Haunted House Tales

by Riley Amitrani

  “Fine…where is Bert?”

  “It’s late and he went home for the evening. He’ll be back in the morning, though. In the meantime, you should try and eat something. You’ve been out from that sedative for quite a while.”

  Jamie nodded, tamping down her growing anger. Maybe she could at least talk to Bert to see if he was in on this plot or if he was out of the loop and was looking into Dr. Malone’s background.

  “Can I at least call him?”

  “Sorry. No phones are allowed on this ward. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Don’t like it but, yeah…I get it.”

  Help Me Obi-Wan…I Mean Bert…You’re My Only Hope

  Westmore Memorial Hospital

  Westmore, NH

  April 21, 2017

  8 PM

  Jamie had been young, but the memories of the institution where her mother had been locked away were still vivid for her. That place was not as bad as it could have been. In-patient mental health facilities had vastly improved by the time Jamie’s mother had been taken away. But even so, it was definitely not the Ritz. She had tried to visit her after she had been hospitalized, but between the cold, inhospitable atmosphere and her mother’s descent into a personal madness that seemed unreachable at the time, Jamie’s visits began to get less and less frequent. As she thought back on it now, it still gave her an unpleasant shiver down her spine.

  Dinner was now the last item of interest for her, and Jamie slid the tray of food across the table and sat back to think. The odd thing about the Malone-thing was how it had seemed to deteriorate in substance between the two times it had come to her. Its demeanor and malevolence had not changed, though. In fact, if anything, that had gotten worse. Maybe, Jamie thought, there was some weird need for the thing to take her away. The pathetic chants of the spirits that had come to warn her about Malone seemed to be in a kind of torture or agony as they spoke to her.

  The fact that all of these emanations were still strongly attached to the facility made Jamie really curious as to what had gone on here to keep them hanging on. Her brief foray into all things paranormal when she was a young teenager fed this curiosity. She knew from what she had read and heard, that beings who were taken unexpectedly or in a violent manner when physical entities often could not move on. For her spirit friends…that was what Jamie had come to refer to the group of spirits trying to warn her about Malone…that was understandable. If Malone had killed them, it was easy to see why they might be stuck. But why Malone? As she mulled this over, the only conclusion Jamie could come to was that Malone must have had a violent end as well. Perhaps from someone who found him out or by his own hand…

  Unless, the other option was in play here, Jamie considered. What if she really was mentally ill? What if her mother’s ailment was hereditary? The dual diagnoses had come to her mother when she was about the age Jamie was now. What if? The mere idea of it shook Jamie to her core. She had watched, as a child, as her mom slowly deteriorated from a loving, caring, completely devoted mother to the fragmented, paranoid, unpredictable shell of a woman who was finally committed by her family. She closed her eyes as tears of fear and uncertainty leaked from her lids. Jamie would have given into a crying fit full of self-pity and hopelessness, but that was just not her style. Due to her mother’s long absence in her adolescence, Jamie had learned to grow up more quickly than her peers. She had been very self-reliant from an early age…she supposed that was the one positive attribute that had blossomed within her due to her mother’s illnesses.

  The more she thought about it, the more she refused to buy into some hereditary link. She knew Malone and the others had been real. At least real in the sense that she had not hallucinated them. Even if no one else believed in other worldly presences, she did, and she was now convinced that this is where the Malone-thing and her friends had come from. Her only hope now, both to figure this thing out and to somehow get herself out of this predicament in the hospital, lay with Bert. Though not a particularly religious or even spiritual person, Jamie prayed with all her might that Bert was not in on this thing with the hospital staff. That he knew her well enough to be seeing what he could dig up on Dr. Malone, etc... If Bert was not on her side, then she might have no hope of convincing anyone else that she was not just an offshoot of her poor mother.

