The Prosecution Cannot Rest

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The flickering light rose me from my long slumber. I just wanted to be left alone, but people tended to trespass.

I seeped from the walls like a shadowy ooze bleeding from the warped lumber. The tendrils of my soul coalesced around the two figures by the window. They should have been scared, but I felt little fear in their hearts.

My haunting routine came back to me at once despite my long absence. “Leave!” I shouted, knowing my voice could only carry one word at a time. I channeled the surrounding wind and rattled the broken beer bottles left behind years before by a group of startled high schoolers. The sharp clattering of glass along the soaked floorboards had scared away everyone who came before, yet these two stayed firmly in place as they stared right back at my ghostly form.

A gangly woman wearing camouflage gear held a lighter in her hand. It took me a moment to realize she had intentionally summoned me by lighting the candle. The burly man beside her wore a large contraption along his back that was reminiscent of a leaf blower. He aimed the nozzle of the hose toward me, and it inhaled with a whirling churn.

I felt a pull. It was a strange sensation to comprehend after being without touch for so long. The tail of my spirit fluttered towards the mouth of the hose, and I began disappearing inside. I reached for the cracks between the floorboards, but I was little more than a mirage, and my grasp slid right through the floor beneath me. I flew towards the mouth of the contraption and further down the rabbit hole.

I fell through the skinny tunnel as my body was stretched tall. My tail hit a solid surface at the bottom, and the rest of my soul caught up with it. I pressed the sides of my surroundings and found that they were smooth. With horror, I realized I was encased in glass. Bodies of water and the slow viscosity of glass had always presented a barrier I could not cross, and these two trespassers had known my weakness before arriving.

The side hatch of the contraption opened, and the candle’s flickering flame became visible. A hand as large as the vial reached inside and spun me from my compartment. The seal was already in place, capping the top of the vial with molten glass that was still cooling.

My field of vision stretched away like a fish trying to look out the side of its bowl. The burly man holding my vial flicked the glass, and a high-pitched ping reverberated through my cramped surroundings. The ghost-hunting couple exchanged a few words with each other that were muffled by the layer of glass separating me from them. I dug deep to find a burst of courage and filled the glass with shadowy blotches that dripped like ink stains, but it only made their crooked smiles grow wider. They packed away the vial encasing me, and I returned to a pitch-black world.

It was impossible to tell the time when stuffed in the dark. It felt like weeks, but my grip on time had been uneven since I’d been torn from the living. I spent considerable periods in the cabin as a forgotten memory beneath the floorboards. Only when people disturbed my haunted estate did I emerge again, and I wanted them to leave so I could retreat once more.

In this glass vial, suspended without much sense of which way was up or down, I was forced to be present in the agony of my situation. Without the option to retreat, I began to remember who I was. I could barely remember my name, but as I contemplated, I remembered my loving parents and our family name, Flynn. They worked hard to give me opportunities, and I used them to become a lawyer. Along the way, I became a husband and raised a Flynn of my own.

My daughter was only three years old the last time I saw her. On my way to work, the van in front of me squealed to a stop. Masked men with guns threw me into the back of their car. I was a prosecutor in Chicago, and they wanted to know the whereabouts of my lead witness. The truth was, I didn’t know. Witness protection was the responsibility of the Marshalls, but they went ahead with torturing me anyways.

They started by ripping out my fingernails before moving on to drilling holes that punched through my bones. My screams were muffled by a cloth gag that tasted like the stomach bile and blood I was coughing up, but I doubted anyone heard me scream. They had dragged me to a cabin deep within the woods of Wisconsin. I don’t know where they discarded my body, but what was left of my soul clung to that cabin and haunted it for years to come.

Memories of my life felt distant, while feelings around my death were so present. I wanted to remember happy days walking along the lakefront with my loved ones. All I could recall were my killers’ laughing faces as they smoked cigarettes and hacked into me with professional savagery. My family’s faces were shrouded in fog, but memories of my killer’s warts and scars stood prominent in my mind.

Eventually, days or weeks after my capture, the wiry woman checked up on me. She gingerly placed my jar into a package half filled with blue packing peanuts and then covered me with more fluff until the box overflowed. I rattled the glass, but it only settled me further into the packaging. She gave me a short wave before closing the package, and I heard the stretch of unwound tape as she sealed me up.

If there were a Hell, it’s probably similar to being shipped in a box. I was angled up and down conveyor belts, repeatedly stacked among other packages, and dropped from one basket to another without warning. From the muffled sounds of the exterior world, I gauged that I was dropped off at the post office and shipped somewhere on a plane with jostling truck rides tying all the events together. I was conscious of every second, never dissipating, never sleeping.

