With unfurling arms, it grabbed the Ouija board. Ripping it up and away.
I reached, but it lifted further. “Oh, shit—”
“What?”
“Shit. I lost the board—”
I scooped up the dying Maglite and aimed the flickering yellow beam up into the darkness. At the floating, rising thing that had stolen the board.
Addie gasped.
It was a hanging body. Dangling bat-like, upside-down from the ceiling by a knot of barbed wire tangled cruelly around one ankle. At first I thought its upper body bristled with twenty-inch porcupine quills, but they were spiny dripstones of frozen blood, the dead color of rust, growing off his shoulders and face like inverted toadstools. The corpse clutched Holden’s Ouija board with a tightening arm, bladed with bloodsicles. I couldn’t see its face, and didn’t want to. I hoped I’d live long enough to be traumatized by it.
Well, the Gasman has summoned me.
Addie screamed. “What is that?”
“The board!” My voice came in panicked tugs. “It stole the board. We need it—”
“The Gasman’s coming—”
“We need the board, Addie. It’s our only chance.”
I jumped for the hanging creature, but it was too high. My fingertips swished empty air. Suddenly the basement ceiling had morphed thirty feet higher; a crisscross of beams I recognized from murky photos of the Kalash armory. The body contracted defensively, cocoon-like, and pulled higher and higher, squeezing its chest up to its knees with a crackle-pop of frozen vertebrae. Too high to reach, an inhuman shape curling away to vanish into the 1970s-Kalash ceiling with Holden’s board, going, going—
CRACK. CRACK.
Two orange flashes, and the corpse’s wrist exploded into crystals of icy red meat. A sprinkle of bloody chunks. The Ouija board dropped.
I caught it.
Addie stuffed her smoking Beretta back into her purse just as our second Maglite flickered and died. I left it clattering on the floor.
“Nice shot. Again.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “But we’re still trapped.”
On cue, the Gasman’s footsteps hollowed on cement foundation. He’d squeezed down the stairs. I heard the swish of his wool greatcoat, the biomechanical creak of flexing leather, plastic, and rubber.
“He’s down here with us.” Her voice rattled. “And we’re trapped—”
“No, we’re not.” I clasped the Ouija board to my chest, feeling a surge of shivery adrenaline. Reckless glee. We’d mightily pissed the entity off. The Head-Scratching Rifle and its vast backlog of murdered victims — all were after us now, zeroing in on Adelaide and I like antibodies. Hell, the barbed-wire hobo hanging from the ceiling like an inverted Venus flytrap had been seventy years in the making. And it failed. The Head-Scratching Rifle needed to stop us. It needed that Ouija board.
The fight might have been suicidal, the odds impossible, the battleground morphing beneath our feet, but at least it wanted to catch us and hadn’t yet. I’m told I have a talent for disappointing people.
And I still had Addie.
Flicking her Pac Man lighter for illumination (appropriate, since we, too, were fleeing ghosts), I found drywall in the glow of orange light, and groped behind boxed clothing and hanging gowns to find a brass doorknob. The brass doorknob I only barely, barely remembered from the long weekend of unpacking this foul house with Holden, because I’d only seen it. And never actually touched it.
“Thank God for closets I never opened.”
“Evil is unimaginative,” Addie echoed.
“Damn straight.”
The Gasman was just a step behind us, so I swung the door open and pushed Addie through first. As I followed, a gloved hand pawed at my back, dumb cigar fingers tightening, almost gripping a fistful of my sweatshirt. Almost.
“Too slow.”
I have no idea what Holden’s grandmother kept in her garage closet in real life, but it sure as hell wasn’t the 2012 Basin State Fair.
NEW TEXT MESSAGE
SENDER: “Holden” (509) 555-8727
SENT: 12:21 p.m. Mar 20 2015
Dan my Ouija board was moving by itself in the box. Answered it, says its U?!
36 Minutes
“Yes!” Adelaide fist-pumped. “I love the Basin State Fair.”
“Close call,” I gasped.
