Stek’s answer bothered me for numerous reasons. He was probably right; probably most of what I felt for Molly was just the effects of fairy dust. But I wasn’t ready to believe that yet.
I left it alone for the time being. I certainly didn’t believe I would convince Stek of anything. He seemed pretty single-minded.
“Where is she now?” I asked. I was reasonably sure I knew the answer to that question, but the timeline had already altered at least once so far. I wouldn’t be surprised if it changed again.
“Let’s just say I took care of her.” Stek grinned.
He lit one of his bent cigarettes. “How so?” I asked.
“With this.” He retrieved a handgun from beneath a pillow beside him.
“Jesus Christ, Stek!” I shouted. “You killed her?”
Stek gave me a look of terrific displeasure. “As if, man!” he said. “No, I didn’t kill her. I don’t even know how that would be done. But I did probably put her in something of a bind for a little while.” The potion sputtered in the setup as all of the contents from one end of the distillation train finally spat out into the flask at the other end. “Straight answer, please?” I pleaded.
Stek retracted the Bunsen burner wick and lifted the flask, shaking it gently and gazing at it in the dim light. “The bullets in this gun were forged in the fires of Mount Doom,” he began.
My eyes must have been goggling. Stek started cracking up.
“Just kidding, dude!” he said. “I merely debilitated her. I think. I’ve never used these bullets before on anything. Dead shot, though, man—six rounds right in the chest. She basically turned into a ball of fire and rocketed off.” Stek laughed. “Through the roof, mind you. Which didn’t help the arson going on downstairs!”
“Won’t the cops be looking for you?” I pointed out.
“Absolutely,” he said. “And they won’t find me. Or you, for that matter. Because we’re heading back to wake up ol’ Laban and finish this mess. But first we’re going to locate your friends. Like I promised I would.” He turned his head toward the inner stairs. “Pete!” he shouted. “Get your ass down here! And bring me a Coke while you’re at it!”
The “stuff” was called vinum sabbati, which did not translate to “Witch’s Wine,” but Stek said that he preferred that phrase to “Wine of the Sabbath.” Molly had “generated” this particular batch during the last Super Blood Blue Wolf Moon when three of the seven constellations of magical stars utterly invisible to mundane astronomers had entered the appropriate constellations in “Fairy Space.”
Pete had returned with three overstuffed sandwiches and three Cherry Cokes, which we painstakingly devoured as Stek relayed this nonsense to me.
Despite my circumstances, I told Stek the truth. “I don’t believe a fucking word of this,” I said. Stek shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “At any rate, we’ve got to get this stuff to the Other Side
ASAP.” He chugged the rest of his Coke.
“Wait a second!” I said. “How does this help us locate Steve and Julie? I thought that’s what we’re supposed to do next.”
“Hey, chill, man,” Stek said. “We’ve got it under control. The most important part is done. Had to get some food in before Phase Two.”
“What’s Phase Two?” I asked, irritated. “Pete, whenever you’re ready,” Stek said.
Pete smiled. “Rock ’n’ roll, dude.” He extracted the Altoids tin from his bathrobe pocket.
“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re going to trance out on those? That’s a terrible idea!” Visions of monster hunters carrying a body bag out of Amanda Whitfield’s house paraded through my mind. “Don’t you realize—”
“I think I got a handle on it, man,” Pete said, nodding and flipping open the tin. He gazed carefully at the candy Valentine’s Day hearts inside. “Best bet for finding your friends. Stek knows what he’s doing.”
Stek nodded enthusiastically. “We used it to find Obi-Wan when he ran off two months ago,” he said.
“Who the fuck is Obi-Wan?” I asked. Stek and Pete both looked at me, eyebrows raised, then burst into laughter after a beat.
“My mom’s dachshund,” Stek said. “Little fucker made it halfway across the county! Can you believe it?”
Pete sorted through the candies with one finger. “Let’s see. ‘2 Hot 2 Handle.’ I feel good about that one!”
