The Frightened Ghost

By Sean Brandywine

An abandoned asylum for the criminally insane was the ideal place for a television documentary about ghosts – particularly if the former asylum already had a reputation for being haunted.

But the television series, Spook Spies, like many such shows, was a fake. The “ghosts” and ghostly happenings that appeared on screen were set up by the production crew.

Even so, Holly considered herself extremely lucky when she got a role in the TV ghost hunter show. It was her first role as an actress, even though she soon became fully aware that everything was faked and most of the crew believed that ghosts did not really exist. After all, this was acting, wasn’t it?

Yet, there was something very strange about the Gordon Heights Asylum, not least when they found a dead body in one of the rooms, a teenager who died only a few days before but whose body looked like an ancient mummy. And then a real ghost warned them to beware.

What an amazing opportunity to film some real ghosts and ghostly happenings! But dealing with real ghosts was the least of the problems when something else started appearing in that asylum, something that was far worse than any ghost. Holly and the others would have to fight for their lives, and quite possibly for the lives of the rest of the human race...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Wolf Books
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463614389

Sean Brandywine

Sean Brandywine was born in 1943 of a Russian father and Irish mother. Most of his professional life was spent working with computers, ranging from programmer to systems analyst and project leader. His BS and MS are in Computer Science. He began programming computers in 1961 and still enjoys writing code occasionally, and designing his own websites.In addition to science fiction, he also writes juveniles under the pseudonym of Shiloh Garnett, and adventure/horror as John Savage.He has been married to the same woman for over forty years and claims to love her more now than ever. He has two children, named Talon and Melody, and three grandchildren (so far). He lives in Solana Beach, California where he enjoys watching his grandchildren growing up, astronomy, fishing, fast sports cars, and, of course, writing.

Book preview

Chapter I:  Interview

  Repeat after me: ‘What was that?’

  What was that!?

  I tried to add a sense of surprise to the question.

  Did you hear that?

  Did you hear that? I said.

  Now: ‘Did you see that?’

  Did you see that?  I think I sounded shocked.  At least I tried to.

  Okay.  One more: ‘Something just touched me.’

  To add realism, I gave a little jump while uttering, in a scared tone: Something just touched me!

  Malcolm Hensley, the show’s producer, sat back in his chair and smiled.  Quite good, he said.  Since he was looking down the neckline of my dress at the time, I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my performance or my cleavage.  Maybe both.  They’re both above average – in my opinion.  He went on, You have now spoken most of the lines you will have in the show.

  What? I said.

  Haven’t you seen the show? he asked, feigning shock.  That’s all you have to do.  Walk around spooky old places and whisper those lines.  You have seen ‘Spook Spies,’ haven’t you?

  Of course I have, I lied.  Well, sort of.  When my agent, Willy Sharpe, who should be called Willy the Weasel, told me he had an interview with that show for me, I did turn on one episode.  Well, the last ten minutes of it.  I wasn’t impressed, but was not going to tell Hensley that.  Nice show.  I tried to smile as I said it.

  From the look on his face, maybe I praised it a little too soon.

  It gets ratings, he said with a lack of humor.

  Sitting back in his chair until I was sure he would fall over backwards, he studied me.  I didn’t want to, but, per Willy’s instructions, I pushed my breasts out so he could get a good look.  To my surprise, he suddenly smiled.  You’re hired, he said.

  I thanked my mother for giving me large breasts.  With good shape, I might add.

  Let me get a contract, he said as he got up.  I noticed that his eyes never left my neckline as he walked past.

  While he was gone, I looked around his office.  I hadn’t had a chance to see much of it when I first came in.  While not rundown, it was certainly not the high class, expensive headquarters I imagined the big TV producers had.  It was on the fifth floor of a moderate sized office building not far from the studios where most TV shows are shot.  But I got the impression from the little I had seen that the show was shot on location all the time, not in studios.  There were posters on the walls, some of classic movies, such as Casablanca and Stagecoach.  There were also a couple posters for something called Attack of the Killer Avocados and I was a Teenage Terrorist.  Since I didn’t recall any classics with those names, I could only assume that this Mr Hensley had something to do with them.  From the lurid pictures on the posters, I wasn’t sure that I would want to have been in either.

