Johnny Blaze stood just outside a small mom-and-pop gas station, topping off his hog as he squinted against the blinding glare of a Texas sun. For just a moment, he was able to forget his mountain of worries, forget the curse that he had been carrying around for so long now, and just focus on the immediate future. He had a job offer, a limited return to the stunt circuit that would earn him enough cash to continue drifting from town to town, bar to bar, and bottle to bottle in a pointless effort to try to outrun his own cursed existence. It was not a great plan and it was a lonely life, but it had been the routine he had followed since the night he'd lost everything that ever mattered to him. He saw no reason to stop now.
Placing the nozzle back on the pump he glanced up just in time to see a young woman and her children exit the station. Short, blonde, and pretty as a picture in her blue jeans and AC/DC shirt, she reminded him so much of Roxanne it hurt. Even her kids, a pair of rambunctious boys drew forth memories of Craig and Emma, his own kids who never got the chance to make their mark on the world. For the first time in ages, he felt something other than Hellfire sting his eyes, but still managed a half smile and small wave to the youngsters as they piled in the back of their minivan.
Shaking his head in an attempt to wipe away the memories that haunted him still, he headed into the gas station to pay. Picking up bottled water for the road, he approached the checkout while barely looking at the cashier as he paid. He was so intent on just going through the motions that it shocked him when the cashier spoke.
"Huh?" Johnny asked, not quite catching it the first time.
"I said you look like someone done up and shot your best friend sonny," said the elderly cashier.
"Oh, uh, no I'm just…I'm fine ma'am. Really," he lied.
"Lots of people are. Fine that is. Or say they are. But you've the look ya know? The look I see everyday on many people that pass through here," she said.
Johnny merely raised an eyebrow in response, amused to be being psychoanalyzed by a gas station attendant.
"That look of loneliness. Almost everyone has it these days. Maybe they lost someone important to 'em or never had nothing and no one to begin with. Wayward kids without a family or old timers like myself who been around long past those we care about have left this place. It happens. But you ain't gotta stay that way."
Blaze chuckled. "Yeah, well, I'll settle down one of these days."
The old lady sighed, shaking her head. "Not like that. You ain't gotta be hitched or dating or nothing of the sort to not be lonely, to have fellowship."
Johnny instantly cringed, fully expecting an invitation to go visit the woman's church. It wasn't that he necessarily had anything against religion, it was just that Heaven and Hell had used him as a plaything against one another for so long now he wasn't really sold on the idea that he belonged anywhere near a church considering how jaded he was.
Well, its not like I'm going to just burst into flames. Or, well, more flames. Still I'm not exactly pew and hymn material.
The cashier however handed him a pamphlet, the styling less like something from a church and more like those you'd expect from some kind of self-help guru or some faith healer sort. It mentioned joining in fellowship with others, ending loneliness forever, and leaving behind the self to become part of a greater whole. It was all a bit too touchy feely and out there for Blaze, but between the images of tents in a field and people with smiles that were just a touch too forced, was a picture of a woman he recognized. Wearing the white robes of this so-called fellowship grouped seemed to love it was not a terribly far cry from what she wore when last he saw her…a nuns habit.
Mother Superior done up and left her gun-nuns? Not guarding the potential portal left over from the Zadkiel incident? And she's joined a cult apparently. Yeah, something doesn't fit here, he thought. I really should ask why she's left her calling and run off to join a bunch of hippies instead of guarding that damnable portal.
Looking up from the pamphlet he smiled at the cashier and asked, "So, when's the next meeting?"
"Attaboy!" she said. "Ain't nothing wrong with a little fellowship!"
Johnny's bike came to stop just outside of Terlingua as he took a moment to take in the town from a distance. Terlingua was not really much to look at, a relic of a bygone age. In fact, a quick Google search had told him that it was, in fact, a ghost town. It had been abandoned since the mining industry had gone bottom up in this particular area of the Lone Star State. Between meeting in such a place, wearing loose fitting white robes, and hearing what sounded like chanting he figured that his declaring the whole thing a cult was pretty much on the money.
