“Welcome, Robert,” a low, gravelly voice behind him suddenly said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Sweat pouring off his entire body, Robert turned hard, yanking his feet from the mud. The hands that held him rooted unexpectedly released, and he over spun, spiraling onto his hands and knees.
Robert slowly raised his gaze, his breathing coming in short bursts.
There was a man in a faded jean jacket only a dozen feet from him. He was sporting a wide-brimmed black hat pulled low, which cast a shadow over his face, and was sitting atop a boulder—one that he immediately recognized.
He didn’t need to see the letters etched in the rock to know that it was Patricia Beatrice Harlop’s tombstone.
“Who—who are you?” Robert whispered.
Chapter 28
“Don’t come any closer,” Shelly warned, waving the blowtorch at arm’s length. Cal cowered behind her, peering over her left shoulder, eyes wide. “You come any closer and I’ll light you up, I swear it.”
It was difficult to gauge the man’s reaction, partly because he seemed confused, but mostly because he was missing the left half of his face.
“I’m—I’m—” the man began, starting toward them again.
Shelly extended the blowtorch even further.
“Stop!” she shouted, and the man’s forward advance immediately ceased. For nearly a full minute, none of them moved. In fact, it was difficult to tell if any of them even breathed; the only sound in the room was the hissing of the blowtorch.
Cal used the momentary reprieve to observe his surroundings.
The room was small, square, the walls covered in peeling beige paint. There was the bed in the center, and what might have once been a window at the back now covered in a thick piece of plywood. And then there was the man. He was young, mid-thirties, maybe, dressed in a gray track suit. He had short brown hair and a neatly cropped beard. But his face was horrifying, rivaling even the abomination that was George. The left side had been completely removed, revealing a disgusting, glistening network of fibrous tissue. The eye on that side was missing, in its place a black pit within which it used to be housed.
Cal felt a bout of nausea hit him then, but he fought the urge to vomit, knowing that if the thin veneer of calm that encased this quiddity broke, the blowtorch in Shelly’s hand, no matter how menacing with its blue-white flame, wouldn’t save them.
As it was, he swallowed hard, a simple act that seemed to reanimate the man. The side of his face that still had skin, the side that was still human, dropped.
Cal thought that maybe he was frowning, or grimacing, but it was impossible to tell for certain.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, lowering his good eye.
Cal felt Shelly tense before him, and thought that maybe she was losing her nerve. He squeezed her sides gently, silently encouraging her.
“Who—who are you?” she stuttered.
The eye raised again and leveled itself at Shelly and Cal.
“My name is Danny Dekeyser,” he replied simply.
“What are you doing here?”
The man shrugged and looked like he was going to step forward again, but Shelly shoved the torch and he stopped.
“I was cleaning…I was cleaning and then…” His voice trailed off. His hand slowly made its way to his face, gently probing the missing skin, the empty socket. “Then it got me.”
Cal shuddered.
He needed no explanation as to what it was.
George.
The blowtorch suddenly flickered, and he heard Shelly gasp. She reached up and fiddled with the gas knob, and it thankfully roared back to life before blinking out.
Time was running out, Cal knew. He wasn’t sure how much gas or propane or whatever the fuck the torch ran on was left, but he couldn’t imagine much.
And they still had to use it to take out the hinges on the door, to get out of here, to grab Robert, and get the fuck as far away from the Pinedale Hospital—the Seventh Ward—as his chubby legs would carry him.
He decided to take things into his own hands.
“What do you want?” he asked, trying, but failing, to sound assertive.
This seemed to confuse Danny for a moment, and he just stood there, his lower lip quivering.
“I just want to go home,” he said at last, and Cal felt a sudden pang of sadness for the young man. He was instantly reminded of Patricia Harlop who had been so thin that, like this man, her cheekbones seemed to be devoid of skin. And how confused she had been, trapped on this side when she so obviously belonged on the other.
That she belonged in the Marrow.
Cal wasn’t sure what to say next. Evidently, Shelly didn’t either, as she remained silent as well.
After a moment, Danny repeated the phrase, only this time his voice had a desperate quality to it that hadn’t been there before.
“Home…I just want to go home.”
Shelly cleared her throat.
“We can help you,” she whispered. “We can help you, but first we need to get out of this room—out of the Seventh Ward.”
Just the mention of the ‘Seventh Ward’ seemed to make the man recoil.
Cal recalled the horrific sight and smell of the creature that Justine had called George, and now it was his turn to shudder.
“You—you can help me go home?” he asked, his voice so low that Cal had to strain to hear him over the sound of the blowtorch.
Shelly nodded.
“Yes, we can help you, but we have to get out of here first.”
The man looked up again.
“You can help all of us?”
A chill shot up and down Cal’s spine.
All?
As if on cue, the shadows on either side of Danny Dekeyser started to shimmer and move. A second later, others began to step forward, all of them with downcast eyes.
This time, Cal managed to stifle his scream, but his hands that gripped Shelly’s sides squeezed so tightly that she gasped.
