The missing shoe

The shoe.

One day Carol had been flipping through images from other Flickerers on the ‘Dilapidated and abandoned buildings’ group and learned of an old hospital that had been opened to the public as a museum, it was near to where she once lived and knew the area and the building but could never get into this building when she was younger as it had been firmly boarded up so no one could get into it to wander around and take photographs. The place was shrouded in mystery and stories abounded that it was haunted and that strange things happened there thus arousing her curiosity ever further.

So she made plans to go and visit, she told her college that she was going to take a few days off to do some photographs for a history project she had been thinking about for a while. Her boyfriend wasn’t happy about her going off alone as he loved to accompany her on these trips but this time it was at least a day’s journey away and he just couldn’t afford to take time off to accompany her. He attempted to put her off the idea until he could find time to go with her but her mind was made up, this was a place she had wanted to visit for a such a long time and now she knew she could she wasn’t about to be put off so easily.

She went to the local Greyhound office and booked her ticket, it would need a couple of changes before she could get there and she discovered that she wouldn’t be able to do it in only one day as the Greyhound schedules somehow didn’t synchronise. So with all her stuff packed in her rucksack for a few days she was off. Sitting on the bus listening to her favourite music on her iPod. Her mind drifted to when she was a kid and tried unsuccessfully to get into the old place. This time she would be able to get in and all legal and above board.

Once again, Carol had found just the kind of place where she loved to take photos, eerie, mysterious, dramatic, however this time it was not quite as dilapidated as usual, this time an old cottage hospital from the late 1880’s early 1900’s that had been saved from demolition due to some historical connections. Many times she had made her way often illegally onto closed up sites guarded by security guards. Often getting through holes in fences and then waiting until after dark then making use of areas in shadow she and others would make there way into these old buildings. She and others like her got a big thrill from getting into these places and getting their images captured before being discovered.

Many of these buildings were physically dangerous places to be in and many a venturer had fallen foul of rotten floorboards and stairways ending up if they were lucky enough to have been accompanied in hospital with just broken bones and injured pride. others may not have been so lucky perhaps only being discovered days or weeks later starved to death or having succumbed to their injuries.

Carol’s images on Flickr were highly regarded as she had quite a unique way with them making them look as if they had been taken at least 50 years before with old film and equipment. The way she dressed too was highly individual making her images look as though the spirit of some lost child had been found wandering in these places.

She had a vivid imagination so often when she visited these old places she would think she could sense, even hear and see figures darting about in the shadows, sometimes where the buildings had been old hospitals or mental institutions it was as though some old tortured souls had been trapped in their past and remained there to haunt the buildings until their eventual demolition. Some of the buildings were in an advanced state of decay and had been boarded up as they were actually dangerous to any who entered, with fallen beams and ceilings, rotting floorboards and collapsed staircases.

In many cases these abandoned buildings already had a history of being cursed or haunted or of being occupied and in many cases had been taken over by the homeless or drug addicts and the walls covered with lurid drug induced graffiti.

In this case however the local authority had decided because of historic connections to try to rescue the old place, to recreate the atmosphere of the old hospital and had set out one of the old wards almost exactly as it must have been at that time. The beds, bedside tables chairs etc had been laid out as they used to be and folks could freely wander the place having paid their entry fee without hindrance from the one old guy who was supposed to act as caretaker, secretary, guide and ticket seller. They had hoped to bring some tourism to a little town that had become a backwater an economically lost town with little industry relying mainly on agriculture.

Most of the rooms of the old hospital were empty giving no evidence of their past use, whether they had been wards or rooms for recreation. If it were not for the old operating theatre which still retained it’s old operating table which had been bolted to the floor and which had therefore not been able to be removed so easily. The building could have been anything. One could easily imagine that the stains on the floor in the old operating theatre had been caused by caused by blood which had leaked from one of the unfortunate patients.
  
Carol had duly paid her dollar and was told where everything was, given a general history lesson about the place and was left free to roam. She had ascertained that it was OK to take photographs without having to obtain any special permission and so wandered around looking for the kind of rooms that she loved to take photos in.

Initially nothing really took her eye everything was so clean and tidy, not at all like the kind of places she usually visited, until she came to the old ward. Oh my goodness, she immediately sensed something odd that she had not noticed anywhere else in the place so she began taking photos of this and that and then a wave of cold and tiredness came over her and so having set up her camera on it’s tripod she set the timer and went to sit on one of the beds. Hoping to capture some vaguely dramatic images of herself in that setting.

The flash fired and in that instant it was as though something took over her body and soul and she seemed to lose consciousness. She felt as though she was floating, transported through time perhaps, lifted by some invisible force and then slowly and gently laid back down on the bed, she remembered nothing after that until she regained consciousness.

Light streamed through the net curtained windows casting shafts of light in the dusty atmosphere onto the pillow of the bed where she lay. Still half asleep the light shone in her eyes and disturbed her and strange thoughts began to flash through her half dreaming mind, strange feelings attacked her still inert body, under her eyelids her eyes darted about as though frantically trying to make sense of her thoughts and feelings.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, she came to her senses, her head felt heavy, fuzzy, she had a slight headache and felt nausea, her mouth felt dry, her lips cracked, she ran her tongue around them to moisten them. Then her eyes began to open as she became accustomed to the bright morning light. she squinted through them trying to look around but the bright light hurt her eyes.

