Ghost Town: Part Eleven

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten

Poor Dillon was being choked, which I never thought would be possible to do to a ghost, and I couldn’t save him. The best that I could do was try to sneak away when he wasn’t looking and attempt to perform the exorcism, but chances are the prince would get to me anyway.

I kept my braining running on the thought that the prince had waited 50 years to start bringing the ghosts back. It doesn’t make any sense, but then again, I had never heard of a ghost gathering other ghosts. It was also weird that he was able to touch the ghosts. It suddenly hit me.

“You waited because they can fight back,” I blurted.

“What?” the evil ghost asked. He tried to play it off like he had no idea what I was talking about but I could see it in his eyes, he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“You waited to bring all of the ghosts back because if you gave it more time they would figure out that they could fight against you.”

Prince Gregory had a look of panic flash across his face right before three ghost came out of nowhere and tackled him. Dillon dropped to the ground and immediately started crying. A surge of anger flowed through my body giving me a huge burst of energy, but I didn’t charge the prince in my fit of rage. It would be useless.

Dillon looked over at me and it was hard to see him like that. I nodded for him to meet me back in the museum and then he disappeared. When I got back inside I could see that he was already waiting for me.

“Get rid of him,” Dillon cried. “Please.”

“I’m going to,” I promised.

I started to speak the phrases that I knew would get rid of him. I actually managed to get out three words before Prince Jackass shoulder checked me across the room. Where was the girl at the front desk, and where did all the people go? I didn’t really care and it was to my benefit because I wouldn’t have to explain myself. That reminded me that I would have to destroy the security footage.

“You pathetic swine!” the prince bellowed. “I am going to tear you apart.”

He was a few feet away from me when dozens of ghosts came in and completely overwhelmed him.

“How dare you!” he screamed.

Larry, the businessman ghost, came up to me.

“We can hold him back,” he promised, “but only for so long.”

I nodded my head. “Thank you.”

Larry ran away toward Gregory as Dillon walked over to me.

“Are you going to get rid of him now?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I told him. I looked at him and hated what I had to tell him next. “If I get rid of him, do you know what will happen?”

He shook his head.

“You’re going to go away, too,” I told him.

He looked at the ground for a second and then looked up at me. “It’s OK. He’s too mean.”

I admired his bravery. This kid had more guts than most adults I dealt with.

“I liked having you around,” I told him. “Thank you.”

He smiled at me. “Go stop him.”

Not wasting any more time, I ran over to the desk and started to speak the complicated language.

“No!” Gregory yelled. He threw a bunch of ghosts off of him. He was obviously very strong.

I ignored him and continued to speak. I started to spread the lighter fluid on the desk.

“I will kill you,” the prince threatened as he threw four more of the ghosts off of him.

It wasn’t enough to stop me, though, and I kept going. There were just a couple more phrases left and then one final step.

As the last word left my mouth the prince finally broke free of all the other ghost and came at me. Right before he grabbed me I threw a match on the desk and watched as it started to blaze. The prince didn’t stop, though, and picked me up right off the ground like I weighed no more than a pound.

Right before he started to rip me apart I tried to think of the reason why he was still there. I did everything right, everything. The moment that match hit the old piece of wood he should have puffed away like a cloud of smoke.

I yelled out in pain as I was pretty sure the prince had separated one of my shoulders. I screwed something up. What was it? Oh! Right!

“Abequitare,” I said. Latin for leave.

Prince Gregory VII shouted and then disappeared. I dropped to the ground and felt my shoulder pop back into place. I stifled my scream and looked up. One by one the ghosts started to disappear.

Dillon walked up to me and sat on the ground in front of me.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he said.

I smiled at him and as the last ghost disappeared.

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said back, but he was already gone. I really was going to miss that little kid. At least now he would be with his mother, I hoped.

I could sit there and sulk, but I had to get rid of the security videos and get out of there. I found the room where the security was set up and found the guard fast asleep. I worked my magic and erased everything before he woke up.

As I stumbled out of the front I looked over at the girl and she was doing something on her phone.

“Have a nice day,” she said.

“Seriously?” I said to her, but she didn’t reply.

I left the building and got on my bike.

I hated ghosts more than anything. There was next to nothing that I could do to fight back and most of the time they were angry, bitter spirits. This time I could honestly say that I hated that I had to clear this town. I hated that I had to get rid of Dillon. At least now the people of this nice place would be safe and Dillon was in a better place…

 

Ghost Town: Part Ten

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Eleven

I suddenly felt as if I was going to cry. You can sit there and judge me all you want but you go face to face with something you couldn’t defend yourself against that looked like absolute death.

The princely ghost did exactly as I had expected him to and sent me flying through one of the exhibits, most definitely attracting unwanted attention. Man, if I could punch ghosts I would slug Prince Gregory VII in the face. I was limited, however, to little Latin phrases that may banish him temporarily.

I started to chant again but the awful ghost just came right up to me and slugged me in the stomach, taking all of the air from my lungs and sending me another 10 feet. This was going to be near impossible to get rid of him if he wasn’t even giving me time to shout out a short phrase. He wasn’t going to stop until I was dead.

