“A foot?” He sighed and ran toward it.
Kate lay crumpled at the base of a classroom door. He knelt down, and shook her.
“Kate! Kate! Wake up!”
She remained motionless as if in a coma.
“Oh, God! What have I done?” He patted her face. “Kate!” He looked to see if anyone was coming. “Why did I let you come here?” he moaned. “I’m so sorry, Kate!” He put his fingers on her neck to check her pulse. He could feel only the faintest beat and her breathing was so shallow he thought she was almost gone.
He immediately began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
• • •
Noah came around the corner, guided by the beam of the flashlight Bryan had laid on the floor. He could hear Bryan talking between gulping in big breaths of air.
“What did I do? Come on, Kate! Wake up! It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see.” In between breathing and pushing on her chest he continued, saying, “Come on, Kate! Come back to me!” Breath. Pump. Pump. Pump. “Come on now. Don’t give up! You can do this!” Breathe. Pump. Pump. Pump.
“That thing isn’t gonna hurt you now. I’ve got you Katie!”
Noah stood in the darkness and thought, I think Bryan knows something he hasn’t told us.
Bryan continued. “Nick was right. It’s David Ray. We saw David’s face…and a dead body. I’m so sorry.” He continued to whimper as he pumped and breathed into Kate’s mouth. “How could I have let this happen to you?”
Noah moved in to assist, and reasoned that Bryan could be dealt with later.
“Is she okay?” asked Noah.
“I hope so! She’s no—”
His efforts had worked. Suddenly Kate gasped loudly for air, cringing in pain. The two men breathed a sigh of relief. Noah took off his jacket and put it under her head. She curled up on the floor, lethargic and incognizant. Noah looked at Bryan with distrust. Bryan returned his gaze like a deer staring into oncoming headlights.
“What’s going on, Bryan?” Noah asked accusingly. He watched the deputy to discern his level of truthfulness.
“I heard you talking to Kate. I heard what you said about the body and the face. Obviously, you know what’s been going on here. So what gives?”
Bryan dropped his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
“Really? Try me!”
“You don’t know what she’s had to go through all these years with Nick. He’s a drunk! And he’s losing his mind! He can’t keep a job and he can’t take care of her like she deserves.”
Noah’s brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with what just happened?”
Kate began to gag and cough. Noah gently touched her shoulder.
Bryan’s eyes threatened Noah. “Shhhh. We’ll talk later.”
Kate held her head and moaned.
“Ohhh. What happened?” she asked. Her face was red from the tumbling.
“Something grabbed you, but it’s gone,” said Bryan. “You’re safe now.”
Her dazed eyes questioned Noah. “Did you see it? What was it?”
“I couldn’t see anything,” replied Noah. “But something was clearly dragging you.”
“I think I felt it. It felt cold.” Kate paused, remembering the sensation. “I could feel its grip on me. I felt it pulling my legs, but it was dark. Then everything went blank.”
“Something’s here.” Noah looked around as if searching for it. “And it wants something from us. Whether it’s David Ray or something else, we have to find out what it wants.”
“What if it’s David Ray’s ghost? What if he wants to kill us too?” Kate started to grow hysterical again.
Bryan peered at Noah, then turned his eyes to Kate.
“Come on, Kate. We talked about this already.” Bryan attempted the charade one last time.
Noah angrily turned on him.
“What are you doing, Bryan?”
“What?” Bryan threw his arms out defensively. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about! Not five minutes ago, you were confessing that David Ray’s ghost is here and that he’s killed someone! And now this! What—are—you—hiding?”
Bryan dropped his head once again. Kate’s eyes were wide open now, and went back and forth between the two men in utter confusion.
“What is he talking about, Bryan? Is that true?”
After a moment of tense silence, Bryan looked at Kate defeated.
“It’s true. Nick was right. There’s something here. Is it David Ray’s ghost? I don’t know for sure. But I think it is.”
• • •
Kate wanted to hit him, hard, but she didn’t have the energy to spare.
“Why did you lie to me—to all of us?”
“I couldn’t let you go back to him, Kate! We always wanted to be with each other. And you were always hoping for an escape. But every time Nick came crawling back you welcomed him with open arms! Well this was my chance to keep him away from you, for good! So when he hit you, I knew I had him. I knew his ranting and raving wouldn’t stop. And every time he spouted off about ghosts, it made him look all the more ignorant.” Bryan took a deep breath. “With him in jail, we can finally be together. Can’t you see that? All we need to do is get through this. After this is over, we can be together just like we always dreamed about!”
Kate silently stared at the floor, desperately trying to understand why he would be so deceitful.
“What’s the matter, Kate? I thought you wanted this! I thought you wanted to be free from him!”
She’d heard enough. Each word that came from his mouth made her feel sick. It took everything in her to open her mouth and tell him, “I did want to be with you Bryan. But not like this.” Her exhausted eyes stared at him and her chin trembled. “You’ve put all our lives at risk…and I could’ve been killed.”
She began to climb up from the floor and cringed from the bruising all over her body. Noah helped her. Picking up the flashlight he supported her with an arm round her back. They walked slowly toward the others.
