The Tampa Terror

Part 5: Gustav

"Please!" I beg Tom desperately. "Please, don't drop me! I'm... I'm sorry for doing whatever I did to anger you! Just don't kill me!"

The scariest part of this catastrophe is that Tom, the person I am speaking to, seems invisible to everyone else. I am floating and in danger of falling to my death at the young age of twenty. Yet, nobody standing on the ground can see the person threatening to drop me onto the ice fifty feet below. Fifty feet is a fatal falling distance.

Nils reaches his arms up towards me. I can clearly see the frightened expression on his beautiful face despite hovering so far above him.

"Gustav, they're putting safety netting and a mat on the boards, so you will be caught if you tumble down!" My boyfriend informs me, signaling frantically at the workers attaching a net to the top of the boards just ten feet below me. If I were to fall from where I am at this exact moment, I would survive. I breathe a sigh of relief, and Tom growls angrily at me. He is obviously frustrated that his plan to murder me will most likely be thwarted.

"If I can't drop you like I wanted to, I'll just throw you somewhere they can't catch you!" Tom grunts, tightening his grip on the front of my shirt. "Good luck surviving this, you worthless piece of garbage!"

Tom throws me towards the stands with all his might, startling everyone. I descend rapidly and land chest first on a seat. Finally, I roll off and collapse to the floor, groaning in agony. It doesn't feel like my bones have been fractured, but the team physicians will likely need to examine me before I participate in the next Finals game.

"Gustav! Oh my God! Gustav, are you alright?" Anthony Cirelli shrieks as he rushes up the stairs and down the row to where I am presently curled up on the floor. "That looked painful and dangerous."

"I don't think I'm injured," I tell him even as waves of pain course through my body. "That tremendous fall just shocked me slightly."

"I would not doubt that after witnessing it myself," Cirelli offers me a hand and pulls me up into a standing position. "You need to see the team physician."

"I don't want to bother Dr. Guttentag," I politely refuse his offer. "I'm sure he's swamped working on other tasks. I'm totally unharmed."

"You could have suffered internal injuries," Cirelli argues, and I admit silently that he is making a fair point. "Those could cause you to bleed to death without you realizing that they were there in the first place. Trust me, Gustav. Seeing Dr. Guttentag is the best decision for you to make."

"Then I will go to his office now," I declare, walking down the staircase to where the rest of my team waits anxiously for me. Nils is at the front of the group, looking like he will begin to cry hysterically if I even wince again.

As I predicted, Nils rushes to me and embraces me desperately as soon as I am on the ground. He is sobbing uncontrollably into my shoulder, and even my rhythmic stroking of his back doesn't calm him down.

"Nils," I whisper into his ear, and he hiccups. "Nils, please don't cry. I'm alright, sweetheart. I didn't get dropped too far. I'm going to visit the doctor."

His crying slows, but he is still practically hyperventilating. I whisper soothing words into his ear until his breathing becomes regular.

"Gustav Nordin?" A short young man greets me shyly. His face is familiar, but I cannot recall his name just by looking at him.

"That's me," I confirm, and he sighs. "What is it that you require?"

"I'm Cole Caufield of the Montréal Canadiens," he introduces himself, and I recognize him now. "I know why you were hovering by the ceiling. I've been keeping the reason to myself until now. I feared that I would be labeled a lunatic or psychotic and sent to a hospital. However, this reason has now affected too many people too many times for me to continue to hide it. Gustav, the thing torturing you is a ghost!"

"Wait, you saw Tom too?" I question incredulously, and Cole looks as surprised as I feel. "I thought that I was the only person who could see him!"

"You saw him?" Cole gasps, tilting his head like a confused dog. "I thought I was the only one...can anyone else present see the spirit?"

Everybody watching the conversation between Cole and myself shakes their heads no, and Cole sighs frustradedly.

"Well, at least he is visible to one other person," Cole grunts. "Now, I will no longer feel like I'm hallucinating when Tom hunts me down."

"Is..." I start to hypothesize but hesitate out of fear of being rude.

"What were you about to say just now?" Cole asks curiously.

"Well," I look down, seeing as I am now embarrassed. "I was going to ask if Tom was the one who injured you the other day. You claimed that you simply fell, but knowing what I know about how violent and angry Tom constantly is, I am beginning to think that he harmed you that night."

"It was Tom," Cole nods, admitting the truth. "He slammed me against a wall after the second game of our series. I told everyone that I fell because I was afraid that they wouldn't believe the fact that a spirit is haunting us."

"I wonder why he keeps doing this," I nearly burst into tears at the thought of one of the Canadiens or one of my teammates being threatened by Tom. "It's not like we did anything to anger him. But, wait, did we actually upset him somehow? Maybe someone on one of our teams offended him by claiming that ghosts are nonexistent."

Cole shrugs as he attempts to formulate a response. "Whatever the reason is for his unrelenting attacks, he clearly isn't targeting just one player. He has caused several of us suffering, and the only thing that all of his victims have in common is that we're all young. So perhaps a young person killed him?"

A blast of cold air hits Cole, and he loses his balance and stumbles to the floor. We both glance up, and there is Tom, shaking his head violently.

"It wasn't a young person who murdered you, or you aren't furious with us because of our age?" I question as Cole massages his sore back. Tom nods his head, and I interpret that as meaning that both things I said were correct. Then, as I help Cole stand up, I hypothesize some more.

"He's angry at us for something, and it's not our age," I recall. "Maybe it's us being professional ice hockey players that upsets him? Or perhaps he is torturing us constantly because of our teams?"

"That's the only other thing his victims have in common," Cole notes. "Hockey. The only complication now is figuring out why this ghost hates hockey players so much. He either died at the hands of a hockey player,  passed away while playing hockey, or was killed watching a hockey game. Maybe the true reason is none of these and is instead something completely different!"

"Don't worry, dude," I try to comfort Cole as I start to walk to Coach Cooper's office. "Whatever it is, we'll discover it before the Finals are over. I am confident that we will be able to fix this disaster for good."