Got Framed for Murder in a Dementia Village | Part 9

 

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Part 8 | Finale

Without a second to spare after hearing the pain shriek, the just taken out of trance Margaret, my undead ectoplasmic friend Luke and I peeked outside the shed to see what was going on. A horde of around two dozen elderly people with serious levels of dementia were approaching, slowly and zombie-like, to Mrs. Rowen’s office. Their eyes were blank. Their movements seemed to lack any intention. All our attempts to get them out of their way towards Morlden Village’s manager office were useless.

Mr. Curtis, the octogenary who had replaced Mr. Bohr in the residence building E after his dead, was the man in front of the mindless mass. Not all my attempts to remember him of the occasions he had woken up screaming for not being forced to eat ice cream due to the diarrhea it produced him, the countless times he asked for my name or his creepy ideas about his caregivers took him out of his trance. He continued his way into the office in which Luke had just killed Mrs. Rowen.

A couple of seconds after all the old people came inside there, the grunting and loud difficult breathing stopped. A whole minute of silence in which I exchanged confused glares with my allies.

Then, a light. A bright, blinding green light accompanied by some sort of foul-smelling vapor escaped through the broken window Luke and I had left in the evil place that was Mrs. Rowen’s quarters. My shinbone, that I had broken by a witch when I was a kid, started aching again. Shit.

The glow disappeared and it was replaced by an old, and alive, Mrs. Rowen that, even with her arthritis and death diagnoses, exited her office into the outside of the building. No elder followed her now.

Margaret, without missing a beat, conjured her magical ethereal shield mandalas like she was Dr. Strange.

Mrs. Rowen attracted all the smoke that had being dispersed since her resurrection and telepathically smushed it together into a two-yard-diameter sphere.

Margaret grew her shields to cover herself, as well as the defenseless Luke and me.

Elisa, the elder imprisoned on Morlden Village before I helped her by retrieving her magical ring, appeared on the scene, full sorcerer mode, with a ball of plasma fully materialized and ready for confrontation in between her hands.

Mrs. Rowen’s gas ball charged us.

Margaret blocked it with her witchcraft.

The spell battle, round two, began. Now, with two wizard ladies on my side, it appeared like we had a more advantageous chance of pulling this out.

Luke and I hid inside the shed for the false sense of safety it provided. My ghost friend’s lips were moving a thousand miles per hour and his left index pointed to my pocket.

After staring stupid at his performance for what felt like the whole day, I took the earphone that we adapted as a method of communication between our realms. Placed it inside my ear canal.

“…want to leave before we got answers!” was the end of Luke’s yell-deserving idea.

“Of course! There is a fucking immortal witch out there that sucks the life energy of his own patients that are too damn mentally weak to catch up with what is happening. Clearly, this is way out of our league!”

“You promised…”

“I know I did. And I’m still wanting to deliver. But we are under serious shit, not just you and me now. I wanted to have a way out just in case.”

“Bullshit. You wanted to leave.”

“I want to leave. As much as I want to help you. But I don’t know how to.”

“That’s so convenient.”

“What?”

“That when is something about you, I have to be pulling you out of mud, but when it is me who needs to know why I was the one sent to that island, now it is an optional task.”

“You’re already dead, you don’t have to worry about…”

My idea got interrupted when a realization hit my mind in the middle of my argument.

“Why you said it like that?” I questioned the ghost in front of me that I called ‘friend.’

 “What?”

“About the island and being sent there.”

“What you mean?” Luke’s eyes pulled away from me. “That’s why we came here.”

“Yes. But you specifically said: “why I was the one sent to that island.’”

“That’s why we came here.”

“Not quite. It seems to imply that you already knew or know why someone had to be sent to the island.”

Luke didn’t continue with his arguments. The only noise was the spells and destruction coming from the damaged and almost post-apocalyptic Morlden Village. My eyes never left the ectoplasmic materialization of the ghoul that had accompanied me since he died in my first night at the Bachman Asylum almost a year and a half ago. His eyeballs avoided me.

