The Fuckno Wars Ch 11 Avison Talon and the First Engagement

A Fool No More   by Peter Green

Avison Talon Wenondinnay

and 

The First Engagement

The sounds of boots upon floor echoed down the hallway, fading a bit each time they entered the doorways as they made their way.  They were searching for us.  I stood with my ear to the door as they scoured each room and then came back out into the hallway. They started at one end, coming up from a stairwell on one end of the hallway.   They did not use the main staircase.  They wanted to flush us out.  If we dared to exit down the grand staircase, you can bet that we would be caught.

There was nothing good that would come of it.  From their past behavior, it was obvious that they would not offer solace and free port.  They intended to kill us.

My heart pounded in fear.  I held no weapons, and these men most certainly were armed.  With what, I had no clue.  Of the blue faces surrounding me, there was no one who could come to harm.  They had been dead for what looked to be a hundred years or so. The other one near me had passed less than a year ago.  My friend Joey, whom I called Joseph, who was the Lion Man, well, he had turned tail and bailed on us.

Tellesco, whom we now called No One, he was in the cellar.  From the shouts I’d heard coming from down there, it sounded to me like he had been caught.  I did not know that he had met more blue faces.  They had shouted an affirmation that he would indeed, lead them up and out of the ruined mansion.

To where, who knew?

I figured that I was alone now.  I did not have time to feel sad for him, because when you have intense fear, which verges upon panic, you can hold only that emotion at bay.  There is no other room for anything else at all.

The boots thumped down the corridor and they were very close.  I looked at the dead girl whose ghost glinted beside me.  Weak comfort from an image no one else could see.   I was truly alone.

She nodded at me, and her eyes looked deep into mine, so deep that I could feel her in my head.   I heard her voice, and she said, “Veeeee-ill.   Vee vill be ok.” 

It did not help.  I grasped the heavy bag over my one good shoulder with one hand, and held up the machine gun in the other.

Yeah, right.

I gripped the door knob, ready to yank it back.  If someone came in, I would hold the element of surprise.  That is the only thing I had on my side.  That would last only for a brief moment.

I intended to slam the intruder with the heavy bag by whipping it around at him, and then stomp on his head with my Docs when he fell.  Then, come what may, I pick that bag back up and I would charge forth.

Her look, how she was looking at me, it made me think that there was some worth to not running off in the other direction like Joey.

I wanted to bail.  Believe me, I had no use for any of this ghost shit. Every hair on the back of my neck and my arms was sprung up so tight that they were made of glass.

I did not dare to move.  I found myself holding my breath. 

The ghosts behind me freaked me out.

The purple robes in front of me were going to kill me.

I was a deer, stuck in the head lights.

…breathe…

…do not panic…

Lorelei spoke in my mind.

I did not panic.

Not yet.

+       +       +   +   +

Avison Talon Wenondinnay

Tellesco smiled at the woman in front of him.  He said, “This is your little girl?”

The woman looked at the little girl on his back and smiled.  She said, “She is.  Her name is Avison Talon.”

Tellesco thought about the bones of the little girl, buried near those of her mother in the dirt beneath the huge mansion overhead.  Tears came to his eyes.  He said, “What happened to you?”

The woman said, “Not in front of the child.  She don’t need to hear this, not now.  We will palaver soon, after you lead us out of here.”

Tellesco nodded.  He said, “What is your name?”

She said back to him, “I am Allison Tally.  Me and my daughter are proud Scots, of the Wenondinnay Clan.”

Tellesco grinned.  “I am a Scot as well!  My ancestors were once kings in Scotland.”

There arose another loud chorus of fealty from the ghosts in the cellar as they heard him say this.

+       +       +       +

The moon over the mountains to the east was on fire with red flames.  She looked like she had her best party dress on. Her lips wore whore red lipstick, and she had taken her white elbow gloves off.  She was ready for a fight.

Joey stood at the line of his fear.  This is the imaginary line in the dirt you have to cross.  Step closer to mortal danger, and you get the sweats, the tremblies, the adrenaline rush.  Time to bail.

Turn to face the other direction and take one step that way, and you get the chicken liver, the heart-sink, the shame and embarrassment of finding out that you are a coward.  How will you ever live that label down?

