Dismal Hollow: Supernatural Haven

Welcome to Hell.

Ha ha, no, I’m just kidding. It’s not really Hell. Just the Afterlife, the Underworld, Hades, what have you. Yeah, the Greeks had it right, I guess. I’ll be your ferryman. Charon? Nah, I’m just filling in while he’s on vacation. I’m kinda new at this boat-driving thing, so it might take a while. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. How did I get here? Well.
 
Everyone should remember the story that ran in the news about the zombie rampage at a mall out in New England. You don’t? Poor sod, out of the loop so bad. Anyway, there was a zombie rampage in Dismal Hollow. Yeah, it’s a town. Which state doesn’t really matter, stop interrupting my story – you wanted to know how I died. There are a bunch of us from that disaster. Ha, just now you ask about the zombies. Hell yeah, they exist, although they prefer to be called the living-impaired. Now shut up and let me tell my story.

I was one of the first to go – as a matter of fact, I was officially the ninth – standing right next to the door with a bunch of teenagers. Did I mention that they were the first eight? No? Well, they were. Let me tell you, being eaten by zombies is an extremely unpleasant way to die. No, I don’t think being eaten by something else would be better, moron.

Oh, him? Yeah, he got torn up a lot worse than the rest of us, rides the boat back and forth for some reason. He was the last, went down fighting. I know because I saw the whole thing. What, you didn’t think ghosts were real, either? You are singularly unimaginative. Of course I had unfinished business. Had to make sure my daughter either made it out or at least met a friendly face when she went. Greeted by Angels? That’s a bleeding lie.You ought to know... “Oh, yeah”, you say. There’s something off with you, kiddo. His story? Yeah, I know it – I was there.

The moment I realized I was dead, I also realized that I wasn’t with my body. In fact, I was as far from my body as possible. I was in the back of some fast food place that – I figured – was in the mall’s food court. Specifically, I was standing behind a girl who was washing dishes at a sink in the back of some fast food place in the mall’s food court. She was muttering to herself about stupid people and how no one could think to rinse grease out of pans, her long black braid twitching slightly, like some sort of tail. That was my tip-off as to why I had been transported here seemingly by magic. The girl had to be Aberle. My daughter. Oh, she had no idea that I’m her father. Was. Was her father. I really have to start remembering that I’m dead. Was her father.

She spun, presumably to track down whoever had offended her by not rinsing out the pan. Her eyes turned to where my ghostly self was, and her left pupil contracted. But only her left. It was an odd reaction, to be sure, as though her one eye saw something the other didn’t (I later figured out that that’s exactly what it was. How was I to know her left eye could see ghosts? I guess the whole left eye being green while the right was brown could have been a clue, but I digress). She dropped the pan and raised a hand to point at me, but she was distracted from demanding who I was – she didn’t know I was dead – when screams issued up from the stairs leading down to the actual seating area of the food court.

Giving me a decidedly dirty look that warned me to stay put, she practically sprinted to the front of the store. And I, being the obliging and obedient person I am, naturally followed her. What? She’s my daughter, and it hadn’t quite sunk in yet that I was d-e-a-d dead and wouldn’t be able to help her if there was danger.

Fortunately, there wasn’t anything trying to attack this level of the center court.

Apparently, though, there was a massacre happening on the lower floor. Being a ghost myself, I could obviously see the spirits of those people who had died, some of them rising through the floor, instinct making them recoil from the zombies before being pulled down to the Underworld. Having her psychic eye, Aberle could see them, too, which is why she knew better than to start heading down the stairs into what I knew was a roiling pit of undead; and, instead, she took one step back, then another, then turned and ran straight through me into the kitchen again.

It was getting awfully close to closing time, and Aberle was the only one left in her particular restaurant. The manager and the cook had left minutes earlier. Many of the other restaurants were already closed and abandoned. There were two places still open, a sandwich counter and a taco place. There were maybe three people working at the little mexican place, and they all ran off after hearing the screams, I guess to attempt their own escape. At the sandwich counter, what looked like the manager was telling the only other person there to stay put.       

I wasn’t paying attention when he went to investigate the screams, more interested in watching my daughter kicking at a sink, trying to bust a big enough piece of pipe off of it to use as a bludgeoning tool of death.  She finally managed to get a good sized chunk of plumbing – there are several drainage pipes that hang down off the sinks so they can empty into a communal drain and those are held on by a couple of measly screws – and hopped right over the counter to collect the only other person left in the entire center court of the mall.

“C’mon, Derrick,” she was saying when I caught up with her. Hey, it’s tough when you’re first getting used to your spirit legs. “We have to go.”

“I…I don’t know, Abs, I mean…Glen told me to stay here. Right here.”

