IMPOSTER AND USURPER
Whether Benny was smart enough to run an manually-operated elevator at a glance; or whether being a zombie meant that he just knew how through some superhuman means; no one knew or cared. All living eyeballs were on the numbered elevator dial as it eased up to the eighth floor.
The remaining skeletons didn't drop the teens, but continued to carry them in their bony grip. They, or Stephanie, were afraid that Team Sabre plus Sarah and minus the obediently zombiefied Benny would fight and flee.
A long hall, a short hall, and a short flight of four steps brought the group to a pair of double doors flanked by dead-eyed zombie doorman. Royal Suite said the sign above in antique brass, to match the polished nameplate on "Jack" Weir's red bellboy's jacket.
The skeletons now dropped the teens roughly, and formed a shoulder-bone to shoulder-bone barricade behind them. This prevented retreat.
Sarah immediately made a karate pose, and despite a feeling of revulsion, looked directly into the empty eye sockets of the skeleton nearest her.
"Don't even think about it!" ordered a high girlish voice from inside the suite.
"Stephanie says not to even think about it!" repeated Benny.
"Like frack I won't, Benny!" said Ethan, as he picked himself up. "You can tell Stephanie that if I'm stuck like this for life, I'm going to make the most of it!"
Ethan barrelled into the wall of skeletons, enough to knock one over and crumple it. But before Ethan could make another step, he found himself floating in midair.
"Floatum Ethan nummow" ordered the girl's voice.
"I'd drop the Karate Kid pose, Sarah" said Benny, in a smarmy voice. "We're at the bottom of one of the towers. Stephanie might drop him out a window, Sarah! Of course, Ethan won't die from that. But I don't think we'll like that, would we? Hmm?"
"Hmm what?" retorted Sarah, with brutal sarcasm.
"Seeing werewolves heal from normally fatal wounds isn't a very pleasant sight" continued Benny. "Sometimes the effort causes them to revert to their true form for hours or even days at a time. And you know Ethan despises his true form."
What could Sarah do? She stopped.
"Floatum Sarah and Erica nummow" said the voice from within the suite.
Sarah and Erica found themselves in midair as well.
"Congratulate yourself on saving Ethan from floating out the window" said Benny, with a salute. "And prowling on the grounds as a werewolf. For now."
"But Benny . . . ."
"Jack"
"You never told Ethan that would happen before" said Rory perplexedly as, making a quick jump, he pulled Ethan down to the floor by his shoe.
"Don't even think of trying to pull Ethan to the floor!" said Benny.
"Floatum Ethan nummow" said the girl's voice, and Ethan went back into the air.
"You forgot the little blond traitor" said the unmistakable male voice. "Rory".
"Okay. Floatum Rory nummow. Now, open the doors" ordered the girl. "And send away the skeletons to the grounds. I can't stand looking at them.
The doorman obeyed. And, so, Team Sabre plus Erica were floated in and dropped to a point in mid-room.
This was a large room with a cathedral ceiling and chandelier. It was either a type of sitting room or foyer or a combination of both. There was a curving staircase leading upstairs to what appeared to be the suite's bedrooms. Several paintings were hanging on the walls. A heavy glass table with a guestbook was near the double doors.
Erica had a glance at the book. The room's last guest, when the hotel had been opened, was a Governor of Minnesota some fifty years before. Stephanie had ostentatiously signed the ghost of the guest-book, making her signature three times the size of the governor's.
At the far side of the room were heavy, high-back wood-inlaid chairs grouped about a fireplace lit by a roaring fire. A very thin zombie maid was attending the fire, while a eyeballless young man stood vacantly about in another hotel uniform.
Stephanie, with her legs crossed, was sitting in one of the high back chairs. She was in a short red skirt and low cut blouse. Something like her cheerleader's outfit without the Whitechapel Devil's name.
Jesse was there as well, still transparent, still in his eighteenth century costume with his three cornered hat. This didn't stop him from lounging in the chair to Stephanie's right. Nor did it stop Jesse from boasting his most arrogant smirk.
"Very sloppy, Jack" said Jesse, with a yawn. "I expected you to take care of our guests. Stephanie expected better from you."
