Cell 4B3

The guard flipped the small cover shut after she looked in on Owen Price. The prisoner leaned back against the wall, adjusting his position while he waited for his execution. Between his fingers, a cigarette slowly burned, which he occasionally took a drag from. Surprisingly, his hands weren’t shaking yet. Owen expected that to happen as the last hour drew closer.

The metallic snap of the door caused the prisoner to look up. The solid door opened, showing his visitor.

“Owen,” the priest nodded.

“Hey padre! How’s it hanging? Find any boys to play with tonight?”

The priest frowned at the insult, but his words remained friendly.

“I’m here at your request. Are you ready to confess your sins?”

Owen laughed, then took an unconcerned drag on his cancer stick.

“I’m agnostic, so I’ll say no,” he replied. “We’ve had that talk. I’ve seen evil beyond your comprehension, so we’re way past talking about souls.”

He paused, observing the thin man on the other side of the bars. The priest wore a full collared black shirt and matching black pants.

“If I tell you the story everyone wants to hear, can you give me a Seal of Confession?” Owen finally asked.

The priest put his hands on the cell bars, only to be warned by the nearby guard not to touch them.

“I can only promise you that should you confess,” the man answered as he pulled his hands from the bars.

Owen considered the words for a moment, then let out a sigh.

“Well, you can call it a confession if it makes you feel better, but I want that promise from you. Plus, it will get the guard away from hearing it. Have her get you a seat. I have one waiting for me already.” Owen smirked at his ghoulish joke.

A few minutes later, the priest sat in front of Cell 4B3 to listen to the story of a condemned man. A man who refused to talk with police detectives, investigators or his lawyer after he killed his girlfriend, along with two other people. Instead, Owen remained silent to everyone but his lawyer. His only words to the lawyer were to expedite his execution faster. The condemned man pushed to get the wheels of justice moving quicker at every turn possible.

