Got Framed For Murder in a Dementia Village | Part 4

 Part 3 | Part 5

In the Morlden Village there is not a single good night to rest. For the first time in weeks, I was not interrupted by vampires, nightmares or creepy sucking old men as I wandered through Morpheus realm. That would’ve been too good to be true.

Crash.

A metallic sound pulled me out of my resting state and activated my vigilant one. My laptop had fallen from the desk right to my bed. It would have been weird if it had just dropped in the middle of the night without reason. But the cause was odder. A creature, greenish skin, one-foot-tall, with pointy ears and teeth had pushed it to the floor.

“What the fuck?” I murmured to myself.

The monster jumped onto the floor.

I got out of bed.

The goblin snatched my computer.

I tried catching the bastard.

It fled away, with surprising speed for its size.

I chased it out of my room.

That thing, carrying my laptop, slid under the caregiver’s bed, escaping me.

If it would’ve been William, I could have asked him to move just for a little. But this night it was a woman in charge of taking care of the cognitive held patients that live with me in our resident building E.

It took me a minute to evaluate the situation before going to the kitchen to grab a knife (thanks to the interrogatory for murder I endured on my first day here, I knew where and how to get this weapon.) Then, without taking my sight from the caregiver bed, and being as silent as possible to avoid waking her up, I opened Mr. Bohr bedroom. I entered.

He was sleeping so peacefully. But today wasn’t a sleeping night.

With two fingers I pinched his nose, blocking the air in.

He gasped a little. His snoring intensified. He woke up craving oxygen.

The scream came next.

That woke the caregiver and brought her running to this room.

“What happened?” She asked.

“Not sure,” I lied. “He just started screaming in fear out of nowhere.”

“Calm down, Mr. Bohr…”

As she attempted to pacify the situation with my roommate’s paranoia, the other dementia patients that had the bad luck to share a sleeping building with us woke up and started screaming in symphony. A crying old woman and another old man who wanted to take a shower entered the room. The caregiver’s duties swallowed her attention completely.

I escaped the scene and sneaked away into the doorless room where the caregiver slept. I lifted the bed.

There was no goblin there. Just a hole that seemed to have been half-drilled and half-hand carved. I stared at the black irregular 2-feet-wide circle, and it glared back at me. Fucking Nietzschean supernatural shit. I leaped into the darkness.

I fell around a couple of yards before encountering the bottom. It wasn’t deep, but the rock it was made of was abnormally dark.

The hole I had trapped myself in connected with an even darker tunnel. Not even the flashlight of my cellphone brightened more than two meters from where I was standing. It was a low, just 3-feet-diameter pipe chiseled into the darkest rock I ever encountered (not that I’m a geologist, I must add.)

Regretting my decision, I interned into the tunned.

After crawling for the longest minute of my life, my cellphone interrupted my exploration. How was I getting signal down there? Unknown number. With a fair chance of regretting it later, I answered the call.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Hey,” a familiar voice, “how you get down here?”

Luke, my ghost friend which I had been uncomfortably distanced since we arrived at this godforsaken place, came through the ceiling and stopped just in front of me.

“How you find me?” I questioned him.

“I felt your cellphone under the graveyard where I was with Mike. Why don’t you carry the earphone anymore?” Luke asked me through my cellphone. “It facilitates our communication.”

“Stolen. I’m on it. Who’s Mike?”

“The mute ghost I’m trying to help.”

“His name is Mike?”

“Not know. But it is the commonest name in English, so it was the name with better chances of nailing.”

I nodded at my undead friend. My knees hurt under my weight against the hard rocks below. My neck was begging to return to a more natural position.

“I know how to help him now, or at least I believe so,” Luke excitedly told me.

“Not now, I’m in the middle of something.”

Luke’s torn ectoplasmic body became sadder. His body language became stiffer and less open.

“He needs my help,” Luke replied. “And I need yours.”

“Right now, I’m on the middle of something…”

“Sure, I guess you’re looking for the earphone you lost.”

“It’s not that…”

My words just rumbled in the small tunnel where they went unheard by my interlocutor, who faded through the ceiling. Darkness and solitude embraced me.

