Michael's Ghost Girl

Something Wicked This Way comes

It was three houses down the street from Michael's; the kind neighborhood kids call "the haunted house".  It seemed to be collapsing in on itself, and the owner did nothing to stop it. There were little signs of life, though, like a van that would occasionally come and go, or mail that would be dropped into a curbside mailbox. 

This house was not a place anyone on the street cared to walk past. Passersby would cross to the other side of the street to avoid it.

In this same house, the house the living seemed to shun, the dead were very much present. Mariah sat in the soft dirt of the basement floor staring at the pitiful mound of damp black dirt: after all these years it was still hard to believe that was all of her that remained. She curled up on top of the earth and began to cry. Once she had been full of hope, life had held promise, then all was gone in an instant. She wished the memories would go away, but they never did.

She could remember being dragged downstairs, the knife at her throat. He'd tied a length of rope in a slip knot, putting around her neck, and pulled it so tightly she couldn't breathe. Then she noticed something--an imitation of a photographer's studio: drop cloths, lamps and a video camera staring her in the face. She started screaming, but her attacker only laughed, knowing that her mind was refusing to accept what was happening to her--then she saw the shovel propped against the wall.

She made a desperate attempt to try to run, but the he dragged her back. He bound her hands tightly and laughed again when she started to cry. He heard her begging and pleading, the camera recording everything. The nightmare seemed to go on and on, and just when she thought she couldn't take anymore, he jerked the rope around her neck causing her to hear the crunch of her neckbones cracking, then everything went black and her ordeal was over for good.

"The most horrible day of my life," she said softly, not wanting to wake Crazy Girl. She had first seen Crazy Girl a couple of days after she died. The girl had risen up out of the dirt and started talking; but it was if there was dirt in her mouth that made her words seem garbled. Mariah had wondered if the girl had gone mad before she'd been killed, but now she knew better. She was the one who had gone temporarily insane. Crazy Girl, as Mariah had nicknamed her, had brought her back to sanity and taken care of her.

All she wanted now was for her parents to have those pitiful bones that were all that was left of her, and to somehow take revenge on her murderer. As the years passed, her wish passed from desire to obsession. Sometimes she would see a white light above her, brimming with love and healing, and the promise to the end to her pain. She could feel part of her start to give in and drift slowly towards it, but in the end, no matter how peaceful the light felt, she always resisted. She had suffered horribly and was not going to be denied her revenge.

She could hear voices upstairs, which meant he was watching his flat screen television, his pride and joy. She decided to go upstairs and break some of his plates and whatever else she could manage. After Crazy Girl had shown her how, she'd destroyed so much of his crockery that he had started buying paper plates to avoid the expense of replacing the ones she broke.

Crazy Girl rose up out of the dirt, "Hey girlfriend, feel like a little action? Let's party." She smiled, showing white teeth. Her dreadlocks were matted and Mariah wondered if she would wind up looking the same way. She and Mariah were the same age, but Crazy Girl looked much older. She had been a teenage prostitute who had walked the streets of the downtown section of the city at night. The monster had found her and taken her to his secret place where she met the same fate as Mariah. Her body had lain in the basement for years before the monster had added Mariah's grave to hers.

Mariah had been taken a few blocks from her home. She'd gotten off the same bus she'd ridden a hundred times before, but the autumn evening's early darkness had given her kidnapper a cover. He'd snatched her off the sidewalk, hand covering her mouth, dragging her into his house before anyone had even seen.