“I always told you that I was sent there,” Luke mumbled.

“But you kept saying that you didn’t know why.”

“That’s what I just said…”

“Quit avoiding!” I interrupted him. “For some reason and since I don’t know when, you already know what your purpose was to be sent to that fucking island.”

“But…”

“I know you still don’t know why it was you the one who was sent in the first place and it has been eating your ectoplasmic and non-existence brain ever since you died. You have made that very clear since day one. But now, there’s something you are not telling me and you had no intention of doing so. Stop your bullshit, look me in the eyes and spit out why were you in that island on my first night there?”

As if the hot arguing had invoked the spells from outside, a big-ass hole opened in the shed’s ceiling. The debris fell over us. It went right through the immaterial body of Luke, but I had to dodge it. I rolled out of harm’s way and cough profusely before I could continue our confrontation.

“You didn’t stab her in a mortal place, right?”

Luke responded with a confused glance.

“On our first night here you could have finished it for good, but once again, you aimed for a non-life-threating area.”

He continued with silence.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Beat.

“Fuck! That was our best way out!”

“I’m sorry, I really need to know,” Luke finally rejoined the conversation.

“Bullshit!”

That was my last mad interaction with my so-called “friend” before going for some massive gardening scissors and a heavy mallet. I stormed out of the tumbling down shed.

“Cover me,” I screamed at Elisa and Margaret.

They were still in a magical war against the place’s manager. Mrs. Rowen was throwing blazing ashes. Margaret used her energy shields as a defensive mechanism. Elisa was throwing plasma balls as fast as she could. My allies, even on their tight spots, nodded at me.

I noticed in their looks that they believed that I had a plan to somehow end this shit. I couldn’t bring myself to reveal to them that I didn’t have anything worthy of their trust. I just nodded back before running towards residence building A.

***

“She is going to get better,” Carly assured me once we left Elisa’s room, which at the time hosted the injured and in a trolley Mrs. Mitchell, as well as the mentally unbalance Mr. Bunn, who had fallen asleep in the main bed before my arrival.

“Nice,” I responded her with a sob.

Carly and I sat for a second at the table of the building’s kitchen. She glimpsed the mallet and gargantuan scissors. Then, she looked back at me, trespassing through my emotional barriers.

“What’s wrong?”

I stared at her hoping she would drop the subject.

“Your expression changed when you saw Mrs. Mitchell.”

Fuck. Carly had always been so aware of this emotional shit.

“My mother,” I finally gave in. “She died during my last middle school year.”

Beat.

“What…?”

“Cancer;” I didn’t even let her finish the question everyone asks when I tell them this. “She spent days at the hospital, too weak to get out of bed or blow properly through the fucking device the doctors gave her.”

“Flow-Ball,” Carly whispered for herself.

I let her insensibility go by.

“I didn’t understand how severe it was until it was too late;” tears rolled through my cheeks. “She was too good at hiding it.”

I smiled, with a trembling and breaking smirk. Carly grinned back at me. I cleaned the droplets falling from my eyes.

“You tried calling the police?” I asked the medical professional in front of me.

“Yes. Something is blocking the signal.”

“Of course it is,” I said while grabbing the mallet and placing it on the table.

“I’ve never had tried to call emergency number before, never had the necessity…”

“Sure,” I interrupted her justification before she started hyperventilating.

Carly took a deep breath as she watched the tool that lay in between us. She needed to be calmed down before I told her what I, and the whole dream team fighting evil Mrs. Rowen, needed from her.

“You must get as many elders as you can to follow you all the way to the supermarket. With this mallet, you wreck the Northern wall that had suffered great damage already and leads directly outside this fucking place. You get the patients out and get the police in.”

I pushed the demolition tool towards my speechless ally.

“You;” beat. “Want me to tear down a wall?”

“We need you to tear down that wall,” I corrected her hoping that would give her more passion for her task.

