Angela's Ghost

He shaves arrow heads carved from bone to a narrow razor sharp point and has meticulously perfected it. He dips each one in home-made ricin one at a time, and bundles the arrows in a leather sheath which he slings around his shoulder. Camouflaged in combat gear, he pinches an eye, takes aim and draws the bowstring. In a release the arrow slices the air to find its mark just inches away from the jugular. The elk runs away. The job is complete. The following day its remains are recovered untouched and skinned. This hunter only wants skin but by this signature act over time a hierarchy of the untamed has been established; any predator eating the meat will die. All manner of evil in the forest respects this arrow and from where it flies, but the dead cannot be tamed.

She rests concealed inside a hollow stump, mummified inside a brown woolly blanket. Everyone in Crawford County Michigan forgot about Angela; the last game she ever played is called hide and seek. Twenty years have passed and her unsolved murder is punished.

Bertram is late for work. He enters through the front like every other member of staff. As usual he makes eye contact with no one. Customers are happy to see their beloved chef finally step in. They’ll wait on gifted hands.

“Bert, this is becoming a habit. What’s the excuse today?” this is Angela the manager.

“Angie, I...I had to run an errand. Sorry about that,”

“Well, it is becoming a habit. I don’t like it. As talented as you are Bert you can still be replaced,”

Bert hastily wraps his apron and apologizes again. He is already sweating from excess heat in the poorly ventilated kitchen, “Sorry Angie. It won’t happen again.”

It doesn’t take long for seats to fill and tables to turn and Bert is grinding the axe. Angela refuses to dig into the coffers of the restaurant to purchase a new extractor. Fancier tables and chairs in the dining room were more important.

“Bert,”

“Yes Angie,”

“I have a feeling a food critic will be covertly paying a visit tonight. We need to make everyone happy. I know you won’t disappoint,”

“You know I won’t,” He says, but the restaurant is also short on hands in the kitchen. Standing the heat is literally what Bert has to do to impress the mystery guest.

He scouts the dining room for possible suspects through the serving window. Despite the usual atmosphere of friendly chatter and light-hearted giggles, Bert focuses on two men in dark suits sitting near the exit, and his blood runs cold. He can’t see their eyes because they are wearing tinted glasses, but another hell-like heat penetrates their tinted eyewear and enters his soul. They are looking straight at him. The next plate he sends out comes back.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks his waitress, her name is Claire.

“The steak is burnt. This is very unlike you Bert, you ok?” she asks.

“Yes. I just need some air. It’s too hot,” he says, and walks out the door for a coke and a smoke.

When Bert doesn’t come back, chaos ensues inside the restaurant. One of the men who spooked him signals Claire and she goes to their table, “Was that the chef who walked out?” he asks.

“Uh…yea, he seems to be having a bad day, and night,” she replies.

Other patrons grumble too. Their opinion doesn’t matter as much as the two men Bert has stood up, they were the critics Angie expected, and Angie fumes. She calls Bert, “Your fired!” she says and severs the call.

 Angie leaves Claire to handle closure, too upset to confront her confused customers. Her sous chef takes over and when the last customer leaves, Claire turns the key for a walk home in the dark alone.

Sounds of high heels clanking on pavement are hers, but Claire doesn’t feel like she’s alone at all. Too scared to turn around eighty meters from her doorstep, she quickens the pace and with a racing heart and hands in her coat pockets, she keeps a good solid grip on her house keys, identifying the one she needs by touch. If she wants to run, she’ll have to take those heels off, which will waste valuable time if running becomes necessary.

Clair focuses on the doorknob, approaches keys in hand, and in a flash turns the key, slamming the door behind her in relief.

This is the first time she felt so afraid. She’s walked home many nights before. Something is still not right. It gets cold inside the foyer. The lights go out. She hears light clanking of high heels going up the wooden stairs but Claire isn’t moving. She is standing with her back to the door clutching the doorknob, wondering if she should turn around and go back.

Her tremors begin and goose bumps decorate her arms from the chilling darkness and sinister mood.

“Am I wrong? Is he already inside?” she thinks, “Who are you? Why are you doing this?” she asks, slowly kicking off the high heels. This time she will run.

She closes her eyes when a sudden cold gush of air surrounds her. In the whirlwind she hears a light whisper, “Angela.”

Claire jumps out of her sleep with bulging eyes. Dreams like these are getting more frequent, and with a common theme: a little girl dressed in black named Angela.

