Ghost

by Illustratus

  Illustrated by Jeff Turley

  Depth

  The end of Michael Alvey’s umbilical cord disappeared from sight as it stretched through the murky ocean waters above him. His only source of air and radio, it was his lifeline to the surface.

  Below the teenager’s feet sat a monstrous, sunken submarine. Downed at the start of the Second World War, the sub had dutifully sheltered the remains of its dead crew in the decades since the attack—an impenetrable steel morgue that, until recently, had lain undiscovered at the bottom of an ocean trench.

  It was Michael’s parents who’d found the wreck. He could still remember their giddy anticipation the day they’d disembarked into these dark ocean waters, the first to glimpse the corroded vessel since it had sunk. They’d never returned from that dive, leaving Michael with just a final, terrified radio transmission, likely fueled by nitrogen narcosis, or “diver’s madness”:

  “Please! Help! They’re coming.”

  Now it was Michael’s duty to retrieve their bodies from the hulking steel beast. Others had offered to spare Michael the sight of his parents’ dead bodies, but he knew it had to be him. Last to see them alive, he would be first to see them dead.

  Michael moved into action. Clambering across the massive hull of the sub, he arrived at the top hatch. It was sealed shut. His parents must have closed it after entering, locking themselves inside to drown. Michael shuddered at the renewed reminder of their gruesome deaths.

  He grabbed the circular wheel that drove the door’s latch and strained against its rusty bearings. It groaned with age before finally engaging, freeing the hatch’s bolts with a piercing screech. A current of foul water rushed from the opening as Michael pulled the door back to reveal the foreboding interior of the vessel below.

  Inside, years of contact with harsh ocean water had bleached the sub bone white. As Michael swam through its dark corridors, a constant haze of algae and bottom-feeders clouded his flashlight’s beam. An experienced diver at the age of fifteen, Michael was already accustomed to exploring the wrecks of downed ships. He always found them to have the same unsettling stillness about them. The stillness of a place familiar with death.

  Although a certain doomed malaise was typical on these types of dives, Michael did feel there was something amiss in the vessel. Where were the bodies? Over a hundred sailors had perished on the sub, yet he’d not found a single sign of human remains.

  Continuing onward through the haunting quiet of the ship, Michael had more pressing things to worry about than the absent crew. Keeping his umbilical from catching on the turns of the labyrinthine corridors was of chief concern. Even the slightest snag could rupture the line with disastrous results.

  Finally, he reached the door at the end of the passage—the engine room. The last room his parents had explored, he knew it was the most likely place to find them.

  The ancient door creaked as he pushed it open, his flashlight’s beam cutting, almost hesitantly, through the room’s dingy water.

  There they were. Face down on the floor—his mother and father.

  Though Michael had prepared himself for this moment, he found himself overcome with shock. He dropped to his knees, unable to take his eyes off their still forms.

  After what seemed an eternity, Michael reached for their faces. He had to see them.

  He lifted his father’s head first. The sight was ghastly. The skin hung loose and bloated from his father’s bones, barely recognizable as the man he had once known. Michael collected his courage and removed his father’s mask. He slowly pried open his father’s eyelids to confirm the diver’s madness that he suspected had taken his life. But Michael was shocked to find his father’s eyes were . . . clear. There was no sign at all of the redness that was the telltale sign of narcosis.

  His mother’s softly rotting eyes showed the same thing. Michael dropped her head and staggered back, unable to believe what he was seeing. If it hadn’t been the madness of narcosis that had cost his parents’ lives, then what? It didn’t make sense.

  As Michael reeled in confusion, he felt a sudden tension in his umbilical. Though he’d safeguarded against it, the cord was caught somewhere in the dark maze behind him.

  He tugged on the base of the cord, but the snag held strong. He gave another small tug—still nothing. His third pull finally set the cord free. Michael sighed in relief, about to turn back to his parents, when—

  THUNK!

  Valves automatically slammed shut on Michael’s helmet. Water was threatening to force its way inside. It could only mean one thing—the cord had ruptured. Reacting quickly, Michael bit down on his emergency air tube, starting the flow of oxygen from the small tank on his back. The air would last only minutes.

  He quickly coiled the umbilical to check the breach. The cord’s end only deepened Michael’s alarm. It wasn’t ruptured at all. It was cut clean through, as if with a knife. Was something out there?

  He instinctively turned to his parents for comfort, but found none in the horror stretched across their morbidly distended faces. Their appearances would never again provide the reassurance he had always relied upon.

  Michael fled from the haunting sight. He scrambled from the engine room, pushing past the rusted door and into the corridor. Ready to make a dash for it, he suddenly stopped short.

  SCREEEEEEECH. THUD.

  The slam of the submarine’s top hatch pierced the darkness, its bolts locking into place. He was trapped.

  Finally, the fears gnawing at Michael’s mind came into focus. If his parents hadn’t been driven mad by narcosis, something else must have killed them down here. Their last terrified radio transmission echoed once more in Michael’s head. He understood, far too late, what it meant.

  “Please! Help! They’re coming.”

