by Angie Fox
If we took the hog, Pirate would have to be fastened to me. Grandma had this contraption that was basically a glorified strap-on baby carrier. Pirate would hate it. It wouldn’t be fun for me, either. Pirate hadn’t had a bath in a week or two, and besides, he tended to have digestive issues.
We had to fly. Please. I shoved my clothes farther into the case and tried again.
My Saturn would have been my second choice, but Grandma already told me the demons probably had spotters looking for it. Besides, she was married to that hog. But a plane would be faster. She couldn’t argue with that.
“You ready yet?” Grandma charged up the stairs holding a sandwich and one of the apple juice bottles I kept on hand for school lunches only. “Lizzie! Stop farting around.”
“You have to be kidding me.” The woman expected me to wrap up my life in the time it took her to make a cheese sandwich. All I wanted was a simple, stable life. I liked to have things I could count on—my friends, my job, and even Cliff and Hillary. Heaven knew they’d never change. My spontaneity came from Pirate, and when that miniature problem with paws ran amok, I could just pick him up. Crisis averted. There was a reason I’d avoided people like Grandma.
She shook her head, her long, gray hair tangling over her shoulders. “Time’s, up, Lizzie. We’ve got trouble.”
Because we hadn’t had enough of it lately.
My stomach dropped. “Don’t tell me you blew up my bathroom.”
“Worse. Remember my purple emergency spell? It turned blue. Demons sucked the red right out of it. They’re coming. Fast.”
Yikes! I attacked the case with renewed vigor.
“Stop!” Grandma commanded. “What do you think this is, Spring Break at Daytona Beach? Ain’t no suitcases on a Harley. One backpack.” She held up a single finger, with a silver snake ring wound around it. “One.”
“Let’s just fly,” I pleaded, hearing the desperation in my voice. “It’ll save time!”
She threw her hands out, sloshing apple juice onto the hardwood floor. “I can’t protect a whole plane! You want demons camping out on the fuselage?”
Oh my word. We were a human tragedy waiting to happen. I shoved the image out of my mind. “Fine,” I said, yanking my school pack from its peg. “This will barely fit a tube top and a pair of socks.”
Grandma raised a brow. “Well, won’t the truckers enjoy that?”
I packed a change of clothes and a hairbrush, then dashed to the kitchen for Pirate’s Healthy Lite dog chow and a spare water dish. The bathroom was indeed glowing an incandescent blue. The haze spilled out into the hallway, carried on an invisible cloud. It had a palpable presence. A demonic one. It crept up to the ceiling and inched down across the floor like a slow, steady breath of evil. Holy he-double hockey sticks.
Grandma had already dragged Pirate out front to fit him for his riding gear. I stuffed his food and bowl into my purse, checked the back-door lock and dashed through the living room toward the front door.
“Akkk!” Pirate dashed circles in the yard while Grandma chased him with a black leather contraption that looked like she ordered it straight out of the Ozzy Osborne Pet Gear Catalog.
“Damn it all.” She tossed the contraption to me. “You try it. Lucky Bob built it for his late ferret, Buddy.”
Pirate went still with shock. “Why late? What happened to Buddy?”
We didn’t have time for this. “Pirate! Sit!” I said, summoning up the voice I learned in doggy obedience classes.
“Like hell!” He took off in a dead run.
“Pirate! Ditch the drama before Grandma zaps you in the butt with one of her demon spells.”
He dug in his front legs to stop, but his back legs kept going and he flipped over. Pirate popped back up, shaking with doggie indignation. “She’s going to tie me up! Look at that thing. It’s a doggy straightjacket!”
Grandma loomed over him, fear burning in her eyes. “If we don’t get on this bike in two minutes, you’ll be wearing your intestines as a necklace.”
Pirate released his bladder. I didn’t blame him.
Grandma wound her thick hair into a bun and stuffed it under her helmet while I fought to untangle the black leather straps of the carrier. The Harley roared to life. She pumped the engine until the kickback rattled my teeth. “Lord help us,” I mumbled as I finagled Pirate’s hard little noggin through the ferret carrier. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I yelled, trying not to breathe in any of the choking exhaust billowing from Grandma’s chrome pipes. I hoped Pirate could hear me over the deafening roar. He lashed his head back and forth. I tried to summon the tone I used with my preschoolers. “It’s snug, but that just means I can hold you close and keep you safe.”
