Late last night and the night before, a dozen mad scientists sneaked into homes across the region. Working in the dark, the pale, grinning group accessed the memories of their sleeping victims and made a host of changes.

It was calamity in the morning. Men, women and children awoke with vivid recollections of things that had never happened. False memories were exchanged. Thin, poorly constructed nightmares were bandied about as fact. Cities and towns across River Valley were abuzz with falsehoods.

Investigators believe the gruesome work may be somehow connected to a Lewiston Maineiacs hockey player. Or possibly to a violent crime in Wilton. A special team of investigators from another dimension has been called in to assist with the probe.

This is the way it happened and I know it to be true. I got it from a guy out on Pine Street who had heard it at the bowling alley. A woman he bowled six strings with had picked up the story at her reading group and, well… Do you really want to question the validity of that?

Cultivating and distributing a rumor is easy. Disproving it is not. Rumors are like computer viruses in that each infected victim propagates the infection at least tenfold. The people you trust to sort out the facts for you are vulnerable to juicy rumors just like anyone else.

I thought it was just a Wilton thing these days. Gossip about a recent murder there has become a full-time recreation. What is suggested as a possibility in a diner is embraced as a truth in a feed store down the street. By the time the rumor reaches the bake sale, it is accepted as gospel. By the time it reaches the newsroom, reporters are wide-eyed and the verification process is under way.

A Rumford cop was responsible for the Wilton murder. No, wait. It was a Lewiston cop. Can’t quite get that one proven? Try this on for size. The killing was committed by the son of one of Wilton’s own policemen and that character is now locked up and presumed weeping.

Bunk, all of it. I chased that latter bit of gossip the other night in the manner with which a cat chases a healthy butterfly – back and forth, up and down. Other reporters checked as well, believing there must be a hint of truth in a rumor that so tenaciously swept the populace. There was not.

I was beginning to believe Wilton folk may be suffering from toxic additives in their drinking water. Rum or whiskey, perhaps. But then there was a killing in Lewiston and the same kind of infection ran through that population like a plague.

A body was found in the trunk of a car. Cops surrounded the vehicle but had not even opened it up yet to look inside. With those scant clues at hand, word began to spread about exactly whose body was folded into the trunk like luggage.

It was a young girl, reported missing days ago. No, it was two young girls, both with their throats slashed. OK, maybe it wasn’t a young girl at all. It was a man. But police were searching the nearby sewer system for other bodies and those would surely prove to be the young girls in question.

I knew who was in the trunk and I was setting about searching for clues to exactly how he got in there and who had done the deed. But the phone did not stop ringing all night.

A man whose information is typically sound called breathless from his cell phone. He was playing bingo downtown and word was spreading fast, like news about a particularly big pot.

Two more bodies had been discovered behind a downtown store. Worse, the bodies had been dismembered and investigators were still collecting all the different parts. With a horrible murder spree on their hands, police sent entire teams of detectives into the sewers, to brave 9-foot alligators and search for more victims.

Hell, if the rumor is that elaborate already, why not place the body of Jimmy Hoffa down there along with the lost city of Atlantis? If you’re going to fish in a puddle, fish for whales.

The rumor about the Maineiacs hockey player is in contention for the hottest, most elusive bit of gossip so far this year. I still have no idea how much merit it has so I’ll just skip the details here. If you haven’t heard it, feel free to give me a call. Or just ask someone down at the feed store.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.