by Apryl Baker
Footsteps on the stairs interrupt my tirade. I tense. Each heavy thud brings him closer and closer. I have to be ready. The cold closes in around me. I don’t see them, but I can feel their terror. It only magnifies mine. I’ve seen what Mr. Olson has done to them, what he plans to do to me. What he’s already done to me with his knife. My body starts to shake. No, no. No more of that! Don’t obsess about the knife.
“Calm down, Mattie,” Eric whispers. “I’m right here. Just calm down.”
“Easy for you to say,” I grouch in answer. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“What?”
“You’re already dead, Eric,” I say. “He can’t do anything else to you.”
“But I can feel him hurt me every day,” Tina whispers brokenly. “I’m back in that chair every minute of every day.”
Oh, God, like I have time for a Dr. Phil session? But if I can make them understand that he can’t cause them any more pain then maybe they will fight harder. I frantically search my memory for all the things I’ve read on why ghosts linger.
“No, he can’t hurt you,” I tell them softly. “You died a horrible death and that is your last memory. It’s the clearest memory you have and that is what you focus on. You relive it every day, but that’s all it is, a memory. He can’t see you, can’t touch you, can’t talk to you. He can’t hurt you anymore. I promise.”
I turn to look at Eric, one ear to the door listening. Mr. Olson is almost up the stairs. “But,he can hurt me! I need all of you to help me. Please don’t let him hurt me.”
I see the shadow fall across the floor.
He has the knife.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I take a deep breath. My first and only thought is escape. He just needs to get far enough into the room so that I can slip by him and back down the stairs. Mrs. Olson is down there, but I’ll take her over the knife in his hand any day.
He stops in the doorway and looks around. His head moves slightly from side to side, the face still buried in the shadow of the hoodie. He takes a step inside and I freeze, doing my best to be quiet. I can hear my heartbeat pound away.
Come on, just come in already, I think to myself. Why doesn’t he move faster? I need him to walk around so I can sneak out.
My wish comes true in the next second, but he closes and locks the door behind him.
Fudgepops, fudgepops, fudgepops. How am I going to get out now? My hands can’t unlock and open the door in enough time to run from him even if he walks all the way to the end of the room. I’ll bet good money that’s what he’s banking on. He knows how badly I’m hurt since he was the one who caused the injuries.
“You can’t get the door open,” Eric’s whispered words are full of defeat.
“Well, duh,” I say in my mind, knowing he and the other ghosts can hear. “We just have to figure out something else.”
“What?” He sounds almost desperate. “You can’t hold a weapon even if we could find you one.”
I frown. He has me there. I can’t hold anything that would do damage.
Mr. Olson starts to whistle softly as he moves further into the room, unhurried. He knows I’m good and trapped. I can feel the ghosts cringe. It hurts my skin. His whistling scares them more than anything else. What had he done to them while whistling a jaunty little tune? Their fear presses in on me and for a moment, it’s hard to breathe. The cold invades me, invades my lungs.
The whistling stops and he turns in my direction. My eyes widen when I realize what caused the reaction. He can feel the cold. It’s centered here, around me. Oh crap. The ghosts are going to get me killed yet, the little buggers. I feel bad almost as soon as I think it. They have been doing everything they can to help me. Still, though, they need to stop with the freeze-fest.
He stops about ten feet away and cocks his head. I can make him out between the crack s in the stacks of boxes I’m hiding behind. The knife is clearly visible in his hand and my breathing quickens at the sight. I’m terrified at just the thought of it on my skin. I hate my mother more than I ever have in this moment. She caused this terror and it’s going to get me killed. I giggle. I can’t help it. What she failed to do when I was five, she’ll accomplish now.
Oh crap. He heard the giggle. He’s coming this way. How stupid can I be? Eric is right. I am going to get killed because I’m doing everything wrong. I’ve seen enough scary movies to know better than to let my emotions get the best of me. You forget the basic rules of a scary movie and you die. I could so be Rose McGowan in Scream right now. I remember thinking ‘How stupid can you be when she went out into that garage?’ and here I go and giggle of all things.
