The Poltergeist

I was walking down William T. Morrissey Boulevard, snow billowing around me.  The towering dorm buildings beside me channeled to cold wind right to me. The parking lot I parked my car in was a couple hundred feet from where I wanted to be. In front of me was the building I needed to get in to. Surrounded by a brand-new tall fence, the old rotting shell of a pumping building stood before me; cast in shadow by the clouds above. It was made of large, old grey blocks. The roofing was shoddy and breaking down fast, quickly getting covered in a fine layer of snow. Most of the windows were boarded up, and the ones that weren’t were smashed to reveal a pitch-black interior. Everything about the building gave me the creeps.  It always had, even when I went to school here.  This thing was in the old pumping house right by my old college.  I really hoped I didn’t see her here.

There were some students walking from the school campus into the dorms. Quickly, I jogged over to them. “Do you guys know anything about the building?” I asked, pointing to the old pump house.

They just shrugged and walked into the dorms.

I asked a couple more students, and they gave me the same response. A couple looked at me as if I were crazy. Colt’s instructions about the building kept ringing in my head: Nobody will talk about the building.

Alec popped into existence next to me.  He was a ghost, glowing his normal blue heugh and wearing his usual kilt.  “So, yeh recon this is it?” Alec asked.

“Maybe.  Colt said it would probably be walled off, which it is.  He also said nobody would talk about it even though it was in the middle of everything.”

“When do yeh want ta go in?”

“Once the sun goes down.”

“Colt said that’d be the most dangerous time to go in.”

“He also said it’s the most effective way to get rid of that thing in there without a squad of Seventh Sons.”  The Seventh Sons were humans that could see the supernatural.  They acted as a sort of police force to keep the supernatural world in check.  That included dealing with the thing in this building.

“Yeah, whatever,” Alec said.  “Yeh know I think this is bloody ridiculous.  Why not just use magic to finish it off?”

“Because that’s not how the Traditionalists do things.”

“But Colt said Traditionalists don’t have to subscribe to the old ways.”

“Colt doesn’t want me using magic for this, so I’m not going to.”

Alec scoffed.  “Yer gonna get killed.  But it’s yer body.  Do with it as yeh want.  It just means I get ta see my family sooner.”

“Just go back in me if you aren’t going to help.”

“Fine by me,” he replied and disappeared with a swoosh of fluorescent blue vapor.

Now to prepare.  I made sure I had nothing of emotional significance on me.  The creature in there would target that instead of me.  I pulled on new clothes and put the old ones in my car.  I loaded my pockets with iron fillings in order to destroy the entity once it manifested itself at dawn.  I double checked to make sure my eye drops were in my back-left pocket as well.  That’d help me later.  Last but not least, the sleek handgun issued to me specifically for this mission.  I’ve never used it before, and I never will again.  This gun means nothing to me.

Feeling as ready as I ever would, I walked to the building and hopped the fence.  The sun had set by now, the last vestiges of grey light being completely blocked by the towering dorm buildings across the street.  That’s when everything went wrong. 

Going in at night was dangerous enough, but that was the only time the portal was open.  However, the number one rule of dealing with a building like this was to never go in with somebody else.  This grants the creature in there even more power.  It can use the other person to its benefit.

“Hey, you!” a security guard called out.

Shit, shit, shit.  I turned around just as I crossed the threshold.  “Sir, please,” I said.  “You cannot follow me in here.”

“Exit the building!” the man said.  He was slightly overweight and balding.

“I can’t do that sir.”  Now that I’m in the building, I can’t leave until the creature gets what it wants or it was dead.  “Please just turn around and leave.”

“And who exactly do you think you are?” the guard asked incredulously, hopping the fence as well.  He walked to me.

“Sir, please,” I pleaded.  “Don’t cross the threshold.  We’ll both be in serious danger if you do.”

