Got Framed for Murder in a Dementia Village | Part 7

 

Part 6 | Part 8

That deep, beast-like roar gave me chills that made all my body hairs stand up as a military squad. Not Margaret, Luke, me or Paula’s inert body knew what the fuck caused it. The elders with cognitive detriment who just got their souls back acted as if they didn’t even notice anything wrong, which honestly is how they react to anything that happens in their haunted dementia village.

My dream team, composed of the no longer witch-controlled caregiver Margaret and my undead ghost friend that only I could see and hear through my special earphone, left the movie theater of the Morlden Village. We tried to pinpoint what caused the disruption. Nothing, just the always-creepy reality of this place, full of octogenarians whom most of the time don’t even know who they are.

Margaret walked unusually slow and with a curved back, almost like she had a hump.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. “You know what could had been that noise?”

“No,” she replied on a volume lower than her self-confident-less normal one. “It’s just… Mrs. Rowen.”

“I told you there was something wrong with her!” Luke yelled excited, with I being the only listener.

“She’s weird, I’ll give you that.”

“You think that’s all?” Margaret looked at me with incredulous eyes.

I didn’t think that was all. I was just trying to support her beliefs. To be honest, till this moment, I still don’t have a lot of information about her.

“She is very aware of what happens here,” Margaret continued. “By now she should know about the movie theater. And surely, she’ll like to get some answers about whatever the fuck just caused that motherfucking roar.”

That tone, language and violent manner of speaking was new to her. It suited her.

“Well,” I tried being the positive one for once. “Let’s hope we don’t encounter her.”

“Hope you’re not talking about me.”

Mrs. Rowen approached us as if we had just summoned her. She looked different. It was clearly the same woman I met a couple of months ago, but seemed older. From a young and healthy woman, now she appeared with wrinkles around her eyes, the first gray hairs were badly hidden, and her overall body language was tired, weaker, older.

“What happened?” The manager of this place demanded to know.

My shinbone, broken when I was an infant by a witch, started to burn a little, as it always did on her office, and every time I was in the presence of some supernatural evil shit. Mrs. Rowen was a manipulating bitch, yet, somehow, I knew she had her reasons to not hurt me. That made me cocky.

“We’re figuring it out.”

“I’m talking about the movie theater. What did you do in there?”

“Well, you see, there was this…”

“Paula got hurt,” Margaret interrupted me before I spilled the beans. “She said she wanted it all for herself and fucked it all up with the projector.”

I just glanced confused as they exchanged ideas. Luke, invisible by my side, was equally confused.

“Is that so?” Mrs. Rowen wasn’t falling for it.

“Yes, it was messy.” I thought that would be a great way to add to the story.

“I want a more detailed report about it.”

“Sure, Mrs. Rowen. Let’s go to your office,” Margaret told her boss.

Both started their lazy strolling away.

“And you,” Mrs. Rowen pointed at me when turning back. “I don’t want you involved in anything more.”

“You told me you brought me there to help you with this place.”

Mrs. Rowen and Margaret’s condemning stares made me shut up with my insolence.

Luke and I watched as the evil manager and our new ally turned left in the main avenue of this place. Once out of sight, I turned the opposite way towards the medical unit, which I had learned to call home.

“Where are you going now?” Luke asked me.

“To my bed. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“But, what about the noise? And that bitch?”

“Seems like for now, Margaret has it under control.”

“We still don’t know why that bitch sent me to that island to die.”

“That’s correct, not yet. Let me just get some sleep, please. After that we will go to get answers from that evil witch.”

Luke finally gave in.

“You know that building E is the opposite way, right?”

His never-ending questions are a trait you just learn to love; or at least you try.

“I do. But my back still burns like a bitch.”

***

My rest was short and mediocre. I dreamed about my grandmother, like I had been doing since my first night in this logic-devoid place.

I was back at my grandma’s Victorian house. Or what was left of it. Broken planks; torn sheets, clothes and curtains; damaged China plates; and spring-pierced furniture were partially buried under ashes, rocks and soil. It seemed like a hurricane had just impacted the three stories home and transformed it into a warzone. In the middle, supporting herself with a table leg, was my grandmother.

