Ghost City
Raymund Hensley
Ghost City
Raymund Hensley
Copyright 2011 by Raymund Hensley
https://www.facebook.com/BossHospital
ALSO BY RAYMUND HENSLEY
Aloha Mannequins
A Revelation
How I met Barbara The Zombie Hunter
Filipino Vampire
The Zombie Hunter’s Bible
Ambulance Masters
Get Kilt: A Zombie Pill
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Currently at Ghost City
CHAPTER TWO
The Making Of A Monster Hunter
CHAPTER THREE
The Big Clean Up
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
IS IT A GHOST PORTAL?
By Sister Janice Raterraw
(Reprinted with permission from The Hawaii Trumpet; issue 3.)
A mysterious portal opened in the clouds over Honolulu recently. Many witnesses are claiming to see ghosts flying out from it. Highly respected, intellectual individuals, such as Father Wham Smith, owner of Kimo Church in Makaha, said the following:
Guests wanting to see the portal must call two months in advance to be on the waiting list. Please, no flash photography and no babies. The constant crying appears to aggravate the ghosts. And remember: “No shoes, no shirt, no entry.”
(Remainder of article eaten and unreadable.)
CHAPTER ONE
CURRENTLY AT GHOST CITY
….And then I held my breath and shoved my fist into the woman's stomach and gripped intestine. When I gave it a good yank, all her mess came out in glittering shades of red this and red that. I shut my mouth and eyes...warm splatter all over my face. A terrible thought struck me: If a cannibal's blood got into my face-holes, will I wake up one day craving human flesh...like this girl...like all those people...like a cannibal? Eating human meat? The idea was sickening.
The white woman grabbed my neck and squeezed, so I pulled out more guts. My hands had a hard time yanking. Very difficult. Like holding on to greased rope. I think the cannibal woman was British. She kept yelling, “I'll eat ya! Yes! You better kill me! Ahhh!” She was yelling through the pain. Then her eyes rolled back white, and she fell on me and pinned me to the grass. Again with the warmth – this time all over my belly, some liquid running down into my pants and around my back.
When she fell, her forehead CONKED against mine and left a big bump. Her mouth was over my mouth, and I could smell her stink, dead-meat breath. Jesus, her tongue touched mine. I was surprised; I wasn't turned on. If I may be honest, I felt guilty.
I was lonely.
I needed company.
After that fight, I tried not killing. I tried making new friends.
One time, I was walking through downtown, and a little boy – I don't know, age 15 – jumped off a bus and tackled me to the ground. I pressed my feet on his belly and kicked out and sent him flying – crashing – through a store window. He ran back out and jabbed his finger at me. He was weeping. Glass was all up in his face.
“Gimme back my knife!” he begged.
I looked down and saw his blade's handle sticking out from my shoulder. I pulled it out and made a deal with him. I would give his knife back, but only if he agreed to sit down and chat with me about religion and movies and books and current events. But he had to be real about it – no fake interest in what I had to say. The boy cocked his head and looked at me weird. He said, “You crazy or sumtin'?” I took offense and threw the knife at him, thinking that he'd grab it and run off. But naw.
He just stood there like a cat in headlights, and the knife hit his forehead.
He went down, wiggling like a fish...froze with his hands clawed in the air...and, well...just stayed that way. I assumed he was dead.
I was horrified...saddened. To make myself feel better, I dragged him to Kaka'ako Park and dug a shallow grave on one of those green hills overlooking the ocean and dead ships. That park – all the tourists used to go there to take their wedding pictures. I looked at my aching hands, then said a little prayer.
“Oh yay, oh yay,” I went. “Please God, accept this poor, murdered soul into your flock and/or herd. Let this young, dead boy ride on the back of your holy lion. Father...please forgive me for killing one of your own. Damn. I'm sorry. He tried to eat me out! I am ashamed...so shamed. Please forgive and forget. Master, please! Stop damning me! I don't wanna go to Hell – that hot, hot place!”
And then I cried a little.
Or maybe it was raining.
