Post #489954 by Cammo on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 11:43 PM

OK, this is a big one, so take this one slow and savor it - first down a few oz's of aged port, put some Berlioz on the stereo, sit back and enjoy....

** Angie's Ghost Story Part 13 **

“How’d you get in there? Is it a cell? Where’s a, hey, there’s the door, just push it open. “ She was walking to me, slowly. Then she hurried up.

I tried reaching through the bars to the door’s handle outside, but there was wire mesh that I couldn’t get past. Cindy would have to open it from outside. She finally ran up, and tried the handle.

“It won’t move!” she yelled at me.

“Calm down. It’s got to. I just got in here.”

“How’d you get in?”

“I don’t know, it wasn’t...” I looked at her and didn’t want to say that the bars weren’t there at first, they seemed to come out of nowhere, with the darkness.

But then I saw something move, past Cindy, behind her, by the jail cells.

It was a hand.

In a little pool of light from the window, it was right there and I could swear I saw a white hand holding the edge of the jail door.

Then the cell door opened, really slowly. If I wasn’t watching it, I wouldn’t have seen it open, it was moving so slowly.

Then another hand appeared, beside the first one, clutching the edge of the wall. And then the very top of a head appeared, but it wasn’t where I expected it, above the hands, so I didn’t se it at first, it was below the hands, down by the floor. And it didn’t have any hair, it was all white, and it slid out really slowly too, and when it came into view I wanted to scream, because it was like a skull but with no eyes or nose, and where the mouth should have been was a big red cut of rotten flesh, like its mouth had been ripped away and you could see red mush inside.

Cindy was pulling and trying to move the door, she kept asking me to push, but I stopped and wanted to scream and backed up. The thing behind her was pulling itself, inch by inch, out of the cell. It stopped and looked right at me, then at Cindy, and then even though it didn’t have a face I knew it wanted us because - it was starving. Then it’s hands searched around, making crazy motions, and pushed again, worming itself back and forth towards us and out of the pool of light.

I was back against the far wall now, trying not to scream because if I did Cindy would look around and stop trying to get me out.

“Push on it! Hurry! What’s wrong with you?” Cindy yelled.

“It’s... I can’t... don’t look around. Don’t look behind you!” I said to her. But of course she looked and the thing was hidden in the shadows now, but still coming, and it was all black other than the face so she didn’t see anything and she turned back around and tried to kick the door to make it move, and then the thing came into the light behind her.

It was standing now on thin legs, but it couldn’t move fast, it looked like it was going to fall down but the look of pain and hate and evil on it’s pure white face was horrible, I couldn’t look at it and tried to concentrate on getting away.

Then it came to me in a flash - it wasn’t after me. It was after Cindy. Because she was more full of life than I was. I was the sensitive, so it had used me, right from the beginning to lock her in with it.

And then I realized that it was on the other side of the jailer’s door, in the cell area with Cindy, and I was where the jailers would stand. So the door must open on MY side, not hers, so I jumped to the door, yanked at the knob, but it wouldn’t open, and then saw that the whole thing was locked down with a big swinging latch that clamped down on the edge of the door, so I pushed up on it and it didn’t move either, and I pushed it again and it budged a little bit, then I pulled up on it and that did it, it swung up and the door creaked open and I grabbed Cindy just as the thing was behind her and pulled her through and slammed the door shut - wham - went the bar down again.

“WHAT T’ FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” She yelled at me, then she spun around and was looking right at the thing, it was inches in front of her on the other side, holding onto the bars, heaving up and down, breathing hard, it’s hands trying to squirm through, and -

we both finally started screaming right there. I thought Cindy was going to have a heart attack, or pass out or something, but she can scream real good, and we both backed up as the thing tried to get through the doors, it was feeling all over the bars and the door quickly, and then it just started shaking the wall of bars. It shook them and shook them. We screamed all we could, backed up against the wall, and that seemed to make it madder and stronger. You could hear the bars actually shaking in the brick walls, the cement they were planted in loosening, the whole wall bending and pulling as the thing got madder and then it jumped up onto the bars and shook them with its whole body, twisting around and pulling itself higher, shaking the whole wall, it was so strong now it sounded like it was hitting the bars with a hammer as it rattled the irons and we kept screaming, we were hanging on to each other and it pulled itself up, its feet hooked in the bars, and it crept up the bars in a weird way, its feet sometimes higher than the rest of its body, spread out, not climbing like a human would, and it stared down at us on the floor. I looked up at the top of the wall, and the bars didn’t quite go all the way up. There were a few inches right at the top and that made me even more scared and I stopped screaming and pulled on Cindy.

We had to get out of there.

I pulled her to the door behind us and swung it open, there was a set of narrow wooden stairs going down and the last thing I saw before we ran down the stairs was the thing at the top of the bars, it’s arm was through the little gap at the top and it was pushing its head through, it was still coming at us, it’s head was through now and it looked at us when it started pulling the rest of itself through.

We ran down those stairs, they turned a couple of times to the left, and were only big enough for one person, but we broke the Olympic Record in Stair Descent that first minute. It was pitch black in there, so we finally had to slow down to feel our way, and then we stopped...

...because a wind suddenly was blowing down on us like somebody had opened a door and we were caught in the draft. Things were blown down in the wind, like dirt and pieces of paper, and this stuff kept sweeping down at us from above the last corner of the stairs. I tried stopping, but the wind was so strong it leaned me forward and we both edged to the side out of the way. Then the wind stopped and there was a light under us flickering and when we turned the corner, there it was,

the thing with the white face right below us on the stairs.

We stopped, and were almost too tired to run back up again, but it wasn’t moving. It wasn’t coming at us. I looked at Cindy, she was crouched down on the stairs, clutching at her chest, she had her eyes closed tight and she was whispering over and over “Jesus Christ help us Mother Mary bless us in our time of need glorious St. Michael Prince of Heavenly Hosts who did fight the dragon have mercy on our souls and shut the gates of hell forever from us Jesus Christ King of Heaven and Mother Mary...” That sounded like a Catholic chant, and I looked back at the thing and

it was trying to talk to me.

It’s bony, long thin white hands were out towards us, it was gesturing and trying to speak. I heard muttering, ugly sounds coming from it’s mouth but couldn’t understand what it was saying, then it reached to the wall beside it and touched its finger to the wall and drew little slow lines on the wall. You could HEAR the scratching really loud, it was slow and sounded like nails on steel. Then it looked back at us and seemed to be getting ready to get up. For some reason, that almost made me sick.

Cindy was Catholic. She was Catholic. I thought of something, whipped back to her and felt where her hand was on her chest, then reached inside her shirt and grabbed the necklace she was wearing. I tried pulling it off her, up over her head, but she was fighting me now, punching me but I grabbed it and snapped it off her neck, and threw her little gold crucifix right at the thing on the stairs.

He squealed and flattened against the wall, and then the black of his body melted into the shadows, he vanished into the cracks and the flickering light was gone, and I grabbed Cindy and dragged her down to the next landing, we burst out onto a carpeted floor, it was lit really bright and we ran down the whole hall, ran down the stairway three more flights, ran out the bottom door and I was already pulling my front door key out, I unlocked the front and we ran out that door too, and ran all the way down the street together, way down almost two blocks until we couldn’t run anymore and finally we stopped.

“I win,” I panted, “those were gaslights on the wall.”