Driving slowly into the town he noticed that everyone walked and moved in almost the same fashion, as if they were swaying with some unseen wind. All had large, toothy smiles that seemed completely unnatural and stretched farther than could possibly be comfortable. Each person he passed offered the same wave, like a mockery of the Queen of England greeting the masses. In many ways it seemed less like what he had expected and more like some kind of David Lynch film where everything was exaggerated and just slightly off from the norm. Even for someone like Johnny, a person who had encountered beings of Heaven, Hell, and in between, the whole thing was incredibly unsettling.
It only got worse when he located Mother Superior. She was not just a part of this odd little following, she seemed to be running the show, leading the gathered masses in chanting. He couldn't understand the words, but evidently the Rider could. Blaze winced a bit as Zarathos' consciousness shifted within him, like an itch so intense it hurt. The chanting however died down when the former head nun turned to the newcomers, each looking about as uncomfortable as Johnny himself did.
"Brothers, sisters! Welcome! Now I know this must all seem strange to you, but please, lend me your ears for but a moment and I shall explain all!" she began.
With arms spread wide she motioned around at those cloaked in white, as if she were trying to hug them all from a distance.
"What you see around you is not odd! It is not unnatural! It is what is possible when you embrace fellowship, embrace togetherness, and leave behind the self to become part of a whole! The natural human condition is one of loneliness, of being locked within one's own head. But it needn't be I tell you! You can, like those assembled here, rid yourself of this solitude, both physical and spiritual!"
As the former nun spoke, a few of the cynics in the crowd of newcomers snickered or mumbled about religious morons. Mother Superior however merely smiled wider.
"But I hear you say that you have heard such things before! That I am but another religious nut job! And I understand your feelings. I was once a nun if you can believe it! But I am not talking about following an deity that is not knowable and leaves us to our own devices. No I speak of joining not only with your fellow man but with a greater whole! To know all around you and beyond! Forever linked! Never again alone!"
Raising her hand, a strange symbol carved into the palm, she began chanting once more. As the symbol began to glow she leapt from the small stage she'd been standing upon, approached the nearest naysayer, and embraced him in a hug as if she'd known him all her life. Within moments the man's eyes began to glow faintly, filled with the same color energy as her hand. His mouth turned upwards in a smile and he too began to sway.
"Brother! Tell the others what has happened," she commanded him.
"I'm not alone! I-I'm not alone!" he shouted. "I missed my wife something awful but now it doesn't seem to matter because he is with me! We are all connected through him! We are all children and brothers and sisters within the greatness that is the Old One!"
The utterance of those words seemed to make the ground shudder. Before Johnny could truly ponder why the earth would move at that very moment, he saw the new convert hug another newcomer, passing his enthusiasm to her like a virus. In no time the entirety of the former skeptics were hugging one another, converting at a mere touch. When they finally made their way to Johnny he was already backing away.
"No, no, I'm not big on touching. Especially crazy supernatural hugging. I'm filing that under bad touching. The kind that gets Chris Hansen knocking on your door and… " he began.
Before he could protest further, the crowd had surrounded him. They swarmed like locusts, with each embracing him in the world's creepiest bear hug. Only whatever strange magic seemed to alter the personalities of those touched did not have the effect on Johnny. In fact, the Rider seemed to react violently towards it, scorching the people that touched Johnny, their sudden pain seemingly being felt by everyone in the area, regardless of proximity.
The former Mother Superior finally took notice of Blaze, eyes narrowing.
"Johnathon Blaze. You shouldn't be here," she snapped.
"C'mon, you know I'm not much of a hugger. Sorry I'm not drinking the Kool Aid, but the Rider doesn't seem too keen on this weird Stepford crap you have going on. So, Old One huh? That like the things mentioned in the Darkhold, those beings of chaos that shall not be named? Since when did you abandon your post to work for the bad guys Sister? You had Kowalski on a leash and a portal to guard," Blaze responded.
"For a deity that allowed my sisters to be slain? I think not. I found a new god, one that that would never leave me alone! Or anyone for that matter! We can all be together!" she declared, eyes crazed.
"Yeah, well in my experience that probably means he's making all these folks into drones so they don't fight back when he eats them. Together in some Great Old One's gut is not the same as family and you know it."
