Chapter 60: Seducing Ben and Playing Catch With Zs'Skayr
The night air was cool and still, carrying the faint scent of pine and distant city exhaust. The Rustbucket sat parked in a quiet suburban stretch just outside the grounds of Bancroft Academy.
Klein slouched deep into a canvas camping chair, his hands laced behind his head as he idly traced constellations in the dark sky. A few straggling Bancroft students milled about in the distance, their chatter reduced to a low murmur. Propped up against the side of the RV, Ben furiously mashed the buttons on his handheld console, the digitized grunts of his Raging Sumo game breaking the evening silence.
"Hey, handsome. How are you?"
A voice drifted out from the shadows, smooth and entirely out of place. Ben paused his game, blinking up from the glowing screen. A girl stood a few paces away. She clearly did not belong to the Bancroft student body. She looked to be around eighteen or nineteen, dressed in casual street clothes, with an utterly unremarkable face. But her eyes were wrong. They stared unblinking, carrying a hollow, unnatural weight.
Ben glanced over his left shoulder, then his right. Seeing absolutely no one else in the immediate vicinity, he pointed a finger at his own chest. "Are you talking to me?"
The girl nodded, a stiff, jerky motion. "Mhm. Yes, you. You are a very handsome guy. Do you want to go into the small woods over there and chat with me?"
A smug grin immediately split Ben's face. He puffed out his chest. "Thanks! I also think I am super handsome." His smile faltered a second later, replaced by a deep frown of suspicion. "So, what exactly do you want? I refuse to believe a girl would hit on me while my cousin is sitting right over there."
He crossed his arms, leaning forward to scrutinize her from head to toe. "Also, aren't you a bit too old for me? Are you some kind of weirdo? A pervert interested in kids?"
The girl's mouth twitched, the muscles spasming as if fighting for control. Abandoning the subtle approach, she stepped closer, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Will you just come with me over there, please? I can let you do... this and that."
Ben stared at the older girl, completely speechless. His face twisted in sheer disgust. "What the heck is 'this and that'? Who exactly are you?!"
Somewhere inside that stolen body, Zs'Skayr cursed his own miscalculation. He had completely forgotten that Ben Tennyson had not even hit puberty yet. Seduction was a useless tactic. Realizing the disguise was blown, the alien entity abandoned ship.
A horrifying, spectral mass tore its way out of the girl's chest, leaving her collapsing to the dirt as Zs'Skayr fled into the shadows, desperate to escape Klein's line of sight. The girl had just been an unfortunate victim. She had been out in the woods with her boyfriend, seeking a bit of late-night fun, only to be hijacked by an extraterrestrial phantom. Her boyfriend was currently somewhere deep in the trees, likely traumatized for life after watching his date sprout tentacles and turn into a literal ghost.
"Ghostfreak!" Ben yelled, stumbling back against the RV as the spectral figure vanished.
The shout shattered the quiet night. Klein snapped out of his lazy daze, immediately vaulting out of his camping chair. His boots hit the pavement with a heavy thud. Catching a rogue alien ghost sounded infinitely more entertaining than counting stars.
"Where did Zs'Skayr go?" Klein demanded.
"He went that way!" Ben pointed a trembling finger toward the sprawling, brightly lit campus of Bancroft Academy.
...
Deep inside the academy walls, Zs'Skayr phased into a cramped storage room. He hovered near the ceiling, his single eye fixed nervously on the heavy wooden door.
'He did not catch up, did he?'
The phantom let out a raspy, echoing sigh of relief, shrinking back into the darkest corner among stacks of discarded desks and dusty sports equipment.
A second later, the temperature in the room plummeted. Frost crept along the edges of the doorframe. Ghostfreak phased straight through the solid wood. This was Klein, using the very transformation Ben had lost. The one-eyed phantom drifted into the center of the room, his inverted head swiveling slowly. He scanned the clutter, paused, and then silently floated right back out through the wall.
'...He did not find me.'
Two agonizing minutes dragged by. Zs'Skayr finally drifted out from behind the towering pile of desks. He leaned his spectral claws against a stack of cardboard boxes, trying to steady his frayed nerves.
"Surprise."
Ghostfreak's inverted head phased directly out of the cardboard box right next to Zs'Skayr's face.
"Ah!" Zs'Skayr shrieked, a high-pitched, entirely undignified wail. He scrambled backward, phasing frantically through the ceiling to escape.
