She ran to her side and pulled her into her arms. The movement made her shoulder scream in pain, but she ignored it. Her pain didn’t matter. Only Lorna mattered. She pressed her face against Lorna’s hair and whispered urgently, “Don’t you dare die on me, do you hear me, Lorna Dutton. You promised to love me forever, and I’m holding you to that.”
Her body shook so hard she was surprised she could still hold on to Lorna. She wasn’t about to let her go, despite the burning in her shoulder. Some stupid-ass ghost was not going to take the woman who’d captured her heart away from her now. She’d waited too long to find love to lose it because of a psycho spirit. “Please,” she cried, and her tears fell from her cheeks to land on Lorna’s hair. To lose her like this couldn’t be right in any realm of existence. “Please don’t leave me, baby girl, please. I need you.”
Lorna’s eyes fluttered open and she blinked several times. “Not going anywhere, beautiful.”
Chapter Eighteen
Renee bent and kissed Lorna hard before she helped her up to a sitting position. Lorna thought it was the sweetest kiss she’d ever experienced, and all she really wanted to do was stay wrapped up in Renee’s arms and forget about everything else. When she came to and was staring into Renee’s watery eyes, it was like waking up in heaven. Not too bad after getting her ass kicked by a spirit.
“Are you okay?” Renee’s voice was tense. “Are you really okay?”
Lorna smiled and stared into the eyes she loved so much. “I’m fine. I’m probably going to have a killer headache, but nothing’s broken. Are you all right? Your shoulder.” If she was being honest with Renee she’d tell her that not only did her head hurt like a son of a bitch, but her body felt like she’d been through a prize fight. It could be just the tussle with the nurse, but she didn’t think that was all of it. The unseen forces had taken their pound of flesh as well, or at least that’s what she suspected. Kind of hard to quantify a fight like the one they’d just gone through.
Renee sighed and leaned back against the wall. It seemed that once she realized Lorna was fine, the pain in her shoulder kicked up. Her tears vanished but her face was pale and drawn. “Hurts like Hades,” she admitted. “But I’ll make it through.”
Lorna kissed her. “Always knew you would. You’re a tough one, if you don’t already know it.”
Renee’s head turned toward the room she’d been held in. “I don’t know how tough I am. I may never get the sight of that room out of my head.”
Lorna wasn’t sure what she’d seen, only that it wasn’t good. Didn’t surprise her much, considering everything else around here and given what she’d seen Nurse Thompson do to Sadie’s great-great-grandmother. But that was a discussion for another day.
Lorna kissed her and said, “I’ll make it go away.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Lorna looked around, trying to get her bearings back. Not that she was planning to tell Renee, but that little smack on the head really had rung her bell. She was going to have a big fat headache in the morning. More like now, actually. “Is she gone?” Despite the pounding in her head, it appeared the only ones still in the room were of the human variety.
Jeremy came over, reached down a hand, and helped her to her feet. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure we sent Nurse Crazy back to hell, where she belongs.”
Once standing, she had to give herself a second to let the dizziness pass. Definitely a bell ringer. With Jeremy at her side, they turned to Renee. It took both of them to help her up, and she winced when Lorna took the arm with the injured shoulder. She was trying to be as gentle as she could, but it wasn’t enough. Cradling her arm to keep the weight off her shoulder, Renee leaned against the wall. That shoulder was going to need the attention of a doctor right away. A second trip to the ER was in order.
Satisfied that Renee was okay for the moment, Lorna looked around the room again. “The big guy?” she asked. Something about that man seemed familiar, as if she’d seen him before. Surely she’d have remembered. After all, he had to be close to seven feet tall. And how about that hair? How many guys had two or three feet of shiny black hair? None that she could think of. So yeah, she’d have remembered meeting that fellow.
It was perplexing how close she felt to him, as if they had some kind of special connection, and maybe they did. It would make sense, given their nearly telepathic communication earlier. Good grief, like she needed another little gift. Being psychic was plenty. No need to add telepathy with giants on top of it too.