  There was also a collection of photos of Hensley with attractive actresses and a few ruggedly handsome leading men.

  He came back in, holding papers in his hand.  If you will just sign these, he began.

  We haven’t agreed on a salary yet, I interrupted.  Politely, of course.

  Oh.  Well…  Then he named a salary for a twenty-show season that was short of spectacular – way short – but would pay my bills for the rest of the year.

  I’ll take it, I said with embarrassing rapidity.  Well, a beginning actress has to start somewhere and takes what she can get.

  While I was signing a five page contract filled with whereas and therefore and contingent upon, and was totally incomprehensible, he was writing something.  He gave me the paper.

  Here’s the beginning shooting schedule, he said.

  I glanced at it.  In only three days, I had to be in Arkadelphia, Arkansas to start shooting.  Then someplace called Gordon Asylum in upstate New York.  I could hardly keep in my excitement.  I hadn’t really expected to get the part, but suddenly I was joining a show that hunted down ghosts!  But why these far off places?  Why couldn’t there be ghosts in Hollywood or Beverly Hills?  Well, that’s show business, I told myself.

  Linda will make your travel arrangements.  You’ll meet Brett and the rest of the team at the Little Rock airport, then you’ll drive down to Arkadelphia.  If you have any questions, call Linda.

  Linda was his secretary, a dumpy, middle-aged woman who hadn’t smiled all the time I was waiting to see Hensley.  Unlike her boss, her office lacked movie posters but was filled with dozens of photos of her grandchildren.  She must have had hundreds of them.  No wonder she didn’t smile anymore.  Worn out.

  What about the scripts? I asked.

  Scripts?  We don’t need no stinking scripts!

  He was doing a poor imitation of Alfonso Bedoya as the bandit leader in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Actually, We don’t need no stinking badges, is the usual way the line is quoted, but that is wrong.  What the actor actually said was: Badges?  We ain’t got no badges!  We don’t need no badges!  I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!  That was right before a gunfight with Humphrey Bogart.

  Hensley was grinning like he just made a great funny, so I smiled and laughed.

  Then he turned serious.  Really, there are no scripts.  We have a general plan when we go to a location, but Hal makes up the action as he sees fit.

  Hal, I recalled, was the director.  Hal Stockman.  Oh, I said.  No wonder the show I had seen seemed so amateurish.

  Do I have to take any special clothing with me?  Or is there a wardrobe there?

  He stared at me as if I had grown antlers and a tail.  Surely you joke, he finally said.

  I smiled as if I had just made a great funny.

  That ended the interview.

  In the outer office, Linda held out her hand with an envelope in it.  She continued to type on her keyboard with the other, and didn’t look at me when she said, Airline tickets.  Salary advance.  Hal’s cell phone number.

  I took the envelope.  Such efficiency!

  I couldn’t think of any questions, so I thanked her and made my escape.

Chapter II:  What am I Getting Myself Into?

  On the drive back to San Diego in my old, high-mileage, tired 300ZX, I wondered if I was making a mistake.  Not about the car; I love my old Z.  The engine trembles, the paint’s faded, and it smokes a bit, but it is a beautiful classic and I’ll never let go of it.  No, I was thinking about this job.

  Mom and Dad wanted me to go to college, just like they did.  But when I looked at them, I saw two middle aged people who hated their jobs but could never give up the salaries that the college degrees had made possible.  What is that term for such people?  Wage-slaves?  They were wasting their lives, stuck in jobs that pay well but that they really don’t want to go to in the morning.  But they have to.  How else will they pay for the new Mercedes and the semi-mansion in the hills and the expensive dinners, and the maid, etc?

  I’m all for education, but, crap!  I’d just finished twelve years of it and was tired of classrooms.  I wanted something more exciting.  At least for a while.  I could always go to college later.  Right?

  I was probably being foolish, but I had always wanted to become an actress.  I’m pretty and have a good figure.  And I took a couple acting classes in high school and did pretty well.  Good enough to get one of the leading rolls in the school play that year.  Flushed with that modest success, I announced my career intentions, only to be met by much wailing and gashing of teeth on the part of my dear parents.

