Ghost Program (11 page)

❃
CHAPTER 11❃

 
U
sing as much force as I could muster, I threw myself away from the table and lurched towards the door to the hallway.  My ankle failing me, I limped two steps and grabbed the doorknob, turning it viciously.  It jiggled back and forth, but the door wouldn’t budge.  I looked behind me and Whittington, smiling, held up a small silver key.

   “You’re going to need this if you plan on leaving us so soon,” he teased.

   Breame wasn’t so pleasant.  He grabbed me by my hair, and slammed my face into the wall, splitting my lip and causing blood to gush out of my nose.  I screamed, and the wall pummeled me again.

   “Quiet!” he barked. 

   I wasn’t aware of much then except my tears and that my body slumped to the floor.

   “Tie her wrists again, this time behind her back,” said Breame.  “I should have
known
that was coming.”

   Breame knelt next to me and lifted my fallen head off of the floor; I whimpered as he smacked my cheek with as much force as he could muster.

   “That was just for fun,” he said, laughing at his snide comment.

   I rolled onto my hands and knees, my hair falling in front of my face as I crawled away from him.  Breame grabbed my left calf and yanked my knees out from under me.  Gasping, I rolled onto my back and kicked him in the stomach.  His breath whooshed out and that stopped him for a minute as he bent over, wheezing.  He staggered to the counter where his gun lay, snatching it up, then turned and smacked its butt against the back of my head.  I slumped to the floor, stunned but not unconscious, my vision blurry as I sobbed.  Whittington ran to where I lay and quickly hogtied my wrists to my ankles.

   “Think that’s gonna hold her?” Whittington asked.

   “I think we’d better hurry up and summon him,” said Breame.  “Samantha is not a very willing participant.” 

   I sniffed and cried a little, and Breame kicked me in the ribs, knocking my breath out, leaving me stunned and unable to make noise.

   “Don’t ever mess with us,” he threatened.  “I don’t have patience for girls who get smart with me.  The next time you pull anything, I’m going to bump you off and feed you to the fishes.”

   Whittington just smiled as if he were on vacation and ran a hand through his brown hair, stopping to straighten his tie.

   “I’ll get the program running,” he said.  “It’s late, and soon I won’t be able to keep my eyes open.”

   Tears ran down my face as I watched Whittington start his MacBook at the kitchen table.  He attached grey speakers and turned the little knobs on them.  He was opening my Casper software, the program I had designed to bring joy to the grieving clients of my future business.

   “It’s set and ready to go,” said Whittington.

   “Do you think he’ll really come this time?” asked Breame.

   “He’d better.  Eventually all these schemes of ours are going to catch up with us.  I’d sure like to have something to show for it.”

   “Same as last time?” asked Breame.

   “Same as last time.  But we get
her
to summon him.  Only Sam shall call on the Dark Lord.  And once he’s here....”

   “He gives us whatever we ask for,” finished Breame, his black, beady eyes flicking back and forth between Whittington and I.  “Repeat these words, Samantha.  I summon you, Dark Lord, also known as Lymon O’Toole.....”

   I stared at him stupidly from the floor, fearing that if I obeyed, something worse than death would happen to me.

   “Well come on, girl,” said Breame.  “Or we can just dispatch you and throw your rotting flesh to the crabs.”

   Crying, I repeated his words just as I had heard them.

  
I summon you, Dark Lord, also known as Lymon O’Toole...

   “In return, I’ll give you my body and soul.....”

   I heard a girl’s shaking voice repeat those words, and again I felt as if this nightmare was happening to someone else, to a girl who looked like me and sounded like me, but couldn’t possibly have been my real self. 
In return, I’ll give you my body and soul...

  
“And all of me for eternity,” said Breame.

   Whittington quietly worked adjusting the controls on the computer.

   “I can’t say that and possibly mean it,” I said.

   That earned me a kick in my swollen ankle.  I swore.

   And all of me for eternity...
I heard a scared girl mutter those words.  Or perhaps it was again me.

   “I’ll be indebted to you for all of my existence.”

   I repeated Breame’s words. 
I’ll be indebted to you for all of my existence.

  
Breame stopped scowling at me and finally looked content.  The lights in the kitchen flickered on and off for a minute.  Two kitchen lightbulbs burst, sparks shooting out of their electrical connection, streaks of yellow fluttering to the ground.  An overhead lamp still cast a soft glow, but left the small room engulfed in shadows.  There were several flashes outside the boat as bursts of white light moved from porthole to porthole in an erratic, frightening fashion, and thick, white vapor began to seep in from underneath the locked door.

