Chapter 20 – "The Eyes of Love Cannot be Deceived by Lies"
"IT'S THE CHAIR! IT'S THE CHAIR! THE CHAIR IS THE TIME MACHINE"
Brooke turned to Edmund, unable to believe what she had heard him holler.
"Edmund," she gasped, "are you sure?"
Meanwhile, a frantic Jack had made his way to an unconscious Erica. Quickly, he knelt down in front of the chair and looked up at her. She was slumped forward, eyes closed, breathing shallow.
"Erica! Erica! Speak to me!" he implored her.
"Mother, wake up!" Kendall yelled, alarmed.
"Ryan, what's wrong with her?" Greenlee wanted to know, not caring that much but sensing her father's distress.
"Erica, wake up!" Ryan tried, but to no noticeable avail.
"Did you do that to her?" Zach asked Zetz-Maria, having observed the whole scene. "Why? Was it something she said?"
"No," Zetz-Maria answered sourly, "it was something she didn't WANT to say."
"Has anybody called the paramedics?" Jack asked frantically, moving away from his wife and reaching for his cell phone.
Erica slumped further forward and would have fallen, had not Zach caught her in the nick of time and gently pushed her back onto the chair.
"Mother!" Kendall cried out. "Zach do something!"
Zach kissed Erica on the mouth.
"Son of a bitch," the real Maria's ghost muttered, meaning it.
"Kendall, what happened?" Bianca cried out. "Ryan, Greenlee what happened?" She had come through the front door, just as Erica had slumped. Miranda, whom Bianca carried in her arms, looked equally concerned.
"I don't know, Binx," Kendall admitted, sounding at her wits end. "She just passed out! Jack, did you get through to the paramedics? Zach, please stop kissing my Mother!"
Doing as he was told, Zach slowly pulled away just as Erica's eyes fluttered open.
"Welcome back," he greeted her softly. "Try not to talk."
"Mind your own business," Zartz-Lily told him. "Erica, how old are --"
"Shut up with that already!" Kendall screamed. "You wanna kill her?"
"I suppose we do," Zift-Brooke supposed.
"Maria, I almost understand why you strayed," Opal confided quietly, careful not to let Edmund overhear her. "That Zach is something else!"
"Slater, get the hell away from my wife!" Jack shouted at Zach, suddenly as furious as he was frantic.
"Killjoy," Zach replied.
"Listen everyone!" Brooke broke in. "Edmund says that red chair is the time machine!"
All ghostly eyes were suddenly not on Erica.
"Edmund, are you sure?" Opal asked for them all.
"Definitely," he affirmed loudly. "That chair Erica is sitting on is the time machine!"
Every Galiosian ear perked up.
"Erica, get the hell off of that chair!" Zetz-Maria shouted.
Zartz-Lily took a less strident approach. "Erica, I think Maria means you would probably be more comfortable in the living room."
"Yes," Zift-Brooke chimed it, "the living room would be infinitely better. Less people, more air. You wanna get out of that chair now, Erica?"
Jack scooped up a languid Erica into his arms and followed Zift-Brooke and Zetz-Maria out of the hall, trailed by Reggie, Greenlee, Ryan, Kendall, Bianca and Miranda.
"I guess you want me to stay here," Zach called after them.
"They're taking her to the living room that was burned to the ground at dawn?" Opal inquired.
But, as all of them discovered upon following Erica and the Montgomery Clan out of the hall, the Wildwood living room had been miraculously restored to its unburned state.
"Glory be, it's healed itself!" Opal exclaimed.
"How could it?" Marian wanted to know.
"It couldn't," Lily frowned. "Only somehow it did."
"Come on, Lily," Edmund urged her urgently, "let's go back and see what my good friends have in mind for that chair!"
"You're being sarcastic, right?" Lily asked him. "They're not really your good friends anymore, are they? Sometimes I'm not sure when a person is being sarcastic, but in this case, I'm pretty sure that you are. Aren't you?"
"Come on, gang," Brooke said to the other ghosts. "Let's go with Edmund and Lily back to the time machine!"
When they got back to the hall, they found Zartz-Lily sitting, legs crossed, in the red chair. Zach was standing next to her.
"Oh, Lily, look!" Stuart exclaimed to the real Lily. "You're guarding the time machine!"
"That's Zartz, not me," Lily pointed out. "But you're right, Stuart. He's definitely guarding that chair."
Edmund smiled, although the others couldn't begin to imagine why.
--
Myrtle was getting restless. Squashed between the leading citizens of Pine Valley and all of Edmund's earthly possessions, she felt an unexpected desire to be somewhere else, anywhere else. "Erica, where are you?" she wondered, walking back into the hall to look for her.
"Oh, she passed out cold, and when she came to, the family took her into the living room," Zach filled Myrtle in when she got there. "I wasn't invited. But they'll let you in."
