“You’re a fucking liar!” June yelled. “You started that shit!” Her hands were still vice-tight around the girl’s throat and now she pounded the girl’s head against the floor. The sound it made caused waves in Mandy’s gut and she told herself she wouldn’t be sick.
Jane and Lynn were no help at all. No matter how they tried, they couldn’t break the two apart. The girl on the floor’s eyes rolled back in her head and she used the leverage of her fingers tangled in June’s hair to pull the girl’s head back so far it nearly touched her back. The strain on June’s face told Mandy it hurt just as much as she thought.
Mandy watched all of this unfold, feeling helpless and useless until she looked around at the other kids and remembered she was responsible for them. She got up and joined Lynn and Jane, forcing herself between the two girls while Lynn pulled June off and Jane pulled the other girl out from under her. Finally, they split them up and forced them to opposite ends of the room where they were told to, “Sit down, shut up and don’t move until I say!”
Mandy looked around and saw Bea was gone.
With the two separated, the fun was over and Lynn said, “Show’s over, everyone. Back to your seats and your food, we’ve still got night chores and a movie, and I’m sure not all of you want to lose free time.”
The kids turned reluctantly toward their trays and went back to eating. Mandy was surprised how quickly they seemed to forget what had just happened and pick up their conversations where they’d left off before the fight broke out.
She went over to Lynn and asked, “What do you need me to do?”
“I’m going to take her to the office. You mind sitting tight with the kids until I get back?”
“No problem,” Mandy said. She went back to her table, tried to eat, but mostly just kept her eyes on the kids. Jane was still in the corner with the other girl. Mandy couldn’t tell what they were saying, but the girl was crying and Jane glanced over once in a while, probably to make sure Mandy was okay. Mandy nodded as if to say, “I got this,” and Jane smiled, then turned back to the girl.
She hated feeling like the one left out, the only person in the room with no idea what she was doing. She knew the kids knew the routine, as they had everything else so far tonight, but she didn’t know it and didn’t know what part she had to play.
She’d been asked to keep an eye on them, she could do that. But anything else and, for now at least, she was a stump, just sitting here taking up space.
She heard footsteps coming up behind her, loud, insistent, but like the slap of bare feet against cold tile. She turned to see who was coming, but there was nothing behind her and Mandy was reminded: there are ghosts here. Then she repeated to herself what Mr. Winters had said. They’re not here to hurt or to scare. Still, she didn’t turn back around just yet, because those footsteps had stopped and she got the feeling something had been coming toward her purposely, and whatever it was, she felt it was watching her.
Mandy got up and went over to where Jane was sitting with the other girl.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
Jane looked up and said, “No, I think we’ll be okay now. Whatever was going on is over and the kids are pretty resilient. They’ll finish supper and tomorrow won’t even be talking about it. Some of these kids have seen a lot worse than two teenage girls trying to kill each other.”
Mandy nodded and smiled, then asked, “So I just sit here, do I take them all back to their rooms or…”
“They’ll be okay,” Jane said.
“Is there a bathroom off this room?” Mandy asked, realizing she’d had to pee for a while.
Jane shook her head. “One down the hall, but we have to have all the staff in here to cover the kids. You’re taking Lynn’s place, but who knows where Bea went.” She looked up at the clock hung over the door. “Ten minutes,” she said.
Mandy shook her head. Then she asked, “Hey, how come those guys didn’t bother to help?” She motioned to the three men sitting at the opposite end of the room.
“Because those three don’t make a move unless it affects their precious boys. Worthless pricks is what they are. Trust me, any time they’re around, you might as well ignore them because you’ll basically be by yourself anyway.”
“Got it,” Mandy said. She went back over to her table to resume her place as guardian. Ten minutes, she thought. She could do that.
She scanned the room, just watching the kids eating and talking. Many of them were smiling and joking, the previous incident seemingly forgotten or just not a big enough deal to waste the energy on.
A black shadow across the top of the room caught her eye and she watched it move, up in the corner where the wall and ceiling met. It inched its way along, from the right side of the room toward the left and she wondered what the story there was. While she wasn’t exactly eager to encounter the ghosts, she did think it might help to understand them better if she knew the stories behind them. So far, Carlotta Vasquez was the only one she knew. And while looking around at how unaffected everyone who lived here round the clock seemed by it all did provide some comfort, there was still that little idea digging into the back of her head that reminded her the dead surrounded her and no matter what Mr. Winters said, just because they hadn’t hurt anyone yet, that didn’t mean they were incapable.
She still felt those eyes on her back.
The shadow crept across the room to the opposite corner where it inched its way down the wall and disappeared from view behind the men who sat and watched, oblivious.
Dinner was over and the kids cleared away their tables, dumped their trash in two big yellow barrels, silverware into the grey plastic tubs on the counter, dishes into another set of plastic tubs, and stacked their trays at the end of the row.
Mandy looked over at Jane who said, “It’s free time, they can go hang out or back to their rooms until the movie starts in an hour.”
“Where should I go?”