   Both Whittington and Breame looked too scared to move.  The doorknob began to shake back and forth as an unseen hand begged admittance to the small room.

   “He arrives,” whispered Whittington.

   They cast glances at each other as the doorknob continued to wiggle back and forth, and lights flashed on and off outside the boat in the dark night.

   “What do we do?” asked Breame.

   “Open it,” whispered Whittington.

   “
You
open it, smartass. 
You’ve
got the key, or did you forget?”

   Whittington stepped forward and unlocked the door with his key.  Slowly, he stepped back, licking his lips, rubbing his hands together.

   Dark, hollowed eyes gazed at us in unnatural reflection, drops of scarlet blood leaking out of the corners of their lids, pale flesh around them contrasting sharply with a thick, black beard.  As the Dark Lord shambled slowly into the room, I goggled at his odd appearance; his immense figure was dressed in a sea-green waistcoat, a watch-chain resting in its folds, and his shadowy mouth gaped at us wide enough that if we were had tried, we could have seen straight down his throat.  A rolling mist flowed out from the bottom of his pants legs, completely covering his boots and moved lazily outward from the dark figure until the whole floor of the kitchen was covered in fog.  He spoke, but the voice having been lost to its human form for so long sounded like a loud whisper.

   “What joy, breathless and immense, do I find in your return, Claire!” said the Dark Lord.  “I wept at the deplorable calamity of your demise, and now I find you returned!”  The dark sunken eyes studied me, eyes in which I could see no irises or whites.  “I feared unspeakable things had been done to you.”

   He turned towards my captors.  “But why is she restrained?  Why have you shown so little respect to my dear wife?”

   Whittington stumbled towards where I lay and clumsily unknotted my bindings while casting nervous glances at the odd figure of O’Toole.  My arms and legs flopped on the floor, and Whittington crawled backwards, placing more distance between himself and the spirit of the Dark Lord.

   “What wickedness have these strangers committed?” spoke O’Toole.  “They will be brought to account for their sins against you, beloved wife.”  His mouth did not move in rhythm to his speech, and I suspect that his voice came from a deeper place inside him than his throat.

   Breame smoothed his hands on his jeans, apparently struggling to speak.  “Sir, we’ve brought her to you as a favor.  We...we meant no harm by it, but rather thought it a good deed.  If you’d be so obliged as to....”

   “Silence!  You come to me with your corrupted morals and speak these lies...”  His voice was raspy and sinister sounded like a boulder being dragged across asphalt by a short rope.  “Lies for which you will suffer the most grave penance.”

   Whittington remained as he was, kneeling on the floor, apparently overwhelmed by the spirit’s imposing and dramatic presence; fear positively oozed out of him.

   Breame stood, gawping at the huge man, his hands clasping and unclasping each other as flashes of his temper burned in his eyes.

   “You’re not going to take her without paying us.  We
brought
her to you!”  He breathed heavily as he contemplated the words of his next outburst.  “You
owe
us.  Look at her; does she look harmed?  No, she’s all in one piece, and now you hold up your end of the bargain!”  Breame’s face was flushed; his countenance grim.

   Whittington, in spite of being such a big man, had been reduced to a mere pussy.  He gasped and gawked, but no words left his mouth.

   “So say you,” said the Dark Lord.  Whatever that meant. 

   But it must have meant something bad because what happened next nearly made me lose my cocoa.  The white steam that billowed out of the Dark Lord’s pants legs turned the darkest ebony, and tendrils of that black smoke wrapped themselves around Mr. Breame, spiraling around his legs and torso; the programming instructor let out a scream that sounded like a rat being dropped into boiling water as his clothes melted and fell off of him and pieces of flesh detached from his muscle, transforming into a viscous goo that slithered down his skeletal frame and disappeared into the inky smog.  The tendrils swathed his face, and his eyes boiled and bubbled clear out of his skull until only hollow depressions were left in their place.  Breame had led a bad life, but no one deserves a death so cruel, and to this day, that vision embodies the very worst of my darkest fears.

   Whittington, already on his knees, groveled and begged for mercy as the black smoke began to claim him.  Had he had uttered the most eloquent apology ever spoken, I don’t believe that it would have saved him.  His fate was sealed.  The smoke took him faster as he was closer to the ground, and I watched as his hair melted and slithered off his scalp, and his features disintegrated until he was nothing more than a grinning skull.