“Don't call me Abs. And Glen’s not gonna know. Seriously, we need to go before whatever it is that’s down there manages to make it up the stairs. Your safety is probably more important than Glen’s precious, precious sandwich counter.” At this point, she grabbed his wrist and practically hauled him out from behind the register and took off towards the bathrooms. Aberle dragged him past three other service counters and into one of the three Family Restrooms. She shoved him into the far corner between the wall and the sink while she locked the door, the pipe clutched in her right hand the entire time. By now, I understood exactly what it meant to be a ghost, meaning I could walk through walls, be invisible, and – wonder of wonders – not die even running through a crowd of zombies. So, I made use of the first skill and joined my daughter and Derrick in their hideaway.

By no means should you believe that because I can go visible and invisible to normal people, I can become invisible to psychics, clairvoyants, and Aberle. I had conveniently forgotten that she could see me. My mistake was made obvious when I came through the wall, and she screamed. And thus, she realized that I was…am…dead. 

Derrick, the poor boy, was still in the corner of the little restroom, looking at Aberle like she was in need of some serious mental help. I decided to take pity on him and went solid. And he screamed. In a manly way befitting a three-year-old girl. Sighing, I cursed and held my head in my hands until he finished. “Done now?” I asked him, and he nodded dumbly before sliding down the wall to sit on the blue tile floor. And so, he knew I was a ghost.

“What’d he say?” Aberle turned to the boy and raised a questioning eyebrow. I blinked at that; I hadn’t even considered that she wouldn’t be able to hear me. Then I smacked myself. Of course, she had a psychic eye. She could see ghosts, not hear them. As it turned out, Derrick could hear the dead, and would be translating for the next hour or so.

She had opened her mouth to, I guess, start a list of questions directed at me when there was a dull thud against the door. Derrick and Aberle turned to each other, eyes wide, looking vaguely panicked.

“Do…do we see what that was?” was Derrick’s question.

Then they both turned toward me expectantly. I was already getting sick of them doing everything in sync. I sighed again, another thing I was getting sick of, and phased out. It was a good idea, I have to admit, since I would not only be invisible, but I couldn’t come to harm even if it was a zombie out there. Why? Because I was DEAD! Once you’re dead, that’s it. Game over. It didn’t even occur to me that those two had no idea what it was that was running around taking out everything alive. I stuck my head and shoulders through the wall, not expecting what was out there. A woman stood on the other side of the door, looking over her shoulder nervously every minute or so. The first thing I noticed about her was her hair. It was a burnished copper and hung straight to her shoulders. The second was her violet eyes. They bled out from her pupils, gradually fading into a dull plum color.
I made what I hoped was an affirmative motion at Aberle with one of my hands and brought the other half of myself back into the bathroom. It had apparently gotten through that it was okay to open the door because by the time I rejoined them the woman was inside as well. Derrick was still huddling in the corner, but Aberle was bombarding the lady with questions: What was happening? Who was doing this? How many others were still alive? How had she managed to get to the center court without injury?

And, amazingly, the woman was answering all of them fairly calmly, even if the look in her eyes was ever so panicked. She saw the zombies when she happened to look over one of the rails that kept not-especially-intelligent people from falling over the edge of an open area. The designers had left some spaces on the second floor open to allow sunlight from the skylights to reach the first floor. That answered Aberle’s second question, so she went on to say that she had no idea how many others had survived. She had made it here because she was an aura reader. She’d noticed a lot of very dim auras on the lower levels. Knowing that those people were going to die soon, she headed upstairs and toward the brightest aura she could sense. She’d panicked briefly when her proverbial guiding light had disappeared, but continued in the direction she had been going and ended up in front of the bathroom. At that point, she gestured at Aberle and muttered something about the aura and how my daughter would probably live forever based on how bright it was.

Cassandra hated me. I wasn’t sure why, maybe it was that she couldn’t sense me or that she could and my non-aura nauseated her. I was a void to her, and that made her twitchy.

Then she fired back with her own question. “How did you know it was okay to open the door? Especially since you couldn’t have known what was out there.”
Aberle turned towards me, in the corner diagonal from Derrick, where I was still invisible. I shrugged and, bracing myself for another scream, resolidified again.  She didn’t scream, just appeared slightly queasy. Then she gave a sick looking smile and nodded in understanding. She introduced herself as Cassandra and asked me, “So, who were you?”

So I told her. Derrick had to translate. Cassandra couldn’t hear me either. I wasn't really happy with how he decided to translate, though. "Mr. Karin? Abs...He's your dad...."

I sighed, and suddenly the floor between my feet was very interesting. After a few minutes with no reaction, I looked up at her and winced when I was met with a stony glare.

