Chapter Eight: The Chainsaw Warrior
Chapter Eight: The Chainsaw Warrior
“But we do have
this mansion,” Binx offered a beacon of hope. “I had cursed this entire
residence with the Necronomicon, permanently linking them both. The haunting of
the mansion itself was how it arrived in this alien world. It can jump again at
the same incantation that brought it here.”
Venkman shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. But, this time, the
cat’s doing it.”
At her instruction, Star set the Necronomicon down for
Binx to read.
As Binx recited the incantation, Hop Pop came to a sudden
realization: “Uh, maybe Sprig, Polly, and I should leave, since we’re actually
supposed to be—” Unfortunately, he was all too late in his warning.
The group, the foyer, and the entire mansion itself were
momentarily basked in a bright white light. It passed like the flash of a camera.
No one seemed to notice any difference.
“What happened?” Sprig asked. “Are we still in Amphibia
or what?”
“Only one way to find out, lil’ frog dude,” Bart said,
heading over to the front door and sticking his head out through the doorway. All
he saw was trees, grass, and other bits of forestation. With a heavy sigh, he
alerted the others, “Nothing…Nothing but the same…”
BLAM!
Just an inch from his head, a shotgun blast took out a
chunk of the door frame.
“¡Ay, caramba!”
Bart blurted one of his most famous catchphrases (in good reason), ducking back
inside and shutting the door.
A distance away from where the mansion materialized in
the lush forest, Ash Williams crouched against a wall, her sawed-off
twelve-gauge, double-barreled Remington smoking in her one good hand. She was
accompanied by Cavin, a page boy who seemed a little worried over the act she
just committed.
“Were you aiming for that yellow-skinned boy’s head?” he
asked her.
Ash casually blew away the smoke seeping from the barrels
of her shotgun. “I don’t even know who that was,” she told Cavin. “Probably
another poor schmuck Thackery Binx roped into that curse of his.”
“The demon cat you told us about?” Cavin recalled. “Is he
really in that strange fortress that you’ve waited two years to appear?”
“He sure is,” Ash verified. “And I’m about to get some
sweet revenge on his scrawny lil’ tail for puttin’ me here in the Middle Ages!”
“I’ll go get Zummi and let him know that your fortress
has arrived,” Cavin said.
While the page boy left to run the errand, Ash made her
way towards the mansion. Along the way, she passed what she presumed to be a
white ambulance/hearse combination vehicle, supped up with some bizarre
machinery on top. There was a logo printed on the driver and passenger side
doors: a ghost with a “no” cross symbol over it (perpetually translated as “no
ghost”).
“What freaky mess is this?” Ash pondered aloud, briefly
put off by the strange car before she refocused on her main task: storming the
mansion. She kicked open the front door and furiously yelled, “Binx! I know
you’re in here! Bring your little butt out here, so I can blow it off!”
“There’s no need for violence, Ash,” she heard Binx’s
voice echo around her. “Shooting me won’t bring you the peace that you want –
especially not since I’m immortal.”
“Still, it’d make me feel a lot better about you trappin’
me in another time!” Ash proclaimed.
At the corner of her eye, she detected sudden movement.
She pointed her Remington to where it came from, sighting
Binx finally stepping out in the open and facing Ash. “It was not my intention
of sending you to another time and place,” he spoke in his defense. “I was only
trying to rid the Sanderson Sisters of your present time in 1981.”
“Well, I hate to break it to ya, Binx, but your plan
ain’t worth but two things right now: Jack and squat,” Ash said. “And Jack left
town.”
Whatever accounted to a brow had furrowed on Binx’s
feline countenance, hearing Ash’s remark. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” he
told her.
“I’ll spell it out for ya with a few shots from ol’ Remy
here!”
Ash’s finger was about to squeeze the trigger just as she
felt the barrel of another gun press against her back. “Drop the boomstick or
there’s gonna be a big ol’ hole where your liver used to be,” ordered the woman,
who had Ash dead-to-rights.
