Disclaimer: I own nothing. However, if Power Rangers did those spiffy novels like Star Trek and Star Wars, I'd be set for life. No infringement is intended.
DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES
By Etcetera Kit
Chapter Five: All Saint's Day
The sun was just coming over the horizon as Ashley pulled the car up the drive of the haunted house. Jen Scotts looked out the window anxiously—this was going to be too good to miss. Either those guys had had the time of their lives or had been bored out of their minds. It made her wonder what TJ had originally been thinking when he asked all of them to put in the application. She hated feeling like she had missed things. Her memory went right up until blacking out after the Tyranno-drones beat Carter to two weeks ago. Almost a year of her life was missing and she felt some strange compulsion to make up for it.
That had been part of the reason she had wanted to come with Wes for the weekend. Not that she wouldn't have been comfortable and well-taken care of in his absence—Mr. Collins would see to that. She wanted to start living again. And going to Angel Grove for the weekend with the gang she remembered from a year ago seemed like a good idea.
Of course, on the flip side, she felt relatively helpless since she was still really weak and couldn't walk or stand for long periods of time. She hated feeling like an imposition on Ashley, since she and Wes had been staying with Andros and Ashley (along with Carter and his bunch.) But Ashley didn't seem to mind overmuch. Jen realized that, for all the people she was surrounded by, she knew very little about most of them. She knew Carter and Dana fairly well along with Cole and Alyssa and, naturally, Eric and to a lesser extent, Taylor. But the others all seemed like virtual strangers, even if she did still possess her purple Dino-Gem.
"And here we are," Ashley announced as she pulled her car next to the guys' cars. It was probably said for the sake of Brian and Kaye who were in the backseat with Cory and Heather. It would be just her luck to be in the car with all the kids. Dana was following them with Kendrix (and Merry), Taylor and Alyssa.
Ashley parked the car and started to unload the kids. Jen got out of the car and slowly made her way around towards the house, using the car as a support.
"Jen!" she heard Kendrix exclaim. "Let us help you!"
Kendrix came hurrying over to her, carrying a couple of lawn chairs. (Alyssa was holding baby Merry and looked to be in seventh heaven.) In the time that she had spent last evening with this bunch of women, Kendrix came across as incredibly sweet and caring. And probably got taken advantage of because of it.
"Don't worry about me," she told Kendrix as she set up the lawn chairs.
"It's not a big deal," Kendrix assured her. "Everyone needs help sometimes." Her blue eyes alighted on Alyssa holding her daughter.
"Think they're alive?" Taylor muttered, as Brian, Heather and Cory started a nonsense game of tag on the lawn.
"Cole probably doesn't think he's alive," Alyssa replied with a laugh.
"I'm sure they're alive," Ashley yawned. "It's just a matter of what kind of state they'll be in." She paused. "Especially if they scared themselves."
Dana snorted. "Unlikely knowing them."
Jen also found it amazing that something as seemingly ridiculous as a 'red ranger distress signal' could bring all of the members and their families so close. Everyone here (over the age of about sixteen) had been a ranger and most of them still had their powers. In Jen's case, she actually still had two power sources.
"Where are they?" Kendrix asked.
"Let's go find out," Taylor replied. Jen watched as Taylor and Kendrix walked up to the front door of the house and tried the doorknob. Apparently, it was stuck, but they heard the guys moving around.
"Why would the door be locked?" Ashley said.
Jen frowned as Taylor picked up a two by four that had been lying on the front porch and used it to take off the doorknob completely. Her and Kendrix stepped back as someone inside the house kicked the door completely open—it splintered where the doorknob had been. The door swung open. Jen wasn't surprised when the door revealed Eric standing there and indicating that he had been the one to kick the door open. He gave Taylor a quick peck on the cheek before calling something back into the house.
She felt a fractional hitch in her breathing as Carter and Andros came out of the house with Leo supported between them. Dana hurried forward and sat Leo down in one of the lawn chairs. She took off the makeshift sling on his arm.
"What happened?" she asked, probing his arm gently.
Leo winced and gritted his teeth. "Fell down the basement stairs."
Dana swung around to face Carter and Andros. "Why didn't anyone call 911? This arm should have been set a long time ago!"
