His voice had never sounded so
cold. Catherine felt winded and just shattered. Her father was telling her
exactly what she had feared he’d be feeling, but she never imagined that he’d
say the words he was now saying, and never in the way he was saying it. She had
only known his warm, kind, gentle voice, and she had always felt safe with him.
Her parents had been separated a few
years ago, and Catherine had feared that she had somehow caused it. Both
parents had been very loving to her, in spite of their divorce, and she had
always spent her weekends at her father’s, where they played video games,
watched movies on his swanky fifty-five inch TV and he had always made her a
big, scrumptious Sunday breakfast. Her father’s cold, distant voice was now
explaining how much of a burden she had been for both her parents, and that he
could not go on living with a daughter like that. She could not stop the tears
that stung her eyes, as she felt the crushing weight of emotion in her chest.
In the past twenty four hours, her every nightmare was coming to pass.
***
“Wait up, Katie! Will - ” He was
out of breath, and when he spoke, it was wrought with emotion. “I failed my LSAT exams!!” he said, sweating
profusely, and looking first at Catherine, then at Willow, their other best
friend. They looked at him, worried, as Willow was just comforting Catherine
after she had heard her father remorselessly cut her off from his life, and she
had dropped her lunch all over herself in front of everyone in the cafeteria,
and had been laughed at, by everyone in the room. Around them, they saw it happening to
everyone who had been with them that fateful evening.
Joshua had hoped to get into
Harvard Law School that fall, once they had graduated from high school, and had
studied for almost a year before he finally agreed to sit the Law School
Admission Test that year. Since he had always been an over-achiever, his school
had agreed to give him a scholarship to cover his tuition and living expenses
if he got sufficiently high scores on the LSAT. As one of five children to
parents who did the Lord’s work, he could not expect his parents to fund his
education out of the income given to a Pastor and his wife.
***
“Everyone’s nightmares are coming
true!” said Faye, at a rushed meeting they had called that evening. Everyone
who had broken into the haunted building on Wimbourne Avenue on Halloween night
was called. Not everyone had been affected just as yet, but they all knew that
it was only a matter of time, and all ten worried about the effects of it, and
what could happen next. Faye was delicate and bird-like, and had just lost one
of her pets, a handsome greyhound, to a horrific car crash. Billy, a usually
well behaved dog, had wandered out into the street, and been run over by a
large hatchback, just before she could get to him. She had had him since he was
a puppy, and was beside herself with grief over his horrific end.
Willow was worried too, as she
had suddenly lost the ability to read, even though she was fluent in three
languages on a normal day. Four more people had had their worst nightmares
materialize – Kevin had found himself naked in front of the class, and in spite
of all her preparation, Allison had forgotten all the words to her speech that
morning, and had not been allowed to give it again on another day. Angela and Marie had found themselves on stage,
announced as the finest sopranos in the town. As the entire audience was
expecting them to sing, they opened their mouths and nothing came out. To make
it worse, the crowd turned into an angry mob, and heckled them off the stage. Needless
to say, Wendall and Joel were very worried about what might come to them.
There was a grave silence for a
few moments until Allison cleared her throat, and spoke. “We need to go over
what we did that night, so that we can maybe, try to think of something to do
to make these things stop.” Everyone
gravely nodded in agreement. Then Willow looked around and decided to start. “We
were at the Halloween party at the Williamses, when we thought that it would be
fun to break in to the abandoned asylum over at Wimbourne Avenue, just to see
what the big deal is, and since there were ten of us, we all felt much braver
than we otherwise would have.” Her voice broke off, and Joel, who was sitting
next to her, put a comforting arm around her shoulder, shivering a little
himself.
“Ignoring all the boards warning
us to not trespass, we broke in, and found the dilapidated asylum to be eerily
quiet, save for the groans and moans of a building that old. We walked into the
various rooms, wondering aloud what the stains on the walls could be – could it
be dried blood? Food, flung in frenzy…or could it be excrement?” Joel mused. What
secrets would a building that housed the insane of an era long gone have
hidden? They all knew that that was the real reason all of them were there. All
they had been told over the years of living in Moorington was that the place
was unsafe, and that they were not to go there. The stories of the building
being haunted were rumours, kept hush-hush, as the building had been for sale
for several years, but remained unsold.
