by Nathan Roden
“What are you afraid of, Scottie?” Sebastian said with a sinister grin. He then tousled Scottie’s hair and looked at Cyrus, who was desperately trying to maintain a smile.
“We share a unique and other-worldly secret, the three of us,” Sebastian said in a friendly way. “This came about thanks to your habit of daily inebriation, and my willingness to believe the unbelievable.”
Cyrus and Scottie managed small and strained little laughs until Sebastian’s smile disappeared. He growled and grabbed a handful of Scottie’s hair. Scottie cried out as his knees buckled.
“You will remain in your respective hostels until I call,” Sebastian said. “You will not speak to anyone.” Sebastian looked at Scottie. “You will not drink. Not a drop.”
He looked at Cyrus.
“If I were you,” Sebastian said. “I would not let that phone out of my sight. In fact, I would not let it out of my reach.” He let go of Scottie’s hair.
“YOU OWE ME!” Sebastian growled. “Thus far, you have done nothing but cost me money and cause me trouble. Until I have the girl,
“I. OWN. YOU! Now, get out of my sight.”
Cyrus and Scottie hurried toward the motorbike. Cyrus tried the kick-starter three times, to no avail. He put the motorbike in gear and turned to Scottie.
“Push!” he said. Scottie pushed, the little engine came to life, and they were off as fast as the bike would go.
“Wait, Dougie, no!” Bruiser yelled at Dougie Day, who ran after the motorbike as fast as he could move.
“They’re getting away again, Bruiser,” Dougie said, as he floated back.
“We didn’t get a look at that map,” Bruiser said. “We’d never find them again.”
“I don’t even know how far a Klompeter is,” Delbert said.
“Yeah, and they were goin’ thirty Klompeters,” Dougie said. “That sounds like a long ways.”
“We woulda lost ‘em on the way here, except it was easy to hear that little chainsaw motor cuttin’ through the woods,” Delbert said.
“So, are we gonna follow this guy now?” Dougie asked. He pointed at Sebastian Wellmore.
“Let’s follow him,” Delbert said. “He has a car.”
Bruiser spat on the ground and glared at Sebastian. Sebastian stood with his hands in his coat pockets, glaring angrily after the fading buzz of the motorbike.
“I wish we could have got here quicker,” Bruiser said. He looked at Dougie and Delbert.
“I didn’t hear a blessed thing they said before this Count Dracula-lookin’ piece of trash grabbed old Scottie by the hair,” Bruiser said. “How about you two?”
Dougie and Delbert shook their heads.
“Well, we know who’s in charge, now,” Bruiser said. His eyes narrowed, and his hands balled into fists.
“He said, ‘until I have the girl, I own you’. Is that what you guys heard?”
“That’s what he said, Bruiser,” Dougie said, also flexing his fists.
“That’s what I heard, too,” Delbert said.
Sebastian turned and walked toward his car. He looked up at the solitary street lamp that continued to threaten to die.
Bruiser, Dougie, and Delbert stared at Sebastian’s back.
“I think he was talking about Holly,” Delbert said.
“Of course, he was talking about Holly,” Bruiser said. “We have to follow him.”
“Maybe we ought to go and get Arabella first,” Delbert said. “She’s gonna be mad as a wet hornet already.”
Dougie chuckled.
“Sure, she is,” Dougie said. “I still say we should have woke her up, Bruiser.”
Bruiser blushed.
“Look here,” Bruiser said. “She’d been across the ocean on an airplane; been on a bullet train, and stomped around with us through taverns all night. The poor little thing was all tuckered out.”
“You’re sweet on her, is what you’re NOT sayin’!” Dougie laughed. “Shoot, BOTH of you are!”
“Don’t go blamin’ this mess on me!” Delbert said. “It weren’t my idea to leave her behind. She’s gonna want to open up a can of Medieval Whoop A—”
“Ask me if I care if she’s mad!” Bruiser said. “There are still things that are a man’s work, and that’s all there is to it!”
