Cherry Hill

by James A. Moore

  Roger tried to be understanding. He knew the sort of pressure the jobs at Cherry Hill could cause, but he wasn’t willing to be gentle with either of the people who were under his charge. He wasn’t in the mood to be gentle anymore.

  Several of the doctors working under him were starting to show more disrespect than he was accustomed to. Not in big ways, but in small gestures and comments that they didn’t think he noticed.

  The worst of the lot was Phil Harrington, who was looking a little too smug lately. Roger knew why he was looking that way, too. He’d already received a phone call from William Coltraine, the head of the supervisory board for the institute. There was going to be a review of protocols and procedures, which was a nice way of saying that the shit was about to hit the fan. He hadn’t had a chance to write his resignation, but he was fairly sure they’d be asking for it. Too much had happened under his command and the chances were good they’d want to use him as a scapegoat.

  Roger dealt with his part of the reports involved in the cases, including firing both of the employees. Should either of them manage to avoid jail time through some miracle, they would not have a job to come back to.

  Then he headed for his office, mostly to avoid any more conflicts and to finish the paperwork that had been on his desk for the last few days.

  He settled down in his chair, picked up his pen and died of a massive coronary two minutes after he’d started. It was several hours later when his body was found.

  By then the worst of it was over.

  ***

  Jonathan Crowley sat perfectly still for a long time, his mind going over the ramifications of what he now knew. A living entity that could consume the dead was not exactly the normal fare, even for him.

  Amelia sat in the room with him, and made as little noise as she could manage as she kept sorting through the papers he’d brought back from the attic.

  She cleared her throat before actually speaking and he looked her way, less annoyed than she was expecting. “I’ve got listings for where the bodies were buried here, Jonathan. And I’ve also got receipts made out to Dr. A. Miles for disposal of “unwanted children.” Do you suppose that means he took them to an orphanage?”

  “Well, I’d hope so.” He rose from his bed and stretched. “So, let’s go over what we know, shall we?” His voice went into what she thought of as lecture mode: His tones subdued and almost questioning even when he was stating a fact. “We have a living entity that is breaking most of the rules. It’s dealing with the dead and the living and doesn’t seem to understand either very well.”

  “How can it do that?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. As a starting point, I think part of the problem is location. There are a lot of pent up emotions in this place and mostly they’re negative. So, strong negative energies allow it to fester unnoticed. I think what we’re dealing with is young and inexperienced but only because a lot of what has happened seems more experimental than deliberately cruel.”

  “How so?”

  Jonathan looked at her, his face still calm. “For starters, it manifested a dead body. I don’t think it created it, so much as pulled it from somewhere and tried to figure out how it worked. We still don’t have an ID on the corpse, but the clothes were old. Then I saw it try to make a new body of its own and fail. Then it tried at least one more time and failed. So, trying to generate a form it can use, but without much success. I think we can be grateful for that, by the way.”

  Amelia frowned, thought about asking a question and changed her mind. He was on a roll and it was best to just listen and ask questions when he slowed down again.

  “Now then, it’s been hungry. We can see the evidence of that. I saw the ghosts it had attacked and we’ve both seen what was left of a few of the people it either consumed, played with or both. It’s also playing with trying to understand human emotions and sensations, as evidenced by what it did to you and by the two hours or so where everyone in this place got pissy out of the blue.”

  “You think it was manipulating minds?”

  “Absolutely,” Crowley nodded his head enthusiastically. “You felt it yourself before it attacked you.”

  “So why weren’t you affected?”

  “I probably was. I’m still trying to sort out a lot of different experiences from my past in my own head. So, frankly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed much of a difference. On the other hand, we had a nurse go crazy and a couple of guards try to beat each other to death from what I was hearing in the hallways.”

  “But I—”

  “You were too busy recovering. I sedated you through the worst of it.”

  She nodded again and shut up, aware that he was starting to get impatient. He wanted to finish his train of thought.

  “We know it took energies from ghosts, we know it took at least mass from several living victims. In one case, it took something from a patient on my list to be watched. It took a lot of power. You took some of that away and I took it from you.” He shot her a look that dared her to argue with what he’d done and she chose not to give him a reason to lose his temper. She understood why. He didn’t have to remind her that she wasn’t exactly human.

  “That leaves two people with the same sort of potential, and I think one of them might actually be hosting this thing.” He moved over to the stacks of paperwork and started tossing files aside until he found what he was looking for. “Alexander Granger and Paul Cioffi, his fingertip tapped a written note he’d made for himself on the files. “One of them is probably responsible for this, or at least connected. The other is likely going to be a target for this thing, because they both have a lot of power, and it needs to get back what was taken. It probably won’t try for you again, and even if it does, this room is warded, so you’re safe in here. As for me, well, let’s just say I’ve had at least a couple of run-ins with whatever this thing is and I think it’s going to be careful around me.”

  Jonathan hadn’t mentioned any previous encounters, but he wouldn’t have. It wasn’t his style.