The guard paused for a moment, then shook his head.  “That’s enough of that,” the guard said.  He crossed the threshold and grabbed my arm.  My heart sank.  I had nothing of emotional significance to get me off the hook, and now that the guard was in here the creature would use him against me.

“Shit,” I said.

“Well, well.  Aren’t we feeling a little—” he began but was cut off by the door crashing shut, making everything pitch black.

“Sir grab my hand,” I said.  Things were about to get bad.  Without waiting for a reply, I grabbed his hand and began to fumble in my pocket with my other hand for my eye drops.

“What the hell is going on?” the guard asked.  I felt him tugging at my iron grip, but he couldn’t get away.  “Let go of me, or I’ll shoot!” he shouted.

I quickly disarmed him with a jab of my free hand.  “You need to stop that right now.  We’re in serious danger.”

“Let go of me!” he shouted, pulling on me and trying to get to the door.  But he was interrupted by a reverberating cackle that seemed to emanate from the walls.  “What was that?” he asked softly.

“We aren’t alone in here,” I said.  “This building is inhabited by a magical entity known to you as a poltergeist.  I need you to do everything I say, and we might just get out of here with our sanity.”  I fumbled with my eye drops, dripping one of the magical drops into my left eye and another in my right.  I blinked several times, gaining visibility in the pitch black with each blink.  Finally, everything was perfectly visible, just without any color.  The guard wouldn’t be able to use these because the spell enchanting the eye drops only worked on those with The Sight.  The guard definitely didn’t have that.

“You mean like from the movie?”

“Sort of.  It’s going to try and use you to get to me.  It feeds off emotion, but its unavoidable to have emotion in a situation like this.  It’s going to try and drive us insane so we can’t kill it.”

“Y-you’re trying to kill it?” he asked.

“Yes, but we need to stay together.  If you feel something touch you other than me, tell me.  It might be living symbiotically with botchlings.”

“Botch-what?”

“Botchlings.  Animated dead fetuses.  They are easy to deal with alone, but they often live in packs.  They have sharp teeth and a strong grip, so it’s important you tell me if you feel something.”

He just whimpered a little.

“Listen,” I said, “if you do what I say, we should be fine.”

“Have you done this before?”

Shit.  “Not this exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never dealt with a poltergeist, but I had one hell of a teacher.  Just trust me on this.”

The guard whimpered again.

“We need to get moving.  It’s going to get progressively aggressive throughout the night and we need to find the center of this building.”

Without waiting for a reply, I started to walk through empty corridors.  I made sure to keep my free hand near my holstered gun in case I needed to draw it quickly, but I didn’t want to draw it prematurely.  There could be situations where I could need a free hand, and I couldn’t let go of the guard’s hand. If I did, bad things would happen.

As we walked through the decayed hallways, I felt something wriggling on the hand holding the guard’s hand.  I looked back to find centipedes writhing and crawling over our hands.

The guard shrieked and tried to jerk away, but I clenched my hand hard.  “Relax,” I said.  “It’s just some ants,” I lied.  I quickly peeled the centipedes off.  “The poltergeist is trying to separate us.”

I saw him nod.  “W-what’s your name?” the man asked.

“It’s best I don’t tell you that.  The less emotionally attached to one another the better.”

“W-what do you mean?” he asked, his voice raising an octave.

“The poltergeist will be able to take advantage of any emotional attachment we have,” I replied, working my way around a corner.

The guard began to fumble with the hand holding mine.  I looked down to find him groping at his wrist.  “My watch is gone,” he said.  “We need to go back for it.”

“No,” I said firmly.

“But my wife—”

“No.  That’s what the poltergeist wants.”  I should have known he had something of emotional significance.  He could have at least left the building.  But it was too late.  Once that door closed, there was no going back.

“What’s that?” the guard whispered after a moment of silence.  There were snuffling sounds coming from the inside of a room to our left.

I took my gun out.  “It’s best we don’t find out.  It could be the poltergeist messing with our senses,” whispered back.  Or it could be something else, I thought to myself.