Ah! That old guilt again. Always with the guilt. NO MORE KILLING. These people were innocent! People were going crazy and turning into cannibals, but it wasn't their fault. They were just hungry. Food. People do strange things when they're hungry – desperate things. I was lucky. Before the ghost portal came, I always had tons of Spam to fill me up. I was all set from day one. Canned food at its finest.
After I said my words of peace – after I blessed that boy and kicked away the roaches that were already all over his grave – I made promises, goals: 1) No more killing people, and 2) Try to make friends. Just keep trying until someone gives in...until someone a little more sane than the rest can hold a reasonable conversation. Heck, I'd even talk about politics.
And then I go and yank out that woman's insides and kill her.
And now here we are.
Me dragging her to Kaka'ako...burying another one of my fellow humans...another sad soul. Another sad, sad soul that was just mad with hunger; that's all. Otherwise, good people, I was sure of it. Loneliness. Guilt. I could feel God looking down on me, ashamed; and I could feel Mr. Satan looking up, approving.
“Your room is ready, Dr. Boss,” Satan was saying. “Anytime you're ready. Anytime you're ready.”
A stronger part of me demanded I shut up with all the guilt-talk.
You're a survivor, it said. You're just doing what you have to do to make it in Hawaii – to live, dammit, so cut out all this BS about guilt. You HAVE to kill. You HAVE to protect yourself. These aren't people anymore. These are damn cannibals! Get it through your head. Not people. Cannibals.
But I'm lonely. I need companionship. I need a woman. Please, God, I want a lover.
You'll get over it. In time...you'll get used to being alone. Besides, you wanna be friends with someone who eats people?
No.
Who gobbles up cats? Dogs?
No.
Who eats DEAD BODIES? Are you weird???
Of course not. I don't wanna kiss a girl that just ate a dead body. It disgusts me.
Well, then...stop talking to yourself and head on home. A mighty Spam feast awaits ye.
I had to leave my condo. Those cannibals were everywhere. They were breaking into places and messing things up. My condo was no exception. When I got home, the place was trashed. It was like someone irresponsible threw a drunkard's party. The stink of urine hung in the air, chairs stuck out from walls, spit filled the kitchen sink, and a half-eaten arm was in the toilet. It reached up with a clawed hand. I flushed, but that didn't get rid of it. Those irritating cannibals....they took all my clothes, but they didn't find my precious canned foods.
I stuffed them all in a backpack and went out for my new place, and I knew exactly where to go.
Back in the world, before the island went haywire with ghosts, I was paid to get rid of some zombies in Kalihi. The guy said I could stay over his place until I finished my job, and there would be a lot of zombies to kill, because he lived behind a cemetery. I said, “For all this money you're giving me, I'll hold you down and give you the ol' up-down.” He said that wasn't necessary. I was just joking, of course.
I lived on the bottom floor of a two-story house owned by two 60-year-old Hawaiian-Filipino brothers. The house got into trouble even bef
ore I could get to work. If memory serves me right, one brother got drunk, died of a heart attack, turned into a zombie, and tried to eat the other. Much screaming. I remember being in bed, trying to read, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, What the F is all that damn noise?
To escape being bitten, the still-human brother jumped off the roof and broke his neck. I saw tears in his eyes. I like to think it was due to a broken heart. After he, too, turned 'sour', I killed them zombie brothers with a sharpened shovel. Seeing as how I had to get paid, I searched them. Not finding anything, I went upstairs and looked around. The place was strange. The walls were covered in newspaper, and animal hair was all over the floor, and I kept hearing a soft whining sound, like a dog was behind a wall or somethin'.
In any case, I found my money in an empty honey jar and got the heck out of there before the fuzz came and threw me in jail. Sure enough, as I walked down the sidewalk, cops sped by. I kept my head down. Works every time....
The house still looked the same, except for the plastic covering the windows and all those boards nailed over the front door. Took me an hour to get them off. I could've smashed through a window, sure, but I wasn't in the mood to hear shattering. I placed each board in a nice pile and opened the door. I expected no one to be home, and I was wrong.