I was there with her. The mud and debris were drying inside my socks. The air was heavy to breathe, and the Sun masked behind dense clouds was almost imperceptible. The weak and faint cry of my elder grandmother pierced my ears.

When I looked at her, she had an appearance that I had seen before. Not like the previous dreams where my subconscious simply knew that old lady was my mother’s mother because of the weird nature of Morpheus realm. I had those evil-looking eyes tattooed in my memory. That wrinkled, almost melting skin had been felt by ankle a lot of time ago. That pointy nose, that I could have sworn was a prosthetic, had haunted me before. Her unsettling smile that, until recently, I believed it was just a nightmare product of a childhood trauma.

She was the witch that, when I was just an infant, threw me down the slide. She was the one who broke my leg all those years ago.

“Why didn’t you read my letter?”

It was her only complaint before a cold airflow pushed me out of balance, and out of my dream.

***

A freezing breath from my left woke me up. I also knew what it was when I saw it.

It had huge claws clinging to the wooden floor. Mean-spirited, completely devoid of life eyes were frowning directly at me. Its almost four-inch teeth filled a V-shaped jaw. All the creature’s body had the same rocky, cold and smooth texture. Big wings made sure any light that might filter through the window was obfuscated before reaching me. It was the almost two-meter-high dragon statue that worked as a landmark of residence building b.

Shit.

The bastard roared, on the same pitch and sound that we heard in the movie theater. I experience it one foot away. It damaged my eardrums (at this point, I’m not sure how those keep recovering.)

I rolled out of my bed forward, avoiding a swing from its rock paw.

I poorly landed on the ground.

“Luke, care to see what this shit is!”

My ectoplasmic friend adopted his visible form before throwing himself against our unsettling-moving and perfectly carved foe. His immaterial self hit and bounced against the alive statue, making it just flinch for a second.

“I can’t get into it,” was Luke’s vague explanation (very like him.)

I stood up while he stated the obvious.

“Just keep it distracted,” I ordered him.

Before checking Luke’s idea for that, I fled my room. Escaped residence building E. Ran across the dark, cold and abandoned-looking Morlden Village at midnight. The paths were just lit by the warm streetlights.

I slept through the day. Everyone was now in bed. How the fuck that roar didn’t woke anyone?

Without checking my back to make sure I was not being followed, I reached the staff quarters. I infiltrated the place in the fastest way I managed to reach Margaret’s room without waking others. Laid down on my belly to corroborate there was nothing under her bed, and finally proceeded to wake her up, covering her mouth to prevent her from making any sound.

“I know what caused the roar,” I informed my uncontrolled ally.

She limited herself to open her eyes almost like pool balls.

“Dragon statue, alive,” I continued my explanation with as few words as the English language allowed me. “Luke can’t help.”

I took my hand away from her face.

“Who’s Luke?”

Fuck. No option but to trust her.

“It’s a ghost friend of mine,” I confessed one of my biggest secrets to her.

“Sure,” Margaret answered like it wasn’t a big deal that a motherfucking dead guy had been following and helping me. “There’s already a soul in the statue.”

“Wait. Who?”

Before I received an answer, the thin moonlight that was shining on us through her window disappeared.

Margaret and I peeked through the glass to confirm what we already knew. The dragon statue was just outside.

I pulled Margaret out of bed.

The living landmark flexed its legs and fold its wings.

I snatched my just awaken friend outside of her room.

CRASH!

A glass shower flooded the bedroom as the mythological creature burst inside.

As I yanked Margaret through the hallway of the staff quarters, I knocked on every door I passed.

“What are you doing?” Margaret was still sleepy.

The stone creature, walking on its four legs, exited into the hallway.

“Hoping to get a distraction.”

All the chambers occupied with Margaret’s fellow caregivers opened.

“Shit…”

I interrupted Margaret as I got her out of the building.

