this is not
the greatest song in the world
no
this is just a tribute
There was a professor far away in London, Malcom Emeritus, who was a professor of the arts but more importantly a student of ancient symbology. Prof Emeritus, unfortunately for the protagonists, was not a part of this story. Had he been so, he would have warned them about the shape of crop circles, and the demonic energy that they channeled. He would have brought books, and other tools, and helpful knowledge that would have saved lives. However, Jerry, the electrical engineer that had just purchased Carby, and his friends, Lisa, Brad and Ashley, had no idea who he was and did not invite him to their weekend trip.
Lisa, being a typical freshman with two much time on her hands, found some satellite pictures of recent crop circles. These crop circles looked like crap; they weren't pretty, and they didn't really involve circles, and could have been mistaken for the damage left by a bunch of teenagers hanging out and drinking. Lisa noticed that if you drew lines between all of them, there was an abandoned farmhouse directly in the center. She thought it would be cool if she and some friends snuck out to the farmhouse that weekend. She invited Jerry, Ashley, and Brad, who all accepted. Then she began packing flashlights, and smores, and tents, etc.
Both Jerry and Brad wanted to bone Lisa. Neither of them had any interest in Ashley, preventing any kind of convenient horror-movie pairings. In fact, Brad volunteered his truck, which, conveniently for him could only fit two girls in the cab. The camping equipment would go in the back. This left Jerry needing to find his own way, and thus, the motivation for buying a motorcycle.
What else. Well, there were no police near the farmhouse; nobody monitored citizen's band channel 9. Ah, yes, and there were only two roads that could reach the farmhouse: dromeda lane, and devils pass. Naturally, despite the fact that the area was mostly farmland, devil's pass was a windy, twisty road that led through mountains and cliffs, with only remnants of an ancient guardrail that used to guard falls of thousands of feet. Also, devil's pass was closed.
So they went.
theres a night and a darkened road
theres a light and a fading hope
theres a dream that once was mine
but now it seems it has passed with time
Thats the kind of music brad was playing in the truck, despite the girl's wishes. He and Jerry would have gotten along if they both didn't want Lisa. The truck broke down a few miles from the farmhouse. The breakdown occured in some way that foreshadowed danger.
Jerry saw them on the side of the road. They exchanged dialogue that would be typical in this situation, but would be excrutiatingly boring to narrate. Seriously, it would be like watching the beginning of the blair witch project. What you need to know is that Jerry worked out a plan where he would give both girls a ride, and by the time he got them both to the farmhouse, Brad would be able to walk there. Because he sure as hell wasn't riding two up with Jerry.
Side note: it is an interesting planning problem, perhaps good for an interview question. How do you transport X number of people, some GUYS and some GIRLS, from location TRUCK to location FARMHOUSE using MOTORCYCLE. The MOTORCYCLE cannot move without a rider at this point in time, and can carry no more than two. Two GUYS cannot ride on the motorcycle at the same time, because in this world all guys are straight and no one ever expects them to dance together. All GIRLS are willing to ride together, and will even make out with each other when drunk, although that does not help them reach the FARMHOUSE. Can this problem be solved with only one motorcycle?
So they all arrived at the farmhouse. For no credible reason whatsoever the truck is done for and will have no bearing on the rest of the story.
The backstory of the farmhouse is that the ancient spirit of a witch possessed the father of a large family who then murdered his entire family. The total number of deaths that occured was statistically insignificant compared to such events as the American Civil War, World War I, or the Holocust, however, it was still enough of a blood bath to...do whatever it is that gets demons and/or ghosts involved with the land of the living. The tale of this event, and subsequent murders, was catologued in an unpublished book held by a private collector. Thats probably where this story will end up too!
Ashley and Lisa thought they felt a presence as they approached the farmhouse. Brad played along, smart and horny guy that he was. Jerry thought they were all idiots. They entered the house. It was very creepy. Three spooky things occured, and then Brad died in a scary way while the other three were distracted. His blood dripped out and was swallowed by the floorboards. This would have been a good opportunity for Jerry to finally bone Lisa, but unfortunately he was distracted by the gravity of the situation. They tried to leave, but the front door wouldn't open. There was a big scary sound that came from the attic. They should have climbed out of the windows, but instead decided to split up and explore the farmhouse.