  “So you need to find Paul Cioffi and Andrew Granger?”

  “Alexander, but close enough. Yes. Once I’ve done that, I think I can solve this as long as whatever it is doesn’t get what it wants in time. If I can find it inside its host, I might be able to keep it there.”

  “Okay, so what happened outside yesterday, when the walls flickered?”

  “Ah. Now that is the part that has me worried. I don’t know if it was trying to break down the barriers between the living and the dead or if it was causing some sort of temporal disruption, but either way, it can’t be a good thing.”

  “How bad would those cases be?”

  “No barrier between life and death would be devastating. All those mean old ghosts would start feeding on the living and in a few weeks or maybe as much as a month, there probably wouldn’t be much left alive. Temporal rifts? Well, time isn’t meant to be repeated and the damage would probably be localized, but it would also be a bad thing. Bad as in anything from dinosaurs eating people to whatever the future holds coming back here to try to fix previous mistakes. In the long run, it would sort itself out, but there would probably be a lot of damage in the meantime. Either way, I’m supposed to stop that sort of thing from happening.”

  “Right. Bad enough.”

  “Exactly. Not necessarily end of the world, but up there on the list of potential disasters.” That said Jonathan headed for the door to their shared office.

  “So I’m supposed to stay here?”

  He nodded and waved instead of speaking.

  Amelia sat alone in the room and rested. He’d forced sleep on her before and it had helped, but now she wanted a chance to rest her mind. It seemed that trauma could be wearying. As she’d been sheltered for a good portion of her life, she hadn’t had too much actual experience with the sensation. Given a preference, she’d avoid it in the future.

  ***

  He’d just left his makeshift office when h
e ran into Phil Harrington.

  “John! Just the man I wanted to see.”

  “What can I do for you, Doc?” He did his best to act cheerful instead of sarcastic. It wasn’t easy.

  “I need to run a few tests, if I can. I need to check your vital statistics and do a couple of x-rays.”

  “It’s going to have to wait, Doc. I have things I need to do first.”

  “Jonathan, it’s not exactly a request.” The man stepped in front of him and placed a hand on his chest. Most people would have received a broken wrist, but John felt a certain affection for the doctor, despite his butchery of a few patients’ minds.

  “My answer hasn’t changed. This time tomorrow, if you want to look me over, I think I can pencil it in the old daily planner, but for now, I have to deal with stopping something bad from happening.” He stepped past the man again.

  “John, don’t make me call the guards.”

  “Dr. Harrington, don’t make me stop the guards. I told you, tomorrow.”

  Sure enough, as John started walking again, Harrington bellowed, “Guards!” and along they came, five men in front of him and five more at the far end of the hallways behind him. He could hear them moving into position.

  “Doc, I really am getting a little tired of this.”

  “John, you’re delusional. Believe me, this is for the best.”

  So far the guards were simply standing at the ready, including the pudgy man he’d had a run in with a while back. Most of them looked perfectly willing to cave his skull in if they were given the order, but for now, they were patient. The group in front of him had out batons, and one of them was carrying a straightjacket that Crowley would have bet money was meant for him. Like as not the group behind him was similarly equipped.

  “Okay, Doc. Let’s try this one more time. I’m willing to barter. Let me have two hours, and then you can do whatever it is you want to do.”

  “No, John, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. Please hand over the keys that Dr. Finney gave you and come along peacefully. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  Crowley smiled. “I don’t want to see me hurt, either. But I’m not going with you.”

  Harrington nodded his head curtly and stepped back four paces. That must have been the signal because the guards came from both directions, and they looked determined to take him down.

  They wore riot armor, thick pads that would reduce any impacts to their bodies. They also wore helmets and at least a few of them had guns.

  “Doc, I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

  Harrington was looking pretty confident. He had every reason to look that way, or at least that’s what he thought.

  John reached out and grabbed his arm. Before Harrington could do more than let out a squawk, Crowley had an arm around his throat and his body positioned as a perfect shield against almost any attack.

  “John! What are you doing?”

  “I told you I can’t go with you now, Doc. I meant it. Call off the goons or you’re going to get hurt when they start swinging.”

  “John, the guards here know the situation.” His voice was shaking, and Harrington’s body was tensed up in anticipation of a potential beating. “You’re considered a danger, and their first priority will always be to stop you from escaping.”

  “Listen, nothing personal, but isn’t Finney supposed to be my doctor now?”

  “Not yet. He hasn’t made the transfer request.” Oh, the venom in those words. Harrington was pissed off about the whole situation.

  “I get it. You just don’t like losing a patient.”

  “What? That’s nonsense.”

  “Really? What were you planning, a lobotomy or just something more mundane?” Crowley was smiling now as the guards came closer, his voice lowered to a whisper. The way Harrington twitched told him he was closer to right than he wanted to think about. “You’re a sick man, Philly. You really are. What makes you think I wouldn’t recover from whatever you did to me?”

