Tammy gave her ghouls two hours to complete their mission. It was more than enough time, she reckoned. Then she and Chad climbed on his motorcycle and headed out to see the damage her minions had done. She could hardly wait to view the slaughter.
But as the bike neared the diner, Tammy knew something had gone horribly wrong. The lights were on, and a mound of body parts had been piled under the hard neon glow. At first, she'd assumed they were the pieces of those who dared oppose her, stacked there by her minions as an offering to their mistress. Then she noticed their green color, and as Chad pulled into the parking lot, Loretta's hulking shape strode from the diner carrying an aluminum trash can. She dumped the can's contents onto the pile, adding another batch of writhing limbs, snarling heads, and twitching torsos to the mix. Loretta reached into the can and pulled out a handful of innards. She tossed them with the other parts.
"Evening, kids."
Tammy gaped, though not for the reason Loretta would expect.
Loretta wiped her greasy fingers on her apron and went back inside.
Tammy circled the pile. The ghouls averted their eyes and gnashed their teeth in duly embarrassed fashion. This was not how it was supposed to be. Five ghouls, properly armed, were more than a match for a vampire, a werewolf, and one fat waitress. But her minions sat before her, an undulating monument to yet another failure.
"What now?" Chad asked.
Fuming, she grabbed a head and stuffed it into her backpack. She struggled to make it fit, finally settling for holding it closed since she couldn't get the pack to zip up.
"Take me home."
The night was still young, and Chad was still horny. But he knew better than to argue with her when she got like this. She had always been a weird chick doing her weird-chick stuff, but when that tone entered her voice and that darkness rose in her eyes, she got too strange for even him to ignore. At such moments, he could almost feel the malevolent power of her soul, colder than an icicle in his jugular. He sped off to her house, all too eager to get rid of her.
"So. . uh. . I'll see you tomorrow," he said.
She jumped off the bike and ran into her house.
"Or something," he sighed.
Tammy dashed into her bedroom. Her dad was engrossed in the middle of a John Wayne movie, and her mom was busy knitting. Her mom was always busy knitting things that nobody ever wore. Scarves, mittens, sweaters, and other pieces of winter clothing that had no purpose in a desert hell like Rockwood.
Tammy shut her door and very quietly locked it. If her father heard the lock turn he would come barreling from the living room and accuse her of smoking dope, or something equally stupid. Then she removed the ghoul head from her backpack and set it on her dresser.
The head hissed. It stuck out its tongue and ran the wrinkled thing round and round its lipless mouth.
"Shut up!" she growled.
The ghoul shot her a squinted glare and opened its mouth as if to howl. She stuffed a sock into the gaping orifice. The head replied with its best sock-muffled cry.
"Mmmpphhh! Mmmpphhh!"
Tammy leaned in close enough that her nose almost touched the open hole where the ghoul's own nose should have been. "Cut it out."
The ghoul lowered its head and nearly rolled onto the floor. It spat out the sock with a frown. The language of ghouls was the language of the abyss. It was a dialect of hisses, growls, grumbles, and other unpleasant noises. Tammy understood it as only a true mistress of darkness could. Just as she was able to read the range of ghoulish expressions which were all subtle variations of scowls and glowers.
"Terribly sorry, mistress," the head apologized, "but I do have an image to keep up. It's not often I'm given form, and I would like to enjoy it while I can."
Tammy sat on the edge of her bed. "What happened?"
"Things got rather mucked up, but it wasn't our fault."
"Who's fault was it then?"
"Since you asked, I dare say, in all honesty, that it was yours, mistress."
Tammy grabbed a pen and stuck it in the ghoul's eye.
"How terribly immature," the ghoul snarled.
"What went wrong?"
"The graveyard guardian. She saved the vampire, who saved the werewolf, who saved the mortals. We weren't prepared for a ghost. And we can't do anything against them anyway. So it really wasn't our fault, now, was it? Can't send ghouls against spirits and expect to win, now, can you?"
"Shut up."
"I was just answering your question, mistress. No reason to get snippy just because you muddled the job."
Tammy rubbed her palms together. "It-shay, uck-fay, amn-day."
The head burst into flame.
"Really, mistress. How infantile."
The ghoul went up like flash paper once alight. Nothing was left but a small pile of ash that she swept into the waste-basket.
