The History of Audubon Park, Part Five

We began to practice at Go! Rehearsals.

As most of you know, Go! had once been a warehouse. I don't know what they housed there. Wares, I guess. Anyway, I worked with a guy named Steve who'd worked at the warehouse in the 1990s. We were talking about the band and he told me, "Oh, you practice in that place. You know what happened there?"

I did not know what happened there, but when someone says, "Oh, you know what happened there?" it makes me want to know what happened there.

"See, there was this guy who'd worked double shift or was drunk or something and he went up to the office to take a break. He was up there smoking and feel asleep on the couch with the lit cigarette still in his mouth. It caught the couch on fire and the office and eventually the whole place went up. Boom! He died. Thousands of dollars worth of wares were destroyed."

"That is terrible."

"Not as terrible as what happened in the parking lot of the Domino's next door."

"What happened in the parking lot of the Domino's?"

"This guy on a motorcycle, on purpose, drove as fast as he could under a guidewire for a powerline and it decapitated him. Slice! His head rolled on the gravel ground, co-eds with armloads of pizza screaming, the head smiling and laughing. The motorcycle sped away with the body still on it."

"So you are telling me that where my band practices there have been two grisly deaths. Did something terrible happen at the car wash in between the two places?"

"No, that's just a car wash."

I didn't tell the band about the man who burned alive where we practiced our upbeat pop jams, nor did I tell them about the decapitated biker in the parking lot of the place where we ordered our pizzas from. After a few weeks, I forgot about the miasma of lurking horror that surrounded the band.

Then, one Sunday evening as we were running through one of our songs, Mike, the manager of the rehearsal space poked his head in. "Hey, I'm going to step out for a while. You all are the only ones here. The door will be locked, but I wanted to give you a heads up." The rest of the band nodded happily, but my soul was gripped by a chill. We were locked in the haunted rehearsal space alone!

We played a little while longer and then took a break. As we sat and talked, we became aware of a noise. A distant, low sound.

"Man, what is that sound. It sounds like the engine of a motorcycle," Finn said. "But, like a really evil motorcycle." Fear gripped me but I said nothing.

"Yeah," said Robert, "And maybe I can hear some laughing too." I began to sweat.

"Let's check it out," Ben said. We crept out of the practice room and I broke down. "Guys, stop!" I told the about the headless biker.

"Yeah, but that was at Domino's," said Matt. "Even if ghosts were possible, which they are not, it would be over there, haunting a pizza."

"I would eat a haunted pizza," Ben said. We all nodded. We would all eat a haunted pizza. Nevertheless, curious, we crept on down the hall toward the mysterious sound. We got to practice room one. The door was vibrating. The sound was coming from in there. Slowly, Finn pushed the door open and we saw it.

Razzle was having practice. "Oh, sorry to interrupt," I said, "Thought we heard pizza." Dave Cantwell gave us the 'these boys are crazy eye' and we walked back to our practice room.

"See, it wasn't a ghost, it was just...Wait!" I said. "Mike said no one was here."

"So," everyone else said.

"And RAZZLE BROKE UP!" Our faces went white and we rushed back to their room, threw the door open and saw--the members of Razzle were all floating above the ground.

"GHOST RAZZLE!" we exclaimed and with a great shriek, the band vanished with a sulfurous smell. "Damn," Finn said, "They farted on the way out."

"I'm sorry," Robert said, "I'm just confused. Are we practicing more or what?"