• I was on a business conference in New York. This was considerably another useless trip with all of my male co-workers: another inadequate, womanizing group of money-hungry businessmen. You would think that a young woman in New York-a whole seven hours before her business meeting would even begin- would take full advantage of the situation by, say, shopping, even sight-seeing? Then again, I wasn’t even slightly considering this would be my last trip anywhere.
    I whistled for a cab to escort me to Buffalo, where the conference was supposed to be held. A cab pulled up, and I got in. Two passengers, a man and a woman, were also in the cab.
    “They’re also going to Buffalo. This saves gas, eh?” The cab driver said almost over-practiced-like. How did he know I was going to Buffalo when I didn’t even tell him yet?
    I tried to strike a friendly conversation with the woman and man. Here’s how I failed:
    “I’m Catherine. Old-fashioned, I know.”
    “Marilla,” (monotonously)
    “Jonah,” (monotonously)
    I wasn’t afraid of my old-fashioned name after hearing theirs. They never said a word after that in the cab, so I took a fake-nap, being embarrassed of rejection.
    The drive was about an hour, I presumed. I anticipated the streets of Buffalo, but when I looked out the window and noticed a gray, old empty town.
    “Where?-“ My half-finished question was useless. There was no driver anymore. The cab stopped. There was nobody but Marilla, Jonah, and me. I jumped out of the car. Anxiety is not a good contribution for blood pressure, I told myself. Marilla and Jonah popped out of the yellow car as well, eyes huge.
    “Where…are…we?” said Marilla.
    Jonah examined the city. “North Cambridge.”
    “I hear it’s a ghost town,” Marilla retorted eagerly. I had never heard of North Cambridge in my entire life, and I was in AP Geography in high school.
    As I looked around, I saw an abyss surrounding us. It must have been a fierce earthquake that caused that crack. I tried to look past ‘Cambridge’, but my vanishing point could not reach past a faded gray that surrounded the city, like fog. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a bridge, and body language told the others to ‘follow me’. When we reached the bridge, Jonah said,
    “I’m getting out of here,” and ran across the ancient artifact. Then, the support began to shake, and the rope that held the base snapped. Jonah fell into the deep chasm.
    Marilla and I immediately ran for the nearest building, an old medical ‘centre’, which marked on the outside of it was the word “Save”. Once inside, Marilla tried to think of a way to salvation from this city. As she opened her mouth, an insipid look flushed her face, and she began to scream. I saw that she was bitten by the largest spider-like thing I have ever seen. I ran out of the door and headed for the circle surrounded by a community of buildings. Then, I cried. There’s no escape, I told myself. Just after my panic session, an image of what looked like to be an aged village house caught my attention. Perhaps there would be an old bed, or something?
    I walked up to the building; this time, the words were inscribed “Yourself”. When I arrived to the interior of the house, I fell. I was relieved that I was away from horror. I found a wrecked fireplace, burned a couple of dead twigs from outside, and fell asleep (it was snowing and I was freezing).
    I woke up. I had been at the house since morning (I assumed), and now it was pitch-dark. My instinct was to investigate outdoors, so I did. Nothing but the ordinary was there, so I thought. Not a moment before I was considering this was a 'plain-as-day' place, a pack of crimson butterflies fled toward an old cathedral-shaped object. Should I investigate it? Of course, I had always been curious, even as a young child. So my childhood-implemented intuition and I followed the bright red butterflies (I could only see their wings and a mysterious glowing from the building, so I was guided by those elements) to a half-deteriorated, massive (the biggest I could ever dreamed of) Roman Catholic Church, and marked on this one someone had written “Before” (just like the other two structures had meaningless words inscribed on it). The screeching of their wings was enough to drive me mad, and as I unlocked the door, they all fell to the ground. I went inside, self-doubtful of this negative warning. I heard footsteps toward the luminous glowing. I followed it.
