Journey to Psitharis

Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-four

April was a busy month indeed. I cemented the closest friendship I had ever had with another outcast and our lunch discussions had become very important to us. My therapists were sharply divided on my state of sanity, with one feeling as if I was doing so much better I should be left to my own devices and the other determined to have me committed by the end of the year. And the holiday and all of the other things that preoccupied my mind had decidedly kept me absent from the place I was desperate to get back to. But finally, in the wee hours of the third Saturday in April, my mind drifted back to dawn in a dilapidated photo booth, and my journey started back up in full force.

I awoke in the booth again and thought to myself, what the heck? We had gone at least a mile into the woods, maybe even more. How had I wound up back here? It was dark; the only light available to me was the light from a huge moon in the sky. The moon was pretty low in the sky, which told me dawn would be fast approaching, perhaps within the next hour or two. The strips of pictures I had kept were still in the pocket of my jacket. I couldn't see the faces very well with only the moon for light, but I had those smiling images etched into my memory. I placed them back in my pocket carefully. Right now those children were the only traveling companions I had.

I weighed my options carefully. If I was here past dawn and the guards caught me, I was a dead girl. Plus there was plenty of light to travel by, if not rather clumsily, but I could manage. But Roland had said something about the "ghosts". Was he being serious? Were there actual ghosts wandering the remnants of times gone by, looking for better days, or was it just symbolic? In this world it could have been either. I sat there for a long time considering what I would do. Finally, fed up with being cramped in a small box, I carefully ventured to the tattered curtain that still closed the interior of the booth off from public view, even though there was no public there to see. I slipped through the curtain, looking both ways very carefully, in case one of Calperal's guards suddenly turned brave. Coast clear, I turned toward the path Roland and I had taken the last time I was here. I only hoped I could remember the way we had taken; a mile of twists and turns through a scrap heap might be a little difficult to remember. Step by step, I took my time finding my way in the moonlight.

It helped that I had been fascinated with some of the things we had passed on our first journey out of the graveyard. When I got to an old vending machine that doled out warm hot dogs, I remembered saying to Roland "Wish that thing still worked" before we turned...left. A few more yards ahead and we almost killed ourselves stumbling over an old swan boat that had been half buried in the dirt, the swan head sticking out just enough to send you sprawling if you didn't know to look for it. I nearly kicked myself for tripping over it again. As I went down I grabbed for the nearest thing I could grip to save myself from face planting. As a result, I sent an entire pile of metal strips from an old guard rail clattering horrendously in the opposite direction. Well, if there are ghosts, I just woke them up, I mused, getting to my feet, brushing the dirt from my knees and thanking the good Lord above that I didn't bring that stuff down on my head.

And then it started. There was a low groan from far away, from what seemed to be where the boundary of the park met the junkyard. It was the most bizarre, the most frightening thing I had heard up until that point. It was the sound of screeching metal mingling with an inhuman scream. It made me jump, nearly falling over the newly scattered railings backing away from it. It started low, then became so intense I was sure the force of it pierced my very soul. I looked in the direction the scream came from, straining to see if I could see what made that sound. What I did see nearly gave me a heart attack.

From the crevices and dark corners of the piles of worthless scrap I could see shadows. Not one or two shadows but hundreds of shadows. They were all human; at least they had all been human once. There were blurred faces, dark images of people filling the clear paths behind me, all turning to face the source of the original racket, which was directly at me. It was as if I was staring at negatives of souls gone by. They were all lumbering my way. I turned to run when I heard the scream once more; this time it was twice as loud and ten times as terrifying. That wasn't coming from the ghosts that approached me, couldn't be. I looked around to see if I could find the source of the noise. In the distance I could just make out another shadow, a shadow that was continuing to rise higher and higher, taller and taller, until it was the size of a three-story building. It had very long, thin arms that contorted outward, as if crouched and ready to pounce. Its body was enormous, and from its head I could see three pale green lights; two making up angry, startling eyes that searched for the source of the disturbance, and one making up a mouth that curled in a snarl when it set its eyes on me. And I realized how much jeopardy I was really in, because at that moment it chose to stand. It was so tall the light from the moon itself was obscured partially in its shadow. Even though it was so far away from me, it only had to take a couple of steps before it would be right in front of me. If this was their idea of a junkyard dog, it was one hell of a deterrent. With the horde of shadow people lumbering slowly toward me and the creature looking like I was the first tasty thing that had crossed its path I did the only intelligent thing my petrified mind could think to do...I RAN.