I continued my crawl for a couple of minutes.

Suddenly, the air became less oppressive. The metaphysical weight of the rock stopped being so intense over my shoulders. A wind blow indicated to me of my arrival to a bigger chamber.

I stood up as I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the spacious oxygen of this fifteen-foot-high cave. My mobile phone’s flashlight circled around the black stone walls that surrounded this place, with multiple goblin height tunnels spreading through them. This was a whole network of tunnels that spread all the way across Morlden Village, and I had just found its heart.

My flashlight landed in the middle of the room. An enormous tower that reached the ceiling imposed magnificently. It glowed. My light hit reflective surfaces, polished metal and fluorescent colors. The shinny scrap mountain reacted to my source of light, vanquishing any shadow in this cove.

But that light also brought with it a whole new level of darkness. The monument also uncovered the goblins that were hiding in the somber areas.

Fuck.

A horde of around a dozen gremlins shrieked. His sharp teeth were pronounced by my light.

I ran away through the tunnel I had come from.

The hyperactive creatures followed me.

I crawled ignoring my knee discomfort.

The rumble behind me caused by scratching talons against hard rock was deafening.

My neck wanted to look down. My curiosity to glimpse back. My survivor instinct kept my eyes to the front.

Light, at the end of the tunnel.

The first goblin charged me.

I stood up in the entrance I had entered through.

The knife slashed a deep wound in the monster.

I jumped out of the hole that got me here in the first place.

Another creature followed my path.

I rolled and stabbed it in a single motion.

The beast fell to the cave again but took the knife with it.

I turned around the caregiver bed, that was still in vertical position as I left it.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

Tonight’s caregiver returned in the most inappropriate moment.

A boney miniature hand with shrunk-looking skin but huge claws emerged from the obscure hole I came from a couple of seconds ago.

I let the bed fall upside down over the portal.

The bones cracked and the little fingers got severed.

“What’s happening?!”

I placed my weight above the bed, blocking completely the entrance to our resting place.

“Not know what they are!” I explained my yelling caregiver.

The bed below me shook a little.

“Call Ms. Rowen!” I indicated my improvised partner.

“She’s out on a trip,” the caregiver replied to me with a high pitch whine only audible to dogs.

A greenish arm slipped out from under the bed.

“Paula and Margaret?”

I dropped my fist against the escaping limb.

“Don’t want to be disturbed.”

The hand swirled back inside.

“I think this is a good exception.”

The bed pushed me with unnatural force from under me.

I flew a couple of seconds in the air before impacting against the resting furniture that was now functioning as a trapdoor.

“But they said…”

“Fuck!” I interrupted the useless caregiver that was underqualified for working in this demented dementia village.

A couple of extremities, green and miniscule, showed themselves from all around the mattress I was holding against the floor.

“William?!” I yelled hoping she would consider calling a fellow caregiver.

“Yes?”

“Get him!”

I gave that instruction before playing a supernatural Whack-a-Mole with goblin fingers and toes.

“William, we need you on Residence Building E,” said the caregiver through her reflective phone.

Fuck.

“Not through a phone!”

She turned at me confused.

The bed under me propelled me outside the small cubicle meant for caregivers to sleep.

The Pandora Box opened and an army of rabid goblins emerged. They swarmed around each other as a homogeneous mass.

The caregiver backed a little. In shock, she didn’t respond to William’s inquiries over the phone.

The green shiny-stuff-desiring horde threw itself against the mobile device my aid held next to her ear. Those things swallowed her.

The revolting gremlin’s mass, with a phone attached to a woman inside, returned to the hellish dimension they came from.

The mess had woken up, again, the five cognitive detriment patients that share the never-quiet building with me. Screams, complaints and stumps fill the area.

I approached the hole that had given birth to these monsters and looked inside it. Black. No trace of those things, nor the poor caregiver whose peaceful night I had stolen from her.

Two minutes later, William broke into the building.

“What happened? Where’s Lucy”

I pointed down to the abyss she had disappeared in.

