Blackbird
an excerpt

Watching the monitor, Ophelia saw the greenish hallway fade into view and heard her voice call out to the unknown. In the background, she heard a noise that hadn’t been present that night. Had not been heard on the tape recorder and it chilled her soul. As she focused on the tiny white orb floating in the hallway, she heard the screaming.

“What the hell was that?” shaken, Ophelia started to say more but was stilled by Stella’s hand on her arm.

“Watch,” her mouth set in a firm line, Stella pointed back to the dim screen. The orb they had witnessed earlier danced and shot up to the ceiling as Ophelia remembered. Now, however, she saw the unmistakable curve of a man’s face stepping out of the doorway at the end of the hall and begin to chase the light.

“Holy shit! Where did he come from? Wait a minute, isn’t the boyfriend still alive and in jail?” Confusion knit her brows together, her mind racing to think of another possibility as how a living person could imprint itself on a haunting.

“I called Elizabeth this morning, she said his name was Chester Braddock, he’s at Red Onion State Prison and still very much alive.” Stella pointed back to the screen, “Watch this…” her voice trailing as she slowed the video to show the next moment.

In the eerie half-light of the tape, the face before her fascinated Ophelia. As she watched, the soft angles of the man’s face began to change, mutating the rough angry countenance into one with sharp features and a cruel tight-lipped mouth. A flash of metal swung out of the darkness and sliced into the ghost, felling her to the ground. As his hands wrapped around Brynn’s ankles and began to drag her back into the darkness, Ophelia swore he turned to the camera—and smiled.

“Oh my god, he knows we were there!” she was shaking with the thought that he had seen them and knew exactly where they were and why they were there. As the video ran its last few seconds, she watched as the man’s face melted back into the pudgy lines of Brynn’s boyfriend. His furious expression relaxing for an instant into slack-jawed confusion then hardened as intense hatred filled his body and pulled Brynn into the dark hallway and away from the light.