An Autumn Ghost Story

Autumn leaves of red, orange and gold were floating through the air, carried on a stiff breeze that only served to cut the temperature down a few degrees. In a small town, and along a reasonably busy road in what could be called ‘Old Town’, people could be seen clutching their coats and sweaters closer to hold off the chill while they went about shopping and chatting with each other. Those that didn’t stop to chat were likely to be rubbing their hands together or using those same hands to hold a hot beverage that would be sipped ever so cautiously.

About halfway between an intersection and a roundabout was a second hand bookstore that went by the name Tom’s Book Nook. The owner, Tom, didn’t get many customers, but that didn’t really bother him that much. A few people would drop in and look around briefly, usually without buying anything but would also sometimes ask for any recommendations, which Tom was happy to provide. At this time of year, around mid October, there was a lot more interest in Halloween stories, so Tom had made sure to hunt down some books with spooky stories in the hopes that people would be more interested in buying those books, as well as maybe a few others.

It was early in the morning when the front door to his shop opened up and a young man, about 15 or 16, entered, carrying a stack of newspapers. “Hey, Tom. You want these in the same place?” he asked.

“Thank you, David. That’s fine there, I’ll deal with them.” Tom reached into his cash register and pulled out some money which he then handed over. “Thanks for the delivery.”

“Any time, sir. I hope you enjoy this edition, they’ve got your ad in there, should help out.”

Tom chuckled, “I hope so. People are more interested in e-books nowadays. They’ve forgotten the value of curling up with a physical book. They’re also forgetting the older, classic stories that have shaped our history.”

David had already turned around and was halfway through the door, but he stopped and turned to look back. “What stories are those?”

Tom gestured to his shop with a giant grin on his face. “Oh,” said David, “those stories. Maybe one of these days I’ll pick something up.”

Tom knew that David was only making platitudes to make him feel better, but still it felt good to hear that someone showed at least a passing interest. After David left, Tom proceeded to do what he normally did: tidy up the shelves and organize the books, sweep the floors, help out whatever customers came in, etc. It was near the end of the day and he was thinking of perhaps closing up a bit early when a young woman he hadn’t seen before entered the store. She didn’t say anything and went immediately to the shelves of books, quickly skimming the titles as if she knew what she was looking for but didn’t know exactly where it was located. It was as Tom was walking around the front desk in order to see if he could help when she approached him, almost walking right into him in her excitement.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she said quickly. Then, when her initial shock wore off and she remembered what she was holding, she held it out towards Tom and said, “Um…..this one. Please.”

He walked back to the front desk and then took a look at the book. Astral Tuning, Frequencies and Other Technologies. Odd, he didn’t remember when it came in, probably part of the latest batch of books. He noted the price and took payment, the woman paying with her RFID card. Without waiting to receive her receipt, she darted out of the store and walked briskly down the sidewalk, quickly leaving Tom’s field of view. He shook his head and proceeded to close down the store.

Tom lived close enough to his store that he could ride his bike in, which he did frequently. It was only when he had to run errands after work that he drove in. On his way home, he noted that there seemed to be fewer people out and about this evening than he would normally expect. He also noted that they tended to spend less time talking to each other and were just trying to get to their respective destinations. I guess this is just the change in the world, he thought. With politics and social anxiety at an all time high, people were becoming more distant from each other, even in small towns like this.

Not that Tom was really much different. He used to keep his window down and call out to people he knew, but now kept them up and listened to the radio instead. He stopped at a local market to pick up some food and a reasonably priced bottle of wine. He then arrived home without incident, cooked himself a simple dinner before heading to bed.

Since he owned a bookstore, Tom was able to sleep in and leisurely get ready for the day. He walked to the store and opened it as usual, not really expecting anything different. There were some boxes stacked in front of his store, but he had been expecting them for a while as they would be new horror-themed stories that he was hoping would boost sales, at least up until Halloween itself.

At around the usual time for the daily newspaper delivery, Tom walked to the front of the store to see a new boy delivering the stack of papers.

“Oh, hello there. I guess I was expecting David. Is he alright?”

The new boy shrugged and simply said, “Dunno. I guess he didn’t come in, or something. I got asked to run this route for the time being.”