We’d entered a world of halogen lights, carnival games, and drunk teenagers. Livestock barns to the north, creaky rides to the south, and food trailers up the middle. Straw, axle grease, and kettle corn. Hand-painted signs advertised scones, German dogs, and deep fried butter. Against a dusk sky pinpricked with stars stood the oily black trestlework of the “Widowmaker” roller coaster; a rattling behemoth built in 1932. It was perhaps one medium-sized gust of wind from fulfilling its name.
I still had the Ouija board and planchette. I elbowed past a throng of kids and slammed the thing onto a picnic table. It had a splintered chip on the edge where one of Addie’s bullets had grazed it.
“Come on, Holden.” I dropped the token on the board and repeated my question with quaking fingertips: WHEREISDAN?
“What if it’s not Holden?” Addie asked again.
“Least of our worries.”
A falling chorus of faraway screams — I flinched — but it was just the Panic Plunge dropping a cartload of riders.
“I’m just saying.” She grabbed an unattended beer and took a swig. “The rifle — the Gasman, the demon, whatever — it’s getting smarter. How can you be so certain that this isn’t a trick?”
The planchette scraped: YOURNOTHOMECARGONE.
“My car’s gone,” I said.
A pause.
Then, urgently: KALESAWYOUONMAIN—
“Too fast.” Addie circled the table. “I can’t—”
“Kale saw me downtown . . .”
The planchette darted again: SAIDYOUBOT—
“Said I bought . . .”
The token stopped. Circled once, then: BOUHGT.
“Bought. I get it.”
BOUTGH.
“Jesus Christ, Holden.”
BOUHGT.
Addie groaned. “He already tried that one.”
BOUGHT.
“Yes!” I said. “Good job. What did I buy?”
But Addie glanced up sharply, whipping her hair in my face, looking toward the deep-fried butter trailer and gasping: “Oh, crap.”
SAIDYOUBOUGHT—
I dug my fingernails into the dusty wood. “Hurry up, Holden—”
“Oh, crap,” she hissed in my ear, rising panic: “Dan.”
BOUGHTBOXESOFBULLETS—
“Dan!”
“Wait.” I watched the planchette. “Just wait—”
DRIVING—
“Driving to—”
She grabbed my shoulder and wrenched me backwards, off the picnic bench. I saw a whirl of carnival lights, stars in a rotten purple sky, and then we both slammed into the grass. Like being tackled. Dirt clods in my teeth, the taste of yellow grass. Something metallic and heavy crashed down on the table behind us. A warbling BANG, like a deafening, five-foot gong.
My mind raced in the chaos: I bought bullets, and I’m driving to—
I tried to stand but Addie tugged me again, into a bruising sidewinder roll . . .
The thunderous splash came next; gallons and gallons of liquid. I heard sludgy raindrops plopping to the grass around us, sizzling and hissing, drawing curls of steam. Scorching hot droplets, peppering the air like shrapnel from a nail bomb. The unmistakable odor of tater tots, elephant ears, and fryer grease.
Fryer grease?
The aluminum deep-fryer tank tumbled past us, spraying more scalding droplets, and bounced off another picnic table. The first screams came, a crescendo of horror, as fairgoers scattered under a mist of acid rain. Most in terror, some in blistering pain.
Someone threw a deep fryer at us.
I blinked, my eyes watering in the hot air. The picnic table we’d occupied — and Holden�
��s Ouija board — was now dripping sizzling brown oil. Four hundred degrees of artery-clogging deliciousness. Like it had been dipped in magma.
Addie blew hair from her face. “You’re welcome. Again.”
Stupidly, I dug my fingers into the patchy grass and scrambled back toward our table. Even drenched in smoking oil, the Ouija planchette was moving — Holden was transmitting critical details from the world of 2015 — but Addie grabbed my wrist and stopped me, her breath in my ear. “No—”
“I have to know—”
“Dan, stop.”
At the funnel cake stand, the Gasman was stooping to pick up another deep-fryer vat, wrapping his arms around the ten-gallon tub in a bear hug. Frothy grease splashed on the counter and poured copper waterfalls over the DEEP FRIED TWINKIES sign.
And that scorched Ouija planchette kept moving, kept racing urgently from letter to letter, too far away to see—
“I have to know,” I gasped.
“Too late,” Addie screamed, digging her heels into the grass.
I tugged but she was right. Nothing to do.