Dillon was off to the side looking like he was going to have a complete panic attack. There was nothing he could do and there was nothing that I could do.

The crazy prince stalked toward me, taking his time. He certainly had enough of it since I couldn’t even speak.

“You have been a thorn in my side,” he said. “I don’t know how you were able to send me away before but I will not allow it again.”

“What is your plan?” I asked him with an immense amount of difficulty.

“To break the chains that bind me to that desk.”

“How can you possibly do that?” I had wondered if he was tied to the desk how he was able to go all around town.

“When I first found myself in the state that I am in I learned quickly I couldn’t venture very far from it. I was trapped within the building the desk was in. Being dead as long I have you learn a thing or two.”

I started to stand up but in interest of not having him attack me yet I settled for just kneeling on the floor. I was surprised that no one had come to investigate the noise yet but then I remembered the girl at the front desk and it made sense.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can imagine.”

“No you cannot,” he assured me.

“OK.”

Dillon came up to us.

“Please stop it,” he begged the prince.

The evil ghost backhanded him in the face and knocked the poor kid to the ground.

“Keep your nose out of it,” he yelled.

I couldn’t believe what I saw. Ghosts couldn’t touch each other but there it happened. The prince hit him just like he was able to hit me.

“How did you do that?” I asked him.

He continued his need to control the situation and gave me a whack in the face. I really disliked this ghost.

“I killed him,” he said to me. “I can do whatever I want with him.”

“I didn’t know that,” I admitted.

“I have spent years and years gathering souls. With each one I take, the closer I come to reaching my goal.”

“What would that be?”

Instead of answering me, he decided it would be better to just kick me in the chest and send me out of the back door, which I didn’t even know was there, and rolling on the ground. The prince wasn’t far behind me and Dillon was right behind him, very conscious of how close to George he was.

“I seek to free myself from that wretched piece of wood,” he told me as came closer. “With each group I collect I can venture further and further from the desk.” He was inches from my face with a look so crazy it could rival even the Joker. I literally thought he was going to start eating me. “When I kill someone their soul is bound to me and killing someone requires a lot of energy.” That would explain why he hasn’t killed me yet. “After I recuperate I kill another and another. Once I have acquired enough I use their energy to break the hold that binds me to the desk. This is the last group that I need to gather, and then this world will be mine.”

“That wouldn’t be good,” I struggled to get out. It wouldn’t. If he wasn’t tied to the desk anymore that could also mean that it no longer belonged to him and I would have a hell of a time trying to get rid of him.

“Why now?”

“Huh?” I confused him.

“Why now?” I repeated. “You’ve had all of this time, but you’ve waited till now.”

“It takes time to gather.”

“Yeah, but you’ve had a lot of time to get the souls you need.”

He gave me another hit to the face. “Never mind that.”

My guess was that when he used a group of souls to break whatever was holding him it probably took a very long time for him to gain his strength back.

“I think it is time that I get what I need,” he said, as he walked toward Dillon.

Another thought popped into my head.

“You decide when these ghosts could walk on the earth,” I said.

He ignored me.

“Dillon was the first,” I continued. “You could have let him wander around since he passed.”

My words were going in one ear and out the other—if you could call them ears.

“Why wait until now?” I asked him.

He picked up Dillon and started to squeeze the life out of him. Well, if a ghost had a life then that was what he was losing.

“Soon I will be free,” he said as he started to draw in Dillon’s soul. I watched and started to panic, because there was nothing that I could do…

 

Ghost Town: Part Nine

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Ten, Part Eleven

I knew the moment I had seen the ghost that it was bad news, but had no idea it had spent the last 50 years killing people in this town. I needed to figure out who it was and what I could do to get rid of him. The search for someone who lost an arm in this town, though, came up with nothing. It seemed hopeless.

“We aren’t going to find anything in here,” I said out loud.

“You wanna go play now?” Dillon asked me.

“I’ll tell you what, as soon as I find out how to get rid of this ghost we can play.”

“OK.”

“I have to be honest, I have no idea what to do.”

“How do we get rid of him?”

He had a very good question to which I didn’t have the answer.

“You need something of the ghost’s,” I told him.

“Oh,” he replied.

I thought about it for a long time. The first occurrence of him we know about was when he killed Dillon, but for all I knew he could be hundreds of years old. He could be even older than that. That is when my brain started to work. It occurred to me that the ghost could be from somewhere other than this town. Remember when I told you that ghosts can be tied to an object? This was going to be tough to get out of a little kid.

“Before you died, do you remember if anything was brought to this town?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked back. I realized how vague that question was.

“Was there something big or antique-like brought to this town? Like to a museum.”

“I don’t know.”

“Awesome.”

That certainly got me nowhere.

“Oh wait,” he said, stopping me from walking away.

“What?” I asked.

“I remember something. Before I died there was a murseum.”

“You mean museum?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I would say that is worth checking out.”

I convinced Dillon to ride on the bike with me again because I would have imagined that the ghost would return at any time. So, we made our way to the museum and I hoped that it was closed. If it was it would make my life just a little bit easier, but when did that ever happen?

When we pulled up to the building it was definitely open and there were definitely people of both variety in there. I walked up to the front door and saw that the charge was 15 dollars, for a museum in a small town. That was just severely over priced. At least they took a card.