From outside, we heard desperate shrieks, that became pain cries before dying in barely audible sobbing. Some lights twinkled, others went out directly. Heavy thumps marched through the building. Wood and (what after many encounters like this I had learned to recognize as) bone cracked. Cloth and flesh get torn in equal parts. Blotching sounds accompanied the hellish symphony.

“We need to go!”

The frozen and shocked Margaret seemed like she needed someone to tell her the obvious.

“Paula is out of control,” she mumbled.

“Paula? Like the bitch who had wanted me death since day one?”

Of course, no answer.

The beast, bathed in caregivers’ blood, burst through the main door of the staff quarters. Wood, blinds and personal affairs flew like projectiles toward us.

I jumped over Margaret, making her take cover against the ground.

“Any ideas, Luke?”

I searched for Luke on that stary night. He was as out of his element, as I.

“I had an idea,” Margaret declared.

She stood up and firmly approached the dragon. The once immovable thing returned to its roots and respired in place. (It pretended to have lungs?)

“What is she doing?” Luke questioned me.

I raised my bruised body from the ground.

“I hope something not as stupid as it looks like.”

A couple of yards away from the stone monster, Margaret stopped. Started moving her hands in front of her face as if she was trying to flap the dragon with dance moves. Her mouth was speeding too faintly to hear and too rapidly to read her lips.

Luke and I just watched how the beast seemed mesmerized by those movements.

A fireball materialized out of nowhere into Margarets hands. Kind of levitating, not burning her. She played a little with it.

Carefully, I stepped closer to her.

She magically threw the conjured fire as a projectile against the statue.

I kneeled to pick up a flare gun that had come out of the staff quarters. I’m oblivious about why any caregiver would have had that in their room.

The dragon caught the flame with its jaws and swallowed it. As if it was a little puppy playing with a ball.

I grabbed Margaret’s hand from behind.

The mystical creature roared into the night sky, and an inferno came out of its throat. Great, now that shit breathed fire.

I aimed my non-lethal weapon, and shot it directly at the creature’s eye. The red flare exited the barrel. In a blink, the red light engulfed the whole scene. It impacted on the stone carved sight organs (that I’m not sure were working organs.)

Blam!

The projectile exploded in the dragon’s face.

ROAR!

I pulled Margaret with me to back up.

The van-sized beast tried to use its gargantuan paws, with sharp talons and no opposing thumbs, to scratch the red burning light from its face.

Margaret, Luke and I reached the park that is just in front of the now uninhabited staff quarters, the one with the artificial river.

“This water has to come from somewhere, I need you to find it,” I indicted Margaret.

She nodded firmly and started crawling through the whole artificial body of water. I ran to the North.

“Luke, you buy her time.” Before he could ask, I responded. “Any way you can!”

I kicked open the shed doors with the impulse I had gathered from my sprinting. The place wasn’t like before. The pristine and organized shed that supernaturally had come into existence was now a dusty, old and disorganized wooden box meant to haul everything that didn’t have a proper function.

Yet, I was not in a reflective moment to figure out what happened. I looked in between paint cans, rusty tools and broken decorative items until I found, in the darkest corner, what I was looking for.

I exited the dark storage building with an industrial hose over my shoulder. Luke was slamming rubbish he had found from the ruins of the staff quarters, making an annoying sound to keep the dragon busy. How strong is his ability to affect the physical world?! (Another question for another time.)

I reached the park where Margaret was already waiting for me with the water all the way through her knees.

“Here it is!” She announced me.

I dropped the hose. Splash!

Fuck. The once unalive statue focused on us.

“My bad,” I apologized.

I placed the end of the hoe on the tap that fed the artificial pond.

The fire-breathing creature swirled towards us, Leaving Luke behind us.

Margaret opened the faucet all the way.

The monster prepared for combustion.

Water busted out of the hoe a thousand miles per hour.

The creature attempted to torch us.

Those opposing elements fought in the space between us, morphing in vapor. I yelled as I felt the heat evaporating my sweat. The dragon took his ground and continued his attack. The liquid coming from the hose remained constant and powerful. Margaret, placed behind me, helped me support the heavy and unpredictable tube I was holding.

