Ghost Town

by Jason Hawes

  “I told you, call me Rach.” She pronounced it “Rash,” as if she were a kind of skin disease. She continued gazing down at her phone. “And no, I don’t get it.”

  “This exhibit is about the flood back in the 1920s. Hundreds of people died, and the survivors almost abandoned the town. A flood is wet, right? But I said the exhibit was dry. It’s funny.”

  “Uh-huh.” In addition to Facebooking, she was also texting a former boyfriend who lived in Portland: “Snd ninjas to sve me! Cnt take much more!!!!!”

  Rach had wanted to sleep in until at least noon, but Donner had pulled her out of bed at nine-thirty. If she’d had a straight razor, she would have gleefully slit his throat for forcing her to get up. She had asked him if the motel was on fire, because that was the only reason she could conceive of for waking up so goddamned early. But no, Donner had wanted to go to a museum—a museum!—which opened at ten. She had been royally pissed, but when he told her the place was called Beyond the Veil and it featured all kinds of spooky-ass exhibits, she had calmed down a bit. So far, the Dead Days celebration hadn’t been as much fun as she had hoped, and she was beginning to regret letting Donner talk her into coming. But if the museum had some really gross exhibits—like wax figures of mutilated bodies with their guts hanging out—it might be worth killing an hour or so there.

  But Beyond the Veil had turned out to be depressingly mundane so far. Worse than that, it was educational. There were exhibits on the Spiritualist movement of the mid-1800s, famous psychic mediums throughout history, and people such as Harry Houdini and James Randi who had made it their mission to expose paranormal hoaxes. Most numerous of all were exhibits about ghosts—and not scary-cool exhibits like the rooms in a Halloween haunted house, where people in hockey masks jumped out of the shadows shrieking and waving rubber knives at you. These exhibits featured supposedly true accounts of hauntings dating back to ancient times, and while there were some wax figures to illustrate the stories behind the hauntings, they were strictly PG-rated.

  And this exhibit—atrociously titled “Rain of Terror”—was the dullest of the lot. It was all about the flood that had devastated the town almost a century ago, and it was made up almost entirely of photographs and text, along with a few personal effects recovered after the flood—moldy-looking children’s toys, rusted jewelry, mud-encrusted bottles—displayed in glass cases. She thought the exhibit was the pinnacle of eye-gouging boredom, but Donner was really grooving on it.

  “C’mon, Rachel. I mean Rach. The rest of the museum is cool and all, but this—this stuff really happened, you know?”

  Rach had met Donner at a comic shop in Indianapolis. She had been checking out the adults-only manga for sale, Japanese comics that were heavy on sex and violence, when Donner approached her, a stack of graphic novels in his hands. He began chatting her up, nothing too creepy, just asking her about what manga she liked and all that, and at first, her answers were curt and dismissive. But Donner didn’t give up, and after a few minutes, she found herself warming to his sarcastic sense of humor. It wasn’t as dark and cutting as hers, but they clicked, and when he asked her out, she said OK, despite the difference in their ages.

  They had been together almost three months, which was longer than Rach’s relationships usually lasted, and she was starting to get bored. The longer they dated, the more obvious it became that any similarities they shared were outweighed by their differences. Donner might be older than she was, but he acted like a little boy much of the time. Like now, for instance. He looked as if he might stamp his foot and hold his breath if she didn’t start showing some interest in the display.

  Rach let out a heavy sigh to let Donner know she was put out at having to feign interest—not that he was perceptive enough to pick up on it—and she looked up from her phone and began reading the information placards accompanying the photos. And despite herself, the more she read, the more intrigued she became.

  In the spring of 1923, a series of heavy rainstorms swept through Indiana. As bad as it was throughout the rest of the state, the deluge hit Exeter the hardest—and by the middle of May, the Mossapeak River—normally sedate and slow-running—had become a swollen, raging torrent. The townsfolk were nervous, and some were talking about evacuating, but the mayor called a town meeting and assured the good folk of Exeter that the worst of the rain was over and that the Mossapeak would soon begin to subside. Reassured, the townspeople returned to their homes.

