Scarsdale Crematorium (The Haunted Book 4)

by Patrick Logan

He wasn’t completely sure why he was there—he definitely hadn’t consciously decided to drive to South Carolina—but it just felt right, and like when he had ordered the quiddity at Seaforth to stop, it just felt natural, normal, right.

  Robert shut off the car and took a deep breath before opening the door. He pulled the cheap sunglasses he had bought at a gas station down to cover the dark circles around his eyes, and then quickly made his way across the street.

  The place was deserted, which wasn’t entirely surprisingly given that it was 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. His objective was to find the church, find the book, and then see what was so important in it that Father Callahan would use his final words before begging to be killed instructing him to find it.

  And then he would get the fuck out of South Carolina, hopefully without raising suspicion, without keying Sean in to the fact that he was looking for the book.

  Robert approached the large front doors to the building, grabbed the handle, then put on his best fake smile before pulling it wide. Cold air blasted him in the face, immediately drying the sweat on his forehead. Allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, Robert stood in the entrance for a moment. When he began to make out the outline of a desk just ten paces inside the door, he started toward it.

  A thin woman with prominent eyebrows sat behind the desk. She had a book in her lap and her eyes were focused on the pages. Robert leaned over the desk and took a look. He caught the title, but not the author: Bad Games.

  “Whatcha reading?” he asked softly.

  The woman jumped.

  “Woah! You scared me.”

  Robert took a step backward, scolding himself for being too casual.

  You’re trying to find out about the church, not get a date.

  Thoughts of Shelly came flooding in, but he forced them away. It wasn’t fair what he’d done, leaving both Cal and Shelly in the dark, but it was less fair bringing them on for a ride. He was done with that life, done with getting them involved. Irrespective of what Cal said, it was about him—him and Amy.

  And they didn’t deserve to be pulled down into the depths with him.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  The woman swallowed hard and adjusted her glasses that had shifted when she was startled.

  “Fine, fine,” she said dismissively. “What can I do ya for?”

  “I’m looking for something…I mean, someone. Well, not them, exactly, but where they might live, where their next of kin is.”

  The woman scrunched her forehead suspiciously, making her eyebrows join into one large, thick caterpillar.

  “Excuse me?”

  Robert pulled his sunglasses off and sighed.

  “Look, a friend of mine passed away, and I’m looking to find his next of kin to inform them.”

  The woman chewed the inside of her lip.

  “Your friend died, but you don’t know where he lives? Where his family lives?”

  Robert looked away, trying not to smile. It was going exactly as he had imagined, minus the first part, but he attributed her jumpiness to Bad Games and not his own actions. He looked back at the secretary, this time getting serious.

  “He was a priest—my sponsor,” he said quietly, looking around dramatically to make sure that nobody was listening.

  “Sponsor?”

  Robert leaned in even closer.

  “Twelve steps.”

  The woman’s mouth and eyes formed the exact same shape: wide and circular.

  “Oh, I see,” she said after an awkward pause. Now it was her time to lean in. “What’s his name? Let me see if I can help you out. A priest, you said? From SC?”

  Robert nodded slowly.

  “Yeah,” he replied dryly, “a priest.”

  He waited for the woman to turn to her monitor and start typing away.

  “Okay, I think I can help you out—if your friend owned the church, that is. Or his house, that’s all part of the public record. We normally defer this kind of thing to the local agencies, but for priests…what’s his name?”

  “Callahan.”

  The woman looked up at him.

  “Is that his first or last name?”

  “Last.”

  “And what is his first name?”

  “Father?”

  “Seriously?”

  Robert shook his head.

  “Look, I don’t know. I only knew him as Father Callahan—sponsors, well, they aren’t supposed to get too personal.” Robert scratched his neck. “And, to be honest with you, ma’am, I’m not the, uh, the best student, if you know what I mean.”

  The woman blinked hard and then nodded.

  “Father Callahan it is.”

  Then she went back to typing.

  “You know him?”

  Her eyes still glued to her computer, she punched a few keys and then the printer behind her starting whirring.

  “No, it’s just that you are the second person this week to ask for Father Callahan’s church address. Must have been a popular sponsor, don’t you think? It pains me to think that he is dead, though. At least—at least he made a difference in someone’s life.”

  Robert’s mouth fell open.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone else was also looking for Inter vivos et mortuos.

  The secretary grabbed the paper from the printer and turned back to him. Before she could even raise her gaze from the page, Robert snatched it from her hand.

  “Yeah, he must have been,” he said absently. Then he started to walk away, staring at the address on the page, one that looked strangely familiar.

  “Good luck with your recovery,” the woman whispered after him.

  Robert didn’t turn back. If someone else was looking for the book, then they were probably looking for him as well.

  He picked up his pace and left the church.

