Hunting Midnight • Ep 5 • Part 5: Friar 👸🏻
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Part 5-5: Friar
The hallway was full of closed doors. All except for one, which stood ajar at the very end, a strip of bright red light radiating out like a nice, proper hellgate. We weaved around the hanging wires, even though we could probably pass right through. It was the same instinct as avoiding trees, except trees didn’t typically upset me as efficiently as these strange, bunched up lengths of plastic.
I could make out the words now.
“Right turn, two more, no. But, no. But if, three more, okay. But.”
The hallway ran out, and Persi peeked into the crack. Then she looked back at me, gestured, and melted through the door.
“Right, okay,” I said to myself, and pushed gently against it as well, glad that I could temporarily distract my brain with the minor task of defying physics. I slipped through and into what looked like it was once a bedroom.
A man stood over a masterpiece of wiry confusion, a weird wrench in one hand, and the red book that I was sure was called Sublimation in his other. A string of clipped words ran out of him, as his eyes darted over his creation. Every now and then he’d kneel down and adjust something with the wrench.
Everything was tinted deep red, like a darkroom—or at least like how movies always depict darkrooms. It made the object of his attention tough to describe in detail, but there’s always something about a bomb that makes it terrifically apparent. Perhaps it was the large, nondescript cylinder, maybe the medium sized circuit board strapped to its side, or the short glass tubes running out one end. Or the coils of tight bound wire, or its compact nature—strangely organized amid the chaotic clutter.
“That’s bad, that’s looking like real bad news,” I said to Persi, pointing to the contraption. I didn’t want to alarm those listening in right away, but as it turned out, they weren’t the ones I needed to worry about.
“Who said that?” cried the man. Persi and I yelped in response.
“Uh, uh, uh,” I said, backing into a wall.
The guy looked around, brandishing his tool. He appeared to be middle aged, in pajamas, flirting with obesity, and sported a ridiculous, balding, Friar Tuck-style haircut. I waved at Persi, who had jumped backwards into the corner and had her hands up and ready, golden sparks flickering on her fingertips.
She saw me, and I held my finger to my lips and pointed at the door.
“Where are you? What are you?” said the man. “Do you have the turns? Tell me!”
We left him to his torments and regrouped in the living room.
“This is a new one,” I said, careful to use the pair of lips attached to my real body, whispering nonetheless. I explained to the non-ghosts what was going on.
“What should we do?” asked Persi, taking my lead. A prickling, icy ball of deja vu caught in my gut, as I heard Persi’s voice (echoing slightly because of the audio feedback) while her lips in Clockworld did not move. It was only the effect of using the headsets and our real bodies to talk, but a distant, paranoid part of me felt like I’d stumbled upon a dangerous secret.
I shooed the feeling away and tried to focus.
“If he can hear us, maybe it’s part of this test. We might be able to get him to tell us what he’s up to or stop him altogether?” I suggested.
“If he can hear you,” said Deluxe, “either he’s partially plugged into Clockworld, you’re partially slipping out, or perhaps the whole structure is compromised.”
“All of those sound terrible,” I said. “But we do need to know more about what’s going on with what he’s making. Did it look like a bomb to you, Persi?”
“That was my first thought, yes.”
“Yes,” came Fergus’ voice. “Yes, there’s something before the fire I see. Well, something I know. Or, not know. Feel? Man, this is a messy trip.”
“What do you see slash know slash feel?” I asked, motioning Persi to follow me back to the room.
“The idea that there’s a bomb is just… right. That’s all I can say. Like the tower of fire is only someone’s signature, or, or, or—”
“The credits after the end of the film,” suggested Deluxe.
“Yes. Yes. That’s perfect, that’s it.”
I thought that ‘perfect’ was a weird word to be using in this context, but kept my snide remarks to myself. I’d pushed back into the room to find our fellow back to muttering and poking about his project, our spectral voices seemingly forgotten or simply not important enough to be fretting over.
“Deluxe, what’s Teddy look like? Pictures of him anywhere?” I asked, concentrating on using my real lips.
She described a tall, longboarding enthusiast with a hippie ponytail and a swimmer’s build. Friar Tuck here was in all likelihood not the vacationing chemistry teacher, unless Eden’s spells had now gotten into cosmetic alterations. I begrudgingly did not put it past our tortuous nemesis.
After spending some time crawling around the bomb and describing it best we could to Deluxe, it was time to test my idea. I wanted to talk to him.
“We may be overthinking it,” said Fergus. “What if we just sic the fuzz on the dude?”
“I could anonymize a phone call easy enough,” said Deluxe. “But without a warrant and evidence they cannot arrest him, or even access the dwelling.”
“It could throw him off, or delay him at least,” I said. “I like it.”
“It may also frighten him into an early detonation,” said Persi.
“Okay, I like it a little less now.” I tried to think, because my gut still said it was a good idea. Eden was tricky, but at the Walkerby’s the final solution had been embarrassingly easy, so easy that even genius Deluxe overlooked it—Eden failed to understand our world’s nuances, such that simply cutting power to the house had screwed it over. Calling the cops could very well be the straightforward answer to “cheating” our way out of the mess. And then I wouldn’t have to find the pain to use the damn disintegration voodoo.
“Fergus, you said you felt the fire tower was in a place with a lot of people? Not an airport… how about a condo building?”
“Hm,” he said. “It’s more, more than a condo building. It’s big, dense. Populated, if you know what I mean, and I hope you do, because I am having trouble.”
“I think it’s not meant to go off here,” I said. “Also, he’s not figured something out about it yet. I say yes to ratting him out.”
“I trust your intuition,” said Deluxe. “I’ll get it done in the next ten. Need to calibrate security measures before placing a VOIP call.”
“Okay,” I said, and took a seat on the edge of what was probably a bed frame. The mattress was gone, and it was too piled with computers and monitors to be one hundred percent sure. “Might as well see what we can get from him in the meantime.”
Persi rubbed her fingers together, testing her sparks. Seeing a healthy flash jolt from her palm, she nodded at me and took up station behind the guy.
I slid my rapier into existence, drawing comfort from the way its blue hue chased back some of the biting redness, and used my ghost voice to say, “Good evening. It’s the voice inside your head and she’d like to know how she might help.”
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Entertaining episode to start the week with excellent stories. The ending leaves us in suspense for the next part.
Thanks for sharing.
Good day.
...the voice inside your head...? 🤣🤣🤣
Great line. 😁😁
Now we're terrorizing the mental folks 😂😂😭