Gradually she became used to the light although her eyes were still not focussing properly, when eventually they began to clear and she could see, she still didn't recognise her surroundings, this was not her home, this was not her bed, then she realised it was some kind of nursing home, she remembered such a place when she had visited some elderly relative many years ago when she was still a child, there was some kind of remembered image at the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite place yet.

She began to shiver uncontrollably as she realised she was alone, the place was deathly quiet except for the wind rustling in the leaves in the trees outside the windows, a door or window in the distance kept banging in the breeze and a dog or wolf howled far away in the distance. She felt so cold, the night-dress covering her body was flimsy, the covers on the bed were thin and almost threadbare, there were only net curtains on the windows and no carpets on the floor, the door of the room stood ajar allowing a cool draught to blow across the bed.

Her head ached and spun making her feel sick again as she tried to raise it to look around. She called out in vain, there was no answer, she felt afraid, what was she doing here, laying in this strange place, laying in a strange bed all alone. She pulled back the covers partially and could see she was wearing a thin night-dress of some kind but it was not her own and she had no recollection of having come to this place or of having undressed. Why was she here? What was this place, why had she been left all alone, too many questions and there seemed no ready answers?

Gradually her senses began to return and her shivering subsided somewhat. She raised herself onto one elbow and called out again. There was still no reply only the echo of her own voice bouncing around the empty walls and down empty corridors.

I must get out of this place she thought to herself and raised herself to a sitting position, she felt very odd and had difficulty balancing but her head was still in a daze, gradually she managed to shuffle to the edge of the bed and sit. She felt very odd and off balance.

She looked around and wondered where her clothes and shoes were, she thought to herself she was still dreaming as she leaned over the edge of the bed. Ah, there was one of her shoes, she slipped her foot into it almost without thinking but then she worried, where was the other shoe?

A sudden chill ran down her spine, where indeed was her other shoe, then she looked down at the empty space under her night-dress... suddenly she felt sick! What had happened while she had slept? She tried to make some sense of her situation, tried to remember how she had got here, tried but in vain. Nothing came back to her, her mind was a total blank.

Her head spinning she lay down again, she thought to herself that this must all be just a bad dream, maybe she had been drinking too much the night before and this was just some kind of bad hangover, after all, this really couldn't be happening to her. It must all just be in her imagination. So she closed her eyes thinking to herself, I'll count to 100 and when I open my eyes I'll find I was really just dreaming and I am really at home in my own bed and everything is just like it was yesterday.

So she closed her eyes and lay back on the bed and counted slowly to a hundred, she felt tempted to reach down and touch her leg but was afraid it might break the spell. She counted slowly but every now and again her mind slipped back to the day before and what she had been doing. She felt her heart beating, pounding in her chest, her head felt heavy as though she had had too much to drink the night before and it throbbed with a dull ache. Nothing seemed to make sense, all she could remember was choosing a place to sit, setting up the camera on self timer and then, a flash, a blank, her mind was blank between then and now.

Eventually she had approached 100, she began counting ever more slowly afraid of what she might find when she opened her eyes but eventually 100 arrived, she had to open her eyes. At first she could still only look up at the ceiling with it’s dull white flaking paint. A effort had been made to recreate the room as it had been in the past but it had been poorly done. She was still afraid to look and felt compelled to try counting cracks in the ceiling instead but then she said to herself that this was all silly, she really had nothing to be afraid of, it had all just been a nasty dream.

She decided this was all a load of nonsense, she must have slipped and fallen, hitting her head then deciding to rest until she felt better had crawled into one of the beds, or perhaps she had not eaten enough and just felt faint, yes she thought to herself that would explain everything and that this was all just a hallucination brought on by the spooky atmosphere in the old hospital.

She just had to pull herself together and get back to reality. She made another effort to get up and this time she concentrated on what she thought was that empty space under the night dress, maybe she had imagined it, maybe she was just sitting in a strange position? Sitting up and looking down she could see nothing had changed. She was indeed wearing a rather short though old fashioned nightdress the kind a child might have worn the kind she had come across so often in the wardrobes of old abandoned houses.

She turned her attention to where the hem of the nightdress fell flat over where her right knee should have been, carefully she raised the hem and her mind froze, all that was there now was the attenuated remains of her thigh swathed in bandages. The end still moist with her own blood that had seeped through. She felt sick, like screaming, she opened her mouth but no sound came out. She sensed there was no one there to hear her. She felt compelled to cup her hand over the end of the stump to try to reassure herself that this wasn’t really happened but when she drew her hand away her palm was smeared with still damp blood.

The full horror of what must have happened now hit her, somehow while taking photographs of the old hospital someone had drugged her and while she was drugged had amputated her leg but why, it just didn't make any sense, why would anyone want to do such a terrible thing to her? She wondered how the hell she was going to get home, how was she going to be able to explain what had happened, there was clearly no one around to help her, she looked around to try to make sense of her situation, her camera was still where she remembered leaving it on it’s tripod pointing at the bed, maybe there would be some clues in the last images taken.