Renee put a finger under Lorna’s chin and turned her face toward the far wall. There he was, standing next to the woman she’d seen Nurse Thompson murder in her vision. She was pale and smiling as she held the giant’s hand. Oddly, she looked healthy and alive. Or alive in the ghostly way. She no longer had angry red wounds in her head, and that made Lorna feel good. What that wicked nurse had done to her was so terribly wrong, and Lorna was glad to see her restored to the beauty she’d been before the brutal attack.
The two of them stood together, the tall dark man and the tiny beauty. A ghostly version of the Beauty and the Beast. Though calling him a beast didn’t seem right. Freaky tall and a little on the Gothic side, but he was far from a beast. Goodness radiated from him, and she’d bet Renee would say he had a beautiful aura.
Seeing them gave Lorna pause. Again things here weren’t quite following the pattern she’d come to expect. They’d banished the evil woman who’d stolen her life, yet she was still here. If her psychic skills were holding true to form, the woman should be on her way to heaven. That she wasn’t, Lorna reasoned, meant one thing: their work was not yet done. Crap.
Lorna’s eyes were still on the duo as she asked, “Do you guys see what I see?” She was really hoping this wasn’t another vision that she had to figure out by herself.
Katie, like Renee, had been freed from the confines of her locked room and now stood with her reclaimed gun in her hand. She had a note of awe in her voice as she answered, “Copy that. I see two that I shouldn’t be seeing, and to tell you the truth, I’m having a little trouble processing the sight. They don’t teach this in the academy.”
“Welcome to my world,” Lorna muttered as she moved toward the two figures standing together, one tall, one tiny. Both sets of eyes gazed at her intently as she drew closer.
“My great-great-grandmother,” Sadie said as she too walked toward the duo. “Rose.”
Yeah, she’d already figured that one out all by herself. After all, the diminutive woman and Sadie were almost twins. No denying the family connection even though one was alive and one was long dead. “Do you know what she wants?” Lorna turned to look at Sadie, who stood a few steps behind her, arm in arm with Anna.
Sadie shook her head and pursed her lips. “Not exactly. I wish I did. She’s told me several times to help them, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what she means.”
Lorna had to agree. Her cryptic words were impossible to reason out. An odd game of Scrabble that she was losing. As far as she was concerned, she’d helped Rose, so what more was there to do? This wasn’t working out at all like anything she’d encountered thus far in her psychic journey. She stopped very close to them, and it occurred to her that while they seemed solid and real, there was something equally unreal about them. Perhaps the fact that, if they could speak, they didn’t. Or the fact that even standing this close there was none of the warmth she would expect from another living being. The weirdness just kept rolling along.
“I don’t understand,” she said to them both. “What do you need me to do?”
Neither one said a word or even moved their lips, for that matter. She was about to throw her hands up in frustration when the tall man inclined his head. She got the distinct impression he wanted her to follow them. Okay, since she had little else to go on, that’s what she did. Sort of. They walked through what appeared to be a solid wall. For a long moment, she simply stared at the spot where they’d been standing and wondered what she was supp
osed to do next. Her abilities didn’t include walking through solid walls. There were other rooms on the perimeter walls, only not in the spot where the two disappeared. So where did they go?
Then something occurred to her, and she starting mulling over the possibility. Could it be? No, it was the kind of thing a person saw in a movie but that didn’t really happen in real life. Or did it? At this point she had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
She walked over to the wall and began to run her fingers along the seams in the concrete. It didn’t appear to be anything uncommon, just a regular concrete wall in an old basement. At first she felt nothing unusual, and then she hit pay dirt. Sure as the world, when she touched an upper corner on the left side, she was greeted with a tiny click. This wall wasn’t a wall at all; it was a cleverly disguised hidden panel. On creaky hinges, it slid open, and as it did, a light came on automatically. Son. Of. A. Bitch.