“Bullshit.” Pirate yelped, half in, half hanging out of the carrier.
I heaved us both up on the pink Harley with silver flames shooting up the sides. “Hold still,” I ordered as I lowered both terrier and carrier over my head. Not an easy task, considering he’d decided to escape. His stubby legs grasped for traction as they dangled out of the baby carrier.
Grandma secured her bag of jars. “Strap him in!” She growled impatiently. “We need to go. Now.”
“This is humiliating!” Pirate lamented to Grandma’s back as I wedged him in tight and fastened the straps around his tummy, his stubby tail poking me in the stomach.
Grandma reached around to tighten the straps. “Cut the chatter.”
I adjusted my helmet and tried not to think about the deep scratch marks that marred its dull, black surface. How many wrecks had this lady been in? Maybe we could stop somewhere for an extra-heavy-duty helmet with a face mask. While we were at it, maybe we could rent a Volvo.
Grandma wore a sleek silver helmet. Hers didn’t have a safety mask either. What? Would it have broken some kind of biker code to fly down the highway at head-smashing speeds while wearing full protective gear? She eyed me as she pulled on a pair of riding goggles.
“Hold on to my waist,” she hollered over the engine. “Lean when I lean and for God’s sake turn your helmet around. You’ve got it on backward.”
My fingers dug into the strap under my chin. I didn’t know how I was going to survive this odyssey when I couldn’t even buckle a helmet right. And talk about crummy instructions. Lean when I lean. How far? How much? I chewed at my lip. If we crash, please don’t let it be my fault. I felt so helpless.
Grandma eyed the blue smoke curling out from under my locked front door.
“What if Xerxes tears apart my neighborhood?” I asked, wrapping my hands around Grandma’s thick waist. I never really met my neighbors. They never seemed to venture outside of their houses, but still…Pirate squirmed, his legs flopping in the air. All three of us lined up on Grandma’s hog like a warped version of the Three Musketeers.
“No worries, babe.” She reached in her pack for a mossy-looking Smucker’s jar wrapped in masking tape. She yanked off a section of tape, shoved it against my face and yanked it back.
It stung like blazes. “God Bless America!” My hand flew to my right eyebrow.
Grandma spit on the tape that held way too many of my eyebrow hairs. She stuck it back against the nasty-looking jar. “Confuto aggredior!” She fired the jar at my house and it shattered on the front porch. Glass flew everywhere and greasy slime oozed down my top step and onto my red brick walk.
“They’ll be following us now.” Grandma gunned the engine, and my back slammed against the safety bar as we peeled out into the gathering dusk.
“Yell if you see Xerxes or any of his hell-raisers,” Grandma said at the first stoplight we reached. “We’ll make Evel Knievel look like a pussy.”
“Urgle.” I nodded, stomach churning. Two blocks and my butt throbbed from the vibrations. Maybe in another two it would go blessedly numb.
“What? Why’d we stop? Did someone say stop? Pup-per-roni, we were flying! Wind in my face, wind in my ears, wind in my toenails. Wind whipping all up in my…”
“Pirate! If you keep whamming me
in the gut with that tail, I’m going to heave.” Yeah, blame it on the dog. Nausea climbed up the back of my throat. I fought to ignore the smushed stinkbugs on the windshield. And the gas fumes from the cars surrounding us. And the pulsations that rattled every raw nerve in my body when I just wanted to lie down. Why did I ever think this would work? I could barely ride bumper cars without yarfing all over the place.
Pirate’s tail pounded my fragile stomach. “Your problem is you got no sense of adventure. Green light!”
Grandma stomped on the gas and we lurched from zero to five hundred in two seconds flat. The wind stung my face and arms. Pirate flung his legs out in the air. “Eyyah! I’m king of the world!”
“Car!” I screamed as we slammed toward a Toyota Prius.
“Yyy-yes!” Grandma swerved at the last second, zigzagged between lanes and gunned it out onto the open road.
I am going to die. What was worse? The road ahead of us or the demons we left behind? At that moment, I wasn’t sure.
