by JG Faherty
Staring at the remnants of the garage, he found that he missed his bike almost as much as he missed his family. He’d built Diablo with his own hands, crafting all his customizations around the frame and engine of a 1975 Harley Electra Glide. Pure power and comfort. No riding around with his hands and arms over his head like a baboon. He’d even done the paint himself. It’d taken him more than a year, and every extra cent he could muster. The bike had been his pride and joy.
Motherfuckers took that away, too.
If only I could’ve brought the bike with me. Think what I could’ve done. In his thoughts, he pictured himself like Ghost Rider from the comics, his skull flaming and Diablo a fire-breathing demon, racing through the streets of Hell Creek while people cowered behind store windows.
I’d ride that beast to my house, so I could—
Without warning, the ground flashed by beneath him, his consciousness moving so fast it raced past the cars on Main Street.
What the—?
A familiar feel came over him; his arms extended, his knees bent. His fingers clenching and unclenching as he shifted gears.
The rumble of a seventy-horse-power engine vibrating beneath him.
Diablo! But how?
It didn’t make sense. But then, neither did his presence as a spirit or the fact that he couldn’t see himself, or the bike, yet he could feel everything as if he had a body. As if he were real.
Eddie no longer cared. All that mattered was not being tied to one spot anymore. With a whooping war cry, he opened the throttle and let the bike take him where he wanted to go.
Home.
Chapter Eight
Seated on a small bench outside the Dairy King, Carson Ryder and Kellie Jones looked up as unexpected thunder rumbled overhead.
“That’s weird,” Kellie said, returning her attention to her pistachio cone. “It’s not supposed to rain today.”
“Yeah.” Carson continued staring at the sky. Something about that thunder hadn’t sounded right. Almost as if it wasn’t thunder at all, but….
He couldn’t place it.
“How’s your ice cream?”
“What?” Carson glanced at his cone, where streams of chocolate and strawberry threatened to run down the sides. He quickly licked the drippings away. “It’s, um, good.”
Carson kept his gaze on the ice cream. His tongue felt numb, and not because of the cold dessert. True to her word, Kellie had called him the day after the funeral. He’d been so stunned by the call that he’d found himself unable to put a coherent sentence together. It’d taken him several agonizing minutes to get up the nerve to ask her if she wanted to do something after school later in the week, all the while fearful that she’d hang up before he got the words out. When she’d said yes, he’d felt excited and relieved and happy and all sorts of things he couldn’t put into words.
Until they’d actually gotten off the school bus at the Main Street stop and walked over to the Dairy King. Then outright terror had hit him as he realized he’d be expected to make conversation without sounding like a total dork.
He kept desperately trying to think of something to say, something that would show her he was more than just the smart kid in class, more than someone from the Trailers, as his neighborhood was known.
So far, the best he’d managed was, “Boy, it’s really hot today,” and “What kind of ice cream would you like?”
She’s only putting up with this because her dad and your mom are friends. As soon as she finishes her ice cream, she’s gonna say how she’s got homework, or—
“How are you and your mom holding up?”
“Huh?” It took him a moment to switch mental gears. “Um, you know, it’s been weird. Like he’s not really gone. Not for good. My mom cries a lot, and she’s been spending more time in bed than usual. I fix her meals now, and make sure she takes her medicine. All the stuff Eddie used to do. But then there’s times when….” He let his voice trail off, wishing he hadn’t opened up so much, and knowing Kellie wouldn’t let it drop.
“When what?” Kellie finished the last of her cone, gave her fingers a wipe with her napkin, and then flicked her tongue over her lips. Carson knew it wasn’t any kind of come-on, but it still set his heart beating faster.
“Well, it sounds stupid, but when I go to bed, I feel like Eddie’s still out there somewhere. I lie there and I find myself listening for the sound of that stupid motorcycle. He always started it or shut it off at the road, thinking we wouldn’t hear him. But it didn’t matter. His bike was so loud it could wake the dead.”
Stunned by how much he’d said, Carson stopped talking, even though there was more inside him, words and emotions suddenly pounding to be set free.
When Kellie didn’t say anything, he figured he’d really gone and blown it. Instead of just being a dork, now he was a weird dork.
“I told you it was stupid.”
Then she surprised him again. “No, it’s not. When my brother died, I couldn’t believe he was really gone. And I was angry all the time. Angry that he got wasted and drove off the road. Angry at the people he hung out with. Even angry at my dad, although it wasn’t his fault. It took me a long time to get over it. And then when my parents got divorced, and my mom left, a lot of those feelings came back. I felt abandoned. I don’t know how my dad put up with me, I was such a bitch. I just couldn’t believe I’d lost her, too, you know?”
“Yeah!” Carson nodded his head. “That’s it exactly. Why the hell did he have to go to the garage that night? Why couldn’t he have just stayed home for once? If he had….”
“He’d be alive.”
Fighting back tears – no way was he gonna cry in front of Kellie! – Carson found himself nodding again. “Yeah. He’d be alive. And we wouldn’t be alone.”
Something touched his arm and he almost jumped when he realized it was Kellie’s hand.
