The hospital report said that I was in intensive care for twenty-eight days, transferred to a room on the psychiatric floor for another week, and then released into the care of the mental institution in which I now sat.
In the end, it documented my entire journey. The truth was in black and white ink. The next day during our session, she produced my mother’s death certificate. The cause of death did not read suicide, overdose, or anything about pills or alcoholism. There were no notes about anti-depressants, or that my mom was on any medication at all. It said she’d had an aortic aneurysm and the main wall of her aorta had weakened, thinned, and then collapsed. Doctor Stein stared at me from across her desk and gently pushed a small pile of paper toward me. The papers were Google search results regarding the condition. I took comfort in the fact that she would have died instantly; she didn’t suffer. But did Father use his connections to alter the records?
When I voiced that concern, Stein was ready for it. “Occam’s Razor.”
The simplest answer was probably the correct one.
“So, she died from a heart issue?” I asked tentatively. My head was filled with fog. “Could that really be true?”
“You tell me,” she answered gently, smiling.
I brought my file with me to that session. “This says I was in a car accident; that I met friends at The Castle and wrecked on the way home. No alcohol or drugs were found in my system. Did I go to rehab at all?”
Stein shook her head. “It never happened. There isn’t even a facility named Sunny Bridge in the state of California. There is one in Rhode Island, but it’s a nursing home.” She sat back in her seat. “Carmen, you never went to rehab, and there isn’t a Doctor by the name of Verlund Coleman in the United States. Never has been. I checked. Twice.”
Doc wasn’t real and Sunny Bridge didn’t exist. I felt like I’d been sucked into a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “There is no Pamela?”
She shook her head, pursing her lips. “There is no Pamela,” she whispered gently. “You keep saying I reacted when you mentioned that name, but Carmen, I didn’t. I have no patient named Pamela. The last time I saw a patient named Pamela was six years ago, and she was treated for schizophrenia. She had no near-death experience to speak of.”
I clutched my temples, pushing them and my head to get things straight. Weren’t they straight already? Nothing made sense, so no. They weren’t.
I was Carmen Elaine Kennedy.
My father was running for President.
My mother was dead. She killed herself.
I was in Purgatory.
It was real.
I killed the devil.
It happened.
He was real.
Michael, the Keeper of Crows, was real.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Carmen, but you need to look, really look, at what’s in front of you. I can help you if you want to let me, but if you keep refusing, you’ll be in this hospital for a very long time.” She let out a sigh. “Do you want me to go over it with you again?”
I nodded numbly.
That was all I could feel: numbness. She showed me the accident report and medical records again, gently noting the facts and dates. She combed over every detail of Mom’s death certificate.
“Carmen, there isn’t a single fact here to support the story you’ve given me. And if you’ll listen, I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I have. You were in a very bad accident. Your body, its bones, your brain itself, was broken. You were broken. The hospital had to induce a coma to allow you to heal. The medication you were on was powerful, and what you experienced was an intense response to that medicine. It’s like when you fall asleep and your muscles begin to spasm—as everyone’s do—and your mind creates a scene where you’re kicking a soccer ball, for instance. Your mind makes your foot jerk forward and it wakes you.”
I nodded. I’d experienced that before. Mine was a dream about a shark shredding my leg into pieces and I’d woken with a Charlie horse. But still. Same thing.
“While in the coma,” she continued, “your mind created an entire world to cope with what you were experiencing. The mind is a terrible, powerful thing. We don’t understand why it does this, but perhaps it’s a shield to keep you from feeling pain or remembering the trauma before you’re able to cope with it. Whatever the reason, it does happen in cases like yours.”
“But you said near-death experiences were universal.”
“They are, because people with trauma respond in much the same way. The brain functions in the same way regardless of creed, color, zip code, or religious affiliation. That’s why the experiences are similar across the board; not because those places exist. It’s why people see different things. Some see a bright light, some feel happiness, and some feel despair and toil in the darkness. Everyone’s emotions are different. Their life experiences differ. You are different from everyone else who’s had such an experience, and so yours is unique to you. Theirs is unique to them. Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t doubt you remember the dream you had and that it seemed very real to you, but it wasn’t real. When you accept that fact, we can make progress and strides in the right direction.”
I wanted to.
I wanted to get better.
I wanted to leave this place.
“I’ll try,” I muttered, my voice like gravel.
She smiled slightly. “That’s all I ask.”
32
Another month. Another session with Doctor Stein. She sat across her desk with a pensive look, creasing the deep wrinkle between her brows. “Over a month ago, you wrote this. Do you remember doing it?”
