by Nina Post
“Eric. Wake up. Eric. Eric, wake up.”
“No, I’m back in college,” Eric mumbled, still half asleep.
“You’re not back in college,” Rex said. “You’re living in an old bus. You work as a shot boy amidst douchebags and taxidermy, but not, alas, taxidermied douchebags.”
“Gross …” Eric pulled the blanket over his head. “Go ‘way.”
“I need to take you somewhere,” Rex said, shaking Eric’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Eric rolled back and forth to get Rex to stop shaking him. “Go away.” Eric hit at Rex from under the blanket. “I just wanna sleep. I won. Can’t I sleep now?”
“What do you mean, you won?”
Eric rubbed his eyes. “I got the letter. I’m a potential grand prize winner.”
Rex barked a laugh. “As if anyone else spelled PUDDING. Out of all the lids you had, there was just one ‘G’ and three ‘P’s. Potential, my ectoplasm.”
Eric sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. “I mailed the affidavit of eligibility, the liability and publicity release, and the, uh, W-9 form. Now I have to wait.”
Rex shook his head. “Waiting is for suckers. Now c’mon. You’ve enjoyed a luxurious two hours of sleep and now it’s time for cake,” Rex said cheerfully, smacking the blanket.
Eric fought off the blanket and sat up.
“You look like you’ve been sleeping on a bus,” Rex said.
“Very funny.”
Rex gave him directions that Eric half-listened to, then phased out of the bus.
A piss, a clothes change, a hair brushing, a teeth brushing, a shave, and a face washing later, Eric was ready to go an undisclosed location to have some cake. He had almost no money left, so Eric was not opposed to some free cake, especially when he didn’t supply it.
That’s where he was, life-wise.
Eric didn’t have the physical energy to ride his bike, so he winced and took the Princess. He really needed something that was fifty miles to the gallon, not this fuel-sucking beast that got him a bunch of ‘Hey, Princess’ and ‘Hey, Princess Patsy’ and ‘How you doin’, Princess?’
Rex’s directions led him to The Gutbucket, a small bar sandwiched between a Wholesale Meats shop and a storefront called Welding Stuff. Across the street was a church that was having a Ham & Turkey party on the coming Sunday.
“I’m not eating cake at The Gutbucket.” Eric stopped at the door. “Nor am I eating anything here with meat.”
“Noted.”
Eric got the door. “Please, disincarnate entities first.”
Entering The Gutbucket made Eric feel like Jonah entering the inside of a fried onion, ninety-cent-cheeseburger, beer-loving whale.
“It’s closed, Rex.”
The lights flipped on, illuminating a room full of spirits from the sponsor meetings and some he had never seen, plus a few human sponsors. They greeted him and waved. The ghost of Christmas past and He Who Cleans House held up a banner that read Happy Birthday Eric. The banner was very crooked.
“My birthday isn’t until March third,” Eric said in a low voice.
“I thought you needed this now,” Rex said, also in a hushed voice, steering him to a big cake on a table. It read Happy 32 Eric.
“Thanks everyone,” Eric said. “This is a surprise. And more than I expected.” He cut slices for anyone who wanted one before taking two servings for himself. It was Black Forest, his favorite. After he had almost finished both slices, He Who Cleans House approached Eric with a microphone. “You two, on stage.”
The sprite pushed him to the small stage to the far right, then made some kind of semaphore. The lights dimmed around Eric and Rex. Another sprite rolled a flat screen in front of them and the music started. They performed a duet, Las Vegas Turnaround (The Stewardess Song).
“It’s a good thing we’ve been practicing this one,” Rex said to Eric.
“Nice to see something work out,” Eric said.
A cyclone raged inside the Princess. Clothes flew and landed on tables and the back of seats. In the center, Eric whirled, frantic, spinning from bin to bin in his panicked search for a tee-shirt that Taffy had made him when she was seven.
“You look like The Abominable Dr. Phibes.” Rex faced the back of the bus from between the two front seats.
“Don’t you have someone to possess?” Eric asked without turning.