After checking his watch, the priest waited with growing anticipation while Owen lit another cigarette.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, padre. We have plenty of time. I hear the soul is eternal. Now, here is the story!”

~~~

Inside the darkened room, Price raised his head. The soothing chanting sound coming from the short and squat medium was putting him to sleep. A late-night seance he and his friends put together for fun started to weigh on him. Long weeks under the gun at work made him reconsider the wisdom of using a Friday night for something other than sleep.

Price glanced over at the fat woman when she finally ordered a spirit to appear. A thin light coming from a narrow crack in the curtain behind him gave him a partial view of Madame Célestine’s face. The flabby third chin of the medium flopped around as she spoke a mixture of Spanish and Creole. For Price, he considered it a part of the entertainment. His natural skepticism grew the longer the woman next to him played the role of entertainer.

Owen looked over the vague outlines of his girlfriend and their friends around the table. On his left was Alex Turner’s wife, Charlotte, who held his hand. She, in turn, held her husband’s hand as he sat next to the medium. Next to Owen, more hidden in the darkness, was his girlfriend, Luna Gardner. He didn’t need to see her face since he was sure Luna was smiling as the event progressed. One of her fingers occasionally tickled the palm of his hand, which she clasped. He recognized her playfulness would keep him up later tonight. But it wasn’t a complaint, he decided, as he suppressed a yawn.

Owen noticed the medium shift in her chair, and he caught movement out of the corner of his right eye. He turned his head slightly, assuming the movement came from his girlfriend. But, his eyes, wide in the darkness, focused on something between Luna and the medium.

A smoky haze lazily twisted in the air. Unformed, then moving convolutions of gray green showed a few feet behind Luna. It was almost invisible, almost unreal to him. Yet it was there, a ghostly mist that rolled idly in the darkness where only its own luminescent light showed.

And then from the mist came something more substantial. Formless at first, the fog-like structure stabilized to take on shape and substance. A partially humanoid face settled between the medium and Luna. He stared in disbelief, then glanced at Madame Célestine, who had her head turned, looking at the same spot.

“Owen, that hurts!” Luna’s voice finally broke through his trance.

He realized he was squeezing his girlfriend’s hand. Price dropped her hand and pointed at the face.

“Look there!” he hissed.

“Where?” Luna’s voice sounded irritated.

Owen realized she couldn’t see his pointing hand.

“To your right!”

He heard her gasp and caught the movement of Luna jerking back.

The face suddenly disappeared before reappearing in front of Price. Somehow, he kept from falling back in his chair. He felt his hand lifted by the icy fingers of another. He looked down and saw a disembodied hand holding his. The fingers appeared thin and delicate, similar to Luna’s.

“Christ, it touched me!” Price blurted out. He finally realized he wasn’t breathing during the encounter. “This is frigging crazy as hell!”

Charlotte’s voice broke through the silence filling the room.

“Alex, turn on the light! Now!”

Owen almost didn’t recognize the woman’s voice, which was much louder than he expected. He guessed the woman saw the apparition as well. A minute later, the light hanging over the dining table came on, causing those sitting to shield their eyes.

“Christ, that was wild,” Price jumped up from his seat and hurried to the other side of Luna.

As he inspected the area, Owen tried to debunk what he saw. He found no wires or anyway the medium might have projected the image.

“I’m not finding any scams going on here,” he announced.

“Let’s be sure,” Alex suddenly stated as he pulled the table away from the medium, who gasped at the action.

“Alex, stopped that!” Luna interceded. “Owen, you sit down. Madame Célestine, I’m sorry for their reaction.”

“It’s part of the job,” the fat woman replied while glaring at Alex. “Some people carry a great sense of spirits and others don’t.”

She looked over at Price.

“Would you like for your wife to search me for a projector?”

“No, no,” he insisted. “It’s just a natural reaction after seeing so many television programs with ghost hunting.” Owen looked around the table.

“Alright, who else saw the face?”

The look on his friend’s faces revealed they saw it.

“I’m going to be honest,” Luna’s voice trembled a little. “This bothers me. This house is only a year old.”

“Come on, Luna. You can’t be afraid,” laughed Price. “If it’s a genuine materialization, it’s pretty cool. It doesn’t mean it’s a ghost.”

She tried to smile in response but appeared to find it difficult.

“No,” she drawled, and her blue eyes remained troubled. “That’s what I’m worried about! How do we know it’s a human spirit?”

Price looked confused, and the medium spoke up.

“Luna is correct. There are more things out beyond our realm we call human. Some are not ghosts or souls. They never can be! And some—it’s not good to bring them inside.” Celestine’s eyes betrayed her concern, which Price found absurd, but he simply nodded. Still, the medium uttered a series of quick exclamations.

“These things, they are not dead; they’ve never lived—not like you and me.”

Madame Célestine shrugged her shoulders and patted Luna on her back.

“But nothing to fear,” she stated. “I protect myself; I protect you, always!”

Luna nodded at the statement as Charlotte joined the ladies. The medium started with an explanation about the face they witnessed. The fat woman told them she never witnessed materialization like that before. Alex caught Owen’s eye and nodded to the kitchen.

“Let’s get a beer to finish out the night,” Price said in agreement.

As the men drank in the kitchen, Alex asked his friend his thoughts.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a hoax. Not sure what we saw but I want to try it again. See if we get the same thing,” Owen said quietly as he glanced out at the women talking.

“Man, you really like to invite trouble in, don’t you? I don’t think Charlotte’s planning on doing that again. She’s pretty nervous right now. She wasn’t happy with me agreeing to do this.”

Price observed the stoic blonde woman standing by his girlfriend and shrugged.

“I don’t know how you can tell,” he admitted.

“It’s easy,” Alex smirked. “The quieter she gets, the more I’m in trouble.”

The two men laughed at the statement and went back into the dining room. They followed the medium to the front door. Madame Célestine suddenly turned back to Owen.

“I am a voice medium, which means I can let a spirit speak through me and use my voice,” she said. “Tonight, something else happened, and it’s not good. Someone else brought the materialization to the table.”

She pointed at Price.

“I think you have more power than you understand.”

Owen’s face lit up at the thought.

“Wow, just call me Owen Price, your star medium!” he announced. “I’ll give readings by appointment only. Luna, you just wait till you see me in my full regalia.”

“No, no, that’s not good,” the medium insisted. “You are inexperienced. You’ll become nothing but a gate for something we don’t want to walk through.”

“I’m sure it’s just a joke,” Luna swore while giving her boyfriend a glare.

“Yeah, just a joke,” Price repeated.

