Once Upon a Black Kraken

  Part 13 | Part 15 I finally rearranged the library and found out a couple of curious facts that I overlooked the first time I inventoried it. The Natives considered this a sacred land because it was a beacon for wealth, and in consequence, greed. Some sort of mystical magnet that attracts treasures, and people to steal them. Bullshit, fucking Bachman Asylum is not even worth the time. Maybe those myths are what brought the expulsion of the Natives out of this place. An old news from a wrinkled and almost unreadable paper, around the 1920s, explains the facility was leased through some conflict of interest. It was taken from the Natives because the government decided to construct an asylum here, and the ones in charge of operating it, the ‘N’ Family, were political relatives from the one in charge of the Health Department at the time. Nepotism, like life itself, finds a way. My investigation into these manners was obstructed when this weird lady appeared in front of me. ...

  Part 12 | Part 14 Well, at least now with the chaplain/morgue technician defeated, there’s no more reason to keep the spiritual area locked. Yet, the almost-charcoal benches worried me about a possible fire, and the extinguishers surely were empty again. Of course they were. The first three were devoid of content. I went to Wing C, looking for the last one, and finally found out why the perpetual need to refill them. It was a malnourished skeletal ghost rolled around the fire extinguisher, hugging it. Its big eyes, once-human features, bony extremities and almost-translucent skin made him resemble a fire-extinguisher-desiring Gollum. He was using all the force of his lips and diaphragm to suck the content out of the red tank’s hoe. Fucking junkies! Not even dead stop draining others. “Hey! Quit that shit!” I yelled at the ghoul. He compelled. Drop the cylinder and threw himself against me. Shit. I ran away from him, taking cover on the closest office. The managemen...

  Part 11 | Part 13 I spent a couple of days rearranging the books I had, without reason, used as defense mechanism against the dead bodies that came out of their graves a couple days ago. I was almost finished when a noise caught my attention. A mix of thumps and cracks. Now fucking what? The disturbance led me to the Chappel. I removed the chains again to be able to enter the locked religious room. At this point, nothing surprises me anymore. It was the skeleton from the morgue, standing with difficulty, dressing itself as a priest or something like that with the robes poorly folded inside the drawers. Turned and stared at me with its empty eye sockets. A gentle and approachable voice came out of its moving jawbone. “Have you seen a necklace that I kept here? It’s heart shaped.” I had. It functioned as a mediocre projectile. I searched for it on the floor between the remaining benches. When I picked it up, it revealed a kid’s picture inside. I gave it back to its own...

  Part 10 | Part 12 My left leg still hurts after the wound courtesy of the ghost psycho-killer Jack. Even with him gone for good, I still had work to do. For starters, I needed to find what was behind the false wall on the janitor’s closet on Wing A. A rock stairway that descended into an underground cave. Went down the erosion-carved steps until I reached the wide space filled with penetrating humidity and drying salinity. It was a laboratory. Very rudimentary. No walls, ceiling or floor, everything was just the perpetually wet rocks you find around the whole island. Cables swirled in between the boulders, wooden planks were stabilizing the desks full of broken or cobwebbed flasks and test tubes, and torn papers half-dissolved were randomly spread all over the ground. What chilled my spine was the six-feet-high Tesla coil on the further corner. It was on. Rays hit the ceiling, like trying to grab itself to the walls and climb out of the obscure cavern using its frail ele...

  Part 9 | Part 11 RING! I answered the wall phone from my office that doesn’t have a line, but works amazingly well when receiving calls from beyond the grave. It’s always the guy who got killed after I didn’t let him come in on my first night as guard here. “Your only hope now is to find and take care of Jack’s rests,” I was instructed as if that meant anything. “In the morgue. Through the Chappel.” That motherfucker hung on me. It’s not like he had better (or any other) things to do. Yet, I was out of options or ideas. *** Unlocked the chains I had secured with the building’s cross to keep the Chappel closed. When they hit the floor, a blow from inside the religious room spanned the doors, welcoming me. Shit. I entered the dust and cobwebs-filled place. The moonlight that swirled through the broken stained glass allowed me to make sense of three benches, a small altar-like area with an engraved box stuck in the wall, and Jack holding his axe. Jumped back and h...