“Bathroom’s down the hall to your left, then we’ll meet you in the common room. Lynn should be done with June by now, but we’re going to keep these two separated the rest of the night.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Mandy went to the hall and took a left, wondering how far down was the bathroom. Jane didn’t say.
She found herself alone and couldn’t believe that many kids could all scurry off to wherever they were going so quickly. The view made her think of all the high school horror movies she’d ever seen where someone’s wandering the empty halls at night for whatever stupid reason. The sound of her shoes against the floor echoed off the empty walls and she thought it should be much brighter out here but for some reason she felt the lights had been dimmed to halfway, even though that couldn’t be because the lights weren’t on a dimmer switch, as far as she knew.
She thought about Katie, driving a forklift all day, no matter the weather, delivering parts to all the buildings on campus, even in the middle of a blizzard, and Mandy thought That’s not such a bad gig, really. Lucky.
Jesus, where was the bathroom? She kept looking at every door she passed, but so far no bathroom. There was a janitor’s closet and the door to an office, the nurse’s station, a men’s room, another door that looked like it opened up outside. She looked back and saw she’d come at least fifty feet, and Jane said the bathroom was down the hall, but she’d been down the hall, surely it couldn’t be that far. And as far as she’d walked, she hadn’t made it to the common room yet, so how had all those kids disappeared so quickly when she was still walking down the hall?
She looked around and suddenly felt she was alone in the building. She knew that wasn’t true. She knew Jane and that girl were still in the cafeteria. She knew Lynn and June were in the office. What office, she wondered. Mr. Winters’s office? She hadn’t seen them in the nurse’s office.
Those dozens of kids were spread around the building and Bea was somewhere or other, too. That must be it, she decided. She was creeped out because she knew Bea was ar
ound somewhere but Mandy didn’t know where, so the possibility that the old woman would round a corner and scare her unintentionally was a real thing. She was trying to discount the ghosts on the grounds of Mr. Winters’s claim, but Bea was a real person and not a very nice one and whatever interaction Mandy had with her wouldn’t be the one-sided non-reaction of the ghosts.
So, she rationalized, she was only uneasy because of the potential for a jump scare. That should make her feel better. But the truth was, potential or not, Bea or not, this hallway was way too dark, way too empty, and she had been searching for this bathroom for way too long. She knew that was where she’d find Bea, it just came to her. The old woman had gone to the bathroom to collect herself after being knocked on her bony ass, and when Mandy finally found the door, she’d open it to go in just as Bea was opening it to come out and they’d run into each other and Mandy would scream. She saw it all so clearly.
But if she couldn’t find the bathroom, it didn’t matter. It was already so dark outside. She went to one of the windows and looked out, but couldn’t see more than five feet. It was too early to be this dark. You’d think there would be lights on the grounds in case the kids were outside after dark, but there was nothing out there. She couldn’t even see by moonlight. Maybe there were tall trees blocking it, or clouds.
She heard voices. An argument coming from upstairs. Two of the girls, maybe, arguing in the hallway?
She’d only been here a few hours and only knew the names of her girls, and now June; she didn’t recognize the voices yet. She’d find the bathroom in a minute, she decided. She’d been hired to look after them and this was part of that job.
Mandy went up the stairs, rounded the landing and up the second flight. The voices were louder, but she didn’t see anyone and although she knew they had to hear her coming, the girls didn’t stop fighting and retreat to their rooms.
She got to the second floor and stopped. It smelled like a backed up sewer line, that hollow garbage stench that made her think of old coffee filters and empty fish stick boxes with that slimy feel to the cardboard.
There was no one here. She thought of the ghosts and remembered Mr. Winters saying something about two voices fighting, but never being able to tell what they were saying. It was one thing to hear the stories from the outside, she thought, but a whole different story once she was in the building and faced with the reality.
“I’m so not going to like this whole ghost business,” she said under her breath.
The girls started yelling at each other, but from further down the hall.
“Girls?” she asked, calling down the hall, hoping she was after two live girls who were so distracted they didn’t notice her. She didn’t see anyone, but she was still unfamiliar with the building’s nooks and crannies and there could be literally any number of alcoves and shadows she didn’t know about. At this point, she kept telling herself, just because she didn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there.
“Girls, is everything okay up here?”
She went down the hall and the voices kept bickering. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, which was disorienting. Whatever it was they were arguing about, it sounded pretty serious. The voices got louder and more heated and Mandy was surprised no one came out of their rooms to calm them down. Then again, it wasn’t their job, was it? But from what she’d seen so far, the kids here seemed to have formed some pretty tight bonds, so surely someone would have come to break up the argument. Then again, no one stepped in when those two were beating the piss out of each other in the cafeteria, either. Maybe it was a “you mind your business and I’ll mind mine” mentality.
The lights on the second floor were even worse than downstairs. The rooms appeared to have small lights placed outside them, over the doorways, but the illumination they provided seemed to spread no further than a foot from the source, leaving the rest of the hall in darkness.
It was chilly up here and she wished she had a jacket.
