Ghostland

by Duncan Ralston

  The books were also unrelentingly bleak. Where writers like King and Koontz often had upbeat endings, Garrote seemed to prefer grim. The few victories his characters found were only ever no-win situations, the casualties so high and the toll on the main characters so devastating that even winning felt like a loss. Out of Garrote's twenty-six novels, only three had what could properly be called a "happy" ending. Of those, the outcome of two were ambiguous at best.

  Even most of the old television episodes ended with a decapitation or a vicious mutilation or a Hamlet "everyone dies at the end" scene. Ben suspected this was why Rex Garrote's Ghost World had only lasted a single season. People preferred upbeat endings, where everything was tied up with a nice little bow, at least before the advent of binge-watch TV.

  Garrote despised loose ends, though bows had been much too pretty for his liking. Instead he’d snipped them with blood-drenched garden shears.

  "Garrote seems more interested in scenes of gratuitous exploitation than such tedious trappings as character development and believable plotlines," a New Yorker reviewer had suggested in the late-'90s. This was exactly what Ben had enjoyed about the books. No wasting time building characters or setting the mood, just rocketing straight into blood, guts and sex, gritty characters and grittier settings, with a liberal sprinkling of '70s "jive talk" that often didn't fit the characters. If Ben's parents had gotten any inkling of the kind of stuff he'd been reading, they would have lost their minds.

  During his lifetime, Garrote had been called both "the scariest man in America" and "profoundly disturbed and disturbing" by critics, and following his death it had turned out they were right. In the summer of 1999— the beginning of a renaissance period for horror movies, the year of The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project—the writer's remains had been found cremated within his private library at Garrote House. There had been no sign of a break in, according to the detectives in charge of the investigation. Either the killer had known him and been given access to the house, or the writer had given new meaning to "profoundly disturbed" by burning himself alive.

  Self-immolation, Ben thought as he double-checked the zippered bottom compartment in his backpack. That's about as bleak an ending as you can get.

  He threw the backpack over his shoulder, steeling himself, ready for what came next yet secretly hoping it wouldn't come to that.

  From now on, he would need to be alert. His mom was in the backyard hanging up the wash, and his parents had no idea about his plans. Normally she would be preparing for an open house in the afternoon, but the market had taken a bit of a hit after the Ghostland upsurge. There were no new listings for her to show this weekend and so she was home, which meant Ben would have to sneak out of the house.

  He was under strict rules. No strenuous activities. No excitement. No life.

  And horror… well, his fixation with horror was, to his parents, disturbed.

  If they thought he was disturbed now, he could hardly imagine how they'd feel after today.

  Following his sudden cardiac arrest, he'd narrowly prevented them from burning all of his horror stuff on the back lawn by faking a fainting spell. His mom had taken pity on him, figuring the stress that getting rid of it would cause him wasn't worth the trouble.

  What they didn't understand was that horror comforted him. Ben had once attempted to compare it to driving by a car crash. "Okay yeah," he'd told his mom and dad, "you might see a few mangled bodies, and there's probably gonna be a big explosion at the end, but you're driving by with the doors locked, safe inside."

  His parents hadn't liked the analogy. They also hadn't even appreciated the thought of him driving.

  As he creeped out of his bedroom, he heard his mother coming back inside the house. The bottom stair creaked and his heartbeat felt like thick liquid. He tiptoed toward the front door, twisted the knob ever so slowly and stepped out into the sunshine.

  "Ben?" his mother called from the kitchen. "I thought I asked you to load the dishwasher?"

  Ben closed the door carefully and hurried up the walk. Dr. Wexler's office was less than a mile across town. He'd have to take side streets to avoid bumping into one of his mother's many friends and acquaintances, but with any luck he'd be well inside Ghostland before she even realized he was gone.

  He just hoped he could make it through security with what he had tucked inside his bag.

  Lilian's dad shuffled into the kitchen while she was scraping butter onto a charred piece of toast. She brought it to the small kitchenette table and sat down in front of her mug of black coffee.

  "You're gonna get an ulcer with that breakfast," he said.

  Lilian hummed in reply and blew on the mug's hot contents.

