Once Upon a Black Kraken

  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...

  Part 8 | Part 10 As my seventh task was scratched and my recognition wandering was interrupted last time by a lighthouse “incident,” I continued to explore Bachman Asylum’s surroundings. There was an old shed around a hundred yards away. The door, as usual, squeaked when I pushed it. The floor did the same when I stepped on. Tried the single bulb in the ceiling. It didn’t work, of course. With my flashlight I distinguished gardening tools. Bullshit, on the boulder ground of this island there was no way to do any. A gas-powered electric generator hijacked my attention. It included a handwritten note held with tape: “Wing A.” With the hand truck that was on its side, I carried the device. Surprisingly, just outside of Wing A there was a flat enough area to place my recent discovery. It fitted like a glove. Connected the cable to the generator and back to the power outlet of Wing A, which turned out to be in the ceiling, which in turn forced me to return to the shed for the...

  Part 7 | Part 9 I don’t have any more tasks now. It took me three days to finish the library’s inventory. Already asked Alex to bring more fire extinguishers on his next groceries delivery trip. The seventh, and last, instruction is scratched beyond readability. Maybe, for once I could relax. Another thing I found in the records was that the trespasser’s guy on my first night here wasn’t the first “suicide.” In the late 1800s there was a lighthouse keeper who, after failing to light correctly the thing, caused a two-hundred people crew to crash into the rocks and sank; no survivors. Not even the keeper, who hung himself. After such gloomy story, I stepped out of the ruined building to get some fresh air. The Bachman Asylum has its own little graveyard. Like thirty yards away from the main building there is a small, rotten-wood-fenced lot, about twenty square feet with rocks, yellow grass and broken or tumbled gravestones. I was astonished they managed to bury someone the...