Delinquency

by Daemon McRae


Act Four: Lights?

Act Four: Lights?

Indigo stayed on her knees, lamenting the loss of her only mode of transportation. She even went so far as to lean against the bumper of her beloved van, caressing it lovingly. “It’s ok, Brutus. Mama will get you home,” she whined.

Dusty had to hold back a torrent of laughter. “Bru-um… you named it Brutus?” he asked slowly, in very measured tones.

The glare Zap shot over her shoulder answered many a question as to where her last name came from. “It’s a HIM. HIS name is Brutus Maximus!” she barked. Returning her attention to the fading chrome on the back of her now DOA vehicle, she cooed, “Don’t listen to the bad man, baby. Indigo’s got you.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and put a hand on Dusty’s shoulder before he could pursue what could only be a most demeaning line of questioning. “I’d let it go,” Twilight said quietly. “I remember when she hit some loose sheet metal on the highway and gouged her oil pan. It was like a soap opera with only one actor.” She turned her focus to her distraught friend, saying encouragingly, “It’s ok, Indigo. We’ll call a tow truck or something. Maybe there’s some stuff in the garage here that’ll work.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “Good luck with that. I mean, you might be on to something with the garage. Lord knows what the old man stashed in there. But if you want to call somebody, have fun with that. The old man never bothered to establish a landline in the house, so that people had to come to him directly if they wanted something. And good luck with getting a cell signal out here. Why do you think I didn’t tell you have off what we just covered over the phone? I’d have gladly saved you the gas if I thought any of what I just shared was enough to scare you off.”

Treble gave her a reproachful glance. “Why didn’t you just call us from your apartment?”

She shrugged. “Stopped paying rent on it when the will finalized. Why do you think I want this place cleaned so badly? I literally have nowhere else to go. My family’s just as happy to leave me in this hell hole as they are leaving it to rot. I mean, I guess I could have called you on the office phone, but would that really have changed anything? I mean right now, of course.”

Spooks shrugged. “Probably not. Let’s get Rubble out here, see if he can be of any help.” With a curious look from his new employer, he elaborated, “Rubble’s the kind of kid who spends his summer working on his car. Up until recently ago he worked construction for his uncle, who taught him pretty much anything you can teach a teenager about anything with wheels on it. If there’s something in the garage that’ll fit this… van,” he added cautiously, with a warning glare from Indigo, “He’ll find it. Plus I think he’d love the opportunity to be doing something.”

After a moment’s consideration, Inkwell nodded. “If you say so. Somebody go get him. Garage’s out around the right side over here,” she gestured in the general direction, and Dusty nodded, making his way back into the house. “Come on, Miss Zap, I’ll show you where it is.”

_______________

A few minutes later, Indigo had gathered some tools, and with the help of a somewhat reluctant Twilight and a slow-going Spooks and Treble, rolled some spare tires of different sizes out to the front lot. They’d found Rubble waiting for them, standing over the van with a grimace on his face. Indigo, seeing him and his expression, shoved the toolbox into Treble’s arms (who received them with a loud ‘oof’ and a few choice words), and ran up to the corner of the van that was decidedly a few inches lower than the others. “What, what is it?!” she demanded.

Rubble took a step back on his good leg. “Good GOD you’re loud. Sorry to brake it to you, Indy, but a new wheel’s not gonna do you jack-all right now.” With some careful maneuvering he brought himself to a seating position, his crutches on the ground next to him. Twilight gave him a reproachful look, which he pointedly ignored. He pointed to something under the wheel well, which had been made visible by the removal of the flat. With much complaining on Dusty’s part, of course. “See this big metal bar that looks like a bendy straw?”

“Yeeeaaahhh?” Zap said slowly, following his finger to the heavy metal piece with a bend in it.

“Yeah, that’s your axle. It’s supposed to be straight. My guess? When it went flat, which might have happened at any point on the way up here, you kept driving on it, which stressed the bar. Normally it wouldn’t be anywhere near this bad, but given how much weight you were hauling, it probably stressed so much that the metal weakened in one spot, where this bend is,” he explained.