Ash brought her arms up. “Alright, alright. No need to
get all gory.”
It seemed as if Ash was about to comply until she
suddenly ducked down and swept her leg against the woman’s, knocking her to the
floor. She now pointed her shotgun at the head of the woman, who she saw to be
some sort of Native American with long, flowing black hair and bright hazel
eyes. Ash also noticed the unusual way she was dressed and asked, “What’re you
supposed to be? Some sort of cosmonaut?”
“I’m an exterminator who deals with cockroaches,” the
woman sneered, “like the one who’s pointin’ a gun at me.”
“You pointed one at me first, Miss…” Ash spotted a
nametag on the woman’s crazy outfit. “Venk-man? What kinda name is ‘Venkman’?
Sounds like a superhero reject.”
Venkman snickered over the rib at her surname. She
countered by asking Williams, “And what kind of woman calls herself ‘Ash’ with
those pale legs of yours?” She nodded at Ash’s bare legs, which – of course – were quite white.
Nonetheless, Ash was just as amused by Venkman’s rib on her name.
A bit of camaraderie between the two women started to
develop, at least before Ash felt a sharp pinch near the base of her neck, at
the shoulder, and literally dropped into an unconscious state.
Ash’s body fell on top of Natalie, who was already
aggravated enough after T’Eve’s surprise attack on Williams. “What the heck?!”
Venkman berated the Vulcan. “We were just about to connect!”
“It was the logical action to take, Dr. Venkman,” T’Eve
said. “She did have a gun pointed at your head.”
“Is it safe to come out?” They heard Bill Green call out
from a hiding spot that he shared with his family. Seeing that the close was
indeed clear, Bill and the others stepped out to look down on the unconscious
Ash Williams – the “Chainsaw Warrior” that they had been searching for.
Star’s eyes sparkled with glee. “It’s her! It’s really her! We’ve really found her!”
Marco was a little underwhelmed. “She’s just some
ordinary woman who smells like stale chips.”
“Ya’ll don’t have to tell me how she smells!” Natalie grumbled while shoving Ash’s heavy,
inert body off herself.
With the body facing up, J.G. noticed a satchel draped
over Ash’s hip. Curiously, he searched through it, finding only four items: a
1980s Walkman, a flask, an old Polaroid camera, and one Polaroid of Ash with a
group of bears.
“Who’re these guys?” Anne asked, looking at the Polaroid
of the bears.
“They look cute, whoever or whatever they are,” Clary
observed.
Marco, however, was more attentive on the unconscious
Ash. “So what do we do now that we’ve found her?”
“We may have bigger concerns than that,” Binx told Marco.
“From the way Ash reacted when I mentioned the Sandersons, it was almost as if
she was implying that they arrived here in this time with her.”
“Judging from this Polaroid, it looks like the time in
question is the Middle Ages,” J.G. deduced.
“That does not bode well at all,” Binx stated. “The
Sandersons could cause much greater harm in an era where magic is more easily
accessible.”
“What do you propose?” Spengler asked.
“Ash can provide us with more answers when she wakes up,”
Binx replied. “But we need to find the greatest wizard of legend to help us…we
need to find Merlin.”
“Oh, sure, we’ll just look him up on Google Maps, no
problem,” Venkman jested.
Ignoring Natalie’s witticism, J.G. came up with a more
serious plan of action: “We’ll split up – Sean, Clary, Homer, Bart, and I will
go out with Binx to search for Merlin. The rest of you stay here with Ash and
see what more information you can get out of her.”
Binx didn’t want to admit out loud, but he was grateful
for Stantz suggesting that he go with him, Spengler, Clary, and the Simpsons
instead of staying in the mansion and being subjected to more abuse (verbal and
physical) from Ash. “If I would suggest one thing before our journey, my
friends, it would be changing your attires,” Binx said. “Those uniforms alone
would scare the locals.”
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