Bryan remained kneeling in the dark. “It doesn’t have to end like this, Kate! I love you!”
Kate didn’t look back.
• • •
Larry continued driving, while Nick gazed out of the window. Larry listened to the rhythm of his tires slapping on the blacktop and the beat of the rain on the roof. Twenty years was a long time, he thought. I wonder what David looks like now? Hell, the boy’d spent more than half his life lying in a hospital bed.
The image sickened him.
Tired of the silence, he turned on the radio as larger raindrops splashed on the windshield. He clicked the button to speed up the wipers again and stared at the dark road ahead. Hope I’m doing the right thing. He looked at Nick, whose eyes were now closed, and continued his thought. I hope I’m doing the right thing, for everyone’s sake.
• • •
Tanner, Lana and Maria had made their way back to the front doors by feeling clumsily along the cafeteria walls. They moved through the darkness toward a single emergency light that shone over the front entrance. Once there they pounded on the doors, but no one answered. They cried out for help, desperately hoping someone would hear them.
“Everyone’s gone,” said Tanner.
“Let’s just stay here for a minute, okay. I need to take the weight off my leg,” said Lana.
“Okay,” replied Tanner.
She sat down stiffly and said, “Will somebody please tell me what happened back there!”
Maria added, “Are you kidding? I don’t even want think about the possibiliti—” Maria stopped and turned to listen to something. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Lana.
“A screeching noise, like fingernails on chalkboard. Listen.”
Lana turned her ear to listen, but shook her head. “No, nothing.”
“There it goes again!” insisted Maria. As soon as she spoke, she saw s
omething moving near the tile artwork.
“What’s that?” she asked as she surveyed the floor. She crawled toward the Fighting Cougar mosaic. As she drew near, she noticed a small area of tile had begun to disfigure. At first she couldn’t make any sense of the distortion in the dim light. She crept closer.
“Something’s digging into the tile,” she said. “There isn’t a physical presence, but something’s carving it…and moving faster. Look!”
At that point the others began to hear the sound as well. They crawled toward Maria, to see what she had discovered.
Maria’s head jerked back and forth as her eyes feverishly attempted to follow the invisible form clawing through the tile. It appeared to be writing something, but she couldn’t decode the message. She watched the tile change shape over the course of several seconds. A carving of some sort began to take form, what appeared to be six unidentifiable shapes. Maria edged closer to the phenomenon inch by inch, crawling on her hands and knees.
She stared at the gouged tile as in a trance. “That’s amazing.” Then her head was abruptly ripped upwards ninety degrees. Her eyes bulged with shock. She didn’t know what to do or say. Her mind was too full of confusion and fear.
“Maria?” Lana gasped.
Tanner shouted, “Maria! What are you doing?”
Maria moaned violently.
Lana screamed when Maria’s head whipped sideways as if something was yanking a handful of her hair.
Maria cried out and her body levitated suddenly directly over the tile carving. Something took her right hand and forced her index finger to outline the message. Her hand was rubbed repeatedly over the rough and jagged tile, her fingers growing raw and bloodied. The force froze her body and inscribed its message with just Maria’s fingers, over and over again until blood oozed out of their tips like a leaking fountain pen.
Maria screamed and screamed as her fingers etched the message into the tile. Lana reached out to pull her friend’s arm but the force shoved her back, sending her rolling to the floor. The entity grabbed Maria’s hair again, and yanked her head up. Her head bobbled as if hanging from a wire.
“Help her!” pleaded Lana.
Tanner grabbed Maria’s dangling arms and tried to pull her away, but the power of the entity almost overwhelmed him. Maria tried to scream again, but now nothing came out of her mouth.
“Pull!” shouted Lana.
“I’m trying!” responded Tanner. “It’s too strong!”
She stood up and grabbed Maria’s arms, pulling alongside Tanner.
Maria whimpered, “Help me. Make it stop. Please. Oh, God. Help me.”
The temperature dropped sharply. Their shouts and screams created a chilling fog, illuminated by the dim, red lighting. Maria’s face appeared and disappeared as the mist consumed her.
Shrouded in frosty air, Maria rose slowly. Her fingers trailed across the mosaic tile, slipping in her smeared blood. Higher and higher she rose, levitating toward the ceiling. Lana and Tanner tried to hold her back but could not overcome the force that hoisted her body upward, weakening their arms with each tug until they had to let her go.
• • •
The cries and shouts from the petrified threesome echoed through the halls. Noah and Kate came back into the cafeteria and shone the flashlight toward the noise. Bryan arrived close behind them. They witnessed Maria dangling nearly seven feet above the floor in the beam of the flashlight. Noah pointed it directly at her. No one moved. Maria’s crying voice quivered with every breath. Her eyes were nearly closed, her limbs dangling like a marionette and her mangled hair drooped downward over her face.
The entity forced her to look at the encoded script etched into the floor. From this raised vantage point she read the inscription:
Kill Me
Shivering and sobbing in pain, Maria whispered the message. “Kill me.”
