Even this late at night, Sunset Boulevard is packed with people. Sirens blare in the distance, the faint blue and red competing with the bright green and turquoise of the various neon signs. The cold night air of Hollywood washes over us, and I shiver, the only one without a jacket. Once again, I don't learn.
Let's rewind a little bit to after we performed and helped Ray and Julie clean up the mess in their backyard.
"Whoo!" Reggie whoops when Luke successfully does a free throw in front of the studio. He goes to collect the basketball and dribbles it a couple times.
"Oh, please," I scoff, crossing my arms. "It's not that hard."
The boys raise their eyebrows and share a surprised look before Reggie passes the ball to me. I let out a slight scream and sidestep it, and they all stare at me with dopey looks. I give them a cheeky smile and run after the ball, soon getting into position in front of the net, where Luke just was.
I bend my knees, stick my butt out, and hold onto both sides of the ball, eyeing the location on the net where I want to aim, and magically, I lift off, the ball leaving my fingers when I jump no-so gracefully. And guess what.
I miss completely.
"What were you saying isn't that hard?" Luke teases, leaning his chin on my shoulder from behind, and Reggie passes him the ball again, more roughly this time, making Luke stumble backward.
"Yeah, I meant for anyone with a coordinated bone in their body. I am currently accepting donations if anyone has one of those donor friends. Please and thank you."
"Mhm, sure," Reggie says, throwing an arm over my shoulder and pulling me away from Luke. "Feels like we should be celebrating or something. What do you guys wanna do?"
Suddenly, all the boys fall to the ground, the same purple electric current shocking them as before. I rush to help Reggie, trying to help him back up, but they can barely move from the pain. It looks like it hurts to even speak.
"Not that," Alex grunts, holding onto his chest.
"That wasn't like the other ones. It's getting worse," Luke says as he straightens back up, a worried expression spreading on all of our faces.
"Why is this happening to us?" Reggie's still doubled over, barely able to look up at me or the boys.
"It's because you guys are in serious trouble." Willie appears from the shadows without his skateboard, and he looks determined.
"Willie?" Alex breathes, and I would squeal but this is a serious matter. I'll bookmark it. Note to self: squeal later.
"We need to talk."
And now we're back to the present.
I shiver again, and Reggie notices, draping his leather jacket over my shoulders. It's already warm, having been worn by him all night, and I don't try and refuse because I know that'll get us nowhere.
The five of us make our way down the strip, following the trail of large granite stars built into the ground.
"All these jolts that we're feeling is because Caleb put his stamp on us?" Luke sums up the entire conversation with Willie in one question, and in any other situation, I would have done a victory dance. Once again, not the time.
"He's threatened by you," Willie tells us, not missing a beat. "He wants you under his control. You're the only ghosts that can be visible to lifers without his help."
"And you let him do this to us?" Alex's voice cracks slightly, and I feel terrible. Poor Alex is heartbroken.
"I can't stop him. He owns my soul! Alright? He owns everybody's soul at that club. If he even knew I was here talking to you, he..." Willie sighs, taking a breath, and his shoulders go slack. "He would destroy me.
"That's why you came to me earlier," I slowly come to realize, accidentally speaking aloud. Alex, Luke, and Reggie all look at me confused, and I nod my head. "Willie found me earlier and told me to watch out for you guys since he won't be able to talk to any of you anymore. I guess that's why."
"Wait," Reggie pauses, trying to get a grip on the topic. He crosses his arms which are covered in goosebumps-- ghostbumps?-- and I instantly feel bad for taking his jacket. I try and shimmy it off, but he stops me. "So if we don't join his club, then the weird power outage thing continues until there's no power left at all?"
"Yes."
"What exactly happens when the power goes out?"
"That's... That's it. You're done."
"Uh, huh. Yeah. And what exactly do you mean by 'we're done?'" He continues to ask, and I slap my forehead. There's no way he's asking that. Please tell me he did not ask that.
"You just... You don't exist anymore. Not anywhere," Willie confirms to Alex's dismay.
"So we have no choice?" Luke steps forward, clearly upset, and I don't blame them. "We have to say goodbye to Julie and Izzy, give up everything we've built together, and work for Caleb? That's some club you guys got going on."
I'm glad I didn't ditch Julie the night of the school dance, but I'd never wish this on anyone, especially my best friends. There's got to be a way around this. There's no way they have no choice, right? There's always another way.
"But there is another option! That's why I'm here."
I'm hesitant to believe his next words. Willie's a nice guy with a heart, and I'm sure he would have been perfect for Alex, but actions speak louder than words. I told the boys that and I'm sticking to it now. How does Willie expect us to blindly trust him when he's given us every reason not to?
"If you guys could just figure out what your unfinished business is, you do it in time, you could cross over and be free from all of this."