***

“¿So, what are these creatures that took Lucy?” William asked me.

His voice resounded hard against the claustrophobic walls of the tunnel we’re crawling in.

“Not, sure. They looked like goblins or something like that. They like shiny things.”

My voice was buried under the clacking noise the golf club that I had tied to my waist was producing by being dragged through the irregular ground we were crossing. Yet, my companion seemed to have understood me just fine.

“So, you think they harmed her?”

“Let’s hope not,” was the most optimistic answer I could deliver. “So why Paula and Margaret didn’t come?”

“They said that they don’t have orders to do so…”

William’s idea got interrupted by his own painful cry.

“What?”

I immediately stopped. Couldn’t turn to face him, the tunnel was too small.

“A mirror shard,” he explained. “Must had fallen from my bag. I’ll make sure it is secured.”

“Be careful.”

I continued the crawl. I felt William’s presence keep up with my rhythm. That gave me faith that it wasn’t such a bad injury.

“You think Mrs. Welch jewelry will be enough? How will we explain it to her?”

His anxiousness was contagious. I fought that urge to descend to that.

“It has to be,” was the badassest and most confident reply I came up with. “And she won’t even notice. No one here ever notices when something is missing.”

I felt William nodding behind me. Even if I could have turned, the darkness wouldn’t have allowed me to see him. We were developing a strong connection.

We continued moving forward until my hand felt the colder surface of the stone ground in the chamber of stolen things.

I heard a clashing noise coming from the front of us.

I shushed my companion.

This time our trip was done without a lantern, so my eyes were more accustomed to the blackness. Yet, it wasn’t enough to distinguish anything. I took out my shirt and rolled it over the flashing side of my torch multiple times. When I turned it on, the light was so diffused that nothing shone or glowed back, but the soft light was enough to make sense of where we were.

I exited the tunnel into the big central chamber as carefully as possible. I help William do the same. With my finger on my mouth, I indicated to him to control his awe.

There were goblins surrounding the scrap tower. Almost like they adored that monolith, they were in a radial formation around it. Quiet. Steady. Asleep.

William and I avoided them as we approached the construction in the center. At the base of it, looking up, I found my stolen laptop. I indicated William, by spiraling my finger, to check around the construction. Surprisingly, he understood it; the connection was palpable.

By myself, without any rope or anything, I climbed the goblin made mountain.

“She’s here,” William whispered at me.

My sphincter clutched. No gremlin moved or reacted to that. Maybe they have bad hearing. My asshole relaxed.

I looked around the tower. Down there, on the opposite side of me, there was Lucy. Unconscious, laying against a big mirror. How the fuck these creatures got these things?

“Good,” I muttered back.

I returned to my endeavor. Carefully, and with an engineering mind, I manage to retrieve my laptop without anything collapsing. I breathed again after achieving it. I stashed my treasure in my bag, in the compartment where I didn’t have mirror shreds nor jewelry.

William carried Lucy. Now below me.

“What are you doing?” He mumbled very intensely.

I implied him, with my index and thumb close to each other, to give me a second.

He wasn’t thrilled about it.

In the opening from where my laptop was supposed to be, I could see two more missing things. The key to my room, with its bulky blue keychain that indicated my room number. And the earphone I had acquired to talk to Luke.

“Let’s go,” William pressured me.

I shoved my hand inside the structure. They were hidden deep. I couldn’t see what I was doing. My touch delivered me to the big keychain. It was stuck. I pulled it out aggressively. It got loose. Everything stood still.

I exhaled in relief.

The polished cup, in which I had my right foot supported, lose its grip.

I fell.

“Run!” I yelled over the violent sound my body made while surfing down the tower.

The goblins woke up.

I landed on William’s side. He left Lucy down. I grabbed my golf club, and he took the baseball bat found in the shed with both hands.

The first nightmare creature jumped against us.

William bashed him away.

A second from behind tasted the cold iron of my weapon.

A fat one bit the bat.

Two approached swirling in the ground towards Lucy.

William broke the bastard’s head by smashing the wood against the rock floor.

I swung what would have been a two-gremlin hole in one.