She spent the next half-hour listening to music on her headphones and pondering the situation. Everything seemed to be going wrong. She was beginning to question her great destiny. She was a teenager and prone to moments of angst and self-loathing. Whenever such moments hit her, there was only one thing to do. She had to talk to the spirits. She had an easy method of communication in the back of her closet, sitting somewhere behind her checkers and Parcheesi sets. She fished around and removed her Ouija Board.
She'd bought it when first embarking on her occult dabbling and quickly realized how utterly useless it was. Not that it couldn't summon spirits under the right circumstances. Particularly at parties, since the dead were always happy for an invitation to a big shindig. There were so few good parties on the other side. But the kind of ghosts channeled through the board were hardly worth her time. She threw it aside and dug deeper before finally hitting upon the object of her desire: her Magic 8-Ball.
As an instrument of spiritual communication, most Magic 8-Balls weren't much better or much worse than Ouija Boards, but this one was special. It was filled with the blue blood of Goorka-mushalavtoteca, Queen of Horrors Unborn. And rather than having to summon a spirit, which was always unreliable, Tammy had already permanently bound a soul into the orb.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, cleared her mind, and shook the spirit awake. Then she explained the situation to the 8-Ball, asked it what to do, and gave it another good shake. She peered into its tiny window and waited for the triangular thingamabob to surface with its reply.
ANSWER UNCLEAR, the ball said.
Tammy rattled the orb once again. It stubbornly held its ground.
ANSWER UNCLEAR.
She gave it a hard smack. The thingamabob dipped below the murky depths and emerged bearing a new message.
PISS OFF.
She rolled the ball in small circles on her bed. The specter in the ball, while invaluable as a source of advice, could be uncooperative at times. Most times, in fact. She couldn't exactly blame him. It had to suck, spending all day in the back of a darkened closet, but it was his own damned fault for pestering her all the time while he'd been free to roam.
"Oh, don't be such a baby. You wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't screwed up your chance in the first place. You'd be a living god and wouldn't even need me."
The blue blood bubbled and blackened, CRAM IT.
"Alright. If you don't want to help me, I can't really make you. I'll never open the way, but I can deal with that. I'll just graduate, go to California, and become an actress. Anybody can do that."
This was very true. Her abridged Necronomicon, being the latest edition, had two dozen rituals on that particular subject. Everything ranging from a three-hour incantation that would guarantee a prime-time sitcom to an elaborate ceremony of human sacrifice that would land a dedicated practitioner a three-picture deal with any major studio.
"It's not my first choice," Tammy admitted to the ghost. "But I'll be just fine. Whereas you'll spend the next five hundred years in a little black ball in a tin box on the bottom of Old Lady Riddler's Well."
She flipped the ball up to read its response.
ALL SIGNS POINT TO NO. The thingamabob dipped and rose again to add, SO GO FUCK YOUR SELF.
Tammy abandoned reasoning with the sphere. It usually didn't work anyway. The specter within was possessed of singular stubbornness and determination. He was no ghost of terrible tragedy or unresolved issues. He simply refused to pass into the hereafter because he didn't want to. Few people had the strength of will to fight the pull of final death. But, pigheaded as he was, no one stood between Tammy and her destiny.
Torture was out of the question. Spirits were hard to torment in any effective fashion. So she fell on her last resort: bribery.
"Okay. I'll make you a deal. Bonanza is on in ten minutes."
The ball shook. The Cartwrights were his biggest weakness. He'd explained to her once that the Ponderosa was a perfect working model of the hierarchy of the old gods. As she learned more about the secret world, she began to see his point. Once she saw the similarities between Lome Greene and Tougiauareuadksdel, He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken and recognized Little Joe as Ahzuulrah, Incarnae of Mad Impulses, everything fell into place. It was almost as if the old gods themselves had subtly reached through the shroud and had a hand in its creation. The specter believed they had. He also believed that the hidden guardians of light had responded by spurring the creation of Three's Company. And that the old gods had launched a counterattack in the form of interminable I Love Lucy reruns. Back and forth it went. The eternal struggle between light and dark was waged on many fronts. Television syndication was just one of them.
TRY AGAIN, the orb said.
She loathed offering more. She didn't want the specter getting spoiled. But she did really need his help.
"Okay. You can also watch Charlies Angels and Dukes of Hazzard. But then it's right back into the closet."
A pair of bright blue eyes appeared in the 8-Ball window before the thingamabob replied, REPEAT YOUR QUESTION, ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR.