Post #491241 by Cammo on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 7:46 PM

Angie's Ghost Story Part 19

It was the last stop on the tour, but there was something that made me hesitate. Cindy wasn’t with us, the lights didn’t work down there, there was nobody but me and Mr. Tilden, and he was already making his way through the hall. I ran after him, then followed down the stairs trying to catch up.

“See?” he said, “This is just like any other cellar. They used to use this to store the coal in the 1800’s, and later it was a...” he stopped when he tried to flick on the light switch. It didn’t work.

“...a , ah, where was I? These lights were fixed last year, too...”

“They haven’t worked this whole summer. Can we go back up now Mr. Tilden?” I asked, backing up the stairs. He grabbed my hand and gently pulled me on, out onto the hard dirt floor. It was really dark, but you could see that the whole room was mostly empty. There were some old junky things around the edges, a broken pop machine stood beside us and I could see a big pile of plumbing equipment heaped up by a pole in the middle. The room looked like a really old, giant garage. Ken walked over to some broken window sills leaning against the wall to our left.

“We should do an inventory of the whole place, these could be used upstairs.”

I noticed that the floor wasn’t really flat. It was a bit hard walking around, there were big rocks in some places coming a couple inches out of the ground. You could trip if you didn’t watch it. The walls were also wet, like I had seen upstairs, but the wetness was real, I touched the wall beside me and it was watery-damp.

“Why doesn’t Mary just put some flashlights by the stairs?” he was talking to himself, leaning the windows out. A window pane fell out and broke on the floor.

“Oops!”

I noticed some movement behind him, he seemed to have jostled the windows and a white rag had fallen on the floor too. I don’t know how it had happened, it was back in the dark at least twenty feet in. But there it was, on the floor.

The rag moved again.

“Can we get out of here now, PLEASE?” I asked, edging back a bit.

He looked up at me, distracted for a second. “Oh, we aren’t scared, are we?” He smiled, “If there are any GHOSTS down here they sure are DIRTY ones! And why would a ghost hang around in the BASEMENT when there’s a nice big well furnished hostel up there?” he jerked his thumb up, trying to be funny.

The rag moved across the floor, to the right, behind him. I saw it move this time. It was moving all by itself.

“Tell you what,” Mr. Tilden said loudly, “If there are any GHOSTS IN HERE they can COME OUT ANYTIME THEY WANT! Hear that, you spooky old ghosts? I’m RIGHT HERE! COME ON OUT! GAME’ OVER! OLLIE -OLLIE OX’IN-FREE!”

We both listened. Nothing moved.

“See?” he looked at me, “Nothing is down here because there are no such thing as ghosts. If you can’t see something it doesn’t exist.”

I was getting more scared all the time, and his little ghost lesson wasn’t making me feel any better.

“I can’t see air,” I said, slowly, “but it’s still there.”

“Well, yes, except for air.” he said, quickly. His smile went away for a second.

“And I can’t see electricity going through a wire. Or radio waves. Or my house, actually, when it’s really dark.”

“You’re missing the point, Angie. There’s never been any evi.. what? Ow.”

He had tripped over something, and his foot was stuck beside one of the boulders in the floor.

“Can you help me? It’s this dirt floor, it’s got holes and ...”

I jumped over to him, glad to be able to do something. I was really creeped out by now. His foot was hooked under something, it was in a funny position. He tried twisting it, but the front of his shoe was under a sharp edge of the rock, and he didn’t want to wreck his nice black shoes. He tried carefully pulling it, but it just slid down a bit more. Finally, he had to go down on his knee and feel around with his hands to try to push and squeeze it out. I helped all I could, and tried to not look over to where the rag had been moving, because

it had been making noises for a while too.

I saw it moving up and down now, out of the corner of my eye, so I turned away and tried not to listen, because it seemed to be making groaning and breathing sounds.

We couldn’t get his foot loose. The more we tried the more it sunk down, and it was lodged up to his ankle now.

Don’t look at it. If I don’t look at it it won’t be there, get this guy’s foot loose and get out right now. I turned around with my back to the rag and tried to concentrate on the rock, I tried lifting it and pushing it but it was heavy.

And there was a smell, a bad smell like bad meat, like garbage.

“I don’t GET it, here, let me just pull it back while I’m pushing down on the front...” he was saying.

Bang. Something fell behind me.

I had to look at it. The rag was shaking. It was on the floor, all squashed down, but then it was rising up in the air. I could see feet underneath it, and then it turned and bent up, and it didn’t look like a rag it looked like a balloon shaking up and down, blowing up into a shape, unfolding, and then I could see two arms.

I wasn’t going to look at it anymore. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going to look back there.

