Just then, the landline on my desk rings. Without breaking our kiss, I lift Fi up by gripping her butt, walking us over to my desk. I grab the phone, putting it to my ear as I say “Gibson.” The girl’s voice on the other end is nervous with an at-the-end-of-her-rope tone. “Um… Is this Spike Brothers? The paranormalists?” Fi continues to kiss my neck as I confirm to her, “Yes it is. What can I do for you, miss?”
“Paranormalist means like… You deal with ghosts and stuff, right?” She asks, her tone never breaking. “Yes it does.” I confirm simply. Fiona stops kissing with a final peck on the cheek. Letting go of me, she shoots me a seductive smile as she heads to the bathroom.
“Well,” The girl on the other end starts “It’s my friend. She, uh… committed suicide last year and… well, she’s blaming me now.” My awareness goes from Fi to the case at hand as my attention is grabbed. Sitting at my desk, I grab a pen and a pad of paper. “Go on.” I ask.
Epilogue
The summer of 2003 saw me back in Oldbridge. Back where I belonged. I was bouncing between a couple family members; however, I was primarily staying with Evan and his family. My arm was out of the sling and my fingers were out of their splints. My aunt Traci had given me a hand gripper to get them worked back out.
I was sitting on the bench at The Secret Court, squeezing on my gripper. Three years away and I still remembered the basketball court hidden in a small patch of woods in between a few different neighborhoods of townhouses. It was around midnight that night and I remember taking a deep sigh of relief, feeling like things had worked out for the moment.
That’s when I heard leaves rustle past the tree line. I reached behind me for the item tucked into the back of my pants. That’s when Evan came into view. I took a heavy sigh while he frantically whispered, “They’re coming!” I asked him, “You sure?” He tilted his head with wide eyes, “Five of them, pale and skin sunken in. Yeah, it’s them.”
I stood up, tucking my hand gripper into my back pocket while Evan took his place by my side. I pulled out a pocket knife from my right pocket, flicking it open. “My buddy and I made this from a railroad spike and some antique silverware. The whole knife is iron and the blade is coated in silver.” I folded it back up, handing it to him. “What about you?” he asked with concern. I just gave him a cocky smirk.
Before I could tell him anything, that’s when they appeared out from the shadows. Only one came from the way Evan had taken. The other four came from different directions all around us, just hovering just enough in the shadows that we couldn’t make out their features. Their leader was clearly the one who followed Evan.
This guy had long, black hair. His skin was flushed pale, like you’d expect someone would be who’d been drained of blood and came back from the dead. He looked as old as a high school upperclassman. He had on a pair of those stupid black pants with the useless straps and metal studs that were popular back then along with a black t-shirt with a Christian metal band’s album art printed on the front.
With a smirk on his face, he made audible sniffing sounds before commenting “I smell… virgins.” I let out an exaggerated sigh, “Oh thank god. I wasn’t gonna say anything, because I didn’t want to be rude. I mean, they make spray-on deodorant now, so you can just pick some up and-” I make a spray noise, miming a spray bottle under both of my arm pits.
He starts to chuckle, “You really are him. The loud mouth shooting off about taking us out.” I smirk with a nod, “Yeah, that’s about the gist of it.” The rest of them start chuckling in the shadows as their leader asks, “So, why don’t you tell me what makes you think you’re walking away from this alive?”
I smile, “Seriously, I thought you’d never ask.” Evan looks at me, confused and scared. I clear my throat, starting “So, me and my cousin here are gonna trade off on your goons here. He’s gonna shank ‘em through the heart while I snap their necks. Then, I’m gonna shoot you in the chest.”
Wide eyed, Evan whispers “Why the fuck are you telling them?” I shrug while whispering back, “The fuck are they gonna do about it?” The leader guy interrupts us, “What makes you think we’re real vampires, though?” I look at him as if he’d just asked what color the sky was, simply stating “Because you’re a fucking idiot?”
He tilts his head, insulted as he asks, “Excuse me?” I shrug as I explain, “You got drained by a vampire like a month ago and disappeared from the morgue, like all suckers do. The only smart thing you did was make it look like your best friends ran away instead of draining and dropping them.”
He glares at me in anger, silent this time. I chuckle, “Yeah, it might’ve been full proof if you’d taken into account of someone actually looking for you.” He asks in a lower tone, “Why were you looking for us?” I take a breath, struggling to come up with an answer, “I don’t know, they said I have PTSD from my mom’s possession. So, I guess I’m on one of those phases where I’m getting into ‘The Life’ now. I mean, I’m not really sleeping much anyways.”