She shuffled towards the foot of the bed and then she noticed her clothes in a heap by the feet of the tripod and by them a pair of old wooden crutches. Whoever had done this to her had thought of everything. She managed to stand on her one foot and trying to balance, hopped rather unsteadily towards where her clothes lay. She was shivering uncontrollably partially from the shock of losing her leg and from the fact that all she had on was a flimsy night dress. She sat down on the floor and dressed quickly to try to get warm. Then lifting herself up she grasped the crutches and slipping them under her arms lifted herself to give her attention to her camera.

She switched the camera on and began flipping through the last images recorded. There was the last one she herself had taken and then there were a whole series of herself being surrounded on the bed by a pale ghostly figures. The whole procedure of her leg being amputated had been recorded but the figures around the bed were all semitransparent and wearing the clothes worn by doctors and nurses at least a hundred years before.

She couldn’t believe her eyes and was about to flip through the images again when the camera's batteries failed. That’s enough she thought to herself, she had to get out of the place and tell someone what had happened, whoever was responsible needed to be brought to justice. She unscrewed the camera from the tripod, collapsed the tripod, put everything in her bag and got ready to go. She needed to find somewhere to stay until she had found out what the hell was going on.

Before she left she returned to look at the bed. It was still made up as though never slept in. There was no blood, no evidence to show that she had even been laying there not that she had even as she had remembered quite clearly sitting on the edge of the bed when she had felt so tired. She looked around to see if the nightdress she had woken up wearing was still where her tripod had stood, even that had mysteriously vanished and her missing shoe was nowhere to be seen.

She crutched towards the entrance with great difficulty still feeling rather groggy, her camera returned to her backpack, her tripod grasped in one hand with difficulty as she tried to manage the crutches. She had not used crutches since since she was 11 and had broken an ankle so the experience was not entirely new to her.

As she glanced back she was sure she saw a ghostly figure flit through the shadows as though she was being watched, maybe it was just the old caretaker or maybe she had imagined it but perched on the old wooden crutches there was no imagining that she was now balancing on just one lonely leg.

As she left the old building she again had the feeling she was being watched but for the moment resisted looking back, only when she reached the comparative safety of the roadside did she venture to turn her head and there almost as she expected at one of the windows she was sure she saw an indistinct figure clad in white wearing a nurses uniform.

She stood at the roadside for what seemed like ages before she managed to hitch a lift from a passing car, there was very little traffic but the first car that passed slowed down some yards ahead and then slowly reversed to where she stood.

The driver could hardly resist asking what had happened to her leg but seeing her rather shocked state held back and only asked if she was ok. She could only reply that she felt cold and ill and thought she might be in need of some medical attention and that anyway he wouldn’t believe her if she told him. She then asked before he could say another word, ‘please get me to the nearest hospital.’

After driving for just a few minutes the driver glanced at her again and asked if she was ok, she replied saying she felt cold, sick and weak and could he perhaps get to her a hospital quickly, then she continued, ‘why did you ask?’ He responded saying that she had blood on her skirt. She looked down and there was a bloody area just below the stump of her thigh, she looked up at him and was about to say something but the words never left her lips as she passed out.

---000---

When she awoke again she was in bed in a hospital, this time a modern one, a drip above the bed feeding saline into her arm and she was hooked up to a monitor. She tried to figure out what had happened but then she saw the driver of the car who had kindly given her a lift sitting by the bed, before she could say a word he told her she had passed out in the car so he had done as she asked and taken her to the closest hospital.

Then the door to her room opened and a doctor and a nurse entered, ‘what happened to you then, young lady?’  ‘Clearly your leg was amputated recently but left in an appalling state with an open wound, we had to clean it up and revise it so that it could heal properly, so it’s a few inches shorter than it was but you will still be able to wear a prosthesis, it looks as though it had been done by someone with little modern knowledge of amputations, maybe you had some kind of accident?’

Her jaw dropped, she was not dreaming, this was all real, her leg had really gone but how could she explain to anyone what had happened in a way that could be understood when she didn’t even understand what had happened herself. She was about to say something when the doctor spoke first. ‘You rest for a while, clearly you have been through some kind of ordeal, when you feel rested someone will be here to interview you and try to find out what happened as apparently you had not been involved in any accident and the police will need to come and interview you and ask some questions.’

When the doctor left, the guy who had given her a lift and had  remained silent decided to speak. I really ought to introduce myself, my name is David I live and work locally and was on my way home when I saw you by the side of the road. When I picked you up, you looked as though you had just come out of that old hospital, the one that had recently been turned into a museum, I had been meaning to visit it myself to get an idea of what an old hospital must have felt like but what were you doing there apparently all on your own?’

She felt she had to tell someone and now was as good a time as any. ‘I used to live around here when I was younger and although I wasn’t so interested in photography in those days I wanted to visit this place as there were some strange stories floating around about it being haunted but it wasn’t possible to get in as it had been heavily boarded up’. she began to explain.