  Chapter 16

  It wasn’t exactly the way Robert remembered it, but pretty damn close. Father Callahan’s parish was a simple structure, and years of being in the sun and not properly cared for had taken their toll on the exterior. Only the impressive front doors, the ones that all those years ago he had stood in front of hand in hand with Sean, looked like they were in decent shape. The obnoxious construction that he remembered from his time here had long since passed. In fact, it looked like the entire area had gone through several life cycles. Once located at the end of a cul-de-sac surrounded by manufacturing buildings, the church now stood like a spire in the center of a derelict wasteland of abandoned buildings, a consequence of America’s outsourcing.

  Robert started breathing heavily the moment he opened his car door, and the anxiety continued to build with every step that he took. He was on the verge of hyperventilating by the time he walked up to the giant wooden doors.

  Please, take the boys…I can only take one…that one…

  In the back of his mind, Robert wondered if Carson was right, if things would have been different if it had been his brother that Callahan had taken in and not him.

  Of course it would be different…but you wouldn’t become Carson. You are a good person.

  Robert tried to push the thoughts from his mind, but they persisted. So instead of denying them, he attacked their validity instead.

  How do you even know that that actually happened? That Sean coming here with you and Carson was real?

  Part of him thought, hoped, even, that these memories were somehow just planted in his head by Sean, a way of getting him to do his bidding…

  But that brought about other questions, ones that sent him skipping down the rabbit hole.

  What, exactly did Sean want him to do? What was his diabolical master plan?

  Robert shook his head.

  It didn’t really matter what Sean wanted, or what the man was trying to accomplish. What mattered was getting Amy back, and making sure that the Marrow stayed the way it was—closed up tight.

  That evil was confined to the flames above the sea.

 
And then he came full circle to the reason why he was standing outside the dead priest’s church, wearing baggy jeans and oversized sunglasses: the book. It was a stretch, he knew, but he hoped that Inter vivos et mortuos would shed some light on his purpose.

  For some reason, Robert knocked on the heavy wooden doors, even though he wasn’t sure who he expected to answer. He waited for several seconds out of respect, but when the only response was only silence from within, he grabbed the wooden handle and pulled.

  Half of him expected the church to be locked, what with Father Callahan having been dead and gone for nearly three months now. But it was a church, after all, and these things had a penchant for remaining open, even though all rational thought suggested that they should be boarded up forever.

  The door opened, and Robert squinted into the darkness, his pupils trying to adjust to the dramatic contrast in light.

  And then he stepped inside.

  There were several lit candles on a table off to one side, which either meant they were burning infernal, or there were still parishioners who visited despite the old priest’s passing. He would have put his money on the latter.

  “Hello?” he said gently. Again, not surprisingly, no one answered.

  The door closed behind him, and then Robert was left with only the candles to light his way. The church was modest, the pews in the same general state of disrepair as the exterior of the church. As his eyes continued to adjust, he realized that he wasn’t as alone as he had first thought. He made out the outline of four heads, all bowed, scattered throughout the pews.

  And of course there was also Jesus; the man was hanging on a cross high above the altar, the candlelight reflecting off his plastic face, making him look eerily like the faces in the flames above the Marrow.

  A chill suddenly raced up and down Robert’s spine, causing him to shudder. A memory came rushing back with such force that he had to brace himself against the back of a pew to avoid toppling.

  “Come with me, son,” Father Callahan said as he took Robert’s small hand in his.

  Robert hesitated and he looked up at the man, confused as to what was happening. The man who called himself Sean had come to get him and his brother at home, telling him that his father had been in an accident. That they had to go with him to find a new home.

  But now they were separating, and Robert felt a tightness in his chest.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen—none of this was supposed to happen.

  He turned and watched as Sean walked away from the church, still holding Carter’s hand. His brother never turned back, and Robert started to cry.

  “It’s okay, son. You are safe here. Please,” Callahan said as he opened the door with a grunt, “there is someone I want you to meet.”

  Robert sniffed, then wiped the tears away with the sleeve of his shirt.

  Daddy didn’t like it when he cried; he was a big boy now, he had to be tough, strong.

  With a deep breath, Robert followed the priest inside the church.

  “Kendra!” Father Callahan shouted, and a little girl of about seven or eight, several years older than Robert himself, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, her messy blonde hair hanging in front of her face.

  “Robert, I want you to meet Kendra. You two can be friends.”

  Robert coughed, then blinked, trying to force feeling back into his legs.

  What the hell was that?

  He coughed again, a hacking cough that brought up some phlegm, then felt a pang of pain in the back of his calf.

  Biting his tongue to avoid crying out, he grabbed the area and rubbed it until the skin beneath his jeans turned red. Then he stood and stretched his back, and tried to catch his bearings.

  Memories or visions or hallucinations or not, he was here to find the book. And the fact that his leg was hurting meant that he had to hurry. Things were happening again, and he didn’t have much time before…before what?

  He didn’t know for certain. But something told him that the pain in his leg was like the pain in his chest when the quiddity were near; only with his leg, it was something worse.