Evan shoves me, “Dude!” I shrug, looking at him quizzically, “What? They’re not allowed to know shit? We’re putting them down anyway!” Frustrated, Evan explains “Maybe we should stop wasting time with the back-and-forth?” I roll my eyes, looking to the head vamp, asking in an apologetic tone “Alright, you cool with that?”
Pissed off, he nods to his boys and they start in. Evan panics, flicking the blade out as one guy rushes him. He frantically slams it into the guys chest, calling out in panic. Meanwhile, the first guy rushing me is made quick work of. I crouched a little, elbowing him in the gut before popping back up, pulling him in and snapping his neck.
I look back at Evan and he’s just standing there, trembling as he looks the vampire in the eyes, blade still in his chest. I toss the limp body of my first one over to his feet, “Here, now this one. Hand me yours, ok?” Evan looks down at the sucker, head twisted around and exclaims “Oh my god!”
“I know,” I tell him while I grab his vamp, “Go quick, they’re not gonna wait.” I twist Evan’s vamp’s head around nonchalantly and drop it where it goes. Meanwhile, Evan gets on his knees, holding the knife in the air like it’s an adrenalin needle and plunges it into my first vamp’s chest.
I see the next two begin to charge, but Evan isn’t even paying attention. He’s still got the knife jammed into that other sucker’s chest. I ended up making an executive decision, taking the one that was charging me and throwing him over Evan and into the other one.
They go tumbling over each other. “Knife!” I call out. Evan looks up, pulling the knife out and tossing it up. I grab it and march over to the two who are struggling with each other. “Get off me!” one calls out while the other explains, “I’m caught on your pants!” I just give a sly smirk.
I kneel down, thrusting the knife into the top one’s back, definitely hitting his heart. I push that one off the other and jam the knife into the second one’s chest. After that, I just stood up and stomped on their necks, feeling them crack under my foot.
“Rickie!” Evan called out. I whipped around, pulling the Flint Locke out from the back of my pants. Arm stretched out, the head vampire stopped dead in his tracks with a look of initial shock on his face. However, once he got a good look at the gun he smiled and asked, “Is that a fucking pirate gun?” I smiled with him and simply said, “Yup!”
I pulled the hammer back with my other hand, holding the knife. Two spikes popped out from either side of the grip. I winced in pain as one shanked into my hand. “Fuck.” I growl as the lead sucker looks on in confusion and curiosity.
Blood begins to flow down the barrel, defying the laws of physics as they fill into the two seals etched around the metal. The thing gives his lips a small lick just before his face turns to surprise when the blood starts to glow, steam rising off the filled in seals.
“Bye.” I say with a sly smirk, a nod and a wink before pulling the trigger. Instead of a loud crack of a bullet being fired, there’s instead a loud explosion sou
nd with a muzzle flash of equal intensity. With the gun spiked into my fucking hand, my arm went flying back and spun me around three or four times before I fell square on my ass. Everyone’s ears are ringing.
I manage to drop the gun and the knife, wiggling my fingers in my ears and just saying “Mawp… mawp… mawp…” until both my hearing and vision come back. I look over to Evan, having jumped back and on the ground. He says something I can’t hear.
“WHAT?” I call out. He gets to his feet and quickly makes his way over to me. Slowly, he says “What. Was. That?” I blankly look at him and then point to the gun with my bloody hand, “Gun!” In exaggerated and sarcastic realization, he exclaims “Oh! Okay then!”
I got to my feet, rubbing my (at that point) unlucky shoulder, pressing my thumb on the hole in my hand. I looked over to find the head vampire, expecting to see him blown into pieces. Instead, I see him knocked back several feet with a large hole in his chest. “Fuck!” I exclaimed, “I was jipped!”
“Why, what was it supposed to happen?” Evan asked, picking up the knife. I groan, picking the gun up as I explained, “I was sold this piece of junk at a shitty flea market. Dude fucking told me Jason Locke made that gun.” Evan looks at me with surprise, “Jason Locke, the Occult Scientist?” I nod, “Yeah, said it was supposed to completely and utterly destroy an-y-thing.”