With the Little Lion Man, it was all about the regard of others.  For whatever reason, for however he was brought up, he needed the respect and admiration of others.  That was why he always bragged about himself.  He needed approval of himself that did not come from within.

But don’t judge him too harshly.  You see, the deepest thing he felt in this moment was his betrayal of those he held dear.  He had left us behind.  This was what mattered most to him.

This is why he did not bail after all.

You see, he made the decision to help us out.   He was going to go and get the little truck that was still purring, down by the immense power station.  The power station fed the off skirt towns surrounding the ugly king of the desert.

It also fed that ugly king. 

You see, the power lines fed the ugly king.

The power came from the dam in the nearby mountains.

 It was the same dam that regulated the water flow through the cement canals that irrigated the city and gave it drinking water.

Joey held power in his fate that he didn’t even know.

Just yet.

Crank this bitch up.

We’re In This Together     by  NIN.   Trent fucking Reznor. 

The boots on the wooden floor of the hallway went past us.

They went past.

I got the willies.

I turned back to Lorelei.  She said, in my head, “Now vee go forth.”  She pointed at the door.  “Vee must hurry.  Vee must be stealthy.”

I twisted on the knob.  It did not budge.   Then I understood.  I simply needed to push on it, and it would click open. 

And it did.

It was an exit, and an entrance into the hallway, and it could not be seen from the hallway.

Of course it was like that.

This chamber, the one which held all of the power of this evil place, it would not be easily discovered. The only thing about this secret door, apart from all the others we’d discovered was this:  It had not been wallpapered over.

It could also not be opened from the hallway side. There was no chance for a drunk stumbler to fall against it and accidentally open it.  For this chamber, you had to know exactly where the other entrance was.

And that was the room that Lorelei had waited for me in.

But there was no time to think.

The boots had faded into the rooms on either side of the hallway, and I stepped up the half-stairs from the chamber that was built between floors, and out into the hallway, with a large, heavy bag full of their curious and odd assortment of talismans.

Stolen.

Lorelei slinted right through me and slipped into the hallway before me.  She stood and pointed down the hallway in the opposite direction.  Her slint through me froze me in my tracks.

I did not expect such a thing.  When she passed through me, something happened to me.

I was filled with images and emotions that were not mine, but they were very strong.  They were fucking powerful.

I did not know how much she had cared for me, before she flew off in that aircraft to head back to Germany.  The aircraft that had fallen to the sea before even reaching France.

I staggered with the heavy bag on my good shoulder, and I felt the world tilt away.

She had made a mistake.

She had slinted through me, and this imparted things to me that I did not need to know about her. 

From her.  

About me.  

About us…

Rurrrrgh.

I growled.

I would not go out this way.

I huffed and I puffed.

Rurrrrgh.

 I stood right the fuck back up, and I roared.

I fucking roared.

That was my own mistake.

+       +               +  

Tellesco whipped around and put his finger to his lips.  The cellar full of blue faces became silent.  The thunder of boots coming down the hallway overhead echoed in the vast expanse of the cemetery underneath the mansion. 

Tellesco put his hands up to his head.  He clamped his eyes shut, and he fell to his knees.  He was in over his head.  He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.

He shuddered and his shoulders heaved, and he began to weep.  He was sorry.

He had failed them all.

He was no leader, and he did not have a plan.

He had no clue at all.

+                       +  

Joey the Lion Man heard shouts and hollers from the mansion as he ran, retracing our steps in the dirt under the light of the bloody moon.

He neared the power station, and there he saw the little truck.  He stopped.  Its engine was still running.  But something else caught his eye to make him stop.

It was the beam of a flashlight, all flashing about the truck, and around the power station building.

Joey knelt down and pulled his black, half-red-spray-painted jacket up around his half-red face.  He looked down when he saw the flashlight beam sweep around the back of the power station, across the field, over him.

His heart raced.  He had been running, he was scared as hell, and he didn’t know what to do next.   The truck had indeed been easy to find.

He just didn’t know who had found it.

                        +  

Lorelei’s eyes opened wide.  She looked over my shoulder at the men who came running out of the rooms down on the other end of the corridor, and she looked back at me.