Tom didn’t think too much about it and went about his day as normal. However, when David failed to show up the next day, and the day after, he got concerned. The next day, he drove in and was committed to heading over to the news building after work, to see if there was anything they would tell him. Tom knew that he wasn’t family, but he was friendly with David, after all.

When he arrived at the news office later that day, he tried to speak to someone about David. The security rep at the front desk referred him to a young lady who referred him to someone else. After talking to five or six different representatives, it became clear to Tom that he wasn’t going to be able to get anything about David, since he wasn’t a family member. He resigned himself to not being able to find out what happened and drove back home.

As he was leaving, he noted that there was a woman around the side of the building, shining a purple-ish light around the walls. It wasn’t until he actually got back home that he remembered that this was the woman that had purchased that odd book from his shop, Astral Tuning, Frequencies and Other Technologies. Since he was already home, he didn’t feel like going back and reporting what she was doing. While it appeared to be odd, it wasn’t really dangerous. The news company wasn’t doing anything about it, why should Tom?

By the time he was heading home, it was already late, so he decided to grab some quick food before heading home. It was already a cold night and there was no one else in the road. All the traffic lights in his path were green, so he started to lose himself in his own thoughts. It was when he was losing up for no real reason that he saw a young girl standing in the middle of the road. Tom braked as soon as he saw her and he could both hear and feel his brake screeching in protest to the sudden use. He then closed his eyes when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to avoid hitting the girl.

It wasn’t until his car came to a complete stop that he realized that he hadn’t felt an impact. He got out and looked around, but there was no one around. He darted to the front of his car and noted that there was no damage or any indication that he had hit anything at all. Was he just imagining the girl? Did she run and hide somewhere? He looked around at the homes nearby. None of them seemed close enough for her to run toward. Further, he hadn’t heard any doors close to indicate that she went inside. Confused, but without any idea on what he could do, Tom got back into his car and drove home.

The next few days went by uneventfully. Tom saw fewer people walking by, but figured that it was due to the weather getting colder. Fewer people stopped into his shop, to the point that he started to close earlier than normal. It was unusual for business to be this slow, but he convinced himself that people had less money for splurging on books due to the economy. It was more important that people buy food than a scary story.

After locking the front door to close early again, he heard someone screaming from down the street. As he got to the window to look down the street, a man went sprinting by, running as fast as he could from Tom’s left to right. When he looked back to the left to find out what all the commotion was, he noticed a young girl standing on the sidewalk. It took him a moment to realize that this was the same girl that he thought he had hit a few nights ago, and he was immediately stunned. Seeing her now, when he wasn’t distracted with his thoughts or driving home, he was able to get a good look at her.

She was perhaps eleven to thirteen years old and appeared to be Caucasian, standing about as high as reaching up to his chest at best. Her skin was very pale and contrasted with her jet black hair, which hung limply as he fell to about the middle of her back and chest. She was wearing a very plain, if kind of old-fashioned white dress, with a ribbon around her waist that tied in the back. Her shoes were jet black as well, and might have been shiny once, but now looked to be worn and scuffed. There was something kind of unsettling about the fact that she didn’t really move at all, just stood there with her arms hanging loosely at her sides.

Tom stood there in shock, unable to do anything for a bit as he mentally processed the fact that the girl he thought he had run over the other night was apparently just fine. At about that time, another person walked by the window on the other side of the store. By the way he was stumbling and spinning around, it was clear that he had been run into by the other man running in that direction. Before he had gone too far, Tom watched as the girl was strangling the man. She didn’t run up, there was no build up. She was on his left and then the next second, she was on the other side of the man, with her hands throttling his neck. Tom watched, horrified as she choked the life out of a random stranger. The suddenness of her attack made him stumble backwards into the shelves inside his store.

The noise of books falling on the floor clearly got her attention as her head pointed towards Tom, again without the intervening motion of the head swiveling to the side. Her eyes were piercing with dark ‘whites’ of the eyes, to the point of being black. She did not blink but her eyes bored directly at Tom as her hands tightened around her victim’s neck. She released her grip and the now deceased body crumpled to the ground. Barely a second passed before the girl appeared inside Tom’s shop, again without crossing the intervening space and apparently through solid glass.