  That night, another storm hit, this one a veritable monster. It was as if the heavens cracked in two and released all the rain they had stored for the remainder of the year in a single awful night. The Mossapeak exploded over its banks, and water flooded the town. People tried to flee, and while some made it, most of them were pulled beneath the churning water and drowned. Those who survived did so by seeking higher ground, heading for second floors and attics, even climbing on top of their roofs if necessary. It took seventeen hours for the storm to blow itself out and the rain to dribble away to a gentle mist. It was another thirty-six hours before the floodwaters finally began to recede. When it was all over, two-thirds of Exeter’s populace was dead, and most of the buildings had suffered such extreme damage that they were unsalvageable.

  Black-and-white photos of the flood’s aftermath covered the museum walls. Entire buildings had been swept away and reduced to kindling. Piles of lumber were scattered across a muddy landscape. Wagons and old-fashioned cars lay wherever they had come to rest after the water released them. Often, they were broken and incomplete, lying at odd angles and sometimes clustered together, as if they were surreal sculptures. The most disturbing pictures were of bodies lying in rows on the muddy ground, arms folded over their chests and eyes closed. Arranged that way by the survivors, Rach guessed. She was surprised they hadn’t covered the bodies with sheets, but maybe they hadn’t been able to salvage any—or maybe there had been too many bodies to cover them all.

  There were more pictures: the town in various states of reconstruction, mediums and psychics coming in to investigate reports of ghostly manifestations, to exorcise earthbound spirits and guide them to the afterlife. But Rach didn’t pay attention to those. She was too caught up in the story of the flood itself. She tried to imagine what it had been like for the survivors, clinging to one another as they huddled on the roofs of their homes and businesses, sheets of driving rain pounding down on them from a bruise-colored sky. Wild, chaotic currents flowing past, carrying broken branches, splintered lengths of lumber, barrels and boxes, the corpses of animals—cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats—and, worst of all, the bodies of their friends and neighbors. Men, women, and children, young and old—the flood wouldn’t have been choosy about its victims. And how many had been alive as they were swept along in the raging floodwaters, crying out for help, stretching their arms toward those they passed, moving too swiftly to be saved?

  Despite the hard shell of cynicism she presented to the world—which wasn’t an act; she really was that cynical—Rach felt an almost overwhelming sorrow for those who had lost their lives in the flood. Hard on the heels of that emotion came anger toward whatever moron had thought so little of the tragedy as to dub the display “Rain of Terror.” Such a sensationalized name, not to mention that lame pun, dishonored the memory of all those who had died when the Mossapeak had overflowed its banks. She turned to Donner, intending to demand that they go find someone in charge—a manager or director or something—and complain about the display’s name, but before she could speak, a blast of cold, wet wind struck her in the face and sent her stumbling backward in surprise. Her right foot slipped out from under her, and she fell hard on her ass. She landed at an angle and began sliding downward—her mind trying to understand how there could be an angle when the floor she had been standing on was level—and she rolled onto her stomach, hands scrabbling frantically to grab hold of something and stop her descent. The surface was hard and grainy beneath her fingers, but it was so slick with water that she couldn’t get
a handhold, and she picked up speed as she slid. She felt a sudden stomach-dropping sensation of space opening up beneath her, and then she was falling. Falling where, falling how—she was in a museum, for godsakes! And then she hit the water.

  Cold bit into her flesh, sank its teeth deep into her bones, and she opened her mouth to cry out, but water rushed down her throat, choking off her voice before she could make a sound. She slipped beneath the surface, her vision clouded by the murky water, pressure roaring in her ears. Lungs heavy and chest burning, she began thrashing about, her arms and legs flailing spastically, as if her body was seeking something solid to grab hold of so it could climb out of the water. A distant, detached part of her mind wondered if this was how humans had learned to swim in the first place, climbing instincts kicking in whenever they found themselves in water over their heads. Those who didn’t manage to keep their heads above the surface drowned. Those who did survived to pass on their genes, and several million years later, voilà! Hairless apes put pools in their backyards and spent vacations at the beach.