The bat broke into pieces due to the impact blast.

“Take her out of here,” I commanded as my club got bent after a solid head monster got in its way. “Through the other side.”

William bent down to pick up the barely awake Lucy.

I threw Mrs. Welch jewelry against the closest stone wall.

Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank, clank, clank.

That sound, that promise of shiny things, drove the goblins towards it. Giving us a couple of seconds.

“Now!” I demanded.

William ran to the other side of the room.

I tossed the broken mirror shreds to the ground.

The goblins charged against me.

I took my shirt off the flashlight.

Approximately twenty shrieks in unison hurt my eardrums as if they had been punctured with multiple needles.

I directed the torch to the shreds.

They glowed.

The goblins forgot me and leaped towards the splash of shreds I had caused.

I ran to the other side of the monolith.

Multiple tunnels. One shone a second after the beam of the flashlight passed through it. The vestige of the dripping bag of mirror fragments.

The gremlins lose their interest in my diversion.

I launched the flashlight against the swarm that was after me.

It hijacked the creatures’ attention for a second. They revolted in place.

I entered the tunnel William had selected hoping that it would lead us to an exit. A close one preferably.

After a couple of yards, I hit something squishy. Legs. Standing legs. Meaning: an exit.

“William?” I wondered.

“Yes,” his voice was so comforting. “I’m getting Lucy out.”

The struggle of his pushing got obfuscated by the blasting sound of around twenty little monsters thumping towards us.

“I’m out,” Lucy’s barely hearable voice acted as a beacon of hope.

“Go!”

William pushed himself out of the caverns.

The rumble intensified.

I followed his example.

A furious cry came from the tunnel.

We exited to another resident building. Later I knew it was A. It was clearly different from all the others I’d visited, but it still was perfect as you might expect an European old couple’s house. Everything was, but the hole we had just come through, which connected the floor below the caregiver’s bed to the supernatural web of goblin tunnels.

“The bed,” I indicated as quickly as I could.

The moving flesh of the creatures was already visible.

William and I slammed the furniture where a caregiver was sleeping a couple of minutes ago against the clandestine entry to our sanctuary.

“Help us!” William demanded his colleague.

The caregiver of residence building A, as well as the almost fainting Lucy, leaped over the bed that William and I were attempting to keep in place.

A couple of strong blows hit us from below.

A scratch, like something heavy being dragged to the floor, came from one of the patients’ rooms.

Another pounding, less intense than the priors, pushed up.

We didn’t yield.

The door of a close room opened.

The struggle with the felony-propense underground creatures stopped.

Elisa, the old woman I had encountered in the middle of the night when I arrived here for the first time, showed her face through the barely open door. She was extremely scared.

“Did you find my ring?”

***

Less than ten minutes later, William and I were in the medical unit. Carly, the nurse, was taking care of a traumatized and possible shocked forever mentally weak caregiver.

“What happened now?” the medical professional asked.

“You don’t want to know,” William replied.

That just upset her more.

“Goblins,” I added without missing a beat. “A whole colony under Morlden Village.”

Lucy, who was just freed from these captors, grunted with discomfort as Carly pinched a needle through her arm.

“How do you know they’re goblins?” William asked.

“Really with this fantasy shit?” Carly questioned.

“It’s true,” were Lucy’s last words before falling unconscious.

“Not sure what they are, but I had to name them somehow.”

William nodded at my answer.

“He has issues, right?” Carly asked the still conscious caregiver while pointing at me with her head.

“Come on,” I directed my attention to the medical professional. “You’re gonna tell me you haven’t noticed anything weird in this place?”

“Never had to work so much before you arrived.”

“Ouch. But I mean it.”

“Not that I can recall,” Carly talked to me without taking her eyes off her patient.

“Everything here is so ridiculously perfect. Not a single leak. All the lightbulbs work perfectly, even the exterior ones. The grass is always at a perfect two-inch height. Never seen a single piece of furniture scratched.”

William stared at nothingness while reflecting on the obvious that had been in front of him all along.

“Maybe, the maintenance team do their job really well.”