Then she looked at the blue faces surrounding us, and she swept her arms wide at them, and she pulled her hands together into a fist.  The blue people stood straight up and their eyes were wide open.  She pointed at the men who ran towards us, and them men were pulling weapons out.

The blue people turned, and then they each slipped close to each other.

They fell into place, into a single place, like entropy.  It was a mass of singularity.

They charged down the hallway as a single mass as them men ran towards us.

Guns came out, and triggers were pulled.   I dove down but I hadn’t been shot.  Nothing touched me.

The blue wall of people were a force of solidity.

They somehow protected me.

They had dragged me back down the hallway when I had run off.  They could do things when they were furious.

Tellesco had been wrong when he said, “They can’t hurt you.”

These blue fuckers could hurt you.

They hurt them men.

They hurt them bad.

The bright wall of them blue people ripped through the men who ran forth and them men went flying down the hallway, tumbling and hitting the walls, and their clothes were torn into shreds, and they bled from skin pulled and stretched until it split.

Guns skittered down the hallway and those where followed by their shoes.

I looked back up in time to see the last purple robe in the hallway fly out of the open window on the end of the hallway.

=   =   =   =   =   =   =

The little girl on Tellesco’s back whispered in his ear.   She said, “You’re a king.  A king don’t let his people down.”

Tellesco couldn’t contain himself.  He whimpered, “I am no king.  I’m just a crying bitch.  I can’t lead anyone anywhere.”

Avison hugged him and whispered, “You ain’t got much choice here, mister.  These folks of mine, they looking for a leader.  You’ll hafta do for now.”

Tellesco looked up through his teary eyes at the immense crowd standing there, watching him.   He had no clue.  He stopped his blubbering and he closed his eyes, as he knelt there in the grave dust.

He whispered back, with his breath faltering and hitching.  He said, “What do I do now?”

Avison Talon Wenondinnay whispered back, “You stand up, you look them right in the eyes, and you tell them to follow you out of this cemetery.  They will be free of their graves that hold them here.”

Tellesco McFlintlock whispered back, “What happens after that?”

Avison said, “Mister king, you just watch.”

Huh.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

Happens All The Time   by Cold

.

The Fuckno Wars Ch 10 Going To Church

The ghost girl hugged me even as the sounds of boots thumping across the floor below echoed in the broken mansion.  I couldn’t let her go.  She didn’t say anything.

Then the blue faces around us started to whisper, and then they began to holler at us.

The sounds of boots below ceased, and the blue faces stopped shouting.

Down below, I heard a chorus of shouts.  They were from the cellar.  An army had awoken, and they were affirming their solidarity to a young man who cried at the drop of a tear.

I grabbed Lorelei’s hand and pulled away from her.  

I couldn’t let her go.

She had a hold on me, from her watery grave, half way around the Earth.

Madness   by Muse

She smiled at me, and even though she was a ghost, her smile warmed my cockles.

She pulled me to the other end of the room, and there she pointed at a wall.  I understood.  It was another one of those hidden panels.  Gawd dayam, how many secret stairwells did this place hold?  I pressed on the wall panel, and a door clicked open.  She pulled me through, and I followed.  So did the blue faces.  We went up another round of stairs, and this time, thankfully, there was no door.  Instead, it opened up into a tiny room with a door on the other side.

In this room, I could see from only the light of the glow of the blue ghosts.  There were no windows, you see.  There were pews.  This room had not been flushed from a water tower crashing down into the building.  This hidden room was between the second and third floors. It was above the huge foyer below, leading into the mansion, from the front.

It was a chamber with an altar before the pews.

Behind the altar, the wall was lovingly adorned with art pieces I had never before seen.

It looked like the wall in a museum dedicated to masks, shakers, drums, talismans, rattles, and bags of dried plants.

Who had done this, and why?

Lorelei pointed at the floor.  I looked down, as the blue faces crowded around us, and their unearthly glow illuminated the giant parcel before us. 

Lorelei said, “Put everything in zis sack.  Then vee have to leave.”

I said, “Why did they leave all of this stuff?”

She said, “Zhey can’t move it.  Zhis is their nexus.  It iss protected from vater und fire, and unseen by any others.”

I said, “How come I can see it?”

She said, “You have your eyes opened.  You vere shupposed to come to me.  I vould have done zhis for you.  But you injured yourself.  Ssomehow, you got your eyes open before you came to me.”