    What I saw next cured me of all common sense: a giant tarantula, only with five legs. It was at least a story tall. I shrieked and upset him. Little tiny insects crawled from the walls, and what I thought were rows of broken pews was actually an army of bugs. I ran toward the second and third story, away from the bug (it couldn’t move fast). I found an old closet and shut the door. Properly proceeding to all horror run-aways, a creepy figure, sort of like a ghost maid, came stepping towards me, with all other inanimate objects-save the ceilings and walls-coming to life with various beings I couldn’t even begin to identify. I hid under an old pew, hoping the immortal couldn’t see me.
    She looked left, right, and then removed her presence from me. The biggest heart-stress of my life was over. I stayed in the church, afraid of what might become alive outside. I took heed in the closet space for about three days, going out of it only in the daytime, when the creatures slept.
    I was hungry and thirsty. I decided I would chew on some old jerky by the church parlor. I had carefully mapped out the church in my mind: there were over fifty rooms if I counted right.
    Unfortunately, deprived of food, I had not kept track of the time that day. It was getting dark, and the creatures came to life then. One insect/creature/I-have-no-clue-what-you-are started a chain reaction. Two little girl ghosts rose from the parlor floor, with a loose rope end tied from each of their waists to connect each other to the rope in-between them. A creepy, symbolic meaning?
    I really wasn’t scared of the bugs so much as the two ghosts. They walked terrifyingly, and they called to me in a sinister voice,
    “Where are you going? You don’t know, do you?”
    I ran to what looked like another bedroom-like thing (I assumed this was more of a boarding house/church).Then, I saw two familiar faces: Marilla and Jonah.
    “I-I-thought-“
    “We are not dead. We were never dead. We are eternal, prisoners of our own limitations,” Marilla ’informed’. It made perfect sense to me now: they were faking their deaths the whole time. I had wondered why Jonah didn’t scream once he fell off of the bridge, or why one of those nocturnal bugs had bitten Marilla in the daytime. So I guess you concluded I screamed again, which I did. I ran to where I thought my closet was. Marilla and Jonah were too fast, and they revealed along the way just by how they floated, that they were ghosts. I searched for a defensive weapon. All I had in my pocket was a compact mirror (I abandoned my purse in the cab days ago), so I opened it and flashed it, to see if anything would happen. They halted, and screeched just like the screech of the butterfly wings I had heard. They kept persisting, but I was crafty, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I ran across a tangle of hallways, flashing my mirror when needed.
    My mirror was not ample to guard off the creatures, find my way out, and leave this town forever. True in fact, the creatures would only stay away for a while, then find some way out of my beaming light path. Some seemed as if they could adjust their eyes to this small amount of light, and try to “get” me, for what ever reason.
    I went out of the castle one day, but found creatures five times as intimidating, and ran back into my closet haven. I ate bugs I captured at night, and captured my water from a well outside during the day. No monsters came into the closet-ever.
    I try to think what the ghosts, ghouls, and other monsters’ motivations may be. My curiosity always gets me into being chased by some other ghostly being, and traps me into the closet. Their presence intrigues me…
    …You might think that I would be safe from all creatures, I would outsmart them with my mirror, but you see; they were trying to take control of me slowly. I have no one to talk to. I have no where to go during the night but my own thoughts. I cannot escape. My sanity is slowly fading. So you see, the creatures won. It is my fault all of this happened. It is my fault I am trapped. I do not live in a human society. The person I knew prior to this is gone.
    I still survive. I try to learn more about the living things, I study their behavior and reactions to certain ways I act. In a way, I have formed a community with them, and some of them don’t even chase me, they just intimidate me. But you must realize this lifestyle isn’t sufficient: I have no idea what’s going on in the real world, the events, the (mortal) people, the economy, are things I don’t get to interact with. So the things who sent me and trapped me here, whatever they may be, won the “battle”. I am climbing into a slow psychotic stage, which will make my very identity of a human no longer existent; I figure that’s what they want out of me: complete lunacy. I know I am not safe, I know I can never be released from Cambridge; perhaps I might become “one of them”. In any and every way, I know my story subsequent to this is fatal, and completely, utterly useless.


    Save

    Yourself Before

    It’s Too
    Late…