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Haunting Me Part 8

Dead End Ahead

By Michael BauchPublished 6 years ago 10 min read
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This is usually the part of the story where I open with some quip or a deep introspective analysis of my character development over time. Yeah, no at this point I was terrified beyond all reason.

These were not zombies, nor were they ghosts as you’d normally associate the concept. In the dark they were shapes in the shadows with embers of fire burning through their flaky, charred skin. Now in the daylight of a half dissolved roof they looked nauseatingly monstrous. Blackened bones protruded from cracked flesh, their eyes were deep set sockets with glowing embers for pupils that, much to my horror, tracked our movements. These things were intelligent to a point, mindless in their pursuit, but keenly aware of the location of their prey.

Washington and I pulled Joyce onto the Annex side of the now collapsed walkway. The burnt demon ghost things however were doing far better than I expected. The few that went down with the walkway were now climbing the side of the building to get back to us. I tried to remember the layout of the Annex. I mean it wasn’t exactly a labyrinth but at the same time I spent most of my days in one room. It wasn’t like I got a grand tour.

We took off down a corridor until we made it to an intersection and I led us in a hard right. I like hard turns, they tend to throw off pursuers, but unfortunately they only work well when you actually know where you’re going. As such we were met with a collapsed wall that led to a pretty significant drop. There was a very good reason this building was off limits after all. I backed us up and we tried back tracking, which worked great until we got to the ghosts again. I took us down another hard right and for better or worse we found B-Pod.

Unfortunately while the outer door to the unit was nice and open, hanging off one rusted hinge, the inner door was jammed shut. Further compounding our problem was the steady shuffling of…well, do you know the sound of charred and skeletal feet walking on dirt and dust covered linoleum? I do and it is not pleasant. We were trapped in this little space and I turned to find the ghost with the scraped off face staring me down. I started to believe that if this ghost didn’t kill me then I was going to have a heart attack anyway as hard as my chest was pounding. My brain hurt from trying to process the impossible combination of information staring me down. I turned back to the door, pounding on it. “What are you doing?” Joyce asked.

“I don’t know!” I yelled at her. “But I have to stop Rogers!”

I felt something hit the door hard and it swung wide open, slapping into the wall with a loud clang. The torched ghost stood over me, its arm outstretched. I looked at it, in the eyes and something clicked in my head. “I’ll stop him,” I told the ghost. It nodded at me and I ran inside. I crossed the unit and turned around a few times, really disoriented by the deterioration inside the walls. Large cracks had formed from the fire and weather and I could see exposed brick and chunks so big missing that I could see clear daylight on the other side. All the cell doors were open, likely what they did to get as many inmates out as they could during the fire. I thought about the layout from what I’d seen and what I remembered. I looked up and found the stairwell leading up and ran up it. I rounded the corner on the second tier and saw Elda crumpled against the railing in front of cell 48.

Simmons was inside, but he wasn’t alone. Rogers stood over him, his hand wrapped around Simmons’ chin, forcing him onto the floor.

“HEY!” I shouted at Rogers. Rogers looked up and smiled that ugly, evil smile at me. Washington came up behind me and Joyce was behind him. I pulled the gun and carefully passed it to Washington. “I’m going to try something very stupid,” I told him under my breath.

I walked up to the cell door. “Rogers, I know what you want. What you need. Let him go.”

Simmons was a good man, I rationalized. The world has always been in short supply of good men. I went into the cell and Rogers let Simmons go. I pulled him out of the cell and handed his semi-conscious form off to Washington. “What is your plan?” Washington asked.

“My plan is that you get Joyce, Elda, and Simmons out of here.”

“Elda’s dead,” Washington said bluntly.

I looked over, her skin was pale, her eyes wide, and blood soaked the side of her head. Suddenly I was pissed. This was a woman who tried to do right by a person she’d never met, never even heard of before.

“Get Joyce and Simmons out.”

“What are you going to do?” Washington demanded.

“I’m going to piss off a ghost.”

I watched as Washington and Joyce shouldered Simmons’ weight and walked him down the stairwell. I waited until I heard them clear the door before I turned back around. Rogers was standing there, his hands open, his mouth in a silent laugh, his black eyes wide with glee. I felt a smile cross my lips, involuntarily at first. “It took me a minute to figure it all out. What all of this was and why you’re doing it. Why, after so long you suddenly started messing with people. I mean, hell it’s been nearly a decade since the first time I saw you. But I get it now. I get what you want.”