“You can’t think like that,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “It took me a while, but eventually I started to understand that it wasn’t my fault, or my parents’ fault, or even Jeff’s fault. It was those damn Hell Riders. They got a kid drunk and let him drive. And whatever happened to your brother, that’s not your fault or your mom’s. It’s not even Eddie’s fault. He did nothing wrong by going to the garage. You can’t blame him for what someone else did to him. You can’t ask yourself ‘what if?’ He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes things like that happen.”
“Yeah.” Carson barely heard her. He was looking at her hand, reveling in the feel of her skin against his.
Thunder rumbled again, only this time it didn’t come from the sky. Kellie turned to look up the street, and her hand fell away. Anger, the same anger he’d just confessed to, churned in Carson’s stomach as he watched four motorcycles take the corner at River Road. Polished chrome turned the afternoon sun into a thousand burning daggers of light and windows rattled as the four Hell Riders accelerated down Main Street.
“I hate them.” The expression on Kellie’s face told Carson how much she meant it.
“I hated Eddie’s bike.” The words popped out of Carson’s mouth before he even knew they were there. “He called it Diablo. Who names their motorcycle? Sometimes I think he loved that bike more than he loved us.”
“Is that why you hated it?”
Carson wished she’d put her hand back on his arm. Or that he had enough guts to touch her like that. The Hell Riders had ruined the mood, though. Now there was just talking. He looked at her, and she stared back at him.
“No. I hated it because I knew someday it would take him away from us forever. Except I figured it would be him getting on it and just riding away, going out for a pack of smokes and never coming back, the way my dad did. Or ending up dead on the highway ’cause he had too much to drink. But you know what?”
Kellie shook her head, never breaking their intens
e eye contact.
“I’d give anything to hear the stupid motorcycle again.”
* * *
“I didn’t leave!” Eddie shouted, hoping that from two stories up some part of his essence would make it down to Carson. “I’d have never left you and Mom.”
After the thrill of experiencing Diablo again, even if only in an imaginary sense, and finding out he could move to different places in town, the afternoon had quickly soured for Eddie. He’d looked into the windows of his house and seen his mother, paler and more drawn than ever, sleeping in her bed. He’d planned on sticking around until she woke up or Carson came home, but his guilt – it’s my fault she looks like that – lay too heavy on his invisible shoulders, so he’d headed back into town. There, he’d found Carson and Chief Jones’s daughter coming out of the Dairy King.
“Way to go, little brother,” he said, watching the two kids sit down on a bench. So they’d gotten together after all. He floated down until he could hear them talking. At first, he felt a little weird for eavesdropping. Sort of a voyeuristic excitement accompanied by embarrassment. Like when you were a kid and you caught your parents fooling around when they thought you were asleep.
Then he heard what they were talking about.
Him.
It was like dying all over again, listening to his brother’s words.
“Goddammit!” As if the curse was an ignition key, Diablo rumbled to life beneath him once more, and just like that! he went roaring down the road after the four Hell Riders.
* * *
“Did you hear that?” Carson looked around.
“What?” Kellie asked.
“That weird thunder again. Like before. Except it didn’t sound like thunder.”
“More motorcycles, probably.” Kellie stood up and tossed her napkin in the trash. “I’ve got homework to do.”
“Sure. Homework.” There it was, the blow off, just as he’d expected. “Me too.”
Kellie’s hand, cool and a little sticky from the ice cream, slid into his and pulled him up from the bench. “Well, we’re in some of the same classes. Why don’t you come to my house? We can study together.”
It took Carson almost a full block to find his voice.
Chapter Nine
Eddie stayed with the Hell Riders as they cruised past the town limits and took a short, unpaved road that led into the Everglades. He’d known where they were going as soon as they got onto the highway; the road to the clubhouse was as familiar to him as his own driveway.
The four bikers went inside and Eddie took a moment to rest. Unlike his other trips across town, this one had left him feeling punky, like back in the days when he’d stay out all night partying and then go straight to work. Even sinking down to window level was an effort.
He forgot all about being tired when he looked inside and saw Hank Bowman, Duck Miller, and Harley Atkins laughing as they clapped Mouse Bates on the back and high-fived him.
“Nice going, Mouse!” Hank handed the smaller rider a beer. “Fuckin’ Police Chief Dickhead thinks he can try to scare us? Shit. He might as well put his arson case in a box and file it unsolved, ’cause he ain’t never gonna get nothin’ on us.”
Staring through the window, Eddie ground invisible teeth. Bastards! I’ll kill all of you! I’ll see you in fuckin’ hell!
“Yeah, I could tell he was pissin’ in the wind,” Mouse said. “But I think we oughtta be careful for a while, lay low.”
“Lay low? No way!” Duck opened a beer, spraying foam all over the place before he got the can to his mouth.
“Shut up, Duck,” Hank said. He glared at Mouse. “What’d you hear?”
Mouse shrugged. “Somethin’ Jones said before he cut me loose. He’s takin’ this real personal, he said. And he had a look…. Man, I never seen him like that. Like he was just itchin’ for a reason to take a swing at me.”
