Ghost Shadows

by Thomas M. Malafarina

  Apparently, one night while the residents of the Shady Rest slept, Mason went from room to room setting fires. The fires quickly raged out of control turning the Victorian era mansion into a furious inferno. Mason tried to escape through a side window but found its shutters locked closed, blocking his escape. The raging fire had blocked him from leaving the room as well. All tolled, seventy-five people perished in the fire including Mason Tennyson, whose charred body was found stuck fast to the window shutter where it burned as he struggled for fresh air while trying to escape the inferno.

  Eddie’s breath caught in his throat as he realized that the shutter out in the hall had to be the very shutter to which Mason Tennyson’s body had been fused. He realized much more than the crazy man’s flesh had been merged with the shutter, but his very essence, his evil soul had become one with the shutter as well. And now that wicked spirit had invaded the sanctuary of his home.

  Eddie jumped up from his chair and raced across the room throwing open the office door. He could now hear the maniacal laughter louder and more evil than ever before. As he stared at the shutter hanging on the wall, the face once again began to appear in the background. It seemed to have three dimensions as if it were rising up from the surface of the shutter. It was charred black, and its burned flesh hung in smoldering chunks from its exposed soot-covered skull. The large white eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, as all that still remained around them were the fleshless orbital bones.

  Next, two charred hands emerged from the background, their bones jutting from burned flesh which was barely existent. Within seconds the creature’s entire torso extended out from the shutter, its artwork now engulfed in a mass of white-hot flames.

  Maxine heard the commotion and came down the hall toward Eddie screaming with horror at the site unfolding before her. With one quick movement of its hand the specter of Mason sent a ball of fire down the hall striking Maxine square in the chest, spreading instantly all over her body, engulfing her in flames. Eddie watched in terror as Maxine’s flesh began to drip like tallow from her still standing body, her once lovely eyes melting like marshmallows, running from her skull.

  Before Eddie could react, the creature now laughing like the madman it once was, sent a ball of fire in his direction and after a few agonizing seconds of searing pain, only darkness remained.

  Soon the entire house was ablaze, and before the fire company could arrive, it was completely engulfed and unable to be saved.

  Several days later after the fire investigators had completed their work, two local vagrants were sifting through the remains hoping to find something valuable. One of them stumbled upon the shutter laying face down among the wreckage.

  “Hey. What’s this?” The one man asked.

  The other replied, “It looks like a shutter, you know, for a window.”

  “What’s it doing inside the house? Shouldn’t it be on the outside?” He replied.

  “Don’t you know nothin’?” the second man replied. “It’s like a decoration. Something people hang on their walls like a painting. Hell, it probably had something painted on it one time.”

  The first vagrant looked down at the shutter then flipped if over. “Holy Mary Mother of God!” The man screamed as he backed away from the shutter.

  “Oh dear Lord,” the other man cried as he, too, saw the image on the shutter.

  The shutter was charred completely black. Three faces seemed to rise from the surface as if sculpted from a solid piece of wood. Two near the bottom of the shutter were of a man and a woman, both of whom seemed to be contorted in horror as if screaming in agony. Their faces were scorched and burned flesh seemed to hang in flaps from their charred skulls. Two skeletal hands held each of the images by their heads, leading upward to a third image. It was that of a wild-eyed burned and scarred man who appeared to be laughing hysterically, his eyes wide with insanity.

  From Below

  The beat up circa 1970s Chevy van eased its way to the curb in an abandoned area of the city so decayed and desolate not even the craziest of the city's walking wounded, nor the homeless street people or not even the most brain-fried of the crack-heads would go near it. It was, by far, one of the worst areas of the city. Locals often quipped, if one were to take the time to look up “urban blight” in the encyclopedia, he should not be at all surprised to find pictures of that district prominently displayed.

  During the early part of the twentieth century, this four-block region along the river had been a booming garment district, with many multistoried clothing factories, employing thousands of people. There were also a few buildings set up for light manufacturing and assembly as well. Millions of dollars were made here for the owners of the businesses and the workers were always paid a fair wage, resulting in the building of hundreds of nearby row-homes and apartment buildings. Neighborhoods quickly began to spring up, and just as rapidly began filling with immigrants flocking to the city in search of employment.

  However, things started to decline in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the labor unions became stronger and the wages became higher, while foreign competition flooded the market with dirt cheap products. Somehow a few of the businesses managed to hold on, at least for a while.

  Then throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, much of the work began to leave the country for places like China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Mexico while here the businesses were saddled with harsh fines and government imposed environmental regulations. Some businesses were accused of dumping harmful toxic chemicals and dyes into the river, which had the potential of polluting the neighborhood water system.

  By the end of the decade in 1989, it was all over but the shouting, as all of the businesses had either moved their operations to foreign countries or had simply gone belly-up. The job market dried up, and the huge buildings were left abandoned. Soon the local neighborhoods were likewise left deserted, as former mill workers fled the area in search of new employment.