Chapter 29
“I’m surprised you don’t recognize me, Robert Watts,” the man in the black hat said, a hint of sarcasm on his tongue.
Robert just stared.
The man reached up slowly, and for a moment Robert thought that he was going to pull the hat back, to reveal his face, and a sudden revulsion over came him. Then the man chuckled, a horrible, grating sound that only made his nausea worse.
Robert’s guts roiled.
Instead of lifting it, the man pulled the hat even lower, the shadow that had previously shown his chin now covering the top buttons of his jean jacket as well.
“I’ve been called many things over the years, Robert. I go by Leland now—Leland Black—but some people still insist on calling me the Goat.”
The man waited and Robert felt a chill course through him.
The Goat is coming…
And then he remembered his discussion with the online entity known as LBlack.
His heart skipped a beat.
How could I have not realized the connection earlier? Has this…man…been stalking me? How? Why?
These and more questions ping-ponged about Robert’s brain.
“What do you want from me?” he croaked, still trying, and failing, to come to terms with all of this.
Again, the man chuckled.
“You came to me, remember? What do you want?”
Robert mulled this over for a second.
Answers…I want answers.
“My daughter—Amy—I heard her voice…”
“Ah yes, nine-year-old? Blonde hair? About yea big?”
Robert swallowed hard.
“If you hurt her—”
Leland laughed again.
“She’s not here, Robert—not now, anyway. And besides, I would never hurt family. But there is someone else here…someone who’s not happy that you took him from the other world.”
The man waited expectantly, and then an image of James Harlop appeared in Robert’s mind. He shoo
k his head, trying to clear the suddenly vivid picture of the man, complete with the gaping, ragged hole beneath his chin.
Another voice suddenly broke the ubiquitous screams and groans above.
“I’m not done with you yet!” the voice yelled—James’s voice.
“So, Robert,” Leland continued, “I think it’s in your best interests to tell me why you are here…”
As before, an image suddenly came to mind. The image of Sean Sommers, complete with his black suit and navy peacoat.
If Robert could’ve seen the man in the jean jacket’s face then, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he were grinning.
“Ah, I should have known…should have known that this was Sean’s meddling.”
Robert’s expression became a mask of confusion. He was certain that he hadn’t said anything out loud.
Time slowed as the man’s shoulders seemed to slump on his wiry frame.
“Question is, what does Sean want with you? It can’t just be to send psychopaths like James Harlop here, can it? I’ll give him this much, it was brave to send you of all people to this place.”
Robert pulled himself to his feet, wiping the mud from his hands on his bare thighs.
“We can ask him together, maybe.”
“He’s…he’s here?”
Leland laughed.
“No, not now. But he will be. Eventually everyone crosses through the Marrow, Robert.” The man paused, then continued, his voice more serious now. “What do you know about Sean, Robert? Hmm? You look at me with such disgust, disdain, leaving me to wonder if you look at him the same way? Hmm? What do you really know about him?”
The answer was obvious.
He knew nothing about Sean Sommers.
“Well, then. We wait. After all, I have all the time in the world. You, on the other hand…”
Robert suddenly felt a sharp pain in the back of his left leg, and he looked down.
“Oh god,” he muttered.
His left calf was almost completely gone, and blood flowed from the wound, soaking the back of his leg. Where it dripped to the ground, the muddy surface seemed to froth excitedly. The shock of the blood sent him reeling, and he fell on his ass.
What is this place?
Robert looked up again, and was so surprised that Leland was standing above him now. He tried to scramble away, but the muddy hands were back, holding him in place.
Leland slowly bent, his hat still tucked low. And then he reached out, and Robert did his best to recoil.
It was no use; he seemed rooted in place, every single one of his muscles seizing as if gripped by tetanus.
The man’s hand stretched and then it gripped his wounded calf.
Pain erupted throughout his entire body, and suddenly it wasn’t just the sky above that was engulfed in flames, but he was as well.
“We’re just going to wait, Robert. Wait for—”
But then something happened.
The sky lit up with lightning again, and Leland’s head snapped upward, revealing, for the first time, his face.
Robert screamed. Even as Leland Black’s outline started to shimmer and fade, the sky above brightening, the fire dying down, he screamed.
“No! No! No!” Leland roared.
Robert Watts kept on screaming, even as his body was slowly returned to the land of the living.
Chapter 30
Cal counted six quiddity, but the way that they moved in and out of the shadows, there could have easily been twice that number.
There was Danny, another young man about his age missing part of his chest, a thin woman wearing a shirt so tight that he could make out every curve of her ample, single breast and the track marks that peppered the inside of her arms like dozens of bee stings. There was also the old, naked woman, the one who would occasionally break out into laughter. There was also a short black man missing an arm, and a mountain of a man, one that looked like George, but at the same time didn’t; he was more whole. Still, he had to prop himself up because of a missing leg.
Every last one of them a tortured soul caught between worlds.
“We will…we’ll help all of you get home,” Cal said hesitantly.