  Hiram Roth sat down beside her, resting his bristly chin on his hands. Without looking up from her coffee, she sensed her father's stare. She knew he would just keep staring at her until she acknowledged him, even if it meant he'd be late for a job.

  "Yes, daddy?" she said in her best I'm-an-innocent-princess voice.

  His lips spread in a goofy smile. "My angel," he said. "Look at you. Grown up so fast. You got your mother's good looks, thank God. Can you imagine that gorgeous face with these eyebrows?"

  Lilian sipped her coffee, trying not to grin.

  "You know, when you were just a little one, Mom and I always told you you'd go on to do great things. We hypnotically suggested it in the crib, I kid you not. Baby Einstein is an amateur compared to your mother and me."

  She couldn't help but chuckle behind her hand.

  "And now here you are, just a few months from graduating. Heading off to college. Oh, to be young again," he said dramatically, channeling his brief high school theater experience. "We're so proud of you, honey. But you know, you don't have to go to UMD just because it's close. Don't be afraid to spread your wings a little."

  "I want to stay here with you and mom."

  He shrugged up his shoulders, giving himself a bushy double chin. "But there's maybe better opportunities for you elsewhere. What about that scholarship? Your zayde went to Stanford, you know."

  "We can't afford Stanford, daddy."

  "The scholarship will cover a good chunk. You could always take out a student loan. Mom and I will cover what we can. We just don't want you to limit yourself, sweetie. Duck Falls is a wonderful little town, but this place—" He made a grabbing gesture with his blistered working man's hands. "—it sucks you in. It's like a black hole. Your mother and I, when we schlepped out here from Baltimore, it was an exciting opportunity for the both of us. A place to lay down roots. When the business folded, we had nothing. Less than nothing. We did the best we could. We provided for you so that you could have more than us, sweetie. Not the same. Not less."

  "Dad…"

  "Don't you Dad me, young lady. I'm not trying to guilt you. I'm just imparting some fatherly words of wisdom."

  He took her hands in his, squeezing them tenderly in his rough palms. His gaze fell on the bracelet they'd gotten for her (Let's be real, Dad got it for me, not Mom, she thought), and he smiled.

  "Don't get your butt stuck in Duck Falls, honey. Mom and I don't regret coming here, not for a day. We could have gone back to Baltimore with our heads hung low when the economy went down the crapper. But we believed, we still believe, raising you here—not pulling you out of school, away from your friends, away from your life—that it was the right thing to do."

  He squeezed her hands once more and let them go. She returned his smile, although the last thing she felt like doing was smiling. Her father had spent the last ten years working odd jobs around town while her mother Maddy busted her hump for tips at the 86 Diner, all so Lilian would never have to experience the minimal discomfort of adapting to new surroundings.

  She felt awful about it, always had. The coffee churned in her empty stomach. Afraid she might vomit if she didn't eat something fast, she wolfed down her toast.

  "You've got my appetite, though," her dad said with a grin, rising from the tabl
e and lifting his gut to fasten the tool belt over his hips. "Okay," he sighed. "Have fun at the spooky park today, sweetie."

  "Doubt it," she muttered.

  "Well, if you can't have fun at least stay safe." He cupped the back of her head and kissed her on the brow. "Love you, sweetie."

  "Love you, Dad," she said, watching him leave.

  As he twiddled his fingers at her through the apartment doorway, a sudden inexplicable thought struck her, causing her hand to quiver and slop the contents of the mug.

  What if this is the last time I see him?

  No reason at all to think he would die on the job, nor that something might happen to her at the "spooky park." It was just an awful, unshakeable thought, one of many "intrusive morbid thoughts," as Dr. Wexler called them, that she'd experienced ever since Ben had almost died.

  But this one… it felt prophetic somehow. Like she should heed its warning.

  You're just scaring yourself, she thought. Trying to convince yourself not to go today. Just suck it up, Dorothy. In a few hours you'll be home again.

  Determined to push through her anxiety and confront her fears, if only to prove Dr. Wexler wrong, Lilian got up from the table, poured the rest of her coffee down the sink, and headed to her room to get ready.