The stone creature paused to recover his breath.

Our water gun didn’t have that issue. A fountain cascaded over our enemy.

But, Morlden Village’s reserves of the precious liquid run out. The water pressure from our improvised weapon failed.

The imposing, heavy beast was still there. Its carved rocky skin was just wet. Its eyes were frowned in an aggressive and threating matter against us.

“What did you expected to happen?” Margaret asked.

The creature shook itself as a hound to dry itself. Did a mediocre job.

“Water beats fire,” was my response.

The stone dragon’s head came closer to us.

Margaret and I dropped the hose as if we both received command from our brains to give up at the same time.

“You fucking fat lizard!” Luke screamed from behind the monster.

Not sure it could hear him. But it sure felt the ectoplasm-made human using his new abilities to yank its tail.

The roasting mythic animal turned back to figure out what was bothering it. Of course, it didn’t find anything. Just wagged its tail with a brutal force strong enough to throw the non-physical ally into the air.

Once the cryptid returned to its main dish, Margaret and I were already escaping that place.

***

“If Paula’s inside that thing, how do we make her stop?” I questioned Margaret without stopping.

“We hurt her in a way that truly affects her.”

“How?”

Margaret turned to her right without answering me. I followed her into the supermarket as the Sun was starting to shine in the East horizon.

We crossed the moldy and rotten food aisles and ventured into the underground level.

“So, we are meant to go to the hanging corpses room?”

“Exactly,” was Margaret’s simple answer.

She tried opening the door. It was locked as expected.

“Why do we need to get there?”

“You haven’t figure it out?”

Fucking condescending attitude of hers. I shook my head.

“Mrs. Margaret created here and in the movie theater a soul/life-energy draining system.”

She was insane. But, at this point, so was I. In the context of my life, now this made perfect sense.

“And Paula needs this because…?”

“This is how Mrs. Rowen keeps her powers working.”

“The perfect appearance of Morlden Village?”

“And immortality for her and her coven,” Margaret concluded.

Shit. Of course she was a witch. That explained a lot of things.

“We need to open that door,” I went back into the present manner. “Can you get the keys from Mrs. Rowen office?”

The dragon’s roar rumbled through the building and our muscles.

“No time,” Margaret assured me.

She started running towards the stairs that led to the supermarket. I followed her into the health-hazardous store. It was now open and with a couple of clients inside.

“What the fuck with the people here?”

Now it was ridiculous. No matter how far the patients’ dementia was, it was impossible that they still acted like nothing was happening and continued their days as normal. A motherfucking dragon really should discourage this type of shit.

“Mrs. Rowen keeps this running,” was Margaret’s vague enough answer to maintain her mysterious aura. “Find something to open the door.”

After giving me that order, she disappeared in the left corridor.

I went to the other side to find some sort of wrench. My luck was jinxed. Bread, milk, backpacks, pencils and vegetables. How the fuck was this place organized? There was nothing that could get us through the metal door in the basement.

CRASH!

The center skylight in the warehouse ceiling precipitated into the customers and products under the weight of the stone magic beast that apparently had learned to use its wings.

THUMP!

It was the sound the creature made when landing, crashing on the concrete floor of the supermarket. It left a crater and crakes that swirled in a five-yard radius. It started sniffing as if the carved nostrils were connected to actual smell-sensitive receptors.

I squatted and kept my position low behind a shelf of spoilt carrots.

To my right, an old woman pushed a shopping cart into the bread and pasta aisle, which now was a vestige of its former self under the massive creature.

“Ma’am!” I whispered at her.

She didn’t stop. Without losing my cover, I snatched her arm and pulled her towards me. It was Mrs. Pike (she lives with me on residence building E.) I immobilized her with a wrestling improvised position and made her shut with my hand over her mouth.

The shopping cart lost its balance by the strong clenching of the octogenarian I kept with me.

Clank!

The dragon turned towards the fallen vehicle. Its heavy steps were getting closer. The sniffing and air grasping of the creature were easy to distinguish. A sudden heat wave that accompanied it reached me.

