Three days later, Johnny thinks that he might, possibly, be starting to lose his mind.
Those purple things just won't go away. He keeps seeing them out of the corner of his eye, out on the streets and in the hallways at school and sometimes, occasionally, in his room. He's on edge all the time, and what bothers him most is that nobody else seems to see them.
It's the Monday after the whole hitball fiasco, and they're all piled up on Stephen's bed. Technically they're not supposed to be here, but his parents were out for the night and his brother was with the babysitter, so Stephen'd snuck them in.
Johnny's hanging half of the bed, back on the floor, staring up at the UFO posters on the ceiling and listening to RJ tell the story again. Near-death experiences were very metal, in RJ's book, and they were more than happy to talk about it. Johnny thinks the story's getting a little bit more embellished every time they tell it, but Stephen doesn't seem to notice or mind.
"I can't believe I missed it!" Stephen says for about the tenth time, flopping back on his bed dramatically. "Man, I would've known right away somethin' freaky was going on." He pops back up almost immediately. "I betcha Jeff was possessed or something! Or, or-" Stephen holds up his hands, ready to launch into a laundry list of conspiracies. "Get this - he was replaced with a look-a-like."
Ollie's a bit more skeptical. "Yeah? By who?"
"Aliens, duh." Stephen's exasperated, like this is obviously the most logical reason.
"'Kay, so aliens made a Jeff body-double and gave him superpowers so he could...play hitball?"
"Ollie, think about it! Obviously they wanted someone on the inside to snoop around the school, and alien Jeff had to act like normal Jeff so nobody'd get suspicious." Stephen crosses his arms, looking smug. RJ's eyes are huge, glued to every word he says.
"Dude, he was plenty suspicious after he tried to put a hole through Johnny's head!" Ollie's still riled up about the whole thing. "Why would an alien even be after him?"
"I've got everything all figured out!" Stephen springs out of the bed with gusto, nearly tripping over Johnny still lying on the floor and startling him out of his thoughts.
"Dude, watch it!" He protests, tearing his eyes away from the thing that crawling around above him.
"Stephen, if you bring out the whiteboard I swear to God I will end you." Ollie deadpans from the bed.
Stephen proceeds to rip open his closet doors and wheel out a large whiteboard.
The Jang had helped him nick it from a classroom about a year ago, and it was his pride and joy. Johnny still wasn't sure how he managed to get it to fit in his closet.
"Okay, first," Stephen uncaps a marker dramatically and draws a stick figure on the board. "We have Jeff." He labels it. RJ pulls out their phone and taps out a message, then nudges Ollie, showing him the screen.
"RJ says Jeff should be more muscle-y 'cuz he was like weirdly ripped and veiny," Ollie says.
"Geez, alright!" Stephen erases the stick figure's arms and redraws them with huge biceps. "Better?"
RJ gives a thumbs up.
"Then we have these guys." He draws four more figures. One of them's wearing a hat. Another has big glasses. The last two have question marks for faces. "This one is Max," He points to the one with the hat, "and this one you guys said is Ned?"
"Ed," Johnny corrects, absently. His attention's back on the ceiling.
Stephen labels them both. "We still don't know about these two," he points at the remaining two figures, "but we do know this guy has lightning powers and is not Jeff." He draws little lightning bolts around one of them. "They gotta be connected to him somehow, though." Stephen aggressively makes a circle around the group. "So, here's my theory. These four have superpowers, obviously, right?"
"Right," chorus Johnny and Ollie. RJ nods.
"What I'm thinking is," Stephen pauses to draw a UFO on the corner of the whiteboard, "either they're working with the aliens, or they are aliens. Either way it explains the powers."
"Does it?" Ollie's clearly not buying this.
"Superman's an alien and that's why he has superpowers," RJ chimes in. Superheroes are one of the metal-est things in existence, right after alt rock and questioning the gender binary.
"See, RJ's got it." Stephen grins triumphantly, and Ollie rolls his eyes. Stephen draws an arrow pointing from the UFO to Max and his friends. "As I was saying, they have powers 'cuz they're aliens and can fly and shoot lightning and other freaky stuff."
"What's that got to do with Jeff though?" Ollie interrupts.
