“I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

Scene 1. Isolation

All institutional buildings worldwide, occupied for several decades or more, such as schools, hospitals, asylums, and military barracks are haunted. Thus, living long-term ‘guests’ of those institutions often get the pleasure of ‘ghostly visits’. Most people that receive a ‘ghost experience’ do not discuss their experiences in polite company, fearing the ‘rubber room’, perhaps already confined to one.

I was wheeled from the ER area over to a sad-looking partially demolished building that was visibly torn from the now demolished old central hospital building. From the building’s external state, it is difficult to believe that it can serve any purpose, even long-term non-critical care for ‘patient overflow’.

Hopefully, they won't finish demolishing this building until after I have been discharged.

As I waited for my ankle reconstruction surgery, I meditated on my conviction for the crime of being stupid and my sentence to solitary confinement.`

My hospital ‘overflow’ ward room was large enough for two beds, but I was always alone. The room was completely white, with gloss white painted walls and ceiling with white floor tile. It was always very clean, smelling strongly of hospital disinfectant. A hospital television was mounted to a turret arm projecting from the far wall and a black hospital telephone was on a stand next to the bed, both of which I assumed to be non-functional. A curtain was hung on a wall, but there was no window behind it.

There was some relief to my isolation. During the week-days, my sister visited with her therapy dog, Amelia. Amelia was already known to the hospital staff, as she had visited the hospital several times before my accident for the hospital staff's ‘health care provider therapy’. She brought me my old and new cell phones, but neither worked through the effective electromagnetic shielding of the old building’s thick concrete walls, so no telephone, no Internet.

My ‘construction friend’ visited periodically to cheer me up, insisting that I call for his help for projects involving ladders or that are up on the roof. He took pictures of me and my ankle block with its projecting rods and delivered my Amazon books, rescued from my front porch before the packages could be collected by the neighborhood ‘porch pirates’.

The entire hall seemed to host only me. I heard no sounds from the other rooms. The nurse’s station is at the far end of the long hall, abandoned on the weekends. My solitude is occasionally interrupted by visits from the night nurses, who check to see if I was still breathing.

The dim illumination, from far down the hallway, was my only light at night.

My room had only wisps of air circulation and no heat;

My night confinement was: Cold; Dark; Silent.

I was alone most of the time, but more aware of it at night.

At first, I was afraid to be alone. As a child, I was afraid of the dark.

Having little else to do, I reflected on my situation:

The TV received only static;

The hospital telephone was dead;

It was too dark to read print;

My cell-telephone had books, articles, or music, and wireless reception was blocked.

I was experiencing sensory deprivation for the first time in living memory.

Am I a target for ‘spiritual entities’?

Do I hear their ‘voices’?

Scene 2. Voices

The old administrator was right about the sounds the old building made at night, creaking and groaning, protesting its impending doom by the wrecking-ball. The building’s noises were as incoherent as the noises of the wind, but the building kept me company from the silence of the night.

However, one night, I was awakened by a new sound, a muffled scratching at the edge of perception.

Is this sound coming from inside the walls? Does this ‘old wing’ have rats?

I was awakened by this sound every few nights, growing progressively louder. Eventually, the sounds began to condense into vocal speech, incoherent as muffled speech heard through a wall from a neighboring apartment.

Do I now have neighbors? Talking in the other rooms?

I stuffed tissues into my ears as ear plugs to muffle The Voices. I felt creepy as I realized that the indistinct speech I heard was not through my ears, and I had no way to block or even diminish this sensation.

I grew used to the building sounds and The Voices, and was able to ignore them to sleep at night and read during the day. However, one night I was awakened by The Voices in intelligible soft clear speech. The speech was as if someone were sitting in my room softly and slowly reading out loud from a book. I see no one in the darkness of my room. I asked The Voice.

“Is someone here?” “Who are you?”

The Voice did not reply or stop its narration. The Voice continued without interruption, as a voice on a tape-recorder’s playback. I finally relaxed, laying back, listening to what The Voice was saying. Intrigued I started to follow The Voice’s story narration, momentarily startled as I listened I witnessed images in my mind, illustrating the story.

