The Vendeleer Brothers Book 3: Nightmare on Holly

“So there’s two waffle houses in town, but make sure to only come to this one. The other one will make you sick.They found a cockroach infestation under the counter. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t get shut down. They got off with just a ‘C’ Rating!”

Roderick nodded, savoring what had to be one of the best waffles of his life. Unlike most places, it wasn’t a belgian waffle, but one that was a bit thinner. Why didn’t more places make it this way?

“Well, Missouri may have Waffle House, but they don’t have In n’ Out.” Roderick told her proudly. Holly shrugged her shoulders.

“Meh. I’ve been there before. I don’t see what the big fuss is about.”

In response, Roderick put a hand over his heart like he had been wounded.

“Agh! Dear Madame! You have deeply offended me!” he said dramatically. Holly laughed.

Roderick was having a great time. Holly was very easy to talk to, she was very friendly and open, and Roderick was very attracted to her.

However, talking with a pretty girl was still not enough to distract him from someone trying to take his wallet. Roderick immediately reacted, grabbing the wrist of the would-be thief and whirling around for a confrontation.

He looked down in surprise at a young african american girl with very dark skin and a frizzy bun on top of her head. She had been leaning over from the booth behind them, and now she was looking up at him with a frightened expression.

Roderick looked the girl over, trying to decide how to react to the situation. For some reason, she didn’t seem like the type of girl who would try to steal someone’s wallet, but then again, he knew that kids sometimes played the part to take advantage of you.

However, the fact that he had felt her reach into his pocket in the first place must have meant she wasn’t very skilled in being a pickpocket. While Roderick was still thinking about how to respond, Holly piped up.

“Wait a second, don’t I know you from somewhere?” she asked, scrunching up her face and trying to remember.

“I… uh… I…”

Roderick looked down at her arm and immediately thought it weird that she was wearing a jacket in such hot weather. Wasn’t she burning up? He let go as she continued to stutter.

“Well, hell. My name is Roderick.” he said, holding his hand out. The girl looked at him skeptically. At that moment, Holly came to a sudden realization.

“Oh!! Weren’t you and your stepdad at our mechanics shop last week?”

“Foster Dad.” the girl said firmly.

“Yeah-he’s the one who got in an argument with Bobby over his car not working right after we fixed it.”

“Sorry about that.”

Roderick leaned against the wall and regarded the girl with interest.

“So are you going to tell us why you were trying to take my wallet?”

The girl grit her teeth and then took in a deep breath.

“My name’s Akaysha. Nice to meet you.”

“And how old are you Akaysha?”

“Thirteen.”

“So you decided to run off to Waffle House and steal people’s wallets?” Roderick asked sternly. “Won’t your stepdad-.”

“Foster Dad.”

“-Foster Dad be looking for you?”

Akaysha scowled, refusing to answer.

“He is such a wonderful person…” she said through her teeth, clenching her fists. Roderick and Holly exchanged glances.

“Hey, uh… You want a waffle?” Roderick asked hesitantly. “They’re only like a couple of bucks. We can’t have you leave Waffle House empty handed now.”

The girl considered this for a long time, self consciously rubbing her arm a little.

“Ok.” she said finally, scooting into the booth next to Roderick. When she did, he made extra sure to have his wallet out of her reach. He wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about this young delinquent interrupting his sort of kind of date with Holly. He wished it could still just be the two of them, but he knew thirteen year old foster kids needed all the guidance and help they could get. So with a small sigh, he ordered the kid a waffle and started asking her a couple of questions.

“So what do you like to do?” he asked her, expecting her to say something like skateboarding or hanging out with friends.

“I like to read.”

“What do you like to read?”

The thirteen year old sat back nonchalantly.

“Well, I really like a lot of the classics. Robert Louis Stevenson has a lot of unexpected humor in his stuff, like with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Did you know that an actual line from that book is, “If he be Mr. Hyde, then I be Mr. Seek?” Charles Dickens is annoying to read. Good plots, but he’s just so full of himself as a writer. One of my favorites though, has to be Ray Bradbury. He has some really cool creepy sci fi stories.”

Roderick and Holly stared at her.

This was quite unexpected.

Akaysha seemed awfully smart for a delinquent foster kid.

Roderick started to grow even more concerned when she scarfed down her waffle like she was starving.

At this point, Roderick’s phone started to buzz like crazy. At first, he was going to ignore it, but when it wouldn’t stop, he figured it must be important.

“Sorry about this…” he said quietly, taking out his flip phone. Holly immediately pointed at it.

“You have a flip phone?” she shrieked. Roderick froze.

“Uh… yeah?”

In a scramble, Holly reached into her bag and also pulled out a flip phone.

“Wait, you have one too?” he asked excitedly, forgetting everything else for a moment.

“Yeah! Everyone makes fun of me for it!”

“Me too!”

“Our phones can be best friends!”

“Yeah!”

With that, Holly opened her flip phone to make it speak, in which he promptly joined her. Akaysha stopped eating for a second to stare at them.

“You guys are weird.” she mumbled, pouring on more syrup.

Roderick and Holly laughed, and then he looked at his phone. He had about a million missed calls and texts, and they were almost all from Brian. There were a couple from Ian that were asking where he was and when he was going to be home, and then one that said he was heading over to check on Joey.

Brian’s texts were much more interesting.

Dude!! Attack of the hamburgers!!

People are totally deeeeead.

FROM BURGER MONSTERS.

CALL ME.

