Memento Mori - Part 2

 This is from the second half of Memento Mori. This is the actual ghost story I wanted to build; everything in Part 1 is all about ghost backstory. This sequence is currently written to make sense as a piece by itself; there are some asides here to make sense of important details that will just be established before this point in the final project.

I'm also making the call to scale down the intensity and frequency of profanity in these drafts here. The use of language is deliberate in setting the tone and building character. I think that that authenticity in the anger and darkness of this story's tone is crucial for the target demographic, but the creative writing group I workshop these pieces with generally finds such language too spicy to digest.

July, 1987

    I don’t know what it is about midsummer that drives people to get drunk and set off explosives for fun. Maybe it’s just more of a guy thing. I don’t know. I’ve always been bad at figuring that stuff out. Why couldn’t I just be friends with some barbecue people instead of the walking fire hazards? At least cheeseburgers and pork chops are delicious.

    Oh well. It is what it is.

    I can already see a few smoke clouds lazily drifting up above the rooftops, barely visible against the orange flickering of a backyard bonfire somewhere nearby. The smell is so heavy it almost feels like the whole town should be on fire. Everybody’s just burning things tonight.

    I walk around the street corner and step off the sidewalk into grass that’s almost halfway to my knees. Bethany’s van is sitting in the abandoned parking lot behind The King’s Carcass. Patches of weeds push up through huge cracks in the hopelessly faded asphalt. It’s getting pretty dark already, but there’s still a tiny bit of pink in the sky, so it’s not too late to recognize people from this far away.

    "Hey, you made it!” Keith calls excitedly once he recognizes me, even though I’m still five seconds of walking outside normal conversation range.

    Behind him, Elaine lights the fuse of some kind of noise-making spark fountain, and stumbles backwards a few steps before falling flat on her ass. I take back what I said about drunk fireworks being a guy thing, I guess. 

    Bethany is sitting even further back, laughing about something with her boyfriend of the month. His name’s like, Eddie, or Andy, or something like that. I’ll just call him Eddie, I guess. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon moose on it, which is probably more appropriate than he meant it to be. I once saw a moose very casually flatten a wooden fence without slowing down, having failed to recognize the fence as an obstacle.

    Keith immediately walks up to me and gives me the kind of awkward hug guys will do when they’re trying really hard to hug somebody while touching them as little as possible.

    “You feelin’ alright? You look kinda miserable,” He asks.

    “I’m fine,” I insist.

    “Still upset about your dog?”

    “I mean … he’s not really my dog. He just followed me home from the dog church one day. If he wants to come back, he’ll come back, and if he doesn’t, then he won’t. That’s just how these dogs work.”

   The “dog church” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. There’s an abandoned church a few blocks from my house, the sign defaced to read “St. Patrick’s Church of God Dog”, after the pack of stray dogs that took over the place. Pretty much any lost or homeless dogs will end up settling into that pack eventually.

    “I’m sure he’s fine,” Keith insists.

    “I’m sure he’s fine too. He got along fine for most of his life without me.”

    I just caught a little bit of what Bethany and Eddie are going on about. Sounds like Bethany roped him into a discussion about which cartoon princesses are the sexiest, and she’s trying to convince him that the “toadstool” in “Princess Toadstool” must be referring to her having a huge package. Seems he’s too dense to piece together what mushrooms and dongs have to do with each other.

    Eddie looks up at me, smiles, and reaches behind him to grab an unopened bottle.

    “Beer?” he offers.

    “No thanks,” I answer.

    “Beans?” Bethany asks.

    She holds up a can of baked beans, a plastic spoon, and a handheld can opener.

    “I . . . screw it. Sure.”

    As I’m sitting down with my can of beans, I notice that she’s got a half-empty can sitting on the ground next to her, and a few more unopened cans sitting on her jacket behind her.

    Keith opens his mouth to say something, but he’s cut off by another whistling shriek and a tower of rainbow sparks erupting into the air across from us.

    “You guys see that one?” Elaine asks loudly, barely containing a chuckle. She walks over to sit with us, and collapses awkwardly on the asphalt. “How much more do we got?”

    “Easy, girl,” Keith insists. “Don’t burn it all at once.”

    The two of ‘em start snapping at each other over something. I’m too focused on opening a can of beans to piece together what, exactly. Eventually, Elaine just belches an insult at him and grabs a half-empty beer bottle she apparently left on the ground.

