Judy was terrified. She didn’t think she’d ever been more terrified of anything in her life. And that was saying something, coming from that stormy relationship with Phil. Hell, who was she still trying to kid? That wasn’t a stormy relationship. Stormy relationships didn’t end each night with the fear of going to sleep before your husband, for worrying about what might happen if you were to close your eyes before he did.
Her heart raced, and she knew the adrenaline that was now drowning her body was the thing that would cause her the most problems. It clouded her thinking, and the hospital was already doing a good job of that. Alone, and in the dark this was a real twisted nightmare.
Something was awry. She was racing for the far wall on the opposite end of the ward, and the set of doors she’d used to get through the ward earlier. It had to be the dim light in here. Only shreds of orange streetlight made its way through the boarded windows.
But her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, the doors were gone.
She was cornered.
Shit. Had she made a mistake? Got turned around somehow? There had to be another exit. She swung left and only just ducked out of sight behind a cupboard before the doors crashed open and Johnny entered.
Holding her breath, she dropped and slid under the nearest bed, trying to ignore the funky smell. She wondered again why these metal rusting beds still had mattresses. Whatever, it gave her a modicum of protection. This was no long-term hiding spot, but she didn’t need that, she needed a chance, any chance to get out of here ahead of Johnny.
“There’s no place you can hide. I assure you I’m not going to harm you. The others are doing well, but they’re concerned about you. Why don’t you come out and we can explain everything.” Johnny’s voice sounded strange. More confident. How much of the man they’d been speaking to earlier had been part of a character he was playing? Johnny was not a bumbling slightly scatty organiser. He was fully in control of the situation and he knew, perhaps he was the only one who knew, exactly what was going on. She didn’t respond. Responding meant capture and there was no way she would trust Johnny’s hollow words.
She heard the doors to the ward opening a second time and then a slump of air as they closed again. Roy joining his son in the pursuit.
From her hiding spot, Judy could just see the light from the end of Johnny’s torch as he swept it around the ward. A second beam joined it. She didn’t stop to speculate why their equipment wasn’t influenced by the hospital.
“We need to finish the preparations,” Roy said to his son.
Johnny’s reply was frustrated, and he kept his voice low as he replied. “We can hardly leave her roaming the hospital. What if she finds a way out? She’s friends with the medium. He might have told her enough that she could harm us.”
“Loomis is taken care of. All we need to do is lock this place down and confine her.”
The lights shifted to the other end of the ward, and the footsteps accompanied them. A search over there would take them less than a minute. She didn’t have time to rest under here feeling sorry for herself. She slid out from under the bed, easing forward on hands and knees struggling to pretend this was all a game and not a deadly hunt where she was the prey.
“Judy, enough is enough. I promise hiding from us is the worst thing you can do. I can’t protect you unless you come with me. You’ve already seen we have visitors tonight. And I think you know they can be lethal. But I can command them. And I can protect you.”
Johnny was talking about the shadow people they’d seen in the morgue. Had he arranged this whole evening knowing the nature of the entities he was going to encounter? But what are they for? Why was he doing any of this? The clues were in the van of course. Seth had characterised the artefacts as having an occult significance.
She got to her feet, her view obscured by her bedroom’s partition. Johnny and Roy were at the far end of the room now, still together but checking either side of the ward as they walked through. Johnny took more care than Roy, crouching down to check under beds. Roy seemed irritable, patting Johnny on the arm to hurry him along. He said he had a timetable to keep, and she checked her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight. Could this be any more the cliche? Was twelve o’clock the deadline Roy was talking about?
“We don’t have time for this,” Roy hissed. “Get back to the van and fetch the rest of the items. I’ll meet you in the sanctum.”
Johnny rubbed the back of his neck and only briefly looked up at his dad before storming out of the ward leaving Roy alone.
Could she take on an older man? He didn’t look particularly frail, but she had the advantage of surprise and Roy wouldn’t be expecting her to attack. Plus, she still had the crowbar. Her other options were to wait it out and hide, perhaps until after this deadline Roy was referring to, or she could make a run for the doors. Johnny was out there though.
Run for it. You’re trapped in here.
She took a deep breath, and then a step forward. The tip of the crowbar clipped the edge of the bed frame and a dull clang rang out.
Oh my god, oh my God, oh my God. He must have heard that. There was no way he hadn’t.
“Is that you, Mrs Doyle? I know you’re scared, but this is all a big misunderstanding. Johnny gets carried away sometimes. In fact, I think he’s got a mental illness. If you come out for me, I’ll get you out of here before he returns.”
Yes, she wanted to believe, but she wasn’t so far gone that she couldn’t recognise his words as utter bullshit.
There had to be another way out of this ward. She kept low, watched her feet, and inched along the partition wall. A spider scurried across her fingers and she waved it aside.
Roy’s footsteps were getting closer.
