Hellrider

by JG Faherty

  It also got Eddie to wondering. Was that the same effect he’d had on Jethro and Butch? Only one way to find out. He told Diablo to take him to the hospital. Maybe he could learn something from looking in on his old club brother.

  As luck would have it, Jethro was awake and talking to another Hell Rider, Harley Atkins, when Eddie arrived. After passing through the glass, Eddie took a seat on the window ledge to listen to their conversation.

  “—probably never remember, least that’s what the doctors is sayin’.” Jethro’s face was still a swollen mess, and the bandages wrapping his head made him look like someone had abandoned a mummy before finishing the job. When he spoke, several gaps showed where teeth had been knocked out. Together with his split, puffy lips, his new dental situation made his words sound like someone trying to talk through a mouthful of food.

  “That sucks, dude,” Harley said. With his long beard and mustache, he looked like one of the characters from Duck Dynasty or Moonshiners. “’Cause everybody wants to know what the fuck you were thinkin’, goin’ after Hank like that.”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know!” It came out ‘Uh doan fthuckin’ go,’ but Harley understood it all the same.

  “He’s still mighty pissed. We ain’t even supposed to be visitin’ you until Hank decides if you can stay in the club. I’m only here ’cause Hank sent me to ask you some questions.”

  Jethro moaned and shook his head. “He’s gotta believe me. I don’t know why I freaked out. Maybe there was somethin’ in the weed.”

  “Somethin’ that didn’t bother none of us?” Half-hidden by the curls of straw-blond hair falling over his forehead, Harley’s raised eyebrows indicated his disbelief.

  “Yeah? What about las’ night?”

  Harley scowled. “How’d you hear about that?”

  “Bad news travel fasht, man. Heard a couple nurses talking ’bout it. Was Butch smokin’?”

  “Not with me.” The uncertainty in Harley’s voice made Eddie want to laugh out loud. He held it in, afraid he might set the lights flickering. Stupid bastards, thinking somebody messed with their weed. Wait ’til they found out the truth.

  “Don’t mean he wasn’t.” Jethro lay back and closed his eyes. Harley just sat there, a look of confused concentration on his bearded face.

  Reminds me of when the teachers used to call on the kid in the back of the class, the one who was always eating paste or staring at the big ol’ booger he’d just dug out of his nose. If he says ‘Duh’ right now I won’t be able to control myself.

  Harley stayed silent, though. After a couple of minutes of intense but ultimately fruitless thinking, he stood up. “Guess I’ll be headin’ out. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Depends on what Hanks says.”

  “Wait.” Jethro’s eyes remained closed, and his final words were so faint Eddie barely heard them. “You listen good. Bad shit goin’ on around here. Somethin’ not right.”

  Harley chewed his lower lip before replying. “Yeah. Things are fucked up for sure.” He waited for Jethro to say more, until the sound of heavy breathing told him there was no point in sticking around.

  After Harley left, Eddie got bored watching Jethro sleep and floated outside the window while he considered his next moves. More than ever, he wanted every last Hell Rider dead. It had to be soon, too, because he had no way of telling how long he’d be around to do the job. It wasn’t like being a ghost came with an owner’s manual.

  “But I think I got enough time to scare the shit out of a few of them first,” he said to Diablo, who growled in response.

  “Besides, if it’s true I take a little energy each time I’m inside someone, then I should keep getting stronger, right?”

  I’m like a vampire, he thought, and the idea of it made him feel damn good. Better than he had in a long time, even before he died. Vampires were powerful motherfuckers. You didn’t mess with vampires.

  Not if you wanted to live.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carson returned to the living room to find it empty. For a heart-dropping, gut-wrenching moment he thought Kellie’d decided not to wait for him after all. Then he heard noises coming from his bedroom. Looking in, he found Kellie sitting at his desk, watching a YouTube video on the computer.

  The intensity of his relief surprised him, and scared him a little, too. He’d had a crush on Kellie for a long time, a crush he’d had no problem admitting to himself, although no one else knew. Not that anyone would have been surprised; half the boys in their junior class had a crush on her. But now…now it seemed like his feelings had grown stronger, that spending time with her had been the equivalent of a springtime rain, allowing the seed of something to grow. Something more than just a crush.

  Something like love.

  But is it? Or is it just a reaction to her attention, something no girl had ever given him before, combined with the stress of everything going on?

  Carson’s heart wanted it to be the former, but his head knew it could be the latter. Love, lust, infatuation, gratitude, loneliness, acceptance, rejection – the emotional soup of adolescence was a dangerous and confusing mix, and usually he was glad that he tended more toward calm logic than wearing his emotions on his sleeve the way Eddie always had.

  But he didn’t want to live life like a robot, either.

  “Just trust your instincts and go with the flow, dude. Don’t overthink things.” The words came to him as he sat down on the bed. It was something Eddie’d told him the previous year, when he’d been worried about a big test. Although his older brother had never been one for dispensing – or following – good advice, that particular bit of wisdom had made sense.

  And it still does. You trust Kellie. She’s stuck with you through all the craziness of the past couple of days. Either she’ll stick with you through this, too, or she won’t. But no matter what, you’ll know where you stand with her.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he said, as she turned off the video.

