The Unwanted Guest
Ep.1 - The New Guy Part III
Turnips in Space is a serialized story told in 3 part episodes. This is the Part III of the first episode.
Part I can be found here. - Where a young Gnome finds himself interviewing for a strange crew on a spaceship.
Part II can be found here - Where Tome begins exploring his new home and uncovering a surprising mystery
In this chapter, Tome resolves to solve all of this ghost nonsense
Tome didn’t believe in ghosts, apparitions, spirits, or poltergeists. But even he couldn’t explain what he was seeing. Or, more accurately, what he wasn’t seeing. There, on the messy floor of the engine room had been roughly one half of a gigantic, possibly prehistoric cockroach. But after the skittering of what Gears, the ship’s mechanic, had insisted was the work of a ghost, the cockroach was gone!
“Come on Steve, this isn’t funny!” Gears said to the otherwise empty room. Steve was the name she had given her bottomless companion. “I just told the new guy you were cool. This is very NOT cool of you!”
Her nerves were beginning to get the better of her as she was forced to grieve her bug buddy. But Tome’s nerves were beginning to clear. With the terrifying sound and light show over, his mind was doing its best to reinforce its deeply held belief that there was no such thing as ghosts, everything that just happened has a clear and logical explanation. He just has to find it, right? And that’s what he was hired for: solving the unsolvable, bringing understanding to a crazy universe. That is what I was hired for, right? The thought crossed his mind that he hadn’t really gotten an official title yet. He made a mental note to double check with Root and Rosie, his new employers, the next time he sees them.
But for now there’s a mystery unfolding right underneath his nose, so Tome delicately tiptoed over to where the body was. He wished he had some chalk to outline with. Then he would have felt like a real detective. He considered asking Gears if she had some but decided it wasn’t worth any more randomly flying objects. Instead he inspects the area closely.
“It looks like Steve was dragged away…” Tome noted aloud. He followed the trail to a vent in the wall. Upon further inspection, the vent very easily moved out of the way, only attached by the two top fasteners the grill acted almost like a doggy door. Tome peered into the vent and found a dusty maze of tunnels. Each with tiny footprints moving back and forth.
“Well, unless your ghost has tiny feet, I think we have a different problem.” Tome said as he backed up out of the vent. “There’s footprints all over the vent space.”
“Or the ghost just planted those to keep you off the scent!” Gears said, tapping her temple. “You gotta think like a ghost if you’re gonna catch a ghost.”
“Yeah…or that,” Tome was unsure what else to say to that, so instead he changed the subject. “I got kind of lost trying to find the living quarters. Would you mind taking me there so I can drop my stuff off and get changed?”
“Of course!” Gears leapt up and ran off. Tome once again had to fight with his luggage to try and keep up. Two bruises, a stitch in the side, and a few minutes later Gears had led him into a cozy little circular common area with 4 bedrooms (each with its own bathroom attached) wrapped around it. The floor was the same mossy grass that was in the botanical garden and flower patches grew along the walls in beautiful splashes of color. Gears pointed out the open room.
“Thanks, I’d like to get cleaned up before Root finds me again. That is one disgruntled gnome.”
“Don’t be too hard on him. He’s had a rough time since their son left for college,” Gears said. She gave Tome a friendly pat on the back and left before he had the chance to ask her any follow up questions.
Tome took his time unpacking and then showering all the mud and gunk off of himself. All the while he couldn’t get the strange occurrences out of his mind. First the missing waffles, then the strange alarm, and finally the disappearing bug. Something was going on and it didn’t sound like a ghost to him. Unless…Do ghosts like waffles? No, he shook the thought from his head and into the steaming shower stall. Ghosts don’t exist. Once he was fresh and changed into his normal, blue overalls and red shirt he finally felt like himself again.
Tome stepped out of his room feeling like a new gnome. A Gnewme, if you will. Most people wouldn’t, Tome decided, but that's okay because he felt like a Gnewme and no one was going to tell him how to feel!
In the circular living space Tome found Root and Rosie sitting and enjoying a cup of tea.
