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Abelforth Whateley

Abelforth "Abe" Whateley was a space-obsessed teenager of Radford, Virginia and the twin brother of Wilbur Whateley. Three years before the task force arrived, he was believed to have robbed a Radio Shack in a homemade spacesuit and run away; the team later found a desiccated teenager nailed to the wall of the Whateley family's cellar.
Type NPC
Aliases Abe; Abelforth Radford (Molly Underhill's usage in Radford Horror 05)
Affiliation Whateley family
Status Presumed dead; the sheriff's office was awaiting DNA and dental results in Radford Horror 08
First appearance Radford Horror 02 (discussed, never seen alive)
Played by Andre (never appears in person)

Description

Abe is known only through other people's accounts and his belongings. He was sixteen in the story's present, with a space and UFO obsession that began around age twelve; before that, his father said, he was "a fire truck kid" (Radford Horror 02). His room at the Whateley house was kept untouched like a shrine: a shuttle poster, star-and-moon pajamas, a UFO painting, and shelves of UFO and pop-science books. The Biz found old tennis shoes in the closet, close to the size of the footprints leading into the woods (Radford Horror 02).

Background

Abe and Wilbur were identical twins and childhood friends of Amanda Lucky. Their father Yobiah Whateley told the team that Abe's interest in space began at about twelve, and that the loss of the family dog shortly before Abe's "episode" had hit him hard. Abe talked to the man at the Pay n' Stay (Rutherford) and urged his mother to get Usenet access (Radford Horror 02). A neighbor, Meg Gunderson, blamed the whole affair on Abe and assumed drugs. The Biz speculated that Amanda might have been Abe's girlfriend; Andrew replied that she had been dating someone else at the time (Radford Horror 02).

History

The Radio Shack robbery

Three years before the story, Abe skipped a school presentation on a Mercury-replica spacesuit he had made. He threw a cinder block through a Radio Shack window wearing the suit, tried to take heavier equipment but could not lift it (which is how the police got his fingerprints), and left with lightweight modems, a cellular phone and other portable gear in a garbage bag. He bought a bus ticket to Richmond and was never seen again (Radford Horror 02). See Radio Shack spacesuit robbery.

The Biz found a hollowed-out copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends in Abe's room holding about $120-130, which led Andrew Howard to conclude the robbery was not about money. The Biz also found an AM/FM receive-only radio tuned to the same station the Pay n' Stay man listened to, where Art Bell airs later in the evening, plus overdue library books on astronomy and ufology. The Biz's early theory was that Abe had been contacted by aliens and was living in the woods (Radford Horror 02).

The APB

In Radford Horror 05, Molly Underhill reported that the only database hit on fingerprints from a rooftop crime scene was the old electronics-store robbery, so "Abelforth Radford" was probably back in town. She put out an APB and sent someone to photograph his brother for up-to-date images (Radford Horror 05). Maybelline Augustine, mother of Phoebe Augustine, told Andrew that one of the twins had had an intense crush on Phoebe when they were younger, though she was not sure which, "because twins"; Phoebe had been badly affected by what happened to the boys (Radford Horror 05). See The Spaceman.

The cellar

At night, Kurt found rotten cellar doors with a padlock under a tarp at the back of the Whateley garage. Inside the low cellar, behind hanging tarps, the team found the discarded pieces of a spacesuit, a dog skeleton, and a desiccated body in a NASA T-shirt, nailed through the wrists and ankles to the wall, with the side of the head stove in. The body was too dry for the damp conditions, and a fibrous, root-like growth was wrapped around a floor joist. The face was too withered to read, but the team took the body to be Abelforth's (Radford Horror 06). The crucifixion echoed the method used on Amanda; see Crucifixion MO.

The sheriff's theory

After the climax, the sheriff told the team that the hidden basement held a spaceman costume with a journal, and that the cadaver was probably Abelforth, who "never ran away at all." His theory was that Wilbur came downstairs dressed as his brother, pretended to leave, then climbed back in through his window and came down as himself, so that both boys appeared to have gone. Wilbur's journal has entries for April 16-18; the players worked out that Abe's disappearance matched April 17, the entry reading "I did something." On April 16 Wilbur wrote that Abe would not stop looking for the dog, and a later entry mentions that Abe was always telling him about picking up radio on fillings. The team concluded that the creature in the journal, the Radford Moth, had manipulated Wilbur (Radford Horror 08).

Relationships

Trivia

  • Dante repeatedly called him "Albert", and the twins' names were mixed up at the table throughout the arc (Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 08).
  • Dante joked that the family had only itself to blame for naming the boys Abelforth and Wilbur (Radford Horror 02).
  • It is never established which twin was older, or which twin had the crush on Phoebe.

Appearances