The Western Valley Mystery
By Thomas Mc

Author's Notes : This story is another oddball product of my warped muse. It and was originally intended as a short standalone 'Lois and Clark' story but as it grew I ended up using bits of information from my other stories so it could easily be considered another part of my existing Lois and Clark series. This story is set six years after the end of the TV series. Lois and Clark currently have two children. Jonathan Samuel Kent (five years old) and Martha Ellen Kent (two years old).

Lois and Clark are sent to investigate a series of strange stories about a mysterious inaccessible valley deep in the Appalachian Mountains and a related shadowy government coverup..

Chapter 1

Lois gazed curiously at Perry after she and Clark sat down across from his desk. "So what's up Chief?" She asked without preamble. Perry did his best not to smile at her typical, no-non-sense approach though Lois and Clark both noticed the corners of his lips twitch for just a moment. A second later, his expression settled into his serious story assignment face.

Perry looked back at his star reporting team for a few moments before beginning his narrative. "Forty-seven years ago the federal government began a Super Top Secret operation up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. Even the name of the project was Top Secret. The project was eventually abandoned after over two years of constant delays, equipment problems and massive cost overruns, as well as several mysterious deaths and disappearances among the troops involved."

"The Military worked very hard to cover the whole thing up and the public never heard anything about it. The scuttlebutt was that the failed project had the potential to become a major scandal for the military. The relatives of the missing and dead soldiers were threatened with charges of sedition and treason to keep them quiet."

"After a few years, despite the military's attempt to hush it all up, rumors of the deaths began to circulate within the general military community. My editor somehow got wind of the rumors and assigned the story to me. It was one of my first big stories as a young investigative reporter. My first inquiries turned out to be fruitless. The government simply refused to admit that any such project even existed."

Perry paused, lost for a moment in his memories before continuing. "Within days after I began investigating the story, some obscure branch of the FBI hauled me and my editor in and began intimidating and questioning us. A majority of their questions involved trying to find out how we even knew of that project's existence. Later I found out that the government wouldn't even admit to the existence of that branch of the FBI. In fact, they threatened to arrest both my editor and myself for espionage if I didn't drop the whole thing. This was during the worst of the McCarthy era House Un-American Activities Committee trials. My editor backed down and took me off that story. I never really gave up on it, but I've been unable to find much real information on it. To this day everything about that project, including the names of the people involved, is still classified well above Top Secret."

Perry picked up a folder off his desk. "Recently a land developer wanted to create a luxury resort there but he was forced to abandon the idea when he was unable to get his men or his equipment into the valley. Many of the delays were the work of government interference. Several people, including a close friend of mine, had invested a lot of money in that venture and lost it all. I also lost some money to it but it wasn't enough to be significant." Perry shook his head ruefully. "Never would have invested if I had known exactly where the resort was to be built." Perry handed the folder to Clark. "That is a copy of everything that I know or have discovered about that valley and the projects involved. It also includes handwritten copies of my notes that were confiscated by the government back in '58."

Lois glanced over at the folder in Clark's hand then looked at Perry. "So what do you expect from us?"

Perry shrugged. "Do what you two do best. Investigate." He leaned back in his chair. "If you can prove that the failure of the resort project was the result of government or military interference or, better yet, corruption . . . and we can prove it then those that lost their shirts in that project could go after the government for a redress of their losses. It could also make a hell of a great article. Corruption. Abuse of power. Government cover-up of a failed military project. It could end up being almost as big as the fall of Lex Luther."

"Seems rather thin to me." Lois responded. "I think it's more likely that the developer scammed the investors and is just trying to use an old failed military project and a few normal bureaucratic SNAFU's to cover his own tracks."

Perry nodded. "That is a possibility. If it turns out to be true then I expect that to be in your article. If that developer was scamming the investors maybe you can find out where the money went." He sat up straighter. "Now go to work and bring me back a good story." As they started to stand up Perry interrupted them. "But first I want you to take this." He handed Lois the thinnest flip open cell phone that she had ever seen. "This is an advance sample of the newest cell that is scheduled to be released next week. It's small enough to be easily hidden. It was given to me by one of those investors I mentioned. I know that you two have a 'super' ability to survive trouble but I want you to keep me up to date on whatever you find. That way if you run into trouble with the government, we can print everything we have so far and make it too hot for them to hold you."

Perry faced Clark. "You watch over Lois and try to keep her out of trouble."

"That's a pretty tall order." Clark responded.

Lois responded by whacking Clark on his chest. "I can take care of myself thank-you."

As Clark reached for the office door, Perry had one last thing to add. "You know that Alice and I will be happy help your parents look after the kids while you're gone."

"We know." Lois responded as she exited the door. "I'll be sure to remind Mother though."