We inched our way past the door.  The snuffling stopped as soon as we got to the end of the hallway.

“It stopped,” the guard stated quietly.

“I know.”  The poltergeist had allies here.  And they were communicating.  “We need to move a little faster.”

I picked up the pace, making sure the guard wouldn’t trip over anything.  Colt’s instructions kept reverberating through my skull.  Keep searching until you start to see odd objects.  Teddy bears, ribbons, watches.  Odd items that could hold emotional significance to the person they were taken from.  The more concentrated they are, the closer to the center of the building you were.  You’ll know you’re at the center when everything changes.

We rounded another corner.  I peeked behind me to see a blur as something withdrew through a doorway.  I couldn’t determine its color because of the eye drops, but it was short in stature.  Something else was following us.

The guard’s face was fear stricken, contorted in concentration as he focused on not tripping over anything.  Then his eyes widened.  “Light,” he gasped, pointing ahead of us.

I looked to where he was pointing and didn’t see anything.  Shit, we were heading in the wrong direction.  And whatever was following us was in the other direction.  We were trapped.

“We need to turn around,” I said.

“Why not go to the light?  It could be an exit.”

“It’s not.  Trust me.  That’s an Angler trap.  It wants us to go that way.”

“So, we can’t even trust our senses?”

“You can’t.  I can.”  For the most part at least.  “Now, we have to go back.  I need you to be prepared to hear gunshots though.”

“What?  Why?”

“There is something following us.”

“W-what?  Is it those b-botch b-botchlings?”

“No.  We need to be prepared for anything.”

I felt him grip my hand harder.  “Okay.”

This man was braver than most.  The fear of the unknown is what scared people the most.  I was scared, but not of the unknown.  I knew what I was doing.  I was scared, sure, but I knew what I was up against… for the most part.  This man had no idea of what was to come.

We turned back.  My gun was drawn, facing our direction of travel.  The corridor ahead of me was eerily quiet, but I knew there was something waiting for us.  We had fallen directly into the poltergeist’s trap.

I peeked my head around the corner to see a creature out of nightmares.  It looked like a human walking on all fours with its back to the ground.  Its face was inverted, its mouth filled to the brim with razor sharp teeth.  Its pale, naked, emaciated body moving unnaturally as it shuffled forwards on its long, thin limbs.  A ghoul!

Jerking back, I readied my gun.  “We jump around the corner on the count of three,” I whispered.

“Okay,” the guard replied.

“One, two, three!”

We jumped around the corner to be faced by not just one ghoul like I had originally seen, but at least fifty of the disgusting creatures.  They couldn’t all fit on the floor, so they were on the walls and ceiling as well.  The hoard hissed at the two of us and began to move forwards unnaturally fast.

“Run!” I shouted and began to drag the guard away.  I tried activating my brand hands, but couldn’t concentrate.

He ran, but he couldn’t see like I could see.  He was stumbling and slowing the both of us down.  “I can’t see!” he cried, tears streaming down his face.  “I can’t see!  Help, please, oh God, help.”  One last stumble and he was on the ground, his sweaty hand slipping out of mine.  “Help!” he shrieked.  “Please, don’t leave m—” he began, but was cut off as he was dragged backwards into the writhing mass of bodies.

I couldn’t help him.  He was gone.  They would have eaten him by now.  Why couldn’t I use magic?

I kept running right down the corridor to where the guard had seen the light.  I saw that I could close off the hallway using two doors, so I quickly did so.  The hoard smashed right into the doors, but they were thick metal ones, so they held up well.

I slumped against the wall, a tear rolling down my cheek.  Alec chose that moment to appear.  “You bloody, self-righteous cunt.  If yeh’d just used yer magic, yeh coulda saved the poor man.”

“I tried,” I gasped.  “I tried.”

“If ye’d practiced with it, then yeh probably could have!”

“But the Seventh Sons—” I began.