The Voice did not come every night, but on those nights, I would be awakened from sleep by The Voice, always from sleep. When one Voice finished a story, a different sounding Voice began another story. The stories were about everything in all genres, some stories may have been records of actual events while other stories were obvious fiction.

In the morning, I was aware that all of these perceived ‘extrasensory phenomena’ from the night before could be explained as simple ‘dreaming’.

But what dreams! I love The Voices’ stories and unlike most of my normal dreams, I could recall The Voices’ narratives and images for a while longer.

I asked my sister to bring me yellow ruled writing pads and a couple of blue Bic pens.

I started my media project by drawing pictures and storyboards, thinking that I could make an animated movie. But I quickly realized that I really had to start with a complete, written story, regardless of the destination medium. So, I began scribbling text, something I could still do in the near total darkness of my ward room. I created dozens of pages of rambling, stream-of-consciousness fiction stories.

This sudden interest in fiction writing was strange for me, as I have not read a fiction novel for thirty years.

And I have never written fiction.

Scene 3. Nightjar

The total bed confinement, the spooky night sounds, and The Block on my foot, make sleeping uneasy and difficult. So, instead of sleeping, I used the 'dark time' to listen to The Voices and write down their stories. When the night nurses came to check on me, I heard the clicking of their shoes on the hallway tile, hiding my writing materials under my bedsheets to avoid a scolding.

I was used to the daily stream of young people, visiting me during their educational rounds through the hospital. I agreed, when admitted, to providing anything I could for education or research, as I believe in it, especially for medicine. The students find me off in the old building. They came in groups or individually to ask survey questions or just to talk to me. The students were young, cute, enthusiastic, cheerful, and smart. They were of every race, nationality, and persuasion that this planet has to offer. I looked forward to their visits and their interest in me. I saw the attraction of the Munchhausen Syndrome.

But the students did not come around to the old building on the weekends. The weekend nights were calm and quiet, ideal for concentration and writing. I was surprised when I heard a knock on my door at nearly midnight.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

I heard a woman’s low voice.

“Are you awake? May I come in? I have some survey questions for you.”

“Yes, I am awake, please come in.”

While I was stuffing my tablet and pen under my sheets, in to my room walked a tall black lady, as a silhouette against the dim hallway night light. I motioned to the visitor’s chair next to my bed.

“Please, come in and have a seat. I am sorry that I cannot stand to greet you.”

I apologized with a chuckle, pointing at The Block over my left ankle and foot. The Lady smiles, making me aware of her large white teeth.

“I am glad that you will talk to me and help me with my survey.”

She regally and gracefully sat down on the simple folding chair next to my bed. My visitor is a tall, thin black woman in a fashionable black business suit as I consider.

She isn’t a student or a nurse, she appears to be older. OMG, she is a queen!

As I was effectively immobilized in the bed by The Block on my left foot, I tried to face The Lady the best I could, and take in her ambiance. I noticed that The Lady was attractive, with large, expressive eyes. Her pupils were dilated by the darkness, with her narrow white sclera highlighted by her dark complexion.

The Lady had shiny, curly black hair piled up on her head, banded with a gold ribbon, as a headdress or a crown. Long strands of The Lady’s curly hair flowed from her ‘headdress’, down the back of her neck across her back, a mane of black feathers. The Lady continuously displayed an engaging white smile, below the slight hook of her nose. The Lady continued.

“Good evening sir, my name is Lynnette. I am doing a survey for the hospital Marketing Department. I would like to ask you a few questions, if I may?”

She doesn’t just look regal, she looks like something from another world.

I nodded. “Sure, what have you got?”

As I continued to stare at this unique looking woman, I reflected.

I am not surprised that she is in sales and marketing, with her voice and her looks.

Lynnette’s questions were the typical ones I have answered before for others, so I am practiced.

“What happened to you, why are you here?”

I recited to her my short version of The Fall.

She asked about my hospital experience.

“How do you find the food, is it good enough with no salt?”

