“Come on, get off your butts!”
Before either Travis or I could react to anything that had just happened, the rashes on our shoulders lit up in the worst agony either of us had experienced. The day I skipped rehearsal felt like a papercut by comparison.
“AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!”
“Hey Charlie,” one of the intangible metalheads said, “I think your bandmates may have broken your guys’s agreement.”
“Ah, crap. I forgot about that,” Charlie muttered, “Well, so have I. No need to punish them for that anymore.”
The pain stopped.
As Travis and I continued to lay on the ground, doubled over from the pain that had just ended, another intangible metalhead said “Nice going guys, it sounds like someone’s coming.”
The intangible metalhead was right. I could hear footsteps coming down the hallway.
“Lezz scare this person away!” a metalhead wearing a Kreator t-shirt, ripped jeans, a blue denim vest covered in thrash band patches, and a D.R.I. hat slurred, “Quick, whish one of us is the scariest ghost?”
Maybe I had misheard, but did he just say “ghost?”
“Well, Sean here doesn’t even have his face anymore,” a bald metalhead in a black leather battle jacket replied.
“Get bent, Neil!” a metalhead who must have been Sean, as he was missing his face and one eye, shot back, “You’re a way scarier ghost because you still have yours!”
That was the second one who had said it. No way I misheard it that time.
“Why don’t you float over here and say that a little closer?” Neil challenged.
“I’ll kick your undead butt!” Sean barked.
“All of you, shut up!” Charlie shouted, “We knew this might happen. Just act cool, stay still, and don’t knock anything over.”
Travis and I had barely stood up when the door flew open.
“Is everything okay in here?” Rick asked.
Travis and I looked back at him in astonishment. Not only was Rick poking his head through the cracked door, he was also poking his head through Sean’s head, his face temporarily appearing where Sean’s would have been if he had one. The thousands of other ghosts were all standing still, continuing to overlap with each other. The only “person,” if you could call him that, whom I could not see in the room anymore was Charlie.
The ghost in the D.R.I. hat noticed I was glancing around at them, and attempted to tilt his head towards Rick so I would look at him instead. However, he tilted it a little too much as his neck snapped to nearly a 90 degree angle with a sickening crack!
“All good,” Travis weakly replied, “We’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“I thought I heard screaming,” Rick said hesitantly, taking no notice of the rooms’ thousands of new occupants, including the one whose head he was sticking his through.
“Just doing some vocal warmups,” I said, “We are a metal band, after all.”
“Okay,” Rick said, still sounding skeptical, “Well you’re on in eight. Make sure you’re all tuned up and get out here.”
“Will do!” I replied, trying to sound cheery.
As soon as Rick shut the door the ghosts relaxed from their rigid postures and exhaled in relief.
“Whew! Didja see that!” the ghost in the D.R.I. hat exclaimed, “‘Cause that guy defintly didn’t! Man, are we massers of stealth or what?”
“You’re going to be the master of chewing on my fist if you don’t shut up, Adam!” Sean growled, “You want that guy to come back?”
“Relax,” Charlie’s voice said. Although I still couldn’t see Charlie anywhere, the same black fog I saw before I passed out had appeared again. But this time, the body parts looked like they were gradually starting to form a whole body.
“Most mortals will be able to hear you just as well as they’ll be able to see you,” Charlie’s voice continued as the body parts replaced the fog entirely, beginning to take the shape of a hulking metalhead, “With the occasional exception, like these two here.”
I hoped most mortals could also smell them as well as they could see them.
“They’re the same reason I’m able to switch back and forth between my human and true forms this fast when I’m around them. Even faster than with only you guys.”
The fog transformed into Charlie as he finished that thought. He was exactly as Travis and I had remembered him the last time we saw him three weeks before. His hair and beard were exactly the same length, he hadn’t lost or gained any weight, and he didn’t have any injuries or scars on his body from what I could tell. Only his eyes were different. Something about them made him seem…older. A lot older than just three weeks.
