Ghost Program

by Marion Desaulniers

  “I’m sure the man’s harmless. Maybe he belongs to some weird cult, and your software is just feeding his delusions.”

  “You didn’t see the look on his face. He looked so smug.”

  “There’s no Dark Lord.”

  “Could it be some kind of Seaside myth?”

  “Ask around. Google it. But yes, it’s likely that the Dark Lord is myth, urban legend. Wishful thinking on your teacher’s part.”

  “You changed your mind about spending the summer with me?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Unless you have.”

  “No. It’ll be fun. I’ll be glad to get away from my house. Too many weird things going on there.”

  “Don’t bring them to Seattle.”

  “I’m planning on leaving them at home, remember? What did mom say when you went downstairs this morning?”

  “There was no one awake, Sam. I left before anyone had gotten up.”

  “Dad didn’t make it home last night. He stayed at a motel. I guess the road was closed for hours.”

  “Musta been. The whole city looks trashed. Tree branches and garbage everywhere. I’m surprised things are moving as well as they are.”

  “I’m afraid to take a shower.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could help. Why don’t you use the bathroom in the master bedroom downstairs?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sure. And you wouldn’t have to shower. You could take a bath instead.”

  The shower in my folks’ room was separate from their jacuzzi bath.

  “It’s my parents’ tub. Not sure I want to bathe in it or how clean it is. I liked the upstairs bath. Until yesterday. It was mine alone, my personal space that no one trespassed in. Now I can’t stand being there.”

  “Bring a friend with you while you shower.”

  “I’m sure you’d like that. Come to my house and watch me shower.”

  “Maybe a girlfriend could come over.”

  “Then she’d wonder why I want her to see me shower. She’d think I was some kind of pervert.”

  “You could tell her why.”

  I didn’t want to.

  “I have a better idea. I’ll call Mel and ask if I can stay the night with her. Then I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself.”

  “It’s not your fault. I mean, you shouldn’t feel embarrassed that someone broke in your house...”

  “It wasn’t someone,” I said. “It was something. And you know it, so don’t say you don’t. I’m not about to go telling my friends that I’m being attacked by the dead. Then they’ll stop calling me. They won’t tell me why, but I’ll know. I don’t want to be that person. Besides, I have this dread, you know, that if I keep talking about Him, He’ll come back. Like I may be summoning Him.”

  “Sorry, just trying to help.”

  “Why am I being bothered at all? I haven’t got anything for them. You know, the ghosts. There’s nothing I can do for them.”

  “They’re probably just tired of being ignored all these years, and you’re an outlet. They’re no longer silenced or unable to communicate. They’re seeking you out because they know you spoke to Gregg, and word spread around.”

  “So what.... do they gossip about me, the dead that is? Is that what happens when we die, we just hang out with all the other unlucky souls at Starbucks or a local bar, wondering when the living will know we’re there with them? Wondering when they’ll see us? Sounds awful depressing to me.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t died yet.” He chuckled. “If I do die, I’ll be sure to visit your house and let you know.”

  “Oh God, don’t say that. Don’t even joke about it. It’s unlucky. I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t have that many close friends. You’ve become so precious to me.”

  “And just think, we were only distant acquaintances till yesterday.”

  “We weren’t so distant,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you much. Hell, mostly I’d come to your house just so you could pay me. Just a job, I never thought you saw me as anything other than the hired help.”

  “You’re good at what you do. The students you tutor, I’m sure they appreciate you more than they let on.”

  “I could help you everyday if you came to city.”

  “I know.”

  There was another awkward silence. I silently cursed myself for not starting my first year at university. Why did I think it’d be easier to spend a year at my parent’s house? If anything, it had stifled me.

  “Sam?” asked Brent. “Don’t spend too much time alone. I worry about you. It’s safer for you be with someone, even if it’s just your mom.”

  “But she’s crazy. If I chilled with her all day, I’d probably start acting crazy, too.”

  “You could help her shop for groceries or something. It’s just for two weeks. You shouldn’t be in that big house alone. The next time something happens, Gregg may not be there. What are you gonna do this afternoon?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe get some lunch, then go work out. And I sometimes head to the library to get homework done. I sure don’t have to go home.”

  “That sounds like a plan. I’m gonna go get a couple tacos from this great stand a block from my apartment.”

  “Is that where you are, your apartment?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Brent.”

  “Bye. Call soon,” he said.

  I clicked off the phone. I wasn’t much hungry but I started the small car and drove to a deli across the street where I ordered a ham sandwich and café au lait. I could’ve have eaten in my car, but the restaurant was pleasant and filled with people on their lunch break. I took a seat with an ocean view, and from there I could watch the ocean liners and sailboats floating around in the water. I watched two seagulls fighting over a mussel and sighed. Seaside today looked nothing like it had yesterday. I was surprised that the sailboats hadn’t been wrecked in the storm and realized that people who lived here possessed an unnatural resiliency to the forces of nature.

  I finished my sandwich and brought my plate to the counter. Pushing open the heavy door of the restaurant, I stopped dead in my tracks. In the far corner of the shopping complex was an outdoor espresso stand. And who should be standing in line, waiting to order, but Mr. Breame himself? Yes, he was ordering coffee from the same strip mall sidewalk on which I stood.