“The hospital food is good, better than what I make for myself. I only hate the decaff coffee, it is pretty good for decaff, I just hate decaff.”

“How are the hospital doctor’s, nurses and staff treating you?”

“I like them all. I have been a patient in this hospital before, I am impressed by how nice they all are.”

Gradually, her questions moved to relaxed and casual conversation, about popular culture, music, movies, current events and family.

I was unconsciously being drawn in by her slow and careful diction in her calm low voice. Her hypnotizing voice was easy for me to follow, even with my deteriorating hearing.

But mostly I remembered laughing with her over conversation subjects. She was a natural at comic narrative delivery.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I also remembered that she had an unusual, high-pitched laugh, which she tried to suppress by covering her beak with her wing.

“Key, key, key.”

As the cry of a small nocturnal hawk, a ‘nightjar’.

I couldn’t help thinking.

Why is this talented beauty wasting so much of her time on me? But I ‘dig’ the attention…

With our noise and laughter, considering the hour, convenient that there are no neighbors and the nurse’s station is vacant at night.

The night faded, and I don’t remember how our meeting ended, Lynnette leaving my room, or anything else from that night.

I bolted up in bed. It was the morning and the hall lights were fully on. My yellow pad was still under the sheet and my blue pen was poking me in the butt. I quickly retrieved and secured my writing gear under the bedsheet at the appearance of the morning nurse.

“How are you this morning?”

I coughed in response, but I asked.

“Who was that student from the hospital Marketing Department that came by my room late last night for a ‘survey’?”

The nurse looked up at me, confused.

“Last night? No one is allowed into the ward rooms after 7 pm. Does the County Hospital even have a ‘Marketing Department’?”

I grinned as the nurse laughed at my statement.

“What would you like for breakfast?”

I weakly smiled and jested.

“Ghost Toasties.”

I watched the morning housekeeper sweep up what appeared to be black feathers from the floor.

Scene 4. Reconstruction

After a few days (and nights) waiting in the old ward room, I was collected by an orderly and my gurney was wheeled from my room in the old ward wing to the new hospital. My gurney was parked at the door of the orthopedic surgical suite, where I waited for my surgeons to finish with the 'emergency' cases. Eventually, I was wheeled in for the reassembly of the bones of my lower left leg, ankle, and foot. The start of the procedure was the same, I was to count backward from 100, getting about as far as I did last time.

I didn’t remember being returned to my room. I did remember that my ‘construction friend’ was waiting for me there.

“You lost The Block. Where is The Block?”

Although I was conscious, I was out-of-it from the fentanyl surgical anesthesia. I raised my head and looked toward my feet. I noticed that The Block was gone and my left foot and ankle were wrapped in thick layers of bandages. I exclaimed to my friend.

“The Block, they took The Block away. Wait, what are you doing in THIS nightmare. This is MY nightmare!”

I lost focus of the room, becoming patterns of abstract lines and tumbling geometric shapes. I tried to describe these visions to my friend in streams of incoherent nonsense.

So, I had a witness. My ‘construction friend’ was watching me closely as I freely conversed with the spirits in the room and also those spirits in the next dimension over, spirits only I could see and hear. I regretted that I couldn't write anything down. Only by the next day had my shaking declined enough for me to hold a pen, although my penmanship was much worse than usual.

That night after the reconstruction surgery, I experienced a terrible, fitful night, feeling painful demon pitchfork stabs, over my whole body, withdrawal symptoms from the fentanyl anesthesia. My body was hot, feeling ever-increasing pain from my left leg, ankle, and foot.

Wow, I didn’t feel much pain before, but now I’m feeling a lot of pain. What did those doctors do to me?

A cheerful morning nurse stuck her head into my ward room doorway and saw me lying on my back with eyes open, gritting my teeth and staring at the ceiling,

“Are You awake? Is it okay if the doctors see you now?”

I grunted, “Ugh!”

Which the nurse took as a ‘yes’.

Six large males in white coats filed into my room.

Presumably these are The Doctors, the orthopedic surgeons, that reassembled ‘Humpty Dumpty’. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men have been replaced by a half dozen giants!

