Wheels And Skulls

by Jeff Baker

The skeleton astride the motorcycle in the parking lot cackled in a ghostly voice; “Beware! I am the Hell-Spawned Spirit of Vengeance!”

“Sounds good to me,” said a voice from the van parked in the space next to the bike.

The skeleton looked up, startled. A read-headed kid apparently in his 20s leaned out the van’s driver’s side window grinning.

“How come you can see me?” the skeleton asked.

“How do you think?” the kid said. “Shawn McKenzie, at your service. I bought it back in ‘85. Hey, how long you been a skeleton?”

“I’m usually not,” said the skeleton. “I just appear like this for Halloween. Usually I stay at the house I used to live in. The kid renting it never sees me, but when when he gets stoned sometimes after work he hears me. That’s the way it is, some people can notice us sometimes. But he didn’t notice me riding along on his bike.”

“Mommy! Mommy!” The little girl walking out of the bank with her mother pointed. “A Halloween skeleton and it’s moving!”

“That’s nice dear,” her mother said, guiding the girl to their car.

The skeleton waved. “Happy Halloween!” he said. He and McKenzie laughed as they watched the pair drive off.

“So,” said the skeleton, standing up and stretching. “You haunt their warehouse and ride along in the van or what?”

“Naaah!” McKenzie said, opening the driver’s side door and stepping out. “I drive this thing all day!”

McKenzie walked around and opened the van’s back doors. He was wearing boots, jeans and a blue shirt with a company logo on the sleeve and SHAWN on a label sewn on the front pocket.

He pulled out a hand cart and started stacking boxes on it. “This is the good thing about being able to make anybody see me,” he said. “I can do this job and they pay me under the table.” He grinned again. “Of course, they don’t know exactly why I need to be paid under the table!”

“So why work?” the skeleton asked. “Aren’t we permanently retired?”

“I don’t eat, but this way I get money for beer,” McKenzie said. “Besides, I got bored.” He locked the van and started pushing the cart to the delivery door. He turned and waved.

“Happy Halloween!”

“Yeah, you too!” the skeleton said, starting to look like his human self and not a skeleton.

The brown-haired kid in the ripped tank top and tattoos walked out of the building and hopped on his motorcycle.

“Hey! Happy Halloween!” the former skeleton said, clinging to the back of the seat he was on. He now looked about the same age as McKenzie and the kid on the bike who gunned the engine oblivious to the ghostly passenger or the voice.

“Oh well,” the skeleton said, looking like a skeleton again even if most people couldn’t see him.

As the bike roared out of the parking lot, the skeleton laughed. “Beware, mortals! I, the Ghost, uh, Hanger-Oner am here to deliver vengeance!”

—end—