The Ghoul Ray Street

Ray Street was a drummer.

He wasn't just a regular drummer. He was one of the best drummers in the area. He could have done so much with his talent. Could have joined a band that was growing like a meteorite. Could have become rich and famous.

And what had happened?

He'd fallen in love with a beautiful young dancer named Amy Shiatsu.

In order to stabilize his life so he didn't have to travel around the country doing gigs and leave the love of his life behind, he had bought the Neon Moon from an old friend and had spent the next ten years trying to make it work as a part-time drummer and a full-time night club owner.

Ray didn't have any regrets. He enjoyed drumming for fun. Enjoyed spending time with his customers. He even enjoyed the business side of running his own little nightclub. It had been all worth it with his wife by his side.

But then he started going crazy. Once the yelling and howling began in his head, it did not let up. He could not escape the terrible noise or the horrifying alien presences within his mind.

He had no idea what started the idea of letting the disco ball be his executioner but the image was so clear and fixed in his mind that before he knew it, he was standing on that ladder.

He had tried to come back to his senses but his foot had, of its own volition, kicked the ladder and he had slipped downward into that knotted noose that he could never again climb out of.

At the moment that he regained his sense of self, when he saw his wife sitting on the floor weeping softly as the medics were taking his body down, Ray Street howled with the pain of knowing he had lost his right to be with her ever again.

He had lost his mind and fled away from the scene as quickly as he could only to meet up with a large dark presence that had chased him around the city until he saw the green top of the Tiger Temple.

Thinking it was a refuge for lost souls, he had entered the temple. That was when he first met up with the Overlord.

Anh Hai had caught him and toyed with him, setting him on spirit fire, dousing him with spirit water, and doing all sorts of things to him until Ray was almost driven mad.

And then he was shoved into a small dark enclosure.

He did not realize it was a brass lamp until the man opened up the lamp and released him back into the realm of the living again.

Once he was released from the lamp, Ray Street hovered above the rafters watching Anh Hai moving around the room.

Anh Hai opened a drawer and took out two red candle sticks and a pair of brass candle holders. From a corner, he took a knee high rectangular table covered with a white cloth which he placed in the middle of the room.

Then he reached over to the large altar and took down the large claw-footed incense urn and centered it on the table.

He placed eight unlit incense sticks fanlike, into the urn and then placed the candles on either side of the incense urn.

From a basket on the altar, he grabbed a sheaf of onion-skin paper dyed in a rainbow of colors, along with a bamboo fan covered with red silk and gold tassels.

Then he crossed the room, took off his jacket, unbuttoned his white broadcloth shirt, and slipped off his slacks and underwear. He hung them with care inside the otherwise empty closet and returned to the center of the room, stark naked.

He positioned himself in front of the small table and sank down, cross-legged. Raising two fingers, he flicked it across the table.

FOOMPH!

The candles and all eight incense stick lit up.

Pursing his lips, Anh Hai blew gently at the incense, dulling the flame down to tiny points of amber, glowing gently at the tips.

Closing his eyes, he began to enter into a trance.

Anh Hai sat unmoving for an indeterminate lapse of time, unmarked by any clock or setting sun, garnering energy and focusing his thoughts.

When he finally reached that state of non-thinking, he slowly released his egotistical claim to being an individual human being. In that state, he began to reach into the atmosphere with tiny quark tentacles of tentative mental feelers.

Finding it tolerant to his microscopic invasion, he began shifting whole atoms out to mingle with the hydrogen and oxygen molecule in the air.

The slow trickle of his being was tentative at first but then began to increase exponentially until in a mad dash, he burst free from the confines of his physical body.

The shift brought a rush of disorientation of this sensory perception, but he steadied and anchored himself and began to explore the shadow world around him.

Anh Hai opened his mind's eye and found Ray Street, hovering on the rafter, looking hungry and savage.

There was a semblance of the human that he had once been and could possibly become again, but all characteristics that once denoted his humanness had been warped into a semblance akin to a large hairy black ape-like figure.

Ray Street's eyes were bulbous and glassy, protruding from his hairy head like two large pods of garlic. His nose was greenish and stumpy, a large bell pepper affair on top of a circular mouth that resembled the mouthpiece of a trumpet.

Ordinarily, Anh Hai could sense the spirits' presence without having the need to see them in all their colorful gory details, but one of the dubious 'perks' of reaching the Overlord Level of the Demon System was his ability to see them in the manner that they saw themselves.

"Ray Street, Come!" Anh Hai commanded. He was still frozen in his seated lotus position but he was able to project his mental voice into the air at the monstrous figure.

His voice reverberated in the silence of the darkened room causing Ray to jump with fright. Unable to stop himself, Ray moved towards Anh Hai's voice, quaking with terror.

"Listen very carefully, Ray. Marvin and Maysie need your help." Anh Hai adjusted his mental voice to the level of gentleness that could calm a wild beast.

"I am going to send you into the mind of the human that Marvin and Maysie are occupying at this moment. Do you understand?"

"No! No! No!" Ray cried, darting behind the altar and turned his back towards Anh Hai in his half-crouched position.

Anh Hai narrowed his gaze.

It was not a request. It was a command.

Still, Ray Street was too new, too untrained. He was not ready to do anything yet.

Anh Hai was going to have to personally go into the mind of the possessed cop, Adam Stuart and take a look for himself to see what was the matter.

But first, he had to take care of Ray Street.