“Why don’t you do it?”

“I have to help Elisa and Margaret somehow.”

“Are you insane?”

“Probably.”

“Why does your ghost friend doesn’t do it?”

“He’s;” beat. “Indisposed. And a magical shield is keeping him here.”

“I can’t.”

“You do. You are the one who got me on my feet from an explosion blast, treated people after enduring folklore creature attacks, cured magical inflicted wounds, convinced the stubborn resident of that room to help us and have done whatever these dementia residents have needed. This is just a walk in the park.”

“Okay.”

Carly’s voice was still trembling, her eyes weren’t believing her lips, and her hand placed over the mallet was still scared of the tool she would need to use. But that was good enough. I hoped adrenaline and her Hippocratic Oath would carry her the rest of the way.

We pushed the dining table against the bedroom door to keep Mrs. Mitchell and Mr. Bunn in a confined space. We needed to make sure that Carly could find them in a reliable place.

A witchcraft spell holed the South wall of the residence building common area. Mr. Bunn started screaming in absolute terror. The table accomplished its job of keeping him trapped with Mrs. Mitchell. I snatched the gardening tool I had secured for myself.

“Go!” I instructed Carly.

She grabbed the mallet and left through the main door, away from the spells. I exited through the just remodeled wall, directly into the witchcraft war.

Margaret was floating in the air, surfing on top of one of her mystical energy-made mandalas like is she was in a “The Craft” crossover with “Point Break.” Elisa jiggled her hands as if she was in a voguing ball in a 1990s Ney York underground club, and a big-ass wave of water materialized of pure light. Mrs. Rowen, on the receiving side, was throwing ash-based attacks through the swirling body of a magic, twenty feet long snake that was attempting to bite my allies.

“Fuck,” I mumbled only to myself.

I leaped into the battlefield. Thankfully, Margaret and Elisa kept Mrs. Rowen’s attention off me. In return, I took the conjured snake’s focus away from them.

I jumped, with the gardening tool in my hands, as the one-yard-wide “Anaconda”-like mouth attacked my feet. I kicked the creature and rolled out of its eating way. I used the gardening scissors against the slithering creature’s… neck?

It cut the magical summoned skin, muscles and bones as if it was a butter bush. The severed monstrous head twitched uncontrollably as it disappeared into nothingness. The rest of its body just spasmed once before lying still on the ground.

Elisa and Margaret were still too busy to celebrate my victory with me.

From the bleeding wound, a mucus membrane began to throb. Stinking pus blotched out of some popping new welts. Deformed and mutated vertebras started placing in front of each other. Muscle fibers and tendons whirled around like a screaming octopus as they covered the now bifurcated beast’s spine. Eight enormous fangs and two twirling slim tongues found its place on two different mouths, located in separated heads. It was a hydra-snake.

“Shit.”

The now bicephalic and three-foot-longer bastard creature created from Mrs. Rowen’s nightmare was ready for round two.

One head flew towards my face.

I dodged it by kneeling.

The second one forced me to roll away.

I snapped the assaulting head.

The first mouth went after me again, as the second regrew on the grass floor.

I placed the gardening tool in front of me, making the creature bifurcate its head by its own brute force.

Ok, not very intelligent.

One head made me leap to avoid its assault.

Another one pushed me out of my balance without losing a bit.

I made an improvised pirouette on the uncared lawn of the park our fight was taking place in.

The motherfucking learns fast.

The four-headed creature swirled at full speed.

I severed a couple of them, while the others played with me as their fallen brothers multiplied.

Suddenly, I was surrounded by regenerative and multiplying limbs like Hercules. When the beast was done toying and was ready for a definitive attack, all the jaws dropped over me.

Millimeters away from my skin, the arm-sized fangs stopped themselves, before pulling back. The whole creature coiled into itself, desperately hissing. The regenerative limbs twirled as if the legend-made viper was attempting to get something off its back. Of course it was.

