Wanted: Undead or Alive

That Frog Is Staring At Me Again

"Uhm," I looked around, but no one was there to help me. "Can I use your phone?"

The old man scowled at me.

"Telephone?"

"Tilefono? Ochi," he replied.

"I don't know what that means." I blinked away tears. Now was not a good time to cry. I'd save my tears for the American Consulate when I told them my totally believable story about how I'd come to be in whatever foreign nation I was in without identification or money.

"Needing help?" he asked.

Hope exploded in my chest. "Yes! Help!"

His gaze wandered along the road in the direction I'd come from. He crossed himself and spit on the ground. "Fantasma?"

The wheels in my mind spun so fast I wouldn't have been surprised to smell smoke. Fantasma. Fantasm. Phantom. Ghosts and unnatural things. Nick had definitely been from that village. I shook my head. "Lost," I said.

He shuffled around in a circle and disappeared back inside his house, reappearing a moment later with a small glass bottle in one hand. He motioned me forward, and I obeyed, hoping he'd come through on his offer of help. "I just need a way to make a call," I said.

He tucked his cane under his arm, uncorked the bottle, and flung the contents at me. Drops of water splashed across my face and down the front of my shirt and I sputtered and stumbled back in surprise.

The old man nodded, apparently satisfied that I wasn't a Fantasma. He re-corked the bottle, stuffed it in his pocket, and fished out an ancient-looking coin. "Aftó tha sas prostatéfsei." He thrust it in my direction with some urgency.

I thanked him and tucked it in my pocket.

Apparently satisfied, he led me to the car. I climbed into the passenger seat while remembering stories that involved hitchhikers and axe murderers.

My savior tossed his cane in the miniscule back seat and turned the key. The car banged to life and belched out a cloud of bluish smoke. After a few seconds of fighting with the gearshift, the man got it where he wanted it and backed out of the driveway. Another few seconds got him in drive, and he did a burn out that sent dust and gravel flying out behind us.

I held on to the dashboard and tried not to comment.

I may have commented.

Probably he didn't understand what I said. Most likely, he interpreted the tone accurately, though. He laughed and sped up.

Eventually, we came upon a reasonably modern-looking town. We passed a gas station and a grocery and pulled into a space in front of the post office. He pointed at a bank of pay phones. "Tilefono."

Right. Pay phones. Except I didn't have any coins, and I didn't know how to ask him for any. How many coins would it take to make a call to America, anyway? I'd never actually used a pay phone and had no idea how much one cost.

"Tilefono!" he shouted in obvious exasperation.

"Yeah, okay. I got it. Thanks, geez." I climbed out of the car before he started poking me with his cane or something.

I passed through the cloud of toxic blue smoke and climbed the slight incline to the phones. There, I discovered, to my utmost delight, a sticker that read, in English, International Call Assist Dial 169. As I jabbed the three buttons, my new friend beeped the horn twice, made a dangerous-looking u-turn and putt-putted away down the road.

A woman with a thick accent agreed to help me place a collect call to Mandrake. Under the circumstances, I'd have preferred to call Nick or Mx. Landry, but Mandrake and Chantelle were the only two people in the world whose phone numbers I knew by heart, and now was not the time to call Chantelle.

"Where are you, Livvie?" was the first thing Drake asked.

With international rates being as high as they are (I assume. I've never called internationally), I tried to explain as succinctly as possible. When I finished, only a soft buzz filled the line. "Still there?" I asked.

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "What do we need to do to get you home?"

I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I thought he might take it in a different way from what I intended, so I settled for explaining about the door behind Walmart.

He sounded skeptical. "How do I get in?"

"They'll see you," I said.

"Yeah, but will they let me in?"

"Of course." I had no way of knowing that was true. "I need you to hurry, okay? I'm just sitting here at the post office in... uhm... I have no idea where." My voice hitched, so I clamped my teeth together before I could start bawling.

"Okay. Is there a phone number there? A street sign? Anything?"

I gave him as much information as I could glean from my surroundings, and he told me to stay put and wait for help. Hanging up the phone kind of felt like cutting myself off from the known universe.