My hand jets down and slides into Reggie's, and his tightens around mine. I don't know how, but my heart is both pounding to the speed of light and not at all. I can't lose the guys. Julie can't, either. This isn't the other way I was hoping for.
Would I want to cross over with them? Do I even have the same unfinished business? I wasn't an active member of Sunset Curve. I wasn't playing the Orpheum that night. For all I know, my reason for being a ghost is completely different from theirs. Maybe lifer me really wanted to go to Egypt.
"OK. So what's our unfinished business?" Luke asks, but he sounds like he's on the fence about it. He doesn't sound completely sure about the idea.
"I don't know," Willie confesses, "but since you all died at the same time, it might be something you need to do together."
"Why should we listen to a word you say?" Alex interjects, and I nod and agree. I was just thinking that! Haha, great minds think alike...
"Because I care about you, Alex." Oh.
I knock on my chest, hearing the hollow echo. Oh, yeah. I don't think it's beating anymore.
Tears begin to well in Willie's eyes. "And I hate that I brought you and your friends into this mess. I can't be away much longer. I'm so sorry. For everything."
Yep, definitely not beating.
Before the boys or I could respond, Willie poofs out and Alex takes his place, the four of us filing in a circle.
"This is all my fault." Alex shoves his hands in his pockets and refuses to meet our eyes. "I met Willie, Willie introduced us to Caleb, and now... Now we're screwed."
Luke shakes his head. "We all wanted to go see Caleb."
"We have to tell Julie," Reggie and I say at the same time.
She'll be heartbroken by this. It'll be like losing her mom again. But she needs to know. It'll hurt more when they magically disappear one day and she never even has a chance to say goodbye.
"No!" Luke says. "We can't do that. This just means more loss in her life. But if we don't want Caleb to own our souls, then we have to figure out what our unfinished business is."
"Yeah, man. And how are we supposed to do that? Alright? There was so much we wanted to do."
The boys are losing faith in themselves and the future by the second, and it's heartbreaking to watch. I don't wish Alex never met Willie, and it was their stupid obsession with revenge on Bobby that got them into this, but how would they know that this is what would happen? They'd never heard of Caleb or his club. None of us had, and no one could have predicted what would happen that night and the ones that followed. Except Caleb, maybe.
My eyes drift up behind Alex's head, and Reggie and I share a look. "The night we died, there was one thing you guys all wanted to do together."
"Playing the Orpheum?" Reggie looks unbelieving and worried, almost as if he has already given up.
"Getting that gig was literally impossible. Even after people knew who we were, we had to hustle, call in every favor we had. It took us years."
Alex sighs, the four of us now gazing upon the same sight. Bright blue lights up the entire outside of the theater, and it hasn't changed a bit in twenty-five years.
Instantly, that same jolt returns, shocking them with that painful electric current. Reggie lets go of my hand, and the boys double over, each holding themselves together.
Alex, Luke, and Reggie cough, groaning as they try to straighten again. "We don't have years."
Guilt runs through me, and I wish I could do something to help them. I feel so helpless, so useless. I don't have the stamp, and I hope I never have the luck to run into Caleb and get it. I don't get these jolts, but that doesn't mean I can't see the pain the boys have to go through every single time. It's like second-hand pain.
Willie said it had to do with their stamps. Their stamps are the cause for all of this, and only Caleb has the power to give them? Or maybe he's the only one who's mastered it. My guess is he's been dead since the twenties or thirties. A century is plenty of time to perfect anything.
Times like these I wish being a ghost came with a manual. I could easily flip to the page about freaky club tattoos that make souls disappear from existence. This is a warped game of Simon Says, and unfortunately, the boys are stuck in the middle of it.
My thinking goes like this: Find a way to remove the stamp, and the boys are fine. We can play again and never cross over, and I don't ever have to say goodbye to Reggie. We all live happily ever after. Yay, the end.
We've reached stage two in our investigation. We know who and we know where. We just need to find out why.
Willie said Caleb is threatened by them. This is his way of controlling them. We know Caleb does not have the power to control them directly because he's using this stamp as a means to spread terror.
New objective: Find out how Caleb makes his stamps.
Unfortunately, that'll require a lot of reading, maybe... There's no public library for this stuff is there? Unless I go directly to the source itself. Yeah, no. That's probably not a good idea.
Let's reopen this case. Detective Izzy is on it again.
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Not very eventful and kind of short, but we needed this to happen! I originally planned for something else to happen in this chapter (hehe) but it'll fall into the next one because I didn't realize how long the scene with Willie actually was.
Also, for some reason I still have zero reads on my last chapter when I definitely know there's more than that lol Does anyone know if Wattpad's having issues? I tried to do some research but came up empty. If anything, I may just delete the chapter entirely and repost it.
Thanks so much for reading! Tell me what you think, and vote and comment!
-Kait 🧡