In the first bifurcation, at the now middle of the monster’s body, Luke was holding himself as a paranormal rodeo rider. His hands pulled the supernaturally created scales. His non-physical body didn’t have to worry about snapping poison-filled mouths. The beast pierced itself constantly, to no effect at all.

“Hold it for a second,” I indicated Luke through the earphone that was still holding in my ear.

Luke yeehawed in agreement.

I got up and ran towards the spell battle on the other side of the park. Thankfully, Elisa’s element bending abilities and Margaret’s throwing light mandalas kept Mrs. Rowen still busy for me. I approached her by the back. Five yards away, I mumbled to the earphone: “Let if free.”

Cowboy Luke let its rodeo snake go.

The multi-headed creature turned all its eyes towards me.

The uncountable number of jaws swiveled like an organic drill.

I released my grip on my gardening weapon.

The mad and unthinking monster assaulted me.

I jumped out of its way.

The beast didn’t stop, just hid its fangs.

Two dozen punches of organic, magically-conjured flesh hit Mrs. Rowen on the back.

She fell to the floor unconscious. The ash clouds and hydra-viper disappeared at that exact moment. Margaret surfed down the waves created by Elisa, who also approached. Luke came into view next to our fainted foe.

***

We brought the nonresponding old body of Mrs. Rowen to her office. We sat her in her chair, in between the desk and the giant safe in the wall, as if she was giving us an audience with her. Yellow documents inside damaged folders, restoring-needing paintings of birds, window shreds and wooden tatters flooded the shrieking floor. At least a dozen burned human silhouettes superimposed over each other covered the swollen floorboards and damaged walls, as if a nuclear bomb had just blown in there.

“Get inside her,” I commanded Luke. “Retrieve the code from her mind. We still need a plan b if Carly’s exodus goes wrong.”

For once, Luke compelled and disappeared into the bitch that had gotten us here.

“I’m sorry we were keeping you in that state for so long. It’s horrible,” Margaret had started to make peace with Elisa.

“And I’m sorry about what happened to Paula… I know you two were the closest.” Beat. “I’m just glad that you found out that her plan wasn’t something reliable.”

Elisa concluded her argument by pointing her head towards the unconscious Mrs. Rowen. The two old ladies hugged like long forgotten friends.

“Fuck!” was my instinctive reaction to what I understood.

My two magical allies, a little startled, turned to me.

I knew why the old Margaret had sparked a familiarity speck in my brain. She was in the picture with a very similar-looking lady to Elisa; now she appeared identical to her. The photograph, the one that after I saw it once “casually” went missing, it portrayed a “previous” Mrs. Rowen, my grandma and three other old women; two of them now in front of me. My mind made the missing connections.

“You’re Mrs. Rowen’s old coven.”

Elisa, with not enough subtlety as she intended, pulled her eyes down.

“Part of it,” Margaret clarified with a little smirk and a tear on her left eye.

Luke interrupted the scene by having his ectoplasmic materialization burst from Mrs. Rowen’s chest as if he was a fully-grown xenomorph.

“I couldn’t find it,” Luke explained me.

“Bullshit!” Mrs. Rowen declared.

With a hand swing, she telepathically took Margaret’s bracelet and Elisa’s ring from their wrist and finger, respectively. Both returned to a cognitively held state.

I snatched the gardening scissors from the ground.

Luke was propelled completely out of Mrs. Rowen’s body.

I placed the sharp open blades around her neck.

“Don’t you dare move a muscle!” I threatened the bitch that had made my life impossible since I arrived here.

“I’ll just be back in my feet again,” Mrs. Rowen assured me disturbingly calmed.

“Not before Elisa and Margaret are too.”

“True, maybe you’re willing for round three.” Beat. “The only thing is that I would have to unnecessary kill a second batch of the elders that Carly is now trying to lead towards the North end.”

I turned myself to Luke. My glance demanded an explanation of how she knew that.