‘Did I have my camera with me when you picked me up?’ she asked, ‘Yes it’s in your bedside cupboard’ he replied, ‘Please take it out and give it me’ she asked, he did so and handed it to her.
She remembered the last time she tried to use it the battery had gone flat, that was just before she got out of the place, she felt inside the front pocket of her camera bag, there was the spare battery, she opened her camera, took out the flat one and put in the fresh one and switched on the camera.

One by one they looked at the images she had taken the day before leading up to her nightmare. Then she came to the last one she had remembered taking. Her hands shaking she then selected the next one, she appeared to be almost floating in the arms of a ghostly figure by the bed. She was sure she didn’t remember any of this. Her mind was a total blank.

One by one the images showed her in the bed surrounded by semi transparent figures in white, it was though someone had been taking photos during the procedure of her leg being amputated, then the last image showed her in the bed alone, the figures had vanished, there was nothing else in the memory, indeed there was nothing of what seemed to have happened in her own memory, it was a complete blank up to the point where she had awoken and found herself in the bed.

She passed the camera back to the guy and told him to look again on his own just to make sure she wasn’t imagining it all. he again flipped through the images one by one and then with a lump in his throat said, ‘this is impossible, this couldn’t happen, that hospital has not been used for at least 60 years, it’s just an empty museum now, the only person in charge just visits in the mornings to open up and and again in the evenings to check the place over and then lock up.

They looked at each other and then down at the sheet where it fell flat over where her leg should have been but there was nothing more to say for the moment. David stayed for a little while longer in silence, he longed to hold her hand, to stroke her forehead to sooth her, to give her some support.     

Eventually went to take his leave saying that he lived locally and would drop in to see her again from time to time, clearly she had made an impression and he wanted to see her again but he didn’t want to appear too forward however he took the opportunity to take her hand and to kiss it before her left.

She lay in bed wondering who she should call to tell what had happened but also wondered how she was going to explain to friends and family, gradually she fell asleep partially from exhaustion and shock and partially from the drugs she was being given to relieve the pain.

Later that day there was a knock at the door and a policeman entered, not that he would have been recognised as one as he wore no uniform. He introduced himself as a detective from the local force, apparently the hospital had notified the police of her appearance without any satisfactory explanations as to how she had come to lose her leg.

She recounted her story as she had to the doctors and nurses and to the guy who had given her a lift and dropped her off at the hospital. After she had finished she asked the detective to hand her her camera for him to see the images and for him to make up his own mind and come to his own conclusions as to what might have transpired.

He went through her images one by one, a frown on his face, clearly he too was mystified by it all . He explained to her that her story was very strange but that it was not possible to accept it at face value as there was no scientific explanation as to how her leg had been there one day and not the next without her having had an accident or some illness that would have required it’s amputation. He continued that the images, strange as they seemed were no explanation for her obvious physical condition.

He felt sure that she had been involved either in some kind of accident and was covering up to protect a guilty party or worse was the unlucky onlooker in a prank that had gone seriously wrong. (he really didn’t want to think of any other scenarios at this point).

He had taken notes of everything she had told him and with her permission had taken the camera away for forensic examination to see if the images were indeed real or if they had be tampered with or indeed created to try to explain the loss of her leg. He needed to be certain that the images lent some scientific light on the matter or whether the images had been tampered with and that there was some more sinister and indeed criminal background to the case.

Clearly not satisfied with her story he then went to question the doctor who had first admitted her and learned that there had been no sign of any accident that the amputation although crudely carried out bore all the indications of having been done by someone with some surgical knowledge and skill that quite apart from the fact that all blood vessels had been tied off correctly her femur had been cut through with a fine saw and not just broken as it might have happened in an accident.

He further learned that her blood had been analysed by the hospital to see if she had been under the influence of any drugs but none had been found, no drugs, no anesthetics and no needle marks anywhere on her body. It was a complete mystery and if it were not for the fact that the local old hospital was well known for it’s history of strange goings on the girl’s story about the old hospital would have been clearly considered a fantasy. It was the doctor’s firm opinion that her leg had been intentionally amputated either with or without her knowledge!

The detective then questioned the driver of the car who had picked her up outside the museum and dropped her at the hospital. His story corroborated that given by the girl at least from the moment that she had been picked up. Although the detective suspected that he might have been involved somehow in what had happened to Carol there was at least for now no way in which he would be able to prove anything unless of course later forensic examination of the old hospital could prove that he had been there with her.

The next day the driver of the car who had given her a lift to the hospital returned with the usual flowers and chocolates and asked if there were friends or family who ought to be informed where she was, that she had had some kind of accident. He was being kind and considerate but he also felt strangely attracted to her as though she was familiar in a way he couldn’t quite fathom and so wanted an excuse to be with her if for no other reason that she was alone and there was no one else around to keep her company.

She told him that her friends and family didn’t live in this area although she felt sure that some of her relatives must still live roundabouts but that she had lost contact with them years ago when she left the area to go to college, that she was just visiting as she had heard about the recent opening of the old hospital to the public and had made a special trip to come and visit it. Her boyfriend was back home about a 5 hour drive away and too busy to accompany her as he usually did so she didn’t feel ready to tell him what had happened to her as he had constantly warned her about going into old and dilapidated buildings unaccompanied.  

