by H. P. Bayne
“So I guess we don’t have a choice.”
Dez offered him an apologetic smile. “I guess not. If it helps, you can come stay with Eva and me for a while after this thing airs. At least you could avoid the weirdos if they figure out where you live.”
“So they can figure out where you, Eva and Kayleigh live too? No, thanks. Maybe I’ll be lucky this time.”
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
Sully gave a rueful smile. “No.”
Dez patted Sully on the shoulder—the best comfort he could provide under the circumstances—and led the way back into the office. There, they found Ed, Kevin and Leanna deep within an intense conversation.
Dez figured no one would mind if he cut in. “Hey, folks? You can ditch the strategy session. We’ll do it.”
4
Sully’s nerves were fraying as Kevin led him, Dez and Leanna down the hall, back toward the lobby and, from there, the gates leading to the prison proper.
His desire to avoid publicity was far from an exaggeration. The months after he’d been forced to out himself as a psychic had been a nightmare. He and Lachlan had received numerous nasty emails and letters from religious zealots who believed what he could do was a gift from Satan himself. They’d been besieged by people feigning to be potential clients who were actually either infatuated with Sully or who wanted advice on problems to do with the afterlife far outside his realm.
Worst of all, Sully had been stalked by two different people—one a woman who was convinced they were soul mates destined to be together forever and the other a disturbed man who claimed God had called upon him to remove Sully from the world. Sully had had to call police on them more than once. He was pretty sure they’d eventually been taken for psychiatric assessments since they’d finally stopped coming around.
That might change the moment he wound up on television. Worse yet, he might find himself with even more unstable people.
But as loath as he was to repeat history, he had a job to do. Having the abilities he had, he had certain responsibilities to meet. While he wasn’t sure he cared much about some of the ghosts trapped in a prison, he knew he couldn’t ignore the problem and allow human lives to be put at risk.
So here he was, trailing behind a man intent on gaining publicity for a new business and the producer of an obnoxious ghost-hunting show.
He guessed his feelings showed in his expression when Dez patted his back. Sully met Dez’s eye and forced a smile—bringing on an extra pat.
Kevin was providing something of a history lesson as he led them past the open gate. Sully had largely tuned him out so far. The building history would be fascinating, no doubt, if he were here on a leisure tour. But when here in his capacity as a psychic, the only history he was interested in related to the pasts of the individual ghosts he’d need to deal with.
“The hall we’re in connects the administration building and the prison itself,” Kevin explained. “It was built in the nineteen sixties to create an intake area for new inmates. At one time, they simply tossed everyone into general population. As the prison expanded, it split offenders up differently based on type of offence, mental health concerns, degree of violence or security risk, gang involvement, that type of thing. The intake area allowed prison staff a couple of weeks to evaluate a new inmate and decide where best to place him.”
Leanna had removed her cellphone at the start of the tour, enabling her to video-record both Kevin’s remarks and her surroundings. Annoyingly, she occasionally swung around in a circle, giggling as she captured Sully and Dez in her shots.
Sully did his best to drop his head every time she started to turn. But out of sight wasn’t out of mind. The presence of Leanna and her camera was distracting, and distraction was a problem he couldn’t afford. Already, the creeping sensation had begun, the dawning of the realization they were far from alone. Like Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital, Pineview was a place awash with energy. But while Lockwood’s ghostly inhabitants were basically good people with serious psychiatric problems, Pineview’s were something else altogether. Though plenty of prisoners suffered from mental health issues or substance abuse problems, which fuelled their behaviours, some of them—certainly some Sully could now sense—were simply bad people.
Born bad or turned bad, he didn’t know. For his purposes, it probably didn’t matter. His job wasn’t to fix the problems of all, nor to goad each of them into leaving this world for the next. Even negative spirits who wanted to harm the living usually couldn’t. But apparently at least one could. And his sole purpose here was to find that ghost, figure out how to get it to cross over, do it and get out. If he could manage it today, well before the program was to be filmed, all the better.
But that would require time alone, away from Leanna and Kevin. Ed had already stayed back, and Sully sensed their client had no desire to step foot inside this place again—at least until he could be assured the threat had been erased.
Sully focused on his surroundings. Moments like this weren’t pleasant, this reaching out consciously to the psychic energy of a place. Kind of like reaching blindly into a snake pit, if he had to compare it to something.
But he stretched out anyway, searching out the energies with his mind and instinct, feeling along their edges, picking out one spirit from the next through subtle differences in thought and emotion generated. He sensed two, then three, then four. Five, six, seven. Eventually, he stopped counting. So many of them here, far more than he’d ever expected. Way more.
“How many are there, do you think?” Dez whispered to him.
“No idea,” Sully said. “I stopped counting at twelve, and that nowhere near touches on the number.”
The subtle paling of Dez’s features was as expected as morning following night and gave Sully a quiet, much-needed laugh.