Even though there was only my bed in the large ward room, these large entities filled all the space, too large even to stand next to each other around my bed. These athletic, broad-shouldered men, were suggestive of the mythical Minotaur, with only the light reflected from the white ceiling visible between their (horned) heads. The team was widely grinning their friendly bovine smiles with all of their large white teeth displayed. I took heart in their smiles.

At the end of my bed was a large bear of a man that I presumed to be the lead surgeon on my case. After some rustling noises from the other figures for space in the room, he spoke to me.

“How are you today?”

I lied, “I am fine, how did my surgery go?”

The bear feigned a worried look,

“Well, you were in a lot of little ‘pieces’. You had what we call a ‘post’ fracture. Here, take a look.”

The lead surgeon pulled up a display-screen to my bed, took a page of dark plastic film out of his folio and placed it on the screen, an x-ray view of my leg before the reconstruction operation, with all the shattered bones.

“This is what we started with.”

The lead surgeon replaced the page with another film, an x-ray view of my leg after the reconstruction operation. The shattered bones were replaced by metal: screws; a plate; several rods. I exclaimed on seeing this x-ray.

“Wow! I have a ‘hardware store’ in my leg!”

The lead surgeon softly chuckled, always smiling,

“Yes, you do. We used everything on you.”

I leaned back, resigned,

“I guess that this means I will be confined to a wheelchair for a while. Can you say how long?”

“That, we will have to see. It depends very much on you, and your healing. But we will start with three months with no pressure on that foot.”

I groaned, “Three months, and maybe more?”

The lead surgeon assumed a serious stare, directly at me.

“Like I said, much depends on you, no weight on your left leg and foot, don’t fall, do your rehabilitation exercises and eat proper foods.”

He turned with the rest of the herd, they clomped out of my room, single-file, ducking down and turning sideways to fit their tall broad bodies through the room’s narrow hallway door. I reflected.

They are off to ‘reassemble’ another ‘unfortunate’, no doubt.

Scene 5. Psych-Ward

After the reconstruction surgery, I was moved to an ‘in-patient recovery’ ward. Once again, because of the construction, another medical building near the hospital had been re-purposed for these accommodations:

The Psychiatric Hospital;

The Psych-Ward.

My visitors told me about large automatic inner and outer airlock type doors, no doubt to allow checking to make sure the correct entities are being let in, or let out.

I believe there are psychiatric patients somewhere in this wing, perhaps on another floor, but I do not see or hear them.

My Psych-Ward 'surgery recovery' room was newer and more cheerfully decorated than my old, and soon to be demolished, ward room, and both the telephone and the television were operational. The room even had a real window facing a courtyard. Once again, I was alone in the room. My room was located at the far end of an activity room, a single room at the end of a hall. I was unused to the quiet at night, without the building noises, hearing only the whirring of the air circulation system fans.

I thought that The Voices would leave me alone now that I had been moved from the old hospital ward wing. However, The Voices from the hospital were quickly joined by The Voices resident in the Psych-Ward. All The Voices were invigorated, inspired, strident, and impossible to ignore. The Voices argued with each other and shouted at me. Each of The Voices was anxious to have their stories told.

Please be patient, I will write as fast as I can. I’ll get to you all…

I wrote and wrote, on yellow tablets in scribbles of blue ink.

Although the nights were chaotic with writing, the days were restful and the hospital’s Physical Therapy program was enjoyable. The technicians are very polite and knowledgeable. They had to take more time with me as I lived alone.

With these folks' help, I get the feeling that I just might recover from all of this.

I only protested when they took me outside to get some sun. Once I realized where they were taking me, I waved my arms,

“Help, help, I am a vampire and cannot tolerate direct sunlight!”

After a week of institutionalized physical therapy, and scribbling bundles of yellow sheets with a blue pen, I was released to ‘home care’ (confinement).

As I rode home in my sister’s van, I felt the cold evening wind of the late Fall, soon to be Winter. My sister had had enough of her brother and his self-inflicted suffering. So, I was briskly ‘dumped off’ at home and my sister promptly left town.

