Crowley woke up in a heavy sweat, his sheet tossed to the side and his body sprawled on the cot. The pain in his head was a raw, unending scream and his hands clenched at the fine hairs near his temples as he groaned.
Damn it! There was something he was supposed to do, he could sense that, but whatever it was, it scared him. More importantly, there was a sense of urgency now, a sense that if he didn’t do something soon, he would regret it.
Whatever he’d been dreaming, however, was fading away. His dreams always did.
“Yeah, just like my life.”
With nothing else to do and no other way to occupy his time, Crowley grabbed another bar of soap. He held it for several seconds, wondering what shape would come forth as he started to whittle. Really, there was only one way to find out, so he picked up his plastic knife and began gently carving away flakes of the stuff to see what would take form.
He knew he’d had another session with the doctors, but couldn’t for the life of him remember what had happened after they’d shot the meds into his vein.
“They’ll tell me when they’re ready.” His hands moved deftly over the soap, and he could feel something taking shape, but he didn’t let himself look. He seldom bothered with paying attention to the form until the time came to carve the finer details.
The tension was leaving his skull, easing away the pressure that had threatened to crush him. He let his mind drift again, trying to sort out the vague memories that littered his mindscape. There was still no real rhyme or reason that he could find to help him understand the fragments as he sorted them. There were only images, remembered sensations and occasionally a sense that everything was missing.
That and an uneasy feeling that something was going wrong in the building around him. Something was changing at Cherry Hill and not for the better.
“Not my problem anymore.” He spoke without paying much attention to what he said. Whatever came out of his mouth, he knew would only be the ramblings of a mad man.
A mad man who would be going through surgery the very next day. He remembered that much. Surgery in the morning, a chance to end his nightmares and his delusions, even if the ending only came with his death.
That thought pleased him more than he expected. It wasn’t so much death he was looking forward to, not really. He just wanted everything to change. He didn’t want to remember anyone or anything anymore, at least not if he couldn’t remember the faces that were most important to him.
He didn’t want to hear voices or see ghosts. He didn’t want to stare at the walls around him for whatever remained of his life, and most of all, he didn’t want to go on for a moment longer if all he had to look forward to was the growing anxieties that seemed to make up most of his days.
For the briefest moment he thought he smelled perfume, a faint hint of jasmine, perhaps. Whatever it was, the scent was familiar and comforting.
John set aside his soap and his plastic knife and closed his eyes trying to focus on why the scent was familiar and pleasing. The memory eluded him, like most all of his memories managed to do these days.
Exasperated, he settled back down on his cot and did his best to wait patiently for the morning and a chance, however slim, that the day after that would be better.
It might have worked better if he’d waited until nightfall. It was only a little after one in the afternoon and he’d already been in a medicated sleep for half the day.
***
Roger Finney shook his head and sighed. The police detective, Branaugh, that was the name, and the coroner were both looking at him for explanations and he just didn’t have any.
“Dr. Finney, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but come on, now. So far we’ve had two people mutilated and a corpse rammed into a drain pipe and now this.” He held out the picture as if, by some miracle, Roger would have forgotten what the damned thing looked like in the last ten minutes.
Once the layers of goo had been wiped away, the full horror of what had been dumped in the kitchen could finally be seen: it wasn’t a person, for which Roger was grateful. That didn’t make him any more comfortable looking at it. He considered himself a man of science and looking at the mass displayed for him made it harder to keep his foundations in place. The lump weighed in at close to a hundred pounds, and seemed to be made of bone, meat and internal organs that had been fused into a new form. One blind eye stared out of the mass, and not far from that a half-formed foot curled in on itself. What he had to guess was a spinal column—minus a large number of bones—cut through the body, but there was no sign of any coherent structure to the entire thing. It looked to Finney as if someone had gathered pieces from a half dozen people and then rolled them in dough and let it rise until everything was knotted together.
He looked away from the picture.
“Gentlemen, believe me, I want this solved as much as you do. More, probably, because I have staff members seriously considering leaving me to handle this entire place by myself.”
“You’re sure that there haven’t been any bad accidents around here lately?”
“I’ve already done a head count. Everyone that is supposed to be here is here, gentlemen. I didn’t even have anyone call out sick today, which is something of a miracle, I assure you.”
Branaugh was pacing, stressed and frustrated. He threw the photo down and shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense. What especially doesn’t add up is why that…thing, was above the break room when the only thing up there was concrete ceiling and a fourteen inch crawlspace.”
“Have you ever found out the identity of the man in the drain pipe?”
Branaugh shook his head and scowled. “No. As near as we can figure the man doesn’t exist. His clothes were very out of date, like by fifty years or more, and he didn’t have any form of identification in his wallet. The wedding ring on his finger had an inscription on the inside with the initials I.A. and that’s all. Not even a date to make it possible to look through any existing records. His finger prints might be on file somewhere but it’s going to take months before we get an answer on that.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think Crowley was right about this place.” He muttered the words just to say them, but Branaugh stopped pacing when he said them.