The girl behind the front desk looked like she was really loving her life. She had her face in both of her hands and it was all pushed up into her eyes. I handed her my card. It looked like it took a lot of effort but eventually she took her hands away from her face long enough to ring me up.

“I don’t suppose you know of anything in here that came here in the 60’s?” I asked her.

“Dude,” she started, “this place was opened in the 60’s. Pretty much everything in here is that old.”

“Right. Thank you.” I took my card back and walked away.

With Dillon on my heels I made my way through the museum trying to find anything that might tell me about that awful ghost.

“What are we looking for?” Dillon asked me.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “Can you read?”

“Yes, I can read.” He was offended by that.

“Sorry.” I put my hands up as if I were defending myself. “Look for anything that might talk about a man with one arm or a curse or something.”

“I can do that.”

“OK, good.”

We both started to walk around and I generally ignored everyone in there because I couldn’t tell who was dead and who wasn’t. It was a very tedious task to have to read every little plaque explaining what I was looking at but if I wanted to get rid of the ghost then I was just going to have to suck it up.

It wasn’t more than three minutes when Dillon came popping out of a statue I was looking at. I jumped and tried not to make any noise.

“Jeez,” I said. I hadn’t even realized that he wandered off.

“Sorry,” he apologized.

“It’s fine.”

“I found something.”

“Lead the way.”

I followed him until we were on the other side of the wall until we came to a desk. Upon reading the plaque in front of it I found out it belonged to Prince Gregory VII.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “This is our guy.” It turned out this guy was a murderous psychopath and he tortured his victims back in the 1400’s. When the people finally discovered that he was the one killing everyone in their village they took revenge on him. They cut off his arm and completely mangled his face.

“This guy is a real winner,” I said.

“Read the rest,” Dillon suggested.

I did as he said and found out that this desk has been moved from museum to museum and in each town that it has been held there were a lot of unexplained deaths. That meant that this ghost has gone from town to town killing a lot of people, but why?

“That’s strange,” I said.

“This is what we needed?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

I turned to look at him. He looked very scared.

“What?” I asked.

I turned around and saw what had him so frightened. The prince was staring me right in the face. He had come back…

 

Ghost Town: Part Eight

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

I bounced off a car, completely caving in the hood, and fell onto the ground, happy the sedan broke my fall. I would have felt bad for whoever’s car I just destroyed if it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t breath. Dillon was standing next me saying something but the ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing anything.

I took as much time as I could to regain my breath because I didn’t have any choice but to wait. It gave me time to notice how remarkably smooth the pavement was. Dillon was still talking and his voice was getting louder. It was either that or I was gaining back my hearing.

“Wes?” he said. “Wes, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I moaned. “We need to get out of here quick.”

“Don’t worry. She can’t come out of there?”

“She? Was that your mom?”

“No. It was a crazy lady.”

I looked up in the hole where the wall used to be and saw a woman with pure white eyes and white, matted hair. She had her toothless mouth open and was screaming at me. It was very attractive.

“In the interest of not having nightmares for the rest of my life, I think we should go,” I said.

“Where now?” he asked.

“We need to find out anything we can about the ghost that killed you.”

I told Dillon to meet me at a café I noticed when I first arrived in town, and I traveled back on my bike. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk so it was better to make the ten-minute drive there alone. It was still hard for me to breath.

The café was quiet, which was perfect. There wasn’t a single ghost in there, except for Dillon, and there were only a couple of people that were alive. That was exactly what I needed.

Dillon noticed that I entered and waved me over. As I sat down I placed my laptop on the table and opened it up.

“What are you doing?” Dillon asked me.

“I need to find out anything I can about the really bad ghost,” I told him. “I have a very bad feeling about him.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“By looking on the Internet.”

“The what?”

“It’s…never mind. I can find out pretty much anything that I want about everything.”

“Oh.”

Before we dug in I decided that I wanted something to keep me going so I ordered a frozen drink. It was some sort of caramel thing but it tasted delicious. Plus it gave me a boost after the rough day that I had been having.

I went back to my seat and started my search.

“What can I do?” Dillon asked me.

“Well,” I started, “you can keep me company. This might take a while and there is no telling when that crazy spirit might show back up or any other ghost that might want to hurt me.”

“OK.”

“Just give me a heads up if anything is coming after me.”

“OK.”

For the first hour there was nothing about anyone who specifically lost an arm. The one thing I did find out, though, was there were a lot of violent deaths in this town throughout the years.

“Jeez,” I said out loud.

“What?” Dillon asked.

“A lot of people have had some unhappy deaths here.” I realized I was talking to a seven year old and shouldn’t have said that. I was also aware of the fact that some of the people in the café were now looking at me.

“What?” I asked them, begging them to say something, but none of them did.

I went back to my computer and as I was searching through all of the stories some of them had people that survived.

“This is interesting,” I said.

“What is?” Dillon seemed as interested as me, but he obviously didn’t know why.

“Some of the reports I’m reading have witnesses.”

“Witnesses?”

“It’s someone who sees something important happen.”

“What do they say?”

“Hang on a second. I’ve only read a couple of them so far.”