  The guards stopped ten feet away from John and the good doctor. Their faces were all different but wore the same expression John had seen in several wars. They were resigned to taking him down, regardless of the cost.

  John took several slow, deep breaths, waiting for one of the guards to step closer. Finally, a foot moved forward and he spun, hurling the good doctor with all of his might. Harrington let out a wail and flapped his arms madly, as if he might finally learn to fly. Three of the guards flinched and the other two tried to catch the man.

  Both guards and the doctor fell on their collective asses, and that was when John made his break for it.

  The guards were ready. Two of them moved forward to block his passage, lifting their clubs and swinging at his head like it was the start of baseball season. John caught the one on his left across his forearm and received a solid bruising but avoided a concussion. The one on his right he blocked properly, knocking the baton away from the hand carrying it. His elbow caught the guard in the unprotected part of his face, and he winced both at the sudden pain and at the sound of the man’s face breaking. He didn’t want to hurt the guards more than he had to, but he also had no intention of letting them beat him down.

  The guards didn’t seem to have the same qualms. One of them smashed the back of his thigh with a club. He’d been aiming for the knee and missed. That was a good thing for John, because it also put the man in the right position for a kick to the side of his head. The helmet might have stopped any injuries, but the impact was enough to send the man reeling backward.

  Harrington tried to untangle himself from the guards he’d bowled over, and Crowley shot a knee into the man’s head hard enough to knock him senseless. The falling doctor successfully kept the two who’d caught him too busy to bother with John for a moment. That only left seven men intent on beating him to death. The next one apparently played a little too much football back in the day. He let out a bellow and jumped into the air. Crowley caught him in mid-leap and used his own momentum to introduce him to the closest wall.

  That left a small opening, and Crowley used it, jumping over the doctor and the guards and landing on the other side of the group. Not surprisingly, they decided to give chase. Crowley ran hard, moving for the main entrance of the building. He had no intention of leaving just now, but if they decided to follow, that was fine with him.

  The main lobby was simply laid out: there were a few chairs for people who might be waiting to visit a family member—normally they were empty—and there was a large island of a desk where the security guard sat. The usual guard wasn’t there, but another man had taken his place and was busily reading a newspaper.

  He didn’t look up when Crowley came by, which was a testimony to the man’s ability to move quietly. John crouched at the front of the man’s desk and waited for the guards to come storming through. And come they did, running as best they could in their heavy riot gear and calling out for him to stop.

  The guard at the desk turned to look at them and lowered his newspaper, obscuring John’s view. John reached out, grabbed the offending collection of articles and threw it to the side. The guard turned fast and stared at him.

  “BOO!” The man did not, despite Crowley’s wishes, immediately faint dead away. “Eh, it was worth a try.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Escaping from the bad men with weapons.”

  By that point the guards were moving around the island, ready to pounce again. John stood and stepped onto the desk itself. His foot punted the confused doorman in the face and then he was moving again, running over the top of the island and back the way he’d come from.

  One of the guards had tried to outsmart him and stayed back, ready for anything Crowley tried. He drew the pistol from his side and started to take aim. John jumped, clearing the rest of the large desk, and kicked him in the chest for all he was worth. The guard hit the ground hard, and his revolver followed a second later.

  John ran again looking for a proper way to get rid
of his local lynch mob. Adrenaline hummed through his system and he had to admit he liked the feeling.

  Up ahead he saw one of the doors for the stairs and he dug into his pocket to grab his keys. There were only two keys on the thing, one for the stairs and one for his office. With his typical luck, he got the wrong one first and wasted thirty valuable seconds trying to fit it into a lock it was never designed to work for.

  Two of the guards reached him before he could get the door open. The first one was fast and hit him in the ribs. The second was a bit slower, and John blocked the blow before he could take another cheap shot. The time for playing was over, and the rest of the guards were closing in fast. The arm he’d used to block slid up to catch the guard’s wrist, and he twisted it hard, snapping the bones. The man let out a roar of pain and Crowley punched him lightly in the Adam’s apple. The blow didn’t kill the man, but it left him gagging.

  The other guard didn’t waste any time swinging again. The club bounced off John’s shoulder as he tried to duck. The advantage of wearing padded armor is, of course, that you’re most sensitive areas are protected. That meant he didn’t have time to beat the guard into submission, so instead he shattered the man’s kneecap and then pushed him aside. As the man screamed, Crowley opened the door and then closed it as fast as he could. He was already on the ground level. The only choices were up or down. He chose to descend, as that was the direction he’d planned on going anyway. If he was lucky, he could find both of the men he was looking for and put an end to the growing dangers. If not, he’d have to play it by ear.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It left Alex Granger’s body on a mission, determined to consume the last of the Seeds and to finally manifest itself, one way or another. It had the knowledge, or so it believed, and it would soon have the power. Now all it needed were the raw materials, and that would be easily enough handled.