Outside, under the moonlight, Carby's ignition switch turned without the key. His engine started. The bike tipped upward, as if an invisible rider had sat down upon it, and the kick stant mysteriously flew up and Carby started to roll away into the night. Even if Jerry, Lisa and that other chick made it out of the house alive, they would be trapped in the middle of a desert, in that kind of thing where you walk straight all day and mysteriously end up where you started, which is a perfectly good reason for you're buddy to eat the one copy of the map that you brought along.
Back in the farmhouse, they explored the farmhouse separately. Ashley stayed on the main floor, and was the first to have something creepy to her because she was the unattractive one. Specifically, Brad's corpse was reanimated, and his eyes glowed red, and he said something corny and attacked her. She nearly defended herself successfuly, but not quite. Whether she survived or not can't be revealed yet, suffice to say that Brad's part in this tale is over.
Ok, so Jerry goes into the basement. Wait, no, thats wrong. Lisa goes into the basement. Jerry took the stairs, acting brave. While not someone who is predisposed to want to believe in ghosts, the loud sound was pretty scary, and Jerry had no reason to believe that its source was related to whatever killed Brad. A number of creepy, and possibly scary, things happen to Jerry while he is in the attic. The details of what exactly happened is so magnificently unimportant its incredible. We must now switch to Lisa.
Lisa is in the basement. There is an alter on the other side of the stairway with a candle lit on either side of it. That's pretty creepy, especially considering the burn rate of an average candle, which Brad would have been able to calculate, because he was an engineer also. There was also some furniture in the basement. Earthen floor. The only other thing of real important is this big, heavy table, and some large, twine-ish rope on it that really stratches the skin. Lisa approached the altar inquisitively, because Stephen King is wrong about adverbs, and because what better action to take when your life is in danger than to approach something that has clearly been tampered with recently, all the while without alerting your companions.
Side note: there was no cellphone reception, of course. Ghosts and demons obviously have the ability to affect or simply block various bands of electromagnetic radiation.
Back to Jerry: Jerry hears Lisa scream, and sets down some moderately heavy object that was related to the most recent creepy thing that happened to him onto a bed with a rotting mattress, and runs out of the room. Moonlight shines on the object. As Jerry bursts into the hallway, the bedroom door slams shut behind him. Jerry runs down both flights of stairs and comes down into the basement. Woah there present tense. That was an accident. Let's slow down there, big fella.
Jerry landed on the...landing, in the basement. He was out of breath a little bit. He saw the alter. Lisa was facing away from him, staring at it. In Jerry's eyes it was less like an alter and more like a fireplace, but he and Lisa never discussed it. On the alter was a belt with a cliche skull buckle, a chipped chalice, and a stained wedding veil.
"Can you read the inscription [on the fireplace]?" asked Lisa. Her voice sounded strange. "It's written in Elfish." Elfish is way cooler than greek, hebrew, aramaic, latin, old english, middle english, and all the other languages that get used in horror movies. Lisa continued, still without turning to him. "It says that the item you pull determined which spirit will awake."
"Really?" asked Jerry, pulling off the belt with the skull buckle. "What if you take more than one?"
Lisa turned to face him. "You can't." Her eyes were glowing red.
Jerry backed away. He turned to find the stairs, only to meet Ashley, whose eyes were also growing red. Also, her head was cocked in a really creepy fashion. In the moments before Jerry began fighting for his life, he made a clever, verbal reference to Evil Dead.
The two girls overpowered him with demonic strength and dragged him upstairs to the kitchen. Ashley brought the scratchy-ass rope. They tied him down to the kitchen table. This is the only time that someone gets tied up in a non sexual way. This is not to say that anyone will ever be tied up sexually--don't get your hopes up.