  Somewhere in the darkness of the sub, another door groaned open. The ship’s crew hadn’t been missing.

  They’d been hiding.

  Written by Blaise Hemingway

  Illustrated by Chris Sasaki

  The Descent

  While he waited for the elevator, Christopher looked down at his socks. They were his favorites, long and woolen with rubber grips lining the bottom. On days when he was too sick to go to school, Christopher’s mother would retrieve them from his topmost drawer and roll them onto his feet. While the boy had long outgrown the pair, they always brought him comfort.

  Christopher’s big toe poked out of a hole on the left foot. He rubbed the liberated toe into the rug on which he stood. The coarse wool reminded him of how the nape of his neck felt after a visit to the barber.

  PING!

  The elevator doors rumbled open. The car was empty, which was no real surprise considering the late hour. What time is it? thought Christopher. Past midnight, I’m sure.

  As Christopher stepped inside, the car creaked under his weight, which—him being of below-average weight and height for an eleven-year-old—was slightly unnerving.

  The elevator looked very old, certainly much older than his parents and likely older than his grandparents. Christopher ran his fingertips along the hand-carved wooden paneling lining the elevator’s interior. He could tell it was real wood, unlike the vinyl laminate on the inside of the elevator at the medical building.

  The boy turned to his right to make his selection from the car’s numbered buttons, only to find: no buttons. He turned left and saw none there either. Odd, thought Christopher. The boy spun, searching the entire elevator for the numbered buttons, to no avail.

  PING!

  Christopher craned back around quickly, just in time to see the doors close. The boy cursed under his breath. How was he supposed to get anywhere without any buttons?

  He tried to relax. Perhaps this was an express elevator, and hence, no buttons were necessary. Christopher waited for something to happen, but the elevator car remained perfectly still.

  Despite his best efforts not to, Christopher started to become uneasy. The boy had never really considered himself a claus
trophobic person, but he’d also never been inside an unmoving, buttonless elevator car in the middle of the night. Christopher started chewing his thumbnail, a habit his mother detested but that he reserved the right to do in situations like these.

  The antique elevator car suddenly lurched downward. Caught off guard, Christopher stumbled sideways and into the wooden panels of the car, which cracked slightly from the impact.

  Christopher heard the low and steady hum of a motor. He was still moving. He sighed in relief, but was surprised that—when he did—he could see his own breath. Christopher felt a sudden chill; his hands went to his bare arms to rub his goose-bumped skin, attempting to warm himself.

  The light inside the elevator began to flicker. Christopher looked to the ceiling and noticed that one of the two bulbs lighting the car was failing. He could hear the buzzing of the bulb’s filament. He remembered his grandfather calling that buzzing “the swan song,” the sound you hear right before the bulb goes out. Christopher hoped this swan song would last at least as long as the ride.

  The car jerked to a stop, and the doors opened. There, standing in silhouette, was a very old man with white hair combed over his scalp. He was dressed sharply in a green corduroy suit and bow tie with a white pocket square.

  “Eve’nin’,” said the old man as he stepped onto the elevator. The boy smiled politely but said nothing back. The old man noticed a piece of lint on his jacket sleeve. He carefully pinched it in between his thumb and index fingers, removed it, and dropped it to the floor. “Got married in this suit and it still fits,” said the man proudly.

  Despite the old man’s pleasant demeanor, there was something off about him—his skin looked like it was caked with that thick, skin-colored makeup that his mother wore when she had an unsightly blemish to conceal.

  The doors closed, and the elevator resumed its descent. Christopher noticed the old man looked as confused as Christopher felt as he searched about the elevator car’s interior. The boy mustered up the courage to say, “There’s no buttons,” his nervous voice cracking a little. “What floor were you going to?” The old man turned to Christopher and then raised his hand to his head, scratching his comb-over to reveal a large liver spot.

  “I . . . I don’t remember,” said the old man.

  “Oh,” said the boy, only now realizing that he could neither recall which floor he wanted to go to nor why he was on this elevator to begin with.

  It was then that the car’s blinking light bulb blew out, its smoldering filament clouding the bulb with smoke. Christopher nervously turned to check on the only other remaining light bulb, which—for the time being—was still in working order.

  The elevator again stopped abruptly, and its doors rattled open. Christopher turned to see—this time—a woman, no more than forty years old, stepping on, wearing a white blouse and skirt, her hair slightly askew. She walked awkwardly, which the boy quickly surmised was due to the fact that one of her shoes was missing its heel. The woman teeter-tottered into the car, greeting neither the boy nor the old man.

  PING!

  The doors closed, and the woman turned her back to them, revealing what looked like the skid marks of a car tire on her blouse. Christopher turned to the old man, trying to draw his attention to the markings on the woman’s blouse, but the old man was in his own world, trying to remember what he was doing there.

  As the elevator continued its descent, the boy noticed a crimson-colored puddle next to the woman’s broken heel. A steady flow of droplets plopped into the puddle, splashing onto the woman’s shoes and stockings. Christopher’s eyes followed the droplets back to the source, seeing that they were coming from the woman’s fingertips, which were covered in blood.

