Ben’s eyes flipped to the garbage on the man’s desk, and a frown formed on his face. There were at least a half-dozen empty Redbull cans along with shiny wrappers from a myriad of energy bars.
“Who? What?” Peter asked.
Ben’s frown deepened as he stared at the man’s pinprick pupils.
“Jesus—how long you been up here?”
When the man just stared, Ben shook his head.
“Never mind. What’s wrong with the lights? The monitors?”
Peter blinked twice, and then seemed to snap out of his stupor.
“Dunno,” he replied with a shrug.
“Take that pen out of your mouth when you’re talking to me,” Ben snapped, unimpressed with the man’s casualness.
Peter obliged, his eyebrows lowering. His tone took on a more serious note when he spoke next.
“I have run every diagnostic I can think of and nothing has popped up yet. Best I can think is that the”—he pointed to a monitor of the outside of Seaforth Prison and the dark brooding clouds, brimming with imminent precipitation and the sea that splashed up against the rocks—“storm has some sort of pent-up electrical component.”
Ben scowled.
“Electrical storm?”
He didn’t like the sound of that. Unruly prisoners? He could deal with them. Even organized riots could also be dealt with.
But an ‘electrical storm’? That was something out of his reach.
Ben cracked his knuckles, wincing at the pain that radiated from his swollen joints.
“Can you do anything about it?”
Peter shook his head.
“The storm?”
Ben made a face.
“No, not the storm. I mean about the lights, the monitors.” Ben still had the uncomfortable sensation in his gut, something that told him that this storm and Carson were somehow related. His hand snaked into the neck of his shirt and he fondled the cross that hung there absently.
The strange words that Father Callahan had uttered still echoed in his mind.
“I’ve checked the generators, checked the backup batteries, put in some extra redundancies. I think—shit, none of this”—he gestured at the static that suddenly appeared across all dozen or so monitors—“should be happening. But I did everything I could to make sure that there are no major interruptions.” He shrugged. “What else can I do?”
Ben nodded, his face still stern. He glanced at Smitts, who was standing behind him, arms crossed over his chest.
“And Carson? What’s he doing?”
Ben turned back to Peter, who flicked a switch and the interior of Carson’s cell appeared in the center monitor.
The man was sitting cross-legged in the center of his room, eyes closed, hands resting gently on his knees. He wasn’t wearing any clothes.
“Where’re his clothes?”
Peter used the pen to point to the lower left-hand corner of the room.
“There.”
Ben nodded.
He felt hatred staring in that man’s face. Hatred for what he had done to Quinn, and the others he had killed.
Quinn…
A thought came over him then.
“Smitts, give us a second, would you?”
Smitts, who was staring at Carson on the monitor, a scowl on his face, suddenly snapped to.
“Warden?”
Ben nodded.
“Just give us a moment, will you?”
A dubious expression crossed the man’s stern face, and Ben could have sworn that he saw the man’s jaw clench. Smitts hesitated, and then nodded before turning and using his keycard to exit the room. The window in the door was filled with his back as he leaned up against it.
“Peter, I want you to do me a favor.”
The man looked up at him expectantly.
“Can you roll back to two nights ago? To when Quinn was killed?”
Peter swallowed hard.
“I tried to recover the film of that, Warden, but—”
Ben shook his head.
“No, not of Cell Block E.”
“Okay…”
“Can you find footage of me leaving my office and heading to the block—through the mess hall?”
Peter put the pen back in his mouth, and at first Ben thought that he was going have to provide more of an explanation. But the man quickly swiveled and turned his attention to his computer. Then he began clacking away at his keyboard, and the real-time CCD cameras from inside the prison switched to the smaller monitors that flanked the large, central one.
The big screen momentarily went dark, and then Peter pulled up a bunch of folders with different time-logs. A few more clicks, and then Ben was in the awkward position of seeing himself, sitting pensively in his worn chair, staring off into space.
“Here it is,” Peter said, leaning back again. “You want me to…”
Ben shook his head.
“No, stay here.”
His heart started to thump harder in his chest, pumping blood throughout his body, flushing his muscles with adrenaline.
It was just stress—Quinn wasn’t there. It wasn’t his spirit. Father Callahan was wrong, he’s off his meds.
But he had to know.
Warden Ben Tristen leaned over Peter, his swollen fingers gripping the back of the man’s chair.
He watched himself startled when the phone rang, then the subsequent one-sided conversation.
“Any audio?” he asked.
Peter shook his head.
“No audio on these cameras.”
Ben nodded and turned back to the monitor, watching himself as he bolted from the room.
“Follow me,” he instructed, and Peter flipped the image to another camera.
He caught sight of the back of his uniform as he ran through the gen pop area, then into the mess room. The camera switched again, and as Ben watched himself near the door to Cell Block E, where he recalled seeing Quinn clutching his face, he felt sweat begin to form on his brow.
