Surrounded by Poseurs

“Wow, sounds like you guys are in deep,” Purple Hair said after Travis and I explained everything in a plot-convenient 10-minute car ride. My rash started to tingle a little bit more, but I barely noticed it. “Welcome to the party,” I replied as she pulled up to Charlie’s house, “We’re rehearsing in his house.” “What?!” she screamed, “I lied to your parents about me keeping you in detention so we could go to Charlie’s house?! You just told me this morning you haven’t heard from him all week! You told me there was almost no chance I would run into him aga-” Travis and I cut her off and explained that Charlie wasn’t home. But the only way to get her to calm down and believe us was to explain how we knew. Travis and I had a brief moment of hesitation before revealing this, because contrary to what […]

Instead of answering any of the multiple questions that arose from encountering Purple Hair snooping through Porter’s office with a gun at 3 in the morning, her explanation had only prompted more so far: How many of these demons were out there? How many people have given their souls to join the union? Do we know any of them? What does giving up your soul even mean? Why teachers? Purple Hair met Giuseppe Andolini? And he was a professor at Miskatonic? How could he have been a professor if he wasn’t even a real PhD? Purple Hair seemed too enraptured in her own story to notice our confused looks and kept talking: “He led me out of the woods, trying to talk to me to help me relax after what I had just seen, like I had tried to do with Maggie. He failed. I don’t remember a single word […]

After we spent nearly an hour helping Purple Hair rearrange Porter’s office to look exactly as we had found it, she took us to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru, which had just conveniently opened. Purple Hair ordered her usual bagel, heavy on the cream cheese, and a large coffee with whole milk and sugar. In answer to the question she had asked us back in the staff lounge, neither Travis nor I drank coffee, so she bought both of us breakfast and a chocolate glazed doughnut. “Normally I’d order inside so we could eat and talk in the restaurant,” Purple Hair said, “But as much as I like Rick and Jennifer, I can’t let a couple of Dunkin’ employees on the opening shift overhear what I’m about to tell you.” I wasn’t sure what was normal about a conversation with anyone in a Dunkin’ Donuts at 4 in the morning, let […]

“This sound-proofing better be as good as you said it was,” I whispered. Travis and I had returned to Charlie’s house the night after we toured it for the first time. Well, more like the morning after. It was about 3 AM. “I still don’t get why we need to test the sound-proofing at this ungodly…ha…hooooouuur,” Travis yawned. “If you’d like to explain to your parents–who just grounded you for playing in a strange man’s band without telling them–why you’d rather rehearse in that strange man’s house without his permission while the sun is still up, you be my guest,” I replied, trying to keep myself from dozing off and face planting into the soundboard, “And we can’t expect the jocks to pick a fight over who will get to pay for Jeff’s ice cream every day this week.” “Have you seen Jeff? I’m sure the jocks will fight over […]

I held my enclosed hand up to knock on the door, but paused. “What if he’s been here the entire time?” I asked Travis. “Then we’ll ask him why,” he answered. We both looked forward at the front door of 106 Muir Avenue as I knocked. Thump! Thump! Thump! Birds chirped in the trees surrounding us as we waited. A couple dogs barked. But no one came to the door. We retreated to the front of his lawn, where it met the sidewalk, and surveyed the front of Charlie’s house. All the blinds in the windows were still shut, just as they had been when we arrived, and no one had turned on any of the lights in response to the knock on the door. The Honda CR-V was parked in the driveway, the same place it had been when we came here last Saturday. “Maybe he’s working out in […]

“What are we going to tell my mom when she sees us?” I asked as we limped back to the school building. We would have been finished with rehearsal at this point had it been an ordinary day, so that meant it was time to call my mom from the phone in the lobby to ask for a ride home. “Whatever we tell her, it’s got to be good enough for your parents as well as mine, because you know they’ll tell them,” Travis replied. Our parents had become de-facto friends since Travis and I began hanging out. I don’t know if they would have become friends otherwise, since they don’t have much else in common. I could never remember exactly what Travis’s parents did, but it involved wearing suits and ties and traveling a lot to meet with rich people. They were on a business trip that day, in […]

Travis and I decided that since no adult had any intention of teaching us, or even interacting with us, it was best to spend the rest of the day searching for Charlie. We spent all day looking. No one tried to stop us. We checked every janitor’s closet in the school. No luck, they were all locked. We checked the band room. It was in use for a music class. We checked every nook and cranny of the school we could access with no sign of Charlie anywhere. “School’s almost over and we’ve searched the whole building,” I said to Travis, “The battle of the bands audition is this Saturday! Where could he be? We’ve looked everywhere!” “Are you sure about that?” Travis asked, “They have janitors clean more than just the building, you know.” “Are you trying to suggest we search the entire school grounds? Do you know how […]

“If Charlie has nothing to do with the rashes on our arms, why did yours start firing up the other day when you missed rehearsal? Why did mine start hurting once I left the band room?” Travis asked as we waited for the bus. It was Monday morning, two days after we had spied on Charlie, and we hadn’t thought of any other good explanations for why our rashes looked like Charlie’s tattoo since then. “I don’t know, Travis. We might have to take another look at that Encyclopaedia Daemonica book again. Demons are supposed to be tricksters, right? Maybe a demon is still involved in this somehow, but it used Charlie as a red herring to lead us off its trail. Maybe there’s no supernatural explanation at all and we’re just seeing what we want to believe. I know just as much about this as you do, and I […]

“AH HA HA HA HA HA!” I laughed as Travis opened his front door to let me in, “What are you wearing? You look like something out of Spy Kids!” “We’re going to be spying on someone, aren’t we?” he shot back, “So I brought spy equipment.” “Dude, those are toys your parents bought for your little brother last Christmas. They’re not spy equipment; they’re probably going to do a better job blowing our cover as you fiddle around with all the buttons and doohickies. Do those things make beeping noises when you turn them on?” Travis paused before saying “Some of them do.” “Exactly. Hang on to the binoculars, leave the rest.” We rode our bikes to a park that was near Charlie’s neighborhood and locked them to the park’s bike racks. We didn’t want to have our modes of transportation visible to Charlie. If he saw our bikes […]

I thought my nerves were bad when I gave Charlie the slip yesterday. It turns out the prospect of confronting him to his face was far more terrifying. Travis and I met each other after the last class period of the day and started heading toward the band room. “Know what you’re gonna say?” Travis asked. “Yeah, hopefully my mouth will be able to say it once we get there,” I replied, my voice already shaking. We arrived in the band room, carrying our instruments. Well, technically they were Charlie’s instruments. Charlie was sitting at one of the tables with a laptop, typing something. “Hey guys! You’re just in time,” he said, looking up from the screen, “I’ve got something I need to discuss with you before we start jamming today.” “Actually, Charlie, Travis and I need to discuss something with you first,” I interrupted. Charlie looked mildly surprised, but […]