Ghost Town

by Jason Hawes

  “I’ll live,” he said. The right side of his chest felt as if it were on fire, but he didn’t think he was in need of immediate medical attention. Besides, he had more important things to worry about right then than a couple of bruised ribs.

  Connie kicked off her remaining shoe and helped the Bride of Frankenstein to stand. The girl looked as if she’d had the breath knocked out of her, and she would probably have some hellacious bruising the next day, but she appeared well enough. Assuming the ghost that had tried to carry her away didn’t make another try for her.

  The ghosts—a dozen or more—swarmed the library atrium, moving through the air with eerie, silent grace as they targeted people. Some tried to grab hold of their victims and lift them into the air, while others fell upon them, clawing and biting. Those who were attacked screamed in pain and fear, and the rest of the crowd—who up to this point had been standing around, unsure what was happening—finally figured out that they were in danger and ran for the exits, shouting and sobbing.

  “Keep running!” Trevor shouted. “Get as far away from the library as you can!”

  “That means you, too, missy.” Connie gave the Bride a push, and she staggered off in the direction of an exit. Connie turned to Trevor. “You figure the manifestation is confined to this location?”

  He nodded. “It has to be the Dark Lady’s doing. She’s here somewhere. If we can find her—” Trevor broke off as a ghost swooped down and made a grab for him. He ducked, but the flying corpse managed to snag a handful of his hair before it arced up and away. He cried out as the ghost tore the hair from his scalp and swam off, waving the strands around as if they were a trophy.

  Trevor swore and clapped a hand to the small bloody patch of skin on his head. “That’s dirty pool! I have little enough hair left as it is!”

  Two other ghosts came toward them. One was long and lean, a flesh-covered skeleton in a gray prison uniform, while the other was short and squat, eye sockets empty, skin covered with fissures as if it were molting. They glided through the air like sharks on the hunt, and Drew wondered if, like sharks, they were drawn by the scent of Trevor’s blood.

  “Chairs!” he shouted, and Trevor nodded. The four of them ran to the snack area, and Drew and Trevor each grabbed one of the hard black plastic chairs and raised them as the ghosts approached.

  “Get behind us!” he told Amber and Connie.

  “As if,” Amber said. She grabbed a chair, and so did Connie.

  The skeleton ghost swooped in first, making for Trevor. Trevor swung his makeshift weapon at the creature and struck a solid blow to its head. The apparitions might be spirits, but Drew was gratified to see that they possessed enough physical substance to hit. Teeth flew from the skeleton’s mouth, and Drew watched in fascination as they faded to nothing, as if they couldn’t maintain their existence without a connection to the ghost’s body. In response, the skeleton veered off, although Drew doubted that Trevor’s blow had done it any real harm.

  The eyeless one moved in next. It headed for Amber, but Drew stepped in front of it, raised his chair high, and brought it crashing down on the ghost’s head. The impact sent jolts of pain up Drew’s arms, and fiery pain flared anew in his ribs. The eyeless ghost hit the floor, and Amber and Connie stepped forward and began pounding it with their chairs. The ghost thrashed and struggled to rise, but the women didn’t let up. They hit it over and over again, each blow knocking off chunks of bloodless white flesh that quickly faded away. The women kept at it, meat sliding off the creature’s bones as if off a well-cooked chicken. Soon the main body of the ghost began to fade, and it was gone.

  Panting for breath, skin slick with sweat, Amber and Connie put their chairs down and gulped air.

  “That was hard-core!” Trevor said.

  Drew agreed, but before he could say anything, the skeleton ghost swung back around for a second attack.

  This time, all four of them battered it into nonexistence.

  They had a breather after that, and Drew took a moment to survey the scene.

  Erin continued standing where she was, watching the chaos around her with glee. She appeared unaware that she was in danger, or at least unconcerned. Drew wondered if her apparent lack of fear was because she was a filmmaker. She was so used to being in control and observing events without being a participant that she couldn’t conceive that she might actually get hurt. The library director had already fled, but he hadn’t gotten halfway to the exit before a ghost had brought him down. The man lay on the floor screaming, while the animated corpse crouched over him, clawing him like a wild animal.