“Okay. Maybe that’s something you should look into then.”
“Excuse me?”
“The bodies of both Ernst Holbrook and Adam Prescott came back negative for infectious diseases and toxicology screens. Well, Prescott was apparently on a lot of medications, but there was nothing going on inside his body that would explain why portions of him were just missing. There was nothing to explain how a big man wound up inside of your pipes and I can’t see how that mess,” he shoved his finger at the offensive photo again, “could have wound up in the ceiling of the cafeteria with no one the wiser about it being there.”
Branaugh sat down and stared hard at Finney, once again making the doctor nervous. “So unless you can come up with a logical answer, and believe me, I’m trying to Doctor, maybe you ought to check with Crowley about any connections he might remember in the parapsychology field. Or maybe you should seek an exorcist.”
The older man he’d brought with him chuckled softly and volunteered, “I have a nephew that’s a priest.”
Finney didn’t throw anything at him.
“Well, perhaps you’d like to ask him yourselves, gentlemen?”
Branaugh nodded without any hesitation. “Sure. I’ll take any help I can get at this point.”
***
John looked at the men sitting around him and shook his head. He recognized the doctors, of course. They were his most common source of interesting conversation and he would even have gone so far as to say they were fun to be around in a miserable way. He knew the detective as soon as he saw him but couldn’t remember his name and the old man was a stranger, but looked a few years younger than he was himself.
“Why do I get the impression this isn’t about my impending surgery?
”
The detective looked at him blankly for a moment until Finney explained.
“Well, I’m sorry about the surgery, and good luck, of course.” John nodded his thanks. “What I wanted to talk to you about is your work in parapsychology.”
His stomach did the butterfly trick, the one where it feels like a thousand or so of the little bastards are flying around in an enclosed space. “What can I help you with?”
“Can you recommend anyone to give Cherry Hill a good looking over?”
The tension left; not all of it, but a lot. For a moment he’d been absolutely certain they were going to ask him, instead they just wanted a contact. “I have one phone number that pops to mind when I think about that. I’ll write it down and you can use me as a reference.”
“Whose number is it?”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion.”
Branaugh’s eyes went wide and then narrowed slightly. “Are you pulling my leg?”
John pulled on his chain and rattled it where it connected with the floor. “Not very likely.”
The old man kept staring at him with a hefty level of doubt on his face. Finally annoyed with the look, John turned on him sharply. “Listen, no offense, but take a picture. It’ll last longer and cover all of the pertinent details.”
“Excuse me?”
“Quit staring at me. I’m not a freak in a circus and you’re starting to get on my bad side.”
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was—”
“My ass you didn’t. You want to ask me something, ask it. You want to stare at me, kindly look elsewhere.”
“John, there’s no reason for that sort of behavior.” Harrington moved closer as he spoke.
“Bullshit! You try getting the third degree and dealing with looky lou’s at the same time. Check how it feels.”
While everyone around him shifted uncomfortably, Crowley took a piece of paper and wrote down the phone number that came to mind when they asked their question of him. He wrote in large numbers because the only writing implement he had access to was a crayon. He slid paper and red wax coloring stick alike over to Branaugh.
“There.”
“Thanks.”
John leaned back in his seat and stared at the old man sitting next to Branaugh. “So if you have a question, ask it.”
Without any hesitation and most decidedly judging by the looks, without permission of the doctors in the room, the older man pulled a photograph from a file in his hand and slid it across the table for John to see. “Okay. Any idea what that is?”
He looked at the picture carefully, leaning over the table to do so. “A mess? Disgusting? An extreme close up of a miscarriage?”
“That mass was found in the asylum this afternoon,” as soon as the older man started speaking both of the doctors protested, calling for him not to agitate their patient. He ignored them completely and continued, raising his voice to be heard. “It weighs just over eighty pounds, was surrounded by a very large pool of foul smelling black fluids, and fell out of the ceiling in the cafeteria. We already know that there are no pipes, no drainage areas and no medical waste dumps anywhere in the vicinity.”
Crowley leaned back again and looked directly at Harrington. The doctor looked back at him with just a hint of shame peeking around the corners of his stoic expression.
“Okay. Take samples of the meat, the bone and the crap that was around them. I’m guessing you’ll find the meat is human and so is the bone. The fluids will probably be a very simple cellular structure, similar to an amoeba. They’ll also all be very dead.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I have amnesia. I’m guessing here. And I’ll try to remember where I’ve run across that sort of thing before, but check it out first.”
He looked around at the two doctors and their guests. Both doctors looked like they wanted a few words alone with the older man. He looked like he could hold his own in any argument.
