Ghost Town: A Novella

by Mark Lukens

  “It feels like someone’s watching us,” Beth told the group. Now that Tony had walked away from them to check out the buildings to their left, she felt more relaxed.

  “She’s right,” Carla agreed. “It does feel like someone’s watching us.”

  Tony ignored the others as he hopped up onto a wooden walkway and strolled down the deck underneath a wood awning. He went right for a door and tried to open it, but it was locked. He hurried down to the next door and tried that one.

  Locked.

  He turned back to the others who were still huddled together in the middle of the dusty street.

  “These doors are locked!” Tony shouted at them. “Who locks doors in a ghost town?”

  Nobody had an answer for him.

  Tony moved over to the window closest to the door and cupped his hands to the sides of his face and peered through the glass.

  “You see anything?” Adam asked him.

  “Nope. Looks empty inside.”

  Tony moved down to the next building and tried the door to that one. It was locked. He looked down at the edge of the wood deck he stood on and spotted a softball-sized rock. He jumped down and picked it up.

  “I know how we can get inside,” Tony said as he cocked his arm back to throw the rock.

  Eugene watched Tony with alarm. “Wait a minute, Tony!”

  Tony didn’t listen. He hurled the rock at the window. The rock smacked into the glass and bounced right off of it; the rock landed down on the wood deck and rolled away. The glass windows didn’t even have a crack in them.

  “What the fuck?” Tony whispered.

  Adam stared at Eugene. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

  They all waited for Eugene’s answer, but then they heard another sound—a soft, thumping noise from across the street. It was coming from the hotel. One of the two double doors, which had been fancy at one time, creaked open and then thumped back closed from the hot breeze. Then the door creaked open again, standing open all the way now like it was inviting them inside its black rectangular mouth.

  They all hurried across the dusty street and gathered on the wooden walkway underneath the wood awning, all of them out of the sun for the first time in hours.

  “You think someone opened that door?” Carla asked.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Adam said. He glanced at the others and then entered the hotel.

  The others looked at each other, about to follow Adam inside.

  Three seconds later Adam came back into the doorway and stared at them with wide eyes and a crooked smile.

  “Come on in,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They all entered the murky hotel.

  It took Beth a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then the room began to swim into focus for her. The bright rectangle of sunlight flooded in behind her through the doorway they had just walked through.

  They stood in a gigantic room that looked like it used to be the hotel lobby a long time ago. To their left, set in a wood-plank wall, was a doorway with a set of wooden steps that led upstairs into darkness. To their far right was a fancy counter that ran nearly the length of that wall. Behind the counter were rows of little wooden cubicles that the hotel workers would’ve stuffed messages into. Along the shadowy perimeter all around the room was a collection of old furniture stacked up on top of each other haphazardly. Some of the furniture was hidden under dusty old sheets and pieces of canvas, some of the furniture was broken, and a lot of it was draped with cobwebs. There were even a few rusty old appliances among the piles of furniture.

  And right in the middle of the large room was a newer-looking dining room table with six chairs seated around it like it had been set up for them.

  “Holy shit,” Tony said as he stared at the room, trying to take in everything at once.

  “Watch out for rattlesnakes and scorpions,” Adam warned.

  “Look at that,” Carla whispered.

  She and Tony stared at the counter on the other side of the room, and they both saw the same thing—an old-fashioned black telephone sitting on the countertop.

  Carla and Tony raced for the phone.

  But something else caught Adam’s attention; an old white refrigerator that sat against the wall near a window that looked out onto the wooden walkway.

  “I don’t believe it,” he whispered.

  The refrigerator looked like an old model, maybe from the sixties or seventies. He had to navigate his way around some more discarded furniture and stacks of old crates, but then he stood in front of it, and leaned in close like he was listening, trying to tell if it was running.

  Ray plopped down in one of the chairs at the table and sighed with relief.

  Eugene and Beth waited near the front door, watching Carla and Tony fight over the telephone.

  Carla got to the phone first and picked up the receiver. She listened for a second and then her face fell slack. “Hello?” she said into the phone.

  She handed the phone to Tony. “There’s no dial tone.”

  Tony had to listen for himself. He held the phone up to his ear and slapped at the hang-up button over and over again.

  Adam stood in front of the beast of a refrigerator, hesitating another moment like he dared to hope there might be something inside. The refrigerator only had one massive door with a metal handle crusted with splotches of rust. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

  And then he exhaled and smiled as he stared at the only items inside the refrigerator—plastic bottles of water sitting on the metal shelves.

  “What is it, Adam?” Eugene asked him. “You find something?”

  Adam couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah. I think we’re going to be okay now.”

  Eugene and Beth started walking towards Adam, watching him reach inside the open refrigerator.

  Adam froze suddenly as his hand brushed the metal rack inside and there was an instant thrum of electricity. A split-second later smoke poured out from the refrigerator as Adam’s body shook, all of his muscles tense, his veins bulging, his skin turning black and beginning to smoke.