Two dead, old women were on the couch. The looked somewhat ethnic, and they smelled like fish.
I took them out back and buried them under a mango tree.
I was hungry, and a sick part of me started getting some ideas. But I wasn't interested in cutting them old people all up and eating them. I'd KILL myself before I ate another person – living or dead or living dead.
I turned on the TV and got nuttin' but static. I knew that would happen. It was just that I always hoped to see a news reporter. “Good news!” she'd say. “Everything's back to normal! The ghost portal is gone!” And if you were lucky, you'd see my commercial right after:
Aloha. My name's Dr. Boss. I can help soothe you – help get rid of your walking dead problems. Just pay my murdering fee and we can do business. Oh, and let's not forget my cleaning fee and depression fee....
All that right there was what you heard on my commercial. It would air at (if I'm remembering correctly) two in the damn morning. It didn't bring any business. A thousand dollars. Down the drain. Good grief. Running a business is hard. I thought I was supposed to be making money? I wasn't living, I was surviving. That's no way to go. Money was tight. Everything I ate was Spam. Spam, Spam, Spam. Meals like fried Spam, boiled Spam, microwaved Spam, chilled Spam, and liquified Spam.
It's all that damn ghost portal's fault. See, that's when the zombies stopped coming! I don't get it. They just...stopped...coming.
Well...now let me tell you a little about this here ghost portal. I'm looking up at it now as I write this. Look at it...ghosts flying in and out, carrying white souls, black souls, yellow souls. (Five minutes later.) I just spent five minutes yelling at that damn portal. I was venting. It never listens to me. It just does what it does...stealing souls at random.
It showed up over Honolulu in 2010 – a big hole in the sky that sucked in the clouds all the live-long day. It was like an upside down, giant sink drain, but for clouds. At first, people were happy to see it. The hole was interesting. People pointed and many clapped. Japanese tourists took pictures, and when even more tourists started flying down, we all thought, Good. Better for Hawaii's economy. The Governor even held a big Downtown party: Rock bands played; girls with painted, naked bodies danced and jiggled their fat; kids ran around naked and free; parents got drunk and breakdanced on cars; and Governor Sherripa was seen running topless through the crowd of drunkards, screaming something about aliens – but in a good way. She was then seen swimming in a bathtub full of whiskey on the back of some pickup truck. She was taken to the hospital as a result of alcohol poisoning. Later in an interview, she apologized for her sick actions and vowed never to suck a drop of alcohol again. (But that's what they all say. I should know.)
All were merry.
That is...until the ghosts came down and started “attacking” people. But they didn't just scare the living daylights out of everyone. They took their souls – right done yanked them out and took them up, up, up...back into the portal. The cemeteries were filling up fast. Many bodies had to be put in big freezers by order of the Governor. Families were pissed. But as they say, “Better to be pissed off, than pissed on.” And it got me thinking....Why didn't people just cremate their dead? Why keep the bodies lying around? What is WITH these families that insist on holding on to rotting corpses? They're insistent! What is this sick fascination? Are they crazy? Daft? Mental???
The first police officer to shoot up at the portal got his legs pulled off by a ghost. Some Irish tourist caught it all on tape. It was all over the news. Jesus....The cop looked very confused.
Then more police attacked the portal...then more ghosts came...then the military attacked...then MORE ghosts came. The message was clear: Leave the ghost portal alone. Nothing could be done. Not even those priests could help. One day, they all got together under the portal and held hands and complained to God about the hole in the sky. Long story short, ghosts flew down...ate their faces off for some reason...and stole their souls back up to the ghost portal. The zombies slowly stopped coming. I wasn't getting many calls. Few people needed my help. I felt useless. It was at this point that I started my crying phase. All hope was lost. I quit my side-job folding clothes and stayed in my room for days. Didn't matter anyway. The mall was closing. ALL stores were closing. The tourists weren't flying in – not after being attacked by atrocious spirits. People were dying on the streets. Once, on the news, I saw a row of people just fall over like dominoes. It was amazing. After that broadcast, everyone stayed HOME.
