When in a Cell

In the summer of 1969, a family sat around a roaring campfire. The children had smushed smores gripped tightly in their hands, smiles on their faces, and attentive eyes toward their grandfather. It was storytime, and Grandpa had a good one. He was finally to tell the tale of how he met Furrow, a man who had an ever-impactful influence on his life, someone he had always mentioned, but whom the children had never met. 

“Alright, little ones. Prepare for a spook!”

I met Furrow in the year of 1921. I was in a prison cell, my first and only time being in one. I was innocent, you see. Truthfully, I was wrongly detained. Wrong place at the wrong time. And on my first night, I was frantically crying and yelling to the guards, to anyone who would listen. It seemed the only one who was, was the man lying in the bunk next to me. His name was Furrow. And instead of treating me harshly like the rest of the lot in that stone hellhole, he asked me if I was alright. In his deep, bellowing voice, he said, “Stop that! What’s the matter with ya!”

Well, that was his way of asking if I was alright. 

I responded with tears flooding my eyelids, and desperation that I could not grip. “I don’t belong here! I’m innocent!”

“Huh,” he said. “Me, too.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “How did you end up here?”

Little did I know, I would hear the craziest, most magnificent story I would ever hear for the rest of my life. 

Furrow stretched himself to a sitting position and whipped his legs off the bed and onto the floor. “Sit. Stop panicking. I’ll tell you my story if you promise to go to sleep.”

I nodded. I wiped the last tear from my eyes, and I sat my butt on the edge of my bed. My full attention was on this mysterious person.

Furrow cupped both hands across his kneecaps and leaned forward slightly. “You ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“A year ago, I was a freelancing ghost hunter, the best, too. I was hired for a job by the kind of people you don’t want to cross, but I took the position for its reward: ten pounds of gold. I had to search this haunted place for a jewel of some sort, and my mission was to bring it back to my employers. Seemed easy enough. But I walked by the house during daylight, anyway, to scope it out and see what I was dealing with. When I did, a woman on a park bench stopped me. She grabbed my arm and squeezed as I walked by, even leaving a bruise. 

“What did she say?” I asked.

“I couldn’t get it out of my head…” said Furrow. “What she said… what she warned me. ‘Oh, no. No. No. No. You don’t want to go there. That’s ghost territory. They’ll mess your head up. Mess it up real bad.’”

I don’t know how, but one place around the area came to mind, and I felt like I had known what place he was talking about. My eyes grew wide and stretched, and my lips quivered. I lifted a single, shaking finger into the air.

“Yes?” he asked.

“You’re talking about Crowley Manor, right?”

Furrows’ smug, half-smile indicated that my guess was correct. 

He let out a soft chuckle, and said, “Indeed, I am.”

This place was the worst of the worst… a real-life version of hell! Not a soul wandered to the manor who did not become lost!

At that moment, I was seriously frightened. So much, so that my pants had absorbed a liquid. Yes, children, I peed myself. 

I had to ask Furrow, “Seriously, you went in there?”

“The very next day,” he said. “No matter how much what the mad bird-watcher said bothered me, I did not let it deter me.”

“Why?” I asked. 

“I was hired to do a job. Besides, I’m the finest ghost hunter in the north!”

I could not believe my ears. The Crowley Manor! And this guy risked his life for a job! (Which, children, let me remind you to never do. Life is too precious to waste away for a quick buck.) Now, I was frantic once more. My eyes moved side to side, and I found it incredibly difficult to grasp that my cellmate had gone into Crowley Manor willingly.

Furrow continued: “Later that night, when I first entered through the front door, I could not sense a thing. I could not hear anything, feel anything, see anything, taste anything, or smell a single thing. I could tell I wasn’t wanted there. But that didn’t stop me! I knew it was a simple trick by ghosts, and by lighting a beeswax candle, I could counteract it! So, I did. My senses returned shortly after creating the flame upon the wick.”

“What did it look like? The inside?”

“Cobwebs, dust, torn wallpaper, old frames and furniture. The usual that you’d find in a haunted manor.”

“In Crowley's Manor? That’s all you saw?”