“Hell to those cunts, and hell to yer bloody pride.  If yeh don’t start practicing with your damned magic as soon as we get outa this mess, I’ll stop helpin’ yeh.  The sooner you die, the sooner I can see me family.”

I simply nodded.  Alec sat next to me, resting his back on the wall.  “He’ll probably end up like me,” Alec said.  “The way he went out.  Painful, full of fear.  He’ll probably become a ghost.”

“They don’t have Rem spawn,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter.  I can feel it.  He’ll become a ghost.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And damn right yeh should be.  Yeh need to bloody grow up!  There is no black in white in this cursed world.  Now pick yer ass up and kill this poltergeist.”

I pushed myself from the ground, and Alec disappeared with a blue woosh.  I turned back to my path of travel and saw a trinket on the ground.  A smashed watch.  Could this be the guard’s watch?  I picked it up to examine it.  Then it hit me.  I was getting near the center of the building.

Pocketing the watch and pushing the guard to the back of my mind for now, I set off at a run to the center of the building.  The trail of trinkets became more polluted with lost objects the closer I got.  There was a staircase that the trinkets seemed to be leading me towards.  I began my ascent to the top of the stairs, practically wading through stolen trinkets and bobs.  Everything should be changing soon, just like Colt said.

As soon as I got to the top of the staircase, everything around me changed.  The deteriorated walls blinked into nice, clean, new walls.  The darkness around me flashed into golden light flooding through the windows.  The trinkets that I was following were no longer present.  This was where the poltergeist truly resided.  This place is a sort of backstage to the real world.  It’s a perfect copy of the real world, just without any living creatures or flow of time.  That’s why everything was pristine again.  It was probably created just after the real building was abandoned. 

I could live forever here, without any need for food or water.  My heartbeat was stopped and I was only breathing out of habit.  This was a perfect place to harvest emotions, with a person unable to die.  Their minds would break after a couple of weeks being here, and they would surely take their own life once they returned to the real world.  But that was the tricky part: returning to the real world.  It could only be done by the poltergeist releasing me… or killing the poltergeist.

I continued to search for the poltergeist.  I had no idea what it would look like, but Colt told me I would know what it was once I found it.  I kept my head in a swivel, checking behind me on occasion, but at the ready.  There were some instances of movement out of the corners of my eyes.  I wasn’t a true Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, so the Poltergeist’s magic still had some effect on me.  It could just be it trying to distract me.  That said, there could also be something else in here other than the poltergeist…

Just as I thought that, I felt something slash my lower leg, just barely missing my Achilles tendon.  I jumped away, jerking around to find nothing.  Whatever was in here was fast.  There was movement to my left, but a slash appeared on my right which just barely missed my kidney.

I began to run down the hallway.  Whatever was slashing at me chased after me, snarling and tearing down the hallway, making no pretense of subtlety.  I rounded the corner into an empty room.  The doorway should give the thing chasing me one angle of attack so that I could shoot it with an iron bullet.  But before I got the chance to even turn around, everything went black.

I woke up groggily, my head pounding from the blow I received.  My vision was blurry, so I had to blink a few times before the figure in front of me came into focus.  What I saw made my skin crawl.  It was the security guard… or at least his body.  The guard was pale, black veins pulsing just beneath his skin.  His eyes were shiny black dots in his skull.  His hands came to pointed claws, dripping with my blood.

It was obvious the poltergeist had possessed the security guard.  Most demonic possessions were the doing of Poltergeists.  Demons themselves haven’t existed in reality for tens of thousands of years. 

I tried moving but my arms but found them to be bound to the wall.  So were my legs.  I looked down to see that I had been crucified on the wall, but since none of the fluids in my body were moving I wouldn’t die from it.  I was simply immobilized in the most prostrating way possible.  “What do you want?” I asked, already knowing the answer.  I was just stalling for time.