“You be sure and remember to tell her that it was all your idea,” Delbert said. “I’m just sayin’.”
Bruiser stepped toward Delbert.
“Why?” he said. “You think I’m afraid to?”
“I think what you’ve done, is poke a pit-bull with a stick,” Delbert said.
Bruiser folded his arms, which as always, made his bicep tattoos come to life. He glared at Delbert.
“What I DONE, was the right thing,” Bruiser said.
“You done slapped a badger right in the mouth, is what you done,” Delbert said. Dougie laughed.
“Yeah, Bruiser!” Dougie said. “You done poured hot sauce on a rattlesnake and fed it to a possum!”
“Shut up, Dougie,” Delbert said. “That don’t even make sense.”
“Shush!” Bruiser said. “We gotta go.”
Sebastian got into his car and closed the door. Bruiser, Dougie, and Delbert floated through the back doors and settled into the back seat.
Sebastian turned the key. Nothing happened. He released the key and leaned back. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He tried the key again.
Nothing.
Nothing happened that time or any of the next thirty times. Sebastian lowered his head against the steering wheel.
“I knew it,” Delbert said. “Now, we’re gonna be all night gettin’ back.”
Sebastian stepped from the car and walked to the front of it. He looked down at the hood. He knew nothing about the function of automobiles, other than how to drive them.
Bruiser and Dougie followed Sebastian. They studied his face, which showed no emotion at all. Delbert remained in the car, tired and bored.
Sebastian pulled his hands from his coat pockets. He grabbed the underside of the car’s bumper. He began jerking on the bumper as if he was trying to flip the car over. At the same time, his face burned with rage, and he began a primal scream that lasted for several seconds. Delbert was no longer bored as he looked for something to hang on to. Bruiser and Dougie stepped back, in awe of the spectacle.
When Sebastian finally exhausted himself, he leaned against the hood of the car until his breathing slowed. He straightened up, walked to the passenger door, and opened it. He opened the glove compartment and removed a pistol. Delbert left the car in a hurry.
“Good grief!” Delbert said as he joined Bruiser and Dougie. “How many guns does this guy have?”
The trio of ghosts followed Sebastian, who walked slowly to the guard rail. He held the pistol at his side.
Sebastian lifted his head, inhaling the oxygenated air rising off of the rushing river. He closed his eyes. The ghosts watched and waited.
Sebastian sniffed. He sniffed again. He raised the pistol and began to methodically spin the revolver’s cylinder—over and over—like a nervous habit that was not new to him.
“I think he’s crying,” Dougie whispered.
“What in the world?” Delbert said. “This guy is gettin’ all bent out of shape ‘cause he’s gonna have to call a tow truck?”
“He can’t call a tow truck, moron,” Bruiser said. “If a tow truck gets a call to pick up a car at an abandoned mill in the middle of nowhere at midnight, you think he ain’t gonna tell nobody?”
“That’s right, Delbert,” Dougie said. “Bruiser knows about stuff like that. He thinks like a DETECTIVE. Where you learn all that detective stuff, Bruiser?”
“From Scooby-Doo,” Bruiser said.
“Scooby-Doo?” Delbert laughed. “If Bruiser is Scooby-Doo, you know who that makes you, right Dougie?”
“Don’t—,” Dougie said, “You better not—”
“That makes you Scrap—”
“Shut up, Delbert!” Dou
gie screamed.
Sebastian raised the pistol to his temple.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Delbert said as he backed away. He looked from Sebastian to Bruiser.
“Holy Moly!” Dougie screamed. “Is he—is this what we want? What do we do, Bruiser?”
“Let him do it!” Delbert said. “Then it’s all over and we go home.”
“We might never find Holly’s parents without him,” Bruiser said.
“LOOK!” Dougie said, pointing at Sebastian. Sebastian lowered the pistol back to his side. His shoulders shook, and there was no doubt that he was sobbing.
Bruiser stepped to his side to get a better look at Sebastian’s face.
