hard. There are 10 more of them than Jim, not that it mattered. One of the boys in the back of the gang comes rushing forward with a pipe and whacks Jim firmly to the ground.

The girl, frail and bleeding from her nose and mouth, is next. She's choking on blood and phlegm, crying for help. People walk by not even 30 yards away like it's not happening.

No one calls out. No one phones 911. You are on your own, and in deep fucking shit.

The next memories you get are very confusing. Jim is trying to protect the girl and get up, but they keep hitting him down. He's only maybe 5' 5" and 155 pounds sopping wet -- astronauts were picked because they were small back then. Jim feels he's going numb, and the pinpricks of white-heat build as they keep hitting him over and over.

The girl starts screaming, "Please stop. You don't know what you're doing. He doesn't want to hurt you. Please, God, please."

One of the boys laughs, "He's going to hurt US?"

Somewhere in Jim's head, there is a sound like a heartbeat. Only it's about 50 times louder and deeper than you've ever heard, and there's just one of them. Thoom. Jim is trying to hold back the tide, but like a muscle you can only tense for so long, he's losing the battle of will.

The girl takes a shot in the face and falls to the ground, on her hands and knees. "Please stop, you don't know what you're doing. He can't control it here. Please!"

She stops and sobs once. Quietly, she turns to Jim's assailants.

"You should be running."

Two boys take their turn at Jim and the girl. Hails of kicks and a bat pour on them. The girl's face is hit squarely, and she falls down still and limp.

Thoom. Thoom. And then, after years of holding back, Shellshock erupts into view. The gang scrurries back as the field of view shrinks, like from a helicopter pulling away from the ground. Good Christian boys let loose with language you are pretty sure they only reserve for special occasions.

They are all terrified. You can feel it, and sickeningly it's sort of fun.

There is a loud shrieking shout, like in those dinosaur movies only more real. A huge hand bristling with blue plasma reaches down and scoops the girl up. She looks like a small bird sleeping in that hand.

There is a gunshot, and the field of view pivots wildly left, then right. One of the older boys has a pistol out, he's just squeazing round after round. Another bellow, and then with a small flick of Shellshock's ankle a car flips up in the air as you get ready to leap. The car comes down, and you try to catch it with your other hand but it's too late. The shooter and a young boy next to him are smashed under the screams of falling steel and glass.

Glass everywhere, sirens approaching. Dimly, Jim's voice echoes back, "We need to go."

Shellshock looks down at the girl, cradles her in both hands to absorb the jolt and leaps up, through two layers of clouds. This is not like flying. This is like being shot out of a mortar, high above the city.

When he hits the ground, he looks around. It's easy to spot a hospital from 40 feet above the street, crouches down and he puts the girl down gently. Two orderly's on a smoke break scream like sissies, fumbling with their keys to get in the locked emergency door.

You hear a huge cavernous voice say, "Care for her gently."

Terrified, the bigger of the two smoking orderlies pisses all over himself cowering against the outside of the fire door. The other orderly shakes his head, approaching the girl's limp body as the huge paw retracts and Shellshock stands back up

Two huge steps and then another bounding leap, toward the reservoir. Shellshock is still enraged, but there are choppers approaching. He wants to hit something, rip up a tree and snap it in half, but Jim says that's not helping. He hides in the reservoir, trying to muster the restraint to turn back. It takes minutes, listening to the thumping of that huge heart.

Jim takes a taxi home after raiding a nearby clothesline for jeans and a T-shirt. Like a true American Dudly-do-right, he's never stolen before in his life. He feels like garbage.

The next morning there's no pictures on the TV, but stories of a huge mutant attack killing two young boys on their way home from church are on every station -- even PBS. Jim picks up the phone and makes a long-distance call. A female voice on the other end answers, "This line is unsecured, Warden's Office. How may I help you?"

That's as far as he actively represses. It's also how he gets in the Castle. You'd also know that if Shellshock is injured, he gets stronger than the Castle drainers can take. This horrifies Jim.