Thanks to small miracles, we made it out of Atlanta alive. We zipped over the Georgia/Alabama border near Bowdon and caught the back roads from there. Alabama had plenty of quiet side roads where we could still rumble at butt-breaking speeds without risking detection on the open highways.
In the darkness, the trees on the side of the road formed an army of shadows, breached occasionally by the light from a house. I breathed in the warm night air. It was a moment to savor because—sure as Grandma’s Smucker’s jars—our luck had to run out sometime.
It almost didn’t seem real—the demon in my bathroom, my biker-witch grandma, any of it. And now we were out on the road with no more than a change of clothes and a doggy bowl. This was so not me. I didn’t like to leave for the grocery store without a typed shopping list and my color-coded coupon file.
Worry about things you can control, like…
Darned if I could think of anything.
Okay, fine. I could still have a moment of peace. I tuned out the droning roar of the bike and focused on the good in my life. I nuzzled my little dog, his prickly hair warm against my cheek. It reminded me of when he was a puppy and used to like to curl up on my chest and listen to my heartbeat. I felt myself relax. Pirate too. He fell asleep somewhere after Talladega, his little legs dangling out of the ferret carrier.
Sure enough, trouble found us at a QuikTrip just outside of Jasper. We’d stopped for gas, a clean bathroom and a Rooster Booster Freezoni for Grandma. While she parked herself in front of the self-serve slushie counter, debating the merits of adding a blue raspberry layer to her energy drink, I found a field for Pirate next to the station.
He sprinted across the small meadow, leaping here and there, just for the fun of it. “I was made for the open road. How come we never blew out on a road trip before?”
Because I’d never thought of it. The full moon illuminated my romping dog, as well as the road dust clinging to every inch of my body. Ugh. I smelled like a diesel gas pump. I brushed at the grime on my arms. “We were fine in Atlanta.”
“Fine does not mean alive!” he said, hurdling over a patch of weeds. “Tingly!” He hopped back the other way. “Oh yeah. That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, continuing his assault on the shrubbery. “Belly scratch!”
“Pirate. Hurry up. Do your thing. Grandma will want to leave sooner rather than later,” I said, as I caught her out of the corner of my eye. She’d chucked her Freezoni and jogged toward us with a hotdog wrapper flapping out of her pocket and the look on her face I was coming to dread. Shadows gathered in the skies above the QuikTrip.
Pirate sniffed furiously at a clump of dried grass. “Hold the phone, Lizzie. You guys eat hotdogs while I get dull, dry dog food. And now you rush me in the john.”
“Four pixies,” Grandma called out before stooping over to catch her breath, “back by the beef jerky. Two more by the weenie machine. Let’s move, people!”
Sweet heaven. Pixies? She might as well have told me she’d spotted the Easter Bunny.
Pirate’s head popped up from a clump of wild daisies. “Don’t pressure me. I can’t stand pressure.” He circled twice. “Oh look, now I’m all locked up.”
Grandma and I made tracks for the bike at pump 6 while I tried to wrap my head around our newest supernatural terror. Someday, when I wasn’t about to have a heart attack, she was going to have to sit down and explain all this to me. “Tell me about pixies, Grandma. They’re bad?”
“They report to the imps. I thought we’d keep you under the radar, least ’til we sharpened you up.”
“Until Xerxes the demon,” I said under my breath. “Wait.” I gripped her arm. “You smell that?” A faint trace of sulfur floated past. And what else? Burned hair. It smelled like evil. Oh no. I sure hoped I was wrong. “Pirate, now!”
For once, he listened. I stuffed Pirate into the ferret carrier while Grandma reached for a Smucker’s jar. She unscrewed it, revealing a leafy-looking sludge. And was that a deer tail? My hand shot to my eyebrows.
She yanked the top off her silver snake ring. “Here.” She forced the severed cobra head into my free hand. Its emerald eyes twinkled under the fluorescent lights of the gas station. Protruding from the ring, which was now basically a snake neck, was a very small, very sharp-looking needle. Grandma plunged it into her chest.
“Ak! What are you doing?”
She winced as it pierced the flesh above her heart. I seized her arm as she flicked one, two, three drops of blood into the jar.
“What kind of lame-ass question is that? Gimme.” She took the snake head and snapped it back onto her ring. Dark wet blood stained her Kiss My Asphalt T-shirt. “Blood. It’s a small death. Makes the spell stronger.” She braced the Smucker’s jar between her thighs and threw on her helmet. “We’re gonna need an ass load of magic to get out of this.”
