The Girl in the Woods: A Ghost's Story (Off-Kilter Tales Book 1)

by Michael Robertson

  The hard bare walls and empty room threw the sound of Andy’s breathing back at him as if mocking his panic. The shadows gave no suggestions as to where he should hide, and the woman’s voice rang through the building again. “The prisoner’s escaped. We need to wake the fuck up.”

  Nell’s voice thrummed with a gravelled snarl. “Shit! Where do you think he’s gone?”

  For the next few seconds, Andy spun on the spot. Then he looked up. The ceiling had a hole in it. But how the hell would he get up there?

  Barely able to stand, he had no chance of jumping.

  Fortunately, Nell went towards the sound, charging into the ward where everyone slept while issuing a barking alarm. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  It had given Andy a few extra seconds. Hopefully he could make them count.

  The only light in the gloomy room came from the candle next door. It offered a narrow corridor of vision, hiding the chest of drawers in the corner until Andy damn near fell over them. About a metre tall and three metres wide, he tugged on them and they shook as if one hard kick would turn them to dust. But the sleepers in the ward were mobilising, Nell still shouting for them to get up. If there were any better or more immediate options, he hadn’t found them.

  Andy bit down on his bottom lip as if it would somehow mute the screech of wood across stone while Nell continued to shout two rooms away.

  The chest of drawers in place, Andy pushed out a hard exhale as he raised his left foot. When he’d lifted it about thirty centimetres from the floor, his standing leg failed him. He hit the hard and dirty stone, his thigh flexing, ripping his wound wider. Sweat instantly covered his body like he had a fever. Tears itched his eyes and his vision blurred. He couldn’t do it. But when the galloping footsteps left the ward and burst out into the corridor he’d just crossed, he gritted his teeth and pulled himself up by the wobbly drawers.

  All upper body strength, Andy pressed down on the drawers so he could first drag his good knee onto them and then use the strength in that leg to pull his weakened one up after. The footsteps spoke of the sleepers spreading out. Several of them beat a tattoo against wooden stairs somewhere in the building.

  Just standing up on the old piece of furniture challenged the strength of Andy’s right leg, the wooden structure creaking as it swayed beneath him.

  The hole had once been a loft hatch. It had been hard to tell from the floor because the edges were jagged with decay. Andy reached up, grabbed a bar of wood and tugged on it. Swollen with damp like the window frame in his cell, it disintegrated in his grip. “Fuck it.”

  Footsteps headed Andy’s way. At least three people entered the room Nell and her two lovers had been in. He grunted as he jumped at the hatch and reached into the loft, the drawers falling on their side when he boosted from them.

  Andy reached into the darkness but found nothing to cling on to and slid backwards, a moment of weightlessness lifting his heart into his throat. Just before he fell, his hands hooked over a beam, the strong bar of wood halting his fall.

  Andy pulled his left leg into the loft and rested his knee against the frame before dragging his right in after it. He bit back a scream as his thigh scraped over the jagged wood on its way in. The second he got clear, several people entered the room.

  Sitting just out of sight of the room below, Andy perched on the beam he’d used to drag himself up by, his right leg stretched out in front of him, his right fist balled waiting for the first head to poke up through the hole. Whack-a-mole for real. Crack-a-skull.

  Darker than any part of the building Andy had been in so far, the space existed between floors. Thunder hammered above him from the search party who’d run upstairs. He leaned closer to the hatch and tracked the movement of those who’d entered the room by their steps. Surely the chest of drawers on their side would give him away.

  A man’s voice said, “There’s no one here. Come on, we need to find that fucker.”

  Once they’d left the room, Andy stood up and paused. Had they really gone? A silent answer met his silent question, so he moved deeper into the loft space. He had just about enough room to walk with a hunch, the pressure of his crouch running straight to his thigh. Dustier than any other space he’d been in, it left a fuzzy layer against his teeth.