It was a relief when I finally heard the postman knock against a door. Wherever I was, it sounded like my final destination. The postman and recipient spoke a few cordial words I had trouble discerning from the distorted acoustics within my sealed vial. Moments later, the recipient tore open the tape around my package with a jagged set of keys. A sweaty, plump hand brushed away the packing peanuts and hauled me into the lamp-lit room.

The heavyset man holding me was wearing blue cloth shorts and a gray sweatshirt with most of the lettering worn off. He turned my vial over several times while I remained upright and unmoved. The man laughed, and his echo reverberated over the glass. As happy as I was to get out of the package, I knew the fate awaiting me here would not be kind.

I assumed the man inherited the home from his late parents because most of the furniture was floral patterned. He wasn’t entirely alone, as his living room had been taken over by stacks of bird cages all chirping for his attention. He walked past his numerous pets toward the back of his home, where a staircase led to his basement.

Every step downwards felt like another nail securing my fate. The cellar was cast in dim blue light from his computer monitors while the single standing lamp in the corner of the room remained off. There were two basement windows with the blinds drawn, further entrenching the underground space in shadows.

The basement dweller carried me to a computer desk crowded with energy drinks and wrappers from microwaveable meals. Three monitors sat suspended in front of him, but the spice rack beside the keyboard stole my attention. There was another glass vial sitting alone within the stand, and the red mist of another ghost swam inside.

The basement dweller wiped the outside of my glass with his shirt to clear off the smudge marks he had left. He set me down in the open space beside the red-mist ghost who looked like a rain cloud verging on a storm.

“Help!” the ghost beside me called out. She sounded young and lost as if trapped in the dark.

It had been a very long since I’d talked to someone. I hardly knew how to respond, but a new language I wasn’t aware of sprang to the forefront of my mind. Whatever the neighboring ghost spoke to me, it wasn’t a language of the living. Our auras were so close that we could commune with one another with more clarity than most words could convey. More importantly, the man who kept us here shouldn’t be able to overhear us.

“I can hear you. Please tell me, how the hell did we get here?” I asked.

“He bought us,” she said, and I could feel the venom in her words as the storm within her vial began to spark. “I call him the Collector. He bought us online, and here we rot.”

“What does he want with us?” I asked.

“He can feel our pain when holding onto the glass, and the pervert gets a sick satisfaction from it,” she said while howling with rage.

The Collector shifted in his chair, noticing the change in her glass and reaching for her container. Her scream cut off as soon as she was mere millimeters away from me.

I flared my rage, hoping a bit of an outburst would change something, but I was barely part of the physical world as it was, and the glass vial was too strong for me to crack. The Collector must have seen the change to my vial, and he quickly lifted me to eye level. He clenched both of our vials as if warming his hands by the fire.

“Stop! No! I am not yours!” she screamed out, and I felt a burst of her horror.

Her emotions flooded mine as our tragedies crossed into each other. Her short life was told through a collage of memories distorting and contracting with the underlying emotions. Visions of my tortured end poured out of me in the same distressing manner. Through the Collector’s interference, it was like he had reopened our fatal wounds and fed off the memories.

Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she grew up without a safe home. There was a monster disguised as a man that took her, and he abused her and others. Rage and sorrow clouded the happy days of her life. At her end, she was discarded without a grave or anyone searching for her, but her soul lingered. She haunted that man for the rest of his days, moving on to follow the sounds of screams and haunting the monsters causing them.

She spoke first. “You loved your family very much. I’m sorry those monsters took you away from them. My name’s Chloe.”

“You can call me Flynn.” If I could cry, I would flood my vial with tears. I wanted to reassure her, but I was clueless as to how we could change our circumstances. We were already dead. No one was coming to help us because most people didn’t believe we existed.

“I still have work out there. So much pain is left unanswered. I cannot hurt monsters from here,” Chloe said with an echoing loss resonating over her words.

“All I know how to do is scare them. How did you hurt the men you haunted?” I asked.

“The first time I possessed a guy, I walked the prick right out into traffic. The county went ahead and stuck up a yield sign outside his house to commemorate the occasion. If I had been more patient, I’d of left a note in his handwriting so someone could find where he buried the bodies,” she said with a gruff maturity from having grown up too fast.

“We can possess people? Tell me how. Sorry, please tell me how?” I asked.