  Christopher gasped with concern. “Ma’am. Your hand. It’s bleeding.” The woman—who still seemed in a haze—eerily lifted her bleeding hand in front of her face and stared at it, unfazed.

  The old man immediately drew the white pocket square from his jacket and wrapped it around the woman’s hand. The woman didn’t protest, but remained silent as the old man went to work to try to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t long before the pocket square was saturated with blood.

  The remaining bulb lighting the elevator started to buzz, its filament blinking. Christopher eyed it nervously as he heard the woman’s hollow voice for the first time: “Why bother?” She stared defiantly at the old man, who was still actively trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Because . . . you’re hurt,” said the old man. “You’re bleeding . . . badly.” Christopher looked at the floor of the elevator, which was now vanishing beneath the pool of the woman’s blood. Christopher backed away into the corner of the elevator, trying to escape it, but his socks were already absorbing blood like a sponge.

  The woman shook her head, laughing at the old man. “Don’t be a fool.” The old man looked back at the woman, puzzled. Christopher, now more terrified than ever, could barely hear their exchange over the high-pitched shriek of the elevator’s engine as it began to accelerate.

  Tears rolled down Christopher’s face. Fear overcame him as he shouted, “I wanna go home. I wanna go home!”

  The lone bulb flickered furiously, creating a strobe effect inside the elevator car as the woman turned to Christopher. “You’re not going home. None of us are.” The woman stepped away from the polished brass elevator doors allowing Christopher to catch a glimpse of his own reflection. The boy saw that he was dressed only in a hospital gown.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t understand . . .”

  The old man put his hand over his mouth as he softly uttered, “Oh no.”

  Christopher looked to the old man. “What? What is it?”

  The old man just shook his head, repeating, “I’m so sorry, son. I’m so sorry.”

  The sound of the elevator’s engine was now deafening. Christopher clung to the old man, screaming at the top of his lungs, “What’s happening!?!” But when the old man finally spoke, the boy couldn’t hear a word. Christopher narrowed his eyes, focusing on the old man’s lips, trying to read the words he was repeating over and over and over.

  Christopher slowly deciphered the old man’s words, one at time, until he knew them all. As the last bulb blew out, swallowing the car in total darkness, the boy formed the words himself.

  “We are all dead.”

  PING!

  Written by Blaise Hemingway

  Illustrated by Chris Sasaki

  Eyes Closed

  “Keep your eyes closed,” said Grace softly to herself. The girl lay awake with the covers pulled up over her head, her nervous breaths making the air hot and stale.

  Grace was afraid. The creaking inside her bedroom was getting increasingly louder and she didn’t dare make eye contact with the ghost that was responsible for it.

  Grace—like all children—knew that so long as you never looked at a ghost, it could do you no harm. Even beneath the sheets and heavy blankets, the girl kept her eyes shut firmly to ensure she didn’t accidentally glimpse it.

  THUD. Grace shuddered. Was that her bedroom door slamming closed? Or had the ghost knocked something off her dresser to tempt her to look?

  Grace quieted her breathing and listened carefully. She could hear the dull whistle of a swirling wind encircling her bed, and she knew . . . the ghost was closer.

  The noises started the night Grace moved from the room she shared with her younger sister into this new one. The move came at Grace’s own insistence; after all, she was ten years old, far too mature to be sharing a room with Molly, a mere first grader who thought only of first-grader things. But now—with terrifying noises inundating her room every night—Grace knew that she had made a terrible mistake. Never once had the ghost come to the bedroom she shared with Molly. Never once did Grace need to hide beneath her blankets. Never once had she lain awake with her eyes closed tightly in fear—Grace felt something breathing on her toes. A cold breath. She quickly drew her feet beneath the covers and pulled her knees into her chest. How a
quilted comforter protected her from the ghost remained a mystery, but she nevertheless felt much safer beneath it.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Grace repeated.

  Grace couldn’t tell her parents she wanted to go back, not after relentlessly bugging them about getting her own room. There were no indications that Molly was having any problems since Grace’s departure. In fact, Molly seemed perfectly content to be rid of her older sister. How immature would Grace look if she was the one too scared to sleep alone and not her younger sibling?

  Grace could now hear the scrape of fingernails against the walls of her room. Deliberate and sustained, the nails slowly clawed from her doorway, past her dresser, and over her head as they made their way around the room. The noise paused.

  Grace felt her pulse quicken; her heart beat with such intensity that her nightgown bounced up and down against her chest. She knew the ghost was close to her now, probably hovering just above her bed.

  Grace pressed her eyelids together as hard as she could. She felt the tension in every muscle on her face; it was painful, but necessary to ensure her protection.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Grace said once more, as if a mantra to keep her safe.

  The fear was consuming Grace. It had never been this bad before. She considered screaming; the ghost would most certainly vanish once her mother and father rushed into the room. Grace could tell them that it was just a nightmare. They wouldn’t have to know the truth. She could preserve her dignity. But then what? Grace’s parents would return to bed, and soon after, the haunting would resume, perhaps even worse than before. No. That wouldn’t do.