Having just been told he was a terrible liar, Zach chose a version of truth. “Winkler had ‘em when I got here.”
“Weird! Hey, is that a Sci-D water bottle?”
“Hey, listen,” Zach said, hoping to change the subject. “I’ve got a feeling Joey is in Rosewood and my intuition tells me I need to go in there alone in order to—”
Footfalls approached them in rapid succession from the same direction Zach had come. Before either could stand, a deep voice called out. “It’s after midnight—technically that means it’s ‘tomorrow.’”
“Who’s there?” Ray growled.
“Are we awake?”
Upon hearing the Blazing Saddle’s quote, Zach took a deep breath and stuck his arm out to hold Ray down. “That depends,” Zach whispered, unable to stifle a smile. “Are we black?”
“Yes, we are and I’m very confused! What are you white boys doing nappin’ on the job?” He twanged the last line in a Slim Pickens drawl, a parody of a Blazing Saddles movie quote.
Hunter emerged from the pitch. He was fully clothed in black. “You boys wouldn’t be able to see me at all except for the full moon,” he said.
In the commotion of the night, Zach had never noticed the moon at its apex. Hunter was probably right. Even with ample moonlight, it was hard to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I felt called to come back tonight. I intended merely to stand on the back fence line to try and contact the doctor. I saw the hole in the fence and came on through. When I saw you two clomping through the trees, I figured I’d better tag along. Just in case.”
“Yeah, you’re just in the nick of time, thanks,” Ray said. He and Zach stood. Ray still cradled his right hand in his left.
“Is he alive?” Hunter cocked his head and peered at Winkler in an odd sort of way.
“He’ll survive,” Ray said. “Prolly wake up with a hell of a headache.”
“He was a whiskey shot away from passing out anyway,” Zach said. “With any luck we’ll find the kid and be gone before he wakes. With a lotta luck, he won’t even remember this in the morning.”
Hunter continued to stare down at him. “No. He’s no threat to us. To himself, maybe, but not to us. Better take his cell phone just in case.”
Zach did and also located the custodian’s keys.
“Okay, are we ready to go in?” Ray headed towards Rosewood’s entrance.
“Hold on guys,” Zach said. “I really feel strongly that I should go in there alone.”
“And I feel really strongly that I should get sex from Natalie Portman any time I want,” Ray said. “But ain’t gonna happen…neither of ‘em.”
“No,” Hunter said. “Hear him out.”
“Listen, I can’t explain it. I just feel it. And I know you guys will try and protect me at all costs…” He sighed. “What if, what if you just give me ten, maybe fifteen minutes in there? Hunter, you go try and make contact with the doctor. Try and solicit his help over here. Something big is going down tonight. More than just a little boy missing. Do you feel it?”
“I feel it, brother.”
“Ray, call Rebecca and tell her there was a change of plans. Sneak out and around to the security guard at the main entrance and meet her and Joey’s mom there. Tell them that we’re getting permission to come in and look and stall them there as long as you can. Ginny’s presence here will only hurt things.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what if it takes longer?” Zach didn’t even wait for him to nod. “I’ll give you Winkler’s keys, so you can break ranks and barge in whenever you feel you need to. You could even get away from those guys and sneak back through the fence hole. Just give me fifteen minutes. Please.”
Ray reluctantly agreed.
“And Ray? Get some ice for your hand. You’re of no use to us long-term with a maimed paw.”
They shared a chuckle, albeit nervous and brief. Zach retrieved the custodian’s wayward flashlight, clicked it off and decided to bring it along as a backup to his night vision goggles. He unlocked the front door and tossed the keys back to Ray who snatched them with his good hand.
They stared up at him, waiting to leave once he entered. It seemed something should be said. It felt like he should say…something. But all that he wanted to say, all that needed to be said was too much. Anything spoken would come across as trite. So he said nothing to his friends, and they said nothing back.
Zach turned and journeyed into Rosewood’s murk. Behind him, the door shut.
