My Probation Consists of Guarding an Abandoned Asylum | Part 12

 

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 owner.

The living skeleton thanked me as he hung it over its cervical spine.

“What happened to the patients?” He questioned me.

Caught me of guard. A beat.

“I mean,” he clarified, “Jack locked me in the morgue once he escaped. What happened to all the patients?”

“Not sure, man. Guess they all died.”

Even without any skin nor muscles, his surprise was evident.

“The Bachman Asylum has been abandoned for almost thirty years,” I continued. “I am the guard now.”

“So, there are no more kids anymore?” He sounded disappointed.

“Maybe ghost ones. That’s pretty common around here.”

He nodded comprehensively before leaving the room to wander the dark and empty halls of the once-thriving medical facility.

***

Ring!

I answered the phone from my office, not knowing what to expect anymore.

“You can’t allow him to drift freely,” I was told by the voice of the dude who died on my first night here and aided me to defeat Jack.

“Hey, man!” I responded with out-of-character excitement. “Thought you have gone to eternal resting.”

“I could,” his hoarse and now friendly voice rumbled through my ear. “Figured out there were still things I needed to do here. For instance, warn you about that fucking skeleton.”

“He seems harmless. And that’s an improvement around here.” Curiosity got better of me. “What’s your name?”

“My name was Luke. But I mean it, be careful…”

“Thanks, Luke,” I interrupted my beyond-the-grave helper. “I’ll take it from here.”

I hung up the phone.

I was rude. I’ll apologize to Luke.

He threw me back to my infancy.

***

When I was in middle school, I remembered there was this sort of spiritual retirement organized by a religious organization. It was a weekend in which the students were going to sleep on a monastery, interact with priests-to-be and, what had me more excited, be far from home a couple of days. My mother prevented me from going. I wasn’t happy about it.

***

Night was young, and I hadn’t even started to pick up the mess I made in the records room. That was my task when a toddler’s cry got in the way.

Fuck.

Followed the whining. It took me exactly to the place I was hoping it wouldn’t. The Chappel. Nothing.

It was down at the morgue. As I descended and approached the door at the end of the rock tunnel, the screech became louder. Shit.

Of course, the door was closed. I placed my ear on the cold metal entrance. Below the kid’s blubber, there was the same nice voice of the skeleton. In this context, it sounded uncomfortable and deceiving.

“This was our secret hiding place, remember? Our happy spot?”

The door had been locked from the inside. Of course it was. It was the “happy spot.”

I tried using my weight against the metal gate. It didn’t do anything to the obstacle. Just intensified the child’s sob. Didn’t discourage the skeleton.

I went back to the Chappel. From the three wooden benches, I located the most complete and less rotten. It was heavy. Around 60 pounds. I barely carried it with both arms.

It rolled down the spiral stairs.

Again, I was in front of my foe, that solid and sealed door.

The atmosphere in the cavern corridor was oppressive, dark, moist and hardly breathable. I inhaled salty air into my lungs a couple of times while my trembling hands were at the brink of dropping the furniture.

I closed my eyes, no need to give energy to that sense.

The rascal choking up at the other side drowned my eardrums.

Even when I just ran through a twenty-foot-long hall, it felt eternal. Every step sent a shock through my system indicating me to let go of the hardware. I ignored all of them.

The laughter of the skeleton, that under any other circumstance must have been contagious, now was chilling.

I felt every splinter puncturing my hand’s skin at the same time the dense air was putting more resistance with every step I took.

BANG!

The metal protection slammed open as the impact-wave cramped my body.

“Get away from the kid!” I commanded.

As imagined, the skeletons phalanges were dangerously close to the child’s groin.

I could see in its empty eye sockets that the skeleton was surprised, but unwilling to compel.

I jumped over the undead predator to tackle him away from the ghost boy.

The impact made the bones fall into the tile ground. My muscles did the same.

With an envious speed, the bones started rearranging themselves into the pedophile osseous creature. Mine would take far longer to be good as new.

I got up and grabbed the infant’s hand.

“We have to go.”

Without questioning me, he nodded (that’s new).

We both ran out of there.

***

I hid the kiddo on the janitor’s closet on Wing A.

“I need you to stay here in silence,” I explained him.

“No, don’t leave me alone,” his ghostly voice chill me out a little.

As I snatched a couple of chemical bottles with skulls on their labels (seemed dangerous), the little phantom hugged me. I left the containers on the ground. Took his cold ectoplasmic hands with mine.

“Hey, I promise I’ll never let that thing hurt you,” I smiled sincerely.

He nodded trustfully.

I grabbed a couple of rubber gloves. Closed the closet with the boy in there.

The skeleton, fully reconstructed, appeared at that exact time.

“I don’t want any problem with you,” he attempted diplomacy. “Just give me the kid and you forget about me. I’ll even make sure he stays quiet.”

“No deal!” I screamed at him as I threw the Smurf-blue content from one of the bottles.

It splashed over him.

He continued walking towards me.

His religious robe started dripping, melting with the blue chemical.

I felt his mischievous grin.

I opened another container, this was Shreck-green.

Again, it did nothing to him as he approached.

I backed a little.

“Stop it!” He ordered me.

The drops of the substance that had travelled all the way down through his bones reached the floor.

Smoke.

A subtle hiss.

The wooden floor corroded.

I slid the rest of the content on the floor immediately in front of the unholy creature.

It worked fast. An immense haze wall blocked my sight.

“Don’t be stupid,” he warned me.

The stomps of the bone heels against the wood became softer with every step.

Crack!

The weight of the fleshless body had been too much for the damaged floor.

He ended up in a three-foot-deep hole, attempting to impulse himself with his supernatural-holding arms.

He looked up at me.

I unscrewed the last bottle, a radioactive-Pinkie Pie-pink thing that I poured directly over his skull.

Steam filled my lungs.

A shriek assaulted the whole Wing.

The futile endeavor of grasping my ankle stopped when the chemical disintegrated the hand bones. The longer ones took a little more. At the end, just small pieces remained in the hole.

***

Half an hour later, I was with the kid in front of the trapdoor-less incinerator. The heat had helped evaporated any trace of tears he might still have on those ectoplasmic cheeks.

I gave him the bag in which I had placed the chaplain’s remains and the heart necklace with his photograph.

He received it determined. Took a couple of steps forward. Threw the malignant bag to the incinerator.

The smell of burned plastic made me cough. The kid didn’t notice it. Advantages of not breathing.

“Thank you for getting me out of there,” he told me.

“Of course. My mom taught me with the example.”

The ghost brat disappeared into peacefulness.