Ok. Dude. You must be busy or something, bUT HOLY CRAP IT WAS CRAZY.

I also met another person with abilities.

Call me back.

His texts were followed by a bunch of pictures of him in front of a place called Barry’s burgers with injured people and ambulances.

“Holy crap! Something happened at Barry’s Burgers” Roderick said, showing the pictures to Holly.

“What the-what happened?”

“My friend said the burgers there came to life and started attacking. A couple of people are even dead.”

Akaysha slammed her fork down on the table, suddenly looking sick.

“I think I ate too fast…” she groaned, hunching over.

“Akaysha! There you are!” someone suddenly exclaimed. They all turned to see a man with honey hair rushing towards them.

“I’ve been so worried about you!” he said, his face full of concern as he got down on her level. Holly narrowed her eyes at the man.

Akaysha started to sniff, doing her best to hold back the tears.

“I’m sorry Hector…” she mumbled, looking away from him. The man sighed.

“Please just… don’t run off again. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

The girl broke down, and the man gave her a hug.

“Let’s go home.”

Holly and Roderick watched silently as the man ignored them and led the young girl away. Before she went out the door, she looked back at them, her eyes filled with tears.

Then they were gone.

“I know that guy seemed nice, but you should have seen him the other day. Yelling and cussin’ at Bobby. I thought he was going to pop a vein or somethin’.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Holly folded her arms and scowled.

“Would it be weird to follow them and make sure she’s ok?”

Roderick raised a brow.

“You’re right…” she sighed. “I guess-.”

“Let’s do it.”

Holly blinked in surprise.

“What?”

“We’ve got to be quick though-let’s hurry up and pay!” Roderick said with a grin. Holly returned the smile and the two of them jumped up.

“Check please!!”

Ian had no idea where Roderick was, or what he was doing, but he knew that he needed distraction. And with everything that had gone on that day, he couldn’t help but think of Joey and how she had run off in tears earlier. So, since he didn’t have anything better to do, he was currently driving himself over to joey’s house to check on her.

He wondered what had gone on in her life to let Ramona’s words have that much affect. Ian was pretty shaken up himself after the letter. He worried about the future enough already, and now he had a magical destiny to figure out? No thank you.

It had also bothered him that the letter mentioned a first encounter with Bill and Kishnu, insinuating that there would be more to come. His younger brother was still getting over he first encounter, let alone another one. Ian still had nightmares of his brother with glowing white eyes and black goop dripping from an eerie smile. The thought of it made him shudder.

At that moment, he noticed someone was riding his tail, weaving impatiently behind him in the dark, rainy night. Ian rolled his eyes. He was going the speed limit for goodness’ sakes! Ian smirked, and slowed down a little, knowing that it was impossible for the car behind him to pass at the moment on the two lane road. The car flashed its lights and honked in response.

When it finally came time for Ian to turn, the car sped by angrily, giving Ian some satisfaction at having annoyed another driver with road rage. Roderick always got on his case when he did things like that, but he wasn’t here at the moment, so oh well.

Joey’s place was a small little house not too far from where Roderick and Ian lived, and it looked like she already had some of her odd statues and art projects out in the yard. When he parked, he saw that Roderick had sent a couple of text messages.

I’m totally hanging out with that girl Holly I was telling you about.

How do I stay out of the friend zone??

Ian chuckled a little to himself and replied.

Ask her on a proper date then you moron.

Roderick replied right away.

How do I do that?

Ian rolled his eyes.

You’ll figure it out.

Ian grabbed his chessboard and walked up to Joey’s house, getting a weird metallic taste in his mouth for some reason. He stopped when he noticed a note on the door.

Joey,

Please call me when you’re ready to talk. I’ll listen.

-JOrdyn

Hesitantly, he knocked on the door.

After the slight movement of the curtains, Joey opened the door, her crazy hair even more tangled than usual.

“Hey.” she said quietly. Ian swallowed, not sure why he thought this had been a good idea. After all, he still didn’t know Joey that well. What made him think that he could even be any help at all?

“Um… Do you like chess at all?” he blurted. “I-I know we were just given a lot of information to process, and I figured you might want to get your mind off of some things.’

Joey seemed a little surprised at this.

“Um… sure, but just so you know, I’m not going to spill my guts to you or anything just because you ask.” she told him, letting him in.

“Oh goodness gracious no! I don’t even want to think about powers, or oracles, or ghosts, or anything. I just want to play chess. That’s all.”

“That sounds good to me. Have you ever played Othello? Or bananagrams?”

“No, but I can learn.”

Joey smiled, quickly coming back to her usual self.

For the next several minutes, the two of them quietly engaged in a chess game. There wasn’t much talking, but wasn’t needed. THe two of them simply sat in comfortable silence. The two of them were so engaged in their game, that they didn’t notice anything unusual going on at first. A cold, dense fog was settling into Joey’s living room, and they both failed to notice until Ian shivered in his t-shirt.

“It’s… kind of cold…”

Ian and Joey jumped up and looked around as the fog got thicker and thicker. What was going on? Was it another spirit?

Slowly, the two of them turned to see the front door knob jiggling. The lights flickered eerily, and then the door creaked opened. Then, in stepped something straight out of Ian’s worst nightmares.

Roderick was there, his eyes glowing white with the possession of Kishnu, black goop dripping from his eyes and nose. Roderick gave an unnatural smile and cocked his head.

“Hello agaaaaain Ian…. It’sssss been a whiiiile…”