Keeper of Crows (The Keeper of Crows Duology Book 1)

by Casey L. Bond

  “Just let me out of here,” I sobbed dejectedly.

  The doctor turned to leave, but looked over her shoulder. “I’m afraid we can’t until you’re stable.”

  “I am stable. Send me home.”

  “With the man you believe is the antichrist?”

  Fuck my life. I had no home now. Gabriel told me it would be this way. That things would be different, that time would be strange. It sure as hell was. He was right. Where was he?

  “Gabriel?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Gabriel? Michael? Where are you? Are you close? Can you hear me?”

  The nurse stepped back into the room. “You can’t yell like that,” he admonished.

  “I sure as hell can! GABRIEL!”

  Another nurse jogged to the doorway. “Psych said to sedate her.”

  “Fuck, no! No! Gabriel! GABRIEL! Help me!” The male nurse and two more came into the room, but it would take more than that to hold me down. I fought them, and then two more showed up. My arm was held still, their bodies weighing me down, weighing my body down, and then the medicine was pushed into my arm. Tranquilizer. Sedation.

  Quiet.

  Peace.

  “Gabri—”

  The nurse shook his head as he climbed off me and turned to his co-workers. “Is it a full moon? The crazies are in full effect.”

  They chuckled as they left me. In my mind, I called for Michael. Called for Gabriel. Called for my crows to pluck the nurses’ eyes out.

  I’d… kill them… all.

  I woke in another room, my arms and uninjured leg still restrained. I was in the psych ward with doors that locked and only the smallest of windows through which the staff spied on their patients. I hated them all. Everyone who worked here.

  The doctors were all a joke. My father had probably hired them to treat me like I’d lost my mind. How was he alive? I saw his body. I saw the feathers buried in his chest. I saw his soul fly, and then I sent a crow to gobble it up and spit it into Hell. I saw it.

  “I saw it!” I screamed. “Gabriel!”

  For days I screamed for Gabriel, Michael, Malchazze…anyone who would tell them I was right, that I wasn’t crazy. No one came.

  Eventually, my body healed and they couldn’t keep me in the ward anymore, so my father paid for me to be transferred to a mental health facility. I was bundled up in an ambulance and taken there against my will.

  Obviously, screaming wasn’t working. I was never going to get out of there if I didn’t shut my mouth, so that was what I decided to do. While the ambulance rocked over bumps and pot holes, I decided to keep quiet, to observe and figure a way out of this situation. Freedom. Tasting freedom would be worth the lying it would take to get out, and then I just had to bide my time. I had to live out my natural life—I couldn’t end it prematurely—and then I could be with him, and him with me. He would love me forever and I would love him.

  I couldn’t wait to see him, so I kept quiet. The gravel under the tires stopped crunching when the brakes squealed and the vehicle came to a stop. The medics slammed their doors and opened the rear of the car, blinding me with the evening sunlight. The mental hospital looked more like an old brick boarding house. A painted-white, iron cross stood sentry over the grounds. I knew I’d been sent there for a reason. It was a sign that Michael was watching over me. Maybe I’d see him, perhaps catch a glimpse somehow. We couldn’t talk, but could I see him? Just once?

  I wanted my crows to circle the cross, to give him a sign that I knew he’d sent me here for a reason, but they didn’t respond. They must be busy, or maybe they were stuck in Purgatory. Did I make the veil available for them, or were they trapped?

  They eased my gurney to the ground and then unfolded a wheelchair. My leg was in a white cast and the hospital gown barely covered me, having come undone in the back. The medic was overweight by a hundred or so pounds, but his smile and eyes were kind. Wes was his name, according to his badge.

  “We have to take the bed back, but the doc thought you’d be more comfortable lying down for the ride. It probably kept your foot from swelling in that cast. It’ll sweat though,” he chatted merrily.

  Fuck casts and sweat, I thought. Where was Gabriel? I wasn’t forbidden from seeing him. Where in the world was he? Was he on assignment in some remote part of the realm? Fighting evil? Flying around in Heaven? Why couldn’t he come visit me?