Indigo took all of this about as well as a fatal diagnosis. “But… why didn’t it POP?” she barked the last word, making Rubble flinch. She didn’t notice. “I mean, why didn’t I notice anything on the way down here?”

Rubble gestured for Dusty to help him up, and Indigo assisted. He hopped up to the front right tire, and smacked it with his crutch. “Hear that? Air’s going out of all of them. Should have checked their PSI before you hauled a load like this. Van probably wasn’t made for it, anyway. Just cause it fits don’t mean it sits,” he quipped. Before she could retort, he trodded back to the flat on the ground. “Also, check this here. See this spot right here, a little bit balder than the rest? Press on the tire just a bit. Yeah, like that,” he said, as Indigo followed his instruction. “See that crack? That’s a slow leak. You get the loud pop and flying leather if it hits something big and sharp and explodes all at once. You probably didn’t notice because they’re all slowly losing air. I mean, half of these tired are balder than the bumper. Do you even rotate your tires?”

Indigo looked at him sheepishly. “I mean, I’ve heard people say that, but I don’t know what it means. Don’t they rotate on their own?”

Rubble almost fell of his crutches, so great was the urge to hit her with them. “NO. NO THAT’S NOT WHAT THAT MEANS.” He took a deep breath. “Rotating your tires means moving them one spot to the left, including swapping in your spare. It evens out the stress on all your tires, and gives them a longer shelf life. I bet you don’t even use snow chains or winter tires, do you?”

“Um… I GOT the van in the Winter, does THAT count?” Zap asked hesitantly.

Rubble looked to the sky for guidance. “Somebody better get this little scrublet away from me,” he said firmly, and frog-marched himself back into the house.

Treble raised a hand, having already dropped the tools unceremoniously onto the driveway. “Scuse me?! How are we getting out of here?” he asked loudly.

Raven had been watching the exchange with all the interest of Jane Austin among the apes. “I have transportation arranged for myself tomorrow night. Miss Zap, if you like, you are welcome to stay the night here. I mean, if ghosts and old dusty bedrooms are your thing.”

Indigo shivered. “They’re really, really not.”

Raven sighed. “Then I have no idea what to tell you.”

Twilight also raised a hand, albeit more politely. “Um, I can call someone to come pick her up?”

The group rounded on her with a sense of mob indignation usually reserved for Saturday morning cartoons. “Excuse me?!” Dusty barked. “You have a phone that works out here?!”

Sparkle flinched, with an embarrassed smile. “Um, yes? I mean I’d been hoping not to use it, but I have a sat phone.”

Spooks blinked at her. “Why the hell do you have a satellite phone?”

“Why did I have a necklace that absorbed magic and turned me into a dimension-shattering succubus?” she deadpanned.

“...I don’t have a good response to that. So instead I’ll ask, why, exactly, were you hoping to not use it?” Bones tilted his head to punctuate the question.

Twilight sighed, and threw her hands up. “Because I never got a plan for it, ok?! DO you have any idea how expensive per-minute sat phone calls are?! It’s like five to ten dollars a minute!”

Indigo stomped up to her friend, although she was considering her choice in vernacular about now, and put her face inches from the scientist’s. “Twilight, I like you, but if I hadn’t hauled all your fancy-ass megaton science-y CRAP out here I’d be halfway home by now! So march that bony little ass in the house, get your sat phone, and call for some HELP, or I will spend five to ten dollars a minute rearranging your facial structure,” she growled.

Twilight ‘eeped’ loudly and ran back inside with an urgent, “Yes ma’am!”

Raven took a deep breath, rubbing her temples, and ushered everyone back into the house. “Alright, boys and girls, we might as well get this show on the road. One phone call isn’t exactly going to put us behind schedule any more than we already are.”

“I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t have timetables,” Spooks mused.

“Shut up, Bones,” Treble and Dusty barked.