To my right, the beast’s jaws were inspected the cart.

I pulled myself with the old Mrs. Pike against the rack.

She tried to move and free herself from me.

The living statue’s wings opened in the air, casting a shadow over us.

The carrots shelf was puncturing my burned back.

The cryptid was turning its head towards us.

Clank!

Something hit the back of the creature, making it slither around itself. It was an old man who pushed a shopping cart against the mystical being while trying to reach for his cereal.

“Sorry, do you know where can I find…?”

The elder got interrupted when the three-foot-wide jaws bit him.

Blotch. Crack!

Blood flew out of the lower half of the man’s body, which still stood up straight for a couple of seconds after being ripped away from its upper half. Bones got shredded under the biting force of the moving monument.

I took advantage of this distraction and, with my belt, tied sweet Mrs. Pike to a sturdy-looking rack. I placed an apple inside her teethless mouth to prevent her from making any sound. I crawled away.

The monster went back to its hunting, returning to where it was searching before being so senselessly interrupted.

I stared at the scene from the canned food aisle.

The creature pushed the fallen cart.

I found a Campbell’s soup.

The bloodlust landmark’s head turned towards where I had left poor old Mrs. Pike.

I threw the conservative-filled soup against the quadruple monster.

Clink!

I hid behind the can rack.

The monster’s tail whipped another shelf as it turned.

“Aaaghhh!”

The pain shriek of an old man. Evidently, someone whose worst enemy is a three-inch-high step would have had a hard time enduring being hit by a cleaning supplies rack.

Fuck.

I threw another can over my head, without looking, hoping that my non-existent grenade experience will distract the human-eating thing.

Another heavy thump.

I threw a third can over me.

Clink.

If fell back on my feet.

Clank.

The soup poured out of the can.

I raised my head to encounter the blood-dripping teeth of the mystical creature over me.

I rolled out of the falling jaws’ way.

I dragged myself through the debris covered aisle. The crazy chomping beast glided towards me. My kicks with rubber soles were futile against its rock-made nose.

“Where the fuck are the caregivers when you need them?!” I yelled in desperation.

“She killed them all,” was the most badass answer to my prayer that Margaret could had come out when jumping into the creature’s back.

With a metallic broom stick, the still human of the friends attacked the statued one.

Pang! Pang! Pang!

I’ve heard that sound before. It reminded me of what being in prison was like. It used to freeze me in place. Not anymore.

The dragon lifted its front legs in the air, making Margaret slip down its back. She rolled to the front door. The heavy, human-less monster by this point, fell towards her. Its elephant-sized paws hitting the ground rumbled the damaged supermarket. The animal that should only exist in myths and monuments trapped Margaret in between its legs, tail and wings.

The frenetic survival mode turned off for a second. The killing machine of stone went back into its more pacific, contemplative state.

“Please, Paula,” mumbled Margaret to the creature she was at its mercy.

The vocal cords-less monster magically roared against its friend from previous life. It was an intimidation display.

Clank!

“Leave her alone, bitch!” I yelled to the fucker after throwing her my second to last can of pineapples.

I tossed my last projectile. It hit the dragon’s wing. It turned to me with its mouth already open.

Shit.

I docked as the creature expelled fire from its bowels.

The shelf behind me became hot as fuck. The non-good for drinking juices evaporated as soon as their bottles melted. The flames flew over me for almost a minute.

Once it stopped, cautiously left my cover to look at the pissed of beast. Time slowed down a lot.

The big as a car dragon opened its wings in a swift motion that pushed all the dust away. My ally had stood up, and my eyes made direct contact with hers. The beast lifted its front legs high in the air as its lungless chest produced an anger-filled cry. Margaret turned away from me, from the creature, and got herself out of what was left of the supermarket.

That fucking bitch left me.

I abandoned the stone cryptid’s trajectory.

The old man who got hit by the rack a couple of minutes ago caught my attention.

“Please, help me!”

The dragon hit the wall and left a hole through which sunlight entered to the supermarket ruins.