  There was a loud popping noise and Adam’s body was thrown back from the refrigerator. He collided with a stack of crates and landed on the wood floor on his back, his burnt skin smoldering, his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, his mouth wide open in a silent howl.

  Beth screamed and she was afraid to move any closer to Adam’s body.

  The others were too shocked for a moment, but then Tony and Carla rushed over to Adam and stared down at him.

  Smoke drifted out of the refrigerator. The room smelled like ozone and charred flesh.

  “Is … is he dead?” Beth asked, choking back tears.

  “I don’t know,” Tony said. “I think so.”

  Carla held her nose as she stared down at Adam. “He can’t be alive anymore. No way.”

  Eugene stood beside Tony and Carla and shook his head in disbelief. “It was a trap.”

  Beth turned away from the others. She needed to do something to help. She walked over to the stacks of furniture on the other side of the room to get one of the canvas sheets that was covering a table. She was about to grab the sheet of canvas when she jumped from Tony’s shout.

  “What the hell are you doing, lady?!”

  Beth turned and stared at Tony. Everybody was watching her. “I … I was …”

  “Leave her alone,” Carla told Tony. “She can do what she wants to.”

  Beth inhaled a breath and forced herself to talk. “I was going to get a sheet to cover him up with.”

  “I was just trying to stop her,” Tony said to Carla. “If there are traps in this place, then we shouldn’t be messing around with anything.”

  “Tony’s right,” Eugene said. “This place could be full of traps.”

  Beth looked at the canvas sheet for a moment, but she left it alone. She walked back to the group.

  Tony turned his atte
ntion away from Adam and focused on the refrigerator.

  Carla watched him. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking at it,” he told her. “We still need to get that water.”

  Tony moved around to the side of the refrigerator and peeked at the back that was shoved up against the planked wall. “It’s plugged into an outlet,” he told them. “So there’s got to be power here in this town somewhere.”

  “Or there was,” Carla said. “Maybe Adam blew the breaker.”

  Tony thought for a second, and then looked around at the room. He hurried behind the counter, being careful with his steps. He saw a few pieces of wood scattered on the floor. He grabbed one of them and brought it back to the refrigerator.

  Eugene adjusted his glasses as he stared at the refrigerator with its door wide open. The smoke had stopped pouring out of the refrigerator and off of Adam’s body; the smoke was beginning to dissipate, drifting out through the double doors, out into the dusty street. But the smell of burnt flesh was still just as strong.

  “Maybe we should try and unplug it,” Eugene said.

  Carla looked at him. “Go ahead. I’m not touching that thing.”

  Eugene looked at Carla, but he didn’t respond.

  Tony stood in front of the refrigerator with the stick of wood in his hand and hesitated for a moment, taking a deep breath. Then he pointed the stick at the open door, inching it closer and closer to the door.

  He touched the end of the stick to the metal.

  Tony flinched back—but he was okay; he hadn’t been electrocuted.

  Ray got up from the table and shuffled over to them, watching them with interest.

  Tony snorted in a big sniffle as he held the stick in his hand. “Wood is not a good conductor of electricity,” he told them.

  “What are you, some kind of electrician?” Carla asked him.

  “I’ve done a lot of things,” Tony said.

  Tony took a step back and tossed his stick at the refrigerator. It hit the metal shelves inside the refrigerator and bounced off and fell down to the floor. The stick hit one of the bottles of water and it teetered back and forth on the edge of the shelf for a moment, but it didn’t fall.

  They all watched as Tony picked up the stick from the floor, ready for another try. He turned and looked at Ray, offering him the stick. “You wanna try? You’re the thirstiest.”

  Ray shook his head no. His mouth was hung open and slack, but his dull eyes were focused on the plastic bottles of water and he licked his dry lips.

  Tony turned back to the open refrigerator, a new determination on his face now. He wiped at his mouth with his shirt sleeve and sniffed in a loud a snort. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m gonna try it.”

  Tony inched the stick inside the refrigerator, his hand and arm trembling. And just as he touched one of the bottles of water with the end of his stick—

  “Bam!!” Ray screamed and laughed.

  Tony dropped the stick and screamed. He backed away from the refrigerator as two bottles of water fell off the shelf and dropped to the wood floor.

  Everyone had backed up from Ray’s scream.

  Ray laughed at his own joke. Tony whirled around and grabbed fistfuls of Ray’s shirts. He pushed the large man back towards the long counter.

  “Stop it, Tony!” Carla screeched.

  Tony’s face was a mask of rage as he pressed Ray against the counter, bending him backwards. “You think that’s funny, retard?”

  Ray tried to answer, but he could only stammer as his eyeballs bulged with fear.

  Carla rushed over to Tony and tried to pull him off of Ray. “Don’t, Tony! He’s slow! He was just trying to be funny!”

  Her words sank in. Tony let go of Ray and backed away from him. He stared at Ray, breathing hard, his hands still clenched into fists.

  Carla watched Tony like someone would watch an unpredictable animal. “He doesn’t know any better,” she told Tony in a low voice, trying to calm him down.

  “We don’t need any jokes right now,” Tony growled. “None of this is a laughing matter. We got a fucking dead guy over there on the floor.”