  It was Leland reaching out to him.

  The Goat is your father, Robert.

  Grimacing, he took a step forward, his eyes scanning the interior of the church that still seemed foreign to him even though he was beginning to suspect that he had, in fact, been here before.

  The book, I need to find the book.

  Moving deeper into the church, he felt sweat begin to bead on his forehead.

  I need to find Inter vivos et mortuos. it’s the only way I will get Amy back.

  Chapter 17

  It was clear that someone had been to the church before Robert, searching for something—most likely either himself, or the book. The lady at the records building hadn’t been mistaken.

  It wasn’t so much the fact that some of the dust on the table with the candles had been disturbed, or that the cabinets in the small office of the church had recently been opened and closed, that tipped him off, but that there had been an obvious effort to put things back the way they had been—exactly how they had been.

  As Robert looked about the church, trying to fit in with the other doting parishioners, he realized that it wasn’t something that Father would have left in the open. If it had been, then whoever was here before would have found it, which was still a distinct possibility.

  An image of Callahan’s mouth, twisted in sheer agony, mouthing the words, ‘the book, go find the book,’ flashed in his mind.

  If it’s not here, where am I supposed to look, then? It must be in a location only I would be able to find…

  Robert stood alone in the small office, breathing deeply, trying to remain calm and still his frazzled nerves. Part of him wanted to just forget about this whole ordeal, pack up, and head to Canada as he had once considered doing with Amy.

  Amy…

  But it was Amy that kept him going.

  Robert shook his head, then made his way back into the main section of the church, all the while mumbling to himself.

  “Think, Robert. Think…Father Callahan wanted you to find the book, and the only logical place to look is here, in his church, the church that you were dropped off at. He would have put it somewhere where only you could find it.”

  His frustration mounting, Robert decided that instead of rifling through the dead priest’s belongings, as someone likely more experienced than he had already done, he would take a different approach.

  He would look inward for answers.

  Robert hadn’t barely been able to close his eyes since being touched by Leland without feeling that darkness, the threat of his mind being transported to the Marrow, but he was running thin on options.

  Determined now, he slowly made his way to the front of the church, and took a seat on the first pew. It had been a long time since he had been in a church, and longer still since he had sat in a pew as a common parishioner. But it felt oddly comfortable and familiar to him.

  Then he closed his eyes, relaxed his neck and shoulders, and took a deep breath.

  Think, Robert. Think back to before…

  “You coming? If you’re hiding with me, you better hurry; she’s almost done counting.”

  Robert looked at Kendra, a smile on his young face.

  “She’s too slow, you know she never finds us.”

  Kendra reached out and grabbed his arm and tugged.

  “Come on, I have something I want to show you anyway.”

  Robert reluctantly went with her, allowing himself to be pulled from the back room with their beds to the front of the church.

  It was a Thursday afternoon, a sweltering, sunny afternoon, which was pretty much the only weather that South Carolina had this time of year, and stepping from the cool, air conditioned sleeping quarters into the warm, humid church was a shock to his system.

  If God is so almighty and powerful, then why doesn’t he cool his own house?

  Still, the weather had done nothin
g to keep the devotees away.

  There was an elderly woman hovering by the candles at the side of the church dressed in black, her head hung low. There was another person, a middle-aged man, on his knees in the middle pew, his lips moving in silent prayer.

  And then there was Father Callahan, his face twisted in a frown as he spoke to a third parishioner by the front, his long, flowing robes somehow pristine despite the heat.

  “C’mon!” Kendra hissed, tugging him even harder. She was guiding him toward the altar, which Callahan had told them repeatedly was a definite no-no.

  But Kendra, she just had this way about her, one that made it near impossible for him to resist her games that would inevitably result in at least a strong scolding.

  Robert stole another glance over his shoulder at the priest, trying to move quietly, to not draw his attention. Kendra, on the other hand, moved like an elephant, and he cringed when she literally jumped onto the platform and landed hard with two feet. Robert followed quickly, his eyes still aimed toward the front of the church.

  What few people realized about the church was that the heavy curtain that hung down from the ceiling behind the altar wasn’t there to cover an unsightly wall, or an exit door. If you paid enough attention, you could see it flutter occasionally, revealing the fact that there was air behind it.

  Most people were too wrapped up in their own heads to notice, and the few that did probably didn’t care. But to Kendra, it was an adventure, a secret in the waiting.

  Kendra snaked her way against the sidewall, and then reached out to tease the curtain back. Then she turned back to face Robert.

  “Come on,” she said, her eyes wild, her smile bright. “Christine will never find us in here.”

  Robert grimaced, knowing that if the altar was off limits, then this area, the sanctum that Father Callahan was so secretive about, was definitely an area that they were forbidden to enter.

  But Kendra pulled, and Robert was literally yanked behind the curtain. At the last second, however, he whipped his head around.

  Father Callahan was staring at him, a scowl etched on his face.