Crap. I’m exhausted. I don’t know if I have it in me to tell the whole thing. So, there I was, sitting at the two inches of free space at my desk, making a list of cool songs to learn for rehearsal when I got the text from Wes.
It was exactly what I expected, which was him begging me to save him from the evil brass and cymbal section’s social mixer on campus. He’s not even in band – he just has friends in it so he can play guitar in their practice room. But to tell you the truth, I was happy to have somewhere to go. Friday nights have been especially hard for me, and the whole “not going to college” thing gives me a lot of alone time – which is totally coincidentally the same time my feet lead me over to the drum set. Again, totally a coincidence. I’m sure the whole screaming in my vehicle stuff is of a healthy amount.
I kissed my parents on the cheek as I went through the dimly lit living room, Wheel of Fortune casting a glow off the reading glasses on the tips of their noses. They were sitting in their designated recliners, both facing the television. Mama looked up from her crochet project, her black Romanian hair in a loose knot atop her head, a few kinked grays poking out whichever way they desired. She reminded me that it’s “pretty cold out,” and that I should take my jacket. Dad pulled his eyes away from the creased paperback Stephen King novel in his hands that he’s read a billion times, rubbing his head in the same spot he’s rubbed it since my big brother A.J. was born. Dad was really showing his Minnesota roots in the green cornhole tournament t-shirt he won at the county fair.
“Is Wes at the school, like a party? Or at someone’s house, like a party?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t gotten to that part yet. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.” He removed his readers, rocking gently in his La-Z-Boy.
“I’m not worried about that, hon. Just… grab a pamphlet or something for yourself if it’s at the school, okay?”
Not wanting to get into it with either of them, I nodded and shut my mouth. Man, it was hard not to stare at how dog-eared that book was. It made me mad, but I couldn’t explain why. I wished he would read any other book for a change. I wished they’d go bowling or something instead of watching that show.
Closing the glass pane door behind me, I was glad I wore my big brown Carhartt, because it was in fact chilly for mid-fall.
The only sounds on our street were the soft, inconstant whooshing of the night breeze, quacking ducks from the park just behind the neighborhood, and the distinctive voice of Pat Sayjak, pillowed by red brick and insulation of the house. I let out a sigh of relief at the shift in noise level as I started towards old Bessie in the driveway.
Bessie’s a truck from some year before my time. I won’t bore you with the make and model because that stuff doesn’t particularly interest me. She is white, she makes a funny little whistling noise down under the hood when it’s cold, her gray polyester upholstery is peeling, and if I had to place her as a person, I think Bessie would be a yoga instructor in her 40s, surrounded by a class of pupils half her age and twice as toned that only serve to remind her of the cruel, passive march of time that just gets louder and louder, closer and closer, only she can’t do anything about it because she has to go home to start supper for her white-bread husband and unappreciative son, even though they absolutely know how to use an oven or order takeout. Anyway, there was no whistling this time. Score!
…
Orange and yellow leaves blew into my windshield after I picked up Wes from the party at a townhouse decorated cutely for the season. Now we were en route to Trip’s for our first band rehearsal in over a month. Wes hadn’t offered an explanation yet as to why I had to rescue him (he literally had called me from the bathroom because he was hiding out). Instead, he was pigging out on the supply of Fruit Roll-ups I keep in the glovebox, resting the dented box on his blue jeans. It amazes me how he stays in shape with all the junk he eats. He plays hockey for fun with a bunch of his guy friends pretty regularly, which I guess explains it.
“Soooo,” I pressed, “did the trombone kids start doing lines on the coffee table or something?”
“Gosh, no,” he shook his head, some of sandy brown hair bouncing with the motion. “No, I wish. Benson Seeley was there.”
“… Is that a person or a quarter horse?”
He gave me an incredulous look, like the one he gives me whenever I’m too much. I snickered.