And there was now a lump in his throat that wouldn’t go down no matter how many times he swallowed.
And then there he was…or wasn’t.
Ben watched himself on screen slow, turn his head ever so slightly, and then pause before continuing down the hallway.
There was no Quinn.
Ben exhaled slowly, and he released his death the grip on the back of Peter’s chair.
“Pause it,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Peter obliged.
“Is there anything—?”
Ben hushed him.
“Go back a few seconds,” he instructed. The imaged jogged backward. “Wait! Stop there.”
Ben leaned in even closer, and he could have sworn that he saw himself turn his head, and even his lips move.
What the hell? What—or who—am I talking to?
“Peter, no audio on this either?”
“No, no audio.”
Ben closed his eyes and then gently massaged his temples.
What are you trying to prove, Ben? What’s the point of this? Quinn is dead, you didn’t see him.
Eyes still closed, he reached for the cross around his neck again.
You shouldn’t have sent Father Callahan away. His story…there is something going on here. It’s all related somehow.
Ben just couldn’t shake the feeling.
“Alright, this is the best I got.”
Ben’s eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring not at the center screen anymore, but when he was trapped in his thoughts, his gaze had drifted slightly.
Now he was looking at the live feed from just outside the front door of Seaforth Prison.
And goddamn him if there wasn’t a person trying to get in.
“Want me to—?”
“What the fuck?” Ben whispered, leaning close to the smaller screen. “Who is that!”
“What? Who?”
Ben pointed at the monitor.
“There, right fucking there! There is someone coming up to t
he door.”
The pen fell out of Peter’s mouth.
“Shit, you’re right.”
The man leaned forward and hammered on his keyboard. The small image was instantly transferred over to the main monitor, and all of the air was forced out of his lungs in an audible whoosh.
“Father Callahan?” he whispered.
“Yeah, that’s him all right. I thought—”
But the words were taken from Peter’s mouth as the power blinked out and the room went completely dark.
Chapter 13
Even before Robert opened the door to the Harlop Estate, he knew deep down who was going to be standing there. What he didn’t expect, however, was the look of fear plastered on the man’s square face.
“Robert,” the man said, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. “I need to talk to you.”
Robert’s eyes narrowed as he examined the man standing before him. On the two previous occasions that they had met, the man’s short-cropped hair had been neat bordering on perfect, his suit and tie impeccable. Now, however, it looked like he hadn’t slept in days; his hair was a mess, his tie loose, the top button of his shirt undone.
After their previous encounter, Robert had vowed that if he ever saw Sean again, he would tear a strip off him, let him know what he really thought about the man.
But this…this was completely, wholly unexpected. And coupled with the strange daydream that he had just had, Robert knew that this wasn’t a meeting that was going to end as innocuously as a letter handed to him.
This was about something bigger, something far more important than a hundred-year-old estate and a hundred grand.
Robert stepped to one side and indicated that the man should enter. He hesitated and his eyes drifted over Robert’s shoulder.
“Shelly,” he said, with a simple nod. Shelly didn’t return the gesture.
“This is Sean,” Robert said in the form of a hackneyed introduction. “He’s the guy that gave me the letters. Told me about Leland—claims that he’s my dad.”
Sean raised an eyebrow at this. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Robert to share this information with her.
“Yeah, like the same way that Ruth was your aunt?” Shelly said, repeating the same words that she had used earlier when Robert had first told her about what Sean had said.
What do you really know about Sean Sommers? You look at me with such disdain…
For a second, nobody said anything, and Robert fretted that they were locked in a perpetual stalemate. But then he remembered Leland’s haunting words from his dream.
Father or not, the man could not be allowed to cross over into this world.
“Shel, ple—”
But he didn’t have to finish his sentence. The woman scowled, bowed her head, and stepped out of the way. Only then did Sean take a final haul of his cigarette, flick it away, and then step inside the Harlop Estate. The man loosened his tie even further before looking up at Robert.
“You got something to drink?”
***
“There is…there is a rift developing in the Marrow,” Sean Sommers said, his eyes focused on the golden-brown scotch at the bottom of his glass. “You’ve seen it, Robert. You’ve seen the evil there, in the flames. You’ve seen him, too.”
Robert eyed the man. He seemed very different from the other times that they had met.
“But it wasn’t all bad,” Robert said, remembering how fulfilled he had felt on the shores. “Not everything about the Marrow is bad, is it?”
Sean shook his head.
“It’s complicated, but the only quiddity that survive are the evil ones, the ones obsessed with the self, with their identity.”
Robert frowned.
“I don’t understand…”
Sean took a sip before continuing. A large sip, one that made his considerable Adam’s apple bob.
“That’s not important now; what’s important is that Leland only wants one thing. He wants to open a rift between his world and ours. He wants to come back, and that cannot happen. If it does…” Sean allowed his sentence to trail off.