By that time, we started to hear groaning voices. More than one. We looked around and quickly discovered the moans are coming from the four other vamps we took down. Frustrated, I remembered, “Fuck, I forgot we’re supposed to burn them too…” Evan went wide eyed, “How do you forget some shit like that?”
Suddenly, we hear the head vampire call out in pain along with an audible crunch of bones. We look over and see the edges of the hole in his chest started to cave inward. We kept watching as more and more of his whole body crunched and pulled towards this hole, slow at first. Before we knew it, his knees bent towards his chest, his arms crossed over the hole before crunching into it.
We both looked on in horror as we felt the wind slowly pick up behind us. Leaves began to kick up from the woods, swirling around the body as his head lifted up involuntarily. He was crying out in not just pain, but desperation and fear. Tears flowed down his face and dripped forward. Suddenly, he was silenced as his neck snapped as his head moved forward more.
His whole body started to crunch, crack and break into this hole; this void of nothing in his chest. The wind started to get real bad to the point we realized it was because of this hole. Evan suddenly pointed out the squirming vampires. Their bodies started to drag towards their quickly consuming leader.
I looked to him wide eyed and we didn’t need to say anything. However, as we quickly booked it away I heard him yell “Leg it!” Through a blizzard of dead leaves, dirt and tiny rocks, we didn’t stop running until we were two blocks away. The whole time, we kept hearing moans of pain and desperation along with cracks and crunches.
I’m not sure when it was, but at some point we realized the cracks and crunches we were hearing weren’t bone, but tree branches and limbs instead. We stopped a block or two away and looked on. From the distance, we could see the outer trees bend inward, straining from something. Suddenly, whatever was pulling them in let go and they swayed back and forth.
Evan and I stood in quiet disbelief for a few seconds. He started to mumble, “That was like a black hole… in his chest.” I looked to him confused, “What the fuck is a black hole?” He looks to me with a deadpan expression as he explains, “It’s like a white hole, but they suck stuff in.” I nod.
After a few more seconds I ask him, “By white holes, you mean those things out in space that spew shit? How people think the universe was created, that kinda thing?” He rolls his eyes, “Yes, those white holes.” I nod again as we started to hear police sirens, “Ok… We better get the fuck out of here.” Evan quips, “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all night!”
Author’s Note
Ok, so I’ll admit it. This whole book exists because I’m a nitpicky nerd. I asked questions like “In the show Supernatural, if so many people are being killed and there’s an annual apocalypse, then why is the greater public still oblivious about it? Wouldn’t the government be involved?” Or better yet, “If the Sherman AntiTrust Act broke up Standard Oil in 1911, how are the Ghostbusters still around? Are there other companies that do the same thing? What would they look like if they don’t have proton packs?”
This book is my way of answering those questions. Of course, it started off with a schlocky fanfic premise of “What if Ghostbusters, but Supernatural too?” The world I built from that ended up taking off without me, at that point. That brought up more questions like “What would medicine look like?” “What kind of laws would there be?” Public health, public safety, etc, etc.
So, in two years time, I pounded out several drafts of what became this. When they say “Films aren’t released, they escape.” I know exactly what they’re talking about now. Dear lord, the first draft of this book looks almost nothing like the one you just read. I’m telling you, rewrites upon edits upon do-overs. I didn’t listen when Charles Bukowski said to do literally anything else BUT write… even though he was referring to poetry, but it still counts.
Though to be honest, I’m glad I did it! Beyond the accomplishment and bragging rights of “Hey, I wrote a novel!” I can say my ideas are out there and in story form. Lots of people on the internet talk about how they’d “fix” this or that movie. Well I ended up putting all my “fixes” into a (hopefully) compelling narrative. If this goes completely nowhere, but at least inspires someone to do the same, then I’ll feel I’ve done my duty in the world. I encourage you, reading these words to do the same as well. If only for bragging rights.
With Much Love and Respect
Tredick Foster
Special thanks to
Eric (duh!), without whom this would never have been possible. My mom, for harboring my broke ass so as I could scrape this weighty tome out of my brain. My “CIA Handler” Summer, for beta reading this and giving me the much needed encouragement on the home stretch. Dawn, who still has my dragon hoodie and gave me a joke bit to play with. Graham, for helping with various names and humor. Hope this is on your desk by Monday. Last, but certainly not least, Dan Aykroyd and Eric Kripke. Neither of which will probably read this, but thank you both for creating such lasting, compelling and genre defining properties for me to draw inspiration from. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for shaping my creativity.
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