A young newspaper reporter with a blossoming psychic gift and government experiments with mind-control at an old, Maine mill.
Jack Wilding has a gift. The young newspaper reporter can hear the thoughts of his fellow man, random snippets that come to him unbidden. But this blossoming psychic ability brings Jack no joy. Some thoughts, he will find, were not meant to be shared. And along with the voices in his head come the memories – dim recollections of a childhood experience at an old Maine mill.
Meanwhile, an intelligence group with grim secrets is desperate to contain the damage. Things have gone wrong with experiments in mind control and now a young reporter is asking questions. It's a race for the truth about what really happened inside Worumbo Mill all those years ago. As the voices inside his head turn to screams, Jack Wilding will discover that his own past may be a lie.
Based on real CIA experiments with mind-control, Worumbo is a nerve-rattling look at a part of our history as dark and dangerous as the old mills that haunt the Maine landscape.
Sitting on the banks of the Androscoggin River in Lisbon, Maine, the real Worumbo mill has been known to haunt the likes of Stephen King, who worked there as a teenager and who wrote about the mill extensively in his recent novel 11/22/63.
"LaFlamme always delivers a plot teetering on the cliff-edge of madness." - Linda Bulger, Amazon
"LaFlamme grabs the reader by the throat and never loosens his grip." - David Ebright, author of The Jack Rackham Adventure series.
Excerpt
Richard Van Fleet was not easily rattled. Before he took over the Straw Project, he worked on various projects in the Middle East for the CIA. Prior to that, he was on a host of Cold War assignments, first as an operative and later as an adviser. And before any of that, he did two tours with the Special Forces in Vietnam.
The horrors of Nam were indescribable. The horrors of his work in espionage were not. Van Fleet could describe many of his experiences in the spy game with grim detail, both the failures and the successes.
It was the failures that made for particularly nasty memories. The botched tests, the experiments gone awry. He had seen perfectly sane men pluck their eyes out with their fingers. He had seen the head of a pretty, young girl explode. He had buried as many reports as he had bodies.
The colonel was not easily rattled, but he was rattled now.
“He told you this? He came right out and said he was experiencing psychic abilities?”
Across the room, standing in front of a sagging door with peeling paint, Dr. Everett Irving looked like a kid who had been called to the principal’s office. He fidgeted with his tie. His brow was beaded with sweat. The doctor had come here on his own, yet his countenance suggested he had been beaten and dragged.
“No. No, he never said anything about psychic abilities. Voices. He said he heard voices. I hope I didn’t, uh… misstate the conversation.”
“Mmmm. I hope so, too. Perhaps you should go back to the beginning.”
The colonel was a tall, lean man of 63. He was bald with pointy ears and tiny eyes and looked somewhat like a rat. Irving had always thought so, though he would carve out his own tongue with a pocket knife before he ever said it aloud.
“Mr. Wilding called me three days ago and said he needed to see me. His father had just died, you see. He had suffered an injury at work and…well he was under a lot of stress.”
Leaning back in his chair behind an impressive, mahogany desk, Van Fleet was showing signs of impatience. It was a windowless room illuminated only by a green banker’s lamp on the desk. The lamp cast a weird shadow over the colonel and half his face was in darkness.
“You can skip that part,” Van Fleet said. “I’ve been keeping up with the very active life of Jack Wilding. Just tell me about his complaints, if you will.”
“Yes. Of course.” Irving noted that there were no other chairs inside this small office. The colonel preferred his guests to stand and fidget. “Mr. Wilding explained he has been hearing voices. That’s the precise term he used. They tend to come at moments of high stress, it seems. In the moments before the shooting, for example. In the aftermath of his father’s funeral.
“When I asked Mr. Wilding if the voices spoke to him directly – told him to do things, say – he was adamant. They do not. He began to suggest that what he hears are the thoughts of other people. Then he swiftly corrected himself and insisted they were merely voices out of nowhere.”
The colonel leaned back further in his chair. He examined the ceiling. Today, he was dressed in Army fatigues. The last time Irving had seen him, the colonel was in a biohazard suit. The time before, it was a business suit. The colonel, it appeared, was a scientist, a businessman and a soldier.
“Please.” Van Fleet was still looking at the cracked ceiling with a pipe running across it. “Go on. Step by step. What did he say and what did you say. I need to hear it all.”
Irving fidgeted. His tie was a wreck.
“I don’t feel good about this. I’d like to remind you that this is against all rules of client confidentiality.”
The colonel lowered his gaze to the doctor. His eyes were small all right but my, how they blazed.
“Doctor. Please. Spare me the ethics lecture. We’ve been through this before and I think we agree you’re well beyond second thoughts..”
Irving reddened. “I didn’t mean to…”
“We have numerous samples of Jack Wilding’s blood, doctor. Samples provided faithfully by you over a period of… well, now. Nearly two decades. Not to mention records – paper records of your patient – that span his entire teen-age years.”
Irving said nothing. He stood there defeated and embarrassed. When the colonel was satisfied that the doctor was sufficiently repentant, he waved Irving on with a flick of his hand.
“Yes,” Irving said, and cleared his throat. “Anyway. Mr. Wilding, uh… reported no debilitating headaches and no accompanying visual hallucinations. He described the voices – voices and sounds. Jack said there were sounds like the fluttering of bird wings.”