“The quiddity, the faces in the flames, they’ll be back here?” Robert asked quietly. Just the thought of the faces morphing in and out of the fire was enough to make his palms sweat. “In our world?”
Sean nodded.
Shelly scoffed, a sound that shocked Robert into turning.
“And how the fuck do you know this shit? Hmm?”
Sean didn’t hesitate.
“Because it was in the book.”
Now it was Robert’s turn to look incredulous. He had scoured the Internet for weeks searching for information about the Marrow, and not once had he come across the mention of any book.
“Book?”
“Book,” he affirmed with a nod. “It’s called Inter vivos et mortuos, and it describes a time when the Marrow opens up, and the horrors are unleashed on all of us.”
“Oh, fuck this shit,” Shelly exclaimed, throwing up her arms. “I get that there’s something going on here, but this? What you’re talking about? This is bullshit religious mumbo-jumbo.” She turned her back to them and went to grab another beer. “Really? Lemme guess, a Jewish guy puts some fucking foliage on his head and ends up sunning himself high up on some wooden light poles? Turns some water and grapes into a shitty Merlot? That sound about right?”
“Shel—”
“Don’t fucking Shel me, Robert.” She gestured toward Sean. “Who is this fucking guy, huh? Why are you listening to him? Seriously, Robert, what do you really know about him?”
Sean went back to being stone-faced during the outburst.
“Shel—”
She held a finger out at him, and Robert stopped speaking.
Shelly was right, of course. Their eyes locked, and Robert felt his mouth go slack. He didn’t know what to say.
“Well?” she demanded.
Robert shook his head, and then slowly turned back to Sean.
“Who are you, Sean? Who the hell are you?”
Sean finished his scotch.
“I am nobody.”
Shelly scoffed angrily from behind Robert, but he ignored her.
“Oh, riddle me this, Batman.”
He heard the sound of her beer being opened.
Sean sighed heavily.
“There is no time for this, Robert.”
“Why?” he asked reactively. “What’s the rush?”
“I think you know.”
Shelly laughed.
“Fucking guy.”
“Shelly’s right. You need to stop talking in riddles. If you want us for…for what? What do you want us for?”
“You, not us,” Sean corrected him, his gaze never straying. “And I think you know.”
Robert felt his temperature rise.
“No, sorry—I have no fucking clue. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
Again, Sean sighed, this time his entire body seeming to collapse at the end of it.
“Because of Carson,” he said, and Robert felt his entire body go cold.
The man of the cloth is coming, Carson. You can use him to open the rift—bind him between the living and the dead, just like the book says.
“Because Carson is going to open the gateway between our worlds. He’s going to let Leland out.”
Chapter 14
A scream rang out, but the sound barely registered with Carson Ford, sitting cross-legged in the center of his cell, his nude body marred by streaks of blood and purple bruises from when the guards had beat him.
But like the fact that the lights above had blinked out, and the shouts that now filled the prison, Carson paid them no heed.
Eyes closed, he took a deep breath in through his nose, inflating his lungs to their fullest. Then he let the air out in a thin stream.
Carson let his mind go blank, drawing himself inward. Years of time in isolation had taught him to focus, to drown out everything in his mind, to shut off the prefrontal cortex.
To
activate other parts of his mind.
A deeper blackness than Seaforth Prison enveloped Carson, and he slowly began to disassociate with his body. He allowed this darkness to fall over him, reveling in its velvety texture.
Time passed; how much, he knew not.
And then, in the darkness, he saw a speck of light. Only a tiny speck at first, but as he deepened into his meditation, it began to grow. And with this growth came additional details, features in the light.
It was a fire, and it burned hot.
Carson’s mind was in the Marrow.
Did you do that? he thought. In this place, there was no need to speak.
I’m getting stronger, my reach expanding even further. But I need you to do the rest, a man answered.
It was the same man that had entered his head all those years ago, encouraging him to grab the knife and drive it into his stepfather’s chest as soon as the man had finished putting out his cigar on his arm.
It was the man that had first introduced himself as Leland, but who Carson now referred to as the Goat.
It was the man who was going to free him from this place, and free all others like him.
The book. The man of the cloth.
That’s right, Carson. As we discussed.
There was a short pause as Carson’s mind moved upward, focusing on the faces in the flames. The roiling embers revealed a friend of his, Buddy Wilson, who had been convicted in Texas for crimes that rivaled his own.
And in Texas, they had the death penalty.
In New Jersey, in Seaforth, they did not.
And the man? Is he coming too?
Leland’s form suddenly materialized, his faded jean jacket slowly becoming solid, as did his wide-brimmed hat. In front of him stood a young girl maybe nine or ten years old, with long blonde hair. Her heart-shaped face was aimed at the black tar-like substance on which they stood.
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