My job gave me a list of rules to follow

The job is at an immense building in a forgotten corner of the world. Over the last century, the building has been used as a factory, an orphanage, a psychiatric ward, and even a prison. Each time, increasingly horrible things happened to the people in the building, and the landowner gave up trying to repurpose it. 

However, the area around the land developed rapidly, and the opportunity cost of leaving the land as-is became too high. Thus, I was hired to evaluate and renovate the building. The first night after I accepted the job offer and signed the waiver, I walked in and grabbed the clipboard with a list of rules I must follow if I want to keep my life.

You know how this goes:

Rule One: Nobody you are interacting with is a living lifeform.

Rule Two: When anyone calls and asks for “Fred” you must convince them that Fred is not here. You may tell them anything, but you must never hang up. You are safe once the caller hangs up.

Rule Three: Remind the incense man that the morgue is in the basement, but do not show him the way, no matter how much he insists.

Rule Four: If you hear a music box start to play, you must locate and close the box before the song ends.

Rule Five: If a window opened by itself, toss salt out the window and wait until the hands release before closing it. Then move the wheelchair back to its original spot.

Rule Six: When you see them, direct the twins to the experimentation room and tell them the doctor knows best. Smile back. Insert earplugs before the screams starts.

Rule Eight: Never, ever speak or write the number of the missing rule.

Rule Nine: Every night at 9:00 PM, mix rat poison with a bowl of dog food and place it out for Fluffy. If Fluffy finishes the whole bowl by 12:00 AM, immediately vacate the premises.

Rule Ten: If you smell smoke, run up to the roof and hide behind the water reservoir tank until it starts to rain. Nowhere else is safe, and do not talk to Martin.

Rule Eleven: Do NOT look her in the eyes.

Though my job was different, there had been contractors who worked in this building because there were generators in the basement that needed to be monitored and maintained. The rules had been passed from one contractor to the next, but I was probably the only person who laughed after reading them.

Yes, I laughed.

Rules, after all, are made by people who know almost nothing, for people who know even less.

Let’s say you got this job instead of me. You pocket the sweet advance, and you take in the rules. Every time the phone rings, you rack your brain for the most convincing lies of where Fred could be—he’s on leave, he’s with a client, he’s in Timbuktu with his mistress— and sometimes you even yell until the caller hangs up.  

But will you ask why that’s supposed to protect you?

I can tell you.

In the early 1930s, Fred was a sensation. He’d spearheaded an innovation that made the factory situated right here generate immense amounts of money and gave hundreds of women jobs. His products were simply divine, like they came from the next era. Everyone wanted at least one of his fancy watches with self-luminous paint.

When women began falling dead with radiation poisoning, everyone also wanted answers.

Must I remind you that Fred is no longer alive, your callers are not amongst the living, and you’re the one behind his desk now? As for why they’re calling, it’s because the weakest types of ghosts need directions and an invitation.

Let me introduce myself. Properly, this time. I am here for a job, but my job is not to follow silly rules made by ignorant humans trying to treat symptoms of a supernatural infestation while surviving to pay the bills. My job is to cleanse the factory and exorcise all the ghosts so my boss can use this land again.

Evaluate and renovate, as I said.

I started with the easiest task, building a trap for any ghosts that wander in looking for Fred. It took almost half an hour to set up, but I knew any ghosts that needed an invitation would be weak and easy to snare. After my setup is complete, I created a new voicemail: “Yes, Fred is here. Third room on the second floor. Please visit at your earliest convenience.”

Then I took a suitcase, went down to an abandoned classroom and spoke the forbidden word. “Seven.”

She emerged from behind some crates, dragging herself along on the floor. Her legs were spread out in an unnatural angle behind her, like those of a dead amphibian. Her eyes were little black holes and she was missing some of her fingers.

“Will you play with me?” Her voice was soft, barely audible because of the black yarn pulled through her mouth. Her head, topped with a mess of tangled ginger hair, lolled side to side and she slowly pulled herself forward towards me.

I opened my suitcase.

“Will you play with me?” She yelled at me, angry in a way only a child could be. She was suddenly right next to me. With a sudden burst of strength, she reached for me. “Will you play with me?”

I let her feel my hand. Her presence was clammy and wet, as if she’d taken her last breath in a pool. “I’d love to, but I can’t play with you, Seven. I’m sorry.”

The black yarn pulling her lips together began to unravel as her scowl stretched into a grin. Before her mouth deformed into something terrible, I added, “He can, though.”

Seven pulled her hand back. Children, even dead ones, are curious creatures. They’re easy to distract and trusting to the point where they appear gullible. She reached for my gift and gasped.

Her little body radiated with joy as she ran her hands over the gift I brought her. Light returned to the little black holes that formed her eyes and she giggled with happiness. I smiled as she read the name on the collar. She hugged her gift.

I leaned down, “Would you like to leave with Biscuit so he can play with you forever?”

Biscuit was a beloved pet whose dead body still radiated with spiritual warmth. His owner took him to be cremated, but could not resist handing him over when I offered to pass down words from her dead grandmother in exchange.

