Storm

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  She waved me off and stood to pour me tea. “You look like you need it. I fished out some clothes that might fit you. They might not be the most stylish, but I bet they beat that hospital gown. The bedroom is right through there,” she gestured to a door off to the right. Standing, I headed to the room and smiled when I saw the sweatpants and t-shirt she laid out for me. Of course, the t-shirt was all flowery, something an older lady would wear, but I didn’t care. She was right, anything was better than this gown. Feeling better, I went back to the couch and picked up the tea cup waiting for me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Storm

  I went back to the estate to help look for Tacos. Ice and Chris couldn’t find him and everyone else was busy on other jobs. I didn’t want to leave Jessica’s side, but we had to find Tony. Based on Jessica falling down the stairs, the very same thing could happen to Tony. Not that it should. He was former army. He had a flashlight to see, but he was also easily spooked by ghosts, which meant that anything could happen.

  Walking into the room that the tunnel had started in, I gave a nod to Jules, who was monitoring what was happening in the tunnels.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nope. They’re trying to put in lights as they go, but for some reason, they keep going out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re running extension cords to hang lights, but for some reason, they aren’t staying lit.”

  “Faulty cord?”

  He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “All six of them?”

  I shrugged. “You never know. It could be that they’re worn out.”

  “I just picked them up at the store. Got any other bright ideas?”

  “Bad outlets? Hell, this house is old as fuck. There could be any number of reasons that the lights are going out.”

  “Yeah, and that reason could be that there are ghosts in there turning them off.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me that you believe in ghosts too?”

  “I didn’t, but how else would you explain Tacos disappearing and the lights going out as soon as we plug them in?”

  “I just told you, the house is old. There’s got to be a perfectly logical explanation for all this.”

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “In the meantime, Tacos is being tortured by ghosts.”

  Chris walked back out of the tunnel and shook his head in bafflement. “You’re not gonna believe this, but the flashlights keep going out. Brand new flashlights and batteries. Still believe there’s no such thing as ghosts?” he asked me.

  “Ghosts are translucent. How the hell do you think they’re turning off your flashlight?”

  “In Ghost-” Chris started.

  “Don’t even start with those stupid movie references. None of that actually happened.”

  “But what if it could?” Jules asked. “I mean, think about it. People have been trying for centuries to move things with their minds. What if you can do that as a ghost?”

  “I would think the ghost would probably try and punch someone in the face before trying to turn off a flashlight,” I responded sarcastically.

  “Hey,” Chris said, holding up his hands. “I’m just telling you what’s happening in there.”

  “Fine, I’ll go in and prove to you that there are no ghosts. Give me the flashlight.”

  Chris shrugged. “It won’t do any good. The fucking thing doesn’t work.”

  I rolled my eyes and snatched it from him, flicking on the light and shining it right in his fucking eyes. “Yeah, they really ruined this flashlight. Maybe you encountered Casper.”

  “I’m telling you,” Chris argued. “It wasn’t working.”

  “Right.” I headed for the tunnel and watched as Chris pulled his gun. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Protecting myself.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to comprehend the logic behind that. “You want to shoot a translucent figure with a bullet,” I said slowly.

  “I might scare it off.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to wrap my head around his logic. “Okay. I’ve got nothing to say to that.” I turned and headed for the door, but stopped and turned back. “On second thought, I have a bet for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “If we see a ghost in there, which I’m telling you is not fucking possible, I’ll stay in the room the doctors performed the operations on the patients in for the whole night.” He narrowed his eyes at me and swallowed hard. “But if there aren’t any ghosts, you have to stay there the whole night.”

  “I get to have Jules and Ice with me,” he demanded.

  I started laughing. “Are you fucking serious? You need an army with you to battle ghosts?”

  “So what? It says I’m a pussy. I’m good with that as long as I walk out of that room the next morning.”

  “Fine,” I said, extending my hand. “We have a deal.”

  He shook my hand and I entered the tunnel, flicking on the flashlight. I made it about halfway down the tunnel we had taken yesterday when I felt it. It was a stiff breeze that sent a chill of foreboding down my spine.

  “Tell me that you don’t feel that,” Chris said in a low voice behind me.

  “Yeah, I feel that.” I spun around slowly, shining the flashlight up and down the walls, looking for something that could explain the breeze in the tunnel. At the top of the wall, covered in cobwebs and dirt was what I was looking for. I brushed away the dirt and shone the flashlight on the vent where a small breeze was filtering out of.

  “There’s your ghost,” I said, grinning to Chris. “Looks like you’ll be spending the night in the operating room.”