"Ha ha ha ha..." Klein's cold, distorted laughter echoed through the empty storage room, chasing the fleeing phantom through the walls.
...
Zs'Skayr manifested inside the chemistry lab on the second floor. He shrank down, hiding behind a row of large glass beakers on the teacher's desk, his single eye darting around the empty room.
"What are you looking at?"
Ghostfreak's terrifying visage materialized inside the glass beaker itself, staring directly back at him.
"Ah!" Zs'Skayr screamed again, rocketing through the floorboards.
...
Desperate, the rogue alien plunged into the indoor swimming pool, submerging his ethereal form deep into the chlorinated water. The surface remained perfectly still.
"Can you even swim?"
Ghostfreak rose slowly from the drain at the bottom of the pool, his tentacles drifting like dead seaweed.
"Ah!" Zs'Skayr thrashed through the water, bursting out of the surface and phasing through the roof.
...
Running out of options, Zs'Skayr phased into a late-night study hall. He immediately dove into the body of a random student hunched over a textbook. He blinked the human's eyes, trying to act natural.
The student sitting at the adjacent desk suddenly turned his head. He slid a heavy calculus textbook across the table. "Hey. How do you solve this problem?"
Zs'Skayr looked up. The classmate's face was pale, his eyes glowing with a sinister, familiar light. Klein had possessed the kid right next to him.
"Ah!" Zs'Skayr abandoned the host instantly, fleeing the study hall in absolute terror.
...
He hid in the oak trees outside. He hid in the decorative fountain. He hid deep underground beneath the campus foundations. Every conceivable hiding spot proved useless.
The good news was that Klein clearly had no intention of catching him immediately. The bad news was that Klein was treating him like a mouse in a maze, entirely capable of ending the game whenever he got bored.
Zs'Skayr was completely out of options. He could not just pull the same trick as their last encounter. There was no guarantee a stray dog would wander by to serve as a convenient distraction this time. Backed into a corner, only one desperate strategy remained. It was a terrible plan. Based on everything he knew about Klein's ruthless personality, the tactic was almost guaranteed to fail. But he had to try.
Spotting another unfortunate male student walking down the third-floor hallway, Zs'Skayr lunged. He seized control of the boy's nervous system, forcing the rigid body to sprint toward the end of the corridor and climb up onto the open window ledge.
The cold night wind whipped past the student's face. Behind him, the wall rippled. Ghostfreak drifted out from the concrete, his movements agonizingly slow and unhurried.
"Klein!" Zs'Skayr shouted through the boy's vocal cords, the voice echoing with a dual, metallic resonance. "As a so-called hero, you would not want ordinary people to be harmed, would you? If you do not back off right now, you are going to hear this unlucky kid scream all the way down, and you will be left staring at a puddle of flesh!"
It was a massive, desperate gamble.
Ghostfreak tilted his head, his single eye narrowing in dry amusement. "What does that have to do with me?"
Alright. The gamble was officially lost.
Just as Zs'Skayr prepared to bail, heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. Grandpa Max sprinted around the corner, flanked closely by Ben and Gwen. They stopped dead in their tracks, taking in the hostage situation on the ledge.
Ghostfreak immediately straightened up, his tone shifting into a deadpan, exaggerated mockery of a comic book hero. "Quickly release him, villain! Otherwise, I shall represent justice and eliminate you!"
A turning point! Zs'Skayr felt a surge of ecstatic hope. With the rest of the Tennyson family present, Klein would be forced to play the hero.
"Klein! Change back right now!" Zs'Skayr barked, his arrogance returning in full force. He leaned the student's body precariously over the edge of the three-story drop. "Change back to your human form and let me possess you! Otherwise, I will force this kid to jump!"
"Then jump."
Ghostfreak crossed his spectral arms. Did this parasite really think a hostage would work? Did he actually believe he could covet Klein's body and get away with it?
"Do you honestly think I care about his life or death?" Ghostfreak's voice dropped, shedding all traces of humor. The temperature in the hallway plummeted, frost creeping across the lockers. "At most, Grandpa will scold me for a few hours. But you? You are definitely going to die tonight."
Klein was genuinely annoyed now. Usually, he played along with Max's moral code to keep the peace. But if pushed too far, he had zero qualms about doing things his way. He could always just wipe the old man's memory later if things got too messy.
This was not how the script was supposed to go. Zs'Skayr froze, stunned by the sheer, chilling apathy radiating from the alien in front of him.