"I tried, sir" said Benny giving Jesse an elaborate salute.
"I know Jack. You try" said Jesse, feigning sympathy. He glanced at Sarah with a look of incredible smugness..
Stephanie smiled, and pointed to the four floating teens. They dropped feet first to the floor.
"I can't move my feet!" announced Rory. "I'm stuck."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious" Erica said.
"She's done this to us before" said Ethan, though that didn't stop him from trying to move his feet.
"It's not as if I'll forget" said Sarah dryly.
"Or me!" Stephanie interjected furiously. "When you thought you'd ruin my life! All I was doing was paying the student body at Whitechapel High back for how they treated me the first time I went to high school."
"Actually, the only reason we caught onto to your plan was we were trying to save you" said Ethan irritably. "Erica wanted to kill you for what you did to her. We didn't know you were a soul-stealing witch."
"I think that was about their second adventure after they faced me that first time" said Jesse casually. "They were mucking around worse even than now. Heh . . . there goes Ethan's yellow eyes again."
"It really shouldn't have mattered to neither geeks nor the undead if I stole the souls of the student body" said Stephanie haughtily. "Well, none of you are still un-dead, but three of you will always be geeks. That reminds me . . . . Jack, step to Ethan's left."
Benny followed her orders, with military precision.
Stephanie snapped her fingers.
"Jack the Bellboy" stiffened as if he had received as bad a shock as he had back at the Casa de Anjou when his troubles began.
"Huh?" Benny sputtered at once, looking around. His vacant black eyes first reacted to Stephanie and Jesse. "How'd you get here? Where am I? What do you fart-heads think you're doing? I can't move my feet. What . . . the frack am I wearing!"
"Your uniform" said Jesse laconically. "The last thing you'll ever wear."
Benny angrily pulled off his bellboy's cap by the chinstrap, and gazed furiously at the his brass tag reading "Jack Weir".
"My middle name's a secret!" Benny said.
"Not anymore, Jack" Jesse replied.
"No one ever calls me Jack!" Benny exclaimed
"Shut up, Jack!" said Stephanie. "When the Windego brought you here, I decided to make you a slave. There isn't a very good variety in the cemeteries here if you're looking to raise zombies. Several careless miners, like our doormen and the skeletons you met. But most of the people buried here died of natural causes."
"Then why do they look as if they're as . . . fresh . . . as Benny?" asked Erica.
"Fresh!" Benny exclaimed.
"Because Stephanie hates looking at skeletons" said Jesse with a yawn. "It's a girl-thing. But Stephanie told you that."
"All you do is mix a rejuvenation potion and then turn your rejuvenated body into a zombie" said Stephanie. "It keeps out the demons. Demons are . . . ."
"So, witches answer to demons" interrupted Benny. "You all have the same boss."
"And you now answer to me" Stephanie said coldly.
"No way in . . . where you're going" said Benny brazenly, who tried but failed to move his feet.
"If you don't want your soul ripped from your body, Jack, you'll be as speechless as a proper zombie should" said Stephanie with a icy look at Benny. Stephanie turned to the rest of the teens. "I've decided to explain what I'm going to do with the five of you after the trouble you've given me. It's far more satisfying."
"Harlow was the gloating type" observed Jesse.
"He was only a vampire" said Stephanie, to Jesse. "I will them my deal with Mr. Scratch. He's very impressed with me."
It was only for a second, but Jesse looked at the teens and made a motion with his finger to his skull showing that he thought Stephanie crazy. At least here.
"Mr. Scratch?" asked Sarah.
"The Satan . . . the devil incarnate" said Jesse, as a shadow over his face. "I bet the bellboy's grandmother . . . Mrs. Weir warned you what Stephanie is working for?"
"That Stephanie's in league with the devil" said Benny, as casually as he could. "Yeah, we know that."
"Erica doesn't believe it" said Sarah.
"I believe what I see" said Erica quietly at first, but increasingly angry. "I see we're being held hostage by a witch who has skeletons, zombies, stinking monsters, a mama's boy innkeeper's son, railroad workers and invisible auto part heirs working for her. And for what? To make Ethan a werewolf and Benny her zombie bellhop? Why? The whole thing is demented!"
