My Probation Consists of Guarding an Abandoned Asylum | Finale

Part 19 |

An hour before twilight, Russel arrived on its own luxurious (and until now unknown) yacht to the island. It required a whole crew to sail it and seemed brand new.

I waited on the small dock as some miserably paid employee brought down a plank for my boss to exit the imposing ship. He carried a rope over his shoulder and a magnet in his hand.

“Where is Alex?” I questioned him already knowing the answer.

“Don’t worry about that. He needed to do something today,” the man in charge of my probation lied at me. “Now, where is the treasure?”

***

None of Russel’s employees came with us to the cliff on the other side of the island.

“You sure everything is okay with Alex?” I insisted.

The chilly wind brought a salty breeze, and last sunrays of the day promised this to be the coldest night of my time here.

“Sure,” he replied while getting some papers out of his coat. “Look, I even got you a present. This signed document validates your probation as completed.”

He handed me the paperwork.

I grabbed it in astonishment.

“You’re free!” Russel announced.

“Thanks,” was the only thing I could reply knowing I wouldn’t leave this island today, and neither would him.

Over the cliff, with the boulders under our feet and waves crashing fiercely against them, Russel glanced at me confused.

“Where is it?” he confronted me.

“That is the rope and magnet for.”

I snatched them from him. Knotted the magnet to one end of the cord. Threw the heavy end of the line down the cliff.

“Wait…” I indicated Russel who was getting desperate.

I lowered the thread until the weight of the magnet stopped pulling. Smiling, I retrieved the cable, a little heavier now.

The last moment of sunlight made the coins I captured with the magnet glow golden.

Russel was speechless (something new to him). He stared at the promised treasure I held in my hands as the night’s darkness engulfed us.

ROAR!

A furious wendigo howl emerged from the cliff’s cavity and awoke every hair in our bodies.

Russel and I ran away.

“I know how to deal with that creature!” I yelled at my scared boss. “Follow me.”

I rushed to the Bachman Asylum. Russel was a few yards behind me. I felt the monstrous greed spirit chasing us, grunting to make us freeze in fear.

I had left the fence gates and main doors of the building open. For once, Russel didn’t complain about it. He tailed me as I dashed through Wing A.

I slammed open the janitor’s closet and descent into the underground laboratory where Dr. Weiss resided at his most powerful.

I stepped out of the stairway.

The lights turned up bright as fuck, accompanied by the bastard’s laughter.

Russel crashed against me from behind.

“What’s this?” He whispered without gesticulating.

“Told you there was clandestine lab,” I smugly replied.

My eyes focused on the Tesla Coil in the back of the wet rocky cave, where Luke (the poor guy I got kill on my first night here) and my electric friend (who I failed to help as she did for me before) were trapped.

“I see you brought someone else to the game,” the hoarse voice of Dr. Weiss flooded the cavern as he adopted his ectoplasmic human body. “Stupid.”

“Last chance, let them go!” I ordered the motherfucker.

“Who are you talking to?” Russel asked me while glaring at a bare wall to the left of the action.

“A fucking ghost your father made a deal with,” I whispered him.

“And he can’t even help you,” Dr. Weiss laughed mischievously.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“What’s that?” Russel glimpsed at the ceiling.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I caught the PhD ghoul out of his comfort zone.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Get down, Russel!” I commanded.

Thum! Thump! THUMP!

The bloodlust punishing wendigo stormed into the place.

“Fuck,” murmured Weiss.

“Oh shit!” squeaked Russel.

I launched the coins I had kept in my sweaty hand towards the Tesla coil with the focus of a pitcher in the world series final game.

The lights of the place flickered a couple of times in a strobing manner, making everything felt as if it was seen through light sensitive blinking eyes.

The skeletal killing machine that had imprisoned greedy men and attempted to murder me almost a month ago jumped at his deliberately stolen treasure.

Dr. Weiss shrieked in anger hoping his vocal cords were strong enough to deviate with his voice waves the shiny metal coins that flew in a perfect parable trajectory.

Luke and the electric lady, still trapped in the Tesla coil’s grasp, used the little strength they had left to contemplate the valuable items thrown towards them, attempting to make sense of what was happening.

I squatted as fast as I could, with my knees practically giving up and letting my body succumb at its own weight, hoping that, by getting closer to the ground, the furious creature that escaped its rock and wooden prison would travel over my head, avoiding the bastard who took his protected treasure in an advantageous manner.

Russel cried as a little toddler in fetal position on the uneven stony floor after getting caught in the middle of a paranormal war he had no idea was being fought; trapped against the electric sparks falling from the old lightbulbs as fireworks, his crazy ghost-seeing employee, a supernatural beast with gargantuan talons and the unknowing results of his family greed.