Wes and I are quite a pair. Everything about him screams Eurocentric: gray eyes with hints of blue, of course his sandy brown hair that was approaching more “boyish” than “presentable”, faint freckles and sunspots dotted across his skin. The only exception to this were his eyebrows, which missed the memo during conception and were instead a thicker, dark brown. His eyes were in a constant state of being ever-so-slightly widened, and he tended to tilt his chin down a bit when speaking; I’ve always likened him to a puppy who got caught chewing on the furniture, but only has a vague understanding of it being wrong because the owners are fussing over the couch. They don’t fuss for long, because who could stay mad at a puppy?
It’s a direct contrast to my harsh, shadowy features, not-so-Covergirl nose, brown eyes, long black hair that always manages to get flyaways, and purple-ish dark circles. They add to the whole “gaunt” vibe I’ve got going on. I like vampires and gargoyles and stuff, probably thanks to my grandma migrating from Romania and all, being a car ride away from all those cool gothic castles, but I never asked to look like one. I get told all the time that I look angry, but I’ve found that I physically cannot un-furrow my brows. It feels untrue to my spirit.
“He’s that jerk from the country club. I pass him walking at Frickton sometimes. If I knew it was at his place I never would’ve gone,” he huffed, looking out the window at the passing fast-food restaurants.
“Ahhhh,” I pondered thoughtfully, “I see. And how is Frick-Ton-of-Dropouts doing these days?” It was the nickname I gave to the college here in Duffel, where Wes goes for his business degree. It’s always a joke (typically followed by his protests of “But it’s not even clever – the dropout rate is only twelve percent!”), but I wonder how much of it might be secret resentment for him going to college, leaving me stuck working reception to save up for my future apartment somewhere and juggle around ideas for a future career in something.
“Fine. About as fine as going for a degree you hate can be. And I don’t appreciate the tone, but I accept it as your way of showing care. We don’t all get the luxury of taking calls for mail-order caskets, or jewel-encrusted headstones, or whatever it is you do at a funeral home, you know.”
I wagged a finger at him smugly. “That’s jewel-encrusted caskets and mail-order headstones to you. It could be worse – I could be relegated to schmoozing with my family’s snobby friends at a country club tomorrow.” Wes let out a dramatic groan. “Ugggghhhh. I hate schmoozing…I don’t even like golf!” he whined, rubbing his eyes with his palms. It made his eyebrow hairs go all sorts of unruly, even worse around the thin horizontal stripe of a scar above his eyelid that barely cuts into his left brow – hockey skate to the face. I remember the night he had to get stitches for it.
“Can’t you just say you have too much homework?” I offered. This had been a regular conversation between us since middle school. Back then, he wasn’t too open about trash talking his parents. Luckily, my trash talking fed into his trash talking, so now we have all the dirt on each other’s families.
“No. They’d just lecture me on how I need to have better time management, which always somehow gets back around to the band and you.”
“Always glad to make an appearance at the Gilder family dinner table,” I nodded, faking gratuity.
“Yeah, you’re very popular with us,” he joked with a straight face. “I already know the Clemmons are gonna bring their daughter Victoria; they’re always trying to set me up with her.”
“Maybe you oughta take them up on that – I mean, how many people, at this very moment, would you say suspect your sexuality because you don’t have a girlfriend?”
“I’d say about as many that suspect yours.”
“Very funny. The waiter with the mustache at that ‘50s themed restaurant will be my husband one day, and you know it.” I turned the knob on the stereo down a hair, signaling to him that I was about to get serious. “Come on, though, it’s been months since you and that Janelle girl broke up. Don’t you think it’s time to go on an actual date again, even just for fun?”
Wes scoffed, the corner of his mouth raising halfheartedly, stuffing the fruit snacks back into the glove compartment.
“What’s more fun than hanging out with Becca Townsley? But really, woman, you are bad for my street cred.”
“Ohhhhhh, my gosh, no I am not. Not if you just said ‘street cred’ unironically.” We laughed. We were a pair of dorks like that.
