Ghost Town: A Novella

by Mark Lukens

  (chewed away)

  from his face, revealing too much of his teeth and gums. Because his teeth and gums were revealed from the missing flesh, it seemed like he was constantly giving Ryan a rictus smile; it gave the man an insane, clown-like appearance. A tortured clown.

  The red-haired man’s scarred hands hung down beside him. Ryan could see that all of the man’s fingernails were gone, and then ends of his ruined fingers were dripping blood.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The red-haired man stopped approaching and stood in front of Ryan; he was only ten feet away. The man smiled at Ryan and the scar on each side of his face bunched up grotesquely.

  Ryan backed up a step away from the man; he was beginning to panic now. “Who … who are you?” Ryan asked as he struggled for breath.

  “You know who I am,” the red-haired man whispered.

  His ruined fingertips continued to drip blood down to the dark floor below.

  “What happened to you?” Ryan whispered.

  “You know that, too,” the man said.

  Ryan couldn’t take it; he couldn’t stand in front of this monstrosity anymore. He turned and ran into the darkness and he was suddenly …

  … drowning in dark, churning water. He tried to swim up to the surface of the water where he could see a dim light. In the strange way that dreams have, Ryan was both inside his body and outside of it; he watched himself swim up towards the light.

  And he could see when he lifted his face up to the light that his own eyes were gone—there were only two deep black holes where his eyes used to be.

  5.

  Ryan jumped awake in his bed. He sat bolt-upright, breathing hard, staring straight ahead at the dresser with the TV on top of it. It seemed to be late afternoon, but it wasn’t dark yet.

  Thank God I didn’t wake up in the dark, he thought.

  His hands went to his own eyes, almost like he was making sure they were still there as he remembered seeing himself swimming in the dark water, looking up to the surface with no eyes.

  He tried to push away the pictures of the dream and he began to relax a little. His heart and breathing began to slow back down to a normal rate. Then he heard the scratching noise.

  He turned and looked at the window.

  The red-haired man from his dream was right outside the window among the tree branches—but he wasn’t on the branch, he seemed to be floating in the air. He stared at Ryan with his constant smile of exposed teeth and gums and the deep gashes that ran from his mouth to his ears were bunched up. He ran his ruined fingertips across the glass of the window and left bloody streaks behind.

  Ryan backed away from the man in the window without even realizing what he was doing. He fell off the other side of the bed and crashed down to the wood floor. In a panic, he jumped up from the floor onto his knees and he crouched over the bed like someone praying at the side of their bed. He stared at the window.

  But the red-haired man was gone.

  There was nothing there, no bloody smears on the glass, only the branches scratching at the window.

  6.

  Downstairs, Victor and Tom sat at the small table in the kitchen. There were plates of half-eaten dinner in front of them. Carol stood at the sink, putting leftover dinner into Tupperware dishes.

  They all looked up at the ceiling when they heard the thumping sound from upstairs from when Ryan fell onto the floor.

  Both Victor and Tom stopped chewing their food as they watched the ceiling for a long moment.

  There were no other noises from up there.

  Victor looked at Carol. “And you don’t think this one’s going to be trouble?” he asked her.

  Carol looked at Victor. “I hope not.”