Ghost stories are stories about the souls who are lost and forgotten. The lonely, the cast-aside. They’re about those who seek justice, who can’t let go, who must remain behind just long enough to right some unspeakable wrong done to them.
This is a ghost story.
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“Identical” they were called. “Inseparable” many said. Devin and Dylan Hastings, two perfect little blond-haired, blue-eyes angels. Adults doted on them. Kids wanted to be them. They were the ultimate pair. And so, so loved by everyone they met. Their parents, Kim and Ken, made sure that the duo wanted for nothing. They lived a very privileged life growing up in Elmharst.
Like any children, they were mischievous little runts, but what kid doesn’t get up to some trouble now and again?
When they were just four years old, Devin and Dylan started showing signs of an affinity for science. They would collect bugs, frogs, sometimes even mice, kill them, and dissect them to see what was inside. Endlessly fascinated by biology, taxonomy, and zoology, the two were ruthless in their pursuit of knowledge. It wasn’t long before mice weren’t enough. Even at this tender age, they understood that larger animals provided more information, more data for their experiments, more facts to fill their eager, growing brains. Bigger was better. So, it wasn’t anybody’s fault really, when they bashed the family dog’s head in with a cement brick and split it open from neck to belly.
Even their parents managed to laugh it off as simply the actions of bright kids who wanted to know more about their world. Immediately after the incident with the dog, they bought Devin and Dylan life-sized, anatomically correct cross-sections of different animals so they could continue their education without having to worry about supplying the raw materials themselves. Ken even signed them up for a wilderness scouts course and Kim started taking them to work with her (as a special treat every now and then) to see the procedures she and the other veterinarians performed on the animals. This seemed to satisfy Devin and Dylan’s bloodlust. For a while at least.
Then, when they turned seven, Devin and Dylan were given another dog by their parents, this time a puppy. Kim and Ken decided the two were old enough to understand the responsibility that came with having a pet - something no reasonable parent could have expected a four-year-old to comprehend. And their parents thought it was certainly time to instill some responsibility in them.
In fact, just a few weeks after getting the pup, Devin and Dylan were taught a significant lesson in responsibility. While playing with their puppy on their parents’ vast estate, the dog suddenly and without warning took off deep into the thicket that lines the property. Devin and Dylan gave chase, only to find their pet sitting and crying outside of an old, abandoned well, left forgotten and overgrown in the bordering woods. Curious, Devin and Dylan peered inside the well to find another kid, dirty and alone, sitting at the bottom. Struck with the realization that the pup had come to get help for the trapped child, Devin and Dylan yell down that they are going for help and will return. They scoop up their pup and head back in what they think is the direction of the house.
Unfortunately, the puppy had taken Devin and Dylan far to the outskirts of their parents’ huge property, and it took them much longer to get back to the house than they expected. Even more unfortunately, at age 7, neither of them had a particularly long attention span. Devin and Dylan, distracted from their trudge through the thicket with their new puppy, perhaps by the nature around them, and perhaps by other little sources of new knowledge and learning, completely forgot about the kid in the well.
It was three days before either of them remembered.
By the time Kim and Ken called the fire department, the kid in the well was near death. Starving, freezing, injured, but alive. Survived on the slim trickle of groundwater that oozed from cracks in the walls and floor of the well. Could barely speak - shock they said - and had no memory of how they’d gotten into the well or of anything that had happened before the big, strong fireman lifted them up and onto the ladder.
It was a great miracle. The entire community celebrated the discovery and the “well-kid’s” return to their family. Devin and Dylan were hailed as heroes. Life savers. The neighborhood threw them a huge party, honoring them for being the youngest rescuers the town had ever seen. For saving the life of another child, who would have been certain to die otherwise. For being brave and clever in a scary and dangerous situation. For being them. The dynamic duo.
No one else knew the truth.