OK David responded I’ll keep you company when I am not working, unto you’re feeling well enough to get out of here. He went on to tell her about the detective who had visited him at home and questioned him about the events leading up to him dropping her off at the hospital, how he couldn’t understand how the police could think that he might be implicated in any way with what had happened to her.

Carol told him how grateful she felt and how she didn’t know what was going to happen, how she would get home like this, how she would explain to everyone what had happened. She didn’t even know whether the police would let her go before they had got to the bottom of it as clearly they were not happy with her version of the story and felt there was something she was not telling them.

She kept trying to go over the events of that day but could not remember anything after the point when the flash went off on her camera and she lost consciousness. The only clue she or indeed anyone had to what might have happened were in her camera and those images looked as though they were out of some horror movie.

True to his word her David kept her company whenever he could get off from work. The police visited a few more times but after the results came back from forensics saying that they could not find any obvious signs of tampering with the images and that they really couldn’t explain the appearance of the odd ghostly images around the bed. Forensics visit to the old hospital also yielded no clues, their suspicion that the driver might have been somehow was not born out as there was not evidence he had ever been there.

Forensics visited the museum again to question the old caretaker and examine the ward where Carol had said it had all happened without finding even a speck of her blood anywhere.  The bed where she said it had happened was clean and made and bore no traces of it having been slept in or of having recently been remade or indeed of anything untoward having happened there. Indeed there was dust on the cover and the same dust on her clothes. It was a mystery and no one seemed to be able to explain what had apparently happened to Carol. No trace was found of either her missing leg or her missing shoe.

The old caretaker was a rather suspicious character having been a hospital orderly in that very hospital as a young man but no evidence could be found that might link him with what had happened to Carol’s leg. Indeed he actually denied ever having sold her a ticket or of having seen her there, as on that day he only came in the morning to open up and then again in the evening to close. That when he came to close up he did his rounds to check that no one was still wandering around but found everything exactly as he had left it that morning. The only thing he could not explain was the faint smell of ether in the air.

He offered his own observation that although the place had only recently been opened to the public after having been closed up and left empty for many years, there were many stories connected with the place being haunted, of ghostly figures having been seen there over the years, apparitions dressed in white like doctors or nurses, he admitted cautiously that he himself had thought he had seen things once or twice but wasn’t sure what he had seen. He added that he never felt comfortable there and didn’t like hanging around the place as even when he wasn’t imagining seeing things he felt there was an evil presence there.

He said he didn’t like to stay around the place even though it was his job to keep an eye on it as it gave him the creeps, especially the room that had been reconstructed as a ward, he always felt cold when he when in there even when it was warm outside and he always felt as though there was someone in there watching him!   

So, it seemed that just about everyone considered it a mystery and none more so than the surgeon who first saw her at the hospital. He felt sure that she was covering up something sinister as it was clear to him that the removal of her leg had been carried out by someone with some surgical knowledge.

Eventually word got around about what had happened and Carol was visited by the local priest, what had happened to her was the first concrete evidence in years of some evil force inhabiting the place so he felt the need to comfort and bless her and to try to put her mind at rest that he would do all that he could to try to make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again.

As soon as he had finished his visit he rang someone who had carried out exorcisms in the past, put poltergeists and lost souls to rest and together they agreed to visit the old hospital to see if they could discover anything. There were numerous legends surrounding the place and local resistance when the local town hall decided to renovate it and turn it into a museum.

During the years it had been boarded up there had been many instances of kids getting into the place and of minor accidents having occurred there but nothing like what had happened to Carol. It was almost as if the previous accidents that had taken place there were warnings for people to stay away. Now the place had been reopened Carol’s presence had somehow provoked a more serious reaction.
So the priest and the exorcist agreed to meet there one day to see what they could discover, they arrived in the late afternoon on a September day, the sun had another hour before setting and there was already and autumnal chill in the air.

The old caretaker had agreed to open up for them but refused to hang around as he had been scared off after what had happened to Carol.

The priest and the exorcist went to the ward where Carol had had her nightmarish experience and settled down to see if anything might transpire, they didn’t have to wait too long before they felt the temperature drop suddenly. The sun was about to set casting long eerie shadows everywhere a stiff breeze blew up rusting the leaves on the trees and ruffling the curtains at the windows despite them being shut. Little eddies of dust blew across the floor, floorboards creaked and strange noises could be clearly heard from other parts of the building although in the old ward itself there seemed to be deathly silence.  

Then just as Carol had recounted, pale semi-transparent figures in white hospital gowns appeared around the same bed that she had sat on. Silently they appeared to be carrying out an operation on a figure laying in the bed. Eventually one figure left carrying what looked like a leg wrapped in a sheet. Somehow or other something that had happened in the past had been caught in some time warp to be repeated over and over again. It was this that Carol had somehow been caught up in and time, place and events had been somehow confused. It was this that the priest and the exorcist had to find a way to stop, forever.