  The sound of popping gravel caught my attention as they helped me into the wheelchair and adjusted the footplates, easing my foot and cast onto them. I looked behind me as they wheeled me onto the concrete ramp and pushed me around the turn toward the front porch. From the rafters on the porch’s cover flew a dove. Its gray feathers told me Gabriel was close. I searched for him, finding only my father’s face. The silence ended in that moment.

  “Wes, get me away from him! He’s going to kill me!” I screamed, taking hold of the wheels and pushing them forward and up the concrete.

  Father put his hands out beseechingly. I moved my eyes from the door, to him, and then back to the door. “I’m not going to hurt you, Carmen,” he pleaded.

  He had the audacity to act hurt. Fuck that. He wasn’t hurt. He was the one who caused pain. “Get away!” my voice shrilled.

  He stopped walking and stood back, hands on his hips as Wes and his friend wheeled me inside the glass double-doors that opened with the automatic button I pushed.

  “Let’s get her inside and then-” Wes told my father.

  “Don’t help him! He’s evil!”

  Wes’s eyes went wide. “Okay.”

  Good thing he was smart enough to be afraid of Malchazze. If he could raise himself from the dead… Wait. Was he really alive, or was this just his skin? The one my father possessed? “Was he really out there?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” Wes answered, leaning down to me. “I saw him.”

  He was kind. Wes was kind and nice to me, so I didn’t claw his face. The lady behind the glass window in the lobby? She was a horrible bitch. She nagged poor Wes to death as they tried to explain that I was being transferred. She had no record of such a transfer, blah, blah, blah. But when the bitch checked her fax machine…boom. There it was. Hallelujah. We’d just witnessed a miracle.

  A male orderly appeared through a security door. “I’ll take her to her room and get her settled,” he said with a smile.

  I looked up at Wes and a tear fell from my eye. “I’m not crazy.”

  He shook his head. “I know you’re not. You’ll be okay. These nice folks will help you.” I couldn’t place his accent, but it was southern and soothing. I nodded, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. I’d morphed into Pamela, but I wasn’t even in Purgatory anymore. I was on Earth. I woke up.

  I came back.

  My soul found my body and time was erased, and this… “Wes?” I yelled as he pushed the door open to leave.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled slightly, his cheeks glowing red. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  That afternoon, when the steel door slammed behind me, I made a decision. I would fake the hell out of this until they let me go. I would turn to steel—just like the door that held me in. And then I’d waltz out of this place and never, ever look back.

  30

  Doctor Stein was more clinical than Doc Coleman. The diplomas and certificates on the walls in her tidy, pristine office showed that she was a psychiatrist. There were no pelvis-shaped ink blots anywhere in this place. The halls were empty, washed in white, like everything else—even the clothing they provided.

  She had a permanent crease in the center of her forehead despite the tight, ebony ponytail that pulled her hair away from her face. She wasn’t friendly; she didn’t bullshit and didn’t care or pretend to care. The dark frames of her glasses overwhelmed her delicately featured face, but somehow it worked for her. There were no clocks on any of the four walls, and she kept the blinds drawn in her darkly painted office, a comforting shade of brown-gray.

/>   She kept the blinds closed for me. I had issues with windows, they said. They were wrong. My issues weren’t with the windows; my issues were with the doves that perched on the sill, cooing happily. Gabriel sent them. Their feathers matched his. He must be the Keeper of Doves. It made complete sense. But Gabriel had yet to show his face. It had been over two weeks and he hadn’t visited me on Earth, or in this place. Pissed off didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about that. I knew Michael couldn’t come, but Gabriel was my friend. He should at least check in on me.

  She stared at me with her arms crossed over her chest, waiting. This was her way. She didn’t push. She asked a question and even if it took the entire session for me to answer, she waited patiently for it. For some reason, the comfort of knowing I had all the time in the world to answer, or the freedom to tell her to go to hell for asking made me more loose-lipped than I’d imagined was possible.