The golden coins, not very pure, hence their magnetic properties, were attracted strongly by the purple electrical tentacles of the phantom prison machine, which claimed its reward with the involuntary greed that wrapped all the island.

Plink.

The coins snatched to the coil.

CRASH!

The wendigo smashed the shit out of the device trying to recover its precious.

Luke and the electric lady were freed.

“No, wait,” stumbled Weiss. “I’m sorry, daughter.”

The electric lady was furious. She absorbed the electricity out of all the lights she had involuntary powered. Her floating body metamorphosized to its original state of a living lightning bolt.

“You know I had good intentions.” Dr. Weiss attempted to flee away.

Luke held the coward ghoul into place.

“I can be now the father you deserved,” fruitlessly begged the hypocritical asshole. “With you as my living battery by my side.”

CRACKLE!

The girl shot from her body an incommensurable ray that fried her inhuman father into oblivion. Forever.

After what felt like a thunderstorm inside all my internal organs and a beating in the external ones, the floating lightning approached me. She was not electric anymore. She looked exactly as she did in the photograph I had seen at her evil father’s office. She was smiling, unable to hide her teeth and tears.

“Thank you so much,” she told me with her voice that felt like a little electric shock fired through my nerves, “for everything.”

“Of course!” Incapable of hearing normally, I probably screamed at her.

“Get out of here,” she finished. “It is time for the Bachman Asylum to rest.”

She disappeared peacefully into… heaven?

Her ghostly self turned into lightning sparks that elevated into the air and set the building in fire.

As the flames reached human size and the heat unbearable temperatures, Luke’s apparition approached me. He smiled at me, which was something weird to see on his half-torn ectoplasmic materialization.

My mobile phone started ringing. I answered it so I could communicate with the specter created on my first night on this cursed island.

“Where’s the guy that came with you?” he asked me.

I skimmed the burning laboratory. No more electric power. Containers exploded and cables melted. The tall wendigo was ripping apart the last of the coil with its sharp claws and jaws to retreat the robbed treasure. Russel wasn’t here anymore.

“Don’t worry, I know where he went!” I strained my lungs trying to talk and breathe through the heavy smoke.

Luke and I ran (he floated, actually) out of the lab.

We exited to Wing A, which was burning as hell itself. The flames blocked any possible exit. The debris clogged my throat. My balance failed me. I relied on a fire extinguisher that supported my falling body.

Emptied the thing against the demonic fire that was consuming the building, and everything inside it. It did nothing. Barely refreshed the eight inches in front of me.

Fuck.

Pang!

I banged the metal cylinder against one of the lateral walls of the corridor in a desperate attempt to break free.

Pang!

The fragile wall wasn’t giving in.

Pang!

I backed a little to get more leverage.

Pang!

Every hit made my arms weaker.

Pang.

Each breath filled my lungs with toxins.

Pang.

I strained myself.

… pang…

My legs couldn’t keep up.

… pang…

I fainted.

***

Pang. Pang. Pang.

Black.

Pang. Pang. Pang.

I felt myself walking. Didn’t see anything. I was pushed by a physical force thumping my back. I didn’t want to continue moving forward, but my feet weren’t cooperating.

Pang. Pang. Pang.

I discerned what was happening. My first day in prison. Being pushed by the guards. My fellow inmates clanked their cups and utensils against the metal bars of their cells welcoming me.

Pang! Pang! Pang!

An urge to fight my way out against the asshole guards flooded my body. A desire to smash someone was taking over me.

Pang! Pang! Pang!

No.

Pang! Pang! Pang!

No more fighting.

PANG! PANG! PANG!

I continued marching to my dark cell. The door was unlocked and wide open for me to enter that pitch-black “room” that was my home for more than seven years.

PANG! PANG! PANG!

The obscure place in which I was meant to exist for having hurt people.

PANG! PANG! PANG!

I entered that darkness. Not without fear, but with acceptance.

***

PANG!

I woke up standing.

What the fuck?

PANG!

My arms fell without my command in a smashing blow against the almost destroyed wall of the Bachman Asylum.

A hole in the wall, big enough for me, allowed the blackness of the night to enter after that final strike.

I told my body to get out. It did it, but not under my command. I was just a passenger.

A couple of yards away from the burning, collapsing building, I started controlling my body again, at the same time Luke’s soul left my used anatomy. It took a lot of coughs and sputum to allow enough air for me to speak.

“Thank you.”

Luke’s ghost smirked.

The cracking noise of the flaming former medical facility became very intense. When I turned back, the whole two story, multi-towered, secret-rooms-filled, gothic rotting construction crumbled on itself.