“Where’s the gratitude for translating those glyphs?”
Eric straightened and turned to Rex. “You’re the bestest former spirit possessor a guy could have.”
“There, was that so hard to do?”
Eric exhaled and waded to the front of the bus. “I’ve gotta go to the house and find this shirt.”
“What’s so important about a shirt?”
Eric settled in the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Taffy made it for me when she was nine.” He put the bus into gear and steered it out of the back lot of the Fireworks Superstore & Convenience Center.
“Ha! Now you look like Harry Dean Stanton from the end of Repo Man,” Rex said,
“She glued tiny stones she found to the shirt in the shape of the Cinnamaldehyde molecule. She knew I loved cinnamon. Where the hell is it?” Eric made his usual five-point visual check, then turned right out of the front lot.
Eric wound through his neighborhood, a loose aggregation of large lots with houses, empty roads, lone mailboxes, ponds, and finally the street, Old Cow Trail Lane, which curved way off to the side from the access street to the main road.
But the house wasn’t there.
“Jeez.” Eric slowed and put his hands at the top of the wheel. “Did I forget where it is already? Maybe we’re on the wrong street.”
“You said ‘we,’“ Rex said, smirking.
“Are we on the wrong street? Am I having a neurological episode? Where’s my house?!” Eric put the bus in reverse and stopped it by an empty lot. “I don’t understand where –”
Rex phased out of the bus and walked up to a long slat of wood that had been inserted in the ground.
The lot was dirt and rubble.
Eric joined Rex at the slat of wood and took the flyer. He read the flyer once, looked up as though to reset, read it again, then let the hand holding the flyer drop to his leg.
Rex took the flyer from Eric but didn’t bother reading it. “What, you think someone lasered the house to the earth with his eyes, then hammered this slat in the ground with his mighty fist and said, ‘I claim this lot in the name of crapping on Eric Snackerge!’“
Eric grabbed the flyer from Rex and read it out loud with bleak eyes. “PUBLIC NOTICE: This property has been purchased by the county and removed under civil code 15.71E, Eminent Domain for Historical Livestock Pathways.” He exhaled. “That would explain the name Old Cow Trail Lane.”
“Maybe Willa didn’t know,” Rex said.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Chapter Twenty
From his vantage point behind a tree, Eric watched Mark Bollworm drive up to Ed’s house in his luxury sedan. Mark went up to the door wearing dark pants and a lavender collared shirt, entered the house, then reappeared a few minutes later with Willa, who was carrying a large bag and wearing her green dress with a light sweater, and Taffy, who was wearing her usual jeans, high-tops, and t-shirt, with a backpack. Mark put a cooler in his trunk.
“Meet the Bollworms,” Eric muttered.
He had parked his bus far enough away that they wouldn’t notice it, and walked over to the house. After they left, he used the key he wasn’t exactly supposed to have. He had some things to do in the house, and even though he felt skeevy doing it, he had to try and find out where they were going. He needed information like his life depended on it.
He put a few things for Willa on the dining room table – things that had cost him several favors. He would have bet his remaining stash of yogurt that Willa would not be letting Mark come in after they returned from wherever they were going, because it was the one-year anniversary of E
d Fellier’s death, and she probably went out to keep herself distracted.
The best place to start was the kitchen: lists, notes. But all he found was a few notes on the grocery delivery problem – a couple of names and numbers up the management chain – and some coupons. He moved on to Willa’s desk. House maintenance bills, property tax bills, paperwork from their house that would soon be a historical livestock pathway, all neatly filed and promptly paid. Credit card bills, 401K statements, a letter from an Indonesian company requesting an in-person interview –
“INDONESIA?” Eric said to an empty room, holding up the letter and looking up at it like a repulsive but priceless sacred relic he just discovered. Her job offer wasn’t in California. She lied to him. He thought California, on the opposite side of the country, was impossibly far, but Indonesia? He wouldn’t even be able to find that on a map. Willa and Taffy, his wife and daughter, living in Southeast Asia without him. The notion was too horrific to contemplate. His mind slammed its security doors shut to protect itself.
