The Ghost of Ben Hargrove: A Short Story
3/5
()
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.
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.
Related to The Ghost of Ben Hargrove
Related ebooks
Ripples Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lily and the Lost Boy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Phantom of the Opera Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiars, Inc. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Snake Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Color Blind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Please Don't Tell Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Open Mic Night at Westminster Cemetery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Haven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Random Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Window Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Caretaker's Bible Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Vanishing Game Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lily's Ghosts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Made You Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Are You Still There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Analee, in Real Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Danger to Herself and Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forbidden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blood Between Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Not a Number Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Choker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anne of Green Gables Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eliza and Her Monsters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Up All Night Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stand-Off Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rock Paper Killers: The perfect page-turning, chilling thriller as seen on TikTok! Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Dorothy Must Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
YA Horror For You
Library of Souls: The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delicious Monsters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl from the Well Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warm Bodies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cellar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dread Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wicked Deep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clown in a Cornfield Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Me (Moth): (National Book Award Finalist) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Smoke Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mary Shelley Club Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grimmer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChain Letter: Chain Letter; The Ancient Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Surprise Party Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heaven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Asylum Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Road to Nowhere Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Stars Come Out Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Necromancer: A Novella Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Full Tilt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Silent Night: A Christmas Suspense Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vespertine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Afterlife of Holly Chase Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Burn Down, Rise Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Ghost of Ben Hargrove
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Intriguing 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