  Pattie and Sarah knelt together to make themselves smaller targets, arms wrapped around each other. Sarah was sobbing, her face buried against Pattie’s chest, and the older woman leaned her head against her partner’s, eyes squeezed shut as if she expected death to find them at any moment, and she didn’t want to see it coming. Ray had backed up against the circulation counter to brace himself as he continued filming. Drew assumed that the act of viewing the scene through the distancing lens of a camera helped him keep the worst of his fear at bay, but if their theory was right, and the Dark Lady was angered by Erin making a documentary about Exeter, Ray was making himself a prime target by continuing to film.

  Carrington made no attempt to flee. He stood watching the chaos, appearing fascinated and terrified in equal measure.

  “Trevor, you said the Dark Lady is causing this,” Drew said.

  “She has to be. She’s like . . . well, like Erin. She’s the director. The other ghosts do what she tells them.”

  “He’s right,” Amber said. “I can feel her somewhere close. She’s the center of all this.”

  “More than that, she’s the power source,” Connie said. “She’s channeling the energy that’s making this manifestation possible.”

  Drew didn’t ask how Connie knew this. Right then, he didn’t care. They had to do something to stop the prison ghosts before someone got killed. Most of the crowd had managed to reach the exits and escape the building, but a half-dozen people—not counting Carrington, Erin, and the film crew—still remained. Some were running from pursuing ghosts, but others, like the poor library director, were fighting for their lives as gray-clad corpses ravaged them with tooth and claw. Drew wanted to run over and pull the ghosts off them, but he forced himself to remain where he was. There were too many ghosts and too few of them, and he knew that if they attempted to help those being attacked, they would end up being attacked themselves. If they really wanted to help the victims, the best thing they could do was cut the ghosts off from their power source: the Dark Lady.

  Another pair of ghosts made a run at them then, but the specters broke off their attack when confronted by the chair-wielding humans. It seemed the creatures weren’t entirely mindless, Drew thought.

  “I think we may need to add chairs to our ghost-hunting arsenal,” Trevor said. “These things work better than a crucifix dipped in holy water!”

  “We have to find the Dark Lady and stop this,” Trevor said. “She has to be around here somewhere.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Trevor said. “But she’s hiding. We won’t be able to find her unless she wants us to.”

  “That may be true for most people,” Connie said. “But the Dark Lady can’t hide from Amber. Not if she’s really looking.”

  “All right, that’s it,” Trevor said. “You may be a good psychologist, but what makes you think you’re an expert in—”

  “Hush,” Amber said, cutting him off. “I need to concentrate.”

  Trevor shut up. He glared at Connie, but she just smiled at him.

  Amber closed her eyes and lowered her head, almost as if she were praying. The rest of them lifted their chairs and stood guard over her.

  The ghosts continued to attack in silence, and the library echoed with the cries of their victims. So far, the vicious spirits had left Erin alone—something Drew found remarkable if, as they had theorized, her film was what had drawn the Da
rk Lady’s ire. But the ghosts had no reluctance when it came to attacking her crew. Three of them circled Sarah and Pattie, mouths twisted into rictus grins as they snatched at the women’s clothes and clawed their exposed skin. Carrington ran over, grabbed the boom mic that Sarah had dropped, and began wielding it like a club at the ghosts. The mic rod was made of light plastic, and it bounced off the specters without doing any damage. Although no sound escaped the creatures’ mouths as Carrington lashed out at them with his makeshift weapon, Drew had the impression that the damned things were laughing.

  Ray looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to keep filming or not. He would start to lower the camera and then start filming again. From the man’s expression, Drew thought he might be in shock and operating on automatic. He continued filming because the act of doing his job gave him something normal to focus on in the midst of all the madness.

  Amber raised her head and opened her eyes. “That way.” Without waiting for a response from anyone, she began walking away from the circulation desk, deeper into the library.

  Drew felt guilty about leaving Erin and the others to fend off the prison ghosts on their own. But if the Dark Lady was at the center of this disturbance, finding and stopping her was the best way to help them. Besides, he knew he could never stand by and let Amber walk into danger without him.