I pushed the shelf away from the elderly, who kept crying and not moving.

The mystical creature returned and was ready to assault me again.

I tried pulling back the old man who wasn’t cooperating at all and wanted me to do all the heavy lifting. The stone creature shook debris from its back as it approached.

The guy suddenly stood up on his own without previous notice.

“Turns out it is easy to possess people with dementia disconnected through panic,” told me the old man.

“Luke?”

“Whatever you are planning to do, do it quickly!”

As fast as that weak body allowed him, Luke screamed and strolled away to get the beast’s attention. I watched the futile attempt for a couple of seconds before a stupid idea popped into my mind.

Paula-inhabited monument was ready to have its piece of the old useless man when I yelled at her.

“Hope you are ready to say goodbye to your youth!”

The angry, blood-thirsty monster saw me directly in the top step that led to the basement. It clearly knew what I meant, it jumped against me like a raging bull.

I went down two steps at the time with the heavy statue breaking the metal floating steps behind me under its weight.

I jumped the last couple of steps.

The stairway collapsed. The dragon lost its balance with it.

I didn’t stop until I reached the end of the hallway.

The monster got back into its feet in a couple of seconds and gave me its meanest glare.

“Come and get me, bitch,” I indicated her with a calmed, almost monastic tone.

The beast didn’t spare a second before rushing towards me.

I breathed deeply.

Its aspirations grew in intensity.

I closed my eyes.

It leaped against me.

I collapsed my body to the ground.

BAM!

The creature smashed the metal door open.

I followed her inside the hanging carcasses maze.

Dragon Paula retrieved her senses. A piece from her nostrils and upper jaw fell after the impact.

I hid behind a wrinkled and pale dead body connected to multiple soul sucking tubes.

The nose-less beast continued hunting.

I dropped the body from its hanging hook. The hoes disconnected from it and twisted in the ground as the green looking fluid kept coming out of them.

The mythic animal got over it.

I hid behind someone else.

The creature growled.

I freed a second body from its hook.

The monster followed it and stepped over it.

A third one hit the ground.

The dragon looked for it.

Plam. A fourth one.

The living statue searched through the whole place.

Plam. Plam. Plam.

The bastard locked its eyes on the body I was behind.

I didn’t notice that before dropping it to the floor.

A blotchy splash accompanied my body falling under the monument’s unbearable weight. The thing roared directly on my face. I distinguished in its mouth a spark trying to create fire to burn me alive.

“Leave him, or your body is gone!” Margaret yelled at her former friend from the threshold.

She was carrying, under her arm, the inert body that belongs to the soul inside the stone landmark that was ready to crush my intestines. She had a knife against Paula’s neck.

My new ally returned to save me. And now she was in a staring contest with her former friend in the form of residence building B landmark.

The monster over me placed its paw over my chest, just pressing enough to keep me in place and in the brink of fainting due to poor oxygen intake. The stone beast kept stiller than ever before, returning to what it was supposed to be, a monument.

From the dragon’s mouth, a glowing blue sphere floated in a dancing manner. It flew across the room.

Margaret didn’t let Paula’s body out of her grasp, and the dagger ready to cut its throat. The ball of Paula’s soul twinkled a little bit in front of her past partner. Margaret didn’t give in. The light descended into the lifeless body, trying to merge into it. But it couldn’t.

Paula’s human body was out of her soul’s reach. Its face turned towards the floating supernatural sphere. The body smiled in a way that seemed unnatural (even for this situation’s standards.) It crept out of Margarets hug and pushed the knife away from its throat.

“Get the dragon off him,” the dead body told its levitating soul.

Without much option, yet a lot of relentlessness, Paula’s spiritual ball returned to the statue that had been chasing us the whole day. The stiff rock-made skin and solid stone non-organs cracked as the enormous creature came back to life and stepped away from me.

My lungs finally managed to, in between a lot of coughing, get enough air to function properly.

The monster turned towards its human body that was now holding the knife. Margaret was in shock behind it.

“Come and get me,” was the last instruction Paula’s empty-eyed body commanded her.