  Even though it had grown stone cold, Jamie looked over at what passed for dinner at Westmore Memorial, wishing maybe she had not been so stubborn about refusing the meal. She had let her anger at being locked up in the psych ward over ride common sense. The now congealed meatish entrée was not an option, but Jamie picked at the salad and the scoop of jello that had come along for the ride. It was not much, but it was enough for the moment. All she was doing now was focusing on Bert’s arrival in the morning. She just had to get through the night. Jamie lay back and stared at the ceiling, unable to get her brain to shut down enough to let sleep come to her.

  The moon was casting a sliver of light through the window that sliced across the far wall like a dagger. The calm night began to morph as a low wind kicked up rustling the broad leafy trees just beyond Jamie’s window. Clouds rolled in and the dagger of moonlight began to disappear, bit by bit. With no real warning, a rumble of thunder broke the silence of the night and a light rain began to fall. The illumination of the moon was replaced with intermittent slashes of lightning as the rain came harder, pattering against the panes of the window in sheets. A sudden loud clap of thunder rattled the glass and make Jamie jump, the sound shaking the room with its echo.

  She drew up her blanket to her chin as the temperature of the room seemed to be falling inexplicably. The curtain by the window was still in the dim light of her room, but it was like the cold air from the storm outside was somehow leaking around the edges of the window frame and into her room. The room grew colder still as Jamie felt her teeth chatter and she could actually see her breath in her exhalations which were now coming more rapidly. No matter how much of the blanket she gathered up, it seemed to be of no help as the temperature of her room continued to plummet. Just as another clap of thunder broke into the night, and violent shards of lightning accompanied it across the deep black of the sky, the curtains of Jamie’s room now began to flutter.

  The movement was subtle at first, but soon it began to fly away more wildly from its normal position, as if a wind from the window was pushing it outward. However, as Jamie looked, it was not from any wind finding its way inside the building. What was, in fact, giving the curtains life, was a mist curling up from the base of the window appearing like a wave crashing into the shore from an ocean current, but in reverse. The mist began to gather, growing thicker and soon Jamie could hardly see the outline of the window for the accumulation of the vapor. She felt her pulse quicken and her heartbeat pound in her ears as the phenomenon continued.

  This is no hallucination, Jamie told herself…no drug-induced dream…this is real, to her great dismay and dread. She scooted back in her bed, trying to put as much space between herself and the growing fog as she could. Jamie felt trapped, as if whatever this was, it might entrap her in its mass. Just as she was about to cry out, the form coalesced into an orb, changing from the gauzy, cottony white color it had originally been to a light blue hue, like the sky on a warm summer afternoon. Jamie removed her hand from the buzzer to summon Lucy Tanner to her room and squinted hard to see into the orb. She was glad she had refrained…the orb, she knew now was her spirit friends, once again.

  She was not sure how she knew this, but she did all the same. Jamie relaxed as much as she could, though her rapid exhalations continued, her breath hanging as clouds of water vapor in the frigid air. This time, however, the group of six did not materialize as individual forms but remained as a group in the orb. Only vague and indistinct features near the top of the orb gave her any sense of faces. She could still see through the orb as it weakened in intensity, but now what few features she could pick out as facial features were twisted in agony and obvious dist
ress. The orb began to pulse with a slow regularity that resembled the beating of an animal’s chest as the heart pulsed away. Again, the weak chanting-like voices, speaking as if one, came to her:

  “beware of Dr. Malone…he killed us…he will kill you too…”

  Like previously, the chant was repeated over and over, as if it was on a never-ending recorded loop. The voices seemed to be a combination of the six, but this time there was a definite sense of urgency and danger to them that Jamie had not detected during their previous visit. After a few minutes, the orb began to fade, losing its blue color and returning to a solid white hue as it had been when it had first appeared to her. The orb then contracted to a dense ball, about the size of a large egg and floated toward the window. It then flattened out into a long rod-like shape and a bright light illuminated the whole thing to a near-blinding intensity. Jamie had to shield her eyes from the glare and with a sudden and distinctive popping sound the white rod stood itself upright and whisked away through the bottom of the window, leaving Jamie’s room just as it had entered.