“Judy? Do you mind if I call you that? I can’t apologise enough. Johnny told me that tonight would be the start of something big for him and I wanted to support him. I didn’t think he was involved in anything so wrong. But if you come with me, I’ll help you get the others out. That’s what you want isn’t it? To help the others. Johnny’s put something in the coffee. A hallucinogenic. He’s friends with some unsavoury characters and he’s been drugging you all night. None of this is real.”
Hallucinogenic. Ha. Roy couldn’t know that she’d been drinking from her own thermos. The stuff she’d seen had been very real indeed.
She braced herself and then before she could talk herself out of it, she rose and slipped into the next bedroom along. This was almost identical to the one she’d just left. An old rusted metal bed frame, a mattress thinner than a British rail sandwich topping it off. A wardrobe with its single remaining door hanging from a hinge.
But from here, she had a new view of the ward, a nurses’ station and beside that a second set of double doors. A sign above indicated these doors led to the Treatment Rooms, whatever they were. Would that lead to a way out? The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She wavered. At least this would get her out of the ward. She silently counted to three, and on three, ran for it. She reached the handle, thinking the doors might be locked, but they weren’t.
Torchlight illuminated the doors and cast her head in sharp outline.
“I’m afraid your little adventure is over,” Roy said, clearly revelling in the moment.
“What do you want with us?” she said, turning. Roy stood ten metres away. He dazzled the light in her face and she blinked, unable to see his features at all.
“You don’t need to be scared. Everything will be fine. Trust me.”
“Ever since we met, you’ve been lying. I was a bloody fool for believing you wanted a few testers for your paranormal nights. You’ve drawn us all here under some stupid pretence. I’ve seen inside the van. I’ve seen the book.”
“That’s regrettable. I told the boy to get everything ready before you arrived. Children today. Never do precisely as you tell them. Don’t you find that?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to grow up like his dad.”
He chuckled at tha
t. “Quite possibly. But, he’s benefited plenty from this life.”
“What do you do here? Why’s the hospital important?”
“It’s our place. It has been for almost a hundred years. It knows us.”
“Us being the Adherents?”
“We’ve been practising from the hospital back when it was still an orphanage. Such a wealth of desperate souls. It’s always been an impossible draw.”
“What about the patients? They deserved better. What hope did they ever have of getting better if you bunch of cranks were abusing them?”
“Abusing them? No, we enriched their lives. Showed them a way to better themselves. Taught them to put themselves ahead of whatever society deemed appropriate for them. They were shut up in here against their will. We taught them that their will was more important than the will of the society that believed them ill. They knew they were serving a higher purpose, and they respected that.”
“You abused them.”
“We released them from their own restraints.”
“They were ill. They needed help.”
“And we helped them. We taught them the way to serve themselves.” He sounded frustrated by the exchange, eager to move on. “This doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve run out of places to hide.”
“Who said anything about hiding?”
And Judy ran at Roy, bringing her crowbar arm from behind her back, and rising it up high to guarantee a decent arc for a swinging attack. He wasn’t expecting this. He drew his arm up to shield his face, but she wasn’t aiming for his head. She thought she might have cried a roar of anger as she struck Roy on his left leg, relishing the sweet sound of impact.
“Bitch!” He yanked the crowbar from her grip.
Shit.
Her heart crashed against her ribcage.
“You’ll pay for that,” he snarled.
Judy turned, grabbed the doors to the treatment rooms and ran as fast as she could.
21
Malc was drenched by the time he reached the Ravenmeols estate. His hair was flat on his head from the deluge and his trainers were sodden and were chilling his feet. He’d tried to thumb down lifts, but no one would stop. A cursory glance down at the state of his clothes, muddy and wet and he knew he’d have sped past as well—the good Samaritan be dammed. Rather than wasting any more time, he focused on just getting there. Besides, if it had been the hospital that had reached out to stop him in his car, who’s to say it wouldn’t try again. Perhaps by going with another driver he’d be putting them at risk as well. Better this way. Safer for all concerned.
The hospital building was well shielded from the road but he knew precisely where it was. He didn’t need to see its sharp outline to discern its presence. The hospital had been the site where his best friend’s sister had been found dead. He knew the place all right.
It was also the location of the last known cell of the Adherents of the Fourth. Yes, he knew all about them as well.
Adam Cowl had been the disturbed figurehead of that cult and over the decades of his influence, he’d ultimately been responsible for a remarkable number of diabolical events. Many of which the church had had to get embroiled in. It was not something they would ever disclose, obviously. The women at the cake sales didn’t want to think there was more going on with their vicar than the traditional sermons and parish duties.
Georgia wouldn’t be pleased if she knew the truth either.
Seth also might be a little miffed.
Shit, there was no getting around the fact that at some point tonight he would end up telling his friend about his extra-curricular activities. They had more in common than Seth realised.