“What are you staring at?” Charlie barked at Travis and I, “Let’s go!”
As he reached through Sean’s beer gut to grab the door handle I shouted “Hold on!”
Charlie stopped and glared back at me. Travis looked like he was about to crap his pants.
“This isn’t your band, anymore, Charlie,” I said, “We haven’t heard from you for weeks! Travis and I have had to make due without you, and you know what? We’ve done just fine.”
I could tell Travis was about to mention that we had been breaking into his house every day to use his studio and drum machine, so I preemptively elbowed him in the ribs.
“We even made it into the Battle of the Bands without your help,” I continued, “In fact, you’re not even registered as a band member with the event organizers, so you may want to do that little disappearing fog act again and go to the general admission section with your ghost friends. If you want to watch our set, we’d love to have you, but if any of The Rusty Nail’s staff catches you backstage without a pass, they’ll kick you out.”
“Eric, maybe we could talk about this?” Travis asked timidly, “A drum machine is no replacement for the real thing, especially if he’s as good as Charlie. Maybe he has an explanation for all of this?”
“The drum machine is better than nearly all drummers, and it’s just as good as Charlie,” I shot back, “Not to mention it doesn’t cause drama, get us shunned at school, get us beaten up, and disappear for three weeks.”
“What? Only three weeks? You mean this isn’t the Lamashtu concert?” Charlie asked.
“Where have you been?” I replied, reaching through the Darkthrone logo on a ghost’s t-shirt to grab my guitar picks, “We’ve gotta win the Battle of the Bands if we want to be backstage to open for Lamashtu. And we can’t win it if we’re late to our own set. Now do you mind? You’re standing in front of the door. Do that little smoky trick if there’s not enough room to step aside.”
Charlie sighed, “You’re right, Eric. I broke my part of the deal. Big time. You’re under no obligation to let me back into the band. I thought you boys needed me to be brutal. Not only was I wrong, I now realize it’s the other way around. I don’t know what you spent the past three weeks doing, but I can feel the brutality emanating from you both. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. You two might be the most brutal souls I’ve worked with since becoming a metalhead recruiter. And I am nothing without brutal souls. I’ve learned that now.”
Despite all my misgivings about Charlie, and despite not knowing entirely what he was talking about, I could tell that he was sincere. Or maybe that’s exactly what he wanted me to believe. He was a demon, for crying out loud! I now knew this for sure. Maybe this was all part of his plan. Abandon us when we need him, make us lose hope of ever seeing him again, then as soon as we learn to do without him reappear and make us think we have the upper hand over him again. Just like last time.
“I’m not powerful enough to read minds yet…” Charlie began.
If he was trying to set my mind at ease, that was a lousy way to start.
“…But it’s clear you’re having a hard time trusting me. I can’t say I blame you. After I got into it with your guidance counselor, she probably told you everything she knew about my kind. If I had known her history with us I would have never threatened her like I did, but I can’t change that now. However, there’s a lot I can change. Starting with your left shoulders.”
As Travis and I pulled up our left shirt sleeves, the rashes underneath that had been there for months vanished.
“No more matching band tattoos,” Charlie said, “From now on, Chernobog, the band that is, belongs to you. I expect it to do great things. If you’ll have me, I’d love to be a part of it.”
Travis and I shared a look. Once again, we were on the same page.
“Okay,” I said, “You’re back in the band. You can start by setting up the stage. Our set starts in one minute, and thanks to you and your undead buddies here we haven’t even started. After we crush this, you owe us one hell of an explanation. Will that be an issue?”
Charlie smiled and turned to the ghosts, “Hey guys, I need you all to distract everyone in the bar from looking at the stage. Nothing too fancy. I don’t sense anyone here is brutal enough to detect you, but don’t push your luck! You’re still new to this ghost thing.” Turning back to me, he said “Let’s go melt some faces.”