Tom’s lizard brain took over and convinced his body to run away to the back of the store as quickly as he could, no need to look behind him as he didn’t want to know how close this girl was getting. He rotated the bolt lock on the rear door, after a couple of attempts as adrenaline ruined his hand-eye coordination. He dashed through the door and slammed it closed, hunting in his pocket for the keys to lock the door. When he dropped his keys, he reached down to grab them again, seeing a pair of scuffed, worn, black shoes. He looked up and saw the girl standing about 10 feet away, and then she was suddenly 2 feet away. As she brought her arms up to Tom, he screamed and scrambled away as quickly as he could, turning and sprinting down the alley behind the shops.

He was just getting to the end of the alley when he felt a pair of hands around his neck. The hands were small, delicate and cold as ice, but gripped him with an incredible strength that Tom knew he wouldn’t be able to fight. As he looked down, he saw the girl staring at him, unblinking and dispassionately. He tried to push her away from him, but noted that his arms met no resistance as he watched his hands pass right through her body. As he fought to draw breath, resigning himself to his fate, there was a flash of purple light and the hands immediately vanished, as did the rest of the girl. As there was very little energy left in his body, Tom crumbled to the floor.

Tom looked up to see what saved his life and saw a young woman holding a larger bulky item that was shining a purple light into the alley. He recognized her as the woman who bought that odd book a few days ago, the one that he didn’t remember obtaining in the first place. The woman struggled to lift the item in her hands and she almost dropped it onto the ground. Tom wanted to thank her for helping him out, but instead he shouted, “What the fuck was that?!”

The woman struggled between turning off her device and not dropping it on the ground before responding, “I think you mean, ‘You’re welcome’.” She eventually dropped her device on the ground with a very solid thunk and looked over at Tom. “Are you okay?”

Tom coughed a couple of times and rubbed his throat to get some warmth back into it. “I’m not sure.”

“Regardless, we should probably take off, I don’t know if the ghost is still around.”

Tom was still in shock, but realizing that he would soon be completely alone in an alley with a ghost that looked to be killing indiscriminately, he followed after the woman as quickly as he could. In his hurry to stumble to his feet, he knocked over a trash can on his way to catch up. He looked back into the alley once, just to double check that the little girl, or ghost he had to admit, was no longer there.

The woman was trying to run back to an older, brown windowless van, but the obvious bulkiness of her device prevented her from moving too quickly. Tom was quickly able to catch up and he offered to help her carry it. She refused his assistance and lifted the device higher to get a better grip on it and continued on her path to the van. When she got alongside it, she put down her device and reached into her pocket for the keys. Opening the door, she looked back toward the alley and froze briefly before she reached down to lift the device into the van. The entire time that she was doing this, Tom was just standing there, dumbfounded and feeling worthless because there was nothing he could do to help.

“Damn it,” she said, “Get inside, quick!” She then darted into the van and started up the van’s motor. Tom’s lizard brain took over as she was doing this and he jumped inside. As he was closing the side door, he saw the ghost at the opening of the alley and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He slammed the door closed at about the same time that the van sluggishly started down the road.

“The switch is on top,” she said, not looking back other than in the mirror. She was actually pretty distracted, looking to make sure that there were no other cars, not that there was much traffic, it was pretty late at night.

Tom’s brain hadn’t fully caught up to everything that happened, so all he could manage in response was, “What?”

“It’s coming after us! If it gets in the van, you need to hit it with the light! The switch is on top, but don’t hit it unless it gets inside!” she was shouting at him, her voice clearly panicked as she continued to accelerate.

Tom looked down at the device, which appeared to be a maglite duct taped to a car battery. There were some computer parts duct taped to the sides and wires criss-crossing all over the place. On top, there was a switch which looked like it belonged on a bedroom wall, complete with puffy stickers which would not be out of place in a young girl’s room.

“Now!” she shouted.

Tom looked up toward the back of the van and saw the ghost standing at the back of the van. Unlike before, the ghost did not have a blank look on her face, but was scowling in anger, baring her teeth. Tom quickly flipped the switch as he had been told, seeing the device spark and start to hum as it warmed up. After a second or two, the light flashed on and lit up the back of the van, as it had already been pointed in that direction. The ghost vanished again, and Tom slumped to the floor in relief.

His relief was short-lived as the device sparked, spreading sparks all over the back of the van and causing the light to flicker a few times before dying. Tom covered his head and listened to the woman swear. She only threw out a few epithets, before telling Tom to hold on as she was going to start ignoring traffic signals, adding that they shouldn’t get into an accident since she didn’t see anyone else on the road.