As they continued to grow up, Devin and Dylan’s lust for knowledge did not abate. At age 12, they started to become interested in ethics after Ken shared the classic moral dilemma, the “trolley car problem” with them as a thought experiment. In the trolley problem, an individual is given a choice: allow the trolley to continue along its predesigned path, knowing it will strike and kill a large group of people, or, change the trolley’s track to another with only a single person in harm’s way. The ethical quandary is as old as thought itself: do you sacrifice the one to save the many?
The duo became obsessed with this idea - each consistently posing more and more absurd ethical dilemmas to the other - and all dilemmas dealt with the measure and value of human life. But soon, very soon, thought experiments weren’t enough to satisfy their desire. As ever, the two scientists decided to conduct their own experiment.
On a beautiful, sunny day, 12-year-old Devin and Dylan had finalized the steps of their experiment. At the local watering hole, they set their plan into action. The sole lifeguard on duty was a skinny, bored teenager, possibly asleep behind their dark glasses. They would be important to the duo’s experiment.
The watering hole was a round lagoon surrounded by long, draping trees to the north. The ends of their willowy branches dipped softly into the water with each gust of the gentle breeze. An enormous oak tree on the lagoon’s northern bank supported a rope swing on one branch and a tire swing on the other. Both were frequently used by swimmers to launch themselves into the water. The single lifeguard stand was smack in the middle of the southern bank with the oak directly across the lagoon’s glassy surface.
On the east and west sides of the lagoon, however, were dangerous rapids, connected by the river flowing around the lagoon in a U-shape. Hazardous areas were clearly demarcated with bright ribbons and anchored buoys, but there was a large, round whitewater raft tethered to the dock on the western edge of the lagoon. Its purpose was to give the more thrill-seeking locals a feel for the rapids. Teenagers, mostly, would sit inside and allow the quick, choppy water to flow beneath the raft, all the while remaining safely anchored to the dock. They would dare each other to get inside, take bets on how long they could remain, on who would chicken out first - the works. You see, the rope connecting the raft to the dock had never been replaced, so the legend goes, and the idea was that it could snap at any moment, dooming the people inside to the last ride of their lives. But it was just a legend.
Devin and Dylan waited until the perfect moment to begin their experiment.
Armed with life vests, the duo asked another child to swim out with them toward the far east side of the lagoon. Closer and closer to those rapids they inched, all the while encouraging their unsuspecting victim to really “feel the thrill” of the rapids in a way the ten teenagers currently sitting in the raft couldn’t possibly understand. Eventually, Devin and Dylan were able to convince the other kid to grab onto a particularly long branch and allow the current to sweep them into the rapids, using the branch as a tether.
Once their victim had been swept into the current, with only their own grip keeping them from being dragged under the rapids, Devin and Dylan returned to shore screaming for help and running as fast as their little legs would carry them to the lifeguard stand. The two conspirators frantically pointed all the way out to the far east side of the lagoon - nearly impossible to see through the trees - and the lifeguard sprang into action.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the lagoon, the ancient anchoring rope’s time had come. Sawed down to a thin strand by the diligent work of our dynamic duo and a trusty pocket knife, the once-mighty rope now could barely contain the pull of the overladen raft. As the teenagers inside jostled around in the rapids, the rope finally gave in. Its snap echoed like a shotgun blast throughout the lagoon.
The lifeguard hadn’t even made it to the edge of the water before his head whipped around to the sound. That’s when he saw ten teenagers in the whitewater raft, screaming, twenty feet further away from where the raft should be anchored. They had formed a sort of human-chain with the last one clinging to the frayed end of what had once been the raft’s tether.
Making a split-second decision, the lifeguard took a single glance back at the lone child clinging for dear life, and started sprinting in the exact opposite direction.
Devin and Dylan had their answer.
As they progressed into teenagers, Devin and Dylan’s thirst for knowledge became more provocative. They started dating, and their desires took on a different focus. Because they were identical, Devin and Dylan designed a unique set of experiments meant to better understand the opposite sex. They would swap dating partners unannounced, their victims never knowing the difference, and record the way they acted. The idea was that people believed what they wanted to believe, and that even someone who claimed to love you wouldn’t know if you’d been replaced with an identical double.