I turned back at Mr. Tilden, but he was pulling at his foot hard, he wasn’t concerned about his shoe anymore, he couldn’t get his foot loose and he was worried now. He didn’t say anything, and I forgot and glanced over his shoulder just for a second and the balloon thing was shaking now, it was big, and it stopped shaking and I could see two eyes at the top of it, but they were tilted sideways and they were in a dark circle that bobbed back and forth as the body of the thing jerked up and down, then stopped, then jerked again, but it was still up in the air and it didn’t come back down and I could see now that it was a lady, but all twisted up and dead looking. It was way back in the room, but it was looking at us, not moving, just twitching a bit, two feet off the ground, just hanging in the air.

I tried getting my fingers down beside Tilden’s shoe but it was tight and sharp, and then my arms pulled back because there were these little worms all over his foot, he couldn’t see them yet, they were those squirmy little maggots and I didn’t want to touch them.

I looked at the back of the room, but I shouldn’t have,

and the twisted lady started to dance. It moved around slowly, its arms moving in jerky spasms, its legs kicking in and out, dancing in little circles. It looked like it was walking on the floor, but it wasn’t, it was up in the air a bit, and it danced slowly towards us, stopped, then came closer again, staring right at me, and my stomach felt like it was going to be sick.

Mr. Tilden looked up at me, and somehow he knew I saw something over his shoulder. I nodded my head, then pointed my hand up, pointing at the thing.

“Angie,” he said slowly, his voice quiet this time, “what do you see?”

I shook my head, I couldn’t speak. The lady thing’s head was black and flopping around on her right shoulder limply, her neck was crooked and all black, and her eyes were wide open, all white, staring at us, never taking her eyes off me. She was smiling now as she danced, then she’d stop and quiver, then she’d dance closer again, making hissing, whining noises.

“L..l...look!” I said, gesturing at her.

“GET MY FOOT OUT!” Tilden yelled at me.

“LOOK AT HER!”

“I CAN HEAR HER! GET ME OUT!

But I looked back at the rock and noticed that all the rocks were the same color, the same shape around us. He had more of those maggots on his leg and they were crawling up under his pants, he must have noticed because he wasn’t touching his leg, and I saw that all the rocks had holes in the side you could get your shoe trapped on, and the color of them reminded me of bone, and an idea came into my head that I didn’t want to think about. All the rocks were sticking out of the floor, just a bit, they weren’t moving but they all had little bumps that were facing us, I looked down and realized his foot was stuck in the rock, in a hole in the rock itself, it was holding his shoe, it was all dirty and old but there was a mess of worms boiling in the hole now, the smell was really bad, and there was a noise right beside me, it was really loud, of someone laughing in a hissing high voice -

I looked up and she was right behind us now in the light, swirling around above the floor, her arms twisting and jerking, and she was groaning and hissing, and I saw that her head had eyes that were pure white, no pupils, and it was flopping around like a doll’s because her neck was all black and broken, that’s what was making the noise, the hissing and bubbling of her broken neck trying to breath, black blood dripping down her dress.

I screamed, then tried to back up but Tilden was hanging onto my arm so I screamed again -

“CINDY! HELP! EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!” -

but she was already coming down the stairs, she tried reaching for the crosses in her pockets but they got stuck she was shaking so much so she grabbed me and then grabbed Tilden too, and we both heaved with freaky panic-energy as the ghost was dropping back slowly, I couldn’t see her anymore it was like a heat wave drifting up in the air not a person anymore, and then Tilden’s foot came out and we all ran up the stairs, down the hall and out the front door. We ran down the front steps, Cindy first, then Tilden suddenly in front of me just before we got to the street, slowed down and yelled -

“HEY! You didn’t tell me the place was HAUNTED!”

It was so absurd Cindy and I stopped. She turned around and pointed back at the hostel,

“OF COUSE it’s HAUNTED! What the hell you think’s been going ON?” She yelled back, stopping on the sidewalk.

“WHAT are you talking about! Don’t you GET IT?” I was trembling with fright, yelling and really mad at him now, pointing back at the hostel, choking out the words - “People HAVE SOULS and all those are STUCK in there! They died filled with HATE and PAIN and they want REVENGE! We solved the mystery, we know what happened, those souls aren’t going to stop until... until they... scare us to death.. and even the score, but the score will never be even, cause...”

Cindy helped me - “Cause they were tortured to death. And they were innocent and... murdered before their time.” Glaring right at Mr. Tilden, like it was his fault.

We all stood there, breathing in gasps, then he gulped and looked like he was going to yell at me but thought twice and slapped his forehead and gestured to both of us,

“Good God! It’s HAUNTED! The whole hostel, right?”

We nodded.

“Not just the basement, everything! Upstairs, the 8th floor, everywhere!”

“Yeah!”

“Even the elevators.” Cindy said.

He looked like he had never considered the idea before. He just stood there shaking his head.

He looked down at his foot. I didn’t see any worms on it anymore, but it was dirty and he brushed at it. Finally he grinned at us.

“Come on. I know what we’re going to do.”