The Broken Ones (Book 2): The Broken Families

by David Jobe

  He moved now to stand where he figured the killer had stood. “I cut you from here.” He swung the blade, watching as droplets cast off and landed in a parallel pattern next to the old blood drops. “I was angry or hopped up. These cuts were vicious and without hesitation.” He paused. “Hopped up.” He scanned the room, taking note that some of the blue boxes had blood stained hand prints on them. Some, but not all. He turned to Silvia. “Show me your hands?”

  Silvia obliged, displaying pristine hands, minus the one finger she had used to paint with her own blood.

  “Thank you. So it was the killer who ransacked the room.” He turned to look at the carnage again. “Someone who knew which boxes to pilfer? Or did they get stopped mid-ransack?” He looked at each blood-stained box in turn, noting that some boxes were skipped. One held a name he would have bet money had some of the high-quality stuff. “No, you knew what you were about. You work here.”

  He turned to face Silvia again. “I am going to save you. I may have failed the others, but you I will save.”

  Silvia gave him a smile and then motioned for him to follow. She turned and began to walk the way they had come. As he stepped out into the hallway he had this strange feeling that something had changed.

  “What’s different?”

  Silvia looked over her shoulder at him. Then she pointed down at the floor near her feet.

  A new trail of blood trailed off on the floor. “That wasn’t there before.” He began to follow it, just as he had the trail leading here. The trail turned away from where he had found Silvia, and led toward an open room that stood across from the nurses’ station. “Why the new trail?” A sense of dread started to creep into the marrow of his bones. Stepping into the room, he could see a body laying next to one of the beds, a large pool of blood surrounding it. The handle of the butcher knife jutted from the person’s left eye. Even before he stepped close enough to look the corpse in the face, he knew who it was.

  His own face stared back at him from the other side of death.

  The words left his mouth, much in the same manner the wind would when you are gut punched. “Well shit.”

  Part Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  Holding the Reins

  Mercy Hill had been a troublesome project since the previous mayor had put it to the planning committee. Mayor Bolívar claimed to have had a vision of the future where the entirety of the prison system, from initial incarceration to those sentenced and serving multiple life sentences would be housed in the same series of buildings on one well-built compound. His reason had been that having two different facilities had been splitting the resources, where if they combined the facilities and upgraded some of the technology housed within, they would see a return on their investment and have a smoother system. It had been a well-reasoned plan with dozens of bean counters picking it apart.

  The problem, they say, is where they decided to build this fortress of corruption. No one wanted this ticking time bomb to be nestled in their community. The project lingered at the edge of failure until the decision had been made to revamp a hospital that had stood empty for many years. The whole plot of land went for pennies on the dollar because no reasonable company wanted to build their business on the site of an infamous massacre. The Bertram Mudgett Hospital had been a thriving hospital in the heart of Indianapolis a few decades back, having both a medical wing and a wing meant to house mentally insane. Like many of the asylums of the earlier years, the hospital had been host to quite a few experiments and deaths that shocked the public once it became known to the public. It had been reported that when the police discovered the room lined with the bones of the deceased, they had to restrain the lead detective from grabbing a torch and burning the whole evil complex down. A few years later, on a cold December night, someone had done just that.

  Now, Mercy Hill sat on the ashes of that hospital, and it is said that the whole place had become infested with the spirits of the murdered. Inmates of both the jail and the prison wings tell tall tales about getting night visits from the ghosts of the people they have wronged. Since the complex opened its doors officially last year, the number of remorseful suicides has tripled. Stephen even tried to do a piece on it after his interview with Sarah Givens had been tanked by the coming out of Bulletproof on live television. His editor squashed the story, wanting instead to get more fluff pieces on the downtrodden Brian and his Bulletproof persona.

  Mercy Hill, more commonly known as Haunted Hill loomed before Stephen, a four-story complex of red brick and white stucco. It was as if the builders did their best to find the two substances that made it feel like the whole compound had been built with desecrated bodies.

  Stephen glanced again in the rearview, playing at the fake gray mustache and beard he had put on in the early hours. He had used this disguise when doing a report on the rise in homeless vets around the city. A great piece that should have won him an award, but didn’t even get a nod. The disguise looked good, none of the edges pulling away to reveal the sham. Even with the false persona, he opted not to go in yet. There was an additional piece he needed to do, before climbing out of a beat up rental. Taking his burn phone from his pocket, he dialed the local tipster line. A woman on the other line answered in a bored voice.

  “I’d like to report a sighting.” He kept his tone natural, adding a warble at the end with the intent to sound like a frightened elderly man.

  “Go ahead.” He wondered if the woman was playing solitaire as she listened to his grand performance.

  “I just saw Stephen Holger up near the bend on 37, where it splits off from 69.” He made a particular point not to add any warble around the name.

  “Hold on.” Before he could answer the hold music started to play.

  A moment of panic gripped Stephen. What if they were tracing the call? They would know he was nowhere near where he had claimed to see himself. He tried to remember from the television shows what they gave as a time frame before a call could be traced. He wasn’t even sure if that was accurate anymore. That was the whole reason he had wandered by an out of the way electronics store to buy this prepaid phone with cash.