She pushed a piece of plain, white paper toward me, sliced with teal lines and slashed down the side with a red one. It had seen happier days. Crinkled and bent, it hadn’t been taken care of. I eased the paper closer and looked at the handwriting. My handwriting.
“Tell me what you remember now,” she instructed. “Which of these things do you recall from your dream? In fact,” she added, holding out a pen. “Cross through everything you don’t remember.”
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.
“I’m sorry. I still remember some of it. It’s all fuzzy, sort of foggy, and I know it wasn’t real, but some of the memories of the dream linger. Mostly about my father.”
She smiled and nodded, accepting the pen from me.
“Good. You’re doing very well, Carmen. The medicine is working. I can’t tell you how proud I am of your progress.”
33
Two months and several intense sessions later, Doctor Stein smiled from the doorway of my room. I knew from the look on her face she was ready to give me the news I’d been waiting to hear.
“You’ve made great strides, and I believe you can continue your care on an outpatient basis. Your father has agreed. He ended his run for the Presidency and has resigned his position.”
My father wasn’t running for president? Would the paparazzi finally leave us alone?
Could life really go back to being normal?
I hoped so. My head
tingled. I sipped from the plastic cup of water and thanked the doctor. Would my bed at home feel soft? The mattress under my legs was squeaky and lumpy and hella uncomfortable. I’d done well so far. I could do this.
Mom wouldn’t be there. I couldn’t remember Father when he wasn’t something important—CEO, Presidential candidate, Community Preparation Specialist. Would there be an awkwardness between us? Would I be welcomed home? I’d no doubt humiliated him. Telling the world he had to drop out of the race because his daughter was mentally ill must have crushed him. Father hated to lose, and I made him forfeit everything in a very public way.
“When can I go home?” I asked, faking a smile.
“You can leave here tomorrow.”
“Will I see you before then?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at discharge.” She smiled genuinely.
The next morning I dressed in a fresh pair of scrubs and sat on the mattress, calmly sipping water after the good doctor left me with a small wave of her hand. An orderly brought my morning doses of psychotropic meds and I swallowed them down quickly, opening my mouth wide so she could see I’d swallowed them. She nodded and told me she would be back as soon as she finished the morning round. Doctor Stein had just begun to fill out my discharge papers.
My mind was still a jumble, but she promised to help me through everything. The last of the dream I had while comatose was still fresh in my mind.
Gabriel telling me to be strong, that two thousand years in Purgatory would pass quickly, that my sentence would be over before I knew it, and that after I served those years, my soul would return to Earth, to my body, and I just had to live out my natural life. Then, he would be there. Keeper was waiting for me. Gabriel would watch over me, and I would soon be with the one I loved.
While the delusion was a nice one, I knew it wasn’t true. The medicine showed me that the tether I thought I felt between his heart and mine was all imagined. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. But I had felt it…
“Ready, Ms. Kennedy?” the orderly asked as she smiled brightly.
“I’ve never been more ready.” It wasn’t a lie, but I was afraid. Part of me still needed to be convinced that it was a dream. Part of me still felt him.
I flipped through mental images of the hospital records, reminding myself of the facts.
Facts that were documented.
Facts that were real.
He wasn’t real. Keeper wasn’t real.
“I’m very happy for you, dear,” the orderly said with a smile.
“Thank you,” I whispered, listening to the door lock behind me, wishing I’d taken my cup of water with me. My mouth became more barren with each step. The hallway was empty except for the janitor, who was using a large machine to polish the already shiny white tile. He nodded in my direction and I returned the gesture.
Doctor Stein was waiting for me near the front office. She glanced up from the papers she was signing and smiled. “Ready to go home?”
“Yeah.”
“Your father is waiting. He’s sitting in the chairs on the back wall, just on the other side of that window.” She pointed the end of her pen toward the rows of chairs in the front entrance. I knew she was testing my reaction. I saw my father slouched forward, elbows on his knees, looking older than I’d ever seen him. I didn’t bother to tell her that man wasn’t the one who raised me or try to bring up Malchazze again. She’d promised the questions about the dream might linger for some time, and that we would work through them together three times each week.
However, I knew that if I started up now, she might tell the orderly to turn right around and take me back to my room. Think about water, I thought, my mouth feeling like cotton. Looking at my father almost made me throw a fit to get put back in. His eyes found mine and the same fear I felt was reflected in them.
My body was fine. My broken leg had healed and the cast was off. My muscles weren’t sore. The bruises had faded from my body. My hair was short again, spiked, and there was a raised scar on my scalp from the stitches and staples I’d had removed weeks ago. I wondered if my physical appearance scared him worse than my mental state.
I doubted it.
Doctor Stein led me out of the secured door and into the waiting area. Father stood, his smile wobbling as tears filled his eyes. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t Malchazze.