  “Your father came to see you today.”

  I shifted in my seat. He had come to see me. Sure. That’s what he wanted them to believe. I knew the truth. He was either trying to kill me – Malchazze returned – or he was just a stranger’s skin that my father occupied for a time. Either option was bad. I didn’t want anything to do with him. Why couldn’t they understand that?

  “Do you want to harm him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you think of harming him or killing him at all?” Her lips pursed, sharp, dark eyes waiting for an answer.

  “He’s not my father.”

  “He is your biological father,” she corrected.

  “But he isn’t the one who raised me. I have no feelings about him whatsoever. He’s a stranger to me.”

  She jotted a note. “There are pictures, family portraits of you, him, and your mother. He isn’t a stranger.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “You still hold to your story? That you killed his soul in Purgatory and sent it to Hell?”

  I smiled. I had done that. Even the medicine, the dosages they kept increasing, couldn’t squash the memory of Malchazze, of those feathers embedded in his chest, the look of shocked surprise on his lips, in his eyes.

  “You believe,” she flipped to another page, another scribbled note, “that he only used a body to travel around on Earth—the same body of the man you call a stranger now.”

  “Yes. That’s one possibility. The other is that he found a way to come back and he’s biding his time. He’ll kill me if that’s the case.”

  “Both scenarios sound far-fetched. You know what I think?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me, Doctor Stein.”

  “I think you know that all this was a dream. You were in a coma, Carmen. A drug-induced coma. For weeks, you lay in a hospital bed. This was nothing more than a dream, a hallucination. If you can admit that to yourself, you’ll be better off.”

  “Sometimes it feels like it was a dream,” I told her. “Sometimes, this room feels like I’m trapped in a dream. The line between what’s real and what’s imaginary is very blurry for me.” She took the bait I offered. I was going to get the hell out of here, but my recovery had to be gradual or it would seem contrived.

  She nodded, a slight smile on her face. “Your admission of that alone is progress, Carmen. We’re done for the day, but I want you to do me a favor. Write it all down. Everything you remember about your dream, about Purgatory. Bring it with you tomorrow.”

  It would take a year to detail it all, but I could write something by then.

  My room was white. The walls bled purity onto the floor. Even the bed clothes were sterile, devoid of everything. The white made me appreciate the tumultuous gray of Purgatory. At least the gray was alive, whereas the white was empty and dead. As long a time as I spent in the gray realm alone, I was far lonelier on Earth. Because he wasn’t here, and I wasn’t allowed to see him. It was part of the bargain struck. I survived two thousand years of servitude in Purgatory, but only days on Earth had passed during that time. Days where my shattered body healed. Days where Gabriel gave my biological father a new memory and by extension, a new future for me. At least I thought he did. The jury was still out on that one. Every time I saw my father’s face, my skin crawled to get away from him. Fight or flight reflexes kicked in, and I wanted to run away or stab him in the throat. Either would have sufficed.

  But if it was just the man whose skin my father wore, how could I kill him? He was innocent. I had to figure out a way to tell…

  The orderly peeked into my room through the small window. I had been given a pencil and paper, so they would watch me closely. Sharp objects weren’t given without supervision, and believe me, I would yield it as a weapon—a weapon in the battle for my own emancipation.

  In my scrawling handwriting, I wrote what I knew:

  My father was the antichrist.

  I was dragged to Purgatory from the hospital after someone beat me almost to death.

  The Keeper of Crows saved me.

  And then we saved each other.

  I slew my father and then the devil himself.

  Purgatory’s balance has been restored, but my faith has been shattered.

  I’m forbidden to see him until death claims me.

  I long for death, but suicide forfeits the agreement. I have to wait for it, and they will make me wait for a very long time.

  I love him.

  He loves me.

  Even through the distance between us, I feel him.