    Keith finally gets back to the thing he wanted to talk about. Mostly complaints about the gas station he works at. Something about the manager being an uptight asshole. I don’t really know. I’m mostly just pretending to listen to be polite. I’ve never cared for that kind of workplace drama.

    Just as I’m finishing my can of beans, and Keith is finishing his story, he pauses ... and suddenly spins around to look to the woods behind The King’s Carcass. There’s something moving in the grass, and coming towards us quickly. There’s suddenly a burst of claws slapping furiously into the pavement.

    It’s some kind of Alaskan Snow Dog, or something like that. A pretty big boy, with thick black and white fur and bright green eyes, charging across the parking lot as quickly as he can, sprinting directly at me. Without hesitation, Dio seamlessly squeezes himself under my arm to pet himself against me.

    “See? Told you I wasn’t worried about him,” I tell Keith.

    Dio looks up at me, smiling as much as a dog can smile with something in his mouth. He’s holding some kind of animal bone I don’t recognize. Probably picked it up in the woods somewhere.

    “What you got there, boy?” I ask, reaching for it. Dio shakes his head to get away from me, and backs off a bit, glaring at me furiously. “Dio,” I frown at him, “Why you always gotta make this such a headache?”

    “Ohhhh noooooo,” Bethany says sarcastically, deliberately dumping half a can of baked beans on the ground in front of her. “Not my beeeeeans! I can’t eat these now!”

    Honestly, just the sound of food hitting the ground would have been enough. Dio gives a sideways glance at the puddle of beans on the ground, waits a second, then drops what he’s holding to chase after something better.

    “Can dogs eat baked beans?” Keith asks.

    “I dunno. Probably,” Bethany answers. “They eat turds and garbage. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

    “I guess so. Can’t be as bad for him as whatever- is that a fucking gun?”

    He’s right. Dio was absolutely chewing on some kind of revolver. A real cowboy looking gun. It’s pretty stark white, like it’s been bleached in the sun for ages. Picking it up, it’s shockingly light. It feels just like it’s made of animal bone, but it’s unmistakably shaped exactly like a revolver, spinning drum and hammer and everything. Still, the dog tooth impressions suggest that it’s at least made of something soft enough and tasty enough that Dio could start chewing into it.

    Oddly, it looks like it doesn’t have a trigger. I wonder if Dio somehow managed to eat it. I can’t seem to get the drum out to look if there’s any ammo in there. Looking at it from the other end, I can see . . . something in there. Five of the six spots look like they got something like a bullet loaded in them. They’re shaped kinda funny, and don’t look like they’re made of metal.

    Maybe the strangest part is the coloring. I think? I don’t know what to call it. Holding it in the dim light of a mostly full moon and some distant street lights, it’s hard to tell, but there’s some kind of sparkling quality to it. Not like it was randomly dipped into a bucket of glitter, though. There’s something like a pattern to it, but I can’t quite take it all in at once. It almost feels like the little points of light are writhing to life as I turn the gun over, though the part Dio’s chewed on ruins the effect a bit. This is way, way too intricate to be some hillbilly art project.

    “Do we ... like ... call somebody?” Keith asks. “Should we wipe her fingerprints off it first? What if it’s stolen?”

    “It’s not real,” I tell him. “I think it’s an ornament.”

    “What?” Elaine looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Who’s gonna hang that on their Christmas tree?”

    “I mean, it’s a decoration. There’s no trigger or anything.”

    “Why didn’t ya just say it’s a decoration?” She grumbles quietly.

    I sigh at the ground, and climb to my feet.

    “We should still do something about it, right?” Keith asks. “It still might be stolen. What if somebody’s looking for it?”

    “Whatever. We can figure something out tomorrow. Right now, I just want to make sure Dio doesn’t run off with it again.”

    Dio looks up at me because he heard his name, but he can’t be bothered to get up to follow me. He just stares over with a huge, dumb smile, because he’s too preoccupied with his new favorite person in the whole world for right now. Eddie’s got him draped over his lap, ruffling the fur on his back.

    I walk over to Bethany’s van, open the door to the back, and drop the gun onto a tied-off garbage bag sitting against the drink cooler and the cassette player pushed against the back of the driver’s seat. A long whistle shrieks out, followed by an orange flash and a distant pop somewhere behind me. I close the door, and turn back towards the group. Dio hasn’t budged, despite the fireworks. I swear, he’s unshakable. He must have been through a lot.  