"Ahem. Well, let us not get too excited!" Zs'Skayr stammered, frantically trying to backpedal. "We can still discuss this, right? I do not want your body anymore. Is that not enough? Ben's body is fine too!"
Cold sweat beaded on the possessed student's forehead. Zs'Skayr was suddenly terrified that Klein really would let this human splatter on the pavement just to get to him.
Standing at the end of the hall, Ben stared in absolute disbelief. 'What the heck is wrong with my body? Are you seriously settling for me?' He clenched his fists. He did not want to be anyone's backup prize, and he certainly did not want to be possessed. But despite his indignation, Ben could not just stand there and watch an innocent student fall to his death.
Seeing Ben take a hesitant step forward, the possessed student's eyes lit up with malicious hope.
Before Ben could take another step, Ghostfreak threw out a long, gray tentacle, barring his path. "Do not go over there, Dweeb," Klein ordered, his tone flat. "We are just going to stand here and watch. Let us see exactly what he has the guts to do."
Ghostfreak slowly turned his gaze back to the trembling student on the ledge. His voice was a cold, low rasp that seemed to echo from the grave itself. "Jump."
The crushing weight of the situation slammed squarely onto Zs'Skayr's shoulders.
Down the hall, Max, Ben, and Gwen stood in tense silence. Their hearts hammered against their ribs, but none of them dared to speak. They knew better than to interrupt Klein when he was like this. They were genuinely terrified that if they agitated him, Klein might just phase forward and tear Zs'Skayr apart, taking the innocent student down with him.
The possessed student swayed on the ledge, sweating profusely. Zs'Skayr was trapped. Jumping meant Klein would instantly hunt down his exposed form. Not jumping meant he was stuck in a standoff with a predator who held all the cards.
The agonizing stalemate stretched on for several heavy seconds. Finally, Zs'Skayr's nerve broke. He tore himself free from the student's body, leaving the boy to collapse safely backward onto the hallway floor.
The phantom immediately spun around, diving toward the ceiling to escape. He knew that staying anchored to a human host made him too slow. But in his blind panic, he completely forgot how vulnerable he was in the open air.
Moving with terrifying speed, Ghostfreak blurred across the hallway. He slammed into Zs'Skayr before the rogue phantom could even reach the ceiling, dragging him violently down to the linoleum floor. Spectral claws pinned Zs'Skayr by the throat.
"Run!" Klein taunted, his single eye widening in manic delight. "Keep running! Why aren't you running anymore?!"
Max wasted no time. He stepped forward, pulling a heavy, cylindrical device from his coat. It was a sun gun—a specialized piece of Plumber tech designed to emit concentrated, simulated sunlight. He aimed the wide nozzle directly at the struggling phantom on the floor and pulled the trigger.
"Ahhhh!"
A blinding beam of pure, golden UV light flooded the corridor. Zs'Skayr shrieked in absolute agony. The moment the artificial sunlight struck his exposed flesh, it began to sizzle and burn away into ash. The searing pain completely short-circuited his mind, making him forget he could simply phase through the floor to escape.
"Hahahahaha!"
Ghostfreak threw his head back, his dark, distorted laughter echoing off the lockers as he held the burning entity down. To Zs'Skayr, that laughter was the true sound of a demon.
The rogue alien thrashed wildly, his screams growing weaker and weaker as the light consumed him. Within seconds, his voice faded into nothing, his body completely dissolving into a wisp of smoke that vanished into the cold night air.
...
The next morning, the sun sat high in a clear blue sky.
The Tennyson family was packing up the Rustbucket, ready to leave Bancroft Academy behind. Just as Klein was about to step inside the RV, Tiffany marched over. She stopped right in front of him, a sly, knowing smirk playing on her lips.
"Klein," she began, her tone dripping with mock innocence. "You wouldn't want your little secret to be discovered, would you?" She tapped the side of her head, clearly referencing his ability to transform. "Give me your contact information."
She held out her hand, presenting her phone with the keypad open.
Klein stared at her for a long moment, his expression perfectly flat. Finding the entire situation far too troublesome to argue over, he let out a quiet sigh of defeat. He took the phone and quickly punched in his number.
Tiffany snatched the device back, her eyes scanning the screen. A deeply satisfied smile spread across her face. She stepped into his personal space, leaning in close until her lips were right next to his ear.
"You cannot escape," she whispered.
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