that devilish duo certainly gets into some shenanigans

We discussed it and thought that night would be the best time, that way there would be fewer people around to see Linds.  We got to the park where she’d last seen her kid.

 

“Okay, so this is the last place you saw him?”

“Yes, it was right over there.” And she points to the jungle gym. “And the police looked all around it for stuff.”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” I tell her and walk away.

 

“Where are you going?” I hear her say, “Where is he going?” she says again and I assume she’s asking Ash.

 

I’m going to make a phone call.

 

 

Linds is able to show up because I really, really need her to. While I explain the situation to her, she gnaws her lower lip.

 

“Should I go and give her a hug?”

“She doesn’t need a hug Linds, she needs her boy back.”

“Right. Okay. Um, there aren’t any people around right now.”

“Can you find some Linds? It might help keep me out of jail.”

 

She doesn’t say anything about that. In fact, at first I’m not sure if she heard what I said, but then she frowns at me and disappears.

 

It’s an hour before Linds shows back up.

 

“No one has seen anything.” She looks over at the lady again. “I should really go over there and give her a hug. She looks so alone. Where is her husband? He should be here.”

 

Her husband! Should’ve thought of that before.

 

I rush back, yelling that everyone should follow me. I’m so focused right now that Linds is compelled to follow.

 

“Do you still have some of your husband’s personal items at home?”

“Of course. Why?”

“We’re going to ask him where your son is.”

“Why would he know?”

“Why wouldn’t he? He’s still the kid’s dad.”

 

We get to her house and I can call him in seconds. It’s the easiest call I’ve ever done.

 

He shows up with a bang. The first time that’s ever happened.

 

“Oh my God, it’s about time you called me. You have to hurry, he’s in terrible danger. Oh God, it’s horrible! They’ve been holding him this whole time, waiting for tonight. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, we’ve got to go.”

 

We follow him in the lady’s car. He’s moving so fast we are having difficulty keeping up with him. We treat yellow lights as green, red as yellow and stop signs as if they’re invisible. We turn a corner onto a normal looking street and I see him standing in front of a house about six houses from the corner. We follow the dead dad to some house on Madison Street. This was never a nice neighbourhood, even when I was a kid. And it looks darker now. They haven’t really painted in the fifteen years since I was last near here. It was a party down the street. I came with Ash.

 

“Hey Ash, remember that party we went to near here?”

“Actually yes. But shut up, we need to focus right now.”

 

“Stop here,” I tell her and she does. Right in the middle of the street.

“I mean like, over on the side.”

But she’s already out of the car and running towards her dead husband.

 

“Is he in there!” she yells the question and everyone shushes her.

“Yes.”

Ashley is staring at the door, like he wants to punch it. “How many are there?”

“Six.”

“Any weapons?”

“I think so. One knife.”

“Hardly seems fair. Right let’s go darling.”

 

“Right. Right. Okay, but how do we get in there? Um, dead Dad, can you pass through and unlock the door?”

 

“I’ll try.”

 

He passes through the front door and comes back within seconds.

 

“It’s unlocked.”

 

“Great” and I go to rush in.

 

“Hold on!” says Ash, “There might be an alarm. Check for anything around the door. See if there’s an alarm set up.”

 

Dead Dad disappears back into the house.

 

“Nope. Nothing.”

 

“Great,” says Ash, “Because I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with one of those.” Ash tells Linds to stay with the mom and that she should call the cops if we don’t come back in half an hour.

 

“Why don’t we call the cops now?” It was a reasonable question and one I heartily endorsed.

 

Ash went full on flamboyant, “Listen darling, we can call the cops and try and explain to them how we know what’s going on, then hope they show up, then hope that your son is still alive, or, if in half an hour we’re not back, you’ll be so frantic that quite frankly they’ll have no choice but to come squealing down here with their sirens blaring and their big nightsticks swinging in the wind.”

 

“Twenty minutes.”

 

We actually needed ten.

 

We snuck into the house, guided by Ghost Dad. It was a big house but we weren’t on tour, so I can’t tell you anything about the décor. Wood. I remember a lot of wood. Anyway, we snuck through the house and down into the basement, Ghost Dad leading us all the way. As we walked down the stairs we could hear chanting. That weird chanting that you heard in the Exorcist movies and in the Resident Evil video games.

 

The room was dark, it was, after all a basement. There were cobwebs, an old fridge, and six cloaked figures standing over a small boy who was tied down to a huge marble slab. They’d gagged him, I guessed, because we couldn’t hear him screaming but we could hear him moaning.  

 

“Who has the knife?”

 

Ghost Dad swooshed away and came back five seconds later.

 

“The guy at the head of the table. The one by Justin’s head.”

 

“Excellent. Okay Rich, I’m going to have to do this quick so stay out of the way. Grab something heavy and hit anybody who gets back up. Keep hitting them until they don’t get up again. Then hit them two more times.”

And then he got up and ran screaming toward the table.

 

It was awesome. Since then I’d seen Ash in a few fights. Sometimes we’re grossly outnumbered, sometimes he’s grossly outnumbered, sometimes I hold my own, sometimes it’s him and one drunk guy at a bar. And in those fights he always, always wins. But this was the first time I’d ever seen him fight and like I said it was awesome.

 

He was across the room and on the table before the six guys (I’m assuming they were guys, they could’ve been girls I wasn’t sure at the time) turned around. He had his knee buried in the head guy’s face before he was done screaming. He had the back of the guy’s head smashed against the wall before he raised his head and he had the guy on the ground before the knife hit the ground. He got hit three times. That’s all, three times.

 

He fought dirty too. Fishooked guys, kicked them in the nuts, smashed them with his elbows. Ripped ears off. Two guys got broken kneecaps, I heard them snap from across the room. Then I remembered I had a job to do and went running over to help, forgetting to grab something heavy. Although, in my defense, there was nothing heavy around. So I just kicked them in the nuts or the head until they stayed down. Okay, honestly, Ash was so thorough, that I only had to deal with one guy trying to get back up and I ended up stomping him in the nuts and then the head. Twice.

 

Ash was all over these guys. And it wasn’t a movie fight either, where the ninjas attack the kung-fu master one at a time and he easily dispatches them. He had two guys come at him at once. He put one in a headlock while kicking the other guy in the nuts and head. Nuts and head man! But while he was beating up those two, one guy came up on his side and punched him in the face. Ash did something to the guy in the headlock that might have killed him or just made him pass out (it killed him. We found that out later) swung at him, missed, swung again, took another punch in the face and then lost his mind. He went absolutely berserk on the guy. He went in low, brought him down to the ground and pummelled his face, ripping at it, smashing his palms into the guy’s ears.

 

We untied the kid. He had a nice reunion with his dead dad and then he we took him outside. I was still overwhelmed at Ashley’s badassedness and I had to ask him about it.