Urban Legends

This Halloween entry is inspired in no small part by my friend and favorite assistant @MagicalFirefly. Told you I could find a Halloween theme for it.

Carlie and her friends weren’t professional ghost hunters, nor were they even technically Urban Explorers. Still, the thrill of this place they were going into had her heart racing.

The Centurion had been closed down for 40 years and just left to rot.  The rumors about that place, women going missing during performances, had a lot of people unnerved.

Carlie could remember hearing the story about Randini, a magician famous in the 1940s.  He’d do things that nobody could ever figure out, even other magicians.  He would levitate his assistant all over the audience, causing a minor uproar, but not the kind of uproar he did when he took her head off and it stayed alive.

And then he said he’d perform his greatest trick ever, an illusion so astounding nobody would ever figure it out.

But there was no record of what that trick was, none.  The legend was that Randini suffered some kind of mental breakdown and that his young daughter disappeared as a result of it.  The story went on to say that Randini’s ghost haunted the building, looking for his daughter.

But Carlie could find no mention of a Randini anywhere.  If he did exist, he certainly did his best to hide his identity.  Nor were there any reports of missing girls.

But then the disappearances started to happen, actresses for the stage productions simply went missing, never to be heard from again.  About every 3 or 4 years, another actress would simply vanish.

So, the doors closed in 1986, but there wasn’t enough money to tear it down.  It was left to rot.

Carlie knew this and was still able to talk her two friends into joining her on this adventure.  She’d always heard about ghost hunting, wondering what would happen if she tried it.  One of her friends adapted her phone to record in infrared while the other had a Spirit Box app attached.

As they went in, Carlie felt she had to take the lead. “Hello?  We’re not here to hurt you.  We just want to communicate, to know what happened.”

Nothing.  No voices, not even a flicker.  Carlie suggested they take seats in the auditorium. “We want to know what happened, Mr. Randini, if that is your name.”

Carlie felt something about then.  It wasn’t cold or warm, but she felt it go into her.  She gasped, but felt a compulsion. “I’m headed up to the stage.”

Before her friends could object, Carlie stood, almost feeling like she was being guided, as she approached the stage entrance.

The place looked like the floor was going to fall out from under her, but she had to follow this. As soon as she stepped foot onto the stage, something happened.

She saw the theater packed, the floor of the stage pristine and new.  She looked down at herself.  Her clothes had changed to something very old fashioned as an older man in a tuxedo with a hand up.

Carlie stepped forward as the man waved his hands mysteriously in front of her.  Suddenly she felt like she was light as a feather, the weight of her body not mattering as she glided up into the air.  Carlie laughed, knowing she was floating, although she still couldn’t grasp how this hallucination was possible.  It had to be a hallucination.

The old man waved her down, and she floated down to him as he spoke in a raspy voice. “I promised you I would do something unexpected, and here it is.”

The old man produced a handsaw and Carlie had to gasp.  No table, no cover, nothing to lay on but the air underneath her and he was going to do it? Carlie almost screamed as this….was he a ghost?  What was he?

A thousand questions came through her as she could feel herself trembling.  Finding the seam between her bodice and her skirt, touching the blade of the saw to her skin.  Carlie could actually feel the teeth on her skin, pricking and digging in.

The ghost took a stroke, cutting into her.  Carlie tried to scream as the pain threatened to overwhelm her.  She could feel that the saw was inside her now, but the pain was quickly gone when the ghost cut into her again.  Carlie gasped, not sure what was going on.

At the next cut, Carlie felt something unexpected.  She felt good.  The ghost leaned over her floating form getting bisected. “Good.  Finally.”

Carlie nodded, shuddering but smiling, as the ghost went on.  She could feel the progress of the saw as the ghost cut into her and felt herself moaning in pleasure as he cut through her spine.  Soon, the saw left the opposite side of her body and Carlie had to smile in wonder.

Had she really survived being sawn in half by a ghost?  The ghost made a gesture and Carlie felt the two halves of her floating body soar apart, gasping in wonder at the increasingly pleasant sensation. Somewhere, she could swear she heard someone screaming as her halves twirled in the air, independent of each other.

The ghost gestured and she felt her halves soaring towards each other.  The ghost watched, carefully, as a wave of intense pleasure overtook Carlie with her halves coming together and rejoining.

The ghost whispered to her. “Finally, we can be at rest.”

As he gestured, Carlie felt her body, now in one piece, soar towards the stage entrance and gently move to where she would land on her feet.

The moment she did so, the illusion fell away.  Her clothes were back to normal.  Was it a dream?  A hallucination?

Her friend had to call to her, telling her that they’d been trying to get her to come back down for about 5 minutes.  She suggested Carlie must’ve been possessed or something because she went up on stage, floated and split in half.  Carlie watched the video, unsure of what was really going on as she saw herself in two pieces, both halves flying all over the stage, just like in the…vision, she decided on.

As soon as the video ended, she had to check herself.  It was like nothing had happened at all, but the video proved she’d really been in halves. She looked at her friends. “I think we’ve seen enough.  Let’s get out of here.”

But Carlie knew she had been sawn in half.  She wanted it again.