Post by Stormm on Nov 27, 2014 0:17:34 GMT -5
Dusk had set in, twilight waved goodbye to the day and greeted the night. There was little between afternoon and night that time of year in Kansas, so even at half past five, darkness had fallen on the Midwest. The ghosts of the day were not visible, however, as the cloud cover prevented Justin from gazing at the stars, something he did often when alone with his thoughts.
While the mid-Autumn front had obstructed his view of the night sky, the flurries that accompanied it gave him a taste. The headlights to his nineteen seventy Chevelle reflected off of every single flake as a million twinkling stars fell to the earth and faded away on impact. It was the first snow of the season that the Force of Nature had witnessed, missing out on the inaugural fall a fortnight prior, but it was still as breathtaking as any he had seen before.
Amongst the falling precipitation lit up by the headlights of his muscle car, out in the country north of Wichita, Kansas, was the charred husk of Southwind Gardens. For nearly five decades the hospital had given hope to those and their families for mental recovery against ailments far beyond comprehension to most individuals. Now, a burnt skeleton, scorched earth, and thousands of ghosts were all that remained.
These were no ordinary ghosts either, despite the dozens of unmarked headstones on the backside of the property marking the final resting place for those sick patients that expired while under the care of doctors form Southwind’s past. It was unfortunate that those who ended up back there were alone in the world, with no friends or family to claim them. Even so, their passing was not of any concern amidst the demons left behind.
Justin would have rather been standing in the middle of that cemetery than traipsing through the rubble. For that matter, he wouldn't have passed up a drink with Damian Sorrow over his predicament at that point in time; even a stroll down Main in Hangtown sounded more pleasing.
With the way things came to head with Lia being taken back into custody, Justin was not about to hesitate on trying to find the next missing patient. While he was left more questions when the young woman suddenly switched from thinking he was her former lover, Steven Lee, to crying that man's name towards Justin's younger brother, Aaron, there was no time to go back and visit the former doctor Sorrow. That man would leave him with even more questions and not enough answers anyway, especially with the way Justin left their last meeting.
This did not prevent Damian from coming to visit him.
"Look twice, and see it for the first time. Look once, and never see it again. Down you go, son, down, down you go. Up, up, and away!" There was no denying the fact that in times of major stress, Justin's imagination could get the best of him. As he turned back towards his car, a silhouette of a man standing in the headlights was all he could see, or rather, all his mind allowed him to see. Turning back around, he ignored the figment of his imagination, but Damian's unmistakable voice continued to call out to him, to mock him. "This is the sort of thing that people like you need people like me for, you know this to be true Number One."
He cringed, even when the voice came from that overly creative place in his mind, Justin still couldn't stand it. "You're not real!"
Even with all the facts supporting his affirmation, the mental specter of all things that haunted him in the past remained. "Suppose you are correct, does saying it out loud make this situation any better for you?" Justin continued to stalk around the rubble, in an obvious hunt for something in particular, and he did his best to ignore the manifestation of his inner turmoil. "We both know why I am here, Number One!"
Being referred to as Damian's first "special patient", the pet name, Number One, dug so far under Justin's skin, the proverbial pain caused a tingling sensation to creep up his spine. "You're not real!"
His resolve was unwavering, his ingenuity was working to break it. "We both know that you do not think it is possible to find all five of the missing patients before something goes horribly wrong, either with one of them, or with yourself." Even though it wasn't real, Damian's voice did seem so realistic to the Force of Nature. Not only that, but the former doctor's way of speaking came out so clearly for only being in his head. "One down, but four more to go." The voice continued. "With twins on the way in your personal life, and a shiny hunk of metal to defend in your professional life, how will you find time to balance it all while trying to decipher my words, in hopes that they actually lead you somewhere?"
"This puzzle is more important to you then it is for me!" Justin shouted. "You want me to find them more than I want to find them. You hope they will lead me to Kaden more than I want them to lead me to him." He continued to meander across the grounds, stomping on the ground every ten feet or so. "You want to see years of planning and manipulation come together in this sick and twisted experiment you've concocted, while I just want to make sure these people are safe, and get the help they deserve!"