"I'm getting to it!" Stephen draws another arrow, this time connecting Max to Jeff. "Obviously these guys got spooked that we were getting close to uncovering the truth, so they made the Jeff look-a-like to infiltrate Mayview Middle and take us out." He taps his chin with the marker, getting little black spots on his face. "Well, Johnny at least, 'cuz he's the boss. But we're on to them now, and we're not gonna fall for any more of their tricks!" Stephen slams his fist into his palm. The marker goes flying and RJ goes skittering after it.
There's a long silence.
"Now what?" Ollie says eventually, breaking the silence. Johnny finally tears his gaze away from the ceiling and finds the rest of the gang looking at him.
"What? Why're you all staring at me?" He demands.
"What's the plan?" Ollie's looking at him a bit concerned. Behind him Stephen's trying to wrestle the whiteboard marker away from RJ. "You feeling okay, dude? You've been spaced out for like the past twenty minutes."
"Hey, I'm fine!" Johnny's a bit more defensive than he meant to be, and Ollie raises his hands slightly, mollifying. Johnny feels a stab of guilt - it's true he had been spacing out, distracted by whatever the heck that weird purple thing was, but that's no reason for him to be snappish with his friends. "Sorry, Ollie. I was just thinking 'bout stuff."
"It's cool."
Johnny springs to his feet. "Awright, guys, I'm cooking up the best plan anyone is Mayview's ever tasted."
"That doesn't make any sense-"
He ignores Ollie. "RJ, toss me that marker, would ya?" RJ expertly avoids Stephen's deluxe level 4.7 tackle/grapple combo and hurls the marker towards him at terminal velocity. Johnny catches it at the same time Stephen crashes to the ground.
"Hey, no fair," his friend says, voice muffled by the wood floor. "That was my best move!"
"Playtime's over, boys! And RJ!" Johnny yells in his best impersonation of the drill sergeant in the hokey old movie he'd watched last night. RJ pulls Stephen to his feet and they both give off snappy salutes while Ollie rolls his eyes. "First things first, though, before we get into it, I got a question for you all."
"What's up?" Ollie's the one who says it, but they're all looking at him expectantly. Johnny swallows, suddenly nervous. He's gotta bring this up real casual-like, so they won't think he'd taken one too many punches to the ol' noggin.
"Has anyone seen anything...unusual?" He starts, tentatively. "Like, besides the whole 'people with superpowers' thing?"
"I saw the guy who runs that corner store taking a walk in the middle of the night while eating cereal," Stephen offers.
"Okay, well, that is kinda unusual," Johnny admits."But that's not what I'm talkin' about."
"What are you talking about, then?" Ollie's starting to look even more concerned. Johnny's gotta wrap this up before he goes into full-on mom mode and starts taking his temperature and force-feeding him soup.
"I'm talkin' 'bout like weird...purple...blobs?" Johnny gestures helplessly, fully aware that's verging on becoming totally incomprehensible. "Like, uh..." As if on cue, one of the thingamajigs appears, floating up through Stephen's floor. It kinda looks like a cat, if cats had two heads and grass for fur. It meeps at him, and Johnny can see that its mouths were full of flowers.
"Like?" RJ prompts. Oh, great, now they're worried about him too.
"Ya know what, forget it." Johnny's super sweaty suddenly. It feels like someone cranked the heat in Stephen's room up fifty degrees. He turns to the whiteboard and uncaps the marker, ready to start outlining the next steps in his master plan.
"I think the best thing to do is split up," he announces. Gasps of horror echo around the room.
"Johnny, that's like the number one rule! Never, ever, split up!" Stephen blurts, and RJ nods frantically.
"I know, I know, but...think about it!" He points to the group of stick figures on the board, then at himself and his boys. "There's four of them, and four of us. We each take a person and lean on them 'til they crack and tell us what we wanna know!"
Ollie's looking thoughtful. "Could work."
"Hey, ya doubting me?" Johnny crosses his arms. "Anybody else got a better idea?"
The Jang shake their heads.
"Right, so that's what we'll do. RJ, you still got that pic?"
RJ pulls out their phone and brings up the picture in question. Everyone huddles around them, jostling for a better look at the screen. Johnny's about to move on to step two of his plan when his heart suddenly drops right down into his stomach.
The picture's different.
