Arc II, Chapter 17: Ghost Story

If I wasn’t standing four feet away from him, I would have been really jazzed to see the ghost of J.T. Guzman. This was my favorite type of ghost to see in horror movies. He didn’t look faded or transparent. In fact, he looked solid, though I wasn’t going to test if he was.

He had died of a broken neck and his spirit forever reflected that. Every time a ghost like that popped up in cinema I would smile and hope to guess the cause of death of each ghost. My favorite movie with spirits of this kind was Thirteen Ghosts, but there were plenty of good ones.

Seeing him in person wasn’t as fun. His spine stuck so far out of place I could practically see it through his skin, his fingers were broken and his nails busted. It looked like he had been dragged and had grabbed onto the ground for dear life, but that was all of what I could see by the moonlight.

“We need to get this closed up,” The Stranger said, grabbing the cardboard from Bobby’s frozen hands and walking to the window.

“I found tape,” Bobby said, unable to take his eyes off the ghost. He held out a roll of duct tape.

I grabbed it and helped patch up the broken window.

“Cardboard will keep ghosts out?” Dina asked.

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?” The Stranger said. “Couldn’t say why.”

“When you’re out there, everything is so far away…” J.T. said. “When I saw the broken window… it was like suddenly the house was closer. Suddenly, I could get to it. I wasn’t just walking in place.”

J.T. always seemed to think we were talking to him. I didn’t know if that was a ghost thing or just his personality.

I knew that soon; we would have to make a plan. Having a very fragile specter in the house would complicate things.

“Excuse me,” I said. I squeezed my way past the ghost and into the hallway. “I’m going to go check on Isaac.

I wondered if Dina, Bobby, and The Stranger would know not to tell the ghost he was dead.

“I’m going to go tell him there was a survivor,” I said. “Not that that will cheer him up.”

I had to weigh the risks. At that moment, I knew that if Isaac came around the corner and saw the man with the crooked neck, he was liable to freak out. The others had experience. They might keep their cool.

Off-Screen.

Isaac was still sitting on the couch next to his sister. He had covered her with a blanket. No amount of logic would break through to him until he was ready. I couldn’t expect him to deal with his sister’s death in a way that was convenient.

“Hey, Isaac,” I whispered in his ear. “You need to know that one of the spirits is in the house. He doesn’t know he’s dead and we need to keep it that way. No screaming or freaking out. Got it?”

I felt like a jerk ordering him around as he mourned his dead sister.

He didn’t answer, but he nodded. Fat, round tears rolled down his cheeks, glistening in the moonlight.

I thought about how I had felt when Camden had died the first time when stabbed by Ranger Danger. I had cried then, but it wasn’t too long before my mind shifted to beating the storyline.

I wondered how long it would take Isaac to do the same. He was the next target.

Or was he?

The Stranger’s Dark Secret trope was supposed to drop his Plot Armor to zero when he revealed his titular dark secret, but I couldn’t actually see his Plot Armor. It was hidden. All I could see were his two visible player tropes. I couldn’t even see his poster.

I had originally assumed that The Stranger’s Dark Secret was that he had initiated The Ten Second Game, but then there was the whole thing where he got dodgy about the voicemail his daughter sent him. That told me he still had a secret. Reading over the text of the trope, I began to realize that he wasn’t allowed to just tell us his Dark Secret Off-Screen. Even though as a player he would like for us to. We had to figure it out.

Luckily, I had already set up Cinema Seer with that prediction. If I was right, everyone but Bobby would get a buff to Grit and Savvy.

I was certain that there was something more to come. It had to be something that would make my character hesitant to work with him, even to survive.

I walked back into the room where the ghost was being interrogated by the others. They had not made much headway.

On-Screen.

“I was so scared,” he said. “You have no idea…”

It was like he was floating in the sea during a storm. He could talk to us and answer our questions. He even showed some personality. But then a “wave” would come and he would go back underwater. He would emerge suddenly very scared and mournful. Ghosts worked in cycles like that, apparently.

