About the Contest
This story is an entry to ’s 31Sentence Contest. The contest is exclusively on Hive.
If you fancy participating, you can find the contest here.
Prompt
Here is the expected sentence order:
16, 1, 14, 8, 23, 21, 17, 20, 27, 30, 2, 3, 15, 11, 26, 19, 12, 28, 9, 7, 31, 18, 29, 5, 24, 10, 22, 25, 13, 4, 6
Ghost of the Innocent
The 180-year-old abandoned prison appeared anything but haunted to Jim and Clark, the popular ghost hunters.
“Nooo.”
Jim knew the expression too well to know that Clark would have spotted something. Clark’s thermal sensors were lit up with blobs. The bright blobs themselves were not the concern but the fact that the normal eye did not see anything but broken walls ahead.
“Okay, finally some activity,” Jim pointed his camera at the thermal sensor’s images, “there is nothing in front of us, guys.” Departing from their usual recording style, the duo was live-streaming the entire episode which meant no editing.
“Many of you had asked for the uncut and unedited videos,” Clark spoke to his YouTube subscribers, “here it is.” One of the subscribers’ requests was to witness the video as recorded without any edits so as to pick up action which the duo could have missed. Jim and Clark were happy to oblige as the request meant that they could do away with the hours of reruns and edits before posting the final version on YouTube.
“Hmpff.. Jim.”
Clark bent down.
“Clark, buddy,” Jim kept the camera panned on Clark and held his shoulder, “what happened?”
“Something hit me,” Clark was short of breath, “on my stomach.”
“Damn,” Jim never witnessed a physical attack as the spirits either were neutral or disliked your presence, which, they would make amply clear by throwing objects. The only time that anyone was hurt was when Penny, another friend, had deep claw marks on her tummy. The odd thing was that Penny’s jacket and T-shirt were not torn.
“Follow me,” an unknown voice from behind startled them.
“Not looking good,” Clark was still crouched. The hallway was lit by the camera lights which reflected on age-old rusty bars, creating a plethora of shadows, and it turned out that few of the shadows were unholy.
“You have to follow me to get out,” the voice bellowed again, “they won’t let you go, otherwise.” During ghost hunting projects, to hear sounds or even words together was quite common, but here the voice was framing sentences, and that was unnerving for the ghost warriors. The voice was getting recorded.
“Dude, this is flipping me off,” Clark called out still holding one hand over the stomach, “let’s follow anyway lest we get further hit.”
Jim witnessed enough paranormal to get moving, “who are you?”
“I am Mark,” the voice echoed as the duo followed, “please, tell the court that I am innocent and also my family.”
The prison was brought down by a fire which killed few inmates too, but little did Clark know that an innocent life was also lost.
The duo exited with tons of footsteps chasing them over Mark’s assuring voice.
“Prison, incarceration, solitary confinement.”
“Washington Post,” Jim smiled, “good start.”
Image Courtesy:: Pixabay