"Zach, you scoundrel!" Myrtle laughed. "What did you do to make my girl faint?"
"Mrs. Fargate, what a thing to say!" he evaded deftly.
"Scoundrel," she repeated, not without affection, as she left to search for Erica in the living room.
"Erica, how old are you?" Zetz-Maria was asking pleasantly as Myrtle entered the room.
Erica smiled but said nothing.
"Oh, I give up!" Zift-Brooke capitulated. "Let's grab that chair and blow this Galaxy!"
--
Zartz-Lily was wondering idly when the time machine was going to go off, when her confederates rejoined her.
"What should we do?" he asked them. "Leave it here, go home and wait for the inevitable Big Bang?"
Zift-Brooke wasn't so sure. "We can't risk leaving Edmund here to deactivate it."
"Edmund's only a spirit," Zetz-Maria reminded him. "He can't deactivate the time machine without the help of somebody who's alive. And at this point everybody he knows is dead!"
"It's all true!" Opal said mournfully. "Edmund, all material reality's goose sure looks cooked!"
"At least Erica didn't tell them her real age," Stuart said, always looking for the positive in any situation. "So they can't pull the trigger!"
At that moment a tall, slim, stately woman with astounding red hair, who looked very like Katharine Hepburn, strode through the front door. "Where's Maria?" she demanded.
Zetz-Maria went to her. "Can I help you, Madame?" she asked.
Mrs. Tiwiliger made a face. "Who the hell are you supposed to be? Where's my Maria?"
"That's telling him!" the real Maria's ghost said with real feeling. "Get him, Shirley!"
"Stuart, who is that?" Marian whispered.
"She's my piano teacher," Maddie answered. "I guess she came to bid on the piano."
"How does she know that isn't the real Maria?" Brooke wondered aloud.
The real Maria knew. "The eyes of love cannot be deceived by lies."
"Look, Zartz, we may as well go home," Zetz-Maria said to him, ignoring Mrs. Twiliger's accusation. "We can safely leave the time machine here to blow up all by itself whenever it's ready. We don't need the trigger now that we know where it is. Besides, it looks like we'll never find out Erica Kane's real age!"
"Oh, I know how old Erica is!" Mrs. Tiwiliger spoke up. "I taught her piano when she was a little girl. I don't know why you need to know it, but tell me what you've done with my Maria and I'll be happy to tell you Erica's age!"
Zartz-Lily, Zift-Brooke and Zetz-Maria joined hands and walked in a line toward Mrs. Tiwiliger. "HOW OLD IS ERICA KANE?"
"Mrs. Tiwiliger, don't tell!" Edmund's ghost cried out. But what remained of his Galioscian powers had been spent on keeping Erica silent. He had become too human to counter this new onslaught.
"Mrs. Tiwiliger, can I have a word with you?" Zach asked her pleasantly.
"Homewrecker!" she accused him, having heard from Maria in detail all he had done to destroy her marriage. "What have you done with my Maria?"
"Get him, Shirley," Edmund echoed.
"She's ignoring us!" Zift-Brooke realized. "Why is she ignoring us?"
"Let's get scarier," Zetz-Maria suggested. "Something more monsterish will get her attention!"
"We're in a Soap Opera," Zartz-Lily reminded them. "Not 'Godzilla's Revenge'. Let's be scary, and yet appropriate."
Taking his words to heart, they morphed into 8-foot bars of Ivory Soap.
"MRS. TIWILIGER, HOW OLD IS ERICA KANE?"
Too stunned to do anything else, as three 8-foot bars of Ivory, foaming at what might have been their mouths, advanced toward her, Mrs. Tiwiliger told them Erica Kane's real age.
All the walls of Wildwind began to vibrate as they faded in and out of visibility, accompanied by a faint, almost melodic hum. The red chair, however, paid no attention to the revelation.
"Please repeat that," Zartz requested, too engrossed to notice the effect her words had on the walls and lack of effect they had on the chair. "Twice."
Before Mrs. Tiwiliger could comply, the red chair rose up five feet from the floor and began flying around the room.
"Shouldn't we try to catch that?" Zift asked, as it flew by him on its way to the Main Ballroom.
"We're soap," Zartz reminded him. "How can we catch anything?"
"And we don't have to!" Zetz was sure, "All we have to do is repeat Erica Kane's real age twice more!"
And that is exactly what they would have done, if Zach hadn't zapped all three of them with his Super-Sonic-Mega-Lazer-Ray-Gun.
Where did Zach get a Super-Sonic-Mega-Lazer-Ray-Gun? Why didn't the red chair react to the trigger? How scary are three 8-foot bars of Ivory Soap? Lots of chapters, lots of surprises still to come! Please read on! Your Review is welcome!