Seven nodded, her eyes brimming with tears and her presence began to fade. “You are so nice. Nobody… nobody has ever played with me…Nobody has been nice to me before…”

But this is not a tale of how I easily broke all the rules of the building and emerged unscathed.

I knew, by the time I went down the same flight of stairs twenty times, that the last spirit in the building was a powerful one. She was powerful enough to manipulate the world of the living without any invitation. Powerful enough to stay and haunt this ground for centuries. Powerful enough to kill and trap the hundreds here.

For once in my life, I felt compelled to follow a rule. Rule Eleven: Do not look her in the eyes.

But, I can’t. I can’t not look her in the eyes because my vision for dead things does not work the same way your eyesight does. Even though my eyelids were firmly screwed over my eyes, I was looking directly in her eyes.

Cold washed over me and I knew she was testing me. How easily could she manipulate my body to shiver?

She couldn’t.

A spirit cannot take from an unwilling human because the rules of life are stronger than the rules of death, but a spirit could manipulate you to give that advantage up. The strongest spirits often knew how to manipulate you until you thought that dying was the best choice you could ever make in your life. 

She murmured, “Your life.”

“—is not yours to take,” I declared.

“You are living on borrowed time,” she whispered. “I know what you did that summer…”

She whispered threats, an auditory invasion of shrieks and wails. Nails dug into the side of my face as she spat out my darkest secrets and laughed at all my insecurities. She’d been here long before I was even born. She’d taken many men and women who were far stronger than me.

She reminded me that I’d caused the death of everyone I loved.

She reminded me I was destined to suffer alone until I pass my curse on to a willing protégé.

Calmly, I told her, “We know where your body is.”

The most powerful spirits usually derived their power from where their body had been buried. I cannot explain the rules, but if I moved her body or manipulated the environment of her body, she could find herself trapped in torment forever.

She could not take anything from me unless I gave permission, but I could feel her longing. Her existence, even now, tormented her. She wanted to be freed, but she did not want to give up. Whatever happened in her life, she died with so much rage, sorrow and regret that she was able to sustain her existence for centuries.

She was the true source of all the horrible happenings of the building, starting when the land was merely a burial ground. 

“I have an eternity,” she said. Because I’d already entered her trap, she could keep me trapped in the never-ending stairwell while preventing me from manipulating her body. My mortal body will perish. “Do you?”

I smiled. “Are you sure about that?”

You see, I don’t just waltz into haunted buildings because I could. I knew dozens of ways to repel ghosts, to reach into the spirit world and tear them apart. I chanted one of the most powerful spells I know. The coldness receded. Her presence became less overpowering. 

Then, one by one, my fingernails popped off.

I silenced myself. Her presence sharpened again. A spirit typically cannot take from or harm an unwilling medium, but when I started my chant, I’d willingly established a connection with her.

In my decades of dancing with the supernatural, I’d never met a spirit strong enough to resist an exorcism and attack me at the same time. I’d seen plenty of attacks on humans who unwittingly gave permission— there were endless ways you could invite the cursed energy in—but I was trained to resist.  

Glancing at my bloody fingers, I straightened my shoulder, took a seat on the floor, and said, “An eternity, you say. So, how was your day?”

My antics caught her off guard. She had an eternity, yes, but we both knew time was of no value to her. I was the last hope of the landowner. If I couldn’t exorcise his land, the land would simply be sealed off. I’d already sent away the hundreds of souls she’d accumulated over the centuries.

Her eternity would become more damned than ever.

Her presence stirred, as if she was settling down. We simply existed in the same place, at the same time. My soul was already cursed – she could not trap me here even if she killed me here. She’d simply be alone, and, based on how many victims she collected in the last centuries, she was terrified of being alone.

She responded, “I want you to listen to my story.”

So, she wanted validation and a witness to believe her as she shared the horrible ways her life unfolded before she met her end. A person dies a second time when somebody says their name for the last time. Whoever she was, she’d died so long ago that even my extensive research couldn’t unearth her name.  

Despite how calm I was, I did not have a choice. “I can do that.”

Then, she hissed, “And, after, I want to rip out your tongue.”

What a petty bitch. “I will permit nothing else, but I will permit you my tongue. You must promise to leave this world.”

She began. Her name was Kanawha…

Hours later, exactly as the clock struck noon of the next day, I emerged from the large building with blood all over my shirt. True to her words (as she was bound), she left after she finished her life story and ripped out my tongue.

Contrary to what you might’ve thought, being the only person in this world who knew her name, her pains, her deepest secrets and how unfair her life had been didn’t make her more sympathetic towards me. I don’t know if I could have negotiated and gotten away with a less damning injury, but she was certainly too powerful for me to remove by force.

I texted the landowner to tell him that his building was now free of ghosts and I threw the list of rules into the trash. I was starting to feel faint from the loss of blood, but I did take emergency medication for the bleeding and the ambulance was already on its way.