“You all need to come take a look at this. I’m seeing it, but I’m sure as hell not believing it.”
Behind her Renee, Katie, Anna, and Sadie gathered. Each let out a little gasp when they peered through the opened panel.
“What in the world?” Renee whispered, as if she was afraid of disturbing something or someone.
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” Lorna said as she grabbed Renee’s hand.
“This is messed up,” Katie muttered as she took her cell phone from the clip on her belt. “I need to call this in.”
“Probably be a good idea.”
Sadie put a hand on Lorna’s shoulder and squeezed. “It all makes sense now. Thank you.”
“Who would ever guess?” She’d seen some pretty bizarre things since her gift was imparted on her, but this was a sight that would stay with her forever.
Lorna guessed the room to be about six feet deep and maybe twenty feet long, give or take a few feet either way. Wooden shelves, sturdy though plain, lined each wall, floor to ceiling. Functional was the word that came to mind. Not a room that was designed for beauty. Unlike the rest of the building that had been cleared out, this room was still in use.
Side by side, in perfect alignment on every shelf, sat rows of copper cans or, more accurately, copper urns. Like the room and the shelves, the urns were not ornate. Rather, they were simple and uniform in size. Hundreds of small urns with names and dates engraved on each lid.
Lorna stepped inside and picked up an urn that caught her eye. Unlike all its counterparts, this one was slightly askew, creating a break in the otherwise perfect lineup of containers. It was as if someone had recently moved it and failed to put it back as it had been. Someone like the ghost of a murdered woman, the same one who’d drawn her here. As with most of the other urns lined up on the shelves in the room, green oxidation dripped down its sides, giving it an almost art-like appearance. It was hauntingly beautiful and sad at the same time. Lorna took the flashlight from her pocket and turned the beam to the words and numbers graved on the lid. Despite the oxidation she could still read what had been carved there a time long past: Rose Halbren, 1882–1903.
*
The Watcher faded into the shadows as the door slid open to bring into the light those souls whose lives were stolen and then forgotten so long ago. Here they’d been hidden away and denied the path to the hereafter they so righteously deserved. One thousand two hundred and thirty-eight souls had waited in this room, some for more than ten decades.
He smiled as he saw the light touch the copper prisons where their ashes were confined to darkness, her evil intent to hold them captive forever. In these souls he finally discovered the true nature of his destiny and, at long last, understood why God had kept his feet grounded on this earth. It was his mission to bring these souls home, and he could not have accomplished that goal without her light.
He watched her now as she gently caressed the urn of the one who had marshaled the courage to fight the evil Nurse Thompson. His own journey to enlightenment had been a lonely one, yet he now understood that in the end, he could not have made it alone. He needed all of them. Lorna. Jeremy. Renee. Sadie. Most of all he needed Rose. He stepped from the shadows and held out his hand one more time. Rose smiled as she put her delicate hand in his. The touch, denied to him for many years, brought tears to his eyes. To experience the joy of this moment was worth the eternity of isolation. This was good and right.
As he stood holding her soft hand in his, he felt his essence fading, and when he turned, he instinctively understood that this time only one was still able to see him. She was indeed a special person, and he would keep her in his prayers for all time. Without her, he would still be lost. With her, he had found his salvation. She had taught him of selflessness and forgiveness. She had brought him into the light and given him back the wings lost so long ago. With one hand, he still held on to Rose, knowing that she would be with him forever. A beautiful, gentle soul who needed him as much as he needed her.
He laid the other hand on his heart as he nodded at Lorna. She, too, would always have a piece of his heart, for she was special beyond measure. She smiled and nodded back, laying her own hand over her heart.
He tipped his head upward, and for the first time since he’d fallen from grace, he smiled. The expression felt odd, and he brought his free hand up to lay a finger against his lips. His smile grew as the warmth surrounding him spread. With his head still tilted up, he greeted the light he’d waited millennia to see. A gentle wind whirled around them, catching his hair and lifting it up. His cape flapped and the warm breeze kissed his skin. His heart swelled, and he gently squeezed Rose’s hand as the light washed over and around them both.