Huh.


Nothing was making sense at all.  I chust didn’t want to let go of her hand.  That’s all I knew.

But then, I did.

Fuck.

I had to.

I grabbed everything I could and dumped it all into the bag.  I was a thief.  I was Santa Claus in reverse.  If there was a fireplace with stockings hung up from the mantle, I would have stolen the yuletide logs as well.

I stopped, realizing that the altar wouldn’t fit into the bag.  It was made out of alabaster and marble.

Top Of The World   by Slightly Stoopid

Lorelei pointed at the door.  I nodded.  I hefted the bag up across my uninjured shoulder, and I turned the knob.  This was the door that Tellesco and Sean had exited through, when the Purple Robes left them.  They were supposed to be the next human sacrifices that night of the dance: sacrificed like the ones in the cellar, who were buried in desert silt.  I chust didn't know it yet.

Do you know, the Glinty was the reason for the escape of Sean, now called Seen, and Tellesco, whom we now called No One.

Yup, the old cowboy preacher, the Glinty, well, he had saved us all, in more ways than one, that night.

He was coming back.  

The moon fire had not been enough to keep him from his path.

Oh.

Huh.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

The Fuckno Wars Ch. 9 Portals To Hell

Somethin’s Wrong   by Billy D and The Hoodoos

Please read the last part before this, won’t you?

There was a reason that Tellesco didn’t want to go back up to any of the floors above.  It was because of what had happened to him and our missing friend Sean up there.  Of course, the little ghost girl with the wilted flowers was his primary reason for heading to the basement.

It helped him, and here’s why:

He knew that the pretty girl with the white hair wanted me to go upstairs instead of him.  And that, right there, that was the first time Tellesco got his heart broke.

He was rejected by a dead girl.  Talk about a bad omen for his future with chicks.  How would it go with living ones? 

But, do you see, it helped him because he could save face. 

Dignity.

I couldn’t unwind my arms from around Lorelei, because if I did, I wouldn’t get another chance to feel her against me.  That’s what I believed. 

Sad to say, that would end up being true.

I chust didn’t know it yet.

 

 Hirviö     (MONSTER) 

Our missing friend Sean was nowhere.  His body was inhabited by a Walkin, but his mind was in limbo.  It was like he was in a cave on the moon or something.  That Walkin called himself “Seen.”  He had been busy with his own agenda all night long.  In each and every cannibal meal, he acquired certain knowledge, specific to each victim.  But because of something he had done that was wrong for a Walkin to do, he also acquired the sickness and evil of each of his victims.

That was not his intention, or course.  You recall; he ate each body part of his victims while they were still alive.  He also adorned himself with some of their living skin, such as hand gloves and a nose and a scrotum bag before he pushed them poor folks off this mortal plane. 

Except for the first one.

His downfall would be due to what he had done to his first encounter, with a man called Sven.  The Walkin had eaten the flesh of the dead, from Sven.  Sven was a serial killer, if you recall.

This Walkin “Seen” began to physically change with each new acquisition of living flesh.  He became grotesque.  And, he began to lose his focus.  He was distracted from his own agenda.

Never should a Walkin act this way.

Never should a Walkin come what may.

Never should a Walkin lose his way.

This one did.

Now pray.

+   +   +       +   +   +

“Rurrrgh.”  Seen reached into the pants pocket of the man who lied on the ground before him.  He grabbed keys.  His gloves held them keys up tight to his face in the dark, and he found the right one.  The right key glinted in the blood-red light shining down from the east.  He scowled at the dark red moon creeping up over the mountains eastward of the city to the north, and he swung his meaty head back and he roared.

He fucking roared.

The Jeep awoke with a lovely purr.  Seen grimaced.  He would never get used to driving a wagon without horses in front of it, tethered to it, pulling it along.  Yet he knew how to operate this horseless carriage from the many kills he had under his belt, all night long.  Kills meant skills.

His gloved finger sought a button and pressed it, and then, foreign sounds thumped out of the speakers. 

Radioactive   by Imagine Dragons  

It began slow, and then it got his heart thumping at a steadier rate.  All of the rock he’d smoked and the lines he’d snorted began to subside.  He fell into a sort of pace. 