  Andy’s eyes adjusted to the murky space. The rooms below had seemed dark when he’d passed through them, but they were lighter than the loft. They revealed themselves through the holes in their ceilings as dull glows punching up into the dusty space. It gave him a measure of the ground floor’s footprint. The loft sat above at least six rooms. They wouldn’t take long to search, and then what? Could he do anything but wait? Or should he move now? The cannibals were stretched thin because of their hasty search, would now be the best time to free the girl?

  While moving over the beams with a stoop, Andy peered into the rooms below through the cracks. Slow progress, he pressed down on a beam with his leading foot, testing its ability to hold him before moving on to the next. Some were softer than others, but they all held. So far.

  As he passed over the room that had hosted the grotesque threesome, Andy stopped. A crowd had gathered in there. A small hole, it showed about six of them, but there were more he couldn’t see. The candlelight cast shadows across Nell’s bitter face.

  “We should check the woods,” she said. “He must have gone out there.”

  A man shook his head. “But where would he go? There’s nothing around for miles.”

  Nell lunged at the man, halting an inch from his face. “There are fucking trees out there and it’s dark. It’s the obvious place to hide, you moron.”

  A scalded puppy, the man pulled into himself and backed away.

  “And if we don’t find him,” Nell said, stalking her pathetic victim, “we’re going to need to find some other flesh to eat.”

  “What about the girl?”

  Andy winced at the crack of Nell’s open palm connecting with the side of the man’s face, knocking him to the floor. She leaned over him. “You mention the girl again and I promise we’ll eat you next whether we find the man or not.”

  The rest of the group closed in around the downed cannibal, some of them licking their lips. Like a pack of well-trained dogs, they needed just one word.

  It wouldn’t do any good to sit and watch degenerates argue with one another. Regardless of what happened to the man, they wouldn’t forget about Andy. If he got away, their secret would be out.

  What Andy had assumed to be the entirety of the ground floor when he’d climbed into the loft, he now saw differently. The space doglegged, running over several more rooms. At the far end sat a small round window in an external wall.

  Just as Andy pushed off, he stopped again when Nell said, “Let’s do one more sweep of the building before we go outside.”

  Footsteps raced away from the woman in every direction, and Andy set off towards the small window. At some point, someone would check the loft.

  Autumn wafted in through the round hole where there had once been glass, and Andy took a moment to breathe the cleaner air. It quelled his need to cough. Footsteps slammed above him, and although he didn’t have to be silent, the wrong sound at the wrong time could easily give him away.

  Andy poked his head outside. The ground about three metres below was covered in a bed of fallen leaves. It should soften the fall, and if he made it, he only had a short sprint to the thick woodland.

  No way could he save the girl on his own. What could one crippled man do against a small army? The sooner he accepted that, the sooner he could get help for both of them.

  Several people entered the room beneath him. The holes in the ceiling revealed their bats, knives, and clubs. Andy’s heart skipped as the woman he’d locked in the cell followed the pack, a short metal bar in her grip.

  How much longer before they were all outside? “I’m sorry, little girl,” Andy muttered as he hung his bad leg out first, the air cool against his exposed skin. The keys in his pocket jabbed into
his good thigh as if reminding him of their presence. But he couldn’t help her if he didn’t save himself.

  Maybe Andy had imagined the voice of his daughter. She’d burst into his mind a lot in the past three years. Usually, she offered words of comfort. Words of support. And sometimes a berating at the state of things between him and Chesky. But she’d never been so assertive before. The one word shattered through his psyche like a thunderclap. No!

  Andy pulled his leg back into the loft. An imagining of his daughter or his conscience, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t leave the girl with these people. More of them had gathered in the room below, their weapons increasingly inventive. Hammers, spanners, and one of them had a wood saw, the blade either rusty with time or coated in dried blood.

  “This search is pointless,” one of them said. “He’s in the woods.”

  The woman Andy had locked in the cell nodded. “I think so too. Why would he stay in here?”