"My my my, Number One! Are you the doctor here, or am I?" Asked the voice.
Shaking his head Justin clenched his teeth together, ignoring the statement. "I haven't seen Kaden in a little over seven years, since the day I made the mistake of handing him over to you for fear that he had been lost in his own head, and needed the help to get back out again!" The volume of his voice continued to increase, thankfully he was out in the middle of nowhere while talking to himself. "Seven years without seeing a man that looked up to me, thought me a mentor; a man I'd call a friend, but probably wouldn't feel the same... even if I do see him again."
"Do you have a point, or is your rant as pointless as this so called figment of your imagination?" Damian's manifestation queried, still mocking Justin in the process.
"My point is, for all I know, Kaden is dead; so if I never see him again, nothing has changed!" He stopped dead in his tracks. Thinking that was always hard to choke down, but hearing himself say it out loud for the first time was both shocking and painful. "I'm not going to let that stop me from looking for him, and even if this maze you are leading me through only has the smallest of chances of me finding him, I'll gladly run it like a lab rat."
As Justin continued to scavenge through what remained of the old Southwind Gardens, the campus that will be cleaned up the following spring and left an open field as the new Southwind was being built on a larger plot of land, a silence fell. All that could be heard was the faint sounds of snowflakes falling to the ground, and what little white noise was being emitted by the headlights of his car. But just when Stormm thought he didn't have that nagging to deal with anymore, it returned. "So, tell me Number One, what are you doing here?"
There was no answering the question as Justin stomped down hard on the ground, only for his foot to meet steel and not earth. He glanced at the ground, and the back towards the headlights behind him where Damian's silhouette no longer was. The riddle that the old man had given him several weeks ago was tough to navigate, but as soon as he forgot about trying to solve it, he did just that.
He kicked away at all the debris that covered that which he was searching for, uncovering a steel door; the steel door that lead to the hidden bomb shelter that Damian had used for hiding anything he felt he needed to hide from the rest of the world. Justin had been inside of it twice before, once after Damian and his goons had kidnapped him during his reign as Pure Class Wrestling World Champion, the other time he barged in to save his brother from months of nightmares.
The rusted steel door cried out in agony as Justin pried it open, and after struggling with it, finally managed to get it pulled open. The light from his headlights did not reach down into the abyss, so with the help of the flash from his smart phone, Justin descended the metals steps down into the underground shelter.
Despite the brightness of his phone up close, the flash itself was not doing a very good job of lighting up the hell he had walked into, and he was forced to examine every inch more closely than he originally wanted to. Granted, the time of day he chose was not the best, but even in broad daylight, the sun would have been of little help to him. As he swept the light on his phone from side to side, looking into all nooks and crannies of the shelter, something startled him, and it wasn't the smell of mold and mildew that hit him before he even walked down the stairs.
He jumped backwards as two faces had seemingly jumped out at him as he moved his flashlight towards a corner of the shelter. He composed himself and pointed the light back towards the corner to reveal the illusions of two people that, together made no sense, but separately, made perfect sense. The six foot, five inch presence of Steven Lee was accompanied by the five foot, eleven inch figure of the young woman, Gem.
"You're not real!" He blurted out quickly, knowing better than for either of them to have been down there, let alone together. Not only was it a declaration of the truth, but also one of comfort, as Justin tried to calm himself down from the scare he just took.
Unlike the first mental ghost, neither one of these had anything to say. If not for anything else, these two had enough in common in that neither had much to say. Gem was not big on words towards those she didn't care about, or had enough reason to care about, so she kept her mouth shut. Steven was not big on talking in general, then again, as far as Justin knew, Steven was still on the streak of not speaking a word since two thousand six.