~~~

One week later, Luna Gardner screamed while her chair tipped over with a loud crash in the dark dining room. Then her terrified voice cut through the darkness.

“Somebody turn on the lights—it’s touching me! Oh God, help—what is this?”

Luna screamed again as Owen flipped on the lights after tripping over Luna’s chair.

She stood crouched over and trembling. Wiping something from one hand using her pant leg when the lights flashed on, Luna glanced up with wide eyes in panic. Her other hand she held outstretched, as if warding off something. And in that split second, everyone around the table saw flecks of white foam on her pant leg she wiped from her hand.

But Owen’s eyes focused on a dark mass in Luna’s outstretched hand—a clump of clotted black hair—and, hanging to it, a mass of what might have been flesh at some point. Luna suddenly realized the item was in her hand and she dropped it.

“What the hell is that?” Alex’s voice broke as he backed up from the creepy item.

“Fuck, that’s enough! Stop this gag!” Charlotte’s enraged voice filled the room.

Price hurried to Luna’s side as she stared down at the matted flesh on the floor.

“This isn’t a joke, Charlotte!” Owen announced. “I don’t know what the hell happened. But we didn’t trick you!”

“Christ, look!”

Price looked down at Alex’s words and he saw that hair and flesh undergoing a change. The pale flesh turned purple. Seconds later, the creepy skin transformed into iridescent brown ooze—until only a pool of the foul liquid showed. The black clot of hair was the last thing to go, slowly disappearing.

“No! It’s not real!” Luna backed away, still unconsciously wiping her hand on her pants.

A stench filled the air, causing everyone to leave the room.

Long after the Turners left, Owen went late into the night, researching their experience. He recognized heart-freezing, blood-congealing fear made people lose sight of rational thinking. Yet Own would admit laughingly and with all honesty that to him that the fear everyone else felt earlier was an unknown emotion for him. Instead, he overcame his fear by focusing on the rational, the scientific. What they experienced needed more study.

Price glanced over at his sleeping girlfriend, who lay on the nearby couch with sympathy. He never intended for things to go so far. However, he felt a buzz inside him from the opportunity he experienced earlier.

Something crossed into their realm!

In the hours since, Owen came away from their terror with more interest. Maybe even something beyond curiosity—he carried an insatiable desire to know more of the thing. As he held Luna in his arms for her to drift off to sleep, Price knew she could not deter him. He would just keep her away from his research. Despite the terror in the minds and hearts of the others in that room, the man felt an almost desperate need to discover more about the thing, as he called it.

Getting up from his chair, Price went over to the window and looked out at the lightening sky. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was nearly five in the morning. His engineer’s mind kept going over the experiences and he came up with several ways to prove what they saw was real. He wanted to capture evidence of the thing with more than just video evidence. He yawned, then went back to his laptop to email his boss. Owen decided he would stay home today and focus on his upcoming experiments.

When the weekend came around, Price was alone in the apartment, sitting in the dining room again. Luna was staying with Charlotte for the evening as a girl’s night out since Alex had a conference trip for his job.