“I almost feel sorry for—”
Sebastian sniffed one last time, and the crying spell was over. He raised the gun again and put the barrel into his mouth.
“Are you kidding me?” Dougie squealed. “Again?”
Sebastian began to cry again, but only briefly. He lowered the gun to his side. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He turned and walked back toward the car.
“Now yer talkin’,” Delbert said. “Maybe it will start now. I call shotgun!”
Delbert jumped through the back door. Sebastian walked to the front of the car. Wearing a blank expression, Sebastian raised the pistol and fired twice through the windshield, directly where the head of a driver would be.
Delbert screamed and dove out through the door. He scrambled to his feet and hid behind Bruiser.
“What in the w—?” Bruiser said before Sebastian fired a shot through the car’s radiator. Water shot into the air and the vehicle’s alarm sounded briefly before Sebastian emptied the pistol into the hood of the car.
Nineteen
Sebastian Wellmore
Outside of Wellmore Village, Scotland
Bruiser, Dougie, and Delbert were speechless.
Without a word or any show of emotion, Sebastian Wellmore opened the passenger door of his car. He took a box of ammunition from the glove compartment, and then went to the trunk of the car. He took out a blanket, a flashlight, and a tire tool. He hefted the tire tool in his hand as if judging its effectiveness as a weapon.
Sebastian laid everything on the ground. He took out his keyring and removed the car’s ignition key from it. He put the key into the ignition and turned it on to unlock the gear selector and the steering wheel. He grabbed the ignition key and snapped it off. He threw the piece between his fingers into the river.
He placed the car in “neutral”, walked to the rear of the car, and pushed until the car gained momentum on its own. The guard rail barely slowed the car as it crashed through, launching itself into the air before making a slight and graceful forward tilt on its pathway to the bottom of the river.
“Wow,” Bruiser said. “That is one heck of a Plan ‘B’.”
Sebastian watched the aftermath for a few seconds before he picked up the tire tool. For the next fifteen minutes, he used the tool and his feet to destroy a large amount of the rest of the guard rail. He stepped back and looked at what he had done. He was convinced that the entire scene looked like the work of vandals.
“Well, we’re walkin’ for sure, now,” Delbert said.
The ghosts followed Sebastian. He picked up the rest of the items he had taken from the car and walked toward the road. Beneath the single lamp, Sebastian stopped at a picnic table, where he reloaded the gun. He put the pistol into the waistband of his slacks, turned on the flashlight, and carried the other items under his arm. When he continued walking, the ghosts looked at each other and shrugged.
Sebastian turned toward the opposite end of the mill property. He stopped in front of what used to be the mill’s office. Sebastian stared at the twin front doors. They were chained and locked together. Sebastian ran his hand along the chain and found that the lock was not closed. It was broken. Someone had arranged the chain and lock to make it appear that it was still in working order.
Sebastian quietly removed the chain. Using the tire tool, he pushed one door open and stepped inside. There were two dirty, cheap plastic chairs and a stack of magazines in the corner that consisted of girly books and comics. Other than that, the reception room was empty. A path of footprints led down the hall—through the dust. The path took a left turn into an office where the door stood open. Sebastian laid down the blanket and tire tool on the reception counter. He moved his pistol to his right hand. He stepped into the office and raised his flashlight.
Two scruffy, long-haired, and bearded men leaped up from mattresses on opposite sides of the floor. Their arms and legs flew in every direction.
“What do you want?” one of the men said. He hid his eyes from the flashlight.
“You need to move along, Stranger,” the other man said. “This is our place. Get your own.”
“I need shelter for the night,” Sebastian said. “And I’m afraid that I do not play well with others.”
“Neither do we,” said the braver of the two men. He raised a golf club from his side, holding the grip in his right hand while tapping the club-face against his left palm.
“Do you possess skill with that stick?” Sebastian asked.
“I have enough,” the man said. He slowly moved his left hand to the grip. He had not noticed the gun.