Before I can blink, the boxes I’m hiding behind go flying in all directions and I stumble back, falling. The ankle I’d sprained twists at an odd angle and I hear a crack. Pain lances up my leg and I cry out. Tears spring to my eyes, but I force myself to focus on getting away from that knife coming down at me. I roll away and land against an old chest. I use my forearms to maneuver my way up. My ankle is broken. Each step tells me that, I push the pain to the back of my mind and concentrate on moving one foot in front of the other.
Icy waves of cold wrap around me, trying to comfort me. I want to snarl at the stupid ghosts. It’s their fault he found me to begin with. I don’t though. The cold actually helps. It gives me strength. Dr. Olivet said my energy was a beacon to them, that my aura was made up of ghost energy. Maybe theirs can give me strength? Could mine give them strength too? Can I use that? My mind races with the possibilities.
Hands catch my hair and yank hard. I fall, screaming as my ankle can’t handle the fall. It isn’t a pain I can push back this time. The knife catches me in the shoulder and sinks deep. My throat closes off as panic seeps in. The knife is ripped away and I try to roll, but it catches me in the side as I try to escape. I can see my Mom bringing a knife down towards me, stabbing me over and over. Her face takes the place of the man standing above me. I see her bright blonde hair and blue eyes smiling as she tries to kill me. I hear her humming and telling me she loves me.
“Please, Mamma,” I whisper. “Please don’t. It hurts.”
The knife stops mid-air. It hovers over me, but I don’t see it. All I can see is Mamma smiling while she kills me.
“That’s it, Mattie!” Eric shouts in my head. “Keep talking, it’s making her think.”
Her? I blink at Eric’s screeching in my head. Her? I look up and see him standing over me, knife in hand. Why has he stopped?
“Mattie! Keep talking like she’s your mother!”
“Mamma?”
I hear a choking noise coming from the figure above me.
“Why are you doing this, Mamma? Wasn’t I good girl?” I whisper, inching backwards just a bit. “Why do you want to hurt me?”
The man shakes his head, almost like he’s confused. I can see him inhale deeply then the tension drains away. He brings the knife down. I moved far enough away that the blade misses me and sinks into the wooden floorboards instead. He yanks, but it’s stuck. I don’t waste time. I roll and roll. There’s no point trying to get up. Best I can do is roll away from him. I roll into something and items rain down on me. I flinch, but I see a baseball bat. It’s an old wooden one made for a child. It’s small. I reach for it and grit my teeth as the pain swells up. I can’t get a good angle, so I’ll wait for my chance. I turn away, close my eyes and listen.
It only takes a moment before I hear the footsteps. Closer and closer they come until he’s right behind me. There is a movement in the air and I can guess its him raising his arm with the knife. I waste no time in rolling and swinging as hard as I can. It’s not my best work, but I hit him squarely in the kneecaps. He grunts and falls forward, landing on me. My breathe goes out in a whoosh, but I notice two things at once. One is that the person on top of me is not a man. I distinctly feel breasts squished against me. It is not Mr. Olson who is on top of me, but Mrs. Olson. The hoodie has come off and her muddy brown hair is falling around her fac
e.
Mrs. O? No way. I knew she was seven kinds of crazy, but never did I think for a second that she was the killer.
The second thing I notice is murder in her eyes. My death. I try to push her off, but it’s no use. What little strength I had left was in that last-ditch effort with the bat.
Mrs. Olson gets up slowly, glares and grabs my hair. She uses it to pull me along. I know I’m crying at this point, but can’t help it.
“Mrs. O., stop, please.” I beg her as she drags me towards the attic door. “Why are you doing this to me? Please, stop, please.”
“You!” she snarls. “Shut up! Be a good girl and shut up. You are going back to the chair. She won’t let you up again. I’ll make sure of that.”
I frown. What is she talking about? Who is ‘she’?
She starts down the stairs, dragging me with her. Each step causes agony. I blink back tears and fight the darkness around the edges of my vision. If she gets me back in that chair I am done for.
“Eric, help me!’
“How?” He screams back.
