Chapter 4

Roy shook his head. Ok, he really couldn't explain the bruises on Johnny, but surely the rest of it could be reasoned away with logic. And now with both Chet and Marco feeding into the ghost theory, the youngest member of their crew was most assuredly going to take the bouncing ball of phantasm and run with it. He let out his own groan, equal in volume to the one emitted by Gage moments before, and moved over to his gear still resting on the floor. Instead of carrying it this time, he stepped into the boots and pulled up the bunker pants and snapped them.

He shot an annoyed glare in the general direction of the bickering firemen; their voices seemed to rise on each word bantered. Roy had no doubt that their captain would be entering the room very soon to see what the noise was all about and why over half his crew was missing from their bunks. He lifted his hands in a weary gesture of resignation and walked over to them. Chet stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and gaped at him, as if he had forgotten DeSoto was still in the room.

"You guys want to keep this discussion down to a low roar? Or is that too much to ask when one of your crewmates has been possessed?"

"Come on Roy, you saw how your "friend" and partner was looking at you! It looked like he was ready to take a bite out of you!" Chet exclaimed, his voice lowered but his hands speaking volume. "I've never seen Gage look at you, or anyone else for that matter, like that!"

"So now Johnny's a vampire?" Roy exclaimed, fighting the irresistible urge to run screaming from the room and into the darkness of the night at Kelly's ridiculous statement. Wait, was it a full moon tonight? Maybe that was why everyone was acting so peculiar. If that was the case, should he be on the lookout for werewolves? What was it that one used on those furry beasts to kill them? Silver bullets, wooden stakes, maybe a little garlic…butter, some shrimp….

"Roy, Roy, Roy," Chet admonished gently, in a tone of voice that belonged to a parent reprimanding their child. "Unless you saw some fangs when our pal showed his teeth to you, that's not what I was implying at all. I'm simply saying that John isn't himself; he's doing and saying things that, well, are not in character for him."

"Not in character," the medic snorted, thinking that Kelly was definitely behaving in a normal manner, normal for him anyway. "For one thing, you were not even in the room when Johnny did that, so how do you know? And another thing, how do you know that's just not his normal reaction to abnormal things; we just caught him by surprise. I mean, if you thought some spirit or ghost thing had pushed you down the stairs or out of your bed at two in the morning, how would you react?"

Roy couldn't believe that Chet Kelly thought his colleague was possessed just because he had made some odd facial expressions. You had to give Gage credit for not doing his own "running into the night screaming" after listening to these two guys discuss the reasons behind the bruises and vocalizing their absurd theories. Sorry, but he just didn't believe in ghosts and possession and what other cockamamie ideas these two were going to come up with.

As he stalked into the garage, he could hear the two linemen arguing possession and the merits of exorcism. Johnny wasn't by the squad or the engine so Roy headed into the locker room. John was at the sinks but surprisingly had his back to the mirrors. He had his arms folded across his chest and was staring at the floor, apparently deep in thought. He looked up as Roy stomped into the room and held up a warning hand.

"Don't even say it," he growled. "Don't start…"

"Say what?" Roy asked mildly, taking up a stance, back flat against his locker on the end. He crossed his own arms and waited, sure the quiet wouldn't last long. He was wrong this time, however, as John simply stared at him and seemed intent on keeping his thoughts to himself. Roy sighed and abandoned his defensive pose. He sat on the bench and lowered his own gaze to the floor, hoping that would ease up some of the tension radiating off his partner.

"Don't worry, I don't believe anything those nuts are saying out there. But Roy, how do you explain this, this stuff?" Johnny finally broke the strained silence, the frustration clearly evident in his voice. He raked a hand through his already disheveled hair and slapped a hand, palm down, on the sink in disgust.

"I'm going back to bed. Maybe Alice has gone back to her, huh, where do ghosts go to sleep? Or do they sleep…" He muttered darkly, padding past DeSoto and disappearing through the door to the dorm. Roy stood up and peered around the corner of the locker in time to see the door swinging shut.

He jumped about a foot into the air when a hand came down on his shoulder and for the briefest moment, he imagined the light touch as belonging to the ghostly Alice. It was Mike, however, looking perplexed and half asleep as he regarded the blond paramedic with hooded eyes.

"Roy?" He jerked his head in the direction that Gage had vanished. Roy cleared his throat and sat back down.

