Post #491053 by Cammo on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 6:07 PM

**Angie's Ghost Story Part 18 **

“Tell him to hang around on the 8th floor at midnight. That’s when they have parties.” Cindy was disgusted. “Jeeez, the guy probably doesn’t believe us. Should have known there was some guy in charge of the hostel who’s never actually been here.”

“He comes once a year,” Bree said, “to make sure it’s still here.”

So we waited, he was supposed to be showing up at three, so we swept up the floors, tidied the kitchen, and Mrs. Aldon spent the whole day in her office, dusting and moving things around. It was annoying. At 3:30 he finally came in.

Mr. Tilden was a big guy, a big head, big hands, he was over six feet tall and had a big voice too.

“Where’s the GHOSTS!” he boomed out.

“Um, up on the 8th floor.” Cindy said, startled.

“Lets GO!” he yelled out, smiling. “Come on all you GHOSTS come and GET ME I’m here to get SPOOKED!” he yelled to the hallway. Then he went over to the elevator and punched “8”.

‘Uh, it doesn’t work.” I told him in a little voice.

“WHAT?”

“The elevator doesn’t work. It stops between floors sometimes, we’re not supposed to use it.” I was having a hard time speaking up, this guy was really intimidating, but luckily Mrs. Aldon came out right then.

“Ken!” she said sweetly, “Thanks for coming to visit on a weekend! We don’t want to take up your time...”

“Mary, why isn’t the elevator WORKING when we spent two thousand four hundred dollars on it LAST YEAR?”

“Oh.” That stopped her, but just for a second. “Those funds were to renovate the gears and hardware, but it’s the electrical that seems to be malfunctioning. I don’t think it’s the elevator itself, it seems to be the power supply to the whole building.” Then she smiled again, but managed a quick glance over to me. Her eyes said it all - Shut Up.

“Fine. It’s an old building, as we all know.” Ken seemed. “So where are all these ghosts?” He said right to her, folding his arms and expecting an answer.

“Ah, well, the girls here have quite an imagination, you know, and they may have let a few things scare them late at night...”

Oh my God! She was selling us out! She wasn’t going to take our side! She was going to pretend nothing was wrong, and it was all our fault. What was next, giving us the sack?

“...so you see, we wanted you to come here and tell them a little about the history of the place and have a tour of the place to show them ... that...”

Ken was looking up at the walls now. He had noticed the crosses over all the doors.

“... there really isn’t any... um...”

“WHAT are all these CROSSES all nailed up for!” He yelled, walking over to one. He reached up, and yanked it down, showing it to us all like we hadn’t seen them before. “This is a government owned building, it’s not ALLOWED to have any religious icons ANYWHERE! Do you realize what kind of TROUBLE I can get in if there are...”


Cindy couldn’t take it anymore. She finally blew up. “Those crucifixes are to get rid of the VAMPIRE!” she bawled back at him, “They’re BLESSED and they WORK!”

I expected him to yell back at her, get mad, anything but what he did.

He laughed.

Ken laughed and laughed, then sputtered “A Vampire! What is this, Transylvania! Does it SUCK your BLOOD? Ha! Does it turn into a bat and flap around? Maybe we should put up some nets and catch the bat!” He was looking at us all, shaking his head, then he got an idea. “Where’s his coffin? They live in coffins during the day, where is it?”

“It doesn’t have one!” Cindy was really mad now, “It lives up on the 8th floor. It doesn’t need a coffin. It tried to KILL US!”

She looked like she was going to cry, Ken noticed it too and calmed down right away. But he kept shaking his head, like we were stupid little girls who were scared of the dark.

“Lets have a little tour. Show me everything and I promise, I PROMISE that I’ll take care of any ghosts, or... vampires,” he was smiling again, it was really annoying, “... that pop up and try to get us.”

That seemed to settle everybody down, and Cindy and I spent the next few hours exploring every part of the hostel with him. He knew more about the place than we had expected, and told us all kinds of stories about who had lived there, and the jail days, and how hard it was to renovate a really old building. He knew way more about it than us. With Ken beside us, the 8th floor looked sunshiney and bright, he showed us how the cells worked and where the guards stayed. I didn’t ask about the attic, cause we weren’t going to go up there and didn’t want to give him any ideas.

He did show us, when I asked, about where the gaslamps had hung and where there had once been a wall of bars at one end of the 8th floor. The wall wasn’t there anymore, but we saw iron rods where it had joined the bricks. And the gaslamps weren’t gas, because the jail was actually built before gas was used; they were oil lamps originally.

The more we showed Ken around the bolder he got and the less we felt like what we had seen was real. Maybe we had imagined it. I don’t know.

Finally Cindy said she had to go to the bathroom, and we trooped down to the front hall. Mrs. Aldon seemed pleased, and she asked Ken if he wanted to go out for an early dinner, and she left to get ready. Even Bree showed up, smiling at me.

Then Ken asked if we could go to the cellar.