Chapter 18 – "The Trigger"
At a little before 11:00 a.m., the ghosts of Edmund Grey, Brooke English, Opal Courtland, Maria Santos Grey, Sam Grey, Maddie Grey, Stuart Chandler, Marian Chandler and Lily Montgomery wandered out of the charred living room of Wildwind and into the Main Ballroom, where the Estate Sale was to begin at noon.
"Wow, we overslept!" Stuart exclaimed.
"Well, Darling, we went through a great deal at the séance," Marian reasoned. "Although I don't remember how it actually ended." She looked at the others and realized with mounting horror that she could look right through them. "Does anybody remember how it ended?"
Lily remembered. "We were all burned to a crisp," she sad sadly. "Our bodies were incinerated."
"Nonsense!" Opal laughed, a little too loudly, "that would mean that we're dead!"
"That's what it would mean all right," Brooke agreed, looking at her hands and seeing through them to the Main Ballroom's lacquered floor.
"I'll kill them," Edmund promised, referring of course to his fellow aliens. He himself was not looking nearly as solid as he had looked during the séance. Still everybody in the room could see him now, since all of them were as dead as he was.
"Kill who?" Maria asked mechanically. "I mean whom?"
"Zartz, Zift and Zetz," Edmund listed matter-of-factly.
"Who in baby blue blazes are Zartz, Zift and Zetz?" Opal demanded.
Edmund's ghostly head ached. There was no way to keep it from them. The whole truth had to be told. They deserved that much.
"They are Alien Invaders from a planet called Galios IV." He took a deep breath and told them the rest of it. "My home."
"Daddy, what are you talking about?" Maddie screeched. "Pine Valley is your home!"
"Well, it WAS your home," Maria amended, "before you got yourself murdered."
"You make it sound like I volunteered!" Edmund said between his teeth.
"You're from another planet?" Brooke asked him pointblank.
"Why the surprise, Brooke?" Maria asked sweetly. "You always thought Edmund was out of this world!"
"Edmund, you told us you came from the future in a time machine!" a bewildered Brooke cried out.
"I did come from the future in a time machine," Edmund replied. "I also came from Galios IV."
"That could be possible," Lily told them. "Just because Edmund's from the future, doesn't mean that he isn't an Alien Invader."
"I'm crazy about that kid," one of Edmund's black trench coats revealed. "I'm almost sorry we murdered her!" The trench coats hung neatly from a metal rack standing directly in front of the ghosts. There were 20 of them. There used to 17.
"That trench coat just said something," Sam pointed out, in case the others had failed to notice.
"What gives, Edmund?" Opal demanded.
Edmund scowled. "Allow me to introduce you all to the delegation from Galios IV, presently in trench coat form!"
Three of Edmund's trench coats jumped off the rack, flicked their collars in acknowledgment and bowed deeply.
"Galiosians are shapeshifters," Edmund explained. "We can change form at will."
"Um, Edmund," Brooke had to ask, "what is your real, actual and true form?"
"Better you shouldn't know," the left-most trench coat replied.
"Zartz, I am going to destroy you," Edmund told it calmly.
"You and what army?" Zartz inquired.
"Murdering us wasn't very friendly," Lily spoke up. "It was extremely unfriendly."
"Nothing personal, kid," the trench coat in the middle said. "It's what Galioscians do."
Edmund exploded. "No, it isn't, you deranged intergalactic misfits! It's what YOU do! How dare you slaughter a room full of people to have some fun? Isn't that what you told me you were going to do? Have some fun?"
"It was more than some fun," Zift corrected him stiffly. "It was an enormous amount of fun!"
"Edmund, when did you get so square?" the right-most trench coat asked mournfully.
"Those coats murdered us?" Marian gasped.
"Sure did!" the trench coats answered.
Opal had heard enough. "I'm gonna rip you monsters apart seam by seam!" she screamed, fists clenched, diving on top of them.
But she only passed harmlessly through them on her way to the floor. Not a thread was touched.
"It won't do any good, Opal," Edmund told her sadly. "Spirits can have no physical effect on reality."
"Then how are you going to destroy them?" Stuart whispered to Edmund.
"He isn't," Zartz answered. "He's going to stand by helplessly while matter crashes into antimatter."
"Dad, there's the Pulitzer!" Sam cried out, his gaze falling on a table not three feet away from them.
"But we can't touch it," Brooke realized. "We can't touch anything anymore!"
"It doesn't matter, Brooke," Edmund said. "The Pulitzer isn't the time machine. They planted that idea in our heads to get us off the trail until they had a chance to exterminate everyone who could help me find the time machine."
"Bastards!" Maria screamed with all her heart.
"Sticks and stones," Zartz shot back. "How'd you guess, Edmund?"
Edmund smiled. "I could hear you three geniuses plotting. You think you're the only telepaths in town?"
The trench coats stopped breathing.
"And that's not the only thing I heard, guys." Edmund turned to Brooke. "Brooke, these sons of bitches are responsible for my getting killed off the Show!"
"No!" Brooke gasped.
"I heard them admit it at the séance," Edmund said.
"They were at the séance?" Stuart asked.
"They were the popcorn kernels on the table," Edmund revealed.
"That was a good disguise!" Lily marveled. "This is a good disguise too," she went on. "How do you come up with all these good disguises?"
"It's what we do," Zartz said simply, touched, in spite of himself by Lily's guileless admiration.
"They planted that idea about the Pulitzer?" Brooke asked, beginning to take it all in.
"They don't know where the time machine is either," Edmund said. "And I still don't remember!"
"We're dead?" Maria asked, beginning to take it all in.
Zetz wished that trench coats could grin. "We do, however, know how to detonate it, wherever and whatever it is!"
"No you don't," Edmund was sure. "I would have heard you three talking about it."
"You can only hear what we say when we're on the same planet," Zift said. "The last time we talked about the time machine detonation trigger we were home." He laughed wickedly. "And you weren't!"
"I programmed that time machine. I built in a detonation option. How would you three know what the trigger is?"
"You kept a diary," Zetz explained. "You wrote about the trigger in your last entry before becoming Edmund Grey and beginning to forget your true identity and mission."
"You had a mission?" all the other ghosts asked Edmund.
"It's news to me," Edmund said honestly.
"Edmund do you remember what the trigger is?" Brooke asked him, hopeful in spite of herself.
"No," Edmund replied miserably.
"Actually, you can tell us about the trigger," Lily pointed out carefully to the trench coats. "There's nothing we can do now to stop you. We're only ghosts now. We can't have any physical effect on reality, so you can tell us what will make all material reality go BOOM. And we can't do anything to make it not happen."
"We're ghosts?" Marian asked Stuart, beginning to take it all in.
The Galioscians were dying to tell Edmund what the detonation trigger was. And so they did.
"ERICA KANE'S REAL AGE!"
Can Edmund and his friends stop the destruction of all material reality? How can the Estate Sale go on without Brooke and Maria? Will we find out Erica Kane's real age? Lots of chapters, lots of surprises still to come! Please read on! I would be grateful for your review!