“See if you can hit this,” Sebastian said. He raised the gun and fired, just to the left of the man’s ear. The shot made a deafening explosion in the small room. Both of the vagrants fell to their knees, clapping their hands to their ears.
Sebastian smiled and lowered the gun. He reached into his ears and removed his custom-fitted ear plugs. He worked his jaw a few times and waited for his eardrums to return to normal.
“You are interrupting my sleep,” Sebastian said. “Get out.”
He stepped into the room and away from the doorway. Neither man heard what Sebastian said, but they had a good idea of what it was, and they had no intention of staying.
Sebastian inspected the mattresses before he turned one upside-down and tossed it on top of the other. He searched three of the nearby rooms and found a canvas drop-cloth in a closet. He covered the stacked mattresses with the drop-cloth before covering them with his blanket. He lay down and was asleep within a minute.
“That ain’t possible,” Delbert Scoggins said, leaning over Sebastian’s face.
“He’s a monster,” Bruiser said. “Though he obviously ain’t no vampire, or else he’s got his sleepin’ habits all backwards.”
“I’m guessin’ we’re done for the night, too?” Dougie asked.
Bruiser was deep in thought. “Huh?” he said.
“Are we stayin’ here?” Dougie asked. “Until he gets up?”
“I guess so,” Bruiser said. “I got the feelin’ that we better not let this guy out of our sights.”
Delbert looked around at the dismal, old, and dusty surroundings.
“The Holiday Inn, this ain’t,” he said.
“Miss Arabella’s sure gonna be madder’n a wet hen, now,” Dougie said.
“Shut up, Dougie,” Bruiser and Delbert said together.
Bruiser kicked Delbert’s and Dougie’s feet just after sunrise.
Bruiser woke up to find Sebastian Wellmore gone, and the mattresses returned to their original positions. Sebastian's blanket was neatly folded on top of one of the mattresses. His flashlight and the tire tool lay on top of it. Bruiser panicked for a few seconds until he spotted Wellmore standing at the end of the parking lot, near the road. Sebastian was looking in both directions.
“Get up!” Bruiser yelled at Delbert and Dougie. “He’s on the move!”
As soon as the three ghosts left the building, a taxi rolled to a stop next to Sebastian Wellmore.
“Hurry!” Bruiser yelled.
Wellmore was inside of the taxi, and it was pulling away. Bruiser grabbed Delbert by the arm and threw him into the passenger seat of the taxi. Bruiser then grabbed Dougie by the arm and threw him through the back door with Sebastian Wellmore. Sebastia
n went into a coughing fit, and a brief wave of nausea came and went. Dougie crashed up against the opposite door.
“You okay back there, mate?” the taxi driver asked.
“Fine,” Sebastian said. “I think I swallowed a moth.”
The driver laughed.
Bruiser ran to the other side of the taxi and hurled himself into the back seat, right on top of Dougie. Dougie scrambled up into Bruiser’s lap.
“What do you think you’re doin’, Dougie?” Bruiser growled.
“You want to sit next to that creep, you go ahead,” Dougie said. “I ain’t. I’ll get out first.”
“This ain’t right,” Bruiser said.
Delbert snickered.
“You better shut it up, right now, Delbert,” Bruiser said. “I put you in the front seat. I can take you out.”
Sebastian stared to his left. He bent over and looked in the floor. He reached out a hand and passed it back and forth across the back seat. Dougie looked down in disgust. Sebastian’s hand had passed through his chest.
“I’m not sure how this works,” Bruiser whispered. “I’m guessin’ that only folks that can see us can actually touch us. Otherwise, we would be busted.”
“So, how you end up out here in the middle of nowhere, mate?” the taxi driver asked Sebastian. He kept an eye on his rear-view mirror, trying to make eye contact with his passenger.
Sebastian smiled, purposely.
“It was such a nice morning. I had already dressed for an appointment when I decided that it was a nice day for a little bicycle ride.”
“What happened?” the driver asked. “You have yourself a flat tire? We could throw your bike in the boot, no problem.”
Sebastian met the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He shook his head and waved off the suggestion.