“How did you get stuck out there?” I asked.

“Girl I’m talking to right now. She’s a freak. 100% my type. Craziest girl I’ve ever tried to get with though. She’s into ghosts and witches and all kinds of weird shit. I’m not complaining. She’s hot. She wanted me to come here and help her talk to some famous ghost. I couldn’t chicken out, not when I got her on the line.”

His head wasn’t on straight, but still, he smiled and licked his lips every time he paused his sentence. When he laughed, his head bounced slightly.

“All I got to do is play this weird game she found on the internet. Spooky sure. I figure when it doesn’t work she’ll be disappointed but, you know, we got all these rooms…. Things could really work out well for me. But the game worked. There were things out there. Something I couldn’t understand. She’s writing down their answers. Ring the bell. Don’t ring the bell, you know.”

I nodded. I understood why The Ten Second Game used a bell to communicate yes or no answers. Ghosts were oversharers.

“Then things started getting freaky. Not in the way I wanted. Started thinking, woah, is this girl worth it? My ex wasn’t this much trouble and she had two kids from different baby daddies… I wonder how they are. I kind of miss them not gonna lie. I couldn’t make things work with my ex she was way older than me… like thirty, but those kids were great. I always wonder if I should have stuck around just for them. The little one, Justin, he asked if he could call me dad and I said no. He was my little buddy. Why did I say no? Fuck. Why did I say no? I could have been a good dad…”

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He paused for a moment and then started back in. “I was so scared. You wouldn’t blame me if you knew. I had to run. That thing… it isn’t like anything I… I had to run.”

He was having difficulty keeping on topic.

“You said that something freaky started to happen when playing the game?” I asked.

“It was out there. Took Sid so long to figure out. We thought we were talking to a dozen different ghosts, but it was that… whatever it was the entire time. I couldn’t even understand what I was looking at. We saw one ghost get really close. And we talked to it. And it got closer and closer. We asked it questions. It was some lady that drowned. Her face was all messed up from something. Then she got closer and we could see something in the darkness standing right behind her. So close behind her we almost couldn’t see it. Like it was hiding behind her. And then she got closer and Sid was asking her about her life and whether she knew this famous guy. And then she got closer… and I heard it. It was laughing. Black like a shadow in an old photo. So close to her, I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw the stitches like the body of this dripping wet woman was sewn right to him. And he was laughing because he tricked us! He tricked us into letting him get close!”

J.T. was breathing faster and faster. He was terrified of whatever it was he was picturing in his mind.

“And then he got close enough to where I could see that behind him, somehow, I couldn’t understand, there were more dead people sewn to him. The drowned woman disappeared and then some prospector dude who had been crushed in a cave-in or something, he came out, sewn on like the others. He was trying to talk, to yell at us, but his jaw and teeth were ruined. The dead people sewn to that thing were all wiggling and scared and he could make them move and talk…. I ran. I turned and ran. A dead biker was standing right behind me, face and shoulder ground down to nothing but hamburger meat. The thing was right behind him. So close I couldn’t see it except at the very edge. I strained to get a look but I couldn’t. It was so close behind him and hiding. We had nowhere to go but out. So Sid opened the window and we ran.”

He was paralyzed with fear.

“The dead all showed how they died. You could see it. I don’t want to end up like that. Is that what happens to the people we love? They end up walking out there dead, body parts cut up and gross.”

He paused. A sudden realization dawned on his crooked face. He started to slowly reach up his right hand. He was going to feel his neck. We had let him go too far. Soon, he would realize he was dead and we would be in trouble.

“Was Sid the hot chick?” Bobby asked.

J.T. looked at him. There was a sudden shift.

“You have no idea. I don’t usually go for quiet chicks, but damn. She was like half goth ‘cause her mom died. I really dug it. The goth thing, not… you know. She wore sweaters and jeans a lot, but you could tell she had a body… damn… I hope it didn’t get her.”

“So you were one of Sidney’s friends,” The Stranger said.

The ghost turned to look at him. “Yeah, Sidney.”