ROAR!

The furious cry of the invulnerable wendigo shook the remains of the beyond reconstruction Bachman Asylum.

Fuck.

***

As expected, Russel was there, at the top of the cliff using the magnet and rope to pull more golden coins and a ring out of the damned cave.

“Hey!” my yell got interrupted by the yacht’s horn.

“Yes!” Russel celebrated with the treasure in his hands. “Come closer, we need to get this gold out of here!” He screamed at the reversing yacht that seemed willing to anchor on the cursed pirate hole in the middle of the rocks.

“Stop this, Russel!” I demanded.

Russel turned back at me.

“I know all about what happened to you and your family. Why you sent me here and the importance of someone taking care of this shitty place. But you need to let go of that gold,” I pretended to care. “You don’t need it.”

He glanced at me for a minute, then at the gold in his hands.

“You don’t know what I need! You are just a poor bastard that ended up here because you also wanted easy money,” he mocked at me.

“I’m sorry, Russel. I tried.”

From behind me, the undead wendigo dashed towards the greed-full Russel.

My former boss tried to get away, there is only one way out of a cliff.

The supernatural creature jumped at my supervisor.

They flew together through the freezing air out of the minute island from which I beheld the scene.

They miraculously landed in the yacht.

“Get the boat moving!” Russel ordered in desperation and agony.

They compelled. The ship sailed. Tortured shrieks, Russel and the unyielding wendigo got moving towards the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. There will be a lot of punishment there.

Luke and I sat down on barnacle-covered boulders. We heard the last of the spoilt wood of the asylum burn into ashes at the distance. We saw the greed-haunted luxury yacht get lost in the horizon.

I was right, that night was cold as fuck.

***

The next morning, I was sitting in the dock when Alex arrived in its three-foot-wide, surprisingly floating boat. I assumed he saw the smoke high in the sky when he approached, and the lack of an ancient building once he arrived.

“What happened?” He questioned confused.

“You got late,” I answered, “due to Russel, I know. Right now, help me carry these into the boat.”

I pointed at a dozen bags around me. I opened one to show its content to my helper to convince him. Gold; coins, jewelry and other utensils.

“Yes, captain,” he complied without issue.

***

“… Now that the wendigo got lost in the ocean, I don’t think he will be so protective over its gold,” I finished recounting the events of the last couple of nights to Alex. “I’m gonna use it to repair the harm I caused that got me into San Quentin eight years ago. Going to track down all the people I have idented in my memory and make things right.”

“And so,” Alex had a lot of questions, “all the ghosts are gone?”

“Not Luke, he’s here with us.”

I pointed to my left where he was sitting. He waved at Alex, who, of course, didn’t see anything but my insanity.

“Don’t take it personal. He’s a great guy and friend, you know, is just your… condition,” I explained my undead buddy.

Luke was very comprehensive. I assume that after being butchered to death and hung as a flag there is not much more of what to complain anymore.

“Oh, before I forget,” Alex told me. “I finally found what you asked me.”

He delivered me, for one last time, a package and an envelope.

The letter was from Lisa. I still can’t believe that she wrote to me. She thanked me for the information package I had sent to her, which led to an amazing multi-part article for the newspaper she is working for nowadays. She even received a promotion. I’m so happy for her.

In the package, there was this thing, I don’t know how to call it, but is some sort of weird earphone that can receive calls. I mean, you don’t need to connect it to your phone nor anything, it has its own calling system completely independent. I placed it on my right ear.

“Okay, Luke,” I indicated the mute spirit. “Hit it!”

Horrible feedback assaulted my eardrum for a couple of seconds.

“Can you hear me?” Luke inquired cautiously.

“Yes! Yes, I do.”

Alex stared at me as if I was a patient of the recently burned Bachman Asylum.

“So, what are you doing now?”

“Well, now that I got freed from my probation, I need a job.”

“Is hard getting one after being in jail,” Luke’s negativity was off-putting.

“Yes, but I got a plan,” I stated. “You’ll see, I had been posting online my whole experience, and multiple people commented stuff. One lady seemed pretty into what I was telling, not judging me as insane. She commented she wanted me to help her with some issue in her property.” Beat. “Maybe I can become a professional ghostbuster.”

“You know how to contact her?” Alex kept throwing questions during the whole journey to the mainland.

“Well, I know her profile was something like @Rowen_wtch.”

“Wait,” Luke’s alarms fired up. “Do you think she could be a European woman with the last name Rowen?”

“I guess so,” I replied confused. “Why?”

“Because she was the one who sent me to this island the night I got murdered.”

Shit.

Will have to start a new set of posts for this.