My Probation Consists on Guarding an Abandoned Asylum | Part 8

 

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 there with no soil, just boulders. The weirdest thing was that all tombs had a passing date before 1987, one decade before the Asylum closed.

One tomb had fresh flowers. No one had been on the island for almost a week but me. The carving read: “Barney. 1951 – 1984. Lighthouse keeper.”

Someone tripped. A dark figure at the distance. It ran away. I chased the athletic trespasser all the way to the lighthouse. He entered. Followed him closely.

Slammed the door. Raised my head to find the intruder running through the old termite-eaten stairway to the top of the construction. Tired, I went up as well.

Opened the trapdoor on top of the stairs and jumped to the platform of the lantern room. Broken floor, once-painted moist-filled walls and old naval objects like ropes and lifesavers. The whale oil lantern was off. The moonlight shone enough to make sense of the small metal balcony around the room.

Something moved. Hid behind old-fashioned floaters and an industrial string fishing net. I pointed my flashlight. The vapor caused by the warm breaths on the chilling climate coming out of the cord mesh was clear under the direct light of my torch. I approached slowly, with the wood below my feet squeaking with each step. The covered thing backed without leaving his refuge. Grabbed the rough lace with my free hand and threw it to the side.

There was Alex hiding there.

“What in the ass are you doing here?!” I questioned him.

***

“My father was a lighthouse keeper here in the island when the Asylum was still on foot,” Alex explained me as we walked down the stairs. “When I was very little, he didn’t return home. Later we knew that he had died and been buried here.”

“So, you got the delivery and navigator position to be able to get close to the island without dragging attention?” I inquired rhetorically.

“I needed some sort of closure. Never knew what his work… his life was like. Not know, I thought coming here could…”

I made him stop with my extended left arm. I had stopped myself when I saw a couple of steps down from us the bulky ghost dressed in antique barnacle-covered sailor clothes and hanging ropes from his body. It was having a hard time moving.

“Does that ghost is your dad?” I pondered about our luck.

“No.”

Fuck.

Alex and I rushed back upstairs as the ghoul’s clumsy and heavy movements tried to keep our pace.

Back in the lantern room, we both pushed a heavy fallen beam over the trapdoor.

“Hide,” I ordered Alex.

I grabbed the same fishing net that moments before had been a concealing device and covered myself with it against the lamp’s base. I still distinguished how the tanking specter blasted without any effort the trapdoor.

Didn’t know where Alex was. The creature neither.

The phantom lit up the torch in the middle of the room. Such an old oiled-powered lighthouse. He adjusted the lenses to make sure the light got as sparce as possible, and the building hot as hell.

Silently, I stood up, holding the fishing net in my hands.

Squeak.

Apparition turned to me.

Fucking noisy floor.

I charged against the bulky ectoplasmic body. My endeavor of tying the ghost was ridicule.

“Alex!” I yelled for help.

Alex headed towards the action.

Without sweat, the dead lighthouse keeper threw me against Alex’s futile attack.

My back hit Alex’s chest. We both rolled in the ground a little attempting to regain our breath and get the pain away.

“I know you,” the deep, hoarse and watery voice from beyond the grave talked to Alex. “Your blood.”

We got up and backed from the threat.

“I knew your father. He was a mediocre lighthouse keeper.”

I clutched to Alex, knowing what was coming next.

“I killed him.”

The ghoul grinned.

“We can jump,” I instructed.

Alex ignored me. Snapped away from my grip. Using a metallic bar from the floor assaulted the undead giant.

I watched the unavoidable.

The specter received the blow. Not even flinched.

The phantom snatched the bar and threw it against the lenses. CRASH!

I exited to the balcony.

Fire got out of control.

Alex’s weak fists were doing nothing to his adversary.

 “Leave it!” I screamed.

Alex didn’t hear me, or ignored me.

The heat was starting to evaporate my mediocre chilling-fluid and warm the metal of the balcony handrail.

The ghoul pushed Alex out to the balcony with me.

I looked for the safest place to jump into the salty growing tides.

There was none.

Fire consumed the whole interior.

I found another fishing net and an old sailing knife.

Alex was subdued on the metal mesh floor by the spirit’s foot.

“You’re next,” announced at the almost fainting delivery guy.

I dashed against our opponent.

Slinged the net around the massive body, stabbed his chest with the knife and used my inertia to tackle him; his back rolled in the balcony’s rail.

The angry soul that refused to leave this plane of existence and I fell to the ocean.

We were descending head-first.

Air, salt water and roaring waves noise blocked my sense of what was happening.

Mid-fall, the ghoul disappeared.

I failed to do the same.

I hit the water.

The fire in the lighthouse ceased immediately, like my dive had been a turnoff switch.

Before resurfacing for air, I noticed a wrecked ship in the proximity. An enormous, three steam chimneys vessel with all paint already replaced with some underwater green shit.

Swam towards the gargantuan transport that had been claimed by marine life. Fishes, eels, even small sharks swirling through the barnacle and algae covered hull and deck holes. With the knife, I ripped a rope free from the knot that had held it in place for more than a hundred years.

I resurfaced.

***

As the night progressed, the tide had been getting higher. I went back to the lighthouse hoping to find Alex. Stepped inside and fearfully admired the almost 100 feet I will have to rise again, now carrying a soaked antique rope.

No need. A whining coming from the floor caught my attention. I forced the trapdoor below me. There was Alex, tied to the building’s foundations. The water on his chin. The tide kept ascending.

Dropped the rope.

I kneeled to help Alex get out of there. Cut his ties. Lifted him.

A blunt hit from behind threw me to the other side of the dark hollow base of the lighthouse. Alex fell into the water between the planks that kept the construction in place.

I failed to stand up. The lighthouse-keeper-suicide-ghost approached me and punched me in the face. My blood and sputum sprayed the start of the stairway. My brain pounded inside my skull. A second blow. More blood. A third one. Lifted my hand to make it stop, it didn’t work. Fell on my back. I waited for the final hit.

Something stopped the ghoul. Through my swollen eyelids I managed to distinguish Alex, using the rope I had retrieved from the wreck, gagging the specter.

I got up, with my balance almost failing me.

Alex pulled as he had laced the rope around the thick wet ectoplasmic neck.

I approached as decidedly as my physical situation allowed me.

Without letting go of the rope holding our foe, Alex squatted in the brim of the trapdoor.

Again, I rushed towards the big phantom and pushed him.

He tripped with Alex.

Splash!

Alex and I glimpsed through the opening in the lighthouse floor how the guilt-driven soul swam up. The rope from the wrecked ship, product of his own negligence, was just too heavy for him. He sank until we lost sight of him in the darkness of the depths.

We rolled and laid on the floor. Spent the rest of the night there.

“I’ll limit myself to deliver your groceries from now on,” Alex assured me.