There weren’t any more incidents with the ghost as they drove through the town and eventually arrived at a decrepit warehouse. The area was well lit due to street lights nearby, but otherwise the neighborhood was seemingly abandoned. On the drive over, the woman introduced herself as Linda, indicating that she considered herself a scientist with degrees in chemistry and biology. She further indicated that she grew up on horror movies and anything involving ghosts, so she was obsessed with the supernatural. She was supposedly in the area to study wildlife, according to the company that she worked for, but was really in the area as she was following up on stories of people disappearing mysteriously.

Her introduction was interrupted upon arriving at the warehouse as she shifted the van into park and quickly dashed out to unlock the gate leading into the building. As she struggled to open the door, Tom could only stare in shock as he continued to process what had just occurred. Linda finished opening the gate, wiped her forehead and ran back to the van, quickly driving it into the building and slamming on the brake before the van ran into a rack full of random electrical equipment. As she dashed back out of the van towards the back of the van again, Tom slowly extricated himself from the van. As he was looking back toward Linda, struggling to close the gate again, Tom noticed further down the road what looked like a person wearing white, but it was impossible to tell much of anything else. Not waiting to verify if it was the ghost or some other random thing. He dashed over and helped Linda close the gate.

Once it was closed and locked, Linda dashed over to a collection of switches off to the side, manipulating a control board and getting various machines to hum up to life. After flipping switches and rotating dials for a bit, bringing up monitors which obviously showed the outside of the building, Linda collapsed into an office chair, obviously relieved that she had completed…. whatever it was that she was doing. She sat there, catching her breath for a prolonged period of time, during which period Tom stood watching her, slack-jawed and eyes wide open in shock. He felt helpless, but wrapped up in something that he was not prepared to do anything about.

Linda suddenly came to life, jumping out of her chair and cheerfully saying, “Well, that was fun. You want something to eat?”

“I…, I…, what?” was all that Tom could manage.

Linda walked over a fridge and started rummaging around, eventually pulling out a Chinese take out box and then moving over a table and grabbing a fork. She started eating some noodles and looked over at Tom, nodding her head toward the fridge. After slurping up some noodles, she said with her mouth full, “Close the door if you don’t want anything.”

He wasn’t hungry per se, just confused and shocked, so he closed the fridge and asked, “Wait, so ghosts are real?”

In between bites, she retorted, “What did you think was happening with everyone in town?”

“Ummm….it’s October, so people are probably out going to parties or something.”

She stopped with some noodles halfway to her mouth and stared at Tom. “Seriously? You didn’t worry about people disappearing?” “I run a used bookshop! I don’t have many friends and pretty much keep to myself!” he shouted, his anxiety increasing his bravado. “The only person I dealt with on a regular basis stopped coming to work and I only thought he was sick or something! No one talks to me!”

She put down her noodles and tried to soothe him, “Dude, dude, dude. It’s ok, I was just curious, not trying to judge here. I guess I’m glad that I got there before the ghost got you.”

“And now it’s followed us, I think. It’s coming down the road toward us!”

Linda gestured to the monitors, showing black & white views of the outside of the building. “We’re fine, it can’t get in here.”

Tom looked at the monitors and then continued looking around the warehouse. There was a large amount of incomplete electrical devices and a bookshelf full of what looked like manuals. There was another desk with plans and open books, one of which Tom recognized as the book that he had sold to Linda. He viewed the monitors for a bit and didn’t see any activity. As he was watching them, he asked, “Why not?”

Linda rolled her chair over to the monitors and while pointing to all of the monitors she explained, “There are lights all around the building which are tuned into the spectral wavelength that disrupts the ecto-plasmic bonds that hold their corporeal form together. Exposure to the light shatters the bonds and forces the phantasm to dissipate until it can re-establish their corporeal form.”

Tom put his hand against his temple and said, “Could I get that again, in English?”

“Shining the light on the ghost makes it go bye-bye,” she stated. “As long as the generator holds, we’ll be fine.

“Ok, thanks. But why is it killing everyone?”

She looked him directly in the eye and said, “No idea. Have you tried asking it? Oh, that’s right, it isn’t talking! Who really cares why? It’s killing people and we need to find a way to stop it! For now, I can only stun it, but I’m researching how to destroy it outright.”