Now the ghostly sequence had been witnessed the exorcist returned over a period of days and nights with his prayers, spells and incantations, there were of little use though and the ghostly apparitions appeared time after time carrying out the same ritual.

Further research revealed that a girl around Carol’s age had been admitted with a broken leg, instead of attempting to put her leg in a splint and wait for it to heal, the surgeon at the time decided to amputate her leg. Her father was so shocked when he discovered what had happened to his daughter that he put a curse on the hospital and all the staff who had helped at the amputation of his daughter’s leg. They were cursed to repeat their mistake over and over again until eternity.

Despite all the prayers, spells, strange religious rites and incantations, the apparitions continued unabated and one night the exorcist went in on his own to try again to get rid of thee spirits and was never seen again. At this point the local townsfolk raised a petition and decided that the best thing to do was to demolish the place and just create a memorial garden in the hope that it would silence the spirits forever.

---000---

Eventually Carol’s wound healed up sufficiently for her to be discharged from the hospital although at some time she would need to return to have the stitches removed. In the meantime Carol had summoned enough courage to phone her boyfriend to explain that she had had an accident and was in hospital but that she would be home soon. She did however managed to tell him that he would find her somewhat changed and not to be too surprised when her saw her again. I seemed odd to her that he never bothered to ring her back or to call the hospital to find out how she was doing but he could be a bit like that sometimes.

Carol had gradually become quite proficient on her crutches and her new companion insisted on accompanying her everywhere, even offering to take off time from work to take her home. At first she didn’t accept, feeling that she ought to try to make the effort to make the journey alone but she was still not confident enough on her crutches in her new state so she decided to accept as he had already been so kind to her.

She still couldn’t quite get her mind around the idea that all she had done was to go into an old building to take some photographs   and had effectively paid for it with her leg. Every morning after waking up she would look down at the hem of her nightdress and look at the space where her leg used to be. There was no explaining it, the leg had gone, it wasn’t coming back. The question now was whether or not she would get an artificial one, she had heard how expensive they could be and she had no insurance to pay for one. She might just have to settle for getting around on crutches for the time being until she could save up for something.

So the day came, what few things she had packed and stowed in the back of her new friend’s car together with her new crutches and they were on their way. She was going home a few pounds lighter, she joked that it was rather an extreme way to lose some weight.

The closer she came to her old home the more agitated she became, she realised she was returning in a way as a different person and yet she was of course still the same person only this time part of her had gone. Unless she actually looked down at where her leg had been she didn’t feel any different except when occasionally she got phantoms pains, pains in the leg that was no longer there. The doctors had warned her about it but told her they would gradually go away. She wondered how she was gong to be able to cope with this change. Indeed how would the most important person in her life going be able to cope with her now altered image?

During the journey there were long periods of silence broken only by short periods of discussion about inconsequential things but as the miles counted down and home grew closer she felt the need to unburden some of her thoughts and feelings on this man who had been so kind to her. She had not discussed it before but felt an urgent need to now, how did he, as a man see her as a woman, now with only one leg.

It had been something he too had been thinking about throughout the whole trip, he felt strongly attracted to her and wanted to be with her, he could hardly bear the thought that having found this beautiful but different young woman he would soon have to give her up to another man.

His thoughts were confused as he wildly searched for a way to express his feelings towards her, to put into words ideas his mind had grappled with ever since he had given her a lift from that old hospital. He did not want to push her away with wild advances and yet he had to convey his feelings somehow.

He slowed the car down pulling over onto the hard shoulder. Putting on the hand brake he turned to her and told he that she was beautiful and that he thought he had fallen in love with her and that he would be sorry to leave her when he dropped her at home.

With that said he leaned across and kissed her lightly on the cheek, she didn’t pull away but she felt he hadn’t answered her question so she asked again this time pointing to the empty space under her skirt where her leg used to be, she lifted the hem of her skirt to expose her bandaged stump. ‘what about this she asked?’.

You are still a very pretty lady, the fact that you now have only one leg does not make you any less beautiful nor any less intelligent. In fact for me it lends an air of mystery to you and for me actually makes you even more attractive in a strange kind of way.

Carol wasn’t sure how to take his answer, in a way she found it reassuring almost what she wanted to hear but at the same time she couldn’t quite understand how he could say that her only having one leg gave her an air of mystery. She decided not to say anymore on the subject for now.

Eventually they arrived at her home and it was time to say goodbye, her boyfriend was waiting on the doorstep so any more that a kiss on the cheek would have seemed inappropriate but she notice a tear running down David’s cheek so she just squeezed his hand and thanked him for everything and told him that maybe they would meet again, sometime and setting her crutches under her arms, with her bag slung over her shoulder she left.

---000---

David drove away immediately, too chocked up to want to hang around, too soon to see the look of surprise on the face of her boyfriend as he coldly grabbed her tripod and stared at her crutches and the empty space where Carol’s leg used to be.

Carol said nothing as she sensed that his reaction was not going to be a very positive one. ‘Let’s go inside and I’ll try to explain what happened but you are going to find it as difficult to understand as I and everyone else have.’