I kept reading and maybe about a third of the strange deaths that happened over the past 50 years all had someone who saw something, and all say the same thing.

“Uh oh,” I breathed.

“What?” Dillon stood up.

“Any strange death or accident that has happened in this town has the same thing in common.”

“What?”

I gulped. “The ghost with one arm has caused them…”

 

Ghost Town: Part Seven

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

Dillon’s mom was sitting on the bed with her back against the wall. I have to admit that when I first met Dillon I expected his mother to be somewhere in her 40’s, maybe 50’s. I never expected her to be an old, frail woman. She had to be somewhere in her 80’s. That of course meant that Dillon had been around for a lot longer than I thought.

As we approached her for, the longest time she didn’t move or even look like she was breathing. I started to wonder if she was even alive. I found out she was when she slowly turned her head toward me. It was very disturbing.

“Wes?” she asked.

I stopped, confused. I quickly devised that Dillon must have told her about me. I don’t know when, though. He’d been with me the whole time. I think he was anyway. To be honest there could have been plenty of times he could have sneaked away when I wasn’t paying attention.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I don’t think I ever got your name.”

“Call me Patty.”

“OK, Patty. I’m guessing your son told you about me?”

“Yes. I know why you are here.”

“I’m here to get rid of some of these ghosts. I was wondering if you could tell me about the day of the accident?”

She turned her head away from and for the longest time said nothing.

“It was a cold November evening,” she said, startling me a little, only a little. “I had decided to take Dillon to see a movie. The night was clear and the moon shined bright. We were no more than five minutes from home when I saw something. At first it was too far away to tell what it was. The closer we got to it the more I could see and I didn’t believe what I was looking at was real. It was a man. A man with one arm and a face that could give anyone nightmares.” That sounded familiar.

“He just stood there,” she continued. “I was so shocked by what I was looking at that I didn’t try to move out of the way. Before I could even blink he came charging at us and passed through the car. I swerved out of the way and lost control. When I woke up I was in the hospital and my poor little Dillon was taken from me.” The whole time she spoke it seemed so emotionless. It was probably years of regret and no one believing her that left her that way.

“I tried to tell everyone what happened but no one believed me,” she told me, “not even my husband. So they threw me in here, leaving me to rot away over time.”

“Do you know anything about the ghost who attacked you?” I asked her.

“When it happened I knew nothing of the spirit that ruined my life.”

“Now?”

“When they threw me in here I did nothing but sit here and think about the loss of my little boy, my poor sweet Dillon. It wasn’t until a year ago that I started to see him.”

“A year? I was under the impression that he had been here for a long time.”

“I never said that,” Dillon chimed in.

I thought about it for a long moment. “I guess you didn’t.”

“Whom are you talking to?” Patty asked me.

“Oh, he’s here with us.”

“Dillon?”

“Hi momma,” he said back.

“Oh, baby. It’s always so good to see you.”

“You too, momma.”

A lot of this wasn’t making much sense. When a ghost dies they might not come back for at most six months, if they ever do become a ghost. Dillon had to have died in the 60’s and he didn’t come back until somewhere around a year ago. Things lately had been a little out of the ordinary and it was really starting to worry me.

“What did you find out about the ghost?” I asked her again.

“I’ve been in here for over 50 years,” she mumbled.

“It is very important that I find out what I can about the ghost and anything you could tell me would be very useful.”

She just sat there and stared off.

“Patty?” I tried.

She still said nothing. It occurred to me how still she was sitting so I decided to walk over to her.

“Momma?” said Dillon.

When I stood in front of her I could tell before I even checked for a pulse. She was dead. Not to be insensitive but it was very inconvenient because I didn’t find anything out about the ghost. Although, at least I knew that it was the same ghost that was harassing me.

“Momma?” Dillon repeated.

“Hey little buddy,” I started, “come here for a second.”

I knelt down to meet his height and he walked up to me.

“Is she gone?” he asked me.

I was surprised by Dillon’s quick acceptance.

“Yes,” I said, sadly.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s OK. Soon we can be together forever.”

I nodded my head, not sure if that were really true or not.

“I think we should get going,” I said. That was when I felt it.

Something hit me. I wasn’t sure what or who it was but whatever it may have been it hit me with enough force to knock me out of the building. Let me say that again so you understand: it sent me through the wall of a brick building. There wasn’t much that I could do at that point but plummet to the hard pavement that waited below…

 

Ghost Town: Part Six

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

The place was creepy, and I mean creepy. The town was small and nice but it had a creepy cemetery and the mental hospital fit right in with that atmosphere. It was an old, brick building that looked almost empty, and the air around it just seemed dark. My thoughts were that when I walked in there I was probably going to see a lot of ghosts and unfortunately that might give me away very quickly.

The whole drive over there I tried to think of a good reason that I should be able to talk to Dillon’s mother but there was no one that I could pretend to be to fool them. So, I was pretty much going to have to walk around and blast everyone with my memory power.

“What did you do to Randy?” Dillon asked me.

“I made him forget me,” I explained.

“Why?”

“If I don’t then I risk getting myself noticed and he would go on worried that I exist.”

“Oh.”

We both walked through the front door and observed a man sitting behind the front desk.