“Ohhh squirrels!” Pirate struggled against the ferret carrier, his legs automatically giving chase.
Not squirrels. My voice caught in my throat. Three—no—at least five shadowy creatures slinked toward us. I scrambled for my helmet, if only to whack them with it. They curled around the gas pumps and past the only other car at the pumps, a white Chevy Nova. “Help!” I called, hoping like heck the Nova belonged to an exotic-animal wrangler.
“Pipe down. Nobody can see the imps but us.”
Imps?
Lovely. I’d have to thank Grandma for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of magical creatures. Sweat pooled under my arms and chest. The imps’ congested breathing grew more and more excited as they drew closer. Purple eyes glowed from under dark, furry brows. They had weasel-like faces and the bodies of thick, hastily constructed people. Dark hair clung to their bent frames.
“Confudi!” Grandma tossed the Smucker’s jar and it shattered between two of them. The air radiated for a split second and the creatures screeched.
The imps retreated as fast as they’d appeared. Yow. I let myself breathe again. “You’ve gotta teach me about those jars,” I said. Maybe I’d try something with a SoBe bottle or two.
Grandma’s eyes widened. “Move!” She shoved both of us against a gas pump and I felt a wave of energy crackle past.
I spun to face her, Pirate dangling between us. “What was that?”
Huge wings beat a blue streak above us. I looked skyward and dread swelled inside me. A monstrous eagle with the body of a lion circled above the convenience store. Big as a truck, it screeched and displayed feathers of red, purple, green, blue. Impossible. Oh begonias. After today, who was I to even think that?
“The Phantom Menace!” Pirate’s legs clambered for him. “You coming back for more? Shake your tail feather this way. I’ll show you more.”
The creature blocked out the moon as it plunged right for us. I scrambled for the hard leather seat of the Harley. The bottoms of my shoes slipped off the riding boards as Grandma peeled out of the parking lot. We were on Route K in a heartbeat, flying so fast it made my head spin.
“I float li
ke a butterfly, sting like a bee!” Pirate hollered as we sped off into the night. I clung to Grandma and closed my eyes to keep from being sick. I didn’t know how we were going to outrun that thing. My hair swirled under the edge of my helmet, and I could feel my face stretching with the wind. Every hill we crested, I swore the bike went airborne for a second or two. Heaven help us.
“Holy shit!” Grandma hollered as we careened around a hairpin turn at a speed I didn’t even want to know. The bike skidded, skipped over a dip in the road and slapped pavement again. My fingers dug into her sides when I saw the road ahead. Or make that, the lack of road.
Our stretch of asphalt ended in a small lake. It consumed both lanes of the road and the forest beyond.
Grandma hunkered low and steady over the handlebars. “Hold on!”
“What? Stop!” My gut clenched as we thundered straight for it. A flash flood like that could sweep a car away, much less three idiots on a bike.
There were no detour signs, no road cones. No reason for the water. My toes curled and I clung to Grandma tighter. We were traveling uphill. Water does not run uphill. But this water did.
Pirate fought the ferret carrier. “Oh no. I don’t do water. Water is not good.” He lurched, just like he did every time I tried to dunk him in a—
“Bath!” he yelled and pitched his body to the left.
“Shiii…p!” I screamed, as I lost my balance and toppled into the air.
“Holy hell!” Grandma grabbed us by the doggy sling. The bike plunged into the lake and skidded sideways through the surging water. Depression and rage swelled from its depths. “It’s an ambush!”
We lost the bike in a wave of water. I clutched Pirate as we slammed nose over toes into the abyss. Eyes closed tight against the muck, I fought past fleshy ropes of seaweed. It clung to my arms, heavy and stringy.
Please let it be seaweed, even if we are a thousand miles from the ocean.
Pirate’s flailing leg caught my arm, and I winced as his doggy claws sliced deep.
We broke through to the surface and, blessedly, I was able to touch bottom. Afraid to draw too much attention, I crouched in the water, just high enough for Pirate to keep his head above the churning darkness. The despair of this place surrounded us. Waves of hopelessness and fear tangled my insides. Grandma was nowhere in sight.