"When you put it like that . . . ." said Jesse, stretching his transparent arms. "Go on, Stephanie. If you really want to tell them first."
"Personally, I don't give a fig about vampires" said Stephanie, looking at Jesse. "But by breaking every rule in the book you doomed your own kind and left an opening for those do-gooders."
"You think I made Ethan a seer? And Jack as spellmaster?" said Jesse sardonically.
"But you made them even more powerful!" Stephanie retorted. "Those five teens . . . between the five of you, you've destroyed most of what was evil in Whitechapel."
"Awesome!" cheered Rory. "High fives!"
"I don't think I can reach my hand over" said Ethan, who didn't feel like cheering.
"But, uh, we knew that" Rory continued. "Jack . . . I mean Benny's Grandma said so. High five Sarah?"
Sarah gave Rory a high five, with the shadow of a smile.
"That kid cannot shut up!" snapped Jesse. "Why, Erica . . . why didn't you drain him when you were supposed to!"
Erica looked indignant a moment, but decided to give a cool shrug. It dampened Rory's spirits considerably.
"I think I should just take their voices away" said Stephanie, with a glare. "One look from me . . . ."
"I know how this works" interrupted Jesse. "If you're going to cheerlead your victory, you want them to complain. Especially the nerds. Not stand around glamoured like statues. Me, I didn't waste my time. If I wanted someone dead, I killed them. But Anastasia and Harlow were as bad as any James Bond villain with gloating."
"James Bond?" asked Stephanie.
"It's not only geeks like those three who watch Bond movies" said Jesse, with a smirk. "Only if you count how many girls I've had over the years . . . let's say I make Bond look like a monk."
"I don't know what I ever saw in you" groaned Sarah.
"A romantic, sensitive, poetic-type, who loved the stage" said Jesse, with a smirk. "What I wanted you to see."
"I know."
"Back to me" interrupted Stephanie. "You probably don't know this was the second deal I made with Mr. Scratch."
"We know that too" said Ethan, who was angry to begin with and was enraged by Stephanie's latest remarks. "It's bad enough you could actually make a deal with the devil. But you're bragging about it?"
"Just because she wasn't popular in high school" said Benny, incredulously. "She's crazy. All witches are."
"No, just evil" said Sarah.
"My first deal was brilliant" said Stephanie, in a haughty tone. "For my eternal youth and powers, all I had to do was steal the souls of a gymnasium full of teens. You ruined that. Mr. Scratch had trusted me so much the first time out I didn't have to give up my soul to him."
Everyone looked incredulously at Stephanie. Jesse, again, made the "she's crazy" gesture.
"The devil would have taken your soul anyway" said Rory, with some surprise. "You can't make a deal with the devil, steal a couple hundred souls and get away with it. That's pure evil. He'd take you in the end."
Stephanie glared daggers at Rory.
"Says a boy who stumbled into a vampire party the first day of high school and found himself a full-fledged bloodsucker by midnight. There was a time your soul was to be as cursed as mine. You and Sarah shouldn't have escaped. I still don't see how."
"A higher justice and a higher mercy" said Benny, "We've seen it, even if you won't believe it."
"Yeah" Rory agreed.
"You shouldn't be able to destroy your soul by saving someone's life" said Ethan emphatically, taking up the thread. "And . . . you can't just bite and brainwash a fourteen year old guy who believes in Santa Claus and only wanted to go to a party and hang with the cool kids."
"What does Santa Claus have to do with it?" asked Rory.
"Everything and nothing, traitor" interrupted Jesse, with some annoyance. "We've covered my mistakes. Now about yours, Stephanie?"
"What mistakes?"
"Your second deal"
"That was no mistake" Stephanie retorted. "You wouldn't be here then."
"Second triumph then" said Jesse, sardonically.
"Now, the second time I dealt with Mr. Scratch, he insisted I show good faith. I had to go through the trouble of selling my soul" said Stephanie with emphasis. "I . . . ."
