Cherry Hill

by James A. Moore

  “Well, I suppose that’s a possibility.”

  “Of course it’s a possibility. It’s almost a probability. Hell, factor in the people who probably were driven mad by being put in this place in the past and you can almost guarantee a substantial output of disenfranchised dead who either lost their way or wanted revenge badly enough to avoid whatever waits after death.”

  “We’re going a little off focus here, John. What makes you, personally, capable of seeing ghosts?”

  “I already told you I have no idea.”

  “Do you suppose it’s just a manifestation of a psychosis, maybe brought about by the deaths of your family?” And maybe, Finney thought, that’s what I like about him. I don’t have to dummy down my vocabulary. The man already understands the field of psychology.

  Crowley stopped pacing and looked at him with amusement once again marking his face. “I sincerely doubt it.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because if you’re thinking the ghosts I see are a side effect of my desire to be revisited by my family, at some point along the way, I would think I would, in fact, see my family.”

  “So you really think you saw a ghost this morning?”

  “Unless you can come up with a better answer, yes, I’m going to work on that assumption.”

  “So, you’re the parapsychologist, John. How does one get rid of an overpopulation of ghosts?”

  Once again, he was trying to make a little joke. Once again, the reaction wasn’t what he expected. Jonathan Crowley closed his mouth and sat back down on his cot. “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”

  Roger Finney left this patient alone after that, puzzled by the man’s reaction. Had anyone asked him at that moment why Crowley had suddenly shut up he would have bet his license that the man was scared to answer. Very scared and trying not to let it show.

  ***

  Crowley sat on his cot again and rocked, his stomach a seething stew of nerves. Discussing the theoretical existence of ghosts with an intelligent, if slightly biased, man was a lot of fun. That didn’t mean he had any desire to explain the proper methods for getting rid of the things.

  That was a road he didn’t want to travel down. Every time he thought about actually doing anything to prevent or limit the activities of the dead, he wanted to panic. It was unsettling as all hell, because he didn’t know why the feelings were so strong. He just knew it would be a bad thing for him to do.

  He’d been reflecting on that very thought for close to half an hour when the door to his cell opened again and Finney came back in along with Harrington and two security guards.

  John looked at them for a few seconds and held his arms out, ready to be manacled again.

  The doctors smiled silent thanks and the guards did their business. It wasn’t long before they were taking him down the hallway to one of the examination rooms.

  He looked at Harrington, who was doing his best not to look nervous. Whatever had happened in the previous interrogation had apparently left the man a little jumpy. That suited John just fine. Harrington wasn’t a bad person, but he definitely had a few issues in the humility department.

  “John,” Finney started. “We have a busy day scheduled for you. First, we want to go over your x-rays with you. Then there’s the possibility of surgery to consider and also another session with Sodium Pentothal therapy to see if there’s more we can discover.”

  “Surgery?”

  “Yes, John. We’re going to take a look at your x-rays, like I said, and then we’re going to discuss the possibility that what’s inside your skull might very well pose a serious threat to your health.”

  “How much risk can there be, Doc? I’ve had the damned thing in my head for a while now.” He didn’t like the idea of anyone opening his skull. As far as he was concerned, if it wasn’t loose and moving around in there, it could stay put.

  It was Harrington that answered. “Jonathan, you have to remember that the human body tends to not like foreign objects placed inside of it. While it’s possible that whatever is in there is perfectly harmless, there’s a very real chance that your body is trying to attack it as an invader. You could develop serious fevers, infection, or worse. Also, with the brain being as complex as it is, you could very well be suffering side effects from the damage that we’re just now starting to see.”

  “Like what?” He knew the answer but wanted to get a second opinion.

  “Well, your amnesia, for one. There’s also your earlier psychotic break.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” He shook his head. Maybe they were right. Maybe increasing brain damage caused all the nonsense about ghosts and his brief recollections of far worse things. That was the problem with being insane. You just didn’t know if you could trust your own feelings and insights.

  The thought that his mind was broken left him feeling adrift. Everything he believed to be might be as Finney had said and Ebenezer Scrooge before him, “a bit of undigested beef.”

  “Jonathan, please believe me, we want to help you.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the man walking a few paces behind him. Instead of trying to answer, he merely nodded his head. What else could he do?

  The examination room they led him into had a light board on one wall and a series of x-ray slides were already mounted in plain view. Rather than sitting down he looked at the slides, studying the details they presented.

  The object lodged in his skull was jagged along one edge and obviously synthetic in nature. Worse, it looked like whatever it was had either fragmented on impact or was in the process of breaking up.

  “My memory isn’t what it should be gentlemen, what parts of my brain are being affected by the location of the foreign matter?”

  Harrington looked the pictures over and stared at them with the same sort of expression Crowley suspected he’d been wearing.