Then they were gone.
*
Sadie stood next to Anna, and tears streamed down her face. “This is it,” she said. “This is what she wanted us to find. She’s been here all these years, and no one knew. No one cared.”
Anna was still dumbfounded by what she was seeing: row upon row of urns, each bearing the names, birth dates, and dates of death of what looked to be hundreds if not a thousand or more souls. She ran a finger along the names, and her heart hurt. So many people, so many lives lost, and no one knew they were here. She’d hated that nurse before but now, what she felt toward her was even stronger. “What an evil bitch. How could she do this to people? Why would she do this?”
Sadie took the urn that held the ashes of her great-great-grandmother from Lorna and stared down at it. “Why didn’t anyone come looking for her? How could my great-great-grandfather just leave her here? What kind of bastard would do that?” Her tears fell against the urn, sliding down the sides and making the copper glisten.
Lorna gave Sadie a little hug. “I’m so terribly sorry, Sadie. I’m sorry for what happened to your grandmother. We haven’t really met yet, but I’m Lorna.”
Sadie turned and put her arms around Lorna. She hugged her tight and then kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything. You have no idea what this means to me.”
At first Anna thought Lorna was going to jump away from the bear hug that Sadie was giving her, and then she was surprised when Lorna just smiled. It was a real smile that made Lorna’s eyes come alive. It was a look that Anna hadn’t seen in a very long time, and it warmed her heart to see it now.
“You’re very welcome,” Lorna said and returned the hug.
Sadie looked down and touched the urn again. “I really don’t understand why no one came for her.” There was a sob in her voice.
“I think I do,” Lorna said as she studied the rows and rows of urns. “I’m not trying to dis your grandfather, but I’m making an educated guess that the guy put her here because he didn’t want her to ever leave.”
Sadie hugged the urn to her chest as she turned her intense gaze onto Lorna. “Do you think she was mentally ill?”
Anna’s heart ached at the sorrow that filled Sadie’s words. From Anna’s point of view, it seemed that during the time Sadie had been kept here, she’d become very attached to Rose. She didn’t blame he
r; it was heartbreaking to think of anyone being stuck here under the control of Nurse Thompson. It had to have been hell. Then to have them appear as ghosts and draw Sadie into the drama that had played out here a hundred years ago made it all even worse.
“No, I don’t,” Lorna said, and Anna could tell by the look in her eyes that she was being honest with Sadie. She wasn’t just telling her what she thought she wanted to hear, and Anna really appreciated her honesty. “I think she may have been depressed or something along those lines, but mentally ill, never. I don’t believe she could be something in death that she wasn’t in life. The woman we saw was not ill, mental or otherwise.”
Sadie held the urn tighter to her chest and smiled. The smile chased away most of the shadows. “Well, she’s not alone anymore. None of these people are, thanks to you.”
Lorna was shaking her head. “I didn’t do anything. Rose did.”
Anna wasn’t buying that argument, or at least not all of it. Without Lorna it was entirely possible Sadie would still be a captive here and these lost souls would still be hidden in darkness behind the unknown panel. “You brought them home, Lorna. You all brought them home,”
Anna said, “Lorna, Sadie, Jeremy, and Katie. None of this would have been possible if you hadn’t come when I called. I can’t ever thank you enough.”
“We’re kind of like the twenty-first-century ghostbusters,” Jeremy said from the doorway. He’d been standing there taking it all in, the same look of disbelief on his face that Anna was pretty sure had been on all of their faces.
His words made everyone laugh, and all the tension that had been hanging over them since the moment they first came to this place lifted. In fact, Anna decided that even the air in the place seemed lighter all of a sudden, as if banishing Nurse Thompson once and for all had lifted a cloud that had been hanging over the building since it first opened its doors.
Twisted Screams Page 21