~ o ~

Lois tossed her notes onto the conference room table in disgust. "Five days and nothing but dead ends." She and Clark had spent two days researching the man that had planned to develop the western valley area. They learned that the failed resort project had been just as destructive to his finances as it had been for his investors. That made it highly unlikely that he had failed intentionally. It had been one dead end after another.

Despite the endless brick walls, they had uncovered a few snippets of information surfaced that suggested that the government really had tried to sabotage the resort project but none of it could be proven. They had also collected a hand full of very fanciful anecdotes about the 'Western Valley' itself. All of that information, as ridiculous and, ultimately, useless as it appeared to be, had been dutifully reported back to Perry.

Lois shook her head and directed her attention to Perry. "All we really have is your original notes and the few affidavits that you managed to get before that FBI group forced your editor to shut your investigation down."

Clark chimed in. "We do have enough evidence and testimonies to suggest that some shadowy government group was up to no good but we can find no records on who was responsible." He tossed a thin folder on the conference table. "All of the names we have of the agents involved turned out to be phony. They never existed. Even the people from that office, that harassed you and your editor, appear to have been phony and the office itself was leased to a non-existent government account."

Perry's head was bowed as he seemed to ponder their words for a minute then spoke. "If I didn't know any better, I would say that this smells of Bureau 39." He looked up at Lois and Clark. "But we know that the last remnants of that renegade group were captured shortly after Jonathan's birth, based on that article written by you two shortly after Colonel Cash had taken over what was left of that bunch of wackos."

Lois shook her head as a look of disgust crossed her face. "It couldn't be them, Chief. Bureau 39 is dead." Again she shook her head. " It has to be someone in the NSA or the CIA that has gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. There is no other way to explain the bugs that were found in our house and in your office two days after we began digging into this." She glanced at the little bug detector that was currently sitting on the conference room table, it's flashing green light indicating that the conference room was bug free

"I agree." Perry nodded. "It looks like you two will have to go to the source and find out what is really happening in that valley."

It took a second for Lois to absorb what Perry had just said. Then she was catapulted into full rant mode. "You're kidding. You want to send us to some isolated spooky mountain region, full of nothing but trees and hillbillies over some dead end stories!? The answers are here in Metropolis. The answers have to be here."

Perry just stared at Lois. "You already said that you have hit a dead end here in Metropolis. The answers have to be up in those mountains. Something strange is going on there and I want you two to find out what it is. I want the both of you to leave as soon as you can. If you go by way of Superman express, you might be able to shake this group off your tail." He glanced at the little bug detector on the conference table. "And I'm going to have the bug removed from my office and have the rest of this office swept for any more bugs."

~ o ~

Lois grumbled to herself in annoyance as she looked down on the valley from the end of the pass through the surrounding rugged mountain peaks. How had she let Perry talk her into this total waste of time? It's not as if there was any possibility of them getting any kind of news worthy story out of this isolated place, despite what the superstitious locals claimed. It was just another very hard to access piece of landscape that had become immersed in some stupid local legend.

The road up into the mountains had been difficult and treacherous. The gorge through the mountains had contained ample evidence of recent rock slides which had forced them to leave their rented car at the other end. Fortunately, Clark's ability to fly had saved them the need to walk the length of the gorge.

She had come to suspect that the only reason the military had been interested in this place was for that very same inaccessibility. What better place to carry out its more nefarious, and sometimes illegal, projects?

Lois And Clark had started by checking out the small village that was located just a few miles east of the valley. Three days later they were standing at the end of a gorge that had apparently been gouged between two mountains. A mist rising from the bog below them would tantalizingly reveal the landscape beyond then obscure it again. 'Of course,' Lois thought in annoyance then remarked to Clark, 'This fog probably doesn't hinder your vision at all."

Lois was currently gazing at what looked like part of the front right corner of a very rusted and vine covered Sherman Tank sticking up out of the fetid swampy bog about thirty-five yards from where the edge of thate bog began. The mist momentarily rolled back a bit to reveal more of the bog. Her gaze shifted to a spot about ninety yards further out and slightly to the left. A ten-foot length of construction crane stuck straight up out of the bog like a giant skeletal finger, warning the unwary of the danger that lay ahead. Lois shivered. How deep did that bog have to be to sink all but ten feet of a construction crane?

Lois shook her head as she thought back to some of the incredible tales that they had heard in the nearby village.

~ o ~

Their first day at the village, located just east of the subject of their investigation, had been spent talking to the people of that small farming community. After some initial reluctance, Clark had finally managed to get some of the people to talk to him and Lois. Sometimes Lois envied Clark's natural easygoing charm that encouraged people to open up to him.

