Haunted Heart by Little Hurricane
The blue faces crowded around Tellesco and looked at
me. He said, “We can’t leave them
here. We have to take them with us.”
I shook my head. I
said, “The car won’t fit them all.”
Boy, did that piss them off.
They charged at me, throwing pitch forks, hoes, other gardening, I mean,
farming equipment at me, and also axes and hatches.
I ducked, even though those things flew through me.
They couldn’t hurt me.
Tellesco shouted, he did.
He said, “Stop! We won’t be
leaving anyone behind! Chill the fuck
out!”
I was amazed. Dude
had grown some balls, I guess. I said,
“Let’s get the hell out of here then.
What you waiting for?”
Tellesco pointed at the little girl with the wilted flowers
in her hands and missing eyes. At least
she hadn’t thrown those at me. He said,
“She wants me to follow her to the basement.
And there is something else we have to see up on the top floors. We don’t have much time.”
I shrugged. “So you
are saying that I have to go up?”
Tellesco nodded. He
said, “I will go down. We have to hurry,
and meet back here. Them purple robes
are outside now.”
Wha? Fuck. Mind you, I still could not shake off the
shivers, the heebie jeebies. Ghosts are
old recordings from the past. They are
not real. But then again, they were mad
at me there in that old library, and they would not let me rest in peace until
I followed them instead of escaping and running away.
Sometimes, you have to up and go down. Sometimes, you have to enter to exit.
Ya know?
Evidently, in order for the ghosts to escape and follow us,
we needed to collect come things, from the top floors and from the cellar. Go figure.
Ghosts are whiny bitches. I also
didn’t know that a certain ghost waited upstairs for me. She was one of two ladies that I had a
connection to in this fucked up tale, and both of them were dead.
They were both ghosts.
I just didn’t know it yet.
Good times.
Fuck.
See you next time.
Just kidding. You
know me.
I got up from the floor in front of the window (I’d ducked
from the various farming tools chucked at me from them blue folks) and took a
deep breath. It smelled like a root
cellar. It smelled like dirt from a
cemetery. I shrugged the shivers off me,
from under my damp leather jacket, and adjusted my tie. I stuck my jaw out and forced a smile. I bent and grabbed the torch light from the
floor and handed it to Tellesco. I said,
“There prolly ain’t no lights down in the cellar. Here.”
His eyes began to weep again, and I just smiled. Inside, I was dying. I did not want to be in that place any
longer. But where else were there any
answers for me?
Kinda fucked, you know.
Tellesco accepted the flashlight and said, “You need to get
to the floor right above us . She’s
waiting there for you.”
Well fuck him. He
just set my skin creepy crawling again.
I shivered and said, “Who?”
He nodded. “It’s that
pretty girl with the white hair. She
been leading us here. She’s so pretty.
But she wants to talk to you, not me.”
He began to weep again. What a
crying little huge bitch-man.
I said, “A name? Can
I get a name?”
He just shook his head and held out his free hand. The little ghost girl put her hand into his
and then they went out the door. He went
on his way all blubbering like a water fountain, shoulders heaving and nose
dripping.
Fuck.
I did not want to look at any of them blue faces crowing
about me. I felt their presence. It was like the cold breath from a freshly
dug grave. But I did.
They all held their farming tools, their digging tools in
their hands again. Well, that was not
exactly reassuring. I didn’t want them
to try to hit me with those implements again.
But they did something odd. They
turned around and walked out the door.
I was left alone in the library. I thought about turning tail again, and
running off with the little Lion Man and escaping. But didn’t.
Fuck me.
I followed them, and they led the way.
We went down the long corridor, heading to the eastern wing
of the huge mansion, and lights gleamed from the front, where the huge foyer
awaited. Before we got to it, the blue
ghosts stopped in front of a wall and beckoned me. I came up to them and they parted. The old dude in the overalls pointed his pitch
fork at the wall. I looked at it, and
then I understood. It was another one of
them hidden panels, or some shit.
I pressed against where he indicated, and the wall
clicked. It popped back out into the
corridor, and then those ghosts glided through the wall and disappeared. I
pulled the door open and it was pitch black inside. The a
blue face peeked down at me from beyond a turn in the stairs, from up above. I nearly shit myself. I would never get used to seeing ghosts, I
guess.
So there were stairs leading upwards, like in the other end
of the mansion, when the tower came down, if you recall. In that other one, it seemed like me and the
little Lion Man were stuck in there for three weeks, my friend.
The ghost came back down around the corner of them stairs,
and do you know, I could see the steps from the weak, blue light of his
glow. He said something over his
shoulder, and then there were ghosts all around me.
Now I could see the walls, the slanted ceiling leading up,
and the steps before me. I ignored their
smell of death and their cold presence.
No way to go but up, baby. Fuck
it, I thought. Might as well go along
for the ride.
Of course, that had always been my downfall. Why stop now? Get up and go down.
Leaving The Nest by Benjy Ferree
I climbed the stairs and reached an old door. Its knob was set like a nail. It wouldn’t twist. I pushed on it, and it
clicked open. The ghosts faded through
the door and left me in the dark. I
resisted the urge to open the door and charge on through, because I had learned
my lesson. I gripped the door knob and
did not let go. I stepped back, in the
pitch black, and pulled it open. I
pressed my other hand forward and felt.
Yup.
There was a wall in front of me. Fucking ghosts wanted to make me smack my
face and fall backwards, for a good laugh.
Bastards.
Then a blue face appeared right in front of me and jumped
the hell out of me. I fell back, heading
toward the stairs below in the darkness, but I still held onto the
doorknob. I caught myself from falling,
but the twist of my shoulder as I held on, now facing downward into the abyss,
well, it wrenched my shoulder.
I almost got a dislocated shoulder, but it fucking hurt.
I steadied myself on the stairs and let go of the knob. More ghosts came into the empty stairwell,
and I was pissed off. Bastards. I screamed, “Fuck You! You left me!
You got me hurt!”
Well, I don’t know about you, but when you see a bunch of
dead people get all sad and apologetic, it is not much help. It will creep you out.
You see, there were tears, but it came out of their eyes
like powdery dust.
It made me sneeze.
I could taste it.
It tasted like a rotten turnip.
I was tasting ghost.
Blecch.
I saw the doorknob now quite well in the glow of their blue
luminescence, and I grabbed it with the other hand, and faced the other
way. I had my back to the doorway, and I
used my Docs to kick away the old wooden slats that held gypsum, and busted
that wall apart. The years of wallpaper
covering the other side of the covered-over wall were still soggy from the
baptism of the once-lovingly-adorned mansion, and I pushed my boot through.
I squeezed through the soggy opening like a new born, and
rolled onto the hallway floor. Them
ghosts crowded around me and tried to help me up, but they couldn’t. They were images, not artifacts. Artifacts were what I needed to collect, in
order to help them leave that fucked up place.
I looked down the hallway and saw the light from the
portable streetlamps out front, shining in from the blown out windows of the
rooms on one side. They made curious
shadows on the ceiling.
I grimaced. My
shoulder hurt like a mutha fucka. Now
they wanted me to do what?
Bastards.
I hate ghosts.
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out.
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