  “We should get out there sooner rather than later. We can tell Nell there’s nowhere else to look. The longer we wait, the more of a head start he’ll have.”

  None of them replied. They didn’t need to. The silence said it all. Go on then. You tell Nell!

  Andy reached up and found a beam to lean against. It took some of the strain off his legs.

  The heavy steps of the tall woman then entered the room, and the same voice that had spoken a moment ago addressed her with a stammer. “H-h-he’s not in here. We need to plan how we’re going to search the woods.”

  The silence lasted so long Andy shifted over to another gap. A hard frown dominated Nell’s face and she worked her jaw as if chewing her words to a pulp before she spat them at him.

  The man clearly couldn’t take it anymore and filled the loaded silence. “Or … or … or you decide what we should do.”

  Nell’s voice snapped through the abandoned building. “Everyone! Here now!”

  If Andy wanted a better moment than this, he could be waiting a long time. The collective thunder of the cannibals closed in from all over the building. Wincing with every step as the wound on his thigh opened and closed, he made his return journey across the loft. Splinters from the beams sank into the sole of his exposed right foot.

  The cannibals were yet to leave. Just two rooms away, but at least they were all together. Andy slipped from the loft hatch and dropped to the floor. His legs failed him.

  A moment or two to breathe through the worst of it, Andy then scrambled to his feet. If he lay there too long, they’d find him and overwhelm him like rats on an injured dog. They tasted better when they screamed.

  Riding out the sting in his thigh with heavy breathing, Andy listened to the voices two rooms away. They continued to discuss their plan for searching the woods.

  Where Andy had limped before, the fall and a foot filled with splinters damn near robbed him of his ability to remain upright. His right hand against the closest wall for support, he shuffled through the first room into Nell’s candlelit boudoir.

  Maybe Andy imagined it, but as he moved through the fucking room, the smell of dirt and sex still perfumed the dank air. Almost as if the porous walls had sucked in the stench.

  The cannibals continued their meeting next door. A thick brick wall separated them, so Andy focused on the ward opposite.

  The shadows in the building had been Andy’s friend all along. Cloaked by them once again, he poked his head out into the hallway. Shadows to his right. An open doorway out of there to his left.

  Before the lure of the exit intensified, Andy hobbled across the floorboards in the direction of the ward.

  Darker than the other rooms, Andy had been too focused on the sleeping cannibals the first time around to see why. Sheets had been pinned up over the windows to block out the light. The voices behind him grew distant as he shuffled towards the entrance to the cellar.

  The door remained open. They must have assumed he wouldn’t be back. Anyone in their right mind would have made a run for it. Andy descended the worn stone stairs. His cell hung wide. The remains of the broken padlock lay on the floor in front of it. Harder to tell from the distance, but it sounded like the cannibals were yet to move.

  At the bottom of the stairs, panting, his throat swollen and dry, Andy tapped the bulge of keys in his pocket. Nell either hadn’t noticed they’d gone, or she didn’t realise he’d taken them. Otherwise, she would have been guarding the girl.

  The girl’s cage remained locked, and it took Andy a few seconds to find her in the gloom. She sat against the far wall, only her hollow glaze visible in the shadows.

  Andy swallowed. “I told you I’d be back.”

  If she felt anything about what he’d just said, she didn’t show it.

  The girl’s hollow eyes held a detached curiosity and maybe even cynicism. A Mona Lisa observance of him. “What are you doing? Why haven’t you run away yet?”

  “I can’t leave you here.” Andy flashed back to his leg hanging out of the window in the loft. To the gaping exit at the end of the corridor. He’d been so close to freedom. “I had to come back. You deserve a life. My little girl lost hers, and now I have an opportunity to help you get the one you should be living. It doesn’t bring her back, but it’s something, right?”