“I don’t know, do something ghostly!”
It’s as if every ghost there just pauses and says ‘Huh?’ and ‘Duh’.
We are on the second floor by now. I can hear them whispering, but there are too many of them talking all at once. The air around us gets colder and colder; I see my breath in front of me as I breathe. Within seconds it is so cold, I am freezing. I wouldn’t be surprised if my lips were blue.
Mrs. Olson stops and stares at me. She’s frowning, but feels the cold. I remember how scared she was earlier. I can help too.
“Can you feel them, Mrs. O? They are all here, all of the kids you killed. They are standing right here with us.”
Her eyes move around the hallway and she snarls something incoherent before giving me a swift kick in the stomach. I grunt, but am not deterred. I look up and see the walls weep with a steady stream of what looks like blood. So cheesy. Eric sighs, but hey, if it works, I’ll take cheesy. She stops trying to drag me away when she sees the walls.
A boy about sixteen or so is standing a few feet from us. His ebony skin is marred by puncture wounds, big gaping holes. There are hooks in his chest, abdomen, arms and legs. I get the distinct feeling he was suspended from those hooks. He grins at Mrs. O. This is Ricky. I know it without having to be told. He walks toward Mrs. O and she backs up. Whoa, she can see him! He winks at me and I know he is using a lot of energy to make her see him.
“You remember, Ricky don’t you, Mrs. O?” I ask her softly.
Another form flickers to our left. She swings in that direction, and probably twisting my hair out by the roots but I don’t care. I see Tina this time. I know it’s her just like I knew Ricky. She could have been pretty once, but her face has been carved up, a pattern embossed in the skin. I shy away from it. It’s almost as bad as Eric’s face. She walks toward us. Her movements are jerky and disjointed. That’s because her legs are bent at an odd angle. Even I cringe away from the walking nightmare and I know she means me no harm.
More and more kids flicker in around us, their mangled forms converging on us. I close my eyes. I can’t take it. If I thought I’d reached my scary threshold, I was wrong. I know they don’t want to hurt me, but I’m so scared, I’m shaking, never mind Mrs. O ripping out my hair.
Then I hear Eric’s familiar screeching start up, like a chainsaw cutting through a wall of nails.
“That’s, Eric,” I whisper and flinch at the pain in my head. My nose starts to bleed. It’s almost unbearable. “Was Eric your first? You remember what you did to his face, don’t you, Mrs. O?”
Mrs. Olson lets out a whimper and I know this is working. She’s afraid of him, but why?
“Why are you so afraid of Eric, Mrs. O?” I whisper, opening my eyes to look up into her terrified ones. “Why does he scare you more than the others?”
“He’s dead,” she hisses. “Dead, dead, dead. I killed him. He’s dead!”
Eric’s screeching gets worse. “Ask her who I am,” he orders.
Right. “Who is he, Mrs. O. Who is Eric and why did you choose him first?”
“He had to pay,” she growls. It’s Mrs. O’s voice, but not. It sounds deeper, almost masculine. “He made us do this.”
“What did he do?” I ask. “Who is he?”
“She was a good wife to him, did everything for him, but he couldn’t keep it in his pants.” Mrs. Olson lets go of my hair and brings the knife up, slashing at the shapes around us. It goes right through them and I hear their laughter. They are laughing and it makes Mrs. Olson insane. She screams.
“She couldn’t give him children,” Mrs. Olson is panting, rage burning in her eyes. “She could. I couldn’t let him hurt her like that. I had to make the whore pay for her sins.”
Who is ‘she’? My mind was whirling.
Eric’s face swims up in front of us. The broken, twisted mess of flesh and blood snarls at her. I swallow, my throat on fire. The blue eyes are glittering with their own rage. Blood seeps down, falling onto the carpet.
Mrs. Olson lets out a yelp and moves backward again. Eric pushes at her, his rage is making me hurt everywhere.
“You had to die,” Mrs. Olson says. “She saw you that day, knew who you were. We thought you had died in the fire with her. But there you were, laughing! How dare you!”