“I’m not finished with my story, yet. As I was saying, after I retrieved my senses back, I continued onward. I was told that what I was looking for was in the basement, so that’s where I went first. I was confused when I looked around for anything that remotely resembled a basement door, but it seemed like the first floor alone had over thirty different doors! Some of them opened, some of them were locked, and some were just for show. It was when I tried the thirteenth door that I found the basement. And that wasn’t even the correct door. After I jiggled the doorknob, I heard a faint whisper traveling behind me. Naturally, I was startled, and I swung my head around looking for the source of it. That’s when I saw the red glow.”

“The red glow? What was it?”

“It was the basement, of course. I went in and then down the stairs, following the mysterious red light. It led to another door, one strange to the human mind– a portal. I do not fear the dead, so I walked right up to it, intending to walk through it. That’s when the guardian approached me.”

“A ghost?”

“Yup. And the king of them, too. At least, the king of the sorry souls who resided in that wretched place. He was all shadow, and had a red, thorny crown atop his head.”

“Did it say anything to you?”

“Not it, but he. And he said, ‘Why do you come here?’”

“And?”

“I told the truth. And the Ghost King was pleased with my doing so. But I wasn’t allowed to go through, yet. He explained that the jewel behind the portal was not to be handled by the wrong person… for that jewel was the one and only Philosopher’s Stone! For that reason, I was subjected to three questions. If I were to pass this ghost’s test, I would be allowed passage.”

“If you didn’t?”

Furrow laughed. He laughed so hard that he slapped his knee and rocked on the edge of his bunk. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I guess.”

“As I was saying: three questions. First, it asked, ‘Why do you come?’”

“It was an easy question, considering I had already answered it. But I thought it may be a trick. I thought, maybe, the ghost needed something more. I responded with, ‘Because I’m the best in the north!”

“Did he buy it?”

“Well, he asked me a second question. Next, he asked why. And then, I said to him, ‘I come because I am the best in the north, and I believe I am capable of handling such a fine jewel.’ It was quick thinking, but it felt truthful.”

“And the third?”

“He asked if I was ready to see the other side….”

I thought I knew what his answer would be, so I blurted, “Well, clearly!”

But Furrow stopped me. “No. This question was much deeper than that. What he meant, was if I was ready to die.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I told the Ghost King that I had accepted death as inevitable for quite some time, and I was as ready as ever. With that answer, the Ghost King let me through. I appeared in a different world, one alike but dying and rotting in every inch of the earth. I appeared in a parallel world in the same house, in the same basement. Only, in front of me was a table, and on it, the Philosopher’s Stone.”

But then, Furrow paused. He brought his hand to his chin and scratched at his beard. His eyes looked like they had grown darker, emptier. And he brought his hand down to his heart, where he laid it across. 

I had not thought about my situation once since the beginning of his story, and now I was caring more about this man than myself. I asked, “Are you okay?”

He replied, “Sorry. I’ll continue.”

“It’s alright,” I said. 

“As I was saying, The Philosopher’s Stone! I left the haunted house with the jewel in my possession, but as I closed the gated fence behind me, leaving the yard, the house took up in flames! Instantly, floors and walls had fallen, and in a matter of minutes, only ash remained. That was a first for me, and I watched it crumble. But the police were there before I could make my escape.”

“That’s how you ended up here? Because a haunted house burned down?”

“No. The police weren’t there because the house burned down.”

“No? Why, then?”

“They were there for me. For the stone.”

“Wait… were they the ones who hired you?”

“The detective who locked me up was the same one who hired me for the job. It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say! You’re innocent! Those backstabbers! Those corrupt, douchebag shitheads!”

“Told ya I was innocent.”

“Wait, but you gave them the stone, and they locked you up?”

“I never said I gave them the stone.”

At that moment, my life had changed forever. My worldview was entirely different and for all the better. I learned of the existence of ancient magic, and I gained a friend, a special one. Furrow unbuttoned his shirt by the top three, just enough to reveal his chest. He pulled one side and revealed the skin over his heart. There, through his skin, was a dazzling, red illumination.”

One of the children asked, “What was it, grandpa? Did his heart turn into the Philosopher’s Stone?”

“My dear, his heart was made of gold.”