  Andy pulled Nell’s keys from his pocket and found the most likely candidate. One twist and it unlocked with a gentle click. He left the girl to open the door herself and rushed to the small window. Unlike the one in his cell, this one had a latch. The action gritty with rust, it still turned easily enough. But when he shoved the window, it opened no more than an inch before halting. Another push yielded the same response. The grass outside had grown too long and thick. “Fuck it.”

  It didn’t matter what Einstein said about insanity, Andy shoved the window again. And then again, each time with more force than before.

  A clenched jaw, his stinging thigh fighting for more of his attention, Andy shook his head. “Fuck it.”

  Maybe the distance between Andy and the cannibals now prevented him from hearing them, or maybe they’d started their search. Would they check the basement again? He shoved the window harder than ever. The bloated frame splintered, his right hand slipping through the dirty pane with a pop. The glass tore a gash through his palm, blood turning his hand slick.

  Footsteps beat against the floorboards in the main hallway. Andy shook, picking the damp and slippery shards of glass from the wooden frame. Most of it came away easily, but one particularly stubborn piece remained wedged in the wood. A jagged tooth coated in his blood. It would tear the girl to shreds. Several attempts to grip and pull it out, but his pinch slipped off every time.

  The footsteps continued through the building. Shouldn’t they all have gone outside by now? Drawing his bleeding hand into his sleeve, Andy used his makeshift glove to pinch the glass. It gave him enough purchase to wiggle the sharp shard free.

  His hand still covered with his sleeve, Andy ran it around the remains of the frame. Nothing left to snag her, he reached out into the night and patted the grass as flat as he could. He turned to the girl, hunched down and made a step by interlocking his fingers. Blood ran from the back of his hand to the floor.

  The girl hesitated. “But you won’t fit.”

  “No,” Andy said. He faced the stone stairs leading back to the ward.

  “Then what will you do?”

  “I have a plan. And that plan involves getting you out first, so hurry up.” Before she said anything else, Andy added, “I want you to wait just outside. Find somewhere good to hide and wait until the adults are distracted. When that happens, run. Run with everything you have. Get to the closest house and ask them to call the police. You won’t be in trouble, I promise. Just make sure you tell them everything, okay?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Don’t hold anything back. None of this is your fault.”

  She nodded again. “How will I know when to run?”

  “You’ll hear it.” After a pause, Andy said, “Can
I give you a new name?”

  “I’d love to have it. If you don’t mind?”

  Andy smiled at her. “Come on now.” He flicked his head up to encourage her to climb.

  Gwen stood on his hand, twisting her foot against the gash.

  Andy groaned through the pain and boosted her out of the window.

  Andy did have a plan, which was why he told her as much. Okay, so he hadn’t revealed the extent of that plan, which had been realised when Gwen’s pasty and emaciated form slipped into the dark night. Now he needed to think of something that would get him out of there too.

  Back at the top of the stairs, Andy leaned against the wall, catching his breath from the short climb. The throb in his thigh had turned into a constant angry buzz that ran all the way to his bone marrow.

  The thud of steps still searched the building despite their plans to head outside. Although there were clearly only a small percentage of the gang left in the place.

  Now in the ward, Andy pulled back one of the sheets covering a window, wincing against the moonlight. The girl had vanished. Not an easy task for someone so pale and dressed in white.

  And that was when the final part of the plan came to him. Smiling through his tears, Andy filled his lungs with the stagnant air. His voice echoed through the old building. If the girl remained close by, she’d probably hear him too. “You sick bastards! You’re fucking wrong in the head, you know that?”

  “He’s inside,” one of the voices in the woods shouted. “Come on.”

  As the footsteps descended on him, Andy smiled to watch a flash of white make her break and vanish into the dark depths of the surrounding woodland. “Good girl.”

  The approaching people growing louder, Andy held his right palm up and kissed the fingers before waving. “Bye, Gwen.” He turned his back on the window and laughed despite the screaming burn of sitting down. He rested against the cold wall.