Dark Lord Rob's DarkForce

Chapter One: The Adventure Begins

     Call me Twonky. Everybody does.It's a contraction of my name. Terrence Wonkler. And with a name like that, there are SO many worse things I could be called.
     Dark Lord Rob said that somebody should be writing down the details of the exploits of our little crew, "Be our Boswell," he said. "Who?" we all said, except Shana, who knows everything. "He was sort of a real-life Dr. Watson," said DLR, "Except Dr.Johnson didn't solve crimes. Though there's a story there, I'll bet..." and that distracted look came over his face like it always does. He has three basic expressions, I swear... distracted, disgusted, and disturbed. And they're all pretty similar.
     Anyway, he was looking at me when he said it, and of course here I am writing this all down like Dr. Watson, who I have heard of, thank you very much Shana!
     It doesn't really start with the Dark Lord, though; it starts a bit before that but that stuff's all so familiar from the papers and TV that anybody looking at this priceless prose knows all about it anyway and I'm supposed to tell the stuff that NO ONE knows but me and the rest of the Dark Force, the really cool secret stuff that they'd never show on TV 'cause it's too nuts for anything except "Sightings" and maybe even too nuts for that.
     Hmm. Maybe that's why I get to write this; everyone figures I'm a little nuts anyway.
     Ah well. Once we all made the rounds of the talk shows and all that we were all feeling pretty full of ourselves, after all it's not every day a bunch of misfit kids bust up a major crime ring and all that. And at the same time we were also feeling a little bummed, like this was the pinnacle of our little lives and where could we go from here? Back to our regular old lives is where, and everybody at school'd be calling us "Ghostbusters" and we'd have to hear all this "Who ya gonna call?" and "Scooby-dooby-doo!" and "Mulder!" all day long 'til it got to be worse than just being thought of as nerds or freaks or geeks (well, not Nathan; no one ever called Nathan a "nerd" though between you and me and the Internet he's the nerdiest of the nerds; he just hides it by being popular. Whoops! Guess I just "outed" a "closet nerd"! Sorry dude!).
     So things were cool but really bleak at the same time. Ever get like that? But Nathan had a plan. Nathan's always got a plan. He said "Hey, even though we just kind of fell into this as a goof, and we weren't really intending to expose those phony spiritualists..." (I'll say! I thought they were real as hell!) "...why don't we do it again, for real this time? Go after some more con artists using the paranormal to fleece the unwary?" And of course that's like the stupidest idea anyone's ever had in the history of the world but man, Nathan can make you believe cotton candy is filet mignon, I swear to God. He's just got one of those personalities. Like a Kennedy, only more popular.
     So I went along, and Maggie too, cause she's got a crush on him like a ten-ton weight, and Shana's just so into this spooky stuff there'd be no way of keeping her out of it anyway, even if it'd been, like, ME that suggested it.
     So that was agreed, and "So what do we investigate, Fearless Leader?" says I.
     "Let's start with this," and he throws a business card on the table.
     We all huddle around. It's got this swirly tie-dye fractal sort of color pattern, and a picture of this kinda creepy-looking guy, and it says: "Dark Lord Rob - Healer, Reader. Specialist in Spirit Communication. Demons Purged. Low Rates." and a phone number.
     "You're kidding, right?" I said.
     "No. This guy's been leaving these all over town. He's got some sort of racket going, I can smell it. Let's go get him!"
     And the enthusiasm swept over us like a sort of fever. Yeah. Fever. That's a good way to describe something that's out of control and potentially fatal. Brother, if we knew what we were walking into....

Next: The Dark Lord's Lair