He fell into a sort of groove.  Stygg as he was, with his new accoutrements, (which is a French term for “borrowed skin decorations) he felt shiny and brand new.

Seen pulled into the street and drove forth.  He had walked many miles with his bag of tools draped over his shoulder, and he had killed many people.  He left a trail of dead in his wake.

Except for one thing.

Each person he had killed was now infected by him.  He was an infected Walkin, and he had been busy.

For whatever a Walkin’s agenda, it is never to allow a portal to open. 

This Walkin, why, he allowed them dead people to remain open for business. 

When you do that, other Walkins don’t have a chance.

Other things have an opportunity to enter.

Entrance.  Enter to escape.

Escape from Hell.

Welcome to the Hell that Fuckno would become.

Seen allowed many portals to open to Hell.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

The Fuckno Wars Ch 8 Rigged

Dirty Little Thing   by Velvet Revolver

That ghost girl needed me to grab something, and it wasn’t any of her prodigious body parts.  It was some ghost stuff.  There were some things that could help us in the War that was about to erupt.

Ya wanna see?

First, let’s go see how what Big Bryan was up to doing, and who was talking to him.  Keep your shorts on, would ya?

Katheena Whispers

Bryan strolled down the walkway outside of Fucky Chucky’s, which was the best burger barn ever created in Califuckyourwaistline.  He squinted in the bright sunlight of the high desert river valley, and as he did this, he scanned the cars.

Dude was gonna steal a ride.

This is how he did it.  Remember, he was fresh from prison, and he had no tools, he had no skills, and he had no game.

He had one thing, however.

He had heart, and he had a reason.

He was gonna come save us.

Why ?

Who had told him about our impending predicament?

How would he know that we would be in dire straights?  (No, not talking about Mark Knopfler here, awesome guitarist that he is…)

Well, it was a sibilant whisper speaking in his ears.

It was Katheena.  She was dead, and he didn’t recognize.

He just didn’t recognize her voice.  He had a bump to the noggin from her the previous evening, and now he was operating on simple, pure trust.  His first order of business had been to fortify himself with a solid meal.

That was mightily accomplished.

Now it was time for stealing, and then there would be fighting.  He was a big guy.  What else are you supposed to do in prison, knit sweaters?  Yup, he lifted weights. And he also learned how defend himself.  You recall this don’t you?  He was a warrior.  He would help us out.

So Big Bryan scanned the parking lot, looking for something solid, fast, and big.  What do you suppose caught his eye?

What would you do?

Bryan looked over and he saw a black tractor with a sleeper cab and a painted commercial trailer hooked up to it rumbling in the far off part of the parking lot.  Now, there is no reason to keep your diesel engine running in the heat of the desert to keep it up to operating temps, but perhaps it was to keep the cab cold with air conditioning?

Spoiled bitch of a driver.

Of course, when you are looking for a good food, always look for a place that has truckers parked outside.  They know the best places to chow down.  It’s the law of the road.

Bryan knew that the driver was in the burger joint.  Bryan wanted this ride.  Bryan was gonna take it.

You know by now that he was the son of a trucker.

He knew how to drop a trailer, and how to operate the split shift.

This guy, he walked right over to the semi rig.   He wound the legs down, and put that haul up high. Then he shut off the air compressor.  He disconnected the hoses to the trailer brakes.   Pshshshsst, each one.   He disengaged the trailer, and climbed into the cab, and then he fucking rode away, skipping gears.   When you have no weight to haul, you can squeal tires and you can race, when you know how to drive a semi rig without the trailer.

Katheena was telling Bryan about the burned ranch, and about the flooded mansion.

She left out the part about her dying while she was trying to save us punk bastards.

She didn’t want him to be distracted.

She didn’t tell him that she had some books still held in her car, crashed and drowned in the desert up north, and how those books held some answers.

There they lay, hidden behind a false rear-seat compartment along with empty beer bottles and cans, and there they would remain until the whole car could be found again, if it ever could be found.

You recall, it was a lovely golden car with gold-tinted windows, and it was buried up to its neck in golden desert sand.

Of course we would find it.  But how?  And what was that Walkin doing all this time?

36 hours, in five different ways.

Hey, keep your shorts on, baby.  This shit is three years leading up to this War.

