“I choose who I belong to,” Julia said. She kicked Dr. Forrest’s robe toward the pathetic, trembling woman. “You’d better put that on before you freeze.”
Dr. Forrest snatched at the robe, jumped to her feet, and ran toward the trees. Her sad, broken laughter filled the clearing. “Satan calls me,” mocked Dr. Forrest, in a strange falsetto. “I hear him in the trees. He’s everywhere.”
Walter tried to stagger after her, but Julia stopped him. “Let her go,” she said. “She won’t freeze to death if she keeps moving. They’ll find her sooner or later and get her the help she needs.”
Walter leaned against her. “Hopefully, she won’t get a therapist as screwed-up as yours.”
“You’re making fun of a woman who’s holding a gun,” she reminded him.
“You’re not a bad Clint Eastwood yourself,” he said.
She didn’t want to explain the murdering force that had descended upon her and briefly possessed her. It would sound deranged, the kind of thing a defense lawyer would use for an insanity plea. Walter would call it the grace of God, but Julia could never be sure whether it was instead the will of a malevolent master whose most potent magic was served by disguise and doubt. The devil’s greatest trick was in getting people to believe he didn’t exist.
But maybe God’s greatest trick was in granting people the free will to doubt.
“I’m no better than they are,” she said, looking at the gun that was cooling in her hand.
Walter shook his head. A large purple knot was swelling above his temple. He touched it and winced. “I’m going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow.”
So would Julia. Tomorrow, she’d have to deal with the fact that she had killed someone. She had played God just as certainly as Hartley had, taking human life. Sure, she could justify it, but every sin had its price, every sinner an excuse.
“Any more of the Creeps around?” she asked. “I only saw three, plus Hartley and the doctor.”
“I shot one,” he said. “That’s where I got the robe. But I lost Mitchell’s gun climbing up the rocks to get here. It got dark so fast I couldn’t look for it.”
“There might be more of the ‘Brothers’ around, but I doubt it. Not enough slices of the money pie.”
“Money?”
“I’ll tell you later. Let’s get out of here.”
She helped Walter toward the trail, clutching the gun in her right hand. Maybe somewhere, God and Satan were sitting in the Happy Hour of the afterlife and bickering over the nature of good and evil and which of them had won this latest dice roll of human souls.
The sun slipped behind the ridges as they staggered back up the trail, both of them weak. They had reached the granite peak of Cracker Knob when Dr. Forrest’s high voice drifted up from the woods. “Oh, Jooolia. Jooolia. He ooowns you, Jooooolia.”
Julia looked out over the dark ripples of Appalachian Mountains in the distance, at the black pockets of valleys. In a strange way, Dr. Forrest had healed her. Compared to a devil-worshipping lunatic who liked to play with patients’ minds, Julia felt like the most sane and rational person on the planet.
They rested against the rocks, the sky in twilight. Walter fidgeted with his hand for a moment and held something out to her. “This is yours,” he said. “I was keeping it for you.”
The silver ring. She looked at the skull grinning in the moonlight, at the stupid empty eyes that saw nothing.
“Free will,” he said.
She took a step forward and hurled the ring into the deep valley below the rocks. Judas Stone didn’t exist.
She couldn’t tell which of them moved first, or if they simultaneously had the same idea. They embraced, their lips meeting, body heat and the heat beyond that combining. Julia kissed desperately, afraid that each precious moment belonged to the past, was already over and never to be regained. But then Walter kissed her again, and she knew that these moments were hers for as long as she desired.
They finally parted, Julia so light-headed that she had to lean against the rocks again. Neither of them spoke, afraid to break the little magic spell the world had allowed. Walter took her hand and guided her between the boulders under the timeless night.
The wind gently pushed the last scraps of clouds away. The sky was indigo and scattered with stars. The rising moon shone down on the silver forest. They continued through the trees, pushing away the groping branches.
By the time they reached the cabin, Julia was exhausted. They found that the Jeep’s tires had been slashed. The Creeps had wanted to cut off easy escape.
“Looks like we’ll have to hike out,” Walter said.
“Not tonight,” Julia said. “I’m beat.”
“No, you’re not beat. They’ll never beat you if you don’t let them.”
“I am a mountain,” Julia said, with just enough strength left to laugh. She turned solemn and said, “If you let God in your heart, can you ever make him leave?”
“Free will,” he said.
“You’re not still trying to save me, are you?”
“Door’s open when you want to talk about it.”
They went inside the dark cabin, Julia’s hand squeezing the gun’s grip, finger ready at the trigger. No Creeps. She was finished with Creeps, real or imagined. Doors closed and deadbolts thrown. Safe house.
“Want me to build a fire?” Walter asked.
“Yes,” she said, pulling him toward the loft. “Like you did up on the rocks.”
Julia climbed the ladder and scrambled onto the loft. She laid the gun within reach and kicked the blankets aside while Walter hurried up alongside her. Finally, she was ready to trust.