  “Sure. So what’s so important? You looked really freaked out before.”

  “Yeah.” Carson took a moment to gather his thoughts. How did you tell someone something so crazy you didn’t even believe it yourself? Especially someone you’d only known a few days. It was hard to trust a close friend with your deepest secrets, let alone a stranger.

  Kellie stared at him, waiting. Neither bored or impatient. Just…there for him.

  Just tell her, already!

  “Okay, but hear me out before you say anything. And don’t laugh. It’s gonna sound kinda wacked out. I mean, really out there.”

  “Go ahead. I won’t laugh, I promise.”

  Carson looked down at his hands, which were twisting the material of his t-shirt. “Remember when my mom said I ate peanut butter and toast for breakfast?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, the thing is, I hate peanut butter. I mean, I really freakin’ hate it. Always have. My mom probably forgot, ’cause she isn’t…she….”

  “Has other things to worry about,” Kellie said, rescuing him from both bad thoughts and getting off topic.

  “Yeah. And, like, I don’t remember anything from this morning that she was talking about, but I must have done those things, must have made breakfast and then cleaned up. Except…when I went into the kitchen to make lunch, I noticed that the juice carton was open in the fridge, not folded closed. And there was a knife in the dishwasher that still had peanut butter on it.”

  Kellie shrugged her shoulders. “So? I don’t get what’s the big deal.”

  Carson took a deep breath. Here it goes. “Eddie is the one who used to love peanut butter and toast for breakfast. It always grossed me out when he ate it. And he’d always lick the knife and then put it in the dishwasher, but there’d be some leftover peanut butter on it that would get all hard, and me or Mom would always be telling him to clean it in the sink first. And he’d always s
tick the juice or the milk in the fridge and leave the top open, so he could just grab it and drink if he wanted to.”

  “I still don’t….” Kellie stopped, frowned. “Wait a minute. Are you trying to say your brother…?”

  “Is haunting me. Yeah. I know it sounds stupid. Crazy, right? But think about it. I’ve been hearing his motorcycle at night, and sometimes even in the day. And now I had this blackout where I did things only he would do.”

  “Carson, there’s a perfectly good explanation for what’s happened to you.”

  “Wait, I’m not finished. There’s more. What about all the strange things happening in town lately? They’ve all involved people in Eddie’s old gang, the same gang that….” He paused, couldn’t say the words.

  “Killed him. And that’s probably why you’re acting like this.” Kellie scooted her chair over to him, took his hands in hers. “Don’t you see? Those assholes killed your brother. You’d have to be made of stone not to be upset over it. And on top of that, now you’re the only one looking after your mom. You’re trying to be strong for her, but subconsciously you’re all messed up. And then you saw someone get murdered. That’s why you fainted or blacked out or whatever. It’s the stress. It could happen to anyone. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out when that gun went off.”

  “What about doing those things my brother used to do?” Now instead of staring at his own hands, Carson was staring at their hands joined together. A much safer thing to do than looking into her eyes. If he did that, he might cry.

  “Your subconscious again. You’re trying to fill Eddie’s shoes so you’re acting like he used to. You want to become him, ’cause he took care of you both and you need him around still.”

  He shook his head. “But—”

  “No buts.” Kellie squeezed his hands harder. “I know what you’re going through. I went through it, too, when my mom died. I told you before. I used to hear her voice down the hall, smell her perfume. Sometimes I’d wake up at night and swear I’d seen her standing by the bed, and then she’d be gone.”

  “So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Carson, look at me.” She tugged at his hands, forcing him to acknowledge her words. He looked up, saw she was staring back at him, her eyes earnest and free of judgment.

  “What?”

  “I’d think you were crazy if you didn’t feel this way.”

  Her eyes stayed locked on his, and he felt her gaze grow stronger. Her head moved closer, just a fraction of an inch, but he noticed it. And although he’d never kissed a girl in his life, he knew he was about to.

  He moved his head forward.

  Their lips met.

  And all his worries melted away in the sweet, gentle softness of her mouth.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After leaving the hospital, Eddie spent the better part of an hour randomly possessing people, strictly for practice. He didn’t want a repeat of his unplanned occupation of Carson to happen, not with family or any of the Hell Riders.

  Of course, he made sure to enjoy every minute of it.

  In Publix, he used a skinny old man to knock over a pyramid of grapefruits into an aisle. While an assistant manager chewed out the confused man, Eddie swooped to the other side of the store and made the meat clerk tell a series of filthy jokes to three old ladies waiting to purchase cold cuts. Then he left the clerk and went across the street to Sal’s Barber Shop, where he forced Sal to shave a giant bald spot on the back of Principal Robinson’s head.

  “That’s for all the detentions you gave me,” Eddie said with a laugh, as Robinson exited the shop, unware of his new look.

  Each time he entered a new body, his ability to control it improved, so that by the time he made Wilbur Dennis, one of Hell Creek’s finest, back his car into a mailbox, he felt sure there’d be no more surprises like the one Butch gave him with Sandy.

