Misery County

Chapter 8 - Part 3

Mulling over it, Cassie was doubly surprised when a groan came from behind her. She stood up and turned around immediately. She couldn't see anything in the room, but she knew for a fact that the sound had come from no more than a few yards behind her and in that very room. Now it was time to run. She took off but was interrupted almost immediately. Something had grabbed onto her left ankle. No sooner had she hit the floor than she turned her flashlight toward her feet to see what had happened. She half-expected the corpse to be holding onto her foot, but it wasn't. No, one of the silver chains that had bound the burnt body was now coiling itself around Cassie's ankle.

A moving shadow caught her eye. Turning the flashlight up toward the far corner of the room, where the two walls and the ceiling met, she was met with a heart-stopping sight. A figure with long, black hair and all clad in white was floating above the corpse. Its face was partly concealed by its messy hair, but even through that, Cassie could see the rage painted on it. If she made it out of this alive, she would shove it in Eric's face so hard.

"Hello. You must be the resident ghost," Cassie said to it, masking the fear in her voice better than she thought she could. She reached into her handbag. "If you're planning on eating me, perhaps you'd like me with a pinch of salt." She was infinitely ashamed of the quip, but in contrast, she was proud of her preparation, the ghost dissipating in an instant and the silver chains releasing their grip on her as she tossed the contents of a salt shaker out at them.

Now it was really time to run. Incorporeal entities making noises was one thing, but phantoms that can manipulate physical objects to do their will? That was wholly beyond what Cassie felt she could handle.

Pushing herself off the ground, she darted over toward the open doorway leading out to the hallway. A quick right turn brought her to the front door, but it was no less stubborn from the inside as it was from the outside. It was deadlocked.

A strained groan behind her caught her attention. Looking back over her shoulder, the ghost had reappeared, floating to the side of the stairwell, near to the ceiling, its blazing eyes fixed hatefully on Cassie. The sound of rattling chains coming from the room that she had just left told her it was time to move, the further away from them, the better. Surely they couldn't stretch out throughout the whole house, right? If they could, she'd find out soon enough, no doubt, but for now, it was time to get as far out of their way as possible, even if that meant running toward the phantom.

A rush of energy – or was it adrenaline? – flowed through Cassie as she took off down the hallway. She closed her eyes as she ran underneath where the ghost was floating, a freezing sensation enveloping her as she did. She kept her eyes closed out of a childlike fear. It was better that way, she'd decided. She could open them again when she was out of the house. That turned out to be a mistake. A hard scraping sound came from in front of her, followed by the impact from slamming into something. Cassie dared to open her eyes. A large bookcase had been rotated to block her way.

Another pained groan filled the room, somehow imperceptibly silent and deafeningly loud at the same time. Cassie looked above her. The ghost was descending, but it still wasn't close enough to participate in the magic trick she had hidden up her sleeve. Whether to do that or to escape, there was now only one way to go – up the stairs.

Sliding out from underneath the phantom, Cassie made her way back towards the front of the hallway, grabbing onto the baluster and swinging herself around it and onto the stairway. Halfway through it, she glanced up to see the ghost blocking her way, its twisted face glaring at her. Close, but not close enough. She turned on her heel and started running down the stairs, already digging through her handbag.