   Through all of this, I whimpered, cried, screamed, and shuddered.  But I had been in no danger.  The black smoke evaporated, leaving in its place a well-dressed spook, two skeletons, and a pile of hairy, gelatinous pink goo that had once been human skin, muscle, organ.  I watched O’Toole stroll towards me, and as I crouched on my hands and knees, his boots made loud, squelching footfalls.  Jumping to my feet like a sprinter at the starting line, the pain in my ankle suppressed by rushing adrenalin, I ran around him and out the door, down the narrow corridor, and up the stairs to the boat deck as fast as if my ass was on fire.  I don’t know if the Dark Lord followed me because I was much too frightened to look back.  Then I did the only thing I could think of: I jumped into the black water that tossed and turned and reflected the wholesome reflection of the full moon.  I figured drowning to be a kinder fate than what O’Toole might have planned for me.  The water felt as cold as if I’d been deeply speared by a thousand icicles; I moaned at the shock of sensation, and as a callous, salty wave collapsed over my head, I lost consciousness.

❃
CHAPTER 12❃

  
M
y right arm felt hot, too hot, and my ankle throbbed and ached.  I took short, shallow breaths to minimize the sharp pain in my right side, near my ribs.  I knew that I should have opened my eyes and confronted my current circumstance, but fear and a pounding headache stopped me from taking that vital leap of faith.  My life had become an ordeal, an exhausting series of disasters from which I wasn’t sure I’d recover from, physically or mentally.  So I lay very, very still, hoping that sleep would re-claim me.  Somewhere nearby, wood burned.  I could hear the snap and crackle of sparking energy, and I could smell its rich, woodsy scent.

   As I tossed and turned, alternating between a fearful dream world and that warm place in which I rested, I heard words and sentences and discerned fragments of voices which spoke softly around me.

   “He’s brought another one,” said a woman’s voice.  “One of those women, one of the unfortunates....”

   “Well, be careful,” said a man.  “I don’t want him here, not in the house.  We don’t need that.”

   “Not so loud.  Let her rest a little longer.  When she wakes, she’ll be in an awful lot of pain.”

   “One of us will have to take her in to the clinic.”

   “Don’t take her yet.  I need to ask her a few questions before she leaves.  Please, it’s important.”

   A warm towel dabbed my forehead gently, and I heard footsteps walk away.  I fell back asleep and woke up much later.  The roaring fire had burned out, and I heard the clink of dishes being knocked around lightly.  A soft purring came from slightly above me.  I opened my eyes and startled in surprise. 

   There was indeed an imposing marble fireplace a few feet from where I lay on a soft, velvet couch edged with ornamental, carved cherry wood.    The fireplace was covered by a brass screen with four hinged panels, and behind it stood a wrought iron staircase.  Sitting on the arm of the couch nearest to my head, a cat reclined lazily.  To my left was a large bay window covered with heavy velvet burgundy-colored draperies and embellished with gold tassels, matching elegant silk cushions placed sensuously inside its depression, its westward-facing direction providing an eagle’s eye view of the Pacific ocean.

   I heard the soft click of feminine heels on the tessellated floor.  A tall, slender woman with pinned up brown curls and a smart suit stood underneath the dark molding of the entrance to the room.

   “You’re awake,” she said, her curious blue eyes staring at me.  She held a tray upon which a small kettle and two teacups wobbled precariously.  I was almost certain that she’d drop the tray, but she carried it to a thick wooden coffee table in front of me and set it down gently.  I sat up quickly and gasped at the stitch in my side.  My blanket fell off of me, revealing a baby blue nightgown.  My ankle had bandages wrapped around it.

   “Your clothes,” said the sophisticated, young woman, “were wet.  They sit, folded, on the dryer.  I’ll bring them to you, but first I’d like to make your acquaintance.  I should have you know, you’ve got a nasty swelling on your rib cage and ankle, and if I were you, I should want that x-rayed.  Would you like some tea?  I’ve got several flavor packets, hot water, cream, sugar....I could make a second trip to the pantry for some cookies, I usually keep some around.”

   “I’m parched,” I said.  “But...where am I?”

   “I’m Veronica Smith; this is my home.  You washed up on the beach last evening.  It’s a good thing I have trouble sleeping.  If I hadn’t been awake, you might’ve died of cold.  Is mint flavor good with you?”  She sat in a large armchair as she poured hot water.