"Now is not the time for this. We will talk about it later. Understood?" 

I could only nod.

It turned out that the only other survivor who joined our group was Emeric. I’d originally thought that he was maybe fourteen, with his curly red hair. He joined us maybe twenty minutes after Cassandra had. He was an empath that had also been on the first floor. As soon as he’d started feeling people dying, though, he instinctively headed for higher ground, abandoning his post at the little kiosk that sold watches. He’d actually stopped about halfway up the stairs and looked back, noticing that he wasn’t being followed. The zombies had trouble on stairs. Go figure. The fact that the mall refused to renovate and add escalators had saved their lives.

When Cassandra asked Emeric how he’d known that he wasn’t being followed, he just turned his piercing yellow gaze to her, daring her to ask any other questions. That glare caused my initial estimation of his age to skyrocket. It also clued the others in to the boy’s adorably over-the-top paranoia.

All through the introductions and subsequent story telling, Aberle had a rather odd look on her face, as though she was making plans but she didn’t like them. Derrick was still in the corner, vibrating slightly, his eyes darting around like wild. I guess that he hadn’t realized before that he could hear the dead. Cassandra had noticed that Aberle wasn’t looking too pleased as well and kept throwing her questioning looks, looks that Aberle would only respond to with a small shake of her head.
“So…how are we gonna get out of here?” Cassandra’s question made Aberle visibly wince. It also started a discussion about the virtues of just waiting for rescue crews. Emeric put a screeching stop to that, though, by pointing out that, with Dismal Hollow’s history of odd events, the authorities probably thought it best to not waste the resources trying to save anyone from zombies.

A little information on zombies: they’re notoriously stubborn in finding victims, food, whatever you want to call it. If they can see someone, they will find a way to get to them. There are very rarely survivors of a zombie attack. Zombies aren’t exactly smart, but they make up for that with sheer tenacity. Hm? Oh, the odd events I mentioned. Yeah, Dismal Hollow is pretty famous for zombie rampages every couple of years, poltergeists occasionally holding people hostage, vampire revolts, there’s even been the odd werewolf or two.

“You’re just being a jerk.” Cassandra accused, pointing at the boy and giving her best impersonation of the Death Glare.

“Maybe. I know you don’t like it, but you’ve got a plan, Abs.” Emeric pointed out, easily using a nickname that my daughter despised and running a hand through his hair.

“I do, but I’d rather not use it.” 

Derrick finally seemed to have come to terms with his clairaudience and managed to prod Aberle into sharing her idea. There were a lot of dark looks thrown around the now very small room as the group realized why she didn’t want to rely on that particular plan. The plan was very dangerous, involving actual hand-to-hand with the zombies and basically wading through that sea of undead to get to the doors. One or more of them could die. 

Sadly, after an hour of discussion, there still wasn’t a better plan on the drawing table. So, rather reluctantly, Aberle became their leader. She still had her pipe, but no one else had a weapon. That became their first objective. Derrick crept back to the sandwich counter where he worked and liberated a few bread knives. Emeric scoffed at him for getting blades, muttering something about how only an idiot would think they could get rid of zombies with knives. Derrick just shrugged and managed a half-smile. Cassandra and Emeric both went for Aberle’s method: bludgeoning tools. They came back with a waffle iron and an aluminum bat, respectively.

As they assembled at the top of the stairs between the bathrooms and a janitor’s closet and looked down into a mass of walking dead, I felt a strange pull at the back of my consciousness. I ignored it, though, as something unimportant, and joined the little group in staring at the green-skinned rotting things, some oozing an odd, clear liquid, all of them with the same shuddering walk as they dragged themselves along, looking for fresh victims. For a reason that I couldn’t fathom, Cassandra was looking at Derrick with something akin to pity in her eyes. Aberle was either completely oblivious to the tension in the air or was just very good at ignoring it as they decided to play rock-paper-scissors to see who would take point. Cassandra’s concern was explained when Derrick ended up with that dubious honor. I missed what Emeric said to Aberle because of a much stronger tug at my mind, but it must have been something nasty, as she was glaring at him.

“What the hell is your problem? You’d think you’d be a little nicer, being an empath and all!” Aberle screamed at him, drawing attention to herself, both from Cassandra and Derrick, and from the zombies.

“You have no idea how being empathic affects people then! You deal with having other people’s emotions infringe on you so much you can’t tell which are yours! You’d be nasty, too!”