  One day, we’ll be together. I will feel his fingers on my skin, his breath on my neck, his lips on mine, and it will all have been worth it.

  When I woke, everyone thought I was crazy. They still do.

  But I know something they don’t.

  I’m not crazy at all.

  When I was finished and satisfied, I waved the orderly into my room and surrendered the pencil to him. “Thank you, Ms. Kennedy.” He smiled. I knew my fractured reality had actually happened, because if it hadn’t, I’d be trying to lure him into bed. I’d flash a smile and ask him to help me. But the thought of any man touching me—any man but Michael—made me sick. My stomach churned at the thought.

  The next day, I gave Doctor Stein the paper. She read each sentence slowly and then re-read them, glancing up at me. “Near-death experiences are common. Across every culture in this world, even ones the modern world hasn’t touched. Did you know that?”

  “I did.”

  “I have a patient now who tells a very similar account of her brush with death.”

  “A man or woman?” I asked.

  “The patient is a woman. You see, Carmen, the mind is very complex. Even when a person’s body shuts down, their mind still functions on all cylinders. Unless there is trauma to the brain itself, it works. Your neurons fire. Your imagination can run wild. Through every culture, in every walk of life, there are stories of people emerging from light or from a place like you’ve described. It’s one universal thread that ties us together, but it isn’t a real one. It’s a testament to the power of our minds to escape from trauma.”

  “Or else it actually occurs,” I countered. “That would be the alternative, right?”

  She cleared her throat. “I suppose, but remember Occam ’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

  Was it simpler to think that my brain created a world that other people had also dreamed about? Or was it simpler to believe that world actually existed? I thought the latter made more sense.

  What were the chances…? “Doctor Stein, is her name Pamela, by any chance?”

  Doctor Stein stilled. “I can’t discuss my patient or her experiences with you any further. I don’t feel that it would do any good, and I won’t violate her privacy as I wouldn’t violate yours. Now, let’s talk about what you wrote here.”

  I flashed a victorious Cheshire cat grin. “Does she mention the Keeper as well? Has she mentioned me?”

  Doctor Stein shook her head. “You aren’t listening today, Carmen. Unless you’re willing
to focus and work to get better, you’re wasting my time. I refuse to go over this with you again. There is no Keeper of Crows.” Unable to hide that she was flustered, Stein hit a button on her phone and called for the orderlies to remove me from her office.

  “We made a lot of progress today, Doctor. Thank you.” I smiled as I was wrenched from the room by two large males who obviously worked out. Those bastards were strong.

  I clawed toward her, trying to wriggle my arms out of their steely grips. “I know you know he’s real! He is real! It was all real! It happened! I’m not CRAZY! I AM NOT CRAZY!” I screamed, kicking out at her desk. Her face was one of shocked horror and I loved it.

  The orderlies threw me in my room and locked the door. Alone, I paced until I couldn’t stand walking on the same twelve tiles anymore. I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at the ceiling with a smile on my face. Pam didn’t forget me, after all.

  31

  “We’re going to try Lithium.” Those words bounced around in my mind several times each day. Every time the nausea started, I made one of my frequent trips to the bathroom where I wasn’t sure which was more urgent: the vomit rising from my stomach, or the diarrhea I could barely control. Adding to the fun, the medicine made my legs swell and my tongue feel dry as the desert.

  Doctor Stein was adamant that my experiences weren’t real; so much so, that I began to believe her. Maybe her other patient really wasn’t named Pamela. Maybe I imagined everything. After all, I’d only been in the hospital a short time. That information was in black and white. I saw the medical charts.

  After telling Stein that I’d only believe her if she showed me proof, she called the hospital, obtained my signature for the medical release, and they faxed bills and records of my stay to her office. She personally delivered the file to my room and I spent hours combing through dates and treatments, diagnoses and nurse’s notes. Also in the file was a motor vehicle accident report. It said I lost control on the highway, flipping my car. The ambulance had taken me from the scene of the crash to the hospital.