Justin closed his eyes tight for a moment, and opened them back up, but both of them remained. "You're not real!" Surely if he said it enough, they'd go away, since it worked so well the first time? There was no denying the level of stress that Justin had imposed on himself lately, and these manifestations were testament to that. To add to that stress level was the fact that he had an upcoming match with one of the individuals he had cooked up in his head. However, both of them standing before him, as far as opponents inside of the squared circle are concerned, he had never beaten. He and Steven had wrestled to two time limit draws in the past, while Gem had cleanly pinned Stormm twice in as many matches in the present.
If they were going to remain silent, however, Justin chose to ignore them; but two became three as Justin turned around and was met face to illusionary face with the third mental specter of all things that haunted him at that present. It only made sense for Lianna Leitz to make an appearance in Justin's mind, given everyone else who had showed up to that point. "What makes you think you can win?"
There was an infinite number of things she could be talking about, or that his mind could be telling her to talk about. It was all starting to get fuzzy, and the more visions he had, the more blurred the lines between fantasy and reality became. "What makes anyone think I can't?" He asked as waited for his heart to sink back down into his chest.
"Gem has beaten you twice in each of your last two matches, distracted or not, there's no denying her drive to ascend in PCW, and now she has the opportunity to take your North American title away from you!" Justin glanced over his shoulder and pointed his phone back to the corner where the visions of Gem and Steven were before. The two were still standing there, the same blank expressions on their faces as before, but this time, Gem was holding the North American title belt above her head in a victory stance. "Stormm has always had a way of mucking up title matches, and that's always going to be in the back of your head... obviously!"
Justin didn't remember much of Lia before her breakdown, back when she and Steven were still dating, and neither of them had fallen off the wagon, but apparently his subconscious had chosen that version of her to manifest before him. "The more of this shit that I can figure out now, the less I have to worry about inside of that ring on Sunday!" He blurted out as he turned back towards the talkative specter, his words echoed off the steel walls of the shelter. "Beating someone two times in a row is tough as it is, but taking three in a row in this business, in this federation, is an even bigger mountain to climb!"
"She seems to be climbing mountains left and right." Quick and witty, this was definitely the Lia that Justin remembered. The Lia that he nearly slept with the night after his and Steven's second match against one another. Granted, this was well before he and Lindsay finally got together, and his wife was none the wiser of that night, but trying to forget about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. "You better hope you clear that pretty little head of yours before you step into the ring with her again, otherwise the faithful are going to see a familiar face, that of Stormm losing another title match."
"I'll keep that in mind." He joked as he started to flash his light around the room to continue looking for any evidence of where his search would take him after this visit.
Without eyes on the ghosts of his imagination, his other sense seemed heightened, and he thought he could hear the shuffles of feet from the three of them following him around the steel box. "As much as he wants you to find them all, you know it would make a better story for him to hear about you failing miserably." The manifestation of Lia had moved on from the squared circle to Justin's personal life and his struggles with Damian Sorrow and trying to find Kaden along with the rest of the escaped patients.
"I'll be damned if that old son of a bitch gets his way, so I'll do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen!" He continued to yell, as if he were trying to prove a point to more than just himself. Perhaps it made him feel better about the fact that he was talking to himself and the visions his mind had cooked up for him, or maybe he was just that passionate about it, either way, he was not letting up.
As she shined his light back towards the center of the shelter, he noticed something he hadn't upon first inspection coming down the stairs. On the floor, in red paint, almost matching that of the rusted steel hell, was the map of the continental United States. Over the top of that were several straight lines that Justin began inspecting thoroughly. There was a line coming from forty-seven of the states, and they all looked to connect and pass through at a single point somewhere over Minnesota. As he positioned himself on that point, Lia's voice called out to him once more. "So, tell me Justin, what are you looking for?"
In a similar fashion as his run-in with his vision of Damian outside, he glanced up at the ceiling of the structure and pointed his flashlight up as well. A manila envelope in a plastic cover had been taped above that very spot where all the lines connected on the painted map. The ceiling was maybe eight feet high, so Justin was able to easily reach up and tear the plastic cover down to retrieve the envelope. He pointed his flashlight around, and all three ghosts had disappeared.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he made a mad dash for the stairs, climbed out of the rusted chamber, and back into the shine of his headlights. As he kicked the steel door shut, and did his best to shelter his ears from the loud clang the followed, he noticed that it had stopped snowing. The cool air and fallen precipitation coupled with the still cooling ground made it seem like there was a rolling fog at his feet.