Once inside they sat down and she began her story. She watched his face for his reaction and could see that after an initial glance at her skirt where her leg used to be he then averted his gaze as though he was unable to accept what had happened to her. She could see that he was uncomfortable over the whole affair. His reactions to her were cold and unsympathetic not the man she used to know.

Eventually she had finished her story but all he could say over and over again was how he had warned her so many times not to go into those old dilapidated and abandoned buildings on her own, that she was just asking for an accident to happen, she was amazed when he told her that it was her own darned fault and that she had no one else to blame but herself, he then added to her pain by telling her that in his opinion she had made up the whole story to cover up the fact that she had had an accident in a place she shouldn’t have been in on her own.

She felt devastated by his reaction, his lack of sympathy, his coldness, at this point it would seem that she wasn’t going to be able to continue her relationship with him but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and see whether his reaction was just one of initial shock and to see whether he might eventually warm and that they could continue as they were before the incident.

Things didn’t get any better he just became more distant spending more time away from home, coming home later at night and leaving earlier in the mornings before she got up. It was clear he was avoiding her. Eventually one day when she got up he had gone, no note, no explanation, clearly he could not cope with her loss and with his own reaction to it. She realised how lucky she was that he had gone at this point in their relationship and that they hadn’t been together for longer or she would have felt even worse over what had happened. Too many losses, too close together, first her leg and now the man she thought she would share her life with.

It was one of the things that preoccupied her as she lay in bed in the hospital recuperating. Whether any man would ever want a woman with only one leg, damaged, spoiled, imperfect, in particular she wondered about the most important man in her life how would he take it? Would he still love her as before or would he feel repulsed by now what remained of her once beautiful leg. Surely she thought no man could be indifferent.

She spent a few days mourning this second loss in her life, she had loved him so dearly, they had spent so many happy times together, he had loved to accompany her on her photographic trips, suggesting places and poses for her to model in. She missed him so much, she couldn’t understand he he could leave her, just like that, with not a word, not a comment, no apology or excuse.

So now it didn’t take her very long to remember the guy who had picked her up that eventful day and who had shown her such tenderness without being at all forward in his advances, she picked up her mobile and after an initial hesitation she rang his number.

After what seemed like too long and with her being about to cancel the call and try again later he answered. For a moment she didn’t really know what to say and he had said hello a few times before she was able to respond. ‘It’s me,’ she said simply, ‘I need to see you again.’

He didn’t respond immediately, he had dreamed that one day she might call him again but never guessed it might be so soon. ‘Hello,’ she whispered, ‘are you there?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I am so happy to hear from you, I thought I might have lost you.’

‘When can we meet again?’ she asked,
‘I have a lot of work on at the moment but I’ll ask the boss if I can take a long weekend so we can organise ourselves, I’ll leave here thursday night and be with you early friday morning if that’s OK?’ ‘That’s wonderful,’ she replied, I’ll get my stuff packed and be ready to come back with you, are you sure you still want me?’ she asked timidly.
‘I can hardly wait to see you but this time I don’t let you go again.’
‘Please drive carefully, I didn’t realise how much I needed you but was afraid to say at the time and had to reassure myself that everything had ended here.’
‘I will,’ he replied, ‘I love you. See you soon.’
It was what she needed to hear, someone who accepted her just as she was, she broke down and cried but put down the phone so that David couldn’t hear her crying.

During the next couple of days she packed her bags, only the important stuff, no regrets about the past, no memories of the guy who could leave her without so much as a cheerio, good luck, hope things turn out alright for you. Just vanish into the night like a skulking frightened animal.

Packing was not an easy affair for her as she had accumulated quite a bit of stuff in her various forays into old dilapidated decaying and abandoned buildings. Some of them were ordinary houses where folks had lived and sometimes she was amazed to see what people left behind when faced with a move and the agonising decisions of what to take what to leave. She also found that packing on one leg was rather tiring as she often needed both hands and so had to hop without her crutches.

Some folks faced with mounting debts had to leave in the midddle of the night to avoid the debt collectors, taking with them only that which they could pack into a suitcase or rucksack.
So it was for her too, she could only take with her as much as she could reasonablly put into David’s car. So when for example it came to her shoes, some of which she had found in abandoned houses she realised that some would have to be left behind, some of course she had no further use for, she doubted she would ever skate again. Then she thought, it might be a long time before she would be able to afford an artificial limb if ever so she discarded all her left shoes.

Eventually and with great effort, sometimes hopping without her crutches, she managed to get her things onto the front porch to await David. She knew he had a long drive but guessed he should be with her somewhere between midnight and 1 am. Initially she sat inside as the night was cold but then she began to worry about all her possesions out on the porch. So she decided to go outside and sit on the porch to wait.

Fortunately the apartment had only been rented and the rent paid only until the end of the month so no one would miss them apart from maybe the landlord who would have to start looking for new tenants.

She wrote out a note for the landlord and pinned it to the door, locked the front door, made sure she had everything she needed and was about to push the keys through the letterbox when she thought she might need to go to the loo or maybe david might went he  arrived so she just sat on her steps with a blanket around her shoulders to wait for him, she wasn’t going to sleep that night.


