Purgatech: Adrian's Ghost-hunting Angst

Chapter Eight: Yesterday Is Here

Two days pass.

Adrian has had enough. The crushing weight of the Purgatech experiments begin weighing down heavily on Adrian’s mind. The only way to get away from these thoughts? He knew he had to do the trial.

What would happen, he considered.

Would there be anything out there or would he be left alone as he believed? Ghosts weren’t real, were they?

Taking another Friday off, Adrian knew he couldn’t prolong his suffering anymore. He sat in his study, wondering the best solution on how to approach the problem. Does he get straight into it? Does he take the time to do more research? Or does he wait another day, taking all the time he needs to get mentally and physically prepared.

“Let’s get straight into it then.” He picked up one of the boxes from the floor, removing it from its packaging. It was the cell phone, which he was told had a full charge and to his surprise, on pressing the side button, it shone to life. It was the same he used in Evergreen Manor, untouched and unsullied, apparently.

He fidgeted with a few of the apps that it came standard with. Neglecting to enter the Ghost Hunter app. He would do it soon, he knew he had to, but that didn’t mean he would rush to anything just yet.

Take your time, he thought, there’s no rush. After all, he was being paid to do this test. He didn’t need to work a day longer, for six months anyway, so why should he rush it? There was enough keeping him going and hooked to this for as long as he needed.

Before Adrian fully committed, he made sure to open the rest of the gadgets. The Purgatory Doorway glasses, the Purgoggles and Purgawear. A warning on the Purgatory Doorway in big, bold letters read: Use at Own Risk.

This unsettled him, but he also knew that it couldn’t have been serious. It must have just been their way of removing liability. And these boxes were their promotional pieces, so as a test subject he knew that it couldn’t have been anything more than a warning, the same way some packages express: this could contain nuts.

He psyched himself out in the hopes that he would just do it, but he struggled. He ended up walking to the kitchen, still playing with the cell phone that looked very similar to his but he could tell it was infinitely better. There were no logos, but it looked very much like a Samsung or Huawei kind.

Purgatech must have outsourced the project. Another trivial thought that spurred in his mind to avoid the impending notion that he had to get into the experiment. Procrastination was always strong in him.

On entering the kitchen, he moved straight to the glass cupboard. Taking out a tumbler, fetching two blocks of ice and pouring whiskey over it. Johnny Walker Red. Not his favourite, but at the way he’d been pounding them lately, it was the only way to go without wasting money on booze, really. He took it down, poured another, downed it too and the final came with him to the room.

Finally, he took the phone from his pocket, tapped on the icon of the ghost in a net and waited for it to load. It felt like an eternity, but in total not more than five seconds had past. He logged in using his credentials and then waited for it to get in. When it was finally all sorted, the first blip came on the screen. It was close, blinking on a blackened Google Maps. A little orange light blinked, unmoving, with red and blue surrounding it. He took a small sheet of paper out of the cell phone box, which explained the various colours of the blips that would appear.

Red was a weak connection. The ghost was there but it was drifting.

Orange meant it was a flickering connection.

Blue was almost always a false positive, or possible interference.

Green meant an accurate read, that you were close.

On inspecting the application, Adrian noted that he was zoomed out in the map and the settings were set for a general scale of where hotspots would be. The same formula was used, just in the more zoomed location, it showed hotspots for activity. He brought his fingers onto the screen, pushed them apart and the map grew smaller. It was only on further inspection that he noticed he wasn’t even in the right state. A small icon in the top right corner showed that he still needed to put on his location settings and he did so.

Again, the map zoomed out to see the entire Evergreen. Evergreen Manor, or the approximate location glowed a bright green, which Adrian thought made sense. Zooming into his own location, he noticed that spots around his own house were glowing a bright green. A few oranges, blues and reds around too, but one seemed too close for his comfort. The unsettling nature of the green orb came from it being in his backyard. Or maybe a neighbours, but it seemed close to his own little blip on the map.

Adrian considered his options.

The first was the obvious. Log the results and give up for the day, get back behind the bottle and take it easy. That was the coward’s way out, and where he knew he was going to regret his decision, Adrian pulled himself up from his desk, grabbed the Purgatory Doorway glasses and went to the backyard.

The glass of whiskey, trailing along with him all the way.

“Okay. So what you’re going to see now is probably going to be devastating. It’s a ghost, right? It’s got to be. Yeah, that’s right. It’s got to be.” Adrian opened the door to his backyard from the kitchen and walked towards the green blip on the phone’s map. He took down the glass of whiskey, the two original ice blocks remaining intact. They would melt now, in the sun, but that was fine. They’ve served their purpose forthright.

