My Probation Consists of Guarding an Abandoned Asylum | Part 14

 

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.

She was shining. Not figuratively as if she was gorgeous. She was literally made of light.

I couldn’t stare directly at her. Thankfully, unlike other ghosts, she had other ways of communicating.

“Please, I need help…”

She got interrupted when some sort of lightings grabbed her from behind. Stiff tentacles held her, preventing her from moving or talking.

Behind her, there was another ghost. He looked like a living person, but he had to be just a spirit. I recognized him. It was Dr. Weiss, the main doctor in charge of this hellish place when it got closed.

He used an uncomfortable-looking Tesla coil in its wrist, as a bulky watch, to hold his prey. His weapon sparked in all directions, but concentrated on caging the light phantom lady with its purple rays.

Before I could say anything, he left the library, dragging the poor shinny being with him. As they turned left in a corridor, I was swollen by the darkness of the library, only combated by my flashlight.

I followed the incandescent specter’s trace across half the building to Wing A. Weiss took her into his office.

I kicked the door open for dramatic purposes.

“Stop it! Let her go!” I screamed with conviction I didn’t feel.

Dr. Weiss didn’t flinch. He kept the ghost in his electric prison as he answered me slowly and with a reassuring voice.

“Sorry. I can’t. Need her for my experiments.”

“But she is in pain,” I remarked.

It was odd, as if his voice had turned my diplomatic mode on.

“Sacrifices are always needed in medicine, son.”

He calling me son and being so insensible shattered any civility I had left.

I tackled him.

When we hit against the ground, the coil-watch-ghostbusting-trap failed for just enough time for the glowing lady to abandon the room.

Still over Dr. Weiss’ ghost, I peeked at the picture of him hugging his daughter. I had seen it before, but there was something I just noticed. The girl had an incredible resemblance to the lightning bolt phantom who had helped me before.

Oh fuck.

“What did you do to her?!” I yelled at the monster trapped below my physical body’s weight.

I punched the bastards face hoping to get some ectoplasmic blood out of him.

The only red sprout came from my knuckles that bashed the floor.

The Tesla coil wrist thing tickled my arms.

“You motherfucker! Where is her?”

He became intangible and faded through the floor. He escaped to his underground lab.

The electric weapon didn’t phase through the ground. It shut down.

***

The incomprehensible brightness of the lady led me to her, to the Chappel. I found her on her knees, praying.

“I really need your help,” she explained to me once she had finished with God (a difficult act to follow).

“What do you mean? Help how?” I inquired.

She turned to me, forcing me to lower my fried eyes.

“While Dr. Weiss still has that weapon, we could never be safe.”

“Wait. Who are we?” I asked confused.

“He woke up when the power on Wing A was turned on,” she ignored my question. “It’s dangerous for him to have access to that portable electric leash.”

“Oh, shit,” I whispered before rushing out.

Back in Dr. Weiss’ office, the coil was missing. I was fucking stupid.

Returned to the Chappel where the flashing glimpse I could get at my ghost friend confirmed me she was confused.

“The wrist weapon is gone.” I recapitulated it for her. “Yet, I have a plan. You are not going to like it.”

I grasped the dented chalice that I had used as a projectile a couple of months ago.  

***

The light lady stood in the openness of Wing A’s hallway. Free for the taking. Weiss’ didn’t resist and approached her.

“Wait,” mumbled the scared woman.

Dr. Weiss turned on his Tesla-watch. Sparks and electric fingers emanated from it.

“Please, just hear me out,” the light phantom begged him.

He pointed his fist towards her and the static protuberances encaged her again. She fell to the ground as if her immaterial legs failed her. She couldn’t talk any more. Was unable to resist the pull of the electricity.

With a grin on his face, Dr. Weiss towed across the hall his immobilized capture as if she was just an unfortunate fish captured by a violet electromagnetic net. The motherfucker was taking her into his lab through the only way he can force a ghost who didn’t want to become intangible: the janitor’s closet stairway.

As they approached, the light filtering through the small open in the door became blinding. The static produced by the weapon traveled in the air and raised all my corporal hair.

When they were almost at janitor’s closet, I jumped out of it.

My goal was not the non-physical specter this time, but the material weapon. I covered it with the chalice in a single lucky movement as if I was capturing an undead flying cockroach with a jar. I slammed the metal cup with the Tesla-watch inside against the floor.

The rays retreated inside the metal chamber, freeing my light friend. Weiss, refusing to let go of the weapon from his wrist, kept on the ground refusing to abandon his materialized self. My weight stuck him to the floor.

“Now!” I yelled at my ally.

The peaceful glowing spirit kicked Dr. Weiss’ head as if she was trying to make a field goal. Second ghost weakness: inertia. His translucent face deformed.

The pull from the kick forced the material weapon, still trapped below the chalice I held, out of the ectoplasmic wrist.

Oh, shit. Soul fight.

Dr. Weiss got up as my companion approached lifting her hands to a boxing defense position. Light punches and ectoplasmic slaps made the corridor a strobic party.

Carefully, checked inside the metal dome I was holding to make sure the coil was still on. Indeed, it was.

The PhD specter, fully berserker mode, threw my companion to the other side of the hall. Light passed over me as a time-lapse of the sun’s path.

“You bitch!” Dr. Weiss shrieked while rushing towards her, with me in the middle of the way.

Let the Tesla-watch free and the lavender-colored rays exploded. The electric appendages swirled all over the place and captured the closest ghoul, Weiss. He furiously roared something incomprehensible. The light girl stayed at a safe distance.

“So, what now?” I asked my ally.

The electric prison became smaller as the power of the machine was running out. The bolts burned Dr. Weiss’ ectoplasmic composition. The pain cry was suffocated by the stench of calcinated rubber.

“I could never be completely free until that weapon is destroyed for good,” she replies.

I could feel her warm smile. Possibly it was just the radiation she expelled.

Weiss was in fetal position.

“Even if that means freeing him?”

She nodded at me. Her light, that brightened the whole area, twinkled a little. The malignant ghoul sobbed, pathetically.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered to myself.

I stepped over the Tesla-watch, crushing it.

All its energy exploded in a blast that forced Dr. Weiss down to his underground lab again. The electric arms ran through my body, causing the worst chill-tingling of my life.

The shining ghost stared at me with a satisfactory sense of relief.

***

Last time I saw her was later that night outside the building.

“Thank you.”

I nodded back at her.

In a paranormal metamorphosis, she shifted into a light ball that elevated through the air.

I covered my face with my hand to avoid the direct glance.

Fifty feet in the air, the ball turned into a comet that flew at the lighthouse’s not-working lantern room. With a shockwave, she turned it on again. The light fired out in a golden halo that pointed to the island’s cliff.

Never been there. One night I should go.