This was especially creepy as his eyes adjusted to being back outside. As everything came back into focus, of all the things he had seen that evening, he could believe them for a second, as the burnt campus grounds were littered with tombstones. As if the small cemetery out back had grown in the half hour he spent in the steel shelter, he repeated similar actions of before by clenching his eyes shut.
In the reverse effect of what he was hoping for, upon opening his eyes, the first headstone he spotted, the only one with any words on it at all, had two words he didn't want to see, Kaden Calix. "This isn't real!"
"Or maybe it is." A voice shot out from behind Justin, and he turned around quickly to see the mental specter of that which haunted him from the future. "Are you prepared for that?" Kaden's ghost questioned. "Are you ready to accept the fact that what you did to me all those years ago lead to this?"
"THIS... ISN'T... REAL!"
"How have you lived with yourself? How can you to live with yourself? Will you be able to continue living with yourself?" The real Christopher Kaden Calix was not a malicious individual, so of all the ghosts that Justin had dealt with that evening, this one seemed a lot different. It was almost as if his own mind was starting to punish him, which was nothing new for the Force of Nature, but this time it was doing it a much more creative way. "It should be you down there, not me!" The vision then reached for Justin's throat, and he closed his eyes again.
Rather than stand there, however, he turned and ran towards his car, letting the light of the headlights glowing through his eyelids lead him back to safety. As he got closer, he did finally open his eyes again, if only to find the door handle to quickly jump back into the Chevelle. He flipped his headlights off to prevent him from seeing anything worse than he already had that night. Even so, he still clenched his eyes closed as he tried to catch his breath and slow his heart rate.
Tap Tap Tap
Real or not, the sound of fingers tapping on the driver's side window sent Justin into a frenzy as he started his car back up, and threw it into reverse. He spun a one eighty as he flipped his headlights on, and showed the old Southwind Gardens his taillights, hopefully for the last time.
While the mid-Autumn front had obstructed his view of the night sky, the flurries that accompanied it gave him a taste. The headlights to his nineteen seventy Chevelle reflected off of every single flake as a million twinkling stars fell to the earth and faded away on impact. It was the first snow of the season that the Force of Nature had witnessed, missing out on the inaugural fall a fortnight prior, but it was still as breathtaking as any he had seen before.
Amongst the falling precipitation lit up by the headlights of his muscle car, out in the country north of Wichita, Kansas, was the charred husk of Southwind Gardens. For nearly five decades the hospital had given hope to those and their families for mental recovery against ailments far beyond comprehension to most individuals. Now, a burnt skeleton, scorched earth, and thousands of ghosts were all that remained.
These were no ordinary ghosts either, despite the dozens of unmarked headstones on the backside of the property marking the final resting place for those sick patients that expired while under the care of doctors form Southwind’s past. It was unfortunate that those who ended up back there were alone in the world, with no friends or family to claim them. Even so, their passing was not of any concern amidst the demons left behind.
Justin would have rather been standing in the middle of that cemetery than traipsing through the rubble. For that matter, he wouldn't have passed up a drink with Damian Sorrow over his predicament at that point in time; even a stroll down Main in Hangtown sounded more pleasing.
With the way things came to head with Lia being taken back into custody, Justin was not about to hesitate on trying to find the next missing patient. While he was left more questions when the young woman suddenly switched from thinking he was her former lover, Steven Lee, to crying that man's name towards Justin's younger brother, Aaron, there was no time to go back and visit the former doctor Sorrow. That man would leave him with even more questions and not enough answers anyway, especially with the way Justin left their last meeting.
This did not prevent Damian from coming to visit him.