  I’d seen him leaving class a couple of times and knew his car. It was a turquoise Nissan. And that Nissan was parked two stalls down from my car. Out of curiosity, I walked towards it and looked through its window. Taking a deep breath, I yanked on the passenger door handle, certain that the door would be locked, but it surprised me by opening. Mr. Breame had left it unlocked the way people do in a small town if they’re only going to be out of their car for a few minutes. I nervously glanced towards him, but he was studying the coffee stand menu and didn’t see me. His little plastic box was on the seat, and I opened it, finding my thumb drive inside along with some of his personal disks and a calculator. I snatched at the thumb drive and shoved it in my pocket, then bumped the door shut with my hip. I was afraid of what this would do to my grade if Mr. Breame found out the thumb drive was gone but more afraid of whatever evil he planned on creating with it. I couldn’t let him have Casper until I knew who or what the Dark Lord was and if he posed any real threat.

  Mr. Breame. Suddenly I loathed him, I feared him. What kind of man was he? What secrets did he have to hide? I jumped in my little car and peeled out of the shopping mall parking lot, heading for the athletic club. I kept a locker there with a towel, swimsuit, and some workout clothes so I wouldn’t have to stop by the house. I needed to go somewhere I could relax and forget about Casper software and English term papers for awhile. Besides, they had warm showers.

  I reached the club fifteen minutes later and maneuvered the Toyota into a parking space, patting the pocket of my sweatpants to make sure my thumb drive was still in there. I entered the athletic club doorway
, found the front desk, smiled at the clerk and showed her my card, and made my way towards the locker rooms, whistling a tune until I found the locker that belonged to me. I pulled my swimsuit out of the small space and dressed into it, placing my outside clothes in the locker after I folded them carefully, then setting my Nikes on the upper shelf. After a quick shower, I pulled on my swim cap and made my way to the swimming pool. The pool room was warm and inviting with creme painted walls and a palm tree in every corner.

  I entered a pool lane and began to swim laps, pacing myself so I wouldn’t become tired, the chlorinated water massaging my tense muscles and easing my tensions and fears. I’d always believed swimming to be therapy for the body and the soul, and the way I felt now in the warm water proved my theory right.

  After swimming for twenty minutes, I pulled my dripping body out of the pool and headed for the jacuzzi, sticking my legs and then my hips into the stiflingly hot water. I’d always heard people did sex stuff in jacuzzis, but I’d never met anyone who had done those things in real life. In truth, it was a little too hot in the club jacuzzi to get those kinds of feelings, but the water did relax me, and it got rid of all the little niggling pains in my body. I stayed in the hot tub for a good half an hour then decided to make my way back to the locker room.

  After drying myself off with my towel, I glanced towards the entrance to the women’s locker room and saw a woman cleaning the tile floor with a mop. Sighing, I realized that I would have to go around the long way back to the locker room, back the way I’d come in from outside. I grabbed my towel and left the pool room for the carpeted hallway.

  As I walked the narrow passage, a tall man carrying a tennis racket smiled at me as he sauntered in my direction. He looked around thirty, had short, curly hair, and as I stepped close to him, he blocked my path instead of moving out of my way.

  “Excuse me,” I said while trying to move around him.

  He took a step sideways and blocked my path again. “Miss, I just needed to have a word with you,” he said.

  I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I wore a skimpy swimsuit and nothing else and that the stranger’s eyes gazed lower than my face.

  “I was wondering, you know, if you wanted to go up to the restaurant, let me buy you a burger. Maybe a martini.”

  “I’m not old enough to drink,” I said.

  “Well, a Pepsi.”

  “I’m sorry, but....I’m taken.”

  “I don’t see a ring.”

  “Well, I’m not married.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Please, nice to have met you, but I’m not interested. Let me by.” I said.

  He smiled, but the smile looked angry, and he grabbed my wrist. “No reason why you have to be such a bitch. I asked you nicely, didn’t I ask you nicely? Sure I did. But you brush me off?”

  A whimpering noise came out of the back of my throat as he squeezed my wrist with a painfully intense amount of pressure.

  “Please let me by,” I repeated.

  “I think someone should teach you to be nice,” he said, not releasing me.

  Panicked, I looked up and down the hallway. Someone will come by and see this, I thought.

  Sure enough, a mother with two kids came ambling our way. The man let go of my wrist, and I ran past him to the locker room, my eyes beginning to fill with tears. What is wrong with the people in this town? Suddenly, everyone is insane. I found my locker, then sat down on the bench next to it wiping saltwater from my cheeks and feeling hopelessly lonesome. Things are going to change. As soon as I get out of this two horse town. And no way am I coming back.

  ❃ CHAPTER 9 ❃

  My bright mood swiftly assassinated, I no longer had much desire to do anything but drive home, a move which left me without the prospect of facing anymore hostile mortals. The highway had few cars on it that afternoon, save for a few semi-trailers rumbling on their way to the mountain pass.