Stek nodded at him. “Let’s try and get our asses in gear, all right?” he said. “I’d like to make it to Max Plunkett’s before sunrise. This is probably gonna suck.”
I barely had a chance to respond to Stek’s pronouncement of imminent death—or at least bullet wounds—before Pete was dissolving the candy heart under his tongue.
“Okay, Pete?” Stek inquired. Pete closed his eyes, leaning back restfully in his bean bag chair. “Now, we want to know: where are Steve and Julie?” Pete’s breathing had slowed substantially. I noticed a degree of perspiration on his forehead.
His head slumped forward.
“He’s going to be like this for a while,” Stek said. “This happens every time. Want to watch TV?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “not particularly.”
After thirty minutes of Stek flipping through comic books at random, I almost gave in and turned the TV on. At that moment, Pete’s head lifted up slowly. He began to half whisper and half mumble. Stek dropped the copy of Amazing Spider-Man that he was reading and glanced at me. “Here we go,” he said. We both sat there, looking at Pete as if he was the answer to the deepest secrets of the universe—which, in a sense, he kind of was.
Finally, I heard something more coherent. Pete spoke in a harsh whisper.
“It’s Pete! Pete Jarry! Don’t shoot! I can control it! ”
Then silence. I recognized what he was saying instantly.
“Holy shit!” I said. “I think he’s at Amanda Whitfield’s party!”
“Pete?” Stek looked concerned. “Pete? Where are you?” He reached out and touched Pete gently on the shoulder. “Petey? Shit.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I think he’s trying to regain control of it,” Stek said. “The last time we tried this, the same thing happened. It’s like whatever he gets inside of doesn’t notice at first, and then when it does, it kicks him out. We’ll just have to wait it out. Cigarette?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure he’s at Amanda’s,” I said. “And if he is, then I know what just happened. But that’s not the answer to the question we need.” I realized what a bind we were in. Steve and Julie were at the party—sure. But I also knew exactly what happened after that...all the way up to this very moment.
I suddenly saw how clever Laban’s “failsafe” mechanism was. If you chose the wrong portal, you had to go through everything again in order to get back to the point where you even had a chance to choose the right one. And who knew whether the location of the right portal changed in the meantime?
I began to feel drained. This was clearly not the solution to the puzzle. We both sat there, and the adrenaline from Pete’s sudden awakening still powered Stek’s attention. Pete did indeed appear to be struggling with something internally, twitching and grimacing occasionally, like he was having a bad dream.
Suddenly, he spoke again.
“Dudes! Dudes? Hey! Oh, man, this sucks.”
I glanced over at Stek, who continued to gaze intently at Pete. “There’s nothing we can do,” I said.
“What?” Stek said. “Pete: where are you?”
“Trunk of a car? I guess. Dark in here.”
I had an idea. “Can you communicate with them, Pete?” I said.
“Yo! Out there! Hey, it’s Pete. Is anybody out there?”
“Pete! Don’t let them open it!” I shouted at him.
“Go for it, man,” Pete mumbled. “Wait—what was that?”
>
Pete raised his head and seemed to be trying to open his eyes. I slumped. “Those guys are dead,” I said to Stek. “Son of a bitch.”
Stek was trying to shake Pete awake. “Is that a good idea?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” Stek said. “It looks like he’s having some kind of fit.”
Pete collapsed back into the bean bag chair.
Seconds later, he was snoring.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, at least I know where Pete was.”
“Where, again?” Stek asked.
“A little ways from the Lots-a-Burger downtown,” I answered. “But those monster hunter guys are toast—”
“Monster hunters?” he said. “You mean Booker and the gang? I sincerely doubt that. Grab your shit, man.” He took the flask of Witch’s Wine and stoppered it carefully with black plastic. “Let’s go get a burger!”
“What about him?” I asked, wondering how in the world Stek would manage one more bite of food on top of the trencher he had just consumed.