“What floor is she on?” I asked Dillon.

“Third,” he replied.

“Excuse me,” the man started but I zapped him before he could say anything else. It occurred to me that it might be better if I dressed myself as an orderly. That might make it a little easier to get around unnoticed.

There was a door behind the front desk and luckily there were a couple of uniforms. I searched until I found one that fit me well enough and then went back to the front desk. The man sitting down seemed to have broken out of his trance and looked at me again.

“Hill?” he asked.

“Huh?” I replied.

“You’re Joshua Hill, yes?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me.”

“Well, take this and get up to the 2^nd floor.” He handed me a key card. “Yancey is waiting for you.”

“Yancey?” I stifled a laugh.

“Yeah. Is there a problem?”

“Not for me.”

“Then go.”

I left without another word with Dillon in tow. It was very convenient that the jerk in the front gave me access to the building. Little did he know I had no intention of finding Yancey or doing anything other than finding Dillon’s mother.

On the first floor there was really nothing worth taking notice of. It wasn’t until I went up the first set of stairs that things got interesting.

“We have to go across here to go further,” Dillon informed me.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because the stairs to the next floor is that way.”

“That’s odd.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. Come on.”

As we entered the hall I could see people everywhere, dead and alive. The ones that were alive were either workers or in a room where they couldn’t get me. The ones that were not alive could easily pass through the walls and looked like they wanted to hurt something. Once they realized that I could see them things would really go south. So I did what any rational paladin would do: I walked with my head down as fast as I could.

“Hey you!” someone yelled.

I ignored him.

“I’m talking to you,” he tried again.

I attempted to walk away but he grabbed my arm to stop me. When he turned me around I was forced to look him straight in the face, which was unfortunate because he was very ugly. He was a ghost for sure.

“Are you deaf boy?” he asked me.

I looked at him for a second. “You’re alive, right?”

“I’m standing here, ain’t I?”

“Right, sorry.”

“You’re Hill, yes?”

“Yancey?”

“Follow me.”

“I really need to go.”

“If you want to stay in here then you will follow me.”

I nodded my head and decided to play along for a while. The last thing I needed to do was make a scene in front of all the patients. He was leading me across the hall, which was the way Dillon and I needed to go anyway.

One of the patients walked up to us. The problem was we were in an area where no patients could get to and Yancey just ignored her.

“Boy?” she said to Dillon. “Boy, why are you following them?”

“I uh,” he stumbled. “I think they are going up to my mother.”

“Why? Why?”

“He’s here to stop the really mean ghosts.”

I whipped my head around and looked at him, scowling.

“Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”

“You can see us?” she asked me. “You can see us? He can see us. He can see us!” She was yelling it to everyone.

Anyone who was a ghost looked up at me and began to come towards me.

“Crap,” I muttered. I tried to keep going without acknowledging them. That became impossible within two seconds as they were all around me and they were shouting. For the first 10 seconds I said nothing.

“You can see us?”

“Ha!”

“Fly, fly away.”

“I will not be ignored.”

They were shouting at once and I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Enough!” I shouted. They stopped.

“What?” Yancey asked me.

“Nothing.”

“Who are you yelling at?”

“No one.”

He stared at me like I belonged on the other side of the glass with the rest of the crazy people.

“I think it’s time that you leave, Hill,” he said to me.

“But I just started,” I tried.

“I deal with enough of these crazies as it is. I don’t need you.”

I let out a sigh. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”

“I beg your pardon.”

I didn’t waste any more time and wiped his memory. That sent everyone, dead or alive, into a complete frenzy. I had to speed up my efforts to get the answers I needed. I yanked Yancey’s card as an alarmed sounded off.

“Get us there quick,” I said to Dillon. He didn’t wait and took off.

As I followed him through the crowd of ghosts they all reached out to me and touched me. I thought I was going to break down.

We eventually made it through them and as we entered the next stairway I saw that the rest of orderlies were coming after us. I flashed a quick beam of light and they stopped, but the alarm kept going.

The third floor was just a bunch of rooms that were obviously held for high-level patients.

“This is it,” said Dillon. He was standing in front of room 312.

“You going to stick with me?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

I opened the door and walked through…

 

Ghost Town: Part Five

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

Before we got to the house I needed to change my attire. When I show up on a motorcycle with a leather jacket people are a little unwilling to answer any questions that I have. So I like to put on my teenage attire and pretend I’m doing a report for school or something. I don’t always do that, but for the most part it’s just easier.

I parked the bike down the street and then Dillon and I made the rest of the way by foot. I appreciated that Dillon just didn’t zip ahead of me.

“OK,” I began, “when we are in here I need you to keep the talking to a minimum.”

“Oh, OK,” Dillon said. He looked hurt.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to you but remember what I said about people not seeing you?”

“Yes,” He seemed a little less offended. “What are we going here for?”

“This is the first reported haunting that I found in this town so this seemed like a pretty good place to start.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No. I don’t want you to leave.”

“Good.”

I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. About 15 seconds later it opened, revealing a gentleman in his mid 40’s.

“Hi,” I said in the nicest voice I could.

“Hello,” he responded. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, My name is Wes and I’m from the community college. I am doing a report on paranormal sightings. I heard about the all of the reports from here and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”

He looked me up and down real quick. “Sure. Come on in. I’m Randy.”