Owen sat in the dark, keeping his breathing calm. Around him on tripods were several devices he picked up from online shops specializing in ghost hunting. He turned on the infrared camera, which stood on a tripod facing him. Since it was his first time trying to bring the thing out, he could only sit in the dark with his thoughts.

At first, he considered the reasons behind his need to investigate. He kept going back to his need to know the truth. In a way, Price wanted to confront the unknown realm and whatever stood inside. The blackness surrounding him gave him a sense of comfort, but he also carried an underlying worry. It was inevitable since the night carried an inherent sense of danger for any human. He reminded himself to control fear was the act that pushed humanity beyond an animal surviving by instinct alone.

A prickling sensation that grew inside came after he waited. The feeling almost stung him as it moved swiftly up his spine. Owen recognized it. Also, there came a lethargy that swept quickly through him. An added sense swept over him when he noticed a ghostly glimmering appeared in the far corner of the room. However, it wasn’t by sight, since his eyes were of little use in the darkness. Yet, some inner vision made him turn his head to face the thing coming.

Straining to grasp a vision, he finally noticed a wispy cloud of gray green spread out over the floor, then it twirled upward to reach the ceiling. His memories of the woods where he beheld foxfire came back as he stared at the bioluminescence flickers weaving amid the cloud.

The cloud disappeared. He looked around as the damnable thing’s presence remained. He felt the pressure down in his bones. Price tried to overcome a feeling of helplessness as some strange power reached out to paralyze his muscles. Something that had become invisible still hovered around him. Its presence made known to him by that strange sense inside him.

He could not move. Still, he felt—no; he knew with certainty that something incredibly vile hovered near him. Owen’s sense tingled with dread as the thing drew closer—still, closer.

Finally, Price understood the full meaning of overwhelming fright. The understanding of its uttermost depths came out along with beads of cold perspiration chill his neck. He thought of the light switch on the other wall. The man turned to the barest stream of moonlight creeping into the room from behind the curtains. He considered running to the window to throw them open in the moonlight. Owen believed it was the only way the entity would leave. And then—he noticed a forming figure which caused Price’s breath to stop.

A blotchy green and brown head emerged in front of Owen Price. He froze, his gaze fixated on the thing. The front of the creature’s face held a flat and triangular elongated nasal and mouth, which reminded him of a venomous snake. But the humanoid lips were open to reveal curved yellow teeth. Thick mangy hair partially covered two soulless pockets where eyes should exist. The hair hung down along the sides of the head.

Powerless, Price could only look at the foulness exposed in front of him. Then he noticed two bands of silvery light suddenly come to life inside the eye sockets. They held a demoniac fury that Owen found an irresistible fascination for a moment. Then, his brain raced with a thousand instant thoughts, which led to one conclusion. The thing was nothing remotely of a human soul. It was something which came from the dark recesses of some ungodly realm.

As his mind scrambled for any solution to his paralyzing fear, Price noticed the beam of moonlight in the corner of his eye. The line of light caused his eyes to look away from the frightful visage. Instinctively, Price jumped out of his chair and ran to the window. He flung back the curtains, then turned. The moonlight flooded into the room. The only sound Owen heard as he watched a blue-white mist vanish from near his chair was his beating heart.

Still in fright, the man hurried to the wall and flipped on the light switch. The blinding glare of light filling the area made him feel safe. However, Owen felt a pain in his wrist. He looked down to find blood streaming from an open cut. Then, an intolerable scent of decay filled the room, and Price hurried to the bathroom.

Luna returned to the apartment with Charlotte the next morning. Both of them looked at Owen with concern when they discovered him in the kitchen. He looked over from the chair where he sat at the counter drinking coffee. The bags under his eyes and the strain of a night filled with terrible nightmares appeared obvious to the women.

“Owen, what happened?” Luna wrapped her arms around him as she pressed against his back.

He shook his head while still debating what to tell her. It was an argument he had with himself most of the night.

“Just awful nightmares,” he explained.