Chapter Forty
Zach had no idea where Joey would be, but he knew the first place he’d look. Also, he hoped to contact Evelyn. He needed to solicit her help.
Zach passed through the lobby. Through his night vision goggles, the scattered electronic equipment in the ancient vestibule gave the impression that the past had somehow smashed into the present, or perhaps vice versa.
He thought he should at least make a half-hearted attempt to avoid a prolonged search. “Joey? Joey are you here?” He thought of adding, “It’s the guy from TV,” but did not. He was especially grateful he didn’t when the echo brought his words back at him. Hearing something that stupid in his own voice repeated back to him would have caused him to lose all self-respect. He stifled a chortle. What was it about libraries and terrifying, deserted, haunted asylums that brought out the giggles in people?
“Joey?”
No such luck. Zach would need to look for him and for Evelyn in the basement. That meant going down the basement stairs. He’d nearly put his last experience on them in the dark, out of his mind. He opened the door that led down, took a deep breath and tried to put it out of his mind again. This time, he told himself, he had night vision goggles. Still, he was having difficulty making out the stairs, but taking his second step, he had the thought of throwing caution to the wind and sprinting down them. Then the low battery indicator flashed urgently in his field of vision. They’d been fully charged earlier in the evening and the battery should have lasted several more hours. A phantasm had obviously sapped it. Was draining it.
Zach was taking his third step down when he heard an echoic voice. “Turn back!”
Zach wasn’t afraid of Evelyn—however, on the staircase, it was difficult not to wonder what other spirits haunted Rosewood’s basement. At night. During a full moon.
Quickly, he took another step down. And another while the night vision picture flashed. Another as it faded and was gone. He stood in complete blackness. He took off the goggles and placed them against the wall.
A shriek whistle emanated from somewhere on the staircase. It rose in pitch until Zach’s ears hurt. “Who are you?” a voice boomed.
It was one of Angel’s Whistling EMF-EVPs. Seemingly a lifetime ago, but it was only hours, he had told Angel to place one there. It must have been forgotten in their rush to leave Rosewood. The siren continued to signal paranormal activity. “Why are you here?” Angel’s recorded voice asked.
The hair on Zach’s arms stood straight up. His whole body tingled.
At the bottom of the stairs, a faint light came into view. Zach used the glow to locate the EMF-EVP on the steps and switch it off. He looked back and saw an apparition. It was a little girl. She was hazy at first, as though emerging from fog. Dressed in rags, her hair was unkempt. She took a step up toward him.
“Evelyn, is that you?” Zach yelled.
As if in response, the girl pointed up at him. Her mouth opened exposing a swollen tongue. Her lips never moved as the words came. “Get out!”
A chill ran through Zach. It was as if ice water crept up his legs and once it reached his waist, shot up his spine. He took a chance and stepped toward her. “Evelyn, a little boy is missing. We need to find him. We need your help.”
The image wavered. It flashed and disappeared. In its place stood the skeletal remains of a burn victim. Flesh, sparse and charred, hung off the bones. There was a black-light glow that emanated from its core. It stood there glaring at
him. Zach hoped this was Evelyn. He couldn’t be positive that it was her, but he knew it was not John Paramour. Of that he was certain.
Zach’s leg trembled as he inched forward to the next step down. “No,” he said, softly. “You’ll not scare me away. I need your help.”
It, the thing, screeched. It was a terrible ungodly sound of pain and suffering. Zach thought of the air trapped in a balloon squealing as it escaped through a clamped opening. This noise was misery escaping through a stretched portal.
Zach took another unsteady step towards it. He stood just three or four stairs away. The thing vanished. Its scream continued in echoes off the walls down the basement’s hallways. Again it was pitch black.
Zach considered pulling out the flashlight, but that had an extremely limited battery source. A spirit could drain it with very little effort, and then he’d be stuck with no way to flee in case of real threat. He pulled out his cell phone and used the soft glow from the display to light his way. He continued down the stairs one at a time. The interaction with the entity left Zach more convinced that it was Evelyn. It was she who was the mysterious ghost woman of Rosewood. It made sense. She tried to scare people away using her own abilities in an attempt to keep them safe from John Paramour, the real danger.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs and headed down the hallway where she’d been found over a century ago. Was she even hiding back then? Hiding from him? Zach suspected she was.