She tore at the buttons of his shirt, burning with hunger. This hunger was deep, reaching further inside her than any fear or panic or hopelessness ever had. This surrender was of her soul, the thing that she and she alone possessed.
Nobody could steal her soul. No demon, no god, no human. It was hers to give as she chose. Of her own free will.
As she reached for the heat of his skin, she wondered how he would react to the touch of her scars.
But it didn’t matter. Wounds healed, scars faded, the past always lost in the battle of forever.
“Jooolia,” he whispered, arousing a last shiver of doubt.
To hell with it.
She threw herself into the fire.
THE END
Table of Contents
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Paranormal investigators Ellen and Monty Drew are summoned to remove a spirit from a bible college—but one dark presence isn’t ready to graduate.
GHOST COLLEGE
By Scott Nicholson & J.R. Rain
Copyright ©2010 J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson
Table of Contents
Chapter One
The place didn’t look haunted; then again, they never do.
We were standing in the polished entrance hall to a small Christian college called Faith University. It was after hours, and so the building was mostly empty. To either side stretched dimly lit hallways. Further down, wedges of light poured from a couple of night classes and faint sounds of an instructor’s lecture spilled from one, the word “Leviticus” jumping out of the drone.
The hallway stretched to our left, devoid of human traffic, but it wasn’t humans we were looking for. At least, not living ones.
I adjusted the sack of gear dangling from my shoulder and surveyed the atmosphere. The place did look sort of gloomy and forlorn, which was surprising considering it was a faith-based institution of relatively new construction.
You would have expected some sort of shimmering glow about the place, like the halo of a saint, or some clouds spilling down from a set of golden stairs. It wasn’t much of a university, really. It felt more like an extension of Cal State Fullerton, which was located across the street.
“What do you think?” I asked, keeping my voice low and reverent, like you would in church even if no one was there.
Ellen had taken a step or two in
front of me and was currently peering off down a darkened side hall. “Oh, it’s haunted, alright.”
“Just like that?” I asked. “We take one step into a place and you can tell it’s haunted?”
She turned to me and flashed me her brilliant smile, the sort that always gave me a fluttering out-of-body experience. Love. Talk about your supernatural powers.
“What can I say?” She reached over and slapped me lightly on the cheek. “It’s a gift. You know that. We’ve been through this a hundred times before.”
“And all one hundred times, I have yet to see a ghost.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“Right. They’re invisible. Why can’t I see that?”
To be honest, I didn’t know what the hell I had felt, seen, or imagined in the past. A cold breeze at the back of my neck. A suspicious moan or two that could have just as easily been the wind. Flitting images that were probably distant headlights sweeping across a window. The mysterious creaking of floorboards, of faint touches on necks and shoulders and forearms, inexplicable goose bumps and soft whispers in my ears.
All of these occurrences, or non-events, could be summed up easily enough: too many long hours working into the middle of the night, hoping for real evidence in a field where everything was built on faith.
Seemed like the ghost-hunting business was a lot like the religion business, so maybe we were in the right place after all.
“They weren’t figments of your imagination,” Ellen said.
“I have strict control over my imagination. In other words, nothing goes on in there that I don’t want to go on. For instance, I am now imagining you fully naked and my EMF meter is going berserk.”
“Put that twitching needle back in your pants,” she said. “There’s someone coming.”
“Now turn around,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m talking to the imagination. Ah, very good. Okay, you may get dressed now.”
“You are too much, Monty.”
I heard the footsteps now. Someone was hurrying down the tiled hallway, materializing before us from the darkness. Now, if this was a ghost, then we were in business. This I could see and hear. And smell. The aroma of whiskey and cigarettes came before him like a bar-stool hurricane.
The figure turned out to be a short man with a surprisingly large waist. “Surprisingly” because he was moving so quickly, as the added girth apparently gave him no trouble at all, a man grown comfortable in his own elastic skin. He was wearing a short suit with a red-and-white striped tie that hung below his zipper. His sweating face was a beacon in the darkness. I checked my watch. Dr. Stevens was right on time.
The professor approached my wife first, as most men do, instantly attracted to her disarming smile and lithe figure. Or perhaps attracted to that thing that had pulled me in, the X Factor.
That unknown something she possessed. That special energy she radiated whether she knew it or not. The look in her eyes that promised all men amusement and good times, even if she never intended to deliver.
And with me, luckily, she delivered.
Sometimes twice a night, and occasionally three, if we were sleeping in the next morning.
“Hi,” said the little man, his voice booming along the hallways. If there were any ghosts, they would have scattered like frightened fish, assuming they could hear or respond to air vibrations. He reached out a very large hand, which was disproportionate to his body. In the world of Tolkien, he would have wielded a battle axe and sported very hairy toes. “Ellen and Monty?”
“That’s us,” I said. “She’s Ellen.”
He grinned. “That was my next question.”
He wiped some sweat away with the back of his hand. The night was cool enough that Ellen was wearing a sweater. Then again, she often wore sweaters even on warm summer evenings. This was not a warm summer evening. This was early February. But this was also Southern California, where there were only two seasons: Oscar season and everything else. “Perhaps we should talk in my office,” he said.