The last time he'd seen it, on Friday, it'd been of several people-sized blobs floating in the air. They weren't there anymore. Instead it was a picture of what looked like a...train? He squints. Yeah, probably a train. A flying train? God, this just keeps making less and less sense.
Nobody else seems to notice the difference. Johnny shakes himself mentally, puts on his leader face. "Okay, guys. Here's what we're gonna do. I'll take Max, 'cuz me n' him are building up some real good rapport." Ollie snorts at that, and Johnny gives him a glare. "RJ, you can take that Ed guy. Yeah, I know he's a nerd, don't give me that look. He was pretty good at helping us hunt down the Starch, 'member?"
"Wait, what?" Stephen's looking confused and also vaguely jealous. RJ must've forgotten to tell him that part of the story.
"Tell ya later. Ollie, you're on the ginger, and Stephen, you get the last mystery person." He points vaguely at the screen, hoping he's at least close to the aforementioned blob. Can't see anything around that dumb train.
"Man, why me? We don't even know anything about them!" Stephen complains mildly.
"It's 'cuz you're the best at conspiracy stuff, that's why." Johnny tells him. "You can put clues together from two pieces of string and a stick of gum."
"You're right." Stephen brightens up. "What about those last two, though?"
"Last who?"
"Them." Stephen's helpfully pointing right at the train, and Johnny mentally runs through every swear word he knows. Stupid train, hindering his investigation.
"I'm pretty sure one of them was that sunglasses teacher," Ollie chimes in. "I saw him driving that car last week. Dunno 'bout the other one, though."
"Uh...we'll leave the teacher for last. It's Mr. Spencer, right?"
"Yeah, I think so. Isn't he the other history teacher?" They're all in Mrs. Poswink's class, Johnny remembers. That makes it a bit more difficult.
"Obviously he's in charge of this whole weird little club, so we'll gang up on him after we've made the others spill the beans. Then he'll have to admit to everything." Johnny looks around at his friends. "Sound good? Everyone got it?"
There's a chorus of affirmation.
"Sweet. Now on to our next order of business. Stephen, you want to do the honors?"
Stephen gives him his best hyena-like grin and drops to the ground, rummaging under his bed for a bit before pulling out a cardboard box that's jam-packed with as many rated-R movies that the Jang could score.
"It's RJ's turn to pick," Johnny continues. RJ hovers over the box for a good thirty seconds, thoughtfully picking up DVDS and considering them before putting them back. Finally, they hold one up in the air.
"Zombie Island 3.5: The Intermediate Sequel! Yeah!" Stephen yells, snatching the movie out of RJ's hand and bounding out the bedroom door and down the stairs. "I'll make popcorn!" His voice drifts out from the lower part of the house.
"Oh, use the spicy cheese seasoning!" Ollie says excitedly as he hustles down the stairs himself, RJ following close behind. Johnny pelts after them. He skids to a stop suddenly when he sees the purple cat from before, curled up on the threshold and snoozing contentedly. He almost falls down the steps trying to avoid it, teetering over the edge precariously. Johnny throws himself backwards forcefully, landing on his butt with a solid thump.
"Ow." He eyes the cat reproachfully. It hadn't seemed to mind his friends running over it - through it? - but since they couldn't see it, it made sense that they couldn't touch it either. Johnny wasn't sure if he could, but he didn't want to chance it and hurt the cat accidentally.
The cat stands up and stretches, yawning with both heads. It's pretty cute, actually, for a hallucination or whatever it is. Johnny reaches out, hesitantly, and touches one finger to its back. It feels weird, like handling jello, and he'd half expected his hand to just pass right through it. The cat makes a peeping sound and licks his arm, leaving a smear of purple goo.
"Oh, gross." Johnny pulls a face, wiping his arm on his shirt. The cat darts off, running straight through a wall. Johnny's left sitting by himself, thinking hard.
Something's happening to him. Johnny doesn't know what, can't even begin to know what, and it terrifies him.
"Hey, Johnny! You coming down or what, man?" Stephen yells up the stairs at him, jerking him out of his thoughts.
"Yeah! Don't start the movie without me!"
"Too late! You missed a good part already!"
"Aw, c'mon!" Johnny races down the steps, hoping that watching some good ol' zombie murder mayhem will put the purple things out of mind.