Luke shook his head.

“Your friend had nothing to do with it,” Mrs. Rowen read the room very well. “I’m sure he never encountered someone who manipulated the bidirectionality of his supernatural link.”

I closed the scissors just enough to have her neck feel the cold blades.

“You do it, and you won’t get the code.”

“And you will give it voluntarily?”

“We could sort something out.” Mrs. Rowen smiled viciously and wide. “Or, maybe you can convince Luke to give it to you.”

Without taking the weapon away from my prisoner’s aorta, I turned back to Luke.

“You got it?” I demanded to know, seriously and mad.

“No, I didn’t…” Luke defended himself.

“He got it,” Mrs. Rowen assured us.

“Liar!” Luke started to lose his temper, even for an already dead guy who had nothing to lose.

“He was fast to find it. It just took him way too long to find an answer on why I sent him to do the dirty job in the Bachman Asylum. So long he didn’t found shit.”

“Bitch!” Luke declared.

“She is,” I agreed. “But it wouldn’t be the first time you held information or have a secret agenda. Would it?”

“Okay, yes. But it is not what you think.”

“So, what it is it, then?”

“Is not easy to explain.”

“I think it is.”

Mrs. Rowen grinned in silence while Luke was betraying our friendship.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth, you got the code or not?”

“I swear I don’t.”

“I just realized, you wouldn’t even need the code,” Mrs. Rowen intervened in the argument. “Luke, right? He could just get inside the safe and open it from within.”

“It has a magic shield,” I told her while the blades slashed little cuts on her throat that dripped blood.

“That’s what he told you?”

Her smile turned as wide as cheshire’s.

“Now I really hope she’s lying,” I warned Luke.

“She is,” he corroborated.

“The code is 18, 52, 4, 36.”

Mrs. Rowen just revealed the secret we so anxiously desired.

“Bullshit,” I grunted to her.

“Try it.”

Her calm and undisturbed self was getting under my nerve.

Leaving a couple of inches from Mrs. Rowen’s skin to the sharp end of the scissors, I demanded her to turn towards the safe. She compelled surprisingly effectively for her arthritis.

“Luke, get the bracelet and ring back to them,” I pointed to Elisa and Margaret with my head.

Luke, avoiding eye contact with everyone, tried to pick up the magical jewelry.

“You do that, and you’ll never know why it was you,” Mrs. Rowen threatened my undead ally (when it fitted his plans.)

Luke stopped what he was doing and pulled back.

In my periphery, I distinguished Mrs. Rowen containing his laughter. My focus was on Luke’s forehead, which was the only part of his face he allowed me to see.

“Fuck! Okay, you get here and keep the scissors on her neck.”

Luke approached.

“You do something stupid, or if you’re lying, you die,” I indicated Mrs. Rowen.

“Don’t worry, I’ve been dead before,” was Mrs. Rowen’s spine-chilling answer. “But I won’t.”

Her attitude was having my broken shinbone almost in flames. Of course, with her being such a manipulative and asshole bitch, that was being expected.

Luke grabbed the shears from my hands and held them around Mrs. Rowen’s neck.

I approached the bracelet and ring that laid on the floor.

“That goes for you too,” Mrs. Rowen disturbed my action. “You give those back and Luke here will never know the truth.”

She smirked at her unmaterial captor.

“Please,” Luke begged me.

I knew she meant it. I played along.

In the back of the office, the rusty, wall-size safe imposed itself. As soon as my fingertips felt the freezing metal of the knob I needed to turn to place the code, my healed leg bone sparked in throbbing, burning pain as if it was fourth of July.

18.

52.

4.

36.

Cling! The heavy door got unlocked and opened itself as if a windblow pushed it from the inside. Its spoilt bolts and tetanus-contagious surfaces creaks rumbled the small office, as if it was going to fall over us.