One thing did benefit from the ghost portal, though.
A game show called Ghost City.
The commercial went something like this: “Would you explore Hawaii's most haunted places for hundreds of dollars? If you think you've got what it takes, we want you for...Ghost City! Hawaii's first ghost hunting reality show. Sign up now to be a contestant!”
And yup, people came like farts in the wind.
But only 10 were selected.
ME being one of them.
Good thing, too. I was jobless. Again, the zombie busting business was pretty much dead. I didn't understand why the dead weren't coming back to life. Something was wrong. It was like all the zombies just gave up and stayed dead. It had to do with the ghost portal. It showed up, and that's when the zombies stopped coming. I needed money. Big-time. That game show thing seemed so easy. All we had to do was make our way to the rooftop, where a briefcase filled with money was waiting. No problem. Seemed easy enough. In my mind, ghosts had to be easier than zombies. I don't know why I thought that. I just did. And I was friggin' so wrong.
All of us were wrong.
Contestants were getting killed left and right – ghosts disemboweled them, tore their limbs off, skinned them alive, fried their bones, stripped away their nerves....Damn ghosts. One of the contestants kept giving me static, kept insulting me, kept trying to intimidate me. It was some big guy who shall go unnamed. Fool! He thought he knew everything; thought he had it all planned out. What's worse than an arrogant fool? An arrogant fool that's also a ghost hunter. Screw that guy! I don't even wanna say his name. Let him cook in Hell. But anyway....
I made the mistake of making pals with one of the contestants.
Her name was Lacey Zoolu.
She was Russian.
We all had to survive a night at an abandoned place called Lord Hannigan's Hospital. I didn't tell anyone, but I already went to that place the past year to take care of some zombie business. I don't remember his name, but some guy that lived in the woods called me, complaining about a zombie terrorizing his family. I went to his house and found the living dead girl riding on their large dog. The family watched in horror, pointing, screaming, demanding me to do somethi
ng about the terrifying spectacle. The zombie girl saw me and tugged on the dog's left ear and headed right for me. I yanked out my trusty sledgehammer and swung a big, heavy one. Her head came off messy, hitting that guy's wife right in the face; then the head rolled around on the grass – teeth chattering – and the husband lit it on fire with his lighter; then they hugged one another and cried while the flames cooked.
The dog flung the zombie's headless body high into the air. It landed on its feet and ran down the dirt road with its arms waving in the air. It ran all the way to....
Lord Hannigan's Hospital.
It ran into the abandoned place, into some dusty room filled with gurneys, and right before I was about smash its legs with my sledgehammer, the thing up and died. I figured the head – the brain – finally burnt up. I got my monies – my $200 – from that guy and started my long walk home. Tired, I decided to sleep the night over at the old hospital and think about my life. What was it all about? Where was I heading? Did I really love what I was doing for a living? Was it my calling? These were all very important questions. More often than not, they seemed like problems. They needed solving, I believed. Or what was the point of it all? Of living?
Purpose.
It was all about purpose. What was mine? Maybe it was time to get a girlfriend. Maybe she could help. Maybe a good sit-down chat with a lover could help make things clearer.
Cut to: Me and this girl, Lacey, walking the dusty hallways of that abandoned hospital. She was with some guy that got spooked real bad by a ghost and ran away like a fancy girl, leaving Lacey all by her lonesome. That ghost would've gotten her, too. That is, until I came along and punched that ghost's head. Its face come off and crashed through a window, and I think it hit a bird. I took Lacey's hand and ran off with her. She was wonderful! We talked about love, about life, about politics (which I thought I hated talking about), and we talked about art. But then she had to turn a wrong corner and get snatched up by a ghost. I grabbed her feet and pulled, but it was no good. The ghost ripped her neck open, and her soul (along with much blackish & greenish blood) flew out from her. The ghost took her soul and flew away with it. I ran to a window and shook my fist at the ghost, yelling, “Bastard! Come back here with her! With her souuuuuul!”