Carly was in the process of negation. Out of the bargain dynamic.

“Have you ever seen anyone doing any of those chores?” I concluded my argument.

I exited the medical unit without giving a chance for an answer. I didn’t expect one, either.

William reached me on the road that leads to the staff quarters.

“What are you doing?”

“I hope I can figure out with Ms. Rowen why everyone here still treats me as if I was a fucking looney with dementia,” I answered him.

“She’s not here…”

“Someone must be.” I interrupted him.

He stopped walking. I left him behind a couple of feet before I stopped myself and turned to him.

“I also need to retrieve something from down there,” I explained him.

“Why? You already have your missing laptop. And that almost got us caught!”

“Those things stole an earphone of mine.”

“I’ll get you another,” William’s caring was genuine.

“It must be that one.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t understand it, man.”

I started walking away.

“Then you’re on your own!” William screamed at me.

He marched in the opposite direction.

***

Mrs. Rowen’s office was empty. The huge desk, the warm lights and old pictures covering the walls didn’t help to make this a cozier place. Yet, something was weird. Unnatural.

There was this nerving sensation in this place. It wasn’t the heavy vibe you get when you’re in a place where a violent action took place, even when in this room a murder was committed against the previous manager. The usual pinch that burned my shinbone every time that I had been into this room, also present when in contact with evil or supernatural shit, was missing. It was more like a feeling that there was something hidden here.

I searched the room completely. Every drawer just contained records of old people with cognitive impairment. The books were all about psychology and socialization. The enormous safe box, high enough that it reaches the ceiling, was sealed and there was no way I could manage to break the cold iron it was made of.

A photograph hijacked my attention. It was hung on the wall with a discrete frame. It felt important. From the texture of it you could know it was old, with a lot of grain and undefined edges. There was Ms. Rowen at the center, surrounded by a group of four women, all about their forties. But it couldn’t be Ms. Rowen, it must have been a previous Mrs. Rowen who was also a manager here at Morlden Village. William’s weird theory seemed more plausible.

Nonetheless, what was more disturbing about the picture was the lady in the right. She looked familiar. I had never met her before. But, I have seen her… in my dreams. That woman was my grandmother.

“What are you doing here?” A familiar voice interrupted my train of thought.

Paula and Margaret stood on the threshold of the room.

“Patients aren’t allowed here,” Paula clarified.

“I’m not a…”

“You must be confused. Margaret will accompany to your residence.”

“Where’s Ms. Rowen?” I demanded.

“Hey, calm down.” Margaret’s calm and sweet voice gave her the power to approach me without me resorting to violence.

“She returns tomorrow,” Paula said. “I’ll tell her you want to see her.”

“No, stop this! I need your help with the stealing goblins under the village.”

“You have some serious issues with reality.”

“You know I’m not lying!”

“Sure we know,” finalized Paula.

I felt really calm and relaxed somehow.

I looked for Margaret, who had just injected me with a syringe.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Blackness.

***

I woke up like ten hours later. In my room on building E. Everything was in its place, as if I hadn’t been living here for almost a month now.

Fucking bitches are gaslighting me. And they drugged me!

Still, I need to get to my earphone.

Thankfully, I had retrieved my laptop, and I didn’t have any internet restrictions to search things. This led me to plan b.

From the rotten, non-money-based supermarket I retrieve a candle, but no matchsticks nor lighters. I know it would be dangerous for cognitive held patients, but the fact that they can get a candle never to be turned on was ridiculous. I didn’t question it to the clerk and got a big one that could stand on its own. Then I hoped the universe would provide.

After we took care of the vampire from the shed, there was no real reason to keep it closed.  That was good news because if not this whole operation would have gone to shit. The fortune was on my side that day.

Inside the shed I found everything I needed. A big bucket, a wooden plank, a rope, a zippo and ammonium nitrate, which I just don’t get why it keeps being commercialized as a fertilizer. Also, as if it was meant to happen, a fucking disco mirror ball (thanks destiny.)