   “It’s fine.  But how did I just wash up on the beach?”  I hadn’t been wearing a life preserver, and I’d never thought I’d survive in those roiling waves longer than a few minutes.

   “Sugar only?  Or would you like some cream too?”

   “Both are fine, I guess.”

   She mixed in sugar and cream, then handed the cup to me on a dainty saucer.

   “How
does
one fall into the sea, then just show up on dry land completely unscathed?” she asked, repeating my question back to me and looking at me darkly.  “The answer is, they don’t.  The thought is absurd.  Most people in your predicament would have inhaled a gallon of seawater.  If you must know, you didn’t show up last night on that windy beach alone.  He was with you.”

   “I don’t understand.”

   “I owe you a better explanation than that, I apologize.  I woke up early this morning; the clock over there had just chimed 4 a.m.  I heard it from my upstairs bedroom.”  She pointed to a grandfather clock which stood against a far wall.  “Finding myself peckish, I made my way down to the kitchen, prepared a cup of coffee with cream, and made my way to this room where you sit now.  That desk there in the corner is where I do most of my work.  I’m a writer, and it isn’t unusual for inspiration to strike at odd hours of the morning.  I pulled my laptop out of the drawer, plugged its cord into the wall, and took a sip of coffee while I waited for it to warm up.  There was a chill in the air, and I had decided to walk back upstairs to fetch my robe when I noticed movement down on the beach.  The sun hadn’t yet risen, so all I had to see by was moonlight and that single lamp on the porch there.  I fetched my glasses out of the drawer and stared down at the sand below the house.  It was him, the man that comes to the house.  I’ve seen him come here since I was a small child, and once I asked mother about him.  She told me that he was the previous owner of the house and that I shouldn’t be worried.”

   “But I could see her discomfort at the mere mention of him, the way she’d become nervous and fidgety at the mention of his name, O’Toole she said it was.  Last night, in the shadows of night, I saw his hulking frame as it lumbered through the water, his legs half covered by lapping waves, and he wasn’t alone.  A wet heap of woman was in his arms, and he carried her across the wet beach, then laid her down on the grassy sand dunes, by the entrance to the staircase.  Mother always said that when he does that, we have to take them in.  And so we’ve had our share of visitors over the years; actually it seems that every girl unfortunate enough to get herself run over, shot, or stabbed has ended up at our doorstep.  That’s all I know.  And that’s why I need to hear it from you.  What happened out there?  Why had you been left there for me to find?  The last time it happened, I was eighteen and I still didn’t understand much of anything.  I’m grown now, all of 28 years, and I want to know the full story.  Why does he bring them?”

   I set down my teacup.  “Where is your mother now?”  The house was silent.  Perhaps she lived upstairs as an invalid.

   “Mother’s dead, died two years ago.  I’d like to know what happened.  Mark, that’s my husband, helped me carry you up those steep steps, and I can tell you it wasn’t any walk in the park.  What is your connection to Lymon O’Toole? How did he find you?”

   “I’ll tell you as much as I know, but I’d sure like some of those cookies you promised me,” I said.  “It’s been ages since I’ve had anything to eat.” 

   “Of course, I should have thought of that.  I’ll go get them.”  She stood and walked purposefully towards the kitchen, her long legs visible below the hem of her skirt. 

   In a minute, she returned and held a plate of cookies in front of me, smiling politely.  I carefully plied a chocolate chip cookie from the selection, taking a large breath, about to spill to her all my remembrances of the last week, and as I did so, I winced at the sharp pinch in my ribs.  Then I began.  I spoke of everything that had happened to me: of the Casper software, of the ghosts that appeared at my house, of
Him
, of Breame and Whittington and how they ran me off the road and destroyed my car, and of the cult of the Dark Lord that ultimately led to their demise.  When I told her that I had jumped ship, she wrinkled her nose and gasped.

   “That was foolish,” she said.  “You should have died.  But why did the he save you and kill the others?  Do you know?  Did he speak to you?”

   “He thought that I was his long-dead wife, Claire, murdered in this very house, by that fireplace.”  I pointed to the marble fireplace.