  “Sir?” The woman came back with a loud click. “I am sorry. I don’t have any information on a Stephen Holger. Are you talking about the reporter?”

  “Um.” Stephen was at a loss.

  “What’d he do? I liked his stories. He always went straight for the throat while getting to the bottom.”

  “I don’t know what he did. I just heard the police were looking for him.” His fake voice slipping at times.

  “Well, I don’t have anything on him. Might be whoever told you was jerking your chain. I’ll write it down, in case I hear anything. Thank you for calling.”

  Before he could say anything, the call disconnected.

  “Well, that’s inspiring.” He dropped the phone on the seat and slipped out of the car. Now would come the performance of his lifetime. Hobbling across the parking lot of the main gates he found himself wondering if he should have brought a cane. It would have been a more convincing look.

  The guard buzzed him in without looking up from his phone. At first, that annoyed Stephen, but he guessed it didn’t matter. He had two security check-points to pass to see one of the occupants, and that was just for the jail side. The side that sat on the same ground as the asylum wing had sat for the hospital. Pushing open a set of swinging doors he found himself standing inside a small waiting room that could have been for a hospital. Except for the heavy bars over the reception’s area. He hobbled over to the desk, smiling through the glass and bars that stood between him and a young man with the body of an Olympic champion. “What are they feeding you kids these days?” He asked, warbling his voice just a bit.

  The young man looked up and gave a smile. “Tacos, mostly.” He began rifling through a stack of papers as he spoke. “Are you here to see an inmate, or someone else, Sir?”

  “I am here to see Mr. Swandon. I was told he was spending a holi
day here.”

  The young man chuckled and pulled a form from the stack and placed it on a clipboard. “Can you fill this out for me?”

  He dropped the clipboard into a tray like where you buy cigarettes from a gas station on the bad side of town. Then he slid the drawer out so Stephen could take it.

  Stephen nodded, scooping up the clipboard. The paper was a standard form for visiting inmates. He filled it out, giving a fake name with a chuckle. Then he placed it back in the tray. Now would come the moment of truth. The first real test of the ability he hoped he had.

  “I’ll need to see your id.” The young man looked over the paper with a passing interest.

  “Oh dear.” Stephen patted the pockets on his thrift store tweed jacket. “I don’t think I brought it with me. Or did I leave it on the bus? “ He stepped in closer to the area of the glass that had the holes for them to talk through. He had no idea if he had the power, if a certain amount of proximity was required. “You don’t need to see my id.”

  The young man blinked, then looked up at him. “You’re fine. Go on through the door to your left. There will be a guard there to pat you down and then take you back.” He pressed something under the counter and the nearby door gave an audible click before opening.

  Stephen smiled. “You are too kind, sir.” He resisted the impulse to press his luck. If this worked out the way he planned, then he would have plenty of time to cause havoc with his power. He still wasn’t sure it was his power or just an inept or overly kind guard.

  He slipped through the door and found himself standing before a dark skinned Olympian. The man dwarfed the one up front, and that was saying something. “Is everyone here a professional wrestler?”

  The new guard chuckled with a deep rumble. “Strength is the only law in here, sir. You get less grief if you look like me.”

  “I suppose so.” Stephen gave another smile.

  “I am going to need you to empty your pockets in the blue bowl over there, and to set your coat on the table.” All business now.

  “That’s terribly inconvenient. I am kind of in a rush. You will let me pass without all that.” He remained careful in how he worded it, in the hopes that if he found he didn’t have powers, that he could walk back the statement without anyone becoming enraged.

  The guard looked at him for a moment. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the back.”

  Stephen smiled behind the guards back. He doubted very much that both of these men were that lax in their job. Again he had to control his urge to try something silly to make the mountain of a man do.

  The room he led them too looked the same as he had seen on countless television shows before. A long room divided down the center by glass and set up with individual booths. Right now there was no one in the room but him and the guard.

  “Sit wherever you like. I’ll be back here. If you agitate the inmate, I will be forced to escort you from the premises.” His tone implying that the escorting would be forceful and altogether unkind to a man of his advanced age.

  “Oh no. I will be on my best behavior officer. Go ahead and go grab yourself a coffee.”

  Without a word, his chaperone left.

  “I definitely have something.” He gave a chuckle and picked a spot furthest from the door he had entered in on. He had no idea if the room had been bugged, but he would at least try to plan for the chance that his chaperone might return.

  After waiting about ten minutes, another guard escorted Swandon in. The man looked haggard and now walked with a limp. The man hadn’t been stable when Stephen had dug him up in some back alley booze hall, but at least then he could pass for a normal member of society. With his hair disarrayed and his eyes darting around the room as if expecting an attack, he doubted the homeless vets he knew would have let him crash with them.

  Swandon sat down. “Do I know you?”

  Stephen felt a moment of pride in his disguise, but then took another look at the man. He wasn’t sure Swandon would know his own family he saw them. “No. You don’t. I’m a reporter from a local paper. I wanted to ask you some questions.”

