The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  “We can’t do that to him, Mom. No.”

  “Dez, listen to me. This can’t go on, all right? It can’t. You know that as well as I do.”

  “He’s not suicidal, Mom. I know him. He isn’t.”

  “I know that. But I also know he’s susceptible to the things that come to him. If he was possessed this time, too, who’s to say the same thing won’t happen again tomorrow, or the day after, or a week from now? Are you going to quit your job to babysit him every moment of every day? Are you going to keep him handcuffed to you so he isn’t allowed ten minutes alone to hurt himself again? Are you going to sacrifice your own mental and physical health for this, Dez? I can’t. I just can’t. We almost lost him again, today. I can’t bury my son, not so soon after losing Flynn.”

  There was a solid sheen of tears in Mara’s eyes, a few having spilled down her cheeks as she spoke. But her voice remained firm, her expression solid. She hadn’t broken yet, but she was close.

  They were all close. Dez could see the wide and jagged cracks in his own surface, created by the earthquake that had been Flynn’s death. They needed only one more significant shock to open him up completely, to swallow him from the inside out.

  He knew Mara was right. He knew it, and he hated it.

  “I don’t want to bring this up,” Eva said. “But what about the investigation into Betty’s shooting? I’m a bit concerned how this will look. Raynor might use this to discredit Sully’s statement about the shooting. If it’s learned Sully experienced blackouts prior to his suicide attempts, or during that confrontation with Lowell, Raynor could easily argue Sully was going through something similar when Betty was shot. That would give Raynor another piece of his puzzle, and it would cast doubt on Sully’s description of the shooting and the man who did it.”

  It was a solid point, but Mara’s was firmer.

  “I hear what you’re saying, Eva, but my biggest concern right now isn’t about Sully’s dealings with the police. It’s with keeping him alive. Dez, what did Dr. Gerhardt mean about your previous conversation with him?”

  Dez provided the explanation about his and Sully’s undercover reconnaissance mission to Lockwood, and the discussion between him and Gerhardt initially intended only to give Sully time to look for clues about the man who’d been haunting him. Dez told them what Gerhardt said about his belief in otherworldly explanations for some things, and his attempts to find ways to help those people cope with their experiences, how he’d quieted people’s minds so they didn’t have to see if they didn’t want to.

  When he’d finished, Mara’s reply was as he’d anticipated. “Maybe that’s what Sully needs now.”

  “I asked him about it afterwards. He said if he lost the ghosts, it would be like losing himself.”

  “He’s losing himself, anyway. These possessions, they’re not just terrifying to him, but to all of us. Every time this man takes him over, Sully disappears and nearly doesn’t return. We’ve all seen how badly the regular ones can impact him, the lengths he’ll go to get them to cross over. I’ve always told myself that was his path in life, and he was learning to follow it. But this is different. This one has power over him in a way none of the others have. You’ve looked for solutions and they haven’t worked. Maybe this is the only way. If there’s a place inside his brain that allows him to see these people, maybe it needs to be sealed off for a little while, long enough he can heal from all of this. It could be like a vacation, in a way.”

  “Lockwood is no holiday destination, Mom.”

  “I wasn’t meaning Lockwood. I was referring to Sully, to whatever it is inside him that connects him to that other world. We need to close the door, Dez. Just for a little while. I think you know that as well as I do.”

  The bitch of the thing was he did know that. But he also knew what he and Sully had been through together the past few days, recalled the words they’d exchanged before walking through Lockwood’s front door for the first time.

  “I feel like we’re opening a door we’re going to regret walking through. I mean, bringing you here is exactly what that doctor at the hospital wanted, and we both know he was wrong about you needing this place.”

  “Dez, I know you’re not going to leave me here, all right?”

  Now, that was exactly what Dez and the rest of Sully’s family were about to do. It felt like betrayal of the worst kind, abandonment, like they’d given up on one of their own when he needed them the most.