“The breath. When they breathe in, ride the air into their lungs. Do not bother possessing a corpse, as they have no pulse to power them. In the darkness of a living body, we can extend ourselves to the tips of their fingers and toes,” Chloe said.

“I kind of like the idea of walking the Collector into traffic. Any reason I shouldn’t do that the first chance I get?” I asked.

“There is so much you can do if you’re patient enough to watch them type in their passwords. Before turning them into a corpse, I’d withdraw everything they had in cash. It doesn’t undo what they did, but it allowed me to give to those they were hurting. I wish the friends I helped remembered me, but I always faded away like the imaginary friend they thought I was. No happy girl has ever summoned me.”

“It sounds like you did more with your afterlife than I ever accomplished. You should be proud of yourself, Chloe. You’ve done a lot,” I said.

“There is still so much to do,” she responded.

Our emotions cooled, and we returned to being barely visible mirages floating in our vials. The Collector wiped off the smudges he left on the glass before returning us to our allotted spaces. He then returned to his keyboard and furiously caught up to the chatroom he momentarily put aside.

I waited, wondering when the Collector would leave for daily obligations. Most of his meals were delivered, or he microwaved something before eating at his desk. He slept in a room upstairs, but other than that, he spent most of his days a couple of inches from his computer monitors. Weeks passed without him leaving his home. No friends or romantic partners visited. There was a whole world outside to explore, but the Collector chose to confine himself to this basement, and he locked up a couple of ghosts along with him.

It took months for the Collector to purchase another ghost. There were more spaces in the spice rack, and I figured it was only a matter of time before he added to his collection. I had been preparing my introduction for a while and told my new neighbor, “I am sorry fate has led you here.”

“Hehehehe,” the voice cackled.

“I’m sure this must be confusing. Is there any question I can answer for you?” I asked, although I was skeptical of my new neighbor’s introduction.

“I want out! Get me out, thief!” the voice demanded, taking on the qualities of a jackal.

“We are all trapped here, together. What’s your name, friend?” I asked.

“I am the eternal night, reaping chaos upon those who stand before me. You can flee to the far corners of the world, but you’ll never successfully hide so long as thine blood shares a drop with my enemy’s. My limits are nowhere. I am revenge cast upon the wind,” the ghost declared.

“Is that what you want to be called?” I asked.

“Laurentius. Manus. My name is Laurentius Manus. Sorry. It has been a while since I have conversed with someone. Usually, people run away after the eternal night speech,” the ghost admitted, his words gaining confidence as he spoke them. I assumed from his classical name that he died long ago. Even though we likely weren’t speaking the same language, we could still understand each other through the commune of the dead.

“I can understand. Have you been out there a long time? Do you remember what year it was when you died?” I asked.

“Twelve years into the reign of Marcus Aurelius. While we are on the topic, do you know what became of Rome?” Laurentius asked.

“It’s still a city. The Empire died though. Just like everything else,” I answered.

“All right. Not the answer I was expecting, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Is he in charge?” Laurentius asked, alluding to the Collector as he appraised the latest addition to his small collection.

“He keeps us here against our will, but I doubt he’s in control of anything else in the world,” I lamented with my slow-burning hatred rising despite my best efforts to remain barely visible.

“There has to be a way to escape,” Laurentius said with anxiety steadily creeping into his voice.

“You are welcome to try whatever you like. Chloe and I have been trying to break out since the day we arrived, and we have gotten nowhere. Unless ghosts have gained rights in the world, help is not coming.” My outlook was bleak, but I had never been much of a liar. “You mentioned traveling without limits. Is that real, or just part of the eternal night speech?”

“I can pursue the descendants of the family who killed me across large landmasses and vast oceans. Tracking those you’re meant to haunt takes time to master, and it is easy to get distracted when nothing more than an unfocused spirit. So long as I concentrate on my death and not the life that came before it, I can follow those I am meant to torment,” Laurentius informed me.

Laurentius remained restless while Chloe bounced between anguish and sorrow. I had the luck of being the ghost in the middle of the spice rack, so I mediated the conversation between the two of them. We got along well, but anytime we allowed our moods to show, the Collector fondled the vials storing us. We tried our best to remain muted, but with the injustice of our present state, that was easier said than done.

I counted the days, although there was no way to tally the results beyond my scattered memory. Little sunlight reached the basement, so I relied on the Collector’s erratic schedule to pace the passage of time. His only exercise was climbing the stairs, and he struggled more with his limited routine every day.

Nearly eight or so years after the Collector brought me into his basement dungeon, all my wicked prayers were answered when he missed a step. The Collector tumbled down the stairs like a sack of screaming garbage. It was petty of me, but I savored his cries of pain as one of the only pleasing parts of my captured existence.