  Even better, he discovered that possessing people definitely recharged his supernatural batteries. Even a few minutes was enough to power him up, wash away any trace of fatigue.

  With energy literally crackling around him, he rocketed up from the town’s center in a burst of thunder and headed south, where he found Hank Bowman pulling out of the Hell Riders’ clubhouse parking lot.

  Perfect.

  Entering Hank took no more effort than thinking about it. There was a second or two of disorientation while he got used to the body, shorter and heavier than his own had been, and the feel of Hank’s Harley between his legs. The bike tilted dangerously to one side and then Eddie righted it. Much like Hank himself, the bike was heavy and squat, not streamlined like Diablo. But Eddie’d ridden plenty of different bikes in his pre-ghost days and it only took a few labored beats of Hank’s heart to get comfortable.

  Jesus, I never realized how out of shape he is. Even if I wasn’t gonna kill him, the drugs and booze will do the job in a couple of years. That’s if he doesn’t crash his fat ass on the highway before then.

  The bike wobbled and Eddie nearly crossed into the other lane trying to correct it, his reflexes – or rather, Hank’s – a hair slow. Hank had definitely been partying hard. The tingling buzz of primo coke counter-balanced the mellow fog of a good joint. The bittersweet-smoky taste of Jack Daniels still coated his tongue and warmed his stomach.

  I could just drive this bike into a tree, or off a bridge, and the police would chalk it up to a drunken accident.

  It would be so simple.

  Eddie frowned and shook his head.

  Screw simple. When Hank’s time comes, he’s gonna make fucking headlines. Right now, I want him to suffer, like he made me suffer. And I know just where to start.

  Humming Molly Hatchet’s ‘Flirtin’ With Disaster’ and cursing the lack of a radio on Hank’s bike, Eddie headed toward Hell Creek.

  Time to throw some real misery in Hank’s life.

  And have some fun at the same time.

  * * *

  As he’d expected, Eddie found Kristy Flood behind the bar at Sheehan’s, an aging pub on the south end of town. When he entered, the afternoon crowd – three old men and a girl with too many tattoos who he vaguely remembered from some of the club’s parties – turned and looked at him, and then at Kristy, whose eyes immediately narrowed when she saw Hank’s face.

  A part-time stripper and full-time bartender with a fondness for nose-candy, she’d been Hank’s main girl before he’d hooked up with Sandy, and word around town was she’d been royally pissed when he dumped her.

  Which made her the perfect weapon to use against him.

  He’d always thought she was hot, as in, a hot mess. Not the kind of girl you’d bring home to meet the family, but definitely too good for Hank. Waist-length black hair, perfect rack, and ice-blue eyes that could freeze you from across a room. And a take-no-shit attitude. Back when he was alive, he’d have never considered going with her. Not only was she several years older than him, but she was Hank’s, and therefore off limits to everyone else.

  Things are different now, though. I could have her if I wanted.

  Only he had something else in mind.

  “You got some nerve showing up here” she said, the smell of cheap weed wafting around her. Her friend with the jailhouse tats snorted laughter. The old men wisely said nothing.

  Eddie went to the end of the bar and motioned for her to join him. Despite his intentions, the sight of her in her tight black Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt was getting him horny and angry at the same time. The booze and drugs didn’t help, dulling his senses and getting his thoughts and memories all mixed up in his head. Images of Hank and Sandy kept pushing their way in. Had she ever cheated on him? Back when he was alive, he’d have said no. But after seeing how fast she got into it with Butch, now he wasn’t so sure. Knowing her, it would have been fast and dirty. She liked it like that. A BJ in the bathroom, a quick fuck behind a bar or at the clubhouse.
>
  How many times did I end up with sloppy seconds without even knowing it?

  The mere thought of it fueled his anger to new heights and he forced it back, afraid he might accidentally zap Kristy or burn down the bar. The rage fought him like a wild animal, stronger than ever before. Darker. Is it me getting more powerful, or is it something inside Hank making me feel this way? There’d always been a fury inside him, a twisting, living snake waiting to strike. But never like this. Now the cage was open, the beast free. And Eddie wasn’t sure if he could control it.

  Or if he even wanted to.

  I could send the whole damn town to hell. And maybe I should. What’d anyone in this shit hole ever do for me?

  No. Stick to the plan. This is about Hank.

  Taking a deep breath, he forced a smile to Hank’s face.

  “I came to apologize. I was a fool, baby. I didn’t know how good I had it with you.”

  “Fuck you. Take your sorries and shove ’em up your ass.”

  “Yeah!” shouted tattoo girl, and pumped her fist. Eddie shot her a look and she backed away, glaring at him, but didn’t leave.

  “I mean it. And to prove how much I love you, I got you something. Something special.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the black box containing the diamond ring he’d purchased earlier, maxing out Hank’s credit card in the process. Flipping it open to expose the ring, he went down onto one knee.

  “Kristy Flood, will you marry me?”

  “What?” Kristy’s eyes grew wide. “Are you serious?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Eddie said, fighting back his laughter. His voice shook from the effort, and he hoped it added conviction to his words. “I’ve always loved you. I want you to be my old lady forever. Nobody rides the back of my bike except you.”