  You’re losing it! she warned herself. Don’t worry about how and why this is happening. Just get some air into your lungs, damn it!

  She forced her body to relax and kicked toward the surface. She felt the current pulling her sideways, but she continued kicking, and after what seemed like a lifetime, her head broke the surface. She drew in a gasp of the sweetest air she had ever breathed and did her best to tread water while she tried to figure out what was going on.

  A storm raged around her. Wind and rain lashed her skin, and muddy brown water surrounded her. She was drifting with the current, floating past rooftops, most of which had people clinging to them for safety. That’s what had happened to her, she realized. She’d fallen off a roof and into the water.

  “Hey!” she called out to a family—a man, a woman, and two children—as she floated by. “Help me! Please!”

  They just looked at her as the current pulled her away from them, and really, what else could they do? It wasn’t as if they had a life preserver tethered to a rope to throw to her. She knew there had been no point in calling out to them for help, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

  How could this possibly be happening? It was as if she had fallen through a hole in time and had somehow ended up in Exeter in the middle of the famous flood. Suddenly, the museum’s title for the exhibit, “Rain of Terror,” no longer seemed so stupid.

  She used to tease Donner about his fascination with the paranormal and his willingness to believe weird shit. If she somehow made it out of this, she vowed that she would never tease him again.

  Something big and solid slammed into her side, knocking the air out of her lungs. She slipped beneath the surface and sucked in another mouthful of river before regaining control of her body and treading water again. She saw a large shape bobbing next to her and with horror realized it was the body of a horse. Something else struck her back, and when she turned her head, she saw it was a dead pig. She remembered the photo of all those bodies laid out in rows on the wet, muddy ground. Those bodies were there now, floating in the water with her. And if she couldn’t keep treading water, she would end up drowned and laid out with them. She wondered if someone back in the present, examining the photo on the museum wall closely, would see that one of the bodies was that of a young woman dressed in black who looked more than a little out of place among Exeter’s dead.

  She knew she couldn’t keep treading water forever, especially if she had to keep fighting the current. She needed to find something that floated to hold on to, preferably not the corpse of a large farm animal. A chunk of lumber or a big tree branch, maybe. If only she—

  With the black clouds and driving rain, visibility was poor, and when Rach saw the shapes in the water in front of her—dozens upon dozens of them, smooth and rounded, some light, some dark—she couldn’t make out what they were at first. But as the current bore her closer to them, she realized that they remained stationary, somehow resisting the floodwaters’ flow. Almost as if they were waiting for her

  When she was within ten feet, they lifted their heads out of the water, and Rach understood that what she had been looking at before were the backs of bodies, human bodies, that had been floating facedown. Men, woman, children, infants—all stared at her with milky-white eyes, their skin wrinkled and bluish-white, as if they had been in the water for a very long time. Then, as one, they smiled at her, revealing rows of sharp teeth like a shark’s.

  She screamed, spun around, and began swimming as hard as she could in the opposite direction. But the current was too strong, and it swept her into the townspeople’s waiting arms.

  “Rach? You OK?”

  Donner was worried. Rach had been standing in front of the photo of the flood victims for several minutes. She hadn’t moved in all that time, and what was even more surprising, she hadn’t said anything. It was the longest period he had known her to remain silent—when she wasn’t sleeping, that is. Maybe the exhibit had gotten to her, had broken through her ever-present veneer of cynicism. But there was something about the too-rigid way she stood, as if her joints were locked tight, that seemed wrong. His stomach twisted into a cold knot of anxiety, and he stepped toward her.

  “Rach? Rachel?”

  He reached out and put a trembling hand on her shoulder, which felt cold and strangely damp. He took hold of her other shoulder and gently turned her around to face him, pulse pounding in his ears. Her eyes were wide and staring, and for an awful instant, he thought she was dead. But then she opened her mouth and vomited a gout of brown water onto his chest. Her body went slack, as if she were a machine and someone had flicked her off switch, and she collapsed to the floor.