"No cell phone reception out here!" Carter snapped, obviously tired and not happy. "And then we were locked in the house."
"You could have found a way out!" Dana turned back to Leo. Jen was almost amazed that she didn't start yelling at Leo too, because Leo could have insisted they find a way out and, if he had started complaining, they probably would have.
"Why isn't she yelling at Leo?" she asked Kendrix in an undertone.
Kendrix gave a small laugh and glanced at Leo. "It's not going to do any good now. Besides, it's not his way to complain about being in pain. If he was dying and thought that he needed to do something, he'd get up and do it."
She moved back to Leo and gently stroked his hair as he stifled a yelp from Dana's examination of his arm.
"So where's that damn publicist with our money?" Eric muttered, dragging a couple duffel bags to the cars. "Probably bailed out on us," he answered himself.
Wes appeared on the porch, holding an armful of sleeping bags and, for some strange reason, a cow flashlight. He dumped the sleeping bags in Tommy's Jeep and handed the flashlight to Brian (who promptly made it 'moo') before coming over to her. He planted a kiss on her forehead as he knelt in front of her.
"So what happened?" she asked playfully.
He shuddered visibly. "Never again will I say I don't believe in ghosts."
"You guys saw ghosts?"
"More than I would care to remember."
"Yeah, he was the one close to having a nervous breakdown," Eric called from where he had been loading duffel bags in TJ's car.
Wes glared at him. "Why is there dust in your hair?" Taylor was asking Eric as she ran her fingers through his black hair, causing noticeable clouds of dust to form.
"I was sleeping on the floor of an abandoned house," he retorted. "You tell me."
"Yeah and we ended up in the attic," Conner added, lugging the cooler out of the house.
Taylor crossed her arms over her chest. "The attic?"
"Well that was after we almost got attack by an insane woman and a convict who obviously thought that we knew something they didn't," Eric replied nonchalantly. "Oh yeah and then I got to see a ghost rendition of a guillotine execution."
"And then that ghost named Thomas took us back down to the parlor," Conner continued, hefting the cooler into Tommy's Jeep.
"And then we found everyone asleep expect Leo who couldn't sleep because his arm hurt too much and then we thought that that publicist was going to come and open the door at sunrise, which he didn't and-" Eric took a deep breath like he was going to continue rattling on and on until someone stopped him.
"I get the picture!" Taylor replied loudly, cutting off anything that was to come.
Jen laughed and turned back to Wes. "So did any ghosts attack you?"
"This crazy little girl tried to attack us because she thought that we were going to take her brothers to prison or something ridiculous like that."
"Hey! The publicist!" Eric yelled.
A black car was pulling up to all of them. A little man with a moustache got out, looking extremely nervous. He looked around at the whole group.
"So? You made it until morning?" He gave a nervous laugh.
"Damn straight," Eric replied. "Where's the money?"
"Ah yes… that…" the man cleared his throat. "Well, no one thought you'd actually stay the whole night, so…"
"What?" Conner yelled, causing the man to jump.
Eric growled and picked the man up by his lapels. He squeaked and looked scared to have an extraordinarily angry Eric on his hands. "Want to repeat that?" Eric asked in a dangerously low tone.
"You-you can't do anything! I'll sue!"
"Oh hell no," Eric said, dropping the man. "I'll have you for false advertising." He pointed at Leo, who was clutching his arm and was pale. "See that? We had to spend the entire night in that house with someone who has a broken arm because you locked us in! If I don't see some money soon, you're going to wish you were never born!"
The man squeaked and pulled an envelope out of his coat. He dropped it on the ground before scurrying off to his car and driving away. Eric bent down and picked up the envelope, looking at its contents. Conner leaned over his shoulder.
"Ten checks," Eric replied. "One hundred thousand dollars each."
"Yes! Tuition money!" Conner crowed.
"I thought you had a scholarship," Tommy asked him.
Conner shrugged. "Just in case."
Jen laughed at the antics. Wes was still on the ground before her, only now he was using her lap as a pillow. She gently stroked his hair, relieved to find that he wasn't covered in dust like Eric and Conner and didn't have broken bones like Leo.