The others couldn’t read the smeared letters from their position. Only Maria could interpret the message. Her bloodied fingers continued to drip scarlet drops onto the floor far below. She stared at the words, trying to recall why they seemed so familiar. Then she remembered Tanner’s dream.
“Kill me!” She spoke as loud as she could, but it came across as a whisper.
The others turned and twisted to try and see what she was looking at.
Maria recited the words again, only louder. “Kill me!” she rasped. “It says, kill me!”
Bryan mouthed the words and looked down at the message.
Maria’s body started convulsing. At first, her limbs wobbled, then her head. Soon, her entire body vibrated beyond her control, whipping her head with such intensity that blood spurted from her ears and nose, splashing down on the others. Then, without warning, her body was thrown violently to the floor below.
Her body crashed onto the tiles and the others heard her bones break. Horrified, they knelt down around her. She couldn’t move and her vision was failing. Darkness was closing in on her mental capacities. The faces of her friends faded but Maria no longer felt pain or fear as a bright light rushed toward the center of her existence. Her friends’ voices grew muffled and unrecognizable, echoing across the chasm between life and death.
“Maria!”
“Someone call 9-1-1!”
“My cell phone doesn’t work!”
“Mine neither!”
“We’re losing her!”
“Oh, my God! She’s dying!”
Although Maria’s eyes were closed, she saw a figure approaching from the center of the light. Darkness pressed against all sides of the light, but the aura of the figure kept the light growing brighter. It walked smoothly, gliding, becoming larger with each step. Finally, the figure reached for her and called her by name.
“Maria.” The voice echoed in her soul, no longer audible to her failing senses. “Maria. Come with me.”
The presence comforted her. The sound of its voice gave her a sense of peace, reminding her of happy times, sending joyful feelings through her being. The light grew brighter. The world she had lived in only minutes before was no longer a concern. The figure reached out to her. His soft, brown hand touched hers and she smiled, letting go of all the anger and resentment. She didn’t know who touched her, only that she trusted him and that his soul was connected to hers. She squeezed his hand and gently let go of her life on earth.
The others kept calling to her from the other side of death.
“Maria!”
“Help her!”
“Do something!”
“Maria!”
“She’s…not…responding.”
“Maria!”
“MARIA!”
• • •
Maria’s dead body lay sprawled on the floor. The frantic attempts to save her had failed. Tanner gently closed her eyes while Lana and Kate held her and cried bitterly. Noah knelt beside Maria’s body and silently prayed for her soul. Lana and Kate shivered in the cold as they considered Maria’s fate, and then their own.
• • •
Tanner was the first to move after what seemed an eternity of shock and grief. He walked back to the food table, quietly placed the dishes onto the floor and pulled off the white tablecloth. He carried the cloth back and they all took a corner and spread it over their friend.
Tanner then snatched the flashlight from Noah and moved past them, back to the tile mosaic. He thought out loud. “I know it seems heartless, but we can’t waste any time crying right now. We’ll look after Maria’s body after we get out of this.”
No one answered.
“Kill me?” Tanner asked, perplexed by the strange message. “What does that mean? We have to find the answer soon or we’re all going to die like Maria.”
Tanner traced the letters with his fingers in the air, studying the bloody wording on the floor.
Kate replied hotly, “I’m telling you, David is trying to kill us!”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Noah.
“It’s him isn’t it?” asked Tanner. He looked a
t Noah and Bryan for answers.
Kate looked at Bryan and said, “Go on Bryan! Tell them!”
“Tell us what?” asked Lana.
Bryan cleared his throat awkwardly. “We’re uh…pretty sure it’s David.”
“Don’t stop! Go on!” said Kate.
Bryan sighed and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ve had several confirmed paranormal sightings of a spirit that meets David’s description.”
Tanner and the others gasped in horror.
Bryan raised his voice to compensate for their shouting. “I think I saw him once myself. I mean, I didn’t see him specifically, but I saw an apparition that looked like him. The worst part is, the department believes this apparition may be responsible for killing someone else here a couple weeks ago—a boy.”
They all looked around the dark room, seemingly aware of the evil that surrounded them, fearful of what David might do next.
Tanner was livid and stood up to address Bryan.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us this before?” Tanner gritted his teeth. “What were you thinking?” He recklessly charged in the dark, dropping the flashlight, throwing a punch at Bryan’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”
Bryan reacted just in time, dodging the blow.
Noah immediately jumped in and bear-hugged Tanner from behind. His tall frame had filled out over the years and now outweighed Tanner. He pulled him back with both of his arms locked in Tanner’s elbows.
Tanner continued his protest by kicking in Bryan’s direction. Bryan grabbed a can of pepper spray attached to his belt.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” shouted Noah. “Go easy!” He continued to reel Tanner away from a confrontation with Bryan.
Bryan responded defensively, observing the group’s reactions. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this! Nobody could’ve guessed—”
Tanner interrupted. “Really? Well, that’s great! But Maria’s dead! And who knows what that thing’s gonna do next!”
Tanner pulled his arms free from Noah’s grasp, looking at the group with distressed eyes. The others watched him while he stood there with his chest pumping rapidly.
Reunion (A Psychological Suspense with Murder, Mystery and the Paranormal) Page 22