“He fell!” Laurentius screamed with glee.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

“The Collector pulled something from his pocket. It glows like the lightbox on his desk. He has the glowing box pressed against his face and is talking into it. Do you know what any of this means?” Laurentius asked.

“He’s calling an ambulance,” I answered, letting my menace shine brightly.

Younger and stronger steps bounded down the stairs and met the Collector at the bottom. I couldn’t see the action, but I heard a plastic stretcher bouncing between the stairwell and the sounds of Velcro pulled apart as the paramedics took care of their patient.

A police officer strode confidently across the basement as he surveyed the room. Meanwhile, the Collector screeched at the officer’s uninvited presence. The muffled sounds of my captor’s horrid voice sent a shiver through me. I welcomed the fear, pressing on that emotion to be more present and visible to the new onlookers. I felt Chloe’s aura of reckoning rise beside me. Laurentius expanded into a cloud of smoke, bashing against his vial and rattling the entire spice rack.

The police officer noticed the vivid displays and approached the Collector’s desk. He trailed his fingers along the trapped souls before pausing on my vial. It was no surprise I caught his attention. I was murdered while working in law enforcement, and my tragedy must have coincided with the same fears that haunted him while on the job.

I had waited for years, and my ordeal had given me patience. I let the officer bring me to eye level before displaying everything to him. I brandished my loss, loathing, and longing for life again. The overload of fear shook the young man, and I tumbled out of his grip.

I careened toward the Collector’s desk. The short descent lasted less than a second and was more incredible than all the years I spent cowering in confinement. My vial connected with the edge of the desk, and a small crack formed below the seal.

I jumped from my confines like a cork from a bottle. The police officer stepped back while reaching for his radio. I followed his breath as Chloe had taught me and rode the air to his lungs. He hacked and coughed as he tried to wedge me from his diaphragm, but I clung on with the ferocity of tuberculosis. I stretched out to the corners of his body, his limbs flailing as we wrestled each other for control. The man crouched to the floor, writhing as I overcame his defenses and confined his soul to a small corner of his heart. He did not know how to fight me, and every worried breath strengthened my hold over him.

I braced the officer’s palm on the carpeted floor and felt the soft fabric at my touch. I ran my hands along it, savoring what most would classify as an old and unvacuumed carpet, but to me felt like the floors of Heaven. It had been so long since I felt anything, and to touch something so soft was a pleasant shock I could barely comprehend.

I stood with the officer’s body under my control and walked with slow, unsteady steps toward the Collector’s desk. I grabbed Chloe’s glass and braced it against the table’s edge. It only took an ounce of pressure to crack the vial. Her howl pierced the air as she flew from the basement. Laurentius shook as he brewed from within his vial. I snapped his prison, letting the shattered glass pile up on the carpeted floor.

I didn’t need the officer’s strength anymore, so I ejected myself with a heavy sneeze. The officer collapsed to the ground, trembling as a cold sweat passed over him. He may tell others of his temporary possession, but the smarter move would be to keep this incident to himself, lest the world thinks he was insane.

My ghost weighed less than the wind as I flew through the sky. I soared towards the enemy I swore revenge on, just as Laurentius had taught me. My view of the rural town was like watching a black-and-white film, and the Collector’s ambulance stuck out like a red ladybug scurrying across the screen. I caught up to the ambulance at a stop light and fluttered through the back doors.

A paramedic was seated in the box of the ambulance with the Collector as he rambled off complaints. She maintained a professional demeanor masking boredom and irritation as the Collector continued to gripe about the level of service he expected. I waited for an inward breath and rode the wave up the paramedic’s nostrils.

The paramedic seized up as I gained control, and I announced, “Hello, Collector.”

“Excuse me?” the Collector asked, both confused and indignant that I would dare interrupt his list of grievances.

“Your ghosts are gone, and I picked up this neat little trick in the process. You know you have no right to have kept us like that.”

The Collector realized what I was as his eyes widened in understanding. He asked, “Are you going to kill me?”

“Eventually, however, I do not feel that an innocent bystander should face charges for your murder. I will bring about your end, but I'm not nearly done haunting you.”

“I know ghost hunters,” the Collector stammered. “I’m a good customer. If you stay near me, they’ll capture you again.”

“Please, send them my way. I intend to haunt them too.” I exorcised myself with a sneeze and possessed the Collector in the process. After pinning his soul beneath mine, I asked, “How does it feel to lose control?”