In an open park, the closest to residence building A, I constructed the trap. Filled the bucket with the ammonium nitrate and covered it with the wood. I tied the rope to the board and placed the candle on top of it. With hardware from the shed I constructed a structure that suspended the disco ball high over the chemical. And, just to make sure, I surrounded the construction with flashlights, shovels with reflective surfaces, personal mirrors and any other shiny thing I could find in the shed and supermarket. It was a shining monument impossible to ignore.

Night fell upon me.

I lit the candle.

The fortunate thing about living with just old people is that they go to bed even before sunset, so no one was peeking into my construction. And even on residence building A the only awakened person was the caregiver who, this time, I had no patience for her.

I didn’t ask her name. Just passed through her and lifted the bed where she was meant to sleep. She stopped trying to prevent my intentions once she saw the hole that connected the underground network of greedy goblins with our beloved dementia village.

I jumped inside it. I threw mirror shreds to the tunnel that connected this entryway with the center of this creatures’ lair. I also threw a flashlight inside.

“Run,” I indicated the caregiver.

The beam of light shone and reflected all the way through the cavern.

The goblin’s shriek shook the building.

The caregiver finally listened to my advice.

A horde approached me.

I exited the hole.

Like a fountain of greenish flesh, the swarm burst from the hole.

I left the building with a shining torch, indicating the way to my pursuers (like a high-heels lady with a T. Rex.)

They caught the game quickly.

The monstrous grunts approached me from behind.

I ran faster.

I felt the heat of those bastards on my nape.

I tossed my source of light at the park.

The gremlins leaped over me after it.

A couple of little scratches, but nothing major. Carly will be upset for sure.

I crawled towards a bush where I had left the other end of the rope tied to the wooden plank.

The beacon of light and shininess I erected for them worked perfectly. The whole colony of around twenty bastards engulfed the monument.

I pulled the rope.

The line pulled the board.

The candle that was meant to fall on the ammonium nitrate, didn’t. Fuck. The melted wax had glued it to the wood. Fuck!

Improvise time. I left my hiding and went back to building A. The caregiver was there again, but I reiteratively ignored her as I entered to the cave network.

I crawled along the tunnel all the way to the central chamber. Spacious, with more breathable air, an enormous tower of shinny scrap in the middle and, for the moment, goblin-free.

I escalated through mirrors and jewelry all the way to the hole I had left after retrieving my computer. From there, I was able to see the earphone.

I breathed deeply as I pushed my hand inside. My fingers felt a lot of cold metallic surfaces. I growled as I shoved my arm further. Something poked my armpit, but I kept going. My fingers sensed some organic form. Jackpot.

The rumble of the goblin army returning to its homeplace with their prize shook my nervous system.

I pulled out.

The uncomfortable foul smell of these beasts hit my nose.

The earphone came out of its place in the structure.

A deafening roar from the tunnel I had used flooded the entire chamber.

I lose my balance. My grip failed me. I rolled down the scrap mountain as it came down on me as an avalanche.

I stood up as the goblins stormed into the chamber.

They cried at me in an anger-fueled unison. It got concealed under the hail rain of shiny shit I had caused.

I disappeared through the closest tunnel.

The creatures danced in desperation around their broken construction before chasing me.

That couple of seconds gave me enough headstart to reach the exit through my luckily well-known residence building E.

The swarm of furious critters widened the entrance to our reality by all of them crossing through it at the same time. The wall, ceiling and floor of the whole building got broken, cracked or displaced.

I slammed the main door behind me as I escaped that place.

The unhinged bulk of goblins all smushed against each other, all with the single purpose of getting me, destroyed my supposed obstacle as if it was nothing.

I rushed towards the park as all the muscles in my body popped.

The mad gremlin’s mass had no intention of stopping.

When I reached the grass, a scratch on my calf made a blood sprinkler out of my leg.

The next time I stepped on that foot, my weight betrayed me.

The creatures behind me shriek with rage.

I rolled in the grass.

The zippo flew out of my pocket.

The goblins mass swallowed me.

I protected the earphone below my body and against the grass.

Talons slashed my back. Pointy fangs pierced my legs. Sharp claws ripped my skin open. Jaws full of unstoppable teeth bit all of me.