Most of the people of the village called it The Western Valley. A few had referred to it as the Haunted Valley or The Cursed Valley. According to the local legend, it had first been discovered just over a hundred years ago. The story goes that during a heavy rainstorm, several of the people living in the relatively quiet settlement of Greenwood had seen the clouds directly above suddenly become blindingly bright, like a flash of lightning, brighter than anything that they had ever seen before, followed by the strange sounding thunder that was much louder than anything that they had ever heard before. Less than a second later, the whole town heard a massive explosion up in the mountains just to the west of the settlement.

Two weeks later a group of six men and two women had gone up into the mountains to investigate. An old tintype photograph of those eight people hung on the wall of the local bed and breakfast, the owner of which was a descendant of one of the two couples in the picture. After a five-day hike, the explorers had found an odd-looking, perfectly straight, gorge carved between two peaks. The strangely shaped gorge was solid rock completely denuded of vegetation. Those first explorers followed the unusual gorge to a secluded valley nestled deep in the mountains. They descended into the valley and quickly became mired in the bog that covered the valley floor. Five of them were lost in the treacherous bog and the three surviving men were forced to turn back. Their tales of the terrors they endured sent shivers of horror down the spines of the settlers that heard them.

The villagers claimed that since that time, occasionally, a few hardy individuals would attempt to climb the mountain and enter the valley. Everyone who did so either never returned or came back changed, raving about the haunted forest swamp that came alive and drove them out.

The older villagers told about an attempt by some military types to enter the valley via helicopter forty odd years ago that had ended in disaster. A young teenage village girl, who had become infatuated with the helicopter pilot, had sneaked into the compound and overheard the radio chatter as the helicopter began its descent into the valley. They hit violent hundred mile per hour turbulence and crashed into the bog. No one made it back. The storyteller pointed to a hand drawn portrait, that the teenage girl had done, and identified it as the pilot. A month later two tanks and several troop carriers passed through town heading west. A few months later about half of the military personnel came back on foot and severely dispirited.

A few years ago, a bunch of construction types from the big city had come through the village with a large load of earth moving equipment. A year and a half later, what remained of the group had passed back through the village without most of their equipment. There were rumors that they had been driven away by the ghosts of others that had died there.

One of the locals mentioned seeing two other outsiders in dark suits hanging around the village, off and on, at about the same time that the developer had been there. The suits left about two weeks after the developer abandoned his project.

~ o ~

Now Lois and Clark stood at the end of the gorge and looked down on that same Western Valley several yards below them and spreading out far to the west.

The tantalizing glimpses they got of the central part of the valley looked like a very pleasant, almost park-like, green forest. This forest however was, completely, surrounded by a dark, dense, swampy, forbidding bog. The surrounding bog varied in width, with the widest part on the eastern side, directly below where they currently stood. A constantly shifting mist rose from the bog and would often obscure their view of the more inviting forest in the central part of the valley. The entire Valley was then surrounded by three nearly inaccessible high mountain peaks. The only way through the mountains was the narrow gorge that they were currently standing in. The gorge was cut in a nearly straight line between two of the peaks.

Clark used his x-ray vision to get a clearer view of the Central Forest through the mist. What he saw was an admittedly beautiful and lush combination of forest and glades that would be perfectly at home in Centennial Park. The difference between the bog and the central woods was like night and day. He noticed that the Forested glade appeared to be more or less circular in shape and the line between the two types of landscape was startlingly sharp. Clark commented mostly to himself. "That central forest is beautiful but there is definitely something unusual about the overall landscape of that valley."

Lois turned to Clark. "I don't care what Perry wants, There is no way I'm going to slog through that creepy swamp just to get a closer look at that valley."

Clark shrugged. "That outer bog ringing the valley seems to be a key component in the tales that we are here to investigate. We need to, at least, check it out and see what is actually going on down there."

"Do you see that tank and that crane? I will not set foot in any stinky, slimy bog." Her tone turned to a form of flirty wheedling as she ran her hand seductively across his chest. "Can't you just sort of carry me over the bog to that nice forest?"

Clark rolled his eyes as he gave off a long-suffering sigh, though there was the strong hint of a smile creeping across his lips. He had already planned to fly them over the bog.

Lois put her arms around his neck and leaped into the arms that had automatically responded to catch her. "Let's go flyboy." She remarked with her best flirty grin.

Continued in Part 2

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Disclaimer: This story is based on the television series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." The recognizable characters and settings in this story are the property of D.C. Comics, Warner Bros., December 3rd Productions, and anyone else with a legal right to them, and I have no claim on them whatsoever, nor am I profiting by their use. The story, however, is a product of my own imagination. No infringement on copyrights is intended. This story is presented merely for the enjoyment of fans.