He could feel them, yes, but he couldn’t see them. Some would have died of health problems, no doubt, or of suicide. So far, no homicides. Those he would at least be able to see. In a way, though murdered spirits could present a frightening image, he found a strange comfort in the known and visible. Here, without his sight to guide him, Sully was forced to maintain a constant focus. Already, he could feel them pushing in closer, attracted by the light he’d been told his aura emitted. A beacon for the dead, one he sometimes wished he could temporarily suppress.
He pressed a little closer to Dez. The eyes of the dead were on him, some curious, some distrustful, others downright hateful. Those were the ones he needed to be aware of. One spirit in particular had pressed in next to him, invading his space in a way that felt more than uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Dez hissed.
“I’ve got a bad one on me.”
“The one who attacked Ed?”
Sully cast a glance ahead to see if Kevin and Leanna were paying attention. Leanna was busy chattering to Kevin about camera positions and best shooting locations inside. In answer to Dez, Sully shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s pretty dark, but I don’t think this one has the power to physically hurt non-psychics.”
Dez clued in. “But he can hurt you.” He reacted as Sully expected he would, shifting Sully so he was walking on his other side. Though Sully appreciated the effort, all it accomplished was a similar switch in where the ghost positioned itself. It pressed in on Sully’s other side now, and he suspected if the spirit were still in a human body, a man’s face would be less than an inch from his.
Sully had one card left to play. He needed to open himself to other spirits—including the most dangerous one he had yet to lock in on—and he couldn’t do that with this current distracting presence. He’d learned in recent years not only how to draw in the ghosts but how to interact with them in the same way they did with him. He could shove spirits away if necessary. And given the threatening nature of this spirit, such an action at this moment struck him as absolutely necessary.
He attempted a less invasive move first. By locking in on the ghost, he sensed the boun
daries of its energy, enabling him to turn his head to fully face it. “Back off. Now.”
For a moment, it did, giving him a few inches of space, as if his sudden turn had been a physical punch. But it snapped back a second later, even closer—close enough to force Sully to glimpse a portion of its conscious thought. Even a second was both long enough and too long, the ghost revealing itself as a predator of the vilest kind. Sully made a mental note to send this one on its way later.
Then he acted, no longer needing, as he once had, any build-up or focus to do it. Sully simply pushed out his own energy, fast and forceful—a very real punch to the ghost this time. The presence flew away under the weight of Sully’s power. It didn’t return.
“What happened?” Dez asked. “Something changed.”
“Got rid of the hanger-on. I’ll do a more permanent job of it later. In the meantime, I think he’ll give us some space.”
Dez nodded, his jaw clenched tight.
Free of the predatory ghost, Sully reached out again. More spirits hovered nearby, perhaps some he’d sensed earlier, maybe some new ones. What was only now coming to him was evidence of the presence of the ones he could see—ones who had died unjustly at someone else’s hands.
One—a skinny man with a receding hairline, a violent tremor and a significant head wound—stood within a cell they passed. Another prisoner prowled within the small space of a cell, back and forth, back and forth. His body, Sully noticed, was soaked head to toe in blood.
Sully glanced back. The shadows moved. Three more came into view, each clad in clothing marking them from different times. Two crossed through each other as they stepped forward from the darkness, and Sully wondered if they were unable to see each other. Did they at least sense each other, the way he and even Dez and others could sense what wasn’t visible? Or were they completely oblivious to everything outside of their own remembered world and the living who now trundled through it?
Six homicide victims so far. Within a Victorian-age prison, Sully suspected he’d find even more before he and Dez put this place in the rearview mirror for the final time.
As if on cue, Kevin turned to him. “So, Mr. Gray, do you see anything yet?”
Not knowing the best way to answer, he settled on the easiest reply. “Sully. Call me Sully.”
Leanna seemed to sense something in his expression. She pulled up short, drawing everyone in their small group to a halt. “You do see something. What? What is it? Where?” Her head spun in all directions, as if she too would notice something if she looked fast enough.
He shrugged. “They’re everywhere, Ms. Rogers. Everywhere you look, you’re probably staring at one.”
Dez’s arm, brushing against Sully’s, shuddered. Leanna, however, perked up. Her eyes danced, her mouth turning up into a wide grin, reminding Sully of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. He briefly entertained the notion he’d fallen down the rabbit hole.
She moved to his other side and hooked an arm through his. “Call me Leanna, Sully. I have a feeling by the time we wrap things up, you and I are going to be very good friends.”
Sully was pretty sure he’d never heard a more unlikely statement.
5
Sully trailed behind the others as Kevin led the group up to the middle tier and, from there, along the catwalk and through a closed swinging gate.
When Kevin gave it a push, it banged against the wall.
His voice echoed back toward where Sully stood next to the stop of the stairs. “I swear, we leave these open every time we leave and yet it’s always shut when we return.”
Leanna made a show of opening and shutting the gate, as if watching to see whether gravity—or some other, more exciting force—might snatch it midway. Sully stood back while she filmed, following the group only once they continued.