Ya know.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

 .

The Fuckno Wars Ch 7 There Were 36 Hours

Lay Down by Alberta Cross

They didn’t think I knew what I was doing.

They were correct.

They said I didn’t know my own strength.

I had no strength.

36 HOURS 

UNTIL 

WAR

In that lovely little city of Clovis on the other end, over the top of the disparity and desperateness (despairity?)  of Fuckno, a young man enjoyed the “fucking bacon cheeseburger” that he wanted to taste for his first meal outside of prison.

He did not regret knowing people and calling them friends; those folks who couldn’t be bothered to welcome him to his earned freedom.  He had gone to jail to protect them.  He had taken their fall.

You see, he knew that his friends were otherwise occupied.  One had drowned a hearse that belonged to a fat punk rocker with purple-died red hair, and the one near him had kept the first from drowning them both.  They slept in the daylight after a long night.

The third friend was hidden in a little truck he’d pinched from the hospital where he’d delivered a girl.

She was dead upon arrival.

But now, she was whispering to him as he finished his meal.

He was fortified from that meal. 

He would have to do some rescuing, and he would have to find a place to take them all before all hell broke loose.

+   +   +       +   +   +

On the bottom end of the ugly king of the desert, which here is a reference to “The Asshole Of Fuckno,”  a Walkin had been busy in the night.  He was quite full from devouring the flesh of the living, before making them dead.

The only thing he’d done wrong, well, for his own set of rules, was this:

He had eaten the flesh of the dead.

It was a small appendage.  No, not that, you naswty minded person. 

It was a toe from his first victim, after the poor soul was dead.

The poor soul had been a mass murderer in his own country, and now, the Walkin was infected.

Poor soul, indeed.

If you ever witness a poor soul who rises into power and then remains in power by the use of death, then you will know about a Walkin.  Evil walks the Earth, baby.

That one, he went by the name of Seen.  He inhabited the body of a friend called Sean.  That Walkin, he knew that he could become the King of Fuckno.

+   +   +       +   +   +

A young man waited by the horse stables in the dark.  He hated himself.  He had nowhere to go.  He thought about going back inside, but he knew that he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He had the fear of death, and rightly so.

He concentrated on how to go about saddling up some horses for himself and his friends, but you know, he didn’t have a clue about horses.  City Messican.

Then he saw the headlights flash from cars pulling into the circular drive in front of the huge mansion.  He heard plywood boards ripped away from the front entrance.

He was stuck in his tracks, like a deer in the headlights.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.

The Fuckno Wars Ch 6 No Exit

Sixteen by The Heavy

Tellesco cast the beam from the flashlight about, and it flashed across rows of mounds and markers.  He whispered, “Holy fuck.”

The little girl without her eyes walked over and set the wilted flowers down on a grave.  She looked back at him and said something that he couldn’t hear.  She began to cry, and dust fell from her hollow eyes.  Then she did something odd.  She went and sat on a mound nearby, and she lied down.  Then she melted into the ground and disappeared from view.  That mound was much smaller than the one next to it, which had those wilted flowers across it.

Tellesco felt his skin crawl.  He knew that it was a grave of the little girl, and it was next to the grave of her mother.  He hollered in his state of shock, and the response, overhead, was from those who entered the huge mansion.  Tellesco covered his mouth with his hand clenched up into a ball.  He looked around the dirt cellar, and he saw glints of reflections here and there, just beyond the reach of the glow from the flashlight.  Eyes were opening, and faces began to appear in the far off reaches of the basement beneath the long mansion.

How many graves were there?  Twenty?  Forty?  A hundred?  Two hundred?  A thou---

He heard someone scream from way up above, and it was me.

+   +   +       +   +   +

I backed away from the glowing woman before me.  Lorelei had crashed and sunk to the bottom of the sea off the coast of France with her tray table locked and her seat in the upright position. This thing before me was not her.  This was a figment of my imagination.

She smiled.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  She whispered, “I chust don’t vant you to be so sad.”

I screamed.  I was fucking scared.  I hate ghosts.  This one wanted me to be happy, don’t worry.  Be happy. 

Then all hell broke loose.