    “Well, if it might be worth a lot of money, why can’t we just sell it?” Elaine insists.

    “Sell it- What do you mean “just sell it”?” Keith asks, frustrated. “You know you have to sell it to somebody, right? How are we gonna do that? Put an ad in the paper, and hope the owner or the cops don’t see it?” 

    Hold up. Is that … is that a guy over there? Walking out of the woods opposite the rest of town? I hope it’s just some guy, and not a bear or a cougar. There’s nothing out that way but miles and miles of trees and cliffs.

    “No, you’re stupid!” Elaine spits. “What kinda dumbass just throws money in the trash?”

    “It’s not money!” Keith snaps. “It’s a gun. You can’t buy hookers and weed with just a gun!”

    “Maybe you can’t!” Elaine snaps back. "This is the age of man; the age of dinosaurs is behind us!"

    EEEEEEEEEEEE . . . . . . POP!

    In that brief flash of light, I can very clearly see the silhouette of a man walking towards us. He’s so far away, that when the night comes back, he nearly vanishes into the shadows of the trees.

    “Guys ...”

   Everybody turns to me. Well, everybody but Dio. I point over at the treeline, guessing the spot as best as I can.

    “Somebody’s coming.”

    “What?” Keith asks.

    “A guy. From the woods. I saw him when the fireworks flashed just now. I swear, he’s walking directly at us.”

    “O ... kay?” Elaine says, in a tone that’s almost begging me to slap her. “So?”

    “I dunno ... I got a really bad feeling all of a sudden.”

    EEEEEEEEEEEE . . . . . . POP!

    He’s just barely out of the shadow of the trees now. Maybe a hundred feet from us, and fifty feet from the edge of the parking lot. He’s wearing some kind of huge hooded coat or a blanket or something. It looks like he’s stumbling a bit, like he’s completely blasted senseless on something, or maybe he’s injured. Or just tripping over his blanket. I can’t tell from such a brief flash.

    “Oh man,” Eddie says, concerned. He gently pushes Dio off his lap and climbs to his feet. “HEY! Are you alright buddy?” He starts walking off towards the trees. Dio merrily trots off with him, suddenly obsessed with his new best buddy.

    “Careful, Moosie!” Bethany calls after him.

    “Don’t worry!” He calls back, with the naive confidence of a man-shaped bulldozer who’s never been in a fight he was scared of losing.

    Eddie very casually walks to the end of the parking lot. I can only just barely make out the shape of the shady guy. He’s clearly having a hard time staying on his feet.

    “Everything okay?” Eddie asks loudly, still too far to talk with the guy normally. “You’re not hurt or anything, are you?”

    “ . . . .”

    “Did ya just have a little too much to drink? Talk to me, man. I’m worried about ya.”

    “. . . .”

    EEEEEEEEEEEE . . . . . . POP!

    He’s almost to the edge of the parking lot. Dio yelps a bit, jumping in place once and lowering his head and paws like what he’s seeing will make more sense if he gets below it. Eddie stands there silently for a second, then suddenly whips around, sprinting back towards us.

    “Shit! … SHIT!,” He stumbles a bit, rushing towards us like a panicked bull. “Get in the car! GET IN THE CAR!!”

    Bethany jumps to her feet. Her face is collapsed completely, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Keith leaps up too, almost tripping a bit, but Elaine just sits next to me, paralyzed.

    Eddie is absolutely booking it across the pavement, leaving Dio behind. Dio is still panicking and howling a bit, jumping in place. In a single, smooth motion, Eddie lowers his running stance as he charges into Bethany, scooping her off her feet and shooting off for the van without slowing down. Keith runs after them without hesitating, but Elaine just struggles to get the ground under her.

    I feel around for her wrist without looking away, and pull her to her feet. The shady guy from the woods has made it to the edge of the parking lot, where Dio is losing his goddamn mind. 

    He stops right in front of Dio and he ... he just ... casually picks him up like he’s a little purse dog, leans back, holds Dio squirming over his head, and he unhinges his jaw like a fucking snake and shoves Dio’s head down his throat.

    There’s a horrible, punctuated canine shriek, and a sickening sound like a lawnmower running over a pair of slippers. I swear to God, I must be imagining this, but in a sudden flash of fireworks, I can very clearly see the last bits of white fur vanish into this demon’s mouth. 

