Be afraid of the dark

After a few hours of watching the outside darkness, John finally grew tired of it. There was nothing happening there. However, when he turned around, things were different; the building was the same, and the living were doing their things. However, the ghosts seemed distressed. Now that John paid attention, the lights seemed to be flickering. Every now and then, the light reduced a bit in intensity and then went back to normal.

"What's going on?" John asked Ramon.

"We just told you a few hours ago that when the lights go bad, things get horrible," answered Ramon while looking at the lights.

"So, the munchers are coming tonight?"

"Not necessarily; sometimes they don't come; it is not a certainty until the lights go dark. Sometimes the lights flicker and the walls rumble, but they don't come. We will see what happens tonight." Ramon left John's side and went to one of the rooms.

Meanwhile, a small crowd was forming around Elizabeth's room. A lot of the ghosts have moved closer to that location. John moved closer to Martin.

"So, everyone goes to Elizabeth for safety?"

"Mostly, yes." However, it is not one hundred percent safe. Once a nurse opened the door, there were fifteen people taking refuge there, and the Munchers went in. It was a carnage. Elizabeth stood there and watched them be eaten and chewed on; she wasn't able to help. The Munchers could not hurt her since she has almost perfect control over her energy-stealing ability. After they finished their meal, and the lights came on, they left." Explained the professor.

"Why does no one go to Willy?" John asked.

It seemed weird that no one went to the oldest of all ghosts.

"Willy is a coward. He would never try to move his host; there is a risk of losing contact with her and falling into the mouths of the Munchers. He won't try to close the door; old people have bad sight, and the munchers come out in the dark. Influencing an old person to move in that situation is dangerous. Elizabeth is taking a risk every time she does it."

As the hours came to pass, after ten o'clock, the walls started to rumble. The sound was similar to an old pipe line that emptied when the water was cut, and now it started to fill up again. As soon as the noise started, the ghost in the house looked even more scared than before. One old woman sat on the floor and started crying; there were no tears, just her constant wailing.

"Not again, not again; I just want to disappear; I didn't do anything so horrible in my life; why is God punishing me?"

Some others started praying.

John wasn't a firm believer, but being dead and a ghost trapped in a nursing home made him reevaluate his beliefs about the afterlife. John saw that the workers and the residents in the nursing home didn't seem to realize about the lights flickering and the rumbling walls.

"Don't they see the lights flicking or hear the noise from the walls?"

"No, they don't." Answered the professor.

"When I was alive two years ago, I didn't see it either. The only thing that we had was small energy cuts every now and then. Usually one of the workers goes down to the machinery room and flips the breakers or replaces a fuse; they have no idea that while they are doing that, a bunch of monsters are massacring the other residents of the home. The flickering we see is the electrical system about to fail, but the sight of the living is a bit different from ours. They just don't know."

"Oh, don't the old people you guys leach energy from feel it? I mean, someone must have noticed something—cold spots, sulfur smell, chills. Anything?"

"Nah, that is just movie stuff; the only thing they might feel is some kind of weight on their shoulders, like they are carrying something. Nothing else. I know. Crying Willy leached from me for years before I died." After that, the professor went away.

The lights kept flickering in the same pattern, but the rumbles in the walls intensified. Even John was starting to get scared; he had come to partially accept the situation; he was dead, that was pretty clear. But everything else was just too weird to just roll with it. However, if things got really bad, he didn't know how to survive, so he made his way to Elizabeth's room. On his way, he saw Shana and Ramon; they were in different rooms with one old person each. They were not the only ones. Professor Martin also moved to one of the rooms. John saw a few others that also moved to the rooms, but he didn't know them yet. When he made it to Elizabeth's, she looked straight at him; her face showed she was not happy to see him, but her gaze was less contemptuous. John waited for a moment; he didn't know how to talk to this stunning, beautiful woman without making things worse. He was never good with women, and dying wasn't going to magically change that. Lucky for him, Elizabeth was a forgiving person; she just gave him a nod.

"You can come in," she finally said.

There were ten other ghosts in the room with her, and all of them were standing there silently. The room had a dim light coming from the bathroom, dark enough to sleep, but clear enough to see things in an appropriate way in case the resident wanted to go to the toilet in the middle of the night or something like that. The old man Elizabeth was leeching energy from was lying on the bed; he was still awake and looking at the ceiling in silence. His face was as expressionless as the first time he saw him earlier in the day.

"Sorry about..." John started talking, but was interrupted.

"Nope, I don't care; I don't want to know; just be quiet; don't say anything." Elizabeth said, cutting John short.

Standing in a room with eleven ghosts, an old man with dementia, and absolute silence turned out to be quite boring after half an hour. There was nothing to do, and after her display of bad attitude, Elizabeth didn't look as mesmerizing as before. Sure, she was a beauty, but she was also a jerk. John thought many times about leaving the awkward situation and venturing out of the room.

"If you leave and the Munchers come, the door will be closed; I won't open it up for you." Elizabeth warned.

She knew what John was thinking. It had happened many times before. In her experience, men could not be quiet; they always had to be doing something or trying to fix something. At least he was not an obnoxious teenager who never shuts up and thinks they know everything; those never lasted long in the home.

John doubted and went back into the room and stood there in silence with the others all night. As soon as the rays of the sun started illuminating the nursing home, everyone thanked Elizabeth and left her room. In the end, nothing happened that night. John was a bit disappointed. Everyone sold him the idea that something horrible was about to happen. However, all that happened was a lot of flickering lights and noises coming from the walls. It was still a very dangerous night; he could have died of boredom. John didn't even bother to say good-bye or give his thanks to Elizabeth; he was beginning to doubt all the eating ghost monster stuff again. Maybe it was just a joke they prepared to entertain themselves at the expense of the newcomers. After leaving the room, he went straight to the main door. The personnel had to be changed at some point, and that was his moment to escape. Around seven thirty, the fresh batch of workers came in. They opened the door, and John rushed out to crash painlessly against an invisible wall.

"I won " announced Martin.

"Why do we even bet? We already know what's going to happen, and we don't even have or use any money." Asked Ramon.

"Don't ask me; you are the one insisting that some of the newbies will believe us and won't try to charge the door as soon as it opens." answered Martin.

They watched John try again every time the door opened; he did everything every stubborn newcomer usually does: charge at the open door, try to slide slowly, and time his passing with a living person that was doing out. They didn't blame him; most of them tried all that at some point, and some even did irrational things, like trying to pass through the door upside down and walking with their hands. Still, it was kind of funny watching other people do it. There was not much entertainment around this time; the television in the relaxing room was still off. John saw all the ghosts staring at him from the hallway. For a moment, he felt stupid, but he still wasn't resigned to staying trapped for the rest of his death. He had to try a way to get out of this place, so he kept trying.