“But why hide now, Evelyn?” He meant it to be a question but, echoed over and over, his words sounded more like an accusation.
“We can fight him. Fight him together.” The repeating echo of “together” sounded encouraging. “Help me find the little boy and stop John from hurting him!” The reverberation of those words jumbled together. Zach was approaching the area they’d caught her both on camera as a female form on her way to meet him at Muses, and on EVP recordings made by Rebecca and Patrizia.
“Evelyn, please?” Zach let all the fear and worry and concern get expressed in his voice. “I need your help. Please talk to me.”
“Leave this place. Leave!” It came from all around and echoed meekly off the concrete.
“I’ll not turn back. I’ll not leave,” Zach said.
“You’re not afraid?”
“No, Evelyn, I’m not afraid of you.” Zach said, softly.
The basement air, already stale and chilly became ice cold. She materialized out of the darkness about twelve feet away. She looked like the elderly lady he’d originally met. Taking a few steps toward him, she regressed in age—grew younger. A pretty lady not much older than him—her age at her death. It was hard to think of her as this age—so young. Her hair chopped short had, during that time period, helped her look crazy. By modern day standards, it was in style.
“You’re in danger,” she said. “You need to keep your friends away from here. I’d hoped that perhaps…”
“That we’d solve the case and get rid of him?”
“No, no. Not like that at all.”
A long ago lesson had stayed with Zach, mostly because he thought of it every time he heard the song, Billie Jean. Zach considered the advice of Monsignor Macginty.
Take care of it in yer head, before the lie becomes the truth.
Dead over a century, it must be difficult for Evelyn to distinguish between the truth and what she wished was reality. She lived in the shadows between the living and the world of her past. From what Zach knew of her short life, it had been filled with deceit and intrigue. He needed to know the truth; Joey’s life might depend on it.
“Evelyn, once this is over, we’ll stay away. Everyone will. I promise.”
“It would be best that way,” she said.
“First, I need to know what happened—an innocent boy’s life is in danger. Please tell me the truth.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Why did you come to Rosewood?”
“It started one day when John was at work, I accidentally came upon his plans. They were terrible, terrible writings of hate and power. He wanted to be a god. He wanted to be the God. He wanted to be a demon. He was insane. I knew I had to hide, not run.”
“Why run or hide?” Zach asked. “Why not report it to someone? The Mayor or someone big?”
“Think about it,” she said, her voice cracking. “A young woman alone standing up to a powerful man, a police chief? In Chicago? Let’s be realistic, these kinds of things just don’t happen, Mr. Kalusky.”
Zach considered Evelyn being raised a full generation prior to women gaining the right to vote. It would be difficult enough in modern times to bring down a police chief with unsubstantiated accusations of demonology, back then it would surely have been scoffed at. Then a thought really hit him hard. Who knows what he would have done to her.
Zach shuddered.
“In any case,” Evelyn continued, “with John’s resources in the police department, he’d find me if I ran. I bought a train ticket to Springfield. I boarded the train with my packed luggage. I got off the train at the first stop without my bags, without virtually any possessions. Thomas picked me up and brought me back to Pullman. He brought me here to Rosewood.”
“Thomas Carter?” Zach verified.
Evelyn’s eyes welled with tears. “Yes, dear Thomas.”
“You two were lovers?”
“Oh no!” She raised a translucent hand to her mouth. “Not at first anyway. That was only much, much later.”
Zach wanted to ask a question but hesitated. It involved Thomas’s murder and he knew it would upset her.
“At first, I thought that I’d only stay at Rosewood a short time. I’d let John either get caught for his crimes, or for him to give up on trying to find me. I knew Rosewood would be the very last place he’d ever look. Because of his mother, he feared and despised ‘the insane’ as he called them. Besides, who would have ever suspected?”