We shook hands and I stepped through the front door. The house was typical. Pictures of people were spread out on a fireplace and on the walls, and a flat screen TV was in the living room. The pictures looked like they were of his family but I didn’t see any of them around. Right away I assumed that one of them might be the one haunting this place.

He offered me a glass of water, which I gladly accepted to not be rude. Plus I was thirsty. I sat on the couch with Dillon next to me. I was glad that he was listening to me so far and remained quiet.

“You have a lovely family,” I told him.

“Thank you,” he replied.

“I don’t mean to be too direct but was there a death recently?”

“No.” He seemed a little confused by that question. “My wife is at work and the kids are at school. I’m a writer so I work from home.”

“Oh,” I said. “Any idea about who the ghost may be?”

Randy started to laugh. It was more sarcastic rather than humorous. “After we bought this house we found out there was a strange death in the house before we bought it.”

“What kind of strange death?” He had my full attention.

“It was 15 years ago, which was more than seven years before we bought so they didn’t have to disclose that information, but there was a woman who lived here by herself. They found her one day with her… uh… with her head severed.”

I didn’t even have to hide the fact that that shocked me. I may kill monsters left and right but finding out about a human that has lost their head still makes me shudder.

“Oh,” I said. “That is strange.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“So are the incidents violent?”

“No, not really. So far it has been surprisingly mild. Some doors will open and close by themselves, the lights will turn off and the TV channels will change.”

“That’s because they use up so much electricity and watch nothing but smut!” shouted a woman as she came bursting into the room.

“OH!” I shouted in surprise. She was an older woman with a pink dress covered in flowers and she was holding her head under her right arm. To say that watching a severed head talk was strange would be an extreme understatement.

“Are you OK?” Randy asked me. I nodded my head.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“These people are ridiculous,” the old woman said. “You can’t imagine how much I save them on electricity.”

“Shhh,” Dillon shushed her. “He can’t talk to us right now.”

“Don’t shush me young man. Respect your elders. Are you telling me that he can see and hear me?”

Dillon nodded his head.

“You,” she said to me.

I ignored her.

“I’m speaking to you boy,” she tried again.

“Are you sure your OK?” Randy asked me again. “You don’t look so good.”

“Yeah, I’m OK,” I promised him. “They ever find out what happened?”

Randy shook his head. “Not from what I read. It is really strange.”

“You think it’s strange?” she asked him. “Try waking up with your head on the ground and having to carry it around. I can’t even leave this house.”

“You don’t know how you died?” I asked her.

“Oh, so now you can talk to me.”

“Yes.” I noticed in the corner of my eye that Randy was staring at me like I was crazy but I ignored him.

“No. I don’t know. I just woke up like this to find these people living in my house.”

“Why can none of you remember?”

“Who are you talking to?” Randy blurted.

“Oh. The old woman that is haunting your house.”

“I think I would like you to leave.”

“Good idea.”

“Don’t leave me with these people,” the old woman begged.

I looked over at Dillon. “We should go.”

“OK.”

We both started for the front door with the woman blabbing behind us.

“Oh,” I started. “One more thing.” I flashed my beam of light and erased Randy’s memory of me.

We were walking back to the bike and it was really eating away at me why no one could remember how they died. I felt like I could go house to house and I would never find out anything useful.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said to Dillon. “Every ghost in this town can’t remember why they died except for you.”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

I stopped walking. “You said you died of a car crash.”

“Yeah, but that’s because my mommy told me that.”

“You talk to your mom?”

“Sometimes, but it’s hard.”

“Where is your mom?”

“She lives at the hospital on the really big hill.”

I knew what one he was talking about. It was a mental institution. She was going to have the answers I needed…

 

Ghost Town: Part Four

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

This time the ghost did reach me and knocked me right off of the bench I was sitting on. It was very frustrating that they could hit me or throw things at me all they wanted but I couldn’t do anything to fight back. It wasn’t fair.

After I rolled for about 30 feet I pushed myself up and prepared for another attack. When I looked up, though, there was no one there, not even Dillon. I doubted that the evil spirit was just going to leave after that, and I was right. He reappeared in front of me and took another swing, once again knocking me to the ground. It was already getting old.

The ghost disappeared again but that is when Dillon came back.

“Wes, are you OK?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” I replied.

“He’s winning.”

“You think?” I didn’t mean to snap at him. I know he’s only seven—I think he is anyway, I never asked—but seriously.

“Behind you!”

I turned around and there he was, ready to knock me into a tree. I thought I might have heard something crack but I was 90 percent sure that it was the tree, however. I hoped it was at least.

When the ghost came at me again I put my hand up and spouted a short Latin phrase as quickly as I could. The ghost disappeared and I knew that he wasn’t coming back any time soon. Yes, yes I made it seem like it’s not easy to get rid of a ghost and that is because it’s not. All I did was banish him to the cemetery for a few hours. Believe me, he will be back.

“Wes!” Dillon shouted.

“Hey,” I said back.

“Are you OK? Are you OK?”

“I’m OK. I’ve had better days but I’m not…I’m fine.” That was close.