There was a plaintive moo from the cow flashlight.
"Let's get out of here," Ashley said. Everyone piled back into the cars and started the drive back into the heart of Angel Grove.
So here they were, safe and sound squeezed into TJ's kitchen after a night of horrors that had been enough to equal a good scary movie. Carter took the beer that had been offered to him and glanced around at the faces around the table. Everyone had either gone back to their host's house or their hotel, showered and had some proper sleep. (None of them considered sleeping on a hardwood floor to be proper sleep.) And they were back, debriefing for all intents and purposes before planes started leaving and people had to drive back home.
They had just finished comparing stories about what had happened to them when they had all split up. The general consensus was that the prison convict ghost had been Charles, the ghost in the suit had been Jonathan, the little girl Veronica and the young man with no apparent wounds or other means of identification had been Thomas. The older man had been Lord Westmoor himself (even though Cole had been the only one to see him) and the insane woman with the gashed throat had been Lord Westmoor's wife.
Apparently, when Eric, Conner and Cole had gone upstairs, they had run into two ghosts in an intimate situation in the master bedroom. That disappeared before the lights went out. Conner and Eric then saw the ghosts circling the ballroom ceiling before running into Lady Westmoor and Charles. They then fled to the attic where Eric (who didn't allow Conner to see it) saw the guillotine execution. Thomas then found the pair of them and brought them back to the parlor with the others. The pair of them also made a clear distinction between what they called seeing 'memories' (scenes that had happened in places around the house) and actual ghosts. The ghosts in the master bedroom and the guillotine had been memories. Everything else they had seen had been ghosts.
When the lights went out, Cole got dragged into the master bedroom by Lord Westmoor and the ghost wanted him to help settle the inheritance problem that had kept all the spirits active. Cole, after getting over the initial shock, had then spent the rest of his time away from the others following around Lord Westmoor and collecting the various documents that were needed for the lawyers.
After those left in the parlor split up, Jason, Tommy, Wes and Andros went upstairs after the former trio (who by this time were all either in the attic or locked in the master bedroom). They found a suspicious blood stain on the carpet and ran into Jonathan in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. (After, Jonathan tried to bludgeon Tommy with a chair.) Once Jonathan disappeared, Veronica appeared and pulled some scary face demon junk that prompted them to get back into the parlor as quickly as possible.
As for himself, Leo and TJ, he already knew the story. They headed in the kitchen, found that skeleton (which the police were investigating) and then found the basement stairs. Leo fell down the stairs and got dragged behind the crates by Charles. Carter and TJ found Leo behind the crates and then Jonathan and Charles argued about killing them. Thomas intervened and they managed to get back to the kitchen, just in time to run into Tommy and Jason who were coming to look for them.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
"So we came out relatively unscathed," TJ commented, sipping his beer.
"You call this relatively unscathed!" Leo said sarcastically, indicating his arm which was now in a cast and a sling. He, along with Conner, was drinking soda instead of beer. Kendrix didn't want him mixing his painkillers with alcohol.
"He's doped up on painkillers. Don't listen to him," Andros muttered.
"Hey!" Conner replied. "Some people have said some very profound things while under the influence."
"Like what?" Eric asked.
"Like that guy that was licking those frogs in South America because something in their skin had hallucinogenic effects."
"That is dumb for two reasons," Carter spoke up. "One, the guy had to be dumb enough to actually do it. Second, he had to tell someone about it."
"That still doesn't answer the question of who said something profound while they were high," Wes said.
"John Lennon came up with some pretty good stuff while he was high," Jason answered the question. "I mean they do say that the whole of Sgt. Pepper's is about drugs."
"That's true," Eric replied.
"So back to the haunted house," TJ said loudly.
"I'm just glad I got out of school," Conner muttered.
Tommy gave him a withering look. "You're just glad that you missed Dr. Cranston's Pre-Cal test today."
"Yeah, I have a study extension."
"Did you talk to the law firm?" Wes asked Cole.
Cole nodded. "I called, but they weren't in today. I left the papers in their mail slot in an envelope with a note." Carter added that the skeleton in the pantry and the bodies in the basement and the prison graveyard were being investigated by the proper authorities.