---000---

She nodded off a few times but the cold often kept her awake, however, she was dozing when David arrived around 1:30 am, he could see her in his headlights, head down huddled under her blanket with her crutches by her side. He switched off his engine and coasted the last hundred yards or so and pulled silently into the drive.

Getting out of the car, he walked as quietly as he could up to her and kissed her gently on the head.

Immediately she woke and seeing David in front of her flung her arms around him and burst into tears, tears of happiness. ‘I’m so happy you came,’ she whispered so as not to wake any neighbours, ‘I have missed you so much.’

‘and I have missed you, more than you can ever imagine,’ he replied and with that, picked her up as though she were a child and carried her to the car, setting her down just so he could open the door for her.

She slid onto the seat and wrapped the blanket around herself as she was shivering with both cold and excitement. David went back to the porch and picked up her crutches and a few other things and put them in the car, in just a couple more journeys he had packed everything and they were ready to leave. Carol handed him the keys and asked him to lock the door and push the keys through the letter box.

The journey back was uneventful and they arrived back in town around 7:30 in the morning. She was exhausted from the exertion of the packing and slept soundly throughout the journey.

She was back, in more ways than one, she had lived there as a child, grew up and went to school there, it was there that her leg vanished into thin air without any satisfactory explanation and there that she met the new man in her life, David.

When they arrived at David’s place he opened the car door, put his arms around her, lifted her from the car and carried her inside, like a bride across the threshold, laying her gently on the settee. He couldn't resist laying by her side and cuddling and kissing for a while before returning to the car and unloading everything and locking up.

On the sofa Carol had stirred, ‘take me to bed please, hold me tight, never let me go’. she asked. He picked her up once more, took her to his bedroom and laid her on the bed. They were both exhausted from the journey, David in particular had just driven 12 solid hours apart from a few cat naps along the way and the stop to pick her up.

He lay down beside her and they both fell asleep fully clothed their two bodies entwined as one and didn’t wake until after mid-day.

As Carol became aware of her surroundings the first thing she had to do was to give David a kiss and hug him like she was never going to let him go, however that hug reminded her that her bladder was full and she needed to go desperately, ‘David, quickly my crutches, I need to go to the bathroom,’ she sounded desperate, David understanding the urgency of the situation and thinking that her crutches were in the living room, bent down and gathered her up in his arms and took her to the bathroom sat her down and then went to find her crutches.

He looked around the living room at all the things that he had unloaded from the car and then remembered he had carried Carol from the car half asleep. So her crutches were still in the car. So he slipped out quickly and brought her crutches in and took them to her.

In the bathroom Carol had slipped off her jeans and was standing having a wash in just her pants and t-shirt, David knocked gentlemanly before entering and handed her her crutches. She turned to take them and as soon as she had them under her arms she approached him and flung her arms around his neck hugging and kissing him as though she had known him forever.

Seeing her standing there on her one slim leg David was immediatly aroused and as they stood hugging and kissing he felt her stump push between his legs and rub his penis. His arms went around lifting her off the floor, her crutches fell to the floor in a clatter, once again she was in his arms as he carried her back to the bedroom, this was beginning to be a habit she thought.

They made mad passionate love for hours, only broken by short naps to catch their breath. During one of their periods of relaxation Carol asked him if he didn’t think that her stump was ugly. He replied that on the contrary, he thought that is was quite beautiful like a lovely piece of living sculpture and with that he bent down and began kissing it all over.

Carol suddenly realised that what remained of her leg had become very sensitive and she became aroused all over again, she had never imagined that after losing her leg that what remained would be capable of such exquisite sensations especially after she had suffered so much pain immediately after losing it. ‘Take me, take me please,’ she cried, David too was so aroused by kissing and caressing her stump that they made love again and again and again until they were both utterly exhausted. Afterwards Carol realised that during their love making she had not missed her leg at all and any phantom pains she had had before seemed to have vanished. Hmm she thought to herself, we have to do this more often

Carol had her answer, David was her man, he didn’t find any part of her ugly, he loved her ‘little one’ as they began to call it, in a way that she never expected any man could love it. It was after all a part of her now and always would be and it was surely better to find a man who loved her whole body without any reservation rather than one who loved her despite what she had lost.

    In each others arms they had become totally oblivious for the need to eat or drink and became just totally absorbed by the need to be with each other and to satisfy each others needs.

They spent the long weekend as a kind of honeymoon, exploring each others bodies and minds in a way that they neither had the time nor the inclination for before Carol had left to ‘go home’. Carol fitted into David’s home and heart like she was always meant to. It was almost as though what had happened in the old hospital was somehow ordained by fate that they were meant for each other and the event in the hospital was what brought them together. How else could it be explained?

Carol began unpacking her belongings and David helped her to put things away, to arrange things, to make her feel as though she was really at home, that his home was hers too.

---000---


The old hospital was pulled down and a garden of remembrance created for all those who had lost their lives there. For Carol, she felt that it was also a garden of remembrance for her missing leg. Occasionally she would visit and sit there and enjoy the peace and quiet and look at the flowers, smell their scents and listen to the bees as they buzzed around collecting pollen.

The previously unquiet spirits too now rested in peace. Or did they?