There were shouts and hollers from the ground floor, and then the thumps of footfalls running down the corridors below.  Them newcomers were heading for the stairs. There were several staircases that led up, but only two that led down.  One was for the wine cellar on the other end, and the other was towards the hidden cemetery beneath the mansion.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was ready for an escape.

Of course, that wasn’t going to happen.  There is no escape.  There is only the entrance.  You see, (and this is key), you can not go back in time. There is only forward motion.  Every stairway door and every plywood window is a portal, and you can not “un-enter” them.  Exit does not exist.

I looked into her green eyes, and I felt a connection to a lost memory.  It seemed like a thousand years ago, a million light years away.  It was the taste of orange sherbet over vanilla ice cream on a stick from a hot summer’s day back when I was eight years old.

It was the smell of my dad’s apple pipe tobacco in the cool evening breeze while I played in the dirt with my Matchbox cars and he sat in a lawn chair and sipped iced tea with his wife, my mom, within reach.

It was a stuffed down memory, repressed and locked away, but now the edges were sharp.

I did not have the strength to run away.

I was numb.

Lorelei said, “Veeee-ill.  You have to fight zees people.”

Yeah, about that…

I faltered.  I wilted.  I did not faint, but I waned. 

It wasn’t her.

 I said, in my head, “It’s not her.  She’s dead.  It’s a trick.  Time to bail.”

Lorelei stood right in front of me and she put her hand on my shoulder.  She said, “It vill be okay, Veeee-ill.  It vill be okay.”

+   +   +       +   +   +

Tellesco watched as faces rose from the dirt beneath the huge mansion, and they numbered in the hundreds.  Some looked like they were waking up from a long dirt nap for the first time, and they wanted to have a fresh cup of campfire coffee to start the day.

Others looked like they had been disturbed from a nice summertime nap and they just wanted to go back to sleep.

Then there were others who looked like they had been tossed from their bed onto the hard pavement of reality, and they wanted answers.

They wanted them now.

It was a bit much for Tellesco, and so he fell to his knees, alone in the cellar, and he put his dusty hands up to his face and he began to cry.  It made mud.  His face was covered with grave dirt and tears, and all about him there were some angry folks.

He felt a tug on his kilt and he pushed it away.  He wasn’t scared like I was.  It was something else.  He didn’t want to see the forgotten graves anymore.  He didn’t know how there could be a mass burial like this one, and why it had lain hidden and forgotten as it was, for what must have been a hundred years or so.

A little hand tugged on his stolen leather jacket.

He wiped his eyes and looked up.

The little ghost girl had blue eyes.  She said, “You came for us.  Thank you.”

He said, “You can talk now?”

She said, “It ain’t that, mister. You can hear now.”

Huh.

+   +   +       +   +   +

Lorelei’s hand froze my leather jacket on the shoulder.  I didn’t run.  I didn’t bail.  I was too weak to do that. 

She said, “Veeeee-ill.  You must have zees people mit you now.”

I said, “Mitt me?  Is that some kind of sex thing?”  I know, it was a weak attempt at a joke, but she nodded. 

She said, “I know zat Joey vas good to Nolei.”

My test worked.

It was her.

It was Lorelei.

+   +   +       +   +   +

Tellesco grabbed the little girl up and looked around.  He saw faces that commanded decades of a hard life, and others that were fresh, if you can call withered and dusty “fresh” at all.  Those were the faces of those who had perished at a young age.

What had happened to them?

Tellesco stopped and looked into the face of a young lady who reached for the girl on his back.  He said, “Are you this little girl’s momma?”

She smiled.

He looked over her at the sea of faces beyond and he shouted to them, “If you want to follow me outta here, then tell me!”

From overhead, the rapid sound of boots stomping into rooms halted.

Now all ears were upon him, from up above.

But down in the basement, there came a thunderous response to him. 

Their cheers echoed throughout the whole mansion.

Tellesco had an army of angry ghosts now.

Gobless him.

+   +   +       +   +   +

I stepped close to her and smelled her perfume.  It had been all over me in the stairway leading up to the fall of the water tower. 

I understood. 

She was the one who had been protecting me all along.

Why did she do this?

I didn’t have the gumption to ask.  I just put my arms around her and I squeezed her.  I felt her against me.  It was something I didn’t know would ever happen again.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

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