“Oh, there you are! We were looking all over for you. Would you like to join us for some apple tea?” Rosie said.
“That sounds wonderful,” Tome replied. He took a seat as Rosie poured him a cup.
“Did you get lost?” Root asked, smiling mischievously behind his cup at the poor boy’s potential misfortune.
“Yeah, a bit,” Tome admitted. “But I ran into Gears down in the engine room and she showed me around. Were you able to figure out what that alarm was for?”
Root’s smile vanished as he said, “Yeah, looked like something was chewing through some wires.”
“Did the bite marks look ghost shaped?” Tome asked jokingly.
“What does that even mean? Do ghosts have a special overbite or something?” Root began to turn red. He didn’t understand what was going on and a thought lingered that maybe he was being made fun of.
“Oh, sorry. Gears and I had a run in with the ghost downstairs, too. I think it’s more likely a rat infestation or something.”
“A ghost does make sense….” Root said, nodding his head in thought.
“What? You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?”
“Do you not?” Root said.
“Of course not! I mean, Dr. Freddy Niche disproved ghosts and magic and all that stuff decades ago,” It was Tome’s turn to start turning a bit red in the face.
“Wasn’t that the same guy that wrote a book claiming to disprove all of science? And it was just 300 pages of ‘I’m smart and your dumb’ over and over and over?” Root asked.
“Well…no one is without their faults,” Tome said sheepishly as his cheeks moved from a burning red to pink. Rosie, who spent the last few minutes silently patting herself on the back for setting up this meeting to get the two boys to get better acquainted now saw her plan falling apart in front of her and she knew she needed to step in.
“Root dear, don’t you think it’s time to go do…that thing we’ve been meaning to do?”
“Ah, man! But I’ve put that off this long. Do we have to?”
“Not that thing. Literally anything else,” Rosie said, the pitch in her voice high and strained.
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Root and Rosie both got up. Before they left the room Tome remembered something and called out to them.
“Wait, I had a question. I don’t think we really talked about a job title. Or responsibilities. I was thinking maybe something along the lines of Master Detective?”
Root let out a loud belly laugh from the doorway.
“What? No! If anyone’s the Master Detective It’d be me! No, no, no. We hired you for custodial services. You know, do the dishes, take out the trash, keep stuff off the couch so the tiny interdimensional portal between the cushions doesn’t suck it up. Stuff like that. Title would be Janitor. Or Head Janitor, if that makes you feel any better.”
And with that, they were gone.
Tome did not feel like a Gnewme anymore. Now he felt like a Gnoldme. Or a Gdumbe. He was deeply offended and so he did what any self respecting man with a bruised ego would do: he went and sulked.
It wasn’t just that he was now a janitor. That he could deal with. It was that he felt like he didn’t belong. The only person that laughed at any of his jokes was the one person he was pretty sure actively despised him. And no one else seemed to share his love of science. He felt like a square peg being shoved into a round hole.
Tome was sitting in the middle of the garden, under a large oak tree. The artificial sun was beginning to set and the ceiling was moving from baby blue to a sea of warm colors. Soon it would settle on a dark black with stars here and there all over. He wondered if there would be any moons in this sky.
He looked down at the stick in his hands. Tome didn’t know why he had grabbed it, but he had brought with him the welcome gift Gears had given him. She had called it a Redwood Wand, but all he could see was an ordinary redwood branch. A deep feeling of guilt welled up inside him. They were trying to be welcoming, but Tome couldn’t feel it. He wanted to feel like a part of the crew, but something deep down insisted that he wasn’t. That he never would be.
He decided in a moment of pure, silly grief that he would give the wand a shot. He brandished it like he imagined a mighty wizard would. Begone, foul spirits! He thought, unwilling to say the words aloud. Then he pointed the wand dramatically at an invisible nothing across the garden. But then-
Nothing happened. Tome slumped back down with a deep sigh. He pointed the stick at his own head and whispered, “Begone, foul spirit.” Then let it drop down to the dirt. He looked down to where the wand was now pointed and started poking at something laying there on the ground.