There were so many variations of
the rumoured stories, but there was one that seemed to be agreed upon. The
older folks said that the building had been deserted after one of the more
violent patients, who was to be transferred to a facility for the criminally
insane, had gone on a rampage, killing several nurses, the resident
psychiatrist and several more staff and patients before the police had finally
been able to subdue him. In the struggle, the police had accidentally nicked
his jugular, and in the dark, and in his aggression, they had not realized it
until he had collapsed. In spite of the valiant efforts of the paramedics to
keep him alive, he was dead on the way to the hospital.
They had cleaned up the building
and resumed normal working hours within a month, but the horrors of the death
of their co-workers had been too great for the remaining staff to continue
working there, and they all left, one by one. Even then, a few more mysterious
deaths had occurred, and the staff and neighbours had strongly suspected spectral
activity in and around the building. With staff numbers dwindling, the patients
had also been transferred to other facilities in batches.
Eventually, the government order
had arrived, stating that the facility needs to be closed, as the cost of
operations was too great for the handful of patients that remained. The
building had then been mildly renovated, and put on the market, but decades had
passed, and it remained unoccupied.
“Then we heard the creaking door.
It was an awful noise. Some of us wanted to run back home, but Wendall and Josh
wanted to run towards the sound, to check it out. Against our better judgement,
we went with them because we didn’t want to leave them behind. We started
hearing various sounds in the building now – sounds that we may have not been
aware of before, but now that we were afraid, we were aware of every sound around
us. The wind was also whistling around us, and it had become colder all of a
sudden.” Catherine said, in a hollow voice.
“It took us a while to find it,
but we eventually found him in what was once the kitchen. It was the guy in our
class, the quiet, nerdy guy who was not quite the overachiever, not athletic,
not the kind who would easily get noticed – what was his name? Mousy?” Josh
said, looking around. “No, you twit!” Marie said. “His name is Matt. Matthew
Forrest. Anyway, we were shocked to find him sprawled on the ground. Wendall
and Josh carefully turned him so that we could see if he was hurt.” Her breath
caught, but she continued. “His face was bloody, and he was unconscious, but he
had a heartbeat, and was breathing, so we called 911. It has been five months
since the incident, but he’s still in a coma.”
Angela, who had been quiet all
this time, spoke up. “All of us knew we were going to be in trouble, but who
knew that this could happen? This is far worse that the suspension we had last
year. Maybe some of us have not had it as bad as the others, but who knows what
can happen next? I have been trying to remember all the nightmares I have ever
had, all morning, praying that they aren’t too horrific.” She said this,
unconsciously glancing at Faye.
It was then that they heard the
little titter, and they all looked at each other. They all knew they would have
missed it if the room had not been that quiet. There was a long silence when no
one dared to speak. “I have a theory,” said Kevin. “I think it’s Matt. What do
you guys know of astral projections?” Then, Kevin explained to a quiet,
attentive room of astral projections, and how he had thought he had seen Matt a
few times, when bad things had happened, and he had dismissed it as his
imagination until just then when they had heard the titter. “What if this is
him? What if he’s angry that he was invisible, easy to miss, and we did
nothing?” Just then, everything happened at once. A sharp wind blew through the
room, dropping a few things and the door slammed shut, and all of them
scrambled to a corner.
Sure enough, in the other corner,
an astral form materialized. It was Matt. In spite of their fear, the next hour
was spent with them talking to Matt, and him saying exactly how much he had
hoped to be included in various things, but that he’d be passed over, time and
again, for someone more popular, good looking or just someone who was not as
shy as he was. Even on Halloween night, he had followed them, too shy to ask
them if he could join them. Wanting to remain unseen, he had bolted when they
had almost come upon him, and had accidentally tripped, and hit his head on a
jagged rock. He had awoken a few days ago, standing beside his bed, watching
the tubes enter and leave his comatose body.
Marie was very sympathetic, and
walked up to him, sitting on the floor next to where Matt was, and speaking in a
soothing tone, calming him, and assuring him of the fact that he had a friend
in each of them. She looked around the room. Not everyone was as sympathetic as
she was, but they all wanted this madness to stop, so even those who were not
inclined to accepting Matt smiled and nodded. There was almost an instant change
in the atmosphere in the room.
***
To their relief, they awoke to a beautiful morning, and
things had gone back to normal. They visited Matt in hospital that day, all ten
of them. It was not until the next fall
that Matt awoke from his coma, but his new friends visited him each weekend,
and read to him and spoke to him and kept him company, much to his parents’
surprise. When he awoke, almost a year since Halloween, Matt was warmly welcomed
by his parents and his new friends, Kevin, Allison, Marie and Josh.
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