The soul blue sphere got out from the stone dragon again and shot itself towards her old body.

Her human carcass stabbed herself in the aortic with surgical precision.

The supernatural ball of light rushed even more to get back into her own self.

A fountain of blood and Luke’s ectoplasmic form came out of Paula’s body, which plunged inert to the ground.

Margaret grabbed her friend’s soon-to-be corpse as her soul came inside it.

Margaret teared up and her voice was cutting. Paula tried to put pressure on her neck wound. Both of their reactions were futile at the end.

“I’m sorry, you left us no choice,” was Margaret’s last whisper to her old friend for (according to what she told me) probably older than they appeared.

“You betrayed our coven. You’ll pay for it.”

Paula’s last words were a threat to her partner and, until one day ago, lifetime companion. Sadly, she passed away full of rage.

Margaret broke into sobbing, squeezing Paula’s cadaver as if it was a real-sized ragdoll.

With a gesture, I indicated Luke to follow me to the back of the room, leaving Margaret a moment alone to grief. He, for once, finally understood me without a lot of explaining.

“And you were busting my balls for supposedly having killed a man?” I confronted my ghost friend with a smile, while I took down of its hook a hanging corpse. “What was that shit?”

“She was evil, beyond repair.”

We both giggled.

“Oh, says the torn apart ectoplasmic man.”

I contained my laughter. Luke didn’t.

I dropped another nude dead man from its place and the hoes stopped sucking his soul.

“Hey, since when can you affect the physical world?”

“I had a lot of time to practice,” was Luke’s only explanation.

I kept on freeing the carcasses from their place until there was no one missing and the floor ended up covered in bare human remains, empty weaving hoes and an overall sense of evilness.

***

After what felt like an eternity for Luke and me, Margaret finished grieving.

“I’m sorry about her,” I told her while looking down into dead genitalia. “Luke’s sorry too.”

I pointed with my head towards our invisible undead aider.

Margaret smiled at Luke, or an empty space for her. Before turning back to me.

“I know. She lost it,” was her calming phrase for us.

Without the stairways, it was hard to get back upstairs into the wrecked supermarket, but in between pushing, pulling and phantom physical intervention, we made it out. The sun was high. It entered through the main glass doors, the irregular ventilation-friendly skylight that won’t protect the place from rain anymore, and the brand-new monster-smashed emergency exit in the east wall.

“So how is it that if that soul-harvesting compound downstairs kept this place looking perfect, all of the food in this supermarket was spoilt?”

My curiosity got better of me. Margaret didn’t take it personally and answered my inquiry.

“When you conduct such a big and evil enterprise, there’s always some leftover that slips in between your finger. In the movie theater was the trapped guy and projection booth itself. Here were the products.”

Margaret talked as if all of this was just basic chemistry.

“So then, with this also gone, Mrs. Rowen can’t keep on living forever as her own descendant, right?”

“You know about that?” Margaret was genuinely surprised.

“William figured it out.”

“Yeah. She might have a hard time with that and other things. But she is still very dangerous.”

We stepped close to the main automatic sliding doors of the supermarket, hoping they’ll open by themselves as usual. They didn’t.

“But I’m not sure what else could have been affected,” was Margaret’s conclusion.

Luke’s immaterial self, floating to my side and refusing to phase through the main doors, glared outside in a shocking and fearful way that wasn’t reflected in his torn-up face. My glance followed Luke’s lead, and in my face that same reaction was obvious.

“I think I know,” I responded Margaret.

She looked towards the same direction we were, and, again, a swearing came out of her.

“Shit.”

On the other side of the transparent and non-working automatic doors of the rotten and moldy supermarket, Morlden Village imposed itself not as the perfect, pristine, top-notch and stereotypical Nordic old town, but as a somber and abandoned place. The grass was almost a meter high, the paint from the buildings was so scraped you could do a carbon reconstruction of its life, the sidewalks were cracked and the handrails were twisted, and the old patients with cognitive difficulties and no caregivers to help them wandered lost in this God-forgotten place.

“Shit indeed.”