“Stay,” she said. “It’s all right here. There’s no pain. No anger.”
“I buried you,” he said, and touched her hair. “You’re gone, and I’m sorry I left you.”
To his right was a metal trashcan and he picked it up with both hands and hurled it at the glass door. It shattered, the pieces of glass crumbling to the carpet. Boyd launched himself through the opening, shielding his face with his forearm. Inside, the restaurant was dark, apart from the pasty glow of the light about the bar. The tables had their chair counterparts stacked on top of them and he used the table closest to the door to barricade the opening in the glass.
He cut across the carpet for the bar and rounded the wooden counter, almost whacking his hip into it. A sharp pain bit at his right knee, and he knew he was losing steam quickly. He was already at a hobble as he pushed through the kitchen and out the back door. Once outside, he grabbed onto the metal railing of the cement staircase and used it to support himself all the way down.
The alleyway was lit with two floodlights, but Boyd had to strain his eyes to see. He spun right, saw the dumpsters, then spun left…
Teddy’s dusty blue pickup sat back off the service road. Boyd limped toward it, and choked down a cry of relief when the door opened. He hauled himself into the cab and found himself even more thankful that the keys were still in the ignition. The engine kicked to life and Boyd punched the truck into gear.
The service road was narrow, and he hit a speed bump hard as he came out onto the loop near the front of the building. When he saw his truck, with Teddy’s body still on top of it, his foot let off the gas. He was divided. He truly didn’t want to leave Teddy there, but there was no way on his bad leg he was going to be able to lift Teddy up into the pickup. Boyd was just about to put his foot back down on the gas when a sound caught his attention through the crack in the window.
A lifting, almost blaring noise filtered through: a horn.
Something was coming up the hill, and just out of reach of his headlights.
A little girl on her bike, a child of maybe nine or ten, pedaled around the bend of the loop and stopped just before Boyd’s damaged truck.
Her head was raised, and it seemed she was staring in towards the building, but he couldn’t be sure. Boyd opened his mouth, but found himself unable to speak. The breath got stuck in his chest and stayed there.
Isabelle stopped squeezing the horn on her pink bike and the night grew still. She was still staring intently into the lobby, but then it seemed she noticed someone standing there, but if there was, Boyd couldn’t see past his truck.
Then she was off her bike, it tumbled to the pavement, and she was reaching her hand out toward someone. Boyd felt a rising alarm as if he was about to watch someone jaywalk into an oncoming car.
“No,” he breathed. “No!”
He had to warn her, had to get her away from this place and whatever it was that was here. He fumbled for the handle to the door, but it wouldn’t budge, and he thrust his shoulder into it before he could process what the holdup was.
“Isabelle!” he shouted, falling from the truck — and she turned her head. “Get away, Isabelle. Get on your bike and ride!”
Isabelle glanced back at the entrance to the hotel, and for the quickest of seconds it looked like she was going to take a step toward Boyd. Her face looked helpless, and she was pulled out of view as she disappeared behind Boyd’s truck.
“Isabelle!” he screamed, but she was gone, having vanished to he didn’t know where. On his one good leg he hopped toward where her bike was collapsed on the pavement. He dropped down before it and wept, hard, terrible tears and without realizing was saying Morgan’s name instead.
-21-
When he came to, he was on his back and staring up into the night sky. It was soothing to see the stars, something he forgot to appreciate enough as the world slipped by him. A rough, wet feeling spread up his face, and he inhaled the scent of wet dog through his nose. Lady was lapping at his face. Hot tears started to form in his eyes. She was whining in the back of her throat and Boyd tried to move his fingers and felt pieces of gravel beneath them. He wanted to tell her he was okay, but a pulsating tremble was moving up his left arm. He tried to lift his head up, but he felt like someone had rested a barbell on top of his forehead.
It was then he realized that someone else was by his side. A face came into view, and Boyd stared into the calm, almond-colored eyes of Ed Gambi. The other man was crouched by him.
“Would you like to come inside?” he asked.
Boyd tried to sit up again, but felt a hot pain in his chest and arms.
“Easy,” Ed said. “You’re having a heart attack. You’ll go into shock soon.”
Boyd tried to move his feet, he could hear them clopping on the cement, but he sure as hell couldn’t feel them. “What … what happened?” he wheezed.
“Just try to relax. This part is always the hardest.”
Boyd shook his head trying to clear away some of the murkiness from his vision. Was he really dying? He felt a hand touching his shoulder. Ed’s face was there again, a tight grin tucked into the corner of his mouth.
“You do understand I couldn’t just let her leave? Couldn’t let you or Teddy leave either. It’s better this way, I promise you. You all need this place so much. I hope you didn’t mind the parlor tricks earlier. I admit the marching band was a tad self-indulgent on my part. But alas, all good shows must come to an end.”
Boyd’s pulse lunged, and he tried to scramble upwards, but with no effort at all Ed was pushing him back toward the ground.
“We haven’t been properly introduced,” Ed said. “My friends call me Badge. That’s my real name, anyway. Ed Gambi is just an anagram, a fun play on words. I hope we can be friends, Boyd. I hope this face is okay for you too. I don’t suspect you’d like my true face very much.”
“Isabelle,” Boyd coughed, his throat was on fire.
“She’ll be fine. She’s been here a real long time and you’re not the first person to see her either. What? You didn’t really think she heard you, did you?”
“I’ll hurt you,” Boyd grunted, and tried to move his hand for his holster, but his body felt paralyzed.
“See?” Ed said with a grin. “This is what I like about you. You’re angry and you’re lonely and you don’t fit in anywhere. I think you’ll find that we’re not that much different, you and I.”
He put a hand to Boyd’s forehead, and wiped a bead of sweat free, then patted his hand dry on Boyd’s pants. “It’s going to be better now, you’ll see.”
Boyd looked up into the sky and saw blackness; and then with horror realized that he wasn’t looking at the sky, but that his own vision had gone black. He started to cry, hard, wet tears. Ed’s voice was there in his eardrum.
“Show’s over now, Boyd. Curtains closed. Let’s say goodnight.”
”I can hear you breathing over the ghost box…”
Dear Reader,
I know it’s never easy to take a chance on something new, whether it’s a new band, movie, or especially an unknown author. The fact that you downloaded this with your cold hard cash or someone put this in your hands and said ‘read this!’ and you actually did (well, I hope you did, otherwise you missed that awesome scene where Abraham Lincoln was battling machine gun wielding monkeys on horseback) is both very humbling and inspiring. And for that, I say THANK YOU!
I hope you liked what you read as this is only the beginning of our journey together. I look forward to telling you more stories and I hope you’ll be apart of helping to see them grow out there in the wild. I’ve often felt that a bond between author and reader is important and very special.
As an author, I want to affect you and make you feel something (that’s why we read, right?). To me, my favorite stories are the ones that clatter around in my brain long after they’re over. I hope you feel the same way.
So, if you enjoyed what you read, spread the word! Put this in the hands of friends,
family, co-workers, anyone who you think will dig a scary story. Let them borrow your copy or read it over your shoulder. Word of mouth is important and helps more than you know.
Till next time …
Derek Neville
From an undisclosed underground bunker
November 2014
Thoughts? Feelings? Confessions?
email the author at: [email protected]
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Ghost Box Page 8