“He’ll be fine,” Stek said as he wrapped the flask in newspaper and shoved it into a backpack. “He’s got plenty of stuff here to take care of the hangover he’ll have when he wakes up.”
We made it over to the Lots-a-Burger in Stek’s brown Camaro. The stench of the car’s ashtray, overflowing with cigarette butts, gradually intermingled with that of fries and burgers piped into the air by the enterprising owner of Golem Creek’s finest fast food establishment.
I continued to express my doubts about “Booker and the gang” to Stek during our drive as clearly as I could, all the while realizing that we had just missed me3 and Julie at this very establishment. By this point, the two Julies, Steve, and me2 had ended up back at the Dreamkeeper’s Emporium after returning to the Brake Street house.
And if the deepest level of chaotic shit had been reached, then me1, Julie, and Steve were now at Pete’s for the “first” time this evening, having the finest dinner imaginable.
I tried to stick to my immediate context of problems without indulging too many whims about the novelty of it. I felt reasonably certain that of all people, Pete could handle it.
“I think those guys were killed by the monster that Pete was trying to control,” I told him.
Stek snorted and fiddled with the radio dial. Guns N’ Roses emerged from the static with “Mr. Brownstone.” “Maybe one of them,” he said. “But all of them? Those guys know what they’re doing. They’ve dealt with worse.”
Unsurprisingly, as we pulled into the Lots-aBurger, I heard Steve well before I saw him.
“...that guy doesn’t even know how to roll a car, much less a joint!” he said to laughter. “I mean, come on! Perfectly good, primo shit, right out the fucking window!”
We pulled up to a spot in the crowded parking lot two cars away. I saw now that Steve sat on the hood of the monster-hunters’ Pontiac 6000 alongside the Lots-a-Burger, surrounded by crushed bags of fast food and plastic soda cups. Booker and Barton leaned against the wall under a fluorescent light, chuckling and smoking. Steve took a bite of a gigantic hot dog without pausing in his speech.
“You know what I mean? So you’ve got this chick, who ain’t gonna be high any time soon, and this guy who’s just failed his test in basic Weed Mechanics, and what does she do?”
“What does she do?” Booker asked.
Steve smiled and finished his hot dog. “She reaches into his pants,” he said between chews, “and pulls out his wallet and takes out two twenties. ‘That oughta cover it,’ she says, and she gets out of the car and walks the fuck home.”
Booker and Barton were exploding with laughter as Stek and I approached.
“Stek!” Booker leaped at Stek and gave him a bear hug.
Steve’s eyes bulged when he saw me. Smiling broadly, he dropped the tin foil wrapping of his hot dog on the ground. “Holy shit, man!” he exclaimed, hopping off the car. “Chaz the Great and Terrible! We were on our way to find you dude! Where the fuck you been?” He took a cue from Booker and hugged me. I returned the gesture weakly.
“What are you doing with these guys?” I whispered. “They’re dead, Steve!”
We broke apart. Steve gave me a brief look of bewilderment. I feigned a smile. “You could have waited for us, you know,” I said.
“I know, I know,” he produced a cigarette and lit it, his eyes still indicating that he was trying to figure out what I had meant by my comment. “I’m sorry. Loose cannon. Hey, where’s Jules? We got work to do, man!”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
Steve shoved his Bic lighter back in his pocket. “No,” he said slowly. “Please don’t tell me I’m supposed to.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Steve,” I said, shaking my head. “Shit.”
Stek and the two monster hunters were conversing animatedly beside us. I noticed the two remaining hunters appear from around the front of the building holding more bags of food. None of them seemed dead. None of them seemed to have any scars or wounds. They all seemed to be throatful rather than throatless.
“So, Charley,” Booker said, stepping toward me. “Thought you could outrun the bad guys, huh?”
“Don’t you mean bad guy?” I said.
“You totally underestimate us,” he said as Fitz and Staley approached. “You honestly thought that us, the real Monster Squad, would fall to a single demonic entity?”