She couldn’t tell anymore which side of the hall the girls were on, so she moved to the middle of the floor and walked its length, keeping her eyes open on both sides of her. The voices sounded like they couldn’t be more than a few doors down. But it also felt like, no matter how far she went, how many steps Mandy took, she was gaining no distance at all.
She counted her steps and stopped when she hit twenty. Then she turned around very slowly, out of hesitation and uncertainty, and from trying to stave off the disappointment she felt was inevitable.
She looked behind her and immediately wanted to run down the stairs, into the light, and find as many people as she could. Because she knew she’d been up here a few minutes, she counted those twenty steps. But the stairs were still right behind her, no more than five feet away.
Mr Winters’s voice spoke to her again. They can’t hurt you. They’re just unspent energy.
That’s all well and good, Mandy thought, but how does that explain me being in almost the same place I was a few minutes ago?
She had that sense of trying to run in a dream, and for a moment she felt with all the certainty in the world that even if she tried to run down the stairs, they would just go on and on and she’d never reach the bottom and whatever it was she’d felt watching her in the cafeteria, she knew she’d feel it coming down the stairs right behind her. It wouldn’t touch her. It wouldn’t even breathe on her neck. But it would be there and Mandy would find herself unable to turn around and look.
The voices were screaming at each other now, but she still couldn’t make out a single word. It all came through as gibberish, and that dreamlike feeling of unreality continued. She kept walking. She passed an open door and she looked inside but the room showed only black in return, a deep pit of nothing from which Mandy half expected screaming skeletons to come flying out at her. If that did in fact turn out to be one of the ghosts she had to contend with, they could take this job and stick it up their asses, she thought.
In fact, if she could just find the voices and confirm whether they were or were not girls she was actually responsible for, she could get the hell out of here. It was only her first day, but they still had a full staff and surely they’d understand if she was a little freaked out on her first night and had to make it a half day.
Half day? she thought. You’ve been here two hours. Bail this soon and you might as well start looking for another job.
“Girls!” she called down the hall, trying to force her voice between then and break them up. “Come on out, we’ll go downstairs and work this out.”
The voices went on yelling at each other. She passed two more rooms, the doors closed, but decided not to turn around and see if she’d made any progress down the hall. Focus and keep going, she thought.
The sound of her feet on the floor echoed around her and the air carried a dusty scent.
The other end of the hall didn’t appear to be getting any closer, and the voices also didn’t sound as if she were almost in front of them. She decided to run.
Mandy took off down the hall, toward the sound of the voices and that dream quality returned. Her body felt made of lead, too heavy to gain any speed and although she counted a total of six doors she passed, three on each side, the darkness in front of her remained, the end of the hallway felt no closer and Mandy’s heart felt like it couldn’t possibly beat any harder without bursting.
“Girls!” she yelled one more time, “stop fighting and come with me!”
She stopped short when suddenly the end of the hall was directly in front of her; she’d almost ran right into it. She turned, looked, knew suddenly there was no one here. She still heard them loud and clear, but they were behind her now, almost close enough to touch, but Mandy was alone in the hallway.
She looked at the spot the voices came from, an open doorway at this end. She knew without going into the room that there was no one in there, and now the voices were no longer screaming, they were shrieking. Whatever had happened in there, someone was about to ge
t their ass handed to them.
Before she could envision what may have gone down, one of the voices was cut off, followed by a loud thump and a smack, like something hitting the wall. A roar came from the room, then a crash, and Mandy took off running again, this time for the stairs.
She prayed it didn’t take as long to get there as it had coming up the first time, and it didn’t. She hit the stairs in seconds, then ran down them, almost going too fast and tripping, but she managed to get her balance by grabbing the rail and made her way safely to the first floor. She took off down the hall again, the need to pee forgotten, and headed back for the cafeteria. She couldn’t have been gone long, and maybe she’d find Jane still there, or maybe Lynn had come back. She just needed company, someone living and sane, anyone would do.
The cafeteria was empty, though. The lights were out, everything was cleaned and put away.
How long was I gone, she wondered. I just left a few minutes ago.
She went back out to the hall and looked up and down both ways, trying to think where they would be. The common room, she thought. But before she went that direction, she heard a voice from the other way, near the front of the building.
She went toward Mr. Winters’s office The door was closed, but she could see the light was on. Movement came from inside, voices. They were muffled, so she couldn’t make out what Lynn was saying, but at least Mandy knew where she was. She stood outside the office and decided to wait.
She glanced up toward the stairs, almost expecting to see disfigured remains crawling down them, the result of whatever had happened to whomever had been arguing upstairs. The ghosts couldn’t hurt her, but they could sure as hell creep the fuck out of her.
Nothing came down the stairs.
Movement across the hall caught her attention and she looked to see the little boy reading his book, sitting quietly, minding his own business.
Mandy looked at the office again, wondering how long Lynn would be, but she saw the light was out and there was no one in there.
The Ghosts of Mertland (An Angel Hill novel) Page 5