The rope hurt as Jerry struggled. His wrists were each bound above his head and his feet were restained in some way that isn't really important. Lisa cut his shirt of with the a giant cleaver--still, unfortunately, in an unsexy way--and traced the blade down his skin from his neck to his belt, occasionally pressing enough to draw blood. Lisa and Ashley were both bleeding steadily from various orifices. They said a number of creepy things, and it became apparent that their intent was to cut him open and let his blood bleed out, feeding the evil house, or perhaps the spirit trapped within it. That spirit was the spirit of the witch, who had been abducted, raped and burned alive on her wedding day. Had Jerry taken the veil from the alter, he would have set her free. He had not taken the veil. He had taken the belt. Ashely and Lisa put this belt on him, diagonally over the shoulder like an ammo belt. The bucke burned his skin like it was a hot coal. Ashley raised the cleaver above his neck. Then a light flashed, and she paused.
Outside the farmhouse, a motorcycle headlight illuminated the front door, spilling into the windows that the other protagonists should have climbed out of. This occured because those demonic, or spiritual, currents as Prof. Emeritus would have called them (remember, from the crop circles), weakened the barrier between the spirit world and the world of the living, and while it did give various undead and malicious entities some play in our world, this weakened barrier was also a boon to machine spirits, and being a self-aware but otherwise inanimate object, Carby was such a machine spirit. A purple light glowed from the place where his pistons crushed and burned gasoline vapor.
"Back Off...." the witches voice, which emanated from the house, trailed off because evil as she was, and despite possibly fathoming the mysteries of heaven and the terrors of hell, the witch had never in her life nor afterlife met a machine spirit.
Carby gunned his engine in warning.
"YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD. This door will not budge an inch!" replied the voice.
"I take millimeters, bitch. Deux, Ex, machine-a!" Carby's voice flowed like a strong river as he yelled. Despite all his mystery, and indeed, bravery, he had, of course, no clue what "deus ex machina" truly meant, only that it was a mildly appropriate battlecry for this situation. Carby wheelied up on his rear tire, like a horse rearing up to kick a door in, and slammed into that front door like he had a nitro.
Carby tore through the farmhouse. Ashley confronted him in whatever room was in front of the kitchen. Carby greeted her with a certain perfectly executed maneuver that only two riders have ever managed to do, one of which who is dead: he did a stoppie (the opposite of a wheelie), braking hard with his front tire in order to make his rear tire fly off the ground. At the same time he twisted, so that his rear tire swung around and knocked Ashley into the wall. Various bones broke and Ashley was no longer able to support her own weight standing up. He was then perfectly aimed at Lisa.
Jerry watched the stolen motorcycle and was not so much shocked as he was elated that maybe he wouldn't die. The motorcycle accellerated forward and slammed Lisa into the back wall, pinning her there. The meat cleaver fell out of her hand and onto the table. It did not land in such a way as to conveniently cut the rope restraining Jerry's left hand, but it didn't slice his wrist open either, so that was a plus. After some painful, rope-burning contortionist movements Jerry was finally able to free himself. Carby backed away just before Jerry cut her neck nearly in two with the meat cleaver. Carby spun his back tired so he could spin in place, then sat, with his engine idling, waiting for Jerry.
Jerry did not take long to hope onto the bike, and together they rode out, around Ashley who was crawling towards (and would definitely die, along with Lisa, and have no further part in the saga) and up, through the giant bay window that the college students could have broken with a brick or something. The glass cut Jerry's skin.
Despite the motorcycles apparent ability to drive itself, Jerry was in full control as he hightailed it out of there. He rode as fast as he could without chilling himself to death from the cool air. Jerry took the rode that was not Devil's Pass and almost made it out of there home free.
Unfortunately, that belt had indeed woken a spirit, and that spirit was waiting for him, in the form of a demonic rider. Jerry saw this rider and fear filled his soul long before he was close enough to make out details. The rider saw on a long, cruiser-style bike, with the long handle bars and the kind of seat that makes you sit back and enjoy the ride. A street bike. The bike was covered with an unusual amount of chrome, which reflected every light back with a demonic red energy. Carby's headlight came back red, and there was a red moon reflection in the unecessarily large stack of exhaust piping. The demonic cruisers engine idled with the rumble of a giant steam locomotive, with an occasional louder bang that sounded like a gunshot. The rider wore a jacket with the logo of some long since murdered motorcycle gang. Various symbols that were not something lame like pentograms glowed on the fabric. The jacket had a tall collar. Thick and gray smoke poured out from it, drifting up to the sky and obscuring the riders features. Jerry could make out an eye patch. The other eye glowed red. Jerry knew even without being told that this was the spirit woken by the belt. The tacky skull buckle made it pretty obvious.