“Where did he go?”

“I sent him away for a while.”

“Oh, good. I don’t like him. What do we do now?”

“Well, despite the fact that my pizza is all over the ground, I’m still going to eat it and then we’ll go to the first house.” I couldn’t get sick and there was no way I was going to let all of that good food go to waste.

As I walked around to gather up my scattered lunch I noticed a woman with bruises on her neck walking over to me.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” I replied.

It didn’t take me long to realize that she was dead and the 20 other people that were heading toward me were also ghosts. I felt like my entire body shudder and I cringed like one might do when they see a spider. I would rather have my body covered head to toe in those eight-legged freaks than be near two ghosts.

I continued to get my pizza and ignored the fact that they were definitely coming towards me. Eventually they were all completely surrounding me and there was no avoiding it.

“Can I help you people?” I asked them.

“How did you do that?” one of them asked.

“How did you make him vanish like that?” another said.

“Why can you see us?”

They went on and on and on.

“Stop!” I shouted. They all jumped and stopped talking. “Why are you all here?”

“Larry told us,” someone said.

“Who’s Larry?”

“I am.” The man I saw earlier in the business suit stepped forward. “I told them how you saw me.”

“Naturally. I thought it was you.” I said the last part to Dillon.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” he promised.

“I believe you,” I said.

I looked around at all the ghosts. I had never thought I would see the day when ghosts were surrounding me like they were.

“Why are you all here?” I asked them.

“Are you here to stop them?” the businessman asked me.

“Who?”

“The bad ones?”

“Yes.”

There seemed to be a wave of relief among the crowd and it occurred to me that I was going to get rid of all of them. They might be easier than the one that attacked me but it was going to be a lot of work to figure what they needed.

“How did you die?” I asked the businessman.

He merely shrugged his shoulders.

“How about you?” I asked another one. They just shook their head. I went around to as many as I felt like and none of them could remember. It was odd because a ghost always knows how they died. At least Dillon knew.

“Why are you asking?” one of them asked me.

“Just curious,” I told them. I started for my bike.

“Are you going to get them now?” a ghost shouted.

“Not yet. I have a lot of work to do.”

They looked disappointed.

“Where are we going?” Dillon asked.

“We are going to 255 West Harold Street,” I said.

“OK, I’ll meet you there.”

“Wait,” I stopped him. “I don’t know the way.”

“Oh. OK.” He climbed onto the bike.

We headed out and felt even more nervous than I had 20 minutes prior. It wasn’t because of the ghost that attacked me but the fact that none of the ghosts knew how they had died. Something very odd was going on…

 

Ghost Town: Part Three

Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

Dillon had stopped counting the ghosts. To a seven year old that could have meant he got bored after counting 10 of them, which would still be a lot, but something told me that it was more than that. I looked around and suddenly realized why there were so many people. It was because some of them weren’t alive. I gulped.

“You OK?” Dillon asked me.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Do you want to hang out with me all day?”

“Yeah!” He was excited about that. I wasn’t putting him in harms way because ghosts can’t hurt each other, they can only hurt us. So with him around he could alert me when another ghost is near, and more importantly the ones that want to hurt me.

“Alright,” I said. “Great.”

“Where are we going?”

“I was going to talk to some people but I think I need to eat first.” I’m allowed to change my mind you know. I was going to need all the energy I could get.

“Can we go into a sit-down restaurant?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I told him. “I can’t be talking to you when people can’t see you.”

“I can make them.”

“No, no. Don’t do that. I think I’ll just get some pizza and find somewhere to take it. You know of anywhere?”

“Yeah. We can go to Hubble Park.”

I ordered a pizza that took almost half an hour to make, which I know is normal especially if the place is busy. It was busy and that is why I was so anxious to get out of there. Out of the 20 people that were there maybe seven of them were alive. So far I was lucky that none of them were angry and trying to kill me. Although, I was sure that there were some around, they just didn’t want me to see them.

After the pizza was ready I stepped out and strapped it to my bike.

“Want to get on?” I asked Dillon.

“No,” he replied. “I can meet you there.”

“OK, where is…” I didn’t get to finish the sentence because he was already gone. “I guess I’ll find it then.”

There was a man in a suit with a briefcase, who looked busy, walking by me.

“Do you know where Hubble Park is?” I asked him.

He stopped and looked at me. He seemed a little confused. “It’s down the road. Take a left on Bleaker.”

“Thank you.”

He walked away and I wasn’t sure why he was confused. That is until another person walked right through him. He was confused because he wasn’t sure how I could see him. I didn’t want to make my presence known to the people of this town; I definitely didn’t want all of the ghosts to know, yet.

I drove down the street and sure enough there was Bleaker Street. Another two minutes and I was at the park. It was just as empty as I had hoped so I could talk to Dillon without worrying about someone thinking I was crazy. He was sitting at a picnic table in the middle of the grass. I brought the pizza over and opened it right up. Dillon took a big whiff.

“That smells good,” he said.

“How can you smell that?” I asked him.

He put his hands up to his mouth and started to giggle.

“Oh,” I said with a smile. “Very funny.”

“I know,” he replied.

I took a bite into the slice I had pulled out and it was probably the best pizza that I have ever tasted, and believe me; I have tried a lot of different places.