Danny turned to the those around him. There was a silent exchange of sorts, and Cal got the sneaking suspicion that their fate rested in whatever was said…or was not said.
“Well?” Shelly asked impatiently. “We have a deal or not? You guys stay there, let me take this door down, then we’ll come back for you.”
Danny nodded.
“We just…we just want—”
“—yeah, we get it. You just want to go home. Fuck, don’t we all.”
Cal grimaced at Shelly’s bluntness. Still, what did it matter now? If these quiddity wanted to attack them, attach themselves to them, touch them, diddle them, do whatever the fuck they wanted, a handheld blowtorch wasn’t going to save them.
“Good,” Shelly said suddenly. “Now I’m going to turn around and get to work on this door, and Cal here is going to keep his eye on you guys. Any of you move toward the door, and…”
Again, Cal was incredulous.
“Umm, Shelly, I don’t even—” have a flashlight, he was going to say, before Shelly drove her elbow into his side. He grunted, and was for once thankful for the spare tire that pretty much coated his entire body.
Then she turned around quickly, spinning with reckless abandon. Cal had to lean backward in order to avoid getting burnt from the torch.
Shelly set to work with the confidence of an expert mechanic, putting the hot flame up against the upper hinge of the thick metal door.
At first Cal just stared at the darkness behind them, the one that he knew held the quiddity of at least six people. But this was incredibly unnerving, and he felt himself beginning to crack. Even though it was nearly completely black in the room, he convinced himself that he could see some shadows moving, pulsing forward and backward.
What was he supposed to do? Even if they were suddenly on him, if he could actually see them, what was he going to do about it?
Shelly had been right; they knew nothing of these people—they had no book or gas mask or fireplace poker to bind them to.
They were truly helpless.
Instead of driving himself mad with things outside of his control, he turned to Shelly. She had made quick work of the first hinge, and was now on to the second. Despite their sturdy appearance, apparently the Seventh Ward architects hadn’t considered psychiatric patients with flaming tools.
The light was so bright, in such contrast to the space behind them, that Cal had to look away as the flame licked the metal hinge. He was in awe of the fact that Shelly was even capable of being as close as she was, seeing as the sparks sprayed at least a foot from the point of contact.
There was a lot he didn’t know about his sexy ghostbusting compadre, it seemed.
She pulled the flame away from the door for a moment.
“Cal, put both hands on the door,” she instructed, and Cal immediately obeyed.
The door was cold to the touch, and he became distinctly aware that he was presenting himself to the quiddity behind him. He felt like he was being admitted to a supernatural prison.
“Now what?”
Shelly suddenly shut off the blowtorch and after the tracing in his eyes faded, they were once again immersed in darkness.
“Let go,” she whispered.
“Let go?”
“Let go,” Shelly repeated.
“Fuck—let go, then what?”
“Then we fucking run, Cal. Run as fast as you fucking can.”
Chapter 31
Robert’s eyes snapped open, and they veritably bulged from his head, a scream caught in his throat. He could still smell his own burning flesh where Leland had gripped him.
What happened? How did I come back?
He glanced around quickly, and realized that Justine and Dr. Shaw had since left the room, leaving him in near darkness. He stretched his neck, trying to move
to a sitting position, but then his head fell back down again.
The straps on his wrists and ankles were still tightly bound.
Robert shut his eyes and tried to make sense of what had happened, but all he saw were the faces in the fiery sky, faces that eventually morphed into one that he recognized: Amy’s.
Help me, Daddy, you promised…
Tears ran down his cheeks, and he started to sob.
How did I get from moving into a new home with Wendy and Amy to here? To being tied up on a gurney in the Seventh Ward of an abandoned hospital, shuttling back and forth between the living and the dead?
But he knew; he knew how he had gotten here.
It was Sean Sommers’s doing.
Leland’s words suddenly echoed in his head: How much do you really know about him? About Sean?
Robert heard a scratching sound, and his eyes immediately snapped open.
There was someone directly beside him fiddling with the leather strap on his right wrist.
“What the fuck?” Robert whispered, trying again to move away.
The man looked up at him with sad, rueful eyes. He was about Robert’s height, maybe a little taller, with a medium build. His face was angular, and he had glasses resting on the chest of his white lab coat.
“What are you doing to me?” Robert whispered.
“I’m sorry, but you were shaking and I…and I…” He let the sentence trail off.
“You what? Are you working with Dr. Shaw?” He lowered his voice and glared at the man. “Have you come for more of my…my body?”
There was a pause as the man seemed to mull this over. Then he lifted his glasses and put them on the bridge of his nose. He looked older now, mid-fifties, maybe.
“You were going into shock—a seizure—so I did the only thing that I could. I touched you.”
Robert opened his mouth to say something, but then he hesitated. He squinted at the doctor, thinking hard.
“Are you…are you Dr. George Mansfield?”
The doctor sighed.
“Yes.”
And then realization swept over him. The doctor—the one that had been dismembered but who was now mysteriously whole—had touched his body here, in the real world, and it was his touch that must have brought him back from the Marrow.
The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 13