With all the air left on my lungs I yelled in absolute pain. That was the only thing I could do.

I had resigned for this to be it. Inside this conglomerate of supernatural creatures. I’ve failed Luke. Never figured out why Mrs. Rowen wanted him death and sent him to the Bachman Asylum in the first place. I would not be able to help him with the mute ghost from the graveyard. Maybe he will never find some closure.

Suddenly, the scratches and chewing ceased. The weight of a whole society of bloodlust goblins left my back. The pain didn’t go with them.

I try to make sense of what happened.

“Over here!” William’s voice seemed so far away.

He was next to the bucket of ammonium nitrate. Shit.

I failed in my attempt to get up.

The beyond-reasoning gremlins charged him.

I tried to get to him by dragging myself through the perfect grass of the park.

William held the zippo high in the air.

The goblins were hypnotized by the flame, like bugs to the light.

“No!” I flopped to get that out of my lungs.

William smiled as he pushed his hand with the turned-on zippo into the bucket full of fertilizer, and the whole society of underground critters buried him.

BOOM!

***

Next day, I woke up as good as new in the medical unit. No open wounds, no dizziness from the explosion, no more bleeding, not even scars. There’s no way Carly is that good at nursing. She welcomed me back to the land of the living.

“Seems like your ‘goblins’ aren’t that deadly, huh?”

I got out of bed. I expected my legs to frail under my weight, but they didn’t.

“William?” I limited all my questions to just a single word.

Carly made a weird gesture.

“Mrs. Rowen wants to see you.”

All the way to the staff quarters, it caught my attention that everything was as good as new. The park seemed in perfect condition, without guts all over it and not even a blast crater. Later it turned out that my damaged residence building was also restored in record time to its usual stereotypical appearance.

I arrived at the boss’ office. She was waiting for me. As soon as I entered the room, I noticed the picture of her with my grandmother missing from the wall, now there was only a bare nail. My shinbone stung me as usual.

“William?” I demanded to know.

“Who?” Ms. Rowen smiled while pretending to be oblivious. “Are you okay? We found you having escaped from your room and slept in the park. We believe you fell down a hill.”

“No, that isn’t true. There were goblins, and a whole explosion…”

“Breath,” she had such a calmed voice. “We would have noticed something like that. You’re just confused.”

“Bullshit!”

I stood up.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I warned her. “You know why I was brought here. That I took care of your vampire issue last week. So, Ms. Rowen…”

“Mrs. Rowen,” she interrupted me.

“What?”

“Please called me Mrs. Rowen.”

I was more confused now than before entering.

“I thought that Mrs. Rowen was your aunt…”

“Yes,” she kept interrupting me. “And now that I’m taking full charge of Morlden Village, I think it will be fitting for me to be refer to as Mrs. Rowen.”

“Well, Mrs. Rowen,” I decided to humor her a little. “What I want to know is why everybody here keeps treating me as if I have dementia and was a patient here.”

Mrs. Rowen pushed the button inside the left upper drawer.

“You’re just confused. Rest a little and then I’ll personally make sure everything is in order.”

Paula and Margaret showed up at the threshold; they really like that spot.

“They’ll take you to your room on building E,” Mrs. Rowen sentenced.

Margaret held a syringe in her left hand.

I got the message, and cooperated with them.

***

Back in my room, I was writing this, hoping it would make some sense in hindsight and wouldn’t be just the babblings of a guy with very early cognitive deterioration, when a sound came out of the drawer next to my bed. It was as if something vibrated in there.

I checked inside and found my earphone. It was still. I grabbed it hoping it would make some more noise.

Burr.

Rapidly, I placed it on my left ear.

“Lu…?”

Before I could finish my question, William’s voice interrupted me.

“Don’t have much time.”

Suddenly, in front of me, ectoplasmic pieces of flesh and internal organs imploded into a phantom version of William. His sight was lost in the horizon as a “Polar Express” character.

“Please, help me…”

William’s prayer turned into an agony shriek as his ectoplasmic body exploded.

Fuck.