by Spike Black
He took a breath, then stopped. She’d got him. “So anyway, you saw a ghost?”
Wendy moved closer. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
“Because, you know, I can understand why you didn’t tell me. It sounds so silly.”
“You hit him with the car. Didn’t you?”
“But I believe you. I’m here for you, we can talk about it.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I’ve actually had some experience of that sort of thing. Quite recently, in fact.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
He swallowed. A nerve in his cheek twitched. “I hit him.”
Wendy’s hands flew to her mouth, stifling a cry. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“He came out of nowhere,” Garth said quickly. “You’ve got to understand that. There was nothing I could do.”
“So… so you just left him there? I thought you were a better person than that.” She dropped onto the bed, her head in her hands.
He sat next to her. “So did I. But he’s haunting me, Wends. We’re not safe, any of us. I know it sounds ridiculous but you’re the only person I can talk to about any of this, because of your… you know, your experience.”
“Wait - we’re not safe?”
“He’s the Chalkstone Ripper, for Christ’s sake. He killed Juha, he caused all those cars to crash. He wants his revenge.”
She jumped up. “This is madness. I can’t be around you.” She headed for the door.
“Wait!”. He chased after her. She turned back. “You saw something, right? Well, I did, too. I saw him, Wends. I saw the ghost of Eddie Serling.”
She looked up at him, searching for the truth in his eyes. “Show me.”
***
Garth pulled onto the shoulder on Eldham Road and parked the car two hundred feet from the bus stop. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked through them at the shelter and the surrounding gravel path.
Wendy shifted in her seat. “Shouldn’t we get closer?”
“Can’t risk it. Not with you in the car.”
Garth had an uneasy feeling about this. What if the ghost was a no-show? What then? Wendy simply had to see it for herself - he needed her on his side. He scanned the area, almost expecting Eddie to suddenly appear at the corner of his limited view, making him jump. Or maybe, when he lowered the binoculars, Eddie’s rotting face would be pressed up against the windshield.
He shivered, creeping himself out. They sat there in silence for some time, the temperature inside the vehicle plummeting, a mist coming off the fields and obscuring his view somewhat. This stakeout could last all night, he realized, and he was deeply regretting not bringing any doughnuts.
Even if Eddie did show, though, what made him think that Wendy would be able to see him? Nobody at the scene of Juha’s accident saw him. Garth sunk into his seat. This was a fool’s errand, he suspected. And he’d put his wife in danger unnecessarily.
“You want to tell me about the station?” he asked. “I think we’ll be here a while.”
Wendy sighed. “There’s not much to tell, to be honest.”
“Still, I’d like to hear it. If, you know… if you’re up to it.”
She shifted in her seat. “Well, you know the place. It’s a creepy old building. Not somewhere you particularly want to be alone at night, or any other time of day, for that matter. And it really doesn’t help that there’s a panic alarm that goes off regularly in the old cell block. Or at least it used to, I think they’ve taken care of that now. Anyway, one night the alarm went off, and there were only four of us in the building. And you can’t turn it off remotely, you have to actually go down there.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, exactly. I mean, these are abandoned cells, at the other end of the station, haven’t been used for years, other than to store junk and old paperwork. And there were all these tales going around about the ghost in the cell block. People had seen him in solitary, apparently. So everybody on shift that night, they started drawing straws. It was ridiculous. So I just said, ‘oh, for goodness sake,’ snatched the keys and went down there.”
Garth shivered. “You really don’t have to tell this story, you know. If you don’t want to.”
“I’m pretty good at that sort of thing though, don’t you think? I’ve never been a scaredy-cat kind of person. So I unlocked the door, and went inside, and yeah, it’s spooky and cold and smells of damp, but it’s not all that bad. I found the key to the alarm behind the custody desk and turned it, and, well, I should have left then. But I think I wanted to test how brave I was or something, because I went to the end of the cell corridor and unlocked solitary. Just to take a peek inside.”
“Jesus. You’re a nutter.”
“I know. But it was empty. Nothing there at all. A bad smell, as if something was off, maybe. Then as I was coming out, I turned around and Kelvin was standing there, the little bastard. I leapt out of my skin!”
“Kelvin? The one who…”
“Yeah. ‘Boo!’ he went. And I started having a go, and I looked back at him, and at that exact moment…” She stopped, her arms rippling with goosebumps.
“What?”
She fidgeted. “He saw something. Over my shoulder. I don’t know what, I’ve never found out, but I was right there, and I saw the absolute terror in his eyes. He just…fell apart. It’s the single scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Good God.”
“Obviously, we got out of there, quick. I had to help him up the stairs.”
“You never saw a ghost?”
“No. Then the next day Kelvin was late for his shift, so Brian called over the radio for me and Silas to go around his house because we were in the area. And, well, you know what happened, I guess, but you don’t know the detail. We found him on the kitchen floor, in a pool of his own blood. He’d poked both of his eyes out with a fork.”
Garth winced. He rubbed his eyes.
“That was enough for me, I tell you. I handed in my notice.”