-------------------------

Indigo tapped her foot against the fine wood flooring impatiently. “And exactly how is any of this getting me closer to a tow truck?!” she demanded, gesturing broadly at the wide array of instruments Twilight had set up.

The nerdy girl poked her head up over one of the larger computer screens. “Well, the sat phone only works if I have it plugged into the main computer, which involves establishing a connection to the house’s electrical wiring. Which also means setting up this adapter here,” she gestured to a rather complex device that looked much like generators cut in half and stuck together by the aft end, “Then running the current through this-”

“OK, OK, forget I asked!” Zap barked, throwing herself into a couch. “Sweet rocket manger baby CHRIST.”

Rubble massaged his temples. “Why don’t you just plug it into the wall?” he asked quietly.

Twilight shook her head. “Wouldn’t work. Plug’s not compatible. This thingy here works as an adapter, and because this draws a lot of power, I have to use a few different outlets, which is why I have all these extension cords, and-”

“NOPE. Nope I’m done asking you questions now. Please let’s move onto something I understand, like all the dead people walking around?” he asked pleadingly, looking to Ms. Inkwell.

Raven had pointedly ignored the admittedly impressive display of technology currently driving her power bills through the roof. On one hand, she was glad to have tuned the power on quite some time ago, on the other, she was lamenting the slight added expense of a landline, which was easily being surpassed by the current amount of gigawatt-hours building up in the background. She thought for a second she could even hear it, then realized that was one of the many machines humming to life. If money had a sound, though, that was surely it. “Yes, please, let’s. Now, I don’t know what kind of… methodology you all have, but I’d at least like to see you at work before mid-afternoon.”

Dusty clapped his hands as Treble leaned over the back of one of the couches. Even Rubble sat forward, eager to do something. Spooks was… Spooks. The only real emotional response he showed was the peaked interest in the rather large heavy-duty trunk Treble dragged around the side of the couch, having lost the fight of dragging it over the back. With much to-do, he unlatched it, and threw it open.

Of all of the things Miss Inkwell had expected, including yet more equipment, magical charms, talismans, ritual items, even a dead animal or two (you only get surprised by that once, honestly), the trunk full of old, ratty books and notes was not near the top of the list. “What… IS all that?”

Spooks accepted a rather large, familiar tome from Dusty, and turned his attention to their employer as he opened it. “It’s all of my grandfather’s works, plus the individual texts we’ve gathered. Our methodology is a strange-yet-effective balance of homework and brute force. You’d be surprised how many ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties respond rather unfavorably to a good punch in the face. Of course, it helps if you know exactly what to punch them WITH, which is where all of this comes from. My grandfather was a rather… intense paranormal investigator, with a tendency to write down everything he saw, fought, or thought about. Unfortunately, his notes are about as well-sorted as they look, which is where all of the reading comes from. THIS book,” he thumped the large tome in his lap, “Is basically the condensed version. If he’s heard of it, it’s in here. Think of it like the index to all of this crap he left behind. We find it in the book, then again in the journals, where there’s a lot more detail. It’s a bit time-consuming, but once we have a few good leads it’s usually faster going from there.

“Ok, Rubble, as much as you absolutely hate this part, I’m keeping you here with me to slog through all of this crap. Look for anything that mentions the Inkwells, or the geographic region we’re in. Here,” he took a small piece of paper out of his vest pocket, and handed it to RM. “I wrote up the GPS coordinates, plus the surrounding landmarks for the region, dating as far back as the local records had them. There’s not much difference from one decade to the next, honestly. This land’s been much the same for quite a while. Although I did find a couple of sites that this land used to be, before Dry bought up the place and turned it into this isolationist paradise.”

Rubble nodded, reluctantly taking a handful of journals and folders and spreading them out on the couch next to them. Dusty and Treble traded glances. “So what are we doing?” Dusty asked.

Spooks considered them carefully, then looked at Raven. “Miss Inkwell, if you don’t mind a teenager telling you what to do, or spending time with… these two-”

“Hey?” Treble sniped. With a look from pretty much everyone else in the room, he conceded. “Ok, yeah.”