"This is a far as you get boy. This is the end of the line for you and that Jap bike." The voice was a terrible whisper, an explosion on the wind, like a wolf's howl. Jerry didn't want to hear the voice again.
Jerry clenched his jaw and did the fatest turn that he could, which wasn't amazing because of his skill level, but wasn't bad either. He accelerated as fast as he could. The rising creshendos of Carby's engine was drowned out by the thundering roar behind them. The demons cruiser was heavy, heavy indeed, and hauling so many thousands of pounds required a monster of an engine, and engine that perhaps injected souls directly into the cylders to increase combustion.
Had they been on a straight road, the demon would have overtaken them, for his engine was more powerful than any motorcycle on Earth. It seemed, though, that the devil did not know what kind of roads got named after him because his angel was poorly equiped. As the road began to twist and turn, the demon's bike ceased to draw close. It was the ride of Jerry's life. Rocks and debris cluttered the road, as well as cracks that had to be content with. The turns began tighter and tighter, forcing him to bend lower and lower, and he dared not slow down too much for them for hell was on his back. It took every ounce of concentration, every part of his will to keep that bike in rythym, to keep the tires on the pavement. Then Carby's engine started making a strange sound. It was rythmic, like a bass note being struck on the first of every four quarter notes.
Jerry looked at the gas tank. It wasn't out of gas. He prayed the bike did not break down. Then he heard the lyrics.
give me release
witness me
I am outside
give me peace
It was the haunting female vocal of a song certain other riders knew well. Suddenly the music filled the air all around him. Demons may block radio waves, but angels, or perhaps the spirits of fallen riders, have magnificent control of the way air molecules bounce around. Jerry fell into the rythm of the song. He nerves became steel and his mind firm. He rode those curves like a bandit; Carby was so incredibly light that he swung back and forth from turn to turn with ease.
The demon was not so fortunate. His cruiser style bike did not have a nearly vertical fork for tight turns, and even scary horror-movie demonic strength could not lean the bike fast enough, and the balance was all off. The demon cried out in anger as the gap between him and his quarry grew. As they reached the pinnacle of Devil's Pass, the demon lost sight of them completely, though he still pursued. That is, until he saw the pink rider.
Standing with her bike across the path just like the demon had earlier done, a pink ghost shimmered like a dead jedi, helmet in hand, blond hair flowing down her sholders. Her bike was a large, pink aprilla with pink street glow.
The evil ghost slowed to a stop fifty feet from her and pulled out his whip, a whip of demonic energy with a glowing red tip that shot off sparks of lava with it was cracked.
The pink rider dismounted and set her helmet on the ground, walking confidently. The demon's power waned with every step she took. When she spoke, her voice was glorious, with the power of a thousand girls reciting the end of a happy poem.
The words she said cannot be repeated here, but they did their magic. The demon was still winding his whip hand back when the air around him shuddered, and his entire essence flickered, and then exploded. The air around him surged outward and then imploded, creating a sonic boom like the sound of thunder. The pink rider was also gone.
Miles away, the skull belt stopped burning Jerry's skin.
In all, there was little evidence linking Jerry to the events that had just occured. He retained a lawyer and looked up the rightful owner of the black ninja 250, and decided it would be wise to return it quietly just as the police began investigating the disappearance of three college students. The trail led them to Brad's truck, and then to the haunted farmhouse, where crime scene investigators took the remaining two artifacts off of what they agreed was definitely a fireplace and placed them in plastic bags. That caused all sort of interesting things to happen, but such logical consequences never appear in crappy slasher films, and thus have no place in this story, nor the larger saga of the self-aware baby ninja named Carby.
Life did return to normal for Jerry aside from emotional scars and a possible lame sequel.
Outside of the ectoplasmic hot spot, Carby could no longer act autonomously, but there was one lasting effect: whenever he was excited, his RPMs would bounce up just a little, for just a second.
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