Garth nodded, about to say something, then froze. A figure, inside the bus shelter. He scrambled for his binoculars and put them to his eyes. As a cloud of mist cleared he saw Eddie Serling staring back at him, through the glass panel of the shelter. “Look!”
Wendy took the binoculars and surveyed the area. “I can’t see anything.”
“There!” He pointed, willing her to see. “Right there. Inside the shelter.”
She dropped the binoculars and shook her head.
Garth’s heart sank. “Well, you believed Kelvin. So believe me.”
“Just so you know,” she said, “ghost or no ghost, I still want you gone.”
He tore his eyes away from the shelter. “What? Wends…”
“I’ll give you time to find a new place, but don’t ever think you’re getting away with this.”
“A new place? Are you kidding?”
“You’ll find something.”
“Oh? Any suggestions?”
“There’s the shelter on Jaywick Street.”
He shot her a look. “That’s for the homeless.”
“No, they’re open to pretty much anyone. Runaways, the destitute, the morally bankrupt…”
“Jesus. Don’t you get it? You and Chloe were the reason I left the scene in the first place. I was thinking of you. Of us.”
“Oh, I see. So by leaving a dead man in the road, you were actually doing the honorable thing.”
Garth huffed. He started to sulk, then snapped out of it. “I’ll make it right. I swear to you.”
“Really? And how do you propose to do that? Travel back in time?”
He opened the car door.
Wendy’s head snapped around. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What? You don’t even think it’s there.”
“Yes, fine, there’s a ghost. Now shut the bloody door.”
He slid a foot out of the car. “I have to make amends.”
“I have to do something.”
“Yeah? And what are you planning, exactly? I don’t think the ghost of a serial killer is going to be happy with ‘sorry’.”
Garth sighed. At least she still cared enough to argue with him. “Just stay out of sight, okay?” He climbed out of the car and closed the door.
What began as a purposeful march uphill soon descended into a trudge, as the reality of what he was doing sunk in. He saw the dark figure of Eddie inside the shelter and wobbled forward on gelatinous knees, listing slightly. His breath shortened, his chest tightening as he gulped mouthfuls of cool air. He glanced back at the car and saw only the reflection of the night sky in the windshield. He was glad, because at least it meant that Wendy would stay hidden from view.
He heard the roar of an engine and turned back. The beam of a car’s headlights blinded him. He edged onto the side of the road as the vehicle passed by. Oh, the irony, he thought, if I had been knocked down in the road by that car.
He locked eyes with the ghost and wanted to look away, but couldn’t. There was something appallingly fascinating about Eddie’s face now that he was beginning to deteriorate. His skin was a patchwork of large blisters, and the flesh under his chin had begun to swell grotesquely, giving him a toad-like appearance.
Garth stopped in the road a few feet from the bus shelter. He noticed that Eddie’s skin had taken on a green hue.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. Wendy would not have approved. He wanted to say more, but his jaw trembled and his tongue lay numb and useless in his mouth, like a beached seal.
He fought past it. “I’m sorry, okay? I know that doesn’t cut it after what I did, but… I know that you’re a husband. A father too, maybe? You can understand how I have to think about my family.”
The ghost stared back at him.
“Trust me when I say that leaving you here was the worst thing I ever did, and I’m ready to accept the consequences. So whatever it is that you want me to do, just tell me, and I’ll do it. Okay?”
Garth fell silent. He realized that expecting a response from a mute ghost was asking a little too much.
“Your wife,” he said. “I’ve seen her. She’s in a state. I can help. Make sure she’s looked after.”
The ghost didn’t react.
“What shall I do? Give me a sign. Anything.”
Eddie’s crushed forehead seemed to pulse, and a chunk of his skull fell away. Garth looked hard. He saw a throbbing, wriggling mass of maggots where Eddie’s brain should have been.
“And if you can’t do that, then… you know what?” His heart bashed in his throat. “Just go. Leave the folks of this town alone. They’ve been through enough, don’t you think?”
With that, the ghost retreated into the shadows.
Garth stood on the road in silent disbelief. After a few moments he moved around the shelter, thinking he would find Eddie on the other side. But no. Had he won?
He glanced behind him at the car, hoping Wendy was okay. When he turned back, the bus stop sign wobbled, the pole lifting impossibly from the ground. It seemed to levitate for a moment, until Garth saw Eddie Serling grasping the seven-foot long pole. He pulled it back over his shoulder, like a javelin.
Garth’s eyes widened, and he ducked.
The pole darted through the air, clearing him by several feet. Turning back, he watched in horror as the pole shot a great distance, injected with such incredible momentum that it kept on going, down the hill. Toward his car.
“No!” Garth screamed. He burst into a run, but as soon as he’d picked up speed the pole came to the end of its arc and sailed, with a crunch, into the windshield of his Nissan.
“Wendy!”
He bolted, frantic, the distance taking forever to traverse, the car seeming to pull away from him as he moved closer. It was a nightmare of looping panic that he thought might never end. Finally he reached the car, the pole jutting through the glass, where it had made a perfect hole. He pulled the passenger side door open, not even sure he wanted to look.
Wendy was in her seat, her face a mask of shock. The pole, having missed her by inches, was buried in the back seat.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. It was a moment before she could speak. “I think I believe you, now.”