"Look twice, and see it for the first time. Look once, and never see it again. Down you go, son, down, down you go. Up, up, and away!" There was no denying the fact that in times of major stress, Justin's imagination could get the best of him. As he turned back towards his car, a silhouette of a man standing in the headlights was all he could see, or rather, all his mind allowed him to see. Turning back around, he ignored the figment of his imagination, but Damian's unmistakable voice continued to call out to him, to mock him. "This is the sort of thing that people like you need people like me for, you know this to be true Number One."
He cringed, even when the voice came from that overly creative place in his mind, Justin still couldn't stand it. "You're not real!"
Even with all the facts supporting his affirmation, the mental specter of all things that haunted him in the past remained. "Suppose you are correct, does saying it out loud make this situation any better for you?" Justin continued to stalk around the rubble, in an obvious hunt for something in particular, and he did his best to ignore the manifestation of his inner turmoil. "We both know why I am here, Number One!"
Being referred to as Damian's first "special patient", the pet name, Number One, dug so far under Justin's skin, the proverbial pain caused a tingling sensation to creep up his spine. "You're not real!"
His resolve was unwavering, his ingenuity was working to break it. "We both know that you do not think it is possible to find all five of the missing patients before something goes horribly wrong, either with one of them, or with yourself." Even though it wasn't real, Damian's voice did seem so realistic to the Force of Nature. Not only that, but the former doctor's way of speaking came out so clearly for only being in his head. "One down, but four more to go." The voice continued. "With twins on the way in your personal life, and a shiny hunk of metal to defend in your professional life, how will you find time to balance it all while trying to decipher my words, in hopes that they actually lead you somewhere?"
"This puzzle is more important to you then it is for me!" Justin shouted. "You want me to find them more than I want to find them. You hope they will lead me to Kaden more than I want them to lead me to him." He continued to meander across the grounds, stomping on the ground every ten feet or so. "You want to see years of planning and manipulation come together in this sick and twisted experiment you've concocted, while I just want to make sure these people are safe, and get the help they deserve!"
"My my my, Number One! Are you the doctor here, or am I?" Asked the voice.
Shaking his head Justin clenched his teeth together, ignoring the statement. "I haven't seen Kaden in a little over seven years, since the day I made the mistake of handing him over to you for fear that he had been lost in his own head, and needed the help to get back out again!" The volume of his voice continued to increase, thankfully he was out in the middle of nowhere while talking to himself. "Seven years without seeing a man that looked up to me, thought me a mentor; a man I'd call a friend, but probably wouldn't feel the same... even if I do see him again."
"Do you have a point, or is your rant as pointless as this so called figment of your imagination?" Damian's manifestation queried, still mocking Justin in the process.
"My point is, for all I know, Kaden is dead; so if I never see him again, nothing has changed!" He stopped dead in his tracks. Thinking that was always hard to choke down, but hearing himself say it out loud for the first time was both shocking and painful. "I'm not going to let that stop me from looking for him, and even if this maze you are leading me through only has the smallest of chances of me finding him, I'll gladly run it like a lab rat."
As Justin continued to scavenge through what remained of the old Southwind Gardens, the campus that will be cleaned up the following spring and left an open field as the new Southwind was being built on a larger plot of land, a silence fell. All that could be heard was the faint sounds of snowflakes falling to the ground, and what little white noise was being emitted by the headlights of his car. But just when Stormm thought he didn't have that nagging to deal with anymore, it returned. "So, tell me Number One, what are you doing here?"
There was no answering the question as Justin stomped down hard on the ground, only for his foot to meet steel and not earth. He glanced at the ground, and the back towards the headlights behind him where Damian's silhouette no longer was. The riddle that the old man had given him several weeks ago was tough to navigate, but as soon as he forgot about trying to solve it, he did just that.
He kicked away at all the debris that covered that which he was searching for, uncovering a steel door; the steel door that lead to the hidden bomb shelter that Damian had used for hiding anything he felt he needed to hide from the rest of the world. Justin had been inside of it twice before, once after Damian and his goons had kidnapped him during his reign as Pure Class Wrestling World Champion, the other time he barged in to save his brother from months of nightmares.