…
Trip’s basement is “man cave” to the extreme. Wood-paneled walls, bowling pins on a shelf above the pool table (we don’t know where the huge stain on the felt came from, and frankly, I’m too scared to ask), far too many lava lamps for any unmarried man to possess, a couple of shag-colored armchairs, and an Irish flag on the wall for… reasons. Reasons that I’m sure make sense to him. Guy’s not even Irish.
It’s always so hot in the basement for no earthly reason. The three of us were already sweating just two songs in, even with my sleeves rolled up to my shoulders and my too-long black hair clipped up. The heat had smushed Wes’s locks down an inch or so on his head, and Trip… well, Trip was beet red, but Wes and I knew to expect that by now.
Trip is cool, I guess. He’s Wes’s friend, not so much mine. He’s on keyboard. The fact that we even have a keyboardist is probably why our track record is the way it is. How they got to be such good friends is a mystery. Trip’s got this Slash wannabe thing going on with his hair, wears a red plaid newsboy cap eight days of the week, and is on the shorter end. Picturing them sitting together in freshman orientation three years ago is impossible for me. But he’s good for Wes; Wes needs guy friends for days when I drive him crazy.
I have no clue how to label our music taste, seeing as we’re primarily a covers band. As for a target audience, I’d say that we would delight any suburban dad, weird girls that collected bugs when they were kids, or a very drunk Scottish man. Somehow Wes always manages to sneak in a snippet of either The Killers or an Eric Clapton song; we’re in the process of making him comfortable enough to play a short solo. His voice is more suited for softer melodies – more appealing than me trying to croak something out while on the drums, that’s for sure.
After wrapping up around 10:30, we decompressed in the kitchen, snacking and letting Trip explain to us with the enthusiasm of Elon Musk his new crypto startup, or whatever it is that business majors do for fun. But I was itching to leave – I had plans for the night. Dubious, brilliant plans.
Wes dragged along behind me as I was practically foaming at the mouth to drive us toward our destination of promised excitement. Well… maybe “routine consumption” is a better way to describe it. Whoever pronounced death to the American shopping mall clearly has never gotten a corn dog and a graphic novel all under the same roof.
Now, one thing to understand about the layout of the South Center strip mall here in Duffel is that it has an awesome all-in-one pop culture/DVD/comic book joint, stationed right next to an Auntie Anne’s. It closes earlier than Auntie Anne’s, but not to fear. Seeing as I’m such a regular customer, the workers at Comicgeddon (yes, that is the actual name) like to give me insider’s knowledge and tips that only surface-level consumers might not have access to.
For instance, that night, there was a bunch of water-damaged stuff they had to throw away because their mail truck got caught in a flash flood or whatever. This included Batman issues – written by Bruce Timm, baby! Of course I was willing to take a look; I would be stupid not to! Wes has never really shared my love for superheroes and stuff like that. I don’t know. Maybe I just like them because I can pretend that my life is that exciting; I doubt I’m virtuous enough to save someone. Wes, on the other hand, is like the Superman to my Bizarro. For every good and noble deed he does, every old lady’s cat saved from a tree, it seems like all I do is go behind him and bulldoze everything. I used to be one of those gifted kids, but he just never stopped. It’s not like I’m not smart, because I like to think I still am, but it’s hard to convince yourself that it was all worth it, that you really amounted to something, when you look at your life and you yawn.
So, after purchasing pretzels and strawberry milkshakes from Auntie Anne’s right before they closed up and went home for the night, I drove us around the back alley behind the mall, stopping at the dumpster/loading dock where Comicgeddon was supposed to be. A bit of mist was starting to turn the gravel road damp enough to make the tiny rocks stick to the soles of your shoes. The same mist was slashing a line through the streetlight above, casting a yellow-green glow that always creeped me out. You know, one of those super old lights with wooden posts that people carve their names into using dull pocketknives.