  “John, this is yet another enigma when it comes to you,” Finney shook his head. “You shouldn’t be alive at all with that sort of damage to your gray matter. As near as we can tell, there isn’t a part of your brain that hasn’t suffered severe damage, but you’re still alive and even odder, you’re alive after having that inside of you for a long time. I’ve examined your cranium, and I can’t understand how it even got inside of you. You don’t have nearly enough scar tissue or damage for what we’re seeing.”

  To make his point Finney moved over and showed a line of bone that was slightly out of place. The wound was old and obviously healed, but Crowley had to agree that it shouldn’t have been there.

  “Guess I have a good constitution.”

  Finney and Harrington looked at each other for a moment and then back at him. “You’re not exactly our normal patient, John. Under a lot of circumstances we wouldn’t bother asking, but as this is your head and you are well aware of the risks, we’ve decided to let you in on the whole process. If we leave it, you’re obviously at risk. If we take it out you’re just as at risk, possibly more so, but you will also have a chance of living a much longer life.”

  He thought about that for a while and the doctors let him do his thinking. Their expressions said they were ready to answer any potential questions, but not really in a hurry to make him decide.

  “Okay. If I leave it alone it will probably continue to degrade, leaving me at risk of severe infection, more brain trauma, possibly increasing whatever psychosis I might already have. If I let you take it out, there’s no guarantee the brain tissue around it hasn’t managed to recover as best it can and you might well do catastrophic damage to what’s left of my brain. That about sum it up?”

  “Yes.” Both doctors answered.

  “Gentlemen, according to what you’ve been able to discover about my life, my wife and family are dead and I am alone in the world.” Harrington started to say something but Crowley held out a hand to stop him. “I’m not getting any younger, and my best prospects currently include spending the majority of the rest of my life in a ten by ten cell do
wn the hallway.”

  Harrington cleared his throat and spoke. “There’s always the possibility of a successful operation, Jonathan. You could well have a long life ahead of you and with therapy, you could come out of this on the winning side.”

  “That’s true, Doctor. That’s why I say go ahead and cut me open.” He crossed his right leg over the artificial left. “And thank you. I know you weren’t actually obligated to consult me.”

  Despite his slowly growing base of memories, he couldn’t believe there was the remotest chance that he would ever be set free. Better by far to either die on the operating table or suffer enough traumas to end all of the delusional thoughts moving through is head.

  Better dead than stuck like this.

  ***

  Kimberly was looking over her latest test scores and making notes for the next exam. She sat in the cafeteria and ate her meager lunch while she read. Her shift was finished, but her next class wasn’t for four hours and it was easier to study in the cafeteria and drive straight to the school instead of traveling home first and trying to accomplish the same task. There were too many distractions at home and the travel time was a bear. Besides, she might get lucky and get a little help from one of the doctors on a few of the tougher questions. They had all been down the road she was currently trying to travel.

  Doctor Sebastian came in and sat at the table with her, and Kimberly smiled. Sebastian was a hefty man with dark hair and a beard, who was also charming, flirtatious and completely safe to be around. When he wasn’t dealing with patients, he was normally on the phone with his wife.

  He smiled and then carefully opened the brown bag holding his lunch. His smile faltered a little when he saw the dry tuna fish sandwich, celery and carrot sticks.

  “If I didn’t know Marion loved me, I’d think she was trying to kill me.”

  “Well, you did tell me you were trying to lose weight, Charles.”

  He sighed and shook his head dramatically. “Yes, that’s true. But still, does diet food have to be so damned bland?”

  Kimberly laughed and slid him half of her bologna sandwich. “No mayo, just mustard.”

  “Will you marry me, Kimberly?”

  “I think I have to go with the same answer. I’m not much into polygamy.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” He took a bite of her sandwich and savored the luncheon meat as if it were the finest filet mignon. She knew him well enough to know that if she’d given him liverwurst instead he’d have been in heaven.

  Without asking he picked up her latest test and started reading it. As he had always been nice enough to help her study, she took no offense.

  “You knew the answer to number eight.” His voice was scolding.

  “I know. I was just tired.” Every time he chastised her she felt like a five-year-old caught with a stolen cookie.

  “Well, I can’t imagine why. It’s not like you work full time.” He winked and leaned in closer. “I don’t imagine it would take much of a nudge to get you moved to a different floor if you prefer. I know working in the dungeon can be taxing.”

  “You know, I actually like working down there.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “It’s mostly quiet.”

  “Well, I have to give you that one. You can’t really say the patients around here stay quiet for long.” Charles opened his mouth for another bite of forbidden sandwich and stopped when something vile fell from the ceiling and landed square on the white bread.

  Whatever the substance was, it was black, foul smelling and still moving.

  Kimberly pushed away from the table and looked up at the same time that Charles dropped the sandwich. A moment later there was a creaking noise from up above and Dr. Sebastian stayed put, looking at the ceiling with a puzzled expression as he caught a deeper whiff of the sweetly rotten aroma.