   “Oh yes, I heard about that,” said Veronica.  “Unpleasant stuff.  I’ve lived here since I was a kid and of course heard the story many times.  I’ve always felt that this place gives off a weird vibe, probably the reason mother bought it.  She was a psychic and preferred to live in a place that had a certain....atmosphere.  Now with her gone, it’s only Mark and me.  You must be frantic to call somebody; I’ve got a cell phone in the kitchen.  Let me go grab it.”  She stood, and her heels clicked away.

   Veronica returned a minute later with her phone, handing it to me before she sat in the well padded armchair again.  I tapped in mom’s number and listened to it ring.

   “Mom?”

   “Sam?” she practically screamed.  “What happened?  They found your car all crumpled up on the highway.  They thought you had walked home and when we told them you hadn’t arrived, well we thought the worst.”

   “Well, the worst happened.  I’m....okay, but I had a run-in with some bad guys, mom.  They ran me off the road, and put me on a yacht...It’s okay.  I’m fine now, I think.”  I purposefully didn’t mention Casper or the Dark Lord.  There was a point at which she would have stopped believing me.

   “Well, my god.  Where are you now?  Will you come home?”

   “I’m safe, mom.  I’m at a neighbor’s house.  I’ll get home as soon as I can, I promise.  It’s too bad about the car, but I’ve got to get to the police station.  I’ve got to try to straighten this out the best I can.”

   “The car,” she said.  “It
is
too bad about the car.  They said that it was totaled completely.  But you’re all right?”

   “I’m fine...you know?  I lost my phone.”

   “No, Sam.  They found your things, your purse, your cell phone, your backpack.  They were inside your wrecked car.  The trooper brought them back to us.  We thought you’d crawled into the woods and died.  They’ve been looking for you for two days.”

   “I didn’t think I was going to make it home,” I replied, my voice cracking a little as a lump formed in my throat.  I was trying not to cry.  “I have to go.”

   “We’ll wait here till you come home,” she said.

   I clicked off the phone.

   “Wow,” said Veronica.  “That must have been embarrassing.  I hope your mom is doing okay.  It must have been hard on her.  Need to call anyone else?”

   I figured I’d call Brent, then wondered how many missed calls there were from him on
my
phone.  I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself.  It’s just Brent, I told myself. I dialed his number, uncertain of the last two digits, but when I heard his voice, I knew I’d punched them in correctly.

   “Hello?”

   “It’s Sam.”

   “I know.  I see the caller ID.  But what happened?  I’d been calling like crazy for two days, then I call your mom, and she says she doesn’t know where you are, that you didn’t come home from school.”

   “I was right about Mr. Breame.  Brent, I miss you so much.  I thought I wouldn’t see you again.”

   “Your programming instructor?  I don’t understand.  What does he have to do with....”

   “He was some kind of Satanist....well, not exactly but...he ran my car off the highway and tied me up on his yacht...”

   “You had another dream?”

   “This wasn’t a dream.  It was real.”

   “I still don’t understand.  Where have you been for two days?”

   “On Mr. Breame’s yacht.  Well, I don’t think it was his; it belonged to his friend.  They both kidnapped me and wrecked my car.  And now they’re both dead.  Killed by the Dark Lord.”

   “Sam, this isn’t making any sense.  Who is the Dark Lord?  Are you sure you’re okay?”

   “I was so frightened.  The Dark Lord is some kind of ghost.  Like Gregg, only evil.”

   “This has something to do with Casper, with those séances you were holding.”

   “Yes.  I never should have designed Casper.  My teacher....he used it to summon a murderer, a dead one, or an undead one if you want to put it that way.  The way the Dark Lord killed them...  Oh Brent, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  I’ll never forget it.”

   “I was so worried when you didn’t answer your phone and wondered if you were unhappy with me.  Then when your mom told me you were missing at the house....Well, I wondered if you’d run off or if something bad had happened to you.  And something bad had happened to you! But you’re okay now, aren’t you?”  His voice had a tinge of worried desperation.

   “I’m fine, Brent.  Please don’t worry.  I would never be upset with you.  And if I weren’t alive and well, I never would have called.  I just don’t know what I’m supposed to tell people when they ask me questions I can’t really answer.”

   “Oh sure.  They’re not going to believe the Dark Lord killed your computer lab teacher.  It doesn’t really matter, though, what they think.  What’s important is that you’re unhurt.  I had a growing feeling that something terrible had happened to you.  Now I think I should have listened to my gut and went looking for you myself.  You must have suffered badly while I relaxed here in the city.  I can’t protect you unless you come to Seattle; don’t you see why you need to come?”