  It was not long afterward that the urban decay began in earnest as the criminal elements of society moved in and vandals started breaking windows and looting whatever scraps they could from the abandoned buildings. Occasionally they started random fires, which quickly escalated into blazing infernos, turning both the local residences and factory buildings into burned out hulks; skeletal remains of what were once thriving and noble structures.

  Then it wasn’t long before the druggies and the crazies moved in; squatting and trying to survive among what little shelter the ruined buildings were able to provide. However, something drastically changed in the area during that time, near the end of the twentieth century. No one ever said for certain what had driven everyone away but it had to have been something so horrible; it was apparently terrifying enough to scare off even those most depraved characters, which were often considered on the bottom of the societal dung heap. And as a result, this mysterious unknown phenomenon had prevented any others from venturing into the area as well.

  Even local gangs with the most violent of hardened criminals chose to avoid the menacing, disreputable buildings. It was as if the place was marked, or cursed somehow, and word of mouth obviously must have spread among the lowest of the low, because seldom was it anymore that even a solitary soul could ever be seen within the four-block area, especially after the sun went down. There had been talk and rumors among the homeless people in surrounding shelters; stories of unsolved disappearances, missing friends, presumed dead but whose bodies were never found.

  It didn’t take long for the stories to reach urban legend status, as people began to speak of "sightings" of creatures, possibly human, but perhaps not quite, who apparently controlled the area from their subterranean lairs. The tales said the creatures hunted and murdered their victims, cannibals devouring anyone they came upon. The lurid stories never quite made it out of the city into the suburbs, however, since the two cultures seldom, if ever had any opportunity to comingle. So, on occasion, groups of young people from the 'burbs would wander into the burned
out ruins seeking adventure. Most of them were never were seen again.

  The weather-beaten van idled at the curb, shaking slightly from the vibration of the ancient engine chugging persistently, giving the van the appearance of trembling in terror, which was apropos for a place with such an ominous reputation.

  Inside the van, the driver, a young man named Cameron Johns, turned to look at his best friend Chase, who was seated on the passenger side.

  “So here we are,” Cameron said with a slight bit of unease in his voice.

  Chase didn't seem to notice Cameron’s discomfort, and turned to look into the back of the van where two girls sat awkwardly on a pair of oversized bean bag chairs. “Well, ladies, are you ready for this?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” the girl named Crystal said from the dark back of the van, “I’m most certainly ready to get out of this potentially syphilitic, AIDS infested death trap you call a van.”

  “Hey!” Cameron retorted. “Careful how you talk about my . . . love machine.”

  “Right,” the other girl, Jen, replied. “This piece of garbage may have been a shaggin’ wagon back in its day, but it stopped being a love machine the day you bought it.”

  “Whoa!” Cameron said, “That’s harsh! You know, ordinarily that would hurt my feelings—”

  “—if it wasn’t so true,” Chase interrupted.

  He and the two girls laughed hysterically while Cameron sat sulking, pretending to be insulted. The group often took turns exchanging barbs; it was simply a part of their special relationship. Then Chase asked, still chuckling, “Cameron, why don't you tell the girls about that burnt out old hippy dude who sold you this piece of shit.”

  “Chase!” Crystal scolded from the back seat. “Language! Please! You know I am trying to keep my aura clean and pure by avoiding such negative and crude language.” Crystal was bit of a flaky sort of personality, who seemed to bounce from one new age religion to another. The other members of their group assumed that with a name like Crystal, and two former earth-children hippy parents, it was inevitable that she would follow such a path in constant search of enlightenment.

  Most recently she had discovered some new form of cosmic mysticism, and after reading several books on the occult, decided she was reincarnated from an Egyptian princess, although having failed geography she most likely didn't even know where Egypt was. She also fancied herself as a sort of medium, even though she had absolutely no clairvoyant abilities whatsoever. She dressed in a strange hodgepodge of various fashions from Bohemian to Far Eastern and even Gothic, depending upon her mood. This strange choice of garb tended to produce unusual looks from just about everyone who saw her.

  The four were part of a group of five close friends who had known each other since grade school and all shared one thing in common; they didn’t fit in anywhere socially but within this special cadre of like minds.

  “Whatever,” Chase replied to Crystal's rebuke. “Come on, Cameron. Tell them about the old guy . . . that smelly hippy dude.”

  Cameron laughed in spite of himself, and said, “This dude was so time-warped. He was like sixty-some years old and the guy still wore tie-dye shirts and had this long white goatee and Fu-Manchu mustache. He was like totally bald, with just this weird ring of white frizzy hair around his head. He must have tried hard to hang onto his long hair forever ‘cause he had like five hairs that were about a mile long, all wrapped together in a ratty looking ponytail.” The group laughed while Cameron continued, enjoying their reactions. “He said he was the original owner of the van and told me if the van could talk, boy could it tell some wild tales.”

  Crystal squirmed uncomfortably in her beanbag chair, tucking her legs tighter up under herself, not certain she wanted any of her clothing or heaven forbid, her flesh to come in contact with the worn shag carpet surrounding her conspicuously. Her stomach turned when she thought of the amount of spent DNA most likely still lingering in the fibers.

