In the light of the morning, Lois was able to convince herself that she'd misheard the woman. Lucy and Jenna had both sworn that they hadn't told the woman anything about Lois. However, Lois knew enough about con artists to know that they were adept at picking up subtle clues from clothing, body language and other bits and pieces of information.
Besides, all Lois could think about was the pain in her head. The light seemed unnaturally bright and Jenna seemed suspiciously chipper.
“Did you know they serve drinks at breakfast?”
Lois covered her head. The way her sister and Jenna were going, they wouldn't remember the trip at all. Drinking had been a mistake and she was paying for it now. All drinking for breakfast was going to do was prolong her agony.
She covered her head and hoped the morning would go away.
***************
Sleeping through the morning had helped wipe away much of her hangover, although she still didn't feel well. Somehow Jenna and Lucy had been out for much of the morning exploring the shops in the French Quarter.
Lois should have been searching through the records from the time the library opened; as it was she'd lost much of the day.
Still, there was a sense of anticipation. She'd done everything she could online, and she didn't even know which books to order through an inter library loan. So many books hadn't been scanned in and she could only hope that she made productive use of her time.
Tracing an urban legend back to its earliest roots was sometimes an exercise in futility, but Lois had found sources from all over the country dating back almost one hundred and fifty years.
Stories of the dark rider appeared in almost every state in the union, and in some other countries as well. The stories were always the same; a man in a a dark hood and flowing cape who appeared out of nowhere to save someone and then disappeared as though he'd never existed.
Early stories had him riding a horse into the sky; more modern versions had him riding a motorcycle. Lois couldn't imaging that a long cape would be safe to wear on a motorcycle, but the stories were there all the same.
She'd even tracked down modern eyewitnesses; people who claimed that they had been personally saved by the rider, not just heard the story from a friend of a friend.
When Lois had questioned them, they admitted that they hadn't seen a motorcycle, but they were adamant about their experience.
There were police records to corroborate at least part of their stories. Car accidents, people who showed up at hospitals miles from where they had been injured with no one taking credit.
Sometimes the timelines didn't add up; one police report claimed an accident had occurred only minutes before the victim had appeared at the hospital despite the hospital being almost an hour away through dark and winding mountain roads.
Lois's theory was that people wanted to believe. She could believe that there were people who wanted to help, but didn't want the risk of being sued, or the unwelcome attention taking credit might bring. They might be more than willing to throw on a black hoodie, and in the dark susceptible people might believe what they were conditioned to believe.
She'd been surprised that versions of the story had been found in Spain, France, Germany and even Russia.
For some reason the stories had stopped in the late nineteen thirties only to resume afterwards with a greater frequency than ever before.
Looking through old microfiche was much less convenient than having issues bound into books, but it was all she had. Beginning in the nineteen fifties, libraries had begun to destroy shelf after shelf of books and newspapers as they converted them to microfilm.
They'd been convinced that the paper was brittle and they'd been “destroying to preserve.” They'd done it to save space as well. Mostly, Lois felt, it had been because in the nineteen fifties old things had been passe. Everything had been about the latest gadget, and old buildings had been destroyed. Entire skylines had been irrevocably altered.
Microfilm would never match the feel of newsprint in her hands in Lois's mind. In another life she could easily have seen herself as a reporter, chasing the story, digging for the truth. But her father had convinced her that the newspaper was dead, and television news was more about entertainment than investigation.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
Sometimes Lois felt that she would have felt happier in an earlier era. She didn't share Lucy's obsession with cell phones and texting, Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes she felt like an anachronism in a world that was moving increasingly in ways that she didn't get.
On the other hand she'd have hated to give up Google, the ability to stream music and to buy things online.
Deodorant and indoor plumbing weren't bad either.
She stiffened as she found the story.
It was from the June 16th 1896 issue of the Times-Picayune. There had been a train wreck and the rider had made an appearance, pulling people from the wreckage almost before the train had stopped moving.
Lois frowned. The people who described the rider described him as a big man, with a dark cloak and a hood, but they also noted that he worse a mask covering half his face.
None of the other descriptions had mentioned a mask. What could it mean?
The only reason Lois could imagine for wearing a mask would be to keep people from recognizing who someone was.
Did that mean that the Rider was a local, someone who would have been recognized if he didn't cover his face?
There was a picture of a vast mass of humanity milling about the wreckage. Lois frowned as something caught her eye.
She enlarged the picture. Up in the right corner of the picture there was a dark haired man who looked oddly familiar. Was he some sort of celebrity that she ought to remember but just couldn't because the hurricanes had destroyed too many brain cells?
Enlarged too much and it became just a blur. Whoever he was, he was carrying a limp body, with others trailing behind him.
The body language of the people around him said that he was respected, and his clothes were, for the standard of the time, expensive.
Lois frowned, and she read the rest of the news hoping for a side story that would shed some light on who the man was.
Given the nature of the crash, she didn't doubt that there would be follow up stories for at least a week following the crash, if not more. She went and retrieved further issues of the paper.
She wasn't sure what she was anticipating, but she'd always had a sense for when something was likely to be important.
Finally, a week after the crash, she found a small story on the third page.
Philanthropist Clark Kent provides funds for the widows of those who died in the accident.
There was a picture, closer than the one that had aroused Lois's curiosity, but somehow the face on this one was blurred as well.
While Lois understood that older cameras had needed absolute stillness to film a good picture, she felt irritated. Hadn't the photographer noticed that it was a bad picture, or was this simply the best of the ones he'd managed to take?
Couldn't Clark Kent keep still even for a moment? It was almost as though he hadn't wanted to be photographed, but that was silly. Philanthropists loved to have their egos stroked; they tended to name huge artifacts after themselves.
Lois sometimes thought of people like Lex Luthor and Donald Trump as nothing more than successful taggers, splashing their names across the entire world legally.
Even if he'd been media shy, he could have simply refused the picture of his shaking hands with the mayor.
Lois found a desktop terminal and made a quick online search about Clark Kent.
There were more than twenty thousand results. A quick Wikipedia search and Lois found herself staring at the monitor.
Born in 1869, raised by two male prospectors named Cletus Kent and Michael Clark. He'd made a fortune in Colorado before branching out into cattle ranching and other pursuits by the turn of the century.
There was a picture, although it too was blurred.
She skimmed the particulars of his life; he'd been married for forty five years, but had been a recluse for much of that time. He'd been survived by one son.
Further research suggested that the Kent family remained reclusive to the present, but was quietly involved in charity, especially around the New Orleans area.
What Lois found herself being drawn to repeatedly was a single line.
“In the late eighteen nineties, Clark Kent was known as King Midas because of his ability to find productive mines.”
King Midas was real.
Lois felt as though she'd been hit by a hammer.