  Drew, Trevor, and Connie carried their chairs as they walked, in case any ghosts should attempt to attack them again. He imagined their group looked more than a bit ridiculous walking around armed with furniture, but makeshift weapons were better than no weapons at all. Ridiculous-looking or not, he did feel a strong sense of rightness about what they were doing. This was the way it should be: the four of them, Connie included, striding forth to confront the darkness that plagued the town. Why it should feel right for Connie to be a part of it, Drew had no idea, but it did.

  As they walked, everyone but Amber kept glancing back. Drew expected to see gray-clad ghosts swimming through the air toward them, teeth bared, bleached-white fingers reaching for them. But it appeared that they no longer held any interest for the ghosts. The apparitions remained in the general vicinity of the circulation desk, attacking those few who hadn’t managed to flee. Were the creatures somehow confined to that spot, or was there another reason they weren’t pursuing them? Somehow Drew doubted it was because they were armed with deadly ghost-repelling chairs.

  They continued past the snack area—on the TV screen, Riff Raff was singing about time being fleeting—and more rows of computer desks until they finally reached the book stacks. There were far fewer books than Drew expected, and that they were kept way in the back of the ground floor like that spoke of just how little the print medium was valued these days. He wondered how many students there had actually read a physical book in the last year or, for that matter, had even touched one.

  At least, the book stacks served a useful function during Dead Days. They had been turned into a haunted maze, with black partitions set up at regular intervals to create walls. There was a single open entrance, above which was a cardboard sign painted to look like gray stone, the words “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” written on it in jagged black letters. From there, they could see lights strobing within, and they could hear ominous music playing, funereal tones punctuated by eerie sound effects: mad cackling, crashing thunder, creaking doors, rattling chains, and yowling cats.

  They put their chairs down and regarded the maze entrance.

  “Don’t tell me she’s in there,” Trevor said.

  “Sorry,” Amber said. “But she is. Or at least, something powerful is.”

  “Maybe she has a sense of humor,” Connie said.

  “Maybe it’s a trap,” Drew said.

  Connie looked at him as if he had just stated the incredibly obvious. “Well, of course it is. Why else do you think the ghosts broke off their attack once we started heading this way? The Dark Lady wants us to go inside.”

  “And what makes you think that?” Trevor demanded.

  She shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”

  “It makes sense,” Drew said. “The question is, do we go in anyway?”

  From behind them came the cries of people scared and in pain.

  “We have to,” Amber said.

  And without any further discussion, the four of them entered the maze.

  TWELVE

  Ray wanted to run. He wanted it so bad that it felt as if every cell in his body was screaming for him to drop his camera and race for the exit. And once he was outside—in the open air and sunlight, where the world made sense and grinning ghouls didn’t fly through the fucking air and try to kill you—he would keep running, as fast and as far as he could. And who knows? Once he started really running, once he hit his goddamned stride, he might never stop.

  But he didn’t run. Instead, he kept filming. Oh, he lowered his camera once or twice, as if he intended to drop it and get the hell out of Dodge, but he shouldered it again and resumed recording. He didn’t keep filming because he was dedicated to his job. He liked being a cameraman, maybe even loved it, but not more than he loved his own life. No way. And he sure as hell didn’t do it for Erin, even though he knew it was exactly what she wanted. He was sick of working for that bitch, and now she had gotten him, Sarah, and Pattie into a mess of shit, just like she had poor Alex. She had brought them there hoping that something like this would happen, and it would be a miracle if they all didn’t end up laid out on a mortician’s slab.

  The reason he kept filming was simple: he couldn’t stop.

  Maybe he was too scared to stop, or maybe he was mesmerized by the bizarre spectacle he was witnessing. Maybe he hoped that if he kept filming, he would capture evidence that this wasn’t real—see thin wires attached to the “ghosts,” holding them aloft, or maybe even see distortion in their images indicating that they were holograms of some kind. Although what a small-town community college would be doing with that kind of technology, he couldn’t say.