“So, Detective Branaugh, why don’t you and I talk over here and you can send the doctors down to argue with your friend about the inappropriate use of one of their patients.” He put both hands against his face and widened his eyes. In a mock whisper he added, “The bad man made me look at dirty pictures!”
Branaugh looked at his associate and the man shrugged and stood up, moving to the far end of the room. Both doctors followed immediately, ready to have their discussion on professional decorum when handling violently insane patients.
John looked at the detective and smiled. “I know you want to ask me questions. I can see it in your face. This might be your last chance, what with me having brain surgery in the morning, so ask them now or forever hold your peace.”
“Do you think the ghosts here are causing all of the troubles?”
“No. I think something else is doing it.”
“Do you think the number you gave me can help?”
“That’s why I gave it to you. Like I said, give it a call and mention my name. I don’t know who will answer, but I think it was someone I trusted at least.”
“What if the number doesn’t work?”
“Then you’re out of luck. I think U.C. Berkeley might have a program on parapsychology, but I don’t know for sure. When in doubt, try a few spiritualists. They may not help, but you never know.”
“Can you make a guess about what’s happening here, Mr. Crowley?”
“Sure.” He stretched and then popped his knuckles. “I think something wants to get born into this world and doesn’t know how to do it yet.”
The man nodded his head with a worried expression on his face. John couldn’t blame him. If he weren’t fairly sure the surgery would go poorly, he’d have been worried himself.
Chapter Ten
The scene replayed itself again: He opened the door to his house and stepped inside, content after a good day of classes full of kids.
His wife, his children, bound and gagged, the tableau one of the only memories that remains clear. He sees the stranger, a pudgy man with sweat running from the bald spot in the wave of salt and pepper hair, his eyes bloodshot to the point where they had to hurt, an idiot grin on his flabby face, and parts of his skin already patchy, strained from whatever was inside of him and trying to hide.
The mouth moves, but there are no noises this time, only remembrances of past threats. He drops his briefcase and moves, oh, how he moves, cursing the artificial leg that he tells himself doesn’t really bother him, pushing as fast and hard as he can to get to the man before it’s too late.
The gesture is almost trivial, a slight wave of one hand, and he feels himself lifted through the air, shoved backwards until the wall stops his progress.
The stranger walks away from his wife and he looks at her, begging her to forgive him for this, his dirty little secret, the one thing he was never willing to talk about, because talking would give power to his past and he wanted nothing to do with that anymore. He wanted to be where he was, with a wife and with children, living the American Dream and suffering the pain of every bruise and scrape on his body and soul, no matter how much time it took for them to mend.
His throat is sore from screaming, his arms ache from the pressure that holds him in place as the middle-aged stranger twitches, his muscles misfiring, not used to a new master. The man is still twitching as he lifts the hammer and the first of the thick nails—just shy of a railroad spike, really—he’s set near the door for just this moment.
The pain is immense, overwhelming any sensation he’s experienced in decades, even the loss of his leg. He screams and his family screams with him as if every hammer blow was pushing their limbs into the exact same wall.
When the worst of it was over, his good leg was bleeding. His arms bled too. The pain dulled down to an inferno and his mouth was so dry he could barely taste anything.
The shock is trying to set in when the stranger turns and heads back into the living room, back to his wife, where she sti
ll tries to get free from her bonds.
She screams again when the man’s fingers curl into her hair and start lifting her from the ground.
And Jonathan Crowley screams, calling out for mercy, but not from the demon he knows is hiding inside the stranger. No, he calls to the source that granted him a reprieve from his life. He knows that whatever happens next, he’ll have to try to stop the thing getting ready to ruin his wife. She means so much to him, more than he ever thought a human could.
Crowley’s eyes opened in the darkness. There was nothing to see except the light where it crept around the edges of his cell’s door and through the meshed glass of the small window.
The memories came harder now, more vividly than ever before and he realized with a start that he had lied to his doctor. He’d never gotten a chance to hunt down and kill the thing that had taken his family from him. He’d been on his way to do just that when the plane crashed.
Whatever fear he’d been feeling was temporarily crushed under the sudden fury that filled his being.
“I fucked up.” He sat on his cot and stared at the gray blurs of his hands. Even in near darkness, he could see the age spots, the fine white hairs and the thinness of his arms. There had been times in his past when he could have bent steel bars with his strength and now he was nothing; a dried up waste without enough coherent thoughts to do anything but quiver in fear at the thought of helping somebody with a simple matter of ghost infestation. The knowledge was there, somewhere, locked behind the rusting blade that was hidden in his skull. There were words he could say, simple commands he could give that would have changed everything if he could only remember them.
Worse than that, he knew even if he could say the words that he wouldn’t. He had never turned his back on a person in need, not unless the person deserved to be abandoned, but here he was, cowering in darkness instead of even trying because…
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