“You didn’t do anything, did you?” Her suspicious tone caused him to grimace.

“No, nothing like that,” Owen recovered quickly and gave her a grin. “Just didn’t get any sleep, so I’m dead tired. I have to quit watching those horror movies.”

~~~

When Luna asked about the bandage on his wrist, Owen just shrugged and told her he cut his arm accidentally while making his dinner just after she left.

“Just don’t ask me to cut vegetables for you,” he joked.

Price noticed by her look she remained skeptical of his answer, so he quickly changed the subject.

“So, what did you and Charlotte do last night?”

As the women regaled him with their bar crawl through the various establishments, Price put on a face he used at work. While his mind returned to the thing which entered his world, he feigned his interest in their exploits. When the conversation ebbed, he excused himself and went to the bedroom for a nap.

Luna’s tender lips woke Owen late in the afternoon. He smiled and hugged her tightly.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said. “But you’ll not get any sleep tonight if you don’t get up.”

Owen suppressed the sarcastic comment waiting on his lips. Instead, he nodded while he enjoyed her embrace. Besides, Price knew he wouldn’t get any sleep until he ensured the thing would not return.

“Charlotte took off right after you went to sleep,” Luna informed him with a grin. “I’m sure you can’t get her to stay in this place on her own.”

Her smile faded.

“You look worried. Is there something I can help with?”

He looked into her eyes, remembering the first moment he saw her.

“Nah, I’m just getting over that stuff with the seance. I’m sorry.”

She kissed him, then laid her head across his chest.

“Don’t put it on yourself. We all agreed.”

Luna paused; her eyes drifted toward the window and the sunlight pushing through the blinds.

“You know, I slept better at the Turners than I’ve done here since that night—when the medium was—do you think that means something?”

Owen tensed at the idea before he let out a breath and shrugged.

“Well, you had a terrible fright. We’re unsure of what happened, so I think it’s normal. On top of that, it happened in this apartment. I think there’s some psychology at work in the background.”

“Well, that’s not a pleasant thought,” she replied. “I mean about it happening a few feet away from this bed. But it does make sense, I guess. Everyone thinks dealing with the supernatural is fun at first. Then, I touched it.” She shivered, then lifted her head to look at him.

“When you get down to it, I don’t want to know what’s out there. It doesn’t matter as long as it stays on one side, and we stay here.”

“What about afterward?” he asked.

Luna gave him a puzzled look.

“I mean after we die. Don’t you want to know what lays beyond?”

She laid her head on his chest and remained quiet for a moment. Then Owen heard her sigh as he stroked her hair.

“No!” she finally declared. “I don’t think there’s a thing we can do about it. So why tempt fate?”

He chuckled at her statement.

“I suppose that’s as good a reason as any I’ve thought of,” Price agreed.

~~~

It was near midnight. True to Luna’s prediction, Owen found himself unable to sleep. After tossing and turning for an hour, plus the glare from his sleepy girlfriend, he finally left the bedroom.

Owen turned his attention to some of the work he’d let slip while he fixated on drawing the thing out again. After making love to Luna early in the evening, he promised himself to change his focus. Price was done with trying to bring the entity into their world. Now, he merely wanted to confirm it stayed away.

Looking over his delayed project, Owen found himself quickly immersed in the details. He swore softly under his breath as he went over various parts of the group’s design, which caused issues. As he tapped out emails to various colleagues involved, Price went over the budgets, estimates and timelines.

The lamp made a circle of light upon the table where he worked. Silence filled the room, but for the occasional squeak of his chair when he moved. Owen remained unaware of the darkness or his own solitude. Entirely engaged, the first sound went unnoticed.

Eventually, the sound repeated several times before Price realized the odd noise. It reminded him of the whistling intake from someone with a severe case of asthma. He cocked his head toward the sound. However, he could not make out the source.

“Stop it!” he mumbled, more to himself than whatever made the noise.