“That’s your plan? What the hell are we supposed to do when Robert and Sean find Carson? And what about Carson’s cannibal friend? His psycho girlfriend?”
Aiden’s eyes narrowed at the mention of Carson’s girlfriend.
“Dealing with Carson and his crew is your job. I’ll take care of the ghosts.”
Cal went silent, as he was clearly recalling the horrors back at the Estate, at Seaforth.
“This is it,” Robert said more to himself than anyone else. “It ends here.”
For the next five minutes, they drove in silence. Even when the orphanage loomed into view, no one said anything.
There were clouds above the large, drab building, menacing gray clouds that seemed to be spinning in a circle directly over top of it. There was a flicker of light embedded deep inside the brewing storm, and Robert was instantly reminded of the fire in the Marrow, the crack of lightning that preceded Leland’s arrival.
He shook his head, trying to stay focused. He didn’t know if he came across Carson—when he came across Carson—if he would be able to do what he couldn’t back at Seaforth.
But he had no choice.
Shelly was involved now, as was his unborn child.
You have to, Robert, Helen thought in his head. You have to end this once and for all. You have to protect yours, protect this Earth, and you have to send me home.
***
Sean parked the car beside the white truck, and they got out in pairs, just as Aiden had instructed. Only the man himself waited by the car, readying his gun.
The sky above them had since erupted into a storm, and the wind picked up to such a level that Robert had to huddle inward to avoid being swept up by the whirling dervish. He stayed close to Sean as they ran toward the building. In minutes, they had passed ahead of Cal and the Cloak, leaving them behind to become the second wave of attack.
Robert prepped Helen, fearing that he might have to let her take over again, and soon.
She was ready.
As he approached the massive front doors that had been wedged open, memories started flooding back to him, much like they had when he had stepped into Callahan’s church. Memories of a time here, in this gray orphanage.
Does anyone know what the words Inter vivos et mortuos means? he remembered the teacher asking.
Robert pressed his palm flat against the door and leaned against it, trying to alleviate the pressure in his chest.
But he couldn’t; it only seemed to grow.
As soon as his hand made contact, something flashed in his mind—an image of Carson, seated on the ground, a cloud opening above his head.
Robert turned to Sean, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.
“We have to hurry.”
The man nodded, and Robert could see in his face that he too felt the pressure. Sean grabbed the door and carefully opened it.
A gray light surrounded them, as if the place itself radiated some sort of ambient glow.
Robert had taken less than a handful of steps inside Sacred Heart when he saw the first of the dead.
Chapter 36
Ed blinked hard, thinking that maybe after Michael had bitten off part of Hugh’s ear, he had stridden over and killed him.
Ate him, too, maybe, but Ed hoped that that happened after he was already dead.
There was just no other explanation for what he was witnessing.
The bodies in the truck, they had been dead. There was no questioning that. After all, he had stopped Vinny thirty miles from the crematorium and had seen them then. He had even fucking laid in the back of the truck with their stinking corpses.
But now they weren’t.
Now they were standing, teetering, holding hands in a giant fucking kumbaya circle like a demented séance.
And in the middle was a man who was worse…far worse than even Michael. Michael, who trapped women in his basement, who nibbled on their skin, their bones, their sinew while they were still alive.
This man held power over the dead, however bizarre the thought sounded in his head, and if Ed was to believe this, then he also had to believe that he was going to commandeer even more of them.
A sudden blast of wind hit him in the face, and his eyes immediately glanced upward. The ceiling had either torn away, despite the fact that no debris had fallen inward, or had simply become transparent by some strange trick or magic.
Whatever the case, the clouds high above were dark, foreboding, and lightning illuminated their rounded edges as they swirled.
“Come to me, rise up and come to me…enter me,” Carson whispered, his words pulled from his mouth and whipped upward into the storm above. The chairs and tables at the periphery of the room started shaking, and even though he was reluctant to take his eyes away from Carson, Ed felt the need to check on Hugh, who hadn’t said anything since their time in the back of the truck.
“Hugh, what—?”
But Michael elbowed him hard in the ribs, and he winced, bending to that side.
Hugh looked over at him, his eyes big as saucers. He was nearly as pale as the dead making a circle not more than ten feet from them.
Whatever was happening, whatever fucking demons that Carson was conjuring from the depths of hell, Ed was certain of one thing: he didn’t want to be here when they arrived.
But with his hands bound, and strapped to Hugh and with Michael watching on, he had no idea how he was going to free the both of them.
Bella was walking around the circle, whispering something to Carson, who was still nude, eyes closed, in the center of the dead.
He thought that perhaps he might be able to overtake her, given her level of distraction, although he hadn’t forgotten how quickly she had gotten the drop on him when they had hopped out of the back of the truck.
More lightning split the sky, and Ed instinctively tucked his head into his shoulders.
He noticed that Michael did the same.