  #GHOSTSRPEOPLE2

  LIL AND HER therapist were waiting outside the medical center at the western edge of downtown when Ben arrived, and he was already sweating through the underarms of his T-shirt and where his backpack rested. Spring had come on fast and strong in Duck Falls, with summer already close on its heels. He hoped it wouldn't be too hot this year, otherwise he'd have to spend most of the summer in the air-conditioned house. Extreme heat could be harmful for the heart of a normal person. For someone like Ben—A freak, he reminded himself—it could be deadly.

  He hated not being able to do the things "normal" kids did. Just once he would have liked to go cliff diving at The Hole during the summer like other kids his age, to play an organized sport, or have a few beers at a bush party, make out with a girl and get into a stupid drunken accident on a four-wheeler. Normal kids took these things for granted.

  Everyone except for Lil.

  She could do whatever she wanted and actually chose to do nothing. It was one of the main reasons her parents had put her into therapy. On Fridays Ben's mom would let him go to the 86 Diner for lunch, just to get out of the house. He'd spend an hour there, eating a BLT and fries ("Something fatty once a week," his mom often cautioned), and reading a book until Mrs. Roth took her break, at which point she would dispense the latest gossip about her daughter. After lunch he would pack up the second half of the sandwich and take it to Marshland park where he'd watch the ducks, and toss sticks loaded with pine sap into the creek and watch them motor off toward the Potomac. Toward freedom. Somewhere far, far away from Duck Falls that Ben himself would likely never visit.

  Because of his chats with Mrs. Roth—she let him call her Maddy—Ben knew why Lil was seeing Dr. Wexler. He also knew she hadn't agreed to come today because she wanted to catch up with her former best friend. He could deal with that. He could even tolerate her therapist tagging along as chaperone. Ever since he'd heard about Ghostland, he'd wanted—needed—Lil to come with him on opening day. He wouldn't have the courage to do what he needed to do without her. Whether she'd been pressured to come by her parents and therapist or not, she was here and they were going together. It was all that mattered.

  Rex Garrote, dead almost twenty years, was still in that house.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  What exactly was he waiting for? Ben had no idea. What he did know was that none of the dozens of reports of hauntings in Garrote House had ever mentioned the presence of the man himself. Of all the ghosts visitors had claimed to have seen in that house, Rex Garrote had never been among them.

  Except he was there. Because Ben had seen him.

  He needed to prove that to himself as much as to Lil.

  And then he would need her help, to find the dark heart of that house and coax its master out of hiding. He needed his teammate, his partner, this one final time, to get rid of Garrote once and for all.

  Dr. Wexler stepped out of the driver's side as Ben approached the car. He recognized the woman from around town but judging by her profession and her typical attire of primary-colored conservative pantsuits, he'd expected her to drive an expensive foreign sedan. Instead, she drove a blueberry-blue Honda hatchback and wore tight fitting blue jeans, white dock shoes and a loose flower-printed shirt. Her hair, normally in a tight bun, lay in shiny auburn waves over her shoulders.

  Lil remained seated in the back, her head turned from him, just the back of her head visible through the rear window.

  "You must be Benjamin," Dr. Wexler said, extending her long, slender fingers, the nails painted black. "I'm Allison."

  "Ben," he said, shaking her hand. He wasn't sure if he was overheated from the walk or if the therapist just had extremely cold hands. Either way he was glad when she released him from her grip.

  "Sit wherever you like," she said.

  "Can I drive?"

  Dr. Wexler—Allison—smirked. "Anywhere except the driver's seat," she clarified.

  His shoulders slumped. He hadn't expected her to say yes, but she had inadvertently made the offer. He went around the back to open the front passenger door and flopped into the seat, tossing his backpack between his feet. The lighter fluid sloshed with a hollow metallic glug that he hoped no one had heard aside from him.

  Dr. Wexler—Allison, he reminded himself again—sat behind the steering wheel and buckled in. Ben smiled over the back of the seat at Lil. "Hey, Lil. Ian. Lilian," he said, wincing at his awful attempt to cover.

