The Ostinato Trilogy

Barney and Trevor.

Barney and Trevor.

Half the world away from West Texas, an office building sat in downtown London (with a view of the Thames, if you must know). One of these floors held the suite of one Barnabas Pettymore Swindells, a real estate developer. More to the point, Barnabas was for anything that made his family’s fortune grow.

Hair so black it radiated a blue sheen, just a bit of gray at the temples, framed his square head. Short sideburns led to a clean-shaven face. He was built like a professional wrestler. A sizable man at six-five, most found him imposing, understandable given his personality.

He understood the need to be the one in charge, never afraid to use his size to intimidate anyone he thought he might be able to. His size and reputation led to him being called a tad rough around the edges. Sharp, coarse, and deadly were some of the polite words used to describe him.

Always looking to keep his family’s name safe and build his small but growing empire, he was prepared to use every means necessary to achieve his goals. He happened to be on the phone when his younger brother, Trevor, burst into the room.

Trevor, the yin to Barnabas’s yang, was slender and blond with almost androgynous features. People called him soft, so he attempted to look rugged, and conceal his weak jaw, with a patchy unkempt beard.

At five-foot-ten, he was much shorter than his brother. He had a reputation for being a little too forgiving when it came to business, and for being soft in the head as well. He was known for seeking a myriad of ways to find himself, always chasing some dream over the horizon.

The interruption irritated Barnabas. For a moment, he thought about how he would love to seize his younger brother’s neck with a satisfying firm grip and twist a bit. Luckily his softer nature concerning his brother prevailed. Without missing a beat, Barnabas kept listening to the phone while motioning to Trevor to be quiet and sit down. Of course, Trevor could not be contained by such niceties and needing a drink, he went for the bar.

Still engaged, Barnabas got to the point in his phone conversation where he found a burning desire to speak. His face at one moment was flush with anger and blanched with uneasiness. Unable to control himself any longer, he spoke with a clear firm voice that held back all his genuine emotions.

“Listen, you little prick! You uphold your end of the contract, or I will boil your bollocks and feed them to my dogs. You’ll be lucky if I remove them first!” Slamming down the phone, he allowed a brief moment of anger and fear to sweep over his face.

Of course, his younger brother was too excited to keep his tongue any longer. He slapped his paper down on the table with a flourish, pointing to what he thought urgent. “Barney! Here, look at this, this is outstanding!”

Barnabas glanced at the headline, took the drink from Trevor’s hand, and took a sip before answering, “Manchester United won again? Hardly enough for me to get a chubby over… How many times do I need to remind you not to call me Barney? You make me sound like a flippin’ brain-dead purple dinosaur.”

Barnabas had always been Barney to Trevor. There were enough years between them that Barney grew up being the older brother most young boys would kill for. Barnabas always wanted to be named after the saint or something majestic.

Clearly, he was named after the vampire from the sixties soap opera. How can a kid grow up normal when his mates all realized he was named after a character on the television? Their mother, called one of those ‘Hippies’ throughout her life up until her death in the early nineties, loved Dark Shadows. Parents can be so mean…

Naturally, Barney learned to fight and protect himself at an early age. So he went by Barney… until the beginning of the nineties. About that time, someone came up with the bright idea to name a children’s show… Barney. This was of course before Barney had earned most of his intimidating reputation for mayhem.

Some of his less couth co-workers started to sing the Barney song when he came around. This led to some, late-night confrontations where Barney made it very clear how much he hated that song, typically with some small amount of violence thrown in to keep the lesson fresh in everyone’s mind.

Thus, Barney became Barnabas once again. A person, first feared for size, earned the reputation that he was willing to resort to violence to prove his point.

Exasperated, Trevor let out a long sigh and almost whined, “Barnabas…” He flipped the paper to show the bottom of the page.

Searching way down at the bottom for a small picture and story, he pointed again. “No, here: at this!” Trevor happened to be pointing at the story about the unexplainable lights in the night sky over a small town in the United States, with Billy’s pictures that had been sold for little more than beer money.

Barnabas glanced a moment at the picture and read the storyline before blurting out, “Trevor how in the flying nine hells is that going to do anything for us?”

Trevor took the drink from Barnabas’s hand and took a swig, facing him across the desk before continuing. “You are always telling me to take my head out of the clouds, well… Listen, all these old hippies are trying to find themselves. They search so hard to find anything they can believe in. Look at the New Age places around the Southwest United States. Sedona, Taos, anywhere people think they can find spiritual meaning, they will migrate to. You know what happens when old people with money to spend travel? They spend said money.”

Barnabas slowly shook his head. “You boil my piss… What do you know about… where is this?” The mention of money to be made grabbed his attention.

Trevor answered as if his life depended on it, “Texas.”

“Right, Texas. Isn’t there still problems with Indians or Mexicans or something?”

“Not for about two hundred years… Listen, this might be a gold mine waiting to happen. We swoop in, buy up land around the area, hype the hell out of this UFO thing, who knows, maybe even link in some other shite. This place is even near the lay lines.” Trevor prepared his phone to show off a map of questionable veracity.

Barnabas shook his head. “Trevor you need to pull your head out of your… the clouds…”

Trevor continued his sales pitch, “These numbers don’t lie. Over thirty percent of Americans believe in ghosts, for Christ’s sake. Forty-five percent of them think E-bloody-T has visited us. Even the people running to be their President are talking about flippin’ aliens. You can’t make this shite up. This is from the country that is supposed to be the world leader. They are all turning whack-a-doodle.”

Barnabas studied the map for a moment before asking, “How much you think we can make?”

Trevor c****d his head, thinking he had an in, and paused a moment to make his sale. “Realistically, the sky is the limit. All I need is a couple of guys to go with me out to this little town. Buy up some of the property cheap, hype the whole thing and flip the lot of it.”

Barnabas finally grunted an agreement and let Trevor loose upon the world. May the gods have mercy on their souls.

With that, the fate of two countries an ocean apart was once again intertwined.