  “He told me he always wanted to give the van a Viking funeral when it finally died,” Cameron explained, “You know, take it out in a field and burn it when he couldn’t drive it anymore. But he said it just kept running.”

  “So why did he want to sell it?” Jen asked, not seeming to mind sitting so close to the carpet as Crystal had. Jen was a bit more tom-boyish than Crystal and always seemed to be on a level playing field when it came to dealing with the boys at school. So she was not really fazed by the van’s disreputable history or the thought of what disgusting elements might be lurking in the deep pile of shag carpet.

  “Get this,” Cameron said with a smile, continuing with his tale. “The dude got into some trouble with the cops for growing weed in his back yard and now he has a bunch of legal bills to pay. So the van had to go 'cause he needed the cashola. I picked it up for a song.”

  Crystal interjected, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that song you bought it for was a funeral dirge. This thing is a dump on wheels.”

  Cameron countered, “It might seem like a dump to you and might be a bit rough around the edges, but it got us here tonight, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah!” Chase retorted, “And speaking of which, are we doing this or not?”

  The “this” to which Chase was referring, was a special Halloween adventure the boys had planned and suggested to the girls, who after some cajoling and daring had reluctantly agreed. The idea was they would go down in to the worst area of the city on a Saturday night of Halloween weekend, and go into one of the spookiest of the buildings, check it out, and stay there until after midnight.

  The original plan was to stay all night, but they were all seniors in high school and the logistics of pulling off something like that with their parents was not even worth considering. It was tough enough to come up with the appropriate lies to be able to stay out past midnight. Cameron was the only one with a senior license, while the other three were still operating with their Cinderella tags, which meant no driving between eleven at night and five in the morning. In fact, the fifth member of the group, Stacey, couldn’t get her parents to agree to let her come at all, so they were four instead of five.

  And now here they were at nine pm in one of the seediest neighborhoods in the city, sitting at the curb in what at one time was a gorgeous metallic red Chevy Van with smoke colored moon windows and sunroof and chrome trim. But now it was just a faded shadow of its former self, held together with duct tape, primer, and badly applied body putty.

  “So, which building are we going to explore?” Jen asked with some reservation.

  Chase said, “Me and Cam were down here scoping them out last weekend and we decided that one over there would be a good one to try.”

  He pointed across the street to a particularly gruesome looking structure, whose name was still displayed proudly in the carved granite slab suspended over the gaping mouth-like front opening, reading Martinson Fashions.

  “My grandfather told me that way back in the early 1930s this factory was a real money maker,” Cameron explained. “He said old man Martinson died a multi-millionaire and none of his kids or grandkids had to work a day of their lives.”

  Cameron continued, “This place was such a big deal, it had its own subway stop in the basement, so workers from all over the city could work here. The subway service stopped coming to this neighborhood back in the 1980s when the line shut down, but the platform is probably still there, somewhere under the building.”

  “And now look at it,” Crystal said sadly. “It is a rundown wreck of a building. That is so sad.”

  “It’s not sad, Crystal,” Chase explained. “It is just business. The strong survive and the weak . . . well the weak end up looking like that building over there.”

  Jen spoke up, “So are you guys sure you checked this place out good enough? I mean, I don’t want us running into a bunch of dopers or perverts or God know what in there.”

  “Yeah,” Chase said. “Me and Cam scoped it out a couple times during the day and it’s totally empty and pre
tty safe as long as you stay on the main path and don’t go off on your own and end up falling down an elevator shaft or some shit like that.”

  “Chase! Your language!” Crystal shouted again.

  “For Christ’s sake, Crystal.” Jen hollered back. “Stop worrying so much about your frickin’ aura.”

  “Jen! Language!” Crystal admonished, shaking her head while Jen just threw her hands up in the air, and the boys simply rolled their eyes, smiling understandably.

  Cameron announced, “OK everybody, it’s now or never. Let’s take this show on the road.” With that, he opened the driver’s door while Chase simultaneously opened the passenger door and got out on the abandoned street. Chase opened the sliding side door so the girls could get out as well. Crystal seemed to be repulsed and terrified every time she had to make contact with any part of the van, as if the beanbag chair was a raft in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by sharks.

  Within a few moments the quartet of friends found themselves standing in front of what was, at one time, two enormous glass doors leading to the wrecked lobby of Martinson Fashions. The doors were completely gone, not even the metal framework or hinges remained. The doorway was charred black from one of the many fires that had been set throughout the years in this part of the city.

  As they were about to enter the building Jen asked, “Does anyone have anything with them we can use to defend ourselves, like a flashlight or a gun or something?”

  “Where the hell would I get a gun?” Cameron asked. Crystal gave him a disapproving look but he ignored her. “I do have a flashlight, though.” He raised his Maglight flashlight to show the group.

  “Me too!” Chase said showing his Maglight, which was a slightly larger model then Cameron’s. “Hey look, Cam, mine is bigger than yours,” Chase said as they both laughed.