“And Thomas?” Zach asked. He hoped she would give him the information he needed without having to ask her about it.
“Thomas was very kind to me and he provided me with everything that I needed. During the daytime, I was free to stroll the grounds. The nurses and other orderlies knew I wasn’t their ward and assumed me to be a visitor, a do-gooder that liked to visit the infirmed. I did so enjoy getting to know some of those people.”
Her face clouded, darkened. Evelyn looked more pale than when she had first appeared. Her skin wasn’t just whiter, her entire image appeared to be losing color, fading.
“When Thomas ended up dead and John tried to frame me for the murder, I knew that if I stayed, it was a matter of time before he got to me. I pleaded with Dr. Johansson to let me go. He knew from something called a fingerprint that I was innocent of the crime, but I couldn’t convince him that I didn’t belong here. I knew that if I made too much of a fuss, or told him what I knew of John, not only would he really think me insane, but that John would…”
“Have you done in?” But she’d skipped over something important, Zach thought.
“Yes. Now, with the strength he’s acquired over the years, over any period of time he cannot be endured, he cannot be resisted. He manipulates people to do his will. Other crimes, he commits himself. Hiding and flight are the only options.”
“What about defeating him?” Zach asked. “What about getting rid of him for good?”
“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said. “It’s all I can do to keep him away from the hospital building. Look at what he did to your group. His subtle manipulation influenced them dramatically over just two days.”
“My group?”
“Well yes, the Mexican boy lighting candles all over the place. The Asian girl, smoking drugs. The tall guy with the weird haircut waiving his funny cigarette around where one loose ember could light the whole property on fire. Do you think these are accidents? Coincidences? He puts ideas into people’s heads. He promises them things.”
Zach said nothing.
“Thin
k what he can do over time. Imagine his affect on the young, the lonely and the feeble minded.”
Zach thought of Wendy’s description of the 1998 arsonist. He was homeless, bipolar and he was hearing voices—voices that told him to burn down the Pullman Factory.
“Usually, John preys on women. Before I came to Rosewood, John burned down the Pullman Market Square because he claimed two female spirits were haunting it. His writings stated that he burned down the H.H. Holmes ‘castle’ to purge it of lingering female spirits.”
Zach was familiar with the concept that fire burned and incinerated human spirits. It was a hotly contested debate in the paranormal circles. Zach had once asked Hunter his opinion. “Better to be safe than sorry,” he’d said. “If I’m ever a ghost, take care that I’m exorcised and sent to the light before anything burns down my haunting site.”
Evelyn’s figure continued to lose color. The glow about her was diminishing.
She continued. “I need not mention John’s motive for burning Rosewood’s female quarters. To murder his wife, yes, but to kill as many women as he could.”
The matter of fact way Evelyn spoke of herself in the third person and glossed over her own death didn’t surprise him. Many lingering spirits confused the details of their passing. She was rambling now. Sharing everything that had been bottled up in her for over a hundred years. But this was information that Zach might need to do battle with John Paramour.
“Even his final act of arson,’ she said, “setting himself ablaze, which to some might appear an act of weakness or surrender was a deliberate and planned act. What the official history doesn’t report, what decent people of those times would never print in an official record, was that he first marked the spot with a pentagon. He surrounded himself with grisly souvenirs, trophies, if you will, of his crimes. He wanted—still wants to become a demon god.”
Zach sensed that his time with her was growing short. With every passing moment, she seemed to be more and more translucent.
“Before Thomas’s death,” she continued, “I assumed Rosewood would be the last place John would look for me. After the fire at the female’s quarters, I hid quietly here in the basement again. I let John think that I’d departed. I had no intention of leaving and letting him completely take over. Someone needed to thwart his destructive schemes. Could you imagine the havoc he would wreak if they’d made a school or museum of Rosewood? All those children. Oh, my heavens no. I did what I could. I frightened people away. I limited his damage.”
Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum Page 26