Eric put the letter back and opened another drawer. He felt ashamed for rifling through Willa’s paperwork, but she had frozen him out, and he needed to know where they were going with Mark. He wanted to know anything at all. And he wouldn’t have found out how much worse the job offer was without resorting to an invasion of her privacy. He paced in circles, feeling like a hypocrite, because he was under constant and aggressive surveillance but was still pawing through Willa’s papers.
In the second drawer on the left side he found a brochure for the Maritimania Theme Park, a short drive away. Eric almost wished Rex were around so he wouldn’t be talking to himself, but he spoke out loud in a parodied version of Mark’s voice anyway, reading from the brochure: “Hey, Willa, doesn’t the ballast-transferred invasive species exhibit, with an interactive ballasting and deballasting cycle, sound fascinating? But I’m really torn between a 3D site inspection to solve the mystery of cargo damage, and the lecture about how to enforce a maritime lien. By the way, what do you think of taking the name Bollworm? And are you pleased with the Jaguar convertible I bought you for Arbor Day?”
He ripped the brochure into pieces. He could hardly believe that they hadn’t gone there a million times. Today would be the first time. He had to find them and see if dread matched reality.
The entrance fee for the Maritimania Theme Park was like a kick in the sack: $40. Eric walked around outside the entrance for five minutes. Forty dollars. That was a lot to pay for something good, let alone for pain. He would have to pick up some modeling gigs, if he even could anymore. Even the nominal fee he picked up from art posing would help.
He approached the ticket office, changed his mind, then walked away, thinking of how much fuel forty dollars would buy, how much food. And here he was about to use it to torment himself in a theme park so he could see if he was losing his family to someone who betrayed him. Like someone who hadn’t betrayed him wasn’t bad enough.
Eric passed the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Playland, then the simulated crew training for seagoing merchant ships, and the Navigation Station Food Court & Info center. He had chosen not to wear the disguise he used when he followed the Cynasure Promotions guy on an epic gadget-buying trip through the mall, because if Willa or Mark caught him, he would die of embarrassment. Instead, Eric wore a modified disguise of regular khaki pants and the green polo, cap pulled low over his face, and sunglasses. Rex had called it Eric’s ‘hedge fund manager on the run from the feds’ look.
He spotted them outside the Hague-Visby Tapas Corner reading the posted menu. Mark had his hand on Willa’s shoulder. His HAND on Willa’s SHOULDER.
Eric retreated behind a tugboat photo booth and watched as Mark caressed Willa’s upper back. Even Taffy didn’t punch him in the face when he gave her a friendly clap on the back. His stomach flipped over. He might as well have been on that swinging pirate ship he noticed looming from another section of the park.
Willa and Mark apparently did not want tapas so they moved on toward the giant pirate ship in the distance, then decided on the Forecastle Deck Cafe and went inside after a moment of deliberation.
Eric waited five minutes, then went in after them.
“Welcome to the Foksl Deck Cafe!” the host said.
“Foksl?” Eric saw Willa, Taffy, and that aggregation of bacteria sitting at a small table by the window off to his left. They were laughing, all of them.
“That’s how it’s pronounced,” the host said. “Table for one?”
Eric turned and left. He didn’t want to see any more. Another minute and he would embarrass himself and Willa and Taffy, and give Mark an edge that Eric didn’t want him to have. Or he would kill Mark by strangling him. He had to back up, remove himself from the situation, and get as far away as possible. What was the point of seeing more?
Eric needed to win the Quantal contest, needed to send in his game materials in time. Mark wouldn’t go to this much effort to win something that would mean so much to Taffy. But Mark had money. What if he just snapped his fingers and made it happen? He wouldn’t have to win a contest, he could just get it for Taffy. Eric hoped that Mark didn’t think too hard about why Eric was trying to win the contest. Mark could easily undermine him and make Eric’s efforts worth nothing. On his way out, he bought a chocolate doughnut at Nautical Twilight Doughnuts and ate it in three bites.
