NYC Midnight Flash Fiction 2011 -- Challenge 1

The Challenge:

Genre: Ghost Story
Location: Hall of Fame
Object: Alarm Clock
Words: 1,000
Days: 2

Brother's Keeper

Synopsis: In a vacant high school gymnasium, an old athlete walks the painful road of nostalgia and discovers the truth about a janitor. A truth that will change everything.

Columns of natural light spilled into the foyer from a row of tall, glass doors. Dust particles danced in the glow, defying gravity and spiraling in every direction. Shadows checkered the scratched linoleum that was littered with confetti and spilt food.

A random squeak of a tennis shoe, the slosh of a mop and the rolling wheels of a bucket is all that broke the silence. Beyond the foyer, a janitor cleaned the wooden floor of the old basketball court.

For 25 years I returned to walk down this hallway on the same morning, right after graduation. Every year it was the same – the janitor and I alone in an abandoned high school gymnasium. I welcomed the caretaker. There was something familiar and comforting about his presence.

I stared through glass cases that hung along the walls at awards, pictures and cutouts of former Cody High School athletes – the Cody Broncs Hall of Fame.

I walked slowly down the hall looking into the eyes of every kid that made All-Conference and All-State in Wyoming since 1942. The local stars of football, track and field, wrestling, tennis, and basketball, and the swimmers, gymnasts, and baseball players lined up like ghosts haunting the foyer.


When I reached the athletes from 1980, I froze. My eyes locked with the grooves where glass met wood. Sudden unknown fear and anxiety weighed on me like cast-iron shackles.

I yelled.

The scream seemed to emerge from some other realm and echoed through the foyer. Trying to free myself from fear, my hands shook the glass case. Pictures and awards collapsed.

The doors to the basketball court swung open. The janitor stopped and watched the trembling glass.

I let go and backed up.

“Sorry,” I said. The shaking stopped.

The janitor ignored me and walked over to the case, pulled out a key, opened it up, reorganized things, closed and locked the case, then walked back into the basketball court and closed the doors.

I walked further back, hesitated. I had to look at every kid. I had to. I started over from 2011 and worked backwards.

While the uniforms, equipment, and the hairstyles had changed from the past, the faces were the same from decade to decade. The same smiles, the same excitement, the same youthful hope, the same innocence.

As I walked further down that hall and reached the celebrated athletes of the 1980s, I froze in place again.

The paralyzing fear left a familiar taste. I reached up and wiped my mouth. Blood smeared on the back of my palm.

In that moment, I remembered I’ve felt this way before. Every year I’d feel it, and taste it. Anxiety mixed with blood in my mouth.

My hands were cold. My body shivered from something icy within. I inched further down the hall until I reached 1986. But I couldn’t look up. My eyes locked onto my name at the bottom of a large plaque, Owen Allphin, engraved in the middle of a dozen others.

This time pain accompanied irrational fear. I fell to my knees and groaned, then vomited blood. My left hand dug into the case and tore it from the wall as I fell. It crashed around me.

Once again my cry seemed distant, like it surfaced from some inhuman thing.

The big, swinging doors opened again and the janitor ran out into the foyer and stopped. He stared at the broken glass case. His head swiveled. His eyes wide and darting.

My pain and fear vanished as soon as I saw him. Blood no longer rested on my lips.


The janitor walked hesitantly toward the broken glass. He kneeled down in front of me and picked up the same large plaque from the rubble and gently brushed it off. He stared at it for a long time before he sat down. His upper lip trembled. His eyes pooled with tears.

“Owen, I’m sorry,” he said, cradling the plaque now.

“Sorry? I’m the one who broke it,” I said.

The janitor ignored me again. I got up and looked over his shoulder.

It was a picture of our basketball team moments before we traveled to the state tournament in Cheyenne. Despite coming here every year, I haven’t seen this photo before. I’ve never been able to see it.

An inscription below the photo read:

“IN LASTING MEMORY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE CODY HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TEAM, THE COACHES AND STAFF, AND DEVOTED FANS, WHO DIED IN THE BUS CRASH ON MARCH 14, 1986.”

I fell back down to the floor. It felt like a frog jumped inside my throat.

“I’m so sorry, Owen,” the janitor was now crying. No, he was bawling. “I’m so sorry, brother. I should have been there.”

I stood straight up and walked around to look at the janitor head on. The face was tough and wrinkled, a face full of life’s experience. Not the face I remember, but one I now completely recognized. After all these years, my brother was in this gym with me every time.

The memories flooded back into my mind. My twin brother broke his leg and didn’t travel with the team that year. He never got on the bus.

I did.

I understood. I finally understood. I wasn’t shaking anymore.

I knelt down and put my mouth to his ear. “Royal,” I said. “I’m okay now. I was asleep when it happened. I don’t remember much.”

Royal’s head popped up. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “I’ll see you soon, brother.”

An alarm clock chimed from behind us. I looked over at another familiar face who was tapping his watch. “Time’s up,” my father said. “I have to go back now. Come this time.”

“I’m ready,” I told him.

My father smiled.

I looked back on Royal. He picked up the plaque with the tenderness of a mother. Then I turned around, and for the first time, followed Dad into the unknown.