  Swandon nodded and leaned in. “This place is haunted.”

  “I had heard that. Seen a ghost, have you?”

  Swandon shook his head so violently that his crazy hair covered part of his face when he stopped. “I saw a corpse. A zombie. Shit, I don’t know what it was. I just know who it was.”

  “Who was it?” Stephen had come for something else, but this intrigued him. Something about the way Swandon acted gave a feeling that the man was telling the truth.

  “Bulletproof. Brian. Whatever his name was. He glared at me through the bars with his one good eye. The other…” He shivered. He leaned in even closer, his trembling lips close as they could get to the holes in the glass. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to scare him.”

  “You said at the scene that someone had given you the gun.”

  “I did?” He looked over his shoulder as if expecting someone to be right there.

  “Yes. Who gave you the gun?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I pulled the trigger.” Another flinch and glance over the other shoulder. “I can’t stay in this place another night.”

  “Did you tell the police who gave you the gun?”

  “What?” Eyes narrowed as they looked back to him. “What did you say?”

  “I can help you get out of here, but you have to tell me honestly. Did you tell anyone who got you the gun?”

  “You can get me out of here?” He pressed his hands against the glass. “Please. I can’t.”

  “Tell me then.”

  His whole demeanor changed. The shaking stopped long enough for him to answer the question. “I didn’t tell anyone.” As soon as the last syllable left his lips, he returned to shaking.

  “Tell me why you didn’t.”

  Again the shaking stopped. “None of their business. I did it. I deserve what they do to me. He was a friend to me when I was at my worst.”

  Stephen grinned. Perfect. But he wasn’t done. “In a couple minutes, say ‘I’m a pretty pony.’ Until then, we can talk.” Now was a test of the depth of his powers.

  Swandon returned to shaking, looking around. “What paper did you say you were with?”

  “A local one.”

  “Are you going to bad mouth me in the story?”

  Stephen smiled. “I have only come here for the truth, and to help you end this nightmare.”

  Swandon nodded, smiling with part of his lip caught between his teeth. “You said you could get me out of here?”

  Stephen nodded. “I promise, by tonight you will be free of this place.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Well, my idea is-“

  Swandon cut him off by blurting out, “I’m a pretty pony.”

  Stephen laughed. He laughed hard enough that tears clung to the edges of his eyes. “That you are. That you are. And now I have the reins.” He leaned close to the glass, taking one long glance at the door he had come in.

  “Here is what I want you to do.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Red in the Morning

  The Solum Castellum apartment building stood twenty stories tall, dwarfing all the buildings in the surrounding blocks by more than twelve stories. Built as a standalone tall tower on the north side of Downtown Indianapolis, the building had reminded Lanton of the mages tower in fantasy books from his childhood. While lately, his reading interests had been more of the modern warfare slant, the rush of awe that spilled over him while gazing up at the building had made him want to run to a local used bookstore and gather up another story about mages and dragons.

  Now as he sat on a seventeenth-floor balcony, his bare feet resting on the wrought iron railing, he still felt that sense of wonderment and awe. Leaning back in a wicker chair that moaned at the strain, he held a steaming mug of coffee to his face, savoring the aroma of vanilla. He sat with his back to the open sliding door, angled in just such a wa
y that if he gazed over his left shoulder he could see the silhouette of Eleanor fast asleep under covers, her hair blocking most of her face. Only the sweet smile peeked through the strands.

  Stretched out before him, the east side of Indianapolis welcomed the rising sun. Red dominated the morning sky, spilling across the great canvas with sweeping waves. The too few clouds that limped by did so with a glow of red in their bellies. The sunrise was breathtaking to behold, but it created a sense of unease in the core of Lanton. He found himself remembering a phrase his father had taught him so many years ago. “Red in the morning, sailors warning.” His father had billed himself as a sailor, and while his professed profession had proven false, his father was in some ways quite the sailor. It had been on one of the few summers where his mother’s ire had been low enough and his father had been around long enough for him to enjoy time with him. His mother had watched him go from the door, glaring from behind the screen as his father had scooped him up in a muscle car and drove him north to Chicago to spend a day on the lake in a rented boat. It was as they stood on the deck of their rented boat that his father had remarked on the red sky and the ill omen it gave him and his nautical brothers.

  Lanton had failed to inquire as to why the red sky indicated bad things. One thing you learned quick with Lanton Senior is that there was a low threshold for asking questions. The reasoning would become clear a few years later when his father’s double, triple life had unraveled in spectacular fashion. Lanton had always assumed the warning indicated there were storm clouds just beyond the horizon and they would soon fall upon the sailors. One thing Lanton knew for a fact was that sailors were often at the whim of mother nature out there on the rolling deep. It paid to be mindful of the signs she gave you.

  Staring at the sky now, he felt that unease grow like a tapeworm in his gut, feeding off the fear and anxiety that already dominated there. He had no doubt that his beloved city struggled through these new and unprecedented changes, but something in his marrow told him that the city was building towards a boil. A boil that would burn so many people when it spilled over into the streets.