“Bird wings.” The colonel wondered over this detail. He plucked a pencil from the desktop and twirled it in his fingers. “Continue, please.”
“Mr. Wilding, as I was saying, described the voices and sounds as mostly distractions. If I may be allowed to offer a non-medical opinion, he seemed to be downplaying the entire complaint. I sensed that these voices, if they exist, are troubling him a great deal. I believe he worries he may be suffering some type of brain anomaly, like his father.”
“Who died of a brain tumor.”
“An aneurysm,” Irving corrected. “A rather large aneurysm that myself and two specialists deemed inoperable.”
The colonel tapped the pencil eraser against his teeth. “Does Jack have an aneurysm, doctor?”
“That, uh… That would require further tests. A CAT scan or an MRI.”
Van Fleet considered this.
“What did you offer Mr. Wilding for advice, Doctor? Did you have suggestions for him? A tentative diagnosis?”
Irving nodded. He unfastened the top button of his shirt. It was stifling in here and it smelled like paint.
“I told him perceived voices might have many causes. Head injury is one possibility. Mental illness is another. Of course, there is the possibility of a tumor, but that’s a hasty conclusion to jump to.”
The colonel was not interested in ideas about brain tumors. He looked at the doctor directly now, sitting forward, his face moving out of the shadow.
“Is Jack Wilding suffering from schizophrenia, Doctor? In your opinion?”
Irving shook his head. “There are no accompanying delusions. No disorganized speech or states of catatonia. No negative symptoms at all, from all appearances. You see, diagnosis of schizophrenia generally relies on two or more accompanying symptoms that…”
But the colonel cut him off. “You don’t need to tell me about schizophrenia, Doctor. I know more about the disease than you ever will. I promise you that.”
Irving reddened again. He adjusted his glasses, smoothed out his tie. The colonel let silence linger. He sat back again. He smiled.
“Doctor, I’m sorry. But I’m having real trouble believing your patient is experiencing these types of… voices. Sounds, perhaps. Loud claps and booms that sound like gunshots. For reasons I can’t discuss with you, the complaint sounds overstated, not – as you put it – downplayed.”
Irving nodded. “Yes, but with all due respect, I’ve known Jack a long time. He is certainly not prone to dramatizing or hypochondria. Hell, if anything, he doesn’t come see me enough.”
The colonel smiled. “Ah, the sweet arrogance of youth, eh?”
“Yes, but what I am getting at – ”
The colonel silenced him by holding up a hand. He poked the pencil behind his ear and began shuffling through a short stack of papers. The papers looked as though they had been placed there just for shuffling.
“I understand your concerns, Doctor. And I sympathize. But you were told in the very beginning there are things you cannot be told.”
Irving stood there, mustering courage. He was indignant and ashamed. He was more than a little afraid, but was also determined to address this.
“In the beginning, we were talking about a few blood samples and an update from time to time. But now we’re talking about a young man’s physical well-being, Colonel. There may be a life-threatening situation involved here and I can’t just… turn my back on a patient.”
The colonel stopped shuffling paper and looked at him. He looked at him with hard eyes and a furrowed brow. A man who has coolly watched a woman’s head explode would not be cowed by an indignant physician.
“Doctor, I’m not asking you to pull the goddamn plug on one of your patients. There are things that need to remain quiet for now and that’s that. No X-rays, no CAT scans, no MRI’s. You need to put that off as long as you can.”
The colonel smiled. “Don’t worry, doctor. We know more about your patient than you do. You gave up your rights to the entire medical history the day you started peddling prescription drugs to preferred clients.”
“You spied on me. Blackmailed me.”
“That’s right,” the colonel said. “We did. An unpleasant necessity in the business we’re in. The advancement of science has always relied on the presence of corrupt medical doctors.”
The colonel let that sink in. “Now, please. I appreciate your coming here with this information. And I’ll expect to hear from you again real soon, Doctor. As soon as you know more.”
Irving let himself out. Two armed soldiers were waiting on the other side of the door and they led him through a maze of dark hallways to the exit.
In his office, Col. Van Fleet sat in his chair, once more looking at the ceiling. This was news. This was something.
Things were moving fast now. The plan was to leave Worumbo and to leave no clues behind; not a sheet of paper, not a nut or screw. How this new development influenced that plan remained to be seen. It might require a trip to Washington to work it all out.
Outside the building, Irving stepped into harsh sunlight. He looked behind him at the massive building he had just exited. All the horrible secrets encased in bricks. He did not know those secrets, nor did he wish to.
Walking to his car, regretting mistakes made 17 years earlier, Dr. Irving realized glumly that he was swallowed by the long shadow of Worumbo.
Professional Reviews
Mystery and Madness in Maine
Mark LaFlamme is a word magician. In LaFlamme's world giant clouds move like granite balls, the wind is skeletal, and Worumbo Mill is a bright enigma.
There's a mystery in the old mill. Handsome but conflicted crime reporter Jack Wilding gets sucked in, and you will too.
Romance, horror, suspense, and humor... the plot will grab you; the language will entrance you. Dig in.
-- Meredith Kendall, author of "Reiki Nurse"
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