“Anytime, now,” came Wes from behind me, rocks crunching under his boots as he followed my lead in getting out of the truck. I didn’t have to turn around to know that he was keeping his head on a swivel, on the lookout for any of Duffel’s resident meth-heads and kooks.
Pulling my jacket closer around me, I strode over to the formidable green opponent before me. Lucky for me, I remembered to stuff in my pockets a pair of little black gloves, perfect for dumpster diving. I’m fairly tall and pencil-shaped for a girl my age, but it still was an awkward climb that I did not feel like free-scaling. I’m telling you, I think stick bugs have more curves than me. But I digress.
After getting a boost from Wes, I lowered myself down into the stinking sea of Comicgeddon and its sister stores. The smell of hot dog water and mildew slapped me in the face so hard that I felt my dark eyebrows singe into blonde. Plus, my shoes! I forgot to change out of my good everyday sneakers, which were now occupying space with something shifting near my feet that I prayed wasn’t a rat.
“Seriously, Becca. Hurry up.”
I guess I could see where he was coming from; in the past month, there had been three or so people missing across town. Duffel, population 17,500, was big enough to have its fair share of crime, but still small enough for anything out of the ordinary to be plastered all over the “Friends of Duffel” Facebook group.
“Would you shush? I see it, okay?” I replied, turning my attention to the thick, rubber-banded stack of issues in the corner of the dumpster, neatly on top of all the garbage. This, this was not garbage – this was something that happened to get thrown away. There’s a difference.
I tried not to think about my jeans being the only barrier between my bare skin and cold, wet, pretzel garbage. When I made it close enough to reach for the stack of issues, I initially struggled to grab the rubber bands with my fuzzy gloves. They were a little bent by the water, dried to a curve, but nothing unsalvageable. Ohhhh, yeah. It was gonna be another win for Batman fans tonight in this dumpster.
I hissed Wes’s name to get his attention before chucking them over the side for him to catch (he didn’t) and dug my palms into the rim of the dumpster to push myself out. Landing on my feet, I quietly cheered to the heavens, cupping my hands around my mouth to amplify the whisper, the black material warming my face where the drizzle had hit it.
“Yeah, yeah, good for you,” he huffed out, making his way to the passenger side door without waiting for me. Gosh, he can be so cranky when he has Statistics homework to do. “Good call on putting the garbage gloves close to your mouth, by the way. I’m sure you won’t contract any diseases from that.”
My mouth fell open at the revelation. In one smooth motion, he pulled himself into the passenger seat by the grab handle, laughing like the smug little rich boy/Simon and Garfunkel fan he is. I wanna sock him in the throat sometimes.
Deciding the garbage would be a better new home for the gloves versus anywhere near my body, I yanked them off and tossed them in the garbage, clambering inside old Bessie like the stick bug/Franz Ferdinand fan I am.
Once we were both in, I locked the doors. Rather than immediately driving off, I began thumbing through the gloriously hefty stack of issues, much to Wes’s – since I am always looking for excuses to use this word – chagrin. Oh, yeah. It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
“Oh, heck no. We are not staying here, Becca. I know you have a death wish, but I would like to live just long enough to make my college debt worth something.”
“Shush. If anyone tries kidnapping us, they’ll start with me, anyway.”
“Yeah – and then it’ll be on me to be chivalrous and fight back. How much good does it do if we’re both face down in a ditch in Venezuela?”
I slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle his annoying voice, focusing on the pages of action and heroism before me. Once he had shut up, I was able to start pulling individual issues out with both hands. I flipped through one, two, three – quickly, because I didn’t want to spoil anything.
Issue #93 was up next to be skimmed. A special double issue! I had to peel the pages apart that were dried together, and the colors were muddled from the damage, but it was cool, nonetheless. I’m not picky, unlike some people next to me.
I was working on flattening out the bent pages against the console when something slunkkkk out from the middle of the issue. I shrieked like a banshee when I saw the thing’s head come out first, then its body. I hate bugs. Always have.