The Gasman hefted the second vat to his chest and the cooking basket fell out, clattering to the ground like a birdcage full of limp French fries. His gloves and greatcoat smoked with spilled oil. He lowered his masked head, firmed up his stance, and whirled like an Olympic log thrower, hurling a lethal payload our way—
She gasped. “Go. Go. Go—”
We vaulted another picnic table and raced past the Mystizmo fortune-teller booth with the second fryer tank incoming. It crashed down somewhere close and we outran a shower of sizzling oil, droplets splashing down just moments behind us. All I could think about was that all-important Ouija board behind us, drenched in scalding grease. Our weapon. Our only chance, lost.
Everything. Lost.
By the scone trailer I halted and chanced a look over my shoulder — “Dan, don’t stop!” — and for just a frozen half-second, I saw one of the Head-Scratching Rifle’s mummified Red Army ghosts standing over Holden’s four hundred degree Ouija board, lifting it from the table with nerveless brown hands. Raising it over a knee.
As we raced through the emptying Basin State Fair, I heard a single CRACK echo behind us. Like a wooden gunshot. So much for that.
And as for the real world?
My exploding bullet misfired.
So I drove into town.
I bought more bullets. And I’m driving to—
Where was I driving? And how close was I to getting there? The stakes had changed. It wasn’t just a suicide anymore. Why hadn’t I suspected it from the start? The Head-Scratching Rifle likes to kill. It’s a dumb hunger, a spiritual disease. Why would it settle for just one meager suicide in my sad little house in rural Farwell, Idaho, when it could use my body like a vehicle and go on an indulgent murder spree? A house-to-house slaughter? How many people would die now, because of my recklessness?
And worst of all, Holden’s Ouija board, our single tether to the real world of 2015, was out of action. Our lightning was out of the bottle. My spine chilled and I tasted stomach acid, climbing my throat like salty tidewater.
This was bad.
“You were almost a six-foot chicken nugget,” Addie said.
“Thank you,” I said weakly.
“Next time, can you save me for a change?”
I was barely listening. My stomach coiled, snakelike. This was so bad . . .
As we raced down the carnival game alley, holding hands under a blur of hot lights and colored tarp, I recognized that asshole clown stepping in from the right to cut us off. Red nose, green ponytail, yellow firefighter jacket with saucer buttons. An artificial smile slathered on with white greasepaint, and under it, a real one, gawking with adolescent scorn at our clasped hands.
“Oh, how cute,” he said as we passed. “But you’ll never—”
I punched him in the face.
Sent: 3/20 12:30PM
Sender: [email protected]
Subject: Thank You!
Dear DANIEL J. RUPLEY,
Thank you for shopping at Outdoor Warehouse today! For your records we’ve attached a copy of your receipt:
20PK 7.62x54R NC00292
$26.99
20PK 7.62x54R NC00292
$26.99
20PK 7.62x54R NC00292
$26.99
20PK 7.62x54R NC00292
$26.99
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$26.99
20PK 7.62x54R NC00292
$26.99
SUB $161.94
TAX 6.00% $9.72
Total: $171.66/DEBIT****
27 Minutes
Lurching from the Basin State fairgrounds to the sludgy soil of the Mount St. Helens blast zone was a shock, like a fifty-yard dash straight into quicksand. Addie hit her knees behind me and I pulled her upright. Even on the Spirit Lake hiking loop, the sloped ground was an ankle-breaking trellis of bleached logs, half-buried in volcanic soil turned gray and sludgy by recent rain showers. Recent, as of 2012.
“Oh, no. He’s right behind us,” she gasped, her shoes slurping in gritty mud. “He’s still coming.”
Fifty feet back, the Gasman scaled the crest of Johnston Ridge, silhouetted against a pewter sky. He missed a step, dumping a small landslide of rocks. Something about his stumbling pose, his gas mask, the scarred land around him — he looked like an astronaut on some barren planet. A space-suited, five-dimensional creature navigating the uncharted terrain of my mind. This came like an odd epiphany. Perhaps this was why he had so much difficulty opening doors — he’d come from some indescribable plane of existence where doors didn’t exist.
