|
Ghost Story
from the archives of the Springfield Home for the Mentally Unsteady
Gregory Mortimer – a diary
23 March XXXX
We talked every day about our life once we left this hellhole. We were to marry and tour the world with our fortunes. Our parents are all dead, but we don’t know why. We know we were here because of them. They say we killed our parents, but we don’t remember. We’re both the same, Lucy and me.
I see words of some man called the Boss: “It’s just your ghost / moving through the night / your spirit filled with light / I need, need you by my side.”
We both escaped and went back to her mansion. I felt something there watching us. I am mad, touched by the damn gods of mischief. But she is, she was, madder. Like a hatter. “Your love and I’m alive / I’m alive and I can feel the blood shiver in my bones.”
She was suddenly just gone. And then standing there was a little girl, standing there giggling and laughing and cackling. That girl, that young girl, her portrait hanging on the wall. She was there, and she was Lucy. I could tell. She was Lucy, like what Lucy said to me at the Springfield Home. My love Lucy was a prisoner to her own evil child spirit, and there she was cackling, like a Salem witch. She pointed to the attic, and it was my duty to follow her crooked finger above upon the hanging ladder.
“I’m alive and I’m out here on my own / I’m alive and I’m comin’ home / Yeah I’m comin’ home.”
Lucy my love, hanging there from a rope prepared by the spirit awaiting her return. Her dress stained in the mud of the river we swam across hung limply. Her face held a horror, the face of staring your own ghost in the face and falling into an eternal abyss of madness and despair. Behind me, I heard the giggling, then the laughing, then the cackling. I ran, I ran, and I ran past all, I needed to return here, this hell is my home.
“I’m alive and I’m out here on my own / I’m alive and I’m comin’ home / Yeah I’m comin’ home.”
The Boss told me, over and over. Lucy my love is no more. Her ghost is in the mansion forever more. I sit here writing. I’m alive and I’m home. It’s just your ghost, Lucy. I’m alive and I can feel the blood shiver in my bones. I’m alive and I’m in here on my own.
|