    This thing just ate my goddamn dog with the same effort I’d need to eat a potato chip.

    A hand yanks on my jacket collar. I jump, and nearly introduce my fist to Keith’s teeth. He’s yelling at us and pulling us towards the van, but all the meaning drowns in a whirlpool of adrenaline.

    Keith throws open the back of the van, and leaps into the cargo area where Eddie is waiting. I jump in after him, while Elaine circles around to the passenger’s seat and trips into the front seat. Keith and I slam the back doors shut in unison, and we all gather towards the driver’s seat, waiting on Bethany.

    “Let’s go! What are we waiting for?” Keith snaps.

    Bethany pats down her pockets, and her face twists like she’s about to cry. “My keys . . .” She whimpers. “They’re in my jacket.”

    “So?” Keith asks.

    Bethany limply points out the passenger side window, to the pink jacket sitting on the pavement just underneath the demon’s feet. It’s gotta be just ten steps from the van now.

    There’s a lot of noise happening. Lots of outrage. People blaming each other for shit, or just throwing a fit over the situation. I can’t get any of it into my head, though. This thing’s final ten, drunken, shambling steps to the car feel like a million eternities, because it’s finally close enough for me to get a good look at it.

    It’s just a few lightning bolts and a battle axe short of looking like it stepped off a heavy metal album cover. It’s almost completely covered in a beat up, filthy, beige overcoat of some kind, all the way down to the ground. Hood pulled up over its head and everything. Its skin is dark, dark black, and scaly like a reptile. Its head is a snake’s head. Its right eye is glassy and completely soulless, even for a reptile, and its other eye is missing completely; it’s got a really gnarly looking scar running all the way up its face over the top of its head.

    As it takes its last few steps towards the passenger’s side door, it’s apparent there’s something deeply wrong with it. Some of the flesh of its chest and neck is missing, ripped up and ragged and raw, bleeding slightly. Underneath that, steel sinews thread it together over a metal skeleton, machinery faintly whirring as it moves, like a goddamn reptilian Terminator.

    There’s a loud thwack as it crashes against the side of the van, like it just tripped over its own feet. Elaine shrieks, and curls up in the passenger’s seat as small as she can. It leans against the window, its fleshless skeleton hands smearing bits of blood on the glass. It’s glaring down at Elaine with the lifeless, empty-skulled stare of a starving animal. It crouches slightly, leaning back while keeping its hands on the glass.

    It strikes at the glass like a snake, its mouth opening impossibly wide. A mind-shattering explosion of noise breaks out. Its mouth is full of an incomprehensible tangle of writhing machinery; gears and blades furiously chewing at the air lined all the way down its throat. Score lines appear on the glass with a high pitched sound like a saw chewing through steel. On top of that, a deep, alien-sounding rumble pours out of its throat, the kind of impossible noise only a thing from Hell could make. On top of that, Elaine is shrieking like a terrified child, several other people in the car are screaming fuck words, and another screeching firework explosion lights up the inside of the car.

    There’s an iron boulder sinking through my chest. I have to do something, but the only thing my stupid lizard brain can come up with right now is “punch it in the face”, which would help about as much as shoving my hand into a woodchipper.

    Then, the clarity hits. Like a goddamn truck. It’s so obvious now.

    There’s a gun in the van.

    THERE’S A GUN IN THE VAN!

    I’m shaking from adrenaline. I can barely hold myself upright as I whip around, looking for the gun. It’s sitting on the floor, next to the cooler. My heart almost slams out of my chest as I throw myself towards the front of the car.

    Glass shatters. The demon over extends, leaning almost halfway over the now empty window frame. Its just a few inches from Elaine’s face. The horrible stench of burning metal and rotting flesh rips through the vehicle. It starts to back up again, hands on the window frame. I hold the barrel of the gun four inches from its face and squeeze the trigger once, as hard as I can.

    There’s a soft click, but nothing else happens. There’s no bang, and no flash. The gun doesn’t kick at all. I’m starting to feel like a braindead moron for expecting this gun to actually fire.

    The demon seems paralyzed for a moment, then suddenly erupts into a massive pillar of white fire. Despite all the flames, I don’t feel any heat. A long, high-pitched hiss rings out as it stumbles back from the car, followed by the sickening ripple of boiling flesh tearing away and slopping to the floor. In about five seconds, all that’s left is a motionless, charred black skeleton wearing a ripped up cloak that was apparently not damaged by the fire. The shape of it stands for a few moments, before the black remains crumble to the ground, sending the cloak gently fluttering down.