  Or maybe there was no reason. Maybe he continued to film simply because he did.

  Whatever the reason, or lack thereof, one thing was certain: he was an idiot for sticking around. Not only was there an excellent chance that he would be joining the ranks of the previously living any moment, but he probably wasn’t getting any usable footage. The museum security camera hadn’t been able to capture images of the murders that had taken place there, and after checking his footage of the multiple manifestations of the word Stop he’d taken at the scene, he had discovered it was filled with electronic distortion, rendering it only partially usable. If these ghosts were real—and although he wished like hell they weren’t, deep down he knew they were—whatever kind of energy they emitted was likely ruining this footage, too. Still, he kept going.

  There was no real thought to his filming. He didn’t worry about camera angles or framing shots or even if the lens was in focus. He just pointed his camera one way, then another, and then another. There was so much going on that it really didn’t matter which way he faced. His camera always picked up something.

  At first, he had been grateful that the ghosts made no sound, although their silence was creepy as hell. But as the attack continued, he found himself wishing otherwise. If the ghosts had laughed, shouted, roared, anything, it would have helped to drown out the screams of the people they savaged. A number of students, faculty, and staff had managed to escape, although many of them had suffered tooth and claw wounds as they fled. But a half-dozen or so remained behind, and the ghosts toyed with them like cats with small rodents.

  Sarah and Pattie knelt together on the ground, holding each other for both physical and emotional support. Several ghosts circled them, clawed hands tearing at their clothes and scratching furrows in their flesh. The women cried out in pain as the specters tormented them, but they didn’t attempt to fight back—maybe because they were too scared or maybe because the absolute insanity of what was happening had overwhelmed their minds to the point where it had trippe
d their mental circuit breakers, leaving them incapable of resisting. He felt like a rat bastard for just standing and filming as the ghosts assaulted them, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

  It seemed that Carrington was made of sterner stuff, or maybe his years as a paranormal investigator made it easier for him to accept what was happening, although Ray doubted the man had ever experienced anything this intense before. Carrington picked up Sarah’s boom mic and began pounding the ghosts with it, like a skinny, gray-bearded Conan the Barbarian. Not that his heroic efforts did much good. The ghosts continued clawing at Sarah and Pattie, and one of them, evidently irritated by Carrington’s attempt to drive them off, broke away from the pack. It circled around and headed for Carrington, swollen white features contorted into a mask of unreasoning hate. The boom mic was bent and looked as if it might fall apart any second, but Carrington held it out before him and prepared to meet the ghost’s charge as if the fragile piece of equipment were Excalibur itself. Up to that point, Ray hadn’t thought much of the older man. He had seen him as nothing more than a boozy charlatan, and an over-the-hill one at that. But now, seeing him attempt to defend Sarah and Pattie, Ray realized that there was a lot more to the man than he had originally thought, and he felt shamed by his own inability to act.

  Carrington swung as the ghost drew near, and the boom mic smashed into the side of the creature’s face. The impact snapped the mic pole in two and created a wound over the ghost’s right temple from which a watery black substance spurted forth. The injury didn’t slow the specter’s approach, and when it reached Carrington, it lashed out with a vicious backhand strike. Carrington’s head snapped back, and he flew backward a dozen feet. He landed hard, slid to a stop, and didn’t move. Ray didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but given that he had suffered such a powerful blow, Ray feared the worst.

  From the first moment the ghosts had appeared, they had left Erin alone, as if she stood in the eye of a hurricane. Like Ray, she had simply watched the madness happening around her, but, unlike him, she hadn’t seemed so much frozen by fear as captivated by delight. Not only hadn’t she made a move to help Sarah and Pattie, but it appeared she didn’t realize, or didn’t care, how terrified they were. He knew what was happening. Just as he was distancing himself from the horror around him by viewing it through a camera lens, she was imagining everything playing out on a screen, considering how she would edit the footage for maximum effect. But when Carrington hit the floor less than ten feet from where she stood, she turned to look at him. Seeing him lying there motionless, the smile left her face, and her delight was replaced with confusion and, he thought, a dawning awareness that what she was witnessing was, in fact, real.