Why am I like this? He wondered. Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Why can’t I just be happy to have a job now?
The answers never came. Instead, Tome’s focus shifted to the thing he was poking. It looked like an orange pine needle. He picked it up and turned it around in the light. It was a little longer than the length of his hand. Tome jumped up.
“I know what the ghost is!”
“You’re probably wondering why I gathered you all here,” Tome said. He was unable to stand still, bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet while moving his hands awkwardly from his pockets, to clasping them in front of him, then back in his pockets when that felt too exposed.
“Did you take out the trash?” Root asked, a twinge of annoyance in his voice.
“I did not,”
“Did you catch the ghost?” Gears asked, feeding off of his excitement.
“Almost? That’s actually-”
“Can you just get on with it?” Merry interrupted, clearly not listening. “And why are you putting my only remaining plate of waffles on the ground!!”
It was true. Tome had carefully placed the plate full of delicious waffles down in the middle of the garden. The artificial sun turned the ceiling from the soft blue of earlier and was now more orange than anything else. Fireflies flit around, occasionally blinking their lights. The golden hour light illuminated the plate of syrupy sweet fried dough like a heavenly beacon.
“Shh!” Tome scolded as he ran back to join the others hiding behind one of the larger trees. “It’ll all make sense in a minute.”
A minute passed, and then another. Someone’s stomach growled as they stared at the untouched waffles.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Root whispered.
“Wait, do you hear that?” Gears tilted her head as she strained to hear something.
SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT
Then there was rustling across the garden. Something appeared from behind one of the bushes. Its quills matched the orange glow of the sunset. It carefully sniffed at the air before it waddled up to the plate of waffles and helped himself.
Tome slowly crept up to the creature. Up close he identified it as some kind of hedgehog, but one that he’d never seen before. It looked up and stared knowingly into Tome’s eyes. Tome looked around to see if anyone else knew about the hedgehog. It was hard to tell from this distance in the dark, but Tome felt confident that they were all surprised and amazed by his finding.
“That’s a very pretty set of quills you have there,” Tome said, reaching a hand out slowly to see if the creature was receptive to pets. It was very receptive, it turns out and so Tome happily scratched behind its ear. “You’re not a normal hedgehog, are you? You must be some kind of spacehog, huh? Who’s a good spacehog? You are! Yes you are!”
Tome devolved into a tone that is only used for the goodest of pets and the spacehog seemed to respond appreciatively. The creature rolled onto its back, looking up expectantly and Tome was able to take a closer look at the creature. For one, he could now see that it was a ‘he’ and not an ‘it.’ Secondly, he saw what looked like an electrical burn on the hog’s neck.
“Looks like you were digging around somewhere you shouldn’t have been, huh?” Tome said softly. The next thing he noticed was an antennae stuck in between the space hog’s teeth.
The whole crew gasped as they came forward to ogle at the spacehog who was now wiggling in excitement at all the attention.
“He’s so cute,” Rosie says.
“Can we keep him?” Gears asks.
“I bet he’s great at finding truffles!” Merry says, finally looking merry before remembering himself and forcing his stoney demeanor back up. Everyone gets up and crowds around the hog who very gladly accepts their affection.
“Not too bad for a new guy, huh? I think we should name him ‘Ghost’ since he’s the one who’s been stealing all your things and chewing through your wires,” Tome says proudly.
“Who’s a good new guy? You are! Yes you are!” Root says from across the room.
“Well that feels a little condescending,” Tome looks over and sees Root happily petting Ghost, not paying Tome any attention. “Oh… That’s alright. I solved the mystery of the turnip ghost! Not bad for a Junior Detective,”
“You’re saying Janitor wrong,” Root chuckled, still enraptured by the orange hedgehog. Root, still chuckling, ruffled Tome's hair. “But you’re alright, kid.”
Tome grinned. With a spacehog now nestled in his lap and a newfound purpose, Tome finally felt a flicker of belonging amidst the mismatched crew and ready to face whatever strange occurrence tomorrow may bring.
Thank you for reading!
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