  “He doesn’t know any better,” Carla repeated, her dark eyes still on Tony.

  Ray lowered his head in shame and almost crumbled to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to be funny.”

  “It’s okay,” Carla told Ray, but her eyes were still on Tony. “Normally that would be okay. But right now that kind of thing isn’t funny. We have to be serious right now, Ray. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Ray lifted his head and stared at Carla. He nodded yes.

  Tony huffed out a breath and walked back over to the open refrigerator and picked up the two bottles of water from the floor. He opened one of the bottles and drained the whole thing down.

  The others watched him as he drank the water.

  “You’re not going to share?” Carla asked him.

  “I got these out. You can get your own out.”

  Carla’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. I’ll get the rest out for us.”

  “Go ahead, hero,” Tony said to Carla, but then he stared at Ray as he opened the next bottle of water. “This is so good, Ray.”

  Ray looked at Tony for a moment, but then he averted his gaze and stared down at the floor.

  Carla gave Tony a disgusted look as she picked up the stick from the floor. She stood in front of the open refrigerator and braced herself. She jabbed the stick in at the bottles of water, careful not to touch anything else. She swiped at them and knocked two more out onto the floor.

  “The power must be out,” Carla said. “Adam must’ve shorted it out.”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Tony said and snorted out a mean chuckle.

  Carla ignored Tony’s comment as she concentrated on knocking out the last of the bottles of water.

  Beth ducked down beside Carla and gathered up the bottles of water in her arms. They were cold against her skin—she’d never felt anything so good. She brought the bottles over to the dining room table in the middle of the room and set them down.

  Eugene came over to the table and picked up one of the bottles, studying it.

  “Come on over here, Ray,” Beth said.

  Ray shuffled across the floor to the table and took the bottle of water Beth offered.

  “You have to drink it slowly,” she told Ray.

  Ray nodded and opened the bottle. But he downed the whole bottle of water in a few swallows. He looked at Beth sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I was real thirsty.”

  Carla brought the rest of the bottles of water to the table. She opened one of them and sipped it. She swished the water around in her mouth, savoring it like fine wine, and then she swallowed it.

  Beth drank half a bottle down and smiled. “I never thought plain old water would ever taste this good.”

  Beth and Carla both looked at Eugene who stood by the table with the bottle of water in his hand. He raised it up towards the open front door and stared at the light filtering through it.

  “What are you doing?” Carla said. “Why aren’t you drinking any of the water?”

  “Any of you ever stop to think that this water might be poisoned?” Eugene asked them.

  Tony drained the rest of his bottle of water. “Right now, I don’t care. I think I’d rather die of poison than thirst.”

  Carla eyed Eugene. “Why would you say that?”

  “Somebody rigged that refrigerator to electrocute someone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It had to have been rigged. People don’t just reach inside a refrigerator and get electrocuted. And look at Adam. He’s fried. That’s way more power than an ordinary outlet would put out.”

  Tony walked over to the table to join them. “You sure seem to know a lot about what’s going on here.”

  “Like I said before, I’m just trying to be logical. Whoever brought us out here to the desert wanted us to find this ghost town. They
wanted us inside this hotel. All of the other windows seem to be unbreakable and the doors are locked. But the door to this place was wide open, inviting us right in.”

  “Take a drink of your water,” Carla growled.

  “They’ve supplied us with the bare essentials,” Eugene continued, ignoring Carla’s command. “Water, but no food. Just enough for us to survive and that’s all.”

  Carla slammed her fist down on the table top and made Eugene jump. “I said drink the fucking water, Eugene.”

  Eugene stared at Carla for a moment, and then he glanced at the others. He unscrewed the plastic cap on the bottle of water, breaking the seal. He threw the cap on the table top and drank down a third of the water in a few gulps. He looked at Carla. “Satisfied?”

  “Not yet.”

  Tony looked across the room at the phone sitting on top of the long counter. “What about the phone?” he asked. “You guys think it’s some kind of trap?”

  No one answered.

  Tony set his empty bottle down on the table and walked over to the counter and stood in front of the telephone. He studied it for a long moment, letting his eyes roam along the cord that ran down behind the counter. Then he went behind the counter, choosing his steps carefully. He studied the black cord, and then squatted down behind the bar for a moment, out of sight from the others.

  He stood back up and looked at the others. “This cord isn’t connected to anything.”

  Carla pulled out a chair from the table and sat down as Tony searched for a phone jack. But he came up empty and came back out from behind the counter.

  Eugene, Ray, and Beth sat down at the table. Beth’s legs throbbed from the long walk and it felt good to rest her body for a moment, but her mind was buzzing with panic. There was something wrong with this place. Windows that didn’t break. Locked doors. Booby traps. Modern-day appliances in a ghost town.

  “We need to figure out who brought us here,” Carla said. “We need to figure out what they want.”

  Tony stomped across the wood floor to the table and plopped down in the chair at the head of the table. “This is fucked up,” he whispered.

  “We need to figure out why we’re here,” Carla continued. “There has to be a reason why we’re here. Why us?”