It… Oh, my gosh. Gross. It was so disgusting. Like a fat, pink little worm the length of my thumb and just as wide, but… this thing was black and had almost a ridge on its back, like a spine. It was so slimy, too. How does it have a spine if it’s a worm?! I remember being awake for biology and that does not happen. No, thank you. This thing should’ve died on the Ark.
The goo worm, or whatever it was, took its sweet time slinking towards me. My whole body was frozen. I think I was yelling at Wes to grab it, but I honestly could not tell you. It felt like I was talking through a fishbowl, I was so out of it. My first out-of body experience for the weekend!
I guess my fishbowl shrieking freaked the little guy out, because it started slinking faster until it stopped at my wrist resting on the console and I felt a sharp pinch that
startled me – he bit me!
Naturally, I started screaming and flinging my arm around like crazy. But, uh… another weird thing happened. It split into two. I thought I just ripped off its back-half, but nope. The one was still latching onto me, but the other half that got split managed to land on Wes’s neck, crawl up a bit, already fully developed, and bite him. Oops.
Good gosh, I hate to sound so primitive, but something about hearing a guy scream just fills you with this dread. The cavewoman in me was hoping to be protected, I guess. But Wes’s scream is kind of funny, a really animated yip and cry, so I wanted to laugh in spite of myself.
“BECCA! UNLOCK IT! The, the – thing – it, the DOOR!”
He threw the passenger side door open, yanking the suctioned goo worm off his neck with a yowl and throwing it out like it was a bomb, slamming the door closed, me following suit immediately. When he pulled it, I saw its little round mouth and maybe a set of teeth? Fangs? They were miniscule from where I was.
Neither of us knew what to say, let alone what just happened. We turned to look at each other, making sure we saw the same thing, our jaws letting in flies. Then Wes gave one of his nervous chuckles.
“What the heck?” he laughed between words to try disguising his fear, but anytime he does that it just makes him look crazier. “Haha. Yeah. Let’s go to a hospital.”
Normally, I would say he was being too hasty. We live in Oklahoma, after all – have you seen an alligator gar? But the sporadic throbbing in my wrist and the fact I was pretty sure I just witnessed a live mutation was making me think otherwise. I didn’t necessarily think it was a life-or-death situation, but I would feel a heck of a lot better if I at least had someone tell me I wasn’t gonna die from that thing.
“Um, sure,” I answered, once again feeling like I was speaking outside of my own body. “Where’s the nearest one?”
“It’ll be faster if you cut through those back roads that go near the old football field.” He reached up to feel the red bump on his neck, muttering to himself. “What the heck…”
Um… yeah. So, I may or may not have blacked out a little bit right here. I remember leaving the alley, speeding through yellow lights to turn at the backroads with no enforced speed limits – strictly enforced, I should say. I remember old Bessie kicking up dust from the dirt roads, until it made me sick to my stomach to hit all the potholes, already woozy. I remember pulling over harshly and running out to puke my guts out on the road in the middle of the Boonies. It was a few feet past the rusted and beaten-in mailbox at the end of someone’s driveway – the driveway in question connecting to someone’s humble log shack that was shaped like a squashed loaf of bread. I remember the cacophony of wind chimes ringing in my ears from the front porch, screaming against the wind.
But this… I have a hard time believing it. As I retched and thought I was literally going to die in some old coot’s creepy driveway with pretzel dog and milkshake dried to my chin, something grabbed my ankle. Hard.
Holy crap – Was it a bear trap? Did we have bears here? Am I actually dead? My head snapped down lightning fast to see a glowing green, decomposing hand was the culprit. It stuck up from the gravel, like in a zombie movie, but not… not disrupting it. Like, it could phase through it, choose when it wanted to obey the law of physics. Like a ghost.
I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs to scream, plus I was afraid my stomach would do another cartwheel if I did. So, I stayed hunched over, shaking and cold sweating like crazy.