“Good luck, boy-o,” I managed to speak to Derrick over the fight as he steeled himself to start down the stairs, and he smiled at me. Aberle and Emeric calmed down enough that they were only fuming slightly and tossing glares at each other over Cassandra’s head every once in awhile. Then it started. Derrick plunged downstairs at full speed, a bread knife in either hand. I wish I could say that he managed some sort of battle cry, but it would be a lie. He descended in dead silence. I was behind him in solid form, intending to at least attempt to shield him from some damage. Aberle came barreling down after me; Emeric and Cassandra were hot on her heels.

Most of the battle is a blur to me. What sticks out is when Derrick went down, maybe five minutes into it, arms liberally splattered with what should have been blood and gore, but was instead rotting flesh and that clear liquid.
Emeric managed to beat a few of the zombies back from Derrick’s body, hoping against hope that the other boy would be all right. I couldn’t imagine that the red-head hadn’t felt Derrick die, but I was pleasantly surprised that he was willing to ignore his psychic ability in lieu of optimism, if only for a second.

Through it all, watching Aberle beat one of the undead in the side of the head with a pipe, seeing a zombie get smacked in the face with a waffle iron, looking on as Emeric wailed away with the bat, through it all I felt the pull on my mind get stronger and stronger, just as I felt myself phasing out of the physical. I blurred, is the best way I can describe it, then came back into focus in time to see Aberle take out a zombie that was somehow sneaking up on Cassandra. It happened again as the three that were left bolted for the doors, a path suddenly clear before them. A longer space of what could be termed as static; and Cassandra was telling my daughter that she – Aberle – had a very bright aura, which was drawing the zombies to her. Aberle’s eyes hardened and she waved the other two toward the doors as she turned. She breathed deeply and ran back into the crowd of undead, using the pipe to knock zombies out of her way, much like an adventurer uses a machete to cut away at undergrowth. More static, and Aberle was being closed in as Emeric and Cassandra tried to break the glass of the doors that had been locked by security when they had seen the zombies. I managed to make out the empath going back to, presumably, rescue my daughter, who really seemed to be doing okay for herself. Cassandra broke through the glass with a cooking implement commonly used to make breakfast foods. I blurred again. Aberle motioned at Emeric to just go, and everything actually went black for me. I got one more glimpse of her swinging the pipe around wildly while the boy turned and herded the other girl out the door before there was a tremendous yank, and I was no longer on the plane of the living. I did get to hear Cassandra’s shocked gasp, and a pained groan that I assume came from Emeric, just based on how low it was, before I was completely separated from the other plane.

Once fully in the afterlife, I got to look back into the world of the living. When I finally managed to find the kids again, Emeric and the aura reader were wobbling toward the barricade around the mall.

Cassandra was busy having an existential breakdown, wailing over and over, “That’s not supposed to happen! Auras don’t just go out! Especially auras like hers! Even with sudden deaths, they dim and then go out! It was just -poof-and she was gone! That doesn’t happen!”

The redhead was just nodding in silent agreement, one arm over the sobbing girl’s shoulders. I suspected by his limp that it was more for help walking than to comfort the aura reader, but it seemed to be doing wonders in calming Cassandra down.  “I know what you mean,” he sighed when Cassandra finally stopped ranting about Aberle’s apparent disappearance. “I didn’t feel her die, she just…dropped off my empathic radar. And that’s not supposed to happen either.”

As they walked, Emeric left a trail of bloody footprints.

Their conversation cut off when they reached the only break in the barricade and the single security person at the checkpoint.


Cassandra had to know if there had been any rescue efforts planned, and it was confirmed that no such plans had been made. It really didn't surprise me, even if Emeric had only said it to be mean. I told you already, zombies are not something a lot of people are willing to go wading through, looking for survivors. Most people figure if someone is going to come through a rampage alive, they can do it on their own.

They tried to get Emeric to sit still so he could get stitches for a nasty looking gash in his leg, but he wouldn’t have any of that and refused any medical attention, whatever delusions that fueled his paranoia obviously back in full force.

A few other groups managed to escape. What, you thought only two people would get out of that mess alive? Aren't you the pessimist. A total of forty or so lived through the attacks. I don't know how many were in the mall in the first place! What gave you the idea that I'd know that?

Authorities later sent riot police in to finish up the job of eradicating the zombies. Dismal Hollow has a history of odd happenings, like I said earlier, so the city council knew full well how to deal with an infestation of the undead. They found enough left of the bodies to identify almost everyone who had been in the mall that day. Derrick was the first to be identified and buried, hailed as a hero. Yeah, I forgave him for telling Aberle who I was. Even I can't hold a grudge forever. They never did find Aberle.

Yeah, I know what happened to her.

Ha, like I'd tell you.

Well, here we are. Head down to the third door on the right and the guys in there will let you know where you'll be housed. Personally, I'd pull for Elysion, I've heard that Tartarus is not-so-nice. Good luck, boy-o.