Mrs. Olson takes a shaky breath. She blinks and I see reason return to her eyes then fear. She’s staring at Eric like he is the Death Angel come to collect. He now towers over her, blood oozing down his face, dripping onto the pudgy form.
“No,” she whispers. “I had to help him. He wouldn’t listen to me. We had to kill her, had to kill you. Then I couldn’t make him stop killing. He had to have them, had to hurt them. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t tell him no. He means everything to me. Please, please, I’m sorry, so sorry.”
“You killed my mother,” Eric hisses. His voice fills the house. It echoes off the walls in octaves not meant for the human ear. I can feel the blood dripping from my ears. “Then you killed me to make sure my father never found out I lived.”
His father? My eyes widen and then it all makes sense. Mr. Olson is his father. He has to be. Mrs. O killed Eric’s mother and Eric ended up in foster care. When she saw him and realized he didn’t die, she took him and tortured him before finally killing him. Oh dear Lord.
“You’re dead!” Mrs. Olson’s voice once again has that deep masculine quality in it. The madness is back in her eyes. She walks back towards us, swinging her knife. “You are dead and you can’t hurt me you little son of a…”
I get to my knees and throw myself at Mrs. Olson. She staggers back. I keep pushing, rolling as hard as I can. She hits the banister. Her hands clutch the railing and the knife falls from her hands. I catch it and turn, stabbing her right above the left knee. She screams and Eric and every ghost in the hall runs at her. She jumps back and in doing so, falls over the banister. I hear the sound of her body hitting the floor below. It’s a unique sound, one hard to describe and one I’ll never forget.
It’s quiet.
I shiver and work to pull myself up to look over the railing. She is sprawled below us, unmoving. Is she dead? God, I hope so. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I let myself slide back down, resting against the bars of the banister. I’m woozy from blood loss. I hurt and don’t think I’ll last much longer.
At least she didn’t kill me. If I’m going to die, then this is a good way to go, fighting.
“Mattie?”
I blink and try to focus on Eric. His face is back to normal. He looks so worried. I smile at him. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank all of you.”
“Come on, Mattie, you need to get downstairs and outside. No one can find you in here.”
I can hear them all murmuring sounds of encouragement, but I can’t move. I have no strength left. All my aches and pains are going away. I’m numb. I often figured dying really hurt. I know people say it doesn’t, but
you don’t really feel anything. The pain is unbearable at first, but the human body is equipped to only handle so much pain before it shuts itself off. I’m grateful for that.
The sounds of whispers seem fainter and fainter, but I fight to keep my eyes open. I don’t want to miss the light. It’s beautiful. One of the bedroom doors is filling up with the most beautiful golden light I have ever seen. There is joy in that light and I want to cry. It so full of love. I can see people standing at the end of that light. Ha, it really does look like a tunnel.
“Do you see it? I see my Dad. Look, there my brother Matt! Granny?”
“No, wait!” Eric is back to hissing. “It’s dangerous in there, I can’t protect you!”
I groan, but must help them. They helped me and it’s my turn.
“No,” I tell them. “That light is for all of us.”
“All of us?” Eric whispers brokenly. “No, Mattie. Not you. I promised I’d save you. I’m sorry.”
“You did save me.” I reach up and for the first time in a long time, there is no pain in my hands. I cup his cheek and smile. “You got me out of that basement, you helped me hide, and you helped me kill her. You saved me, Eric, and now it’s my turn to save you.”
At least I don’t breath to do this. “The light is your doorway to the next life, I continue. “There is joy and peace there. You don’t belong here anymore. You belong there. Those people are waiting to guide you through the Between. They will keep you safe. I promise you, there is nothing to be scared of. It’s time to go home.”
“Mommy!” Michael Sutter. I remember him from the white boards, the little boy I’d seen in the bathroom when all this first started. His puppy-dog eyes shine with happiness. He hurtles himself into the light and then is gone. After that, they all drift in, calling out to their loved ones. I watch every ghost I’d seen since the little girl in the bathroom to Rick go into the light and it makes me happy. As much pain as I am in, I am happy that I could help them.