“Like I said. If that doesn’t bother you too much, I’d like to ask you to please show them the way to any offices your family may have used, any libraries you have on the premises, pretty much anywhere this family may have had an idea of stashing anything on paper they thought even mildly important. Like you said, it’s not your dirty laundry, anyways,” Bones concluded.

“Now hold on,” Inkwell protested, raising a hand. “I can understand the need for research, even as in-depth as… this,” she indicated the array of paperwork and open books with a hand, “But why would you need to know so much about my family? Yes, I did say you could dig through what you wanted, but I’d at least like to know why you’re so eager to do just that.”

The boys all looked to Spooks as he answered, well-versed in taking a step back when he had something to say. “There aren’t any hard facts when it comes to ghosts. Hell, the fact that there even are ghosts is literally as much solid information as anyone in the field has. Some people like to throw facts and figures around, talk about cold spots and EMF, and sometimes it works. But not always. The few things we do know, the things we can rely on, are history. Ghosts don’t happen without a reason. If there’s something here that takes exception to how things are handled in the here and now, I’d bet whatever I have of value that they didn’t get their happily ever after. The majority of the time it has something to do with the house, the people who owned it, walked in it, breathed and bled in its walls. Houses aren’t just hardwood and decoupage, they’re porous, emotionally saturated things that soak up every good or bad or horrible thing that ever happened here. If one person, just one, died bloody on these floors, you can be as sure as anyone can in this field that it’s enough to turn a hallway into a hellhole. Spirits don’t hang around because they like the trimming, ma’am.”

“Ha-HA!” Twilight exclaimed, much to the surprise of everyone. She looked about at the wide-eyed stares she was getting. “Oh… sorry. I just… I mean the sat phone is working-”

“Oh my GOD give me that if I have to spend another minute in this house with the fuckin’ Addams family I swear to GOD-” Indigo ranted as she charged across the room and yanked the phone out of Twilight’s hand. After a second she gave her friend an apologetic look. “Um… how do I dial out?”

With a roll of her eyes and an amused grin, Twilight hit a few buttons on the console and put the phone back in its cradle. “Here, put it on speaker, the handheld doesn’t work so great. Turns out not everything in my house runs on coffee.”

Indigo gave he a knowing smirk as she dialed home, hoping her parents could send someone to help her on her way. After a few rings, the familiar click of another person on the line resonated through the room. “Hey, dad? Mom? It’s me. Listen, the van-”

A voice like singing through a dying man’s throat echoed over the line. “Seven. Good. Seven’s a good number..”

They all stood up in alarm and backed away from the phone. Even Rubble had managed to hop some distance before Dusty had to prop him up. “No fuckin’ way,” Treble breathed.

The line went dead, then all was silent for a moment. A silence quickly executed by the slamming of doors, the shutting of windows, and every alarm on Twilight’s console going off at once. The lights in the house blared with energy, and any socket without a bulb simply crackled and arced wild currents of strange power. Had they been spread out, they would have seen and heard the same much throughout the house. Indigo shook the shutters on the window nearest her, and they gave not an inch. She ran off to the foyer to try the front door.

Then it all went quiet. “What… what the HELL was that?!” Inkwell demanded.

“FUCK ME!” yelled Indigo, apparently unable to open the double doors.

Dusty shook his head. “That was a grand entrance. Whoever’s crashing your party wants us to know he’s watching. It’s weird though, that sounded...”

“Amused,” Spooks said solemnly. “Like he was laughing while he talked, yeah. And that’s not the worst part.”

Not the worst part?!” Indigo demanded, storming back into the room. “We just got locked in a haunted-ass house with some supernatural entity that gave everything electrical in this building a fucking aneurysm. HOW IS THAT NOT THE WORST PART?!”

Rubble gave a sideways smile at Twilight’s machinery. The scientist was going mad trying to determine the damage, and if possible, the source of the phenomena. He shook his head, and said in excited tones, “It’s happy to see us.”