There was a table not too far from him, just on the other side of Hugh.
If I could somehow manage to—
More lightning filled the room, but this time, it didn’t seem to come from the sky above, but from Carson himself.
The dead stopped walking in a circle, and stepped back, their hands and heads falling to their sides, offering Ed a clear view of the nude man.
“Jesus,” he whispered, unable to control himself. But Michael didn’t deliver another blow to his side as he expected; instead, he heard the man sharply inhale.
Thin, smoking streams of light were spilling from Carson’s eyes and mouth and his chin shot upward. And then the room was suddenly filled with an intense, blinding brightness, so vivid that Ed was forced to close his eyes.
If his hands had been free, he would have used them to shield his face.
In the blinding light, he heard Carson’s voice loud and clear, and a shudder ran up his spine.
“They’re here…they’ve arrived.”
Chapter 37
Cal watched his friend and Sean head toward the church and crouched down low. As per the plan, he waited, even though every single muscle in his entire body screamed at him to move.
To run.
To run as far away from Sacred Heart Orphanage as his fucking legs would take him.
The Cloak crouched beside him, his old spine stooped, the dark black fabric turning his body into what looked like a pile of refuse.
“How long do we wait, Aiden?” he asked.
When there was no reply, he looked over his shoulder.
The dead man was gone.
“Great.”
“We wait until they reach the door,” the Cloak croaked. “And then we go around back.”
Cal observed the man for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell he was all about. Small in stature, definitely old. The hood of the cloak covered the top part of his face, his hair, his eyes, while the turtleneck hid the lower half. Cal had no idea how the man even saw. Then he remembered the camera around his neck and started to ra
ise it, intending on pointing it at the Cloak. But before he did, the Cloak spoke again and his hand held in midair.
“You’re a good friend, Cal.”
Cal made a face, the man’s assessment of him coming as a surprise.
“How do you know?” he retorted. “How the hell would you know?”
The Cloak turned his head back toward the house.
“They’re at the door. Let’s go.”
He started to rise, but Cal reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Wait—”
The Cloak shook him off.
“It’s time. We need to hurry.”
Chapter 38
Carson must have known that they were coming, as he had seven corpses standing just inside the doorway, and as soon as Robert and Sean crossed the threshold, they lunged at them.
“Fuck!” Robert shouted, twisting as a man with huge black lips slipped by him. The next one came at Sean, and a split second before he moved, Robert heard a hissing noise like boiling air in his bloodied ear.
The bullet passed right through the skull of the man with the thick lips, and then struck the quiddity coming at Sean in the center of his chest behind him.
“Jesus Christ!” Robert shouted. He whipped his head around to see where the shot had come from, but the sky was so dark outside that he saw nothing.
But he knew it was Aiden, and when he turned back, he knew that what the man had said was true.
The gun would work.
The first quiddity fell flat on his face without even bracing himself and went still. Robert was about to look away when the quiddity suddenly started to shake, tiny tremors at first, but these quickly devolved into a massive grand mal seizure.
At the height of these violent muscle contractions, the man’s back arched and his pitch-black eyes stared directly into Robert.
Then he went still again and dissolved into a cloud of black dirt and dust.
Robert instinctively brought the crook of his elbow to his mouth to avoid inhaling the cloud of quiddity. But his actions were unnecessary; the cloud shot upward, seemingly passing directly through the ceiling above.
He looked over at Sean, who was staring at the other quiddity as it too fell to his knees and then started to shake.
A blur of motion caught his eye, and Robert’s face shot up.
“Sean! Another one—look out!”
There was another whizzing sound, and this quiddity was also gunned down by Aiden.
We need to get out of here, there are too many, Helen chimed in his head. Robert, something bad is happening here…
No shit.
Another shot rang out, and another corpse collapsed.
And yet they kept coming. Robert had initially counted eight, but it seemed as if there were dozens of them now, maybe even hundreds clambering over each to get to them. To get their hands on the living.
He blinked hard, trying to stay focused.
“Go back outside,” Sean yelled at him over the roar of the storm that suddenly sounded as if it were originating from inside the orphanage instead of outside. “Get the fuck outside so Aiden can take them out.”
Robert nodded and was about to take a step backward when he saw something partway down the hallway.
A familiar silhouette.
A familiar pregnant silhouette.
“Shelly!” he shouted over the sound of the seizing quiddity and the wind whipping about his ears. “Shelly!”
But she didn’t turn.
And then the entire orphanage went white a second before one of the quiddity lunged at him.
Robert did the only thing he knew how, in that moment. The only thing that would keep him from being sent to the Marrow.
He let Helen take over.
Chapter 39
Cal was working his away around the side of the building when he heard Robert’s shout.
“Shelly! Shelly!”
He immediately froze, ignoring the Cloak’s pleas to come with him, to hurry.
