Let’s Twist Again

This week’s new flash fiction is another attempt at a ghost story by a non-horror writer.

Let’s Twist Again

The mist was something incorporeal yet palpable as it settled over the country cemetery. Edward had a job to do. Grave digging was noble work. Sufficed to provide for a meager joint of mutton on the table for he and the missus. He took no mind of the other villagers’ talk of ghosts. Until one cornered him. He rubbed his eyes, struggling for an explanation, not being a man prone to drink or fancy. The specter flashed towards him. Terrifying. Edward made hasty final arrangements with his maker. Prepared for the end. The phantom had him, dead to rights.

“Cut,” yelled the director.

Later in his office after reviewing the dailies, Otto the great director, the auteur, sneered at what he’d just seen. What he’d produced. The drivel. The laughable special effects. Ghosts, what nonsense. But it was what the insipid public wanted. Paid the bills. As he arose to refill his tumbler, the temperature in the room plummeted. The walls sweated a gelatinous ooze. Which transmogrified into a near solid apparition. A night creature. A wispy demon. Howling, it catapulted towards the cowering filmmaker. This is no movie, he thought. Would that I could capture this abomination on celluloid. But that seemed not his fate. He readied to be consumed by the onrushing banshee.

Then he awoke with a start. Groggy. But tachycardic. Drenched in sweat. All a bad dream, he realized with a grim laugh. Ghosts. What folly. He resolved not to eat kippered herring before bed anymore.

Now wide awake, Otto chided himself for an overactive imagination. Susceptibility to hobgoblins. Looked up, to his horror and surprise, to face a fresh hell, a specter more horrific than the last. More grotesque. Angrier. Hungrier. The director fled his room and the wraith gave chase. Both of them screaming bloody murder. This was no dream. He was wide awake. He was sure of it. The entity drew nearer and nearer, rearing to strike.

Finally the attendants at the asylum wrestled Otto to the ground in the hallway.

“Now it’s ghosts,” said the nurse, pressing the plunger to administer the soothing sedative. “What’s next? He already thinks he’s Spielberg.”

“Batty,” concurred her shift-mate preparing the straitjacket.

But this spirit was no madman’s hallucination. A mile high, looking down at the Earthlings, Zilg was losing patience. “Run it again,” he exhorted. “These humans! So dim. How are we supposed to conduct a proper simulation? How can we study their fear reflexes? Reintroduce the ghostly image, wipe all memories clean and restart the experiment.” Otto’s torment began anew.

Roderick put down his pen. Sick with himself. Disgusted he had lowered himself to resort to such cheap plot devices. How could he stoop so? Story within a story. A dream? The oldest trick in the book. Lunatic ravings. Space aliens! Had he really sunk to this level? Contrived twists. Parlor tricks. Did he have such little regard for his readers? For himself? Mother was right. All he had was smoke and mirrors. Transparent. Amateurish. All sizzle no steak. His self flagellation was interrupted by a single drop from above, absorbed by his writing paper. Blood red. Roderick looked up. Noted the spread of a menacing crimson stain on the ceiling. He ran and grabbed the tall ladder from the shed. Climbed to the top rung. Fingered the blotch. Licked his finger. Port wine. Quite satisfactory. He’d forgotten the casks stored in the attic. He’d have to get up there and plug the leak. But then he heard something frightful. A low keening moan. Then a different groan. Chilling. This was real. More real than anything in the claptrap he wrote. This was genuine. An arresting sound. Haunting. One he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life. All twenty seconds of it. Could it be a fearsome ghoul? Bunk, he thought. No such thing. More likely something rational. Something that could be explained. Something scientific. Like the sound of old wood. Creaking. Cracking. Separating. That’s it. Exactly. The sound an old ladder makes, he realized too late, right before it splinters into a hundred pieces and collapses. Gravity took its course and Roderick plummeted like a ripe tree fruit. Hit the hard granite floor tiles with a thud, like a reckless middleweight. His spirit left him at once. Headed for the attic to await the next resident. At long last, he’d conjured a proper ghost!