What the crap was I supposed to do?! Swat at it? Kick it with my free foot? Both? Yeah, both were good. I did both. Thank the Lord it got annoyed enough to let me go. I could’ve sworn I heard a ghostly moaning of “Ooooowwwwwwww, that hurrrrrrrt…”
Wes, in the middle of all this, climbed up to stand in the truck bed, an ice scraper in one hand and a tire chain in another as what I can only amount to as weapons against what we were now seeing – within a fifty foot radius, there were fifteen, maybe twenty of those glowing green hands, just popping up around us in the cabin’s yard and in the muddy ditch across the road, all grasping the air. It was in vain, because we were getting the heck out of there. I sprinted to the driver’s side, jumping around the luminescent limbs like I was dodging land mines and slamming the door shut, throwing it into drive and nearly toppling Wes’s athletic frame over the edge of the bed in the process. My foot pressed so hard on the gas pedal I thought it’d break through the bottom.
Okay – Crap, CRAP, what were we doing again?? Hospital. Right. We’d get there and tell them what we saw… And… Why were we going in the first place again? Wes had finally gained his footing and crouched down to shout into the slider window between the bed and the backseat, gripping onto the glass edges with his fingertips like his life depended on it. Just from the tone of his voice behind me I could perfectly imagine the appalled look on his face.
“I’M – STILL – HERE!”
My ears popped from the pressure of the open window. Napkins from fast food restaurants and gas station receipts whipped furiously around my head as all I could see from the sideview mirror was the dust my tires were spitting up. I ignored Wes as best I could for the sake of focusing on getting OUT of there.
Thankfully those narrow backroads were empty – I’d have more cops on my tail than O.J.’s Bronco if they saw all the stop signs I was blowing and all the turns I was swinging waaaayyyyy too wide on. My internal “Never Eat Sour Weenies” compass is totally dead, so I picked whether to turn left or right about a dozen times solely based on vibes, gradually easing up on the gas each time. Seeing the lights of the highway up ahead made my spirits soar: Free at last, baby! The open road, no more feeling two feet tall against all those scary trees, and I could finally slow down enough at the stop sign before the turn to let Wes inside (who threw a hissy fit by roughly shutting the slider window closed and throwing the tire chain and ice scraper into the backseat). Guy’s teeth were still chattering by the time we’d driven about five miles, which was about five miles of us interrupting each other with overlapping exclamations and disbelief and bamboozlement and just shock.
“Did you see that? Did you SEE that??” I slapped the steering wheel multiple times, not totally sure how else to react to tonight’s events or spend my adrenaline.
“Seriously? Do you think I would’ve used an ice scraper as a weapon if I didn’t see
that?!” he sassed back.
“HANDS. They were HANDS.” I took deep breaths in through my nose and out my mouth. “They were green.”
“Becca, I know,” he snapped at me, his hands gesticulating like a madman. “I was there, I saw it, you don’t have to convince me.”
Neither of us spoke for a good few minutes. I think we finally had the time to process what all had just happened.
Something had been on my mind. “Wes, what if… Are these, like, side effects? Is there any other reason why we’d be seeing those things?”
Then something really weird happened: I started to cry. I cried because I glanced over at Wes and saw him crying. His was more dignified than mine, just a single tear that he tried wiping away quick enough for me to not see. But I realized how scared I was.
“Hey,” my voice shook, my lip wobbled, and my eyebrows did the whole pushyuppy thing they do when I cry. Normally, I just get angry when I cry, because I don’t like how it makes me feel. But I didn’t care this time, not with my best friend just as terrified and uncertain as I was. “Wes. We’re gonna fix this, okay? It’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t sure which of us needed to hear that more. I sniffled and drove, sniffled and drove, sniffled and drove for I don’t know how many more miles until we were coming up on the edge of town, houses built far and wide between each other. Vulgar political flags and out-of-commission toilets littered their yards, but no one appeared to be awake at this hour. On our right we were now approaching the abandoned Frickton University football field from the 1950s. Not to worry – the town built a new one closer to the actual school years ago, so this one just sits and gets used sparsely for peewee practice. Passing by, you can only really see the layers of colorful (in every sense of the word) graffiti sprayed on the back of the cement bleachers, the weeds growing over the brown turf on the field, the concession stands and locker rooms littered with busted glass.