During a particularly interesting experiment, one of the duo successfully tricked their sibling’s significant other into sleeping with them, purposefully giving them an STD. The question presented was whether your partner could still love you after this - whether they would stay or leave, accuse you of cheating, or confess to cheating. This particular partner took the middle option, accused them of cheating, and left them. But it didn’t matter to the duo. Their bond was unbroken. Other casualties were only to be expected on the quest for knowledge.
Devin and Dylan continued to learn lessons like these well into their twenties.
But, eventually, as most people do, Devin and Dylan settled down, got married, started adult lives. They had children of their own. Their relentlessness persevered, but they learned to hide it better from the outside world.
It paid off. Before they turned 30, Devin had reached the executive-level in a Fortune 500 company, and Dylan was a sitting member of Congress. They each had the perfect nuclear family, the perfect pink house, the perfect marriage. But the duo was still mostly inseparable. Their houses were on the same block. Their jobs were in the same city. They were never far from one another. Never more than a stone’s throw away. That’s important for a bond like theirs. The unbreakable bond of siblings.
Like all people in power, both Devin and Dylan became obsessed with the idea of having more of it. Clever childhoods had turned them into clever adults, and our duo figured out some handy ways of taking that power. Devin realized, as CFO, that the financial “buck” stopped there. At that level, embezzlement wasn’t just easy, it was almost required. Devin built a very comfortable life on those stolen dollars. But embezzlement wasn’t enough for the powerful executive, for money alone does not make power. Threats, bribes, and physical coercion were just some of the many tools in Devin’s arsenal. They were how Devin had made it to CFO in the first place. A stacked deck.
Dylan, on the other hand, as a politician, had unfettered access to government funds, but, perhaps more importantly, to the ears of others in positions of power. Others who could make real change. Those in the shadows. The ones who control. Clever Dylan, linking these sources, forged an empire on bribes, illegal kickbacks, and threats. One of the corporations in Dylan’s pocket was purposefully poisoning the water supply of a local indigenous tribe, because it was cheaper to dump there illegally than to obtain the proper permits and waste-removal equipment. Dylan, through some keen maneuvering (and after an enormous bribe from the company), convinced other lawmakers to pass an ordinance ripping away the land from the tribe and granting it to the corporation. The natives were uprooted without a destination, and their homes were destroyed for company land. The illegal dumping of course did not stop, and Dylan continued to take quarterly bribes.
As you can imagine, these were not the only instances of Devin and Dylan’s brilliance, born from childhood wonder, leading to their overall success.
It’s around the time they turn 35 that things start to go wrong for our duo. Slowly, at first. Small things. Devin’s identity was stolen and the thief racked up over fifty thousand dollars in purchases before the scam was detected. Devin’s credit card company said they couldn’t confirm whether the purchases were fraudulent, as they were all local, and some were even at places Devin frequented. So, Devin was on the hook for the money. Not a great loss considering Devin’s ill-gotten fortune, but still enough to make an impression.
Then, Dylan’s slush fund, kept hidden beneath the family garage, went missing. Over $100,000 in unmarked bills, stowed for the explicit purpose of immediate access to bribe money, gone overnight. For obvious reasons, the police could not become involved. For these same reasons, Dylan’s family did not fully understand the panic a missing duffel bag instilled. Dylan was able to recover the money from other sources, but called in nearly every possible favor to do so. That’s what happens when you’re clever. You find a way out.