"So you didn't sell your soul two times over" said Benny. "That's what confused Grandma. I think I get it. When Grandma took away your evil powers and made you a wrinkled old hag, she really saved you from your first idiot deal. Only you're such a fart head you didn't realize it."
"Until Stephanie of her own free will sold her soul . . . Stephanie could repent . . . atone for what she did" said Sarah. "I think I understand."
"That's why the only job she could get was as a lunch lady" said Ethan. "It just wasn't coincidence. By working in the cafeteria, it . . . gave her a chance to save her soul by becoming a new, better person."
"It was poetic justice" said Sarah thoughtfully, with a look at Ethan. "Almost as if it were out of story. She mistreated students and our old lunch lady. She'd work as lunch lady herself but could learn her lesson and become . . . deserving."
Stephanie gave a mocking laugh.
"Repent! You know how I've been treated!"
"No worse than me" said Ethan. "And I've never wanted to kill anybody."
"Although you soon will" said Stephanie, with a sinister look into Ethan's deep brown eyes . . . now clouded by spots of yellow. "For months, for over a year, I suffered again . . . because of you above all. I desperately wanted his infernal majesty to return my powers and give me my revenge. Finally, after you've destroyed the one town in Canada under the command of occult forces . . . ."
"More like destroyed the occult forces" Sarah interrupted.
"And stop calling the devil something like "infernal majesty" added Benny. "It makes me want to puke."
"Just stop talking about it . . . period" Erica complained.
Stephanie looked at Erica with a tight smile.
"You know, you're a little like me" Stephanie said sweetly. "You know and understand what people have done to you. And how you should take revenge. Mr. Scratch gave me the means to take my revenge. My youth, my powers, and what you call the counterfeit curses. The rest was my doing. I wanted my revenge on Ethan most of all. First Ethan, then Benny and Evelyn. Sarah, you were a decoy to confuse everyone. You, Sarah, you Erica, had potential as cheerleaders. And you were safely under my mind control spell until the geeks came along to spoil things. Sarah, you had such potential."
"As you found out, Ethan, Benny and Rory have potential too" Sarah retorted.
"You know they're hopeless geeks" said Stephanie.
"Like you were when you were a teen?" said Erica.
"I am a teen."
"When you were really a teen you were a hopeless geek" said Sarah.
"No I wasn't!" Stephanie retorted. "Just blocked from being a cheerleader. Don't make excuses just because you have geeks for friends."
"There's bigger things than high school" Sarah replied in a annoyed tone. "And being cool isn't the most important thing in the world either. And I've always made my own friends."
"You're just lucky, Sarah, that I wasn't allowed to make you a vampire again" said Stephanie. "Since you hate it so much. I don't blame you . . . it's so much of a nuisance. But I would have turned you if I could, just to have punished you for your part in ruining my plans. Mr. Scratch told me I might try a use a vampire spell someday, for real. Mr. Scratch told me I was very shrewd."
"Of course you are" said Ethan sarcastically.
"Mr. Scratch even told me how the vampire spell would fail" Stephanie retorted. "How is that for honest dealing you morons?"
"So he'd trick you into something else" Benny said, irritably. "I don't believe this!"
Not being able to move his feet, Benny plunked his bellboy hat back on his head as an expression of disgust.
"Don't you have a brain, Stephanie?" asked Ethan.
"As if you did" said Stephanie. "If you did, you would have realized that all I set out to do was to set out to take away your powers. And I was careful to choose curses that would stick. Ethan and Benny were meant to be werewolf and zombie once. It was my safest revenge . . . and it stripped the two geeks of their innate powers."
"Benny turned Ethan into a werewolf the first time" Jesse now put it. "And the Lotto Latte zombies weren't even cursed.
"But I was allowed to counterfeit the effect" said Stephanie. "And, of course, there's no rule against putting a curse on somebody's body. It's stealing a soul that difficult. Do you five know the difference between a stolen soul and a condemned soul?
There was no answer from Team Sabre plus Erica. Depending on who it was, either they didn't know (Rory) or because they didn't feel like answering (Ethan).
"A condemned soul is his infernal majesty's by right" said Stephanie.
"Like yours" Ethan said icily.