  Dez had always prided himself on being able to fight Sully’s demons for him or alongside him. Suddenly, Dez came to the heart-sinking realization he couldn’t chase Sully’s shadows, because he’d gained too many of his own. The light within Dez, ordinarily bright enough for both of them, had faded to the dim glow of a flickering candle. One puff of air and he’d go completely dark. There wasn’t enough left inside him to fight for everyone he loved. Not anymore.

  His mother’s voice cut in, a voice sounding from the topside of a deep, dark well.

  “Dez? Sweetie, I know this is hard—”

  “I understand why he needs to go,” he said. “But I can’t be a part of it.”

  Dez excused himself, muttering something about having to take a leak. He passed the bathroom. Walked past a waiting room. Heard the sliding glass doors to the ER entrance close behind him.

  And kept going.

  29

  There was no such thing as time anymore, hours passing unnoticed through a fog, day and night marked only by light and dark.

  A castaway in a life raft, Sully equated moments of clarity with ships passing within an endless sea. Before he had a chance to wave them down, the fog would settle back between them with the prick of a needle in his arm.

  The first time he felt the full return of awareness, he awoke inside what looked like a treatment room, Dr. Gerhardt loading up a syringe at a counter along the righthand wall.

  Sully was fully alert and, for a moment, revelled in that feeling. Relief faded fast as he became conscious of the fact his wrists and ankles were strapped to a bed. Testing the bonds, he found them strong, too tight to slip out of.

  Then he noticed something else. The walls inside this room were covered in flaking paint the colour of a midday sky.

  Harry’s words and Snowy’s warning came at him like a slap, pulling the whispered words from his lips. “Blue Room.”

  His eyes snapped onto Gerhardt’s back, a desperate need to understand seizing hold of his insides and twisting. “What are you doing?”

  “Ssh. Relax, Sullivan. You’re all right.”

  “Why am I strapped down?”

  “I need you fully conscious, and I don’t want to risk you attempting self-harm.”

  On its surface, the psychiatrist’s explanation gave the impression of doctorly concern.

  Sully knew better.

  Given the circumstances, there were two routes he could take: try to reason with the man or give in to utter panic. He opted for the former.

  “I don’t need the drugs anymore,” Sully said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re fine because of the drugs. You have far too many demands on you, far too many emotional stressors in your life. I’ve only wanted to give you a rest.” Gerhardt at last turned to face him. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need a rest. I need to leave here. I’m not mentally ill. I just need to be with my family.”

  Gerhardt smiled. To anyone else, the expression might have appeared kind. “Your family’s here, Sullivan.”

  The doctor nodded with his chin, then went back to whatever it was he was doing. Sully followed the direction Gerhardt had indicated, angling his head until he could see just behind himself, to the right.

  Lowell stared down at him.

  Sully’s heart drummed against his ribs as he teetered on the edge of panic. He heard the sound in his own voice, the way it turned a single word into a moan. “No.”

  “It’s all right, son,” Lowell said. “Dr. Gerhardt knows what he’s do
ing.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Gerhardt answered for Lowell. “He’s helping me with something I’ve been working on. His lab developed a drug that acts as a mind opener of sorts. I believe your ability to see the things you do originates somewhere within your brain. People with abilities like yours are able to tap into parts of the mind that remain closed to most of us once we pass childhood. Your ability is quite advanced, and very strong. That’s why I’ve had to keep you sedated so heavily for the past couple of weeks. You needed a chance to rest.”

  Weeks? Had it been that long?

  “Your uncle is a brilliant man,” Gerhardt continued. “The drug he developed will, I believe, help us to control your ability, to channel it. It will open your mind and allow you to use your gift in ways you never could before.”

  “I don’t want to use it in other ways,” Sully said. Full reality hit him, called to mind the pills his uncle had prescribed in the days leading to the committal. “The pills you gave me. You passed them off as my usual sleep meds, but this is what they were, weren’t they? A mind opener. Mom told me the police lab tested them and they came back as some sort of psychedelic.”

  “Psychotropic,” Lowell corrected.