“I’ve just led you onto the range that once housed the men who were awaiting execution,” Kevin said. “Death row. If you look straight ahead, you can see a large window in the main wall. At one time, a doorway stood there, leading out to the scaffold. When the death penalty was abolished, the prison disassembled the scaffold and opted to put in the window you see here. Two schools of thought exist as to reasoning. The official one claims it allowed in more light. The more cynical view is that prison officials wanted to give inmates a glimpse to the former execution site as something of a reminder of what had once happened there. A warning, if you will. I think there would have been many at the time who wished the death penalty back—and likely believed it would be.”
Kevin and Leanna shared some more conversation about prison executions and death row itself, but Sully had stopped listening again. His attention had trailed off, wandering the range ahead of him. While much of the prison he’d seen so far remained populated with ghosts, this area seemed particularly full. Each cell he passed contained spirit energy, with some holding more than one inmate from varying times. Sully peered into the cells’ interiors along the way, failing to see anything. Execution might now be considered morally wrong, but whatever power guided his psychic gift hadn’t deemed these spirits wrongfully killed so as to allow him to see them.
“I don’t even want to ask,” Dez muttered back at him.
“No, you probably don’t.”
Dez turned fully anyway, drawing Sully up short. Dez’s eyes fixed on his with an intensity clearly born of anxiety. “We don’t have to take this job, Sully. We really don’t. I’ll break it to Ed and Lachlan myself.”
“You don’t need to do this, okay? But I do.” He could feel it now, a crawling sensation of dread from somewhere up ahead. Kevin and Leanna had stopped next to the farthest cell and were deep in conversation. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were standing outside the cell where the condemned spent their final night.
Their final mortal night, anyway. Even from here, Sully could feel it.
“It’s full,” Sully said. “The whole place, but this range especially. It’s like no one’s ever left. And the cell on the end.”
“Hell’s Gate.”
“What?”
Dez grimaced. “Kevin said it was dubbed Hell’s Gate. The last one prisoners slept in before their executions. They were led out from there the next day and through the door onto the scaffold.” Dez cast a nervous glance behind him, in the direction of the cell into which Kevin and Leanna had now disappeared. “You’re saying all those executed men are still there?”
“I don’t know about all. A lot, for sure. Some of them, I think came back into these cells, but the energy of that last one—I can feel it even from here.”
“No wonder,” Dez said. “Think about all the tension and fear and anger inmates would have felt in that little space. Makes sense the walls would kind of soak it up. Maybe it makes it harder for them to leave. What I don’t get is why they stay. I’ve spent less than an hour in this building, and I can’t wait to get out.”
“I don’t know, not really. I can guess though. I mean, we’re talking about a cell called Hell’s Gate, right? People used to be a lot more religious. If you genuinely believed you were about to go to hell, wouldn’t you just decide to stay put instead? I mean, this place is awful, but it beats all the church stories about eternal damnation. As for why they stay in the prison, I think maybe they don’t have a choice beyond the initial one. If they choose to remain on earth instead of crossing over, then they’ll remain where they died—imprisoned. Look at all the other ghosts we’ve helped. They get trapped in whatever reality they were living when they died. Not often the place where they died, but could be a prison is different. Maybe if you’re locked up in life, you stay that way in death.”
Dez raised a brow. “Good lord, it’s bad enough to pay money to stay here for fun. Can you imagine being stuck here forever?”
Problem was, Sully was doing more than imagining. They were all around him, these embittered permanent residents, their actions in life having trapped them forever in this hellhole. He agreed with Dez—the idea of booking a room h
ere for the sheer excitement of it flummoxed him. The past had never left this place. While he understood the necessity for jails, the fact was cooping up a bunch of people with a propensity for bad deeds was only going to result in more. Combined with the bitter, rage-filled, seething spirits who haunted these halls and cells, and you had a recipe for full-blown catastrophe. No wonder some prisons seemed to constantly report riots, murders and suicides. Pineview had been one of them. Only a short time inside these walls, and Sully could see exactly why.
“What are you guys doing back there?” Leanna called.
Sully peered around Dez to see the producer peeking out from the cell at the end of the hall. Once she saw Sully looking, she waved an arm as indication for them to join her and Kevin.
“Come down here. I’d love your opinion.”
She disappeared back inside. Sully debated turning around and beetling it out of here. He could still investigate the place without needing to do it in front of Leanna Rogers.
Dez offered a weak smile. “Let’s get this over with, all right?” But he didn’t immediately move, instead casting one more glance back toward Hell’s Gate before returning his eyes to Sully’s. “Or can you? Sull, if it’s that bad and you can’t, we don’t have to.”
Sully heaved a breath. “It’s that bad,” he admitted. “But that’s exactly why we do have to. I can’t ignore it. What happened to Ed will happen again. I can tell just by standing here. Problem is, there are so many ghosts here, it’s hard to home in on just the one. I need to be right in there if I’m going to try to get a read on who we’re dealing with. I meant what I said. I need to stay, but you don’t have to.”
Dez’s eyes narrowed. “Like hell.”
Sully gave him a grateful smile. Then he led the way down to the cell at the end of the hall.