    There’s nothing but heavy breathing for a minute or so, while everybody shakes off the haze of adrenaline. I take the chance to examine the gun. One, two, three, four ... There is one less bullet in there now. If those are bullets, anyway.

    Finally, Bethany says something to break the silence, still staring at the broken window.

    “Oh my God ... how am I gonna explain this to my insurance?”

    Keith slowly turns towards her, making a face like she just unplugged something in his brain.

    “Why does it smell like piss?” Eddie suddenly asks.

    Elaine lurches around and starts screaming at him. Completely incoherently. I’m not even sure all of those sounds are supposed to be words. Her face is bright red, like all the blood in her body just rushed to her face, and she’s crying too hard to get the last couple of words out.

    Bethany turns around, leaning real far over the back of her seat to grab something from the back. She unties the garbage bag, digs around for a second, and pulls out a pair of clean, black sweatpants.

    “I know,” She says gently to Elaine. “It happens. This is why God invented more than one pair of pants.”

    Bethany shoos us all out of the van so Elaine can change. My legs still feel kind of weightless, and my heart’s still racing. The ground feels strange on my feet.

    Bethany walks directly for her jacket, and starts scooping up beer bottles. Eddie follows her, whispering something to her. She rests her head on his shoulder and whispers something back. I figure it’s best not to step on their toes right now.

    Instead, I walk around to the outside of the passenger’s side door. That cloak is still just casually sitting on the ground like it belongs there, on top of a reddish black stain, a bit like somebody shoved a lit firecracker up a watermelon’s ass, then threw an old towel over whatever was left.

    “Hey,” Keith starts softly. “I’m sorry about what happened to Dio.”

    “Whatever,” I say bluntly. “I don’t really care.”

    Why would I say that? Am I trying to convince him that I hate dogs or something?

    I wipe my hand on the corner of my eye, still staring at the ground. It’s always gotta end up like this, huh?

    “So ... ” Keith trails off, “Did you shoot it? Is that what happened?”

    “Yeah,” I answer.

    “With a decoration?” He asks.

    “Huh?”

    “You said that thing’s just an ornament. It doesn’t have a trigger. How did you shoot him with a gun with no trigger and no bullets?”

    I look down at the gun. He’s right. There’s no trigger. I remember that now. But ... I still felt it when I shot it. I know I felt the trigger on my finger. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that weight against my finger. Too much adrenaline. That will still randomly bubble back up from the swamp of half-sleep thirty years from now, I bet.

    “Yeah. No trigger. See?” I  hold up the gun, and point to where the trigger should be. “Not even a groove for where the trigger could have been,” I point the gun at the ground, and act out pulling the trigger. The gun doesn’t react. I check the drum again to be sure. Still four bullets. “Nothing. It’s not a real gun.”

    “Then how did you shoot it?”

    “I don’t know! What are you, the fucking ... imaginary-bone-gun demon-shooting police? I don’t understand any of this any more than you do!”

    “Sorry," Keith throws his hands up defensively. "I’m just ... trying to understand what happened. That’s all.”

    “I know ...” I turn away to avoid looking at him. “I ...”

    Hold up. Not again. Something just moved. Across the street. Ducking down into the pit where the high school used to be. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this before; the uncanny feeling that somehow, somebody who was just watching me suddenly isn’t anymore.

    “Lyra?” Keith asks. “Is there another one?” His voice is weak, like he’s bleeding out and asking a doctor if he’s gonna make it.

    That stops me, turning my heart to lead again. I hadn’t considered that. But I’m able to force myself across the street anyway. A bit of the chewed up grip digs into my palm; my hand wants to clench the living hell out of the gun.

    I slow down a bit as I’m getting close to the chain link fence around the edge, cautiously stepping up to peek down into the massive, squarish hole, ready to find an army of mechanical man-snakes staring back up at me.

    But it’s empty. Relatively, anyway. The bottom is dusted with pine needles, sticks, and a loose scattering of empty chip bags, broken beer bottles, and cigarette butts. Most of the walls and bottom are covered in dirt or trash, but there are some black streaks peeking through in places.

    When the pit was fresh, it was all impossibly black. Like somebody just erased a square patch of reality. You could shine a spotlight down into it, and the light would just stop completely. You couldn’t make out any of the contours down there, because the walls and floor of the pit just utterly swallowed any light that touched it.