Garth glanced back at the bus shelter. Eddie Serling was gone. He turned to Wendy, catching his breath. “Okay, so tell me. How did you get rid of the ghost at the station?”
* * *
CHAPTER 13
“Now,” Father Padraig said, laying out a variety of objects on the bus shelter seat, “what I will perform here is not, as you might expect, an exorcism, but a cleansing.”
Garth peered over the priest’s shoulder at the collection of items: a Bible, a vial of salt, a box of matches, a bundle of sage branches bound with string. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach about this. “A cleansing?”
“We’re dealing with a malicious entity, yes, but not a possessed soul. The spirit has merely decided to remain in this place rather than moving on to an afterlife.”
Unfinished business, Garth thought. That’s why he’s sticking around.
The priest thumbed through his Bible, finding pre-marked passages, and set the book down in front of him. He wore a tunic of white linen that reached to his knees, and a purple stole around his neck, the two ends hanging down in front, each end decorated with a cross. He fit the stereotypical image of a priest so completely that Garth thought he looked like an actor playing a role, or someone going to a costume party.
Father Padraig placed his hands on the mud-smeared glass of the shelter and spoke so loud it was startling. “Thank you, Lord, for your sanctification. I command all spirits, ‘You leave at once!’” He moved on to the metal frame, and the plastic bench. “I bless this place, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Garth looked on, wide-eyed, a sense of creeping dread building as he waited for the star of the show to make his appearance.
The priest struck a match and lit the top of the bundle of branches, creating a smudge stick. As it smoked freely, he waved the stick around the bus shelter, and along the roadside. He walked the perimeter of the shelter, allowing the smoke to fill the area, paying particular attention to the bench and the doorway.
“I banish all negative energies, spirits and ill will from this place. Go now, and do not come back.” He took the vial of salt and sprinkled it on the bench and across the doorway.
He breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and stood in quiet prayer for a moment. Just as Garth started to think that maybe this was a complete waste of time, the priest’s eyes snapped open.
Garth’s jaw slackened in anticipation.
Finally, Father Padraig spoke. “I do not feel a presence.”
Garth deflated. A thought struck him, and he winced. “Well…there is one more place we can try.”
He took the priest to the storage container beyond the trees. Opening one of the cargo doors wide, he waved his hand in an after you motion. Not that he had any intention of going inside. The whiff of death escaping the container was enough to make him feel instantly nauseated.
The priest stepped inside, seemingly immune to the awful smell. He walked the perimeter of the container, waving the smudge stick and repeating his prayer. “Oh yes,” he said, turning to Garth when he was done. “This is the place. I can feel it.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than something emerged from the shadows at the rear of the container. Garth gasped as he watched the shape of Eddie Serling form in the smoke, rising to full height, a whole head taller than the priest. Garth wanted to call out, to tell him to get the hell out of there, but he was struck dumb, his tongue paralyzed with fear.
“I banish all negative energies, spirits and ill will from this place,” Father Padraig continued, oblivious to the specter looming behind him. “Go now and do not come back.”
A
nd then something remarkable happened. The smoke from the smudge stick began to collect around Eddie’s ghost, clouds of vapor departing the corners of the container and coming together, forming into a funnel that wrapped itself first around his feet and legs, then his chest and arms. The look on the serial killer’s face was one of shock and dismay.
“It’s working!” Garth shouted. “It’s working!”
“Open the doors,” Father Padraig said. “As wide as you can.”
Garth set to work, putting all of his weight behind the open cargo door until it was as wide as it would go, dropping the bolt to hold it in position. He raced to the other door and grabbed hold, running in an arc until the front of the container was fully exposed to the night.
He heard a low, moaning noise and was reluctant to look back for a moment, worried that he would see the priest gargling blood, or mortally wounded in some way. To his surprise, the noise was emanating from Eddie’s ghost. He watched as the smoke climbed up his spectral form, entangling him. His facial features contorted beyond anything possible by a physical being.
“I command you to be silent in the name of Jesus,” Father Padraig cried, maintaining what Garth thought was remarkable composure, given the circumstances. In response, the ghost’s moans only became louder, the tortured cry of a tormented beast, a hellish and constant wail. It was like the worst song ever recorded playing on the devil’s turntable at the wrong speed.
Padraig sprinkled more salt across the doorway, and Eddie’s hideously stretched face moulded into an expression of anguish, his noises now mangled, excruciating screams, echoing around the container, bouncing off the metal walls.
“Jesus,” the priest exclaimed, fighting to be heard over the caterwauling, “I ask that you silence any and all evil spirits in and around this place.”
Garth covered his ears as the screams heightened in pitch. He didn’t know how the priest could stand it - this was a noise that he was sure would soundtrack his nightmares for years to come.
Father Padraig raised his arms. “Depart then, impious one!”
The ghost seemed to rise up behind the priest, a formidable foe, and Garth feared the worst. It was going to attack, he knew it. But then it twisted, thrashing violently, and the harder it fought the more it lost its form, the smoke almost seeming to eat away at it, tearing large holes in the body of the thing, the ghost’s mouth widening until the hole was so vast it had consumed its head.