The security guard’s face twisted into a smiled.  “I want you to be mine,” it said in its grumbling voice.  “Your body being possessed by a ghost will give me the magic I need to exist in peace.  I won’t need to steal human trinkets to survive any longer.  I won’t need to feed off the stress of college students any longer.  I will just need your broken body to channel your ghost’s magic.  I will keep you suspended in bliss so you remain sane, but your ghost will suffer with me for all eternity.”

Rage filled me.  The security guard was terrified, and now the poltergeist was inhabiting his body.  The security guard was just trying to do his job by following me into the building.  He was dragged into this world.  If only I had more in magic, he’d probably be with his wife right now.  The poltergeist thought it had won.  It thought I was cornered.  To be honest, I was cornered.  It knew I wouldn’t shoot the security guard.  It also knew I couldn’t overpower it with brute strength alone.

“Let’s strike a deal,” I said.

The security guard’s demented face contorted into a smile again.  “I care not for your bargains.  You’re mine and there’s nothing you can do to escape.  Your magic won’t work here and once you become mine, nobody will be able to save you.

The poltergeist was wrong.  Some strange knowledge had come into my mind.  I felt power and confidence in my plan of action coursing through me.  For whatever reason, I knew my plan would work and I couldn’t explain why I knew it.  I could escape any time I wanted.  I just wanted to make a deal with it so that it would become my servant.  I guess that’s off the table.

My magic could not be stolen or manipulated, so I could still use my magic.  But my plan revolved around my Brand Hands.  They left my brand, my mark on anything they touched.  Hands so hot they could burn through anything.  Why wouldn’t that include magic?  I closed my eyes and concentrated, opening the flow of magic from my heart.  My hands began to glow, radiating heat and singing the cuffs of my shirt.  Whatever magic that was holding my hands in place melted away.  I quickly burned the magic holding my feet in place and I fell to the floor.

The poltergeist’s smile faded.  “How!”

I wordlessly advanced on the cowering poltergeist.  For a moment, it faltered, then the guard’s face contorted into anger.  “I refuse to let you escape.  This is my domain, mine!”  It lunged at me far faster than I could react.  Something seemed to jerk my hands forward.  Alec.  His reflexes were far faster than my own.  My hands grasped the security guards face, my brand hands ignoring the guard’s flesh and burning away the magical entity within him.  The poltergeist screeched, clawing at my arms, leaving deep gashes that oozed blood.  The pain was intense, but I didn’t care.  I was going to correct my mistake and save the security guard.

The blackness of his veins seeped out of his fingernails like drops of oil.  It collected on the ground around us.  Just as the last of the black oil left his fingernails, I collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.  The dark oil soaked into my clothes, but I didn’t care.  I was exhausted.

The guard groaned.  Good to know he was alive.  I tried to sit up but found that I couldn’t.  I was stuck on the ground.  Why couldn’t I get up?

I tried lifting my head but found that was also stuck.  My arms were free, so I tried pushing myself off the ground, but that also didn’t work.  I just got my left arm stuck in the oil.  I could feel it diffusing up the sides of my clothes.  The oddest thing was it felt like the oil was pressing in on me like a slowly constricting snake.  The poltergeist was still alive, and it was trying to take over my body.

There wasn’t much time and I needed to move.  The oil was coiling around my chest and working its way to my mouth.  I tried squirming but to no avail.  I couldn’t use anymore magic for fear of depleting my body of energy I need to stay alive.  There was nothing I could do.  I felt the oil begin to pry my mouth open, but I kept it clamped shut.  It gave up and decided to enter through my nose.  I sputtered and spit, but it didn’t work.  It was writhing through my pharynx, into my esophagus and larynx, into my stomach and lungs.  I could feel it flow through my veins, filling me with an indescribably emptiness.  It didn’t matter if it couldn’t use my magic right now, I realized.  Once I was dead and it was in control of my body, it could use all the magic it wanted.  My vision went blank and soon after that, so did my mind.