  “We still haven’t found TacoMan. Don’t count your eggs before they hatch.”

  Nodding, I moved the light to the other side of the tunnel. “This is where Tony disappeared, I’m guessing.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “They both stopped on the video because they thought they felt something, which would be the breeze from the vent. Jessica called out for Tony and he wasn’t here anymore. Which means, he disappeared right here.”

  I ran my hand along the wall, looking for something, anything that would let me know how Tony suddenly disappeared.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A lever or a switch. Something that would lead to a false wall.”

  “This isn’t Indiana Jones,” Chris scoffed. “Do you really think-”

  Everything else was drowned out by a whooshing sound as the ground fell out from under me and I slipped down into a cavern about ten feet down. There had been a notch on the wall. I pressed it in and the floor fell out. That must have been what happened to Tacos. Jessica must have been so distracted that she didn’t even hear him fall through the floor.

  I heard a sound as the ceiling opened again. This time, Chris had found something to jam in the hole to keep the opening from shutting.

  “How’s it going?” he asked with a smile. “Did you have a nice trip?”

  “You’re real fucking funny.” I stood and brushed the dust from my hands. Flicking the flashlight back on, I looked around the space, trying to see if there were any signs of where Tony went. “Are you coming down or are you too scared?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Hey, you’re the one that was so sure that Tony disappeared.”

  He slipped his feet through the opening and dropped down to the ground beside me. “You know what I think now? I think we’re both fucking crazy for going looking for Tony. I say that if the fucker got himself lost in this place, he deserves what he gets.”

  “Yeah, that’s such a warm welcome for the new recruits. You’re willing to go to war for the guys you’ve worked with for years, but the rest of us can fuck off.”

  “Hey, I would have said the same to them if they had gotten ghosts involved,” Chris said. “I’ve got no problem taking out the nasty fuckers we’ve come across, but ghosts are
a different story. You can’t kill them, you don’t know where they’re hiding, and worst of all, you can’t prove they exist.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? You need to see a psychiatrist or something. Go talk with Dr. Sunshine and adjust your attitude.”

  “Let’s just find Tacocheese and get out of here. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

  I started walking to the far side of the wall, searching for another trap door. “There has to be some way he got out of here. It’s not like he just vanished.”

  I followed the beam of the flashlight around the room until I found another corridor. “Here,” I shouted to Chris. We followed the corridor to another large room that was extremely dusty, with large cobwebs draped from the ceiling. I started coughing and sneezing from the amount of…. “Coal dust.” I sneezed again and brushed the taste of dust off my tongue.

  “Shit, you’d think they would have cleaned this shit out a long time ago,” Chris coughed.

  “No need to if they just closed it off.”

  I heard a banging and held up a hand to stop Chris from speaking. I heard it again. Shining the flashlight around again, I spotted the coal chute. Something sounding like a moan came from behind the door. Chris pulled his gun and aimed it at the chute.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Not getting killed by a ghost.”

  I walked over to the chute door and opened it, sitting just inside was Tony Tacos, coughing and covered in soot.

  “Now, there’s something I never thought I’d see,” Chris mumbled. “What the hell are you doing in a coal chute?”

  “It was the only way out I could find. I thought I could climb out the other end, but it’s too small. Then I got back down here and the chute had closed and locked.”

  “That was really fucking stupid,” I pointed out.

  “Well, it’s not something I care to repeat,” he coughed again.

  “Did you see any ghosts?” Chris asked.

  “I was a little too concerned with being locked in a fucking coal chute to worry about ghosts.”

  “Did you ever consider that you were locked in the chute by a ghost?” Chris asked.

  Tony paled and wiped the dust from his face. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the door shutting on its own is possible, but locking too? Sounds to me like someone didn’t want you to get out.”

  “Holy shit. I was almost killed by a ghost,” Tacos murmured.

  “You were not,” I said exasperatedly. “The door shut and the lock swung shut. It was pure dumb luck. And I emphasize dumb because only a dumbass would climb up a fucking coal chute.”

  Tony climbed out of the chute and brushed what coal dust he could off his clothing. Not that he could tell anyway. It was dark down here and he was wearing black.

  “Can we just get out of here?” he asked. “I’ve had enough of this house for one day.”

  “Sure,” I shot a sarcastic grin. “Let’s just take the stairs out of here.”

  “There are stairs?” Tony’s jaw dropped in shock.

  “No, genius, there are no fucking stairs, but there is a ghost that said he would be our tour guide.”

  “You’re an asshole.”