The rusted steel door cried out in agony as Justin pried it open, and after struggling with it, finally managed to get it pulled open. The light from his headlights did not reach down into the abyss, so with the help of the flash from his smart phone, Justin descended the metals steps down into the underground shelter.
Despite the brightness of his phone up close, the flash itself was not doing a very good job of lighting up the hell he had walked into, and he was forced to examine every inch more closely than he originally wanted to. Granted, the time of day he chose was not the best, but even in broad daylight, the sun would have been of little help to him. As he swept the light on his phone from side to side, looking into all nooks and crannies of the shelter, something startled him, and it wasn't the smell of mold and mildew that hit him before he even walked down the stairs.
He jumped backwards as two faces had seemingly jumped out at him as he moved his flashlight towards a corner of the shelter. He composed himself and pointed the light back towards the corner to reveal the illusions of two people that, together made no sense, but separately, made perfect sense. The six foot, five inch presence of Steven Lee was accompanied by the five foot, eleven inch figure of the young woman, Gem.
"You're not real!" He blurted out quickly, knowing better than for either of them to have been down there, let alone together. Not only was it a declaration of the truth, but also one of comfort, as Justin tried to calm himself down from the scare he just took.
Unlike the first mental ghost, neither one of these had anything to say. If not for anything else, these two had enough in common in that neither had much to say. Gem was not big on words towards those she didn't care about, or had enough reason to care about, so she kept her mouth shut. Steven was not big on talking in general, then again, as far as Justin knew, Steven was still on the streak of not speaking a word since two thousand six.
Justin closed his eyes tight for a moment, and opened them back up, but both of them remained. "You're not real!" Surely if he said it enough, they'd go away, since it worked so well the first time? There was no denying the level of stress that Justin had imposed on himself lately, and these manifestations were testament to that. To add to that stress level was the fact that he had an upcoming match with one of the individuals he had cooked up in his head. However, both of them standing before him, as far as opponents inside of the squared circle are concerned, he had never beaten. He and Steven had wrestled to two time limit draws in the past, while Gem had cleanly pinned Stormm twice in as many matches in the present.
If they were going to remain silent, however, Justin chose to ignore them; but two became three as Justin turned around and was met face to illusionary face with the third mental specter of all things that haunted him at that present. It only made sense for Lianna Leitz to make an appearance in Justin's mind, given everyone else who had showed up to that point. "What makes you think you can win?"
There was an infinite number of things she could be talking about, or that his mind could be telling her to talk about. It was all starting to get fuzzy, and the more visions he had, the more blurred the lines between fantasy and reality became. "What makes anyone think I can't?" He asked as waited for his heart to sink back down into his chest.
"Gem has beaten you twice in each of your last two matches, distracted or not, there's no denying her drive to ascend in PCW, and now she has the opportunity to take your North American title away from you!" Justin glanced over his shoulder and pointed his phone back to the corner where the visions of Gem and Steven were before. The two were still standing there, the same blank expressions on their faces as before, but this time, Gem was holding the North American title belt above her head in a victory stance. "Stormm has always had a way of mucking up title matches, and that's always going to be in the back of your head... obviously!"
Justin didn't remember much of Lia before her breakdown, back when she and Steven were still dating, and neither of them had fallen off the wagon, but apparently his subconscious had chosen that version of her to manifest before him. "The more of this shit that I can figure out now, the less I have to worry about inside of that ring on Sunday!" He blurted out as he turned back towards the talkative specter, his words echoed off the steel walls of the shelter. "Beating someone two times in a row is tough as it is, but taking three in a row in this business, in this federation, is an even bigger mountain to climb!"
"She seems to be climbing mountains left and right." Quick and witty, this was definitely the Lia that Justin remembered. The Lia that he nearly slept with the night after his and Steven's second match against one another. Granted, this was well before he and Lindsay finally got together, and his wife was none the wiser of that night, but trying to forget about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. "You better hope you clear that pretty little head of yours before you step into the ring with her again, otherwise the faithful are going to see a familiar face, that of Stormm losing another title match."