  Lilian gave him a tight smile and rested her chin on a fist to peer out her window.

  "So, who's excited?" he asked. "I know I am."

  He caught Lil's eye roll in the side-view mirror and chose to ignore it.

  Allison dropped the car into reverse and backed out into the empty road. "Actually, I am a little excited. Academically speaking," she added with a cautious glance in the rearview, as if she might be worried Lil disapproved of her public display of enthusiasm. "How are you feeling, Lilian?"

  "Do we have to do this?" Lilian asked.

  "If you've changed your mind—"

  "I'm going, okay? Jesus! I just don't want to pour over every goddamn twitch in front of… him." She stuck her chin out antagonistically toward the back of his seat. "Can we just pretend you're not my therapist? For today?"

  Ben saw Allison purse her lips before she nodded, controlling her anger. "Okay," she said. "Today I'm just Allison. We're just three friends going to an amusement park together."

  "Great," Lil muttered. "Let's just get this shit over with."

  Allison arched an eyebrow at Ben. He hid his grin from Lil.

  About half a mile outside of town, past the old fairgrounds and the abandoned sawmill, traffic from the highway exit slowed their progress to a crawl. Allison tapped her glossy black fingernails impatiently on the steering wheel. After a few minutes, the heat inside the car started to make him nauseous. He zipped down his window, hoping he wouldn't need to puke.

  He spotted several people walking in the ditch along the line of cars just up the road, headed toward the car. It reminded him of the times they'd gone into the city and panhandlers had approached, asking for change. A young woman with orange dreadlocks and baggy camo cargo shorts that hung down below her knees knocked on the window of the Suburban ahead of Allison's car. The woman held a stack of pamphlets in her left hand.

  The passengers of the Suburban ignored her. She muttered something snarky Ben didn't catch, marched up to his window and held out the pamphlets.

  "Ghosts are people too," the protestor said in monotone. "Help put an end to the slavery of innocent non-corporeal beings."

  Ben reached for the pamphlet. The image on the front was a cheap rip-off of the Ghostbusters logo. Printed along
the slash was the hashtag #GRP2 (which Ben guessed stood for "Ghosts are People Too"), along with the slogan "Free the Ghosts."

  "My dad says that's communist propaganda," Lil piped up behind him.

  "It's not propaganda," the woman snapped, her light blonde eyebrows with multiple piercings knitting together. "How would you like it if they put your grannie on display in there?"

  "I'd be proud of her," Lil shot back. "Nana always wanted to be in the movies."

  Ben heard the activist's teeth clack together in stunned silence. He took the pamphlet, thanked her and zipped the window back up before snorting laughter.

  Lil shook her head. "You're just encouraging them."

  "I dunno, I kind of like this stuff." He folded the pamphlet and tucked it into one of the pockets of his backpack. "I've got a whole bunch of those Chick cartoons at home."

  Lil lurched forward in her seat, her interest suddenly piqued and her seatbelt cranking. "You collect hentai?"

  "No!" he responded too quickly, his cheeks already burning in embarrassment. "They're religious tracts. Jack Chick was the guy who made them. You've probably seen them online, those funny comics about how everybody's going to Hell and stuff."

  "Except now we're all aware there is no such place," Allison said in a sagely tone.

  "Nobody's proven that yet." Ben pointed up ahead. "They sure don't seem to think so."

  Lil and Allison looked where he was pointing to a mass of protestors in the high grass alongside a farm fence, angrily waving signs. Judging by the differences in their attire, opposition to Ghostland seemed to be one thing Christians, Muslims, hippies and Mormons all could agree on. It reminded Ben of the time he'd been forced to cross a picket line at the hospital to get to his appointment when the nurses had all gone on strike.

  "Oh boy," Allison muttered.

  The few signs Ben could read from the distance bore bold statements in big bold letters: DEATH OBSESSION IS DEMONIC POSSESSION, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL - GOD IS LIFE, and SAY NO TO DEATH-ED CURRICULUM! Everyone appeared to be chanting something, but he couldn't make out the words until the traffic allowed the car to roll forward a few more yards and it came to him on the light pre-summer breeze.