  The temperature of her room rose again to where it had been before the mist had leaked through the window. Jamie stared in disbelief, but somehow in her heart, knew this latest warning might have been crucial. The message was the same, but the delivery felt as if it was to make sure she really understood the urgency of her situation. Jamie looked over as Lucy Tanner quietly opened her door and stuck her head inside.

  “Everything alright, Jamie?”

  Knowing it would only exacerbate her image as the crazy girl, Jamie saw no point in telling Lucy about this latest visit.

  “Yep…just settling in to sleep…why?”

  “The sensors on the ward indicated a big temperature drop in your room, and I thought I just saw a really bright light leaking out from under your door.”

  “Have no idea what you saw, but as you can see, the temperature is fine…nothing I was aware of. Maybe your sensors are malfunctioning…”

  “Maybe…maybe…just wanted to check. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight. Lucy….”

  Jamie listened as her door closed gently and clicked into place. She had effectively gotten Lucy to believe her, but in the nurse’s eyes she could see that there was a high degree of skepticism.

  “No worries, Nurse Tanner, Jamie said quietly…the crazy girl is fine…”

  Jamie dropped off to an uneasy sleep just minutes later, but her sleep was intermittent at best, her dreams filled with disturbing images of the Malone-thing coming to her in the night with his oxygen mask connected to a tank of lethal drugs to kill her. Each time the nightmare fell upon her, Jamie jerked upright in her bed, gasping for air, her body coated with a clammy gleam of sweat. In her nightmares, she was sure she had cried out, but apparently even so, it had either been just in the dream, or so quiet that no one on the ward had heard her. Neither Lucy nor anyone else on the ward ever came back that night to check on her, as far as Jamie could tell.

  Thank God for Google…

  Westmore Memorial Hospital

  Westmore, NH

  April 22, 2017

  9 AM

  Jamie woke early the next morning, feeling as if she had been through a wringer. Between the latest visits from her ghostly friends, the nightmares of the Malone-thing, and not getting much sleep period, she was not sure how she was going to function that day. Bert would soon arrive and until she spoke with him directly and in private, she felt lost. Jamie forced down the hospital’s concept of a breakfast, but she had purposely avoided the juice and coffee in case the psych ward had thought to include some sedatives in her drinks. This was partly to put something in her stomach which was growling, seeing as how she had not eaten much in the last twenty-four hours, but more to patronize the hovering Lucy Tanner.

  Just as she had finished up her toast and a half grapefruit, Lucy reappeared looking at her untouched drinks with disappointment. Jamie was not sure if what she had suspected was true, or if her fatigue was making her read something into the nurse’s expression, but it sure looked as if she might have made the correct decision to avoid the drinks.

  “Anything else?” Lucy asked as she collected the tray.

  “I’m good, thanks.” Jamie replied.

  “Bert just arrive, by the way…OK to send him in?”

  “Absolutely….”

  Lucy nodded and went to the door to motion for Bert to come in. He tried to put on a happy face, but he was horrified that he might have been responsible for Jamie’s move to the psych ward. He kissed her and sat on the end of her bed. Bert began to speak, but Jamie put a finger to her lips and communicated with him in sign language that they had both undertaken for some volunteer work at Brownington the previous year.

  “We need to speak in private. I do not trust that the rooms are not being monitored…it being a psych ward and all.” Jamie signed.

  “Really?” Bert signed back.

  “Just humor the crazy girl, OK?”

  “Not funny…but alright. Let me see if I can get the OK to take you to the sunroom so we can chat. I have news.”

  Jamie felt her spirits lift and waited for Bert to return. He was back in just a minute or two and nodded that all was cleared for them. Jamie slipped on her robe and slippers and slid into the wheelchair as Bert guided her along the hallway to the solarium at the other end of the corridor. He locked the wheels and sat close by so they could now talk quietly but in private without fear of being overheard or recorded.