"I'll keep that in mind." He joked as he started to flash his light around the room to continue looking for any evidence of where his search would take him after this visit.
Without eyes on the ghosts of his imagination, his other sense seemed heightened, and he thought he could hear the shuffles of feet from the three of them following him around the steel box. "As much as he wants you to find them all, you know it would make a better story for him to hear about you failing miserably." The manifestation of Lia had moved on from the squared circle to Justin's personal life and his struggles with Damian Sorrow and trying to find Kaden along with the rest of the escaped patients.
"I'll be damned if that old son of a bitch gets his way, so I'll do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen!" He continued to yell, as if he were trying to prove a point to more than just himself. Perhaps it made him feel better about the fact that he was talking to himself and the visions his mind had cooked up for him, or maybe he was just that passionate about it, either way, he was not letting up.
As she shined his light back towards the center of the shelter, he noticed something he hadn't upon first inspection coming down the stairs. On the floor, in red paint, almost matching that of the rusted steel hell, was the map of the continental United States. Over the top of that were several straight lines that Justin began inspecting thoroughly. There was a line coming from forty-seven of the states, and they all looked to connect and pass through at a single point somewhere over Minnesota. As he positioned himself on that point, Lia's voice called out to him once more. "So, tell me Justin, what are you looking for?"
In a similar fashion as his run-in with his vision of Damian outside, he glanced up at the ceiling of the structure and pointed his flashlight up as well. A manila envelope in a plastic cover had been taped above that very spot where all the lines connected on the painted map. The ceiling was maybe eight feet high, so Justin was able to easily reach up and tear the plastic cover down to retrieve the envelope. He pointed his flashlight around, and all three ghosts had disappeared.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he made a mad dash for the stairs, climbed out of the rusted chamber, and back into the shine of his headlights. As he kicked the steel door shut, and did his best to shelter his ears from the loud clang the followed, he noticed that it had stopped snowing. The cool air and fallen precipitation coupled with the still cooling ground made it seem like there was a rolling fog at his feet.
This was especially creepy as his eyes adjusted to being back outside. As everything came back into focus, of all the things he had seen that evening, he could believe them for a second, as the burnt campus grounds were littered with tombstones. As if the small cemetery out back had grown in the half hour he spent in the steel shelter, he repeated similar actions of before by clenching his eyes shut.
In the reverse effect of what he was hoping for, upon opening his eyes, the first headstone he spotted, the only one with any words on it at all, had two words he didn't want to see, Kaden Calix. "This isn't real!"
"Or maybe it is." A voice shot out from behind Justin, and he turned around quickly to see the mental specter of that which haunted him from the future. "Are you prepared for that?" Kaden's ghost questioned. "Are you ready to accept the fact that what you did to me all those years ago lead to this?"
"THIS... ISN'T... REAL!"
"How have you lived with yourself? How can you to live with yourself? Will you be able to continue living with yourself?" The real Christopher Kaden Calix was not a malicious individual, so of all the ghosts that Justin had dealt with that evening, this one seemed a lot different. It was almost as if his own mind was starting to punish him, which was nothing new for the Force of Nature, but this time it was doing it a much more creative way. "It should be you down there, not me!" The vision then reached for Justin's throat, and he closed his eyes again.
Rather than stand there, however, he turned and ran towards his car, letting the light of the headlights glowing through his eyelids lead him back to safety. As he got closer, he did finally open his eyes again, if only to find the door handle to quickly jump back into the Chevelle. He flipped his headlights off to prevent him from seeing anything worse than he already had that night. Even so, he still clenched his eyes closed as he tried to catch his breath and slow his heart rate.
Tap Tap Tap
Real or not, the sound of fingers tapping on the driver's side window sent Justin into a frenzy as he started his car back up, and threw it into reverse. He spun a one eighty as he flipped his headlights on, and showed the old Southwind Gardens his taillights, hopefully for the last time.