    It even still smells kind of ashy. Even a little bit cave-y. That strange kind of smell I got real familiar with back in high school, having spent so much time underground. I’m not sure how that smell got up here.

    I relax my grip. I take one last look down into the pit, but can’t get a good read on much in the moonlight. The darkness is playing tricks on my eyes. I can’t quite make out what’s on the floor in one of the black patches. It’s like a piece of mostly empty midnight sky with only two tiny stars; just a pair of nearly microscopic white dots. Too distant or too tiny to make out any detail.

    It’s funny how your brain can find faces in anything. With the spacing of those two little white dots, and the size and rough shape of that black patch, I want to see the shape of a person down there.

    I’ve only felt this a handful of times before. The first one was a long time ago, walking down into my basement when the shitty, ancient wooden stairs collapsed under me about halfway down. That first moment of earth suddenly turning to air and the world falling out from under my feet hits me just as hard every time.

    Looking down at those two tiny white specks, cautiously staring back at me, violently snaps everything into sharp focus. I instinctively reach into my jacket pocket, but just find a crinkled up receipt. I suddenly remember that I lost that pendant a long time ago.

    I let out a sigh like I’ve just come home to find my dog’s thrown the kitchen trash all over the floor for the fourth day in a row.

    “Why do you always gotta pull something like this?” I ask the darkness quietly.

    A second white shape appears, the blackness split by an ax murderer’s smile. She thinks this is funny. Of course she thinks this is funny.

    “Lyra!”

    I jump in place, and turn around. Bethany is whispering harshly behind me.

  “We should get out of here, before the cops show up to investigate all the screaming. I don’t think they’re gonna be in the mood for ghost stories tonight. Or ever. Lame nerds.”

    “Right ... Yeah ... We might have a ... uh ... problem, here.”

    “What’s up?”

    “... I can’t think of a non-crazy way to explain this. Just see for yourself,” I gesture past the fence.

    Bethany walks up to the fence and hangs on it to put her face right up against the metal. She stares down, scanning the ground.

    “What am I looking for?”

    I look back to the corner where I saw her. But the shadow’s gone. So is that ashy, cave-y smell.

    “ ... She’s gone ...”

    “Damn ...” Bethany says, defeated. “If you see her again, point her out to me. Whatever she is.”

    I step back from the school pit, glancing around for a pair of tiny white dots peeking out from behind a tree or something. But there's nothing. 

    I jump into the back of Bethany's van, where Elaine has curled into a ball and buried her face in her knees, and the boys are sitting in awkward silence. Nobody says anything even after the van starts rolling forward. Not for a while, anyway.

    "What was that thing?" Eddie suddenly asks.

    "Why would any of us know that?" Elaine hisses quietly.

    "I mean, it was clearly some kind of ghost, right?" Keith suggests.

    "Ghost?" I ask.

    "Yeah," Keith says, like he can't understand the question. "What else would it be? A featureless shadow man walks up to you in a ragged old cloak, and you don't call that a ghost? You think he might be Bigfoot?"

    "Featureless? Man, how much were you drinking? I'd say he was pretty well fuckin' featured."

    "I don't think drinking has anything to do with it," Keith answers. "Whatever it was, it got right up to the car. Even that close, it's obviously just a black silhouette. Like a shadow peeled itself off the floor."

    "It was a zombie snake with mechanical limbs," I snap. "He was all black scales and bloody flesh and iron bones woven together. Glassy, soulless reptile eyes. Mouth full of angry machinery. Smelled like burning iron and rotting flesh, like the pits of Hell."

    "Wait, smelled?" Keith asks. "You smelled it?"

    "Yes! Am I going insane here? Tell me you guys didn't see all that."

    "I didn't see that," Eddie says bluntly. It sounds like thinks he's helping me.

    Keith just shakes his head.

    "I saw the teeth," Elaine says quietly. "I saw his eyes, and inside his mouth. I didn't see the snake parts."

    "Well, she's had more to drink than any of us," Keith shrugs.

    Elaine sits up and projects forward to spit at him. Keith's face twists, and he wipes his arm on his jeans.

    "Yeah, I don't know about the snake part," Bethany chimes in, "But I definitely saw some shadowy skeleton hands on the window. A thin white line, like a scar on his face. I wouldn't say he's totally featureless."