Good Afternoon Everyone!
This is my 24 Hour Short Story Contest Entry hosted by @mctiller!
The prompt for this story is: A man who doesn't believe in ghosts checks into a mental hospital that has been closed for twenty years.
How awesome is that! Here is the link to more of the contest particulars and how you can also enter!
Good Luck to all the other entries!
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You ever received a phone call from a dead man?
I was 20 when I met Thomas. Tommy. We were friends of circumstance. He was a newly inducted member to the Belle Wake Institute for Troubled Children. Me, well, I was a veteran. My parents locked me up at the tender age of 12. I've never seen the chart but I imagine it read "disobedient, insomniac, violent." I'd laugh out loud but whatever it said was the truth.
Tommy was different. He didn't belong. He'd look you in the eyes when you talked, understanding. Sweet but not weak. His mother had divorced his father for some investment banker and neither parent wanted the responsibility of caring for a child.
Welcome to Belle Wake Tommy, its hell.
He wasn't sick. Not like the rest of us. That didn't stop the procedures. Sadists every single one.
Physical and mental abuse were the norm at Belle Wake but what was really special was the treatments. The electrodes buzzed. Blood was drawn but in the end me and Tom, we were the same. We’d never break, not for them. That's when they roomed us together, some halfcocked idea about absorption. Exposure, pills, absorption. Exposure, pills, absorption. Why'd they want to incite violence in somebody like Tommy I could never know. My violence for Tommy's peace.
Tommy used to ask "Is this home?"
Naw kid, this is hell.
He died. It was an accident, a new form of 'treatment'. Something went wrong. A civil group sued the hospital, Tommy's parents didn't care.
Belle Wake closed one year later. I was let loose, no one to claim me. My parents had walked away long ago.
I am not an animal. I have fought and scraped and loved and worked myself to the bone. Belle Wake should be a distant memory.
Ring.............Ring.......
I still have a landline. Somethings are harder for criminals.
Ring.............Ring.......
"Hello"
"It's time to come home....."
"The fu*..........."
"It's time to come home....."
"Who is this.......I'll break your legs if this is about...."
"It's time to come home....."
You know that sound, when the other end hangs up. Click and then……….That's all that I had.
It was weird. I felt weird. All over, skin dancing. That voice, on the other end.......It was Tommy. It had to be. Just like him. But he'd died....what 20 years ago?
Belle Wake still stood, barely, in the shadow of the moon.
Boarded up, shut, the rats ruled. It was as dark inside as my memories of it.
I kicked through the refuse as I headed toward my old room, our old room.
Past the treatment stations, the examination tables. Past the orderly office.
Past. It gave me shivers
I came to our door. Shut, locked. I kicked it in. No one’s home, there shouldn’t be. I felt hollow inside.
The bobbing light cast long shadows across the dusty hallway. They must still have someone on payroll. A night watchman. I had nowhere to go. The light danced over my face. Blinded.
“Tommy? Geez…Tommy is that you?”
Familiar? I’m so confused.
“What? How do you know Tommy? Tommy’s dead.” I growled.
“No Tommy, it’s me Francis. I used to work the front desk, remember? Belle Wake kept me on after, ya know……for security…..”
“Tommy’s dead! You killed Tommy!” I was regressing.
“No Tommy, now calm down. Your mother came back for you and filed that law suit after she saw what was being done in here…..You just up and disappeared on her after. Looked for you for years…..”
I do remember him. He was an orderly when I was locked up but he wasn’t a monster. I was.
I rushed Francis. I was strong. I had him on the ground in an instant. His maglight tumbled with him. It went out. We were the darkness.
I sat in our room, in blood, warm and wet. The rats scurried over me, over Francis, lifeless.
The dawning sun threw rays of light across the floor, diffused through broken boards and shattered glass. I was home.