Later that same year, Devin was driving home on a deserted stretch of highway, late at night. Out of nowhere, a huge truck came barreling up from behind and slammed into the car, pushing it off the road to the right and through the guardrail. Before Devin’s car went all the way over the cliff-face, however, the truck reversed erratically, leaving the car hanging, like a see-saw, with Devin staring down through the windshield into the ravine below. Only the clever use of a seatbelt prevented Devin’s ejection through that same windshield. The truck driver, clearly intoxicated, continued to swerve down the highway as they booked it away from the scene. For eight entire hours Devin hung there, suspended, unable to move, to shift in any way, for fear of launching the car into an 80-foot, absolutely fatal nosedive. It was not until the next morning that commuters found Devin, wide-eyed and desperate, having lived an entire night not knowing whether the car would take that final plunge. Emergency services were called, and Devin’s car was rescued. But Devin was … changed.
Dylan, on the other hand, was slowly beginning to realize that some of the people involved in their dealings were … less than reputable. You see, Dylan had been making deals and getting into bed with gang members and worse, and had become enmeshed in a billion dollar racketeering scam across several countries. These relationships had paid off for Dylan initially, but soon, Dylan was in too deep. And then, Dylan pissed off the wrong people. The threats started to come in droves. Written threat letters discovered on the family’s property; strangers harassing Dylan’s kids at school; mob members sitting outside the house for days on end, just surveilling, staring, the sheer awareness of their presence overwhelming. Soon, Dylan’s entire family was being monitored, stalked, and harassed. The looming threat of violence was ever-present. Dylan began to live a life on edge.
Now we’re getting to the part in this story where things really hit the fan for our duo. Devin was fired, dramatically, and publicly, after e-mails leaked confirming a long and disgusting history of sexual assault and harassment on too many interns and assistants to count. The company stripped Devin of everything. Devin was humiliated, ridiculed, and used as an example of the company’s zero tolerance policy for such heinous behavior. It was the most aggressive media campaign of a corporation against a single person that television had ever seen. Social media dragged Devin through the ringer for months even after the news stations stopped reporting on the scandal. Devin’s downfall had to be this sensational because the company itself had a secret - sexual assault and harassment were commonplace there - but they needed a “straw man,” a “fall guy,” someone to take the heat and go down so the company could save face by demonstrating it had excised the cancer. Devin was that cancer.
No one would hire Devin after the scandal broke. No income meant that the family couldn’t afford to stay in their home. Devin’s family felt disgusted and betrayed. They left. Devin was well and truly alone.
Dylan’s home and office were raided by the FBI when an anonymous tip led them to uncover an enormous, underground human-trafficking ring being run by those shadier characters Dylan had become involved with. The raid led to dozens of high-profile arrests, including those of several other powerful politicians and members of the elite upper-class. Those arrested wasted no time in giving Dylan up. Photos eventually surfaced of Dylan in compromising positions with several underage children, all of whom had been illegally trafficked for those purposes. Dylan, facing 25 to life in Federal Prison, but out on bail, now awaits trial.
The scandal forced Dylan to resign in disgrace. The obscene nature of the charges lead Dylan’s family to leave, too. Dylan is, for perhaps the first time, lonely.
But fear not for our duo - they still have each other! And it is at this point in our story that we come to present day. For you see, Devin and Dylan are nothing if not clever. And the thing they understand, better than anything else, is precisely how clever they are. Both knew that their level of cleverness was unmatched, and yet they had been outmaneuvered. Together, they arrived at the same conclusion: sabotage. Devin and Dylan deduced that someone else has been pulling the strings of their lives, orchestrating their ruin. Not just that, but they know who, and they are all too aware of why. That’s why I have been frantically writing this story out. Because by this point, they undoubtedly have figured out it’s been me this entire time. And I’m certain they are coming. Someone needs to tell our tale.
You see, I told you: this is a ghost story. And I, Dale, the third Hastings triplet, am a ghost. I have been my entire life. Overlooked, unwanted, completely and utterly forgotten. Lost in the glaring and constant light of Devin and Dylan, anyone would be. I was nothing. Nothing special, anyway. And Devin and Dylan were so much closer than I could ever get to either of them. They saw at once that I was different, an outcast - not like them. So they cut me out. From then on it was never a triplet bond, but a twin, with a lonely outside observer desperately clamoring to understand a language they once knew fluently.
