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J. Jonah Jerkson
Fri Sep 02, 2005 at 03:47:47 pm EDT
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The Baroness, Part 35: Baffled in the Bayou
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In honor of KS.

The Baroness, Part 35
Baffled in the Bayou (Part 1)

“Elizabeth. Elizabeth!” Baron Ottokar Zemo boomed as he stomped into the Blue Room of Schloss Schreckhausen.

“No need to shout, *Grandfather Baron Otto*,” Elizabeth Zemo replied. “Did someone chuck a cross at you again?”

“I warned you about fooling around with your great-uncle’s weather machines! Four months of looking for that fool Killer Shrike’s astral signature, and then you boot up the weather machine, and it’s blown away! Not to mention New Orleans.”

“I wasn’t fooling around. I needed good weather in the garden for my tea party with Celeste Hole and Akiko Masamune.”

“Was Agnes, I mean, Frau Wooster, there too?” Otto could hardly speak the name of his beloved.

“’Fraid not. I try to keep that old battleaxe and her sidekick, that twittering bore Adele Jerkson, away as much as I can.”

“Donnerwetter,” mumbled Baron Otto. A moment later, he returned to his usual demeanor. “You trashed the city where my prey was hiding just to impress three of your women friends? Don’t you realize how unpredictable the side effects of that weather machine are? It’s not enough that you have created a gas shortage in the Parodyverse, you have to double it and create a gumbo shortage on top of it?”

“Why should I care? I’m a Zemo, and it’s not like *I* have anything valuable anywhere near there.”

“But I did!”

“So?” the Baroness responded coolly.

“%#FT&H()%^&$! V$#(*&@WXCRHYYIBNR!” Baron Otto continued in that vein for more than a minute. He then dropped into an overstuffed armchair facing his grand-niece and began an obvious sulk.

After a suitable cooling-down period, Elizabeth took the initiative. “I don’t know why you bother with the ghost of Killer Shrike, but it’s none of my business. I will say that I doubt even Hurricane Katrina can do much to harm him, so he’s probably still around. Why don’t you go down there and find him? And what’s the problem with a gumbo shortage anyway?”

“You have no idea what can be done with gumbo in the right occult hands,” murmured her grandfather.

After a short spell in his thaumaturgical laboratory, the Neo-Necromantic Nazi determined that the most likely relocation point for Killer Shrike’s increasingly tattered spirit was an abandoned plantation just outside Houma, Louisiana. Moments later, he had relocated just in front of the plantation house’s front steps. To his surprise, he was almost run over by a large, brown dog bounding down those steps.

“Screwy-Doo,” a voice called after the canine, “come back!”

The Baron looked up the spalled concrete steps to find a lanky, scruffy teenager, with straggly hair, a pock-marked face and an absurd goatee, staring at him.

“And what are you doing here?” the Baron announced with a maximum of Teutonic arrogance.

“Oh, us? Well, it’s a long story –“

“It usually is,” sneered Otto.

“We were investigating a report of ghosts in New Orleans, and we evacuated ahead of the hurricane, and then Miz Prudhomme let us and the others stay in her old family house here, and we said, ‘Fine,’ because people were saying this place was haunted too, and then about forty more people came and needed a place to stay, so we said, ‘O.K.,’ and then –“

“I see,” the Baron interrupted.. “And have you found any ‘ghosts,’ yet?”

“Lots of strange things, but we haven’t found the ghost yet.”

“And your name, you strange hippie freak?”

“Hey, I’m not a freak! Shaggy, at your service, sir.”

“That’s much better. As it happens, I am also searching for paranormal phenomena. Perhaps you could serve, er, help, me.”

“That sounds cool. Hey, Velma,” Shaggy turned and shouted back into the dim passageways of the decrepit mansion, “what does “paranormal phenomena’ mean?”

Another teenager, this one a stocky, short girl with a pleasant disposition and a penchant for purple sweaters, emerged. “Ghosts, basically. Who’s this, Shaggy?”

“Er, I dunno. But I’ve invited him to come along with us in the Mystery Machine to check out that thing in the swamp.”

“I am . . . Otto. Otto Matic, at your service.” He reflexively clicked his boot heels. “I am a researcher from the University of Heidelberg, investigating your voodoo and Acadian legends.”

“Aren’t you awfully hot in that wool cape and gray uniform?” Velma inquired. “I mean, it’s 95 degrees and about 100% humidity here.”

“I, er, am used to it.”

“Whatever floats your boat, as they say around here,” Velma replied cheerfully. “Hey, Fred, Daphne, quit making out up there and let’s go! We’ve got a real live German researcher to help us!”

“I am not ali—“

“What’s that?” Shaggy asked.

“Er, I am not aligned. How do you say it in English? I am not yet in line with you.”

“Cool,” replied Shaggy. “You’re even more confused than I am.”

A few minutes later Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Otto were crammed into a non-descript van, lurching and bouncing along a rutted, muddy trail into the surrounding swamps.

“So, Professor Matic,” Fred asked from the driver’s seat, “how long have you been investigating paranormal phenomena?

“Almost since I was graduated from Heidelberg in 1924,” Otto replied. He liked Fred – the group’s leader looked so Aryan.