Tom was impressed, it appeared that Linda had everything in hand and was well on her way to becoming a professional ghost hunter. Or maybe a ghost buster. He smiled a little bit at the reference to the old movie. He then thought of something. “What happens if the power goes out? I mean, how are you powering all of this equipment?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve got a generator and lots of gas. Power isn’t a problem,” she beamed, clearly proud of herself.

“How did you learn how to do this?”

She gestured over to the table with books all over the place and said, “I read a lot, and took notes. I’m very self-educated on this stuff.” She took another bite of her noodles and added with her mouth still full, “Thanks for the book the other day, by the way. I had been looking for that one for a while now.”

Tom looked over the table and glanced at the books scattered there. There were a few that went into stories, myths, and legends, but most of them seemed to be technical manuals. There were folded pages and bookmarks all over the place, it seems like Linda spent a lot of time cross-referencing information. “You’ve got quite a collection here,” he said. Linda only beamed back and finished off her food.

She tossed the used container on the floor and focused on her monitors. After looking them over for a bit, she laughed briefly and excitedly claimed, “Look! See? She can’t get in! HAHAHA! She looks so mad!”

Tom looked at the monitors and saw the ghost flashing from one area to the next. Occasionally, the camera was close enough to see the ghost’s face, which was scowling with silent rage and clear frustration. “Listen,” he said, concern in his voice, “Not that I doubt your tech skills, but I just want to be prepared. What happens if it does get in here?”

“No worries,” she responded lightly. “I’ve got a cage set up as a last resort, complete with a Faraday cage, just in case. At this point, we just need to wait for the sun to come up.”

Tom looked at his watch and noted that it was not even midnight yet. They had a lot of waiting ahead of them with an angry ghost that was clearly frustrated at being denied its prey. This combination only served to add anxiety to Tom’s already frazzled nerves, knowing that they would have to wait at least six hours, hoping that the power stayed on the entire time. He probably would not be sleeping this night.

He heard some sounds behind him and turned around to see Linda fiddling with the light that she had first used to save Tom, back behind his store. It felt odd that this was less than just over a hour previous, things being hectic ever since. He looked up again at the monitors as Linda worked, glancing from one to the next. After a bit he asked, “Where did it go?”

Without looking up, Linda asked, “Where did what go?”

“The ghost. I don’t see it anywhere.”

Linda dropped her tools and rushed over and ran into Tom. While she was acting rather laissez-faire earlier, she was alert and focused as she flipped through monitor feeds. She was exuding panic in increasing amounts as each camera she flipped to failed to display the ghost. As she continued to cycle, Tom looked around but couldn’t spot anything himself inside the warehouse. There were several intense minutes where nothing was happening, which only served to make them both increasingly nervous and anxious.

Linda laughed lightly, but it couldn’t hide her anxiety. “I, I guess it gave up?”

“Is your generator covered by the lights?” Tom asked.

She shook her head, “It’s inside the building, she can’t get to it.”

Right after she said that, there was sparks from the other side of the building and a gentle hum that Tom wasn’t really aware of suddenly died. Both Tom & Linda stared directly in that direction like scared rabbits for a brief second. Linda then grabbed Tom and dashed off to the side, away from all of her gadgets. He wasn’t complaining and allowed her to guide him to the cage that Linda had mentioned earlier. The cage in question was a large concrete tank about twenty feet across, that they got to after running down a short corridor.

Linda grabbed the ring attached to the door and Tom needed no prompting to jump onto the other side of it to help her turn it. The door into the tank opened slowly due to its massive weight and both of them felt the seconds pass as it ponderously opened. As soon as it was open enough for Linda to enter, she did so. Tom had to shove it open a little more so that he could fit inside.

Once inside, he could see that Linda had already turned on another light inside the tank and when he reached the door to close it, he thought that he caught a glimpse of a white cloth, perhaps from a dress. Not wanting to take the time to verify if they were being followed or not, he tugged on the door and felt it close securely. He then spun the door closed, hoping that they had not been spotted.

Both of them silently stared at the other, neither needing to speak to note the fear on both of their faces. At this point, it was apparent that they would be stuck in this tank, hoping that the ghost gave up and that the light didn’t give out. They stayed like that for hours, the only sounds uttered were one or the other swallowing bile. They weren’t paying attention to how long they had been there when the light inside suddenly went out, plunging them into an intense darkness.