I was so sick of music. I just wanted quiet. Maybe that’s why we didn’t talk any further about what our plan was. In the silence, we both decided to study the field in the process of passing it. The drizzle had finally stopped, so I did not waste the chance to shut off the windshield wipers. The silence itself felt alive; I became conscious of my slowed heartbeat and of Wes’s breathing.
But not of the unidentified object flying through my front glass, apparently.
Wes and I gasped in reaction, my nerves totally shot. There was a flash of electric light that disappeared just as quickly with no damage to the glass, whooshing past our heads. I lost control of the wheel, narrowly managing to miss meeting the honking car in the opposite lane head-on by whipping into the gravel parking lot outside the field. My knuckles were sheet white, nails dug down practically to my cuticles into the steering wheel. We sat there for a good minute, too stunned to speak. Then, it was Wes’s turn to dizzily see himself out of my vehicle and puke his guts out a few feet away.
It was official: I was burning this piece of tin as soon as I got home.
Gosh, I was walking like a newborn when I nearly tripped out of the driver’s side to inspect the damage, but there was nothing. I met Wes around the other side once he was decent enough, but the sound of a young man’s voice up ahead almost made me pee my pants.
“Are y’all okay?”
It was a cop – stocky, maybe in his early thirties, sporting a crewcut and a thick mustache, chewing gum vigorously. He stepped out of the patrol car that was hidden in the bushes behind the concession stand, not quite confident in his steps. He trained a flashlight on us, his free hand pointing at something that had stopped rolling near his foot. He was totally unphased by the fact that it was a football and that it was glowing green.
“Y’all looking for something?”
Wes blinked furiously, holding a hand up to block the harsh light. “Yeah, we’re fine. I… Can you see that?”
The cop shifted his eyes between the two of us, as if he was testing the waters before he could answer. He was a fidgety tank of a fella.
“Depends… What do you see?”
“Uh, right now, nothing would surprise me, but it looks like a football.”
He narrowed his eyes at Wes. Why did I get the feeling I was in the middle of an old spaghetti western? “A football? Like, just your normal, everyday football?”
“If ‘everyday’ means it looks like a glowstick,” Wes answered, not daring to move an inch, “then yeah.”
The cop exhaled in relief, his prominent shoulders relaxing. He seemed much friendlier, too. “Boy, that’s a relief. The name is Officer Pelton. Well, rookie officer. When were you bit?”
Wes and I glanced at each other, stunned. I finally managed to croak out a tangible sentence, shaking my head in confusion. “How did you know?”
Pelton strode toward us, clicking off the flashlight and returning it to his belt, rolling up the black cotton sleeve of his left arm. When we gathered close enough to smell his overbearing cologne, that’s when the moonlight illuminated the irritated bump on the inside of his upper arm, teeming with pus around the four puncture marks.
“This was from four nights ago. I started seeing things I had never seen before.”
I was seriously weirded out, but morbidly curious all at once. “Like what?”
He turned aside and pointed to the field itself, where there were definitely more than just hands: try an entire football team. Thirty or so guys Wes’s and I’s age, all in full gear for practice, roughhousing and laughing with each other – but they were glowing green. Like, once again, ghosts. Some shrimpy-looking kid was even carrying around a luminescent boombox, playing Hall and Oates. We were far back enough that I don’t think they noticed us. The jersey numbers were clear, but their features were hazy.