“1924?” Velma interjected. “That would make you almost 100 years old.”

“I beg your pardon, I meant 1974. Fier und zwanzig, fier und siebzig, I got mixed up.”

“Really? And why are you wearing that wool cape and tunic? They look so World War II.” Daphne had a good eye for fashion, despite the fact that her outfits always smacked of the 1970’s.

Baron Otto was saved from having to reply by the appearance of another anachronistically attired individual who was standing in the middle of the muddy track. Fred jammed on the brakes and brought the van to a muddy, sliding stop only a foot away from the man, who was wearing a crushed, blue suede jacket, a ruffled shirt and bellbottomed pants straight from the Carnaby Street of the 1960’s. With the van halted, the lanky man wearing an obvious black toupee strode over to Fred’s window, brandishing a pistol.

“Hullo, there, thanks for stopping. My name is Wilton, Roger Wilton.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wilton,” Fred replied in his normal hyper-polite manner when addressing adults.

Reassured, Roger Wilton lowered his weapon and attempted to holster it. It dropped into the mud and sank halfway. “Just a moment, young man,” he announced and bent over to retrieve the revolver. On doing so, he realized that in fact he had no holster. After glancing hither and yon for a few moments, he scrunched up his face in determination and stuck the muddy weapon into the waist of his pants. Then, shaking his hand to rid it of the muck, and in the process reminding Fred and Daphne of a limpwristed caricature, he resumed his inquiry.

“Yes, quite. Well, young man – and miss – as it happens I’m down here on Her Majesty’s Service. Confidential, don’t you know. I’m on the trail of some young woman calling herself Zemo.”

“We don’t know anybody called Zemo,” Fred replied.

“I mean, like who would want to call themselves Zemo, right?” Shaggy chimed in from the rear. There was a soft sound of grinding teeth.

“We’re on our way to search for the Swamp Monster that supposedly is around here,” Velma chimed in.

“Swamp Monster? That sounds groovy,” Roland Wilton replied. “Maybe it has something to do with this Zemo woman. I’ll come with you.”

“Hey, I mean, there’s no room back here. Not with all the Screwy Snacks we have to carry,” Shaggy complained. “Hey, wait, what happened to the Professor?”

“Professor, you say? Quite odd.”

“He was here beside me just a second ago!”

“Well, it’s clear you have room for me. Let’s zoom, my friends.” And Roger Wilton, muddy mountebank of MI5, squeezed his way into the back seat.

Knee-deep in deep-black silt about 100 yards away, Baron Ottokar Zemo stood oblivious to the mud staining his jackboots and grey uniform. Roger Wilton had not been seen since the late 1960’s and had certainly died. Yet here he was, or an unreasonable facsimile of him, acting as if it were still 1969. And he was after Elizabeth, who hadn’t even been born in 1969. Only one thing made sense. Wilton was bumbling around in this swamp in his usual moronic manner instead of Parodiopolis.

“What brings you down here to find this Zemo woman?” Velma asked with her usual perspicuity.

“Odd, rather. She was supposed to be in Parodiopolis, where she has her mansion. But when I asked the U.S. Government, they said she was in Louisiana, working on some evil plot.”

“And you believed the government?” Shaggy asked with real concern.

“I heard it from Mr. Herbert Garrick himself, in the White House. And then I checked with a relative of mine in Parodiopolis, who is well acquainted with her, and he said, ‘If Garrick says you should go to the Louisiana swamps, that’s fine with me. Surprisingly acute of the man.’ And some other things, which weren’t so nice.”

Fred jammed on the brakes again. “End of the road, people.” The van lurched and slid on the treacherous mud, sliding down the muddy lane which dipped into the swamp water. Fishtailing, the van skidded rear first into the swollen bayou and halted with the brown water well over the wheels and into the engine compartment.

“Drat!” Roger Wilton expostulated. “Second time that’s happened to me today.”

Baron Otto was also expostulating, but much louder, in German. After a soul-cleansing rant, he realized he had no idea of his location. Mustering all of the occult charms he had learned, he hoped to home in on the old mansion and find his way back. Finally, satisfied that he had a bearing on the dilapidated plantation house, he transited toward it.

Instead of finding himself on the front steps, Baron Otto found himself embedded in what appeared to be a pile of rotting vegetation. The taste of decaying sassafras and rushes filled his mouth. Writhing, he pulled himself away from the compost, and began brushing his face and clothing as clean as he could. His concentration on that task kept him from noticing how the pile of muck was rising up to a height beyond his own, and how the simulacra of arms, legs and a head were appearing from the gray-green mass. A tap on his shoulders caused him to whirl around, and see – the Bog Thing.

Playing the part of Elizabeth Zemo

J. JONAH JERKSON
Voice of the People

Notes:

Baron Otto’s interest in Killer Shrike’s astral being was described in the sidebar, “A Man in Demand.”

Baron Otto’s romance with Agnes Wooster is touched on in The Baroness, Parts 32 and 33.

Roger Wilton, unfrozen from cryogenic suspension, was introduced to us in the Baroness, Part 32. Sir Mumphrey’s reaction when he heard the news was *loads shotgun*. It’s unclear how the two men are related.





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