“I’m so proud of you,” he whispered as he hugged my neck. I patted his back awkwardly, watching Stein take us in, a concerned look furrowing her brow, deepening her wrinkle. He pulled back, grabbed my elbow, and said, “Let’s go home.”
Again, I gave a fake smile. We stepped through the double-doors and into the sun, where Father led me to his white Range Rover. The drive home was quiet. I reveled in the feeling of the warmth left by the sun on the tan leather seats and stared at the passing cars, houses, buildings, life. All around us was life. Everything was normal.
It teemed all around us.
“I stocked the refrigerator with all your favorites. I can make us something for lunch when we get home,” he offered. “And I dismissed the staff. I thought it might be less overwhelming if it was just you and me for a time.”
“Okay.” I was hungry and tired. No, tired was too small a word. I was exhausted to the bone, and not from physical exertion. Tonight… I would sleep in my bed tonight.
Would I stay at my house?
I would for a while. I had two days until my first outpatient appointment with Doctor Stein.
She actually let me go.
I wasn’t ready.
My breaths became erratic.
Pinching my eyes closed, I chanted in my head, I imagined him. I imagined him.
The Keeper of Crows. What color was his hair? What color were his eyes?
Chapter 33 ½
Doctor Cynthia Stein watched as the white Range Rover backed out of its space and drove out of the parking lot. She let the sun warm her skin through the glass doors. She’d been cold since Carmen named her other patient; the woman who had been plagued with nightmares so vivid, she believed they were real. Perhaps they were, because she had specifically mentioned someone by name: The Keeper of Crows.
But that was merely a coincidence, she scoffed to herself. It wasn’t possible that he actually existed. Novelists came up with similar ideas, each writing books about the same topic but in their own words, in their own way. Filmmakers, song writers…the creativity of the world often overlapped. This is no different, she told herself.
The mind was a powerful thing, and just because it was unique to the individual, didn’t mean that all thought was unique.
The two women experienced something similar. That was all. Their brains had to cope somehow. Maybe it was something they heard. They were admitted to the same hospital at the same time, and they were in the Intensive Care Unit one room away from each another, according to their records. Maybe it was a song played softly through the speakers, a song whistled or sung by a nurse they shared and both heard. It had to be something rooted in reality that their imaginations ran wild with.
In the afternoon sun, doves cooed loudly from the eaves of the front porch and flew away, following the Rover down the long, gravel driveway.
She snapped out of her daze and turned to swipe her security card by the door, movement in her periphery making her turn her head. In the center of the glossy white tile of the lobby, fluttering in the wind made by the ceiling’s air conditioning vent, was a single, black, downy feather.
The Keeper of Crows Playlist
The A Team—Ed Sheeran
Royals—Lorde
Castle—Halsey
Hold Me Down--Halsey
Human—Christina Perri
Control—Halsey
Jar of Hearts—Christina Perri
Breath of Life—Florence + The Machine
Gasoline—Halsey
Close—Nick Jonas (feat. Tove Lo)
Let’s Hurt Tonight—OneRepublic
Lights Down Low—Gnash
King
dom Come—Demi Lovato (feat. Iggy Azalea)
Rise—Katy Perry
Every Little Thing—Carly Pearce
She Talks to Angels—The Black Crowes
About the Author
Award-winning author Casey L. Bond lives in Milton, West Virginia with her husband and their two beautiful daughters. When she’s not busy being a domestic goddess and chasing her baby girls, she loves to write romance in all its glorious forms.
Connect with Casey:
Website: www.authorcaseybond.com
Newsletter: http://authorcaseybond.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e812bbce406a10776c6a28162&id=79850847f2
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorcaseybond
Twitter & Instagram: @authorcaseybond
Other books by Casey L. Bond:
The Frenzy Series: Frenzy, Frantic, Frequency, Friction, Fraud and Forever Frenzy
The Harvest Saga: Reap, Resist and Reclaim
Acknowledgments
Keeper of Crows is a book that has significant meaning to me. I started it, wrote 30,000 words and got stuck on the plot, so I put it away. A very important person in my life passed away after that and I had trouble concentrating on much of anything. My grandmother was more than just that. She was one of my best friends and every time I think of her, my heart hurts because I know I can’t pick up the phone and call her. I can’t take my kids to go see her. She’s gone…and until I am, I can’t see her. But I can feel her. And she kicked me in the butt to finish this book.
So, I need to thank her. For all the lessons she taught me, for just being there and for being such a strong presence in my life and in the lives of my children. When her heart broke, so did mine. Mine hasn’t healed yet. It may never.
Keeper of Crows (The Keeper of Crows Duology Book 1) Page 21