In the evening Claire is at the restaurant earlier than usual because she wants to go home earlier than usual. She expects to be greeted by Angela who is always first no matter how early she gets there. This is a first for Angie too. Claire calls her but she doesn’t answer so she opens up the restaurant and begins setting up the outdoor dining area waiting for Bert and Angie.

Neither show up and by the time the first customers enter, it is clear to Claire that another evening of chaos is about to unfold. Where are they?

Claire calls Bert.

“Hey Bert, where are you?” she asks.

“Hi Claire, Angie fired me yesterday. I won’t be coming in, neither will she,” he says and ends the call abruptly.

In disbelief Claire desperately calls Angie’s number again. It rings and rings and rings unanswered until finally she calls the police. They get to Angie’s house in five minutes, knock and call, “Angela, it’s the sheriff’s office. Please respond so we know you are ok,”

There is no answer, and when they kick the door in they encounter a trail of bloody shoeprints leading down from the top of the staircase through the house towards the back door and call for back up.

Deputy Nicolas Curtis and his partner Manuel scope the house for clues, but they all point to a vicious abduction which happened in minutes, and suggests the abductor may have already been inside and upstairs waiting for her.

They hurry back to the station and Nicolas bumps into Sherriff Richard Reynolds at the door on his way out.

In Richard’s office Nicolas is briefing him on the abduction when Manuel enters with a white envelope, “Sir, this just came for you,” he says.

When Richard opens and reads a note inside he can’t believe his own eyes. The message is simple but frightfully familiar: ‘Ready or not here I come, you have two days’.

“Who gave this to you?” Richard asks, but he sails out the front door before Manuel can answer, trying to see whoever it was. He catches up to a man in rags and grabs him by his collar, “Hey, did you just deliver this envelope?” he asks.

The man nervously replies, “Yes. A man gave me five dollars to bring it to you,” he says.

“I’m sorry but you’ll have to come with me until we find him, let’s go,”

“Please Sherriff, I’m really hungry,”

“I’ll buy you something to eat. Keep the five dollars, but you’re coming with me,”

He hurries back inside, shoves the deliveryman into a holding cell, and runs back to Manuel and Nicolas, “We now have two days to find Angie alive. It’s going to be a long night.” He says, and gulps the rest of his now cold coffee.

A long night it was. Richard, desperately short on time, asks Nicolas to bring the waitress in, “I want to talk to her,” he says.

When Claire enters Sherriff Reynolds’s office very cautiously, she pans her eyes around at walls decorated with recognition and achievement. It gives her hope.

Richard wastes no time and shows her the letter, “Twenty years ago I hunted a serial kidnapper who called himself The Finder. He sent me letters like this and signed them. Each time he sent one, a missing child report came in shortly afterwards. Angela Braham was the last of eight children to disappear. All eight have never been found. I personally searched for Angela hoping to find her alive. After searching one night I got lost in the forest trying to find a shortcut to get back and ended up being guided out by the arrows of a skillful marksman.

 The next day five of us went back and discovered the carcass of an elk skinned and left to rot, so we brought the animal in for testing and found out it died from a poisoned arrow head. They picked up Bertram Harris. When they pulled him over he was wearing illegal camouflage and had arrow heads carved from elk bone in the trunk of his car. He became one of four people questioned in relation to Angela’s disappearance. We fined him for all the hunting violations. The way he looked at me from his holding cell that day, I knew the son of a bitch was the Finder, but without Angela Braham’s body we had to let him go. If there’s anything else you can share that I can use to help Angela share it, we don’t have much time left to save her,”

Claire has nothing besides what she already told them. All their efforts will revolve around that phone call she made to Bert the day Angela disappeared.

“Can’t you track her phone Sherriff?” she asks.

“It was recovered on the vanity in her bathroom,”

Claire thinks long and hard before she utters these words, “Do you believe in ghosts Sherriff Reynolds?”

“Try me,” he says.

“I am being haunted by one, her name is Angela. She is a child. Usually she leads me into the forest. Lately she’s dressed in black and sad. The night Angie disappeared I had a dream about her, she walked up my stairs in high heels and I couldn’t see her. I thought there was someone else in the house, and then I woke up,”

Richard is disappointed but it is information he didn’t have before, “Thank you Claire,” he says. Hope and dreams are all he has to work with, but can he work with it?

Nightfall, Richard puts out an APB for Angie and brings Nicolas with him this time into the forest knowing if they don’t find Angie by tomorrow, they may never find her.