Eric cleared the table in the Princess. He placed a copy of the game rules, a 3” x 5” index card, and a stamped, addressed envelope to the side. He carefully printed his name, address (using Willa’s dad’s house), and phone number on the card. He opened the safe and removed his collection of foil lids.
Rex phased in by the driver’s side door and sat next to Eric on the sofa.
“Why don’t you bask in the glory of those lids for a while?” Rex said. “You deserve it.”
Eric opened a yogurt from the fridge, wiped off the lid, and got a spoon. He sprinkled some cinnamon in the yogurt before eating it, and felt a stab of disappointment for losing the shirt Taffy had made him.
“There’s a lot riding on these.” Eric flipped the lid around his fingers like a coin.
“We spelled P-U-D-D-I-N-G with the glyphs,” Rex said, tapping his chest. “That’s it. We’re set. No one else has a chance of winning this thing. Your entry will be the only one that spells out that word. Even if another contestant somehow had access to a spirit as old as I am who could crack the code, there’s no way they would have also collected all the glyphs. Hell, you must have bought and opened five hundred containers before you finally got the glyph that translates to a ‘P’.”
Eric slumped back and watched a nature documentary.
Rex turned around on the sofa so he was facing Eric. “This is what you want! You should be elated right now, but you look about as happy as a small business owner who just got served with their first lawsuit.”
Eric sighed.
“I’m going to build the Eric Snackerge Wing of the Center for the Permanently Bummed,” Rex said.
“Oh?” Eric said. “You got a grant from the Endless Losers Foundation?”
“I have a little saved up,” Rex said. “You’ve got the damn word spelled. Look at these lids! Why the bleak face?”
Eric picked up a lid and leaned back again. “I thought that winning this contest would get Taffy and Willa back on my side. But Mark is moving in on them, and the worst part is, I told Willa that he sabotaged me at the firm. And that’s fine with her, that Mark did that. Or worse, she doesn’t believe me. No, wait – the former is worse, if she believes it and is fine with it.”
Rex changed the channel to a boxing match.
Eric changed the channel back to the nature show. “So I could win the contest and still lose Willa and Taffy. And now I’ve got this asshole and his promotion company trying to basically kill me for trying to win the contest that they promoted!”
Rex nodded, then turned the channel back to boxing.
“Then on top of that,
they’re infecting their customers with poltergeists.”
Rex had a grim look. “Commerce spirits gone rogue, like one of those circus monkeys that finally loses its patience.”
“They sent us those mailers,” Eric said. “They’ve been in Willa’s class, they’ve seen Taffy at school, and they only know about them because of me and this stupid contest.” He stuffed the lids into the big envelope. “I still have to send these certified mail.”
“Do not ask me to go to the post office.” Rex shuddered. “I can see their real faces,” he whispered.
Eric pressed the envelope down on the lids. He still had enough time for the Quantal game-handling division to receive the mail. Then he had to wait until the handlers verified the game pieces and rule compliance. He had read the game rules multiple times a day since he decided to start: at a stop light, in the store checkout line, in the bathroom. He had double-checked, triple-checked: none of the foil lids were irregular or torn in any way.
But it didn’t seem like anywhere near enough.
“We have a new member,” He Who Cleans House said. “She has reached her hundredth year as a beer stein and is now a spirit! Please welcome She Who Provides Sustenance!”
The others cheered. The stein flapped its lid. “Thanks very much.”
“We also have a few buttons to give one of our long-standing members.” He Who Cleans House held up a bag. “The Ghost of Christmas Past, for not tormenting anyone for one whole week about Christmases they’ve had. Congratulations!” The rangy man with tattered clothing accepted the button with a grim smile. “And to He Who Eats Grapes. Four months since his last possession!” The cyclops gorilla waddled up to the sprite and took the button proffered him.
“Finally, He Who Digs In, who has gone a whole day without scaring anybody or mauling any upscale furniture.” The talon didn’t come up.
“Isn’t he here?” He Who Cleans House said.
“He had an errand to run, but he said he’d be here soon,” He Who Eats Mucous said.