Inside, as promised, there was the keychain that held the main gates key. Also, there were three jars half-full of red, viscous blood, and an empty one to their side. In front of one of the crimson-filled glasses, there was a brooch; Paula’s, evidently. Under the jewel and transparent containers, a folder full of documents.

I just retrieved the keys and the folder. I didn’t want to figure out was the rest meant.

“Wait,” Luke interrupted me as I opened the file. “I can explain it. Just take it easy.”

Ignoring him, I started reading the first document that was imprisoned in the folder. It contained the record of a conversation that was held in between two usernames: @Rowen_wtch and @LUKE.099 on this platform I’m publishing this. It didn’t say in which forum they connected, but what @Rowen_wtch had sent was pretty explanatory.

“Travel to the abandoned Bachman Asylum. You’ll meet a nightguard there. Bring him to Morlden Village by whatever means necessary. Alive!”

Tears started coming out of my eyes. I dropped the keys and documents onto the nuclear-wasteland-looking floor. Luke now attempted to make eye contact with me. I couldn’t do it this time.

“You were hiding this from me?” My voice broke completely. “You brought me here on purpose? That’s why you always helped me…?”

“No,” Luke interrupted me. “I didn’t rem…”

“You lied to me!” I returned him the favor.

“Let me…”

“Shut up! I trusted you! Let you possess me. All that was fake?”

“Of course not.” Luke’s voice broke as if he was mimicking mine.

“You invented that magic shield shit, right? The safe and the whole village. You needed to keep me trapped inside this hell!”

“No. That wasn’t it.”

“No supernatural shield of any kind,” Mrs. Rowen announced theatrically.

That made him lose his grip on the cutters.

Mrs. Rowen, with the agility of an Olympic athlete in her prime, waved her hands. The bush-trimmers flew away. The bracelet leaped against Luke’s left wrist and pulled him towards a wall. The ring inserted itself on his right middle finger, and held his arm extended. The brooch levitated from inside the safe and punctured against Luke’s chest. He was magically held in a crucified position against the wall.

Everything happened so fast for me to react or do something. I stared at my supposed ally. We were both in shock.

“Please, help me! You must believe me, that’s not what happened,” Luke pleaded.

“So, what was what did happen?”

“I… I just needed to know why me.”

I took my earphone away from my ear. I saw Luke, held against his will, screaming and yelling at me to help him. But I couldn’t make sense anymore of his lip’s movements and the faint vibrations our communication device was making between my index and thumb. No sound came out of his active mouth.

My eyes plunged towards the ground while the earphone did the same.

I turned away from the desperate Luke and the dropped telephonic equipment.

I accepted that my fate was going to be what Mrs. Rowen wanted from me at that time. I had no more ideas left. There was no way to make Elisa and Margaret helpful again without Mrs. Rowen stopping me. If Carly and the elders had left the village was out of my control and awareness at this point. Resignation flooded me.

“I’ll make you a deal.”

Mrs. Rowen’s hoarse and tired voice made me lift my head to see what would be of me.

“You have hurt me and Morlden Village so much,” she continued.

I couldn’t help feeling proud of myself, even though I knew that was my own doom.

“I’ll let you go,” Mrs. Rowen declared.

She threw me the keychain that I needed to open the main gates. She also added some car keys into the package.

I looked at her offer. Then directly at her, confused.

“You can even take my car,” she continued. “You just take it and leave this place behind. Forget about it.”

I glared at Elisa and Margaret, confused and almost without brain cells left.

“Don’t worry about them. I’ll keep them safe. They will be two more patients here. Carly will have back his job at the medical unit. And you have my word I won’t hurt Luke.”

It sounded way too fair. There must be a catch in there.

“What’s in it for you?” I asked her.

“I’ll keep operating this place. Keeping myself alive by constantly reborning, as you already know.”

“And if I decide to talk to the police?”

“Morlden Village has also been recognized for his humane treatment of psychotic patients with hallucinations.”

I contemplated the offer for a couple of minutes. No alternative came to my mind. Defeated, I drove away from the awful place.