After we had followed him through a series of twists and turns and into a large office, making small talk about the state budget cuts that had curtailed higher education, he closed the door behind us after giving the hallway a quick check. Ellen and I sat before him at his spacious desk.
He sat back and looked at us. “We have a problem,” he said simply. “And we need some help.”
Chapter Two
He lowered his voice an octave, as if afraid a student might overhear. “And you are the ghost hunters?”
“We prefer to call ourselves paranormal investigators, Dr. Stevens,” I said.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to offend.” He paused and took us both in, the hint of a smile still stamped on his jovial face. “I’ve never met ghost hunters before.”
I was about to object to the reference again when my wife leaned forward and placed a digital audio recorder on his desk. She clicked it on and a red dot of light appeared. “9:17 p.m., February 11, Dr. Stevens’ office,” she said, projecting for the benefit of the recording. She nodded at the professor and returned to a conversational tone. “You mentioned hearing some strange noises, Dr. Stevens?”
The joviality left his face, replaced with something closer to exhaustion. “Either way, right?” he laughed, his voice booming. He looked nervously at the recorder.
“Actually, we investigate strange occurrences and attempt to identify the sources,” I said. “Much of our work is in eliminating all rational physical explanations, and only then do we consider the possibility of something more. But so far there’s never been something more.”
“Tell us about the ghost,” my wife said, cutting off my serious scientific explanation of our task.
“I never said we had a ghost,” said the little man, looking up startled. “We just have had some strange, you know, occurrences.”
“Of course,” she said. “I didn’t mean to unnerve you.”
But my wife never said “ghost” unless she was sure there was a ghost. She’d always had more faith than me, but I also trusted that she had a more refined sense of the sublime. Myself, I tried to give the moment some academic distance before I got all caught up in hysteria.
We were sitting in the president’s office. There were some fairly impressive plaques and degrees placed precisely on the wall behind his desk, and some other certificates with ornate writing scattered around the room. I noticed that one of his plaques was askew. Just one. The others were in perfect uniform precision.
It didn’t fit the world of Dr. Stevens. I have often come across many things that didn’t make sense. For my wife, however, it all made perfect sense. Sometimes I wished I had her outlook. Sometimes. And sometimes her outlook scared the hell out of me.
His office was in a corner of the building. The blinds were shut, but had they been open he would have had a great view of Cal State Fullerton across the street. With practice, he probably would have been able to shoot rubber bands at that larger, better-funded campus.
His chair was studded leather. His desk was large enough to play ping pong on. Aside from our recorder, his desk was empty, save for a picture of a pretty but severe woman and a cute little girl. The picture was angled so that he could see it from his desk. I had to lean forward to see it.
“There have been noises,” he said, reluctantly. He had clasped his hands together. His thumbs twiddled briefly, and then stopped, then started again.
“What type of noises?” I asked. People tended to overdramatize such situations, but I could sympathize a little. Once upon a time, I had been a cold creature of logic, and then Ellen happened.
Stevens shifted, his leather seat emitting a slight farting squeak that we all ignored. I wondered if that was the mysterious noise of which he spoke.
He adjusted the picture of his family on his desk, and then wiped at imaginary dust on the mirror-like maple desktop. Too bad we weren’t getting paid by the hour. He shrugged, his face redden
ing a little with embarrassment or stress. “Screams. Wailing. Footsteps. Sobbing.”
I turned to my wife. “Sounds like our first date.”
Talk about a severe look. My wife said nothing—she didn’t have to, the look said plenty—and turned to Dr. Stevens. “Have you heard these noises yourself?”
“No. Well, not at first.”
We waited. The recorder was a two-gig Sony model, so we had all night. And most of the week.
“I have been hearing reports from others, mostly from the janitorial staff. They told me about some of the sounds, except they didn’t really hear them as words.”
“So you ignored them,” said Ellen.
“Yes. At first.” He spoke with a little of the pomposity earned by all those degrees. “Janitors are generally uneducated.”
“And that means they’re superstitious?” I said, a little annoyed. Elitism never sat well with me. “Like they dance around the mop bucket mumbling voodoo spells when you’re not looking?”
“Not at all,” he said. “In fact, it’s because they are uneducated that I came to believe them. Because they repeated the sounds they’d been hearing, and I recognized it was Latin.”
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” I said.
My wife jumped in before my sarcasm got rolling. “How long had the janitorial staff been reporting these strange voices?”
He shrugged. “A while. Ever since I’ve been here, really. I chalked it off to legend. Faith University started as a bible seminary during the Depression, and stories tend to pile up over the years, especially at an institution that encourages a belief in miracles.”
“And you mentioned that you hadn’t heard the noise at first.”
“True, not at first.” His petulance had been replaced by something else. He sucked in some air and looked at my wife. He held her gaze and something crossed between them. I saw it and sensed it. He was scared and was trying to hide it.
“Tell me about it,” said my wife. She reached out across the desk and touched his arm.
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