"You remember that call we had earlier, the one we got called out on when we were watching that Frankenstein movie?" At Mike's nod, Roy continued. "The wife, Mrs. Teal, was holding a séance at her house, trying to bring back her sister who died about a month ago. Well, this last call was for the same address. The husband called us this time to check on his wife, who's certain that Alice, that's the sister, has returned to the house and means harm to her husband. I made the stupid mistake of volunteering to check the house for "spirits", to alleviate Mrs. Teal's fears; I sent Johnny upstairs and that's when the trouble started for us, well, for Gage anyways."

He filled in Stoker on the rest of the creepy happenings, although he left out the unsolicited suggestions that had flowed nonstop from the rest of the engine crew. Knowing those two, they were still discussing the best way to perform an exorcism on poor Gage. Mike remained quiet throughout the tale, crossing his arms and leaning sideways on the locker next to Roy's. He studied DeSoto's face and after a long moment apparently came to the decision that he was deadly serious.

"You're not saying what you think about all of this, Roy," Mike chided gently. "And why, except for the Cap, everybody is out of their beds."

"Probably because I don't exactly know what to say or think…" Roy replied honestly. "I really thought Johnny was pulling a fast one, but, I don't know, this is a little too far out even for him. As for Marco and Chet, I guess we woke them up, same as you."

Stoker shrugged, unwinding his slumped pose to his full height. "Not sure what woke me up, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't you guys. It was more like, not sure exactly, a change in the air pressure in the bunk room."

Roy smiled; he supposed the engineer in Mike was always going to be present no matter what the circumstances. But he also noticed that Stoker didn't exactly volunteer his thoughts on the matter. He was about to bring that up when the tones went off, summoning the whole station to a child trapped call. He ran through to the dorm, grabbing his blue jacket which was now lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, and continued on to the bay.

His somber partner had commandeered the driver's seat in the squad, so Roy detoured to the other side and jumped in. He grabbed the slip from John's outstretched fingers and checked the address, 261 Olema Street. He was reaching for the map when Johnny's voice stopped him.

"I know where it is." He stated simply, adjusting his chin strap on his helmet. He took the next corner so fast that DeSoto involuntarily grabbed at the door and the dash to keep himself upright. He glanced back down at the words scribbled on the call slip and allowed a brief moment of recollection to filter into his thoughts.

"Yeah, so do I," he admitted. "That old house in the middle of nowhere, up on the hill, right?"

"That's the one." Johnny stated flatly. Through the brief flashes of streetlights that illuminated the cab as they passed by them, the younger medic looked positively sick. His skin appeared so white that the dark smudges under his eyes gave him the appearance of Casper the Ghost, only he wasn't giving off the impression of a friendly ghost at all. In fact, Roy thought with misgivings, he looked more like that tormented guy in chains who haunted Scrooge.

"Oh for Pete's sake," he muttered, annoyed with himself for giving in to the moment, and letting his imagination take off once again in a fanciful flight. He forcibly directed his thoughts to the house they were heading towards, only that brought up more unpleasant recollections. Like how the house strongly resembled the dilapidated structure in Psycho, an ancient house with a front porch that had probably never known a rocking chair… and rounded windows frames that resembled evil eyes mocking every move that you made…especially that one prominent window in the attic, circular and menacing.

Roy had never actually been in the house itself, but had flown above it once during the day on his way to a rescue in Las Plumas canyon when he had worked at 45s. The house resided on a hill and, as the copter winged past it, the imposing edifice had appeared forbidding and a bit threatening; not a place where anybody in their right minds would willingly go to sell encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners! He and Johnny had also responded to a rescue there during Johnny's first wildfire; they had evacuated two elderly sisters who had to be persuaded to leave. (1)

He couldn't repress a shudder as he imagined how it was going to appear in the dark with only the moon to provide any kind of light. He sincerely hoped that if there really was a kid trapped, that it would be something minor like a foot through the porch floorboard. Although, come to think of it, why was a kid out running around at three in the morning instead of being tucked safely in their bed?

He tensed as John turned onto Olema Street and flew down the road, his foot heavy on the accelerator and dust flying out behind them. They were probably at least a quarter of a mile from the house at the end of the road but Roy could already see the structure, backlit by the moon, residing high on the hill, waiting….waiting…..waiting….

~TBC~

A/N – (1) from the episode Brushfire, written by Robert C. Dennis.