  “Shit,” Donner whispered. Water—river water, from the smell of it—dripped off the front of his coveralls, and a trickle of it still ran from the corner of Rach’s mouth. Her eyes remained open, focused on nothing, and Donner was certain she was dead. How could this have happened? She was a lot younger than he was and in good shape, too. It didn’t seem—

  “Turn around.”

  Donner jumped at the sound of the voice. He turned to see a man dressed in a brown flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots standing there, hands balled into fists at his sides, a cold, unreadable expression in his eyes.

  “Do you work here? I didn’t do anything to her, I swear! We need to get her to a hospital, call an ambulance—something!”

  The man didn’t reply. He just continued staring. For an instant, Donner thought he saw someone else standing next to the man—a woman wearing a long, old-fashioned black dress. But he blinked, and she was gone. He was seeing things, he figured, because of the shock of Rach collapsing.

  The man still wasn’t talking. At first, Donner had taken him to be a museum employee, perhaps drawn when he had shouted Rach’s name. But the freak just kept standing there, silent, doing nothing. Donner didn’t know what the hell his problem was, and he didn’t care. Rach needed help. He pulled out his cell phone, intending to dial 911. But before he could enter the first number, the man finally spoke.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Drew.”

  Now it was Donner’s turn to stare.

  “Um . . . who?”

  Mitch was filled with cold fury. Not because this sonofabitch had killed Amber but because he’d done it before Mitch had got his chance to teach her a lesson. Amber had been so proud when she had told him she was dating a psychologist. “A real great guy,” she had said. Looked like her real great guy had turned out to have one hell of a temper. Mitch wondered what she had done to piss Drew off so much that he had killed her right there in the museum. Come to think of it, no matter how angry Drew had been, wouldn’t he have waited to do the deed until they were somewhere private, where there weren’t any witnesses? He didn’t know much about the man, but he didn’t seem like the type of guy who would suddenly snap and fly into a homicidal rage.

  In fact, the woman lying on the floor didn’t resemble Amber all that much
now that he took a closer look. And the man didn’t look as much like Drew as he had a second ago. He was shorter, fatter, and dressed in some kind of uniform.

  Mitch felt a cold hand clasp his, and then the Dark Lady leaned close to his ear and whispered. Her voice sounded like rustling leaves, her breath as frigid as January wind on his flesh.

  “Hesitation is a sign of weakness.”

  Rage welled strong within him, burying his doubts, and he clearly saw Amber lying on the floor, Drew standing next to her, cell phone in hand.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Drew.”

  The man mumbled something in reply, but Mitch paid no attention. He ran forward, locked his hands around Drew’s throat, and began to squeeze.

  Drew fought back. He tried to pry Mitch’s hands off his throat, and when he couldn’t break his grip, he pounded his fists against Mitch’s forearms and then the sides of his head. Mitch ignored the pain, such as it was. Drew might have looked in shape, but his blows lacked any real strength. What a fucking wimp!

  Drew’s face reddened, then purpled, and then his knees gave out on him, and he slumped to the floor. Mitch followed him down, maintaining his grip. He was squeezing so hard he thought he could feel the man’s neck bones beneath his hands. In the movies, tough guys could break someone’s neck simply by giving the head a single savage twist. Cool as that always looked, he had figured it was Hollywood bullshit. But now, feeling Drew’s bones like this, he understood just how fragile a neck could be, and he believed that it wouldn’t take a lot to snap it. All he would have to do was—

  Drew’s body went slack, breaking Mitch’s train of thought. He examined the man’s swollen face, his open, bulging eyes, and realized it was too late for him to try to break his neck. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

  He released his grip, and Drew fell to the floor, only a couple of feet from where Amber was lying. He stood up and regarded their still forms. He expected to feel something—exhilaration at having broken one of society’s greatest taboos, satisfaction at showing Drew what a real man could do, a sense of justice at knowing that Amber had gotten what she deserved, even if he hadn’t been the one to give it to her. But the truth was, he didn’t feel much of anything, and that lack of emotional payoff made him feel cheated.