  “Sorry they put you here, Jamie. I am afraid it may be partly my doing.” Bert whispered.

  “Your doing?” Jamie asked.

  Bert nodded and with an embarrassed countenance filled her in on how he had gone to Lucy with his concerns over her mental state. Jamie listened quietly. It had not been ideal, she guessed, but in the end, she knew Bert had had her best interests at heart.

  “Never mind, Bert…it’s OK.”

  “You think they have your room bugged?”

  “Maybe I’ve seen too many movies or maybe my paranoia is on full alert. In either case, I just want to protect myself so I can get out of here as soon as possible. You said you have news?”

  Bert nodded as he glanced around them and down the hall. After what he had discovered overnight, he thought that maybe Jamie’s instincts might be warranted.

  “I do. And it’s big.”

  Jamie’s eyes flew wide as Bert quietly laid out all that he had found about the former Orleans County Regional Hospital and Dr. Frederick Malone. Jamie felt her pulse quicken as Bert told her of Malone’s suicide and how the old Orleans County Regional Hospital had been razed in the aftermath back in the 1950’s. How the current Westmore Memorial facility had been erected on the same exact spot.

  “It was quite the scandal at the time,” Bert went on as he read from the printouts he had brought along from his search. “I know I am not a big proponent of your beliefs in the paranormal, Jamie, but now, after digging this up, I guess I owe you an apology.”

  “Forget it,” Jamie replied. “There is more I am afraid.”

  “More?”

  Jamie nodded as she lowered her voice even more.

  “Did you find anything about Malone maybe being responsible for a series of unexplained deaths at the old Orleans County Regional Hospital?”

  “Nada. Just his sudden and grisly suicide.”

  Jamie took Bert into her full confidence then, explaining about the multiple visits she had received from what she now called her spirit friends.

  “You think Malone killed them and they have been coming to you to warn you, huh?”

  “Sure seems that way.”

  “Guess the suicide of their hand-picked chief of hospital operations was enough at the time,” Bert added. “To have it be a public historical record might have been too salacious at the time to let out. Let me poke around some more and see if I can find anything connecting Malone to six unexpected deaths at the old hospital. Westmore is an old place. I am guessing that in
the college archives or an old bookstore or some perhaps now defunct newspaper office somewhere, there is a link that the elders of Westmore have done their best to cover up.”

  “Thanks, Bert. But move fast. The last visitation from my friends seemed to have the tone of real imminent danger.”

  He nodded and wheeled her back to her room before setting off on his mission. If anything had been suspected or overheard, Bert was unaware of it as Lucy was as friendly and warm toward him as ever. He assumed this would not have been the case if they knew what he and Jamie were up to.

  ………

  Jamie lounged in her bed trying to read a novel that Lucy had retrieved for her from the hospital library, but she was too anxious and keyed-up to concentrate on the old story from Eugenia Banks. Lucy loved Eugenia, but it was no use. She just kept reading the same paragraphs over and over without taking anything in. It was more to put up an appearance of normality for the psych staff as she had read the book several times anyway. It was also partly to try and distract her from thinking about what Bert was up to and what “plan B” might be if he came up empty. The late morning flowed into the afternoon and Jamie began to get more antsy as the sun from the afternoon sky was growing weak…still nothing from Bert. Though she was sure his search would not be so simple as just popping into a place and having the proprietor say, “oh, sure…multiple murders at the old hospital…I was just waiting for someone to come along and ask.”

  She glanced over at her empty lunch tray, wondering when the inquisition as to why she was avoiding all her drinks would come. She sighed with frustration and restlessness, tossing the book to her table. Just as she looked up toward the window, she noticed an odd shadow was obscuring the full sun from her room. Jamie felt her blood curdle and a shiver race up her back as she looked up to see that the Malone-thing had resurfaced…