  Gerhardt supplied a more detailed explanation. “He developed it for some of my other patients. But given what you’d told your family about your abilities, he thought it might be worth seeing if it would have a similar effect on you. I understand you experienced a full possession. That’s highly unusual. Until you, quite frankly, I would have thought it impossible. What I’ve discovered about this drug is that it magnifies the existing abilities people like you already possess.”

  “Why? Why would you want to do that?”

  Gerhardt replied without answering. “Lowell had his chemists develop an injectable and more concentrated form of the drug. The effect should be more immediate and give us an improved means of ensuring the appropriate dosage. It might take a couple tries to get it exactly right—that’s why your uncle is here—but we’ll manage, won’t we?”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “I’m only trying to help you. If we can find the right combination of medications, we should be able to help you control your ability. Don’t you want that? The chance to be able to turn it on or off at will?”

  “Not if I feel the way I always do here. Not if I feel like I’m lost in a fog. I can deal with the things I see. I don’t need your help.”

  “I think you do, Sullivan,” Lowell said. “You’re here because you tried to kill yourself.”

  Sully had no memory beyond that final fight with his uncle and Larson Hackman, not until he awoke in hospital with his arms badly slashed and a shellshocked Dez sitting next to him. Despite having no knowledge of how he’d ended up there, Sully suspected—more than suspected, really—it had everything to do with Lowell.

  It hadn’t been attempted suicide that had landed Sully in hospital with multiple stitches closing gashes in his arms; it was attempted murder.

  He wished he could see his brother now. Dez would kick these guys’ asses, would put them bodily through the wall and stick whatever Gerhardt was wielding into him. Gerhardt, and even Lowell, would be lucky if they escaped with their lives.

  But Dez wasn’t here, and there was nowhere that drug was going but into Sully’s vein.

  He had nowhere to go, no way to slip the restraints. But damned if he wasn’t going to try.

  He strained against the padded cuffs, the metal rings linking them to the bed frame clanking as he struggled. Lowell moved in, holding one of Sully’s arms as a second person suddenly entered the frame. Hackman pressed his full weight down on Sully’s shoulders, leaving him nowhere to go but back down the rabbit hole.

  Gerhardt moved in, the needle pricking the flesh of Sully’s inner arm as he released his terror and frustration in a howl.

  Cool liquid entered his vein, flowed up his arm until the heat of his own body warmed it. The needle withdrawn, he was at first relieved to feel nothing.

  But this was the Blue Room; relief had no place here.

  Gerhardt had retreated back to the counter, where he remained for a couple of minutes, his back to the others. Whether he meant to allow the drug a chance to take hold, or to give Sully the opportunity to calm down really didn’t matter. With these three men in control, no outcome would be a good one.

  Lowell and Hackman had released Sully after the injection, granting him some space. It wasn’t helping much, his brain running in overdrive with thoughts of what was to come.

  He didn’t have long to think.

  Gerhardt turned, and Sully’s heart caught in his throat at the tears in the other man’s eyes. Emotion could make people dangerous, give them motivation they wouldn’t possess were they more stable.

  This emotion was the worst kind. In his hands was a stuffed rabbit, its fur matted and faded with age. The grimace twisting Gerhardt’s lips and the deepening of lines across his brow told Sully a story before the doctor had said anything aloud.

  “It was my son’s. He had it with him the day he was taken.” Gerhardt’s gaze went from the rabbit to Sully. “I need you to find him.”

  “I can only see them if they’re dead. If they’ve been murdered.”

  “I know. A patient of mine, a young woman, she told me he was gone. She left before she could tell me where to find him. I need to give him a good, Christian burial. But, more than that, I need closure. I need to know what happened, and to find the person responsible. You’re going to help me, Sullivan. I need you to help me.”

  Gerhardt stepped forward and place the stuffed animal in Sully’s restrained hand. “Focus on this object and tell me when you begin to see my son.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Just focus, Sullivan. Breathe deeply and focus.”