One hundred yards in, an arrow slices the air to find its mark. It lands in tree bark and quivers beside Nicolas at chest level. Richard grabs his arm and pulls him to the ground.

“Sir, he missed. I’m ok,”

“That was a marker Nicolas, keep up and stay low,”

A voice resonates through the forest like in an echo chamber, “Sherriff, do you remember this?”

 Richard’s voice echoes back in a useless disguise, “I remember. Bertram, is this how you want this to end? Just tell me where she is and I’ll let you go.”

 “Don’t you remember? We started this game twenty years ago. I know how this works Richard, let’s finish it,”

“Why now?” Richard asks.

The phantom voice gets angrier and angrier, “I’m tired, tired of being harassed by you and your goons watching my house, following me around, now you come to my restaurant. Why can’t you just leave me alone? Now you’ll know how it feels to be hunted.”

An arrow lodges in the tip of Nicolas’s right shoe, he screams in agony.

Richard isn’t ready. Ready or not, he’s in the game, “Oh no,” he yanks the arrow out of Nick’s foot and quickly removes the shoe and sock letting the puncture wound bleed. He removes his belt and cuts off circulation by Nick’s upper thigh, hoping to buy him time.

“Nick I have to get you to the hospital,”

“I’ll wait for back up,”

“No you can’t,”

Laughter echoes through the forest, he is almost celebrating, “Sherriff, you can save your friend or you can save Angela. I know you can’t save her, you’re such a loser.”

Now Richard is angry. He fires seven shots in different directions around himself, “You hear that Bert, I’m saving the next one for your head.”

Camouflaged in combat gear, The Finder hopes, pinching an eye with his extended tongue pressed between his lips, steady. Bull’s-eye is the middle of Richard’s chest but The Finder hesitates. A cold rush of air surrounds him, it throws him off.

 He draws again, but a whirlwind in the darkness encircles them all and Richard believes he’s lost his mind when a pale white figure of the missing child Angela Braham stands in front of him, “Shoot me,” she whispers, and so he does in a kneejerk reaction out of terror!

They hear a man squeal in the distance and fall, and then silence.

Richard takes no chances, the figure of Angela Braham is gone, but someone has been shot, “Bert, show me your hands,” Richard shouts.

Still there’s no reply. He inches, closer and closer shouting the same instructions and fires two more shots for good measure with still no response or retaliation. Finally he is close enough to see which hunter reigns supreme. Bertram Harris is on his back with a hole in his head, dead!

Richard radios for help, “Officer down, I need an ambulance. He’s been shot with a ricin tipped arrow, hurry and send the K-nine unit.”

They arrive with antitoxins and speed away with Nicolas, leaving the K-nine unit behind.

“Angela, help me, one more time, please,” Richard whispers.

Suddenly the dogs start barking, but at something no one else is able to see. Whatever it is they chase it through the forest stopping at an old tree stump lying on its side.

“Silence the dogs,” he says, and shouts, “Angela where are you!”

Richard doesn’t need them to be quiet at all. They start digging beside the fallen tree and with help from their handlers they unearth a large box. It is pried open. Angie is inside but barely alive!

 She’s pale and weak but manages to hold her hand up as a signal of life and gratitude. Her rescuers hold on to it and pull her out to safety.

Inside the tree stump, they also find a brown woolly blanket, Angela Braham has finally been found. Unfortunately, the fate of the other seven is also known.

She haunted him for years, making him paranoid and delusional. Finally he snapped when two men dressed in dark suits entered Angie’s restaurant. He believed they were detectives, because whenever he saw Angela’s ghost he saw them too.

Claire’s haunting dreams of Angela Braham ends, but she still shivers at the thought of working beside her killer for years.

She sees her boss Angie in the back of the kitchen alone in tears, and her tears are contagious. Claire tries to console her, “Angie, it’s ok, he is gone forever. It’s going to be ok.”

Seven more make-shift graves are found in the forest. DNA confirms they contain the remains of the other missing children.

Their champion Angela is the first one to be officially laid to rest. Now she sleeps, peacefully, surrounded by lilies in the cemetery.

Nicolas makes a full recovery. The truth is he understands nothing about what happened the night Captain Reynolds, by great odds, found the middle of Bertram Harris’s forehead in the middle of the forest at night. For him, every explanation leads to something supernatural. He visits Angie’s restaurant to eat and check up on her from time to time, and finds romance with Claire while doing it.

Sherriff Richard Reynolds retires. He has seen it all now. A ghost is something he didn’t expect to see on the job at all but he did, and once is enough, but it was worth it.

THE END