"Sounds good," Tommy said.
"Think we'll see anymore of the ghosts?" Andros asked.
"Probably not," Cole replied. "I mean they are all tied to the house. I can't imagine that they'd leave their home just to give us grief."
Everyone agreed to that and the conversation drifted back towards lighter topics. Carter had to admit that, if nothing else, these group reunions always turned out interesting.
Eric looked out the window on the plane ride back to Silver Hills. Maybe the weekend had not been as restful as he had thought it was going to be, but it had gotten him and Taylor away from Taylor's parents for a little bit. For that small blessing, he was thankful. The sky was blue and the clouds were fluffy and white. It seemed like such a contrast from the horrific things he had seen last night. Well, he supposed that nothing he had seen last night was all that horrific compared to what he had already seen, it was just the context that made it different.
"What'cha thinking about?"
He turned from the window to Taylor. She was studying him intensely, her blue eyes burning into his skin.
"Cole and Alyssa are getting married in six weeks," he invented.
"And?"
"I have to buy a new tie."
Taylor laughed and snuggled up against him. He sighed, contentedly. When he and Taylor first met, the last thing he had ever thought they would do was get married. He recalled that picnic after the mutorgs had been defeated. He had stolen her book and she ended up chasing him to a remote spot in the Animarium. One thing led to another… and for the next two years they had ended up as off and on bedmates. The year after the red ranger mission involving Mesogog had been the reckoning for their relationship. The two years before had been odd—both of them had other significant others and there was no commitment to each other. That year saw them through the ups and downs of a relationship, before he proposed to her.
"That's not what you were thinking about."
He smiled, in spite of himself. "No, it's not."
"You were thinking about last night."
"Dammit, woman, how do you figure these things out?"
"I'm psychic," she retorted sarcastically.
He sighed, not feeling like picking a fight over something stupid. "Yeah. I've seen things more horrific than that. It was just the context… and if anyone else had been with me other than Conner…"
"You're worried about him?"
"He's just so young. He doesn't need to see an insane woman dying from a gash across her throat, even if it was a ghost."
"Eric, he's probably seen movies gorier than what you two saw."
"Movies are not the same thing as real life, even if it was a ghost."
"Maybe you should call him and see if he's okay."
Eric gave her a bored look. "We are talking about Conner here. Even if he was scarred for life, do you really think he'd admit to it?"
Taylor smiled. "You two have a lot in common then."
He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"You don't ever want to admit you're hurt or that you need help or that you'd like someone to take care of you for a change."
"I don't need to be taken care of."
Taylor shook her head. "Everyone needs to be taken care of."
"Well, you're guilty of the same thing."
"We're not talking about me, we're talking about you," Taylor replied airily.
Eric didn't reply, he just wrapped an arm around her and let his gaze drift back to the window. He didn't know why he loved Taylor at all. She drove him crazy and the two of them could fight over the dumbest things, but there was something about her that made him feel whole. His entire life he felt like he had been running. First it was from the fact that he had no real family and then that prep school where he never fit in. Then it was the Marines and then the Silver Guardians… he had never dreamed that when he pulled Taylor over and gave her that ticket close to three years ago that she would eventually become his wife. Fate had a way of putting him right back in the company of people he didn't like (Wes… Taylor…) and turning that hate into friendship and love.
"Did I tell you my mom called last night?" Taylor asked.
"No." He paused. "Did she give you another lecture on my shortcomings?"
"Surprisingly no. She did tell me my Aunt Bella called."
"That name sounds ominous."
Taylor laughed. "She's supposedly the psychic one in the family. She said that she foresees we will have lots of babies."
"Lovely."
He was starting to think that his original idea of trying to drown himself in the shower might not be so bad.To Be Continued...
Author's Note: I hope everyone has enjoyed this fic! I got the idea for this at one point in time and, ironically enough, the thread with Conner and Eric was the only completed one for a long time. Go figure. I do have more stories planned for the red ranger bunch. I'll just say that if it involves a member of the red ranger distress signal to a large degree, it happens in the same world as 'Roaring On the Wind.' If it doesn't, then it's a stand alone piece. So, with that, happy writing and I shall see all of you around and about! --EK