“Okay, Adrian.” He tapped a few buttons on the phone and changed it to the text format. He wasn’t sure how it was supposed to work. The Ouija Board aspect of it was lost on him. He wondered if it would only happen once he put the glasses on, which he thought could be another part of the long con. But low and behold, he thought, there on the screen, the Ouija Board began to move. At first it was a garbled mess of letters strung together. An occasional number too.

“What’s this nonsense?” He said. He was speaking in hush tones, so that no one around that could be listening in would make out what he was saying.

Finally after another string of peculiar letters and numbers a message formed:

I know. I’m sorry.

Interesting, Adrian’s only thought. What else could he think? This was a peculiar situation and he felt uncomfortable. He was on the edge of his seat and waiting for the jump scare. That’s what would happen now, if this was a horror movie, right? It had to be what happened next. He prepared for it, thinking that when he pulled the glasses over his eyes, he would see something flicker. A deformed monstrosity that waited for him. A planted monster on the other end of Purgatech’s sick game.

Murder in the red barn.

The next message came through. It repeated itself on occasion. With the “I’m sorry.” Filtering in there too and if Adrian didn’t get satisfaction now, he would never get it. He pulled the glasses over his face to see the figure of a man. From the shoulders and general length, he could make out that the figure was male, even though it faced an opposite direction and was dressed in a black evening dress. His hands were brought to his face, and almost instantly with the glasses connecting to his face, there was no longer need for the cell phone. He heard the weeping, he heard the grizzled voice of a man muttering “I know. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my fault. There was a murder in the red barn.”

He found the whole situation uncomfortable. A man dressed in drag, that wasn’t the worst of it, but seeing him weep. A man that seemed to once have been of great power, reduced to tears. His shoulders broad, arms tight and strong, he stood taller than Adrian somewhat.

“Hello?” Adrian spoke. He sniffed. Again, he felt the urge of the jump scare coming. If this was a joke then it was a good one. The long con, he thought. It took Purgatech only a moment to hook a few hundred suckers, and it would take only another, to scar them for life.

“What are you saying?” He asked. He could hear every word that the man spoke, but the convoluted message that came with it was the true unsettling part of it all.

“It wasn’t me, man. It wasn’t me. It was them. They did it. I was just letting them go to where they wanted. You’re not going to take me in for something that I didn’t do.” The man spoke again. He seemed to be growing angrier with every word. The hands dropped to his side, looking off into the distance now. The tears stopped.

“It was their fault. They chose to do it. They came home with me, I didn’t try and bring them over. They wanted to be here. They wanted to be here. They wanted to be here.” He said.

“What?” Adrian asked.

But then the cycle repeated again. A soft weeping could be heard and the man brought his hands back up to his face. Adrian looked around, there was nothing apart from the two of them there. A chirping bird off in the distance startled Adrian and he turned his head to face it. When his vision returned to where the man stood, he was gone.

He turned down to his phone, noticing that the green blip was still on the map. So this is where the jump scare comes? He knew that if he took the glasses off he would be fine. There would be nothing that he would see and he could walk away from it unscathed. If he kept them on, he would get a fright and it would put him down for a little while –Adrian was never any good at scares, jump scares being the worst of all – but he knew that to get proper results, he would have to put in the time and effort. He wanted to be a part of this trial and by god, he would do his best to take part in it.

Everything was silent, however. The intense ramblings he heard when he first put the glasses on, gone. The muffled tears, gone. There was not a noise in the air, apart from the bird, that continued its calls out into the afternoon air.

“Maybe it’s delayed,” Adrian said, “It could be that it takes a while for the blips to go away once the ghost leaves. That’s got to be it, right?” He nodded and looked around. Again, there was nothing. But he waited. He waited for a moment longer so that he could be certain and in waiting, he realized that it was a mistake.

The sobbing came again but this time from behind. Behind was the direction he had to go to make it back into his house. Now, he worried. The jump scare threat was still there. It could be gone, with removing the glasses, right? But what would that yield.

He sucked up his fear and turned to face the sobbing man, whose hands covered his face. From there, Adrian could already see wounds. The scars of being bludgeoned to death.

“Adrian Beck.” The ghost spoke, “You’re trapped. And we’re all mad down here.” The ghost dropped its hands, half the jaw gone, one eye popped from its socket. Adrian began to scream which was returned with the sick laughter of the ghost before him. It reached out to grab him, but before anymore could come, Adrian flung the glasses to the ground. He collapsed beside them, crippled by fear.