“What are we going to do?” Dillon asked.

“Well,” I started as I finished my bite, “I’m going to finish this pizza and then I am going to talk to a couple in town here that claim to be haunted.”

“How come?”

“Because I need to get rid of them.” I realized the moment the words left my mouth I shouldn’t have said it.

“Get rid of them? Are you going to get rid of me?”

“No, Dillon, but not all ghost are good.”

“I know,” he said. “There are some really mean ones.”

“That’s why I am here.”

“They’re not all mean. Some are really nice.”

“Do you know why there are so many?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “At first it was just me, but more have been coming.”

“When did they start showing up?”

“I don’t know. Not too long ago.”

Not too long ago to him could be five years for all I knew.

“Like a year?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied. “Less than that, maybe a month ago. It’s hard to tell.”

That was odd. It was already weird that there were so many but why were they all showing up recently?

I was broken from my train of thought when I noticed that Dillon looked like he had just seen a ghost. Ha. The funny thing, aside from the fact that he was one, is that he did see a ghost. It was also the worst part because when I turned around I saw the same ghost from the cemetery was staring us both down. I guess I was wrong about him being stuck.

“Wes,” said Dillon, “he’s a real mean one.”

“I kind of figured,” I replied.

The ghost came flying at us so fast that I didn’t have time to react, and this time he didn’t stop once he reached me…

 

Ghost Town: Part Two

Part One, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven

I thought it had reached me. I closed my eyes and scrunched up, bracing myself for the hit. Don’t judge me. Have you ever tried to fight a violent ghost? No? I didn’t think so. Now let it go and read on.

A few seconds went by and nothing had touched me. I chanced a look and saw the ghost standing at the edge of the cemetery and he—I could see that it was a he now—was just staring at me, like he wanted to eat me. This was good. Sometimes a ghost is trapped to a cemetery. I’m not sure why really. Some ghosts can go wherever they want, while others can’t go beyond 20 feet of something they are attached to. It could be an object, a person or a cemetery.

I took one last look at the ghost and then left it be. There was no way I was going to be able to just get rid of him right then. There was a plus, though, and that was that he was missing an arm. No, I don’t think severed arms are cool. It meant that he lost it when he was alive and that I knew what to look for while I was trying to find out who he was.

The center of the town was typical. It was full of shops, mom and pop type mostly, but it had a few big names as well. The town had a lot of traffic, cars and people, but then again it was lunchtime so I guess it made sense.

It had been at least six hours since I had last eaten but I was way too amped up to eat anything. I just wanted to get right to work. Nothing gets me going like these stupid spirits. The quicker I got it done the better off I was.

I was two feet away from my bike when a little boy walked up to me. He was maybe four feet tall, about seven years old and had pale blond hair. Now, normally I would have said hello and probably tried to walk away from him, but this kid was different. Maybe it was that he had the bluest eyes I had ever seen or the fact that he just walked through a mailbox; you decide.

“Hi,” he said, in a very happy voice.

“Uh, hi,” I replied.

“I’m Dillon. Who are you?”

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Oh. It’s Wes.”

“OK. How come you can see me?”

“How did you know I could see you?”

“You were staring at me,” he told me.

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It’s OK. How come you can see me?”

“I’m different than normal people.” Ghost can choose whom they do and do not want to see them. The one thing that makes a paladin different, with ghosts I mean, is that I can see them when they don’t realize it. If they want a human—that would be you—to see them then they have to concentrate. If they want a paladin—that’s me—to not see them then they also have to concentrate. Sometimes they didn’t know that but most seem to have a natural understanding of that trick. Just like other monsters they can sense me so they immediately make themselves invisible to me, unless they don’t know or care.

“Oh,” he said. “How?”

“What happened to you?” I asked him, avoiding his question.

“Car accident.”

“Oh.”

“It’s OK. I still get to see my mommy everyday.”

“That’s good.”

“What about you?”

I fought back the urge to cry. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. Hey, I’m only human. Well, kind of human, anyway.

“I haven’t seen my mom in a very long time,” I told him.

“Oh,” he replied, sadly.

“It’s OK.”

“You wanna play?”

He threw me off a little bit with that one. “Play what?”

“A game.”

“What game?”

“I don’t know. Tag?”

I took a knee in front of him. “I don’t think I can.”

“How come?” he asked.

“To be honest, it would look a little weird if I was running around chasing someone nobody else can see.”

“Who are you talking to?” A woman came up to me and was very confused.

I quickly took the little Bluetooth headset out of my pocket and put it in my ear. I knew that it would come in handy for something.

“What?” I asked.

“I said who are you talking to?”

“Hang on a second mom. Can I help you?” I turned my head a little so she could see the headset.

“Oh, sorry.” She walked away.

The last thing I needed was to make myself known here. Once she was out of earshot I turned back to Dillon.

“Anyway, Dillon,” I began. “I can’t play.”

“Oh,” he said. “No one ever wants to play.”

“Well, big guy, I don’t think they can see you.”

“No, not them.”

He had my interest now. “Who then?”

“The other ghosts.”

“Dillon, how many are there?”

“I don’t know. I stopped counting.”

Crap…