  It was like the time when Dad wanted to give me my first car.  He had a nice new Mercedes C-230 picked out, and was amazed when I turned it down.  For one thing, I test drove one of those and found it was gutless!  Floor the gas pedal and it politely purrs and takes its sweet time getting up to sixty miles per hour.  No way!  A car that slow is dangerous.  You ever try to accelerate up the freeway onramp without any real power?  Or have to jump out of the way when some idiot tries to occupy the same lane as you?  Like I say, dangerous.

  So I worked that summer at a fast food place – much to the chagrin of my parents – and earned enough money to buy my dream car.  I had to borrow money for new tires, but Mom was up for that when she saw the lack of tread when I brought Speedy home.  Okay, so Speedy isn’t a very good name for a car, but it is a sports car after all.  And people do race them.  Anyway, I love him.  Maybe after I finish this acting gig, I can afford to rebuild the engine.

  And the trans.

  I said it was a little on the high mileage side.

  Like with the car, my parents knew better than to buck me when my mind was made up.  So they cried into their Perrier and consoled each other by claiming that I would fail and eventually come back to go to college.  They expressed some silly idea that it was nearly impossible to make a career in acting.  Well, I’d show them.

  Mother gave me a lecture about not jumping onto the casting couch.  I looked that up and found that it meant young, pretty female actresses often get gigs by granting sexual favors to the producers.  Well, maybe some girls do, but I resolved to earn my way by talent and hard work.

  The question was: is this the best first gig?  I mean, this was not exactly a Broadway show or anything like that.  But it was a part in a TV show, and that was a start.  And I didn’t have to take my clothes off!

  I figured that I could always leave this job off my resume if it proved to be a negative.  But I would do a good job.  Hopefully it would lead to better gigs in the future.

  Having talked myself into a good feeling about this, I stopped in Orange County for lunch at the same fast food type place I had worked to get Speedy.  I won’t mention the name, but their spokesperson is a clown.  While waiting for my hamburger, I called Willy the Weasel to tell him that I got the job.  Which made him happy.  As it happens, Willy wasn’t my first choice for an agent.  But, one of the first things I found when I went looking for an agent to represent me, was that all the big and famous agencies won’t touch a beginner with no credits at all.  It was even suggested to me that spending four years to get a degree in Drama from UCLA would be a good start!  Four years!  Ugh!

  Eventually I found that there were a few agents who were not exactly in the high rise offices but would accept a beginner.  The third one I visited was Willy.  The first two said they could get me jobs but first I had to demonstrate my talents.  I may not be college educated, but I know what a man means when he says talents and looks at me that way.  At least Willy seemed honest.  He actually asked me about my acting classes and the play that I was in.  The fact that he was old enough to be my grandfather might – just might – have had something to do with why he didn’t expect me to show off my talents.  I felt that he was really interested in getting me a job.  Probably had bills to pay also.

  The second interview he got for me was with Spook Spies and the rest is history.

  I told him about the interview and offer, and he sounded happy.  I told him that I would call him when I got on location.  By the time my meal came, I was feeling pretty good.  Just like a real actress, talking to my agent about a gig and such.  I was on my way!

  When I got home, the first thing I did was put my bra back on.  Maybe some girls do it, but I just didn’t feel right going out without it.  Looking at myself in the mirror, I told myself that I would have gotten the job anyway.  The lack of bra and the tight dress might have helped, a nagging thought told me.  But I have talent, I replied, and told it to shut up.

  I told Mother about the job and she said she was happy for me, although she didn’t look it.  I called my friends to tell them all about my good news.  That evening, over dinner, Dad grilled me about the job.  He didn’t seem to be too pleased.  But he also had to admit that he had never seen the show, so there wasn’t much he could criticize about it.

  That evening, in the privacy of my bedroom, I watched my first full episode of Spook Spies.

  When the final credits scrolled up the screen, I sighed.  It wasn’t exactly Emmy material.  But it wasn’t too bad.  At least, I tried to tell myself that.  The lead, a guy with the improbable name of Brett Starr, was handsome, I guess.  It seemed he was always looking straight into the camera and smiling.  If you like the pearly white teeth, wavy hair and twinkling eyes type, I guess he would do.  I knew a few guys in high school who