Chapter 6 – Chap 6

It’s hard to describe the noises that followed.

What you could hear the most were the chains and the moans of agony; it was like all the souls of the damned from the whole universe decided to hold a conference in my yard.

Then Pandora kept yelling things like “How many times do I have to tell you that son of a whore Colonel isn’t here? Just go to the fucking light you morons!” as she dashed with her strange-looking long sword, clank-clanking it against the chains.

And there was Legless Linda’s laugh, among some other strange noises that I couldn’t identify. She sounded like (and I think she was) a particularly vicious old witch.

It took Pandora over an hour to come fetch me, something that had never happened before.

“Ugh, I’m beat. Let’s watch that super silly musical again”, she announced by my doorframe.

“What happened?” I asked, concerned. It wasn’t like me to ask about her business, but it was mostly because she could deal alright with the other invaders.

We sat on the couch and I put Grease for us.

“Menaces that are pitiful are the worst. Did you know that this used to be a farm with over 1,000 slaves?”

“I figured this land probably had slaves, but I couldn’t imagine how many.”

“Of course this used to be a way bigger farm, extending to the neighboring properties too; but the slave-owner’s mansion used to sit right here where we are, including most of your yard and the hennery too.”

I nodded.

“When slavery became illegal, that horrible Colonel invited all the slaves he had at the time – I was able to count at least 80 – for a banquet at the mansion. Supposedly. What actually happened was the racist scum locking them inside and burning the mansion to the ground, because he thought that, if not to serve him, they didn’t deserve to live.”

It took me at least 20 minutes to let that sink in, and I’m not ashamed to say that I broke down crying. My brain couldn’t even process such cruelty, especially because — since the government didn’t offer any aid for recently released slaves who had literally nothing — most pro-slavery farmers, when forced to release their slaves, ended up just hiring them for pennies, and they lived pretty much the same life, but now legally as free people.

But this Colonel didn’t even think that they deserved that infinitesimal change for the best. He was evil and rotten.

“For a long time, even before me, they have been returning; no one knows when they’ll show up. It could take months, years, even decades before the next raid. But they always come back so full of sorrow and angst. They are so blind that they firmly believe that the Colonel is still here, and they want to destroy him.”

“That’s understandable”, I replied.

“Yeah… I know all that because, every time their chains touch me or my underlings, we see and feel it all. All they went through. That’s why the battle is always so slow. This and because I avoid destroying them completely, so they have one teeny chance of just moving on and going to the frigging light.”

“That’s awful!” I whimpered. “So the Colonel’s ghost is not here anymore?”

“Nope. Went to hell or whatever else a long time ago. Isn’t it unfair how he gets to move on with his afterlife while all these people have to suffer as spectrums? They look so awful… all burned down, pieces of their bodies falling as they move. And it’s not only the 80 or so that were burned. All the slaves he ever owned want to destroy him, and we have to fight more as the first ones fall and more enter the property.”

“It sounded like a tank entering the yard”, I remarked, still fighting back the urge to cry over all this senseless cruelty.

“Oh that’s because some of their forms are so mangled and wry that they fused with their chains and with each other, working as a vehicle for the ones that are (more or less) in one piece above them”, she explained.

We watched the movie in silence for a while; Pandora seemed more relaxed because she started letting out small laughs and muttering “her hair is ridiculous” every time the camera closed in on Sandy. On my end, I was still trying to process these incredibly dark pieces of information.

“Uh… Pandora? Is it okay if I give you a little something I bought?”

“Is it an extra chicken? I’m good. I just eat them because of the contract.”

I shook my head and grabbed the brilliant pink box that I had been keeping hidden for a few weeks. I then got on my knees to help Pandora put her brand new shoes on.

“Shit, what are you doing? I can’t get married!” she seemed truly concerned that I was going to propose.

I laughed and showed her a pair of very artistic, flamboyant high heels. Something that Lady Gaga would wear, but in a more affordable price range — I’m still only a writer with a mortgage to pay, after all.

It was weird to choose the ideal size because she didn’t have toes, but then I figured that with hoofs it was way easier to wear extravagant heels, since those always hurt your toes the most.

She was so happy. She even started criticizing every hairstyle in the movie with more scorn and gusto than ever; and she never took them off.

“Melinda?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, I… suck”, she seemed like she wanted to say I’m sorry, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She seemed to be gathering some courage to go ahead.

“I shouldn’t have attacked your relative. It’s just that her mentioning the p-man and the h-thing…” I inferred that she meant priest and holy water “Those really hurt me, you know? And the others too. It’s physical torture, and it won’t banish us because the house — no, these very grounds… well, it’s time Lakota tells you about all the complicated shit that’s way above my pay grade.”

“Lakota…?”

I screamed as a very tall Native-American older female in typical clothes and braids suddenly materialized in the living room; unlike the other ghosts, who had names like Legless Linda or Burnface that suggested a lethal injury, neither her name nor her body carried anything suggestive of her causa mortis.

Lakota was beautiful in a sense, like an old and intelligent aunt you look up to; everything in her suggested a strength that wasn’t unlike a force of the nature, and she looked calm as the eye of a hurricane. She carried herself in the manner of a wise and compassionate leader.

“Hello, kid. I am what you’d call a shaman, and I’ve been tied to this place as an eternal observer since before your people first walked these lands”, her mouth didn’t move, but I heard her pleasant and energetic voice inside my mind. “You see, the leader of my tribe, contradicting the belief of nearly all the other Sioux, didn’t think there was an afterlife. To him, the only way to put our souls to rest was tying them to a piece of land that was specifically made for the dead. A cemetery for your spirit, one could say.”

I nodded. It sounded… like something that would go terribly wrong.

“Over the millennia, that ended up creating some sort of magnetic field that attracts lost souls, especially the ones who died wishing for vengeance; a drain for those that are neither alive nor have crossed whatever there is to cross; and, most of all, a raft that beings on journeys in the outer planes end up using as a patch, or as a door to wreak havoc in the world of the living.”

“To sum it up”, Pandora intervened. “Your place is cursed as fuck.”