"Don't look so proud, Ethan, thinking about us" smirked Jesse. "Relishing in it is a sin by itself. What do you call it? Yeah, schadenfreude?"
"Nobody's perfect" Ethan admitted, temporarily abashed. But Ethan soon worked himself into a temper; "But you're holding us prisoner, my eyes are glowing yellow, and you're bragging about your working in and for the forces of evil. I'm not perfect but I'm not . . . ."
"You're not me, is it, were-whelp?" Jesse sneered. "You're not, let's see, murderer, thief, heretic, fraud, necromancer, defiler of women and corrupter of souls. And condemned to his infernal majesty Old Scratch by right."
"I don't think "by right" is that's the right way to put it" Benny said. "Even forgetting the infernal fubrecarb."
"A stolen soul is one taken prisoner and subject to rescue" said Stephanie. "And that's why I've only cursed you and haven't tried to kill you or take your souls. I didn't go through all this trouble to try to steal souls."
"Just ruin our lives?" asked Ethan.
"You should have accepted life as the Whitechapel Werewolf" Stephanie retorted.
"You were expecting Ethan to die in prison, as a werewolf, after mauling Malcolm" Sarah said abruptly.
"Yes" said Stephanie. "But that would have been their fault. My role was just to give Ethan and Benny new lives as . . . exciting . . . varieties of werewolves and zombies. It would have meant the end of their fighting against dark forces. They'd be benched . . . now being monsters themselves.
"W-we fought evil as vamps" Rory reminded Stephanie. "Ethan and Benny could have spent their whole lives as monsters on the side of good."
"A werewolf and zombie? Not the same as a teen with second sight" sneered Jesse "Probably the best seer of his generation. Benny too, might have been a good spellmaster . . . if he were competent."
"I am competent" said Benny indignantly.
"Were!" said Stephanie. "Well, you've probably guessed why I went up north?"
"To make me act the werewolf" said Ethan.
"It wasn't just so you could show your yellow eyes" said Stephanie sardonically. "I was hoping you'd become violent enough to kill or get yourself to get killed. Or give up and live at the fringe of civilization. You must have been thinking of it? You were, weren't you? Your ears move, don't they, when you're upset? I can see from where you combed your hair over the tips."
"Frack my ears" said Ethan bitterly, trying helplessly to kick his way loose from the carpet. "If they do, you know it's your fault. Eyes, ears, teeth, feet, hair, everything."
"Don't whine, Ethan" said Jesse wryly. Jesse smirked. "You know, for a werewhelp, that's a good close shave you had this morning. Most werewolves have five o'clock shadow by noon. Let me guess, straight razor at the Thunder Bay Plaza Hotel barber shop? Extra close, I bet. You wanted to make sure Sarah didn't see you look too wolfish?"
Ethan again struggled with his feet and shoes, seemingly glued to the floor.
"You're still not going to get away with any of this" said Benny hoarsely. "We'll walk out of here human, and you'll still be a ghost."
"You don't know how close you are to being a ghost yourself" said Jesse cooly. "If I was in charge, you would be by now. If your spirit chose to stick around."
"You're not going to kill us?" asked Sarah.
"Oh, I'm not killing you" said Stephanie. "And have your souls fly away to the world to come, forever beyond my reach?"
"Because she sold her soul" said Benny, in surprise. "She can't stand to let ours go to a better place."
"We hope!" said Rory.
"Just not yet" Ethan reminded his pal.
"Uh-huh" said Rory. "I don't want to die yet."
"Then what's she trying to do?" interrupted Sarah.
"You'll . . . be surprised" said Jesse, with an appraising look at Stephanie as she stood up and went to a small drawer in an end table. "Add to her crimes that of . . . .
For a moment, Jesse faltered to describe what Stephanie's scheme.
"Add to her crimes that of an imposter and usurper."
Author's Note
In writing this, I was trying to make sure it was clear how crazy/evil Stephanie is. It sets up to what Stephanie is aiming to do in the next two chapters.
Inspired by the old movie "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and tv programs which had episodes based on that movie. I should mention specifically the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Devil's Feud Cake".