Chapter 6 #2
Unsure of what to say, I snuck a peek at Phil behind me as his camera finally captured the sight before us. His jaw dropped. “Oh fuck,” he whispered, his deep voice shaky, as he stared at the wheelchair roundup. “What’s that on the floor in the middle of the chairs?”
I’d not seen anything in the center. Although he was several inches taller.
I rose to my toes, my snow boots creaking slightly.
My heart thudded twice the normal rate when I saw that opossum we’d flushed out not an hour ago lying dead on the floor, its mouth and eyes open wide, a trickle of blood pooling under its horribly twisted head.
“Fuck!” I shouted, stepping back into Phil, who slid his free arm around me.
“Shit, fuck, okay this is not okay!” I bellowed, my sight locked on the poor marsupial, as Phil backed us out of the cafeteria with haste.
I broke free of his hold, stalked down the hall, and stormed into the lobby.
Several smaller entities darted through the walls.
A few lingered, meager forms that were barely holding their corporeal forms together.
“Who is responsible for what happened to that animal in the dining hall?” I demanded at the top of my lungs.
I generally didn’t yell at spirits, then again, I generally didn’t have phantoms engaging in this kind of carnage.
Even the Tewberry twins weren’t known to harm animals.
Shave heads, yes, but slaughter an innocent animal?
“Arch, we should go back to the game room,” Phil said, coming up beside me, the light on his camera quaking slightly.
I stared at the forms moving to and fro, their essences catching on the wind blowing down the stairs from what I assumed were holes in the ceilings on the upper floors.
I felt myself shaking with a combination of shock and rage.
“There could be other people here. We need to take a break.”
I glanced back to see that the tiny green light was still green. Roxie’s prime directive of “Never turn off the camera” rattled around inside my head. The stream was still live. Oh shit. My phone was vibrating like mad in my pocket as it rested by the gris-gris bag.
“Okay, yeah, we need a moment,” I finally agreed. I wet my cold lips and turned to bury my face into his chest. He was as solid as ever. His arm came around me tightly and kept me there as I battled to draw in calming breaths. “That was terrible.”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad. Come on, let’s just go back to base. Get our bearings.”
I drew in a deep breath of his scent, let it work its magic, as my fingers clutched at the back of the glow party tee covering his coat.
Breaking apart, I turned my back on the specters watching us warily as I made my way down to the rec room.
There were no signs of other people here at the moment, so I felt deep down in my seeing-eye center that the opossum was not left there by human hands.
Call it a hunch. The memory of that black, shadowy form I’d glimpsed just for a millisecond came to mind.
Perhaps there was a UFI perpetually shackled to this dreadful place.
In all honesty, I would be surprised if there weren’t at least one given the things that had taken place here.
The land itself could hold dark memories.
The earth is very much alive, and it can absorb malice and agony just like a sponge.
Take historic battlefields for instance.
The soil in such places as say Gettysburg is thick with the ghosts of the soldiers who died there.
The very dirt under their feet, the soil that they bled out on, drinks in the blood and the terror.
Many psychics know grounds can and do hold a negative spiritual residue.
We moved with haste but on silent feet back to our little base camp, shut the door, and then stood there staring at each other as a few glow-in-the-dark balloons bounced around in the draft of the door closing.
I wanted to scream at Phil to turn off the camera, but this was what the subs were here for.
The urge to go Russell Crowe and shout out to ask if they entertained or not was strong, but I held it back and worked on not puking on the shoes.
“Right, so that was an unexpected turn of events,” I said to the viewers, taking a second to run my cold hand through my hair, which probably did marvelous things to the unruly mess.
“I’m so sorry if seeing that poor animal upset anyone.
Obviously, there are other people here or possibly a predator of some sort? ” I looked at Phil.
“Could have been a fisher. They’re pretty common around here, but they’re secretive and solitary, so he could have been scared off in the middle of a hunt and dropped his kill.”
“Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.” I gave my guy a feeble smile. “I think we need to bury the animal if we can.”
Phil gaped. “But you said you didn’t want to go near the asylum’s cemetery.”
“That still stands.” I thought back on the spirits I’d seen here already—shy and timid—they didn’t seem to be unfriendly, just wary.
Totally understandable. They’d probably never encountered a human with the seeing eye before.
Just rowdy teenagers and drunk college kids ventured out here.
God, I sounded like Grandpa now. Next, I’d be telling the Connor boys to stay off our grass.
Not that we had any to keep off of. “I think we can find the groundskeeper’s shack easily enough, perhaps locate a shovel or something, and bury the opossum around the side, far from the burial plots. ”
My phone was buzzing like a nest of agitated yellow jackets in my front pocket. Phil seemed wholly unconvinced.
“I’m not sure we can dig a hole, babe. The ground is probably frozen solid this time of year.”
Oh shit. Yeah, that was true. I reached up to rub my temples, the odd tingling of something unknown growing inside my head as the night wore on. “But we can maybe place it in a snowbank. You know, cover it up, and then nature will take care of it.”
I gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re very smart. Let’s do that. Okay, supernatural enthusiasts, we’re going to give Oliver Opossum a winter funeral. Let’s go grab that old sweater in the head nurse’s office to wrap the poor thing in, then we can head outside to lay him to rest.”
“Okay.” Phil gave my butt a pat off-camera. Football players. They do like to tap backsides when something pleases them. With his warm handprint on my ass, I girded my loins and threw open the game room doors. Several apparitions flew off like frightened deer.
“They’re curious,” I said over my shoulder. “There are some spirits lingering here on the grounds, inside the hospital itself, which leads me to think they’re possibly residentiary phantoms who passed while inside the asylum. What a terrible place to be forced to wander for eternity.”
As I walked and talked, I checked the texts flowing in from K&K central. All from Roxie, all in capital letters, and all sent at least ten minutes ago. Phil was right. The internet here was choppy to say the least. Rural infrastructure was sorely needed, legislators.
SUBS R RISING!
DO NOT TURN OFF THE CAMERA!
SAD COMMENTS FROM THE SUBS ABOUT THE OPOSSUM.
MANY ARE GLAD U ARE BURYING IT.
CAN WE TALK TO ONE OF THE FRIENDLY GHOSTS?
A GIF of Casper followed the last comment of the last block of texts.
If only all ghosts were as affable as that cartoon one.
To be fair, Reggie was pretty friendly as were the others in our neighborhood, not including the twins on that list, sorry not sorry.
I sent a text in reply, but it sat there, the little blue circle spinning as my phone searched for a signal.
After a moment, I just pocketed my cell in frustration.
Great. Internet interruptions would make the viewers angry.
Maybe there was something Phil could do to boost the signal, so I asked.
“Already on it,” he said and pointed to a small white device he was attaching to his camcorder. “Wi-Fi extender. It should help a little bit but may cause the stream to slow at times. Better than nothing, though.”
We found the sweater with the tarnished buttons.
I lifted it from the chair and felt nothing in the way of psychic energy.
That was not one of my gifts. Some people were blessed with ESP or psychometry in the form of being able to touch an item and pick up impressions from the person who had owned it or touched it last. That would be incredibly cool, but I was not that sort of medium, and so we used the old, chewed sweater to roll around a dead forest animal.
Cradling the dead opossum in my arms, we headed back outside via the lobby. Pale gold auras of curious phantoms peeked at us as we moved through the once-glorious reception area.