Shelly, the one who he had brought into the fold, was in danger. Shelly, the one that Robert had impregnated, was inside the orphanage. Shelly, the one who was pregnant with the baby that had the potential to hold the rift in the Marrow open, was within Carson’s reach.
Cal swiveled on his heels, turning back toward the front of the building.
“Cal,” the Cloak hissed after him. “Cal, come back!”
But Cal didn’t listen. He was nearly at the front entrance when the entire orphanage erupted into a ball of light.
Chapter 40
“You feel that?” Ben asked Allan, looking over at him.
The sky had gotten progressively darker in the Marrow until it had become nearly completely black. The sand, previously velvety smooth on the soles of his bare feet, was suddenly getting hot and sticky.
“I feel it,” Allan admitted. “It’s getting stronger…he’s coming.”
Ben, who had been staring up at the clouds that had started to turn a deep orange, looked at Allan. The boy was scared, terrified even.
“Who? Who’s coming?”
Allan swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently in his narrow throat.
“The Goat. The Goat is coming.”
Ben shivered just as the sky erupted into flames.
Chapter 41
Agent Brett Cherry took a wide berth around the two vehicles as he made his way to the rear of the orphanage. He had his pistol drawn, but something inside him told him that it would do little good.
His time in the swamp had taught him as much.
Fire, on the other hand…
Lightning cracked in the sky above, and Brett looked upward. The storm clouds appeared to be circling, twisting and turning in on themselves, forming some sort of spire that ascended from the peaked roof of the orphanage to the heavens above.
In the center of that spire, he could pick out the unmistakable sight of flames.
A fire in the sky.
Brett took a deep breath, picked up the pace, and headed towards that very spire.
“This is for you, Ken-Ken. For you.”
Chapter 42
The bright light still blinded him, and when a hand slipped around his neck and pulled him close, he almost called out.
But the hand over his mouth prevented him from doing so.
Hot breath was suddenly on his ear.
“Don’t move.”
Ed’s chest deflated. It was Brett. The man must have snuck into the room under the cover of the storm and the light.
He felt pressure on his arms, then the sudden release as his hands were cut free. Ed immediately alternated rubbing his wrists, trying to work some feeling back into his fists.
“Come with me,” Brett whispered, his breath reeking of alcohol. “Follow me exactly and I can get us out of here.”
Ed slowly made his way to his feet as silently as possible, remembering that Michael was very close.
As was Hugh.
Recalling the man’s saucer eyes, the pale face, his slack jaw, he doubted that Hugh even realized that he was no longer bound to Ed.
“Wait,” he whispered. “We can’t leave Hugh.”
Then the light blinked out.
Ed and Brett froze.
“They’re here,” Carson whispered again.
The storm had died too, and the room was suddenly very quiet—too quiet.
And then Bella switched on a lamp, and Ed’s heart stopped.
Carson was still in the circle now, only he wasn’t the only one surrounded by the quiddity that had rode with him in the back of the truck.
There were others. And these others were hugging him, holding him, clinging to his legs.
There were seven of them, six boys and one girl ranging in age from what Ed guessed was five to eleven.
His heart suddenly started again, and for whatever reason, this gave him away. All of the children turned to look at Ed with their obsidian pits for eyes.
“I’ve brought the Guardians back,
” Carson said with a smile. “I’ve brought them all back.”
He patted one boy on the head, then turned around and focused on Brett.
“You’re Agent Cherry, I assume?” Carson asked.
Brett tried to bolt, but Michael stood in his path, blocking his way. Brett raised his gun and aimed it at the man’s forehead.
“I don’t understand fuck all of what’s going on here, and I could care two shits about it. But I’ll tell you one thing: me and my friends are leaving here right fucking now.”
Carson smiled, and Ed thought that his mouth had gotten bigger, more full of teeth. And they seemed to have been filed into points.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Carson flicked his chin, and the quiddity that had been encircling him suddenly started to move toward Ed and Brett. Their gait was still awkward, but had improved compared to when he had first seen them fall out of the back of the truck.
Brett immediately swung the gun from Michael to the quiddity closest to them.
“Stop,” he instructed. “Stop moving.”
This wasn’t a prolonged standoff. When the quiddity didn’t stop, Brett squeezed off one round.
The bullet struck a male corpse in the shoulder, but aside from twisting to that side from the impact, it didn’t even slow him.
“Brett, I don’t—”
But Ed didn’t finish his sentence before Brett fired off two more shots in rapid succession. This time, the bullets hit the man in the head.
The result, however, was the same.
“Fuck!” Brett shouted. He took a step forward, held the gun directly out in front of him at arm’s length.
Somewhere in front of them, Carson burst into laughter.
The window to their left suddenly exploded and a high-pressure round hit the man that Brett had been shooting directly in the temple. Brett made a confused face, and stared at his gun, as the man’s head was completely vaporized.
It fell to its knees, and then started to shake.
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 15