  I drove cautiously down the debris-strewn road, my hands tightly gripping the wheel, eyes fixed in front of me, traveling that rural route unaffected by the chronic congestion of I-5 while trying my best to get rid of the knotted feeling in my stomach and the anxiety I felt in my head, casting paranoid glances towards the road shoulders and my rearview mirror, a mirror that now displayed the reflection of a speeding black SUV quickly gaining on me as it moved into the passing lane to overtake my car, and I grew worried when it didn’t overtake me at all, but pulled up alongside me to block my escape.

  No! Fuck!

  I straightened the steering wheel to keep from plowing through the guardrail when I felt a jolt as the black truck’s panel smacked the side of my much smaller car. Flooring the accelerator, my car lurched ahead of the preying SUV, and I felt my pounding heart slam into my mouth as it again caught up alongside me and nudged me off the road, an invisible driver mocking my weak attempts at self-preservation behind the truck’s forbidding, black-tinted windows. I heard someone cry in anguish and realized a moment later that it was me; I wept for I knew today I would die.

  The monstrous truck rammed the driver’s side door of my Toyota, and my car veered out of control as it spun sideways, thick, black smoke radiating from skid marks burned into gray pavement. At that instant, my windshield crumpled; I felt the rough, raw touch of pine branches and broken glass on my face and arms, and my world went dark.

  *****

  Sometime later I opened my eyes and felt a trickle of warm blood running down my cheek, saw the black leather cover of a van seat and a large, leering man with a grin like a Cheshire cat who was obviously somehow intimately connected to my unfortunate and violent encounter on the highway. Too weak to move, I let out a low moan.

  “Sleeping Beauty wakes up,” he said.

  “No, no,” said another male voice. “Not yet.”

  My beaten head lay still and helpless on the rumbling seat cushion, and I resigned myself to whatever nightmare the Fates had in store for me as I felt a needling pinprick on my arm which sent me into a world of visions and fantasies, deep into that unconscious realm of involuntary delusion. I slept for a long time. Strange dreams jarred my sanity, pale-faced ghouls chased me down dark, winding staircases, cold hands groped my shoulders, breasts, and hips, unknown villains laughed as I cried, and a chorus of jeering, hysterical utterances promised me no escape.

  *****

  I didn’t know what it meant to hurt until the day they took me. Confusedly, anxiously, I opened my eyes, causing bright light to flood my sensitive pupils and set off small explosions of misery in my face and jaw. I struggled to keep from vomiting. It wasn’t easy, the surface I lay on swayed back and forth as if alive, the odd sideways movements and sudden dips striking me in the pit of my stomach. I carefully breathed in shallow, even pants, trying not move my throbbing frame, wishing my searing headache away, and holding my eyes tightly shut to block out the searing daylight. Dying would have been an easier trial than the wretched purgatory I suffered.

  A fog horn blared from some unseen location, and I thought I heard the cry of a hungry seagull. I tried to comfort myself by wrapping my arms around my cold middle and found that I couldn’t; something restrained their movement, holding them above my head. My right ankle throbbed, and I was certain that if I somehow was able to stand, it couldn’t support my weight.

  I knew that I was near water; I could hear the lap-lap-lap of waves, smell the salty, rotten stink of the sea. Maybe my captors had left me on an abandoned ship, figuring that eventually I’d float to China where strange-speaking foreigners would discover my well-traveled corpse. Struggling to control my pain and rising nervousness, I continued to focus all my efforts on inhaling and exhaling the moist, cool air of my surroundings, hoping that sleep would reclaim me. For the next few hours, I bobbed in and out of consciousness, my periods of rest punctuated by long stretches of restlessness and fear. I didn’t waken fully until nightfall, when the soft moonlight failed to produce the severe pain and nausea that sunlight had, and I
was finally free to discover my bleak, dim surroundings.

  My bed was a thin, rubber mattress set on a smooth, grey carpet, and above me a porthole window let in pungent, cool sea air. Every so often a bright light would pass through the tiny window; I knew it was a lighthouse beacon, and relief flooded through me for I knew I wouldn’t have seen that if I was halfway to China.

  Although I couldn’t hear the purr of its motor, I guessed that I was on a small yacht or fishing vessel, maybe a sleek, new model like the boats I’d see at the marina by my college. What anyone could want from me that they had to turn my cherished little car into tinfoil, I didn’t know. My family possessed no wealth, and I had no known enemies save for creepy guy, and I was sure He didn’t own a yacht. I thought of the crazy Mr. Breame I had imagined in my sleep, but community college instructors didn’t make the kind of dough this boat would have cost.

  Anyway, I was pretty sure I still had my clothes on. That ruled out being taken by a pervert. Didn’t it? I thought so. The only part of my outfit missing was my shoes.

  I twisted a little sideways so I could judge my predicament, the pale, feminine moonlight aiding my discovery while my body shook from the cold. My wrists appeared to be tied together over my head with a bit of tightly wound twine and hooked to the handle of a locked cabinet which had been built into the wall. Lifejackets hung on pegs, and I made a sound like a dry laugh. It stuck a little in my throat. Would my captor have the courtesy to provide me with a life jacket if the boat should sink? No, I guessed not. Probably wasn’t one of their privileged guests.