Taken aback, as if Blaze had just spoken some ultimate truth he shouldn't have known, she snarled before issuing a command in some unknown language. Those wearing white cloaks moved in to attack, everything from baseball bats to tire irons in hand. Johnny however didn't have to wait for an attack to collide before the change overtook him.
His skin boiled and popped like bacon in a skillet, his eyes melting, and hair burning away. In seconds Johnny Blaze was gone and the burning, skull headed form of the Ghost Rider was in his place.
Almost instantly the Rider attacked, spewing flame into the closest group of white cloaked cultists. A chain fell from up his sleeve and began to be twirled about, the burning links hitting the mind controlled masses and sending them flying in burning heaps. Smoke and burnt flesh filled the air as the Ghost Rider made short work of all assembled. Stepping through the ashes, finger pointing at the former Mother Superior, the Rider spoke, deep voice crackling with fire and rage.
"You…guilty! Vengeance must be served!"
His enemy merely laughed. "Oh indeed? Well, my family has something to say about that I think."
As if on cue the roasted, smoking bodies rose up fully restored. Even those who had turned to nothing but ashes returned to their former status, once again wearing the same bizarre smiles.
"You see Spirit of Vengeance? We are and shall forever be in fellowship! Within the Old One there is no death!" she shouted. "All of us are connected! Forever! To each other and to him!"
"Good to know!" Ghost Rider growled.
Suddenly, Johnny's bike, now the Rider's Hellcycle, roared into the crowd as it came to its master. Decking the nearest cultist, the Rider climbed on, let loose an inhuman laugh, and revved the engine. Shooting through the masses, burning skid marks left in his wake, the Rider threw out his chains like a lasso. Snaring Mother Superior around the neck he peeled out, moving at impossible speeds out of the former ghost town and leaving the crowd behind as they pointlessly tried to pursue him.
Rolling into the former entrance to a mine, ball of hellfire smashing through the barricade, the Rider only stopped driving once it had reached a deep, inner portion of the mine. Well away from the crowd of cultists, he dismounted the bike, and pulled Mother Superior to her feet, her road rash injuries already healing over by the power of the Old One.
"You cannot harm me Rider!" she shouted defiantly.
"Don't need to! You are together with your boss, linked to the Old One yes? So technically it isn't you, but him I want to look in the eye!" the Rider told her.
Her eyes widened as she realized what the Spirit of Vengeance meant, but it was too late. Fiery orbs formed in the skull's empty sockets. Holding her by the jaw the Rider forced Mother Superior to look at him, his Penance Stare burrowing not only into her soul, but into the Old One she was linked to. The pain and suffering she had caused in her time as a human were insignificant compared to the countless souls the Old One had tormented over millennia. All at once the Old One, buried beneath the ghost town, felt all the pain and agony it had ever inflicted upon others.
Dropping the now comatose former nun to the ground the Rider got back on the Hellcycle and tore out of the mine as it began to cave in, the earthquake felt throughout the region having no effect on the bike itself…
Hours later Johnny found himself at a motel vending machine, trying not to think about what had happened. The news had claimed that the mine collapse was due to it being old and unstable, the earthquake somehow related to fracking miles away. Almost all of the cultists had perished, though he knew that it was because they all felt the pain of their Great Old One master. The few that survived were left in such a state that insane was likely a polite term. Chances were they'd never again see the world outside of a padded room.
"All that just because they didn't want to be alone anymore," he said angrily. "And here I am stuck with just you for company."
Of course Zarathos didn't answer. He never did when Johnny would have wished to hear another voice. Talks about dead cultists and betrayals by former allies was not exactly the Spirit of Vengeance's strong suit anyway. Besides, he had to assume that death and insanity was better than forever being devoured by some ancient evil deity. Didn't really make him feel better about the outcome, but then again he was used to having to shoulder such things alone.
Stuffing the candy bar he'd bought into his jacket pocket, he felt something he had not even thought about in weeks. An impromptu Christmas gift he had gotten during a visit to New York for the holidays. Pulling out the card, he looked at the phone number on it and thought of the woman who had given it to him back when his own loneliness was at an all time high. Smiling he glanced over to the payphone across the way and remembered the words of the gas station cashier.
Ain't nothing wrong with a little fellowship, he thought.
[The End]