But all he could think about as he neared the hospital was that he’d let his friend down.
The grounds were bleak. There’d been no lights in the building since it had been decommissioned and the only illumination came from the moon, half buried behind these rain clouds, and the weak glow from the housing estate across the field. Seth’s family still lived down there, what was left of them. Malc had called on them once or twice without Seth knowing. Mr and Mrs Loomis had both been good to him as he grew up, taking him under their wings when his own parents divorced and his mum became ill. Sure, they probably thought having him come round after school most nights was no big deal, but to a boy struggling to find some stability in his life, it meant the world.
And Seth had barely spoken to them since he’d moved out.
On the trek here, the rain had been incessant and Malc was well and truly soaked. The one good thing was it had done a decent job of rinsing away the mud from his field trip on the marshland. But now he was freezing and longed to get somewhere dry.
Ravenmeols Hospital was not what he had in mind.
His skin tingled the nearer he got to the Victorian edifice, like pins and needles all over his body. It had been years since he’d been this close. When this was last open to patients, there had been plenty of visiting clergy, all saying the same thing, that the place was not welcoming. He thought of that scene in the Amityville Horror when the entity screams at the priest to “Get out!” and he wondered what he might do if faced with such opposition.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, he thought.
There was no sign of life. No cars. No lights. Perhaps he’d got it wrong or maybe the event had already finished and everyone had already gone home, safely.
Or perhaps it had gone the other way and they were all in serious danger inside.
Cautiously, he walked up to the main entrance and admired the stone steps and the great double wooden doors with trepidation. Nothing was right about this place. His head felt like it was beginning to suffer from a cold. There was a pressure building up, like hands squeezing against the side of his temples. He shook his head to clear the sensation then sprang up the steps. The main door was locked.
He knocked and waited. Then he knocked again, louder this time. And he counted to fifty in his head. If they were all busy at the far end of the hospital or on a higher level, there was zero chance they’d have heard him, and even if they had, it would take them a while to get down here. So, he concluded a recce would be in order. The ground-floor windows were all boarded, but undeterred, Malc tried to pull one of the boards away. No chance. It was solidly nailed. The next was the same, and although the third looked in urgent need of replacing, it was tougher than it looked and despite managing to prise one corner up, it was only by a couple of inches and the rest of the nails refused to budge.
Around the back of the hospital, things seemed more promising. He recalled now that the building was laid out in several blocks surrounding a courtyard. The gates leading into the courtyard were locked, and he found the heavy chain that had been fed through and knew there was little chance of him getting through that. A quick wander past the gates revealed nothing he didn’t already suspect. The gates were how his friend had entered the building. He peered in through the edges of the frame and saw the outline of several cars parked up at the far end of the courtyard. One was parked a few feet away from the gates, looking like it was ready to leave. There was no one inside, though.
At the top of the gates, a tangle of barbed wire gripped grumpily and Malc knew this would be troublesome. Troublesome but not insurmountable. Malc dragged two pallet boards left by the side of the old gatehouse and leant one against the gate. Then carefully, he dragged up the second and rested it rather haphazardly on top of the first. Now, he had something he could use to climb, and he reckoned so long as he didn’t fall and break his neck, he’d be able to get up there and reach the top.
The pallets were wobbly but made a reasonable ladder of sorts, and he was quickly at the summit. From here, he had a fair view, as long as he ignored the barbed wire swirling in front of his face. Malc worked out of his jacket and slung it over the top of barbed wire. The heavy leather would protect him to some extent but he was fully expecting to get some injuries. And then there was the drop on the other side.
The longer he left it, the more chance there was of him talking himself out of it.
“You can do this,” he said to himself, then grabbed at the top of the fence, jumped and swivelled his right leg over. The sudden instability on the pallets caused them to slide and fall back, leaving Malc stranded, straddling the fence. The ground looked a long way down.
Suddenly, he saw movement in the main hospital building. A wavering light was moving past several windows on the ground floor. These weren’t boarded up.
He had to hurry. He was a sitting target. Too exposed.
He swung his left leg over and found a handhold at the top of the gate and let himself dangle then drop to the ground. He suppressed a moan as the impact aggravated his ribs, and he scrambled to the gatehouse and ducked inside, leaving the door open a sliver so he could keep watch. The gatehouse was a small one storey building containing two rooms and looked to have most recently been used for storage. The shadows ruled in this space and the darkness behind and around him weighed heavy.
A door opened across the courtyard and a man with a torch exited. Malc didn’t recognise him but noted that he was alone—which in itself was odd considering the nature of the event. He supposed he could be one of the organisers and the others were all being taken care of by another. But his spider-sense was tingling, and he kept quiet, not wanting to reveal his presence to the newcomer.
The man strode to the van, pulling his coat collar up around his neck with one hand.
The Dark Corners Box Set Page 14