Rogers stalked towards the door of his cell. I grabbed the door and slammed it shut in his face. “Fuck you,” I said, feeling something just below my throat. I don’t know if it was a laugh or a scream that came out, maybe both. Rogers roared and the pounding against the walls and pipes rattled the building. The tier I was standing on cracked and started to fall apart. I flipped off Rogers and held onto the railing, bracing for the impact with the ground which came hard enough that I felt it through my whole body. I screamed and cradled my left arm when I landed on my side. My arm refused to respond and I could feel loose bones under my skin. Oh that hurt. I still feel it when I talk about it.

Fueled by adrenaline I booked it out of the unit as it started to collapse. I saw one of the burned ghosts and he pointed me towards a hall. Following his instruction I rounded a corner and found daylight up ahead. I ran and came to wide crack in the wall. I pushed my way through and scrambled out of the building as it started to come down on itself. Once clear I tucked in and let the dust cloud roll over me. I stood and found Simmons, Washington, and Joyce standing over me, asking if I was alright. Police, a firetruck, and an ambulance arrived. I got transported to the hospital where they put a cast on my arm. We spoke with the police and I told them everything. I took responsibly for the whole crap-fest, even Elda’s death. The detectives questioning me took my statement and left me in the interrogation room. A few minutes later the chief of police came in, an older man with white hair and a white mustache that stuck out to me, and he asked for my statement again, asking if that was the story I was sticking to. I said yes. He said that Joe, Elda’s husband, isn’t pursuing legal action and the coroner is ruling her death as accidental. The police department wasn’t pursing it either and I was free to go.

This was a massively lucky break I just caught, but it fell hollow. Elda was…dead. She had been harassed by a ghost into summoning me here and that got her killed. That wasn’t something that was going to go away for me; no matter how many times a man in a uniformed waved his hand. I spent the next few days in my hotel, writing the whole thing down, putting pictures of the charred ghosts in articles and e-mailing my usual publishers. As I was packing to get back on the road a knock came to my door and it was Joyce. She had a letter from Joe. Joe wanted me to know there was no hard feelings about what happened to Elda, that I was the first person to believe her, to take her seriously and that was something she needed more than anything. That made me feel a little better, but her ghost was going to haunt me for a while, and I reconciled that this was okay, that I needed to be haunted by failures. We all do. That helps us understand why we need to succeed.

“What are you going to do now?” Joyce asked. I told her I was going to do what I always did. Get the story published; make sure that the truth was told, no matter how weird it was or who officially denied it.

“How did you know what to do about Rogers?” she asked. Girl asked a lot of questions.

“When we got to the unit, I looked around and realized that all the doors had been opened, and that realistically there was no reason those inmates should have died. One, sure maybe, but eighteen is a lot to just be trapped in a unit. That’s…that’s when I realized that those men were the ones who set the building on fire. They died to stop John Rogers. And they never stopped. That’s why they were attacking us when we got there. They didn’t want us freeing Rogers.

“You see, Rogers wanted what every inmate wants: freedom. But his spirit couldn’t leave the cell. His image could, and he could make us see things, but his spirit couldn’t leave that cell. That’s what he wanted Simmons for, to leave. He thought I was going to give that too him in Simmons’ place. I figured if we destroyed the cell we’d expel the ghost.”

She helped me get my bag into the trunk of my car. I fired up the engine, thinking about the trip home. The problem with chasing the dead is you eventually have to return to the world of the living and that can be jarring. The world of the living was bills and deadlines and politics and social media. They dead were in a lot of ways much simpler. I asked her what she was going to do. “I don’t know…” she answered “Take some writing classes, maybe go into journalism. Maybe sell the house and move on with my life.

“Start with the city beat, only try to make it interesting.” I looked down the road, squinting against the late afternoon sun. “Know any place good to eat? I mean that isn’t a Whataburger?”

She told me about a pizza place about half an hour out of town, had a good buffet and good servers. I thanked her and told her to keep in touch. I pulled off onto the road. Looking in the rear view mirror saw Mia, her blue eyes shone from under a shroud of dirty blonde hair. Next to her was Elda, her heavy, motherly arm around Mia’s narrow shoulders. Taylor was at her side and Teresa next to him. I blinked and they were gone, mirages in the low sun.

So what happens now? I don’t know. I suppose my reason for starting all of this is finally done for, dead and buried as it were, but I don’t think that means I need to stop. There are still things, that 10% that no one can explain, and someone should probably look into that. In the end there are somethings that only ghosts and civil servants should know, since I’m neither, I’ll have to find the answers on my own. My name is Ned Spencer, and who knows, maybe I'm heading your way next. What’s your ghost story?

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About the Creator

Michael Bauch

I am a writer with a wide range of interests. Don't see anything that sparks your fancy? Check back again later, you might be surprised by what's up my sleeve.

You can follow me on Twitter @MichaelBauch7

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