  The ceiling had been fine when Kimberly entered the room. She’d have sworn on it in a court of law if the situation ever came up. Now the acoustic tiles were sagging heavily above their heads and the stench from whatever it was that was trying to come down was enough to make her eyes water and her stomach threaten rebellion.

  Charles Sebastian got out of the way only seconds before the table where they’d been sitting became the target of a deluge. Thick syrupy waves of what smelled like leftovers from a charnel house splashed across the table and sprayed outward, covering both of them with more of the same. Something heavy and solid fell at the same time and the weight of the unrecognizable lump shattered the pressboard tabletop.

  Doctor and nurse alike let out loud screams and backed away, their eyes fixed on whatever was resting on the remains of their lunches and her school work.

  They were still staring, still trying to understand everything that had happened when the security guards came into the room.

  ***

  Carl Branaugh looked over the scene with obvious disgust on his face. Per his request, no one had moved anything in the cafeteria, the only exception being the two people who’d been in the room when the ceiling collapsed. They were both cleaning up and he couldn’t say he blamed them for trying to wash off whatever had hit them.

  He looked at the thickly coated lump and could guess that at least part of it would be body parts. The smell gave it away if you’d been unfortunate enough to be around enough dead people. He had.

  He took several pictures for his own files and let the county team take care of their own photos.

  He tried to focus on the details in front of him, but it was hard. Whenever he let his mind wander even a little he was back with the old man in the interrogation room who said his dead sister was looking over his shoulder. Worse, he could almost feel her staring at him in disapproval. His life, like most peoples, had taken a few unexpected turns along the way. The notion that his sister might well have been watching at the darkest moments in his life was not soothing.

  He pushed the thoughts away again and sighed. There were more pressing matters to attend to.

  Matt Burton, the local medical examiner, walked up quietly and slapped him on the shoulder. Matt seemed to enjoy trying to make him piss himself. It was one of the things of which the old man never seemed to tire.

  Carl resisted the urge to either scream, wet his pants or backhand the old coot. “Not a very pretty sight, is it?”

  “No, I can’t say that it is.” With a very perfunctory look around the cafeteria, the man pulled on a pair of gloves and walked over to the weighty lump that rested on the devastated table. Carl had seen the man carve open a few cadavers and never once seen the man blanch at the odor or sight. He looked ready to get ill just staring at the mess in front of him. Still, he carefully reached out and started collecting samples for examination.

  Branaugh moved away. Despite his own morbid sense of curiosity, he decided he’d wait to hear from the good doctor before he entered the room.

  Several members of the staff were milling around in the hallway, some of them surely just curious and others worried about possible health risks. Carl moved to the first one who looked familiar, in this case he believed the man’s name was Harrington.

  “Doctor.” He nodded. “Any idea what happened here?”

  “Actually, I was just going to have my lunch, but that’s not looking like a very good idea.” The man looked like Christmas had just been cancelled.

  “No, not today it isn’t.”

  “Well, I suppose dinner is only a few hours away.” He looked like he was ready to call it a day already.

  “I wish I could help, Doctor, but I have a few people I need to interview about this latest situation.” If his voice carried an edge he didn’t try to hide it. Whatever was going on at Cherry Hill was rapidly becoming a true annoyance. He could have done without another ten-mile trip to the local loony bin. “Can you tell me where I can find Dr. Charles Sebastian or Kimberly Walker?”

  “I saw Charles a few moments ago. He was just drying off. I think he said he’d be in his office.” Carl had no idea
what sort of politics took place in a mental hospital, but he knew well enough the look on the doctor’s face. There was bad blood between the two men. He made a mental note of the fact, though he doubted it would come to anything. He thanked the man for his troubles and moved down to find Finney. The man was in charge of the building and would probably want to, once again, assure him that he had no idea what was happening in the building.

  That’s the part I hate the most, he mused. No matter where you go, no matter whom you ask, it always seems like no one can admit to knowing anything.

  ***

  His eyes were closed and his body relaxed, but there was nothing calm in Jonathan Crowley’s mind.

  A thousand faces passed through his sleep, some familiar and some as alien to him as the red sands of Mars. Each spoke, formed words, but despite all of their differences, they spoke with one voice.

  “You have to remember.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “There’s no choice, really. It’s what has to be done. It’s what you’ve always done.”

  “I quit that. I quit you. I wanted a life, a real life.”

  “I gave you time for that. You squandered it away.”

  “I’m old now. I want to be left alone.”

  “No. There’s much you need to do.”

  The words were insistent, demanding.

  He wanted nothing to do with them.

  “We had a deal and you broke it!” He screamed at the endless array of faces that flashed before him, his rage building, consuming his sorrow.

  “You had a lifetime. You wasted it on foolish dreams and hopeless pursuits.”

  He saw only the faces, the ever-changing series of features that blended into each other and obscured his ability to see anything else. He felt something though, a presence, a towering, monumental force that swelled with the power of a hundred tsunamis. Whatever that something was, it no longer wished to be denied.