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    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story
    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story
    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story
    Ebook65 pages1 hour

    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story

    By Heather Brewer

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    About this ebook

    In this standalone short story from New York Times bestselling author Heather Brewer, a boy wakes up in a cell with no recollection of how he got there—and no idea how he is going to escape.

    Ben Hargrove has been trapped for so long, he's lost count of the days. In a cell with no windows and only a small slot in the door, he doesn't even know when it's day and when it's night. All Ben knows is the hand that brings him food and medicine. All Ben knows is the cycle from one sleep to the next.

    But this cycle, something is different. Someone has left Ben a note:

    There is no freedom.
    There are no walls.
    The boy is real.

    Ben will have to figure out what the cryptic note means, and fast—or he may not make it out of this cell alive.

    Featuring a first look at Heather Brewer's upcoming novel, The Cemetery Boys, this mysterious and frightening short story will keep you guessing until the very last page—and it will keep you awake long after.

    Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateOct 7, 2014
    ISBN9780062321268
    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story
    Author

    Heather Brewer

    Z Brewer is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series, and more short stories than they can recall. Their pronouns are they/them. Z is also an outspoken mental health and antibullying advocate. Plus, they have awesome hair. Z lives in Saint Louis, Missouri, with a husband person, one child person, and three furry overlords that some people refer to as “cats.” Visit Z online at zbrewerbooks.com.

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    • 2/5
      Intriguing start. Disappointing end. The actual story is only the first 28 pages btw, the rest is unrelated. I was anticipating for more.

    Book preview

    The Ghost of Ben Hargrove - Heather Brewer

    Contents

    Begin Reading

    Afterword

    Excerpt from The Cemetery Boys

    Prologue

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Back Ad

    About the Author

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Begin Reading

    My dreams are false lullabies. They are lies that I tell myself when I am asleep to get me through the nightmarish truth that faces me when I am awake. Sometimes, when I wake up, I make a conscious choice to keep my eyes closed, to pretend that I’m still sleeping, so that I won’t have to face what awaits me in the day.

    Or the night.

    To be honest, I can’t be certain which is which anymore. The room that I’m kept in has no windows, and I don’t know what lies beyond the door that never opens. Maybe only darkness.

    At first, when I wake up, I don’t recall my name, but then it comes to me in whispers, floating over me until it lands like cobwebs in my mind. Ben. My name is Ben. My age soon follows—seventeen—and then come the scattershot memories of my life before this cell. Mostly, my mind is a blank. A gray, horrible, empty cube—much like the cell that I always wake up in.

    I’m never awake for long before I hear them moving down the hall. Whoever is keeping me here must have cameras hooked up in my room, as they seem to know precisely when I wake, move, blink. . . . They never move unless I do. When I go still, the footsteps stop.

    I know they’re out there, but I haven’t found them yet. Maybe they’re just listening. Through the thin walls, via hidden microphones that I also haven’t located. Or maybe my exhausted, frightened mind echoes that loudly in the chamber of my skull—maybe they just know. Maybe they can sense that I’ve woken, that I’m moving, that I’m thinking about how I came to this place and how I can escape. That I’m thinking . . . and maybe what I’m thinking.

    Maybe they know it all.

    Maybe I am trapped here forever.

    I push that thought away—back into my nightmares, back into the place in my soul that’s convinced there is no hope of ever escaping my captors—and open my eyes. A new day has begun, or perhaps just a new time. Day and night are meaningless words within the walls of my prisonlike cell. I know only the cycle from one sleep to the next.

    The room I am kept in is small, roughly eight feet by eight feet. Its walls are grim and gray, stained with time and the memory of former prisoners. I use that word—prisoner—with doubt, for where I am doesn’t feel like a prison. There are no bars or guards—at least, none that I’ve seen—and my only daily visitor is of the medical persuasion. But this place cannot be a hospital, either—it’s too filthy, too frightening, to help or heal.

    The walls look as if some sort of liquid once ran down them, especially in the corners, only to dry into elongated shapes that remind me of Halloween ghosts. Long, shapeless. Harmless, really, so long as no one pulls back the sheet.

    My room has only a single door. It was once painted white. I can see flecks of that color here and there through what now covers it. Brief glimpses of its former identity peeking through tiny chipped holes. But the door is gray now. No more bright, clean white. Now dirty. Now gray. Now ruined with age.

    The door has a small slot in its very center. Seven times per cycle, a hand appears through the slot with food—a male hand, much older than my own. On the knuckle of the pointer finger, there is a small freckle. Otherwise, the hand is flawless.

    Sometimes it presents me with pills that I refuse to take. White pills. Flawless, like the door was once. Like the hand is now, apart from that freckle. The owner of the hand never speaks, never says as much as a single word. No good morning. No good evening. Just gives me my food and shuffles away, leaving me alone once again.

    (I’m convinced that’s the worst part of being here, by the way. The loneliness. The emptiness. The mind-numbing solitude.)

    I can remember them sometimes, my first days in this cell. Not the specifics—there are no specifics. Before the cell is hazier still. I can only hope that that time will come back to me, and soon.

    When I first awoke in this room—and that was it for me, no screaming or dragging, I simply appeared here in a blink—I do remember that I tried finding a way out. I climbed onto my bed and examined the ceiling. I beat against the door with my

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