“You don’t know your town history, do you?” Pelton asked at the confusion and amazement on my face. “1987. ‘Frickton U’s gonna go big this year, they’re gonna go all the way,’ is what they all said – except they don’t.” His hands demonstrated an explosion, accompanied by his own sound effects. “Bus accident. Tragic. But there they are, right in front of us… Ladies and gents, welcome to 1987.”
“I don’t understand,” Wes shook his head in disbelief.
“We see things – ghosts, monsters, dead people. How come you think there’s been no reports of dead guys running around with jockstraps on their heads? It didn’t start until that danged worm.”
“Monsters?” I squeaked, breaking into a cold sweat.
“Oops… I guess that part hasn’t happened yet. But now I know there’s more of us still alive!”
“Still alive?” That was me again. I was starting to feel lightheaded.
I thought Pelton would chew a hole in his jaw with how fast that piece of gum was going. “We don’t know how many have been bitten by these things. Sometimes people go missing. Sometimes they’re found dead by the road or in a field, all pointed in the same direction. Not enough clues to know what the heck’s goin’ on around here.” He put his hands on his hips matter-of-factly, looking around for any eavesdroppers before lowering his voice. “Now, I’m not supposed to be saying all this, but to heck with it. Looked like those folks lost control of their limbs. Totally paralyzed their brains, too – toxins found in the autopsy reports. Had nasty little ridges growing above the skin on their hands too, between the fingers, like that thing… I’m scared, y’all.”
He put his head in his hands, shaking from crying. Not to be trash human beings, but we kind of just stood there for a minute, shuffling our feet, until he composed himself.
“Hold on,” Wes cut in with his level-headedness that I so envy sometimes. “So, you think this thing is like a parasite? Like, with host bodies and everything?”
Pelton nodded, wiping his nose on his paisley handkerchief. The crack of helmets colliding with each other and loud laughter echoed from the field. “That’s the unofficial report. The department is trying to keep it quiet until we know more, which is jack squat… I just wish we could find these things!”
“We could help!”
The three of us yelped in shock, jumping two feet in the air at the sudden fourth member of our conversation: a pipsqueak of a ghost holding a tray of Gatorade bottles, with a mousy face and haircut that made him look like a Duran Duran roadie. His features were discernible, just… of a toxic waste complexion. Pelton clutched a hand over his heart, recuperating from the startlement; he could’ve keeled over right then and there. Not that I didn’t care to check on him, but can you really blame me for having other priorities?
“There’s a lot of us around town, you know, more than just the team. Like… maybe more dead people than average. I’ve always said Duffel is cursed, but did anyone listen to me? Noooo. But we can – don’t do that, please,” he said, politely swatting away the finger that I’d just poked and probed through his translucent stomach with the same curiosity as a kid dissecting a frog. “We could be your eyes and ears; float around town, get the scoop, talk to the other ghosts, find the antidote – just like Miami Vice! I mean, it’s not like you have much else going on when you’re dead. Have you guys met the others yet around town? You really need to! Some of us are friendlier than others. Some of them may or may not try to do ghost things – you know, haunt you, maim you, kill you. Mostly just practical jokes. Wow… you guys can really see us! This is so exciting!” he finished cheerfully.
Boy, it’d be nice if we shared his enthusiasm (or his endless supply of words). I shivered against the wind, digging my hands in my pockets and sharing a knowing look with Wes. I could read the gallant acceptance on his face (mangled with nausea) and immediately knew what we were getting ourselves into. I could hear him perfectly in my head, saying “Okay, Becca. Time to put all those hours of Supernatural to use. What would the Winchesters do?”
Sigh…It was going to be a long night. And probably a long tomorrow. Or however many tomorrows it would take to track down these suckers. If we could find them and the missing people. If we lived long enough to find the cure. If we didn’t become mindless meat puppets for some wormy, alien overlord. There was nothing, no one, not even Bruce Timm that could have prepared me and Wes for our hero origin stories… I guess it was time to see just how virtuous I could be.
TO BE CONTINUED…