Suddenly, I was alone. Stunned by the transition, I sat motionless, in the center of my living room, in my wheelchair. I decided to press random buttons on my entertainment system’s remote control.

Maybe some sounds will distract me and improve my mood.

As I listened to familiar YouTube music and meditated on the weirdness of the events of the last several weeks, the electrical power to my house was suddenly shut off. I plunged into darkness.

(I later learn that this unannounced power cutoff was the power company's response to the California wildfires in late 2018.)

As I peered out into the darkness of my living room, I considered.

The power company is helping me too! Eliminating distractions that might come from: telephones; entertainment centers; computers; the Internet.

I screamed out, to the ‘no one’ that might be listening.

“Even my cell phones are nonfunctional, I am disconnected from everything and everyone, this is a gift!”

I was used to writing in the dark. I picked up the pad and pen my sister left on my end table and resumed the blue-scribbling of the stories dictated by The Voices.

I reflected.

The ‘ghostwriters’ must have followed me home.

Scene 6. After-Life

Trapped at home in the wheelchair and denied most physical activities, I read books and watched TV. But mostly I wrote, as I found writing to be the best distraction from focusing on my physical limitations.

Eventually, after the required minimum of three months in wheelchair confinement, my doctors decided I had healed enough to release me to walk, so I returned to my more-or-less normal life, walking with a very cool cane, courtesy of my physical therapist. My writing diminished, as I resumed other life activities with my entertainment center, computers and Internet, but I never stopped writing, The Voices wouldn't let me.

My sister was dropping off groceries at my house one day and saw an untidy heap of blue scribbled yellow tablet pages sliding off my desk and on to the floor of my office, many pages had already reached the floor.

“What is that?”

She asked, grimacing at her brother's office mess and pointing to the untidy, sliding pile. I cheerfully smiled back.

“It’s my ‘book’.”

My sister glared at me.

“Okay, and what are you going to DO with your ‘book’?”

Sheepishly, I smiled.

“Well, I don’t know, I have nothing planned.”

My sister stated with arm akimbo.

“You know, when you die, we are just going to throw your ‘book’ into the trash.”

For drama, she made a throwing motion with her arm, towards my office trash can, then paused and meditated for a moment as she regarded my pile of pages.

“I have a friend who is a ‘writer’. She gets her stories printed into books and published by Amazon. Have you looked for resources or publishers on the Internet?”

A few days later, I sit in my chair reflecting.

I have to thank my big sister for shopping for me every week. And she does have a good suggestion about me seeking Internet writer resources and on-line publishing.

Then I looked over at my sliding yellow pile of pages with blue scribbles.

Well, I might as well look into posting ‘my pile’ somewhere on-line. It is either that or my sister’s ‘disposal’ method.

And so, in reaction to my sister’s threats and suggestions, I searched for, and found, an on-line publisher with many positive ratings.

And furthermore, I read on this on-line publisher’s website that they are hosting a fiction writing ‘challenge’:

To write and post 55,555 words of original fiction, in one month.

I rocked back in my office chair and laughed.

“Why that’s easy!”

I cheated, of course, having already written over a hundred pages, with outlines for many more, during and after my hospitalization from:

The Fall of 2018.

The transcription was a pain, though.

Scene 7. Post-Script

My wheelchair and my cool cane were long gone. I was up on my feet again walking slowly, but thanks to physical therapy, good enough.

After my freedom in 2019, confinement had returned for me, and many others, throughout 2020 and beyond. This time because of the COVID-19 virus and my primary risk factor: ‘old’.

I continued to write, meeting the on-line publisher’s challenge. Of the seven hundred and fifty writers who started the challenge, I and about two-hundred and fifty others, completed the challenge successfully.

I sat back in my office chair from writing this chapter and reflected, as I had no shortage of new material. Even as, or perhaps because of, I was sinking into senile insanity.

My ‘work’ may all be nonsense, but I am accomplishing my goal of learning to write fiction.

So, my secret sources, take a bow and ‘thank you’:

The Voices.

End of Chapter 2. The Fall of 2018 – Part 2, Voices.