  Sully had never needed to focus to see the dead. He didn’t need it this time, either.

  Movement next to the bed, a gradual solidification of mist into human form, told him a spirit was materializing. The faint shape of arms, legs, torso and head sharpened as the swirling energy molded itself into the image of its former body—that of a young child, no older than five or six. Facial features began to reveal themselves as the ghost’s hue changed from whites and greys to full colour: pale skin, the denim blue of jeans, the crisp yellow of a cotton T-shirt, green within the nearly formed eyes.

  It was the strawberry blond tone to the hair that gave it away. This wasn’t Gerhardt’s son coming into view.

  It was Aiden.

  There was no doubt the dripping wet five-year-old standing next to him was the same little boy Sully had glimpsed several times in the past. The same little boy whose life had ended by the hand of the man standing oblivious to the presence on the opposite side of the bed.

  The start of a word formed on Sully’s lips, the desire to torment Lowell with this vision nearly as strong as the fear still coursing through him.

  Tiny, cold, wet fingers touching his left hand forced Sully into silence as he was yanked from this room and into the consciousness of the five-year-old child.

  He was next to a river, his hiding spot affording him a view of the house. Dez would come soon. He was angry with Aiden, but he’d look for him anyway. Dez always looked for him.

  He knew he wasn’t supposed to be at the river. Mommy and Daddy always said to stay away from it. It was dangerous, they said. But he wouldn’t go in the water. He’d stay here, crouched in the reeds on the bank. Dez knew all his hiding spots inside the house already, and there weren’t a lot of trees or bushes to sneak through. Eventually, Dez would come, and Aiden would jump out and scare him. Then his brother would giggle the way he always did, and they’d be best friends again.

  Only it wasn’t Dez coming this way. It was Uncle Lowell.

  Uh-oh.

  Uncle Lo was coming closer, coming right toward him, like he knew exactly where to find him. Aiden stayed crouched. He didn’t like the frown on his un
cle’s face. Uncle Lo usually smiled. Today, he wasn’t smiling.

  Aiden knew there was no point hiding. Uncle Lo knew where he was. He would tell Mommy and Daddy Aiden was down here, and he would be grounded for a long time. No video games or TV, and Mommy would make him explain to her why it was so dangerous to come down here. And Daddy—he would be so disappointed in him.

  Aiden looked up as hands parted the reeds. Uncle Lo was there, staring down at him, the same frown on his face. Daddy didn’t yell much, but sometimes Uncle Lo did, and Aiden thought that would happen now.

  Only he didn’t yell. He stayed quiet, reaching a hand down for Aiden.

  He took his uncle’s hand. An apology was on his lips, as he expected to be taken back to the house and made to stay in his room until Mommy and Daddy got back.

  Instead, Uncle Lowell stepped further down the bank, pulling Aiden along with him. He didn’t stop until he was next to the water, standing on the big, flat rock Daddy and Dez liked to fish from. Uncle Lo knelt and pulled Aiden into a hug. His uncle’s body started to shake and Aiden’s heart beat fast as he realized Uncle Lo was crying.

  This was even worse than Mommy’s yelling or Daddy’s disappointed eyes. Aiden had been so bad he’d made his uncle cry.

  He said sorry again, but the crying didn’t stop. It only got worse, and it seemed like it would never stop.

  Uncle Lowell was still choking back sobs as he released Aiden. His uncle wasn’t looking at him, and Aiden wondered if he’d been so bad Uncle Lo couldn’t even stand the sight of him.

  Then something happened. It happened fast. One second Aiden was standing on the rock, his uncle’s big hands grasping his torso; the next he was going backwards, his body hitting the water.

  Going under the water.

  Uncle Lowell’s hands were still on him, still holding him. Aiden’s eyes had shut as he went into the cold water, but his mouth had been open in a surprised yell. Now he closed it, but water had already gone in. He swallowed what water he could, but some of it felt like it went in his air pipe, the way it felt when he drank his juice too fast.