“He knows he’s fucked.” Harley lowered his barrel-shaped body into a dusty, worn reclining chair. The wood creaked under his weight and when he leaned back, his massive belly formed a medicine ball-sized dome beneath his dirty Rage Against the Machine t-shirt. “He’s…what’s the word? Flusterated.”
Hank snorted. “That’s frustrated, you idiot. And we knew it was personal. Ain’t no secret Jones is all cozy with Eddie’s mother. So what’s the big deal?”
Mouse swigged beer and belched before replying. “I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t remember ever seein’ him so pissed. Not even when your brother decked him that night down at Lanie’s.”
As mad as he was, Eddie couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the night Ned Bowman had punched Chief Jones. Lanie’s was a biker bar on the highway between Hell Creek and Homestead. Well outside of Jones’s jurisdiction and Ned had known it. Jones had been nosing around about a sudden influx of pot in Hell Creek, and Ned was six tequilas over his normal limit, which meant he was being a bigger douchebag than usual. They’d gotten to jawing and Ned had clocked Chief Jones right in the mouth. Knocked him out cold. The whole gang had boogied out of there, of course, laughing their asses off all the way back to Hell Creek. Afterward, Jones had made their lives hell – and their wallets a lot thinner – for about a month, hitting them with everything from speeding tickets to citations for disturbing the peace.
But they’d all agreed it’d been worth it.
“Fuck him,” Hank said, and threw his beer can at the wall.
Eddie flinched as the can hit right next to the window, momentarily forgetting no one could see him.
“He’s gonna keep comin’ down on us.”
“So what?” Hank held out his hand and Duck tossed him another beer. “If he does, you just keep your mouth shut. How fucking hard is that? If Jones had any real brains, he’d be a cop in a real town, ’stead of a shit burg like Hell Creek.”
“He was smart enough to break Eddie and put your brother in jail.” Mouse stepped back as he spoke, putting himself out of range of Hank’s fists. But instead of getting angrier, Hank gave a nasty laugh.
“Yeah, and we paid Ryder back for that, didn’t we? He got what he deserved, and the same thing’ll happen to anyone else who opens his mouth. Any problems with that?”
Eddie seethed as the other three gang members shook their heads.
“Good.” Hank slammed his beer against the stolen picnic table they used for poker and meals. Foam sprayed out, adding to the innumerable stains in the rough wood. “Let the rest of the boys know. I don’t want to hear nothin’ else about it.”
Watching his ex-friends laugh and joke as they finished their beers and prepared to get the evening’s party started fueled Eddie’s rage even further. They’d just admitted to killing him, while he stood there helpless to do anything about it. Every part of him burned, blazing with a mad energy worse than anything he’d ever felt while alive.
When the four Hell Riders walked outside to dump some empty beer kegs in the back, he couldn’t control himself any longer. All his wrath came out in a furious scream.
“I’ll kill you all, you motherfuckers!”
At that exact moment, just as Hank shut the door, every window in the clubhouse exploded inward, filling the place with deadly glass shrapnel.
“Holy fuck!” Hank dove to the ground, Mouse and Duck close behind him.
Harley simply stood there, staring at the clubhouse, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
“Get down!” Duck shouted at him, pulling out a pistol. He was the only one in the gang who had a permit to carry, thanks to his uncle the mayor. “Someone’s shootin’ at us.”
Harley remained standing, a perfect target if someone had been firing at them. “They are? I didn’t hear no guns. And how’d they do that?” He pointed to their motorcycles.
All the rearview mirrors were shattered.
“Son of a bitch.” Hank got to his feet and looked around. The othe
rs joined him, although Duck didn’t put his pistol away. “What the hell…?”
* * *
What the hell? Eddie’s thoughts mirrored Hank’s. Did I do that?
After the explosion of glass, he’d shot up into the air, an instinctive reaction that caught him by surprise. By the time he got control of himself, he’d been almost a hundred feet over the clubhouse. Below him, Hank and the others were cursing at the damage to their bikes and wondering what had happened.
Eddie’s anger remained, but at the same time he felt exhausted, drained of all strength. When the Hell Riders climbed on their cycles and roared off, he didn’t bother following them. Instead, he let himself slowly float back toward town like an empty boat drifting to shore on an invisible current.
His thoughts, however, raced at top speed.
What the hell am I? Am I a ghost? An angel?
Why am I still here instead of heaven or hell or wherever fuck it is dead people go?
Are there others like me, and I just can’t see them, or am I alone?
His questions kept circling around to two main questions.
I can control energy. I can move from place to place. What else can I do?
And….
Why? Why am I here?
Looking deep inside himself, he found he didn’t care about the second question. He was still around, for whatever reason. For how long, he didn’t know. But he’d been given a chance.
A chance to get revenge.
And he planned on making the most of it.
Chapter Ten
Over the next two days, Eddie worked harder than he ever had while alive. Without the need to eat or sleep, he found it easy to devote his total attention to learning as much about himself as he could. He quickly discovered that even though he had no actual body, he still had certain physical limitations, some of which he managed to overcome, at least to a degree.