More figures rose into view behind him. His icy flock. His unhallowed crowd of burlap flesh, shattered skulls, and empty eye sockets. Trench coats in gray, brown, and black. Fox fur hats and Waffen-SS helmets. I saw bright red, the wet glisten of freshly opened meat, and recognized the destroyed cavity of Ben Dyson’s face, the gunsmith falling obediently into line with the older corpses. You can resist all you want, but sooner or later everyone joins the Gasman’s frozen parade.
Including . . . that one orange tabby cat from Holden’s grandmother’s house, still affectionately mewing and pawing at the Gasman’s boots. I don’t think the cat was actually dead like the others; I think he was just a big fan.
I tugged Addie’s hand as she sighed: “Man, fuck cats.”
“Come on.”
“I told you they’re evil.”
We kept running along the slanted trail, up and over rising waves of cracked trees, their bark scorched away decades ago by pyroclastic fire. Like running over a river of rolling logs. It was dreamlike in a futile way, a desperate pursuit over churning earth. A chunk of driftwood tumbled downhill and splashed into the gray stillness of pond water, thirty feet below.
“He’s trying now,” Addie panted. “He’s really trying to catch us—”
“Good. It means we still have a chance to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
I grabbed her wrist and helped her up a massive log, chapped and bone-white, like a dinosaur femur. “A mass shooting,” I said. “That’s what the Head-Scratching Rifle is going to use me for. Not a suicide — not yet, at least. First, a mass shooting. A horrific, nightmarish killing spree with that Mosin Nagant—”
Her jaw hung open.
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “This . . . explains everything.”
“How?”
Muddy ash shifted under my feet, like stepping on water. I crashed down hard on one kneecap but recovered and kept running. Over a shoulder, I glimpsed the Gasman and his friends trudging through the ash and crunchy underbrush. A grim march. Soldiers on the move. Thunder rolled behind them, a hollow rumble.
She grabbed my arm. “That explains why we’re here, Dan. That’s why we’re traveling back in time. The rifle — the Gasman, whatever — it was going through your memories, flipping pages through your brain. Searching your mind for a location
it likes. A place to stage its massacre in the real world. In March of 2015.”
“So,” I said, “what did it find?”
She looked at me, something on the edge of her tongue.
I had it, too.
The Gasman sure loved that third-floor balcony at Timber Ridge, hadn’t he? Sweeping the Mosin Nagant up and over the crowd at the food court in a weird moment of childish play. Now we knew it wasn’t play. It was a cold, witless mind assessing a target-rich environment. We’d witnessed a dry run. A rehearsal.
Oh, God.
“Timber Ridge,” I said. “That’s where I’m driving. Right now.”
On Saturday, March 20, 2015. With the Head-Scratching Rifle in my trunk and a half-dozen boxes of 7.62x54R ammunition grocery-bagged in the back seat.
Another crash of thunder. She didn’t flinch. “How do we stop it?”
“If we still had that Ouija board, I’d just tell Holden to call the police and tell them to come to Timber Ridge.” I hesitated and let the next uncomfortable thought go unsaid — so they can see me strolling in from the parking lot with a bolt-action Soviet rifle and shoot me on sight. “But we . . . we lost it.”
“So we’ll find another one—”
“There aren’t any Ouija boards left in my brain,” I said. “That was the first one I’d ever seen in person, in Holden’s grandmother’s house in Butte, spring of 2012, and it’s gone now. That was our link to 2015. Our only link.”
“We’ll stop it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“How, Addie?” I snapped, my voice a hoarse rattle.
A fork of purple lightning slithered across the sky, striking somewhere behind Mount St. Helens’ destroyed caldera.
“Oh my God.” She looked back at the pursuing Gasman and it seemed to fully hit her, her lip quivering in realized horror. “Oh my God. Oh my God . . .”
I imagined myself, thoughtless and glass-eyed, shouldering that slimy old Mosin Nagant on the third-floor balcony in front of JCPenney. Aligning the notched Russian sights, click-clacking the heavy bolt, and opening fire on a food court full of teenagers, baristas, book club members, young couples with babies in strollers. You always watch news coverage of the latest tragedy and wonder what goes through the insect-brain of a mass shooter; what disgusting force could pervert a human mind into willfully and carefully murdering strangers. It truly horrified me that maybe I’d find out.
OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller Page 18