And the rest of my family? They were ashamed of me too. So much so that most people had no idea we were triplets. Locals began referring to Devin and Dylan as the “Hastings Twins” and nobody ever corrected them. What was I supposed to do as a forgotten toddler? Nothing. Just like what I was: nothing.
Whenever I was accidentally exposed and my family was forced to reveal my presence to the outside world, people would squint and say, “…triplets?” Their look of confusion was always quickly replaced by one of abject pity. A knowing, an understanding that I’m somehow unclean, unwanted, untouchable, unlovable. How is it that everyone in town knew of Dylan and Devin but there’d never been a whisper of Dale? The answer then becomes apparent to them: I am simply nothing. Nothing special. I have no dazzling pizzazz, no je’ne sais quoi, no electric chutzpah that set me apart like it did my siblings. No. Not Dale Hastings, resident ghost.
Those experiments they ran as kids? Performed with me as the subject. In their pursuit of science, my dog was butchered to death in front of my very eyes at four years old; I was left to rot in a well for three days before rescue at age seven; I was abandoned to cling to dear life in the rapids while I watched the lifeguard choose to save other people instead when I was only twelve; the love of my life left me because my siblings imparted their disease in a cruel trick ….. I can’t even go on. Devin and Dylan destroyed me. They took everything from me. They made me into who I am today.
My parents? Doted on my siblings, gave them everything they ever wanted, signed them up for activities and camps, organizations, and parties. But not me. No, never me. I was too shy, too quiet, too “weird” to be exposed to others. I was kept safely inside. Sheltered. Hidden. Forced to live a life as an observer, watching Devin and Dylan have all the fun, make all the friends, get all the attention. Kim and Ken never had time for Dale because I was … too odd. Off-putting. I just wasn’t like other people.
In the rare instances where I did speak, I always said the wrong thing. I wanted to be better, to do better, but instead I was mocked and derided, told to remain silent and away. This was taken to the worst extreme whenever either of my parents had to take me out in public - usually because I was just too young to be left home alone - and I would be threatened into absolute silence to the point where passing neighbors would call me by Devin or Dylan’s name and my parent wouldn’t correct them. We were identical. If I didn’t speak, I couldn’t be identified as easily as being different.
As we got older, Devin and Dylan left me in the dust completely. Knowing I couldn’t be on my own outside the safe halls of our parents’ estate because I was just too different. They went off and created entire, full, rich lives together. Always together. And there was me. Always alone.
So, I started to plan. A stolen credit card here, a rental truck there, a few whistle-blower e-mails and anonymous tips to the right law enforcement officials and the trap had been set.
What better way is there to arrange a family reunion than by reminding my dear siblings that, at the end of the day, we really only have each other.
You see, where, as kids, the twins were endlessly fascinated by what’s in an animal’s insides - zoology, biology, taxonomy - my area of special interest has always been ethology. The study of human behavior. Humans. Not wild animals. But here’s the thing - humans are animals. They are predictable, especially when cornered. Just like the squirrels and racoons of their youth, Devin and Dylan both reacted exactly like a rodent in a trap - desperate for any way to escape. And when humans are desperate, they are indistinguishable from animals. Which is why I know exactly what they will do next.
They will come here, to find me. Me. Their forgotten sibling. Still living in our family home in Elmharst, mom and dad long gone now. They will step directly through the old barn door at the front of the house, possibly with weapons drawn, to exact their revenge. Because, like animals, desperate humans look for any way out. By any means necessary. But it won’t matter if they do, because the barn door has been modified. When it opens, Devin and Dylan, my sisters, will see me, the architect of their demise, seated atop the staircase in the grand entryway, smiling at them as the hairpin trigger lodged in the door’s latch executes my final experiment.
You see, this is a ghost story after all. And after the barrels I have spent weeks setting up in the basement explode, three identical ghosts will make their way into whatever lies ahead.