Fitz and Staley laughed. Barton and Stek continued to talk a few paces away. I noticed that their discussion had fallen into hushed tones, but I overheard Barton reassuring Stek that “she” couldn’t possibly show up “there.” Whatever that meant.
“Well,” I responded, “I did see you guys fall to a ‘single demonic entity.’ I saw you in particular get your fucking throat ripped out.”
Booker’s eyes bulged. He reached up with both hands and grabbed his neck, making a choking sound. Then he stopped, relaxed, and pointed directly at me. “You got a thing or two to learn about teamwork, mon friar.”
Thankfully, Steve decided to intercede on my behalf. “And you got a thing or two to learn about French, dude. Let’s drop the macho bullshit and get on with stuff.”
Booker laughed and stepped back over to Barton and Stek. Fitz and Staley had gotten back in the car to eat. Screeching guitar music began to emanate from within; it sounded like old-school Megadeth.
I nodded my head in the direction of the hunters and spread my hands.
Steve took the cue. “After I jumped through that portal, I got kicked out down a ways from here,” Steve said. He took another drag off of his cigarette. “I tried to hitch a ride back, but it was the middle of the fucking night. I saw these guys on the shoulder of the road, and I was like, ‘Hey, aren’t you guys those monster hunters?’ And we all decided to get some dinner.”
“You came through the portal between two stone gateposts?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “How did you know?” “Long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you sometime.
Meanwhile, I think Stek’s got a plan.”
“Is it a good one?” Steve asked.
“Probably not,” I said. “Ever been to Tulsa?”
“Just try and dance around them!”
This from Booker, who had apparently been shot at numerous times.
I ran for my life, hoping that swift enough movement in near-darkness (and the presence of additional targets) might just save my life. I could see Max Plunkett’s shed off in the distance.
More gunshots rang out, this time accompanied by wild redneck hollering. This latter sound terrified me even more than death by bullet—what would that crazed maniac do to those merely crippled by a gunshot wound?
Steve had already made it to the shed. He waved at me from the darkened doorway.
I thought I heard two of the other hunters possibly firing back at Max Plunke
tt as I dove into the darkness of the shed. Stek followed, then Booker. Miraculously, amidst more hooting and shots exchanged, the remaining three hunters made it into the shed.
All the firing and noise from outside stopped. “He won’t fire at his shed,” Stek said. “Some-
thing about those rednecks and their property.”
I was still trying to catch my breath in the stuffy, gasoline-scented confines as three of the hunters made their way to the large door leading to the cellar in back. Fitz was barring the front door.
“At least now we know,” Steve said, still breathing heavily, “that Chris Baxter was not full of shit.” I nodded. Steve helped me up. We followed the hunters, who had unlatched the door and headed down.
The cellar below was just as empty and clean as in the video we had seen of it. And there, shimmering darkly in the middle of the room, stood the portal.
“You guys do this regularly?” Steve asked. Staley nodded. “Family tradition, now,” he said, chuckling. Fitz came down the steps after us. The other hunters were checking their gear. Steve and I had both managed to hang onto our backpacks; I hoped that the key would still prove to be of some use in Tulsa.
Stek turned to the hunters. “Ready when you are,” he said. He looked over at me and Steve. We nodded.
One by one, beginning with Fitz, the hunters stepped through the portal, followed by Stek.
“After you,” Steve said, gesturing toward the darkness. “I mean, since I fucked up the last time. Your turn.”
More gunshots, almost immediately. Steve and I both collapsed to the floor.
“Check him.” That was Booker’s voice. I peered up in terror as Staley turned on a massive flashlight.
“Steve?” I whispered.
“You guys can get up,” Booker said. I pushed myself up off the floor. Several flashlight beams illuminated the room from the video. I found myself lying on an intricate design painted in black on the concrete floor. Staley had focused his flashlight on a prostrate body. Stek.
Fear Club- A Confession Page 17